Social Security

The study of history can change your mind. Jeffrey L. Pasley has had his mind changed about Social Security: History Made Me a Liberal (And it has something to teach us about Social Security)[from the current issue of Common-Place, an on-line American history journal:

The current Social Security debate presents a great example of an issue on which history has changed my mind. Before graduate school--and a forced march through the literature on American social history--I was one of those post-baby boomers who thought Social Security was a big crock, an outmoded boondoggle that transferred wealth from younger workers starting families to older people who did not need it, while still not paying retirees enough to live comfortably. Back in the '80s, I was encouraged in these views by a series of articles in neoliberal magazines like the Washington Monthly, the Atlantic, and my journalistic alma mater, the New Republic. While out-and-out conservatives openly pushed privatization (much more openly than President Bush does now with his disingenuous talk of saving Social Security by taking money out of the program, the destroying-the-village-in-order-to-save-it option), the magazines I was reading often took the reasonably liberal position that some sort of smaller, means-tested old-age pension program, paid for through progressive taxation, would be greatly preferable to FDR's universal entitlement.

What Social Security actually accomplished rarely came up in the 1980s debates, any more than it does today. That requires some knowledge of what went before Social Security and the other forms of retirement assistance that now go along with it. Here is where the facts start to cause problems.

Go read the rest. I, too, used to accept the conventional wisdom--Social Security was a Ponzi scheme--and that it wouldn't still be around by the time I retired. The SCLM really had me brain-washed.

For reference, here is Jeffrey L. Pasley's list of Further Reading. Go do your homework before spouting off about Social Security:

While I presume that much literature on the social and policy history of aging has come out in the last fifteen years, it seemed fair given the premise of this piece (and less time consuming, too), to rely on my old comps reading. Thus most of the detail above, except for the congressional debate on revolutionary pensions, comes from David Hackett Fischer, Growing Old in America (New York, 1978); Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York, 1976); Philip J. Greven Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, 1970); Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840 (New York, 1989); and Gary B. Nash, "Poverty and Poor Relief in Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser, 33 (1976): 3-30. It is my own spin, however, so none of these authors should be blamed for my lapses. I first learned about the Civil War pension system in Theda Skocpol's American Political Development seminar, and her book Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, 1995) controversially places great interpretive stress on this lost first welfare state. To remind myself about the 1930s, I exhumed a couple of other books I have had for years: Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York, 1983), and William E. Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 (New York, 1963). The neoliberal case against Social Security as I knew it is summarized in Phillip Longman, Born to Pay: The New Politics of Aging in America (Boston, 1987). The best coverage of the current Social Security debate is appearing at Talking Points Memo, a blog edited by Joshua Micah Marshall, the only prominent political journalist I am aware of with a Ph.D. in early American history. I suspect he remembers his comps reading, too. The Florida "dictator professors" bill, one of several Horowitz-inspired measures around the country, came to my attention via the editor of Common-Place and a posting by the king (sultan?) of historian bloggers, Juan Cole.

And I'll add one more resource: the very useful Center for Economic and Policy Research. Look for the Social Security Reporting Review, where stories about Social Security are analyzed--see what the SCLM neglects to report...

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

What about 'spoiled' votes?

Journalist Greg Palast claims that Kerry Won if all the votes had been counted:

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

Particularily if they are voting with black boxes in Ohio [Machine Error Gives Bush Thousands of Extra Ohio Votes] More on Ohio's problems here.

According to Mr. Palast, on average about 3% of ballots in American elections are not counted due to 'spoilage'. Most of the 'spoiled' ballots just happen to be from areas with higher numbers of Democrats. How convenient for the Republican Party. In New Mexico, it appears that much of the pro-Kerry Hispanic vote was diverted into uncounted 'provisional ballots':

Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.

"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?

Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

Of course, it would be difficult for the leaders of the Democratic Party to demand that all votes be counted before conceding. That would be too confrontational. They'd rather surrender; how typical.

