It Hits the Fan:

The New York Times reports today that a bipartisan Congressional report documents "485 contacts between [Jack] Abramoff’s lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with [Karl] Rove’s office." According to the report "lobbyists spent almost $25,000 in meals and drinks for the White House officials and provided them with tickets to numerous sporting events and concerts."

Could it be that a heel has been revealed to an archer?

Good Times, Bad Times: Just Where Is the Economy?

As the midterm elections approach, the Republicans chant "terrorism" and the Democrats cry "foul," while oil prices drop until the election is over. What happened to the economy?

Jim Jubak, over at MSN Money has an important analysis of the situation that takes a look at the big picture, the one that will play out over a number of future administrations. America, the world's biggest debtor nation, and China, the world's biggest creditor nation, passed up some statistical milestones.

For the first time in 91 years, the U. S. "paid more to its foreign creditors than it took in from its overseas investments." Meanwhile, "China's foreign-exchange reserves topped $1 trillion."

Jubak points out,

The two countries couldn't seem to have less in common: The United States owes an increasing debt, and China is piling up foreign exchange at a record rate. But in reality, both countries face the same problems: How do you balance consumption and savings in a rapidly aging world? The U.S. has gone way too far toward consuming without saving, especially considering the huge financial costs that result from the aging of the baby-boom generation.But China is out of balance, too. The country saves too much and often invests money foolishly. The country is aging even more rapidly than the United States, albeit from a younger starting point. And it has less infrastructure in place to support that aging population than the United States does.

This is news that will ultimately be every bit as important as what is going on in the Middle East.

Clinton on Fox:

Did you catch former President Bill Clinton on Fox? If not, here's the link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9026120716999978732&q=bill+clinton+interview

If Nixon had this kind of moxie, he would never have needed to resign.

Quick! Here's a Test: The War in Iraq makes us (A) Safer or (B) Less Safe?

Condie Rice appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes tonight, arguing that the war in Iraq actually makes us safer. We are at last confronting the danger, she said.

In the meantime, both the New York Times and The Washington Post are reporting that our best intelligence agencies are insisting that the war is making us less safe as each day goes by.

Can there be any better proof that ideology defines this administration even in the face of the best evidence available?

"White men raping black women was not considered a crime at the time." – Roseanne Pereira:

In 1906 a race riot broke out in Atlanta, Georgia (see "Century-Old Race Riot Still Resonates in Atlanta" by Kathy Lohr), taking the lives of more people than historical records can account for. Few of us today have any knowledge of what was taking place a short 100 years ago, not only in Atlanta, but around much of the U. S. It's a sign of how ahistorical the American mindset is.

In the Middle East, people are still seething over Alexander the Great's invasion, while here in the U. S. people have little notion of what their grandparents' world was like. For American's what happened in 1906 might have well taken place on Mars.

Nevertheless, the scars remain. And Atlanta wasn't the only scene of mob violence and murder. Lynchings took place throughout the U. S., even in such northern states as Illinois, and they continued to be a part of our lives at least as late as the 1960s while Lyndon Johnson was president.

When the FBI went to Philidelphia, Mississippi to investigate the murder of three civil rights workers, they discovered the bodies of nine black men who had been lynched, when a creek outside of the town was dredged in an attempt to recover the bodies of the civil rights workers.

Within months of the investigation, the U. S. would be heavily involved in the Vietnam War, where black soldiers made up no less than 40 percent of the American forces on the ground, four times the number that would accurately represent their demographics back in the U. S.

Ignoring history has allowed us all to be exploited. And it continues to do so.

"Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight":

An Associated Press story appearing on MSNBC.com, reports the growing truth in this old saw. During World War II, American soldiers died in approximately equal percentages. Since 1945, that particular form of egalitarianism has changed dramatically with each successive conflict. According to the story,

Among the Americans killed in the Iraq war, 34 percent have come from communities reporting the lowest levels of family income. Half have come from middle income communities and only 17 percent from the highest income level. [Emphasis added]

In other words, 84 percent of the people who have died fighting in Bush's adventure into empirialism have come from the people who receive the smallest benefit from this great country.

Just what sort of "democracy" does he and his sort plan on establishing in the Middle-East? The same sort they work so hard to undermine here?

Gas Prices Plummet, but Nobody Buys an SUV!

Okay, that's not quite true, but true enough to spark a story in today's New York Times. This past couple of weeks we've seen the price at the pump drop close to a dollar as the oil companies try to help Georgie Boy's low approval ratings. The November elections are only a few weeks away, and the Republicans aren't looking so good.

