Record since 04-26-05
Win (191)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (46)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 3
Horse: CREDIBILITY (Out of the Money)
Post Position: # 3
Race # 14
Horse: ARTS DAY (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Friday, September 30, 2005
Schwarzenegger Comes Out on 75, Uses Anti-Union Members as Front People
Governor Schwarzenegger announced his endorsement of Proposition 75 before a hard-core crowd of partisan Republicans gathered in Orange County for the state convention. The announcement came as no surprise to political observers.
Schwarzenegger’s ads, released immediately after that, include Props. 74, 75, 76, and 77.
More information on all four is available at www.betterca.com .
Proponents of Prop. 75 have attempted to portray the measure as something intended to help working people, calling the measure “paycheck protection,” when the true purpose is to put unions at a political disadvantage so they can’t fight the Governor’s pro-corporate political agenda.
The Governor has succeeded in getting extremist, anti-union members to act as the public face of Prop. 75, but the real forces behind the measure are corporations and wealthy conservative ideologues, as documented on the new web site, http://www.millionairesforprop75.com/, which lists a selection of the measure’s conservative millionaire and billionaire supporters.
Schwarzenegger’s ads, released immediately after that, include Props. 74, 75, 76, and 77.
More information on all four is available at www.betterca.com .
Proponents of Prop. 75 have attempted to portray the measure as something intended to help working people, calling the measure “paycheck protection,” when the true purpose is to put unions at a political disadvantage so they can’t fight the Governor’s pro-corporate political agenda.
The Governor has succeeded in getting extremist, anti-union members to act as the public face of Prop. 75, but the real forces behind the measure are corporations and wealthy conservative ideologues, as documented on the new web site, http://www.millionairesforprop75.com/, which lists a selection of the measure’s conservative millionaire and billionaire supporters.
HUD chief foresees a 'whiter' NOLA
A Bush Cabinet officer predicted this week that New Orleans likely will never again be a majority black city, and several black officials are outraged. Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development, during a visit with hurricane victims in Houston, said New Orleans would not reach its pre-Katrina population of "500,000 people for a long time," and "it's not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."
From the Right-Wing Moonbat Times:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050929-114710-8545r.htm
From the Right-Wing Moonbat Times:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050929-114710-8545r.htm
Take Action
On the September 28 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Bill Bennett remarked that "you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down." People across the country, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, have called for Bennett to apologize for his remarks. Even White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bennett's comments were "not appropriate."
Take action! Contact the show's distributor, Salem Radio Network, and urge the company to apologize for Bennett's comments and to ensure that such remarks don't receive airtime in the future.
Take action! Contact the show's distributor, Salem Radio Network, and urge the company to apologize for Bennett's comments and to ensure that such remarks don't receive airtime in the future.
"Our constitution cites 'one nation under God"
Karen Hughes said that in response to a question an Egyptian opposition leader asked on her tour.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1581335,00.html
For the worthless Bush Ass Lickers , show me where in the Constitution it says "one nation under God".
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1581335,00.html
For the worthless Bush Ass Lickers , show me where in the Constitution it says "one nation under God".
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html
Media Matters Latest, September 30, 2005
CNN, MSNBC parroted DeLay's allegation that Earle is a "partisan zealot" but failed to note Earle's history of prosecuting Democrats
On September 28 and 29, CNN news personalities repeatedly cited and played footage of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-TX) September 28 accusation that Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle is a "partisan fanatic" and an "unabashed partisan zealot" who is prosecuting DeLay for political reasons, without noting that most of the public officials Earle has prosecuted were Democrats. Similarly, on the September 28 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, MSNBC chief Washington correspondent Norah O'Donnell aired DeLay's charges without noting Earle's history of prosecuting Democrats.
NY Times: No one calls DeLay "the Hammer" to his face
A New York Times article on the indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) reported that his moniker -- "the Hammer" -- is not "a nickname anyone uses with Mr. Delay himself." But contrary to the Times' claim, the nickname was repeatedly used by his supporters during a recent event in tribute to DeLay, and news reports indicate he is proud of his "reputation as the Hammer."
Newspapers uncritically reported DeLay's denial of "day-to-day" involvement in TRMPAC
In reporting on the September 28 indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) for conspiracy to violate Texas campaign finance laws, The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Baltimore Sun all quoted DeLay denying involvement in the day-to-day operations of the political action committee Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) but failed to present any of the publicly available evidence that undermines DeLay's defense.
Brooks claimed Blunt could "loosen the baggage" on Republicans after DeLay's indictment, but new leader has also faced ethics questions
Appearing on the September 28 edition of National Public Radio's (NPR) All Things Considered, New York Times columnist David Brooks suggested that new House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-MO) could "loosen the baggage on the party" caused by outgoing leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), who has been indicted over allegations of a conspiracy to launder illegal corporate contributions into Texas House races. But, in fact, Blunt has faced significant ethics charges of his own.
WSJ reported erroneous tax cut figures, contradicted its own reporting
In a September 29 Wall Street Journal (subscription required) article, staff writers David Rogers, Brody Mullins, and Jeanne Cummings erroneously reported that the Republican proposal to extend capital gains and dividend tax cuts would cost "$12.5 billion from 2008 to 2010." Not only does this statistic underestimate the cost of the proposed cut, it also contradicts the figure Mullins cited in a previous article on Republican tax cut proposals.
CBS reported DeLay's attack on Earle but omitted Earle's rebuttal
Following the indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on conspiracy charges, the nightly news broadcasts on the three major television networks ran stories on the unfolding scandal. But while all three programs covered DeLay's accusation that Ronnie Earle, the Travis County, Texas, district attorney who filed the charges, is a partisan Democrat on a political vendetta, only ABC and NBC noted that during his career Earle has prosecuted substantially more Democrats than Republicans. CBS allowed DeLay's accusation to go unchallenged.
Coulter on DeLay scandal: Reporters and liberals "want it to be against the law to be a Republican, and they would like us in Guantánamo"
Defending former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on the September 28 edition of Fox News' DaySide, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter attacked reporters and liberals, claiming that "they want it to be against the law to be a Republican, and they would like us in Guantánamo." Her comments were made in the context of discussing, with DaySide co-hosts Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy, a question that a reporter posed to White House press secretary Scott McClellan: "Is the President concerned that there's a stench of corruption around the Republican establishment in Washington?" "The stench of corruption means Republicans are in power," Coulter said. Later, she claimed, "They want us all in Guantánamo. And, by the way, I want to say, if you're a Republican in Washington and you haven't been indicted, you're doing something wrong."
Limbaugh, no holds barred: Sheehan "doesn't have the IQ of a pencil eraser"
On the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh attacked the motivations of Cindy Sheehan motivations in engaging in her anti-war activities, stating she is being "inculcated" and "manipulated." Limbaugh added that Sheehan "doesn't have the sense to come in out of the rain" and "doesn't have the IQ of a pencil eraser."
Hannity, Coulter "don't believe" that Tillman liked Noam Chomsky, opposed Iraq war; Tillman's mother disagrees
On the September 27 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity and right-wing pundit Ann Coulter told co-host Alan Colmes that they "don't believe" a report that Army Ranger Pat Tillman was a fan of leftist author Noam Chomsky, opposed the Iraq war, and planned to vote for Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in the 2004 presidential election. But according to a September 25 San Francisco Chronicle report that Colmes cited, Tillman's mother said that he had planned to meet privately with Chomsky and that "Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war." Tillman, a former pro football star, served in Iraq before being killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004.
Harness Racing Picks for 09-30-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (190)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 3
Horse: CREDIBILITY
Post Position: # 3
Race # 14
Horse: ARTS DAY
Post Position: # 1
Win (190)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 3
Horse: CREDIBILITY
Post Position: # 3
Race # 14
Horse: ARTS DAY
Post Position: # 1
STOCK MARKET
AT THE CLOSING BELL WHEN BUSH TOOK OFFICE on January 22, 2001
Dow - 10,578.24
Nasdaq - 2,757.91
S&P 500 - 1,342.90
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON September 29, 2005
Dow... 10,552.78 +79.69 (+0.76%)
Nasdaq... 2,141.22 +25.82 (+1.22%)
S&P 500... 1,227.68 +10.79 (+0.89%)
Oil Closed on 09-29-05 at $66.79
**************************************
US economic momentum in doubt after hurricanes
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US economy was on a robust path ahead of the two massive hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast, data showed, but analysts say the outlook is now murky and some are even talking about risks of recession.
The economy expanded at a 3.3 percent pace in the second quarter, the government said in its final estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) in the period that excludes the impact of Katrina and Rita.
The latest figure on the April-June quarter was unrevised from last month, and reflected a deceleration from the pace of 3.8 percent seen in the previous three months, the Commerce Department said.
SNIP
David Kotok, economist at Cumberland Advisors, has provisionally marked down his growth forecast to 2.0 percent for the fourth quarter of 2005 and first quarter of 2006, but adds "I worry that I may be too high."
more
Dow - 10,578.24
Nasdaq - 2,757.91
S&P 500 - 1,342.90
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON September 29, 2005
Dow... 10,552.78 +79.69 (+0.76%)
Nasdaq... 2,141.22 +25.82 (+1.22%)
S&P 500... 1,227.68 +10.79 (+0.89%)
Oil Closed on 09-29-05 at $66.79
**************************************
US economic momentum in doubt after hurricanes
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US economy was on a robust path ahead of the two massive hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast, data showed, but analysts say the outlook is now murky and some are even talking about risks of recession.
The economy expanded at a 3.3 percent pace in the second quarter, the government said in its final estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) in the period that excludes the impact of Katrina and Rita.
The latest figure on the April-June quarter was unrevised from last month, and reflected a deceleration from the pace of 3.8 percent seen in the previous three months, the Commerce Department said.
SNIP
David Kotok, economist at Cumberland Advisors, has provisionally marked down his growth forecast to 2.0 percent for the fourth quarter of 2005 and first quarter of 2006, but adds "I worry that I may be too high."
more
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Harness Racing Results for 09-29-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (190)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Cal-Expo
Race # 2
Horse: DESPERATEHOUSEWIFE (Won)
Post Position: # 3
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 15
Horse: TEXAS SHOOTOUT (Scratch)
Post Position: # 4
****************************
Plainridge Race Course
Race # 11
Horse: CAMS BEST MAN (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Win (190)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Cal-Expo
Race # 2
Horse: DESPERATEHOUSEWIFE (Won)
Post Position: # 3
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 15
Horse: TEXAS SHOOTOUT (Scratch)
Post Position: # 4
****************************
Plainridge Race Course
Race # 11
Horse: CAMS BEST MAN (Won)
Post Position: # 1
$100,000 Reward Offered
$100,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE ARREST AND CONVICTION OF CORRUPT GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
VR today launches the 'Government Accountability Reward Fund' to induce whistleblowers to come forward with information about criminal activity by high government officials. Specifically, VR has a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of officials involved in the following three incidents: 1) the illegal outing of CIA Agent Valerie Plame, 2) the illegal payment of bribes to Congressman Dennis Hastert, and 3) the rigging of the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. In the event more than one person provides information or information about more than one incident, the money will be split between the persons.
