Life in OUR America, Volume 5, the Livyjr Files Options

[Livyjr]

"Cartoon Protesters Direct Anger at U.S."

By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer

The satirical French weekly Charlie-Hebdo also printed a new drawing under the headline "Muhammad Overwhelmed by the Fundamentalists" that showed the prophet with his head in his hands, remarking, "It's hard to be loved by idiots."

And in that same cartoon, there stood George W. Bush saying back to Muhammad, "Oh, I don't know, I'm doing pretty well by it, here in America ..."

[Livyjr]

And moving right along here, with the news ...

As is our habit in here each day ....

We have ....

THE ECONOMY ....

Will the housing "BUBBLE" ever burst ...

Or is it a figment of someone's wild imagination ...

In the first place ....

HYPE continually spewed by these realtor associations so as is to keep us panicked and off balance .....

"Home sales expected to slow, but not sink in '06"

By Sue Kirchhoff, USA TODAY

Wed Feb 8, 7:01 AM ET

U.S. home sales are expected to slow in 2006, though remaining near peak levels, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday.

Realtors' chief economist David Lereah predicts existing home sales will dip 4.7% to 6.74 million units, while new-home sales decline 8.5% to 1.17 million units.

That would still be the third-best year on record.

In another sign the housing market might be cooling after five record-setting years, luxury home builder Toll Bros. said signed contracts in the first quarter of 2006 declined 21% from the same, record period in 2005.

"Selling homes this first quarter was certainly more difficult," said CEO Robert Toll.

"We experienced softening demand ... in a number of markets."

Toll said activity seems to be improving, though speculative buying has eased off.

Economists, including Lereah, have long predicted the housing market will slow this year, partly because of Federal Reserve short-term interest rate increases, which affect mortgage rates.

Prices have risen so fast in some hot markets on the East and West coasts that affordability is a problem.

Government data show existing home sales drifting down in recent months, though new-home sales perked up last month.

A slower housing market could affect the economy by weakening construction employment and slowing consumer spending as homeowners have less ability to extract home equity.

However, a report by mortgage giant Freddie Mac Tuesday indicated consumers continue to borrow against the value of their homes.

Fully 80% of Freddie Mac-owned loans that were refinanced in the fourth quarter of 2005 resulted in new mortgages at least 5% higher than the original loan balance.

That's up from 73% in the third quarter.

"The overwhelming majority of these borrowers were extracting home equity rather than trying to reduce their monthly payments," says Freddie Mac chief economist Frank Nothaft, adding consumers were using cash-out refinancing because 30-year mortgage rates near 6.25% are below home equity rates, linked to the 7.5% prime rate[/u].

People with adjustable-rate mortgages might also be refinancing into fixed-rate loans.

Freddie Mac expects homeowners to extract $117 billion in equity from their homes in 2006, down from $243 billion in 2005.

The Realtors predict the national median existing-home price will rise 5% this year to $219,200.

The median new home price should rise 5.7% to $250,900, with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hitting 6.9%.

"Home sales are a little lower than projected, but they can be sustained around current levels," Lereah said.

[Livyjr]

And moving right along here, with the news ...

As is our habit in here each day ....

We have ....

What we really have is this "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" program of George W. Bush's .....

Which no one seems to really understand ...

At least up here where I am ...

WHAT EXACTLY IS IT THAT THESE CHILDREN WILL NOT BE KEPT AWAY FROM?

I mean ...

NO child left behind ...

That implies a line of children ....

And someone is taking them somewhere ...

Or someone is leading them someplace ....

And someone else is watching, apparently, to make sure none escape ....

And up here, in the cold country ...

Where there is really not much to do during the winter ...

Well, us yokels get to sitting around the fire ...

And we get to talking ....

And musing ....

And we consider whose program this really is ....

Which is George W. Bush's ...

And we consider this man ...

Who is violent ....

And who is in favor of torturing OUR fellow human beings ...

And we consider that HIS "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" program really is intended to let the BUSH MILITARY MACHINE have access to America's children ....

ALL OF THEM ...

For these wars that George W. Bush intends to start all over the world ...

As he and his go about erasing national boundaries ....

From Gaza and Iraq all the way through Indonesia ...

And beyond ...

As they IMPOSE REPUBLICAN DOMINATION and TYRANNY on all the world ....

And what we figure ...

Based on the evidence before us up here ....

Is that George W. Bush wants to ensure that NO AMERICAN CHILD IS LEFT BEHIND FROM HAVING TO LIVE IN FEAR EACH DAY AS THEY TRY AND COPE WITH THE VIOLENCE in their school buildings ....

That is providing George W. Bush and the REPUBLICAN WAR MACHINE with the killers they need for today, tommarow and the day after that ....

To take over the world ...

And thereby make it safe for REPUBLICANS ...

But no one else, really ....

And certainly not the non-violent children ...

Here in OUR America ....

I mean, what the hey ...

It is a dog-eat-dog world out there, despite what these women-men Democrats and LIB-RAWLS might have to say about it, over a glass of chardonay ......

And only the tough can really survive ....

And those are the ones that George W. Bush is looking for ...

So as to be able to flesh out his MILITARY JUGGERNAUGHT with fresh meat for cannon fodder ...

And so ....

Begin the process of "bringing forth" those new recruits ...

While they still are in kindergarten ...

"Teachers warn of violent students - Livingston staff asks for formation of alternative middle school in Albany"

By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, February 9, 2006

ALBANY -- Discipline is so bad at Philip Livingston Magnet Academy that nearly a fifth of the students should be removed to a more restrictive alternative school, according to a teacher who pleaded to the school board for help.

Sixth-grade science teacher Susan Paultre said the middle school has "become a dangerous place" where students strike and stab at each other with sharpened ends of rattail combs.

"Threatening staff members and classmates, using language that isn't even fit for a brothel, bringing in weapons; gang activity and violence have become the norm, not the exception," said Paultre, flanked by about 30 Livingston teachers and staff as she addressed the board at its meeting Tuesday.

"We ask, no, we beg the school board to acknowledge our problem," Paultre said.

"We desperately need an alternative placement for those middle school student who make our school unsafe daily."

A full-time city police officer is assigned to the school, but more security is needed, Paultre said in an interview on Wednesday.

During her eight years on the faculty, she said, she has been shoved by students who then were suspended only to return and repeat the behavior.

She estimated that as many as 100 of the 560 students at Livingston must be removed to restore order.

The district has two middle schools -- Livingston and Hackett -- but no alternative middle school like that in place for disruptive high school students.

Harriet Gibbons High School is at capacity, with more than 200 students.

In a statement released Wednesday, District Superintendent Eva Joseph said the teachers' concerns are "always important to us."

"We appreciate hearing their perspective regarding this important matter and we will respond to their suggestions."

Joseph said safety issues will be studied by the new Youth Safety Task Force, which includes the superintendent and Police Chief James Tuffey, and by new safety committees that have been formed at each city school.

Paultre said the committees must propose specific solutions to address student misconduct.

"We want to see action," she said.

Brian Nearing can be reached at 454-5094 or by e-mail at bnearing@timesunion.com.

[jeffmoskin]

The Realtors predict the national median existing-home price will rise 5% this year to $219,200

Out here in Kah-lee-FAWN-Yah, that is the median price of a doghouse.

A fixer-upper at that.

Minus the dog.

[Livyjr]

Out here in Kah-lee-FAWN-Yah, that is the median price of a doghouse.

A fixer-upper at that.

Minus the dog.

Is that because a coyote ate the dog?

[Livyjr]

And in that same cartoon, there stood George W. Bush saying back to Muhammad, "Oh, I don't know, I'm doing pretty well by it, here in America ..."

And getting back to this on-going story about the cartoons ....

And the uproar ....

It seems if you look hard enough ...

There is a BUCK to made in anything ..

