Hawkeye's Mash

W wants to vastly increase taxes on middle class

2007-01-27T23:44:00.000-06:00

W, the KING of BAD IDEAS, now wants to raise taxes on health benefits for millions upon millions of working people who get health insurance benefits as part of their compensation at work.

Amazingly, Bush is going around talking about how his proposal will give tax deductions for health benefits up to $15,000 making the claim that this is a good deal for people. HOLD IT! How can it be a good deal when he's trying to make everyone owe taxes on the health benefits, changing policy and law that has made health benefits tax free for over 60 years.

When in the world will the media and the public realize and report this gargantuan rip off of American working families??

Yes, 5 million more people have lost health insurance since Bush took office, and THEY NEED INSURANCE, but instead of setting up new taxes for the middle class, this nation needs to progressively tax the rich to help pay for health care coverage for Americans who haven't been at the Bush trough for the last six years!

See more from the New York Times:

January 28, 2007

Experts See Peril in Bush Health Proposal

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — With his proposal to uproot a tax break that has been in place for more than 60 years, President Bush has touched off an impassioned debate over the future of the employer-based system that provides health insurance to more than half of all Americans.

“Changing the tax code is a vital and necessary step to making health care affordable for more Americans,” Mr. Bush said in his State of the Union address this week.

Mr. Bush said his proposal would eliminate a bias in the tax code that strongly favored insurance provided by employers over coverage bought by individuals and families outside the workplace.

Paul Fronstin, director of health research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization, said: “The president’s proposal would mean the end of employer-based benefits as we know them. It gives employers a way out of providing the benefits because their employees could get the same tax break on their own.”

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, denied that the president wanted to move people away from the employer-based system and toward the individual insurance market. “We are seriously agnostic on that,” he said.

It might take years for changes to occur. “Large corporate employers could not immediately terminate their health benefits because there is, at present, no reliable place where employees can get coverage they can afford outside the workplace,” said Frank B. McArdle, a health policy expert at Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm.

The economic rationale for Mr. Bush’s proposal is that too many people have “gold-plated, deluxe” health insurance, which encourages them to use excessive amounts of health care, driving up costs for everyone.

Many economists agree. But they doubt that Mr. Bush’s proposal would do much to hold down costs or cover more people.

“The president’s proposal addresses inequities in the tax code that provide an open-ended subsidy for premiums paid by employers,” said Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “If your employer does not provide health insurance and you have to buy it on your own, you get no tax benefit at all. The president’s plan would eliminate that distinction.”

But Mr. Reischauer said, “A glaring problem with the president’s plan is that he did not call for any stronger regulation of the individual insurance market.” In that market as it now exists in most states, insurers can deny coverage or charge higher rates to sick people.

In their desire to achieve universal coverage, some Democrats have also begun to raise questions about the employer-based system. “We have to ask ourselves if the employer-based system of health care is still the best way for providing insurance to all Americans,” said Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, noting that workers frequently changed jobs.

The Service Employees International Union negotiates with employers to secure health benefits for its members, but the president of the union, Andrew L. Stern, said, “The current employer-based health care system is not the foundation for 21st-century health care reform.”

Mr. Bush’s proposal differs radically from President Bill Clinton’s plan for universal coverage, but experts on health benefits said they were similar in one respect: In an effort to help the uninsured — about one-sixth of the population — they would upend the system that covers most Americans.

The Clinton plan would have provided comprehensive health benefits to 39 million uninsured Americans, with more than $400 billion in new federal spending over 10 years. The White House says the tax changes proposed by Mr. Bush would provide coverage for 3 million to 5 million people at no cost to the government over 10 years.

Since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, the number of people without insurance has increased by more than 5 million, to 46.6 million, according to the Census Bureau. Administration officials said they hoped to reverse that trend by helping states that offered basic private insurance policies to their residents. To pay for such help, the administration would take federal money from hospitals that serve large numbers of poor people.

Under Mr. Bush’s proposal, employee health benefits would, for the first time, be treated as income and would be subject to income and payroll taxes, just like wages. At the same time, Mr. Bush would create a tax deduction for health insurance of $15,000 for families and $7,500 for individuals. The same deduction would be available to everyone with coverage, regardless of the source or value of the policy.

A family with coverage worth $18,000 would have to pay taxes on the amount exceeding the $15,000 standard deduction — $3,000, in this example.

Katherine Baicker, a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the proposal would increase taxes for 30 million people with the most generous employer-provided health benefits, unless they “change their behavior” and choose less costly coverage. Ms. Baicker said the proposal would cut taxes for more than 100 million people who bought insurance on their own or had employee health benefits worth less than the standard deduction.

Treasury officials said that under the Bush proposal, an uninsured family of four with an annual income of $60,000 would save $4,545 if it bought coverage in the individual market. By contrast, they said, a family that earns $80,000 and has employer-provided coverage worth $20,000 could see a tax increase of about $1,500.

Joel D. Kaplan, deputy chief of staff at the White House, acknowledged that the proposal could accelerate the trend of employers’ dropping health benefits for employees. But he said more people “would be able to buy insurance in the individual market,” so there would be “a net increase in the number of insured.”

Politicians and health care providers are skeptical.

Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, said, “The president’s proposal would do little to help the uninsured, but would undermine the employer-based system through which 160 million people get coverage.”

Richard J. Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, agreed. “The tax proposal would have the effect of driving people to the small-group insurance market — a market that has proved unstable,” Mr. Umbdenstock said. “For many people, even with a tax break, coverage would remain unaffordable.”

Historically, employers have used benefits as a tool to recruit workers and keep them healthy and productive.

R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, praised the general direction of the president’s proposal but said his members had serious concerns.

First, Mr. Josten said, the $15,000 cap on tax-free insurance takes no account of wide geographic variation in the cost of health care and insurance. The same package of benefits typically costs more in Boston than in Minneapolis, for example.

Moreover, Mr. Josten said, a health plan may be expensive because it covers older workers with major medical problems, not because it is “gold-plated.” A single mother, working as a low-paid secretary at a law firm, could be pushed into a higher tax bracket because she participates in an $18,000 health plan covering older men who have had heart attacks and expensive surgery, Mr. Josten said.

Treasury officials acknowledged that some people with costly, comprehensive benefits had modest incomes.

But deluxe health plans are vanishing fast. In recent years, many workers have found themselves paying more for less comprehensive benefits. From 2000 to 2006, premiums for employer-sponsored coverage rose 87 percent, about four times as fast as workers’ earnings, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The GOP's Class War

2007-01-24T21:13:00.000-06:00

George W. Bush’s alliance with the rich and big business makes his politics entirely predictable. Following the GOP’s form of class warfare, Bush always protects his favored class, whether giving huge tax cuts for the country club class or massive economic incentives for corporations that pay CEOs hundreds of millions.

His proposal for health insurance is nothing but a huge tax increase for taxpayers that will once again hit the middle class the hardest. The plan will surely lead to reductions in care by employer organized health plans and increased numbers of individuals scrambling to obtain decent coverage on their own.

With the Bush health insurance tax increase, working people lose big again, while the rich will find a negligble relative cost. I’m afraid this is a chance for Bush to do for healthcare what he’s done for peace in Iraq!

The FAILED PRESIDENCY of W

2007-01-22T22:10:00.000-06:00

How much lower can Ws poll numbers go? Its taken so long for the American people to figure it out, I wonder if it is true! Bush To Face Skeptical Congress
Iraq Overshadows Domestic Outreach

By Peter Baker and Jon Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 23, 2007; A01

President Bush plans to reach out to the opposition in his State of the Union address tonight with new and recycled proposals on health care, energy, immigration and education, but the uproar over his decision to send more U.S. troops to Iraq has eclipsed potential consensus on domestic policy.

As he addresses a Congress controlled entirely by Democrats for the first time since he took office, Bush faces deep skepticism inside the chamber, even within the House Republican leadership, which yesterday made proposals intended "to hold the Bush administration . . . accountable" for the progress of his latest Iraq plan.

The doubt on Capitol Hill reflects the continuing erosion of Bush's public support across the country. His approval rating is at the lowest level of his presidency, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, and only twice in the past six decades has a president delivered his annual speech to the nation in a weaker condition in the polls -- Harry S. Truman in the midst of the Korean War in 1952 and Richard M. Nixon in the throes of Watergate in 1974.

For the first time, majorities of Americans say Bush cannot be trusted in a crisis, has not made the country safer and should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq to avoid further casualties rather than leave them until civil order is restored. And, in a sign of intensifying opposition, a majority (51 percent) for the first time expressed strong disapproval of Bush's performance, compared with 17 percent who strongly approved.

"The world changed significantly on Election Day, and the only people who were surprised were them," GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio said of Bush and his aides. Now, he added, "they've backed themselves into a tough corner, and the problem is his continued insistence for the troop increase, which flies in the face of what 70 percent of Americans want, makes him look . . . like [he's saying], 'I'll listen to you, but I'll do what I want anyway.' "

The poll indicates that Bush has made no headway in selling his decision to bolster troop levels in Iraq by 21,500, with 65 percent now opposing it compared with 61 percent the night of his Jan. 10 nationally televised address. Three in five Americans trust congressional Democrats more than Bush to deal with Iraq, and the same proportion want Congress to try to block his troop-increase plan.

Bush's overall approval rating of 33 percent matches the lowest it has been in Post-ABC polls since becoming president, and 71 percent say the country is seriously off track, the highest such expression of national pessimism in more than a decade. By contrast, newly installed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is enjoying a honeymoon, with 54 percent approving her handling of the job.

While Bush will devote about half of tonight's 40-minute-plus speech to Iraq, the broader battle with Islamic radicals and other foreign policy matters, advisers said they understand that only sustained and visible progress on the ground in Iraq might change American minds about the war. The best Bush can hope for tonight, they said, is to prevent a wholesale defection by Republicans and buy enough time for his plan to work.

"He knows there's great skepticism," said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the speech before its delivery. "But in spite of that, he believes there's much to be done if we can work together."

Aides said Bush will not directly engage in a debate over congressional efforts to block the troop increase. But in private briefings for administration allies yesterday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove said Bush will challenge Congress to put up its own plan if it does not like his "new way forward," according to people who were briefed.

Past presidents who found themselves facing an opposition Congress tried to tack to the middle after suffering midterm retreats. "This president, based on his speech last week, is taking the opposite approach," said Michael Waldman, a Clinton speechwriter who heads New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. "The 2006 election was as close to a referendum on a president and issue as you get in our constitutional system. So for the president to move to escalate, it's very dramatic."

While recognizing differences over Iraq, Bush does aim to make progress with Democrats on domestic policy. The four main issues he will emphasize -- health care, immigration, energy and education -- are closer to Democratic priorities than some past State of the Union addresses. And Bush tried to send a signal on the eve of the speech by accepting an invitation to address the House Democratic retreat in Williamsburg on Feb. 3.

"They're going to focus on issues and themes where they think they can get bipartisan cooperation," said Cesar Conda, former domestic policy adviser to Vice President Cheney. "It's a big difference from before, when he had a Republican Congress and the big issues would have been making the tax cuts permanent and reforming the tax code. It's a change in tone and focus. He's got to deal with the reality of a Democratic Congress."

Some of Bush's domestic discussion will sound familiar. He plans to repeat his call to overhaul immigration laws and allow illegal immigrants to become guest workers, an idea that may find more favor among Democrats than it did with Republicans last year. He plans to call for extension of his No Child Left Behind education program with modifications to make it more flexible but will not ask Congress to expand it to high school as he did in the past.

The White House has previewed two new health-care proposals that will be in the speech. The first would make employer-provided health-care benefits taxable income after a deduction of $15,000 for families and $7,500 for singles. Officials said the plan would increase taxes for 30 million families whose benefits are worth more than the deduction but would provide a tax break to the vast majority of families with employer coverage as well as to 17 million people who purchase insurance on their own. The program would begin in 2009 and cost the government during its first years of operation but pay for itself by 2018, they said.

Bush also wants to redirect spending from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs toward new grants to help states ensure that everyone has access to affordable basic health insurance, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said yesterday. Leavitt did not specify a cost but said the new program would spur efforts already underway in states such as Massachusetts and California to provide coverage to people without health insurance.

The main uncertainty is what Bush will say about energy and the environment. Amid much talk about climate change and energy security, the president and his aides have promised unspecified "bold" ideas. Officials have ruled out binding caps on emissions of greenhouse gases, despite support among Democrats and some corporate executives who came to Washington yesterday. But they told allies that he will advance ideas for greatly expanding ethanol as an alternative to oil, and some insiders expect changes in fuel efficiency standards for vehicles.

Staff writers Dan Balz, Chris Cillizza, Christopher Lee and Lori Montgomery contributed to this report.

Surge and Purge

2007-01-21T23:15:00.000-06:00

We have to watch w and Rovie all the time. They're way ahead of the game, always shifting things in a way most would think illegal. Here Krugman shows how they're getting set for upcoming investigations and possible criminal trials....

Surging and Purging

By Paul Krugman

Published Friday Jan. 9, 2007 in New York Times

There’s something happening here, and what it is seems completely clear: the Bush administration is trying to protect itself by purging independent-minded prosecutors.

Last month, Bud Cummins, the U.S. attorney (federal prosecutor) for the Eastern District of Arkansas, received a call on his cellphone while hiking in the woods with his son. He was informed that he had just been replaced by J. Timothy Griffin, a Republican political operative who has spent the last few years working as an opposition researcher for Karl Rove.

Mr. Cummins’s case isn’t unique. Since the middle of last month, the Bush administration has pushed out at least four U.S. attorneys, and possibly as many as seven, without explanation. The list includes Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney for San Diego, who successfully prosecuted Duke Cunningham, a Republican congressman, on major corruption charges. The top F.B.I. official in San Diego told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Ms. Lam’s dismissal would undermine multiple continuing investigations.

In Senate testimony yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to say how many other attorneys have been asked to resign, calling it a “personnel matter.”

In case you’re wondering, such a wholesale firing of prosecutors midway through an administration isn’t normal. U.S. attorneys, The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, “typically are appointed at the beginning of a new president’s term, and serve throughout that term.” Why, then, are prosecutors that the Bush administration itself appointed suddenly being pushed out?

The likely answer is that for the first time the administration is really worried about where corruption investigations might lead.

Since the day it took power this administration has shown nothing but contempt for the normal principles of good government. For six years ethical problems and conflicts of interest have been the rule, not the exception.

For a long time the administration nonetheless seemed untouchable, protected both by Republican control of Congress and by its ability to justify anything and everything as necessary for the war on terror. Now, however, the investigations are closing in on the Oval Office. The latest news is that J. Steven Griles, the former deputy secretary of the Interior Department and the poster child for the administration’s systematic policy of putting foxes in charge of henhouses, is finally facing possible indictment.

And the purge of U.S. attorneys looks like a pre-emptive strike against the gathering forces of justice.

Won’t the administration have trouble getting its new appointees confirmed by the Senate? Well, it turns out that it won’t have to.

Arlen Specter, the Republican senator who headed the Judiciary Committee until Congress changed hands, made sure of that last year. Previously, new U.S. attorneys needed Senate confirmation within 120 days or federal district courts would name replacements. But as part of a conference committee reconciling House and Senate versions of the revised Patriot Act, Mr. Specter slipped in a clause eliminating that rule.

As Paul Kiel of TPMmuckraker.com — which has done yeoman investigative reporting on this story — put it, this clause in effect allows the administration “to handpick replacements and keep them there in perpetuity without the ordeal of Senate confirmation.” How convenient.

Mr. Gonzales says that there’s nothing political about the firings. And according to The Associated Press, he said that district court judges shouldn’t appoint U.S. attorneys because they “tend to appoint friends and others not properly qualified to be prosecutors.” Words fail me.

Mr. Gonzales also says that the administration intends to get Senate confirmation for every replacement. Sorry, but that’s not at all credible, even if we ignore the administration’s track record. Mr. Griffin, the political-operative-turned-prosecutor, would be savaged in a confirmation hearing. By appointing him, the administration showed that it has no intention of following the usual rules.

The broader context is this: defeat in the midterm elections hasn’t led the Bush administration to scale back its imperial view of presidential power.

On the contrary, now that President Bush can no longer count on Congress to do his bidding, he’s more determined than ever to claim essentially unlimited authority — whether it’s the authority to send more troops into Iraq or the authority to stonewall investigations into his own administration’s conduct.

The next two years, in other words, are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis.

W's Surge to Lose

2007-01-11T22:39:00.000-06:00

What is with the US media the way they accept W's calling the escalation in troops to Iraq a "surge" and their suggesting that it is only temporary. What a pile of bull!

Did anyone anywhere ever think that Bush would do anything other than increase the number of troops in Iraq. Not a chance. I would've bet the farm.

Did you see the Houston Chronicle today? It was great, congressmen and a female US senator were all shifting around trying to say something of substance without out offending the American public. Several Ds were working hard to appear to support the war, while nearly all Rs suggested that they supported the president but were worried about the war going wrong.

Raise Minimum Wage; but no deals for big business

2007-01-10T22:52:00.000-06:00

The Democrats need to rais the minimum wage without any additional deals for big business. The six years of the Bush administration have been nothing but benefit and deal after deal for big business. The only true way to know where Bush stands on any issue is to judge if it is a giveaway to private industry; if it helps industry, Bush is pushing it. If it throws money and tax breaks at big business, then W will be fighting for it.

Success of 100 hours hinges on few uncertain Senate votes The Hill By Elana Schor and Jeffrey Young

Two planks of the House Democrats’ “100 Hours” agenda are headed for swift passage this week but risk delay in the Senate, where Republicans and Democrats must navigate intra-party disputes over how to raise the minimum wage and amend the Medicare drug benefit.

