Friday, November 18, 2005
WHAT HE SAID
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, NOT OUR PRESIDENT
By Richard Reeves
LOS ANGELES -- President Bush and his bodyguards, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, have had a busy week denouncing critics of the war as "irresponsible ... reprehensible ... dishonest ... hypocritical." The idea behind that polysyllabic barrage is that not supporting our only president and the troops he has sent into harm's way in
Iraq is a monstrous lack of patriotism.
What has set loose Washington's dogs of war this time is any suggestion that the American people and Congress were deceived by pre-war intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and imminent threats from a small country far away. We were deceived and manipulated, but that is really yesterday's story, a story that actually defines wars through the centuries.
There is no doubt in my mind that we were lied to, as some of us wrote or said before the war. So what? The problem now is getting out. We have lost, as students of history knew we would before we began. We are simply repeating 19th-century British history, and the ending will be the same. No amount of good intentions, democracy, bravery, technological superiority and torture can change the fact that the people we are fighting or trying to save have been there for thousands of years -- and they will still be there after we go back where we came from. The only question on the table is when we decide to get out.
Sincere and caring readers send me hometown newspaper stories about the courage, the idealism and the decency of the young men and women wearing our uniform in Iraq. I am always moved. I am always saddened. They are risking their lives for nothing, except love and loyalty to their mates, the men and women fighting next to them -- in the end that is why soldiers fight. They fight out of loyalty to each other, not loyalty to their leaders or to abstract ideas, wonderful ideas written out in our Constitution more than 200 years ago, or in the Bible and other tracts written by geniuses, saints and sinners, too.
Support our troops? I bleed for them. Many, many lives will be ruined because these young men and women are doing their duty. They will come home to be called "torturers," as Vietnam vets were called "baby killers." Civilians are afraid of fellows trained to kill, to survive by killing them before they kill you.
This is not an American phenomenon. It is universal. The great Vietnamese novel of what they call the American war, Bao Ninh's "Sorrow of War," is essentially about the isolation of the warriors who came back to Hanoi after the Americans left their country in 1975. They were called heroes, but civilians wanted nothing to do with men who had been in the jungle for 10 years, living by the primitive rules of war, kill or be killed. The recent American best-seller "The Rule of Four" tells the story of disoriented Union veterans of the Civil War, who wandered streets and were tied to hospital beds, still wearing their uniforms, because there was no longer a place for them in peaceful, civilian life.
Even the "Greatest Generation," the heroes of World War II, the beneficiaries of the GI Bill and other extraordinary national programs, came home to a nation suspicious of their experiences. There is a reason men who see combat rarely talk about it. The GI Bill and other enlightened programs were openly debated as measures to prevent unemployed, combat-trained young men from launching riots or revolution when they returned to ordinary life.
This time it could be worse, because so many of the returnees were volunteers. This is not a citizen army in Iraq; it is a professional army, a good one. But the rest of the nation they are serving if not protecting are barely engaged in this unnecessary fight. I repeat what I said before the war -- irresponsibly? -- if we had a draft army, ourselves and our children, there would have been no Iraq war. True or not, White House propaganda was never persuasive enough to send a citizen army into the desert.
Now we begin the debate about when and how to get them out. It does not matter how that debate ends. The damage has already been done.Friday, November 18, 2005
NIHAO!
Bush, Asia meet with their own agendas
USA Today - What newspapers in Asia are saying about Bush's visit:
Taipei Times, Taiwan, in an editorial: "U.S. President Bush (visits) Japan, South Korea, China and Mongolia on his latest trip to Asia. The Bush administration's China policy has increasingly been influenced by experts who favor economic engagement in terms of huge market and business opportunities, while paying less attention to the constant expansion of Chinese hegemony and its authoritarian structure, which oppresses democratic forces. ... If the U.S. regards Beijing as responsible, on what grounds can it condemn countries such as North Korea and Iran? The threat these nations pose to international security and democracy is limited compared with that posed by a nuclear power such as China. ... The U.S. has much to lose if Bush continues to rely on those who take an economic view and champion profit at the expense of international security in the construction of his administration's foreign policy."
The Korea Herald, South Korea, in an editorial: "It is true that (South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun) has, intentionally and inadvertently, created a gap with the United States since taking office. There is a little wrong in seeking an 'equal' partnership with the United States, but it should not hurt our relations with the United States."
