Core Beliefs of the Wadical White Wing

Core Beliefs of the Wadical White Wing

1) Being a drug addict is a moral failure and a crime, unless you're a rich conservative. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

2) The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iran/Iraq.

3) Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.

4) Standing Tall for America, means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

5) Multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

6) The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

7) A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

8) HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.

9) Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

10) Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a 'we can't find Bin Laden' diversion.

11) A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

12) The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

13) What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

14) Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

Court Papers: Bush, Cheney OK'ed Leaks

Court Papers: Bush, Cheney OK'ed Leaks: "Court Papers: Bush, Cheney OK'ed Leaks
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President Bush told Vice President Cheney to tell the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, to disclose highly classified information regarding Iraq intelligence in order to try and discredit legitimate criticism of the administration.

What's this? The latest line from proponents of impeachment?

No, it is what the bible of Washington insiders, the National Journal, is reporting that Libby has testified was the scenario that played out before he began contacting reporters in an effort to undermine the reputation of former Ambassador Joe Wilson.

According to the Journal report published today: 'I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had received 'approval from the President through the Vice President' to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to the court papers. Libby was said to have testified that such presidential authorization to disclose classified information was 'unique in his recollection,' the court papers further said.'


| The Journal report, which is based on both court papers and interviews with senior government officials familiar with the investigation of Libby's actions by "

Politics - World - s.f. bayarea forums - craigslist

Politics - World - s.f. bayarea forums - craigslist: "Malthus was an optimist < RoughJustice > 03/31/06 16:01

Here's more evidence...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters.

Researchers from around the globe are scrambling to figure out the extent of the loss. Early conservative estimates from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands find that about one-third of the coral in official monitoring sites has recently died.

'It's an unprecedented die-off,' said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. 'The mortality that we're seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef ... We're talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months.'

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20060331/D8GM9UO07.html

... when do suppose Easter Islanders figured out that there would never be any more trees? "

Rumsfeld, Rice Say Iraq Not at Civil War

If this isn't one, what is?


My Way News: "Rumsfeld, Rice Say Iraq Not at Civil War

Mar 9, 11:53 AM (ET)

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

(AP) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Capitol...
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Should U.S. Leave Iraq? - Take Our Iraq Survey And Get Paid $300 In The Next 15 Minutes!
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Top members of the Bush administration urged Congress Thursday to quickly pass a $91 billion spending bill that includes money to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite a surge in sectarian violence in Iraq, the process of creating a stable government is proceeding satisfactorily.
Rumsfeld was pressed to explain the U.S. military's plan to respond in the event that Iraq's sectarian violence grows into a full-fledged civil war.
'The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the - from a security standpoint - have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to,' Rumsfeld said.

(AP) An unidentified protester interrupts a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill,...
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Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., repeatedly pressed Rumsfeld to say what U.S. troops would do if civil war broke out, noting that in his own view the country 'only narrowly missed descending into all-out civil war' in recent days.
Rumsfeld said the key to avoiding civil war is for Iraq's political leaders to form a government of nationa"

Red states & black students continue to lag.

Draw your own conclusions...


"In the nation's public schools, 14.1 percent of the class of 2005 passed at least one AP test, up from 13.2 percent a year before. In 2000, 10.2 percent of high school seniors passed an AP test.

The number of students passing at least one test increased by nearly 120,000 from 2000 to 2005. But black students continued to take the exams at lower rates than white students, and their overall scores remained a level behind whites last year.

Nationwide, black students make up 13.4 percent of the student population, but only 6.4 percent of the students taking AP exams. The percentage of white and Latino students taking the tests more closely mirrored their numbers in the classroom

... meanwhile, red states continue to show why they're red:

Forty-four states and the District of Columbia increased the percentage of students passing at least one AP test last year. The percentage of students passing at least one test declined in five states — Florida, Nevada, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming. It was flat in Louisiana.

New York led the nation with 22.8 percent of its high school seniors passing at least one test. Louisiana was last with 2.5 percent."

... 2.5% is around a tenth the national average. I guess that explains why La was flat -- it's hard to get any lower.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/07/national/main1291874.shtml

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Index: "
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
Tuesday, November 9th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251
We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies. [includes rush transcript]


John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man - a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.
20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title, 'Conscience of an Economic Hit Men.'
Perkins writes, 'The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits - Jaime Rold?s, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Rold?s and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
John Perkins goes on to write: 'I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. Howe"

Looting and Pillaging in the Boardroom

A tale of two pension plans: regular vs. CEO


http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/boomerbucks/20060215a2.asp


tale of two pension plans: regular vs. CEO

Corporate promises for a traditional pension benefit can be easily broken for the average worker, but not so for the top brass.

Traditional pension plans for the average Joe are creeping into the Ice Age, as more companies have announced the decision to deep-freeze their pension plans to current or new employees -- or both. General Motors Corp. and Alcoa are among the latest to jump on the frozen-pension bandwagon that includes IBM, Verizon, Sears, Circuit City, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Aon Corp. and NCR. Most of these companies are not on the verge of bankruptcy, mind you.

This freeze phenomenon spells disaster for boomers who had been promised a pension and who have 10 years or more left till retirement. That's because benefits under the traditional pension formula ordinarily accrue at accelerated levels for older employees as they approach retirement. The last 10 years are absolutely crucial. With frozen plans, benefits stop building up altogether.

Another trend among companies is to convert defined-benefit plans into cash-balance plans, which substantially reduces a pension's value because the benefit buildup is calculated differently than with a traditional pension plan. Hundreds of companies have chosen to do this in recent years.

But the retirement plans of highly paid executives are not affected at all by these trends. That's because they're a different breed. I mean the retirement plans, not the execs, though I suppose that statement could apply to either. Most top executives have so-called "supplemental executive retirement plans," or SERPs, that are governed by a different set of rules, because they're nonqualified plans.

Qualified pension plans have tax benefits for both employer and employee and have to pass rigorous IRS nondiscrimination tests that ensure some semblance of fairness among highly compensated employees and those that are not highly compensated. Nonqualified plans have no tax benefits and no such fairness standards.

Congress suddenly appalled
Recently, some members of Congress have voiced objections to the retirement pay disparity between top executives and their employees. One bill, introduced by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., would disallow companies from funding pensions for the top brass if they're unable to adequately fund their workers' pensions. Other bills along similar lines have surfaced.

"This huge disparity between ... protected pensions that CEOs have versus production workers is really immoral," Miller told the Los Angeles Times.

Just how lavish are the retirement deals for top execs? It's not all that transparent because current rules allow their retirement packages to be obscured from investors, financial analysts, the media and everyone else. That might change in the future, as the Securities and Exchange Commission last month proposed that disclosure requirements be improved concerning executives' pay, including their retirement benefits.

As it stands now, shareholders rarely get wind of just how generous executive retirement packages can be until it's too late -- when the executive already starts drawing payments. This information is not included in the summary compensation tables required under current law that are readily available to the public.

Those tables list various forms of compensation awarded to the top five executives in a company, but the retirement plan is not on the radar screen, Lucian Bebchuk wrote in a recent commentary for the Wall Street Journal.

Retirement plans for the rich
Bebchuk, director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, co-wrote a white paper called "Executive Pensions" with Robert J. Jackson Jr., which was released in December. They collected information from the SEC filings of 51 large corporations.

"We use these disclosures to make estimates of the value of pension plans awarded to the CEOs in our sample," the authors say in the white paper. "But such estimates are not accessible to outsiders without closely analyzing company disclosures and making a series of actuarial assumptions and calculations."

In other words, you and I wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of these filings. - advertisement -



SERPs take the form of defined-benefit plans -- yes, the very same plans that are heading toward extinction for the average worker. For these plans, the company promises a specific benefit based on tenure and assumes all investment risk.

Except that, for the CEO, tenure is one of those variables that can be fudged. Extra years, in the form of "service credits," can be added on an executive's tenure for the purpose of awarding a larger retirement benefit.