Unlike their party colleagues in the House, Senate Democratic leaders are sending high-priority bills through regular order, a move that underscores their promise of bipartisanship. But this could deny them the political benefit of demonstrable progress when there are fractious conference negotiations with the House over different approaches to the minimum wage and Medicare.

“I’m becoming aware of the difficulties of the U.S. Senate in trying to pass a bill dealing with one issue,” freshman Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said yesterday, urging the Senate to follow the lead of his former House colleagues and approve a clean minimum wage increase.

Republicans, however, are seeking tax and regulatory sweeteners for businesses to ease the impact of a phased wage hike to $7.25 per hour. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has indicated that he will back the business breaks, remarking last week that a filibuster-proof margin for a stand-alone minimum wage increase may be achievable, but, “I’m not sure I want to do that.”

The Senate Finance Committee today will examine options for tax breaks that the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee can successfully pair with the wage hike. But HELP Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and ranking Republican Mike Enzi (Wyo.) are already dissenting from party leaders’ positions on the minimum wage.

Kennedy will push for a Senate wage hike without business tax breaks at an event today with House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, and freshman Reps. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) and Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.).

At least two members of Kennedy’s panel, freshman Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), backed his approach.

“We need to do serious business tax breaks … [but] don’t link them to the minimum wage,” Brown said. Sanders also called for a clean bill, saying via e-mail: “After 10 years of inexcusable inaction, I believe that the time is long overdue for Congress to pass a clean minimum wage bill.”

Enzi, meanwhile, spent yesterday’s GOP policy lunch tamping down enthusiasm among Republicans for adding small-business health plan provisions to the minimum-wage hike. Enzi’s small-business health plan bill fell short on the floor last year, and he continues to work carefully on a compromise with Democrats that he hopes to pursue as a stand-alone issue, spokesman Craig Orfield said.

Senate Republicans also endorse other business benefits as add-ons to the wage bill, but support for including small-business health plans is being stoked in the House. There, senior Republicans gathered yesterday to tout Reid’s support for a business-friendly wage bill and promote their alternative – which includes small-business health plans.

“Small business health plans would be my choice,” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) said in an interview late last week, adding that a wage increase coupled with health insurance incentives would ensure businesses are “able to give their employees a better life.”

The Medicare prescription drug bill slated for House approval on Friday, which would require the Bush administration to negotiate with drug companies on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries, poses considerable challenges of its own for Senate Democrats.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has been granted first dibs on drafting a bill to fulfill the Democratic campaign promise for federal negotiation of Medicare drug prices. He will hold a hearing on the issue one day before the House considers its Medicare bill, strongly opposed by the White House.

But Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a Finance Committee member, got 54 votes last year for a bill he and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) authored that would allow federal negotiation of Medicare drug prices. Wyden and Snowe will release an updated version of their measure today, mandating negotiation in the case of single-source drugs, drugs created with substantial taxpayer funding, or in cases where private insurers request help.

Wyden said yesterday that he and Snowe count 58 votes in the new Congress for their plan, if freshman Democrats were added and Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), who is ailing, subtracted. Still, even if the pair can reach the crucial 60-vote threshold, Baucus could credibly claim to provide the Democratic leadership with a bigger margin, starting with his own vote.

“I’m going to work very closely with chairman Baucus,” Wyden said when asked whether he would consider using his head count for leverage in discussions with Baucus, who voted against two Medicare negotiation bills last year. “I’m pleased with the discussions we’ve had.”

Baucus is under pressure from Democratic leaders, who have vowed to approve negotiation by spring, to get a bill through the Finance Committee. Though Baucus has criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the drug benefit, he was one of only two Democrats who participated in the drafting of the law creating the program.

“I suspect there [are] going to be serious questions about it in the Senate,” Republican Whip Trent Lott (Miss.) said yesterday of the Medicare negotiation concept. “I’m not sure how or when Reid plans to call it up. I think Democrats have serious questions about it too.”

Complicating matters for Baucus is that a majority of his committee voted for the Wyden-Snowe amendment on the floor. Baucus was the only Democrat on the panel who voted against it, while Snowe captured the support of fellow Finance member Gordon Smith (R-Ore.).

Snowe said yesterday that she and Wyden would discuss their new bill at tomorrow’s Finance hearing and she hoped “some of the changes will broaden the support [for negotiation].”

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) was one of two members missing the vote on Wyden-Snowe. Despite Democrats’ emphasis on negotiation during their electoral triumph last year, Coleman said yesterday he would continue to oppose government involvement in Medicare drug prices.

“We’ve got a system now that’s working,” Coleman said, acknowledging that he would risk political attacks during his reelection run in 2008 but charging that negotiation would “add another layer of bureaucracy.”

The pressure coming from outside interest groups is considerable. Two of Washington’s biggest powerhouses, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the AARP, are facing off and are ready to bring the full weight of their influence to bear.

UN Calls to Stop Next Two Executions

2007-01-03T23:30:00.000-06:00

Iraq Should Refrain From Executing Two Hussein Aides, UN Says

By Bill Varner and Paul Tighe

Much like international human rights groups tried before Saddam's hanging, the UN has now called for a delay to allow review of process and appeals...

Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Iraq should refrain from carrying out the execution today of two associates of former leader Saddam Hussein, who was hanged Dec. 30, said Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Hussein's half-brother, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, are scheduled to be executed at dawn today in Baghdad, Al Arabiya television reported yesterday, citing unidentified Iraqi government officials.

``The concerns that I expressed just days ago with respect to the fairness and impartiality of Saddam Hussein's trial apply also to these two defendants,'' Arbour said yesterday in a statement, adding she appealed to Iraq's President Jalal Talabani to prevent the death sentences being carried out.

Bush Can't Run from the Hussein Death Spectacle

2007-01-03T23:13:00.000-06:00

It is amazing that the Bush administration is now trying to distance itself from the outrageous execution of Saddam Hussein. You know the US was an accessory to the execution; more likely the moving force with the current Iraq puppet government.

Sadly for the US's global reputation, the execution video is very much like the typical terrorist killing with menacing hooded figures (unwilling to expose their identities) slitting necks, or in this case putting a noose around the victim. Again, like the terrorist assasinations, the killers here (somewhat sanctioned by some type of totally biased government) verbally accompanied the death with threats and vulgarities.

Oddly, perhaps not surprisingly, the parallels between W and Saddam are ironic. Saddam kills those opponents in Iraq who tried to assassinate him, and W uses the propped up Iraq system to kill Saddam who tried to assassinate his father. Apparently these acts of retribution are ok as long as you're in power...

It is up to US to stop him...

2007-01-01T21:07:00.000-06:00

A Sentinel in Time
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Thursday 28 December 2006

The calendar pages of our collective history are dotted with a gloomy constellation of days marked in blood, in woe, and in regret. The assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy; that last, hurried helicopter flight from that last rooftop on that last day of our time in Vietnam; the day four lifeless little bodies were pulled from the rubble of a bombed church in Birmingham; the December morning when Pearl Harbor was transformed into a graveyard etched in infamy, the September morning when we all watched those proud Towers in Manhattan crumble and fall - these moments, and the others of like kind too vast in number to name, defined us and transformed us even as they left their scars.

Sometimes, when such a grim milestone passes, we can say to ourselves, yes, it was this terrible day that revealed and released the strength, courage and perseverance which came, in time, to define that moment. We can, with deserved pride, glory in the memory of our passage through those crucibles, confident in the hard-won knowledge that we all have the capacity to overcome any trial, and that surpassing good can be forged in the fires of sorrow and pain.

Too often, however, we come to remember a day of darkness as bereft, with empty hands and hollowed hearts, deprived of the chance or ability to do more than bow our heads and wish it could have been, somehow, different. It requires a long passage of time, in most instances, to allow the cold realities of such days to sink in, and to absorb the brutal totality of consequences we have been burdened to endure in the aftermath. Some moments linger, haunting us, seemingly beyond redemption or solace.

Worst of all, such days breed more days to match or surpass them. The wretched offspring of one malignant moment are birthed into our future, where they wait like deep chasms in a darkened road. Like Booth's bullet, they cut a swath through time itself, and no matter our efforts or exertions, we never seem quite able to reach a place where we are free from their damned and damnable power to do us harm.

On the twentieth day of this coming new year, we will mark the sixth anniversary of the moment George W. Bush stood before Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, raised his right hand into a bitter wind, and swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

This, in the fullness of time, may well stand as such a day. Everything we have endured these last six years - the death, the horror, the fear, the anger - was born that afternoon in Washington, DC. We have already suffered myriad consequences because of it - the shame of Abu Ghraib; the lingering fear of blue skies and airplanes; the ebb tide of freedom as rights become privileges too easily withheld, the bottomless sorrow stitched into nearly three thousand folded American flags while taps played to the wind - and it is a bleak certainty that further suffering born on that day lies in wait.

Consider some other anniversaries we will mark in this new year.

February 5th will be the fourth anniversary of Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations, in which he stated without equivocation that Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that could easily be delivered to terrorists for use against us. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, and all the bloody calamities to follow, became an inevitability on this day. It was not so much the presentation itself that sealed the deal - much of which was and remains laughably transparent - but Powell himself. Wreathed in the fawning adulation of the media establishment, the myth of his rectitude carried the day, thus damning untold thousands to death, suffering, and pain.

March 19th will likewise be the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, of "Shock and Awe," and of the moment a match was put to the fuse. Beyond the blood already spilled because of this day - blood like an ocean - is the carnage yet to come. Before much of this new year is gone, the only people still talking about "winning" in Iraq will be that small cadre of wretches who created this anniversary in the first place, whose monochromatic ideologies exploded an inescapable quagmire that will be generational in its impact upon us all.

May 1st will be the fourth anniversary of the day President Bush stood before an assembled gathering of servicemen and women on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to gleefully declare, under a bright banner reading "Mission Accomplished," that victory in Iraq had been achieved. Little needs to be said here, because the obvious grossness of some moments requires no further elaboration, except this: Of the nearly three thousand soldiers killed in Iraq, and the nearly 47,000 soldiers wounded in Iraq, only the barest fraction fell before the first of May 2003. All the rest have come in the long days, weeks, months, and years since that bright banner was unfurled.

December 17th will be the second anniversary of Bush's public confirmation that he had indeed authorized the National Security Agency to tap the telephones of countless American citizens - said taps having been undertaken without warrants. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, a law requiring these warrants to protect citizens against undue governmental intrusion, was discarded out of hand through these actions. Despite the fact that almost no requests for FISA warrants have ever been denied, and that the parameters for obtaining these warrants are so broad that they can be obtained even after the surveillance is underway, Bush and his people deemed the FISA requirements too restrictive. On this anniversary, we mark the moment when a president placed himself above the law by fiat and suffered no consequences - the moment when each and every one of us stepped deeper into the doomed, imprisoned shadow of Winston Smith.

These are but a small sampling of the moments, days, decisions, and consequences unleashed on January 20, 2001. Freighted with deadly potential, each of these was born that day, and each has itself become a singularity, a creator of mayhem and strife in its own right. As that first moment poisoned the potential of so many tomorrows, so now do these. The bomb that kills a child in Baghdad creates the father whose revenge will be gained by another's senseless death. The official lie that goes unchallenged clears a path for the deadlier lies to follow. A deliberate chip in the walls defending our rights is the perfect spot to lay in the pry bar, until the chip becomes a hole through which tyranny may pass with stunning ease.

Thus, the anniversaries of woe are compounded; consequences spawned by consequences, and a future once defined by hope is transformed into a territory of dread.

Yet, in spite of all the horrors arrayed before us, even as our uncertain future whispers its omens of grief from an unfathomable darkness, there is a simple and unassailable truth standing sentinel against despair. We are that truth - all of us, every one. We are a defiant counterweight that can tip the scales of history. The wellspring of limitless possibility and potential that is humanity's astonishing birthright bestows upon each of us the means to be the alchemists of our own fate.

You are the bulwark, as this new year approaches: a defining line between the possible and the inevitable. The terrible moments of our past reach out to define our future, to create new anniversaries of mourning from the old. Only your will can keep this beast at bay. If you choose to, if you summon the courage and strength and perseverance that have served us well so many times before, the momentum of that cold January day and all the days that followed will be checked.

You are stronger than history, if you choose to be so. The future is yours to create, if you choose to do so. The moments to come are yours. Let nothing and no one steal them from you. Guard them with your life, because that is exactly what they are.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. His newest book, House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation, will be available this winter from PoliPointPress.

Political Execution as Theater

2006-12-30T23:56:00.000-06:00

From the Nation

John Nichols

Convicted in a show trial that certainly appeared to have been timed to finish on the eve of last month's US elections, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hanged in a show execution that just as certainly seems to have been timed to be carried out before the end of the worst year of the Iraq War.

Hussein was a bad player -- a totalitarian dictator who, with tacit approval from the U.S. and other western nation during the 1980s, killed his own people and waged a mad war with Iran. He needed to be held to account. But even bad players deserve fair trials, honest judgments and justly-applied punishments. The former dictator got none of these.

According to Human Rights Watch, which has a long and honorable history of documenting and challenging the abuses of Hussein's former government, the execution early Saturday morning followed "a deeply flawed trial" and "marks a significant step away from respect for human rights and the rule of law in Iraq."

"The test of a government's commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders," says Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program. "History will judge these actions harshly."

For fifteen years, Human Rights Watch had demanded that Hussein be brought to justice for what the group has rightly described as "massive human rights violations." But the group argues that Hussein was not brought to justice.

In addition to objecting at the most fundamental level to the use of the barbaric practice of state-sponsored execution--which is outlawed by the vast majority of the world's nations--Human Rights Watch notes that Hussein was killed before being tried for some of his most well-documented acts of brutality.

The group notes the trial that did take place was fundamentally flawed.

A niney-seven-page report by Human Rights Watch, issued late last month, details the severe problems with the trial. The report, based on close monitoring of the prosecution of the former president, found that:

•"(The) Iraqi High Tribunal was undermined from the outset by Iraqi government actions that threatened the independence and perceived impartiality of the court."

• The Iraqi administrators, judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers lacked sufficient training and expertise "to fairly and effectively try crimes of this magnitude."

• The government did not protect defense lawyers--three of whom were killed during the trial--or key witnesses.

• "(There were) serious flaws in the trial, including failures to disclose key evidence to the defense, violations of the defendants' right to question prosecution witnesses, and the presiding judge's demonstrations of bias."

• "Hussein's defense lawyers had 30 days to file an appeal from the November 5 verdict. However, the trial judgment was only made available to them on November 22, leaving just two weeks to respond."

The report did not study the appeals process, But the speed with which the tribunal's verdict and sentence were confirmed suggests that the Iraqi Appeals Chamber failed to seriously consider the legal arguments advanced by Hussein's able--if violently harassed--legal team.

"It defies imagination that the Appeals Chamber could have thoroughly reviewed the 300-page judgment and the defense's written arguments in less than three weeks' time," said Dicker. "The appeals process appears even more flawed than the trial."

There will, of course, be those who counter criticism of the process by pointing out that Saddam Hussein did not give the victims of his cruel dictates fair trials or just sentences. That is certainly true.

But such statements represent a stinging indictment of the new Iraqi government and its judiciary. With all the support of the United States government, with massive resources and access to the best legal advice in the world, with all the lessons of the past, Iraq has a legal system that delivers no better justice than that of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

This is the ugly legacy of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq: An awful mess of a country that cannot even get the trial and punishment of deposed dictator right, a justice system that schedules the taking of life for political and propaganda purposes, a thuggishly brutal state that executes according to whim rather than legal standard.

According to Britain's Telegraph newspaper, "There was no comment from the White House, which was determined that the execution should appear to be an Iraqi event." The central role played by the US government in the process was not lost on the Telegraph, however, as the newspaper noted that: "the transfer of Saddam from American to Iraqi custody meant his death was imminent."

The term "transfer" is of course being used in a loose sense, as Hussein was hung not in an Iraqi prison but within the American-controlled Green Zone in central Baghdad.

Now that the killing is done, the governments of Iraq and the United States have confirmed what may have been the worst fear of those who condemned both Saddam Hussein and the US invasion and occupation that removed him from power. The crude lawlessness of Hussein has been replaced by the calculated lawlessness of a new regime.

Big Buck GOP Ripping Off Everyone in Sight!

2006-12-07T22:14:00.000-06:00

Legislators: Cash gift rule needs changing

By John Tompkins
The Facts

Published December 7, 2006

Cash or check?

Public officials should be forced to report the monetary amount of gifts given to them by donors, even though an advisory opinion from a state commission says they don’t have to, local legislators said.

So far, four bills have been pre-filed for the upcoming 80th Legislature that would require just that, said Tim Sorrells, deputy general counsel for the Texas Ethics Commission.

The bills come behind an advisory opinion issued last week by the ethics commission, which states legislators and public officials do not have to report the amount of a monetary gift from a donor, merely what kind of gift it is, check or cash, Sorrells said.

“There’s nothing in that statute that requires them to report the value of that gift,” he said. “The language is just not there.”

If none of the four bills currently filed changes the reporting law, State Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston, said he would write his own bill to force public officials to report gift values.

“Clearly that is unacceptable,” he said. “We might as well throw the statute out.”

The commission did interpret the law correctly and didn’t make its decision based on public outcries, Janek said.

“The ethics commission is in a tight spot,” he said. “I applaud them for staying in the confines of the law.”

An ethics commission advisory opinion is not a creation of law, merely an interpretation of existing law, Sorrells said.

“Everything is allowed that was allowed before,” he said. “It doesn’t change anything in the law.”

