I Will Never Take This Water bottle Camping

Scorsese to direct George Harrison documentary

VIA YAHOO
Thu Sep 27,

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese plans to
direct an authorized documentary about George Harrison, the
former Beatle who died of lung cancer in 2001, Daily Variety
reported on Thursday.

Interviews and early production will begin this year, and
the film will take several years to complete, the trade paper
said.

“It would have given George great joy to know that Martin
Scorsese has agreed to tell his story,” the paper quoted
Harrison’s widow, Olivia, as saying.

She will serve as a producer of the untitled project, and
will supply archival materials. Daily Variety added that
surviving Beatle members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr would
participate, as would the Beatles’ Apple Records label.

Scorsese, who won an Oscar this year for directing the
crime saga “The Departed,” is preparing for the April 2008
release of a concert documentary about the Rolling Stones,
called “Shine A Light.” He turned his attention to Bob Dylan in
the 2005 documentary “No Direction Home,” and depicted the
Band’s farewell concert in 1976’s “The Last Waltz.”

The Harrison movie will cover his time in the Fab Four,
when he composed such memorable tunes as “Something” and “Here
Comes the Sun,” his inconsistent solo career, his foray into
movie production with such projects as “Monty Python’s Life of
Brian,” and his enthusiastic embrace of Eastern mysticism,
Daily Variety said.

“George Harrison’s music and his search for spiritual
meaning is a story that still resonates today and I’m looking
forward to delving deeper,” Scorsese was quoted as saying.

Tullycast

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Dissing D.C.

Still no vibrant urban core. Height restrictions and the inevitable
scarity of affordable Class A commercial office space have encouraged
businesses that might otherwise be inclined to locate in the city out
to the suburbs, and even beyond into ex-urban hells like Loudoun and
Charles counties. Long workdays bracketed by exhausting commutes back
and forth to these outer suburbs. Rise of faux town centers in
otherwise indistinguishable places like Reston, Ballston, Rockville,
Bethesda, and Silver Spring serve to pull people out of the city at
night and encourage them to stay out on the weekends. Disproportionate
representation of current and ex-military in the metropolitan area who
still hear Taps playing in their heads every night at 9:30 pm. Downtown
business base of government, accounting/auditing, lobbying, trade
association, and national and international law firms not known for
attracting the, shall we say, bohemian demographic that demands your
“urban perks”. Lingering perceptions that the District still annually
vies with Detroit for the title of Murder Capital of the United States.
Georgetown, an area that might otherwise attract your “wealthy, single,
young people”, is limited by the absence of Metro service, the
surrounding neighborhood’s well-known and powerfully expressed aversion
to noise, fun and other signs of life, and the sense that the whole
place stopped being cool about 40 years ago. That ridiculous “Capital
of the Free World” ethos that demands long hours at the
department/agency/bureau/institute/office in the service of freedom
just isn’t conducive to lots of down time.

I am sure there are others

Brian Beutler

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HILLARY IS A POLITICIAN! AMERICA SHOCKED….SHOCKED I TELL YOU

 

 

In a rare feat, the Democratic front-runner appears on all five major Sunday programs, discussing Iraq and her health plan.

By Jim Puzzanghera

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 24, 2007

WASHINGTON —

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reinforced her position as the
Democratic presidential front-runner Sunday as she executed the rare
feat of appearing on all five major TV talk shows in one morning,
defending her new healthcare proposal and vowing to oppose any Iraq war
funding unless it is tied to starting a U.S. troop withdrawal.

“I will not vote for any funding that does not move us toward beginning
to withdraw our troops, that does not have pressure on the Iraqi
government to make the tough political decisions that they have, that
does not recognize that there is a diplomatic endeavor that has to be
undertaken,” the New York Democrat said on “Fox News Sunday.”

President Bush plans to ask Congress this week for nearly $200 billion to fund the war through the end of next year.

Clinton — who holds a 22-point lead over her closest rival, Sen.
Barack Obama of Illinois, in the latest national Gallup Poll on the
Democratic presidential field — did not criticize her opponents for
the party nomination. Instead she focused on her general-election
prospects, highlighting her success in winning Republican and
independent votes in her two Senate races.

“Anyone who gets the Democratic nomination is going to be subjected to
the withering attacks that come from the other side,” Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think I’ve proven that I not only can survive them but surpass them.”

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday” for the first time
in more than three years — and almost exactly a year after former
President Bill Clinton had an angry confrontation on the show with host
Chris Wallace over attempts in the 1990s to capture Osama bin Laden –
the senator laughed loudly when asked why she and her husband “have
such a hyper-partisan view of politics.”

“Well, Chris, if you had walked even a day in our shoes over the last
15 years, I’m sure you’d understand,” she said. “But you know, the real
goal for our country right now is to get beyond partisanship, and I’m
sure trying to do my part, because we’ve got a lot of serious problems
that we’re trying to deal with.”

Clinton took to the airwaves Sunday after unveiling her long-awaited
healthcare proposal, the American Health Choices Plan, last week. It
would require everyone to have medical insurance and would offer tax
credits to those who can’t afford it. Half of the program’s
$110-billion-a-year price tag would come from savings she says she can
squeeze from the current healthcare system, which she calls bloated and
inefficient. The rest would come largely from repealing tax cuts for
those earning more than $250,000 a year.

“It is not only a moral imperative that we try to cover everyone, it is
now an economic necessity,” she said on “Meet the Press.”

Clinton dismissed criticism from Republican presidential candidate
Rudolph W. Giuliani that her healthcare plan amounted to “socialized
medicine.” She said it created no new federal bureaucracy and addressed
a crucial problem.

“I’m waiting for any Republican candidate to come out with a plan
that can be really scrutinized, that we can ask hard questions about,”
she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “It seems as though they’re in the ‘just say no’ category, and I don’t think that’s good for the country.”

But Iraq was the focus of much of the interviews. Clinton again
defended her 2002 vote authorizing the use of military force against
Iraq. Many antiwar activists have called for her to apologize for that
vote.

“I cast a sincere vote based on my assessment at the time, and I take
responsibility for that vote,” she said on “Meet the Press.”

She continued: “It’s fair to say that the president misused the
authority that he was given, and if I had the opportunity to act now
based on what I know now, I never would’ve voted that way.”

Clinton also would not directly criticize the liberal group MoveOn.org
for its recent full-page ad in the New York Times referring to Army
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, as “General Betray
Us.” Republicans condemned the ad, and Bush said Democrats were afraid
to criticize the group because of its liberal clout.

“I don’t condone attacks by anyone on the patriotism and service of our military,” Clinton said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
“But let’s be clear here. This debate should not be about an ad. This
debate should be about the president’s failed policies.”

Asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” whether her husband would have a policy role if she is elected president, Clinton responded, “No. No.”

“Among the many lessons that I have learned, we want to be sure that
the president, my husband, does whatever he can, just as I tried to do
whatever I could, and I think he has a very special and important role
in reaching out to the rest of the world,” she said.

Appearing on all five major Sunday talk shows — the political
equivalent of hitting for the cycle in baseball — is known among TV
producers and political operatives as a “full Ginsburg,” after the
first person to pull it off, Southern California attorney William H.
Ginsburg. He made the circuit on Feb. 1, 1998, in defense of his client
Monica S. Lewinsky, the onetime White House intern at the center of a
Bill Clinton sex scandal.

Ginsburg had to scurry from studio to studio that day; Clinton taped her appearances from her home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Only high-profile guests in the midst of major news events have the
cachet for the five-show circuit. Those who have done it include
then-vice presidential nominee Dick Cheney during the 2000 Republican
convention; Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, then the Democratic vice
presidential candidate, during the 2000 Florida recount; and
then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during a nuclear weapons
showdown with North Korea in 2002. Giuliani and then-Rep. Rick Lazio
(R-N.Y.) also did it in 2000 in their race against Clinton for the
Senate.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

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Andrew Tully, 78, Author, Columnist And War Reporter

---

September 29, 1993

By RANDY KENNEDY

Andrew F. Tully Jr., an author who was one of the first American reporters to enter conquered Berlin in April 1945, died on Monday in a nursing home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 78 and lived in Washington.

The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said his wife, Molly.

Mr. Tully’s writing career spanned six decades. His work included several novels and popular nonfiction books on the workings of Washington, where he was a syndicated political columnist for more than 20 years. In 1962, Mr. Tully had both a novel, “Capitol Hill,” and a nonfiction book, “C.I.A.: The Inside Story,” on The New York Times’s best-seller lists.

He started working for newspapers while still in high school, as a sports reporter for his hometown daily newspaper in Southbridge, Mass. At 21, he bought the town’s weekly newspaper, The Southbridge Press, for about $5,000 with loans from friends, making him the youngest newspaper publisher in America.

He sold the paper two years later and became a reporter at The Worcester Gazette in Worcester, Mass., leaving there to become a correspondent in Europe for The Boston Traveler during World War II.

He began writing his own column in 1961, which came to be called “Capital Fare,” and was syndicated in more than 150 newspapers at its peak.

He was the author of 16 books in all, including “Where Did Your Money Go?” with Milton Britten, an examination of foreign aid, and “Supreme Court,” a novel.

He is survived by his wife, the former Molly Wood; three sons, Andrew F. 3d, of North Potomac, Md., Mark, of North Anson, Me., and John, of Santa Cruz, Calif.; two daughters, Martha Brown of Washington and Sheila Hamilton of Brunswick, Md., and seven grandchildren.

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Seven)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Seven)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Six)

 

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Six)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Five)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Five)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Four)

 

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Four)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Three)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Three)

 

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Two)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Two)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part One)

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part One)

NY TIMES’ SELENA ROBERTS LABELS ERIC MANGINI A TRAITOR FOR “FLIPPING” ON PATRIOTS COACH BELICHICK

By SELENA ROBERTS
Sports of The Times
September 18, 2007

There is Coach Hoodie, and then there is Coach Hoodwink.

Coach Hoodie is the Patriots’ Bill Belichick. He answers with growls, is hardwired to be ruthless, and would have lost a congeniality contest to the dearly departed Leona Helmsley. He comes as is: obsessive, cold, and brazen enough to have cheated with his video spy games out in the open of a sideline.

Coach Hoodwink is the Jets’ Eric Mangini. He replies to questions in his library voice, visits Sesame Street in his downtime and readily reveals his soft, fatherly side. He comes off as duplicitous: paranoid, brutal, and nakedly ambitious enough to have double-crossed the organization that nurtured his career.

Mangini didn’t just flip on Belichick, costing his former mentor a celebrated image that has been reflected in a shelf-full of Lombardi Trophies, as well as a $500,000 fine and a prime draft pick. He did more. He also humiliated the respected Patriots owner and league power player Robert K. Kraft.

That sin has left Mangini toxic to some team executives. After all, would you trust him? Is there anyone — a player, assistant, general manager, owner or mascot — that he wouldn’t betray in a pinch?

Bad karma can be a career killer. It took Ted Nolan years to land his current gig as the coach of the Islanders after he was blackballed, in part because he was labeled a traitor of management during his Sabres days.

False righteousness can boomerang. The track coach Trevor Graham once said he anonymously mailed the syringe that started the Balco circus in an effort to clean up the sport, but a grand jury witness told a different tale: He did it to implicate athletes and coaches that his runners competed against. Graham is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to federal agents about the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs.

•

Videogate isn’t a criminal issue — it’s more of a punch line by now — but it does cast shadows on the league’s integrity.

There is no doubt Belichick’s video trickery was wrong, hubristic and a below-the-belt maneuver of reckless proportion. Commissioner Roger Goodell — the N.F.L.’s overtaxed moral warden — was right in delivering a punitive blow as a scare tactic to a league full of teams that seek a competitive edge by tapping into their inner MacGyvers. Even Kraft understood Goodell’s logic, even if it took him a while.

“I must tell you I was quite upset and perturbed when I saw the penalty, because I didn’t think that the incident deserved this kind of punishment,” Kraft told NBC on Sunday night. “Over the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking about it and have cooled down. I realized he wasn’t just sending a message to the New England Patriots, he was sending it to all 32 teams.”

Belichick wasn’t alone in this race to the bottom of sports ethics. Mangini was very likely, at one point in his Patriot days, the spy who loved Hoodie.

How will we ever know? Maybe the lens will be the judge. In order to eliminate any competitive advantage Belichick might have tucked away in his film files, the Patriots said yesterday that they would comply with Goodell’s request to provide their videotape archive.

How about popcorn and a movie with Goodell? Imagine what’s on those old tapes. Is that Mangini holding the Cheat Cam in 2004? Is that Mangini wiretapping Bill Parcells’s headset in 2003?

A question to Jets officials yesterday about Mangini’s possible role in New England’s spy ring was greeted with the organization mantra: “It’s a league matter.”

The matter has revealed more about Mangini than Belichick. Already, Mangini was known for attempting to raid the Patriots’ cupboards upon his exit in January 2006. He slithered around Foxborough as if he were pilfering Whoville, trying to lift players, assistants and secretaries.

He wanted everything but the picture hooks on the walls. He also wanted to claim Belichick’s mind as his own intellectual property.

But who knew how far he would go for a gotcha of Belichick? Maybe Mangini’s betrayal was a little something he learned from Belichick’s school of calculated callousness. In a way, the two almost deserve each other. Someday, Belichick and Mangini may look up and realize teams can win — and play in Super Bowls — on the strength of a coach’s humanity, not his ability to humiliate.

•

Belichick is who he is. Mangini is the one with an identity crisis. He wants to portray himself as the anti-Bill — oozing charm when talking family values — and yet he longs to be Hoodie, to be known as wickedly smart.

Calling out his mentor lacked thought, though. It is not the wisest idea to mess with the N.F.L.’s version of Zeus. The wisdom of Mangini’s decision to flip Bill will play out all season — and maybe beyond. So far, it’s Coach Hoodie, 2-0; and Coach Hoodwink, 0-2.

E-mail: selenasports@nytimes.com

Iraqi Government Revokes Blackwater License

WASHINGTON POST
By Joshua Partlow and Megan Greenwell
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 17, 2007; 2:14 PM

BAGHDAD, Sept. 17 — The Iraqi government said today it has revoked the license of Blackwater USA, a private security company that guards U.S. Embassy personnel in Iraq, following a shootout in downtown Baghdad on Sunday that left at least nine people dead.

Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf called the episode the “last and the biggest mistake” committed by Blackwater, whose black sports utility vehicles and agile “Little Bird” helicopters escort diplomatic convoys throughout Baghdad.

He said the decision of the Iraqi government meant that Blackwater “cannot work in Iraq any longer, it will be illegal for them to work here.”

“Security contracts do not allow them to shoot people randomly,” Brig. Gen. Khalaf said. “They are here to protect personnel, not shoot people without reason.”

Phone calls and e-mails to a Blackwater spokeswoman were not immediately returned.

The Iraqi government’s position toward Blackwater set up a confrontation with the U.S. government over what legal authority governs the behavior of private security contractors here. Blackwater, which has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq, plays a high-profile role because it guards U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and other diplomats. The company has faced criticism in the past for violent incidents in Iraq.

The shooting on Sunday started when a car bomb exploded near a State Department motorcade in the Mansour district of western Baghdad. In response to the explosion, Blackwater employees opened fire, U.S. Embassy officials said. The shooting killed at least nine people and wounded 14 others, according to police and hospital officials. Khalaf put the death toll at 11 people.

Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said the embassy discussed the incident with the Iraqi government, but she added that few details would be available while it was under investigation.

“We are taking it very seriously indeed,” she said. “We certainly regret any loss of life associated with this incident.”

Embassy officials would not say whether Blackwater had suspended its work in Baghdad after the Interior Ministry’s decision. W. Johann Schmonsees, another embassy spokesman, said, “No one has been expelled from the country yet.”

It was not immediately clear whether Iraq or the United States holds the authority to regulate Blackwater’s operations. A regulation known as Order 17 established under the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer effectively granted immunity to American private security contractors from being prosecuted in Iraqi courts.

Another CPA memorandum requires private security companies to register with the Interior Ministry, but some of the companies in Iraq operate without doing so.

Lawrence T. Peter, director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, said Blackwater was licensed by the Interior Ministry. But Blackwater acknowledged as recently as two months ago that a license it obtained in 2005 had lapsed, and the company was having trouble getting the license renewed.

“Many Iraqis have come to me and complained bitterly to me about CPA Order 17, I understand that,” said Peter. “But the fact that you complain bitterly doesn’t mean you can wave a magic wand and change it.”

Correspondent Steve Fainaru contributed to this report.

“Britney is fat!” “GOTCHA!”: On Chuck Hagel, Jim Lehrer And The Iraq War

JT

I remember that dreary fall of 2002 when Jim Lehrer would have Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar and Joe Biden on about once a week to repeat again and again and again how the initial “defeat” of Iraq’s “forces” could be and probably would be accomplished quite easily.

The problem, they practically shouted (I recall the very mellow Dick Lugar just bristle with disdain at some assbite’s analysis from one of the neocon think-tanks) was Securing The Peace after our precision bombs had taken out the “valuable targets” they had.

It seems to me that the same “Americans” who are just so gosh darned fed up with this war while at the same time don’t seem to know and/or care about what exactly it is that we’ve wrought over there, ought to think about all their bluster and bullshit and preoccupation with some missing little girl in Utah (Elizabeth Smart-remember her?) or Michael Jackson holding his kid over a balcony or how smooth and powerful that handsome Donald Rumsfeld looked yesterday at one of his wonderful press conferences….

“Gotcha” America was and is constantly preoccupied with the latest scandal and you can always count on Larry King to do a roundtable discussion about what exactly went wrong with Lindsey Anna Nicole Paris Hasselhoff; televise the bickering of parents Alec Balwin and Kim Bassinger or spend a week with wall-to-wall coverage of a bathroom misdemeanor setup…

GOTCHA! Britney is fat! GOTCHA!

I remember that there were many voices at that time, literally screaming about the dangers and pure folly of invading Iraq,  including Mohammed El Baradi, Hans Blix and Scott Ritter among others.
Chuck Hagel has always stuck in my mind because of his unwavering statements about the disaster this folly could produce.

But I can’t get the image out of my mind of Congressman John Conyers trying to hold hearings on the “Downing Street Memos” back in June of 2005, when the Republicans were still stifling all dissent, and being relegated to the basement of the Capitol. (Longworth?)

For the last six years, Democrats tried to hold this Bush Administration accountable for a myriad of transgressions only to be obstructed at every turn.

Now the fickle American public, oblivious to the fact that we’ve probably killed a million Iraqis, just want to “get out of there” and scream at the Democrats to stop the war immediately. Those darned Democrats, that’s the problem; or the classic: “It’s both parties really” (Note: “No, it’s the Republicans who created and cheer lead this beastly effort- you don’t get to now, finally, start including the Dems in this mess)

Did you see the hissyfit that the Beltway mob threw about the Move On advertisement? Enough said.

Sheesh….

Chuck Hagel On Real Time With Bill Maher :: September 14, 2007 ::

LIVING IN AYN RAND LAND

 

ANN RYND’S LITERATURE OF CAPITALISM
NEW YORK TIMES
By HARRIET RUBIN

One of the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-page novel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still drawing readers; it ranks 388th on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. (“Winning,” by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No. 1,431.)

The book is “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest.

For years, Rand’s message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work in the service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed. Gore Vidal described its philosophy as “nearly perfect in its immorality.”

But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.

“I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.’s that ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has had a significant effect on their business decisions, even if they don’t agree with all of Ayn Rand’s ideas,” said John A. Allison, the chief executive of BB&T, one of the largest banks in the United States.

“It offers something other books don’t: the principles that apply to business and to life in general. I would call it complete,” he said.

One of Rand’s most famous devotees is Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose memoir, “The Age of Turbulence,” will be officially released Monday.

Mr. Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic forecaster. She was already renowned as the author of “The Fountainhead,” a novel about an architect true to his principles. Mr. Greenspan had married a member of Rand’s inner circle, known as the Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment. Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he began praising drafts of “Atlas,” which she read aloud to her disciples, according to Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand’s papers. He was attracted, Mr. Britting said, to “her moral defense of capitalism.”

Rand’s free-market philosophy was hard won. She was born in 1905 in Russia. Her life changed overnight when the Bolsheviks broke into her father’s pharmacy and declared his livelihood the property of the state. She fled the Soviet Union in 1926 and arrived later that year in Hollywood, where she peered through a gate at the set where the director Cecil B. DeMille was filming a silent movie, “King of Kings.”

He offered her a ride to the set, then a job as an extra on the film and later a position as a junior screenwriter. She sold several screenplays and intermittently wrote novels that were commercial failures, until 1943, when fans of “The Fountainhead” began a word-of-mouth campaign that helped sales immensely.

Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic’s comment that “the book was written out of hate.” Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”

Rand’s magazine, The Objectivist, later published several essays by Mr. Greenspan, including one on the gold standard in 1966.

Rand called “Atlas” a mystery, “not about the murder of man’s body, but about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit.” It begins in a time of recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt, calls for a strike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shut down. Riots break out as food becomes scarce.

Rand said she “set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a world without them.”

The book was released to terrible reviews. Critics faulted its length, its philosophy and its literary ambitions. Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of “greed is good.” Rand is said to have cried every day as the reviews came out.

Rand had a reputation for living for her own interest. She is said to have seduced her most serious reader, Nathaniel Branden, when he was 24 or 25 and she was at least 50. Each was married to someone else. In fact, Mr. Britting confirmed, they called their spouses to a meeting at which the pair announced their intention to make the mentor-protégé relationship a sexual one.

“She wasn’t a nice person, ” said Darla Moore, vice president of the private investment firm Rainwater Inc. “But what a gift she’s given us.”

Ms. Moore, a benefactor of the University of South Carolina, spoke of her debt to Rand in 1998, when the business school at the university was named in Ms. Moore’s honor. “As a woman and a Southerner,” she said, “I thrived on Rand’s message that only quality work counted, not who you are.”

Rand’s idea of “the virtue of selfishness,” Ms. Moore said, “is a harsh phrase for the Buddhist idea that you have to take care of yourself.”

Some business leaders might be unsettled by the idea that the only thing members of the leadership class have in common is their success. James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds at Gillette, Nabisco and Kraft, said he encountered “Atlas” at “a time in college life when everybody was a nihilist, anti-establishment, and a collectivist.” He found her writing reassuring because it made success seem rational.

“Rand believed that there is right and wrong,” he said, “that excellence should be your goal.”

John P. Stack is one business executive who has taken Rand’s ideas to heart. He was chief executive of Springfield Remanufacturing Company, a retooler of tractor engines in Springfield, Mo., when its parent company, International Harvester, divested itself of the firm in the recession of 1982, the year Rand died.

Having lost his sole customer in a struggling Rust Belt city, Mr. Stack says, he took action like a hero out of “Atlas.” He created an “open book” company in which employees were transparently working in their own interest.

Mr. Stack says that he assigned every job a bottom line value and that every salary, including his own, was posted on a company ticker daily. Workplaces, he said, are notoriously undemocratic, emotionally charged and political.

Mr. Stack says his free market replaced all that with rational behavior. A machinist knew exactly what his working hour contributed to the bottom line, and therefore the cost of slacking off. This, Mr. Stack said, was a manifestation of the philosophy of objectivism in “Atlas”: people guided by reason and self-interest.

“There is something in your inner self that Rand draws out,” Mr. Stack said. “You want to be a hero, you want to be right, but by the same token you have to question yourself, though you must not listen to interference thrown at you by the distracters. The lawyers told me not to open the books and share equity.” He said he defied them. “ ‘Atlas’ helped me pursue this idiot dream that became SRC.”

Mr. Stack said he was 19 and working in a factory when a manager gave him a copy of the book. “It’s the best business book I ever read,” he said. “I didn’t do well in school because I was a big dreamer. To get something that tells you to take your dreams seriously, that’s an eye opener.”

Mr. Stack said he gave a copy to his son, Tim Stack, 25, who was so inspired that he went to work for a railroad, just like the novel’s heroine, Dagny Taggart.

Every year, 400,000 copies of Rand’s novels are offered free to Advanced Placement high school programs. They are paid for by the Ayn Rand Institute, whose director, Yaron Brook, said the mission was “to keep Rand alive.”

Last year, bookstores sold 150,000 copies of the book. It continues to hold appeal, even to a younger generation. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who was born in 1958, and John P. Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, who was 3 when the book was published, have said they consider Rand crucial to their success.

The book’s hero, John Galt, also continues to live on. The subcontractor hired to demolish the former Deutsche Bank building, which was damaged when the World Trade Center towers fell, was the John Galt Corporation. It was removed from the job last month after a fire at the building killed two firefighters.

In Chicago, there is John Galt Solutions, a producer of software for supply chain companies like Tastykake. The founder and chief executive of the company, Annemarie Omrod, said she considered the character an inspiration.

“We were reading the book,” she said, when she and Kai Trepte were thinking of starting the company. “For us, the book symbolized the importance of growing yourself and bettering yourself without hindering other people. John Galt took all the great minds and started a new society.

“Some of our customers don’t know the name, though after they meet us, they want to read the book,” she went on. “Our sales reps have a problem, however. New clients usually ask: ‘Hey, where is John Galt? How come I’m not important enough to rate a visit from John Galt?’ ”

Joe Scarbourough still can’t shake his past

Why has Lori Klausutis’ Death Been Swept Under the Rug?

 

This article is the first in a series on TRUTHOUT which will present the known facts and raise some questions about this strange and tragic case.

Part I: Congressional Aide Found Dead in Congressman’s Office

By Jennifer Van Bergen

t r u t h o u t | January 4, 2001 – Remember the news back in July that Lori Klausutis, an aide to U.S. Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL), was found dead in the congressman’s District Office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida?

If you don’t, that’s because the news came and went in the blink of an eye.

Wait. Did you get that? A congressman’s aide. Dead. In the congressman’s office. No witnesses.

And the media were all but silent.

While the Condit/Levy story ran rampant in the national press for weeks on end, the Scarborough/Klausutis story got barely nine lines in the Associated Press and only one line in The Washington Post.

Does it make you wonder?

Wait until you hear the rest of the story. It has all the elements of a good murder mystery.

* The congressman (an ardent and vocal supporter of G.W., by the way) resigns only six months after re-election, just prior to his aide’s death. The reason: amid rumors of marital infidelity, the recently-divorced husband wants to spend more time with his sons.

* A medical examiner who had his license revoked in another state. Why? He lost it falsifying autopsies.

* The medical examiner’s supervisor had contributed thousands of dollars to the congressman’s election campaign.

* Contradictory reports about whether there is a visible head injury or not.

* A medical conclusion that contains several inconsistencies. First, that Mrs. Klausutis, who was a marathon runner, died of a cardiac arryhthmia. Second, that although she had suffered a fractured skull and a “contracoup” bruise on the opposite side of the brain, the injury could not possibly have been caused by a physical assault.

* Then there’s the question of whether the office was locked and the lights were on. One report says the door was locked and the lights were off; another report says the door was unlocked and the lights were on.

* And if all this weren’t enough, there’s the scientist husband who does high level weapon design work for the Air Force.

These are only the more obvious elements of the case. And this is not newsworthy enough for the press?

To be fair, the local press, the Northwest Florida Daily News, thought it was newsworthy for a few weeks. They published several short but good pieces and made a public records request for the police and medical reports. However, after the paper published the autopsy findings — which concluded that Lori Klausutis fainted, fell and hit her head on the desk — which effectively closed the police investigation, the paper had little more to go on. Furthermore, some local citizens accused the paper of “sensationalizing” the story. So, the story died.

In fact, however, the news stayed alive on various message boards on the internet and two intrepid journalists did do some excellent research which was published online, but amazingly, no major paper or television network even mentioned the story. Why?

That question is perhaps unaswerable. But it should be raised, along with all the many other questions that arise in this case. This series intends to review the facts and raise these questions.

“Absolutely no evidence of foul play”

Mrs. Klausutis was found dead in Rep. Joe Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach office at about 8:10 a.m. on July 20 by Juanita and Andreas Bergmann, who claim they had an appointment that morning with Rep. Scarborough to facilitate Mr. Bergmann’s application for a green card. Mr. Scarborough, however, was still in Washington, D.C. and flew home only later that day.

The day after Mrs. Klausutis was found, the police said there was no evidence of “foul play or trauma to her body.” The following day, having performed his autopsy and while waiting for the results of blood tests, Dr. Michael Berkland, the medical examiner, told the press that there was “absolutely no evidence” that Lori was “a victim of ‘foul play.’” By July 26, although Berkland had still not received the toxicology results, which he noted would likely play a key role in determining whether Ms. Klausutis had died of natural causes or accidentally, Berkland stated that he had “ruled out homicide.” While he said he didn’t think that suicide was a likely scenario either, he stated that he was also investigating it as a possibility.

