Eminem's Mosh Music Video - Directed by GNN's Ian Inaba

Source: GNN (Guerilla News Network)
Oct. 25, 2004

Directors Note:

Most Americans are well aware that in 2000, the presidential election was decided by 537 votes. From hanging chads to the hourly updates of the manual recount, this story was obsessively covered by the mainstream press. However, what wasn’t covered was what journalist Greg Palast discovered that thousands of primarily minority voters were scrubbed from the voter registry in Florida and prevented from potentially changing the course of America’s turbulent last four years.

By the spring of 2004 all around the country, groups from both sides of the aisle were organizing and activating plans to impact the coming presidential election from MoveOn to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Here at GNN we were finishing our book, True Lies , two related documentary projects and barely had enough time for our own attempt of an online voter registration campaign. Through Palast’s reporting and our own investigations into electronic voting machines and the crossover campaign that defeated Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, we became increasingly aware of the fallibility of elections and the fragile state of America’s most fundamental democratic process. We also knew the potential power of the youth vote. With more than 55 million voters between the ages of 18 and 35, this demographic group accounts for 36% of the total eligible voters in the U.S. And as witnessed in 2000 it all comes down to who shows up to vote on election day.

So on the eve of one of the most spirited elections in recent times, it’s time to try and turn out the vote. As a music video director, ideas for videos usually come independent of the song and are then adapted to fit the timing and lyrics of the featured track. I initially developed a concept for this video in June 2004 and contacted Interscope shortly after to find out what artists in their roster would be releasing albums near the election. The goal was to make a video that inspired young people to vote because they too often disregard it as a powerless exercise. To show them that political decisions do impact their daily lives and that voting is the most powerful act we all have to voice our opinion and effect change. And to educate and reiterate the point that whether or not people want to accept it, there are forces in play that attempt to suppress the youth and minority vote.

When I got the callback that our favorite conspirator of controversy, Eminem would be releasing an album in November, I knew we had the potential to say something that would be heard by the masses. And after hearing the song later that month it seemed Mr. Mathers had also been in the lab concocting his own plans for the election and it was precisely the anthem I had been looking for. So with less than six weeks to deliver we put together a team and forgot about what it meant to sleep. In order to produce animation for a song that runs 5:20 in just over 5 weeks we were going to need a lot of green tea and mate and a little help from Marshall himself. This video was made possible by a team of artists who came together inspired by a song and video that might be able to effect the next four years of all of our lives.

Two years ago, this video would not have been approved by a single record label. A year ago it would never had the possibility of being played on television. But with the changing tide of public sentiment marked by the success of our last video for Chronic Future, an anti-war message that made it into rotation on TRL we think it might just have a chance.

Now, it’s up to the broadcasters. Will they ban the top selling musical artist for being anti-establishment while they allow other propaganda to air? Or will they finally allow an artist who has the courage to speak out to take center stage and utilize the airwaves for something other than typical celebrity fodder?

Stay tuned here for updates on the unfolding antics and remember to show up and vote for you candidate of choice on November 2nd.


Credits
Eminem
“Mosh” from the album Encore

Ian Inaba
Producer, Director, Editor

Anson Vogt
Art Director, 3-D Animation

Haik Hoisington
Character Animation

Steve Ogden
Motion Graphics

Craig Patches
Illustration, Animation

Kevin Elam
Eminem Animation

Mark Nicola
After Effector

John Quigly
Green Screen Producer, Cameraman

Thomas Brohdal
Illustration Design

Nicholas Sanchez
Illustration Support

Eat your heart out Mussolini

Source: Alex Jones' Prison Planet
by William Bowles
October 24 2004

We control political forces, we control moral forces we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state.” - Benito Mussolini [1]

The database state

Six million video surveillance cameras, bioemetric ID cards, transnational data interception laws and ’joined up’ government. Add to this the privatisation of key state functions, all mediated by global IT corporations that are also the indispensable link in the weapons, media, pharmaceuticals and global financial networks and you have the corporate, security state 21st century style.

The privatisation project initiated in the 1970s under Reagan/Thatcher (so-called neo-liberalism) heralded the return to the days of Mussolini insofar as it reversed the gains of working people achieved through decades of struggle by once more fusing the primary objective of the state under capitalism with that of the corporations. All pretence of the ’liberal’ state representing different strata and interests of the whole of society were effectively abandoned. Greed and self-interest once more became the overriding ’philosophy’ of the capitalist state.

Central to the success of the ’neo-liberal’ agenda is the creation of an effectively disenfranchised electorate, whether through the fusing of the ideologies of the dominant political parties or the opting out of the electorate from the election process.

The fascism of Mussolini’s Italy was overt and by today’s ’standards’ crass, utilising brute force and direct attacks on the organised working class and the left by manipulating the organs of the state (parliament) into passing increasingly repressive laws.

However, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. The route to the creation of the corporate security state needn’t involve the formal abandonment of universal suffrage. There are more subtle and surreptitious ways and they don’t necessarily involve fraud, vote rigging, ballot stuffing, jerrymandering or even selective disenfranchisement aka Florida 2000, although these can be the routes the capitalist state takes when push comes to shove.

What fascism and the modern corporate security state share in common are the following:

The ’legal’ suppression of the organised working class such as trade unions and other political formations as well as increasing curbs on civil and political liberties.

But perhaps in the current context there are two aspects that are of concern:

1. The privatisation of the state and 2. The construction of the surveillance state except that now the ’enemy’ is not communism but ’terrorism’.

These two strands have come together in the current situation, facilitated by the new technologies that have made possible firstly, the construction of sophisticated tracking and ID systems that are implemented through an alliance between global IT corporations and the state that Mussolini could only dream about.

But for such a system to be effective under a so-called democracy it needs firstly an invisible enemy and secondly given the current situation, a global one.

The common theme that propels both sides of the equation is fear.

Fear on the part of the people of an enemy who can strike anywhere and effectively at random and the fear that state has of its own population, especially in the current post-Cold War period when, after decades of propaganda about the ’Red Menace’ (the same Red Menace that motivated Mussolini) whose defeat we were told, would bring peace and prosperity, only to find that on the ’other side of the veil’, lay an even greater menace, terrorism.

Under these circumstances, only an even greater fear could replace nuclear annihilation and/or loss of freedom under a ’totalitarian dictatorship’, a fear that has more in common with the movies ’Predator’ and ’Robocop’ than the world we actually live in.

To engineer such a fear and do it virtually overnight takes a lot of effort and resources that only a corporate security state could harness and most importantly, justify. But to do it, it has had to use the racist ideology that has been instilled in our collective psyche of the ’other’, that dehumanises those who aren’t ’like us’, who don’t we are told, subscribe to ’our’ values. In a phrase, these are people who are less than human, animals, things that don’t even think the way we do. People who are ruthless and fanatical, whose fanaticism can only be met with our own ’civilised’ fanaticism, that of the total state committed to total war without end.

Is the ’logic’ not totally compelling?

And this is a fear that is total in its scope, striking we are told, where we feel most vulnerable - on our way to work or in a restaurant. There can be no total victory over such an enemy, hence the ’war’ will last one, two or even more generations. This is endless war, the arms merchant’s wet dream. It’s the state bureaucracy’s license for total surveillance leading ultimately to incarceration 24/7. First they come for the ’alien’ and eventually for anyone else who dares step out of line.

And all of it done under a ’democracy’, there is no need for a Mussolini-style Fascism but effectively that’s what it will amount to but it will be done with our cooperation simply because we don’t think it’s us - you and me - who are the real enemies of the state.

Fanciful? Just look around you at the kind of society that is being constructed literally before our eyes by Blunkett and Ashcroft, all of it justified by an enemy that is in the first place the Frankenstein creation of the economic and political policies of ’neo-liberalism’ that has come back to haunt us just as Count Frankenstein’s creation did.

