And here, Morambar, you have painted yourself into a quite interesting corner, with your depiction of John Adams as a CONSERVATIVE!

And I wonder, truly, and for the continued sake of this thread, how you have arrived at this juncture, that you can have John Adams pegged as a "conservative"!

John Adams was a revolutionary!

He saw a nation born!

He attended to that birth, in order to throw off something malign!

There is no "conservatism" to John Adams, that I can see, and I would like to hear you develop this point, Morambar, for the sake of future discussion, because right now, I am engaged in an extensive study of that period of time, and John Adams is, of necessity, one of those who I am studying.

John Adams was a man who could see and comprehend much of human nature, I think, anyway, and so, he had great concerns about this nation's future, if left in the hands of people like Sam Adams, who were good at tearing down the old order, but no good at all at building up a new nation to replace it.

And so to me, in this thread, anyway, the jury is still out on exactly what was going on back there, and it is not an idle matter with me, since I am involved in real life with an appeal that is going to the Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Constitutional grounds, and so, my history has to be precise!

And so, back to you, if you please, Mr. Morambar!

After reading Morambar's post in here this morning, I was caused to have to think one more time about my own thoughts on this thread, and this forum, and to me, as I have said many times before, this is the purest form of democracy that there can ever be, and it is something, for me, an older American, to be there at its very advent, which in many ways is now, AFTER the election, when it is more just plain people in here, than it was before the elections, when many people indeed were skimming the precurser forum to this one, as I think of it anyway, in terms of organizational structure, people were skimming the John Kerry Forum, AS AN EXERCISE IN SELF-EMPOWERMENT, AND SELF-EDUCATION, to make themselves into better citizens, AS THEY THEMSELVES WOULD HAVE THAT TERM DEFINED!

DIVERSITY!

The TRUE STRENGTH of democracy in action!

POLITICS as a marketplace!

This is what I believe, and why!

Filters are removed in here, for once, and for all!

No "SPOKESBOYS" and "SPOKESGIRLS", or if there are, they stand out like a sore thumb, because they cannot discuss, they can only sling party ideology, and what would be an effective tactic in a room full of people becomes very transparent in here, and therefore, useless as a "tool of persuasion".

SO!

"Tools of persuasion!"

This "dialogue" in here has now been going on since just after the 2004 elections, and in that time, we have managed to not only keep alive this dialogue which involves a diverse population spead across the American "map", in many ways, but certainly, stir me, anyway, as an American citizen with respect to my own citizen duties and responsibilities, to strive at all times for the highest and best level of thought and consideration that I am capable of achieving in here, at any given time.

Are we solving anything in here?

As for me, I don't even think about it, nor do I worry about it, as things solve themselves when it is their time to do so, and so, to me, at least, it is more important that we continue to observe this world of OURS, from all of OUR varied vantage points, and that we simply keep the conversation going, to report on life in OUR America, as it continues, like the thousand-petal lotus, to unfold all around us, in the days of OUR lives past, and the days yet to come, as well!

And here, I want to "put in a plug", I guess it would be called, for the Albany, New York Police Honor Guard who went to Washington, D.C. this past weekend to participate in the ceremonies down there for fallen police officers in the line of duty!

As I understand from speaking to one of them upon their return Monday, they were honored with a trip through the West Wing of the White House, and the young man that I was speaking to about this trip down to Washington felt himself to have been honored by the opportunity to be a part of this ceremony, and I have to agree with him, as I am one of those who had an opportunity to mentor this young man as he was growing up, and my advice to him was to always strive for the highest and best that you personally can do, and to always make the best impression that you can on other people, and so, I am personally glad to see this young man on the Albany, New York Police Honor Guard, as I think those young men put forth a very professional positive appearance ON BEHALF OF THE POLICE, and in this day and age, or in any day and age, I think that is a very important thing, to know that YOUR POLICE are so professional as these young men are trained to be.

I know these young men on this Honor Guard see duty as duty, and so do not expect to have their praises being sung every time they fulfill that duty by appearing in public on behalf of the Albany, New York Police Department, but I think that this trip at least deserves a word of mention, and so, I have made it!

And from these fine young men representing Albany, New York's "finest" down there in Washington, D.C. this weekend just gone by, we go to the world, where an iceberg right now is apparently running rampant, just to put into perspective just how much real control over things on this earth we puny humans really do, or do not have:

"Iceberg Tears up Antarctica"

Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Senior Writer, LiveScience.com

Tue May 17, 4:15 PM ET

A huge wandering iceberg is tearing up the Antarctic like a slow-moving bull in a frozen China shop.

The roaving destructor, named B-15A, slammed into the Drygalski ice tongue a month ago and broke off at least two city-sized chunks.

Now it is poised to strike another feature sticking out from the continent.

At 71 miles (115 kilometers) long, B-15A is the largest free-floating object in the world.

It is expected to lumber into the Aviator Glacier any day now, scientists with the European Space Agency said Tuesday.

The researchers released a satellite image taken May 16.

Aviator was discovered in 1955 and named for flyers who helped open up the continent for exploration.

The floating structure is attached to the continent and protrudes about 15 miles (25 kilometers) into Lady Newnes Bay within the Ross Sea.

If B-15A gets stuck, as it has before, researchers fear it could block sea ice behind it, thwarting animals that need to move from shore to the open sea.

B-15A is the largest chunk left of a bigger iceberg, known as B-15, that broke off the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000.

That initial frozen hunk was about the size of Jamaica.

After B-15 broke apart, the chunk named B-15A drifted into McMurdo Sound, where it blocked ocean currents and caused other sea ice to build up, threatening wildlife.

Scientists predicted an imminent collision back in January this year.

Instead, the iceberg ran aground and stalled out.

Then it broke free in March.

On the move again, it collided with the Drygalski ice tongue in April, forcing the redraw of Antarctica maps.

And from rampant ice in Anarctica, through the miracle of modern science and technology, we whisk ourselves back northwards, to sunny Los Angeles, California, where Mayor Hahn, weakened by CORRUPTION, and other problems, has just been given the BOOT by the citizens of that city, and HOORAY to that say I:

HAIL THE POWER OF DEMOCRACY IN OUR AMERICA!

Politics

Antonio Villaraigosa acknowledges cheering supporters Tuesday.

"Villaraigosa wins L.A. mayor’s race - Councilman becomes city’s first Hispanic mayor in 133 years"

The Associated Press
Updated: 3:57 a.m. ET May 18, 2005

LOS ANGELES - Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa unseated Mayor James Hahn on Tuesday to become the city’s first Hispanic mayor in more than a century, confirming the rising political power of Latinos in the nation’s second-largest city.

After a lackluster term tainted by corruption allegations at City Hall, Hahn was turned out of office in favor of a high school dropout and son of the barrio who turned his life around to become speaker of the California Assembly and then a member of the Los Angeles City Council.

With 82 percent of precincts reporting, Villaraigosa had 225,328 votes, or 59 percent, to 158,732 votes for Hahn, or 41 percent.

'Tonight I really love L.A.'

Striding to the podium at his victory party amid chants of “Si, se puede,” Spanish for “Yes, we can,” Villaraigosa thanked his family and the people who had inspired him over the years, and promised to “bring this great city together.”

“You all know I love L.A., but tonight I really love L.A.,” an exuberant Villaraigosa told supporters.

Villaraigosa will become the first Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles since 1872, back when the city was merely a dusty outpost of only about 5,000 residents on the edge of the Western frontier.

Hahn, the scion of a prominent political family, becomes the first Los Angeles mayor in 32 years to be bounced from office.

Villaraigosa, 52, positioned himself as a unity candidate who would bridge racial and ethnic groups in a city that is 48 percent Hispanic, 31 percent white, 11 percent Asian and 10 percent black.

The Democrat lined up marquee endorsements from John Kerry to basketball legend Magic Johnson.

The bruising runoff between the two Democrats was a rematch of the 2001 election, in which Hahn rallied to defeat Villaraigosa and win his first term.

Villaraigosa came back strong this year, nearly ousting Hahn in the March primary.

Elsewhere, Pittsburgh held a primary for mayor with the city mired in worst financial crisis since the collapse of the steel industry during the 1980s.

And voters in Dover, Pa., picked their candidates for the school board in a community that has been roiled by a new and apparently first-in-the-nation policy requiring that students learn about the “intelligent design” theory of creation.

Hahn's base of support crumbles

Hahn’s family has been active in Los Angeles politics for decades; his father, Kenneth, was a beloved county supervisor.

He touted Los Angeles’ dropping crime and argued that he is the man to cure such urban ills such as failing schools and gridlock.

But the coalition of blacks and moderate-to-conservative San Fernando Valley voters that put him in office four years ago broke apart this time.

He lost black support because he backed the ouster of Police Chief Bernard Parks, who is black, and he suffered fallout from allegations that his administration exchanged city contracts for campaign donations.

And Hahn’s lawyerly — some say drab — image left him open to criticism that he isn’t up to being the public face of star-studded L.A.

“People want substance rather than style."

"I think they want results rather than rhetoric,” Hahn, 54, said after voting early Tuesday.

“You know, maybe I have a charisma deficit disorder, but I’ve done the job people have elected me to do.”

Hahn left his own party shortly before Villaraigosa declared victory Tuesday night.

Before bidding his supporters goodnight, Hahn praised his administration and said he had accomplished much of what he set out to do.

Villaraigosa promised to bring a fresh start to the city.

“I will never forget where I came from."

"And I will always believe in the people of Los Angeles,” he said Tuesday night.

In other races Tuesday:

Former City Councilman Bob O’Connor beat a crowded field of Democrats in the Pittsburgh mayoral primary.

O’Connor will be heavily favored to win in November because Pittsburgh is predominantly Democratic.

Mayor Tom Murphy is not seeking a fourth term.

In Dover, Pa., a party-line split emerged in a school board primary that has made national headlines because of the board’s October decision to require that ninth-grade students be told about “intelligent design” when they learn about evolution in biology class.

Republicans picked seven incumbent school board members who support the policy, while Democrats favored a slate of seven challengers who say intelligent design doesn’t belong in science class.

Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex, it must have been created by some kind of guiding force.

Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, once called “America’s Deadliest D.A.” for her pursuit of the death penalty, took a big step toward winning a full fourth term by cruising to victory in the Democratic primary.

The 64-year-old prosecutor defeated a 38-year-old lawyer who accused Abraham of being soft on City Hall corruption.

In Erie, Pa., Mayor Rick Filippi, who is under indictment on charges of using insider information to try to profit from real estate deals, lost his re-election bid in the Democratic primary.

The primary came a day before he faced a preliminary hearing in the corruption case.

Attention John Kerry!

Four years ago, Antonio Villaraigosa lost to Jim Hahn in the same race for mayor. The reason? Simple.

Hahn ran smear ads against Antonio Villaraigosa during the last week of the campaign. Antonio Villaraigosa was too much of a gentleman to even acknowledge them, much less counter them.

Years ago, I learned (in court) that " AN UNREFUTED LIE BECOMES ACCEPTED AS THE TRUTH"

This year, Antonio Villaraigosa cried "BULLSH*T" at all of Hahn's smears.

The result? Antonio Villaraigosa won with 60 percent of the vote.

Elections work when:

a: people vote.

b: the votes are counted (fairly)

c: BULLSH*T is vigorously opposed.

Attention John Kerry!

Did you copy that?

BRAVO, jeffmoskin, well said!

As a veteran who supported John Kerry, I could not believe that he let that Swift Boat B** S*** go on for more than five minutes, let alone as long as it did, COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY UNREFUTED, AND UNCHALLENGED, and I think that a lot of people lost a great deal of respect for him, because of that!

You are right on the money, jeffmoskin, when you say that unrefuted lies become the truth!

Do they ever!

John Kerry let a bunch of howling fools make him into the epitome of a flaming coward, with innuendo, and outright crap, like that Navy doctor who was running down John Kerry's wounds in the most unprofessional manner possible, and he never even said boo!

What a bunch of crap!

Excellent analysis too, jeffmoskin, on Villaraigosa, then and now!

We need to hear more of that "grass-roots" type of analysis from the "field", is what I think, and certainly, whoever ran that losing campaign for John kerry should certainly be taking a tutorial from you, jeffmoskin!

And it's too bad for all of us that they didn't take that tutorial long before the Kerry campaign even began!

BUT .......

Ah, well!

"Earthly Empires

By William C. Symonds, with Brian Grow in Atlanta and John Cady in New York
BusinessWeek Online

There's no shortage of churches in Houston, deep in the heart of the Bible Belt.

So it's surprising that the largest one in the city -- and in the entire country -- is tucked away in a depressed corner most Houstonians would never dream of visiting.

Yet 30,000 people endure punishing traffic on the narrow roads leading to Lakewood Church every weekend to hear Pastor Joel Osteen deliver upbeat messages of hope.

A youthful-looking 42-year-old with a ready smile, he reassures the thousands who show up at each of his five weekend services that "God has a great future in store for you."

His services are rousing affairs that often include his wife, Victoria, leading prayers and his mother, Dodie, discussing passages from the Bible.

Osteen is so popular that he has nearly quadrupled attendance since taking over the pulpit from his late father in 1999, winning over believers from other churches as well as throngs of the "unsaved."

Many are drawn first by his ubiquitous presence on television.

Each week 7 million people catch the slickly produced broadcast of his Sunday sermons on national cable and network channels, for which Lakewood shells out $15 million a year.

Adherents often come clutching a copy of Osteen's best-seller, Your Best Life Now, which has sold 2.5 million copies since its publication last fall.

To keep them coming back, Lakewood offers free financial counseling, low-cost bulk food, even a "fidelity group" for men with "sexual addictions."

Demand is brisk for the self-help sessions.

Angie Mosqueda, 34, who was brought up a Catholic, says she and her husband, Mark, first went to Lakewood in 2000 when they were on the brink of a divorce.

Mark even threw her out of the house after she confessed to infidelity.

But over time, Lakewood counselors "really helped us to forgive one another and start all over again," she says.

Disney Look

Osteen's flourishing Lakewood enterprise brought in $55 million in contributions last year, four times the 1999 amount, church officials say.

Flush with success, Osteen is laying out $90 million to transform the massive Compaq Center in downtown Houston -- former home of the NBA's Houston Rockets -- into a church that will seat 16,000, complete with a high-tech stage for his TV shows and Sunday School for 5,000 children.

After it opens in July, he predicts weekend attendance will rocket to 100,000.

Says Osteen: "Other churches have not kept up, and they lose people by not changing with the times."

Pastor Joel is one of a new generation of evangelical entrepreneurs transforming their branch of Protestantism into one of the fastest-growing and most influential religious groups in America.

Their runaway success is modeled unabashedly on business.

They borrow tools ranging from niche marketing to MBA hiring to lift their share of U.S. churchgoers.

Like Osteen, many evangelical pastors focus intently on a huge potential market -- the millions of Americans who have drifted away from mainline Protestant denominations or simply never joined a church in the first place.

To reach these untapped masses, savvy leaders are creating Sunday Schools that look like Disney World and church cafés with the appeal of Starbucks.

Although most hold strict religious views, they scrap staid hymns in favor of multimedia worship and tailor a panoply of services to meet all kinds of consumer needs, from divorce counseling to help for parents of autistic kids.

Like Osteen, many offer an upbeat message intertwined with a religious one.

To make newcomers feel at home, some do away with standard religious symbolism -- even basics like crosses and pews -- and design churches to look more like modern entertainment halls than traditional places of worship.

