busted again. how long will the American people put up with the lies and deceptions by this administration?

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Secret Pentagon spies confirmed: "Senior officials in the US Defense Department have confirmed reports that the Pentagon ran a secret unit to help gather human intelligence.
The Washington Post first revealed on Sunday that the Strategic Support Branch (SSB) was set up on the orders of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon was re-interpreting US law and trying to bypass the CIA, it said.
But the department denies bending laws, saying the group was set up to provide better support for military forces.
It was in regular touch with the CIA and Congress over its plans, officials say. "

from Horse with no Name" in response to the news that the supreme court has ruled that dog nsniffers are ok even when the stop is not warranted. (story below)

Small question.
Do you carry money in your wallet?
Are you aware of money's 'other' uses...ie being rolled up to snort cocaine, etc?
Do you feel that there aren't traces of that on your hands or clothes when you handle money?
Do you go to the grocery store?
Do you carry grocery bags in your car to get them home?
How do you know that the kid carrying out your groceries isn't a meth cook and have residual all over his hands when he handles your stuff?
If you have children--are you 100% certain they or their friends aren't doing drugs and didn't leave something behind in your car?
Do you lock your car door every single time you get out? Can you be certain that someone didn't slip something under your seat for a joke?
This gives 'probable cause' and could ultimately put you on some type of government watch list if these things are detected in your car and it is not far fetched to think that they might.
There are people in our prison system who are innocent--not just the ones trying to beat raps--but completely innocent and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Can you be 100% certain that someone matching your description wasn't being targeted as a drug lord--then they pull you over and find traces of drugs?
Personally--I would rather it never be allowed to get that far.
Random drug searches using dogs should not be allowed to happen and yes they can infringe on our constitutional rights."

the story he was commenting on came from Newsday

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court gave police broader search powers Monday during traffic stops, ruling that drug-sniffing dogs can be used to check out motorists even if officers have no reason to suspect they may be carrying narcotics.

In a 6-2 decision, the court sided with Illinois police who stopped Roy Caballes in 1998 along Interstate 80 for driving 6 miles over the speed limit. Although Caballes lawfully produced his driver's license, troopers brought over a drug dog after Caballes seemed nervous.

this is george w. bush's idea of 'spreading freedom' and ending 'tyranny' and all that snakeoil talk.

this is how the bushite people work. they suspend gathering information which contradicts with their agenda. see the WSJ. iow, they are now able to 'not lie' and say they never knew.

Daily Times Monitor

According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration’s assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to “plant” WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by “friendly fire”, the Environmentalists Against War report.

Nelda Rogers is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the DoD. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq. According to Al Martin Raw.com, “Ms Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense.”

The information that is being leaked out is information “obtained while she was in Germany heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel, involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the DoD and/or the CIA. “According to Ms Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq,” reports Al Martin Raw.com, an online subscriber-based news/analysis service which provides “Political, Economic and Financial Intelligence”.

Al Martin is a retired Lt Commander (US Navy), the author of a memoir called “The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider,” and is considered one of America’s foremost experts on corporate and government fraud. Ms Rogers reports that this particular covert operation team was manned by former military personnel and “the unit was paid through the Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, which is also very commonplace”.

According to Al Martin Raw.com, “the Agriculture Department has often been used as a paymaster on behalf of the CIA, DIA, NSA and others”. According to the Al Martin Raw.com story, another aspect of Ms Rogers’ report concerns a covert operation which was to locate the assets of Saddam Hussein and his family, including cash, gold bullion, jewelry and assorted valuable antiquities. The problem became evident when “the operation in Iraq involved 100 people, all of whom apparently are now dead, having succumbed to so-called ‘friendly fire’. The scope of this operation included the penetration of the Central Bank of Iraq, other large commercial banks in Baghdad, the Iraqi National Museum and certain presidential palaces where monies and bullion were secreted.”

“They identified about $2 billion in cash, another $150 million in Euros, in physical banknotes, and about another $100 million in sundry foreign currencies ranging from Yen to British Pounds,” reports Al Martin.

“These people died, mostly in the same place in Baghdad, supposedly from a stray cruise missile or a combination of missiles and bombs that went astray,” Martin continues. “There were supposedly 76 who died there and the other 24 died through a variety of ‘friendly fire’, ‘mistaken identity’ and some of them—their whereabouts are simply unknown.” Ms Rogers’ story sounds like an updated 21st-century version of Treasure Island meets Ali Baba and the Bush Cabal Thieves, writes Martin.

“This was a contingent of CIA/ DoD operatives, but it was really the CIA that bungled it,” Ms Rogers said. “They were relying on the CIA’s ability to organise an effort to seize these assets and to be able to extract these assets because the CIA claimed it had resources on the ground within the Iraqi army and the Iraqi government who had been paid. That turned out to be completely bogus. As usual.”

“CIA people were supposed to be handling it,” Martin continues. “They had a special ‘black’ aircraft to fly it out. But none of that happened because the regular US Army showed up, stumbled onto it and everyone involved had to scramble. These new Iraqi “asset seizures” go directly to the New US Ruling Junta. The US Viceroy in Iraq Paul Bremer is reportedly drinking Saddam’s $2000 a bottle Napoleon-era brandy, smoking his expensive Davidoff cigars and he has even furnished his office with Saddam’s Napoleon-era furniture.

about about twisted thinking.

Security Vies With Danger at Iraqi Polls: "... and Jan. 29 to 31 has been declared a national holiday period. During those days, most vehicular traffic will be prohibited, an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew will be in effect, the country's borders will be shut down and Baghdad's international airport will be closed, he added. Civilians will be barred from carrying weapons."

from cheney's favorite site ....

FactCheck.org Does Social Security Really Face an $11 Trillion Deficit?: "President Bush and Vice President Cheney have told audiences that Social Security faces an $11 trillion shortfall if nothing is done to fix the current system. But they fail to mention that this is over the course of the ?infinite future.' Over the next 75 years -- still practically a lifetime -- the shortfall is projected to be $3.7 trillion.
The 'infinite' projection is one that the American Academy of Actuaries says is likely to mislead the public into thinking the system 'is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated,' and therefore should not be used to explain the long-term outlook."

Did Bush Homeland Nominee Michael Chertoff Shield NJ Terror Ring?: "Michael Chertoff, appointed by President Bush to head the Homeland Security Department, may have shielded from criminal prosecution a former client suspected by law enforcement of having funneled millions of dollars directly to Osama Bin Laden while in charge of the U.S. Government?s 9.11 investigation."

Democratic Underground Forums - Michael Chertoff and the sabotage of the Ptech investigation: "Michael Chertoff and the sabotage of the Ptech investigation

Remember Ptech? That's the Boston software firm financed by Saudi businessman Yassin Al-Qadi, who also happens to be an al Qaeda bagman, whose clients happened to include numerous sensitive US federal branches and agencies, including the FAA, the FBI, the military and the White House."

Social Security: There Is No Crisis -: "YES, with 200+ bloggers united we are certainly making ourselves heard. NO, Bush did not offer any meat in today's Inauguration speech."

when they dont want to admit to the truth, they evade the question entirely, and it seems to be working.

