The NYT finally decides to try honest reporting on Judith Miller

it's a REALLY long article...

"Judy is going to take some time off until we decide what she is doing next," said Catherine Mathis, the Times' spokesperson.

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U.S. automakers hit hard... Japan not so bad...

do ya suppose auto electronics manufacturer delphi was an omen of things to come...? kirk kerkorian has been signaling a bid for gm in much the same way he did with chrysler some years back... certainly, these numbers are dramatic... gm can't hold on too long with sales drops of over 50%...

Retail new-vehicle sales were down 33 percent across the industry in the first nine days of October compared with the same period a year ago, the Power Information Network said.

It said results were down at nine major automakers, but GM led the pack with a 57 percent decline followed by Ford, which saw its retail sales drop 45 percent over the first nine days of the month.

The Chrysler arm of Germany's DaimlerChrysler posted a 32 percent drop over the same nine-day period compared with year-ago results.

The U.S. arm of Honda Motor Co. Ltd. posted the smallest drop, with retail sales down just 8 percent, followed by Toyota Motor Corp., with sales down 14 percent.

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Saturday Photoblogging - Trinidad, Colorado

After the thunderstorm, June 2004...



From the western edge of Trinidad,
Colorado, looking west toward the
Sangre de Cristo mountains.



From just north of Trinidad,
looking south with Fishers
Peak in the central lower-left.

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Failure to counter Democratic "jihad" will cede Congress in 2006 and WH in 2008

the "scandalmongering" dems are getting under the skin of the good folks at newsmax... they suggest an aggressive strategy...

A little GOP scrutiny directed towards a myriad of alleged crimes perpetrated by Democrats could easily neutralize their ability to wage the current investigative jihad.

and who's their target...? what person have they set their sights on that's gonna "neutralize" the "jihad...?"

. . . former national security advisor Sandy Berger [who] continues to carry on as a trusted advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton - and remains a respected "expert" in media circles.

be my guest... do it... raise hell... make a fuss... so why isn't it happening...?

[T]he Republican controlled Justice Department and congressional oversight committees refuse to lift a finger. [...] Why? Because the Bush Justice Department let Berger off earlier this year with a slap on the wrist plea bargain after he confessed to stealing and destroying top secret national security documents.

pardon me, i'm confused... why would the most relentlessly vicious presidential administration in u.s. history let a wonderful opportunity to further destroy the democratic party slip through its fingers...?

[E]lected Republicans refuse to act.

newsmax's prediction...?

Absent any GOP interest in spotlighting alleged crimes that may have genuinely damaged the national interest, Republicans shouldn't be surprised to find themselves surrendering control of Congress in 2006 - along with the White House two years later.

oh, well... shit happens...

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U.S. and Argentina running neck and neck in inflation

identical figures for september... who woulda thunk it...?

Argentina

Rising price tags on everyday food items fuelled inflation of 1.2 percent in September.

U.S.

Consumer prices rose 1.2 percent last month . . . the biggest monthly advance since March 1980, and the steepest annual rise since May 1991.

the difference is that argentina is experiencing double-digit economic growth...

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Harsh words for Bush's hypocrisy

derrick jackson seems a trifle upset...

Last week in an address before the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush . . . [said], "Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life."

Two and a half years after the invasion, Bush has said nothing about the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who were sacrificed to serve his own political vision.

[...]

In the speech on his "war on terror" last week, Bush had the gall to quote the part of the Koran that says "killing an innocent human being is like killing all humanity. . . . the time has come for all responsible Islamic leaders to join in denouncing an ideology that exploits Islam for political ends." He said this as a president who has exploited Christianity for his own political ends, in a presidency that has displayed a cold-blooded contempt for innocent Iraqis and democracy right here at home.

it's beyond gall... it's outright contempt for anyone that purports to have a brain - or a heart...

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Savoring life's simple pleasures

the pressure is building...

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Big Box Mart

walmart watch alerted me to a terrific animation produced by the political satirists, jibjab... it was aired last night on jay leno and is definitely worth taking a look at...

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ElBaradei - a worthy role model

The Non-Aligned Movement, G77 groups of developing countries and China said in a statement to the 35-nation board of governors that the IAEA's half of the money "be used for practical application of atomic energy for peaceful purposes for the needs of developing countries".

Diplomats said the board was unlikely to decide at its one-day meeting how the money should be used, but would probably agree to put it into a fund and the use determined later.

ElBaradei would not be keeping his prize money either.

"He intends to direct it to charity and other good causes," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said. "He will not keep it for himself."

remarkable... a ray of light in a dark world...

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Rove in his Jaguar this morning, headed to work...

never let 'em see ya sweat...



maybe soon, if he plays his cards right, he'll have the chance to sleep in EVERY morning...

(from the nyt...)

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You're on your own: "not only cruel, but stupid..."

molly ivins jumps on what i've been fulminating about for a while now - bankruptcy as a business strategy... she's coming at it from the pension-dumping angle and, as one who has had his (admittedly paltry) pension dumped onto the pbgc, i'm more than a little invested in the topic...