Branding Whiz

So successful are some evangelicals that they're opening up branches like so many new Home Depots or Subways.

This year, the 16.4 million-member Southern Baptist Convention plans to "plant" 1,800 new churches using by-the-book niche-marketing tactics.

"We have cowboy churches for people working on ranches, country music churches, even several motorcycle churches aimed at bikers," says Martin King, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists' North American Mission Board.

Branding whizzes that they are, the new church leaders are spreading their ideas through every available outlet.

A line of "Biblezines" packages the New Testament in glossy magazines aimed at different market segments -- there's a hip-hop version and one aimed at teen girls.

Christian music appeals to millions of youths, some of whom otherwise might never give church a second thought, serving up everything from alternative rock to punk and even "screamo" (they scream religious lyrics).

California megachurch pastor Rick Warren's 2002 book, The Purpose-Driven Life, has become the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time, with more than 23 million copies sold, in part through a novel "pyro marketing" strategy.

Then there's the Left Behind phenomenon, a series of action-packed, apocalyptic page-turners about those left on earth after Christ's second coming, selling more than 60 million copies since 1995.

Evangelicals' eager embrace of corporate-style growth strategies is giving them a tremendous advantage in the battle for religious market share, says Roger Finke, a Pennsylvania State University sociology professor and co-author of a new book, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy.

A new Pope has given Catholicism a burst of global publicity, but its nominal membership growth in the U.S. stems largely from the influx of Mexican immigrants.

Overall, the Catholic Church's long-term decline in U.S. attendance accelerated after the recent sex-abuse scandals, there's a severe priest shortage, and parish churches and schools are closing in the wake of a financial crisis.

Similarly, the so-called mainline Protestants who dominated 20th century America have become the religious equivalent of General Motors Corp.

The large denominations -- including the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church -- have been shrinking for decades and have lost more than 1 million members in the past 10 years alone.

Today, mainline Protestants account for just 16% of the U.S. population, says University of Akron political scientist John C. Green.

In contrast, evangelicalism's theological flexibility gives it the freedom to adapt to contemporary culture.

With no overarching authority like the Vatican, leaders don't need to wrestle with a bureaucratic hierarchy that dictates acceptable behavior.

"If you have a vision for ministry, you just do it, which makes it far easier to respond to market demand," says University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sociology professor Christian Smith.

With such low barriers to entry, the number of evangelical megachurches -- defined as those that attract at least 2,000 weekly worshippers -- has shot up to 880 from 50 in 1980, figures John N. Vaughan, founder of research outfit Church Growth Today in Bolivar, Mo.

He calculates that a new megachurch emerges in the U.S. an average of every two days.

Overall, white evangelicals make up more than a quarter of Americans today, experts estimate.

The figures are fuzzy because there's no common definition of evangelical, which typically refers to Christians who believe the Bible is the literal work of God.

They may include many Southern Baptists, nondenominational churches, and some Lutherans and Methodists.

There are also nearly 25 million black Protestants who consider themselves evangelicals but largely don't share the conservative politics of most white ones.

Says pollster George Gallup, who has studied religious trends for decades: "The evangelicals are the most vibrant branch of Christianity."

The triumph of evangelical Christianity is profoundly reshaping many aspects of American politics and society.

Historically, much of the U.S. political and business elite has been mainline Protestant.

Today, President George W. Bush and more than a dozen members of Congress, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, are evangelicals.

More important, the Republican Right has been fueled by the swelling ranks of evangelicals, whose leaders tend to be conservative politically despite their progressive marketing methods.

In the 1960s and '70s, prominent evangelicals like Billy Graham kept a careful separation of pulpit and politics -- even though he served as a spiritual adviser to President Richard M. Nixon.

That began to change in the early 1980s, when Jerry Falwell formed the Moral Majority to express evangelicals' political views.

Many of today's evangelicals hope to expand their clout even further.

They're also gaining by taking their views into Corporate America.

Exhibit A: the recent clash at software giant Microsoft.

As they thrive, though, there are growing tensions, with some mainline Protestants offended by their conservative politics and brazen marketing.

"Jesus was not a capitalist; check out what [He] says about how hard it is to get into heaven if you're a rich man," says the Reverend Robert W. Edgar, general secretary of the liberal National Council of Churches.

Especially controversial are leaders like Osteen and the flamboyant Creflo A. Dollar, pastor of World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga., who preach "the prosperity gospel."

They endorse material wealth and tell followers that God wants them to be prosperous.

In his book, Osteen talks about how his wife, Victoria, a striking blonde who dresses fashionably, wanted to buy a fancy house some years ago, before the money rolled in.

He thought it wasn't possible.

"But Victoria had more faith," he wrote.

"She convinced me we could live in an elegant home...and several years later, it did come to pass."

Dollar, too, defends materialistic success.

Dubbed "Pass-the-Dollar" by critics, he owns two Rolls Royces and travels in a Gulfstream 3 jet.

"I practice what I preach, and the Bible says...that God takes pleasure in the prosperity of his servants," says Dollar, 43, nattily attired in French cuffs and a pinstriped suit.

Hucksters?

Some evangelical leaders acknowledge that flagrant materialism can raise the specter of religious hucksterism à la Sinclair Lewis' fictional Elmer Gantry or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

"Our goal is not to turn the church into a business," insists Warren, the founder of Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif.

After The Purpose-Driven Life made him millions, he repaid Saddleback all the salary he had taken over the years and still lives modestly.

Cautions Kurt Frederickson, a director of the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.:

"We have to be careful when a pastor moves into the CEO mode and becomes too market-oriented, or there might be a reaction against megachurches just as there is against Wal-Mart."

Many evangelicals say they're just trying to satisfy demands not met by traditional churches.

Craig Groeschel, who launched Life Church in Edmond, Okla., in 1996, started out doing market research with non-churchgoers in the area -- and got an earful.

"They said churches were full of hypocrites and were boring," he recalls.

So he designed Life Church to counter those preconceptions, with lively, multimedia-filled services in a setting that's something between a rock concert and a coffee shop.

Once established, some ambitious churches are making a big business out of spreading their expertise.

Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., formed a consulting arm called Willow Creek Assn.

It earned $17 million last year, partly by selling marketing and management advice to 10,500 member churches from 90 denominations.

Jim Mellado, the hard-charging Harvard MBA who runs it, last year brought an astonishing 110,000 church and lay leaders to conferences on topics such as effective leadership.

"Our entrepreneurial impulse comes from the Biblical mandate to get the message out," says Willow Creek founder Bill Hybels, who hired Stanford MBA Greg Hawkins, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, to handle the church's day-to-day management.

Willow Creek's methods have even been lauded in a Harvard Business School case study.

Hybel's consumer-driven approach is evident at Willow Creek, where he shunned stained glass, Bibles, or even a cross for the 7,200-seat, $72 million sanctuary he recently built.

The reason?

Market research suggested that such traditional symbols would scare away non-churchgoers.

He also gives practical advice.

On a recent Wednesday evening, one of his four "teaching" pastors gave a service that started with 20 minutes of music, followed by a lengthy sermon about the Christian approach to personal finances.

He told the 5,000 listeners about resisting advertising aimed at getting people to buy things they don't need and suggested they follow up at home by e-mailing questions.

Like Osteen, Hybel packages self-help programs with a positive message intended to make people feel good about themselves.

"When I walk out of a service, I feel completely relieved of any stress I walked in with," says Phil Earnest, 38, a sales manager who in 2003 switched to Willow Creek from the Methodist Church he found too stodgy.

So adept at the sell are some evangelicals that it can be difficult to distinguish between their religious aims and the secular style they mimic.

Last December, Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Tex., staged a spectacular Christmas festival, including a 500-person choir, that attracted 70,000 people even though the cheapest ticket was $20.

Throughout the year, some 16,000 people take part in its sports program, which uses eight playing fields and six gyms on its $100 million, 140-acre campus.

The teams, coached by church members, bring in converts, many of them children, says Executive Pastor Mike Buster.

Gushers of Cash

Kids are often a prime target audience for megachurches.

The main campus of Groeschel's Life Church in Edmond, Okla., includes a "Toon Town" of 3D buildings, a 16-foot high slide, and an animatronic police chief who recites rules.

All the razzmatazz has helped Life Church quadruple its Sunday school attendance to more than 2,500 a week.

"The kids are bringing their parents to church," says children's pastor Scott Werner.

Such marketing and services help to create brand loyalty any CEO would envy. Willow Creek ranks in the top 5% of 250 major brands, right up with Nike and John Deere, says Eric Arnson.

He helped develop a consumer-brand practice that McKinsey then bought and recently did a pro bono study for Willow Creek using that methodology.

Other megachurches are franchising their good name.

Life Church now has five campuses in Oklahoma and will expand into Phoenix this fall.

Pastor Groeschel jumped the 1,000 miles to Arizona after market research pinpointed Phoenix as an area with a large population but few effective churches.

Atlanta's Dollar, who is African American, has pushed into five countries, including Nigeria and South Africa.

All this growth, plus the tithing many evangelicals encourage, is generating gushers of cash.

A traditional U.S. church typically has fewer than 200 members and an annual budget of around $100,000.

The average megachurch pulls in $4.8 million, according to a 1999 study by the Hartford Seminary, one of the few surveys on the topic.

The money is also fueling a megachurch building boom.

First Baptist Church of Woodstock, near Atlanta, for example, has just finished a $62 million, 7,000-seat sanctuary.

Megachurch business ventures sometimes grow beyond the bounds of the church itself.

In the mid-1990s, Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Wharton MBA who sold bonds for First Boston before he enrolled in seminary, formed an economic development corporation that revived a depressed neighborhood near Houston's 14,000-member Windsor Village United Methodist Church, which he heads.

A former Kmart now houses a mix of church and private businesses employing 270 people, including a Christian school and a bank.

New plans call for a massive center with senior housing, retailing, and a public school.

For all their seemingly unstoppable success, evangelicals must contend with powerful forces in U.S. society.

The ranks of Americans who express no religious preference have quadrupled since 1991, to 14%, according to a recent poll.

Despite the megachurch surge, overall church attendance has remained fairly flat.

And if anything, popular culture has become more vulgar in recent years.

Still, experts like pollster Gallup see clear signs of a rising fascination with spirituality in the U.S.

The September 11 attacks are one reason.

So is the aging of the culturally influential Baby Boom, since spirituality tends to increase with age, he says.

If so, no one is better poised than evangelicals to capitalize on the trend.

end quotes

Sing HALLELUJAH, say AMEN, right, Karl Rove?

And keep that money just pouring on in, 'cause GOD just loves George W. Bush and that REPUBLICAN PARTY of his so, so much that he can't stand it!

And what does that future look like?

"Diabetes out of control in U.S., survey finds"

2 hours, 35 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two out of three Americans with type-2 diabetes do not have their disease under control and risk early deaths from stroke, heart attack or kidney failure as well as blindness and limb loss, according to a report published on Wednesday.

Doctors and patients alike need to do more to test for diabetes and then to control it with diet, exercise and, if necessary, drugs, the report said.

"Diabetes management actually worsened in the past 10 years," Dr. Jaime Davidson, a diabetes expert at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, told a news conference.

"We have the tools but we are not doing better."

Unlike juvenile or type-1 diabetes, type-2 diabetes is almost exclusively caused by poor diet and a lack of exercise, although it may involve a genetic susceptibility.

As many as 18 million Americans now have it, including a growing number of children and young adults.

Type-2 diabetes can be prevented with improved diet and exercise.

It can also be controlled with diet and exercise but many people also need medications to control it and some may eventually need insulin.

The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American College of Endocrinologists commissioned a survey of 157,000 people with type-2, or so-called adult-onset diabetes.

They looked at a blood sugar reading called A1C, and found 67 percent of the patients did not have an adequate A1C level.

"Two out of every three people analyzed in this study were not in control of their blood sugar," said Dr. Lawrence Blonde of the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, a member of the American College of Endocrinologists.

In every state, 50 percent or fewer patients had adequate blood sugar control, they found.

The A1C test indicates average blood sugar levels over the past two months or so by measuring how much glucose is attached to red blood cells.

KEEPING TRACK OF GLUCOSE

The average lean, healthy young American adult has an A1C of about 5.1 percent and the highest desirable level is 6.5 percent.

An A1C reading of 6 percent correlates to an average daily blood sugar reading of 135, while 7 percent indicates an average of 170 over the preceding weeks.

Blood sugar should be below 110 before eating and no higher than 140 after eating.

A separate, Harris Interactive survey of 501 adults with diabetes showed that more than 60 percent did not know what A1C was.

And 84 percent believed they were doing a good job of controlling their blood sugar.

When glucose levels are too high, they can damage the insides of the blood vessels, leading to heart attacks and stroke.

They can damage the tiny capillaries inside the eyes and kidneys, causing blindness and kidney failure.

"Diabetes doesn't necessarily hurt," said singer and actress Della Reese, who has type-2 diabetes.

"If you have a backache, the backache will make you take your medication."

"But this will slip up on you."

She said people need to do more to make sure they are screened for diabetes, and to take care of themselves if they have it.

"The doctors mean well but they are not going to be with you 24 hours a day," Reese told the news conference.

Surgeon-General Dr. Richard Carmona said 40 percent of Americans aged 40 to 74 now have pre-diabetes.

They still have a chance to prevent diabetes itself if they begin to exercise and eat more healthily.

"We must do something about this now," Carmona said.

"Every single year we add 1.2 million Americans with this problem," Davidson said.

"It cost us in 2002 about $132 billion."

And drugs can help manage diabetes but cannot cure it.

"Once complications have set in, you cannot magically reverse it," said Dr. Paul Jellinger, president of the American College of Endocrinologists.

end quotes

Sounds like another business niche here for these Evangelicals, if you ask me, getting people to take care of their diabetes!

And what with their organizational skills, why, maybe what we should do is to turn the whole United States government over to these Evangelicals to run for us, sub-contract it out to them, kind of, or would it be sub-let?

Anyway, with the big bucks they would bring in, why, I bet we would all be getting tax refunds from the overflowing treasury they would have built up in no time, and that is not a bad thing, anyway!

SO!

Who's for it?

Raise your hands, America, and make your choice known!

I believe it was Mary Beth Cahill who "ran" Kerry's campaign.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know whether it was her fault or his fault that no lies were refuted. I don't know whose idea it was to be "above all that."

All I know is that George W Bush is STILL THERE, when he should have been back in Crawford, shovelling for free what he now shovels on our dime.

"Rebels Seize Control of Uzbekistan Town"

By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA, Associated Press Writer
Wed May 18, 3:15 PM ET

KORASUV, Uzbekistan - Rebels cherishing the prospect of a strict Islamic state were firmly in control of this border town Wednesday, throwing up a new challenge to the government as it tried to prove to skeptical diplomats that its troops didn't fire on innocent civilians.

"We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran," rebel leader Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press in Korasuv, a town of 20,000.

"People are tired of slavery."

The government of President Islam Karimov dismissed those claims as "nonsense," but Rakhimov said he has 5,000 followers ready to fight any troops that try to crush the rebellion.

There was no sign of Uzbek officials in Korasuv on Wednesday.

The officials apparently fled the town when rioters attacked police and government offices Saturday, a day after the violent confrontation in the nearby city of Andijan.

The rebels in Korasuv did not appear to be armed.

"We don't have weapons, but if they come and attack us we will fight even with knives," Rakhimov said.

Regardless of officials' attempt to shrug it off, the insurgency in Korasuv ratchets up the stakes for Uzbekistan, a U.S. ally in the war against terrorism.

