Bush Lies, America Cries
This just in: Global terrorism rates are higher than any time since
1985. Thanks, Dubya!
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/04/22/notes042205.DTL
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 22, 2005
Oh my God I feel so much safer. Don't you?
I mean, don't you feel so much more secure in your all-American
gun-totin' oil-happy lifestyle now that we have wasted upward of $300
billion worth of your child's future education budget, along with
1,600 disposable young American lives and over 20,000 innocent Iraqi
lives and about 10,000 severed American limbs and untold wads of our
spiritual and moral currency, all to protect America from terrorism
that is, by every account, only getting worse? Nastier? More nebulous?
More anti-American?
Here's something funny, in a
rip-your-patriotic-heart-out-and-spit-on-it sort of way: Just last
week, BushCo's State Department decided to kill the publication of an
annual report on international terrorism. Why? Well, because the
government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more
terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985. Isn't that
hilarious? Isn't that heartwarming? Your tax dollars at work,
sweetheart. [1]
Lest you forget, this is what they do. They trim. They edit. They
censor. BushCo kills what they do not like and fudges negative data
where they see fit and completely rewrites whatever the hell they
want, and that includes bogus WMD reports and CIA investigations and
dire environmental studies and scientific proofs about everything from
evolution to abortion [2] and pollution and clean air, right along
with miserable unemployment [3] data and all manner of research
pointing up the ill health of the nation, the spirit, the world.
In other words, if BushCo doesn't like what comes out of their own
hobbled agencies and their own funded studies, they do what any good
dictatorship does: They annihilate it. Now that's good gummint!
Let's be clear: The obliteration of the National Counterterrorism
Center report merely goes to prove what so many of us already know --
that BushCo's brutish and borderline traitorous actions since they
leveraged 9/11 to blatantly screw the nation have done exactly nothing
to stem the tide of terrorism -- and, in fact, have, by most every
measure, apparently increased the threat of terrorism. In other words,
the world is a more dangerous place because of George W. Bush. Is that
clear enough?
Let's put it another way: Under Bush, in the past five years, the U.S.
has made zero new friends. But we have made a huge number of new and
increasingly venomous enemies. And no, they don't hate us because of
our malls, Dubya. They don't hate us because of our freedoms. They
don't hate us because of our low-cut jeans and our moronic 8 mpg Ford
Expeditions or our corrupt Diebold voting system that snuck you into
office.
They hate us, George, because of our policies. Anti-Muslim.
Pro-Israel. Oil-uber-alles. Anti-U.N. Anti-Kyoto. Anti-planet.
Pro-war. Pro-insularity. Pseudo-swagger. Bogus staged "town hall"
meetings stocked with prescreened monosyllabic Bush sycophants. [4]
Ego. Empire.
But here's the truly sad part, the hideous and depressing and
soul-shredding part about all those young kids in the U.S. military
right now, all those mostly undereducated, lower-middle-class kids,
most of whom aren't even old enough to buy beer and many of whom have
barely had sex and many who got sucked into the military vortex in an
honest attempt to help pay for a college education so they could go
out and not find a decent job in this miserable economy. The sad part
is all those kids in the military who've been trained/brainwashed to
believe they are serving in Iraq to protect America's freedom, to
protect us from, well, something dark, and sinister, and deadly. When
in fact, they're not. Not even close.
The truth is, we were never under threat from Iraq. There were never
any WMDs, and Bush knew it. Our military is protecting nothing so much
as our access to future stores of petroleum, nothing so much as
helping set up a giant police station in Iraq to ensure surrounding
nations don't get all uppity about just who controls the rights to
those oil fields.
So let's get honest and just ask it outright: Is this a worthy use of
the massive bloated machine that is the U.S. military? Of the largest
and most advanced fighting force in the world? To protect the flow of
oil to the most gluttonous and wasteful and least accountable
developed nation on the planet? Is this worth so many young American
lives?
You already know the answer. Ask any oil exec. Any government
economist. Any BushCo war hawk or auto manufacturer or the leaders of
any major manufacturing industry. Ask the president himself. They all
say the same thing: You're ***** right it is.
Here, then, is the warped, convoluted irony: We went to war under the
lie of a Saddam-fueled terrorism threat that never existed. We are at
war, instead, to protect our oil and to establish regional control, an
act that, in turn, has destabilized the Middle East even further and
is actually inciting much of the very terrorism we were ostensibly
there to battle in the first place, thus producing a level of
anti-U.S. hatred not even a (still alive and apparently very chipper)
Osama bin Laden could have wet dreamed. Isn't democracy fun?
We are not "spreading democracy" by invading Iraq. We are not giving a
gift of a more peaceable Iraq to a grateful world. That is merely
insidious Republican PR spin. Right now, the U.S. military is, in
short, protecting your right to a $3 gallon of gas, which will soon be
$4 and then maybe $5 and $6 as we are running out of the stuff faster
than anyone thought and the fight for that which remains will only
turn uglier and more violent and so I have to ask again, do you feel
safer?
