The New York Times > Books > Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity

Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity: "Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity
By PETER EDIDIN

Published: February 14, 2005


Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, is a moral philosopher of international reputation and a professor emeritus at Princeton. He is also the author of a book recently published by the Princeton University Press that is the first in the publishing house's distinguished history to carry a title most newspapers, including this one, would find unfit to print. The work is called 'On Bull - - - - .'

The opening paragraph of the 67-page essay is a model of reason and composition, repeatedly disrupted by that single obscenity:

'One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much [bull]. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize [bull] and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.'

The essay goes on to lament that lack of inquiry, despite the universality of the phenomenon. 'Even the most basic and preliminary questions about [bull] remain, after all,' Mr. Frankfurt writes, 'not only unanswered but unasked.'

The balance of the work tries, with the help of Wittgenstein, Pound, St. Augustine and the spy novelist Eric Ambler, among others, to ask some of the preliminary questions - to define the nature of a thing recognized by all but understood by none.

What is [bull], after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth.

"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," Mr. Frankfurt writes. "A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it."

The bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it," he writes. "He pays no attention to it at all."

And this makes him, Mr. Frankfurt says, potentially more harmful than any liar, because any culture and he means this culture rife with [bull] is one in danger of rejecting "the possibility of knowing how things truly are." It follows that any form of political argument or intellectual analysis or commercial appeal is only as legitimate, and true, as it is persuasive. There is no other court of appeal.

The reader is left to imagine a culture in which institutions, leaders, events, ethics feel improvised and lacking in substance. "All that is solid," as Marx once wrote, "melts into air."

Mr. Frankfurt is an unlikely slinger of barnyard expletives. He is a courtly man, with a broad smile and a philosophic beard, and he lives in apparently decorous retirement with his wife, Joan Gilbert, in a lovely old house near the university.

On a visit there earlier this month, there was Heifetz was on the stereo, good food and wine on the table.

But appearances, in this case, are somewhat misleading. Mr. Frankfurt spent much of his childhood in Brooklyn, and still sees himself as a disputatious Brooklynite - one who still speaks of the Dodgers as "having betrayed us." And, in any event, Mr. Frankfurt is not particularly academic in the way he views his calling.

"I got interested in philosophy because of two things," he said. "One is that I was never satisfied with the answers that were given to questions, and it seemed to me that philosophy was an attempt to get down to the bottom of things."

"The other thing," he added, "was that I could never make up my mind what I was interested in, and philosophy enabled you to be interested in anything."

Those interests found expression in a small and scrupulous body of work that tries to make sense of free will, desire and love in closely reasoned but jargon-free prose, illustrated by examples of behavior (philosophers speak of the "Frankfurt example") that anyone would recognize.



He's dealing with very abstract matters," said Sarah Buss, who teaches philosophy at the University of Iowa, "but trying not to lose touch with the human condition. His work keeps faith with that condition."

Mr. Frankfurt's teaching shares with his prose a spirit Ms. Buss, who was once his graduate student, defines as, "Come in and let's struggle with something."

"He was very willing," she added, "to say, 'I just don't understand this.' "

The essay on [bull] arose from that kind of struggle. In 1986, Mr. Frankfurt was teaching at Yale, where he took part in a weekly seminar. The idea was to get people of various disciplines to listen to a paper written by one of their number, after which everyone would talk about it over lunch.

Mr. Frankfurt decided his contribution would be a paper on [bull]. "I had always been concerned about the importance of truth," he recalled, "the way in which truth is foundational to civilization and the various deformities of it that were current."

"I'd been concerned about the prevalence" of [bull], he continued, "and the lack of concern for truth and respect for truth that it represented."

"I used the title I did," he added, "because I wanted to talk about [bull] without any [bull], so I didn't use 'humbug' or 'bunkum.' "

Research was a problem. The closest analogue came from Socrates.

"He called it rhetoric or sophistry," Mr. Frankfurt said, "and regarded philosophy as the great enemy of rhetoric and sophistry."

"These were opposite, incompatible ways of persuading people," he added. "You could persuade them with rhetoric" - or [bull] - "with sophistic arguments that weren't really sound but that you could put over on people, or you could persuade them by philosophical arguments which were dedicated to rigor and clarity of thought."

Mr. Frankfurt recalled that it took him about a month to write the essay, after which he delivered it to the humanities group. "I guess I should say it was received enthusiastically," he said, "but they didn't know whether to laugh or to take it seriously."

Some months after the reading, the essay, title intact, was published by The Raritan Review, a journal then edited by Richard Poirier, a distinguished literary critic. In 1988, Mr. Frankfurt included it in "The Importance of What We Care About," a collection of his essays.

The audience for academic journals and collections of philosophical essays is limited, however, and so the essay tended to be passed along, samizdat style, from one aficionado to another.

"In the 20 years since it was published," Mr. Frankfurt said, "I don't think a year has passed in which I haven't gotten one or two letters or e-mails from people about it."

One man from Wales set some of the text to music; another who worked in the financial industry wanted to create an annual award for the worst piece of analysis published in his field (an idea apparently rejected by his superiors). G. A. Cohen, the Chichele professor of social and political theory at All Souls College, Oxford University, has written two papers on the subject.

"Harry has a unique capacity to take a simple truth and draw from it very consequential implications," Mr. Cohen said. "He is very good at identifying the potent elementary fact."

It was Ian Malcolm, the Princeton University Press editor responsible for philosophy, who approached Mr. Frankfurt about publishing the essay as a stand-alone volume. "The only way the essay would get the audience it deserved was to publish it as a small book," he said. "I had a feeling it would sell, but we weren't quite prepared for the interest it got."

For Mr. Frankfurt, who says it has always been his ambition to move philosophy "back to what most people think of as philosophy, which is a concern with the problems of life and with understanding the world," the book might be considered a successful achievement. But he finds he is still trying to get to the bottom of things, and hasn't arrived.

"When I reread it recently," he said at home, "I was sort of disappointed. It wasn't as good as I'd thought it was. It was a fairly superficial and incomplete treatment of the subject."

"Why," he wondered, "do we respond to [bull] in such a different way than we respond to lies? When we find somebody lying, we get angry, we feel we've been betrayed or violated or insulted in some way, and the liar is regarded as deceptive, deficient, morally at fault."

Why we are more tolerant of [bull] than lying is something Mr. Frankfurt believes would be worth considering.

"Why is lying regarded almost as a criminal act?" he asked, while bull "is sort of cuddly and warm? It's outside the realm of serious moral criticism. Why is that?"

FAA Had Dozens of Pre-9/11 Warnings

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001, about al-Qaida and its desire to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terror attacks.

The report by the 9/11 commission that investigated the suicide airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon detailed 52 such warnings given to FAA leaders from April to Sept. 10, 2001, about the radical Islamic terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al-Qaida's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. However, none of the warnings pinpointed what would happen on Sept. 11.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency received intelligence from other agencies, which it passed on to airlines and airports.

But, she said, "We had no specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures."

Brown also said the FAA was in the process of tightening security at the time of the attacks.

"We were spending $100 million a year to deploy explosive detection equipment at the airports," she said. The agency was also close to issuing a regulation that would have set higher standards for screeners and, for the first time, give it direct control over the screening work force."


... and how close to doing something useful like putting bars on the cockpit doors? Not very, I suppose.

Steve Kangas, RIP with so many others

It's been six years but we shouldn't forget Old #5...


(1) J. Clifford Baxter Found dead in his car, shot in the head. Mr. Baxter was vice chairman of Enron Corp. when he resigned in May 2001. Enron had been hot copy with the revelation that they were the largest campaign contributors for George W. Bush. Was J. Clifford Baxter a potential witness to Bush foreknowledge of their wrongdoings? His death was ruled a suicide.

(2)Charles Dana Rice He was the senior vice president and treasurer of El Paso Corp., an energy corporation swept up in the recent energy scandal. Two months after the "suicide" of Enron executive Clifford Baxter, in the midst of questions about the accounting practices of El Paso Corp., Charles Rice was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. His death was ruled a suicide.