Observers of the impoverished Central Asia region have long feared that any social unrest could be used by Islamic groups to promote their own goals.

The uprising in Andijan that set off the violence Friday focused largely on social and economic demands.

But it may have provided the opening Islamic militants have craved.

"While one cannot call Uzbekistan an Islamic country, and other sources of the conflict in Uzbekistan are social and clan-based, Islam as a very strong ideology, a strong factor, will be ready to fill the ideological voids created by the regime of Islam Karimov," Russian analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said in Moscow.

"So I consider that in the coming two to three years, an Islamic revolution and the Islamization of Uzbekistan is unavoidable."

"Of course this will be accompanied by bloodshed," he said.

Karimov's government has blamed the unrest on militants and has denied that troops fired on any civilians, though an AP reporter saw troops opening fire on protesters in Andijan on Friday.

The government cites 169 dead in Andijan, but opposition activists say more than 700 were killed — more than 500 in Andijan and about 200 in Pakhtabad — most of them civilians.

Interior Minister Zakir Almatov on Wednesday vehemently dismissed allegations of a crackdown by troops in Pakhtabad.

Judging by Friday's shooting, the government's first response was to crush the Andijan uprising before it could spread farther.

But the emergence of a second hotspot in Korasuv, 20 miles to the southeast on the border with Kyrgyzstan, has coincided with an intense international focus on Uzbekistan — attention that may be staying Karimov's hand.

Uzbek officials took foreign diplomats and journalists on a lightning-quick tour of Andijan on Wednesday, showing them a prison and the local administration building and arranging meetings with local officials, as the top U.N. human rights official called for an independent investigation.

The delegation was kept blocks away from the people of Andijan, leaving little chance for an objective assessment of Friday's violence.

"We blocked a few roads for your security," Almatov told the delegation as it was bused along streets lined with cordons of troops and police.

Inside the gutted administration building, a local official pointed at signs of looting and described how militants allegedly executed local officials whom they took hostage and used civilians as a shield as they tried to flee.

Almatov ignored a reporter's request to visit to a school where a prominent doctor had said 500 bodies were stored after the violence.

The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity out of fears for her safety.

After three hours in Andijan, the delegation was treated to a lavish lunch of the national lamb-and-rice dish, plov, and flown back to the capital, Tashkent.

Some diplomats complained the trip was too short and that there was no opportunity to speak to residents.

"I think we need to be realistic about how much can be achieved in a whistle-stop tour of ambassadors in a large delegation format over such a short period," said British Ambassador David Moran.

"I think what we need now is a systematic process of openness that will enable the international community to make an authoritative assessment of the scale and nature of what happened here."

It was equally difficult to assess just how great a force — and whom — Rakhimov and his Islamic followers in Korasuv represent.

One of Rakhimov's aides, Arab-Polvon Badanboyev, rode a horse back and forth before a crowd of 600 to 700 refugees jostling at the Kyrgyz border on Wednesday morning.

Kyrgyz border guards had closed the bridge spanning the river border, but the crowd was demanding they reopen it so they could reach a market on the other side.

"If you don't open the border, all these people will sweep you away," Badanboyev threatened — and the Kyrgyz guards obliged.

Rakhimov's men, clad in traditional V-necked white shirts and embroidered skull caps, could be seen scattered around the town.

"All decisions will be taken by people at a mosque."

"There will be rule of Shariah law," Rakhimov said.

"Thieves and other criminals will be tried by the people themselves."

Among the groups that promote such ideas, the one that probably has the most followers in formerly Soviet Central Asia is the Hizb-ut-Tarir party, which Uzbek authorities accuse of inspiring terror attacks in Tashkent and the central city of Bukhara last year that killed more than 50.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which claims to reject violence, denied responsibility for those attacks.

Rakhimov said he and his supporters did not belong to any specific Islamic organization.

"We are just people," he said.

"We just follow the Quran."

Ikbol Mirsaitov, a Kyrgyz expert on Islam, speculated that some of the rebels may have been people who escaped from prison in Andijan on Friday, because they had very short beards — indicating they had grown them in the past few days.

Asked if he feared soldiers would try to regain control of Korasuv by force, Rakhimov said:

"They came here today, a few military people."

"I turned them back."

___

Associated Press Writer Kadyr Toktogulov in Andijan contributed to this report.

end quotes

Karimov?

That's the thug that George W. Bush is in bed with over there, isn't he?

Another Saddam Hussein in a long line of Saddam Hussein's for America!

And people say God is blessing America!

With friends like that, however, I must wonder!

It was the "School Marm" Mary Beth Cahill, jeffmoskin, and however that decision was made, it was a damn poor one, for John Kerry, and for OUR America!

Presidential Elections - AP

"Kerry Campaign Head Admits Miscalculations"

By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press Writer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The campaign manager for Sen. John Kerry's failed presidential bid said Wednesday she regrets underestimating the impact of an attack advertisement that questioned Kerry's Vietnam War record.

Mary Beth Cahill, who spoke at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government with Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager, said the Massachusetts senator's campaign initially thought there would be "no reach" to the ad from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Instead, the ad, which initially aired in just three states, became a central issue of the campaign, eventually forcing Kerry to personally deny the group's allegations that he did not deserve his combat medals.

"This is the best $40,000 investment made by any political group, but it was only because of the news coverage that it got where it did," she said.

"In hindsight, maybe we should have put Senator Kerry out earlier, perhaps we could have cut it off earlier."

Mehlman said that it was natural that the ad had the reach and impact it did, because Kerry decided to make his Vietnam record a central part of his campaign.

"Because Senator Kerry was so focused on that part of his biography, it came out as an issue," he said.

Mehlman acknowledged that Democrats scored points against Bush, such as raising the specter of a draft reinstatement, which got the attention of young voters.

"I think that was something that worked."

"It wasn't true, but it worked," he said.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of Republican-funded Vietnam War veterans who patrolled the same Mekong Delta in Swift boats similar to the ones piloted by Navy Lt. John Kerry, challenged Kerry's accounts of his medal-winning service and anti-war protests.

In the first ad, former sailors who served on boats near Kerry's in Vietnam said he lied about his war record.

In a second, veterans criticized his subsequent anti-war activities.

A third attacked Kerry for throwing away the medals he earned in Vietnam.

Cahill said the Swift boat ads show the power of news coverage, particularly cable news stations, which she said amplified the ads by running them repeatedly.

She said it was frustrating that the first ad continued to eat up so much air time even after the central allegations were debunked.

"For me, this was a very big change."

"The fact that it was disproved and it was still shown every day as part of the (campaign) coverage," she said.

Cahill said if she could change one thing about the campaign it would be the timing of the conventions.

By scheduling their convention about five weeks after the Democrats, the Republicans gained a fund-raising advantage and dominated the news going into the final stretch.

"That was a huge hill to get over," she said.

Both sides agreed the debates were a crucial moment in the campaign.

Mehlman said he felt Bush was comfortable because he had gone through similar debates in 2000 and had gained confidence as president.

Cahill said Kerry practiced "mock debate after mock debate" and tried to avoid political zingers given the seriousness of the debates while the country was at war.

"This was not an election where 'You're no John Kennedy' was going to turn a debate," she said referring to a quip used by Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen against Republican Dan Quayle in a 1988 debate.

Both sides also agreed that the Internet and other emerging news technologies have transformed the political process by making it more democratic and encouraging more people to become involved.

Why did he make a 35 year old war the "central part of his campaign?" Why not the IRAQ WAR???




WOW. What a bad decision. WAR IS VERY SERIOUS. PEOPLE DIE. Kerry never called Bush on it.



Looking for the quip, but missing the whole point. The Quayle quip was for VICE PRESIDENT - - - An experienced senator against an idiot - - - not the same thing.

On second thought...

"Senate battle begins on judicial nomination - Democrat leader throws first monkey wrench to delay business"

By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC

Updated: 7:28 p.m. ET May 18, 2005

WASHINGTON - While the Senate conducted a day-long floor debate Wednesday on appeals court nominee Priscilla Owen, a bipartisan group of senators working behind closed doors tried to engineer a deal that would head off a showdown vote on changing the filibuster rule.

After a series of meetings, the bipartisan conclave was unable to devise an agreement and called it quits until Thursday.

The group seeking compromise is headed on the GOP side by Arizona Sen. John McCain, Virginia Sen. John Warner, Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and on the Democratic side by Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

A bipartisan deal could undercut the effort by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to lower the number of votes needed to stop debate on a judicial nominee from 60 to 51.

Democrats have used filibuster threats to block 10 of 46, or about 20 percent of Bush’s appeals court nominees.

The battle over judicial filibusters could be the most consequential one of George Bush's presidency.

At stake: Bush's ability to steer the courts in a more conservative direction.

With the likelihood that the president will have an opportunity to fill one or more vacancies expected next month on the Supreme Court, the issue takes on even greater importance.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 80, is ailing with thyroid cancer.

"The problem now is that the issue has escalated," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., one of the leading conservatives in the Senate.

"This has escalated into a question of: do you need a super-majority to get a Supreme Court nominee confirmed?'"

And Democratic senators have repeatedly said they would be unwilling to give up the chance to use the filibuster to scuttle a Supreme Court nominee they deemed unacceptable.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, Democratic Leader Harry Reid immediately objected to the Senate debating Owen's nomination.

Would it not be better, Reid asked Frist, if senators considered other administration nominees such as Thomas Griffith whom Democrats would not filibuster, instead of trying to vote on Owen?

The first monkey wrench

Reid then threw the first parliamentary monkey wrench — invoking the rarely-used Senate rule that prevents Senate committees from meeting for more than two hours once the Senate has begun its day's proceedings.

In his debate-opening speech, Frist said that traditionally judicial nominees were confirmed by a majority vote.

But "in the last Congress the minority party radically increased that threshold to 60, and that is wrong," Frist said.

But Reid replied, “If Republicans roll back our rights in this chamber, there will be no check on their power."

"The radical right wing will be free to pursue any agenda they want.”

And Democratic Whip Sen. Dick Durbin criticized Frist for saying in his speech that Democrats had used filibusters "to kill, to defeat, to assassinate" Bush appeals court nominees.

Senate Democrats have said that if the filibuster rule is changed, they will use parliamentary devices to delay bills and to “wrest control of the agenda” from Republicans.

Reid was living up to that promise on Wednesday.

The essence of a potential accord to avert the filibuster showdown remains as it has been for weeks: Republicans would have to agree to "throw overboard" two, three or perhaps more of Bush's appeals court nominees.

Graham said told reporters before heading to one meeting of the bipartisan senators, "if you voted on all these (nominees), some of them wouldn't make it," in other words, if the Democrats would permit up-or-down votes on all of Bush appeals court nominees, some of them would be defeated, with a few Republican senators joining Democrats to vote "no."

But he also said, "I'm not going to agree to vote 'no' on somebody just to get a deal."

A Democratic participant in the negotiations, Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Graham.

"There is some realistic expectation that a couple of the nominees would be voted down on an up-or-down vote," he said.

Specter decries deal-making

Pouring cold water on talk of a deal in which a few Bush nominees were abandoned, Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R- Pa., told the Senate, "Such a deal on confirmations would only confirm public cynicism about what goes on in Washington behind closed doors."

As part of a deal, Democrats would have to agree to not filibuster the remainder of the seven contentious nominees from last year, and would have to refrain from filibustering nominees for the rest of the 109th Congress (until January of 2007) — except under "extraordinary circumstances."

One roadblock: the difficulty of reaching a consensus on what "extraordinary circumstances" means.

As part of any deal, at least six Republicans would promise to vote against any attempt by Frist to lower the threshold for ending filibusters of nominees.

A leading liberal activist on judicial nominations , Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, was in the Senate lobby Wednesday morning to urge senators to reject any deal that allowed some Bush nominees to go through without being filibustered.

"The Alliance for justice is categorically opposed to any deal, any deal," she told MSNBC.com.

"We have communicated that message to all the offices of the Democrats."

"It would be bad for the federal judiciary.... We are working very hard to dissuade them from agreeing to a deal."

A Frist aide said that the debate on Owen would most likely continue until next Tuesday.

At that point Frist would seek a ruling of the presiding officer that further debate was dilatory.

If the Senate sustained by majority vote a ruling that further debate was dilatory, then the filibuster-ending threshold would be lowered from 60 to 51.

President Bush first nominated Owen to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on May 9, 2001, but Democrats defeated four attempts by Frist to bring her nomination to a vote.

And speaking of the "thousand petal lotus opening", just who in the hell is this Donald Rumsfeld, and what game is he really playing at here with respect to OUR military forces?

Whose "side" is he on here, BESIDES HIS OWN?

"Donnie, what's you game?"

"Pentagon Aims to Disperse Facilities - Rumsfeld's Strategy For Capital Region Embedded in Report"

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 19, 2005; Page A01

The Pentagon's recommendation to move more than 20,000 defense jobs from sites in the Washington area is based in part on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's goal of shifting operations out of the capital region, according to the base realignment and closure plan released last week.

The dispersal strategy, which had not been announced previously, is mentioned numerous times in the base-closings report as a justification for abandoning leased office space in Northern Virginia and transferring some facilities from Maryland and the District.

The report does not explain why Rumsfeld wants to reduce the concentration of Defense Department activities in and near Washington, and Pentagon officials declined to elaborate yesterday.

Several local members of Congress said the policy appears to be an effort to make the department less vulnerable in the event of another terror attack or a natural disaster in the nation's capital.

Several of the lawmakers, including John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed concern about Rumsfeld's goal.

A Warner spokesman said yesterday that the senator questions the security standards the Pentagon has developed both for buildings and for the metropolitan area.

He also said the guidelines could increase defense costs by requiring new construction elsewhere.

"Senator Warner is very concerned about the proposed closures."

"He has not seen a justification from DOD for the savings that these closures are expected to produce," Warner spokesman John Ullyot said.

"He intends to very closely scrutinize the standards -- the force-protection standards and the savings rationale for the closure of leased office space."

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D), who represents Arlington County and Alexandria, called the decision to move defense jobs outside the region "arbitrary" and said the dispersal goal was not included in the criteria the Pentagon had said would guide the new round of base closings.

"What do they accomplish by moving away from the very center of decision-making they have to be a part of?" Moran asked, noting that the Defense Department's headquarters -- the Pentagon -- is not moving.

The plan released Friday would eliminate or reduce forces at more than 800 military installations across the country, with the aim of consolidating far-flung operations and saving $49 billion over 20 years.

A nine-member commission is reviewing the plan and has until Sept. 8 to produce a final list that President Bush must accept or reject in its entirety and forward to Congress.

The Washington area would have a net loss of 14,459 defense jobs, more than any other metropolitan region in the country, according to the Pentagon's calculations.

Its definition of the D.C. area, however, does not include some outer counties that would gain employment, such as Anne Arundel, where Fort Meade would get an additional 5,361 military and civilian jobs.

Arlington and Alexandria would be the hardest-hit jurisdictions, losing almost 23,000 defense workers now housed in leased office space.

Northern Virginia officials had expected job losses because those office buildings do not meet new Pentagon requirements that structures be set back at least 82 feet from traffic to protect against truck bombs.

But the Pentagon's broader goal of moving jobs outside the region presents local officials with an additional obstacle as they lobby against the loss of the leases.

Moran and Northern Virginia Reps. Thomas M. Davis III ® and Frank R. Wolf ® said the military risks a brain drain because many of its skilled technical workers would take other jobs rather than leave the area.