Time Magazine reported last fall on this phenomenon in its cover story, "The Great Retirement Ripoff." The article pointed out that, for example, Leo Mullin, former CEO and chairman of Delta Air Lines, received service credits amounting to 21 years that were added to his actual tenure of about 7.5 years, an allowance that greatly augmented his retirement benefits.

And here's the corker: "Under Mullin's stewardship, Delta killed the defined-benefit pension of its nonunion workers and replaced it with a less generous plan," Time reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele noted.

What stunning leadership!

Anyway, Bebchuk and Jackson set out to determine how much a CEO's retirement benefit compares to his or her total compensation. Was it just a teeny weeny fraction of the big picture, or was it major? They discovered that it was rather significant, not only as a percentage of the CEO's total compensation, but sometimes even as a percentage of the total value of the companies they headed.

The researchers looked at two sets of data. The first comprised CEOs who retired during 2003 and the first five months of 2004. The second included all CEOs between the ages of 63 and 67 at the end of 2003 who would retire soon and who headed companies listed in the S&P 500. In both sets, roughly two-thirds of the CEOs were covered by a company-sponsored pension plan. (Roughly one-third had no pension plan coverage at all, though they may instead participate in a deferred compensation plan -- another type of retirement plan favorable to executives that bypasses public scrutiny.)

It may not shock you to learn that the average payout for CEOs that are already collecting retirement checks is $1.1 million a year. Those CEOs who hadn't begun collecting checks yet are set to get $1.5 million annually.

Bebchuk and Jackson then determined the total pension values of the CEOs' packages, which takes into account their life expectancies as well as those of their spouses, if applicable. The average "actuarial value" of CEO pensions in today's dollars was $15 million for retired CEOs and $19 million for those approaching retirement in the second sample studied.

As an aside, it may interest you to know that firms that are going through bankruptcy proceedings "often choose to assume fully such obligations, even when executives' pensions are unsecured," note the authors.

The averages belie the wide variety in total pension values, which range from $3.3 million (Symbol Technologies) to $73.4 million (Exxon Mobile). "Across our sample of more than 50 S&P 500 companies, the value of executives' pension plans added on average more than 48 percent to total pay during the executive's service as CEO," say the researchers.

Now mind you, these guys aren't exactly hurting for cash to begin with. Without these pensions, if they set aside a mere fraction of their pay, they could easily afford a fantastic retirement with annual trips to Cote d'Azur and round-the-world cruises aboard the QE II, among other extravagant whims.

Among the individual CEOs named in the study were those heading Aon Corp. and Motorola, which recently froze their pension plans to new hires. The retirement plans of these CEOs were valued at $4.8 million and $41.3 million, respectively. Clorox Co. had converted its pension plan to a cash-balance plan some time ago. The value of the top guy's pension? About $23 million, according to the researchers.

Bebchuk and Jackson argue that investors need to have a clear picture of how much the top executives of a firm are getting in compensation that is not linked to their performance. They advocate that firms be required to disclose the value of all retirement plans, whether defined benefit or deferred benefit, as well their increase in value each year.

Yes, they need to be accountable to shareholders. But they also need to be accountable to their employees. The hush-hush deals made in stately boardrooms need to come out in the open. But even beyond that, the top leadership of companies need to, well, lead by example. If defined-benefit plans must get phased out for employees so that a company can be more competitive, then they should get phased out for the top brass, too.

Soldiers for the Truth

Armor Money Can't Buy: "01.14.2006

Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits


By Nathaniel R. Helms

Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.

The soldiers asked for anonymity because they are concerned they will face retaliation for going public with the Army's apparently new directive. At the sources' requests DefenseWatch has also agreed not to reveal the unit at which the incident occured for operational security reasons.

On Saturday morning a soldier affected by the order reported to DefenseWatch that the directive specified that 'all' commercially available body armor was prohibited. The soldier said the order came down Friday morning from Headquarters, United States Special Operations Command (HQ, USSOCOM), located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. It arrived unexpectedly while his unit was preparing to deploy on combat operations. The soldier said the order was deeply disturbiing to many of the men who had used their own money to purchase Dragon Skin because it will affect both their mobility and ballistic protection.

'We have to be able to move. It (Dragon Skin) i"

how do civilizations collapse?

Try failure to recognize changes in the ecosystem, failure to react, and ineffective reactions...

Off Southern California, zooplankton are down 70 percent, fish larvae 50 percent, and there have been massive die-offs of kelp.

In Puget Sound, the number of seabirds has dropped by nearly half since the 1970s.
At Triangle Island in British Columbia and California's Farallon Islands, scientists saw a third seabird, the Cassin's auklet, show signs of starvation, said Bill Sydeman of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory.

The Farallon auklets started the breeding season late. Only half as many as normal even tried. Then they abandoned the nests.

Researchers recorded low catches of juvenile salmon and rockfish, and there were sightings of emaciated gray whales. Those findings were preceded by the first appearance in Washington waters of thousands of squid normally not found north of San Francisco. And a plankton typically found near San Diego bloomed along Northwest beaches.

In Washington, the state's largest colony of glaucous-winged gulls suffered when the normal fledge count plummeted from 8,000 chicks to 88 last year.

... tick, tick, tick...

Don't cry for Natalie

She's going to a better place ...

'Every day a soldier dies, I am more proud that I spoke out. For the last three years, I am at a loss for words as to... what this country is. Who we are. I really think people have just gone insane. And they think we've gone insane. I think it's sad that you have to truly seek out the truth these days, because CNN and Fox News don't give it to you. So you can't really point a finger at individuals, because it's exhausting to seek out fact from fiction. I used to try and make sense of it but when Bush got reelected, I just didn't know what to do. Keep livin'. It's gotta change back. Politics ? I just think it's all corrupt. The entire country is controlled by money. And I think that's what people feel, their voice isn't heard. They don't have a say. It's corporate America.'

... No, Natalie, it DOESN'T have to change back. Things are always darkest just before they go completely black."

Army has become a 'thin green line'

My Way News: "WASHINGTON (AP) - Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a 'thin green line' that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.
Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.
As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump - missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 - and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives."

Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: How the Spying Story Will Unfold (and Fade)

Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: How the Spying Story Will Unfold (and Fade)

The third button on the Daou Report's navigation bar links to the U.S. Constitution, a Constitution many Americans believe is on life support - if not already dead. The cause of its demise is the corrosive interplay between the Bush administration, a bevy of blind apologists, a politically apathetic public, a well-oiled rightwing message machine, lapdog reporters, and a disorganized opposition. The domestic spying case perfectly illuminates the workings of that system. And the unfolding of this story augurs poorly for those who expect it to yield different results from other administration scandals.

Here's why: the dynamic of a typical Bush scandal follows familiar contours...

1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.

2. The story breaks (in this case after having been concealed by a news organization until well after Election 2004). [A nice added touch, to be sure, but we certainly couldn't have the liberal media attempting to influence public opinion with facts while the Swift Boat ads were circulating, now could we? - ed.]

3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.

4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.

5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution. A few 'mavericks' like Hagel or Specter risk the inevitable rightwing backlash and meekly suggest that the president should obey the law. John McCain, always the Bush apologist when it really comes down to it, minimizes the scandal.

6. Left-leaning bloggers and online activists go ballistic, expressing their all-too-familiar combination of outrage at Bush and frustration that nothing ever seems to happen with these scandals. Several newspaper editorials echo these sentiments but quickly move on to other issues.

7. A few reliable Dems, Conyers, Boxer, et al, take a stand on principle, giving momentary hope to the progressive grassroots/netroots community. The rest of the Dem leadership is temporarily outraged (adding to that hope), but is chronically incapable of maintaining the sense of high indignation and focus required to reach critical mass and create a wholesale shift in public opinion. For example, just as this mother of all scandals hits Washington, Democrats are still putting out press releases on Iraq, ANWR and a range of other topics, diluting the story and signaling that they have little intention of following through. This allows Bush to use his three favorite weapons: time, America's political apathy, and make-believe 'journalists' who yuck it up with him and ask fluff questions at his frat-boy pressers.