No Speedy Gonzales By Eric?Umansky: "Milbank even counts up Gonzales' written evasions: 'I am not at liberty to disclose' at least 10 times; 'I do not recall' or 'I have no recollection' six times; I did not 'conduct a search' seven times; 'I am not at liberty [to discuss certain matters]' 10 times; and 'I have no present knowledge' seven times. 'It's a little bit appalling,' said one Reagan administration official. 'A conservative should want greater congressional scrutiny?it limits government.' "

DesMoinesRegister.com: "Courtesy of The Associated Press, here are some key numbers for President Bush from four years ago vs. today:

The federal budget then had a $127 billion surplus. Now it has a $413 billion deficit, the worst on record.

Unemployment is 1.5 percentage points higher.

There are 2.2 fewer Americans with jobs.

The stock market, measured by the Dow Jones average, is flat - up 41 points.
Home ownership is up nine-tenths of a percentage point."

WHAT UTTER BULLSHIT. and the timing, the day before the election, is suspicious. but one thing is clear. they used exit poll data to define moral values as being the top factor in this election, among other things, but refused to use the same data to explain why kerry isn't president. three words: FUCK YOU CNN!

CNN.com - Report suggests changes in exit poll methodology - Jan 19, 2005: "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Exit polls overstated John Kerry's share of the vote on November 2, both nationally and in many states, because more Kerry supporters participated in the survey than Bush voters, according to an internal review of the exit-polling process released Wednesday.
The report said it is difficult to pinpoint precisely why, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit poll than were Bush voters. 'There were certainly motivational factors that are impossible to quantify,' the report said."

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Insurgency: Archbishop Freed in Iraq, but 8 Chinese Are Captives: "He said the insurgents kept asking the same question: Are you an American spy? 'I told them, you do not know me,' he said. 'We are Christians, and we believe the Americans are occupiers.'"

DesMoinesRegister.com: "If Republicans don't like Governor Vilsack's idea of raising taxes, we should remind them former Governor Branstad raised the sales tax.
-D. A. Benda,
Toledo."

a great collection of the lies this administration perpetrated upon the American people about iraq.

from variety:

The presidential inaugural committee has settled on its final list of celebrities and entertainers coming to Washington this week to participate in festivities associated with President Bush's swearing-in for a second term. Among those taking leading roles in the two days of events are former "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer, former Nixon staffer cum actor-comedian-gameshow host Ben Stein, teen idol Hilary Duff, country singer Kenny Chesney and boxing promoter Don King.

and here is ben stein on abu ghraib:

I am going to get straight to the point. Something is terribly wrong with media coverage of the war in Iraq. The media hysteria about Iraq and the prisoners reached a crescendo last Friday when another network breathlessly disclosed that American guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad had stomped on the toes of suspected Iraqi terrorists to make them more likely to talk about murders of Americans and innocent Iraqis in Iraq.

This toe stomping was treated as a stunning revelation of American brutality. It was added to the torrent of hysteria about photos of nude Iraqis piling on each other and a nude Iraqi being led by a woman soldier with a leash. All of this --according to the media and some in Congress --is supposed to show that America is itself a terrorist nation and that we are really no different from the terrorists.

This is dangerous nonsense.

Here is what is important. This conflict started because a group of Islamic fundamentalist mass murderers killed three thousand totally innocent civilians on September 11, 2001. We did nothing to provoke it except in the terrorists' crazy brains. We had to fight back. That's why we went into Afghanistan and used harsh methods to get answers out of captured Al Qaeda there. To prevent more 9/11's.

the clusterfucks attending the pigfest will be running out of lipstick too soon.

josh marshall sums up this whole social security nonesense rather nicely:

We'll be talking shortly about some very disappointing events today on Meet the Press. But for now, a reading suggestion.

If you're following or care about the Social Security debate, you really must read the article by Roger Lowenstein in today's New York Times Magazine. It is probably the best single piece of journalism I've read on the subject -- mixing clarifying statistical and historical information with elegant description and context.

Along the way the author touches on a number of points that are commonly either ignored or distorted. For instance, you'll remember that Tim Russert today noted that in 1997 the Social Security actuaries predicated that the Trust Fund would run out in 2029.

Now they say it will run out in 2042, thirteen years later. As we've noted again and again, the forecasting assumptions upon which the predictions are based are fairly pessimistic. So it's not surprising that each time the SSA actuaries revisit their estimates they've pushed them further out into the future since each time there's a little more data that has come in that isn't as feeble as they'd predicated.

Another point. You know how back when Social Security was created most people didn't live much longer than 65 years, so the program just isn't designed for the world we're now living in?

Well, this just turns out to be a canard. As Lowenstein relates, when the actuaries sat down to design Social Security only 5.4% of Americans were over 65. But contrary to the understanding of Tim Russert and other Beltway mandarins, the founders weren't fools. They knew lifespans would increase.

When they designed the program they estimated that by 1990 -- more than fifty years later -- the number would increase to 12.65%. In fact, when 1990 rolled around, the percentage was 12.45. In other words, they knew almost exactly what the demographic profile of the retired population would be. And they designed the system accordingly.

One thing they couldn't know about quite so accurately were the effects of the baby-boom and the subsequent decline in birth-rates. But those are the factors that were taken into account by 1983 Social Security Commission that raised payrool taxes and began raising the retirement age.

So for instance you have Sen. Bill Frist today, with about as much knowledge as taste, saying that in 2008 Social Security will be hit by a "huge demographic tidal wave."

But Frist must be in a time warp. Because in 1983 we knew all about the baby-boom generation and that is precisely why they decided to build up a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund and raise the retirement age in phased stages. We've already done the reform for that.

And what happens when Social Security starts drawing on the Trust Fund? Will the world stop turning on its axis? "Since 1970 there have been 11 years in which Social Security has operated at a deficit; each time, it redeemed bonds from the trust fund without a fuss." So, I guess the answer is, no.

Then there's one other point the author brings up toward the end of the piece -- and it's a point we should all be focusing on, with regards to the seemingly arcane and abstract distinction between wage and inflation indexing of benefits.

"If the index was changed," he writes, benefits "would be pegged to a fixed portion of a previous generation's income. If this standard had been in force since the beginning, retirees today would be living like those in the 1940's ... which would mean $300 a month in today's dollars, as opposed to roughly $1,200 a month."

That puts it in perspective. The benefit cuts President Bush is talking about would slowly grind Social Security away into nothing, not a foundation for retirement security but an all-but-meaningless subsidy that wouldn't keep many retirees off the streets.

President Bush figures that as long as current retirees are assured that their checks will keep coming in for the next decade or two, that they really don't care what sort of America their young grandchildren will be living in half a century or more from now. In other words, he looks at them and sees himself. But I think America is better than that. And if the facts can speak with as big a megaphone as the president's lies, then I think we'll see that.

