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August 31, 2003
Poll: U.S. Losing Grip In IraqCBS News | Poll: U.S. Losing Grip In Iraq August 29, 2003 Americans express growing concern that things are not going well for the U.S. in Iraq. More now than at any time since the war ended think things are going badly for the U.S. there, and an increasing number see U.S. control of events there slipping away. Americans continue to support the United Nations having a lead role in Iraq. ... Just 42% of Americans think the U.S. is in control of events in Iraq, while 47% think the U.S. is not in control there. That is a slightly more negative assessment of the situation than was seen earlier in August, when 45% thought the U.S. was in control in Iraq, and 43% thought it was not. It is a drastic change in public perceptions since the end of April, when the war was still underway. ... Despite continuing casualties, Americans’ views about whether the war in Iraq was worthwhile have changed little in the past few months. Since July, the public has been divided as to whether the result of the war was worth the loss of American life and the other costs of attacking Iraq; 46% now think it was worth it, and 46% think it was not. Read It Rating: 8 Fire consumes R.V.Excerpts: The fire began at around 5 p.m. and was under control in less than 20 minutes, according to Mount Shasta Fire District Chief Clyde Davis. However, the vehicle was fully involved very quickly, and only a few personal effects could be salvaged. The fire also spread beyond the vehicle, burning a small amount of vegetation. Davis said the preliminary investigation revealed the fire was caused when the driver "pushed the vehicle really hard up the grade," which loaded up the engine's filters with oil, causing the smog pump to explode and spread oil over the engine. "There are quite a few motorhome fires in this area because of the steep grades the vehicles have to come up," Davis said. "People try to get more out of their vehicles than they can give." Read It Rating: 4.5 Write a Story, Go to JailWhenever I read a story like this, I always think of the Stephen King novella Rage. Wired News: Write a Story, Go to Jail Brian Robertson was just months away from graduation at Moore High School in Moore, Oklahoma, last year when he found the beginnings of what he thought was a short story on a school computer. He copied the file to another computer, added some paragraphs to the initial text and then promptly got arrested. Robertson, who was 18 when he wrote the story, was charged with a felony count of planning to cause serious bodily harm or death. The story he wrote, titled "Evacuation Orders," (PDF) described preparations for an armed invasion of his school that included directions to unnamed fellow commandos to kill the senior class principal and then plant plastic explosives around the campus. After searching Robertson's car and his parents' home, authorities found no weapons, traces of explosive material or any other evidence that the teen was planning to attack his school. But authorities said the story Robertson wrote was sufficient to charge him under an Oklahoma state statute, which was passed in the wake of school shootings across the country in the last few years. Read It Rating: 9 Family: Police beating killed manFamily: Police beating killed man The family of a man who died after a struggle with arresting officers is accusing the Marin County Sheriff's Department of beating the man to death. San Rafael police and the sheriff's department are conducting investigations into the mysterious death of Cary James Grime, who called 911 asking for help early Sunday and ended up being forced to the ground by two officers and arrested on suspicion of public intoxication. ... Lavie said Grime was was completely subdued and screaming, "Help, they're going to kill me," and 'They're breaking my arm." She said she watched as the officers roughed him up, then pulled him into the patrol car by his cuffed wrists. "I don't care if he was drunk or what he was being arrested for, what they were doing wasn't right," she said. "I think its disgusting." Pittman said, however, that Grime was still resisting when he was taken to the Marin County Jail booking area. As deputies attempted to take off his handcuffs, Grime suddenly collapsed and stopped breathing, Pittman said. Read It Rating: 8 California's reasonable recallBoston Globe / Op-ed / California's reasonable recall By Jeff Jacoby, 8/24/2003 Excerpts: Whether all these add up to a compelling case to recall him is a serious question for serious voters, and the campaign deserves more serious coverage than it has gotten. Yes, there are some ludicrous publicity hounds on the ballot, and yes, there is a decidedly only-in-California aura to the candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger. But that doesn't detract from the gravity of California's condition or the legitimacy of the recall as a vehicle for repairing it. One of the world's largest and most important political entities is in the midst of a leadership crisis. It is irresponsible and cynical for the press to be treating it as a circus. The pundits' dyspeptic disapproval of California's recall procedure is meritless. Why should Californians be condemned for making use of a provision that has been in their constitution since 1911? They have not exactly been promiscuous with it: This will be the first statewide recall election in California history. ... For all the talk of "democracy run amok," voters in states that have the recall use their power sparingly. Like the ability to pass or repeal laws via the ballot box -- initiative and referendum -- the recall is a restraint on the power of arrogant politicians and entrenched special interests. In a government based on checks and balances and the sovereignty of the people, it is prudent to have a constitutional tool for removing officeholders who are so abusive or incompetent that it would be unwise to leave them in power until the next election. A train wreck? A coup? Far from it. California's recall campaign is simply an exercise in democratic accountability. Whatever the outcome on Oct. 7, the cause of self-government will advance. Read It Rating: 9 California can't be won without a winning mantraI like this suggested mantra: "A true leader is someone who knows where his followers are going." California can't be won without a winning mantra Excerpt: Here is my advice to the other 134 hopefuls who are trying to overtake him: A message is good, but a mantra is better. Find a phrase that resonates with voters and stick with it. This can be tricky, especially for office seekers who have little or no experience in public speaking, or writing declarative sentences. Nothing is more embarrassing than getting stumped on the stump. So I have compiled a list of sample slogans that are inspiring, noncommittal, and somewhat confusing. In other words, they should help any political novice step up to the podium and sound like a pro: • "Standing still means we are not moving forward." • "Progress is a transformative undertaking." Read It Rating: 4.5 A Ready-Made Budget For Would-Be GovernorsA Ready-Made Budget For Would-Be Governors Attention, candidates - whether frontrunners, longshots or fantasy play- ers. There's a detailed state budget proposal available that combines reform, restructuring and selected cuts in duplicative programs to promise a $1.5 billion surplus in 2005 - with no tax increases, no cuts in services deemed vital by most Californians, but with improvements in the business climate sufficient to permit the creation of an estimated 600,000 new jobs over two years. In a recall election whose inescapable backdrop is a state spending crisis that the Legislature and governor punted into next year, the Citizens' Budget offers a benchmark by which candidate seriousness can be judged. It was prepared jointly by the Performance Institute of San Diego, a think tank dedicated to advocating performance-based management practices for government agencies, and the free-market Reason Public Policy Institute in Los Angeles. We wrote about the proposal when it was released April 30, but it has become even more relevant in this season of recall. (The proposal is online at www.rppi.org/cacitizensbudget.html.) Read It Rating: 8.5 MPP "most active and most visible" in presidential primary(Received via e-mail) Dear Friend: The Marijuana Policy Project's campaign to pressure the Democratic Representatives of Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana (GSMM) -- Here are the latest developments: * On July 15, Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) reaffirmed his support for the * On July 17, GSMM's efforts were praised in John DiStaso's closely * On July 20, in response to a question from GSMM member and patient * On July 24, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) followed up on his * During an August 4 appearance on CNN's Larry King Live, Howard Dean * On August 6, questioned at a campaign forum by GSMM members, * GSMM's encounter with Kerry was reported in detail on August 8 in The pressure on the presidential candidates will continue. Already, Sincerely, Rob Kampia P.S. Would you please visit http://www.GraniteStaters.com/donate to (I donated.) Justice Kennedy Speaks Out Against Sentencing Guidelinest r u t h o u t - Justice Kennedy Speaks Out Against Sentencing Guidelines The New York Times Tuesday 12 August 2003 We hope that both the members of Congress and the Bush administration were paying attention last weekend when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a tough-on-crime Reagan appointee, decried harsh and inflexible sentencing policies. Justice Kennedy was speaking for legal experts from across the political spectrum when he said the current rules misspent America's criminal justice resources by locking up people for irrationally long amounts of time. The nation's inmate population reached 2.1 million, a record, last year. One major factor behind the increase has been the imposition of the mandatory minimum sentences contained in many federal laws, especially drug laws. A second reason for the rise is the effect of federal Read It Rating: 5.5 Techies, Politics Now ClickThis is a long article about MoveOn, DigitalConsumer.org, EFF, and other cyber-activism projects t r u t h o u t - Techies, Politics Now Click The 'geeks' who once shunned activism during the digital revolution use their money and savvy to influence public policy. Read It Rating: 7.5 Charley Reese on Arnold and amateur politiciansby Charley Reese I can't recall ever having written a commentary on California politics. That's because, from afar, politics in California seem to be as complex, byzantine and sometimes downright weird as those in the Middle East. And I've had more experience in the Middle East than in California. Nevertheless, I can say this: Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly qualified to be a governor. Whether he will be elected or not is another question, and I don't have a clue. I can't think of anything more uncertain to bet on than the outcome of a California election. But let me tell you why he is qualified and at the same time poke the air out of a myth created by politicians that holding public office in this country is somehow complex and difficult. That's a load of self-aggrandizing horse apples. Buying into the notion that people need an "experienced" politician is like deciding you need an "experienced" prostitute. Read It Rating: 5 Read His LipsOpinion of the New York Times After presiding over a two-year binge of tax cuts, a rocketing federal deficit and job losses that recall the Herbert Hoover era, President Bush appears ready to step away from the supply-side gaming table, at least for a while. Mr. Bush announced Wednesday that he sensed enough of an economic upturn to reject any immediate plans for yet another tax cut. He estimates that the effects of two years of giddy revenue-slashing — geared heavily toward the wealthiest Americans — are looking "robust enough" to hold off on more cuts. We accept the respite as an act of fiscal mercy rather than a cause for economic celebration. The Republicans' chokehold on the nation's revenue flow is doing far more to create debt and deficits than to create jobs, but it is a relief to know that Mr. Bush is not planning to do any more major damage in the immediate future. Read It Rating: 9 Federal judge may postpone recallFederal judge warns he may postpone election / U.S. must ensure minority rights not harmed Saturday, August 16, 2003 A federal judge in San Jose threatened Friday to postpone California's unprecedented recall election unless Monterey County and state officials can get federal clearance to proceed with the vote. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ordered attorneys from the state Department of Justice and Monterey County back into court on Aug. 29 to show why the election should move forward. In the meantime, he told the county's election officials to refrain from sending out 200 absentee ballots to overseas voters. Fogel's orders came hours after civil rights groups argued that the unusual election is so rushed that it is forcing changes in the voting process that require federal approval. TruthOut permacopy (2nd story on page) Read It Rating: 6 Recall chaosContra Costa Times | Recall chaos Ballot likely to be radically different, confusing to voters Elections officials across the state face a possible meltdown if too many candidates jump on the Oct. 7 recall ballot to replace Gov. Gray Davis. "Counties are not ready to handle this," said Contra Costa County voter registrar Steve Weir. "Every elections official in the state is concerned about how this will look for the voter (and) how it's going to be organized." Read It Rating: 5 Libertarian billing himself as "the smokers' candidate"thedesertsun.com | Libertarian billing himself as "the smokers' candidate" Ned Roscoe wants governor’s seat to be his first public office By Rick Davis PALM DESERT -- Leave the grandstanding and promotional stunts for others, says Ned Roscoe. The Northern California Libertarian claims he is running for governor of California because he fancies the opportunity -- and realizes it is a rare one. "This situation is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Roscoe said during a hastily planned campaign visit to the Coachella Valley on Monday afternoon. "And so here I am. This is no stunt." Roscoe is on that lengthy list of 195 Californians who qualified to appear on the ballot for the Oct. 7 recall election of Gov. Gray Davis. On Monday, Roscoe, 42, of Napa made the desert one of his first stops. Here's another article along similar lines. Read It Rating: 3 August 16, 2003
Poll: Bustamante In Lead to Succeed DavisPoll Places Bustamante In Lead to Succeed Davis (washingtonpost.com) Schwarzenegger Tops the Other Calif. Hopefuls LOS ANGELES, Aug. 15 -- Before the first television ads have aired, the race to succeed California Gov. Gray Davis (D) if he is recalled came down to just two men, Republican action star Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante, according to a nonpartisan statewide poll to be released Saturday. The California Field Poll found 25 percent of registered voters opted for Bustamante followed by 22 percent for Schwarzenegger. The other candidates trailed in single digits: State Sen. Tom McClintock took 9 percent; businessman Bill Simon won 8 percent; former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth received 5 percent; all three are Republicans. Independent and columnist Arianna Huffington got 4 percent, and Green Party candidate Peter Camejo received 2 percent. The poll also found Davis in deeper trouble. The beleaguered governor earned the dubious distinction of being the most unpopular governor in the 56-year history of the Field Poll.... Read It Rating: 8 Fresno Councilman: 'Use Dirty Bomb to Kill Liberals't r u t h o u t - CA Republican | 'Use Dirty Bomb to Kill Liberals' Fresno council member wrote of using 'dirty bomb' to kill liberals. By Pablo Lopez and Matt Leedy Fresno residents and community leaders, outraged by an e-mail message in which City Council Member Jerry Duncan wished he had a "dirty bomb" to kill every liberal in Fresno, called Thursday for his resignation, recall or reprimand. A crowd that gathered in City Hall also chastised City Council Member Brian Calhoun and his chief assistant, Ann Kloose, who wrote in an e-mail that police should "Cap" members of the Human Relations Commission. _____ Related item _____ Read It Rating: 7.5 "Wacky California" puts on electoral circusA perspective on the recall (pre-certification of the candidate list) from an Indian media source. "Wacky California" puts on electoral circus - Sify.com Saturday, 09 August , 2003, 07:47 In the state known for nurturing alternative lifestyles and for pioneering everything from roller-skates to freeways and movie celebrity, almost anyone can run for office. And they do. Armed only with the signatures of 65 friends and a 3,500-dollar fee, residents of the most populous and culturally diverse US state can register as candidates for the October 7 recall polls aimed at unseating its governor. ... Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerveGuardian Unlimited | Special reports | Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve Julian Borger in Washington A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity". All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality". ... Read It Rating: 5 Dean Campaign's Net Savvy ShowsA good once-over of the Dean campaign and supporters' 'Net efforts. Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Dean Campaign's Net Savvy Shows August 10, 2003 BURLINGTON, Vermont On July 10, Zephyr Teachout posted a short note on the weblog for Howard Dean's presidential campaign. She was looking for programmers to help on several projects, one of which would let volunteers around the country create a social network to share their best ideas more efficiently She quickly got scores of responses. Members of an unaffiliated group called Hack4Dean, since renamed DeanSpace, were among those who answered the call, and a site she's calling ``Visible Volunteers'' is taking shape. Teachout, 31, heads ``Internet outreach'' for a campaign that is rewriting some of the rules of politics. Dean's team isn't the first to use new media in a national race. However, more than any previous campaign, the people running this one truly get the meaning of the Net. Read It Rating: 8 Bush's 9-11 SecretsThe Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: Bush's 9-11 Secrets by James Ridgeway The Government Received Warnings of Bin Laden's Plans to Attack New York and D.C. July 31st, 2003 1:00 PM WASHINGTON, D.C.—Even though Bush has refused to make parts of the 9-11 report public, one thing is startlingly clear: The U.S. government had received repeated warnings of impending attacks—and attacks using planes directed at New York and Washington—for several years. The government never told us about what it knew was coming. See for yourself. The report lists 36 different summaries of warnings dating back to 1997. ... A Debate Over U.S. 'Empire' Builds in Unexpected CirclesSweet! A Debate Over U.S. 'Empire' Builds in Unexpected Circles (washingtonpost.com) By Dan Morgan Sunday 10 August 2003
Liberal scholars have been raising the question but, more strikingly, so have some Republicans with impeccable conservative credentials. For example, C. Boyden Gray, former counsel to President George H.W. Bush, has joined a small group that is considering ways to "educate Americans about the dangers of empire and the need to return to our founding traditions and values," according to an early draft of a proposed mission statement. "Rogue Nation," a new book by former Reagan administration official Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Washington-based Economic Strategy Institute, contains a chapter that dubs the United States "The Unacknowledged Empire." And at the Nixon Center in Washington, established in 1994 by former president Richard M. Nixon, President Dimitri K. Simes is preparing a magazine-length essay that will examine the "American imperial predicament." Read It Rating: 9.8 Three Libertarian candidates will appear on California recall ballotI am very disappointed in the California Libertarian Party for making what looks likely to be an insubstantial (if not downright embarrassing) showing in the California recall. To a lesser extent, I'm disappointed in myself for deciding not to go for it (even though I think it was the right choice...I think). LP News Online: Three Libertarian candidates will appear on California recall ballot Three Libertarian candidates will be on the ballot in California's upcoming special gubernatorial election -- including the president of a national chain of discount cigarette stores who is running on a platform of "smoker's rights." According to the list released by the California secretary of state on August 14, Ned Roscoe, Jack Hickey, and Ken Hamidi have qualified to appear on the October 7 ballot under the Libertarian Party banner. Read It Rating: 4 Vernice Kuglin found not guilty of tax evasionIRS vs. KUGLIN - Sierra Times.com By Carl F. Worden Forget the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and our excellent adventure in Liberia. Forget about Kobe, Arnold, Arriana, Scott and Laci. The biggest news of the entire week is that on August 8, 2003, the IRS was unable to convince a jury in Memphis, Tennessee that the Federal Tax Code requires the citizens to pay individual income taxes. I kid you not. NOTE: I have no idea how credible this story is, but I'm familiar with the movement -- so it wouldn't surprise me a bit to find out it's true. (Googles "Vernice Kuglin") Well, it's true that she didn't pay her taxes and didn't get convicted of a crime for it. Here's the transcript from a FoxNews interview with Kuglin and her lawyer. Read It Rating: 8.5 |
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Analysis: Is 'Perfect Storm' Brewing for Bush?
Analysis: Is 'Perfect Storm' Brewing for Bush?
Yahoo/Reuters
As the 2004 election nears, President Bush could face an international "perfect storm" -- more attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, an overextended deployment of U.S. troops eager to come home and blackening clouds over the Middle East, North Korea and Iran.
The confluence of world events will test Bush's foreign policy leadership even as he must concentrate on the U.S. economy and other domestic issues that could determine whether he wins a second term.
Although most Americans still have a favorable opinion of the president, his job performance rating has slipped to 52 percent positive and 48 percent negative in a recent poll of 1,011 likely U.S. voters by Zogby International. This compares with a post-Sept. 11, 2001, peak rating of 82 percent positive.
...
"A perfect storm (on security) is brewing for the rest of the year," said one military planner, referring to a catastrophic clash of three storms that menaced the U.S. Northeastern coast in 1991.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -7.5
Learning Percentage: 10%
Bush's men tried to gag me, claims Gen Clark
Telegraph | News | Bush's men tried to gag me, claims Gen Clark
General Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander in Bosnia, and a probable presidential contender, has accused White House officials of trying to get him sacked as a CNN military analyst because they feared he would criticise the Iraq war....
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Democrats line up Gen Wesley Clark as their best hope
I said earlier that Clark would be a better choice than Dean for Democrats. (I can't link to it right now because the LBR archives don't seem to be cooperating). I'll stick with that assertion.
Telegraph | News | Democrats line up Gen Wesley Clark as their best hope of winning against Bush
By Julian Coman in Washington
(Filed: 24/08/2003)
In this era of the War on Terrorism, senior Democrats have decided that the best - possibly the only - way to beat George W Bush in the 2004 presidential elections is to put up a soldier against him.
A retired general, Wesley Clark, the supreme commander of Nato during its successful campaign in Kosovo, is widely expected to announce his candidacy for the White House in the next few days, backed by powerful members of the United States Congress.
In an open field, where none of the nine current Democrat candidates has established a clear lead, a late entry by Gen Clark would have an electrifying effect. The Vietnam veteran has never stood for elected office. Since his retirement, however, he has become a familiar face on CNN television, frequently criticising President Bush's policies on Iraq.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L3
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
Federal Court Restricts Global Deployment of Navy Sonar
NRDC Press Release: Federal Court Restricts Global Deployment of Navy Sonar
Conservation Groups Say Ruling Protects Whales and Other Marine Life From Injury and Death
SAN FRANCISCO (August 26, 2003) -- A federal judge ruled today that the Navy's plan to deploy a new high-intensity sonar system violates numerous federal environmental laws and could endanger whales, porpoises and fish. In a 73-page opinion, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte barred the Navy's planned around-the-world deployment and ordered the Navy to reduce the system's potential harm to marine mammals and fish by negotiating limits on its use with conservation groups who had sued over its deployment.
The sonar system, known as Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active sonar (or LFA), relies on extremely loud, low-frequency sound to detect submarines at great distances. According to the Navy's own studies, LFA generates sounds up to 140 decibels even more than 300 miles away from the sonar source. Many scientists believe that blasting such intense sounds over large expanses of the ocean could harm entire populations of whales, porpoises and fish. During testing off the California coast, noise from a single LFA system was detected across the breadth of the North Pacific Ocean.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L3
Freedom Rating: 3.5
Learning Percentage: 50%
August 28, 2003
Homeschooling in the UK
This is a good article about homeschooling -- in this case, in small-town United Kingdom. It sounds like the British government is much more mellow about the issue in terms of mandatory elements and regulations about schooling. The article appears to be saying that there basically are none.
Excerpt:
It may sound impossible and scary, but anyone can educate their children at home.
There is no law that says that you must send your children to school. Neither do you have to follow the National Curriculum. You don't have to follow a curriculum at all for that matter.
You can put your children into school and then take them out again. You can even put them in during mornings only or on a three-day-a-week basis, should your chosen school agree to a mix and match arrangement.
According to a recent study at Durham University, home educated children fare much better than the average school child in academic terms, and generally socialise well.
Which will surprise many parents who believe making friends in the playground is a big part of childhood interaction.
Read It Rating: 9.7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 6
Learning Percentage: 50%
August 27, 2003
Monsanto, Stop Bullying Tiny Dairy Over Growth Hormones
My brief spiel in favor of this action is posted at E-Actions for Freedom.
Monsanto, Stop Bullying Tiny Dairy Over Growth Hormones
by Working Assets
In a move of Goliath-attacking-David proportions, Monsanto, the multi-national agrichemical company, is suing a small, family-owned milk producer in Maine because they advertise that their farmers pledge not to use artificial growth hormones (also known as rBST) on the cows that produce their milk.
...
Lawsuits such as these are shameless attempts to use the financial clout of a multi-billion-dollar monopolist to intimidate a tiny family-owned business. Consumers want the information being provided to them, and Monsanto should get out of the way.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 89%
August 26, 2003
Petition to Howard Dean on clarifying Israel position
I don't think I'm going to sign this, primarily because of the sentence that begins with "Dr. Dean, we respect and fully support your agenda to...", but if you're a Dean supporter or Democrat enthusiast, I recommend signing this. The Israel-Palestine playing field is already tilted more than enough.
To: Dr. Howard Dean
As members of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, The Green Party, Progressives, Independents, and other parties interested in your candidacy, we would like to express our deep reservations regarding your stated positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Based on speeches and interviews given last year and early this year, you spoke often of the Israeli victims of terror, yet you failed to acknowledge the three-fold number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces, or the Israeli military's incursion and illegal occupation of large portions of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. These incendiary actions by the Israeli military have fueled much of the animosity in the region, and they must be acknowledged in any fair assessment of the situation....
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 50%
California Recall SmartVoter Profile: Jack Hickey
Voter Information for John J. "Jack" Hickey. October 7, 2003 Election
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 25%
California Recall SmartVoter Profile: Ned Roscoe
Voter Information for Ned Roscoe. October 7, 2003 Election
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 2%
August 25, 2003
Weintraub: State deficit bond rests on shaky ground
sacbee.com (Opinion): State deficit bond rests on shaky ground
By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, August 5, 2003
The California Constitution says that the Legislature "shall not, in any manner, create any debt or debts" greater than $300,000, unless such an obligation is for a "single object or work" and is approved by a vote of the people. The only exception is in case of war, "to repel invasion or suppress insurrection."
The pending recall election aimed at Gov. Gray Davis might be considered an insurrection, I suppose. But I don't think that such a threat is the kind of exception the framers had in mind when they prohibited the Legislature from using borrowed money to pay for the ordinary, ongoing expenses of state government.
Yet the budget passed last week and signed Saturday by Davis is built upon a $10.7 billion bond measure to finance the state's accumulated budget deficit. These bonds, to be repaid over five years, are in an amount far greater than $300,000. They will not be used for a "single object or work," such as building a school or buying parkland. And they will not be submitted to a vote of the people.
How then, can the bonds possibly be legal? Some people, not surprisingly, think they are not....
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 75%
Fox Blocked In Suit Against Al Franken's Book
Newsday.com - Fox Blocked In Suit Against Al Franken's Book
By Patricia Hurtado
STAFF WRITER
August 22, 2003, 9:29 PM EDT
In a scathing opinion, a Manhattan federal judge denied a request by Fox News to block sales of a book by liberal humorist Al Franken that satirizes the network's motto, "Fair and Balanced."
"There are hard cases and there are easy cases," U.S. District Judge Denny Chin told Fox's lawyers Friday. "This is an easy case in my view and wholly without merit, both factually and legally."
Lawyers for the network filed suit earlier this month seeking a preliminary injunction against the sale of the book, which hit stores Thursday. They argued that the title of Franken's book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," infringed on the network's trademarked motto and could mislead some into believing that the book was endorsed by Fox.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 20%
August 24, 2003
City can't ban Walmart RV parking
It's not often one hears about something cool that Walmart does, but once I started looking into the RV lifestyle, I soon found out that Walmart has a company-wide policy of allowing RVers to spend a night in a store parking lot for free. It seems that Walmart founder Sam Walton was a big RVer, and the policy was his doing. Very cool.
Apparently some in Whitehorse, Yukon, don't see it as I do.
Particularly this whiner:
After the councillors spoke about Preston’s report, RV park owner Chuck MacKenzie stood up and said now that he sees where council is going on this issue, he wants a refund for 16 years’ worth of city taxes and business licences because the city is not doing its job right.
“I would like a cheque Monday morning,” he said before sitting.
City can’t curtail RV parking, lawyer says
by Jason Small
A Whitehorse Star Archive story originally published August 20, 2003
If the city wants to prevent RVs from camping in Wal-Mart’s parking lot without the store’s permission, it will have to get the territorial government to change a law.
Local lawyer Tim Preston told city council at last night’s meeting that the only way it could prevent people from parking overnight at Wal-Mart without a request by the store to do so would be to ask the territorial government to change the Motor Vehicles Act.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 50%
Conservative backlash (against Ashcroft and "PATRIOT Act")
Baltimore Sun editorial
---------------------------------------------------------
Originally published August 22, 2003
JOHN ASHCROFT must be sweating bullets.
A grass-roots drive to resist the attorney general's broad expansion of police powers in the name of fighting terrorism has picked up so much support in the American heartland it threatens not only repeal of the legislation but political damage to President Bush as well.
Try as he might, Mr. Ashcroft can no longer dismiss opponents of the USA Patriot Act as a small but whiny band of liberals. Some of the nation's top conservative groups as well as a huge majority of the Republican-led House of Representatives -- in other words, the Bush base -- are now leading the drive to eliminate portions of the law that allow secret spying on anyone.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 15%
Lawsuit filed against "USA-PATRIOT" Act
Suit challenges constitutionality of anti-terror law
Eric Lichtblau
New York Times
Jul. 31, 2003 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union and six Muslim groups Wednesday brought the first constitutional challenge to the sweeping anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, arguing that the law gives federal agents virtually unchecked authority to spy on Americans.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Ashcroft Criticized for "PATRIOT Act" promo tour
Ashcroft Criticized for Talks on Terror
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — Attorney General John Ashcroft faced sharp criticism today from Democrats and others over his decision to give more than a dozen speeches around the country in defense of anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Mr. Ashcroft in a letter that he should either "desist from further speaking engagements" or explain why they do not violate restrictions on political activities by government officials.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 70%
Arnold's Bad Business
Arnold's Bad Business
Is his campaign the new Planet Hollywood?
By Daniel Gross
The most celebrated business venture of Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was his involvement in Planet Hollywood. Planet Hollywood, you may have forgotten, was the gaudiest avatar of the '90s idiotic theme-restaurant trend, which also spawned the Rainforest Café, the Official All-Star Café, and, most absurdly, the Fashion Café. ("What's on the menu," David Letterman asked. "A stick of gum?") Founded in 1991 by producer Keith Barish (The Fugitive, Sophie's Choice, The Running Man) and restaurant impresario Robert Earl (Hard Rock Café), the profitable Planet Hollywood chain had 34 units when it went splashily public in 1996.
It turns out there's a lot of similarity between the business plan of Planet Hollywood and the business plan of Arnold's gubernatorial campaign.
...
Republicans must hope Schwarzenegger's campaign is more durable than Planet Hollywood. The company raised $196 million in its IPO and plowed the proceeds into expansion. But its celebrity cachet dissipated once outlets opened in London's Gatwick Airport and Edmonton, Alberta. In October 1999 the chain, which peaked at 95 restaurants, filed for Chapter 11. Schwarzenegger severed his ties with the company in 2000. Planet Hollywood exited bankruptcy in 2000 but then earned membership in the Chapter 22 club by going bust again.