8. Reporters and media outlets obfuscate and equivocate, pretending to ask tough questions but essentially pushing the same narratives they've developed and perfected over the past five years, namely, some variation of "Bush firm, Dems soft." A range of Bush-protecting tactics are put into play, one being to ask ridiculously misleading questions such as "Should Bush have the right to protect Americans or should he cave in to Democratic political pressure?" All the while, the right assaults the "liberal" media for daring to tell anything resembling the truth.

9. Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on.

10. The story starts blending into a long string of administration scandals, and through skillful use of scandal fatigue, Bush weathers the storm and moves on, further demoralizing his opponents and cementing the press narrative about his 'resolve' and toughness. Congressional hearings might revive the issue momentarily, and bloggers will hammer away at it, but the initial hype is all the Democratic leadership and the media can muster, and anyway, it's never as juicy the second time around...

Rinse and repeat.

It's a battle of attrition that Bush and his team have mastered. Short of a major Dem initiative to alter the cycle, to throw a wrench into the system, to go after the media institutionally, this cycle will continue for the foreseeable future. [And it's too late to make enough of a difference other than to prolong the inevitable anyway. -ed.]

http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=a6da2e05-c808-4f7e-9ab2-3d2a01a82a15

GOP = Debt

The legacy of GOP administrations is written in the federal deficit history ...


Title: Federal Government Debt: Total Public Debt
Series ID: GFDEBTN
Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Management Service
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GFDEBTN/downloaddata
Release: Treasury Bulletin
Seasonal Adjustment: Not Seasonally Adjusted
Frequency: Mar Jun Sep Dec
Units: Billions of Dollars
Date Range: 1966-03-31 to 2005-09-30
Last Updated: 2005-12-06 2:36 PM CT
Notes: Monthly data reported for March, June, September and December.
Annl
DATE VALUE % of GDP Change % of GDP GDP
1966-03-31 317 41.2% 771
1966-06-30 316 40.6% 780
1966-09-30 321 40.4% 793
1966-12-31 326 40.4% 807
1967-03-31 328 40.1% 10.6 1.3% 818
1967-06-30 323 39.3% 6.7 0.8% 823
1967-09-30 333 39.8% 12.2 1.5% 837
1967-12-31 342 40.1% 16.3 1.9% 853
1968-03-31 347 39.4% 19.0 2.2% 880
1968-06-30 345 38.2% 22.0 2.4% 904
1968-09-30 353 38.4% 20.0 2.2% 919
1968-12-31 356 38.0% 14.0 1.5% 936
1969-03-31 359 37.4% 12.0 1.2% 961
1969-06-30 353 36.2% 8.0 0.8% 976
1969-09-30 360 36.1% 7.0 0.7% 997
1969-12-31 367 36.5% 11.0 1.1% 1,005
1970-03-31 371 36.5% 12.0 1.2% 1,017
1970-06-30 370 35.8% 17.0 1.6% 1,033
1970-09-30 378 36.0% 18.0 1.7% 1,051
1970-12-31 388 36.9% 21.0 2.0% 1,053
1971-03-31 391 35.6% 20.0 1.8% 1,098
1971-06-30 397 35.5% 27.0 2.4% 1,119
1971-09-30 412 36.2% 34.0 3.0% 1,139
1971-12-31 423 36.7% 35.0 3.0% 1,152
1972-03-31 427 35.9% 36.0 3.0% 1,191
1972-06-30 426 34.7% 29.0 2.4% 1,226
1972-09-30 433 34.6% 21.0 1.7% 1,250
1972-12-31 448 34.8% 25.0 1.9% 1,287
1973-03-31 458 34.3% 31.0 2.3% 1,336
1973-06-30 457 33.3% 31.0 2.3% 1,372
1973-09-30 461 33.1% 28.0 2.0% 1,391
1973-12-31 469 32.7% 21.0 1.5% 1,432
1974-03-31 474 32.8% 16.0 1.1% 1,447
1974-06-30 474 31.9% 17.0 1.1% 1,485
1974-09-30 481 31.8% 20.0 1.3% 1,514
1974-12-31 493 31.7% 24.0 1.5% 1,553
1975-03-31 510 32.5% 36.0 2.3% 1,570
1975-06-30 533 33.2% 59.0 3.7% 1,606
1975-09-30 554 33.3% 73.0 4.4% 1,663
1975-12-31 577 33.7% 84.0 4.9% 1,715
1976-03-31 600 33.8% 90.0 5.1% 1,773
1976-06-30 620 34.4% 87.0 4.8% 1,805
1976-09-30 635 34.5% 81.0 4.4% 1,838
1976-12-31 654 34.7% 76.5 4.1% 1,885
1977-03-31 669 34.5% 69.0 3.6% 1,939
1977-06-30 674 33.6% 54.0 2.7% 2,006
1977-09-30 699 33.8% 64.0 3.1% 2,067
1977-12-31 719 34.0% 65.4 3.1% 2,112
1978-03-31 738 34.3% 69.0 3.2% 2,150
1978-06-30 749 32.9% 75.0 3.3% 2,276
1978-09-30 772 33.0% 73.0 3.1% 2,336
1978-12-31 789 32.7% 70.3 2.9% 2,417
1979-03-31 797 32.3% 59.0 2.4% 2,464
1979-06-30 805 31.8% 56.0 2.2% 2,528
1979-09-30 827 31.8% 55.0 2.1% 2,601
1979-12-31 845 31.8% 55.9 2.1% 2,661
1980-03-31 864 31.7% 66.5 2.4% 2,725
1980-06-30 878 32.2% 72.6 2.7% 2,729
1980-09-30 908 32.6% 80.7 2.9% 2,787
1980-12-31 930 31.9% 85.1 2.9% 2,917
1981-03-31 965 31.6% 101.0 3.3% 3,053
1981-06-30 971 31.5% 93.6 3.0% 3,086
1981-09-30 998 31.4% 90.2 2.8% 3,179
1981-12-31 1,029 32.2% 98.5 3.1% 3,196
1982-03-31 1,061 33.3% 96.8 3.0% 3,187
1982-06-30 1,080 33.3% 108.4 3.3% 3,243
1982-09-30 1,142 34.9% 144.1 4.4% 3,276
1982-12-31 1,197 36.1% 168.4 5.1% 3,314
1983-03-31 1,245 36.8% 183.2 5.4% 3,383
1983-06-30 1,320 37.9% 240.0 6.9% 3,484
1983-09-30 1,377 38.4% 235.2 6.6% 3,589
1983-12-31 1,411 38.2% 213.6 5.8% 3,690
1984-03-31 1,464 38.4% 219.2 5.8% 3,810
1984-06-30 1,513 38.7% 193.1 4.9% 3,909
1984-09-30 1,572 39.5% 195.1 4.9% 3,978
1984-12-31 1,663 41.2% 252.3 6.3% 4,036
1985-03-31 1,711 41.5% 247.0 6.0% 4,120
1985-06-30 1,775 42.5% 261.9 6.3% 4,178
1985-09-30 1,823 42.8% 250.8 5.9% 4,261
1985-12-31 1,946 45.0% 282.9 6.5% 4,322
1986-03-31 1,987 45.3% 276.1 6.3% 4,386
1986-06-30 2,059 46.5% 284.8 6.4% 4,426
1986-09-30 2,125 47.3% 302.2 6.7% 4,494
1986-12-31 2,215 48.7% 268.9 5.9% 4,546
1987-03-31 2,247 48.7% 259.9 5.6% 4,614
1987-06-30 2,309 49.2% 249.9 5.3% 4,690
1987-09-30 2,350 49.3% 225.0 4.7% 4,768
1987-12-31 2,432 49.8% 216.9 4.4% 4,886
1988-03-31 2,488 50.2% 240.9 4.9% 4,952
1988-06-30 2,548 50.3% 238.4 4.7% 5,063
1988-09-30 2,602 50.6% 252.0 4.9% 5,147
1988-12-31 2,684 51.1% 252.7 4.8% 5,254
1989-03-31 2,741 51.1% 253.3 4.7% 5,367
1989-06-30 2,800 51.3% 252.2 4.6% 5,454
1989-09-30 2,857 51.7% 255.1 4.6% 5,532
1989-12-31 2,953 52.9% 268.6 4.8% 5,584
1990-03-31 3,052 53.4% 311.1 5.4% 5,716
1990-06-30 3,144 54.2% 343.9 5.9% 5,798
1990-09-30 3,233 55.3% 375.9 6.4% 5,849
1990-12-31 3,365 57.5% 411.8 7.0% 5,849
1991-03-31 3,465 58.9% 413.2 7.0% 5,888
1991-06-30 3,538 59.3% 394.2 6.6% 5,964
1991-09-30 3,665 60.7% 432.0 7.2% 6,036
1991-12-31 3,802 62.4% 436.9 7.2% 6,096
1992-03-31 3,881 62.6% 416.1 6.7% 6,196
1992-06-30 3,985 63.3% 446.7 7.1% 6,290
1992-09-30 4,065 63.7% 399.3 6.3% 6,381
1992-12-31 4,177 64.4% 375.3 5.8% 6,484
1993-03-31 4,231 64.7% 349.3 5.3% 6,543
1993-06-30 4,352 65.8% 367.3 5.6% 6,612
1993-09-30 4,412 66.1% 346.9 5.2% 6,675
1993-12-31 4,536 66.7% 358.7 5.3% 6,800
1994-03-31 4,576 66.2% 345.3 5.0% 6,911
1994-06-30 4,646 66.1% 293.8 4.2% 7,031
1994-09-30 4,693 66.0% 281.3 4.0% 7,115
1994-12-31 4,800 66.4% 264.5 3.7% 7,232
1995-03-31 4,864 66.6% 288.2 3.9% 7,298
1995-06-30 4,951 67.5% 305.6 4.2% 7,338
1995-09-30 4,974 66.9% 281.2 3.8% 7,432
1995-12-31 4,989 66.3% 188.5 2.5% 7,523
1996-03-31 5,118 67.1% 253.7 3.3% 7,624
1996-06-30 5,161 66.4% 209.7 2.7% 7,777
1996-09-30 5,225 66.4% 250.8 3.2% 7,866
1996-12-31 5,323 66.5% 334.5 4.2% 8,000
1997-03-31 5,381 66.3% 263.1 3.2% 8,114
1997-06-30 5,376 65.2% 215.1 2.6% 8,250
1997-09-30 5,413 64.6% 188.4 2.2% 8,382
1997-12-31 5,502 65.0% 179.2 2.1% 8,471
1998-03-31 5,542 64.5% 161.5 1.9% 8,587
1998-06-30 5,548 64.1% 171.7 2.0% 8,658
1998-09-30 5,526 62.9% 113.0 1.3% 8,790
1998-12-31 5,614 62.7% 111.8 1.2% 8,954
1999-03-31 5,652 62.3% 109.2 1.2% 9,067
1999-06-30 5,639 61.5% 90.9 1.0% 9,174
1999-09-30 5,656 60.7% 130.1 1.4% 9,314
1999-12-31 5,776 60.7% 161.9 1.7% 9,520
2000-03-31 5,773 60.0% 121.8 1.3% 9,629
2000-06-30 5,686 57.9% 47.1 0.5% 9,823
2000-09-30 5,674 57.5% 17.9 0.2% 9,862
2000-12-31 5,662 56.9% -113.9 -1.1% 9,954
2001-03-31 5,774 57.6% 0.3 0.0% 10,022
2001-06-30 5,727 56.5% 40.9 0.4% 10,129
2001-09-30 5,808 57.3% 133.3 1.3% 10,135
2001-12-31 5,943 58.1% 281.2 2.7% 10,226
2002-03-31 6,006 58.1% 232.3 2.2% 10,333
2002-06-30 6,127 58.8% 399.7 3.8% 10,427
2002-09-30 6,228 59.2% 420.7 4.0% 10,527
2002-12-31 6,406 60.5% 462.3 4.4% 10,591
2003-03-31 6,461 60.3% 454.8 4.2% 10,717
2003-06-30 6,670 61.5% 543.6 5.0% 10,845
2003-09-30 6,783 61.2% 555.0 5.0% 11,087
2003-12-31 6,998 62.3% 592.3 5.3% 11,236
2004-03-31 7,131 62.2% 670.3 5.9% 11,457
2004-06-30 7,274 62.4% 604.2 5.2% 11,666
2004-09-30 7,379 62.4% 595.9 5.0% 11,819
2004-12-31 7,596 63.3% 598.1 5.0% 11,995
2005-03-31 7,777 63.8% 645.8 5.3% 12,199
2005-06-30 7,837 63.3% 562.2 4.5% 12,378
2005-09-30 7,933 62.9% 553.6 4.4% 12,606