They also argued that moving defense operations out of the region would decrease coordination with other federal agencies involved in security and homeland defense.

The 754-page report on base realignment and closure invokes the goal of dispersing Washington area facilities to help justify scores of moves by defense agencies that would affect thousands of jobs.

For instance, in recommending the transfer of the Defense Contract Management Agency headquarters from Alexandria to Fort Lee, Va., which is south of Richmond, the report cites a desire to achieve "a dispersion of DOD activities away from a dense concentration within the National Capital Region."

The same justification is given for moving the Air Force Real Property Administration from Arlington to Lackland Air Force Base, near San Antonio.

The report says that transferring the Air Force Flight Standards Agency and two C-21 aircraft from Andrews Air Force Base to Will Rogers Air National Guard Base in Oklahoma City "moves federal assets out of the National Capital Region, reducing the nation's vulnerability."

And it says that moving defense intelligence analysts from Bolling Air Force Base in Washington to Rivanna Station near Charlottesville "meets the spirit of the Secretary of Defense's guidelines for relocation outside the National Capital Region."

In an interview yesterday, Philip W. Grone, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment, would not elaborate on the guidelines mentioned in the document.

But he said the recommendations involving Washington area operations were based not only on security considerations but also on such factors as cost savings -- achieved by moving from leased to department-owned facilities -- consolidation of related activities and better use of vacant space.

"No recommendation . . . was based solely on anti-terrorism, force-protection arguments," Grone said.

"There is no one-size-fits-all approach."

In fall 2002, Rumsfeld issued what has become known as the "100-mile memo," in which he reserved authority over any real estate purchase, construction or leasing action greater than $500,000 within a 100-mile radius of the Pentagon.

The department also has given jurisdiction over real estate issues in that area to its Washington Headquarters Service.

As one of America's many veterans, I have to wonder at what is going on here with this Donald Rumsfeld character, and exactly what is his goal for OUR American military, which he is supposed to be in charge of, although as a disabled veteran, I truly have to wonder at his qualifications for the task, which seem to be none at all, other than that he is a powerful REPUBLICAN with an alleged huge "portfolio" of corporate stock holdings that makes his personal involvement with OUR military very suspect to me, ESPECIALLY SINCE OUR AMERICA NOW SEEMS TO BE WEAKER MILITARILY THAN AT ANY TIME IN ITS PRIOR HISTORY, or in my lifetime anyway, which includes the Korean debacle, where OUR military forces were not very prepared at all, for seemingly anything, especially armed conflict in a foreign land like Korea!

Old Donnie Rumsfeld keeps talking about making OUR military "leaner", but what does that really mean?

No answers forthcoming!

And he talks about these supposed "conflicts of the future" that we are supposed to be engaged in, and here, as a combat veteran, I have to wonder exactly what he is at, since my thoughts are that old Donnie is planning further war, for "CORPORATE PROFIT", I would say, as opposed to preparing for defense of OUR America, and believe me, there is a huge difference between the two, as every other civilization on the face of this earth before us has learned, mostly to its chagrin and detriment, since those nations are no longer here on the face of the earth as nations, but as ruins instead!

Is there going to be an "attack" on Washington, D.C., for partisan REPUBLICAN purposes, timed to coincide with the next presidential election?

Is that "attack" in the "planning stages" right now, which is why old Donnie wants to pull people out of the Washington, D.C. area?

And would the REPUBLICANS, or their financial benefactors, really stage an attack on Washington, D.C. for their own gain, so as to continue THEIR STATED GOAL of consolidating their power not only over all of OUR America, but all the wide world as well?

Stay tuned!

Let's find out together, as a nation, and as a world, just what the future is going to bring!

And what part old Donnie Rumsfeld and his crowd are going to play in making that "future" a reality!

And speaking of the transformational power of the internet in action:

"Bikini-clad beauty queens offend Thais"

By Sasithorn Simaporn
Thu May 19,11:40 AM ET

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Miss Universe organizers scrambled on Thursday to calm a furor over photos of bikini-clad contestants posing near an ancient Buddhist temple in pageant host Thailand after the images infuriated religious leaders.

The photos, which showed beauty queens on a Bangkok river cruise with the famed Wat Arun, or "Temple of Dawn," in the background, were swiftly removed from the pageant Web site.

But religious leaders and culture watchdogs are still upset, saying the episode violated traditional values and morality just days before a key Buddhist holiday.

"This is the time of Visakha Bucha when we are reminded of Lord Buddha's teachings."

"But we have allowed this thing which will mark the country with sin for a long time," Phra Thep Dilok, head of the National Center for Buddhism Promotion, told Reuters.

The chair of the Senate tourism committee, Suradech Yasawat, said the photos, which were splashed on the front pages of most Thai newspapers, had hurt the country's image.

"It is completely inappropriate."

"When a contest is being held in Thailand, Thai traditions and culture should be respected," he told the Thai News Agency.

About 90 percent of Thailand's 63 million people are Buddhist and any slight against the religion can trigger a public outcry.

Last year, the director of the U.S. movie "Hollywood Buddha" apologized for offending Thais by sitting on the head of a Buddha image for an advertising poster.

Thai Buddhists consider the head the most sacred part of the body and it is not to be touched.

And despite Bangkok's hundreds of go-go bars and its racy reputation as the "anything goes" sex capital of Southeast Asia, many Thais are uncomfortable with public nudity.

FOOTAGE VETTED

Pageant president Paula Shugart said the temple incident was unfortunate and would not happen again.

"We knew that if we had any visits to the temple, we knew how the women had to dress."

"This happened to be out on the river and unfortunately it appeared in the background," she told Reuters.

"We would never, ever do anything to intentionally offend anyone here."

The Miss Universe franchise is a partnership between real-estate mogul Donald Trump and U.S. television network NBC.

Shugart said video footage of the 81 Miss Universe hopefuls -- who have rode elephants, toured temples and frolicked on beaches since arriving last week -- would be vetted by the pageant's Thai partners before the May 31 grand finale is broadcast worldwide.

It screens in the United States on May 30.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who hopes the pageant will give Thailand's tsunami-hit tourist industry a badly-needed boost, has urged Thais not to overreact.

Thailand has spent 265 million baht ($6.7 million) on hosting the event and expects to earn 3.2 billion baht ($80.4 million) in revenue from the pageant and other activities.

"I think they did not intend to insult Thai culture."

"They just wanted to shoot pictures of beautiful places but did not realize that the temple is sacred for Thais," he said.

Some Thais are also wondering what the fuss is all about.

"We wanted to promote our tourism industry, right?"

"If we want tourists to come to Thailand, then let them see it," said a university student on an Internet chat site.

($1=39.82 Baht)

And since we are on the "economy" here, let's see if we still have one:

"Reports Offer Mixed Signals for Economy"

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, AP Business Writer

42 minutes ago

NEW YORK - The economy offered conflicting signs of growth on Thursday.

While a closely watched gauge of future business activity fell for the fourth month in a row in April, job hunters got an encouraging cue when the number of new people signing up for unemployment insurance dropped sharply last week.

The Conference Board said its Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators fell 0.2 percent last month to 114.5, though economists pegged the economy as still solid.

The decline was in line with what analysts expected for the indicator, which is closely followed because it is meant to forecast the economy's health over the coming three to six months.

The April drop followed a revised 0.6 percent decline in March and a 0.1 loss in February.

Also Thursday, the Labor Department reported that the number of new people signing up for jobless benefits dropped sharply last week.

New applications filed for unemployment insurance declined by a seasonally adjusted 20,000 to 321,000 for the week ending May 14.

The decline, larger than expected, was the biggest drop in claims seen in a month.

Investors appeared to respond positively to the job claims report, as stocks were mostly higher Thursday though blue chip issues struggled.

"The Leading Economic Indicators show continued economic growth, but a definite loss of forward momentum," said Ken Goldstein, economist at The Conference Board, a non-profit business research group.

Economists were not worried about the fourth consecutive decline in the index because the components that offered positive signs — such as manufacturers' new orders for consumer goods and materials and average weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance — are the most critical barometers.

Also, there were plenty of special factors such as an early Easter — which hurt consumer spending — and turmoil in Iraq that hobbled the economy.

Given higher interest rates, "we are going to see slower growth in the second half, but if it weren't for those special factors I would have been more concerned," said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, N.C.

"There is clearly underlying strength in the economy," he said, adding that the components that are strengthening "tend to give consistent readings about the direction of the economy."

"The ones weakening have given a lot of false signals."

Vitner said there is a chance the Federal Reserve will "take pause" and won't push up the federal funds rate as high as 4 percent because the economy is slowing.

But most economists like Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, expect more rate increases throughout this year.

"Until the (Federal Reserve) sees that the upward creep in inflation has stopped, they will continue to keep tightening," Naroff said.

He added, "Right now, I am not worried ... The economy is moderating, but growth is still solid."

The five of the 10 components of the leading index that also strengthened in April included building permits, average weekly manufacturing hours and manufacturers' new orders for nondefense capital goods.

The components that fell were the index of consumer expectations, real money supply, interest rate spread, stock prices and vendor performances.

The index of coincident indicators, which measures the current economy, rose 0.2 percent in April to 119.6.

The gain followed a 0.2 percent increase in March and a 0.1 percent increase in February.

Three of the four components that make up the index rose in April.

The one component that declined was industrial production.

The index of lagging indicators, which looks back at the past six months, rose 0.4 percent in April to 99.7.

That was followed by a 0.2 percent decrease in March, and a 0.3 percent increase in February.

Six of the seven components advanced, led by commercial and industrial loans outstanding.

The negative contributor was average duration of unemployment.

In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 3.78 to 10,468.23.

The barometer of 30 major companies has advanced more than 300 points this week, including a 132-point jump on Wednesday.

Broader stock indicators rose modestly.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 3.19 to 1,188.75 and the Nasdaq composite index was up 9.35 to 2,040.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 1.96 to 609.84.

It is entirely possible that the gains in stock prices is due more to the influx of petrodollars (OUR stolen gas money) being recycled than to so-called "investor optimism." After all, with manufacturing jobs disappearing, what's the cause for optimism?

And speaking of George W. Bush's lack of foresight and vision in connection with the Iraq Holy War to take over Iraq's oil deposits, hobbling the economy over here, which makes us weaker and weaker as a nation, what do we have here, besides chaos, and a bunch of people who, as usual, seem to not have the slightest idea of what they are about, going to "war" as they have, without a plan, without a strategy, without tactics, without a clue, actually:

"The rising economic cost of the Iraq war - One estimate of the military pricetag: $5 billion each month."

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – Fighting in Iraq has been prolonged and remains intense enough that it has pushed the total cost of US military operations since Sept. 11, 2001, close to that of the Korean War.

Despite the yawning federal deficit, Congress hasn't blinked at this price.

And while annual defense spending is now as high as it ever was during the Reagan buildup, the US economy as a whole is much larger, making it easier, in economic terms, for the nation to shoulder the bill.

Yet the costs for Pentagon operations are likely to pile up in years ahead.

By 2010, war expenses might total $600 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Much depends on when - and how many - US military personnel can be withdrawn from the Iraqi theater of operations.

"We can't be any more certain about the trend of the defense budget than we can be about the number of troops that will be deployed overseas," says Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The demands and unpredictability of war have, in essence, turned the defense budget into a two-part allocation.

First is the regular budget request, which contains acquisition and research and development funds as well as personnel and operations costs, and which Congress considers in its normal appropriations process.

Second is the supplemental appropriations - the add-on emergency spending requested by the administration later in the year.

Congress gave final passage to a 2005 supplemental defense bill just last week.

Of the $82 billion contained in the bill, all but $76 billion will pay for Defense Department operations costs.

The cost of the US military in Iraq is running about $5 billion a month, estimated the former Pentagon comptroller earlier this year.

Fighting in Iraq "is lasting longer, and is more intense, and the cost to keep troops in the theater of operations is proving to be much greater than anyone anticipated," wrote Rep. John Spratt (D) of South Carolina, ranking minority member of the House Budget Committee, in a recent Democratic report on war costs.

Overall, Congress has approved about $192 billion for the Iraq war itself, according to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service.

Another $58 billion has been allocated for Afghanistan, and some $20 billion has gone for enhanced air security and other Pentagon preparedness measures in the US.

That totals $270 billion for all military operations since 2001, according to the CRS analysis.

The cost of war in Iraq by itself has already far exceeded the $85 billion inflation-adjusted price tag of the 1991 Gulf War, notes Mr. Kosiak.

Plus, that war was largely paid for by contributions from US allies.

As for all military operations combined, add in the $50 billion in war spending the Senate Armed Services Committee last week added to the fiscal 2006 defense budget bill, and the total will surpass $320 billion in US funds.

"That's close to the Korean war level of $350 billion [in today's dollars]," says Kosiak.

Unsurprisingly, operations and maintenance constitute the single largest extra expense of the Iraq war.

Almost half of the just-passed emergency spending bill's defense funds went for ground operations, flying hours, fuel, and travel.

Iraq fighting has been particularly grinding, noted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a Senate budget hearing in February.

On average, combat vehicles are experiencing four and a half years of peacetime wear in one year.

"A bradley fighting vehicle that usually runs about 800 miles a year - that's in peacetime training - now sometimes is being driven in the range of 4,000 miles in Iraq," said Secretary Rumsfeld.

About half of the remaining emergency defense funds was devoted to personnel.

This means not basic pay but incremental costs: the extra money paid reserve troops when they are called to active duty, for instance, as well as hazard pay and other special compensation.

The rest went largely to weapons procurement, such as replacement of six National Guard UH-60 helicopters lost in Iraqi and Afghan operations.

More spending on the war is sure to come - even if the US begins to draw down troops levels.

While it is difficult to estimate precisely, it is sure to be in the hundreds of billions, experts say.

The Congressional Research Service pegs the cost of US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at an additional $458 billion through 2014.

This is hardly cheap, but given the overall size of the US economy, and the levels of defense spending maintained during the cold war, it is well within the bounds of recent experience, according to Center for Strategic and International Studies military expert Anthony Cordesman.

Total defense spending in 2006 will probably be around 4 percent of gross national product, notes Mr. Cordesman.

The average since 1992 for this measure has been 3.6 percent.

"When it does come to economic and federal 'overstretch,' defense is unlikely to be the cause," Cordesman argues in a recent report.

It would be interesting to apply some scientific reasoning to the stock market to see if it is a "hunting" type of system, consistently rising and falling in response to some set of external inputs, forever overshooting, and then reacting to its overshooting by reversing course, only to overshoot on that end as well, which causes it to "hunt" and "hunt" and "hunt", with no rhyme or reason in sight as to why that is so, other than the dynamics of the system are unbalanced!

And with that said, it would also be interesting to see whether or not the stock market might be "damped" in any particular way, and I say that because I think what is happening is a few big computers are now watching each other in essence, and they are "surging" each other, looking for "openings" programmed into them, and in the meantime, here are all these stray factors, individual investors, acting as random noise, as they try to follow the logic employed by these computers in buying and selling, AND THERE ISN'T ANY!

Just reactions to noise by a "hunting" system!

And George W. Bush wants people to base the security of their futures on that?

Yeah, right!

Might as well just go straight to the roulette wheel!

At least that is not listening to a bunch of computers sending a bunch of spurious signals back and forth, intermixed with a bunch of random noise, and so, your chances at winning are probably enhanced!

Maybe George W. Bush will study that option and include it as part of his social security plan, and he'll get a vote from Donald Trump, and well, that is something, I guess.