The information provided must be new and not previously provided to the press or government entity or official. The information must be verifiable and be a major contributing factor in the arrest and conviction of the government official(s). In the case of the Valerie Plame, the evidence must implicate and convict a senior White House official. In the case of Dennis Hastert, the evidence must implicate and convict him. In the case of Ohio, the evidence must implicate and convict persons who actually and knowingly rigged the 2004 Presidential election in such a way that it changed the true outcome.
There have been credible news reports that senior White House officials conspired to and did knowingly and intentionally disclose the identity of Valerie Plame. Other news reports have indicated that Dennis Hastert took bribes from foreign interests and hid those bribes through political action committees. Moreover, many news reports have stated that persons rigged the election in Ohio to favor the Republicans, and now top Republican officials are under investigation and indictment in Ohio for corrupt practices.
VR believes that, if these reports are true, there are upstanding American citizens who have important information which could verify them. VR wants these people to come forward, and this reward is an incentive to do so.
If a person desires confidentiality, please say so and we will honor that request. However, we must be able to verify the information provided and documentation is preferred. Send information to reward at velvetrevolution.us.
VR today launches the 'Government Accountability Reward Fund' to induce whistleblowers to come forward with information about criminal activity by high government officials. Specifically, VR has a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of officials involved in the following three incidents: 1) the illegal outing of CIA Agent Valerie Plame, 2) the illegal payment of bribes to Congressman Dennis Hastert, and 3) the rigging of the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. In the event more than one person provides information or information about more than one incident, the money will be split between the persons.
The information provided must be new and not previously provided to the press or government entity or official. The information must be verifiable and be a major contributing factor in the arrest and conviction of the government official(s). In the case of the Valerie Plame, the evidence must implicate and convict a senior White House official. In the case of Dennis Hastert, the evidence must implicate and convict him. In the case of Ohio, the evidence must implicate and convict persons who actually and knowingly rigged the 2004 Presidential election in such a way that it changed the true outcome.
There have been credible news reports that senior White House officials conspired to and did knowingly and intentionally disclose the identity of Valerie Plame. Other news reports have indicated that Dennis Hastert took bribes from foreign interests and hid those bribes through political action committees. Moreover, many news reports have stated that persons rigged the election in Ohio to favor the Republicans, and now top Republican officials are under investigation and indictment in Ohio for corrupt practices.
VR believes that, if these reports are true, there are upstanding American citizens who have important information which could verify them. VR wants these people to come forward, and this reward is an incentive to do so.
If a person desires confidentiality, please say so and we will honor that request. However, we must be able to verify the information provided and documentation is preferred. Send information to reward at velvetrevolution.us.
Thomas L. Friedman: The Endgame in Iraq
Thomas Friedman
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Umm Qasr, Iraq --- Even a brief visit to this southern Iraq port leaves me convinced that we are entering the endgame here. The coming Iraqi votes, in October over the new constitution and in December over a new Parliament, are going to tell America whether it is worth staying here much longer.
Despite all the shameful blunders of Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, at the end of the day, was always going to be what the Iraqis decided to make of it. And the Iraqi majority --- the Shiites and Kurds who make up roughly 80 percent of this country --- have spoken. They want an Iraq that will be decentralized and will allow each of their communities to run its own affairs and culture --- without fear of ever again being dominated and brutalized by an oil-backed Sunni minority regime in Baghdad.
Equally important, both the Kurds and the Shiites have made it clear that they have no interest in telling the Sunnis how to live, and will cut them a slice of Iraq's oil revenue and maintain Iraq's basic Arab identity.
So now we know what kind of majority the Kurds and Shiites want to be, the question is what kind of minority the Iraqi Sunnis want to be. Do they want to be the Palestinians and spend the next 100 years trying to mobilize the Arab-Muslim world to reverse history and restore their "right" to rule Iraq as a minority --- a move that would destroy them and Iraq?
Or do they want to embrace the future? I know the Sunnis are terrified by Iran's influence in this southern region, but, as the Brits who run the Basra area, which includes this port city of Umm Qasr, will tell you, the Iraqi Arab Shiites here are obsessed with not being dominated by Iran.
Despite growing cultural and commercial ties with Iran, they are Iraqis first. That attitude would only be enhanced if Iraqi Sunnis, rather than allowing or abetting the murders of Shiites, would instead embrace the new constitution and let the United States cut the Sunnis an even fairer slice of the pie.
"We have a lot of overlapping interests with the Sunnis of Iraq," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad said. Indeed, in the latter stages of the constitutional negotiations in Iraq, the talented U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, was basically acting as the Sunnis' lawyer in dealings with the Kurds and Shiites. The problem was that the Sunnis never knew when to say yes, "that's enough," and the United States got fed up with their demanding much more than their due.
Do the Iraqi Sunnis understand their own interests, and does the Sunni world have any moral center? Up to now the Sunni Arab world has stood mute while the Sunni Baathists and jihadists in Iraq have engaged in what can only be called "ethnic cleansing": murdering Shiite civilians in large numbers purely because they are Shiites in hopes of restoring a Sunni-dominated order in Iraq that is unrestorable.
A fatwa has just been issued against a female Indian tennis player who is Muslim, condemning her for her short skirts, but no fatwa has been issued by Sunni clerics condemning al-Zarqawi's butchering of Iraqi Shiite children and teachers.
Some courageous Sunnis have begun to speak out. "One of the most bizarre phenomena of recent times has been the refusal of Arab governments to condemn terrorist acts in Iraq or to commiserate with the victims," Abdul Rahman al-Rashed wrote in the Saudi daily Asharq Al Awsat. He added, "Take the most recent atrocities in which more than 200 Iraqis lost their lives in two days of carnage: No Arab government raised its voice in condemnation, although most of them shrilly objected when the new Iraqi Constitution failed to mention that the country was part of the Arab nation. The official Arab position vis-a-vis Iraq has always been spineless."
So, folks, we are faltering in Iraq today in part because of the Bush team's incompetence, but also because of the moral vacuum in the Sunni Arab world, where the worst are engaged in murderous ethnic cleansing --- and trying to stifle any prospect of democracy here --- and the rest are too afraid, too weak, too lost or too anti-Shiite to do anything about it.
Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time.
We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind. We must not throw more good American lives after good American lives for people who hate others more than they love their own children.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Umm Qasr, Iraq --- Even a brief visit to this southern Iraq port leaves me convinced that we are entering the endgame here. The coming Iraqi votes, in October over the new constitution and in December over a new Parliament, are going to tell America whether it is worth staying here much longer.
Despite all the shameful blunders of Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, at the end of the day, was always going to be what the Iraqis decided to make of it. And the Iraqi majority --- the Shiites and Kurds who make up roughly 80 percent of this country --- have spoken. They want an Iraq that will be decentralized and will allow each of their communities to run its own affairs and culture --- without fear of ever again being dominated and brutalized by an oil-backed Sunni minority regime in Baghdad.
Equally important, both the Kurds and the Shiites have made it clear that they have no interest in telling the Sunnis how to live, and will cut them a slice of Iraq's oil revenue and maintain Iraq's basic Arab identity.
So now we know what kind of majority the Kurds and Shiites want to be, the question is what kind of minority the Iraqi Sunnis want to be. Do they want to be the Palestinians and spend the next 100 years trying to mobilize the Arab-Muslim world to reverse history and restore their "right" to rule Iraq as a minority --- a move that would destroy them and Iraq?
Or do they want to embrace the future? I know the Sunnis are terrified by Iran's influence in this southern region, but, as the Brits who run the Basra area, which includes this port city of Umm Qasr, will tell you, the Iraqi Arab Shiites here are obsessed with not being dominated by Iran.
Despite growing cultural and commercial ties with Iran, they are Iraqis first. That attitude would only be enhanced if Iraqi Sunnis, rather than allowing or abetting the murders of Shiites, would instead embrace the new constitution and let the United States cut the Sunnis an even fairer slice of the pie.
"We have a lot of overlapping interests with the Sunnis of Iraq," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad said. Indeed, in the latter stages of the constitutional negotiations in Iraq, the talented U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, was basically acting as the Sunnis' lawyer in dealings with the Kurds and Shiites. The problem was that the Sunnis never knew when to say yes, "that's enough," and the United States got fed up with their demanding much more than their due.
Do the Iraqi Sunnis understand their own interests, and does the Sunni world have any moral center? Up to now the Sunni Arab world has stood mute while the Sunni Baathists and jihadists in Iraq have engaged in what can only be called "ethnic cleansing": murdering Shiite civilians in large numbers purely because they are Shiites in hopes of restoring a Sunni-dominated order in Iraq that is unrestorable.
A fatwa has just been issued against a female Indian tennis player who is Muslim, condemning her for her short skirts, but no fatwa has been issued by Sunni clerics condemning al-Zarqawi's butchering of Iraqi Shiite children and teachers.
Some courageous Sunnis have begun to speak out. "One of the most bizarre phenomena of recent times has been the refusal of Arab governments to condemn terrorist acts in Iraq or to commiserate with the victims," Abdul Rahman al-Rashed wrote in the Saudi daily Asharq Al Awsat. He added, "Take the most recent atrocities in which more than 200 Iraqis lost their lives in two days of carnage: No Arab government raised its voice in condemnation, although most of them shrilly objected when the new Iraqi Constitution failed to mention that the country was part of the Arab nation. The official Arab position vis-a-vis Iraq has always been spineless."
So, folks, we are faltering in Iraq today in part because of the Bush team's incompetence, but also because of the moral vacuum in the Sunni Arab world, where the worst are engaged in murderous ethnic cleansing --- and trying to stifle any prospect of democracy here --- and the rest are too afraid, too weak, too lost or too anti-Shiite to do anything about it.
Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time.
We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind. We must not throw more good American lives after good American lives for people who hate others more than they love their own children.
Message From Operation Truth
Operation Truth has been extended a special offer by fellow Iraq Veteran Nathaniel Fick to get his new book, “One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer,” while supporting OpTruth at the same time.
The book, which details Nate’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan as a part of an elite Marine reconnaissance platoon, will likely be viewed as one of the best texts on life in the modern military. This is the voice of the Troops, on paper, and it’s already generating rave reviews:
USA Today says, "Fick's descriptive and exacting writing...guarantees ONE BULLET AWAY a place in the war memoir hall of fame." GQ called it "the best sign of military intelligence."
Nathaniel Fick is also becoming a respected voice on the evolving situation in Iraq. You may have read his OpEd in the New York Times last week, which offered a third solution to the usual “cut and run” versus “stay the course” discussion of the War. Click Here for more information about Nate Fick.
Here’s where you come in: Thanks to the author’s generosity, if you Click Here to buy the book, every copy sold will generate a contribution for OpTruth. It’s that easy – buy this important new book, and support OpTruth at the same time.
Thanks once again for your support, and as always, please forward this message to anyone who might be interested.