The corporate state calls it ’liberal imperialism’ but its real name cannot be spoken for to do so, would reveal the true nature of the beast. But occasionally we let the ’cat out of the bag’ and it’s not only instructive to carefully read their words, but to who and by whom the words are addressed

“Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle. [my emph. WB]” Robert Cooper, The new liberal imperialism. Cooper, formerly a senior Foreign Office advisor to Tony Blair [1]

So confident is Cooper in his vision of this new world order that he actually spells out the rationale behind this ’new’ liberal imperialism. He tells us

“First there is the voluntary imperialism of the global economy. This is usually operated by an international consortium through International Financial Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank - it is characteristic of the new imperialism that it is multilateral. These institutions provide help to states wishing to find their way back into the global economy and into the virtuous circle of investment and prosperity. In return they make demands which, they hope, address the political and economic failures that have contributed to the original need for assistance. Aid theology today increasingly emphasises governance. If states wish to benefit, they must open themselves up to the interference of international organisations and foreign states...” [2]

Cooper tells us

“It is precisely because of the death of imperialism that we are seeing the emergence of the pre-modern world. Empire and imperialism are words that have become a form of abuse in the postmodern world. Today, there are no colonial powers willing to take on the job, though the opportunities, perhaps even the need for colonisation is as great as it ever was in the nineteenth century. [my emph. WB]” [3]

Tell it like it really is Mr Cooper! All of the above was written between the invasion and re-colonisation of Afghanistan and that of Iraq. This then is the context of the de facto return to the days of Mussolini but we dare not call it by its real name, even Cooper phrases it in an ’acceptable’ form for us ’civilised’ folk

“What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. [my emph. WB]” [4]

The world Cooper refers to of course is not that of the ’other’, out there in the ’jungle’ but to ’ours’ but even as he articulates these views, it’s clear the jungle is within and always has been. The treatment meted out to the ’aliens’ incarcerated in Belmarsh or Guatanamo that literally drives men mad [5] gives the lie to Cooper’s vision of an ’us’ and ’them’ view of the world. For underneath the language lies another reality that propels the ’logic’ of Cooper, that of the corporate state that in order to maintain the rule of capital must firstly create and then perpetuate a state of constant and increasing fear that requires ever greater control of our lives. Eat your heart out Mussolini, don’t you wish you’d had the kind of powers the new and improved version now has.

Notes

1. Speech before the new National Directory of the Party, April 7, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 120

2. ’The new liberal imperialism’ by Robert Cooper, Observer Worldview Sunday April 7, 2002

3. ibid

4. op cit

5. op cit

6. See ’Our betrayal of these men has made them sick’ By Raj Persaud, The Independent, 14 October 2004, In part the article tells us “There are two theories as to why the governments are behaving as they do - one is that indefinite internment acts as a deterrent to any Muslim considering opposing the state.” In other words it’s not about ’terrorism’ but opposing the state.

See also ’Judge tells Blunkett to relax restrictions on terror suspect’ By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent, The Independent, 15 October 2004, where we learn that the ’terror suspect’ is subject to the kinds of treatment that were previously seen only in Apartheid South Africa under the notorious Suppression of Communism Act, “Since then, he [the suspect ’G’] has been forced to live in a small one-bedroom housing association flat in London with his wife and young daughter. He suffers from polio and requires crutches to walk more than a few steps. Under the terms of G’s house arrest, he is denied visitors and all contact with the outside world.”

Cooking His Own Goose (re: George Bush)

Source: The New York Times
by Maureen Dowd
October 24, 2004

In yet another attempt to prove to George W. Bush that he is man enough to run this country, John Kerry made an animal sacrifice to the political gods in a cornfield in eastern Ohio last week.

Four dead geese are not too high a price to pay for a few rural, blue-collar votes in a swing state. As long as Mr. Kerry doesn't slip and ask Teresa to purée the carcasses into foie gras.

Tromping about in a camouflage costume and toting a 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun that shrieked "I am not a merlot-loving, brie-eating, chatelaine-marrying dilettante," the Democratic nominee emerged from his shooting spree with three fellow hunters proclaiming, "Everybody got one, everybody got one," showing off a hand stained with goose blood.

One of my first presidential trips was going to Texas one weekend to cover Ronald Reagan hunting with James Baker at Mr. Baker's ranch. President Reagan came back proudly empty-handed. He didn't want to shoot any small animals. He had his faults, but he never overcompensated on macho posturing, thinking that blowing away a flock of birds in borrowed camouflage for the cameras or bombing a weakened dictator and then sashaying in Top Gun gear for the cameras would give him more brass.

Just as W. needed to shock and awe to prove he was no wimp, Mr. Kerry needed to shoot and eat. As Jodi Wilgoren wrote in The Times, a Kerry aide assured reporters that "two of the birds would soon be sent back to Mr. Kerry for consumption."

The senator is desperately trying to prove his regular-guydom. He's using more contractions and dropping G's, T's and N's, as Ms. Wilgoren points out, and he drank Budweiser with his male aides while watching a Red Sox game, when you know he was dying for an imported beer.

Democrats have been panting to get a gun into their nominee's hands for a month now. Apparently three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star in Vietnam combat are not enough - even for Mr. Kerry, who seems to agree with the Vietnam-evading president and vice president that he has to prove he would be as tough on national security as they have been.

That wouldn't seem to be that hard, given that Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney were the guys who were in charge when the C.I.A. warnings came true and Bin Laden struck in the U.S.; given that they let Osama and his top deputies slip away at Tora Bora; given that they had a war in Iraq over imaginary weapons; and given that they still don't even admit that their belligerence and bullying have spawned a large insurgency movement in Iraq and caused a recruitment swell for Islamic terrorism.

W. and Dick Cheney like being seen as a huge beast throwing its weight around. That was the whole point of whacking Saddam. The pair immediately began their Beavis-and-Butthead snickering and sneering at the Democrat's camouflage costume.

The vice president is right that Mr. Kerry can't compete in the arena of power hunting. When Mr. Kerry goes, only the birds are in danger. When Mr. Cheney and his pal Antonin Scalia go duck hunting together, the Constitution is in danger.

Even as they mocked the Democrat for trying to be macho with a wildlife tableau, the Republicans were trying to be macho with a wildlife tableau.

The Bush-Cheney campaign began showing a new ad on Friday aimed at scaring up more votes. Meant to be a chilling cross between "The Wolfen" and "The Blair Witch Project," the ad plays more like a cross between a Sierra Club promotion and "Lassie."

The wolves stalking around the forest are not meant to evoke scary Paul Wolfowitz and the neocons stalking around the Pentagon, planning more mischief. They are supposed to be the Al Qaeda terrorists stalking America, even though they look too cuddly for the narration that ominously warns: "In an increasingly dangerous world, even after the first terrorist attack on America, John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America's intelligence operation by six billion dollars, cuts so deep they would have weakened America's defenses. And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm."

One Kerry aide joked to a reporter that the Democrats should do a response ad where Mr. Kerry comes into the forest in a camouflage jacket and shoots the wolves.

Why not? A few more dead animals might do the trick for him.

Canada Has Surplus Vaccine

Source: WAFF.com
Oct. 20, 2004

People are lining up by the thousands in the U.S., worried they won't get their flu shot this year.

The U.S. can't fill the demand because of a manufacturing problem. But in Canada, they've got a secure supply of flu vaccine..

Dr. John Carsley, Montreal Public Health said, "Purchased by the Provincial governments and made available to people at high risk and their entourage free of charge so obviously we can't offer that to the Americans because its targeted at our high risk population."

It takes months to manufacture a flu vaccine, a process that starts with eggs.

Canada needs some 10 million doses to immunize the elderly, children under 2 and other vulnerable groups.

Ontario offers the vaccine free to its whole population. ID Biomedical in vancouver supplies three quarters of the Canadian demand, another firm, supplies the rest .

Both orders are already delivered and Canada's health minister says there may be some left over for American needs.

Ujjal Dosanjh, Federal Minister of Health said, "I haven't spoken to them. In fact ID Biomedical says it does have a surplus it could ship to the U.S.

Dean Linden, ID Biomedical said, "We are presently offering between one million and 1.5 million doses to help out with the crisis in the U.S. with the wishes of the FDA. The public health problem the Americans are having now is one that could face Canadians in the future."

Both countries rely on just two companies for all their flu vaccine.

Dr. John Carsley, Montreal Public Health said, "If manufacturing is concentrated in a very, very few companies the risk of when something goes wrong its going to affect a lot of people and I think thats what we've seen in the states and its something that its going to be a continuing risk as we go forward unless more companies become involved in manufacturing."

A potential hazard of putting too many vaccine eggs in one basket.

CAMPAIGN 2004 | HIP-HOP GENERATION
Hip-hop's influence expected at polls

Source: Miami Herald
By EVELYN McDONNELL
Oct. 19, 2004

Lucianne Florveus turned 18 -- voting age -- earlier this year. On Saturday, the only thing perhaps more precious to the Miami native than her newfound suffrage was her cellphone and its photo of her with Russell Simmons.

