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Today's News and Views

Published on Saturday, July 15, 2006 by the New York Times

Little Separates Public, Private Schools -- Report

Study Finds Worst Performance in Conservative Christian Schools

by Diana Jean Schemo

WASHINGTON - The federal Education Department reported Friday that, in reading and math, children attending public schools generally do as well as or better than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private-school children did better.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools in 2003, also found that conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind public schools when it came to eighth-grade math.

The study, carrying the imprimatur of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department, was contracted to the Educational Testing Service and delivered to the department last year.

It went through a lengthy peer review and includes an extended section of caveats about its limitations, calling such a comparison of public and private schools "of modest utility."

Its release, on a summer Friday, was made without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, the union for millions of teachers, said the findings showed that public schools were "doing an outstanding job" and said that if the results had been favorable to private schools, "there would have been press conferences and glowing statements about private schools."

"The administration has been giving public schools a beating since the beginning" to advance President Bush's political agenda, Weaver said, of promoting charter schools and taxpayer-financed vouchers for private schools as alternatives to failing traditional public schools. A spokesman for the Education Department, Chad Colby, said he did not expect the findings to influence policy. Colby emphasized repeatedly that "an overall comparison of the two types of schools is of modest utility."

"We're not just for public schools or private schools," he said. "We're for good schools."

The study, along with one of charter schools, was commissioned by the former head of the National Center for Education Statistics, Robert Lerner, an appointee of Bush, at a time preliminary data suggested that charter schools, which are given public money but are run by private groups, were doing no better at educating children than traditional public schools.

Proponents of charter schools had said the data did not take into account the predominance of children in their schools who had already had problems in their neighborhood schools.

The two new studies put test scores in context by examining the backgrounds of children in the schools and taking into account factors like race, ethnicity, income and parents' educational backgrounds to make the comparisons more meaningful. The extended study of charter schools has not been released.

Findings favorable to private schools would likely have given a boost to administration efforts to offer children in ailing public schools the option of attending private schools. An Education Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the climate surrounding the report said researchers were "extra cautious" in reviewing the study and were aware of the "political sensitivity" of the issue. The official said the section warning against drawing unsupported conclusions from data was expanded somewhat as the report went through the review process.

The report cautions, for example, against concluding that children do better because of the type of school they're in, as opposed to some unknown factors that might influence performance. It also warned that there was great variation of performance among private schools, making a blanket comparison of public and private schools "of modest utility."

Friday's report examined fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading scores for students attending public, private and religious schools. Students in private schools typically score higher than those in public schools, a finding confirmed in Friday's study. The report then dug deeper to compare students of like racial, economic and social backgrounds. When it did that, the private-school advantage disappeared in all areas except eighth-grade reading.

The report separated private schools by type, and found that among private-school students, those in Lutheran schools did best, while those in conservative Christian schools did worst. For example, in eighth-grade reading, children in conservative Christian schools did no better than comparable children in public schools.

In eighth-grade math, children in Lutheran schools did significantly better than children in public schools, but those in conservative Christian schools fared worse.

Two weeks ago, the American Federation of Teachers, on its Web log, predicted that the report would be released on a Friday, suggesting that the Bush administration saw it as "bad news to be buried at the bottom of the news cycle."

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July 18, 2006

Bush’s Policy Chit-Chat: Undiplomatic Prose

By JIM RUTENBERG

STRELNA, Russia, July 17 — For anyone who has ever wondered what President Bush sounds like when the microphones are off, the answer, at least at lunchtime on Monday, was blunt to the point of profane, laced with a wiseguy edge and, like anyone forced to make small talk, willing to fall back on safe topics like air travel.

Mr. Bush was munching on a roll during lunch with his fellow world leaders on the final day of the Group of 8 summit meeting here as his unguarded comments were picked up by an open microphone and overheard by gleeful journalists.

Whether the cause was poor staff work by the Russian hosts or something more calculated, the result was more interesting and revealing than the catalog of official statements the leaders had issued during their talks here in this St. Petersburg suburb, at the Konstantinovsky Palace.

Using a vulgarity, Mr. Bush said at one point that Syria should get Hezbollah to stop its attacks on Israel, describing American policy in the kind of unfettered language that he acknowledged only weeks ago sometimes gets him in trouble when he uses it publicly.

Discussing diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, Mr. Bush said the approach favored by Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, “seems odd.” Referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Mr. Bush said he “felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad, make something happen.”

The microphone caught him discussing global trade talks, his impatience with long speeches, even his preference for Diet Coke. For four minutes, the world was given an unscripted look at how he does business with his international counterparts, especially Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who, apparently alert to the peril, brought the episode to a conclusion by turning the microphone off.

But not before Mr. Bush disclosed that he would send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East and needled Mr. Blair about a recent birthday gift.

“No, I’m just going to make it up,” Mr. Bush said in one aside, presumably to an aide, apparently referring to remarks he would be making to the other leaders. “I’m not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long.”

Ms. Rice was subject to a similar unwitting public airing of her views last month in Moscow, when someone forgot to turn off a microphone while she was having lunch with Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister.

Mr. Bush’s unscripted side has been put on public display before, as when his unflattering description of a reporter for The New York Times was picked up by a microphone at one of his campaign events in 2000.

But this one caught him in interactions with other leaders, mixing the banal with matters of war and peace. Those at the lunch were the leaders of the Group of 8 industrial nations — France, Germany, Japan, the United States, Russia, Britain, Italy and Canada — as well as those of China, India and Brazil, among others.

[Asked about the incident later aboard Air Force One as Mr. Bush flew home, Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said the president’s “reaction first was, ‘What did it say?’ So we showed him the transcript, then he rolled his eyes and laughed.” Mr. Snow said Mr. Bush “likes Kofi Annan” and “has been supportive from the very start of the U.N. mission to the region.”]

In the taped conversation, Mr. Bush, clearly eager to get home to the White House after six days in Europe, is heard saying, apparently to a counterpart, possibly President Hu Jintao of China, who was sitting next to him, possibly President Validimir V. Putin of Russia, his host, “Good job, gotta keep this thing moving — I gotta leave at 2:15 — you’ll want me out of town so to free up your security forces.” His counterpart agrees, “Ya,” and he laughs along with Mr. Bush’s trademark giggle.