GOP Hypocrisy, Where to Begin?

How about fiscal restraint?


"Consider the fiscal health of the country (and thus, also, of your wallet). The Republicans bill themselves as the party of fiscal discipline, but when Ronald Reagan came into office he spent so much, and cut taxes on the wealthy so much, that he had to quadruple the national debt to (not) pay for it. Democrats managed to reverse that decline in the 1990s, generating the largest surpluses in American history, but then Bush administration policies made Reagan's recklessness look like kid's stuff. Spending like crazy - much of it on foolish priorities like an unnecessary war in Iraq, a prescription drug plan which primarily benefits drug and insurance companies, and pork-barrel legislation like multi-million dollar bridges to nowhere in Alaska - while also taking a meat-axe to taxes formerly paid by the wealthy, George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have created the biggest pile of debt in American history.

Indeed, Mr. Bush has now borrowed more money from foreign governments to finance his (well, actually, your) fiscal nightmare than have all the 42 presidents who have come before him - combined! Just how much is that, and why should you care? The national debt has now surpassed $8 trillion. That is about two-thirds the size of what the entire American economy produces (GDP) in a given year. All this, and more, has to be paid back. What is the 'more'? Well, we're adding to this mountain of debt to the tune of $350-450 billion every single year, digging ourselves further in. And, of course, we not only have to pay all this back, but the accumulating interest on this debt as well.

All told, each American, including any just born this second, and including each reader of this article, will spend some good portion of their lives paying off their share of this national blow-out, that share at the moment equaling more than $27,000 per American. But since only about half of us work, at least enough to pay taxes, the reality is that any American with a job owes over $54,000 to cover for the Republican Party's party at your expense. Plus the approximately $2,600 being added to the pile each year, every year. Plus interest on all that. How do you feel about coming out of school with $60,000 worth of debt hanging over your head, for something you didn't even benefit from?

Meanwhile, here's the real kicker. We used to have a somewhat fair system of tax distribution prior to the Bush program, but nowadays the rich pay far less in taxes than they used to, and the middle class pays just slightly less (and that's only if you don't count increases in state and local taxes, tuition, fees for government services, and more, all of which have gone up to fill in for the loss of federal revenues). Since these tax 'cuts' have been financed by borrowing, however, what that means is that the middle class will continue to have to pay their own share of the national debt in future years, plus the taxes that the rich won't be paying in the future, plus the taxes that the wealthy also didn't pay in the past (now) when this problem was created. Americans should therefore understand that this was never really a tax cut, but simply a tax transfer, from the rich to the middle class..."

http://www.hofstrachronicle.com/media/paper222/news/2005/12/01/EditorialopEd/From-The.Faculty.Its.Your.Life-1119456.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.hofstrachronicle.com


... If Bush were a Dimmocrat, the pubbies would almost certainly have impeached him by now. Instead the Coalition of the Conniving and the Clueless continue to praise him as if he were the Second Coming.

