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DrSmellThis
09-28-2005, 02:17 PM
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509280150sep28,1,3686073.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctr

ack=1&cset=true (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509280150sep28,1,3686073.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1

&cset=true)

We're talking about Rumsfeld's own secret Pentagon intel agency. So why did they let a

known terrorist into the U.S., and allow him to train to take off an airplane?

Did they not even have him under

surveillance?

belgareth
09-28-2005, 02:25 PM
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509280150sep28,1,3686073.story?co

ll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509280150sep28,1,3686073.story?coll=ch

i-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true)

We're talking about Rumsfeld's own secret Pentagon intel agency. So

why did they let a known terrorist into the U.S., and allow him to train to take off an airplane?

Did they not

even have him under surveillance?
Would you mind posting the article? The link requires a log in.

DrSmellThis
09-28-2005, 02:29 PM
Atta known to Pentagon before 9/11

By John Crewdson and Andrew Zajac
Washington Bureau


Published September 28, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Four years after the nation's deadliest terror attack, evidence is

accumulating that a super-secret Pentagon intelligence unit identified the organizer of the Sept. 11 hijackings,

Mohamed Atta, as an Al Qaeda operative months before he entered the U.S.

The many investigations of Sept. 11,

2001, have turned up a half-dozen instances in which government agencies possessed information that might have led

investigators to some part of the terrorist plot, although in most cases not in time to stop it.

But none of

those leads likely would have taken them directly to Atta, the Egyptian architecture student who moved to the U.S.

from Germany to take flying lessons and later served as Al Qaeda's U.S. field commander for the attacks.

Had

the FBI been alerted to what the Pentagon purportedly knew in early 2000, Atta's name could have been put on a list

that would have tagged him as someone to be watched the moment he stepped off a plane in Newark, N.J., in June of

that year.

Physical and electronic surveillance of Atta, who lived openly in Florida for more than a year, and

who acquired a driver's license and even an FAA pilot's license in his true name, might well have made it possible

for the FBI to expose the Sept. 11 plot before the fact.

Atta is presumed to have been at the controls of

American Airlines Flight 11 when it struck the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

The FBI

has reviewed the voluminous records of its extensive Sept. 11 investigation and can find no mention of Atta before

Sept. 11, a senior FBI official said. If the Pentagon knew about Atta in 2000 and failed to tell the FBI, the

official said, "It could be a problem."

Anthony Shaffer, a civilian Pentagon employee, says he was asked in the

summer of 2000 by a Navy captain, Scott Phillpott, to arrange a meeting between the FBI and representatives of the

Pentagon intelligence program, code-named Able/Danger.

But he said the meeting was canceled after Pentagon

lawyers concluded that information on suspected Al Qaeda operatives with ties to the U.S. might violate Pentagon

prohibitions on retaining information on "U.S. persons," a term that includes U.S. citizens and permanent resident

aliens.

Information unearthed

The Washington-based FBI agent who was Shaffer's liaison has recalled, in

interviews with her superiors, that Shaffer told her his group had unearthed important information on suspected Al

Qaeda operatives with links to the U.S., but without mentioning Atta's name.

When Shaffer, who is also a

lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, asked to whom at the FBI that information should be communicated, the agent

gave him the name and phone number of an official at FBI headquarters, according to the senior FBI official.



Shaffer explained in a telephone interview that although Able/Danger never had knowledge of Atta's whereabouts, it

had linked him and several other Al Qaeda suspects to an Egyptian terrorist, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who had been

linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and later was convicted for conspiring to attack the U.S. Atta arrived

in the U.S. some seven years after that bombing. But Shaffer and his attorney, Mark Zaid, emphasize that Able/Danger

never knew where Atta was, only that he was connected to Abdel-Rahman and Al Qaeda.

"Not to say they were

physically here, but the data led us to believe there was some activity related to the original World Trade Center

bombing that these guys were somehow affiliated with," Shaffer said.

Asked by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.),

chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, at a hearing last week whether Atta, who lived for 15 months in Florida

under a temporary student visa, was a "U.S. person," a senior Pentagon official answered, "No, he was not."

The

official, William Dugan, was asked why the Pentagon had not given the Able/Danger data to the FBI.

"We're a lot

smarter now than we were in 1999 and 2000," replied Dugan, who testified that the Pentagon instead destroyed the

huge volume of material gathered by Able/Danger, which was disbanded in late 2000.

Erik Kleinsmith, a former

Army major who worked with Able/Danger, testified at the hearing that he continued to wonder whether, if Able/Danger

"had not been shut down, [whether] we would have been able to assist the United States in some way" to prevent the

Sept. 11 attacks.

Zaid, who also represents James D. Smith, a private contractor employed by the Pentagon to

work on Able/Danger, said that until last summer Smith had on his office wall a copy of a chart of Al Qaeda

suspects, produced more than a year before Sept. 11, that had Atta's name and photograph.

"He showed it to

anybody who came by--`Look what we had,'" Zaid testified. "And he would just shake his head, `What if, what if,

what if....'"

Specter sharply criticized the Pentagon for refusing to allow Shaffer, Phillpott, Smith and

others who recall seeing the chart to appear and answer the committee's questions.

"It looks to me as if it

could be obstruction of the committee's activities," the senator said.

Specter added that he was especially

"dismayed and frustrated" by the committee's inability to hear from Shaffer and Phillpott, whom he described as

"two brave military officers [who] have risked their careers to come forward and tell America the truth."



Pentagon to permit testimony

Following the hearing, Specter announced that the Pentagon had agreed to allow

Shaffer, Phillpott and three other witnesses to testify in public next month, though a Specter aide said Tuesday

that the Pentagon now insisted the hearings be closed.

The Defense Department initiated its own investigation of

Able/Danger's activities several weeks ago. After more than 80 interviews with Pentagon personnel, investigators

reported that two individuals in addition to Shaffer, Phillpott and Smith recalled seeing the Atta chart before

Sept. 11.

Kleinsmith, who is no longer affiliated with the Pentagon, testified that he was ordered by a Defense

Department lawyer to comply with Pentagon regulations by destroying the Able/Danger data. He said he did not

remember seeing Atta's name or photo on the materials he destroyed, but that he believed Shaffer, Phillpott and the

three other employees "implicitly when they say they do."

Shaffer said that before Sept. 11 neither he nor

anyone else associated with Able/Danger attached any special significance to Atta, or to any of the other Al Qaeda

suspects the intelligence effort had unearthed.

Nor would they have had reason to. In early 2000, when Shaffer

said he first saw Able/Danger charts identifying suspected Al Qaeda members with links to the U.S., Atta and two

other Sept. 11 hijack pilots, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, were living and studying in Hamburg, Germany.

"I

was the one that carried the charts down to Tampa, to Capt. Phillpott," then Able/Danger's operations officer,

Shaffer said.

Able/Danger was an experiment in a new kind of warfare, known as "information warfare" or

"information dominance." One of the program's missions was to see whether Al Qaeda cells around the world could be

identified by sifting huge quantities of publicly available data, a relatively new technique called "data

mining."

The data miners used complex software programs, with names like Spire, Parentage and Starlight, that

mimic the thought patterns in the human brain while parsing countless bits of information from every available

source to find relationships and patterns that otherwise would be invisible.

Over its 18-month lifetime,

Able/Danger gathered an immense amount of data, the equivalent, Specter said, of one-quarter of the contents of the

Library of Congress.

Although data mining can be a powerful technique, there is a danger that false connections

will be made along the lines of "six degrees of separation," the popular theory that any two people on Earth can be

linked through their relationships to no more than six other people.

Data points matched

The Atta-Al Qaeda

connection, Shaffer said, was made by Smith, who then worked for a Pentagon contractor named Orion Scientific.

Atta's photo, Shaffer said, was obtained by Smith from someone in California who had connections to "a foreign

source" who monitored radical mosques in Europe.

"J.D. Smith took eight data points that were common to the

original World Trade Center bombers in 1993," with whom Abdel-Rahman had been associated, Shaffer said. "From those

eight data points, he matched the profile."

Atta, whose full name was Mohammed El-Amir Awad el Sayid Atta,

called himself Mohamed el-Amir while living in Germany, and thus would not have been readily identifiable as

"Mohamed Atta."

He switched to the surname Atta as he prepared to move to the U.S., according to German police

documents. A Senate aide said Specter was negotiating with the Defense Department over the conditions under which

Shaffer and the other Pentagon witnesses would be permitted to appear before the Judiciary Committee and answer the

senators' questions.

"I think the Department of Defense owes the American people an answer about what went on

here," Specter declared.

Clues pieced together in years following attacks

Post-Sept. 11 investigations have

revealed instances that seem, in hindsight, to have been chances for the CIA or FBI to thwart the attacks.

1.

MAY 1998

HIJACK WARNING

- In September 2005 it was revealed that the independent

commission that

investigated the Sept. 11 attacks found that the

Federal Aviation Administration had been warned as early as

1998 that Al Qaeda "might try to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark." The FAA viewed this

possibility as "unlikely" and a "last resort," the report said.

2. JAN. 15, 2000

THE CIA AND FBI

-

Investigations into Sept. 11 paid much attention to the CIA's failure to tell the FBI that one of the Sept. 11

hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar, had apparently moved to the U.S., where he was taking flying lessons with another

hijacker, Nawaf al-Hazmi, in San Diego.

3. JAN. 31, 2000

DUBAI ARREST

- One of the most promising leads

came from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where in January 2000 authorities detained Sept. 11 hijack pilot Ziad

Jarrah as he was returning to Hamburg from a twomonth sojourn with Mohamed Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi

in Osama bin Laden's Afghan training camps.

It was during those two months that bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh

Mohammed decided that Atta and his friends were the ideal candidates to conduct the operation, according to the

Sept. 11 commission report.

As Jarrah was questioned by the Dubai airport police, he knew the general outlines

of the plot, though the date and targets would not be decided for more than a year.

According to a senior UAE

official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, while Jarrah was in custody the Dubai police informed

the American Embassy that a young Lebanese student had been detained on his way back to Europe from Afghanistan. The

embassy contact, the official said, asked that Jarrah be arrested.

When the Dubai police explained they had no

grounds for an arrest, the embassy contact replied that the police should let Jarrah go.

Jarrah flew from Dubai

to Amsterdam and then to Hamburg, where he reconnected with Atta, al-Shehhi and Ramzi Binalshibh.

U.S. officials

dispute the UAE official's account, saying they never learned of the Jarrah airport stop until Sept. 18, 2001.



4. JULY 5, 2001

THE "PHOENIX MEMO"

- What has become known as "the Phoenix memo" was written in July 2001

by an FBI agent in that city who took notice of the number of Middle Eastern students enrolling in Arizona flight

schools and wondered whether some of them might be terrorists.

The agent suggested the FBI compile visa

information on foreigners applying to flight schools, although such an effort would have missed the Sept. 11

hijackers, who had graduated from flight school months before.

5. AUG. 15, 2001

MOUSSAOUI'S ARREST

-

Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges in Minneapolis three weeks before Sept. 11 after he raised

the suspicions of a flight school instructor by paying for his lessons in cash and demanding to learn to fly a

Boeing 747.

When Minneapolis FBI agents asked FBI headquarters in Washington for permission to see what was on

Moussaoui's laptop, they were denied. In fact, Moussaoui had been sent to the U.S. by Al Qaeda to undergo flight

training, and aides to bin Laden had arranged for Moussaoui to receive at least $15,000, according to the Sept. 11

commission report.

When the laptop was finally searched in the wake of Sept. 11, it contained nothing linking

Moussaoui to the plot.

6. SEPT. 10, 2001

SATELLITE CALLS

- Investigators have made much of two satellite

telephone calls between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, monitored and recorded the day before the hijackings by the

U.S. National Security Agency.

In one conversation, a party in Afghanistan announces that "The match begins

tomorrow." In the second conversation, a different person warns that "Tomorrow is zero hour."

The conversations,

in Arabic, weren't translated by the NSA until Sept. 12, but were probably too general to have led investigators to

the plot.

InternationalPlayboy
09-28-2005, 02:52 PM
Would you mind posting the article? The link requires a log in.

When coming across

a site that requires registration but is otherwise free, such as the Chicago Tribune and other major newspaper

sites, try http://www.bugmenot.com for an anonymous login username and password. I learned about that

site from http://obscurestore.typepad.com/, "The Obscure Store and Reading Room."

belgareth
09-28-2005, 02:58 PM
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509280150sep28,1,3686073.story?co

ll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509280150sep28,1,3686073.story?coll=ch

i-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true)

We're talking about Rumsfeld's own secret Pentagon intel agency. So

why did they let a known terrorist into the U.S., and allow him to train to take off an airplane?

Did they not

even have him under surveillance?

Thanks Doc.

The real question is why the FBI was not notified of

his presence. The CIA and NSA are not allowed to mount operations withing the US (Yeah, I have my doubts too but

let's stick to the story line :) ). They do have an obligation to notify agencies responsible for security within

the borders of potential probelms. I'd think an Al Queda operative would qualify as a problem.

belgareth
09-28-2005, 03:15 PM
My memory is failing me,

wasn't Rumsfield appointed by Bush?

DrSmellThis
09-28-2005, 08:58 PM
Yes. I hope Bush doesn't "find out" Rumsfeld was

responsible for that. He'd be sure to get promoted.

You're right that the main specific responsibility was to

notify the FBI. I should have been clearer about where I was coming from with those questions:

The context to

that specific responsibility is a collective responsibility, as U.S. security and intelligence professionals, to

stop the known terrorist from coming here and planning a terrorist attack under everyone's nose. Someone has to be

responsible for that, and if everyone is only responsible for their specific task within that, no one is.

I'm

tired of a government where no one is responsible for anything, because everything has multiple parts;

and everyone is only responsible for "their part" of something. (Obvious examples in today's news are the Katrina

mess, and prisoner tortures; but there are countless others.).

Even if the "buck" is supposed to stop at

someone's desk, they will blame those lower down the chain; claiming they couldn't possibly have controlled or

managed all the details and people.

It's "ghost responsibility." It theoretically exists somewhere, but you

can't see it, feel it, or put your finger on it. (Digital music is like this too, but I don't want to digress.

:))

It's part of the machine era, where a machine is only the sum of its parts. People are both machines, and

parts of a larger machine with no human identity. No machine or mechanistic process can have responsibility.



Examples include the corporation, the "pheromone-determined relationship"; (a slight stretch but the same

underlying idea, with the mechanism being biological) and the assembly line. It plays into our misguided faith in

mechanism.

One result of this foolish mindset is that only gullible and cowardly peons are held

responsible (enjoy your hard time, Lindy). Another is that efforts to "put a soul in the machine" are labelled crazy

conspiracy theories, etc.

You can cheat to win, by taking advantage of this foolishness, if you're a

thug.

Your defense is to identify with the machine, to masquerade as a mechanism; and that frees you to engage in

actual conspiracy with impunity. Do more choose to conspire more often, given all that freedom and immunity? You

bet! Just look around you. Or read today's news.

Though the solution might not be to have everyone be held

equally and absolutely responsibile for everything in which they have a part, there is a middle ground on which

people can take responsibility for the big picture, and are held responsible for taking that responsibility.



People are typically punished for trying to take responsibility like this in the system we now have (e.g.,

Ambassador Joe Wilson, the many fired CIA "whistle blowers", my own job history, though I'd rather be Joe Wilson

than Lindy Englund ;)). Mechanisms are not allowed to think, after all. But only by allowing and expecting this

mindfulness can we add some soul to the machine, and protect ourselves from thugs who will use the machine to do us

in.

In this anti-mechanistic light, I suspect that the FBI wasn't told of that obvious, unmistakeable,

unforgettable danger because someone with power didn't want the FBI to know, and those without as

much power were either too gullible, or too afraid to push it. Legalism aside, to assume mere incompetence with this

situation is to grant an irrational benefit of the doubt, not to avoid paranoia.

The implications are not

pretty, unfortunately.

We know there was Administrative pressure from the start to divert attention and intel

resources away from Al Queda, to facilitate invading Iraq -- a project that would be well served by building a

special, secret intelligence agency with no congressional oversight, as Rumsfeld did, under Bush's

direction.

That is about the least conspiratorial interpretation possible for a rational person, though

not the only one I have in mind (Hint: PNAC. I'll leave it at that.). This restrained interpretation

nonetheless implies that no one in this administration ever gave a rat's ass about our safety and security -- only

the security of their power agenda. The blatant, omni-arrogant appointment of ruthless power broker Karl Rove to

head the Katrina reconstruction and award the contracts to cronies supports that thesis neatly. This "machine,"

masterfully exploited as a weapon against innocents by thugs, has no soul by design, not by mere political

default.

I trust that explains my original questions.

belgareth
09-29-2005, 06:13 AM
That's what I thought.

Obviously this has been going on for some time as Atta came to the US prior to the Bush regime and Rumsfield

building his organization. It sounds to me like we need to consider the entire intelligence organization not simply

blame the existing power structure and/or political party. It goes right back to my strong belief that the

government structure we have, regardless of elected leadership, is fatally flawed. I will not disagree that it is a

mechanism ruled by thugs but the evidence seems to indicate that other thugs were at work during previous

administrations.

What you describe is in part scapegoat-ism. The whistle-blowers who should be protected are

getting hung while others, the leaders, are not being held responsible. Certainly, if Englund is guilty she should

be punished. How about the officers running the detention center, why are they not being held responsible for the

actions of their subordinates? Why is Rove not being punished for his crimes? There's a whole long list that goes

back many years but it all boils down to accountability. Regardless of politics, personal opinions or party

affiliation, if a person is responsible for something, hold them 100% responsible. If a person commits a crime or

allows one to be committed, apply the same laws across the board. No other standard can be applied and still

honestly expect a just system.

belgareth
09-29-2005, 06:35 AM
According to the

email, this beast was caught roaming the streets of New Orleans. They claim it was looking to eat people/bodies

found there. I'm a bit sceptical because they claim the army killed it. If so, where's the blood? Where are the

bullet holes? No visible signs of trauma. I know how a man with an M16 would deal with a monster that size. The

vehicle does not have a license plate that I can see either. Make your own decision about it. It's an impressive

beast anyway. 21 feet long and 4,500 pounds.

belgareth
09-29-2005, 06:40 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050929/ap_on_

fe_st/santa_compensated (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050929/ap_on_fe_st/santa_compensated)

DrSmellThis
09-30-2005, 11:13 AM
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050929/D8CTVTI04.h

tml (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050929/D8CTVTI04.html)

DrSmellThis
09-30-2005, 11:31 AM
Republicans See Signs That Pentagon Is Evading Oversight

By Douglas Jehl / Washington Post (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/politics/29intel.html)



WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - Republican members of Congress say there are signs that the Defense Department may be

carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the new

director of national intelligence.

The warnings are an unusually public signal of some Republican lawmakers'

concern about overreaching by the Pentagon, where top officials have been jockeying with the new intelligence chief,

John D. Negroponte, for primacy in intelligence operations. The lawmakers said they believed that some intelligence

activities, involving possible propaganda efforts and highly technological initiatives, might be masked as so-called

special access programs, the details of which are highly classified.

"We see indications that the D.O.D. is

trying to create parallel functions to what is going on in intelligence, but is calling it something else,"

Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an

interview.

Mr. Hoekstra said he believed that the purpose might be to obscure the extent of Pentagon

intelligence activities and to keep them outside Mr. Negroponte's designated orbit.

Even under the new

structure headed by Mr. Negroponte, the Pentagon's activities are widely understood to make up about 80 percent of

an annual intelligence budget whose details remain classified but that is widely understood to total about $80

billion a year. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon is understood to have carried out a major expansion of its

intelligence programs, including human spying efforts by Special Operations Forces and an arm of the Defense

Intelligence Agency, whose missions have expanded into areas traditionally the purview of the Central Intelligence

Agency.

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have been pressing Stephen Cambone, the under secretary of

defense for intelligence, for more information about the Pentagon's human spying. But the concerns now being voiced

by Mr. Hoekstra and others appear to extend more broadly.

In the interview, Mr. Hoekstra declined to be

specific, citing concerns about classification and the general sensitivity of the issue. But as an indication of the

committee's sentiments, another Republican lawmaker cited an unclassified report issued by the committee in June,

which said the panel believed that "it does not have full visibility over some defense intelligence programs" that

do not clearly fall under particular budget categories.

The report said the committee believed that "individual

services may have intelligence or intelligence-related programs such as science and technology projects or

information operations programs related to defense intelligence that are embedded in other service budget line

items, precluding sufficient visibility for program oversight."

"Information operations" is a military term

used to describe activities including electronic warfare, psychological operations and counterpropaganda

initiatives.

A version of the intelligence authorization bill that was passed by the House this summer calls on

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in consultation with Mr. Negroponte, to provide Congress with "a comprehensive

inventory of Department of Defense intelligence and intelligence-related programs and projects." Those who would

receive such a report would include the House Intelligence Committee, its Senate counterpart and the armed services

committees in both chambers of Congress.

As part of the intelligence overhaul that Congress ordered last year,

Mr. Negroponte, as director of national intelligence, is supposed to oversee 15 intelligence agencies whose

activities fall under a budget category known as the National Intelligence Program. Mr. Negroponte has less

authority over programs that fall under another category, the Military Intelligence Program, which are intended to

provide tactical and strategic support to military commanders.

But the concern expressed by Mr. Hoekstra and

others is focused on a third category of programs involving intelligence activity but not labeled as such, and

included within the budgets of the individual military services.

"Greater transparency into these programs and

projects will enhance Congressional oversight and permit identification of potentially duplicative programs in other

services," the committee said in its recent report, issued in June to accompany the intelligence authorization act

for the fiscal year 2006.

In the interview, Mr. Hoekstra said the committee had been told that the Pentagon was

creating parallel structures "so they don't have to deal with the D.N.I.," the abbreviation for the new

intelligence chief.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Conway, declined to comment on the issue,

referring questions to Mr. Negroponte's office. A spokesman for Mr. Negroponte, Carl Kropf, described coordination

between Mr. Negroponte's office and the Pentagon as "excellent" on budget issues.

"Successfully integrating

D.O.D.-unique intelligence programs and missions into the National Intelligence Program requires full transparency,"

Mr. Kropf said. "Such transparency exists today."

belgareth
10-02-2005, 08:59 AM
Seattle Considers Ban on Lap Dances By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer



Sun Oct 2, 7:23 AM ET



SEATTLE - Strippers who venture too near the laps of their

dollar-bill-waving patrons have exposed an unexpected prudish streak in this West Coast bastion of tolerance and

liberalism.

Fearing a rash of new cabarets after a federal judge

struck down the city's 17-year moratorium on new strip clubs, the City Council is planning to vote Monday to impose

some of the strictest adult-entertainment regulations of any big city in the

country.

No lap dances. No placing dollar bills in a dancer's

G-string. And the clubs must have what one council member likens to "Fred Meyer" lighting, a reference to the

department store chain.

"It's wiping out an entire industry in

Seattle," said Gilbert Levy, a lawyer for Rick's gentleman's club.

Seattle's queasiness over naked dancing contradicts its usual freewill attitude, which traces its roots to

the days when the city had a thriving business separating gold prospectors from their gold at local brothels and

saloons. Anti-war demonstrations are routine here, a gay population has thrived for nearly a century, and residents

voted two years ago to make enforcing marijuana laws the police department's lowest

priority.

"Seattle had always had that reputation for being a

wide-open town, so it's an almost-normal kind of Seattle controversy — what is sin?" said local historian David

Wilma, comparing the strip club dilemma to the early 20th century debate over whether to regulate the gambling dens

and brothels that permeated Seattle's Pioneer Square district. "One hundred years ago, it wasn't about public

health. It was about what is offensive."

Between 1986 and 1988, the

number of cabarets in Seattle jumped from two to seven. Concerned residents persuaded the city to impose a 180-day

moratorium, to keep the number where it was while officials studied the social effects of the clubs and whether

zoning regulations were needed.

Over the next two decades, the City

Council repeatedly extended the moratorium as a way of avoiding the politically sensitive issue of deciding in which

neighborhoods to allow strip clubs. The number of cabarets in the city fell to four. By contrast, Atlanta has

roughly three dozen.

Last year, a man who hoped to open a club

downtown sued. U.S. District Judge James Robart sided with him last month, ruling the moratorium an unconstitutional

restraint on free speech. The city could wind up paying the man millions of dollars in

damages.

In anticipation of the ruling, however, Democratic Mayor

Greg Nickels came up with rules designed to make it easier to police strip clubs and to discourage new clubs from

opening. The rules include requiring dancers to keep 4 feet from customers, barring the use of private rooms,

barring customers from giving money directly to entertainers, and increasing the minimum lighting — think

parking-garage brightness.

The rules would also make the entertainers

employees of a club instead of private contractors, which the city believes will make it easier to go after club

owners when violations occur. In Seattle, most dancers pay about $150 per shift for the privilege of dancing in the

club, and keep what they make in fees and tips.

Several suburban

communities around Seattle already have the 4-foot rule, one reason clubs seek to open in Seattle, Nickels argues.

The regulations "are necessary to protect the public health, safety, and general welfare of the citizens of

Seattle," he wrote in a letter to City Council. Some council members say the regulations may go too far, but the

measure appears to have enough support.

Technically, the city already

bans "touching" between a dancer and customer, but city officials dispute whether that means sexual touching or all

touching. At any rate, they say it's impossible to enforce and completely ignored in the

clubs.

"How do you know there's no touching unless you're one of

the participants?" said Mel McDonald, the city official charged with strip club regulation. "It's dark in there.

You don't know whether they're half-an-inch away or not. With the 4-foot rule, it's a lot less subjective. Our

vice people can enforce it without buying a dance."

City Council

meetings to consider the rules have drawn protests from more than 100 of the city's 554 licensed dancers, many

toting young children. Tiffiny Neatrour, a 24-year-old dancer at Sands Showgirls, said she wouldn't be able to

afford to support her two daughters, ages 1 and 5, without the $400-$600 a day she makes — almost all of it from lap

dances. While she's working, her mom or sister helps babysit.

"I

don't know why they're bothering. We're not doing prostitution in there, at all," Neatrour said. "I'd be making

a lot more money if I was. If they want to go after prostitution why don't they go after the escort

services?"

City Council member Richard McIver, whose Finance

Committee has held hearings on the regulations, said he is concerned about the effect the regulations could have on

the dancers, but "I'm not an employment counselor." He supports the rules because police and city officials have

testified that they are needed to regulate the clubs and cut down on alleged "secondary effects" such as

prostitution.

Last year, about 197,000 people visited the city's

clubs, not including the Lusty Lady peep show, generating $79,000 in admissions taxes. But one of McIver's aides,

Paul Elliott, said the general public doesn't seem terribly interested in the debate. The council has received

about three dozen letters and e-mails concerning the new rules, most of them opposed to the regulations.



"We get more e-mails about putting synthetic turf on the Lowell

Heights playfield," Elliot said.

DrSmellThis
10-02-2005, 01:45 PM
Anywhere you have

libertarianism you have backlash by the control freak cultures. But the northwest U.S. is a land of opposites. You

also have a lot of fundamentalism out here, despite the greater openmindedness.

Oregon is a bit more libertarian

than Washington. All their strippers are going to be coming down I5 to Portland now! :twisted:

There are already

more strip clubs here per capita than anywhere in the U.S. My favorite is stripper Karaoke. You can sing Johnny Cash

in a black suit and bowtie while strippers accompany you. Killer!

Netghost56
10-02-2005, 01:56 PM
Lucky for you. The nearest

strip place here is Hot Springs, which has a bunch.

I think there's supposed to be on in Texarkana, but I doubt

its worth visiting.

belgareth
10-03-2005, 06:25 AM
Anywhere you

have libertarianism you have backlash by the control freak cultures. But the northwest U.S. is a land of opposites.

You also have a lot of fundamentalism out here, despite the greater openmindedness.

Oregon is a bit more

libertarian than Washington. All their strippers are going to be coming down I5 to Portland now! :twisted:

There

are already more strip clubs here per capita than anywhere in the U.S. My favorite is stripper Karaoke. You can sing

Johnny Cash in a black suit and bowtie while strippers accompany you. Killer!
In my experience I find that

anywhere you have people you have the control freak culture. Some people just have to try to force others to do what

they think is best for them.

DrSmellThis
10-03-2005, 12:35 PM
In my

experience I find that anywhere you have people you have the control freak culture. One could say,

correctly, that anywhere you have people, you have any and every human quality exhibited. So it's hard to

understand this as a reply, other than as expressing a vague sense of disagreement.

belgareth
10-03-2005, 01:22 PM
One could

say, correctly, that anywhere you have people, you have any and every human quality exhibited. So it's hard to

understand this as a reply, other than as expressing a vague sense of disagreement.
You said "Anywhere you

have libertarianism" I was simply observing that the tendancy is far from being restricted or associated with

libertarianism. Though my post was from plain amussement and not politically motivated I suspect that most people

view Seattle as a bastion of liberals and democrats rather than libertarians. At least that is the way the vote

typically swings in elections. As a point of fact, the article even mentions liberalism. Was there some point to the

remark about libertarians?

DrSmellThis
10-03-2005, 02:06 PM
You said

"Anywhere you have libertarianism" I was simply observing that the tendancy is far from being restricted or

associated with libertarianism. Though my post was from plain amussement and not politically motivated I suspect

that most people view Seattle as a bastion of liberals and democrats rather than libertarians. At least that is the

way the vote typically swings in elections. Was there some point to the remark about libertarians?The point

was made in the post, and I see no need to defend anything. But I will attempt to clarify the apparent

misunderstanding.

Since you bristle when people stereotype Texans in the forum, it should be easy for you to

hear that your implicit characterization of Northwesterners as "liberals" is a bit simplistic. A lot of people would

tell you that libertarianism (this concept is in no way limited to "Civil Libertarians") is a palapable way of life

out here, both in terms of law and culture, and that this obvious cultural tendency influences many political

persuasions, across all party lines. There is a general independent streak that, for example, caused political

mavericks and party misfits Kucinich and Nader to base their recent presidential campaigns out of this area, rather

than in a simply Democratic state (many Dems hate Nader). There is also an obvious rebel attitude in State politics

that gives the Feds headaches, on a regular basis, no matter the party affiliation. I think it's fair to say that

this culture is more intense in Oregon, but is still present in Washington.

It shouldn't be a stretch to imagine

that when a community of people tend to express and tolerate a wider range of freedoms overtly, as is the case with

a libertarian culture, there'd be some who would be made more uncomfortable than otherwise and actively seek to

squash that expression to protect their own emotions. Just as I said, there would tend be a backlash by the control

freak culture, as people's control issues are triggered.

In fact this is what I have observed. For example, you

have more gay culture here than most places, but also a more active anti gay culture than would be typical (Google

"Lon Mabon" for a good example).

belgareth
10-03-2005, 02:39 PM
Doc,

Implicit

characterization? Huh? Who asked you to defend anything? I certainly didn't.

I did not characterize the

Northwesterners as liberals. We seem to be talking ninety degrees to one another. You characterized them as

libertarian, or at least that is what I think you said. Is it incorrect? The article characterized them as liberals

in the first paragraph. My only comment that could be considered pointing that direction was in my most recent post

when I observed that the vote in that area tends to be liberal/democratic. That is no more than an observable fact,

you are welcome to check out for yourself. I'd be very interested to learn more about the libertarian culture in

Seattle or the surrounding area, it's frankly news to me but I haven't paid a lot of attention to the subcultures

in that area. Do you have references I could follow up?

For the rest, It's still true that no matter where you

go or the political bias of the area, there is always a subset, usually a minority, who insist on telling others how

to live. Unfortunately, here in the bible belt they seem to be a rather large minority. I suspect it has something

to do with spending too much time in the hot sun without a hat on. :) California was pretty badly that way too, I'm

not sure what to blame it on there. Maybe mercury in their drinking water, that would explain a lot.:POKE:

I am

still rather surprised and somewhat amused to learn that an area long considered by most the country as very liberal

(you are welcome to check that out as well) would have such a silly attitude towards something so (From my point of

view) harmless. Here, they are trying hard to shut down the flesh palaces but it isn't surprising considering their

rather narrow minded, southern baptist viewpoint on such things. Didn't I at one point post an article about the

lady that was arrested for selling vibrators near here? Many people here actually thought it was the right thing to

do!:frustrate

DrSmellThis
10-03-2005, 03:00 PM
You are welcome to "check out"

whether or not we are liberals and/or have libertarian tendencies out here.

Readers can verify that the other

question about liberals and libertarians was addressed.

belgareth
10-05-2005, 07:45 AM
Doc, I'm curious, are you

saying you are a libertarian?

DrSmellThis
10-05-2005, 09:50 AM
One reason I live out here is

that facet of Northwest culture. It's like the adventurers, free spirits, misfits, and pioneers hid themselves away

in the farthest corner of the country. We don't want people from California or anywhere else moving here, so we

tell everyone how rainy it is. (a sign once posted on the border: "Welcome to Oregon. Now buh-bye!")

I think

it's great, for example, that Oregon has no sales tax, and medical MJ; that it opted out of the FBI

"anti-terrorism" task force; that you can walk barechested through downtown as a woman, :D that it often tells the

Feds to f_ck off (under Clinton too). We do things differently out here (a popular mainstram bumper sticker: "Keep

Oregon weird").

But I hope you of all people are not thinking that "libertarian" = Civil Libetarian. On the

other hand, someone could have a misconception about my "political" philosophy, based on how certain issues have

been approached.

belgareth
10-05-2005, 10:33 AM
But I hope

you of all people are not thinking that "libertarian" = Civil Libetarian. On the other hand, someone could have a

misconception about my "political" philosophy, based on how certain issues have been approached.

That's

why I asked, to avoid any misunderstanding.

DrSmellThis
10-05-2005, 11:11 AM
I do get the spellings mixed

up: "Libertarian" versus "libetarian"? All I know is I'm not a party member, and wouldn't want to be.

Politics

is a strange thing. There really isn't any perfect -- or even clearly good -- political party or system; if you

listen to eveybody's argument, and then look around you. Why?

Humanity works through life stories and history,

not simplistic political platforms. We learn, struggle and we grow. We are where we are. So politics, to be

successful, to match the creatures it serves, needs to be cultural "teliography" -- history told into the future,

and based in where each of us is now. You could call this idea "narrative politics".

Part of this idea is that

every political improvement is based on, and presumes, a change in consciousness. Politics are a fun house mirror of

the people's consciousness.

A political story, unlike an abstract platform, can capture shifts in consciousness

in real time. The consciousness isn't reduced to the abstract conclusion of the story.

We can expand our

consciousness, but are limited by it. Consciousness in history changes like a Rubik's Cube from Hell, so it ain't

easy. It's a chess match played against ourselves, the unachievable object being to elimenate the game and the

competition.

We both know all this and don't. If the process were clear, acknowledged, and deliberate, we could

take more control of our own future history. We could also better understand our own lives, and political

beliefs.

OK. I can hear the Belgareth mind ticking, "But what is the practical solution, what actions are we

going to take?"

But there is no good, simplistic platform for what to do about taxes, welfare, or foreign policy.

If you tried to make one, and were honest with yourself, you might discover that everything depends on various

situations some people are now in, and where we all want to go. So just let it go.

The only politics that can

wrap itself around this state of affairs is a story, a narrative. That means the story rules, and the political

platform can only be discerned upon reflection on this story. We look for common stories of the people, and common

themes. The platform is based on those themes, as they fit with the future history told by the policy maker, who

also has a personal life story he or she wants others to relate to. There is no policy or law that cannot be told as

a compelling story, one that fits in with the bigger stories.

So there is no principle, like "small government".

If government were magically and suddenly made very small, and say, public assitance or other functions were

elimenated, it would be a mega-disaster, and many abstract principles are like this. This is just a simple example,

where the principle is bad by definition because it is not in form of a story.

Or instead of having a tax

platform, like "flat tax for everybody, 20%", you would have a big story that included a tax story within it, by

virtue of the big story. The tax story would have many moments in it, like any other story. Neither raising or

cutting any particular tax could be interpreted, necessarily, as reflecting a "big taxes" or "small taxes"

principle. The coherence and understandability comes from the quality of the story, not the "simplicity" of the

principle. (BTW, remember all the rants on black and white thinking, about how proud fools are, about how simplistic

they are? It all goes together. I continually define what I mean by "holistic", by writing holistic things like

this.)

All such political principles are let go for the time being, as they are divisive and simplistic. We

instead have a shared awareness of ourselves, and imagined life for ourselves and others. Under this idea, you might

need small government for time/place/function X, but big government for Y, and no government for Z.

Political

"principles" are slave to the story if they are to function at all: "we have to help this person in this situation,

working with their self understanding, and this is how we are going to make it work".

The challenge is to tell a

coherent story about the big picture that fits with all the individual stories of people and policies. It is a

political method. That is where the effort goes. It is the hard road, and demands rigorous professionalism

from its practitioners, the politicians.

We might seem to do some of that now, but it's actually pretty

chaotic. The process is only narrative by accident (you can't make people not be storytellers...), not by design

(...so you may as well accept it). So instead of a tax story, you have a bloated, nonsensical, ineffective tax code,

made of countless fragments patched together with snot, boogers, manure and duct tape. As a story, it

sucks.

It's about having a political methodology, one that transcends your platform or affiliation. The story is

the method.

By making it all coherent, deliberate, clear, and acknowledged, we might finally function as one

self-aware mind, in a particular place, going somewhere. For example, you'd have to systematically collect

people's stories, identify themes, and constantly recheck those themes for current validity. The same goes for

foreign relations. We should be collecting stories from Iraqis.

The apparent "problem" with implementing this

here is that we have a constitution and established systematic way of doing things, so there is little room for big

picture thinking. But that is just another way to say, "we are here, now". That is indeed part of the story that

needs to be told.

belgareth
10-06-2005, 09:46 AM
Excellent answer, Doc. Thank

you. However, by the same token, don't simplify my beliefs either. They are considerably more complex than labels

can be made to fit. There is much in your belief I believe as well though we are looking at the problem differently

thus are coming to somewhat different conclussions. Not bad, just different.

Is my mental ticking so loud that

you can hear me from 2/3 of the way across the country? Hummm, should have that adjusted, maybe it needs

lubrication? :) But you are correctly implying that I am thinking about how to address the issues, what to do about

it, how can it be fixed. Simply put, our single biggest problem is our government. It is too large, saps too much of

the resources and is a heavy burden on each and every person in this country. The mistaken mentality that we work

for and are beholden to the government for every need is all-pervasive when the reality is exactly the opposite.

Personal responsibility and human dignity are the keys to a truly progressive future in a fair and just society.




So there is no principle, like "small government". If government were magically and suddenly

made very small, and say, public assitance or other functions were elimenated, it would be a mega-disaster, and many

abstract principles are like this. This is just a simple example, where the principle is bad by definition because

it is not in form of a story.


You apparently misunderstand my position and have forgotten things I've

said. Government cannot magically be made suddenly small and you cannot simply eliminate most functions. That would

result in uncounted horrors to make the worst war scenerio seem like a summer stroll. I never claimed otherwise. On

the other hand, government programs are in part designed to create dependency on them. Lets look at the welfare

system as a prime example but not the only one by far. It is incidently one of the things I think Bill Clinton did

right but did not take far enough.

For many years, generations, welfare was structured so you could not easily

transition from welfare to gainful employment and nothing was done to help people or encourage them to do so. If you

were on welfare and started earning money you were immediately penalized. Obtaining any type of job trianing was a

major pain in the rear end. If you got through job trainiing and found a job you were immediately dumped out of the

system. There was no transition. The fear of the unknown was too great for many people and the lack of incentive

made matters worse. As a result we have generations of people who have never supported themselves, have never earned

a living and who have virtually no self esteem, they don't know that they can stand on their own two feet and be

productive. All they know how to do is be dependent on government largess.

Alternatively, if a person is on

welfare, offer them choices. You can take job training and we will help you by making it easy to get involved in it.

We'll put a roof over your head, feed you, clothe and care for your children. In return, you must make an honest

effort to learn a marketable skill. Once you've done that, we will help you obtain subsidised work that will in

time lead to non-subsidised work. A certain precentage of top performers will be offered jobs within the system

performing all the needed administrative work rather than hire from the general labor pool. If you prefer not to go

through job training you can always perform less skilled tasks within the system such as providing child care and

housekeeping services to those who are in job training or working, etc. No problem, it's your choice to make.



The third option? We are of course, not going to let you starve. You see that big, brick building over there?

Yeah, that's the one. It's called a dorm. You get a bed to sleep on, three meals a day though they may not be

exactly what you want they are wholesome, a dispensary in case you get ill, we'll even issue you clothing and

provide laundry services. Oh, did I mention the kids? Yes, of course. The school bus stops outside at 7:45, be sure

they are on it. Money? What for? You have everything you need to live. Oh, you want cigarettes, alcohol, drugs or

play around cash! Sorry, the first three are forbidden here in the first place. In the second, they are luxuries

which we do not provide. Still want them? Not a problem, see the first two options above.

Harsh? Not at all!

Each and every person is given every opportunity and nobody is required to go hungry. Sure, there are all sorts of

details and exceptions to work out. I could write a book on it and still not cover it all. The important part is

that over a period of years it would reduce a branch of government down to a manageable size while giving back to

whole generations of people their self esteem.

The same can be applied to every portion of the government. It

all starts with education. Today's school system does not teach people to think, it does not teach people to act as

a part of the society. Start when a child is young, pre-kindergarten, make them think about what they do and why

they do it. Hold them accountable for themselves from day one. Teach them that they are part of a society and are

responsible for their actions within that society. Then teach them why. Teach them facts but teach them how to use

those facts to the best interest of everybody involved. Teach them that they only recieve what they earn and teach

them why they should help others.

This has gone rather long and only covers one small portion of a very big

picture. My big picture is an integrated one where all the pieces work together and there is none of today's us and

them propaganda. The rich are not evil for achieving and the poor are not lazy and worthless. Each and every person

is expected to achieve to their ability and will be justly rewarded for their achievements.

DrSmellThis
10-06-2005, 01:20 PM
I actually didn't mean to

imply anything about your personal politics there, but was just using you as a hypothetical example to make a point!

Sorry if it came across in another way. Thanks for playing!

I especially liked how you put your reply in a sort

of narrative form. In that form I found lots of things I could agree with. You are on the right track with that

method, IMHO. We all need to listen to each others stories, tell more and more coherent stories, and look for

commonalities.

I agree government is too big in general (despite claims that I talked about wanting to raise

taxes in a PM, when I said I'd never just come out and say that in some blanket fashion. Maybe we could please let

that one go for good now, to be in present reality, or else find the PM, thanks? :)). Curiously, Republicans gained

power by people like Gingrich talking about small government (OK, that and stealing elections). But if anything

Republicans have talked about small government, while making it grow hugely bigger every year. By comparison,

Clinton and Democrats have seemed to me to believe in smaller government these days, if you go by what actually

happens overall. (This is one of the things I hate about calling anyone left of center or talking progressive values

a "tax and spend liberal" or "liberal". Anyhow...)

I've always thought there's a way to do everything cheaper,

redefine the roles of the branches of government, etc. (I once worked in DC as a useless government beurocrat,

evaluating Reagan's block grant program for mental health, which was in the spirit of shifting things to states. I

wrote a nice, long government report for NIMH, summarizing the program's performance for all 50 states and

suggesting changes, that no one read!) I also believe that people want a way out and a hand up, to be active in

their own lives; not just to hang out on welfare. By the same token there are people who are poor for very good

reasons, and it isn't easy or even possible for every person to make it, even if they try to do everything the

right way, without help of various kinds and degrees.

Ultimately you just want everyone fulfilling their

potentials, to make society rich in real terms. Everyone has something they can contribute. This merits a lot of

attention and effort on all our parts.

As I've said, government spending is way more about priorities, and

values -- or more accurately, the story that expresses those -- than it is the amount of dollars spent.

Cuts in

spending these days are often penny wise/pound foolish -- for instance transferring health care/mental health

care/substance abuse care to the emergency rooms and prisons due to program cuts, or cutting out prevention. The

fools think they're saving money, because they haven't put the whole story together. Only with a coherent story,

top to bottom, can spending can be wise, effective and efficient. This is where progressive, holistic thinking is so

valuable, in the storytelling.

belgareth
10-06-2005, 01:39 PM
Ok, you call it a story, I call

it a system but we mean much the same thing. Fair enough.

Sorry to insist Doc, but at one time you did make that

statement. Unfortunately, I'm a fairly prolifiic writer and have to clean out my email box often. I imagine you

have a similar problem. It isn't worth the effort of rehashing it so I'll drop it now.