Florveus ran into the founder of Def Jam Records, Phat Farm clothing and the nonpartisan Hip-Hop Summit Action Network at the USA Flea Market in Miami. Simmons and his brother, the Rev. Run of the seminal rap group Run-DMC, and members of the HSAN and America Coming Together were cruising the air-brush and jewelry stalls, encouraging marketgoers to vote.

''What he's doing is very great,'' said Florveus, who says she is a registered voter. ``He inspires us to vote.''

Simmons was in town for the launch of wife Kimora Lee Simmons' Baby Phat line at the Funkshion fashion show in Miami's Design District. But during the day, he was wearing the political hat that has become an increasingly integral part of the mogul's being.

Simmons founded the HSAN to pressure politicians on issues such as education, drug-sentencing laws and poverty. On Oct. 1, the HSAN sponsored two bus tours through 10 Southern and Midwestern states to encourage 18- to 35-year-olds to vote. Miami was the second city in which Simmons climbed on board (the first was Cleveland).

''We want to go places where the candidates are not going,'' Simmons said as he and Run sat down to plates of Cuban food from the market's cafe. ``These freedom rides do make a difference.

``It's a cultural shift, a shift of consciousness. People are more sophisticated today than they were yesterday, they're more interested. There's a change in enthusiasm; we'll see at the polls.''

In 1992, MTV's Rock the Vote campaign was widely credited with helping Bill Clinton win the presidency by tapping the power of Generation X. The HSAN, along with the ongoing Rock the Vote drive and P. Diddy's Citizen Change, say they will have a similar effect this year by tapping the growing social consciousness of the hip-hop generation.

''It's exciting to be around all this energy and see how the youth have come to this consciousness of doing this,'' Run said. ``We followed what the kids are doing. We weren't the first to make this thing happen; this thing started bubbling and we said wow, great, let's make it bigger.''

Added Simmons: ``We're watering good seeds. We didn't plant them.''

The HSAN's leaders also say their reach goes beyond any one generation. ''The candidates don't know these kids are influencing their parents,'' Simmons said.

Norris Norman was sitting in a barber's chair when the HSAN group walked by. He's got a couple of decades on the average 103.5 The Beat listener, but he was still impressed with Simmons' and Run's appearance.

''What they're trying to do is motivate people to vote,'' he said. ``We always suffer when Republicans are in office. We lost jobs to the fat cats.''

Simmons said that it's actually the Republicans, particularly party chairman Ed Gillespie, who have been most responsive to the HSAN drive. An aide interrupted Simmons to say that President Bush had just contacted Simmons' office and was hoping to join the bus at some point. But HSAN President Dr. Ben Chavis later denied that, and said any such direct involvement by a party would be illegal for the nonpartisan group.

''Because of the effectiveness of what we're doing, our tour has caught the attention of both campaigns,'' Chavis said.

Simmons said he was taken aback by recent statements by rapper Kris ''KRS-One'' Parker, a frequent HSAN supporter, that black Americans shouldn't be concerned about Sept. 11 or the election. ''I'm surprised that anyone would think that we shouldn't vote,'' Simmons said.

The HSAN says it has registered one million voters through 26 summits across the country.

The focus Saturday was on early voting. The HSAN buses are targeting neighborhoods with a history of low-voter turnout or voter-suppression issues. During their 17 days in the state, they have visited most of the major cities. In South Floridam they spent time in Little Haiti, Overtown and Opa-locka.

Later Saturday afternoon, at the Mashiko's store off Biscayne, women shrieked as they waited for autographs from the hip-hop icons. HSAN national volunteer coordinator the Rev. Lennox Yearwood said the bus tours have found a level of excitement in Florida that exceeds that in other states.

''People have been waiting for this in Florida,'' he said. ``They were disenfranchised, and now that's changing.''

The HSAN's leaders say they plan to round up celebrities for the last few days of the tour. Yearwood noted that such stars as Mary J. Blige and Outkast's Andre 3000 have said that they plan to vote for the first time this year.

''Part of the process has been enfranchising the artists,'' Yearwood said.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, 5.4 million Americans bought Outkast's last album. The leaders of the HSAN believe many of them will follow Andre to the polls.

''It's a movement. I believe we're going to choose the president,'' Run said. ``I think we're going to shock people with how many people make it to the polls.''

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket: The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.

Source: Los Angeles Times
By Robert Scheer
Oct. 19, 2004

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."

According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.

"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official.

"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."

None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.

The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.

And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.

In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.

The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don't have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."

The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."

Without a Doubt (re: Republican civil war)

Source: The New York Times
By RON SUSKIND
Oct. 17, 2004

ruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''


Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''

Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!'''


The democrat Biden and the Republican Bartlett are trying to make sense of the same thing -- a president who has been an extraordinary blend of forcefulness and inscrutability, opacity and action.

But lately, words and deeds are beginning to connect.

The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.'' The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group -- the core of the energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory -- believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time, the issue of Bush's certainty -- the issue being, as Kerry put it, that ''you can be certain and be wrong.''

What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?

All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.

The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!'' (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president's re-election effort in New Jersey.)

he nation's founders, smarting still from the punitive pieties of Europe's state religions, were adamant about erecting a wall between organized religion and political authority. But suddenly, that seems like a long time ago. George W. Bush -- both captive and creator of this moment -- has steadily, inexorably, changed the office itself. He has created the faith-based presidency.

The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. The dome of silence cracked a bit in the late winter and spring, with revelations from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and also, in my book, from the former Bush treasury secretary Paul O'Neill. When I quoted O'Neill saying that Bush was like ''a blind man in a room full of deaf people,'' this did not endear me to the White House. But my phone did begin to ring, with Democrats and Republicans calling with similar impressions and anecdotes about Bush's faith and certainty. These are among the sources I relied upon for this article. Few were willing to talk on the record. Some were willing to talk because they said they thought George W. Bush might lose; others, out of fear of what might transpire if he wins. In either case, there seems to be a growing silence fatigue -- public servants, some with vast experience, who feel they have spent years being treated like Victorian-era children, seen but not heard, and are tired of it. But silence still reigns in the highest reaches of the White House. After many requests, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said in a letter that the president and those around him would not be cooperating with this article in any way.

Report: Jeb Bush Ignored Felon List Advice

Source: Associated Press
By AP writer
Oct. 17, 2004

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ignored advice to throw out a flawed felon voter list before it went out to county election offices despite warnings from state officials, according to a published report Saturday.

In a May 4 e-mail obtained by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Florida Department of Law Enforcement computer expert Jeff Long told his boss that a Department of State computer expert had told him "that yesterday they recommended to the Gov that they 'pull the plug'" on the voter database.

The e-mail said state election officials "weren't comfortable with the felon matching program they've got," but added, "The Gov rejected their suggestion to pull the plug, so they're 'going live' with it this weekend."

Long, who was responsible for giving elections officials his department's felon database, confirmed the contents of the e-mail Friday to the Herald-Tribune. He said he didn't remember the specifics, but that Paul Craft, the Department of State's top computer expert, had told him about the meeting with Bush.

A software program matched data on felons with voter registration rolls to create the list of 48,000 names. Secretary of State Glenda Hood junked the database in July after acknowledging that 2,500 ex-felons on the list had had their voting rights restored.

Most were Democrats, and many were black. Hispanics, who often vote Republican in Florida, were almost entirely absent from the list due to a technical error.

Bush's spokeswoman, Jill Bratina, denied allegations that the governor ignored warnings about the list.

"It's also irrelevant because the list isn't being used," Bratina said Saturday.

Bush told the Herald-Tribune that Craft didn't call him, and he denied that any meeting took place May 3 with Craft or other election officials.

"Once it became clear after talking to the secretary of state that there were problems with the list (in July), that's when we decided to end it," Bush said.

Craft hung up on a Herald-Tribune reporter seeking comment Friday. A message left for a Paul Craft in Tallahassee was not immediately returned Saturday.

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek (news, bio, voting record), the Florida chairman of Democratic Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites)'s presidential campaign, said the report shows the extent Bush will go to ensure his brother's re-election.

"Jeb Bush and the Bush campaign need to come clean about their involvement in this sad spectacle," Meek said.