Of course, if the Democrats had gone to the courts they would have been crucified by the SCLM and the Republican Party. We can only win if we have an overwhelming advantage in both the popular vote and the electoral college. Let's adapt the populist politics of William Jennings Bryan: economic populism with a healthy dose of respect for conservative Christian values. (Not a phony marketing campaign to simulate 'values' but an expansion of the discussion of ethics and morality to all aspects of politics and public policy.) If we don't change we will become a permanently out-of-power coalition of minorities (ethnic and social), and the Republican party will dominate American politics as its libertarian and theocratic wings battle each other for ultimate control.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Conflicted evangelicals

Finally, someone in the SCLM notices that evangelicals aren't all happy with Mr. Bush. Read Conflicted Evangelicals Could Cost Bush Votes by Peter Wallsten (Los Angeles Times)

An excerpt:

Some of these targeted voters remain conflicted -- torn between their religious convictions on so-called values issues, and concerns typical of suburban moms and dads, such as jobs, healthcare, the Iraq war and the environment.

Some, such as Wendy Skroch, a 51-year-old mother of three who prays regularly at the evangelical Elmbrook Church in this heavily Republican Milwaukee suburb, blame Bush for failing to fix a "broken" healthcare system and for "selling off the environment to the highest bidder."

Others are like Joe Urcavich, pastor of the nondenominational evangelical Green Bay Community Church, where more than 2,000 people worship each Sunday. He is undecided, troubled by the bloodshed in the Middle East.

"It's hard for me to say that Christians should be marching against abortion and carrying signs, and then turn around and giving a pep rally for the war in Iraq without even contemplating that hundreds and hundreds of people are being killed on a regular basis over there," Urcavich said.

"I'm very antiabortion, but the reality is the right to life encompasses a much broader field than just abortion," he added. "If I'm a proponent of life, I have to think about the consequences of not providing prescription drugs to seniors or sending young men off to war."

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Senator Kerry's long history against terrorists

Senator Kerry has always been my first choice for President this election. I remember his efforts in the 1980s exposing the Nicaraguan contra/US government/cocaine connection, and his efforts to expose the terrorist dealings of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Senator Kerry has already had more success fighting terrorists than President Bush ever will.

[Note the failure of Mr. Bush to dispatch enough troops in Iraq to secure the known weapon's caches but placing a higher priority on protecting Iraq's oil fields--Scott McClellan confesses at the White House Press gaggle, October 25, 2004:

At the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom there were a number of priorities. It was a priority to make sure that the oil fields were secure, so that there wasn't massive destruction of the oil fields, which we thought would occur.

But it didn't occur to the Bush Administration to secure explosives [Salon.com: subscribe now or get a free day pass!] which terrorists would love to get their evil hands on?]
Iraq's letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the missing explosives: 'theft and looting of governmental installations due to lack of security'
Image from the New York Times, click for a larger view.

Here is a recent article by Robert Parry about Mr. Kerry's courageous role in the Contra/Cocaine investigation [Salon.com: subscribe now or get a free day pass!] including the craven attempts by the SCLM and the Republican Party to sweep the scandal under the carpet.

Read the links!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Robert Reich on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

This morning, I heard former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich give this commentary on Marketplace Radio--Sweeping up Fannie Mae.

Marketplace Radio's introduction:

Now that Fannie Mae has just agreed to clean up its accounting and operations, it might be attractive for political leaders to put the mortgage financier's scandal behind them. But it may be tough to sweep it under the carpet, as commentator Robert Reich tells us in this edition of The Public's Business.

Here is a Robert Reich column about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from November, 2003. It seems they have run up a debt of over 2 trillion dollars since 1995 and they have been caught making billion-dollar accounting mistakes.

Unlike most corporations, if Fannie or Freddie ever went belly up, American taxpayers would foot the bill. These two giants are just too big to fail. Since 1995, the two have tripled their combined debt to more than $2 trillion. At this rate, they'll soon exceed the debt of the entire federal government. And because financial markets assume that the federal government guarantees their debts, Fannie and Freddie can borrow money at a discount and use the cash pretty much as they want.