Personally, I strongly

think both major parties are at best liars and fools and at worst incompetent, self serving thieves. I can't think

of a single member of either that I would allow into my home unless I was well armed and had time to watch them

around my valuables, daughters and dog. Even then I'd be reluctant as I really hate to waste ammunition and getting

rid of dead bodies is so much trouble. :rofl:

In another email we agreed about the spending cuts, makes no

sense whatsoever. All it really does is move the debt to a later date and enlarge it through repairing damage rather

than prevention. As you say, penny wise and pound foolish.
Of course I want everybody fulfilling their potential,

that's a big part of human dignity. A person who has their ability to do for themselves taken away from them has no

self respect. In my world vision human dignity is one of the most important points. Even my efforts here to help

others revolve around helping them to help themselves in most cases. To paraphrase a cliche "I do not believe in

handouts, only in giving a hand."

DrSmellThis
10-06-2005, 02:10 PM
And I am sorry to insist that

you misinterpret/take out of context/misremember! :) But thanks for dropping it! T'ain't worth the effort, when I

say so many other things you could throw in my face without dispute. There's no shortage, and in general I don't

mind being confronted with my stuff at all, as it's a healthy challenge to increase integrity. It can even be fun

playing the fool from time to time! So I wish I could see what I wrote.

It makes sense that an engineer would

talk system and a psychologist story. ;) The relation between story and system is interesting. A system is like a

precipitate of a story, a reflection of it, but the story still rules the system, like the programmer the program.

But yeah we are talking something mutually compatible and consistent there.

belgareth
10-06-2005, 02:13 PM
As an addendum about dignity

I'd like to add a story.
Many years ago when I was in college I worked in a resturant. There was a man who washed

dishes there who had held the job for 5-6 years already. He was mentally retarded and lived in a group home. He rode

his bicycle to work every day, was always early and always stayed late. He wasn't bright enough to hold any kind of

a conversation but he was very proud of himself. His work area was always clean and well ordered, he never left the

job undone. He once told me that he was the only person in his group home who didn't take a dime from the state, he

supported himself and was very proud of that fact. For all I know he may still be washing dishes there. It wasn't

the job so much as the pride at doing for himself that took him to work every day. The guy had a ton of dignity.



No matter their limitations each of us has something we can do for ourselves or to help others. It is part of us

to want to do and when that is taken away it leaves a void deep inside. Many resort to drugs and alcohol to try to

fill that void, it doesn't work. Let's stop rejecting those, stop paying them off and forgetting them. Let's give

them the opportunities they deserve to make their way in this world under their own steam.

DrSmellThis
10-06-2005, 02:23 PM
That is a true success story.

Many of the programs I've seen, and some I've been a part of, that work well, help people do just those kinds of

things. He may have had quite a bit of support from others to be able to do that, but was able to contribute to his

potential. Heart warming.

belgareth
10-07-2005, 06:22 AM
The point is that our society

is failing the majority of 'handicapped' people by not helping them to become more self sufficient resulting in

more government and greater burden on society as a whole. I believe that the majority would rather do something than

nothing, given the opportunity, no matter what their limitations are.

Netghost56
10-07-2005, 08:09 AM
That's true. Rehabilitation

services is one of the most underfunded places I know of.
We had to practically beg them for our equipment, and

they're constantly stiffing us on our hearing aids.

DrSmellThis
10-08-2005, 02:50 PM
The point is

that our society is failing the majority of 'handicapped' people by not helping them to become more self

sufficient resulting in more government and greater burden on society as a whole. I believe that the majority would

rather do something than nothing, given the opportunity, no matter what their limitations are.Absolutely.

That's how you know something is sick and wrong. Pretty much everyone wants to do something, unless they are very

ill.

An interesting idea would be to develop some kinds of job rehab services based on giving people a chance to

do what they'd want to do, when they can't find anyone to hire them to do it. You creatively fit jobs to people

rather than vice versa, and actually provide the work environments and business support for various type of work.

The theory is that what people naturally would want to do is potentially valuable to society. I realize it might be

a bit naive, but I wonder. I bet something along those lines could work.

Netghost56
10-08-2005, 03:59 PM
An

interesting idea would be to develop some kinds of job rehab services based on giving people a chance to do what

they'd want to do, when they can't find anyone to hire them to do it. You creatively fit jobs to people rather

than vice versa, and actually provide the work environments and business support for various type of

work...

They do that already. Arkansas Rehabilitation Services does, at least. They assigned me a career

specialist that's supposed to help get me a job. She's sent several job offers my way, and though she doesn't

keep in contact, she lets me know when a job is available in the area where we want to move to.




...The theory is that what people naturally would want to do is potentially valuable to

society. I realize it might be a bit naive, but I wonder. I bet something along those lines could work.
I

always thought I could change the world, I guess lots of people do. It's something to hope for.

DrSmellThis
10-09-2005, 12:54 PM
I wasn't referring to finding jobs for people, but rather to creating jobs to match people's

interests and talents -- an organization that would specialize in getting a contribution from people who had

struggled to find a way to contribute on their own, and need extra assistance.

You look at who you have, and

make the system both match that and be flexible. The particular structure the organization would assume for a "job"

would depend entirely on a sub group of customers it was serving.

It would have a number of structures ready to

go, based mostly on patterns their target market tended to exhibit, and a certain cutting edge ability to develop

work structures on the fly, based partially on at least three sources; including a theory of the "work

characters" people exhibit, generic organizational categories; and specific interest/talent content areas that need

support in a particular community.

Regarding funding, it would be partially government assisted; based on

increases to GDP and/or decreases in needed assistance; due to not working previously. That portion would be

investment, not handout. Another part would be fee for service, based on the organization taking a percentage of

income to provide generic or model organizational services. A third part might perhaps be charitable contributions.

The charter of the non-profit corporation would be renewable, based on demonstrated ability to serve a target

community.

So in short, the service would be to provide custom, model work and organizational services of

all kinds; work structures; for people who don't quite "fit the mold", and are not well-served by temp agencies and

typical rehab and employment services.

It would take full advantage of advances in technology, that make virtual

work structures possible to construct; especially the internet, and software development advances.

If you need an

example from industry, it would partially be like taking the idea behind Mountain West Communications --the "virtual

generic warehouse" that helps Bruce -- to the nth degree times ten! But services would not be limited to

warehousing, as with Mountain West.

Services would include almost anything you could imagine, from office space

and support, to marketing, to secretarial, to actuarial, to labor, to data mangement, to customer service, to tech

support, to product development, to purchasing, to sales, to managerial! You would have different departments, like

a university. You would also have different scales on which these areas were supported for particular individuals,

from a simple piece of software, to simple human support, to a desk and a phone, on up.

To the extent possible,

the different parts of the organization and "job structures" would be made to work together and support one another.



A goal would be to work as closely as possible with communities to keep this virtual work community from

supplanting natural community structures. This is because traditional communities have done this sort of thing in

the past through knowing its members and how to make use of them. But traditional communities have been supplanted

by corporate and industrial communities. So we have to restore some of the functionality society has lost through

losing its communities.

Does that make sense? The market is systematically excluding a lot of good,

talented, interested people (e.g., people with ADD that aren't well-organized, people who don't specialize), and

this would be easier than changing the nature of 21st century capitalist institutions (a goal I also support, of

course). This would be designed to assist those who had slipped through the many holes in the nets offered by modern

capitalist institutions.

It would acknowledge that the responsibility is not all on the individual to fit

into society, but is also equally on society to serve individuals; and not just corporate profits.

We as

society have abandoned the individual for the corporation to our own detriment, and yet there are some who want to

put it all on the individual to sink or swim. But we sink or swim together, ultimately. We all pay for any

individual not fulfilling their potential, and there is ultimately no way to avoid that, no matter how

selfish/callous you are! It is self defeating for society to put the responsibility all on individuals! We are all

made poorer. If individuals could already be doing it without society's help, they would, by and large. People do

love to work!

The benefit of acknowledging this responsibility is a truly richer life for us all, based on the

benefits the extra achievement of human potential would provide to us all. This is simply a logical solution to this

big picture state of affairs; and another example of holistic thinking.

Mtnjim
10-10-2005, 10:34 AM
"Fearing a rash of new cabarets after a federal judge struck down the city's 17-year moratorium on new strip

clubs, the City Council is planning to vote Monday to impose some of the strictest adult-entertainment regulations

of any big city in the country."


They've never been to San Diego!!:hammer:

belgareth
10-10-2005, 10:45 AM
Absolutely.

That's how you know something is sick and wrong. Pretty much everyone wants to do something, unless they are very

ill.


That, the absence of everyday courtesies and general apathy towards the society are all signs of

a sick society. The fact that most don't see these as an issue just makes it worse.

DrSmellThis
10-10-2005, 12:54 PM
Mutual alienation

("a-lie-nation") seems to be a common theme underneath everything you are referring to. Alienation in our

culture grew out of the industrial revolution, as people were forced away from their communities and families to

work. We got into the habit of seeing everyone as separate, as strangers that are not to be trusted or cared about.

Now corporations run our governments and communities. People have the impression that societal systems are

self-serving, and at odds with regular people. What our nation does, such as invade non-threatenng countries,

becomes more and more cut off from any kind of collective consciousness of the people. We withdraw even more and

care even less about society. Funny how so much can be traced back to corporatism (a central, essential component of

fascism). You are correct that too few recognize the issue.

The alienation extends to the relationship between

citizens and government, then; such as between citizens and the military. I see good indirect reasons for

supporting a draft, such as noted, but bad direct reasons for doing so, given the lack of moral integrity or

necessity behind our military actions. The violence, death and suffering are unimaginable.

That makes for a

problem. Implementing a draft is clearly the wrong thing to do by some of our most treasured moral values; and yet

might well lead to the best consequences, ultimately.

The situation is irreduceably ugly, with our young people

ultimately just refusing to fight by not enlisting. That refusal leads to more suffering among our current troops,

and an inability to accomplish military goals. They have good, even morally impeccable, reasons for refusing to

participate. How do we respond to that?

I would personally resist if I were drafted at this time, unless there

was some clear purpose I could, in good conscience, get behind. I'd do my time in prison, or leave. Maybe provoking

that resistance is the true goal and value of a draft. In the mean time you are destroying the souls of a lot of

young men and women, and enabling our government to better accomplish destructive ends around the world, destroying

the lives of so many others.

No one should ever have to be in a position to make this kind of horrific choice,

whether you are a draftee or not. One issue is the need to clarify responsibility for this ugly problem. In response

to this insanity, foist upon us by our government, people are going to make whatever choices and conclusions they

are going to make; none of which can ever completely make sense. So we all suffer from a mental illness of sorts.

It's crazy-making.

Remember what happened to enlistment immediately following 9-11? Does anybody here think

people wouldn't want to defend their county if we were attacked, or defend it if they knew defending each other was

what they were doing?

So what do you do? Do you have a draft in a country where the military is used for mayhem?

Does that result in in the government having to answer to the people, or in the government having more power to

destroy humans for nothing? Does it make us more honest, or make the price of living here the destruction of your

soul?

belgareth
10-10-2005, 01:35 PM
Rather than say refusing to

fight I'd say refusing to serve. Fighting is not necessarily and important part of serving, there are many other

ways one can serve their country. Even the act of voting is serving in its own way. Our society is becoming more

narcissistic by the year. More and more people are tending towards the attitude of "What's in it for me?" and

looking less at how they can help others. Koolking made a point of that recently. Young people are less and less

inclined to see that they need to contribute to their society to make it work.

Look at so many of the posts in

the pheromone forum. The gist is all too often "How can I manipulate somebody into fulfilling my wants?" There is

very little asking how to maintain a good relationship with others. Once they get laid they couldn't care less

about the other person, or so it sounds from their posts.

The source may well be the influence of corporate

culture, I don't know because I've never explored that area. My guess is that there are likely many contributing

factors. The real question (Uh oh, here goes Bel's wanting to take things apart and make them work again :rofl: )

how do we address it? I could make a good argument that this country is sick and dying. Can it and should it be

cured?

DrSmellThis
10-10-2005, 02:13 PM
Oops, I just realized I'm not

in the "draft" thread. Here I thought I was tying everything back in to the topic! Shitth! That long winded post was

for nothing! :D

***
Can and should it be cured? It needs to be cured, probably, because it's not going away,

and will continue to be a problem. This plot of land we're on will always be here, there will always be people

living on it; and this country will remain a force for the forseeable, distant future. It can be cured from the

inside or outside, or both.

It cannot be cured right now, however. It's not time for it to happen. Only the

groundwork can be laid. You have to read history into the future accurately and think clearly. It will not happen

overnight or painlessly. It probably starts with raising consciousness, integrity for the sake of power/clarity, and

community action.

In the meantime, we also need leaders who think the bigger thoughts, communicate the thoughts,

and act according to the thoughts. Dennis Kucinich is the only major politician I've heard do anything close to

this in recent years. The level of his consciousness goes far beyond the others, from where I sit. I met him here at

an Earth Day celebration, and would be happy to have him over for dinner anytime, from what I know so far.

Leadership helps define collective consciousness as much as it does anything.

Consciousness drives

everything else. Most don't realize this. We must look at this factor, not just whether policies A, B, and C

are "conservative" or "liberal" for them. Policies are accidental to consciousness and a bigger understanding. It's

not about effective policies, per se, because the bigger consciousness will lead to more effective policies

in the long run; and because the best policies change with circumstances. Whatever the specifics of those policies,

wisdom will eventually recognize the best way and balance things out. Policies are details. Again, most of us do not

understand this, IMHO.

We can also make the patient more comfortable while fighting the long illness.

In the

mean time, we need to raise consciousness and act locally to implement the consciousness. I'm also tempted to get

off the corporate grid completely, so as not to support it. My friends and I are talking of forming a community.



The whole survival thing is difficult too, since the work you do is an implementation of your integrity and

values. People are challenged here like never before.

Some might find it necessary to leave. Much depends on who

you are as an individual person. No one path fits everyone. I've tended to hang in the middle of Babylon and take

sort of a warrior path, but I'm getting a little old for that any more. I want some peace, love and joy in my own

life. I hope that's not selfish. I hope peace starts at home.

Mtnjim
10-10-2005, 02:35 PM
"In the mean time, we need to raise

consciousness and act locally to implement the consciousness. I'm also tempted to get off the corporate grid

completely, so as not to support it. My friends and I are talking of forming a community."

Shades of the late

'60's and early '70's!!!

Reminds me of my youth. But, then again, sometimes even

some of the best (http://www.wavygravy.net/) "sell out"!!

belgareth
10-10-2005, 02:40 PM
While it is true that people

will continue to live on this plot of land I can't agree that the country is here for the forseeable future. I

don't know that it is going away either but there are some serious cracks in it that are being swept under the rug

instead of being addressed. Examples are the fights over prescription medication imports, the right to die, medical

marijuana, immigration and so on. States are begining to pull away from federal authority on dozens of small issues.

There are some real issues here. But that is still another topic that should be addressed elsewher or maybe in its

own thread.

Mtnjim
10-10-2005, 02:44 PM
... States are

begining to pull away from federal authority on dozens of small issues. There are some real issues here. But that is

still another topic that should be addressed elsewher or maybe in its own thread.

Not to mention the

environment!! (http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2005/1006/p01s04-uspo.html)

DrSmellThis
10-10-2005, 03:07 PM
While it is

true that people will continue to live on this plot of land I can't agree that the country is here for the

forseeable future. I don't know that it is going away either but there are some serious cracks in it that are being

swept under the rug instead of being addressed. Examples are the fights over prescription medication imports, the

right to die, medical marijuana, immigration and so on. States are begining to pull away from federal authority on

dozens of small issues. There are some real issues here. But that is still another topic that should be addressed

elsewher or maybe in its own thread.I think it's great the States are doing that. This week Oregon's right

to die is being challenged in the Supreme Court, for example. We rebel against the feds more than any other state, I

think. :)

Maybe you're right about cracks in the armor. It all depends on what happens politically. If every

leaderhip was like the Bush crime family, national destruction would be assured eventually. The obscentity of it is

ultimately just too unacceptable to everyone here and in the rest of the world. Since you have seemed to me to

believe all politicians are essentially alike (similar to my father's current belief, but correct me if I'm wrong

to characterize you this way), I could see how you might think that.

belgareth
10-10-2005, 03:13 PM
Start with a piece of

misinformation that has been propogated for many years. They say power corrupts. I say power attracts the corrupt.

Thus, any person aspiring to high office should be considered suspect until proven otherwise. As yet, not one has

been shown to be free of corruption. That so far has applied to both politics and corporate structure.

Mtnjim
10-10-2005, 03:29 PM
As the man said:

"Suppose you

were an idiot ...
And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself."

--Mark Twain

DrSmellThis
10-10-2005, 03:32 PM
Random thoughts: I'm not

denying your thesis, Bel, but... you don't believe power can corrupt as well? Could both be true? Are leaders by

nature corrupt? Does leadership attract corruption too? Is literally no one that is a natual leader or who is drawn

to leadership free of corruption? Could you define corruption then? How much is due to it being harder to get

elected without dirty tricks? Is it possible to refine your thesis to account for all of this? We might have more

options if it's not so black and white. Is there anything in your own tendency toward leadership that is corrupt?

(question to provoke insight only -- no obligation to answer). Is there any danger in self fulfilling prophecy in

looking at power as corrupt? Can we teach a better leadership? Can we learn to support a differnt kind of leader? I

certainly agree you don't just immediately trust someone running for office.

Netghost56
10-10-2005, 04:16 PM
Hollywood is a good example

of "power corrupts", I think. Most actors come from a less than luxurious life when they start out. but after

several years of fame and high living, they get this "diva" attitude and you end up with these riders like they have

on the smoking gun website.

belgareth
10-10-2005, 06:53 PM
Random

thoughts: I'm not denying your thesis, Bel, but... you don't believe power can corrupt as well? Could both be

true? Are leaders by nature corrupt? Does leadership attract corruption too? Is literally no one that is a natual

leader or who is drawn to leadership free of corruption? Could you define corruption then? How much is due to it

being harder to get elected without dirty tricks? Is it possible to refine your thesis to account for all of this?

We might have more options if it's not so black and white. Is there anything in your own tendency toward leadership

that is corrupt? (question to provoke insight only -- no obligation to answer). Is there any danger in self

fulfilling prophecy in looking at power as corrupt? Can we teach a better leadership? Can we learn to support a

differnt kind of leader? I certainly agree you don't just immediately trust someone running for office.



You, of all people should know better than to even think my thoughts are black and white. There are innumerable

layers of complexity but the basic assumption holds true in the vast majority of cases.

You missed the point,

those who seek high office should be suspect until proven otherwise, those who have it thrust upon them are not

necessarily corrupt but can be corrupted by power and should be watched. I challenge you to name a single holder of

high office who was not corrupt. You hit it on the money though, without corruption could they have reached high

office? I doubt it.

Am I a leader? A natural leader? Both are questionable. I do what I do and I am good at it

so have always risen to the top. Does that make me a (natural) leader? I don't think so. Does leadership imply

corruption? It has the potential for corruption but I think it falls under the second group above, it was thrust

upon them. A natural leader leads only because others decide to follow. As demonstrated by the last several

presidents, high office does not have to entail leadership. So we must define leading as that through coercion as

opposed to that done through willingness. Obviously if you decided to not follow the government's rules you would

have a few problems with the force that would be brought to bear against you. I think big guys with guns qualifies

as coercion

You would have to define corruption to decide if I am corrupt. Would I ruin somebody because he/she

disagreed with me? Never! Would I use my high office to gain sexual favors? Never did but don't have too many

problems keeping an active sex life and never have. Take full advantage of the money and other benefits that comes

with it? You bet your a.. I have and continue to do so! Would I use whatever power at my disposal to stomp on

somebody that gave me good reason, say attacked me? Do you really need me to answer that? So, by some definitions I

am corrupt. I can accept that.



Hollywood is a good example of "power corrupts", I think.

Most actors come from a less than luxurious life when they start out. but after several years of fame and high

living, they get this "diva" attitude and you end up with these riders like they have on the smoking gun

website.

You are assuming they had no corruption befoe they became stars. Do you believe that they had

no wild plans or idas before they became stars?

Netghost56
10-10-2005, 08:00 PM
You are

assuming they had no corruption befoe they became stars. Do you believe that they had no wild plans or idas before

they became stars?
Perhaps some do. But many simply forget that they were once waiters, cabbies,

secretaries, etc. And they develop this air of superiority, which you know I'm against.

Actors are driven,

motivated people. But they're also emotionally fragile. When they get to the point where they demand more than they

deserve, I would consider them corrupted by power.

Power, control, and money are the three temptations of

corruption, IMO.

DrSmellThis
10-10-2005, 09:03 PM
Thanks for your answers and

honesty, Bel. I was just trying to get more thoughts thrown into the mix. I'm probably the guy who would take the

blowjob from Monica, like Bill, if I was in a bad marriage and desperate. But maybe not, since I love the potential

of building trust. But sex is my biggest weakness, though I have turned it down plenty of times to keep my

integrity, including when I was in a troubled relationship. I think having all sexual activity forbidden to me

outside marriage, growing up Catholic, led me to choose to rebel. Power doesn't much interest me. Teaching, the

"father role", and some other kinds of basic leadership do, but not leadership per se, unless secondary to whatever

I'm doing. Most of my interests and likes in people are simple, humble, and low rent. That's not to say I might

not be attracted by the prospect of easy money. I'd turn an awful lot of it down to keep my integrity, to be sure.

But would I be perfect? I don't know. Possibly not. As president, I would try to admit mistakes and make up for

them whenever possible, to an unprecedented level. I'd be very conscious of the effect that alone might well have

on history. I'd seek to innovate in being able to exhibit such humility in such a way as to not ruin my ability to

lead, by being strong and self-assured in my honesty. We badly need a president to do this!

I think we're all

corrupt, but I do think its possible to have someone who is basically genuine and well-intentioned in the

presidency. Basic integrity is important too. Maybe Lincoln, Ford, Ike, Ben Franklin (of course, not a president),

and Carter were examples. I don't know that much about the history of political corruption, unfortunately. Maybe

you do. I just know that the point is not whether you can point out some shortcomings of character or bad

decisions.

If people would stop focusing on stupid moral rules and just look at basic intentions, integrity, and

good heartedness, we'd be better off. I also think that it is important to admit our corruption and to seek to

improve our integrity in all directions and at all depths. That is what I liked about Carter. He at least admitted

some of his faults with humility. He told a great, humble story about sneaking into the nude circus peep shows as a

kid. He also admitted to lusting after women in the famous Playboy interview, while he was a sitting

president.

Growing up Catholic, studying ethics, and an interest in growth taught me a lot about being a flawed

human being over the decades. It is possible to have an integrity that goes a little deeper than your lack of

integrity, if that makes sense. Arrogance or unrepentance about one's corruption would be an obstacle toward

achieving that deeper integrity. That deeper integrity is achievable for everyone. I'd look for that in a leader,

and would be willing to forgive a lot of BS for that. Mother Teresa once denied she was good (of course, to her only

God is good, so it's more of a theological point). That might be taking it a bit too far, since humans can be

gentle with themselves, but you get the point.

The main thing I think that would help is to strip the Presidency

and other political positions of all the fringe bennies of power that are possible to be stripped, to help attract a

better caliber of person. They should have thought of that when drafting the constitution. Campaign financing needs

to be reformed also, to very strict standards. It confuses me that we haven't voted something like all that

in.

We also need to roll back all the legal power enjoyed by corporations. They have way more rights as

"artificial persons" than actual real people.

Then we need to vote the best we can, work to raise consciousness,

live our integrity, stay in our hearts, support a few things, fight for some things we believe in, and let history

take its course.

belgareth
10-11-2005, 03:52 AM
Ah, we've finally hit the core

of my thoughts...the constitution. While it was a good document for it's time, it could not be expected to be

completely valid for situations they could not have possibly forseen. In my little fantasy world I see re-writing

the constitution to take power away fom the government and return it to the people, where it belongs. You mention

corporations but the instant government loses the power to order our lives so do corporations.

Take a few

minutes to think about it. What would you say? Personally, I would turn it into a negative document by listing the

thousands of things the government is not allowed to do. What are the absolute necessarry funtions of government?

How would you restrict our government to those functions?

You know I am not religious so am not constrainted by

the terms of any religion. Rather, I operate under a set of guidelines that are intended to allow me to live a just

life in peace. Many of the considerations of religion are sloughed off, IMO, allowing me a better, more rational

life. But it is also more demanding because I cannot go back to a higher power and ask forgiveness. I have to live

with the responsibility of my actions.

That also means the traditional marraige vows mean nothing to me. By my

understanding religion forbids sexual relationsips outside of wedlock. However, if you do have those relationships

you can ask for forgiveness and recieve it. Under the terms I live by there is nobody to ask to forgive me. I have

to deal with myself on it and I am much less forgiving about such things than the christian god is. That doesn't

give me the right to judge another, only myself.

DrSmellThis
10-14-2005, 03:57 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/14/poll.rude.ap/index.html

InternationalPlayboy
10-17-2005, 05:49 AM
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/14/poll.rude.ap/index.html

Thanks for

that link. I was just lamenting this weekend on how society's manners have gone so far downhill.

DrSmellThis
10-20-2005, 03:07 AM
So let's see if I have this straight: Both Bush's right hand man and Cheney's right hand man appear

to have cooperated in conspiring then outing a CIA agent, a teasonous act in itself; in an attempt to cover up lying

to Congress and the American people to start a war, so they could steal Iraq's oil and line the pockets of their

corporate exec friends; like from Halliburton, where the vice president is a stockholder and still draws a paycheck?



We know they already knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, since they made up all the intelligence,

and since every weapons expert said there were no weapons, until they made the weapons inspectors leave Iraq. But

they were so worried about finding the weapons at any cost -- the ones they told us they knew exactly where they

were -- that Cheney signed orders that enabled the prisoners to be tortured with dogs and other techniques?

This

was at the same time they said they were going to "win the hearts and minds of Iraqis", and that Iraq was going to

welcome us with roses as liberators? And meanwhile 100,000 Iraqis and 3000 Americans lost their lives so we could

have all this oil and pay only $3 a gallon for gas?

They were able to do this because they used 9/11 as their

"Pearl Harbor", and because Bush was spending his political capital from the presidential election they appear to

have stolen (according to the Conyers Report)?

Meanwhile Osama Bin Laden is running free in Pakistan, even though

we "have a very good idea" where he

is?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/PO

LITICS/10/20/cia.leak.investigation.ap/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/20/cia.leak.investigation.ap/index.html)

DrSmellThis
10-20-2005, 06:52 AM
http://nydailynews.com/front/story/357109p-304302c.h

tml (http://nydailynews.com/front/story/357109p-304302c.html)

Mtnjim
10-20-2005, 09:53 AM
So let's see if

I have this straight: Both Bush's right hand man and Cheney's right hand man appear to have cooperated in

conspiring then outing a CIA agent, a teasonous act in itself; in an attempt to cover up lying to Congress and the

American people to start a war...

Yep!! That about sums it up!!

DrSmellThis
10-20-2005, 02:27 PM
This is the highest ranking administration official to speak out yet, I

think. I can't wait to hear the rest of what he has to

say.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-

40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html)

DrSmellThis
10-20-2005, 02:40 PM
According to this article, it looks like Bush was long ago

peeved Rove conducted his political hit man duties (his role in the White House Iraq Group) on Ambassador Wilson's

wife in a sloppy

manner:

http://nydailynews.com/front/story/357107p

-304312c.html (http://nydailynews.com/front/story/357107p-304312c.html)

DrSmellThis
10-20-2005, 03:18 PM
And for my sixth post of the

day, a moving film (Music by Pink Floyd):

http://theunitedamerican.blogs.com/Movies/2000A/2000.html

DrSmellThis
10-24-2005, 12:43 PM
Too bad he doesn't have a wife in the CIA! -- DST

October 24, 2005


Republicans Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges

By

RICHARD W. STEVENSON (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=RICHARD%20W.%20STEVENSON&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newes

t&ac=RICHARD%20W.%20STEVENSON&inline=nyt-per)
and

DAVID JOHNSTON (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=DAVID%20JOHNSTON&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=DAV

ID%20JOHNSTON&inline=nyt-per)
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - With a decision expected this week on

possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to

pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an

overzealous prosecutor.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, is expected to announce by the

end of the week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials in a decision that is likely to be a

defining moment of President Bush's second term. The case has put many in the White House on edge.



Karl

Rove (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/karl_rove/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President

Dick

Cheney's (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/dick_cheney/index.html?inline=nyt-per) chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy. Other officials could

also face charges in connection with the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer in 2003.

On

Sunday, Republicans appeared to be preparing to blunt the impact of any charges. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison,

Republican of

Martha

Stewart (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/texas/index.html?inline=nyt-geo"

]Texas[/url], speaking on the NBC news program "Meet the Press," compared the leak investigation with the

case of

[url="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/martha_stewart/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and her stock sale, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said

about something that wasn't a crime."

Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an

indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where

they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation

was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

President Bush said several weeks ago that Mr. Fitzgerald

had handled the case in "a very dignified way," making it more difficult for Republicans to portray him

negatively.

But allies of the White House have quietly been circulating talking points in recent days among

Republicans sympathetic to the administration, seeking to help them make the case that bringing charges like perjury

mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case, one Republican with close ties to the White House said Sunday.

Other people sympathetic to Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said that indicting them would amount to criminalizing

politics and that Mr. Fitzgerald did not understand how Washington works.

Some Republicans have also been

reprising a theme that was often sounded by Democrats during the investigations into President

Bill

Clinton (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per), that special prosecutors and independent counsels lack accountability and too often pursue cases

until they find someone to charge.

Congressional Republicans have also been signaling that they want to put some

distance between their agenda and the White House's potential legal and political woes, seeking to cast the leak

case as an inside-the-Beltway phenomenon of little interest to most voters.

"I think we just need to stick

to our knitting on the topics and the subjects the American people care about," Senator Sam Brownback,

Republican of

Kansas (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/kansas/index.html?inline=nyt-geo

), said on "Fox News Sunday."

The case, which traces back to an effort by the White House

to rebut criticism of its use of intelligence to justify the invasion of

Iraq[

/url], has grown into a crisis for the administration that has the potential to shape the remainder of Mr. Bush's

second term. Democrats signaled Sunday that they would use the inquiry to help weave a broader tapestry portraying

the Republican Party as corrupt and the White House as dishonest with the American people.

"We know that

the president wasn't truthful with us when he sent us to Iraq,"

[url="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/howard_dean/index.html?inline=nyt-per"]Howard

Dean (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo), the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on "This Week" on ABC. "What got

Rove and Libby in trouble was because they were attacking, which the Republicans always do, attacking somebody who

criticized them and disagreed with them. They make the attacks personal. They go over the line."

Beyond

introducing a Web site for his office last week, Mr. Fitzgerald has given no public hints of what, if any, action he

might take. Whatever he decides, he is expected to make an announcement before Friday, the final day of the term of

his grand jury. In the past, the grand jury has met on Wednesdays and Fridays.

His silence has left much of

official Washington and nearly everyone who works at or with the White House in a state of high anxiety. That has

been compounded by the widespread belief that there are aspects of the case beyond those directly involving Mr. Rove

and Mr. Libby that remain all but unknown outside of Mr. Fitzgerald's office. Among them is the mystery of who

first provided the C.I.A. officer's identity to the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who published it on July

14, 2003.

The negative effects on Mr. Bush's presidency if his senior aides were indicted, said James A.

Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington,

would be as great as the positive effects of Mr. Bush's handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"This

is the most important turning point for his administration in terms of turning down and losing support," Mr.

Thurber said.

A weakened White House, he said, could lead to further infighting among the conservatives who

provide most of Mr. Bush's legislative, grass-roots and financial support, and could leave the administration with

even less political clout to sway Democrats in Republican-leaning states to back Mr. Bush's agenda.

Republicans

acknowledged the problems facing the White House but said Mr. Bush would ultimately be judged on whether he produced

results in addressing the issues of most concern to the American people.

"If you look at poll numbers and

things like that, we face challenges," said Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee. But

even in the last few months, he said, the White House has made "tremendous long-term progress" on a

variety of fronts.

He cited the referendum on a constitution in Iraq, signs that the economy remains strong and

what he characterized as evidence that Mr. Bush's signature education legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act, is

producing measurable results.

Mr. Fitzgerald has been focused on whether there was an illegal effort at the

White House to undermine the credibility of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who became a critic of the

administration's Iraq policy by his dismissive comments over the possibility that Baghdad had sought to buy uranium

fuel from

Nige

r (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/niger/index.html?inline=nyt-geo).

The prosecutor has sought to determine if the effort against Mr. Wilson involved the intentional

identification of his wife, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Fitzgerald has tried to find out whether Bush officials violated the

law that protects the identities of undercover officers like Ms. Wilson or sought to impede the inquiry by

misleading investigators or providing false information about their actions.

Mtnjim
10-24-2005, 05:51 PM
THE

BUSINESS CLIMATE HOAX
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

President Bush just can't leave bad enough

alone.

With the Gulf Coast physically battered by Hurricane Katrina, the
president's reconstruction plan is on

track to do further harm to a
region that was poor and maldeveloped even before the hurricane struck.

The core

of his proposal is the creation of a Gulf Opportunity Zone that
would provide massive depreciation and tax benefits

to firms investing
in new plant and machinery in the region. Translation: giant subsidies
for oil companies and

casinos.

Hurricane Wilma is on the way to Florida. Tropical Storm Alpha is
brewing in the Caribbean. Scientists

say a combination of natural
hurricane cycles and global warming very likely mean we are going to see
more, and

more intense hurricanes over the next many years. So, Katrina
reconstruction is not likely to be the last major

clean-up and recovery
effort during the next decade-plus.

How does a tax giveaway plan for big business end up

as the centerpiece
of the president's reconstruction plan?

It's easy enough to say the administration never

misses an opportunity
to cut taxes and do favors for its big business backers. And that's
true. It's also easy

enough to point to the influence of right-wing
think tanks like the Heritage Foundation in designing

the
administration's plan. And there's no disputing that, either.

But something more is going on, too -- a

decades-long effort to promote
the idea that cities and states (and nations, for that matter) will best
develop by

cutting taxes and providing subsidies to big business.

Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First and

author of The
Great American Job Scam (Berrett-Koehler Press, 2005), shows that these
policies are not only

unjust, they are unwise.

In The Great American Job Scam, LeRoy, whose organization has led the
way in trying to

counter the business climate ideology, provides case
study after case study of corporate rip-offs of communities

and states.
One example is Marriott's leveraging of a threat to locate its
headquarters in Virginia to extract

more than $50 million in gifts from
Maryland -- even though the company had already decided to build its

new
headquarters in Maryland, where it was already located. Another is Dell
Computer's finagling of a roughly

$250 million subsidy package from
North Carolina -- as an incentive to invest $100 million to $115 million
in the

state. The Louisiana Coalition for Tax Justice found that, over
the course of the 1980s, Louisiana granted $2.5

billion in property tax
exemptions, nearly a billion of which would have gone to schools in the
state.

States

and cities do not get much in return for these donations to the
corporate coffer, which is part of what makes them

so flawed as
development policy. LeRoy shows how blind faith, bad negotiating and
illusory promises leave local

and state government officials with little
or no guarantee that new and permanent jobs will be created.

But

it's not just that they get manipulated. LeRoy's key point is that
business does not invest because of the tax

breaks they are able to
extract. Location decisions are driven by access to suppliers and
customers, labor costs

and skills, transportation facilities and costs,
the cost of utilities, land or rent costs and, not so

incidentally, the
whim of executives. Tax rates make almost no difference in location
decisions. So generous tax

breaks will rarely attract investments that
would not otherwise have been made.

Crudely put, in the case of

Katrina reconstruction, oil and
petrochemical companies are not going to locate or rebuild in the Gulf
area

because of tax breaks. They build there because there is oil there.

Perhaps most enlightening in LeRoy's book is

his explanation of the site
location consulting industry, which has driven the competition among
states and cities

for investments.

A single firm, Fantus Factory Locating Service, played a key role in
developing the business

climate ideology. By 1977, it had claimed to
assist with more than 4,000 corporate relocations. Fantus is now

an
affiliate of the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche.

Fantus, and the other players in the small field of

advising
corporations on how to shift locations and blackmail cities into
lavishing them with tax breaks and

subsidies, realized their business
had created another market niche: advising cities and states on how to
make

themselves attractive to investors. Thus they work both sides of
the street -- instructing the corporate

extortionists, and advising
governments on how to make themselves appear desirable to the

extortionists.

There's not a lot of subtlety in the business. In March 2004, the
national director of Ernst &

Young's Business Incentive Practice and a
former Boeing official led a workshop at a trade association

of
corporate officers handling government relations. Their powerpoint
presentation was leaked. Its title: "Turning

Your State Government
Relations Department from a Money Pit into a Cash Cow."

The combination of windfall

subsidies for big business and low wages for
workers represents the "low-road" of economic development, LeRoy

says.
It leaves communities poorer and more vulnerable. Louisiana and
Mississippi have long traveled that road.

It's not unrelated to why they
were so poor before Katrina hit.

Mtnjim
10-25-2005, 09:28 AM
U.S. NEWS/HARVARD/BP BAN REPORTERS FROM FIRST AMENDMENT ROOM
By Russell Mokhiber and

Robert Weissman

This morning, at the National Press Club, U.S. News and World Report
held a press event to

announce the release of its list of "America's
Best Leaders 2005."

The event was co-sponsored by the Center for

Public Leadership at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

And it was paid for by the

oil giant BP.

We saw a notice of the event on the National Press Club's web site.

At the appointed time, we

went over to the First Amendment Lounge to
attend the event.

C-Span was covering it (Brian Lamb was chosen as

one of the "best
leaders" -- as was Roger Ailes of Fox News, Thomas Friedman of the New
York Times, Secretary of

State Condoleezza Rice, and former Secretary of
State Colin Powell, among others.)

So, we show up at the door to

attend and are met by James Long, the man
who organized the event for U.S. News and World Report.

Long tells us

that we are not allowed into the press briefing.

Why not?

"Well, on all the notices, it said RSVP," Long said.

"And you didn't RSVP."

We didn't see anything about RSVP. But okay, we'll RSVP now.

"No, you won't," Long

said. "You are not allowed in."

We're members of the National Press Club.

And we understand the policy of the

Press Club -- he who rents the room
rules.

So, if BP and Harvard University and U.S. News and World Report rent

the
room, they decide who attends.

But the question is why?

Why, when all the press in the world were allowed

in, were we not?

Well, it has to do with the last U.S. News and World Report event we
attended at the Press

Club, earlier this month.

It was titled, "Corporate America and Congress: Has Sarbanes-Oxley
Restored Investor

Confidence?"

And in an article published two weeks ago in Corporate Crime Reporter,
we described how that event

was paid for by Altria.

Altria?

A tobacco company paying for a conference on social responsibility?

That's

what we wanted to know.

The panelists at the Altria/U.S. News & World Report event were Senator
Chuck Hagel

(R-Nebraska), William J. McDonough, the chairman of the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), John J.

Castellini,
president of the Business Roundtable, and Alyssa Machold Ellsworth,
managing director of the Council

of Institutional Investors.

During the question-and-answer session, we stood up and asked the
following

question:

"Senator Hagel said transparency is critical. What's the deal exactly
between U.S. News & World

Report and Altria? What are the details of the
sponsorship? Members of the social responsibility community refuse

to
invest in tobacco companies. Did you find it a little odd that a panel
on corporate responsibility is being

sponsored by a tobacco company?"

Nobody found it odd.

We pointed out in that article that a group of public

health advocates
at the University of California San Francisco have set up a web site

--
www.altriameanstobacco.com -- that documents that in fact the company
changed its name from Phillip

Morris to Altria "to hide the taint of
tobacco and attempt to restore a corporate image brought low by decades
of

deception and death."

We also made the point that "not too long ago, it would have been
considered improper for

a major news organization to team up with a
major tobacco company to sponsor a forum on corporate

social
responsibility -- after all, tobacco companies are in the business of
killing off their customers."

This

apparently did not please Mort Zuckerman and the other "leaders" at
U.S. News and World Report.

And with

today's "leadership" event being broadcast on C-Span, you
wouldn't want any pesky questions about how is it that

an oil giant with
a shady history on the north slope of Alaska is funding a press event
co-sponsored by U.S. News

and World Report and Harvard University.

And so, U.S. News and World Report, and Harvard University and

BP,
decided that the best way was to bar those who would ask impolitic
questions from the First Amendment

Room.

How can we celebrate a list of leaders that includes Rice, Powell,
Friedman and Ailes -- a foursome who

helped lead the country into a
disastrous war of aggression -- defined by former Supreme Court Justice
and

Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson as "the supreme international
crime" -- a war of aggression that has cost close

to 2,000 young
American lives and untold thousands of Iraqi civilian lives?

And how can U.S. News and Harvard --

BP we can understand -- be
complicit in barring reporters from an open press event from the First
Amendment Room

at the National Press Club -- solely because those
reporters were destined to ask questions that might embarrass

the people
sponsoring the event?

It is this kind of arrogance that has led the American people to turn on
their

leaders -- according to a poll released today by U.S. News, 64
percent of Americans believe leaders today are

corrupted by power and 62
percent believe they are primarily looking for monetary enrichment --
including those

that were celebrated today in the First Amendment Room.

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 01:50 PM
h

ttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102401734.html?referrer=emailarticle (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102401734.html?referrer=emailarticle)

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 01:58 PM
http://www.washingtonpo

st.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102402051.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102402051.html)

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 02:07 PM
Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A.

Officer, Notes Show
By David Johnston, Richard W. Stevenson and Douglas Jehl /

The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/politics/24cnd-leak.html?emc=eta1)



WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the

C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity

became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed

conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a

federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers

said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle

of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the

administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers said the

notes show that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made

public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr.

Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the

director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they

contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that

her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who

discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby,

both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her

link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his

conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an

illegal effort to impede the inquiry.

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment, and Mr.

Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Mr. Libby’s legal status.

Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to

decide whether to bring charges in the case by Friday when the term of the grand jury expires. Mr. Libby and Karl

Rove, President Bush’s senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment, lawyers involved in the case have

said. It is not publicly known whether other officials may be charged.

The notes help explain the legal

difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first

heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission

to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program.



But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald’s possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson — who

is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame — from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony

suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr.

Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the

name of Mr. Wilson’s wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed

by the C.I.A. and that she may have helped arrange her husband’s trip.

Some lawyers in the case have said Mr.

Fitzgerald may face obstacles in bringing a false statement charge against Mr. Libby. They said it could be

difficult to prove that he intentionally sought to mislead the grand jury. Lawyers involved in the case said they

have no indication that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr. Cheney was

interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald

about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it.

But the evidence of Mr.

Cheney’s direct involvement in the effort to learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political pressure

on the White House in a week of high anxiety among Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow

to Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Mr. Tenet was not available for comment on Monday night. But another former senior

intelligence official said that Mr. Tenet had been interviewed by the special prosecutor and his staff in early

2004, and never appeared before the grand jury. Mr. Tenet has not talked since then to the prosecutors, the former

official said.

The former official said he strongly doubted that the White House learned about Ms. Plame from

Mr. Tenet.

On Monday, Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby both attended a cabinet meeting with Mr. Bush as the White House

continued trying to portray business as usual. But the assumption among White House officials is that anyone who is

indicted will step aside.

On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby, the

Washington Post published a front page story reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to the

Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there. The story did not name

the diplomat, who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about

Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union

address.

An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to Africa had appeared in a column by

Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White

House had "twisted" the intelligence about Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article

in The New York Times. The note written by Mr. Libby will be a key piece of evidence in a false statement case

against Mr. Libby if Mr. Fitzgerald decides to pursue it, according to lawyers in the case. It also explains why Mr.

Fitzgerald waged a long legal battle to obtain the testimony of reporters who were known to have talked with Mr.

Libby.

The reporters involved have said that they did not supply Mr. Libby with details about Mr. Wilson and

his wife. Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine, in his account of a deposition on the subject, wrote that he asked Mr.

Libby whether he had even heard that Ms. Wilson had a role in sending her husband to Africa. According to Mr.

Cooper, Mr. Libby did not use Ms. Wilson’s name but replied, "Yeah, I’ve heard that too."

In her testimony to

the grand jury, Judith Miller, a reporter for the New York Times said that Mr. Libby sought from the start of her

three conversations with him to "insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson’s charges."

Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions

about Mr. Cheney, Ms. Miller said. "He asked for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had

approved of his interview with me or was aware of them. The answer was no."

In addition to Mr. Cooper and Ms.

Miller, Mr. Fitzgerald is known to have interviewed three other journalists who spoke with Mr. Libby during June and

July 2003. They were Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, and Tim Russert of NBC News. Mr. Pincus

and Mr. Kessler have said that Mr. Libby did not Mr. Wilson’s wife with them in their conversations during the

period. Mr. Russert, in a statement, has declined to say exactly what he discussed with Mr. Libby, but said he first

learned the identity of Mr. Wilson’s wife in the column by Mr. Novak, which appeared on July 14, 2003.

belgareth
10-25-2005, 02:20 PM
From what I have heard, the

biggest question is whether or not outing a CIA spook is illegal in this situation. The morality is another issue,

everybody knows what I think of the morality in our capitol, but what I am concerned with now is the legal aspects.

