I MORN A GREAT WRITER - Arthur C. Clark

This is one of the Science Fiction writers, along with Asimov and Heinlein, that started me loving SiFi in general. I will sorely miss him.

"Arthur C. Clarke, 90; scientific visionary, acclaimed writer of '2001: A Space Odyssey'" by Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times

Arthur C. Clarke, who peered into the heavens with a homemade telescope as a boy and grew up to become a visionary titan of science-fiction writing and collaborated with director Stanley Kubrick on the landmark film "2001: A Space Odyssey," has died. He was 90.

The knighted British-born writer died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had made his home for decades, after experiencing a cardio-respiratory attack, his secretary, Rohan De Silva, told Reuters.

Clarke wrote scores of fiction and nonfiction books (some in collaboration) and more than 100 short stories -- as well as hundreds of articles and essays. Among his best-known science-fiction novels are "Childhood's End," "Rendezvous With Rama," "Imperial Earth" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Deemed a scientific prophet, Clarke foretold an array of technological notions in his works such as space stations, moon landings using a mother ship and a landing pod, cellular phones and the Internet.

"Nobody has done more in the way of enlightened prediction," science-fiction author Isaac Asimov once wrote.

"I'd say he was the major hard science-fiction writer -- that is, the writer of science fiction that is scientifically scrupulous -- in the second half of the 20th century," UC Irvine physics professor Gregory Benford, an award-winning science-fiction author who collaborated with Clarke on the 1990 science-fiction novel "Beyond the Fall of Night," told The Times in 2005.

George Slusser, author of the 1978 book "The Space Odysseys of Arthur C. Clarke" and curator emeritus of UC Riverside's Eaton Collection -- the world's largest publicly accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror and utopian fiction -- ranks Clarke as one of the three greatest science-fiction writers of all time.

"Clarke, along with Asimov and [ Robert A.] Heinlein, is unique in that his human dramas are determined by advances in science and technology," Slusser, a professor of comparative literature, said in 2005. "He places his characters in a near future where science has changed the way we live and the possibilities for adventure.

"Clarke incarnates the essence of [science fiction], which is to blend two otherwise opposite activities into a single story, that of the advancement of mankind."

His remarkable record of foreseeing future technologies led him to be known as "the godfather of the telecommunications satellite."

A radar pioneer in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Clarke wrote a 1945 article in Wireless World magazine in which he outlined a worldwide communications network based on fixed satellites orbiting Earth at an altitude of 22,300 miles -- an orbital area now often referred to as the Clarke Orbit.

Clarke's seminal article, for which he received $40, was published two decades before Syncom II became the world's first communications satellite put into geosynchronous orbit in 1963.

For pioneering the concept of communications satellites, Clarke received a number of honors, including the 1982 Marconi International Fellowship and the Charles A. Lindbergh Award.

His literary career soared with the success of his 1951 nonfiction book "The Exploration of Space" and his critically acclaimed 1953 science-fiction classic "Childhood's End."

"Rendezvous with Rama," his 1973 novel about a space probe sent to explore an enormous celestial object speeding through the solar system that turns out to be a mysterious alien spacecraft, was one of Clarke's greatest critical successes.

It won the prestigious Nebula, Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, as well as the British Science Fiction Associate Award, the Locus Award and the Jupiter Award.

His collaboration with Kubrick to create a work about man's place in the universe began in 1964 when he was in New York City to complete his work on the Time/Life book "Man and Space."

What I want," Kubrick repeatedly told Clarke, "is a theme of mythic grandeur."

Inspired in part by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel," about the discovery of an alien artifact on the moon, the two men began their collaboration with weeks of brainstorming sessions.

"Perhaps because Stanley realized that I had low tolerance for boredom, he suggested that before we embarked on the drudgery of the script, we let our imaginations soar freely by writing a complete novel, from which we would later derive the script," Clarke wrote in the foreword to the millennial edition of "2001: A Space Odyssey."

This is just the first page of the 3 page article.

Obama on Race and Politics

For those who did not view,
long but well worth the watch.

"Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage" Editorial Opinion, New York Times 3/19/2008

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.

Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.

Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism is Christian enough for them.

It was not a moment to which Mr. Obama came easily. He hesitated uncomfortably long in dealing with the controversial remarks of his spiritual mentor and former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who denounced the United States as endemically racist, murderous and corrupt.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama drew a bright line between his religious connection with Mr. Wright, which should be none of the voters’ business, and having a political connection, which would be very much their business. The distinction seems especially urgent after seven years of a president who has worked to blur the line between church and state.

Mr. Obama acknowledged his strong ties to Mr. Wright. He embraced him as the man “who helped introduce me to my Christian faith,” and said that “as imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.”

Wisely, he did not claim to be unaware of Mr. Wright’s radicalism or bitterness, disarming the speculation about whether he personally heard the longtime pastor of his church speak the words being played and replayed on YouTube. Mr. Obama said Mr. Wright’s comments were not just potentially offensive, as politicians are apt to do, but “rightly offend white and black alike” and are wrong in their analysis of America. But, he said, many Americans “have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagree.”

Mr. Obama’s eloquent speech should end the debate over his ties to Mr. Wright since there is nothing to suggest that he would carry religion into government. But he did not stop there. He put Mr. Wright, his beliefs and the reaction to them into the larger context of race relations with an honesty seldom heard in public life.

Mr. Obama spoke of the nation’s ugly racial history, which started with slavery and Jim Crow, and continues today in racial segregation, the school achievement gap and discrimination in everything from banking services to law enforcement.

He did not hide from the often-unspoken reality that people on both sides of the color line are angry. “For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation,” he said, “the memories of humiliation and fear have not gone away, nor the anger and the bitterness of those years.”

At the same time, many white Americans, Mr. Obama noted, do not feel privileged by their race. “In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game,” he said, adding that both sides must acknowledge that the other’s grievances are not imaginary.

He made the powerful point that while these feelings are not always voiced publicly, they are used in politics. “Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition,” he said.

Against this backdrop, he said, he could not repudiate his pastor. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” he said. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” That woman whom he loves deeply, he said, “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street” and more than once “uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

There have been times when we wondered what Mr. Obama meant when he talked about rising above traditional divides. This was not such a moment.

We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

IRAQ WAR - When You Live In Bush World.....

EXHIBIT A: "Bush "Envious" Of Soldiers Serving "Romantic" Mission In Afghanistan" Huffington Post 3/13/2008

President Bush let his inner adventurer out while discussing the state of the war in Afghanistan with military and civilian personnel. While those in Afghanistan detailed the logistical and diplomatic problems via teleconference, the President took a much more whimsical approach to their mission. Via Reuters:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Meanwhile, over 40 Taliban insurgents were killed in a battle in Southern Afghanistan, and six Afghani civilians were killed in a suicide bombing aimed at an American convoy.

EXHIBIT B: "Bush's Battlefield Envy" by Dan Froomkin, Washington Post

President Bush wishes that he could be alongside the troops in Iraq -- except that he's too old.

At least that's what he reportedly told a blogger embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. In the first session of its kind, Bush spent almost an hour on Friday talking with 10 so-called "milbloggers," including two who participated by video conference from a military base outside Baghdad.

"N.Z. Bear," one of the eight guests sitting around a table with Bush at the White House, reported: "Responding to one of the bloggers in Iraq he expressed envy that they could be there, and said he'd like to be there but 'One, I'm too old to be out there, and two, they would notice me.'"

Maybe Bush was just making idle chit-chat. But this would not be the first time the president has appeared unaware of the hardships his war has caused hundreds of thousands of American troops -- while expressing a misguided sense of bravado.

He certainly hasn't ever put himself in harm's way. The president who avoided serving in Vietnam as a young man has made only three visits to Iraq since declaring that major combat operations were over more than four years ago. All three of the visits were unannounced and featured extensive security.

Bush's total time in country? Less than 15 hours.

Bush's first trip was a two-and-a-half-hour visit to the Baghdad airport on Thanksgiving 2003, where he teared up at the sight of the soldiers and was famously photographed posing with a prop turkey.