But Mr. Bush sighs, and explains, “Gotta go home, got something to do.”

Then, more likely to Mr. Hu, he asks: “Where you going? Home? This is your neighborhood; it won’t take you long to get home.”

The response cannot be heard, but Mr. Bush exclaims, “You get home in 8 hours? Me too! Russia is a big country, and you’re a big country.”

A moment later, Mr. Bush can be heard saying to a waiter, “No, not Coke, Diet Coke.”

But it is around then that Mr. Blair walks by, and the president yells out, “Yeah, Blair, what are you doing? Leaving?” It is the beginning of a conversation contrasting Mr. Blair’s soft-spoken style to Mr. Bush’s more forceful one, with Mr. Bush often interrupting him.

After Mr. Blair raises the issues of global trade talks, Mr. Bush abruptly changes the subject to a recent gift from the prime minister for Mr. Bush’s 60th birthday. “Thanks for the sweater, awfully thoughtful of you,” Mr. Bush says, then jokes, “I know you picked it out yourself.”

Mr. Blair, laughing, says, “Oh, absolutely, absolutely.”

Mr. Bush again abruptly changes the subject to the most serious matter of the meetings here, the Middle East. “What about Kofi?” he says, referring to Mr. Annan. “That seems odd.”

After a day in which aides stressed they had achieved international unity here on the Middle East violence, Mr. Bush complained about Mr. Annan’s approach to the crisis, and for holding a view shared by some of the leaders here that Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah should cease fire and hash out their differences. The Americans have said that Israel will probably stand down only if Hamas and Hezbollah return the soldiers they have captured and cease their shelling of Israeli towns.

“I don’t like the sequence of it,” Mr. Bush said. “His attitude is basically, cease fire and everything else happens.”

Pregnancy Centers Found to Give False Information on Abortion

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; A08

Federally funded "pregnancy resource centers" are incorrectly telling women that abortion results in an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility and deep psychological trauma, a minority congressional report charged yesterday.

The report said that 20 of 23 federally funded centers contacted by staff investigators requesting information about an unintended pregnancy were told false or misleading information about the potential risks of an abortion.

The pregnancy resource centers, which are often affiliated with antiabortion religious groups, have received about $30 million in federal money since 2001, according to the report, requested by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). The report concluded that the exaggerations "may be effective in frightening pregnant teenagers and women and discouraging abortion. But it denies the teenagers and women vital health information, prevents them from making an informed decision, and is not an accepted public health practice."

A spokeswoman for one of the two large networks of pregnancy resource centers, Sterling-based Care Net, said that the report is "a routine attack on us that's nothing new."

Care Net's Molly Ford said the centers criticized by Waxman received federal grants for abstinence-only programs they conduct, but not for pregnancy counseling. "The funds are kept entirely separate," she said.

Ford said, however, that she agrees with pregnancy counselors who tell women that abortion may increase the risk of breast cancer, infertility and a condition described by antiabortion groups as "post-abortion syndrome."

"We have many studies that show significant medical problems associated with abortion," she said.

Those studies are at odds with mainstream medical opinion. An expert panel of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), for instance, concluded in 2003 that an "abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer." The experts said their conclusion was "well established" by the evidence.

The report, from the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee, found that counselors at eight of the centers told callers that abortion substantially increases the risk of breast cancer. Some counselors also said the psychological effects of abortion are severe and long-lasting, while research generally has found that severe stress reactions are no more common after an abortion than after giving birth.

President Bush has been an advocate for pregnancy resource centers and for abstinence-only sex education. Few of the pregnancy resource centers -- formerly called crisis pregnancy centers -- received any federal funding before 2001. Care Net's Ford said there are now about 2,000 centers in the United States and Canada.

Waxman has been a critic of many Bush administration women's health programs, including a 2002 reference on an NCI Web site suggesting that there was serious debate about whether abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. As a result, the NCI brought together experts to review existing data and came up with its conclusion that no abortion-breast cancer association exists. The statement was later deleted from the NCI Web site.

Last year, Waxman initiated a study of a government Web site intended to help parents and teenagers make "smart choices" about sexual activity. A team of medical experts who reviewed the Web site said it included inaccurate or misleading information that could alienate some families or prompt riskier behavior.

Jane Hamsher: Report From the Lamont/Lieberman Front

Jane Hamsher

Sat Jul 15, 10:25 PM ET

I'm in Connecticut right now where the ground war between the campaigns of Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman grows ever more contentious. There is a general sense that Lieberman is getting desperate but the money he has to spend is formidable, and Lamont will have to compensate by inspiring his followers to action.

. Anything But Substance: Lieberman merde-flinger and campaign manager Sean Smith (who in the past has acknowledged Lieberman was out of touch with Connecticut voters and spent too much time in Washington, DC to be aware of local radio shows) desperately tried to distract from the real issues in a debate against Lamont campaign manager Tom Swan, who says Lieberman's new "Kiss My Ring" party is a vanity party no different than vanity license plates. Watch Swan get pissed at the smug lies: "The last candidate who tried these cheap political gimicks was John Rowland." (If you don't know who Rowland was, here you go.) If Lamont actually wins this race, most folks will credit the "W" to Swan. Watch him on the YouTube above (thanks to Scarce).

. Desperation: The New York Times has a portrait of Lieberman up that makes him look like such a sad, desperate loser you almost feel sorry for him. That Judas kiss? Killing him. Then his colleagues come out and start patting his hand and calling him a "great man" and talking about what delicate flower he is:

p>Friends say his predicament has left Mr. Lieberman nervous, dispirited and angry, a portrait of a politician stunned to face opponents as passionate in their loathing of his principles as he is proud of them....Mr. Lieberman's allies discuss him these days with a tinge of sadness, as if mourning a kindly gentleman who has wandered into a bad neighborhood.