The magic iraqi "6 months" < Tartarin > 12/01 10:25:52



"You only have about the next six months.”
Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Nov. 21, 2005

I think that you get them out of there in six months.
U.S. Reprsentative John Murtha (D-PA), Nov 17, 2004

“We've got, I think, six months.”
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), Nov. 17, 2005

“We are entering a make-or-break six-month period.”
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Oct. 26, 2005

“The next six months will really tell the story”
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb), Aug 18, 2005

“The next six to seven months are critical.”
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Dec. 1, 2003

“The next three-to-six months will be critical.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sept. 10, 2003

And before the war…

“It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 7 2003

And the best for last:

"We would probably need six months to complete inspections of Iraq's nuclear programs."
Mohamed ElBaradei, Feb 14, 2003

... How's the next 6 months look to you?

WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT INTEL AGENCIES

KGO-AM 810 NewsTalk: "
FEBRUARY 23 & 24, 2001 ? COLIN POWELL SAYS IRAQ IS CONTAINED: 'I think we ought to declare [the containment policy] a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box.' He added Saddam 'is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors' and that 'he threatens not the United States.' [Source: State Department, 2/23/01 and 2/24/01]
SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 ? CHENEY ACKNOWLEDGES IRAQ IS CONTAINED: Vice President Dick Cheney said that 'Saddam Hussein is bottled up' ? a confirmation of the intelligence he had received. [Source: Meet the Press, 9/16/2001]
SEPTEMBER 2001 ? WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT INTEL AGENCIES: The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans 'in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States?The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community.' The office, hand-picked by the Administration, specifically 'cherry-picked intelligence that supported its pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest' while officials deliberately 'bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence.' [Sources: New Yorker, 5/12/03; Atlantic Monthly, 1/04; New Yorker, 10/20/03]
2002: Intel Agencies Repeatedly Warn White House of Its Weak WMD Case
Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy "

In the wake of the week

Forget the CEO testimony, it's the FTC, stupid!

They're the ones who can find and prosecute collusion ...

WASHINGTON, Nov 9 (Reuters) - The Federal Trade Commission has sent subpoenas to Big Oil companies in its investigation of gasoline price manipulation and oil refining capacity constraints, and hopes to complete the probe next spring, the agency's head told a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday.

The agency sent out "dozens of subpoenas" to companies, including oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. , Chevron Corp. , ConocoPhillips , and the U.S. units of BP Plc. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. , FTC Chairwoman Deborah Majoras said.

She spoke following a hearing on energy profits held by the Senate's energy and commerce committees. "It is a major investigation."

... Remember, markets only do what the Law of Supply and Demand requires. It's restraint of trade that's illegal.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Liberals get no respect, even in Canada

"On Monday, the Liberals are expected to deliver a fiscal update that will detail its pre-election platform. Wiseman said Finance Minister Ralph Goodale will announce a projection of a $10 billion surplus. [... remember what a surplus felt like? I do ]

...The Conservatives, meanwhile, are reacting positively to Layton's proposal [to force early elections] and said all opposition parties are joining forces to bring down the minority Liberals."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Diebold is a voting machine in Egypt?

CAIRO, Egypt Nov 10, 2005 — President Hosni Mubarak's strongest challenger in the presidential race two months ago lost his parliamentary seat in an upset in the first round of Egypt's legislative elections, according to initial returns Thursday.

Ayman Nour, a key mainstream opposition figure, was defeated Wednesday by a candidate of the ruling National Democratic Party for the south Cairo seat he had held for 10 years, the results said.

... Abdul! Every time I try to touch Nour's picture, Mubarak's winks at me!

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Dems hopes rise but futures dim

Even in their improved position, Democrats will have limited numbers of targets. Because congressional boundary lines place most lawmakers in districts clearly favoring one party or the other, fewer than 10% of House seats held by Republicans currently are considered at risk. Most Senate Republican incumbents facing re-election next year remain favored to win.



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YAUNEL: Yet Another Unelectable Northeastern Liberal

Anyone else looking forward to '08 the way I am? I can hardly wait to see the next YAUNEL the Dimmocrats decide to put up against whatever cretinous proto-facsist the pubbies settle on.


---------------------------------------------------------


Random Thots:



The State shouldn't be involved in marriages. They should recognize civil unions for legal purposes and let the clergy handle the marrying.

If Dubya were a Democrat he'd have been impeached by now.

ANWR spared? HA! That oil isn't going anywhere --They'll get it next time.

Paris, City of Light (as in lightweight gov't)

Re CA props: Straight "no". No, no, NO, NO, NO, dammit! I hope that message got thru. (Any other year, several props would have passed in CA. There was a larger issue at stake this time)


Prop 13's Dirty Little Secret:
...It applies to businesses, too! That means when there's competition, firstcomers can prices and undercut latecomers' costs. And when the latecomers go bust, well, you know what happens then.


Judith Miller retires from NY Times. Kinda like Eagles losing Owens.


Scott McClellan does a pretty good Ron Ziegler immitation.

If only 25% of Kansans believe in evolution and over 50% in the pentefundegelical version of Creation, why should they be forced to teach evolution in their schools? Willful ignorance is as willful ignorance does.

Ahhhh, Paris in the fall ...

A collection of news reports tell a compelling story...

PARIS (AP) - Authorities imposed curfews in the French Riviera cities of Nice and Cannes on Wednesday to prevent rioting, while the interior minister called for the deportation of foreigners convicted in the wave of unrest that has spread throughout France.

Looters and vandals defied a state of emergency with attacks on superstores, a newspaper warehouse and a subway station. Arson attacks continued after sundown, with a nursery school going up in flames in the southern city of Toulouse, RTL radio reported.

.. Take that, kiddies!
The unrest began Oct. 27 and has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths who complain of discrimination and unemployment. Although many of the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants are Muslim, police say the violence is not being driven by Islamic groups.

.. OK, if Islamic groups aren't driving it, who is? SANTA?

The extraordinary 12-day state of emergency, which began at midnight Tuesday, covered Paris, its suburbs and more than 30 other French cities from the Mediterranean to the border with Germany and to Rouen in the north - an indication of how widespread arson, riots and other unrest have become.

The measures imposed in Nice also require some bars to close from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for the next 10 days, the regional government said.

.. no way, man, not the bars too!!

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who previously inflamed passions by referring to troublemakers as "scum," said 120 foreigners have been convicted for roles in the violence, and he called on local authorities to expel them.

"I have asked regional prefects to expel foreigners who were convicted - whether they have proper residency papers or not - without delay," he said during a National Assembly session.


.. If they really want to get serious about restoring order, they'd better invite the Wehrmacht.

"Protestors set fire to 315 cars in the Paris area overnight, half of them in Seine-Saint-Denis, where nine people were injured, officials said.

Simone: Your jacket!
Clouseau: Yes, I kneaw it iz my jacket.
Simone: No... It's on fire!

"The violence has once more trained a spotlight on the poverty and lawlessness of France's rundown big-city suburbs and raises questions about an immigration policy that has, in effect, created sink ghettos for mainly African minorities who suffer from discrimination in housing, education and jobs.
...

Today, France's government was in crisis mode with Mr de Villepin calling a string of emergency meetings with government officials throughout the day.

One was a working lunch with the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been accused of inflaming the crisis with his tough talk and police tactics. Mr Sarkozy has called troublemakers "scum" and vowed to "clean out" troubled suburbs, language that some say further alienated their residents [...hmmm... I guess he forgot to call for their total eradication. ]
The unrest was triggered by last Thursday's accidental death in Clichy-sous-Bois, five miles from Aulnay, of two African teenagers who were electrocuted while hiding in a power substation from what they believed, apparently wrongly, was police pursuit. An interior ministry official described the clashes as "more like sporadic harassment, lightweight hit-and-run urban guerrilla fighting, than head-to-head confrontation". Small, highly mobile groups of up to a dozen youths emerge, hurl stones or petrol bombs, and disperse. "It's hard to contain," the official said.