And so ....

"European Papers Benefit in Cartoon Uproar"

By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 10 minutes ago

PARIS - Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

That street corner cry of yesteryear is resonating at some European publications that have enjoyed a boom in sales and Web traffic after printing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have stoked outrage across the Islamic world.

Denmark's biggest-circulation broadsheet, Jyllands-Posten, triggered the controversy in September by publishing 12 cartoons of the prophet, including one showing his turban as a bomb.

Its weekday circulation of about 154,000 hasn't moved much.

But for newspapers in France and Norway that reprinted the drawings with much international ado, sometimes in defense of free speech, the caricatures have become a profile boost and tonic for lackluster sales.

If there's a lesson, it's an old one: Controversy sells.

Mohamed Bechari, a vice president at the French Council of the Muslim Faith, France's largest Islamic organization, said he thinks French readers are buying up the newspapers out of "curiosity" — not anti-Arab or anti-Muslim feeling.

"Here's some advice to those newspapers today facing ruin, bankruptcy or collapse: All you need do is insult Muslims and Islam, and sales will get hot as blazes," he told The Associated Press at a Paris conference Thursday on promoting dialogue between the West and the Muslim world, convened in response to the furor over the drawings.

Demonstrators in Syria, Lebanon and Iran have attacked Western embassies.

Protests and boycotts of Danish goods erupted in numerous Arab and Islamic countries.

Three days of riots across Afghanistan left 11 people dead.

France Soir's Feb. 1 issue with the drawings sold 40 percent more than the usual daily circulation, and executives are tantalized that the newspaper's souped-up profile could translate into long-term gains.

"Over time, it could change the brand image of France Soir ... it shows we're capable of running scoops — and leading a battle for freedom of the press," circulation director Philippe Soing told the AP.

Satirical French weekly Charlie-Hebdo reprinted the drawings Wednesday, behind a cover page showing Muhammad with his head in his hands, crying and saying: "It's hard to be loved by idiots."

The paper quickly sold out all 160,000 copies of the issue — 60,000 more than the typical weekly run — and was printing another 160,000, spokeswoman Liliane Roudiere said.

Print sales at Norway's Magazinet, an Evangelical Christian newspaper, have been flat since it ran the drawings Jan. 10.

But daily hits on its Web site have more than tripled, to about 800,000, said Vegard Kobberdal, a consultant for the thrice-weekly paper.

Spanish daily El Mundo, which posted some of the images on its Web site, said it was impossible to determine which news item was affecting sales.

The rise of the Internet, rising competition for advertising money and the advent of free dailies across Europe have meant tough times for many newspapers.

France Soir, a legendary daily whose circulation hovered around a million a day in the late 1960s, is now in financial straits, and the paper is up for sale.

"If we wanted to use this to save France Soir, we'd need a story like this every day, and I dare hope that there won't be," editor-in-chief Arnaud Levy, with a bodyguard in tow, told the AP at the conference.

___

Associated Press Writers Harold Heckle in Madrid, Doug Mellgren in Oslo and Paul Duke in Paris contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

And being a GOOD AMERICAN, of course, one who listens assiduously to Scott McClellan and Rush Limbaugh every day for my instructions on how to see life and how to think as a GOOD AMERICAN should think, well ....

Having accepted that I know absolutely nothing about science ...

And that WHITE HOUSE lawyers know everything that ever was, is, or could be known on the subject ....

Well ....

You know ....

And so ...

Having accepted that these WHITE HOUSE lawyers are right, and correct, that GLOBAL WARMING really is a VERY GOOD THING for the world, and thus, as a corrollary that it may be better not to force cuts in greenhouse gases because the added prosperity from unfettered economic activity would allow countries to exploit benefits of warming and adapt to problems, what I have decided I can do as a GOOD American is to simply report the facts as they develop on this WHITE HOUSE LAWYER THEORY ....

Specifically ...

Adapting to problems in the face of all of this unfettered economic growth that IS resulting from GLOBAL WARMING ...

And here is some now ....

"Earthen dam threatens homes - Debris from landslide holds back creek, posing downstream concern" 

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

GREENPORT -- Officials are concerned that an earthen dam that formed when a landslide tumbled into the Claverack Creek earlier this week may break apart, threatening downstream homes.

The new fears prompted local and state authorities to declare a limited state of emergency and to reopen a command post on the site where a 300-yard-section of embankment tumbled into the creek on Thursday.

The landslide has diverted Claverack Creek from its normal path and has led a considerable amount of water to build up behind the massive pile of earth and rock that was formed.

end quotes

I mean ...

Well ...

Maybe this is not the economic opportunity of the century here ....

BUT ....

There is some money to be made here, isn't there?

I think this is the kind of GOOD STUFF that these WHITE HOUSE lawyers are telling us is going to be coming our way, this unfettered opportunity for economic growth as a result of GLOBAL WARMING .....

If you are selling boats, anyway ...

And looking back in on this potentially money-making opportunity for these country folks up here to exploit as one of the BENEFITS of GLOBAL WARMING ....

We have ....

"Landslide piques some downstream worry"

By BOB GARDINIER, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Tuesday, February 7, 2006

GREENPORT -- Emergency responders and engineers continue to monitor the site at which a landslide into Claverack Creek last week created a dam that could threaten residents downstream.

The collapse Thursday of a 60-foot-high, 300-yard-long section of embankment in the Columbia County town also caused high water near the bridge that takes Route 66 over the creek, Fire Chief Gary Mazzacano said.

The town set up a command site at the Sons and Daughters of Italy Lodge on Bridge Street near the landslide and a communications system with officials in the hamlets of Stottville and Stockport, both in the town of Stockport and downstream from the landslide.

Water levels there could reach four to five times the creek's normal level.

About 25 homes have been identified as being in potential danger.

"They've been advised there could be flooding if this lets go," Mazzacano said.

Mazzacano said, so far, water levels at the dam site are not continuing to rise; the water found an outlet around a stand of trees and the earthen dam.

Heavy rains could change that.

"Thank God we aren't getting any more rain," Mazzacano said.

"If it gets colder, that would be better."

end quotes

NOW ...

We have these White House types telling us that GLOBAL WARMING will create a lot of new economic opportunities ....

And so ...

Must be these Greenport folks got a real MONEY-MAKER on their hands here ....

If they could only figure out how to work the crank ...

To get that MONEY-MAKER making some money ...

For them ...

Because right now ...

It seems to me that it is costing them a bunch instead ....

AH ...

HHHHmmm ...

Maybe they are Democrats ....

And so ...

Just can't see a real MONEY-MAKING OPPORTUNITY ....

When it is staring them in the face ....

[Livyjr]

BOOM ....BOOM ......BOOM ....BOOM .....

WAR DRUMS BEATING ...

A big fire burning ....

Dick Cheney, with a special gold-plated Abercrombie & Fitch BI-CENTENNIAL EDITION hatchet at only $750, half-naked, dressed only in a designer breech-clout and a special pair of leggings that he got in a Jackson Hole boutique for $3500, mouth drawn back in a rictus, teeth showing like a big Wyoming GRIZ, massive thighs pumping furiously, whirls and capers and cavorts around the fire like an imp released from the bowels of hell itself, gibbering and alternately grunting in some tongue intelligible to only himself, if even that ....

There was quite a good photo this morning accompanying this following story of Dick Cheney and the famous "BIG GRIZ" snarling look that he cultivated up there in the tourist bars and boutiques of trendy Jackson Hole, Wyoming ....

It is something how that man can peel his lips back just so, and look so much like a big, rampant grizzly bear ....

They say that at one time, old Dick was quite a tourist attraction himself up there ....

Every now and then, with the right prodding they say, old Dick would all of a sudden rear up to his full height, peel his lips back in that rictus he still sports to this day, and then he would let out his now-famous "BIG GRIZ" roar ....