This is the man who told rape victims to take a hike. Have they actually read any of his campaign literature? Honestly the bubble these people live in is staggaring. (And BTW, you'd think people in leadership positions would be too ashamed to cop to this wimp-o-rama.) As Greg Sargent notes, "It even quotes Lieberman blaming his staff for one of his political screw-ups." It's a pity festival, that's for sure.

. Meanwhile, the local press shows that they are light years ahead of their national counterparts when it comes to covering this race. While the NYT clutches pearls, David Lightman of the Courant dismantles Holy Joe's claims about his progressive voting record:

By the numbers, Joe Lieberman is a true, consistent Democrat.

He votes with Democratic colleagues almost all the time. His record gets him high marks from interest groups close to the party, from the AFL-CIO to the NAACP.

But dig beneath the votes and there's plenty of ammunition for critics - including primary challenger Ned Lamont - who say Lieberman has a habit of straying from the party when it suits him.

He broke with the region's Democratic senators on a key energy vote last year. He has embraced a position on Iraq that few Democrats share. He has questioned bedrock Democrat-backed programs such as affirmative action and Social Security. He voted against a filibuster that could have blocked the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

And just this week the senator launched his own political party so he can still run in November even if Democratic voters rebuff him in the Aug. 8 primary.

Holy Joe offers up some "courage of my convictions" blather but it's less than convincing. He votes with his own party when it doesn't matter, and sides with the GOP to savage progressive causes when it does and the scorecards he quotes do not reflect this obvious fact. Kudos to Lightman for highlighting that.

. CEOs For Lieberman: The Journal-Inquirer recently had a good article about how Lieberman tried to fob off bundled contributions from defense industry contractor employees as "individual contributions" in a fundraising letter to his supporters. The military industrial complex certainly knows how to get it's money's worth, doesn't it?

It should be interesting to watch the arrival of Maxine Waters when she comes to town to stump for Lamont, who was very warmly received in a local African-American church last night. Lieberman, on the other, hand, has alienated African-American voters of Connecticut who claim they haven't seen him for 18 years, and his acceptance of contributions from Choicepoint (the firm that worked hand-in-hand with Katherine Harris to purge African American voters from the Florida voter rolls in 2000) is probably going to speak much louder than any of his claims to have participated in civil rights marches in the 60s that his supporters keep echoing.

. Raphael J. Sonenshein, writing in the Jewish World Journal, has one of the more insightful articles about Lieberman's complicity with the Bushies you are likely to read:

The Bush-Cheney team reviles Democrats of all stripes, whether left, right or center. Bush, however, has a long history of picking out and cultivating individual Democrats, like a wolf culling a weak sheep from the safety of the flock. That way, no concessions need to be made to Democrats, generally, while the impression of bipartisanship remains.

On Medicare, Bush played on Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) ego to get the reform ball rolling, and then cut him out of the negotiations over the final Republican bill. For a while, the tame Democrat was Sen. Zell Miller (news, bio, voting record) of Georgia, until he began to look like a nut case.

And now, the best catch of all has been the eyes-wide-shut Lieberman who, unlike the others, has built a career out of being the wise and thoughtful centrist revered by the media talking heads.

Lieberman seems to be genuinely baffled and indeed petulant that his fellow Democrats won't let him have it both ways: To say he is a strong Democrat with a largely progressive record and to work hand-in-glove with the White House to denigrate his own long-suffering and battered party.

Well worth the click through, the article concludes "this is really about the consequences of Lieberman wanting to have his cake and eat it, too."

. Spreading the Misery: The Journal Inquirer also has a good piece up about how Lieberman has put Chris Dodd's nuts in a vise with his sad desperation:

If Lamont wins by a small margin, Dodd may not feel pressured to speak out much in the race. But if Lamont wins by a healthy margin, Dodd may be asked to support Lamont.

Pelto added that Connecticut's Democratic candidates for U.S. House also may not appreciate Lieberman waging an independent campaign and drawing voters' gaze off the Democratic line in the voting booth.

I've said it before but I'll say it again -- the Dems running for Congress are extremely angry and Holy Joe's Cut-and-Run campaign. I wrote about it here, but it bears repeating: Joe's selfishness puts three hotly contested Congressional seats at risk, and threatens Democratic control of Congress in November.

. Millionaire Joe plays the class card: Desperate to keep the focus off his record, Lieberman has been trying to switch attention over to Ned Lamont's personal finances. So Joe Conason quite fairly asks -- why won't Lieberman release client list of his pharmaceutical lobbyist wife Hadassah? It's especially relevant in light of Joe's big bucks donations from Big Pharma and his enthusiastic support of regressive drug legislation that hurts consumers, especially old people. It's also notable that Hadassah's firm, Hill and Knowlton, are the ones who completely fabricated the story about Iraqi soldiers snatching babies out of incubators and killing them during the first Gulf War. That's some high moral ground.

. Lieberman's college roomate writes a letter to the LA Times, saying he no longer thinks Joe is worthy of support.

. Battle of the Yard Signs: Lieberman is definitely losing. Overheard at an event recently, "If this boils down to a competition over the most lawn signs, it'll be Ned vs. Coldwelll Banker."

Jane Hamsher will be covering the Lamont/Lieberman race daily at firedoglake.com

Progressive Daily Beacon Opinion Piece

How Long Must This Go On

A. Alexander, July 16th, 2006

When will we learn? How long will the people of the world continue to allow their rulers to divide us by nation, religion, color, and wealth? How long must the insanity continue before we realize that everyone has more in common than not, and that we have all been the useful dupes of the moneyed and powerful?

How long must this go on?

How many more brutal and bloody millennia must tick by before "We the People" -- not only "We the People" of America, but rather "We the People" of the planet -- come to our senses and realize that from the start, we've all been played for fools? Let's be honest about religion: Religion is, as has been said, the opiate of the masses. It is by design the pacifier given to those "without" by those "with", so the "have nots" won't rise up and take from those who "have". Religion is the original trickery promised by those "with" to those "without" so that they could say, "Though, you may have nothing in this pathetic and sorry life, and we have it all - when life ends and death comes, you will have it all and we'll have nothing. Therefore, look not to take 'ours' from us in this life, but be patient and when you die, 'it' and more shall all be yours." Truly, if anyone takes the time to ponder it, a very convenient notion given to the "have nots" by the "have it alls".