(3)James Daniel Watkins His body was found on December 1, 2001 in the Pike National Forest in Colorado, a gunshot wound to the head. Mr. Watkins was a consultant for Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm for Enron. He disappeared on November 13, 2001 after he left work. He was described as a devoted family man who always called home if he were going to be late. Officials initially said that the death was suspicious, but have changed their tune and have ruled his death a suicide.

(4) Jake Horton He was the senior vice-president of Gulf Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, a cohort of Enron in the energy industry, and a major contributer to the Bush agenda. According to reporter Gregory Palast, Horton knew of the company's appalling accounting practices, and "... had no doubt about its illegal campaign contributions to Florida politicans - he'd made the payments himself. In April of 1989 Horton decided to come clean with state officials, and reserved the company jet to go confront company officials. Ten minutes after takeoff the jet exploded


(5)Steve Kangas His web site, Liberalism Resurgent, was meticulously researched and presented such a problem to the "real boss" of George Bush, Richard Scaife, that he hired a private detective to look into Kangas' past (a not infrequent practice of Scaife's). In February 1999, Steve Kangas was found in a 39th-floor bathroom outside of Scaife's offices at One Oxford Centre, in Pittsburgh, an apparent suicide.

Mr. Kangas, a very prolific writer, left no note. He had brought a fully-packed suitcase of clothes with him to Pittsburgh. He bought a burglar alarm shortly before he left for Pittsburgh. Why did he need a burglar alarm if he was going to commit suicide? An avowed advocate of gun control, he nevertheless bought a gun. What was he afraid of? Why did he go to Pittsburgh? After his death, his computer was sold for $150 and its hard drive wiped clean. Everything in his apartment was thrown away.


(6) Danny Casolaro He was working on a book that tied together the scandals surrounding the presidency of George H. W. Bush. He told his friends he was going to "bring back" the head of the Octopus. Instead, his body was found in a hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on August 10, 1991, an apparent suicide.


(7) Mark Lombardi He was an accomplished conceptual artist who, while chatting on the phone with a banker friend about the Bush savings and loan scandal, started doodling a diagram and was inspired to create a complex series of drawings and sketches that charted the details of the scandal. According to the New York Times, "He was soon charting the complex matrices of personal and professional relationships, conflict of interest, malfeasance and fraud uncovered by investigations into the major financial and political scandals of the day; to keep facts and sources straight, he created a handwritten database that now includes around 12,000 3-by-5-inch cards." On the evening of March 22, 2000, Mark Lombardi was found hanging in his loft, an apparent suicide.

(8) James Hatfield Mr. Hatfield was the author of Fortunate Son, an unauthorized biography of George W. Bush. The book detailed Bush's cocaine use and cover up of a cocaine arrest. He was found dead in a motel room, an apparent suicide, in July 2001.

Taking on Farm Subsidies

'The Bush administration is going to take on farm subsidies, the NYT reports. If they thought Social Security was tough, wait till this firestorm hits. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Thad Cochrane says he'll "work as hard as I can to oppose any changes." Will other Republicans stand up for fiscal responsibility and market principles? Will conservative pundits make a big deal of this issue? Will the libertarians and liberals who've scored the Bush administration for its earlier fiscal (and trade) foolishness? In other words, is there any kind of vocal, principled coalition to balance the concentrated interests of subsidized agriculture? A few environmental groups can't do it alone.'
http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/001598.html

... and the Coalition of the Conniving and the Clueless can't quite figure out how to form a circular firing squad.

A body blow to the self-esteem movement

A teacher named James in New York responding to This Is True article on the dumbing down of scholastics in the name of self-esteem: "Finally, it
happened. You offended me. In your latest dispatch someone with very
little insight wrote a piece about teachers trying to shove their
students into the same mold. This professional educator, along with
many, feel our hands tied by ADMINISTRATORS who, like the spineless
cretins they are, worry about such things as if we hurt the feelings of
a child when we tell them the answer they gave is wrong. They are the
ones with parents breathing down their backs. The administrators also
know that Johnny can't read. That's because Mom and dad will buy a 65
inch HDTV plasma television before they buy a book to put into their
kids hands. Don't forgot that in mommy and daddy's eyes Johnny can't do
any wrong. When he doesn't study because there are no rules at home and
Johnny is up later than the teacher. It is always the teacher's fault
why Johnny can't read. I don't teach in an affluent part of town, nor
do I teach in the heart of a crime infested city. I have several 13
year olds in my classes who have rap sheets longer than my tie. They
are found wandering the streets at three or four in the morning when
there is school the next day. Mom and dad didn't even know they were
out. Of course when the blame is unrefutably the parents, they just
throw up their hands and say, 'I just don't know what to do any more.'
But somewhere along the lines an administrator is telling us from their
ivory tower, how to fix the world and make everything all better for
the kid. What does the administrator do? Worry about the self esteem of
the child. Teachers seem to be the scapegoat in your little blurb. Walk
a mile in my shoes and you'll run screaming the other way. Is it the
teacher who pushes the child with a single digit average on? NO! We
know better. We know skills and lessons were not learned. But heaven
forbid the school district should look bad. Currently in New York State
the Commissioner of Education (the head administrator) is thinking of
tying student performance to State aid. So if the kids do poorly they
suffer with less tools like books, papers, and pencils (do you really
think everyone brings them to school)? Teaching positions are cut
because the aid is no long flowing in and the classes get crowded and
little Johnny is lucky to get the attention of one teacher for four
minutes a week. Don't get me wrong, not all administrators are like
this. So I'm not sure who wrote that piece but obviously someone who is
ill informed. If you would pass it on to them, I would appreciate it."


... How's that teaching gig working for ya, James?

Spend. Lie. Stick your kids with the bill

"How Washington tackles the thorny issue of Social Security reform.

By Jim Jubak

Recently my 87-year-old father asked me a question that many other elderly are asking as politicians in Washington begin talking about "reforming" Social Security: "Am I going to get less in my Social Security?"

He's fine. And at 55, so am I. Right now, the average worker gets a Social Security benefit equal to 42% of earnings when he or she retires at 65. Over the next two decades, as the retirement age slowly moves up to 67, that contribution from Social Security is set to shrink to 36%.

But if my 9-year-old son or my 21-year-old friend Sam had asked the same question, I would tell them their benefits are going to get cut -- and cut deep -- and that their generations will be saddled with $2 trillion in debt to fund those "private retirement accounts" that are now getting so much attention.

These younger workers will pay into Social Security at the same tax rate as someone who retired in my generation or my father's, but they'll get back nearly 50% less in benefits, according to current proposals.Social Security.
Are you worried, too?
Our special report.



Why am I so sure? It's not because I've got some secret source. Or because I think the current system works so well. Or because I think the proposed changes will fix the problem.

No, my predictions are based on my understanding of how our government in Washington works. As I explained in my last column, "Uncle Sam gets an 'F' in money management," our government (and we as voters) are addicted to a set of financial rules that I'd summarize as: Spend now. Lie about the cost. And pay later. Much, much later.

Best of all, of course, would be Never. But if the day of reckoning is unavoidable then "Let the kids pay."

We've done it before
If you need a primer on how this works, you don't have to look any further than the Medicare drug benefit that President Bush championed and that Congress voted into law in 2003.

Spend now. Paying for prescription drugs is a big financial burden for many seniors, and the problem is getting worse day by day because drug costs are rising at a rate that far outstrips the rate of inflation. By creating a prescription drug benefit for seniors, the president and his party got the enthusiastic political backing of the 36-million-member AARP. That support was crucial to getting the bill through Congress.

Lie about the cost. Even so, Congress might not have passed the bill if the Bush administration hadn't pulled out the Washington accounting handbook to make the cost of the drug benefit look as small as possible. Fiscally conservative members of Congress were willing to spend $400 billion over 10 years, but no more, on the program. So all the president's men, including the chief actuary at Medicare, said this bill would cost -- surprise! -- $400 billion over 10 years. Medicare's chief actuary actually had calculated that the cost of the bill over 10 years was more like $500 billion to $600 billion. But he'd been warned not to tell Congress of the true cost before it voted.