Once that is cleared up, I think the lady has legal recourse for civil action against whoever actually did this.

I'm not a lawyer and don't claim to be. Anybody here know something about that aspect?

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 03:01 PM
It's possible to get away

with doing something illegal. So phrasing the question as "was it illegal?" can be deceptive. (For example, if

someone kills a person in cold blood but gets off on a technicality, was killing the person in cold blood

therefore legal?)

I'm not a lawyer, but have heard the legal aspects discussed fairly often over the

past months. The way I understand it, outing a CIA agent "knowingly" and "deliberately" is hard to prove, because

the law is written so the standards of proof for this are very high. That is to prevent someone from being convicted

of treason and hung for accidentally letting something slip, or letting something slip you didn't know wasn't

public knowledge (neither issue of which is realistically in question here, BTW).

There is a difference between

asking whether a particular illegal event occured, and whether a particular individual will be successfully

prosecuted. The act of outing this kind of agent deliberately and knowingly is absolutely illegal and treasonous,

assuming such an act occured. Further, it is almost inconceivable that the act didn't occur, and the motivation for

it seems clear, from every account.

But will every aspect of being "knowing" and "deliberate" be proven for a

particular defendant? That depends on the talent of the prosecutor and the available evidence. Proving anything

psychological, like knowingness and deliberateness, is notoriously difficult. Obviously, the guilty parties have had

all the time and means in the world to destroy evidence, and have the best representation money can buy. Therefore a

lot will hang on who is willing to talk, etc. These people calculated these acts after much deliberation, and must

have felt felt they would get away with it. The question is how stupid they were or were not, versus how smart the

special prosecutor is.

Conspiracy, perjury, and some other related charges surrounding the incident aren't so

hard to prove, however; hence the speculation that these are the kinds of charges that will ultimately stick. It

looks virtually certain that somebody, likely multiple parties, will be indicted. That is itself

remarkable.

Republicans will of course argue that perjury is no big deal, for example, even though that is what

they impeached Clinton for. But we needn't let spin about legal technicalities let us lose sight of what is

happening in our country. If they all get off, my disgust and outrage will not be less. Politicians have never been

easy to prosecute. It is big news whenever one gets caught on anything.

belgareth
10-25-2005, 03:41 PM
It's

possible to get away with doing something illegal. So phrasing the question as "was it illegal?" can be deceptive.

(For example, if someone kills a person in cold blood but gets off on a technicality, was killing the person in cold

blood therefore legal?)

Of course it wasn't legal. They still did something illegal. That's

sophistry.


I'm not a lawyer, but have heard the legal aspects discussed fairly often over

the past months. The way I understand it, outing a CIA agent "knowingly" and "deliberately" is hard to prove,

because the law is written so the standards of proof for this are very high. That is to prevent someone from being

convicted of treason and hung for accidentally letting something slip, or letting something slip you didn't know

wasn't public knowledge (neither issue of which is realistically in question here, BTW).

I've heard

several versions from several people. Some of those people are lawyers and even they don't agree on whether or not

it was actually illegal. That's why I asked the question.

Accidently letting something slip is a poor example

as people are regularly charged for accidents. A person with TS or above clearance is expected to know better than

to "Let something slip" That is not an excuse. I clearly remember the lectures back in the military when I had a

clearance.

Everything is in question until proven otherwise in a court of law. The guy investigating it is a

very good man and not in anybody's pocket, give him a chance to do his job. I'm not going to convict anybody at

any time based on what I read anywhere. Anything else is wrong

There is a difference between

asking whether a particular illegal event occured, and whether a particular individual will be successfully

prosecuted. The act of outing this kind of agent deliberately and knowingly is absolutely illegal and treasonous,

assuming such an act occured. Further, it is almost inconceivable that the act didn't occur, and the motivation for

it seems clear, from every account.
Sorry to disagree but you don't know that and neither do I. Even

legal experts aren't sure if it was an illegal act, certainly not sure enough to try to prosecute. Even the guy

investigating still isn't sure and he is wel known for his fairness and skill.


But will

every aspect of being "knowing" and "deliberate" be proven for a particular defendant? Is it therefore technically

"illegal"? That depends on the talent of the prosecutor and the available evidence. Proving anything psychological,

like knowingness and deliberateness, is notoriously difficult. Obviously, the guilty parties have had all the time

and means in the world to destroy evidence, and have the best representation money can buy. Therefore a lot will

hang on who is willing to talk, etc.

Conspiracy, perjury, and some other related charges aren't hard to prove,

however, hence the speculation that these are the kinds of charges that willp stick

I already addressed

that so won't repeat myself.

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 04:07 PM
As I've explained, phrasing

it as about whether the acts were illegal can be deceptive. But if you think it's not, please post articles that

can explain why. I havent heard the legal experts you have, apparently, and would love to see a coherent, balanced

legal argument.

What I said obviously wasn't "sophistry", since it was an appropriate case example in support of

establishing a necessary logical distinction, a distinction missing from much of the spin, the lack of which results

in misunderstanding. Someone not understanding or agreeing with this does not equal someone else's "sophistry".

Please think more carefully before throwing around vague, negative labels that are unlikely to reflect on their

target.

No one is not letting prosecutors do their job by posting information people deserve to know. I tried to

clear a related misunderstanding up in the past in detail, by distinguishing "legal" from "personal" responsibility.

If we could be bothered only by those specific things specific politicians have been convicted of, if our beliefs

about the political world were determined entirely by legal status, we would virtually never have the right to be

bothered by politicians. I choose to give the law its due, and yet have my beliefs function independently from it.

belgareth
10-25-2005, 04:22 PM
As I clearly said, I have heard

both, that it is legal and illegal. Maybe it isn't clear that when I said heard I really meant heard, as in

conversation with other people, some of whom were lawyers. And as I also said, the legal experts, lawyers, disagree

on the legality. I don't claim to be an expert and phrased it as a question for somebody that might have some

expertise in that area. Last I knew your expertise was not in the legal field. Without meaning offense I feel that

the opinions of practicing lawyers carries more weight than your opinion on legal matters. And as I said, they

disagree.

Yes, anybody who says that a person who committed cold blooded murder but was let off on a

technicality did not commit a crime is using sophistry. Are you taking it I meant your statement? If so, you

misunderstood the statement.

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 04:50 PM
Yes, I misunderstood your

intended meaning. I thought about "giving you the benefit of the doubt" exactly per your explanation, but then

reread it a few times and thought the other reference was clearly implied. Damn words. Sorry about that, as you

didn't intend for it to come out that way.

I remain interested. I agree my legal opinion doesn't matter much,

but I had more detail on the relevant legal issues than you posted, and decided to share what I read about it. I've

not read a single coherent argument that nothing they did was illegal, even the outing part. Almost everyone is

predicting the prosecutor will bring charges of some kind by early next week. I've only heard it put something like

the way I related it, especially as regards questions of treason, which may be different from whether it is illegal

in other ways (hence your lecture from military training?). I'd be happy to be shown a more accurate analysis.

belgareth
10-25-2005, 05:07 PM
Yes, I

misunderstood your intended meaning. I thought about "giving you the benefit of the doubt" exactly per your

explanation, but then reread it a few times and thought the other reference was clearly implied. Damn words. Sorry

about that, as you didn't intend for it to come out that way.

I thought that might be the case. No

problem.


I remain interested. I agree my legal opinion doesn't matter much, but I had more

detail on the relevant legal issues than you posted, and decided to share what I read about it. I've not read a

single legal argument that nothing they did was illegal, even the outing part. Almost everyone is predicting the

prosecutor will bring charges of some kind by early next week. I've only heard it put something like the way I

related it, especially as regards questions of treason, which may be different from whether it is illegal in other

ways (hence your lecture from military training?). I'd be happy to be shown a more accurate analysis.



I've had a lot of detail too. Did you know that one of the best cures for insomnia is reading legal analysis?

:)

There are several lawyers in one of the groups I meet with. A couple of them are criminal lawyers although

that may be an oxymoron. In any event, the topic has come up several times and my impression, based on the vehemence

of their discussions, I'd say it is a pretty hotly contested issue among that profession.

I'd love to hear a

solid analysis from both perspectives since it seems there is a lot of debate on the subject. Even charges being

filed don't really prove anything, only the final results can prove much and what that proves isn't necessarily

justice.

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 05:43 PM
You've got that right.

Whether the legal process brings justice is another matter. I do wish the law could be applied evenly across the

board; but I guess not in this universe, where money and power is a ticket to wickedness.

Not to imply anything

about everyone from a particular party, but were they Republican lawyers? ;) I think this is a hotly contested

political issue. The hard part is that lawyers are not only extremely specialized any more; they will often will say

any damn thing to further their agenda, so its hard to believe any of them.

I bet some better analysis will

become available in the coming few weeks. I still predict the issue will be more a matter of provability than

legality, per se.

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 05:55 PM
This is the official site of

Fiitzgerald's investigation. There is very little yet posted there, but no doubt there soon will

be:

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/

belgareth
10-25-2005, 06:00 PM
I think we all wish that about

the law. Perhaps if there were fewer laws there would be fewer loopholes for lawyers to slide cases out through. It

isn't even always the rich that get off because of the flaws in the system. Regardless of that, under our current

constitution, unless and untl somebody is proven guilty in a court of law they are innocent.

In Texas? A

democratic lawyer? Surely you jest. Actually, believe it or not the majority of this state's government is

democrats and has been quite a while. But I honestly don't know about the ones who were arguing as I keep a lot of

my personal opinions about the government to myself in my real life. At guess I'd say that they probably were both

republican because the make up of that group is pretty firmly so.

Under the constitution it's the same thing,

isn't it?

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 06:29 PM
No one here wants to send

anyone to jail without a trial.

Just to show you what kind of man I am, here's a page that gives a Republican

analysis of the Plame leak, etc. ;) I found it to be interesting reading, and like the amount of detail. To be sure,

I've heard another side, and points that were pretty much ignored here. But at least you know it's not unfair to

Republicans. Maybe someone else can post another

side.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/category/us_politics/valerie_plame_affair/

belgareth
10-25-2005, 07:42 PM
All I want is a fair trial, no

more or less. We all know that depending on which rag you read each person is either guilty as sin or free from sin.

Over all, I've found the best bet is to ignore the analysts because they all are biased. I asked before about guilt

and innocence and the scenerio of if he is innocent. I've also advocated for the full penalty of law depending on

what is proven. Are you going to advocate for nailing the prosecuter if it is demonstrated that he is misusing his

authority for political purposes? I am! That is not proven either but is a possibility.

Let's just say that I

am an equal opportunity sceptic, I doubt all positions equally and most especially when it looks like it could be

politically motivated.

belgareth
10-25-2005, 07:46 PM
Public Giving Gov't, Business Lower Marks By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer



WASHINGTON –





The public's view of the government has eroded over the past year

and its view of business corporations is now at the lowest level in two decades.



The public's rating for the federal government has fallen from 59

percent favorable last year to 45 percent now, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the

Press. The favorable view of business corporations is also at 45 percent.

When dissatisfaction with national conditions is running high "people tend to be critical of institutions such

as the government, the Congress, and have rising discontent with business corporations, especially oil companies,"

said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. Only 20 percent of people said they have a favorable view of

oil companies — down from 32 percent in 2001.

The federal government

needs the public's trust to operate and businesses need the goodwill of customers, Kohut

said.

The public's view of the Department of Defense has dropped

from 76 percent favorable in 1997 to 56 percent during an unpopular war in Iraq. Even the view of the U.S.

military has dropped slightly, from 87 percent favorable to 82 percent now.

The political parties have slipped with the public, as well. Republicans are now viewed unfavorably by 49

percent and favorably by 42 percent. Despite the GOP's falling popularity, Democrats have not gained ground and are

seen favorably by 49 percent, down slightly from 53 percent last year.

Two institutions that have not slipped with the public are the news media, viewed positively by 52 percent,

and the Supreme Court, 62 percent.

The poll of 2,006 adults was taken

Oct. 12-24 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, larger for

subgroups.

DrSmellThis
10-25-2005, 07:55 PM
All I want is

a fair trial, no more or less. We all know that depending on which rag you read each person is either guilty as sin

or free from sin. Over all, I've found the best bet is to ignore the analysts because they all are biased. I asked

before about guilt and innocence and the scenerio of if he is innocent. I've also advocated for the full penalty of

law depending on what is proven. Are you going to advocate for nailing the prosecuter if it is demonstrated that he

is misusing his authority for political purposes? I am! That is not proven either but is a possibility.

Let's

just say that I am an equal opportunity sceptic, I doubt all positions equally and most especially when it looks

like it could be politically motivated. If a prosecutor is unprofessional, that hurts everybody.

belgareth
10-25-2005, 07:58 PM
If a

prosecutor is unprofessional, that hurts everybody.

Unprofessional is one thing and you are right that

it hurts everybody. I am asking about what should be done if he is intentionally using his office for political

purposes, if he is bringing false charges in an attempt to discredit or undermine another person or party. In my

eyes that is also a form of treason but that's very subjective.

DrSmellThis
10-26-2005, 03:48 AM
Any time you pervert Democracy

it is subtle treason, ethically, if you are a purist -- which you and I tend to be moreso than average. But you're

correct it is subjective how one determines that. Among the most egregious perversions is election fraud. That's

pretty treasonous.

It went without saying that if a prosecutor breaks laws they are liable as any one else; since

I expect them to be professional -- a stricter standard than simply keeping it legal. If they are legal but

egregiously unprofessional, they should lose their professions. For lesser offenses they should be disciplined and

lose their position on a case.

Curiously, the larger challenge to the justice system is primarily about

the possibility of over-zealous prosecutors to political spin masters, it seems. In the last administration the spin

was about Kenneth Starr, who was prosecuting Clinton for lying about having an affair, IIRC. But in general, our

whole system goes on trial, and should; any time it is stretched to its limit, in attempting to hold power

accountable. We should learn a lot through all of this, just as we did with Watergate.

Mtnjim
10-27-2005, 09:16 AM
Looks like he'll have to

try again:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/27/miers.nominations/index.html

Mtnjim
10-27-2005, 11:48 AM
From the "Risks" newsletter, a

publication of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM):

Subject: Printer steganography (Mike

Musgrove)

Many color printers (Xerox, HP, etc.) add barely visible yellow dots that
encode printer serial

numbers and time stamps (down to the minute).
Intended primarily to combat counterfeiters, the purportedly

"secret"
steganographic code in color printer copies has now been decoded by four
people at the Electronic

Frontier Foundation. (The encoding is
straightforward, and includes no encryption.) There are of course

various
slippery-slope privacy issues. [Source: Mike Musgrove, Sleuths Crack
Tracking Code Discovered in Color

Printers, *The Washington Post*, 19 Oct
2005, D01;

PGN-ed]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663.html

[Also

noted by Amos Shapir, who suggests you look at the eff site, which
nicely documents the encoding:


http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/
PGN]

Mtnjim
10-27-2005, 11:56 AM
This is for anyone living in Massachusetts:

Subject: Mileage sign errors

Excerpt

from

http:/

/www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/10/16/state_rejects_somerville_i_93_lane_shift/ (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/10/16/state_rejects_somerville_i_93_lane_shift/)

We finally have an

answer about how those new state mileage signs got so
terribly messed up. And the blame is being placed on Bill

Gates.
MassHighway admitted that the state had found 19 legends on the new signs
with significant errors in

mileage. That's 12 percent of the 164 new signs
in the $1.05 million contract.

According to the contractor,

some of the distances were calculated using
Microsoft's Streets & Trips software. According to Microsoft, the

software
without a GPS hookup costs $39.95. This contractor was paid $130,000 by the
state.

Apparently the

contractor had tried to use Mapquest, but found it
unreliable.:hammer:

Excerpt

from
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/09/25/in_chelsea_pedalers_celebrate_the_bus/

One

sign on Interstate 93 north, near Exit 45 in Andover, reported that
Manchester, N.H. was 42 miles away, although

the actual distance is just a
bit more than 28 miles. Another sign on Route 128/95 in Needham reported
that

Wellesley is 7 miles away. The actual distance is slightly less than 3
miles. A sign on Route 3 north in Braintree

listed the distance to I-93 as 5
miles when the distance by odometer was 3 miles.

DrSmellThis
10-27-2005, 05:07 PM
Looks like

he'll have to try

again:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/

10/27/miers.nominations/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/27/miers.nominations/index.html)Does anyone think the next nominee will be any better?

belgareth
10-27-2005, 08:39 PM
I found it interesting that the

republicans gave her at least as much trouble for her more moderate views than the dems gave her.

Mtnjim
10-28-2005, 08:48 AM
Does anyone

think the next nominee will be any better?

From "W"??
Be serious!!

Perhaps this was his try at "I'm

trying to put a moderate in" before he puts who he really wants in?? The next one could very well be much worse!

DrSmellThis
10-28-2005, 02:09 PM
I found it

interesting that the republicans gave her at least as much trouble for her more moderate views than the dems gave

her.I think it was all about the Republican reaction. Dems saw her mainly as pro-corporation -- "not good,

but what can you do?"

It is interesting, because it really highlights what the right wing expect. They will

settle for nothing other than an anti-human rights, government-in-control-of-our-lives, theocratic idealogue. A wee

bit perfectionist, aren't they?

DrSmellThis
10-28-2005, 02:23 PM
...but just the tip of the

iceberg.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/

28/leak.probe/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/28/leak.probe/index.html)

Netghost56
10-28-2005, 08:05 PM
Conservatives feel betrayed by Bush Analysis: Conservative base, feeling betrayed by selection of

Miers, lashed out at Bush

Harriett Miers' 25-day odyssey as a Supreme Court nominee exposed a serious rift

between President Bush and his conservative base, posing a surprising challenge as he tries to emerge from his

presidency's darkest days.

In choosing Miers, a nominee with no judicial track record but a long history of

personal loyalty, Bush essentially told conservatives: "Trust me.''

They didn't.

At a time

when Bush's popularity has sunk to its lowest level, he must find a way to mollify his conservative, and

traditionally most reliable, supporters at the same time he reaches out to moderates as he pursues the war in Iraq,

Social Security reform, tax simplification and other priorities of his second term.

In Democratic enclaves such

as Northern California, many liberals find Bush's policies so deplorable that they assume their ideological

counterparts on the right adore him. The Miers saga revealed a more complicated and tenuous relationship.



Critics who have blamed Bush for ignoring the political center since his contested victory in 2000 got a crash

course in what happens to a Republican president who does not please the right on a matter as important as the

Supreme Court.

Conservatives expressed more disdain for Bush's agenda and more contempt for his leadership in

the past month than they had in the first 56 months of his presidency combined. They questioned his integrity and

intellectual capacity and jeered his handlers for the way they disparaged their complaints, much as Democrats have

done for the past four years.

Many suspect Miers' abrupt departure on the eve of possible indictments against

top administration officials in the CIA leak probe was a timely effort by the White House to make amends with its

base. Some on the left decried it as capitulation.

Yet even if Bush delivers his base an unabashed conservative

ideologue to replace Miers, many of the harsh words uttered since he nominated her on Oct. 3 will be hard to take

back.

"(Bush) has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing

approaches to construing the Constitution,'' conservative columnist George Will wrote on Oct. 5. "The president

has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution.''

On the day Miers was nominated,

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, wrote: "It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that

President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. ... What are the prospects for a strong Bush

second term? What are the prospects for holding solid GOP majorities in Congress in 2006 if conservatives are

demoralized?''

And just last week, David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union wrote: "We've

swallowed policies we might otherwise have objected to because we've believed that he and those around him are

themselves conservatives trying to do the right thing against sometimes terrible odds. We've been there for him

because we've considered ourselves part of his team. No more.''

Conservative contempt for Bush, though far

from universal, extends to matters far beyond the Miers' nomination. Many on the right are deeply upset by the huge

expansion of government spending and rise in the national debt. Others are opposed to the entanglement in Iraq, the

Patriot Act, the expansion of Medicare to include prescription drugs and Bush's signing into law of the

McCain-Feingold campaign finance measure.

"The fact is, from the beginning there have been a number of things

that conservatives have been either leery of, or upset with, the way the Bush administration has proceeded,''

Keene said Thursday.

"It was the promise to move the Supreme Court decidedly to the right that motivated many

conservatives to vote in record numbers in the 2004 election," he said.

"The Bush folks told conservatives

explicitly, maybe you don't like the spending, maybe you disagree with our foreign policy or the war in Iraq, or

the Patriot Act, but this is about the Supreme Court. This is what George Bush said he was going to do, to get

someone in the mold of (justices Antonin) Scalia and (Clarence) Thomas.''

When Bush nominated Miers, Keene

said conservatives felt betrayed just as they had a generation earlier, when Bush's father agreed to raise taxes

after declaring during the campaign: "Read my lips, no new taxes.''

"You never completely repair

it,'' Keene said. "They've got a lot of fence-mending to do.''

Bush now confronts an opening on

the court with the same seemingly impossible task he faced when the summer began: fulfilling his pledge to

conservatives to move the court to the right while fulfilling his promise to be a uniter, not a divider.

Senate

Democrats, none of whom had said they had planned to vote for Miers, decried her withdrawal Thursday as a

capitulation to the right.

"Not a single Republican senator called for Harriet Miers' withdrawal,'' said

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "It was the very extreme wing of the president's party ... that brought about the

withdrawal. If the president continues to listen to that extreme wing on judicial nominations or everything else, it

can only spell trouble for his presidency and for America.''

It is not Democrats, who long ago abandoned

Bush, whom the president needs to worry about. Bush's drop in popularity over the past several months -- about four

in 10 Americans say they approve of the job he is doing as president -- is largely due to mounting frustration among

Republicans and independents.

His agenda is in trouble if he cannot find votes among centrist Democrats and

independents. His agenda is dead if he cannot find enthusiasm among his conservative

base.

------
http://www.propagand

amatrix.com/articles/october2005/281005betrayed.htm (http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/october2005/281005betrayed.htm)

Netghost56
10-28-2005, 08:09 PM
Public has

had it with both parties

Battleground poll reveals Americans disillusioned with government

A just-released political survey by George Washington University contains bad news for

Democrats and Republicans because it lays bare a public seemingly disenfranchised with both major parties.



The Battleground poll – unique for its

inclusion of top Democrat and Republican pollsters – shows a definite slide in support for President Bush and the

GOP. But the survey contains little good news for Democrats as a viable alternative.



The poll found just 44 percent of the public is satisfied

with President Bush's job performance – a figure well below his two-term average but still slightly higher than

other recent polls showing his approval at all-time lows.

"The mounting casualties of American troops in Iraq, the higher gas prices certainly put a

dampening on any of the good news about the economy, and you had the surfacing scandals with Republicans in the

House, the Senate and the White House, potential scandals," said GOP pollster Ed Goeas.



While a Republican retreat in the polls normally means good

news for Democrats, there is little evidence Americans are enamored with the opposition party, survey results

indicate. On a host of issues – Iraq, homeland security, the economy – Democrats don't fare much better, the poll

indicated.

"There is a real void right

now in terms of what the alternative is. And right now, Democrats suffer from the fact that Americans are

disillusioned and distrustful of government in general," Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told Voice Of America.

"They tend to be feeling more negative about the Republicans, but not particularly positive about the Democrats."



Goeas believes Democrats' inability to

capitalize on Republican weakness is actually encouraging.

"But the Democrats, whether you look at the image of the Democratic Party, whether you look

at Democrats in Congress, not only did not gain anything, they actually had their negatives go up some during this

period of time," he told VOA.

And, the

survey noted, Republicans continue to hold an edge in the public's eye on issues related to taxes and terrorism.

Democrats, meanwhile, fare better with health care, jobs and education.

The mid-October poll surveyed 1,000 registered likely voters nationwide. It has a

margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.



--------
http://www.worldne

tdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47084 (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47084)

DrSmellThis
10-29-2005, 08:49 PM
Indictment Gives Glimpse Into

a Secretive Operation By Douglas Jehl /

The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/politics/30indict.html?pagewanted=print)



WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - Over a seven-week period in the spring of 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney's suite in the Old

Executive Office Building appears to have served as the nerve center of an effort to gather and spread word about

Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, a C.I.A. operative.

I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president's chief of staff,

is the only aide to Mr. Cheney who has been charged with a crime. But the indictment alleges that Mr. Cheney himself

and others in the office took part in discussions about the origins of a trip by Mr. Wilson to Niger in 2002; about

the identity of his wife, Valerie Wilson; and whether the information could be shared with reporters, in the period

before it was made public in a July 14, 2003, column by Robert D. Novak.

The indictment identifies the other

officials only by their titles, but it clearly asserts that others involved in the discussion involved David

Addington, Mr. Cheney's counsel; John Hannah, deputy national security adviser; and Catherine Martin, then Mr.

Cheney's press secretary.

Mr. Grossman, Mr. Hannah, Mr. Addington and Ms. Martin have all declined to comment,

citing legal advice. The fact that they were not named in the indictment suggests that they will not be charged, but

all can expect to be called as witnesses in any trial of Mr. Libby, setting up a spectacle that could be unpleasant

for the administration.

That Mr. Cheney and his office sparred with the C.I.A. before the invasion of Iraq has

never been a secret. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby made repeated trips to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., in the

months before the American invasion in March 2003, and Mr. Libby was often on the phone with senior C.I.A. officials

to challenge the agency's intelligence reports on Iraq. A principal focus, former intelligence officials say, was

the question of whether Al Qaeda had had a close, collaborative relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi

government, an argument advanced publicly by Mr. Cheney but rejected by the C.I.A. intelligence analysts.

The

antipathy felt by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby toward Mr. Wilson, in the aftermath of the invasion, has also long been

known. But the events spelled out in the 22-page indictment suggest a far more active, earlier effort by the vice

president's office to gather information about him and his wife.

The indictment provides a rare glimpse inside

a vice presidential operation that, under Mr. Cheney, has been extraordinary both for its power and its secrecy. It

tracks a period in the spring of 2003, at a time when the American failure to find illicit weapons in Iraq meant

that the administration's rationale for war was beginning to unravel, and when early reports about Mr. Wilson's

2002 trip, which had not yet identified him by name, raised questions about whether the White House should have

known just how weak its case been, particularly involving Iraq and nuclear weapons.

By any measure, the

indictment suggests that Mr. Libby and others went to unusual lengths to gather information about Mr. Wilson and his

trip. An initial request on May 29, 2003, from Mr. Libby to Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political

affairs, led Mr. Grossman to request a classified memo from Carl Ford, the director of the State Department's

intelligence bureau, and later for Mr. Grossman to orally brief Mr. Libby on its contents.

Later requests

appear to have prompted C.I.A. officials to fax classified information to Mr. Cheney's office about Mr. Wilson's

trip, on June 9. Mr. Cheney himself is alleged to have shared details about the nature of Ms. Wilson's job with Mr.

Libby, on June 12. The indictment says that Mr. Libby first shared information about Mr. Wilson's trip with a

reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, on June 23; but it also describes discussions involving Mr. Libby,

Mr. Addington, Mr. Hannah, Ms. Martin and White House officials, about whether the information could be shared with

reporters.

Among the discussions, the indictment says, were one on June 23, 2005, in which Mr. Libby is said to

have told Mr. Hannah that there could be complications at the C.I.A. if information about Mr. Wilson's trip was

shared publicly. It is also not clear how Mr. Cheney may have learned "from the C.I.A." that Ms. Wilson worked in

the agency's counterproliferation division, a fact that meant she was part of the C.I.A.'s clandestine service,

and that she might well be working undercover.

Lawyers in the case say that notes taken by Mr. Libby indicate

that detail was provided to Mr. Cheney by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, but several

former intelligence officials say they do not believe that Mr. Tenet was the source of the information.

Many

questions remain unanswered in the indictment. The special counsel, Mr. Fitzgerald, said that Ms. Wilson's

affiliation with the C.I.A. had been classified, but he did not assert that Mr. Libby knew that she had covert

status, something the prosecutor would have had to prove to support a charge under the Intelligence Identities

Protection Act.

It is not clear, for example, what guidance, if any, Mr. Cheney gave to Mr. Libby about whether

or how to share information about Mr. Wilson's trip with reporters. Among their discussions, lawyers in the case

have said, was one on July 11, 2003, on a trip to Norfolk, Va., that preceded by a day what two reporters, Ms.

Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, have said were conversations in which Mr. Libby mentioned Mr. Wilson's

wife.

Beyond Mr. Cheney's office, some of the government officials involved in the discussions have yet to be

identified. It is not clear from the indictment, for example, who faxed the "classified information from the C.I.A."

about Mr. Wilson's trip to the vice president's office on June 9, or which "senior C.I.A. officer" provided

further information to Mr. Libby on June 11.

Another question is whether Mr. Libby made appropriate use of the

briefings provided to him by the C.I.A., a privilege afforded to only eight or nine other members of the Bush

administration. The indictment says that Mr. Libby complained to a C.I.A. briefer on June 14 that C.I.A. officials

were making comments critical of the Bush administration, and that he mentioned, among other things, "Joe Wilson"

and "Valerie Wilson" in the context of Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger. Also still unclear is how Ms. Martin, the press

secretary, may have learned in June or early July that Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. The indictment says

that Ms. Martin learned the information from "another government official" and shared that information with Mr.

Libby.

Mr. Grossman, who served under Colin L. Powell, left the government in January and is now a private

consultant. Mr. Addington, still Mr. Cheney's counsel, has been a major participant in debates within the

administration about the treatment of suspected terrorists, including questions surrounding interrogation rules, and

whether those held at the American facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should face military tribunals. Mr. Hannah, a

Middle East specialist, was a main liaison between the vice president's office and Ahmad Chalabi, who as an Iraqi

exile was a major force in urging the administration toward war.

Mr. Hannah and Mr. Libby were also the main

authors of a 48-page draft speech prepared in January 2003 that was intended to make the administration's case for

war in Iraq before the United Nations. The draft was provided to Mr. Powell, in advance of his speech to the

Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, but most of its contents were cast aside by Mr. Powell and Mr. Tenet, who during

several days of review at C.I.A. headquarters rejected many claims related to Iraq, its weapons program and

terrorism as exaggerated and unwarranted.

It has long been understood that Mr. Libby, Mr. Cheney and others

felt hostility toward Mr. Wilson by July 6, 2003, the day the former ambassador emerged publicly, in an Op-Ed

article in The New York Times and an appearance on "Meet the Press," to describe his trip to Niger and to criticize

the administration.

Mr. Wilson suggested that he had taken the trip at the behest of Mr. Cheney's office, and

that the office had been briefed on his findings. Neither assertion was strictly accurate (the C.I.A. had dispatched

Mr. Wilson on its own, after questions from Mr. Cheney about a possible uranium deal between Iraq and Niger; and his

findings, briefed orally to the agency, were never shared with Mr. Cheney's office). After Mr. Wilson's public

appearance, the White House worked aggressively to challenge his statements.

But the indictment shows that,

within Mr. Cheney's office, the pushback against Mr. Wilson began far earlier, at a time when the only news

accounts about his trip had referred to him only as a "former ambassador." Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times

wrote about Mr. Wilson on May 6, 2003, without naming him. But the timeline spelled out in the indictment suggests

that it was a second round of news media inquiries, this time from Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, whose

article appeared on June 12, that set Mr. Libby and the vice president's office on the path toward digging out the

information that is now at the heart of the case against Mr. Libby.

DrSmellThis
10-30-2005, 04:23 PM
http://www.washingto

npost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102900549_pf.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102900549_pf.html)

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/

washington/articles/2005/10/29/despite_urging_calm_for_libby_cheney_may_face_fire storm_too?mode=PF

I just

love that Bush said he was as anxious as anyone to find out who "leaked" the identity of the CIA officer; but gee,

he says, there are just an awful lot of people in this big administration, and it could be anyone!!



Now the information turns out to have come from Vice President Cheney, and Bush's other closest

colleague, Rove.

Isn't it funny, how when you're President, treason to cover up conquering a non-threatening

nation can be meticulously coordinated right under your nose, over a period of months, by your two closest

associates and you don't even know it? Kinda like a suprise birthday party? :rofl:

DrSmellThis
11-01-2005, 12:43 PM
[url="http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html"]http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html[/u

rl]

It looks as if the Pentagon's "Office of Special Plans" may have been the culprit in the yellowcake

forgeries.
The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the

viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New

York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger.

I hope everyone is noticing by now that, together with the Downing Street Minutes and related sources, a

very clear big picture is emerging.

Here, it's about breaking every national and international law to conquer a

non-threatening country for economic gain by a few; with no regard for the scores of thousands dead; and no regard

for the national security of the United States.

This goes beyond "corruption". It's not corruption of

something at all, in fact. It is blatant organized crime, through and through. Everything revolves around the

crime, around power and money at any "cost", or regardless of cost to our citizenry and the world. Notice that all

other government functions/agencies, like FEMA and the Pentagon, have been relegated to trivial formalities, whose

only true function is simply loyality to the administration and their corporate friends (hence no appointments

except cronies). Even going after Bin Laden was a trivial going through the motions, with no goal to succeed. With

the Plame outing, they took down a huge, undercover U.S. intelligence network, not just one CIA officer. CIA sources

indicate multiple intelligence personnel have already died because of it. It will take decades to get our intel

credibility back abroad, and we are already at increased risk.

It's all a front.

Even the Christian

fundamentalists have been duped by appearances, as they just found out with the Harriet Meiers nomination. The same

goes for conservatives, who penned the above linked article. People are just beginning to realize that this has

nothing to do with "those damn liberal conspiracy nut jobs."

Massive murder, destruction and chaos are just

normal, taken for granted, methods of doing business; just like in the Mafia.

There is no way to fathom the

national shame we have incurred.

belgareth
11-01-2005, 01:53 PM
Panel Recommends Major Tax Law Overhaul By MARY DALRYMPLE, AP Tax Writer



Tue Nov 1,

WASHINGTON - Chosen to find a simpler way to tax the nation, a presidential panel on Tuesday recommended two

designs that would rewrite virtually every tax law for individuals and businesses.



Treasury Secretary John Snow called the proposals "bold

recommendations" but he did not indicate what ideas the administration would

embrace.

"Now it's up to us," Snow said. The Treasury Department

will "take the report, review it carefully, understand the implications and use the report as a starting point for

recommendations that we will make to the president," he said.

Under

the panel's plan, most deductions, credits and other tax breaks would be eliminated along with much of the

paperwork and equations that baffle taxpayers under a drastically simplified income

tax.

Many, including the nine members of the presidential commission,

have said key recommendations will be unpopular.

"The effort to

reform the tax code is noble in its purpose, but it requires political willpower," the group said Tuesday in a

letter to Snow. "Many stand waiting to defend their breaks, deductions and loopholes, and to defeat our

efforts."

Members of the panel urged taxpayers and lawmakers to look

at the whole plan, not just individual components.

Asked whether the

administration could build support for a tax plan that contained some controversial ideas, Snow said, "I happen to

believe — it may be naive, but I don't think so — that good ideas ultimately

prevail."

The President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform spent

most of the year studying tax designs, including consumption taxes like a national retail sales tax. President

Bush tasked the group with finding simpler and more economically productive ideas for

taxation.

The commission wrapped up its work last month, and its

ideas immediately attracted criticism — some from those who wanted to see more change and some from those who felt

the changes went too far.

Drawing particular criticism, the panel

determined that tax breaks for homeownership be changed to spread their benefits to more middle-income

families.

The panel would convert the home mortgage interest

deduction into a credit equal to 15 percent of mortgage interest paid. The $1 million limit on mortgages eligible

for the tax break would shrink to the average regional price of housing, ranging from $227,000 to

$412,000.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley,

R-Iowa, said that idea is bound to be politically unpopular. "But it's important to have a comprehensive starting

point that will get everyone talking and thinking," he said.

In

another major change, taxpayers could purchase health insurance using untaxed money up to the amount of the average

premium, about $5,000 for an individual and $11,500 for a family, a change that caps currently unlimited breaks but

would create a new tax break for those who do not get health insurance through

work.

Both plans would tax rates on individuals and

businesses.

Under one plan, individuals would pay no tax on dividends

paid by U.S. companies and exclude 75 percent of their capital gains from taxation. Under the second plan, all

investment income would be taxed at 15 percent.

Both proposals would

abolish the alternative minimum tax, a levy originally drafted to prevent wealthy individuals from escaping taxation

but increasingly reaching into the middle class. They also would eliminate federal deductions and credits for

mortgage interest, state and local taxes and education, among others.

The advisory commission would replace those withdrawn tax breaks with simpler benefits, including three

savings plans that supplant more than a dozen provisions currently available for retirement, medical expenses and

education.

Bush set certain limits on the panel, requiring that the

new plans collect roughly as much tax money as the government collects now.

The proposals also had to retain the progressive system that taxes wealthier taxpayers at higher rates

than poorer individuals and families. They were also required to recognize "the importance of homeownership and

charity in American society."

The panel rejected frequently touted

ideas to impose taxes on consumption, like a retail sales tax.

Instead, the group chose to use one recommendation to push for major simplification of the current income tax

system. Its second recommendation makes changes for businesses that shift the nation's tax system toward indirect

tax on consumption.

The changes allow every taxpayer to use a

simpler tax form, less then half the length of the current Form 1040. Snow said that would also cutting in half the

number of taxpayers who need to hire a professional tax preparer.

The tax-writing House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees pledged to take a close look at the

recommendations.

___



On the Net:



President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform:

http://www.taxreformpanel.gov

DrSmellThis
11-01-2005, 08:13 PM
Democrats close Senate to

push war probe

Deal struck to advance investigation on prewar intelligence

WASHINGTON (CNN) --

Democrats forced the Senate into a closed session Tuesday to pressure the Republican majority into completing an

investigation of the intelligence underpinning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Democrats demanded that Intelligence

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts move forward on a promised investigation into how Bush administration officials

handled prewar intelligence about Iraq's suspected weapons programs.

The probe would be a follow-up to the July

2004 Intelligence Committee report that blamed a "series of failures" by the CIA and other intelligence agencies for

the mistaken belief among U.S. policymakers that Iraq had restarted its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons

programs. (Full story (http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/09/senate.intelligence/index.html))

The

Senate reopened about two hours later, after members agreed to appoint a bipartisan group of senators to assess the

progress of the "Phase 2" probe, the office of Majority Leader Bill Frist said.

(See video on Democratic move -- 3:05 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:cnnVideo%28%27play%27,%27/video/politics/2005/11/01/henry.senate.closed.sess

ion.cnn%27%29;))

The three Republicans and three Democrats are to

report back to Senate leaders by November 14.

Democrats accused Roberts of stalling the probe into how

administration officials handled the intelligence used to sell Congress and the public on invading Iraq.



Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said the closed session was "not needed, not necessary and, in my personal opinion,

was a stunt."

The closed session was punctuated by acrimonious broadsides in the Capitol hallways.

Frist

said Democrats had "hijacked" the Senate, and Democrats threatened to close the chamber each day until Republicans

agreed to move forward with the investigation.

"This is an affront to me personally," said Frist, a Tennessee

Republican. "This is an affront to our leadership. It is an affront to the United States of America, and it is

wrong."

[So it's an affront to the American people for anyone to question the actions of government; but

not to lie to the American people into fighting and dying in a war for narcissistic reasons. This lecture on ethics

is coming from one of our most "corrupt" politicians. -- DST]

Frist said Senate Rule 21 -- which requires

everyone but senators and a few aides to clear the chamber until a majority votes to reopen -- had been invoked only

rarely and with "mutual conversation" between the leaders of both parties.

Democratic leader Harry Reid said the

surprise move was necessary to overcome Republican efforts to "obstruct" a full investigation of how the Bush

administration led the United States into war.

"There's nothing more important to a Congress or a president

than war," the Nevada Democrat said. "I think the American people are entitled to know how we got there. That's

what this is all about."

There was no immediate reaction from the White House.

Reid said the GOP leadership

in Congress has "repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what

happened and why."

He said he had "zero regret" about the move: "The American people had a victory today."



Rule 21 has been invoked 53 times since 1929, according to the Congressional Research Service.

It was invoked

six times during the impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton for senators to organize the proceedings and

deliberate on his eventual acquittal.

Roberts: Probe in progress

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the

intelligence committee's ranking Democrat and vice chairman, said the Democratic maneuver was necessary for

Americans to learn who was accountable for the way prewar intelligence was used.

"Everything is about

accountability to the American people, accountability of the executive branch ... [and] accountability of the

oversight of the Congress," Rockefeller said.

He said the committee's Republican majority has refused to

request documents from the White House about how the Bush administration crafted arguments for the invasion.



"What disturbs me the most is the majority has been willing, in this senator's judgment, to take orders from this

administration when it comes to limiting the scope of appropriate, authorized and necessary oversight

investigations," Rockefeller said.

Roberts said his committee has been working on the Phase 2 investigation

since May and "we have what we think is a pretty good report." He said the committee will take up the matter next

week.

"However long it takes, working in good faith, we will look into Phase 2 and see what we can do and finish

that product," Roberts said.

Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat on the panel, expressed his doubts.

"Assurances have been made for months that progress is being made," Levin said. "We have not seen any evidence of

it."

Democrats last year had pushed for the second part of the panel's inquiry to be completed before the

November 2004 elections.

Democratic Whip Richard Durbin said last week's indictment of Vice President Dick

Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on perjury and obstruction of justice charges showed how the Bush

administration reacts to criticism.

Libby is accused of lying to investigators and a grand jury probing the

disclosure of the identity of a CIA officer whose husband had challenged a key assertion in the administration's

case for war.

"It's a question about whether or not anyone in this administration in any way misused or

distorted intelligence," Durbin said. He said senators "owe the American people some straight answers."

Durbin,

an Illinois Democrat, denied his party was trying to stall Senate action on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.



He said work on Alito's nomination was still going on, and he was scheduled to meet with the nominee on

Wednesday.

Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, a Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, said Democratic

complaints against Roberts were "terribly unfair and unfounded."

Bond said the panel's 2004 report found no

indication that the mistaken assumptions about Iraq's weapons programs were the result of political pressure.



"Even after they signed on to that, they contend that somehow this intelligence was misused," he said.



Responding to that argument, Durbin told CNN, "This is a different question: Once they received the intelligence,

did members of the administration accurately and honestly portray it to the American people?"

CNN's Ted

Barrett contributed to this report.

belgareth
11-02-2005, 11:52 AM
Nominee Has Some Unexpected Supporters By David G. Savage and Henry Weinstein Times Staff Writers



Wed Nov 2, 2005





WASHINGTON — Samuel A. Alito Jr. was quickly branded a hard-core

conservative after President Bush announced his nomination, but a surprising number of liberal-leaning judges

and ex-clerks say they support his elevation to the Supreme Court.

Those who have worked alongside him say he was neither an ideologue nor a judge with an agenda, conservative

or otherwise. They caution against attaching a label to Alito.

Kate

Pringle, a New York lawyer who worked last year on Sen. John F. Kerry (news, bio, voting record)'s presidential

campaign, describes herself as a left-leaning Democrat and a big fan of

Alito's.

She worked for him as a law clerk in 1994, and said she was

troubled by the initial reaction to his nomination. "He was not, in my personal experience, an ideologue. He pays

attention to the facts of cases and applies the law in a careful way. He is conservative in that sense; his opinions

don't demonstrate an ideological slant," she said.

Jeff Wasserstein,

a Washington lawyer who clerked for Alito in 1998, echoes her view.

"I am a Democrat who always voted Democratic, except when I vote for a Green candidate — but Judge Alito was

not interested in the ideology of his clerks," he said. "He didn't decide cases based on ideology, and his record

was not extremely conservative."

As an example, he cited a case in

which police in Pennsylvania sent out a bulletin that called for the arrest of a black man in a black sports car.

Police stopped such a vehicle and found a gun, but Alito voted to overturn the man's conviction, saying that that

general identification did not amount to probable cause.

"This was a

classic case of 'driving while black,' " Wasserstein said, referring to the complaint that black motorists are

targeted by police. Though Alito "was a former prosecutor, he was very fair and open-minded in looking at cases and

applying the law," Wasserstein said.

It is not unusual for former law

clerks to have fond recollections of the judge they worked for. And it is common for judges to speak respectfully of

their colleagues. But for a judge being portrayed by the right and left as a hard-right conservative, Alito's

enthusiastic backing by liberal associates is striking.

Former

federal Judge Timothy K. Lewis said that when he joined the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992, he consulted

his mentor, Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. The late Higginbotham, a legendary liberal and a scholar of U.S. racial

history, was the only other black judge on the Philadelphia-based court at the time.



"As he was going down the roster of colleagues, he got to Sam Alito.