The Times is acting shocked that America hasn't rushed in mass to save Ford and Chevy's butts by slurping up all those gas guzzlers gathering dust on their new car lots, now that we can almost afford to fill their tanks. Ha! Fool me once … as Georgie Boy once stumbled through. Nobody buys the lie that fuel is going to be cheap for very long. We all know full well that Exxon and their brotherhood put Georgie Boy into office in order to fill their pockets. The low price at the pump is just a momentary form of campaign contributing.

So top off now. Take the lawnmower can with you and fill it too. By the time you drive to Grandma's for Turkey Day dinner, the chances are pretty good you'll be paying premium prices again.

And email Detroit that you'd prefer one of those Japanese cars that gets at least 40 miles to the gallon in real world driving conditions, not that stupid EPA nonsense they put on the window sticker.

Your Government at Work:

Here's the story from The Washington Post: "1,100 Laptops Missing from Commerce Dept." As they say, this is one for the books. Folks at Commerce are reporting the laptops as stolen. Evidently they've only just gotten around to checking their inventory. Some of the laptops disappeared as long ago as 2001. Commerce is playing down the notion that personal information may have been heisted along with the hardware. Let's make a guess here: how much you want to bet the employees just walked away with the devices, assuming that if they were allowed to use them while they were at work they must belong to them.

More Welfare Reform Needed?

Clinton and his Republican buddies worked hard in the 1990s to get those lazy welfare moms off the dole and back into the workforce. They were just destroying the American way of life. Thank God the government kept welfare where it belongs, feeding the megapockets of the super rich. Take a look at yesterday's Washington Post article, "A Quiet Break for Corporations." It'd be a shame if the people who buy the government had to play fair.

Will 'Publicans Steal the Next Election?

With the mid-term election only weeks away, officials are beginning to worry that the stage has been set for the coming election to be stolen. The Washinton Post reports,

[I]n Maryland last Tuesday, a combination of human blunders and technological glitches caused long lines and delays in vote-counting. The problems, which followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable and whether election officials are adequately prepared to use them.

The Republicans are already gearing up to steal the election, whining about "conspiricy theorists" in their snide fashion, as if looking down one's nose is sufficient enough to defray criticism of their actions.

Decomcracy in the U. S. has always been far from perfect, but with the Republican party now suffering under some of the worst leadership imaginable, they are feeling the heat to resort to politics as it has come to be known in some of the worst of third world countries. Power is indeed seductive.

Technology:

Need to make PDF files and can't afford to buy software? I can recommend ActivePDF, a freeware program from a company by the same name. It runs on Windows 98 and up, and appears to do a good job of converting Word documents to PDF in our test. According to its creators, it should create PDF files from any program that can be printed in Windows.

So Just How Messed Up Is the Bush Iraq Policy?

Here's some insight no voter should ignore: Rajiv Chandrasekaran published an article in The Washington Post, reprinted on MSNBC, that gives a small indication of how far the Bush White House has its collective heads shoved up their nether regions. Here are some fascinating excerpts:

[A] political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

… [S]taff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

* * *

Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation that sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people.

* * *

[M]any CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans.

One thing and one thing alone accounted for policy in Iraq: loyalty to the Bush administration. Stupidity was not an object in the way of employment. If this administration doesn't go down in history as one of the worst ever, then we need to find some historians who aren't brain dead.

Technology:

Desperately seeking to upgrade, repair, or disassemble your mobile phone? Check out Digg.com. The New York Times' David Pogue has an article on the site that's devoted to all things techy, that's sure to spark your giggle box.


Corruption in High Places:

When the Republicans were out of office, one of their biggest complaints was about the corruption within the party that controlled government. Now that Republicans have been in power for many years, guess what? EDMUND L. ANDREWS has an important article in today's New York Times: "Interior Official Assails Agency for Ethics Slide." Apparently it doesn't matter what party you belong to. Stay in power long enough, and greed takes over. This story focuses on the Department of the Interior:

“I have observed one instance after another when the good work of my office has been disregarded by the department,” [stated Earl E. Devaney, the Interior Department’s inspector general]. “Ethics failures on the part of senior department officials — taking the form of appearances of impropriety, favoritism and bias — have been routinely dismissed with a promise ‘not to do it again.’ ”

The blistering attack was part of Mr. Devaney’s report on what he called the Interior Department’s “bureaucratic bungling” of oil and gas leases signed in the late 1990’s, mistakes that are now expected to cost the government billions of dollars but were covered up for six years.

Shocking News!

This just in: The Central Intelligence Agency reported last fall that Saddam Hussein did not have a close relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of Al Qaeda as asserted by Pres. Bush and other administration officials. Their findings were delivered to the Republican controlled Senate Intelligence Committee last fall (a year ago).

I know, your jaw is now on the floor, poor thing!

