Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Back to Messing With Florida
Earlier this month in Florida, where President Bush's brother Jeb is governor, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced it would ask the Department of Justice to investigate whether the state's aborted effort to "use of a flawed database to remove felons from the voter rolls was a deliberate attempt to block some voters from casting ballots." The Miami Herald reported that this year's list "included people, many of them black Democrats, who have had their right to vote restored."
A string of recent declarations from top government officials and Republican party leaders are raising questions about whether the Bush administration is quietly attempting to manipulate voting in the 2004 presidential election. Last week, a GOP lawmaker and co chair of the Bush Cheney '04 Michigan Veterans Leadership Team called recently for his party to "suppress the Detroit vote," making a mockery of President Bush's belated attempt to reach out to African Americans in that city last week. Speaking at the National Urban League, Bush said, "I believe you've got to earn the vote and seek it," but State Rep. John Pappageorge (R) revealed a backup plan in the swing state of Michigan: "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election," he said. It is little secret what Pappageorge meant by the "Detroit vote" while Michigan state is majority white (78 percent), Detroit boasts an overwhelmingly minority population (88 percent). State Sen. Buzz Thomas (D) told reporters, "I'm extremely disappointed in my colleague. That's quite clearly 'code' that they don't want black people to vote in this election."
Friday, July 23, 2004
MEDIA - IMPACT OF FAHRENHEIT 9/11
AP reports that while "Republicans initially dismissed Fahrenheit 9/11 as a cinematic screed that would play mostly to inveterate Bush bashers" conservatives are now worried that the movie is having a serious political impact. Four weeks "and $94 million later, the film is still pulling in moviegoers at 2,000 theaters around the country, making Republicans nervous as it settles into the American mainstream." According to the story, "two senior Republicans closely tied to the White House said the movie from director Michael Moore is seen as a political headache because it has reached beyond the Democratic base. Independents and GOP-leaning voters are likely to be found sitting beside those set to revel in its depiction of a clueless president with questionable ties to the oil industry." The Wall Street Journal earlier this month reported that the movie is even gaining big audiences among the military.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
The U.S. House of Representatives will vote this week on the so-called "Marriage Protection Act" (H.R. 3313), which would deny the Supreme Court and all other federal courts the ability to consider challenges to the anti-gay federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). If this passes, no federal court would ever be able to review one of the most important laws affecting the rights of married couples and their families.
Please send a message to urge him/her to oppose the "Marriage Protection Act" - you can simply hit "Reply" to this message, or click the blue button to send your message.
Sign the Petition to Save YOUR Overtime
In fact, a new study from the Economic Policy Institute predicts that 6 million workers stand to lose their right to overtime pay beginning Aug. 23, when the Bush Fair Labor Standards Act changes are scheduled to take effect. The Bush Administration went forward with the new rules despite widespread concern over its impact from Republicans as well as Democrats. This shouldn't surprise anybody. The fox is in the henhouse at the U.S. Department of Labor. The Bush Labor Department's top spokesperson on overtime pay, Ed Frank, previously worked as the top spokesman for the National Federation of Independent Businessâthe main special interest representing businesses that want to take away workers' overtime pay. This is why it is so important that people take action today. Please click on the link below to send a message to your senators and representatives urging them to block the overtime pay take-away. Congress is going home until September on Friday. It is important to urge them to act today. http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/fax4otpay/ It isn't surprising that businesses are going all out to take away overtime pay. The math on this is pretty stunning. If, for example, the average worker earns $4,000 a year in overtime pay, for every 1 million workers who lose overtime pay this would be a $4 billion windfall for employersâright out of the pockets of working people. (The $4,000 figure is only used as an illustration. Actual overtime pay may be greater or less.) The Bush administration's overtime pay take-away is wholesale looting of the paychecks of working families by an administration beholden to its special interest donors. |
Some Troops Are Quitting Military for Better Contract Pay
Stiffing troops has serious consequences for the stressed military, as some highly trained soldiers are opting out of the system altogether. The New York Times reports, senior Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other elite forces are leaving for higher-paying, more beneficial contractor jobs. "Better salaries, retirement benefits and educational opportunities are among incentives that might help stem the problem, defense officials said as they met with lawmakers to discuss ways to keep forces who have become so crucial to the war on terror."