Florida is one of few states that does not automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons when they complete their sentences. Purging felons from voter rolls has been a hot-button issue since the 2000 presidential election, when many citizens discovered at the polls they weren't allowed to vote.

Election officials have said that anyone who feels they have been inadvertently removed from the voter rolls on Nov. 2 will be allowed to use a provisional ballot that will be examined later to determine eligibility.

Military Recruiters Demand Names of All U.S. High Schoolers

Mother Jones tells us:

Sharon Shea-Keneally, principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont, was shocked when she received a letter in May from military recruiters demanding a list of all her students, including names, addresses, and phone numbers. The school invites recruiters to participate in career days and job fairs, but like most school districts, it keeps student information strictly confidential. "We don't give out a list of names of our kids to anybody," says Shea-Keneally, "not to colleges, churches, employers -- nobody."

But when Shea-Keneally insisted on an explanation, she was in for an even bigger surprise: The recruiters cited the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush's sweeping new education law passed earlier this year. There, buried deep within the law's 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student -- or face a cutoff of all federal aid.

Oh... so that's what No Child Left Behind means. Makes sense now.

COMMENTS:

At 11:40:06 PM, Anonymous said...
I thought this was too fascist to actually be true, but I looked it up- section 9528 of "no child left behind". Let's give every child the opportunity to die in a trumped up war!


At 12:50:47 AM, Anonymous said...
I guess it is just a coincidence that right-wing radicals can not be on the list - they homeschool their children!


At 1:15:44 AM, Anonymous said...
I believe the provision requires that the school gives the military the same access to facilities and information, as college and job recruiters receive. So Shea-Keneally might have a case to make.

The NCLB Act also allows a parent or child to "opt out", but it must be in writing. The problem is, the lack of knowledge; not just for parents and kids, but obviously, for schools as well.


At 5:31:01 AM, Anonymous said...
SEC. 9528. ARMED FORCES RECRUITER ACCESS TO STUDENTS AND STUDENT RECRUITING INFORMATION.

(a) POLICY-

(1) ACCESS TO STUDENT RECRUITING INFORMATION- Notwithstanding section 444(a)(5)(B) of the General Education Provisions Act and except as provided in paragraph (2), each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school students names, addresses, and telephone listings.

(2) CONSENT- A secondary school student or the parent of the student may request that the student's name, address, and telephone listing described in paragraph (1) not be released without prior written parental consent, and the local educational agency or private school shall notify parents of the option to make a request and shall comply with any request.

(3) SAME ACCESS TO STUDENTS- Each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide military recruiters the same access to secondary school students as is provided generally to post secondary educational institutions or to prospective employers of those students.


At 7:23:15 AM, Anonymous said...
Shouldn't it be necessary to opt in? Notice that they presume the right to harass the school children.


At 8:12:42 AM, Anonymous said...
No Child Left Behind---they'll all be sent off to war!


At 9:56:21 AM, Anonymous said...
I gather that they're going to change the bane of the Bill to "No Child Left alive"


At 10:33:24 AM, Todd Boyle said...
There are 20,000 high schools in the U.S. and many counter-recruitment groups of parents/citizens, local, regional and national. PLEASE get involved! Join the mailing list at counter-recruitment@yahoogroups.com or see these websites:

http://objector.org
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/
http://www.nisbco.org
http://www.comdsd.org/index.htm
http://www.youthandthemilitary.org/


Todd
a member of this and that
WaTiR Washington Truth in Recruiting http://www.watir.org
Western Washington Veterans For Peace http://vfp92.org
EVERGREEN PEACE AND JUSTICE http://epjc.net


At 11:48:46 AM, Michael H. said...
Excellent comments from everyone, including the prolific "Anonymous." I see where this post made it onto the front page of "Whatreallyhappened.com," which in turn produced by far the greatest single-day readership since this blog started three months ago. Crazy -- and welcome to everyone who sticks around.


At 7:04:50 PM, Anonymous said...
Seems to me there are a lot of voters out there without much sense so I'm telling you up front - THIS IS SARCASM - - - With the shortage of jobs, this is a great way to trim the work force - high school is education enough for kids over 18, now they can go out there and learn to maim and kill .... of course, they will be at risk, but what's that to a President who has himself never been under enemy fire - he has no sons, but he has enough pull to keep his daughters home if they don't want to go ....


At 7:12:32 PM, Anonymous said...
November 2, 2004 is National Celebicy Day......NO Bush NO Dick!!!


At 2:52:44 AM, Anonymous said...
As a former resident of Shaftsbury, and with a child currently living there, this appals me greatly. If this isn't a sign of Bush's complete disregard for the lives of our sons and daughters, then I am Louis the Fourteenth. After our children, we have nothing, and fast approaching is an assault against the very last of our freedoms. Tolerate this no further, fellow parents. If no one stands up, and now, this will only progress into a nightmare the like of which we have never seen.


At 5:58:01 AM, Anonymous said...
I wonder if they're showing up at Phillips Academy at Andover to take those names? And every other prep school where Momsy and Poppsy send their little darlings.


At 6:26:53 AM, Debbie said...
My son is a senior in high school. I have signed a paper twice stating I do not want military recruiters to contact my son. The school assured me he would be placed on the do not contact list. I recently got a call from a recruiter and told him about the paper I had signed. I don't know if he was lying or not, but he told me it didn't matter what I had signed. He said he receieves his information from "the government" as part of the "No Child Left Behind Act", not the schools. He then went on to tell me that if a child was not doing well in school, that they were there to let the child know there is an alternative...the military.


At 8:58:19 AM, Anonymous said...
I live in Staten Island, NY and have heard of a similar experience here concerning aggressive recruiters. A co-worker told me that her son, a high-school senior, was called by a recruiter at home. This was after she had signed and given in a "do-not-call" notice to the school.


At 2:08:08 PM, Anonymous said...
It's CRYSTAL clear what must be done.. On November 2nd, merican voters MUST turn out like they've never turned out before and make their concerns and opinions KNOWN by voting OUT the most barbaric, arrogant and impunious presidential administration in US history!!

I live up in Canada but I'm keenly following every nuance of this presidential election. It IRKS me no end that Bushwacky the pretzel-chewing moron could STILL have such a blindly loyal following DESPITE the uncovered list of LIES and DECEPTION perpetrated by him and his oil-thirsty cronies!!

Given that, in past US presidential elections, voter apathy has predominantly been a Democrat shortfall, "we", that is everyone who recognizes the true EVIL and GREEDY nature of the beast that is the current administration, get out there and convince as many people as possible to actually make their votes count on Nov. 2nd!!

Send the neocon pieces of crap back to hell where they TRULY belong and let's get the slow but necessary process of repairing all the damage they've done to your country and to the planet!


At 9:03:13 PM, Anonymous said...
I'm sorry, but I fail to see this as a major problem, are this will do is turn recruiters into telemarketers in a way. All you have to do is say "No thanks". They aren't forcing you to join.

Remember this, Kerry suggested a reinstatement of the draft if President Bush is re-elected. Bush is against the draft.


At 9:24:23 PM, Anonymous said...
I fielded five phone calls from the Army in one evening! Each time I requested that they remove my phone number as a contact # for my high school senior son! On the fifth call, I lost it and told them that if I got another call from their recruiting "bank"--I could clearly hear other recruiters making their calls!--I would call the police and report them to the Attorney General's office for failing to comply with my signing up on the Texas Do Not Call List!! I haven't heard from the Army again.