How long must this go on?

But that hasn't been the only purpose of religion. The powerful "haves" have made great use of religion as the means to con the "have nots" into fighting, dying, and taking from others praying to a different version of the same old lies; and giving to the "haves" that which is taken by the "have nots" from those praying in a different direction or to a different version of the same old lies.

How long must this go on?

None of this is to say there isn't some great and mysterious "life force" guiding the ebb and flow of the Universe. Whether one chooses to call that force "God" or "Allah" or "Jesus" or, for that matter, "Scooby-Doo" doesn't matter. When the pageantry, manipulative words, and outright lies are distilled from the world's religions down to the essence of whatever force or laws guide the Universe, it comes down to this: Whatever the name, it is all the same.

It is all the same and slapping the heading "Islam" or "Judaism" or "Christianity" or, for that matter, "Buddhism" on that force will not and does not alter nor change the underlying reality of that force. The only thing the label changes are for whom we are willing to sacrifice our lives. But it doesn't change the reality of whatever that Universal "life force" is or isn't.

Changing the name of that "life force" to "Allah" or "God" or "Jesus" doesn't alter the reality inherent in that Universal truth. Labeling the mysteries surrounding and contained within that Universal "life force" as being "Christian" or "Jewish" or "Islamic" also does not change a single reality.

No matter what the force is called or under which banner it is carried - mass still falls toward earth, the planet does not change its direction of spin, and there are still only so many hours, minutes, and seconds of daylight. Life continues to be created and at the moment of conception even that newly created life begins its march toward death and will one day cease to exist. Most important of all, however, is the fact that killing those that huddle beneath a different banner and in the name of our false understanding of the Universal truth - will forever be wrong. Don't you see, the names change nothing...except for you, I, and we?

How long must this go on?

The names given to the Universal "life force" or, if one prefers, "God" or "Allah" has changed nothing in reality save for it has served to make you hate me, me hate you, and we hate others. The only thing that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam has changed in this entire Universe, is that it made you different and separate from me and we.

How long must this go on?

Did you come to a personal understanding of the force(s) guiding and directing this Universe, or did someone with an agenda tell you what that/those force(s) was/were called and, too, how you should perceive that/those force(s)? Were you from birth Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Catholic, Shia, Baptist, Protestant, or Shiite or did someone tell you that is what and who you were? Who told you? Who told them? And who told those that told they who told them that told you? Why were they told that told them that told you what they were told -- what and whose purpose did all this telling ultimately serve?

When they that told them that told you, told you what they had been told by all the "thems" before - what one Universal truth did all that telling change? Did the sun suddenly stop rising in the East and setting in the West? Did the moon no longer hold sway over the ebb and flow of the oceans? Did one bird that flew before suddenly cease to fly at all? Did even one hair on the head of a single man, woman, or child change its color? Did the pain and suffering in the world stop, or did it only get worse? Did this telling and retelling bring one moment of peace, love, and understanding - or did it defer all until some unknown great beyond and time wherein you will no longer exist? Well, they that told them that told you did promise that you will exist in that murky time heretofore and never to be seen. They did promise you that, didn't they?

They that told them that told you promised that if you do the things they said to do then, of course, when that "someday" finally comes that never comes, then you will reap the benefits of that promised day to come that never comes. Isn't that how it went? Isn't that how they said it would all work out? If you believe only and exactly thus, turn a blind eye to those that rule and bring pain, kill in the name of whatever deity they told you to kill for - that in the end your existence would finally be one of peace and joy, isn't that what they that told them told you?

Didn't they tell you there is "only one true God" and that only they that told them that told you knew, understood, and had a monopoly on that one "true God" and, therefore, it was your duty to -- whenever they said so -- kill anyone with a different understanding of their version of the "one true God"? Isn't that how it all went down...when they that told them that told you who you were, isn't that how it all played out?

How long must this go on?

So, now you are Islamic or Christian or Jewish - and what has changed? What has changed? Does the rain no longer fall on your head? Will lightning cease to strike? Will hurricanes stop blowing? Did the stars suddenly become brighter? Has the Universe become bigger, smaller, stayed the same, or imploded because you were told who and what you were?

Now, that you have been told which banner you must carry - have there been more babies killed or fewer? Has a single man or woman not been tortured because of that banner you've been told to carry? How much justice, since you've been told who and what you are, has been increased in this world? More importantly - since they that told them that told you who and what you are, told you who and what you are...did it increase or decrease the number of people you can potentially love and share with your existence? Or did it serve only to make you different than me and we?

How long must this go on?

How long will we continue to hate one another and kill one another because of what they that told them that told us, told us? How long will we slaughter one another because Bush, Blair, Howard, Harper, bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il, Hu Jintao, Putin, the Pope, an Imam, or Rabbi said we must?

How long must this go on?

How many more battles at Wounded Knee, Trail of Tears, Auschwitz and Birkenau, Darfur, Tiananmen Square, Mai Lai, Haditha, gulags, Palestinian refugee camps, Munich Olympics, Crusades, Inquisitions, football (soccer) stadium beheadings, abu-Ghraib, Guantanamo, Salem Witch Trials, Bande and Malmedy, purges, Ethiopian famines, and literally millions of other crimes against "We the People" will it take before you, I, and we finally decide this cannot go on?

How long must this go on?

How long will it be before "We the People" truly understand that when a thug puts a bullet in the head of a man in Darfur simply because he is somehow considered "different than", or a woman in Afghanistan or Pakistan is raped simply because a man's religion presumes to give him that "right", or Israel fires rockets into a Palestinian's house, or a Palestinian warlord convinces a child to strap a bomb on and that child kills Israeli women and children, or that when a member of the Saudi Royal Family denies equal rights to his people, or when George W. Bush orders a Muslim tortured, or when a Chinese student is imprisoned for daring to honor the fallen at Tiananmen, or when a single right is taken from a person simply for being gay, or when the people of North Korea starve so Jong-Il can build a nuclear bomb and feed his army, or when Putin chokes off the free press in Russia - how long will it be before you, I, and we understand these are not crimes against "them", but crimes against us all? Crimes against "We the People"!