But don't stop with my summary, read the Times Magazine piece itself here.

some of my conservative friends, and yes, i do have friends that lean conservative, proving that i do not pick my friends because of politics, often ask my definition of dumb. i should provide them with this lil' tidbit from ny newsday:

WASHINGTON -- The White House on Friday played down a government report which said the war in Iraq is providing an important training ground and recruitment center for Islamic terrorists.

...

Bush has frequently described Iraq as the central front in the war on terror, and has said the United States wants to confront terrorists overseas rather than at home.

"The report confirms that we have the right strategy for winning the war on terrorism," McClellan said.

Asked about the finding that the war had created a breeding ground for terrorists, he said, "That's assuming that terrorists would just be sitting around and doing nothing if we weren't staying on the offensive."

on top of bush explaining why he hasn't yet caught osama bin laden.... "because he's hiding", has to to make the books of all-time-dumbspeak.

iraq is getting messy. time for some new excitement for the bushites. and what better way to provide the only excitement that republicons cum over than war, bloodshed and chaos. they LIVE for it. only, they like YOU to die for it.

CNN.com - Journalist: U.S. planning for possible?attack on Iran - Jan 16, 2005: "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has been carrying out secret reconnaissance missions to learn about nuclear, chemical and missile sites in Iran in preparation for possible airstrikes there, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.
The effort has been under way at least since last summer, Hersh said on CNN's 'Late Edition.'
In an interview on the same program, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said the story was 'riddled with inaccuracies.'
'I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact,' Bartlett said.
Iran has refused to dismantle its nuclear program, which it insists is legal and is intended solely for civilian purposes. (Full story)
Hersh said U.S. officials were involved in 'extensive planning' for a possible attack -- 'much more than we know.'"

no, this is not a skit from saturday night live.

CBS News | Bush: Voters Ratified Iraq Policy | January 16, 2005?10:00:01: "Asked why bin Laden was not been captured yet, the president responded, 'Because he's hiding.' "

i'm too lost for words.

Yahoo! News - U.S.-Led Soldiers Said to Damage Babylon: "LONDON - U.S.-led troops using the ancient Iraqi city of Babylon as a base have damaged and contaminated artifacts dating back thousands of years in one of the world's most important archaeological sites, the British Museum said Saturday.

For example, military vehicles crushed a 2,600-year-old brick pavement, and archaeological fragments, including broken bricks stamped by King Nebuchadnezzar II around the same time, were scattered across the site, a museum report said.

The dragons at the Ishtar Gate were marred by cracks and gaps where someone tried to remove their decorative bricks, the paper said.

John Curtis, keeper of the British Museum's Near East department, who was invited by the Iraqis to study the site, also found that large quantities of sand mixed with archaeological fragments have been taken from the site to fill military sandbags.

"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," Curtis said in the report.

In an interview Saturday with Associated Press Television News, Iraq (news - web sites)'s Minister of Culture Mufeed al-Jazairee said coalition troops in Babylon had used "armored vehicles and helicopters that land and take off freely. In addition to that, the forces also set up other facilities and changes."

He added: "I expect that the archaeological city of Babylon has sustained damage but I don't know exactly the size of such damage."

The remains of Babylon have been occupied since the early days of the invasion by U.S. Marines and, more recently, by soldiers from Poland and other countries. Babylon is 50 miles south of Baghdad.

A Polish military spokesman in Iraq said troops were cooperating with Iraqi authorities in efforts to protect the site.

"I have asked our archaeologists to prepare a specific answer to the accusations, but I have to give them some time," Lt. Col. Artur Domanski said.

The city's main sites — the Ishtar Gate, the ruins of Babylon and the Nebuchadnezzar Palace — are in a separate area on the camp's perimeter, run by Iraqi officials as an archaeological park to paying visitors.

The U.S. military says all earth moving has been halted and it is considering moving troops away to protect the ruins.

Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said all engineering works were discussed with the head of the Babylon museum.

"An archaeologist examined every construction initiative for its impact on historical ruins," he said.

In the report, Curtis acknowledged that at first the U.S. presence had helped to protect the site from looters.

But subsequent work — including the decision to cover large areas of the site with gravel brought in from elsewhere to provide car parks and helipads — was damaging, he said.

Lord Redesdale, an archaeologist who heads a parliamentary archaeology committee, described the report's findings as "just dreadful."

"Not only is what the American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it's actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world," he said.

"

the definition of what democracy means to george dubya boosh:

Times Online - World: "THE plan sounds more like the preparations for war than the holding of Iraq?s first democratic elections. But such is the dire state of Iraqi security today that the authorities in Baghdad are considering a complete lockdown of the country ahead of polls in two weeks? time.
According to Iraqi and Western sources, international borders will be sealed, movement between cities tightly controlled, mobile phone networks switched off and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi security forces and foreign troops deployed in a show of force not seen since the height of the war nearly two years ago.


The draconian measures aim to prove to the estimated 15 million voters that it is safe to cast their ballot, while deterring the insurgents from killing off the election with their campaign of violence and intimidation.
Although details will be kept secret until the last moment, it is clear that Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, is planning a countrywide alert similar to the one he imposed during the storming of Fallujah in November by US Marines.
A state of emergency law, granting the authorities sweeping powers, has recently been renewed until the beginning of February to cover the January 30 election date.
That will allow curfews to be imposed, restrict movement between cities, open special courts where police can obtain arrest warrants around the clock and seal off Iraq?s land and air borders to civilian traffic. With that in place the Iraqis are also planning to halt the movement of insurgents, who seem able to strike at will from southern Iraq all the way to the northern capital of Mosul, currently the bloodiest city in the country.
Traffic is expected to be strictly limited to those with special passes and the mobile phone network, which is a patchy service at best, will be turned off to hamper rebel commu"

anybody know how many members are left in this so-called coalition?

Reuters AlertNet - Portugal to withdraw force from Iraq on Feb. 12: "LISBON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Portugal will withdraw its paramilitary force from Iraq on Feb. 12, a government spokesman said on Saturday, after extending its stay to help provide security for the Jan. 30 elections."

there's a brew-haha brewing in iowa over the grocers' refusal to accept returns on bottles & cans. a letter in today's register hits the bullseye.

DesMoinesRegister.com: "Your Jan. 7 story ('Iowa Threatens To Sue Fareway Over Bottles') stated 92 percent of bottles and cans sold are returned and 1.4 billion a year are being returned. Some simple arithmetic shows that the unreturned bottles and cans represent profits to the distributors of more than $6 million. Maybe the distributors should share some of that wealth and set up recycling centers for the grocers that don't want to accept returns.
-Glen Breuer,
Coralville."

from yahoo:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) said he regretted sending the wrong impression of the United States when he used phrases like "Bring 'em on" and "dead or alive" in his first term and pledged to be more diplomatic.

In an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters to be broadcast on Friday, Bush said some of his past remarks were too blunt.

"'Bring it on,' was a little blunt," the president said in a transcript of the interview released on Thursday.

"I remember when I talked about Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), I said we're going to get him dead or alive. I guess it's not the most diplomatic of language," Bush said.

The president in July 2003 used the phrase "Bring 'em on" when speaking of insurgent attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq (news - web sites). The comment was widely interpreted as a challenge to the insurgents but Bush said his intent was to rally U.S. troops.

Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush said he wanted to catch Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," a phrase that reinforced the U.S. president's international image as a cowboy.

Bush said his wife, Laura, disapproved and "chewed me out right after that."

"So I do have to be cautious about, you know, conveying thoughts in a way maybe that doesn't send wrong impressions about our country," he said.

Asked about bin Laden, who remains at large, Bush reiterated his vow to "bring him to justice."

Bush's expressions of regret over his use of language contrasted with his comments at a news conference in April 2004, when he struggled for an answer to a reporter who asked him to name his biggest mistake since the Sept. 11 attacks.

In another mea culpa, the president said he felt his administration had done a poor job bolstering its image in the Muslim world.

"Our public diplomacy efforts aren't ... very robust, and aren't very good, compared to the public diplomacy efforts of those who would like to spread hatred and ... and vilify the United States," Bush said.

But he said he thought U.S. efforts to aid victims of the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami would help improve Washington's image abroad.

DISASTER TO THE RESCUE AGAIN! as someone posted on DU observes, the total picture isn't lost.

1. A tape appears in which eevil moslem "terrists" chide Bush for saying "bring it on"

2. Of course, no one knows where the tape came from--and as usual no one questions its authenticity

3. Right on cue, Bush makes this statement: "Gee, I guess I was undiplomatic"... and we're supposed to read into that: "I'm just a rough-hewn man from the back country... kind of a rail-splitter type, like Lincoln... did I ever tell you all how I used to read by firelight in my family's primitive room in the Waldorf-Astoria... I'm just like you people... a real man of the people..."

4. Everyone smiles and thinks, "Gee, he's just one of us... not some guy from the rarefied rich..."

At least when Sam Ervin said "I'm just a little old country lawyer", he knew he was making a joke, and he knew people knew he was making a joke.

the sun-sentinel checking in with the latest lie:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency misrepresented weather data it used this week to justify $30 million in disaster assistance paid to Miami-Dade County residents, according to the government scientists who developed the information.

In a phone conference with reporters Monday, FEMA officials said they had found no evidence of widespread fraud in Miami-Dade and were confident in the legitimacy of the Hurricane Frances claims. As proof, FEMA cited wind speeds of up to 85 mph "in the parts of Miami-Dade County that received our assistance," according to a statement from Daniel Craig, recovery division director.

FEMA backed up its statement by releasing a wind map of the Labor Day storm, citing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Center as its source.

But NOAA spokeswoman Donna McCaskill told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "We didn't make this map. It looks like some of [NOAA's] data might have been misrepresented in it."

NOAA atmospheric scientist Mark Powell said he knew of no sustained winds in Miami-Dade as high as FEMA claimed. "I don't know what they did with our data," he said.

The top sustained winds, lasting at least one minute, in Miami-Dade reached 63 mph on Key Biscayne, but were no more than 53 mph elsewhere in the county, according to NOAA's figures.

The only 85 mph winds were three-second "gusts" about a half-mile offshore from Miami Beach northward, the Sun-Sentinel determined using NOAA's method formula for calculating gusts.

blackwell can't be all that dumb. hypocrites generally are. stupid, yes, but dumb? hardly.

toledoblade.com: "Mr. Blackwell, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor in 2006, said: 'We fundamentally believe what Patrick Henry believed; that constitutions are not vehicles for the government to restrain the people. To the contrary, constitutions are vehicles for the people to restrain government.'"

a good summation about the bush lies regarding social security.

DesMoinesRegister.com: "Meanwhile, the president claims his tax cuts have put the nation on a path toward sustained, robust economic growth. In its long-term budget projections, the administration assumes 3.1 percent average annual economic growth. Yet the administration paints a doomsday Social Security scenario predicated on only 1.8 percent average economic growth.

Which is it? If the president is right about his economic policies ushering in an era of prolonged growth, then he is wrong about Social Security being in trouble.
The administration cannot assume low economic growth for Social Security purposes and high economic growth for everything else. It cannot tout the benefits of personal savings accounts based on historic rates of return in the market while claiming Social Security will be bankrupted by less-than-historic rates of economic growth."

FARPOINT.FACTOID:

DesMoinesRegister.com: "Greetings newborns: Your birth tax (your share of the national debt) is $30,000 and counting.
-Mary Voorhees,
Ames."

nobody should have to endure lesbian sisters at a reading of the father's will. it's punishment bordering on torture.

if, as bush likes to scream every other line, that it's "YOUR MONEY", and that "YOU KNOW HOW TO SPEND IT BETTER THAN THE GOVERNMENT", has one serious fundamental flaw. IT'S OUR MONEY THAT'S PAYING HIS SALARY AND ALL THE PERKS HE'S GETTING FOR HIM AND HIS FRIENDS.

'sides, if it really and truly was 'YOUR MONEY', then why is it a crime to burn it?

today's voting in palestine was on the top five of the local newscast. using the term 'exit polls showed'. just like they used the same phrase during the ukraine elections, and even with their 'it was all about morals' depiction of our own 'exit polls'.... about the only thing the 'exit polls' were wrong is who was favored for president.

surprised? i'm not.

i wish i could find a .swf file of a huge red flag that waves wildly so i could headline this post properly.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) admitted he is worried about the future of Iraq (news - web sites) but said the United States could consider its mission there accomplished once a representative government and an Iraqi security force are in place.

WaPo

American Army soldiers are deserting and fleeing to Canada rather than fight in Iraq, rekindling memories of the thousands of draft-dodgers who flooded north to avoid service in Vietnam.

An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq, reflecting Washington's growing problems with troop morale.

U.K. Telegraph

Several US officials have privately admitted that it may be better to keep Bin Laden pinned down on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than make him a martyr or put him on trial. But Krongard is the most senior figure to acknowledge publicly that his capture might prove counter-productive.

London Times

PARIS, Jan 7 (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac on Friday warned journalists to stay out of Iraq, two days after a reporter went missing in Baghdad and two weeks after the release of two correspondents held hostage for months.

Expatica

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a leading architect of the Iraq war, said on Friday he had been asked to remain in the Bush administration and will do so.

NY Times

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has still only spent a small portion of the $18.4 billion it set aside for rebuilding Iraq, a new government report shows.

According to a copy of the Bush administration's latest quarterly update to Congress on Iraq obtained by Reuters on Thursday, as of Dec. 29 only $2.2 billion of the funds has actually been spent.

This is up from $1.2 billion in the previous report that detailed reconstruction spending as of Sept. 22.

The portion of the money promised to companies for projects has risen to $10.5 billion from $7.1 billion in the previous report.

NY Times

NEW YORK As Iraq moves closer to its first democratic elections later this month, the number of news organizations requesting embedded slots with military units there is on the rise, according to officials. But those new embeds better watch their step. E&P has learned that five journalists have been kicked out of embed slots in the past three months for reporting secure information.

"They were all for operational security reasons, (revealing) something that would have been of use to the enemy," Maj. Kris Meyle, who runs the embed program, told E&P from Baghdad this morning. "Generally, it gets done very quickly. Usually it was something that was not done intentionally by the reporter."