Kerry Won Even in Polls Weighted Outrageously with Republicans

ABC doesn't even pretend to conduct honest polls any more. They frankly admit that their pool of "respondants" contains 38% Repugs to 30% Democrats (even tho' more Dems than Repugs have voted in the past three electons). But even ABC couldn't pad their poll enough to make Bush the winner of Oct. 13's debate: 42% to 41%. If they had an honest sampling - or even an even Repug-Dem mix (34-34), Kerry would have won 46% to 37%. Why are the networks padding polls so outrageously? One source tells us its to dupe Bush's corporate sponsors into believing he will win in Nov. -- to keep their campaign dollars flowing. http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=38099

Republicans Destroy Democratic Voters' Registration Forms

"Democrats in Nevada charged in a lawsuit Wednesday that a company paid by the Republican National Committee destroyed voter-registration forms they had collected from Democratic voters. Similar allegations have surfaced in Oregon and West Virginia... The Nevada allegations were reported Tuesday night by KLAS-TV in Las Vegas about Eric Russell, a former employee of the Republican-funded group, Voters Outreach of America, which also goes by the names America Votes and Project America Votes. In an affidavit filed with the lawsuit, Russell said he was told to ask prospective voters, 'Who would you vote for in the next election?' He said he was told to register only those who supported President Bush. 'I personally witnessed my supervisor at VOA, together with her personal assistant, destroy completed registration forms that VOA employees had collected,' said Russell. "All of the destroyed registration forms were for registrants who indicated their party preference as 'Democrat.' " http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101504A.shtml

Is Bush Physically Ill

Salon's Katharine Mieszkowski writes, "First it was presenile dementia. Now, it's a stroke. A rash of armchair-diagnosis speculation about Bush's health, based on his faltering speech in the first debate to his drooling and drooping Wednesday night, is flying around the Web. And there's nothing to feed 'is-he-really-fit-to-lead?' grousing among Democratic partisans in the blogosphere like the fact that Bush, who was pronounced healthy at his annual check-up in August 2003, has refused to get his annual physical this year before the 2004 election. A letter by Dr. Joseph Price of Carsonville, Mich., to the Atlantic Monthly... first raised the idea that Bush's mental faculties might be in decline. But it was Bush's less-than-lucid performance in the first debate against John Kerry that sparked the creation of a short video montage juxtaposing footage from that debate with video from Bush sparring with then-Texas Governor Ann Richards, ten years ago."
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.htmlblog=/politics
/war_room/2004/10/14/dementia/index.html

Nader Breaking His Word by Undermining Kerry in Swing States

TomPaine.com: "Ralph Nader has done so much good for the United States, but his latest stubborn run for president will secure him a place as either a spoiler or an almost-spoiler.... David Corn - who broke into independent journalism 24 years ago working for Nader - is in the unenviable position of trying to reconcile his respect [with] disappointment at Ralph's utterly futile bid for the presidency.... It has saddened me to watch him destroy his legacy ... by mounting a fool's errand of a campaign. [Ralph] argues his campaign does not pose more of a threat to Kerry than to Bush [but] his GOP partners ... believe the Nader campaign is mainly a problem for Kerry.... Ralph has not played it straight.... [H]e maintained that his presence could help Kerry. Yet he now actively seeks to undermine Kerry [while] campaigning in swing states.... Telling someone not to run for office because his or her candidacy might be tactically unwise is not denying that person his or her political rights." http://www.tompaine.com/articles/reproaching_ralph.php

Like Kerry, Scowcroft Said Terrorism Can Be Reduced to a 'Nuisance'; Compared It to Organized Crime

From the Daily Kos: "I heard Dana Bash doing a news report on the 'nuisance' story on Lou Dobbs (watching late replay), and she said she had received an email which quoted Bush 41's NSA calling terrorism a nuisance. She just sort of brushed over it quickly -- she didn't even mention his name (Gen. Brent Scowcroft) and didn't show the actual quotation -- but the tidbit has bubbled at least here up for those who are paying attention. Here's the quotation: 'Can we win the war on terrorism? Yes, I think we can, in the sense that we can win the war on organized crime. There is going to be no peace treaty on the battleship Missouri in the war on terrorism, but we can break its back so that it is only a horrible nuisance and not a paralyzing influence on our societies. -- General Brent Scowcroft, Bush 41 National Security Advisor, Bush 43 appointee to the Forum for International Security '9/11 a Year On' conference, Sept. 2002." Hey Dubya, Kerry agrees with your Daddy's NSA!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/12/55413/319

Bush's Endless 'Predictive' Wars

Robert Parry writes: "In the months before the Iraq invasion in 2003, we began writing that the proper term for the so-called Bush Doctrine was not 'preemptive' war but 'predictive' war. Our reasoning was that 'preemptive' war required clear evidence that Iraq was threatening or preparing to attack the United States, but George W. Bush was simply predicting that Iraq might someday pose a threat... Based on Bush's latest statements, one might even argue that the Bush Doctrine has moved beyond 'predictive' war to a kind of 'hypothetical' rationale for invading other countries -- that is, if a future threat is just conceivable, no matter how unlikely, then Bush has the right to invade. By contrast, the safeguards envisioned in the movie, 'Minority Report,' look positively judicial and rational. [It appears that] Bush fully intends to apply his war doctrine during a second term. 'This is a long, long war,' Bush declared in one chilling comment during the second presidential debate." http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/101004.html

500 Leading National Security Experts Say Bush Policies are Fueling Terrorism

IPS: "The Bush administration's failure to accept advice on Iraq from its military and foreign service officers has led to policies that have fuelled the insurgency against U.S.-led forces in the occupied nation, says a letter signed by some 500 national-security specialists. Released Tuesday by a group called Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy (S3FP), the letter calls the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq the United States' 'most misguided' policy since the Vietnam War. 'We're advising the administration, which is already in a deep hole, to stop digging,' said Barry Posen, the Ford international professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the organisers of S3FP, which includes some of the most eminent U.S. experts on national-security policy and on the Middle East and the Arab world." http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25848

Iraqi Government Forced to Beg Globally for Reconstruction Funds

US taxpayers have sunk nearly $200 billion (all told) into Iraq in less than two years. Yet almost none of that cash has gone to reconstruction. As a result, Iraqi gov. reps have been reduced to "door to door begging" from the global community. AFP reports: "Iraq urged the international community Wednesday to play an active role in rebuilding the war-shattered nation at a donors conference in Tokyo as a Baghdad bombing killed three US soldiers in the latest wave of violence. As the Iraqi delegation pleaded for aid, US forces struck rebel positions in Iraq's Sunni Muslim hotbeds of Fallujah and Ramadi late Tuesday, killing 11 people. In Tokyo, interim Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh told representatives of some 55 countries and organisations that donors should waive its crushing debt from the Saddam Hussein era... 'We need more UN support and we need it now. Please don't let the Iraqi people down," Saleh told the opening of the two-day conference.'" This is PATHETIC!
http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id=1372

Fearing Widespread Corruption, NGOs Petition UN for Help Monitoring US Election

IPS: "A coalition of U.S.-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has petitioned the United Nations seeking international observers to monitor the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. In July this year, a group of U.S. legislators, mostly from the opposition Democratic Party, asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to send a team of observers for the Nov. 2 elections. 'We are deeply concerned that the rights of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections are again in jeopardy,' they said, pointing out that the last presidential elections in 2000 were 'tainted,' with nearly six million votes left uncounted." The NGOs had to petition the UN because the US government, which is supposed to make such a request, failed to do so - gee, we wonder why!? http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25852

Bush Raids Federal Retirement Pension Fund to Prevent Hitting Debt Limit

To keep from admitting that the federal debt limit has been - or within days will be - reached, Bush has, in essence, raided a federal retirement fund. AFP: "US Treasury Secretary John Snow said he would suspend payments immediately to the federal employees' Government Securities Investment Fund (G-Fund) in order to keep the government running." Once the looming 7.38 TRILLION debt is hit, the government will have to shut down. THAT'S HOW BAD THINGS HAVE GOTTEN! "The missing money would be repaid in full later [yeah - God willin' and the creek don't rise!], with no net effect on the fund or retirees, the US economic policy chief said in a letter to the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist. Any move by Congress to raise the debt limit could be politically damaging ahead of the November 2 presidential elections."
http://www.turkishpress.com/turkishpress/news.asp?ID=30781

In 2003, Drug Barons Lost Money on Flu Vaccine - Now They are Making a Killing off Shortage

USAToday: "Jack Bond's hospital pharmacy needed 2,800 flu shots, but his supplier couldn't provide them. Plenty of other distributors were ready to meet his needs, though - for a price: as much as $600 for a vial of 10 flu shots that normally costs about $80. Around the country, health officials say some suppliers are trying to cash in on the flu shot shortage. Aventis Pasteur is currently the only company providing flu shots this year. Because it takes months to develop vaccine, Aventis can't make more vaccine in time for the flu season." This is simply not true. It takes 8-10 weeks to produce vaccine for a new strain. The shortage was known about from Aug. 26 - i.e., 7 weeks ago. If the Bush admin. had ordered more vaccine, it would be available by the end of Oct. But by intentionally NOT ordering more vaccine, what a great profit the drug barons will now make - at the expense of public health. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/
2004-10-13-flu-gouge_x.htm