So far, the recall campaign has been very much like a meal at Planet Hollywood. There's plenty of ruckus and shouting and fake smiles. A lot of celebrities are hanging around—for no apparent reason. The fare is insipid. And when the experience is over and the bill comes, nausea may follow.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 65%
August 23, 2003
Victory Act melds war on terror with war on drugs
GOP Bill Would Add Anti-Terror Powers (washingtonpost.com)
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 21, 2003
As Attorney General John D. Ashcroft begins a barnstorming tour of the country to shore up support for existing anti-terrorism laws, Senate Republicans are discussing legislation that would expand the Justice Department's powers to investigate terrorists and drug criminals.
Recent drafts of the Victory Act, which carry the names of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and four other Senate Republicans, would provide extra penalties for drug dealers alleged to be connected to terrorist groups and would dramatically expand the government's power to seize records and conduct wiretaps in connection with "narcoterrorism" investigations.
The proposal, which totals 56 pages in one July 30 version, also targets alleged "interstate currency couriers" by making it a crime to carry more than $10,000 cash in a vehicle in connection with illegal activity. Prosecutors also would be able to freeze the assets of defendants arrested on money-laundering charges for 30 days, regardless of whether the assets are connected to a crime, according to the draft legislation.
Justice Department officials stress that they have not been involved in creating or revising the Victory Act proposal, but copies of the bill that have circulated on Capitol Hill over the last two months include many provisions sought by Justice prosecutors in the areas of terrorism and drug crimes. Several of the measures are similar to proposals made during the early debate over the USA Patriot Act, the controversial anti-terrorism package approved in October 2001 that Ashcroft is defending during his U.S. tour.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
August 22, 2003
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Woman `thought He Was A Liar'
Thursday, August 21, 2003
By Lee Sensenbrenner The Capital Times
When Sally Baron's family wrote her obituary, they described a northern Wisconsin woman who raised six children and took care of her husband after he was crushed in a mining accident.
She had moved to Stoughton seven years ago to be closer to her children and was 71 when she died Monday after struggling to recuperate from heart surgery. Her family had come to the question of what might be a fitting tribute to her.
"My uncle asked if there was a cause," her youngest son, Pete Baron, said.
Almost in unison, what her children decided to include in the obituary was this: "Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush."
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 40%
Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
t r u t h o u t - Paul Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
By Paul Krugman
New York Times
Friday 22 August 2003
The key moment in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Wednesday press conference came when the bodybuilder who would be governor brushed aside questions with the declaration, "The public doesn't care about figures." This was "fuzzy math" on steroids - Mr. Schwarzenegger was, in effect, asserting that his celebrity gives him the right to fake his way through the election. Will he be allowed to get away with it?
Reporters were trying to press Mr. Schwarzenegger for the specifics so obviously missing from his budget plans. But while he hasn't said much about what he proposes to do, the candidate has nonetheless already managed to say a number of things that his advisers must know are true lies.
...
...the candidate says he won't touch education. Sharp cuts in medical spending would be not only cruel but foolish, since in many cases they would mean losing federal matching funds. And prison spending is largely determined by the state's "three strikes" law. In short, he's not leveling with voters: there's no way to balance the budget while honoring all his promises.
But the candidate says that specifics don't matter, that the public just wants someone "tough enough." Does he really think that voters will confuse him with the characters he plays?
So here's the question: Can a celebrity candidate muscle his way into public office without ever being held accountable for his statements?
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 45%
August 21, 2003
Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Contra Costa Times | 08/21/2003 | Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Excerpt (emphasis and wisecrack added):
Scott Winfield Davis, a Palo Alto resident running for governor, announced late Tuesday that he was pulling out of the race, just hours after he talked about his campaign and his past with the San Jose Mercury News.
Davis was charged with murder in Atlanta seven years ago, accused of killing his estranged wife's lover and setting his home and Porsche afire. Although the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney told the Mercury News he still considers Davis "the top suspect."
Not long after the district attorney's statement, Davis announced he was no longer a candidate, citing personal reasons, business commitments and the overwhelming number of candidates.
(Probably a little more the first thing than the second two, I'm thinking.)
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .3
Learning Percentage: 98%
August 18, 2003
Arianna's Recall Entrance Speech
Arianna Huffington Announces Her Candidacy for Governor of California
Wednesday, Aug 6, 2003
Today I am announcing that I am running for Governor of the great state of California.
Those are 16 words I never imagined I would hear myself say. And they are in no way based on the findings of British intelligence.
I am not -- to say the least -- a conventional candidate. But these are not conventional times. And we will never find a way out of the mess we are in if we continue to elect the same politicians -- backed by the same special interests -- that got us into it.
I have spent a large part of my life writing and speaking out on the need for each of us to become personally involved with our community -- to devote time and attention to building a more just and more compassionate society.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Davy Crockett vs. Welfare
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
Thank you, oh mighty War on Drugs, for opening yet another perverse tear in our society's fabric.
There is one good thing about crystal meth: Of all the drugs in the New Prohibition, it's the one which is most obviously reminiscent of the first Prohibition. (Think moonshine.) Maybe something will snap, as people internally compare the images on the evening news with the contraption in "The Swamp" on M*A*S*H, and experience a cognitive dissonance -- preferably, a big collective one.
From the end of the article:
You can help as well by reporting suspected labs to state police.
Try, "You can help as well by demanding a swift and certain end to the foolish 'War on Drugs'."
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
(Mattawan, August 12, 2003, 6:20 p.m. ) Camping is a favorite summer past time for Cindy Harnish and her family.
But while getting ready for a camp out earlier this summer, Cindy's father discovered a problem with his travel trailer.
"We got up north and the refrigerator, we tried to light it up but it wouldn't light. So he opened it up and it looked like it had been cut."
But what first appeared to be an act of vandalism may actually have been the latest chapter in the war against the drug known as crystal meth.
For years, makers of crystal meth have been stealing anhydrous ammonia from tanks on farm fields and farm co-ops.
...Now, it appears some manufacturers are turning to RV's.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
By Andrew England
Associated Press
Sunday 17 August 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Quranic verse plastered on a monument to freedom carries a simple message - God will send a plague on those who deal in drugs and spread corruption.
But the message is being widely ignored.
Across the busy highway from the monument, built in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy, traders have set up gambling tables and are openly selling pornography, fake ID cards and looted goods - including laboratory microscopes, industrial fuse boxes and pills stolen from psychiatric hospitals.
"Now we have freedom and democracy," said a 34-year-old trader selling pornographic DVDs with titles such as "The Dirty Family" and "The Young Wife," and photocopied postcards of couples in various sexual positions. "We could not sell them when Saddam was here."
This is Baghdad four months after U.S. troops took over the sprawling city of 5 million - jobless, insecure, and in many cases taking "freedom and democracy" as license to do pretty much what you want and get away with it.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .2
Learning Percentage: 55%
August 17, 2003
Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Arizona's Clean Elections law: Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Commission orders the Dist. 17 candidates to repay $104,237 they spent on booze, food.
DAVID PITTMAN
Tucson Citizen
Thursday, July 31, 2003
A trio of defeated Phoenix-area legislative candidates spent thousands of dollars on alcohol, food, rental cars and entertainment expenses at trendy Scottsdale nightspots - and used Clean Elections money to do it.
...
Yuri Downing, the son of state Rep. Ted Downing, D-Tucson, said the trio is guilty of only one thing: attempting to run an unorthodox campaign to attract youthful voters.
District 17 includes south Scottsdale and most of Tempe. It takes in all of the Arizona State University campus and most of the students attending the university.
"We are Libertarian candidates, we knew going into the campaign that the odds of us winning were very small," said Yuri Downing. "The only hope we had was to go after the younger demographic, get them registered and to the polls. Those people aren't in church on Sunday morning. So we targeted the places where they do go."
What the three Libertarian candidates did was campaign at sporting events and at campus-area parties and popular watering holes. Yuri Downing said there is nothing wrong with that, accusing the commission of trying to "micro-manage" the trio's campaign.
"Are they saying I didn't run the campaign the way they would have run it?" he asked. "They have no right, either legally or morally, to make that decision."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 70%
California's Hot Ticket
This is a pretty good tongue-in-cheek look at the recall playing field.
California's Hot Ticket (washingtonpost.com)
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page C01
BURBANK, Calif., Aug. 6
The special effect known as Arnold Schwarzenegger has just told Jay Leno (which is the same as telling America, nowadays) that he's decided to accept the starring role in yet another way over budget movie with "Recall" in the title, rocketing into the race to become governor of California in the statewide vote to decide the fate of current Gov. Gray Davis.
"When I moved to California in 1968 it was the greatest state in the greatest nation in the world," the actor said, during the taping of the "Tonight" show at NBC Studios here. "Now it is totally the opposite. The atmosphere is disastrous. There is total disconnect of the people in California. [They] are working hard, paying taxes, raising families, and politicians are not doing their jobs. They're fiddling, fumbling and failing. . . .
"And this is why I'm going to run for governor of the state of California."
At which point, the studio audience screamed and their heads exploded, spattering blood everywhere. (Okay, okay. Maybe they'll add that part, with CGI, in the movie version.)
Greetings from schizzy California, where the Leno show now functions as a public forum, a royal veranda, the conduit by which the famously political can officially speak to loyal subjects about nearly issueless panic politics and (by some weird extension of the sunshine and celebrity vibe) speak to that small piece of California in the rest of the national psyche.
...
The recall is frequently compared to some neat, new, vaguely obnoxious summertime reality show, only this time it stars everybody, all 35 million or so Californians, and it's not as tightly edited.
There are characters you dislike. (The namby-pamby governor. The conniving car-alarm magnate. The poliguru pundit. The former mayor.) There are characters you root for, sometimes just because you like the flukiness of their ambition. (The pornographer. The Terminator. The punk rocker. The bounty hunter. The former Republican congressman who is known mostly for coming out of the closet late in life.) There are characters who are going to get voted off so fast. Mostly there are just lots and lots of characters.
Saturday is the deadline for gubernatorial wannabes to file as candidates. Although several hundred people had picked up paperwork and said they intended to run, it's still not clear how many will actually make deadline and get on the ballot. Some people actually sense giddiness at a safe distance; they want to see as many candidates as possible, a ballot that rambles on into chaos.
It's all endlessly watchable and so very, embarrassingly California.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
LA Times: Recall is a Circus Without Solutions
Los Angeles Times
Friday 08 August 2003
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in declining Wednesday to run for governor, lamented that the Oct. 7 recall election was becoming "more and more like a carnival every day." And that was before actor Arnold Schwarzenegger ended his slow striptease of refusal, announcing during a late-night entertainment show that he will run for governor after all. The Terminator promised, "I will go to Sacramento and I will clean house." Then, anticlimactically, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante shattered the fragile Democratic unity, offering himself as a candidate to replace a governor he served but never liked.
Carnival? Circus? How about action comics? WHAP! BAM! BIFF! POW! TAKE THAT, CALIFORNIA!
Democrat John Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner and a frequent candidate, was in, and Rep. Darryl Issa, who bankrolled the recall petition campaign, was out. The California Supreme Court rejected a series of lawsuits challenging the recall and seeking to delay it. Several cases remain before the federal courts, but each decision moves the election closer to reality.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 8%
The mystery men behind the recall
This has a lot of "dirt" about the characters behind the recall scenes. FWIW.
California Confidential
Who are the mystery men behind the recall push?
By Max Blumenthal
Web Exclusive: 8.13.03
"It's a victory. A total victory!" Howard Kaloogian exclaimed on the right-wing Worldmag.com after hearing that the petition to recall the election of California's embattled Gov. Gray Davis had gained enough signatures to qualify as a ballot question. Kaloogian, a former Republican California legislator, had plenty of reason to cheer. Because while the media have presented Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the wealthy car-alarm magnate, as the man who drove the recall, he's actually been little more than a useful idiot for a stealthy group of GOP operatives who laid the groundwork. Months before the recall was even a blip on the media radar, this consultant cabal began manipulating California's idiosyncratic electoral system, creating a muscular funding mechanism and exploiting it for its members' own ends.
The cabal includes Kaloogian, who was a right-wing backbencher in the state Assembly, Sal Russo, who handled banker Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and David Gilliard, a veteran GOP strategist with a career steeped in scandal. They're joined by former Enron pollster and Republican tactician Frank Luntz, who devised a strategy for the recall campaign centering around negative character attacks and avoidance of policy discussion. With the surprise announcement of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who boasted on The Tonight Show Aug. 6, "I have plenty of money. Nobody can buy me off." -- the movie star's high-priced uber-consultants George Gorton and Don Sipple have grabbed the baton in the recall race, eager to take it the last mile to the state capitol. Thanks to this handful of men and the millionaires who bankrolled them, what started with a petition and a few phone calls has become an election that may unseat a twice-elected governor and dramatically affect the lives of one in seven Americans.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 70%
Democracy in Iraq might be impossible, US was told
Democracy might be impossible, US was told
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2003
WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime -- as a model for the rest of the region -- was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible."
That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on Feb. 26.
The question of how quickly, and easily, the United States could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security. The administration offered few assessments of its own but dismissed predictions by the army chief of staff of a lengthy occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops.
Now, frustration among Iraqis about a lack of stability and the slow pace of reconstruction -- and new evidence that Islamic militants are slipping into Iraq to take up arms against the Americans -- are leading the administration to lengthen its plans to keep troops in Iraq for up to four years. And the Pentagon is moving to lower expectations for a shift to democracy, suggesting that a liberal democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but acknowledging the difficulty of creating one.
"The question isn't whether it is feasible, but is it worth a try," Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.
"Is it worth a try"? Wouldn't the question be "Is it worth killing thousands of innocent people and destabilizing the world for an effort to accomplish something that is likely impossible?"?
Is that "worth a try?"
Read It Rating: 8.8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Fri Aug 15,12:12 PM ET
By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Clerics from across the Muslim sectarian divide blasted the U.S. occupation of Iraq in Friday prayers as guerrilla hit-and-run attacks in the center of the country inflicted more American casualties.
...
Chanting "Yes for Islam, No to America," more than 5,000 worshippers held prayers in open air at a street in northern Baghdad's Sadr City, where U.S. forces shot dead one Iraqi and wounded four during a protest earlier in the week.
"What happened (in Sadr City) clearly shows that America and international Zionism have declared war against Islam," Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Daraji said.
...
In the Sunni town of Falluja, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi said U.S. troops faced more attacks if they remained in Iraq.
"The future will witness more killing and resistance operations against the United States in Iraq," he told hundreds of worshippers in a mosque in the town, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 40%
Reason: Dean's List
Can the Vermont guv flash mob his way to power?
August 13, 2003
Jeff Taylor
The crowd in Philadelphia got a quick lesson in viral marketing from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who urged his supporters to spam the hell out of their friends.
"When we send you stuff, you send it to your e-mail list. A hundred people on everybody's email list here, that's four hundred thousand people!" Dean said at a rally on Monday that dwarfed the response other candidates received.
Is Dean nuts or is he onto something? Probably a little of both, which makes him dangerous to status quo assumptions about how 2004 will unfold. ...
At a minimum, Dean's campaign is setting a new standard for integrating the Internet into the overall campaign and is using a number of free or nearly free off-the-shelf components to do it.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 25%
Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
Donald Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
In Pursuit of Global Supremacy, We Have Polluted Every Part of Our Nation
By DONALD WORSTER
After much denial, Americans are finally beginning to admit that we are indeed an imperial nation. What Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers openly dreamed about two centuries ago has become reality, and the United States has taken Britain's place as the seat of empire, dominating the globe.
What does an empire cost and is that cost worth paying?
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L2.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
The Other Guevara:Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Reason interviews Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Excerpt:
Perhaps surprisingly, the most successful libertarian party in recent years has arisen in Latin America, where left and right wing variants of statism have been the norm for much of the 20th century. In Costa Rica, the ten-year-old Movimiento Libertario has managed to elect six diputados to the country's 57-seat congress. The chief architect of that success was Otto Guevara, who served as the party's first elected diputado, from 1998 to 2002. In late July, he spoke with Reason during a visit to Washington, D.C.'s Cato Institute.
What inspired you to launch a Costa Rican libertarian party?
To understand the birth of Movimiento Libertario, you need to put yourself in the context of the Costa Rica of that time. Costa Rica is a substantially socialist country, with a state monopoly on alcohol, a state monopoly on insurance. There's a state monopoly in telecommunications, in agriculture, in fuel refinement and distribution. Education is constitutionally free, mandatory, and run by the state. Ninety-three percent of the population, girls and boys, attends public, state schools.
Costa Rica, like a majority of the Latin American states, experimented with a development scheme based on import substitution. It closed its borders, turned inwards. The state began to make inroads in many other industries—production of fertilizers, of cement, of cotton, of tuna. They had state tuna catching boats! Bankrupt industries were bought by the state with the idea of saving jobs. That's how the state ended up running industries that make chocolates or catch shrimp. It led to $7 billion in losses for Costa Ricans.
In the 1980s, a new form of politics emerged. In the '70s, they had put people on the public payroll. That was no longer sustainable. So they began a practice of instead granting privileges to unions and forced firms to buy licenses for, say, running cabs. These privileges were politically assigned, and as there were three principal banks, heavily controlled by the state, until recently loans, too, were politically assigned.
There were a range of giveaways to the poor as well, like the bono alimenticio to pay for food. A lot of people stopped working because food was guaranteed. Then came the bono de la vivienda or the bono de vivienda popular: $10,000 as a gift of the state for housing. To free education, they added a new benefit called the beca, or bono escolar to pay for schoolbooks.
This is the origin of our movement. Nobody was defending liberty. And it was being lost at an accelerated rate.
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 6
Learning Percentage: 35%
Recall Supporters Attacked by Davis Supporters
(received via e-mail)
Recall Supporters Violently Attacked
by Gray Davis Thugs
Women and Children Among Those Victimized
Above: Recall Gray Davis Committee supporter, Shawn Cubbage – wearing a baseball cap – is attacked by union thugs wearing dark “NO ON RECALL” t-shirts paid for by the State Building & Construction Trades Council. Another Recall Gray Davis supporter, Donald Lacomb, is immediately behind Cubbage and had attempted to help protect Mr. Cubbage but was then assaulted himself.
UPDATE TO ALL
RECALL GRAY DAVIS
SUPPORTERS
FROM:
The Honorable Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Several Recall Gray Davis Supporters
Kicked, Beaten, Punched, Tackled to the Ground as They Protested Taxpayer Funding of
Anti-Recall Workshops.
Recall Gray Davis supporters and volunteers were violently attacked by thugs supporting Governor Gray Davis on Saturday and have filed a criminal complaint. Our top-notch legal team is also exploring possible civil action.
On Saturday, several peaceful Recall Gray Davis protestors were brutally beaten, kicked, punched and tackled to the ground by union workers who were attending a taxpayer-funded workshop, WAR - “Workers Against the Recall.”
The violent “WAR” union workshop attendees rushed across J Street in downtown Sacramento – through traffic! – in several waves and attacked the pro-recall protestors.
A 20-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were terrorized.
One of four incidents where recall supporters were physically beaten was caught on video by Fox News Channel and the Recall Gray Davis Committee has uploaded a clip of this footage to our website. For video and photographs of part of the attack please CLICK HERE.
PLEASE – I need your help.
As the chairman of the Recall Gray Davis Committee, I am sickened by the sights and sounds of my staff and recall supporters and volunteers being beaten by thugs.
Several of our people were victimized in four attacks – one of which is captured in the Fox News Channel video and photographs shown at this special page on our website.
We cannot tolerate this behavior from the thugs who Gray Davis and his political team have hired to fight the recall effort. Make no mistake – Davis and his hired guns are determined to frighten and intimidate the people of California from supporting this recall.
When they tell you that the recall is a “circus atmosphere” or “risky” they are trying to strike fear into your soul.
And now we see they are going even further by trying to scare people from actively and publicly working on behalf of the recall campaign through the use of violence.
We must not let them defeat us with fear.
I need you to call your local talk radio stations and voice your outrage over this revolting incident. I need you to send the pictures and video file to reporters at major newspapers, television stations and radio stations.
DEMAND THAT THEY SHOW CALIFORNIANS THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THOSE WHO DARED TO OPPOSE GRAY DAVIS.
If you can also continue to help fund our legal defense fund I would greatly appreciate it. So many of you sent in generous contributions to assist in our legal efforts to date. I never thought that I would have to raise money for the medical bills for recall supporters and legal bills to fight those who had attacked my dedicated and hard-working staff.
If I have to, I will pay these expenses out of my own pocket – my staff and our volunteers have become an extended family of mine who have made history thanks to their tireless efforts, determination, honesty, integrity and perseverance. I will not allow anyone to harm members of this great family without also going through me.
As you will recall, the reason we had organized our peaceful protest against these “WAR” workshops – on the OPPOSITE side of the street from where the workshops were being held – is because they used taxpayer funds to assist in the leadership and planning of the workshops.
The University of California Institute for Labor & Employment received $4,000,000 in taxpayer money from this year’s budget and was listed as one of the lead organizers of these workshops.
We were outraged and wanted to show the media and the people of California that we would not allow Gray Davis to get away with this unnoticed.
Apparently they decided to beat my staff, supporters and volunteers into silence.
But we cannot be silent, my friends.
The end is near for Gray Davis’ corrupt and failed administration and we must move forward undaunted – committed in our goal of restoring the California Dream for our families.
Please – make sure that every Californian hears the truth about what happened on this violent Saturday morning. We must not let those who endured the pain and physical punishment for standing up for their beliefs to have suffered in vain.
Sincerely,
Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Homeschooling in the UK
This is a good article about homeschooling -- in this case, in small-town United Kingdom. It sounds like the British government is much more mellow about the issue in terms of mandatory elements and regulations about schooling. The article appears to be saying that there basically are none.
Excerpt:
It may sound impossible and scary, but anyone can educate their children at home.
There is no law that says that you must send your children to school. Neither do you have to follow the National Curriculum. You don't have to follow a curriculum at all for that matter.
You can put your children into school and then take them out again. You can even put them in during mornings only or on a three-day-a-week basis, should your chosen school agree to a mix and match arrangement.
According to a recent study at Durham University, home educated children fare much better than the average school child in academic terms, and generally socialise well.
Which will surprise many parents who believe making friends in the playground is a big part of childhood interaction.
Read It Rating: 9.7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 6
Learning Percentage: 50%
Monsanto, Stop Bullying Tiny Dairy Over Growth Hormones
My brief spiel in favor of this action is posted at E-Actions for Freedom.
Monsanto, Stop Bullying Tiny Dairy Over Growth Hormones
by Working Assets
In a move of Goliath-attacking-David proportions, Monsanto, the multi-national agrichemical company, is suing a small, family-owned milk producer in Maine because they advertise that their farmers pledge not to use artificial growth hormones (also known as rBST) on the cows that produce their milk.
...
Lawsuits such as these are shameless attempts to use the financial clout of a multi-billion-dollar monopolist to intimidate a tiny family-owned business. Consumers want the information being provided to them, and Monsanto should get out of the way.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 89%
August 26, 2003
Petition to Howard Dean on clarifying Israel position
I don't think I'm going to sign this, primarily because of the sentence that begins with "Dr. Dean, we respect and fully support your agenda to...", but if you're a Dean supporter or Democrat enthusiast, I recommend signing this. The Israel-Palestine playing field is already tilted more than enough.
To: Dr. Howard Dean
As members of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, The Green Party, Progressives, Independents, and other parties interested in your candidacy, we would like to express our deep reservations regarding your stated positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Based on speeches and interviews given last year and early this year, you spoke often of the Israeli victims of terror, yet you failed to acknowledge the three-fold number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces, or the Israeli military's incursion and illegal occupation of large portions of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. These incendiary actions by the Israeli military have fueled much of the animosity in the region, and they must be acknowledged in any fair assessment of the situation....
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 50%
California Recall SmartVoter Profile: Jack Hickey
Voter Information for John J. "Jack" Hickey. October 7, 2003 Election
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 25%
California Recall SmartVoter Profile: Ned Roscoe
Voter Information for Ned Roscoe. October 7, 2003 Election
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 2%
August 25, 2003
Weintraub: State deficit bond rests on shaky ground
sacbee.com (Opinion): State deficit bond rests on shaky ground
By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, August 5, 2003
The California Constitution says that the Legislature "shall not, in any manner, create any debt or debts" greater than $300,000, unless such an obligation is for a "single object or work" and is approved by a vote of the people. The only exception is in case of war, "to repel invasion or suppress insurrection."
The pending recall election aimed at Gov. Gray Davis might be considered an insurrection, I suppose. But I don't think that such a threat is the kind of exception the framers had in mind when they prohibited the Legislature from using borrowed money to pay for the ordinary, ongoing expenses of state government.
Yet the budget passed last week and signed Saturday by Davis is built upon a $10.7 billion bond measure to finance the state's accumulated budget deficit. These bonds, to be repaid over five years, are in an amount far greater than $300,000. They will not be used for a "single object or work," such as building a school or buying parkland. And they will not be submitted to a vote of the people.
How then, can the bonds possibly be legal? Some people, not surprisingly, think they are not....
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 75%
Fox Blocked In Suit Against Al Franken's Book
Newsday.com - Fox Blocked In Suit Against Al Franken's Book
By Patricia Hurtado
STAFF WRITER
August 22, 2003, 9:29 PM EDT
In a scathing opinion, a Manhattan federal judge denied a request by Fox News to block sales of a book by liberal humorist Al Franken that satirizes the network's motto, "Fair and Balanced."
"There are hard cases and there are easy cases," U.S. District Judge Denny Chin told Fox's lawyers Friday. "This is an easy case in my view and wholly without merit, both factually and legally."
Lawyers for the network filed suit earlier this month seeking a preliminary injunction against the sale of the book, which hit stores Thursday. They argued that the title of Franken's book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," infringed on the network's trademarked motto and could mislead some into believing that the book was endorsed by Fox.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 20%
August 24, 2003
City can't ban Walmart RV parking
It's not often one hears about something cool that Walmart does, but once I started looking into the RV lifestyle, I soon found out that Walmart has a company-wide policy of allowing RVers to spend a night in a store parking lot for free. It seems that Walmart founder Sam Walton was a big RVer, and the policy was his doing. Very cool.
Apparently some in Whitehorse, Yukon, don't see it as I do.
Particularly this whiner:
After the councillors spoke about Preston’s report, RV park owner Chuck MacKenzie stood up and said now that he sees where council is going on this issue, he wants a refund for 16 years’ worth of city taxes and business licences because the city is not doing its job right.
“I would like a cheque Monday morning,” he said before sitting.
City can’t curtail RV parking, lawyer says
by Jason Small
A Whitehorse Star Archive story originally published August 20, 2003
If the city wants to prevent RVs from camping in Wal-Mart’s parking lot without the store’s permission, it will have to get the territorial government to change a law.
Local lawyer Tim Preston told city council at last night’s meeting that the only way it could prevent people from parking overnight at Wal-Mart without a request by the store to do so would be to ask the territorial government to change the Motor Vehicles Act.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 50%
Conservative backlash (against Ashcroft and "PATRIOT Act")
Baltimore Sun editorial
---------------------------------------------------------
Originally published August 22, 2003
JOHN ASHCROFT must be sweating bullets.
A grass-roots drive to resist the attorney general's broad expansion of police powers in the name of fighting terrorism has picked up so much support in the American heartland it threatens not only repeal of the legislation but political damage to President Bush as well.
Try as he might, Mr. Ashcroft can no longer dismiss opponents of the USA Patriot Act as a small but whiny band of liberals. Some of the nation's top conservative groups as well as a huge majority of the Republican-led House of Representatives -- in other words, the Bush base -- are now leading the drive to eliminate portions of the law that allow secret spying on anyone.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 15%
Lawsuit filed against "USA-PATRIOT" Act
Suit challenges constitutionality of anti-terror law
Eric Lichtblau
New York Times
Jul. 31, 2003 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union and six Muslim groups Wednesday brought the first constitutional challenge to the sweeping anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, arguing that the law gives federal agents virtually unchecked authority to spy on Americans.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Ashcroft Criticized for "PATRIOT Act" promo tour
Ashcroft Criticized for Talks on Terror
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — Attorney General John Ashcroft faced sharp criticism today from Democrats and others over his decision to give more than a dozen speeches around the country in defense of anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Mr. Ashcroft in a letter that he should either "desist from further speaking engagements" or explain why they do not violate restrictions on political activities by government officials.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 70%
Arnold's Bad Business
Arnold's Bad Business
Is his campaign the new Planet Hollywood?
By Daniel Gross
The most celebrated business venture of Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was his involvement in Planet Hollywood. Planet Hollywood, you may have forgotten, was the gaudiest avatar of the '90s idiotic theme-restaurant trend, which also spawned the Rainforest Café, the Official All-Star Café, and, most absurdly, the Fashion Café. ("What's on the menu," David Letterman asked. "A stick of gum?") Founded in 1991 by producer Keith Barish (The Fugitive, Sophie's Choice, The Running Man) and restaurant impresario Robert Earl (Hard Rock Café), the profitable Planet Hollywood chain had 34 units when it went splashily public in 1996.
It turns out there's a lot of similarity between the business plan of Planet Hollywood and the business plan of Arnold's gubernatorial campaign.
...
Republicans must hope Schwarzenegger's campaign is more durable than Planet Hollywood. The company raised $196 million in its IPO and plowed the proceeds into expansion. But its celebrity cachet dissipated once outlets opened in London's Gatwick Airport and Edmonton, Alberta. In October 1999 the chain, which peaked at 95 restaurants, filed for Chapter 11. Schwarzenegger severed his ties with the company in 2000. Planet Hollywood exited bankruptcy in 2000 but then earned membership in the Chapter 22 club by going bust again.