In June 2006, Bush spent five hours visiting Iraqi political leaders in Baghdad, although he didn't let the prime minister know he was coming.

During his most recent trip, two weeks ago, Bush was on the ground for seven hours, never leaving the confines of a military base known as Camp Cupcake, a heavily fortified American outpost for 10,000 troops with a 13-mile perimeter.

At the same time, the White House has depicted Bush as being on the front lines. In a June 14 briefing, Hearst columnist Helen Thomas asked press secretary Tony Snow if there were "any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war?"

Snow's response: "Yes, the President. The President is in the war every day."

Thomas said she meant "on the front lines."

This is just the first page of the 5 page article.

IRAQ - What Bush & the GOP Don't Want To Hear

"Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam and al Qaida" by Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers 3/10/2008

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.

He and others spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because the study isn't due to be shared with Congress and released before Wednesday.

President Bush and his aides used Saddam's alleged relationship with al Qaida, along with Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, as arguments for invading Iraq after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed in September 2002 that the United States had "bulletproof" evidence of cooperation between the radical Islamist terror group and Saddam's secular dictatorship.

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell cited multiple linkages between Saddam and al Qaida in a watershed February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council to build international support for the invasion. Almost every one of the examples Powell cited turned out to be based on bogus or misinterpreted intelligence.

As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq. "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims," he said.

The new study, entitled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents", was essentially completed last year and has been undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a "painful" declassification review.

It was produced by a federally-funded think tank, the Institute for Defense Analysis, under contract to the Norfolk, Va.-based U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Spokesmen for the Joint Forces Command declined to comment until the report is released. One of the report's authors, Kevin Woods, also declined to comment.

The issue of al Qaida in Iraq already has played a role in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, mocked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill, recently for saying that he'd keep some U.S. troops in Iraq if al Qaida established a base there.

"I have some news. Al Qaida is in Iraq," McCain told supporters. Obama retorted that, "There was no such thing as al Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade." (In fact, al Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004, a year after the invasion.)

The new study appears destined to be used by both critics and supporters of Bush's decision to invade Iraq to advance their own familiar arguments.

While the documents reveal no Saddam-al Qaida links, they do show that Saddam and his underlings were willing to use terrorism against enemies of the regime and had ties to regional and global terrorist groups, the officials said.

However, the U.S. intelligence official, who's read the full report, played down the prospect of any major new revelations, saying, "I don't think there's any surprises there."

Saddam, whose regime was relentlessly secular, was wary of Islamic extremist groups such as al Qaida, although like many other Arab leaders, he gave some financial support to Palestinian groups that sponsored terrorism against Israel.

According to the State Department's annual report on global terrorism for 2002 — the last before the Iraq invasion — Saddam supported the militant Islamic group Hamas in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a radical, Syrian-based terrorist group.

Saddam also hosted Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, although the Abu Nidal Organization was more active when he lived in Libya and he was murdered in Baghdad in August 2002, possibly on Saddam's orders.

An earlier study based on the captured Iraqi documents, released by the Joint Forces Command in March 2006, found that a militia Saddam formed after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the Fedayeen Saddam, planned assassinations and bombings against his enemies. Those included Iraqi exiles and opponents in Iraq's Kurdish and Shiite communities.

Other documents indicate that the Fedayeen Saddam opened paramilitary training camps that, starting in 1998, hosted "Arab volunteers" from outside of Iraq. What happened to the non-Iraqi volunteers is unknown, however, according to the earlier study.

The new Pentagon study isn't the first to refute earlier administration contentions about Saddam and al Qaida.

A September 2006 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Saddam was "distrustful of al Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al Qaida to provide material or operational support."

The Senate report, citing an FBI debriefing of a senior Iraqi spy, Faruq Hijazi, said that Saddam turned down a request for assistance by bin Laden which he made at a 1995 meeting in Sudan with an Iraqi operative.

Bold emphasis mine.

Of course, since this report does not fit in Bush World, the Administration will continue to insist on a link between Saddam and al Qaida. And the GOP sheep, and its new leader McCain, will parrot the mantra.

ECONOMY - America Becoming Second Tier

"False promise of free lunch" by Walter Williams & Bryan D. Jones, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Bush policies put U.S. on road to second-tier economy and vanishing middle class

As the United States teeters on the verge of recession, the emerging view is that the branches of government responded with notable swiftness to enact an economic stimulus package. Glowing accounts of the striking bipartisanship came forth from the president and congressional leaders of both political parties as well as mainstream analysts.

Quick, however, is not necessarily good. The stimulus package does not come close to bringing the biggest bang for the buck, despite widespread agreement among respected economists across the political spectrum about the most effective options.

One-third of the costs go for a business tax break that cannot help, while two options rejected by the Bush Republicans -- extending the unemployment benefits and increasing food stamps -- are actually six times more effective in stimulating economic activity per dollar of costs than the costly business tax break.

Rather than see the stimulus package as a political and economic success, we see it as a mark of the continued failure of the political system to face problems and design policies directed at ameliorating them.

First, the experience with the economic stimulus package shows clearly that the federal government now lacks the capacity to cope with the massive economic problems that are pushing the nation toward second-class economic status.

Second, the source of this inability is the unshakable ideological belief of President Bush and the Republican Party that income tax cuts are the cure-all for the nation's economic problems. This core belief led to a flawed stimulus package, a repeat of the bad logic leading to the administration's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Third, the 2008 legislation has many of the same flaws as the earlier tax cuts that put the U.S. on the path toward fiscal insolvency, left the middle class in the worst financial straits in the post-World War II era, and brought the widest income inequality since the 1920s-effects we document clearly in our new book, "The Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America."

We watched in horror as the president and Congress traveled the same road to pass the ineffective economic stimulus package. It seems like we are seeing the movie sequel titled TAX CUT DISASTER III.

As in the first two movies, the ideological commitment to the Great Tax Cut Delusion has been buttressed by Bush's refusal to look at plain evidence of how severely the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts damaged the fiscal balance sheet of the nation and the health of its economy. This intransigence has been aided and abetted by the continuing reluctance of the congressional Democrats to take a stand against Bush's destructive tax cuts.

A stimulus package similar to the final bill had been negotiated in the House by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the House Republican leader John A. Boehner of Ohio. It provided full rebates for most tax filers of $600 for individuals up to $75,000 of income, $1,200 for couples up to $150,000 and $300 per child.

Those earning at least $3,000 a year but paying no income taxes receive $300 per individual and $600 per couple. The main business tax cut allows for "accelerated depreciation."

There is widespread agreement among respected economists of different political persuasions on the impact of available options for stimulating the economy.

Mark Landi, the chief economist of Economy.com, has assessed various tax and spending changes by determining the increased economic activity per dollar of cost. The greater the increase in economic activity for each $1 of outlay, the greater will be the effectiveness.

Landi found the most effective option to be a temporary increase in food stamp benefits that yields $1.73 additional economic activity per dollar of cost. A close second is extending unemployment benefits at $1.64 in increased activity for each $1 paid to the eligible unemployed.

The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, observed: "Food stamp and unemployment benefits can affect spending after two months, rebates would affect spending at the end of 2008." The Congressional Budget Office rated options on three criteria: cost-effectiveness, timeliness and certainty of effect. Unemployment benefits and food stamps were the only options to win CBO's highest rating as an effective stimulus in all three categories. No other option received the top rating in more than one category.

Accelerated depreciation write-offs -- the main tax cut for business in both the House and Senate --yields $0.27 in economic activity per dollar of tax cut. Thus, its impact per dollar of cost generates one-sixth as much economic activity as that of a dollar in food stamps or unemployment benefits. And the tax cuts cannot be implemented until late spring or summer at the earliest, while unemployment insurance and food stamps could have an effect almost immediately.

Democrats and Republicans made important trade offs in the House package. But the latter shaped the package both by forcing through the roughly $50 billion for business and blocking any benefits for food stamp and unemployment insurance benefits. The $50 billion for benefits to business that the Republicans demanded as the "price" for their support of the stimulus package rendered the $150 billion legislation marginally effective at best.