And the tourists would take pictures ....

And clap their hands ...

And exclaim how very rustic it all was ....

And look where that got Dick Cheney ...

Just goes to show ...

If you got the right act, well, you can go just about anywhere ...

Right, SCOOTER ....

"Libby: White House 'Superiors' OK'd Leaks"

By TONI LOCY, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 20 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that his superiors authorized him to give secret information to reporters as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq, according to court papers.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in documents filed last month that he plans to introduce evidence that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, disclosed to reporters the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate in the summer of 2003.

The NIE is a report prepared by the head of the nation's intelligence operations for high-level government officials, up to and including the president.

Portions of NIEs are sometimes declassified and made public.

It is unclear whether that happened in this instance.

In a Jan. 23 letter to Libby's lawyers, Fitzgerald said Libby also testified before the grand jury that he caused at least one other government official to discuss an intelligence estimate with reporters in July 2003.

"We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors," Fitzgerald wrote.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to comment.

"Our policy is that we are not going to discuss this when it's an ongoing legal proceeding," he said.

William Jeffress, Libby's lawyer, said, "There is no truth at all" to suggestions that Libby would try to shift blame to his superiors as a defense against the charges.

Libby, 55, was indicted late last year on charges that he lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and when he subsequently told reporters.

He is not charged with leaking classified information from an intelligence estimate report.

Plame's identity was published in July 2003 by columnist Robert Novak after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium in Niger.

The year before, the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to determine the accuracy of the uranium reports.

Wilson's revelations cast doubt on President Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon as one of the administration's key justifications for going to war in Iraq.

On Thursday, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said Cheney should take responsibility if he authorized Libby to share classified information with reporters.

"These charges, if true, represent a new low in the already sordid case of partisan interests being placed above national security," Kennedy said.

"The vice president's vindictiveness in defending the misguided war in Iraq is obvious."

"If he used classified information to defend it, he should be prepared to take full responsibility."

In the summer of 2003, White House officials — including Libby — were frustrated that the media were incorrectly reporting that Cheney had sent Wilson to Niger and had received a report of his findings in Africa before the war in Iraq had begun.

In an effort to counter those reports, Libby and other White House officials sought information from the CIA regarding Wilson and how his trip to Niger came about, according to court records.

Fitzgerald, in his letter to Libby's lawyers, said he plans to use Libby's grand jury testimony to support evidence pertaining to the White House aide's meeting with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

During the meeting with Miller on July 8, Libby also discussed Plame, Fitzgerald said.

"Our anticipated basis for offering such evidence is that such facts are inextricably intertwined with the narrative of the events of spring 2003, as Libby's testimony itself makes plain," the prosecutor wrote.

Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to discuss her source.

[Livyjr]

"GOP hopes Ney removal will aid reform"

By DAVID HAMMER, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:17 a.m., Monday, January 16, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The House Republican leadership has achieved its goal of separating Rep. Bob Ney, the committee chairman implicated in a burgeoning scandal, from GOP efforts to change how Congress interacts with lobbyists and their clients.

With Ney's decision -- under pressure -- to temporarily step down from chairing the powerful House Administration Committee, the six-term Ohio Republican won't have any control over his party's efforts to stem the damage caused by disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Ney's decision comes as three House Republicans are waging a spirited campaign to replace Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas as majority leader.

DeLay was forced by party rules to step aside after he was indicted by a state grand jury in Texas for alleged violation of campaign finance laws.

DeLay also is a longtime friend of Abramoff and some of DeLay's former aides have been charged in the Abramoff investigation.

A GOP leadership aide said Friday that House Speaker Dennis Hastert was pressuring Ney to step aside because he believes it would be inappropriate for him to head the committee with jurisdiction over the Republican reform agenda.

The famous REPUBLICAN REFORM AGENDA ....

What a crock of pure crap-ola that all was ....

Aaaahhhh, yes ....

Those wily REPUBLICANS ....

There they all were .....

Just days ago, it seems ...

GOT TO CLEAN HOUSE ....

Make the American people think that they got ethics, all of a sudden ....

Yesterday, I heard on FOX NEWS FAIR AND BALANCED that this new guy they got in there to replace "TWO-GUN TEXAS TOMMY", this Boehner, that he was backing way off on any kind of ethics reform for the REPUBLICANS in OUR Congress ....

Not really needed is what he is saying ...

The fault did not lie with the REPUBLICANS ....

The fault did not lie with Abramoff ....

IT REALLY WAS THE FAULT OF THE INDIAN TRIBES ....

They need to be regulated more ...

NOT THE REPUBLICANS ....

Hey, America ...

Let's face it ..

The REPUBLICANS are only selling what everyone wants to buy, anyway ..

So where is the harm in that, says Boehner ....

After all, a "working guy" has to make his living, too, don't he ....

"Boehner Rents Apartment Owned by Lobbyist in D.C."

By Thomas B. Edsall and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 8, 2006; Page A03

Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was elected House majority leader last week, is renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

The relationship between Boehner, John D. Milne and Milne's wife, Debra R. Anderson, underscores how intertwined senior lawmakers have become with the lobbyists paid to influence legislation.

Boehner's primary residence is in West Chester, Ohio, but for $1,600 a month, he rents a two-bedroom basement apartment near the House office buildings on Capitol Hill owned by Milne, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said yesterday.

Boehner's monthly rent appears to be similar to other rentals of two-bedroom English basement apartments close to the House side of the Capitol in Southeast, based on a review of apartment listings.

Milne's clients -- including restaurant chains and health insurance companies -- hired him to lobby on issues at the heart of Boehner's work, including minimum-wage increases, small-business tax breaks and tax-free savings accounts to help cover insurance costs, congressional lobbying records show.

In the weeks preceding last week's GOP leadership elections, Boehner acknowledged his close ties to the lobbying community, but he assured Republican lawmakers that all of his relationships were ethical and he campaigned on a platform of change and reform.

Seymour reiterated that message last night.

"John Milne does not lobby John Boehner on any issue and has not lobbied him on any issue during the time period in which John has been renting the property," he said.

Seymour added that he does not know if other members of Milne's mCapitol Management firm have lobbied Boehner.

"We really have no idea on this one," he said.

"We'd have to know who else works for those firms, which we don't offhand."

"It's possible the answer is yes, but we don't know."

House members may not accept anything from lobbyists worth more than $50.

If Boehner is paying market-rate rent, it would appear he is not violating that rule.

Boehner's work closely coincides with the interests of Milne.

In 2002, the House approved the Economic Security and Worker Assistance Act, a tax measure originally drafted by Boehner, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.) and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) as the Back to Work Act.

The measure eventually was signed into law.

Lobbying disclosure forms indicate that one of Milne's clients, Fortis Health Plans, hired him to lobby the Economic Security and Worker Assistance Act.

Another client, the Buca di Beppo chain of Italian restaurants, hired Milne to push the Small Business Tax Fairness Act, which would allow restaurants to deduct the cost of investments at a faster pace.

The measure was introduced by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) in 2003, with Boehner as one of 15 co-sponsors.

Many of its provisions have since become law.

Fortis, now called Assurant Health, also asked Milne to push Health Savings Accounts, the tax-free savings accounts established by Congress to help with health care costs not covered by high-deductible plans.

Boehner is a proponent of such accounts, which President Bush is targeting for a major expansion.

Buca di Beppo and another restaurant chain, Parasole Restaurant Holdings Inc., also hired Milne to lobby on the minimum wage and tax credits for tips, issues directly under the Education and the Workforce Committee's purview.

The restaurant industry has long fought minimum-wage increases, seeking instead to augment restaurant wages with tips that become more valuable if they can avoid taxation.

Despite numerous attempts by Democrats and some pro-labor Republicans, the minimum wage has not been raised since 1997, when it was lifted from $4.75 to $5.15.