The latest corporate craze is for companies to declare bankruptcy, dumping pension responsibilities on the federal government and walking away, only to start doing business again without that nasty pension anchor around their necks. Your pension gets dumped to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a government entity that ensures $2 trillion of pension benefits. The PBGC is funded by employers, who pay it $19 per employee annually.

$19 per year... now, THERE'S a bargain...! no wonder they're dumping...

This worked fine for years, until a bunch of steel companies and airlines declared bankruptcy. The Guaranty Corp. is now responsible for $62.3 billion in pension checks, but it has only $39 billion. Employer contributions have not kept up, so the PBGC now has a $23 billion deficit -- and chances are the taxpayers will wind up bailing it out, as we did the savings and loan industry.

[...]

There are several proposals now about what to do rumbling around in Congress. One I particularly like would forbid companies from continuing to fund their special executive retirement plans if their rank-and-file pensions are seriously underfunded.

[...]

[E]very one of us comes into this world naked and helpless, and most leave it in the same condition -- and we are dependent on one another every single day in between. The "stand on your own feet and take care of yourself" attitude the right wing keeps pushing is not only cruel, but stupid, too.

stupid, yes... cruel, yes... for you and me, not for them - "them" being the have-a-lot's who are hell-bent on being the have-a-lot-more's... stand on your own two feet... take care of yourself... i've got mine... screw you... social darwinism at its finest...

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Just in case you lose sight of what the fundies have in mind

american vision will spell it out for ya...

About American Vision

"Equipping and Empowering Christians to Restore America's Biblical Foundation"

Founded in 1978, American Vision is one of the most comprehensive and culturally relevant ministries today. For the past 25 years, American Vision has produced hundreds of educational resources designed to help Christians build a biblical worldview and reclaim the culture for Christ. Today, American Vision is taking its vital message and life-changing resources to Christians throughout America and around the world.

VISION: An America that recognizes the sovereignty of God over all of life and where Christians are engaged in every facet of society.

MISSION: Equipping and Empowering Christians to Restore America’s Biblical Foundation (Psalm 11:3).

be very, very clear... THIS is what lies beneath all the SCOTUS and Harriet Miers hoo-ha - "reclaim the culture for christ..."

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The reality of Iraq today (as it wasn't reflected in the teleconference)

a reality we, once again, have to turn to non-u.s. media to provide... what a sad, pathetic state of affairs, taken to a whole new level of the bizarre with the revelations of today's scripting of the presidential teleconference...

Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, whose new book The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East has just been published by 4th Estate, painted a picture of deepening chaos and misery in Iraq more than two years after Saddam Hussein was toppled.

He said that the "constant, intensive involvement" in the Middle East by the West was a recurring pattern over centuries and was the reason why "so many Muslims in the Middle East hate us". He added: "We can close doors on history. They can't."

Fisk doubted the sincerity of Western leaders' commitment to bringing democracy to Iraq and said a lasting settlement in the country was impossible while foreign troops remained. "In the Middle East, they would like some of our democracy, they would like a couple of boxes off the supermarket shelves of human rights as well. But I think they would also like freedom from us."

[...]

He said that the portrayal of Iraq by Western leaders ­ of efforts to introduce democracy, including Saturday's national vote on the country's proposed constitution ­ was "unreal" to most of its citizens. In Baghdad, children and women were kept at home to prevent them from being kidnapped for money or sold into slavery. They faced a desperate struggle to find the money to keep generators running to provide themselves with electricity. "They aren't sitting in their front rooms discussing the referendum on the constitution."

[...]

Asked if the "anger and passion" he felt over the events he witnessed had affected his objectivity, he said: "When you are at the scene of a massacre, you are entitled to feel immense anger and I do."

He rejected suggestions that graphic pictures of the dead in newspapers took away their dignity. He said: "My view is the people who are dead would want us to record what happened to them."

powerful stuff... it's the kind of perspective and on-the-ground information we desperately need to be a part of our national debate...

(thanks to chris in paris at americablog...)

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Global warming

ya gotta love visuals...

Late last month, a team of University of Colorado and NASA scientists announced that the Arctic sea ice cap shrank this summer to 200 million square miles, 500,000 square miles less than its average area between 1979 and 2000.

[...]

"At this point, people shouldn't be surprised this is happening," said Goddard atmospheric scientist David Rind, noting that 2002, 2003 and 2004 were among the warmest years on record. [...] "We're putting a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and we're getting a lot higher temperatures."

well, gollee... how about that... cause and effect... what a concept...!

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Wayne LaPierre and the NRA "outraged" at gun ban in emergency housing parks

oferchrissake... how in the world did fools get so much clout...? cuz we let 'em, i guess...

Amid complaints from gun-rights groups, FEMA said Wednesday it is reconsidering a ban on firearms at emergency housing parks built in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

[...]

"Whether it's a national disaster, whether it's by nature like Katrina, or a flu pandemic or an earthquake, the Constitution can't be thrown out the window," said NRA leader Wayne LaPierre.

He said the NRA was outraged, and he warned that the organization would take its case all the way to Congress and president.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office had asked that guns be banned at the encampment because the trailers are close together and have thin walls, according to spokesman Deputy Fred Raiford.