Meyle would not disclose the identities of those who were "disembedded" or the news organizations for which they worked. But she did not recall any from newspapers. "I remember them being broadcast," she said.

She also warned that those seeking slots in an effort to get close coverage of the Iraqi elections later this month may be wasting their time. "We are telling people who request an embed during elections that they will not necessarily be near a polling place," Major Meyle said. "That is not our role."

Editor & Publisher

and now we hear that george is going to spend $50,000,000.00 on his coronation. disgusting to all hell.

and they wonder why we compare bush to hitler? let them wonder no longer.

The New York Times > New York Region > Public Lives: Warning From a Student of Democracy's Collapse: "FRITZ STERN, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and a leading scholar of European history, startled several of his listeners when he warned in a speech about the danger posed in this country by the rise of the Christian right. In his address in November, just after he received a prize presented by the German foreign minister, he told his audience that Hitler saw himself as 'the instrument of providence' and fused his 'racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity.' "

to all the critics on foxnewz who cant stop whining about the oil-for-food programme at the U.N., will have sad faces today as they find the audits recedntly done because of the scandal, 'don't prove a thing' and fail to lay charges of bribery or corruption.

too bad the same conclusion couldn't be made about this administration's business practices. gao recently made the claim that the united states' accounting is as shameless as arthur andersen's practice over at their old stomping grounds, enron.

negroponte + iraq = deathsquads II.

Top News Article | Reuters.com: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Pentagon is debating whether to set up elite hit-squads to target leaders of the Iraq insurgency in a new strategy based on tactics used against leftist guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago, Newsweek magazine reported on Saturday.
One proposal would send U.S. Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads of hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, Newsweek said, citing military insiders familiar with the discussions.
The squads may operate across the border in Syria, Newsweek said on its web site, but added it was unclear whether they would assassinate leaders or be involved in 'snatch' operations.
The magazine said the plan is being called 'the Salvador option' after strategy instigated during the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s."

Chicago Tribune | Mysterious jet tied to torture flights: "PORTLAND, Ore. -- The first question is: Where is Leonard T. Bayard? The next question is: Who is Leonard T. Bayard? But the most important question may be: Does Leonard T. Bayard even exist?

The questions arise because the signature of a Leonard Thomas Bayard appears on the annual report of a Portland-based company, Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC, that was filed in August with the Oregon secretary of state.

According to federal records, Bayard Foreign Marketing is the newest owner of a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V executive jet reportedly used since Sept. 11, 2001, to transport suspected Al Qaeda operatives to countries such as Egypt and Syria, where some of them claim to have later been tortured.

The Central Intelligence Agency has declined to discuss the plane. But one retired CIA officer said that he understood the Gulfstream had been operated by the Joint Special Operations Command, an interagency unit that organizes counterterrorist operations in conjunction with the CIA and military special forces.

A search of commercial databases turned up no information on Leonard Thomas Bayard: no residence address, no telephone number, no Social Security number, no credit history, no automobile or property ownership records--in short, none of the information commonly associated with real people.

And yet, someone signed the name Leonard T. Bayard to Bayard Foreign Marketing's annual report.

The report, which describes the company as an "international marketing firm," lists Bayard's principal place of business as a suite in a historic downtown Portland office building known as the Pittock Block. But a visitor to the suite who asked to see Bayard was told by a receptionist only that "Mr. Bayard doesn't work here."

The telephone number on Bayard's annual report is listed to a private residence in a rundown section of northeast Portland whose doorbell went unanswered earlier this week. Calls to that number, however, appear to be answered by a bank of operators.

An initial call was answered as "Baynard Foreign Marketing" by an operator who insisted she never had heard of Leonard Bayard. A second call two minutes later was answered as "Bayard Foreign Marketing" by a different operator, who said that "Mr. Bayard is away from his desk."

A message left by a reporter went unanswered. The CIA has long had a well-known practice of "backstopping" local telephone numbers for its proprietary companies around the world, whose calls are forwarded to operators at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

Scott Caplan, an attorney whose offices occupy the same Portland suite as the one listed by Bayard Foreign Marketing, identified Bayard as "a client" but declined to say more. Public documents show it was Caplan who filed the incorporation papers for Bayard Foreign Marketing when the company was created in August 2003.

Ann Martens, a spokeswoman for Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, said that knowingly filing a false corporate document in Oregon is punishable by up to 6 months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

November sale

Leonard T. Bayard--whoever he may or may not be--became the sole owner of the mysterious Gulfstream jet on Nov. 16, according to public records compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The records show that Bayard Foreign Marketing purchased the plane, for an undisclosed sum, from Premier Executive Transport Services, whose address is the same as that of a Dedham, Mass., law firm that incorporated Premier Executive in January 1994.

The Massachusetts law firm's address is shared by a second company, Crowell Aviation Technologies Inc., which according to Dun & Bradstreet claims to have only a single employee and $65,000 in annual revenue.

Government records show, however, that Crowell is one of only nine companies, along with Premier Executive, that has Pentagon permission to land aircraft at military bases worldwide.

The same day it transferred ownership of the Gulfstream to Bayard, Premier Executive sold an unmarked, 3-year-old Boeing 737 to Keeler and Tate Management LLC of Reno. That company's address is the same as that of the Reno law firm that incorporated it in October 2003, records show.

Like Leonard T. Bayard, the only named principal in Keeler and Tate, one Tyler Edward Tate, also appears not to exist in any public records accessible by the Tribune.

Premier Executive's only listed executive is its president, Bryan P. Dyess. A person with that name does appear in commercial databases, but his only addresses are two post office boxes in Arlington, Va., not far from CIA headquarters.

Premier Executive purchased or leased the new Gulfstream V in 1999, FAA records show. The plane's original registration number, N581GA, would later be changed by the FAA to N379P, and again to 8068V.

The first public mention of the Gulfstream appeared six weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, when a Pakistani newspaper reported that Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, a 27-year-old microbiology student at Karachi University, had been spirited aboard the plane at Karachi's airport by Pakistani security officers in the early hours of Oct. 23, 2001.

There is no information about where Mohammed was taken. But Pakistani officials said later that Mohammed, a Yemeni national, was believed by the U.S. to belong to Al Qaeda and to have information about the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

Since Sept. 11, unnamed U.S. officials have been quoted in several publications discussing the U.S. practice of "rendition," which involves sending suspected terrorists or Al Qaeda supporters captured abroad for interrogation to countries where human rights are not traditionally respected.

Well-documented case

One well-documented rendition occurred in December 2001, when two Egyptian nationals, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed al-Zery, were flown aboard the Gulfstream from Sweden's Bromma airport to Cairo. A Swedish television broadcaster, TV4, reported last year that a check of the plane's registration number, N379P, showed it belonged to Premier Executive.

The Swedish ambassador to Cairo later said Agiza and al-Zery both told him they had been tortured by Egyptian police. Al-Zery was released in October 2003 without charges. Agiza was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his alleged membership in an Egyptian terrorist group.