You don't have to be a Wall Street wizard to know that when taxpayers bear the downside risks, and executives and shareholders get the upside gains, there may be a temptation to take undue risks with money. Remember the savings and loan debacle?

And these government chartered companies have executives with multi-million dollar salaries and connections to both of the major political parties. Lovely mess.

I'll post a link to Mr. Reich's current commentary when I find it on-line.
[Originally posted September 29, 2004.]

Update October 7, 2004 6:45 am

Fannie Mae has been in the news. Here is the link to Mr. Reich's Marketplace commentary: Getting tough with Fannie. Here is the link to the report mentioned in Mr. Reich's commentary: Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight--Report of Findings to Date Special Examination of Fannie Mae (PDF) And here are some links to stories in the SCLM:

• WP September 22, 2004
• NYT October 3, 2004
• 
  NYT October 6, 2004
and today's story, on yesterday's hearings:
• 
  NYT October 7, 2004

Notice the bipartisan support of and attacks on Fannie Mae.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

More on the black box voting in Florida, 2004 and Polls with GOP bias and the SCLM

Pregnant chads, vanishing voters... the election fiasco of 2000 made the Sunshine State a laughing stock. More importantly, it put George Bush in the White House. You'd think they'd want to get it right this time. But no, as Andrew Gumbel discovers, the democratic process is more flawed than ever.

Read Andrew Gumbel's report from today's Independent here: Something rotten in the state of Florida.
Mr. Gumbel revisits some of the problems of the 2000 election, and the millions spent on flawed technology that doesn't even fix the problems.

The best thing about this story: people are fighting back:

Some people believe the best strategy is to keep fighting. There are high hopes of introducing a voter-verified paper trail before the 2008 presidential election, and there are signs that a grassroots movement to restore ex-felons' voting rights is finding support beyond Florida's boundaries.

"We're trying not to get bogged down in negatives," said Monica Russo, a state co-ordinator for the service workers' union. "If you do that, everyone will slit their wrists. We're union workers - we're used to having the deck stacked against us. It's about helping people to get through the process."

Well, having the deck stacked against us is normal. A good example of this are all the recent polls supposedly showing President Bush in the lead against Senator Kerry. Let's be logical:

1. There are more Democrats than Republicans in the electorate.
2. It is highly unlikely that voters for Mr. Gore in 2000 will be switching in large numbers to vote for Mr. Bush.
3. It is highly likely that at least some voters for Mr. Bush in 2000 have been disappointed by his performance in office--the failure in Iraq, the sluggish economy, and the fiscal irresponsibility of massive deficits--and will vote for Senator Kerry.

Therefore, something is wrong with the polls, in particular, the Gallup poll, which is probably the most publicized and yet the most obviously wrong:

It is pathetic and unacceptable for a "non-partisan" polling firm to be produce the outlying poll in favor of Bush in fourteen of its last sixteen polls. The odds of this happening at random are around one in 14,000. Considering those odds, the far more likely explanation for all these outliers is that Gallup's polling methodology is inherently structured in favor of Bush. Whether or not it is intentional, I do not know. However, I do know that Gallup's polls are connected to the largest news outlets in America of any poll, both in terms of print (USA Today is the largest circulation newspaper in the country) and cable news (CNN has more viewers than Fox, they just watch for shorter periods of time). I also know that sensational headlines sell. I further know that Gallup's chairman is a Republican donor.

Dear reader, perhaps you need more evidence of Gallup's faulty methodology? Check out this: Gallup Is At It Again - Yesterday's National Poll Had 12% GOP Bias by Steve Soto at the Left Coaster:

Here is the text from the email I got from Gallup this morning outlining the party ID breakdown in their likely voter samples from their two most recent national polls:

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 13-15
Reflected Bush Winning by 55%-42%

Total Sample: 767
GOP: 305 (40%)
Dem: 253 (33%)
Ind: 208 (28%)

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 24-26
Reflected Bush Winning by 52%-44%

Total Sample: 758
GOP: 328 (43%)
Dem: 236 (31%)
Ind: 189 (25%)

Looking at this, again I have a simple question: how can anyone, especially USA Today and CNN, let alone the rest of the media take a Gallup national poll seriously when Gallup knowingly puts a poll out there for consumption with a 12% GOP bias in its likely voter sample that everyone knows does not exist in the country today or at any time in the last three presidential elections?