"If a gun was discharged in any of those trailers, it probably would go through three or four other trailers before it stopped," Raiford said.

why aren't they hollering about not being able to take a firearm on an airplane...? or into a hospital...? or a crowded shopping mall...? oh, 'scuse me... i guess you can if you've got the right permits... ~sheesh~ message: don't leave home without it...

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The next 18 months in Latin America

(taken from a presentation by Anoop Singh, Director, Western Hemisphere Department International Monetary Fund, at a symposium sponsored by the Banco de la Republica, Bogota, Colombia, October 13, 2005...)

there's a tremendous amount of information in singh's presentation, not only about latin america but the rest of the world as well... particularly interesting are the graphs showing china in relationship to the u.s. and europe... however, my interest was drawn to this particular graph...

In the next 18 months, 19 countries in the region, including the largest Latin American countries, are slated to have elections, the results of which will affect more than 520 million people.

that's a huge number and the impact could be equally huge... if the move to the center-left continues, it's going to put a great deal of pressure on the u.s. to begin dealing with those countries in a different way than we have been attempting to do so far with hugo chavez...

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Putting the pieces of Plamegate together - Wilson, Plame, Cheney, Rove, WHIG, Miller and the other suspects

raw story has a concise, readable, chronology of the white house iraq group (whig), its members, who did what and when that i think is perhaps one of the better summaries of plamegate and its maze of plot twists worthy of a brazilian telenovela... the article starts with the news of the day - the possible involvement of dick cheney - and then fills in the background...

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to determine whether Vice President Dick Cheney had a role in the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame-Wilson, individuals close to Fitzgerald say. Plame’s husband was a vocal critic of prewar intelligence used by President George W. Bush to build support for the Iraq war.

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Chavez requesting nuclear reactor from Argentina so NOW we support the IAEA

just prior to the summit of the americas... the buenos aires herald comments...

The media buzz over the request of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez for an Argentine nuclear reactor is probably the last thing the government wanted just three weeks before hosting the Americas Summit in Mar del Plata [Argentina], especially with the spotlight on the potential clash between Chávez and United States President George W. Bush. The position of the United States is not so much outright rejection as to insist that such a transaction cannot be a simple bilateral decision but must respect the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other international conventions (the point seems timely enough the week after the International Atomic Energy Agency won the Nobel Peace Prize in Vienna).

oh, so NOW we want to support the treaty and the IAEA...! we throw our support behind whatever happens to serve our interests at the time...

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Steve Clemons: Miers as "soccer mom"

he's commenting on miers' writing ability, a subject also taken up by david brooks in today's nyt...

Maybe a soccer mom type is the right choice for the next slot on the Supreme Court, but there seem to be numerous people out there who are not part of the "judicial monastery" but can still communicate their views in a way that adds to rather than blurs America's legal infrastructure.

oooo... that's GOTTA hurt...

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Religion, the world's - and our nation's - great divider...

george monbiot, writing in alternet today, makes this statement...

If you want people to behave as Christians advocate, you should tell them that God does not exist.

he bases his comment on the results of a recently-published study...

[I]n the current edition of the Journal of Religion and Society, a researcher called Gregory Paul tests the hypothesis propounded by evangelists in the Bush administration, that religion is associated with lower rates of "lethal violence, suicide, non-monogamous sexual activity and abortion." He compared data from 18 developed democracies, and discovered that the Christian fundamentalists couldn't have got it more wrong.

"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion ... None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction."

Within the United States "the strongly theistic, anti-evolution South and Midwest" have "markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the Northeast where ... secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms."

Three sets of findings stand out: the associations between religion -- especially absolute belief -- and juvenile mortality, venereal disease and adolescent abortion. Paul's graphs show far higher rates of death among the under-5s in Portugal, the U.S and Ireland and put the U.S. -- the most religious country in his survey -- in a league of its own for gonorrhea and syphilis.

Strangest of all for those who believe that Christian societies are "pro-life" is the finding that "increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator ... Claims that secular cultures aggravate abortion rates (John Paul II) are therefore contradicted by the quantitative data."

it's unfortunate that, after reading monbiot, one could reasonably confuse religiosity with spirituality... they are not the same... i consider myself very spiritual but i have no truck with religion... religion, i agree, is perhaps the most divisive force on the planet but i would fiercely defend that belief in a god, higher power, whatever you might choose to call him/her/it is not a precursor to the devastation that has been wreaked in the name of religion or, perhaps better-termed, rigid pseudo-spiritual dogma...

equally unfortunately, this issue is playing out on the national stage and is one that bushco has continually used to stake out his political territory to the great detriment of our country...

President Bush said yesterday that it was appropriate for the White House to invoke Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers's religion in making the case for her to skeptical conservatives, triggering a debate over what role, if any, her evangelical faith should play in the confirmation battle.

no, it's not appropriate... it's precisely her religion that draws the dividing line between her and everyone who does not share her views... it also presents us with the prospect of a supreme court justice of the united states of america who, because of her deep RELIGIOUS beliefs, will be compelled to cast her decisions in that light in order to not put herself at odds with those beliefs...