Sincerely,
Paul Rieckhoff
OIF Veteran
Founder and Executive Director
Operation Truth
Harness Racing Picks for 09-29-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (188)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Cal-Expo
Race # 2
Horse: DESPERATEHOUSEWIFE
Post Position: # 3
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 15
Horse: TEXAS SHOOTOUT
Post Position: # 4
****************************
Plainridge Race Course
Race # 11
Horse: CAMS BEST MAN
Post Position: # 1
Win (188)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Cal-Expo
Race # 2
Horse: DESPERATEHOUSEWIFE
Post Position: # 3
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 15
Horse: TEXAS SHOOTOUT
Post Position: # 4
****************************
Plainridge Race Course
Race # 11
Horse: CAMS BEST MAN
Post Position: # 1
Media Matters Latest, September 29, 2005
Fox's Napolitano accused DA prosecuting DeLay of political motivations, ignored his prosecution record
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano accused Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, of being "openly and notoriously political," repeating his suggestion that Earle's prosecution of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on conspiracy charges is politically motivated. But in making the accusation, Napolitano once again ignored Earle's record, which includes the prosecution of significantly more Democratic officials than Republicans, as Media Matters for America has previously noted.
Borger adopted Frist's defense as fact, failed to note that his past defense was false
CBS News contributor and U.S. News & World Report contributing editor Gloria Borger continued a pattern, identified by Media Matters for America, of discussing the brewing scandal over Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) suspiciously timed stock sale while leaving out key facts that undermine the credibility of claims Frist has made in his defense.
CNN, other news outlets ignored Brown's false claim about Blanco's state of emergency request
On the September 27 editions of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 and NewsNight with Aaron Brown, anchor Anderson Cooper billed a report on former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown's congressional testimony as an effort to "check what he said against the facts." In the segment that followed, however, CNN congressional correspondent Ed Henry simply reported on the "war of words" between Brown and members of the House committee investigating the handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster by local, state, and federal government agencies. Despite Cooper's introduction, Henry did not offer viewers the facts surrounding the Katrina response, nor did he discuss the veracity of Brown's statements. He merely noted that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D), in a "blistering" response, had described Brown as "either out of touch with the truth or reality." But if Henry had actually fact-checked Brown's testimony, he would have identified as clearly false Brown's claim that Blanco excluded several parishes from her federal emergency assistance request.
News outlets highlighted Bush's call for fuel conservation, failed to note that it contradicts administration record
News outlets nationwide highlighted President Bush's recent request that U.S. consumers drive less and "be better conservers of energy" in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But most media outlets reporting on Bush's public appeal did not note that it represents a departure from his administration's prior stance on energy conservation.
Bill Bennett: "[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down"
Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."
Cavuto suggested he can't be both "a good American" and "a good journalist"
On the September 27 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Fox News host and vice president for business news Neil Cavuto told co-hosts Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, "I would much sooner go down as a pretty good American when I try to be versus a good journalist. The good journalist thing is not nearly as important."
O'Reilly falsely claimed he retracts his false claims
On the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly claimed that "if we make a mistake ... we will retract, and we will apologize, and we will put it up."
WSJ baselessly attacked Time for launching "politically motivated attack" on FDA official
A September 27 Wall Street Journal editorial (subscription required) baselessly accused Time magazine of engaging in a "politically motivated attack" on Scott Gottlieb, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs. According to the Journal, an October 3 Time article investigating possible "cronyism" within the Bush administration "fingered Dr. Gottlieb this week without offering any evidence of any special connections to the White House -- family or otherwise." The Journal went on to "guess" that "Time got suckered by sources who don't agree with Dr. Gottlieb on policy and used the magazine to try to damage his career." In fact, Time did offer evidence that Gottlieb might not be ideally suited to his position at the FDA and also provided evidence of his "special connection" to the Bush administration: Gottlieb once had extensive ties to the pharmaceutical industry, and he is friends with former FDA commissioner Mark McClellan, brother of White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
On The Chris Matthews Show, Matthews and guest insisted that the ongoing insurgency in Iraq was unexpected
Ignoring evidence that the Bush administration received repeated pre-war warnings of the potential for a sustained insurgency in Iraq, NBC host Chris Matthews and nationally syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker insisted that the continuing bloodshed had not been anticipated. On the September 25 broadcast of NBC's syndicated The Chris Matthews Show, Matthews suggested that the "enduring" nature of the Iraqi insurgency was a surprise and told viewers that he didn't "know many people who expected it to still be going on this long." Parker added that while "there was no preparation for the long haul" in Iraq, "I don't think anyone envisioned two years down the road we'd still be fighting insurgents."
Wash. Post editorial falsely claimed that congressional leaders "dropped proposals for yet more tax cuts"
A September 27 Washington Post editorial falsely claimed that congressional leaders -- taking into consideration the Iraq war, rising national debt, and the combined disasters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- "have rightly dropped proposals for yet more tax cuts." This assertion is contradicted by the Post's own reporting, which points out that tax cuts are in fact a major component of President Bush's hurricane relief package. Additionally, Republican plans to extend Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and repeal the estate tax have not been "dropped"; Republican congressional leaders are, at best, divided over how to approach tax policy in the wake of the hurricane disasters.
Stock Market Info
AT THE CLOSING BELL WHEN BUSH TOOK OFFICE on January 22, 2001
Dow - 10,578.24
Nasdaq - 2,757.91
S&P 500 - 1,342.90
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON September 28, 2005
Dow... 10,473.09 +16.88 (+0.16%)
Nasdaq... 2,115.40 -1.02 (-0.05%)
S&P 500... 1,216.89 +1.23 (+0.10%)
Oil Closed on 09-28-05 at $66.35
Dow - 10,578.24
Nasdaq - 2,757.91
S&P 500 - 1,342.90
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON September 28, 2005
Dow... 10,473.09 +16.88 (+0.16%)
Nasdaq... 2,115.40 -1.02 (-0.05%)
S&P 500... 1,216.89 +1.23 (+0.10%)
Oil Closed on 09-28-05 at $66.35
Remember this guy is a BIG REPUBLICAN INSIDER, and he owns THE WASHINGTON TIMES.
Rev. Moon urges bridge linking Alaska, Asia
Challenging U.S. leaders to build a 51-mile "peace" bridge and tunnel from Alaska to Russia, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon rallied hundreds of Seattle supporters last night in an effort to bolster a religious movement best known for mass weddings.
Moon delivered a rambling, 45-minute sermon at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center that heavily criticized the United Nations and called for the end of war and the reconciliation of religious differences.
Moon offered no specifics on how a combination bridge and tunnel could be built or funded.
... Moon declared that his teachings helped Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin become reborn as new people.
Challenging U.S. leaders to build a 51-mile "peace" bridge and tunnel from Alaska to Russia, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon rallied hundreds of Seattle supporters last night in an effort to bolster a religious movement best known for mass weddings.
Moon delivered a rambling, 45-minute sermon at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center that heavily criticized the United Nations and called for the end of war and the reconciliation of religious differences.
Moon offered no specifics on how a combination bridge and tunnel could be built or funded.
... Moon declared that his teachings helped Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin become reborn as new people.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Harness Racing Results for 09-28-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (188)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Cal-Expo
Race # 8
Horse: PARTONIZING (Won)
Post Position: # 8
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 3
Horse: HARD SHOE HANNAH (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Win (188)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Cal-Expo
Race # 8
Horse: PARTONIZING (Won)
Post Position: # 8
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 3
Horse: HARD SHOE HANNAH (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Bring back Warren Harding
2005-09-26 / New York Times / By Frank Rich
There are no coincidences. On Monday, as L. Dennis Kozlowski was slapped with eight to 25 years in jail for looting Tyco International of some US$150 million, the feds were making their first arrest of a high-ranking member of the Bush administration. The official was David Safavian, the chief of White House federal procurement policy who once worked for Jack Abramoff, the sleazy Republican lobbyist whose disreputable client list, in another noncoincidence, included Tyco. While it's an accident of timing that Safavian was collared at his suburban Virginia home just as Kozlowski was sent to the slammer in New York, the two events could not better bracket a corrupt era worthy of the Gilded Age.
Ours will be remembered as the Enron era. Enron itself is a distant memory. But even as American business has since been purged by prosecutions and reforms, the mutant Enron version of the CEO culture still rules in Washington: uninhibited cronyism, cooked books, special-favors networks, the banishment of whistle-blowers and accountability. More than ideology, this ethos has sabotaged even the best of American intentions, whether in Iraq or New Orleans. Unchecked, it promises greater disasters to come.
As recently as 10 days ago, when he resigned before his arrest, Safavian was the man who set purchasing policy for the entire federal government, including that related to Hurricane Katrina relief. The White House might as well have appointed a contestant from "The Apprentice." Before entering public service, Safavian's main claim to fame was as a lobbyist whose clients included Indian gaming interests and thuggish African regimes. Safavian now faces charges of lying and obstructing the investigation of Abramoff, the Tom DeLay-Ralph Reed-Grover Norquist pal who is being investigated by more agencies than looked into 9-11. Abramoff's greasy K Street influence-peddling network makes the Warren Harding gang, which operated out of its own infamous "little green house on K Street," look like selfless stewards of the public good.
Blackout
You know that the arrest of Safavian, one of three known Abramoff alumni to migrate into the administration, is the start of something big. Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department announced it only after Safavian had appeared in court and had been released without bail. The gambit was clearly intended to keep the story off television, and it worked.
It won't for long. The Enron odor emanating from Safavian is of a piece with the rest of the cronyism in the Katrina preparedness package.
Witness the nomination of Julie Myers as the new head of immigration and customs enforcement at the Homeland Security Department. Though the White House attacked the diplomat Joseph Wilson for nepotism because he undertook a single pro bono intelligence mission while his wife was at the CIA, it thought nothing of handing this huge job to a nepotistic twofer: Myers is the niece of General Richard Myers and has just married the chief of staff for the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff. Her qualifications for running an agency with more than 20,000 employees and a US$4 billion budget include serving as an associate counsel under Kenneth Starr; in that job, she helped mastermind the costly and doomed prosecution of Susan McDougal, and was outwitted at every turn by the defense lawyer Mark Geragos.
Julie Myers is only the latest example of Chertoff's rolling the dice with Americans' safety during his brief tenure in Homeland Security. After the bombings in London in July, he vowed to maximize his department's "finite human and financial capital to attain the optimal state of preparedness." Yet the very same day, the president nominated Tracy Henke as Homeland Security's new executive director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. Henke has since been unmasked as an Enron-style spinner of numbers.
Unending good news
Imagine Henke, in her Homeland Security job, having sway over press releases about our disaster readiness. There is likely to be nothing but good news until it's too late. But if the hiring of the likes of Henke, Myers and Safavian is half of the equation in Enron governance, the other half is the punishing of veteran civil servants like Greenfeld for doing their jobs honestly. Even as it fills its ranks with Abramoff golf-junket partners, political flunkies and underemployed relatives, the administration silences those who, like Sherron Watkins at Enron, might blow the whistle on any Kozlowski or Ebbers or Rigas fleecing or betraying the taxpayers. Three weeks before Safavian's arrest, the Army Corps of Engineers demoted another procurement official, Bunnatine Greenhouse, who was a 20-year veteran in her field. Her crime was not obstructing justice but pursuing it by vehemently questioning irregularities in the awarding of some US$7 billion worth of no-bid contracts in Iraq to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root.