Yet this flawed poll showed a narrowing Bush lead from their similarly flawed poll of two weeks ago. So if a poll with an unsupportable GOP bias of 12% in its likely voter sample, shows an 8% Bush lead amongst likely voters when a poll they used two weeks ago with a 7% GOP bias showed a 13% Bush lead with likely voters, then how can anyone not conclude that Kerry is doing much better than Gallup would have you believe?

The cynic in me wonders whether the So-Called Liberal Media lets the pollsters get away with this so they can legitimate the stealing of the election this time.

[conspiratorial whisper] Maybe if we keep drumming up the lie that Kerry doesn't have a chance, enough Democrats will sit on their hands and won't bother going to the polls?[/conspiratorial whisper]

Don't count on it. Any methodology that assumes Democrats are not as likely to vote as Republicans this time is baloney. The pollsters are going to goof up like they did in 1948 when they predicted President Truman's loss.

In researching this post, I noticed that the Left Coaster has even more on Gallup's bias and the SCLM's collusion with the pollsters.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

August doldrums are over

I haven't found anything interesting to write about for over two weeks. How many refutations of the Swift Boat Liars are needed? How many times does Senator Kerry have to get smeared as a flip-flopper? How long will smarmy pundits in the SCLM inject Republican talking points into the pipeline? How long will Zell Miller call himself a Democrat?

Why is this? I could be writing every day about the evils and incompetence of the Bush Administration. I could be writing in support of Senators Kerry and Edwards--truly accomplished and thoughtful men. It is only two months away from the presidential elections, and yet I am tempted to sit the election out in comfort, minding my own business, enjoying my insignificant life. But today I ran across this piece by Rick Bass which echoes my feelings and encourages me to take a more active role--The War of the Senses: The Battle for the Heart of America from Orion magazine (via wood s lot):

Nearly everyone I know, it seems, is angry at our ghost of a government -- at a federal government that we have allowed to go AWOL, leaving only a handful of corporations to run the show. This is the biggest government, the most power-mad, heartless-son-of-a-bitch machine-of-a-government this country has ever known, yet the safeguards of government are nowhere in evidence.

It is not true that everyone is angry at the Bush Administration; about half of Americans are prepared to vote for the most evil and corrupt (or incompetent) administration this country has ever had. How can the obvious truth not be seen by half of Americans? Mr. Bass concludes with a call to action:

The election of 2004 will come down not to federal deficit fears or intelligence betrayals, nor even likeability. I think it will -- and should -- come down to the condition and capacity of the human heart -- and to courage: The courage to demand something better, the courage to rekindle the senses -- our sense of home, sense of place, sense of duty -- the courage to awaken.

This nation's future is not about capturing or not-capturing any one mad-dog terrorist. It's not even entirely about any one Texan in the White House. Instead, it's about what is really in our hearts. Are we a nation ready to cede our power completely, with neither check nor balance, to misleading zealots?

FORTY YEARS FROM NOW, young people will be calling upon us to tell them what it was like, in this crucible-forged time when democracy was attacked not just from abroad, but from within. What was it really like, they will ask. They will want to know how close and intense it was, and how we achieved our victory, their victory.

We sharpened our knives, we will tell them. We were frightened, and we were fearless. We chose courage rather than silence. We turned our backs forever on the myth of pure self, on the myth of utter independence and disconnectedness. That myth, we will tell them, was no longer compatible with the genius of democracy.

We were frightened -- terrified -- of the seeds, the sprouts, of dictatorship arising in our own homeland, we will tell them, but we cut it down, just barely in time, by throwing everything we had at it -- body and soul, intellect and intuition, everything. We rose above our fears, we will tell them, and chose action.

It was terrifying, we will tell them. It was glorious.