So far, the recall campaign has been very much like a meal at Planet Hollywood. There's plenty of ruckus and shouting and fake smiles. A lot of celebrities are hanging around—for no apparent reason. The fare is insipid. And when the experience is over and the bill comes, nausea may follow.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 65%
August 23, 2003
Victory Act melds war on terror with war on drugs
GOP Bill Would Add Anti-Terror Powers (washingtonpost.com)
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 21, 2003
As Attorney General John D. Ashcroft begins a barnstorming tour of the country to shore up support for existing anti-terrorism laws, Senate Republicans are discussing legislation that would expand the Justice Department's powers to investigate terrorists and drug criminals.
Recent drafts of the Victory Act, which carry the names of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and four other Senate Republicans, would provide extra penalties for drug dealers alleged to be connected to terrorist groups and would dramatically expand the government's power to seize records and conduct wiretaps in connection with "narcoterrorism" investigations.
The proposal, which totals 56 pages in one July 30 version, also targets alleged "interstate currency couriers" by making it a crime to carry more than $10,000 cash in a vehicle in connection with illegal activity. Prosecutors also would be able to freeze the assets of defendants arrested on money-laundering charges for 30 days, regardless of whether the assets are connected to a crime, according to the draft legislation.
Justice Department officials stress that they have not been involved in creating or revising the Victory Act proposal, but copies of the bill that have circulated on Capitol Hill over the last two months include many provisions sought by Justice prosecutors in the areas of terrorism and drug crimes. Several of the measures are similar to proposals made during the early debate over the USA Patriot Act, the controversial anti-terrorism package approved in October 2001 that Ashcroft is defending during his U.S. tour.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
August 22, 2003
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Woman `thought He Was A Liar'
Thursday, August 21, 2003
By Lee Sensenbrenner The Capital Times
When Sally Baron's family wrote her obituary, they described a northern Wisconsin woman who raised six children and took care of her husband after he was crushed in a mining accident.
She had moved to Stoughton seven years ago to be closer to her children and was 71 when she died Monday after struggling to recuperate from heart surgery. Her family had come to the question of what might be a fitting tribute to her.
"My uncle asked if there was a cause," her youngest son, Pete Baron, said.
Almost in unison, what her children decided to include in the obituary was this: "Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush."
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 40%
Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
t r u t h o u t - Paul Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
By Paul Krugman
New York Times
Friday 22 August 2003
The key moment in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Wednesday press conference came when the bodybuilder who would be governor brushed aside questions with the declaration, "The public doesn't care about figures." This was "fuzzy math" on steroids - Mr. Schwarzenegger was, in effect, asserting that his celebrity gives him the right to fake his way through the election. Will he be allowed to get away with it?
Reporters were trying to press Mr. Schwarzenegger for the specifics so obviously missing from his budget plans. But while he hasn't said much about what he proposes to do, the candidate has nonetheless already managed to say a number of things that his advisers must know are true lies.
...
...the candidate says he won't touch education. Sharp cuts in medical spending would be not only cruel but foolish, since in many cases they would mean losing federal matching funds. And prison spending is largely determined by the state's "three strikes" law. In short, he's not leveling with voters: there's no way to balance the budget while honoring all his promises.
But the candidate says that specifics don't matter, that the public just wants someone "tough enough." Does he really think that voters will confuse him with the characters he plays?
So here's the question: Can a celebrity candidate muscle his way into public office without ever being held accountable for his statements?
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 45%
August 21, 2003
Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Contra Costa Times | 08/21/2003 | Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Excerpt (emphasis and wisecrack added):
Scott Winfield Davis, a Palo Alto resident running for governor, announced late Tuesday that he was pulling out of the race, just hours after he talked about his campaign and his past with the San Jose Mercury News.
Davis was charged with murder in Atlanta seven years ago, accused of killing his estranged wife's lover and setting his home and Porsche afire. Although the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney told the Mercury News he still considers Davis "the top suspect."
Not long after the district attorney's statement, Davis announced he was no longer a candidate, citing personal reasons, business commitments and the overwhelming number of candidates.
(Probably a little more the first thing than the second two, I'm thinking.)
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .3
Learning Percentage: 98%
August 18, 2003
Arianna's Recall Entrance Speech
Arianna Huffington Announces Her Candidacy for Governor of California
Wednesday, Aug 6, 2003
Today I am announcing that I am running for Governor of the great state of California.
Those are 16 words I never imagined I would hear myself say. And they are in no way based on the findings of British intelligence.
I am not -- to say the least -- a conventional candidate. But these are not conventional times. And we will never find a way out of the mess we are in if we continue to elect the same politicians -- backed by the same special interests -- that got us into it.
I have spent a large part of my life writing and speaking out on the need for each of us to become personally involved with our community -- to devote time and attention to building a more just and more compassionate society.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Davy Crockett vs. Welfare
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
Thank you, oh mighty War on Drugs, for opening yet another perverse tear in our society's fabric.
There is one good thing about crystal meth: Of all the drugs in the New Prohibition, it's the one which is most obviously reminiscent of the first Prohibition. (Think moonshine.) Maybe something will snap, as people internally compare the images on the evening news with the contraption in "The Swamp" on M*A*S*H, and experience a cognitive dissonance -- preferably, a big collective one.
From the end of the article:
You can help as well by reporting suspected labs to state police.
Try, "You can help as well by demanding a swift and certain end to the foolish 'War on Drugs'."
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
(Mattawan, August 12, 2003, 6:20 p.m. ) Camping is a favorite summer past time for Cindy Harnish and her family.
But while getting ready for a camp out earlier this summer, Cindy's father discovered a problem with his travel trailer.
"We got up north and the refrigerator, we tried to light it up but it wouldn't light. So he opened it up and it looked like it had been cut."
But what first appeared to be an act of vandalism may actually have been the latest chapter in the war against the drug known as crystal meth.
For years, makers of crystal meth have been stealing anhydrous ammonia from tanks on farm fields and farm co-ops.
...Now, it appears some manufacturers are turning to RV's.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
By Andrew England
Associated Press
Sunday 17 August 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Quranic verse plastered on a monument to freedom carries a simple message - God will send a plague on those who deal in drugs and spread corruption.
But the message is being widely ignored.
Across the busy highway from the monument, built in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy, traders have set up gambling tables and are openly selling pornography, fake ID cards and looted goods - including laboratory microscopes, industrial fuse boxes and pills stolen from psychiatric hospitals.
"Now we have freedom and democracy," said a 34-year-old trader selling pornographic DVDs with titles such as "The Dirty Family" and "The Young Wife," and photocopied postcards of couples in various sexual positions. "We could not sell them when Saddam was here."
This is Baghdad four months after U.S. troops took over the sprawling city of 5 million - jobless, insecure, and in many cases taking "freedom and democracy" as license to do pretty much what you want and get away with it.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .2
Learning Percentage: 55%
August 17, 2003
Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Arizona's Clean Elections law: Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Commission orders the Dist. 17 candidates to repay $104,237 they spent on booze, food.
DAVID PITTMAN
Tucson Citizen
Thursday, July 31, 2003
A trio of defeated Phoenix-area legislative candidates spent thousands of dollars on alcohol, food, rental cars and entertainment expenses at trendy Scottsdale nightspots - and used Clean Elections money to do it.
...
Yuri Downing, the son of state Rep. Ted Downing, D-Tucson, said the trio is guilty of only one thing: attempting to run an unorthodox campaign to attract youthful voters.
District 17 includes south Scottsdale and most of Tempe. It takes in all of the Arizona State University campus and most of the students attending the university.
"We are Libertarian candidates, we knew going into the campaign that the odds of us winning were very small," said Yuri Downing. "The only hope we had was to go after the younger demographic, get them registered and to the polls. Those people aren't in church on Sunday morning. So we targeted the places where they do go."
What the three Libertarian candidates did was campaign at sporting events and at campus-area parties and popular watering holes. Yuri Downing said there is nothing wrong with that, accusing the commission of trying to "micro-manage" the trio's campaign.
"Are they saying I didn't run the campaign the way they would have run it?" he asked. "They have no right, either legally or morally, to make that decision."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 70%
California's Hot Ticket
This is a pretty good tongue-in-cheek look at the recall playing field.
California's Hot Ticket (washingtonpost.com)
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page C01
BURBANK, Calif., Aug. 6
The special effect known as Arnold Schwarzenegger has just told Jay Leno (which is the same as telling America, nowadays) that he's decided to accept the starring role in yet another way over budget movie with "Recall" in the title, rocketing into the race to become governor of California in the statewide vote to decide the fate of current Gov. Gray Davis.
"When I moved to California in 1968 it was the greatest state in the greatest nation in the world," the actor said, during the taping of the "Tonight" show at NBC Studios here. "Now it is totally the opposite. The atmosphere is disastrous. There is total disconnect of the people in California. [They] are working hard, paying taxes, raising families, and politicians are not doing their jobs. They're fiddling, fumbling and failing. . . .
"And this is why I'm going to run for governor of the state of California."
At which point, the studio audience screamed and their heads exploded, spattering blood everywhere. (Okay, okay. Maybe they'll add that part, with CGI, in the movie version.)
Greetings from schizzy California, where the Leno show now functions as a public forum, a royal veranda, the conduit by which the famously political can officially speak to loyal subjects about nearly issueless panic politics and (by some weird extension of the sunshine and celebrity vibe) speak to that small piece of California in the rest of the national psyche.
...
The recall is frequently compared to some neat, new, vaguely obnoxious summertime reality show, only this time it stars everybody, all 35 million or so Californians, and it's not as tightly edited.
There are characters you dislike. (The namby-pamby governor. The conniving car-alarm magnate. The poliguru pundit. The former mayor.) There are characters you root for, sometimes just because you like the flukiness of their ambition. (The pornographer. The Terminator. The punk rocker. The bounty hunter. The former Republican congressman who is known mostly for coming out of the closet late in life.) There are characters who are going to get voted off so fast. Mostly there are just lots and lots of characters.
Saturday is the deadline for gubernatorial wannabes to file as candidates. Although several hundred people had picked up paperwork and said they intended to run, it's still not clear how many will actually make deadline and get on the ballot. Some people actually sense giddiness at a safe distance; they want to see as many candidates as possible, a ballot that rambles on into chaos.
It's all endlessly watchable and so very, embarrassingly California.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
LA Times: Recall is a Circus Without Solutions
Los Angeles Times
Friday 08 August 2003
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in declining Wednesday to run for governor, lamented that the Oct. 7 recall election was becoming "more and more like a carnival every day." And that was before actor Arnold Schwarzenegger ended his slow striptease of refusal, announcing during a late-night entertainment show that he will run for governor after all. The Terminator promised, "I will go to Sacramento and I will clean house." Then, anticlimactically, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante shattered the fragile Democratic unity, offering himself as a candidate to replace a governor he served but never liked.
Carnival? Circus? How about action comics? WHAP! BAM! BIFF! POW! TAKE THAT, CALIFORNIA!
Democrat John Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner and a frequent candidate, was in, and Rep. Darryl Issa, who bankrolled the recall petition campaign, was out. The California Supreme Court rejected a series of lawsuits challenging the recall and seeking to delay it. Several cases remain before the federal courts, but each decision moves the election closer to reality.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 8%
The mystery men behind the recall
This has a lot of "dirt" about the characters behind the recall scenes. FWIW.
California Confidential
Who are the mystery men behind the recall push?
By Max Blumenthal
Web Exclusive: 8.13.03
"It's a victory. A total victory!" Howard Kaloogian exclaimed on the right-wing Worldmag.com after hearing that the petition to recall the election of California's embattled Gov. Gray Davis had gained enough signatures to qualify as a ballot question. Kaloogian, a former Republican California legislator, had plenty of reason to cheer. Because while the media have presented Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the wealthy car-alarm magnate, as the man who drove the recall, he's actually been little more than a useful idiot for a stealthy group of GOP operatives who laid the groundwork. Months before the recall was even a blip on the media radar, this consultant cabal began manipulating California's idiosyncratic electoral system, creating a muscular funding mechanism and exploiting it for its members' own ends.
The cabal includes Kaloogian, who was a right-wing backbencher in the state Assembly, Sal Russo, who handled banker Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and David Gilliard, a veteran GOP strategist with a career steeped in scandal. They're joined by former Enron pollster and Republican tactician Frank Luntz, who devised a strategy for the recall campaign centering around negative character attacks and avoidance of policy discussion. With the surprise announcement of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who boasted on The Tonight Show Aug. 6, "I have plenty of money. Nobody can buy me off." -- the movie star's high-priced uber-consultants George Gorton and Don Sipple have grabbed the baton in the recall race, eager to take it the last mile to the state capitol. Thanks to this handful of men and the millionaires who bankrolled them, what started with a petition and a few phone calls has become an election that may unseat a twice-elected governor and dramatically affect the lives of one in seven Americans.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 70%
Democracy in Iraq might be impossible, US was told
Democracy might be impossible, US was told
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2003
WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime -- as a model for the rest of the region -- was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible."
That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on Feb. 26.
The question of how quickly, and easily, the United States could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security. The administration offered few assessments of its own but dismissed predictions by the army chief of staff of a lengthy occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops.
Now, frustration among Iraqis about a lack of stability and the slow pace of reconstruction -- and new evidence that Islamic militants are slipping into Iraq to take up arms against the Americans -- are leading the administration to lengthen its plans to keep troops in Iraq for up to four years. And the Pentagon is moving to lower expectations for a shift to democracy, suggesting that a liberal democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but acknowledging the difficulty of creating one.
"The question isn't whether it is feasible, but is it worth a try," Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.
"Is it worth a try"? Wouldn't the question be "Is it worth killing thousands of innocent people and destabilizing the world for an effort to accomplish something that is likely impossible?"?
Is that "worth a try?"
Read It Rating: 8.8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Fri Aug 15,12:12 PM ET
By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Clerics from across the Muslim sectarian divide blasted the U.S. occupation of Iraq in Friday prayers as guerrilla hit-and-run attacks in the center of the country inflicted more American casualties.
...
Chanting "Yes for Islam, No to America," more than 5,000 worshippers held prayers in open air at a street in northern Baghdad's Sadr City, where U.S. forces shot dead one Iraqi and wounded four during a protest earlier in the week.
"What happened (in Sadr City) clearly shows that America and international Zionism have declared war against Islam," Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Daraji said.
...
In the Sunni town of Falluja, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi said U.S. troops faced more attacks if they remained in Iraq.
"The future will witness more killing and resistance operations against the United States in Iraq," he told hundreds of worshippers in a mosque in the town, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 40%
Reason: Dean's List
Can the Vermont guv flash mob his way to power?
August 13, 2003
Jeff Taylor
The crowd in Philadelphia got a quick lesson in viral marketing from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who urged his supporters to spam the hell out of their friends.
"When we send you stuff, you send it to your e-mail list. A hundred people on everybody's email list here, that's four hundred thousand people!" Dean said at a rally on Monday that dwarfed the response other candidates received.
Is Dean nuts or is he onto something? Probably a little of both, which makes him dangerous to status quo assumptions about how 2004 will unfold. ...
At a minimum, Dean's campaign is setting a new standard for integrating the Internet into the overall campaign and is using a number of free or nearly free off-the-shelf components to do it.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 25%
Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
Donald Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
In Pursuit of Global Supremacy, We Have Polluted Every Part of Our Nation
By DONALD WORSTER
After much denial, Americans are finally beginning to admit that we are indeed an imperial nation. What Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers openly dreamed about two centuries ago has become reality, and the United States has taken Britain's place as the seat of empire, dominating the globe.
What does an empire cost and is that cost worth paying?
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L2.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
The Other Guevara:Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Reason interviews Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Excerpt:
Perhaps surprisingly, the most successful libertarian party in recent years has arisen in Latin America, where left and right wing variants of statism have been the norm for much of the 20th century. In Costa Rica, the ten-year-old Movimiento Libertario has managed to elect six diputados to the country's 57-seat congress. The chief architect of that success was Otto Guevara, who served as the party's first elected diputado, from 1998 to 2002. In late July, he spoke with Reason during a visit to Washington, D.C.'s Cato Institute.
What inspired you to launch a Costa Rican libertarian party?
To understand the birth of Movimiento Libertario, you need to put yourself in the context of the Costa Rica of that time. Costa Rica is a substantially socialist country, with a state monopoly on alcohol, a state monopoly on insurance. There's a state monopoly in telecommunications, in agriculture, in fuel refinement and distribution. Education is constitutionally free, mandatory, and run by the state. Ninety-three percent of the population, girls and boys, attends public, state schools.
Costa Rica, like a majority of the Latin American states, experimented with a development scheme based on import substitution. It closed its borders, turned inwards. The state began to make inroads in many other industries—production of fertilizers, of cement, of cotton, of tuna. They had state tuna catching boats! Bankrupt industries were bought by the state with the idea of saving jobs. That's how the state ended up running industries that make chocolates or catch shrimp. It led to $7 billion in losses for Costa Ricans.
In the 1980s, a new form of politics emerged. In the '70s, they had put people on the public payroll. That was no longer sustainable. So they began a practice of instead granting privileges to unions and forced firms to buy licenses for, say, running cabs. These privileges were politically assigned, and as there were three principal banks, heavily controlled by the state, until recently loans, too, were politically assigned.
There were a range of giveaways to the poor as well, like the bono alimenticio to pay for food. A lot of people stopped working because food was guaranteed. Then came the bono de la vivienda or the bono de vivienda popular: $10,000 as a gift of the state for housing. To free education, they added a new benefit called the beca, or bono escolar to pay for schoolbooks.
This is the origin of our movement. Nobody was defending liberty. And it was being lost at an accelerated rate.
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 6
Learning Percentage: 35%
Recall Supporters Attacked by Davis Supporters
(received via e-mail)
Recall Supporters Violently Attacked
by Gray Davis Thugs
Women and Children Among Those Victimized
Above: Recall Gray Davis Committee supporter, Shawn Cubbage – wearing a baseball cap – is attacked by union thugs wearing dark “NO ON RECALL” t-shirts paid for by the State Building & Construction Trades Council. Another Recall Gray Davis supporter, Donald Lacomb, is immediately behind Cubbage and had attempted to help protect Mr. Cubbage but was then assaulted himself.
UPDATE TO ALL
RECALL GRAY DAVIS
SUPPORTERS
FROM:
The Honorable Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Several Recall Gray Davis Supporters
Kicked, Beaten, Punched, Tackled to the Ground as They Protested Taxpayer Funding of
Anti-Recall Workshops.
Recall Gray Davis supporters and volunteers were violently attacked by thugs supporting Governor Gray Davis on Saturday and have filed a criminal complaint. Our top-notch legal team is also exploring possible civil action.
On Saturday, several peaceful Recall Gray Davis protestors were brutally beaten, kicked, punched and tackled to the ground by union workers who were attending a taxpayer-funded workshop, WAR - “Workers Against the Recall.”
The violent “WAR” union workshop attendees rushed across J Street in downtown Sacramento – through traffic! – in several waves and attacked the pro-recall protestors.
A 20-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were terrorized.
One of four incidents where recall supporters were physically beaten was caught on video by Fox News Channel and the Recall Gray Davis Committee has uploaded a clip of this footage to our website. For video and photographs of part of the attack please CLICK HERE.
PLEASE – I need your help.
As the chairman of the Recall Gray Davis Committee, I am sickened by the sights and sounds of my staff and recall supporters and volunteers being beaten by thugs.
Several of our people were victimized in four attacks – one of which is captured in the Fox News Channel video and photographs shown at this special page on our website.
We cannot tolerate this behavior from the thugs who Gray Davis and his political team have hired to fight the recall effort. Make no mistake – Davis and his hired guns are determined to frighten and intimidate the people of California from supporting this recall.
When they tell you that the recall is a “circus atmosphere” or “risky” they are trying to strike fear into your soul.
And now we see they are going even further by trying to scare people from actively and publicly working on behalf of the recall campaign through the use of violence.
We must not let them defeat us with fear.
I need you to call your local talk radio stations and voice your outrage over this revolting incident. I need you to send the pictures and video file to reporters at major newspapers, television stations and radio stations.
DEMAND THAT THEY SHOW CALIFORNIANS THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THOSE WHO DARED TO OPPOSE GRAY DAVIS.
If you can also continue to help fund our legal defense fund I would greatly appreciate it. So many of you sent in generous contributions to assist in our legal efforts to date. I never thought that I would have to raise money for the medical bills for recall supporters and legal bills to fight those who had attacked my dedicated and hard-working staff.
If I have to, I will pay these expenses out of my own pocket – my staff and our volunteers have become an extended family of mine who have made history thanks to their tireless efforts, determination, honesty, integrity and perseverance. I will not allow anyone to harm members of this great family without also going through me.
As you will recall, the reason we had organized our peaceful protest against these “WAR” workshops – on the OPPOSITE side of the street from where the workshops were being held – is because they used taxpayer funds to assist in the leadership and planning of the workshops.
The University of California Institute for Labor & Employment received $4,000,000 in taxpayer money from this year’s budget and was listed as one of the lead organizers of these workshops.
We were outraged and wanted to show the media and the people of California that we would not allow Gray Davis to get away with this unnoticed.
Apparently they decided to beat my staff, supporters and volunteers into silence.
But we cannot be silent, my friends.
The end is near for Gray Davis’ corrupt and failed administration and we must move forward undaunted – committed in our goal of restoring the California Dream for our families.
Please – make sure that every Californian hears the truth about what happened on this violent Saturday morning. We must not let those who endured the pain and physical punishment for standing up for their beliefs to have suffered in vain.
Sincerely,
Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Petition to Howard Dean on clarifying Israel position
I don't think I'm going to sign this, primarily because of the sentence that begins with "Dr. Dean, we respect and fully support your agenda to...", but if you're a Dean supporter or Democrat enthusiast, I recommend signing this. The Israel-Palestine playing field is already tilted more than enough.
To: Dr. Howard Dean
As members of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, The Green Party, Progressives, Independents, and other parties interested in your candidacy, we would like to express our deep reservations regarding your stated positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Based on speeches and interviews given last year and early this year, you spoke often of the Israeli victims of terror, yet you failed to acknowledge the three-fold number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces, or the Israeli military's incursion and illegal occupation of large portions of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. These incendiary actions by the Israeli military have fueled much of the animosity in the region, and they must be acknowledged in any fair assessment of the situation....
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 50%
California Recall SmartVoter Profile: Jack Hickey
Voter Information for John J. "Jack" Hickey. October 7, 2003 Election
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 25%
California Recall SmartVoter Profile: Ned Roscoe
Voter Information for Ned Roscoe. October 7, 2003 Election
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 2%
Weintraub: State deficit bond rests on shaky ground
sacbee.com (Opinion): State deficit bond rests on shaky ground
By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, August 5, 2003
The California Constitution says that the Legislature "shall not, in any manner, create any debt or debts" greater than $300,000, unless such an obligation is for a "single object or work" and is approved by a vote of the people. The only exception is in case of war, "to repel invasion or suppress insurrection."
The pending recall election aimed at Gov. Gray Davis might be considered an insurrection, I suppose. But I don't think that such a threat is the kind of exception the framers had in mind when they prohibited the Legislature from using borrowed money to pay for the ordinary, ongoing expenses of state government.
Yet the budget passed last week and signed Saturday by Davis is built upon a $10.7 billion bond measure to finance the state's accumulated budget deficit. These bonds, to be repaid over five years, are in an amount far greater than $300,000. They will not be used for a "single object or work," such as building a school or buying parkland. And they will not be submitted to a vote of the people.
How then, can the bonds possibly be legal? Some people, not surprisingly, think they are not....
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 75%
Fox Blocked In Suit Against Al Franken's Book
Newsday.com - Fox Blocked In Suit Against Al Franken's Book
By Patricia Hurtado
STAFF WRITER
August 22, 2003, 9:29 PM EDT
In a scathing opinion, a Manhattan federal judge denied a request by Fox News to block sales of a book by liberal humorist Al Franken that satirizes the network's motto, "Fair and Balanced."
"There are hard cases and there are easy cases," U.S. District Judge Denny Chin told Fox's lawyers Friday. "This is an easy case in my view and wholly without merit, both factually and legally."
Lawyers for the network filed suit earlier this month seeking a preliminary injunction against the sale of the book, which hit stores Thursday. They argued that the title of Franken's book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," infringed on the network's trademarked motto and could mislead some into believing that the book was endorsed by Fox.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 20%
August 24, 2003
City can't ban Walmart RV parking
It's not often one hears about something cool that Walmart does, but once I started looking into the RV lifestyle, I soon found out that Walmart has a company-wide policy of allowing RVers to spend a night in a store parking lot for free. It seems that Walmart founder Sam Walton was a big RVer, and the policy was his doing. Very cool.
Apparently some in Whitehorse, Yukon, don't see it as I do.
Particularly this whiner:
After the councillors spoke about Preston’s report, RV park owner Chuck MacKenzie stood up and said now that he sees where council is going on this issue, he wants a refund for 16 years’ worth of city taxes and business licences because the city is not doing its job right.
“I would like a cheque Monday morning,” he said before sitting.
City can’t curtail RV parking, lawyer says
by Jason Small
A Whitehorse Star Archive story originally published August 20, 2003
If the city wants to prevent RVs from camping in Wal-Mart’s parking lot without the store’s permission, it will have to get the territorial government to change a law.
Local lawyer Tim Preston told city council at last night’s meeting that the only way it could prevent people from parking overnight at Wal-Mart without a request by the store to do so would be to ask the territorial government to change the Motor Vehicles Act.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 50%
Conservative backlash (against Ashcroft and "PATRIOT Act")
Baltimore Sun editorial
---------------------------------------------------------
Originally published August 22, 2003
JOHN ASHCROFT must be sweating bullets.
A grass-roots drive to resist the attorney general's broad expansion of police powers in the name of fighting terrorism has picked up so much support in the American heartland it threatens not only repeal of the legislation but political damage to President Bush as well.
Try as he might, Mr. Ashcroft can no longer dismiss opponents of the USA Patriot Act as a small but whiny band of liberals. Some of the nation's top conservative groups as well as a huge majority of the Republican-led House of Representatives -- in other words, the Bush base -- are now leading the drive to eliminate portions of the law that allow secret spying on anyone.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 15%
Lawsuit filed against "USA-PATRIOT" Act
Suit challenges constitutionality of anti-terror law
Eric Lichtblau
New York Times
Jul. 31, 2003 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union and six Muslim groups Wednesday brought the first constitutional challenge to the sweeping anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, arguing that the law gives federal agents virtually unchecked authority to spy on Americans.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Ashcroft Criticized for "PATRIOT Act" promo tour
Ashcroft Criticized for Talks on Terror
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — Attorney General John Ashcroft faced sharp criticism today from Democrats and others over his decision to give more than a dozen speeches around the country in defense of anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Mr. Ashcroft in a letter that he should either "desist from further speaking engagements" or explain why they do not violate restrictions on political activities by government officials.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 70%
Arnold's Bad Business
Arnold's Bad Business
Is his campaign the new Planet Hollywood?
By Daniel Gross
The most celebrated business venture of Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was his involvement in Planet Hollywood. Planet Hollywood, you may have forgotten, was the gaudiest avatar of the '90s idiotic theme-restaurant trend, which also spawned the Rainforest Café, the Official All-Star Café, and, most absurdly, the Fashion Café. ("What's on the menu," David Letterman asked. "A stick of gum?") Founded in 1991 by producer Keith Barish (The Fugitive, Sophie's Choice, The Running Man) and restaurant impresario Robert Earl (Hard Rock Café), the profitable Planet Hollywood chain had 34 units when it went splashily public in 1996.
It turns out there's a lot of similarity between the business plan of Planet Hollywood and the business plan of Arnold's gubernatorial campaign.
...
Republicans must hope Schwarzenegger's campaign is more durable than Planet Hollywood. The company raised $196 million in its IPO and plowed the proceeds into expansion. But its celebrity cachet dissipated once outlets opened in London's Gatwick Airport and Edmonton, Alberta. In October 1999 the chain, which peaked at 95 restaurants, filed for Chapter 11. Schwarzenegger severed his ties with the company in 2000. Planet Hollywood exited bankruptcy in 2000 but then earned membership in the Chapter 22 club by going bust again.
So far, the recall campaign has been very much like a meal at Planet Hollywood. There's plenty of ruckus and shouting and fake smiles. A lot of celebrities are hanging around—for no apparent reason. The fare is insipid. And when the experience is over and the bill comes, nausea may follow.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 65%
August 23, 2003
Victory Act melds war on terror with war on drugs
GOP Bill Would Add Anti-Terror Powers (washingtonpost.com)
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 21, 2003
As Attorney General John D. Ashcroft begins a barnstorming tour of the country to shore up support for existing anti-terrorism laws, Senate Republicans are discussing legislation that would expand the Justice Department's powers to investigate terrorists and drug criminals.
Recent drafts of the Victory Act, which carry the names of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and four other Senate Republicans, would provide extra penalties for drug dealers alleged to be connected to terrorist groups and would dramatically expand the government's power to seize records and conduct wiretaps in connection with "narcoterrorism" investigations.