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Northwest's union-busting under bankruptcy, the new business strategy

no doubt about it... bankruptcy is the new business strategy... us airways broke the ground... it's taken united since my birthday, 2002, to bludgeon its employees into submission... now that they've been successful AND managed to shove their pension liability off to the pension benefit guarantee corporation, they've paved the way for northwest, delta and, most recently, delphi, to follow suit... you're gonna see little time wasted in dumping those annoying union contracts, unnecessary pension programs, and trouble-making frontline employees...

Northwest Airlines on Wednesday said it has asked a bankruptcy judge for permission to void its contracts if its employee unions did not agree to concessions worth USD$1.4 billion a year.

[...]

Companies in bankruptcy can use court protection as leverage to extract savings from their labor forces that otherwise might be unattainable. Unions at bankrupt United Airlines, for example, agreed to wage and benefit concessions this year after the carrier asked for court permission to void its labor contracts.

anything in the article about executive and management wage concessions...? funny you should ask... no...

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39, 29, 28... Bushco continues to tank

39% think bush is doing a good job
29% think miers is qualified to serve on scotus
28% think the country is headed in the right direction
65% think delay's activities are illegal
57% think frist's activities are illegal
48% think congress should be under democratic control
69% think the worst is yet to come with energy costs

OUCH...!!

For the first time in the poll, Bush’s approval rating has sunk below 40 percent, while the percentage believing the country is heading in the right direction has dipped below 30 percent. In addition, a sizable plurality prefers a Democratic-controlled Congress, and just 29 percent think Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is qualified to serve on the nation’s highest court.

[...]

"It is not that Democrats have done so well," [Hart] said. "It is that people are disgusted." McInturff puts it this way: "People are very turned off and unhappy with the state of play in American politics." [Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.]

disgusted...? unhappy...? turned off...? that's putting it mildly...

(thanks to atrios...)

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Well, well, well... Neocons deserting a sinking ship...

and, of course, blaming the captain...

President George W. Bush may have no military exit strategy for Iraq, but the “neocons” who convinced him to go to war there have developed one of their own — a political one: Blame the Administration.

Their neo-Wilsonian theory is correct, they insist, but the execution was botched by a Bush team that has turned out to be incompetent, crony-filled, corrupt, unimaginative and weak over a wide range of issues.

The flight of the neocons — just read a recent Weekly Standard to see what I am talking about — is one of only many indications that the long-predicted “conservative crackup” is at hand.

how reminiscent of watergate with all the president's men standing around pointing fingers at each other... these folks, with all their self-appointed expertise and accompanying arrogance, got their wish and it turned out to be a chimera... so guess what...? they point to dear leader... ain't no accountability, no where...

(thanks to Think Progress...)

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John at AMERICAblog commemorates Matthew Shepard

RIP, Matthew Shepard, 12 October 1998...

go read the letter from his mother, judy...

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The heating season begins... Good luck, everybody...!

as the r's continue to destroy the social safety net...

Winter heating bills will be a third to a half higher for most families across the country, with the sharpest increases expected for those who heat with natural gas, the Energy Department forecast Wednesday.

The department said natural gas users can expect to pay an average of $350 more during the upcoming winter compared to last year, an increase of 48 percent. Those who heat their homes with fuel oil will pay $378 more, or 32 percent higher than last winter.

[...]

"We have never had prices so high and increase so quickly," said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents the state agencies that distribute money to help low-income families pay their fuel bills.

This winter, Wolfe expects more than a million additional applicants for the government program, a 20 percent increase over last year, with not enough money to go around. Congress provided $2.2 billion for the program, known as LIHEAP, last year. Wolfe said $5.1 billion is needed.

i've commented before, all it will take is a few elderly freezing to death in their apartments because they were unable to pay their heating bills for all this to blow up in bushco's face... just add it to the list of everything else that's blowing up in their face...

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The internet: as we contemplate our navels, the world continues to turn

even those of us who claim to be liberal and espouse global thinking and broader perspectives tend to get our focus stuck inside the borders of the u.s., iraq and occasionally western europe notwithstanding... with all that's going on - rove, hurricanes, bush's free-fall, miers, etc. - it's easy to forget that what's happening in the u.s. is not necessarily the be-all and end-all for the rest of the planet... take, for instance, the current quiet war that's being waged over control of the internet, the outcome of which could profoundly affect this cherished medium we have come to take for granted...

The real world is involved in a battle for control over the virtual world, one of the central issues to be dealt with at the Nov. 16-18 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the Tunisian capital.

Against the wishes of almost all other governments, Washington wants to maintain the current system of domain names administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private sector, non-profit body that is linked to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

There has even been talk of creating another global computer network, independent of the current system under U.S. control.

The invasion of Iraq and U.S. restrictions on basic rights in the name of the "war on terrorism" have heightened the urgency of the need to place the Internet under international oversight, according to Carlos Afonso, a Brazilian member of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) set up by the United Nations.

[...]

The tendency, given the divisions and U.S. resistance to any change whatsoever, is towards the emergence of a compromise solution, in which ICANN would continue to perform its technical functions, while moving gradually over to a system of multilateral oversight, said Afonso...

and, lest you didn't read between the lines, the article 'splains it for you...

[T]he Bush administration's demonstrated contempt for multilateralism has fuelled the struggle for international Internet governance...

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Bush's downfall...?

O’Reilly: “If Rove gets indicted, that could bring down the Bush administration.”

You know things are getting bad when Bill O’Reilly is predicting the downfall of the Bush administration...

i can't think of anything that would be better for this country right now than if bushco crashed... under my initial glee would be a massive sense of relief followed immediately by a sense of urgency to begin repairing the damage...

(thanks to Think Progress...)

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Speaking of Bush's cognitive dissonance

[Bush on] his bold plan to rebuild the devastated Gulf Coast . . .

"We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality."

[...]

That was a month ago. This week, the only talk about legislative action has come from the conservative Republicans calling for new holes in the social safety net . . .

[...]

But, of course, that was exactly what Americans expected the White House to do. There seems to be no coordinated plan, no single person in charge of making the recovery happen. With this president, there is a vast gulf between words and action.

you know things are at a low ebb when you have an outfit like the nyt observing that americans no longer expect their president to match his words with actions...

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Success in the Middle East looks like, uh, looks like, hmmmm...

CHRISTMAS...!!!

The decorations are hanging, the cash registers are clanging, and the air of holiday cheer is everywhere. For a holy month, Ramadan is not what it used to be.

Once an ascetic month of fasting, prayer and reflection on God, Ramadan has gradually taken on the commercial trappings of Christmas and Hanukkah, from the hanging lights that festoon windows to the Ramadan greeting cards and Ramadan sales and advertising campaigns that have become the backbone of commerce for the month.

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Bush: blink, blink, jiggle, jiggle, shift, shift...

(NBC's Matt Lauer interviewing Bush yesterday on the Today show...)

The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

for a guy who is so invested in projecting a tough image, a decisive mind, the courage of his convictions, and an in-charge stance, body language like this opens a gap of what the shrinks call "cognitive dissonance" big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through...

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"Think about it..." Molly Ivins on prisoner torture

Think about it: Five years of stupefying pork, ideological nonsense, dumb administrative ideas, fiscal idiocy, misbegotten energy programs -- and the first thing the man vetoes is a bill to pay our soldiers because it carries an amendment saying, once again, that this country does not torture prisoners.

yeah... indeed... think about it...

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Dobson to "clarify" his comment on Miers [UPDATE: Dobson's "clarification"]

(tip courtesy of el hermano...)

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson will take to the airwaves Wednesday and Thursday to clarify what information he got from the White House or other sources about U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.

oh, yeah, he feels the need to "clarify..." s-u-u-ure... he feels the need to NOT have to "testify" before the Senate...

[UPDATE]

so, now dobson's spilled the beans... i've posted the majority of the transcript simply because reading it gives a rather fascinating insight into the mind of this fundamentalist, evangelical christian who is so important that he receives a personal telephone call from the white house deputy chief of staff PRIOR to the president announcing his nomination for an open seat on the united states supreme court...

ANOTHER LOOK AT THE MIERS NOMINATION (rough, unedited transcript)

Date: 10-12-2005

TRANSCRIPT

OPENING VOICE TRACK:

John: It’s Wednesday. I’m John Fuller and you’re tuned to “FOF” with psychologist and author, Dr. James Dobson. And Doctor, what a crazy week you’ve had!

(more)

JCD: Well, John, if our listeners and friends have been monitoring the news on radio and television and the Internet and if they have been listening to other talk shows in the past week, then they know well, that I have been a topic of conversation from the nation's Capitol to the tiniest burg and farming community. And the issue that's propelled this unprecedented interest in something that I've said is my conversation with Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, that occurred on October 1st, just a few days ago. And that was the day before President Bush made his decision to nominate White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, to be the next Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now, as you know and as I'm sure many of our listeners know, there are members of the judiciary committee who are running from one talk show to another, threatening to subpoena me to find out what occurred in that conversation with Karl Rove. And I am going to make their job easier (Laughter), because in the next few minutes, I'm gonna tell them what I would say to them if I were sitting before the judiciary committee. [Note: didn't i say he was doing this so he didn't have to testify...? huh, huh...?] And this is the essence of what transpired between the Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House and me. So, is that clear?

John: I think that is. And for our listeners, you wouldn't believe all that's going on here at Focus, as so many of the mainstream media--most of the mainstream media--is contacting us. They, like those Senators, want to know, "What does Dr. Dobson know? What did he talk about? Tell us, please."

JCD: Well, John, I think it's time that I did that.

John: Okay, before you do though, it probably would be helpful for our listeners to understand why you can talk about that now and previously you couldn’t.

JCD: Yeah, I haven’t been willing to. The reason is because Karl Rove has now given me permission to go public with our conversation. And I’m gonna say a little more about that in a minute.

John: Okay. Well, fill us in then on what happened.

JCD: Well, let me go back through the sequence of events and...and explain what happened. The President announced his decision on Monday morning, October 3rd, that Harriet Miers was his selection and the debate was on. And a few hours after that, many conservative Christian leaders were involved in a conference call, wherein some of those men and women were expressing great disillusionment with President Bush's decision and there was a lot of anger over his failure to select someone with a proven track record in the courts. And I came in a little bit late and I caught just a bit of that angst and then I shared my opinion, that Harriet Miers might well be more in keeping with our views than they might think and that I did believe that she was a far better choice than many of my colleagues were saying and that they obviously believed.