Pay later. Even $500 billion to $600 billion isn't the true bill handed to future taxpayers. Because drug costs, along with other health-care costs, are climbing at a rate well above inflation, and because the huge baby boom generation is just starting to become eligible for this drug benefit, the 10-year costs of this program are just a fraction of the long-term bill. If you measured total present value of the total future obligations created by the Medicare drug benefit plan, according to the trustees of the Medicare Trust fund, the cost would be $16.6 trillion. Since that's an unsustainable sum, future generations of taxpayers will likely have to eliminate this benefit for themselves after paying for the drugs consumed by previous generations.

Think that calculating the cost of the Medicare drug benefit plan that way is unfair? Well, it's exactly the calculation that the Bush administration has used to come up with its figure of a $10.4 trillion shortfall in Social Security. But then, of course, the Bush administration wants to make the Social Security gap into a crisis. For that purpose, the bigger number is more useful. (The standard way to measure the shortfall is to look at the next 75 years. Measured that way, the Social Security shortfall is a smaller but still a very large $3.7 trillion, according to the Social Security Administration.)

Do the math
Now apply these same three steps to predict the most likely outcome of the Social Security debate.

Spend now I. Look at the demographics of AARP, certainly the most powerful lobbying group representing seniors and maybe the most powerful lobbying group in the country. AARP is fully mobilized for the fight over Social Security. The organization's goal is clear: to save Social Security for its members. President Bush has already conceded that he won't cut benefits for anyone who is retired or close to retirement. The battle now will be over how to define "close to retirement." AARP, I'm sure, will push hard toward 50.

Spend now II. "Saving" Social Security isn't much of a "sweetener" to offer younger workers, who are sufficiently cynical or realistic to doubt that the program will be around to pay them much of anything. The major new sweetener for these workers is private accounts, valuable to workers for whom retirement is a long, long way off. The sweetener is targeted at younger workers who already don't have much faith that they'll ever collect from Social Security. Hey, who under the age of 50 doesn't think they could invest their money better than the old fogies who run the Social Security trust fund? And don't forget that this sweetener will be funded by borrowing $2 trillion. Get the private accounts now and pay for them later.

Lie about the cost. All the debate about the cost of fixing Social Security has focused on how much it would cost to set up the new private accounts. Because money going into the accounts wouldn't be available for paying current Social Security benefits, the government would have to borrow something like $2 trillion to make up for the shortfall in pay-as-you-go Social Security benefits.

But that's not the cost number to watch. The true cost is buried so deep in the details of these proposals that we're all likely to fall asleep before we get to the bottom line.

Nobody in Congress wants to come right out and propose a tax hike or a benefit cut: that could be political suicide. So the current idea is to change the way that Social Security benefits are calculated.

The change sounds very simple. Right now, Social Security payments are indexed to increases in wages. As wages go up, Social Security benefit checks get larger so that retirees get a constant percentage of the average current wage in their checks. The proposal is to change the index to a ratio of the increase in the Consumer Price Index (commonly called price inflation) to the increase in wages beginning in 2009. Since wages climb more rapidly than prices, this would lower the rate at which benefits increase over time.

The change doesn't seem radical. But over time, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration estimates, this one change would close the entire Social Security shortfall within 75 years. Make this one change and there is no Social Security crisis. (If you want to read all the details about how Social Security benefits are calculated and how indexing works now and would work under these proposals, follow this link to "How benefits are calculated.")

Pay later. Look at the size of bill to younger workers and children yet unborn that this one very-hard-to-understand change creates. The chief actuary of Social Security estimates that, under these rules, a worker born in 1977 who retires at 65 in 2042 would get 26% less than under the current rules. Instead of replacing 42% of average earnings, as Social Security does now, or the 36% as current benefit reductions phase in, this worker would see just 27% of his earnings replaced. For the worker retiring in 2075 -- a worker not yet born -- the benefits are 46% lower than under the current system: Social Security would replace just 20% of earnings.

Bad policy and bad karma
How did we get to this proposal? The Social Security Commission put them on the table in 2001 after it was charged by President Bush to "fix" the system but told that it could not consider any alternative that would increase revenue from the Social Security payroll tax, that it couldn't consider rolling back the 2001 tax cut to fund Social Security from general tax revenue, and that it couldn't dedicate some other tax, such as part of the estate tax, to Social Security. In other words, the only solution it could look at was to cut benefits. At the same time, it was to consider a proposal for private accounts that would increase the size of the Social Security gap and lead to larger benefit cuts.

I think trading this kind of certain reduction in the Social Security safety net -- it's insurance, not an investment account, which is precisely what makes it worth keeping --for the uncertain benefits of private investment accounts is a bad deal that I'd reject for myself.

But beyond that, there's something that sticks in my craw about maintaining my benefits at the cost of cutting those of young workers, of children not yet in the workforce, and of workers not yet born.

Would you feel good about explaining Spend Now, Pay Later to your kids? I know I wouldn't."


http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P105697.asp

Lehman Bros research dept discovers hole in the Willful Ignorance Zone Layer

"While the U.S. economy looks solid on the surface, there is a hole in the roof, and it is
getting bigger. The trade deficit jumped from an upwardly revised $56.0 billion in October
to $60.3 billion in November. That is $7 billion bigger than expected and easily a new
record. There was nothing fluky about the number. The widening reflected a $2 billion drop
in exports and a $2 billion increase in imports. Removing noisy, special factors, such as
aircraft and petroleum, shows a similarly wider deficit. The widening was “real” rather than
an artifact of changing prices. In particular, the widening cannot be blamed on a temporary
“J-curve” effect—where a weak currency pushes up the price of imports, worsening the trade
balance—because prices have not changed very much.

Over the past five years, the monthly trade deficit has tripled. Every time the numbers improve
for a month or two, optimists argue that the long worsening is over [however] the
trade balance improved slightly during the 2001 recession and seemed to plateau in 2003,
but each time it has resumed its relentless path downward.

Unfortunately, it appears that the deterioration is far from over..."

... the answer is simple: sell greenbacks, buy Euros.
... How's that working for ya?

The Speech Bush Should have Given

"If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drillin' rights on that man's head."
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower

This is the speech Bush had given in fall, 2002, as he was trying to convince Congress to give him the authority to go to war against Iraq...

"My fellow Americans:

I want us to go to war against Iraq. But I want us to have our eyes open and be completely realistic.

A war against Iraq will be expensive. It will cost you, the taxpayer, about $300 billion over five years. I know Wolfowitz is telling you Iraq's oil revenues will pay for it all, but that's ridiculous. Iraq only pumps about $10 billion a year worth of oil, and it's going to need that just to run the new government we're putting in. No, we're going to have to pay for it, ourselves. I'm going to ask you for $25 billion, then $80 billion, then another $80 billion. And so on. I'm going to be back to you for money more often than that unemployed relative that you don't like. The cost of the war is going to drive up my already massive budget deficits from about $370 billion to more like $450 billion a year. Just so you understand, I'm going to cut taxes on rich people at the same time that I fight this war. Then I'm going to borrow the money to fight it, and to pay for much of what the government does. And you and your children will be paying off that debt for decades. In the meantime, your dollar isn't going to go as far when you buy something made overseas, since running those kinds of deficits will weaken our currency. (And I've set things up so that most things you buy will be made overseas.) We'll have to keep interest rates higher than they would otherwise have been and keep the economy in the doldrums, because otherwise my war deficits would cause massive inflation.

So I'm going to put you, your children, and your grandchildren deeply in hock to fight this war. I'm going to make it so there won't be a lot of new jobs created, and I'm going to use the excuse of the Federal red ink to cut way back on government services that you depend on. For the super-rich, or as I call them, "my base," this Iraq war thing is truly inspired. We use it to put up the deficit to the point where the Democrats and the more bleeding heart Republicans in Congress can't dare create any new programs to help the middle classes. We all know that the super-rich--about 3 million people in our country of 295 million-- would have to pay for those programs, since they own 45 percent of the privately held wealth. I'm damn sure going to make sure they aren't inconvenienced that way for a good long time to come.