The minister of social cohesion, Jean-Louis Borloo, said the government had to react "firmly" but added that France must also acknowledge its failure to deal with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades.

"We cannot hide the truth: that for 30 years we have not done enough," he told France-2 television.

Fran?ois: Do you know what kind of a bomb it was?
Clouseau: Yes, the exploding kind







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paris, City of Light


PARIS — The French government declared a state of emergency Tuesday, enabling police to impose curfews and other extraordinary measures to combat the worst riots in recent history.

President Jacques Chirac's Cabinet decided at a special meeting to invoke an emergency powers law first imposed during the Algerian war of independence against France 50 years ago. Starting at midnight, the authorities had the right to declare curfews in targeted areas, restrict the movement of people and vehicles, request police searches and place suspects under house arrest. "


... "Too little, too late" again, Jacques. How's that workin for ya?





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Better late than never, France ?

PARIS (AP) - The French government declared a state of emergency Tuesday after nearly two weeks of rioting, and the prime minister said the nation faced a "moment of truth."

The extraordinary security measures, to begin Wednesday and valid for 12 days, clear the way for curfews to try to halt the country's worst civil unrest since the student uprisings of 1968.


... and after only 12 days!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Very slow learners, these French...


PARIS (AP) - France will impose curfews under a state-of-emergency law and call up police reservists to stop rioting that has spread out of Paris' suburbs and into nearly 300 cities and towns across the country, the prime minister said Monday, calling a return to order "our No. 1 responsibility."

The tough new measures or what passes for tough there... came as France's worst civil unrest in decades entered a 12th night, with rioters in the southern city of Toulouse setting fire to a bus after sundown and pelting police with gasoline bombs and rocks.

Outside the capital in Sevran, a junior high school was set ablaze, while in another Paris suburb, Vitry-sur-Seine, youths threw gasoline bombs at a hospital, police said. No one was injured. Earlier, a 61-year-old retired auto worker died of wounds from an attack last week, the first death in the violence.

Asked on TF1 television whether the army should be brought in, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "We are not at that point." meaning "my car has not firebombed yet"


But "at each step, we will take the necessary measures to re-establish order very quickly ...or what passes for very quickly there... throughout France," he said. "That is our prime duty: ensuring everyone's protection."

...Oh, please.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

French discovering the Awful Truth: Self-inflicted Wounds are Always the Most Painful

What catches many French leaders in a bind is their belief that the alternative to their strong state intervening to ensure color-blind equality is the cut-throat capitalism and ethnic segregation they say prevails in English-speaking countries.

When Sarkozy says the best social system is the one that produces jobs and that the French model is not doing that, his comments are met not with approval but retorts that the French model is fine and needs only to be better applied.

In a scene that spoke volumes, National Assembly Speaker Jean-Louis Debre -- a close Chirac ally and passionate defender of the republican model -- was shocked and almost speechless on Sunday as he surveyed riot damage in Evreux, where he is mayor.

"A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation," he commented. "Well, they don't form part of our universe."


... and denial is not a river in Egypt, pal.

College football

For 52 minutes Saturday, I witnessed the worst football game ever played by a major college undefeated team as UCLA managed to dig themselves deep into a well-deserved 24-3 hole. A deader bunch of losers I couldn't imagine. "Who are these imposters, where are you holding my 7-0 team, and how much do you want for them?" I shouted. I was packed and ready to make a run for the car but my son insisted on seeing the bitter end. For the next 8 minutes, I witnessed something truly extraordinary...


Oct 29, 11:21 PM (ET)


STANFORD, Calif. (AP) - Maurice Drew and Marcedes Lewis sat at their lockers and looked at each other in disbelief. UCLA was down and disheveled at halftime, its powerful offense sputtering and its perfect season in big trouble. [nah! They were only down 7-3 at halftime, but let's not quibble...]

Two hours later, Drew and Lewis looked at each other again with even more amazement - because UCLA was still unbeaten, thanks to the cardiac Bruins' most unlikely escape yet.

Brandon Breazell caught a 23-yard TD pass from Drew Olson in overtime after No. 8 UCLA scored 21 points in the final 7:04 of regulation to stun Stanford 30-27 on Saturday.

UCLA (8-0, 4-0 Pac-10) has specialized in fantastic finishes during conference play, rallying from double-digit deficits against Washington, California and Washington State earlier in October - but none was as dramatic or unlikely as the Bruins' escape from Stanford Stadium.

"It doesn't seem real. I still can't believe what we did," said Drew, who ran for two late scores, including a 1-yard tumble across the goal line with 46 seconds left to force OT.

Olson, soundly outplayed in the first 52 minutes by workout buddy Trent Edwards, went 24-of-35 for 293 yards and two TDs while leading his latest jaw-dropping comeback. He led fourth-quarter scoring drives of 65, 72 and 66 yards - and all three took a combined 3:40.

Joe Cowan caught a 31-yard TD pass with 4:43 to play, and Drew shook off a bruised right knee to score on UCLA's final play of regulation. Though Olson celebrated wildly along with his teammates, the quarterback knew his team might not have deserved its outrageous fortune.

"For 3? quarters, we played horrible football," Olson said. "I was surprised we were only down 7-3 at halftime. I've got no explanation for this."

UCLA 30, Stanford 27, OT

Has there ever been a season of finishes like this?

None dare call it treason

(... but a rose by any other name wouldn't smell this bad)

I suspect the Plame leak was just someone forgetting what was classified when smearing yet another enemy to a friendly reporter. Obstruction of Justice is also naughty but probably not impeachable.

What was really, REALLY bad was what triggered the whole sordid chain of events -- the administration (maybe Michael Ledeen) forged documents purporting to show Saddam got uranium from Niger and fed them to allied intelligence agencies, who dutifully fed it back to the CIA so we could go to war under false pretenses!

This is the most treasonous act in US history since the Rosenbergs, and certainly qualifies as a High Crime and Misdemeanor.

http://caribmon.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/19/41429/846 ">Politics - World - s.f. bayarea forums - craigslist: "None dare call it treason < RoughJustice > 10/27 13:54:00


I suspect the Plame leak was just someone forgetting what was classified when smearing yet another enemy to a friendly reporter. Obstruction of Justice is also naughty but probably not impeachable.

What was really, REALLY bad was what triggered the whole sordid chain of events -- the administration (maybe Michael Ledeen) forged documents purporting to show Saddam got uranium from Niger and fed them to allied intelligence agencies, who dutifully fed it back to the CIA so we could go to war under false pretenses!

This is the most treasonous act in US history since the Rosenbergs, and certainly qualifies as a High Crime and Misdemeanor.

http://caribmon.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/19/41429/846 "

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Who Forged the Niger Documents?

Vincent Cannistaro, the former CIA head of counterterrorism operations and intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan:


... The Italian intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United States, yet were funneled through the Italians.

[Do we know who produced those documents? Because there’s some suspicion ... ]

I think I do, but I’d rather not speak about it right now, because I don’t think it’s a proven case ...

[If I said “Michael Ledeen” ...?]

You’d be very close . . .

[do you believe that this process worked out in such a way to exonerate the White House and to lay the blame with the wrong . . .]

I think that’s certainly the objective. To lay it off to the intelligence community. But, it’s very disingenuous. It’s like saying, OK, the intelligence community that we whipped into a frenzy in order to provide information to sustain our policy conclusions that Saddam had a WMD program and that he was an imminent danger — that intelligence community provided information that now turns out not to be correct. And that’s why we were misled into saying what we did say, and doing what we did do. That’s very disingenuous, because that’s not the case at all.

The case was that this was not a fact-based policy that the U.S. government adopted. It was a policy-based decision that drove the intelligence, and not the other way around...You had a lot of people who played along to get along, and they understood that in that kind of administration, you couldn’t say exactly what it is that you really believed.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21704/?comments=view&cID=1127&pID=1077#c1127

cabal hijacked US foreign policy

Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy
By Edward Alden in Washington
Published: October 20 2005 00:00 | Last updated: October 20 2005 00:19

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.