Oprah Slaps Bush

SF Gate: "[T]he nation's most powerful and popular public female, kicking butt on a recent installment of her insanely beloved TV show with the help of celeb guests (Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, P. Diddy, Christina Aguilera) and galvanizing stunned women across the nation to participate in this election, or else. There was Oprah, doing what she does so freakishly well, cheerleading and extolling and impressing upon, getting women up and getting them angry and demanding that they exercise their hard-won right to vote and demanding that they quit dissing their feminist ancestors, the ones who worked so damn hard for suffrage and for freedom of choice and for the right to tell powerful sexist Republican men where they can shove their repressive sexist antichoice bigotry. This was her fabulous, much-needed message: Take your rights for granted at your peril, ladies. Move, or else. Choose how you want the laws to treat and respect you and your body - or someone else...will." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/10/13/notes101304.DTL&nl=fix

Bush Debate Lies

Bush Debate Lie: 'Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations'

Transcript of Bush press conference, March 13, 2003 via Buzzflash: "Q: Mr. President, in your speeches now, you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? [...] BUSH: ... I don't know where he is. Nor -- you know, I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you [...] Q: Do you believe the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead of alive? BUSH: As I say, we hadn't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, you know, again, I don't know where he is. I'll repeat what I said: I truly am not that concerned about him."
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/10/con04436.html


Bush Debate Lie: 'Three-quarters of Al Qaida leaders have been brought to justice'

MSNBC, Sept 8, 2004: "Bush....asserted that 'nearly two thirds' of Al Qaeda's 'known leaders' had been captured or killed. The absence of any explanation [for this estimate] as well as the timing, prompted some counterterrorism experts to deride the figure as 'meaningless' and predict the revision could fuel allegations that the administration is massaging terrorism data for political purposes. An official with the recently disbanded 9/11 commission also dismissed the new number, noting that it was impossible to get a firm handle on precisely the number of Al Qaeda 'leaders' that were in place at the time of the September 11 attacks - the definition that the CIA says it used as its baseline for the estimate. 'It was meaningless when they said two thirds and it's meaningless when they said three fourths, ' said the official, who asked not to be identified. 'This sounds like it was pulled out of somebody's orifice."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5945061/site/newsweek/


Bush Debate Lie: 'As a result of ... ridding the Taliban out of Afghanistan, the Afghan people had elections...'

The US has NOT rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. They are still very much in Afghanistan, and have posed a major threat both to the Afghan government and to the recent elections. AFP: "A Taliban spokesman said all 18 candidates in Afghanistan's presidential elections were 'top targets' for attack, and claimed responsibility after a rocket landed near a school President Hamid Karzai was about to visit. 'All presidential candidates are our top targets now because they are running for the polls of a US-made election -- an election which will create a government in the interest of the Americans,' Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP the Taliban had called on the 'Afghan nation to boycott the election and not vote because this is not going to be the type of government Afghan's want.' Taliban loyalists have vowed to disrupt the election and also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a US security firm."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1512&ncid=
731&e=2&u=/afp/20040916/wl_afp/afghanistan_vote_attacks


Bush Debate Lie: 'Veterans are getting very good health care under my administration'

April 2004 from ABC: "In an hour-long 'Primetime Thursday' investigation, Diane Sawyer uncovers disturbing new information about quality of care and questionable management practices at some of America's veterans' hospitals. These hospitals are the primary source of medical care for thousands of veterans -- including some of those returning from the current war in Iraq. Hidden cameras secretly journey inside some of these hospitals, documenting alarming examples of potentially dangerous hygiene practices, outdated medical equipment, understaffed wards and overworked nursing staffers. 'Primetime' also finds instances of doctors not showing up for surgeries and out-patient clinics."
http://www.vvaindiana.org/News/hidden04-07-04.html


Bush Debate Lie: 'Vaccine manufacturers are worried about getting sued, and therefore they have backed off from providing this kind of vaccine'

FACT: Vaccine makers are protected from all vaccine lawsuits except those in which fraud and intentional wrongdoing are shown. ."Vaccine manufacturers and others are sheltered from product liability lawsuits by a special 1986 act of Congress. (See the US Code 42 USC 300aa for details.) This act set up a fund to compensate those who can prove serious injury from vaccines."--Roger Schlafly. Under Title 42.300aa-23. Trial, it states that if a vaccine manufacturer can show "it complied, in all material respects, with all requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act [21 U.S.C. 301 et seq.] and this chapter applicable to the vaccine and related to the vaccine injury or death with respect to which the action was brought, the manufacturer shall not be held liable for punitive damages unless the manufacturer engaged in" fraud, illegal activity, intentional wrongdoing, etc. For more on drug barons and vaccines see http://www.whale.to/vaccines/profits.html
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/search/display.html?terms=vaccineliability&url=/uscode/html/uscode42/usc
_sec_42_00000300--aa023-.html


Bush Debate Lie: 'You've got more money in your pocket as a result of the tax relief we passed. A family of four making $40,000 received about $1,700 in tax relief'

Since 2001, because inflation has risen faster than salaries, the average "spending power" income for American workers fell by 1.7%. So take off $680 per year for your family of 4's $40,000. (http://www.house.gov/georgemiller/middleclass/middleclass1.html ) Also, average annual energy costs have risen dramatically since 2001- a family of four pays $1,100 more per year in fuel (heating, cooking and transportation). http://money.cnn.com/2003/02/10/pf/saving/oil_and_you/ Next we have healthcare costs. Since 2001, average health insurance costs to workers has climbed by 36%, with the average annual rise for a family of four amounting to at least $400 (http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml ) So tally it up: $680 + $1,100 + $400 = $2,180. Minus Bush's $1,700 tax cut = a NET LOSS of $480 per year. Add to that rising rents and bank fees and shrinking savings accounts returns and that 'money in your pocket' just went sailing down a sinkhole.
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/files/061304_squeeze
/Wisconsin.bank.pdf


Bush Debate Lie: 'Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans'

Tables of US tax data compiled by the Tax Policy Center shows that the smallest proportion or the tax cuts, in terms of after tax change in income, went to Americans making less than $75,000 per year, while the lions share went to those making over $500,000 per year. Bush may have cynically played with statistics to even dare make such an outrageous claim. He is technically accurate if he means NUMBER OF TAXPAYERS receiving some sort of cut -- not number of tax DOLLARS. But the percentage of change in after tax dollars for the poorest Americans ($10,000 or less/year) was just 0.2%.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxModel/tmdb/TMTemplate.cfm?DocID=458&topic2ID=40&topic3ID=57


'Of Course' Bush Lies -- And He Says 'Of Course' Whenever He Lies

From Corrente: "Long story short: Bush has a brutally obvious 'tell': When he's letting loose with a real whopper, He says 'of course.' Froomkin noticed that after Debate 2, and challenged the blogosphere to check it out for Debate 3. If anyone did, I missed it. And heck, it was a Friday, whine... Anyhow, Bush is still doing it. Quoting Froomkin's entire post: In last Friday's column, I encouraged you to perk up your ears every time President Bush says 'of course,' because in adversarial settings Bush seems to use that phrase whenever he's about to say something that supporters might find obvious -- but that his critics might consider a whopper."
http://corrente.blogspot.com/2004_10_10_corrente_archive.htm
l#109780457243277402

LOCAL VIEW: Going to war in Iraq was a mistake

Source: AnswerLA
BY REP. DOUG BEREUTER
Posted October 14, 2004

It is a painful and disturbing process, but America and everyone involved in the decision-making and oversight process (the Executive Branch and Congress) must learn from the errors and failures related to waging a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the aftermath of that war. The toll in American military casualties and those of civilians, physical damages caused, financial resources spent, and the damage to the support and image of the United States abroad, all demand such an assessment and accounting.

Certainly, all the facts and impacts are not yet apparent, and the violence and financial and diplomatic costs of the Iraqi aftermath continue to accumulate. However, I must give this account before I leave Congress on Aug. 31.

The first, and most basic, conclusion is that it appears there was a massive failure or misinterpretation of intelligence concerning the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and supply stocks of Saddam, both by the U.S. agencies and leading decision-makers, but also on the part of allies and other leading countries.

