"For the sake of perception, I think there is always going to be a cloud hanging over whether or not this Justice Department, run by John Ashcroft, will ever have the objectivity and the independence to do the kind of investigation required."

--Senator Tom Daschle

This leak business is so disturbing, such an egregrious violation of federal law, that even Republicans are starting to speak out. Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department and "registered Republican," had this to say to Terence Smith on the Newshour tonight:

Let's be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. But given that, I was a CIA analyst for four years. I was undercover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until I left the agency on September 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it.

So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover. Let's put them overseas and let's out them and then see how they like it. They won't be able to stand the heat.

I say this as a registered Republican. I'm on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. His entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it's something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.

Does anyone honestly believe that Ashcroft's Justice Department can be trusted to conduct an investigation of the White House's leak of the identity of an undercover CIA agent? How convenient that the Republican-controlled Congress let the independent counsel statute, used so ruthlessly by the Republicans against Clinton, expire last year.

Just imagine if the Democrats were to spend as much time and money investigating this Bush administration as the Republicans did during the Clinton administration, only to learn that Hillary made some money on a shady real estate deal and that Bill got blown in the Oval Office! Hell, who needs Ken Starr anyway? Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can find enough damning evidence to support sending Bush & Co where they belong.

Section 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources

(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent

(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of covert agents as result of having access to classified information

(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents

Somebody do some research on this one, please:

Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted.

Bush & Co Lie About Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame

The story goes something like this. US Ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Africa by Vice President Dick Cheney to come back with some evidence that Iraq tried to obtain yellow cake uranium from Niger. Not only did Wilson fail to find any such evidence, he also made his findings public after Bush & Co used the yellow cake as one of many false justifications for invading Iraq. Robert Novak reported on July 14 that a White House staffer told him that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plane, was a CIA operative, and that's why Wilson got the assignment. Two months later, the White House is getting some well deserved heat for acting to discredit Joseph Wilson and endanger his wife by outing her identity out of spite and vindictiveness.

Now the Bush cronies are taking an interesting tack. At the executive level, Condi Rice appeared on the talk show circuit this Sunday to say that she knew nothing about the leak's source, although she didn't condemn it, which would have been the appropriate thing to do. She made no effort to admit that it was a mistake, and tried to stifle further questioning by saying that it was now being investigated by the Justice Department. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan echoed her comments today, and dismissed claims that Karl Rove was behind the leak as "ridiculous."

At the public discourse level, the message is more convoluted and goes something like this:

1) Joseph Wilson had it in for Bush and purposefully used his yellow cake findings to discredit the White House.
2) Bush & Co weren't solely responsible for the leak, as Robert Novak was the one who actually reported it and the CIA corrobated it. (At least six other journalists may have been contacted by the White House, including Andrea Mitchell, Alan Greenspan's wife.)
3) Valerie Plame wasn't really that secret of an agent anyway.

"If Mrs. Wilson wasn't undercover, then this is a non-story ginned up by her husband, a unabashed Bush-hater who wrote in the notoriously left-wing Nation magazine earlier this year that under Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness."

White House critics want to paint a picture of Mrs. Wilson as a super secret spy working abroad whose life was endangered because of a White House vendetta, while in reality she was apparently safe and sound working stateside as a CIA weapons analyst at the time of the Novak report. "

Give me a fucking break. I don't have to tell you that Bush's father was head of the CIA before he took up residence in the White House. His administration would have known better than to out a US agent over a political squabble, but apparently his son's men (largely one and the same) have no sense of decency or tact. By outing Wilson, they put foreign friendlies at risk and damaged our intelligence efforts in ways that we won't soon understand or appreciate. And for those who are scoring this at home:

Leaking classified information and identifying an undercover CIA operative are felonies. The maximum penalty is 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines.

I say, let's not make this personal, at least not yet. Whether Karl Rove is to blame doesn't matter. Hopefully a full investigation will get to the heart of this. (Howard Kurtz suggests that this may not be likely, as leak investigations don't often pan out.)

This White House is a mess at the very least, and felonious at worst. This leak is just another reason why Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld and the rest need to be looking for new jobs come next November. Or sitting behind bars.

Ted Rall explains what David Brooks and other conservative pundits just don't understand:

Bush's detractors despise him viscerally, as a man. Where working-class populists see him as a smug, effeminate frat boy who wouldn't recognize a hard day's work if it kicked him in his self-satisfied ass, intellectuals see a simian-faced idiot unqualified to mow his own lawn, much less lead the free world.