Finally, on August 6, Berkland released the autopsy. Oddly, although the police had originally stated that there were no signs of trauma, Berkland acknowledged that Klausutis had sustained a “scratch and bruise” on her head which had been noted in the original death investigation. His explanation for having lied to the press was to “prevent undue speculation” about the cause of death.

Berkland determined that Lori, an avid runner who ran fivemiles a day, had a prolapsed mitral valve which caused a sudden cardiac arrhythmia — an irregular heartbeat — which in turn caused Lori to faint “in midstride,” and hit her head on the desk. How Berkland came up with this theory is unknown since the medical report contains no description of the death scene, no diagram of the location of the body, or its posture or appearance as Berkland first observed it on the morning of July 20th..

Early on in the investigation, there were rumors that Ms. Klausutis had suffered from previous health problems, but her family issued a statement contradicting this.

Thus, in the very first chapter of this story, several questions arise. How could a healthy, physically fit, 28-year-old woman suddenly “faint” of a previously undetected heart problem? How could the police, with no witnesses, and knowing from the outset that Ms. Klausustis had sustained a bruise to the head, determine that there was no evidence of an attack? If Rep. Scarborough had an appointment with the Bergmann’s, why was he still in Washington, D.C.? Or was he? Why did the police and medical examiner lie to the public about the existence of visible signs of head trauma? They lied to the public so easily. Could they have lied about other things, as well? Given their later reluctance to pursue the case or release any information whatsoever about it, this lie may indicate a less-than-honest handling of the case.

FRANK RICH GETS ON BOARD THE DEMOCRAT BASHING MEME : “CAN’T BLAME PUBLIC FOR CHANGING CHANNEL”

 Will the Democrats Betray Us?
By Frank Rich
The New York Times     Sunday 16 September 2007

    “Sir, I don’t know, actually”: The fact that America’s surrogate commander in chief, David Petraeus, could not say whether the war in Iraq is making America safer was all you needed to take away from last week’s festivities in Washington. Everything else was a verbal quagmire, as administration spin and senatorial preening fought to a numbing standoff.

    Not that many Americans were watching. The country knew going in that the White House would win its latest campaign to stay its course of indefinitely shoveling our troops and treasure into the bottomless pit of Iraq. The only troops coming home alive or with their limbs intact in President Bush’s troop “reduction” are those who were scheduled to be withdrawn by April anyway. Otherwise the president would have had to extend combat tours yet again, mobilize more reserves or bring back the draft.

    On the sixth anniversary of the day that did not change everything, General Petraeus couldn’t say we are safer because he knows we are not. Last Sunday, Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the C.I.A.’s Osama bin Laden unit, explained why. He wrote in The Daily News that Al Qaeda, under the de facto protection of Pervez Musharraf, is “on balance” more threatening today that it was on 9/11. And as goes Pakistan, so goes Afghanistan. On Tuesday, just as the Senate hearings began, Lisa Myers of NBC News reported on a Taliban camp near Kabul in an area nominally controlled by the Afghan government we installed. It is training bomb makers to attack America.

    Little of this registered in or beyond the Beltway. New bin Laden tapes and the latest 9/11 memorial rites notwithstanding, we’re back in a 9/10 mind-set. Bin Laden, said Frances Townsend, the top White House homeland security official, “is virtually impotent.” Karen Hughes, the Bush crony in charge of America’s P.R. in the jihadists’ world, recently held a press conference anointing Cal Ripken Jr. our international “special sports envoy.” We are once more sleepwalking through history, fiddling while the Qaeda not in Iraq prepares to burn.

    This is why the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, including those more accurate than Mr. Bush’s recent false analogies, can take us only so far. Our situation is graver than it was during Vietnam.

    Certainly there were some eerie symmetries between General Petraeus’s sales pitch last week and its often-noted historical antecedent: Gen. William Westmoreland’s similar mission for L.B.J. before Congress on April 28, 1967. Westmoreland, too, refused to acknowledge that our troops were caught in a civil war. He spoke as well of the “repeated successes” of the American-trained South Vietnamese military and ticked off its growing number of combat-ready battalions. “The strategy we’re following at this time is the proper one,” the general assured America, and “is producing results.”

    Those fabulous results delayed our final departure from Vietnam for another eight years – just short of the nine to 10 years General Petraeus has said may be needed for a counterinsurgency in Iraq. But there’s a crucial difference between the Westmoreland show of 1967 and the 2007 revival by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Westmoreland played to a full and largely enthusiastic house. Most Americans still supported the war in Vietnam and trusted him; so did all but a few members of Congress, regardless of party. All three networks pre-empted their midday programming for Westmoreland’s Congressional appearance.

    Our Iraq commander, by contrast, appeared before a divided and stalemated Congress just as an ABC News-Washington Post poll found that most Americans believed he would overhype progress in Iraq. No network interrupted a soap opera for his testimony. On cable the hearings fought for coverage with Britney Spears’s latest self-immolation and the fate of Madeleine McCann, our latest JonBenet Ramsey stand-in.

    General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could grab an hour of prime television time only by slinking into the safe foxhole of Fox News, where Brit Hume chaperoned them on a gloomy, bunkerlike set before an audience of merely 1.5 million true believers. Their “Briefing for America,” as Fox titled it, was all too fittingly interrupted early on for a commercial promising pharmaceutical relief from erectile dysfunction.

    Even if military “victory” were achievable in Iraq, America could not win a war abandoned by its own citizens. The evaporation of that support was ratified by voters last November. For that, they were rewarded with the “surge.” Now their mood has turned darker. Americans have not merely abandoned the war; they don’t want to hear anything that might remind them of it, or of war in general. Katie Couric’s much-promoted weeklong visit to the front produced ratings matching the CBS newscast’s all-time low. Angelina Jolie’s movie about Daniel Pearl sank without a trace. Even Clint Eastwood’s wildly acclaimed movies about World War II went begging. Over its latest season, “24″ lost a third of its viewers, just as Mr. Bush did between January’s prime-time address and last week’s.

    You can’t blame the public for changing the channel. People realize that the president’s real “plan for victory” is to let his successor clean up the mess. They don’t want to see American troops dying for that cause, but what can be done? Americans voted the G.O.P. out of power in Congress; a clear majority consistently tell pollsters they want out of Iraq. And still every day is Groundhog Day. Our America, unlike Vietnam-era America, is more often resigned than angry. Though the latest New York Times-CBS News poll finds that only 5 percent trust the president to wrap up the war, the figure for the (barely) Democratic-controlled Congress, 21 percent, is an almost-as-resounding vote of no confidence.

    Last week Democrats often earned that rating, especially those running for president. It is true that they do not have the votes to overcome a Bush veto of any war legislation. But that doesn’t mean the Democrats have to go on holiday. Few used their time to cross-examine General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker on their disingenuous talking points, choosing instead to regurgitate stump sentiments or ask uncoordinated, redundant questions. It’s telling that the one question that drew blood – are we safer? – was asked by a Republican, John Warner, who is retiring from the Senate.

    Americans are looking for leadership, somewhere, anywhere. At least one of the Democratic presidential contenders might have shown the guts to soundly slap the “General Betray-Us” headline on the ad placed by MoveOn.org in The Times, if only to deflate a counterproductive distraction. This left-wing brand of juvenile name-calling is as witless as the “Defeatocrats” and “cut and run” McCarthyism from the right; it at once undermined the serious charges against the data in the Petraeus progress report (including those charges in the same MoveOn ad) and allowed the war’s cheerleaders to hyperventilate about a sideshow. “General Betray-Us” gave Republicans a furlough to avoid ownership of an Iraq policy that now has us supporting both sides of the Shiite-vs.-Sunni blood bath while simultaneously shutting America’s doors on the millions of Iraqi refugees the blood bath has so far created.

    It’s also past time for the Democratic presidential candidates to stop getting bogged down in bickering about who has the faster timeline for withdrawal or the more enforceable deadline. Every one of these plans is academic anyway as long as Mr. Bush has a veto pen. The security of America is more important – dare one say it? – than trying to outpander one another in Iowa and New Hampshire.

    The Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate need all the unity and focus they can muster to move this story forward, and that starts with the two marquee draws, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It’s essential to turn up the heat full time in Washington for any and every legislative roadblock to administration policy that they and their peers can induce principled or frightened Republicans to endorse.

    They should summon the new chief of central command (and General Petraeus’s boss), Adm. William Fallon, for tough questioning; he is reportedly concerned about our lapsed military readiness should trouble strike beyond Iraq. And why not grill the Joint Chiefs and those half-dozen or so generals who turned down the White House post of “war czar” last fall? The war should be front and center in Congress every day.

    Mr. Bush, confident that he got away with repackaging the same bankrupt policies with a nonsensical new slogan (“Return on Success”) Thursday night, is counting on the public’s continued apathy as he kicks the can down the road and bides his time until Jan. 20, 2009; he, after all, has nothing more to lose. The job for real leaders is to wake up America to the urgent reality. We can’t afford to punt until Inauguration Day in a war that each day drains America of resources and will. Our national security can’t be held hostage indefinitely to a president’s narcissistic need to compound his errors rather than admit them.

    The enemy votes, too. Cataclysmic events on the ground in Iraq, including Thursday’s murder of the Sunni tribal leader Mr. Bush embraced two weeks ago as a symbol of hope, have never arrived according to this administration’s optimistic timetable. Nor have major Qaeda attacks in the West. It’s national suicide to entertain the daydream that they will start doing so now.

TOM FRIEDMAN’S INNER DEMONS ARE GETTING TO HIM

TOM FRIEDMAN’S INNER DEMONS ARE GETTING TO HIM 

SOMEBODY ELSE’S MESS

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: September 16, 2007

George W. Bush delivered his farewell address on Thursday evening — handing the baton, and probably the next election, to the Democrats.

Why do I say that? Because in his speech to the nation the president basically said that on the most important, indeed only, legacy issue left in his presidency, Iraq, there would be no change in policy — that a substantial number of U.S. troops would remain in Iraq “beyond my presidency.” Therefore, it will be up to his successor to end the war he started.

“In one fell swoop George Bush abdicated to Petraeus, Maliki and the Democrats,” said David Rothkopf, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, referring to Gen. David Petraeus and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. “Bush left it to Petraeus to handle the war, Maliki to handle our timetable and therefore our checkbook, and the Democrats to ultimately figure out how to end this.”

The sad thing for the American people is that we have no commander in chief anymore, framing our real situation and options. The president’s description on Thursday of the stakes in Iraq was delusional. An Iraqi ally fighting for “freedom” against “extremists”? There are extremists in the Iraqi government, army and police. There is a civil war on top of tribal, neighborhood and jihadist wars, fueled not by a single Iraqi quest for freedom, but by differing quests for “justice,” revenge and, yes, democracy. The only possible self-sustaining outcome in the near term is some form of radical federalism.

We also do not have a commander in chief weighing the costs of staying in Iraq indefinitely against America’s other interests at home and abroad. When General Petraeus honestly averred that he could not say whether pursuing the surge in Iraq would make America safer, he underscored how much the war there has become disconnected from every conceivable worthy goal — democratization of Iraq or spreading progressive governance in the Arab-Muslim world — and is now just about itself and abstractions of “winning” or “not failing.”

“We must begin by considering the overall security of this nation. It’s our responsibility here in Congress under the Constitution to ensure that the United States military can deter and if needed prevail anywhere our interests are threatened. Iraq is an important piece of the overall equation, but it is only a piece. There are very real trade-offs when you send 160,000 of our men and women in uniform to Iraq. Those troops in Iraq are not available for other missions.”

While Mr. Bush’s tacit resignation last week greatly increases the odds of a Democratic victory in 2008, there are several wild cards that could change things: a miraculous turnaround in Iraq (unlikely, but you can always hope), a terrorist attack in America, a coup in Pakistan that puts loose nukes in the hands of Islamist radicals, or a recession induced by the meltdown in the U.S. mortgage market, which forces a stark choice between bailing out Baghdad or Chicago.

The first three, for sure, could propel the right Republican candidate right back into the thick of things — especially if the Democrats have not positioned themselves with a credible approach to Iraq and the wider national security issues facing the country.

There is an opportunity now for Democrats, and Americans will be listening — but they need to articulate a concrete endgame policy, and it would have to include at least three components:

First, a detailed blueprint with a fixed withdrawal date tied to a negotiation with Iraqi factions on a federal solution tied to a military redeployment plan to contain the inevitable spillover from Iraq.

Second, a commitment by the next president to impose a stiff tariff on all imported crude oil, to make sure we become less dependent on what is sure to be a more unstable Middle East as we leave Iraq. And third, a plan to deal with the broader terrorist challenge. Set a date. Set a price. That will get people’s attention.

Democratic candidates have been talking about health care and other important issues, but the overriding foreign policy message that still comes across from them to many Americans, argues Mr. Rothkopf, is that Democrats are simply “anti-Bush, antiwar and antitrade.” Be careful: despite the mess Mr. Bush has made in the world, or maybe because of it, Americans will not hand the keys to a Democrat who does not convey a “gut” credibility on national security.

MAUREEN DOWD GIVES GIULIANI A COLUMN OF CUTENESS

Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON

It’s on.

Or, rather, it’s back on.

Rudy versus Hillary, a New York steel-cage match pitting two eye-gouging, hair-pulling, kick-em-till-they’re-dead brawlers.

For months, Hillary’s comely male rivals for the Democratic nomination have tiptoed around her, letting their wives take shots at the front-runner.

Barack Obama looks wary when he’s on stage with Hillary, but Michelle stepped up: “Some women feel it’s a woman’s turn, you know? They just feel like it’s Hillary’s turn. That, I reject, because democracy isn’t supposed to be about whose turn it is.”

That followed Elizabeth Edwards’s takedown of Hillary: “She’s just not as vocal a women’s advocate as I want to see. John is.”

Obama and Edwards probably figured the criticism would sound less Lazio coming from their wives. But it just made them seem as though they were hiding behind their wives’ skirts.

Enter Rudy. He may wear skirts, but he’s not afraid to take down a skirt.

He put up an ad Friday on his campaign Web site slamming her as a hypocrite for running an antiwar campaign after supporting the president on the authorization for war.

Obama has been trying to make this point for quite a while, but so gingerly that every time he sneaks up on it, Hillary surges ahead.

Rudy doesn’t do ginger.

Hillary has been trying to Rudy-up, corralling ground zero and playing the fear card, saying that if there were a terrorist attack before the election, only she could stop Republicans from keeping the White House. But Rudy aims to de-Rudy her. His ad is an instant cult classic, with a solemn trumpet that is reminiscent of “Taps” and a narrator who sounds like the guy who does trailers for “In a World Gone Wrong” disaster flicks.

Just when Hillary was basking in her reinvention of herself, Rudy sprang out of the Republican primary shadows and shoved her back.

He ignores her attempts to be New Hillary, a senator who loves men in uniform, who is not afraid to use military power, and who is tough enough to deal with bin Laden. He recasts her as Old Hillary, a Code Pink pinko first lady and opportunist from a White House that had a reputation for having a flower-child distaste for the military, a left-wing shrew who made a secret socialist health care plan and let gays into the military and certainly can’t be trusted to fight the jihadists.

“In 2002,” the white words flash on a black screen, “Hillary Clinton voted to authorize military action in Iraq because she believed it was the right thing to do.”

Then it goes to a clip of Hillary speaking on the Senate floor during the war authorization debate that Obama has been too refined to highlight.

“If left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons,” she said, an echo of Condi. “He has also given aid and comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members. So it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation.”

Then the narrator intones, “But now that she’s running for president, Hillary Clinton has changed her position, even joining with the radical group MoveOn .org in attacking American General Petraeus” when she said it would require “a willing suspension of disbelief” to believe him.

“Just when our troops need all our support to finish the job, Hillary Clinton is turning her back on them,” the narrator concludes.

There are harsh images of Hillary, looking brittle in dark glasses, to go with the harsh words.

Rudy has decided that the best way to win his primary is to show he can beat the woman on the way to winning hers.

He can’t campaign on family values or the sanctity of marriage. He can’t whip up any fears on abortion or gays.

He can’t campaign on his plan to get out of Iraq because he doesn’t have one. He can’t campaign as the tough-guy heir to Bush because nobody likes Bush. He can’t campaign on attacking Iran because he’ll sound like crazy Dick Cheney.

He can’t campaign on the economy because he’s W. redux, facing a possible recession because of the mortgage crisis. He can’t campaign on Rudy’s from-the-mountaintop “12 Commitments” because no one knows what they are, and they don’t mention the word “Iraq.”

But he can be the only man in the field tough enough to slap around a woman.

The irony is that if you could loosen up Hillary with a few Jack and gingers, she would probably be closer to her reinvention than to his caricature. She probably secretly supports the surge, knowing that after it sputters, she may reap the whirlwind. And then the Republicans, who have lied, stalled and mismanaged in every way imaginable, will paint her as Ms. Cut and Run, turning her back on the military again.

PAUL KRUGMAN ON BUSH ENABLER AL GREENSPAN

When President Bush first took office, it seemed unlikely that he would succeed in getting his proposed tax cuts enacted. The questionable nature of his installation in the White House seemed to leave him in a weak political position, while the Senate was evenly balanced between the parties. It was hard to see how a huge, controversial tax cut, which delivered most of its benefits to a wealthy elite, could get through Congress.

Then Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before the Senate Budget Committee.

Until then Mr. Greenspan had presented himself as the voice of fiscal responsibility, warning the Clinton administration not to endanger its hard-won budget surpluses. But now Republicans held the White House, and the Greenspan who appeared before the Budget Committee was a very different man.

Suddenly, his greatest concern — the “emerging key fiscal policy need,” he told Congress — was to avert the threat that the federal government might actually pay off all its debt. To avoid this awful outcome, he advocated tax cuts. And the floodgates were opened.

As it turns out, Mr. Greenspan’s fears that the federal government would quickly pay off its debt were, shall we say, exaggerated. And Mr. Greenspan has just published a book in which he castigates the Bush administration for its fiscal irresponsibility.

Well, I’m sorry, but that criticism comes six years late and a trillion dollars short.

Mr. Greenspan now says that he didn’t mean to give the Bush tax cuts a green light, and that he was surprised at the political reaction to his remarks. There were, indeed, rumors at the time — which Mr. Greenspan now says were true — that the Fed chairman was upset about the response to his initial statement.

But the fact is that if Mr. Greenspan wasn’t intending to lend crucial support to the Bush tax cuts, he had ample opportunity to set the record straight when it could have made a difference.

His first big chance to clarify himself came a few weeks after that initial testimony, when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Here’s what I wrote following that appearance: “Mr. Greenspan’s performance yesterday, in his first official testimony since he let the genie out of the bottle, was a profile in cowardice. Again and again he was offered the opportunity to say something that would help rein in runaway tax-cutting; each time he evaded the question, often replying by reading from his own previous testimony. He declared once again that he was speaking only for himself, thus granting himself leeway to pronounce on subjects far afield of his role as Federal Reserve chairman. But when pressed on the crucial question of whether the huge tax cuts that now seem inevitable are too large, he said it was inappropriate for him to comment on particular proposals.

“In short, Mr. Greenspan defined the rules of the game in a way that allows him to intervene as he likes in the political debate, but to retreat behind the veil of his office whenever anyone tries to hold him accountable for the results of those interventions.”

I received an irate phone call from Mr. Greenspan after that article, in which he demanded to know what he had said that was wrong. In his book, he claims that Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, was stumped by that question. That’s hard to believe, because I certainly wasn’t: Mr. Greenspan’s argument for tax cuts was contorted and in places self-contradictory, not to mention based on budget projections that everyone knew, even then, were wildly overoptimistic.

If anyone had doubts about Mr. Greenspan’s determination not to inconvenience the Bush administration, those doubts were resolved two years later, when the administration proposed another round of tax cuts, even though the budget was now deep in deficit. And guess what? The former high priest of fiscal responsibility did not object.

And in 2004 he expressed support for making the Bush tax cuts permanent — remember, these are the tax cuts he now says he didn’t endorse — and argued that the budget should be balanced with cuts in entitlement spending, including Social Security benefits, instead. Of course, back in 2001 he specifically assured Congress that cutting taxes would not threaten Social Security.

In retrospect, Mr. Greenspan’s moral collapse in 2001 was a portent. It foreshadowed the way many people in the foreign policy community would put their critical faculties on hold and support the invasion of Iraq, despite ample evidence that it was a really bad idea.

And like enthusiastic war supporters who have started describing themselves as war critics now that the Iraq venture has gone wrong, Mr. Greenspan has started portraying himself as a critic of administration fiscal irresponsibility now that President Bush has become deeply unpopular and Democrats control Congress.

 

WILCO ::YOU ARE MY FACE:: JOOLS HOLLAND

BILL MAHER ::September 14 2007:: Part Seven (NEW RULES)

 

BILL MAHER ::September 14 2007:: Part Seven

BILL MAHER ::September 14 2007:: Part Six

 

BILL MAHER ::September 14 2007:: Part Six

BILL MAHER ::September 14 2007:: Part Five

BILL MAHER ::September 14 2007:: Part Five

BILL MAHER’S REAL TIME ::September 14 2007:: Part Four

BILL MAHER’S REAL TIME

::September 14 2007:: Part Four

 

BILL MAHER ::September 14 2007:: Part Three

BILL MAHER ::September 14 2007:: Part Three

 

BILL MAHER’S REAL TIME ::September 14 2007:: (Part Two)

BILL MAHER’S REAL TIME

::September 14 2007:: (Part Two)

 

 

BILL MAHER’S REAL TIME WITH CHUCK HAGEL DREW CAREY CARL BERNSTEIN CONGRESSWOMAN JAN SCHAKOWSKY AND AUTHOR DAVID DRAPER

 

BILL MAHER’S REAL TIME WITH CHUCK HAGEL DREW CAREY CARL BERNSTEIN CONGRESSWOMAN JAN SCHAKOWSKY AND AUTHOR ROBERT DRAPER

PART ONE

Don’t Mess With The New York Jets:: N.F.L. Imposes Record Half-Million Dollar Fine On Patriots Coach Belichick

NFL Fines Belichick, Limits Patriots’ Draft
By Mark Maske
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 14, 2007; E01

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fined New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick $500,000 yesterday and stripped the team of at least one draft pick, possibly its first-round selection next spring, for using videotaping equipment to try to steal the New York Jets‘ play signals during a game Sunday.

The Patriots will lose their first-round draft choice in 2008 if they reach the playoffs this season, the league announced last night. If they don’t reach the postseason, they’ll be stripped of their second- and third-round selections. The Patriots were fined $250,000 even though Goodell concluded that franchise owner Robert Kraft was not aware of Belichick’s sign-stealing scheme before the league’s investigation began.

Goodell considered suspending Belichick, according to the league’s announcement, but decided against it because he felt the fine and loss of draft pick or picks were “more significant and long-lasting.”

In a letter to the Patriots, Goodell wrote that “this episode represents a calculated and deliberate attempt to avoid longstanding rules designed to encourage fair play and promote honest competition on the playing field.”

Belichick, who discussed the incident with Goodell earlier in the week, said in a written statement that he accepted “full responsibility” for the incident but blamed it on an “incorrect” interpretation of the league rules.

The three-time Super Bowl-winning coach, who has a salary of more than $4 million this season, apologized “to the Kraft family and every person directly or indirectly associated with the New England Patriots for the embarrassment, distraction and penalty my mistake caused,” but said his team has “never used sideline video to obtain a competitive advantage while the game was in progress.”

Members of the league’s security staff confiscated videotaping equipment from a Patriots employee who was on the field at Giants Stadium during Sunday’s 38-14 triumph over the Jets, who are coached by Belichick’s former defensive coordinator in New England, Eric Mangini. The two have had a combative relationship since Mangini left the Patriots for the Jets prior to last season.

The Patriots had been accused of using such tactics in the past, and Goodell and other league officials determined that the club’s coaches in this instance were using the videotaping equipment to try to steal the play signals being delivered from the Jets’ coaches on their sideline to players on the field.

NFL rules prohibit the use of video recording devices by a team on the field, in the coaches’ booth or in the locker room during a game. According to the league, a memo from Ray Anderson, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, was delivered to the general managers and head coaches of every team last September, warning them not to attempt to use videotaping equipment to steal an opponent’s signals.

“Part of my job as head coach is to ensure that our football operations are conducted in compliance of the league rules and all accepted interpretations of them,” Belichick said in the statement. “My interpretation of a rule in the Constitution and Bylaws was incorrect.”

Goodell determined that the Patriots’ tactics did not impact the outcome of Sunday’s game, the league announced. Still, the fine that he imposed on Belichick was the maximum amount allowed under the league’s constitution and bylaws. The league also announced that it would closely “review and monitor” the Patriots’ videotaping practices in the future.

Goodell penalized the Patriots because Belichick “has substantial control over all aspects” of the club’s football operations and “his actions and decisions are properly attributed to the club,” the league announced.

Earlier in the day, sources familiar with the league’s investigation had said that a multiple-game suspension of Belichick was possible but unlikely. Others around the league said they thought a suspension of any Patriots coach or front office official found to have acted improperly was in order, given Goodell’s emphasis in recent months on handing out lengthy suspensions to players for off-field misbehavior.

“He’s kind of set that tone already, that he’s going to be tough on someone who makes a mistake,” Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb said at his team’s training facility in Philadelphia.

IN FRANCE THEY KISS ON MAIN STREET

David Brooks Ignores All And Rambles About I.Q.

 

INSERT JOKE HERE

NEW YORK TIMES

DAVID BROOKS

A nice phenomenon of the past few years is the diminishing influence of I.Q.

For a time, I.Q. was the most reliable method we had to capture mental aptitude. People had the impression that we are born with these information-processing engines in our heads and that smart people have more horsepower than dumb people.

And in fact, there’s something to that. There is such a thing as general intelligence; people who are good at one mental skill tend to be good at others. This intelligence is partly hereditary. A meta-analysis by Bernie Devlin of the University of Pittsburgh found that genes account for about 48 percent of the differences in I.Q. scores. There’s even evidence that people with bigger brains tend to have higher intelligence.

But there has always been something opaque about I.Q. In the first place, there’s no consensus about what intelligence is. Some people think intelligence is the ability to adapt to an environment, others that capacity to think abstractly, and so on.

Then there are weird patterns. For example, over the past century, average I.Q. scores have risen at a rate of about 3 to 6 points per decade. This phenomenon, known as the Flynn effect, has been measured in many countries and across all age groups. Nobody seems to understand why this happens or why it seems to be petering out in some places, like Scandinavia.

I.Q. can also be powerfully affected by environment. As Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia and others have shown, growing up in poverty can affect your intelligence for the worse. Growing up in an emotionally strangled household also affects I.Q.

One of the classic findings of this was made by H.M. Skeels back in the 1930s. He studied mentally retarded orphans who were put in foster homes. After four years, their I.Q.’s diverged an amazing 50 points from orphans who were not moved. And the remarkable thing is the mothers who adopted the orphans were themselves mentally retarded and living in a different institution. It wasn’t tutoring that produced the I.Q. spike; it was love.

Then, finally, there are the various theories of multiple intelligences. We don’t just have one thing called intelligence. We have a lot of distinct mental capacities. These theories thrive, despite resistance from the statisticians, because they explain everyday experience. I’m decent at processing words, but when it comes to calculating the caroms on a pool table, I have the aptitude of a sea slug.

I.Q., in other words, is a black box. It measures something, but it’s not clear what it is or whether it’s good at predicting how people will do in life. Over the past few years, scientists have opened the black box to investigate the brain itself, not a statistical artifact.

Now you can read books about mental capacities in which the subject of I.Q. and intelligence barely comes up. The authors are concerned instead with, say, the parallel processes that compete for attention in the brain, and how they integrate. They’re discovering that far from being a cold engine for processing information, neural connections are shaped by emotion.

Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California had a patient rendered emotionless by damage to his frontal lobes. When asked what day he could come back for an appointment, he stood there for nearly half an hour describing the pros and cons of different dates, but was incapable of making a decision. This is not the Spock-like brain engine suggested by the I.Q.

Today, the research that dominates public conversation is not about raw brain power but about the strengths and consequences of specific processes. Daniel Schacter of Harvard writes about the vices that flow from the way memory works. Daniel Gilbert, also of Harvard, describes the mistakes people make in perceiving the future. If people at Harvard are moving beyond general intelligence, you know something big is happening.