Blowing off whistleblowers
Greenhouse and Greenfeld are only two of the many whistle-blowers done in by this administration so far. Even top government officials who are not whistle-blowers, merely truth-tellers, are axed. Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, was pushed out after he accurately projected the cost of the Iraq war at US$100 billion to US$200 billion. General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, was shunted aside after he accurately estimated the number of required troops for securing Iraq.
The damage done to the mission in Iraq and homeland security alike by Enron governance is immeasurable. Yet it's not only the administration that is to blame, any more than it is only the executives who are at fault when a corporation rots. Culpability also belongs to the board that rubber-stamps the shenanigans - to wit, Congress. Republicans in the Senate are led by Bill Frist, who, in the grandest Enron manner, claimed last week that it was to avoid a conflict of interest that his supposed "blind trust" unloaded all of his holdings in a Frist family-founded company just before its stock tanked.
As for the Democrats, they are nonpareil at posturing about the unstoppable nomination of John Roberts - a conservative, to be sure, but the rare Bush nominee who seems both qualified for his job and unsullied by ethical blemishes. Yet when David Safavian was up for a job involving hundreds of billions of dollars, and much of his dubious resume was fully known, he was approved by the ranking Democrat, Joe Lieberman, and all his colleagues of both parties on the Governmental Affairs Committee.
Which is to say that the rest of us, the individual shareholders in government who have voted in our Enron-era politicians, are responsible, too.
There are no coincidences. On Monday, as L. Dennis Kozlowski was slapped with eight to 25 years in jail for looting Tyco International of some US$150 million, the feds were making their first arrest of a high-ranking member of the Bush administration. The official was David Safavian, the chief of White House federal procurement policy who once worked for Jack Abramoff, the sleazy Republican lobbyist whose disreputable client list, in another noncoincidence, included Tyco. While it's an accident of timing that Safavian was collared at his suburban Virginia home just as Kozlowski was sent to the slammer in New York, the two events could not better bracket a corrupt era worthy of the Gilded Age.
Ours will be remembered as the Enron era. Enron itself is a distant memory. But even as American business has since been purged by prosecutions and reforms, the mutant Enron version of the CEO culture still rules in Washington: uninhibited cronyism, cooked books, special-favors networks, the banishment of whistle-blowers and accountability. More than ideology, this ethos has sabotaged even the best of American intentions, whether in Iraq or New Orleans. Unchecked, it promises greater disasters to come.
As recently as 10 days ago, when he resigned before his arrest, Safavian was the man who set purchasing policy for the entire federal government, including that related to Hurricane Katrina relief. The White House might as well have appointed a contestant from "The Apprentice." Before entering public service, Safavian's main claim to fame was as a lobbyist whose clients included Indian gaming interests and thuggish African regimes. Safavian now faces charges of lying and obstructing the investigation of Abramoff, the Tom DeLay-Ralph Reed-Grover Norquist pal who is being investigated by more agencies than looked into 9-11. Abramoff's greasy K Street influence-peddling network makes the Warren Harding gang, which operated out of its own infamous "little green house on K Street," look like selfless stewards of the public good.
Blackout
You know that the arrest of Safavian, one of three known Abramoff alumni to migrate into the administration, is the start of something big. Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department announced it only after Safavian had appeared in court and had been released without bail. The gambit was clearly intended to keep the story off television, and it worked.
It won't for long. The Enron odor emanating from Safavian is of a piece with the rest of the cronyism in the Katrina preparedness package.
Witness the nomination of Julie Myers as the new head of immigration and customs enforcement at the Homeland Security Department. Though the White House attacked the diplomat Joseph Wilson for nepotism because he undertook a single pro bono intelligence mission while his wife was at the CIA, it thought nothing of handing this huge job to a nepotistic twofer: Myers is the niece of General Richard Myers and has just married the chief of staff for the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff. Her qualifications for running an agency with more than 20,000 employees and a US$4 billion budget include serving as an associate counsel under Kenneth Starr; in that job, she helped mastermind the costly and doomed prosecution of Susan McDougal, and was outwitted at every turn by the defense lawyer Mark Geragos.
Julie Myers is only the latest example of Chertoff's rolling the dice with Americans' safety during his brief tenure in Homeland Security. After the bombings in London in July, he vowed to maximize his department's "finite human and financial capital to attain the optimal state of preparedness." Yet the very same day, the president nominated Tracy Henke as Homeland Security's new executive director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. Henke has since been unmasked as an Enron-style spinner of numbers.
Unending good news
Imagine Henke, in her Homeland Security job, having sway over press releases about our disaster readiness. There is likely to be nothing but good news until it's too late. But if the hiring of the likes of Henke, Myers and Safavian is half of the equation in Enron governance, the other half is the punishing of veteran civil servants like Greenfeld for doing their jobs honestly. Even as it fills its ranks with Abramoff golf-junket partners, political flunkies and underemployed relatives, the administration silences those who, like Sherron Watkins at Enron, might blow the whistle on any Kozlowski or Ebbers or Rigas fleecing or betraying the taxpayers. Three weeks before Safavian's arrest, the Army Corps of Engineers demoted another procurement official, Bunnatine Greenhouse, who was a 20-year veteran in her field. Her crime was not obstructing justice but pursuing it by vehemently questioning irregularities in the awarding of some US$7 billion worth of no-bid contracts in Iraq to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root.
Blowing off whistleblowers
Greenhouse and Greenfeld are only two of the many whistle-blowers done in by this administration so far. Even top government officials who are not whistle-blowers, merely truth-tellers, are axed. Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, was pushed out after he accurately projected the cost of the Iraq war at US$100 billion to US$200 billion. General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, was shunted aside after he accurately estimated the number of required troops for securing Iraq.
The damage done to the mission in Iraq and homeland security alike by Enron governance is immeasurable. Yet it's not only the administration that is to blame, any more than it is only the executives who are at fault when a corporation rots. Culpability also belongs to the board that rubber-stamps the shenanigans - to wit, Congress. Republicans in the Senate are led by Bill Frist, who, in the grandest Enron manner, claimed last week that it was to avoid a conflict of interest that his supposed "blind trust" unloaded all of his holdings in a Frist family-founded company just before its stock tanked.
As for the Democrats, they are nonpareil at posturing about the unstoppable nomination of John Roberts - a conservative, to be sure, but the rare Bush nominee who seems both qualified for his job and unsullied by ethical blemishes. Yet when David Safavian was up for a job involving hundreds of billions of dollars, and much of his dubious resume was fully known, he was approved by the ranking Democrat, Joe Lieberman, and all his colleagues of both parties on the Governmental Affairs Committee.
Which is to say that the rest of us, the individual shareholders in government who have voted in our Enron-era politicians, are responsible, too.
Bill O'Reilly Needs Love..........
(1) Write pervert Bill O'Reilly. Remind him what a Dumb-ass Phone Sex Whanker he is.
Bill O’Reilly: oreilly@foxnews.com
(2) Write FOX and remind them how O'Reilly is a Dumb-ass Phone Sex Whanker.
FOX NEWS: Comments@foxnews.com
Is this O'Reilly's New Falafel Buddy?
Bill O’Reilly: oreilly@foxnews.com
(2) Write FOX and remind them how O'Reilly is a Dumb-ass Phone Sex Whanker.
FOX NEWS: Comments@foxnews.com
Is this O'Reilly's New Falafel Buddy?
HA HA ....HOT TUB TOM DELAY INDICTED
DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe
WASHINGTON Sep 28, 2005 — A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that likely will force him to step down as House majority leader.
DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.
GOP congressional officials said the plan was for DeLay to temporarily relinquish his leadership post and Speaker Dennis Hastert will recommend that Rep. David Dreier of California step into those duties.
WASHINGTON Sep 28, 2005 — A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that likely will force him to step down as House majority leader.
DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.
GOP congressional officials said the plan was for DeLay to temporarily relinquish his leadership post and Speaker Dennis Hastert will recommend that Rep. David Dreier of California step into those duties.
Dancing in the Dark
Maureen Dowd
I can't wait to see what's next.
Dick Cheney carpooling downtown with Brownie? Rummy Rollerblading down
the bike path to the Pentagon? Condi huddling by a Watergate fireplace
in a gray cardigan?
Maybe now that our hydrocarbon president is the conservation president,
he'll downgrade from Air Force One to a solar-powered Piper Cub as he
continues to stalk the Gulf Coast towns and oil rigs like Banquo's
ghost.
The once disciplined and swaggering Bush administration has descended
into slapstick, more comical even than having Clarence Thomas et al.
sit in judgment as Anna Nicole Smith attempts to get more of the moolah
of her late oil tycoon husband.
We've got the clownish Brownie still on FEMA's payroll, giving advice
on cleaning up the mess he made. ( Let's hope the White House is paying
him only long enough to buy his good will, not to take any of his bad
advice.)
We've got two oilmen in the White House whose administration was built
on urging us to consume and buy as much oil and energy as possible. Now
they're suddenly urging us to conserve. (Since Mr. Cheney considers
conservation a "personal virtue," at least he'll get some virtue.)
The president called on Americans to drive less, and told his staff
members to turn off their computers at night, turn down the
air-conditioning, form carpools and take the bus.
At the same time, he set a fine example by wasting gazillions of
gallons of fuel with all the planes and Secret Service vans and press
motorcades and police escorts that follow him around every time he goes
on one of his inane photo-ops from the Colorado bunker to what's left
of the Mississippi Delta and the Bayou. He did his part by knocking off
a few cars from his motorcade on his seventh trip to the gulf yesterday
- but if residents had hoped he'd bring them some water, they went
thirsty.
"Even so," as The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller wrote, "security dictated
that Mr. Bush's still-impressive caravan pick him up at the base of Air
Force One in Lake Charles, La. - and drop him off just yards away for a
meeting with local officials at an airport terminal."
Noting that the Bush administration has proposed new fuel economy
standards that critics say could make huge S.U.V.'s and pickups even
more popular, Reuters published some arithmetic about the president's
notorious fuel inefficiency.
Air Force One costs $83,200 to fill up and more than $6,000 per hour to
fly. Then there's the cost of helicopters and a 2006 Cadillac DTS limo
that gets less than 22 miles per gallon.
Karen Hughes, the Bush nanny who knows nothing about the Muslim world
and yet is charged with selling the U.S. to it, wasted even more fuel
this week flying to Saudi Arabia to tell women covered from head to toe
in black how much she likes driving even though they can't.
She knows so little about the Middle East that she looked taken aback
when some Saudi women told her that just because they could not vote or
drive did not mean that they felt they were treated unfairly.
One thing Saudi women like even less than not having certain rights is
to have hypocritical Americans patronize them.
The moment when America should have used its influence to help Saudi
women came on Nov. 6, 1990, as U.S. forces gathered in the kingdom to
go to war in Iraq the first time. Inspired by the U.S. troops,
including female soldiers, 47 women from the Saudi intelligentsia took
the wheels from their brothers and husbands and drove until the police
stopped them.
They were branded "whores" and "harlots" by Saudi clerics, had their
passports revoked, and were ostracized from society for a dozen years.
Even their husbands suffered.
