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September, 2003 |
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September 30, 2003 - Speaking to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee Secretary of State Colin Powell sent a bellicose warning to Iran and to Syria to halt what he called their direct support of terrorism. The speech to the powerful lobbying group came just two days after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued stern warnings to the two countries to “stay out of Iraq”. Later, speaking to an Arab-American audience in Detroit the Secretary of State softened his language toward Syria but warned non-Arab Iran that the United States would not tolerate the development of a nuclear weapons program by Iran. The two speeches came the same day that the Chicago Tribune ran the story of an Illinois Guard Anti-Aircraft Artillery unit being mobilized for an 18 month tour in the region. Iran announced its willingness to cooperate with an IAEA inspections regime. The IAEA reportedly gave the Iranians until October 31 to prove that it did not have a weapons program but was developing only a peaceful nuclear capability. Asked about the Iranian announcement of compliance with IAEA inspections Powell said it was “not enough”. "We have to have all questions with respect to their nuclear weapons programs answered," he said. "Over the past year, the evidence that has come forward, that is now before the IAEA, has made it clear to the world that there is something going on in Iran with respect to nuclear weapons development that goes beyond their nuclear power industry." ...click here for entire article September 29, 2003 - Battery G, 1st Battalion 202nd Air Defense Artillery has been mobilized for service in the War in Iraq. The Illinois National Guard unit consists of 150 soldiers and their equipment and is based in Streator and Marseilles, Illinois. The Illinois National Guard announced that the unit will be deployed in either Afghanistan or Iraq. The unit’s deployment is for 18 months. The air defense unit and is, according to Brigadier General Randal Thomas, Adjutant General of the Illinois Guard. “well trained, equipped and ready to answer the call to active duty." If the 202nd is deployed to Afghanistan the Taliban’s Air Force is on its way to extinction. Bin Laden’s fighter bombers are in big trouble. If they go to Iraq it will send a message to Saddam that we are ready for his guerilla air attacks and he better watch out because the 202nd is, as General Thomas says, “well trained, equipped and ready” for them. That is, of course, nonsense. There will be no aircraft for the 202nd to target in either Iraq or Afghanistan. So why is the 202nd being mobilized?...click here for entire article September 29, 2003 - Buffet (Jimmy - not the Terminator’s financial advisor) laments in song about his lost shaker of salt and his blown-out flip-flop. The situation in Margaritaville was bad enough but it just got worse. Vincente Fox – you may remember him from the La Cucaracha Fiesta in Crawford – has just announced that the Mexican government is going to stop exporting Tequila in bulk for bottling in the United States. When last he visited the Ranch in Crawford the discussions between the two Presidents were hailed by the Administration as ushering in a new era in relations between the two countries...click here for entire article September 28, 2003 - The Bushist operatives have been deployed to the left with one central mission and that is to paint Wesley K. Clark, Gen, US Army. Ret. with a right wing brush. From Rush Limbaugh to Tucker Carlson they have been mining the record for every kind thing that the new Democratic front runner has had to say about George Bush or the members of the Bush Administration. It really doesn’t matter whether the President George Bush that the quote refers to is this George Bush or that George Bush. Carlson, quoting from remarks of the General discussing the conduct of the First Iraqi war, conveniently dropped the “H” and claimed the words approving of George H. W, Bush’s coalition building strategy in preparing for the First Iraqi War were in praise of George W. Bush’s conduct of the second. It really is amusing and at the same time quite sad. Deprived of their usual line of attack – that this or that Democrat is too liberal to be President – the Rhetorical Rambos of the Right have been reduced to ranting that Wesley Clark is too Republican to be President...click here for entire article September 27, 2003 - My grandmother used to crochet. She would sit and rock on the porch as the breeze cooled a summer evening. The heels of her sensible shoes beating a tattoo on the floor as her fingers flew transmuting the dross of a skein of thread into the delicate lace of an every growing circlet. Hour by hour, day by day, stitch by stitch that circle of lace would grow. Occasionally that rhythm of the rocking would cease as she paused, held her work up to the golden light of the setting sun, examine her work and spotting a defect undetected by the child who watched her she would pull out a few stitches and then resume her rocking and her work anew. Day by day and stitch by stitch she worked around and around the circle always at the edge until as the evening light faded with October she had fashioned a tablecloth for the round oak table on which she would serve Thanksgiving dinner in November...click here for entire article September 26, 2003 - On May 11, 2001 when the Bush Administration was just short of 4 months in office Retired General Wesley Clark spoke to the Pulaski County Republicans’ annual Lincoln Day Dinner in his hometown, Little Rock Arkansas. He told the GOP fundraiser that, “[I]'m very glad we've got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice... people I know very well - our president George W. Bush. We need them there." He went on to