In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”


Transcript: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson


Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.

It also resulted in bitter battles in the administration among those excluded from the decisions.

“If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.”

The comments, made at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year.
Among his other charges:

¦ The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

¦ Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president”.

¦ The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel”.

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either”.

“There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.”

Arctic Ice Disappearing

(AP) New satellite observations show that sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster while air temperatures in the region are rising sharply, scientists say.

Since 2002, satellite data have revealed unusually early springtime melting in areas north of Siberia and Alaska. Now the melting trend has spread throughout the Arctic, according to a national collaboration of scientists.

The latest observations through September show that melting in 2005 began a record 17 days earlier than usual.

The observations showed 2.06 million square miles of sea ice as late as Sept. 19. That's the lowest measurement of Arctic sea ice cover ever recorded, the researchers said. It's also 20 percent less than the average of end-of-summer ice pack cover measurements recorded since 1978.

At the same time, average air temperatures across most of the Arctic region from January to August 2005 were as much as 5.4 degrees warmer than average temperature over the last 50 years, said the team of researchers from two universities and NASA.

'The melting and retreat trends are accelerating,' Ted Scambos, of the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a statement released by the university. " ...


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/29/tech/main889404.shtml

... I'm still wrestling with the twin fundamental questions: what evidence would it take to (1) convince enough people there's a problem and (2) we can and should do something to fix it?

Meanwhile, back at the deficit ...

"Q:You hold cash in your fund, not bonds. Can you hold corporate bonds or agencies?

We can hold bonds, but we think long-term bond yields at the 4% level are a bad deal. They do not compensate you for the uncertainties of inflation of the massive deterioration in the fiscal integrity of the United States. And I do mean that. It is a travesty to witness what the federal government is doing to the balance sheet of the U.S. "

-- Robert Rodriguez, head of $2 billion FPA Capital fund


http://www.thestreet.com/_iwon/mutualfundmonday/mutualfundmondaygg/10243125_3.html

... don't say I didn't warn you.

For the record: KATRINA TIMELINE

A full recounting of the sorry mess thru 9/3/05
http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline

Think Progress ? KATRINA TIMELINE: "KATRINA TIMELINE
Comment on the timeline here.
Friday, August 26
GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA [Office of the Governor]
GULF COAST STATES REQUEST TROOP ASSISTANCE FROM PENTAGON: At a 9/1 press conference, Lt. Gen. Russel Honor?, commander, Joint Task Force Katrina, said that the Gulf States began the process of requesting additional forces on Friday, 8/26. [DOD]
Saturday, August 27
GOV. HALEY BARBOUR DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN MISSISSIPPI [Office of the Governor]
5AM CDT ? KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE [CNN]
GOV. BLANCO ASKS BUSH TO DECLARE FEDERAL STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA: ?I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster.? [Office of the Governor]
FEDERAL EMERGENCY DECLARED, DHS AND FEMA GIVEN FULL AUTHORITY TO RESPOND TO KATRINA: ?Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.? [White House]
Sunday, August 28
2AM CDT ? KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]
7AM CDT ? KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE [CNN]
MORNING ? LOUISIANA NEWSPAPER SIGNALS LEVEES MAY GIVE: ?Forecasters Fear Levees Won?t Hold Katrina?: ?Forecasters feared Sunday afternoon that storm driven waters will lap over the New Orleans levees when monster Hurricane Katrina pushes past the Crescent City tomorrow.? [Lafayette Daily Advertiser]
9:30 AM CDT ? MAYOR NAGIN ISSUES "

craigslists posts on Kat 8/30-9/8

Politics - World - s.f. bayarea forums - craigslist: "Krugman on FEMA
2005-09-08 07:43:16
Krugman writes: 'the undermining of FEMA began as soon as President Bush took office. Instead of choosing a professional with expertise in responses to disaster to head the agency, Mr. Bush appointed Joseph Allbaugh, a close political confidant. Mr. Allbaugh quickly began trying to scale back some of FEMA's preparedness programs.

You might have expected the administration to reconsider its hostility to emergency preparedness after 9/11 - after all, emergency management is as important in the aftermath of a terrorist attack as it is following a natural disaster. As many people have noticed, the failed response to Katrina shows that we are less ready to cope with a terrorist attack today than we were four years ago.

But the downgrading of FEMA continued, with the appointment of Michael Brown as Mr. Allbaugh's successor.

Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than having been Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate. But Mr. Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency's director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.

That contempt, as I've said, reflects a general hostility to the role of government as a force for good. And Americans living along the Gulf Coast have now reaped the consequences of that hostility.'

... and there's your RJ Moment of 2005





[sfo] Politics - World (context)
You decided to live below sea level
2005-09-07 13:34:27
right on the Gulf. You"

Is W channeling Nixon?

Although I don't hold the mental health community in particularly high regard, this strikes me as more or less credible. That said, I'm not nearly as worried about Bush's temper as I am about his fundamental priorities...

Is Bush Out of Control?
By DOUG THOMPSON
Aug 15, 2005, 05:46
The Rant - From Capitol Hill Blue

Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.

They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with “get out of here!”

In fact, George W. Bush’s mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain “weather reports” to warn of the President’s demeanor. “Calm seas” means Bush is calm while “tornado alert” is a warning that he is pissed at the world.

Decreasing job approval ratings and increased criticism within his own party drives the President’s paranoia even higher. Bush, in a meeting with senior advisors, called Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist a “god-damned traitor” for opposing him on stem-cell research.

“There’s real concern in the West Wing that the President is losing it,” a high-level aide told me recently.

A year ago, this web site discovered the White House physician prescribed anti-depressants for Bush. The news came after revelations that the President’s wide mood swings led some administration staffers to doubt his sanity.

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.

“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”

Dr. Frank’s conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

As a recovering alcoholic (sober 11 years, two months, nine days), I know all too well the symptoms that Dr. Frank describes and, after watching Bush for the past several years, I have to, unfortunately, agree with him.

Conversations over the last few weeks with longtime friends who work in the Bush White House confirm even more what Dr. Frank says and others have suggested.

The President of the United States is out of control. How long can the ship of state continue to sail with a madman at the helm?

© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue

The BIG risk in Global Warming isn't what you think

It's not just a gradually rising ocean and changing temperature and precipitation patterns, it's a wholesale unhinging of the climate as we know it...

"During the last million years or so, glacial periods and interglacials have alternated as a result of variations in the Earth’s orbital parameters. Based on Antarctic ice cores, more detailed information is available now about the four full glacial cycles during the last 500,000 years. In recent years it was discovered that during the last glacial period large and very rapid temperature variations took place over large parts of the globe, in particular in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. These abrupt events saw temperature changes of many degrees within a human lifetime. In contrast, the last 10,000 years appear to have been relatively more stable... "

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/042.htm

The risk of reaching an heretofore unknown tipping point in the climate is quite real and very dangerous. You've been warned.

Karl Rove's America:How the Dream Ends

It ends not with a bang but with a prolonged sigh ...

"John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?"