The experience made them more angry at the U.S. than at their own
rulers. They feel that the Bushes play up the repression of women in
the Middle East when it suits their desire to bang the war drums, but
do not care what happens to women once the ideological agenda has been
achieved.
They feel the administration and the American media have emphasized the
repression of Saudi women post-9/11 as a way to demonize Saudi Arabia
and paint Saudi men as bullies and terrorists.
When Ms. Hughes goes to Saudi Arabia to introduce herself as "a mom"
and to talk about Americans as people of faith, guzzling fuel all the
way in a country getting flush selling us oil, I think we can consider
it taxpayer money well spent.
W. doesn't really need to worry about turning down the lights in the
White House. The place is already totally in the dark.
I can't wait to see what's next.
Dick Cheney carpooling downtown with Brownie? Rummy Rollerblading down
the bike path to the Pentagon? Condi huddling by a Watergate fireplace
in a gray cardigan?
Maybe now that our hydrocarbon president is the conservation president,
he'll downgrade from Air Force One to a solar-powered Piper Cub as he
continues to stalk the Gulf Coast towns and oil rigs like Banquo's
ghost.
The once disciplined and swaggering Bush administration has descended
into slapstick, more comical even than having Clarence Thomas et al.
sit in judgment as Anna Nicole Smith attempts to get more of the moolah
of her late oil tycoon husband.
We've got the clownish Brownie still on FEMA's payroll, giving advice
on cleaning up the mess he made. ( Let's hope the White House is paying
him only long enough to buy his good will, not to take any of his bad
advice.)
We've got two oilmen in the White House whose administration was built
on urging us to consume and buy as much oil and energy as possible. Now
they're suddenly urging us to conserve. (Since Mr. Cheney considers
conservation a "personal virtue," at least he'll get some virtue.)
The president called on Americans to drive less, and told his staff
members to turn off their computers at night, turn down the
air-conditioning, form carpools and take the bus.
At the same time, he set a fine example by wasting gazillions of
gallons of fuel with all the planes and Secret Service vans and press
motorcades and police escorts that follow him around every time he goes
on one of his inane photo-ops from the Colorado bunker to what's left
of the Mississippi Delta and the Bayou. He did his part by knocking off
a few cars from his motorcade on his seventh trip to the gulf yesterday
- but if residents had hoped he'd bring them some water, they went
thirsty.
"Even so," as The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller wrote, "security dictated
that Mr. Bush's still-impressive caravan pick him up at the base of Air
Force One in Lake Charles, La. - and drop him off just yards away for a
meeting with local officials at an airport terminal."
Noting that the Bush administration has proposed new fuel economy
standards that critics say could make huge S.U.V.'s and pickups even
more popular, Reuters published some arithmetic about the president's
notorious fuel inefficiency.
Air Force One costs $83,200 to fill up and more than $6,000 per hour to
fly. Then there's the cost of helicopters and a 2006 Cadillac DTS limo
that gets less than 22 miles per gallon.
Karen Hughes, the Bush nanny who knows nothing about the Muslim world
and yet is charged with selling the U.S. to it, wasted even more fuel
this week flying to Saudi Arabia to tell women covered from head to toe
in black how much she likes driving even though they can't.
She knows so little about the Middle East that she looked taken aback
when some Saudi women told her that just because they could not vote or
drive did not mean that they felt they were treated unfairly.
One thing Saudi women like even less than not having certain rights is
to have hypocritical Americans patronize them.
The moment when America should have used its influence to help Saudi
women came on Nov. 6, 1990, as U.S. forces gathered in the kingdom to
go to war in Iraq the first time. Inspired by the U.S. troops,
including female soldiers, 47 women from the Saudi intelligentsia took
the wheels from their brothers and husbands and drove until the police
stopped them.
They were branded "whores" and "harlots" by Saudi clerics, had their
passports revoked, and were ostracized from society for a dozen years.
Even their husbands suffered.
The experience made them more angry at the U.S. than at their own
rulers. They feel that the Bushes play up the repression of women in
the Middle East when it suits their desire to bang the war drums, but
do not care what happens to women once the ideological agenda has been
achieved.
They feel the administration and the American media have emphasized the
repression of Saudi women post-9/11 as a way to demonize Saudi Arabia
and paint Saudi men as bullies and terrorists.
When Ms. Hughes goes to Saudi Arabia to introduce herself as "a mom"
and to talk about Americans as people of faith, guzzling fuel all the
way in a country getting flush selling us oil, I think we can consider
it taxpayer money well spent.
W. doesn't really need to worry about turning down the lights in the
White House. The place is already totally in the dark.
Republicans Require Health Insurance for Immigrants Only
September 28, 2005 · Next month, Congress will consider an immigration reform bill introduced by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ). A component of the bill would require employers to provide health insurance to all workers who are registered immigrants.
Give'em Hell Harry
Take Back The Senate
Think of this website as your own: A place where you can be a part of taking back your Senate in 2006 and fight to protect your communites; provide everyone with good health care; make America energy independent; restore America’s global strength; secure our retirement and rebuild our economy through innovation and reform. Working together, we can do it. Let’s change the future.
http://www.giveemhellharry.com/
Think of this website as your own: A place where you can be a part of taking back your Senate in 2006 and fight to protect your communites; provide everyone with good health care; make America energy independent; restore America’s global strength; secure our retirement and rebuild our economy through innovation and reform. Working together, we can do it. Let’s change the future.
http://www.giveemhellharry.com/
Latest Items From Media Matters for America
O'Reilly's evolving deadline on preparing Iraqi security forces
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly declared on the September 26 edition of The O'Reilly Factor that Iraqi security and law enforcement forces should be given "another year and a half" to prepare to defend their country by themselves. But this is a substantially longer time frame than O'Reilly proposed less than two months earlier, on August 3, when he stated, "I mean, within six months, they either do it or they don't. I mean, we can't be South Vietnamese [sic] all over again. Either you fight or you don't." In amending his deadline, O'Reilly neither acknowledged his previous statement, nor gave any reasons for setting the new, longer deadline.
Read more...
Major broadcast networks covered Frist scandal but overlooked Frist's documented falsehoods
On September 26, after largely ignoring the issue, news broadcasts on all three major television networks devoted segments to the brewing scandal over the sale by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) of his stock in HCA Inc., the hospital chain founded by his father, just two weeks before a bad earnings report caused the stock price to drop sharply. But all three networks left out a significant angle, first reported on September 24 by The New York Times and the Associated Press: Frist falsely claimed in 2003 that he was unaware his qualified blind trusts included major holdings in HCA.
Read More...
Dobbs omitted "intelligent design" proponent's Christian ties, beliefs
On the September 26 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, host Dobbs failed to inform viewers of guest Frank Sherwin's overt support for creationism, a literal belief in the biblical account of how the universe and human life were created. Dobson also left unchallenged Sherwin's disingenuous statements on the views that he and his group, the Institute of Creation Research, are advocating.
Read More...
Hannity to guest: "I don't care about your thoughts" on Iraq veterans protesting the war
On the September 26 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity interrupted Global Exchange human rights director Ted Lewis's discussion of Iraq war veterans protesting the war. Hannity declared, "I don't care about your thoughts. You can tell them to [co-host] Alan [Colmes]."
Read More...
"Oil"-Reilly again gushed misleading Iraqi oil statistics
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly again misleadingly maintained that Iraqi oil production is one of the success stories of the war, reporting that "[o]il production is up to 100 percent." As Media Matters for America has previously explained, O'Reilly ignores the fact that the current capacity of the Iraqi oil industry has greatly diminished from pre-war levels. While Iraq may indeed be producing at current capacity, the overall amount of oil the nation is producing is less than before the war.
Read More...
For the record: Media figures admit they have been easy on Bush White House since 9-11
In recent weeks, several prominent journalists have publicly acknowledged that the U.S. media accorded President Bush too much deference following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams both noted that it was only in observing government failures in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort that journalists began seriously to challenge the administration. NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell conceded that reporters have been "less challenging" since the attacks. Friedman wrote that the 9-11 attacks created in the media a "deference" towards the administration. Williams described the press corps as "settling in to too comfortable a journalistic pattern," a phenomenon he described as the "9/11 syndrome."
Read More...
Russert repeated false Knight Ridder claim that Cindy Sheehan "protested outside [Hillary] Clinton's New York office"
On the September 25 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert suggested that Cindy Sheehan's anti-war activism might negatively affect a potential 2008 presidential campaign by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY). In doing so, Russert read an excerpt of a Knight Ridder article that reported that "anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan protested outside Clinton's New York office" -- despite the fact that the protest in question occurred at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, more than seven miles from Clinton's nearest office.
Read More...
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly declared on the September 26 edition of The O'Reilly Factor that Iraqi security and law enforcement forces should be given "another year and a half" to prepare to defend their country by themselves. But this is a substantially longer time frame than O'Reilly proposed less than two months earlier, on August 3, when he stated, "I mean, within six months, they either do it or they don't. I mean, we can't be South Vietnamese [sic] all over again. Either you fight or you don't." In amending his deadline, O'Reilly neither acknowledged his previous statement, nor gave any reasons for setting the new, longer deadline.
Read more...
Major broadcast networks covered Frist scandal but overlooked Frist's documented falsehoods
On September 26, after largely ignoring the issue, news broadcasts on all three major television networks devoted segments to the brewing scandal over the sale by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) of his stock in HCA Inc., the hospital chain founded by his father, just two weeks before a bad earnings report caused the stock price to drop sharply. But all three networks left out a significant angle, first reported on September 24 by The New York Times and the Associated Press: Frist falsely claimed in 2003 that he was unaware his qualified blind trusts included major holdings in HCA.
Read More...
Dobbs omitted "intelligent design" proponent's Christian ties, beliefs
On the September 26 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, host Dobbs failed to inform viewers of guest Frank Sherwin's overt support for creationism, a literal belief in the biblical account of how the universe and human life were created. Dobson also left unchallenged Sherwin's disingenuous statements on the views that he and his group, the Institute of Creation Research, are advocating.
Read More...
Hannity to guest: "I don't care about your thoughts" on Iraq veterans protesting the war
On the September 26 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity interrupted Global Exchange human rights director Ted Lewis's discussion of Iraq war veterans protesting the war. Hannity declared, "I don't care about your thoughts. You can tell them to [co-host] Alan [Colmes]."
Read More...
"Oil"-Reilly again gushed misleading Iraqi oil statistics
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly again misleadingly maintained that Iraqi oil production is one of the success stories of the war, reporting that "[o]il production is up to 100 percent." As Media Matters for America has previously explained, O'Reilly ignores the fact that the current capacity of the Iraqi oil industry has greatly diminished from pre-war levels. While Iraq may indeed be producing at current capacity, the overall amount of oil the nation is producing is less than before the war.
Read More...
For the record: Media figures admit they have been easy on Bush White House since 9-11
In recent weeks, several prominent journalists have publicly acknowledged that the U.S. media accorded President Bush too much deference following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams both noted that it was only in observing government failures in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort that journalists began seriously to challenge the administration. NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell conceded that reporters have been "less challenging" since the attacks. Friedman wrote that the 9-11 attacks created in the media a "deference" towards the administration. Williams described the press corps as "settling in to too comfortable a journalistic pattern," a phenomenon he described as the "9/11 syndrome."