The case stems from a June 2005 disclosure filed by Dallas businessman Bill Ceverha, a member of the State Employees Retirement System board, which oversees a nearly $20 billion fund for 250,000 retired state workers.

Ceverha reported a gift, described only as a check, from Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, the largest Republican donor in the state. Both men later said the check for $50,000 was supposed to help cover legal fees Ceverha incurred defending himself against a lawsuit related to his role as treasurer of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s Texas fundraising operation.

State law requires public officials to report every political donation and amount made to their campaigns. The ethics commission’s decision addresses personal gifts made to public officials.

State Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, filed a lawsuit against the ethics commission asking them to ask for more meaningful descriptions of monetary gifts. The ethics commission was wrong in its decision and it gives legislators every reason not to report the monetary value of a gift they receive from a political donor, he said.

“It shows how spineless our reporting laws are,” Burnam said. “They’ve opened up a loophole.”

Reporting the value of a gift should be as regular as reporting campaign donations, said State Sen. Mike Jackson, R-Houston, whose district includes part of Brazoria County.

“There ought to be a little bit more explanation about what it is,” he said. “The concept ought to be open, and people should report that.”

Though he said the law needs to be changed and he supports bills that would require more information on gifts, no legislation is stronger than the public’s demand to know what kind of money their legislators are receiving, Bonnen said.

The fear of the public finding out an official is taking an undisclosed sum of money from a donor is usually fear enough to make the official write down the amount, he said.

“That’s a stronger standard than any legislation,” Bonnen said.

Texan Bob Perry spends $16 M for GOP candidates

2006-12-06T22:36:00.000-06:00

Dec. 6, 2006, 10:02AM
Builder puts $16 million into election process
Bob Perry is nation's biggest campaign donor

By CLAY ROBISON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

Election after election, Bob Perry spends tens of millions to help the GOP maintain all the special breaks for developers and the filthy rich. When will Texas citizens make their elected representatives STOP him? When will the US congress and president STOP his purchase of election after election? Pete

TOOLS

RESOURCES

WINS AND LOSSES

Some recipients of Bob Perry's giving in the 2005-06 election cycle and how they fared in the campaign:

Winners

• Republican Party of Texas: $780,000

• Texans for Lawsuit Reform: $601,000

• HillCo PAC: $545,000

• Gov. Rick Perry: $380,000

• Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst: $285,000

• Sen.-elect Dan Patrick,

R-Houston: $55,000

• Rep. Sylvester Turner,

D-Houston: $50,000

• Sen. John Whitmire,

D-Houston: $45,000

Losers:

• Joe Nixon, R-Houston : $262,500

• Talmadge Heflin, R-Houston: $95,000

• Martha Wong, R-Houston: $59,500

Sources: Texans for Public Justice, Chronicle research

AUSTIN — Houston home builder Bob Perry poured $16 million into state and federal races during the recent election cycle, apparently making him the biggest individual political contributor in the country for 2005-06, a money-tracking group reported Tuesday.

A legislator from San Antonio hopes the report will boost his proposal to place limits on big donors, but similar efforts have failed in the past.

Perry has been a leading political donor in Texas for several years, but the $6.7 million he gave to state candidates, mostly Republicans, and political action committees over the past two years was a 44 percent increase over 2003-04, according to Texans for Public Justice.

Additionally, he put $9.3 million into federal elections, mostly through conservative groups that bought ads attacking Democratic congressional candidates throughout the country, TPJ reported, citing Congressional Quarterly's PoliticalMoneyLine.

"Texas is the Wild West of money in politics. Texas needs limits," said Andrew Wheat, TPJ's research director.

Wheat said Perry's total contributions may be the largest ever by an individual donor from Texas, other than what a wealthy candidate has given to his own campaign. Laredo businessman Tony Sanchez spent about $60 million of his own money on his unsuccessful race for governor in 2002.

Nationally, New York billionaire George Soros gave $23.5 million, mostly to liberal organizations, in the 2004 election cycle. Soros spent less this year.

Perry spokesman Anthony Holm said the home builder gives to Republicans and "pro-business, pro-jobs" Democrats because they support governmental policies promoting job creation.

"Bob Perry's political donations are all transparent and spent in public," Holm said.

"TPJ operates in the shadows. TPJ is funded by secret donors," including plaintiffs' lawyers, he added.

Texans for Public Justice says it is nonpartisan, but it frequently draws fire from conservatives for its periodic reports criticizing the role that large donations play in the electoral process. TPJ Director Craig McDonald said his group receives some funding from plaintiffs' lawyers but gets most of his support from philanthropic and other foundations.

85 biggest givers

About a month before the Nov. 7 election, the group released a report listing the 85 biggest donors to Texas candidates and committees, up to that point in the election cycle. Perry and his wife, Doylene, topped that list, which also included a number of other business people and several prominent plaintiffs' lawyers, including Fred Baron of Dallas, Mikal Watts of Corpus Christi, Walter Umphrey of Beaumont and John Eddie Williams of Houston.

Perry was singled out in this follow-up report because he's "the biggest donor in Texas," McDonald said.

Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, has prefiled HB111 for the legislative session, which convenes in January, to limit total political contributions by one individual in state races to $100,000 per election cycle.

Villarreal sponsored a similar bill in 2005, but it died in a House subcommittee.

"I think there is more public clamor for change," he said, noting that another mega-contributor, San Antonio businessman James Leininger, a leading advocate of spending tax dollars on private school vouchers, also received much attention this year for large political donations to legislative candidates.

Under Villarreal's bill, a person could give the entire $100,000 to a single candidate or committee but would be unable to donate to anyone else.

Among candidates this year, Perry gave 92 percent of his money to Republicans and 8 percent to Democrats, TPJ reported. HillCo PAC, the political action committee of an Austin lobbying firm that represents Perry's company, Perry Homes, received $545,000.

HillCo partner Bill Miller said money has been part of the democratic process since time immemorial.

"What's the difference between him giving his money and John O'Quinn giving a seven-figure contribution?" he asked.

O'Quinn, a plaintiffs' lawyer from Houston, gave Democratic nominee Chris Bell $1.5 million in the recent gubernatorial race.

After contributing $3.8 million to state candidates and committees in the 2002 election, Perry was instrumental in the Legislature's creation in 2003 of the Texas Residential Construction Commission, an agency criticized by consumer advocates as a builder-protection agency.

clay.robison@chron.com

Neocons Dying Out

2006-12-04T21:58:00.000-06:00

Elliott Abrams: The Last Neocon Standing

With the neocons in disarray, Elliott Abrams may be their best hope for keeping President Bush onboard.

A disgusting crew.....Pete

By Michael Hirsh and Dan Ephron

Newsweek

Dec. 4, 2006 issue - It's been a rough season for neoconservatives, the group that has dominated U.S. foreign policy since the attacks of September 11. They've been largely run out of the Bush administration, beset by infighting, and mocked by a foreign-policy establishment that hailed their power just a few years ago. Last month was particularly brutal. They looked on helplessly as Democrats took both houses of Congress. They had to grit their teeth when President Bush met with Washington dealmakers James Baker and Lee Hamilton, whose bipartisan group is charged with extricating America from the mess the neocon-influenced policy created in Iraq. Then, insult to injury: they watched their cold-war nemesis in Central America circa 1986, Daniel Ortega, rise again to be president of Nicaragua.

The neocons are reeling, but they're not dead yet. A few stalwarts are digging in their wing-tips. And there's already a small backlash against the backlash. At the State Department, supposedly the bastion of realism, some officials are sounding defiant. "There are a lot of people throughout the ranks who believe in the democracy agenda," says one senior official who would only discuss policy issues anonymously. "If the result of the Baker report is that we have to make any deal necessary ... to get out of Iraq, I don't think that's going to fly." Their hopes, and the hopes of neocons everywhere, may rest on the shoulders of Elliott Abrams, the number-two official at the National Security Council—who remains in charge of promoting democracy in the Middle East, a linchpin of the neocon agenda.

Abrams, who declined an interview request from NEWSWEEK, has his work cut out for him. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Abrams handles the Middle East, though not Iraq. Earlier this year, Abrams pushed for an $85 million expansion of TV and radio programming beamed into Iran to gently promote regime change. Now, toppling the mullahs might be off the table. The same goes for the policy of pushing reforms on Arab allies like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, who has kept a key opposition figure in jail for more than 11 months and scaled back rights. Michael Gerson, who served until recently as Bush's speechwriter (and who is now a NEWSWEEK contributor), says Abrams must be troubled by the swing. "People who support the democracy agenda are deeply concerned that Mubarak is significantly backtracking," Gerson says. And Abrams has to cope with the fallout of his push for Palestinian elections—the rise of Hamas, and the breakdown of the peace process. But Abrams has one powerful advantage. "Bush has enormous regard for him," says a senior administration official who would not speak about their relationship on the record. "One, because he knows Elliott is keeper of the flame. And also, he's the only one who doesn't draw any attention to himself." (Abrams has been somewhat press-shy ever since he admitted to withholding information from Congress about the Iran-contra affair two decades ago; he was later pardoned.)

The biggest dogfight is still ahead: whether to cut a deal with regimes like Iran, North Korea and Syria. Bush's approach has been to counter threats from oppressive regimes by trying to change them. Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and the punditocracy's best-known neocon, says it's hard to imagine the president turning his back on all that. "I think Bush is the last neocon in power," he says. "The truth is, it was always Bush."

Kristol acknowledges the neoconservatives are turning on each other. Francis Fukuyama, the "End of History" sage, has broken with the neocons publicly and believes that they are discredited. Richard Perle, the former Pentagon adviser, now says he probably wouldn't have invaded Iraq at all (Perle refused to talk to NEWSWEEK). Kristol dismisses what he calls the "confessional mode" of his old friend Perle. But Kristol also believes the infighting is natural. "Every intellectual group, every political group, goes through a period of mini crackup and reassembles in slightly different ways," he told NEWSWEEK. "For a group that's discredited, an awful lot of people are spending an awful lot of time discrediting us." Kristol's allies are looking to Abrams to pick up the pieces.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15896208/site/newsweek/?rf=snwnewsletter

Finally Truth about the Iraq Civil War!

2006-11-28T22:35:00.000-06:00

The GOP/conservative media influence machine has done an excellent job of cowing the US media into not admitting that Iraq is in a CIVIL WAR, and has been for many months. Now, finally, a few of them are taking the "big" jump to conclude (and justify) that the country is suffering a civil war. And David Letterman tonight joked that Bush is saying that it isn't a civil war until there's a series of Time/Life books about it!!! Pete

Media Starting to Describe Iraq Conflict as "Civil War"
By Anna Crane
Editor and Publisher

Monday 27 November 2006

New York - For months, the media have been torn over use of the term "civil war" to describe the descent into outright murder and torture in Iraq. Apparently the utter chaos and carnage of the past week has finally convinced some to use "civil war" without apology - with NBC News and MSNBC joining in today in a major way - but many still hold back, an E&P survey today shows.

The Los Angeles Times was one of the first newspapers to flatly describe the conflict as a "civil war" - without the usual qualifiers of "approaching" or "near" - and did again in the first paragraph of a news report on Saturday. The Christian Science Monitor today refers to a "deepening civil war."

But the main Washington Post story today continued to use "sectarian strife." A widely-published Reuters dispatch today adopted "sectarian conflict" and McClatchy in a report from Baghdad relied on "sectarian violence." Other papers declared that Iraq is on the verge of civil war, but has not gotten there yet, with an Associated Press story calling Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's visit to Iran an effort to prevent "Iraq's sectarian violence from sliding into an all-out civil war."

In a bombshell, however, Matt Lauer on the Today show this morning revealed that NBC had studied and perhaps debated the issue anew, and then decided that it will now use "civil war" freely. "For months the White House rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into civil war," he said. "For the most part news organizations like NBC hesitated to characterize it as such. After careful consideration, NBC News has decided the change in terminology is warranted and what is going on in Iraq can now be characterized as civil war."

He explained: "We should mention we didn't just wake up on a Monday morning and say let's call this a civil war.' This took careful deliberation. We consulted with a lot of people." One of them was retired Gen. Barry McCaffery a longtime NBC consultant, who told Lauer he had been using the expression "civil war" for quite some time, with the qualifier "low grade."

Lauer added: "The White House objects to the terminology that NBC News is now using, and here is part of the statement that they've released: 'While the situation on the ground is very serious, neither Prime Minister Maliki nor we believe that Iraq is in a civil war.' It goes on to say that 'the violence is largely centered around Baghdad, and Baghdad security and the increased training of Iraqi security forces is at the top of the agenda when President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki meet later this week in Jordan.'"

Asked about the civil war tag, CNN's Michael Ware said on Friday from Baghdad: "Well, firstly, let me say, perhaps it's easier to deny that this is a civil war, when essentially you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country within the Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister, the national security adviser for Iraq and, of course, the top U.S. military commanders. However, for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of it, then they do not want to see what one really looks like."

In his column in this week's Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria pulls no punches: "We're in the middle of a civil war and are being shot at by both sides. There can be no more doubt that Iraq is in a civil war, in which leaders of both its main communities, Sunnis and Shiites, are fomenting violence."

The Los Angeles Times story by Solomon Moore had opened: "Iraq's civil war worsened Friday as Shiite and Sunni Arabs engaged in retaliatory attacks after coordinated car bombings that killed more than 200 people in a Shiite neighborhood the day before. A main Shiite political faction threatened to quit the government, a move that probably would cause its collapse and plunge the nation deeper into disarray."

The Los Angeles Times since October has been calling it a civil war, Marjorie Miller, the newspaper's foreign editor, told the Associated Press today. "It's a very simple calculation," she said. "It's a country that's tearing itself apart, one group against another group or several groups against several groups. What country even admits that it is in the midst of a civil war?"

Editors at The Associated Press have discussed the issue and haven't reached a definitive stance, said John Daniszewski, international editor. Most often, the conflict is called "the war in Iraq" or identified with descriptive terms such as sectarian fighting, anti-government attacks or ethnic clashes, he said.

He pointed to the different definitions experts have for civil wars. "From a historical point of view, not every civil war is called by that name, and wars by their very nature are not always neatly categorized," he said, in an AP report. "For instance, the American Revolutionary War, the Vietnam War and the more recent wars in Bosnia and Kosovo were all civil wars according to the broader definition, yet we do not normally think or speak of them that way."

Officials at both ABC News and CBS News said that they discuss the situation all the time, but that there's no network policy to use the term civil war, AP added. "We are not there yet," said Paul Slavin, ABC News senior vice president, noting differing definitions.

But MSNBC's Contessa Brewer said this morning on the air: "Now, the battle between Shiites and Sunnis has created a civil war in Iraq. Beginning this morning, MSNBC will refer to the fighting in Iraq as a civil war - a phrase the White House continues to resist. But after careful thought, MSNBC and NBC News decided over the weekend, the terminology is appropriate, as armed militarized factions fight for their own political agendas. We'll have a lots more on the situation in Iraq and the decision to use the phrase, civil war."

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that some scholars are calling the Iraq conflict a "civil war. " A civil war, it explained, is commonly defined by two criteria: two warring groups fighting for control over political power, and at least 1,000 deaths with at least 100 from each side. Criteria that Iraq meets, easily.

With Edwards and Democrats Wal-Mart Wants to Play with Fire!

2006-11-16T22:48:00.000-06:00

Democrats everywhere should boycott Wal-mart because the store viciously attacked Democratic Senator Edwards simply because he's criticized the Wal-mart corporation and an Edwards staffer mistakenly sought to buy something there. Pete

Edwards acknowledges Wal-Mart query

By MARCUS KABEL, AP Business Writer 6 minutes ago

John Edwards — a vocal critic of the retailer — asked his local Wal-Mart store for help in getting the potential 2008 presidential candidate a Sony PlayStation 3. Edwards said a volunteer did so by mistake.

Edwards told The Associated Press that the volunteer "feels terrible" about seeking the game unit at Wal-Mart a day after his boss criticized the company, saying it doesn't treat its employees fairly.

"My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a Playstation3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people," Edwards said. "That staff person mentioned it in front of a volunteer who said he would make an effort to get one. He was making an effort to go get one for himself.

"Elizabeth and I knew nothing about this. He feels terrible about this. He made a mistake, and he knows he should not have used my name," Edwards said.

Edwards said the volunteer was "a young kid" unaware of what he called flawed Wal-Mart policies. He called the Wal-Mart statement an effort to divert attention from its own problems.

After Wal-Mart this summer hired Edelman executive Leslie Dach as its public relations director and put him on the company's executive team, analysts said the retailer would likely become more aggressive toward its critics.

Wal-Mart had noted in a news release Thursday that on the same day Edwards was criticizing the company in a conference call with union-backed activists, the volunteer staff member had asked a Raleigh, N.C., electronics department manager to obtain a PS3 for the ex-senator's family.

From Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., company spokesman David Tovar said the person who called left a voicemail at the Raleigh store and identified himself as an Edwards staff member. When the manager returned the call, the staff member again identified himself as working for Edwards, and Wal-Mart said it confirmed that with Edwards' office.

The retailer's news release accused Edwards of not wanting to wait his turn.

"While the rest of America's working families are waiting patiently in line, Senator Edwards wants to cut to the front," the Wal-Mart statement said.

The PlayStation 3 console is set to go on sale Friday.

Edwards, the Democrats' vice presidential candidate in 2004, spoke Wednesday to supporters of union-backed WakeUpWalMart.com on a conference call launching the group's holiday season campaign to pressure Wal-Mart for better labor standards.

In the call, he repeated a story about his son Jack disapproving of a classmate buying sneakers at Wal-Mart. "If a 6-year-old can figure it out, America can definitely figure this out," Edwards said.