The Swedish government has called on Egypt to agree to an international investigation into the torture charges. The government has said it had been assured by Egypt that the two men would not be mistreated.

Another widely reported rendition to Egypt occurred in January 2002, when the Gulfstream arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia, to pick up a 24-year-old Al Qaeda suspect and dual Egyptian-Pakistani citizen, Muhammad Saad Iqbal, and transport him to Cairo.

German intelligence sources later said Indonesia refused to permit subsequent renditions to Cairo after learning that Iqbal had been tortured.

An international network of "plane spotters," hobbyists who log the comings and goings of specific aircraft around the world, have posted on the Internet photographs of the Gulfstream in various locations.

The Sunday Times of London, which claimed to have obtained the plane's flight logs, reported in November that the plane was based at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. The newspaper said it had flown to at least 49 destinations outside the U.S., including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, other U.S. military bases, as well as airports in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan.

Two days after the Sunday Times report, Premier Executive Transport sold the Gulfstream to Bayard Foreign Marketing. On Dec. 1, records show, the FAA assigned the plane yet another tail number, N44982."

it's the last line that's the kicker.

Tax-Funded White House PR Effort Questioned: "WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers called for an investigation Friday into whether the Bush administration misused taxpayer funds by paying a prominent media pundit $240,000 to promote the president's controversial new education policy.

The Education Department on Friday defended its payments to conservative commentator Armstrong Williams as part of a million-dollar contract with the Ketchum public relations firm to promote the No Child Left Behind Act with minority groups.

Williams, who is African American, was hired by Ketchum in late 2003 to build support among minorities for the president's education plan. He praised the program in columns and on television without disclosing the payments.

His case is the latest and perhaps most striking example of the Bush administration using government funds to market its agenda to the American public under the guise of journalism. It is also a fresh blow for the media following recent scandals that have raised questions about credibility.

Williams is the host of a syndicated television show and a frequent guest on CNN, NBC and other media outlets, and writes a syndicated opinion column. His website describes him as a "principled voice for conservatives and Christian values in America's public debates" who brings "an independent view with a refreshing twist to the central issues of our day."

In a column in May, for example, he sharply criticized the National Education Assn., saying the teachers union was "fundamentally opposed to any education reform — like vouchers or the No Child Left Behind Act — that seeks to hold public schools accountable for their failures."

Williams said Friday that he had "made an error of judgment" in accepting the payment, which was disclosed by USA Today.

Tribune Media Services, a subsidiary of the Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, announced it would stop syndicating Williams' column in response to the revelations.

Democrats said Friday that the payments to Williams amounted to using tax money to fund Republican propaganda. They were joined in their call for an inspector general inquiry by at least one Republican, Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

"We believe that the act of bribing journalists to bias their news in favor of government policies undermines the integrity of our democracy," said Democratic Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada, Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts in a letter to the president. They wrote that such actions "were common in the Soviet Union, but until now, thought to be long extinguished in our country."

Public relations contracts to promote government goals and services have been around for decades. Under Republican and Democratic administrations, the number and size of these contracts have grown, along with the use of deceptive tactics, according to PR industry officials.

In two cases last year, the Government Accountability Office, Congress' nonpartisan investigative arm, declared that departments under Bush had engaged in illegal "covert propaganda."
The GAO issued a legal opinion criticizing video segments produced by PR firms under contract with the Health and Human Services Department and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The segments were designed to be inserted into television station newscasts, but did not indicate that the origin of the information was the U.S. government. A third investigation into videos produced by the Education Department is pending.

The Education Department defended its practices in a three-paragraph statement, contending that officials had a duty to reach out to as many parents as possible to explain No Child Left Behind, which Bush signed three years ago.

The law, one of Bush's signature domestic policy achievements, requires states to hold schools accountable for teaching reading and mathematics in elementary and middle schools in exchange for more federal education aid.

Concerns about public reaction to the law mounted in Republican circles. Democrats attacked the administration for failing to provide enough funding for the new policy. Teachers complained about the complex testing requirements.

To help promote and explain the new law, the department retained Ketchum. The Ketchum contract came under criticism last fall when it emerged that some money was spent to help the department assess how the media was portraying the law, and other money was spent to develop controversial "video news releases."

Another part of the contract turned out to be the deal with Williams. The department acknowledged that a firm headed by Williams had been awarded a subcontract worth $240,000. The term of the subcontract was about a year, starting in December 2003.

In the contract, department officials said, Williams agreed to produce and air two 60-second television spots and two radio spots featuring Education Secretary Rod Paige explaining the law. The spots, officials said, ran frequently on Williams' cable TV and syndicated radio shows over the last year and included a standard disclaimer that identified the government as its sponsor.

But the subcontract also included several unorthodox provisions, according to a copy of the contract released under the Freedom of Information Act.

First, it stipulated that Ketchum "shall arrange for Mr. Williams to regularly comment" on the law during his broadcasts. It also called for Williams to use his influence with "America's Black Forum," a public affairs television program aimed at African Americans, to encourage producers to "periodically address"' the law.

Second, the contract gave Paige and other department officials the right to appear from "time to time" as guests on Williams' programs. Paige apparently exercised this option at least once in a one-hour interview on a show called "On Point," education officials said.

The contract praised the "unique and diverse" viewership of one of Williams' shows, called "The Right Side." The show's audience is 30% African American, 21% Latino and 40% white, according to the contract.

"We're interested in getting our message out to the audience that watches his show," said a senior Education Department official. The official added that the agency would cooperate with the congressional request for a review.

But many education experts cringed at the revelation.

"You don't pay money to a reporter to tell him that as part of that payment he's going to allow the secretary of Education so many appearances on TV," said Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy in Washington and a former top Democratic education aide on Capitol Hill. "That's buying news coverage."

Public relations firms are increasingly used by government, according to PR experts, who said that Washington firms received millions in contracts from federal agencies each year.

"The government has been pushing the envelope more in recent years," following the practice of private industry, said Paul Holmes, who produces a newsletter, the Holmes Report, monitoring the PR industry. "The problem, it seems to me, is what a company does with its own funds and what a government does with public funds requires two very different standards."

The use of government funds to covertly influence public opinion surfaced as an issue in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration paid consultants to send op-ed pieces and letters to newspapers in support of its policies in Central America without disclosing the payments.

Controversy has also surrounded the use of the video news releases, which are typically produced by PR firms to disseminate to local TV stations.

The releases included short segments on government programs and policies designed to be inserted into nightly news reports. They included instructions to news anchors for suggested lead-ins to the segments and voice-over from actors who claimed to be "reporting" on a subject. The news segments do not identify the source of the information as the U.S. government.

For instance, a recent anti-drug ad produced by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy was titled "Urging parents to get the facts straight on teen marijuana use."

The news release ran for two minutes, and featured a voiceless reporter identified as Mike Morris introducing such officials as drug czar John P. Walters warning parents about the dangers of marijuana.

The GAO said such releases violated laws against the use of tax dollars to fund propaganda without explicit congressional approval and without disclosing the government's role.