And speaking of tsunami-ravaged economies, versus war-ravaged economies such as ours, what about that tsunami, anyway?

What was that all about, does anyone think?

Part of an intelligent design?

Or just plain old evolution?

Or is GOD finally p***ed-off, but good, and at us, to boot?

"Sumatra Quake Shook Earth's Total Surface"

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 12 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - December's great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake — the most powerful in more than 40 years and the trigger of a devastating tsunami — shook the ground everywhere on Earth's surface.

Weeks later the planet was still trembling.

The quake resulted from the longest fault rupture ever observed — 720 miles to 780 miles, which spread for 10 minutes, also a record.

A typical earthquake's duration would be 30 seconds.

The December quake was the first of its size to be measured and studied by the new worldwide array of digital seismic instruments.

Those results are starting to come in, with a special section of a half-dozen research papers on the quake appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"This is really a watershed event."

"We've never had such comprehensive data for a great earthquake because we didn't have the instrumentation to gather it 40 years ago," said Thorne Lay, professor of Earth sciences and director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"It is nature at its most formidable," Lay said in a statement.

The earthquake and resulting tsunami, which swept across the Indian Ocean, killed more than 176,000 people in 11 countries and left about 50,000 missing and hundreds of thousands homeless.

The quake occurred where two of the giant plates that form the surface of the Earth grind together.

At that spot the Eurasian plate was being pulled downward by the descending Indo-Australian plate.

The quake released the edge of the Eurasian plate, which sprang up, lifting the ocean floor and sending the sea water off in the giant wave that killed so many, the researchers reported.

They said the higher sea floor displaced so much water from the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea that sea level worldwide was raised 0.004 inch.

"No point on Earth remained undisturbed," wrote Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.

Indeed, ground movement of as much as 0.4 inch occurred everywhere on Earth's surface, though it was too small to be felt in most areas.

And the temblor "delivered a blow to our planet" that was felt for weeks, noted a team of researchers led by Jeffrey Park of Yale University.

His group calculated that the quake caused the planet to oscillate like a bell, at periods of about 17 minutes, which they were able to measure for weeks afterward.

A similar phenomenon was first noted in the 1960 quake in Chile.

The initial Dec. 26 Sumatra quake is estimated to have had a magnitude of 9.1 to 9.3 and a second quake to the south on March 28 registered 8.6.

By comparison, the 1960 Chile earthquake was magnitude 9.5 and the 1964 Alaska earthquake was magnitude 9.2.

California's 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake had a magnitude of 6.9.

Among the other findings reported in the various papers:

_ In Sri Lanka, more than 1,000 miles from the epicenter, the ground moved nearly 4 inches.

_ The rupture spread from south to north, resulting in a Doppler effect in instruments measuring it.

Seismometers in Russia recorded the quake at a higher frequency because it was moving toward them, while those in Australia measured a lower frequency as it moved away.

_ When the surface waves from the Sumatra quake reached Alaska they triggered a swarm of 14 local earthquakes in the Mount Wrangell area.

In addition to Lay, Bilham and Park, the lead authors of the articles were Charles J. Ammon of Pennsylvania State University, Michael West of the University of Alaska and Roland Burgmann of the University of California, Berkeley. Burgmann's article was published in Science Express, the journal's online edition.

___

On the Net:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

From the May 18, 2005 edition of the Christian Science Monitor

ANY TAKERS? Army Staff Sgt. Christian Marsh watched a wave of students pass by at the Edmonds-Woodway High School in Edmonds, Wash. Recruiters are struggling to meet enlistment numbers.

"Rift over recruiting at public high schools - A Seattle high school bars military solicitation, touching off debate over Iraq war and free speech.

By Dean Paton | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

SEATTLE – While most Parent Teacher Student Association meetings might center on finding funding for better math books or the best way to chaperon a school dance, a recent meeting here at Garfield High School grappled with something much larger - the war in Iraq.

The school is perhaps one of the first in the nation to debate and vote against military recruiting on high school campuses - a topic already simmering at the college level.

In fact, the Supreme Court recently agreed to decide whether the federal government can withhold funds from colleges that bar military recruiters.

High schools are struggling with a similar issue as the No Child Left Behind Act requires that schools receiving federal funding must release the names of its students to recruiters.

Some feel that's an invasion of privacy prompted by a war effort that has largely divided the American public.

Others say barring recruiters is an infringement of free speech - and a snub to the military, particularly in a time of war.

Garfield High School took a decisive step last week with a vote of 25 to 5 to adopt a resolution that says "public schools are not a place for military recruiters."

All this comes as recruiters struggle to meet enlistment goals.

Although PTA chapters are supposed to be "nonsectarian and nonpartisan, which means nonpolitical," according to Jenny Sopko, a spokeswoman for the national PTA in Chicago, Garfield's PTSA cochair maintains that its action is "wholly consistent with our mission."

"The mission of the PTA is to protect and defend kids," says Amy Hagopian, a mother of three whose son is a Garfield senior.

"It's not just limited to education issues - which explains why the PTA takes positions on kids' health, violence, and other serious issues."

Garfield, with 1,600 students, is one of Seattle's top high schools, routinely producing bumper crops of National Merit Scholars, plus internationally acclaimed student orchestras and jazz bands.

It's also racially diverse, with African-American students making up 31 percent of its student population.

Like so many schools today, Garfield grapples with painful budget cuts, loss of teachers, and dwindling resources.

The school's opposition to military recruitment seems, in part, a result of parents' growing realization that tax money spent for the Iraq war is money not spent on children's educations or other domestic needs.

"They're spending $4 billion a month in Iraq, but we have to cut our race relations class, which costs $12,500," Ms. Hagopian pointed out.

"That's an important class for our kids."

During discussion at the PTSA's meeting last week, Ted Inkley argued against the resolution because he thought it dangerous to deny free speech to organizations simply because their philosophies or intentions disagreed with the PTSA.

Mr. Inkley, an attorney whose daughter is a senior, told the crowded library he could "easily" see a resolution by some other PTA that banned Planned Parenthood representatives from campus because of their views on contraception and abortion.

Steve Ludwig, whose son is a senior and whose daughter will enter as a freshman next fall, made a point shared by many in attendance: Garfield does not allow organizations that promote illegal activities to recruit students to perform those activities, nor does it allow organizations that discriminate on the basis of race, gender, national origin, or sexual orientation to recruit on campus.

"Planned Parenthood, as far as I know, does not advocate or perform illegal acts."

"The US military does," Mr. Ludwig continued.

The soft-spoken carpenter said he would not object if Army representatives came to Garfield to debate their ideas on torture or aggressive war.

"What I object to is their coming here to recruit students to perform those acts," he said.

"It's not about free speech."

Nationally, there's a growing sense that recruiters desperate to bolster falling enlistment numbers are misrepresenting sign-up agreements to entice recruits.

In response to 480 allegations of improprieties by recruiters since Oct. 1, the Army announced it will suspend its recruiting for one day on May 20, so commanders can remind its 7,500 recruiters of proper conduct.

Douglas Smith, a US Army spokesman, said the job of recruiters is not to make promises but to show applicants possibilities and career options.

"As for a recruiter making promises and not following through, the recruiter's not in any position to promise anything."

"We hope that all our recruiters are communicating honestly with our applicants," Mr. Smith said.

But he added, "In the contract [between the new soldier and the Army] it says, 'Anything the recruiter may have promised me is moot.'"

Smith also pointed out the legality of military recruitment activity on campuses.

"The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to let us have access to these students," he says.

Indeed, the resolution by Garfield's PTSA is more symbol than policy, for Seattle, like virtually all school districts, requires high schools to give recruiters access to students - or risk losing federal funding under Section 9528 of the act.

School districts also are required to notify parents and students that they may "opt out" by signing a letter preventing recruiters from getting their names.

In response to Garfield's resolution, Seattle's district issued a statement reinforcing its policy of allowing recruiters to work on high school campuses, but also said it would increase efforts next fall to make it easier for parents and students to opt out.

"Nothing in this resolution prevents students desirous of joining the military from doing so," said Sasha Riser-Kositsky, a Garfield sophomore from a written statement during last week's meeting.

"Indeed, there is a recruiting center within a five-minute walking distance of Garfield."

And speaking of George W. Bush's botched-up attempt to simply take over the oil fields of Iraq, which on-going fiasco, the legacy of thoughtlessness and p***-poor planning, is now costing US, $5 BILLION a month, what is the latest from over there in that now-beleaguered and tormented land:

"Iraq Calls on Neighbors to Stop Insurgency"

By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer

Thu May 19, 3:11 PM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called on neighboring countries Thursday to help prevent foreign terrorists from crossing into Iraq as a series of attacks killed more than a dozen Iraqis and two American soldiers.

Al-Jaafari's appeal came a day after a top U.S. military official said the leaders of Iraq's most notorious terrorist group recently held a secret meeting in neighboring Syria, where they plotted the recent wave of insurgent violence that has killed hundreds of people.

"There are infiltrations of non-Iraqis through the border to carry out sabotage activities," al-Jaafari said of the meeting that may have been attended by most-wanted militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself.

"It's up to our geographical neighbors."

"We are keen to preserve relations between us and neighboring countries, and these relations should be good."

He was speaking after a meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who said al-Zarqawi's aim was to divide Iraqi society.

"Part of these attacks stem from the successes of the new government."

"The insurgents wanted to stop the elections and failed."

"The insurgents wanted to stop the formation of a new Iraqi government and they failed, so now they are trying to split the society," Zoellick said.

He added that "it's very clear that this evil wants to destroy a democratic Iraq."

"These people will not be easy to counter because they commit suicide in a random way."

Zoellick said he and al-Jaafari had discussed the militant meeting in Syria and the prime minister "was quite strong in his statements about the need for Iraq's neighbors, and particularly Syria ... not to undermine stability here."

The Syrian meeting has led to one of the bloodiest periods since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago.

More than 520 people have been killed — including an oil ministry employee gunned down in front of his house Thursday — since the country's new Shiite-dominated government was announced April 28.

The oil ministry employee Ali Hamid Alwan al-Dulaimy, 31, was killed by three men firing pistols from a minivan as he walked out of his house toward his car in Baghdad, his brother, Ahmed Hamid Alwan al-Dulaimy, said in a telephone interview.

Also Thursday, eight people were killed and three injured in an ambush in the northern city of Mosul against Fawaz al-Jarba, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly who was a recent candidate for parliament speaker.

At least eight bodies were taken to the Jamhouri Teaching Hospital after they were killed in or near al-Jarba's house, Dr. Bahaa-Eddine al-Bakri said.

Al-Jarba was not injured.

Witnesses and Ali al-Faisal, a member of the Shiite clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance, said U.S. troops were involved in the incident, but their role remained unclear.

The U.S. military was investigating, a spokesman said.

One U.S. soldier was killed when his convoy struck a roadside bomb in southeast Baghdad, the military said.

Another American soldier was killed and five wounded late Wednesday in a rocket attack on Camp Ar Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.

The soldiers' names were withheld pending notification of relatives.

Three American soldiers also were injured when a roadside bomb blast struck their patrol in Dujayl, 35 miles north of Baghdad, military spokesman Sgt. David Rhodes said.

At least 1,624 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A suicide bomber also drove his car into an Iraqi army checkpoint in southern Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, killing one soldier and injuring eight, Iraqi army Capt. Firas Aied said.

Meanwhile, Iran's foreign minister met Thursday with Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric in the holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad.

Kamal Kharrazi, the highest level official from any of Iraq's six neighbors to visit Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster two years ago, met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

No details were available, but both men have called for calm in Iraq amid an increased number of apparent tit-for-tat killings between the Shiite and Sunni populations.

Kharrazi said his visit to Najaf, which included a stop at the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, one of Iraq's holiest, was a "religious journey, not a political one."

Facing accusations that Iraq's neighbors were doing too little to stop terrorists from entering Iraq, Kharrazi said there was no proof Iran was supporting militants here and claims Tehran was backing the insurgency were "baseless.

"The Iraqi provinces along the Iranian borders, are more secured than other provinces," Kharrazi said at a press conference.

Also this week, a chilling, rambling Internet audiotape purportedly by al-Zarqawi surfaced.

It denounced Iraq's Shiites as U.S. collaborators and said killing them is justified.

The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi and his key militant leadership have met at least five times in foreign countries during the conflict, most recently during the past 30 days in Syria, according to the senior U.S. military official, who briefed reporters on condition he not be named.

He did not identify the other countries but said neighboring Iran, a Shiite theocracy, was not one of them.

He said the military obtained information during questioning of insurgent prisoners, from Iraqi military sources and field intelligence in determining that the most recent meeting had taken place in Syria.

He said that U.S. forces were constantly disrupting insurgent activities, but success was not guaranteed and could take "many years."

"If we fail, the different groups would be at each other's throats and warfare would continue for some time," he said.

"If we take our foot off their throats, this country could be back into civil war and chaos."

The Syrian foreign and information ministries were unavailable for comment on the alleged terrorist gathering on their soil.

In other developments:

_A roadside bomb killed two Iraqi police officers in Baqouba.

_Gunmen killed policeman Omar Majeed Shakir al-Dosh and his father in Samarra, officials said.

_A drive-by shooting late Wednesday killed Salah Niyazi, an official from the Youth and Sport Ministry, in Baghdad, police said.

_The opening of a NATO training camp for Iraqi officers in Baghdad has been delayed until at least late September, German Gen. Harald Kujat, chairman of the alliance's military committee, said in Hungary.

____

Associated Press Writers Bassem Mroue and Paul Garwood in Baghdad contributed to this story.

And speaking of George W. Bush's buddy, Karimov, how's things going over there with this alleged probe into Bush-buddy Karimov's alleged order to machine-gun a few hundred of HIS innocent people over there, just to show the candid world that he is as tough as George W. Bush when push comes to open fire?

"Uzbek president turns down UN rights probe"

45 minutes ago

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday he "did not favor" a U.N. human rights probe into violence in the eastern part of the country, a senior U.N. official said.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, has called on Uzbekistan to allow an independent international inquiry into reports of killings by security forces in the town of Andizhan last week.

But Karimov "did not favor an international inquiry at this time," the U.N. official said.

The president said on Tuesday that 32 soldiers and 137 other people had died in the violence that consumed Uzbekistan's Feragna Valley.

Survivors said 500 people died in the town of Andizhan when troops raked crowds with machine gun and rifle fire.

Karimov blamed Muslim rebel protesters for the killings.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said that Annan had a lengthy telephone conversation with Karimov during which they "reviewed in depth the situation in Andizhan."

Eckhard described the talk as "constructive" but gave no further details.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw supported Arbour's call on Wednesday and told the BBC that official explanations had been inadequate.

Annan also discussed Uzbekistan with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, Eckhard said.

"There's a variety of ways to bring all the facts to light," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Wednesday.

"And I'm sure the international community would want to be part of it and want to assist."

"But exactly how that should be structured, I don't have anything yet."

end quotes

I wonder how come we have not heard a single peep from Miss "Con-Job Connie" on this matter!

Must be it's alright to do, so long as you are a friend of Mr. George W. Bush, and isn't that just something now, will you!

"Villaraigosa's Support Goes Beyond Latinos"

By Michael Finnegan and Mark Z. Barabak, LA Times Staff Writers
Thu May 19, 7:55 AM ET

Antonio Villaraigosa won a crushing victory in the Los Angeles mayoral race by spurring a record Latino turnout and broadening his support across the city among voters of every stripe, who deserted incumbent James K. Hahn in droves.

