:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: "Theory of Relativity Evidence Found" ::

From The Washington Post
By Guy Gugliotta

By measuring variations in satellite orbits, scientists have found the first direct evidence of one of the hallowed tenets of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity -- that the Earth and other large celestial bodies distort space and time as they rotate.

Researchers reporting yesterday in the journal Nature said improved satellite data had enabled them to show the effect known as "frame-dragging" with a degree of precision never previously possible.

ALSO
Relativity prediction is correct
AZ Central.com

posted by me

:: 1:43:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Palasting the Vote ::

I grabbed the following from a Greg Palast e-newsletter
VOTING AND COUNTING
by Paul Krugman
The New York Times

If the election were held today and the votes were counted fairly, Senator John Kerry would probably win. But the votes won't be counted fairly, and the disenfranchisement of minority voters may determine the outcome.

... Last week I described Greg Palast's work on the 2000 election, reported recently in Harper's, which conclusively shows that Florida was thrown to Mr. Bush by a combination of factors that disenfranchised black voters. These included a defective felon list, which wrongly struck thousands of people from the voter rolls, and defective voting machines, which disproportionately failed to record votes in poor, black districts.

One might have expected Florida's government to fix these problems during the intervening four years. But most of those wrongly denied voting rights in 2000 still haven't had those rights restored - and the replacement of punch-card machines has created new problems.

After the 2000 debacle, a task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush recommended that the state adopt a robust voting technology that would greatly reduce the number of spoiled ballots and provide a paper trail for recounts: paper ballots read by optical scanners that alert voters to problems. This system is in use in some affluent, mainly white Florida counties.

But Governor Bush ignored this recommendation, just as he ignored state officials who urged him to "pull the plug" on a new felon list - which was quickly discredited once a judge forced the state to make it public - just days before he ordered the list put into effect. Instead, much of the state will vote using touch-screen machines that are unreliable and subject to hacking, and leave no paper trail. Mr. Palast estimates that this will disenfranchise 27,000 voters - disproportionately poor and black.

A lot can change in 11 days, and Mr. Bush may yet win convincingly. But we must not repeat the mistake of 2000 by refusing to acknowledge the possibility that a narrow Bush win, especially if it depends on Florida, rests on the systematic disenfranchisement of minority voters. And the media must not treat such a suspect win as a validation of skewed reporting that has consistently overstated Mr. Bush's popular support.

Excerpted from the New York Times. See Palast's entire report in this month's Harper's Magazine. Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestseller, the Best Democracy Money Can Buy, is investigating the vote in Florida for BBC Television Newsnight and Harper's. Palast's documentary of his BBC investigations, "Bush Family Fortunes," has just been released in DVD. For more information on the film or the voting investigation, go here.

posted by me

:: 10:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Keychain Remote Control Turns Off Most TVs" ::

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - A lot of people love television but apparently some people have had enough of it, too. A new keychain gadget that lets people turn off most TVs - anywhere from airports to restaurants - is selling at a faster clip than it would take most people to surf the channels on their boob tubes.

"I thought there would just be a trickle, but we are swamped," the inventor, Mitch Altman of San Francisco, said Monday in an interview. "I didn't know there were so many people who were into turning TV off."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 1:03:00 AM [+] ::
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:: AlterNet report: ELECTION 2004 ::

Bad Gallup! No biscuit! Ruy Teixeira pulls apart the polls and explains why Gallup is coming up with these funny numbers.

ALSO
Our War on Terrorism
Howard Zinn, The Progressive.
With the failure so obvious, and the president tripping over his words trying to pretend otherwise, it astonishes us that a majority of Americans believe the president has done "a good job" in the war on terrorism.

posted by me

:: 10:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Report from the trail ::

A Blistering Attack by Bush, a Long Indictment by Kerry
By JODI WILGOREN and ELISABETH BUMILLER
From The NY Times

WATERLOO, Iowa, Oct. 20 - Under blistering attack on national security, Senator John Kerry on Wednesday issued a lengthy indictment of President Bush's handling of terrorism, deriding his opponent as a stubborn and failed leader who has made the United States less safe.

In a point-by-point condemnation of Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq, terrorism, domestic security, intelligence and diplomacy, Mr. Kerry ticked off a litany of "terrible mistakes" by Mr. Bush. "What did the president learn?" he asked. "Apparently nothing. He is, I think, literally in denial."

Mr. Bush, campaigning just 85 miles away here in a state where the race appears as closely contested as it is nationally, responded with equally strong language, saying of Mr. Kerry, "You can't win a war when you don't believe you're fighting one."

He said Mr. Kerry's description of Iraq as a "profound diversion" from the larger struggle against terrorism- which Mr. Kerry repeated Wednesday - "misunderstands our battle against insurgents and terrorists in Iraq."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:38:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Michael Moore Brings Bush-Bashing to Utah" ::

OREM, Utah (AP) - Filmmaker Michael Moore brought his Bush-bashing to conservative Utah Wednesday, saying he felt perfectly safe and was proud of student organizers who held firm against attempts to bar him from the Republican bastion.

"I feel bad for students who had to suffer through this simply because they believe in freedom of expression," Moore said before his sold-out speech to more than 7,000 at Utah Valley State College.

The stop was part of Moore's Slacker Uprising tour aimed at mobilizing youth voters. Asked if he feared for his safety in an area so opposed to his point of view, Moore scoffed.

"The whole country loves the Mormons. Why would I feel unsafe here? I haven't seen a lot of Utah gangs, Mormons with chains and knives and Uzis."

Moore's appearance stirred fierce debate in Utah County. Critics said the student government misused public money by spending much of its $50,000 budget to book the "Fahrenheit 9/11" director, whose documentary paints President Bush as an inept leader who rushed into war in Iraq.

Student government leaders organizing the speech, who face a recall petition, said the money was spent properly and that Moore's appearance reflected freedom of expression.

Because it received so many complaints, the school brought in conservative talk show host Sean Hannity to speak last week to balance Moore's perspective.

School spokesman Derek Hall said proceeds from the Hannity and Moore events would mean the school spent only $35,000 combined for both speakers.

"The way we look at it, we spent $17,500 each on two national speakers," Hall said.

Wednesday's crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Moore, but protesters occasionally broke through the din. Some jeered Moore by calling him a liar and criticizing his weight.

"I love that sound," Moore said of the interruptions. "It's the sound of a dying dinosaur. ... It's embarrassing for them."

At least three people were thrown out, including one seated near the front whom Moore singled out because he said the man was pointing an unidentified object at him.

posted by me

:: 10:32:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "WILL BUSH SPARK A SEISMIC YOUTHQUAKE?" ::

From an e-newsletter
By Arianna Huffington

Out on the campaign trail, President Bush never tires of talking about how America is facilitating "the march toward democracy" in Afghanistan and Iraq — evoking the heart-rending images of the 19-year-old Afghan girl who cast the first vote in her country's recent election and of eager Iraqis preparing to do "the hard work of democracy."

