April 20, 2004
"They want us to panic — that's their intent,"
Mr. Bush said
yesterday of the terrorists. "Their intent
is to say: 'Let's create panic among the civilized
world. We want nations to turn upon each other,
civilized nations to argue and debate about the
mission.' "
"What I'd like to do is come out with some
collaborative positions that Bush can never blur,"
said Ralph Nader,
pointing to a crackdown on corporate crime as one
possibility. "It would be nice if we could
come out taking a common position on that, and
throwing the gauntlet down to the Bush
administration."
"We're talking about margins," Ralph Nader said.
"Going into that arena is not an option for the
Democrats. They have stereotyped tens of millions
of conservatives because they are against abortion
and against gun control, so forget about them.
That's a big mistake by the Democratic Party. We
have not had that problem. .. Depressing the vote
by having them stay home in some numbers, or going
to an independent candidacy, is something that
will help defeat George W. Bush," Nader said.
"Today there is hatred of the Americans like never
before in the region,"
Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview given
during a stay in France, where he met President
Jacques Chirac Monday.
Bush still leads
President Bush still leads Sen. John Kerry in the
USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll with Bush ahead 50% to
44% among likely voters -- a bit wider than the
4-point lead he held in early April. The lack of
movement underscores how polarized the electorate
is. About six months before Election Day, they
say, most people's minds are made up.
I don't think anything barring a major calamity of
some sort will have much of an impact between now
and November," says independent pollster John
Zogby. "The nation is split down the middle."
Reports
USA Today:
Some Democrats argue that Kerry needs to meet a
"threshold" but not to beat Bush in convincing
voters he can handle terrorism. If Kerry does
that, they say, more voters will focus on economic
issues that give Kerry an advantage.
By 36% to 30%, those surveyed say only Kerry would
do a good job in handling the economy. A 52%
majority disapprove of the job Bush is doing on
the economy.
Woodward wrong
Bob Woodward’s book continues to cause a stir in
the race for the Presidency. The book has brought
comments from Secretary of State Colin Powell that
Woodward is flat wrong about Powell not being
informed about the war plans before the Saudi
Arabian prince.
Another factual error is being exposed concerning
deviation of $700 million from Afghanistan to Iraq
war planning. Woodward announced that "Congress
was totally in the dark on this," in an interview
with CBS "60 Minutes" concerning the alleged shift
in funding in July 2002.
Reuters reports:
A senior Pentagon budget official told reporters
in a hastily called briefing on Monday that Army
Gen. Tommy Franks, then head of the U.S. Central
Command, submitted a request to the Pentagon
leadership for $750 million in "Iraq contingency"
funding in July 2002.
But the official said that no money was provided
by the Pentagon for actual war preparations in
neighboring Kuwait and the region until after
Congress passed a resolution on Oct. 11, 2002,
authorizing the use of force "if necessary" in
Iraq.
They also report:
Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the
House of Representatives Appropriations Committee
that oversees spending, said Bush owed Congress "a
full, detailed and immediate accounting."
If the book is accurate, Obey said, it was "ironic
that the president was surreptitiously authorizing
expenditures to begin a plan for war" while
resisting efforts in Congress to boost spending
for homeland security.
The Republican chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee, Rep. Bill Young of
Florida, said because "of the lack of specificity
in the Woodward account, it is impossible to
determine what specific funds he is alleging were
spent without Congress' knowledge."
Woodward’s book is also gathering steam on the
question he raised that Saudi Arabia would lower
gas prices close to the election. Kerry has called
the allegation "disgusting if true."
The Saudis have released an announcement that they
are not manipulating the market to affect the
elections outcome. The White House stated that
they were not inclined to speak for the Saudis.
However, they pointed out that it had been Saudi
Arabia’s policy to keep oil prices between $22 to
$28 per barrel in order not to hurt the U.S.
economy.
Woodward has distanced himself from stating that
there was a secret deal as well.