The proposal, which totals 56 pages in one July 30 version, also targets alleged "interstate currency couriers" by making it a crime to carry more than $10,000 cash in a vehicle in connection with illegal activity. Prosecutors also would be able to freeze the assets of defendants arrested on money-laundering charges for 30 days, regardless of whether the assets are connected to a crime, according to the draft legislation.
Justice Department officials stress that they have not been involved in creating or revising the Victory Act proposal, but copies of the bill that have circulated on Capitol Hill over the last two months include many provisions sought by Justice prosecutors in the areas of terrorism and drug crimes. Several of the measures are similar to proposals made during the early debate over the USA Patriot Act, the controversial anti-terrorism package approved in October 2001 that Ashcroft is defending during his U.S. tour.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
August 22, 2003
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Woman `thought He Was A Liar'
Thursday, August 21, 2003
By Lee Sensenbrenner The Capital Times
When Sally Baron's family wrote her obituary, they described a northern Wisconsin woman who raised six children and took care of her husband after he was crushed in a mining accident.
She had moved to Stoughton seven years ago to be closer to her children and was 71 when she died Monday after struggling to recuperate from heart surgery. Her family had come to the question of what might be a fitting tribute to her.
"My uncle asked if there was a cause," her youngest son, Pete Baron, said.
Almost in unison, what her children decided to include in the obituary was this: "Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush."
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 40%
Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
t r u t h o u t - Paul Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
By Paul Krugman
New York Times
Friday 22 August 2003
The key moment in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Wednesday press conference came when the bodybuilder who would be governor brushed aside questions with the declaration, "The public doesn't care about figures." This was "fuzzy math" on steroids - Mr. Schwarzenegger was, in effect, asserting that his celebrity gives him the right to fake his way through the election. Will he be allowed to get away with it?
Reporters were trying to press Mr. Schwarzenegger for the specifics so obviously missing from his budget plans. But while he hasn't said much about what he proposes to do, the candidate has nonetheless already managed to say a number of things that his advisers must know are true lies.
...
...the candidate says he won't touch education. Sharp cuts in medical spending would be not only cruel but foolish, since in many cases they would mean losing federal matching funds. And prison spending is largely determined by the state's "three strikes" law. In short, he's not leveling with voters: there's no way to balance the budget while honoring all his promises.
But the candidate says that specifics don't matter, that the public just wants someone "tough enough." Does he really think that voters will confuse him with the characters he plays?
So here's the question: Can a celebrity candidate muscle his way into public office without ever being held accountable for his statements?
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 45%
August 21, 2003
Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Contra Costa Times | 08/21/2003 | Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Excerpt (emphasis and wisecrack added):
Scott Winfield Davis, a Palo Alto resident running for governor, announced late Tuesday that he was pulling out of the race, just hours after he talked about his campaign and his past with the San Jose Mercury News.
Davis was charged with murder in Atlanta seven years ago, accused of killing his estranged wife's lover and setting his home and Porsche afire. Although the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney told the Mercury News he still considers Davis "the top suspect."
Not long after the district attorney's statement, Davis announced he was no longer a candidate, citing personal reasons, business commitments and the overwhelming number of candidates.
(Probably a little more the first thing than the second two, I'm thinking.)
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .3
Learning Percentage: 98%
August 18, 2003
Arianna's Recall Entrance Speech
Arianna Huffington Announces Her Candidacy for Governor of California
Wednesday, Aug 6, 2003
Today I am announcing that I am running for Governor of the great state of California.
Those are 16 words I never imagined I would hear myself say. And they are in no way based on the findings of British intelligence.
I am not -- to say the least -- a conventional candidate. But these are not conventional times. And we will never find a way out of the mess we are in if we continue to elect the same politicians -- backed by the same special interests -- that got us into it.
I have spent a large part of my life writing and speaking out on the need for each of us to become personally involved with our community -- to devote time and attention to building a more just and more compassionate society.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Davy Crockett vs. Welfare
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
Thank you, oh mighty War on Drugs, for opening yet another perverse tear in our society's fabric.
There is one good thing about crystal meth: Of all the drugs in the New Prohibition, it's the one which is most obviously reminiscent of the first Prohibition. (Think moonshine.) Maybe something will snap, as people internally compare the images on the evening news with the contraption in "The Swamp" on M*A*S*H, and experience a cognitive dissonance -- preferably, a big collective one.
From the end of the article:
You can help as well by reporting suspected labs to state police.
Try, "You can help as well by demanding a swift and certain end to the foolish 'War on Drugs'."
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
(Mattawan, August 12, 2003, 6:20 p.m. ) Camping is a favorite summer past time for Cindy Harnish and her family.
But while getting ready for a camp out earlier this summer, Cindy's father discovered a problem with his travel trailer.
"We got up north and the refrigerator, we tried to light it up but it wouldn't light. So he opened it up and it looked like it had been cut."
But what first appeared to be an act of vandalism may actually have been the latest chapter in the war against the drug known as crystal meth.
For years, makers of crystal meth have been stealing anhydrous ammonia from tanks on farm fields and farm co-ops.
...Now, it appears some manufacturers are turning to RV's.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
By Andrew England
Associated Press
Sunday 17 August 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Quranic verse plastered on a monument to freedom carries a simple message - God will send a plague on those who deal in drugs and spread corruption.
But the message is being widely ignored.
Across the busy highway from the monument, built in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy, traders have set up gambling tables and are openly selling pornography, fake ID cards and looted goods - including laboratory microscopes, industrial fuse boxes and pills stolen from psychiatric hospitals.
"Now we have freedom and democracy," said a 34-year-old trader selling pornographic DVDs with titles such as "The Dirty Family" and "The Young Wife," and photocopied postcards of couples in various sexual positions. "We could not sell them when Saddam was here."
This is Baghdad four months after U.S. troops took over the sprawling city of 5 million - jobless, insecure, and in many cases taking "freedom and democracy" as license to do pretty much what you want and get away with it.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .2
Learning Percentage: 55%
August 17, 2003
Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Arizona's Clean Elections law: Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Commission orders the Dist. 17 candidates to repay $104,237 they spent on booze, food.
DAVID PITTMAN
Tucson Citizen
Thursday, July 31, 2003
A trio of defeated Phoenix-area legislative candidates spent thousands of dollars on alcohol, food, rental cars and entertainment expenses at trendy Scottsdale nightspots - and used Clean Elections money to do it.
...
Yuri Downing, the son of state Rep. Ted Downing, D-Tucson, said the trio is guilty of only one thing: attempting to run an unorthodox campaign to attract youthful voters.
District 17 includes south Scottsdale and most of Tempe. It takes in all of the Arizona State University campus and most of the students attending the university.
"We are Libertarian candidates, we knew going into the campaign that the odds of us winning were very small," said Yuri Downing. "The only hope we had was to go after the younger demographic, get them registered and to the polls. Those people aren't in church on Sunday morning. So we targeted the places where they do go."
What the three Libertarian candidates did was campaign at sporting events and at campus-area parties and popular watering holes. Yuri Downing said there is nothing wrong with that, accusing the commission of trying to "micro-manage" the trio's campaign.
"Are they saying I didn't run the campaign the way they would have run it?" he asked. "They have no right, either legally or morally, to make that decision."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 70%
California's Hot Ticket
This is a pretty good tongue-in-cheek look at the recall playing field.
California's Hot Ticket (washingtonpost.com)
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page C01
BURBANK, Calif., Aug. 6
The special effect known as Arnold Schwarzenegger has just told Jay Leno (which is the same as telling America, nowadays) that he's decided to accept the starring role in yet another way over budget movie with "Recall" in the title, rocketing into the race to become governor of California in the statewide vote to decide the fate of current Gov. Gray Davis.
"When I moved to California in 1968 it was the greatest state in the greatest nation in the world," the actor said, during the taping of the "Tonight" show at NBC Studios here. "Now it is totally the opposite. The atmosphere is disastrous. There is total disconnect of the people in California. [They] are working hard, paying taxes, raising families, and politicians are not doing their jobs. They're fiddling, fumbling and failing. . . .
"And this is why I'm going to run for governor of the state of California."
At which point, the studio audience screamed and their heads exploded, spattering blood everywhere. (Okay, okay. Maybe they'll add that part, with CGI, in the movie version.)
Greetings from schizzy California, where the Leno show now functions as a public forum, a royal veranda, the conduit by which the famously political can officially speak to loyal subjects about nearly issueless panic politics and (by some weird extension of the sunshine and celebrity vibe) speak to that small piece of California in the rest of the national psyche.
...
The recall is frequently compared to some neat, new, vaguely obnoxious summertime reality show, only this time it stars everybody, all 35 million or so Californians, and it's not as tightly edited.
There are characters you dislike. (The namby-pamby governor. The conniving car-alarm magnate. The poliguru pundit. The former mayor.) There are characters you root for, sometimes just because you like the flukiness of their ambition. (The pornographer. The Terminator. The punk rocker. The bounty hunter. The former Republican congressman who is known mostly for coming out of the closet late in life.) There are characters who are going to get voted off so fast. Mostly there are just lots and lots of characters.
Saturday is the deadline for gubernatorial wannabes to file as candidates. Although several hundred people had picked up paperwork and said they intended to run, it's still not clear how many will actually make deadline and get on the ballot. Some people actually sense giddiness at a safe distance; they want to see as many candidates as possible, a ballot that rambles on into chaos.
It's all endlessly watchable and so very, embarrassingly California.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
LA Times: Recall is a Circus Without Solutions
Los Angeles Times
Friday 08 August 2003
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in declining Wednesday to run for governor, lamented that the Oct. 7 recall election was becoming "more and more like a carnival every day." And that was before actor Arnold Schwarzenegger ended his slow striptease of refusal, announcing during a late-night entertainment show that he will run for governor after all. The Terminator promised, "I will go to Sacramento and I will clean house." Then, anticlimactically, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante shattered the fragile Democratic unity, offering himself as a candidate to replace a governor he served but never liked.
Carnival? Circus? How about action comics? WHAP! BAM! BIFF! POW! TAKE THAT, CALIFORNIA!
Democrat John Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner and a frequent candidate, was in, and Rep. Darryl Issa, who bankrolled the recall petition campaign, was out. The California Supreme Court rejected a series of lawsuits challenging the recall and seeking to delay it. Several cases remain before the federal courts, but each decision moves the election closer to reality.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 8%
The mystery men behind the recall
This has a lot of "dirt" about the characters behind the recall scenes. FWIW.
California Confidential
Who are the mystery men behind the recall push?
By Max Blumenthal
Web Exclusive: 8.13.03
"It's a victory. A total victory!" Howard Kaloogian exclaimed on the right-wing Worldmag.com after hearing that the petition to recall the election of California's embattled Gov. Gray Davis had gained enough signatures to qualify as a ballot question. Kaloogian, a former Republican California legislator, had plenty of reason to cheer. Because while the media have presented Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the wealthy car-alarm magnate, as the man who drove the recall, he's actually been little more than a useful idiot for a stealthy group of GOP operatives who laid the groundwork. Months before the recall was even a blip on the media radar, this consultant cabal began manipulating California's idiosyncratic electoral system, creating a muscular funding mechanism and exploiting it for its members' own ends.
The cabal includes Kaloogian, who was a right-wing backbencher in the state Assembly, Sal Russo, who handled banker Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and David Gilliard, a veteran GOP strategist with a career steeped in scandal. They're joined by former Enron pollster and Republican tactician Frank Luntz, who devised a strategy for the recall campaign centering around negative character attacks and avoidance of policy discussion. With the surprise announcement of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who boasted on The Tonight Show Aug. 6, "I have plenty of money. Nobody can buy me off." -- the movie star's high-priced uber-consultants George Gorton and Don Sipple have grabbed the baton in the recall race, eager to take it the last mile to the state capitol. Thanks to this handful of men and the millionaires who bankrolled them, what started with a petition and a few phone calls has become an election that may unseat a twice-elected governor and dramatically affect the lives of one in seven Americans.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 70%
Democracy in Iraq might be impossible, US was told
Democracy might be impossible, US was told
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2003
WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime -- as a model for the rest of the region -- was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible."
That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on Feb. 26.
The question of how quickly, and easily, the United States could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security. The administration offered few assessments of its own but dismissed predictions by the army chief of staff of a lengthy occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops.
Now, frustration among Iraqis about a lack of stability and the slow pace of reconstruction -- and new evidence that Islamic militants are slipping into Iraq to take up arms against the Americans -- are leading the administration to lengthen its plans to keep troops in Iraq for up to four years. And the Pentagon is moving to lower expectations for a shift to democracy, suggesting that a liberal democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but acknowledging the difficulty of creating one.
"The question isn't whether it is feasible, but is it worth a try," Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.
"Is it worth a try"? Wouldn't the question be "Is it worth killing thousands of innocent people and destabilizing the world for an effort to accomplish something that is likely impossible?"?
Is that "worth a try?"
Read It Rating: 8.8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Fri Aug 15,12:12 PM ET
By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Clerics from across the Muslim sectarian divide blasted the U.S. occupation of Iraq in Friday prayers as guerrilla hit-and-run attacks in the center of the country inflicted more American casualties.
...
Chanting "Yes for Islam, No to America," more than 5,000 worshippers held prayers in open air at a street in northern Baghdad's Sadr City, where U.S. forces shot dead one Iraqi and wounded four during a protest earlier in the week.
"What happened (in Sadr City) clearly shows that America and international Zionism have declared war against Islam," Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Daraji said.
...
In the Sunni town of Falluja, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi said U.S. troops faced more attacks if they remained in Iraq.
"The future will witness more killing and resistance operations against the United States in Iraq," he told hundreds of worshippers in a mosque in the town, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 40%
Reason: Dean's List
Can the Vermont guv flash mob his way to power?
August 13, 2003
Jeff Taylor
The crowd in Philadelphia got a quick lesson in viral marketing from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who urged his supporters to spam the hell out of their friends.
"When we send you stuff, you send it to your e-mail list. A hundred people on everybody's email list here, that's four hundred thousand people!" Dean said at a rally on Monday that dwarfed the response other candidates received.
Is Dean nuts or is he onto something? Probably a little of both, which makes him dangerous to status quo assumptions about how 2004 will unfold. ...
At a minimum, Dean's campaign is setting a new standard for integrating the Internet into the overall campaign and is using a number of free or nearly free off-the-shelf components to do it.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 25%
Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
Donald Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
In Pursuit of Global Supremacy, We Have Polluted Every Part of Our Nation
By DONALD WORSTER
After much denial, Americans are finally beginning to admit that we are indeed an imperial nation. What Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers openly dreamed about two centuries ago has become reality, and the United States has taken Britain's place as the seat of empire, dominating the globe.
What does an empire cost and is that cost worth paying?
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L2.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
The Other Guevara:Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Reason interviews Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Excerpt:
Perhaps surprisingly, the most successful libertarian party in recent years has arisen in Latin America, where left and right wing variants of statism have been the norm for much of the 20th century. In Costa Rica, the ten-year-old Movimiento Libertario has managed to elect six diputados to the country's 57-seat congress. The chief architect of that success was Otto Guevara, who served as the party's first elected diputado, from 1998 to 2002. In late July, he spoke with Reason during a visit to Washington, D.C.'s Cato Institute.
What inspired you to launch a Costa Rican libertarian party?
To understand the birth of Movimiento Libertario, you need to put yourself in the context of the Costa Rica of that time. Costa Rica is a substantially socialist country, with a state monopoly on alcohol, a state monopoly on insurance. There's a state monopoly in telecommunications, in agriculture, in fuel refinement and distribution. Education is constitutionally free, mandatory, and run by the state. Ninety-three percent of the population, girls and boys, attends public, state schools.
Costa Rica, like a majority of the Latin American states, experimented with a development scheme based on import substitution. It closed its borders, turned inwards. The state began to make inroads in many other industries—production of fertilizers, of cement, of cotton, of tuna. They had state tuna catching boats! Bankrupt industries were bought by the state with the idea of saving jobs. That's how the state ended up running industries that make chocolates or catch shrimp. It led to $7 billion in losses for Costa Ricans.
In the 1980s, a new form of politics emerged. In the '70s, they had put people on the public payroll. That was no longer sustainable. So they began a practice of instead granting privileges to unions and forced firms to buy licenses for, say, running cabs. These privileges were politically assigned, and as there were three principal banks, heavily controlled by the state, until recently loans, too, were politically assigned.
There were a range of giveaways to the poor as well, like the bono alimenticio to pay for food. A lot of people stopped working because food was guaranteed. Then came the bono de la vivienda or the bono de vivienda popular: $10,000 as a gift of the state for housing. To free education, they added a new benefit called the beca, or bono escolar to pay for schoolbooks.
This is the origin of our movement. Nobody was defending liberty. And it was being lost at an accelerated rate.
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 6
Learning Percentage: 35%
Recall Supporters Attacked by Davis Supporters
(received via e-mail)
Recall Supporters Violently Attacked
by Gray Davis Thugs
Women and Children Among Those Victimized
Above: Recall Gray Davis Committee supporter, Shawn Cubbage – wearing a baseball cap – is attacked by union thugs wearing dark “NO ON RECALL” t-shirts paid for by the State Building & Construction Trades Council. Another Recall Gray Davis supporter, Donald Lacomb, is immediately behind Cubbage and had attempted to help protect Mr. Cubbage but was then assaulted himself.
UPDATE TO ALL
RECALL GRAY DAVIS
SUPPORTERS
FROM:
The Honorable Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Several Recall Gray Davis Supporters
Kicked, Beaten, Punched, Tackled to the Ground as They Protested Taxpayer Funding of
Anti-Recall Workshops.
Recall Gray Davis supporters and volunteers were violently attacked by thugs supporting Governor Gray Davis on Saturday and have filed a criminal complaint. Our top-notch legal team is also exploring possible civil action.
On Saturday, several peaceful Recall Gray Davis protestors were brutally beaten, kicked, punched and tackled to the ground by union workers who were attending a taxpayer-funded workshop, WAR - “Workers Against the Recall.”
The violent “WAR” union workshop attendees rushed across J Street in downtown Sacramento – through traffic! – in several waves and attacked the pro-recall protestors.
A 20-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were terrorized.
One of four incidents where recall supporters were physically beaten was caught on video by Fox News Channel and the Recall Gray Davis Committee has uploaded a clip of this footage to our website. For video and photographs of part of the attack please CLICK HERE.
PLEASE – I need your help.
As the chairman of the Recall Gray Davis Committee, I am sickened by the sights and sounds of my staff and recall supporters and volunteers being beaten by thugs.
Several of our people were victimized in four attacks – one of which is captured in the Fox News Channel video and photographs shown at this special page on our website.
We cannot tolerate this behavior from the thugs who Gray Davis and his political team have hired to fight the recall effort. Make no mistake – Davis and his hired guns are determined to frighten and intimidate the people of California from supporting this recall.
When they tell you that the recall is a “circus atmosphere” or “risky” they are trying to strike fear into your soul.
And now we see they are going even further by trying to scare people from actively and publicly working on behalf of the recall campaign through the use of violence.
We must not let them defeat us with fear.
I need you to call your local talk radio stations and voice your outrage over this revolting incident. I need you to send the pictures and video file to reporters at major newspapers, television stations and radio stations.
DEMAND THAT THEY SHOW CALIFORNIANS THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THOSE WHO DARED TO OPPOSE GRAY DAVIS.
If you can also continue to help fund our legal defense fund I would greatly appreciate it. So many of you sent in generous contributions to assist in our legal efforts to date. I never thought that I would have to raise money for the medical bills for recall supporters and legal bills to fight those who had attacked my dedicated and hard-working staff.
If I have to, I will pay these expenses out of my own pocket – my staff and our volunteers have become an extended family of mine who have made history thanks to their tireless efforts, determination, honesty, integrity and perseverance. I will not allow anyone to harm members of this great family without also going through me.
As you will recall, the reason we had organized our peaceful protest against these “WAR” workshops – on the OPPOSITE side of the street from where the workshops were being held – is because they used taxpayer funds to assist in the leadership and planning of the workshops.
The University of California Institute for Labor & Employment received $4,000,000 in taxpayer money from this year’s budget and was listed as one of the lead organizers of these workshops.
We were outraged and wanted to show the media and the people of California that we would not allow Gray Davis to get away with this unnoticed.
Apparently they decided to beat my staff, supporters and volunteers into silence.
But we cannot be silent, my friends.
The end is near for Gray Davis’ corrupt and failed administration and we must move forward undaunted – committed in our goal of restoring the California Dream for our families.
Please – make sure that every Californian hears the truth about what happened on this violent Saturday morning. We must not let those who endured the pain and physical punishment for standing up for their beliefs to have suffered in vain.
Sincerely,
Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
City can't ban Walmart RV parking
It's not often one hears about something cool that Walmart does, but once I started looking into the RV lifestyle, I soon found out that Walmart has a company-wide policy of allowing RVers to spend a night in a store parking lot for free. It seems that Walmart founder Sam Walton was a big RVer, and the policy was his doing. Very cool.
Apparently some in Whitehorse, Yukon, don't see it as I do.
Particularly this whiner:
After the councillors spoke about Preston’s report, RV park owner Chuck MacKenzie stood up and said now that he sees where council is going on this issue, he wants a refund for 16 years’ worth of city taxes and business licences because the city is not doing its job right.
“I would like a cheque Monday morning,” he said before sitting.
City can’t curtail RV parking, lawyer says
by Jason Small
A Whitehorse Star Archive story originally published August 20, 2003
If the city wants to prevent RVs from camping in Wal-Mart’s parking lot without the store’s permission, it will have to get the territorial government to change a law.
Local lawyer Tim Preston told city council at last night’s meeting that the only way it could prevent people from parking overnight at Wal-Mart without a request by the store to do so would be to ask the territorial government to change the Motor Vehicles Act.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 50%
Conservative backlash (against Ashcroft and "PATRIOT Act")
Baltimore Sun editorial
---------------------------------------------------------
Originally published August 22, 2003
JOHN ASHCROFT must be sweating bullets.
A grass-roots drive to resist the attorney general's broad expansion of police powers in the name of fighting terrorism has picked up so much support in the American heartland it threatens not only repeal of the legislation but political damage to President Bush as well.
Try as he might, Mr. Ashcroft can no longer dismiss opponents of the USA Patriot Act as a small but whiny band of liberals. Some of the nation's top conservative groups as well as a huge majority of the Republican-led House of Representatives -- in other words, the Bush base -- are now leading the drive to eliminate portions of the law that allow secret spying on anyone.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 15%
Lawsuit filed against "USA-PATRIOT" Act
Suit challenges constitutionality of anti-terror law
Eric Lichtblau
New York Times
Jul. 31, 2003 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union and six Muslim groups Wednesday brought the first constitutional challenge to the sweeping anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, arguing that the law gives federal agents virtually unchecked authority to spy on Americans.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Ashcroft Criticized for "PATRIOT Act" promo tour
Ashcroft Criticized for Talks on Terror
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — Attorney General John Ashcroft faced sharp criticism today from Democrats and others over his decision to give more than a dozen speeches around the country in defense of anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Mr. Ashcroft in a letter that he should either "desist from further speaking engagements" or explain why they do not violate restrictions on political activities by government officials.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 70%
Arnold's Bad Business
Arnold's Bad Business
Is his campaign the new Planet Hollywood?
By Daniel Gross
The most celebrated business venture of Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was his involvement in Planet Hollywood. Planet Hollywood, you may have forgotten, was the gaudiest avatar of the '90s idiotic theme-restaurant trend, which also spawned the Rainforest Café, the Official All-Star Café, and, most absurdly, the Fashion Café. ("What's on the menu," David Letterman asked. "A stick of gum?") Founded in 1991 by producer Keith Barish (The Fugitive, Sophie's Choice, The Running Man) and restaurant impresario Robert Earl (Hard Rock Café), the profitable Planet Hollywood chain had 34 units when it went splashily public in 1996.
It turns out there's a lot of similarity between the business plan of Planet Hollywood and the business plan of Arnold's gubernatorial campaign.
...
Republicans must hope Schwarzenegger's campaign is more durable than Planet Hollywood. The company raised $196 million in its IPO and plowed the proceeds into expansion. But its celebrity cachet dissipated once outlets opened in London's Gatwick Airport and Edmonton, Alberta. In October 1999 the chain, which peaked at 95 restaurants, filed for Chapter 11. Schwarzenegger severed his ties with the company in 2000. Planet Hollywood exited bankruptcy in 2000 but then earned membership in the Chapter 22 club by going bust again.
So far, the recall campaign has been very much like a meal at Planet Hollywood. There's plenty of ruckus and shouting and fake smiles. A lot of celebrities are hanging around—for no apparent reason. The fare is insipid. And when the experience is over and the bill comes, nausea may follow.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 65%
Victory Act melds war on terror with war on drugs
GOP Bill Would Add Anti-Terror Powers (washingtonpost.com)
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 21, 2003
As Attorney General John D. Ashcroft begins a barnstorming tour of the country to shore up support for existing anti-terrorism laws, Senate Republicans are discussing legislation that would expand the Justice Department's powers to investigate terrorists and drug criminals.
Recent drafts of the Victory Act, which carry the names of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and four other Senate Republicans, would provide extra penalties for drug dealers alleged to be connected to terrorist groups and would dramatically expand the government's power to seize records and conduct wiretaps in connection with "narcoterrorism" investigations.
The proposal, which totals 56 pages in one July 30 version, also targets alleged "interstate currency couriers" by making it a crime to carry more than $10,000 cash in a vehicle in connection with illegal activity. Prosecutors also would be able to freeze the assets of defendants arrested on money-laundering charges for 30 days, regardless of whether the assets are connected to a crime, according to the draft legislation.
Justice Department officials stress that they have not been involved in creating or revising the Victory Act proposal, but copies of the bill that have circulated on Capitol Hill over the last two months include many provisions sought by Justice prosecutors in the areas of terrorism and drug crimes. Several of the measures are similar to proposals made during the early debate over the USA Patriot Act, the controversial anti-terrorism package approved in October 2001 that Ashcroft is defending during his U.S. tour.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
August 22, 2003
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Woman `thought He Was A Liar'
Thursday, August 21, 2003
By Lee Sensenbrenner The Capital Times
When Sally Baron's family wrote her obituary, they described a northern Wisconsin woman who raised six children and took care of her husband after he was crushed in a mining accident.
She had moved to Stoughton seven years ago to be closer to her children and was 71 when she died Monday after struggling to recuperate from heart surgery. Her family had come to the question of what might be a fitting tribute to her.
"My uncle asked if there was a cause," her youngest son, Pete Baron, said.
Almost in unison, what her children decided to include in the obituary was this: "Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush."
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 40%
Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
t r u t h o u t - Paul Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
By Paul Krugman
New York Times
Friday 22 August 2003
The key moment in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Wednesday press conference came when the bodybuilder who would be governor brushed aside questions with the declaration, "The public doesn't care about figures." This was "fuzzy math" on steroids - Mr. Schwarzenegger was, in effect, asserting that his celebrity gives him the right to fake his way through the election. Will he be allowed to get away with it?
Reporters were trying to press Mr. Schwarzenegger for the specifics so obviously missing from his budget plans. But while he hasn't said much about what he proposes to do, the candidate has nonetheless already managed to say a number of things that his advisers must know are true lies.
...
...the candidate says he won't touch education. Sharp cuts in medical spending would be not only cruel but foolish, since in many cases they would mean losing federal matching funds. And prison spending is largely determined by the state's "three strikes" law. In short, he's not leveling with voters: there's no way to balance the budget while honoring all his promises.
But the candidate says that specifics don't matter, that the public just wants someone "tough enough." Does he really think that voters will confuse him with the characters he plays?
So here's the question: Can a celebrity candidate muscle his way into public office without ever being held accountable for his statements?
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 45%
August 21, 2003
Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Contra Costa Times | 08/21/2003 | Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Excerpt (emphasis and wisecrack added):
Scott Winfield Davis, a Palo Alto resident running for governor, announced late Tuesday that he was pulling out of the race, just hours after he talked about his campaign and his past with the San Jose Mercury News.
Davis was charged with murder in Atlanta seven years ago, accused of killing his estranged wife's lover and setting his home and Porsche afire. Although the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney told the Mercury News he still considers Davis "the top suspect."
Not long after the district attorney's statement, Davis announced he was no longer a candidate, citing personal reasons, business commitments and the overwhelming number of candidates.
(Probably a little more the first thing than the second two, I'm thinking.)
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .3
Learning Percentage: 98%
August 18, 2003
Arianna's Recall Entrance Speech
Arianna Huffington Announces Her Candidacy for Governor of California
Wednesday, Aug 6, 2003
Today I am announcing that I am running for Governor of the great state of California.
Those are 16 words I never imagined I would hear myself say. And they are in no way based on the findings of British intelligence.
I am not -- to say the least -- a conventional candidate. But these are not conventional times. And we will never find a way out of the mess we are in if we continue to elect the same politicians -- backed by the same special interests -- that got us into it.
I have spent a large part of my life writing and speaking out on the need for each of us to become personally involved with our community -- to devote time and attention to building a more just and more compassionate society.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Davy Crockett vs. Welfare
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
Thank you, oh mighty War on Drugs, for opening yet another perverse tear in our society's fabric.