What he always fails to mention is how hard we are making "the hard of work of democracy" here at home — particularly for young voters.

Our voting system continues to be an unhealthy stew of wildly uneven local and state regulations that often confuse first-time voters and lead to ridiculous situations like the one in Ohio where the Republican Secretary of State recently attempted to invalidate tens of thousands of new voter-registration forms because they hadn't been — I kid you not — printed on thick enough paper. One of the reasons democracy is such hard work is because of the hard work so many put into suppressing it.

A new study by Harvard University shows that more than a third of colleges do not comply with a federal law requiring them to help students register to vote in the states where they are enrolled — no small matter when you consider that students represent more than 1 percent of the voting population in crucial swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

And when I was speaking at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, students told me about an arcane rule wherein if they change dorms, they change electoral districts and had to re-register -- something lots of them didn't know until they got to the polling place, by which time it might be too late.

Making matters worse, a number of states have rules that can make it impossible for out-of-state college students to vote absentee, while only six states have same-day voter registration, which is crucial when you consider that young voters often don't start paying attention until much closer to the election.

You have to wonder what that first-through-the-polling-place-door Afghan teen would make of all this.

If she didn't know better, she might start to wonder if the powers-that-be didn't prefer that her young American counterparts just stay home on November 2nd -- and leave the messy business of participatory democracy to them.

The bottom line is that our leaders have done a hell of a job of narrowing the field of engaged young voters. A paltry 36 percent of 18-to-24 year olds bothered to vote in 2000.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that all indications point to a radical turnaround in young voter turnout in the coming election — a turnaround fueled by a force more powerful than all the electoral hurdles placed in young people's way.

Namely, George W. Bush.

He has sparked a youthful uprising unseen since Robert Kennedy's tragically shortened run for president. Kennedy's 1968 campaign brought together a powerful coalition of progressive young white voters and disaffected young black voters, united in support of his twin platform of fighting poverty and ending the war in Vietnam. Bush's immoral war in Iraq and poverty-spreading domestic policies have brought those same groups together in an effort to topple him.

Bush is the photo negative of Kennedy. The anti-Bobby.

Perhaps most significantly, he has galvanized a whole generation of urban youth that had turned its back on voting. Hip-hoppers who cut their teeth on Tupac Shakur's black rage anthems are now registering voters, talking electoral politics and gearing up to help their grandmothers' friends make it to the polls in Cleveland, Philadelphia and Jacksonville. A new generation of political activists has been born.

The effort to turn out young voters has been extraordinary. Both parties and their 527 supporters have been aggressively pursuing new voters, as have a wide variety of high-profile, nonpartisan voter registration groups, including Rock the Vote, the New Voters Project, Declare Yourself and the Hip Hop Summit Action Network . Rock the Vote alone has registered more than 1.3 million people via its Web site and street teams.

Preliminary figures show that voter registration is soaring all across the country, with unprecedented numbers of young voters signing up. In New Mexico, where the 2000 race was decided by just 365 votes, over 50,000 young people have registered. And in Wisconsin, where the 2000 margin was only 5,708 votes, well over 110,000 young voters have signed up.

A New York Times analysis of new voter registration in key swing states indicates that a disproportionate number of these voters are signing up in traditionally Democratic areas. In Florida, for instance, new registrations in areas that sided with Al Gore in 2000 are up 60 percent; in areas that sided with Bush, they are up by only 12 percent. The disparity is even more significant in Ohio, where new registrations in Democratic areas are up an astounding 250 percent from 2000, while in Republican areas they are up by only 25 percent.

Of course, registration is just the first step — it won't mean a thing if the new registrants fail to turn up at the polls or if, once they get there, they are turned away by a 2004 Katharine Harris wanna-be.

That's why the key to delivering the youth vote, and with it the keys to the White House, will be which side is most successful at getting out the vote. Studies have shown that the most effective way to do this is through peer-to-peer contact — and with young people this means knocking on dorm doors and repeatedly following up with e-mails, cell phone calls and text messages.

Which is why the tipping point of 2004 may be reached not by the big, well-funded voter registration efforts, but by the under-the-radar efforts of the hundreds of small, independent, grassroots groups of young people that have joined in the effort to remove the president from office.

Groups like the League of Pissed Off Voters. Starting out as a handful of 20ish activists who self-published a book, "How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office", they proceeded to launch a website , and began encouraging their friends to get involved in politics. The League now has close to 100 local chapters and over 500 organizers using the Internet and other highly creative, 21st Century strategies to spread the word.

And unlike the groups focused solely on voter registration, the League is looking to fully engage young people in the political process -- not just on November 2nd, but way beyond.

"This isn't about a short term victory," the League's founder, Billy Wimsatt, told me, "or about any one candidate. It's about creating a community, building power locally, and grooming well-qualified young people to run for office -- it's our own version of what the right wing has been doing so successfully for so many years."

In the wake of the 2000 Florida fiasco, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. The warm-and-fuzzily named law — evoking images of Boy Scouts and kindly state election commissioners helping voters cast their ballots — was going to set uniform national standards for ensuring that our voting process is sound.

But thanks to political infighting, White House foot-dragging and a serious dose of underfunding, we find ourselves on the verge of yet another painful post-election ordeal. You can almost hear the starter's cry echoing down K Street: "Election lawyers, start your lawsuits!"

With any luck, though (and with lots of IMing over the next two weeks), the unexpected beat of the hip-hop generation making its way to the polls could deliver Kerry an unambiguous victory — and be a giant step in our march toward a healthier democracy.

© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

posted by me

:: 10:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Comedians on the Political Campaign" ::

from The Guardian UK
Late Night with Conan O'Brien:

"John Kerry is being accused of using bad grammar to appeal to uneducated voters because yesterday he stopped in a store and asked, 'Can I get me a hunting license here?' After hearing about it President Bush said, 'It should be 'Can me get me a hunting license here?'''