"I don't say there's a secret deal or any
collaboration on this," Woodward told CNN's "Larry
King Live" Monday. "What I say in the book is that
the Saudis ... hoped to keep oil prices low during
the period before the election, because of its
impact on the economy. That's what I say."
Asked by Larry King about Kerry's use of the
issue, Woodward said, "Kerry has taken this to the
next level. This always gets caught in the
political crossfire, and I'm trying to stick with
what my reporting showed."
Kerry moving to environment
Sen. John Kerry is trying to move the focus over
to the upcoming Earth Day and the environment in a
three-day swing that begins in Florida with Carol
Browner, a former Environmental Protection Agency
administrator.
The choice of lawyer Browner is interesting from
two standpoints. She and her husband worked for
Ralph Nader’s organization and Browner became the
poster child for Washington Bureaucrats’ mission
creep.
While science isn't Browner's strong point,
political tactics are. Her enemies can only envy
the way the EPA uses the courts. An organization
such as the Natural Resources Defense Council will
go into federal court and sue to force the EPA to
do something. The EPA would wink and, after the
courts expand its mandate, see to it that big
legal fees go to the NRDC.
NRDC is an organization that Teresa Heinz Kerry
contributes part of her ketchup fortune to.
The Associated Press reports Kerry’s spin:
"Under President Bush we have seen a devastating
deterioration not only in our economy but in our
public health and safety," Kerry said of the
effort to mark Earth Day on Thursday. "It does not
have to be this way."
IRS: bugging Democrats
The IRS is still at it. This time it sent out four
April 9 news releases that were labeled
·
"April 15th Tax Day Reminders":
"Treasury and I.R.S. Work To Make Paying Taxes a
Little Easier,"
·
"The 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief Plans
Will Impact Income Tax Returns Filed,"
·
"Millions of Individuals and
Families Are Benefiting From Tax Relief Plan"
·
"Tax Relief Reinvigorated the U.S.
Economy and Is Driving Job Creation."
The releases also included: "America has a choice:
It can continue to grow the economy and create new
jobs as the president's policies are doing, or it
can raise taxes on American families and small
businesses, hurting economic recovery and future
job creation."
Democrats have already caused an inspector
general’s inquiry into the IRS report on Senator
John Kerry’s tax plan citing that the agency can’t
participate in politics. The administrator stated
that the report was produced because of policy
questions.
Alternative endings
Alternative news weeklies are releasing a memo by
somebody close to the Iraqi governing council,
according to ‘Publishers and Editors’:
The 3,000-word story, embargoed until Tuesday but
obtained by E&P today, is based on a "closely
held" memo purportedly written by a U.S.
government official detailed to the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA). It was provided to
writer Jason Vest by "a Western intelligence
official." The memo offers a candid assessment of
Iraq's bleak future -- as a country trapped in
corruption and dysfunction -- and portrays a CPA
cut off from the Iraqi people after a "year's
worth of serious errors."
The article is titled, "Fables of Reconstruction,"
with a subhead, "A Coalition memo reveals that
even true believers see the seeds of civil war in
the occupation of Iraq."
Bush: over time
A hot political topic has been the Bush
administration handling of new over-time rules.
The
Associated Press reports that the
administration is reworking the formula of who
would get over-time:
The plan, to be previewed Tuesday by Labor
Secretary Elaine Chao, also would make more
white-collar, lower-income workers newly eligible
for overtime, said Republican officials, speaking
on the condition of anonymity. Police,
firefighters and emergency medical technicians are
identified as jobs that will not lose overtime
eligibility.
Republican officials said that under the revised
new rules, up to 107,000 workers could lose their
overtime protection, but 6.7 million workers would
be guaranteed eligibility. The old rules provided
for 644,000 white-collar workers possibly losing
protection, and 1.3 million could have gained it.
Hillary’s people care
The
Washington Times reports that Hillarys’
folks are always on the look out to protect:
A man dressed up in a Saddam Hussein "Ace of
Spades" costume was chased from a New York City
sidewalk yesterday by three of Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton's bodyguards as the former first lady
signed copies of her new paperback book inside
Borders bookstore at Columbus Circle.