Since then, inflation has eroded its value to near-record lows.

That such companies would hire Milne is no mystery.

His firm overtly promotes its connections to influential lawmakers.

"At mCapitol Management, we specialize in leveraging relationships on our clients' behalf."

"Our bipartisan team's unique resources allow our clients unparalleled access at the international, federal, state and local level," the firm's Web site boasts.

Milne could not be reached by phone or e-mail.

His wife, Anderson, who is on the advisory board of mCapitol, said she and her husband have been friends with Boehner and his wife for years.

After buying the house in 2004, she said, she mentioned at a social gathering that they had a place to rent, and Boehner said he was interested.

Anderson described Boehner as an "excellent tenant" who pays his rent on time.

Seymour said Boehner originally met Anderson in the early 1990s, when she worked in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

[Abu Beacon]

Anderson described Boehner as an "excellent tenant" who pays his rent on time.

Let's be realistic.

Tenants that pay their rent on time are hard to find.

So -----


Why be picky about a few minor transgressions in the realm of ethics?

To paraphrase our brilliant minister of defense -----

You make rules and laws with the Congress you have -

Not the Congress you want.

A.B.

[Livyjr]

Let's be realistic.

Tenants that pay their rent on time are hard to find.

So -----

Why be picky about a few minor transgressions in the realm of ethics?

To paraphrase our brilliant minister of defense -----

You make rules and laws with the Congress you have -

Not the Congress you want.

A.B.

The very best that money can buy, they say ....

Our Congress boys and girls ...

And hey ...

With respect to this Boehner ....

A "working man" has got to make a living, too ...

And so ...

And that was a good point you made above, Mr. A.B. .....

Having a tenant who pays the rent on time is important ...

And so ....

[Livyjr]

"Climate expert claims coercion - Top NASA scientist says Bush administration is pressuring him to stop speaking out about dangers of greenhouse gases and links to global warming"

By ANDREW C. REVKIN, New York Times
First published: Sunday, January 29, 2006

NEW YORK - The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions.

"They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Hansen.

"That's not the way we operate here at NASA," he said.

"We promote openness, and we speak with the facts."

Acosta said the restrictions on Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel whom the public could perceive as speaking for the agency.

He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is a leading authority on the Earth's climate system.

He directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in Morningside Heights in Manhattan.

Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

He has had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration and Vice President Al Gore.

In 2001, Hansen was invited twice to brief Vice President Dick Cheney and other Cabinet members on climate change.

White House officials were interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing carbon dioxide.

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled, and said he planned to vote for Sen. John Kerry.

But Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.

In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."

He said he was particularly incensed that the directives affecting his statements had come through informal telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

Hansen's supervisor, Franco Einaudi, said there had been no official "order or pressure to say shut Jim up."

But Einaudi added, "That doesn't mean I like this kind of pressure being applied."

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the Earth "a different planet."

The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Hansen said in interviews.

Among the restrictions, according to Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, McCarthy said Deutsch called NPR "the most liberal" media outlet in the country.

She said that in that call and others Deutsch said his job was "to make the President look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Deutsch's priority.

But she added:

"I'm a career civil servant and Jim Hansen is a scientist."

"That's not our job."

"That's not our mission."

"The inference was that Hansen was disloyal."

Normally, McCarthy would not be free to describe such conversations to the news media, but she agreed to an interview after Acosta, in NASA headquarters, told The Times that she would not face any retribution for doing so.

Acosta, Deutsch's supervisor, said that when Deutsch was asked about the conversations he flatly denied saying anything of the sort.

Deutsch referred all interview requests to Acosta.

McCarthy, when told of the response, said: "Why am I going to go out of my way to make this up and back up Jim Hansen?"

"I don't have a dog is this race."

"And what does Hansen have to gain?"

Acosta said that for the moment he had no way of judging who was telling the truth.

Several colleagues of both McCarthy's and Hansen's said McCarthy's statements were consistent with what she told them when the conversations occurred.

"He's not trying to create a war over this," said Larry D. Travis, an astronomer who is Hansen's deputy at Goddard, "but really feels very strongly that this is an obligation we have as federal scientists, to inform the public, and this kind of attempted muzzling of the science community is really rather dangerous."

"If we just accept it, then we're contributing to the problem."

Travis said he walked into McCarthy's office in mid-December at the end of one of the calls from Deutsch demanding that Hansen be better controlled.

In an interview on Friday, Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist and the president of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's leading independent scientific body, praised Hansen's scientific contributions and said he had always seemed to describe his public statements clearly as his personal views.

"He really is one of the most productive and creative scientists in the world," Cicerone said.

"I've heard Hansen speak many times and I've read many of his papers, starting in the late '70s."

"Every single time, in writing or when I've heard him speak, he's always clear that he's speaking for himself, not for NASA or the administration, whichever administration it's been."

The fight between Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes.

At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on extracurricular lectures or writing.

One example is Indur M. Goklany, assistant director of science and technology policy in the policy office of the Interior Department.

For years, Goklany, an electrical engineer by training, has written in papers and books that it may be better not to force cuts in greenhouse gases because the added prosperity from unfettered economic activity would allow countries to exploit benefits of warming and adapt to problems.

In an e-mail exchange on Friday, Goklany said that in the Clinton administration he was shifted to nonclimate-related work, but added that he had never had to stop his outside writing, as long as he identifies the views as his own.

"One reason why I still continue to do the extracurricular stuff is because one doesn't have to get clearance for what I plan on saying or writing," he wrote.

Many people who work with Hansen said politics was not a factor in his dispute with the Bush administration.

"The thing that has always struck me about him is I don't think he's political at all," said Mark R. Hess, director of public affairs for the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a position that also covers the Goddard Institute in New York.

"He really is not about concerning himself with whose administration is in charge, whether it's Republicans, Democrats or whatever," Hess said.

"He's a pretty down-the-road conservative independent-minded person.

"What he cares deeply about is being a scientist, his research, and I think he feels a true obligation to be able to talk about that in whatever fora are offered to him."

And talk about HACK-O-CRATS ....

In the HACKOCRACY of George W. Bush ....

Here's another one gone ....

And HOORAY for that say I ....

"Man Who Left NASA Says He's Under Attack"

Thu Feb 9, 9:35 PM ET

COLLEGE STATION, Texas - A staffer who resigned from NASA after he was accused of restricting access to a noted climate scientist said Thursday he was targeted because of his political ties.

George C. Deutsch, 24, resigned from the agency's public relations department earlier this week.

"What you do have is hearsay coming from a handful of people who have clear partisan ties and they are really coming after me as a Bush appointee," he told radio station WTAW.

"I was an easy target."

"I was low-hanging fruit."

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Deutsch attempted to limit reporters' access to Jim Hansen, a noted NASA climate scientist, and insisted that a Web designer insert the word "theory" before any mention of the Big Bang.

Deutsch denied the allegations.

"I have never been told to censor science, to squelch anything or to insert religion into any issue, absolutely not," said the former Bush campaign worker.

[Livyjr]

And talk about HACK-O-CRATS ....

In the HACKOCRACY of George W. Bush ....

Here's another one gone ....

And HOORAY for that say I ....

"Man Who Left NASA Says He's Under Attack"

Thu Feb 9, 9:35 PM ET

COLLEGE STATION, Texas - A staffer who resigned from    NASA after he was accused of restricting access to a noted climate scientist said Thursday he was targeted because of his political ties.

George C. Deutsch, 24, resigned from the agency's public relations department earlier this week.

"What you do have is hearsay coming from a handful of people who have clear partisan ties and they are really coming after me as a Bush appointee," he told radio station WTAW.

"I was an easy target."

"I was low-hanging fruit."

HEY, BROWNIE - YOU'RE DOING ONE HECK OF A JOB!