How long must this go on?

How long will it be before you, I, and we understand that there are no "Muslims" or "Jews" or "Christians" or "Africans" or "Chinese" or "faggots" or "niggers" or "Chinks" or "infidels" or "sinners" or "dikes" or "kikes" or "terrorists" or "patriots" or "retards" or "bastards" or "whores" or "sluts" or "target markets" or "demographics" or "Tories" or "Liberals" or "commies" or "capitalists" or "Baptists" or "Catholics" or "Shias" or "Shiites" or "white" or "yellow" or "black" or "red" or "them" or "enemies" -- there is only us. There is only "We the People" of the planet Earth.

How long must this go on?

How long will "We the People" allow ancient doctrine, prejudice, hatred, and imperialistic notions of taming the "savage" continue to play-out? How many more times will "We the People" face East and pray to a giant rock, or bend our knees in a pew and pray to a statue upon the wall, or rock back and forth before an ancient wall chanting -- all being done in the name of delivering us from what? To save us from what? To protect us from whom? From one another! All this praying that they who told them that told us we must do in order to be safe -- from one another.

How long must this go on?

How much longer must the Jew pray to his or her version of "God" to give them the strength to kill the person of Islamic faith? How long must the Shia pray to "Allah" to help him or her overcome the Shiite? How long must the Christian pray to "Jesus" for the power to slaughter the Islamic heathen? How long must the Christian pray to "God" to protect them from the Jew who refuses to accept that the "Christ-child" really exists? How much longer must the Islamic man pray to "Allah" for the ability to conquer the Christian and Jew? How long must all this praying for the ability to kill one another go on before "We the People" realize its all been said, prayed, and done before...and nothing ever changes?

How long must this go on?

All this praying, hoping, and clinging to some great promise of some great time that never comes, for what? All this praying by the Jew, Christian, and Islamic people of faith to have the strength to kill one another, for what? So the moneyed and powerful can keep you, I, and we from asking, "what about us?" All this praying as we've been told by they that told them that told us, so that "We the People" will continue to see one another not as brothers and sisters sharing more in common than we have differences, but so that when the moneyed and powerful tell us to do so, "We the People" cannibalize one another.

How long must this go on?

When will we learn? How long will the people of the world continue to allow their rulers to divide us by nation, religion, color, and wealth? How long must the insanity continue before you, I, and we realize that everyone shares more in common than not and, too, that we have all been the useful dupes of the moneyed and powerful?

How long must this go on?

Posted on Sun, Jul. 16, 2006

Fletcher takes beating in GOP poll
69% would prefer someone else as governor

By Ryan Alessi
HERALD-LEADER POLITICAL WRITER

FRANKFORT -- A Republican Party-commissioned poll shows that more than two-thirds of respondents want someone other than Ernie Fletcher to be governor, and said that even his acquittal or dismissal of legal charges wouldn't help their views of the state's embattled chief executive.

The Washington-based pollster Jan R. van Lohuizen, who has done work for the campaigns of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and Fletcher, described the results in a memo as "devastating" for the Republican governor.

Of the 500 respondents from across the state, 69 percent said they wanted to give someone else a chance to be governor, while just 25 percent thought Fletcher deserved re-election.

Only 38 percent approved of Fletcher's job performance, while 56 percent disapproved.

And 44 percent blamed Fletcher primarily "for scandals in Frankfort." Democratic Attorney General Greg Stumbo, who has led the probe into the Fletcher administration's hiring practices, was blamed by 14 percent.

"In my view, the findings also suggest that the public wants to get this whole thing behind it as quickly as possible, in effect suggesting a 'pox on both their houses' -- get it over with and get back to the business of solving the problems facing the state," the pollster, van Lohuizen, wrote in a memo along with the poll.

The poll results, obtained by the Herald-Leader yesterday, were distributed to Republican officials in Frankfort, including Fletcher, as well as the GOP members of the congressional delegation and the Republican Party chairmen of each of the six congressional districts. Questions were asked between June 25 and 29. The poll had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Fletcher's chief of staff, Stan Cave, noted that the poll numbers showed a 10 percent increase in approval from a poll conducted last month by an independent tracking group, SurveyUSA.

"Given that the administration has been under a constant barrage for two years from a liberal press and that we've done nothing to combat that with paid media, it is remarkable that the governor has a 38 percent approval rating," Cave said in an interview before repeating a similar line about the "liberal media" 11 more times.

But perhaps the worst news for Fletcher is that shedding his legal troubles might not even help his re-election bid in 2007.

Fletcher was indicted in May on three misdemeanor charges related to the ongoing hiring investigation.

Cave has said publicly that he expects the charges to be dismissed, which could allow the governor to turn his political fortunes around.

But those asked by the pollsters didn't think so.

Sixty-five percent said that if Fletcher were acquitted it would "make no difference." Sixteen percent said they'd view Fletcher more favorably, while another 16 percent said they'd have a less favorable impression of him.

Even of the Republicans polled, a slightly higher percentage said an acquittal wouldn't change anything.

Virtually the same numbers also held true in the poll when people were asked about the charges being dismissed by the courts. This time, 60 percent said it wouldn't matter, while 14 percent thought it would help and 23 percent said it would hurt their view of him.

Cave said he would throw out the results from the dismissal question because it's "counter-intuitive" that so many people would have a less favorable opinion of Fletcher than they did before.

"I think that is proof that those polled did not understand that question," he said. "You can't make sense out of that answer."

But the pollster had a different interpretation.

"It is less about whether the governor is guilty or innocent, acquitted or not, it is more about ending the political theatre as quickly as possible," van Lohuizen wrote.

"Combined with the very high percent of voters who say they would vote to give someone else a chance to do better, this is very bad news indeed," he concluded in the memo addressed to Republican Party Chairman Darrell Brock.