My fear is that the opponents of the good are also sharpening their knives--they will do anything to hold on to power. We must stop them.

(Long-time readers of Ghost Town Orange (are there any?) may remember my post about one of Rick Bass's stories.)

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Electoral predictions and thoughts on the Democratic National Convention

It has been a good week of speeches at the Democratic National Convention. I watched on C-SPAN so I wouldn't have to listen to Republican pundits and the SCLM tell me what I just heard.

The only sour moments:

• Senator Kennedy misusing FDR's "nothing to fear" to make a cheap political shot at President Bush.
• I do not like the Democratic Party's position on abortion.

Even Rev. Sharpton's speech was better than I thought it would be.

This is my modest prediction, based on hunches, not polling data: Senator Kerry wins even without some of the battleground states. Use the Wall Street Journal's Electoral Vote Calculator to test out different scenarios. To paraphrase John Kerry, we are not really divided into "Red" and "Blue" states; we're all "Red, White, and Blue States!"

I am making a commitment to read columns by the Hippie Chick Pie Wagon to see what Republicans think of me. This will keep my anger level high enough to keep working for John Kerry's election. Here are some examples from her column of July 28 [my responses in brackets].
According to her, Democrats ...

• ... are representative of the nation only if the nation we're talking about is Brazil. For Democrats, there is [sic] only the maid and millionaires. There are no Americans in the middle. To the extent Democrats are forced to recognize working-class white men, they call them "fascists."
[as a working-class white Democrat, I wonder what she's talking about.]
• ... weren't interested in liberating Afghanistan and Iraq from woman-hating Islamicist fanatics.
[What about Saudi Arabia? As evil as Saddam Hussein was, he wasn't an Islamicist fanatic. He was more of an Arab-nationalist Stalin.]
• ... don't believe in capitalism and don't worry about taxes on earned income because they can't imagine there is any way to "earn" money other than the Teresa Heinz-John Kerry way.
[I don't believe in capitalism? Huh?]
• ... unable to conceal their America-hating pacifism were relieved of their anti-war signs and escorted to the free-speech veal pens a few blocks from the convention center.
[I am unable to conceal my God-fearing pacifism.]
• Convention organizers even forced the delegates to choke their way through the Pledge of Allegiance -- something the teachers' students are not allowed to say. The delegates play along, pretending they know the words and making the occasional random reference to "God," trying not to sound ironic.
[Here in Oklahoma, my children still say the Pledge of Allegiance, and I know the words and recite it with them, at Scout meetings, for example. I have reservations about the potential for flag-idolatry--I am a citizen of God's kingdom first.]
• ... are not angry about 9/11.
[Well, I am still angry that Osama bin Laden has not been the focus of my country's response to 9/11.]

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Christians in Iraq

Here's a story you won't find in the SCLM nor the webpages of the 101st fighting keyboarders: The Iraq hand-over is close, Christians ready [Mission Network News]:

This pastor put a sign on the church that reads, 'Jesus is the light of the world.' According to Brewer the local Muslims put a sign over it saying, 'Mohammad is the light of the world.' He says that didn't stop this pastor from ministering to them in love by providing medicines and other needed items. He also asked them some questions. "He asked them if they respected the Bible as Muslims and they said yes. And, he asked them if they believed Jesus was a prophet and they said yes. So, he turned in the New Testament to John 8:12 where Jesus says, 'I am the light of the world.' And, amazingly these militant Muslims apologized. They said, 'we're sorry, we respect you, we want to be your friends.' It was a God moment."

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Macedonian plot update

I blogged about this Macedonian plot about 2 weeks ago, but now the New York Times has reported on it. The New York Times report by Nicholas Wood includes rather gruesome photos and more information about how the plot has come to light:

Instead of offering troops to support American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, as other countries in the region had done, senior officials and police commanders conceived a plan to "expose" a terrorist plot against Western interests in Skopje, police investigators here say.

The plan, they say, involved luring foreign migrants into the country, executing them in a staged gun battle, and then claiming they were a unit backed by Al Qaeda intent on attacking Western embassies.