The Asahi Shimbun, Japan, in an editorial: "As the year-end approaches, so too does a season of East Asian diplomacy. ... It is said that the 21st century will be the Asian century. Excluding Japan, the combined 2005 gross domestic product of Asian countries is estimated to account for 11% of the world total, with Japan accounting for about the same amount. Although total Asian GDP is smaller than that of the United States, at 28% of the world total, and the European Union, at 30%, the Asian countries led largely by China and India will increasingly be a force to be reckoned with. U.S. President Bush is visiting Asia in a somewhat out-of-character eagerness to build on the region's momentum. ... The United States will try to drive home its increasingly strong ties with Asian countries. It will argue in effect that it is the United States itself that will be the strongest motivating force for liberalizing trade and investment and promoting regional development in Asia."
The Australian, in an editorial: "George Bush is not a man afraid to speak his mind, even on occasions when diplomacy dictates staying silent on sensitive subjects is the wisest course, and especially when his optimism overwhelms the evidence. On Wednesday, the U.S. president gave a speech in Japan praising democracy. As a statement of the benefits democracy delivers, it was hard to beat. But in adding that China was already on the irreversible road to democracy, the president underestimated the Chinese Communist Party's pleasure in power and its determination to hold on to it."
Liu Kin-ming, in The Standard, Hong Kong: "Two lessons. ... First, China may have to pay a price for oppressing Hong Kong. Second, Hong Kong can no longer stay out of rows between China and the United States like it did when it was a British colony. While being obedient to Beijing may be a political necessity, Hong Kong risks becoming simply another mainland city in American eyes. How do we strike a balance?"
Frank Ching, in the New Straits Times, Malaysia: "The president will seek to reduce China's trade surplus - estimated at $200 billion this year - through increased imports from the United States. He will also call for action on intellectual property rights, increased market opening and currency reform. China and the United States recently signed an agreement under which Beijing will limit its textile exports for the next three years. In addition, Bush will push for greater religious freedom. The president is also likely to want to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue, Iran, terrorism and energy. What the visiting president may be too diplomatic to bring up, however, is an even more pressing issue: The need for China to demonstrate that it will not be a bully when it becomes powerful, as it undoubtedly will."Wednesday, November 16, 2005
US IS INDEED A FASCIST STATE
"Detainees". Not combatants, or prisoners or criminals or terrorists, but detainees. Persons being detained, one would presume, against their will. What the FUCK.
U.S. Has Detained 83,000 in War on Terror
WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The United States has detained more than 83,000 foreigners in the four years of the war on terror, enough to nearly fill the NFL's largest stadium. The administration defends the practice of holding detainees in prisons from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay as a critical tool to stop the insurgency in
Iraq, maintain stability in Afghanistan and get known and suspected terrorists off the streets.
Roughly 14,500 detainees remain in U.S. custody, primarily in Iraq.
The number has steadily grown since the first CIA paramilitary officers touched down in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, setting up more than 20 facilities including the "Salt Pit," an abandoned factory outside Kabul used for CIA detention and interrogation.
In Iraq, the number in military custody hit a peak on Nov. 1, according to military figures. Nearly 13,900 suspects were in U.S. custody there that day — partly because U.S. offensives in western Iraq put pressure on insurgents before the October constitutional referendum and December parliamentary elections.
The detentions and interrogations have brought complaints from Congress and human-rights groups about how the detainees — often Arab and male — are treated.
International law and treaty obligations forbid torture and inhumane treatment. Classified memos have given the government ways to extract intelligence from detainees "consistent with the law," administration officials often say.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., is leading a campaign to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. The administration says the legislation could tie the president's hands. Vice President Dick Cheney has pressed lawmakers to exempt the CIA.
"There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. And so you bet we will aggressively pursue them. But we will do so under the law," President Bush said last week.
Some 82,400 people have been detained by the military alone in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to figures from officials in Baghdad and Washington. Many are freed shortly after initial questioning.
To put that in context, the capacity of the Washington Redskins' FedEx Field, the NFL's largest, is 91,704. The second largest, Giants Stadium, holds 80,242.
An additional 700 detainees were sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Just under 500 remain there now.
In Iraq, the Defense Department says 5,569 detainees have been held for more than six months, and 3,801 have been held more than a year. Some 229 have been locked up for more than two years.
Many have been questioned by military officials trained at the main U.S. interrogation school, Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Pentagon officials say those mistreated are relatively few when the sheer numbers are considered.