"Ex-FEMA Chief Shifts Katrina Blame to DHS"

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

8 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Former federal disaster chief Michael Brown, the face of the government's listless response to Hurricane Katrina, said Friday he told top Bush officials the day the storm howled ashore of massive flooding in New Orleans and warned "we were realizing our worst nightmare."

More defiant than defensive, Brown told senators he dealt directly with White House officials the day of the Aug. 29 storm, including chief of staff Andrew Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin.

He also said officials from the Department of Homeland Security were getting regular briefings that day.

Administration officials have said they did not realize the severe damage Katrina had caused until after the storm had passed.

Under oath, Brown told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he could not explain why his appeals failed to produce a faster response.

"I expected them to cut every piece of red tape, do everything they could ... that I didn't want to hear anybody say that we couldn't do everything they humanly could to respond to this," Brown said about a video conference with administration officials — in which President Bush briefly participated — the day before Katrina hit.

"Because I knew in my gut this was the bad one."

In the end, the storm claimed more than 1,300 lives, uprooted hundreds of thousands more and caused tens of billions in damage.

The devastation in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities left Americans with enduring images of their countrymen dying in flooded nursing homes and pleading for rescue from rooftops.

Brown, in his second Capitol Hill appearance since Katrina, told his side to the senators five months after he quit under fire as chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

He agreed with some senators who characterized him as a scapegoat for government failures.

"I feel somewhat abandoned," said Brown,

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said he did not know that New Orleans' levees were breached until Aug. 30.

Bush at the time said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

At an occasionally contentious White House briefing Friday, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said there were conflicting reports about the levees in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

"We knew of the flooding that was going on," McClellan said.

"That's why our top priority was focused on saving lives."

"... The cause of the flooding was secondary to that top priority and that's the way it should be."

After three hours of testimony, Brown was handed a subpoena ordering him to reappear in front of a House panel investigating the storm response.

Brown is expected to be questioned by House investigators this weekend — days before the panel is expected to release its findings on the storm.

Recounting conference calls that described initial damage reports the day Katrina hit, Brown scoffed at claims that Homeland Security didn't know about the devastation's scope until the next day.

He called those claims "just baloney."

Some senators suggested Brown look inward before pointing the finger elsewhere.

"You're not prepared to put a mirror in front of your face and recognize your own inadequacies," said Norm Coleman, R-Minn.

"Perhaps you may get a more sympathetic hearing if you had a willingness to confess your own sins in this."

Brown responded: "That's very easy for you to say sitting behind that dais and not being there in the middle of that disaster watching that human suffering and watching those people dying and trying to deal with those structural dysfunctionalities, even within the federal government."

The disjointed federal response, Brown said, was in part the result of FEMA being swallowed in 2003 by the newly created Homeland Security Department, which he said was focused on fighting terrorism.

Natural disasters "had become the stepchild of the Department of Homeland Security," he said.

Had there been a report that "a terrorist had blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, then everybody would have jumped all over that," he added.

Some senators attempted to trace the failures back to the White House.

"You quite appropriately and admirably wanted to get the word to the president as quickly as you could," said Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., asking about Brown's conversation with Hagin on the evening of Aug. 29.

"Did you tell Mr. Hagin in that phone call that New Orleans was flooding?"

Brown answered: "I think I told him that we were realizing our worst nightmare, that everything we had planned about, worried about, that FEMA, frankly, had worried about for 10 years was coming true."

Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, suggested Brown may have delayed the federal response by cutting Homeland Security out of the loop about the levee failures and going straight to the White House.

"I think I now understand why Secretary Chertoff says he didn't know," Bennett said.

"The reason he didn't know is because you didn't think it important to tell him."

Brown said he communicated directly with the White House instead of Homeland Security because FEMA's parent agency "just bogged things down."

[Snuffysmith]

Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse:

It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam's long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9698.htm

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faes...ar-in-iraq.html

Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq
Paul R. Pillar
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006


Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

PAUL R. PILLAR is on the faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Concluding a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency, he served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

A DYSFUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIP

The most serious problem with U.S. intelligence today is that its relationship with the policymaking process is broken and badly needs repair. In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized. As the national intelligence officer responsible for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, I witnessed all of these disturbing developments.

Public discussion of prewar intelligence on Iraq has focused on the errors made in assessing Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs. A commission chaired by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Senator Charles Robb usefully documented the intelligence community's mistakes in a solid and comprehensive report released in March 2005. Corrections were indeed in order, and the intelligence community has begun to make them.

At the same time, an acrimonious and highly partisan debate broke out over whether the Bush administration manipulated and misused intelligence in making its case for war. The administration defended itself by pointing out that it was not alone in its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and active weapons programs, however mistaken that view may have been.

In this regard, the Bush administration was quite right: its perception of Saddam's weapons capacities was shared by the Clinton administration, congressional Democrats, and most other Western governments and intelligence services. But in making this defense, the White House also inadvertently pointed out the real problem: intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs did not drive its decision to go to war. A view broadly held in the United States and even more so overseas was that deterrence of Iraq was working, that Saddam was being kept "in his box," and that the best way to deal with the weapons problem was through an aggressive inspections program to supplement the sanctions already in place. That the administration arrived at so different a policy solution indicates that its decision to topple Saddam was driven by other factors -- namely, the desire to shake up the sclerotic power structures of the Middle East and hasten the spread of more liberal politics and economics in the region.

If the entire body of official intelligence analysis on Iraq had a policy implication, it was to avoid war -- or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath. What is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in recent decades.

A MODEL UPENDED

The proper relationship between intelligence gathering and policymaking sharply separates the two functions. The intelligence community collects information, evaluates its credibility, and combines it with other information to help make sense of situations abroad that could affect U.S. interests. Intelligence officers decide which topics should get their limited collection and analytic resources according to both their own judgments and the concerns of policymakers. Policymakers thus influence which topics intelligence agencies address but not the conclusions that they reach. The intelligence community, meanwhile, limits its judgments to what is happening or what might happen overseas, avoiding policy judgments about what the United States should do in response.

In practice, this distinction is often blurred, especially because analytic projections may have policy implications even if they are not explicitly stated. But the distinction is still important. National security abounds with problems that are clearer than the solutions to them; the case of Iraq is hardly a unique example of how similar perceptions of a threat can lead people to recommend very different policy responses. Accordingly, it is critical that the intelligence community not advocate policy, especially not openly. If it does, it loses the most important basis for its credibility and its claims to objectivity. When intelligence analysts critique one another's work, they use the phrase "policy prescriptive" as a pejorative, and rightly so.

The Bush administration's use of intelligence on Iraq did not just blur this distinction; it turned the entire model upside down. The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. (The military made extensive use of intelligence in its war planning, although much of it was of a more tactical nature.) Congress, not the administration, asked for the now-infamous October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, although few members of Congress actually read it. (According to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material, no more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary.) As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.

Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war. On the issue that mattered most, the intelligence community judged that Iraq probably was several years away from developing a nuclear weapon. The October 2002 NIE also judged that Saddam was unlikely to use WMD against the United States unless his regime was placed in mortal danger.

Before the war, on its own initiative, the intelligence community considered the principal challenges that any postinvasion authority in Iraq would be likely to face. It presented a picture of a political culture that would not provide fertile ground for democracy and foretold a long, difficult, and turbulent transition. It projected that a Marshall Plan-type effort would be required to restore the Iraqi economy, despite Iraq's abundant oil resources. It forecast that in a deeply divided Iraqi society, with Sunnis resentful over the loss of their dominant position and Shiites seeking power commensurate with their majority status, there was a significant chance that the groups would engage in violent conflict unless an occupying power prevented it. And it anticipated that a foreign occupying force would itself be the target of resentment and attacks -- including by guerrilla warfare -- unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall of Saddam.