Previously, Edwards has appeared at WakeUpWalMart rallies.

___

26 After the Presidency in '08

2006-11-13T22:30:00.000-06:00

From CQ Weekly: The '08 Race for the White House Begins

By Craig Crawford | 5:24 PM; Nov. 10, 2006 |

Note: This overview of the 2008 presidential race, including profiles of the top contenders, ran in the Nov. 6 issue of CQ Weekly, one day before the midterm elections that returned Democrats to power in the House and Senate. Two of the Republicans profiled, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Virginia Sen. George Allen, saw their presidential hopes severely damaged by Tuesday's outcome — in Allen's case, his chances were all but extinguished by his loss to Democrat Jim Webb. However, we have included them since political comebacks by both cannot be ruled out.

The coming presidential campaign will be the most wide open in eight decades. The future of a war is at stake. There is the potential to elect the first woman, the first African-American — or even, possibly, the first African-American woman.

To most of the political world, the 2008 presidential campaign will be considered under way this week. But, in fact, activity on the hustings in the battleground states, those with the early nominating contests, began within weeks of the day George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004.

In the wake of this week's elections, the margins of control are so narrow that establishing a firm rule over the nation’s direction will not be feasible until the 44th president of the United States is elected on Nov. 4, 2008.

If Tuesday's elections were the midterms, consider 2008 the final exam. And what a brutal test it should be.

By definition, any presidential election makes history. But this one is shaping up as the biggest, baddest, meanest and, quite possibly, the most historic race for the White House in at least a generation.

With Vice President Dick Cheney unambiguously ruling out a bid, the stage is set for an epic battle without an official heir apparent on either the Democratic or Republican side.

“It’s the first cycle since 1928 with no incumbent president or vice president running for the White House,” said University of Virginia political science professor Larry J. Sabato. “As a result, we are seeing the earliest campaigning ever, by the most candidates in both parties.”

The 2008 contest began so early that we already have a dropout. Last month, former Gov. Mark W. Warner of Virginia said he would not be running after making several forays into Iowa, New Hampshire and other early-voting or big-money states — and earning standing among the pundits as a member of the emerging Democratic field’s top tier.

In Iowa, site of the first nominating test, more than two dozen potential presidential contenders from both political parties—including 10 percent of the current governors and 12 percent of the current Senate—have already racked up more than 100 campaign trips there since the last election. And the pace is picking up in early-primary states such as New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Many of the White House hopefuls set up their federal exploration committees long ago. As a group, they have already raised a cash total that is now climbing above the tens-of-millions range. Permanent staffs have been hired. Direct-mail campaigns are under way. Consultants have designed logos, tested slogans and even made bumper stickers.

Civilians not accustomed to the guerrilla warfare of a presidential campaign might well think it is amazingly early for so many candidates to be so active. Not so. To win the biggest political prize on Earth, it pays to start now. Indeed, those who have not at least begun testing the waters by now might already be too late — so much of the big money and so many of the smart campaign people having already been spoken for.

Lining up top-shelf strategists and policy experts almost becomes a primary campaign unto itself at this early stage.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is set to inherit the bulk of her husband’s constellation of political stars, James Carville first among them. And John Edwards has won the services of a top rural strategist, Dave “Mudcat” Saunders. But many of the major Democratic operatives, while quietly placing their bets on potential candidates, are hedging those bets until Clinton makes a final decision on whether to run.

On the Republican side, John McCain is mainly sticking with the team he assembled for his run in 2000 and has added some interesting names on the policy front, among them former Clinton administration drug czar Barry McCaffrey. Mitt Romney, though, scored a coup in signing on Mike Murphy, who was McCain’s top adviser last time. George Allen attracted the services of GOP super-nova Mary Matalin and former Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie.

But nobody has won the biggest prize of all in this subcampaign — the ear of Karl Rove, the president’s longtime political Svengali, who has painstakingly avoided even hinting at who he might help, or even whether he will join the fray at all.

No Exaggeration

Would-be presidents are scrambling to the field so soon thanks to a genuine power vacuum in both political parties. For once, it is not hyperbole to call an election one of the most important ever, as politicians tend to say every four years — especially when it’s their moment to make history.

Republicans must debate what to do after the Age of Bush, a period that featured two decades of party rule by a single family — George W. Bush’s two presidential terms following the four years that his father, George Bush, spent as president starting in 1989.

A threshold question for Republicans in their nomination struggle will test the fate of social conservatism’s influence. President Bush built a victorious coalition squarely founded upon the support of evangelical Christians, who are one of the most effective grass-roots players in the history of American politics. But their intensely conservative social agenda disturbs enough Americans that many Republicans, including some of the major 2008 contenders, are eager to make this next campaign about moving the GOP toward the center.

Much will depend on who among the Republicans will claim the mantle of social conservatives’ darling, which the president himself will be shedding, and whether that person will possess Bush’s skill at leveraging the religious base without narrowing his appeal to the rest of the electorate.

On economics, Bush has struggled to bridge a widening gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and the next nominee will be pressed to manage that rift. This tension was at the root of the roiling Republican debate over immigration, for instance. Big business, with Bush at its side, pushed GOP congressional leaders for changes aimed at legalizing the status of millions of immigrants. But rank-and-file Republicans balked in a fury, scuttling the Bush initiative.

The officially leaderless Democrats, for their part, will be in search of someone who can pull the party’s varied factions together into a winning coalition — a task that even this week's sweeping victory might not come close to accomplishing.

Trickiest for the crop of Democrats running for president will be how to win over the legions of party activists who want to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. It will be tempting for candidates to get on the good side of these voters, who are likely to dominate the primary balloting, but the obvious risk is being tagged by Republicans as weak on national security, a brand that has hobbled the party more often than not since Vietnam.

Of course, the best-case scenario for both party’s candidates would be for the Iraq War to become a non-issue in the 104 weeks before Election Day 2008. But even if the Bush administration some day does begin significantly reducing troop levels, it seems a remote possibility that Iraq will not remain a national headache in two years.

The stakes for the country in the next election are as high as they are for the political parties. Polls show that voters are disgusted with the country’s direction. With two years of bitterly divided government ahead of them, the voters are likely to be even unhappier when they choose the next president.

Look for the White House race to echo much of what was heard in the midterm elections, a tug of war between stay the course or time for a change. Republicans must offer some change, while making the case for keeping the status quo of a GOP-held White House. Democrats must argue for change, but without scaring people.

They have 14 months until the votes are counted in the living rooms, cafes and schoolhouses of Iowa. And then at least two people, one Republican and one Democrat, will start moving toward a place in history. They will probably come from the roster of people, a baker’s dozen from each party, whose current strengths and weakness — political, ideological and financial — are sketched in alphabetical order below.

The Democrats

Evan Bayh — Junior Senator, Indiana

Rationale: A red-state darling and the son of another Democratic senator from Indiana — Birch Bayh, who sought the presidency in 1976 — this telegenic graduate of Washington’s prestigious St. Albans School is a proven vote-getter in his home state, winning two terms as governor (he served from 1989 through 1996) of a state that Democrats have not carried in a presidential campaign since the Johnson landslide of 1964. A dedicated centrist and a senator since 1999, he served from 2001 to 2005 as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, the middle-of-the-road policy group once headed by Bill Clinton and Joseph I. Lieberman. In a blitz of campaigning for Democratic congressional candidates in 25 states this year, he has aggressively positioned himself as a Washington outsider, telling stump audiences, “The gulf between our nation’s capital and the people of our country has never been greater.”

Resources: With more than $10 million in his account, Bayh should have no trouble meeting the cover charge to run a credible nomination campaign. His home state’s relative proximity to all-important Iowa will help him muster a network of grass-roots activists. His frequent trips to Iowa and New Hampshire in the past year have attracted local media interest and favorable comments. And his movie-star looks helped make an instant hit of his profile on the popular Facebook.com, drawing more than 2,000 “friends” to sign up.

Hobby Horse: Stressing fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, job creation and lean government, this is one Democrat who hopes to dodge the liberal label so often pinned on his party brethren in national campaigns. His Capitol Hill voting record shows that, until recently, he sided with President Bush on key issues more often than not.

Hobble Horse: Coming across as a mild- mannered Midwestern deacon is not what presidential campaign audiences expect — and in Washington, he is viewed as an intellectual lightweight. To compensate, Bayh asks Democrats, “Do we want to vent, or do we want to govern?” He might find that primary voters prefer venting.

Rationale: A Democrat who talks the way many people talk, Biden’s vernacular style is frequently on display in his many appearances on radio and television news shows, such as his regular gigs with syndicated host Don Imus. Despite spending more than half of his life in the Senate, the world’s most elite political club — he arrived in 1973, when he was 30 — he seems to have a genuine instinct for middle-class sensibilities. Before the Iraq War, most Americans knew him from a series of bruising Judiciary Committee battles for Supreme Court nominations as he delighted liberals with his ferocious assaults on Republican presidents’ choices. In past years his seat on the Foreign Relations Committee afforded him the chance to travel frequently to Iraq and stand out as one of the most vocal critics of the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq.

Resources: Biden never has faced genuinely difficult re-election races in Delaware, a small state where he has not needed to develop a large financial donor base — at least by presidential campaign standards. This has left him chronically unable to raise enough money to match his White House ambition, which manifested itself in a short-lived run in 1988 and dalliances almost ever since. Still, his popularity with broadcast news producers and personalities gives him a tool for reaching voters that most rivals envy.

Hobby Horse: Despite voting for the 2002 resolution authorizing the Iraq War, Biden dissects the war’s subsequent troubles with relentless passion and a knack for explaining his views in ways that average folks can grasp. And he takes great delight in pointing out that recent White House policy adjustments track his own longstanding suggestions.

Hobble Horse: If Biden could raise big bucks he would have been a serious contender in any of the last several presidential campaigns. And despite his average-Joe demeanor in public, his 33 years in the Senate — along with his reputation as the very model of a long-winded lawmaker — tag him as a creature of Washington. So, too, would the target-rich database of thousands of roll call votes from which opponents could cherry-pick.

Rationale: In an era of national security concerns that could last a generation, a retired four-star general who has been around the presidential-campaign block should be a most attractive commodity. Now a contributor to the conservative-leaning Fox News Channel, Clark has the opportunity to develop general- election appeal by reaching many voters who distrust the Democrats. Although unsuccessful in what experts deemed a disorganized 2004 bid for the Democratic nomination, he performed well enough to earn the undying loyalty of moderate voters attracted to his background as West Point graduate, wounded Vietnam veteran and NATO commander during the Kosovo conflict. Having run before and established modest political credentials, Clark — lacking experience as an elected official — might not be at as much of a disadvantage in a second run.

Resources: Raising $30 million in his first outing on the presidential field was not too shabby, but so far Clark has not begun to put together a serious war chest. Since most of his 2004 campaign funds came from individual donors, thanks to an effective Internet program, it is likely that he could raise plenty of start-up cash quickly if he decides to run again. But the major-league Democratic donors have shied away from him so far.

Hobby Horse: As the only potential contender in either party with such a distinguished military résumé, Clark commands attention as long as voters rate the war in Iraq as a top concern. His experience in handling the Kosovo conflict and helping negotiate the Bosnia peace accord give him unrivaled credibility.

Hobble Horse: Although Clark’s lack of experience holding elective office is a plus to some voters, it is likely to remain a hindrance in the eyes of media and political elites. And he has not effectively used his time since the last campaign to shore up his credentials on the domestic front.

Rationale: Having evolved from Goldwater girl to first lady to player on the mighty Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton is better known and more road-tested than any of her rivals and is by far the most politically viable woman ever to ponder the presidency. She is hugging the ideological center to shed the liberal, big-government image she acquired in a failed attempt during her husband’s presidency to radically change the nation’s health care system. But now she is tacking rightward, backing federal legislation against flag burning, refusing to recant her vote in 2002 to authorize the Iraq War — even sounding a distinctly centrist tone on abortion. And she seldom misses an opportunity to emphasize her conservative Republican roots growing up in the Chicago suburbs. A recent HBO documentary about Barry Goldwater prominently featured pictures of her as one of his teen supporters along with interviews of her warmly praising the father of modern conservatism.

Resources: Insiders say she will tap former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Bill Clinton fundraiser, to oversee a nomination campaign with a donor budget expected to at least double the record-shattering $100 million that George W. Bush stockpiled in 2000. She has surprised observers by spending so much on her shoo-in second term Senate campaign, however, which means that she will not have as much left over for a presidential bid as she could have — and has fueled speculation that she might not actually run.

Hobby Horse: Clinton is a passionate policy wonk with a think tank to prove it. Founded three years ago as a refuge for Clinton administration alumni, the Center for American Progress has become an emerging force within the Democratic Party, sometimes outdoing the party’s congressional leaders in taking on the Bush administration.

Hobble Horse: A stilted and sometimes boring performer on the stump, she pales in comparison with her husband when it comes to revving up crowds. And she seems cozier with the many Hollywood stars who are flocking to her cause than with the average folks she most needs to win over.

Rationale: Call it buyer’s remorse, the notion that a nation once so high on George W. Bush might possibly embrace the man who led the Senate Democrats for a decade but lost his bid for a fourth term in South Dakota in 2004 after going toe-to-toe with the White House throughout the president’s first term. Now that Bush is at rock bottom with voters, perhaps they would see Daschle’s partisan warring — once so successfully targeted as “obstructionist” by the Republicans — as a badge of honor worth a belated reward. Grass-roots Democrats especially might be receptive to repaying a debt to Daschle. And with the pivotal state of Iowa neighboring his home state, he has a chance to play a role akin to that of the martyred favorite son in the first nominating contest of 2008.

Resources: As Democratic leader, Daschle was able to raise $20 million for his 2004 race back home, or $51 on every vote cast. Building the even more substantial war chest required for a presidential campaign could be an uphill struggle without the platform of an influential Capitol Hill post to help attract donors. Despite launching a new political action committee last year and testing the waters with trips to Iowa and New Hampshire last summer, Daschle has not revved up his fundraising sufficiently to convince skeptics that he can get his groove back on the cash front.

Hobby Horse: Daschle can argue that he was out front against Bush when it was hard, when the president was rated so high in the polls that many Democrats ran for the hills. And from his perch at the Washington lobby shop of Alston & Bird LLP, he has an opportunity to maintain access to party fundraisers who favored him in those heady days as a Senate leader.

Hobble Horse: Having pulled out of an expected presidential race last time, when he was at the height of his influence, Daschle could easily be written off as a has-been and a loser. Although a recent stint debating former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich in California earned them both points for across-the-aisle creativity, it seemed to make both men look very retro.

Rationale: In an era when liberal Democratic partisans see the party’s move to the ideological middle of the road as caving in to conservatives, Dodd is the true-blue alternative to centrism. Although he voted in favor of authorizing the war in Iraq, Dodd’s liberal credentials are solid. He has a 91 percent support rating from the AFL-CIO and sided with President Bush only one-third of the time on the Senate floor last year. Dodd is a popular speaker in Democratic circles, easy-going and humorous even while hurling verbal spears at the opposing party. Within his robust résumé as a senator since 1981 — and as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1995 until 1997 — Dodd has the tools to bolster his case.

Resources: Dodd has raised more than $1 million to fund contributions to Democratic campaigns in the midterm election, but it will take much more to seriously get into the presidential game. Corporate givers are not fond of his longstanding opposition to their pet projects, such as restricting shareholder and class action lawsuits. Still, his home state is home to many wealthy givers, and his politics should appeal to the Hollywood money crowd.

Hobby Horse: Although he’s a liberal, he is a pragmatist known for cutting deals at the last minute to shape legislation that he opposes more to his liking. In 2005, for instance, he gave in to Republicans on a bill to restrict class action lawsuits after winning concessions from them.

Hobble Horse: Another New England liberal might not be the ticket Democrats are looking for after walking the plank in 2004 with John Kerry of Massachusetts. And Republicans in Florida would have a field day with his strong support for opening up relations with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Rationale: As one of the few political figures on the national stage who routinely talks about fighting poverty, Edwards was a natural for the debate on helping the impoverished citizens of the Gulf states after Hurricane Katrina hit a year ago. His come-from-nothing personal story — the first in his family to go to college, he became a multimillionaire personal-injury trial lawyer before his election to the Senate from North Carolina in 1998 — makes him the genuine article when it comes to appealing to the middle class. One of the most popular speakers on the Democratic chicken-dinner circuit, Edwards is keeping a high profile outside Washington. He impressed Beltway insiders weary with Democratic waffling on the Iraq War when he wrote a Washington Post op-ed last year plainly stating that he was wrong to vote for authorizing the war while in the Senate.

Resources: Edwards raised $2.5 million for his One America Committee in the 2006 election cycle, funding a full-time staff and other expenses for one of the most aggressive PACs of the presidential wannabes. As happened at the outset of his 2004 run for the Democratic nomination, his seed money — nearly $1 million — comes from lawyers, presumably drawn to Edwards’ own background. Broadening that donor base will be a major objective for him.

Hobby Horse: Edwards is all but living in Iowa, where a poll last June showed him in first place, ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Iowa insiders say he has natural appeal in the state — the Des Moines Register endorsed him in 2004 — and might have won the presidential caucus if he had maintained a stronger grass-roots organization.

Hobble Horse: Washington’s political insiders tend to dismiss Edwards as a poor performer on the 2004 national ticket who came across as a lightweight in the debate with Vice President Dick Cheney and could not even help carry his home state of North Carolina.