The cultural consequence is that judging intelligence is less like measuring horsepower in an engine and more like watching ballet. Speed and strength are part of intelligence, and these things can be measured numerically, but the essence of the activity is found in the rhythm and grace and personality — traits that are the products of an idiosyncratic blend of emotions, experiences, motivations and inheritances.

Recent brain research, rather than reducing everything to electrical impulses and quantifiable pulses, actually enhances our appreciation of human complexity and richness. While psychometrics offered the false allure of objective fact, the new science brings us back into contact with literature, history and the humanities, and, ultimately, to the uniqueness of the individual.

PAUL KRUGMAN ON THE SURGE/STAB

A Surge, and Then a Stab

by Paul Krugman

NY Times

To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.

Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that … “…Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”…

Two-thirds of Iraq’s GDP and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just … armed gangs fighting for control of resources.

Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.

What’s particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown…, a Kurdish … provincial government … production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas … seems to have been the last straw.

Now here’s the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body… By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds.., he’s essentially betting … against the survival of Iraq…

The smart money, then, knows … that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration — maybe even Mr. Bush himself — know this, too.

After all, if the administration had any real hope…, officials would be making an all-out effort to get the government … to start delivering on some of those benchmarks, perhaps using the threat that Congress would cut off funds otherwise. Instead, the Bushies are making excuses, minimizing Iraqi failures, moving goal posts and, in general, giving the Maliki government no incentive to do anything differently.

And for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David Petraeus … to as many news media outlets as possible — not granted an exclusive appearance to Fox News…

All in all, Mr. Bush’s actions have … been what you’d expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.

In fact, that’s my interpretation of something that startled many people: Mr. Bush’s decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel.

What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.

OUTRAGED ABOUT THE OUTRAGE: JOE KLEIN AND THE BELTWAY WHINEFEST OVER NEWSPAPER AD

One-sided rules of political debate

The “controversy” over the MoveOn ad is petty and vapid but nonetheless revealing of the double standards governing our political debates. 

Glenn Greenwald

Sep. 12, 2007 | (updated below – Update II)

Now that it is inescapably clear to everyone (rather than just bloggers) that we will remain in Iraq in full force through the end of the Bush presidency, and now that, according to a Fox News report this morning, “‘everyone in town’ is now participating in a broad discussion about the costs and benefits of military action against Iran, with the likely timeframe for any such course of action being over the next eight to 10 months,” what has attracted the righteous fury of Time’s leading “liberal” pundit Joe Klein, who helped sell the Iraq invasion to the country in the first place?

The supremely important MoveOn.org advertisement, of course, which Klein, eager as always to show the Right what a Good Liberal he is, flamboyantly condemns:

Just back from today’s hearings and just about Every Last Republican mentioned the idiotic MoveOn ad…also caught the beginning of Fox News, where — surprise, surprise –it played big. . . .This is going to put the Democrats on the defensive. . . . The ad was, on its face, morally and politically outrageous. . . . But the substance (or lack of it) will be subsumed by the slander: It is no small thing to accuse a military man of betraying his country. It is also palpably untrue in this case. Whoever cooked up this ad is guilty of a disgraceful act of malicious puerility. . . .

But for now, MoveOn has handed the Bush Administration a major victory — at a moment when all attention should be focused on whether we should continue to commit U.S. troops to this disaster. Just nauseating.

Klein’s fury over such rhetoric is extremely selective. Here is Joe Klein himself last year employing far more vicious accusations (against, among others, unnamed “many writers at The Nation“) which, in far more mild form today, he so disdains:

In his recent account of a breakfast book party at the home of Tina Brown and Harry Evans, Eric Alterman misquoted me slightly but significantly. What I actually said was “the hate America tendency of the [Democratic Party's] left wing” had made it harder for Democrats to challenge Republicans on foreign policy. . . .

For those who think — for some indiscernible reason — that it is important enough to spend the energy developing an opinion on the MoveOn ad, there are, I suppose, reasonable arguments that can be made on both sides as to whether the “betray us” rhyme was rhetorically excessive, counter-productive, etc. But the shrill hand-wringing it has triggered is just bizarre in light of the fact that accusing Americans, including military veterans, of being unpatriotic, anti-American and betraying the country has, for decades, been a mainstream staple of the political rhetoric from our country’s pro-war Right — invoked most aggressively by those, such as Klein, now claiming such profound offense over the MoveOn ad.Here is Joseph Farah of World Net Daily in an October, 2004 column entitled “Questioning Kerry’s Patriotism”:

Think of what I am saying: A man who came to prominence and notoriety in American life, and who is now on the threshold of winning the White House, was actively aiding and abetting the enemy just 33 years ago. He was a tool. He was an agent. He was working for the other side.That’s why I say it is time to stop playing rhetorical games with respect to Kerry.

There is only one word in the English language that adequately describes what he was in 1971 — and what he remains today for capitalizing on the evil he perpetrated back then. That word is “traitor.”

The right-wing site “American Thinker” — proudly included on Fred Thompson’s short blogroll, among most other places on the Right — published an article in 2005 entitled “Is Jack Murtha a Coward and a Traitor?” (answer: “Any American who recommends retreat is injuring his own country and calling his own patriotism into question”). Here is John Hinderaker of Powerline — Time’s 2004 Blog of the Year — on our country’s 39th President (and, unlike the non-serving Hinderaker, a former Naval officer): “Jimmy Carter isn’t just misguided or ill-informed. He’s on the other side.”When Howard Dean pointed out (presciently) in December of 2005 that the Iraq War cannot be won, Michael Reagan called for Dean to “be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war,” and the next day, on Fox News, alongside an approving Sean Hannity, he said: “I have no problem at all, no problem at all, with what this guy is doing, taking him out and arresting him.” And here is Giuliani campaign advisor Norm Podhoretz on the Hugh Hewitt Show yesterday, as they explained how deeply anti-American “Democrats” are:

HH: Norman Podhoretz, before the last break, we were talking about the intellectual class in America that is so deeply anti-American from the Vietnam years, and how it did not take them long to find in America the cause for 9/11, and to begin what has been a very poisonous attack on America over the last six years. How can they be that successful?NP: Well, what I try to explain in my book is that a lot of these people were working out of the anti-war movement playbook of the Vietnam era. . . .

Well, what I think is that that is correct, and I think that the Democrats are committing political suicide, at least for the 2008 presidential election. I mean, you know, the Democrats suffered from the disability of the McGovern years, when they were rightly considered soft on national defense, not to be trusted to protect us against foreign threats. They worked very heard to overcome that reputation, especially under Clinton. And now what they’ve done is to resurrect it. And they’ve gone even further than they did under McGovern. I mean, embracing defeat, calling for American defeat, rooting for American defeat.

Insinuating that Democrats and/or other opponents of various American wars are “betraying” America — and worse — has been the central argumentative tactic on the Right for decades. So says no less of an expert on (and past purveyor of) such tactics than Pat Buchanan, in his column today explaining why Congressional Democrats will never end the war:

As Petraeus testifies, the antiwar movement appears broken. Reid has said his party will not try to de-fund the war or impose new deadlines. . . .What happened to the party of Speaker Pelosi and Reid, which was going to end U.S. involvement in the war and not permit Bush to pursue victory the way Richard Nixon pursued it in Vietnam for four years?

Answer: Terrified of the possible consequences of the policies they recommend, Democrats lack the courage to impose those policies.

When it comes to issues of war, Democrats are an intimidated lot. Sens. Clinton, Edwards, Biden, Dodd and Reid were all stampeded by Bush into voting him a blank check for war in October 2002. Why? Because they feared Bush would declare them weak or unpatriotic if they denied him the authority to go to war, at a time of his choosing, until he had made a more compelling case for war.

Now they regret what they did. But, in a showdown, they will do it again. For Democrats have been psychologically damaged by 60 years of GOP attacks on them as the party of retreat and surrender.

It really is the height of strangeness to witness the shrieking and self-righteous rage over the MoveOn ad as though such insinuations are prohibited in American political debates, the Line that Cannot be Crossed. That line is crossed routinely, and has been for decades, including when directed at a whole array of American combat veterans. Ask George McGovern about that. The only difference this time — the sole difference that has so upset Joe Klein and his fellow media mavens — is that it is being directed at the side that typically wields such accusatory rhetoric, rather than by them.Indeed, just a few months ago, Gen. Petraeus himself toyed with exactly such rhetoric at the prompting of the incomparably odious Joe Lieberman, whose entire political career is now devoted (ironically) to impugning the patriotism of any Americans who oppose Lieberman’s desire to wage one war after the next against Israel’s enemies. As The Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks reported regarding a Senate hearing in May:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) asked Army Lt. Gen. David H . Petraeus during his confirmation hearing yesterday if Senate resolutions condemning White House Iraq policy “would give the enemy some comfort.”Petraeus agreed they would, saying, “That’s correct, sir.”

Though subsequent reports suggested that Lieberman used the phrase “give the enemy some encouragement” (rather than the treasonous term of art “comfort”), the point was the same: those who condemned the President’s war policy were, pursuant to Petraeus’ toxic accusations, helping America’s Terrorist Enemies. Petraeus’ comments were so disturbing, and obviously inappropriate (though hardly uncommon), that it led GOP Sen. John Warner to admonish him as follows:

I hope that this colloquy has not entrapped you into some responses that you might later regret. I wonder if you would just give me the assurance that you’ll go back and examine the transcript as to what you replied with respect to certain of these questions and review it, because we want you to succeed.

What all of this really reflects is the underlying and pervasive premise that those who advocate American wars are inherently patriotic and “pro-American,” while it is always appropriate to impugn the patriotism and allegiances of those who oppose such wars (even when such war opponents are life-long civil servants or even military veterans).It also is reflective of this completely backward notion that our highest government and military officials ought to be free to use the most scurrilous smears of their political opponents, but should never be the target of that same rhetoric, because their High Positions of Importance entitle them to Great Respect, which should shield them from such attacks (hence, it is fine to smear unnamed Nation writers and other all-powerful members of the “Left,” but not our Supreme Generals or our Commander-in-Chief).

The whole MoveOn “controversy” is, of course, nothing more than a petty and worthless distraction. We’re going to occupy Iraq indefinitely; Israel just bombed Syria, to the delight of Liebermans’ comrades seeking full-scale U.S./Israel regional war; and very influential factions in the Bush administration are planting stories with Fox News that we are planning for an attack on Iran. And yet all one hears from the Joe Kleins and Chris Matthews is deep concern over whether an ad from MoveOn was a naughty thing. In one sense, it’s just the John Edwards Haircut Story of this week from our vapid chattering class.

But as petty as the story is, it is also revealing. It has been perfectly fine for decades to impugn the patriotism of those who think the U.S. should stop invading and bombing other countries (how could anyone possibly think such a thing unless they hate America?), while it is strictly forbidden to do anything other than pay homage to the Seriousness and Patriotism of those who advocate wars. Hence, the very people who routinely traffic in “unpatriotic” and even “treason” rhetoric towards the likes of Jack Murtha, John Kerry and war opponents generally feign such pious objection to the MoveOn ad without anyone noticing any contradiction at all.

UPDATE: John Cole points to the lengthy Enemies List compiled by the always-vigilant Michelle Malkin, who exploits photographs of the 9/11 victims to urge “resistance” against America’s Terrorist Enemies and their domestic allies:

But remembrance without resistance to jihad and its enablers is a recipe for another 9/11. This is what fueled my first two books, on immigration enforcement and profiling. This is what fuels much of the work on this blog and at Hot Air.Not every American wears a military uniform. But every American has a role to play in protecting our homeland — not just from Muslim terrorists, but from their financiers, their public relations machine, their sharia-pimping activists, the anti-war goons, the civil liberties absolutists, and the academic apologists for our enemies.

Depending on how one defines “anti-war goons” and “civil liberties absolutists,” it sounds like Michelle’s Enemies List is composed of roughly 65% of the American population. Those are some rather large internment camps Michelle and her Homeland-Protecting Comrades will need to build. MoveOn crossed a terrible rhetorical line this week with its ad.

UPDATE II: As I tried to make explicitly clear, this post actually has nothing to do with whether the “Betray Us” rhyme in the MoveOn ad was smartly worded, counter-productive, etc. As I indicated, there are probably reasonable arguments to make on both sides of that issue if one actually thinks (for reasons I cannot discern) that debating the phraseology of a single MoveOn ad merits such contemplation. Here, for instance, is criticism of the ad from Klein’s colleague, Jay Carney, which I find perfectly sober and reasonable (whether I agree with it or not).The issue here is the depiction of this ad as some sort of unique transgression and the intensity of the condemnation it has received, particularly from those who themselves are enthusiastic and frequent purveyors of similar though far worse rhetorical tactics. Whether one thinks the MoveOn ad was well-done or not — and, again, who really cares? — has little or nothing to do with that issue.

— Glenn Greenwald

200 SUBSCRIBERS ON YOUTUBE

 

We’re all very proud around here. Pearl says she’s got an old bottle of Cutty Sark locked away in the grey folding metal filecase on the first floor. I’m famished….

TULLYCAST

Hooray!

I’m uploading some Joni (w/Jaco Pastorious) at Santa Barbara County Bowl just to celebrate…

WFAN debuts ‘first’ show without Don Imus

Wednesday, September 5th 2007

---

Boomer Esiason, at left, and Craig Carton

 

Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton kicked off their morning show on radio station WFAN yesterday without anything close to a “boom,” which means “mission accomplished” for all concerned.

After the messy and awkward firing of longtime morning host Don Imus in April, WFAN and parent CBS clearly wanted a show more about football anecdotes than Larry Craig jokes.

But morning shows also need edge, and it’s way too early to tell how the new team will create the critical sense that, at any moment, something unexpected and riveting could happen.

Because Carton showed no sign yesterday of the “bad boy” reputation he got at 101.5 in New Jersey, Esiason never had to play the “good cop” many see as part of that dynamic.

Meanwhile, the fact that both guys are broadcast veterans ensured that yesterday’s debut didn’t sound like a “first” show. Carton handles the mechanics – going to breaks, taking calls – and since he has a quick tongue, he gets his full share of airtime. At times, he seemed to hold back to let Esiason finish a story.

Imus’ newsman, Charles McCord, has left the show, and WFAN, so Tracy Burgess did a shortened news break. But the best supporting player was sports guy Chris Carlin, whose good-natured exchange of barbs with Esiason recalled the liveliest parts of the Imus show.

The biggest question yesterday was content. Almost the whole show was devoted to football, which seemed odd on a day when the city had at least two major baseball stories in the return of Pedro Martinez and a possible injury to Roger Clemens.

A fluffy interview with New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, in that context, seemed marginal, and left the impression that WFAN wanted former football star Esiason to be able to stay in the pocket on his first day.

Presumably there will be plenty of time for him to scramble.

Compromise on Oil Law in Iraq Seems to Be Collapsing

 New York Times

By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Sept. 12 —

 

A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq’s
rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks
among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed. The apparent
breakdown comes just as Congress and the White House are struggling to
find evidence that there is progress toward reconciliation and a
functioning government here.

Senior Iraqi negotiators met in Baghdad on Wednesday in an attempt
to salvage the original compromise, two participants said. But the
meeting came against the backdrop of a public series of increasingly
strident disagreements over the draft law that had broken out in recent
days between Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, and
officials of the provincial government in the Kurdish north, where some
of the nation’s largest fields are located.

Mr. Shahristani, a senior member of the Arab Shiite coalition that
controls the federal government, negotiated the compromise with leaders
of the Kurdish and Arab Sunni parties. But since then, the Kurds have
pressed forward with a regional version of the law that Mr. Shahristani
says is illegal. Many of the Sunnis who supported the original deal
have also pulled out in recent months.

The oil law — which would govern how oil fields are developed
and managed — is one of several benchmarks that the Bush
administration has been pressing the Iraqis to meet as a sign that they
are making headway toward creating an effective government.

Again and again in the past year, agreement on the law has been
fleetingly close before political and sectarian disagreements have
arisen to stall the deal.

One of the participants in Wednesday’s meeting, Deputy Prime
Minister Barham Salih, who has worked for much of the past year to push
for the original compromise, said some progress had been made at the
meeting, but that he could not guarantee success.

“This has been like a roller coaster,” said Mr. Salih,
who is Kurdish. “There were occasions where we seemed to be
there, where we seemed to have closure, only to fail at that.”

“Given the seriousness of the issue, I don’t want to
create false expectations, but I can say there is serious effort to
bring this to closure,” he said.

The legislation has already been presented to the Iraqi Parliament,
which has been unable to take virtually any action on it for months.
Contributing to the dispute is the decision by the Kurds to begin
signing contracts with international oil companies before the federal
law is passed. The most recent instance, announced last week on a
Kurdish government Web site, was an oil exploration contract with the
Hunt Oil Company of Dallas.

The Sunni Arabs who removed their support for the deal did so, in
part, because of a contract the Kurdish government signed earlier with
a company based in the United Arab Emirates, Dana Gas, to develop gas
reserves.

The Kurds say their regional law is consistent with the Iraqi
Constitution, which grants substantial powers to the provinces to
govern their own affairs. But Mr. Shahristani believes that a sort of
Kurdish declaration of independence can be read into the move.
“This to us indicates very serious lack of cooperation that makes
many people wonder if they are really going to be working within the
framework of the federal law,” Mr. Shahristani said in a recent
interview, before the Hunt deal was announced.

Kurdish officials dispute that contention, saying that they are
doing their best to work within the Constitution while waiting for the
Iraqi Parliament, which always seems to move at a glacial pace, to
consider the legislation.

“We reject what some parties say — that it is a step
towards separation — because we have drafted the Kurdistan oil
law depending on Article 111 of the Iraqi Constitution, which says oil
and natural resources are properties of Iraqi people,” said Jamal
Abdullah, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government.
“Both Iraqi and Kurdish oil laws depend on that article,”
Mr. Abdullah said.

The other crucial players are the Sunnis and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
Some members of one of the main Sunni parties, Tawafiq, which insists
on federal control of contracts and exclusive state ownership of the
fields, bolted when it became convinced that the Kurds had no intention
of following those guidelines.

But the prime minister’s office believes there is a simpler
reason the Sunnis abandoned or at least held off on the deal: signing
it would have given Mr. Maliki a political success that they did not
want him to have. “I think there is a political reason behind
that delay in order not to see the Iraqi government achieve the real
agreement,” said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Mr.
Maliki. Mr. Rikabi was at Wednesday’s meeting.

Ali Baban, who as a senior member of Tawafiq negotiated the
compromise, said that allegation was untrue. “I have a good
relationship” with Mr. Maliki, he said. “This is an issue
of Iraqi unity. This could cause a split in this country.”

Mr. Maliki has suggested returning to the original language agreed
to in February and trying once again to push the law through
Parliament. Mr. Salih says there is basic agreement on returning to
that language, but conceded that Sunni participants in
Wednesday’s meeting might insist on a deal that includes changes
to the Iraqi Constitution to safeguard their interests in the
distribution of revenues. A law on how the revenue should be shared is
being developed as a critical companion piece of legislation to the
draft law.

The central element of the compromise was agreed to in February
after months of difficult negotiations among Iraq’s political
groups.

The main parties in those negotiations were Iraqi Kurds, who were
eager to sign contracts with international oil companies to develop
their northern fields; Arab Shiites, whose population is concentrated
around the country’s southern fields; and Arab Sunnis, with fewer
oil resources where they predominate.

Those facts meant that the compromise law had to satisfy both the
Sunni insistence that the central government maintain strong control
over the fields as well as the push by the Kurds and Shiites to give
provincial governments substantial authority to write contracts and
carry out their own development plans.

Somehow negotiators managed to strike that balance, but soon after,
the agreement began to crumble. Many of the negotiations centered on a
federal committee that would be set up to review the contracts signed
with oil companies to carry out the development and exploitation of the
fields. The Kurds objected to any requirement that the committee would
have to approve contracts. So in a nuanced bit of language, the
negotiators gave the committee the power only to reject contracts that
did not meet precisely specified criteria.

But problems immediately cropped up after the cabinet approved the
draft law and, in what seemed to be a perfunctory step, it went to a
council that was supposed to hone the language to be sure it complied
with Iraqi legal conventions.

When the draft emerged from that council, the members of some
parties, particularly the Kurdish ones, thought that the careful
balance struck in the draft had been upset, and they accused Mr.
Shahristani of meddling. Then the law languished in Parliament and,
said Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, the Kurds decided to
send a signal that they would not wait indefinitely and signed the
contract with Dana Gas.

“It served as a reminder: ‘If you keep stalling, life goes on,’ ” said Mr. Zebari, who is Kurdish.

On Monday the Kurdistan Regional Government, or K.R.G., issued
another rejoinder to the oil minister’s views that the
Kurds’ moves were illegal. “His views are irrelevant to
what the K.R.G. is doing legally and constitutionally in
Kurdistan,” the regional government said.

Mr. Shahristani was apparently traveling and did not respond to
e-mail messages sent Wednesday. But Saleem Abdullah al-Juburi, a
Tawafiq member who participated in Wednesday’s meeting, gave his
own assessment of the Kurdish agreements with Hunt and Dana Gas.
“The contracts are not legal,” he said.

Reporting was
contributed by Ahmad Fadam, Ali Hamdani and Khalid al-Ansary from
Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from northern Iraq.

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EVEN KEITH OLBERMANN CAN’T “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE”

 

CHRIS CROCKER: GOTCHA AMERICA LOVES TO MAKE FUN OF BRITNEY SPEARS

 

IDIOCRACY:THE TORRENT

IDIOCRACY:THE TORRENT

BLOWING UP ON YOUTUBE: LONELY GIRL, CBS AND TULLYCAST

LONELY GIRL, CBS AND TULLYCAST

BIRDSONG

9/12: FROM CHAOS TO COMMUNITY

 Looks beautifully sweet…

Experts Doubt Missing Millionaire Steve Fossett Still Alive

GUARDIAN Wednesday September 12, 2007 By MARTIN GRIFFITH Associated Press Writer RENO, Nev. (AP) – Steve Fossett survived a nearly 30,000-foot plunge in a crippled balloon, a dangerous swim through the frigid English Channel and hours stranded in shark-infested seas. But 10 days after he took off on a routine flight and never returned, doubts were growing Wednesday as to whether he was still alive. Fossett was scouting sites to attempt to break a land-speed record when his small plane disappeared. Searchers have taken to the air and conducted ground searches, but even with thousands of volunteers scanning satellite images of Nevada’s high desert, they have yet to find any sign of him. Wednesday morning, the pilots set out again for the rugged region. “It’s frustrating, but not tiring,” said George Mixon, a crew member with the Colorado Civil Air Patrol who has been part of the search since Sunday. Survival experts say a trained outdoorsman such as Fossett should have been able to signal rescuers with the emergency beacon from the plane or with his specially equipped wristwatch. Even if those didn’t work, he could have built a fire or an X made of rocks or sticks, they said. “He’s either so injured he can’t signal or he’s perished,” said David McMullen of Berkeley, Calif., a leader of the hiking group Desert Survivors, whose members frequently venture into some of the country’s harshest terrain. Fossett took off on Sept. 3 in a single-engine plane from a private airstrip about 80 miles southeast of Reno. He didn’t leave a flight plan. Maj. Cynthia Ryan of the Nevada Civil Air Patrol said Tuesday she’s still betting on Fossett’s “sheer grit and determination” to keep him alive. “We still find people against all odds,” she said. “Maybe he’s got a couple of broken arms and can’t signal.” Such injuries would worsen Fossett’s chances of finding water in the 17,000-square-mile search area – about twice the size of New Jersey. Authorities believe he was carrying only one bottle of water. “No food, that’s not a problem. No water, that’s a problem. That’s a harsh desert out there,” said Lee Bergthold, director of the Palmdale, Calif.-based Center for Wilderness Studies and a former Marine Corps survival instructor. People can go only two or three days without water in the summer, experts say, and Fossett would be hard-pressed to find water in unfamiliar country, even if he was in good health. Nevada, the driest state in the nation with less than 10 inches of precipitation a year, had an unusually dry winter, and stream flows usually diminish by the late summer even in wet years. “At this point, you’d be lucky to find him alive,” Bergthold said. Temperatures in the search area have been in the 80s and 90s, with lows in the 50s and 60s. Shelter from the sun would be just as important as water, McMullen said. McMullen knows what he’s talking about. Six years ago, he found himself stranded with a severely sprained ankle for three nights in Death Valley National Park. He stayed in the shade of a tree until he was rescued by a military helicopter, with the help of a detailed itinerary he had left his wife. “You’ll lose water faster than you can absorb it in heat, and that’s why a shelter is so important,” he said. McMullen and other survival experts faulted Fossett for not filing a flight plan, which might have allowed searchers to focus on a smaller area. “The itinerary I filed for my 2001 hike saved my life,” McMullen said. — Associated Press writers Sandra Chereb in Minden and Scott Sonner in Reno contributed to this story. —

PATRIOTS HEAD COACH BELICHICK COPS TO FILMING NEW YORK JETS

Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) – New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick apologized today for videotaping New York Jets coaches during a National Football League game.

Belichick, whose team has won three of the last six Super Bowl title games, said in a statement issued by the Patriots that he spoke with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell this week and explained that the case stemmed from his own interpretation of the league rules.

NFL security removed a Patriots employee suspected of attempting to steal the Jets’ signals and seized his video camera and tape during the Sept. 9 season-opening game in East Rutherford, New Jersey, won by New England 38-14. Belichick said the Patriots hadn’t been notified of any league ruling.

“I want to apologize to everyone who has been affected, most of all ownership, staff and players,” the coach said. He declined to elaborate in a televised news conference held just after the statement was released.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello and Jets spokesman Bruce Speight didn’t immediately return messages at their offices seeking comment.

ESPN reported on its Web site yesterday that Goodell has determined the Patriots broke league rules and is considering sanctions, including docking them “multiple draft picks.”

Green Bay Packers President Bob Harlan told ESPN that his team’s security guards identified the cameraman as the same one who was removed from the sidelines of a game against the Patriots at Lambeau Field on Nov. 19, 2006.

League Warning

Former Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason said the NFL circulated a memo last September warning of severe penalties for videotaping other teams’ signals. He also said the Patriots’ success made them targets for critics around the league.

The Patriots have won almost 70 percent of their games since Belichick became coach in January 2000. He is the only NFL coach to win three Super Bowls in four years and his 13-3 playoff record is the second-best in league history, behind Vince Lombardi, for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named.

“Everyone’s piling on right now, there’s no question about it,” Esiason, now an NFL analyst for CBS, said in an interview. “There’s 31 other teams that would love to knock the Patriots off their perch.”

The episode is the latest in a rivalry between the Jets and Patriots that Bill Parcells, who coached both teams, termed a “Border War.”

Teams Rivalry

Parcells left the Patriots in 1997 following a Super Bowl appearance and took over the Jets a month later. In 2000, Belichick took the job coaching the Jets, quit after one day, and then accepted a job coaching New England 3 1/2 weeks later.

Last year, the Jets hired Patriots assistant Eric Mangini as coach and Belichick refused to shake his hand after their first meeting of the season. New England also filed tampering charges with the NFL after the Jets held contract talks with former Patriots wide receiver Deion Branch, who wound up being traded to Seattle by New England.

$3,000 Bill for Hardly Using an iPhone

Tag, You’re It

Fun, Tours and a $3,000 Bill for Hardly Using an iPhone

By KATIE HAFNER

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9 — When Neil Dingman recently went on a European vacation, he took his iPhone with him with no intention of using it much. In fact, for the 14 days he was there, he used it only a handful of times and had expected to see just a small increase in his next bill for roaming charges.

Instead, he was charged $852.31.

As it turned out, the cellphone carried by Mr. Dingman, a mortgage consultant in Minneapolis, made calls on a European data network several times each hour to check for e-mail messages. Because he didn’t deactivate the feature that automatically checks for new e-mail messages, during Mr. Dingman’s trip through Italy, Croatia and Malta, the phone went to retrieve e-mail more than 500 times.

Other iPhone users have felt the sting of high roaming charges with their iPhone, too. Some, like Mr. Dingman, are unaware that they need to disable the e-mail feature; others are billed erroneously; still others misunderstand the explanation of charges they are given by AT&T customer service representatives. Many of them are complaining to the company or on blogs.

The iPhone is no different from any other phone, said Todd Smith, an AT&T spokesman, with the exception of the BlackBerry, whose users can opt for a flat monthly rate when traveling. Any AT&T customer planning to travel outside the United States should contact AT&T to inquire about roaming plans, he said.