Senate Democrats lost in their fight for food stamps and unemployment insurance. The GOP won again in the case of a $300 payment to 20 million Social Security recipients and 250,000 disabled veterans after strong protests from the aged and veterans lobbies. The House quickly agreed to add a $300 rebate to the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, sought to bluff the Republicans. He threatened to put up for vote only the Senate bill that included unemployment insurance benefits and the House legislation without the $300 rebates for Social Security recipients and disabled veterans. But he backed down and the Republicans added not only the $300 tax rebates but an amendment disqualifying illegal immigrants.

One can view the legislation as a victory over gridlock and partisan bickering. The stimulus package gained wide praise as a good bill mainly because it seemed to feature the kind of hard work and compromise by the two parties that had vanished in the Bush presidency. Yet the final legislation is an overwhelming victory for Bush's tax cut ideology over sane economic reasoning.

Why did the Republicans refuse to use the two most effective options developed by highly reputable experts? We can find no explanation in any of the usual suspects: The package was not sensibly designed to stimulate the economy, and, if politicians are held accountable for economic performance, it was not designed to help them stay in office.

In particular, Republican true believers refused to deviate from what the authors call "The Great Tax Delusion," in which tax cuts are the optimum fix for economic ills whatever the "facts on the ground."

Republican tax cut dogma rules out budget expenditures such as unemployment benefits or any other highly effective spending programs on ideological grounds alone. In contrast, the belief in the force of business incentives to stimulate investment is impervious to either economic reasoning or sound evidence showing how poorly this option works.

A September 2007 report by the major Wall Street investment firm of Goldman-Sachs made the point that companies invest money on hand if the expected returns are likely to exceed the costs of a new project, "and that usually requires growth in demand strong enough to put pressure on existing resources."

In the case at hand, it does not take training in graduate level economics, only a little common sense, to figure out that the declining demand in the current downturn makes investments unattractive even if funds are available.

Research gave the same answer. In their Federal Reserve study of the effects of the accelerated depreciation incentives initiated in 2002 and increased in 2003 to stimulate the weak economy, the researchers found "only a very limited impact" at best on new investment.

The Democrats did force the Republicans to improve the economic stimulus package somewhat, but The Great Tax Delusion still dominated the final legislation. Despite this, the economic stimulus package -- a replay of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that warrants the label TAX CUT DISASTER III --won praise as the kind of bipartisanship needed in the federal government.

Putting the business benefits in the final legislation is the opposite of real bipartisanship. Bush intransigence and the Democrats timidity produced a bill that had none of highly effective stimulus options and wasted one-third of the total funds on business benefits shown to be ineffective by economic reasoning and research on a similar earlier effort.

The almost-uniform praise by the chattering classes and the press of a process that led to a flawed economic stimulus legislation as exemplary bipartisanship is deeply disturbing, bordering on a national delusion.

Rather than coming to praise this process, we'd like to bury it. It is just one more depressing example that the federal government lacks the will to cope with the major economic problems that threaten the United States.

For seven years, the Bush's tax cut ideology has trumped reality, harmed the nation's economy and its governing institutions, and pushed the middle class into the worst financial mess since the Great Depression.

The Great Tax Cut Delusion and its false promise of a free lunch for the American people must be cast aside as a patent medicine dangerous for the nation's health. If not, we risk speeding rapidly toward a second tier economy and a vanishing middle class.

Of course, the problem with the GOP is that they live in Bush World where Raganomics is king, even though it did not deliver its promises.

From the USENET article that lead to this post:

"The Great Tax Cut Delusion and its false promise of a free lunch for the American people must be cast aside as a patent medicine dangerous for the nation's health."

IRAQ - Another Casualty

"Mideast military chief resigns after magazine article" The Raw Story

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that Admiral William Fallon, the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East, is resigning.

Gates said Fallon had asked Gates for permission to retire and that Gates agreed.

Fallon was the subject of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy. It described Fallon as a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

First paragraph from Esquire article

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him "Fox," which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America's two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it's impossible to make this guy--as he likes to say--"nervous in the service." Past American governments have used saber rattling as a useful tactic to get some bad actor on the world stage to fall in line. This government hasn't mastered that kind of subtlety. When Dick Cheney has rattled his saber, it has generally meant that he intends to use it. And in spite of recent war spasms aimed at Iran from this sclerotic administration, Fallon is in no hurry to pick up any campaign medals for Iran. And therein lies the rub for the hard-liners led by Cheney. Army General David Petraeus, commanding America's forces in Iraq, may say, "You cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq," but Fox Fallon is Petraeus's boss, and he is the commander of United States Central Command, and Fallon doesn't extend Petraeus's logic to mean war against Iran.

Another example of the Bush-is-NEVER-wrong policy. So our military has another casualty of his Iraq War, military expertise. Why? How dare he disagree with Bush! Experts don't count in Bush World (unless they agree).

IRAQ WAR - The Ripoff of the American Public, Again

"Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore" by Farah Stockman, Boston Globe

The article leads off with this....

CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

You may want to take an antacid before reading the rest of the article.

HYBRID CARS - Getting Closer to What's Needed

"GM to make lithium-ion powered hybrid cars" CNN Technology

General Motors Corp. says it expects to bring its first lithium-ion battery powered hybrid engine system to market in North America in 2010.

The world's largest automaker by sales was to announce the hybrid system Tuesday at the Geneva International Motor Show, saying the new battery will deliver three times the power of GM's current nickel-metal-hydride batteries.

Automakers and battery companies across the globe have been racing to develop lithium-ion technology, seen by many as the key to mass producing hybrid vehicles powered by conventional and electric motors.

The batteries also are essential in producing the next generation of electric cars.

Daimler AG plans to introduce a gasoline-electric hybrid version of its Mercedes-Benz flagship S-Class luxury sedan that also uses a lithium-ion battery starting next year.

Lithium-ion technology already is widely used in consumer electronics, but now is being adapted to meet demanding automotive requirements. The batteries are lighter than other batteries, but cost and concerns about overheating have delayed their use.

Lithium-ion batteries common in laptops are smaller, yet more powerful than the nickel-metal hydride batteries used in gas-electric hybrids like Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius.

The GM and Daimler announcements in Geneva indicate increasing confidence about lithium-ion technology.

In addition, Toyota said in December it was preparing to start mass producing lithium-ion batteries for low-emission vehicles.

GM said the new hybrid system eventually will spread worldwide, and it expects sales volumes to exceed 100,000 vehicles per year. The system would build on GM's current hybrids, reducing engineering costs and the cost to consumers, the company said.

The battery system would be paired with a wide range of GM engines, including turbocharged gasoline, diesel and biofuel power plants. It would be used in multiple GM models across all brands, but the company would not say which models would get the new system.

The new system will produce a 15 percent to 20 percent increase in fuel economy over what a nonhybrid vehicle would get in 2010, GM spokesman Brian Corbett said.

The company said the hybrid system would debut in North America before the Chevrolet Volt, which is an electric car with a small conventional motor used to recharge the batteries. The company hopes to bring the Volt to market in 2010 as well.

GM said in a statement that the new hybrid system would save fuel by turning the engine off at idle and cutting off fuel during deceleration. It would offer brief electric-only power, the company said in a statement.

HOMELAND SECURITY - Internal Problems

"Crimes by Homeland Security agents stir alert" by Jay Weaver & Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald

Excerpt

Agency managers say these cases (in full article) reflect individual criminal behavior, not the culture of the agencies.

But some longtime employees said administrative incidents, like hostile confrontations or heavy drinking, may reflect the low morale and intense rivalries following the merger of federal agencies under Homeland Security.

Some employees from the old Immigration and Naturalization Service are the most vocal in their complaints. They bitterly denounce employees who came from the old Customs Service for "seizing control" of both CBP and ICE, "lording it over" former INS employees and showing disdain toward immigration-related work.