There is one good thing about crystal meth: Of all the drugs in the New Prohibition, it's the one which is most obviously reminiscent of the first Prohibition. (Think moonshine.) Maybe something will snap, as people internally compare the images on the evening news with the contraption in "The Swamp" on M*A*S*H, and experience a cognitive dissonance -- preferably, a big collective one.
From the end of the article:
You can help as well by reporting suspected labs to state police.
Try, "You can help as well by demanding a swift and certain end to the foolish 'War on Drugs'."
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
(Mattawan, August 12, 2003, 6:20 p.m. ) Camping is a favorite summer past time for Cindy Harnish and her family.
But while getting ready for a camp out earlier this summer, Cindy's father discovered a problem with his travel trailer.
"We got up north and the refrigerator, we tried to light it up but it wouldn't light. So he opened it up and it looked like it had been cut."
But what first appeared to be an act of vandalism may actually have been the latest chapter in the war against the drug known as crystal meth.
For years, makers of crystal meth have been stealing anhydrous ammonia from tanks on farm fields and farm co-ops.
...Now, it appears some manufacturers are turning to RV's.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
By Andrew England
Associated Press
Sunday 17 August 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Quranic verse plastered on a monument to freedom carries a simple message - God will send a plague on those who deal in drugs and spread corruption.
But the message is being widely ignored.
Across the busy highway from the monument, built in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy, traders have set up gambling tables and are openly selling pornography, fake ID cards and looted goods - including laboratory microscopes, industrial fuse boxes and pills stolen from psychiatric hospitals.
"Now we have freedom and democracy," said a 34-year-old trader selling pornographic DVDs with titles such as "The Dirty Family" and "The Young Wife," and photocopied postcards of couples in various sexual positions. "We could not sell them when Saddam was here."
This is Baghdad four months after U.S. troops took over the sprawling city of 5 million - jobless, insecure, and in many cases taking "freedom and democracy" as license to do pretty much what you want and get away with it.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .2
Learning Percentage: 55%
August 17, 2003
Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Arizona's Clean Elections law: Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Commission orders the Dist. 17 candidates to repay $104,237 they spent on booze, food.
DAVID PITTMAN
Tucson Citizen
Thursday, July 31, 2003
A trio of defeated Phoenix-area legislative candidates spent thousands of dollars on alcohol, food, rental cars and entertainment expenses at trendy Scottsdale nightspots - and used Clean Elections money to do it.
...
Yuri Downing, the son of state Rep. Ted Downing, D-Tucson, said the trio is guilty of only one thing: attempting to run an unorthodox campaign to attract youthful voters.
District 17 includes south Scottsdale and most of Tempe. It takes in all of the Arizona State University campus and most of the students attending the university.
"We are Libertarian candidates, we knew going into the campaign that the odds of us winning were very small," said Yuri Downing. "The only hope we had was to go after the younger demographic, get them registered and to the polls. Those people aren't in church on Sunday morning. So we targeted the places where they do go."
What the three Libertarian candidates did was campaign at sporting events and at campus-area parties and popular watering holes. Yuri Downing said there is nothing wrong with that, accusing the commission of trying to "micro-manage" the trio's campaign.
"Are they saying I didn't run the campaign the way they would have run it?" he asked. "They have no right, either legally or morally, to make that decision."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 70%
California's Hot Ticket
This is a pretty good tongue-in-cheek look at the recall playing field.
California's Hot Ticket (washingtonpost.com)
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page C01
BURBANK, Calif., Aug. 6
The special effect known as Arnold Schwarzenegger has just told Jay Leno (which is the same as telling America, nowadays) that he's decided to accept the starring role in yet another way over budget movie with "Recall" in the title, rocketing into the race to become governor of California in the statewide vote to decide the fate of current Gov. Gray Davis.
"When I moved to California in 1968 it was the greatest state in the greatest nation in the world," the actor said, during the taping of the "Tonight" show at NBC Studios here. "Now it is totally the opposite. The atmosphere is disastrous. There is total disconnect of the people in California. [They] are working hard, paying taxes, raising families, and politicians are not doing their jobs. They're fiddling, fumbling and failing. . . .
"And this is why I'm going to run for governor of the state of California."
At which point, the studio audience screamed and their heads exploded, spattering blood everywhere. (Okay, okay. Maybe they'll add that part, with CGI, in the movie version.)
Greetings from schizzy California, where the Leno show now functions as a public forum, a royal veranda, the conduit by which the famously political can officially speak to loyal subjects about nearly issueless panic politics and (by some weird extension of the sunshine and celebrity vibe) speak to that small piece of California in the rest of the national psyche.
...
The recall is frequently compared to some neat, new, vaguely obnoxious summertime reality show, only this time it stars everybody, all 35 million or so Californians, and it's not as tightly edited.
There are characters you dislike. (The namby-pamby governor. The conniving car-alarm magnate. The poliguru pundit. The former mayor.) There are characters you root for, sometimes just because you like the flukiness of their ambition. (The pornographer. The Terminator. The punk rocker. The bounty hunter. The former Republican congressman who is known mostly for coming out of the closet late in life.) There are characters who are going to get voted off so fast. Mostly there are just lots and lots of characters.
Saturday is the deadline for gubernatorial wannabes to file as candidates. Although several hundred people had picked up paperwork and said they intended to run, it's still not clear how many will actually make deadline and get on the ballot. Some people actually sense giddiness at a safe distance; they want to see as many candidates as possible, a ballot that rambles on into chaos.
It's all endlessly watchable and so very, embarrassingly California.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
LA Times: Recall is a Circus Without Solutions
Los Angeles Times
Friday 08 August 2003
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in declining Wednesday to run for governor, lamented that the Oct. 7 recall election was becoming "more and more like a carnival every day." And that was before actor Arnold Schwarzenegger ended his slow striptease of refusal, announcing during a late-night entertainment show that he will run for governor after all. The Terminator promised, "I will go to Sacramento and I will clean house." Then, anticlimactically, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante shattered the fragile Democratic unity, offering himself as a candidate to replace a governor he served but never liked.
Carnival? Circus? How about action comics? WHAP! BAM! BIFF! POW! TAKE THAT, CALIFORNIA!
Democrat John Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner and a frequent candidate, was in, and Rep. Darryl Issa, who bankrolled the recall petition campaign, was out. The California Supreme Court rejected a series of lawsuits challenging the recall and seeking to delay it. Several cases remain before the federal courts, but each decision moves the election closer to reality.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 8%
The mystery men behind the recall
This has a lot of "dirt" about the characters behind the recall scenes. FWIW.
California Confidential
Who are the mystery men behind the recall push?
By Max Blumenthal
Web Exclusive: 8.13.03
"It's a victory. A total victory!" Howard Kaloogian exclaimed on the right-wing Worldmag.com after hearing that the petition to recall the election of California's embattled Gov. Gray Davis had gained enough signatures to qualify as a ballot question. Kaloogian, a former Republican California legislator, had plenty of reason to cheer. Because while the media have presented Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the wealthy car-alarm magnate, as the man who drove the recall, he's actually been little more than a useful idiot for a stealthy group of GOP operatives who laid the groundwork. Months before the recall was even a blip on the media radar, this consultant cabal began manipulating California's idiosyncratic electoral system, creating a muscular funding mechanism and exploiting it for its members' own ends.
The cabal includes Kaloogian, who was a right-wing backbencher in the state Assembly, Sal Russo, who handled banker Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and David Gilliard, a veteran GOP strategist with a career steeped in scandal. They're joined by former Enron pollster and Republican tactician Frank Luntz, who devised a strategy for the recall campaign centering around negative character attacks and avoidance of policy discussion. With the surprise announcement of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who boasted on The Tonight Show Aug. 6, "I have plenty of money. Nobody can buy me off." -- the movie star's high-priced uber-consultants George Gorton and Don Sipple have grabbed the baton in the recall race, eager to take it the last mile to the state capitol. Thanks to this handful of men and the millionaires who bankrolled them, what started with a petition and a few phone calls has become an election that may unseat a twice-elected governor and dramatically affect the lives of one in seven Americans.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 70%
Democracy in Iraq might be impossible, US was told
Democracy might be impossible, US was told
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2003
WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime -- as a model for the rest of the region -- was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible."
That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on Feb. 26.
The question of how quickly, and easily, the United States could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security. The administration offered few assessments of its own but dismissed predictions by the army chief of staff of a lengthy occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops.
Now, frustration among Iraqis about a lack of stability and the slow pace of reconstruction -- and new evidence that Islamic militants are slipping into Iraq to take up arms against the Americans -- are leading the administration to lengthen its plans to keep troops in Iraq for up to four years. And the Pentagon is moving to lower expectations for a shift to democracy, suggesting that a liberal democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but acknowledging the difficulty of creating one.
"The question isn't whether it is feasible, but is it worth a try," Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.
"Is it worth a try"? Wouldn't the question be "Is it worth killing thousands of innocent people and destabilizing the world for an effort to accomplish something that is likely impossible?"?
Is that "worth a try?"
Read It Rating: 8.8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Fri Aug 15,12:12 PM ET
By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Clerics from across the Muslim sectarian divide blasted the U.S. occupation of Iraq in Friday prayers as guerrilla hit-and-run attacks in the center of the country inflicted more American casualties.
...
Chanting "Yes for Islam, No to America," more than 5,000 worshippers held prayers in open air at a street in northern Baghdad's Sadr City, where U.S. forces shot dead one Iraqi and wounded four during a protest earlier in the week.
"What happened (in Sadr City) clearly shows that America and international Zionism have declared war against Islam," Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Daraji said.
...
In the Sunni town of Falluja, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi said U.S. troops faced more attacks if they remained in Iraq.
"The future will witness more killing and resistance operations against the United States in Iraq," he told hundreds of worshippers in a mosque in the town, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 40%
Reason: Dean's List
Can the Vermont guv flash mob his way to power?
August 13, 2003
Jeff Taylor
The crowd in Philadelphia got a quick lesson in viral marketing from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who urged his supporters to spam the hell out of their friends.
"When we send you stuff, you send it to your e-mail list. A hundred people on everybody's email list here, that's four hundred thousand people!" Dean said at a rally on Monday that dwarfed the response other candidates received.
Is Dean nuts or is he onto something? Probably a little of both, which makes him dangerous to status quo assumptions about how 2004 will unfold. ...
At a minimum, Dean's campaign is setting a new standard for integrating the Internet into the overall campaign and is using a number of free or nearly free off-the-shelf components to do it.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 25%
Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
Donald Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
In Pursuit of Global Supremacy, We Have Polluted Every Part of Our Nation
By DONALD WORSTER
After much denial, Americans are finally beginning to admit that we are indeed an imperial nation. What Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers openly dreamed about two centuries ago has become reality, and the United States has taken Britain's place as the seat of empire, dominating the globe.
What does an empire cost and is that cost worth paying?
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L2.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
The Other Guevara:Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Reason interviews Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Excerpt:
Perhaps surprisingly, the most successful libertarian party in recent years has arisen in Latin America, where left and right wing variants of statism have been the norm for much of the 20th century. In Costa Rica, the ten-year-old Movimiento Libertario has managed to elect six diputados to the country's 57-seat congress. The chief architect of that success was Otto Guevara, who served as the party's first elected diputado, from 1998 to 2002. In late July, he spoke with Reason during a visit to Washington, D.C.'s Cato Institute.
What inspired you to launch a Costa Rican libertarian party?
To understand the birth of Movimiento Libertario, you need to put yourself in the context of the Costa Rica of that time. Costa Rica is a substantially socialist country, with a state monopoly on alcohol, a state monopoly on insurance. There's a state monopoly in telecommunications, in agriculture, in fuel refinement and distribution. Education is constitutionally free, mandatory, and run by the state. Ninety-three percent of the population, girls and boys, attends public, state schools.
Costa Rica, like a majority of the Latin American states, experimented with a development scheme based on import substitution. It closed its borders, turned inwards. The state began to make inroads in many other industries—production of fertilizers, of cement, of cotton, of tuna. They had state tuna catching boats! Bankrupt industries were bought by the state with the idea of saving jobs. That's how the state ended up running industries that make chocolates or catch shrimp. It led to $7 billion in losses for Costa Ricans.
In the 1980s, a new form of politics emerged. In the '70s, they had put people on the public payroll. That was no longer sustainable. So they began a practice of instead granting privileges to unions and forced firms to buy licenses for, say, running cabs. These privileges were politically assigned, and as there were three principal banks, heavily controlled by the state, until recently loans, too, were politically assigned.
There were a range of giveaways to the poor as well, like the bono alimenticio to pay for food. A lot of people stopped working because food was guaranteed. Then came the bono de la vivienda or the bono de vivienda popular: $10,000 as a gift of the state for housing. To free education, they added a new benefit called the beca, or bono escolar to pay for schoolbooks.
This is the origin of our movement. Nobody was defending liberty. And it was being lost at an accelerated rate.
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 6
Learning Percentage: 35%
Recall Supporters Attacked by Davis Supporters
(received via e-mail)
Recall Supporters Violently Attacked
by Gray Davis Thugs
Women and Children Among Those Victimized
Above: Recall Gray Davis Committee supporter, Shawn Cubbage – wearing a baseball cap – is attacked by union thugs wearing dark “NO ON RECALL” t-shirts paid for by the State Building & Construction Trades Council. Another Recall Gray Davis supporter, Donald Lacomb, is immediately behind Cubbage and had attempted to help protect Mr. Cubbage but was then assaulted himself.
UPDATE TO ALL
RECALL GRAY DAVIS
SUPPORTERS
FROM:
The Honorable Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Several Recall Gray Davis Supporters
Kicked, Beaten, Punched, Tackled to the Ground as They Protested Taxpayer Funding of
Anti-Recall Workshops.
Recall Gray Davis supporters and volunteers were violently attacked by thugs supporting Governor Gray Davis on Saturday and have filed a criminal complaint. Our top-notch legal team is also exploring possible civil action.
On Saturday, several peaceful Recall Gray Davis protestors were brutally beaten, kicked, punched and tackled to the ground by union workers who were attending a taxpayer-funded workshop, WAR - “Workers Against the Recall.”
The violent “WAR” union workshop attendees rushed across J Street in downtown Sacramento – through traffic! – in several waves and attacked the pro-recall protestors.
A 20-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were terrorized.
One of four incidents where recall supporters were physically beaten was caught on video by Fox News Channel and the Recall Gray Davis Committee has uploaded a clip of this footage to our website. For video and photographs of part of the attack please CLICK HERE.
PLEASE – I need your help.
As the chairman of the Recall Gray Davis Committee, I am sickened by the sights and sounds of my staff and recall supporters and volunteers being beaten by thugs.
Several of our people were victimized in four attacks – one of which is captured in the Fox News Channel video and photographs shown at this special page on our website.
We cannot tolerate this behavior from the thugs who Gray Davis and his political team have hired to fight the recall effort. Make no mistake – Davis and his hired guns are determined to frighten and intimidate the people of California from supporting this recall.
When they tell you that the recall is a “circus atmosphere” or “risky” they are trying to strike fear into your soul.
And now we see they are going even further by trying to scare people from actively and publicly working on behalf of the recall campaign through the use of violence.
We must not let them defeat us with fear.
I need you to call your local talk radio stations and voice your outrage over this revolting incident. I need you to send the pictures and video file to reporters at major newspapers, television stations and radio stations.
DEMAND THAT THEY SHOW CALIFORNIANS THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THOSE WHO DARED TO OPPOSE GRAY DAVIS.
If you can also continue to help fund our legal defense fund I would greatly appreciate it. So many of you sent in generous contributions to assist in our legal efforts to date. I never thought that I would have to raise money for the medical bills for recall supporters and legal bills to fight those who had attacked my dedicated and hard-working staff.
If I have to, I will pay these expenses out of my own pocket – my staff and our volunteers have become an extended family of mine who have made history thanks to their tireless efforts, determination, honesty, integrity and perseverance. I will not allow anyone to harm members of this great family without also going through me.
As you will recall, the reason we had organized our peaceful protest against these “WAR” workshops – on the OPPOSITE side of the street from where the workshops were being held – is because they used taxpayer funds to assist in the leadership and planning of the workshops.
The University of California Institute for Labor & Employment received $4,000,000 in taxpayer money from this year’s budget and was listed as one of the lead organizers of these workshops.
We were outraged and wanted to show the media and the people of California that we would not allow Gray Davis to get away with this unnoticed.
Apparently they decided to beat my staff, supporters and volunteers into silence.
But we cannot be silent, my friends.
The end is near for Gray Davis’ corrupt and failed administration and we must move forward undaunted – committed in our goal of restoring the California Dream for our families.
Please – make sure that every Californian hears the truth about what happened on this violent Saturday morning. We must not let those who endured the pain and physical punishment for standing up for their beliefs to have suffered in vain.
Sincerely,
Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Obituary Backs `removal of Bush'
Woman `thought He Was A Liar'
Thursday, August 21, 2003
By Lee Sensenbrenner The Capital Times
When Sally Baron's family wrote her obituary, they described a northern Wisconsin woman who raised six children and took care of her husband after he was crushed in a mining accident.
She had moved to Stoughton seven years ago to be closer to her children and was 71 when she died Monday after struggling to recuperate from heart surgery. Her family had come to the question of what might be a fitting tribute to her.
"My uncle asked if there was a cause," her youngest son, Pete Baron, said.
Almost in unison, what her children decided to include in the obituary was this: "Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush."
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 40%
Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
t r u t h o u t - Paul Krugman | Conan the Deceiver
By Paul Krugman
New York Times
Friday 22 August 2003
The key moment in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Wednesday press conference came when the bodybuilder who would be governor brushed aside questions with the declaration, "The public doesn't care about figures." This was "fuzzy math" on steroids - Mr. Schwarzenegger was, in effect, asserting that his celebrity gives him the right to fake his way through the election. Will he be allowed to get away with it?
Reporters were trying to press Mr. Schwarzenegger for the specifics so obviously missing from his budget plans. But while he hasn't said much about what he proposes to do, the candidate has nonetheless already managed to say a number of things that his advisers must know are true lies.
...
...the candidate says he won't touch education. Sharp cuts in medical spending would be not only cruel but foolish, since in many cases they would mean losing federal matching funds. And prison spending is largely determined by the state's "three strikes" law. In short, he's not leveling with voters: there's no way to balance the budget while honoring all his promises.
But the candidate says that specifics don't matter, that the public just wants someone "tough enough." Does he really think that voters will confuse him with the characters he plays?
So here's the question: Can a celebrity candidate muscle his way into public office without ever being held accountable for his statements?
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 45%
Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Contra Costa Times | 08/21/2003 | Recall candidate withdraws as past murder charges rise
Excerpt (emphasis and wisecrack added):
Scott Winfield Davis, a Palo Alto resident running for governor, announced late Tuesday that he was pulling out of the race, just hours after he talked about his campaign and his past with the San Jose Mercury News.
Davis was charged with murder in Atlanta seven years ago, accused of killing his estranged wife's lover and setting his home and Porsche afire. Although the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney told the Mercury News he still considers Davis "the top suspect."
Not long after the district attorney's statement, Davis announced he was no longer a candidate, citing personal reasons, business commitments and the overwhelming number of candidates.
(Probably a little more the first thing than the second two, I'm thinking.)
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .3
Learning Percentage: 98%
August 18, 2003
Arianna's Recall Entrance Speech
Arianna Huffington Announces Her Candidacy for Governor of California
Wednesday, Aug 6, 2003
Today I am announcing that I am running for Governor of the great state of California.
Those are 16 words I never imagined I would hear myself say. And they are in no way based on the findings of British intelligence.
I am not -- to say the least -- a conventional candidate. But these are not conventional times. And we will never find a way out of the mess we are in if we continue to elect the same politicians -- backed by the same special interests -- that got us into it.
I have spent a large part of my life writing and speaking out on the need for each of us to become personally involved with our community -- to devote time and attention to building a more just and more compassionate society.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Davy Crockett vs. Welfare
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
Thank you, oh mighty War on Drugs, for opening yet another perverse tear in our society's fabric.
There is one good thing about crystal meth: Of all the drugs in the New Prohibition, it's the one which is most obviously reminiscent of the first Prohibition. (Think moonshine.) Maybe something will snap, as people internally compare the images on the evening news with the contraption in "The Swamp" on M*A*S*H, and experience a cognitive dissonance -- preferably, a big collective one.
From the end of the article:
You can help as well by reporting suspected labs to state police.
Try, "You can help as well by demanding a swift and certain end to the foolish 'War on Drugs'."
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
(Mattawan, August 12, 2003, 6:20 p.m. ) Camping is a favorite summer past time for Cindy Harnish and her family.
But while getting ready for a camp out earlier this summer, Cindy's father discovered a problem with his travel trailer.
"We got up north and the refrigerator, we tried to light it up but it wouldn't light. So he opened it up and it looked like it had been cut."
But what first appeared to be an act of vandalism may actually have been the latest chapter in the war against the drug known as crystal meth.
For years, makers of crystal meth have been stealing anhydrous ammonia from tanks on farm fields and farm co-ops.
...Now, it appears some manufacturers are turning to RV's.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
By Andrew England
Associated Press
Sunday 17 August 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Quranic verse plastered on a monument to freedom carries a simple message - God will send a plague on those who deal in drugs and spread corruption.
But the message is being widely ignored.
Across the busy highway from the monument, built in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy, traders have set up gambling tables and are openly selling pornography, fake ID cards and looted goods - including laboratory microscopes, industrial fuse boxes and pills stolen from psychiatric hospitals.
"Now we have freedom and democracy," said a 34-year-old trader selling pornographic DVDs with titles such as "The Dirty Family" and "The Young Wife," and photocopied postcards of couples in various sexual positions. "We could not sell them when Saddam was here."
This is Baghdad four months after U.S. troops took over the sprawling city of 5 million - jobless, insecure, and in many cases taking "freedom and democracy" as license to do pretty much what you want and get away with it.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .2
Learning Percentage: 55%
August 17, 2003
Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Arizona's Clean Elections law: Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Commission orders the Dist. 17 candidates to repay $104,237 they spent on booze, food.
DAVID PITTMAN
Tucson Citizen
Thursday, July 31, 2003
A trio of defeated Phoenix-area legislative candidates spent thousands of dollars on alcohol, food, rental cars and entertainment expenses at trendy Scottsdale nightspots - and used Clean Elections money to do it.
...
Yuri Downing, the son of state Rep. Ted Downing, D-Tucson, said the trio is guilty of only one thing: attempting to run an unorthodox campaign to attract youthful voters.
District 17 includes south Scottsdale and most of Tempe. It takes in all of the Arizona State University campus and most of the students attending the university.
"We are Libertarian candidates, we knew going into the campaign that the odds of us winning were very small," said Yuri Downing. "The only hope we had was to go after the younger demographic, get them registered and to the polls. Those people aren't in church on Sunday morning. So we targeted the places where they do go."
What the three Libertarian candidates did was campaign at sporting events and at campus-area parties and popular watering holes. Yuri Downing said there is nothing wrong with that, accusing the commission of trying to "micro-manage" the trio's campaign.
"Are they saying I didn't run the campaign the way they would have run it?" he asked. "They have no right, either legally or morally, to make that decision."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 70%
California's Hot Ticket
This is a pretty good tongue-in-cheek look at the recall playing field.
California's Hot Ticket (washingtonpost.com)
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page C01
BURBANK, Calif., Aug. 6
The special effect known as Arnold Schwarzenegger has just told Jay Leno (which is the same as telling America, nowadays) that he's decided to accept the starring role in yet another way over budget movie with "Recall" in the title, rocketing into the race to become governor of California in the statewide vote to decide the fate of current Gov. Gray Davis.
"When I moved to California in 1968 it was the greatest state in the greatest nation in the world," the actor said, during the taping of the "Tonight" show at NBC Studios here. "Now it is totally the opposite. The atmosphere is disastrous. There is total disconnect of the people in California. [They] are working hard, paying taxes, raising families, and politicians are not doing their jobs. They're fiddling, fumbling and failing. . . .
"And this is why I'm going to run for governor of the state of California."
At which point, the studio audience screamed and their heads exploded, spattering blood everywhere. (Okay, okay. Maybe they'll add that part, with CGI, in the movie version.)
Greetings from schizzy California, where the Leno show now functions as a public forum, a royal veranda, the conduit by which the famously political can officially speak to loyal subjects about nearly issueless panic politics and (by some weird extension of the sunshine and celebrity vibe) speak to that small piece of California in the rest of the national psyche.
...
The recall is frequently compared to some neat, new, vaguely obnoxious summertime reality show, only this time it stars everybody, all 35 million or so Californians, and it's not as tightly edited.
There are characters you dislike. (The namby-pamby governor. The conniving car-alarm magnate. The poliguru pundit. The former mayor.) There are characters you root for, sometimes just because you like the flukiness of their ambition. (The pornographer. The Terminator. The punk rocker. The bounty hunter. The former Republican congressman who is known mostly for coming out of the closet late in life.) There are characters who are going to get voted off so fast. Mostly there are just lots and lots of characters.
Saturday is the deadline for gubernatorial wannabes to file as candidates. Although several hundred people had picked up paperwork and said they intended to run, it's still not clear how many will actually make deadline and get on the ballot. Some people actually sense giddiness at a safe distance; they want to see as many candidates as possible, a ballot that rambles on into chaos.
It's all endlessly watchable and so very, embarrassingly California.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
LA Times: Recall is a Circus Without Solutions
Los Angeles Times
Friday 08 August 2003
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in declining Wednesday to run for governor, lamented that the Oct. 7 recall election was becoming "more and more like a carnival every day." And that was before actor Arnold Schwarzenegger ended his slow striptease of refusal, announcing during a late-night entertainment show that he will run for governor after all. The Terminator promised, "I will go to Sacramento and I will clean house." Then, anticlimactically, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante shattered the fragile Democratic unity, offering himself as a candidate to replace a governor he served but never liked.
Carnival? Circus? How about action comics? WHAP! BAM! BIFF! POW! TAKE THAT, CALIFORNIA!
Democrat John Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner and a frequent candidate, was in, and Rep. Darryl Issa, who bankrolled the recall petition campaign, was out. The California Supreme Court rejected a series of lawsuits challenging the recall and seeking to delay it. Several cases remain before the federal courts, but each decision moves the election closer to reality.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 8%
The mystery men behind the recall
This has a lot of "dirt" about the characters behind the recall scenes. FWIW.
California Confidential
Who are the mystery men behind the recall push?
By Max Blumenthal
Web Exclusive: 8.13.03
"It's a victory. A total victory!" Howard Kaloogian exclaimed on the right-wing Worldmag.com after hearing that the petition to recall the election of California's embattled Gov. Gray Davis had gained enough signatures to qualify as a ballot question. Kaloogian, a former Republican California legislator, had plenty of reason to cheer. Because while the media have presented Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the wealthy car-alarm magnate, as the man who drove the recall, he's actually been little more than a useful idiot for a stealthy group of GOP operatives who laid the groundwork. Months before the recall was even a blip on the media radar, this consultant cabal began manipulating California's idiosyncratic electoral system, creating a muscular funding mechanism and exploiting it for its members' own ends.
The cabal includes Kaloogian, who was a right-wing backbencher in the state Assembly, Sal Russo, who handled banker Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and David Gilliard, a veteran GOP strategist with a career steeped in scandal. They're joined by former Enron pollster and Republican tactician Frank Luntz, who devised a strategy for the recall campaign centering around negative character attacks and avoidance of policy discussion. With the surprise announcement of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who boasted on The Tonight Show Aug. 6, "I have plenty of money. Nobody can buy me off." -- the movie star's high-priced uber-consultants George Gorton and Don Sipple have grabbed the baton in the recall race, eager to take it the last mile to the state capitol. Thanks to this handful of men and the millionaires who bankrolled them, what started with a petition and a few phone calls has become an election that may unseat a twice-elected governor and dramatically affect the lives of one in seven Americans.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 70%
Democracy in Iraq might be impossible, US was told
Democracy might be impossible, US was told
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2003
WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime -- as a model for the rest of the region -- was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible."
That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on Feb. 26.
The question of how quickly, and easily, the United States could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security. The administration offered few assessments of its own but dismissed predictions by the army chief of staff of a lengthy occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops.
Now, frustration among Iraqis about a lack of stability and the slow pace of reconstruction -- and new evidence that Islamic militants are slipping into Iraq to take up arms against the Americans -- are leading the administration to lengthen its plans to keep troops in Iraq for up to four years. And the Pentagon is moving to lower expectations for a shift to democracy, suggesting that a liberal democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but acknowledging the difficulty of creating one.
"The question isn't whether it is feasible, but is it worth a try," Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.
"Is it worth a try"? Wouldn't the question be "Is it worth killing thousands of innocent people and destabilizing the world for an effort to accomplish something that is likely impossible?"?
Is that "worth a try?"
Read It Rating: 8.8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Fri Aug 15,12:12 PM ET
By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Clerics from across the Muslim sectarian divide blasted the U.S. occupation of Iraq in Friday prayers as guerrilla hit-and-run attacks in the center of the country inflicted more American casualties.
...
Chanting "Yes for Islam, No to America," more than 5,000 worshippers held prayers in open air at a street in northern Baghdad's Sadr City, where U.S. forces shot dead one Iraqi and wounded four during a protest earlier in the week.
"What happened (in Sadr City) clearly shows that America and international Zionism have declared war against Islam," Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Daraji said.
...
In the Sunni town of Falluja, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi said U.S. troops faced more attacks if they remained in Iraq.