give the Reagan credit for improving the lot of the military. He told the Pulaski County GOP that America’s military presence in Europe was welcomed and necessary. “I've learned from Europe is that are a lot of people out in the world who really, really love and admire the United States. Don't you ever believe it when you hear foreign leaders making nasty comments about us. That's them playing to their domestic politics as they misread it. Because when you talk to the people out there, they love us. They love our values. They love what we stand for in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights”, he told them...click here for entire article September 25, 2003 - Polling is an inexact science. Had the public opinion polls accurately taken the temperature of the body politic Dewey succeeded Truman as President of the United States in 1948. Thomas Dewey believed the polls; the Chicago Tribune believed the polls; Harry did not and just kept giving them hell. Polls two years before the poll that counts are imperfect predictors of an election. Politics – not football or baseball – is America’s most popular spectator sport. We delight in bashing the politicians and touting our own horse in the perpetual political race. The polls tell us who is ahead and by how much. They are the only measure that we have between elections. We cheer the polls when we see our runner pulling ahead and we boo them as we do the blind umpire who calls the third strike in the 9th inning with the winning run on base...click here for entire article September 24, 2003 - CNN is broadcasting the story of a firefight near Fallujah. According to the account a detachment of the 82 Airborne was attacked and returned fire. One Iraqi was killed in the exchange according to Central Command. The New York Times, in an Alex Berenson bylined article, relates the account of a coordinated ground-air attack on an apparently unarmed and unresisting Iraqi family home outside of Fallujah. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/24/international/middleeast/24IRAQ.html According to the article several of the sleeping family members were wounded and three were killed. A PR representative of the 82nd confirmed the operation and said that the attack on the farmhouse was in reaction to the unit taking fire...click here for entire article . September 23, 2003 - The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sitting en Banc has ruled superceding the opinion of its three judge panel and affirming the trial court’s denial of a preliminary injunction delaying California’s recall election until March. That is what the court did but it is also important to not both the rationale for its decision and what the court did not do. The rationale turned on the fact that the election had already began. “… [O]ur law recognizes that election cases are different from ordinary injunction cases. See, e.g., Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. at 585. Interference with impending elections is extraordinary, id., and interference with an election after voting has begun is unprecedented.” ,the court said..click here for entire article September 22, 2003 - President Bush will address the United Nations General Assembly tomorrow and the early line has it that he will tell the international body again that it must participate in the American led conquest of Iraq or become irrelevant. That, of course, begs the question, if the UN is irrelevant as he and the circling pentagon hawks proclaimed it last year then why is he asking it for help? Trying to convince the American public that the “re-construction” effort is going well the Administration leaked the news this weekend that the Coalition Provisional Authority will relax rules against foreign investment in Iraq. Now the word is coming from Seoul that the Administration has asked South Korea to contribute a division to the occupation army. Reportedly the Bush team hasn’t mentioned numbers but has asked for a division from Seoul while we maintain our 37,000 man garrison in the country. There is a carrot hanging out there for the Seoul regime – according unnamed Korean officials and American diplomats what the New York Times calls “potentially lucrative reconstruction contracts” are in play. Apparently the Bush Administration has given up on appealing to the moral certainties and security fears that it claims justify its occupation of Iraq and decided to appeal to the one factor that it so clearly understands – greed. After telling us that it is dedicated to rebuilding an Iraq for the Iraqis it has started selling Iraq’s assets on the world market. “Send troops – get in on the ground floor – you too can own a piece of the peace!”....click here for entire article September 19, 2003 - Like it or not the United States is engaged an ongoing two front war against dedicated and determined enemies. One front is in Afghanistan, the other in Iraq. In neither theatre has there been a victory, though the premature and politically mandated declarations of victory have been made. Our President pledges to “stay the course”; no matter what the cost in money, social dislocation and lives; no matter how long it takes. While it is important that we examine and evaluate the blunders that brought us into this situation so that the mistakes and miscarriages of judgment that brought us to this may not be repeated; it is equally important that the United States deliver on its commitment to repair the damage that war has wrought and deliver to the people of the sovereign nations it now occupies viable and responsive political systems...click here for entire article September 18, 2003 - The going price for an Iraqi Policeman doing his job too near a US checkpoint is $2,000. At least that is what the CPA has offered to compensate the Iraqi cops killed by our most friendly fire a couple weeks ago. I wonder what price will be