I believe the connection between Hussein and terrorism (Abu Nidal, et al) is too well documented for Rhoads to contest.
"That Saddam Hussein had something to do with terrorism, which was not true."I believe the connection between Hussein and terrorism (Abu Nidal, et al) is too well documented for Rhoads to contest.
Come on, Howard. Saddam was making a big deal of writing checks to the families of suicide bombers.
"When the Vice President said that in Iraq they are accumulating nuclear weapons, which was not true."Boortz gets that one right, too. Dean got that one wrong.
I can find no instance where Cheney said that Iraq was accumulating nuclear weapons, only that Saddam was attempting to do so.
"When he said in the State of the Union that Iraq was purchasing uranium from Africa, which was not true."
George Bush never made that statement. Dean is lying, and he knows he's lying. Why didn't the CNN interviewer call him on this?
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.
Dean said the president was not telling the truth when he said:
"There was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, which was not true."
In fact, it was true. Those connections have now been proven.
3. A list of the contaminants found in the sources of our drinking water.It may be that Mr. Podesta is truly interested in the safety of the drinking water. However, given the ability of modern instruments to measure very, very small amounts of substances I predict this is an attempt to scare people into thinking the Bush Administration is trying to kill people. This despte the Bush Administration having tightened the water quality standards to levels well cleaner than the Clinton Administration advocated until December of 2000. That is as they were heading out the door. It's all politics.
This penchant for secrecy undermines America's founding principles. Without reasonable access to government information, the public is unable to evaluate whether the administration is behaving responsibly and in the public interest. Excessive secrecy undercuts confidence in the workings of our government. It's time to let the sunshine in.
Consider: The top 1 percent of America's taxpayers earn 17 percent of the income and pay 23 percent of federal taxes; the top 5 percent earn 31 percent of the income and pay 40 percent of the taxes; the bottom 80 percent of the earners make 41 percent of the income and pay 31 percent of the taxes (and those numbers are from 2001, the most recent such data available; President Bush's tax cuts have since made the burden on top earners lower). In other words, in aggregate, we have a modestly progressive federal tax system.Those figures look about like the one's I've cited in my prior posts. As I said, I support a modestly progressive federal (state and local) tax system. What I pointed out, and what I think is worth considering, is that (based upon the figures I cited in prior posts) 40% of the taxpayers pay 83.5% of the federal taxes (all taxes considered as the CAP fellow rightly suggests tax burdens should be calculated). They earn roughly 70-73% of the income, so they should pay more than the lower 60%. The danger is that the 60%, being a solid electoral majority, may be tempted to vote themselves more and more of the money of the 40% through increased taxes on "the rich" and lower taxes on "the poor."
Consider: The top 1 percent of America's taxpayers earn 17 percent of the income and pay 23 percent of federal taxes; the top 5 percent earn 31 percent of the income and pay 40 percent of the taxes; the bottom 80 percent of the earners make 41 percent of the income and pay 31 percent of the taxes (and those numbers are from 2001, the most recent such data available; President Bush's tax cuts have since made the burden on top earners lower). In other words, in aggregate, we have a modestly progressive federal tax system.Doesn't seem all that unfair to me, although the latest Bush tax cuts will shift it to make it less regressive. Too bad.
I am very disappointed in your statement yesterday (March 18th) that Senator Kerry is not weak on defense issues. Senator Kerry has voted against just about every major new weapons system, voted against most military pay raises, voted against the building of new housing for our troops and their families, voted to reduce spending for intelligence efforts. As far back as 1994 Senator Kerry voted to practically "gut" defense and spending for intelligence. At that time he was taken to task by his fellow Democrats, Senators Inouye, Byrd and DiConcini: but you say he is not weak on defense issues. Will you please tell me who, in the U.S. Senate, has a worse voting record regarding defense, support for our service personnel and support for our national intelligence than Senator Kerry?Ouch. As I said earlier, senators have trouble winning the White House. They have records on issues of importance that hurt them with significant subsets of the voting public.
The greatest disappointment though, Senator, is that your reckless statements now become a threat to the security of our country. I can think of no greater harm to our nation at this crucial time than to have a shameless charlatan like John Kerry to be elected president. Unfortunately, Senator McCain, the Democrats are correct in referring to you as their favorite Republican: you could do no better job for them nor worse for our country.Earlier Gen. Hudson said he would no longer support Sen. McCain for any public office.
George W. Bush is not the most articulate of men, but he is really good at one kind of speech: laying out in simple language the way he's thought through a policy decision. He most famously did that on stem cell research. Tonight's speech opening the press conference was another good example. If you've only seen snippets, I recommend reading, watching, or listening to the whole thing. Here's the conclusion:She then blockquotes the final eight full paragraphs of Bush's prepared speech. Followed by this conclusion:
In the Q&A, Bush was much more expansive, articulate, and comfortable than he's often been in the past.So let's go over this slowly, in fine Princeton preceptorial fashion:
Dear Rhoads,
I wanted to write and thank you again for your generous contribution
to my campaign. While I am certain you are asked to give to many
causes, your commitment to my campaign and to the larger political
process is humbling and much appreciated.