Well, my reasons for supporting her were twofold, John. First, because Karl Rove had shared with me her judicial philosophy which was consistent with the promises that President Bush had made when he was campaigning. Now he told the voters last year that he would select people to be on the Court who would interpret the law rather than create it and judges who would not make social policy from the bench. Most of all, the President promised to appoint people who would uphold the Constitution and not use their powers to advance their own political agenda. Now, Mr. Rove assured me in that telephone conversation that Harriet Miers fit that description and that the President knew her well enough to say so with complete confidence.

Then he suggested that I might want to validate that opinion by talking to people in Texas who knew Miers personally and he gave me the names of some individuals that I could call. And I quickly followed up on that conversation and got glowing reports from a federal judge in Texas, Ed Kinkeade and a Texas Supreme Court justice, Nathan Hecht, who is highly respected and has known Harriet Miers for more than 25 years. And so, we talked to him and we talked to some others who are acquainted with Ms. Miers.

So, I shared my findings with my colleagues, not only what I just mentioned, but other calls I made. I talked to Chuck Colson, my great friend, who is a constitutional attorney--

John: Uh-hm, uh-hm.

JCD: --and talked to him four times. He helped me kind of assimilate the information that we had garnered, but I would not say much about the phone call from Karl Rove, even though I'm very close to many of the people who are on the telephone. Why would I not do that? Because it was a confidential conversation and I've had a long-standing policy of not going out and revealing things that are said to me in confidence. That may come from my training as a psychologist, where you hear all sorts of things that you can't go out and talk about.

John: Sure.

JCD: And I feel very strongly about that. And frankly, I think it’s a mistake and maybe even an ethical problem for people to do that—to go out and brag about being a player on the national scene, maybe to make themselves to look important. You know, I just wish that didn’t happen like it does and I certainly didn’t want to be part of it.

So, I wouldn’t reveal any of the details about the call, although I did say to these pro-family leaders, which has been widely quoted, that Karl had told me something that I probably shouldn’t know. And you know, it really wasn’t all that tantalizing, but I still couldn't talk about it. And what I was referring to is the fact that on Saturday, the day before the President made his decision, I knew that Harrier Miers was at the top of the short list of names under consideration. And as you know, that information hadn’t been released yet, and everyone in Washington and many people around the country wanted to know about it and the fact that he had shared with me is not something I wanted to reveal.

But we also talked about something else, and I think this is the first time this has been disclosed. Some of the other candidates who had been on that short list, and that many conservatives are now upset about were highly qualified individuals that had been passed over. Well, what Karl told me is that some of those individuals took themselves off that list and they would not allow their names to be considered, because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter, that they didn’t want to subject themselves or the members of their families to it.

So, even today, many conservatives and many of ‘em friends of mine, are being interviewed on talk shows and national television programs. And they’re saying, “Why didn’t the President appoint so-and-so? He or she would have been great. They had a wonderful judicial record. They would have been the kind of person we’ve been hoping and working and praying for to be on the Court. Well, it very well may be that those individuals didn’t want to be appointed.

John: For understandable reasons, because the grilling that they get in that confirmation process is just brutal.

JCD: Well, it’s true. The Democrats have so politicized that process that it’s become an ordeal and many people just don’t want to go through that. And I’m not sure I blame them. So, Karl Rove shared some of that with me. He also made it clear that the President was looking for a certain kind of candidate, namely a woman to replace Justice O’Connor. And you can imagine what that did to the short list. That cut it…I haven’t looked at who I think might have been on that short list, because Karl didn’t tell me who was not willing to be considered.

But that many have cut it by 80 percent right there. But I was not gonna be the one to reveal this. I knew that people would eventually be aware of some of that information, but I didn’t think I had the right to say it. And so, I made my comment.

Now there’s…there’s something else I’ll say in a moment that I was referring to. But let me just say that some of my friends that I was talking to that day and thought I was speaking in confidence, went straight to the media and…and shared what I had said or what I had not said. And that’s where the firestorm began. You know, “What did Dobson know and when did he know it?”

Now let me go back to the statement that there were some things from my conversation with Karl Rove that I couldn’t talk about. And of course, the media has keyed on that statement. I had no idea that was going to be released to the media, but there it is.

So, what was it that I couldn’t talk about? The answer has everything to do with timing. It’s very important to remember that when I first made that statement about knowing things that I shouldn’t know, and shared that with my colleagues the day that the President made his announcement, maybe two or three hours after his press conference.

And then, that very night, I went on the Brit Hume program—the FOX News program—and…and talked about the President’s nomination. And then, the following day—Tuesday—I recorded a statement for FOF, which was heard on Wednesday. And that is the last time that I said that I had information that was confidential and that I really couldn’t talk about.

Why? Because what I was told by Karl Rove had been confirmed and reported from other sources by that time.

What did Karl Rove say to me that I knew on Monday that I couldn’t reveal? Well, it’s what we all know now, that Harriet Miers is an Evangelical Christian, that she is from a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life, that she had taken on the American Bar Association on the issue of abortion and fought for a policy that would not be supportive of abortion, that she had been a member of the Texas Right to Life. In other words, there is a characterization of her that was given to me before the President had actually made this decision. I could not talk about that on Monday. I couldn’t talk about it on Tuesday. In fact, Brit Hume said, “What church does she go to?” And I said, “I don’t think it’s up to me to reveal that.” Do you remember my saying that?

John: I do, yes.

JCD: What I meant was, I couldn’t get into this. But by Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, all this information began to come out and it was no longer sensitive. I didn’t have the right to be the one that revealed it and that’s what I was referring to.

John: Well, I’d also guess, Doctor, that the answer you gave here about the contents of that conversation and why you couldn’t divulge some of those matters, won’t satisfy the senators on the judiciary committee, who were looking for some red meat.

JCD: Well, John, I have no doubt that what I’ve just said will be a great disappointment to Senator Schumer and Senator Salazar and Senator Biden and Senator Durban and Senator Leahy and Senator Lautenberg and some of the other liberal Democrats, because Karl Rove didn’t tell me anything about the way Harriet Miers would vote on cases that may come before the Supreme Court.

We did not discuss Roe v. Wade in any context or any other pending issue that will be considered by the Court. I did not ask that question. You know, to be honest, I would have loved to have known how Harriet Miers views Roe v. Wade. But even if Karl had known the answer to that and I’m certain that he didn’t, because the President himself said he didn’t know, Karl would not have told me that. That’s the most incendiary information that’s out there and it was never part of our discussion.

One thing is clear. We know emphatically that Justices Souter and Kennedy and Breyer and Ginsburg and Stevens have made up their mind about Roe v. Wade, by politicizing their decrees on that issue and others. They have usurped the right of the people to govern themselves and they imposed a radical agenda on this country. And John, as long as I’m talking about that, let me say one other thing.

More recently, they have been drawing some of their conclusions, not from the Constitution and not from precedent and not from the American people, but from public opinion in Western Europe. You know, that’s one of the most outrageous developments in the history of the Court. American public opinion is ignored and so are previous Court decisions or precedent. And frequently, the Constitution itself is bypassed. And instead they favor the views of people who have no commitment to our freedoms and our traditions that the Founding Fathers gave us.

So, I want the President to appoint someone who will go to the original intent of the Constitution and tell us what the founding fathers meant. If we don’t like what they wrote, there’s a process to change it. But the way it works now, every time the Court meets, it can be more or less a constitutional convention, where five or more justices reinterpret the meaning of that precious document.

Now Karl Rove didn't tell me all of that, but what he said, in essence, is that Harriet Miers is a strict constructionist, which is why the President likes her. And you know, I've never met her; I don't have any personal communication with her. I've never received a letter or a phone call from her or any firsthand knowledge, but I do believe President Bush is serious when he says this is the kind of person I'm looking for and Harriet Miers is such a person.

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James Yee speaks

the london sunday times carried an excerpt from james yee's book [For God And Country by James Yee with Aimee Molloy, soon to be published] detailing his experiences at guantanamo leading up to and following his arrest... nothing we haven't either heard or suspected but still a sordid tale for all that...

I knew why I had been arrested: it was because I am a Muslim. I was just the latest victim of the hostility born the moment when the planes flew into the twin towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

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Bush's approval ratings

(thanks to ipsos...)

nothing like a good visual to tell the story...

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So much for bloggers not being considered journalists

Yahoo Inc. said on Monday it will begin featuring the work of self-published Web bloggers side by side with the work of professional journalists, leveling distinctions between the two.

Yahoo News, the world's most popular Internet media destination, is set to begin testing on Tuesday an expanded news search system that includes not only news stories and blogs but also user-contributed photos and related Web links.

good move... this may put to rest some of the ill-informed blather that bloggers working as citizen journalists aren't worthy of the designation - as some maintain...

Bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon.

while i consider myself a "concerned citizen" rather than a journalist, i applaud yahoo on a sensible decision and suggest lugar give a little more thought to a subject he obviously knows little about... if he's serious about learning, he can ask sen. barack obama about the reaction to his recent post on kos...

"It was a good opportunity to engage an activist community in a forum that is rapidly growing," Obama said in an interview. "If you take these blogs seriously, they'll take you seriously."

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Condi for preznit

meanwhile, over at newsmax...

[T]he Morris-McGann tome [Dick Morris and Eileen McGann in their book, "Condi vs. Hillary: the Next Great Presidential Race"] warns of a dark future that might yet be avoided - if Republicans realize in time that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is America's last best hope to avoid a third Clinton administration.

lemme be clear... i'm not carrying a torch for hillary... at one point, i was enamored with the idea of her as the first woman president but after watching her weaseling around with the r's, trying to find some sort of "centrist" position which, to my mind, only signifies the absence of any principles whatsoever, she can kiss my patoot... that said, the mere notion of condi as america's "last best hope" is, by turns, appalling and simply hysterical...she may have some intellectual firepower but she ain't presidential material, not by a long shot... i have to admit, however, it would be kind of interesting to have a right-wing dominatrix as preznit...