"California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says that after he gave a speech at the Republican Convention, his wife, Maria Shriver, was so mad, she wouldn't have sex with him for 14 days. Schwarzenegger said things got so bad he had to call up Bill O'Reilly.''

posted by me

:: 10:41:00 AM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

LEAD STORY
A new computer gadget enables someone to apply direct physical stimulation sexually to another person over the Internet, thus advancing "cybersex" far beyond its previous limitation of mere words and pictures. According to a September report on Wired.com, the vibrating "Sinulator," with wireless receiver, can be activated remotely at different speeds and force by a spouse or anyone else who uses the device's password at Sinulator's Web site, and that manipulation can be done not only by keyboard and mouse, but by a male placing the Sinulator's transmitting sleeve ("Interactive Fleshlight") over his penis and thrusting at his (or the recipient's) preferred speed and force. "Thus," summarized the Wired writer, "a man can be thrusting in Cleveland while a woman is penetrated in Seattle." [Wired.com, 9-24-04]

Throw the Book at 'Em!
In February, a 38-year-old Disneyland worker was killed when he fell from a three-part parade float and became trapped between the second and third sections. Disney's float was termed a "serious" workplace violation by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and in August, it fined the multibillion-dollar company $6,300. [KNBC-TV-AP, 8-11-04]

Great Art!
The 223-page novel "The Train From Nowhere," by a French writer using the name Michel Thaler, is reported to be the first novel in history with no verbs, and its May publication was met with damning reviews. "Thaler" has called the verb "like a weed in a field of flowers" and his book a "revolution in the history of literature," that it "is to literature what the great Dada and Surrealist movements were to art." Critics noted the book's lack of action, in that it consists only of, according to London's Daily Telegraph, "lengthy passages filled with florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic portraits of dislikable passengers on a train." [Daily Telegraph, 5-9-04]

Inexplicable
A Quad City Times (Davenport, Iowa) columnist reported in September on a man who recently drove into his housing community at 10:30 p.m. to discover about 500 14-inch-high, ceramic-faced Ronald McDonald dolls neatly lined up in the middle of six streets, two to three feet apart, with no witnesses or explanation as to how they got there or why. The columnist, Bill Wundram, discovered only that the dolls were probably taken from the warehouse of a promotions company in nearby Camanche, Iowa, but is still stumped as to motive. [Quad City Times, 9-15-04, 9-24-04]

Readers' Choice
Stephen P. Linnen, 33, who was a lawyer for the Ohio House Republican state legislators' caucus, was sentenced in September to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to 53 misdemeanors, including 40 times springing out from hiding places while naked and photographing the faces of women reacting to the surprise (and also for fondling 13 of them). However, the judge refused to label Linnen a "sexual offender" and said he poses "absolutely no risk to public safety." [Columbus Dispatch, 9-28-04]



posted by me

:: 12:23:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Hey W: Can you feel the love? ::

A sampling of recent protest activity:

Kept away from rally, hundreds protest Bush policies
from Cherry Hill Courier Post

President Bush could not see or hear any of the opponents who showed up to criticize his policies, particularly the war in Iraq.

But they were there, several hundred strong, some in a parking lot assigned to "protesters," several hundred yards from the point where the president spoke. Another, smaller group was at the point on Tuckerton Road beyond which the public could not proceed.

"It's one of the things that upsets me," said Chris Hansen, 42, of Medford. "He's so insulated."

Hansen, the vice president of a manufacturing company, described himself as "an active independent who's become a Democrat" and said that, for him, the war is the main issue.

"I'm sick of feeling ashamed of my country," Hansen said.

SPC sponsors Bush protest
By Jessica Horvath
from The Daily Orange

Heavy rain and low temperatures failed to deter members of the local community from showing their commitment to removing President George W. Bush from office this November.

About 100 people gathered on the lawn of the Museum of Science and Technology in Armory Square for the "Bush Must Go!" rally, organized by the Syracuse Peace Council.

"It's important for the well-being of all citizens that the Bush regime is kicked out of office," said Rae Kramer, a volunteer with SPC and a Syracuse resident. "The world will be a safer place with (Sen. John) Kerry in the White House."


Police Arrest 21 In Bush Protest
from nbc4.com

The protesters were AIDS activists who accused President George W. Bush of failing to do enough to help people with AIDS.

Some of the protesters chained themselves to the door of the campaign headquarters and were arrested for trespassing.

Police fire pepper shot to break up Bush protest
from Collective Bellaciao, France

"We were here to protest Bush and show our support for Kerry," said Cerridewen Bunten, 24, a college student and retail clerk from Ashland. ...
(Registration required -- in French)

ALSO
Anti-Bush Canadians Put Gov't in Quandary
from an AP report

MONTREAL - Measured by shared boundaries and trade, no foreign country has a larger stake in the U.S. presidential election than Canada. Its citizens, by an overwhelming margin, hope for President Bush's defeat, but its government - unsure of the Nov. 2 outcome - is trying to keep bilateral tensions from escalating.

Many Canadians have intently followed the campaign, watching the TV debates and writing impassioned letters to newspapers. Two recent polls showed Democrat John Kerry favored by more than 2-to-1 across Canada; in French-speaking Quebec, Bush's support was only 11 percent.

Bush's decision to invade Iraq has been a major factor. After the invasion last year, Montreal Canadiens fans began booing during the U.S. national anthem, and anti-war protesters even jeered a Massachusetts youth hockey team at a tournament.

"Canadians have become leading Bushophobes," said Gil Troy, a New York City native who teaches history at Montreal's McGill University. "The fundamental U.S.-Canada relationship remains incredibly strong. ... but there's an extreme demonization of Bush, a notion of him as an uncultured cowboy."

posted by me

:: 10:37:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Fiasco 2K: the Sequel? ::

Problems Crop Up in Fla. Early Voting
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - With memories of 2000 and the state's bitter fight over ballots still fresh, Floridians began casting votes Monday and within an hour problems cropped up.

posted by me

:: 4:21:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "It's coming sometime, maybe ... " ::

Thousands of Britons Protest War in Iraq

LONDON - Thousands of anti-war and anti-globalization activists marched through central London and filled Trafalgar Square on Sunday to protest the U.S.-led coalition's presence in Iraq.

The march marked the culmination of the third European Social Forum - three days of speeches, workshops and debates largely dominated by Iraq and the U.S. presidential election.

Marchers carried signs reading "World's No. 1 Terrorist" over a picture of President Bush. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was also a target, with placards reading "Out with Blair."

Several activists blew loud whistles or joined in political chants as they trudged through the capital on a cold, rainy day. Police estimated that 15,000 to 20,000 people set off from Russell Square around 1 p.m., but organizers announced that 75,000 had reached Trafalgar Square by 3:30 p.m.

While the forum discussed a range of issues concerning privatization and globalization, the march was almost overwhelmingly devoted to opposition to the war in Iraq and the Bush administration.

"I've been coming to every demonstration against Bush I can," said Liz Mawl, a resident of London carrying an "Out with Bush" sign.

"His foreign policy is very destabilizing for the entire international community, and I'm not sure Americans realize that's bad for them as well," she said.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 5:45:00 PM [+] ::
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:: More on Dubya's Nam Daze ::

Review Finds More Bush Military Records

WASHINGTON (AP) - Weeks after Texas National Guard officials signed an oath swearing they had turned over all of President Bush's military records, independent examiners found more than two dozen pages of previously unreleased documents about Bush.