Then, this Iraq War that I want you to authorize as part of the War on Terror is going to be costly in American lives. By the time of my second inaugural, over 1,300 brave women and men of the US armed forces will be dead as a result of this Iraq war, and 10,371 will have been maimed and wounded, many of them for life. America's streets and homeless shelters will likely be flooded, down the line, with some of these wounded vets. They will have problems finding work, with one or two limbs gone and often significant psychological damage. They will have even more trouble keeping any jobs they find. They will be mentally traumatized the rest of their lives by the horror they are going to see, and sometimes commit, in Iraq. But, well we've got a saying in Texas. I think you've got in over in Arkansas, too. You can't make an omelette without . . . you gotta break some eggs to wrassle up some breakfast.

I know Dick Cheney and Condi Rice have gone around scaring your kids with wild talk of Iraqi nukes. I have to confess to you that my CIA director, George Tenet, tells me that the evidence for that kind of thing just doesn't exist. In fact, I have to be frank and say that the Intelligence and Research Division of the State Department doesn't think Saddam has much of anything left even from his chemical weapons program. Maybe he destroyed the stuff and doesn't want to admit it because he's afraid the Shiites and Kurds will rise up against him without it. Anyway, Iraq just doesn't pose any immediate threat to the United States and probably doesn't have anything useful left of their weapons programs of the 1980s.

There also isn't any operational link between a secular Arab nationalist like Saddam and the religious loonies of al-Qaeda. They're scared of one another and hate each other more than each hates us. In fact, I have to be perfectly honest and admit that if we overthrow Saddam's secular Arab nationalist government, Iraq's Sunni Arabs will be disillusioned and full of despair. They are likely to turn to al-Qaeda as an alternative. So, folks, what I'm about to do could deliver 5 million Iraqis into the hands of people who are insisting they join some al-Qaeda offshoot immediately. Or else.

So why do I want to go to war? Look, folks, I'm just not going to tell you. I don't have to tell you. There is little transparency about these things in the executive, because we're running a kind of rump empire out of the president's office. After 20 or 30 years it will all leak out. Until then, you'll just have to trust me."

--Juan Cole

Uncle Sam gets an 'F' in money management

"When you watch how the U.S. government mishandles our money, it's clear we're in for years of trouble. In some ways, we're heading in the completely wrong direction.

By Jim Jubak

If you had a choice, would you let the U.S. government manage your money?

OK, OK. So it was a rhetorical question. But humor me. I know I wouldn't let it.

The U.S. government violates every single one of the five rules for managing debt that I laid out in my last column, "5 ways to make your debt work for you."

This isn't a failure limited to the Bush administration or the Republicans who now control Congress. For administration after administration, no matter which party held the White House and Congress, the federal government has consistently violated the standards of sound financial management. None of us, given a choice, would ever, ever let anyone with the U.S. government's record of financial management touch our money. And any household that managed its money so foolishly would be headed for bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, most of us don't have a choice about letting the government touch our money. The government's hand reaches deep into all of our personal finances. But we do have some say, if we fight hard to exercise it, about how that money is managed in the future.

An 'F' for Uncle Sam
Today, Jan. 25, is the day the Congressional Budget Office issues its "Budget and Economic outlook," and as we wait for President Bush to deliver his own budget, I think it's a good time to step back from arguing about the details of any specific budget plan and look at the terrible job that our government does at managing our money and the consequences of that mismanagement.

Let's start by looking at how the government does on the five rules for managing debt that I explained in my last column.Meet Jim
in Orlando at the
2005 World Money Show.



Why start with a look at how the government manages its debt? First, because it's a useful indicator of how the government manages all of our money. Second, because with the annual budget deficit running at $400 billion to $500 billion for the next few years before accelerating as the demographic rubber meets the road, we're likely to add the huge sum of $5 trillion to the total federal debt over the next 10 years. Third, the cost of servicing that debt, already 7% of the annual U.S. budget, is likely to climb, costing each household in the United States an extra $3,000 in interest payments each year by the end of the that 10 years, according to the Brookings Institution. And, fourth, because the total U.S. debt is increasingly the 600-pound gorilla that drives interest rates, the value of the U.S. dollar, and decisions on how much the U.S. government can spend on "discretionary" fripperies such as education, environmental protection, securities regulation, food and drug safety, and homeland security.

Overall, the government earns an 'F' on debt management. But the score is even worse when you look at how the U.S. government does on each of my five rules of smart debt management. In some areas, the government isn't merely failing to do a good job; it's actively and aggressively headed in exactly the wrong direction.
Tracking the debts
Rule No. 1: Does the government draw up a separate capital budget that distinguishes between debt used to buy productive assets and debt used for day-to-day operations? Accounting experts and budget reformers have been after the federal government to do this for years. The progress so far? Zero. Zip. Zilch. The government continues to lump capital investments that add to national wealth over time such as, say, additions to the Interstate Highway System or new national parks, together with operating expenses such as the cost of highway maintenance or the salaries of park rangers. The only time the government separates capital investments from its operating costs is when a politician adds up the value of the assets the government owns to demonstrate that we are financially OK/financially in peril because the value of those assets is about the size of the national debt.

Rule No. 2: Does the government match the duration of the debt to the life of the asset, whether it's on the capital investment or consumption side of the budget? Well, golly gee, no way. I don't think there's a more striking example of the government's financial mismanagement than this. What do you think is at the root of the current funding crisis in Social Security and Medicare? These programs create long-term obligations: The government will pay retirement income to and the medical costs of a 20-something worker in 40-something years. That creates a predictable future obligation with a present value of about $45 trillion. (Social Security accounts for about $7 trillion of that. Which does raise the interesting question -- Why is so much more attention being focused on the much smaller, although still huge, problem?)

To fund this long-term obligation, the federal government collects Social Security and Medicare taxes now. Does the government invest in long-term bonds or equities so that it matches the maturity of the obligation with that of the investment asset? Of course not. Most of the revenue collected from current taxes is used to pay current benefits. The surplus, and right now there is a surplus, goes into a trust fund for Social Security or Medicare, where it is in invested in "special issue," bonds created for the trust funds and only available to the trust funds. The interest rate, according to the Social Security Administration, on a special issue is the average of the interest rates on all U.S. Treasury notes and bonds of more than four-year maturities.

Can you see the three problems with this? First, since the interest rate on a special issue is an average, it is always lower than the yield on the longest U.S. Treasury bond. So in 2002, when the 30-year Treasury bond was paying 5.43%, the Social Security trust fund was buying special issues with an average yield of 4.87%. Second, since these special issues cannot be sold on the public bond market, the trust funds can't reap any capital gains on the bonds if interest rates fall. Special issues can only be redeemed by the U.S. Treasury at face value. So the trust funds missed, for example, the spectacular appreciation that other bond investors reaped as interest rates on 20-year Treasury bonds fell to 5.43% in 2002 from 13.01% in 1982. And, third, since the U.S. government has discontinued the 20-year and 30-year Treasury bond series, the trust funds are buying special issues with lower yields and implied shorter maturities even as the life span and thus the duration of the obligation owed to U.S. retirees increases.

No repayment plan
Rule No. 3: Does the government set up a sinking fund to pay the debt for those long-lived assets in its capital budget? OK, stop laughing. This is serious. It's the future, or at least somebody's future, that we're talking about here. There is no plan to pay off the national debt. President Bush's pledge to cut the deficit in half refers only to the level of the annual deficit and not to the national debt. If he can make good on that promise, which is unlikely absent exceedingly creative accounting that shifts costs to the years after this administration has left office, all that will do is slow the rate at which the national debt increases. As of Jan. 21, the publicly held national debt came to $7.6 trillion. In November, Congress voted to raise the ceiling for how much the United States could borrow to $8.2 trillion, so you know where the politicians' heads are at. There is no plan to ever pay off the national debt. There's only the hope that we can keep borrowing to roll over old debt as it matures and to pay for those annual budget deficits.