Please note: The human brain requires seven times the amount of time to process a negative statement as a positive one. Could it be that the little monosyllable hidden in the lead paragraph just didn't sink in the administration's collective cranium?

A spokesperson close to Pres. Bush stated, "Cheney just doesn't do 'no'," implying the president's brain trust may require even more time than the ordinary politician to process a negative response.

"It is important," the spokesperson clarified, "that we be told what we want to hear so that we can tell you what we want you to know. That's God's will."

"Don't you mean 'the President'?" a member of the White House press corps asked.

"Next question?" the spokesperson responded.

Some Democrats are reportedly raising the "impeachment issue." After all, if you can impeach a president for lying abut a peccadillo, shouldn't you impeach one for lying about reasons to take the country to war and bringing about the deaths of untold thousands of people?

Not so, reply the Republican lead Congress. Lying about a little nookie on the side is an abomination, lying about your reasons for taking the country to war is, well, just routine politics.


Big News in Business:

Hewlett-Packard’s chairwoman, Patricia C. Dunn, comes under heavy fire for the manner in which she directed the investigation of leaks within HP's board of directors. Dunn, known as a super salesperson rather than someone who actually knows something about the products or services the company manufactures and provides, farmed the investigative process out, and after several more steps removed, the term "pretexting" has now come into fashion.

When you link electronics with a word that has "text" in it, you probably think it has something to do with typing text into some sort of device. And it does in this case, but the real root is "behaving under the pretext of being someone else" (a strategy intended to conceal something). It seems the sleuths pounding the pavement, as it were, in this case were emailing requests while misleading folks about who they were, pretending to be members of the board, when in fact they were not.

The rest of us are accustomed to such activity. We get emails everyday that purport to be from someone other than the real sender.

Frankly, I'm still surprised that sales people are able to rise to the highest levels within any organization. It has always seemed to me that the person at the top should be the most knowledgeable about what products the company makes or services it provides, not some fast talking, slick sales person. But then I guess I'm just naïve, right Jack Welch?

Blair to Go—Career Wrecked by Allegiance to Bush:

One time popular Prime Minister Tony Blair, head of England's Labour Party, has announced he will step down in the coming months, as announced in today's New York Times, before his term ends. Blair's fall from grace is a direct result of his blind following of U. S. Pres. George Bush, in the latter's "war on terror."

Europeans, including the English, see Bush as a chest pounding buffoon, whose gunboat diplomacy has wrought havoc to what was a relatively peaceful and prosperous world. Bush's recent announcement concerning persons who have been hidden away in other countries' prisons and his intentions to try these persons in tribunals along with his intentions to force revisions in U. S. law to allow for some forms of torture cannot have helped but to further fuel the animosity the British feel toward Blair's blind adherence to everything "Bush."

Major Oil Find in Gulf of Mexico:

A new oil field discovered under four miles of ocean in the Gulf of Mexico promises to keep the oil flowing in the U. S. The new find is the largest in U. S. territory since Prudhoe Bay. However, experts report the find will not alter the overall domestic oil supply. The U. S. is the largest consumer of oil in the world and will still need to import more oil than it is capable of producing unless major changes occur in alternate energy use.

The good news is that the stock value of the three companies involved in the search and future production has gone up. The bad news is that the find does nothing to alleviate environmental issues or to limit the U. S.'s reliance on oil from troubled places around the world.

See AP Business Writer Brad Foss's story, "Vast Oil Field Tapped in Gulf of Mexico."


Republicans Stoking the Fires of the Politics of Hatred and Fear:

Republicans in hotly contended districts are fanning the fires of hatred and fear among constituents as they gear up for the mid-term electections. The hot topic issue this year is the fear of Hispanics (referred to as illegal immigrants even when they are in the U. S. legally).

Republicans are calling for tougher border control, meaning the border with Mexico, as if that were the only U. S. border, as they play on Average Joe's fear and anguish over the changing demography. See Carl Hulse's article, "In Bellwether District, G. O. P. Runs on Immigration" in today's New York Times.

Technology:

Want to know how to use WinXP's Recovery Console? Here's some helpful info:

How to Start and Run the XP Recovery Console

The Recovery Console is a tool built into Windows XP that will allow you to repair problems when your XP computer won't start. Here's how to start it:

1. Insert the Windows installation CD in your computer's CD-ROM drive.
2. Reboot the computer from the CD.
3. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press F10 or R for Repair.
4. On a dual boot system, you're prompted to enter the number of the Windows installation that you want to log onto.
5. Enter the administrator password when prompted.

You can use the Recovery Console commands to change file/folder attributes, run batch files, change the boot configuration, run chkdsk to repair disk problems, copy and delete files, disable and enable services, manage disk partitions, overwrite the boot sector, repair the Master Boot Record, format drives, and more.