Read More...
Russert repeated false Knight Ridder claim that Cindy Sheehan "protested outside [Hillary] Clinton's New York office"
On the September 25 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert suggested that Cindy Sheehan's anti-war activism might negatively affect a potential 2008 presidential campaign by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY). In doing so, Russert read an excerpt of a Knight Ridder article that reported that "anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan protested outside Clinton's New York office" -- despite the fact that the protest in question occurred at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, more than seven miles from Clinton's nearest office.
Read More...
Harness Racing Picks for 09-28-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (186)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Cal-Expo
Race # 8
Horse: PARTONIZING
Post Position: # 8
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 3
Horse: HARD SHOE HANNAH
Post Position: # 1
Win (186)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Cal-Expo
Race # 8
Horse: PARTONIZING
Post Position: # 8
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 3
Horse: HARD SHOE HANNAH
Post Position: # 1
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Harness Racing Results for 09-27-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (186)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 6
Horse: CLAREEN (Won)
Post Position: # 1
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 8
Horse: REAL CONNECTION (Won)
Post Position: # 4
Race # 10
Horse: VIRTUAL DREAM (Won)
Post Position: # 1
****************************
Plainridge Race Course
Race # 3
Horse: HURRICANE HUDSON (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Race # 8
Horse: SIMPLY A STAR (Place)
Post Position: # 6
Win (186)
Place (58)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 6
Horse: CLAREEN (Won)
Post Position: # 1
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 8
Horse: REAL CONNECTION (Won)
Post Position: # 4
Race # 10
Horse: VIRTUAL DREAM (Won)
Post Position: # 1
****************************
Plainridge Race Course
Race # 3
Horse: HURRICANE HUDSON (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Race # 8
Horse: SIMPLY A STAR (Place)
Post Position: # 6
The Independent Katrina Commission Discharge Petition!
Rep. Louise M. Slaughter has announced a Discharge Petition, which if successful, will force the Congress to debate and vote, up or down, the formation of an Independent Katrina Commission. This is a necessary step in our quest to investigate the woefully inadequate preparation and response to the horrible disaster on America’s Gulf Coast.
In order for the Discharge Petition to take effect and force a vote, half of Congress (218 Members) must sign on. That’s a tall order to fill, especially when you consider all that the obstructionist Republican Leadership has done to block our efforts. But even they can’t stop a Discharge Petition. It truly is our silver legislative bullet.
If Louise is to gather the required signatures, she will need our help. Please sign up as a Citizen Co-Signer, and she’ll keep you updated on our success and other ways you can help.
Link: I’m signing up as a Citizen Co-Signer of the Discharge Petition because we need an Independent Katrina Commission modeled after the 9/11 Commission. With the obstructionist Republican Leadership in control, the Discharge Petition may be our only hope of bringing accountability and truth to our nation's capitol.
In order for the Discharge Petition to take effect and force a vote, half of Congress (218 Members) must sign on. That’s a tall order to fill, especially when you consider all that the obstructionist Republican Leadership has done to block our efforts. But even they can’t stop a Discharge Petition. It truly is our silver legislative bullet.
If Louise is to gather the required signatures, she will need our help. Please sign up as a Citizen Co-Signer, and she’ll keep you updated on our success and other ways you can help.
Link: I’m signing up as a Citizen Co-Signer of the Discharge Petition because we need an Independent Katrina Commission modeled after the 9/11 Commission. With the obstructionist Republican Leadership in control, the Discharge Petition may be our only hope of bringing accountability and truth to our nation's capitol.
From Senator Boxer
You may know him for his courage -- his willingness to speak out against the radical right-wing agenda when few others would. You may know him for his inspiring speeches on the Senate floor and the passion he brings to our progressive cause. Or you may know him for defending the Constitution and our system of checks and balances from the Republicans' relentless pursuit for power.
No matter how you know him, to all of us Senator Robert Byrd is a patriot, a statesman, and a national treasure. He is a fearless advocate for Democratic values, and he truly is the conscience of the Senate.
But to George Bush and the Republican attack machine in Washington, Robert Byrd is an obstacle: one man who is preventing them from enacting their radical right-wing agenda.
That's why the White House has made Robert Byrd its top target for defeat during the 2006 elections. And it's up to you and me to stand with him.
Support Senator Byrd's re-election campaign today!
During the lead up to the war in Iraq, Senator Byrd spoke out early and often, warning President Bush against an invasion. Tragically, because of the Bush Administration's rush to war and its complete lack of planning for the aftermath, many of the worst-case predictions have come true. Thousands of lives and billions of dollars have been lost, with no end in sight.
Now, in a moving speech that he recently delivered on the Senate floor, Senator Byrd has called on President Bush to bring our troops home.
"It is time to come home, America. Time to look within our own borders and within our own souls. There are many questions to be answered and many missions to accomplish right here on our own soil. We cannot force-feed democracy to Iraq. We cannot resolve Iraq's internal issues. It is time for the United States to begin to bring our troops home."
I have had the personal honor and privilege of working with Senator Byrd for more than a decade. Each and every day I have a renewed appreciation for his integrity, his wisdom, and his lifelong commitment to public service. Thankfully, time and again, he has thwarted the radical right-wing extremists and prevented their most damaging efforts from becoming law. Earlier this year, Senator Byrd was a key voice in defusing the GOP's 'nuclear option' that would have turned the Senate into a rubber stamp for the President's extreme right-wing judicial nominees.
But now Karl Rove and the right-wing smear machine have targeted Senator Byrd for defeat. Since they cannot beat him on the floor of the Senate, they are on a mission to try to defeat him at home.
We can't let them win. Contribute to Senator Byrd's campaign today!
Already, these right-wing extremists have spent thousands of dollars on television attack ads in Senator Byrd's home state of West Virginia.
We'd all like to think that a leader of Senator Byrd's stature and seniority is unbeatable. But unfortunately, you and I know better. We saw it just last year when the right-wing attack machine smeared and distorted the record of my friend Tom Daschle in South Dakota. They'll do anything it takes to try to win. We now know that seniority and stature are simply not enough.
So if you care about checks and balances in government, if you want to live in a country that is once again admired instead of feared, if you believe that Democrats need more strong leaders in Washington, D.C. who fight for our families and our children, then I hope you'll stand with me and support Senator Byrd.
Please support Senator Byrd's campaign today!
http://ga4.org/ct/upafmvd1gztB/donate
In Friendship,
Barbara Boxer
No matter how you know him, to all of us Senator Robert Byrd is a patriot, a statesman, and a national treasure. He is a fearless advocate for Democratic values, and he truly is the conscience of the Senate.
But to George Bush and the Republican attack machine in Washington, Robert Byrd is an obstacle: one man who is preventing them from enacting their radical right-wing agenda.
That's why the White House has made Robert Byrd its top target for defeat during the 2006 elections. And it's up to you and me to stand with him.
Support Senator Byrd's re-election campaign today!
During the lead up to the war in Iraq, Senator Byrd spoke out early and often, warning President Bush against an invasion. Tragically, because of the Bush Administration's rush to war and its complete lack of planning for the aftermath, many of the worst-case predictions have come true. Thousands of lives and billions of dollars have been lost, with no end in sight.
Now, in a moving speech that he recently delivered on the Senate floor, Senator Byrd has called on President Bush to bring our troops home.
"It is time to come home, America. Time to look within our own borders and within our own souls. There are many questions to be answered and many missions to accomplish right here on our own soil. We cannot force-feed democracy to Iraq. We cannot resolve Iraq's internal issues. It is time for the United States to begin to bring our troops home."
I have had the personal honor and privilege of working with Senator Byrd for more than a decade. Each and every day I have a renewed appreciation for his integrity, his wisdom, and his lifelong commitment to public service. Thankfully, time and again, he has thwarted the radical right-wing extremists and prevented their most damaging efforts from becoming law. Earlier this year, Senator Byrd was a key voice in defusing the GOP's 'nuclear option' that would have turned the Senate into a rubber stamp for the President's extreme right-wing judicial nominees.
But now Karl Rove and the right-wing smear machine have targeted Senator Byrd for defeat. Since they cannot beat him on the floor of the Senate, they are on a mission to try to defeat him at home.
We can't let them win. Contribute to Senator Byrd's campaign today!
Already, these right-wing extremists have spent thousands of dollars on television attack ads in Senator Byrd's home state of West Virginia.
We'd all like to think that a leader of Senator Byrd's stature and seniority is unbeatable. But unfortunately, you and I know better. We saw it just last year when the right-wing attack machine smeared and distorted the record of my friend Tom Daschle in South Dakota. They'll do anything it takes to try to win. We now know that seniority and stature are simply not enough.
So if you care about checks and balances in government, if you want to live in a country that is once again admired instead of feared, if you believe that Democrats need more strong leaders in Washington, D.C. who fight for our families and our children, then I hope you'll stand with me and support Senator Byrd.
Please support Senator Byrd's campaign today!
http://ga4.org/ct/upafmvd1gztB/donate
In Friendship,
Barbara Boxer
Pelosi and Waxman introduce Anti-Cronyism Act
WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Today, Congressman Henry A. Waxman and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi introduced the Anti-Cronyism and Public Safety Act, which would prohibit the President from appointing unqualified individuals to critical public safety positions in the government.
"President Bush has handed out some of the country's most difficult and important jobs - leadership positions in public safety and emergency response - to politically well-connected individuals with no experience or qualifications," Rep. Waxman said. "This common sense legislation will end this practice and ensure that public safety is back in the hands of those who are trained and experienced in protecting the public."
"President Bush has handed out some of the country's most difficult and important jobs - leadership positions in public safety and emergency response - to politically well-connected individuals with no experience or qualifications," Rep. Waxman said. "This common sense legislation will end this practice and ensure that public safety is back in the hands of those who are trained and experienced in protecting the public."
Harness Racing Picks for 09-27-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (182)
Place (57)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 6
Horse: CLAREEN
Post Position: # 1
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 8
Horse: REAL CONNECTION
Post Position: # 4
Race # 10
Horse: VIRTUAL DREAM
Post Position: # 1
****************************
Plainridge Race Course
Race # 3
Horse: HURRICANE HUDSON
Post Position: # 1
Race # 8
Horse: SIMPLY A STAR
Post Position: # 6
Win (182)
Place (57)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 6
Horse: CLAREEN
Post Position: # 1
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 8
Horse: REAL CONNECTION
Post Position: # 4
Race # 10
Horse: VIRTUAL DREAM
Post Position: # 1
****************************
Plainridge Race Course
Race # 3
Horse: HURRICANE HUDSON
Post Position: # 1
Race # 8
Horse: SIMPLY A STAR
Post Position: # 6
Monday, September 26, 2005
THE OTHER CINDY SHEEHAN:
A far more credible person with some serious questions about the death of her son in combat. Her name? Mary Tillman. Did you know that one of Pat Tillman's favorite authors was Noam Chomsky and that he opposed the Iraq war? I didn't. It makes his patriotism and service more admirable, in my view. And the obvious lies and obfuscation and contradictions from the military all the more reprehensible.