The fact that Saddam had used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds, that chemical weapons and biological and nuclear development programs were discovered after the first Gulf War and that Saddam so strenuously resisted unfettered international inspection efforts in recent years all contributed to the general conclusion that he had reconstructed his chemical weapons stock and was weaponizing biological agents. There was also the suspicion that his efforts to surreptitiously import certain dual-use technology were part of an effort to reconstitute his nuclear development program. The conclusion generally reached was that he had at least some of these types of WMD and that he would use them again against countries of the neighborhood.

Even more directly troubling to the United States was the concern that he would share them with terrorist groups. It was a combination of these conclusions and fears that were the primary justification for pre-emptive military action against Iraq. Most importantly, however, it was the fear that his WMD would be shared with terrorists when it served his purposes. These concerns caused this member of Congress to vote to authorize the use of military force by the president, even pre-emptive military force, if the conditions specified in House Joint Resolution 114 of October 2002, were judged by the president to have been met. That resolution, which authorized the use of military force, was passed by large majorities in both houses of Congress, and I believe that for most members the element of a WMD-terrorist link was a key factor.

Evidence that substantial Iraqi chemical and biological WMD stocks existed at the time the war began or that they covertly had been destroyed just before the conflict began still may be discovered. Certainly, there were such chaotic conditions after the "military war" ended, with huge weapons dumps and laboratories left unguarded or undiscovered for months, that evidence and supplies could have been hidden or destroyed.

However, revelations in the unredacted portions of reports recently released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence point to a massive intelligence failure by the U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, and even more disturbingly, leave unresolved whether inadequate or questionable elements of intelligence and sources of intelligence were used to justify military action. (Many members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on which I serve, have also reached some of the same conclusions as the Senate Committee - and that includes me.)

Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified. However, the inability of the administration to clearly establish a link between al-Qaida and Saddam, despite the intimations of various administration leaders such as Vice President Dick Cheney, is no surprise to me. In my floor statement of Oct. 8, 2002, during the debate on the "military use of force" resolution, I said, "the administration cannot yet present incontrovertible evidence of a link between al-Qaida and Saddam."

Of course, one of the major controversies yet remaining is whether key individuals in the administration skewed the intelligence made available to them to justify military action against Saddam's Iraq or, whether coerced, intimidated or sympathetic U.S. intelligence analysts and managers gave them the findings they seemed to want in order to justify military action. The Senate Select Intelligence Committee report finds no evidence of such pressure and I do not believe that individual members of the House Committee have such evidence. Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action. That would be difficult to determine definitively without "a smoking gun."

I was very interested to read Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times on April 23, 2004, because his words, which follow, succinctly mirrored my own thoughts:

"Just as experts on peacekeeping predicted before the war, the invading force was grossly inadequate to maintain postwar security. And this problem was compounded by a chain of blunders: doing nothing to stop the postwar looting, disbanding the Iraqi army, canceling local elections, appointing an interim council dominated by exiles with no political base and excluding important domestic groups.

"The lessons of the last few weeks are that the occupation has never recovered from those early errors. The insurgency, which began during those early months of chaos, has spread."

Of course, that insurgency has grown dramatically since Krugman wrote those words in April. While the U.S. military deaths have declined from the highest levels of April and May, which was during the U.S. offensive against the terrorists, there still were an average of a tragic 50 U.S. military deaths per month at the time this is being written.

It should be noted, too, that the administration received many warnings not to make those very errors. Perhaps the warning most frequently given by reputable sources was to avoid disbanding the Iraqi army, but to instead immediately reconstitute it. Many of those Iraqi army personnel became insurgents or, at best, disenchanted. Now that an army and police forces are being trained and deployed, they are targets for the organized and increasingly motivated insurgency. The same is the case for the Iraqis who have assumed leadership roles at the national or local level; that violence has intensified since the "hand-over" in late June.

In my view, another fundamental and predictable failure was placing the responsibility for reconstruction and interim governance in the hands of the Department of Defense. The Department of State, and particularly its Agency for International Development, would no doubt have handled these responsibilities more expeditiously and economically, and with less questionable procurement and contractual practices. These are responsibilities normally assigned to State, and it has a better experience base for such programs.

Finally, I would reiterate the frequent criticism that the U.S. and coalition forces were inadequate in number to take effective control of Iraq when the initial military action was complete. This was a misjudgment from the top levels of the Defense Department and contrary to the estimates of the former U.S. Army Chief of Staff, who was sharply criticized by the DOD civilian leadership. Of course, that inadequacy was accentuated by both the unexpected rejection by Turkey for the movement of one U.S. Army division across that country to enter northern Iraq and by the unwillingness of a number of European countries to supply troops for the coalition because of their opposition to the war.

The Middle East neighborhood and the rest of the world is no doubt safer from attack and subversion now that Saddam has been removed from power. The oppressed Kurdish and Shiite Iraqis no longer have to fear for their lives from his government, and the same is true of other Iraqis he punished as enemies of the state.

Was the pre-emptive military strike to remove Saddam in America's best interest? That is a question that receives a sharply divided response in our country with the trend being against the pre-emptive military action we launched. I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action, especially without a broad and engaged international coalition. The cost in casualties is already large and growing, and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible. Our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened. From the beginning of the conflict it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force. Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world.

Doug Bereuter will step down from his 1st Congressional District seat effective Sept. 1 after 26 years in the in the House of Representatives.

ACTION ALERT: March & Rally for Immigrant Rights on Olympic & Broadway (Los Angeles) SATURDAY OCTOBER 16TH

Source: AnswerLA
Posted October 14, 2004

On Saturday, October 16, immigrants of ALL nationalities and their supporters will march from Olympic and Broadway through downtown Los Angeles to demand full rights for undocumented workers, and to stop the raids and racism against all immigrants. The march will culminate in a mass rally with well known speakers, musicians and more. Bring your friends and family. The march and rally are fully permitted.

Excitement for October 16 is growing each day. The march is receiving broad and wide-spread support in California and throughout the nation. It is a march to support the struggle of ALL immigrants! JOIN IMMIGRANTS OF ALL NATIONALITIES ON OCT 16

More than 80 organizations representing Mexican and Central American immigrants have endorsed and are actively mobilizing for the march. Arab, Muslim, South Asian, Korean, Philippino immigrant organizations are building for the demonstration as well. Youth, students, LGBT, antiwar and anti-racist groups and labor unions are also actively involved.

The October 16 demonstration was announced publicly two years ago by a pro-immigrant coalition led by Latino Movement USA & Hermandad Mexicana Nacional during a large immigrant rights rally in downtown LA. Since that time, activists have worked hard to build community support to make it a success.

The October 16 march will commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the massive anti-Proposition 187 demonstration in LA. That march was the largest protest by Latinos in the history of the United States. To commemorate that historic march is important.

The need for a mass march for immigrant rights is even more urgent today. Latino immigrants are terrorized by police raids at their jobs and in their neighborhoods. Arabs, Muslims and South Asians are targeted in FBI roundups and detained without justification. Recent immigrants of ALL nationalities are under racist attack by law enforcement and constantly threatened with incarceration and deportation.

Organize and demonstrate for immigrant rights

At this critical time, we must organize and fight back against racism, bigotry and all forms of oppression. We must elevate the level of struggle to win full rights for all immigrants, and especially for undocumented workers and their families.

All progressive individuals and organizations are invited to join the march and rally on October 16. A strong, united demonstration in downtown Los Angeles will prove the incredible strength and resolve of the movement for immigrant rights in the United States today.

The October 16 march is less than 1 week away. Tens of thousands of leaflets and posters have been distributed in LA alone. Get involved and make the demonstration a huge success!

AMNESTY FOR THE UNDOCUMENTED! STOP THE RACIST ARRESTS, RAIDS AND DEPORATATIONS! REPEAL THE PATRIOT ACT AND ALL OTHER ANTI-IMMIGRANT LAWS!