Dave Stolte did that before taking his iPhone with him on a two-week trip to Ireland and England in July. He signed up for a roaming plan, but he said the customer service representative’s explanation of the charges was unclear. His bill was $3,000.

When he was offered a $100 credit, Mr. Stolte said he felt insulted, and he sent letters to the chief executives of AT&T and Apple. The story of his bill quickly spread around the Internet. Before long, he was given a full credit.

“I can’t imagine AT&T would expect all their customers to be technicians and say, ‘O.K., if I go to use Google maps, how many kilobytes am I transferring?’ ” asked Mr. Stolte, a Web designer who lives in Temecula, Calif.

In July, Aaron Oxley took his iPhone with him to London, Dubai and Bangkok. Mr. Oxley said in an e-mail message that he was aware that there would be international roaming data charges, so he always made sure he was in an area with free Wi-Fi when he used his iPhone to access the Internet. But when Mr. Oxley’s AT&T bill arrived, the data charges totaled $300.

When Mr. Oxley called AT&T, he was told that even though he was using Wi-Fi, there was still a data transfer charge.

Indeed, according to Mr. Smith, the AT&T representative, iPhone owners are not charged for Wi-Fi connections. Mr. Oxley eventually received a full refund for the $300 roaming data charge.

Mr. Dingman said it didn’t occur to him to disable the e-mail feature. AT&T eventually reversed the charges, but only after Mr. Dingman signed up for a $24.99-a-month global data plan.

AT&T is not automatically crediting customers for such charges. Mr. Smith said that each complaint is being evaluated case by case.

#88 DALE EARNHARDT JUNIOR SPORTING THE ADIDAS AND DRINKING MELLO YELLO

Dale Earnhardt Jr.: “Drinking Up” As Coke, Pepsi Trade Places?

 

By Darren Rovell-CNBC.COM

This week, Pepsi is expected to give way to Coke as the official beverage of most of NASCAR’s tracks and speculation is that Pepsi will be putting some of the money they would have used for the tracks, to getting its Mountain Dew brand on Dale Earnhardt Jr’s, racing car hood next year.

If that trade-off really happens, it’s a cinch for Pepsi and a dumb move for Coke. The bottom line is people aren’t fans of tracks or fans of the organization itself (NASCAR). They watch races to see their favorite drivers and they are much more likely to support the brand of their favorite drivers than what they are required to drink at the track.

There is a little issue I have though if the Mountain Dew deal goes through. Since Mountain Dew, like Budweiser , is already such a big brand (it’s the nation’s fourth best selling soda behind Coke Classic, Pepsi and Diet Coke) if the deal is consummated it’s going to be nearly impossible to figure out if Earnhardt will have any effect on sales.

Part of me hoped that if a soft drink brand were going to sign Earnhardt, it would have been Coke. And that Coke would unveil a blast from the past that hasn’t been on shelves. That way you could really tell if “Little E” was making a difference.

Like how about Mello Yello? The drink was introduced as a competitor to Mountain Dew 28 years ago and had a great racing tradition. Its motto was “The World’s Fastest Soft Drink” and used a race car driver in its ads. Kyle Petty of course was sponsored by the brand in the early 90s, as was Tom Cruise’s character Cole Trickle in “Days of Thunder” had it on his No. 51 car.

On a related note, I’m pretty sure that Earnhardt is going to set the record next year for the most merchandise ever sold by a single athlete in the history of sport. His popularity combined with a potential sponsor and number change will be part of it (and trust me, Mello Yello would sell more than Mountain Dew). The other part is that–for the first time ever–a mainstream shoe and apparel brand (adidas) is going to make a driver’s outfit and sell it at retail. Reebok looked into getting into the sport in the late 90s, but passed. Puma sponsors Kasey Kahne, but aside from ads doesn’t have much of a retail presence and Nike has a deal to make shoes with Joe Gibbs drivers for its low cost Tailwind brand.

It’s easy to see why all the big brands were scared off with NASCAR. Unlike the traditional sports, the shoes aren’t really shown since they’re in the car with the driver. With no opportunity to display anything, they shied away.

What Adidas will do that no one has done in the past is give NASCAR fans what they really deserve: An authentic firesuit. For too long, fans have had to buy replicas, but I expect adidas to give fans the real thing (it might be $200, but so are authentics from other sports). The alliance will also benefit Earnhardt Jr. plenty because a NASCAR driver has never really had the marketing force of a big apparel brand behind him. He’ll now have a greater distribution channel than ever before.

I expect a new wave to come from this as Adidas will prove this to be the next frontier. Unlike the hundreds of millions it has cost adidas and Reebok to have the rights to make the apparel of all the teams in the NBA and NFL, respectively, a shoe and apparel company will can outfit a race team for a fraction of the cost. By 2009, I expect to see more Adidas, Nike and Under Armour logos on firesuits and also expect that, with these deals, NASCAR merchandising will leap into the stores that carry the licensed apparel from traditional sports.

While we’re on the subject of what could sell more–Mello Yello over Mountain Dew, for example–I truly believe that Earnhardt Jr. would be best served by starting over with a new number next year. He has had No. 8 long enough so that a move wouldn’t alienate fans and a change of number–like Kobe Bryant when he changed from No. 8 to No. 24–would serve to prove just how big he is in the sport.

CNBC

 

JOE GIBBS RACING GIVES INSTANT CREDIBILITY TO TOYOTA RACING DEVELOPMENT’S NASCAR PROGRAM

The great David Poole on a winning combo…

JGR turns Toyota into Cup contender

Charlotte Observer

DAVID POOLE

Things just got interesting.

Everybody colored inside the lines at Wednesday’s announcement that Joe Gibbs Racing will switch to Toyotas next year. It was all nice and polite, which is curious since Tony Stewart was there.

Make no mistake, however, this was the true beginning of the manufacturer’s foray into NASCAR’s top series. Toyota participated in Nextel Cup in 2007. In 2008, it starts competing.

There’s no kind way to say this, but if the teams using Toyotas this year were building Fords, Chevrolets or Dodges, they’d struggle, too. Michael Waltrip Racing and Team Red Bull started from scratch, and Bill Davis Racing had been wandering in a NASCAR purgatory until it got to start racing Camrys in 2007.

This year, Toyota executives wore out shoe leather worrying about whether they’d get any cars in the Daytona 500. In 2008, they’ll worry about how to win it.

In 2007, only 60.7 percent of the Toyotas trying to make Cup races have made the field. In 2008, it will be shocking to see fewer than two Toyota teams in the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

Sure, it might take some time for the people at Joe Gibbs Racing to switch over all of its cars and learn how to make the Toyota engine power those cars to Victory Lane.

Then again, it might not.

“If we thought we were going to come out of the box slow next year, we wouldn’t have done it,” team President J.D. Gibbs said.

When you’ve accomplished as much as Joe Gibbs Racing has — three Cup championships and 58 victories since 1992 — you don’t accept limitations.

“The only way that you constantly stay ahead of the game is by putting yourselves in positions to be leaders, not followers,” Stewart said. “That’s why I signed up with Joe Gibbs Racing in the first place.”

Leadership is a word that kept coming up.

“There are certain things we think we’d like to have a leadership role in,” said Gibbs, the son of owner Joe Gibbs. ” … With GM, you’ve got four really strong teams, so I think it is probably a little more difficult to say who has a leadership role there. Which direction are we going to go? I think for us it is just the right decision and the right time.”

In other words, J.D. Gibbs wants his team to be the best. That’s the only reason to be in the racing business. And guess what? Toyota feels the same way.

“Our plan has always been that … we would grow,” said Toyota Racing Development President Jim Aust. “You don’t know when that’s going to come available to you.”

JGR became available because all four of the top-tier Chevrolet teams had their deals with GM come up for renewals. Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc. all want to be the best team in the sport, just as JGR does. The chance to be the lead dog at Toyota was too hard for Gibbs to turn down.

Stewart, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch will drive for JGR next year. Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Casey Mears will drive for Hendrick. Those teams are going to be rivals, but if they were all driving Chevrolets that rivalry couldn’t be what it will be with the Gibbs gang in Toyotas.

“From inside the car, they all look the same,” Stewart said, dismissing that premise. It’s no big deal to us.”

But then he added the magic words.

“What it boils down to,” Stewart said, “is we want to win races.”

Correct.

And so does Toyota.

TOM FRIEDMAN RUNS AWAY TO CHINA

Iraq Through China’s Lens

THOMAS FRIEDMAN

NEW YORK TIMES

Dalian, China

It’s nice to be in a country where Iraq is never mentioned. It’s just a little unnerving when that country is America’s biggest geopolitical and economic rival these days: China.

I heard China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, address an international conference here in Dalian, and what impressed me most was how boring it was — a straightforward recitation of the staggering economic progress China has made in the last two decades and the towering economic, political and environmental challenges it still faces.

How nice it must be, I thought, to be a great power and be almost entirely focused on addressing your own domestic problems?

No, I have not gone isolationist. America has real enemies that China does not, and therefore we have to balance a global security role in places like the Middle East with domestic demands.

But something is out of balance with America today. Looking at the world from here, it is hard not to feel that China has spent the last six years training for the Olympics while we’ve spent ourselves into debt on iPods and Al Qaeda.

After 9/11, we tried to effect change in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world by trying to build a progressive government in Baghdad. There was, I believed, a strategic and moral logic for that. But the strategy failed, for a million different reasons, and now it is time to recognize that and focus on how we insulate ourselves from the instability of that world — by having a real energy policy, for starters — how we protect our security interests there in more sustainable ways and how we get back to developing our own house.

By now it should be clear that Iraq is going to be what it is going to be. We’ve never had sufficient troops there to shape Iraq in our own image. We simply can’t go on betting so many American soldiers and resources that Iraqis will one day learn to live together on their own — without either having to be bludgeoned by Saddam or baby-sat by us.

So either we get help or get out. That is, if President Bush believes staying in Iraq can still make a difference, then he needs to muster some allies because the American people are not going to sustain alone — nor should they — a long-shot bet that something decent can still be built in Baghdad.

If the president can’t get help, then he has to initiate a phased withdrawal: now. Because the opportunity cost this war is exacting on our country and its ability to focus on anything else is out of all proportion to what might still be achieved in Iraq by our staying, with too few troops and too few friends.

Iraqis can add. The surge has brought more calm to Iraq largely because the mainstream Iraqi Sunnis finally calculated that they have lost and that both the pro-Al Qaeda Iraqi Sunnis and the radical Shiites are more of a threat to them than the Americans they had been shooting at.

The minute we start withdrawing, all Iraqis will carefully calculate their interests. They may decide that they want more blood baths, but there is just as much likelihood that they will eventually find equilibrium.

I have not been to Dalian in three years. It is not just a nice city for China. It is a beautiful city of wide avenues, skyscrapers, green spaces, software parks and universities.

The president of Dalian University of Technology, Jinping Ou, told me his new focus now is on energy research and that he has 100 doctoral students dealing with different energy problems — where five years ago he barely had any — and that the Chinese government has just decided to open its national energy innovation research center here.

Listening to him, my mind drifted back to Iraq, where I was two weeks ago and where I heard a U.S. officer in Baghdad tell this story:

His unit was on a patrol in a Sunni neighborhood when it got hit by an I.E.D. Fortunately, the bomb exploded too soon and no one was hurt. His men jumped out and followed the detonation wire, which led 1,500 feet into the neighborhood. A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was in the area and alerted the U.S. soldiers that a man was fleeing the scene on a bicycle. The soldiers asked the Black Hawk for help, and it swooped down and used its rotor blades to blow the insurgent off his bicycle, with a giant “whoosh,” and the U.S. soldiers captured him.

That image of a $6 million high-tech U.S. helicopter with a highly trained pilot blowing an insurgent off his bicycle captures the absurdity of our situation in Iraq. The great Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi said it best: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

That is where we are in Iraq. We’re wasting our brains. We’re wasting our people. We’re wasting our future. China is not.

NEW YORK TIMES

MAUREEN DOWD PLAYS CUTESY WITH PATRAEUS WHILE WASHINGTON GAGS OVER NEWSPAPER AD

PEACHES TIGHTENS THE GIRDLE

Maureen Dowd

Joe Biden didn’t talk that much yesterday for Joe Biden.

And he told Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker that they shouldn’t talk too much, either, so that members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would have time to get in their questions. Even though the senators often didn’t ask questions but simply gave little partisan lectures or told stories about themselves, or in the case of Barbara Boxer, had an aide hold up a blow-up picture of herself with General Petraeus in Iraq.

Nevertheless, Mr. Biden, the committee’s chairman, took time at the end of yesterday’s first hearing with the Surge Twins to make the points, a bit repetitively, that there is no plan to get out of Iraq and that the Bush administration is not leveling with Americans.

John McCain was standing behind Mr. Biden, waiting to sit down for the next hearing — the Armed Services Committee — with the witnesses.

First, the Republican presidential candidate smiled archly at having to cool his heels as the Democratic presidential candidate yakked — sniffing at the Surge that Mr. McCain supports. Then Mr. McCain turned to his G.O.P. colleague Susan Collins and flapped his fingers in the universal hand sign for yakking.

It pretty much said it all.

For months, everyone here has been waiting with great expectations to hear whether the Surge is working from the top commander and top diplomat in Iraq.

But the whole thing was sort of a fizzle. It’s obvious that the Surge is like those girdles the secretaries wear on the vintage advertising show, “Mad Men.” It just pushes the fat around, giving a momentary illusion of flatness. But once Peaches Petraeus, as he was known growing up in Cornwall-on-Hudson, takes the girdle off, the center will not hold.

And it was clear from their marathon testimony that the Iraqi politicians are useless, that we’re going to have a huge number of troops in Iraq for a long time, that there’s no post-Surge strategy, that they’re just playing for time, hoping that somehow, some way, things will look up in the desert maze of demons that General Petraeus referred to as “home.”

The strategy is no more than a soap bubble of hope, just as W.’s invasion of Iraq was based on a fantasy about W.M.D.’s and an illusory view of Iraq.

Even though it was 9/11, Osama was barely mentioned all day.

Republican Senator John Warner, freer than ever now that he’s announced his retirement, turned the screw on the two witnesses.

Do you feel, he asked the general, that the Surge “is making America safer?”

“Sir, I don’t know actually,” Peaches replied. “I have not sat down and sorted out in my own mind.”

The Surge Twins seemed competent and more realistic than some of their misbegotten predecessors, but just too late to do any good. They’re like two veteran pilots trying to crash land the plane.

Ambassador Crocker has expressed a darker, more rueful vision in background briefings with reporters, and he emanated a bit of Graham Greene yesterday.

He noted that the Iraqis know that “they’re going to be there forever,” while we will not.

Pulling troops out too soon, he fears, could “push the Iraqis in the wrong direction. It would make them, I would fear, more focused on, you know, building the walls, stocking the ammunition and getting ready for a big, nasty street fight without us around.”

Asked by Senator McCain if he was confident that the Maliki government will get the job done, the ambassador said dryly: “My level of confidence is under control.”

The star witnesses gave shell game answers, trying to make the best of a hideous hand.

“It’s a hand that’s unlikely to improve in my view,” Hillary Clinton — one of five senators running for president on the two panels — told the Surge Twins. “I think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.”

Hillary’s plan is to posture and criticize W.’s war all the way to the White House. But then President Clinton will be stuck with figuring out how to pull out the more than 100,000 troops still there policing a lot of crazy sectarian street fighting.

The Republicans seemed happy that the witnesses’ calm presentation bolstered the president’s case for continued war funding. In his speech on Thursday night, W. will be able to accept the recommendations of the Surge Twins, who are only recommending what he wants to hear.

Republicans seemed oblivious to the fact that they may have scored points short term while laying the groundwork for disaster long term. W. won’t care because he’s not running, but it will be political suicide for Republicans entering the campaign with 130,000 troops still in Iraq.

As Lindsey Graham joked to the witnesses about Congress, referring to the talk of the dysfunctional Iraqi government, “You could say we’re dysfunctional and you wouldn’t be wrong.”

New York Times

BILL MAHER:: THE COMPLETE SHOW 09/07/2007

 

 

Part One

 

Part Two

 

Part Three

 

Part Four

 

Part Five

 

Part Six

 

Part Seven

 

NEW RULES

 

THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING: Dark Spots Mar an Aging, Yet Exquisite, Face

THE NEW YORK TIMES

September 9, 2007

Streetscapes | Woolworth Building

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

IT’S like a fungus that runs up and down the tower of the Woolworth Building, at Broadway and Park Place. From every angle the cream-colored surface has dirty, discolored patches, the unanticipated consequences of a major restoration project three decades ago.

Frank Woolworth began accumulating his 5-and-10-cent store fortune in 1879, and by 1886 he opened a headquarters in New York City. He was a multimillionaire by 1900, when he built a lacy Gothic-style limestone house at Fifth Avenue and 80th Street, a building demolished in the 1920s.

It was designed by Charles P. H. Gilbert, a mansion specialist who worked up and down the avenue. He also designed the main building of the Jewish Museum, at 92nd Street.

In 1911, Woolworth announced plans for the tallest building in the world, to be constructed on Broadway between Park Place and Barclay Street. Like his house, Woolworth’s new building was to be neo-Gothic and designed by a Gilbert — in this case, Cass Gilbert, who was not related to Charles but was instead an aggressive out-of-towner who had elbowed his way into New York City architecture.

In 1905, Gilbert had designed the boxy Gothic-style West Street Building, at West and Cedar Streets, one of many structures to use the new technology of glazed terra cotta to clad a tall building, and the architect used it as a model for the Woolworth Building.

For Woolworth, Gilbert doubled the size of the 23-story West Street building and then some, to 55 floors, with a pyramidal roof 792 feet high. That topped the 700-foot Metropolitan Life tower, built at Madison Avenue and 24th Street in 1909.

Paul Starrett was one of the contractors bidding on the Woolworth project, and in his 1938 book, “Changing the Skyline,” he recalled trying to persuade Woolworth to use more traditional materials.

“In stone it would be magnificent,” he said, but in terra cotta, “it would look like a 5-and-10-cent store proposition.”

He did not get the job.

The utility of terra cotta was irrefutable: each block of fired clay, usually hollowed out, was a fraction of the weight of brick or stone. The blocks were easily modeled in intricate forms and were protected by a glaze that shed dirt.

A 1912 ad by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company in The Real Estate Record and Guide boasted, “Cream color in another material would be dark and dirty after a few years’ exposure.”

Unlike many prior skyscrapers, the Woolworth Building was well received by the architectural intelligentsia. It had no raw blank side walls, and the Gothic-style detailing seemed an honest reflection of the new steel-frame technology.

Writing in The Architectural Record in 1913, Montgomery Schuyler particularly admired the way Gilbert adjusted the scale of the ornament. The finials, shields, crockets and other details were not simply giant-sized to look good from a distance but also held up to close view from neighboring buildings.

Compared with European models, “this brand-new American Gothic loses nothing,” Mr. Schuyler said.

But Mr. Starrett’s misgivings were well founded. In his 1938 book he recalled, apparently from years earlier, “the spectacle of the upper part of the Woolworth Building, wired up with metal mesh to catch the falling terra cotta.”

By 1962, The New York Times reported that riggers were repairing broken pieces all year round.

These problems only grew worse, and in the 1970s the Woolworth company retained Ezra D. Ehrenkrantz & Associates (now Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn) to examine every one of the 400,000 terra-cotta blocks. The architecture firm found that 25,000 of them needed complete replacement and selected precast concrete instead.

The concrete had a surface coating, meant to be renewed every five years, to shed soil and moisture, like the glaze on the terra-cotta blocks.

Timothy Allanbrook, now a senior consultant at Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, an architecture and engineering firm in Northbrook, Ill., worked for Ehrenkrantz at the time and was on and off the scaffolds at the Woolworth Building for three years.

He says the prescription for periodic resealing has not been followed, so the porous concrete has been absorbing water and dirt for years. He suspects that the concrete has absorbed so much dirt that it cannot be cleaned sufficiently so that it matches the original terra cotta, which may leave another replacement as the only option.

Mr. Allanbrook said that 30 years ago, the terra-cotta industry was in decline, making concrete “the optimal choice in a narrow field of imperfect choices.”

Now, terra cotta has seen a resurgence, so the original material could be a reasonable replacement, Mr. Allanbrook said; so could newer materials like concrete reinforced with glass fiber.

Roy Suskin, a vice president of the Witkoff Group, the building’s owner, declined to discuss the problem and any plans for remedying it.

THE CONTINUED MADNESS OF TOM FRIEDMAN

ANOTHER SIX MONTHS FRIEDMAN AT IT AGAIN

One of the most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion is just how empty the Arab dictatorships are. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque. There is nothing in between — no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press. So it is not surprising to see the sort of clerical leadership that has emerged in both the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq.

But this is not true in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan. Though not a full-fledged democracy, Kurdistan is developing the key elements of a civil society. I met in Erbil with 20 such Kurdish groups — unions, human rights and political watchdogs, editors and women’s associations. It is worth studying what went right in Kurdistan to understand what we still can and can’t do to promote democratization in the rest of Iraq and the Arab world.

The United States played a critical role in Kurdistan. In 1998, we helped to resolve the Kurdish civil war — the power struggle between two rival clans — which created the possibility of a stable, power-sharing election in 2005. And by removing Saddam, we triggered a flood of foreign investment here.

But that is all we did. Today, there are almost no U.S. soldiers or diplomats in Kurdistan. Yet politics here is flourishing, as is the economy, because the Kurds want it that way. Down south, we’ve spent billions trying to democratize the Sunni and Shiite zones and have little to show for it.

Three lessons: 1) Until the power struggle between Sunnis and Shiites is resolved, you can’t establish any stable politics in southern Iraq. 2) When people want to move down a progressive path, there is no stopping them. When they don’t, there is no helping them. 3) Culture matters. The Kurdish Islam is a moderate, tolerant strain, explained Salam Bawari, head of Kurdistan’s Democracy and Human Rights Research Center. “We have a culture of pluralism,” he said. “We have 2,000 years of living together with people living around us.” Actually, there are still plenty of Arab-Kurdish disputes, but there is an ethos of tolerance here you don’t find elsewhere in Iraq.

While visiting Kurdistan, I read a timely new book, “Democracy’s Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World’s Most Popular Form of Government,” by my friend Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign affairs expert at Johns Hopkins University. It is highly relevant to America’s democracy project in Iraq and beyond.

Mr. Mandelbaum argues that democracy is made up of two elements: liberty and popular sovereignty. “Liberty involves what governments do” — the rule of law, the protection of people from abuses of state power and the regulations by which government institutions operate, he explains. Popular sovereignty involves how the people determine who governs them — through free elections.

What Baghdad exemplifies, Mr. Mandelbaum says, is what happens when you have elections without liberty. You end up with a tyranny of the majority, or what Fareed Zakaria has labeled “illiberal democracy.” Kurdistan, by contrast, has a chance to build a balanced democracy, because it is nurturing the institutions of liberty, not just holding elections.

What the Kurdistan-Baghdad contrast also illustrates, notes Mr. Mandelbaum, is that “we can help create the conditions for democracy to take root, but people have to develop the skills and values that make it work themselves.”

In the southern part of Iraq “you have people who are undemocratic who have a democratic government,” said Hemin Malazada, who heads a Kurdish journalists’ association. “In Kurdistan, you have a democratic government for a democratic people.”

One way a country develops the software of liberty, Mr. Mandelbaum says, is by nurturing a free market. Kurdistan has one. The economy in the rest of Iraq remains a mess. “A market economy,” he argues, “gives people a stake in peace, as well as a constructive way of dealing with people who are strangers. Free markets teach the basic democratic practices of compromise and trust.”

Democracy can fail because of religious intolerance, the curse of oil, a legacy of colonialism and military dictatorship, or an aversion to Western values — the wellspring of democracy. The Middle East, notes Mr. Mandelbaum, is the one region afflicted by all of these maladies. That doesn’t mean democratization is impossible here, as the Kurds demonstrate. But it does mean it’s really hard. Above all, Iraq teaches us that democracy is possible only when people want both pillars of it — liberty and self-government — and build both themselves. We’re miles away from that in Baghdad.

The DC Establishment versus American public opinion-GLENN GREENWALD

  WEIRDO NEOCON DREAMER MICHAEL O’HANLON

By large majorities, Americans distrust Gen. Petreaus’ report and, in general, claims about Progress in Iraq.

GLENN GREENWALD-SALON

Sep. 09, 2007 | (updated below)

The Washington Establishment has spent the last several months glorifying Gen. David Petraeus, imposing the consensus that The Surge is Succeeding, and most importantly of all, ensuring that President Bush will not be compelled to withdraw troops from Iraq for the remainder of his presidency. The P.R. campaign to persuade the country that the Surge is Succeeding has been as intense and potent as any P.R. campaign since the one that justified the invasion itself. While this campaign has worked wonders with our gullible media stars and Democratic Congressional leadership, it has failed completely with the American people.

Ever since the Surge was announced (and allowed) back in January, Conventional Beltway Media Wisdom continuously insisted that September was going to be the Dramatic Month of Reckoning, when droves of fair-minded and election-fearing Republicans finally abandoned the President and compelled an end to the war. But the opposite has occurred.

Democratic Congressional leaders — due either to illusory fears of political repercussions and/or a desire that the war continue — seem more supportive than ever of the ongoing occupation (or at least more unwilling than ever to stop it). They are going to do nothing to mandate meaningful troop withdrawal. Most Republicans are hiding behind the shiny badges of Gen. Petraeus and his typically sunny claims about Progress in Iraq, and they, too, are as unified as ever that we cannot end our occupation.

None of that is notable or surprising to anyone other than our nation’s media stars. It has been depressingly predictable (and predicted) for months that Petreaus would descend on Washington in September, hail the Great Progress we are making, and the entire D.C. Establishment — and more than enough members of both parties — would meekly fall into line and support whatever scheme prevailed at the time for ensuring that we stayed in Iraq through the end of the Bush presidency. The notion of the “Moderate Congressional Republican” who will stand up to the President has long been an absurd Beltway myth, as was the expectation that Democrats in Congress would ever force the President to end the war.

But what is notable about all of this, if not surprising as well, is that the overwhelming majority of the American people now harbor such intense distrust towards our political and media elite that they are virtually immune to any of these tactics. Several polls over the past month have revealed that most Americans do not trust Gen. Petraeus to give an accurate report about Iraq. And a newly released, comprehensive Washington Post-ABC News poll today starkly illustrates just how wide the gap is between American public opinion and the behavior of our political establishment.

The majority of Americans have emphatically rejected the Beltway P.R. campaign of the last several months, and are as opposed more than ever before to the war. Perhaps most remarkably, in light of the bipartisan canonization rituals to which we have been subjected, a strong majority (53-39%) believes that Gen. Petreaus’ report “will try to make things look better than they really are” (rather than “honestly reflect the situation in Iraq”).

Moreover, huge majorities continue to believe that the war was not worth fighting (62-36%) and that the U.S. “is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq” (60-36%). Only a small minority (28%) believe the Surge has made the situation in Iraq better, while vast majorities believe it has made no difference (58%) or has made the situation worse (12%). And a sizable plurality continues to believe the U.S. is losing the war (48-34%).

More significantly still, overwhelming numbers of Americans understand what the D.C. Establishment refuses to accept: namely, that even if there are marginal and isolated security improvements, there is still no point in continuing to stay in Iraq. Large majorities want the number of U.S. troops in Iraq decreased (58-39%); believe overwhelmingly that a decrease should begin “right away,” rather than by the end of the year or next year (62-33%); and favor legislation now to compel troop withdrawal by the spring (55-41%).

Yet the “debate” taking place in the Beltway regarding Iraq could not be any further removed from the views most Americans hold, and the war-continuing actions of our political class over the next several weeks will be — yet again — in complete defiance of the pervasive belief in this country that it is long past time to end the war. Just as they do with regard to the realities in Iraq, our political class just pretends that these facts about American public opinion are not true. As but one particularly egregious (though representative) example, this is what Fred Thompson advisor Mary Matalin said last week on the Meet the Press:

MS. MATALIN: Yes, because what we’re seeing for the first time last week, is a majority of people now support and believe that the war can be won.