I expressed some concern about [him] being so conservative. He said, 'No, no. Sam Alito is my favorite judge to sit

with on this court. He is a wonderful judge and a terrific human being. Sam Alito is my kind of conservative. He is

intellectually honest. He doesn't have an agenda. He is not an ideologue,' " Higginbotham said, according to

Lewis.

"I really was surprised to hear that, but my experience with

him on the 3rd Circuit bore that out," added Lewis, who had a liberal record during his seven years on the bench.

"Alito does not have an agenda, contrary to what the Republican right is saying about him being a 'home run.' He

is not result-oriented. He is an honest conservative judge who believes in judicial restraint and judicial

deference."

In January 1998, Alito, joined by Judge Lewis, ruled that

a Pennsylvania police officer had no probable cause to stop a black man driving a sports car after a rash of

robberies in which two black males allegedly fled in a different type of sports car. The driver, Jesse Kithcart, was

indicted for being a felon in possession of a gun, which police discovered when they patted him down after his car

was stopped. After a trial judge refused to suppress the search, Kithcart pleaded guilty but reserved his right to

appeal.

"Armed with information that two black males driving a black

sports car were believed to have committed three robberies in the area some relatively short time earlier," the

police officer "could not justifiably arrest any African-American man who happened to drive by in any type of black

sports car," Alito wrote. He said the trial judge had erred in concluding that the police had probable cause that

extended to the weapons charge because Kithcart had not been involved in the

robberies.

Alito and Lewis sent the case back to the trial judge for

new hearings on whether the search was legal. The third judge in the case, Theodore A. McKee, said he would have

gone even further.

"Just as this record fails to establish" that the

officer "had probable cause to arrest any black male who happened to drive by in a black sports car, it also fails

to establish reasonable suspicion to justify stopping any and all such cars that happened to contain a black male,"

wrote Judge McKee. He said he would have thrown out the search without further

proceedings.

Judge Edward R. Becker, former chief judge of the 3rd

Circuit, said he also was surprised to see Alito labeled as a reliable

conservative.

"I found him to be a guy who approached every case with

an open mind. I never found him to have an agenda," he said. "I suppose the best example of that is in the area of

criminal procedure. He was a former U.S. attorney, but he never came to a case with a bias in favor of the

prosecution. If there was an error in the trial, or a flawed search, he would vote to reverse," Becker said.



Some of his former clerks say they were drawn to Alito because of

his reputation as a careful judge who closely followed the text of the law.

Clark Lombardi, now a law professor at the University of Washington, became a clerk for Alito in 1999.



"I grew up in New York City, and I'm a political independent. But I

liked Judge Alito because he was a judicial conservative, someone who believed in judicial restraint and was

committed to textualism," he said. "His approach leads to conservative results in some cases and progressive results

in other cases. In my opinion, he is a fantastic jurist and a good guy."

Some of Alito's former Yale Law School classmates who describe themselves as Democrats say they expect they

will not always agree with his rulings if he joins the Supreme Court. But they say he is the best they could have

hoped for from among Bush's potential nominees.

"Sam is very smart,

and he is unquestionably conservative," said Washington lawyer Mark I. Levy, who served in the Justice Department

during the Carter and Clinton administrations. "But he is open-minded and fair. And he thinks about cases as a

lawyer and a judge. He is really very different from [Justice Antonin] Scalia. If he is going to be like anyone on

the court now, it will be John Roberts," the new chief justice.

Joel

Friedman teaches labor and employment law at Tulane University Law School, but is temporarily at the University of

Pittsburgh because of Tulane's shutdown following Hurricane Katrina.

"Ideology aside, I think he is a terrific guy, a terrific choice," said Friedman, a Yale classmate of

Alito's. "He is not Harriet Miers; he has unimpeachable credentials. He may disagree with me on many legal issues —

I am a Democrat; I didn't vote for Bush. I would not prefer any of the people Bush has appointed up until now.



"The question is, is this guy [Alito] going to be motivated by the

end and find a means to get to the end, or is he going to reach an end through thoughtful analysis of all relevant

factors? In my judgment, Sam will be the latter."







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[fon

t=Times New Roman]Savage reported from Washington and Weinstein from Los Angeles[/font]

Mtnjim
11-02-2005, 03:47 PM
And from the ACLU:






Dear Friend,

The ACLU participates in more cases before the Supreme Court than anyone besides the U.S.

government itself.

Every time we step into that courtroom, fundamental freedoms are on the line. That will

certainly be true later this month when ACLU attorney Jennifer Dalven, Deputy Director of our Reproductive Freedom

Project, will step before the Justices of the Supreme Court to argue Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New

England.

With a decision in the Ayotte case, the Supreme Court could revoke the long-established principle that

abortion restrictions must include exceptions to protect a woman's health. This is the first abortion-related case

to reach the Court in five years -- and it will probably be the last time the ACLU argues a case before Justice

Sandra Day O'Connor.

Justice O'Connor has provided more than a swing vote on the Court. She has been a

moderating voice on critical civil liberties issues ranging from race to religion to reproductive freedom. We cannot

know for certain how Judge Alito would vote in Ayotte or any other case, but there is no question that this

nomination calls into question the delicate balance that Justice O'Connor has helped to shape and preserve.

For

example, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Judge Alito voted to uphold a state law provision that required women to

notify their husbands before having an abortion. Justice O'Connor joined with a majority of the court in rejecting

his position. In addition, Judge Alito has been more willing to support state-sponsored religious displays than

Justice O'Connor. And he has written several dissenting opinions on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that, if

accepted, would have not only made it more difficult for victims of discrimination to prevail in bringing a suit,

but would have made it more difficult for them to even get their case to a jury.

Other troubling positions in

Judge Alito's record includes:

Upholding the strip search of a mother and her ten-year old daughter, even though

the warrant allowing the search did not name either of them.
Holding that Congress does not have the power under

the Commerce Clause to restrict the transfer and possession of machine guns at gun shows.
Holding that Congress did

not have authority to require state employers to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Make no mistake

about it. As the Senate considers the Alito nomination, we are at a pivotal moment in our nation's history. The

Bush Administration is claiming unprecedented national security powers, reproductive rights are in jeopardy, the

teaching of evolution is under attack, and we continue to struggle with a legacy of discrimination.

The Supreme

Court's role as the ultimate safeguard of our constitutional liberties has never been more critical. With that

stark reality in mind, the ACLU will, in the weeks ahead, compile a complete report on Judge Alito's civil

liberties record, including the good and the bad. And, with your help, we will make sure each and every Senator

understands that record and acts on his or her obligation to protect the Supreme Court's vital position in our

constitutional democracy.

We'll be counting on your support every step of the way.

Sincerely,

Anthony D.

Romero
Executive Director
American Civil Liberties Union

Netghost56
11-02-2005, 05:23 PM
I have a proposal that I

think would satisfy people on both sides of the abortion issue. But people are so polarized about it I decided to

keep my mouth shut.

Mtnjim
11-02-2005, 06:32 PM
I have a proposal

that I think would satisfy people on both sides of the abortion issue. But people are so polarized about it I

decided to keep my mouth shut.

Uhm!!
"If you're against abortion, don't have one"???

belgareth
11-02-2005, 09:01 PM
Uhm!!
"If

you're against abortion, don't have one"???

Isn't that a bit too rational for our society? They'd

much rather spend their time forcing others to act in accordance with their beliefs.

belgareth
11-03-2005, 05:51 AM
The ACLU is kind of in the same

catagory with me as the major religions. They can and do do some good but they can and do do immeasurable harm too.

The position stated by the ACLU is a really good example of why I don't trust them. Poorly reasoned at best.




And from the ACLU:




Dear Friend,

The ACLU participates in more cases before the

Supreme Court than anyone besides the U.S. government itself.

Every time we step into that courtroom,

fundamental freedoms are on the line. That will certainly be true later this month when ACLU attorney Jennifer

Dalven, Deputy Director of our Reproductive Freedom Project, will step before the Justices of the Supreme Court to

argue Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.

With a decision in the Ayotte case, the Supreme

Court could revoke the long-established principle that abortion restrictions must include exceptions to protect a

woman's health. This is the first abortion-related case to reach the Court in five years -- and it will probably be

the last time the ACLU argues a case before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Justice O'Connor has provided more

than a swing vote on the Court. She has been a moderating voice on critical civil liberties issues ranging from race

to religion to reproductive freedom. We cannot know for certain how Judge Alito would vote in Ayotte or any other

case, but there is no question that this nomination calls into question the delicate balance that Justice O'Connor

has helped to shape and preserve.

For example, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Judge Alito voted to uphold a

state law provision that required women to notify their husbands before having an abortion. Justice O'Connor joined

with a majority of the court in rejecting his position. In addition, Judge Alito has been more willing to support

state-sponsored religious displays than Justice O'Connor. And he has written several dissenting opinions on the

Third Circuit Court of Appeals that, if accepted, would have not only made it more difficult for victims of

discrimination to prevail in bringing a suit, but would have made it more difficult for them to even get their case

to a jury.

Other troubling positions in Judge Alito's record includes:

Upholding the strip search of a

mother and her ten-year old daughter, even though the warrant allowing the search did not name either of

them.
Holding that Congress does not have the power under the Commerce Clause to restrict the transfer and

possession of machine guns at gun shows.
Holding that Congress did not have authority to require state employers to

comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Make no mistake about it. As the Senate considers the Alito

nomination, we are at a pivotal moment in our nation's history. The Bush Administration is claiming unprecedented

national security powers, reproductive rights are in jeopardy, the teaching of evolution is under attack, and we

continue to struggle with a legacy of discrimination.

The Supreme Court's role as the ultimate safeguard of our

constitutional liberties has never been more critical. With that stark reality in mind, the ACLU will, in the weeks

ahead, compile a complete report on Judge Alito's civil liberties record, including the good and the bad. And, with

your help, we will make sure each and every Senator understands that record and acts on his or her obligation to

protect the Supreme Court's vital position in our constitutional democracy.

We'll be counting on your support

every step of the way.

Sincerely,

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
American Civil Liberties

Union

Mtnjim
11-03-2005, 10:08 AM
Isn't that a bit

too rational for our society? ...

Ya, you're right, I forgot!!:hammer:

Mtnjim
11-03-2005, 10:10 AM
The ACLU is kind

of in the same catagory with me as the major religions. They can and do do some good but they can and do do

immeasurable harm too. ...

Absolutely!!!

I remember one time when they defended some wingnut Nazis

right to hold a march. They came right out and said that they found the Nazis to be abhorent, but that they did have

the right to hold their march.
I admire that they will stand on principle, even when they don't agree with who

they are defending.

belgareth
11-03-2005, 03:47 PM
I hear a lot of hyperbole about how the republicans are only out to

help big business, are screwing the little guy, etc. In my opinion it is politically motivated propaganda with

little basis in fact. As you can see, the Supreme court ruled against the individual in favor of of

government/business interests. Here we see where the conservatives, including King W himself, are backing the

individual but nowhere is there anything about democratic participation either for or against. I wonder why. I have

several thoughts on this issue. One is that it is not the place of the Supreme Court to make laws, it is their job

to interpret them without an agenda. Clearly they have failed at that many times but this in one of the most

egregious. The other is that, while I agree in principle that Bush and company are generally awful, they are not the

all consuming evil so many make them out to be. As with anybody and everybody, there are many sides to the

picture.

Belgareth
*************************************************

House to Vote on Eminent Domain Measure By JIM ABRAMS,

Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON - Charging that the Supreme Court has undermined a pillar of American society, the sanctity of the

home, the House considered a bill to block the court-approved seizure of private property for use by developers.



The bill, headed toward easy passage with bipartisan support

Thursday, would withhold federal money from state and local governments that use powers of eminent domain to force

homeowners to give up their property for commercial uses.

The Supreme

Court, in a 5-4 ruling in June, recognized the power of local governments to seize property needed for private

development projects that generate tax revenue. The decision drew criticism from private property, civil rights,

farm and religious groups that said it was an abuse of the Fifth Amendment's "takings clause." That language

provides for the taking of private property, with fair compensation, for public

use.

The ruling in Kelo v. City of New London allowed the Connecticut

city to exercise state eminent domain law to require several homeowners to cede their property for commercial

use.

With this "infamous" decision, said Rep. Phil Gingrey (news,

bio, voting record), R-Ga., "homes and small businesses across the country have been placed in grave jeopardy and

threatened by the government wrecking ball."

Added the House's No. 3

Republican, Rep. Deborah Pryce (news, bio, voting record) of Ohio: "For a country founded on property rights, this

is a terrible blow."

The legislation is the latest, and most

far-reaching, of several congressional responses to the court ruling. The House previously passed a measure to bar

federal transportation money from going for improvements on land seized for private development. The Senate approved

an amendment to a transportation spending bill applying similar restrictions.

About half the states are also considering changes in their laws to prevent takings for private

use.

The Bush administration, backing the House bill, said in a

statement that "private property rights are the bedrock of the nation's economy and enjoy constitutionally

protected status. They should also receive an appropriate level of protection by the federal

government."

The House bill would cut off for two years all federal

economic development funds to states and localities that use economic development as a rationale for property. It

also would bar the federal government from using eminent domain powers for economic

development.

"By subjecting all projects to penalties, we are

removing a loophole that localities can exploit by playing a 'shell game' with projects," said Rep. Henry Bonilla

(news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, a chief sponsor.

The House, by a

voice vote, approved Gingrey's proposal to bar states or localities in pursuit of more tax money from exercising

eminent domain over nonprofit or tax-exempt religious organizations. Churches, he said, "should not have to fear

because God does not pay enough in taxes."

Eminent domain, the right

of government to take property for public use, is typically used for projects that benefit an entire community, such

as highways, airports or schools.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who

wrote the majority opinion in Kelo, said in an August speech that the ruling was legally correct because the high

court has "always allowed local policymakers wide latitude in determining how best to achieve legitimate public

goals."

Several lawmakers who opposed the House bill said eminent

domain has long been used by local governments for economic development projects such as the Inner Harbor in

Baltimore and the cleaning up of Times Square in New York. The District of Columbia is expected to use eminent

domain to secure land for a new baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals.

DrSmellThis
11-03-2005, 08:04 PM
Ownership, property, and the

"ownership society" are conservative issues. It is not suprising that Bush would play to his conservative base here.



Supporting ownership rights cannot be construed necessarily as concern for the "little guy", however. It turns

out in this case that it often is, as with cases we have examined in the forum recently. Generally, the rights

involved in ownership are consistent with Democratic capitalism, and necessary to respect, in context.

But

ownership rights are not best seen as black and white absolutes, IMO. (e.g., "What's mine is mine. End of story.")

Absolute ownership rights are also consistent with fascism, wherein ownership is like a religion. Corporatism is

strongly related to an extreme view of ownership. Once, again, if you want to see any political/philosophical/moral

principle turn destructive, just make it a black and white absolute. I believe Bush and Family take the concepts of

property rights and ownership too far, in some ways.

This in no way implies any one position on eminent domain.



This issue crosses party lines for multiple reasons. Progressives are also interested in helping individuals

keep their houses. There is a middle path in thinking about ownership.

Also, a great many progressives are

sympathetic to traditional conservative (e.g., fiscal, right to religious views) issues, even the most radical ones.

In no way are conservatives bad or "evil". Unfortunately for them, traditional Republicans and conservatives are

getting screwed by current leadership.

For my part, I avoid the word "evil" when referring to the present

administraton, preferring concrete, descriptive, evidence-based terms; like "destructive", instead.

There are

positive, constructive, genuine, ethical people in politics on both sides of the aisle, in my opinion. They just

don't carry enough weight to rule the process.

belgareth
11-04-2005, 07:00 AM
I see nothing so far, other

than what has been in the press, that you could possibly call evidence. Since I do not regard the press as a

reliable source of information, and I do regard all forms of news organizations as biased sensationalists, I find

the press of little value other than as a starting point to research issues, something I have encouraged others to

do many times. If and when the allegations you mention reach a legal venue I will put stock in the decisions of that

legal venue as that is the standard set by the constitution to determine a person's guilt or innocence. While not

perfect, it is a far better meduim than the press to base opinions on. If and until any person is convicted, under

law and constitutionally, they are innocent.

On the other hand, I find actions to be important and that is what

I was commenting on. At this time, there is nothing to indicate the liberals or progressives are helping to protect

the individual from local government abuse in this instance. Before I'll form a stronger opinion on the matter

I'll look at voting records to see who really supported this highly important issue. If you want to regard that as

a conservative issue that's fine. To me, taking one's home away from them for commercial or government gain is

wrong under almost any conditions and has nothing to do with any political leaning.

As for King W's White

House, in my personal opinion, the lot of them are crooks. However, their support of individual property rights is

the right thing to do. I am willing to see they grey in the current administration's behavoir. Under my 'Black and

White' philosophy, I hold a person responsible for their actions The other side of the coin requires I give them

credit where due instead of looking for reasons to fault them. Everybody, no matter who they are or what their

political leanings has a wide range of traits across a spectrum from what I call good to what I call bad.



Doubtless there are some people in government that are honest and well meaning. In my opinion they are in a small

and suppressed minority. Some of them may even be headed in the direction I think is the right path. Others are well

meaning and dangerous fools who can do a lot of damage to our society. Unfortunately, since the course we follow and

what is the right thing to do is subjective, we often will disagree on who is who. That's fine by me as I don't

ask you or anybody else to agree with me. However, I will continue to mistrust any and all people involved in

politics until they not only prove their honesty but demonstrate that they are on a path I believe is a good one for

society. Oh...yes, I do consider honesty to be a black and white issue in this respect.

A curiousity though,

when you mention ownership you sound as if you disagree with ownership. Am I misunderstanding your position on

that?

belgareth
11-04-2005, 09:10 AM
Payrolls Expand in Oct.; Jobless Rate Dips By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer



WASHINGTON - America's payrolls grew by a rather tepid 56,000 in

October, a sign that the nation's job market is slowly regaining its footing after the beating administered to the

Gulf Coast area by Hurricane Katrina. The unemployment rate dipped to 5 percent of the labor force.



The latest snapshot released by the Labor Department on Friday

offered fresh insights into the impact of Katrina, the most costly natural disaster in U.S.

history.

Importantly, job losses in September turned out to be just

8,000, according to revised figures. That was smaller than the 35,000 decline in jobs that was reported a month ago,

suggesting the damage to the job market from Katrina wasn't as terrible as many had feared. Still, the storm was

certainly felt: The drop in payrolls in September was the first nationwide employment decline in two

years.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, edged down to 5 percent in

October as some people opted to leave the civilian labor force for any number of reasons. The jobless rate in

September had crept up to 5.1 percent.

"The United States' economy

is strong. It's healthy," President Bush proclaimed Friday while attending the Summit of the Americas in

Argentina.

On Wall Street, stocks edged higher. The Dow Jones

industrials were up 9 points in morning trading.

Mark Zandi, chief

economist at Economy.com, said: "the economy has weathered these storms about as gracefully as could be

expected."

The payroll gain of 56,000 in October disappointed

economists. Before the release of the report, they were predicting that around 100,000 were created during the

month.

"Hiring was cautious in October," observed Carl Tannenbaum,

chief economist at LaSalle Bank. "Aside from companies not being able to operate because of the hurricanes, many

businesses might have been in a state of suspense as they assessed damage to their operations and to the economy

that might have resulted from these storms."

Another disappointment:

job gains in August turned out to be 148,000, according to revised figures. That was down from the more robust

increase of 211,000 previously reported.

An inflation barometer tied

to the report picked up strongly.

Workers' average hourly earnings

rose to $16.27 in October, representing a 0.5 percent increase from September. Economists were calling for a 0.2

percent rise. Wage gains are good for workers but a rapid pickup can lead economists to fret about inflation. The

0.5 percent increase was the largest since February 2003 when hourly earnings rose by the same

amount.

More worried about the prospects of inflation heating up,

rather than a serious slowdown in the economy, Fed policy-makers on Tuesday bumped up a key interest rate to its

highest level in more than four years to keep a lid on prices. More rate increases are

expected.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, appearing

before Congress on Thursday, said fallout from a trio of late-summer and fall hurricanes should be temporary and

that the expansion remains firmly planted.

Katrina, Rita and Wilma

are likely to "exert a drag" on employment and production in the short term and may aggravate inflation pressures,

he said. "But the economic fundamentals remain firm, and the U.S. economy appears to retain important forward

momentum," Greenspan said in his most extensive remarks thus far on the impact of the

storms.

The Fed chairman is retiring in late January after 18 years

at the helm of the monetary policy-making body.

For October, "job

growth in the remainder of the country (outside the hurricane zone) appeared to be below trend," said Kathleen

Utgoff, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "It is possible, of course, that employment growth for the

nation could have been held down by indirect effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, for example, because of their

impact on gas prices," she said.

Retailing and leisure and

hospitality were among the areas of business that cut jobs in October. Those losses, however, were blunted by gain

in construction, manufacturing, professional and business services, and in education and health services.



The latest jobs picture comes as Bush is confronted with sagging job

ratings.

President Bush's job approval is at the lowest level of

his presidency.

A new AP-Ipsos poll showed Bush's approval rating

dipped to 37 percent, compared with 39 percent just a month ago.

Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coat on Aug. 29. Rita barreled into the region on Sept. 24. Those storms

battered crucial oil and gas facilities, choked off commerce and destroyed businesses. Wilma, which hit on Oct. 24,

caused widespread power outages and property damage across Florida.

While Katrina had a visible impact on employment, Rita's bite was minimal, the Labor Department said.

The figures released on Friday don't capture the impact of Wilma because the employment information was collected

before the hurricane hit.

tim929
11-04-2005, 01:06 PM
Ya know...some day...court cases

will simply be decided by two guys named Ted and Earl flipping a coin and rendering a verdict.

DrSmellThis
11-04-2005, 02:09 PM
I see nothing

so far, other than what has been in the press, that you could possibly call evidence. Since I do not regard the

press as a reliable source of information, and I do regard all forms of news organizations as biased

sensationalists, I find the press of little value other than as a starting point to research issues, something I

have encouraged others to do many times. If and when the allegations you mention reach a legal venue I will put

stock in the decisions of that legal venue as that is the standard set by the constitution to determine a person's

guilt or innocence. While not perfect, it is a far better meduim than the press to base opinions on. If and until

any person is convicted, under law and constitutionally, they are innocent.

On the other hand, I find actions to

be important and that is what I was commenting on. At this time, there is nothing to indicate the liberals or

progressives are helping to protect the individual from local government abuse in this instance. Before I'll form a

stronger opinion on the matter I'll look at voting records to see who really supported this highly important issue.

If you want to regard that as a conservative issue that's fine. To me, taking one's home away from them for

commercial or government gain is wrong under almost any conditions and has nothing to do with any political

leaning.

As for King W's White House, in my personal opinion, the lot of them are crooks. However, their

support of individual property rights is the right thing to do. I am willing to see they grey in the current

administration's behavoir. Under my 'Black and White' philosophy, I hold a person responsible for their actions

The other side of the coin requires I give them credit where due instead of looking for reasons to fault them.

Everybody, no matter who they are or what their political leanings has a wide range of traits across a spectrum from

what I call good to what I call bad.

Doubtless there are some people in government that are honest and well

meaning. In my opinion they are in a small and suppressed minority. Some of them may even be headed in the direction

I think is the right path. Others are well meaning and dangerous fools who can do a lot of damage to our society.

Unfortunately, since the course we follow and what is the right thing to do is subjective, we often will disagree on

who is who. That's fine by me as I don't ask you or anybody else to agree with me. However, I will continue to

mistrust any and all people involved in politics until they not only prove their honesty but demonstrate that they

are on a path I believe is a good one for society. Oh...yes, I do consider honesty to be a black and white issue in

this respect.

A curiousity though, when you mention ownership you sound as if you disagree with ownership. Am I

misunderstanding your position on that?To me relying on the courts to tell us whether politicians and their

foreign policies have done anything immoral or destructive would be just as crazy as getting it all off of Fox news.

That is not the proper role of courts, which is to determine legal guilt and innocence for the purpose of

penalization and other legal actions -- not to determine human thought. The sum total of what courts will ever be

able to tell us about the world is virtually nothing, except on a few extremely discreet questions about a few

extremely discreet instances. I am supposed to think nothing immoral has ever occured in society unless everyone has

been convicted of it? My girlfriend cheats on me, but I can't get mad unless she's been convicted in court?

Realistically, there is not a single corrupt politician in our government that will ever have all their corruption

thoroughly addressed by the legal system. Therefore I am to conclude there is no corruption anywhere in government.



Give to the courts the things that belong to the courts. That's not to say using the courts to the max as a

source of information isn't wise. It's partly to say that courts are not our only source of information.

To me

Republican propaganda, and to a lesser extent politician-speak in general, is full of legalism. I'm not a big fan

of legalism as a life philosophy (another oft-heard version of legalism: "as long as it's legal, it's OK to

do"). It's obvious that Rove and Libby did something unethical to me and most Americans. And yet neither Bush,

Scott McCllellan nor Cheney will apologize, accept responsibility, or express dismay. They keep using the cheap

excuse that no one has been convicted of a crime yet, so therefore they are all doing a great job. I don't buy that

logic.

All I've been doing for the past few years is uncovering evidence of this administration's

destructiveness (e.g., that we are fighting an unjust war based on real lies in which real people are really dying),

and everything I've read and heard points to the same conclusion. I don't know how to respond to the notion that

there is "no evidence" of our current regime's destructiveness. Maybe Bush doesn't exist at all. Now there's a

comforting thought. :)

So "honesty" is black and white? Do you know anyone who is perfectly honest? That has a

perfect grasp of the truth? That knows themselves perfectly to even tell the truth to themselves? Are all statements

even clearly true or clearly false? Is there ever a case where being dishonest, even the slightest little bit, might

be the best thing to do?

Black and white thinking is now, and will always be, a harmful disorder of thinking.

It's sort of like "concept arrogance". To promote it is dangerous, frankly. If I could eradicate it and accomplish

nothing else, my life would have been well-spent beyond my wildest dreams. They'd have to put me in the bible. The

elimenation of terrorism and intolerance would be just grains of sand in the total benefits.

An example of black

and white thinking would be to interpret my statement that there should be some limits to ownership as indicating

even a possibility that I am against ownership, even after I indicated support of the homeowners in every case here

on the forum. Now I'm a communist? I'll leave both that and your question as rhetorical.

tim929
11-04-2005, 03:39 PM
The unfortunate limitations of

our current situation leave us...and our elected officials in a very uncomfortable situation."Honesty," is a word

that gets alot of air time in the press and among the intelectual elite.But unfortunatly it's not how you win and

election and it certainly isnt how you keep the office you just won.Regardless of party affiliation or personal

beliefs.If the Bush administration were to come befor the American people with hat in hand and appologize for

leading us down this path of stupidity,the voters would run them out of town on a rail in a heart beat.

The same

would have been true durring the Clinton administration,the first Bush administration,the Reagan administration and

so forth,on down the line to our first president...George what's-his-name.The wheeels of politics are powered by

money,greased with the blood of the innocent and driven on a road paved with thier bones.This is the sad reality of

politics.One need only pick up a history book and read of the trecherous and broken path of the Roman senate and the

various Roman emperors to see the almost photographic simmilarities in the demise of the Romans and the path we are

on today.

Roman senators were forbidden by law from owning businesses...yet,they became quite wealthy on a

modest state stypend...how?Our vice president is no longer affiliated with his former corperation,Halliburton...and

yet his bank accounts are pregnant.Republican friends of mine refer to Bill Clinton as Clintigula.A throw back to

the perverse and corrupt Roman emperor Caligula.

The rules of politics are simple.If you wish to feed at the

trough,keep your mouth shut and you will feed comfortably.Dont make waves,dont rat out the others and everything

will be alright.Make the wrong noises and we will throw you under the bus to make an example of you.Just sit there

and make little grunting noises and shove your snout in the slop and let the media circus keep the people distracted

from whats realy going on.Sure,the piglets might scrap among themselves over silly things like abortion or gay

rights,but thats all part of the show.The moment a politician starts having an attack of guilt and starts making the

wrong noises,he ends up being hauled off to the slaugter house for processing.

A friend of mine lives in

Chicago.The practice there is that EVERYBODY knows that the local officials are corrupt up to thier necks.But

everybody covers for everybody else.But once in a while,just to keep all the little herdlings happy in the

public,they cull one or two of them away from the trough and butcher them on national T.V. and everybody

says,"wow,those guys are realy looking out for us by catching those crooks."And the herd goes back to watching the

latest episode of CSI Miami and the politicians shove thier snouts back into the trough and its back to buisiness as

usual.

The Bush administration has thrown a couple people out in front of the speeding train so that the

herdlings will make a buch of noise and stomp around and carry on dramaticly.The press will be busy re-reporting the

same crap about these guys for weeks.The talking heads will flop around and moan and groan on T.V. and the herd will

imagine to itself that the big bad wolves will finaly pay thier dues.But the reality is that G.W. and his closest

friends are,as I write this,burrying thier snouts back into the trough and feeding wildly in a frenzy of grunting

and squealing and laughing to themselves about how wonderful it is to be an American.And,when the dust settles and

the smoke clears,we will still be in the same mess we are in right now.

The next administrations hardest job

wont be "how to fix the mess George Bush made." Thier biggest problem will be to figure out how to make a profit

from it and keep the trough filled for themselves and all thier friends while making sure the herdlings stay focused

on CSI Miami and Poptarts.Much of the "opposition" we hear from the Democrats is geared toward enhancing thier

position in the up comming elections.If they can make Republicans look bad enough,they will be handed a grand

opportunity to sweep the White House AND Congress and be in a position to pour and extra measure of slop in the

trough for thier buddies and friends.Dont be fooled by this silly talk about peace and love and all that crap.The

real issue is the fact that when Republicans control the trough,Democrats dont get as much slop.When Democrats

control the trough,the Republicans get pushed away from the trough.

If you spend alittle time in a stock yard

watching pigs getting fed...you will develop the most accurate and detailed understanding of the inner workings of

politics.No joke....it should be required in college.

DrSmellThis
11-04-2005, 04:04 PM
Some good points, and I

support your bringing us in touch with the dark side of it; though I personally am not quite that cynical or ready

to give up. I don't think talk of peace and love is all crap, and I do believe progress is possible. Positive

change in world culture happens, but challenges get greater with a shrinking world and resources. So progress is

masked. I still refuse to accept the least-common denominator, status quo.

Clinton at least eventually apologized

and came clean about his affair in that particular instance. I think it was effective when he did so. I believe

honesty and integrity can potentially work in government, when combined with strength, charisma, communication

skills, and clarity of vision. There are changes we can make to make it more possible.

Incidentally, Cheney is

still on the payroll at Halliburton, to the tune of an amount roughly equal to his salary as VP.

I personally

think there's both specific and general corruption at play. What I've noticed is that a lot of folks with

conservative and/or republican and/or righty leanings rely much heavier on the "all politics is equally corrup"

mindset, allowing them to gloss over the specific situation we are in with neoconservative leadership. Otherwise

they'd have to turn a critical eye on themselves specificially, which would be uncomfortable. That is just my

opinion and observation. Nothing personal to anyone intended.

belgareth
11-04-2005, 04:04 PM
To me

relying on the courts to tell us whether politicians and their foreign policies have done anything immoral or

destructive would be just as crazy as getting it all off of Fox news. That is not the proper role of courts, which

is to determine legal guilt and innocence for the purpose of penalization and other legal actions -- not to

determine human thought. The sum total of what courts will ever be able to tell us about the world is virtually

nothing, except on a few extremely discreet questions about a few extremely discreet instances. I am supposed to

think nothing immoral has ever occured in society unless everyone has been convicted of it? My girlfriend cheats on

me, but I can't get mad unless she's been convicted in court? Realistically, there is not a single corrupt

politician in our government that will ever have all their corruption thoroughly addressed by the legal system.

Therefore I am to conclude there is no corruption anywhere in government.
[/qoute]
I love how one thing cannot

be black and white but another can. Your morality is not necessarily theirs or mine, you should know better than to

expect anything else. How can you convict somebody of immorality? More to the point, how can you convict somebody of

immorality based on the press? How can you expect me or anybody else to accept your morality? That's an absurdity

on the face of it!

If your girlfriend has sexual relations with somebody outside your relationship, that is a

moral question between you, her and the outside party and it is none of my business. I will not judge you on it

until you try to enforce your morality on me. Then I will fight you tooth and claw. That is significantly different

from sending citizens off to die in a war, I hope you can understand that. Frankly, I doubt very seriously if you

know all Bush's reasons for his actions, only what you choose to attribute to him. Is that really what is in

Bush's mind, a reflection of press bias or a reflection of your mentality? I don't personally know or even have an

opinion. Whatever the case is, the point is that some things he does are very bad and I strongly disagree with him,

other things he does are good and I give him credit for them. What you conclude is up to you and really not my

concern.
[QUOTE=DrSmellThis]
Give to the courts the things that belong to the courts. That's not to say using

the courts to the max as a source of information isn't wise. It's partly to say that courts are not our only

source of information.

So, what is? I am not going to rely on the press. You can if you want to, that's

entirely up to you. I don't expect or want the courts to make moral judgements, even though they do all to often. I

also spend time looking for other sources of information because I don't trust the press, they've misrepresented

too many times and are obviously biased.


To me Republican propaganda, and to a lesser extent

politician-speak in general, is full of legalism. I'm not a big fan of legalism as a life philosophy

(another oft-heard version of legalism: "as long as it's legal, it's OK to do"). It's obvious that Rove and Libby

did something unethical to me and most Americans. And yet neither Bush, Scott McCllellan nor Cheney will apologize,

accept responsibility, or express dismay. They keep using the cheap excuse that no one has been convicted of a crime

yet, so therefore they are all doing a great job. I don't buy that logic.

That's true of both parties,

as you should well know. It may be obvious to you that they did something unethical. Please present your proofs.

Without your proofs the rest is noise. Nor does the lack of proof indicate they are doing a great job, that's a

silly statement and you know it.



All I've been doing for the past few years is uncovering

evidence of this administration's destructiveness (e.g., that we are fighting an unjust war based on real lies in

which real people are really dying), and everything I've read and heard points to the same conclusion. I don't

know how to respond to the notion that there is "no evidence" of our current regime's destructiveness. Maybe Bush

doesn't exist at all. Now there's a comforting thought. :)

I didn't say there was no evidence of the

current regime's distructiveness and get really sick of you trying to put words in my mouth. Please stop. I am

happy to discuss the issues but that approach is dishonest.

Intellectual dishonesty is just as bad. How much did

you scream about Clinton's bombing of Belgrade and all the innocents who died there? When did the Yugoslavs attack

the US? Or was it the Serbs? Of course, it's entirely possible that Clinton didn't exist either based on your

thought processes. However, my friends that were wounded by American bombs dropped on Clinton's orders did

exist!


So "honesty" is black and white? Do you know anyone who is perfectly honest? That has a

perfect grasp of the truth? That knows themselves perfectly to even tell the truth to themselves? Are all statements

even clearly true or clearly false? Is there ever a case where being dishonest, even the slightest little bit, might

be the best thing to do?
Go back and read what I said! Didn't I say "In this instance"? Is there some

part of that you don't understand?


Black and white thinking is now, and will always be, a

harmful disorder of thinking. It's sort of like "concept arrogance". To promote it is dangerous, frankly. If I

could eradicate it and accomplish nothing else, my life would have been well-spent beyond my wildest dreams. They'd

have to put me in the bible. The elimenation of terrorism and intolerance would be just grains of sand in the total

benefits.

An example of black and white thinking would be to interpret my statement that there should be some

limits to ownership as indicating even a possibility that I am against ownership, even after I indicated support of

the homeowners in every case here on the forum. Now I'm a communist? I'll leave both that and your question as

rhetorical.
Get off it Doc! I asked you to clarify something I didn't understand, no more and no less. All

the rest of your statement is ridiculous. Stop putting words in my mouth. Instead of going off in another wild

diatribe, why don't you answer the question asked?

Your stand on black and white is amazing, to say the least.

I'm not going to discuss it with you because you either cannot understand my point of view or don't want to.

That's fine as yours is utterly incomprehensible to me.

DrSmellThis
11-04-2005, 05:06 PM
Are you taking responsibility

for what you say and think? Yes, I'm sorry. You did imply there was no evidence of destructivenes. Trace the logic

of your own words, please.

I may not be all that and a bag of chips, but regard myself as saying things that are

typically at least reasonable and withstand scrutiny as such. I've never been accused of a habit of wild diatribes

until just now, but won't waste our time further on it. Your accusations of intellectual dishonesty are groundless

and hilarious.

* You didn't know me during the Clinton administration. I was extremely critical of Clinton,

including of that bombing, as I've said multiple times in the past here, from multiple angles, in threads in which

you were actively participating.

* We all depend on others for information at times.I use as many sources of

information as I can, as I said. I have posted tons of information here about Rove. It is your responsibility to

investigate it further, not mine to prove it to you.

* I have no idea what you meant by honesty being black and

white in that instance. Nor was it possible to see what you meant in your words. I do know it's virtually always BS

to say honesty is "black and white". If you want a more specific response, please make a more specific, clear

statement.

* Hopefully some others can understand the point about black and white thinking. I promise everyone

I'm doing my best to do a good thing by talking about it, something that needs to be done. Parents need to teach

their kids about it. That's our best hope.

belgareth
11-04-2005, 09:12 PM
Are you

taking responsibility for what you say and think? Yes, I'm sorry. You did imply there was no evidence of

destructivenes. Trace the logic of your own words, please.
Taking responsibility for every word of it and

am telling you again that I did not say it or imply it. Trace the logic yourself and tell me where you come to such

an erroneous conclusion. I already went back and re-read it. Your reasoning is beyond me.


I

may not be all that and a bag of chips, but regard myself as saying things that are typically at least reasonable

and withstand scrutiny as such. I've never been accused of a habit of wild diatribes until just now, but won't

waste our time further on it. Your accusations of intellectual dishonesty are groundless and hilarious.


Nice dodge but untrue. In a very recent example I asked a question about ownership for clarification of something I

didn't understand. Rather than putting words in your mouth or assuming what you meant, I asked a question. You went

off on me (wild diatribe) and ended by accusing me of calling you a communist when all I did was ask a single,

simple question. It would make anybody wonder why you got so defensive over a harmless request for clarification.




* You didn't know me during the Clinton administration. I was extremely critical of Clinton,

including of that bombing, as I've said multiple times in the past here, from multiple angles, in threads in which

you were actively participating.

No I didn't know you then. I was attempting to highlight something and

use your own sarcasm to do so. Guess it was lost on you.


* We all depend on others for

information at times.I use as many sources of information as I can, as I said. I have posted tons of information

here about Rove. It is your responsibility to investigate it further, not mine to prove it to you.

I do

investigate but apparently am not seeing the same material as you or maybe I am seeing more or other information. Is

there some reason you are unwilling to share it? Yes, you have posted a lot, almost all from a media that is well

known to be liberally biased and sensationalist and almost all your postings were one sided. That does not

constitute proof of any sort. Part of what I do is try to add a bit of balance to it.


* I have

no idea what you meant by honesty being black and white in that instance. Nor was it possible to see what you meant

in your words. I do know it's virtually always BS to say honesty is "black and white". If you want a more specific

response, please make a more specific, clear statement.

It was clear. I said "Oh...yes, I do consider

honesty to be a black and white issue in this respect." in reference to people in political office. You do

understand qualifiers, don't you? It was not so complicated as to be incomprehensible to most people, or at least

it wasn't intended to be.



* Hopefully some others can understand the point about black and

white thinking. I promise everyone I'm doing my best to do a good thing by talking about it, something that needs

to be done. Parents need to teach their kids about it. That's our best hope.
I do hope so as well. I am

also trying to do a good thing by pointing out a different perspective. Misrepresenting my philosophy and branding

it as mental illness accomplishes nothing. Additionally, my efforts have yeilded success in raising my kids, in my

personal life, in my corporate career and in my own business while doing as much as possible to help others. If

that's wrong or I'm mentally ill as a result of it then I don't think I want to get well. That reality sounds

like a truly horrid world. I'm quite happy with my fantasy world.

You keep implying all sorts of things about

black and white thinking but apply black and white thinking to your argumments then tell us that disagreement with

your position is a sign of mental illness. You seem pretty unwilling to allow anything other than your opinion,

twist or misquote my words and use other assorted misdirection. I should know better than discuss things with you

because it usually degenerates into a long series of corrections. At least your technique is consistant. What a

waste of time.

belgareth
11-05-2005, 01:01 PM
Some good

points, and I support your bringing us in touch with the dark side of it; though I personally am not quite that

cynical or ready to give up. I don't think talk of peace and love is all crap, and I do believe progress is

possible. Positive change in world culture happens, but challenges get greater with a shrinking world and resources.

So progress is masked. I still refuse to accept the least-common denominator, status quo.

Clinton at least

eventually apologized and came clean about his affair in that particular instance. I think it was effective when he

did so. I believe honesty and integrity can potentially work in government, when combined with strength, charisma,

communication skills, and clarity of vision. There are changes we can make to make it more possible.



Incidentally, Cheney is still on the payroll at Halliburton, to the tune of an amount roughly equal to his salary

as VP.

I personally think there's both specific and general corruption at play. What I've noticed is that a

lot of folks with conservative and/or republican and/or righty leanings rely much heavier on the "all politics is

equally corrup" mindset, allowing them to gloss over the specific situation we are in with neoconservative

leadership. Otherwise they'd have to turn a critical eye on themselves specificially, which would be uncomfortable.

That is just my opinion and observation. Nothing personal to anyone intended.
Clinton came clean once he

was backed into a corner. he had no choice by that time. In that kind of a case it wasn't a virtue, it was a lack

of any other choices.

Is he? I'd read that somewhere before and never got around to verifying it. Is that

legal? I would think that would be a comflict of interest. Yes, legality is the issue. That and voter opinions on

it. Trying to enforce any particular set of ethics on it is not right because each person has their own set of

ethics. I can imagine the screaming if somebody else wanted to use their christian beliefs to decide the point.



Beyond a doubt you are right that there are both types of corruption at play. It has been going on for an awfully

long time and is getting worse with each administration. It seems to be that those at the top have been so corrupt

for so long that it has filtered down to almost all aspects of the government. What we really need is a general

housecleaning. It isn't likely to happen but it would sure be nice to see the criminals at all levels of government

caught and punished. The biggest problem, and it has been mentioned on this forum in the past, is that to even get

close to being able to run for president in either major party requires a high level of corruption to start off

with.

I am not now or at any other time promoting violence as a solution but I wonder if that isn't what it is

going to take to correct the declining government in this country.

belgareth
11-09-2005, 04:57 PM
Some good news, some less than good. One thing that really shocked me

was towards the end. Nearly a quarter of the people think its ok for the government to secretly search your house?

There isn't language strong enough to express my negative opinion of that idea.

Belgareth
************************************************** ****************

Congress May Curb Some Patriot Act Powers By LAURIE

KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Congress is moving to

curb some of the police powers it gave the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including

imposing new restrictions on the FBI's access to private phone and financial records.



A budding House-Senate deal on the expiring USA Patriot Act includes

new limits on federal law enforcement powers and rejects the Bush administration's request to grant the FBI

authority to get administrative subpoenas for wiretaps and other covert devices without a judge's

approval.

Even with the changes, however, every part of the law set

to expire Dec. 31 would be reauthorized and most of those provisions would become

permanent.

Under the agreement, for the first time since the act

became law, judges would get the authority to reject national security letters giving the government secret access

to people's phone and e-mail records, financial data and favorite Internet

sites.

Holders of such information — such as banks and Internet

providers — could challenge the letters in court for the first time, said congressional aides involved in merging

separate, earlier-passed House and Senate bills reauthorizing the expiring Patriot

Act.

The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the panel has

not begun deliberations.

Under the 2001 law, the FBI reportedly has

been issuing about 30,000 national security letters annually, a hundred-fold increase since the 1970s, when they

first came into existence under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Last year, a federal judge in New York struck down the national security letter statute as unconstitutional

because he said the law did not permit legal challenges to the letters or a gag rule on recipients of the letters.

The administration has appealed.

Civil libertarians lauded the

deal's preliminary terms, saying recent accounts of the FBI's aggressive use of national security letters have

lent credibility to their call for caution.

"Without those checks and

balances, there will be abuses," said former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., of Patriots to Restore Checks and

Balances.

The Bush administration contends there have been no

abuses.

"In the four years since the passage of the USA Patriot Act

there has not been a single verified abuse of the act's provisions, including in the department's own inspector

general's report to Congress," said Justice Department spokesman Brian

Roehrkasse.

Hashed out over two months by senior House and Senate

aides, the preliminary terms still have to be approved by a panel of lawmakers from each chamber and then by the

full House and Senate. The process is taking shape this week, with the appointment of House members to the panel on

Wednesday and the bicameral committee's first meeting expected on Thursday.