offered to the family of the child killed last night when our well trained troops opened fire on yet another wedding. There is a lesson there – if you are going to get married in Iraq you had best invite the American commander to the party. They get angry when they are snubbed and when they crash the party it ain’t pretty. That is how the Bush Administration will convince the Iraqis that their hearts and minds belong to us now, and that they had better not forget it. I wonder where all the flowers Dick Cheney promised the troops have gone...click here for entire article . September 17, 2003 - In its Per Curium opinion in Bush v. Gore the Supreme Court enunciated the Equal Protection standard that applies to the citizen’s right to vote in unequivocal and concise language. “The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another. See, e.g., Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 665 (1966) (“[O]nce the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”). It must be remembered that “the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.” Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 555 (1964).” http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZPC.html ...click here for entire article September 15, 2003 - Illinois taxpayers pay $340 Million each year to pay for the medicines prescribed for the 240,000 state workers in the state and about the same for an equivalent number of local government employees. It, like many other states is saddled with a massive budget shortfall. One of Illinois’ primary sources of revenue is, of course, its state income tax. It is tied to the Federal Income Tax and the Republican tax cuts automatically cut Illinois’ revenue result. Coupled with the economic downturn the state’s budget was hard pressed on the revenue side while the State had to come up with the money for a massive pork-barrel spending plan - out-going Governor George Ryan’s Build Illinois program. While the 2002 election loomed and the State Treasury emptied out the scandal plagued Republican toured the state handing out checks to cover one project after another. It did not help his party in November. Democrats swept the election state wide. In control of the Governor’s office, every statewide office, both houses of the State legislature and the State Supreme Court the democrats have had to cut the State’s budget to the bone and still faces the deficit the Republicans bequeathed them. Governor Blagojevich is taking the heat for his predecessor’s profligacy and looking for ways to ease the pain without raising state taxes. He is looking north toward Canada and its pharmacies to save 30-50% on the state’s medicine bill....click here for entire article September 12, 2003 - (CNSNews.com) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Thursday offered his definition of patriots - of which America has plenty, he said. "A patriot is one who loves his land, prizes its principles and cherishes its creed. A patriot so reveres the ideals of his home country that he is willing to lay down his life to ensure that those ideals endure." It is a fine definition. I wonder if the Secretary of Defense has ever read it to the President or to the Attorney General. I wonder if he realizes that the creed of this land is embodied in the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution – The Bill of Rights. I wonder if he has reminded the Attorney General that there are plenty of patriots in America who are willing to lay down their live that the Bill of Rights may endure....click here for entire article September 12, 2003 - It was the spring of 1948 and I was 10 years old. The polling place was at Lincoln School. It was primary election day and my mother, having decided that it was not too early for me to learn the nuts and bolts of politics collected me from class and had me accompany her as she went to vote. She gave the first lady in the long line of elections judges her name and asked for a Democratic ballot. There was a stir in the room and an electric crackling to the atmosphere as the ladies scurried around to try to find one. Finally the orange ballot was located and she took me into the booth with her. I had to crane my neck to see what she was doing as she pointed to the first name in the list and said “See, there is the President.” She marked an X in the box next to the name Harry S. Truman. “The lines of the X have to cross inside the box or they throw your vote out”, she explained and then went down the list explaining each candidate and the office that they sought. Twelve years later I would cast my first vote for John F, Kennedy in that same precinct polling place. I made sure that the lines of the X crossed inside the box.....click here for entire article September 11, 2003 - To everything there is a season… September 11th is more than the anniversary of a vicious attack on America. It marks more than the death of some 4,000 people. Most of the 4,000 dead were Americans but others were nationals of countries around the globe. It was more than an American tragedy. Its scope was international. The 19 men who threw their away own lives destroyed more than buildings and lives that morning. They inspired a concerted effort to dismantle and destroy the very foundations of the nation that they attacked. They destroyed the balance carefully wrought through two centuries of development between necessary government power and individual freedom and liberty. The real tragedy for which we must weep is the assault upon this nation’s heritage, launched not by a shadowy band of terrorists but at the highest levels of our government seeking power in the name of security. It is mete that we should mourn the dead, but we should reflect that the dead whose killing was engendered that morning are buried around the globe. They lie in graves, marked and unmarked. Their names are both recorded and