"The future will witness more killing and resistance operations against the United States in Iraq," he told hundreds of worshippers in a mosque in the town, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 40%
Reason: Dean's List
Can the Vermont guv flash mob his way to power?
August 13, 2003
Jeff Taylor
The crowd in Philadelphia got a quick lesson in viral marketing from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who urged his supporters to spam the hell out of their friends.
"When we send you stuff, you send it to your e-mail list. A hundred people on everybody's email list here, that's four hundred thousand people!" Dean said at a rally on Monday that dwarfed the response other candidates received.
Is Dean nuts or is he onto something? Probably a little of both, which makes him dangerous to status quo assumptions about how 2004 will unfold. ...
At a minimum, Dean's campaign is setting a new standard for integrating the Internet into the overall campaign and is using a number of free or nearly free off-the-shelf components to do it.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 25%
Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
Donald Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
In Pursuit of Global Supremacy, We Have Polluted Every Part of Our Nation
By DONALD WORSTER
After much denial, Americans are finally beginning to admit that we are indeed an imperial nation. What Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers openly dreamed about two centuries ago has become reality, and the United States has taken Britain's place as the seat of empire, dominating the globe.
What does an empire cost and is that cost worth paying?
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L2.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
The Other Guevara:Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Reason interviews Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Excerpt:
Perhaps surprisingly, the most successful libertarian party in recent years has arisen in Latin America, where left and right wing variants of statism have been the norm for much of the 20th century. In Costa Rica, the ten-year-old Movimiento Libertario has managed to elect six diputados to the country's 57-seat congress. The chief architect of that success was Otto Guevara, who served as the party's first elected diputado, from 1998 to 2002. In late July, he spoke with Reason during a visit to Washington, D.C.'s Cato Institute.
What inspired you to launch a Costa Rican libertarian party?
To understand the birth of Movimiento Libertario, you need to put yourself in the context of the Costa Rica of that time. Costa Rica is a substantially socialist country, with a state monopoly on alcohol, a state monopoly on insurance. There's a state monopoly in telecommunications, in agriculture, in fuel refinement and distribution. Education is constitutionally free, mandatory, and run by the state. Ninety-three percent of the population, girls and boys, attends public, state schools.
Costa Rica, like a majority of the Latin American states, experimented with a development scheme based on import substitution. It closed its borders, turned inwards. The state began to make inroads in many other industries—production of fertilizers, of cement, of cotton, of tuna. They had state tuna catching boats! Bankrupt industries were bought by the state with the idea of saving jobs. That's how the state ended up running industries that make chocolates or catch shrimp. It led to $7 billion in losses for Costa Ricans.
In the 1980s, a new form of politics emerged. In the '70s, they had put people on the public payroll. That was no longer sustainable. So they began a practice of instead granting privileges to unions and forced firms to buy licenses for, say, running cabs. These privileges were politically assigned, and as there were three principal banks, heavily controlled by the state, until recently loans, too, were politically assigned.
There were a range of giveaways to the poor as well, like the bono alimenticio to pay for food. A lot of people stopped working because food was guaranteed. Then came the bono de la vivienda or the bono de vivienda popular: $10,000 as a gift of the state for housing. To free education, they added a new benefit called the beca, or bono escolar to pay for schoolbooks.
This is the origin of our movement. Nobody was defending liberty. And it was being lost at an accelerated rate.
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 6
Learning Percentage: 35%
Recall Supporters Attacked by Davis Supporters
(received via e-mail)
Recall Supporters Violently Attacked
by Gray Davis Thugs
Women and Children Among Those Victimized
Above: Recall Gray Davis Committee supporter, Shawn Cubbage – wearing a baseball cap – is attacked by union thugs wearing dark “NO ON RECALL” t-shirts paid for by the State Building & Construction Trades Council. Another Recall Gray Davis supporter, Donald Lacomb, is immediately behind Cubbage and had attempted to help protect Mr. Cubbage but was then assaulted himself.
UPDATE TO ALL
RECALL GRAY DAVIS
SUPPORTERS
FROM:
The Honorable Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Several Recall Gray Davis Supporters
Kicked, Beaten, Punched, Tackled to the Ground as They Protested Taxpayer Funding of
Anti-Recall Workshops.
Recall Gray Davis supporters and volunteers were violently attacked by thugs supporting Governor Gray Davis on Saturday and have filed a criminal complaint. Our top-notch legal team is also exploring possible civil action.
On Saturday, several peaceful Recall Gray Davis protestors were brutally beaten, kicked, punched and tackled to the ground by union workers who were attending a taxpayer-funded workshop, WAR - “Workers Against the Recall.”
The violent “WAR” union workshop attendees rushed across J Street in downtown Sacramento – through traffic! – in several waves and attacked the pro-recall protestors.
A 20-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were terrorized.
One of four incidents where recall supporters were physically beaten was caught on video by Fox News Channel and the Recall Gray Davis Committee has uploaded a clip of this footage to our website. For video and photographs of part of the attack please CLICK HERE.
PLEASE – I need your help.
As the chairman of the Recall Gray Davis Committee, I am sickened by the sights and sounds of my staff and recall supporters and volunteers being beaten by thugs.
Several of our people were victimized in four attacks – one of which is captured in the Fox News Channel video and photographs shown at this special page on our website.
We cannot tolerate this behavior from the thugs who Gray Davis and his political team have hired to fight the recall effort. Make no mistake – Davis and his hired guns are determined to frighten and intimidate the people of California from supporting this recall.
When they tell you that the recall is a “circus atmosphere” or “risky” they are trying to strike fear into your soul.
And now we see they are going even further by trying to scare people from actively and publicly working on behalf of the recall campaign through the use of violence.
We must not let them defeat us with fear.
I need you to call your local talk radio stations and voice your outrage over this revolting incident. I need you to send the pictures and video file to reporters at major newspapers, television stations and radio stations.
DEMAND THAT THEY SHOW CALIFORNIANS THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THOSE WHO DARED TO OPPOSE GRAY DAVIS.
If you can also continue to help fund our legal defense fund I would greatly appreciate it. So many of you sent in generous contributions to assist in our legal efforts to date. I never thought that I would have to raise money for the medical bills for recall supporters and legal bills to fight those who had attacked my dedicated and hard-working staff.
If I have to, I will pay these expenses out of my own pocket – my staff and our volunteers have become an extended family of mine who have made history thanks to their tireless efforts, determination, honesty, integrity and perseverance. I will not allow anyone to harm members of this great family without also going through me.
As you will recall, the reason we had organized our peaceful protest against these “WAR” workshops – on the OPPOSITE side of the street from where the workshops were being held – is because they used taxpayer funds to assist in the leadership and planning of the workshops.
The University of California Institute for Labor & Employment received $4,000,000 in taxpayer money from this year’s budget and was listed as one of the lead organizers of these workshops.
We were outraged and wanted to show the media and the people of California that we would not allow Gray Davis to get away with this unnoticed.
Apparently they decided to beat my staff, supporters and volunteers into silence.
But we cannot be silent, my friends.
The end is near for Gray Davis’ corrupt and failed administration and we must move forward undaunted – committed in our goal of restoring the California Dream for our families.
Please – make sure that every Californian hears the truth about what happened on this violent Saturday morning. We must not let those who endured the pain and physical punishment for standing up for their beliefs to have suffered in vain.
Sincerely,
Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Arianna's Recall Entrance Speech
Arianna Huffington Announces Her Candidacy for Governor of California
Wednesday, Aug 6, 2003
Today I am announcing that I am running for Governor of the great state of California.
Those are 16 words I never imagined I would hear myself say. And they are in no way based on the findings of British intelligence.
I am not -- to say the least -- a conventional candidate. But these are not conventional times. And we will never find a way out of the mess we are in if we continue to elect the same politicians -- backed by the same special interests -- that got us into it.
I have spent a large part of my life writing and speaking out on the need for each of us to become personally involved with our community -- to devote time and attention to building a more just and more compassionate society.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L6
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Davy Crockett vs. Welfare
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
Thank you, oh mighty War on Drugs, for opening yet another perverse tear in our society's fabric.
There is one good thing about crystal meth: Of all the drugs in the New Prohibition, it's the one which is most obviously reminiscent of the first Prohibition. (Think moonshine.) Maybe something will snap, as people internally compare the images on the evening news with the contraption in "The Swamp" on M*A*S*H, and experience a cognitive dissonance -- preferably, a big collective one.
From the end of the article:
You can help as well by reporting suspected labs to state police.
Try, "You can help as well by demanding a swift and certain end to the foolish 'War on Drugs'."
Illegal drug makers targeting RV's
(Mattawan, August 12, 2003, 6:20 p.m. ) Camping is a favorite summer past time for Cindy Harnish and her family.
But while getting ready for a camp out earlier this summer, Cindy's father discovered a problem with his travel trailer.
"We got up north and the refrigerator, we tried to light it up but it wouldn't light. So he opened it up and it looked like it had been cut."
But what first appeared to be an act of vandalism may actually have been the latest chapter in the war against the drug known as crystal meth.
For years, makers of crystal meth have been stealing anhydrous ammonia from tanks on farm fields and farm co-ops.
...Now, it appears some manufacturers are turning to RV's.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
Porn, Drugs, Weapons Hit Baghdad Streets
By Andrew England
Associated Press
Sunday 17 August 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Quranic verse plastered on a monument to freedom carries a simple message - God will send a plague on those who deal in drugs and spread corruption.
But the message is being widely ignored.
Across the busy highway from the monument, built in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy, traders have set up gambling tables and are openly selling pornography, fake ID cards and looted goods - including laboratory microscopes, industrial fuse boxes and pills stolen from psychiatric hospitals.
"Now we have freedom and democracy," said a 34-year-old trader selling pornographic DVDs with titles such as "The Dirty Family" and "The Young Wife," and photocopied postcards of couples in various sexual positions. "We could not sell them when Saddam was here."
This is Baghdad four months after U.S. troops took over the sprawling city of 5 million - jobless, insecure, and in many cases taking "freedom and democracy" as license to do pretty much what you want and get away with it.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .2
Learning Percentage: 55%
Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Arizona's Clean Elections law: Trio is in hot water over meaning of political 'party'
Commission orders the Dist. 17 candidates to repay $104,237 they spent on booze, food.
DAVID PITTMAN
Tucson Citizen
Thursday, July 31, 2003
A trio of defeated Phoenix-area legislative candidates spent thousands of dollars on alcohol, food, rental cars and entertainment expenses at trendy Scottsdale nightspots - and used Clean Elections money to do it.
...
Yuri Downing, the son of state Rep. Ted Downing, D-Tucson, said the trio is guilty of only one thing: attempting to run an unorthodox campaign to attract youthful voters.
District 17 includes south Scottsdale and most of Tempe. It takes in all of the Arizona State University campus and most of the students attending the university.
"We are Libertarian candidates, we knew going into the campaign that the odds of us winning were very small," said Yuri Downing. "The only hope we had was to go after the younger demographic, get them registered and to the polls. Those people aren't in church on Sunday morning. So we targeted the places where they do go."
What the three Libertarian candidates did was campaign at sporting events and at campus-area parties and popular watering holes. Yuri Downing said there is nothing wrong with that, accusing the commission of trying to "micro-manage" the trio's campaign.
"Are they saying I didn't run the campaign the way they would have run it?" he asked. "They have no right, either legally or morally, to make that decision."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 70%
California's Hot Ticket
This is a pretty good tongue-in-cheek look at the recall playing field.
California's Hot Ticket (washingtonpost.com)
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page C01
BURBANK, Calif., Aug. 6
The special effect known as Arnold Schwarzenegger has just told Jay Leno (which is the same as telling America, nowadays) that he's decided to accept the starring role in yet another way over budget movie with "Recall" in the title, rocketing into the race to become governor of California in the statewide vote to decide the fate of current Gov. Gray Davis.
"When I moved to California in 1968 it was the greatest state in the greatest nation in the world," the actor said, during the taping of the "Tonight" show at NBC Studios here. "Now it is totally the opposite. The atmosphere is disastrous. There is total disconnect of the people in California. [They] are working hard, paying taxes, raising families, and politicians are not doing their jobs. They're fiddling, fumbling and failing. . . .
"And this is why I'm going to run for governor of the state of California."
At which point, the studio audience screamed and their heads exploded, spattering blood everywhere. (Okay, okay. Maybe they'll add that part, with CGI, in the movie version.)
Greetings from schizzy California, where the Leno show now functions as a public forum, a royal veranda, the conduit by which the famously political can officially speak to loyal subjects about nearly issueless panic politics and (by some weird extension of the sunshine and celebrity vibe) speak to that small piece of California in the rest of the national psyche.
...
The recall is frequently compared to some neat, new, vaguely obnoxious summertime reality show, only this time it stars everybody, all 35 million or so Californians, and it's not as tightly edited.
There are characters you dislike. (The namby-pamby governor. The conniving car-alarm magnate. The poliguru pundit. The former mayor.) There are characters you root for, sometimes just because you like the flukiness of their ambition. (The pornographer. The Terminator. The punk rocker. The bounty hunter. The former Republican congressman who is known mostly for coming out of the closet late in life.) There are characters who are going to get voted off so fast. Mostly there are just lots and lots of characters.
Saturday is the deadline for gubernatorial wannabes to file as candidates. Although several hundred people had picked up paperwork and said they intended to run, it's still not clear how many will actually make deadline and get on the ballot. Some people actually sense giddiness at a safe distance; they want to see as many candidates as possible, a ballot that rambles on into chaos.
It's all endlessly watchable and so very, embarrassingly California.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
LA Times: Recall is a Circus Without Solutions
Los Angeles Times
Friday 08 August 2003
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in declining Wednesday to run for governor, lamented that the Oct. 7 recall election was becoming "more and more like a carnival every day." And that was before actor Arnold Schwarzenegger ended his slow striptease of refusal, announcing during a late-night entertainment show that he will run for governor after all. The Terminator promised, "I will go to Sacramento and I will clean house." Then, anticlimactically, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante shattered the fragile Democratic unity, offering himself as a candidate to replace a governor he served but never liked.
Carnival? Circus? How about action comics? WHAP! BAM! BIFF! POW! TAKE THAT, CALIFORNIA!
Democrat John Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner and a frequent candidate, was in, and Rep. Darryl Issa, who bankrolled the recall petition campaign, was out. The California Supreme Court rejected a series of lawsuits challenging the recall and seeking to delay it. Several cases remain before the federal courts, but each decision moves the election closer to reality.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 8%
The mystery men behind the recall
This has a lot of "dirt" about the characters behind the recall scenes. FWIW.
California Confidential
Who are the mystery men behind the recall push?
By Max Blumenthal
Web Exclusive: 8.13.03
"It's a victory. A total victory!" Howard Kaloogian exclaimed on the right-wing Worldmag.com after hearing that the petition to recall the election of California's embattled Gov. Gray Davis had gained enough signatures to qualify as a ballot question. Kaloogian, a former Republican California legislator, had plenty of reason to cheer. Because while the media have presented Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the wealthy car-alarm magnate, as the man who drove the recall, he's actually been little more than a useful idiot for a stealthy group of GOP operatives who laid the groundwork. Months before the recall was even a blip on the media radar, this consultant cabal began manipulating California's idiosyncratic electoral system, creating a muscular funding mechanism and exploiting it for its members' own ends.
The cabal includes Kaloogian, who was a right-wing backbencher in the state Assembly, Sal Russo, who handled banker Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and David Gilliard, a veteran GOP strategist with a career steeped in scandal. They're joined by former Enron pollster and Republican tactician Frank Luntz, who devised a strategy for the recall campaign centering around negative character attacks and avoidance of policy discussion. With the surprise announcement of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who boasted on The Tonight Show Aug. 6, "I have plenty of money. Nobody can buy me off." -- the movie star's high-priced uber-consultants George Gorton and Don Sipple have grabbed the baton in the recall race, eager to take it the last mile to the state capitol. Thanks to this handful of men and the millionaires who bankrolled them, what started with a petition and a few phone calls has become an election that may unseat a twice-elected governor and dramatically affect the lives of one in seven Americans.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 70%
Democracy in Iraq might be impossible, US was told
Democracy might be impossible, US was told
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2003
WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime -- as a model for the rest of the region -- was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible."
That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on Feb. 26.
The question of how quickly, and easily, the United States could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security. The administration offered few assessments of its own but dismissed predictions by the army chief of staff of a lengthy occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops.
Now, frustration among Iraqis about a lack of stability and the slow pace of reconstruction -- and new evidence that Islamic militants are slipping into Iraq to take up arms against the Americans -- are leading the administration to lengthen its plans to keep troops in Iraq for up to four years. And the Pentagon is moving to lower expectations for a shift to democracy, suggesting that a liberal democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but acknowledging the difficulty of creating one.
"The question isn't whether it is feasible, but is it worth a try," Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.
"Is it worth a try"? Wouldn't the question be "Is it worth killing thousands of innocent people and destabilizing the world for an effort to accomplish something that is likely impossible?"?
Is that "worth a try?"
Read It Rating: 8.8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Clerics Urge U.S. to Quit Iraq
Fri Aug 15,12:12 PM ET
By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Clerics from across the Muslim sectarian divide blasted the U.S. occupation of Iraq in Friday prayers as guerrilla hit-and-run attacks in the center of the country inflicted more American casualties.
...
Chanting "Yes for Islam, No to America," more than 5,000 worshippers held prayers in open air at a street in northern Baghdad's Sadr City, where U.S. forces shot dead one Iraqi and wounded four during a protest earlier in the week.
"What happened (in Sadr City) clearly shows that America and international Zionism have declared war against Islam," Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Daraji said.
...
In the Sunni town of Falluja, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi said U.S. troops faced more attacks if they remained in Iraq.
"The future will witness more killing and resistance operations against the United States in Iraq," he told hundreds of worshippers in a mosque in the town, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 40%
Reason: Dean's List
Can the Vermont guv flash mob his way to power?
August 13, 2003
Jeff Taylor
The crowd in Philadelphia got a quick lesson in viral marketing from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who urged his supporters to spam the hell out of their friends.
"When we send you stuff, you send it to your e-mail list. A hundred people on everybody's email list here, that's four hundred thousand people!" Dean said at a rally on Monday that dwarfed the response other candidates received.
Is Dean nuts or is he onto something? Probably a little of both, which makes him dangerous to status quo assumptions about how 2004 will unfold. ...
At a minimum, Dean's campaign is setting a new standard for integrating the Internet into the overall campaign and is using a number of free or nearly free off-the-shelf components to do it.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 25%
Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
Donald Worster: The Heavy Cost of Empire
In Pursuit of Global Supremacy, We Have Polluted Every Part of Our Nation
By DONALD WORSTER
After much denial, Americans are finally beginning to admit that we are indeed an imperial nation. What Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers openly dreamed about two centuries ago has become reality, and the United States has taken Britain's place as the seat of empire, dominating the globe.
What does an empire cost and is that cost worth paying?
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L2.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
The Other Guevara:Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Reason interviews Costa Rica's Libertarian revolutionary
Excerpt:
Perhaps surprisingly, the most successful libertarian party in recent years has arisen in Latin America, where left and right wing variants of statism have been the norm for much of the 20th century. In Costa Rica, the ten-year-old Movimiento Libertario has managed to elect six diputados to the country's 57-seat congress. The chief architect of that success was Otto Guevara, who served as the party's first elected diputado, from 1998 to 2002. In late July, he spoke with Reason during a visit to Washington, D.C.'s Cato Institute.
What inspired you to launch a Costa Rican libertarian party?
To understand the birth of Movimiento Libertario, you need to put yourself in the context of the Costa Rica of that time. Costa Rica is a substantially socialist country, with a state monopoly on alcohol, a state monopoly on insurance. There's a state monopoly in telecommunications, in agriculture, in fuel refinement and distribution. Education is constitutionally free, mandatory, and run by the state. Ninety-three percent of the population, girls and boys, attends public, state schools.
Costa Rica, like a majority of the Latin American states, experimented with a development scheme based on import substitution. It closed its borders, turned inwards. The state began to make inroads in many other industries—production of fertilizers, of cement, of cotton, of tuna. They had state tuna catching boats! Bankrupt industries were bought by the state with the idea of saving jobs. That's how the state ended up running industries that make chocolates or catch shrimp. It led to $7 billion in losses for Costa Ricans.
In the 1980s, a new form of politics emerged. In the '70s, they had put people on the public payroll. That was no longer sustainable. So they began a practice of instead granting privileges to unions and forced firms to buy licenses for, say, running cabs. These privileges were politically assigned, and as there were three principal banks, heavily controlled by the state, until recently loans, too, were politically assigned.
There were a range of giveaways to the poor as well, like the bono alimenticio to pay for food. A lot of people stopped working because food was guaranteed. Then came the bono de la vivienda or the bono de vivienda popular: $10,000 as a gift of the state for housing. To free education, they added a new benefit called the beca, or bono escolar to pay for schoolbooks.
This is the origin of our movement. Nobody was defending liberty. And it was being lost at an accelerated rate.
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 6
Learning Percentage: 35%
Recall Supporters Attacked by Davis Supporters
(received via e-mail)Recall Supporters Violently Attacked
by Gray Davis Thugs
Women and Children Among Those Victimized
|
Above: Recall Gray Davis Committee supporter, Shawn Cubbage – wearing a baseball cap – is attacked by union thugs wearing dark “NO ON RECALL” t-shirts paid for by the State Building & Construction Trades Council. Another Recall Gray Davis supporter, Donald Lacomb, is immediately behind Cubbage and had attempted to help protect Mr. Cubbage but was then assaulted himself. |
UPDATE TO ALL
RECALL GRAY DAVIS
SUPPORTERS
| FROM: | The Honorable Howard Kaloogian Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee www.RecallGrayDavis.com |
Several Recall Gray Davis Supporters
Kicked, Beaten, Punched, Tackled to the Ground as They Protested Taxpayer Funding of
Anti-Recall Workshops.
Recall Gray Davis supporters and volunteers were violently attacked by thugs supporting Governor Gray Davis on Saturday and have filed a criminal complaint. Our top-notch legal team is also exploring possible civil action.
On Saturday, several peaceful Recall Gray Davis protestors were brutally beaten, kicked, punched and tackled to the ground by union workers who were attending a taxpayer-funded workshop, WAR - “Workers Against the Recall.”
The violent “WAR” union workshop attendees rushed across J Street in downtown Sacramento – through traffic! – in several waves and attacked the pro-recall protestors.
A 20-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were terrorized.
One of four incidents where recall supporters were physically beaten was caught on video by Fox News Channel and the Recall Gray Davis Committee has uploaded a clip of this footage to our website. For video and photographs of part of the attack please CLICK HERE.
PLEASE – I need your help.
As the chairman of the Recall Gray Davis Committee, I am sickened by the sights and sounds of my staff and recall supporters and volunteers being beaten by thugs.
Several of our people were victimized in four attacks – one of which is captured in the Fox News Channel video and photographs shown at this special page on our website.
We cannot tolerate this behavior from the thugs who Gray Davis and his political team have hired to fight the recall effort. Make no mistake – Davis and his hired guns are determined to frighten and intimidate the people of California from supporting this recall.
When they tell you that the recall is a “circus atmosphere” or “risky” they are trying to strike fear into your soul.
And now we see they are going even further by trying to scare people from actively and publicly working on behalf of the recall campaign through the use of violence.
We must not let them defeat us with fear.
I need you to call your local talk radio stations and voice your outrage over this revolting incident. I need you to send the pictures and video file to reporters at major newspapers, television stations and radio stations.
DEMAND THAT THEY SHOW CALIFORNIANS THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THOSE WHO DARED TO OPPOSE GRAY DAVIS.
If you can also continue to help fund our legal defense fund I would greatly appreciate it. So many of you sent in generous contributions to assist in our legal efforts to date. I never thought that I would have to raise money for the medical bills for recall supporters and legal bills to fight those who had attacked my dedicated and hard-working staff.
If I have to, I will pay these expenses out of my own pocket – my staff and our volunteers have become an extended family of mine who have made history thanks to their tireless efforts, determination, honesty, integrity and perseverance. I will not allow anyone to harm members of this great family without also going through me.
As you will recall, the reason we had organized our peaceful protest against these “WAR” workshops – on the OPPOSITE side of the street from where the workshops were being held – is because they used taxpayer funds to assist in the leadership and planning of the workshops.
The University of California Institute for Labor & Employment received $4,000,000 in taxpayer money from this year’s budget and was listed as one of the lead organizers of these workshops.
We were outraged and wanted to show the media and the people of California that we would not allow Gray Davis to get away with this unnoticed.
Apparently they decided to beat my staff, supporters and volunteers into silence.
But we cannot be silent, my friends.
The end is near for Gray Davis’ corrupt and failed administration and we must move forward undaunted – committed in our goal of restoring the California Dream for our families.
Please – make sure that every Californian hears the truth about what happened on this violent Saturday morning. We must not let those who endured the pain and physical punishment for standing up for their beliefs to have suffered in vain.
Sincerely,
Howard Kaloogian
Chairman, Recall Gray Davis Committee
www.RecallGrayDavis.com
Grisham: Mr. California
This is another perma-copy story from Jack Grisham's campaign website.
(Jack Grisham was (and is again) the front man of punk band TSOL.)
It's just a portion of this original article. (I haven't read that whole article, but I might.)
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 65%
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
This re-examination of border history came about upon hearing that California recall candidate Cruz Bustamante is a member or supporter of an organization that seeks to have much of the formerly-Mexican land returned to Mexico. (Or so I've heard.)
The Border | 1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Excerpt:
At the time of the treaty, approximately 80,000 Mexicans lived in the ceded territory, which comprised only about 4 percent of Mexico’s population. Only a few people chose to remain Mexican citizens compared to the many that became United States citizens. Most of the 80,000 residents continued to live in the Southwest, believing in the guarantee that their property and civil rights would be protected. Sadly, this would not always be the case. By the end of the 19th century, most Mexicans had lost their land, either through force or fraud.
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 50%
Rocker throws his hat into the recall ring
This is actually a scanned-in copy of a LA Times article, from the media section of Jack Grisham's website.
Rocker throws his hat into the recall ring
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 80%
The U.S. Mexican War
Part of PBS' "The Border" online feature, from the "border timeline":
The Border | 1846 The U.S. Mexican War
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 40%
Bloggers Gain Libel Protection
Wired News: Bloggers Gain Libel Protection
By Xeni Jardin
02:00 AM Jun. 30, 2003 PT
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers.
Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily.
"One-way news publications have editors and fact-checkers, and they're not just selling information -- they're selling reliability," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But on blogs or e-mail lists, people aren't necessarily selling anything, they're just engaging in speech. That freedom of speech wouldn't exist if you were held liable for every piece of information you cut, paste and forward."
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Pipes the Propagandist
Pipes the Propagandist
Bush's nominee doesn't belong at the U.S. Institute for Peace
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, August 11, 2003, at 8:23 AM PT
When I read that Daniel Pipes had been nominated to the board of the United States Institute of Peace (a federally funded body whose members are proposed by the president and confirmed by the Senate), my first reaction was one of bafflement. Why did Pipes want the nomination? After all, USIP, a somewhat mild organization, is devoted to the peaceful resolution of conflict. For Pipes, this notion is a contradiction in terms.
I am not myself a pacifist, and I believe that Islamic nihilism has to be combated with every weapon, intellectual and moral as well as military, which we possess or can acquire. But that is a position shared by a very wide spectrum of people. Pipes, however, uses this consensus to take a position somewhat to the right of Ariel Sharon, concerning a matter (the Israel-Palestine dispute) that actually can be settled by negotiation. And he employs the fears and insecurities created by Islamic extremism to slander or misrepresent those who disagree with him.
This makes him a poor if not useless ally in the wider battle. Let me give two illustrations from personal experience....
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 55%
TV Debate in Calif. Recall Will Be for the Chosen Few
There's more to this article than just the debate...it talks about developments in a few of the campaigns, including a significant speed bump for the Arianna campaign.
TV Debate in Calif. Recall Will Be for the Chosen Few
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 15, 2003; Page A06
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 14 -- The top-polling candidates in the California recall election will be invited to a single debate hosted by the state's broadcasters next month, giving voters here perhaps their only chance to see the field vying to replace Gov. Gray Davis (D) mix it up together on live television.
Alas, it will be no free-for-all among the 135 candidates who have won a place on the unprecedented ballot. To be invited to the Sept. 17 face-off, the candidates must demonstrate at least 10 percent support in any of three major polls to be taken before the 90-minute moderated round table discussion at the California State University in Sacramento.
The debate will most likely have six or so candidates -- but no Davis. He will not be invited; instead he will be offered a chance to tape a message to be aired separately.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 65%
Record blackout strikes Northeast
Quite a bit of detail about the immediate impact of the outage in this articleWorldNetDaily: Record blackout strikes Northeast
Posted: August 14, 2003
10:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
The largest power outage in U.S. history blacked out the Northeast this afternoon, affecting an estimated 50 million people, including residents of New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ottawa, Toronto, Cleveland and Detroit.
...
SCHEER: Reject the Recall, California
By Robert Scheer
August 12, 2003
Excerpts:
"Take him, he's yours."
That was my initial response to the California recall, aimed at a conservative Democratic governor who often has betrayed the state's large progressive base of voters – the same folks who held their noses to elect and then reelect him.