The power to conduct wiretaps and install covert listening devices without court approval had been on the

administration's wish list for more than a year but was never seriously considered by either chamber's Judiciary

committee.

Both the House and Senate versions of a Patriot Act

extension, debated over the summer, proposed giving the judiciary a role in national security letters. "The court

may quash or modify a request if compliance would be unreasonable or oppressive," according to a summary by the

Congressional Research Service. The Senate added more conditions: "or violate any constitutional or other legal

right or privilege."

Some version of those curbs is expected to be

passed as part of the compromise bill.

Less specific but looked upon

favorably is a proposal to add a new restriction on evidence-gathering of classified material that would require

investigators to return or destroy any materials that are not relevant to the probe, the congressional aides

said.

Polls show that most Americans do not distinguish between the

Patriot Act and the war on terror, and a majority knows little about the four-year-old law. But the more Americans

know about the Patriot Act, the less they like.

A poll conducted in

August by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut showed that almost two-thirds

of all Americans, 64 percent, said they support the Patriot Act. But only 43 percent support the law's requirement

that banks turn over records to the government without judicial approval; 23 percent support secret searches of

Americans' homes without informing the occupants for a period of time.

tim929
11-09-2005, 05:05 PM
Ya know...how can we have a

polite scociety if people arent willing to accept little inconviniences like secret searches of thier

homes,monitoring of thier phone conversations,email and internet habbits and turn over thier firearms the the

nearest available law enforcement agency?You barbaric "freedom seekers" need to get a clue.The Government only wants

to help you by putting sensors and tracking devices up your "you-know-what." Why would you object to that?It's for

your own good and the good of the country.

belgareth
11-09-2005, 07:55 PM
I gather you read that they

outlawed handguns in San Francisco? What a bunch of idiocy! I'm taking wagers on the number of criminals who turn

in their handguns between now and April.

koolking1
11-14-2005, 08:23 PM
November 14, 2005 latimes.com : Opinion : Commentary Print E-mail story Most e-mailed Change text size



This isn't the real America
By Jimmy Carter, JIMMY CARTER was the 39th president of the United States.

His newest book is "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," published this month by Simon &

Schuster.


IN RECENT YEARS, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies

that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.



These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties,

our environment and human rights.

Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with

truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal

responsibility.

At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence from the restraints of

international organizations and have disavowed long-standing global agreements — including agreements on nuclear

arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

Instead of our tradition of

espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of

"preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other

purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse

to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by

top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

These revolutionary policies have

been orchestrated by those who believe that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be

internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat and America facing the threat of additional

terrorist attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or against us!" has replaced the forming of alliances

based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the threat of terrorism.

Another disturbing

realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated

exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our

nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public

awareness of casualties.

Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we now find

civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

Of

even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq,

Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary

rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free

to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.

Instead of

reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and

that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all nuclear arms

control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear

proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear

nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

Protection of the

environment has fallen by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry

and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued lowering of pollution standards at

home and almost universal condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

Our government has

abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families.

Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per

hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many

houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously

thought unimaginable.

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving champion of

peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to

combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should be in the

forefront of providing human assistance to people in need.

It is time for the deep and disturbing political

divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common commitment to revive and

nourish the historic political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years. "

I think he

speaks for many of us. I only wish other prominent people would speak out.

DrSmellThis
11-15-2005, 02:24 AM
November 14,

2005 latimes.com : Opinion : Commentary Print E-mail story Most e-mailed Change text size

This isn't the real

America
By Jimmy Carter, JIMMY CARTER was the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is "Our

Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," published this month by Simon & Schuster.


IN RECENT YEARS, I have

become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles

espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

These include the rudimentary American

commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

Also

endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices

and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

At the same time, our political

leaders have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed

long-standing global agreements — including agreements on nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the

international system of justice.

Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our

security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack

other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences

with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve

disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial

dominance throughout the world.

These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who believe that our

nation's tremendous power and influence should not be internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in

combat and America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or

against us!" has replaced the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the

threat of terrorism.

Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the

burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in

the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been

made to conceal or minimize public awareness of casualties.

Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion

of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of

the Patriot Act.

Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use

of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called

extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA

should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.



Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on

our right (and that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all

nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global

nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against

nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

Protection of

the environment has fallen by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from the oil

industry and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued lowering of pollution

standards at home and almost universal condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

Our

government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's

working families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum

wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist

shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways

previously thought unimaginable.

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving

champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can

gather to combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should

be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need.

It is time for the deep and disturbing

political divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common commitment to

revive and nourish the historic political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years. "

I

think he speaks for many of us. I only wish other prominent people would speak out.This left wing pinko

conspiracy theorist was elected president of the United States? What the he!! does he know about politics? Bad

mouthin your country like this sends a mixed message to our troops. It's just sour grapes because he got his @$$

kicked by a better man, GHWB, and failed at everything he did. Isn't he gay? Go tell it to Fonda, pinko!

Mtnjim
11-15-2005, 10:55 AM
This left wing

pinko conspiracy theorist was elected president of the United States? What the he!! does he know about politics? Bad

mouthin your country like this sends a mixed message to our troops. It's just sour grapes because he got his @$$

kicked by a better man, GHWB, and failed at everything he did. Isn't he gay? Go tell it to Fonda,

pinko!

I presume this was totally "tongue in cheek"! :trout:

By the way, Ronnie Ray Gun was the 40th

President, not Daddy Bush!!:hammer:

Netghost56
11-15-2005, 11:01 AM
I hope it was a joke, too.

Bush didn't follow Carter. Plus I've never seen the Doc resort to namecalling.

I don't think that Carter

misspoke on anything. Everything he said made references to actual events. I only have an issue with two

things:


The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice...
Maybe not directly,

but the American people are paying for this war, and if we don't leave it will eventually bankrupt us.


As

the world's only superpower... Who? us? I just can't get behind that, not when the euro and the yen are

above and beyond the dollar. And I think we look like idiots in the eyes of the rest of the world, and have ever

since we went to Iraq.

Mtnjim
11-15-2005, 11:30 AM
"And I think we look like idiots in

the eyes of the rest of the world, and have ever since we went to Iraq."

Absolutely!!!

DrSmellThis
11-15-2005, 12:08 PM
Sorry guys. That was my evil

twin, evidently a poor historian (or at least playing one satirically), who likes to joke around after going to a

concert and consuming several beers.

My real reaction was "Amen!" I think Carter summed it up flawlessly, except

I agree with Netghost56, too. I give him a lot of credit for the courage to call it like it is and take a stand,

while so many in his party are waffling and trying so hard to sound moderate. I guess it's that he isn't running

for anything any more. He was President and understands the perspective, scope and pressures of the job. He knows

the importance of speaking carefully. He could have reacted even more strongly in the same direction, though, since

the reasonable conclusions he has come to are so profoundly disturbing, and should fill any American who is fully in

touch with themselves with rage.

DrSmellThis
11-15-2005, 01:22 PM
I disagree with the decision by the current administration to use torture.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/

20051115/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraqi_detainees_lions_2 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051115/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraqi_detainees_lions_2)

DrSmellThis
11-15-2005, 01:32 PM
Jeez, I hope they made him pay for his own drinks. Otherwise we

did.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/14/chalabi-chene

y/ (http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/14/chalabi-cheney/)

belgareth
11-15-2005, 04:17 PM
This seems to be a bit

hypocritical as we continue to lose our

freedoms:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051115/a

p_on_go_pr_wh/bush_asia (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051115/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_asia)

belgareth
11-16-2005, 04:24 AM
It looks to be getting interesting in the capitol. I can't wait to

see how all this comes out.

Bush Risks Alienating GOP Over Iraq War By TOM RAUM




WASHINGTON - President Bush's efforts to paint Democrats as

hypocrites for criticizing the Iraq war after they once warned that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat could

backfire on Republicans.

Polls show marked declines in support for

the war, notably among moderate Republicans, especially Republican women, and independents — voting blocs that the

GOP needs to woo or keep in their camp.

If Bush castigates Democrats

for changing their minds on the war, he might wind up alienating Republicans who have done so,

too.

The administration has been engaging in a rhetorical high-wire

act in its efforts to defend its use of prewar intelligence — so much that some analysts have likened it to

President Clinton's remark in his deposition on the Monica Lewinsky case: "That depends on what the definition of

'is' is."

Bush and his advisers have conceded that the

administration was wrong in its assessment of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion. So the

debate centers on whether they misled members of Congress and the American

people.

"The fact is this was a truly major failure in intelligence

and analysis," said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert and former Pentagon intelligence official. "But that does

not mean that information was not manipulated or used to create a case for war that was much stronger than the

assessments made before the conflict."

Well, maybe it depends on what

the definition of "manipulated" is.

"In reality in this city, on a

bipartisan basis, everybody always spins the facts to support the policy they advocate. There are no innocents,"

said Cordesman, now an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He suggested those in the

intelligence community didn't have to be told that, if they wanted to exert influence and have their advice taken

seriously, "you better tell policy makers there was a really good case for

war."

Anxiety over Iraq among both Republicans and Democrats seemed

apparent as the Senate voted 79-19 on Tuesday to demand regular updates from the White House on progress in Iraq

until all U.S. troops are withdrawn.

The vote on a defense policy

bill came after the GOP-led chamber rejected a far more restrictive Democratic amendment demanding that Bush set a

timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.

Bush and senior members of his

administration have stepped up their attack on Democrats, singling out those criticizing the war now who supported

the October 2002 war resolution like Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and former Sen. John Edwards,

D-N.C.

In a speech to U.S. troops in Alaska on his way to a trip to

Asia, Bush said Monday it was "irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American

people," suggesting lawmakers had access to the same intelligence — faulty as it turns out — as did the

administration and foreign allies.

Defense Secretary Donald H.

Rumsfeld and the Republican National Committee joined the fray on Tuesday.

Rumsfeld quoted Clinton administration officials who contended in the late 1990s that Saddam was a

security threat to the U.S. and its allies, including Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, former Secretary of State

Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security adviser.

The RNC, meanwhile, put on its Web site (http://www.gop.com) a video compilation of such

statements, including more recent ones by current Democratic leaders and potential 2008 presidential contenders,

including Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, Joe Biden of Delaware and

Edwards.

The video implies that such Democrats had later turned

against the war, even though Mrs. Clinton has been consistent in supporting Bush's

efforts.

Stephen Cimbala, a Pennsylvania State University political

scientist who studies war and politics, said the administration's case that it didn't manipulate Iraq information

was undermined by the CIA-leak case. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, was

indicted on five counts for obstructing an investigation into the leaking of the identity of an intelligence officer

married to an outspoken war critic.

Top Bush strategist Karl Rove

remains under investigation.

"The critics of Bush's Iraq policy

have more ammunition now," said Cimbala. "And Republicans in Congress are very nervous because they know that, if

Bush's numbers don't come up, they could be in big trouble next year in the midterm elections."



Bush's approval is at the low point of his presidency, 37 percent

in a recent AP-Ipsos poll.

His Republican base still supports him on

Iraq, but that support has been eroding.

His approval on handling

Iraq fell from 87 percent among all Republicans in November 2004 to 78 percent this month. Among Republican women,

from 88 percent a year ago to 73 percent now. Among independents, approval on Iraq fell from 49 percent in November

2004 to 33 percent now.

Among Democrats, where he has enjoyed little

support for his war policies all along, it fell from just 15 percent a year ago to 12 percent now.

DrSmellThis
11-16-2005, 02:45 PM
This is where the bullsh!t of

politics becomes frustrating.

No one was denying Iraq was potentially dangerous, since they had been resisting

inspections (whether they had really fired on our planes has been debated). But everyone at the top level of Bush's

administration, including Rice, Cheney, and Rumsfeld; made public statements, in 2000 especially, to the effect that

Iraq was not a nuclear or WMD threat, and did not have a significant offensive force capable of threatening its

neighbors. They take credit for this accomplishment by the Bush family.

Then 9/11 happens; they get their Pearl

Harbor, and act like it's Christmas. All of a sudden, we're waiting for a "mushroom cloud" from Iraq. Every Bush

speech links Hussein to Al Queda (usually by implication), after he says "We've had no evidence Saddham Hussein was

involved in 9/11", and after the CIA and military intelligence both conclude there's no link there.

Furthermore,

the WMD intel is just fabricated out of thin air, much of it in deals with foreign intelligence sources eager to win

favor with the U.S.

Now he's accusing the Democrats and some Republicans of hypocrisy.

Well, of course

there are two-faced politicians on both sides of the aisle. But you feed Congress and the American people a steady

diet of lies on the matter of going to war, and then blame them for changing their mind when they find out it was

all a pack of lies? You're going to lie about the intel heirarchy and say they had the same intelligence (not to

mention relationships with the intel community) you did?

He's in so deep now, all he can do is continue to tell

bigger and bigger lies.

belgareth
11-16-2005, 03:49 PM
Senate Passes Bill to Shore Up Pensions By JIM ABRAMS, Associated

Press Writer

Hoping to reverse the deterioration of pension plans

covering 44 million Americans, the Senate voted Wednesday to force companies to make up underfunding estimated at

$450 billion and live up to promises made to employees.

The action

came a day after the federal agency that insures such plans reported massive liabilities and predicted a troubled

future.

The Senate legislation, passed 97-2, takes on the daunting

task of compelling companies with defined-benefit plans to live up to their funding obligations — without driving

those companies into abandoning the plans and further eroding the retirement benefits of millions of

people.

"This bill honors a promise that we made way back in 1974"

when Congress passed legislation to protect pensions, said Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. "If

you've been promised a pension, we are going to make sure that you receive

it."

Broad support of the bill reflected its bipartisan origins.

Grassley and the top Democrat on the committee, Max Baucus of Montana, crafted it with Sens. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and

Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

The White House, in a statement, said it

supported passage of the Senate bill but opposed some provisions, including extended relief for the airline

industry. It warned that the president would be advised to veto any bill that resulted in weakening pension funding

requirements.

The House could take up a companion bill in early

December, although it remains to be seen whether the two chambers can reach a compromise on the legislation, which

runs hundreds of pages, by the end of the year.

The vote came a day

after the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which insures defined-benefit plans of 44 million people and takes

over the plans of bankrupt companies, reported a deficit of $22.8 billion at the end of the 2005 fiscal year on

Sept. 30.

The PBGC said it assumed responsibility for the pension

benefits of an additional 235,000 workers and retirees in 2005, bringing the total to 1.3 million, and paid benefits

of $3.7 billion, up from $3 billion in 2004.

Premiums per

participant, paid by companies, totaled $1.5 billion. Those premiums would increase from $19 to $30 a year under the

Senate bill.

That legislation, unlike the House version, also would

extend special relief for debt-ridden airlines. Bankrupt steel and airline companies have been a major source of the

PBGC's mounting financial problems.

The PBGC is now financed

entirely by premiums and interest on investments, but there is growing concern that the agency may one day have to

turn to taxpayers for a bailout that could rival the Savings and Loan crisis of the

1980s.

The Senate bill would give companies seven years to pay off

their unfunded liabilities while changing the interest rate formula to better reflect what those liabilities toward

future retirees will be. Companies with poor credit ratings would be required to make additional payments into their

plans.

The legislation would encourage companies to put more money

into their pension plans when times are good. It would clarify the law governing hybrid plans such as cash balance

plans that are gaining in use.

PBGC-covered single-employer

defined-benefit plans, under which workers receive monthly benefits based on their salaries and length of service,

fell from 95,000 in 1980 to 30,000 in 2004 as more companies either stopped offering plans or switched to

401(k)-type programs.

Some companies seeking to switch to cash

balance plans, which award benefits at a steady rate during a worker's tenure, have been thwarted by court rulings

that some such programs discriminate against older workers.

The

Senate accepted an amendment by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., that extended from 14 to 20 years the time allowed for

airlines to stabilize their pension plans. It also would expand the number of airlines that qualify for the payment

relief.

Also approved as an amendment by Sen. Daniel Akaka (news,

bio, voting record), D-Hawaii, to protect the pensions of airline pilots, who are required to retire at age 60.



"Had the airlines not had a crisis, I'm not sure we would have been

here today debating pensions," Enzi said.

United Airlines and US

Airways used bankruptcy earlier this year to dump their employee pension liabilities — a combined $9.6 billion —

onto the PBGC. Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines, which both filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in

September, could do the same.

The PBGC imposes ceilings on how much

it pays out to retirees. Baucus cited estimates that almost 7,000 United workers will lose 50 percent or more of

their promised benefits.

Voting against the bill were the two

Democratic Michigan senators, Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin.

___





The bill is S. 1783





On the Net:





Congress:

http://thomas.loc.gov/





PBGC: http://www.pbgc.gov/

DrSmellThis
11-17-2005, 08:02 AM
In

challenging war's critics, administration tinkers with truth

By James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S.

Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney turned up the

White House rhetoric Wednesday in attacking critics of the Iraq war, accusing some unnamed lawmakers of lacking

"backbone."

Cheney's rough-edged remarks were the latest in the Bush administration's campaign to challenge

critics of the war, accusing them of twisting the historical record about how and why the war was launched. Yet in

accusing Iraq war critics of "rewriting history," Bush, Cheney and other senior administration officials are

tinkering with the truth themselves.

The administration's overarching premise is beyond dispute -

administration officials, Democratic and Republican lawmakers and even leaders of foreign governments believed

intelligence assessments that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That intelligence turned out to be wrong.



But Bush, Cheney, and other senior officials have added several other arguments in recent days that distort the

factual record. Below, Knight Ridder addresses the administration's main assertions:

ASSERTION: In

a Veterans Day speech last Friday, Bush said that Iraq war "critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate

investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to

Iraq's weapons programs."

CONTEXT: Bush is correct in saying that a commission he appointed,

chaired by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va., found no evidence of "politicization" of

the intelligence community's assessments concerning Iraq's reported weapons of mass destruction programs.
But

neither that report nor others looked at how the White House characterized the intelligence it had when selling its

plan for war to the world and whether administration officials exaggerated the threat. That's supposed to be the

topic of a second phase of study by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"Our executive order did not

direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that was not part of our

inquiry," Silberman said when he released the panel's findings in March.

The Senate committee concluded that

none of the intelligence analysts it interviewed said they were pressured to change their conclusions on weapons of

mass destruction or on Iraq's links to terrorism.

But the committee's findings were hardly bipartisan.

Committee Democrats said in additional comments to the panel's July 2004 report that U.S. intelligence agencies

produced analyses and the key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit weapons in "a highly pressurized climate."



And the committee found that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, analysts were under pressure to avoid missing

credible threats, and as a result they were "bold and assertive" in making terrorist links.

In a July 2003

report, a CIA review panel found that agency analysts were subjected to "steady and heavy" requests from

administration officials for evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaida, which created "significant pressure on the

Intelligence Community to find evidence that supported a connection."

ASSERTION: In his speech, Bush

noted that "more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate - who had access to the same intelligence -

voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."

CONTEXT: This isn't true.

The Congress

didn't have access to the President's Daily Brief, a top-secret compendium of intelligence on the most pressing

national security issues that was sent to the president every morning by former CIA Director George Tenet.

As

for prewar intelligence on Iraq, senior administration officials had access to other information and sources that

weren't available to lawmakers.

Cheney and his aides visited the CIA and other intelligence agencies to view

raw intelligence reports, received briefings and engaged in highly unusual give-and-take sessions with analysts.



Moreover, officials in the White House and the Pentagon received information directly from the Iraqi National

Congress (INC), an exile group, circumventing U.S. intelligence agencies, which greatly distrusted the organization.



The INC's information came from Iraqi defectors who claimed that Iraq was hiding chemical, biological and

nuclear weapons programs, had mobile biological-warfare facilities and was training Islamic radicals in

assassinations, bombings and hijackings.

The White House emphasized these claims in making its case for war,

even though the defectors had shown fabrication or deception in lie-detector tests or had been rejected as

unreliable by U.S. intelligence professionals.

All of the exiles' claims turned out to be bogus or remain

unproven.

War hawks at the Pentagon also created a special unit that produced a prewar report - one not shared

with Congress - that alleged that Iraq was in league with al-Qaida. A version of the report, briefed to Secretary of

Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and top White House officials, disparaged the CIA for finding there was no cooperation

between Iraq and the terrorist group, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed.

After the

report was leaked in November 2003 to a conservative magazine, the Pentagon disowned it.

In fact, a series of

secret U.S. intelligence assessments discounted the administration's assertion that Saddam could give banned

weapons to al-Qaida.

In other cases, Bush and his top lieutenants relied on partial or uncorroborated

intelligence.

For example, Cheney contended in an August 2002 speech that Iraq would develop a nuclear weapon

"fairly soon," even though U.S. intelligence agencies and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency had no

evidence to support such a claim.

The following month, Bush, Cheney and then-national security adviser

Condoleezza Rice asserted that Iraq had sought aluminum tubes for a nuclear-weapons program. At the time, however,

U.S. intelligence agencies were deeply divided over the question. The IAEA later determined that the tubes were for

ground-to-ground rockets.

A recently declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from February 2002 said

that an al-Qaida detainee was probably lying to U.S. interrogators when he claimed that Iraq had been teaching

members of the terrorist network to use chemical and biological weapons.

Yet eight months after the report was

published, Bush told the nation that "we've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and

poisons and gases."

Meanwhile, lawmakers didn't have access to intelligence products that may have been more

temperate than what they got, even after they investigated the prewar intelligence assessment. For instance, the

Director of Central Intelligence refused to give the Senate committee a copy of a paper drafted by the CIA's Near

East and Southeast Asia Office examining Iraq's links to terrorism.

Lawmakers didn't see the main document

concerning Iraq and WMD - the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate - until three days before their vote

authorizing war. The White House ordered the NIE compiled only after lawmakers, including the then-chairman of the

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., demanded it.

The resolution that authorized

use of force against Iraq didn't specifically address removing Saddam. It gave Bush the power to "defend the

national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and to "enforce all relevant

United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq."

ASSERTION: In his Veterans Day address,

Bush said that "intelligence agencies around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."



CONTEXT: Bush is correct in saying that many intelligence agencies, particularly in Europe, believed that

Saddam was hiding some weapons of mass destruction capabilities - not necessarily weapons. But they didn't agree

with other U.S. assessments about Saddam. Few, with the exception of Great Britain, argued that Iraq was an imminent

threat, or that it had any link to Islamic terrorism, much less the Sept. 11 attacks.

France, backed by several

other nations, argued that much more time and effort should have been given to weapons inspections in Iraq before

war was launched.

ASSERTION: Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser, told

reporters last Thursday that the Clinton administration and Congress perceived Saddam as a threat based on some of

the same intelligence used by the Bush administration.

"Congress, in 1998 authorized, in fact, the use of

force based on that intelligence," Hadley said.

And Rumsfeld, in briefing reporters Tuesday, seemed to link

President Clinton's signing of the act to his decision to order four days of U.S. bombing of suspected weapons

sites and military facilities in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq.

CONTEXT: Congress did pass the

Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which stated U.S. support for regime change in Iraq and provided up to $97 million in

overt military and humanitarian aid to opposition groups in Iraq.

But it didn't authorize the use of U.S.

force against Iraq.

Clinton said his bombing order was based on Iraq's refusal to comply with weapons

inspections, a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf War.



Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents William Douglas and Warren P. Strobel contributed to this report.

DrSmellThis
11-20-2005, 04:16 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/20/torture/index.html

belgareth
11-21-2005, 03:27 AM
Authorities Crack Down on NYC Poker Clubs

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - On a busy night

at the New York Players Club in upper Manhattan, vice squad officers wearing bulletproof vests and raid jackets

dealt the underground poker scene a losing hand.

The team entered

unannounced at 11 p.m., detaining dealers, snatching up piles of cash and sending dozens of card players home with

empty pockets. Downtown, another popular card club, Playstation, also was shuttered. In all, police arrested 39

employees and confiscated $100,000.

The raids on May 26 — dubbed

"Black Thursday" by one poker Web site — and two more last month have sent a chill through the city's clandestine

poker scene.

Several members-only card clubs closed their doors after

13 arrests on Oct. 16 at the Broadway Club in the Flatiron District, where the Yankees' $25-million-a-year third

baseman, Alex Rodriguez, reportedly had played. On Oct. 28, a second-floor parlor on the Upper East Side, the EV

Club, became the site of more vice squad arrests.

Regulars at the

Manhattan clubs, including professional card player Phil Hellmuth, have questioned the crackdown while predicting

the popularity of poker and its potential for profit make it unlikely the chips will be down for

long.

"People just want to play poker, and because there are no legal

clubs in the city, they turn to underground clubs," said Hellmuth, a former World Series of Poker

champion.

Authorities elsewhere also have taken a hard

line.

In Passaic County, N.J., police converged on a shopping center

basement that allegedly was home to an illegal parlor posing as a soccer club. They arrested dozens of people and

seized about $60,000.

An undercover investigation in Palmer Lake,

Colo., led to the arrest of the owner of a Mexican restaurant that held a Texas Hold 'em tournament. And in

Baltimore, police arrested 80 poker players in the biggest gambling raid in the city since Prohibition, only to have

prosecutors drop the case.

In Manhattan, at least a dozen clubs —

with names like Ace Point, High Society, Hudson and All-In — once operated up to 10 tables in rented offices, back

rooms and other nondescript locations, according to regulars. Countless others have sprung up in the outer boroughs

and Long Island, offering local alternatives to casinos in Atlantic City and Internet

games.

The clubs, unlike casinos, don't take a percentage of the

pot. Instead, patrons pay about $5 per half-hour to sit at tables and play Texas Hold 'em and other card games with

buy-ins as low as $40. Their ranks include Wall Street brokers, lawyers, teachers and other professionals, along

with the occasional celebrity.

The Daily News has reported that A-Rod

has been warned by Yankee officials to curb his enthusiasm for poker parlors — something his agent denied. Rodriguez

later spoke publicly about the clubs, saying, "In retrospect, it's probably a place I shouldn't have

gone."

The clubs typically ban alcohol but provide other perks:

Playstation served Oreo cookies; New York Players Club offered valet parking; and the Broadway Club featured plasma

televisions and a glassed-in room for high-stakes games. Front doors are unmarked, and manned by

bouncers.

It is a world reminiscent of the 1998 movie "Rounders,"

which was set largely in underground New York poker clubs and is credited with jump-starting the poker

craze.



Hellmuth said

he was "a bit shocked anyone's making a big deal over the New York's poker scene" — a reaction shared by an

attorney for a club operator who was arrested.

"This is not the crime

of the century," said the lawyer, Michael Rosen.

Indeed, playing

poker isn't criminal. However, it's illegal to profit by promoting it.

Authorities say the clubs, along with evading taxes, could be funneling tens of thousands of dollars to drug

traffickers or mobsters. The sizable cash flow is certain to entice armed robbers, police said.



"We realized that this was the start of a problem because there is

lots of money involved," vice squad Lt. Pasquale Morena said at the time of the Players Club takedown. "We don't

know where the profits from the gambling are going."

Hellmuth

suggested officials simply start licensing existing clubs.

One

proposed law in New York would decriminalize poker in bars and restaurants that sponsor low-stakes games, although

it would not protect the poker rooms now under siege.

"Poker's so

commonplace now," said state Sen. John Sabini, who sponsored the bill. "Businesses should be allowed to cash in on

it."

DrSmellThis
11-29-2005, 03:46 PM
Ex-Powell aide: Bush 'too

aloof'

President was detached during Iraq postwar planning, Wilkerson says

WASHINGTON (AP) --

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff says President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the

details" of post-war planning, allowing underlings to exploit Bush's detachment and make bad decisions.

In an

Associated Press interview Monday, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said that wrongheaded ideas

for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who

argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful," and that the Geneva Conventions were

irrelevant.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded

aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror

assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

Wilkerson

suggested his former boss may agree with him that Bush was too hands-off about Iraq.

"What he seems to be

saying to me now is the president failed to discipline the process the way he should have and that the president is

ultimately responsible for this whole mess," Wilkerson said.

He said Powell now generally believes it was a good

idea to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but may not agree with either the timing or execution of the war.

Wilkerson said Powell may have had doubts about the extent of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein but was convinced

by then-CIA Director George Tenet and others that the intelligence girding the push toward war was sound.

Powell

was widely regarded as a dove to Cheney's and Rumsfeld's hawks, but he made a forceful case for war before the

United Nations Security Council in February, 2003, a month before the invasion. At one point, he said Saddam

possessed mobile labs to make weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

Cheney may have deliberately

ignored contrary intelligence

Wilkerson criticized the CIA and other agencies for allowing mishandled and

bogus information to underpin that speech and the whole administration case for war.

He said he has almost, but

not quite, concluded that Cheney and others in the administration deliberately ignored evidence of bad intelligence

and looked only at what supported their case for war.

A newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document

from February 2002 said that an al Qaeda military instructor was probably misleading his interrogators about

training that the terror group's members received from Iraq on chemical, biological and radiological weapons. Ibn

al-Shaykh al-Libi reportedly recanted his statements in January 2004.

(Full Story (http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/10/iraq.intel/))

A presidential intelligence commission

also dissected how spy agencies handled an Iraqi refugee who was a German intelligence source. Codenamed Curveball,

this man who was a leading source on Iraq's purported mobile biological weapons labs was found to be a fabricator

and alcoholic.

On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts on the war on terror,

Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration. Abuse of prisoners, and

even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad

and undermined fragile support for the Iraq war that followed.

Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others

argued "that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the

United States can do anything he damn well pleases," Wilkerson said.

On the other side were Powell, others at

the State Department and top military brass, and occasionally then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice,

Wilkerson said.

Powell raised frequent and loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a telephone

at Rumsfeld: "Donald, don't you understand what you are doing to our image?"

Wilkerson also said he did not

disclose to Bob Woodward that administration critic Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, joining the growing

list of past and current Bush administration officials who have denied being the Washington Post reporter's

source.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press (http://www.cnn.com/interactive_legal.html#AP). All

rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Find this

article at:


http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/1

1/29/wilkerson.interview.ap/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/29/wilkerson.interview.ap/index.html)

DrSmellThis
11-29-2005, 04:16 PM
..and this follow up item is even more

striking:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle

_east/4480638.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4480638.stm)

DrSmellThis
11-29-2005, 08:55 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200511

29/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_war_semantics_2 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051129/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_war_semantics_2)

...strikes one as a touch rebellious, does it not? It's that

pesky torture issue again. But it's good to know about Donnies' "epiphany".

belgareth
11-29-2005, 08:59 PM
Donald H. Rumsfeld has

decided the enemy are not insurgents.

Now there's a firm grasp of the obvious! We invaded their

country then call people defending their homes insurgents? Wouldn't it be more accurate to call us an

invading/occupying army and them patriots?

DrSmellThis
11-29-2005, 09:12 PM
Now there's

a firm grasp of the obvious! We invaded their country then call people defending their homes insurgents? Wouldn't

it be more accurate to call us an invading/occupying army and them patriots?:lol: Bush calls them

"terrorists", and I don't know why the Commander in Chief's term is not good enough for Mr. Rumsfeld. When did our

"friends", the Iraqis, become "terrorists"? That I don't know.

Somehow I think that when or if we leave, the

Iraqi people will manage to defend themselves and their homes. But if my innocent friends were rounded up and

tortured by an occupying force, without being charged with anything -- whether or not that occupying force was

claiming to have installed a democracy -- I'd have to say I'd think about shooting at them too.

belgareth
11-29-2005, 09:44 PM
Just think about shooting

back?

In all fairness I can't blame the Iraqi people for fighting back. However, the bloody bas...ds that set

off bombs that are intended to harm or kill innocents are another subject. They're fair game.

DrSmellThis
11-29-2005, 10:23 PM
Just think

about shooting back?I wouldn't go so far as to say "just think", even though you can't solve anything with

naked violence, as we are finding out. It's hard to believe we -- our leaders -- are being that animalistic and

stupid.

belgareth
11-30-2005, 09:08 AM
I wouldn't

go so far as to say "just think", even though you can't solve anything with naked violence, as we are finding out.

It's hard to believe we -- our leaders -- are being that animalistic and stupid.
True, but in the case of

another country invading and occupying my country or even of our government trying to impose martial law, I'd have

no options but to fight back. You can't blame people for resisting when another country unilaterally decides to

replace your government with one of their own choosing.

It isn't really hard to believe, that's the pattern

we've followed for two centuries. Why do something different? Jeeze, man! Don't rock the boat and expect an

original thought from a politician.

koolking1
11-30-2005, 10:50 AM
I think and truly hope that

we now have a real man in charge at the Pentagon, Gen Peter Pace. Rummy must be fuming, gonna be real interesting

to see how this plays out.

koolking1
11-30-2005, 11:14 AM
"Pace also proved himself

to be no 'yes' man. When questioned about torture by the Iraqi authorities, Rumsfeld said "obviously, the United

States does not have a responsibility." Pace, however, evidently disagreed, telling the briefing "It is the absolute

responsibility of every US service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop

it."

When Rumsfeld tried to correct him, saying, "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to

physically stop it; it's to report it," Pace stood his ground. "If they are physically present when inhumane

treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," the Joint Chiefs Chairman

stated."

I am greatly heartened by this. Is this the beginning of our national recovery, I sure hope

so.

I hope the rest of the world understands that under our system of government it's quite a lengthy

process to put gangs of criminals in prison.

DrSmellThis
11-30-2005, 04:21 PM
I hope the

rest of the world understands that under our system of government it's quite a lengthy process to put gangs of

criminals in prison.A key concept. The best way to sell democracy to the planet is to set an example, not to

conquer people. When people see a government prosecuting its own criminals they will think they want that kind of

government too. That is how real people around the world actually think, IMO. "Bush bashing", as the righties call

it, is actually among the best ways to spread democracy at this moment. It is also supporting the troops, by the

same logic. This is what democracy is. Let the charade escalate to epic proportions! Screw fascist, imperialist

totalitarianism!

Mtnjim
11-30-2005, 04:22 PM
You mean there is actually someone

with "nuts" in Washington today??
There must be some mistake here!!!

koolking1
11-30-2005, 04:25 PM
I read elsewhere today,

CounterPunch.Org I think, that Bush/Cheney bumperstickers are disappearing from cars.

belgareth
12-02-2005, 03:19 PM
A culture of bribery in Congress The Monitor's View



Fri Dec 2, 2005





Almost every US lawmaker takes big money aimed at helping private

interests win favorable government action. If they stash the cash for themselves, it's illegal. If they use it to

get reelected, keep their job, and help the private interests, it's generally legal.



Either way, money still talks in Washington and the legal/illegal

distinction gets easily blurred in all the backroom dealings with private interests until, that is, a brazen case of

bribery pops up. Then Washington, if it had any sense, might ask if the laws and rules that regulate campaign

donations and lobbyist gifts are tough enough or prosecutors are vigilant

enough.

Obviously the laws and prosecutors weren't good enough in

the case of Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The California Republican congressmen resigned on Monday after admitting he

took $2.4 million in bribes - yes, $2.4 million - to help steer Pentagon business toward select defense

contractors. (Newspapers, not prosecutors, first exposed Mr. Cunningham's unexplained

wealth.)

Strangely, his official crimes were committed openly in

Congress as he worked like many lawmakers in pushing through specific benefits for private interests or calling

government departments to coerce a decision in favor of a well-funded, private interest. The plea agreement stated

he steered spending "to the benefit" of defense contractors who bribed him, and those contracts were not "in the

best interests of the country."

Cunningham, who wisely and contritely

admitted the wrongdoing, will probably serve years in jail. But the question lingers: How many other members of

Congress (or presidents) have collected big money from private interests - either as campaign-related donations or

as bribes - and then conducted the people's business in shady ways that also weren't "in the best interests of the

country"?

And let's not stop there with the obvious rhetorical

questions: Why should large amounts of money, either as bribes or as big campaign funds from businesses and unions,

be permitted at all, since in too many cases such hefty chunks of change can easily distort a lawmaker's ability to

represent the highest interests of the most people?

The Washington

Post reported that Rep. Virgil Goode (news, bio, voting record) (R) received more than $80,000 in campaign donations

from the employees of MZM - a defense firm that's an alleged co-conspirator in Cunningham's case - and then was

the principal sponsor of a measure helping MZM get a contract in his district. He's since offered to refund the

money.

Other recent ethics scandals in Washington, almost all

involving Republicans, point to weaknesses in current laws and a need for some sort of public campaign financing.

They also highlight Congress's inaction toward further campaign-finance reform and ethics watchdogging - an

inaction that seems purposeful: "Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, have used ethics allegations

as a political weapon for years," Common Cause stated after Cunningham's guilty plea.

No wonder dictators laugh at US demands for representative democracy. They can easily point to

American democracy's big failing: allowing the well-monied to corrupt lawmakers by dictating government actions -

either legally or illegally.•

belgareth
12-02-2005, 03:25 PM
People sometimes wonder why I am so cynical about our government and

sceptical about all their motives. This is just another example of the same type of thing we are seeing from our

government right now. Anybody besides me ever read the book "The Cuban Missile Crises"? I had to read it in a

PoliSci class.

Analysis Casts Doubt on Vietnam War Claims By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer


Fri Dec 2, 2005

WASHINGTON - Another war, another set of faulty intelligence findings behind it.



Forty years before the United States invaded Iraq believing

Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, it widened a war in Vietnam apparently convinced the enemy had

launched an unprovoked attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers.

Papers

declassified by the National Security Agency point to a series of bungled intelligence findings on the purported

clash in the Gulf of Tonkin that led Congress to endorse President Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam conflict in

August 1964.

Among the documents released Thursday is an article

written by NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok for the agency's classified publication, Cryptologic Quarterly. In it, he

declares that his review of the complete intelligence shows beyond doubt "no attack happened that

night."

Claims that North Vietnamese boats attacked two U. S. Navy

destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964 — just two days after an initial assault on one of those ships — rallied Congress behind

Johnson's build-up of the war. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution passed three days later empowered him to

take "all necessary steps" in the region and opened the way for large-scale commitment of U.S.

forces.

As with the intelligence that convinced the administration

and lawmakers that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the article asserts officials gave much weight to scant

evidence.

But, also like Iraq, it did not find that top

administration officials ordered up fabricated evidence to suit their wishes.

Instead, in the case of Vietnam, they were presented with an incomplete story, Hanyok said. Of the

intelligence-gatherers who got it wrong, he added: "They walked alone in their

counsels."

The agency released more than 140 documents in response to

requests from researchers trying to get to the bottom of an episode that unfolded in the South China Sea that cloudy

night, and has been disputed since.

"The parallels between the faulty

intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq war make it all the more

worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964 in light of new evidence," researcher John Prados

said.

Prados is a specialist on the Gulf of Tonkin at George

Washington University's National Security Archive, which is not affiliated with the National Security Agency, and

which pressed for release of the documents through Freedom of Information requests and other

means.

Hanyok's article reviews signals intelligence, or SIGINT,

from that time and concludes that top administration officials were only given material supporting the claim of an

Aug. 4 attack, not the wealth of contradictory intelligence. His study was published in 2001 and does not necessary

reflect the agency's position.

"In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged

in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August," Hanyok

wrote.

He said "the handful of SIGINT reports which suggested that an

attack had occurred contained severe analytical errors, unexplained translation changes, and the conjunction of two

unrelated messages into one translation. This latter product would become the Johnson administration's main proof

of the Aug. 4 attack."

He said he did not find "manufactured evidence

and collusion at all levels"; rather, it appeared intelligence-gatherers had made a series of mistakes and their

superiors did not set the record straight.

Conflicting and confused

reports from the scene have long cast doubt on whether the events unfolded as

claimed.

Hanyok's analysis of previously top secret intelligence

adds insight on North Vietnam's communications from that time, showing, he said, that the supposed attackers did

not even know the location of the destroyers, the USS Maddox and C. Turner Joy, as the two ships patrolled off the

North Vietnam coast.

A shorter agency study done years earlier and

also released Thursday indicated the ships did not know what, if anything, was coming at them as they zigzagged to

evade what the crews feared were torpedoes.

That study concluded

with a wry note, saying the destroyers resumed their patrols after a heavy round of U.S. air strikes on North

Vietnam ports, "and the rest is just painful history."

A detailed

chronology assembled days after the episode for the Joint Chiefs of Staff by J.J. Merrick, commander of Destroyer

Division 192, reflected the uncertainty of that night.

It said sonar

in many cases picked up sounds that were believed to be torpedoes but turned out to be "self noise" — the beating of

the ships' own propellers, or noise from patrol boats or supporting planes that were strafing the dark sea, unable

to see any prey. In another instance, however, the report contended a "torpedo wake was seen by four people."



The Maddox had come under fire from North Vietnamese patrol boats

Aug. 2, taking only superficial damage.

tim929
12-03-2005, 07:27 AM
Funny...the C. Turner Joy is

berthed here wher I live.I always cringe alittle when I see it sitting at anchor in the bay.

DrSmellThis
12-04-2005, 06:26 PM
People sometimes wonder why I am so cynical about our government

and sceptical about all their motives. This is just another example of the same type of thing we are seeing from our

government right now. Anybody besides me ever read the book "The Cuban Missile Crises"? I had to read it in a

PoliSci class.

Analysis Casts Doubt on Vietnam War Claims By

CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 2,

2005

WASHINGTON - Another war, another set of faulty intelligence

findings behind it.

Forty years before the United States invaded

Iraq believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, it widened a war in Vietnam apparently convinced the

enemy had launched an unprovoked attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers.

Papers declassified by the National Security Agency point to a series of bungled intelligence findings on the

purported clash in the Gulf of Tonkin that led Congress to endorse President Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam

conflict in August 1964.

Among the documents released Thursday is an

article written by NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok for the agency's classified publication, Cryptologic Quarterly.

In it, he declares that his review of the complete intelligence shows beyond doubt "no attack happened that

night."

Claims that North Vietnamese boats attacked two U. S. Navy

destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964 — just two days after an initial assault on one of those ships — rallied Congress behind

Johnson's build-up of the war. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution passed three days later empowered him to

take "all necessary steps" in the region and opened the way for large-scale commitment of U.S.

forces.

As with the intelligence that convinced the administration

and lawmakers that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the article asserts officials gave much weight to scant

evidence.

But, also like Iraq, it did not find that top

administration officials ordered up fabricated evidence to suit their wishes.

Instead, in the case of Vietnam, they were presented with an incomplete story, Hanyok said. Of the

intelligence-gatherers who got it wrong, he added: "They walked alone in their

counsels."

The agency released more than 140 documents in response to

requests from researchers trying to get to the bottom of an episode that unfolded in the South China Sea that cloudy

night, and has been disputed since.

"The parallels between the faulty

intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq war make it all the more

worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964 in light of new evidence," researcher John Prados

said.

Prados is a specialist on the Gulf of Tonkin at George

Washington University's National Security Archive, which is not affiliated with the National Security Agency, and

which pressed for release of the documents through Freedom of Information requests and other

means.

Hanyok's article reviews signals intelligence, or SIGINT,

from that time and concludes that top administration officials were only given material supporting the claim of an

Aug. 4 attack, not the wealth of contradictory intelligence. His study was published in 2001 and does not necessary

reflect the agency's position.

"In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged

in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August," Hanyok

wrote.

He said "the handful of SIGINT reports which suggested that an

attack had occurred contained severe analytical errors, unexplained translation changes, and the conjunction of two

unrelated messages into one translation. This latter product would become the Johnson administration's main proof

of the Aug. 4 attack."

He said he did not find "manufactured evidence

and collusion at all levels"; rather, it appeared intelligence-gatherers had made a series of mistakes and their

superiors did not set the record straight.

Conflicting and confused

reports from the scene have long cast doubt on whether the events unfolded as

claimed.

Hanyok's analysis of previously top secret intelligence

adds insight on North Vietnam's communications from that time, showing, he said, that the supposed attackers did

not even know the location of the destroyers, the USS Maddox and C. Turner Joy, as the two ships patrolled off the

North Vietnam coast.

A shorter agency study done years earlier and

also released Thursday indicated the ships did not know what, if anything, was coming at them as they zigzagged to

evade what the crews feared were torpedoes.

That study concluded

with a wry note, saying the destroyers resumed their patrols after a heavy round of U.S. air strikes on North

Vietnam ports, "and the rest is just painful history."

A detailed

chronology assembled days after the episode for the Joint Chiefs of Staff by J.J. Merrick, commander of Destroyer

Division 192, reflected the uncertainty of that night.

It said sonar

in many cases picked up sounds that were believed to be torpedoes but turned out to be "self noise" — the beating of

the ships' own propellers, or noise from patrol boats or supporting planes that were strafing the dark sea, unable

to see any prey. In another instance, however, the report contended a "torpedo wake was seen by four people."