Yet human rights groups say they don't know the extent of the abuse. "And there is no way anyone could, even if the military was twice as conscientious. It is unknowable, unless you assume that every act of abuse is immediately reported up the chain of command," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch.
As of March, 108 detainees were known to have died in U.S. military and CIA custody, including 22 who died when insurgents attacked Abu Ghraib and others who died of natural causes. At least 26 deaths have been investigated as criminal homicides.
Last week, Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said that more than 400 criminal investigations have been conducted and 95 military personnel have been charged with misconduct. Seventy-five have been convicted.
Through the CIA, a much smaller prison population is maintained secretly by the agency and friendly governments. A network of known or suspected facilities — some of which have been closed — have been located in places including Thailand, Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
The governments of Thailand and a number of Eastern Europe countries have denied the CIA operated prisons within their borders. The agency consistently declines to comment.
About 100 to 150 people are believed to have been grabbed by CIA officers and sent to their home countries or to other nations where they were wanted for prosecution, a procedure called "rendition." Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are known to cooperate.
The practice has taken on a negative connotation, but that wasn't always the case. In a December 2002 speech touching on intelligence successes, former CIA Director George Tenet said the agency and
FBI had "rendered 70 terrorists to justice."
While officials won't confirm the number, another two to three dozen "high-value" detainees are also believed to be in CIA custody. Among them, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
As House Intelligence chairman in 2004, CIA Director Porter Goss took a strong stand on some of the gray areas of detention practices. In an AP interview, he said, "Gee, you're breaking my heart" in response to complaints that Arab men found it abusive to have women guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Before Goss took over the agency, its inspector general completed a report on the treatment of detainees, following investigations into at least four prisoner deaths that may have involved CIA personnel. To date, one agency contractor has been charged.
The inspector general's report discussed tactics used by CIA personnel — called "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques." Former intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the practices are classified, say some interrogation techniques are well-known: exposing prisoners to cold, depriving them of sleep or forcing them to stand in stressful positions.
Perhaps the most publicly controversial technique is waterboarding, when a detainee is strapped to a board and has water run over him to simulate drowning.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
LYING LIARS AND THE LIES THEY TELL TO COVER UP THEIR LIES
GEORGE BUSH IS A LYING LIAR.
Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials
New York Times - To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists.
Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.
It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.
•
Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.
Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.
It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.
The administration had little company in saying that Iraq was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999 to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time by analysts with real expertise.
The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.
Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence. That is true only in the very narrow way the Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure: as direct pressure from senior officials to change intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to be redone until it got those answers.
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was "significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration's "hammering" on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency.
Mr. Bush and other administration officials say they faithfully reported what they had read. But Vice President Dick Cheney presented the Prague meeting as a fact when even the most supportive analysts considered it highly dubious. The administration has still not acknowledged that tales of Iraq coaching Al Qaeda on chemical warfare were considered false, even at the time they were circulated.
Mr. Cheney was not alone. Remember Condoleezza Rice's infamous "mushroom cloud" comment? And Secretary of State Colin Powell in January 2003, when the rich and powerful met in Davos, Switzerland, and he said, "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?" Mr. Powell ought to have known the report on "special equipment"' - the aluminum tubes - was false. And the uranium story was four years old.
•
The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why.
Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.Wednesday, November 16, 2005
GLOBAL WARMING IS AN URBAN MYTH
Deadly Effects of Future U.S. Heat Waves Predicted
Yahoo/LiveScience.com - In 2003, a summer heat wave killed between 22,000 and 35,000 people in five European countries. Temperatures soared to 104 degrees Fahrenheit in Paris, and London recorded its first triple-digit Fahrenheit temperature in history.
If a similar heat wave struck the United States, the results would be disastrous, a new study suggests.
Researchers looked at what would happen if a comparable extreme-heat event settled on five major U.S. cities, learning that not only would the country experience massive blackouts, but thousands of people could die. In New York alone, the number of deaths would increase to nearly 3,000 in a single summer.
"That would literally double the number of excess deaths over the next hottest summer in the last 40 years in New York," said study leader Laurence Kalkstein, senior research fellow at the University of Delaware's Center for Climatic Research.
Already deadly
History shows that heat waves are deadlier than hurricanes or tornadoes. And studies have indicated that extreme weather events will become more common with global warming.
The warming is underway. With temperatures up to 30 percent higher than the seasonal average over the past few decades in most of Europe, the summer of 2003 was one of the hottest in centuries. Scientists expect 2005 to set a modern record for the warmest average global temperature. Leading computer models show continued warming for at least several decades, even if greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, with only wild schemes proposed to put the brakes on.