Matalin’s claim that a majority “believe that the war can be won” is extremely dubious (the Post-ABC Poll found the opposite: that a plurality believes the U.S. will lose the war; only a minority (39%) believes we will win). But Matalin’s claim that “a majority of people now support” the war is just an outright lie.One poll after the next for at least two years has found that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the war and want it to end. But Matalin, a Serious Member in Good Standing of our Beltway Establishment, can go on Meet the Press, sitting there with Tim Russert and her husband and others, and spout lies like this about what Americans think about the war because the D.C. Establishment wants to believe that they are trusted and respected. Matalin also said this about what “Americans believe”:

It does not comport with the critics of the president who say progress is being made, including front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton and, and Barack Obama. So people are very nuanced about this. They understand not only that it can be won, but that it must be won. They understand the consequences of defeat. Further, two thirds of them trust — and nobody more than the generals – when Petraeus and Crocker come and give their report, that will be the positive time.

These are total falsehoods. Yet The D.C. Establishment, including Democratic Congressional leaders, are wedded to the premise that Gen. Petreaus must not be challenged, that we are making Progress due to the Surge, and that — whatever else is true — compelled withdrawal (i.e., withdrawal before George W. Bush wants to withdraw) is irresponsible and dangerous.In his Washington Post Editorial this morning, Fred Hiatt came as close as he ever has today to admitting that there is no point in continuing to remain in Iraq, rhetorically asking: “If Iraqis are not moving toward political reconciliation, what justifies a continuing commitment of U.S. troops, with the painful sacrifices in lives that entails?” That question answers itself: nothing justifies our ongoing occupation. Yet Hiatt can’t bring himself to follow that premise to its logical conclusion: namely, that withdrawal is the only rational option.

The Establishment is so invested in ensuring that the war they created can be painted as a Success, and even more so in the notion that forced withdrawal is something only the Unserious People advocate, that they will never follow their premise (we are doing nothing good in Iraq) to its logical conclusion (therefore we should force Bush to withdraw whether he wants to or not). And the entire leadership strata of our political class, including Congressional Democrats, either shares those premises and/or are far too weak and afraid to defy them. The war thus continues, and the gap between our political class and American public opinion continues to grow.

In one sense, it is quite unhealthy in a democracy for such a large majority of Americans to so distrust the political and media establishment that they even believe in advance that war reports from our leading General will be nothing more than self-serving and misleading propaganda. But in another, more important sense, when a democracy’s political establishment becomes as rotted and deceitful and corrupt as ours has become — enabling the most unpopular President in modern American history to continue what is so blatantly a senseless war for years and years, in complete defiance of what Americans want — the one encouraging sign is that a majority realizes how corrupt our establishment is and has stopped believing anything they say.

One of the very few governmental institutions that inspired respect among Americans has been the military, and that is still the case. But anyone who becomes a part of our political class, such as Gen. Petraeus, is inherently distrusted. This war has completely eroded the relationship between our Beltway ruling class and the rest of the country. That would normally be something to lament, but in this case, it is something to celebrate. The Beltway ruling class — political and media figures alike — deserves nothing but scorn and distrust. As they spend the next several weeks enabling George Bush to continue this war for as long as he wants, they will earn a lot more of both.

UPDATE: One of the most depressing aspects of this entire Establishment spectacle is how mind-numbingly predictable it all is. Here is what I wrote back in May about what would happen in September. I excerpt this not because I was the only one saying it — to the contrary, virtually every blogger I read was saying the same thing — but only to illustrate how dishonest the DC Establishment is in everything they say and do:

The single greatest and most transparent delusion in our public discourse right now — and that is a distinction for which there is always an intense competition — is that Something Weighty and Significant is Going to Happen In September with regard to the Iraq War.September, you see, is the real turning point, the real Day of Reckoning. Finally, our political elites are going to face the cold, hard truth in an unvarnished and hard-nosed way about The Facts on the Ground. That is the read deadline for George W. Bush. No more leniency for him come September. Republicans, Democrats and their pundit and opinion-making comrades alike have all banded together — strength in numbers — and boldly decreed: “No More.” Either we have Real Progress in September, or that is the end of the line.

That’s what one hears over and over from all of our Serious and Sober Beltway denizens — the ones who advocated the war in the first place and assured us it was going well for the last four years (and therefore have great credibility on such matters). As but just one example, the very serious, sober, smart expert Michael O’Hanlon, bearing the title of Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, was on Fox News yesterday explaining how “smart” the Democrats were for funding the war with no limits because their real opportunity is September, when — if things are not going well — everyone will support them in imposing real limits.

But all that is going to happen In September is that we are going to await with bated breath for General David Petraeus — he of infallible wisdom, judgment and honesty, and unquestionable objectivity — to descend upon Washington and reveal whether there is Real Progress being made (by him) in Iraq. We are all going to leave partisanship and politics to the side and turn to the source who resides above all of that, the one who can be counted on to speak the Real Truth — General David Petraeus.

And, needless to say, General Petraeus will, cautiously though emphatically, declare that progress is being made, though there is much work that remains to be done. And therefore we must redouble our resolve and stay until The Job is Done. . . .

And with General Petraeus heralded as the Objective Source of Honor to be Trusted, the White House and Congressional Republicans and Fred Hiatt will immediately proclaim that it would be irresponsible and reckless (and terribly unserious) not to continue with our Great Progress, that we should leave such judgments to the Generals on the Ground, not Politicians in Washington. Joe Lieberman and Bill Kristol will warn that anyone who speaks out in dissent at this Important Time of Opportunity is Emboldening Al Qaeda, and General Petraeus will agree.

And in September, when the great (though incomplete) progress is unveiled by General Petraeus, our pundit class will continue their canonization of The General, and thus, that there is Progress in Iraq will be the conventional wisdom which all serious and responsible people recognize (“Finally, after four years of frustration, General David Petraeus, in dramatic testimony before Congress, highlighted the great improvement the U.S. is seeing in its war against Al Qaeda in Iraq”). And a sufficient number of Democrats will either be persuaded by this ritual or will be sufficiently afraid of it to do anything other than let the entire spectacle continue.

The central unyielding truth in our political landscape is that — no matter what — the War in Iraq is not going to end before the end of the Bush presidency. That has been obvious for a very long time, and that is why it is so bizarre to watch the Beltway establishment continue to pretend that there is some Big Decision Day coming in September — the day when Republicans take a stand and our political elite put their foot down.

Nothing has changed. Republicans and media-war-proponents are far too invested in the war to do anything other than claim it is finally going well. And there are more than enough Democrats who either (a) believe we should stay in Iraq indefinitely, (b) perceive political benefits from staying, and/or (c) fear forcing withdrawal.

Kevin Drum recently claimed that Gen. Petraeus “outplayed” bloggers and war opponents by secretly launching a brilliant P.R. campaign — unbeknownst to naive bloggers — to persuade the D.C. establishment that the Surge was Succeeding (“I’ve been thinking about is how badly the liberal blogosphere and the liberal establishment have been outplayed here. . . . We’re only seeing the results of Petraeus’s PR blitzkrieg now. . . . The general has profoundly outplayed the amateurs on their home turf. . . . Bravo, general. Well played”). That is completely wrong.

While our media stars and Democratic politicians may not have been aware of it, most bloggers realized exactly what Gen. Petreaus was doing, and apparently, so, too, did most Americans. It’s the same game that the D.C. Establishment has been playing for four years with regard to the war and it’s anything but difficult to recognize.

— Glenn Greenwald

TIME WARNER TO INTRODUCE 24 NEW ONLINE VIDEO PRODUCTIONS

THIS IS INTERESTING…..

September 10, 2007

By BROOKS BARNES

NEW YORK TIMES 

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 9 — In the race to become a major supplier of original video programming to the Web, Warner Brothers has decided to reverse its direction.

The studio, part of Time Warner, plans today to introduce 24 Web productions in a range of formats including minimovies, games and episodic television shows.

But for this latest online push, Warner Brothers has discarded its initial strategy of insisting that advertisers shoulder production costs from the start. Instead, it has decided to finance most projects itself and worry about lining up advertisers to recoup costs later.

“In trying to get the business off the ground,” said Craig Hunegs, executive vice president for business development, “we ended up in a bit of a dance with advertisers about what various projects would look like.”

The shift underlines a growing realization among the big Hollywood studios: Web entertainment is evolving so quickly that they must take on more financial risk to keep up.

So far, Warner and most other traditional studios have tried to lock down a comfortable, low-risk business model before venturing too far online. That approach has slowed them down, delivering a competitive edge to scrappier, upstart production companies.

In the year since Warner moved into original production for the Web, it has delivered just one project: Hardly News, a satirical pop-culture quiz show that had its premiere on Anheuser-Busch’s entertainment Web site, Bud.TV, in April. It failed to gain an audience, although the studio is not giving up on the concept and is weighing new distribution options.

“We may have initially had a narrow view,” said Bruce Rosenblum, president of the Warner Brothers Television Group, which houses the studio’s digital production unit. He is now operating on the idea that as long as the studio churns out quality digital entertainment, advertising dollars will follow.

The slate of short-form Web productions that Warner plans to announce today are already deep in the production pipeline and range across genres including science fiction and animation.

“The Jeannie Tate Show,” created by Liz Cackowski, is a 10-episode series about a neurotic soccer mom who presents a television talk show from her minivan. A puppet comedy for adults from the Jim Henson Company, unofficially titled the Simian Undercover Detective Squad, follows a group of ape investigators.

The comedy projects can hit close to home. A mockumentary titled “Viral,” from Joey Manderino and David Young, looks at the dysfunction that overtakes a digital studio as it tries to come up with the next big online hit.

The studio says that a half-dozen more video projects are in development, including an animated offshoot of “The Wizard of Oz” and an online dating game produced by Lauren Graham of “Gilmore Girls.” Joseph McGinty Nichol, a director of the “Charlie’s Angels” movies who is known as McG, also has a project in the works.

Although Warner is spending more cash up front, executives point out that the combined budget for the 24 projects is less than $3 million, or the approximate cost of one episode of a high-end television drama.

And Mr. Rosenblum has distribution plans for most of its new digital entertainment. RealNetworks has agreed to distribute the Jim Henson project. With other projects, Mr. Hunegs said, programming will appear on Joost and other video portals. Warner plans to sell its digital projects to advertisers through its own media sales unit.

The studio is trying to gain traction in an increasingly crowded field. More than a dozen new production companies are angling for a share of the exploding online video business. Among the upstarts achieving early success are Generate, co-founded by a former Warner executive, and Vuguru, a new media company backed by Walt Disney’s former chief, Michael D. Eisner.

Brent Weinstein, chief executive of 60Frames Entertainment, a digital studio co-founded by the United Talent Agency, said, “We can get things to market a lot quicker than traditional media companies because we aren’t hamstrung by all their legal and rights issues.”

The agency, like most of its rivals, is building an internal unit devoted to scouting up-and-coming creators of Internet content and to securing new media deals for existing clients with the likes of Warner.

Jason U. Nadler, director of UTA Online, said, “Artists know the Web is a great place to both showcase their talent and incubate new ideas without the pressure of delivering a full-blown movie or television hit out of the gate.”

Although Warner’s digital venture, dubbed Studio 2.0, has gotten off to a slow start, the company has emerged as a leader in other areas of Web entertainment.

Mr. Rosenblum announced a deal in May 2006 to allow local television stations that buy reruns of the Warner-produced comedy “Two and a Half Men” to stream the episodes on their Web sites. The studio’s TMZ.com, a Web celebrity tabloid, has grown so popular since its debut in December that Warner will introduce a television spin-off this week.

And Warner’s chief executive, Barry M. Meyer, announced plans last week for a virtual online world populated by animated characters from the company’s library. A spring debut is planned for the site, called T-Works. It will also stream episodes of Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes cartoons.

“Some of the announcements you will see from us over the next several months will show how dedicated we are to this business,” Mr. Rosenblum said.

MAUREEN DOWD ON FRED THOMPSON AND THE FATHER FIGURE PHENOMENON

OLD SCHOOL INANITY
BY MAUREEN DOWD

Dying for a daddy, the Republicans turn their hungry eyes to Fred

Fred Thompson acts tough on screen. And like Ronald Reagan, he has a distinctively masculine timbre and an extremely involved wife.

In his announcement video, Mr. Thompson stood in front of a desk in what looked like, duh, a law office, rumbling reassuringly that in this “dangerous time” he would deal with “the safety and security of the American people.”

As Michelle Cottle wrote in The New Republic, far more than puffy-coiffed Mitt and even more than tough guys Rudy and McCain, the burly, 6-foot-5, 65-year-old Mr. Thompson exudes “old-school masculinity.”

“In Thompson’s presence (live or on-screen),” she wrote, “one is viscerally, intimately reassured that he can handle any crisis that arises, be it a renegade Russian sub or a botched rape case.” But she wondered, was he really “enough of a man for this fight,” or just someone who meandered through life, creating the illusion of a masculine mystique?

Newsweek reported that some close to the Tennessean “question whether moving into the White House is truly Thompson’s life ambition — or more the dream of his second wife, Jeri, a former G.O.P. operative who is his unofficial campaign manager and top adviser.”

It took only two days of campaigning to answer the masculine mystique question. Fred gave an interview to CNN’s John King as his bus rolled through Iowa.

“To what degree should the American people hold the president of the United States responsible for the fact that bin Laden is still at large six years later?” Mr. King asked.

“I think bin Laden is more of a symbolism than he is anything else,” Mr. Thompson drawled. “Bin Laden being in the mountains of Afghanistan or — or Pakistan is not as important as the fact that there’s probably Al Qaeda operatives inside the United States of America.”

Usually, you can only get that kind of exquisitely inane logic from the president. Who does Fred think is sending operatives or inspiring them to come?

Fred is not Ronnie; he’s warmed-over W. President Reagan always knew who the foe was.

Fred followed W.’s nutty lead of marginalizing Osama on a day when TV showed another creepy, fruitcake manifesto by the terrorist, who was wearing what seemed to be a fake beard left over from Woody Allen’s “Bananas” and bloviating on everything from the subprime mortgage crisis to the “woes” of global warming to a Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory to the wisdom of Noam Chomsky to the unwisdom of Richard Perle to the heartwarming news that Muslims have lived with Jews and not “incinerated them” to the need to “continue to escalate the killing and fighting” against American kids in Iraq.

Can we please get someone in charge who will stop whining that Osama is hiding in “harsh terrain,” hunt him down and blast him forward to the Stone Age?

Fred must have missed the news of the administration’s intelligence estimate in July deeming Al Qaeda rejuvenated and “a persistent and evolving terrorist threat” to Americans.

Pressed by Mr. King on the fact that the Bush hawks went after Saddam instead of Osama, Fred continued to sputter: “You — you’re — you’re not served up these issues one at a time. They — they come when they come, and you have to — you have to deal with them.”

Democrats pounced. John Edwards issued a statement saying, “That bin Laden is still at large is Bush’s starkest failure.” John McCain and Rudy Giuliani also stressed the need to take out Osama.

Fred quickly caved on the matter of men in caves. At a rally later in the day he manned up. “Apparently Osama bin Laden has crawled out of his cave long enough to send another video and he is getting a lot of attention,” he said, “and ought to be caught and killed.”

He continued to insist that killing bin Laden would not end the terrorist threat, without realizing that this is true now because, by not catching bin Laden, W. allowed him to explode into an inspirational force for jihadists.

Republicans are especially eager for a papa after their disappointing experiences with Junior. After going through so many shattering disasters, W. seems more the inexperienced kid than ever.

In Australia, the president called Australian soldiers in Iraq “Austrian troops,” and got into a weird to-and-fro on TV with the South Korean president.

W. cooperated with Ropert Draper, the author of a new biography of him, yet the portrait was not flattering. Like a frat president sitting around with the brothers trying to figure out whether to party with Tri-Delts or Thetas, W. asked his advisers for a show of hands last year to see if Rummy should stay on. And W. is obsessed with getting the Secret Service to arrange his biking trails.

“What kind of male,” one of his advisers wondered aloud, “obsesses over his bike riding time, other than Lance Armstrong or a 12-year-old boy?”

-NEW YORK TIMES-

‘Soprano’ Michael Imperioli ‘baffled’ by bomb outside building

BY TANANGACHI MFUNI, DENIS HAMILL and TINA MOORE

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, September 5th 2007, 4:00 AM

---

 

 

Imperioli’s theater, Studio Dante.

Bada bing – bada boom!

A Manhattan building owned by “Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli was shaken by an explosion early yesterday when a pipe bomb detonated outside.

Imperioli, who played Tony Soprano’s nephew on the hit HBO series, told the Daily News he was “baffled” by the blast, which did not hurt anyone but terrified several residents.

“I don’t know anything about this bomb in front of my theater,” Imperioli said. “I’m completely baffled.”

Police officials said they were unsure if the 1 a.m. blast had any connection to Imperioli or his performance space, Studio Dante, on the first floor of the building on 29th St. between Seventh and Eighth Aves.

Investigators said Imperioli had been locked in a dispute with a former tenant, but later said the disagreement wasn’t related to the blast. Imperioli said he wasn’t aware of any conflicts with tenants or neighbors.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “You’ll get 10 different stories by the time this is finished.”

Whoever detonated the 2-by-4-inch bomb either planted it or threw it after lighting a fuse, police sources said. The explosion smashed a window of a nearby minivan, sent a large cloud of smoke into the sky and reverberated throughout the midtown neighborhood. The blast drew a large response of firefighters and cops, including officers from the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force. Tenants were evacuated from Imperioli’s four-story building.

“I heard some big explosion and I heard the car alarms in the neighborhood,” said Joe Brockett, 46, an advertising executive who lives in the building. “It was deep; it was not like a little firecracker.”

Mayor Bloomberg declared the blast wasn’t terrorism-related. Several neighborhood streets were closed temporarily as cops searched for other explosive devices.

First-grade teacher Jennifer Russo, 32, who lives two doors down from Imperioli’s building, said she was terrified by the blast. “My heart was pounding,” said Russo, who regretfully missed the first day at Public School 96 in the Bronx because she couldn’t get back into her home.

Flavio Souza, the 51-year-old local resident who owns the red Chevrolet minivan damaged in the blast, slept through the explosion. “It’s very bad these things happen,” said Souza, a bridge painter from Brazil.

Several residents of Imperioli’s building drank at the Molly Wee Pub at 30th St. and Eighth Ave. to pass the time after being forced from their homes.

“It shook the house; it knocked some oyster plates off the wall,” said Ken Holiday, 29, a student at the nearby Fashion Institute of Technology.

Imperioli said there are “drunks and druggies in the area late at night.” He said he had not been stalked or threatened and doesn’t believe he was the target.

Imperioli showed up at his building hours after the blast and did something his mob character would never do: He talked to the cops. “I told them all I know, which is basically nothing,” he said.

“It’s terrible,” he added. “This whole day felt like an hallucination. It’s surreal. … We have the greatest police force in the world. I’m confident they will come up with something.”

tmoore@nydailynews.com

With Peter Kadushin and Erin Einhorn

ONE HUNDRED SUBSCRIBERS ON YOUTUBE

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REDSKINS RADIO

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Bill Maher’s Real Time With Cornel West, Mos Def, Ralph Nader and Lawrence Wilkerson:: PART ONE

Bill Maher’s Real Time With Cornel West, Mos Def, Ralph Nader and Lawrence Wilkerson:: PART TWO

Bill Maher’s Real Time With Cornel West, Mos Def, Ralph Nader and Lawrence Wilkerson:: PART THREE

Bill Maher’s Real Time With Cornel West, Mos Def, Ralph Nader and Lawrence Wilkerson:: PART FOUR

Bill Maher’s Real Time With Cornel West, Mos Def, Ralph Nader and Lawrence Wilkerson:: PART FIVE

 

Bill Maher’s Real Time With Cornel West, Mos Def, Ralph Nader and Lawrence Wilkerson:: PART SIX

Bill Maher’s Real Time With Cornel West, Mos Def, Ralph Nader and Lawrence Wilkerson:: PART SEVEN

Activists take Al Gore to task on his diet

By Philip Sherwell

09/09/2007

 

He may be the hero of the environmental movement for his crusade against global warming but Al Gore is about to be targeted by animal rights activists over his carnivorous contribution to greenhouse gases.

	Al Gore has come under fire for failing to highlight the impact of animal agriculture

Citing United Nations research that the meat industry is worse for the environment than driving and flying, animal rights groups are directing a campaign at the former American vice-president’s diet.

When he delivers a lecture on global warming in Denver next month, protesters will display billboards bearing a cartoon image of Mr Gore eating a drumstick and the message: “Too chicken to go vegetarian? Meat is the No 1 cause of global warming”.

The campaign is being organised by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) and is backed by other animal rights groups.

“For Al Gore, the fact that his diet is a leading contributor to global warming is a highly inconvenient truth – pun intended,” said Matt Prescott, a spokesman for Peta.

Mr Gore won an Oscar this year for An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary based on his lecture-circuit presentation detailing how man is allegedly destroying the environment.

But he is now under fire for failing to highlight the impact of meat-eating.

According to recent UN Food and Agriculture Organisation research, animal agriculture generates 18 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions – more than the 13.5 per cent produced by all forms of transport combined.

Mr Gore’s eating habits have previously drawn attention only because of his dramatic weight fluctuations.

He cut a far slimmer figure in the run-up to the 2000 election than since – and observers would regard a reduction in his waistline as a likely sign that he intends join the Democrats’ race for the White House next year.

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TELEGRAPH LONDON

TUCKER CARLSON IS A DOUCHEBAG; More Troops Killed

MEDIA MATTERS 

Tucker Carlson quoted Michelle Obama, wife of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), from a recent interview with Glamour, saying of her husband and children: “We have this ritual in the morning. They come in my bed, and Dad isn’t there — because he’s too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want to ever get into bed with him.” But Glamour left out a key word from Michelle Obama’s quote; she had said, “They come in my bed, and if Dad isn’t there …” — the addition of “if” turning her remark into a conditional statement that her children come into bed “if Dad isn’t there.” But Carlson went beyond Glamour’s original error, asserting, based solely on the inaccurate quote, that “the Obamas do not sleep in the same bed, Mrs. Obama is saying.”

On the September 6 edition of MSNBC’s Tucker, host Tucker Carlson quoted Michelle Obama, wife of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), from a recent interview with Glamour as saying of her husband and children: “We have this ritual in the morning. They come in my bed, and Dad isn’t there — because he’s too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want to ever get into bed with him.” Glamour left out a key word from Michelle Obama’s quote; she had said, “They come in my bed, and if Dad isn’t there …” — the addition of “if” turning her remark into a conditional statement that her children come into bed “if Dad isn’t there.” But Carlson went beyond Glamour’s original error, asserting, based solely on the inaccurate quote, that “the Obamas do not sleep in the same bed, Mrs. Obama is saying.” Later in the program, Carlson reported that he “just received a call from the Obama campaign taking issue” with his claim that Michelle Obama said “the Obamas do not sleep in the same bed.” Carlson claimed to “know nothing about the Obama’s bedroom habits beyond what Michelle Obama has told the rest of us,” and reread the excerpt from the interview adding: “I don’t know anything she hasn’t told me. So if there’s more they want to tell us about their bedroom habits, this is the show to tell us on.”

Even after Glamour edited the posted transcript, CNN’s Political Ticker blog posted the inaccurate version of Michelle Obama’s quote in a September 7 entry, despite linking to the updated Glamour transcript:

In an interview with Glamour Magazine, Ms. Obama details her two girls’ morning ritual, a time, she says, when her husband Barack is often “snore-y and stinky.”

“We have this ritual in the morning,” Michelle Obama told Glamour. “They come in my bed, and Dad isn’t there — because he’s too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want to ever get into bed with him.”

Michelle Obama’s statement, as it originally appeared, was cited by several blogs, including a September 6 entry to The New York Times‘ The Caucus by reporter Katharine Q. Seelye. Seelye’s post was updated on September 7 to note Glamour’s update to the interview transcript:

Update: Glamour has updated its Web site now with a fuller quote from Mrs. Obama, and here’s a complete transcript of the passage:

Q: Speaking of your girls, what do you think they think of Mommy? How do they think of you?

Mrs. Obama: You know my hope in my gut is that I am just Mommy. I don’t think this part registers to them. I mean so much of our relationship is based on our world at home. It’s getting up _ you know we have this ritual in the morning. We get up and they want ten more minutes so they can come in my bed and if Dad isn’t there _ because he is too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want ever to get in the bed with him _ but we cuddle up and we talk. We’ve talked about everything from the boy that one daughter doesn’t particularly like in school to what is a period to _

Q: And they are five and eight?

Mrs. Obama: They are six and nine. To the big topic in the morning is, when we get a dog, what kind of dog?

From Michelle Obama’s interview with Glamour, as it currently appears on the magazine’s website:

LEE: What do your girls think of you?

OBAMA: My hope and my gut is that I am just Mommy. We have this ritual in the morning. They come in my bed, and if Dad isn’t there — because he’s too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want to ever get into bed with him. But we cuddle up and we talk about everything from what is a period to the big topic of when we get a dog: what kind?

From the September 6 edition of MSNBC’s Tucker:

CARLSON: Time for a check of the Obameter, and there is fresh activity. First, an aide close to Obama says that Oprah Winfrey may take a visible role in that campaign, possibly as a surrogate of sorts. Winfrey hosts her fundraiser for the campaign Saturday night in California. The other development comes from Michelle Obama, who again spoke plainly about her husband to Glamour magazine. Referring to their daughters she said this, quote: “We have this ritual in the morning. They come in my bed, and Dad isn’t there — because he’s too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want to ever get into bed with him. But we cuddle up and we talk about everything from what is a period to the big topic of when we get a dog: what kind?”

That’s what she said. Did you want to know that? Well, you do now, and so does everyone else. Joining us again, former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and senior editor of Newsweek Jonathan Alter. Jonathan Alter — the Obamas do not sleep in the same bed, Mrs. Obama is saying. Why is that my business? Why is she talking about this?

[...]

CARLSON: Welcome back. We just received a call from the Obama campaign during the course of our show taking issue with something I said a minute ago. It appeared to me, I said, that Michelle Obama was saying she and her husband don’t share the same bed. Just to be clear, I know nothing about the Obamas bedroom habits beyond what Michelle Obama has told the rest of us. So, to be clear, let’s reread what Michelle Obama said about the subject. Quote, “We have this ritual in the morning. They come into my bed” — the children — “and Dad isn’t there — because he’s too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want to ever get into bed with him.” Etcetera, etcetera. I don’t know anything she hasn’t told me. So if there’s more they want to tell us about their bedroom habits, this is the show to tell us on.

REALTIME WITH BILL MAHER; CORNEL WEST, MOS DEF, RALPH NADER AND LAWRENCE WILKERSON

BILL MAHER 7 SEPTEMBER 2007

BILL MAHER’S NEW RULES

WILCO CONQUERS BAY AREA

INSIDE BAY AREA

WILCO SINGER Jeff Tweedy took a sold-out Greek Theatre on a wild ride, from gentle country to screaming rock, on the old stalwart “Misunderstood.” He ended by repeatedly screaming the staccato, broken-down and desperate line “Nothin’,”while the band pounded the two-syllables along with him for what seemed like forever.

Or, maybe somewhere between three and four dozen times. Even Tweedy wasn’t sure.

“How many nothin’s was that?” he asked someone in the crowd, back from shrieking hell-raiser to normal, deadpan, Midwestern everyman. He seemed genuinely interested.

“42? Noooo.”

Though surrounded by virtuoso talent, and capable of building songs that are emotional, intellectual, whimsical and intricate (sometimes all at once), Tweedy hasn’t lost the humor and stage drive that makes Wilco one of the greatest live acts in the country.

Friday night was a 21/2-hour ride — lapsing into sleepiness a few times early on because of mismatched songs on the set list. But these were brief speed bumps, and the band finished with an eight-song double encore, sealing the performance as one of best Wilco shows the Bay Area has seen in a long time.

That was no small feat, considering that guitarist Nels Cline had already caused the band to cancel two shows this week with a nasty case of chicken pox. Other than sitting to play lap steel guitar, Cline was a trouper, up and about, stomping his feet and spasmodically jerking around during the shredding solos that brought an entirely new dimension to the band two records ago.

Opening slow — as they typically do — Wilco gave far too many newbies in the crowd space to talk while building through solid versions of “Sunken Treasure” and “You Are My Face.” The good thing is that, especially on the new record “Sky Blue Sky,” (which is far more Beatles than Eagles, I don’t care what thousands other rock critics say), Wilco has an amazing ability to sneak up on people.