Rationale: The ultimate insider-acting-like-an-outsider, Feingold often breaks ranks with his party and sometimes the entire Senate. The campaign finance overhaul enacted in 2002 over the objections of the leadership in both parties is known as the McCain-Feingold law. Perhaps the most uncompromising liberal in the Senate, Feingold’s name appears as the only dissenter in the occasional Senate roll call. His lone-ranger status forever endeared him to civil libertarians in 2001, when he cast the single vote in the Senate against the counter-terrorism law dubbed the Patriot Act — and did so just six weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. More recently, party leaders refused to even seek a vote on his resolution to censure Bush for ordering “warrantless” surveillance.

Resources: Even Democratic Party insiders grumble that Feingold goes too far in spurning the campaign finance system by refusing to accept most forms of outside money, even before McCain-Feingold took effect. Still, he has managed to raise more than $2 million for his presidential exploration fund, most of it from individual donors. The law he helped write could level the playing field to his advantage, as rivals must play by the rules he set.

Hobby Horse: No one in the presidential field for both parties has a better track record for advocating clean government, even when his stands irritate his own party’s leaders. Voters cynical about corruption in Washington should find him to be a refreshing exception and tireless champion.

Hobble Horse: Feingold’s social liberalism — he opposes the death penalty and supports gay marriage — delights his loyal followers, but it could be a devastating target in a general election and severely limit his reach into middle America. He didn’t help matters by once referring to Greenville, Ala., as a place of “check-cashing stores and abject trailer parks.”

Rationale: Revenge-minded Democrats could have a champion in Gore if they want a do-over of the 2000 presidential election, which many believe he actually won. After wandering in the wilderness after that bitter loss, Gore re-emerged to popular acclaim as George W. Bush was tanking in the polls. It is tough to discount his claims that the United States would not be mired in Iraq if he had become president. And he restored some of the old luster by starring in a critically acclaimed film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” alerting audiences to the dangers of global warming. While once rejecting any notion of another race, Gore has recently cracked the door open a bit. Party insiders believe that he will definitely run if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton opts out.

Resources: Gone are the heady days when Gore, as the two-term incumbent vice president under Bill Clinton, raised well above $100 million for his second presidential campaign. (He first ran in 1988, the year he turned 40, when he was a freshman senator from Tennessee.) Four years ago, when he toyed with another try, many of his financial backers abandoned him, a major factor in his final decision to sit out the 2004 campaign. If Gore joined the 2008 field, associates say he would shun the big bucks — out of necessity — and try to make it an asset by running as an outsider.

Hobby Horse: Global warming and the environment enthuse Gore like no other topic, although some observers note that he failed to make those issues much of a priority while he was vice president. On the Iraq War, he parted with Bush and most congressional Democrats in vehemently opposing the invasion early on.

Hobble Horse: Endorsing Howard Dean for president in 2003 was a sign to some Democratic insiders that Gore had simply lost his way, reducing his appeal to the party’s fringe elements. And his global warming obsession is not viewed as a big enough platform to revive a presidential bid.

Rationale: The preferences of a few counties in southern Ohio cost Kerry the electoral votes that would have made him president last time. Since he came so close against an incumbent, he could put it over the top in a race for an open seat in the White House — especially considering that, since the 2004 election, the country has turned against Bush on the war in Iraq. Battle-worn from that race, the 22-year senator from Massachusetts says he has learned crucial lessons in how to run against Republicans. Primarily, he vows to fiercely defend attacks, evidenced by his initial refusal to apologize last week when Bush assailed him for joking that young Americans must get educated or “get stuck in Iraq.” Instead, Kerry counterattacked, calling the president’s aides hacks who are “willing to lie.” He apologized for the gaffe the next day.

Resources: Money is the least of Kerry’s problems. He raised nearly $350 million for his last presidential campaign and nearly $6 million in the 2006 cycle for his political action committee, Keeping America’s Promise. His personal wealth, mostly from the fortune of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, came in handy in his first national run, when he infused his Iowa caucus campaign with his family money in the final days and eked out a win that propelled him toward the nomination.

Hobby Horse: Kerry has determinedly used his Senate platform to extend his campaign against President Bush and fuel another presidential bid. He turned much of his 2004 campaign policy agenda into a legislative agenda. Just a few weeks after that election, for instance, he retooled his campaign health proposals into the first bill that he introduced.

Hobble Horse: Last week’s imbroglio over what Kerry himself termed a “botched joke” — which, to many, appeared to suggest that American soldiers are uneducated — was yet another reminder to Democrats of how clumsy he can be on the stump. It forced him off the campaign trail as fearful Democratic candidates canceled his appearances.

Rationale: Right now he holds one of the hottest cards in American politics, his initial flirtation with a 2008 campaign generating so much enthusiasm that media pundits have labeled the nation beset with “Obama fever.” With his deep baritone voice and Lincolnesque physicality, he has Oprah Winfrey swooning and Democrats cheering, attracting massive audiences on a White House exploration itinerary thinly disguised as a book tour. Although Obama once flatly ruled out a presidential bid so early into his first Senate term, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last month he acknowledged that he could well change his mind. On paper it would seem much too early in his career for such a run, but when you are holding such hot cards it is tempting to play them.

Resources: Anyone who can stir the waves as he has done usually finds that the money flows in. He raised $15 million for what was a cakewalk 2004 Senate campaign and more than $4 million this year for a federal political action committee that presumably would become his presidential exploration fund. Obama’s biggest PAC contributors come from organized labor, and it seems he delivers, already earning a 100 percent support rating from the AFL-CIO for his Senate votes.

Hobby Horse: Obama has captivated the imagination of baby boomers in an ironic way, by arguing in his new book, “The Audacity of Hope,” that it is time for American politics to move beyond them and the polarizing issues of their growing-up years in the 1960s. His forward-looking message clearly resonates with many Americans.

Hobble Horse: Although many political experts say the country would be open to electing an African-American president (his father is from Kenya, his mother is a white woman from Kansas), it would be a racial gamble for the Democratic Party to nominate only the third black senator since Reconstruction. And his far-from-ripe career on the national stage, while evoking memories of a youthful Jack Kennedy, is bound to give pause among some voters.

Rationale: For starters, ethnicity and geography argue in favor of Richardson, a Latino governor in a battleground state that backed Al Gore in 2000 but George W. Bush in 2004. Add to that his varied Washington experience — 14 years in the House plus four years in the Clinton administration, first as U.N. ambassador and then as Energy secretary — and on paper you have the ingredients for national office. Richardson is a larger-than-life character who is charming on the stump. On policy matters, he is a pragmatist who remains quite popular in his politically fluid state, recently winning kudos for making good on a 2003 campaign promise to save taxpayers $90 million in state budget costs. Governors do well in presidential contests, which is enough of a reason to consider Richardson a player.

Resources: Richardson raised more than $8 million for his bid for a second term as governor this year, a sizable sum in New Mexico politics. And his shoo-in standing in that race has allowed him to spread his money around to other Democrats in the state, always good for earning chits to solidify his home-state base in a presidential campaign. Also, the bulk of his campaign funds come from business interests instead of big labor, a good talking point for any Democrat in a general-election bid.

Hobby Horse: Richardson earned foreign- policy credentials as the ambassador to the United Nations, troubleshooting hot spots from Iraq to North Korea, and he also can emphasize his popular management of New Mexico and tout what is expected to be a lopsided re-election victory.

Hobble Horse: Richardson’s closet is not entirely clean. At a minimum, a presidential bid will again bring to light his brush with the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which he reportedly offered her a job, and revelations that for years he erroneously claimed to have been drafted as a pitcher by the Kansas City A’s.

Rationale: Vilsack’s hopes are pinned to a four-letter word: Iowa. As the outgoing governor of the state that has the first presidential nominating contest, he owns the place. Democrats take note that he was the state’s first governor from their party in 32 years. In recent years he has worked hard to broaden his portfolio with a heartland-focused message assailing Washington’s pork barrel spending and arguing for an end to what he derides as corporate giveaways in federal budget and tax policies. He has a strong working knowledge of economics and knows how to appeal to middle class pocketbook worries. His wife, Christie, is a talented politician in her own right and was instrumental in helping John Kerry win the Iowa caucus last time.

Resources: Vilsack raised more than $6 million for his successful 2002 re-election bid, with contributions from business groups edging out labor donors. He has raised a bit more than $2 million for his current political action committee but would need much more to convince party bosses that he can move into the major leagues of fundraising.

Hobby Horse: As one of a handful of governors in the race from either party, Vilsack is well-positioned to run against Washington at a time when voters seem disgusted by corruption in the nation’s capital. And he intends to make his views of the excesses of federal spending one of his primary targets in a presidential campaign.

Hobble Horse: Another Iowan, Sen. Tom Harkin, demonstrated in his 1992 presidential bid that being a favorite son might be enough to win the state’s nominating caucus, but it was much discounted by the national media and proved not to be anything close to a momentum generator for the New Hampshire primary.

The Republicans

George Allen — Junior Senator, Virginia*

Rationale: A Ronald Reagan conservative with George W. Bush’s down-home style, Allen has deep appeal to those social conservatives who dominate Republican presidential nominating contests. His background as Virginia governor and a solid conservative voting record during his term in the Senate present a powerful résumé. A year ago, Allen was seen as a top prospect to inherit the conservative chair in GOP circles. But a bruising re-election bid this year against Democrat Jim Webb has seeded ample doubt. Still, his troubles could be a blessing if he wins a second term. Despite his gaffes on the campaign trail and charges of racism in his past, Allen always could argue that these matters have now been vetted fully and dodge further discussion in a presidential run. All bets are off, of course, with Allen's loss this week.

Resources: There once was no doubt that Allen, a fundraising machine, could fund a credible presidential campaign — until his Senate re-election campaign foibles surfaced. Raising almost $14 million for his current race, much of it from outside Virginia, Allen had hoped to save a chunk of the money as seed funds for a White House run. But, instead, he has had to shovel the bulk of it into television ads in a last-minute effort to save his seat.

Hobby horse: Before his political skills were called into question this year, Allen was seen as a major talent on the stump. Never considered much of a policy wonk, he has served the GOP well on the political front, such as his successful management of the Senate Republicans’ 2004 campaign team.

Hobble Horse: Even some Republicans privately say that Allen is not too bright, an image reinforced by his stumbling this year on the campaign trail. With his loss on Tuesday, Allen will likely be seen as damaged goods. And his tough race kept him tied down in Virginia, unable to travel the country earning the favor of other Republicans.

* see note at the top of this story

Rationale: Brownback has an opening to seek the social conservative mantle in Republican politics, especially if Sen. George Allen loses his re-election bid in Virginia — and with it his viability for 2008. Brownback is no poser on issues of concern to evangelical Christians, who have grown restive about the Republican Party’s real commitment to their cause. In Brownback, they would have a true believer who passionately denounces what he sees as the decay of American culture and has made the championing of social conservatism a centerpiece of his decade in the Senate. He has remained steadfast in opposition to stem cell research — a litmus test for anti-abortion conservatives, who view the harvesting of embryonic stem cells in the cause of medical breakthroughs as the destruction of human life. While others in his party are looking for room to wiggle toward the center on that and other socially divisive issues, Brownback has stayed put. None of his potential 2008 rivals can beat his ties to politically active religious leaders on the right.

Resources: Although he raised a respectable $2.7 million for his breezy Senate re-election campaign in 2004, Brownback has no experience in the major leagues of presidential campaign fundraising. His current political action committee, Restore America, raised just under $600,000 over the past two years. But if he can ignite the evangelical grass roots for a White House drive, Brownback could overcome a money deficit.

Hobby Horse: Brownback has cultivated Mideast credentials since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when he began making use of his standing at the time as the top-ranking Republican on the Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations panel. Since then, he has developed a reputation for expertise on Afghanistan and the Muslim world.

Hobble Horse: As a darling of the religious right, Brownback might have a leg up for the GOP nomination, but his appeal in a general election could be quite limited. Pragmatic Republicans would likely argue this case against him in the primary campaigns.

Rationale: Before his stunning promotion to majority leader four years ago, Frist was seen as the heir apparent to President Bush’s command of the Republican Party. Many say he was handpicked by the White House for the top Senate job. Despite a lackluster-at-best performance during his four years as GOP leader — and his decision to retire from his Tennessee seat at year’s end — Frist can still argue that his résumé as a transplant surgeon and his political base in the South keep him in the running for 2008. He has struggled to balance his party’s ideological divide. On the one hand, he pleased social conservatives when he set a Senate vote to overturn Florida court rulings that allowed the comatose Terri Schiavo’s husband to have her life support removed. But he irritated evangelicals by taking a strong stand in favor of stem cell research — and in opposition to the Bush White House.

Resources: A very wealthy man, thanks to his own surgical prowess and a family fortune in the hospital business, Frist is comfortable and persuasive among the super-rich who fund major political campaigns. He raised nearly $6 million for his 2000 re-election and, naturally, health industry donors led the way. In the 2006 cycle, he has raised more than $7.5 million for his political action committee. If he runs for president, Frist could be one of the better-funded candidates in the field.

Hobby Horse: Frist is working hard to regain the trust of social conservatives after parting company with them on stem cell research. He got out front in the drive to ban same-sex marriage, even though it was a non-starter in the Senate. He knows that winning over the evangelicals is his first order of business for renewing interest in his presidential prospects.

Hobble Horse: The Senate got little done on his watch, and many conservatives hold him responsible for failing to enact their agenda. And as he tries to make it up to them, moderate Republicans accuse him of pandering to the right wing. Washington insiders who were once so high on his chances now all but write him off.

* see note at the top of this story

Rationale: In a twist on Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign slogan, “Why Not The Best?,” Gingrich could use as his campaign tag line the rhetorical question, “Why Not The Past?” And why not, indeed? Gingrich, who led Republicans to control of the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years, could be just the one to revive his party’s winning spirit. With one of the sharpest minds in politics and policy, he can outtalk anyone in the game. And none of the party’s current problems, from the Iraq War to the swirl of scandal around lobbyist Jack Abramoff, can be laid at Gingrich’s doorstep. He’s been out of politics since he resigned his House seat eight years ago, giving him the right to chide his party for losing its way, as so many grass-roots Republicans seem to think has happened. All he needs is a new contract with America.

Resources: Having been out of politics and the fundraising game for so long, Gingrich might have trouble getting up to speed. But when he was at the top of his game, as Speaker in 1996, he amassed more than $6 million for one of his more competitive House re-election races in suburban Atlanta. He has kept up ties with the money crowd as a popular speaker on the convention circuit, where well-to-do business leaders congregate.

Hobby Horse: Gingrich gives no ground when it comes to national security, arguing that the nation is already embroiled in World War III and should act accordingly. Although concerns about terrorism were not at the top of the agenda during his days in power, he has written several books about war and misses few opportunities to join the national debate.

Hobble Horse: Some think that Gingrich just talks too much, sometimes sounding like a nutty professor, and is much too eager to be provocative even at the risk of being misinterpreted. Social conservatives distrust him, and it doesn’t help that he’s on his third marriage. And the last big campaign he ran, the 1998 midterm, was a big enough bust for the GOP that it forced him out as Speaker.

Rationale: No one has ever moved from a city hall to the White House, but Giuliani could be the first for one reason: He still basks in the glow from his role as “America’s Mayor” five years ago, when his considered but forceful stewardship of New York City after the Sept. 11 al Qaeda hijackers’ attacks on the World Trade Center earned him comparisons to Winston Churchill and prompted Time magazine to name him “person of the year.” Other hallmarks of his eight years as mayor, such as fighting crime and cleaning up Times Square, bode well for making his case as a competent manager. He is a sought-after speaker on management topics. And perhaps most important to his political ambitions, Giuliani has tirelessly trooped around the country to leverage his star power stumping for Republican candidates. Despite his moderate social views, he has made a sincere effort to reach out to religious conservatives and talk in personal terms about his own beliefs.

Resources: Giuliani raised $2.4 million for his political action committee, Solutions America, in the 2006 season and gave nearly a half-million dollars to GOP candidates or other campaign committees. Among the home states of his donors, Florida and Texas are in the top five, a positive sign that he can tap the deep wells there for Republican cash. Still, he is untested as a national fundraiser.

Hobby Horse: Competence will be Giuliani's best argument. He takes pride in having run the nation's largest city and surviving the experience well-remembered as an able manager who actually got some things done. And his earlier days as a crime-fighting federal prosecutor could be cited as a credential for fighting terrorists.

Hobble Horse:Giuliani’s views on abortion rights, environmental protection and other domestic issues are far to the left of the typical GOP voters’ And his personal life, to put it mildly, is something of a mess. He has been married three times and his last divorce sparked a tabloid frenzy of charges and countercharges. Main Street Republicans and evangelical Christians might find it all a bit much to handle.

Rationale: Call him the new John McCain. With two Purple Hearts earned as an Army infantryman in Vietnam and cozy relations with the press corps, Hagel comes across as the Republican maverick that McCain once was — before he began courting President Bush and the party’s conservative wing. Early on, Hagel was a rare GOP voice in opposition to Bush’s handling of the Iraq War. He did not let up, despite extreme pressure from party leaders to cool it. As a result, he is a favorite Republican to many Democrats. But he is no wild-eyed liberal, having once voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade protection of a woman’s right to an abortion. For a presidential campaign, geography favors him: His home in Omaha is practically within walking distance of Iowa.

Resources: With just over $1 million raised by his political action committee during the 2006 cycle, Hagel shows no signs of being a campaign-finance powerhouse. He easily won re-election in 2002 with a modest $1.6 million in campaign funds. Chances are that if Bush and his friends have anything to say about it, Hagel will not be tapping a lot of traditional GOP resources. He has been a thorn in the president’s side, and payback is probably on its way.