Because if you say yes, you are, quite simply, lying. Or delusional.
Or you have had your brain edited by BushCo. Or those are some mighty
powerful drugs you are obviously taking and you might wish to consider
switching to aspirin and wine and Fleshbot.com.
They say that violence is the last refuge of a desperate nation. And
violence under the guise of secrecy and outright lie such as BushCo
has foisted upon the nation is the last refuge of a nation of thugs.
Yes, I'm looking at you, Rummy. I'm looking at you, Cheney. I'm not
looking at you, Karl Rove, because looking at you makes my colon
clench and looking at you makes birds die and looking at you makes
small children feel hopeless and lost, like the world is full of black
venomous hate and bilious condescension that is aimed squarely at
their heads, like a gun.
It's true. We are living in a nation run by overprivileged alcoholic
frat boys and power-mad thugs. This much we know. This much we need to
be reminded of, over and over again, until we finally wake up.
Ah, but there is good news. There is always good news. The good news
is, they are now confiscating all cigarette lighters at the
airport. [5] In the name of safety. In the name of homeland security.
In the name of America, apple pie, babies, puppies, Jesus and guns.
Lighters are now forbidden on all air travel. I mean, thank God. I
feel safer already.
©2005 SF Gate
[1] http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm
Posted on Fri, Apr. 15, 2005
Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism
report
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual
report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism
center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than
in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the
methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate
statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion
of incidents that may not have been terrorism.
Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a
revision of the report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism."
But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism"
eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised
disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims
of progress in the war against terrorism.
"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an
intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American
public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State
Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to
eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last
year's mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.
"This is the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around
the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be an effort to
withhold it - or any of the key data - from the public. The Bush
administration should stop playing politics with this critical
report."
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the
publication was being eliminated, but said the allegation that it was
being done for political reasons was "categorically untrue."
According to Johnson and U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the
issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided
to the State Department reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks
in 2004.
That compared with 175 such incidents in 2003, the highest number in
two decades.
The statistics didn't include attacks on American troops in Iraq,
which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called "a central front in
the war on terror."
The intelligence officials requested anonymity because the information
is classified and because, they said, they feared White House
retribution. Johnson declined to say how he obtained the figures.
Another U.S. official, who also requested anonymity, said analysts
from the counterterrorism center were especially careful in amassing
and reviewing the data because of the political turmoil created by
last year's errors.
Last June, the administration was forced to issue a revised version of
the report for 2003 that showed a higher number of significant
terrorist attacks and more than twice the number of fatalities than
had been presented in the original report two months earlier.
The snafu was embarrassing for the White House, which had used the
original version to bolster President Bush's election-campaign claim
that the war in Iraq had advanced the fight against terrorism.
U.S. officials blamed last year's mix-up on bureaucratic mistakes
involving the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the forerunner of
the National Counterterrorism Center.
Created last year on the recommendation of the independent commission
that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the center is
the government's primary organization for analyzing and integrating
all U.S. government intelligence on terrorism.
The State Department published "Patterns of Global Terrorism" under a
law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism
assessment by April 30 each year.
A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986
in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal
requirement to produce one.
The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism
would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public
in place of "Patterns of Global Terrorism," but that it wouldn't
contain statistical data.
He said that decision was taken because the State Department believed
that the National Counterterrorism Center "is now the authoritative
government agency for the analysis of global terrorism. We believe
that the NCTC should compile and publish the relevant data on that
subject."
He didn't answer questions about whether the data would be made
available to the public, saying, "We will be consulting (with
Congress) ... on who should publish and in what form."
Another U.S. official said Rice's office was leery of the methodology
the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate the data for
2004, believing that analysts anxious to avoid a repetition of last
year's undercount included incidents that may not have been terrorist
attacks.
But the U.S. intelligence officials said Rice's office decided to
eliminate "Patterns of Global Terrorism" when the counterterrorism
center declined to use alternative methodology that would have
reported fewer significant attacks.
The officials said they interpreted Rice's action as an attempt to
avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration's
claims that it's winning the war against terrorism.
To read past "Patterns of Global Terrorism" reports online, go to
www.mipt.org/Patterns-of-Global-Terrorism.asp
© 2005 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources
[2] http://www.govtech.net/news/story.print.php?id=27543
Government Technology
Democrats Accuse HHS of Putting Ideology Over Science
Associated Press
Oct 22, 2002
WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) -- Two Democratic congressman contended Monday
that the Bush administration is putting ideology over science, citing
appointments to advisory committees and the removal of information
from Web sites.
Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Sherrod Brown of Ohio demanded
explanations in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy
Thompson.