Brock, when contacted late yesterday about the poll, declined to comment.

The results also show that Fletcher could be a drag on Republican legislative candidates running this fall.

Thirty-seven percent said they would vote against General Assembly candidates who bring in Fletcher for a campaign event. Just 12 percent said they would be more likely to support a candidate who brought in Fletcher.

Another question asked whether the respondents would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported Fletcher or one who wanted to hold the governor accountable.

Half of the people said they'd go with the candidate who sought to hold Fletcher accountable. Thirty-two percent preferred someone who would back Fletcher.

Van Lohuizen wrote that Republicans running in majority Democratic districts are "at risk of getting caught up in the negative reaction to Governor Fletcher."

Still, a majority of respondents said they would make voting decisions on a case-by-case basis.

"To the extent that Republicans make the fall elections about local issues and Republican accomplishments rather than about the 'mess in Frankfort,' they improve their ability to emerge successfully," van Lohuizen's memo said.

Overall, Cave said such poll numbers have little effect on Fletcher's re-election bid because the governor still draws large crowds at events and "support is increasing." Fletcher's re-election campaign brought in $372,225 in two weeks, surpassing expectations.

Republican Senate President David Williams said the week before these poll numbers were released that Fletcher needs to weigh empirical evidence.

"He's an adult. He can read the polls. And he can make his own decisions," he said. "And if someone wants to stand forward and challenge him in a primary, that will determine whether he can win."

Tomgram: Bush's Faith and the Middle East Aflame

This post can be found at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=101850

The Force Is Not with Them

The Middle East Aflame and the Bush Administration Adrift
By Tom Engelhardt

So, as the world spins on a dime, where exactly are we?

As a man who is no fan of fundamentalists of any sort, let me offer a proposition that might make some modest sense of our reeling planet. Consider the possibility that the most fundamental belief, perhaps in all of history, but specifically in these last catastrophic years, seems to be in the efficacy of force -- and the more of it the merrier. That deep belief in force above all else is perhaps the monotheism of monotheisms, a faith remarkably accepting of adherents of any other imaginable faith – or of no other faith at all. Like many fundamentalist faiths, it is also resistant to drawing any reasonable lessons from actual experience on this planet.

The Bush administration came to power as a fundamentalist regime; and here I'm not referring to the Christian fundamentalist faith of our President. After all, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and our Vice President seem not to be Christian fundamentalists any more than were Paul Wolfowitz or Douglas Feith. Bush's top officials may not have agreed among themselves on whether End Time would arrive, or even on the domestic social issues of most concern to the Christian religious right in this country, but they were all linked by a singular belief in the efficacy of force.

In fact, they believed themselves uniquely in possession of an ability to project force in ways no other power on the planet or in history ever could. While hardly elevating the actual military leadership of the country (whom they were eager to sideline), they raised the all-volunteer American military itself onto a pedestal and worshipped it as the highest tech, most shock-and-awesome institution around. They were dazzled by the fact that it was armed with the smartest, most planet-spanning, most destructive set of weapons imaginable, and backed by an unparalleled military-industrial complex as well as a "defense" budget that would knock anyone's socks off (and their communications systems down). It was enough to dazzle the administration's top officials with dreams of global domination; to fill them with a vision of a planet-wide Pax Americana; to send them off to the moon (which, by the way, was certainly militarizable).

Force, then, was their idol and they bowed down before it. When it came to the loosing of that force (and the forces at their command), they were nothing short of fervent utopians and blind believers. They were convinced that with such force (and forces), they could reshape the world in just about any way they wanted to fit their visionary desires.

And then, of course, came 9/11, the "Pearl Harbor" of this century. Suddenly, they had a divine wind at their back, a terrified populace before them ready to be led, and everything they believed in seemed just so… well, possible. It was, in faith-based terms, a godsend. Not surprisingly, they promptly began to prepare to act in the stead of an imperially angry god and to bring the world -- particularly its energy heartlands -- to heel.

First, however, because they had long been People of the Word, they created their sacred texts, their doctrine. In the form of "preventive war" and keeping other potential superpowers or blocs of powers from ever rising up to challenge the United States, they enshrined force at the apex of their pantheon of deities in their National Security Strategy of 2002. (The term "preventive war" was in itself reasonably unique. Usually even the most aggressive dictators don't label their planned wars with terms that creep right up to the edge of "aggressive" and then promote them that way to the world.) At the same time, the President then began speaking out about the need not to wait until the threat of destruction was upon us as in his 2002 State of the Union Address where he said: "We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

Soon enough, his advisors began raising Iraqi mushroom clouds over American cities and describing fantasy Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles that might spray those cities with chemical or biological weapons in order to make an already scared populace and cowed Congress into believers as well. This was, of course, in the period when their long-time supporters and a supportive corps of pundits, radio talk-show hosts, and communicators of various sorts were speaking proudly, even boastfully, about the United States as the sole "hyperpower" on the planet or the globe's New Rome; when even a liberal Canadian commentator, Michael Ignatieff, could publish a piece in the New York Times Magazine extolling George Bush's U.S. as "a new invention in the annals of political science, an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known." He wrote as well of the necessity of Americans shouldering the "burden of empire" in Iraq. (Historically, there's only one such "burden," by the way – and it's Rudyard Kipling's nineteenth century "white man's burden.")

Those, of course, were the good times when "neoconservatism" (partially a shorthand term for this religious bent, for the love of "the most awesome military power the world has ever known") was truly ascendant. That term was also shorthand for an imperial mission to be shouldered by officials convinced that our empire should stand tall, alone, and on one leg -- the leg of "force."

In any case, having enshrined "preventive war" at the heart of the Bush Doctrine, they went in search of someplace to loose it on the world, someplace that might look militarily strong enough and heinous enough, but would be weak enough to make a point fast. They needed a roguish country, preferably run by a nasty dictator, preferably smack in the oil heartlands of the globe, that could be taken down quickly as a demonstration of that "awesome military power," a place that could be shock-and-awed into instant submission. It would be both a cakewalk and a case in point for the rest of the region about what a group of determined fundamentalists might do to anyone who opposed their religion and their wishes.