You can read them here.

From the AP article:

The newly released documents include a January 1972 order for Bush to attend three days of "physiological training" at Laredo Air Force Base in Texas. His Texas payroll and attendance records, released earlier, show Bush was credited for serving on active duty training for the three days involved.

At the time, pilots had to renew their high-altitude training every three years, said retired Maj. Gen. Paul A. Weaver, Jr., a former head of the Air National Guard. Bush's first altitude training came in 1969 when he was in pilot school at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.

The training involved instruction about the effects of lack of oxygen on the body and exercises in which the pilots are exposed under supervision to the thin air of high altitudes. The purpose is to familiarize pilots with the effects of lack of oxygen so they can recognize them and take appropriate action to avoid blacking out at the controls.

The altitude training came six weeks before Bush began an unexplained string of flights on two-seat training jets and simulators. On April 12, 1972, Bush took his last flight in the single-seat F-102A fighter.

The future president skipped a required yearly medical exam and was ordered grounded as of August 1972. Bush says he missed the exam because he was planning to train with an Alabama Air National Guard unit which did not fly the F-102A.

Bush went to Alabama that year to work on the U.S. Senate campaign of a family friend.

Records show Bush did no guard training at all between mid-April and late October 1972. He's credited with six days of training in October and November 1972, presumably with the Alabama unit.

The Alabama unit's commanders say they never saw Bush or any paperwork showing he performed drills there. A January 1973 document says Bush got a dental examination at the Alabama unit's base.

---

posted by me

:: 9:44:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Greg Palast's latest ::

Excerpted from 'Block The Vote'
By Paul Krugman, New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
15 October 2004
This arrived today in a Palast e-newsletter

The case of Florida's felon list - used by state officials, as in 2000, to try to wrongly disenfranchise thousands of blacks - has been widely reported. Less widely reported has been overwhelming evidence that the errors were deliberate.

In an article coming next week in Harper's, Greg Palast, who originally reported the story of the 2000 felon list, reveals that few of those wrongly purged from the voting rolls in 2000 are back on the voter lists. State officials have imposed Kafkaesque hurdles for voters trying to get back on the rolls. Depending on the county, those attempting to get their votes back have been required to seek clemency for crimes committed by others, or to go through quasi-judicial proceedings to prove that they are not felons with similar names.

And officials appear to be doing their best to make voting difficult for those blacks who do manage to register. Florida law requires local election officials to provide polling places where voters can cast early ballots. Duval County is providing only one such location, when other counties with similar voting populations are providing multiple sites. And in Duval and other counties the early voting sites are miles away from precincts with black majorities.

Next week, I'll address the question of whether the votes of Floridians with the wrong color skin will be fully counted if they are cast. Mr. Palast notes that in the 2000 election, almost 180,000 Florida votes were rejected because they were either blank or contained overvotes. Demographers from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission estimate that 54 percent of the spoiled ballots were cast by blacks. And there's strong evidence that this spoilage didn't reflect voters' incompetence: it was caused mainly by defective voting machines and may also reflect deliberate vote-tampering.

The important point to realize is that these abuses aren't aberrations. They're the inevitable result of a Republican Party culture in which dirty tricks that distort the vote are rewarded, not punished. It's a culture that will persist until voters - whose will still does count, if expressed strongly enough - hold that party accountable.

*******************************************************
The BBC documentary of Palast's report on Florida and more - "Bush Family Fortunes" - premiers in New York this Sunday, in Washington Monday and in LA on October 24th. Go here for addtl. info.
*******************************************************

posted by me

:: 9:21:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "E-Vote Snafu in Florida" ::

From Wired News
A server crashes, disrupting the pre-election test of electronic voting machines in West Palm Beach. Critics say this underscores the unreliability of e-voting, while election officials say all glitches will be fixed.

posted by me

:: 11:21:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Every which way but loofah" ::

Inside the Bill O'Reilly sexual harassment lawsuit
From Salon.com

Popular right-wing talk show host Bill O'Reilly, star of "The O'Reilly Factor," and the company he works for, Fox News, were slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit today by Andrea Mackris, an associate producer on his show. (The lawsuit is posted in its entirety on The Smoking Gun website.) Mackris, who worked for Fox News for more than four years, alleged that O'Reilly repeatedly harassed her verbally, repeatedly making lewd suggestions to her in person and over the telephone while masturbating with a vibrator.

Just before Mackris filed her civil complaint, O'Reilly and Fox's lawyers filed a counter lawsuit (also posted on The Smoking Gun Web site) charging that Mackris and her lawyers were attempting to extort $60 million in "hush money." Although the complaint did not directly deny that O'Reilly had engaged in the conduct Mackris alleged, it called the allegations "baseless, scandalous and scurrilous." O'Reilly's attorneys alleged that the lawsuit was motivated not only by greed but politics, alleging that Mackris' lawyer, Benedict Morelli, his firm and his wife are "known supporters of and contributors to the Democratic Party" who wanted to "embarrass and tarnish the reputations of Fox and O'Reilly" during the election season.

Read more here.
(Subscription required - 1-day passes are available, giving access to the entire site as I recall)

ALSO

FOX IN THE XXX FACTOR
From The NY Post Online

Producer alleges Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly forced her into phone sex
From SFGate.com

The 'X' Factor: Papers Get Raunchy with O'Reilly Case
From Editor & Publisher
Newsday's Pradnya Joshi wrote that the suit detailed O'Reilly's conversations with Mackris (possibly caught on tape or in detailed notes): "In other discussions, which the suit called 'perverted ravings,' he allegedly approached Mackris and a college friend, saying, 'Boy, I would've had fun with you two,' and told Mackris of his trysts with a pair of 'really wild' Scandinavian airline stewardesses and a 'girl' at a Thai sex show."

Many papers provided plenty of R-rated material. New York's Daily News carried raunchy excerpts, including one where O’Reilly allegedly told Mackris that every woman owns a vibrator. Mackris insisted she did not, and shot back, "Does your wife?"

"Yes, in fact she does," O'Reilly replied, according to court papers. "She'd kill me if she knew I was telling you."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:15:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Who do you think won the debate?" ::

[From CNN QucikVote as of a few moments ago.]

George W. Bush 46% 209060 votes

John Kerry 54% 246132 votes

Evenly matched 0% 670 votes

Total: 455862 votes

This QuickVote is not scientific and reflects the opinions of only those Internet users who have chosen to participate. The results cannot be assumed to represent the opinions of Internet users in general, nor the public as a whole. The QuickVote sponsor is not responsible for content, functionality or the opinions expressed therein.

posted by me

:: 12:39:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Who won Wednesday night's presidential debate?" ::

[As of a few moments ago from... FOX NEWS!]

a. President Bush (46%)
129,323

b. Senator Kerry (53%)
149,930

c. I did not watch (1%)
1,907

d. None of the above (0%)
526

281,686 total votes

posted by me

:: 12:33:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Don't believe the hype..." ::

Read a transcript of tonight's, the third and final prez debate tonight.
From CNN.com

AN EXCERPT

KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.

Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?"

He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.

posted by me

:: 12:24:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Who won the debate?" ::

From MSNBC.com
[As of a few moments ago.]
Pres. Bush -- 27%
Sen. Kerry -- 73%
* 582037 responses

posted by me

:: 11:03:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Machine Politics" ::

Diebold and the Disabled
From Wired News
Special Report » Among the promoters of electronic voting machines are advocates for disabled voters. But critics say money connections between disability groups and voting-machine companies suggest the groups may be concerned with more than independent access for the disabled. By Kim Zetter.

... voting activists say disability groups have become shills for the voting companies, pressuring counties to buy insecure voting systems over other options.

"I feel they're using blind voters to pursue an agenda that's actually not in the interest of any voters," said Maryland voting activist Linda Schade of TrueVoteMD. "Because these machines don't discriminate when they lose votes, they can lose or inaccurately record the votes of blind voters as well as seeing voters."

Read more here.

ALSO from Wired News

Diebold Rep Now Runs Elections

E-Vote Fears Soar in Swing States

How E-Voting Threatens Democracy

posted by me

:: 2:38:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "U.S. Spies on Chat Rooms" ::

From Wired News
Could terrorists be plotting their next move online, obscured by the "noise" of chat-room chatter? The U.S. government thinks that may be the case and is funding a yearlong study on chat-room surveillance.

ALSO from Wired News

Oral History on the Go
A project to record thousands of interviews with people across the United States is expanding. StoryCorps originates from a soundproof booth in Grand Central Station and now wants to go mobile. Rachel Metz reports from New York.

Can Math Help in Terror War?
A group of mathematicians look at how order theory -- a branch of abstract math resembling classic military strategy -- might help in the war on terror. Applying computers to problems could increase accuracy of predictions and strategic moves.

posted by me

:: 5:07:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

Recurring Themes
Once again, housekeepers at a museum mistook part of an art installation for ordinary garbage and tossed it out (this time, a bag of newspapers that was part of Gustav Metzger's "Re-creation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art" at London's Tate Britain gallery, in August). And once again, a suicidal man leaped to his death off a building but landed on a pedestrian, killing him, too (this time, in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan, in August). [Reuters, 8-26-04] [Mainichi Daily News, 8-8-04]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 8:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "New Backup Voting System May Pose Problems" ::

WASHINGTON (AP)- Call it the law of unintended consequences. A new national backup system meant to ensure that millions of eligible voters are not mistakenly turned away from the polls this year, as happened in 2000, could wind up causing Election Day problems as infamous as Florida's hanging chads.

Congress required conditional, or provisional, voting as part of election fixes passed in 2002. For the first time, all states must offer a backup ballot to any voter whose name does not appear on the rolls when the voter comes to the polling place on Nov. 2. If the voter is later found eligible, the vote counts.

But Congress did not specify exactly how the provisional votes will be evaluated.

Add the ordinary problems that come with doing something new, and the result is a recipe for mix-ups at the polls and lawsuits over alleged unequal treatment of some voters, said Doug Chapin, executive director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for information on election reform.

"If I had to pick the one thing that will be source of controversy on Election Day, it will be provisional voting," Chapin said.

Read more here.

ALSO
Lawsuits challenge Florida Secretary of State
By David Damron, Orlando Sentinel
Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood is fending off more than a half-dozen legal challenges over the upcoming 2004 election.

posted by me

:: 6:55:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Update Afghanistan ::

Karzai's Opponents Claim Fraud in Election
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghans packed polling stations on Saturday for a historic presidential election that was blemished when all 15 candidates opposing U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai withdrew, charging the government and the U.N. with fraud and incompetence.

In the end, faulty ink - not Taliban bombs and bullets - threatened three years of painstaking progress toward democracy. The opposition candidates claimed the ink used to mark people's thumbs rubbed off too easily, allowing for mass deception.

Electoral officials rejected opposition demands that voting be stopped at midday, saying it would rob millions of people of their first chance to directly decide their leader, and the joint U.N.-Afghan panel overseeing the election would rule later on the vote's legitimacy.

Afghans braved the threat of violence to cast ballots country-wide.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:33:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Who won the debate?" ::

From an MSNBC poll as of a few moments ago
Pres. Bush -- 32%
Sen. Kerry -- 68%
871802 responses

Share your thoughts w/ MSNBC.

posted by me

:: 1:26:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Don't believe the hype... ::

Read a transcript of tonight's Presidential debate.

Choice quote:
"Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq." ~Sen. John Kerry

posted by me

:: 1:21:00 AM [+] ::
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CNN QuickVote

As of a few moments ago:

Who won the second presidential debate?
President Bush 20% 65709 votes
John Kerry 77% 249687 votes
Evenly matched 2% 7147 votes
Total: 322543 votes

This QuickVote is not scientific and reflects the opinions of only those Internet users who have chosen to participate. The results cannot be assumed to represent the opinions of Internet users in general, nor the public as a whole. The QuickVote sponsor is not responsible for content, functionality or the opinions expressed therein.

posted by me

:: 1:03:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Rematch: Dubya V. Long Face ::

Bush and Kerry differ sharply on Iraq and taxes

ST. LOUIS (Reuters UK) - President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry have differed sharply on Iraq, jobs and taxes in their second debate, with Kerry questioning Bush's judgment and the president accusing Kerry of crumbling under political pressure.

In a sometimes testy confrontation, the White House rivals roamed the stage to battle over the decision to go to war in Iraq and repeatedly accuse each other of misleading Americans.

"The world is more dangerous today because the president didn't make the right judgements," Kerry said at the debate at Washington University on Friday, adding Bush "took his eye off the ball" in shifting his focus to Iraq while Iran and North Korea developed nuclear programs.

Bush defended his decision to go to war and aggressively attacked Kerry's record, saying the Massachusetts senator's willingness to shift in the political winds made him an unsuitable leader.

"I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics," Bush said.

Kerry denied that he had shifted his position in Iraq and said Bush was running a campaign of "mass deception."

"Let me tell you straight up: I've never changed my mind about Iraq. I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat," he said.

"This president rushed to war, pushed our allies aside, and Iran now is more dangerous, and so is North Korea, with nuclear weapons. He took his eye off the ball, off of Osama bin Laden," Kerry said.

An angry Bush at one point cut off moderator Charles Gibson to upbraid Kerry for criticising the size of the coalition backing the United States in Iraq, saying it denigrated allies like Britain and Poland.