On March 2, 2002, this plan came to fruition when Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski announced that seven "mujahedeen" had been killed earlier that day in a shootout with the police near Skopje. Photos were released to Western diplomats showing bodies of the dead men with bags of uniforms and semiautomatic weapons at their side.

At the time, diplomats in Skopje questioned the government's story, but it was not until the nationalist-led government lost elections in September 2002 and a new center-left administration came to power that the police began to investigate the shooting in earnest. The full extent of the state's involvement in the incident has only emerged in the last two weeks.

Let's see, 'conservative' nationalist politicians cook up phony anti-terror plot and cover it up; 'center-left' administration comes to power and eventually uncover the truth. This is just more evidence that good, competent governance comes from center-left parties, not right-wingers. (My political bias is showing!)

Well, it's safe to say many people in Macedonia have known or suspected the truth about this plot for quite a while. It is an exageration to suggest that 'just now' the truth is coming to light. Maybe it's more accurate to say that the truth is finally coming to the attention of the SCLM.*

*So-Called Liberal Media

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

We were slaves in the American kitchens

Here is another story (this is from the Independent of South Africa) we will not find in the SCLM*:We were slaves in the American kitchens:

New Delhi - A group of 20 Indians who ran away from a United States military camp in Iraq, where they worked in the kitchen, claim they were abused for nine months, it was reported on Tuesday.

The men from southern Kerala state paid 75 000 rupees (about R11 700) each for visas to Kuwait in August 2003. They were cheated by employment agents and landed in Baghdad.

One man, Hameed, said they were taken to a US military camp in Mosul where they were told that they had been bought to work in the kitchen, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

"We were slaves in the American kitchens. We barely got two hours of sleep. Any slip-ups and we were tortured for days," Hameed said.

While Hameed alleged they were often used as shields when their camp was attacked by Iraqi militia, his brother Shahjahan said they were forced to cook pork despite being Muslim.

The men said they were not allowed to call or write home, but were told 12 000 rupees (about R1 800) would be sent to India every month.

They got their chance to escape when their camp was attacked at the end of April. An Iraqi truck driver took them to Baghdad from where they travelled to Fallujah, Jordan, Doha, finally arriving in Mumbai on April 28.

* So-called liberal media

SCLM

The New York Times informs us that Op-Ed page writers can just make stuff up. Read all about it here. Now you know why Friedman, Safire, Brooks, and Dowd are so frequently wrong. They don't have to be factual. Tom Tomorrow says that the Times should preface each opinion piece with this little gem of honesty:

EDITOR'S NOTICE: Even though some of the things in the following column may sound to any reasonable reader like statements of objective "fact," everything that follows is actually nothing more than a statement of the author's "beliefs," which, while they may be illogical, crackbrained or infuriating, are nevertheless exempt in every respect from the Times' error correction policy.

Of course, Krugman is always 100% factual:-) despite what Krugman stalker Luskin says.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Here's something the 'liberal media' will bury

John Kerry's speech:
Fighting a Comprehensive War on Terrorism Here are some excerpts:

This war isn’t just a manhunt – a checklist of names from a deck of cards. In it, we do not face just one man or one terrorist group. We face a global jihadist movement of many groups, from different sources, with separate agendas, but all committed to assaulting the United States and free and open societies around the globe.

As CIA Director George Tenet recently testified: “They are not all creatures of bin Laden, and so their fate is not tied to his. They have autonomous leadership, they pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks.”

At the core of this conflict is a fundamental struggle of ideas. Of democracy and tolerance against those who would use any means and attack any target to impose their narrow views.

The War on Terror is not a clash of civilizations. It is a clash of civilization against chaos; of the best hopes of humanity against dogmatic fears of progress and the future.

Like all Americans, I responded to President Bush’s reassuring words in the days after September 11th. But since then, his actions have fallen short.

I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the War on Terror; I believe he’s done too little.

Here are some of the main points of Senator Kerry's plan:

First, if I am President I will not hesitate to order direct military action when needed to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders. George Bush inherited the strongest military in the world – and he has weakened it. What George Bush and his armchair hawks have never understood is that our military is about more than moving pins on a map or buying expensive new weapons systems.