Your support remains crucial to my efforts and I trust that I can
count on your continued friendship and counsel.
Once again, thank you for your support.
Warm regards,
John F. Kerry
Paid for by John Kerry for President, Inc.
In the Q&A, Bush was much more expansive, articulate, and comfortable than he's often been in the past.
"George W. Bush is not the most articulate of men, but he is really good at one kind of speech: laying out in simple language the way he's thought through a policy decision."
"George Bush uses simple language because otherwise he wouldn't be able to understand what he is saying.
Q. Mr. President, Why are you and the vice president insisting on appearing together before the 9/11 commission? And Mr. President, who will you be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30?
A. We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over. And secondly, because the the 9/11 commission wants to ask us questions. That's why we're meeting, and I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions.
Q. Mr. President, I was asking why you're appearing together rather than separately, which was their request.
A. Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.
Let's see. Hold on for a minute. Oh — I've got some must calls, I'm sorry.
1. Corporations are not moral actors.Stephen Bainbridge teaches corporate law at UCLA Law School. He briefly explains each of these assertions in the linked post.
2. Directors and managers owe duties to shareholders rather than society.
3. Directors and officers are obliged to maximize shareholder wealth within the law.
The problem in general with commissions is that they find what they are tasked to look for. If you appoint a government commission on fairy rings, they'll do their damndest to dig one up, because after all, fairy rings are the reason we're all assembled in this big, important looking room with the columns and the picture of George Washington. That's the first problem I have with this thing.There's more, including a look at self-delusion.
The second problem is that we are all seeking some reassurance that we can somehow prevent all this stuff in the future. Everyone is very earnestly asking "What changes do we need to make so that our intelligence doesn't (for example) tell us Iraq has WMD, or not tell us that Al-Qaeda's about to attack us?" Almost no one seems prepared to accept the possibility that the answer is "None. Intelligence just sucks." The energy expended trying to blame this failure on someone--George Tenet, Louis Freeh, Condoleezza Rice, or whoever--goes beyond mere regular partisan bashing. It seems to me to express an underlying conviction that of course someone could have stopped this--it's only a question of who. For the commission, especially, it's an unacceptable answer; they simply cannot turn to a frightened American public and tell them that it's really too bad, but we live in a scary world.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related.I don't know how many agents are involved in a "full field investigation," nor how many such investigations the FBI conducts (hundreds, thousands?) on a regular basis.
(this is not an historical conversation- as far as we know)
Dr. Rice: Mr President, Dick Clarke keeps bugging me to tell you about the threat posed by Osama bin Laden on our soil.
President Bush: Tell him to explain it to me in a PDB. And while you are at it, tell him to quit whining about Osama bin Laden and to help us get Sadam Hussein.
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ... (redacted portion) ... service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.One month and five days after this memo, al Qaeda hijacked four planes and flew them into three buildings and one empty field (with some help from brave passengers). I don't see anything in this memo that was new or of a specific nature calling for more action than the FBI was already doing.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.
Following the Iranian hostage takeover in 1979, the United States had embraced a quarter-century of appeasement that had resulted in far more American deaths than all those lost during the present war against terrorists abroad — flaming ships, embassies, planes, skyscrapers, and people the wages of its mollifying. And every time in Iraq we have tried to offer conciliation before complete military victory — low profiles, tolerance for looters and militias, allowance for vicious mullahs — we have seen more, not fewer, killed.Enjoy the rest.
The sad truth is that civilization itself is engaged in a worldwide struggle against the barbarism of Islamic fundamentalism. Just this past month the killers and their plots have been uncovered in London, Paris, Madrid, Pakistan, and North Africa — the same tired rhetoric of their hatred echoing from Iraq to the West Bank. While Western elites quibble over exact ties between the various terrorist ganglia, the global viewer turns on the television to see the same suicide bombing, the same infantile threats, the same hatred of the West, the same chants, the same Koranic promises of death to the unbeliever, and the same street demonstrations across the world.
Looking for exact professed cooperation between an Islamic fascist and the rogue regime that finds such anti-Western violence useful is like proving that Mussolini, Tojo, and Hitler all coordinated their attacks and worked in some conspiratorial fashion — when in fact Japan had no knowledge of the invasion of Russia, and Hitler had no warning of Pearl Harbor or Mussolini's invasion of Greece.
In fact, it didn't matter that they were united only by a loose and shared hatred of Western liberalism and emboldened by a decade of democratic appeasement. And our fathers, perhaps better men than we, didn't care too much for beating their breasts about the exact nature of collective Axis strategy or blaming each other for past lapses, but instead went to pretty terrible places like Bastogne, Anzio, and Okinawa to put an end to their enemies all.
CLAIM: "The threat reporting that we received in the Spring and Summer of 2001 was not specific as to...manner of attack."
FACT: ABC News reported, Bush Administration "officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." Dateline NBC reported that on August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." Rice herself actually admitted this herself, saying the Aug. 6 briefing the President received said "terrorists might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft." [Sources: ABC News, 5/16/02; NBC, 9/10/02]
Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told HUMAN EVENTS May 21 that his committee had received all the same terrorism intelligence prior to September 11 as the Bush administration.I don't think that's the impression left by the Center for American Progress in its "FACT" statement above.