The Maddox had come under fire from North Vietnamese patrol boats

Aug. 2, taking only superficial damage. It is true that LBJ lied through his teeth about the

Viet Nam War. It was shameful then and is now.

belgareth
12-06-2005, 11:05 AM
U.S. Factory Orders Rebound in October By MARTIN CRUTSINGER

WASHINGTON - Orders to U.S. factories posted a solid increase in October, the government reported Tuesday,

providing the latest evidence that the economy is rebounding from the Gulf Coast hurricanes and a spike in energy

prices.

The Commerce Department said that demand for

manufactured goods rose by 2.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted $399.8 billion in October, erasing a 1.4 percent

September decline when demand was jolted by the hurricanes, a strike at aircraft giant Boeing and a jump in energy

costs.

The October increase was in line with economists'

expectations. Orders for durable goods, items expected to last three or more years, increased by 3.7 percent while

demand for nondurable goods rose by 0.5 percent.

In other news, the

productivity of American workers shot up at an annual rate of 4.7 percent in the July-September quarter, the best

showing in two years. The new report from the Labor Department represented a big upward revision from an initial

estimate made a month ago that productivity was growing at a 4.1 percent rate in the third

quarter.

The big jump in worker efficiency helped to push labor costs

down by 1 percent at an annual rate in third quarter, double the 0.5 percent drop in unit labor costs that had

originally been reported. The stronger productivity and falling labor costs should help ease fears at the

Federal Reserve that overall inflation was on the verge of worsening because of rising wage

pressures.

The 2.2 percent overall rise in durable goods was the best

showing since a 2.9 percent jump in August. It showed that manufacturing, which was the hardest hit sector in the

2001 recession, is showing resilience in the face of rising energy costs and the devastation caused by hurricanes

Katrina, Rita and Wilma, which caused widespread destruction along the Gulf

Coast.

The 3.7 percent gain in orders for durable goods was even

better than an initial estimate of a 3.4 percent increase made last week. The gain was led by a 142 percent rise in

orders for military aircraft and parts and a 50.6 percent jump in orders for commercial

aircraft.

DrSmellThis
12-13-2005, 01:28 PM
Probe backs CIA prison

allegations

PARIS, France -- European investigators say they have evidence that supports allegations the CIA

"abducted and transferred" people between countries and temporarily held them "without any judicial

involvement."

"The information gathered to date has reinforced the credibility of the allegations concerning the

transfer and temporary detention of individuals without any judicial involvement in European countries," Swiss

Senator Dick Marty said in a report Tuesday.

"Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to

indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal

standards."

The report by Marty, who heads the Council of Europe investigation, noted the allegations had never

been formally denied by the United States.

It did not specify which countries were involved.

"It's still

too early to say if there has been any involvement or complicity of member states in illegal actions," Marty said in

the report to the human rights committee of the 46-nation council in Paris.

"The seriousness of the allegations

and the consistency of the information gathered to date justifies an in-depth inquiry," he said.

"If the

allegations proved correct, the member states would stand accused of having seriously breached their human rights

obligations to the Council of Europe."

During a news conference Tuesday, Marty said he believed the United

States was no longer holding prisoners secretly in Europe, The Associated Press reported.

Marty said he believed

the detainees were moved to North Africa in early November, when reports about secret U.S. prisons first emerged in

The Washington Post. He did not provide any other details, AP said.

Poland and Romania have been identified by

the New York-based Human Rights watch as sites of possible CIA secret prisons. But both countries have denied any

involvement.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced repeated questions about the allegations during her

recent trip to Europe but denied that the United States used European airspace or airports to transport detainees to

countries where officials believed they would be tortured.

Rice also denied that U.S. personnel engaged in

torture, saying that U.S. interrogators abided by the Geneva Conventions.

The U.S. State Department contended

as recently as last week that suspected terrorists are not protected by the Geneva Conventions because they are not

prisoners of war.

However, a department spokesman said the United States applies the conventions to those

suspected terrorists anyway.

In the past, the Bush Administration has said the conventions do not apply to

Americans working outside U.S. borders.

-- CNN producer Jonathan Wald contributed to this

report
Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or

redistributed. Associated Press (http://www.cnn.com/interactive_legal.html#AP) contributed to this

report.

Find this article at:


http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/12/13

/cia.europe/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/12/13/cia.europe/index.html)

belgareth
12-16-2005, 03:42 PM
This is mostly good

news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051216/ap_on_go_co/patriot_act_51;_ylt=AvMszQ993Dpyci2

c8ALQG.kTv5UB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCU l (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051216/ap_on_go_co/patriot_act_51;_ylt=AvMszQ993Dpyci2c8ALQG.kTv5UB;_ ylu=X

3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl)

Netghost56
12-16-2005, 04:54 PM
I'm wondering if anyone here

has heard of Aspartame? It's come up on some other forums, and I'm not sure whether its propaganda

or fact:
http://presidiotex.com/aspartame/Nancy_Markle/nancy_markle.html

They also say that Rumsfeld

had a hand in

this:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/05/07/aspartame_gate_when_donald_rumsfeld_was_ceo_of_sea rle.ht

m

Again, I don't know much about this beyond what's on these pages. Frankly, it looks like scare tactics,

but with our government, you never know...

belgareth
12-17-2005, 11:04 AM
I'm

wondering if anyone here has heard of Aspartame? It's come up on some other forums, and I'm not

sure whether its propaganda or

fact:
http://presidiotex.com/aspartame/Nancy

_Markle/nancy_markle.html (http://presidiotex.com/aspartame/Nancy_Markle/nancy_markle.html)

It seems a little implossible for several reasons. The first is that

something like this is the provence of the FDA not the EPA. I did check the EPA website and they have nothing to say

about Aspartame at all. When you do a search you geet information on wood alcohol and there is no reference to MS or

Lupis. You can check for yourself at: www.epa.gov (http://www.epa.gov/).


They also

say that Rumsfeld had a hand in

this:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/05/07/aspartame_gate_when_donald_rumsfeld_was_ceo_of_sea rle.htm (http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/05/07/aspartame_gate_when_donald_rumsfeld_was_ceo_of_sea rle.h

tm)

n
Again, I don't know much about this beyond what's on these pages. Frankly, it looks like scare tactics, but

with our government, you never know...


I strongly suspect that it is extreme exageration

put out by the same people who have put out so much other misinformation in an effort to discredit the current

administration. Frankly, if they would focus on real issues they'd stand a much better chance of getting results.

You are encouraged to do your own research but here's what you can find on the FDA page:

From: Mark Gold

[mgold@shelltown.net]Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 11:18 PMTo:

fdadockets@oc.fda.govSubject: Docket # 02P-0317 Recall Aspartame as a

Neurotoxic Drug: File#9: Recent Independent Aspartame ResearchSubject: Docket # 02P-0317To: FDA Dockets

SubmittalFrom: Mark D. Gold Aspartame Toxicity Information Center 12 East Side Dr., Suite 2-18 Concord, NH 03301

603-225-2110Date: January 12, 2002Please find below Evidence File #9: Recent Independent Aspartame Research Recent

Independent Aspartame Research Results(1998 - 2002)The results of recent independent research continue the trend of

researchnot funded by the manufacturer finding serious problems with aspartameingestion. Details about other

independent research demonstrating thehazards of aspartame ingestion can be found in the Aspartame FAQs andAspartame

Scientific Abuse web pages.Table of ContentsAspartame Ingestion Causes Formaldehyde Accumulation in the

BodyAspartame and MSG Cause to Painful Fibromyalgia SymptomsAspartame and Brain Tumors (Swedish Study)Aspartame

Causes Memory

Loss----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------Aspartame Ingestion Causes Formaldehyde Accumulation in the

BodyExcerpt from:Trocho, C., et al., 1998. "Formaldehyde Derived From Dietary AspartameVinds to Tissue Components in

vivo," Life Sciences, Vol. 63, No. 5, pp.337+, 1998"These are indeed extremely high levels for adducts of

formaldehyde, asubstance responsible for chronic deleterious effects that has also beenconsidered

carcinogenic....."It is concluded that aspartame consumption may constitute a hazardbecause of its contribution to

the formation of formaldehyde adducts.""It was a very interesting paper, that demonstrates that

formaldehydeformation from aspartame ingestion is very common and does indeedaccumulate within the cell, reacting

with cellular proteins (mostlyenzymes) and DNA (both mitochondrial and nuclear). The fact that itaccumulates with

each dose, indicates grave consequences among those whoconsume diet drinks and foodstuffs on a daily basis."

(NeuroscientistRussell Blaylock,

MD)-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------Aspartame and MSG Cause to Painful Fibromyalgia SymptomsAnn

Pharmacother 2001 Jun;35(6):702-6Relief of fibromyalgia symptoms following discontinuation of

dietaryexcitotoxins.Smith JD, Terpening CM, Schmidt SO, Gums JG. Malcolm Randall VeteransAffairs Medical Center,

Gainesville, FL, USA.BACKGROUND: Fibromyalgia is a common rheumatologic disorder that is oftendifficult to treat

effectively. CASE SUMMARY: Four patients diagnosed withfibromyalgia syndrome for two to 17 years are described. All

had undergonemultiple treatment modalities with limited success. All had complete, ornearly complete, resolution of

their symptoms within months aftereliminating monosodium glutamate (MSG) or MSG plus aspartame from theirdiet. All

patients were women with multiple comorbidities prior toelimination of MSG. All have had recurrence of symptoms

whenever MSG isingested. DISCUSSION: Excitotoxins are molecules, such as MSG andaspartate, that act as excitatory

neurotransmitters, and can lead toneurotoxicity when used in excess. We propose that these four patients

mayrepresent a subset of fibromyalgia syndrome that is induced or exacerbatedby excitotoxins or, alternatively, may

comprise an excitotoxin syndromethat is similar to fibromyalgia. We suggest that identification of similarpatients

and research with larger numbers of patients must be performedbefore definitive conclusions can be made.

CONCLUSIONS: The elimination ofMSG and other excitotoxins from the diets of patients with fibromyalgiaoffers a

benign treatment option that has the potential for dramaticresults in a subset of patients. PMID:

11408989------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------Aspartame and Brain TumorsA published study in Sweden that

looked at various possible causes ofbrain tumors (e.g., cell phones, aspartame) found a link between use ofdiet

drinks and certain types of large brain tumors in middle-aged andelderly population groups.

http://www

.medscape.com/MedGenMed/braintumors---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Aspartame (http://www.medscape.com/MedGenMed/braintumors-----------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Aspartame) Causes Memory

LossTitle: DANGEROUS DIET DRINKS.Subject(s): ASPARTAME -- Physiological effect; NONNUTRITIVE sweetenersSide effects;

MEMORYSource: Psychology Today, Mar/Apr 2001, Vol. 34 Issue 2, p20, 2/5pSection: [Nutrition] Facts&FindingsMIND

DANGEROUS DIET DRINKSCAN'T REMEMBER WHAT YOU HAD FOR LUNCH?WHAT YOU ATE OR DRANK MIGHT BE THE REASON.New research

suggests that the artificial sweetener aspartame may actuallygo to your head.By Peter RebhahnAnecdotal evidence that

aspartame disrupts memory has been growing sincethe sugar substitute was approved in the early 1980s, though

attempts toprove the claim have so far been equivocal. Previous studies have testedmemory by asking aspartame users

to remember lists of words or numbers--tests of short-term memory. But according to Timothy M. Barth, Ph.D.,

apsychology professor at Texas Christian University, those studies focusedon the wrong type of memory.In his study

of 90 students, Barth found that participants who regularlydrank diet sodas containing aspartame performed as well

as nonusers onlaboratory tests. However, aspartame users were more likely to reportlong-term memory lapses like

forgetting details of personal routines orwhether or not a task had been completed."These people aren't crazy,"

says Barth. Instead, "the type of memoryproblems they report are not the type of memories that have been assessedin

the typical laboratory study."After reporting his findings at a recent Society for Neuroscience meeting,Barth

cautioned that he thinks it's premature to condemn aspartame. But hedoes worry about the largely untested effects

of long-term use. Already,he has made some converts. "Several of my graduate students who drank dietsoda no longer

do.


"************************************************** ******************


After reviewing scientific

studies, FDA determined in 1981 that aspartame was safe for use in foods. In 1987, the General Accounting Office

investigated the process surrounding FDA's approval of aspartame and confirmed the agency had acted properly.

However, FDA has continued to review complaints alleging adverse reactions to products containing aspartame. To

date, FDA has not determined any consistent pattern of symptoms that can be attributed to the use of aspartame, nor

is the agency aware of any recent studies that clearly show safety problems.
Carefully controlled clinical studies

show that aspartame is not an allergen. However, certain people with the genetic disease phenylketonuria (PKU), and

pregnant women with hyperphenylalanine (high levels of phenylalanine in blood) have a problem with aspartame because

they do not effectively metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine, one of aspartame's components. High levels of this

amino acid in body fluids can cause brain damage. Therefore, FDA has ruled that all products containing aspartame

must include a warning to phenylketonurics that the sweetener contains phenylalanine.



************************************************** ****

75 Food and Drug Administration
November 18, 1996

Arthur Whitmore: (202) 205-4144

Consumer Hotline: (800)532-4440


FDA Statement on Aspartame

A recently

published medical journal article raises the
question whether any increased incidence in the number of

persons
with brain tumors in the United States is associated with the
marketing of aspartame, an artificial

sweetener, following the
Food and Drug Administration's approval of that food additive in
1981. The following can

be used to answer questions:
Analysis of the National Cancer Institute's public data base
on cancer incidence in

the United States -- the SEER Program --
does not support an association between the use of aspartame

and
increased incidence of brain tumors. Data from the SEER program
show that overall incidence of brain and

central nervous system
cancers began increasing in 1973 and continued to increase
through 1985 in the United

States. Since 1985 the trend line has
flattened for these cancers, and in the last two years recorded
(1991 to

1993), the incidence has slightly decreased.
The FDA stands behind its original approval decision, but
the Agency

remains ready to act if credible scientific evidence
is presented to it -- as would be the case for any

product
approved by the FDA.

The question of a relationship between brain tumors and
aspartame was initially

raised when the Agency began considering
approval of this food additive in the mid-1970s.
The agency resolved the

brain tumor issue before the initial
approval of aspartame in 1981. A Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI)
was convened

in 1980 by the Agency to review the scientific data
presented by G.D. Searle and Company relating to the safety

of
aspartame. These independent scientific advisors to the Agency
concluded that aspartame did not cause brain

damage. At the same
time, they said that there was not sufficient scientific evidence
presented to the PBOI that

aspartame did not cause brain tumors
in rats. Therefore, the PBOI recommended against approval of
aspartame at

that time and concluded that further study was
needed.
In 1981 after extensive review of the record by

FDA
scientists, then Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes approved
aspartame as a food additive. In his decision Hayes

noted that
additional scientific data from a Japanese study about the brain
tumor issue corroborated his decision.

The PBOI chairman later
wrote in a letter to Hayes that the Japanese data would have
caused that panel to give

aspartame an "unqualified approval."
"As data stood, we were unable to reach a communal feeling
of confidence in

aspartame's innocuousness on this score and
expressed this unease in our report to you. By the same token,
we

wish to express our endorsement of your final decision in this
matter," wrote Walle J. H. Nauta, M.D., Ph.D., of

the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
####

Netghost56
12-17-2005, 06:41 PM
Have you seen the Wiki

entry?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame

It also has

a bunch of works cited.

All this talk about it breaking down into wood alcohol and formaldehyde- here's how they

said Aspartame was discovered:

The Story of

Aspartame Aspartame was

discovered in 1965 by a researcher, Mr. James Schlatter, at G.D. Searle & Company.



Schlatter was a scientist doing research with amino

acids, working to develop a treatment for ulcers. When he licked his finger to pick up a piece

of paper he tasted a sweet attractive flavor. James Schlatter inadvertently had the first taste of

aspartame and helped create a product that would revolutionize the category of "sweetener" for individuals

and food companies.
---------

No wonder! Aspartame comes from paper products?

belgareth
12-17-2005, 07:53 PM
Wiki entries can be made by

anybody to say almost anything. They are great for foundational stuff but once you get past that point you really

need a better resource.

DrSmellThis
12-17-2005, 09:37 PM
Bel, I'd like to read your

FDA post, but the links caused it to grow outside my viewable screen. Could you edit that please? Thanks in

advance.

belgareth
12-17-2005, 11:11 PM
Did

that help Doc?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Netghost56
I'm wondering if anyone here has heard of

Aspartame? It's come up on some other forums, and I'm not sure whether its propaganda or

fact:




It seems a little implossible for several reasons. The first is that something like

this is the provence of the FDA not the EPA. I did check the EPA website and they have nothing to say about

Aspartame at all. When you do a search you geet information on wood alcohol and there is no reference to MS or

Lupis. You can check for yourself at:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Netghost56
They also say that

Rumsfeld had a hand in this:


Again, I don't know much about this beyond what's on these pages. Frankly, it

looks like scare tactics, but with our government, you never know...
</FONT></FONT>



I strongly suspect

that it is extreme exageration put out by the same people who have put out so much other misinformation in an effort

to discredit the current administration. Frankly, if they would focus on real issues they'd stand a much better

chance of getting results. You are encouraged to do your own research but here's what you can find on the FDA page:



From: Mark Gold [mgold@shelltown.net]Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 11:18 PMTo: Subject: Docket # 02P-0317

Recall Aspartame as a Neurotoxic Drug: File#9: Recent Independent Aspartame ResearchSubject: Docket # 02P-0317To:

FDA Dockets SubmittalFrom: Mark D. Gold Aspartame Toxicity Information Center 12 East Side Dr., Suite 2-18 Concord,

NH 03301 603-225-2110Date: January 12, 2002Please find below Evidence File #9: Recent Independent Aspartame Research

Recent Independent Aspartame Research Results(1998 - 2002)The results of recent independent research continue the

trend of researchnot funded by the manufacturer finding serious problems with aspartameingestion. Details about

other independent research demonstrating thehazards of aspartame ingestion can be found in the Aspartame FAQs

andAspartame Scientific Abuse web pages.Table of ContentsAspartame Ingestion Causes Formaldehyde Accumulation in the

BodyAspartame and MSG Cause to Painful Fibromyalgia SymptomsAspartame and Brain Tumors (Swedish Study)Aspartame

Causes Memory

Loss----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------Aspartame Ingestion Causes Formaldehyde Accumulation in the

BodyExcerpt from:Trocho, C., et al., 1998. "Formaldehyde Derived From Dietary AspartameVinds to Tissue Components in

vivo," Life Sciences, Vol. 63, No. 5, pp.337+, 1998"These are indeed extremely high levels for adducts of

formaldehyde, asubstance responsible for chronic deleterious effects that has also beenconsidered

carcinogenic....."It is concluded that aspartame consumption may constitute a hazardbecause of its contribution to

the formation of formaldehyde adducts.""It was a very interesting paper, that demonstrates that

formaldehydeformation from aspartame ingestion is very common and does indeedaccumulate within the cell, reacting

with cellular proteins (mostlyenzymes) and DNA (both mitochondrial and nuclear). The fact that itaccumulates with

each dose, indicates grave consequences among those whoconsume diet drinks and foodstuffs on a daily basis."

(NeuroscientistRussell Blaylock,

MD)-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------Aspartame and MSG Cause to Painful Fibromyalgia SymptomsAnn

Pharmacother 2001 Jun;35(6):702-6Relief of fibromyalgia symptoms following discontinuation of

dietaryexcitotoxins.Smith JD, Terpening CM, Schmidt SO, Gums JG. Malcolm Randall VeteransAffairs Medical Center,

Gainesville, FL, USA.BACKGROUND: Fibromyalgia is a common rheumatologic disorder that is oftendifficult to treat

effectively. CASE SUMMARY: Four patients diagnosed withfibromyalgia syndrome for two to 17 years are described. All

had undergonemultiple treatment modalities with limited success. All had complete, ornearly complete, resolution of

their symptoms within months aftereliminating monosodium glutamate (MSG) or MSG plus aspartame from theirdiet. All

patients were women with multiple comorbidities prior toelimination of MSG. All have had recurrence of symptoms

whenever MSG isingested. DISCUSSION: Excitotoxins are molecules, such as MSG andaspartate, that act as excitatory

neurotransmitters, and can lead toneurotoxicity when used in excess. We propose that these four patients

mayrepresent a subset of fibromyalgia syndrome that is induced or exacerbatedby excitotoxins or, alternatively, may

comprise an excitotoxin syndromethat is similar to fibromyalgia. We suggest that identification of similarpatients

and research with larger numbers of patients must be performedbefore definitive conclusions can be made.

CONCLUSIONS: The elimination ofMSG and other excitotoxins from the diets of patients with fibromyalgiaoffers a

benign treatment option that has the potential for dramaticresults in a subset of patients. PMID:

11408989------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------Aspartame and Brain TumorsA published study in Sweden that

looked at various possible causes ofbrain tumors (e.g., cell phones, aspartame) found a link between use ofdiet

drinks and certain types of large brain tumors in middle-aged andelderly population groups. Causes Memory

LossTitle: DANGEROUS DIET DRINKS.Subject(s): ASPARTAME -- Physiological effect; NONNUTRITIVE sweetenersSide effects;

MEMORYSource: Psychology Today, Mar/Apr 2001, Vol. 34 Issue 2, p20, 2/5pSection: [Nutrition] Facts&FindingsMIND

DANGEROUS DIET DRINKSCAN'T REMEMBER WHAT YOU HAD FOR LUNCH?WHAT YOU ATE OR DRANK MIGHT BE THE REASON.New research

suggests that the artificial sweetener aspartame may actuallygo to your head.By Peter RebhahnAnecdotal evidence that

aspartame disrupts memory has been growing sincethe sugar substitute was approved in the early 1980s, though

attempts toprove the claim have so far been equivocal. Previous studies have testedmemory by asking aspartame users

to remember lists of words or numbers--tests of short-term memory. But according to Timothy M. Barth, Ph.D.,

apsychology professor at Texas Christian University, those studies focusedon the wrong type of memory.In his study

of 90 students, Barth found that participants who regularlydrank diet sodas containing aspartame performed as well

as nonusers onlaboratory tests. However, aspartame users were more likely to reportlong-term memory lapses like

forgetting details of personal routines orwhether or not a task had been completed."These people aren't crazy,"

says Barth. Instead, "the type of memoryproblems they report are not the type of memories that have been assessedin

the typical laboratory study."After reporting his findings at a recent Society for Neuroscience meeting,Barth

cautioned that he thinks it's premature to condemn aspartame. But hedoes worry about the largely untested effects

of long-term use. Already,he has made some converts. "Several of my graduate students who drank dietsoda no longer

do.


"************************************************** ******************


After reviewing scientific

studies, FDA determined in 1981 that aspartame was safe for use in foods. In 1987, the General Accounting Office

investigated the process surrounding FDA's approval of aspartame and confirmed the agency had acted properly.

However, FDA has continued to review complaints alleging adverse reactions to products containing aspartame. To

date, FDA has not determined any consistent pattern of symptoms that can be attributed to the use of aspartame, nor

is the agency aware of any recent studies that clearly show safety problems.
Carefully controlled clinical studies

show that aspartame is not an allergen. However, certain people with the genetic disease phenylketonuria (PKU), and

pregnant women with hyperphenylalanine (high levels of phenylalanine in blood) have a problem with aspartame because

they do not effectively metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine, one of aspartame's components. High levels of this

amino acid in body fluids can cause brain damage. Therefore, FDA has ruled that all products containing aspartame

must include a warning to phenylketonurics that the sweetener contains phenylalanine.



************************************************** ****

75 Food and Drug Administration
November 18, 1996

Arthur Whitmore: (202) 205-4144

Consumer Hotline: (800)532-4440


FDA Statement on Aspartame

A recently

published medical journal article raises the
question whether any increased incidence in the number of

persons
with brain tumors in the United States is associated with the
marketing of aspartame, an artificial

sweetener, following the
Food and Drug Administration's approval of that food additive in
1981. The following can

be used to answer questions:
Analysis of the National Cancer Institute's public data base
on cancer incidence in

the United States -- the SEER Program --
does not support an association between the use of aspartame

and
increased incidence of brain tumors. Data from the SEER program
show that overall incidence of brain and

central nervous system
cancers began increasing in 1973 and continued to increase
through 1985 in the United

States. Since 1985 the trend line has
flattened for these cancers, and in the last two years recorded
(1991 to

1993), the incidence has slightly decreased.
The FDA stands behind its original approval decision, but
the Agency

remains ready to act if credible scientific evidence
is presented to it -- as would be the case for any

product
approved by the FDA.

The question of a relationship between brain tumors and
aspartame was initially

raised when the Agency began considering
approval of this food additive in the mid-1970s.
The agency resolved the

brain tumor issue before the initial
approval of aspartame in 1981. A Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI)
was convened

in 1980 by the Agency to review the scientific data
presented by G.D. Searle and Company relating to the safety

of
aspartame. These independent scientific advisors to the Agency
concluded that aspartame did not cause brain

damage. At the same
time, they said that there was not sufficient scientific evidence
presented to the PBOI that

aspartame did not cause brain tumors
in rats. Therefore, the PBOI recommended against approval of
aspartame at

that time and concluded that further study was
needed.
In 1981 after extensive review of the record by

FDA
scientists, then Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes approved
aspartame as a food additive. In his decision Hayes

noted that
additional scientific data from a Japanese study about the brain
tumor issue corroborated his decision.

The PBOI chairman later
wrote in a letter to Hayes that the Japanese data would have
caused that panel to give

aspartame an "unqualified approval."
"As data stood, we were unable to reach a communal feeling
of confidence in

aspartame's innocuousness on this score and
expressed this unease in our report to you. By the same token,
we

wish to express our endorsement of your final decision in this
matter," wrote Walle J. H. Nauta, M.D., Ph.D., of

the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
####

DrSmellThis
12-19-2005, 07:52 PM
There was no change.

Apparently some formatting was copied and pasted? No biggie.

belgareth
12-19-2005, 08:09 PM
Sorry Doc, it works fine for

me. No formatting problems at all. Screen resizes and everything. PM me and we can work something out if you want a

copy of it.

DrSmellThis
12-19-2005, 08:26 PM
No biggie. I can rock the

horizontal scroll back and forth to view it.

Netghost56
12-19-2005, 09:13 PM
Well, I can confirm it's not

pure fantasy. Today my mother bought some maple syrup and after getting home, realized that she accidently bought

"Suger Free" syrup. I was curious so I checked the nutritional information, and BING! Aspartame was on the list.

Talk about alarms going off in your head. I won't be putting that syrup on my pancakes. Not just because it's got

Aspartame, but because we never eat sugar free stuff. It all tastes like crap to me.

belgareth
12-19-2005, 09:19 PM
Have you tasted it? Aspartame

tastes just like sugar.

There's no doubt that it is in may products. The question is whether or not it is

causing problems. Specifically, is there a relationship between Lupis/MS and aspartame? Next question, is it worse

for you than the alternatives? For instance real sugar or saccarine?There's been recent research showing that fruit

sugars (sucrose and fructose) are heavy contributors to obesity which leads to cardiocascular desease and diabetes

too.

Personally I think the best answer is to eat good quality foods, stay away from fast food altogether, eat

snacks and sweets in moderation and get some regular exercise.

DrSmellThis
12-19-2005, 10:36 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/19/nsa/index.html

Netghost56
12-19-2005, 11:25 PM
Personally I

think the best answer is to eat good quality foods, stay away from fast food altogether, eat snacks and sweets in

moderation and get some regular exercise.

Which is exactly what I do. But my concern is that this junk

intrudes into my diet. Say if I wanted a carrot cake. Or even a simple sugar cookie. How long will it be before a

stick of gum becomes as lethal as cocaine? Ok, that's alarmist. But seriously though, the more you give them, the

more they take.

And I don't think I can handle being a vegan or raw foodist. I need homecooked meals! :D

belgareth
12-20-2005, 01:38 AM
I eat home cooked meals most of

the time. If you look in our pantry you won't find pre-packaged or sugar/salt/fat laden foods. You'll find fresh

fruits and veggies and basic ingredients. It's up to each person to make sure what they eat is wholesome. If I want

a carrot cake, I'll probably make it myself because what passes for cake in the grocery store or even in most

bakeries is junk and not suitable for consumption.

Right now, I don't know if aspartame is the evil substance

those articles make it out to be. I can tell you though that all the fats and sugars most people consume as a part

of their daily diet is killing them. A huge part of the problem is that we as a group are much more interested in

having time to watch football or some idiotic sitcom to get off our behinds and do something for ourselves.

Arbitrarily throwing one food additive out as bad while we continue to pour crap by the gallon into our systems in

rather silly and a waste of time. We need to look at the whole picture and stop consuming so much garbage in

general. Aspartame would not be a question if we weren't so interested in junk food in the first place.

DrSmellThis
12-20-2005, 02:07 AM
http://www.cq.com/public/20051209_homeland.html

DrSmellThis
12-20-2005, 02:13 AM
http://www.washingto

npost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121402528_pf.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121402528_pf.html)

DrSmellThis
12-20-2005, 02:17 AM
Bush claims he doesn't know. So this time the implicit admission that Bush lied on matters of

national security comes from one of his staunchest

supporters:

http:/

/www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121402121_pf.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121402121_pf.html)

belgareth
12-20-2005, 10:15 PM
This is just funny!



Computer worm traps child porn offender in Germany Tue Dec

20,2005
BERLIN (Reuters) - A child porn offender in Germany turned

himself in to the police after mistaking an email he received from a computer worm for an official warning that he

was under investigation, authorities said on Tuesday.

"It just goes

to show that computer worms aren't always destructive," said a spokesman for police in the western city of

Paderborn. "Here it helped us to uncover a crime which would otherwise probably have gone

undetected."

The 20-year-old was caught out by a version of the

"Sober" worm, a prolific Internet virus which can invade computers and then send out messages from a host of

fabricated addresses.

The trap was set when the man got an email

saying "an investigation is underway," that listed the sender as Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

Police charged him after finding pornographic images of children on his home computer.

Netghost56
12-22-2005, 05:59 PM
MP calls for ban on 'unsafe' sweetener

By Felicity Lawrence | The

Guardian Consumer Affairs Correspondent, Thursday, December 15, 2005

A member of the parliamentary select

committee on food and the environment yesterday called for emergency action to ban the artificial sweetener

aspartame, used in 6,000 food, drink and medicinal products.
The Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said in an

adjournment debate in the Commons that there was "compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance

to be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether". In licensing aspartame for use, regulators around the

world had failed in their main task of protecting the public, he told MPs.


Mr Williams highlighted

new concerns about the additive's safety, raised by a recent Italian study that linked it to cancer in rats. He

said the history of aspartame's licensing put "regulators and politicians to shame", with the likes of Donald

Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and former head of Searle, the company that discovered the sweetener, "calling in

his markers" to get it approved.


Responding for the government, the public health minister,

Caroline Flint, said a thorough independent review of safety data had been conducted as recently as 2001 and the

Food Standards Agency advice remained the same: aspartame is safe for use in food. She said the government took food

safety very seriously.


The European Food Safety Authority would be reviewing the Italian study as

soon as it had full data on it, but an initial review by the UK's expert committee on toxicity had not been

convinced by its authors' interpretation of their data. "I am advised that aspartame does not cause cancer," she

said, adding that artificial sweeteners also help to control obesity.


Aspartame is now consumed on

average every day by one in 15 people worldwide, most of whom are children, according to the MP. It is used to

sweeten no fewer than 6,000 products, from crisps, confectionery, chewing gums, diet and sports drinks to vitamin

pills and medicines, including those for children. Yet the science that supported its approval was "biased,

inconclusive and incompetent".


Mr Williams said he was using the immunity he was afforded under

parliamentary privilege to initiate a debate about aspartame's safety which had been largely repressed since the

early 1980s, with the help of the sweetener industry's lawyers.


Independent research published

last month by the European Ramazzini Foundation showed moderate regular consumption of aspartame led to a repeated

incidence of malignant tumours in rats and "should have set alarm bells ringing in health departments around the

world", he said. "The World Health Organisation recognises such findings in rats as being highly predictive of a

carcinogenic risk for humans. The contrast between the quality of the science in the Ramazzini study and the

industry studies could not be more clear and more damaging to the industry."


Mr Williams, the MP

for Brecon and Radnorshire and a Cambridge science graduate, said he had been looking into the safety of aspartame

for more than a year. At first he had been unconvinced by the "internet conspiracy theories" but he said what he had

found had "truly horrified" him.


Sound science and proper regulatory and political independence had

been notable by their absence from the approval of aspartame, he said. In addition to Mr Rumsfeld being instrumental

in securing aspartame's approval, with the support of the then newly elected president Ronald Reagan, there had

been numerous examples of decision makers who were worried about aspartame's safety being discredited or being

removed from their positions. Industry sympathisers had been appointed to replace them and were in turn recompensed

with lucrative jobs working for the sweetener industry.


The European Food Safety Authority said

last night that it planned to review the safety of aspartame as "a matter of high priority" in the light of the

Ramazzini Foundation study. The foundation's director, Dr Morando Soffritti, said he expected to send the authority

a 1,000-page dossier by the end of the month.


The industry's Aspartame Information Service said Mr

Williams' material brought no new information to the public. "The minister's response was accurate and on point,"

a statement said.



------------

DrSmellThis
01-11-2006, 03:35 PM
[url="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0111-01.htm"]http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0111-01.htm[/url

]

DrSmellThis
01-13-2006, 01:45 PM
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.nsa13jan13,1,3964287.story?coll=bal-home-headlines&ctrack=1&cs

et=true (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.nsa13jan13,1,3964287.story?coll=bal-home-headlines&ctrack=1&cse

t=true)

DrSmellThis
01-13-2006, 01:56 PM
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cell13.h

tml (http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cell13.html)

DrSmellThis
01-14-2006, 08:42 AM
It was one of the first things he did when he got in

office. This fact contradicts administration claims that it was 9/11 motivated. Tired of being lied to

yet?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml



...one thing that appears to be indisputable is that the NSA surveillance began well

before 9/11 and months before President Bush claims Congress gave him the power to use military force against

terrorist threats, which Bush says is why he believed he had the legal right to bypass the judicial

process. Notice the U.S. government document is conveniently

linked, for anyone who is a skeptic.

This warrantless domestic spying on American citizens is not only illegal,

it is impeachable.

belgareth
01-15-2006, 04:03 PM
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/

story?id=1500338&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312)

Netghost56
01-15-2006, 05:21 PM
Yeah, that's why I'm so

dumb. Public schooling.

Nowadays it's all about how you FEEL rather than what you KNOW. And the teachers can't

discipline kids anymore, so kids can do what they want.

There's a vid related to this available on bittorrent

(it's a independent

documentary):http://isohunt.com/release.php?ihq=who+controls+the+children&id=31687
It's about a program

started in the 90s that put intelligence in the back seat in education. (That was far back enough to affect

me).

Official site:
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/

Related

info:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1994/vo10no16.htm
http://www.educationnews.org/perspective

__who_controls_our_ch.htm

belgareth
01-15-2006, 08:34 PM
I've believed for a long time

that there is a general dumbing down of the overall population, that video just supports my fears. The schools are

not completely to blame though. Speaking as an old fart, if I'd have caused trouble in school my dad would have

ripped me a new ....well, you can imagine. Now parents sue the school if their kid gets into trouble.

Holmes
01-15-2006, 08:52 PM
Can't view the

video...


ISpeaking as an old fart, if I'd have caused trouble in school my dad would have

ripped me a new ....well, you can imagine. Now parents sue the school if their kid gets into

trouble.

It's amazing the degree to which everything is everyone else's fault these days.

Especially if there's a couple bucks in it.

"Is it possible, then, to sue you people?" - Sol

Rosenberg (The Jerky Boys), threatening a Lawyer who won't take his case.

belgareth
01-15-2006, 09:00 PM
//Rant=ON//
It isn't my fault

that...
I'm fat, even though I never exercise and eat garbage foods
I don't exercise
I broke the law and am in

jail
I cut myself playing catch with a knife
Burned mytself with coffeee while driving and eating
Wrecked my car

while talking on my cell phone
Got drunk, busted for drunk driving and lost my job
my wife caught me cheating and

divorced me
I can't hold a job
I lie
I cheat
I steal
I harm another person

and on
and on
and on
and

on...

//rant=off//

belgareth
01-30-2006, 04:59 AM
I love it. We demand other

countries hold democratic elections. When they hold those elections and the people vote in nnew leaqdership, we

aren't happy about it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060130/ap_on_re_eu/rice;_ylt=AnC2meTgiZdrf98Us1KPFI.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMT A2Z2szaz

kxBHNlYwN0bQ (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060130/ap_on_re_eu/rice;_ylt=AnC2meTgiZdrf98Us1KPFI.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMT A2Z2szazkxBH

NlYwN0bQ)--

tim929
01-30-2006, 05:37 AM
It is the privelage of being an

american to dissaprove of the choices that others make...but what we dont seem to understand is that if we dont like

the choices other people make it becomes incumbent uppon us to figure out a way to work WITH this situation rather

than sabotage the relationship.It may not work,but the bigger man will try and then say "I told you so" rather than

simply start dropping laser guided bombs from the get go.

DrSmellThis
02-03-2006, 04:39 PM
In this year's State of the

Union, Bush set a goal to eliminate tyranny everywhere, claiming that tyranny anywhere is a threat to our national

security. That belief would seem to imply us fighting in an awful lot of wars.

Bush's neocon interventionism,

and "US-government-everywhereism" is starting to piss off old-school conservatives; who believe in having a small

government, and taking care of our own business.

To wit, check out this scathing article by Pat

Buchanan:

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.p

hp?id=12168 (http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=12168)

As far as I can tell from my reading of critical political discussions over the past five

years, there has been very, very little in the way of attacks from the left on traditional conservative or

Republican philosophies. These American ideas and ways of doing things are just as endangered as liberal insights

and practices. In the past it seems we've needed both perspectives, as well as the wisdom to transcend the

limitations of both.

Criticising this administration is not about partisanship; but is rather about patriotism.

This is not the America we grew up believing in, if I may be so bold. It's about fascism, corporatism, corruption,

and empire-building.

Netghost56
02-03-2006, 04:45 PM
Iraq war vets enter US political fray







Democrats have enlisted special help in the battle for Congress from a small band of Iraq war veterans,

hoping their military experience turns into campaign-trail credibility with voters.

At least 10 veterans of the

Iraq war are running for Congress, all but one as Democrats, in what amounts to an open challenge to both President

George W. Bush's policies in Iraq and the traditional Republican advantage on national security issues.

The

Iraq veterans, all political neophytes, say the call to arms in November's election is a natural extension of their

military service. For many, it is also a direct result of their experiences in a war they now oppose.

"The

veterans who served in Iraq have a special voice and a responsibility to continue our public service," said Patrick

Murphy, a lawyer and veteran of the Army's 82nd Airborne who is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge

Republican Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick in suburban Philadelphia.

"We've seen the truth and we're willing to stand up

for it," Murphy told Reuters. "I have seen with my own eyes why we need a change in direction there, but when I came

home I saw that it's not just about Iraq."

Democrats believe the war veterans will be good messengers in an

election year they hope focuses on the war in Iraq, Republican corruption scandals and sagging public confidence in

Bush's leadership.

The Iraq veterans, part of a larger group of more than 50 military veterans running for

Congress this year as Democrats, also could be an antidote to decades of Republican attacks on Democrats as weak on

defense.

"Their experience gives them instant credibility and the ability to break out and get their views

heard," said Amy Walter, a House analyst with the Cook Political Report. "But it can be a double-edged sword if they

get pigeonholed as one-issue candidates."

REPUBLICAN ONE

Republicans have one pro-war Iraq veteran running

for Congress - in Texas - and more than 40 military veterans on the ballot in House races, but they dismiss their

political impact.

"Having military experience is a great resume item, but it does not automatically make someone

a good candidate," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the House Republican campaign committee. "It takes a lot more to

be a credible candidate than one strong resume point."

Forti said many of the Iraq veterans are long shots

running in Republican districts where local and domestic issues dominate the agenda. The Democrats point to Paul

Hackett, an Iraq veteran who nearly pulled off a huge upset in a heavily Republican Ohio district last summer, for

inspiration.

Hackett is now running for the Senate in Ohio in a high-profile primary clash against Democratic

Rep. Sherrod Brown (news, bio, voting record). Other veterans in competitive races include Murphy, running in a

Democratic-leaning district, and Andrew Horne, a Marine Reserves lieutenant colonel vying for the right to challenge

perpetually endangered Republican Rep. Anne Northup (news, bio, voting record) in Kentucky.

Tammy Duckworth, a

helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq, has garnered a wave of media attention for her race in the Republican

district of retiring Rep. Henry Hyde (news, bio, voting record) in Illinois.

The Democratic veterans all share a

distaste for the war, but like the rest of their party differ on the details of how to end it. They also pledge to

be more than one-issue candidates, and say their experiences in Iraq taught them bitter lessons about Bush's

leadership on a range of topics.

"The current circumstances in Iraq are just a symptom of what is wrong with the

administration," Horne told Reuters. "This administration acts with arrogance, doesn't get advice from Congress or

allies, has difficulty acknowledging its problems and politicizes everything."

Democrats have learned the

pitfalls of relying on military credentials in a campaign, most recently when decorated Vietnam War veteran John

Kerry saw his record shredded under heavy Republican attack during the 2004 White House race.

The Democratic

veterans have formed a political action committee to promote their cause and fight back against Republicans, and

will kick off the campaign with events in Washington next week.
_____________

belgareth
02-04-2006, 06:29 AM
Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds

By LiveScience Staff

posted: 24 January

2006

10:03 am ET





Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions

without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And

they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of

view.

Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to

evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The

subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.

The results

were announced today.

"We did not see any increased activation of the

parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory

University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to

be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."



Bias on both sides

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring

information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.



Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas

that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response

similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said.

"Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want,

and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of

positive ones."

Notably absent were any increases in activation of

the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with

reasoning.

The tests involved pairs of statements by the candidates,

President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, that clearly contradicted each other. The test subjects were asked

to consider and rate the discrepancy. Then they were presented with another statement that might explain away the

contradiction. The scenario was repeated several times for each candidate.

The brain imaging revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious

contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.



"The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person

can learn very little from new data," Westen said.

Vote for Tom Hanks



Other relatively neutral candidates were introduced into the mix,

such as the actor Tom Hanks. Importantly, both the Democrats and Republicans reacted to the contradictions of these

characters in the same manner.

The findings could prove useful

beyond the campaign trail.

"Everyone from executives and judges to

scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to

interpret 'the facts,'" Westen said.

The researchers will present

the findings Saturday at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social

Psychology.

a.k.a.
02-04-2006, 09:44 AM
Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but

detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.


I can’t speak to the

scientific merit of this study, but you can reach the same conclusions by engaging folks in a little political

discussion. George Orwell called it “doublethink”: the capacity to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at

the same time.
In the novel “1984”, “doublethink” was a prerequisiste for success within the government

bureaucracy.
Of course the ultimate test of loyalty was being able to admit, and fully believe, that 2 +

2 = 5. I imagine we’ll be seeing that soon enough.

DrSmellThis
02-04-2006, 08:08 PM
What was the source for that

article?

People in general hate to question their own beliefs. The pain of doing this becomes the overriding

concern, and reason is abandoned. They self identify with their beliefs. People can learn to be flexible and not

feel significant pain from admitting "they're wrong", or simply shift their beliefs whenever indicated. But it is a

learned skill that takes much effort. I think it is a mark of emotional maturity.

belgareth
02-04-2006, 10:52 PM
The source of the article is

listed in the article. I don't have an opinion on the matter because I am not trained in that area. I simply found

the concept interesting and decided to share it.

DrSmellThis
02-05-2006, 03:30 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapc

f/02/05/cartoon.protests/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/cartoon.protests/index.html)

People sure do get into a lot of trouble when they take their own

notion of God and religious beliefs too seriously.

belgareth
02-05-2006, 03:36 PM
That they do, don't they?

a.k.a.
02-05-2006, 03:40 PM
http://www.cnn.co

m/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/cartoon.protests/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/cartoon.protests/index.html)

People sure do get into a lot of trouble when

they take their own notion of God and religious beliefs too seriously.

That they do.
I wonder what

the reaction would be if somebody tried to jokingly depict Jesus as a terrorist. I can still remember all the ruckus

from Martin Scorcese's "Last Temptation of Christ". In that film, Jesus was merely depicted as capable of human

desire.

Netghost56
02-05-2006, 03:51 PM
That was a great movie. Very

thought provoking.

belgareth
02-05-2006, 09:41 PM
I can’t speak to

the scientific merit of this study, but you can reach the same conclusions by engaging folks in a little political

discussion. George Orwell called it “doublethink”: the capacity to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at

the same time.
In the novel “1984”, “doublethink” was a prerequisiste for success within the government

bureaucracy.
Of course the ultimate test of loyalty was being able to admit, and fully believe, that 2 + 2 = 5.

I imagine we’ll be seeing that soon enough.
Yeah, that crossed my mind when I read the article. Mr. Orwell

was an astute observer of human nature and politics.