"They explained there was construction nearby and
they didn't want me to get hurt," the Saddam
impostor informed Inside the Beltway from a
New York City phone booth.
U.N. financed terror
The United Nations has long been an irrelevant
debating society that has wasted funds in ways
that would have made Tammany Hall bosses green
with envy. Now, the U.N. is clearly involved in
corruption on a grand world scale, amounting to
over $10 billion in kickbacks and corruption.
Money that helped Saddam Hussein continue his
reign of terror. Money that helped allow Hussein
to do things like lower his own people into
shredders -- feet first. It was also money that
helped Hussein’s son, Uda, continue to rape and
torture people in his basement. Wonderful things
for the U.N. to have helped finance and received a
little bit of graft as well.
However, we need not fear because the U.N. has
come to understand that the world will not allow
them to investigate the graft and corruption
themselves. About the only thing we can expect is
for the U.N. to clean up the truth so that we will
never know it. Hopefully, President Reagan’s
friend at the Federal Reserve Board, Paul Vocker,
can sort it out. He has been appointed to head the
investigation.
You see, the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's
own son -- Kojo Annan -- had ties to the
Switzerland-based firm, Cotecna, which from 1999
onward worked on contract for the U.N. monitoring
the shipments of Oil for Food supplies into Iraq.
These were the same supplies sent in under terms
of those tens of billions of dollars worth of
U.N.-approved contracts in which the U.N. says it
failed to notice Hussein's widespread arrangements
to overpay contractors who then shipped overpriced
goods to the impoverished people of Iraq and
kicked back part of their profits to Saddam's
regime. Kojo Annan had a consulting contract with
Cotecna.
Cotecna was paid roughly $6 million for its
services during that first year in charge of
overseeing the Food for Oil program. The U.N. will
not release figures on Cotecna's fees over the
following years. Any thinking person knows that $6
million is not enough to pay for inspecting tens
of billions of dollars worth of supplies inbound
to a regime that is expert in smuggling -- and
evidently accustomed to dealing in bribes and
kickbacks as a routine part of business. So, how
trustworthy were the inspectors?
If anyone was wondering about Turkey’s failure to
help the United States get rid of Hussein and his
reign of terror, take a look at a July 2001 report
titled, "Monitoring Arrangements and Reported
Violations." The U.N. Security Council Sanctions
Committee acknowledged it had received evidence
that Saddam was earning as much as $1 billion a
year through illegal oil smuggling through Syria
and Turkey. No wonder, it took $6 billion to get
Turkey to consider helping America.
The
NY Post reports today on testimony
before Congress that demonstrates several
instances where the U.S. and Britain made informal
and formal complaints:
The paper took note of the publication of a list
of 270 prominent international business and
political figures who received sweetheart oil
deals in the form of vouchers that allowed them to
buy Iraqi oil at below-market prices and resell at
a 50 cent per-barrel profit.
The biggest number of the deals went to businesses
and political figures in Russia and France.
"If some of the allegations prove true, it is
quite possible those citizens were able to exert
some influence on the decisions of their
governments to reject additional controls on Iraq
and to oppose the war," the report said.
Russia dropped its opposition to a U.N. resolution
endorsing an investigation of the U.N. Oil for
Food program for Iraq, clearing the way for former
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to take
charge of the inquiry. It is expected that a
resolution authorizing the investigation will come
from the U.N. soon.
It is clear that the U.S. is stuck between two
conflicting powers, both of which want America to
be weakened: 1) Europe, who wants the U.S. cut
down to their size as France and Germany’s
presidents have stated in public and their foreign
ministers have put in writing, and 2) an Islamic
extremist group who wants America and Western
Civilization destroyed.
The question that keeps arising is this: why do
the Democrats (especially John Kerry) want to
bring in the U.N. and sell America short?