In addition, the intelligence community offered its assessment of the likely regional repercussions of ousting Saddam. It argued that any value Iraq might have as a democratic exemplar would be minimal and would depend on the stability of a new Iraqi government and the extent to which democracy in Iraq was seen as developing from within rather than being imposed by an outside power. More likely, war and occupation would boost political Islam and increase sympathy for terrorists' objectives -- and Iraq would become a magnet for extremists from elsewhere in the Middle East.

STANDARD DEVIATIONS

The Bush administration deviated from the professional standard not only in using policy to drive intelligence, but also in aggressively using intelligence to win public support for its decision to go to war. This meant selectively adducing data -- "cherry-picking" -- rather than using the intelligence community's own analytic judgments. In fact, key portions of the administration's case explicitly rejected those judgments. In an August 2002 speech, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney observed that "intelligence is an uncertain business" and noted how intelligence analysts had underestimated how close Iraq had been to developing a nuclear weapon before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His conclusion -- at odds with that of the intelligence community -- was that "many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon."

In the upside-down relationship between intelligence and policy that prevailed in the case of Iraq, the administration selected pieces of raw intelligence to use in its public case for war, leaving the intelligence community to register varying degrees of private protest when such use started to go beyond what analysts deemed credible or reasonable. The best-known example was the assertion by President George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was purchasing uranium ore in Africa. U.S. intelligence analysts had questioned the credibility of the report making this claim, had kept it out of their own unclassified products, and had advised the White House not to use it publicly. But the administration put the claim into the speech anyway, referring to it as information from British sources in order to make the point without explicitly vouching for the intelligence.

The reexamination of prewar public statements is a necessary part of understanding the process that led to the Iraq war. But a narrow focus on rhetorical details tends to overlook more fundamental problems in the intelligence-policy relationship. Any time policymakers, rather than intelligence agencies, take the lead in selecting which bits of raw intelligence to present, there is -- regardless of the issue -- a bias. The resulting public statements ostensibly reflect intelligence, but they do not reflect intelligence analysis, which is an essential part of determining what the pieces of raw reporting mean. The policymaker acts with an eye not to what is indicative of a larger pattern or underlying truth, but to what supports his case.

Another problem is that on Iraq, the intelligence community was pulled over the line into policy advocacy -- not so much by what it said as by its conspicuous role in the administration's public case for war. This was especially true when the intelligence community was made highly visible (with the director of central intelligence literally in the camera frame) in an intelligence-laden presentation by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council a month before the war began. It was also true in the fall of 2002, when, at the administration's behest, the intelligence community published a white paper on Iraq's WMD programs -- but without including any of the community's judgments about the likelihood of those weapons' being used.

But the greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD (there was indeed a broad consensus that such programs existed), but the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the "alliance" the administration said existed. The reason the connection got so much attention was that the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the "war on terror" and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood.

The issue of possible ties between Saddam and al Qaeda was especially prone to the selective use of raw intelligence to make a public case for war. In the shadowy world of international terrorism, almost anyone can be "linked" to almost anyone else if enough effort is made to find evidence of casual contacts, the mentioning of names in the same breath, or indications of common travels or experiences. Even the most minimal and circumstantial data can be adduced as evidence of a "relationship," ignoring the important question of whether a given regime actually supports a given terrorist group and the fact that relationships can be competitive or distrustful rather than cooperative.

The intelligence community never offered any analysis that supported the notion of an alliance between Saddam and al Qaeda. Yet it was drawn into a public effort to support that notion. To be fair, Secretary Powell's presentation at the UN never explicitly asserted that there was a cooperative relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. But the presentation was clearly meant to create the impression that one existed. To the extent that the intelligence community was a party to such efforts, it crossed the line into policy advocacy -- and did so in a way that fostered public misconceptions contrary to the intelligence community's own judgments.

VARIETIES OF POLITICIZATION

In its report on prewar intelligence concerning Iraqi WMD, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said it found no evidence that analysts had altered or shaped their judgments in response to political pressure. The Silberman-Robb commission reached the same conclusion, although it conceded that analysts worked in an "environment" affected by "intense" policymaker interest. But the method of investigation used by the panels -- essentially, asking analysts whether their arms had been twisted -- would have caught only the crudest attempts at politicization. Such attempts are rare and, when they do occur (as with former Undersecretary of State John Bolton's attempts to get the intelligence community to sign on to his judgments about Cuba and Syria), are almost always unsuccessful. Moreover, it is unlikely that analysts would ever acknowledge that their own judgments have been politicized, since that would be far more damning than admitting more mundane types of analytic error.

The actual politicization of intelligence occurs subtly and can take many forms. Context is all-important. Well before March 2003, intelligence analysts and their managers knew that the United States was heading for war with Iraq. It was clear that the Bush administration would frown on or ignore analysis that called into question a decision to go to war and welcome analysis that supported such a decision. Intelligence analysts -- for whom attention, especially favorable attention, from policymakers is a measure of success -- felt a strong wind consistently blowing in one direction. The desire to bend with such a wind is natural and strong, even if unconscious.

On the issue of Iraqi WMD, dozens of analysts throughout the intelligence community were making many judgments on many different issues based on fragmentary and ambiguous evidence. The differences between sound intelligence analysis (bearing in mind the gaps in information) and the flawed analysis that actually was produced had to do mainly with matters of caveat, nuance, and word choice. The opportunities for bias were numerous. It may not be possible to point to one key instance of such bending or to measure the cumulative effect of such pressure. But the effect was probably significant.

A clearer form of politicization is the inconsistent review of analysis: reports that conform to policy preferences have an easier time making it through the gauntlet of coordination and approval than ones that do not. (Every piece of intelligence analysis reflects not only the judgments of the analysts most directly involved in writing it, but also the concurrence of those who cover related topics and the review, editing, and remanding of it by several levels of supervisors, from branch chiefs to senior executives.) The Silberman-Robb commission noted such inconsistencies in the Iraq case but chalked it up to bad management. The commission failed to address exactly why managers were inconsistent: they wanted to avoid the unpleasantness of laying unwelcome analysis on a policymaker's desk.

Another form of politicization with a similar cause is the sugarcoating of what otherwise would be an unpalatable message. Even the mostly prescient analysis about the problems likely to be encountered in postwar Iraq included some observations that served as sugar, added in the hope that policymakers would not throw the report directly into the burn bag, but damaging the clarity of the analysis in the process.

But the principal way that the intelligence community's work on Iraq was politicized concerned the specific questions to which the community devoted its energies. As any competent pollster can attest, how a question is framed helps determine the answer. In the case of Iraq, there was also the matter of sheer quantity of output -- not just what the intelligence community said, but how many times it said it. On any given subject, the intelligence community faces what is in effect a field of rocks, and it lacks the resources to turn over every one to see what threats to national security may lurk underneath. In an unpoliticized environment, intelligence officers decide which rocks to turn over based on past patterns and their own judgments. But when policymakers repeatedly urge the intelligence community to turn over only certain rocks, the process becomes biased. The community responds by concentrating its resources on those rocks, eventually producing a body of reporting and analysis that, thanks to quantity and emphasis, leaves the impression that what lies under those same rocks is a bigger part of the problem than it really is.

That is what happened when the Bush administration repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war. The Bush team approached the community again and again and pushed it to look harder at the supposed Saddam-al Qaeda relationship -- calling on analysts not only to turn over additional Iraqi rocks, but also to turn over ones already examined and to scratch the dirt to see if there might be something there after all. The result was an intelligence output that -- because the question being investigated was never put in context -- obscured rather than enhanced understanding of al Qaeda's actual sources of strength and support.