Expected to improve efficiency, the merger has instead spawned tension. Both Border Protection and Customs Enforcement scored near the bottom in a 2007 survey of employee satisfaction at 222 federal government agencies.

"It's become a cultural clash, tensions between officers from the merged agencies," said a Customs and Border Protection officer who asked not to be identified because he did not have authorization to speak publicly. "There's low morale and tension. Some people drink; others take it out on their colleagues or supervisors. It's no fun anymore."

Homeland Security, an invention of the Bush Administration that was created in response to 9/11, one has to wonder how anyone could believe such a huge bureaucracy could be more efficient. How could so many different organizational cultures be put under one "roof" and not generate more problems than they solve?

And this from a party (GOP) that believes in "small" government, or says they do.

That other organizations should contribute personal to Homeland Security I could agree with. But the FBI and FEMA should never have been put under control of the Homeland Security Department. These two agencies, at the least, should maintain independence (especially funding) from Homeland Security because they have a different mission.

The FBI must legally investigate federal crime so the Justice Department can successfully prosecute federal crime.

FEMA deals with disasters within the USA, the majority of which have nothing to do with terrorism. Further, this is one agency that should be returned to a Presidential Cabinet post.

Both these agencies could be mandated by law to contribute expert personnel to Homeland Security but maintain independence necessary to carry out their own missions.

POLITICS - Approved Commercial for the First Amendment

Why Government Can't Run Media

POLITICS - Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer Sounds Off

Lying Politicians
7/2007

MIDDLE EAST - American Policy Faces Political IEDs

"Gaza Pitfalls in Every Path" by HELENE COOPER, New York Times

Ever since the militant Islamist organization Hamas took over Gaza eight months ago, President Bush’s peace plan for the Middle East has been to prop up the more moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the hopes that Palestinians would rally behind him as man who could bring them statehood and make Hamas irrelevant.

But Israel’s military and economic pressure on Gaza, the menacing rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and the ensuing chaos that reached new heights this weekend have highlighted a fundamental tangle in that plan: As long as Hamas controls Gaza, it can subvert negotiations between Israelis and moderate Palestinians whenever it sees fit.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to the region on Monday, a trip planned for weeks, she is confronting very few options in achieving President Bush’s stated goal of peace between Israel and a new Palestinian state that includes both the West Bank, where Mr. Abbas’s government sits, and Gaza.

“She’s walking into a buzz saw,” said Aaron David Miller, author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.” “You cannot make peace with half of the Palestinian polity and go to war with the other half.”

On Sunday, as violence spilled over from Gaza into the West Bank, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas said talks with Israel had been suspended.

In many ways, the latest crisis, in which Israeli aircraft and troops have attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza after long-range rockets from Gaza hit the large Israeli city of Ashkelon, looks like the Lebanon war of July 2006, when Israel bombed Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

The Israelis are also facing criticism similar to that made during the Lebanon war — that their response has been disproportionate and killed many civilians, including children. And just as Israel faced tough decisions on Lebanon, the United States finds itself with dwindling choices, none considered attractive.

Ms. Rice could encourage Israel to increase the strikes against Hamas in the hopes of destroying its leadership in Gaza. But Israel tried that with Hezbollah in Lebanon and failed, leaving Hezbollah leaders to assert when the war was over that they had stood up to Israel.

Even if Israel did go all out to defeat Hamas in Gaza, the problem of what comes after would remain. For instance, would Israeli forces stay in Gaza, or would they be replaced by an international force from the already stretched NATO or the United Nations?

Ms. Rice’s other alternative — encouraging Israel to negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas — has pitfalls, Middle East experts say, because that would further legitimize Hamas, which the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization. Martin Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel, said such a cease-fire would further undermine Mr. Abbas and make it look like Hamas is the entity with which Israel and the West should be negotiating.

“Excluding them doesn’t work, and including them doesn’t work, either,” Mr. Indyk said. “So what do you do? This is a situation that does not lend itself to a sensible policy.”

With the rocket attacks on Israel, Hamas has demonstrated power to threaten peace talks simply by inciting a strong Israeli response and making it impossible for Mr. Abbas to sit by and do nothing. On Sunday, the day after Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Gaza, resulting in the biggest one-day death toll in more than a year, Mr. Abbas announced that he was suspending the peace negotiations in protest.

Mr. Abbas’s options, too, are limited, Palestinian experts say, given that the peace negotiation with Israel is his main selling point for his claim that he is the only one who can bring the Palestinians a deal with Israel.

A senior Bush administration figure acknowledged on Sunday that Ms. Rice “is playing a really bad hand.” So far, the Bush administration is adhering to a position very similar to the one it used during the Lebanon war.

As with Hezbollah, Ms. Rice is standing behind Israel’s right to defend itself. Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said late Saturday that the United States wanted to see “an end to violence and all acts of terrorism directed against innocent civilians.” But, he noted, “there is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self defense.”

As with the Lebanon war, Ms. Rice is, at the same time, trying to prop up a besieged “moderate” leader — this time, Mr. Abbas instead of the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora. But — just as with Hezbollah — she cannot stop the rocket attacks onto Israel from Gaza because the United States does not talk to Hamas.

“This is beyond her capacity, and beyond even the capacity of a secretary of state like Kissinger or Baker,” said Mr. Miller, who served as a Middle East negotiator for the last three presidents. “This is rooted in a fundamental problem that we haven’t acknowledged: Israel cannot make peace with a divided Palestine.”

Even within Israel, many experts are echoing that view. A few weeks ago, Hamas claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the Negev desert town of Dimona, the first such attack in more than a year. Shlomo Brom, a retired general at the Institute for National Security Studies, said the bombing was meant “to send a clear message” to Mr. Abbas, Israel and the United States that there will be no normalization of life without Hamas.

Mr. Brom advocates dialogue with Hamas. But the United States and Israel have refused to deal with Hamas leaders unless the organization forswears violence and acknowledges Israel’s right to exist.

So Ms. Rice will try to press surrogates, including Egypt, to lean on Hamas, administration officials say. And she will sharply criticize rocket attacks on civilian Israeli targets, and publicly charge Hamas with hiding behind civilians in Gaza. She will meet with Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, in the West Bank, and with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.

Ali Abunimah, a research fellow at the Palestine Center, a Washington-based advocacy group, derided the American strategy of ignoring Hamas: “You can’t talk to them. You can’t deal with them. You just cover your ears, close your eyes and pretend they don’t exist.”

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

The Palestine-Israeli Issue is the foundation of the distrust of America by Arab nations. This is outside Fundamentalist Islamic Terrorism in which the issue is the creation of Iran-style Islamic States in addition to hatred of everything American or Western.

WALL STREET - City/State Bond Ratings Hurting Americans

"States and Cities Start Rebelling on Bond Ratings" by JULIE CRESWELL and VIKAS BAJAJ, New York Times

Does Wall Street underrate Main Street?

A growing number of states and cities say yes. If they are right, billions of taxpayers’ dollars — money that could be used to build schools, pave roads and repair bridges — are being siphoned off in the financial markets, where the recent tumult has driven up borrowing costs for many communities.

A complex system of credit ratings and insurance policies that Wall Street uses to set prices for municipal bonds makes borrowing needlessly expensive for many localities, some officials say. States and cities have begun to fight back, saying they can no longer afford the status quo given the slackening economy and recent market turmoil.

Municipal bonds, often considered among the safest investments, sank along with stocks last week, darkening the already grim mood in the markets. Several big hedge funds unloaded bonds as banks further tightened credit to contain the damage from mounting losses on home mortgages and other loans.

States and cities rarely dishonor their debts. The bonds they sell to investors are generally tax-free and much safer than those issued by corporations. But some officials complain that ratings firms assign municipal borrowers low credit scores compared with corporations. Taxpayers ultimately pay the price, the officials say, in the form of higher fees and interest costs on public debt.

“Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars in increased costs because of the dual standard used by the rating bureaus,” said Bill Lockyer, treasurer of California, who is leading a nationwide campaign to change the way the bonds are rated. California, one of the largest issuers of municipal bonds, is rated A; Mr. Lockyer said the state should be triple A.