For a more detailed explanation, see Microsoft's site.

Economics:

Trickle-down Reaganomics is a proven fact. I've already borrowed several times against the trickle-down income I expect to receive in the year 2424 from Reagan's first tax cuts. I find the banks are all willing to loan me money at easy interest rates based on my future windfall. I can't wait to see what they'll loan me on the Bush trickle-down money.

The U. S. Economy:

Pundits have been trying to figure out why the average Joe thinks the economy is on the fritz for the past several years. The Feds report a growing economy while Joe keeps moaning about how bad things are. For the best analysis I've seen check out Steven Greenhouse's article in today's New York Times: "Many Entry-Level Workers Feel Pinch of Rough Market."

Greenhouse doesn't just look at the numbers provided by the Feds or some university analysists, he talks to real people and looks at real numbers. Workers today are earning less money and carrying heavier debt loads than they were ten years, even five years, ago. Young people are entering the job market without the expectation that they will become independent adults.

Republicans Fear House Will Fall to Dems in November:

House Republicans now see as many as 40 seats vulnerable in the coming elections, as reported in Sunday's Washington Post. Dissatisfaction with Bush's war, poor economic progress, and high gasoline prices have made voters ready for a change. It is feared that conservative Republicans will vote with their feet by not coming out and that sunny-day Democratic voters will come out in increased numbers.

This should place increased pressure on Ohio and Florida vote benders to fix the elections once again in those two states.

The major oil companies have been trying to do their part to help the Bush idealogues by lowering prices, even during a holiday weekend at the end of the summer when prices at the pump are usually jacked up to produce windfall profits. But polls still show sufficient decreasing support so that one Republican candidate for the senate from New Jersey has decided to come out openly against the Bush Iraqi policy.

Even SuperPol Karl Rove is struggling under the strain. Increasing numbers of Republicans are prepared to turn their backs on the Bush failed blitzkrieg of the Middle East. Some are even calling for Rummy's resignation. Will wonders never cease, so to say.


More Wanna Be Terrorists Seized in England:

Sixteen persons were arrested in two seperate raids in England in recent days as reported in The Washington Post yesterday. Bush is expected to contact Tony Blair in the near future about a possible U. S. military invasion in order to bring democracy to the British Isles.

It is thought that the Brits would be willing to contribute troops to the effort in a coalition of the willing and that perhaps no U. S. troops would actually be needed on the ground. However, the U. S. Air Force has insisted on contributing bombing runs, using stealth air craft.

Secretary Rumsfeld has reportedly directed General Milo Minderbinder, who rose to prominence during World War II as a logistics officer and later directed bombing campaigns in Vietnam, to develop a plan.

Bush's Failure in His War on Terror:

Today's lead story in the New York Times relates the increasing power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, fueled by record opium harvests: '“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,' Mr. Costa (the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa) said at a news briefing."

After 9/11 it was well known that if we were to eradicate Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, or at least severly limit its power there, that nation building was an inevitability. The Bush administration has severely limited our ability to accomplish this with its obsession with Iraq and now Iran. The administration has turned a blind eye to the country that was the base for Al Qaeda operations.

It takes time to grow and harvest opium. Obviously no one has been paying attention to what has been going on in Afghanistan or they simply do not care.


Microsoft Rushes its latest Beta Version of Vista to Testers:

What's the panic, Microsoft? Why rush out a Beta to testers on a new version of Windows? Bottom line, meaning fear of falling stock prices. It isn't as if the vast majority of Windows users are dying for a new version of Microsoft's flagship software. The fact is that almost everyone who uses Windows is satisfied with the version they've been using for several years. Many users are still content with older versions of Windows, going back as far as Windows 95 in some cases.

After all, if people were truly anxious to upgrade their operating system they would switch to Mac or Linux, but very few people have or are likely to. So why rush out a newer version of Windows? Simple, the stock market will downgrade the value of Microsoft stock if the company falls further behind in its projected release of the next operating system. Microsoft is worried about one thing and one thing only: the value of its stock. Boom! That's it.

You can read about it here. By the way, will Vista be better than XP? It will require much more powerful hardware than XP or 2000 or 98 in order to run well. That will certainly be better for the few computer manufacturers left standing. Dell has witnessed dropping stock values of late. They are no doubt anxious to see the new OS come out, hoping it will spur sales of new hardware.

Quote of the Day:

"Nobody cares what George Clooney thinks about beer." — My son.

Rummy Taken to Task by Former Sportscaster:

Keith Olbermann, now a news anchor for MSNBC, delivered a ringing response to Secretary Rumsfeld's recent speech in which the Secretary characterized critics of the administration as supporters of fascism. You can view the video from this link:

Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld