"I have spoken with Congressman Istook and he assures me that his office is not responsible for inclusion of the IRS provision into the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005, the so-called omnibus bill. I regret any confusion my earlier remarks may have created."

Americans Show Clear Concerns on Bush Agenda

After enduring a brutally fought election campaign, Americans are optimistic about the next four years under President Bush, but have reservations about central elements of the second-term agenda he presented in defeating Senator John Kerry, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

At a time when the White House has portrayed Mr. Bush's 3.5-million-vote victory as a mandate, the poll found that Americans are at best ambivalent about Mr. Bush's plans to reshape Social Security, rewrite the tax code, cut taxes and appoint conservative judges to the bench. There is continuing disapproval of Mr. Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, with a plurality now saying it was a mistake to invade in the first place.

While Democrats, not surprisingly, were the staunchest opponents of many elements of Mr. Bush's second-term agenda, the concerns extended across party lines in some cases. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents - including 51 percent of Republicans - said it was more important to reduce deficits than to cut taxes, a central element of Mr. Bush's economic agenda.

CBS News/New York Times Poll. Nov. 18-21, 2004. N=885 adults nationwide. MoE +/-3.

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?"

Approve: 51%
Disapprove: 44%
Don't Know: 5%

"Is your opinion of George W. Bush favorable, not favorable, undecided, or haven't you heard enough about George W. Bush yet to have an opinion?"

Favorable: 48%
Unfavorable: 39%
Undecided: 10%

"What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?"

War in Iraq 25%
Economy/Jobs 18%
Terrorism (general) 11%
Health care 6%
Miscellaneous moral values 4%
The President 3%
Social Security/Medicare 2%
Education 2%
Poverty/Homelessness 2%
Foreign policy 2%
Defense/Military 2%
Other 17%
Unsure 6%

LINK - Thieves have stolen scantily clad garden gnomes from a gnome peepshow in an eastern German amusement park, park manager Frank Ullrich said on Thursday.

"The gnomes display naked body parts -- the same ones you'd expect to see in a human peep show," Ullrich said of his missing stars.

The adults-only attraction at Dwarf-Park Trusetal, where visitors peep through keyholes to see the saucy German miniatures in compromising poses, was smashed open early on Thursday morning.

Ullrich said he feared the gnomes would not be traced.

"I doubt they're standing in someone's garden, they'll have to have been hidden inside."

Scalia says religion infuses U-S government and history

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says a religion-neutral government doesn't fit with an America that reflects belief in God in everything from its money to its military.

Scalia told an interfaith conference at a New York synagogue that courts should consider that heritage in making their rulings.

In Europe, Scalia noted, religion-neutral leaders almost never publicly use the word "God." But he asked, "Did it turn out that, by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they were in the United States of America?" He added, "I don't think so."

Scalia said official examples of the presence of faith go back to America's Founding Fathers -- the word "God" on U-S currency, chaplains in the military and the legislature, real estate tax-exemptions for houses of worship and the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

1) Go to Sirius.com, click on "Get Sirius", then click "Buy at Sirius Direct."
2) Enter the promo code 252 and click "Go."
3) The Audiovox SIR-PNP2 and Clarion SIRPNP tuners will come up for $49.99 each. Choose one by clicking "Add to Cart."
4) You'll be asked for a referring e-mail address. Use mine - [hoffmanblog at earthlink dot net].*
*Type it in as a regular e-mail address. I spelled it out that way so I don't get spam from website crawlers.
5) Choose either the car kit or the home kit for free.
6) Follow the rest of the procedure to subscribe.

Bill Frist exposed

In Washington's fetid culture of personal destruction, the powerful and privileged can trash an adversary's reputation without concern that the truth will embarrass them when it emerges months or years later. Consider the case of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Last March, Frist rose on the Senate floor to demonstrate his fealty to the White House by attacking Richard Clarke in the ugliest and most personal terms. Seeking to discredit the former counter-terrorism chief after his stunning appearance before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Frist essentially accused the former counter-terrorism chief of committing perjury.

But now we know who was telling the truth and who wasn't, thanks to the release of a newly declassified document. That document is the transcript of Clarke's testimony before a closed, joint congressional hearing in June 2002, when he discussed "the evolution of the terrorist threat" leading up to 9/11 with members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. While the declassified text contains lengthy redactions, it also shows conclusively that Frist slandered Clarke last spring.
_______

In his furious floor speech, the senator mocked Clarke for acknowledging his own responsibility in the government's failure to prevent the 9/11 disaster, berated his "profiteering" from the tragedy with his revealing memoir, "Against All Enemies," and went on to insinuate that the star witness had lied and might be prosecuted:

"Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath," said Frist. "In July 2002, in front of the Congressional Joint Inquiry on the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Clarke testified under oath that the administration actively sought to address the threat posed by al-Qaida during its first seven months in office ... .[It] is one thing for Mr. Clarke to dissemble in front of the media. But if he lied under oath to the United States Congress it is a far more serious matter. As I mentioned, the intelligence committee is seeking to have Mr. Clarke's previous testimony declassified so as to permit an examination of Mr. Clarke's two different accounts. Loyalty to any administration will be no defense if it is found that he has lied before Congress."

Clarke reacted by urging the immediate declassification of the entire six-hour transcript of his secret testimony, confident that he would be vindicated. Eventually, Frist's own spokesman admitted that his boss hadn't read Clarke's testimony -- and that his only "evidence" was gossip from other unnamed legislators who had called the majority leader to complain that Clarke's "tone" differed from what he had said two years earlier. Some Republicans who had heard Clarke's testimony quietly suggested that Frist didn't know what he was talking about, including Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas.
_______

His detailed description of those efforts, which explodes Republican attempts to blame Clinton for 9/11 and confirms both his testimony and his book, should be required reading for mythologizers like the Senate majority leader. And when Frist has finished reading the 103 pages, the majority leader ought to be decent enough to apologize publicly for lying about this remarkable public servant.

LINK - It is noteworthy that the announcement of a legal challenge made it into weekend editions of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Columbus Dispatch, the Associated Press wires, and other publications. The Columbus paper even mentioned something curious. "Earlier this week, the Ohio Democratic party announced it would join a lawsuit arguing that the state lacks clear rules for evaluating provisional ballots, a move the party said will keep its options open if problems with the ballots surface."
_______

The Ohio newspaper coverage suggests that even the mainstream media is beginning to sit up and take notice that, whatever its merits, the investigation into the voting irregularities of November 2nd has moved from the Reynolds Wrap Hat stage into legal and governmental action. Tripe does continue to appear, like Carol Pogash's column in today's San Francisco Chronicle. Its headline provided me with a laugh: "Liberals, the election is over, live with it." I've gotten 37,000 emails in the last two weeks (now running at better than 25:1 in favor), and the two most repeated comments by those critical of the coverage have been references to the ratings of Fox News Channel, and the phrase "the election is over, (expletive deleted), live with it." I hesitate to generalize, but this does suggest a certain unwillingness of critics to engage in political discourses that don't have no swear words in 'em.

House Blocks Intelligence Reform Bill

Defying their leadership and direct appeals from President Bush and Vice President Cheney, two powerful House Republicans on Saturday blocked intelligence reform legislation that would put a single director in charge of the nation's spy agencies.

Passage of the legislation that would have implemented recommendations from the Sept. 11 commission had appeared likely earlier in the day. Commission members and families of the victims of the terrorist attacks reacted with frustration and outrage at the reversal.

The prospects of reviving the bill appeared uncertain late Saturday.

Hours after House and Senate negotiators said they had a deal, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he was unable to persuade Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) and some other Republicans to support the compromise. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), also opposed elements of the bill.

The two chairmen stood firm even after the president called Sensenbrenner from Santiago, Chile, where Bush was attending a summit of Asian and Pacific leaders, to urge him to make a compromise. Vice President Cheney asked Hunter to do the same.

Hunter said the bill would undermine the Pentagon's ability to obtain real-time intelligence during a battle. Sensenbrenner objected to stripping out controversial law enforcement and immigration provisions that had been included in the House's intelligence bill.

"We're just doing our jobs," Hunter said in an interview.

LINK - I'll add one factor to explain the collective shrugged shoulder: reading this stuff is hard. It's hard work.

There are, as we know, lies, damn lies, and statistics. But there is one level of hell lower still - scholarly statistical studies. I have made four passes at "The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections," and the thing has still got me pinned to the floor.

Most of the paper is so academically dense that it seems to have been written not just in another language, but in some form of code. There is one table captioned "OLS Regression with Robust Standard Errors." Another is titled "OLS regressions with frequency weights for county size." Only the summary produced by Professor Michael Hout and the Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Time is intelligible.

Of course, I'm reminded suddenly of the old cartoon, with the guy saying "I don't understand women," and the second guy saying, "So? Do you understand electricity?"
_______

In his news conference yesterday at Berkeley (who attended? Who phoned in to the conference call? Why didn't they try?) Professor Hout analogized the report to a "beeping smoke alarm." It doesn't say how bad the fire it is, it doesn't accuse anybody of arson, it just says somebody ought to have an extinguisher handy.
_______

...you are forced to conclude that compared to the Florida counties that used paper ballots, the ones that used electronic voting machines were much more likely to show "excessive votes" for Mr. Bush, and that the statistical odds of this happening organically are less than one in 1,000.

They also say that these "excessives" occurred most prominently in counties where Senator Kerry beat the President most handily. In the Democratic bastion of Broward, where Kerry won by roughly 105,000, they suggest the touch-screens "gave" the President 72,000 more votes than statistical consistency should have allowed. In Miami-Dade (Kerry by 55,000) they saw 19,300 more votes for Bush than expected. In Palm Beach (Kerry by 115,000) they claim Bush got 50,000 more votes than possible.

Hout and his research team consistently insisted they were not alleging that voting was rigged, nor even that what they've found actually affected the direction of Florida's 27 Electoral Votes. They point out that in a worst-case scenario, they see 260,000 "excessives" - and Bush took the state by 350,000 votes. But they insist that based on Florida's voting patterns in 1996 and 2000, the margin cannot be explained by successful get-out-the-vote campaigns, or income variables, or anything but something rotten in the touch screens.

Two precincts had high undercounts, analysis shows

Two Montgomery County precincts had extraordinarily high numbers of ballots cast Nov. 2 with no presidential vote counted, and the county's overall rates of such undercounts were highest where Democratic hopeful John Kerry did best.

Undercounts are ballots that do not register a vote for a particular race, in this case for president. Two precincts - one in Kettering and another in Washington Twp. - had undercounts of more than 25 percent, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of the county's unofficial results.

Overall in Montgomery County, 5,693 or 2 percent of the ballots cast registered no valid vote for president.

As predicted by political scientists, who say the poor and less-educated are more likely to have problems with punch card voting, the rate of so-called undercounted presidential ballots was higher in Democratic areas of the county than in Republican strongholds.

The undercount amounted to 2.8 percent of the ballots in the 231 precincts that supported Kerry, but only 1.6 percent of those cast in the 354 precincts that supported President Bush.

"That again, certainly, is torture," said Dennis Lieberman, the Montgomery County Democratic chairman.

Across the state on Nov. 2, counties that used punch-card voting, as Montgomery County did, had a higher rate of undercounted ballots than counties that used optical scanning technology or electronic voting machines, which had the lowest undercount.

With punch cards, undercounts can occur when a voter:

•Inadvertently votes for two candidates in the same race.

•Decides not to vote in the race.

•Does not sufficiently puncture the punch card to eliminate a "hanging chad." Hanging chads can make it impossible for machines to read the punch cards.

The highest undercount rate in Montgomery County was in precinct Washington X, around Paragon Road and Spring Valley Pike in Washington Twp.

In the precinct, 168 or 27.5 percent of the 611 ballots cast did not have a good presidential vote. That was followed closely by Kettering 3-A, near Stroop Road and Far Hills Avenue, where 121 or 27.3 percent of the 444 ballots cast were undercounted.

Both of those precincts supported Bush, as did seven of the 10 precincts with the highest rate of undercounted presidential ballots. That's despite the county's overall trend, in which precincts where Kerry did well tended to have above-average undercounts, while precincts where Bush won had lower-than-average undercounts.

County elections officials said they have no reports of any problems at either Washington X or Kettering 3-A. The punch-card voting stands, checked Wednesday using demonstration ballots, appeared to work appropriately.
_______

Rates that high show something must have gone wrong, said Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist from the University of Virginia. Undercounts during presidential elections are typically between 1 percent and 2 percent, he said.

"It is very difficult to believe that a quarter of the people would not vote for president, especially in a year like this," Sabato said. "If I were the election officers in those areas I would be doing some very extensive checks of those machines."

LINK - ...stay tuned for the latest disaster from Ohio.

For 40 years, the Dayton Daily News reports this morning, Shirley Wightman has worked at polling places on election days. Two weeks ago, she says, turnout was high - 611 voters - and she and her colleagues paid careful attention to their punch-card, chad-filled, voting stations in Washington Township, Ohio.

"We checked the machines periodically," Ms. Wightman told the paper, "and I could see nothing wrong with them."

Yet when the votes were tallied, 168 of the 611 voters had made no choice for president. Unless these were the famed undecideds we heard so much about in the closing weeks of the campaigns, something went terribly wrong. 27 and a half percent of the voters in that "Washington X" precinct in Montgomery County officially didn't have a presidential preference.

This was the high point of the Daily News' investigative analysis of the still-unofficial voting results in its county - or more properly, perhaps, the low point. The paper discovered that of the 284,650 votes in Montgomery, a total of 5,693 registered no valid vote for president. And the percentages were significantly higher in the 231 precincts that wound up voting for Kerry (2.8%) than did the 354 that wound up voting for Bush (1.6%).

Besides Washington X, a second County precinct exceeded 27% 'undercount,' as the election professionals, such as they are, call it. Washington X, Kettering 3-A, and five of the other top ten 'undercount' precincts by percentage wound up supporting Bush.

Since, as the papers note, political scientists suggested that the poor and the lesser-educated are presumed to have more trouble with punch card voting, there are several logical disconnects here. Given the outcomes in those two precincts, Washington X and Kettering 3-A, were those mostly Bush voters who managed to blank out more than a quarter of their own ballots, or did the precincts wind up voting for Bush because more than a quarter of the ballots had no valid presidential vote?

What happened in the voting precincts in Moraine, Ohio? 2,557 votes were cast at seven sites there. The President won the city by 2%. The number of ballots without a valid presidential vote was 5.6%.

What do the state undercounts in Ohio look like? Did they reduce Bush's margin of victory? Did they eliminate votes for Kerry? What the hell happened?
_______

As the Ohio recount nears, the number of hotspots continues to multiply. You are aware of the remarkable late night voting lines throughout the state, and the mysterious Glitch of Youngstown which initially registered negative 25,000,000 votes. There is the Gahanna machine which gave one presidential candidate 4,000 extra votes in a community of 600. And the farcical "walling off" of the vote counting in Warren County, because the county head of security was told face-to-face of an FBI terrorism warning there - except the FBI says it didn't issue any terrorism warnings there.

The Associated Press today carries a report of 2,600 ballots in nine precincts around Sandusky, Ohio that were counted twice - as that paper puts it - "likely because of worker error." The Clyde precinct showed a voter turnout of 131%, to the dismay of the head of the elections board, Barb Tuckerman.

Ms. Tuckerman, in one of the great quotes of the election, told the News-Messenger of Fremont, Ohio: "I knew there was something amiss."

Tell me about it, Barb.

Rare Blood Infection Surfaces in Injured U.S. Soldiers

An expectedly high number of U.S. soldiers injured in the Middle East and Afghanistan are testing positive for a rare, hard-to-treat blood infection in military hospitals, Army doctors reported on Thursday.

A total of 102 soldiers were found to be infected with the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii. The infections occurred among soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and three other sites between Jan. 1, 2002, and Aug. 31, 2004.

Although it was not known where the soldiers contracted the infections, the Army said the recent surge highlighted a need to improve infection-control in military hospitals.

Eighty-five of the bloodstream infections occurred among soldiers serving in Iraq, the area around Kuwait and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army said in a report published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From the pen of Nick Anderson

Senate leader backs Specter for Judiciary chairmanship

WASHINGTON - Sen. Arlen Specter on Wednesday went before his toughest audience to date, all the Republican members of the U.S. Senate, and won fresh support from many of his colleagues in his quest to secure the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee.

Perhaps the most significant statement came from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who only a few days ago had sounded less than enthusiastic about Specter's prospects.

"Today, he had the opportunity to make some comments, which were received very well by members of the caucus," Frist said at a news conference after the meeting of the Republican Conference.

Specter is expected to complete his penance by issuing a written statement clarifying his post-election remarks in which he appeared to signal that anti-abortion judges would have a rough ride through confirmation.

The 74-year-old Pennsylvanian has since vowed to support all of President Bush's judicial nominees and impose no litmus test on abortion.

UC Berkeley Study Questions Florida E-Vote Count
Research Team Calls for Immediate Investigation

When: Thursday, November 18, 2004, 10:00 a.m. PST

Where: UC Berkeley campus, Survey Research Center Conference Room --
2538 Channing Way (intersection of Channing/Bowditch). Parking on Durant
near Telegraph.

What: A research team at UC Berkeley will report that irregularities
associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded
130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in
Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained
discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic
voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting
methods. Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance -- the
probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team, led by Professor
Michael Hout, will formally disclose results of the study at the press
conference.

Democrats Question Kerry's Campaign Funds

Democratic Party leaders said Wednesday they want to know why Sen. John Kerry ended his presidential campaign with more than $15 million in the bank, money that could have helped Democratic candidates across the country.

Some said he will be pressured to give the money to Democratic campaign committees rather than save it for a potential White House bid in 2008.

"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential race.

Brazile is a member of the 400-plus member Democratic National Committee, which meets early next year to pick a new party chairman.

Pinellas ballot box sat ignored in office

The unmarked brown box sat unnoticed in the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections office until Monday, two weeks after the election, when an employee cleaning a desk stumbled upon it.

Inside were 268 uncounted absentee ballots.

"I think this is a very serious situation," Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark said Monday, vowing to fire or discipline any employee found to be negligent.

"I assume all responsibility for everything that happened in that department, but I have to rely on other people," Clark said. "It's not a one-woman show."

The unmarked box wasn't the only problem.

Five days ago, Clark sent the state the county's final results for the Nov. 2 election. But her office had failed to perform a standard check to ensure that all ballots had been accounted for.

Clark assumed her staff had performed the check, but they had not.

Now she will ask the state for permission to change Pinellas' official results. The canvassing board will count the missing ballots Thursday.

Although it is numerically possible, officials say the missing ballots probably won't change any results. Only a few races were decided by less than 268 votes - including the presidential contest.

George W. Bush won the presidential race in Pinellas by just 226 votes. While Bush's margin in Pinellas could change, his statewide victory won't.

"If you found a couple hundred thousand votes in Ohio, that might be exciting," said Paul Bedinghaus, chairman of the Pinellas Republican Party. "I expect that human error will continue to occur as long as human beings are involved."

A Hawk in Bush's Inner Circle Who Flies Under the Radar
Stephen J. Hadley, selected to be the next national security advisor, backs missile defense and is skeptical of arms control pacts.

Like others in Bush's inner circle, Hadley has demonstrated his loyalty. His most highly publicized appearance during Bush's first term came when he effectively took the blame for the president's mistaken claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Africa.

The assertion attracted controversy in July 2003, when it was disclosed that the Central Intelligence Agency had sent the White House two memos raising doubts about the uranium claim. Hadley appeared before reporters at the White House to say that he should have read the memos — and should have kept the erroneous 16 words out of Bush's speech.

"It is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility," he said. Immediately afterward, Bush aides stressed that Hadley retained Bush's complete confidence and would stay on the job.

On Tuesday, as he announced the selection, Bush called Hadley a "man of wisdom and good judgment" who had "earned my trust."

House GOP May Change Leadership Rules

House Republicans were contemplating changing their rules in order to allow members indicted by state prosecutors to remain in a leadership post, a move designed to benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, GOP leaders said today.

The rules change, which some leaders said is likely to be adopted Wednesday, comes as House Republicans return to Washington indebted to DeLay for the enhanced majority they won in this month's elections. DeLay led an aggressive redistricting effort in Texas last year that resulted in five Democratic House members retiring or losing reelection. It also triggered the grand jury inquiry into fundraising efforts related to the state legislature's redistricting actions.

House Republicans recognize that DeLay fought fiercely to widen their majority, and they are eager to protect him from an Austin-based investigation they view as baseless and partisan, said Rep. Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.), the GOP's chief deputy whip.

"That's why this [proposed rule change] is going to pass, assuming it is submitted, because there is a tremendous recognition that Tom DeLay led on the issue to produce five more seats in our majority," Cantor said after emerging from a meeting in which the Republican Conference welcomed new members and reelected Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and DeLay as its top leaders.

ODB's family woes

The sister of hip-hop star ODB said yesterday that his money was beginning to become an issue within the family since his death Saturday.

Lamarenae Jones, 32, said she and her mother, Cherry Jones, were angry that ODB's separated wife made public statements that he had only three children when the rapper had seven children to whom he was financially committed.

"All these kids were always around each other," Jones, of Manassas, Va., said. "We have no idea why she said he only had three - her three - but it looks like his money is definitely going to be an issue."

Biographies of the rapper have put the number of his offspring at 12 or 13.

His wife, Icelene Jones, met ODB at her 16th birthday party in East New York about 20 years ago and lives in Deer Park with the couple's three children, Taniqua, 16; Barson, 15; and Shaquita, 13. After ODB's death, she insisted he had only three children and would not be responsible for any more than that.

She could not be reached yesterday.

Man Stabbed in Melee at L.A.-Area Rap Awards Show

One man was stabbed and rapper Dr. Dre was punched in the nose during a melee at the second annual Vibe Awards for hip-hop stars at a hangar at Santa Monica Airport on Monday night, police said.

The fight, in which crowds of people traded punches and hurled chairs, started when Dr. Dre was punched while waiting to go on stage to receive a lifetime achievement award after being introduced by arranger Quincy Jones and rapper Snoop Dog.

Dre's bodyguards went after the assailant and fights broke out in the crowd of about 1,000. The man who was stabbed was not identified but officials said he was in stable condition and police were hunting for his attacker. The victim's name was not released.

When taping of the show resumed, Dr. Dre was presented with his award. The program was scheduled to be broadcast on Tuesday night on the UPN network.

Post: Man Who Ignited Self at White House an Informant

A man who set himself on fire outside the White House on Monday was a Yemeni federal informant on terrorism upset over how the FBI had managed his case, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

Mohamed Alanssi, who had recently discussed his work as an informant in interviews with The Washington Post, told the newspaper by faxed letter and telephone on Monday he intended to "burn my body at unexpected place," the newspaper reported.

NBC video shows Marine killing wounded Iraqi

A U.S. Marine shot and killed a wounded prisoner in a Fallujah mosque, according to a television pool report broadcast Monday. A Marine spokesman said the shooting was being investigated.

Pool pictures taken by NBC correspondent Kevin Sites embedded with the Marines 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, were recorded Saturday as the Marines returned to an unidentified Fallujah mosque.

The video, according to a version aired by CNN, showed a Marine raising his rifle toward the prisoners but neither NBC nor CNN showed the shooting itself. The video was blacked out but the report of the rifle could be heard.

LINK - Iraq's Red Crescent group sent seven truckloads of food and medicine to the city, but U.S. forces blocked the aid convoy at Falluja's main hospital and said it could not enter. The convoy turned back on Monday after three days of frustration.

"It's our third day here at the hospital and all we have done is receive promises from the Americans," Hassan Rawi, a member of the International Federation of the Red Cross, said.

U.S. commanders say they are working to deliver assistance to the city themselves, and urged any Iraqis needing aid to go to Falluja's main hospital on the western outskirts.

CIVILIAN DEATHS?

Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said he did not believe any civilians were killed in the offensive, which has left 38 U.S. soldiers, 6 Iraqi troops and more than 1,200 insurgents dead. But witness accounts contradicted him.

A member of an Iraqi relief committee told Al Jazeera television he saw 22 bodies buried in rubble in Falluja's northern Jolan district on Sunday.

"Of the 22 bodies, five were found in one house as well as two children whose ages did not exceed 15 and a man with an artificial leg," Mohammed Farhan Awad said.

"Some of the bodies we found had been eaten by stray dogs and cats. It was a very painful sight."

Recount in Ohio a Sure Thing
Green Party Campaign Raises $150,000 in 4 Days, Shifts Gears to Phase II

There will be a recount of the presidential vote in Ohio.

On Thursday, David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 presidential candidate, announced his intention to seek a recount of the vote in Ohio. Since the required fee for a statewide recount is $113,600, the only question was whether that money could be raised in time to meet the filing deadline. That question has been answered.

The Ohio presidential election was marred by numerous press and independent reports of mis-marked and discarded ballots, problems with electronic voting machines and the targeted disenfranchisement of African American voters. A number of citizens' groups and voting rights organizations are holding the second of two hearings today in Columbus, Ohio, to take testimony from voters, poll watchers and election experts about problems with the Ohio vote.