Rall goes on to explain that we really hate Bush because he stole the election. (As if he hasn't given us 1000 more reasons to hate him since.)

Schwarzenegger Promises to Model California After Texas

If I hadn't heard him say it with my own ears, I wouldn't believe it. It's funny, but I remember often hearing the word "Californication" when I lived in Texas, referring to the influx of people from the West Coast during the economic boom. Now we have a bodybuilder Republican from Austria who thinks that Texas does a good job of serving the public interest. Only the most ignorant Californians could listen to this comment without gagging.

SCHWARZENEGGER: I am for Prop. 53. I think it's a good beginning. But the fact of the matter is that we need a lot of infrastructures in California. Infrastructure with highways and with the transportation, railroads. Infrastructure with our water supply, infrastructure with our ports. We need that. We should model ourselves after Texas. In Texas, they have committed $140 billion for infrastructure (unintelligible) with building 4,000 miles of transportation -- railways, freeways, highways and all those kind of things. They have already taken the position where we were first in export -- now it's Texas, the first in export. Because they are really aggressive. That's what California ought to do.

Sounds to me like someone has been listening to Karl Rove.

Bush Lied and People Died

White House web site has the letter Bush wrote to Congress requesting authority to invade Iraq because of their involvement in the attacks of 9/11.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-1.html

If you've ever asked the question "Are They Insane?!"
Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition

Interesting psychological study posted here from the original in the Psychological Bulletin

An important conclusion that follows from our analysis is that political attitudes and beliefs possess a strong motivational basis. Conservative ideologies are adopted in part because they satisfy various psychological needs. Variables significantly associated with conservatism, we now know, include fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure, personal need for structure, terror management, group-based dominance, and system justification.

We regard political conservatism as an ideological belief system that is significantly (but not completely) related to motivational concerns having to do with the psychological management of uncertainty and fear. Specifically, the avoidance of uncertainty (and the striving for certainty) may be particularly tied to one core dimension of conservative thought, resistance to change. Similarly, concerns with fear and threat may be linked to the second core dimension of conservatism, endorsement of inequality. Although resistance to change and support for inequality are conceptually distinguishable, we have argued that they are psychologically interrelated, in part because motives pertaining to uncertainty and threat are interrelated

Prediction on California Recall
Why California will delay the recall

A panel of judges decides today whether or not to reinstate the Oct. 7 recall. I predict they will find a reason to delay.

The Republicans didn't expect Bustamante to be doing so well.
Their boy isn't guaranteed the automatic victory they were hoping.
They need time to get McClintock out.
They need time to slander Bustamante.

Predictions: The judges vote to delay. The Republicans beat up on Bustamante in the super-bowl debate Wednesday. McClintock drops out. LOTS of wild stories about Bustamante. ES&S sells electronic voting machines to California. (ES&S in FL) (ES&S in FL) Recall and Arnold win in March.

Where have all the flowers gone?
Let’s recap the series of events for the viewing audience:
* Clinton left the country with its first budget surplus in 40 years
* Bush gave that surplus to his rich friends, promising to leave future generations to foot the bill. It will take OUR taxes and someone else’s fiscal discipline to pay down this debt.
* Bush started a war, funded with OUR taxes.
* Bush’s friends profit from the war, paid for by US.
* Bush’s friends profit from the rebuilding after the war, paid for by US.
* Bush’s friends will profit from the oil business coming from Iraq after the rebuilding.
The budget surplus goes to the rich. Deficits benefit the rich. War benefits the rich. Rebuilding benefits the rich. Oil revenues benefit the rich.

The occupation of Iraq is costing US taxpayers nearly $4 BILLION PER MONTH. Total cost to the US for war and occupation = $100 BILLION and the federal deficit is nearing $500 BILLION.

Here’s what Clinton left us:

Instead of a $455 billion deficit, the surplus that year was $230 billion.

Here’s what Bush is leaving us:
Record federal deficit of $304 billion, NOT COUNTING the extra $87 billion.

The $1.3 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthy accounted for over two-fifths of the lost surplus, according to a CBO report.

Most of the not-yet-in-effect tax cuts would benefit the nation's wealthy households by trimming their marginal income tax rates and by reducing, and over time ending, taxes on estates.