InternationalPlayboy
02-06-2006, 06:37 AM
http://www.cnn.co

m/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/cartoon.protests/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/cartoon.protests/index.html)

People sure do get into a lot of trouble when

they take their own notion of God and religious beliefs too seriously.

I came across the cartoons

accidentally last week. I won't post a direct link to them but a bit of searching can find them at

humaneventsonline.com. I find it interesting that there has been a violent reaction to these cartoons, some of which

depict the person of controversy as an instigator of violence.

DrSmellThis
02-06-2006, 03:12 PM
I

came across the cartoons accidentally last week. I won't post a direct link to them but a bit of searching can find

them at humaneventsonline.com. I find it interesting that there has been a violent reaction to these cartoons, some

of which depict the person of controversy as an instigator of violence.Black and white thinking based in

superstitious fundamentalism. Not a good combo. But according to a CNN reader poll today, 38% of respondents believe

respect for religion should outweigh the right to free speech. Has anyone else ever felt like an alien on their own

planet?

a.k.a.
02-06-2006, 06:57 PM
I see it as more of a racism/hate

crime issue. Muslims are already being profiled as terrorists. So the image of Mohamed with a bomb is kind of like

depicting the virgin of Guadalupe as a welfare mother, Martin Luther King as a street thug, Thomas Jefferson as an

torturer and etc. It’s not the religion being mocked. It’s the people.
Contrast this cartoon with Rushdie’s

“Satanic Verses”, which satirized Mohamed in order to mock the authority of mullahs and ayatolas — without insulting

the dignity of the people. Now that was a free speech issue.

DrSmellThis
02-07-2006, 03:50 AM
I see it as more

of a racism/hate crime issue. Muslims are already being profiled as terrorists. So the image of Mohamed with a bomb

is kind of like depicting the virgin of Guadalupe as a welfare mother, Martin Luther King as a street thug, Thomas

Jefferson as an torturer and etc. It’s not the religion being mocked. It’s the people.
Contrast this cartoon with

Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses”, which satirized Mohamed in order to mock the authority of mullahs and ayatolas — without

insulting the dignity of the people. Now that was a free speech issue.Hmmm... yeah, I guess the cartoons

could be considered offensive -- not that I really understood them. I am aware they were sort of right wing

cartoons. But how is this not still free speech again? I mean, their protests are also free speech -- until

somebody gets hurt.

One uncomfortable thing I read was that Mohammed was actually a quite violent person from the

very beginning. I believe he led a pretty violent army that took over a lot of towns. If that is true, and I don't

trust every history book I read, Muslims would do well to deal with that.

Honestly, I've seen lots of obscene

art about Jesus but was never offended, even though I was raised Catholic. I think people take Jesus more

"seriously" than he took himself in some important ways.

I honestly think it's healthy to laugh at and see

the folly in even the most "sacred things", since it's not really the "things themselves" that are sacred, if that

makes sense (and I'm sure it doesn't to everyone). According to this line of thinking, though, the more extreme

the mockery one can appreciate, the healthier it is.

belgareth
02-07-2006, 05:57 AM
Reading the local paper this morning I ran across something and wanted to share it. The city of Dallas has

determined they need more bilingual teachers. There's already a legitimate debate about hiring teachers to teach in

spanish but I found another part of it a little baffling. They want to hire illegal immigrants to teach bilingual

classes! That's going a bit far. These people are in this country illegally and we are going to reward them by

hiring them to teach our children?

tim929
02-07-2006, 06:40 AM
The decline of Rome went this way

too bel...Romans became to afluent and lazy to do the work for themsleves and began importing slaves and barbarians

to do the work for them...in the end,we got some realy cool ruins to explore when we go on vacation to Europe.In

generations to come,the white house and the capitol building will be little more than archeological amusements.The

Romans had a problem that we are having right now in fact.The young men of Rome had absolutly no use for entering

military service.They were fat,lazy,over stimulated by the games and the excess of being a Roman and as a

result,Rome had to import barbarians to fill the ranks of its armies with promises of land and citizenship to those

who served.At this point,our recruiters are resorting to some very dirty tricks to fill thier quotas.

One such

trick involves quietly covering up a recruits past criminal history,getting them in and calling it good.By the time

the nice folks at BUPERS (Bureau of Personel) figure out that you arent eligable for service,its too late...the

records for that recruiter show that he made quota,even though his recruits are getting sent home.Thats the only

reason that ANY of the recruiters are even coming close to making quotas.Try finding people who are willing to work

in a warehouse for 8.00 an hour.The only ones willing to work for low wages anymore are Mexicans.They will work for

less than minimum wage and wont complain.They will live several families to an appartment to keep down costs and

work for less than you can hire an American for.Thats why G.W. Bush is such a pussy when it comes to imigration.His

friends back home in Crawford Texas need illeagals to do the work because the rest of us wont work for poverty

wages,and they arent willing to pay more than poverty wages.If we cut off the supply of illeagals now,they would be

put in the uncomfortable position to have to actualy pay fair wages to real Americans that are supporting families

that expect to have an actual standard of living.

I know PLENTY of white folks("white folks" includes

blacks,asians,native americans,pacific islanders etc. who were born and bread in the U.S.A. and hispanics that were

either born here or are actualy LEAGAL) who are fluent in spanish AND english.But since the buget for teachers is so

low,they figure they can hire a half dozen illeagals for the price of one of these other totaly capable and

qualified people.

I realy dont hate Mexicans...in point of fact,I work with a couple immigrants and they and

thier families are fabulous.But they came here LEAGALY and if they hadnt I would have no remorse about turning them

in to INS at gunpoint with a smile!but these people took the time to jump through the hoops and worked hard for the

RIGHT to be here.Yes...the RIGHT to be here.Its thier RIGHT because they did it LEAGALY!!! And God bless them for

it! I have no use for a person whos first act uppon entering my home was to commit a felony just by being here!



Sorry if I sound like an intolerant a$$ hole...but...in point of fact...I am an intolerant a$$ hole and proud of

it too!

belgareth
02-07-2006, 12:19 PM
Compromise Proposed in Eminent Domain Fight Tue Feb 7,

2006







NEW LONDON, Conn. - The mayor of New London, where a fight over

government seizing property led to a controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling, is proposing a compromise for a

group of homeowners.

Under a plan presented to the City Council

Monday night, four people whose homes were seized for a private development would be allowed to stay. The city would

own their properties and the residents would have to pay the city to live

there.

Two other homeowners were excluded from Mayor Beth Sabilia's

plan; one doesn't live in the home and the other moved in after the court battle

began.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June that the quasi-public New

London Development Corp. could take homes in the Fort Trumbull area for private economic development. The 94-acre

project, proposed in 1998, calls for a hotel, office space and upscale housing.

The court also said states are free to ban the taking of property under eminent domain for such projects,

and many states have begun considering such bans.

One of the property

owners who sued over the Fort Trumbull seizures, Susette Kelo, said the mayor's proposal shows that the houses and

the private development can coexist. But she and another plaintiff, Michael Cristofaro, said they aren't interested

in paying rent for homes they owned.

"The ongoing battle of the last

eight years has not been to allow us to live in our homes and pay rent to the city of New London until we die," Kelo

said.

The city council voted Monday to collect rent from the

homeowners while city Law Director Thomas Londregan studies the mayor's

proposal.

Michael Joplin, president of the New London Development

Corp., said the agency would defer to the council's decision.

The

government offered what it said was fair value for the Fort Trumbull homes. Most residents took the money and left,

but those remaining either say the money isn't enough or their homes aren't for sale at all. Money for the houses

still standing has been set aside for the homeowners.

belgareth
02-07-2006, 12:37 PM
There is nothing

wrong with mexican people, my son in law is one. He and his family are all fine people as are most other mexican

people I've known. The majority have stronger family values and a better work ethic than most home-grown Americans

that I know.

Nor am I opposed to immigration whatsoever. This country was made up of immigrants, my wife is one

and most of my older sister's in-laws are immigrants. Every one of them jumped through hoops to come here, met all

the legal standards and made every effort to become a participating member of this country.

All that said, we

are going to hire ellegal immigrants to work and be paid from or tax money? That's not even rational! That's

nearly as wild as giving them driver's licenses. How can you have a law forbidding illegal entry then give the

people who broke the law quasi-legal status by hiring them to work for the government or licensing them to operate

motor vehicles on the streets? Why bother having immigration laws whatsoever?

a.k.a.
02-07-2006, 08:59 PM
The Supreme Court

ruled 5-4 in June that the quasi-public New London Development Corp. could take homes in the Fort Trumbull area for

private economic development.
I would be so pissed if that happened to me.
It’s bad

enough when the city wants to expand freeways. But dispossessing one person of their property so that another person

can get rich? That’s un-American. It’s the kind of stuff that was happening in England when the first settlers

arrived.

belgareth
02-07-2006, 09:01 PM
And now, the city is generously

offering to allow those people to keep their homes IF THE PAY THE CITY RENT FOR THEIR OWN PROPERTY!!! That was the

part that really hit home with me.

a.k.a.
02-07-2006, 10:29 PM
Hmmm... yeah, I

guess the cartoons could be considered offensive -- not that I really understood them. I am aware they were sort

of right wing cartoons. But how is this not still free speech again? I mean, their protests are also free speech --

until somebody gets hurt.
You’re right. Racist free speech is still free speech. Governments shouldn’t

censor it, but citizens should certainly protest it.


One uncomfortable thing I read was

that Mohammed was actually a quite violent person from the very beginning. I believe he led a pretty violent army

that took over a lot of towns. If that is true, and I don't trust every history book I read, Muslims would do well

to deal with that.
Mohammed was no pacifist. He and his followers were being attacked by the rulers of

Mecca. So he negotiated sanctuary with Arabs in Medina. The rulers of Mecca continued harassing his followers with

raiding parties. Mohammed managed to unite the various Arab tribes of Medina against them, but two Jewish tribes

wanted to stay neutral, and one supported the rulers of Mecca. So Mohammed expelled the two neutral tribes and

massacred the enemy tribe — selling the women and children into slavery.
Six years later he led and army of

10,000 that conquered Mecca.
This much is uncontroversial.
I don’t know if Mohammed personally

led other conquests but it certainly wasn’t the end of Muslim conquests in the Middle East, North Africa and parts

of Europe. Like all conquests, it was rationalized as a civilizing mission. Maybe in some ways it was: art, science,

literature, hygiene, medicine, architecture...
All the major religions of our day were spread through

conquest (unless you want to count indigenous faiths, voodoo and Wicca as major religions). Christianity has the

bloodiest history by far and, to this day, it’s primary symbol is the cross. The ancient equivalent of our modern

electric chair.
All religious issues aside. No European culture is in the moral position to preach pacifism

to any other culture.

DrSmellThis
02-09-2006, 10:19 PM
Mohammed was no

pacifist. He and his followers were being attacked by the rulers of Mecca. So he negotiated sanctuary with Arabs in

Medina. The rulers of Mecca continued harassing his followers with raiding parties. Mohammed managed to unite the

various Arab tribes of Medina against them, but two Jewish tribes wanted to stay neutral, and one supported the

rulers of Mecca. So Mohammed expelled the two neutral tribes and massacred the enemy tribe — selling the women and

children into slavery.
Six years later he led and army of 10,000 that conquered Mecca.
This much is

uncontroversial.
I don’t know if Mohammed personally led other conquests but it certainly wasn’t the end of

Muslim conquests in the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe. Like all conquests, it was rationalized as a

civilizing mission. Maybe in some ways it was: art, science, literature, hygiene, medicine, architecture...
All

the major religions of our day were spread through conquest (unless you want to count indigenous faiths, voodoo and

Wicca as major religions). Christianity has the bloodiest history by far and, to this day, it’s primary symbol is

the cross. The ancient equivalent of our modern electric chair.
All religious issues aside. No European culture

is in the moral position to preach pacifism to any other culture.True enough. And it is incumbent on each

tradition to own up to, and critically examine, its violent, inhumane histories.

At least Jesus was himself a

pacifist, and champion of peace, nonjudgment, compassion, and justice. That in no way excuses the Crusades, or any

number of other destructive actions of the Church. There is little resemblance between Christian religions and the

life philosophy of the historical Jesus.

DrSmellThis
02-09-2006, 11:03 PM
What a

suprise!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/09

/cia.leak/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/09/cia.leak/index.html)


On September 30, 2003, President Bush said, "If there is a leak out of my

administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care

of."

belgareth
02-17-2006, 08:35 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060218/ap_on_re_us/ivy_league_sex;_ylt=Al_A6KOth8POWoVMISa4wRB

vzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060218/ap_on_re_us/ivy_league_sex;_ylt=Al_A6KOth8POWoVMISa4wRBvzwcF;_ ylu=X3oDMTA

5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA)--

belgareth
02-18-2006, 10:47 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060218/a

p_on_go_pr_wh/presidential_errors (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060218/ap_on_go_pr_wh/presidential_errors)

Netghost56
02-19-2006, 12:55 AM
I don't agree with Wilson's

mention. He stuck to his guns, and he was trying for world peace. He got closer than anyone ever did. And he hit it

at just the right time. It was the squabbling of the other nations that killed the LON.

belgareth
02-19-2006, 05:39 AM
I'm not an historian and

don't claim to know enough to judge. Only found the article interesting. It's likely that if viewed from another

perspective that you could completely re-order the list.

Mtnjim
02-20-2006, 01:55 PM
PLASTICS
By Russell

Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Good morning.

We've just awakened. Cup of coffee in hand.

We flip through

today's papers.

Looking for stories by our favorite corporate crime reporters.

And this is what we

found:

In the New York Times, Jane Perlez reports that Newmont Mining
Corporation will pay $30 million to

Indonesia in a settlement of a civil
lawsuit in which the government argued that the company had polluted a
bay

with arsenic and mercury. The settlement will have no effect on a
criminal trial of the company and its Indonesian

director that is now
under way in the province of Northern Sulawesi.

In USA Today, Matt Kelley reports that

Senator Arlen Specter asked the
Senate Ethics Committee to investigate whether a top aide improperly
helped direct

nearly $50 million in Pentagon spending to clients
represented by her husband. The Pennsylvania Republican asked

for the
review of legislative assistant Vicki Siegel Herson's actions after
Kelly reported Thursday that his

office inserted 13 provisions into
spending bills benefiting clients of her husband, Michael Herson, a
registered

lobbyist.

In the New York Times, James Glanz reports that Christopher Joseph
Cahill, an executive for a company

that was hired by Kellogg, Brown &
Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, to fly cargo into Iraq for the war
effort

pled guilty to inflating invoices by $1.14 million to cover
fraudulent "war risk surcharges."

The Associated

Press reports out of Charleston, West Virginia that
federal regulators have issued safety citations at the West

Virginia
coal mines where 14 miners died last month. (Big of them. How about a
criminal investigation?)

In the

Washington Post, Kathleen Day reports that the Securities and
Exchange Commission filed civil charges against two

local auditors with
the accounting firm KPMG LLP for failing to act on widespread
bookkeeping irregularities that

the SEC says helped U.S. Foodservice
Inc. overstate profits by millions of dollars in 1999 and 2000. The
civil

complaint alleges that Kevin Hall and Rosemary Meyer "engaged in
improper professional conduct" because they found

numerous "red flags"
in the bookkeeping at the Columbia, Maryland-based hotel and restaurant
supply company but

didn't alert the company's audit committee.

The Associated Press reports that three former executives of a

Berkshire
Hathaway unit and a former American International Group official pled
not guilty to federal charges of

conspiring to distort AIG's finances.

The New York Times, in an editorial titled "Price-Gouging on

Cancer
Drugs?" says that "the high price charged for Avastin, a drug that has
proved moderately effective against

colon cancer and is about to be used
against breast and lung cancer, seems hard to justify on any ground
other

than maximum profit for its maker. The pricing scheme planned by
Genentech and its majority owner, Roche, is a sign

of how the rising
cost of new life-extending drugs may affect American health care unless
ways are found to

mitigate the trend." The Times reported this week that
Genentech's pricing for Avastin will drive its cost to

$8,800 a month
for lung cancer and $7,700 a month for breast cancer, up from the $4,400
cost for colon cancer

patients. The manufacturers go beyond the standard
argument that high prices are needed to recoup research costs

and add a
new twist: the price reflects the value of this medicine to society.

In the Houston Chronicle, Mary

Flood reports that the criminal trial of
Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling is suddenly picking up

speed.

Bloomberg reports that drug wholesaler McKesson Corp. will pay $3
million to settle allegations that it

defrauded the Pentagon by charging
more for medicine than government contracts allowed. The civil
settlement

resolves claims McKesson overcharged for pharmaceutical
products from October 1997 to December 2001, the Justice

Department said.

This is from a quick glance at one morning's newspapers.

And what are we to conclude?

The

idea that the Skilling/Lay trial in Houston is the peak of the most
recent "wave" of corporate crime is a

fantasy.

The wave has not peaked.

And will not peak until the government stops playing tiddlywinks

with
society's most dangerous criminals -- the white-collar class.

And so we update that scene from the movie

The Graduate where the older
guy whispers into a young Dustin Hoffman the one word he believes is the
future --

"plastics."

We look into our crystal ball and whisper into the ears of all young
reporters, prosecutors,

investors, and lawyers -- "corporate crime."


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate

Crime
Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based

Multinational Monitor,
<http://www.multinationalmonitor.org>. Mokhiber and Weissman are
co-authors of On the

Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of
Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).

(c) Russell

Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

This article is posted

at:
<http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2006/000231.html>

DrSmellThis
02-20-2006, 08:04 PM
Chertoff defends Arab firm control of U.S.

ports
Homeland Security director says government review provided

‘assurances’

MSNBC staff and news service

reports
Updated: 2:56 p.m. ET Feb. 19,

2006

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Director

Michael Chertoff on Sunday defended the government’s security review of an Arab company given permission to take

over operations at six major U.S. ports.

“We

have a very disciplined process, it’s a classified process, for reviewing any acquisition by a foreign company of

assets that we consider relevant to national security,” Chertoff told Tim Russert on

“Meet the Press (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/).”

London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., was bought last week by

Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business from the United Arab Emirates. Peninsular and Oriental runs major

commercial operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.



“We don’t take a risk. What we do is we

require a very careful review—we have the FBI involved, we have the Department of Defense involved—of what the

challenges are. We have, in fact, dealt with this port before because we deal with it overseas as part of our

comprehensive global security network,” Chertoff said.

“We’ve built in, and we will build in safeguards to make sure that these kinds of things don’t

happen. And, you know, this is part of the balancing of security, which is our paramount concern, with the need to

still maintain a real robust global trading environment.”

U.S. lawmakers from both parties are questioning the sale, approved by the Bush administration,

as a possible risk to national security.

“It’s

unbelievably tone deaf politically at this point in our history,” Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C. said on “Fox News

Sunday.”

“Most Americans are scratching their

heads, wondering why this company from this region now,” Graham said.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, said she would support legislation to block

foreign companies from buying port facilities.

“I’m going to support legislation to say ‘No more, no way.’ We have to have American companies

running our own ports ... Our infrastructure is at risk,” she said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”



Added Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.: “I think we’ve

got to look into this company. We’ve got to ensure ... the American people that their national security interests

are going to be protected.”

At least one

Senate oversight hearing is planned for later this month.

“Congress is welcome to look at this and can get classified briefings,” Chertoff told CNN’s “Late

Edition.”

“We have to balance the paramount

urgency of security against the fact that we still want to have a robust global trading system,” he added.



Sen. Robert Menendez, who is working on

legislation to prohibit companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from running port operation in the

U.S., said Chertoff’s comments showed him that the administration “just does not get it.”



In a statement, the New Jersey Democrat said,

“No matter what steps the administration claims it has secretly taken, it is an unacceptable risk to turn control of

our ports over to a foreign government, particularly one with a troubling history. We cannot depend on promises a

foreign government has given the administration in secret to secure our ports.”

Chertoff said Dubai Ports World should not be excluded automatically from such

a deal because it is based in the UAE.

Critics

have cited the UAE’s history as an operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks of

Sept. 11, 2001.

In addition, they contend the

UAE was an important transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya

by a Pakistani scientist.

DP World has said it

intends to “maintain and, where appropriate, enhance current security arrangements.” The UAE’s foreign minister has

described his country as an important U.S. ally in fighting terrorism.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10704051/

a.k.a.
02-21-2006, 06:20 AM
“We have to

balance the paramount urgency of security against the fact that we still want to have a robust global trading

system,”
In other words, if you’re an average Arab that comes to this country looking for freedom and

opportunity, don’t be surprised if you get detained without charges, denied legal representation, your assets are

seized and you get shipped off to some undisclosed location where you will be tortured. If you’re a big shot Arab

entrepreneur that comes looking for a way to spend lots of money, don’t be surprised if it takes less than a month

to get high level security clearance and you recieve lucrative opportunities to engage in a highly sensitive

business.

Actually, I think Barbara Boxer has it right. It wasn’t much better when a British firm was

in charge of the facility. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have private enterprises in

charge of national security in the first place. There’s little public oversight, not much accountability and there’s

always a strong motivation to cut corners.

Mtnjim
02-21-2006, 11:13 AM
From E-Week, a computer geek's magazine!!:type:

Judge Orders DOJ to Release Spying

Records
By Caron Carlson
February 17, 2006




A federal judge ordered the Department of Justice to

release records related to the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic spying program by March 8, or else

explain the legal basis under which the records cannot be released.

The order was handed down Feb. 16 in a case

brought against the Justice Department by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

EPIC requested the documents

in December under the Freedom of Information Act, after the New York Times reported that President Bush authorized

the NSA to conduct electronic surveillance of people in the United States without a court order.

EPIC asked four

offices at the Justice Department to hasten the processing and release of the spy program records, and the offices

agreed that the requests merited expedited handling.

However, it remained unclear when EPIC would receive the

information it sought, and so it filed a lawsuit Jan. 19 to stop what it called the agency's "unlawful attempts" to

prevent the center from obtaining the documents.

In ordering the Justice Department to expedite the FOIA request

processing, Judge Henry Kennedy Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that the

department's opinion that it could determine how much time is needed was "easily rejected."

For advice on how to

secure your network and applications, as well as the latest security news, visit Ziff Davis Internet's Security IT

Hub.



"Under DOJ's view of the expedited processing provisions of FOIA, the government would have carte

blanche to determine the time line for processing expedited requests," Kennedy wrote in his opinion.

EPIC asked

the Justice Department for four types of records, including an audit of NSA domestic surveillance activities, a

checklist showing probable cause to eavesdrop, communications about the use of information NSA obtained, and other

documents concerning increased domestic surveillance.

The Justice Department argued that working too fast to

respond to the FOIA request would increase the odds that exempted information (such as classified documents) would

be released accidentally, but the judge dismissed that concern.

Click here to read more about New York rejecting

the Department of Justice's request to track people's cell phone information.

"Vague suggestions that

inadvertent release of exempted documents might occur are insufficient to outweigh the very tangible benefits that

FOIA seeks to further—government openness and accountability," he wrote.

Noting that public awareness of the

government's actions is necessary in democracy, Kennedy said that timely awareness is also a

necessity.

"President Bush has invited meaningful debate about the warrantless surveillance program," Kennedy

wrote.



"That can only occur if DOJ processes its FOIA requests in a timely fashion and releases the

information sought."

David Sobel, general counsel for EPIC, said that the order vindicates the public's right to

know about the spying program.

"The administration has attempted to spin this story by controlling the flow of

information, but the court has now rejected that strategy," Sobel said.

"The government must now produce all

relevant information, or provide a compelling justification to withhold it."

DrSmellThis
02-22-2006, 10:43 AM
NSC, Cheney Aides Conspired to Out CIA Operative
By Jason Leopold
t r u t

h o u t | Investigative Report Monday 20 February 2006

The investigation into the leak of covert CIA

operative Valerie Plame Wilson is heating up. Evidence is mounting that senior officials in the office of Vice

President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council conspired to unmask Plame Wilson's identity to reporters

in an effort to stop her husband from publicly criticizing the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence,

according to sources close to the two-year-old probe.

In recent weeks, investigators working for Special

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald have narrowed their focus to a specific group of officials who played a direct

role in pushing the White House to cite bogus documents claiming that Iraq attempted to purchase 500 tons of

uranium from Niger, which Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had exposed as highly

suspect.

One high level behind-the-scenes player who has been named by witnesses in the case as a

possible source for reporters in the leak is Robert Joseph, formerly the director of nonproliferation at the

National Security Council. Joseph is responsible for placing the infamous "sixteen words" about Iraq's

attempt to purchase uranium from Niger in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.



It's unknown when Fitzgerald will present the grand jury with additional evidence related to this aspect of the

case or if he is close to securing indictments. The sources said the Special Prosecutor is very "methodical,"

and they expect the investigation to continue well into the spring.

The new grand jury hearing

evidence in the leak case was empanelled in November. Right now, the jurors are still absorbing two years' worth

of evidence Fitzgerald presented to the jurors a couple of weeks after the previous grand jury's term expired

at the end of October. Sources said the jurors have raised numerous legal questions about unnamed senior Bush

administration officials against whom Fitzgerald is trying to secure indictments.

Sources close to the

probe said witnesses involved in the case told FBI investigators that Joseph was one of the recipients of a

classified State Department memo in June 2003 that not only debunked the Niger allegations but also included a

top-secret reference to Valerie Plame Wilson's work for the CIA, and that she may have been responsible for

recommending that the CIA send her husband to Niger to investigate the uranium claims in February 2002.



Joseph did not return calls for comment. A spokeswoman for the vice president's office said she would not

comment on "rumors" or "speculation" as long as the investigation is ongoing. Hadley's spokeswoman also did

not return calls for comment, but she has said in the past that Hadley played no role in the leak.

The

sources added that the witnesses testified that Joseph and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley

had worked directly with senior officials from vice president Cheney's office - including Cheney's former

chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, National Security Adviser John Hannah, and White House Deputy Chief

of Staff Karl Rove - during the month of June to coordinate a response to reporters who had phoned the vice

president's office and the NSC about the administration's use of the Niger documents.

Libby was

indicted in October on five counts of lying to investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice related to his

role in the Plame Wilson leak. Legal scholars said that Fitzgerald can ask a grand jury to add conspiracy

charges against Libby if he uncovers evidence that Libby and other administration officials worked together to

leak Plame Wilson's identity to reporters in an effort to silence her husband. If additional charges were

filed against Libby it would come in the form of a superseding indictment. Fitzgerald would have to introduce new

evidence and witnesses against Libby to the grand jury, and the grand jury would decide whether there were

enough evidence to support the superseding indictment.



In a court filing (http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/files/Libby_060216.pdf) made public Friday in

response to a defense motion in which Libby's attorneys wanted Fitzgerald to turn over highly classified

documents to assist the defense's case, Fitzgerald made it clear that Libby was not charged with conspiracy.



"Libby is not charged with conspiracy or any other offense involving acting in concert with others, and the

indictment lists no un-indicted co-conspirators," states Fitzgerald's motion, which asks a judge to deny

the defense motion seeking evidence Fitzgerald said is unrelated to Libby's criminal indictment.

That

could change, however, the sources said, if there is enough evidence to support conspiracy charges.



Although that remains to be seen, former State Department and CIA officials who have testified about their role

in the leak said they believe officials at the National Security Council and in the vice president's office

worked together to unmask Plame Wilson to reporters, specifically to undercut her husband's credibility. They

said that Joseph was one NSC staffer who worked with Cheney officials to do so.

Joseph, who is now the

Under Secretary of State for Arms Control - a position once held by John Bolton, now United States Ambassador to

the United Nations - testified before the grand jury that he played no part in the leak and was not involved

in attempts by the administration to discredit Wilson.

Moreover, Joseph testified that he did not recall

receiving a warning in the form of a phone call from Alan Foley, director of the CIA's nonproliferation,

intelligence and arms control center, saying that the "sixteen words" should not be included in Bush's speech,

the sources said.

Foley had revealed this element during a closed-door hearing before the Senate

Select Committee on Intelligence back in July 2003 - just two weeks after Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York

Times that proved the administration cited suspect intelligence claiming Iraq attempted to purchase uranium

from Niger.

The Senate committee had held hearings during this time to try to find out how the

administration came to rely on the Niger intelligence at a time when numerous intelligence agencies had warned

top officials in the Bush administration that it was unreliable.

Foley said he spoke to Joseph a day or

two before President Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address and told Joseph that detailed

references to Iraq and Niger should be excluded from Bush's speech. Foley told committee members that Joseph

agreed to water down the language and would instead, he told Foley, attribute the intelligence to the British,

which is exactly what Bush's speech said.

However, a few weeks before Foley's meeting with the Senate

committee, the Niger intelligence was beginning to unravel and threatened to expose the roles of Libby,

Hadley, Joseph, Hannah, and Rove in getting the administration to rely upon it to build the case for war.



The sources said it was during this time that Libby, Hadley, Joseph, Hannah and Rove plotted to silence Wilson by

leaking his wife's name to a specific group of reporters, saying that she chose him for the fact-finding

mission to Niger and as a result his investigation was highly suspect. It's unclear what role, if any, Cheney

played, but the sources said Fitzgerald is trying to determine if the vice president was involved.

The

sources said Hannah is one of the cooperating witnesses in the probe.

The sources said this time frame was

chosen because there were "rumors" that Wilson was "going to go public" and reveal that he had checked out

the Niger claims on behalf of the CIA and that there was no truth to them. According to the sources close to

the probe, all five of the officials have spoken with reporters about Plame Wilson.

At the same time that

Plame Wilson's CIA status was leaked to reporters, Libby, Rove and Hadley had been exchanging emails that

included draft statements explaining how the "sixteen words" ended up in President Bush's State of the

Union address, the sources added.

"Before Mr. Wilson's article appeared in the New York Times," one

source close to the case said, "the administration still insisted that Niger still had merit. It was only

after the article had been published that the White House accepted responsibility."

Wilson disclosed in

an op-ed he wrote in the New York Times that he had been the special envoy chosen by the CIA in February 2002 to

travel to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from the

African country.

Wilson's fact-finding mission had come as a result of additional questions Vice

President Cheney raised with the CIA about the veracity of those allegations a month or so before Wilson was

selected for the mission. Wilson wrote in the column that he had reported back to the CIA eight days after his

trip that there was no truth to the charges. In his column, he accused the administration of ignoring his report.

He said President Bush and Cheney continued to cite the Niger uranium intelligence, knowing it was false, in

order to dupe the public and Congress into supporting the war.

In the four months prior to writing his

column, Cheney and officials from the NSC insisted that the Niger intelligence had merit, and said as much

publicly, despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Association found that they were crude forgeries.

Moreover, there is evidence that Cheney, Hadley, Libby, and numerous other officials were warned as early as

March 2002 - one year before the start of the Iraq war - that claims suggesting Iraq tried to purchase uranium

from Niger were baseless.

Indeed, witnesses in the case have testified that President Bush's senior

aides, the vice president's office, the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the

Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the National Security Council had received and

read a March 9, 2002, cable sent by the CIA that debunked the Niger claims.

The cable was prepared by a

CIA analyst and was based on Wilson's oral report upon his return from Niger. It did not mention Wilson by name,

but quoted a "CIA source" and Niger officials Wilson had questioned during his eight-day mission, who said

there was absolutely no truth to the claims that Iraq had tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium ore

from Niger.

Cheney and other officials connected to the leak have said over the years that they never saw

such a report from the CIA, and had never heard of Wilson until he became the subject of news accounts in which

the former ambassador called into question the veracity of the Niger documents upon which the uranium claims

were based.

The sources said it was during this month, March 2003, when Wilson arrived on the

administration's radar as a result of his public comments that alleged the White House had manipulated

intelligence, that Cheney, Libby, and Hadley spearheaded an effort to discredit Wilson.

It was during the

course of their attempts to attack Wilson's credibility and rebut his charges that officials in the State

Department, the CIA, Cheney's office, and the National Security Council - many of whom were responsible for

pushing the administration to cite the Niger claims - learned that Wilson's wife was a covert CIA agent and,

upon learning that she may have been responsible for sending Wilson to Niger, leaked her name to a handful of

reporters.

Five days after Wilson's explosive column was published, CIA Director George Tenet accepted

responsibility for allowing the infamous "sixteen words" to be included in Bush's January 28, 2003, State of

the Union address. Many people interpreted this as Tenet falling on his sword to protect the president.



Two weeks later, the CIA revealed that other administration officials were culpable as well. CIA officials sent

Hadley two memos in October 2002 warning him not to continue peddling the Niger claims to the White House

because the intelligence was not accurate.

Hadley, who didn't heed the CIA's warnings at the time, said

during a press conference on July 23, 2003, that he had forgotten about the memos.

belgareth
02-22-2006, 10:55 AM
You know, the more I read the

more I think Cheney is the real bad guy here. Sometimes it seems like he pushes all the buttons and King George is

only doing what he's told. Doesn't speak any better of GWB but might make things clearer.

DrSmellThis
02-22-2006, 02:13 PM
Published on Wednesday,

February 22, 2006 by Knight Ridder (http://www.realcities.com/)



Dubai Company Set to Run U.S. Ports Has Ties to

Administration

by

Michael McAuliff
WASHINGTON - The

Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House. One

is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale

of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal

and Newark's container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port

operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.

The

other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and who was tapped by

Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.

The ties raised more concerns about the decision to

give port control to a company owned by a nation linked to the Sept. 11 hijackers.

"The more you look at this

deal, the more the deal is called into question," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who said the deal was

rubber-stamped in advance - even before DP World formally agreed to buy London's P&O port company.

Besides

operations in New York and Jersey, Dubai would also run port facilities in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Baltimore and

Miami.

The political fallout over the deal only grows.

"It's particularly troubling that the United States

would turn over its port security not only to a foreign company, but a state-owned one," said western New York's

Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee. Reynolds is responsible for helping

Republicans keep their majority in the House.

Snow's Treasury Department runs the Committee on Foreign

Investment in the U.S., which includes 11 other agencies.

"It always raises flags" when administration officials

have ties to a firm, Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., said, but insisted that stopping the deal was more important.



The New York Daily News has learned that lawmakers also want to know if a detailed 45-day investigation should have

been conducted instead of one that lasted no more than 25 days.

According to a 1993 congressional measure, the

longer review is mandated when the company is owned by a foreign government and the purchase "could result in

control of a person engaged in interstate commerce in the U.S. that could affect the national security of the

U.S."

Congressional sources said the president has until March 2 to trigger that closer look.

"The most

important thing is for someone to explain how this is consistent with our national security," Fossella said.




© 2006 KRT Wire and wire service sources

Mtnjim
02-23-2006, 02:28 PM
All I can say to the above post is

"Yes, and??"!!

It's to be expected Bush and friends is going to get as much for his friends as he can, it's a

given!!!

tim929
02-23-2006, 03:13 PM
Going out and handing lucrative

contracts to friends is a time honored tradition in politics.Clinton did it,Bush Sr. did it,reagan did it,Carter did

it,Ford did it,Nixon did it....Caesar did it,the Pharos all did it...Its just the way politics is.The problems I

have with this administration are these:The contracts that are being handed out bear fruit for a very small number

of people rather than "floating all boats" and the fact that this administration is so blatant and "in your face"

about it.At least Clinton made an effort to make it look legit.These people dont even try...they just ram it through

and smile.I suppose its thier twisted way of claiming to be honest by not hiding the fact that they are bending us

over and...well...you get the picture.

DrSmellThis
02-23-2006, 04:07 PM
Last night on the radio I heard an eye-opening interview with one of Ronald Reagan's former economic

advisers, a former Wall Street Journal economics reporter (hardly a "left wing liberal" by history). I remember his

analysis well; but not his name, unfortunately. If I find more info on him I'll post it.

The U.S. Bureau of

Labor Statistics released some employment numbers recently, showing that only two million jobs were created over the

past five years.

That's one million in the private sector and one million in the public sector. But in

no way does that represent a real increase in jobs.

The number of jobs required to keep pace with

population growth over that period was 9 million.

So we are short by 7 million jobs. Those are literally

depression-era numbers (1930's most recent precedent).

It's even more depressing to look at the areas in

which the "new jobs" were created.

The biggest single increase was in lower income social service/health care

jobs (not doctors, psychologists and nurses, for example). After that was bartenders and wait staff. Third were

creditors and collection agencies. The entire growth in engineer-type jobs can be attributed to lower wage hiring of

immigrants, rather than American engineers. There is no net growth for college age, entry level workers, except in

bartending/wait staff. Great use for your college degree, n'est pas? There is also a "growth" in

construction jobs, all of which was taken up by a combination of legal and illegal Mexican workers. Those were the

major factors, but I might have reversed a couple of factors in the rank ordering.

Meanwhile upper tier

executives and CEOs especially are enjoying logarithmic levels of income growth every year (here I forget, but

wasn't it something like a 50% growth?), tied mostly into bonuses for cost reducing (i.e., cheaper labor through

outsourcing overseas, hiring foreign workers), rather than salary. Obviously, the gap between rich and poor has

grown every year.

Does anyone else see the overall theme here? Within an overall massive shortage of jobs, the

only "growth" benefitting average Americans is due to the greater number of sick and troubled people, more people

drinking, more people who can't pay their bills; and more of our business/economy going to other countries. So

although there are 7 million fewer jobs for the American population, the main remaining opportunity within that is

to capitalize on the growth of poverty and chaos among the lowest SES class, at their expense, relative to

ever-wealthier cost-cutting corporate execs.

Further, the new tendency is for people to drop out of the work

force permanently, rendering the common unemployment statistic, which measures how many are laid off and collecting

unemployment, useless as an overall economic measure. That is in stark contrast to unemployment stats during past

years where a healthy manufacturing economy meant cyles of production that would absorb those temporarily laid off.

Also, many states are running out of unemployment insurance, which also makes that statistic dubious.

The

primary factor supporting the economy among the middle and lower classes was people spending their savings. The

American people overall are saving less than they have since the depression. This kind of spending cannot

last.

The economist being interviewed predicted we'd be a "third world country in ten years" at this

rate, and said that even radical domestic protectionism (which he seemed to advocate for: U.S. workers producing

U.S. goods for U.S. consumers -- I could see his point) was unlikely to bring us out of this crisis at this point.

a.k.a.
02-23-2006, 05:50 PM
Last night on the

radio I heard an eye-opening interview with one of Ronald Reagan's former economic advisers, a former Wall Street

Journal economics reporter (hardly a "left wing liberal" by history). I remember his analysis well; but not his

name, unfortunately. If I find more info on him I'll post it.
Could it be Paul Craig Roberts? He

was Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and a former Associate Editor for the Wall Street Journal.


If so, he’s a frequent contributor to counterpunch.org.
Here’s his take on Bush’s latest State of the Union

speech:

The True State of the Union
More Deception from the Bush White House

By PAUL CRAIG

ROBERTS

Gentle reader, if you prefer comforting lies to harsh truths, don't read this column.

The

state of the union is disastrous. By its naked aggression, bullying, illegal spying on Americans, and illegal

torture and detentions, the Bush administration has demonstrated American contempt for the Geneva Convention, for

human life and dignity, and for the civil liberties of its own citizens. Increasingly, the US is isolated in the

world, having to resort to bribery and threats to impose its diktats. No country any longer looks to America for

moral leadership. The US has become a rogue nation.

Least of all did President Bush tell any truth about the

economy. He talked about economic growth rates without acknowledging that they result from eating the seed corn and

do not produce jobs with a living wage for Americans. He touted a low rate of unemployment and did not admit that

the figure is false because it does not count millions of discouraged workers who have dropped out of the work

force.

Americans did not hear from Bush that a new Wal-Mart just opened on Chicago's city boundary and

25,000 people applied for 325 jobs (Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 26), or that 11,000 people applied for a few Wal-Mart

jobs in Oakland, California. Obviously, employment is far from full.

Neither did Bush tell Americans any of

the dire facts reported by economist Charles McMillion in the January 19 issue of Manufacturing & Technology

News:

During Bush's presidency the US has experienced the slowest job creation on record (going back to

1939). During the past five years private business has added only 958,000 net new jobs to the economy, while the

government sector has added 1.1 million jobs. Moreover, as many of the jobs are not for a full work week, "the

country ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had in January 2001."

McMillion reports

that the largest sources of private sector jobs have been health care and waitresses and bartenders. Other areas of

the private sector lost so many jobs, including supervisory/managerial jobs, that had health care not added 1.4

million new jobs, the private sector would have experienced a net loss of 467,000 jobs between January 2001 and

December 2005 despite an "economic recovery." Without the new jobs waiting tables and serving drinks, the US economy

in the past five years would have eked out a measly 64,000 jobs. In other words, there is a job depression in the

US.

McMillion reports that during the past five years of Bush's presidency the US has lost 16.5% of its

manufacturing jobs. The hardest hit are clothes manufacturers, textile mills, communications equipment, and

semiconductors. Workforces in these industries shrunk by 37 to 46 percent. These are amazing job losses. Major

industries have shriveled to insignificance in half a decade.

Free trade, offshore production for US markets,

and the outsourcing of US jobs are the culprits. McMillion writes that "every industry that faces foreign

outsourcing or import competition is losing jobs," including both Ford and General Motors, both of which recently

announced new job losses of 30,000 each. The parts supplier, Delphi, is on the ropes and cutting thousands of jobs,

wages, benefits, and pensions.

If the free trade/outsourcing propaganda were true, would not at least some US

export industries be experiencing a growth in employment? If free trade and outsourcing benefit the US economy, how

did America run up $2.85 trillion in trade deficits over the last five years? This means Americans consumed almost

$3 trillion dollars more in goods and services than they produced and turned over $3 trillion of their existing

assets to foreigners to pay for their consumption. Consuming accumulated wealth makes a country poorer, not

richer.

Americans are constantly reassured that America is the leader in advanced technology and intellectual

property and doesn't need jobs making clothes or even semiconductors. McMillion puts the lie to this reassurance.

During Bush's presidency, the US has lost its trade surplus in manufactured Advanced Technology Products (ATP). The

US trade deficit in ATP now exceeds the US surplus in Intellectual Property licenses and fees. The US no longer

earns enough from high tech to cover any part of its import bill for oil, autos, or clothing.

This is an

astonishing development. The US "superpower" is dependent on China for advanced technology products and is dependent

on Asia to finance its massive deficits and foreign wars. In view of the rapid collapse of US economic potential, my

prediction in January 2004 that the US would be a third world economy in 20 years was optimistic. Another five years

like the last, and little will be left. America's capacity to export manufactured goods has been so reduced that

some economists say that there is no exchange rate at which the US can balance its trade.

McMillion reports

that median household income has fallen for a record fifth year in succession. Growth in consumer spending has

resulted from households spending their savings and equity in their homes. In 2005 for the first time since the

Great Depression in the 1930s, American consumers spent more than they earned, and the government budget deficit was

larger than all business savings combined. American households are paying a record share of their disposable income

to service their debts.

With America hemorrhaging red ink in every direction, how much longer can the dollar

hold on to its role as world reserve currency?

The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is the cradle

of the propaganda that globalization is win-win for all concerned. Free trader Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley

reports that the mood at the recently concluded Davos meeting was different, because the predicted "wins" for the

industrialized world have not made an appearance.

Roach writes that "job creation and real wages in the

mature, industrialized economies have seriously lagged historical norms. It is now commonplace for recoveries in the

developed world to be either jobless or wageless--or both."

Roach is the first free trade economist to admit

that the disruptive technology of the Internet has dashed the globalization hopes. It was supposed to work like

this: The first world would lose market share in tradable manufactured goods and make up the job and economic loss

with highly-educated knowledge workers. The "win-win" was supposed to be cheaper manufactured goods for the first

world and more and better jobs for the third world.

It did not work out this way, Roach writes, because the

Internet allowed job outsourcing to quickly migrate from call centers and data processing to the upper end of the

value chain, displacing first world employees in "software programming, engineering, design, and the medical

profession, as well as a broad array of professionals in the legal, accounting, actuarial, consulting, and financial

services industries."

This is what I have been writing for years, while the economics profession adopted a

position of total denial. The first world gainers from globalization are the corporate executives, who gain millions

of dollars in bonuses by arbitraging labor and substituting cheaper foreign labor for first world labor. For the

past decade free market economists have served as apologists for corporate interests that are dismantling the

ladders of upward mobility in the US and creating what McMillion writes is the worst income inequality on

record.

Globalization is wiping out the American middle class and terminating jobs for university graduates,

who now serve as temps, waitresses and bartenders. But the whores among economists and the evil men and women in the

Bush administration still sing globalization's praises.

The state of the nation has never been worse. The

Great Depression was an accident caused by the incompetence of the Federal Reserve, which was still new at its job.