But now I don't buy it. However you feel about Gray Davis, the fact is, this recall has become a shell game, led and paid for by Republicans...
...
If you think politics is all a joke anyway, then vote for whichever opportunist makes you laugh the most. But if you think that meaningful representative democracy requires the scrutiny of the serious primary and election process that Davis has twice weathered, then for a small "d" democrat, a "no" vote on the recall is an obligation.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
Arnold adds former statesman George Shultz to campaign team
Yahoo! News - Schwarzenegger adds former statesman George Shultz to campaign team
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger further beefed up his bid to become governor of California by adding former US statesman George Shultz to his campaign team.
The move came a day after billionaire businessman Warren Buffett joined the "Terminator" star's lineup as his chief economic and financial adviser ahead of an October 7 vote on Governor Gray Davis' fate.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1.5
Learning Percentage: 25%
August 14, 2003
Calif. Supreme Court Dismisses All Recall Suits
Calif. Supreme Court Dismisses All Recall Suits
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's Supreme Court dismissed all five cases on Thursday that challenge various aspects of the unprecedented Oct. 7 recall ballot against Gov. Gray Davis, including one brought by Davis himself.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
August 13, 2003
135 qualify for recall ballot / Politicians campaign in S.F.
Pack of politicians campaign in S.F. / 135 qualify for recall ballot
Sacramento -- State officials announced late Wednesday that California's unprecedented recall election will have 135 candidates to replace Gov. Gray Davis on the Oct. 7 ballot.
Many of the people-who-would-be-governor didn't wait for Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to officially announce who would be on the bulging ballot before getting out and campaigning. Davis, GOP businessman Bill Simon and columnist and commentator Arianna Huffington were in the Bay Area to shake hands and search for votes Wednesday, while Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger stayed in the news by adding one of the world's richest men and $1 million to his campaign.
State election officials whittled the list to 135 certified candidates from more than 240 people who had applied to run for governor.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ??
Learning Percentage: 35%
Schwarzenegger hires Warren Buffett as campaign adviser
Schwarzenegger hires Warren Buffett as recall campaign adviser
(08-13) 13:15 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) --
Warren Buffett will serve as senior financial and economic adviser in actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid to replace Gray Davis if the governor loses the recall vote, the Republican actor's campaign announced Wednesday.
Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is a billionaire investor legendary for his financial prowess. He is also a Democrat.
"What he will be doing is assembling other prominent business leaders and economists and setting up a team to address the issues facing California," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 70%
E-Mail Brings Together Flash Mob at NY Toy Store
E-Mail Brings Together Flash Mob at NY Toy Store
Fri Aug 8,12:03 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's become a case of mob rule in New York.
A growing flash mob craze -- when crowds organized by e-mail turn up in unexpected places -- brought a mob late on Thursday to the flagship Times Square store of Toys "R" Us, where a giant dinosaur roars menacingly at customers.
The mob of some 300 people gazed at the dinosaur, as if transfixed, then fell to the floor screaming and waving their hands in the air. As store staff hurried to call security, the mob dispersed as quickly as it gathered.
The flash mob was the sixth in New York and the latest in a string that has popped up around the globe. Organized by e-mail, recipients are invited to arrive at a certain place, at a certain time, and receive instructions for a particular mobbing event.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 65%
SF Party Chairs on the recall
SFpolitics.com asks the question:
Given the standards and threshold requirements, is a recall an inclusive and proper means to elect a Governor?
The heads of the four main parties in San Francisco -- Libertarian, Green, Republican, and Democratic -- answer.
Read It Rating: 2.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 9%
Nader Takes a Pie in the Face in California
Nader Takes a Pie in the Face in California (washingtonpost.com)
Reuters
Tuesday, August 12, 2003; 8:09 PM
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's political scene was looking more and more like a circus on Wednesday, when former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader took a pie in the face during an appearance in San Francisco.
Nader was speaking at an event to endorse fellow Green Peter Camejo for California governor when a man ran into the room where he was speaking, forced a pie in his face, and made a quick exit.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .2
Learning Percentage: 33%
August 12, 2003
Libertarians earn solid support in e-thePeople.org polls
LP News Online: September 2003: Libertarians earn solid support in e-thePeople.org polls
The Libertarian Party has been showing up in double digits in several recent polls on the popular political website, e-thePeople.org.
In the unscientific polls, visitors to e-thePeople.org can cast their votes in response to political questions, which are suggested by website visitors.
While the LP has been mentioned in several dozen polls over the past few years, here are eight of the most interesting recent ones:
* "Are there any candidates for [the] 2004 election worth voting for?" (Asked on July 18). The "Libertarian" candidate came in fourth with 13%, behind Republican (48%), Democrat (23%) and "No candidate" (14%). The Green candidate came in fifth at 6%.
* "What describes your personal political ideology?" (February 17). Libertarian came in third with 14%, behind Conservative (53%) and Liberal (33%).
* "If you really thought they could [win], which party would you vote for?" (July 25). The Libertarian Party came in a strong third with 20%, beating the Constitution Party (15%), the Green Party (10%), and the Reform Party (3%). The Republican Party came in first with 30%, followed by the Democratic Party with 22%.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 75%
County Counsel denies "Fishing Expedition" in Van Zant's Laptop
This is some local news where I live.
County Counsel denies "Fishing Expedition" in Van Zant's Laptop
By YubaNet
Aug 11, 2003, 08:42
There were no BOS meetings in the past 3 weeks, but behind the scenes, activity was frantic. On July 22, Terry Robinson, campaign worker for Drew Bedwell, filed the following request for public records with the Board of Supervisors:
"Provide the following public record for viewing:
The lap top computer and the entire contents of the lap top computer used by Supervisor Peter Vanzant during board meetings."
The request was forwarded to County Counsel's office, which responded on August 1 with a letter addressed to Robinson stating that the County was unable to comply with his request.
Read It Rating: 2.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 65%
Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Firing blindly during a power cut, soldiers kill a father and three children in their car
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
10 August 2003
The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.
"We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them 'Stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting."
The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: "Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq."
But in this city Iraqi civilians still die needlessly almost every day at the hands of nervous, trigger-happy American soldiers.
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -8.5
Learning Percentage: 45%
Bob Barr: THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE NEO-CONS
I am extremely proud to be a part of the movement that is working to slow (and then reverse) the advance of the "neo-conservative" movement. So far my main effort in this respect has been developing PNAC.info, which seeks to expose that philosophy and its subscribers (and which, I believe, has played a real part in the rising of awareness about neocons.)
And, given what the movement I'm in is up against, I'm happy to welcome such strange bedfellows as former Congressman Bob Barr, who I have assailed countless times in the past as being a rat bastard rabidly drug-warring soulless political whore, for the part he has played in this country's War on Drugs (including his ethically vacuous -- and successful -- effort to block Washington D.C. from counting the vote in a medical marijuana proposition, so that it wouldn't pass.)
But as I said to the person who sent this article to me, there's nothing better than hardcore conservatives ripping into neo-cons, as least as far as the anti-PNAC movement goes. So: Go Bob! (You bastard, you!)
It's also worth noting that Bob has gone to work for the ACLU, and has recently appeared on the news opposing a federal definition of marraige act, so it could be he's not as much of a piece of crap as he appeared to me to be while he was in office. Maybe he and I can even become friends someday (as long as he never sees this entry, that is). ;-)
THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE NEO-CONS
by Bob Barr
Excerpt:
Many earlier American political movements were closely tied to an aggressive, military-based foreign policy. In the 19th century, the push toward "manifest destiny" was rooted in an understandable desire on the part of America's leaders to extend America's continental reach to meet the needs of a nation struggling to industrialize and capitalize its resources. In the early 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt, often viewed as an imperialist, actually exercised considerable restraint in the use of American military power when he involved troops in circumstances clearly limited in time and scope. Woodrow Wilson's ill-fated drive to "make the world safe for democracy" was born of a genuine, if unrealistic notion that political freedom was preferable to tyranny and that democratic governments would be less predisposed to war as a tool of political power. Though Wilson's effort failed miserably, the goal was to avoid, not foster, war.
But neo-conservatives rely on the raw and aggressive use of military power to a unique degree, and their almost messianic mission to root out "bad guys" around the world, is unprecedented.
In 1997, the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank headquartered in Washington, issued a Statement of Principles that lays out the neo-conservative vision of an international order completely subservient to U.S. business, military and political interests. At its core, the statement makes clear that nothing less than total, global American military dominance will suffice. The statement was signed by Dick Cheney, who is now vice president, Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary.
The problem is that such total, global American military dominance would require a huge federal bureaucracy. And even worse: It would require an essentially permanent state of war abroad, as well as a climate of fear at home -- leading to ever-increasing levels of government power. The tragic events of Sept. 11 offered neo-cons the perfect catalyst to move into high gear. And, brother, have they ever.
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R6
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Preliminary list of candidates for California recall election
Preliminary list of candidates for California recall election
The Associated Press Saturday, August 9, 2003
Preliminary list of candidates to appear on the Oct. 7 recall ballot and the county where they filed. In some cases, the signatures they turned in to qualify still must be verified. The secretary of state's office late Saturday reported that 155 candidates had turned in candidacy papers, but it did not have a complete list of the names. The following list contains 134 candidates. The office said it will try to make a complete list available on Sunday and will certify a final list Wednesday.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 10%
August 11, 2003
Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
I run a whole other site devoted to this topic, BTW: PNAC.info
Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (IPS) - An ad hoc office under U.S. Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.
The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official U.S. intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.
But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.
Read It Rating: 9.8
Left/Right Rating: L1.5
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 65%
Tongue-tied Arnie Takes Hits From Left and Right
Tongue-tied Arnie Takes Hits From Left and Right
Guardian Newspapers Limited
Sunday 10 August 2003
Hasta la vista to the political honeymoon. Four days after after his gubernatorial campaign in California opened to better reviews than any of his films ever did, Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday came face to face with political reality when he was attacked from the left for being too naive and from the right for being too liberal.
The 56-year-old actor embarked on a quick-fire round of TV interviews aimed at capitalising on his already stratospheric ratings in the campaign to take the most powerful office in the nation's biggest state - Governor of California.
But instead of momentum the appearances produced a succession of awkward moments as he was asked to explain his political views.
Pressed on a range of issue that are certain to feature prominently in the run-up to the vote on 7 October - gay marriage, health services, the fiscal crisis facing California - Schwarzenegger was forced to deny a policy statement attributed to his staff or revert to the time-honoured formula of the candidate under pressure: 'I don't want to go into that right now.'
...
...a spokesman for the Democratic Party, who urged the media to scrutinise Schwarzenegger's political record more closely.
The media took his advice and within a couple of hours turned up the embarrassing allegation that the actor had voted in only two of the last eight statewide elections.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 55%
August 05, 2003
Flynt: 'Vote for a Smut-Peddler Who Cares'
CNN.com - Larry Flynt announces run for California governor - Aug. 4, 2003
August 03, 2003
Force of July
ORANGE COUNTY WEEKLY OC Weekly: News: Force Of July
Vol. 8 No. 42 June 20 - 27, 2003
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a busy man. Running the Department of Defense in jacked-up times. Ramrodding past Secretary of State Colin Powell a new American foreign policy, Diplomacy Through Bombsight. Reinventing the nation’s entire military structure, where he encounters resistance every step of the way from older brass. Conducting a tireless round of press conferences so lively that you scarcely miss the nominal president of the United States.
...
...The same flair for micromanaging and knowing what’s best for those in uniform is now being shared with the rest of us, here in Everytown, USA. His staffers have been phoning city officials, including some in Orange County, and strongly urging them to structure Fourth of July celebrations around the war in Iraq.
"I got the impression that they had a list of every city in the nation that had applied for a pyrotechnics permit, and were calling them to persuade them to be part of the program," said one OC city official.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L3
Freedom Rating: .6
Learning Percentage: 50%
Poindexter to Quit Pentagon Post Amid Controversy
t r u t h o u t - Poindexter To Resign Over Terror Bets Plan
Thursday 31 July 2003
WASHINGTON - John Poindexter, the retired Navy admiral who spearheaded two sharply criticized Pentagon projects, intends to resign from his Defense Department post within weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday.
...
``Everybody certainly recognizes Admiral Poindexter's background. And in the context of that background, it became in some ways very difficult for him to receive an objective reading of work that he was doing on behalf of finding terrorists," the official said.
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 60%
Easyjet breast ad 'not offensive'
BBC NEWS | UK | Easyjet breast ad 'not offensive'
An airline ad featuring a woman's breasts with the phrase "discover weapons of mass distraction" was not offensive, the advertising watchdog has ruled.
A total of 186 people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the easyJet ad, making it the ad to gain the second highest number of complaints so far this year.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2.7
Learning Percentage: 90%
RVing with cats
I'm not crazy about this article, which I've somehow bumped into 3 separate times over the past year-plus, but the author does make some worthwhile points and suggestions. Originally this article helped convince me to hold off on trying the "RV lifestyle", but I'm gradually conquering the fears she sets in with her somewhat over-cautious attitude.
Cats on Wheels
by Barbara Foley
August, 1999
If you are a regular visitor to "Traveling with Pets," you know I have sadly neglected cats in my articles. It is not that I don't like cats. But my experience is with dogs, and I only felt credible in giving advice about them. I have, however, received many off-line requests for specific information on traveling with cats, so I am writing about them now. I have conferred with several cat authorities too, but if you "cat folks" see anything glaringly wrong or have some additional advice for me to pass on, please let me know.
I often see cats sunning themselves on the dashs of RVs, so they obviously make wonderful traveling companions. And let's face it, I've never heard of any cat-owning RVer being asked to leave because the cat was barking! So, since we enjoy having our pets with us as we travel, our focus should be on making the experience pleasant and safe for our feline friends. My tendency is to concentrate on safety first, then on pleasantness. We, therefore, want to ensure our cats are not injured during travel, escape, or fall prey to other animals. Once we are sure they are safe, we can concentrate on the pleasantries.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 40%
Larry Flynt may run in recall
Hustler Publisher Files in Calif. Recall (washingtonpost.com)
Excerpts:
The Hustler magazine publisher has filed initial paperwork to run in the gubernatorial recall election and says he may spend a large amount of his own money if people take his candidacy seriously.
...
"California is the most progressive state in the union," said Flynt, 61. "I don't think anyone here will have a problem with a smut peddler as governor."
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 30%
RV Air Conditioning Basics
And now, for something completely different...
By Bill Hendrix
Keep your cool by increasing your knowledge about the fundamental principles associated with operating and maintaining the A/C system of an RV.
The air conditioner in an RV works on the same principle as the one in a home or office, but significant design differences exist. All roof-mounted RV air conditioners will operate as a single unit when connected to a 20 amp receptacle, making it possible for the coach owner to operate one unit with the minimum acceptable campground electrical hookup. With this power specification comes a limit on how large the compressor can be. Manufacturers of air-conditioning units hit this limitation with a compressor of approximately 15,000 Btus.
Mechanical Design of Air Conditioners
In terms of mechanical design, roof-mounted RV air conditioners are very similar to residential window units. ...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: N/A
Freedom Rating: .23
Learning Percentage: 80%
Tom McClintock's Recall Rally Speech
CA Senator Tom McClintock's Recall Rally Speech
Excerpt:
The home my parents bought for $35,000—if it were new—should be selling today for $180,000 with inflation. But the homes in that neighborhood—now 40 years older—now cost more than twice that.
My parents wouldn't have been able to even think of affording that house today. They wouldn't have been able to find work, either. We lost more than 200,000 jobs last year. And if they had found the work, they couldn't have gotten there—Downtown Los Angeles is now TWO HOURS from Thousand Oaks in rush hour.
They couldn't have afforded their taxes either. That year, the state spent a little over 6-dollars from every hundred that people earned. Today, Davis is spending a record of nearly 10-dollars out of every hundred you earn.
If my family—and every family like ours—came looking for a better future for their kids today—they wouldn't find it in California.
Those families today look at our state, with its bountiful resources; with the most equitable climate on the entire continent; with every blessing that God could possibly bestow upon a land—and they're finding a better place to live and work and raise their families out in the desolation of the Arizona and Nevada deserts.
No conceivable act of God could ever wreak such devastation upon our state. Only government could do that. And it has.
And the good news of this election is—WE CAN CHANGE THAT. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have the chance to make our state over again.
Read It Rating: 6.12
Left/Right Rating: R6
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 50%
Hunter Thompson- Welcome to the Big Darkness
Hunter S. Thompson - Welcome to the Big Darkness
Excerpt:
Richard Nixon could tell us a lot about peaking too early. He was a master of it, because it beat him every time. He never learned and neither did Bush the Elder.
But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. By the summer of 2004, he might not even be living in the White House. Gone, gone, like the snows of yesteryear.
The Rumsfield-Cheney axis has self-destructed right in front of our eyes, along with the once-proud Perle-Wolfowitz bund that is turning to wax. They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree, between January and July, or even less. It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 42%
August 02, 2003
Soros' Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
t r u t h o u t - Billionaire's Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
Reuters
Friday 25 July 2003
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers on Sunday challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq.
The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth."
A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
Lake County Supervisor Considers recall run
Lewis considers a run for governor
By Margaret Gan-Garrison - Record-Bee staff
Sat Aug 2 03:00:13 2003--
LAKE COUNTY - District 3 Supervisor Gary Lewis is thinking about running for governor.
"I collected a set of the papers yesterday and I'm looking for signatures," said Lewis, adding that 180 people have taken papers for the race.
He said he will be working hard next week to seek support. "I am going to start beating the bushes," Lewis said.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 70%
Michael Huffington considers recall run
"Former Republican United States Congressman Michael Huffington today obtained nomination papers to run for Governor of California from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. He paid the $3,500 filing fee and has until August 9th to complete the paperwork and return the documents to the County. After much encouragement by friends and supporters to consider seeking the office of Governor, he made the decision to consider his candidacy now that an election date has been set.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 50%
New Zealand: Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Six aviation-industry unions lodged papers with the Employment Court in Auckland yesterday opposing a drug and alcohol-testing regime proposed by Air New Zealand.
Although the airline says it will not test any of its 9000 or so employees before putting them all through an education programme, the unions say it has no lawful right to demand urine or breath samples from staff at any time.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 75%
Calif. Supreme Court Dismisses All Recall Suits
Calif. Supreme Court Dismisses All Recall Suits
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's Supreme Court dismissed all five cases on Thursday that challenge various aspects of the unprecedented Oct. 7 recall ballot against Gov. Gray Davis, including one brought by Davis himself.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
135 qualify for recall ballot / Politicians campaign in S.F.
Pack of politicians campaign in S.F. / 135 qualify for recall ballot
Sacramento -- State officials announced late Wednesday that California's unprecedented recall election will have 135 candidates to replace Gov. Gray Davis on the Oct. 7 ballot.
Many of the people-who-would-be-governor didn't wait for Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to officially announce who would be on the bulging ballot before getting out and campaigning. Davis, GOP businessman Bill Simon and columnist and commentator Arianna Huffington were in the Bay Area to shake hands and search for votes Wednesday, while Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger stayed in the news by adding one of the world's richest men and $1 million to his campaign.
State election officials whittled the list to 135 certified candidates from more than 240 people who had applied to run for governor.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ??
Learning Percentage: 35%
Schwarzenegger hires Warren Buffett as campaign adviser
Schwarzenegger hires Warren Buffett as recall campaign adviser
(08-13) 13:15 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) --
Warren Buffett will serve as senior financial and economic adviser in actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid to replace Gray Davis if the governor loses the recall vote, the Republican actor's campaign announced Wednesday.
Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is a billionaire investor legendary for his financial prowess. He is also a Democrat.
"What he will be doing is assembling other prominent business leaders and economists and setting up a team to address the issues facing California," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 70%
E-Mail Brings Together Flash Mob at NY Toy Store
E-Mail Brings Together Flash Mob at NY Toy Store
Fri Aug 8,12:03 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's become a case of mob rule in New York.
A growing flash mob craze -- when crowds organized by e-mail turn up in unexpected places -- brought a mob late on Thursday to the flagship Times Square store of Toys "R" Us, where a giant dinosaur roars menacingly at customers.
The mob of some 300 people gazed at the dinosaur, as if transfixed, then fell to the floor screaming and waving their hands in the air. As store staff hurried to call security, the mob dispersed as quickly as it gathered.
The flash mob was the sixth in New York and the latest in a string that has popped up around the globe. Organized by e-mail, recipients are invited to arrive at a certain place, at a certain time, and receive instructions for a particular mobbing event.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Learning Percentage: 65%
SF Party Chairs on the recall
SFpolitics.com asks the question:
Given the standards and threshold requirements, is a recall an inclusive and proper means to elect a Governor?
The heads of the four main parties in San Francisco -- Libertarian, Green, Republican, and Democratic -- answer.
Read It Rating: 2.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 9%
Nader Takes a Pie in the Face in California
Nader Takes a Pie in the Face in California (washingtonpost.com)
Reuters
Tuesday, August 12, 2003; 8:09 PM
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's political scene was looking more and more like a circus on Wednesday, when former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader took a pie in the face during an appearance in San Francisco.
Nader was speaking at an event to endorse fellow Green Peter Camejo for California governor when a man ran into the room where he was speaking, forced a pie in his face, and made a quick exit.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .2
Learning Percentage: 33%
August 12, 2003
Libertarians earn solid support in e-thePeople.org polls
LP News Online: September 2003: Libertarians earn solid support in e-thePeople.org polls
The Libertarian Party has been showing up in double digits in several recent polls on the popular political website, e-thePeople.org.
In the unscientific polls, visitors to e-thePeople.org can cast their votes in response to political questions, which are suggested by website visitors.
While the LP has been mentioned in several dozen polls over the past few years, here are eight of the most interesting recent ones:
* "Are there any candidates for [the] 2004 election worth voting for?" (Asked on July 18). The "Libertarian" candidate came in fourth with 13%, behind Republican (48%), Democrat (23%) and "No candidate" (14%). The Green candidate came in fifth at 6%.
* "What describes your personal political ideology?" (February 17). Libertarian came in third with 14%, behind Conservative (53%) and Liberal (33%).
* "If you really thought they could [win], which party would you vote for?" (July 25). The Libertarian Party came in a strong third with 20%, beating the Constitution Party (15%), the Green Party (10%), and the Reform Party (3%). The Republican Party came in first with 30%, followed by the Democratic Party with 22%.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 75%
County Counsel denies "Fishing Expedition" in Van Zant's Laptop
This is some local news where I live.
County Counsel denies "Fishing Expedition" in Van Zant's Laptop
By YubaNet
Aug 11, 2003, 08:42
There were no BOS meetings in the past 3 weeks, but behind the scenes, activity was frantic. On July 22, Terry Robinson, campaign worker for Drew Bedwell, filed the following request for public records with the Board of Supervisors:
"Provide the following public record for viewing:
The lap top computer and the entire contents of the lap top computer used by Supervisor Peter Vanzant during board meetings."
The request was forwarded to County Counsel's office, which responded on August 1 with a letter addressed to Robinson stating that the County was unable to comply with his request.
Read It Rating: 2.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 65%
Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Firing blindly during a power cut, soldiers kill a father and three children in their car
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
10 August 2003
The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.
"We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them 'Stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting."
The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: "Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq."
But in this city Iraqi civilians still die needlessly almost every day at the hands of nervous, trigger-happy American soldiers.
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -8.5
Learning Percentage: 45%
Bob Barr: THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE NEO-CONS
I am extremely proud to be a part of the movement that is working to slow (and then reverse) the advance of the "neo-conservative" movement. So far my main effort in this respect has been developing PNAC.info, which seeks to expose that philosophy and its subscribers (and which, I believe, has played a real part in the rising of awareness about neocons.)
And, given what the movement I'm in is up against, I'm happy to welcome such strange bedfellows as former Congressman Bob Barr, who I have assailed countless times in the past as being a rat bastard rabidly drug-warring soulless political whore, for the part he has played in this country's War on Drugs (including his ethically vacuous -- and successful -- effort to block Washington D.C. from counting the vote in a medical marijuana proposition, so that it wouldn't pass.)
But as I said to the person who sent this article to me, there's nothing better than hardcore conservatives ripping into neo-cons, as least as far as the anti-PNAC movement goes. So: Go Bob! (You bastard, you!)
It's also worth noting that Bob has gone to work for the ACLU, and has recently appeared on the news opposing a federal definition of marraige act, so it could be he's not as much of a piece of crap as he appeared to me to be while he was in office. Maybe he and I can even become friends someday (as long as he never sees this entry, that is). ;-)
THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE NEO-CONS
by Bob Barr
Excerpt:
Many earlier American political movements were closely tied to an aggressive, military-based foreign policy. In the 19th century, the push toward "manifest destiny" was rooted in an understandable desire on the part of America's leaders to extend America's continental reach to meet the needs of a nation struggling to industrialize and capitalize its resources. In the early 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt, often viewed as an imperialist, actually exercised considerable restraint in the use of American military power when he involved troops in circumstances clearly limited in time and scope. Woodrow Wilson's ill-fated drive to "make the world safe for democracy" was born of a genuine, if unrealistic notion that political freedom was preferable to tyranny and that democratic governments would be less predisposed to war as a tool of political power. Though Wilson's effort failed miserably, the goal was to avoid, not foster, war.
But neo-conservatives rely on the raw and aggressive use of military power to a unique degree, and their almost messianic mission to root out "bad guys" around the world, is unprecedented.
In 1997, the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank headquartered in Washington, issued a Statement of Principles that lays out the neo-conservative vision of an international order completely subservient to U.S. business, military and political interests. At its core, the statement makes clear that nothing less than total, global American military dominance will suffice. The statement was signed by Dick Cheney, who is now vice president, Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary.
The problem is that such total, global American military dominance would require a huge federal bureaucracy. And even worse: It would require an essentially permanent state of war abroad, as well as a climate of fear at home -- leading to ever-increasing levels of government power. The tragic events of Sept. 11 offered neo-cons the perfect catalyst to move into high gear. And, brother, have they ever.
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R6
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Preliminary list of candidates for California recall election
Preliminary list of candidates for California recall election
The Associated Press Saturday, August 9, 2003
Preliminary list of candidates to appear on the Oct. 7 recall ballot and the county where they filed. In some cases, the signatures they turned in to qualify still must be verified. The secretary of state's office late Saturday reported that 155 candidates had turned in candidacy papers, but it did not have a complete list of the names. The following list contains 134 candidates. The office said it will try to make a complete list available on Sunday and will certify a final list Wednesday.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 10%
August 11, 2003
Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
I run a whole other site devoted to this topic, BTW: PNAC.info
Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (IPS) - An ad hoc office under U.S. Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.
The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official U.S. intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.
But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.
Read It Rating: 9.8
Left/Right Rating: L1.5
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 65%
Tongue-tied Arnie Takes Hits From Left and Right
Tongue-tied Arnie Takes Hits From Left and Right
Guardian Newspapers Limited
Sunday 10 August 2003
Hasta la vista to the political honeymoon. Four days after after his gubernatorial campaign in California opened to better reviews than any of his films ever did, Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday came face to face with political reality when he was attacked from the left for being too naive and from the right for being too liberal.
The 56-year-old actor embarked on a quick-fire round of TV interviews aimed at capitalising on his already stratospheric ratings in the campaign to take the most powerful office in the nation's biggest state - Governor of California.
But instead of momentum the appearances produced a succession of awkward moments as he was asked to explain his political views.
Pressed on a range of issue that are certain to feature prominently in the run-up to the vote on 7 October - gay marriage, health services, the fiscal crisis facing California - Schwarzenegger was forced to deny a policy statement attributed to his staff or revert to the time-honoured formula of the candidate under pressure: 'I don't want to go into that right now.'
...
...a spokesman for the Democratic Party, who urged the media to scrutinise Schwarzenegger's political record more closely.
The media took his advice and within a couple of hours turned up the embarrassing allegation that the actor had voted in only two of the last eight statewide elections.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 55%
August 05, 2003
Flynt: 'Vote for a Smut-Peddler Who Cares'
CNN.com - Larry Flynt announces run for California governor - Aug. 4, 2003
August 03, 2003
Force of July
ORANGE COUNTY WEEKLY OC Weekly: News: Force Of July
Vol. 8 No. 42 June 20 - 27, 2003
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a busy man. Running the Department of Defense in jacked-up times. Ramrodding past Secretary of State Colin Powell a new American foreign policy, Diplomacy Through Bombsight. Reinventing the nation’s entire military structure, where he encounters resistance every step of the way from older brass. Conducting a tireless round of press conferences so lively that you scarcely miss the nominal president of the United States.
...
...The same flair for micromanaging and knowing what’s best for those in uniform is now being shared with the rest of us, here in Everytown, USA. His staffers have been phoning city officials, including some in Orange County, and strongly urging them to structure Fourth of July celebrations around the war in Iraq.
"I got the impression that they had a list of every city in the nation that had applied for a pyrotechnics permit, and were calling them to persuade them to be part of the program," said one OC city official.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L3
Freedom Rating: .6
Learning Percentage: 50%
Poindexter to Quit Pentagon Post Amid Controversy
t r u t h o u t - Poindexter To Resign Over Terror Bets Plan
Thursday 31 July 2003
WASHINGTON - John Poindexter, the retired Navy admiral who spearheaded two sharply criticized Pentagon projects, intends to resign from his Defense Department post within weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday.