They complained that information about the effectiveness of condoms
had been removed from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web
site; that experts serving on advisory committees were being replaced
because their views do not match the administration's; and that HHS is
singling out AIDS groups with probing audits.
In addition, they said, information showing that abortion does not
increase the risk of breast cancer was removed from a National
Institutes of Health Web site. "Scientific information ... has been
removed, apparently because it does not fit with the administration's
ideological agenda," Waxman and Brown wrote.
They charged that "ideology has replaced scientific qualifications" as
HHS chooses members of advisory committees. Among other examples, they
pointed to a report on a CDC advisory committee on safe lead levels
for children. The report found that nominations of respected academics
had been withdrawn and replaced with consultants to the industry.
"We are deeply concerned that stacking advisory committees with
individuals whose qualifications are ideological rather than
scientific will fundamentally undermine the integrity of scientific
decision-making at our leading public health agencies," the Democrats
wrote.
HHS spokesman Bill Pierce said it is Thompson's prerogative to appoint
whomever he chooses for advisory committees. By contrast, he said,
Waxman and Brown "would like all of us to follow their agenda, their
liberal agenda, on these issues."
"They should stop looking for conspiracy theories," Pierce added.
Copyright 2002. Associated Press.
[3] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0103-02.htm
Published on Friday, January 3, 2003 by the San Francisco Chronicle
George W Bush's America
Shooting the Messenger: Report on Layoffs Killed
by David Lazarus
The Bush administration, under fire for its handling of the economy,
has quietly killed off a Labor Department program that tracked mass
layoffs by U.S. companies.
The statistic, which had been issued monthly and was closely watched
by hard-hit Silicon Valley, served as a pulse reading of corporate
America's financial health.
There's still plenty of economic data available charting employment
trends nationwide. But the mass-layoffs stat comprised an
easy-to-understand overview of which industries are in the greatest
distress and which workers are bearing the brunt of the turmoil.
"It was a visible number," said Gary Schlossberg, senior economist at
Wells Capital Management in San Francisco. "In times like these, it
was a good window on how businesses were cutting back."
No longer. But then, businesses cutting back didn't exactly jibe with
the White House's recent declarations that prosperity is right around
the corner.
You had to look pretty hard just to learn that the mass-layoffs stat
had been scotched. No announcement was made by the Labor Department,
and no prominent mention of the change was posted at the department's
Web site.
In fact, news of the program's termination came only in the form of a
single paragraph buried deep within a press release issued on
Christmas Eve about November's mass layoffs.
It simply said that funding for the program had dried up and that the
Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics was unable to find an
alternative source of funding.
No doubt as intended, the announcement slipped by virtually unnoticed.
Even state officials were surprised to learn of the demise of what
they called an important, if downbeat, barometer of the nation's
economy.
Sharon Brown oversaw compilation of the mass-layoffs number at the
Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington. She was pleased to blow her
agency's horn.
HIGH-QUALITY PROGRAM
"This was a high-quality program, producing timely information on
important developments in the labor market," Brown said.
According to the bureau's final monthly report, U.S. employers
initiated 2, 150 mass layoffs in November, affecting 240,028 workers.
A mass layoff is defined as any firing involving at least 50 people.
California by far had the most employees given the boot -- 62,764,
primarily in administrative services. Wisconsin was a distant second
with 15, 544, followed by Texas with 14,624.
Between January and November, 17,799 mass layoffs were recorded and
nearly 2 million workers were handed their hats by businesses.
Brown said that because of a bureaucratic quirk, the $6.6 million in
annual funding for the mass-layoffs program -- money primarily doled
out to state officials to gather relevant data -- was channeled
through the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration.
FUNDING ELIMINATED
When that agency decided it needed more cash to handle its own
affairs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics was told to look elsewhere for
its budget needs.
Apparently no extra money was to be found anywhere within the Labor
Department, which had a total budget of $44.4 billion last year, up
from $39.2 billion in 2001.
"With very finite discretionary resources, we have to make difficult
decisions," said Mason Bishop, the Labor Department's deputy assistant
secretary for employment training. "We didn't see how this program was
helping workers re-enter the workforce."
Coincidentally, the same conclusion was reached in 1992 when the first
President Bush canceled the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program amid
election-year charges that he had bungled handling of the economy.
REVIVED BY CLINTON
The program was resuscitated two years later by the Clinton
administration.
Now Bush the younger is following in his father's footsteps, once
again deciding that the American people have no real need to know how
many mass layoffs are made each month.
"It's questionable what value this program has for workers," insisted
Bishop.
On the other hand, the Labor Department this week released a sweeping
study of volunteer work over the past year, reporting that 59 million
Americans donated their time and know-how to helping others.
President Bush has spoken repeatedly about the virtues of volunteerism
since taking office in 2001.