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/
The Top 10 Conservative Idiots (No. 215)
September 26, 2005 · Run And Hide Edition
Determined to avaoid a repeat of their Katrina fiasco, George W. Bush rode out Hurricane Rita in Northern Command headquarters in Colorado Springs, looking utterly bored. Or perhaps he was riding out the anti-war protests.
Determined to avaoid a repeat of their Katrina fiasco, George W. Bush rode out Hurricane Rita in Northern Command headquarters in Colorado Springs, looking utterly bored. Or perhaps he was riding out the anti-war protests.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Harness Racing Results for 09-25-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (182)
Place (57)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 1
Horse: ER GOLDEN BEACH (Won)
Post Position: # 5
Win (182)
Place (57)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 1
Horse: ER GOLDEN BEACH (Won)
Post Position: # 5
Harness Racing Picks for 09-25-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (181)
Place (57)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 1
Horse: ER GOLDEN BEACH
Post Position: # 5
Win (181)
Place (57)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 1
Horse: ER GOLDEN BEACH
Post Position: # 5
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Friday Night News Dump, Bush Cronie Quits.....
FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford resigns
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford abruptly resigned from the post on Friday, less than three months after he survived a contentious confirmation battle in the Senate
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford abruptly resigned from the post on Friday, less than three months after he survived a contentious confirmation battle in the Senate
Harness Racing Results for 09-24-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (181)
Place (57)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Freehold Raceway
Race # 6
Horse: VILLAGE JATE (Place)
Post Position: # 5
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 6
Horse: WESTERN CYCLONE (Won)
Post Position: # 3
Race # 11
Horse: JOE TO GO (Show)
Post Position: # 7
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 4
Horse: BEEMERS NEW LAND (Won)
Post Position: # 3
Race # 12
Horse: CHOCOLATE CRACKLE (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Win (181)
Place (57)
Show (10)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Freehold Raceway
Race # 6
Horse: VILLAGE JATE (Place)
Post Position: # 5
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 6
Horse: WESTERN CYCLONE (Won)
Post Position: # 3
Race # 11
Horse: JOE TO GO (Show)
Post Position: # 7
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 4
Horse: BEEMERS NEW LAND (Won)
Post Position: # 3
Race # 12
Horse: CHOCOLATE CRACKLE (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Stop Funding Them.........
Will your online shopping support:
Fair labor or sweatshops?
Blue skies or brown?
Clean energy or oil dependence?
Government for the people or business?
alonovo.com
Intelligent Marketplace
It’s your money.
Shop Loudly.
Read More...
Fair labor or sweatshops?
Blue skies or brown?
Clean energy or oil dependence?
Government for the people or business?
alonovo.com
Intelligent Marketplace
It’s your money.
Shop Loudly.
Read More...
Harness Racing Picks for 09-24-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (178)
Place (56)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Freehold Raceway
Race # 6
Horse: VILLAGE JATE
Post Position: # 5
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 6
Horse: WESTERN CYCLONE
Post Position: # 3
Race # 11
Horse: JOE TO GO
Post Position: # 7
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 4
Horse: BEEMERS NEW LAND
Post Position: # 3
Race # 12
Horse: CHOCOLATE CRACKLE
Post Position: # 1
Win (178)
Place (56)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Freehold Raceway
Race # 6
Horse: VILLAGE JATE
Post Position: # 5
****************************
The Red Mile
Race # 6
Horse: WESTERN CYCLONE
Post Position: # 3
Race # 11
Horse: JOE TO GO
Post Position: # 7
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 4
Horse: BEEMERS NEW LAND
Post Position: # 3
Race # 12
Horse: CHOCOLATE CRACKLE
Post Position: # 1
Friday, September 23, 2005
Harness Racing Results for 09-23-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (178)
Place (56)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Northfield Park
Race # 13
Horse: SMOKIN MADGE (Won)
Post Position: # 2
****************************
Pompano Park
Race # 13
Horse: JAZZ HANOVER (Place)
Post Position: # 4
****************************
Scioto Downs
Race # 2
Horse: SEAWORTHY (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Win (178)
Place (56)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Northfield Park
Race # 13
Horse: SMOKIN MADGE (Won)
Post Position: # 2
****************************
Pompano Park
Race # 13
Horse: JAZZ HANOVER (Place)
Post Position: # 4
****************************
Scioto Downs
Race # 2
Horse: SEAWORTHY (Won)
Post Position: # 1
Chavez staying true to pledge for U.S. poor
Citgo officials scrambling to fine-tune Venezuelan leader's promise of cheap oil
When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on the weekend that he was going to open the taps on subsidized heating oil for poor folks in the United States, many assumed it was a drive-by comment aimed at raising the ire of his frequent critics in Washington.
But, as it turns out, Mr. Chavez is a man of his word.
Officials at Citgo Petroleum Corp. -- the Houston-based company that is wholly owned by Venezuela's state-owned energy company -- say they are scrambling to put the fine points on Mr. Chavez's promise to supply some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the United States with cheap heating oil this winter.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.200509...
When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on the weekend that he was going to open the taps on subsidized heating oil for poor folks in the United States, many assumed it was a drive-by comment aimed at raising the ire of his frequent critics in Washington.
But, as it turns out, Mr. Chavez is a man of his word.
Officials at Citgo Petroleum Corp. -- the Houston-based company that is wholly owned by Venezuela's state-owned energy company -- say they are scrambling to put the fine points on Mr. Chavez's promise to supply some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the United States with cheap heating oil this winter.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.200509...
STEELER'S Football Week # 3
The Steelers host the New England Patriots on Sunday, Sept. 25. Kickoff for the game is at 4:15 p.m. The Steelers are 2-0 and coming off a 27-7 win over the Houston Texans. The Patriots are 1-1 after losing 27-17 to the Carolina Panthers. The Steelers are 13-8 all-time versus the Patriots.
Steelers-Patriots Game Day Coverage
Harness Racing Picks for 09-23-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (176)
Place (55)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Northfield Park
Race # 13
Horse: SMOKIN MADGE
Post Position: # 2
****************************
Pompano Park
Race # 13
Horse: JAZZ HANOVER
Post Position: # 4
****************************
Scioto Downs
Race # 2
Horse: SEAWORTHY
Post Position: # 1
Win (176)
Place (55)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Northfield Park
Race # 13
Horse: SMOKIN MADGE
Post Position: # 2
****************************
Pompano Park
Race # 13
Horse: JAZZ HANOVER
Post Position: # 4
****************************
Scioto Downs
Race # 2
Horse: SEAWORTHY
Post Position: # 1
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Harness Racing Results for 09-22-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (176)
Place (55)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Flamboro Downs
Race # 6
Horse: GOING POSTAL (Won)
Post Position: # 3
****************************
Hazel Park
Race # 3
Horse: FALCONS SHAMAN (Place)
Post Position: # 2
Win (176)
Place (55)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Flamboro Downs
Race # 6
Horse: GOING POSTAL (Won)
Post Position: # 3
****************************
Hazel Park
Race # 3
Horse: FALCONS SHAMAN (Place)
Post Position: # 2
BUSH'S BOOZE CRISIS
By JENNIFER LUCE and DON GENTILE
Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.
Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.
Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.
His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."
Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against "falling off the wagon" and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.
"When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!"
"Laura gave him an ultimatum before, 'It's Jim Beam or me.' She doesn't want to replay that nightmare — especially now when it's such tough going for her husband."
Bush is under the worst pressure of his two terms in office and his popularity is near an all-time low. The handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq have fueled public discontent and pushed Bush back to drink.
A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months.
"The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier's life personally. It has left him emotionally drained.
The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. "And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn't go out of control."
Another source said: "I'm only surprised to hear that he hadn't taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit's end. I've known him for years. He's been a good ol' Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn't believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone's drinking around him."
Another source said: "A family member told me they fear George is 'falling apart.' The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper." Bush's history of drinking dates back to his youth. Speaking of his time as a young man in the National Guard, he has said: "One thing I remember, and I'm most proud of, is my drinking and partying. Those were the days my friends. Those were the good old days!"
Age 26 in 1972, he reportedly rounded off a night's boozing with his 16-year-old brother Marvin by challenging his father to a fight.
On November 1, 2000, on the eve of his first presidential election, Bush acknowledged that in 1976 he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol near his parents' home in Maine. Age 30 at the time, Bush pleaded guilty and paid a $150 fine. His driving privileges were temporarily suspended in Maine.
"I'm not proud of that," he said. "I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much, and I did that night. I learned my lesson." In another interview around that time, he said: "Well, I don't think I had an addiction. You know it's hard for me to say. I've had friends who were, you know, very addicted... and they required hitting bottom (to start) going to AA. I don't think that was my case."
During his 2000 presidential campaign, there were also persistent questions about past cocaine use. Eventually Bush denied using cocaine after 1992, then quickly extended the cocaine-free period back to 1974, when he was 28.
Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, told The National Enquirer: "I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any program, like the President, have a hard time when stress gets to be great.
"I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening."
Published on: 09/21/2005
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/63426
Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.
Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.
Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.
His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."
Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against "falling off the wagon" and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.
"When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!"
"Laura gave him an ultimatum before, 'It's Jim Beam or me.' She doesn't want to replay that nightmare — especially now when it's such tough going for her husband."
Bush is under the worst pressure of his two terms in office and his popularity is near an all-time low. The handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq have fueled public discontent and pushed Bush back to drink.
A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months.
"The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier's life personally. It has left him emotionally drained.
The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. "And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn't go out of control."
Another source said: "I'm only surprised to hear that he hadn't taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit's end. I've known him for years. He's been a good ol' Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn't believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone's drinking around him."
Another source said: "A family member told me they fear George is 'falling apart.' The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper." Bush's history of drinking dates back to his youth. Speaking of his time as a young man in the National Guard, he has said: "One thing I remember, and I'm most proud of, is my drinking and partying. Those were the days my friends. Those were the good old days!"
Age 26 in 1972, he reportedly rounded off a night's boozing with his 16-year-old brother Marvin by challenging his father to a fight.
On November 1, 2000, on the eve of his first presidential election, Bush acknowledged that in 1976 he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol near his parents' home in Maine. Age 30 at the time, Bush pleaded guilty and paid a $150 fine. His driving privileges were temporarily suspended in Maine.
"I'm not proud of that," he said. "I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much, and I did that night. I learned my lesson." In another interview around that time, he said: "Well, I don't think I had an addiction. You know it's hard for me to say. I've had friends who were, you know, very addicted... and they required hitting bottom (to start) going to AA. I don't think that was my case."
During his 2000 presidential campaign, there were also persistent questions about past cocaine use. Eventually Bush denied using cocaine after 1992, then quickly extended the cocaine-free period back to 1974, when he was 28.
Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, told The National Enquirer: "I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any program, like the President, have a hard time when stress gets to be great.
"I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening."