Hobby Horse: For Hagel, the word is maverick. In an era when voters are disgusted with blind partisanship, he is about as independent as they come. Like McCain and Rudolph Giuliani, his best argument to Republican primary voters is that he could appeal to a wide swath of general-election voters.

Hobble Horse: Plenty of GOP conservatives would rather set themselves on fire than see Hagel win the Republican nomination. They see his persistent criticism of the Iraq War as treason within his party, if not to the nation as a whole.

Rationale: If teaching Americans how to lose weight can make you president, then Huckabee is a shoo-in. After being diagnosed with diabetes in 2003, he set upon a life-changing course of eating less and running more. Now 110 pounds lighter than when he began his exercise and diet regimen, Huckabee last year published a book about his experiences, titled “Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork.” As governor, he has argued that promoting healthier living, among both citizens and state workers, ultimately saves taxpayers millions of dollars in medical expenses. Huckabee’s weight-loss evangelism comes naturally. He is a Baptist minister accustomed to inspiring others. As Bill Clinton demonstrated, you do not get to the top of Arkansas politics and stay there without knowing how to charm a crowd. And Huckabee, who has been governor for a decade (and was lieutenant governor for three years before that), gets high marks as a crowd pleaser.

Resources:Huckabee raised $2.3 million for his last governor’s campaign, in 2002. The bulk of his money came from Arkansas business interests and only a little more than 10 percent of his funds came from out of state, suggesting that he might have some difficulty financing a national race. Although Huckabee might possess some of Clinton’s charisma, he does not share his fellow Arkansan’s knack for fundraising.

Hobby Horse: In a party so dominated by religious conservatives when choosing presidential nominees, Huckabee’s status as a Baptist minister should get him a hearing. He and his wife, Janet, entered into a “covenant marriage,” a popular movement among evangelicals in which couples agree to limited legal grounds for divorce.

Hobble Horse: A penchant for granting pardons went awry for Huckabee when he released a convicted rapist, Wayne Dumond, who then committed a murder in Missouri. Look for this story to get plenty of play if Huckabee becomes a credible presidential candidate.

Rationale: In these times of national security worries, there is nothing like an ex-Army Ranger to the rescue. In the halls of Congress, where he’s been since 1981, Hunter still comes across as a trained combatant. At the helm of the House Armed Services Committee for the past four years, he has earned a reputation as a blunt and ferocious advocate for the military, especially when it comes to protecting the troops from budget cuts. When the Bush White House wanted to redesign the nation’s intelligence hierarchy, the president, the vice president and many others in the administration had to personally lobby Hunter to back off his firm stand against it. He finally signed on when satisfied that the changes would not threaten the access of soldiers in the field to intelligence data.

Resources: Considering the squads of defense lobbyists who traditionally swarm the Armed Services panel’s offices, running from the Rayburn Building is a fine platform for raising money, and Hunter has mustered war chests in the $1 million range for each of his last three re-election bids — none of which has been remotely close. But if Republicans lose control of the House, Hunter would lose his chairmanship and not be in as strong a position to raise money.

Hobby Horse: Beyond his solid credentials as a defense hawk, Hunter presents a social conservative portfolio that has appeal in GOP presidential primaries. He has long sponsored legislation to ban abortions. And now that building a fence along the Mexican border is in vogue, he can point out that he has proposed doing so for years.

Hobble Horse: Hunter is a powerhouse on Capitol Hill, but outside Washington and his Southern California district he remains a complete unknown. Perhaps he is expecting to have plenty of time to get outside the Beltway and build name recognition after Tuesday.

Rationale: As close to a Republican heir apparent as anyone gets in the 2008 field, McCain has done his best to earn that title from tradition-minded voters in his party. His positioning as a straight-talking maverick continues to give him clear general-election appeal, so his challenge is winning over social conservatives to get the GOP nomination. Independent voters and more than a few Democrats flocked to his initial presidential campaign. At the risk of losing some of those voters, McCain has courted religious conservatives and buried the hatchet from that bitter rivalry for the GOP nomination six years ago. The result has been a swell of conventional wisdom in Washington that sees McCain as the party’s most likely nominee. Look for the president himself to give that nod at some point if all goes well between the two former rivals.

Resources: Money was tight for McCain toward the end of his 2000 nomination bid, which played a role in his ultimate loss to the massively funded Bush machine. But no one on the horizon for 2008 seems able to duplicate what Bush accomplished, opening the way for McCain to play the role of the presumed nominee and attract the attendant onslaught of cash.

Hobby Horse: While the corruption scandal brought on by convicted ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff primarily tainted the Republican Party, it could make GOP voters all the more eager to nominate McCain, who has earnestly built a squeaky-clean image — he was, of course, a principal author of the 2002 campaign finance overhaul — despite himself getting caught up in the “Keating Five” savings and loan scandal of the 1980s.

Hobble Horse: Age and health are the biggest worries for McCain. He would be 72 on Inauguration Day 2009, meaning he would be the oldest person to become president. (Ronald Reagan was just shy of his 70th birthday when he first took the oath.) And although McCain says his bout with skin cancer is behind him, it left marks on his face that — along with injuries he suffered as a prisoner of war in Vietnam — deny him the appearance of robust health that Reagan projected.

Rationale: The governor’s mansion in Albany was a good enough launching pad to get Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt into the White House — but it proved lousy for Mario Cuomo, who had to shelve his national ambitions in 1994 after losing his bid for a fourth term to Pataki, then a relatively obscure state senator. That upset earned Pataki the awe of Republicans nationally. They have watched him ever since, and his stewardship of the state — cutting taxes and creating jobs — has not disappointed them. (He’s not seeking a fourth term of his own this year.) After the attacks of Sept. 11, Pataki was in the national spotlight, side by side with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, demonstrating a calm competence that made their party proud. Instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican Convention to New York, Pataki on paper is ready to play an even bigger role at the next convention.

Resources: The state of New York by itself has enough money to potentially fund a presidential campaign, but in 2008 there could be three from the state dialing for dollars: Pataki, Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Clintons have a tried-and-tested national network. Giuliani has been out of office with plenty of time to travel the country. Pataki, without the track record of the Clintons or the free time Giuliani enjoys, could face a tough challenge finding enough cash elsewhere.

Hobby Horse: A governorship has been the job of choice in four of the past five presidential elections, and Pataki is currently the nation’s longest-serving governor — with plenty of policy achievements to boast about. Tax-conscious conservatives will find Pataki’s tax-cutting record quite appealing. For compassionate conservatives, he can tout his 1999 health care plan extending insurance to those without employer-provided plans.

Hobble Horse: Pataki’s charisma deficit — he’s considered boring on the stump — will not help him charm his way into the hearts of religious conservatives who are not going to warm up to his abortion stand and support of gay rights. Rockefeller Republicans are still not welcome in such circles.

Rationale: She has said no in every imaginable way, but the political world cannot stop being fascinated with the idea of Rice on the national Republican ticket. She fits the bill for those who think only a solid conservative could ever become the first woman president, let alone the first African-American in the Oval Office. Rice, of course, is both of these — and she would make history just by running and winning a single primary. Careful and calculating in public, Rice makes very few mistakes despite having so many political foes gunning for her. A stalwart in the Bush White House’s war on terrorism, from national security adviser in the first term to secretary of State since last year, she has the policy platform for a credible campaign despite lacking the experience of elected office.

Resources: If the Bush family gets behind her, all things are possible. The president is her biggest fan, and so far no one knows which of the 2008 hopefuls he might favor. Such high-powered backing is probably what it would take for Rice to mount an adequately resourced campaign. She has no experience raising the amount of money needed for such an undertaking, though her fame and rock-star appeal at GOP gatherings could make up the difference.

Hobby Horse: While she has legions of critics, no one can doubt her toughness in the national security arena. She gives no ground, whether on talk shows or in contentious Senate hearings. And the State Department turned out to provide some refuge from the brickbats being hurled at Bush’s war policy, where Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has taken ownership of the hot seat.

Hobble Horse: As a presidential candidate, Rice would face endless questions that she now mostly dodges about uncomfortable matters, such as the warnings she received about terrorist activity before Sept. 11. That headache alone could be enough to dissuade her from joining the White House fray.

Rationale: If conventional wisdom is correct and John McCain is the one to beat for the Republican nomination, someone will emerge as the conservative alternative. Bet on Romney to at least have a turn in that spotlight. Most pointedly, he rushed to President Bush’s defense when McCain was taking on the White House plan to expand the authority to interrogate terror suspects. On immigration, Romney has taken a hard line, in contrast to McCain’s middle-of-the-road approach in support of the president’s proposals. And Romney seems to show up in religious conservative country, such as South Carolina, every time McCain tries to make his way there. Romney is doing what Sen. George Allen was planning to do until his own Senate re-election became dicey in Virginia. If Allen is out of play, Romney stands to gain.

Resources: It is hard to know which is better for training as a major league fundraiser, being governor of a good-sized state or running the Olympics. Romney has done both. He raised nearly $9.5 million for his 2002 election as Massachusetts governor (he’s not running again this year), and he compiled nearly $2.5 million for his federal political action committee in the 2006 cycle. And those ties to corporate biggies when he was CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City? Priceless.

Hobby Horse: In an age when politicians cannot stop yammering about health care, Romney did something about it, signing into law last April an insurance plan that covers nearly all Massachusetts citizens without raising taxes. The plan’s emphasis on individual responsibility for premium costs and subsidies for lower-income citizens is already becoming a popular model for Republican-style health care reform.

Hobble Horse: As a Mormon, Romney faces doubts among many evangelical Christians who are suspicious of the denomination. He does his best to disarm the doubters, once even cracking a joke about polygamy, saying that he believes marriage is “between a man and woman and a woman and a woman.”

Rationale:One-issue protest candidates are a hallmark of presidential campaigns, and Tancredo aims to make illegal immigration his cause. As Congress’ leading advocate for tighter border controls and the deporting of people who have immigrated illegally, he is riding a wave of conservative sentiment that is roiling the Republican Party. Even some religious conservatives are getting as agitated about immigration as they are about abortion. And Tancredo was on this case long before it was hot. He says that he began focusing on it as a state legislator in the 1970s, when waves of immigrants moved into Colorado, eventually forcing the state to implement bilingual education programs. As a self-described religious-right Republican, Tancredo only gives way to liberals on gun control — a conversion brought about by the 1999 shooting deaths at Columbine High School, just blocks from his home in the Denver suburb of Littleton.

Resources: Protest candidates don’t need a lot of money to maintain their candidacy. A cell phone and a rental car is about all it takes. But Tancredo is no slacker in this regard, having hit the $1 million mark in campaign funds when necessary for his re-elections since first winning his House seat in 1998. His alignment with anti-immigration groups and evangelicals should provide a healthy source of cash and direct-mail addresses to keep a campaign as long as he likes.

Hobby Horse: Tancredo’s long-standing obsession with border fences and other measures to reduce illegal immigration is no longer burdened by the nutty image it once suffered. Last month, President Bush vindicated Tancredo’s movement by signing into law a bill authorizing construction of 700 miles of fence along the Mexican border.

Hobble Horse: The inconvenient truth for Tancredo is that his own grandparents were immigrants. They came to the United States from Italy, but he says they always regarded themselves as Americans and not as Italian-Americans. And since they were legal immigrants, presumably he would not have them deported if they arrived today.

To Win, Convince Voters of Opposition's Faults

2006-11-13T22:15:00.000-06:00

CQ Weekly: Swing Voters Change Course

By Bob Benenson | 10:50 AM; Nov. 12, 2006

When Republicans surged to control of Congress in the elections of 1994, they declared a “conservative revolution,” aimed at toppling liberal New Deal and Great Society policies that had undergirded Democratic dominance of Capitol Hill for six decades.

Now, 12 years later, the Democrats who terminated that Republican reign by sweeping control of the House and the Senate placed no such grand ideological label on their election-year rhetoric, neither during the nationwide campaign nor in their leaders’ statements in the immediate aftermath of their electoral triumph.

(They're right, right, right. Finding the center's interest in the central issues of the Democratic Party will help us win in '08. Pete)

Far from flying a banner of a Liberal Restoration, the Democrats succeeded this year in what’s better described as the Push-back of the Pragmatists. They won their majorities by proving they can play in the middle of the political spectrum and the middle of the country.

If nothing else, they have successfully — if perhaps only temporarily — re-engineered the nation’s electoral paradigm by laying bare the tired and trite distinctions between Republican “red” and Democratic “blue.” This election turned, as will the next one in 2008, on self-described independent voters who predominate in “swing” districts and states. Last week, they turned away from President Bush and his GOP allies in Congress, in search of something else.

The beneficiaries of that turn this year are the Democrats. The question for both parties now is, what do these independent and generally moderate voters want from their government in Washington? The party that answers that question best will have a leg up on the 2008 election for president and future control of Congress.

Shades of Purple

Of the six states in which the Democrats unseated Republican Senate incumbents, four were carried by President Bush at the top of the GOP ticket just two years ago with margins ranging from 2 percentage points in Ohio to 20 points in Montana.

Although two of those states are traditional Midwestern partisan battlegrounds — Ohio and Missouri — both had been trending Republican in recent years. The other two, Virginia and Montana, could only be described as bedrock Republican territory.

On the House side, voters in 19 of the 28 districts where the Democrats had confirmed takeaways at the end of Election Week had, just two years ago, favored Bush over Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry. Those districts — many of them regarded as securely Republican entering this midterm campaign year — were strung from eastern New Hampshire to the Central Valley of California, and included seats in upstate New York, the South, the interior Midwest and the fast-growing Mountain West state of Arizona.

Most of those districts have substantial rural territory. Others are mainly in suburbs and exurbs. What both groupings have in common is that Democrats had been lagging behind Republicans.

The numbers do not include a number of near-misses for Democrats in districts that are usually strongly Republican turf. Among these are the nine seats for which the vote count was too close to call at week’s end, plus one in Texas for which a December runoff between a Republican and a Democrat will decide the result.

The Democrats scored most of their victories by pursuing centrist postures and successfully dodging the “liberal label” applied by Republicans that so often has been fatal to Democratic aspirations.

Republicans faced a challenging political environment caused by dissent over the war in Iraq and plummeted approval ratings for Bush and the Congress they controlled. Many of their candidates danced awkwardly between distancing themselves from Bush and the party leadership and staying loyal enough to avoid alienating their conservative Republican base voters. About three dozen of them stumbled in that dance.

The new “bluer” political map provides both parties with their directions for the 2008 campaign. Republicans must ponder whether this year’s election was a blip or one that would force them to rethink the strategy developed by Bush adviser Karl Rove of focusing primarily on turnout among the Republican base. It was a plan that worked in 2002 and 2004 but failed to meet the party’s needs in the chaotic election of 2006.

Democrats, who showed this year that many places thought to be deeply Republican red are really “purple,” will be probing to see how many of these and other previously hostile regions their party can put in play in 2008. But they will do so with the knowledge that many districts the Democrats won are already at the top of the Republicans’ target list for the next round.

The Democrats during the midterm campaign did not hesitate to pummel Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress, whom they blamed for the intractable U.S. military commitment to Iraq, a “middle-class squeeze” in the economy, and failures of management epitomized by the Bush administration’s response to the calamity that Hurricane Katrina wreaked in August 2005.

But the Democrats did not have to tone down this critique this year because it appealed not only to their base of liberal activists but also to politically unaffiliated swing voters.

According to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for a combine of broadcast and cable television networks, Democratic candidates were favored by 57 percent of respondents who said they were not affiliated with either major party and who made up 26 percent of voters. The Republicans were favored by 39 percent of independents, which pollsters said was a 9 percentage-point drop for the Republicans from the 2002 elections.

The Democrats dominated among self-described moderates, who made up just less than half of the respondents. The 60 percent to 38 percent Democratic edge among those voters amounted to a 7 percentage-point drop-off for the GOP from 2002. Many of these voters found the Republican message more compelling in 2002 and 2004, especially its emphasis on national security and fighting terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11. The loss of faith in the GOP among many swing voters in the two years since Bush was re-elected — spurred largely by Iraq, Katrina and a series of damaging corruption scandals — contributed to the steep declines in job approval ratings for Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress.

Democrats held big advantages over Republicans, according to exit polling, on most of the big issues that voters said were important to them. On the overriding issue of the war in Iraq, 35 percent of the respondents said the subject was extremely important, and Democrats led among them by 60 percent to 39 percent for the Republicans. On the economy, 39 percent said it was extremely important — and those voters broke 59 percent to 39 percent for the Democrats. And among the 41 percent who said corruption and scandals in government were extremely important, Democrats led 59 percent to 39 percent.

To win the Senate, the Democrats had to overcome significant disadvantages. There were more Democratic than Republican seats up this year (18 to 15); 12 of the 15 Republicans seats in play were in states carried by Bush over Democrat John Kerry just two years ago; and of the eight GOP seats the Democrats managed to seriously contest, six were in states that in 2004 were colored Republican red.

All of the victorious Democratic candidates energized their base voters by criticizing the Iraq War and other unpopular aspects of the Bush administration, playing up ethical lapses by congressional Republicans and accusing the GOP of extreme partisanship that had caused policy gridlock. But among them, only Ohio’s Sherrod Brown had a legislative record that gave Republicans ammunition to try to brand him as too liberal, and he managed to deflect that effort by focusing on populist themes such as the impact of foreign trade deals on American jobs. Bob Casey in neighboring Pennsylvania gained note for some conservative positions on social issues, notably abortion.