"The crucial issue here is the covert aspect of it. The target audience does not know that this is information prepared by the government," said Susan Poling, the GAO's managing associate general counsel. "If this is prepared with tax dollars, then legally it should be acknowledged as such.''

During the Clinton era, Health and Human Services said it used actors to portray reporters in fake news segments designed to be distributed to television stations.

The GAO found that the same principles forbidding covert propaganda would have been applicable to the Clinton-era news packages, which were produced in October 1999. The GAO did not criticize the packages at the time because they "were not brought to our attention," according to the legal opinion.

Rep. George Miller, a Democrat from Martinez, Calif., who co-wrote the No Child Left Behind Act, led calls to investigate the Williams matter. He said in an interview that he thought the Department of Education had "become distracted by the Bush administration's questionable political agenda."

Said Miller: "The administration ought to obey the law."'"

on the irony. plus the fact that this president is sitting at 49% approval, a week before inauguration ... is just more proof that this election was not won by this man.

InsideTrack1: "NEW YORK CITY (Jan. 7, 2005, GoldDerby.com) -- George W. Bush may have been the American people's choice for President in 2004, but the People's Choice Award for the Favorite Film of 2004 will go to his political nemesis this Sunday night, GoldDerby.com has learned.
At the ceremony to be telecast Jan. 9, at 9 p.m. (EST) on CBS, director/writer Michael Moore will accept the prize bestowed upon 'Fahrenheit 9/11' by TV 'President' Martin Sheen, star of 'The West Wing.'
GoldDerby has learned that Moore was tipped off ahead of time that his film beat other nominees 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,' 'The Incredibles,' 'Shrek 2' and 'Spiderman 2.' Apparently, that's why Moore mysteriously chose to ditch his earlier plan to attend this Sunday's gala dinner of the New York Film Critics Circle, which had planned to give him their award for Best Documentary, a victory announced on Dec. 13. Now rumor has it that Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein -- who organized 'Fahrenheit 9/11's' indie patchwork distribution -- will attend the Roosevelt Hotel gala to accept on Moore's behalf.
Even though People's Choice Award winners usually pretend to be surprised when their names are announced as champs, the fact that CBS really tips them off early has always been a poorly kept secret in the media world and, strangely, has never become controversial. In 1968, the Golden Globes were kicked off NBC when the FCC accused the Hollywood Foreign Press Association of tipping off winners ahead of time and thus 'misleading the public about the integrity of the awards process.' The Globes' banishment lasted a long time: it was 9 years before its kudos gala returned to live TV.
This year the tip-off at the People's Choice Awards could become scandalous because it enables CBS and Michael Moore to stage a r"

BELLEVUE, Wash. - Republican Dino Rossi and the state Republican Party announced Friday that they would contest the governor’s election that gave his Democratic opponent, Christine Gregoire, a 129-vote victory.

Republicans have been building a case over the past few weeks, gathering evidence of voting irregularities, including illegal provisional ballots and a handful of votes cast by dead people. They are pushing for a revote, an unprecedented step in a statewide election.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6793577

They have a problem with King County and they filed their challenge in ultra-red Chelan. The usual judge shopping.

meanwhile, we got irregularities up the yingyang, and repukes reFUSE to even look at it.

Richard Conglianese, Ohio assistant attorney general, is seeking a court order to protect Blackwell from testifying under oath about how the election was run. Blackwell, who administered Ohio’s Nov. 2 balloting, served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign.

James R. Dicks, Miami County assistant prosecuting attorney, filed a motion to block a subpoena in his county while Conglianese filed to block subpoenas in 10 key Ohio counties.

President George Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney and White House Political Advisor Karl Rove received notice that they will be deposed Tuesday and Wednesday, Dec. 28 and 29. The trio’s Ohio attorney, Kurt Tunnell, so far claims his clients have not been properly served. Under Ohio law, the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court is responsible for serving the three.

Meanwhile, the Election Protection legal team has collected new statements under oath describing more voting and vote-counting problems on Nov. 2.

Voters in Trumbull County have testified that on election day they received punch-card ballots where holes were already punched for Bush. Meanwhile, a notarized affidavit signed by Angela Greene, who voted at Whitehall Yearling High School in central Ohio’s Franklin County, stated that one of the malfunctioning electronic voting machines at her polling place was delivered without a cartridge—meaning votes cast might have gone uncounted.

In Miami County, Blackwell certified a 98.6 percent turnout in the Concord Southwest precinct, comprised of 520 votes for Bush and 157 for Kerry. This statistically improbable turnout has all but 10 of the 689 registered voters casting their ballots on election day. A preliminary canvas by The Free Press of less than half the precinct found 25 registered voters admitting they had not voted, meaning the official tally was almost certainly fraudulent.

The nearby Concord South precinct certified a 94.27 percent voter turnout, with 468 alleged votes for Bush versus 182 for Kerry. Miami County is included in the election challenge since it somehow reported nearly 19,000 additional votes after 100 percent of the precincts had reported on election day.

In Madison County, where public records requests were filed to obtain voting records, the voting results provided by the Madison County Board of Elections came directly from a private company, Triad Governmental Systems, Inc. An email dated Nov. 29, 2004 from Brandon Sandlin of Triad reads as follows: “Hello to all in Madison County! Attached you will find the cumulative report (oh49unov.pdf) with over and under votes reported as well as the official abstract (oh49abs.pdf). These reports may be printed for your records and then mailed to the state along with your other certification reports.” Coming from a private corporation, Triad’ s letter underscores the barriers to making a reliable independent public assessment and recount of Ohio’s presidential tally.

In Mahoning County, the Washington Post reported new affidavits documenting electronic “vote hopping” from Kerry to Bush. This means voting machines highlighted the choice for Bush before the voter recorded a choice of his or her own. The legal team has been told by a computer expert that this may mean the machines were pre-set on a Bush vote as a default. The Free Press has obtained dozens of such sworn statements of vote hopping.

The legal team is also exploring new evidence that in Coshocton, Ohio, write-in votes wrongly defaulted to Bush when run through the voting machine.

http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=01-03-05&storyID=20433

all the while cryin and moanin about how those evil democrats can't take losing.

these are the protectors of our democracy??????

gotta make you wonder who else is on the payroll.

USATODAY.com - Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law: "Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."

The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." He said he will ask his Republican counterpart to join him in requesting an investigation."

the guy gets the nation's highest honor, for being a miserable failure. this isn't America. this is Bushisitastan.