The state is soliciting support from other municipalities for a letter it intends to send to the ratings agencies, arguing that municipal bonds should be rated on the same scale as the one used for corporate bonds.

Because of their relatively weak credit scores, more than half of all municipal borrowers buy insurance policies that safeguard their bonds in the unlikely event that they fail to pay the debt. California, for instance, paid $102 million to insure more than $9 billion in general obligation debt between 2003 and 2007.

Ratings agencies like Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings are paid a second time to evaluate the insured bonds.

Officials at ratings firms and bond insurance companies defend the system, saying it gives investors the information they need to buy bonds with confidence. The recent turmoil, they say, highlights the need for insurance. They further add that rating municipal bonds like corporate debt would not save taxpayers much money, if any.

The outcry in the municipal market comes at a difficult time for the ratings firms and bond insurers. S.& P., Moody’s and Fitch Ratings have drawn criticism for assigning their highest grades to securities tied to subprime mortgages, only to downgrade them later as defaults surged and the investments tumbled in value.

The plunging fortunes of bond guarantors, meantime, have cast doubt over the value of the insurance policies municipalities buy.

“We are learning essentially that the emperor may have no clothes, that there is no real reason to require these towns to have insurance in many instances,” said Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, who is investigating the ratings firms on antitrust grounds. “And it simply serves the bottom lines of the ratings agencies, the insurers or both.”

The House Financial Services Committee plans to examine how municipal bonds are rated at a hearing on March 12.

At every rating, municipal bonds default less often than similarly rated corporate bonds, according to Moody’s. In fact, since 1970, A-rated municipal bonds have defaulted far less frequently than corporate bonds with top triple-A ratings. Furthermore, when municipalities do default, investors usually receive some — or even all — of their money back, unlike in most corporate bankruptcies.

But critics like Mr. Lockyer and Mr. Blumenthal face an uphill battle to change the Wall Street system. Upgrading municipal ratings would dramatically alter the landscape of the $2.6 trillion market; Moody’s estimates that more than half of the market would be rated triple A or double A using the corporate scale. Triple-A securities are considered nearly as safe as Treasury bonds issued by the federal government.

Moreover, some bond specialists caution that this is the wrong time to rerate municipal bonds. The slowing economy and faltering housing market are squeezing state and city tax revenue. At the same time, public pension liabilities keep rising. Facing budget shortfalls, states like California, New Jersey and Arizona are cutting services.

This is from the 1st page of the 2-page article.

This highlights the culture of Wall Street, which is prejudiced to big corporate business, where state and city bonds are not considered as corporate entities. Wall Street considers corporate entities as those who trade stocks on Wall Street, and do NOT consider municipal bonds = stocks.

But, when consulting every 401k investment advise I've used, state/city bonds are recommended as the safe, long term, investment of choice, along with US Bonds. There is a disconnect on Wall Street between financial advice given to consumers and how Wall Street handles state/city bonds.

OPINION - William F. Buckley, Jr.

Although I am now a Progressive, there is one Conservative I have always admired if not always agreed with; William F. Buckley, Jr.

This Conservative Sage came from a era of intellectual and polite politics. I admire him because he gave concise and logical arguments for the conservative cause, even if I did not agree with them, and was not a conservative ideologue. He disagreed with some conservative issues. He surprised me with his opinion on the Iraq War. Especially in the following interview which I watched at the time.

"Buckley: Bush Not A True Conservative" CBS Evening News Saturday anchor Thalia Assuras, CBS Evening News 6/22/2006

Excerpts

Buckley finds himself parting ways with President Bush, whom he praises as a decisive leader but admonishes for having strayed from true conservative principles in his foreign policy.

In particular, Buckley views the three-and-a-half-year Iraq War as a failure.

"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign," Buckley says.

Asked if the Bush administration has been distracted by Iraq, Buckley says "I think it has been engulfed by Iraq, by which I mean no other subject interests anybody other than Iraq... The continued tumult in Iraq has overwhelmed what perspectives one might otherwise have entertained with respect to, well, other parts of the Middle East with respect to Iran in particular."

Then there is this National Review article of 4/28/2007
"The Waning of the GOP" by William F. Buckley, Jr.

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war.

Meanwhile, George Tenet, former head of the CIA, has just published a book which seems to demonstrate that there was one part ignorance, one part bullheadedness, in the high-level discussions before war became policy. Mr. Tenet at least appears to demonstrate that there was nothing in the nature of a genuine debate on the question. What he succeeded in doing was aborting a speech by Vice President Cheney which alleged a Saddam/al Qaeda relationship which had not in fact been established.

It isn’t that Tenet now doubts the lethality of the terrorists. What he disputed was an organizational connection which argued for war against Iraq as if Iraq were a vassal state of al Qaeda. A measure of George Tenet’s respect for the reach and malevolence of the enemy is his statement that he is puzzled that Al Qaeda has not, since 2001, sent out “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half dozen American shopping malls on any given day.” By way of prophecy, he writes that there is one thing he feels in his gut, which is that “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.”

But beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to day, week to week, month to month. In South Vietnam there was an organized enemy. There is clearly organization in the strikes by the terrorists against our forces and against the civil government in Iraq, but whereas in Vietnam we had Hanoi as the operative headquarters of the enemy, we have no equivalent of that in Iraq, and that is a matter of paralyzing importance. All those bombings, explosions, assassinations: we are driven to believe that they are, so to speak, spontaneous.

When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that Mr. Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease? The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.

General Petraeus is a wonderfully commanding figure. But if the enemy is in the nature of a disease, he cannot win against it. Students of politics ask then the derivative question: How can the Republican party, headed by a president determined on a war he can’t see an end to, attract the support of a majority of the voters? General Petraeus, in his Pentagon briefing on April 26, reported persuasively that there has been progress, but cautioned, “I want to be very clear that there is vastly more work to be done across the board and in many areas, and again I note that we are really just getting started with the new effort.”

The general makes it a point to steer away from the political implications of the struggle, but this cannot be done in the wider arena. There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

Even though today's conservative ideologues hale him as the Father of Modern Conservatism, they overlook that he was not a sheep.

SCIENCE - Another Sol-Like Solar System?

"Astronomers Discover Solar System That Might Mimic Our Own" by Jenny Marder, PBS News Hour

A global team of professional and amateur astronomers has found a solar system thousands of light years away that looks like a scaled-down version of our own.

Two planets proportionally similar to Jupiter and Saturn are orbiting a star in a constellation called Scorpius, which is 5,000 light years, or 30 quadrillion miles, away.

The finding suggests that solar systems patterned like ours may be common, something astronomers have long believed to be true, said Scott Gaudi, assistant professor of astronomy at Ohio State University and lead author of the study. The study was published in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Science.

"I think this is very encouraging in terms of the hope that there are other solar systems like our own out there," Gaudi said. "This is a good step in the direction of trying to answer these questions."

Scientists detected the planets using a technique called "gravitational microlensing," which required constant nighttime monitoring of the faraway constellation over a 10-day span. To do so, researchers relied on amateur astronomers Jennie McCormick and Grant Christie, both based in Auckland, New Zealand, to collect data during the American daylight hours.

Microlensing, long considered the "poor cousin" of planet-finding techniques, uses Einstein's theory of relativity to find massive objects in outer space. When a close and a distant star align, the foreground star acts as a lens, magnifying the background star. Gravity of the planets near the background star further distorts the image. Scientists calculate the mass of the planets by measuring the extra distortions in that background star.

"In general, the bigger the planet, the larger the area is that it distorts," said Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State, and one of the study's co-authors. "If the planet is bigger, it will have fluctuations that last longer."

This discovery marks the first time microlensing has been used to find more than one planet. Only four other planets have been detected by this method, which is a tricky and time-consuming process, also requiring tens of thousands of hours of mathematical modeling.