Straight From the Horrors of D-day: War Is Heck!
By Jeff Danziger

Under our new "moral values" standards, you can show war is hell, but you must leave out the word "hell."
_______

Up the beach we go, through enemy fire, crawling over bodies and wrecked materiel. Finally unable to stand any more carnage, Tom cries out: "Darn these Germans, anyhow!"

In one of my favorite scenes, Tom is approached by a fresh-faced young corporal. "I'm worried, sir," the soldier says. "We've run out of ammunition!" "Fudge!" Tom says.

"What?" asks the young lad, appropriately shocked.

"I mean fiddlesticks!"

It's not easy writing this stuff, trying to be accurate and yet OK for prime-time TV. But I and my fellow script doctors have done our homework, and we've based the best lines on actual soldiers' memoirs. Some of these lines are just great, punctuating the fire and smoke of battle with pithy, yet morally valuable, sentiments. For example, "Drat, there goes my leg!"; "I'd like to kick Hitler in the pants!"; and the searing, "By Jiminy, we're all going to die."

Finally, Private Ryan is located, ("There you are, you son of a biscuit!") and a happy ending is appended. The audience is happy, the FCC is happy and the execs at the ABC affiliates are happy.

Most important, the true picture of men at war is provided to a country now somewhat fearful about the nature of armed conflict, even when led by men of towering faith. The lesson is that if soldiers are fighting for freedom and democracy they can get the job done without a lot of bad words.

It's been fun, giving a positive tone to a great American war movie. I reread my own words and even I am uplifted. My agent is happy too. He's gotten me a gig rewriting a made-for-television biopic on Dick Cheney.

Iraqi City Lies in Ruins
Rebels are reportedly making their last stand in Fallouja. The next step, reconstruction, could cost the U.S. tens of millions of dollars.

Even as small groups of guerrillas continued putting up fierce resistance here Sunday, U.S. commanders were preparing for the next phase of the operation: the complete reconstruction of a city that has been devastated in battle.

"It's a monumental task," acknowledged Marine Maj. Timothy Hanson, one of the first civil affairs officers on the scene to assess the scope of destruction in the city that had become the tactical and inspirational capital of the Iraqi insurgency.

Reconstruction of Fallouja is on hold as the fighting persists, especially in southern areas of the city, where some of the most die-hard guerrillas are reported to be making a last stand. Some have burrowed underground, prompting U.S. forces Saturday to drop a 2,000-pound bomb - the most powerful munition used here to date - on a tunnel complex.

Senate Majority Leader BIll Frist (R-TN) is seen during an interview with Fox News in Washington November 14, 2004. Frist said Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, who has questioned whether an abortion opponent could win approval to the U.S. Supreme Court, must agree to back President George W. Bush's nominees if he is to head the Senate Judiciary Committee.

...how come the "Kerry's winning" part of the election night exit polling is presumed to have been wrong, or tampered with, but the "Moral Values" part of the same polling is graded flawless, and marks the dawn of a new American century?

Rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard Dies

Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard died on Saturday (November 13) in New York, according to his spokesperson.

Sources close to ODB (whose real name was Russell Jones) said he had been complaining of chest pains earlier in the day.

A statement was released Saturday evening by ODB's mother, Cherry Jones. "This evening I received a phone call that is every mother's worst dream," she said. "My son, Russell Jones, passed away. To the public, he was known as Ol' Dirty Bastard. To me, he was known as Rusty, the kindest and most generous soul on earth. I appreciate all the support I received. Russell was more than a rapper - he was a loving father, brother, uncle and most of all, son. With love, Cherry Jones.

MTV News will have more on this story as it develops.

Dawn of the Brain-Dead

The re-election of mentally- and morally-challenged George W. Bush means the dumbing down of America is complete.

Bush returned to office because an army of brain-dead cretins, their minds turned to mush by years of right-wing propaganda, marched to the polls and exercised what little grey matter remained to pull the lever, touch the screen or mark the ballot to elect anything Republican.

True, no small measure of blame goes to the Democrats for fielding their own Keystone Cops slate of candidates, but Republicans stay in power because they have turned their followers into a mob of zombies, staring blankly into space while their party destroys a once-great country called America.

Republicans undermine America the way the Nazis pillaged and plundered Germany - using fear as a motivator, playing on public paranoia over an enemy that could be weakened if the President were not focused more on his personal agenda than the security of the people he is sworn to protect.

Bush is a madman, a pill-popping dry drunk whose recklessness grows and can now run amuck for four more years, thanks to mindless morons who buy into his party's line of partisan paranoia.
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Bush would not be able to accomplish his mission of American destruction were it not for the mindless masses who buy into the right-wing hysteria fueled by the Republican party. Mesmerized by conservative hypesters like Rush Limbaugh (another dope head) and Sean Hannity, the intellectually-challenged buy into the party line that only the right-wing can be right, only the fear-mongering lies of conservatives can be trusted and only those who buy this crap can be "real Americans."
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These zealots are a greater threat to our freedoms than any olive-skinned terrorist. They support the constant attacks on the Constitution by their leaders and excuse the excesses of their administration while condemning similar actions by their opponents.