...
``Everybody certainly recognizes Admiral Poindexter's background. And in the context of that background, it became in some ways very difficult for him to receive an objective reading of work that he was doing on behalf of finding terrorists," the official said.
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 60%
Easyjet breast ad 'not offensive'
BBC NEWS | UK | Easyjet breast ad 'not offensive'
An airline ad featuring a woman's breasts with the phrase "discover weapons of mass distraction" was not offensive, the advertising watchdog has ruled.
A total of 186 people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the easyJet ad, making it the ad to gain the second highest number of complaints so far this year.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2.7
Learning Percentage: 90%
RVing with cats
I'm not crazy about this article, which I've somehow bumped into 3 separate times over the past year-plus, but the author does make some worthwhile points and suggestions. Originally this article helped convince me to hold off on trying the "RV lifestyle", but I'm gradually conquering the fears she sets in with her somewhat over-cautious attitude.
Cats on Wheels
by Barbara Foley
August, 1999
If you are a regular visitor to "Traveling with Pets," you know I have sadly neglected cats in my articles. It is not that I don't like cats. But my experience is with dogs, and I only felt credible in giving advice about them. I have, however, received many off-line requests for specific information on traveling with cats, so I am writing about them now. I have conferred with several cat authorities too, but if you "cat folks" see anything glaringly wrong or have some additional advice for me to pass on, please let me know.
I often see cats sunning themselves on the dashs of RVs, so they obviously make wonderful traveling companions. And let's face it, I've never heard of any cat-owning RVer being asked to leave because the cat was barking! So, since we enjoy having our pets with us as we travel, our focus should be on making the experience pleasant and safe for our feline friends. My tendency is to concentrate on safety first, then on pleasantness. We, therefore, want to ensure our cats are not injured during travel, escape, or fall prey to other animals. Once we are sure they are safe, we can concentrate on the pleasantries.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 40%
Larry Flynt may run in recall
Hustler Publisher Files in Calif. Recall (washingtonpost.com)
Excerpts:
The Hustler magazine publisher has filed initial paperwork to run in the gubernatorial recall election and says he may spend a large amount of his own money if people take his candidacy seriously.
...
"California is the most progressive state in the union," said Flynt, 61. "I don't think anyone here will have a problem with a smut peddler as governor."
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 30%
RV Air Conditioning Basics
And now, for something completely different...
By Bill Hendrix
Keep your cool by increasing your knowledge about the fundamental principles associated with operating and maintaining the A/C system of an RV.
The air conditioner in an RV works on the same principle as the one in a home or office, but significant design differences exist. All roof-mounted RV air conditioners will operate as a single unit when connected to a 20 amp receptacle, making it possible for the coach owner to operate one unit with the minimum acceptable campground electrical hookup. With this power specification comes a limit on how large the compressor can be. Manufacturers of air-conditioning units hit this limitation with a compressor of approximately 15,000 Btus.
Mechanical Design of Air Conditioners
In terms of mechanical design, roof-mounted RV air conditioners are very similar to residential window units. ...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: N/A
Freedom Rating: .23
Learning Percentage: 80%
Tom McClintock's Recall Rally Speech
CA Senator Tom McClintock's Recall Rally Speech
Excerpt:
The home my parents bought for $35,000—if it were new—should be selling today for $180,000 with inflation. But the homes in that neighborhood—now 40 years older—now cost more than twice that.
My parents wouldn't have been able to even think of affording that house today. They wouldn't have been able to find work, either. We lost more than 200,000 jobs last year. And if they had found the work, they couldn't have gotten there—Downtown Los Angeles is now TWO HOURS from Thousand Oaks in rush hour.
They couldn't have afforded their taxes either. That year, the state spent a little over 6-dollars from every hundred that people earned. Today, Davis is spending a record of nearly 10-dollars out of every hundred you earn.
If my family—and every family like ours—came looking for a better future for their kids today—they wouldn't find it in California.
Those families today look at our state, with its bountiful resources; with the most equitable climate on the entire continent; with every blessing that God could possibly bestow upon a land—and they're finding a better place to live and work and raise their families out in the desolation of the Arizona and Nevada deserts.
No conceivable act of God could ever wreak such devastation upon our state. Only government could do that. And it has.
And the good news of this election is—WE CAN CHANGE THAT. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have the chance to make our state over again.
Read It Rating: 6.12
Left/Right Rating: R6
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 50%
Hunter Thompson- Welcome to the Big Darkness
Hunter S. Thompson - Welcome to the Big Darkness
Excerpt:
Richard Nixon could tell us a lot about peaking too early. He was a master of it, because it beat him every time. He never learned and neither did Bush the Elder.
But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. By the summer of 2004, he might not even be living in the White House. Gone, gone, like the snows of yesteryear.
The Rumsfield-Cheney axis has self-destructed right in front of our eyes, along with the once-proud Perle-Wolfowitz bund that is turning to wax. They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree, between January and July, or even less. It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 42%
August 02, 2003
Soros' Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
t r u t h o u t - Billionaire's Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
Reuters
Friday 25 July 2003
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers on Sunday challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq.
The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth."
A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
Lake County Supervisor Considers recall run
Lewis considers a run for governor
By Margaret Gan-Garrison - Record-Bee staff
Sat Aug 2 03:00:13 2003--
LAKE COUNTY - District 3 Supervisor Gary Lewis is thinking about running for governor.
"I collected a set of the papers yesterday and I'm looking for signatures," said Lewis, adding that 180 people have taken papers for the race.
He said he will be working hard next week to seek support. "I am going to start beating the bushes," Lewis said.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 70%
Michael Huffington considers recall run
"Former Republican United States Congressman Michael Huffington today obtained nomination papers to run for Governor of California from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. He paid the $3,500 filing fee and has until August 9th to complete the paperwork and return the documents to the County. After much encouragement by friends and supporters to consider seeking the office of Governor, he made the decision to consider his candidacy now that an election date has been set.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 50%
New Zealand: Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Six aviation-industry unions lodged papers with the Employment Court in Auckland yesterday opposing a drug and alcohol-testing regime proposed by Air New Zealand.
Although the airline says it will not test any of its 9000 or so employees before putting them all through an education programme, the unions say it has no lawful right to demand urine or breath samples from staff at any time.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 75%
Libertarians earn solid support in e-thePeople.org polls
LP News Online: September 2003: Libertarians earn solid support in e-thePeople.org polls
The Libertarian Party has been showing up in double digits in several recent polls on the popular political website, e-thePeople.org.
In the unscientific polls, visitors to e-thePeople.org can cast their votes in response to political questions, which are suggested by website visitors.
While the LP has been mentioned in several dozen polls over the past few years, here are eight of the most interesting recent ones:
* "Are there any candidates for [the] 2004 election worth voting for?" (Asked on July 18). The "Libertarian" candidate came in fourth with 13%, behind Republican (48%), Democrat (23%) and "No candidate" (14%). The Green candidate came in fifth at 6%.
* "What describes your personal political ideology?" (February 17). Libertarian came in third with 14%, behind Conservative (53%) and Liberal (33%).
* "If you really thought they could [win], which party would you vote for?" (July 25). The Libertarian Party came in a strong third with 20%, beating the Constitution Party (15%), the Green Party (10%), and the Reform Party (3%). The Republican Party came in first with 30%, followed by the Democratic Party with 22%.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 75%
County Counsel denies "Fishing Expedition" in Van Zant's Laptop
This is some local news where I live.
County Counsel denies "Fishing Expedition" in Van Zant's Laptop
By YubaNet
Aug 11, 2003, 08:42
There were no BOS meetings in the past 3 weeks, but behind the scenes, activity was frantic. On July 22, Terry Robinson, campaign worker for Drew Bedwell, filed the following request for public records with the Board of Supervisors:
"Provide the following public record for viewing:
The lap top computer and the entire contents of the lap top computer used by Supervisor Peter Vanzant during board meetings."
The request was forwarded to County Counsel's office, which responded on August 1 with a letter addressed to Robinson stating that the County was unable to comply with his request.
Read It Rating: 2.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 65%
Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Firing blindly during a power cut, soldiers kill a father and three children in their car
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
10 August 2003
The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.
"We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them 'Stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting."
The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: "Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq."
But in this city Iraqi civilians still die needlessly almost every day at the hands of nervous, trigger-happy American soldiers.
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -8.5
Learning Percentage: 45%
Bob Barr: THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE NEO-CONS
I am extremely proud to be a part of the movement that is working to slow (and then reverse) the advance of the "neo-conservative" movement. So far my main effort in this respect has been developing PNAC.info, which seeks to expose that philosophy and its subscribers (and which, I believe, has played a real part in the rising of awareness about neocons.)
And, given what the movement I'm in is up against, I'm happy to welcome such strange bedfellows as former Congressman Bob Barr, who I have assailed countless times in the past as being a rat bastard rabidly drug-warring soulless political whore, for the part he has played in this country's War on Drugs (including his ethically vacuous -- and successful -- effort to block Washington D.C. from counting the vote in a medical marijuana proposition, so that it wouldn't pass.)
But as I said to the person who sent this article to me, there's nothing better than hardcore conservatives ripping into neo-cons, as least as far as the anti-PNAC movement goes. So: Go Bob! (You bastard, you!)
It's also worth noting that Bob has gone to work for the ACLU, and has recently appeared on the news opposing a federal definition of marraige act, so it could be he's not as much of a piece of crap as he appeared to me to be while he was in office. Maybe he and I can even become friends someday (as long as he never sees this entry, that is). ;-)
THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE NEO-CONS
by Bob Barr
Excerpt:
Many earlier American political movements were closely tied to an aggressive, military-based foreign policy. In the 19th century, the push toward "manifest destiny" was rooted in an understandable desire on the part of America's leaders to extend America's continental reach to meet the needs of a nation struggling to industrialize and capitalize its resources. In the early 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt, often viewed as an imperialist, actually exercised considerable restraint in the use of American military power when he involved troops in circumstances clearly limited in time and scope. Woodrow Wilson's ill-fated drive to "make the world safe for democracy" was born of a genuine, if unrealistic notion that political freedom was preferable to tyranny and that democratic governments would be less predisposed to war as a tool of political power. Though Wilson's effort failed miserably, the goal was to avoid, not foster, war.
But neo-conservatives rely on the raw and aggressive use of military power to a unique degree, and their almost messianic mission to root out "bad guys" around the world, is unprecedented.
In 1997, the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank headquartered in Washington, issued a Statement of Principles that lays out the neo-conservative vision of an international order completely subservient to U.S. business, military and political interests. At its core, the statement makes clear that nothing less than total, global American military dominance will suffice. The statement was signed by Dick Cheney, who is now vice president, Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary.
The problem is that such total, global American military dominance would require a huge federal bureaucracy. And even worse: It would require an essentially permanent state of war abroad, as well as a climate of fear at home -- leading to ever-increasing levels of government power. The tragic events of Sept. 11 offered neo-cons the perfect catalyst to move into high gear. And, brother, have they ever.
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R6
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 15%
Preliminary list of candidates for California recall election
Preliminary list of candidates for California recall election
The Associated Press Saturday, August 9, 2003
Preliminary list of candidates to appear on the Oct. 7 recall ballot and the county where they filed. In some cases, the signatures they turned in to qualify still must be verified. The secretary of state's office late Saturday reported that 155 candidates had turned in candidacy papers, but it did not have a complete list of the names. The following list contains 134 candidates. The office said it will try to make a complete list available on Sunday and will certify a final list Wednesday.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 3
Learning Percentage: 10%
Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
I run a whole other site devoted to this topic, BTW: PNAC.info
Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (IPS) - An ad hoc office under U.S. Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.
The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official U.S. intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.
But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.
Read It Rating: 9.8
Left/Right Rating: L1.5
Freedom Rating: -5
Learning Percentage: 65%
Tongue-tied Arnie Takes Hits From Left and Right
Tongue-tied Arnie Takes Hits From Left and Right
Guardian Newspapers Limited
Sunday 10 August 2003
Hasta la vista to the political honeymoon. Four days after after his gubernatorial campaign in California opened to better reviews than any of his films ever did, Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday came face to face with political reality when he was attacked from the left for being too naive and from the right for being too liberal.
The 56-year-old actor embarked on a quick-fire round of TV interviews aimed at capitalising on his already stratospheric ratings in the campaign to take the most powerful office in the nation's biggest state - Governor of California.
But instead of momentum the appearances produced a succession of awkward moments as he was asked to explain his political views.
Pressed on a range of issue that are certain to feature prominently in the run-up to the vote on 7 October - gay marriage, health services, the fiscal crisis facing California - Schwarzenegger was forced to deny a policy statement attributed to his staff or revert to the time-honoured formula of the candidate under pressure: 'I don't want to go into that right now.'
...
...a spokesman for the Democratic Party, who urged the media to scrutinise Schwarzenegger's political record more closely.
The media took his advice and within a couple of hours turned up the embarrassing allegation that the actor had voted in only two of the last eight statewide elections.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 55%
August 05, 2003
Flynt: 'Vote for a Smut-Peddler Who Cares'
CNN.com - Larry Flynt announces run for California governor - Aug. 4, 2003
August 03, 2003
Force of July
ORANGE COUNTY WEEKLY OC Weekly: News: Force Of July
Vol. 8 No. 42 June 20 - 27, 2003
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a busy man. Running the Department of Defense in jacked-up times. Ramrodding past Secretary of State Colin Powell a new American foreign policy, Diplomacy Through Bombsight. Reinventing the nation’s entire military structure, where he encounters resistance every step of the way from older brass. Conducting a tireless round of press conferences so lively that you scarcely miss the nominal president of the United States.
...
...The same flair for micromanaging and knowing what’s best for those in uniform is now being shared with the rest of us, here in Everytown, USA. His staffers have been phoning city officials, including some in Orange County, and strongly urging them to structure Fourth of July celebrations around the war in Iraq.
"I got the impression that they had a list of every city in the nation that had applied for a pyrotechnics permit, and were calling them to persuade them to be part of the program," said one OC city official.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L3
Freedom Rating: .6
Learning Percentage: 50%
Poindexter to Quit Pentagon Post Amid Controversy
t r u t h o u t - Poindexter To Resign Over Terror Bets Plan
Thursday 31 July 2003
WASHINGTON - John Poindexter, the retired Navy admiral who spearheaded two sharply criticized Pentagon projects, intends to resign from his Defense Department post within weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday.
...
``Everybody certainly recognizes Admiral Poindexter's background. And in the context of that background, it became in some ways very difficult for him to receive an objective reading of work that he was doing on behalf of finding terrorists," the official said.
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 60%
Easyjet breast ad 'not offensive'
BBC NEWS | UK | Easyjet breast ad 'not offensive'
An airline ad featuring a woman's breasts with the phrase "discover weapons of mass distraction" was not offensive, the advertising watchdog has ruled.
A total of 186 people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the easyJet ad, making it the ad to gain the second highest number of complaints so far this year.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2.7
Learning Percentage: 90%
RVing with cats
I'm not crazy about this article, which I've somehow bumped into 3 separate times over the past year-plus, but the author does make some worthwhile points and suggestions. Originally this article helped convince me to hold off on trying the "RV lifestyle", but I'm gradually conquering the fears she sets in with her somewhat over-cautious attitude.
Cats on Wheels
by Barbara Foley
August, 1999
If you are a regular visitor to "Traveling with Pets," you know I have sadly neglected cats in my articles. It is not that I don't like cats. But my experience is with dogs, and I only felt credible in giving advice about them. I have, however, received many off-line requests for specific information on traveling with cats, so I am writing about them now. I have conferred with several cat authorities too, but if you "cat folks" see anything glaringly wrong or have some additional advice for me to pass on, please let me know.
I often see cats sunning themselves on the dashs of RVs, so they obviously make wonderful traveling companions. And let's face it, I've never heard of any cat-owning RVer being asked to leave because the cat was barking! So, since we enjoy having our pets with us as we travel, our focus should be on making the experience pleasant and safe for our feline friends. My tendency is to concentrate on safety first, then on pleasantness. We, therefore, want to ensure our cats are not injured during travel, escape, or fall prey to other animals. Once we are sure they are safe, we can concentrate on the pleasantries.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 40%
Larry Flynt may run in recall
Hustler Publisher Files in Calif. Recall (washingtonpost.com)
Excerpts:
The Hustler magazine publisher has filed initial paperwork to run in the gubernatorial recall election and says he may spend a large amount of his own money if people take his candidacy seriously.
...
"California is the most progressive state in the union," said Flynt, 61. "I don't think anyone here will have a problem with a smut peddler as governor."
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 30%
RV Air Conditioning Basics
And now, for something completely different...
By Bill Hendrix
Keep your cool by increasing your knowledge about the fundamental principles associated with operating and maintaining the A/C system of an RV.
The air conditioner in an RV works on the same principle as the one in a home or office, but significant design differences exist. All roof-mounted RV air conditioners will operate as a single unit when connected to a 20 amp receptacle, making it possible for the coach owner to operate one unit with the minimum acceptable campground electrical hookup. With this power specification comes a limit on how large the compressor can be. Manufacturers of air-conditioning units hit this limitation with a compressor of approximately 15,000 Btus.
Mechanical Design of Air Conditioners
In terms of mechanical design, roof-mounted RV air conditioners are very similar to residential window units. ...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: N/A
Freedom Rating: .23
Learning Percentage: 80%
Tom McClintock's Recall Rally Speech
CA Senator Tom McClintock's Recall Rally Speech
Excerpt:
The home my parents bought for $35,000—if it were new—should be selling today for $180,000 with inflation. But the homes in that neighborhood—now 40 years older—now cost more than twice that.
My parents wouldn't have been able to even think of affording that house today. They wouldn't have been able to find work, either. We lost more than 200,000 jobs last year. And if they had found the work, they couldn't have gotten there—Downtown Los Angeles is now TWO HOURS from Thousand Oaks in rush hour.
They couldn't have afforded their taxes either. That year, the state spent a little over 6-dollars from every hundred that people earned. Today, Davis is spending a record of nearly 10-dollars out of every hundred you earn.
If my family—and every family like ours—came looking for a better future for their kids today—they wouldn't find it in California.
Those families today look at our state, with its bountiful resources; with the most equitable climate on the entire continent; with every blessing that God could possibly bestow upon a land—and they're finding a better place to live and work and raise their families out in the desolation of the Arizona and Nevada deserts.
No conceivable act of God could ever wreak such devastation upon our state. Only government could do that. And it has.
And the good news of this election is—WE CAN CHANGE THAT. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have the chance to make our state over again.
Read It Rating: 6.12
Left/Right Rating: R6
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 50%
Hunter Thompson- Welcome to the Big Darkness
Hunter S. Thompson - Welcome to the Big Darkness
Excerpt:
Richard Nixon could tell us a lot about peaking too early. He was a master of it, because it beat him every time. He never learned and neither did Bush the Elder.
But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. By the summer of 2004, he might not even be living in the White House. Gone, gone, like the snows of yesteryear.
The Rumsfield-Cheney axis has self-destructed right in front of our eyes, along with the once-proud Perle-Wolfowitz bund that is turning to wax. They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree, between January and July, or even less. It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 42%
August 02, 2003
Soros' Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
t r u t h o u t - Billionaire's Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
Reuters
Friday 25 July 2003
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers on Sunday challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq.
The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth."
A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
Lake County Supervisor Considers recall run
Lewis considers a run for governor
By Margaret Gan-Garrison - Record-Bee staff
Sat Aug 2 03:00:13 2003--
LAKE COUNTY - District 3 Supervisor Gary Lewis is thinking about running for governor.
"I collected a set of the papers yesterday and I'm looking for signatures," said Lewis, adding that 180 people have taken papers for the race.
He said he will be working hard next week to seek support. "I am going to start beating the bushes," Lewis said.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 70%
Michael Huffington considers recall run
"Former Republican United States Congressman Michael Huffington today obtained nomination papers to run for Governor of California from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. He paid the $3,500 filing fee and has until August 9th to complete the paperwork and return the documents to the County. After much encouragement by friends and supporters to consider seeking the office of Governor, he made the decision to consider his candidacy now that an election date has been set.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 50%
New Zealand: Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Six aviation-industry unions lodged papers with the Employment Court in Auckland yesterday opposing a drug and alcohol-testing regime proposed by Air New Zealand.
Although the airline says it will not test any of its 9000 or so employees before putting them all through an education programme, the unions say it has no lawful right to demand urine or breath samples from staff at any time.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 75%
Flynt: 'Vote for a Smut-Peddler Who Cares'
CNN.com - Larry Flynt announces run for California governor - Aug. 4, 2003
Force of July
ORANGE COUNTY WEEKLY OC Weekly: News: Force Of July
Vol. 8 No. 42 June 20 - 27, 2003
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a busy man. Running the Department of Defense in jacked-up times. Ramrodding past Secretary of State Colin Powell a new American foreign policy, Diplomacy Through Bombsight. Reinventing the nation’s entire military structure, where he encounters resistance every step of the way from older brass. Conducting a tireless round of press conferences so lively that you scarcely miss the nominal president of the United States.
...
...The same flair for micromanaging and knowing what’s best for those in uniform is now being shared with the rest of us, here in Everytown, USA. His staffers have been phoning city officials, including some in Orange County, and strongly urging them to structure Fourth of July celebrations around the war in Iraq.
"I got the impression that they had a list of every city in the nation that had applied for a pyrotechnics permit, and were calling them to persuade them to be part of the program," said one OC city official.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L3
Freedom Rating: .6
Learning Percentage: 50%
Poindexter to Quit Pentagon Post Amid Controversy
t r u t h o u t - Poindexter To Resign Over Terror Bets Plan
Thursday 31 July 2003
WASHINGTON - John Poindexter, the retired Navy admiral who spearheaded two sharply criticized Pentagon projects, intends to resign from his Defense Department post within weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday.
...
``Everybody certainly recognizes Admiral Poindexter's background. And in the context of that background, it became in some ways very difficult for him to receive an objective reading of work that he was doing on behalf of finding terrorists," the official said.
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 60%
Easyjet breast ad 'not offensive'
BBC NEWS | UK | Easyjet breast ad 'not offensive'
An airline ad featuring a woman's breasts with the phrase "discover weapons of mass distraction" was not offensive, the advertising watchdog has ruled.
A total of 186 people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the easyJet ad, making it the ad to gain the second highest number of complaints so far this year.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: 2.7
Learning Percentage: 90%
RVing with cats
I'm not crazy about this article, which I've somehow bumped into 3 separate times over the past year-plus, but the author does make some worthwhile points and suggestions. Originally this article helped convince me to hold off on trying the "RV lifestyle", but I'm gradually conquering the fears she sets in with her somewhat over-cautious attitude.
Cats on Wheels
by Barbara Foley
August, 1999
If you are a regular visitor to "Traveling with Pets," you know I have sadly neglected cats in my articles. It is not that I don't like cats. But my experience is with dogs, and I only felt credible in giving advice about them. I have, however, received many off-line requests for specific information on traveling with cats, so I am writing about them now. I have conferred with several cat authorities too, but if you "cat folks" see anything glaringly wrong or have some additional advice for me to pass on, please let me know.
I often see cats sunning themselves on the dashs of RVs, so they obviously make wonderful traveling companions. And let's face it, I've never heard of any cat-owning RVer being asked to leave because the cat was barking! So, since we enjoy having our pets with us as we travel, our focus should be on making the experience pleasant and safe for our feline friends. My tendency is to concentrate on safety first, then on pleasantness. We, therefore, want to ensure our cats are not injured during travel, escape, or fall prey to other animals. Once we are sure they are safe, we can concentrate on the pleasantries.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 40%
Larry Flynt may run in recall
Hustler Publisher Files in Calif. Recall (washingtonpost.com)
Excerpts:
The Hustler magazine publisher has filed initial paperwork to run in the gubernatorial recall election and says he may spend a large amount of his own money if people take his candidacy seriously.
...
"California is the most progressive state in the union," said Flynt, 61. "I don't think anyone here will have a problem with a smut peddler as governor."
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 30%
RV Air Conditioning Basics
And now, for something completely different...
By Bill Hendrix
Keep your cool by increasing your knowledge about the fundamental principles associated with operating and maintaining the A/C system of an RV.
The air conditioner in an RV works on the same principle as the one in a home or office, but significant design differences exist. All roof-mounted RV air conditioners will operate as a single unit when connected to a 20 amp receptacle, making it possible for the coach owner to operate one unit with the minimum acceptable campground electrical hookup. With this power specification comes a limit on how large the compressor can be. Manufacturers of air-conditioning units hit this limitation with a compressor of approximately 15,000 Btus.
Mechanical Design of Air Conditioners
In terms of mechanical design, roof-mounted RV air conditioners are very similar to residential window units. ...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: N/A
Freedom Rating: .23
Learning Percentage: 80%
Tom McClintock's Recall Rally Speech
CA Senator Tom McClintock's Recall Rally Speech
Excerpt:
The home my parents bought for $35,000—if it were new—should be selling today for $180,000 with inflation. But the homes in that neighborhood—now 40 years older—now cost more than twice that.
My parents wouldn't have been able to even think of affording that house today. They wouldn't have been able to find work, either. We lost more than 200,000 jobs last year. And if they had found the work, they couldn't have gotten there—Downtown Los Angeles is now TWO HOURS from Thousand Oaks in rush hour.
They couldn't have afforded their taxes either. That year, the state spent a little over 6-dollars from every hundred that people earned. Today, Davis is spending a record of nearly 10-dollars out of every hundred you earn.
If my family—and every family like ours—came looking for a better future for their kids today—they wouldn't find it in California.
Those families today look at our state, with its bountiful resources; with the most equitable climate on the entire continent; with every blessing that God could possibly bestow upon a land—and they're finding a better place to live and work and raise their families out in the desolation of the Arizona and Nevada deserts.
No conceivable act of God could ever wreak such devastation upon our state. Only government could do that. And it has.
And the good news of this election is—WE CAN CHANGE THAT. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have the chance to make our state over again.
Read It Rating: 6.12
Left/Right Rating: R6
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 50%
Hunter Thompson- Welcome to the Big Darkness
Hunter S. Thompson - Welcome to the Big Darkness
Excerpt:
Richard Nixon could tell us a lot about peaking too early. He was a master of it, because it beat him every time. He never learned and neither did Bush the Elder.
But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. By the summer of 2004, he might not even be living in the White House. Gone, gone, like the snows of yesteryear.
The Rumsfield-Cheney axis has self-destructed right in front of our eyes, along with the once-proud Perle-Wolfowitz bund that is turning to wax. They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree, between January and July, or even less. It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 42%
August 02, 2003
Soros' Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
t r u t h o u t - Billionaire's Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
Reuters
Friday 25 July 2003
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers on Sunday challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq.
The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth."
A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
Lake County Supervisor Considers recall run
Lewis considers a run for governor
By Margaret Gan-Garrison - Record-Bee staff
Sat Aug 2 03:00:13 2003--
LAKE COUNTY - District 3 Supervisor Gary Lewis is thinking about running for governor.
"I collected a set of the papers yesterday and I'm looking for signatures," said Lewis, adding that 180 people have taken papers for the race.
He said he will be working hard next week to seek support. "I am going to start beating the bushes," Lewis said.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 70%
Michael Huffington considers recall run
"Former Republican United States Congressman Michael Huffington today obtained nomination papers to run for Governor of California from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. He paid the $3,500 filing fee and has until August 9th to complete the paperwork and return the documents to the County. After much encouragement by friends and supporters to consider seeking the office of Governor, he made the decision to consider his candidacy now that an election date has been set.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 50%
New Zealand: Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Six aviation-industry unions lodged papers with the Employment Court in Auckland yesterday opposing a drug and alcohol-testing regime proposed by Air New Zealand.
Although the airline says it will not test any of its 9000 or so employees before putting them all through an education programme, the unions say it has no lawful right to demand urine or breath samples from staff at any time.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 75%
Soros' Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
t r u t h o u t - Billionaire's Ads Challenge U.S. Case For Iraq War
Reuters
Friday 25 July 2003
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers on Sunday challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq.
The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth."
A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.5
Learning Percentage: 70%
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
Lake County Supervisor Considers recall run
Lewis considers a run for governor
By Margaret Gan-Garrison - Record-Bee staff
Sat Aug 2 03:00:13 2003--
LAKE COUNTY - District 3 Supervisor Gary Lewis is thinking about running for governor.
"I collected a set of the papers yesterday and I'm looking for signatures," said Lewis, adding that 180 people have taken papers for the race.
He said he will be working hard next week to seek support. "I am going to start beating the bushes," Lewis said.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 70%
Michael Huffington considers recall run
"Former Republican United States Congressman Michael Huffington today obtained nomination papers to run for Governor of California from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. He paid the $3,500 filing fee and has until August 9th to complete the paperwork and return the documents to the County. After much encouragement by friends and supporters to consider seeking the office of Governor, he made the decision to consider his candidacy now that an election date has been set.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 50%
New Zealand: Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Unions Seek Injunction Against Airline Drug And Alcohol Testing
Six aviation-industry unions lodged papers with the Employment Court in Auckland yesterday opposing a drug and alcohol-testing regime proposed by Air New Zealand.
Although the airline says it will not test any of its 9000 or so employees before putting them all through an education programme, the unions say it has no lawful right to demand urine or breath samples from staff at any time.
Read It Rating: 5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 75%