"There's a lot of triage involved," Gould said. "It's really the result of an incredibly chaotic process." Gould also heads the MicroLensing Follow-Up Network, a collaboration of professional and amateur astronomers who assist in collecting data for microlensing events.

There is much that is still unknown about the planets. Astronomers don't know how big they are, what they are made of, or whether other smaller planets orbit the same host star. Any planet the size of earth would have escaped detection by the team because it would be too small to be seen with current technology at that distance.

"To see an earth directly would be like trying to find a firefly within one inch of a search light," said Sara Seager, professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But astronomers do know the mass of both planets and the mass of the star that they orbit. They know that these planets - believed to be gas giants - are the same distance from their sun as Jupiter and Saturn are to ours. And like Jupiter compares to Saturn, the larger planet is triple the size of the other.

"The star itself is smaller and dimmer than the sun," Gaudi said. "The planets are also smaller. But the amount of sunlight is not that different than ours, because the planets are closer."

Microlensing is particularly useful when objects are too far away to be located by more traditional methods, such as radial velocity, or the "wobble" method.

So far, Scientists have found about 270 planets and about 25 multiple-planet systems, mostly using the wobble method. Seager said most of these planets "are just crazy" -- giants compared to earth and clustered closer to their sun than those in our solar system.

Scientists believe this is because, the wobble method, by its very nature, is more sensitive to finding planets that sit closer to their parent star.

"[Microlensing] is the only technique that can find Saturn-like planets at Saturn-like distances from the star," Seager said. "We're seeing a triumph of a new technique and a vindication for people working so hard to find planets that no other technique can find."

Note the caveat in the article title, "might mimic." This is good science because it is a recognition of sciences' limits.

Also note the use of amateur astronomers which is recognition of these "amateurs" do good science. This is especially true of Astronomy.

CAMPAIGN 2008 - Would the GOP Love to Do This?

I am not saying that the GOP would actually do this, but one has to wonder, seeing what GOP supporters (especially Super Conservatives) are doing in this election cycle IF in their heart-of-hearts they wish they could.

"Putin’s Iron Grip on Russia Suffocates Opponents" by Clifford J. Levy, New York Times

In part

Shortly before parliamentary elections in December, foremen fanned out across the sprawling GAZ vehicle factory here, pulling aside assembly-line workers and giving them an order: vote for President Vladimir V. Putin’s party or else. They were instructed to phone in after they left their polling places. Names would be tallied, defiance punished.

The city’s children, too, were pressed into service. At schools, teachers gave them pamphlets promoting “Putin’s Plan” and told them to lobby their parents. Some were threatened with bad grades if they failed to attend “Children’s Referendums” at polling places, a ploy to ensure that their parents would show up and vote for the ruling party.

Around the same time, volunteers for an opposition party here, the Union of Right Forces, received hundreds of calls at all hours, warning them to stop working for their candidates. Otherwise, you will be hurt, the callers said, along with the rest of your family.

CAMPAIGN 2008 - The Cost of Being In the Spotlight

"For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk" by Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick, & Stephen Labaton, New York Times

In part

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

There's more in the full article.

Ah, yes. Being under the microscope. One has to wonder why the McCain people did not see this coming and head it off. After all, they were aware of the problem back "then."

Of course, all the GOP Attack-Dogs will denounce this as a Liberal, Commie, smear campaign when it applies to their own.

ON THE LITE SIDE - From "America's Finest News Source"

In The Know: New Iraqi Law Requires Waiting Period For Suicide Vest Purchases


"Archaeologist Tired Of Unearthing Unspeakable Ancient Evils" The Onion, Sci & Tech

HASAKE, SYRIA—When archaeologist Edward Whitson joined a Penn State University dig in Hasake last year, he did so to participate in the excavation of a Late Bronze Age settlement rich in pottery shards and clay figurines. Whitson had hoped to determine whether the items contained within the site were primarily Persian or Assyrian in origin.

Instead, he found himself fleeing giant flying demon-cats as he ran through the temple's cavernous halls, jumping from ledge to ledge while locked in a desperate struggle for his life and soul for what seemed like the thousandth time in his 27-year career.

"All I wanted to do was study the settlement's remarkably well-preserved kiln," said the 58-year-old Whitson, carefully recoiling the rope he had just used to clamber out of a pit filled with giant rats. "I didn't want to be chased by yet another accursed manifestation of an ancient god-king's wrath."

Over the course of his career, Whitson has been frequently lauded by colleagues for his thorough, methodical examinations of ancient peoples. He has also been chased by the snake-bodied ophidian women of Al'lat in Israel, hunted down by Mayan coyote specters manifested out of lost time and shadow in the Yucatan, and hounded by the Arctic-sky-filling Walrus Bone Woman of the early Inuits.

"It's true, I've got to stop reading the inscriptions on ancient door seals out loud," Whitson said. "I also need to quit dusting off medallions set into strange sarcophagi, allowing the light to hit them for the first time in centuries. And replacing the jewels that have fallen from the foreheads of ancient frog-deity statues—that's just bad archaeological practice."

Whitson added that he hopes one day to excavate an ancient Egyptian monastery or marketplace without hearing the ear-splitting shrieks of the undead while being swarmed by green-glowing carnivorous stink beetles.

"I realize I'm entering grounds that are considered sacred to these people," Whitson said. "But that doesn't mean I deserve to be pelted with poison-tipped darts shot from cavern walls. A simple 'Do Not Enter' sign in hieroglyphics would suffice."

Turning to the subject of his latest incident at a dig site in Peru, Whitson maintains he was not at fault for summoning the forces of evil.

"I was just idly rearranging flint sickle blades that had already been catalogued. Apparently, I spelled out the true name of a long-dead god-priest," Whitson said. "Can't a man even clean up his work area without inadvertently conjuring up a pack of lightning-breathing ocelots?"

Making matters worse, such encounters have had little to no scientific value.

"It's always, 'I will drink your soul' or 'I will chew the flesh from your bones' with these hellish apparitions," Whitson said. "When I ask them if that means the ancient Etruscans did, in fact, add copper to their mixing clay to make their urns more sturdy, they don't even seem to hear me."

Worn down by nearly three decades of peril, Whitson said he plans to move off the front lines to become a museum curator or in-office researcher.

"It's unfortunate," Whitson said. "Nothing quite compares to being out in the field on an actual dig. But the reality is, I'm really starting to hate almost getting killed all the time."

POLITICS - Lier n' Chief Taken to Task Again

Countdown, 2/14/2008
Keith Olbermann

Bush 'panoramic invasion of privacy' is terrorism

POLITICS - GOP Says Dems "Putting the Nation at Risk"

"House Defies Bush on Wiretaps" by Dan Eggen & Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post 2/15/2008

The House of Representatives defied the White House yesterday by refusing to make an expiring surveillance law permanent, prompting a harsh exchange between Republicans and Democrats as they prepared for an extended, election-year battle over national security.

The episode was a rare uprising by Democrats against the White House on a terrorism issue, and it inspired caterwauling on both sides about the dire ramifications of the standoff.

Republicans said Democrats were putting the nation at risk, while President Bush offered to delay his scheduled departure for Africa today to reach a deal. Democrats responded with charges of administration recklessness and fearmongering.

The conflict erupted on the same day that House Democrats approved contempt citations against White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers over their refusal to cooperate with an investigation into the mass firings of U.S. attorneys.

That vote -- resulting in the first citations ever issued against White House officials -- infuriated the Bush administration and helped torpedo a short-lived political truce with Democrats, who had celebrated the signing of a bipartisan economic stimulus package on Wednesday. Republicans staged a walkout before the vote.

The surveillance dispute centers on the Protect America Act, a temporary law approved over Democratic misgivings last August. It expanded the powers of the government to monitor the communications of foreign suspects without warrants, including international phone calls and e-mails passing through or into the United States. It is set to expire at the end of the day tomorrow.

The Bush administration wants to make the law permanent, while adding legal immunity for telecommunication companies that were sued for invasions of privacy after helping U.S. intelligence agencies conduct warrantless wiretapping. The Senate has approved a bill backed by the White House, but the House has balked at the immunity provision and raised other objections because of civil-liberties concerns.