PAY OUR TROOPS. NOW.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, "Ninety-five percent of soldiers at eight Army Reserve units sent to Iraq and other Middle East bases experienced significant problems getting paid, creating stress and concern about the financial well-being of their families back home." According to a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), "The soldiers were overpaid or underpaid or paid late... and the problems in some instances persisted for more than a year." What this means: not only does ,not paying affect soldiers' performances, it has other ramifications. Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA) "said these issues had been shown to cause troops to decide not to reenlist." Said one unpaid soldier, "How can I, in a combat environment, find out if my 4-month old and my 5 ½-year-old kids are taken care of? I don't want to be rash, but it was like a slap in the face."
DECATUR, Ala. -- At 68, many people are slowing down. Not John Wicks: He's going to Iraq. Wicks, a psychiatrist, has been called out of military retirement by the Army to fill a shortage of mental health experts needed to help soldiers cope with combat. He could be gone as long as a year.
The Army hasn't told Wicks what his exact assignment in Iraq is, or where in the country it will send him.
"I believe that the morale in general is not that good since the scandal at that prison," he said, referring to the allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. "When morale is high, you have fewer of these kinds of problems. And when morale is low you have more."
Wicks, who is beginning a week of training in Texas, will have the rank of colonel. His previous military experience includes two years active duty with the Marines and 18 years in the Alabama National Guard.
Wicks is a veteran of the U.S. war with Iraq in 1991, but his wife said things are different this time.
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WASHINGTON -- Making a tough choice with U.S. troops still in Iraq, the House on Wednesday sided with the chamber's Republican leaders to embrace spending restraint over an expansion of a program to improve family military housing.
In a near party-line 212-211 procedural vote, lawmakers signaled their willingness to remove a $500 million expansion of the housing program from a $10 billion military construction bill for next year.
The housing expansion provision - supported by President Bush, most Democrats and many Republicans - was expected to be formally deleted from the legislation on Thursday.
Hours after the first vote, though, lawmakers underscored the election-year sensitivity of the issue by voting 423-0 for a separate bill doing exactly the opposite - expanding the same family military housing program by $500 million.
The back and forth underscored the GOP's ambivalence about which priority should gain the upper hand, controlling spending or helping the troops during wartime. It also illustrated the party's internal battle between conservatives and moderates, and the balancing act GOP leaders must often perform.
"I hate to say this is a cynical gesture, but it is," Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said after the second vote.
Skelton and others, including several Republicans, said the effort to expand the housing program had a far better chance of becoming law by being included in the must-pass military construction bill.
There are no guarantees that the Senate will ever pass the freestanding measure on housing that the House approved. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, said it would end up in a "trash heap of fig leaves."
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., argued otherwise.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Friday, July 16, 2004
Moore puts amputee in 'F 9/11' without his knowledge
By Jennifer Kovalich, Enterprise staff writer
BROCKTON â Army reservist Peter Damon, the Brockton soldier who lost parts of both arms in the war in Iraq, was surprised to find out recently that he appears in the scathing anti-war film, "Fahrenheit 911," his wife said Wednesday.
A brief film clip of the hospitalized National Guardsman talking to an off-camera interviewer is shown in Michael Moore's documentary, which won the prestigious Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
"He's in there," his wife, Jennifer Damon, said. "I saw it and I told him that he should probably go see it too."
Peter Damon lost his right arm near the shoulder and his left arm above the wrist when a tire he was helping change on a Blackhawk helicopter exploded in Balad, Iraq, on Oct. 21. He now is recuperating at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Jennifer Damon said neither she nor her husband knew film footage of him would be used in Moore's film. "Prior knowledge? No," she said.
Peter Damon planned to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" today and declined comment until afterward.
'They made my life hell for nine months'
(CNN) -- The U.S. Army Thursday dropped its case against a soldier who was initially accused of cowardice after he suffered a panic attack when he saw the bloody corpse of an Iraqi on his second day in the war zone.
The decision to drop the case against Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany came after a Navy doctor last month diagnosed him as suffering from damage to his balance system, most likely caused by Lariam, an anti-malaria drug issued to some troops serving in Iraq.
Hallucinations and panic attacks are among the possible side effects listed by Lariam's manufacturer, Roche Pharmaceuticals.