Who benefits from the war:

The Carlyle Group stands to make huge profits from the war in Iraq.

Halliburton
Cheney claimed to have cut ties with the company, and had nothing to do with a large no-bid contract for oil reconstruction work in Iraq. He was still receiving large deferred salary payments and continues to hold 433,333 unexercised Halliburton stock options.

Other Facts:
* George Bush Sr. is a former director of Halliburton. He is now one of the directors of The Carlyle Group, one of the largest defense contractors in the world.
* Halliburton has signed contracts and provides services to Chevron.
* The Bush Administrations' National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, was a former director of Chevron and held a quarter of a million shares of Chevron stock. She even had a tanker named after her before being appointed by President Bush.

More money, please
President Bush’s $87 billion war spending request to Congress offers new details about the costs of reconstructing Iraq and is drawing criticism from Democrats that the White House is willing to spend more on Iraqis than on U.S. citizens.
Of the president's request, nearly $5.8 billion would go toward rebuilding Iraq's electricity system, $2.1 billion is earmarked for its oil infrastructure, $3.7 billion for water and sewer building, $800 million for telecommunications and transportation improvements, and $900 million to upgrade hospitals and health care.
U.S. taxpayers will construct two prisons in Iraq, build houses and finance the importation of $900 million worth of fuel to a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves.

”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. “ President Eisenhower, 1961

Naked WTO Protest in Cancun

Last Monday, 29 fair trade activists showed that they are willing to do anything to bring attention to their cause, even if it means stripping naked and spelling out "No WTO" in the sand with their bodies.

Nonetheless, not many Americans were paying attention. Some might be aware of the WTO because of the protests in Seattle, but ask them to connect WTO to free trade or globalization and they'll likely draw a blank.

Free trade is one of those terms that is tossed around quite casually in the US press, with little explanation of what it means. For most of the world, free trade means being coerced by the United States, via the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to "liberalize" markets and remove trade barriers. Unfortunately, the resulting "free" markets have little respect for human rights, health care or the environment. And evidence shows that the resulting economic conditions benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.

Yesterday, global trade talks collapsed at the World Trade Organization summit in Cancun. It looks like some of the world's poorest people are finally sick and tired of being exploited by the richest. Lori Wallach, Director of the Public Citizens Global Trade Watch, explained why during an online interview with the Washington Post.

"The poor countries had a specific agenda of changes to the existing WTO rules to remedy the problems proven through nine years of implementation-- such as an increase in the number of extremenly poor and increased global hunger.

The Bush Administration calls itself the great promoter of democracy, free trade and the global trade system. Yet it just imploded the WTO summit by paying lip service to the demands of a majority of WTO signatory nations who require more democratic decision'making, fairer trade and true multilateralism. These countries refused to simply sign off on the corporate agenda for WTO pushed by the U.S. and its small rich country coalition of corporate shilling.

This model of globalization is not working for us, and it doesn't seem to be working for most of the people in the big rich countries either. So why are we doing this, and who is it benefitting? These are the kinds of questions that the Bush administration does not want to answer...which may explain in part why they are always spreading lies about and trying to undermine the Venezuelan government.

Many of the countries that have flouted core aspects of the WTO globalization model -- blocking imports, not having a convertible currency, strictly regulating foreign investment, etc... have grown the fastest and pulled more of their people out of poverty. Meanwhile the strictest adherence to the WTO model have seen their growth slow down, have faced domestic social and political instability cause by desparate peasant farmers who have lost their livelihoods. And in some instances, have spectacularly crashed -- like Argentina, the WTO and IMF's poster child of perfect compliance to the model.

From WWII to the early 70s. U.S. wages grew 80 percent. In the next period, even though the share of trade represented in our GDP doubles (ie, trade is a lot bigger part of our economy), real wages have remained flat. Part of that result can be seen outside of manufacturing employment. During debates on WTO and NAFTA we were all promised these agreements would bring our high-tech future where we would work as professionals instead of sweating on a tractor or in front of a steel furnace. Yet now we learn that over 3 million high-end service jobs (doctors, architects, engineers, etc.) are slated to be shipped overseas. Everyone needs to ask their elected officials and anyone running for office, 'Just what in the hell kind of work will we be doing here in the U.S. in the future?'"

That's exactly the question I would like to ask Mr. Bush and his free-trade brethren. I wonder, if I took off my clothes would they pay attention to me?