Rule No. 4: Does the government actively strive to drive down the cost of borrowing so that we'll pay less interest on existing and future debt? Not so you'd notice it. In fact, I'd argue that current government budget policies will drive up interest rates on the publicly held debt in the next decade. (This follows on the decision of the previous administration to do away with the 30-year bond so that the government couldn't lock in the low bond yields of the late 1990s for the long run.) Running the printing press to fund annual deficits has its cost: The government (which in this case means those of us who pay taxes) have to pay investors (in this case overseas investors since Americans don't save enough) to buy and hold dollars (in the form of Treasury bills, notes, and bonds). At some point, especially now that the dollar's fall has put investors on notice that the dollar might decline in value in the future, we'll have to pay overseas investors more to hold dollars. Paying more means higher interest rates on U.S. debt instruments. Not yet; foreigners stepped up to the window in a big way to buy dollars in December. But inevitably; As long as we run huge annual deficits, higher interest rates are guaranteed. The debt-management policies of the U.S. government will add more debt and at higher interest rates to our balance sheet.

Not even working on it
Rule 5: Never relax. Managing that spread is an ongoing task. I don't think the U.S. government is even a player in the spread game. Congress and the president many administrations ago decided to cede economic policymaking to the Federal Reserve. Congress got to spend -- and spend without accountability. The Federal Reserve manages interest rates.

Congresses and presidents have put us in this bind by taking the easy way out, administration after administration, when it came to hard budget decisions. And those of us who vote have let the politicians get away with it.

Looking at the battles ahead over the Bush administration's budget, over Social Security and Medicare, and over the tax system as a whole, I can see two distinct alternatives. One, like a family tightening its belt to avoid being overwhelmed by debt, we can start to make the tough and painful cuts we need to make. Two, we can hope that someone else will pay.

Guess which alternative I think is more likely. Here's a hint. My next column is called "Let junior pay for it."

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P105694.asp

Man of the Year Redux

W is Time's MOTY (again), but ....

"Bush, tapped in 2000 by Time, joins six other presidents who have twice been named the magazine's Person of the Year: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower (first as a general), Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Franklin Roosevelt holds the record with three nods from the editors.

Bush was recognized for "reshaping the rules of politics to fit his 10-gallon-hat leadership style" and "for sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes -- and ours -- on his faith in the power of leadership."

... How's that working for ya?

For the memory challenged, a walk down M-Lane...

Bush: Surplus Justifies Tax Cut

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2001


(AP) President Bush said Saturday that the most important number in the budget he sends to Congress next week is the $5.6 trillion surplus it projects over the next 10 years.

That huge projected surplus provides the underpinning of all the administration's tax-cut and spending plans, Mr. Bush said in his recorded weekly radio address.

"A surplus in tax revenue, after all, means that taxpayers have been overcharged," the president said. "And usually when you've been overcharged, you expect to get something back." The surplus figure "counts more than any other" in the budget, he said.


www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/02/24/national/main274334.shtml
... How's that working for ya?

It can't happen here

Those wacko Russians will stop an nothing, but at least we're still too civilized to try something like this ...


"VIENNA (Reuters) - Poisoning remains one of the possibilities behind Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's illness during election campaigning, Medical experts investigating his ailments said on Wednesday.

Yushchenko fell ill in September while on the presidential campaign trail and was flown to Austria for treatment. He later accused the authorities of trying to kill him with poison.

The Times newspaper in Britain on Wednesday quoted West-leaning Yushchenko's personal physician in Vienna, Mykola Korpan, as saying that the opposition leader had been poisoned in an attempt on his life."


It can't happen here ... no, wait. Yes it can. I forgot, it's Anything Goes now. Nevermind.

Somebody at CIA didn't get that memo

"A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials. The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq.

"The officials described the two assessments as having been 'mixed,' saying that they did describe Iraq as having made important progress, particularly in terms of its political process, and credited Iraqis with being resilient. But over all, the officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy."

With Washington's partisan war raging on over a bitterly politicized CIA, a steady flood of intelligence leaks, and the castrated political orphan that the congressional intelligence reform bill has become, administration supporters will no doubt argue that the CIA cable made public Tuesday is just the latest salvo fired by disgruntled spooks who want to put holes in the president and his new DCI and clean-up man, Porter Goss. The truth of the matter, they will say, is that things in Iraq are looking up.

They will, of course, also dismiss or skip over ominous reports from the "liberal" media showing that they couldn't be more wrong. Say, for example, Edward Wong's New York Times report from Baghdad on Sunday, "Mayhem in Iraq Is Starting to Look Like a Civil War":

"In recent weeks, at least one new Shiite militia has formed -- not in opposition to the Americans, but to exact revenge against the Sunnis.

"Assaults by Iraqis on other Iraqis have taken grisly and audacious turns lately. In October, insurgents dressed as policemen waylaid three minibuses carrying 49 freshly trained Iraqi Army soldiers -- most or all of them Shiites traveling south on leave -- and executed them. Pilgrims going south to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala have also been gunned down. In response, Shiite leaders in the southern city of Basra began telling young men last month that it was time for revenge. They organized hundreds of Shiites into the Anger Brigades, the latest of many armed groups that have announced their formation in the anarchy of the new Iraq. The stated goal of the brigades is to kill extremist Sunni Arabs in the north Babil area, widely known as the 'Triangle of Death,' where many Shiite security officers and pilgrims have been killed.

"'The Wahhabis and Salafis have come together to harm fellow Muslims and have begun killing anyone affiliated with the Shiite sect,' Dhia al-Mahdi, the leader of the Anger Brigades, said in a written statement. 'The Anger Brigades will be dispatched to those areas where these germs are, and there will be battles.'"

The Bush White House itself has consistently shot down critics of its Iraq policy as pessimists who are out of touch. Few would realistically expect a wartime administration -- especially this one -- to be publicly self-critical, let alone admit the need for a dramatic change of course. But it is growing more and more obvious that the U.S.'s hopes for Iraq may have to be drastically scaled back. At what point will the Bush administration be forced to accept reality?

www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html#cia_iraq

Meet Mr. Bond Market

Still worshipping the Almighty Dollar? The end of an era is at hand...

"It is generally accepted these days that the continued debasement of the U.S. dollar is a positive. It is also generally accepted to expect that as the buck declines, the U.S. trade deficit will correct itself, like a self-cleaning oven, we have been led to suppose. But upon pondering this 2004 rule of thumb, a question came to mind. Perhaps you can answer it. Here goes:

"At what dollar/yuan (or dollar/won or dollar/anything) level will overseas manufacturers lose the cost-competitive edge to where, say, a Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, news, msgs) (or any other U.S. entity that's contributing to our gaping trade imbalance) will eschew Asia and opt for domestically produced goods? Simply put, how low do we have to push the buck before a 42" TV is cheaper from Sheboygan than from Shenzhen?

"Right off the bat, I'd have to surmise that we won't ever experience that phenomenon, because long before it came anywhere even close to that, the inflation would have eaten us all alive. . . . You still wanna argue about the benefits of a weaker dollar because this will lower our imports and raise our exports with a view to meaningfully closing the trade gap? This of course would encompass the glitch of how to market a U.S.-made $2,200 Maytag Neptune washer/dryer combo to that guy in Nanjing who is pullin' down a cool 76 cents per hour. . . .

"But before we wrap up this diatribe, how about this eye-opener: There is apparently a leading manufacturer of large kitchen appliances I read about somewhere (which was not named, though I continue to dig) that has stopped using conveyor belts in its Chinese factories. Is that right? Yep. So what have they determined is a cheaper option? They hired Chinese laborers to manually lug the stuff around."


Meet Mr. Bond Market

We don't export enough to solve our trade deficit. What we need to do is stop consuming beyond our means and start saving, which is what will be forced upon us eventually. We're slowly moving toward the point in the process where the rate-making decisions will be taken away from Easy Al and the boys, and given to Mr. Bond Market himself.

Haven't heard of Mr. Bond Market? An interesting fellow. Fluent in Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, etc. He will soon be calling the tune in the mortgage market, and -- oh, by the way -- he will therefore have more than a little to say about the price of houses going forward.