Kerry responded that if all the citizens of the state of Missouri were a military force in Iraq, they would be the third largest bloc behind the United States and Britain.

"That's not a grand coalition," he said.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "A Willful Lie?" ::

European Press Review
From DW-WORLD.DE
Deutsche Welle
Papers across Europe commented Friday on the Iraq Survey Group's confirmation that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and discussed Elfriede Jelinek winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Guardian from London wrote that the more than one thousand pages of the Iraq Survey Group's report, painstakingly researched by 1,200 staff, obliterate an entire arsenal of familiar phrases about gathering threats, clear and present danger, and Condoleeza Rices's catchy but preposterous line about a smoking gun becoming a mushroom cloud. "Saddam Hussein did not have any chemical or biological weapons in 2003 and less than a month before the presidential election, the case for war in Iraq has never looked so threadbare," the paper said.

The Austrian daily Der Standard commented that it took the US weapons inspection team one and a half years to come up with a report and noted that the amount of time and resources spent are something UN weapons inspectors before the war could only have dreamed of. The fact that President Bush did not prevent the release of the report so close to US elections, highlights again how little importance he attached or attaches to legitimizing the Iraq war. "First, the US spoke of weapons of mass destruction, then a weapons program, then the intention to secure weapons, but together with the magic word "terrorism" it works every time," the paper wrote.

Berlin's Tageszeitung said Bush and Blair's main justification for the war in Iraq was not based on false intelligence but was from the very beginning a willful lie. "Everything collated by the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, confirms the first report of the UN weapons inspectors in 1999." The paper added that Duelfer's report means former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix should be fully rehabilitated and vindicated.

Turning to this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, Spain's El Pais wrote that "as a political and feminist author, Jelinek created her personal language that is used as an aesthetic weapon against all that is wrong within society: exclusion, the misuse of power, and social pressures that crush and destroy."

Parisian daily Liberation commented that the choice of Jelinek by the Nobel committee -- made up primarily of men and normally very politically correct -- had been a big surprise. "Jelinek is not only an author but an active feminist and a tribute to contemporary Austrian culture," the paper wrote.

Less impressed with the Nobel Committee's decision was de Volkskrant from the Hague. While the paper noted that her bizarre and experimental novels and plays full of self-pity and self-incrimination are anchored in contemporary Austrian culture, they are no longer up to date. The paper argued that if this had been a factor in the decision-making process, then American writer Philip Roth or Arabian poet Adonis should have won the prize. Yet, the paper pointed out, this would have made too much of a political statement; the political aspect of this year's decision is to avoid being too obvious, the daily opined.

posted by me

:: 12:38:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Democrats Send Campaign Help to Republican" ::

TODAY'S "STRANGE NEWS" FROM the AP
BOUNTIFUL, Utah - U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop got an unexpected campaign contribution this week. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee mailed the freshman lawmaker a computer program to create campaign ads for his 1st Congressional District race.

"This is a cool little campaign toy that could be helpful to our campaign," he said.

While Bishop said he was grateful to the Democratic Party for their kind consideration of his campaign needs, the Republican decided to send it back.

Bishop figured - and the Democrats agreed - the program was intended for the other freshman congressman with the same last name, New York Democrat Tim Bishop.

The irony is not lost on Rob Bishop's Democratic opponent, Steve Thompson, who says he didn't get a copy of the program from his own party.

"I'd like to get one, though, so please tell them to send me one," Thompson said.

The Utah Bishop says he'll also welcome any help the Democrats offer in the future.

ALSO, from the AP's "Strange News"

Man Allegedly Pays Ticket With Foul Bills
BURLINGTON, Iowa - A psychiatrist who police say smeared excrement on dollar bills used to pay a parking ticket has been charged with harassment of a public official.

Man Pours Gas Down Toilet, Causing Blast
SALT LAKE CITY - If you can't stand the heat, don't pour gasoline down the toilet. An apartment tenant made that $75,000 mistake Tuesday.

posted by me

:: 9:23:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: Just a tad freaking late... ::

Bush, Cheney Concede Saddam Had No WMDs

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue - whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:09:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Don't say we never told you ... ::

A New C.I.A. Report Casts Doubt on a Key Terrorist's Tie to Iraq
From The NY Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - A reassessment by the Central Intelligence Agency has cast doubt on a central piece of evidence used by the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq to draw links between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda's terrorist network, government officials said Tuesday.

The new C.I.A. assessment, based largely on information gathered after the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, is the latest to revise a prewar intelligence report used by the administration as a central rationale for war.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:24:00 AM [+] ::
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:: RE Veep debate ::

Edwards Attacks Cheney On Halliburton Dealings in Iran, Bribing ...
Democracy Now
At the Vice Presidential debate, John Edwards dropped what pundits are calling the "H-Bomb" on Dick Cheney - Halliburton.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:17:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Info Creep" ::

Senate Wants Database Dragnet
From Wired News
Lawmakers may soon pass a bill that would set up a huge network of databases that law enforcement officials could tap to find terrorists. But that kind of unfettered access to data about Americans raises eyebrows. By Ryan Singel.

The proposed network is based on the Markle Foundation Task Force's December 2003 report, which envisioned a system that would allow FBI and CIA agents, as well as police officers and some companies, to quickly search intelligence, criminal and commercial databases. The proposal is so radical, the bill allocates $50 million just to fund the system's specifications and privacy policies.

[Further down...]

Critics say the Senate is moving too fast and the network could infringe on civil liberties. Lawmakers are taking a "boil the ocean" approach, according to Robert Griffin, president of Knowledge Computing. His company runs Coplink, a widely used system for linking law enforcement databases. Despite being a supporter of increased information sharing, Griffin criticized the proposal for trying too much too soon and relying too heavily on commercial data.

"The next Mohammed Atta is not going to be found in commercial databases," Griffin said, referring to the tactical leader of the 9/11 attacks. "We are going to stop him running a red light somewhere, and we are going to run relationships associations with this guy and we are going to say, gee, you have things in common with guys on watch lists. That's how you are going to find the guy -- not because he has bad credit."

Civil liberties lawyer Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation accused Congress of "institutional laziness" for not holding hearings on the proposal to hear the perspectives of advocates for consumers or battered women. Tien also argued that a widespread lack of privacy and due process protections would make data sharing dangerous.