Published on: 09/21/2005
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/63426
Harness Racing Picks for 09-22-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (175)
Place (54)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Flamboro Downs
Race # 6
Horse: GOING POSTAL
Post Position: # 3
****************************
Hazel Park
Race # 3
Horse: FALCONS SHAMAN
Post Position: # 2
Win (175)
Place (54)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Flamboro Downs
Race # 6
Horse: GOING POSTAL
Post Position: # 3
****************************
Hazel Park
Race # 3
Horse: FALCONS SHAMAN
Post Position: # 2
Able Danger ties Condi Rice to Chinese espionage
Washington Times
Now we find out why Able Danger was shut down in Feb. 2001, one month after Condi Rice becomes National Security Advisor:
Mr. Weldon said he thinks Able Danger was shut down after a "profile" of Chinese weapons proliferation linked two Americans to Chinese students at Stanford University engaged in technology acquisition for China.
During the profile, the names of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at the time the Stanford University provost, and former Defense Secretary William Perry were mentioned in the data and created "a wave of controversy," he said.
After Congress sought the data, "tremendous pressure was placed on the Army, because this was a prototype operation, and they shut down the Able Danger operation," Mr. Weldon said.
Now we find out why Able Danger was shut down in Feb. 2001, one month after Condi Rice becomes National Security Advisor:
Mr. Weldon said he thinks Able Danger was shut down after a "profile" of Chinese weapons proliferation linked two Americans to Chinese students at Stanford University engaged in technology acquisition for China.
During the profile, the names of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at the time the Stanford University provost, and former Defense Secretary William Perry were mentioned in the data and created "a wave of controversy," he said.
After Congress sought the data, "tremendous pressure was placed on the Army, because this was a prototype operation, and they shut down the Able Danger operation," Mr. Weldon said.
Frist Stock Sale Raises Questions on Timing
Washington Post
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has maintained for years that his stock holdings in the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain posed no conflict of interest for a policymaker deeply involved in health care matters. He even received two rulings in the 1990s from the Senate ethics committee that blessed the holding of the stock in blind trusts.
So when Frist decided in June to dump all the stock, and later cited as the reason his desire to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, eyebrows went up among ethics experts and congressional watchdogs. Why did he do it at that time?
Precisely a month later, after the stock was sold, its price tumbled 9 percent when executives in the company -- HCA Inc., which was founded by Frist's father and on whose board Frist's brother serves -- disclosed that hospital admissions of insured patients were lower than expected, depressing profits in the second quarter.
The timing thus raised questions about whether Frist had somehow traded on information he obtained in advance from the company. "Frist has been in the Senate for many years now, and the conflict is not new," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Why did he decide to sell it then? Why not years ago? What's changed? Did he know that the stock was about to take a fall?"
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has maintained for years that his stock holdings in the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain posed no conflict of interest for a policymaker deeply involved in health care matters. He even received two rulings in the 1990s from the Senate ethics committee that blessed the holding of the stock in blind trusts.
So when Frist decided in June to dump all the stock, and later cited as the reason his desire to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, eyebrows went up among ethics experts and congressional watchdogs. Why did he do it at that time?
Precisely a month later, after the stock was sold, its price tumbled 9 percent when executives in the company -- HCA Inc., which was founded by Frist's father and on whose board Frist's brother serves -- disclosed that hospital admissions of insured patients were lower than expected, depressing profits in the second quarter.
The timing thus raised questions about whether Frist had somehow traded on information he obtained in advance from the company. "Frist has been in the Senate for many years now, and the conflict is not new," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Why did he decide to sell it then? Why not years ago? What's changed? Did he know that the stock was about to take a fall?"
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Time for Bush to act, not pose
Maureen Dowd
WASHINGTON -- The president won't be happy until he dons a yellow slicker and actually takes the place of Anderson Cooper, violently blown about by Rita as he talks into a camera lens lashed with water, hanging onto a mailbox as he's hit by a flying pig in a squall, sucked up by a waterspout in the eye of the storm over the Dry Tortugas.
Then maybe he'll go back to the White House and do his job instead of running down to the Gulf Coast for silly disaster-ops every other day.
There's nothing more pathetic than watching someone who's out of touch feign being in touch. On his fifth pilgrimage of penitence to the devastation he took so long to comprehend, W. desperately tried to show concern. He said he spent some "quality time" at a Chevron plant in Pascagoula and nattered about trash removal, infrastructure assessment teams and the "can-do spirit."
"We look forward to hearing your vision so we can more better do our job," he said at a briefing in Gulfport, Miss., urging local officials to "think bold," while they still need to think mold.
Bush should stop posing in shirtsleeves and get back to the Oval Office. He has more hacks and cronies he's trying to put into important jobs, and he needs to ride herd on that.
The announcement that a veterinarian, Norris Alderson, who has no experience on women's health issues, would head the FDA's Office of Women's Health ran into so much flak from appalled women that the FDA may already have reneged on it. No morning-after pill, thanks to the antediluvian administration, but there may be hope for a morning-after horse pill.
Bush made a frownie over Brownie, but didn't learn much. He's once more trying to appoint a nothingburger to a position of real consequence in homeland security. The choice of Julie Myers, a 36-year-old lawyer with virtually no immigration, customs or law enforcement experience, to head the roiling Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency with its $4 billion budget and 22,000 staffers, has caused some alarm, according to The Washington Post.
Myers' main credentials seem to be that she worked briefly for the semidisgraced homeland security director, Michael Chertoff, when he was at the Justice Department. She just married Chertoff's chief of staff, John Wood, and she's the niece of Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As a former associate for Ken Starr, the young woman does have impeachment experience, in case the forensic war on terrorism requires the analysis of stains on dresses.
Julie makes Brownie look like Giuliani. I'll sleep better tonight, knowing that when she gets back from her honeymoon, Julie will be patrolling the frontier.
As if the Veterinarian and the Niece were not bad enough, there was also the Accused. David Safavian, the White House procurement official involved in Katrina relief efforts, was arrested on Monday, accused by the FBI of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into the seamy case of "Casino Jack" Abramoff, the Republican operative who has broken new ground in giving lobbying a bad name. Democrats say the fact that Safavian's wife is a top lawyer for the Republican congressman who's leading the whitewash of the White House blundering on Katrina does not give them confidence. Just as he has stonewalled other inquiries, Bush is trying to paper over his Katrina mistakes by appointing his homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, to investigate how her department fumbled the response.
Bush's "Who's Your Daddy?" bravura -- blowing off the world on global warming and the allies on the Iraq invasion -- has been slapped back by Mother Nature, who refuses to be fooled by spin.
When Donald Rumsfeld came out Tuesday to castigate the gloom-and-doomers and talk about the inroads American forces had made against terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, he could not so easily recast reality.
In Afghanistan, the U.S.'s handpicked puppet president is still battling warlords and a revivified Taliban, and the export of poppies for the heroin trade is once more thriving.
Iraq is worse, with more than 1,900 American troops killed. More died Tuesday, as well as four security men connected to the U.S. embassy office in Mosul, all to fashion a theocratic-leaning regime aligned with Iran. In Basra, two journalists who have done work for The Times have been killed in the last two months.
The more the president echoes his dad's "Message: I care," the more the world hears "Message: I can't."
WASHINGTON -- The president won't be happy until he dons a yellow slicker and actually takes the place of Anderson Cooper, violently blown about by Rita as he talks into a camera lens lashed with water, hanging onto a mailbox as he's hit by a flying pig in a squall, sucked up by a waterspout in the eye of the storm over the Dry Tortugas.
Then maybe he'll go back to the White House and do his job instead of running down to the Gulf Coast for silly disaster-ops every other day.
There's nothing more pathetic than watching someone who's out of touch feign being in touch. On his fifth pilgrimage of penitence to the devastation he took so long to comprehend, W. desperately tried to show concern. He said he spent some "quality time" at a Chevron plant in Pascagoula and nattered about trash removal, infrastructure assessment teams and the "can-do spirit."
"We look forward to hearing your vision so we can more better do our job," he said at a briefing in Gulfport, Miss., urging local officials to "think bold," while they still need to think mold.
Bush should stop posing in shirtsleeves and get back to the Oval Office. He has more hacks and cronies he's trying to put into important jobs, and he needs to ride herd on that.
The announcement that a veterinarian, Norris Alderson, who has no experience on women's health issues, would head the FDA's Office of Women's Health ran into so much flak from appalled women that the FDA may already have reneged on it. No morning-after pill, thanks to the antediluvian administration, but there may be hope for a morning-after horse pill.
Bush made a frownie over Brownie, but didn't learn much. He's once more trying to appoint a nothingburger to a position of real consequence in homeland security. The choice of Julie Myers, a 36-year-old lawyer with virtually no immigration, customs or law enforcement experience, to head the roiling Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency with its $4 billion budget and 22,000 staffers, has caused some alarm, according to The Washington Post.
Myers' main credentials seem to be that she worked briefly for the semidisgraced homeland security director, Michael Chertoff, when he was at the Justice Department. She just married Chertoff's chief of staff, John Wood, and she's the niece of Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As a former associate for Ken Starr, the young woman does have impeachment experience, in case the forensic war on terrorism requires the analysis of stains on dresses.
Julie makes Brownie look like Giuliani. I'll sleep better tonight, knowing that when she gets back from her honeymoon, Julie will be patrolling the frontier.
As if the Veterinarian and the Niece were not bad enough, there was also the Accused. David Safavian, the White House procurement official involved in Katrina relief efforts, was arrested on Monday, accused by the FBI of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into the seamy case of "Casino Jack" Abramoff, the Republican operative who has broken new ground in giving lobbying a bad name. Democrats say the fact that Safavian's wife is a top lawyer for the Republican congressman who's leading the whitewash of the White House blundering on Katrina does not give them confidence. Just as he has stonewalled other inquiries, Bush is trying to paper over his Katrina mistakes by appointing his homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, to investigate how her department fumbled the response.
Bush's "Who's Your Daddy?" bravura -- blowing off the world on global warming and the allies on the Iraq invasion -- has been slapped back by Mother Nature, who refuses to be fooled by spin.
When Donald Rumsfeld came out Tuesday to castigate the gloom-and-doomers and talk about the inroads American forces had made against terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, he could not so easily recast reality.
In Afghanistan, the U.S.'s handpicked puppet president is still battling warlords and a revivified Taliban, and the export of poppies for the heroin trade is once more thriving.
Iraq is worse, with more than 1,900 American troops killed. More died Tuesday, as well as four security men connected to the U.S. embassy office in Mosul, all to fashion a theocratic-leaning regime aligned with Iran. In Basra, two journalists who have done work for The Times have been killed in the last two months.
The more the president echoes his dad's "Message: I care," the more the world hears "Message: I can't."
Harness Racing Results for 09-21-05
Record since 04-26-05
Win (175)
Place (54)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Flamboro Downs
Race # 2
Horse: ROYAL MISSY (Won)
Post Position: # 7
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 1
Horse: PANAMA CANAL (Won)
Post Position: # 3
Race # 8
Horse: RIPPED (Won)
Post Position: # 9
Win (175)
Place (54)
Show (9)
Out of the Money (45)
****************************
Flamboro Downs
Race # 2
Horse: ROYAL MISSY (Won)
Post Position: # 7
****************************
Pocono Downs
Race # 1
Horse: PANAMA CANAL (Won)
Post Position: # 3
Race # 8
Horse: RIPPED (Won)
Post Position: # 9