Dollar's plunge is a blight, not a benefit

Catch o' the Day

To the moon, Alice! TO THE MOON!!! 2004-11-30 12:54:16
With the passage of the debt ceiling increase, the government's borrowing limit has climbed by $2.23 trillion since President Bush took office: by $450 billion in 2002, by a record $984 billion in 2003 and by $800 billion this year. Just the increase in the debt ceiling over the past three years is nearly 2 1/2 times the entire federal debt accumulated between 1776 and 1980.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60963-2004Nov18.html


But analysts noted that the (U.S. trade) deficit has remained at record levels for much of this year, exceeding $50 billion in each of the past four months. It is on track to approach $600 billion for the full year, easily topping the previous record of $496 billion reached in 2003. The trend isn't expected to reverse soon.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41093-2004Nov10.html



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[chi] Politics - World (context)
WRONG! Guess again.
2004-11-30 12:07:53


If your war hero can't beat the most inarticulate boob to occupy the Oval Office in living memory with the worst combined foreign & domestic record in living memory then you can't beat anyone.

Read the writing on the wall ...

** GAME OVER **


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How many brave American boys will be killed 2004-11-30 11:48:56
because of treasonous anti-war protesters undermining our resolve and providing aid & comfort to our enemies?


... There, I've said it -- now it won't be such a shock when the bastards try to pin the whole debacle on you.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now that the shoe is firmly on the other foot,
2004-11-30 11:37:15

GOP Rule 1: kick the hell outta the suckers while they're down...

" In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.

In contrast to the present day Republicans:

... in 1993, when most House Democrats opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton backed NAFTA, and leaders of the Democratic-controlled House allowed it to come to a vote. The trade pact passed because of heavy GOP support, with 102 Democrats voting for it and 156 voting against. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House GOP leader at the time, declared: "This is a vote for history, larger than politics . . . larger than personal ego."

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15423-2004Nov26.html?referrer%3Demail&sub=AR

... well, that was then, this is now.

F-the-South

Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.



And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?



Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?





No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.




Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so. Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.




All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. "Let the Spanish keep it, it’s a shithole," we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.





The next dickwad who says, "It’s your money, not the government's money" is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That’s right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It’s too easy, asshole, they’re blue states. It’s not your money, assholes, it’s fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.




Let’s talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It’s fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that’s right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that’s just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.






But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you're ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that's ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we're fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you're fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that's a workable formula. Maybe us fucking Northerners don't talk about religion as much as you because we're not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you're too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up here in the North, assholes.



Well this gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.






And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off.
... How's that working for ya?

Stealin, STEALIN!

Mass Media In 'Lock Down'
Not To Cover Vote Fraud
By Peter Coyote
11-13-4

There is a bumper sticker I saw months ago that sums up the current state of affairs in our country regarding what is the biggest news story you'll never see on the General Media reported. It said "IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION".

On Friday I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS--I've known her for years and she is a Producer for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse--far scarier. She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified--every one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity as what she considers to be a gov't watchdog requires her to speak out, while be it covert and she therefore asked me to "spread" the word... She said that journalism and the truth is at stake. She said another friend of hers, a producer at MSNBC, said that an anchor by the name of Keith Olbermann had brought it up on his show on Friday eve and the axe came down. He's at least fighting back and talking about it on his "Blog", but she said that people there are worried that he's going to be fired by higher ups. She said at this point the only way that the "real news" was going to be if the people started talking about it and made a big enough stink about it to our elected officials, the FEC, and "noise" to the international media, that our own media won't have any choice but to cover it. (Yes, this is really happening in the good ole' supposed "democratic" free press of the US of A). The only place you'll see this talked about right now is on the internet and on AirAmericaRadio.

Everyone--this is serious....I can't emphasize it any more than saying if there was ever a time to speak up and take action it is NOW. If you are feeling sick to your stomach (like me) about the possibility of 4 more years under Bush and the future of our country, and yet you feel helpless, here's your opportunity to take action. Imagine if you saw a loved one drowning--what do you do? Well, our country's democracy is drowning and she needs us. In an email I sent you last night, I used the F-word--FRAUD and mentioned to you that I felt strongly that there is a lot of mounting evidence that this election was not clean. I say that not only out of a result of my observations while out in the field as a poll watcher in the key battleground state of Ohio, I say it with the knowledge and information of reports that have been circulating around the country in various voting precincts involving irregularities and problems with the voting machines and numbers not matching up with the exit polls or actual numbers of registered voters in various precincts. I've been busy researching this issue and compiling for you below some details of these reports and where you can get more info:

To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe:

1- That the exit polls were WRONG...(remember--they have been used for over a decade and considered reliable)

2- That Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning OH, FL were WRONG. He was within a less than 1/2 % point margin of error in his 2000 final poll and previous polls for other elections.

3- That Harris Poll last minute polling for Kerry was WRONG. They were also within a 1/2% point margin of error in their 2000 final poll.

4- The Incumbent Rule
I (that undecideds primarily break at the end for the challenger)was WRONG.

5- The 50% Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling)

6- The Approval Rating Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election)

7- That Journalist Greg Palast was WRONG when he said that even before the election, 1 million votes were stolen from Kerry. He was the ONLY reporter to break the fact that 90,000 Florida blacks were disnfranchised in 2000.

8- That it was just a COINCIDENCE that the exit polls were CORRECT where there WAS a PAPER TRAIL and INCORRECT (+5% for Bush) where there was NO PAPER TRAIL.

9- That the surge in new young voters had NO positive effect for Kerry, even though it was the largest number of youth voters 18-29 ever and a huge jump from 2000 and they were over 55% in favor of Kerry. >> 10- That Bush BEAT 99 to 1 mathematical odds in winning the election.

11- That Kerry did WORSE than Gore against an opponent who LOST the support of SCORES of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000.

12- That Bush did better than an 18 national poll average which showed him tied with Kerry at 47. In other words, Bush got 80% of the undecided vote to end up with a 51-48 majority--when ALL professional pollsters agree that the undecided vote ALWAYS goes to the challenger.

13- That Voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were NOT tampered with in this election.

Some Examples: (There are many more, but I won't list them all here--this is to give you an idea)

- The City of Gahanna in Ohio discovered a discrepancy that gave 4,000 votes to George Bush. After media scrutiny, city officials have admitted to an electronic "glitch" that caused the problem.

- In Broward County, FL, errors in software code caused a referendum on gambling to be completely overturned. The error caused totals to count backwards after reaching a ceiling of 32,500 votes. The problem existed in the 2002 election as well however the issue was never resolved by the manufacturer of the electronic voting machine.

- In North Carolina, a Craven County district logged 11,283 more votes than voters and actually overturned the results of a regional race.

For more info, go to: <>http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

<>http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm


http://www.rense.com/general59/ememd.htm

every day is Hypocrisy Day in the Coalition

of the Conniving & the Clueless


... How's that working for ya?

The Perfect Monetary Storm II: Pension

After the Medicare/Social Security payments and combined trade & fiscal deficits are done wrecking the economy, another major strand of the safety net will prove rotten ...

"as part of the corporate abdication of responsibility that's gone hand-in-hand with the mania (and a similar abdication of responsibility on the part of the Fed), I think many of these pension plans will not be able to withstand a 30%-to-40% drop in the stock market, which I still expect to see at some point.

Fatuous assumptions fatten earnings

Of course, most chieftains in corporate America don't want to employ a safer, sounder asset mix that would be less vulnerable to stock-market problems because it would be more expensive. With the present low level of interest rates, the actuarial assumptions they'd likely have to use would require them to make higher contributions. What the heck do they care about whether the pension plan will be solvent down the road? They just want to contribute the least amount of money to their plans so that their earnings look as good as possible.

Retirement won't be a problem for the chiefs."