"If someone transfers your credit report or medical history, you have no way of knowing," Tien said. "The natural feedback we expect in the physical world just doesn't work in the area of information. You have to be careful."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:10:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Report May Undercut Bush's Iraq Rationale" ::

WASHINGTON (AP) - The final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector for Iraq is expected to undercut a principal Bush administration rationale for removing Saddam Hussein: that Saddam's Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction. Weapons hunter Charles Duelfer will provide his findings Wednesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Read more here.

poste by me

:: 9:59:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Tough crowd ::

Rodney Dangerfield, Acid-Tongued Put-Down Comic, Dead At 82
MTV.com
Rodney Dangerfield, the acid-tongued put-down comic whose chief comedic target was always himself, died Tuesday at the age of 82, according to Reuters.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:23:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "White House on Defensive After Bremer Talk" ::

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House staunchly defended its Iraq policy Tuesday as new questions emerged about President Bush's prewar decisions and postwar planning. An impending weapons report undercut the administration's main rationale for the war, and the former head of the American occupation said the United States had too few troops in Iraq after the invasion.

Four weeks before Election Day, Democrat John Kerry pounced on the acknowledgment by former Iraq administrator Paul Bremer Monday that the United States had "paid a big price" for insufficient troop levels.

Bremer, who shot into the national headlines with his remarks, softened his comments during a speech Tuesday in Michigan.

"We certainly had enough (troops) going into Iraq, because we won the war in a very short three weeks," he told an audience of more than 400 people at Michigan State University.

"The point that I have been making, and that has gotten a little bit distorted in the press recently, is that, as I look back now, I believe it would have been better to stop the looting that was found right after the war.

"One way to have stopped the looting would have been to have more troops on the ground. That's a retrospective wisdom of mine, looking backwards," he added. "I think there are enough troops there now for the job we are doing."

Kerry said there was a "long list of mistakes" that the Bush administration had made in Iraq.

"I'm glad that Paul Bremer has finally admitted at least two of them," Kerry said, referring to postwar troop levels and a failure to contain chaos.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:55:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Electronic voting and copyright?" ::

From CNET News.com
By John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Most everyone who lived through the presidential election of 2000 would agree that it's important to have public discussion about the integrity of voting systems in America. Most everyone, except Diebold.
And Diebold sold electronic voting machines to at least 37 U.S. states in the last four years.

Computer experts have been fretting about the security of Diebold's electronic voting technology for years. In 2003, a controversial scholarly review cataloged 328 possible security problems in Diebold's systems. California decertified Diebold's touch-screen voting machines, citing security reasons. California's attorney general has sued the company for misrepresentation.

It didn't help matters that Diebold's CEO, Walden O'Dell, reportedly wrote in a fundraising letter in the summer of 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

But the most tragic part of the story has nothing to do with political partisanship. It has to do with Diebold's ill-conceived effort to use the copyright law to put a lid on the public debate about the integrity of electronic voting.

About a year ago, a rather large set of documents written by Diebold staff appeared online. Exactly how the memos got there is disputed. The 13,000 or so documents revealed internal concerns about many of the issues that had worried the computer scientists.

Diebold moved quickly to block the publication of the documents online by sending "cease and desist" letters to a woman who had posted the material, Bev Harris, and her Internet service provider.

Students at Swarthmore College, aware of the threat to the documents, copied the documents to their own Web sites. An undergraduate at Harvard, Derek Slater, among others, followed suit. The students contended that the accessibility of the documents contributed to an important civic debate and asserted that their actions were shielded by the fair use doctrine, an important exception in the copyright law. Nonetheless, the students and their schools heard promptly from Diebold's lawyers.

Diebold's legal action against the students makes perfect sense on one level. Company secrets, as well as private information about employees, were floating freely about in the ether. Shareholders would suffer. Competitors would gain.

But Diebold and its lawyers made a terrible choice in trying to stop the hemorrhaging. They decided to invoke the copyright law to cut short the debate.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:33:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Shooting the Messenger Doesn't Discredit the Message" ::

The Real Lt. Col. Burkett - in His Own Words to BBC Television
From an e-newsletter
by Greg Palast

When Dan Rather went down for airing a document he couldn't source, he did the courageous thing: blamed someone else.

In this case, Rather and CBS loaded their corporate guilt on a guy you've probably never heard of before, rancher Bill Burkett of Abilene, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Texas Air National Guard.

CBS did a no-no -- used a document on air without fully checking out its source. No excuses. Shouldn't have done it. They got the document from Burkett.

Once CBS hung out its source and painted a target on him, Rove-ing gangs of media hit men finished him off. Burkett's an evidence "fabricator," "Bush-hater," and even, suggests William Safire in the New York Times as he fantasizes a dark left-wing conspiracy, a felon ready for hard time.

Let me tell you about this Burkett "criminal." I met him while filming for BBC's Television documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes." Better than that, I'm posting a transcript of our hour-and-a-half interview.

Burkett a 'Bush-hater'? "George W. Bush was an excellent pilot," Burkett told me, "He had the right leadership skills, he had the 'Top Gun' approach."

But I didn't go interview Burkett to chat about our President's days when he flew high. He has an important story to tell which has not one damn thing to do with a memo by some Lt. Col. Killian. It has to do with a phone call and a shredder.

Burkett, a top advisor to Major General Daniel James at the Air Guard, was working at Camp Mabry with Major General James when a call came in from Joe Allbaugh, the Chief of Staff to then-Governor George W. Bush. Bush was about to get a political polishing up for his White House run, with a ghost-written autobiography, which would include his heroic years during the war in Vietnam. Allbaugh, according to Burkett, stated that Bush political operatives Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett would be dropping by the Air Guard offices to look at the war record and wanted to, "make sure there's nothing in there that'll embarrass the Governor."

According to Burkett, the General and his minions who work for the Governor, not the US Air Force, took this as an unsubtle hint from the boss to purge the record. Lt. Col. Burkett, both curious and disturbed by the call, wondered how his fellow comrades-in-arms would respond. His answer was in the trash-to-be-shredded bin: George Bush's military pay records. "I saw what are called LES (Leave and Earnings Statements) which are pay documents. I saw Retirement Points documents and other administrative information."

He did not see their content, only Bush's name, and therefore cannot answer the 64 million dollar question: Did those records, now "missing," indicate that our President went AWOL while others ended up on the Black Wall?

That's Burkett's story and it's in the BBC film. Watch the film, read the transcript, and judge for yourself. I think you'll find in Burkett a straight shooter, telling a piece of the larger draft-dodge story which mounting evidence corroborates.

So what about that "Killian" document? We don't have it in the BBC film - we couldn't source it so we wouldn't use it. Burkett passed it on from a third party, obviously someone still in the Guard or fearful of Bush Family retribution. Now why would they imagine that?

Under pressure, Burkett gave CBS a false name to cover for the whistleblower. Burkett should not have done that. It is inexcusable. Period. Yet, that does not tell us the document was fabricated. It was the job of CBS to follow up -- they are the journalists.

