The Rant Archives

The archives of my irregularly spaced rants.

December 2002


Well. I checked my last update for the rants and it was July. Wow! Tell me your life is more boring and I won't believe you!
Not much has been happening, and I guess you could say that is good, because all that has happened has been mostly bad, or at least scary at the time.
I had my gall bladder out on October 16. I was mostly scared of dying on the table, like that could happen. Gallstones were giving me a heck of a pain, so bad I went to the hospital twice before I broke down and went to my regular doctor to get it checked.
I have some of the risk factors: female, overweight (yikes! therapy confession time or what?!), even Native American blood. Now that it's over, I have started exercising in earnest again. So you could say that it turned out to be a good thing. I even rearranged my house. I am lucky enough to have the room to devote to my treadmill and plenty of room for aerobics.
So what's to rant about? Hmmm, how about the fact that I have NO MORE EXCUSES not to exercise! :-)
Long story short: many diseases of Americans are preventable and we should all exercise to stay healthy. With the Republicans in charge, we have to stay out of the hospital or we'll all go broke! ;-)
One other thing: I didn't want this to turn into a blog, but I am going to the airport tonight to see my mom, sister, and two cousins. They are returning from Italy and their plane is delayed. Darned airlines. This kind of makes it rant-like, huh?

November 2002


A GWBush.com Alert -- Visit http://gwbush.com for more...
The press has again gone above and beyond the call of duty. Not only are they failing to report on another Bush lie, they are also repeating his lie as if it were true.
The S.E.C. determined that Bush violated 4 laws in 1990 with his very timely Harken stock sale. He was found guilty. Of course he wasn't punished--his father was president at the time.
He was not "cleared by the S.E.C." But reporters from Cokie Roberts to Peter Jennings have been repeating Bush's line that he was cleared as though it were a fact.
Angry? Visit GWBush.com and we'll cheer you up. http://gwbush.com
And please spread this link around: http://www.public-i.org/story_01_100400.htm It has the SEC report on Bush's 1990 dealings.

July 2002


This is unbelievable, scary, but 100% true...
(See full story at http://gwbush.com)

Recently Bush met with Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Not far into the conversation, Bush asked the 71 year old statesman an unexpected question:
"Do you have blacks too?"
Condoleezza Rice was present and jumped in to save Cardoso from having to answer, informing Bush that in fact Brazil is home to more blacks than any country outside Africa.
The incident, witnessed by the White House press corps, is more proof that Bush knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the world he lives in--AND LEADS! This is terrifying!
Equally terrifying: the American media did not report the incident. There seems to be an unwritten rule that while it's ok to acknowledge Bush's lack of "intellectual curiosity", any hard evidence of utter stupidity must be covered up.
The incident was reported outside the U.S.. For example, by the prestigious German news magazine Der Spiegel. Here's a translation of the article (with a link to the original German article): http://gwbush.com/copies/trans.shtml
Please spread the word about this. American voters need to know that our pilot is flying blind!
Please visit GWBush.com for the full feature and some additional laughs on this subject... http://gwbush.com

June 2002


May 17, 2002
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
Bush is lying. It's that simple.
Today, in an effort to stop his presidency from hemorrhaging its credibility, Bush took to the podium to gamely defend his lack of action on behalf of the American people prior to September 11th.
According to CNN, "Weighing in on a furor over what the government knew about potential terrorist attacks before September 11, President Bush on Friday criticized the "second-guessing" and said he had no clear indication beforehand that terrorists would hijack jets and deliberately crash them."
(http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/17/bush.sept.11/index.html)
Bush was echoing the hollow excuse offered by Ari Fleischer, who said on Wednesday:
"The president did not receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers. This was a new type of attack that was not foreseen."
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u= /ap/20020516/ap_on_go_pr_wh/attacks_quotes_2)
There's only one thing wrong with both their statements. The White House and Bush were well aware of the potential use of hijacked suicide missiles.
When Bush attended a G-8 conference in Italy in 2001, "U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July that Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill President Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations, officials said Wednesday.
Italian officials took the reports seriously enough to prompt extraordinary precautions during the July summit of the Group of 8 nations, including closing the airspace over Genoa and stationing antiaircraft guns at the city's airport.
But a U.S. official said that American counter-terrorism experts considered the warning "unsubstantiated."
In either case, the reports suggest that Western governments were aware that terrorists might one day use a hijacked airplane as a suicide weapon -- as they did Sept. 11 in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092701genoa.story)
More damning evidence of the Bush lie is found in a 1999 Federal Report that warned:
"Exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building.
"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White House," the September 1999 report said.
The report, entitled the "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks al-Qaida might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan"
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid= 716&e=1&u=/AP/20020517/ap_on_go_pr_wh/attacks_1999_warning_6)
We could recount more evidence that the White House is deceiving the American people, but the above two items offer an open and shut case.
You won't see the mainstream press calling Bush a liar, but we will, because we care about America and our fellow Americans.
We love our country dearly -- and the man in the White House is playing us for a fool.
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