"The command reviewed all of the information, as well as Staff Sgt. Pogany's medical condition, and decided the best course of action was to drop the charges," said a spokeswoman for the Army Special Forces Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Pogany told CNN in a phone interview Thursday that he wants the military to apologize.
"I think they owe me an apology," he said from Colorado Springs, Colorado. "They made my life hell for nine months."
Pogany was serving as an interrogator with a Special Forces unit when he arrived in Samarra September 29 after what he described as a tense convoy ride through Iraq.
When he went to bed that night, Pogany said, he was soon awakened by the commotion of a returning patrol. That patrol had been ambushed and had returned fire, he said, killing an Iraqi man.
Pogany said he glimpsed the man's mangled remains in an unzipped body bag, and when he later returned to his room he experienced nausea, hallucinations and panic.
"I had what I call a nervous breakdown, and was malfunctioning to the point where I didn't know what was happening," he told CNN in an interview last month.
Pogany said his reaction was so severe that he asked for help from his superiors to deal with the panic attacks. Instead of being given help, he was told to reconsider for the sake of his career.
Whoopi reacts to Slim-Fast axing
16/07/2004 - 19:01:58 
Whoopi Goldberg has defended her choice to attack US president George W Bush which led to her being dropped as a spokeswoman for diet aid company Slim-Fast.
Bosses at Slim-Fast dropped the star from their ad campaign, after admitting they were disappointed in her remarks at last Thursday's star-studded fundraiser for presidential hopeful John Kerry at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
Goldberg caused offence at the event, when, according to the New York Post she "fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia".
An unrepentant Goldberg hit back in a written statement. "Just because I'm no longer in those (commercial) spots, it doesn't mean I will stop talking.
"While I can appreciate what the Slim-Fast people need to do in order to protect their business, I must also do what I need to do as an artist, as a writer and as an American - not to mention as a comic."
"I only wish that the Republican re-election committee would spend as much time working on the economy as they seem to be spending trying to harm my pocketbook."
Airport snoop system thrown in $102m garbage can
The US government has scrapped a controversial $102m airline passenger screening system in favor of an as of yet undefined new system.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge gave word this week of his department's flip-flop on the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening Systems, or CAPPS II, project. CAPPS II was once meant to identify potential evil-doers by snooping through credit card, phone and car registration databases and deciding whether or not a traveller was who he claimed to be. As comforting as this kind of tracking system sounds, it did manage to worry puffy civil liberties freedom fighters. And, in fact, the system proved too difficult to build even with a massive budget at the Homeland Security Department's disposal.
On Wednesday, Ridge joked about a dagger going through the heart of CAPPS II, but his agency scrambled to put a better spin on things by Thursday. The Homeland defenders are now saying they expect to roll out a new automated screening system. They just don't know what this system will look like, how much it will cost or when it will be ready.
The Feds are basically trying to update old identification systems. They want to look out for customers buying airline tickets in cash, making last minute purchases and with dubious records. Now, however, they might have to resort to a system that simply checks names against a record of potential terrorism suspects. And that kind of systems seems hopelessly easy to fool.
The waste of $102m could not come at a worse time either. The General Accounting Office recently issued a scathing report on the Defense Department's failed use of funding. It's also disconcerting to note that Homeland Security has not managed to secure this part of the Homeland nearly three years after the 9-11 attack, especially given the nature of the attack.
Looks like the pants dropping will continue.
RIGHT-WING SMEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOE WILSON CONTINUES
Keying off of disputed conclusions in the recent Senate Intelligence Report, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Washington Times, Ann Coulter, and conservative columnist Robert Novak (who originally perpetrated a leak now under investigation) have released coordinated editorials in an effort to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson. The attempt to focus the debate on Wilson is an effort to deflect scrutiny from "senior administration officials" who illegally blew the cover the of Wilson's wife, an undercover CIA operative. For his part, Wilson has issued a detailed, 6-page rebuttal to the attacks against him. One key point: RNC Chairman Ed Gillsepie claims Wilson's "allegations against the president that have now been proven false." That is blatantly untrue: There is no clear intelligence to support the President's assertions in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger; as the American Progress backgrounder shows, the White House was warned well before the speech by the CIA that the Niger claim was not supported. The White House has conceded that the President's statement was a mistake. Nothing in the Senate Intelligence Report changes that reality.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
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LOS ANGELES - Sources close to Bill Maher report that the comedian and host of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher spent Friday evening arguing with Carolyn Dobson, a prostitute from the London Escorts Agency and a supporter of the Republican Party.