Partial list of organizations endorsing the October 16 march and rally:

Latino Movement USA, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, Dolores Huerta, Asociacion Nacional de Salvadoreños Americanos, Alianza Hondureña de Los Angeles, Northeast UTLA, Casa Nicaragua, Alliance for a Just and Lastin Peace in the Philippines, Ecuadorians Residing Abroad, Frente Civico Zacatecano, South Asian Network, National Lawyers Guild, Federación de Clubes de Jalisco, Familias Unidas de Lynwood, Centro Azteca, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Free Palestine Alliance, Pro-People Youth (KMB), National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Hispanos Unidos, Latin Armst, Fuerza Revolucionaria Salvadoreña, U.S. Cuba Labor Exchange, GABRIELA Network-Los Angeles, Dr. John Fernandez, Roosevelt H.S., Campaign for Social Justice, Pacific Palisades Peace Vigil, Palestinian American Congress-LA and National, Union of Palestinian American Women, Green Party LA, Muslim Student Association- Cal State Long Beach, Santa Monica College Coalition in solidarity with Cuba, Association of Latin American Students- SMC, Tendencia Revoluci onaria El Salvador, Casa del Pueblo Collective, MECha Cal State LA, Apostolic Church, Jóvenes Inc, Coalición Latinoamericana, Mindullae , Moviemento Popular Inmigrante, Fundacion Pro-Inmigrante, Club Ancon, Union Campesina, Jornaleros del Valle de San Gabriel, Union Sin Fronteras, National Network on Cuba (includes 80 member organizations), California Congreso of U.S.-Mexican Women Voters, Casa del Sinaloense, Zacatecanos en Marcha, Federación de Zacatecanos, Ordinary Dharma, Movimiento Politico Exterior Mexicano, COMACC, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Palestinian American Women’s Association (PAWA), CSUN Students Against War, Nicaragua Network, Mexico Solidarity Network, Korea Truth Commission, Haiti Support Network, Middle East Children’s Alliance, IFCO/Pastors for Peace, Partnership for Civil Justice-LEDF, Kensignton Welfare Rights Union, Americans for Just Peace in the Middle East-OC, People of Color Against Globalization, One Korea LA Forum, Immigration Equality-LA, Asian Pacific American Legal Center and more.

For more info contact:
Latino Movement USA 323-269-6069
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition 323-464-1636

Report says awarding of contracts without bids is up under Bush

Source: Associated Press/The Bakersfield Californian
By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer
May 27th, 2004, 3:10 PM
(Posted Oct. 14, 2004 to PolitixWatch.com)

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of government contracts awarded without competitive bids has increased slightly during the Bush administration, according to a report Thursday by the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.

Noncompetitive contracts accounted for 37 percent of federal procurement spending in 2003, compared with 33 percent in 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, said the report issued by Rep. Henry Waxman of California.

Overall spending on federal contracts increased over those years, from $205 billion in 2000 to $291 billion in 2003, but spending on noncompetitive contracts grew even faster, according to the report. In 2000, $67 billion was spent on some 32,500 noncompetitive contracts, compared with $107 billion through more than 43,000 noncompetitive contracts in 2003.

With U.S. military forces occupying Iraq and policing Afghanistan, the bulk of the noncompetitive contracts were award by the Pentagon. The Army, Air Force and Navy accounted for 55 percent of all federal contract spending in 2003, and for 73 percent of spending on federal contracts awarded without competition.

Waxman said the practice put favored contractors ahead of taxpayers.

"Increasingly, the administration is turning over essential government functions to the private sector, and it has jettisoned basic safeguards like competition and supervision that are needed to protect the public interest," he said in a statement.

Office of Management and Budget spokesman Chad Kolton said he hadn't read the report, but defended the government's contracting practices.

"In every instance where it's possible, this administration works to ensure that the taxpayers are afforded competition to get the best benefit for their taxes," Kolton said. "However, in times of war it is frequently necessary to use legal, streamlined contracting processes to get the resources our people need when they need them."

Waxman's report, prepared by the Government Reform Committee's Democratic staff, drew on data from the Federal Procurement Data System, which is part of the General Services Administration. It discussed federal contracts in general, without focusing on work in Iraq or naming specific companies.

Federal procurement law requires full and open competition for contracts, but allows various exceptions. These include situations in which the case is unusually urgent; disclosing an agency's needs could jeopardize national security; only one source can provide the necessary work or goods; or the public is better served if there is not full competition.

The report said the Bush administration has also increased the use of a form of contracts called "single-award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity" that commits the government to a single contractor for an undefined range of goods or services. Some $5.9 billion worth of these contracts were issued in 2003, compared with $4.2 billion in 2000, the report said.

--

On the Net:

House Government Reform Committee: http://reform.house.gov/

What's in a Label? Right-wing think tanks are often quoted, rarely labeled

Source: Think Tank Monitor
By Michael Dolny
May/June 1998
(Posted to PolitixWatch Oct., 14, 2004)

For the third year in a row, conservative or right-leaning think tanks in 1997 provided more than half of major media's think tank citations, according to FAIR's third annual survey of major newspaper and broadcast media citations in the Nexis computer database. Think tanks of the right provided 53 percent of citations, while progressive or left-leaning think tanks received just 16 percent of total citations.

Half of the ten most-cited think tanks are conservative or right-leaning, including three of the top four. The centrist Brookings Institution held the top spot as the most widely cited think tank for the second year in a row. Three right-wing institutions--the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute--maintained their respective positions as the second, third and fourth most cited. The top four think tanks were each cited more than a thousand times, and provided 46 percent of all think tank citations.*



Missing Labels
To see how the top four think tanks were identified, a random 10 percent of their citations were examined. Surprisingly, all four institutions were not identified at all in a majority of their respective citations.

The most mentioned think tank, the Brookings Institution, was given no identification in 78 percent of the 229 citations examined. In another 17 percent, it was identified as being located in Washington, D.C. Twice it was referred to as "liberal," twice as "non-partisan" and once as "centrist."

The "liberal" label is inaccurate; Brookings has long had a centrist or center-right orientation. As far back as the mid-1980s, Fortune magazine (7/23/84) was approvingly noting that "Brookings Tilts Right." Current president Michael Armacost was undersecretary of state in the Reagan administration and President Bush's ambassador to Japan. Brookings' two most prominent analysts served in Republican administrations. Their most visible foreign policy expert, Richard Haass, is formerly of George Bush's National Security Council. Domestic political analyst Stephen Hess helped edit the Republican platform in 1976, and served in the U.S. delegation to the U.N. under Gerald Ford.

The Heritage Foundation was not identified in 68 percent of 182 cases; in a further 8 percent, only its location in Washington was noted. Its political orientation was noted 24 percent of the time: Forty of these 44 mentions used the word "conservative," while four used "right-wing" or "on the right." Twice, while labeled as "conservative," the institute's support from right-wing funder Richard Mellon Scaife was mentioned.

Seventy-two percent of the time, the American Enterprise Institute appeared with no qualifying label. In only 14 percent of the 132 stories sampled was it identified as conservative. The Cato Institute was similarly not labeled in 68 percent of the 130 stories sampled. It was identified as "libertarian" 13 percent of the time, "conservative" 6 percent of the time, and twice was referred to as both "libertarian" and "conservative." One reference called the institution "free-market oriented."

For comparison purposes, we sampled the labeling of the survey's top progressive think tank, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). As with the top four think tanks, EPI received no label more than half the time (52 percent). However, EPI received an ideological label more often than any of the top four, in 29 percent of the 58 cases sampled. Almost half of the ideological labeling was "progressive," "liberal" or "left-leaning," but slightly more than half (9 out of 17) referred to EPI as having ties to or receiving funds from labor unions.

In sharp contrast, none of the top four think tanks were referred to as "corporate-backed" or any similar label. A call to EPI confirmed that they received a quarter of their funding from labor sources; however, Brookings acknowledged that nearly one-third of their funding comes from corporate sources. AEI's webpage discloses that 40 percent of its budget comes from corporate donations.

When a think tank representative is used as an expert on a topic, often that person's media-framed credibility may be measured by the ideological label attached to them. By failing to politically identify representatives of think tanks, or identify the financial base of think tanks, major media deprive their audiences of an important context for evaluating the opinions offered, implying that think tank "experts" are neutral sources without any ideological predispositions. The fact that EPI was the group most often identified ideologically-and the only one scrutinized in terms of its funding sources-suggests that even when progressive think tanks are allowed to take part in the usually center-right debate, the playing field is still not level.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*The Heritage Foundation's citations were adjusted to reflect the incidence of "false positives." Approximately 15 percent of the time, the words "heritage foundation" occur together in an article in the Nexis database without referring to the think tank. One think tank, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, was added to the survey this year.

Michael Dolny is the senior research associate at the Center for Criminal Justice Research at California State University, San Bernardino, where he also teaches part-time. He can be reached at mdolny@wiley.csusb.edu.

Click here to Think Tanks ranked in tables.