Messages Aimed at the Mainstream

Among those who picked up Democratic House seats, a few candidates could be defined as liberal activists. The best example was the huge come-from-behind upset by Democratic social worker Carol Shea-Porter over two-term Republican Rep. Jeb Bradley in eastern New Hampshire’s 1st District, which was fueled by voter outrage over the war in Iraq.

But most of the members of the instantly historic Democratic Class of 2006 presented decidedly mainstream images to voters in the politically competitive districts where they ran.

Take, for example, the first two Democrats in the state-alphabetical listing of new members: Arizona’s Harry E. Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords, both of whom used the state Senate as their springboards. Mitchell, who won an upset over Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth in the suburban Phoenix 5th District, says he plans to work in a bipartisan fashion with Republicans. Giffords, who won the southeastern 8th District seat left open by retiring GOP moderate Jim Kolbe, calls herself a consensus-builder.

Then there are Midwestern newcomers such as Brad Ellsworth, a county sheriff who ended the long hold of conservative Republican John Hostettler in southwestern Indiana by talking tough on crime and playing up his socially conservative views; and former pharmaceutical chemist Nancy Boyda, the upset winner over Republican Jim Ryun in Kansas’ 2nd District, who calls for a bipartisan commission to deal with problems in the nation’s health care system.

As with most big swing elections, the new majority party won some seats that will be hard to hold. This is particularly the case in House districts the Democrats won predominantly because of serious scandals involving the seats’ previous Republican occupants, Bob Ney of Ohio, Mark Foley of Florida and Tom DeLay of Texas.

But the Democrats’ gains this year also open a window of opportunity for the party to broaden its national political base. The agendas that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada pursue — and whether their approach is one of conciliation or retaliation — will go a long way toward determining if 2008 is another Democratic success or a comeback by Republicans chanting “we told you so.”

GOP running from the truth, but can't hide

2006-09-30T11:12:00.000-05:00

Bob Perry, Houston area home builder and Cong. Dist. 22 resident, continues to spend BIG money (multi-millions) to control elections. In 2004 he set up the money for the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" that in ten days in the summer of 2004 cost John Kerry the presidential election. Now, he's spending $5 million to try to stop the GOP hemmorging to save their control of Congress.

This might be a little harder this year as the GOP culture of corruption continues to eat away at any positive feelings the electorate may still have for the GOP control of Congress. The latest spike is Congress Mark Foley who resigned yesterday after his penchant for Congressional Page (boys) became public.

The GOP's having a very hard time running from the TRUTH, and it certainly can't HIDE!

A political Mr. Buffett?

By RICK CASEY
STAFF

HOUSTON homebuilder Bob Perry came to national attention two years ago when he gave more than $4 million to a group called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

Now he's back in the news around the country in connection with $5 million in donations he gave to an outfit called the Economic Freedom Fund.

Swift Boat Veterans used Perry's money effectively to attack Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's accounts of heroism in Vietnam, for which he was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star.

The Economic Freedom Fund, which so far has received few donations other than Perry's, has targeted for attack a handful of Democratic congressional candidates in competitive races in Georgia, Indiana, Iowa and West Virginia.

There's plenty of that going around, but what has earned the group (and Perry) publicity is that the attorney general in Indiana has sued the Fund for violating a state law banning mass recorded phone calls.

Telemarketer fighting law

Politics at play?

Not likely. Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter is a Republican.

What's more, he subsequently went to court against a group using recorded phone calls to attack a Republican congressman.

Carter had sent out a letter to both state parties announcing that he intended to enforce the 1988 law in regards to political phone calls, even though it generally had not been enforced in such cases before.

The Fund agreed to a court order prohibiting the calls until the suit is tried, which won't happen until after the election. The penalty can range as high as $5,000 for each violation. The company the Fund hired to make the calls is challenging the law's constitutionality, saying it violates free speech protections and inhibits interstate commerce.

Ambitious campaign

Other than Perry, it is unclear who is behind the Economic Freedom Fund. The only name included in publicly filed papers is Charles Bell Jr., an election law specialist who serves as general counsel for the Republican Party of California.

Bell has not returned reporters' phone calls, including mine, and a spokesman for Perry said he would not comment.

The phone calls are just one part of the ambitious campaign. Most the money is being spent on TV ads attacking Democratic candidates with titles such as, "The Tax Man," "Double Life," "Who Is This?" and "Cheek."

The Fund is using the same Virginia media firm - Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm - that did the Swift Boat ads attacking Kerry.

The controversy has received coverage in the states involved, as well as in Time magazine.

Individual contributors are limited by law to $4,200 in contributions to congressional candidates. But "527 committees" such as the Economic Freedom Fund can spend unlimited amounts to attack candidates as long as they don't coordinate their activities with the candidates they support.

Two years ago, Perry ranked fifth in donations to 527 committees at just over $8 million, according to Federal Election Commission figures listed on a Web site called opensecrets.org.

All four high rollers above Perry, led by billionaire investor George Soros at $23.5 million, gave to liberal groups such as MoveOn.org.

But times have changed.

Other than Perry, the top 527 contributor this year is Univision owner Jerry Perenchio at $4 million. It all went to a group called Progress for America, which runs slick ads supporting the war in Iraq.

On a recent visit to Houston, Soros said he has cut back his 527 giving. FEC records show him at $1.9 million.

His 2002 527 investments didn't do so well.

Perry, on the other hand, had a significant impact on the presidential election with $4.5 million to the Swift Boat guys.

If his $5 million this year is seen as helping hold on to Republican control of the House of Representatives, the reclusive homebuilder will be to political "investing" what Warren Buffett is to the stock market.

Bush White House Filled with Sleazy Ethically-Challenged GOP Boys

2006-09-20T22:37:00.000-05:00

The Bush White House has a disgusting stink of GOP pigs at the trough sucking up illegal funds and dishing out special government deals from the White House....

Abramoff-linked duo visited White House dozens of times

POSTED: 8:24 p.m. EDT, September 20, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed totaled more than 100 visits to the Bush White House, according to documents released Wednesday that provide the first official accounting of the access and influence the two presidential allies have enjoyed.

The White House released the Secret Service visit records to settle a lawsuit by the Democratic Party and an ethics watchdog group seeking visitor logs for the two GOP strategists and others who emerged as figures in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Earlier this month, the White House suggested to the judge in the lawsuit that such records need not be disclosed because the information was privileged and might reveal how Bush and his staff get private advice, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.

White House officials said Norquist, who runs the nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform, was cleared for 97 visits to the White House complex between 2001 and 2006, including a half-dozen with the president.

Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia earlier this year, got 18 meetings, including two events with Bush.

Officials said they believe all meetings with Bush involved larger group settings, such as Christmas parties or policy briefings for GOP supporters.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, however, it was possible some of Norquist's meetings might have been directly with Karl Rove, the president's longtime confidant and political strategist.

"He is one of a number of individuals who worked to advance fiscal responsibility, which is one of the key aspects of the president's agenda," Perino said.

Reed and Norquist became involved with Abramoff, the once high-power GOP lobbyist who has pleaded guilty to fraud and is now cooperating with prosecutors in an influence peddling investigation that has rocked Capitol Hill.

Norquist's group advocates lower taxes and less government and he built it into a major force in the Republican Party. Along the way he became friends with Abramoff and Rove.

E-mails obtained this summer by AP show Norquist facilitated several administration contacts for Abramoff's clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist's group. Americans for Tax Reform acknowledged Norquist helped Abramoff but said he did nothing improper.

Reed rose to prominence as an organizer of evangelical Christian groups, including the Christian Coalition, inside the Republican Party before moving into business ventures where he did work for Indian tribes at Abramoff's request.

Documents unearthed by congressional investigators showed Abramoff and business partner Michael Scanlon routed about $4 million from Indian tribes to Reed-controlled entities for grassroots work aimed at blocking rival casinos. The revelations came as Reed ran an unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor in Georgia.

The release of the visitor records settles lawsuits by the Democratic Party and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

In a court filing earlier this month while settlement discussions were ongoing, Justice Department lawyers representing the administration said information about the Norquist and Reed visits should be protected from public disclosure under the doctrine of "deliberative process privilege."

That privilege lets the president and executive branch officials seek advice and deliberate policy decisions in private without having to disclose such information under the Freedom of Information Act.

It is similar to executive privilege, a power made famous by President Nixon, that lets a president keep information secret even from Congress or the courts on the grounds that it would hurt his ability to get candid advice.

Executive privilege was the focal point of major legal battles in the Watergate and Clinton impeachment cases.

Bush administration lawyers wrote that Norquist and Reed were "prominent advocates of particular tax policies and other conservative policies" and that releasing information about their White House visits would "inherently reveal the structure and nature of deliberative processes."

"In making decisions on personnel and policy, and in formulating legislative proposals, the president must be free to seek confidential information from many sources, both inside the government and outside," the lawyers wrote in citing a favorable court ruling from 2005 involving Vice President Dick Cheney.

The administration lawyers also argued against releasing information about the White House visits of former federal procurement official David Safavian on the grounds that it would violate Safavian's privacy. Safavian was recently convicted of trying to cover up his dealings with Abramoff.

Administration officials said the Justice Department never invoked the privilege mentioned in the court filings because a settlement was reached. The lawyers made the arguments in the court filing only when the judge asked them to outline what legal arguments it might make if the case went to trial, the official said.

Former White House lawyer Lanny Breuer, who handled many of President Clinton's privilege claims, said that administration routinely released White House entry records to the public and never "came close to making a claim like the one being suggested in this instance."

Deliberative and executive privilege claims are "designed to protect the advice the president gets. They are not intended to protect the identities of people from whom he gets that advice or when or where that advice was given from a particular person," Breuer said.

Other Abramoff associates visited

The White House also released records showing White House appointments landed by some of Abramoff's former lobbying associates. Among them:

Neil Volz, a former aide to Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney, had 18 appointments, including one to attend a large event featuring Bush on September 11, 2001, that was canceled because of the terrorist attacks. Volz has pleaded guilty to conspiring to corrupt Ney and others with trips and other largess.

Lobbyist Shawn Vasell also had 18. Two were Bush events, likely a February bill signing and a Ford's Theatre gala, that occurred this year, when Vasell was no longer working with Abramoff.

Abramoff business partner Scanlon, a former aide to then-Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, may have had one appointment; the White House couldn't say for certain whether the name in the Secret Service log was the same person. Scanlon has pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe public officials while lobbying on behalf of Indian tribes.

Former DeLay aide and Abramoff lobbying team member Tony Rudy had 13, none with Bush. Rudy has pleaded guilty to conspiring with Abramoff.

Former Abramoff lobbying associate Kevin Ring, a former aide to California Republican Rep. John Doolittle, had 21, none with Bush.

Two former Abramoff lobbying colleagues who joined Bush's administration, David Safavian and Patrick Pizzella, show up in the appointment logs. Pizzella, an assistant secretary of labor, had 48 visits, none with Bush. Among numerous meetings for Safavian, a former Bush administration procurement official who pleaded guilty to trying to hide his dealings with Abramoff, just one was with Bush, likely an employee holiday reception in 2004

If Only Bush Hadn't Stolen the 2000 Election...

2006-09-13T23:03:00.000-05:00

Johnathan Alter says here what everyone has thought at least once and perhaps a million times...

An Alternate 9/11 History

By staying 'humble,' as he promised in 2000, Bush preserved much of the post-9/11 good will abroad.

By Jonathan Alter

Newsweek

Sept. 18, 2006 issue - Five years after 9/11, the world is surprisingly peaceful. President Bush's pragmatic and bipartisan leadership has kept the United States not just strong but unexpectedly popular across the globe. The president himself is poised to enjoy big GOP wins in the midterm elections, a validation of his subtle understanding of the challenges facing the country. A new survey of historians puts him in the first tier of American presidents.

As Bush warned, catching terrorists wasn't easy, but he kept at it. At the battle of Tora Bora, CIA operatives on the ground cabled Washington that Osama bin Laden was cornered, but they desperately needed troop support. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately dispatched fresh forces, and the evildoer was killed. While bin Laden was seen as a martyr in a few isolated areas, the bulk of the Arab world had been in sympathy with the United States after 9/11 and shed no tears. After their capture, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists were transported to the United States, where they were tried and quickly executed.

Today, Al Qaeda remains a threat but its opportunities for recruitment have been scarce, and the involvement of the entire international community has helped dramatically reduce terrorist attacks worldwide. Because Bush believes diplomacy requires talking to adversaries as well as friends, even Syria and Iraq were forced to help. By staying "humble," as he promised in 2000, he preserved much of the post-9/11 good feeling abroad, which paid dividends when it came time to pull together a coalition to handle North Korea and Iran.

At home, some aides suggested that Bush simply tell the nation to "go shopping." But the president knew he had a precious opportunity to ask Americans for real sacrifice. He took John McCain's suggestion and pushed through Congress an ambitious national-service program that bolstered communities and helped train citizens as first responders.

Soon Bush put the country on a Manhattan Project crash course to get off oil. He bluntly told Detroit that it was embarrassing that Chinese automakers had better fuel efficiency, he classified SUVs as cars, and he imposed a stiff gas tax with a rebate for the working poor. To pay for it, he abandoned his tax cuts for the wealthy, reminding the country that no president in history had ever cut taxes in the middle of a war. This president would be damned if he was going to put more oil money into the pockets of Middle Eastern hatemongers who had killed nearly 3,000 of our people. To dramatize the point, he drove to his 2002 State of the Union address in a hybrid car. Sales soared.

When Karl Rove suggested that the war on terror would make a perfect wedge issue against Democrats in the 2002 midterms, Bush brought him up short. Didn't Rove understand that bipartisanship is good politics? Lincoln and FDR had both gone bipartisan during wartime, he reminded his aide. So when evidence of torture at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay surfaced and Rumsfeld was forced to resign, former Democratic senator Sam Nunn got the job. With post-9/11 unity still at least partially intact in 2004, Bush was re-elected in a landslide.

Taking a cue from Lincoln's impatience with his generals, Bush was merciless about poor performance on homeland security. When the head of the FBI couldn't fix the bureau's computers in a year's time to "connect the dots," he was out. And Bush had no patience for excuse-making about leaky port security, unsecured chemical plants and first responders whose radios didn't communicate. If someone had told him that five years after 9/11 these problems would still be unsolved, Bush would have laughed him out of the office.

In 2003, Vice President Cheney advised the president to take out Iraq's Saddam Hussein militarily. But Bush was beginning to understand that his veep, while sounding full of gravitas, was in fact reckless. When it became clear that Saddam posed no imminent threat, Bush resolved to neuter him, Kaddafi style. When the president found, after a little asking around, that the 10-year cost of invading Iraq would be a crushing $1.2 trillion, he opted out of this war of choice.

Five years after that awful September day, even Bush's fiercest critics have learned an important lesson: leadership counts. Imagine if we'd done the opposite of these things. This country—and the world—would be in a heap of trouble.

More People Believe Bush to Blame for 9/11

2006-09-12T08:10:00.000-05:00

Poll: More Americans blame Bush for 9/11

POSTED: 9:31 p.m. EDT, September 11, 2006

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The percentage of Americans who blame the Bush administration for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington has risen from almost a third to almost half over the past four years, a CNN poll released Monday found.

Asked whether they blame the Bush administration for the attacks, 45 percent said either a "great deal" or a "moderate amount," up from 32 percent in a June 2002 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

But the Clinton administration did not get off lightly either. The latest poll, conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, found that 41 percent of respondents blamed his administration a "great deal" or a "moderate amount" for the attacks. (Read the complete poll results -- PDF)

That's only slightly less than the 45 percent who blamed his administration in a poll carried out less than a week after the attacks.

Still, most Americans appear to be fatalistic, with more than half -- 57 percent -- saying they think that terrorists will "always find a way to launch attacks no matter what the U.S. government does."

The poll was carried out August 30 through September 2 by Opinion Research Corp. with 1,004 American adults questioned by telephone. The sampling error for the questions was 3 percentage points.

Will we be fooled again?

2006-09-10T20:20:00.000-05:00

Today I read in the Sept. 10 Parade Magazine about a retired police officer in New York who lost his son in the 9/11 attack. The man said he wanted revenge after his son was killed and described how he got the US military to put his son's name on bombs dropped on Iraq.

Since the president had blamed 9/11 on Iraq, the former police officer was like many Americans in saying he was, "insane with wanting to get even, (and) was willing to believe anything." The man was shocked many months later when President Bush then said "We've no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11."

Like a huge majority of Americans who now realize that Bush and Republican Party Congress leaders lied about why we invaded Iraq, the former police officer was plainly angry at being used. He said, "the government had exploited my feelings of patriotism."

And now, just like before the Congressional elections of 2002 and the presidential election of 2004, Bush - probably directed by his Svengali Rove - is using the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attack to spin up fear of terror which in turn helps some voters accept his exceedingly bad record in all other areas of presidential and global leadership.

Yes, because the 2006 congressional election is two months away, George W. Bush wants to appear focused on terror and not the civil war he created in Iraq. Hopefully, the American people will not be fooled for the third time.

Bush says: Be afraid, be very afraid!!

2006-09-06T22:50:00.000-05:00

The Bush full-court press to get this election's fear mongering underway gives everyone an opportunity to "believe" the good things W has to say now that their election polls are putting some pressure on him. W, under direct orders from Karl Rove to a least try to "fix" the public's huge distaste for Bush's many misdeeds, is doing "hardball" HA! interviews with Katie Couric to tell her how it is. It is all BS, but the media sucks it in and spits it out...see some comments in the AP article below.

Bush admits the CIA runs secret prisons

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer 16 minutes ago

WASHINGTON -

President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that the CIA runs secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.

Bush said 14 suspects — including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and architects of the 2000 bombing of the

USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania — had been turned over to the Defense Department and moved to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for trial.