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No Rove, no Plame, no Miers, no Dobson

ain't commentin' on any of the above until there's something out there that resembles NEWS rather than attorney droppings, recycled speculation and pundit flatulence...

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Looking for those behind the $1B "missing" in Iraq

once again, accountability is mia... the u.s. set up allawi's government, paul bremer was the man on the scene, the money flowed into the green zone, and then...?

Iraq has issued arrest warrants against the defense minister and 27 other officials from the U.S.-backed government of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi over the alleged disappearance or misappropriation of $1 billion in military procurement funds, officials said Monday.

and the costs of the war in iraq were going to be paid out of iraqi oil revenues... ha...! i wonder how much of that $1B is sitting in numbered swiss bank accounts right now...

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Taking care of those in need...? The naïveté of the NYT is touching...

Tax policy should get a relatively low priority in restoring the Gulf Coast, which will be hard for this administration and some of its diehard supporters to accept. [...] Housing vouchers and bolstered unemployment compensation should also come before any discussion of tax breaks.

If lawmakers are worried about paying for those measures, they should simply let President Bush's temporary tax cuts for the rich expire as scheduled.

either naïveté or just plain disingenuousness... there is nothing about the bush administration or its tom delay bought-and-paid-for congressional contingent that's about to bless any move toward backing social programs... even with bush's popularity settling rapidly into the cellar, the president and his ideologically-driven cadre will never back off their agenda to gut any implied social contract...

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Global warming - Oh, goodie, more of the earth to exploit

never let it be said that capitalism doesn't answer the door when opportunity comes calling... from gouging on the price of gasoline after a devastating hurricane to making the most of the ravaging of the arctic by global warming, good ol' capitalism is right there...

It seems harsh to say that bad news for polar bears is good for Pat Broe. Mr. Broe, a Denver entrepreneur, is no more to blame than anyone else for a meltdown at the top of the world that threatens Arctic mammals and ancient traditions and lends credibility to dark visions of global warming.

Still, the newest study of the Arctic ice cap - finding that it faded this summer to its smallest size ever recorded - is beginning to make Mr. Broe look like a visionary for buying this derelict Hudson Bay port from the Canadian government in 1997. Especially at the price he paid: about $7.

By Mr. Broe's calculations, Churchill could bring in as much as $100 million a year as a port on Arctic shipping lanes shorter by thousands of miles than routes to the south, and traffic would only increase as the retreat of ice in the region clears the way for a longer shipping season.

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Bush - The Manchurian Candidate

Whoa

...There is no pleasure in recording this. This newspaper is second to none in its pro-American sentiments; in the early Bush years it devoted much ink to defending the President against the often malevolent and ignorant attacks of a congenitally anti-American European media. But we know a lost cause when we see one...

Though I do not agree with this author's premise that Ronald Reagan was the great one, it is lovely to see the Right-wingers eating their own.

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$100K?!?! That's it?

My modest little home cost more than this.

US Offers Aid and Sympathies after Asian Quake

President Bush has offered Americans' deepest sympathies for the loss of life caused by the South Asian earthquake Saturday.

In a statement, Mr. Bush said initial deployments of American aid are underway, and that the United States stands ready to provide more help as needed.

The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker, has said Washington will provide 100-thousand dollars in emergency relief funds.

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Bush's base: We don't want a "closeted" Christian

bush's "code" has never been all that subtle... even someone with a tin ear could crack it... i doubt if bush has ever made a single public speech without peppering it with words and references the faithful would clearly interpret as evidence of bush's solid evangelical, fundamentalist christianity... the whole terri schiavo affair was a brazenly calculated effort to display the depth of george's beliefs which, ironically, was perhaps the very point at which his pandering began to backfire...

The nomination of Ms. Miers demonstrated the fragility of a coalition built in part on code. The administration relied on subtle clues about her evangelical faith and confidential conversations with influential conservative Christians to enlist grass-roots support for Ms. Miers.

Instead the Miers nomination has threatened to shatter the coalition that Mr. Bush and his adviser Karl Rove hoped would be the foundation of a durable Republican majority. Social conservatives say that Mr. Bush made them tacit promises to appoint justices who would rule their way on abortion and other social issues. They wanted a nominee with a clear record and Ms. Miers had none.

in all honesty, i am fairly well convinced that both bush and rove are solid in their evangelical, fundamentalist christian beliefs and would sincerely like to see the country governed from those principles... i also believe that miers is of the same mind... her choice, however, and the apparent strategy of using her as a stalking horse to bypass moderate and liberal scrutiny, also reflects just how intense their desire to hold on to power at any cost... it is that desire, now on full public display, that is their achilles heel... the fundamentalists are making it very clear they don't want a "closeted" christian at the helm...

here's the passage that put a burr under my butt... typical nyt... won't say shit until they're up to their eyeballs in it... some liberal media we have... HA...!

And at a time when polls show his approval rating hovering near its low point, the discontent of his most passionate supporters can only hasten the day when the term "lame duck" will apply.

get a friggin' CLUE... he's been a "lame duck" at least since terri schiavo...

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