The New York Times > National > C.I.A. Report Finds Its Officials Failed in Pre-9/11 Efforts: "ASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that officials who served at the highest levels of the agency should be held accountable for failing to allocate adequate resources to combating terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to current and former intelligence officials.
The conclusion is spelled out in a near-final version of a report by John Helgerson, the agency's inspector general, who reports to Congress as well as to the C.I.A. Among those most sharply criticized in the report, the officials said, are George J. Tenet, the former intelligence chief, and James L. Pavitt, the former deputy director of operations. Both Mr. Tenet and Mr. Pavitt stepped down from their posts last summer.
The findings, which are still classified, pose a quandary for the C.I.A. and the administration, particularly since President Bush awarded a Medal of Freedom to Mr. Tenet last month. It is not clear whether either the agency or the White House has the appetite to reprimand Mr. Tenet, Mr. Pavitt or others. "

R.I.P. Carroll Dean Schmidt, my step-father.

once again, we have enronomics in full play, where the administration again is playin funny with the munny.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: January 02, 2005 - January 08, 2005 Archives: "Boy, is Atrios right about this. Contrary to what this AP report (and many other articles) says, the emerging Bush proposal doesn't allow younger worker to 'invest up to 4 percent of their payroll taxes in private accounts.' It allows them, as Atrios says, to divert 4 percentage points of their contribution to their own private account.
Even this, though, while accurate, leaves a misleading impression.
The Social Security portion of the payroll tax amounts to 12.4% of your salary up to about $87,000 annually. The employee kicks in 6.2% and the employer contributes 6.2% as well.
What the president is proposing is that individuals can divert roughly 4 of those 6.2 percentage points into their private investment account.
What percentage would that be of the annual contribution to the Social Security for the given worker? About 30%.

Saying that individual workers are merely taking 2% or now 4% out of their contribution makes it sound like a nominal amount. Just enough to give a trial run to private accounts. The more accurate description -- 30% of their contribution to Social Security -- makes it sound like a much bigger deal.

It's understandable that the White House would prefer the misleading description. But why does the AP and most of the rest of the national press?
Late Update: Here's a follow-up question I wish one of the elect would ask the designated White House leakers. I assume that the employer is still obligated to contribute their 6.2% however much the employee might choose to divert. But is that the case?"

and speaking of iraq..... insurgents now outnumber u.s. forces, and i'm sure the allied camps included. and who do we need to tell us? a paper in a foreign country.

Times Online - World: "IRAQ?S rapidly swelling insurgency numbers 200,000 fighters and active supporters and outnumbers the United States-led coalition forces, the head of the country?s intelligence service said yesterday.
The number is far higher than the US military has so far admitted and paints a much grimmer picture of the challenge facing the Iraqi authorities and their British and American backers as elections loom in four weeks.


?I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people,? General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq?s new intelligence services, said.
Bomb attacks killed another 18 people yesterday, almost all of them members of the security services, and the head of the Baghdad division of the Iraqi National Guard admitted that his paramilitary police force had been infiltrated by people who are leaking information to the guerrillas.
General Shahwani said that there were at least 40,000 hardcore fighters attacking US and Iraqi troops, with the bulk made up of part-time guerrillas and volunteers providing logistical support, information, shelter and money.
?People are fed up after two years without improvement,? he said. ?People are fed up with no security, no electricity, people feel they have to do something. The army (dissolved by the American occupation authority) was hundreds of thousands. You?d expect some veterans would join with their relatives, each one has sons and brothers.?
With elections less than a month away, the guerrillas have launched a massive campaign of attacks against anyone linked with the coalition or the Iraqi authorities.
Yesterday, at least ten National Guardsmen were killed in the northern Sunni towns of Tikrit and Balad, and another six policemen and a civilian died"

so it's 'our catastrophe' now? what changed?

Baghdad Governor Slain by Insurgents (washingtonpost.com): "'The war's worse, the insurgency's worse,' said a senior U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly. 'This is not going to be a short fight. Nobody should think it is.'

---snip---

More than three months ago, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi asserted during a visit to Washington that 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were stable and largely peaceful. Now, in interviews, he routinely refers to the situation as "our catastrophe.""

give that guy a cigar... or is it a woman?

DesMoinesRegister.com: "This would really impress me - and the world: President Bush gives the allotted $40 million for his inauguration to the Asian countries suffering the tsunamis, and has a televised inauguration in the Oval Office with family and dignitaries.
-Jan Fleming,
West Des Moines."

The Washington Post: has a follow up on the new bush push for detention policies.

A leading Republican senator yesterday condemned as "a bad idea" a reported U.S. plan to keep some suspected terrorists imprisoned for a lifetime even if the government lacks evidence to charge them.

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it is unwilling to set free or turn over to U.S. or foreign courts, The Washington Post said in a report yesterday that cited intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.

Some detentions could potentially last a lifetime, the report said.

Influential senators denounced the idea as probably unconstitutional.

"It's a bad idea. So we ought to get over it and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this," Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday."

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, cited earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions. "There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process . . . if you're going to detain people, whether it's for life or whether it's for years," Levin said, also on Fox.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department declined to comment, and a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke of the Air Force, had no information on the reported plan.

As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, plans to ask Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, defense officials told The Post.

imagine that. lack of evidence, so what in God's name are they using to hold them in the first place? and anybody who tries to muster up the gall to pass off the excuse that 'back during world war twooooo, they did it to the japanese? remind them of Rep. Matsui. God rest his soul.

The New York Times > Obituaries > Representative Robert T. Matsui, 63, Dies: "A third-generation Japanese-American, Mr. Matsui was less than a year old when he and his family were taken from Sacramento and interned. He stayed in camps until he was almost 4. In one camp, his pregnant mother contracted German measles and, as a result, gave birth to a blind daughter, Barbara. Mr. Matsui's wife, Doris, was also born in an internment camp.
When he got to Congress, Mr. Matsui helped lead the fight for compensation for the 120,000 people sent to the camps. In August 1988, President Ronald Reagan, saying he was moving to 'right a grave wrong,' signed an act that apologized for the forced relocation and established a $1.25 billion trust fund to pay reparations to those who were placed in camps and to their families."

this just makes me sick. coronation? mandate? one would think they're talking about Jesus.

Holding the Keys to Power, Tuxes if Needed (washingtonpost.com): "Second inaugurations tend to be relatively low-key affairs compared with the first go-round, but the most experienced concierge in Washington feels certain this one will be a blowout to rival its predecessor.
'We're not calling it an inauguration,' said Jack Nargil, head concierge at the Hay-Adams Hotel, as he gazed across the street at the White House last week. 'Because the president's supporters believe he has a mandate, there's going to be, in effect, a coronation.' "

enronomics strikes again!!

The New York Times > Washington > In Plan to Reduce Deficit, White House Turns to Old Projections: "WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues and omit the cost of major initiatives like overhauling Social Security.
Advertisement


To make Mr. Bush's goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year's actual shortfall of $413 billion.
By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion and claim victory if the deficit falls to just $260 billion.
But White House budget planners are not stopping there. Administration officials are also invoking optimistic assumptions about rising tax revenue while excluding costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as trillions of dollars in costs that lie just outside Mr. Bush's five-year budget window.
The five-year plan, due in February, is likely to reaffirm previous predictions of a $217 billion surge in tax revenues in 2005, the biggest one-year jump on record, and almost $800 billion a year by 2009.
'We still believe we will see new economic growth, with revenues increasing as a share of G.D.P.,' said Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, referring to the gross domestic product. 'I think our numbers are very realistic because they are consistent with the best estimates of Wall Street and of the Congressional Budget Office.'
As in past years, the budget will exclude costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could reach $100 billion in 2005 a"