"This program has been, and remains, one of the most vital tools in our war against the terrorists," Bush said.

"Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland."

Releasing information declassified just hours earlier (I WONDER WHY, NOW?), Bush said the capture of one terrorist just months after the Sept. 11 attacks had led to the capture of another and then another, and had revealed planning for attacks using airplanes, car bombs and anthrax.

Nearing the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, Bush pressed Congress to quickly pass administration-drafted legislation authorizing the use of military commissions for trials of terror suspects. Legislation is needed because the Supreme Court in June said the administration's plan for trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law. (OF COURSE HE PUSHES FOR IT NOW BEFORE THE ELECTION SO THAT HE CAN CALL DEMOCRATS UNPATRIOTIC IF THEY VOTE AGAINST USING THE MILITARY JUDICIAL SYSTEM)

The president's speech, his third in a recent series about the war on terror, gave him an opportunity to shore up his administration's credentials on national security two months before congressional elections at a time when Americans are growing weary of the war in

Iraq.

Democrats, hoping to make the elections a referendum on Bush's policies in Iraq and the war on terror, urged anew that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld be made to step down. They argued that the White House has mishandled the war, mismanaged the detainee system and failed to prosecute terrorists.

"For five years, Democrats have stood ready to work with the president and the Republican Congress to establish sound procedures to bring terrorists to justice," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Unfortunately, President Bush ignored the advice of our uniformed military and set up a flawed system that failed to prosecute a single terrorist and was ruled unconstitutional by the

U.S. Supreme Court."

With the transfer of the 14 men to Guantanamo, there currently are no detainees being held by the CIA, Bush said (ANYONE OUT THERE BELIEVE THIS? WHY WOULD WE BELIEVE BUSH NOW AFTER HE AND HIS ADMINSTRATION HAVE LIED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CONSISTENTLY SINCE 9/11). A senior administration official said the CIA had detained fewer than 100 suspected terrorists in the history of the program. (SO 100 PEOPLE HELD IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES AND MOVED AROUND TO AVOID LAWS, IS GOOD? AND LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW MANY DIED WHILE IN CUSTODY, AND HOW MANY HAVE NEVER BEEN TOLD WHAT THEY ARE CHARGED WITH. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN IDEALS OF JUSTICE? AREN'T THEY JUST AS IMPORTANT AS OUR TENENTS OF LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY?)

Still, Bush said that "having a CIA program for questioning terrorists will continue to be crucial to getting lifesaving information."

Earlier this year, an anti-torture panel at the

United Nations

recommended the closure of Guantanamo and criticized alleged U.S. use of secret prisons and suspected delivery of prisoners to foreign countries for questioning. Some Democrats and human rights groups argued that the CIA's secret prison system did not allow monitoring for abuses and they hoped that it would be shut down. (SO INSTEAD OF CLOSING GITMO, BUSH AND ROVE DECIDE TO SEND MORE PEOPLE THERE FOR A PRE-ELECTION PHOTO-OP!)

"He finally acknowledged the elephant in the room that everybody had always been talking about," said Jumana Musa, advocacy director for Amnesty International USA.

"I think what surprised me is he seemed to be asking Congress to legalize it through statutes, essentially allowing him to continue to detain people in secret by sort of putting forth all this information that they got from these folks and somehow using that to justify what has been recognized by U.N. committees as an unlawful act and contrary to our treaty obligations." (THIS QUOTE SHOWS THIS BOY DOESN'T QUITE GET IT!)

The president declined to disclose the location or details of the detainees' confinement or the interrogation techniques.

"I cannot describe the specific methods used — I think you understand why," (NO I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY NEED TO BE HIDDEN!) Bush said in the East Room, where families of some of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks heartily applauded him when he promised to finally bring the perpetrators to justice.

"If I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe and lawful and necessary."

Bush insisted that the detainees were not tortured.

"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture," Bush said. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it." (NO THE US MAY NOT TORTURE, BUT IT IS WELL-DOCUMENTED THAT THE US HAS SET UP DEALS FOR OTHER COUNTRIES TO BE THE LOCATION OF TORTURE THAT HAS AT TIMES LED TO DEATHS OF PRISONERS. IS THIS THE AMERICAN WAY?)

Bush said the information from terrorists in CIA custody has played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every senior al-Qaida member or associate detained by the U.S. and its allies since the program began.

He said they include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused Sept. 11 mastermind, as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker, and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between

Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells.

He said interrogators have succeeded in getting information that has helped make photo identifications, pinpoint terrorist hiding places, provide ways to make sense of documents, identify voice recordings and understand the meaning of terrorist communications, al-Qaida's travel routes and hiding places,

The administration had refused until now to acknowledge the existence of CIA prisons. Bush said he was going public because the United States has largely completed questioning the suspects, and also because the CIA program had been jeopardized by the Supreme Court ruling.

The Supreme Court ruled that prisoner protections spelled out by the Geneva Conventions should extend to members of al-Qaida. In addition to torture and cruel treatment, the treaties ban "outrages against personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment."

Administration officials said they were concerned the ruling left U.S. personnel vulnerable to be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act because the language under the Geneva Conventions was so vague.

The Supreme Court ruling put a damper on the CIA's program, virtually putting the interrogation of detainees on hold until such prohibitions like "outrages against personal dignity" could be defined by law.

"We're not interrogating now because CIA officials feel like the rules are so vague that they cannot interrogate without being tried as war criminals, and that's irresponsible," Bush said in an interview with "CBS Evening News."

The administration-drafted legislation would authorize the defense secretary to convene a military commission with five members, plus a judge to preside. It would guarantee a detainee's access to military counsel but eliminate other rights common in military and civilian courts. The bill would allow reliable hearsay and potentially coerced testimony to be used as evidence in court, as well as the submission of classified evidence "outside the presence of the accused."

Senate Republican leaders hailed Bush's proposal.

"It's important to remember these defendants are not common criminals," said Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "Rather, many are terrorists, sworn enemies of the United States."

But Democrats and GOP moderates warned that the plan would set a dangerous precedent, ensuring the legislation would not likely sail through Congress unchanged.

Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham have drafted a rival proposal. Unlike the administration's plan, the senators' proposal would allow a defendant to access to all evidence used against them. The plan by Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also would prohibit coerced testimony.

Graham, R-S.C., said withholding evidence from a war criminal sets a dangerous precedent other nations could follow. "Would I be comfortable with (an American service member) going to jail with evidence they never saw? No," Graham said.

Also on Wednesday, the

Pentagon put out a new Army field manual that spells out appropriate conduct on issues including prisoner interrogation. The manual applies to all the armed services but not the CIA. It bans torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, for the first time specifically mentioning forced nakedness, hooding and other procedures that have become infamous during the war on terror.NICE TIMING BY THE PENTAGON. PUT OUT A NEW FIELD MANUAL WHILE THE SECDEF CONTINUES TO TELL THE WORLD THAT WE DON'T NEED TO FOLLOW THE GENEVA CONVENTION. TRUTH IS THIS IS ONLY A PSEUDO WAR SO WE REALLY SHOULDN'T NEED TO FOLLOW LAWS GOVERNING REAL WARS.

the ECONOMY: W just can't figure it out

2006-09-05T21:06:00.000-05:00

Good to be back after a few days out of town.

As Bushie and Rove and the boys start spinning up terrorist fear again, Bush's failure to capture bin Laden should be driven into the minds of all voters.

That said, what about the biggest issue out there? The "running as fast as I can" economy where everyone works harder and harder and more and more hours and never gets ahead.

And W the lesser Bush just can't seem to figure it all out!

'Mortgage Moms' May Star in Midterm Vote

With Wages Stagnant and Debt Growing, Democrats See an Opportunity

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Chris Cillizza

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 5, 2006; Page A01

BURLINGTON, Ky. -- Life is cramped at the Condit household. Dale and Sharon Condit and their two young sons need more room but can't seem to sell their current home -- on the market now for three months.

In a year when politics is being roiled by angry debates over the Iraq war and immigration, it might seem odd to imagine the midterm elections being waged over square footage and closet space. But these are parts of a lifestyle that Sharon Condit, a deputy clerk of court, describes as dogged by a sense of limits: "We have dreams of this future, but we can't get it right now."

This gap in expectations, a source of anxiety for the Condits, is a source of opportunity for former representative Ken Lucas, a Democrat who is trying to win back Kentucky's 4th Congressional District from incumbent Republican Geoff Davis. Attitudes about the economy -- "People are being pushed up against a ceiling," said Lucas. "They feel trapped" -- are part of the reason the Democrat is in a neck-and-neck race in a district President Bush won by 27 percentage points in 2004.

At first glance, the economy's role in this year's midterm elections is a puzzle. Economic growth and unemployment are at levels that in past years would have been a clear political asset for the party in power.

But one layer down in the statistics, the answer is more clear. Flat wages and rising debt nationally have converged to leave millions of middle-class households feeling acutely vulnerable to bumps in their financial planning. The most visible of these are rising energy prices and a softening housing market.

A less obvious but powerful variable is the interest paid by people carrying credit card debt or mortgages whose monthly payments vary with interest rates. People buffeted by these trends have given rise to a new and volatile voting block.

"People like this are making a large ripple across the body politic," said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies. When added to the growing opposition to the war in Iraq, he said, worry about this economic crunch "is creating a political environment that is not that friendly to the party in power."

Every election cycle has its own important set of undecided, or swing, voters. In 2000, it was the "soccer moms," targeted by both parties with appeals based on education and quality-of-life concerns. In 2004, it was the security moms, normally Democratic-trending women whose concerns about terrorism helped give Bush his margin of victory.

This year could mark the emergence of what might be called mortgage moms -- voters whose sense of well-being is freighted with anxiety about their families' financial squeeze. Democrats are betting that this factor is strong enough to trump security or cultural values issues.

Kentucky's 4th District, stretching across nearly 200 miles of the state's northern tier, offers a useful window into whether the strategy can work. It includes coal-mining precincts with an Appalachian character, affluent Cincinnati suburbs along the Ohio River, and rural farmland that looks and feels more like the Midwest than the South. Unemployment in 2005 was 6.9 percent. The current national average is 4.7 percent.

Democrats here typically do not stress liberalism. Lucas, for instance, opposes abortion rights and gun-control measures. But in Kentucky and elsewhere, Democrats have some reason for optimism about the traction they might gain from the economy.

Polls show that swing voters -- the category that candidates most want to attract -- are unhappier than the rest of the population about their economic circumstances. According to a recent survey by Bloomberg News and the Los Angeles Times, six in 10 self-described independents said the economy was doing badly, and seven in 10 said the country was on the wrong track. A Fox News poll, taken at the end of last month, showed that 23 percent of Americans consider the economy the most important factor they will weigh when they cast their ballot in November -- more than those who cited Iraq (14 percent) or terrorism (12 percent).

And a recent poll conducted for the AFL-CIO by the Democratic Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group found that 55 percent of voters said their income was not keeping up with inflation, and that the economy was a more effective campaign theme against Republicans than either the war or corruption. This rings true to many Republican strategists and their allies: Despite the unpopularity of the president's Iraq policies, Bush's approval rating is higher among voters who see the war and national security as the top issues in November than it is among voters who rate the economy as their top issue, according to one veteran GOP pollster worried about his party's prospects this fall.

Republicans have approached the problem partly as a matter of perception. Eager to frame the issue for the fall, Bush recently met with economic advisers at Camp David and later announced that the economy is "solid and strong" and "creating real benefits for American workers and families and entrepreneurs." The gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services produced, has slowed a bit since the beginning of the year but is still growing at a respectable annual rate of 2.9 percent. And the unemployment rate is near its five-year low.

But the sour mood is not simply a matter of psychology. Since 2003, the inflation-adjusted median hourly wage of most workers has fallen by 2 percent, according to the Labor Department. And this summer marked the first time since 1991 that the annual inflation rate exceeded 4 percent for three consecutive months, driven partly by $3-per-gallon gasoline.

Then there is debt. According to a study by the Federal Reserve Board, the ratio of financial obligations -- primarily mortgage and consumer debt -- to disposable personal income rose to a modern record of 18.7 percent earlier this year. The amount of mortgage debt alone has more than doubled since 2000, to nearly $9 trillion. And in July, for the 16th consecutive month, consumers in the aggregate spent all of their disposable income and dipped into savings or borrowed to finance the things they bought.

Among the most exposed are those who bought into one of the great fads in mortgage lending in recent years -- adjustable rates. Next year, $1 trillion worth of adjustable-rate mortgages -- about 11 percent of all outstanding mortgage debt -- is scheduled to readjust to a higher interest rate for the first time, according to LoanPerformance, a research company. This will come after more than $400 billion of readjustments this year. That means millions of homeowners will either have to refinance or shoulder an increase of perhaps 25 percent in their monthly payments.

The political implications of these trends are obvious. "A large number of voters have a definite foreboding about the economy, and that isn't good news for incumbents," said Gregory S. Casey, chief executive of the Business Industry Political Action Committee, a nonpartisan electoral analysis organization. "They feel disappointed in government institutions that they think have let them down."

"Republicans are worried," added R. Bruce Josten, an executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a significant backer of pro-business -- and therefore predominantly Republican -- congressional candidates. "You have a portion of the middle class that doesn't believe it's benefiting from good economic news, and, in fact, it's not. . . . All the blame doesn't go to Congress, but voters are going to take it out on Congress anyway."

Republicans in Congress have tried to show sympathy for hard-pressed workers by pushing to pass an increase in the minimum wage. That effort foundered in the Senate because it was tied to a cut in the estate tax, which would have benefited wealthy individuals. But GOP leaders say they want to take another stab at raising the minimum wage this month, before Congress adjourns.

Democrats want to prevent Republicans from claiming that success and are advancing ballot initiatives in half a dozen states -- including key Senate battlegrounds such as Missouri, Montana and Ohio -- that would mandate boosts in the minimum amount that employers pay their workers. They also intend to talk about the need to cut taxes for the middle class, roll back tax cuts for upper-income people and extend a soon-to-expire provision that permits some middle-income families to write off college tuition payments.

Among the key places the debate is playing out is New York, where Republican Reps. John E. Sweeney, James T. Walsh and John R. "Randy" Kuhl Jr. are facing tougher-than-expected challenges because of the state's economy.

In the Upstate district of retiring Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R), the House Democratic Campaign Committee is running a TV ad that lashes the Republican nominee, state Sen. Ray Meier, for opposing a minimum-wage increase in the New York legislature while his own pay went up by $22,000. The ad promises that Democratic nominee Michael Arcuri will not vote to increase his own salary in Congress until a minimum wage boost is passed.

Even Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (N.Y.), who chairs the House Republicans' campaign arm, is being challenged -- by Jack Davis, who runs the Save American Jobs Association, an organization contending that free trade is causing U.S. job losses.

The economy will also figure throughout the industrial Midwest, especially in Michigan, where layoffs by the auto industry have political repercussions. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) has called the economy the No. 1 issue in his region.

But the fact that the economy is on people's minds does not necessarily mean it will drive votes, as was clear in numerous voter interviews here in Kentucky. Dale Condit, a truck driver, said, like his wife, that he is concerned about the economy and unhappy with the direction of things in Washington. But, like her, he is not sure whether he will vote for Ken Lucas or Geoff Davis.

The owner of the diner where they were eating, the Little Place Restaurant, has had less trouble making up her mind. Estelle Nunn and her husband, Henry Nunn, recently bought a smaller car to save on gasoline. Estelle Nunn, who has operated the restaurant for 36 years, said they are making ends meet but her dollars are not going as far as they once did. She is saving for a new stove at the eatery but doesn't have nearly enough money yet. She is even hesitating to visit her grandsons in Florida because of the cost of travel, something she deeply regrets. "There is uneasiness," said Nunn, noting that she will be supporting Lucas in the fall.

At another table sat Mike Collins, a local judge who said he sometimes indulges his love for singing Michael Bublé songs at karaoke lounges. He said he sees evidence of the economic crush every day in traffic court. Things have gotten so tough, he said, more people are unable to pay the standard $138 in court costs plus the traffic fine.

For all this, traditional class-based appeals to economic grievance would probably not play well in Kentucky's 4th. At lunch at a Panera Bread restaurant in Crestview Hills, a Cincinnati suburb, Angela McNickle was enjoying a "girls' day" with her daughter, Hope, 4. McNickle, a former flight attendant who is married to a salesman, has concerns -- a 7-year-old son has Down syndrome and high medical bills -- but she said her financial situation does not affect her vote. "We're comfortable," she said. "If I was in a different economic class or a single mom, it might be different."

Indeed, Davis, the Republican incumbent, has some formidable advantages. He is well financed, with $1.5 million in the bank. And he is navigating economic concerns by playing down his party affiliation and focusing on his ability to deliver federal aid to the district.

In late August, Davis made two stops in Carroll County. At the first, he announced that he had secured $500,000 in funding for a rural medical center. He then joined Assistant Secretary of Commerce David M. Spooner at North American Stainless, a steel mill, to present an "Export Achievement Certificate" to honor its focus on trade with foreign countries. Asked about the national climate facing Republicans, Davis said, "This is a local race that will be decided on local issues."

It is Lucas who is more ready to talk about national trends. Braving blistering heat at a seniors' picnic along the banks of the Ohio River, he shook hands and tried to call Republicans to account for a "a system where the rich are getting richer." In an interview, he said enough people agree with him to make the difference on Nov. 7.

Great Music that describes the US in the Bush Era

2006-08-31T23:49:00.000-05:00

Check it out, It's been a "long long time...." by Austin's Guy Forsyth.

http://www.guyforsyth.com