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P93622.asp

Kerry's Real Concession Speech:

My fellow Americans, the people of this nation have spoken, and spoken with a clear voice. So I am here to offer my concession. [Boos, groans, rending of garments] I concede that I overestimated the intelligence of the American people. Though the people disagree with the President on almost every issue, you saw fit to vote for him. I never saw that coming. That's really special. And I mean "special" in the sense that we use it to describe those kids who ride the short school bus and find ways to injure themselves while eating pudding with rubber spoons. That kind of special. I concede that I misjudged the power of hate. That's pretty powerful stuff, and I didn't see it. So let me take a moment to congratulate the President's strategists: Putting the gay marriage amendments on the ballot in various swing states like Ohio... well, that was just genius. Genius. It got people, a certain kind of people, to the polls. The unprecedented number of folks who showed up and cited "moral values" as their biggest issue, those people changed history. The folks who consider same sex marriage a more important issue than war, or terrorism, or the economy... Who'd have thought the election would belong to them? Well, Karl Rove did. Gotta give it up to him for that. [Boos.]

Now, now. Credit where it's due.I concede that I put too much faith in America's youth. With 8 out of 10 of you opposing the President, with your friends and classmates dying daily in a war you disapprove of, with your future being mortgaged to pay for rich old peoples' tax breaks, you somehow managed to sit on your asses and watch the Cartoon Network while aging homophobic hillbillies carried the day. You voted with the exact same anemic percentage that you did in 2000. You suck. Seriously, y'do. [Cheers, applause] Thank you. Thank you very much. There are some who would say that I sound bitter, that now is the time for healing, to bring the nation together.

Let me tell you a little story. Last night, I watched the returns come in with some friends here in Boston. As the night progressed, people began to talk half-seriously about secession, a red state/blue state split. The reasoning was this: We in blue states produce the vast majority of the wealth in this country and pay the most taxes, and you in the red states receive the majority of the money from those taxes while complaining about 'em. We in the blue states are the only ones who've been attacked by foreign terrorists, yet you in the red states are gung ho to fight a war in our name. We in the blue states produce the entertainment that you consume so greedily each day, while you in the red states show open disdain for us and our values. Blue state civilians are the actual victims and targets of the war on terror, while red state civilians are the ones standing behind us and yelling "Oh, yeah!? Bring it on!"

More than 40% of you Bush voters still believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. I'm impressed by that, truly I am. Your sons and daughters who might die in this war know it's not true, the people in the urban centers where al Qaeda wants to attack know it's not true, but those of you who are at practically no risk believe this easy lie because you can. As part of my concession speech, let me say that I really envy that luxury. I concede that. Healing? We, the people at risk from terrorists, the people who subsidize you, the people who speak in glowing and respectful terms about the heartland of America while that heartland insults and excoriates us... we wanted some healing. We spoke loud and clear. And you refused to give it to us, largely because of your high moral values. You knew better: America doesn't need its allies, doesn't need to share the burden, doesn't need to unite the world, doesn't need to provide for its future. Hell no. Not when it's got a human shield of pointy-headed, atheistic, nconfrontational breadwinners who are willing to pay the bills and play nice in the vain hope of winning a vote that we can never have. Because we're "morally inferior," I suppose, we are supposed to respect your values while you insult ours. And the big joke here is that for 20 years, we've done just that. It's not a "ha-ha" funny joke, I realize, but it's a joke all the same.

Being an independent candidate gives me one luxury - as well as conceding the election today, I am also announcing my candidacy for President in 2008. [Wild applause, screams] Thank you. And I make this pledge to you today: THIS time, next time, there will be no pandering. This time I will run with all the open and joking contempt for my opponents that our President demonstrated towards the cradle of liberty, the Ivy League intellectuals, the "media elite," and the "white-wine sippers." This time I will not pretend that the simple folk of America know just as much as the people who devote their lives to serving and studying the nation and the world. They don't. So that's why I'm asking for your vote in 2008, America. I'm talking to you, you ignorant, slack-jawed yokels, you bible-thumping, inbred drones, you redneck, racist, chest-thumping, perennially duped grade-school grads. Vote for me, because I know better, and I truly believe that I can help your smug, sorry asses. Thank you, and may God, if he does in fact exist, bless each and every one of you.


... well, a fella can dream, can't he?

Buh-bye naysayers. (gotta love this)

"The bloodletting has begun.

I'm not referring to the latest attempt to reconquer Iraq, but rather the wholesale political revenge campaign being waged by the hard-liners in the Bush administration against anybody and everybody inside the government who challenged the way the second Persian Gulf war in a decade was marketed and run.

Out: Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose political epitaph should now read, "You break it, you own it" for his prescient but unwanted warning to the president on the danger of imperial overreach in Iraq.

Out: Top CIA officials who dared challenge, behind the scenes, the White House's unprecedented exploitation of raw intelligence data in order to sell a war to a Congress and a public hungry for revenge after 9/11.

Out: Veteran CIA counterterrorism expert and Osama bin Laden hunter Michael Scheuer, better known as the best-selling author "Anonymous," whose balanced and devastating critiques of the Iraq war, the CIA and the way President Bush is handling the war on terror have been a welcome counterpoint to the "it's true if we say it's true" idiocy of the White House PR machine.

Meanwhile, incompetence begat by ideological blindness has been rewarded. The neoconservatives who created the ongoing Iraq mess have more than survived the failure of their impossibly rosy scenarios for a peaceful and democratic Iraq under U.S. rule. In fact, despite calls for their resignations — from the former head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, among others — the neocon gang is thriving. They have not been held responsible for the "16 words" about yellowcake, the rise and fall of Ahmad Chalabi, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the post-invasion looting of Iraq's munitions stores and the disastrous elimination of the Iraqi armed forces.

As of today, the neocons on Zinni's list of losers — Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz; the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; National Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — are all still employed even as Bush's new director of central intelligence, Porter J. Goss, is eviscerating the CIA's leadership.

This is the culmination of a three-year campaign by the president's men to scapegoat the CIA for the fact that 9/11 occurred on Bush's watch.

So far, half a dozen of the nation's top spymasters have been forced out abruptly — a strange way to handle things at a time when Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are still seeking to attack the U.S. Ironically, this all comes as Goss is suppressing a lengthy study, prepared for Congress by the CIA's inspector general, that, according to an intelligence official who has read it, names individuals in the government responsible for failures that paved the way for the 9/11 attacks.

Thus Bush, with Goss as his hatchet man, is having it both ways: He can be seen to be cleaning house at the CIA — when he is simply punishing independent voices — while denying Congress access to an independent audit of actual intelligence failures.

We should remember that as flawed as its performance was under former Director George J. Tenet, the CIA at least sometimes tried to be a counterweight to the fraudulent claims of Rumsfeld's and Dick Cheney's neoconservative staffs. All of the nation's traditional intelligence centers were bypassed by a rogue operation based in Feith's Office of Special Plans. Feith was given broad access to raw intelligence streams — the better to cherry-pick factoids and fabrications that found their way into even the president's crucial prewar State of the Union address.

Now, by successfully discarding those who won't buy into the administration's ideological fantasies of remaking the world in our image, the neoconservatives have consolidated control of the United States' vast military power.

With the ravaging of the CIA and the ousting of Powell — instead of the more-deserving Rumsfeld — the coup of the neoconservatives is complete. They have achieved a remarkable political victory by failing upward."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer16nov16,1,597989.column?coll=la-util-op-ed

Biblical Strict Constructionism Update

Dear Mr. President,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from you and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws
and how to follow them:

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and
female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not to Canadians.Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (think beef barbecue) (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

4. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

5. A friend of mine feels that, even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there degrees of abomination?

6. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses.
Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

7. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?

8. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

9. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing
garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He
also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev. 24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws(Lev. 20:14)?

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

We're getting the govt we deserve.

Daily Mirror: LONDON
They say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.

This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.

This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.

A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.

A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.

And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11.

To the overwhelming majority of you who didn't, I simply ask: Have you learnt nothing? Do you despise your own image that much?

Do you care so little about the world beyond your shores? How could you do this to yourselves? How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him?

You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out. These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one. As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity. To the tens of millions who voted for John Kerry, my commiserations.

...Self inflicted wounds are always the most painful.s

Focus on the blue

... How's that working for ya?