Thanks to them, America is no longer the land of the free or home of the brave. Thanks to them, we have become the land of the moronic and home of the oppressed. They are a greater enemy to freedom than any Farsi-spouting Muslim cleric ever can be.

Backed by tanks and artillery fire, U.S. troops launched a major attack Saturday against insurgent holdouts in southern Fallujah, hoping to finish off resistance in what had been the major guerrilla bastion of central Iraq. An Iraqi official estimated that about 1,000 insurgents had been killed so far in the weeklong offensive.

In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi National Guard convoy passed by, witnesses said. In recent days, an armed uprising in sympathy with Fallujah's insurgents has killed 10 Iraqi National Guards and one American soldier, the U.S. military said.

The region's governor blamed the uprising on "the betrayal of some police members" and said National Guard units arrived to help quell the violence. Also, a U.S. infantry battalion was diverted from Fallujah and sent back to Mosul.

Insurgents appeared to be taking advantage of the lessening of American troop strength around Fallujah as U.S. commanders report an increase in small-scale rebel attacks.
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U.S. officials confirmed the arrest of about 14 suspected foreign fighters, but Dawoud said Saturday that al-Zarqawi and Fallujah leader Abdullah al-Janabi "have escaped."

Private Ryan, Unsaved

Private Ryan couldn't be saved after all, at least not in some of the nation's major TV markets on Thursday night. Given the Federal Communications Commission's ongoing jihad against indecency, ABC affiliates in Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix and other cities yanked the Oscar-winning movie off the air. Never mind that the network had already aired the movie in 2001 and 2002. The nation is regressing.

It's hard to think of a more fitting Veterans Day tribute than Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," which celebrates the heroism of U.S. soldiers who stormed the beaches in Normandy. Sure, the movie is violent and reveals that soldiers are known to use unpleasant language while under fire. But at a time when thousands of Americans are engaged in another conflict, reminding their compatriots back home that war is hell is not such a bad thing.

Moreover, the prudish desire to keep any profanity off the air, regardless of its context, is misguided. Broadcast television does not exist in a vacuum. Viewers are exposed to plenty of shocking fare on cable, not to mention video games. And ABC aired plenty of disclaimers, letting parents know that this was rough viewing. The ABC affiliates that refrained from airing the movie could have shown more valor, but they are as much a victim of the FCC's arbitrary and capricious regulation as they are villains in this tale. Their fear of the jihad is understandable, and their surrender Thursday serves to highlight just how destructive the FCC's crackdown on indecency has become.

The commission has been targeting the broadcast industry for the last year or so, prodded on by such Taliban-like zealots as the American Family Assn. and the Parents TV Council (which did issue a ruling exempting "Private Ryan" from its campaigns) and their allies in Congress. The FCC caved in to these groups in the aftermath of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction," fining CBS $550,000. The FCC has also gone after Howard Stern and reversed its own staff in assessing rock star Bono's use of a word alluding to the act of procreation.

The lack of clarity in the regulatory scheme is likely to encourage only more self-censorship. In the past, stations could count on staying out of trouble unless they willfully and repeatedly aired indecent material, however vaguely defined. Now, an isolated incident is enough to trigger a fine, and more important, a black mark against a broadcaster seeking a license renewal.

Rather unhelpfully, the commission has pledged to judge the airing of supposed profanity on a case-by-case basis. This, coupled with the FCC's refusal to provide advance guarantees to affiliates that it wouldn't take action if they aired "Saving Private Ryan," makes it look as if the commission's main priority is to tailor its response to whatever level of pressure it feels from self-appointed morality guardians. This is not only cowardly on the part of FCC Chairman Michael Powell and his fellow commissioners, it's probably unconstitutional.

I believe that the responsibility for peace is going to rest with the Palestinian people's desire to build a democracy and Israel's willingness to help them build a democracy. I know we have a responsibility as free nations to set forth a strategy that will help the Palestinian people head toward democracy. I don't think there will ever be lasting peace until there is a free, truly democratic society in the Palestinian territories that becomes a state. And therefore, the responsibility rests with both the Palestinian people and the leadership which emerges, with the Israelis to help that democracy grow, and with the free world to put the strategy in place that will help the democracy grow.

US troops stretched to limit as insurgents fight back

Insurgent attacks across Iraq stretched American forces to their limits yesterday when rebels appeared to be in control of at least two cities, and the operation in Fallujah entered its most dangerous phase.

The holy city of Najaf became the seventh city to be placed under a night-time curfew with insurgents across the Sunni Triangle, the country's most volatile region, united in their determination to use the battle for Fallujah as a rallying call to terror.

Despite air strikes on Iraq's main northern city, Mosul, on Thursday night and claims by US forces that the city was calm, masked gunmen openly controlled its streets yesterday with eyewitnesses reporting that neither police nor US forces were to be seen.

Aid Agencies See Possible Fallujah Crisis

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqis trapped in Fallujah face a humanitarian disaster unless Iraqi and U.S. authorities allow food, water and medicine into the besieged city, aid agencies said Friday.

The head of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, Fardous al-Ubaidi, said she asked for permission from the Iraqi government to deliver humanitarian supplies to Iraqi civilians in the city but the request was turned down.