"Yes, we had seen all the information," said Graham. "But we didn't see it on a single piece of paper, the way the President did."
Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. "The particular report that was in the President's Daily Briefing that day was about three years old," Graham said. "It was not a contemporary piece of information."
Graham's comments contradicted combative statements made recently by the Democratic congressional leadership, and confirmed White House assertions that the only specific threats of al Qaeda hijackings known to the President before September 11 came from a memo dating back to the Clinton Administration.
"America will not be intimidated by barbaric acts whose only goal is to spread fear and chaos throughout Iraq," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, said in a moving floor speech last Thursday after the initial attacks that began the weeklong string of violence. "Yesterday's events will only serve to strengthen America's resolve and seal America's unity. The brave people who lost their lives did not die in vain. Americans stand together today and always to finish the work we started and bring peace and democracy to the citizens of Iraq," he said.So does Bob Kerrey (more here).
Mr. Daschle repeated those sentiments to reporters yesterday, and Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana Democrat, said on NBC's "Today" show that the United States must "stay the course." "This is really as much a test of our perseverance as anything else," he said, though he cautioned that Americans must be prepared for the conflict. "It's going to be difficult. We're going to have too many days ahead of tragedy like yesterday, unfortunately."
Share of aggregate income
----------------------------------------------------------
Year Lowest Second Third Fourth Highest
fifth fifth fifth fifth fifth
----------------------------------------------------------
2001 4.2 9.7 15.4 22.9 47.7
----------------------------------------------------------
Share of aggregate income
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Year Number Lowest Second Third Fourth Highest
(thous.) fifth fifth fifth fifth fifth
---------------------------------------------------------------------
2001 109,297 3.5 8.7 14.6 23.0 50.1
Ron McBay 87.4
Bob Bateman 86.5
NCAA SEEDING COMMITTEE 86.4
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED(GWahl) 84.6
Rhoads Hollowell 82.8
"It's those who don't live in this community who did the most objecting to this store. The community has clearly spoken and it supports this store."It's a similar story in Hartford. The locals were thrilled to bring in a Wal-Mart to a poor part of town, but outside radicals (ACORN who I've noted before advocate living wages but don't pay them) and the Connecticut chapter of the food and commercial workers union objected. That didn't please the locals. They wanted the Wal-Mart.
POINTS FULLNAME YEARS 2004 2003 2002
------ ------------------------------ ----- ------ ------ ------
245.5 Bob Bateman 3 99.0 70.0 76.5
229.0 Ron McBay 3 72.0 81.5 75.5
202.5 Rhoads Hollowell 3 69.0 56.0 77.5
Good job, Bob! At least I beat you back in 2002!
The National Center is a 501(c)(3) organization under the Internal Revenue Code. Donations to The National Center and its projects are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.
The Center for American Progress has been incorporated and will be operated as a public charity. It has received official IRS recognition of its tax exempt status under sections 501(c)(3) and 501(a)(9)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code. Our federal ID number is 30-0126510. Donations will be tax deductible and disclosed to the IRS.I hope the Center for American Progress isn't advocating higher taxes or bigger government programs and then allowing tax deductions for people who give them money to so advocate.
GORTON: Now, since my yellow light is on, at this point my final question will be this: Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001, based on Delenda, based on Blue Sky, including aid to the Northern Alliance, which had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?
CLARKE: No.
"intensify both our planning for a post Saddam Iraq, and our efforts to speed its arrival."While he didn't mention al Qaeda or bin Laden, he did mention ousting Saddam. Maybe he didn't mean it. But if he did, maybe the differences between the Bush and Clinton Administrations weren't as big before 9/11 as some partisans are now claiming.
The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all Americans.I believe that says "nonpartisan" does it not? Funny, I saw a lot of criticisms of Republicans, yet I didn't see anything critical of any Democrats. Maybe that's why Rhoads claims Clarke isn't a partisan. Attacking Republicans and not Democrats is nonpartisan.
I don't think that the oil situation is a factor. I think that at least two things are at work. First, there is a great confusion because for eight years Clinton treated terrorism as a law enforcement issue, with the emphasis on arresting individuals and bringing them to justice, trying and convicting them. That had the effect of obscuring the role of states in terrorism, particularly Iraq. But in addition, those who went along with his view of terrorism are now personally invested in it, and they are reluctant to give up that view. That would include George Tenet, a Clinton appointee who still heads the CIA, and I believe, the intelligence coming from the CIA is skewed. It may also be that there is an influence of former President Bush and Bush's top advisors from the 1991 Gulf War on President Bush. Some of those people, including former President Bush, Brent Scocroft, his national security advisor, Colin Powell, have not acknowledged that it was an error to end the war in 1991 with Saddam in power, and that may color their judgment now.
Pages 229-30, 234: Demoted Clarke. When the administration took office, Condoleezza Rice kept Clarke on staff. But she downgraded his position so that as national counterterrorism coordinator he no longer reported directly to Cabinet-level officials.Maybe your credible guy hasn't left that impression in his TV appearances.