VOLUNTEERISM MEASURED
During his own stint in the White House, the elder Bush was a proud
advocate of community service. That was also the last time the Labor
Department was told to devote its finite discretionary resources to a
study of volunteer work by U.S. citizens.
Then, as now, it's difficult to see how feel-good surveys of volunteer
activities contribute to an understanding of the economy's vitality or
the re- employment of displaced workers.
There does seem to be merit, though, in easily seeing how many people
have received pink slips as companies tighten their belts, and which
states and industries are in facing the greatest challenges.
"The United States economy is growing again," Bush declared in a
holiday radio address from his Texas ranch. "This economy is strong
and it can be stronger."
And if not, best to just sweep the whole mess under the rug.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
[4] http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0401-31.htm
Published on Friday, April 1, 2005 by the Hearst Newspapers
Screened Audiences, Fake News Promote Bush Agenda
Bush, Government Manipulate Media
by Helen Thomas
President George W. Bush has learned to use the bully pulpit that is
the powerful prerogative of all presidents.
But this president has tried to tweak that power in ways that expand
the definition of "managed news."
Let's start with his national campaign to change Social Security.
As he travels around the nation to make his pitch that Social Security
is in a crisis, the president is limiting his congregation to
screened, sanitized audiences. Why does he sermonize on the subject
only to carefully selected audiences?
These are people who are vetted to make sure they agree with the
president's views. If they pass that test, the local Republican Party
or the groups sponsoring the event then issue tickets to the so-called
"town meetings" or "conversations with the president."
Asked why the president speaks only to his supporters, White House
press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush's intention is to "educate"
the people. He probably meant "indoctrinate."
Is this the president of all the people -- or just some of the people
who agree with him?
It's bizarre. He's preaching to the choir, hardly the way to "educate"
the public.
Controlling his audience was a prime goal of Bush's 2004 presidential
campaign, when anti-war protesters were barred from his public
appearances. People who openly disagreed with him were hustled out of
the hall. We're now seeing the same audience control when Bush speaks
about Social Security. The Secret Service and White House aides
apparently spend a lot of time trying to handpick those permitted to
hear him.
Bush seems satisfied that he has made Social Security a worry to
people. That's the goal of his sky-is-falling campaign. But the
president is not ready to handle genuine dialogue on the subject or
deal with those opposed to his plan to partially privatize the
government pension program.
Every administration tries to manage the message that the news media
convey to the public about presidential policies, problems and
successes. But the Bush White House is pioneering new methods that
steer message management into outright government propaganda.
The New York Times on March 13 published an in-depth report on how the
administration is cranking up its public relations campaign to
manipulate broadcast news by distributing pre-packaged videos prepared
by several federal agencies, including the Pentagon.
These videos use phony reporters to tout the administration's position
on major issues. Thinly staffed TV stations are only too happy to
receive the free videos, which they then pass along to viewers without
any acknowledgement that the images and messages are government issue.
Spokespersons for the major TV networks say they would never
disseminate government-prepared videos for their news broadcasts. But
some financially strapped affiliates apparently are willing to air
them without identifying the source.
The government agencies say it is up to the broadcast stations to
attribute the origin of the report, if they want to do so.
This practice is far over the ethical line. Shame on both the
government agencies and those TV stations.
The Government Accountability Office -- a congressional investigative
unit -- has ruled that such government videos represent "covert
propaganda." The GAO declared that agencies may not produce
pre-packaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for
the television viewing audience" that they were made by the
government.
But the White House rejected that opinion and handed reporters a
memorandum from the Justice Department and the Office of Management
and Budget directing the federal agencies to ignore the GAO verdict.
The memo contended that the GAO did not distinguish between propaganda
and "purely informational" news reports and claimed there was no
requirement for a federal agency to label its disguised broadcasts.
This is consistent with the administration's other outrageous exercise
in propaganda, which took the form of paying a few columnists and
broadcasters, such as Armstrong Williams, to promote administration
programs.
Williams pushed the Education Department's "No Child Left Behind"
program without disclosing that he was on Uncle Sam's payroll.
The president called a halt to paying pundits, saying "there needs to
be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the
press."
He needs to pay more attention to other administration actions that
threaten that independence.
© 2005 Hearst Newspapers
[5] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7507086
Lighters Banned Passed Airport Security Checkpoints
By Lori Dougovito
WILX-TV
Add cigarette lighters to the list of things to leave at home when
heading to the airport. Beginning Thursday, lighters are prohibited
past security checkpoints at all U.S. airports. It's the latest
security measure put in place by the Transportation Security
Administration. If you have a lighter on you when you check-in, you'll
be asked to either leave it in your vehicle or surrender it before you
go through the terminal. All collected lighters will be thrown away.
You can't put a lighter in your checked luggage either, but matches
are still allowed. You can carry on up to four books of matches.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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