They can kill the random conversations from impatient fans by suddenly turning a sleepy country vibe into a sharpened, multi-faceted rocker.Much of that has to do with not only the way Tweedy writes songs — and let’s face it, it all starts and ends with Tweedy — but also with secret weapon drummer Glenn Kotche, who can take a simple, dusty acoustic riff in more directions than perhaps any rock drummer in existence (which may be why he’ll be performing with Kronos Quartet in October at the San Francisco Jazz Festival).

Tweedy’s the brains, Cline and guitarist/keyboardist Pat Sansone are the electricity and bassist John Stirratt is the rock. Keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen is the musical icing. But Kotche is what makes this band go, and he’s wonderful to watch.

Actually, one could watch anyone in Wilco and be suitably impressed without considering how they all fit together like a masterful puzzle.

The engaging “Either Way” finally got the crowd going (and let’s pray it wasn’t because the song isbeing used in a car commercial). Despite lots of material from the new record, songs such as “Handshake Drugs,” “Pot Kettle Black” and “War on War” (with a new bigger build at the end) came off like old friends.

After controlling the guitar leads on the past couple records, Tweedy is finally secure enough to turn most of that role over to the incredible talents of Cline, who poured effort all over the stage despite being ill. Those times that Tweedy climbed into the fray with his lead guitarist, the pair showed a noisy bond, playing with and off each other — something Tweedy couldn’t do with former partner Jay Bennett, who was clearly the best musician in the band before leaving during “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel.”

Watching Cline and Tweedy in “Handshake Drugs,” and later in “Impossible Germany” and “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” was like watching Stephen Stills and Neil Young go at it face-to-face and neck-to-neck.

“Sky Blue Sky” brought the band back to its alt-country roots — all it needed was a Western sunset backdrop. But there were still a few lulls. “Via Chicago” stalled until Kotche suddenly brought an insane storm of noise that felt like it was descending from the rafters (it was almost hilarious to watch Tweedy gently strum, seemingly oblivious to his bandmates going nuts around him). He talked with the crowd all night, blankly telling a fan at one point, “I saw you smoking pot, sir. You’re too high to be talking to me about anything.”

They rolled at the end of the show, with the brilliantly whimsical “Hummingbird” featuring Tweedy running in place, before the gorgeously quiet “On and On and On” from the new record. But the absolute best song of the night was where it should’ve been — at the end, with a big version of “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” which, in its up-and-down, dynamic glory, has become to Wilco what “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was to the Who.

Tweedy’s long feedback-packed lead was insane, especially when Cline joined the second time around. At the end, Tweedy challenged the crowd to clap while the band wound down and left the stage. “What’s the matter?” he slowly drawled. “Can’t you clap?” They faded, almost left the stage and, after a minute, crashed back into the pounding, loud part. As usual, Wilco couldn’t help but end big.

Ex-C.I.A. Agent Excoriates St. John Mc Cain

CHRIS MATTHEWS HAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH HIS BRAIN

REMEMBER SCOOTER LIBBY

SENATOR JAMES WEBB MAKES SENATOR GRAHAM LOOK LIKE A FLACK

The two senators square off on Meet The Press
July 15

(PART 2) SEN. JIM WEBB MAKES SEN. GRAHAM LOOK LIKE A FLACK

 

PART TWO
The Discussion is about Senator Webb’s bill in the Senate that mandates troop readiness through judicial non-combat periods.

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

SALON EXCLUSIVE

Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq.

Sep. 06, 2007 | On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. “We continued to validate him the whole way through,” said Drumheller. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller’s account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war.

Secretary of State Powell, in preparation for his presentation of evidence of Saddam’s WMD to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, spent days at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and had Tenet sit directly behind him as a sign of credibility. But Tenet, according to the sources, never told Powell about existing intelligence that there were no WMD, and Powell’s speech was later revealed to be a series of falsehoods.

Both the French intelligence service and the CIA paid Sabri hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least $200,000 in the case of the CIA) to give them documents on Saddam’s WMD programs. “The information detailed that Saddam may have wished to have a program, that his engineers had told him they could build a nuclear weapon within two years if they had fissile material, which they didn’t, and that they had no chemical or biological weapons,” one of the former CIA officers told me.

On the eve of Sabri’s appearance at the United Nations in September 2002 to present Saddam’s case, the officer in charge of this operation met in New York with a “cutout” who had debriefed Sabri for the CIA. Then the officer flew to Washington, where he met with CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, who was “excited” about the report. Nonetheless, McLaughlin expressed his reservations. He said that Sabri’s information was at odds with “our best source.” That source was code-named “Curveball,” later exposed as a fabricator, con man and former Iraqi taxi driver posing as a chemical engineer.

The next day, Sept. 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. “Tenet told me he briefed the president personally,” said one of the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush’s response was to call the information “the same old thing.” Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. “The president had no interest in the intelligence,” said the CIA officer. The other officer said, “Bush didn’t give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up.”

But the CIA officers working on the Sabri case kept collecting information. “We checked on everything he told us.” French intelligence eavesdropped on his telephone conversations and shared them with the CIA. These taps “validated” Sabri’s claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi Operations Group within the CIA. But those in charge of the IOG were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would not give credit to anything that came from the French. “They kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war,” said one of the CIA officers.

The officers continued to insist on the significance of Sabri’s information, but one of Tenet’s deputies told them, “You haven’t figured this out yet. This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about regime change.”

The CIA officers on the case awaited the report they had submitted on Sabri to be circulated back to them, but they never received it. They learned later that a new report had been written. “It was written by someone in the agency, but unclear who or where, it was so tightly controlled. They knew what would please the White House. They knew what the king wanted,” one of the officers told me.

That report contained a false preamble stating that Saddam was “aggressively and covertly developing” nuclear weapons and that he already possessed chemical and biological weapons. “Totally out of whack,” said one of the CIA officers. “The first [para]graph of an intelligence report is the most important and most read and colors the rest of the report.” He pointed out that the case officer who wrote the initial report had not written the preamble and the new memo. “That’s not what the original memo said.”

The report with the misleading introduction was given to Dearlove of MI6, who briefed the prime minister. “They were given a scaled-down version of the report,” said one of the CIA officers. “It was a summary given for liaison, with the sourcing taken out. They showed the British the statement Saddam was pursuing an aggressive program, and rewrote the report to attempt to support that statement. It was insidious. Blair bought it.” “Blair was duped,” said the other CIA officer. “He was shown the altered report.”

The information provided by Sabri was considered so sensitive that it was never shown to those who assembled the NIE on Iraqi WMD. Later revealed to be utterly wrong, the NIE read: “We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.”

In the congressional debate over the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, even those voting against it gave credence to the notion that Saddam possessed WMD. Even a leading opponent such as Sen. Bob Graham, then the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had instigated the production of the NIE, declared in his floor speech on Oct. 12, 2002, “Saddam Hussein’s regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying to get nuclear capacity.” Not a single senator contested otherwise. None of them had an inkling of the Sabri intelligence.

The CIA officers assigned to Sabri still argued within the agency that his information must be taken seriously, but instead the administration preferred to rely on Curveball. Drumheller learned from the German intelligence service that held Curveball that it considered him and his claims about WMD to be highly unreliable. But the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) insisted that Curveball was credible because what he said was supposedly congruent with available public information.

For two months, Drumheller fought against the use of Curveball, raising the red flag that he was likely a fraud, as he turned out to be. “Oh, my! I hope that’s not true,” said Deputy Director McLaughlin, according to Drumheller’s book “On the Brink,” published in 2006. When Curveball’s information was put into Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address, McLaughlin and Tenet allowed it to pass into the speech. “From three Iraqi defectors,” Bush declared, “we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs … Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them.” In fact, there was only one Iraqi source — Curveball — and there were no labs.

When the mobile weapons labs were inserted into the draft of Powell’s United Nations speech, Drumheller strongly objected again and believed that the error had been removed. He was shocked watching Powell’s speech. “We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails,” Powell announced. Without the reference to the mobile weapons labs, there was no image of a threat.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff, and Powell himself later lamented that they had not been warned about Curveball. And McLaughlin told the Washington Post in 2006, “If someone had made these doubts clear to me, I would not have permitted the reporting to be used in Secretary Powell’s speech.” But, in fact, Drumheller’s caution was ignored.

As war appeared imminent, the CIA officers on the Sabri case tried to arrange his defection in order to demonstrate that he stood by his information. But he would not leave without bringing out his entire family. “He dithered,” said one former CIA officer. And the war came before his escape could be handled.

Tellingly, Sabri’s picture was never put on the deck of playing cards of former Saddam officials to be hunted down, a tacit acknowledgment of his covert relationship with the CIA. Today, Sabri lives in Qatar.

In 2005, the Silberman-Robb commission investigating intelligence in the Iraq war failed to interview the case officer directly involved with Sabri; instead its report blamed the entire WMD fiasco on “groupthink” at the CIA. “They didn’t want to trace this back to the White House,” said the officer.

On Feb. 5, 2004, Tenet delivered a speech at Georgetown University that alluded to Sabri and defended his position on the existence of WMD, which, even then, he contended would still be found. “Several sensitive reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized by our foreign partners as established and reliable,” he said. “The first from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle” — Naji Sabri — “said Iraq was not in the possession of a nuclear weapon. However, Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon.”

Then Tenet claimed with assurance, “The same source said that Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons.” He explained that this intelligence had been central to his belief in the reason for war. “As this information and other sensitive information came across my desk, it solidified and reinforced the judgments that we had reached in my own view of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein and I conveyed this view to our nation’s leaders.” (Tenet doesn’t mention Sabri in his recently published memoir, “At the Center of the Storm.”)

But where were the WMD? “Now, I’m sure you’re all asking, ‘Why haven’t we found the weapons?’ I’ve told you the search must continue and it will be difficult.”

On Sept. 8, 2006, three Republican senators on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — Orrin Hatch, Saxby Chambliss and Pat Roberts — signed a letter attempting to counter Drumheller’s revelation about Sabri on “60 Minutes”: “All of the information about this case so far indicates that the information from this source was that Iraq did have WMD programs.” The Republicans also quoted Tenet, who had testified before the committee in July 2006 that Drumheller had “mischaracterized” the intelligence. Still, Drumheller stuck to his guns, telling Reuters, “We have differing interpretations, and I think mine’s right.”

One of the former senior CIA officers told me that despite the certitude of the three Republican senators, the Senate committee never had the original memo on Sabri. “The committee never got that report,” he said. “The material was hidden or lost, and because it was a restricted case, a lot of it was done in hard copy. The whole thing was fogged up, like Curveball.”

While one Iraqi source told the CIA that there were no WMD, information that was true but distorted to prove the opposite, another Iraqi source was a fabricator whose lies were eagerly embraced. “The real tragedy is that they had a good source that they misused,” said one of the former CIA officers. “The fact is there was nothing there, no threat. But Bush wanted to hear what he wanted to hear.”

— By Sidney Blumenthal

CBS’ new reality series, “Kid Nation,” will be broadcast starting Sept. 19

MONSTERS AND CRITICS

By Stone Martindale Sep 4, 2007

There is no such thing as bad publicity in show business. Case in point, the controversial CBS series that chronicles kids left to their own devices out in the New Mexican desert.

CBS’ new reality series, “Kid Nation,” will be broadcast starting Sept. 19, in spite of lawsuits and negative articles alleging child abuse and labor law infractions.

Network executives and the program’s producer continued to exude confidence that the reality show would go on as scheduled.

“Everybody’s questions about the show will be answered when it airs,” the show’s executive producer, Tom Forman, said to the New York Times.

According to the Times, CBS has started a series of screenings of the first episode for advertising executives, with some taking place last week and more scheduled for this week.

The show premise is that 40 children, ages 8 to 15, are placed in a “ghost town” in New Mexico to see if they can build a working society without the help of adults.

But soon after the production ended in May, the parent of a child in the production complained about her child being injured and about sub-standard working conditions on the set.

Now, CBS has allegedly made some plans to produce a second edition of the series. It has already held some casting sessions for new children, claims the Times.

Forman told the Times the producers need to be ready to start shooting again if the network likes the early ratings, and orders a second series.

But the problems with the labor law infractions that the state of New Mexico cited for the “Kid Nation” production will have an effect on what state will house the future location of any kid based reality series.

The Times reports that the “attorney general’s office in New Mexico had dropped an investigation into the show, but reopened it two weeks ago after the complaints began to surface.”

Most states have tougher laws than New Mexico’s regarding children and labor.

The negative attention that has popped up over “Kid Nation” has made it too hot a potato for any state to permit future filming, one unnamed CBS executive said to the Times.

Asked if the show could be relocated to Mexico or elsewhere, Mr. Forman said to the Times, “Nothing is off the table.”

Depending on the ratings and the public reception once the series is aired, will determine any future expansion of the “Kid Nation” franchise.

The Times explains that “advertisers buy network programs in packages, rather than on a show by show basis, but they always reserve the right to withdraw from any show whose content they believe may alienate customers.”

source

NY taxi strike over ’spy in cab’

New Yorkers are facing the second day of a 48-hour strike by taxi drivers protesting over the introduction of new technology in their cabs.

Authorities want new credit card systems and satellite tracking, which they say will help with lost luggage.

Some drivers say the devices could be used to track their movements.

Organisers said the first day was a “resounding success” but Mayor Michael Bloomberg said 75% of the fleet cabs were working.

The strike comes during New York Fashion Week and the US Open tennis championship.

Flat rates

The city has about 44,000 licensed drivers and 13,000 registered yellow cabs.

At inspections from 1 October, the cabs are required to have GPS satellite tracking systems and video screens to allow passengers to see their location, plus credit card payment facilities.

They’re charging a flat rate of $10 to anywhere in Manhattan, but if you find a cab, you’re happy to pay it Mark Yaffe, businessman

The City Taxi & Limousine Commission said the credit card system could create bigger fares and the GPS would help with lost luggage.

Strike organisers, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, fear the GPS will spy on drivers, whom it says will also have to pay credit card transaction fees.

The alliance’s leader, Bhairavi Desai, told AFP news agency: “Taxi drivers sometimes use the cars in their private time. Why should they tell the [commission] where they are going on a Sunday with their family? This is an invasion of privacy.”

Takings ‘up’

The impact of the strike on Wednesday was disputed.

Mr Desai said only 10% of the 13,000 registered cabs were working.

But city officials put the number of taxis working at 75-80%.

Mayor Bloomberg said: “The city has not come to a stop and people are getting where they need to go.”

The city allowed drivers who were working to offer group rides to separate passengers and let them pay flat rates rather than metered fares.

British businessman Mark Yaffe, who arrived in New York on Wednesday, told the BBC News website: “People are spending a lot longer trying to hail what few cabs there are.

“If one stops for you, it’s likely to already have two or three people in it. They’re charging a flat rate of $10 (£4.95) to anywhere in Manhattan, but if you find a cab, you’re happy to pay it.”

Some reports said there were more cabs about on Thursday.

Michael Woloz, of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents 3,200 taxis, told the New York Post: “The drivers were hearing how much everyone was making out there and decided to go to work.”

The paper said some drivers had quadrupled their takings.

Driver Taj Dass told the Post: “I did not work yesterday, but how can I afford to stay out a second day?”

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6982278.stm

JUDE LAW ARRESTED

Dag….

 

 

Law arrested over alleged attack

Actor Jude Law was arrested by police over an alleged attack on a photographer ahead of Tuesday night’s GQ Awards.

Law was accused of trying to grab the photographer’s camera in the incident in west London.

The actor, 34, was bailed to return to a London police station in October.

Law was in London to present his Sleuth co-star Sir Michael Caine with the GQ lifetime achievement award in Covent Garden on Tuesday night.

“A 34-year-old man from Maida Vale was arrested yesterday on suspicion of actual bodily harm after voluntarily attending a London police station,” a police statement said.

“The arrest followed an allegation of assault yesterday at a residential address in Maida Vale. The 34-year-old man was released on bail to a date in October pending further inquiries.”

STUPIDEST DO-IT-YOURSELF IDEA EVER

DIY

Turn a Tripod into a Floor Lamp

Turning an unused tripod into an attractive floor lamp is a one-step process, and as weblog Curbly reports, directions aren’t even necessary. All you need to do is purchase a lamp kit and shade and screw it in to the top of the tripod. Who doesn’t love cheap and decorative furniture? Looking for more tripod hacks? We’ve got you covered.

Convert A Tripod Into A Floor Lamp [Curbly]

The Face of the New York Taxi Strike

Bhairavi Desai Is an Unlikely Voice, Gender for Cabbies

By LARRY McSHANE
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — She is the unlikely embodiment of New York City’s striking cabbies: A college graduate, a woman, barely 5 feet tall, soft-spoken.

But as the city’s two-day taxi job action headed toward its finish, Bhairavi Desai reaffirmed her prominent role in the city’s labor movement and her willingness to make bold moves on behalf of her membership in the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

“She doesn’t rattle easy,” said Ed Ott, head of the New York City Central Labor Council. “That’s the thing that’s very interesting to me — she does not rattle easy. Under extraordinary pressure, she keeps an even keel.

“She never raises her voice. She never swears. She’s steady as a rock.”

Desai, 34, is a slight woman — 5-foot-1, 110 pounds — who co-founded the alliance in 1998, the same year the city’s cabbies refused to drive in a historic one-day walkout over working conditions.

This time around, she organized a 48-hour work stoppage over the city’s insistence that all cabs are fitted with new technology — including global positioning systems and video screens that will allow customers to pay by credit card.

The cabbies are complaining that the GPS technology will allow Big Brother into their cabs, and that the credit card option will cut into profits by costing them a 5 percent fee on every transaction. The technology must be in place as the cabs come up for inspection starting Oct. 1.

The city has 13,000 yellow cabs and 44,000 licensed drivers. The alliance — an advocacy group, not a union — claims to represent about one-fifth of those cabbies.

The success of the strike that began Wednesday morning remained in dispute well into day two. City officials said 82 percent of the taxi fleet was on the road Thursday, while the ever-passionate Desai was proclaiming triumph.

“You know, the numbers can be spun as much as the opposition wants, but the reality is, the waiting lines speak for themselves,” Desai said Thursday.

It’s that attitude that made her one of 17 people recognized by the Ford Foundation in its 2005 Leadership for a Changing World awards, where she was among those cited for bringing “not only concrete gains to their communities but a determination to stand for justice.”

One year earlier, she was honored by another group as one of the “Top 5 Under 35″ South Asians in the metropolitan area. And in 2003, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund presented her with a “Justice in Action” award.

Desai was born in India, where her grandmother — as related in stories to her grandchildren — was arrested in the fight for her homeland’s independence. Her father was an attorney who “fought for the rights of the underprivileged,” Desai once said.

When she was six, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in Harrison, N.J., a gritty blue-collar town near Newark.  Her father wound up buying a small grocery store, while her mother worked in a factory.

Desai recalled her mother, side by side with one of her two brothers, filling out applications at an assortment of businesses before landing her job.

She graduated from Rutgers University in 1994 with a degree in women’s studies, but instead found her niche in a business where 99 percent of the drivers are male. After winning the Ford award two years ago, Desai said she was inspired by her membership.

“Through taxi drivers, I have learned the true meanings of honesty and humor, forgiveness and fairness, the maturity to handle difficulties with grace, and, at all times, the importance of dignity,” Desai said.

LUCIANO PAVAROTTI R.I P.

MSNBC: Luciano Pavarotti, whose vibrant high C’s and ebullient showmanship made him one of the world’s most beloved tenors, has died, his manager told The Associated Press. He was 71.

His manager, Terri Robson, told the AP in an e-mail statement that Pavarotti died at his home in Modena, Italy, at 5 a.m. local time. Pavarotti had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and underwent further treatment in August.

“The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer, which eventually took his life. In fitting with the approach that characterized his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness,” the statement said.

“THE ROTTING OF THE BIG APPLE” SEPTEMBER 1990

The Decline Of New York

By JOELLE ATTINGER

NEW YORK

If, as Lewis Mumford wrote, cities were created as “a means of bringing heaven down to earth” and “a symbol of the possible,” New York is the epitome of those dreams. No other city’s skyline thrusts so aggressively toward the heavens, pulling down the clouds like a monarch shrugging into a cloak. No other city’s history so embodies the idea of innovation and achievement in such a dazzling range of human endeavors. “There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride and exultancy,” novelist Thomas Wolfe rhapsodized in 1935. “It lays its hand upon a man’s bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.”

That is why New York was for more than two centuries — and still is — a beacon for the best, brightest and bravest people from all over the U.S. and all around the world. They come to test themselves against the toughest competition, to make a buck, to reinvent lives that seem stale in any other setting. As the song that has become the city’s unofficial anthem puts it, “If I can make it there, I’d make it anywhere.”

In virtually every category, New York has the best, the biggest, the most — except for civility, of which it has the least. With a flood of new arrivals from Europe, the Soviet Union and the Third World, New York’s population has rebounded from its 1980 low of 7 million to an estimated 8 million, more than twice as many as runner-up Los Angeles. Washington may be the home of Congress and the President, but New York is the financial capital of the world. Even with the rise of Japan and Germany, the New York Stock Exchange remains the world’s most prestigious financial market, on which stocks worth trillions of dollars are traded.

In culture too, New York remains a pacesetter. Other cities would be proud to have one world-class performing troupe. New York has dozens, including the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the American Ballet Theater, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Manhattan Theater Club. As a showcase for theater, Broadway has few rivals — unless they are the city’s own off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions. Its collection of museums is a gallery in itself.

But just as the sheer size of New York’s population makes possible a dazzling smorgasbord of urban delights, it also magnifies a myriad of social ills. Only about 1 of every 100 New Yorkers is homeless, but that adds up to 90,000 people huddling in shelters or eking out a life of not-so-quiet desperation on the street. A mere 1 in 300 New Yorkers may be a victim of AIDS, but that totals 27,000 people, a staggering 19% of all confirmed cases in the U.S. Says Paul Grogan, president of the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a nonprofit housing-development organization: “New York is the same as every place — only more so.”

Until recently, the negative aspects of New York living were more than compensated by the exhilaration of simply being there. As architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable says, “When it is good, New York is very, very good. Which is why New Yorkers put up with so much that is bad.” Over the decades, Gothamites have evolved a hard-boiled, calculating approach to life that enables them to enjoy the city’s manifold pleasures while minimizing its most egregious hassles. Says Brigette Moore, 19, a college student from Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay section: “I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up in any other city. I think people in other parts of the country are more limited. In New York you have the privilege to be anything you want.”

But that balance has now begun to shift. Reason: a surge of drugs and violent crime that government officials seem utterly unable to combat. Eight other major cities have higher homicide rates, but New York’s carnage dwarfs theirs in absolute terms. Last year 1,905 people were murdered in New York, more than twice as many as in Los Angeles. In the first five months of this year, 888 homicides were committed, setting a pace that will result in a new record if it goes unchecked.

The victims have been of all races, all classes, all ages. This summer, in one eight-day period, four children were killed by stray gunshots as they played on the sidewalks, toddled in their grandmother’s kitchens or slept soundly in their own beds. Six others have been wounded since late June. So many have died that a new slang term has been coined to describe them: “mushrooms,” as vulnerable as tiny plants that spring up underfoot.

The city was still absorbing those horrors two weeks ago when Sean Healy, a prosecutor in the Bronx district attorney’s office, was cut down by a hail of gunfire as he selected a package of doughnuts from the shelf of a neighborhood grocery. That same day Vander Beatty, a former political power in Brooklyn attempting a comeback by running for district leader, was shot to death in his campaign headquarters. The prime suspect, according to police, was a longtime friend who was allegedly angry over the manner in which a lawyer who had been recommended by Beatty had handled his alimony case.

Then last week came the murder of 22-year-old Brian Watkins, an avid tennis buff from Provo, Utah, on a subway platform in midtown Manhattan. Over the years, his family frequently made a pilgrimage to watch the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Queens. En route to dinner at Tavern on the Green, a popular tourist attraction, the family was attacked by a group of eight black and Hispanic youths. After one of the gang cut open his father’s pocket to get at his money and punched his mother in the face, Brian jumped to his parents’ defense. He was stabbed with a four-inch butterfly knife and died 40 minutes later at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

The shock of Watkins’ death was intensified by the venality of its alleged motive. According to police, the suspects are members of F.T.S. (an abbreviated obscenity), a Queens youth gang that requires its members to commit a mugging as an initiation rite. They were reportedly trying to raise cash to finance an evening of frolicking at Roseland, a nearby dance hall, where six suspects were arrested. Two others were rounded up later.

Like the brutal rape of the Central Park jogger and the murder of Yusuf Hawkins in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn last year, Watkins’ death quickly assumed a larger symbolic meaning. Outside the city it confirmed what most Americans already believed: New York is an exciting but dangerous place. Among New Yorkers it reinforced the spreading conviction that the city has spun out of control. A growing sense of vulnerability has been deepened by the belief that deadly violence, once mostly confined to crime-ridden ghetto neighborhoods that the police wrote off as free-fire zones, is now lashing out randomly at anyone, anytime, even in areas once considered relatively safe.

New Yorkers were quick to notice that the Watkins family were attacked even though they were traveling in a group of five, including three men. But such a precaution did not prevent them — or thousands of city residents — from being victimized. “Crime is tearing at the vitals of this city and has completely altered ordinary life,” says Thomas Reppetto, president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a private watchdog group. “Worst of all, it is destroying the morale of our citizens.”

The looming question in many minds was what, if anything, people could do to protect themselves when children were no longer safe in their beds. “New Yorkers can put up with dirty streets, poor schools and broken subways,” warns Mitchell Moss, director of the urban research center at New York University. “But New Yorkers cannot take uncertainty — risks, yes, but not uncertainty.”

At times the city has seemed so consumed with crime that it was incapable of thinking about anything else. Nursery-school teachers in some of the city’s tougher neighborhoods train children barely old enough to talk to hit the floor at the sound of gunshots. They call them “firecrackers” and reward the swift with a lollipop.

What has most dismayed many New Yorkers is the tepid response of the city’s leaders to the surge of mayhem. Like everyone else in New York, Mayor David Dinkins and his handpicked police commissioner, Lee Brown, seem at a loss for remedies to the worst crime wave to hit the city in a decade. “New York is in desperate need of leadership,” says Moss, “and it simply isn’t there.” A TIME/CNN poll of New Yorkers taken during this summer’s rash of killings showed that only 47% approved of Dinkins’ performance, and an equal number believed he is no different or worse than his abrasive predecessor, Edward I. Koch.

New York’s plunge into chaos cannot be blamed on Dinkins, who has been in office for only nine months. In fact, he has inherited the whirlwind sown by decades of benign neglect, misplaced priorities and outright incompetence at every level of government. If during the city’s close brush with bankruptcy during the 1970s Gerald Ford was willing to let New York drop dead, the Reagan Administration seemed eager to bury it. Since 1980, cutbacks in federal aid have cost New York billions, with funds for subsidized housing alone dropping $16 billion. Despite a series of state and local levies that now place New Yorkers among the most heavily taxed citizens in the nation, the city has never recovered from those setbacks.

Most brutally hit have been basic social services. Even with the addition of 1,058 new police officers in October, the force will still be 14% smaller than its 1975 level of 31,683. Meanwhile crime, fueled by the drug epidemic, has jumped 25%. Since 1987, the number of street sweepers has been slashed from 1,400 to 300, trash collections in midtown Manhattan have been reduced by a third, and what used to be daily rounds in the outer boroughs have been reduced to twice a week. Epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and syphilis have pushed the health-care system to the breaking point. As many New Yorkers are waiting for public housing as there are existing units, leading occupants to double or triple up in a frantic bid for shelter. “The chickens have come home to roost,” says Madeline Lee, executive director of the New York Foundation, which supports community projects for the disadvantaged, “and New York doesn’t let anyone escape from the reality of that.”

That reality includes an infrastructure so dilapidated that the very streets seem to be rising up in rebellion. A year ago, a series of exploding steam pipes spewed carcinogenic asbestos into apartment houses in Manhattan. When some residents moved back into their homes after a protracted cleanup, objects of value had been stolen.

During the roaring 1980s, it appeared that New York might slip by. High finance and a booming real estate market transported New York to a paroxysm of unbridled capitalism, with all its attendant glitz and excess. At the height of the bull market, 60,000 new jobs were being created annually, luring droves of hyperambitious baby boomers to the canyons of Wall Street and midtown Manhattan. Nicknamed “the Erector set,” a stable of real estate developers transformed the cityscape, throwing up 50 million sq. ft. of glistening office monoliths within Manhattan alone. New fortunes upended the city’s social lineage, shoving Rockefeller and Astor aside for Trump, Steinberg and Kravis. The new barons redefined wealth beyond Jay Gatsby’s wildest dreams, ensconcing themselves in palatial aeries groaning with old masters and nouveau exorbitance.