This process represented a radical departure from the textbook model of the relationship between intelligence and policy, in which an intelligence service responds to policymaker interest in certain subjects (such as "security threats from Iraq" or "al Qaeda's supporters") and explores them in whatever direction the evidence leads. The process did not involve intelligence work designed to find dangers not yet discovered or to inform decisions not yet made. Instead, it involved research to find evidence in support of a specific line of argument -- that Saddam was cooperating with al Qaeda -- which in turn was being used to justify a specific policy decision.

One possible consequence of such politicization is policymaker self-deception. A policymaker can easily forget that he is hearing so much about a particular angle in briefings because he and his fellow policymakers have urged the intelligence community to focus on it. A more certain consequence is the skewed application of the intelligence community's resources. Feeding the administration's voracious appetite for material on the Saddam-al Qaeda link consumed an enormous amount of time and attention at multiple levels, from rank-and-file counterterrorism analysts to the most senior intelligence officials. It is fair to ask how much other counterterrorism work was left undone as a result.

The issue became even more time-consuming as the conflict between intelligence officials and policymakers escalated into a battle, with the intelligence community struggling to maintain its objectivity even as policymakers pressed the Saddam-al Qaeda connection. The administration's rejection of the intelligence community's judgments became especially clear with the formation of a special Pentagon unit, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group. The unit, which reported to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, was dedicated to finding every possible link between Saddam and al Qaeda, and its briefings accused the intelligence community of faulty analysis for failing to see the supposed alliance.

For the most part, the intelligence community's own substantive judgments do not appear to have been compromised. (A possible important exception was the construing of an ambiguous, and ultimately recanted, statement from a detainee as indicating that Saddam's Iraq provided jihadists with chemical or biological training.) But although the charge of faulty analysis was never directly conveyed to the intelligence community itself, enough of the charges leaked out to create a public perception of rancor between the administration and the intelligence community, which in turn encouraged some administration supporters to charge intelligence officers (including me) with trying to sabotage the president's policies. This poisonous atmosphere reinforced the disinclination within the intelligence community to challenge the consensus view about Iraqi WMD programs; any such challenge would have served merely to reaffirm the presumptions of the accusers.

PARTIAL REPAIRS

Although the Iraq war has provided a particularly stark illustration of the problems in the intelligence-policy relationship, such problems are not confined to this one issue or this specific administration. Four decades ago, the misuse of intelligence about an ambiguous encounter in the Gulf of Tonkin figured prominently in the Johnson administration's justification for escalating the military effort in Vietnam. Over a century ago, the possible misinterpretation of an explosion on a U.S. warship in Havana harbor helped set off the chain of events that led to a war of choice against Spain. The Iraq case needs further examination and reflection on its own. But public discussion of how to foster a better relationship between intelligence officials and policymakers and how to ensure better use of intelligence on future issues is also necessary.

Intelligence affects the nation's interests through its effect on policy. No matter how much the process of intelligence gathering itself is fixed, the changes will do no good if the role of intelligence in the policymaking process is not also addressed. Unfortunately, there is no single clear fix to the sort of problem that arose in the case of Iraq. The current ill will may not be reparable, and the perception of the intelligence community on the part of some policymakers -- that Langley is enemy territory -- is unlikely to change. But a few steps, based on the recognition that the intelligence-policy relationship is indeed broken, could reduce the likelihood that such a breakdown will recur.

On this point, the United States should emulate the United Kingdom, where discussion of this issue has been more forthright, by declaring once and for all that its intelligence services should not be part of public advocacy of policies still under debate. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted a commission of inquiry's conclusions that intelligence and policy had been improperly commingled in such exercises as the publication of the "dodgy dossier," the British counterpart to the United States' Iraqi WMD white paper, and that in the future there should be a clear delineation between intelligence and policy. An American declaration should take the form of a congressional resolution and be seconded by a statement from the White House. Although it would not have legal force, such a statement would discourage future administrations from attempting to pull the intelligence community into policy advocacy. It would also give some leverage to intelligence officers in resisting any such future attempts.

A more effective way of identifying and exposing improprieties in the relationship is also needed. The CIA has a "politicization ombudsman," but his informally defined functions mostly involve serving as a sympathetic ear for analysts disturbed by evidence of politicization and then summarizing what he hears for senior agency officials. The intelligence oversight committees in Congress have an important role, but the heightened partisanship that has bedeviled so much other work on Capitol Hill has had an especially inhibiting effect in this area. A promised effort by the Senate Intelligence Committee to examine the Bush administration's use of intelligence on Iraq got stuck in the partisan mud. The House committee has not even attempted to address the subject.

The legislative branch is the appropriate place for monitoring the intelligence-policy relationship. But the oversight should be conducted by a nonpartisan office modeled on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Such an office would have a staff, smaller than that of the GAO or the CBO, of officers experienced in intelligence and with the necessary clearances and access to examine questions about both the politicization of classified intelligence work and the public use of intelligence. As with the GAO, this office could conduct inquiries at the request of members of Congress. It would make its results public as much as possible, consistent with security requirements, and it would avoid duplicating the many other functions of intelligence oversight, which would remain the responsibility of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Beyond these steps, there is the more difficult issue of what place the intelligence community should occupy within the executive branch. The reorganization that created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is barely a year old, and yet another reorganization at this time would compound the disruption. But the flaws in the narrowly conceived and hastily considered reorganization legislation of December 2004 -- such as ambiguities in the DNI's authority -- will make it necessary to reopen the issues it addressed. Any new legislation should also tackle something the 2004 legislation did not: the problem of having the leaders of the intelligence community, which is supposed to produce objective and unvarnished analysis, serve at the pleasure of the president.

The organizational issue is also difficult because of a dilemma that intelligence officers have long discussed and debated among themselves: that although distance from policymakers may be needed for objectivity, closeness is needed for influence. For most of the past quarter century, intelligence officials have striven for greater closeness, in a perpetual quest for policymakers' ears. The lesson of the Iraq episode, however, is that the supposed dilemma has been incorrectly conceived. Closeness in this case did not buy influence, even on momentous issues of war and peace; it bought only the disadvantages of politicization.

The intelligence community should be repositioned to reflect the fact that influence and relevance flow not just from face time in the Oval Office, but also from credibility with Congress and, most of all, with the American public. The community needs to remain in the executive branch but be given greater independence and a greater ability to communicate with those other constituencies (fettered only by security considerations, rather than by policy agendas). An appropriate model is the Federal Reserve, which is structured as a quasi-autonomous body overseen by a board of governors with long fixed terms.

These measures would reduce both the politicization of the intelligence community's own work and the public misuse of intelligence by policymakers. It would not directly affect how much attention policymakers give to intelligence, which they would continue to be entitled to ignore. But the greater likelihood of being called to public account for discrepancies between a case for a certain policy and an intelligence judgment would have the indirect effect of forcing policymakers to pay more attention to those judgments in the first place.

These changes alone will not fix the intelligence-policy relationship. But if Congress and the American people are serious about "fixing intelligence," they should not just do what is easy and politically convenient. At stake are the soundness of U.S. foreign-policy making and the right of Americans to know the basis for decisions taken in the name of their security.

[Livyjr]

George C. Deutsch, 24, resigned from the agency's public relations department earlier this week.

"What you do have is hearsay coming from a handful of people who have clear partisan ties and they are really coming after me as a Bush appointee," he told radio station WTAW.

"I was an easy target."

"I was low-hanging fruit."

And while we are on the subject of people in OUR America, these poor beleaguered LOW-HANGING FRUITS, as it were, being picked on and singled out for unfair prosecution merely because they are REPUBLICANS ...

And friends of George W. Bush ...

Like Kenny "BOY" Lay, for example ...

Who is certainly being discriminated against because he is one of George W. Bush's friends ....

We have ....

"Three More Lawmakers Linked to Abramoff"

By TONI LOCY and PETE YOST, Associated Press Writers

8 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Three members of Congress have been linked to efforts by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a former General Services Administration official to secure leases of government property for Abramoff's clients, according to court filings by federal prosecutors on Friday.