May 2002, part 2


May 16, 2002
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: Knowing Much, Bush Did Little to Protect America by James Ridgeway
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0221/ridgeway3.php
When people first raised questions about President Bush's scared- chicken behavior on September 11, they were buried in patriotic abuse. But think about it. Consider the bare facts: The attacks happened on George Bush's watch. He was in charge. And he now admits to having known in general what was going to happen. Terrorists were slipping into the country. They were studying at American flight schools. They intended to hijack planes. They were financed by Osama bin Laden. Knowing all of this, Bush still left us totally undefended. And for this performance, his approval ratings soared.
If the president got an intelligence warning during the summer about what might soon happen, how come he didn't do something then? He could have:
1. Told Congress.
2. Improved airport security, which had already been criticized as inadequate.
3. Alerted the airlines. As it was, the airlines never raised any questions when the hijackers started laying down thousands in cash for one-way tickets.
4. Warned the FAA. The FAA control center in New Hampshire knew 10 to 15 minutes after takeoff that an American Airlines flight from Boston had been hijacked. It was more than half an hour later when it crashed into the World Trade Center.
5. Ordered improved security for the nation's nuclear power plants, the untended thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines, the harbors into which a terrorist could sail a liquid natural gas tanker and unleash a holocaust equal to a nuclear explosion.
If Bush knew so much, how come he did so little on September 11? Instead of letting his handlers move him from place to place in an utter fog, he could have returned to Washington immediately and, as commander in chief, taken charge. He could have alerted the military, which ought to have had planes in the air moments after the FAA control learned of the takeover.
Bush was much more careful when it came to defending his political power. He and his managers managed to spin his response to the attacks so well that approval ratings soared to all-time highs. Clutching his halo, the president then began pushing for various rollbacks of freedom and constitutional process. They were old ideas for him, but he wrapped them in patriotic banners and sold them to the nation. Consider what he accomplished:
1. He set in motion the installation of a secret Congress.
2. His administration marched far forward with its program for restricting civil rights and tightening immigration rules.
3. He started a shooting war in Afghanistan against a group of people— the Taliban—with whom the administration was quietly negotiating last summer. He advanced immeasurably the interests of those who want to go to war against Iraq. That's not to mention those of the Israeli war hawks who assert they are part of the campaign against terror and that their invasion of Palestinian cities and towns is thus justified.
Bush protected himself and his friends. What he left uncovered was the rest of us.

May 2002


Environmental Groups Added After Outcry

From http://www.politicalamazon.com:

Despite the typical Bush "administration" LIES about having consulted environmental groups in their energy policy scheme, the truth is that the only reason ANY environmental group was even mentioned is because of the huge outcry. c Once again, the Bush "administration" is caught in a lie. And they wonder why Americans don't believe anything they are saying about their oily war in Afghanistan?
Quoting the article: [["This is the environment chapter," wrote Margot Anderson, a deputy assistant secretary, in an e-mail sent to Energy Department colleagues March 23, 2001. "I am unclear about the process on this one. I do know the topic was added in late."]]
:::::::::::::::::::::::::
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22511-2002Mar26? language=printer
washingtonpost.com
Energy Task Force Belatedly Consulted Environmentalists
Documents Show Administration Sought Input Only After Protests
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 27, 2002; Page A02
President Bush's energy task force moved to include a chapter on environmental matters only late in last year's deliberations, despite administration officials' assertions that the panel weighed conservation and production equally as it assembled a national energy policy.
The new information, indicating that the task force added a section on the environment only after an outcry from environmentalists excluded from deliberations, came from Monday night's court-ordered release of documents by the Energy Department and other government agencies.
"This is the environment chapter," wrote Margot Anderson, a deputy assistant secretary, in an e-mail sent to Energy Department colleagues March 23, 2001. "I am unclear about the process on this one. I do know the topic was added in late."
The e-mail was consistent with environmental groups' claims that they received a sudden flurry of inquiries from the task force in late March, two months after the task force was created and as the panel was preparing interim drafts.
Gary Skulnik, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said the group was called March 22 and "given 24 hours to provide any input on energy policy -- not to meet or talk to them, but to send any material we might have, or links to Web sites." He added: "It looked to us like a move to cover their rear ends." An Energy Department official said conservation was originally to have been part of another chapter on energy efficiency.
An "environmentally sound" approach is mentioned in Bush's Jan. 29 directive creating the task force, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in March the report would "enhance our commitment to conservation." Abraham called it a myth that it is "impossible to balance energy exploration and environmental protection."
Behind the scenes, documents indicate, Energy Department officials, who handled most of the energy task force's work last year, seemed to be skeptical of conservation measures. On April 28, then-Department of Energy policy adviser Joseph Kelliher wrote to colleagues about California Democratic Gov. Gray Davis's conservation plan. "Can we assess the accuracy of his claims of success on conservation?" asked Kelliher.
Interest groups and others yesterday gave the thousands of pages of documents a more thorough review than was possible when they were released. The documents showed that in addition to Abraham's meetings with three dozen industry representatives, lobbyists and executives -- several of them large campaign contributors -- worked extensively with administration officials at various levels as they assembled Bush's energy policy.
Representatives of the Edison Electric Institute, American Gas Association, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association collaborated with those developing the policy recommendations.
The Center for Responsive Politics studied the individuals and groups that met with Abraham about the energy task force and found total contributions to Republicans of more than $4.5 million since 1999. Of the 36 representatives of industry interests who met with Abraham, 29 were contributors individually or through their organizations.
The documents also indicate that Abraham met with more than the 36 individuals about the task force. An April 26 e-mail said he was meeting May 4 with two officials from the American Gas Association and the chief executive of NiSource Inc., a gas distributor.
The information that was released Monday night in response to lawsuits brought under the Freedom of Information Act was of limited value because the vast majority of relevant documents had sections deleted or were omitted. The groups that had sued for the documents, Judicial Watch and the Natural Resources Defense Council, said they planned to go back to court because so many thousands of pages were withheld.
Still, a close reading of the available documents provides a rare glimpse at the inner workings of policymaking in the administration. The e-mails detailed a significant level of cooperation between government officials and energy industry representatives.
By late March, as environmental groups were first being reached, industry players already were assuming a favorable outcome and were working together to sell Bush's then-secret plan. A March 22 memo from the American Gas Association to Kelliher says the group "had a good meeting this morning" at the Energy Department, and offers any assistance to a "new coalition" to support the Bush policy.
Next, an AGA official wrote to Andrew Lundquist, the task force director, on April 3 offering a map of natural gas transmission lines with notes about "access restrictions and the impact of Clinton's roadless initiatives." The official continued: "Please let me know if the materials on distributed generation that we provided were adequate for your purposes???" The Bush energy report called for increases in natural gas production and enhanced pipelines.
An e-mail with the words "possible recommendation" in the title was sent on April 5 to Robert Kripowicz, acting assistant secretary for fossil energy, from an Energy Department colleague stated: "I have now spoken with Fred Davis at EEI and to Bob Szabo at Van Ness, Feldman, on this issue. Chuck Linderman suggested by yesterday's voice mail that I contact both in his absence."
Fred Davis is a lobbyist and has been treasurer of the political action committee of EEI, or Edison Electric Institute, which contributed $193,888 in the 2000 election cycle -- 71 percent to Republicans. Linderman is also from EEI. Szabo served as director of the National Wetlands Coalition, a business group opposed to the regulatory approach taken by environmentalists. Around the same time, Kripowicz sent an e-mail to Kelliher about an "interim report on coal transportation issues." Kripowicz wrote: "I will have someone follow up on this tomorrow . . . with EEI."
Documents released by the EPA in response to the same lawsuit also indicate close cooperation with industry. "Citgo Petroleum Corporation is providing the following response to a question EPA has posed to the refining industry," one memo states. The question EPA proposed was, "If refineries were allowed to turn off their air pollution controls or increase their operating hours beyond permit limits, then would industry be able to supply more gasoline to market this summer?"
Citgo said a more practical solution would be for the federal government to prevent states from establishing their own standards for "boutique" fuels. The energy report seeks to phase out such fuels.
American Petroleum Institute President Red Caveny, who brought five oil company presidents along when he met with Abraham on Feb. 21, said in an interview that Abraham was attentive as they argued "more regulatory flexibility" to avoid shortages. Caveny said his group was pleased with the outcome, calling it a "balanced" report, adding: "On 11 out of the 12 key areas, we're covered."
Bob Slaughter of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association used a March 22 e-mail to thank an Energy Department official for calling and said he was attaching the group's "current thinking as to what changes in national energy policy are needed to help the refining sector." Slaughter said "everyone had a chance to input."
The energy officials seemed to be aware that their contacts with groups seeking favorable recommendations in the report could be controversial. One e-mail in February about a draft chapter provided a "Reminder on secret location: P://Analysis/Calls/External Requests." Another e-mail proposes a meeting with General Atomics and asks, "Could you please advise whether you think the meeting is appropriate." The cooperation continues after the energy report's release. On July 3, two Energy Department officials exchanged documents provided to them by American Electric Power and Southern Co. offering additional proposals for energy policies. "As per our discussions," one of the executives wrote, attaching a document titled "proposed energy policy language."
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer yesterday said the government acted appropriately. "News flash: It's no surprise to anybody that the secretary of energy meets with energy-related groups," he said.
Staff researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.
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