But behind the blinding glitter of the new multimillionaires, the city was failing the bulk of its citizens. Even the basic rudiments of civil behavior seemed to evaporate along with the glitter of the boom times. Every day 155,000 subway riders jump the turnstiles, denying the cash-strapped mass transit system at least $65 million annually. The streets have become public rest rooms for both people and animals, even though failure to clean up after a pet dog carries fines of up to $100. What was once the bustle of a hyperkinetic city has become a demented frenzy.

Skyrocketing real estate prices (a one-room apartment that rents for $800 a month is considered a bargain) have driven middle-class families out of Manhattan and are threatening the creative enterprises that make the island a cultural oasis. Twenty years ago, about 50 or 60 new productions opened on Broadway each year. Today soaring costs have driven the price of an orchestra seat to $60, and a healthy season yields no more than 35 new shows, only 12 of which are deemed successes. In dance alone, New York lost 55 world-class studios in the past four years. Others, including Martha Graham Dance, are considering following the example of the Joffrey Ballet by establishing second and third homes in other cities. That means a shorter season in New York. “This is the most expensive, difficult and competitive city for arts organizations,” says David Resnicow, president of the Arts and Communications Counselors, which arranges sponsorships for corporations and cultural institutions. “You don’t have to be in New York to make it. “

The daily litany of problems seems all the starker now because of the feverish boosterism that characterized Koch’s three terms as mayor. The 65- year-old Democrat lived and breathed New York, taking the pulse of the city through his own. “How’m I doin’?” was his constant question as he flitted from fire to shooting to gala to press conference. For much of his 12-year tenure, the answer was “O.K.” But rampant corruption within his administration and the widening economic and racial fissures in the city ultimately soured New Yorkers on their tireless but tiresome mayor.

Last November New Yorkers turned to Dinkins in the hope that the cautious and gentle veteran clubhouse politician would heal the rifts among them and offer a modicum of racial peace. “A Gorgeous Mosaic” became the 63-year-old grandfather’s metaphor for his divided city, and he pulled together an ethnically diverse electorate to become New York’s first black mayor by a narrow margin. Dinkins has named more minorities to top-level staff positions than any mayor before him and has drawn on a national pool of talent to fill posts in his administration. With little fanfare, the silver-haired insider fashioned a slash-and-tax $28 billion budget that met with grudging approval from unions and business leaders alike.

But the battle for survival is being fought on the sidewalks of New York, not in the ledger books. And so far, Dinkins’ lackluster performance has strengthened the unsettling sense that he is simply not up to his job. In the war against crime, Dinkins’ initiatives have been piecemeal and halting, ranging from a stillborn gun-amnesty program (only 35 illegal firearms have been turned in) to the hiring of less than a fourth of the additional 5,000 officers that police commissioner Brown contends are needed to win back the streets.

Part of the mayor’s problem is style. Unlike the prickly Koch, Dinkins rarely raises his voice and disdains the finger-in-your-chest aggressiveness that has characterized New York politicians since the days of Tammany Hall. He is far more comfortable in quiet back-room negotiations than in public confrontations with unhappy constituents. His finest hour may have been the lavish hero’s welcome the city provided in June for South African leader Nelson Mandela, for whom New York’s warring ethnic groups seemed to put aside their differences during a three-day celebration of racial harmony.

A more serious drawback is Dinkins’ reluctance to attack problems in a direct and forceful way. Since January, for example, the Flatbush section of Brooklyn has been roiled by a black boycott of two Korean grocery stores that began after a Haitian woman accused the Koreans of assaulting her in an argument over a dollar’s worth of fruit. The shopowners obtained a civil court injunction ordering the protesters to remain at least 50 ft. away from the shops’ entrances, but Dinkins has not ordered the police to enforce it. Instead, he appointed a commission to review his handling of the affair. Not surprisingly, the report it issued two weeks ago praised the mayor’s conduct and lambasted Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes for not vigorously pushing the investigation and prosecution of the Haitian woman’s original complaint.

Despite the mounting unease about his leadership, Dinkins remains unfazed. His response last week to demands that he publicly condemn the Watkins murder was characteristically orotund. Quoth the mayor: “I say that if two nations are in dispute and one diplomat says to the representative of another government, ‘Her Majesty’s government is exceedingly distressed,’ everybody knows that means we’re mad as hell. Now, however, I’m prepared to say I’m mad as hell, not simply ‘We’re exceedingly distressed.’ “

Even so, Dinkins’ remark was a significant shift from his earlier pronouncements. At times the mayor has attempted to downplay the crime wave as a public relations problem: “This administration is doing all it can to win back our streets. Some of it has been to address the image of the city. People need to feel secure, and ((a bad image)) adversely impacts business and tourism.” He has also portrayed the outbreak as a local manifestation of a national crisis beyond his control: “If the problems of drugs and crime were only in New York, then you could ask, What is it that you folks are doing wrong? But all of our urban centers are afflicted similarly. The fact that it’s happening somewhere else doesn’t mean that I don’t have a problem to address. But the fact that the problem is regional or nationwide does say that the Federal Government should assist in addressing it.” Says Dinkins: “You have to have credibility. People have to have faith in you.”

These days faith is in short supply. So is money. Megadeveloper Lew Rudin, who heads a corporate cheerleading organization, Association for a Better New York, estimates it would take $5 trillion to bring his city back up to par. Although its annual budget is larger than that of all but two states, New York City is in a financial straitjacket, and the nation’s economic downturn, more harshly reflected in the Northeast than elsewhere, offers little hope for future relief. Says financier Felix Rohatyn, who devised the plan that saved New York from bankruptcy 15 years ago: “I just don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, we cannot turn our back on the city now.” Facing a $1.8 billion shortfall, the Dinkins administration has been forced to raise taxes $800 million and cut city services more than $200 million.

Such cutbacks mean that for average New Yorkers the struggle to attain what other Americans take for granted will become even more grueling. The challenge is especially tough for families with children. New York public schools are burdened with educating 940,000 students, representing 150 countries and speaking more than 100 languages. Less than half read at or above grade level, 1 out of 3 drop out before their senior year, and those who do stay in school often take five to seven years to graduate from high school. The system itself is rife with troubles. Almost a third of the city’s 32 local school boards are under investigation for corruption, building maintenance has chalked up a $500 million backlog, and a basic in-school service like nursing care has been slashed 86%. An impossible caseload of 1,000 high school students for every guidance counselor makes a mockery of the profession.

Other New Yorkers are waging private wars for safe and affordable housing. Willie Olmo, an electronics technician who supports his wife Mabel and five daughters on a salary of $30,000, had nowhere to go last year when the landlord abandoned the apartment building in which the family lived. When police declined to drive away crack users who had set up a drug den in the building’s basement, Olmo picked up a baseball bat and chased them out himself. He then bought walkie-talkies with his own money and started a tenants’ patrol, which has since expanded into a neighborhood watch committee. Next he persuaded his neighbors to lease the building from the city and manage it themselves. “We’ve tried to improve the neighborhood so we could live here,” says Mabel. “Rents everywhere else are too high.”

For those who can afford it, the increasingly attractive choice is to leave New York behind. According to the Household Goods Carriers’ Bureau, which tracks the business of the city’s six largest moving companies, 12,000 more customers moved out over the past two years than moved in. For the first time in this century, fear of crime is the main catalyst for this burgeoning exodus. “People may want to be here,” says Richard Anderson, head of New York’s Regional Plan Association, “but the things that drive them away are bubbling to the surface.” Says Laura Ziman, a native New Yorker who recently fled to upstate New York with her husband and their two toddlers: “I love the city, but it’s just becoming unlivable.”

So far the exodus from New York is no more than a trickle. But it could become a flood if the fear of crime begins to overshadow the city’s unique combination of pizazz and opportunity. Unchecked violence has already dulled the luster of the Big Apple. The daunting task before its leaders is to prevent it from rotting to the core.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 1,009 New York City residents for TIME/CNN on Aug. 2 to 5 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling is plus or minus 3%.

CAPTION: Do you think the quality of life in New York City has become better in the past few years?

Do you think the quality of life in New York City will get better in the next few years?

If you could choose where you live, would you stay in New York City or move somewhere else?

Which, if any, of these statements describes how you feel about New York City?

Has it been getting easier or tougher for you to live in New York?

Percent who agree with these statements

To live in New York City, people must be a little crazy

Life in New York City brings out the worst in people

With reporting by Mary Cronin, Stephen Pomper and Janice C. Simpson/New York

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Drunken elephants go on rampage after “getting into” the rice beer

At least 6 in India killed after elephants get into rice beer

Dec 17, 2002 – At least six persons were crushed to death by wild elephants that went amok after getting drunk on rice beer near Guwahati, India. A forest official said the herd went on the rampage Monday in Tinsukia district.

“They smashed huts and plundered granaries and broke open casks to drink rice beer. The herd then went berserk killing six persons,” according to a Reuters report.

Wild elephants have been targeting areas where people brew large volumes of rice beer. “We have come across devastating drunken bouts by herds that have developed a liking for country liquor,” Kushal Sharma, a noted elephant expert, said.

In the last two years, elephants have killed at least 150 people. Villagers, in turn, have killed up to 200 of the animals.

KUCINICH WINS POLL ON EDWARDS WEBSITE

Edie Brickell Keyboardist Shot Dead In Dallas

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September 5, 2007

Musician Is Killed for Banging on a Door

By GRETEL C. KOVACH

DALLAS, Sept. 4 — A Texas rock musician was shot to death here early Monday by a neighbor who fired through a closed door, thinking he was scaring off a burglar.

The incident occurred just three days after a new law took effect strengthening the right of Texans to use deadly force to protect themselves and their property.

The musician, Jeffrey Carter Albrecht, 34, a keyboardist with Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians and the Dallas rock band Sorta, was shot in the head after he startled a man and his wife about 4 a.m. by pounding and kicking at their back door, the police said. Mr. Albrecht had just assaulted his girlfriend, who lives next door and had locked him out of her house, the police said.

The neighbor, who has not been identified by the police, was awakened by his wife’s screams that someone was breaking into their home, according to the police report. The man yelled for the person to go away, but when the pounding continued, he fired through the top of the door.

Mr. Albrecht, who was about 6-foot-5, was struck in the head.

The police said the case would be referred to a grand jury for review. Mr. Albrecht’s mother, Judith Albrecht, would not say whether she thought the neighbor should be charged with a crime.

“I think he was frightened, and I do think he could have made another choice,” Ms. Albrecht said. “I understand there are a lot of bad people, but Carter was not one of them.”

Mr. Albrecht’s girlfriend, Ryann Rathbone, said she believed he was having a bad reaction to the combination of alcohol and an antismoking drug they both had taken for a week. The drug had given them hallucinatory dreams, Ms. Rathbone said.

“This was not a drunken rage,” she said.

“Carter would never have hurt me, ever,’’ Ms. Rathbone said.

Texas has protected the right to “stand your ground” and use deadly force to protect oneself at home without first trying to retreat since 1995. And a law that took effect on Saturday expanded that so-called “castle doctrine” to apply to public spaces.

The law also expanded civil immunity and could make it more difficult for the Albrecht family or relatives of those killed in similar incidents in Texas to win a wrongful-death suit, said James Dark, executive director of the Texas State Rifle Association, which lobbied for the new law.

“These duty-to-retreat laws provide legal protection for those who are out committing criminal acts,” Mr. Dark said. Under the new Texas law, “the protection of the law falls on those who obey the law not those who violate the law.”

Texas is one of 19 states with a castle doctrine self-defense law, according to the National Rifle Association.

Marsha McCartney, president of the North Texas chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, called Mr. Albrecht’s death “one more gun tragedy.”

“I’m sure the man who did the shooting feels terrible about it,” Ms. McCartney said, “but legally in Texas he can do exactly what he did because he feels frightened.”

Borris Miles, a Democratic state representative from Houston and a former schools police officer, opposed the legislation, which was signed into law in March.

In July, Mr. Miles confronted a robber at his home construction site and shot him in the leg. No charges were filed, but he said he still opposed the new law.

“We have a right to defend ourselves in our home. I support that and I always will,” Mr. Miles said. But the law went too far, he said, by expanding the right to use deadly force in the workplace and one’s automobile.

PEGGY NOONAN’S ACID TRIP

A Time for Grace
America needs unity in dealing with Iraq. That means the president must lead.

Friday, August 31, 2007 12:01 a.m.

What will be needed this autumn is a new bipartisan forbearance, a kind of patriotic grace. This is a great deal to hope for. The president should ask for it, and show it. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report to Congress on Sept. 11. From the latest metrics, it’s clear the surge has gained some ground. It is generally supposed that Gen. Petraeus will paint a picture of recent decreases in violent incidents and increases in safety. In another world, that might be decisive: It’s working, hang on.

At the same time, it’s clear that what we call Iraq does not wholly share U.S. objectives. We speak of it as a unitary country, but the Kurds are understandably thinking about Kurdistan, the Sunnis see an Iraq they once controlled but that no longer exists, and the Shia–who knows? An Iraq they theocratically and governmentally control, an Iraq given over to Iran? This division is reflected in what we call Iraq’s government in Baghdad. Seen in this way, the non-latest-metrics way, the situation is bleak.

Capitol Hill doesn’t want to talk about it, let alone vote on it. Lawmakers not only can’t figure a good way out, they can’t figure a good way through.

But we’re going to have to achieve some rough consensus, because we’re a great nation in an urgent endeavor. The process will begin with Gen. Petraeus’s statement.

Particular atmospherics, and personal dynamics, are the backdrop to the debate. People are imperfect, and people in politics tend to be worse: “Politics is not an ennobling profession,” as Bill Buckley once said. You’d better be pretty good going in, because it’s not going to make you better. Politicians are individuals with a thirst for power, honors, and fame. When you think about that you want to say, “Oh dear.” But of course “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

All sides in the Iraq debate need to step up, in a new way, to the characterological plate. From the pro-war forces, the surge supporters and those who supported the Iraq invasion from the beginning, what is needed is a new modesty of approach, a willingness to admit it hasn’t quite gone according to plan. A moral humility. Not meekness–great powers aren’t helped by meekness–but maturity, a shown respect for the convictions of others.

What we often see instead, lately, is the last refuge of the adolescent: defiance. An attitude of Oh yeah? We’re Lincoln, you’re McClellan. We care about the troops and you don’t. We care about the good Iraqis who cast their lot with us. You’d just as soon they hang from the skids of the last helicopter off the embassy roof. They have been called thuggish. Is this wholly unfair?

The antiwar forces, the surge opponents, the “I was against it from the beginning” people are, some of them, indulging in grim, and mindless, triumphalism. They show a smirk of pleasure at bad news that has been brought by the other team. Some have a terrible quaking fear that something good might happen in Iraq, that the situation might be redeemed. Their great interest is that Bushism be laid low and the president humiliated. They make lists of those who supported Iraq and who must be read out of polite society. Might these attitudes be called thuggish also?

Do you ever get the feeling that at this point Washington is run by two rival gangs that have a great deal in common with each other, including an essential lack of interest in the well-being of the turf on which they fight?

Not only hearts and minds are invested in a particular stand. Careers are, too. Candidates are invested in a position they took; people are dug in, caught. Every member of Congress is constrained by campaign promises: “We’ll fight” or “We’ll leave.” The same for every opinion spouter–every pundit, columnist, talk show host, editorialist–all of whom have a base, all of whom pay a price for deviating from the party line, whatever the party, and whatever the line. All this freezes things. It makes immobile what should be fluid. It keeps people from thinking. What is needed is simple maturity, a vow to look to–to care about–America’s interests in the long term, a commitment to look at the facts as they are and try to come to conclusions. This may require in some cases a certain throwing off of preconceptions, previous statements and former stands. It would certainly require the mature ability to come to agreement with those you otherwise hate, and the guts to summon the help of, and admit you need the help of, the other side.

Without this, we remain divided, and our division does nothing to help Iraq, or ourselves.

It would be good to see the president calming the waters. Instead he ups the ante. Tuesday, speaking to the American Legion, he heightened his language. Withdrawing U.S. forces will leave the Middle East overrun by “forces of radicalism and extremism”; the region would be “dramatically transformed” in a way that could “imperil” both “the civilized world” and American security.

Forgive me, but Americans who oppose the war do not here understand the president to be saying: Precipitous withdrawal will create a vacuum that will be filled by killing that will tip the world to darkness. That’s not what they hear. I think they understand him to be saying, I got you into this, I reaped the early rewards, I rubbed your noses in it, and now you have to save the situation.

His foes feel a tight-jawed bitterness. They believe it was his job not to put America in a position in which its security is imperiled; they resent his invitation to share responsibility for outcomes of decisions they opposed. And they resent it especially because he grants them nothing–no previous wisdom, no good intent–beyond a few stray words here and there.

And here’s the problem. The president’s warnings are realistic. He’s right. At the end of the day we can’t just up and leave Iraq. That would only make it worse. And it is not in the interests of America or the world that it be allowed to get worse.

Would it help if the president were graceful, humble, and asked for help? Why, yes. Would it help if he credited those who opposed him with not only good motives but actual wisdom? Yes. And if he tried it, it would make news. It would really, as his press aides say, break through the clutter. I don’t see how the president’s supporters can summon grace from others when they so rarely show it themselves. And I don’t see how anyone can think grace and generosity of spirit wouldn’t help. They would. They always do in big debates. And they would provide the kind of backdrop Gen. Petraeus deserves, the kind in which his words can be heard.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of “John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father” (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.

Canadian Ryan Coniam hired as race engineer for Jacques Villeneuve in 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup

 

Burlington racer to be Villeneuve’s NASCAR engineer

TheStar.com – AutoRacing – Burlington racer to be Villeneuve’s NASCAR engineer

September 04, 2007

Norris McDonald
Motorsport Reporter

Burlington’s Ryan Coniam has been hired as race engineer for Jacques Villeneuve in the 2008 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.

Villeneuve, who was world driving champion in 1997, will start his NASCAR career at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sept. 22 when he will partner Bill Davis Racing teammate Mike Skinner in a Craftsman Truck Series race.

Villeneuve is expected to drive as many as seven truck races and possibly one Nextel Cup race in ’07 before going into the Cup series full-time in 2008.

The 27-year-old Coniam, former World of Outlaws sprint car star and son of Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame inductee Warren Coniam, has been living in Mooresville, N.C., where he was employed in research and development for Dale Earnhardt Inc. He was head-hunted by BDR and travelled to Bristol, Tenn., for an interview the weekend of Aug. 25. He was notified last Friday that he has the job and told wheels.ca today that he is absolutely thrilled.

Coniam, who started racing karts when he was seven, has carefully worked his way up the racing ladder. He had seasons in modifieds and limited supermodifieds on pavement and then went sprint-car racing on dirt, spending seasons with the Southern Ontario Sprint Car series and the New York-based Empire Super Sprints.

A move to the highly competitive U.S.-based All Star Circuit of Champions series followed and he won rookie-of-the-year honours and finished top five in points in his first year. He then raced on and off with the World of Outlaws before starting to concentrate on car preparation and team management.

Villeneuve will drive truck No. 27, renumbered in recent days by BDR to honour Villeneuve’s late father, Gilles Villeneuve, who drove Ferrari No. 27.

Jacques Villeneuve also drove with that number on his car when he raced in the CART series in the mid-1990s, winning both the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship in 1995.

CARLOS AMEZCUELA ROCKS FAT FOX CONTRACT; BAILS ON HAL FISHMAN JOB AT KTLA

LOS ANGELES TIMES

September 5, 2007

Carlos Amezcua, the longtime KTLA-TV Channel 5 morning news anchor who was viewed as a potential replacement for the late Hal Fishman on the station’s 10 p.m. newscast, has decided to move to rival KTTV-TV Channel 11, station officials said Tuesday.

Amezcua, who has been with KTLA for more than 16 years, had been working as the interim evening news anchor after Fishman died this summer.

“We had hoped that he would be in that position, but obviously things take turns. We’ve got to move forward,” said Rich Goldner, interim KTLA news director.

Variety reported that Amezcua will anchor KTTV’s 10 p.m. newscast beginning this fall, replacing veteran anchor John Beard.

VOTING MACHINES “FATALLY FLAWED”

OpEdNews

“………..the software mechanisms that are intended to secure the systems can be defeated very, very easily……….”
“………I frankly was surprised that the systems we looked at had passed certification. …..”

“…………I think they’re fatally flawed, and that puts us in a real bind……….”

 

Voice of the Voters: Transcript of Matt Blaze Interview

By Mary Ann Gould

TIME TO BAN DREs?????
THE PROBLEMS WITH ELECTRONIC VOTING, ESPECIALLY DRES – A VIEW FROM THE CA TOP TO BOTTOM STUDY
Transcript of Matt Blaze, and Mary Ann Gould on Voice of the Voters!
Dr. Matt Blaze of the University of Pennsylvania and leader of the Sequoia source code review team for California’s Top to Bottom Electronic Voting Investigation
August 8, 2007

MAG: Good evening, Dr. Blaze. We’re glad to have you here, especially with all the notoriety that is going around the country about the top-to-bottom study in California.

MB: Glad to be here.

MAG: I noticed on your blog, which is excellent, www.crypto.com, you noted that you found significant, deeply rooted weaknesses in all three of the vendors’ software. Then you went on to talk about the red team and their finding significant problems because of built-in security mechanisms that they were up against—that they simply don’t work properly.

MB: That’s right. I should start by telling you a little bit about what we did, and what my role in it was. So, the California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, this Spring, put together a study of the electronic voting technology that’s used in her state, that’s primarily four systems made by Diebold, Sequoia, Hart, and ES&S. What she did is went to the University of California to two professors, one at UC Berkley, David Wagner, and another at UC Davis, Matt Bishop, and asked them to put together teams to review each of these systems in various ways. And in particular, one of the teams was to review the source code of the systems—the programs that run on the voting computers, and on the vote tallying computers back at the county election’s headquarters. And another team was to attempt to use any vulnerabilities that were found to see if these could be exploited to interfere with the proper tallying of votes or interfere in the election, in some way. Now, my role in this was to lead the team that looked at the source code for one of the systems, the Sequoia system, and our reports, the red team reports, and the source code review reports were submitted to the state a few weeks ago, and they’re up on the Secretary of State’s website. So, my role was to basically look at the Sequoia system’s source code and see if there were any security problems in it—to do a security review of the software. Now, after we finished, all the reports found particular problems that were particular to the various systems. There was an overall similarity among them, which is that all three of the reviewed systems (one of the systems wasn’t reviewed; they didn’t submit their source code in time, that was the ES&S system), of the three systems that were reviewed, Diebold, Sequoia and Hart, all of the teams that looked at them just found that the software mechanisms that are intended to secure the systems can be defeated very, very easily. They just don’t work very well, at all. Because of that, the red teams that were to try to penetrate these systems and tamper with election results in a simulated environment had a relatively easy time of it. They were able to succeed at almost everything they tried.

MAG: Now, you indicated that what you found, even in the code alone, was far more pervasive and much more easily exploitable than you had ever imagined it would be. What did you mean by that?

MB: That’s right. It would be unfair to expect any large system to be completely perfect, and really nobody expects that any large software project is going to be completely free of mistakes or bugs or even little security problems. And in fact, election systems are designed with procedures that are intended to tolerate a certain amount of weakness. So we expected that we would find some things that would be wrong. What really surprised me, and I think surprised all of us, was just how deeply rooted the problems were. It wasn’t simply that there were some mechanisms that could be beefed up or that weren’t as good as they could have been, but that every single mechanism that was intended to stop somebody from doing something just didn’t work or could be defeated very, very easily.

Now, two of the three systems, Hart and Sequoia, haven’t really been studied that widely in the public literature, in the academic literature; not much had been known about them before. But the Diebold system, various versions of that have been studied by academics, by researchers, who had found that there were problems. But even there, the problems that were found by the Diebold team included some things that hadn’t been found before.

MAG: Well, Harri Hursti, on our program, had said two things: one, that there was an overall weakness in the architecture and that basically, the equipment that he had looked at has not been built for quality.

MB: I’d say there really are two problems. This is really another way of putting that. The first, as you said: there’s a problem with the architecture, and by the architecture, what I mean is the design of the system. Even if it were built absolutely perfectly, the way it was designed puts security at a bit of a disadvantage. That is, the way these systems are designed, if you compromise one component, one voting machine somewhere, it becomes easier than it should be to interfere with the election results. The architectures of the systems aren’t designed with enough built-in checks and balances and built-in—essentially—mistrust of the possibility of mistakes to tolerate the kinds of problems that come up in any system run by people. So you can look at the overall design of these systems and tell right off the bat that this design was not as good for security as it could be. But, compounding that problem, when we actually went and looked inside these systems and looked at the source code that runs them, not only is the design weak, but the implementation itself is weak. The code has bugs in it, there are some fundamental security weaknesses that could have been avoided by better programming. So that makes that weak architecture that much worse, because the weaknesses that you might be able to exploit are just all over the place.

MAG: How did these machines get certified?

MB: There’s a federal certification process in which the design is submitted and the source code is submitted to what’s called an independent testing authority, and they look at the code and make sure, and they’re supposed to make sure, that the code is written according to certain standards. They look at the actual machines and they test them. I frankly was surprised that the systems we looked at had passed certification.

MAG: Then that’s my question. How did they get past that certification?

MB: I think you’d have to ask the testing authorities. It frankly baffles me.

MAG: Okay. Then we get to the bottom line, I guess. Are the problems fixable, or do we have systems that might be fatally flawed?

MB: I think they’re fatally flawed, and that puts us in a real bind. We can’t just postpone our elections until the technology is ready. So we really have two problems: one, which in a lot of ways is the easier of the two problems, is what do we do in the long term? How would we design a good, secure election system for use in three to five years from now? And I think there are a number of ways we might do that, and we can talk about them. But we’re still left with the problem of what will we do in November and what will we do in the primaries, and what do we do in the presidential election in 2008?

MAG: And those are very serious situations. First, I’d like to ask on DREs, direct recording electronics, or many people call them touch-screen machines: Even if we had a printer put on them, would that solve the problem?

MB: So there’s a concept with these touch-screen DRE voting machines, a concept called a voter-verified paper trail. The idea here is that votes are recorded electronically, but before you finalize casting your vote, there’s a little printer, similar to a cash register receipt printer, next to the machine, usually behind glass, that prints out the votes that the machine is recording, all the different candidates in each race it thinks you voted for. What you’re supposed to do is, before pressing the “Yes, I want to cast my vote” on the touch-screen display, you should look at that voter-verified paper trail print-out and confirm that it actually reflects your vote, and at that point, it should print out on that display “Vote confirmed, scroll forward,” and then the display on the screen will go blank and let the next person vote. So this is intended to improve the reliability and the security of these machines, because it means that there is now a paper record of what’s been voted for, so if the electronic record is tampered with, or is lost, or is challenged later on, you can go to these print-outs and count up the votes that the machines printed out. Now, this does, in fact, prevent a number of ways of attacking these machines, a number of types of vote tampering pretty well, but they’re not perfect; they don’t solve the problem as well as we’d need them to, and probably not well enough to use with the kinds of machines that we’ve seen here. The first problem is that the paper trail produced by these printers only gets counted if there’s an actual recount. It’s a very labor-intensive process to go through all the voting machines and count up each of the tallies in each of the races.

MAG: So on election night, what we get as a result has nothing to do with these paper print-outs.

MB: That’s right. These are just secondary records that are used only if there’s a recount of particular machines, so if there is no recount, then these paper trails are never looked at. So somebody would have to suspect there was a problem, or challenge the results of the election for these paper trail records to even be taken into consideration. So that’s one weakness. Another weakness is that we really don’t know that much about how voters behave with these print-outs. We don’t know if people actually look at them carefully, so if the machine is running software or firmware that’s trying to cheat, it may be able to print out invalid choices right on the printer.

MAG: And I believe that has been found.

MB: So, the behavior of voters— because you know, the voter’s looking at the screen to cast their ballot and there’s this little receipt printer, or this little cash register–type printer on the side, we don’t really know if people look at it carefully enough to tell if their choices are accurately recorded. The other problem is that in these voting machines, the printer itself—many of the characteristics of the printer—are under the control of the software running on the voting machine and so the corrupted voting machine that has bad software loaded into it by someone might be able to print out the paper trail in a very misleading way that might look acceptable to the voter but in fact actually reflects a vote for someone else. For example, it could print out the correct candidates, but then print “cancelled” below them, and then print the candidates that the machine wants to vote for.