And it is also the President's job. Safire in the Times, in charging that Burkett faked the document, demanded the military open a criminal investigation. Darn right they should. They haven't. Why not? Maybe they don't want to check into this 'fake' document because maybe it's not fake.

An investigation should begin with questions for the President. After all, he can clear up the matter lickety-split.

"Mr. President, did you or did you not ask your commander Lt. Col. Killian how you could shirk your duty to show up?"

"Mr. President, did you or did you not refuse a direct order to take a medical exam and pee into a jar?" (The record is solid on the evidence of refusing that order, Mr. Top Gun -- you were stripped of your flight wings.)

"Mr. President, did Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes make any calls to get you out of 'Nam and into the Air Guard? Yes or no?"

See Dan, that's how it should be done. It wasn't Burkett's job to verify the evidence, it was the job of Dan and the President.

It is for the President, not Bill Burkett, to answer the question, "Did your daddy the congressman vote to send other men's sons to Vietnam while pulling the strings to keep you cozy and safe? Yes or no, Mr. President, yes or no?"

For a clip from the BBC Television investigative reports on George Bush's military career, go here.

Greg Palast's interview with Col. Burkett for BBC can be read here.
============================================

posted by me

:: 10:22:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

Lead Story
To publicize the use of fat as an alternative method of harvesting stem cells to grow new human tissue, Austin, Texas, plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Ersek, who is overweight, called in reporters in August to watch as he liposuctioned 1-1/2 pounds of his own fat from the left side of his abdomen. As Ersek (under local anesthetic) moved the vacuuming wand inside his body, he urged people to save their fat for the time (maybe five years from now) in which stem-cell work will be routine. (Ersek said he would leave the right side of his abdomen as is, to show liposuction candidates a "before" and "after.") [Austin American-Statesman, 8-27-04]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 1:03:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Rice Defends Comments on Iraq Nuke Threat" ::

WASHINGTON (AP) - National security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday defended her characterization of Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities in the months before the Iraq invasion, even as a published report said government experts had cast doubt at the time.

In the run-up to the March 2003 war, Rice said in a television interview in 2002 that the Iraqi president was trying to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes to rebuild his nuclear weapons program. The tubes, she said, were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

On Sunday, Rice acknowledged she was aware of a debate within the U.S. intelligence community about whether the tubes were intended for nuclear weapons. "I knew that there was a dispute. I actually didn't really know the nature of the dispute," Rice told ABC's "This Week."

"The intelligence community assessment as a whole was that these (tubes) were likely and certainly suitable for, and likely for, his nuclear weapons program," Rice said. She said the director of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, believed that the tubes were for centrifuge parts.

"When you are faced with an assessment that Saddam Hussein is reconstituting his nuclear weapons program, that he has by the end of the decade the probability of having a nuclear weapon ... the tendency is always not to want to underestimate these programs," Rice said.

But two years later, Rice insisted she has no regrets about how the administration portrayed what it believed was a dangerous threat posed by Saddam.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:51:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Debate Viewed Warily in Middle East" ::

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Arab viewers, many suspicious of U.S. intentions in their region, watched the U.S. presidential debate with wariness, some dismissing the event as a trivial "American show" long on rhetoric and short on specifics.

While some viewers said Democrat John Kerry appeared to best President Bush in the debate itself, analysts suggested Friday that Bush still appeals to many in the Middle East - to governments looking for continuity, to reformers looking for pressure on their countries, and to militants who see Bush's policies spreading support for their anti-American rage.

Salama Ahmed Salama, an Egyptian newspaper columnist, said that in the end, the debate - and the election itself - would mean little to the Middle East.

"Neither this or that (candidate) will be in the benefit of the Arab world," he said. "Everyone has been tossing us around."

American presidential races were closely watched overseas with viewers from Asia to the Middle East and Europe listening closely to the issues that matter most to them. In Asia, viewers were concerned with U.S. policy toward North Korea and its possible nuclear arsenal.

In the Middle East viewers were looking for a president who is willing to tackle the region's conflicts from the war in Iraq to fighting between Israeli's and Palestinians.

The debate ran in the pre-dawn hours Friday in the Middle East. The region's most popular television news networks, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, broadcast live coverage of the debate. Al-Arabiya replayed the debate at midday Friday, a day off throughout the region.

But although the Iraq war and the battle with global terrorism took center stage in the 90-minute debate, many Arab commentators lamented that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wasn't mentioned.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said ignoring the issue during the debate was an indication that both candidates view the conflict "through Sharon's eyes," sending the region further down the road of "chaos, extremism and darkness."

"I think they should focus not on siding with Israel, but on making the Middle East a more stable and peaceful place," Erekat said.

Yossi Alpher, an Israeli political analyst, said the candidates sidestepped the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because the U.S. view of the Middle East has changed since Sept. 11.

In Asia, analysts said that both Kerry and Bush were adamant that North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program, pointing out that both were likely to take a tough stance.

"We don't see any big difference between the Republicans and Democrats when it comes to the United States' commitment to using all available resources to stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and fight terrorism," said Kim Sung-han, an analyst at South Korea's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.

"Whoever wins the election, the United States will get tough if North Korea drags its feet in resolving its nuclear problem," Kim said.

North Korea is suspected of delaying six-nation nuclear talks initiated by the Bush administration, hoping that it could get more concessions from Washington through bilateral negotiations with a Kerry administration.

"The debate shows that after the U.S. presidential election, North Korea will become a key target of U.S. foreign policy," a national daily, Chosun Ilbo, said in an editorial. "North Korea must realize that the fact that Kerry embraces bilateral talks with it doesn't mean that if elected, he will accept more North Korean demands."

The difference in approach between the candidates centers on the U.S. administration's view that involving other countries in talks with North Korea will bring more pressure to bear on the isolated country to abandon its nuclear capability. The talks involving North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan have so far yielded little progress.

In Europe, many people had to stay up past 4 a.m. to see the whole debate. In France and Germany, which opposed the Iraq war, Kerry's promise of a multilateral U.S. foreign policy was welcomed.

Germans could not help noticing that Kerry's stand on the Iraq war and his opposition to unilateral attacks is closer to Berlin's stance, Gernot Erler, a senior lawmaker with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats, told n-tv television.

In France, results of a pre-debate poll said nearly 90 percent of French favor Kerry, and one analyst said the reasons why are obvious.

"We are in a logic of 'Anything but Bush,'" Andre Kaspi, an expert on the United States at Paris' Sorbonne University, told the daily newspaper La Croix.

"There is no doubt that international support for the United States has fallen a lot in the last four years - in France particularly, but this is a global trend and it is also very strong in the Arab world."

During the debate, Kerry accused Bush of leaving U.S. alliances around the world "in shatters" and said that as president he would try to win more international support for the war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2004 Associated Press.

posted by me

:: 12:51:00 AM [+] ::
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