--P Krugman, The New York Times, 7.15.05

Krugman: real unemployment rate is 1-3 pts higher

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "Economists who argue that there's something wrong with the unemployment numbers are buzzing about a new study by Katharine Bradbury, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which suggests that millions of Americans who should be in the labor force aren't. 'The addition of these hypothetical participants,' she writes, 'would raise the unemployment rate by one to three-plus percentage points.'
Some background: the unemployment rate is only one of several numbers economists use to assess the jobs picture. When the economy is generating an abundance of jobs, economists expect to see strong growth in the payrolls reported by employers and in the number of people who say they have jobs, together with a rise in the length of the average workweek. They also expect to see wage gains well in excess of inflation, as employers compete to attract workers.
In fact, we see none of these things. As Berkeley's J. Bradford DeLong writes on his influential economics blog, 'We have four of five indicators telling us that the state of the job market is not that good and only one - the unemployment rate - reading green.'
In particular, even the most favorable measures show that employment growth has lagged well behind population growth over the past four years. Yet the measured unemployment rate isn't much higher than it was in early 2001. How is that possible?
The answer, according to the survey used to estimate the unemployment rate, is a decline in labor force participation. Nonworking Americans aren't considered unemployed unless they are actively looking for work, and hence counted as part of the labor force. And a large number of people have, for some reason, dropped out of the official labor force.
Those with a downbeat view of the jobs picture argue that the low reported unemployment rate is a statistical illusion, tha"

Krugman: Chinese will stop buying T-bills, then kiss that bubble buh-bye

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "By keeping the yuan down, China is feeding a trade surplus that is creating a growing political backlash in America and Europe. And China, which is still a poor country, is devoting a lot of resources to the accumulation of a basically useless pile of dollars instead of to higher living standards.
The question is what happens to us if the Chinese finally decide to stop acting so strangely.
An end to China's dollar-buying spree would lead to a sharp rise in the value of the yuan. It would probably also lead to a sharp fall in the value of the dollar relative to other major currencies, like the yen and the euro, which the Chinese haven't been buying on the same scale. This would help U.S. manufacturers by raising their competitors' costs.
But if the Chinese stopped buying all those U.S. bonds, interest rates would rise. This would be bad news for housing - maybe very bad news, if the interest rate rise burst the bubble.
In the long run, the economic effects of an end to China's dollar buying would even out. America would have more industrial workers and fewer real estate agents, more jobs in Michigan and fewer in Florida, leaving the overall level of employment pretty much unaffected. But as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, in the long run we are all dead.
In the short run, some people would win, but others would lose. And I suspect that the losers would greatly outnumber the winners.
And what about the strategic effects? Right now America is a superpower living on credit - something I don't think has happened since Philip II ruled Spain. What will happen to our stature if and when China takes away our credit card?
This story is still in its early days. On the first day of the new policy, the yuan rose only 2 percent, not enough to make any noticeable difference. But one of these days Chinese dollar purchases will trail of"

Batting .500 isnt bad if death isn't on the line

The likelihood that the innocent are being executed was enough to compel Illinois Governor George Ryan, a onetime supporter of the death penalty to suspend executions two years ago. Simple arithmetic convinced him the system was broken: of 25 people put on death row in Illinois since 1987, 12 were executed, 13 were falsely accused and eventually freed, including Anthony Porter, a retarded man who came within a few days of execution for a murder he didn't commit.

... What is your state's average?


http://www.insideout.org/documentaries/dna/thelaw.asp

US wakes up, finds itself in bed with WHAT!?

"A record 57 percent also now say the administration intentionally exaggerated its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
...
Fifty-three percent of Americans say the war was not worth fighting...

Fifty-one percent said they want to see a timetable for withdrawing troops. For the first time, a plurality of Americans, by 50%-47%, sees the war in Iraq as a separate action from the war on terrorism.
...
By 46%-43%, a plurality says the war in Iraq has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism.
...
By 53%-46%, Americans say the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq. That's the highest level of discontent since the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison scandals last summer.

In addition,

By a record 61%-37%, those surveyed say the president doesn't have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq. Bush's job-approval rating has suffered, too. His approval rating is 45%, equaling the lowest of his presidency. At 53%, his disapproval rating has reached a new high."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

... now where's that damn morning after pill!?

The overlooked $2,300 billion deficit upper

And you thought half a trillion was bad...

"... Blessed by historical habits that have no relationship to what our government does today, our legacy of cash accounting now serves to mislead and confuse. The April issue of Economic Indicators, a publication prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers, for instance, projects a unified budget deficit -- the one that lumps the Social Security surplus in with the rest of government -- of $427 billion. (New reports this week that we may be on track for a smaller deficit don't change the fact that the accounting methods are misleading. We'll stick with the $427 billion figure until they make the new estimate official in midsummer.)

The $427 billion deficit, however, is a massive understatement of our true deficit. The real deficit is $2.3 trillion larger. That's more than five times the publicly discussed $427 billion figure -- but it never enters public discussion.

If the executive branch of government were held to the standards of Sarbanes-Oxley, it would be on a fast track to a criminal trial. We would forget about Ken Lay because the crimes at Enron are mere rounding errors compared to what our government does.

A bipartisan problem
Some readers will expect a diatribe against President George W. Bush to follow.

It won't.

This is a bipartisan problem. Both the Democrats and the Republicans, in or out of office, have been using accounting methods that are, at best, quaint and, at worst, criminal. And they have been doing it for decades.

You can understand what's going on by comparing our government to a large corporation like General Motors.

When General Motors (GM, news, msgs) files its annual report, it must report on the condition of its pension fund and other obligations to current and retired workers as well as its profit or loss. If the pension liabilities -- the retirement benefits it has promised workers -- exceed pension-plan assets by more than a certain amount, General Motors must make contributions to the pension fund, reducing its profits. The two, profits and pensions, are deeply linked. General Motors also has substantial health-care obligations to its retired workers.

Sound familiar?

Our government is in a similar position -- but with a lot more zeros on the numbers it uses. It reports its annual profit and loss as a surplus or a deficit. Separately, it reports on its long-term pension, disability and health-care obligations. Unlike General Motors, however, the government doesn't include these figures in the annual statements of surplus or deficit.

The buried details
You can find them only in the trustees' reports for Social Security and Medicare.

The 2005 reports (each over 200 pages) show the programs to be underfunded by a total of $33.7 trillion (in today's dollars) over the next 75 years. That's four times the $8 trillion in formal debt shown in regular government accounting.

You learn still more when you compare the 2005 reports with the reports from 2004. In 2004, the combined unfunded obligations of Social Security and Medicare were $31.4 trillion.

That's an increase of $2.3 trillion in a single year. The trustees' examination of the plans over a longer time period, termed the infinite horizon, shows an even larger change, $7.2 trillion (see table below).

But let's not look so far in the future. Let's stay with the traditional (if inadequate) 75-year measure, that $2.3 trillion. It isn't mentioned in other government documents. It is missing from Economic Indicators. Indeed, it is absent from virtually all discussion of the federal budget -- the one currently estimating a piddling deficit of $427 billion for fiscal 2005.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P120624.asp

Onward, Christian Soldier!

Connecting the Dots 101

The legal battle over the life of Terri Schiavo may have ended, but a thick, fervent crowd remains in the makeshift encampment outside the Woodside Hospice House here . . .
No, we're not going to go home," said Bill Tierney, a young daughter at his side. "Terri is not dead until she's dead" . . .
Mr. Tierney, a former military intelligence officer in Iraq who works as a translator and investigator for private companies, cried as he talked about watching the Schiavo spectacle on television and feeling the utter need to be at the hospice.
New York Times
Protesters With Hearts on Sleeves and Anger on Signs
March 28, 2005

Bill Tierney . . . had just returned from eight months working as an interrogator for US forces in Baghdad, and had come to talk, on the record, about torture.
''The Brits came up with an expression – wog,'' Tierney said. ''That stands for Wily Oriental Gentleman. There's a lot of wiliness in that part of the world.''. . .
After explaining his various psychological tactics to the audience, interrogator Bill Tierney (a private contractor working with the Army) said, ''I tried to be nuanced and culturally aware. But the suspects didn't break.''
Suddenly Tierney's temper rose. ''They did not break!'' he shouted. ''I'm here to win. I'm here so our civilization beats theirs! Now what are you willing to do to win?'' he asked, pointing to a woman in the front row. ''You are the interrogators, you are the ones who have to get the information from the Iraqis. What do you do? That word 'torture'. You immediately think, 'That's not me.' But are we litigating this war or fighting it?'' . . .
Asked about Abu Ghraib, Tierney said that for an interrogator, ''sadism is always right over the hill. You have to admit it. Don't fool yourself – there is a part of you that will say, 'This is fun.' ''
Boston Globe
Spy world
February 13, 2005

... what a piece of work is man. Well, this man anyway.