America’s greatest military strength has always been the courageous, talented men and women whose love of country and devotion to service lead them to attempt and achieve the impossible everyday.

[snip: the Bush administration's failures]

Second, if I am President I will strengthen the capacity of intelligence and law enforcement at home and forge stronger international coalitions to provide better information and the best chance to target and capture terrorists even before they act.

But the challenge for us is not to cooperate abroad; it is to coordinate here at home. Whether it was September 11th or Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, we have endured unprecedented intelligence failures. We must do what George Bush has refused to do – reform our intelligence system by making the next Director of the CIA a true Director of National Intelligence with real control of intelligence personnel and budgets. We must train more analysts in languages like Arabic. And we must break down the old barriers between national intelligence and local law enforcement.

In the months leading up to September 11th, two of the hijackers were arrested for drunk driving – and another was stopped for speeding and then let go, although he was already the subject of an arrest warrant in a neighboring county and was on a federal terrorist watch list. We need to simplify and streamline the multiple national terrorist watch lists and make sure the right information is available to the right people on the frontlines of preventing the next attack.

[snip: the Bush administration's failures]

Third, we must cut off the flow of terrorist funds. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the Bush Administration has adopted a kid-glove approach to the supply and laundering of terrorist money. If I am President, we will impose tough financial sanctions against nations or banks that engage in money laundering or fail to act against it. We will launch a "name and shame" campaign against those that are financing terror. And if they do not respond, they will be shut out of the U.S. financial system.

Fourth, because finding and defeating terrorist groups is a long-term effort, we must act immediately to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. I propose to appoint a high-level Presidential envoy empowered to bring other nations together to secure and stop the spread of these weapons. We must develop common standards to make sure dangerous materials and armaments are tracked, accounted for, and secured. Today, parts of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal are easy prey for those offering cash to scientists and security forces who too often are under-employed and under-paid. If I am President, I will expand the Nunn/Lugar program to buy up and destroy the loose nuclear materials of the former Soviet Union and to ensure that all of Russia’s nuclear weapons and materials are out of the reach of terrorists and off the black market.

[snip: our responsibility in Iraq and Afghanistan]

But nothing else will matter unless we win the war of ideas. In failed states from South Asia to the Middle East to Central Africa, the combined weight of harsh political repression, economic stagnation, lack of education, and rapid population growth presents the potential for explosive violence and the enlistment of entire new legions of terrorists. In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, almost sixty percent of the population is under the age of 30, unemployed and unemployable, in a breeding ground for present and future hostility. And according to a Pew Center poll, fifty percent or more of Indonesians, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Palestinians have confidence in bin Laden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs”

We need a major initiative in public diplomacy to bridge the divide between Islam and the rest of the world. For the education of the next generation of Islamic youth, we need an international effort to compete with radical Madrassas. We have seen what happens when Palestinian youth have been fed a diet of anti-Israel propaganda. And we must support human rights groups, independent media and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture from the grass-roots up. Democracy won't come overnight, but America should speed that day by sustaining the forces of democracy against repressive regimes and by rewarding governments which take genuine steps towards change.

We cannot be deterred by letting America be held hostage by energy from the Middle East. If I am President, we will embark on a historic effort to create alternative fuels and the vehicles of the future – to make this country energy independent of Mideast oil within ten years. So our sons and daughters will never have to fight and die for it.

[snip: more on the homeland security front]

And our children’s future demands that we also do everything in our power to prevent the creation of tomorrow’s terrorists today. Maybe there’s no going back to the days before baggage checks and orange alerts. Maybe they’re with us forever. But I don’t believe they have to be. I grew up at a time of bomb shelters and air raid drills. But America had leaders of vision and courage in both parties. And today, the Cold War is memory, not reality.

I believe we can bring a real victory in the War on Terror. I believe we must, not only for ourselves but for all who look to America as “the last best hope of earth.” I believe we can meet that ideal – and that’s why I’m running for President.