For all the significance of the victor's breakthrough as the first Latino elected mayor of modern Los Angeles, ethnic pride was just part of what powered his 17-point win.

By overwhelming margins, Villaraigosa captured Democrats, liberals and younger voters, according to a Times exit poll.

He also won a majority of San Fernando Valley residents, union members and Jewish voters.

His support among blacks more than doubled from what he won in his 2001 mayoral contest against Hahn — although it fell just shy of half.

But it was Villaraigosa's huge support among Latinos that turned his victory into a landslide, ushering Hahn out of office — effective July 1 — after a lone term.

The city councilman sparked a surge in Latino turnout and won 84% of those voters.

For the first time in modern Los Angeles, the Times Poll found, the Latino share of the city's electorate reached 25% — up from 22% in the Villaraigosa-Hahn contest four years ago, and up from a mere 10% in the 1993 mayoral race.

The city's heavily Latino Eastside produced the strongest turnout in the city, preliminary election results show.

Although the city clerk expects the final tally to show citywide turnout at about 33%, on the Eastside it ran as high as 38% and could climb further as the last batch of votes are counted.

"Clearly this energized Latinos more than people's perception of the campaign would have indicated," said Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton.

For Hahn, the election marked a collapse in support across the spectrum of voters.

Even among groups that clearly favored him over Villaraigosa — Republicans, conservatives, Asian Americans and voters age 65 and older — Hahn ran weaker than he did four years ago, according to the exit poll.

Voters had a strongly favorable view of Villaraigosa, but even those who backed Hahn were unenthusiastic about their choice.

Two-thirds of Villaraigosa supporters voted for the councilman because they liked him and his stands on issues.

But for Hahn, about 6 in 10 supporters said they saw him as "the lesser of two evils."

Nearly 3 in 10 Hahn backers offered no positive reason for their vote.

"Doing nothing but smearing Antonio might have persuaded conservatives that he was the lesser of two evils, but it didn't give anyone a motivation to vote for him," said Villaraigosa strategist Parke Skelton, referring to Hahn's decision to run television ads attacking his rival instead of promoting his own record.

Hahn strategist Bill Carrick described the mayor as a victim of his own success.

He said Hahn's effort to trumpet the drop in violent crime on his watch had difficulty gaining traction, because the mayor's success diminished the issue's importance to voters.

"Crime goes down, and people take it for granted," the strategist said.

Carrick also attributed Hahn's performance partly to the harm he suffered in the first round of the mayoral race, when Villaraigosa and three other candidates reinforced one another's attacks on the mayor.

That dynamic both shaped voters' impressions of Hahn and hurt him in the eyes of donors who ended up being far more generous to Villaraigosa, Carrick said.

"There was a tremendous case to be made for the city being in pretty good shape," he said.

"But at the end of the day, when you get four people pounding you all the time, talking about how bad things are in the city, that drives the numbers down, and people develop an attitude: 'We need a change.'"

Overall, although the Times poll found education to be the most important issue for voters, there were distinctions depending on which candidate they backed.

Among Hahn voters, the most important factor driving their decision Tuesday was concern about crime and gangs.

That reflected Hahn's sharp criticism of Villaraigosa's past opposition to legal injunctions against gang members.

Among Villaraigosa supporters, the top concern was education — a view reinforced by his commercials, which cited the job of his wife, Corina, as a schoolteacher and his promise to salve the Los Angeles Unified School District's woes.

The voter survey, supervised by Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 3,191 voters as they left precincts across the city.

The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2 percentage points overall, and more for smaller voter groups.

Among the survey's more striking findings was its confirmation of Hahn's loss of support among African Americans and Valley voters, the once-sturdy coalition that drove his 2001 triumph over Villaraigosa.

The mayor, whose father, Kenneth, built an African American political base for the family decades ago as a county supervisor, won 80% of the black vote four years ago.

But on Tuesday, he captured just 52% of those voters.

Among blacks who supported Villaraigosa, nearly two out of five cited the ouster of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, an African American, as a main reason for their vote.

Also, 59% of the blacks who voted for Parks in the first round of mayoral voting in March shifted to Villaraigosa in the runoff.

Parks had endorsed and actively campaigned for Villaraigosa.

Yet the survey found sharp distinctions within the black community.

Black voters 45 and older — those most apt to fondly remember the legacy of Hahn's father — strongly favored the mayor over Villaraigosa.

Younger blacks leaned heavily toward the challenger.

Also, black men favored Villaraigosa, while black women strongly supported Hahn.

Villaraigosa, who won 48% of the black vote, had campaigned aggressively for African American support.

A large group of black leaders who backed Hahn in 2001 — among them former basketball star Magic Johnson, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and various church pastors — abandoned the mayor this year and vouched for Villaraigosa.

An ebullient Johnson helped introduce the winning candidate at his victory party.

"The really interesting and intriguing question is what happens to relations between Latinos and blacks now," Sonenshein said.

"Because by no means is this the sign of a full-scale coalition."

"But it is certainly a bridgehead in what could have been a purely competitive relationship."

In the Valley, as among blacks, Hahn suffered a sharp reversal of fortune.

In 2001, the Valley favored Hahn over Villaraigosa, 55% to 45%.

The election Tuesday flipped that precisely: The Valley opted for Villaraigosa over Hahn by the same 10-point margin.

A key problem for Hahn, the poll confirmed, was his 2002 campaign to kill the proposed secession of the Valley from the rest of Los Angeles.

Nearly three in 10 of the Valley voters who supported Villaraigosa cited secession as a main reason for their vote.

The preliminary election returns showed that Hahn carried the predominantly white parts of the Valley that he targeted heavily in his campaign, including Granada Hills, Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, West Hills, Tarzana, Sunland and Tujunga.

Many of the city's Republicans are concentrated in those areas.

Villaraigosa swept the central and eastern Valley, much of it populated by Latinos and white liberals.

Among the areas he won were Studio City, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Canoga Park, Sylmar and Pacoima.

Outside the Valley, Hahn's strongest performance was around San Pedro, where he lives, along with scattered pockets of support in areas such as Brentwood, Bel-Air and downtown.

Another source of strength for Villaraigosa was union members: 60% backed him over Hahn even though the bulk of organized labor leadership endorsed the mayor's reelection.

It was another sharp turnaround for Hahn from four years ago.

In the 2001 campaign, when organized labor endorsed Villaraigosa, a majority of union members supported Hahn.

The result: Organized labor's endorsed candidates are 0 for 2 in recent mayoral elections — although rank-and-file union members have sided with the winner each time.

Skelton said Hahn's strong showing four years ago among African Americans depressed Villaraigosa's support among union members, because many are black.

In general, he added, union members' votes are guided by a "whole range of influences" beyond union leaders.

"They never vote in lock step with the union," he said.

Villaraigosa's standing with a host of other voting blocs also rose sharply from four years ago.

Among whites, his share of the vote grew from 41% to 50%.

Among Asian Americans, it jumped from 35% to 44%.

On the Westside, his support grew from 52% to 57%.

In South L.A., the jump was from 33% to 51%.

In the central and eastern portions of Los Angeles, from the Fairfax district to Boyle Heights to Eagle Rock, Villaraigosa's share of the vote surged from 58% in 2001 to 71% on Tuesday.

And for tonight, we finish with women, and the Army!

Should women be put into combat roles, the same as men?

Politics

"Women in combat: Lawmakers draw new line - Move to ban direct ground combat is retreat from broader ban"

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 12:45 p.m. ET May 19, 2005

WASHINGTON - House Republicans retreated from a sweeping ban on women in combat support and service units, and instead approved legislation backing the Pentagon’s policy barring women from direct ground combat in a bill passed overnight.

The House Armed Services Committee approved the narrower provision after the Army and Democrats said the amendment, rammed through a subcommittee last week, would close nearly 22,000 jobs to women, undermine morale, and hamper operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We want women to serve everywhere, except in ground combat,” said Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y.

McHugh, chairman of the personnel subcommittee, said the amendment would require Congress to vote before women would be allowed in direct combat units.

The amendment was part of a bill authorizing $442 billion in defense programs for next fiscal year that the committee approved 61-1 in a marathon session that ended after midnight.

Democrats: Ban would demoralize women

The amendment would put into law a policy written 11 years ago by former Defense Secretary Les Aspin that was intended to expand the role of women in the military, but keep them from serving in ground battles.

Democrats said even the narrower amendment sent a demoralizing signal to women, was confusing and unnecessary.

“Women don’t deserve the kind of shabby treatment this committee’s been giving them the last week,” said Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., said Republicans were trying to “fix the terrible language” they put into the bill in the subcommittee.

The measure passed by the full committee was a major step back from the amendment passed last week by the personnel subcommittee that would have imposed a sweeping ban on women in combat support units.

Democrats called that amendment an insult to women serving in Iraq, and the Pentagon quickly raised its opposition.

Iraq combat support now 20 percent women

About 20 percent of the combat support and service units in Iraq are comprised of women, although Army policy keeps women from some support jobs such as repairing tanks or artillery in a fighting situation.

Gen. Richard Cody, the Army Vice Chief of Staff, in a letter to the committee said that amendment would “cause confusion in the ranks and send the wrong signal to the brave young men and women fighting the global war on terrorism.”

But Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., pushed the measure, saying Congress needed to weigh in on whether women should be in "forward support companies," which he said could happen soon unless it intervened.

Those units provide infantry, armor and artillery units with equipment, ammunition, maintenance and other supplies in combat zones.

The Army started allowing women to staff such support posts last year and says it is complying with the 1994 policy.

Hunter said there was “massive confusion” in Army policies on women in combat roles, and said it needed to be defined.

No mention in Senate bill

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the defense bill, which it passed last week, does not address the issue.

The House bill, expected to be on the floor next week, also calls for another $49 billion in emergency funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The House and Senate Appropriations committees must act to actually provide the money, which would bring costs of the wars to more than $300 billion.

Hunter said the money was needed as a “bridge fund” from the Oct. 1 start of the next fiscal year until March 2006, when Congress would approve another emergency supplemental war bill.

Congress last week passed an $82 billion emergency bill largely for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

MSNBC POLL: Who should decide if women are assigned to direct ground combat roles?

As of 8:00 P.M. EST: * 20282 responses

Lawmakers - 23%

Pentagon officials - 77%

"Public records policy changed - Court orders agency to stop prescreening information requests"

By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press
First published: Friday, May 20, 2005

ALBANY -- A court has ordered a state agency to end its 30-year practice of allowing the subjects of Freedom of Information Law requests to help decide what public records should be released.

The state Racing and Wagering Board's policy of allowing entities such as the New York Racing Association to prescreen requests made under the state's FOI law dates back to as early as 1975.

That's the era in which FOI laws were created amid post-Watergate measures to force greater access and oversight by the public of government and the industries it regulates.

The Racing and Wagering Board repealed the rule Wednesday, effective in coming weeks, said board Assistant Counsel Mark Stuart.

But he said the board stopped the prescreening last year after a Supreme Court judge struck the practice down.

In that case, the Daily Racing Form newspaper sought records in 2002 under FOIL regarding Catskill Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., a public agency.

The case involved rigged bets placed by three fraternity brothers on Catskill OTB telephone accounts that resulted in a fraudulent winning ticket on a $3.1 million Pick Six bet, according to the court decision dated Oct. 31, 2003.

Stuart had previously said the case involved the New York Racing Association.

The news organization sought board members' names, executive salaries, annual reports, contracts and any reports of criminal or regulatory investigations as well as other financial data, according to the court decision.

The board turned the request over to Catskill OTB, effectively tipping New York's horse racing overseer to the newspaper's investigation.

end quotes

THE ART OF THE COVER-UP, IN ACTION!

Which triggers this question:

CAN CORRUPTION IN GOVERNMENT HERE IN OUR AMERICA EXIST WITHOUT THE CONNIVANCE OF UNPRINCIPLED, UNREGULATED, AMORAL LAWYERS TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THAT CORRUPTION BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, INCLUDING VIOLATING THE LAW, LYING, BURYING EVIDENCE, AND REPRESSING CITIZENS?

As always, America, that choice is yours!

So!

Consider your answer well, as once the choice is made, it is not so easy to go back and un-make it, just as once rung, a bell can never be un-rung, to make the sound go away!

What a time to be an American citizen!

And I mean that sincerely!

Of course, every day of my life, it has been good to be an American, but it is "especial" to me today, PRECISELY BECAUSE OF WHAT THIS INTERNET FORUM HAS GIVEN US OLDER AMERICANS AS A CITIZENSHIP TOOL UNPARALLED AND UNRIVALED IN MY LIFETIME of almost sixty years!

Never have we citizens had so much truly democratic "citizenship power" as we do in here, and to me, a disabled veteran who otherwise would have little contact with OUR America because of the limiting nature of being an older disabled veteran, which is to say, a person who doesn't travel well, this is like a literal miracle in here, where we can each and every one of us say what being an American really does mean to him, or her, because in here, we are all equal, regardless of the efforts of this or that special interest group out there in the actual world to have it be otherwise!

And what a thing that is!

And here, not to knock younger Americans, but I just don't think they can quite appreciate my views on this as an older American, because in their lifetimes, THIS HAS ALWAYS JUST "BEEN THERE", and so, cannot be appreciated for all the years that it was not "just there", which left people like me simply out in the cold, mute, without a voice, because there was no way to communicate that voice, if you were just an ordinary American like me!

Who would have believed this WOULD ACTUALLY BE HAPPENING, when I was young, and seriously so!

We had no telephone when I was young.

If you wanted to talk to someone, well, you had to go out and find them, and then have your chat, unless you had a loud voice, and so could yell down to someone in town without actually having to travel, as I did, to get there first!

And I never learned how to type!

What for?

We had no typewriter!

Couldn't afford one in the first place, and if you did have one, out in the country as we were, what would you do with it?

Type a letter to your neighbor?

And so, just last year, in fact, I had to learn how to do a whole lot of new things, and when you are older, well, for me, anyway, it is intimidating.

After one of my first posts on the John Kerry forum, which took me a while, several months, in fact, to figure out how to use, which is to say, leave a post on an existing thread, someone told me that I should start a thread, and I had no idea what they were talking about, since it is not to me intuitively obvious what a thread really is, or was, at least then!

And so, to me, this is quite a thing in here, and I just wanted to say that, because it is so, and because it was on my mind.

And were it not for the miracle of this internet forum, I don't think it would be at all possible to appreciate just how big this nation of OURS really is, and yet, for all of that distance that separates us, such as myself and jeffmoskin, who are some 3,300 miles distant from each other, or Mr. A.B. and myself, who are at least a good day's drive separate from each other in distance, not to mention generations apart, how alike in many senses we really are, even though, for example, Mr. A.B. is of middle-eastern descent, and I am not!

In here, all of that simply dissolves!

In here, we are simply words on a piece of paper, and anyone who wishes can read those words!

Everybody else is completely free to walk right on by, completely and totally unmolested!

If Plato was around today, I have to wonder at what he would make of this in here, and whether he would see some of his ideal REPUBLIC in here, as I see mine!

And what a conversation that would be!

Or Thomas Jefferson, who thought there should be a REVOLUTION in OUR America every twenty years!

I have to think that old Tom Jefferson would be quite excited by this very internet forum as would James Madison, and what a conversation we could have with them on this subject of citizenship, here in OUR America, that I find so very interesting, today, and every day of my own life, here in OUR America, where my own ideas and beliefs are shaped so much by people like Jefferson and Madison, dead and gone these last hundred and more years ago now, BUT SO ALIVE IN HERE IN SPIRIT TODAY, thanks to this internet forum!