The filings in U.S. District Court do not allege any wrongdoing by the elected officials but list them in documents portraying David Safavian, a former GSA chief of staff, as an active adviser to Abramoff, giving the lobbyists tips on how to use members of Congress to navigate the agency's bureaucracy.

Abramoff is cooperating with federal investigators in a wide-ranging probe of corruption on Capitol Hill that threatens several powerful members of Congress and their staff members.

Last month, he pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud.

Safavian is charged with lying to a GSA ethics officer when he said Abramoff was not seeking business with the agency at the time the lobbyist paid for Safavian and several others to go on a golf outing to Scotland in August 2002.

At the time of the trip, prosecutors said, Abramoff was trying to get GSA approval for leases of the Old Post Office Pavilion in Washington for an Indian tribe to develop and for federal property in Silver Spring, Md., for use by a Jewish school.

Two of the elected officials referred to in Friday's filings have been identified in published reports as Reps. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio, and Don Young, R-Alaska.

According to Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, the two representatives wrote to the GSA in September 2002, urging the agency to give preferential treatment to groups such as Indian tribes when evaluating development proposals for the Old Post Office.

LaTourette maintains he did nothing improper by advocating special opportunities for certain small businesses in areas known as HUBzones, or Historically Underutilized Business zones.

His spokeswoman, Deborah Setliff, said that the letter was reviewed by Young's chief of staff and counsel and that it did not advocate any particular business over another.

A spokesman for Young did not return telephone calls.

Friday's filings by prosecutors refer to a third member of Congress, Rep. Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

Her name appears in e-mails that suggest she was trying to help Abramoff secure a GSA lease for land in Silver Spring for a religious school.

Capito claims to know nothing about the effort.

"The action taken by her former chief of staff was done without her knowledge, approval or consent," said her spokesman, Joel Brubaker.

"She was not aware of any contact with GSA of any type on this matter."

Mark Johnson, Capito's former chief of staff, said he did not bring the issue to Capito's attention.

He said he was contacted by Neil Volz, a colleague of Abramoff's and a former chief of staff for Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio.

Johnson said Volz asked him to check on the status of a project involving the GSA.

Johnson said he believes he called a friend at the GSA but doesn't recall the outcome.

Prosecutors included the e-mails in documents filed in response to a request by Safavian's lawyers to dismiss the indictment against him.

Safavian's lawyers want a federal judge to throw out the charges on grounds there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

In their filing, prosecutors laid out a series of contacts between Abramoff and Safavian that show the former GSA official gave inside information and advice to the lobbyist.

Safavian used his personal e-mail during business hours to communicate with Abramoff several times, according to prosecutors.

He also edited the draft of a letter that was probably sent under LaTourette and Young's names.

And Safavian advised Abramoff to tell his wife to use her maiden name during a meeting with GSA officials so she wouldn't draw attention to her politically connected husband's involvement in the project.

In a July 23, 2002, e-mail to a GSA official, Safavian discussed getting information about the Silver Spring site to Capito's office.

But Volz discovered a complication the next day.

Volz told Abramoff that someone at the GSA wanted the congresswoman to put her request in writing.

"We can't ask the most vulnerable Republican incumbent member of Congress in the House to put something in writing that can be made public," Volz wrote.

"The congresswoman's office has already put the request in and you would think that would be enough!!!"
___

Associated Press writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse:

It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam's long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9698.htm

And there we are, Snuffysmith ....

Way back, when this was still the John Kerry forum, before the election, I had a thread running where I posted an article dealing with this exact subject ....

And jeffmoskin is continually talking about it in here as well ....

This battle between the EURO and the DOLLAR ....

But it is too complicated for people to understand ...

Is what I think, anyway ...

As an engineer with a license, I was required to take a course in engineering economics ...

And to take and pass a question on that subject on the licensing exam ...

And still ...

Some of this stuff is esoteric to me ....

Because economics is concepts ...

And not actualities ....

The real point that people need to consider, and they usually don't, or won't ....

Is that while America may not be easy to defeat militarily ...

Because we are in fact isolated from the rest of the world by two oceans ....

When it comes to isolating us economically ....

That can be done in a relative heartbeat ...

By computers ...

And there is doodly-squat we can do about it ....

Economic blockades have been a viable tactic of warfare between nations ...

Since time immemorial, in all likelihood ....

And they are still viable today ....

EXCEPT ....

The stupid, ignorant BUSHCOS believe that they are invincible ...

And so ....

[Livyjr]

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faes...ar-in-iraq.html

"Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq"

Paul R. Pillar, From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

PAUL R. PILLAR is on the faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Concluding a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency, he served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

But if Congress and the American people are serious about "fixing intelligence," they should not just do what is easy and politically convenient.

At stake are the soundness of U.S. foreign-policy making and the right of Americans to know the basis for decisions taken in the name of their security.

The "DAME SNOW JEOPARDY" .....

As it is called up here, anyway ....

A lawyer's trick of where you start with the conclusion that you want to support ....

And then ...

You start stacking up the "evidence" to support that conclusion ....

And it is an old, old trick ....

Probably being used before Jesus was born ....

This is quite a thought-provoking article, Snuffysmith ....

BUT ...

I wonder about context ....

This article assumes that nothing has changed in OUR America with the ascension of George W. Bush to the THRONE here in OUR America ...

Coupled with the stranglehold the REPUBLICAN PARTY now has on OUR government ....

This article assumes that the REPUBLICAN PARTY has the best interests of OUR America at stake ...

And I don't believe that for one instant ....

Rather, what I believe is that we have "slid" through a transition here .....

So that the America of before ...

Is no longer the America of after ....

And this BID-NESS of IRAQINAM was a catalyzing event ....

To cause that transition to happen ...

Which is one of the prime reasons that I started this particular thread just after the 2004 presidential elections ....

To track this matter along ...

After Karl Rove made public statements about making and keeping the REPUBLICAN PARTY in power as the DOMINANT PARTY here in OUR America ...

For as long as he could keep it that way ...

SO ...

A COUP ....

And nobody even noticed ....

Which is the brilliance of Karl Rove ....

[Snuffysmith]

I can always count on you Liv for a refreshing interpretation of the scheme of things. I forwarded this article to a long time personal colleague from the Ford White House Days and he sent me back a reply to the effect that he thought this guy was terribly dishonorable. Regardless, this article is the most damming critique in Washington since Richard Clarke's expose.

[Livyjr]

I can always count on you Liv for a refreshing interpretation of the scheme of things.

I forwarded this article to a long time personal colleague from the Ford White House Days and he sent me back a reply to the effect that he thought this guy was terribly dishonorable.

Regardless, this article is the most damming critique in Washington since Richard Clarke's expose.

Well ....

We're just simple country folk up here in the hinterlands of civilization, Snuffysmith ....

And so ...

We have to see things as they are ....

Rather than how we might wish them to be ....

And so ....

I see no DISHONOR here at all ...

At least on the part of this guy who wrote the article ....

And I don't know rightly if it is a damning critique ....

But I do know that it is to the point ...

And so, should be read by every American .....

Because it is OUR country ...

And by OUR silence ...

It is being taken away from us ...

Lock, stock and barrel ....

I wonder at how this former colleague of yours can get all the way over to dishonor ....

But that is really immaterial ....

Since everyone is entitled to their own thoughts on these subjects ....

But to me ....

This guy has stood up ...

And he has demanded that he be counted ...

And in my opinion ...

He is what I would want in my government .....

As opposed to all these lick-spittles and toadies and such who are concerned about THEIR retirement checks, and nothing else in between ..

And so ..

They are willing to sell out anyone and anything ....

Just to get that check in the mail ....

At the end of their government service ....