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| Above: Maher escorts Dobson through the W Hotel lobby. |
Dobson and Maher, who occupied an executive suite at the W Hotel, reportedly argued on subjects ranging from the Bush Administration's financial accounting for the Iraq war to its refusal to release records to the public in accordance with the Freedom Of Information Act. The two also engaged in three consensual sex acts, for which the comedian paid $750.
Maher, who was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2001 for his work on ABC's Politically Incorrect, made his first political observation early in the evening. Shortly after entering the hotel room, he turned his attention from Dobson, who was unpacking her bag, to the television screen, where CNN commentator Eleanor Clift appeared on The McLaughlin Group.
Sitting on the edge of the bed and watching the television as he removed his shoes, Maher asked about Dobson's political affiliation. Dobson responded that she did not vote in the last election, but if she had, she would have supported Bush.
"Let me tell you something about Bush's domestic agenda, Carolyn," Maher said. "He doesn't have one. I mean, take a look at his State Of The Union address. Sports coaches need to crack down on athletes' use of steroids? I'm sorry, that's not a vision for America's future. That's a Sports Illustrated op-ed topic."
Dobson said she didn't initially attempt to argue with the winner of four Cable Ace Awards.
"I was getting all my condoms and lubricants and stuff out," Dobson said. "I told him straight sex was $250 and asked him to pick what I should wear. He chose the pink negligee."
While the prostitute phoned Maher's credit-card number into her agency, the quick-witted pundit returned his attention to the television screen, where a news segment showed Bush addressing military personnel at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, FL.
Monday, July 12, 2004
Letterman's Top Ten List: Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit 9/11":
10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing
9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election
8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words
7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported
6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger
5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true
4. Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe
3. Where the hell was Spider-man?
2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth
1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball
Philippines Announces Pullout to Save Iraq Hostage
Filipinos stage a rally outside the presidential palace in Manila to demand the release of an overseas worker held hostage by Iraqi militants July 12, 2004. The Philippines said on Monday it would withdraw its troops from Iraq as soon as possible to save the Filipino hostage threatened with death by militants. CNN quoted unidentified Philippine officials as saying they expected truck driver Angelo de la Cruz to be released on Tuesday, but no independent confirmation was available. Photo by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters 
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Help support Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act
Sign the pledge and make a difference!
On September 25, 2003, Lifetime Television delivered more than 5 million petition signatures to Capitol Hill, urging Congress to ban "drive-through" mastectomies - the practice in which women are forced out of the hospital sometimes only hours after breast cancer surgery. Sign our petition now to help end drive-through mastectomies once and for all.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Moore to MPAA: "Go Fuck Yourself"
Fury as Fahrenheit 9/11 director backs illegal not-for-profit downloads
By Iain S Bruce, Online Editor
Controversial film-maker Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on the internet of pirated copies of his anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and claimed he is happy for anybody to download it free of charge.
The activist, author and director told the Sunday Herald that, as long as pirated copies of his film were not being sold, he had no problem with it being downloaded.
“I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that,” he said.
“I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I’m happy this is happening.”
Moore’s views have not been well received by Hollywood’s establishment, which is fighting a war against the online pirates it claims cost the industry £1.6 billion a year in lost sales.
Jack Valenti, the outgoing president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), said: “We are proud that American films continue to enjoy immense popularity around the world but the need for copyright protection in the digital age is crucial to the preservation of our most prized trade asset.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
By Gina Zotti / June 29, 2004 / Daily Local News
EAST CALN -- She said she didnât scream fire in a crowded theater.
All she did was hand out voter registration forms to movie patrons on their way out of the controversial film "Fahrenheit 9/11" on Saturday night.
Because of that, Lani Frank, of Easttown, doesnât understand why -- or feel it was right -- that she was handcuffed and cited at the Regal Cinemas by police.
State police said Frank was in a place of business and causing a disturbance. They said she refused to leave and, for that, was cited for disorderly conduct. The citation, much like one a person would receive for a traffic violation, is a summary offense.
But, Frank contends that she was not making a disturbance and was on her way to her car before police motioned her back to ask her questions.