AND SO ......

In the meantime, while we are waiting on Plato, and Jemmy Madison, and old Tom Jefferson, what is going on out there in the world?

What especially is this over there in Putin's Russia?

Some kind of American CIA plot, or what?

Or is this going to be blamed on those Muslim separatists down there in Uzbekistan that Bush-buddy Karimov allegedly machine-gunned down here recently?

Stay tuned and see:

"Russian villagers baffled by missing lake - 'I was thinking, well, America has finally got to us,' one woman says"

Updated: 9:57 a.m. ET May 20, 2005

MOSCOW - A Russian village was left baffled on Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.

NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.

“It is very dangerous."

"If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival."

"The trees flew downwards, under the ground,” said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

“I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us,” said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.

end quotes

Well, jeffmoskin, think it was those Muslims down there in Uzbekistan that did this, took that lake over there in Russia, just like that, and overnight to boot?

Or was it maybe a SMERSH/BUGGER coalition with al-Qaida, and al-Zarqawi, and that rebel group that usually hangs out there by the dog star, Sirius, in an attempt to make George W. Bush look weak and ineffectual as President of all the world, and the sun, moon and stars, to boot?

Some serious "hi-tech" stuff in play, here, either way, is what it looks like to me, maybe one of those anti-gravity reverser things Navy intelligence is rumored to be working on where all those trees just flew downwards the way that Russian guy said they did, above here.

Kind of like a reverse nu-clar explosion, if you ask me!

Ahhhh!

Iran!

They're the culprit, I bet!

But of course, well, there are the North Koreans as well, and so ......

And winging our way back to OUR America after that brief stop over there in Putin's Russia, where someone has just stolen a lake, which George W. Bush appears to be getting the blame for, right now, anyway, what is going on here in Bush-buddy George Pataki's "homeland"?

"Jets stadium in Manhattan: Boon or boondoggle for state - Massive infusion of public funding raises questions about failed promises"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, May 15, 2005

ALBANY -- One thing's for sure, Gov. George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg are thinking big.

Their plan to put up $600 million in public funds to the New York Jets for a $2 billion Manhattan football stadium would be a new high in public sports facility subsidies.

And it comes with giant headaches -- major critics, multiple lawsuits and a reluctant public.

The two Republican leaders are staking much political capital on the idea, too, despite polls showing New York residents statewide dislike the idea.

The mayor and governor say the project would bring the Jets back from New Jersey to where they belong -- the Big Apple.

Also, the stadium would be integrated with the adjacent and expanding Javits Center to draw dozens of large conventions to Manhattan, creating thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in revenue, they say.

Their proposal triggers a classic public policy question about taxpayer funding of sports facilities.

Polls show New Yorkers question the stadium project, including people like upstate resident Stephen Ten Eyck, 65, a retired commercial cleaner from Altamont who has been following the issue.

"What are we supposed to get out of this stadium?" asks Ten Eyck,

"It sounds like a great boondoggle for Manhattan."

Indeed, "boondoggle" is used a lot by critics, including Capital Region Assemblymen Ronald Canestrari, D-Cohoes, and Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam.

"This is a project that the local community does not want, the local city does not want, the voting population of the state does not want and would waste hundreds of millions of state funding," Canestrari said.

Pataki, who faces a Legislature deeply divided on the issue, sees the project as worth the investment.

His budget staff projects the state would recoup its $300 million share five years after the stadium opens and take in $1 billion in taxes and other revenues over 30 years.

Pataki and Bloomberg are joined by Jets owner, Johnson & Johnson heir Robert Wood "Woody" Johnson IV, in saying the bonuses could be even more far-reaching.

The proposed stadium/convention center above the West Side Rail Yards, they say, could draw world-class events, including the 2010 NFL Super Bowl, and enhance New York City's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee is supposed to decide on a site July 6.

A vote of the state Public Authorities Control Board, scheduled for this Wednesday, could decide the matter.

But it appears unlikely the stadium issue will be on the agenda until later this summer because Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who have members on the panel, have already rejected Pataki's attempt to fund the project in this year's budget, legislators and Pataki's aides say.

Heavy lobbying on both sides of the issue is pumping millions into the pockets of Albany lobbyists and ad firms.

Jets stars, including Joe Namath, have met with lawmakers.

A big pro-stadium rally is planned for Tuesday involving several unions and possibly Jets players.

By committing the $600 million to Jets owner Johnson, a billionaire who bought the team for $635 million in 2000 and is now willing to spend at least $1.4 billion for the new stadium, the state and city could become the biggest underwriter of a sports facility in history.

But the public cost may be higher.

Opponents, chiefly Cablevision, which is suing the state to protect its Madison Square Garden property, count another $450 million worth of debt service on the city's $300 million share, which would be financed with in-lieu-of-tax payments from the Jets.

They also count $100 million in tunnels connecting the stadium to the Javits Center.

Silver says the public subsidy goes further because of the real estate discount the Jets would get.

The Pataki-controlled Metropolitan Transit Authority accepted the Jets offer of about $250 million to build over MTA rail yards, well below Cablevision's $400 million bid for a project to create housing.

The MTA's appraiser valued the "air rights" at $923.4 million.

Bruno could force the price tag higher if he insists -- as he typically does -- on a $300 million quid-pro-quo for upstate.

"Whatever we do in the city, there ought to be equality, there ought to be balance," Bruno said.

Bruno and Silver want to see what happens with lawsuits by a group representing transit consumers challenging the MTA's plan to sell off a public asset so hastily.

"This would never fly in the private sector," said Sen. Eric Schneiderman, D-Manhattan, representing the New York Public Interest Research Group's Straphanger's Campaign on the suit.

"The only way the Jets can make it work is from public subsidies and virtually stealing the asset," he said.

Silver's Democratic majority conference is divided over the project.

Many New York City black and Hispanic members strongly favor it, citing high minority unemployment in the city.

Jets President Jay Cross and Bloomberg say the project will result in about 18,000 construction jobs and 6,900 permanent jobs.

Pataki says the stadium will spur hotel and tourism business.

Cross said the city "will finally have a first-class midsize convention center," and that the site might be used 15 to 20 days a year for sports and another one-third of the year for conventions, trade shows and expositions.

Key Manhattan lawmakers, including those on the West Side, deplore the plan, saying it will ruin city life, jam traffic and be a negative for conventions.

"This is a serious public works issue that could cost New York taxpayers over $1 billion," said Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan.

Cablevision's plan makes more sense, he said, and would lead to more jobs because residential buildings would be filled with people -- "not a hollow building."

Gottfried also called Pataki's plan to find ways to funnel $300 million in state money into the project with or without the Legislature's consent "an end-run around the Legislature ... taking money under the table from an undefined list of other programs -- money that would have gone to some other community."

Among the skeptics of the Jets project is Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor who has written about the economic impact of sports stadiums.

"The notion that this is a good economic investment is a real stretch of the imagination," Zimbalist said.

He also dislikes the quick bidding process and the open understanding that Bloomberg would consider competition hostile.

He said a residential development at the site seems a better idea.

Economic development officials, however, applaud the Jets concept.

"If you're going to be a major league city, you need to have a major league facility," said Brian McMahon, executive director of the New York State Economic Development Council, who adds that New Jersey has been "eating our lunch."

"Long-term, I think this facility would be a net revenue generator for the city and the state," McMahon said.

Veteran consumer activist Ralph Nader, who opposes what he calls "corporate welfare" for "fat cat" owners of sports teams, doubts the stadium will get built.

"It's never going to make it -- too many interest groups trying to stop it," Nader said.

end quotes

SO?

By committing the $600 million to Jets owner Johnson, a billionaire who bought the team for $635 million in 2000 and is now willing to spend at least $1.4 billion for the new stadium, the state and city could become the biggest underwriter of a sports facility in history.

Hhhhmmm!

This Jets guy here, this Johnson, he is a BILLIONAIRE, is that right?

SO?

What's he need the state money for then?

Got his own, don't he?

Well, then, like the rest of us here in this state, that's just what he should be spending, if he wants this thing so badly, his own money!

Or try a "dollar and a dream", as the New York Lottery advertises!

And who knows, he just might get lucky!

Until then, however .....

Definitely the work of TAY-RISTS.

No doubt about it.

AnD we will bring them to Justice.

Or bring justice to them.

You''re either with US, or you're with the TAY-RISTS.

"Lawmakers clash over voting system decision - With millions in federal funding at stake, Senate Democrats urge statewide use of one machine"

By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Tuesday, May 17, 2005

ALBANY -- Senate Democrats on Monday called for the adoption of a single voting machine for statewide use, saying a conceptual agreement that would allow county officials to make their own choices could result in electoral chaos.

"New York cannot go down that road of making this process any more complicated or difficult," said Senate Minority Leader David Paterson, D-Harlem.

Among the issues lawmakers are grappling with while trying to meet requirements of the federal 2002 Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, is what kind of new electronic machines to buy.

HAVA provides millions of dollars to do so, but if deadlines are missed, the money will not be forthcoming.

The new machines must be in place for the fall 2006 elections.

The Senate minority wants "optical scan" machines, which count paper ballots marked with a pencil.

Paterson said he believes these machines are more affordable, simpler to use and provide an easily accessible paper trail.

The Senate Democrats' call for a unified voting system comes as a bipartisan legislative committee has agreed to do just the opposite.

The 10-member committee recently said the state Board of Elections will certify several machines that meet a set of yet-unknown standards and let county elections officials pick which ones they want.

Opponents say letting the counties choose will create a patchwork voting system that could further prolong recounts in close races.

Another worry is that local elections commissioners may be unduly pressured by voting machine companies and their lobbyists.

The voting machine companies that have been lobbying hardest in New York -- Liberty Election Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Electronic Systems and Software -- are pushing for direct recording electronic machines, which resemble the current machines but use a button rather than a lever.

Sequoia and ES&S also manufacture optical scan machines; Liberty does not.

DRE supporters say paper for optical scan machines would be costly, making up for the fact that the initial cost of a DRE is $8,000 to $12,000, compared with about half that for an optical scan.

They also maintain DREs are hacker-proof and provide a paper trail that is just as easy to recount as that of an optical scan machine.

Right on, jeffmoskin!

SO?

Do you think George W. Bush ought to nuke the whole crowd of them, or just them Muslims Bush-buddy Karimov wants to machine-gun to death down there in the THUG-O-CRACY of Uzbekistan?

I've heard that bunch from BUGGER are a real nasty crowd, in their own right, and as to SMERSH, well, everybody knows about them, and so ....

"Bruno seeks open talks on stadium - Senate leader, Assembly's Silver call for details on taxpayer costs; Pataki wants vote next week"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, May 19, 2005

ALBANY -- Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno called Wednesday for a public forum on the proposed Manhattan stadium for the New York Jets, but Gov. George Pataki is instead setting up a "special meeting" for a vote on the project next Wednesday.

Bruno, who wants a one-month delay before making a judgment, said it's important first to get the facts on the entire Jets plan, including how much the $2 billion proposal will cost taxpayers.

"I'm hearing total commitment is close to $1 billion," Bruno said.

"I don't know what the hell it is."

"It's time to get it more in the open."

Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have called the project critical to New York City's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee names a host city on July 6.

Bruno said he wants a meeting with the mayor and governor so that he and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver can get more information.

Bruno said the meeting could be like one of the open budget meetings led by Pataki this year with legislative leaders.

At a meeting of the Public Authorities Control Board on Wednesday, which rules on debt financing, Pataki's budget director, John Cape, announced a May 25 special session to deal with the Jets project.

He said Bloomberg administration officials will be present to help answer questions.

Bruno's call for postponement Tuesday had removed the Jets financing from the agenda of Wednesday's meeting of the PACB, whose voting members represent the governor, Bruno and Silver.

John McArdle, a spokesman for Bruno, said if the special meeting is held the Republican majority leader will likely attend.

Silver said he may ask for another postponement "until we get the answers" about financing and the proposed acquisition by the Jets of the project site.

Pataki said the project calls for $300 million in grants from New York City and the state.

The governor maintains the stadium would be good for the economy.

Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, said the $600 million public subsidy is only part of the taxpayers' cost.

Another $450 million borrowed by New York City would be repaid by in-lieu-of-tax payments by the Jets.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority accepted the Jets' $250 million bid for the right to build above the West Side Rail Yard, about a quarter of the value of the appraised value, Silver said.

Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan, said lawmakers need to know who will operate the stadium and its convention business and whether the MTA is renting or selling the site.

DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) machines in Ohio put Bush in the White House.and should be BANNED.

Only machines that produce a paper record, verifiable by the voter at the time of voting, should be permitted.

There is not a single machine I would trust unless the voter could be sure that the box he touched on the screen produced an actual vote for HIS candidate.

Period.

How can cost be a factor when we are talking about the fundamental pillar of OUR democracy?

Our elections must never be stolen again.

Twice is enough.

Not SMERSH - - -SPECTRE!

Bond-"Red wine with fish. Well, that should've told me something."

Donald Grant-"You may know the right wines, but you're the one on your knees. How does it feel, old man?"

Bond-"Old man? Is that what you chaps in SMERSH call each other?"

Grant-"SMERSH?"

Bond-"Of course, SPECTRE."

In the meantime ........

"Leaders get green light to dip into pork barrel"

By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press
First published: Thursday, May 19, 2005

ALBANY -- A panel appointed by the governor and legislative leaders quietly approved more than $440 million in borrowing Wednesday for projects the leaders will pick and New York's taxpayers will pay off over the next 30 years.

The borrowing includes $235 million for "various projects" to be determined by Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and $209.5 million to be used at the discretion of Gov. George Pataki, according to board resolutions.

Typically, many of the projects are for local projects identified by lawmakers in this little-known version of "member items," derided by critics as pork-barrel spending.

The borrowing was approved by the state Public Authorities Control Board -- appointed by the three leaders.

There were no details on most of the projects, many of which haven't yet been chosen, and there was no public comment before the final approvals were made.

The borrowing was a last-minute addition to the agenda of the control board, which quickly approved it.

"This is backdoor borrowing," complained Barbara Bartoletti of the League of Women Voters.

"This is borrowing the voters don't get to actually approve and taxpayers still end up footing the bill ... it is being less than upfront with taxpayers."

"All PACB decisions are made behind closed doors and they come to these meetings and they are just (formally) approved," she said.

The funds approved Wednesday are in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars directed by individual lawmakers under traditional member items.

end quotes

What a mockery!

Two hundred some years since independence from England and corrupt ROYAL government in New York and what have we got?

Just some more corrupt ROYAL government!

No accountability then, none today!

Go figure, because I sure can't!

Well, jeffmoskin, you might be right, there, anyway, about SMERSH really being just a front for SPECTRE!

But it's that BUGGER crowd that really worries me!

From what I hear, they're meaner than a black snake, which is maybe why Donald Rumsfeld was allegedly using them as his stooges over there in that abu Ghraib prison in Iraq!

Quite a crowd, indeed, eh?

OH NO.

SPECTRE is an acronym for "The Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion"

SMERSH is a contraction for "Smiert Spionam (meaning "Death to Spies")"

What is BUSH an acronym for?

A person without credibility, because he appears to have absolutely no integrity whatsover?

"They have miscalculated me as a leader!'