MAG: Hmm. Now, we also have the other option with the opscan. Now that too is vulnerable. How would you compare the two?

MB: So, the optical scanning voting systems are a little different. There, rather than voting on a touch-screen, you vote by filling out a piece of paper, one of these optically scanned forms where you usually cross out with a pen or pencil something next to the candidate you want to vote for, so you actually use a paper ballot, and it’s at the voting booth. It’s just a booth; there’s no actual voting machinery where you fill out the form, it’s just a little booth you get privacy to fill out your ballot in. Then you take this ballot and feed this into a scanning device that sits on top of a ballot box and basically the scanning device reads the marks you put on the ballot and figures out who you voted for, records a tally for those candidates in those races, and deposits your ballot in the ballot box. Then, at the end of the election, the electronic results from the optical scanner and the paper ballots are sent back to the election headquarters. Now, what we found in looking again at all these systems is that it’s possible to tamper with the electronic records of optically scanned ballots that are returned from the polling place back to headquarters and change what results are recorded. So these systems, as they’re implemented, are still vulnerable to tampering, but they at least have the benefit that you still have the paper ballots that the voters voted on. And, as long as the ballot boxes are adequately secured, and somebody is watching them and they’re properly sealed, if you suspect there might have been that kind of tampering, you can go back and count the paper ballots in a secure place and find out who the voters intended to vote for.

MAG: Okay. Now, some people say that we can also solve the problem by doing a one to three percent audit. Would that work? Are there some problems that you’ve found?

MB: We didn’t look at auditing procedures in our study in any particular detail, except the procedures as used in California, as they might interact with some of the vulnerabilities that we found. So, I can tell you what they do in California is automatically recount one percent of the precinct results as a kind of safeguard, so one percent of the voting machines will have their paper ballots (if they’re an optical scan system, or if there are voter-verified paper trails) counted and matched against the electronic results that were recorded in those machines. And, if there’s a mismatch, then they know that there was some tampering with those particular machines. Now, this is actually helpful for catching deep problems that affect all of the machines. If, for example, the manufacturer of a voting machine included bad software in every machine that was sent everywhere, the one percent recount procedure would be likely to catch that because the fraud would be uniformly distributed among all of the voting machines. But what this is not as good at catching is targeted fraud where somebody goes to a particular precinct and knows that there will be, for example, a lot of votes for the candidate they don’t want to win, and arranges for those particular machines to run tampered software, which as we showed could be very easily loaded in. The safeguards to prevent that in software don’t work nearly as well as they’re intended to. Now, the one percent recount will only catch that if, by sheer luck, a chance of one in a hundred, the machines that were tampered with get selected for the audit.

MAG: So we have a serious situation. We’ve got a system that you’ve indicated is fatally flawed, the two systems available both have problems; one from your point of view has the advantage, at least, of the voter completing the ballot with their own hand, which could be counted. What, then, can we do for 2008?

MB: Again, we’re in a real bind. I don’t envy the election officials who are going to have to make some very hard decisions, coming up. Now, one thing I should emphasize: we looked only at the software and the systems themselves. We looked at the software. The red teams looked at the hardware as delivered, and tried to tamper with it, using some of the problems that we discovered with the software systems. And what we found was that the software and the hardware don’t prevent tampering. So that’s not the only set of security mechanisms in place in an election. The elections are also protected by procedures and by physical security of the machines themselves. So what our results tell you is that the security system depends entirely on those procedures. Any security that we were relying on the machines to have or the software to have, we shouldn’t assume it’s there; it’s fatally flawed. So what we’re saying is all of the security in an election depends on the security procedures and the protocols and the physical seals and the two-person control by poll workers and election officials and people watching what’s going on—that’s where all of the security comes in. Now, the problem that we have is that those procedures were designed on the assumption that the machines were offering a certain level of security to start with, but in fact they’re not. So those procedures have to be thought out from the beginning very carefully, and whether or not a practical set of procedures can be designed that actually adds security, I’m not sure.

MAG: So you’re really saying that you could have the best security procedures in the world, but if what they’re checking out has problems, it may help a little bit, but you’re still left defenseless.

MB: You have the problem that an election is a logistically very complex event. You may have a thousand polling places in a county, and thousands of poll workers who get a few hours of training and have been basically hired to work just on Election Day, and you may have half a dozen of them in any polling place, carrying out procedures that they do maybe once a year after a few hours of training. The equipment has to be distributed to these polling places; some of them are in lobbies of apartment buildings, in school gyms, sometimes even in private homes. That equipment might be delivered the night before. In some cases, it’s sent home with the poll workers, who bring it to the polling place on the morning of Election Day and basically had it in their homes overnight and had access to it completely without restriction. So building a physical security system that prevents anybody from tampering with equipment in such a complicated event and with so many people involved, this is going to be very hard.

MAG: Well, I understand the Secretary of State of California is going to institute some changes, which may include in some places a hundred percent count. Do you think we may have to do that for 2008?

MB: One of the things that the Secretary of State required was that in many cases the DRE machines all have to have their paper trails recounted—one hundred percent of them, not just one percent. That will certainly prevent certain attacks that would otherwise not be detected with just a one percent recount. They’ve limited the number of DREs for the Diebold and the Sequoia system to just one per polling place in order to accommodate voters with disabilities who can’t use the optical scan ballots without needing assistance, but who might be able to use the DRE machines, and that is intended
to reduce the scale and the number of people who’d have access to the machine throughout the day, to limit what would need to be protected and to make it easier to do that hundred percent recount. These seem like, to me, frankly, very sensible ways of mitigating this. What I’d be less confident in saying is that this is going to give you a secure election, but these seem like steps in the right direction. It’s certainly more secure than not doing these things.

MAG: Now I’ll put you on the spot: Congress is apparently finally waking up and is supposedly considering banning DREs and giving states money to replace [them] with optical scan. Would you support that?

MB: That seems, from what we’ve seen, my opinion, and I’m speaking only for myself, is that that would make me feel a lot more comfortable with the security of these elections.

MAG: But you would still like to see a fair number of procedural changes, as well.

MB: That’s right. We still need procedural changes, we still need to look at the security of the optical scan ballots, but I think the most serious problems we found, and most importantly, the ones that are hardest to correct, once they’ve happened, are the problems with the DREs.

MAG: That even raises the question, because you mentioned checks and balances, and that’s pretty important; I’m wondering if you could ever design and have a DRE system that would meet that, because a DRE system, even with a printer, would never be a separate and independent system.

MB: The disadvantage of a DRE is that the voters’ intentions—are touching a screen, this ephemeral process, that, at the end of it, you’re left with only the record produced by the machine, you’re not left with something that the voter has produced themselves, so you don’t know if it’s an accurate reflection of what they actually intended. So, DREs start from a security disadvantage right there. Now, it’s important not to confuse DREs with touch-screens.

MAG: Understood.

MB: This, I think, has been a source of considerable confusion on the issue because people often equate the nice user interface of a touch-screen, which many voters, particularly disabled voters, like quite a bit because you can, for example, have assistive devices hooked up to it that will speak in different languages, you can have sip and puff interfaces for mobility-impaired voters, and so on. These are all very important considerations, but they don’t actually require a DRE machine in order to accommodate these voters.

MAG: Do you think that we’re going to be faced in 2008 with doing a lot more hand counting to give us any security?

MB: Well, I think if we want secure elections, with the equipment at least that we looked at, we’re going to have no alternative.

MAG: Is there any reason for you to think that, and here again, this is strictly your opinion, that the equipment you didn’t examine, although it covers a large majority, that it would be that much different?

MB: Well, all we can do is speculate. We looked at three. Of the three we looked at, all of them were very deeply and pervasively flawed. Are the others any better? I suppose it’s possible that they are, but unfortunately, they haven’t been looked at with the same kind of scrutiny.

MAG: So, how do you feel as a Pennsylvanian and living in Philadelphia, where you have a Danaher machine which actually doesn’t even have a print-out, and you will be going, unless there is a change, up to that machine, entering your vote and not knowing where it went? How secure will you feel in 2008 if we have no change?

MB: Well, I hope that the procedures that are put in place in Philadelphia to prevent tampering are really sound.

MAG: But we still have that problem without any proof.

MB: That’s right.

MAG: Okay. Is there anything else that our audience should know, and is there anything Congress should be aware of?

MB: Well, I think one of the things we need to recognize is that these voting machines, the DREs, and the systems that count the votes, and the optical scan systems, these are all computers. They don’t look like personal computers, they don’t have the same keyboard and the same display, but on the inside, they’re computers that run software, and they’re running very complex software that performs a specialized task that only gets tested out a few times a year, and may not be stress-tested in a hostile environment very often in its life at all. Now, writing software that’s correct and that’s secure is a very, very difficult problem. It’s really the fundamental problem that computer science has been grappling with and has not succeeded in solving for its whole history. So, building a secure voting system out of software is already a very difficult problem, because designing software itself is a hard problem. So scrutiny and skepticism are really the only safeguards we have here.

MAG: And what about for Congress? Do you think it is time they re-look at this?

MB: It’s a shame, and again, I’m speaking only for myself here.

MAG: Understood.

MB: It’s a shame that after the 2000 election, with the butterfly ballot and so on, there was a real national consensus that it was important to make voting more reliable. I think everyone agreed with this very important goal that we should modernize elections and make them as reliable as possible. Unfortunately, we really rushed into buying equipment everywhere in the country that really wasn’t ready, and I think the only way we are going to solve this problem is by recognizing that we’ve got to do a careful design. We’re going to be left with whatever equipment we buy, whatever systems are put in place, we’re going to have them for a while, and this is something our democracy vitally depends on, so this is worth doing right.

MAG: Well, I would invite all our listeners, in addition, to play a game. I found that your Vendor Excuse Bingo is absolutely ingenious and fantastic. Where could they find it?

MB: There’s a link to it on my blog. I should say, I don’t want to make light of this, because this is very, very serious; but an unfortunate property of vendors of software, whether it’s voting machines or web servers, who have had their software exposed to scrutiny and discovered that it’s not as secure as it should be is to deny and threaten and so on. So I’ve put together a little bingo game with some of the common vendor responses to these kinds of things that I think we’re likely to hear in the voting machine case, but we often hear in computing in general.

MAG: And that website is?

MB: The website is www.crypto.com/blog.

MAG: Well, I want to thank you.

MB: And I should also say, if I can just interrupt very quickly. Go to the source: the Secretary of State’s website in California has all of our reports. We tried to make them as readable as possible.

MAG: And you did an excellent job and I think you did a tremendous service for this country and thank you very much.

MB: Thank you.

Authors Bio: Mary Ann Gould is a founding member of the Pennsylvania-based Coalition for Voting Integrity.

WHAT A PICTURE!

DUDES 

B-52 Carrying 5 Nuclear Warheads Mistakenly Flew Across United States

BREAKING:FROM CROOKS AND LIARS

By: Logan Murphy

From Americablog:

CNN’s Barbara Starr has been breathlessly reporting the news that a B-52, loaded with nuclear warheads, flew across the country last week — without anyone’s knowledge. It has caused quite a stir in the military. Starr reports that Bush had to be informed about the mistake. Here’s an NBC report:

An Air Force squadron commander has been relieved of his command after five nuclear weapons were mistakenly loaded aboard a B-52 and flown cross-country from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, NBC News reported.

Five 150-kiloton warheads were attached to cruise missiles that were flown from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to be dismantled, but they should have been removed, according to officials.

Military officials insist the warheads remained “under control” at all times and did not pose a danger.

That’s comforting.

More information as it becomes available.

WORST HEADLINE EVER

Fire Illuminates Burning Man Complaints

By MARCUS WOHLSEN 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — After the signature effigy of the Burning Man festival went up in flames four days ahead of schedule, festival-goers vowed to rebuild the 40-foot icon by Saturday’s planned climax. But not everyone was disappointed by Tuesday’s incineration.

The alleged torching of the wood-and-neon figure by a San Francisco performance artist has cast light on the disillusionment of many who feel the annual celebration of radical self-expression has lost touch with its spontaneous, subversive roots.

“People have been trying to set that thing on fire for years,” said Hugh D’Andrade, a San Francisco artist who attended the festival for many years. “This is not a new phenomenon.”

Organizers trace the first Burning Man back to a 1986 party on a San Francisco beach where Larry Harvey, who still runs the festival, set ablaze a crude 8-foot wooden figure.

Since then, the event has evolved into a weeklong gathering of nearly 40,000 people who descend on the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada around Labor Day each year to celebrate countercultural creativity.

In San Francisco, especially, Burning Man has emerged as a kind of underground high holiday as legions of so-called Burners devote the rest of the year to choreographing fire dances, decorating art cars and building elaborate interactive sculptures.

The event has become such a mainstay of the city’s cultural calendar that Burner parents in 2005 unsuccessfully urged the San Francisco school board to postpone the first day of school so their children could attend.

But the rise in Burning Man’s popularity has also brought a backlash.

In the immediate aftermath of this week’s unscheduled burn, gleeful expressions of approval for the alleged prank rained down on blogs and Internet forums.

Some comments came from conservative posters ready to mock anything carrying a hint of hippiedom.

But many originated from self-described former attendees complaining that Burning Man has been spoiled by crowds of “yuppies” and “frat boys” mostly interested in doing drugs and ogling naked participants.

Steven Black, a 40-something librarian at the University of California, Berkeley, has attended Burning Man 11 times. But even though he had a ticket this year, he said, he didn’t go.

“What has happened here is giving pause for a degree of introspection and reflection on what it means to burn this man that is perhaps long overdue,” Black said.

According to Black, Burning Man’s huge crowds have attracted heavy law enforcement attention to an event that was originally meant to be an exultation, leaving him feeling “less secure and less free” than if he had just stayed home.

Paul Addis, 35, of San Francisco, who is accused of setting fire to the Burning Man, posted $25,632 bond and was released from jail in Pershing County, Nev., on Tuesday. He was arrested on suspicion of arson, illegal possession of fireworks, destruction of property and resisting a public officer, according to the sheriff’s department.

Known on the city’s art scene for playing gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson on stage, Addis has apparently had long-standing gripes against the festival. In a letter published in a local alternative newspaper in 2002, a person using the same name complained about the imposition of rules he felt were spoiling the event.

“Those rules and judgments, such as what art is permitted in B(lack) R(ock) C(ity) and radical free expression’s outer limits are determined in line with what will make the most money for B(urning) M(an) and generate the fewest potential controversies in the media,” the person wrote.

Law enforcement officials said they did not know Addis’ whereabouts after his release. Calls to a telephone number listed for him in San Francisco were not answered.

A spokeswoman for Burning Man organizers did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Despite the criticism, even disenchanted Burners like D’Andrade haven’t completely written off the festival.

“When I first started going, they already said it was over,” said D’Andrade, who went to his first Burning Man in 1999 and designed the ticket for this year’s event, though he hasn’t attended since 2005. “New people are still getting a big blast of all the positive elements that have made it what it is.”

On the Net:

• http://www.burningman.com

NEW YORK MAGAZINE::GETTING IT DONE

EXCELLANT FALL PREVIEW SMORGASBORD

THE MAUREEN DOWD “BARACK OBAMA HIT PIECE” IS FINALLY HERE!

MAUREEN DOWD: The 46-Year-Old Virgin

WASHINGTON

Barack Hussein Obama squinted into the New Hampshire sun to read a new speech on his teleprompter Monday and turned into William Jennings Bryan.

It isn’t a good fit. Obama is many things, but the Great Commoner ain’t one of them. Bryan gave a Cross-of-Gold speech, and Obama gave a Cross-of-Media speech.

The urbane young senator who rules over Chicago society with his wife, Michelle, the glamour boy who has graced more fashionable magazine covers than Heidi Klum, the debonair pol who has wowed crowds at white-tie and black-tie press dinners in D.C., suddenly started ranting about Washington pundits and other jades on the Potomac who don’t appreciate the thrilling loftiness of his message and purifying minimalism of his résumé.

Suddenly, the candidate who had so consciously modeled himself and his wife on J.F.K. and Jackie was a simple rube, fighting the system.

“There are a lot of people who have been in Washington longer than me, who have better connections and go to the right dinner parties and know how to talk the Washington talk,” he told an audience in Manchester.

The smooth jazz senator claiming no facility with “Washington talk” struck a false note. In the traditional Labor Day kickoff to a campaign that has already left us weary of the inauthentic, the shopworn and the hyper-prepped, Obama told voters: “Now, when the folks in Washington hear me speak, this is usually when they start rolling their eyes, ‘Oh, there he goes talking about hope again. He’s so naïve. He’s a hope-peddler. He’s a hope-monger.’ Well, I stand guilty as charged. I am hopeful about America. Apparently, the pundits consider this a chronic condition, a symptom of a lack of experience.”

Actually, the only thing we regard as a symptom of a lack of experience is a lack of experience. This pundit, for one, needs hope as much as any American these days. But the only time I roll my eyes is when my hope is dashed that Obama will boldly take on Hillary, making his campaign more than cameras and mirrors and magazine covers.

The Obama promise was a fresh approach to politics, and now he pulls out the oldest trick in the playbook — the insider-who-pretends-to-be-an-outsider bit, the tactical populist, the sophisticate desperately shedding his sophistication.

I expected more of him than the same outsider routine I’ve heard from other beltway familiars, like Pat Buchanan and Bush senior.

Poppy took off his striped, preppie watchband and talked about his alleged love of pork rinds. (He really liked martinis and popcorn.)

When he ran for president in 1992, Mr. Buchanan claimed to be an outsider, even though he was a Washington native, an aide to three presidents and a D.C. pundit who lived so close to C.I.A. headquarters that his cat kept setting off the security sensors buried in the woods.

Obama doesn’t understand that his new approach — obliquely attacking Hillary by dismissing “those who tout their experience working the system in Washington” — cedes ground to her by admitting she has more experience working the system.

He allows Hillary to present herself as having the experience to be president just because she was married to one. He should be making the opposite case, that Hillary — go ahead, use her name, she won’t bite you, or even if she does, you’ll get over it — knew from nothing about the system.

In the White House, she botched health care and bungled dealing with special prosecutors — remember that talent she had for losing critical files? And in the Senate, she played it safe and became a Democratic Senator Pothole while helping W. launch his disaster in Iraq.

Obama relentlessly recited his credentials to voters in New Hampshire, talking about being a community organizer the way corporate lawyers remind you they were in the Peace Corps.

It’s not his experience that excites people, but his brainy élan. We don’t know about his judgment: good on Iraq, bad on Rezko.

The joke on Obama is that the only experience that has served Hillary well has been the experience of raw, retail politics — the kind he turns up his nose at — which has allowed her to seem authoritative and professional and singularly unwhiny in speeches and debates.

She first tripped up Obama by making him think that every time he fought back he was falling off his pedestal. As one of the Washington pundits Obama has scorned put it, with a grin: “That’s why you have two hands, one to graciously greet your opponents and one to stick the shiv in.”

By conjuring a scenario where Hillary is the deft insider and he’s the dewy outsider, Obama only plays into her playbook again.

To borrow Oscar Levant’s old joke about Doris Day: We knew Obama before he was a virgin.

President Bush thinks he can make “ridiculous” money out on the lecture circuit

Days before the 2006 election, Robert Draper reports in his fascinating new book, as things were looking bleaker and bleaker for House Republicans, and even the party’s chairman was predicting a G.O.P. defeat, George W. Bush brushed aside such forecasts, telling one of his worried aides that they were all being pessimists. When she protested that she was simply being realistic, he said: “Realist — I like that,” but added, “There’s a fine line between realism and pessimism.”

In “Dead Certain” Mr. Draper — a national correspondent for GQ magazine and a former Texas Monthly editor who wrote a lengthy profile of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, in 1998 — draws a detailed portrait, based on six hourlong interviews with the notoriously press-wary president and interviews with some 200 other sources, including Laura Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and the senior adviser Karl Rove.

It is a portrait of the commander in chief as a willful optimist, proud of his self-confidence and convinced that any expressions of doubt would make him less of a leader: a man addicted to “Big Ideas and small comforts” (like riding his bike), a stubborn, even obstinate politician loath to change course or second-guess himself, and given to valuing loyalty above almost everything else.

This overall picture is hardly new, of course, and Mr. Draper’s depiction of the president as an avatar of certainty owes a lot to Ron Suskind’s 2004 portrait of Mr. Bush (which appeared in The New York Times Magazine) and to the portrait Bob Woodward drew in his 2006 book, “State of Denial.” While there are many aspects of the Bush presidency that Mr. Draper completely neglects — there is almost nothing here about executive power, interrogation policy or the treatment of detainees — what “Dead Certain” does do and does very nimbly is give the reader an intimate sense of the president’s personality and how it informs his decision making.

At the same time, it ratifies what many other reporters and former insiders have said about this administration’s ad hoc, often haphazard policy-making process, while suggesting that the West Wing has grown increasingly dysfunctional over the years, with the aides Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett “constantly at war” with each other, and other staff members not on speaking terms.

Already, “Dead Certain” has caused controversy, showing that the blame game in an increasingly embattled administration is already in full play. In the book President Bush is quoted, saying of the much-criticized decision to disband the Iraqi army (a decision many experts say fatally fueled the insurgency): “Well, the policy was to keep the army intact,” adding that it just “didn’t happen.”

In response, his former top envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, who issued that fateful order in 2003, has released letters showing that the president was told in advance by Mr. Bremer of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures.”

“Dead Certain” also asserts, almost in passing, that it was John Roberts who suggested Harriet Miers to Mr. Bush as a possible Supreme Court nominee, leading to her disastrous nomination. Chief Justice Roberts denied that report through a court spokeswoman, who said “the account is not true.”

Although the President Bush described in this volume will be familiar to most readers, Mr. Draper colors in the outlines with lots of tiny details. Apparently Mr. Bush loves doing imitations of Dr. Evil from the “Austin Powers” movies. He keeps meticulous count of all the books he’s read. (At one point he tells Mr. Draper he’s up to 87 for the year.) And he’s wildly competitive about his bike riding, eager to show his younger Secret Service companions “who’s The Man” and insistent on burning at least 1,000 calories during each workout.

This is a president who says he cries easily and often about dead and wounded soldiers, a president who Mr. Draper says doesn’t defer, as widely believed, to Vice President Cheney and Mr. Rove (who apparently recommended that Mr. Cheney not be put on the 2000 ticket, arguing, in Mr. Draper’s words, that picking “Daddy’s top foreign-policy guy ran counter to message.”)

Mr. Draper tells us that the president repeated his conviction that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction to his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., “all the way up until Card’s departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMD’s.”

And he describes Mr. Bush asking for a show of hands at an April 2006 dinner about whether to keep Mr. Rumsfeld on as defense secretary in the face of a downward-spiraling war: Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove, Mr. Bartlett and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, voted to keep Mr. Rumsfeld on board; Mr. Card, the outgoing chief of staff; Joshua B. Bolten, the incoming chief of staff; and Ms. Rice, among others, voted for Mr. Rumsfeld’s ouster.

The president, who, Mr. Draper repeatedly observes, prizes routine and familiarity, hoped his favorite staff members would be “eight-year men”: “The notion that change was not only good but essential — that once-vital personnel would outlive their usefulness and require culling — ran counter to his impulses.”

It is also clear from Mr. Draper’s book that President Bush dislikes criticism and bad news, and that staffers found it very hard “to stick one’s arm into the fiercely whirring gears of Team Bush’s institutionalized optimism and say, ‘Let’s … slow… down. And rethink this.’ ” For that matter, this volume is studded with examples — on matters ranging from the Iraq war to Hurricane Katrina — of aides failing to deliver distressing information to the president or failing to persuade him to grapple quickly with unfortunate developments.

In her much-criticized role as national security adviser, Ms. Rice, for instance, is described as deciding to be the president’s information broker and sounding board rather than the person, as Mr. Draper puts it, who would ruffle “his feathers with opinions that he did not share.” She is quoted as telling a close friend: “It’s not my exercising influence over him. I’m internalizing his world.”

As other reporters and former administration insiders have frequently observed, dissenting views, be they on Iraq or domestic policy, are rarely solicited by this White House, and Mr. Draper writes that one of Mr. Bush’s most pronounced traits is “an almost petulant heedlessness to the outside world.” Members of the Iraq Study Group told Mr. Draper that they found the president “far more upbeat than the realities in Iraq seemed to warrant,” and that it occurred to one of them that President Bush did not so much want to hear their views as “convince us that we should be writing a report that would reflect his views.”

What’s more, when dissenting views did reach the president, the results could be an obstinate digging in of heels. For example, calls for Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation from several retired generals in the spring of 2006 elicited this response from Mr. Bush: “No military guy is gonna tell a civilian how to react.” As one aide glumly put it: “The moment someone would say ‘Fire Donald Rumsfeld,’ Donald Rumsfeld would get a new lease on life.”

The best approach to selling the ever-competitive president on an idea, aides told Mr. Draper, was to tell him, “This is going to be a really tough decision.” Mr. Rumsfeld (whose own Big Idea was to “transform” the military and go into Iraq with a lighter, faster force) gave similar advice, telling his lieutenants that if they wanted the president’s support for an initiative, it was always best to frame it as a “Big New Thing.”

Mr. Draper writes that Mr. Bush was “at root a man who craved purpose — a sense of movement, of consequence” and that he was irresistibly drawn to Big Ideas like bringing democracy to the Middle East, Big Ideas that stood in sharp contrast to the prudent small ball played by his father, who was often accused of lacking the “vision thing.”

So what does the current President Bush plan to do after leaving office? At the end of this revealing book, Mr. Draper quotes him saying that he plans to build a “Freedom Institute,” a sort of think tank where young leaders from abroad can learn about democracy. Mr. Bush, who has a net worth estimated at $8 million to $21 million, also said he would like to make some money — “replenish the ol’ coffers,” as he put it.

He said he could : “I don’t know what my dad gets. But it’s more than fifty, seventy-five” thousand dollars a speech.

NUNS WANT BUSH CHENEY IMPEACHED

 WIRE REPORT

A progressive group of U.S. nuns has called on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney because of their roles in the war in Iraq.

“The National Coalition of American Nuns is impelled by conscience to call you to act promptly to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for … high crimes and misdemeanors,” the group wrote in a letter written on behalf of its board members.

The letter says that impeachment is warranted for their “deceiving the public under the false pretense that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction” and “destroying” the reputation of the United States and the good will of other nations.

“The time for impeachment is now — before the example of George W. Bush’s regime is set in stone,” they wrote. “Future generations will thank you for preserving the freedom of our nation and its relation to the entire human community.”

The coalition was founded in 1969 for individual nuns dedicated to issues of social justice and human rights.

The letter was approved during a mid-August meeting of the board, held in Chicago. During that same meeting, the board unanimously adopted statements opposing all war and affirming peacemaking efforts. “Rather than continuing support of a just-war theory, a more compassionate church would oppose all war and teach peacemaking skills for all levels of government and interpersonal conflict resolution,” the statement reads.

The board also adopted statements pledging to work to “moderate the impact we make on planet Earth,” and supporting nuclear disarmament and relief efforts for the poor in Africa.

Rock bottom for Palm and Hawkins?

 

Rock bottom for Palm and Hawkins?

Posted by Tom Krazit

Suddenly, it seems even more fitting that a company called Elevation Partners recently took a stake in Palm.

This might be rock bottom for the storied mobile-computing company. The decision to cancel the Foleo even before letting people get their hands on it is an embarrassing admission that Palm’s vision of the computing world is way off base from the rest of the world, and it’s a black mark on the otherwise stellar career of Palm founder Jeff Hawkins.

It’s hard to dump too much on Hawkins. The man invented the Palm Pilot and the Treo. I once invented a novel method of stacking beer cans in a fridge (the key is not to buy any food). But after Hawkins unveiled the Foleo at the D: All Things Digital conference–arguably the most prestigious gathering of the computing elite–with proclamations like “it’s the best idea I’ve ever had” and “the most exciting product I have ever worked on”–Palm’s decision to cancel it without even a product launch must be mortifying for Hawkins.

Now, Hawkins has his own company, Numenta, which is trying to develop a computer that works like the human brain. If he pulls that off, we’ll forget all about the Foleo.

But what is Palm going to do? Speaking of mortifying, Ed Colligan must be wondering why he gave Hawkins $10 million to go down into the basement and come up with Palm’s Next Big Thing, only to emerge with the Foleo. Almost universally panned by analysts and bloggers, the Foleo was a lightweight Linux “mobile companion” that was designe