Well, we know the place; we know how they first shock-and-awed Congress and the American people into an invasion; and we all remember how they put their plan into practice -- with a confidence and lack of planning for any alternative possibilities or realities that was typical of true believers. And so, on March 20, 2003, they loosed their cruise-missile-styled lightning bolts on Baghdad because they knew one thing -- that the force was with them and that, because the United States was the military superpower of all superpowers in all of history, it was theirs alone…

Stock and Awe: The Force of an Anxious Market

Now, let's jump a few familiar years ahead on our fast-spinning, wobbly globe and see if we can land on the present moment, July 16, 2006. In the process, let's also take a little spin through our "empire lite," that vaunted New Rome, that Pax Americana as it's developed since the Bush administration decided to "take the gloves off," and apply its power fully and brutally from Iraq to Guantanamo. In fact, let's do a fly-by of what the neocons' once called "the arc of instability" three years later:

In Afghanistan, as an ABC network news journalist touring American bases reported the other night, American officers are begging for more troops. (The Brits, just taking over in the south, are already desperately sending them in!) This is a response to the "eradicated" Taliban unexpectedly ramping up their force levels; narco-warlords growing ever more entrenched; the security situation in the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere deteriorating; and American bombing runs (including the use of B-52s) increasing. Force has truly become the arbiter of Afghanistan's terrible fate.

The situation has, in fact, deteriorated so rapidly in the Bush administration's model "nation-building" project that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on a quick dash through sunny Tajikistan last week, suggested that bad news, looked at in another light, might actually be splendid tidings. According to David S. Cloud of the New York Times, "Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged that the number of Taliban attacks may be up this year. But he said the increasingly brazen tactics had made it easier for American, Afghan and NATO forces to find them. ‘Every time they come together,' he said, 'they get hit and they get hurt. So the fact that we see a somewhat different method of operation during this period is correct, but it has not necessarily been disadvantageous because the more that are in one place, the easier they are to attack.'"

For a while, back in 2003-04, when things began to go sour in Iraq, various neocons suggested that the country might providentially prove to be a kind of global "flypaper" drawing all the terrorists to one spot for what, in near biblical terms, would prove to be a terrorist-zapping Armageddon. The theory was quietly dropped into the dustbin of history when only its first half proved accurate; but here it is back with us again in devolving Afghanistan and on the lips of our Secretary of Defense because… well, the idea of overwhelming force solving all problems just feels so good and sounds so right to a believer when things are going so wrong.

In the former flypaper-land of Iraq, the Bush administration's application of full-frontal force has, by now, released every two-bit sectarian thug, death-squad killer, jihadi fanatic, and angry rebel onto the streets of the capital, Baghdad -- where perhaps a fifth or more of the country's population lives -- armed to the teeth and ready to maim, mutilate, torture, and kill. Not surprisingly, overwhelming, shock-and-awe force has released a nightmare of counterforce there that has shoved every other, more peaceable possible way of doing or thinking about anything into the shade and onto the sidelines (if not simply into the morgue).

In the wake of the killing of Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, a potential turning-of-the-tide moment, according to our President, the Iraqi capital, in particular, has been drenched in a high tide of blood; and, despite all the talk about possible "draw-downs" of American troops, commanding general George W. Casey, Jr. has just called for yet more American soldiers to be sent into the lawless, uncontrollable capital. At the same time, in America's fantasy Iraq, a single, relatively quiet southern province bordering Saudi Arabia has just been officially "turned over" to the charge of Iraqi security forces and the act declared a "milestone" by Casey and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. (When any American official even mutters "milestone," or "tidal change," or "turning point" in relation to Iraq, watch out!)

In fact, Iraqis seem to be paying ever less attention to American commands, demands, and orders -- and no wonder, since over the last four years every attempt to impose the administration's will on Iraq purely by force of arms and in an imperial manner has failed dismally -- and to this dismal failure there is neither an end in sight, nor an imaginable bottoming-out tidal moment.

Meanwhile, as no one could have missed by now, the Mediterranean edge of the Middle East is teetering at the edge of full-scale war, behind which lurks the threat of an even wider regional war of some previously almost unimaginable sort. There, too, the recourse to arms has overwhelmed any other possible option. Hamas guerrillas broke into Israel, killed two soldiers and captured another. They certainly must have had a sense of what the Israeli reaction to such a raid might be; but for the sake of argument, let's say they didn't.

In the meantime, at the Lebanese border with Israel, the guerrillas of the Hezbollah movement watched the Israelis mercilessly take out a power plant, government offices, and various other infrastructural targets in Gaza, while killing civilians and hammering urban areas as a "response" to the capture of their soldier. Hezbollah then launched their own incursion into Israel, killing several soldiers and capturing two more. With the example of Gaza in front of them, they had to know just exactly what the Olmert government would do to the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon itself -- and clearly it made no difference.

As for the Israelis, at this point they visibly feel free of all outside restraint or constraint, given the Bush administration, and so can bomb, blockade, missile, and attack almost at will -- and, with their eyes on Syria and Iran, are threatening to widen this war yet further, setting the region ablaze. As in the slums of Baghdad, so too in Gaza, Lebanon, and possibly elsewhere, the urge is to settle historic grudges via shock-and-awe tactics. And yet, as Rami Khouri has written recently, the Israelis are "in the bizarre position of repeating policies that have consistently failed for the past 40 years." The last time this happened, the Israelis made it all the way to Beirut and ended up stuck in Lebanon for 18 years before withdrawing ignominiously. In the process, they helped midwife the Hezbollah movement and give it luster, a reputation, and strength.