Without the law, administration officials said yesterday in interviews and statements, the monitoring of terrorist groups overseas will be severely hampered. Telecom firms may also become reluctant to help the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies conduct surveillance, officials said.

"If Congress does not act by that time, our ability to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning will be compromised," Bush said in a hastily arranged news appearance on the South Lawn of the White House. He said that intelligence officials were "waiting to see" if Congress would "tie their hands."

Democrats immediately said that the expiration of the temporary law would have little, if any, immediate impact on intelligence gathering. "He has nothing to offer but fear," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters after Bush's address.

"I regret your reckless attempt to manufacture a crisis over the reauthorization of foreign surveillance laws," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said in a letter to Bush, in defense of his colleagues in the House. "Instead of needlessly frightening the country, you should work with Congress in a calm, constructive way."

The acrimony reflects the long-simmering anger among some Democratic lawmakers and their liberal allies over their inability to thwart Bush on Iraq policy and terrorism issues since the Democrats took control of Congress last year after the 2006 elections. It also indicates a new willingness to risk election-year attacks by Republicans who say that Democrats are unfit to protect the country.

More on 2nd page of article

Here it is again. Fearmongering by the GOP.

Give up your Constitutional Protected Rights in the name of National Security. We are expected to feel more secure as our Rights are threatened. Unfortunately many American citizens have fallen for this argument; just as other citizens, in other times, have fallen for it as their governments slid into dictatorships.

They ignore that there is a legal way to conduct such surveillance already on the books, but that is not enough for the GOP.

IRAQ - From the Inside

"LOGIC" McClatchy Trusted Voices

I always believe that logic has no place in Iraq because things move in a very random way in this country but also I have to accept that there is an exception for each role.

When the Americans decided in away or another to depend on the local residents to defend their neighborhood, they knew for sure that they had made a very difficult decision because they were 100% sure that some of residents if not the majority are members insurgents groups and they have their own ideologies which might not agree or meet with the American ideology in any way. Yet, the US army decided to take the initiative and try to use the insurgents.

Of course, there are some positive points in using those people, they know the tactics of the insurgents, some of them know where the insurgents live or meet and others know other important issues like funding or the way the insurgents move or act. All these positive points encouraged the Americans to form what is known the awakening councils or the support councils or any other names I might not have an idea about. The most important aim for the US army was to settle security in Iraq and especially in Baghdad.

Well, I can’t see any logic in the American initiative of using the insurgents to fight Qaida. First because these areas are mixed and we all know about the sectarian tension and violence, the insurgents who join these awakening council may uses their authorities for personal purposes and second depending on the insurgents to fight the insurgents (Qiada or any other groups) doesn’t mean defeating the enemy because for sure some members of the enemy would sneak inside the American formed awakening councils.

believe the Americans tried to follow the steps of the awakening council in Anbar which was created by the sheikhs of Anbar province tribes. The mistake of the Americans was not studying the psychological side of Anbar experience. People of Anbar are almost from one main tribe and they all suffered from Qaida. When they decided to fight Qaida, they gathered their efforts to work as one real team because they wanted to end their suffering. They formed their awakening council and they succeeded because they had an exact goal. There is no way to compare between the awakening council of Anbar and any other awakening council whether its formed by Iraqis or American. Anbar awakening council is the real copy while the others are imitations.

Since almost one weak, the awakening council in one of Baghdad ’s neighborhood and in Diyala province suspended their cooperation with the government. They both accuse the official security forces (police and army) of attacking these councils. The awakening council in Amiriyah neighborhood west Baghdad says that a joint force of the Iraqi and the US armies arrested some of its members. The supporters of the awakening council in Diyala demonstrate for the last four days demanding to depose the police chief of Diyala accusing him with the sectarian violence.

These two examples are the best evidence of the failure of the American experience which (the failure) is very logical result for an illogical initiative. Those councils now demonstrate against the American supported Iraqi government. As I said, those people don’t have a case to fight for and this is a very strong weak point in the infrastructure of such awakening council.

I wish the American army find a good solution for this crisis. I’m afraid the US army decides to form new awakening councils within the current awakening councils who support the Iraqi government. In fact, In fact, I’m afraid that the whole issue would end with forming an awakening government.

HEALTHCARE - Big Business REALLY Cares, NOT

"Doctors balk at request for data" by Lisa Girion, LA Times

Physicians object to a letter from Blue Cross seeking information that could lead to policy cancellations.

The state's largest for-profit health insurer is asking California physicians to look for conditions it can use to cancel their new patients' medical coverage.

Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose "material medical history," including "pre-existing pregnancies."

"Any condition not listed on the application that is discovered to be pre-existing should be reported to Blue Cross immediately," the letters say. The Times obtained a copy of a letter that was aimed at physicians in large medical groups.

The letter wasn't going down well with physicians.

"We're outraged that they are asking doctors to violate the sacred trust of patients to rat them out for medical information that patients would expect their doctors to handle with the utmost secrecy and confidentiality," said Dr. Richard Frankenstein, president of the California Medical Assn.

Patients "will stop telling their doctors anything they think might be a problem for their insurance and they don't think matters for their current health situation," he said. "But they didn't go to medical school, and there are all kinds of obscure things that could be very helpful to a doctor."

WellPoint Inc., the Indianapolis-based company that operates Blue Cross of California, said Monday that it was sending out the letters in an effort to hold down costs.

"Enrolling an applicant who did not disclose their true condition (and the condition is chronic or acute), will quickly drive increased utilization of services, which drives up costs for all members," WellPoint spokeswoman Shannon Troughton said in an e-mail.

"Blue Cross feels it is our responsibility to assure all records are accurate and up to date for HMO providers," she said. "We send these letters to identify members early on in the process who may not have been honest in their application."

Blue Cross is one of several California insurers that have come under fire for issuing policies without checking applications and then canceling coverage after individuals incur major medical costs. The practice of canceling coverage, known in the industry as rescission, is under scrutiny by state regulators, lawmakers and the courts.

Patients in a raft of lawsuits accuse the insurers of canceling coverage over honest mistakes and minor inconsistencies on applications that they contend are purposely confusing. Victims of cancer and other serious medical problems often are unable to get new coverage once their insurance has been rescinded and they may go without treatment when they need it most. Suddenly swamped by medical debt, some people have lost homes and businesses.

Insurers say the cancellations are an important weapon against fraud and occur rarely.

Physician groups and doctors who received the letter told The Times they never had seen anything like it. Also unfamiliar with such letters was Don Crane, executive director of the California Assn. of Physician Groups, which represents many of the large HMO-style medical groups.

"I have not heard any dialogue on this business of underwriting or ferreting out existing" conditions, Crane said.

But WellPoint's Troughton said this was nothing new. "This is something that has been in place for several years and to date we have not received any calls or letters of concern for this service," she said.

It was important, Troughton added, "to note that participation in this outreach effort is voluntary on the part of the physicians."

The California Medical Assn. sent a letter to state regulators Friday urging them to order Blue Cross to stop asking doctors for the patient information, saying it was "deeply disturbing, unlawful, and interferes with the physician-patient relationship."

The letters go out to some physicians who care for Blue Cross' share of the state's estimated 3 million people with individual policies.

Troughton said Blue Cross sent the letters to medical groups that operate, in effect, as health maintenance organizations. Blue Cross pays such groups a set amount per patient each month. With a few exceptions, the groups are then responsible for arranging and providing patients' medical care and take on a substantial piece of the risk.

Troughton said "in the past" physicians in such medical groups had requested information on patients' pre-existing medical conditions because anything that had not been disclosed could affect the medical group's finances.

She disputed the notion that the letters could improperly breach patient confidentiality. She said the sharing of medical information with medical groups was within federal law because it fell under "patient, treatment and operations" guidelines.

Blue Cross doesn't always cancel the policies of patients with discrepancies in their applications, Troughton noted. Sometimes it may offer them another plan, she said.