The new American job depression is the result of free trade ideology. The new job depression is creating a reserve

army of the unemployed to serve as desperate recruits for neoconservative military adventures. Perhaps that explains

the Bush administration's enthusiasm for

globalization.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02012006.html

People that feel

Reagan did a good job with the economy might find this article interesting. Roberts continues to support

Reaganomics, but he feels the current administration has it all wrong:


http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02062006.html

DrSmellThis
02-23-2006, 06:03 PM
Good job, AKA! You found it.

It is for sure the same guy. I enjoyed the two articles as well. The guy, who appears to be fairly non-partisan,

makes excellent points by the bushel-basket.

Netghost56
02-23-2006, 06:50 PM
Further, the new

tendency is for people to drop out of the work force permanently, rendering the common unemployment statistic, which

measures how many are laid off and collecting unemployment, useless as an overall economic measure.

We

heard that last year. It also shows you that "certain" news networks like to pick and choose which statistics they

run.

The rest sounds about right.

I read last spring about bread lines forming in the MidWest. They weren't

really bread lines, but what it was: The number of people appearing at a gov. commodity/soup kitchen (several in

different cities) jumped from a few dozen to several hundred. The article mentioned a mile of cars lined up at one

place. People were eventually turned away because they ran out of food.

Here's a case to ponder: My neighbor has

40 acres of pasture, 70 head of cattle, three trucks, a tractor, an ATV, two chicken houses, a smaller piece of

property 1 hour away, one house and he's just built another. Everything I've just listed- he's mortaged. OK? He

can't sell his land or his vehicles, can't sow crops, can't kill a cow for meat, can't buy feed unless he sells

some cows, which he can't do without the bank's consent. What kind of life is that? I mean, the bank owns

everything but his underpants!

IMHO, even if you have to scrape dirt, "DON'T GET IN DEBT". I see everyone I know

in debt, and I can't see how they think they can pull themselves out and keep up their exorbiant lifestyle. We may

be poor, but we don't owe anybody anything!

DrSmellThis
02-24-2006, 06:04 AM
Average family income drops

2.3%
By Sue Kirchhoff, USA TODAY

The 2001 recession was shallow, but its effects were steep.
Average family

incomes fell in the USA from 2001 to 2004, pulled down by a sluggish recovery from the downturn and the sharp stock

market drop, the Federal Reserve said Thursday. The decline — the first since 1989-92 — was accompanied by the

smallest increase in net worth in that period.

In its comprehensive Survey of Consumer Finances, released every

three years, the Fed said the median net worth of the bottom 40% of families declined, while those at the top saw

gains. The percentage of families investing in stocks fell 3.3 percentage points to 48.6% from 2001 to 2004, a level

last reached some time between the 1995 and 1998 surveys.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com,

says job growth and incomes have been picking up since the survey period. But the report provides more troubling

evidence of a rising gap in wealth in the USA.

"The household balance sheet is in good shape, better shape today

... but it's not improved for everybody. It's improved for the people in the top distribution of income and

wealth," he says.

From 2001 to 2004, average family income fell 2.3%, to an inflation-adjusted $70,700 from

$72,400 in the 1998-2001 period. By contrast, from 1998 to 2001, average income jumped 17.3%. Median income — the

midpoint of the income range — rose 1.6% to $43,200.

Fed economists said the figures were "strongly influenced"

by a more-than-6% drop in median real wages during the period. Also, investment income was less than in the stock

market boom years of the late 1990s. (Related:

Full report (http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2006/financesurvey.pdf))

Real net worth —

the difference between family assets and liabilities — rose only slightly from 2001 to 2004. Median net worth rose

only 1.5% to $93,100 during the period, vs. a 10.3% gain from 1998 to 2001. And liabilities rose faster than assets,

due largely to a big rise in mortgage debt.

Though the economy was in recession in 2001, it steadily improved

from 2002 to 2004 with low inflation and falling unemployment.

There was some good news in the report.

Minorities, who have long lagged behind whites in income, saw healthier gains. Homeownership rates rose. Still,

minority income remains much lower, about 60% of whites.

"The measured gains in wealth in the 2001-04 period pale

in comparison with the increases of the preceding three years," wrote Fed economists Brian Bucks, Arthur Kennickell

and Kevin Moore.

DrSmellThis
02-24-2006, 06:10 AM
From Capitol Hill Blue


The Rant
Secret Service agents say Cheney was drunk when he shot lawyer
By DOUG THOMPSON
Feb 22,

2006, 07:35

Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Dick Cheney when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington

on a hunting outing two weeks ago say Cheney was "clearly inebriated" at the time of the shooting.

Agents

observed several members of the hunting party, including the Vice President, consuming alcohol before and during the

hunting expedition, the report notes, and Cheney exhibited "visible signs" of impairment, including slurred speech

and erratic actions.

According to those who have talked with the agents and others present at the outing, Cheney

was drunk when he gunned down his friend and the day-and-a-half delay in allowing Texas law enforcement officials on

the ranch where the shooting occurred gave all members of the hunting party time to sober up.

We talked with a

number of administration officials who are privy to inside information on the Vice President's shooting "accident"

and all admit Secret Service agents and others say they saw Cheney consume far more than the "one beer' he claimed

he drank at lunch earlier that day.

"This was a South Texas hunt," says one White House aide. "Of course there

was drinking. There's always drinking. Lots of it."

One agent at the scene has been placed on administrative

leave and another requested reassignment this week. A memo reportedly written by one agent has been destroyed,

sources said Wednesday afternoon.

Cheney has a long history of alcohol abuse, including two convictions of

driving under the influence when he was younger. Doctors tell me that someone like Cheney, who is taking blood

thinners because of his history of heart attacks, could get legally drunk now after consuming just one drink.



If Cheney was legally drunk at the time of the shooting, he could be guilty of a felony under Texas law and the

shooting, ruled an accident by a compliant Kenedy County Sheriff, would be a prosecutable offense.

But we will

never know for sure because the owners of the Armstrong Ranch, where the shooting occurred, barred the sheriff's

department from the property on the day of the shooting and Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas III agreed to wait

until the next day to send deputies in to talk to those involved.

Sheriff's Captain Charles Kirk says he went

to the Armstrong Ranch immediately after the shooting was reported on Saturday, February 11 but both he and a game

warden were not allowed on the 50,000-acre property. He called Salinas who told him to forget about it and return

to the station.

"I told him don't worry about it. I'll make a call," Salinas said. The sheriff claims he

called another deputy who moonlights at the Armstrong ranch, said he was told it was "just an accident" and made the

decision to wait until Sunday to investigate.

"We've known these people for years. They are honest and

wouldn't call us, telling us a lie," Salinas said.

Like all elected officials in Kenedy County, Salinas owes

his job to the backing and financial support of Katherine Armstrong, owner of the ranch and the county's largest

employer.

"The Armstrongs rule Kenedy County like a fiefdom," says a former employee.

Secret Service

officials also took possession of all tests on Whittington's blood at the hospitals where he was treated for his

wounds. When asked if a blood alcohol test had been performed on Whittington, the doctors who treated him at

Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial in Corpus Christi or the hospital in Kingsville refused to answer. One admits

privately he was ordered by the Secret Service to "never discuss the case with the press."

It's a sure bet that

is a private doctor who treated the victim of Cheney's reckless and drunken actions can't talk to the public then

any evidence that shows the Vice President drunk as a skunk will never see the light of day.

belgareth
02-24-2006, 11:16 AM
Why consumer pocketbooks had a rough start this millennium By Mark Trumbull, Staff writer of The Christian

Science Monitor

Fri Feb 24,

2006

As Americans entered a new millennium, gains in their pocketbook

slowed dramatically.

Median incomes rose just 1.6 percent after

inflation during the 2001-04 period, according to data released Thursday by the Federal Reserve Board. The

median family net worth, a measure of wealth that represents the sum of all assets minus liabilities, rose a

similarly small 1.5 percent in that period.

Gains are better than

losses, but the survey confirms and amplifies a trend of wage stagnation that is continuing to dampen American

paychecks into 2006.

"It is a long-term trend," says Mark Weisbrot,

an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, which studies the well-being of American

workers and families. "Over the past 30 years, the median wage has grown about 9 or 10

percent."

The Federal Reserve survey of consumer finances comes out

every three years, and represents a more detailed portrait of family finances than the monthly economic reports that

come from the Department of Labor or other government agencies.

The period studied in its new survey encompassed a rocky time for the stock market, a slow-growing job market,

and a rise in both home prices and family debts.

Inflation-adjusted

incomes have grown so slowly, Mr. Weisbrot says, despite solid growth in productivity. A worker today is able to

produce about 80 percent more, per hour of work, than his or her counterpart 30 years

ago.

"Globalization is part of the process by which the bargaining

power of most employees in the United States has been drastically reduced so that they don't capture most of the

gains from the economy," he says.

Thanks in large measure to a rough

stock market, the 2001-04 period was not necessarily a lucrative one for the richest Americans

either.

The median measure of income captures the "typical" family -

with half of households above and half beneath that number. It reached $43,200 in 2004, up from $42,500 in

2001.

Yet average incomes fell, in part due to a plunge in the

earnings of the top 10 percent of families ranked on a scale of net worth. Essentially, they weren't able to earn

as much on their assets as in 2001. It's not that managerial salaries have fallen. But the recent period hasn't

been quite the booming opportunity for capital gains and stock options that the late 1990s

was.

Thus, the average American family income fell from $72,400 in

2001 to $70,700 in 2004. The average income of families in the top 10 percent of net worth fell from $273,100 to

$256,000 during that period.

The net worth, meanwhile, rose somewhat

for families of all levels of wealth, although not as strongly as in the late

1990s.

The median, or midpoint, for net worth rose by 1.5 percent to

$93,100 from 2001 to 2004. That growth was far below the 10.3 percent gain in median net worth from 1998 to 2001, a

period when the stock market reached record highs before starting to decline in early

2000.

The Fed survey found that the share of Americans' financial

assets invested in stocks dipped to 17.6 percent in 2004, down from 21.7 percent in

2001.

The percentage of Americans who owned stocks, either directly

or through a mutual fund, fell by 3.3 percentage points to 48.6 percent in 2004, down from 51.9 percent in

2001.

Stock ownership rates were highest in 2004 among families with

higher incomes and heads of households aged 55 to 64. Overall median stock holdings fell to $24,300 in 2004, down

from $36,700 in 2001. With baby boomers turning 60 this year and nearing retirement, the survey found that the

percentage of families with some type of tax-deferred retirement account, such as a 401(k), fell by 2.5 percentage

points to 49.7 percent of all families.

However, those who had

retirement accounts saw their holdings increase. The median for holdings in retirement accounts rose by 13.9 percent

to $35,200.

The Fed survey found that debts as a percent of total

assets rose to 15 percent in 2004, up from 12.1 percent in 2001. Mortgages to finance home purchases were by far the

biggest share of total debt at 75.2 percent in 2004, unchanged from the 2001 level.



"Three key shifts in the 2001-04 period underlie the changes in net

worth," said the Fed researchers involved in the study. "First, the strong appreciation of house values and a rise

in the rate of homeownership produced a substantial gain in the value of holdings of residential real estate."



Second, the rate of ownership of stocks in direct and indirect forms

(such as through mutual funds) declined, as did the typical amount held.

Third, the amount of debt relative to assets surged, notably debt secured by real estate. The upshot:

"Families devoted more of their income to servicing debts, despite a general decline in interest rates," the

researchers said.

The fraction of families with debt payments 60

days or more overdue rose substantially, mainly among people in the bottom 80 percent of the income ladder.



The Fed survey of consumer finances is conducted between May and

December of every third year, and involves interviews with several thousand US families.



• Material from the Associated Press was used in this

report.

a.k.a.
02-24-2006, 11:51 AM
The guy, who

appears to be fairly non-partisan, makes excellent points by the bushel-basket.

I think so too. He

gives a very straightforward account of America’s decline. Here’s the scariest one I’ve read:


August 9,

2005
Good News! Soon You'll No Longer Need an Expensive College Education to Work in the US
Watching the

Economy Crumble
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The US continues its descent into the Third World, but you would

never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July payroll jobs release.

The media gives

a bare bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a

reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface things look to be pretty much OK. It is when

you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises.

Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13%) are

tax-supported government jobs. That leaves 181,000 private sector jobs. Of these private sector jobs, 177,000, or

98%, are in the domestic service sector.

Here is the breakdown of the major categories:

• 30,000

food servers and bar tenders;
• 28,000 health care and social assistance:
• 12,000 real estate;


• 6,000 credit intermediation;
• 8,000 transit and ground passenger transportation;
• 50,000 retail

trade; and
• 8,000 wholesale trade.

(There were 7,000 construction jobs, most of which were filled by

Mexicans immigrants.)

Not a single one of these jobs produces a tradable good or service that can be exported

or serve as an import substitute to help reduce the massive and growing US trade deficit. The US economy is

employing people to sell things, to move people around, and to serve them fast food and alcoholic beverages. The

items may have an American brand name, but they are mainly made off shore. For example, 70% of Wal-Mart’s goods are

made in China.

Where are the jobs for the 65,000 engineers the US graduates each year? Where are the jobs for

the physics, chemistry, and math majors? Who needs a university degree to wait tables and serve drinks, to build

houses, to work as hospital orderlies, bus drivers, and sales clerks?

In the 21st century job growth in the

US economy has consistently reflected that of a Third World country--low productivity domestic services jobs. This

goes on month after month and no one catches on--least of all the economists and the policymakers.

Economists

assume that every high productivity, high paying job that is shipped out of the country is a net gain for America.

We are getting things cheaper, they say. Perhaps, for a while, until the dollar goes. What the cheaper goods

argument overlooks are the reductions in the productivity and pay of employed Americans and in the manufacturing,

technical, and scientific capability of the US economy.

What is the point of higher education when the job

opportunities in the economy do not require it?

These questions are too difficult for economists,

politicians, and newscasters. Instead, we hear that “last month the US economy created 207,000

jobs.”

Television has an inexhaustible supply of optimistic economists.

Last weekend CNN had John

Rutledge (erroneously billed as the person who drafted President Reagan’s economic program) explaining that the

strength of the US economy was “mom and pop businesses.” The college student with whom I was watching the program

broke out laughing.

What mom and pop businesses? Everything that used to be mom and pop businesses has been

replaced with chains and discount retailers. Auto parts stores are chains, pharmacies are chains, restaurants are

chains. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowes, have destroyed hardware stores, clothing stores, appliance stores, building

supply stores, gardening shops, whatever--you name it.
Just try starting a small business today. Most gasoline

station/convenience stores seem to be the property of immigrant ethnic groups who acquired them with the aid of a

taxpayer-financed US government loan.

Today a mom and pop business is a cleaning service that employs

Mexicans, a pool service, a lawn service, or a limo service.

In recent years the US economy has been kept

afloat by low interest rates. The low interest rates have fueled a real estate boom. As housing prices rise, people

refinance their mortgages, take equity out of their homes and spend the money, thus keeping the consumer economy

going.

The massive American trade and budget deficits are covered by the willingness of Asian countries,

principally Japan and China, to hold US government bonds and to continue to acquire ownership of America’s real

assets in exchange for their penetration of US markets.

This game will not go on forever. When it stops, what

is left to drive the US economy?
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08092005.html

As he says

in another article, “If you’re worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry

is.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02112006.html

a.k.a.
02-24-2006, 12:25 PM
Yet average incomes

fell, in part due to a plunge in the earnings of the top 10 percent of families ranked on a scale of net worth.

Essentially, they weren't able to earn as much on their assets as in 2001. It's not that managerial salaries have

fallen. But the recent period hasn't been quite the booming opportunity for capital gains and stock options that

the late 1990s was.
This is true throughout the world. The investment climate is much worse in Europe,

and even China is showing a slight slowdown in its growth.
I’m sure if you were to subtract protected

industries (such as military tech and pharmaceuticals) and subsidized markets (such oil & gas) you would find an

even worse investment climate. It’s really quite hard to find any clear winners in the current phase of

globalization. (The Japanese economy appears to be bouncing back — in terms of GDP — but it doesn't seem to be

trickling down into any significant job gains.) That’s why many commentators cal it a “race to the bottom”.



Bush’s plan of making tax cuts permenant is an effort to address this problem (at least in the US), but I feel it is

more of a band-aid for the upper-middle class (in other words a political payoff for the Republican constituency)

than a realistic solution for the country.

belgareth
02-26-2006, 06:20 AM
So far, the clearest winners

seem to be developing countries like India. I hate to pick on an individual nation but outsourcing to India has been

a primary culprit in the decline of technical jobs in the US over the last 10-15 years and it isn't likely to get

better. The bright side is that it benefits people like me, my competitors and those who work for us. Frankly and

despite the remarks made in one of the above articles, small businesses seem to be doing well. I don't mean the mom

and pop gas stations but the highly skilled professional. My company focuses on small business and I am a member of

the local Chamber of Commerce. Most the chambers are affiliated and I hear the same from all over the country. There

are a lot of pros that are growing in the small business/professional services arena.

Something I've mentioned

before and that I find frightening is the number of young people coming out of college with technical degrees that

can't find work. I get anywhere from 2 to 15 resumes in any given week from college grads looking for work and

willing to accept technician's wages. On the other hand, my wife who works in a highly specialized field gets a lot

of headhunters contacting her about potential work. Much of it is in this country but a lot is in other countries

and some of the offers are pretty amazing, to say the least. I think one of the things we need to consider is the

marketability of the specific jobs we are training our young people for. Years ago a large portion of our workforce

was devoted to heavy industry until foreign competition became to stiff. We moved on in large part to other areas.

Now, is there some other developing arena to persue that would be more lucrative and have better opportunities for

the future?

We are probably going to disagree about tax cuts but in my mind they didn't go far enough. The more

capitol you can put back into circulation the more is available for investment for future gains. Every dime the

government takes for any purpose is taken out of circulation for a time and if returned it is only a fraction of

what was removed. Some portion of it is sent out of the country for various reasons as well. As an economic engine

the government is a terribly inefficient one.

It might give us all a warm fuzzy feeling to take from the haves

and give to the have nots but it is only a short term solution. I know, as a business owner, what I would do with

more ready cash from reduced taxes or any other source, any small business owner who plans on being around in ten

years would do they same. They will not put it in their pocket but will invest it in advertising and sales people to

increase sales and in hardware and supplies. That in turn is going to put more poeple to work fulfilling the

increased orders. As profits rise so do the things I can do to keep a talented workforce from looking to other

employers. Better benefits, higher wages and more company paid training would be the first things to be done. In

turn, more jobs are created making it possible for more people to move away from government assistance and into the

workforce where they will have the disposable income to buy consumer goods creating still more jobs. As a side

effect, tax revenues will rise. Not from higher taxes but from greater spending.

a.k.a.
02-26-2006, 10:40 AM
In terms of profits, India is still

a colony. There’s more money going out of the country than coming in. Therefore I could never call it a “winner”,

even though many of the standard economic indicators demonstrate that it’s economy is growing. (Another factor is

that much of this growth is based on privatization and displacement of communities that used to rely on subsitance

farming/fishing and traditional handicrafts. A rise in the middle class has been outweighed by the fact that a large

percentage of the rural poor has been transformed into the urban unemployed. Creating a severe crowding problem and

diminishing quality of life for all.)

In the US... it’s true that professional services are on the rise.

The sharpest rise has been in internet, finance, and computer software-and-services companies. There has also been

respectable growth in legal services, accounting, management and consulting, and administrative services.
The

downside — from an “Economic Health of the Nation” perspective — is that these businesses account for very small

payrolls compared to the industries that are being exported to foreign lands.

In any case the point of

Robert’s analysis (which I agree with) is that America is producing less and borrowing more. This is not the mark of

a robust economy, any way you look at it.

I wasn’t trying to make any ethical points about Bush’s tax

cuts (that’s another story altogether). The point is that — in the absence of solid investment opportunities — these

cuts are highly unlikely to stimulate economic growth.
Any tax cut is likely to help small businesses stay

competitive — as you say. But most small businesses do not produce for foreign markets and even fewer offer stock

options for the average investor.
Given the fact that mutual funds are becoming riskier every day, people that

do not own their own business (that is the majority of people) will most likely either spend their tax surplus or

put it into savings.
In other words, the Bush tax breaks are a highly inefficient stimulus for small

business, at best. And let’s be realistic. How many new employee’s do you plan to hire as a result of these tax

cuts?

Netghost56
02-26-2006, 11:06 AM
I've been saying all along

that there isn't any jobs. But no one seems to believe me.

When you're on a 2 year waiting list to sweep

floors at Wal-Mart, SOMETHING'S WRONG!

belgareth
02-26-2006, 12:16 PM
In terms of

profits, India is still a colony. There’s more money going out of the country than coming in. Therefore I could

never call it a “winner”, even though many of the standard economic indicators demonstrate that it’s economy is

growing. (Another factor is that much of this growth is based on privatization and displacement of communities that

used to rely on subsitance farming/fishing and traditional handicrafts. A rise in the middle class has been

outweighed by the fact that a large percentage of the rural poor has been transformed into the urban unemployed.

Creating a severe crowding problem and diminishing quality of life for all.)

Which is offset by the

increases (long term) of a segment of the population's income. It isn't a short term fix but results will happen

over time. Money is flowing into India where people are slowly and in small groups becoming more educated and able

to increase their earning power. That gives them more money which is the fuel for any and all economic engines. I

don't know the figures for it but I do know that if money is flowing from one point it has to be flowing to

another. Where is it going and why?

However, that wasn't the intent of the statement. Tens of thousands of

technical and engineering jobs are flowing into India every year from this country. In that aspect, India is

winning.


In the US... it’s true that professional services are on the rise. The sharpest rise has

been in internet, finance, and computer software-and-services companies. There has also been respectable growth in

legal services, accounting, management and consulting, and administrative services.
The downside — from an

“Economic Health of the Nation” perspective — is that these businesses account for very small payrolls compared to

the industries that are being exported to foreign lands.

Likely so. That was the point of my question.

That was also true when Japan started making better cars for cheaper than we could produce them. You aren't going

to be able to legislate the jobs staying in this country so what is the alternative? The alternative is the same as

any business establishment. You find a product/service you can profitably offer.


In any case the

point of Robert’s analysis (which I agree with) is that America is producing less and borrowing more. This is not

the mark of a robust economy, any way you look at it.

No disagreement on that point. The question is what

to do about it?


I wasn’t trying to make any ethical points about Bush’s tax cuts (that’s another

story altogether). The point is that — in the absence of solid investment opportunities — these cuts are highly

unlikely to stimulate economic growth.
Any tax cut is likely to help small businesses stay competitive — as you

say. But most small businesses do not produce for foreign markets and even fewer offer stock options for the average

investor.
Given the fact that mutual funds are becoming riskier every day, people that do not own their own

business (that is the majority of people) will most likely either spend their tax surplus or put it into

savings.
In other words, the Bush tax breaks are a highly inefficient stimulus for small business, at best. And

let’s be realistic. How many new employee’s do you plan to hire as a result of these tax cuts?
I never said

anything about ethical as it is irrelevent to the subject. I do disagree, tax cuts always put money back into the

economy making more of the essential energy available. No matter what, the government is a worse stimulant to

economic growth than putting the money back in the taxpayer's hands. It's a fact that EVERY increase in taxes and

EVERY decrease in taxes has a direct effect on the number of available jobs. A dynamic example that we can see every

day is the increases or decreases in the interest rates which is no more than a tax. The economy is growing too

fast, stiffle it with an increase. Growing too slow? Encourage it with a reduction in interest rates. There is a

direct correlation.

What happens when somebody spends money? It is used by the business to hire people, buy

inventory and increase advertising. That isn't to allow the businesses mto be competitive, its to allow or

encourage growth which results in job creation.

Since you asked I'll give you an example based on my business.

Let's say that I get a $10,000 tax break this year. By going to my banker and taking part of that tax break as a

loan I can easily parley that into three new jobs before the end of the year. That means I'll also have to buy a

couple more desks, phones and so on. In two years, with the same tax break for those two years I can turn it into

eight new employees. Now, multiply that by the number of small businesses and remember that mine is a small

business. Then think about all the secondary effects, all the material's all of us will have to purchase, the money

those people will now have to spend to buy still more consumer goods. The people needed to fill those orders and the

materials needed to build or create the items I and my employees will buy.. With my new employees I'll also hav a

wider profit margin and can increase their benefits package again so still other industries will be profiting.



Simply put, the reduction in taxes has made it easier for me to build up capitol to invest in the things I need to

grow my business, which includes a major investment in people. They are the first and most important part of any

business development plan.

Yes, there is a very real concern about the flow of money out of this country. It

needs to be addressed. How is subject to debate.

InternationalPlayboy
02-26-2006, 06:03 PM
Something I've mentioned before and that I find frightening is the number of young people coming

out of college with technical degrees that can't find work. I get anywhere from 2 to 15 resumes in any given week

from college grads looking for work and willing to accept technician's wages.

I have an Associate's

Degree in Electronic Technology and have worked for a government contractor for 21 years. Got the job just a month

or two before I got the degree. When I saw a programmer with no technical experience swap out a motherboard on a

(then) high end Silicon Graphics computer, I realized that the technician's days are numbered. That was over ten

years ago.

There is very little troubleshooting to component level anymore, if any. Most of the repairs I do

now are board swaps, or even more common now, sending the unit back to the manufacturer for repair. The community

college where I got my degree doesn't even teach electronic technology anymore. When I graduated high school in

1977, they (the counselors) told me, and a lot of others, that electronic technology is where the big money will be

in the future. After 21 years, I'm still making under $40k/year.

My job anymore consists mainly of making

cables. I'm at my element when I'm installing new equipment and have to fabricate things to make them work right.

Technicans here are a dying breed, but if you have IT experience, that's where the money is now where I

work.

I'm tired of what I do, but don't see myself making enough to keep up with the bills if I went

somewhere else, unless I "reinvent" myself. About five years ago, I went to a job fair in San Diego. One person I

talked to said that three years before, they needed technicians but all the applicants were engineers. At the time I

attended, all the jobs were for engineers and all the applicants were technicians.

I like the saying a

coworker had displayed in his office, "nothing engineered works until it's technicianed." But it sure seems slim

for the opportunity to do so anymore.

belgareth
02-26-2006, 06:19 PM
I have both an EE and CS degree

and have never really put either one to use.

Yes, I will agree that there are still some jobs in IT but they

have been declining every year. My department in the corporation I worked for was 90 people the day I left, its less

than 10 now and the rest is offshored. Dell now has somewhere around 8,000 IT people in India. Sun Microsystems is

opening a facility there and plans to employ close to 10,000 by '08. Microsoft is doing the same thing but I don't

have their numbers. However, almost all their coding, QC and support is done offshore now. SBC, our local phone

company who recently merge/bought/was bought by ATT is doing it too as are almost every other major corporation.



Right now, today, there are more than 15,000 IT people in the Dallas/Fort Worth area who are either unemployed or

under-employed. It's the same in almost every technical center in the US. I am dead serious when I tell you I can

hire MCSE's with a CS degree all day long at $35,000. They are happy to take a job as a field technician.

Being

a computer technician now days is different from the board level work you and I both learned. There are hardware

diagnostics to be performed and analysing various conflicts to deal with. But the real challenges now are

integrating all the various components with the software and fighting off various types of invasions. Not the same

thing at all. With the number of operating systems out there and the variety of software we deal with it's always

something new.

I understand what you are saying about being tired of what you do. There were a lot of reasons

for leaving the corporate world but being sick of it was one of them. Reinventing yourself is a challenge but it can

sure be fun too.

Netghost56
02-27-2006, 09:01 AM
When I graduated high school in 1977, they (the counselors) told me, and a lot of

others, that electronic technology is where the big money will be in the future. Believe it or not, in 1999

I was sold the same hogwash.

I have an A+ and Net+ certificate, but they might as well be TP. In three years

I've only sat down for one IT job interview, and I completely blew it.

I can do any kind of hardware work to a

computer. Practically any kind of software work too. I know basic HTML, I do digital design and video editing for a

hobby.

People keep asking me why I can't find work. I tell them, "when was the last time you saw an IT job in

this country?" It's all fast food and cash registers anymore.

a.k.a.
02-27-2006, 09:06 PM
Anybody seen the old Terry Gilliam

movie “Brazil”?
It starts out with a glitch in one of the printers in one of the government’s data mining

operations. This leads to some poor sap getting mistakenly fingered as a terrorist. A swat-like unit breaks into his

home, terrorizes his family and drags him off in a bag. He eventually dies under torture.
Of course nothing

like that could ever happen in real life.

TIA Lives On

By Shane Harris, National Journal
© National

Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers

halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly

continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S.

citizens.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which

developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of

people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group,

which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National

Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to

conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

It is no secret

that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that

moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware

of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific

programs are classified.

Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced

Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One

piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information

extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection

technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.

A $19 million

contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in

Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in

late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work," Hicks executive

Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time. "Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a new sponsor has

come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was

ARDA. Along with the new sponsor came a new name. "We will be describing this new effort as 'Basketball,' "

Sharkey wrote, apparently giving no explanation of the name's significance. Another e-mail from a Hicks employee,

Marc Swedenburg, reminded the company's staff that "TIA has been terminated and should be referenced in that

fashion."

Sharkey played a key role in TIA's birth, when he and a close friend, retired Navy Vice Adm. John

Poindexter, President Reagan's national security adviser, brought the idea to Defense officials shortly after the

9/11 attacks. The men had teamed earlier on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research

Projects Agency, which agreed to host TIA and hired Poindexter to run it in 2002. In August 2003, Poindexter was

forced to resign as TIA chief amid howls that his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s made him

unfit to run a sensitive intelligence program.

It's unclear whether work on Basketball continues. Sharkey

didn't respond to an interview request, and Poindexter said he had no comment about former TIA programs. But a

publicly available Defense Department document, detailing various "cooperative agreements and other transactions"

conducted in fiscal 2004, shows that Basketball was fully funded at least until the end of that year (September

2004). The document shows that the system was being tested at a research center jointly run by ARDA and SAIC Corp.,

a major defense and intelligence contractor that is the sole owner of Hicks & Associates. The document describes

Basketball as a "closed-loop, end-to-end prototype system for early warning and decision-making," exactly the same

language used in contract documents for the TIA prototype system when it was awarded to Hicks in 2002. An SAIC

spokesman declined to comment for this story.

Another key TIA project that moved to ARDA was Genoa II, which

focused on building information technologies to help analysts and policy makers anticipate and pre-empt terrorist

attacks. Genoa II was renamed Topsail when it moved to ARDA, intelligence sources confirmed. (The name continues the

program's nautical nomenclature; "genoa" is a synonym for the headsail of a ship.)

As recently as October

2005, SAIC was awarded a $3.7 million contract under Topsail. According to a government-issued press release

announcing the award, "The objective of Topsail is to develop decision-support aids for teams of intelligence

analysts and policy personnel to assist in anticipating and pre-empting terrorist threats to U.S. interests." That

language repeats almost verbatim the boilerplate descriptions of Genoa II contained in contract documents, Pentagon

budget sheets, and speeches by the Genoa II program's former managers.

As early as February 2003, the

Pentagon planned to use Genoa II technologies at the Army's Information Awareness Center at Fort Belvoir, Va.,

according to an unclassified Defense budget document. The awareness center was an early tester of various TIA tools,

according to former employees. A 2003 Pentagon report to Congress shows that the Army center was part of an

expansive network of intelligence agencies, including the NSA, that experimented with the tools. The center was also

home to the Army's Able Danger program, which has come under scrutiny after some of its members said they used

data-analysis tools to discover the name and photograph of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta more than a year before the

attacks.

Devices developed under Genoa II's predecessor -- which Sharkey also managed when he worked for the

Defense Department -- were used during the invasion of Afghanistan and as part of "the continuing war on terrorism,"

according to an unclassified Defense budget document. Today, however, the future of Topsail is in question. A

spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., which administers the program's contracts, said

it's "in the process of being canceled due to lack of funds."

It is unclear when funding for Topsail was

terminated. But earlier this month, at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, one of TIA's strongest critics

questioned whether intelligence officials knew that some of its programs had been moved to other agencies. Sen. Ron

Wyden, D-Ore., asked Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and FBI Director Robert Mueller whether it

was "correct that when [TIA] was closed, that several ... projects were moved to various intelligence agencies.... I

and others on this panel led the effort to close [TIA]; we want to know if Mr. Poindexter's programs are going on

somewhere else."

Negroponte and Mueller said they didn't know. But Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Michael V.

Hayden, who until recently was director of the NSA, said, "I'd like to answer in closed session." Asked for

comment, Wyden's spokeswoman referred to his hearing statements.

The NSA is now at the center of a political

firestorm over President Bush's program to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States

who the agency believes are connected to terrorists abroad. While the documents on the TIA programs don't show that

their tools are used in the domestic eavesdropping, and knowledgeable sources wouldn't discuss the matter, the TIA

programs were designed specifically to develop the kind of "early-warning system" that the president said the NSA is

running.

Documents detailing TIA, Genoa II, Basketball, and Topsail use the phrase "early-warning system"

repeatedly to describe the programs' ultimate aims. In speeches, Poindexter has described TIA as an early-warning

and decision-making system. He conceived of TIA in part because of frustration over the lack of such tools when he

was national security chief for Reagan.

Tom Armour, the Genoa II program manager, declined to comment for

this story. But in a previous interview, he said that ARDA -- which absorbed the TIA programs -- has pursued

technologies that would be useful for analyzing large amounts of phone and e-mail traffic. "That's, in fact, what

the interest is," Armour said. When TIA was still funded, its program managers and researchers had "good

coordination" with their counterparts at ARDA and discussed their projects on a regular basis, Armour said. The

former No. 2 official in Poindexter's office, Robert Popp, averred that the NSA didn't use TIA tools in domestic

eavesdropping as part of his research. But asked whether the agency could have used the tools apart from TIA, Popp

replied, "I can't speak to that." Asked to comment on TIA projects that moved to ARDA, Don Weber, an NSA spokesman

said, "As I'm sure you understand, we can neither confirm nor deny actual or alleged projects or operational

capabilities; therefore, we have no information to provide."

ARDA now is undergoing some changes of its own.

The outfit is being taken out of the NSA, placed under the control of Negroponte's office, and given a new name. It

will be called the "Disruptive Technology Office," a reference to a term of art describing any new invention that

suddenly, and often dramatically, replaces established procedures. Officials with the intelligence director's

office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

DrSmellThis
02-28-2006, 02:04 AM
As long as the death squad

czar is running it, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.

DrSmellThis
02-28-2006, 04:08 AM
White House 'Discovers' Emails Related to Plame Leak
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o

u t | Report Friday 24 February 2006

The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from

Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of

covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court

hearing Friday.
The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the

effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush

administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.
Sources close to the probe

said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources

added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in

early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status

to reporters.
Cheney was not under oath when he was interviewed. He told investigators how the White House

came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African

country.
Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in either December 2001 or

January 2002.
Cheney said he was unaware that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the

uranium claims, and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return which stated that the

Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson's trip.
However, the emails say

otherwise, and will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility

and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.


Some of the emails that were turned over to Fitzgerald contained references to Plame Wilson's identity and CIA

status, and developments related to the inability of ground forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after

the start of the war in March 2003.
According to sources, the emails also contained suggestions by senior

officials in Cheney’s office, and at the National Security Council, on how the White House should respond to what it

believed were increasingly destructive comments Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq

intelligence.
Last month, Fitzgerald disclosed in court documents that he discovered from witnesses in the

case that some emails related to Wilson and his wife, written by senior aides in Cheney’s office and sent to other

officials at the National Security Council, had not been turned over to investigators by the White House.
“In

an abundance of caution,” Fitzgerald's January 23 letter to Libby's defense team states, “we advise you that we

have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for

certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.”


Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from

Fitzgerald’s probe citing “executive privilege” and “national security” concerns. These sources said that as of

Friday there are still some emails that have not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified

information in addition to references about the Wilsons.
Attorneys representing Cheney’s former Chief of

Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to

his role in the leak, were in court Friday arguing that Fitzgerald should be required to turn over classified

material, including highly sensitive Presidential Daily Briefs, to Libby’s defense team.
The defense hopes

that the classified materials will establish that Libby was dealing with more pressing matters facing the White

House and that he simply did not intend to mislead the grand jury when he testified that he did not disclose Plame

Wilson’s name to reporters.
In another development in the leak case Friday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B.

Walton said another administration official, who does not work at the White House, also spoke to reporters about

Plame Wilson. This individual, according to sources close to the case, works at the National Security Council.


Walton said that Libby’s defense team was not entitled to be told of the individual’s identity because the person is

not charged with a crime in the leak. However, the person is said to be one of several people in the administration

who is cooperating with the probe.

DrSmellThis
02-28-2006, 04:11 AM
http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/cheney

3.htm (http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/cheney3.htm)

DrSmellThis
02-28-2006, 04:14 AM
I wonder what will happen to the poll numbers when the emails, and Cheney's pivotal role

in blowing the cover of a major CIA operation in revenge to cover up his own war crimes, hit the public

consciousness?

Remember, Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby testified that his "superiors" (He has exactly

two superiors: Cheney and Bush) authorized the leak.

For those who haven't studied this, CIA agent Valerie

Plame's company was investigating WMD's. After the company's entire cover was blown by administraton officials,

several agents reportedly met violent ends; severely damaging the United States' ability to get human intelligence

on WMD's for the forseeable future. That is obviously a huge blow to national security. In light of this, it should

be obvious why knowingly "outing" even one undercover CIA agent is considered treason under U.S.

law.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stor

ies/2006/02/27/opinion/polls/main1350874.shtml (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/27/opinion/polls/main1350874.shtml)

DrSmellThis
02-28-2006, 01:50 PM
Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 by

OneWorld.net (http://www.oneworld.net/)

Incomes Fall, Hunger Worsens as Bush Says 'We're Doing Fine'



by Abid

Aslam
WASHINGTON - The average

American family has taken a financial tumble and millions in the country go hungry despite President George W.

Bush's sunny assessment of the U.S. economy, say federal data and economists.

Bush talked up the nation's wealth last week during a speech in Milwaukee.

''We're doing fine,'' he said and described the economy as ''strong and gaining steam.''



Economic growth had clocked a respectable 3.5 percent, unemployment had

been held down to 4.7 percent with more than four million new jobs created in the past 30 months, and after-tax

income had risen eight percent since 2001, he said.

Within days, however, the Federal Reserve reported that average incomes after adjusting for

inflation actually had fallen between 2001 and 2004.

At the same time, the number of Americans who need emergency food aid to survive had swollen to

more than 25 million even before hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, the nation's largest network of food banks

said in a separate report.

Many families continued to

struggle in the wake of the 2000 stock market collapse and 2001 recession, the central bank said in its latest

triennial ''Survey of Consumer Finances,'' released Thursday.

Inflation helped to eat away at the average American family's income, reducing the total to

$70,700 in 2004--a loss of 2.3 percent from 2001. That followed a 17.3 percent gain in average incomes between 1998

and 2001 and 12.3 percent in 1995-98, the Fed said.
Median family income showed a slight increase of 1.6 percent to reach $43,200 in 2004, up from

$42,500 in 2001.

Half of all households are

understood to stand above, and half to fall below, the median point, which is used to represent the ''typical''

rather than ''average'' family.

Economic analysts

said the latest Fed's findings confirmed earlier research showing that the average American family's finances were

deteriorating.

''Every American should be able to

achieve middle class economic security, a hallmark of national and household stability in this country,'' said

Tamara Draut, director of the economic opportunity program at research and advocacy group

Demos (http://www.demos-usa.org/).

''But

the Federal Reserve's findings spotlight trends that are causing economic fragility in today's middle class and

are closing the door on low-income Americans.''
The

income situation appears to be worsening.

Last year

proved to be the worst one on record for inflation-adjusted income, said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the

Economic Policy Institute (http://www.epinet.org/), a Washington, D.C.-based think

tank.

''Wages and compensation for the average

worker are lagging inflation despite strong productivity growth,'' Bernstein said, citing figures from last

month's ''Employment Cost Index'' report from the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.



''Averaging over all of 2005, real wages fell 0.9 percent--the lowest

annual result on record--while compensation's essentially unchanged rate from 2004 provides its worst year on

record as well,'' Bernstein added in an analysis of the BLS report. The term ''compensation'' refers to wages

plus benefits.
Draut, at Demos, said she was worried by

the latest Fed report's findings that ''growing numbers of American households face mounting debt and financial

instability.''
In particular, more than 76 percent of

households carry debt, up since 2001. Of households in debt, the median amount of debt, $55,300, amounts to 128

percent of the median household income.

''A greater

number of people reported not saving money in 2004 than in 2001. Only 41 percent save regularly,'' Draut said,

citing the Fed's figures. ''That's a foreboding number for a nation with 76 million people reaching retirement

age over the next 25 years.''

The Fed found that

four in 10 senior citizens older than 75 years shouldered debts in 2004, up from 29 percent in 2001.



Americans also have been piling up credit card debt,

which grew 10 percent in the median household and 15.9 percent in the average household. Most of the increase

occurred in the ''middle class,'' which the Fed defined as the fifth of the population with a median income of

$42,500.

''Stagnant wages and skyrocketing

healthcare, education and housing costs, plus greater job instability has pushed America's families right to the

limit, and they're borrowing on high-cost credit just to make ends meet,'' said Draut.



Home equity loans also have become bigger and more common, with many

homeowners using the cash-out refinancing to pay down their credit card debts and to recover expenses they can't

cover with their earnings, she added.

Rising

household debt and stagnant real wages sapped median net worth, a tally of assets and liabilities. Median net worth

grew by 1.5 percent in 2001-04, down from 10.3 percent in 1998-2001, the Fed report said.


The gap between wealthy and poor also has widened, the Fed said.

America's wealthiest 10 percent saw their net worth rise by 6.1 percent to an average of $3.1 million while the

bottom 10 percent saw theirs fall from zero in 2001 to minus $1,400--meaning they owed this much more than the value

of all their assets--in 2004.

Data on net worth would

have proven even more anemic were it not for big gains in the notional value of real estate--something that, at

least hypothetically, boosted homeowners' financial standing, the Fed and analysts agreed.



''Americans are keeping their families afloat by putting their greatest

asset at risk,'' said Draut.

Yet they appear to be

among the fortunate, according to America's Second Harvest (http://www.secondharvest.org/), which

supports 50,000 food-aid charities nationwide.

More

than 25 million Americans were forced to resort to food donations from the organization's affiliates last year, an

8 percent increase over 2001, it said.

Nine million

children younger than 18 and three million senior citizens stood among the hungry, America's Second Harvest said in

its ''Hunger in America 2006'' report.
''About 70

percent of the clients seeking emergency food assistance are living below the federal poverty line,'' the private

philanthropy said.
''Nearly 40 percent have at least

one adult working in their household,'' it added.

Those figures suggest that increasing numbers of working Americans do not earn enough to feed

their families.

Mtnjim
02-28-2006, 02:18 PM
America's wealthiest 10 percent saw their net worth rise by 6.1 percent to an average

of $3.1 million while the bottom 10 percent saw theirs fall from zero in 2001 to minus $1,400--meaning they owed

this much more than the value of all their assets--in 2004.


See, this proves Bush right!

His CEO buddies are doing just fine, as for the rest of us scum, we don't count.:angel:

belgareth
03-01-2006, 05:53 AM
Study: One in 1,000 Know First Amendment By ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer


Wed Mar 1, 2006







CHICAGO - Americans apparently know more about "The Simpsons" than

they do about the First Amendment.
Only one in four Americans can name

more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly

and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family,

according to a survey.
The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom

Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in

1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms.
Joe

Madeira, director of exhibitions at the museum, said he was surprised by the

results.
"Part of the survey really shows there are misconceptions, and

part of our mission is to clear up these misconceptions," said Madeira, whose museum will be dedicated to helping

visitors understand the First Amendment when it opens in April. "It means we have our job cut out for

us."
The survey found more people could name the three "American Idol"

judges than identify three First Amendment rights. They were also more likely to remember popular advertising

slogans.
It also showed that people misidentified First Amendment

rights. About one in five people thought the right to own a pet was protected, and 38 percent said they believed the

right against self-incrimination contained in the Fifth Amendment was a First Amendment right, the survey

found.
The telephone survey of 1,000 adults was conducted Jan. 20-22 by

the research firm Synovate and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Mtnjim
03-01-2006, 10:29 AM
I remember some years ago,

researchers carried around a petition that was the Bill of Rights and asked people to sigh it to get congress to

enact the provisions. The number of times they got called "commies" and "hippie freaks" was amazing.

DrSmellThis
03-01-2006, 02:07 PM
It completely blows my mind

that we don't have time to teach that in grade schools. Kids should also learn a little about the history of

struggle for citizenship, rights and freedom; here and around the world.

Mtnjim
03-01-2006, 02:25 PM
It completely

blows my mind that we don't have time to teach that in grade schools. Kids should also learn a little about the

history of struggle for citizenship, rights and freedom; here and around the world.

And can't locate

Brazil on a map!!