Urban areas are particularly vulnerable, because dark asphalt and rooftops absorb more solar radiation than natural landscapes, raising nighttime temperatures by as much as five degrees, according to
NASA studies.
In order to see the effects of extreme heat events on the United States, the researchers developed models to simulate scenarios analogous to that of Europe's for heat-sensitive urban areas.
"We tried to take the Paris heat wave in 2003 and transpose it onto the climate of five different cities," Kalkstein said. The cities: Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.
The results were not cool.
In the nation's capital, there were 11 days with temperatures at or above 105 degrees in the virtual scenario. St. Louis reached an all-time maximum of 116. New York and Philadelphia each broke all-time highs for four days. In Detroit the mercury set all-time records twice.
The total simulated excess deaths were more than five times the historical summer average, with New York and St. Louis showing the highest numbers. This the researchers attribute to size and city structures.
"New York is much bigger and clearly will have more deaths than cities like Washington and Detroit," Kalkstein said. "The second thing is that [a place such as] New York is a very sensitive city with a lot of high-rises and buildings that are sensitive to extreme heat."
Plan for it
Better planning and simple innovations in architecture could effectively reduce mortality rates should things heat up.
There are many things that can be done immediately, Kalkstein told LiveScience.
Cities could provide air-conditioned shelters and cut down on the use of black asphalt in favor of lighter-colored materials. More heat-absorbing trees and gardens could dot urban areas. Cities could work to provide better public transportation, decrease traffic congestion and minimize commutes. Property owners could be encouraged to paint roofs white and build roof gardens.
The study is part of a recently released report titled Climate Change Futures, a project of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.Tuesday, November 15, 2005
POWERS THAT BE TO JOHN Q. PUBLIC: YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN, BROTHER
A 'fiscal hurricane' on the horizon
By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
The comptroller general of the United States is explaining over eggs how the nation's finances are going to hell.
"We face a demographic tsunami" that "will never recede," David Walker tells a group of reporters. He runs through a long list of fiscal challenges, led by the imminent retirement of the baby boomers, whose promised Medicare and Social Security benefits will swamp the federal budget in coming decades.
The breakfast conversation remains somber for most of an hour. Then one reporter smiles and asks, "Aren't you depressed in the morning?"
Sadly, it's no laughing matter. To hear Walker, the nation's top auditor, tell it, the United States can be likened to Rome before the fall of the empire. Its financial condition is "worse than advertised," he says. It has a "broken business model." It faces deficits in its budget, its balance of payments, its savings - and its leadership.
Walker's not the only one saying it. As Congress and the White House struggle to trim up to $50 billion from the federal budget over five years - just 3% of the $1.6 trillion in deficits projected for that period - budget experts say the nation soon could face its worst fiscal crisis since at least 1983, when Social Security bordered on bankruptcy.
Without major spending cuts, tax increases or both, the national debt will grow more than $3 trillion through 2010, to $11.2 trillion - nearly $38,000 for every man, woman and child. The interest alone would cost $561 billion in 2010, the same as the Pentagon.
From the political left and right, budget watchdogs are warning of fiscal trouble:
• Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, dispassionately arms 535 members of Congress with his agency's stark projections. Barring action, he admits to being "terrified" about the budget deficit in coming decades. That's when an aging population, health care inflation and advanced medical technology will create a perfect storm of spiraling costs.
• Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, sees a future of unfunded promises, trade imbalances, too few workers and too many retirees. She envisions a stock market dive, lost assets and a lower standard of living.
• Kent Conrad, a Democratic senator from North Dakota, points to the nation's $7.9 trillion debt, rising by about $600 billion a year. That, he notes, is before the baby boom retires. "We're not preparing for what we all know is to come," he says. "We're all sleepwalking through this period."
• Stuart Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation projects a period from now until 2050 in which tax revenue stays stable as a share of the economy but Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending soars. To avoid big tax increases, he says the government has to "renegotiate" the social contracts it made with its citizens.
• Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill of the centrist Brookings Institution put their pessimism into a book titled Restoring Fiscal Sanity. Rivlin, who became the first director of the Congressional Budget Office in 1974, says it will take an "economic scare" such as the 1987 stock market crash to spur action. Sawhill likens the growing gulf between what the government spends and takes in to a "Category 6 fiscal hurricane."