Lynne Randolph, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Managed Health Care, said the agency would review the letter. Blue Cross is fighting a $1-million fine the department imposed in March over alleged systemic problems the agency identified in the way the company rescinds coverage.

A spokesman for state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said the Insurance Department had not received any complaints about Blue Cross' letter. But because the medical association had sent a copy of its complaint to the department, the letter is "on our radar now," spokesman Byron Tucker said.

The letter is "extremely troubling on several fronts," Tucker said. "It really obliterates the line between underwriting and medical care. It is the insurer's job to underwrite their policies, not the doctors'. Doctors deliver medical care. Their job is not to underwrite policies for insurers."

Anthony Wright, executive director of HealthAccess California, a healthcare advocacy organization, said the letter had put physicians in the "disturbing" position of having to weigh their patients' interests against a directive from the company that, in many cases, pays most of their bills.

"They are playing a game of 'gotcha' where they are trying to use their doctors against their patients' health interests," Wright said. "That's about as ugly as it gets."

Here's the bottom line. Citizens of California, and one has to assume those in other BlueCross states, will have to believe that this letter is only a "weapon against fraud." Yap, it could not be abused as a tool to fatten corporate profits.

We need to remember that poor ol' BlueCross needs more, and more money for the CEO's salary and Golden Parachute, not to mention ever increasing dividends to stockholders. Just making a profit is not good enough. BlueCross NEEDS MORE, and MORE, and MORE.....

Women, beware of NOT knowing you were 2mths pregnant the month you signed up for BlueCross. You should have known! Oh, BlueCross will offer you a different plan, like in $$$$ Plan.

WAR ON TERROR - Deficiencies

"U.S. deficient against Muslim insurgents, study says" CNN.com

The U.S. military is seriously deficient in meeting "the threat of Islamist insurgencies," says a Pentagon-commissioned study released Monday.

The Rand Corp. report characterizes "U.S. military intervention and occupation in the Muslim world" as "at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible." The Pentagon asked the nonprofit research organization to review strategies to thwart insurgents.

The United States should instead focus its priorities on improving "civil governance" and building "local security forces," according to the report, referring to those steps as "capabilities that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"Violent extremism in the Muslim world is the gravest national security threat the United States faces," said David C. Gompert, the report's lead author and a senior fellow at Rand. "Because this threat is likely to persist and could grow, it is important to understand the United States is currently not capable of adequately addressing the challenge."

The Pentagon did not respond to calls Monday from CNN seeking comment.

The report is titled "War by Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency."

It focused on the increase of about 30,000 U.S. troops in Iraq over the past year -- the "surge" -- which supporters have credited for a decrease in insurgent attacks.

But "it would be a profound mistake to conclude from [the troop increase] that all the United States needs is more military force to defeat Islamist insurgencies," Gompert said. "One need only contemplate the precarious condition of Pakistan to realize the limitations of U.S. military power and the peril of relying upon it."

The study notes that U.S. military interventions can be risky as well as costly because of the tenacity of jihadists, "infected by religious extremism." It says massive military interventions against insurgencies usually fail.

Looking at some 90 conflicts since World War II, the report concludes that establishing "representative, competent and honest" local government is the way to go.

"Foreign forces cannot substitute for effective local governments, and they can even weaken their legitimacy," said co-author John Gordon. The study says the United States would have more success if the insurgency were defused early and it must develop ways to interpret early "indicators and warnings."

Along with building "effective and legitimate local governments," the report says the United States must do a better job of organizing, training and equipping local security forces, and gathering and sharing information.

To beef up counterinsurgency efforts, local governments must develop "job training and placement of ex-combatants; an efficient and fair justice system, including laws, courts and prisons; and accessible mass lower education," it says.

"When it comes to building these and other civil capabilities abroad, the United States is alarmingly weak," Gompert said. "To fix this problem, the federal government will need a dramatic increase in civilian capabilities, new organizational arrangements, and more flexible personnel policies."

More money in foreign aid, more civilian professionals and help from U.S. allies and international groups are needed, the report said.

Other observations from the report include:

• American military forces can't keep up with training local militaries to match the growth of Muslim insurgent groups and that must improve. Police should be trained by professional police trainers.



• American military prowess should focus "on border and coastal surveillance, technical intelligence collection, air mobility, large-scale logistics, and special operations against high-value targets."



• A new information-sharing architecture should be created. This "Integrated Counterinsurgency Operating Network" would promote "universal cell phone use, 'wikis' and video monitoring."



• "Pro-America" themes should be dropped "in favor of strengthening local government" and emphasizing the failure of jihadists to meet people's needs.



• U.S. allies and international organizations, such as NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations could help the United States in areas such as "building education, health and justice systems, and training police and" military forces that perform civilian police duties.

Reminder, this is "a Pentagon-commissioned study."

Looks like Emperor Bush failed to keep a tight leash on Rand so they would come out with an all-is-rosie, and thank God for Bush, report.

NATIONAL GUARD - Cost of the Bush War

"A depleted National Guard" Boston Globe Editorial 2/11/2008

Excerpt

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION opted to fight two land wars with an overextended service corps, and one harmful side effect of this decision has been the regular deployment of state National Guard units in these conflicts. This is not the purpose for which the Guard is intended, and it has left units far short of the vehicles and equipment they need to assist in homefront emergencies. Over the long term, this practice also runs the risk of hurting recruitment and reenlistment of Guard members.

A report released earlier this month by a congressional commission said that the Massachusetts Army National Guard at the end of last year had just 46 percent of its needed military equipment. Even worse, it had just 40 percent of the dual-use trucks, radios, generators, and medical equipment needed both in combat and in civilian emergencies. The state official in charge of homeland security, Juliette Kayyem, says that figure somewhat overstates the shortage the state Guard faces for civil emergencies, but the report leaves little doubt that many states would be hard put to respond to major disasters.

One indication that the Pentagon at least understands the strain that has been placed on both regular units and the Guard came Wednesday, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate that the top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is not the sole adviser to President Bush on the war. The clear implication was that decisions on troop levels in Iraq would reflect not just Petraeus's estimation of what is needed but also the opinions of Pentagon officials of what the military - active duty, the Reserve, and the Guard - can sustain.

Again and again, Emperor Bush worries about the war but is raping our military to support it.

ON THE LITE SIDE - Bear Facts

The Bear Facts
CATS RULE!


click pic to enlarge

IRAQ - Mosul

"Iraqi insurgents attack during NBC interview" by David Edwards and Nick Juliano, The Raw Story

Mosul now more dangerous than two years ago, soldier says

As the war in Iraq largely slips from the front of Americans' minds, a new report from Mosul demonstrates the daily hardships and constant threat of attack still faced by US troops trying to pacify the country.

NBC's Richard Engel is in the middle of an interview with one member of the Army's 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment when their combat outpost in Mosul comes under attack. Engel and the soldier he is interviewing -- both outfitted in helmets and body armor -- flinch as the first bullets fly toward the makeshift base.

"It's clear the war here is as intense as ever," Engel says, narrating his piece.

He asks the soldier if the attacks are a "constant problem."

"Yes," the soldier says grimly.

A 10-man team of insurgents attacked the base, and the US troops fan across the city searching for them. They come up empty-handed as visibly frightened residents of the city nonetheless offer no cooperation to the Army.

As al Qaeda insurgents have been driven out of Anbar provence, they have apparently regrouped and found a foothold in Mosul, a crumbling, depressed city in northern Iraq. The city also apparently has provided a cache of new recruits for the insurgency.

Over the several days Engel spends in Mosul, the soldiers face several attacks from insurgents, using guns and improvised explosive devices to target the US troops before they slip back into the general population.

Sgt. Robert Johnson, on his third tour in Iraq, "says Mosul is more dangerous now, than when he was here two years ago," according to Engel.

"After this, I don't want to come over here no more," Johnson says. After tours lasting nine, 16 and 15 months, "my body is getting weary."

The article has the video from MSNBC.com, broadcast February 6, 2008.