unremarked. They are the victims in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, in Afghani huts and Iraqi streets. They are all victims of that September morning’s attack. The inevitable deaths of innocents – we call it “collateral damage” – in the wars inspired by that suicide campaign can all be laid to the door of the attack's author. So can the death of the American system of ordered liberty, replaced now by an authoritarian regime arrogating to itself the power to monitor every aspect of its citizens’ lives in the name of national security. It is for that too that it has become a time to weep. .....click here for entire article September 10, 2003 - The Supreme Court may be back in the business of acting as a Supreme Election Board for State elections faced with their own rulings in Bush v. Gore . A three judge panel of the country’s most liberal Court of Appeals is considering whether to delay the California Recall Election on the grounds that the use of punch card machines in some counties of the state and more accurate election methods in other counties deprive voters in the counties with punch cards of equal protection of the laws. The plaintiffs argue that the use of those machines with their proven inaccuracies make it more likely that voters using those will be more likely to have their votes miscounted than voters using more accurate methods. It is the exact ground used by the Court to stop the Florida recount.....click here for entire article September 9, 2003 - Which color are you? No, I am not asking about your ethnic heritage though it will probably be used as part of determining what your color is. Beginning as soon as the equipment is in place you will be assigned a color whenever you choose to fly. You will be green, yellow, or red. You won’t know what color you are…at least not at first. You may be able to figure it out depending on what happens to you. Your color will be assigned by the Transportation Security Agency’s new Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPSII). It will work like this: If you buy a ticket to fly the airline will collect your name, your address, your telephone number, your date of birth, your travel itinerary and the way you paid for your ticket and send it to TSA’s computer. That information will be processed in two stages. First your data will be matched to a battery of privately maintained databases collecting data on your credit history, your income, your shopping habits and the like. You will be assigned a numerical score based upon the threat assessment that data generates. You won’t know if you are a 1 or a 10.....click here for entire article September 8, 2003 - When a navigator charts
a course to lead the ship safely to a port he relies upon the information recorded
on his chart. The course he charts only avoids dangerous reefs and shoals if
the chart accurately reflects positions and soundings that have been accurately
collected. When the evidence of his eyes and ears demonstrate that the chart
is faulty then the course must be altered to skirt the newly discovered hazards
of the sea. Only a fool insists on staying the course despite the danger to
the ship.....click here for entire article
September 6, 2003 - We are approaching the second anniversary of the attack on New York and Washington. The President plans to address the nation tomorrow night to report on his progress in the War on Terrorism that he declared two years ago. It is time to look at the record. AFGHANISTAN You remember this forgotten and unfinished war, don’t you?. It was a quick six week campaign that routed the Taliban and sent Al Qaida on the run. We rounded up a secret number of people and stuffed them safely behind barbed wire safely beyond the reach of American or International law. We installed a regime of our own choosing in Kabal. Two years later that regime is under siege, insecure in its own city and the remnants of America’s victorious army is still losing men and fighting pitched battles with the Taliban. AL QAIDA....click here for entire article September 5, 2003 - Sergeant J. J., Chapa is a Texan. He is a weekend warrior, a member of the Texas National Guard. His assignment is not detached duty with the Alabama Guard in Birmingham. He is on active duty in Baghdad. He talked to Gary Marx of the Chicago Tribune recently. “I'm not here for George Bush's foreign policy. I'm here because they sent me. We all have wives and children and we do what we have to do to get back alive.", Marx quotes him as saying in an article in the September 4th Chicago Tribune. Sergeant Chapa is one of the many American husbands and fathers whose families are bearing the cost of the Second Iraqi War....click here for entire article September 1, 2003 - Nine million American workers are celebrating Labor Day by trying to find a job in the Bush economy. Another 5 million or so have given up on the search for the jobs the Bush Tax cuts were supposed to create. There is a bright spot this Labor Day for some American’s pocket books. The government – that is you and me- are going to have to borrow the money to fund the $500 billion deficit (not counting the cost of the Second Iraqi War), money that the Bush Administration has already spent this year. That spells investment opportunity for the folks who reaped the benefit of the George’s largess. And there will be another equally large deficit nest year according to the Congressional Budget Office estimates and another handsome opportunity for those who clip interest coupons for a living. And who is going to pay the interest that those coupons represent? The American Taxpayer will pay and that is you and me, brothers and sisters. Just how many jobs have the Bush borrow and spend policies created? Probably at least 9 million, but those jobs have been in Bangladesh and Bombay and Beijing. |
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