We seem today to be headed into Lebanon redux in a region where the principle of force has been set loose to trump all else. On all sides, fundamentalists in the religion of force are thundering threats and imprecations, while issuing sets of impossible demands. In the typical words of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah (whose home and office had just been wiped out by Israeli missiles): "You wanted an open war, and we are heading for an open war… We are ready for it… The surprises that I have promised you will start now." And, of course, as in Gaza where random Palestinian civilians suffer and die under Israeli attack, so in Israel random civilians are wounded or die under a barrage of Hezbollah rockets; so, in Lebanon, helpless civilians die in homes, on highways, wherever, under a rain of Israeli bombs and missiles.

And all this is happening without either Iran, the third member of George Bush's axis of evil, or Syria, the unspoken fourth member (like an unindicted co-conspirator), have truly entered the fray (except, possibly, by proxy through their stand-ins in Gaza and Lebanon). Yet Iran is already offering up increasingly bloodcurdling threats. Emboldened by the American disaster in Iraq, its fundamentalist leaders, too, seem in a rush to threaten force and more force.

Now, just try to imagine an American attack on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities -- something that journalist Seymour Hersh, in a recent New Yorker piece, reports a "senior military official" claiming Secretary of Defense Donald Rumfeld and his "senior aides" still "really think they can do… on the cheap, and they underestimate the capability of the [Iranian] adversary." In a similar fashion, the Iranian leadership undoubtedly underestimates its bogged-down American adversary. It's the nature of such a faith to overestimate your own ability to use force and underestimate the capabilities of your opponents.

If Bush and his top officials arrived on the Iraqi scene believing that the force was with them and only them, the last three-plus years have offered (if not taught) a rather different lesson. After all, they now find themselves in a roiling crowd of medium-sized and smaller states, stateless movements, and extremist grouplets, all passionately devoted to the same principle of force as them. The fundamentalist belief in force, once let loose in this fashion -- once (you might say) modeled by the globe's reigning hyperpower -- turns out to be a distinctly pagan faith. From the streets of Gaza to the slums of Baghdad, from the mountains of Afghanistan to Beirut International Airport and the halls of the Pentagon, this is a religion open to one and all, ready to embrace many contradictory gods into its pantheon.

And here's the irony. The hyperpower that loosed this singular round of force on our world seems strangely sidelined, while others move boldly to apply its most essential principles profligately, every one of them emboldened both by our example and by our dismal failure. Talk about Pandora's Box (without Hope anywhere in sight)!

What force has done, thanks to the Bush administration's utopian foolishness, is to tie the region's many competing groups, movements, and states into an ever-tightening, Gordion-style knot -- and that knot, in turn, has been ever more tightly hitched to the global economy, so that every tug on any loose end now sends oil prices up another disastrous notch and trembling stock markets into convulsions. (Call it stock-and-awe!) Just Friday, the Dow Jones completed a three-day, 400 point shuddering drop, while oil, not so long ago hovering in the vicinity of $30 for a barrel of crude, managed to hit a staggering $78.40 a barrel by the end of last week -- and remember, this was just based on "nerves," not on more oil supplies actually going off the market, as would certainly happen, one way or another, in a widening conflict in the region.

In fact, the oil heartlands of the planet look to be heading for further rounds of violence and turmoil and, potentially, the American and global economy with them -- and the only tool imaginable to anybody is still: Force.

The Bush administration had no wish for other tools -- that was the meaning, after all, of "unilateralism" -- and so now it has no other tools in its "arsenal." It lost most of its allies while in its unilateral dream-state. Focusing all its attention on the Pentagon and on military-to-military relations globally, it also lost whatever modest capacity might have been available to it not just to head down another path, but to deploy the most basic tools of diplomacy. What it has left is, of course, force; but its own on-the-ground forces are dangerously depleted and it's evidently no longer obvious to top administration officials exactly where American force (and forces) should be applied (much as they may loathe the Iranians and Syrians).

They launched a force party in the Middle East. Now it's in full swing; the club's pilled high with dancers; many of the exits are bolted shut; the bouncers are no longer at the front door; and, on stage, the performers are brandishing blowtorches, while the Earth's last hyperpower and its hyper-commander-in-chief President are watching, helplessly, from the sidelines. As Dan Froomkin, the fine Washington Post on-line columnist, pointed out this week in a column headlined Bush the Bystander, "stopping off in Germany on his way to the G-8 summit in Russia," as the Middle East caught fire, "Bush reserved his greatest enthusiasm for tonight's pig roast -- technically, a wild-boar barbecue -- bringing it up three times. ‘I'm looking forward to that pig tonight,' he gushed."

Conceptually, what else could he do but offer his support to the Israelis (with but polite demurrals about "restraint" from his Secretary of State). After all, what are the Israelis doing but fighting their own hopeless "war on terrorism" American-style?

As journalist Warren Strobel summed up the regional situation: "Virtually every president faces a plethora of global crises, sometimes simultaneously. What's new is that the United States' ability to influence events has shrunk, largely because U.S. troops and treasure remain mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Iraq war has diminished foreign confidence in American leadership, according to foreign policy experts and some U.S. officials." Former Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Beilin made a similar point to Haaretz. "The worsening conflict in the Middle East is a blatant reflection of the weakness of the American partner,"

Everywhere this administration is being less attended to. Everywhere, others are sharpening their knives, loading their weapons, and preparing to smite their enemies, inspired by the American example, liberated by its failure.

Hair-trigger World

Oh, and while I've been mentioning the international face of the two-faced religion of force, I've forgotten to mention how it's been playing out at home.

After all, in the Bush years the Pentagon and the military have been fully elevated to the role of first providers (of everything) -- a role for which they are visibly unprepared. Nation-building and diplomacy have largely become military, not State Department, matters, as has intelligence-gathering of every sort. For the first time, a permanent, peacetime North American Command (Northcom) has been established for the continental U.S., while the military, not the civil government, is now to be the initial, and possibly main, responder in situations ranging from disastrous hurricanes to a potential Avian flu pandemic.

But for overwhelming force to be effective at home or abroad, it must be, in the minds of fundamentalists like, say, our grey and secretive Vice President, or his own eminence gris, David Addington, not to speak of eager force-hounds like "torture memo" author John Yoo or former Former General Counsel for the Pentagon William J. Haynes II, now up for for a federal appeals court judgeship,