"There is no water, no food, no medicine, no electricity and no fuel and when asked for a permission, we were only allowed to approach the Fallujah outskirts but had no access to Fallujah itself," al-Ubaidi told The Associated Press.

Our interest in Bush's second term

Bush has already boasted that last week's election has given him "political capital which I intend to spend". How he interprets that "capital" and "spends" it is the big worry for those opposed to his policies at home and abroad.

American jihad
I have to say I'm glad I didn't have to write this column two days ago. Because two days ago - Wednesday, the day the most important elections for the world since the elections held in Germany in 1932 broke the same way they did there then - I spent most of my time fielding phone calls, and watching my Inbox fill up with e-mails, from various parts of the world; and without exception they were shocked, heartbroken, despairing, numb. Mainly, numb.

The written word, they say, has a certain permanence; yet it's the phone calls I remember. Uniformly, the voices on the line had an unforgettable deadness about them. (Was I sounding that way too? I hoped not.)

Such a deadness! As if the psyches behind them had been put on 'Pause', and the words were rolling out on their own, unleavened by the human spirit.

If what those voices were expressing was grief, it was a grief beyond lamentation. It was the grief that comes over a mother of a newly-lost child after the hysterics and the wailing are over. Only, in this case there had presumably been no hysterics, and no wailing. And in this case, the dead child's name was Hope.

A lobotomy for democracy

The real problem is that many people cannot believe that the Republicans could be so arrogant and barefaced to do what it is obvious that they must have done. On KLAS-FM on Wednesday morning, the two presenters initially thought I was being funny when I said the election had been stolen. But it isn't funny, and forecasts horrendous consequences as we shall see in Fallujah shortly, and perhaps Haiti.

After the 2000 election I predicted that we were in for a hard time. I didn't think it was going to be this bad. I had no idea that democracy itself and its handmaiden, the press, were scheduled for prefrontal lobotomies.

The ultimate irony, of course, was provided by the American media which solemnly pronounced that Bush won the election on moral values, despite Enron, Halliburton, Iraq WMDs, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act and the host of other scandals.

If that represents morality, perhaps we should all get prefrontal lobotomies. We need to remember though, that nothing is ever over until we give up.

Now the fun really begins!
Keeble McFarlane
Saturday, November 06, 2004

Now that the Bushling has renewed his lease on the White House for another four years, the world is in for the wildest roller-coaster ride it can imagine.

Regrettably, regime change did not take place in Washington, which sees itself as the most important city on the face of the Earth since civilisation began. In fact, what happened last Tuesday was a cementing of simplistic, neo-conservative, ultra right-wing, religious zealotry under the guise of politics.
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Don't forget that very early in his first term Bush made the Centres for Disease Control pull from their website and other informational materials all references to the use of condoms as one of the tools to fight AIDS, and also cut off any financial support to international organisations fighting the disease if they didn't stick to the script that abstinence is the only proper way to deal with AIDS.

On the legal front, Bush has been packing lower- and middle-level federal courts with some of the most Neanderthal judges he could find, and has the opportunity to do the same for the nine-member Supreme Court, up to four of whose members are due for retirement, either by way of illness or fatigue.

You can bet he'll name the most reactionary types available, and with the Republicans in complete control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, it will be very difficult to stop the progress of the elephantine steam-roller as it paves the way for overturning laws the zealots don't like, such as Roe vs Wade, which allows a woman to have an abortion.

We all remember, of course, that when the terrorists flew those aeroplanes into the towers in New York, just about everyone of significance in the world gave their support when the US struck out against Afghanistan, which was harbouring Osama bin Laden. But very soon Bush and his vengeful minions took their eye off the target and shifted instead to Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11.

He ignored the same people who applauded when he went after al-Qaeda and who now expressed misgivings about the relevance of Iraq. Some of us remember the underlying emotional reason, as Bush expressed a couple of years ago: "He tried to kill muh daddy." Not to mention the huge pool of oil sitting under the parched sands of Iraq, barely tapped.

Then there's that simplistic view that you can plant democracy in infertile soil such as you find in an old, traditionalist society like Iraq, and expect it to sprout into something solid in a short while. Unfortunately, Iraq has become Bush's Tar Baby, from which he cannot disengage, even though Iraqis now can't stand the presence of the Americans and their allies.

Going into the war, he had no plan of how to get out, and, like Vietnam a generation ago, this one promises to grow into an open, running sore, oozing lives and resources long after Bush's second lease on the White House expires. The next president will have to clean up that mess. (Remember what Vietnam did to Lyndon Johnson?)
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Bush has dusted off and updated an old American concept of manifest destiny, and has come out with a policy of preventive deterrence - the US can attack any country it wants to, if it feels that that country may possibly be thinking about attacking it, or even has the potential capacity to do so.

Now, I don't for one minute think they'll invade North Korea, since even though it is an extremely impoverished country, it still possesses sharp and solid teeth, some of them nuclear ("nucular", in Bush-talk), and appears quite willing to use them.
Duppy, indeed, knows who to frighten.

However, you can see the possibility of Bush striking at a country close by, not because it poses a military or economic threat to the US, but because it is so different from what Bush thinks a country should be like, and because it has defied all efforts to toe any line drawn by Washington, the Europeans or anybody else.