- George W. Bush, Westminster, California; September 13, 2000

Ah, no, George, I don't think I have miscaluclated you as a leader at all, because I never actually thought that you were one, and nothing that you have done to date has disabused me of that notion!

To the contrary, by your actions and bumbling on a day-to-day basis here in OUR America, and out there in the world as well, places like Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Uzbekistan, of course, where you appear to be the best buddy of the THUG who has allegedly just machine-gunned a bunch of innocent people over there in what is being called by some wags, anyway, the "Bush-style" of democracy, you just keep on reinforcing the impression that I have that whoever really did vote for you, if anyone outside of some electronic noise in a computer somewhere really did, that is was they who very seriously miscalculated how very incompetent and inept and unworthy the REPUBLICAN PARTY IS to have anything at all to do with OUR self-government in this REPUBLIC of OURS, including catching its stray dogs when they are on the loose!

RESTORE INTEGRITY TO GOVERNMENT, HERE IN OUR AMERICA!

REPUBLICANS OUT!

Pass it on!

"Karzai Wants More Control of U.S. Forces"

By DANIEL COONEY, Associated Press Writer

22 minutes ago

KABUL, Afghanistan - Hours before flying to Washington for talks with President Bush, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai demanded greater control Saturday over American military operations in his country and called for vigorous punishment of any U.S. troops who mistreat prisoners.

He also said he wants the United States to hand over all Afghan prisoners still in U.S. custody.

In a volatile southern province, meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded in the latest in a string of attacks launched by loyalists of the ousted Taliban regime.

Speaking to reporters before his first visit to the United States since he was installed in December as Afghanistan's first democratically elected president, Karzai demanded more say over operations by the 16,700 U.S. troops still in the country, including an end to raids on the homes of Afghan unless his government was notified beforehand.

"No operations inside Afghanistan should take place without the consultation of the Afghan government," he told reporters.

Karzai — seen by his critics as an American puppet — issued the tough statement after fresh reports of prisoner abuse by American forces at Bagram, the main military prison north of Kabul, and anti-U.S. riots that broke out across the country earlier this month, leaving at least 15 people dead.

The unrest was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report, later retracted, that the Quran was defiled by interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and likely further fueled by long-standing complaints of heavy-handed search operations and the deaths of civilians in U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

There were fears a report in Friday's New York Times, based on the Army's criminal investigation into the December 2002 deaths of two Afghans at Bagram, could re-ignite anti-American manifestations.

Karzai said he was "shocked" by allegations of prisoner abuse by poorly trained U.S. soldiers at Bagram and vowed to raise the issue during his four-day U.S. visit that begins Sunday.

"We want the U.S. government to take very, very strong action to take away people like that (who) are working with their forces in Afghanistan," Karzai said.

"Definitely ... I will see about that when I am in the United States."

Responding to the abuse allegations, Col. James Yonts, the U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said:

"The command has made it very clear that any incidents of abuse will not be tolerated."

In Washington, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was "alarmed by the reports of prisoner abuse," and wants them thoroughly investigated.

Duffy said seven people were being investigated about abuse at Bagram.

The Times' allegations of maltreatment were supported by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog, which said that at least six detainees in U.S. custody in Afghanistan have been killed since 2002.

"U.S. forces in Afghanistan were involved in killings, torture and other abuses of prisoners," it said in a statement.

"These crimes, known to senior officials in the military and Central Intelligence Agency, have not still been adequately investigated or prosecuted."

In December, Pentagon officials said that eight deaths of detainees in Afghanistan — including the two mentioned in the Times report — had been investigated since mid-2002.

Hundreds of people were detained during and after the campaign by U.S.-led forces to oust the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.

After the outcry over abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the military also initiated a review of its detention facilities in Afghanistan and later said it had modified some of its procedures, although the review's findings have not been made public.

Also, an Italian aid worker kidnapped in Kabul spent her sixth day in captivity on Saturday, still with no clear word on her fate.

Taliban-led rebels kept up assaults in the south and east of the country.

A roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier and wounded three others as they patrolled in an armored vehicle in Zabul province, the U.S. military said.

A purported spokesman for the Taliban claimed responsibility.

A mine explosion in southern Kandahar province wounded four Afghan soldiers, while a two-hour gunbattle between Taliban rebels and Afghan forces in Zabul left two insurgents dead, officials said.

In Ghazni province, four people driving to a wedding were killed and four others were wounded when an old land mine exploded under their vehicle, said police chief Gen. Abdul Rahman Sarjang.

Karzai said he was "shocked" by allegations of prisoner abuse by poorly trained U.S. soldiers at Bagram and vowed to raise the issue during his four-day U.S. visit that begins Sunday.

Poorly trained United States soldiers are alleged to be abusing prisoners in Afghanistan, now, and George W. Bush is shocked, probably because the news got out!

WHY ARE UNITED STATES SOLDIERS POORLY TRAINED TODAY, WHEN WE ARE SPENDING MORE MONEY PER SOLDIER NOW, THAN EVER BEFORE IN THIS NATION'S HISTORY?

Because we have AN INCOMPETENT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, IS WHY!

Donald Rumsfeld is not fit to be Secretary of Defense in OUR America, and he should be immediately fired from that position BECAUSE OF THESE VERY ADMISSIONS ABOVE HERE, where it is admitted in print by OUR government that OUR troops are very poorly trained, and led, for that matter!

Thanks to George W. Bush and the REPUBLICAN PARTY, we have an incompetent, poorly trained military that is now thug-like in nature, CREATED IN THEIR VERY IMAGE!

WHO'S PROUD OF THAT?

Anyone?

"Prosecutors Seek Sealed Limbaugh Records"

By The Associated Press

1 hour, 21 minutes ago

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Palm Beach County prosecutors who want to examine Rush Limbaugh's medical records for their prescription drug abuse investigation are going to court Monday in hopes of having that evidence released.

The records were seized in late 2003, as prosecutors looked into allegations that the conservative commentator went "doctor shopping" to illegally acquire pain medication.

Limbaugh, 54, of Palm Beach, has not been charged with any crime and has denied any criminal wrongdoing.

Limbaugh's attorneys fought the seizures, claiming a violation of privacy rights.

But last month the Florida Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, clearing the way for prosecutors to finally look over the records.

The records are under seal in the possession of Palm Beach Circuit Judge Jeffrey Winikoff.

A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Monday.

Prosecutors went after Limbaugh's medical records after learning he received about 2,000 painkillers, prescribed by four doctors in six months, at a pharmacy near his oceanfront mansion.

Limbaugh acknowledged his addiction to pain medication in October 2003, blaming it on severe back pain, and took a five-week leave from his radio show to enter rehab.

The show has 20 million listeners a week and is heard on nearly 600 radio stations.
___

On the Net:

Rush Limbaugh: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com

"British officer could be tried for Iraq 'war crimes': report"

6 minutes ago

LONDON (AFP) - A British commanding officer decorated for his service in Iraq could face court martial for alleged war crimes following the death of an Iraqi detainee, a report said.

Colonel Jorge Mendonca, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his actions in Iraq, is being investigated over the death of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel clerk allegedly beaten to death in 2003, the Mail on Sunday said.

Mendonca, 41, was the commanding officer in charge of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, the army unit linked with Mousa's death in British custody in Basra, southern Iraq.

An army investigation into the death had centred on ordinary soldiers from the regiment, but was then expanded to senior officers amid allegations the entire chain of command was complicit in the abuse, the report said.

Earlier this month, following a 10-month inquiry, military police investigators handed their files on the death of Mousa to the Army Prosecuting Authority, who must now decide whether to court martial Mendonca or others.

If he is charged, it would be the first time since the 1950s that a British commanding officer has been implicated in alleged criminal misconduct, the newspaper said.

Mendonca completely rejects the allegations, and was "furious" at the investigation, it added.

In February, two British soldiers were found guilty of abusing Iraqi civilians at a base in Basra known as Camp Breadbasket, while a third pleaded guilty.

The mistreatment -- including one Iraqi being suspended from a forklift truck and others forced to simulate sex acts -- was captured in photographs that were published around the world after they were released as evidence.

South and Central Asia

"Afghanistan's Karzai 'shocked’ by abuse report - Bush hails ties ahead of Afghan leader's visit to Washington"

Joe Raedle / Getty Images file
Soldiers stand by as a helicopter lifts supplies from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda in 2002. Two Afghan detainees died at the base in the same year and a report on the Army probe into their deaths was published Friday.

Updated: 3:14 p.m. ET May 21, 2005

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday he was shocked by a U.S. Army report on abuse of detainees in Afghanistan, saying his government wanted custody of all Afghan prisoners and control over U.S. military operations.

The abuse described in the report, including details of the deaths of two inmates at an Afghan detention center, happened in 2002 and emerged from a nearly 2,000-page file of U.S. Army investigators, The New York Times reported Friday.

"It has shocked me thoroughly and we condemn it," Karzai said at a news conference.

"We want the U.S. government to take very, very strong action, to take away people like that."

Karzai, a staunch ally in the U.S.-led war against terrorism, was due to leave on a U.S trip Saturday and meet President Bush for talks.

Karzai wants to forge a broad long-term partnership with his most important ally but he said he would also reiterate a request for the return of Afghan prisoners and control over U.S. military operations.

The United States commands a foreign force in Afghanistan of about 18,300, most of them American, fighting Taliban insurgents and hunting militant leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

Karzai's visit to Washington follows violent anti-American protests in Afghan cities prompted by a Newsweek report that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Koran.

Sixteen people were killed and many wounded in the violence.

Newsweek retracted the report, but the International Committee of the Red Cross subsequently said it had told the Pentagon of allegations U.S. personnel had mishandled the Muslim holy book.

In his weekly radio address, Bush emphasized close ties with Afghanistan and said he would discuss with Karzai progress his country has made since the ousting of the Taliban by U.S. forces in 2001.

He did not mention the protests or the abuse report.

"We're helping Afghanistan's elected government solidify these democratic gains and deliver real change," Bush said.

"A nation that once knew only the terror of the Taliban is now seeing a rebirth of freedom, and we will help them succeed."

House searches criticized

Many Afghans have criticized U.S. troops for what are seen as heavy-handed tactics, such as breaking into people's homes in the middle of the night in their search for militants.

At the news conference, Karzai said searches should be carried out in cooperation with Afghan forces.

"No operations inside Afghanistan should take place without the consultation of the Afghan government," he said.

"They should not go to our people's homes any more without the knowledge of the Afghan government."

"... If they want any person suspected in a house, they should let us know and the Afghan government would arrange that."

Karzai said he would also ask for "the return of prisoners to Afghanistan, all of them."

The United States is holding more than 500 prisoners from its war on terrorism at the Guantanamo Bay naval base on Cuba.

Many of them were detained in Afghanistan after the Taliban overthrow.

U.S. forces are also believed to be holding several hundred Afghans in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Army report centers on the death of a 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died at the U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul, six days earlier, in December 2002.

According to the report, Dilawar was chained by his wrists to the top of his cell for several days before he died and his legs had been pummeled by guards.

"The file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse.

The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths," The New York Times said.

In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers described mistreatment ranging from a female interrogator stepping on a detainee's neck and kicking another in the genitals to a shackled prisoner being made to kiss the boots of interrogators, according to the newspaper.

U.S. officials have characterized incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002 as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated, the newspaper said.

Two army interrogators have been reprimanded and seven soldiers have been charged, the newspaper said.

"Bush gets mixed reception at Christian college"

By Caren Bohan

1 hour, 49 minutes ago

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Reuters) - President Bush on Saturday championed faith in American society, but ran into some criticism as courted his Christian base in a commencement speech at a Michigan college.

"We need to support and encourage the institutions and pursuits that bring us together."

"And we learn how to come together by participating in our churches and temples and mosques and synagogues," Bush told graduating seniors at Calvin College, a Christian liberal-arts college.

The college describes itself as a "center of faith-anchored liberal arts teaching and scholarship," and Bush has aggressively sought to reinforce his support among religious conservatives who helped deliver him a reelection victory in 2004.

But anti-Bush ads that ran in the local newspaper, protests outside the event and buttons worn on graduates' robes made clear that many students and faculty objected to Bush's policies.

"We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq," said a letter signed by about one-third the college's 300 faculty members and published in Saturday's Grand Rapids Press.

"As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," it said.

The letter criticized economic policies that it said favored the wealthy over the poor, and faulted Bush for mixing religion and politics and exhibiting and "intolerance" for others' views.

It cited "conflicts between our understanding of what Christians are called to do and many of the policies of your administration."

The letter followed an earlier ad by students, alumni and faculty who said they were troubled that Bush was to be the commencement speaker.

Bush's speech emphasized community service and he urged graduates to volunteer.

"This isn't a Democrat idea."

"This isn't a Republican idea."

"This is an American idea," he said.

Some graduating students wore buttons that said "God is not a Democrat or a Republican."

A few dozen protesters gathered outside, carrying signs that read, "Conservatives and moderates reject extremism" and "Thou shalt not torture."

But there were also many Bush supporters, with placards that said, "We love Bush" and "Cutie pie."

Bush, a Methodist, often talks of the importance of faith in his life.

Some critics see this as crossing a line between religion and politics.

Bush said his emphasis on religion does not make him intolerant of those who do not share his beliefs.

"I don't condemn somebody in the political process because they may not agree with me on religion," he said.

Calvin College is the venue for one of two commencement speeches Bush will be delivering this year.

He is scheduled to speak at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Alister Bull)

And talk about an association with Eliot Spitzer being the "kiss of death", sounds like this Brodsky just caught a dose himself, which is going to make this an intereting race indeed!

"Attorney general campaign heats up - With 17 months to go before election, hopefuls line up endorsements"

By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, May 19, 2005

ALBANY -- An endorsement war has blown up between two of the seven Democrats competing to be the next state attorney general -- and the race is 17 months away.

On Wednesday -- two days after state Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin, D-Queens, a New York City labor leader, endorsed former U.S. Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo's likely bid for the office in 2006 -- another candidate, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Westchester, announced he has the backing of all five of his Democratic Assembly colleagues from Westchester County.

Assemblyman Adam Bradley called Brodsky "a leading reformer" and said he "most embodies the style" of crusading State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who raised the office to new heights with investigations of Wall Street and the insurance industry.

Spitzer is the Democrats' leading contender for governor in 2006.

Assemblywoman Amy Paulin echoed that, adding: "If you liked Eliot, you'll love Richard."

Assembly members Sandy Galef, George Latimer and Gary Pretlow rounded out Brodsky's endorsement list Wednesday.

This latest back-and-forth between Cuomo, son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, and Brodsky, a former Westchester County legislator, follows their dueling announcements of union endorsements late last month.

First Cuomo won the support of the politically potent Service Employees International Union/Local 1199, which represents some 250,000 health care workers.

One week later, Brodsky revealed he had been endorsed by the 75,000-member Communications Workers of America union, which backed Cuomo's aborted gubernatorial bid in 2002.

Other Democrats interested in the attorney general's office include former New York City Public Advocate Mark Green; Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, D-Queens; Sean P. Maloney, a lawyer who worked as an aide to President Bill Clinton; Denise O'Donnell, the former United States attorney for the Western District of New York; and Charles King, who had two unsuccessful campaigns for lieutenant governor -- once as Cuomo's running mate.

Among Republicans mentioned for the attorney general race are Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, state Sen. Michael Balboni, R-Nassau, and former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio, who ran for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton in 2000.

BUSH


Belligerant

Unhelpful

Spendthrift

Hazardous

or... the obvious:

BU**SH**