How COULD we lose? Well, we did....Or did we?

Maybe it was those funny machines -- jurisdictions using them seem to produce more than their share of unexpected outcomes compared to traditional methods, and generally tilted toward Republicans...

http://www.alternet.org/election04/20416/

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

There's a saying in the army --"Once is bad luck, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

Sailing on the Denial, Sleeping in the Lifeboat

I've read several "don't give up the ship" pep talks this week from my progressive brethren. And now for a contrasting POV ...

What are the salient facts of this election?

Bush is arguably the dumbest and without doubt the most inarticulate candidate on a national level in living memory, probably in history. I have never heard of so many reputable insiders (esp. Clarke and O'Neill) not only quitting in disgust but actually laying out the gory details demonstrating that this emporer has neither clothes nor prospect of acquiring same.

He ran on the worst record of any incumbent (considering both economic and foreign policy results) in living memory, possibly in history.

Granted, he had funding. The Coalition of the the Conniving and the Clueless managed to scrape up about half a billion dollars.

Most of his supporters (the latter half of the aforemention coalition) believe many things are just flat out wrong, and fairly widely reported to be wrong in media other than broadcast. Facts simply do not matter to them.

The Dimmocrats settled on a pretty good slate (significantly better than 2000's) very early and dedicated themselves to a surprisingly united and well-funded effort to unseat Bush, running an arguably indifferent campaign but still better than 2000's.

How could we lose? Well, we lost.

We really did not even come close.

Now it's time to face the hard conclusion: if you can't beat such a bozo with such a bad record, you simply cannot win in the foreseeable future, period. End of sentence. GAME OVER.

True, Bush will have only 4 more years to inflict his peculiar brand of devastation on the country and the planet. In that 4 years you should expect
over 3 TRILLION dollars more heaped onto the national debt (combining federal and current accounts deficits), and
3 more Scalia clones joining the Supremes, with an average life expectancy of 30 years each.
And that's just for openers.

The surging debt picture will be accompanied by rising interest rates and a declining dollar. If real estate prices continue their rise in this environment, it will be a minor miracle. We could be looking at a perfect monetary storm.

The Conniving will continue to make out like bandits and the Clueless will continue to support them at their own considerable expense. Employment remains about 9 million under where it should be at this point in the cycle, October's 300K new jobs notwithstanding. And the education system continues to turn out HS grads ranking about 24th in the world, slightly ahead of Nigeria's. Two million more every year.

We'll likely see continued ineptitude in the management of the military, more dead than I care to imagine, and a draft is certainly possible if not likely. Enlistment rates for the guard and reserve units are a closely held secret, probably for good reason.

I refuse to speculate on the atrocities that will be committed on the Constitution, but given that the Dark Side has working majorities in damn near everything including both houses, the courts, and most state legislatures, anything is possible.

Fast forward to '08 when the GOP offers up a significantly improved model of the workhorse Bush II:

Will the Clueless be any less ignorant or the Conniving less generous in their funding? No. Even an unmitigated string of disasters in the next 4 years will not deter them, and it is hard to imagine how we could be more inspired than we were this year. We'll still be outmanned and outgunned, the issues no better defined, and the differences in character of the candidates no clearer.

Finally, there's the tsunami of accumulated deficits and exploding Medicare/Social Security payments (no, we didn't put all those past payments in a lock box, and yes, Medicare will get top billing as outlays race past Social Security's) that's piling up for anyone with half a brain to see, but it will not swamp the economy by '08 despite what some economists say.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warns that “substantial reductions in the projected growth of spending or a sizable increase in taxes – or both – will probably be necessary" but as David Broder notes, "It’s not true that Washington can’t agree about anything. Across the political spectrum there’s a clear recognition that the present path of budget-making is unsustainable – in fact, ruinous.”

Paul Krugman thinks economic chaos will start about 5 years out but I think he's a tad pessimistic. We probably have 8 to 10 good years left before that debt tsunami dominates the economic landscape, maybe 15 before it really hits. Meanwhile, rich folk should continue to make out rather well, assuming their investments are prudently diversified overseas. (Of the money flowing into equity mutual funds this week, %70 went to foreign markets. And that's with a rip-roaring rally on.)

Soldier on, optimists. I wish you all the best but watch out, the Denial River has some nasty rapids. No one's giving the order to abandon ship, nevertheless I'm sleeping in the lifeboats.


...Life jacket, anyone?

"Roma locuta est. Causa finita est"

(Rome has spoken. The cause is finished.)


many's the time i've been mistaken
and many times confused
yes and i've often felt forsaken
and certainly misused
oh but i'm all right
i'm all right
i'm just weary to my bones
still you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
so far away from home
so far away from home



i don't know a soul who's not been battered
i don't have a friend feels who at ease
i don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to it's knees
oh but it's all right
it's all right
we've lived so well so long
still when i think of the road we're traveling on
i wonder what's gone wrong
i can't help it i wonder
what's gone wrong



and i dreamed i was dying
i dreamed that my soul
rose unexpectedly
and looking back down at me
smiled reassuringly
and i dreamed i was flying
high up above
my eyes could clearly see
the statue of liberty
sailing away to sea
and i dreamed i was dying



oh we come on a ship they call the mayflower
we come on a ship that sailed the moon
we come in the ages most uncertain hour
and sing an american tune
oh but it's all right
it's all right
you can't be forever blessed
still tomorrow's going to be another working day
and i'm trying to get some rest
that's all i'm trying
to get some rest





...and fade to black.

And furthermore ...

"Roma locuta est. Causa finita est" (Rome has spoken. The cause is finished.)


Send lawyers, guns & money! The fecal matter has contacted the rotating air circulation device.

And in closing....

"Roma locuta est. Causa finita est" (Rome has spoken. The cause is finished.)


We're getting the government we deserve.

Self-inflicted wounds are always the most painful.

PIPA POLL: Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Lies

I think we're getting close to the crux of the problem ...


"It's not just Bush who's living in a bubble... A majority of those who support him are fundamentally misinformed about key justifications for going to war against Iraq, and other important factors in his foreign policy. A new report from PIPA (the Project on Policy Alternatives) titled, "Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD or Major Program, Supported al Qaeda" has the following lead findings:

Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.

Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions.

The report is based on polls conducted in September and October.

Diaries :: Paul Rosenberg's diary :: Thu Oct 21st, 2004 at 12:53:43 PM EST


In a relatively short time, PIPA has established itself as the leading source of in-depth information about public opinion and knowledge in foreign policy, focusing particular attention on misperceptions that underpin conventional wisdom.
Not only do they highlight misperceptions among the public, equally--or perhaps more importantly--they highlight misperceptions among the policy elite, including the elite media. Here, they find that it really matters that Bush/Cheney contiune to mislead on these crucial points:


Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments, "One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them. Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree." Eighty-two percent of Bush supporters perceive the Bush administration as saying that Iraq had WMD (63%) or that Iraq had a major WMD program (19%). Likewise, 75% say that the Bush administration is saying Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. Equally large majorities of Kerry supporters hear the Bush administration expressing these views--73% say the Bush administration is saying Iraq had WMD (11% a major program) and 74% that Iraq was substantially supporting al Qaeda.
Steven Kull adds, "Another reason that Bush supporters may hold to these beliefs is that they have not accepted the idea that it does not matter whether Iraq had WMD or supported al Qaeda. Here too they are in agreement with Kerry supporters." Asked whether the US should have gone to war with Iraq if US intelligence had concluded that Iraq was not making WMD or providing support to al Qaeda, 58% of Bush supporters said the US should not have, and 61% assume that in this case the President would not have. Kull continues, "To support the president and to accept that he took the US to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance, and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about prewar Iraq."

Other areas where Bush supporters suppress dissonant information includes the opposition of world opinion to (1) the US invasion of Iraq and (2) the re-election of Bush, and Bush's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the treaty banning land mines, the Kyoto (global warming) Protocols, the International Criminal Court, and the inclusion of labor and environmental standards in trade agreements.

Why the disconnect?


"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," according to Steven Kull, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters."
Read more here, with links

http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/10/21/125343/81