'The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour'
They are the preachers of doom and gloom. Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, they are trying to be heard above the ka-ching of the cash register as it tallies the cost of government benefits and tax cuts, Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. To raise their profile in recent months, several have traveled together to places such as Richmond, Va., and Minneapolis for what they call a "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour."
Leon Panetta, former White House budget director and chief of staff to President Clinton, calls them "disciples of balanced budgets. ... And at some point, they'll be proven right."
The White House and Congress are trying to address the nation's short-term budget deficits, but their response pales against the size of the long-term problem. President Bush proposed nearly $90 billion in savings over five years in his 2006 budget. He also tried to trim future Social Security benefits for wealthier recipients. The Senate this month approved $35 billion in savings over five years. House Republicans tried to save more than $50 billion last week, but objections from moderates stalled action. Either way, the savings could be wiped out by $70 billion in proposed tax cuts.
The budget-cutting effort is being led by conservatives, who recoiled when Congress quickly voted to spend $62 billion after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. "Katrina served as a wake-up call," Walker says.
In prior years, facing a less imminent demographic explosion, Congress cut in politically agonizing increments of $500 billion over five years. Bush's father gave up his "no new taxes" campaign pledge in 1990. After
Ross Perot focused attention on the deficit in his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton and the Democratic-run Congress raised taxes even more in 1993. Clinton and the Republican-run Congress forced two government shutdowns before agreeing on a deficit-reduction package in 1997.
In each case, cutting the deficit backfired at the polls. The elder Bush lost re-election, the Democrats lost Congress, and Republicans' obstinacy helped Clinton win a second term. "The choices you have to make are almost exactly the opposite of what wins political elections," Panetta says.
The problem is also easy for Congress to postpone because the day of reckoning is years away. This year's deficit was $319 billion, down $94 billion from the year before. That's 2.6% of the nation's economy, an amount easily borrowed from foreign investors.
From 'Grenada' to 'Vietnam'
But there is every reason to act - and soon. Budget watchdogs cite these looming problems:
• Prescription-drug coverage under Medicare takes effect Jan. 1. Its projected cost, advertised at $400 billion over 10 years when it passed in 2003, has risen to at least $720 billion. "We couldn't afford" it, Walker says of the new law.
• The leading edge of the baby boom hits age 62 in 2008 and can take early retirement. The number of people covered by Social Security is expected to grow from 47 million today to 69 million in 2020. By 2030, the Congressional Budget Office projects, Social Security spending as a share of the U.S. economy will rise by 40%.
• The bulk of Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax-cut program is set to expire at the end of 2010. But Congress is moving to make the reductions permanent. That would keep tax revenue at roughly 18% of the economy, where it's been for the past half-century - too low to support even current spending levels. "We can't afford to make all the tax cuts permanent," Walker says.
• Baby boomers begin to reach age 65 in 2011 and go on Medicare. Of all the nation's fiscal problems, this is by far the biggest. If it grows 1% faster than the economy - a conservative estimate - Medicare would cost $2.6 trillion in 2050, after adjusting for inflation. That's the size of the entire federal budget today.
"Social Security is Grenada," Holtz-Eakin says. "Medicare is Vietnam."
Inaction could have these consequences, experts say: Higher interest rates. Lower wages. Shrinking pensions. Slower economic growth. A lesser standard of living. Higher taxes in the future for today's younger generation. Less savings. More consumption. Plunging stock and bond prices. Recession.
Some veterans of the deficit-cutting wars are pessimistic about avoiding disaster. "In the end, CBO and others are no more than speed bumps on the highway of fiscal irresponsibility," says Robert Reischauer, former Congressional Budget Office director and now president of the non-partisan Urban Institute.
'Where's Ross Perot?'
The gloom-and-doom crowd hopes to avoid that fate. Increasingly in recent months, they are traveling the country, writing and speaking out about the need to cut spending, raise taxes - or both.
The most outspoken is Walker, an impeccably dressed CPA whose 15-year term as head of the
Government Accountability Office runs through 2013. He was a conservative Democrat, then a moderate Republican, and is now an independent. He's also a student of history, a Son of the American Revolution who lives on Virginia property once owned by George Washington.
Walker's agency churns out reports with titles such as "Human Capital: Selected Agencies Have Opportunities to Enhance Existing Succession Planning and Management Efforts." But he knows he must try to humanize the numbers, and his rhetoric on the nation's fiscal course has become more acerbic. "Anybody who says you're going to grow your way out of this problem," Walker says, "would probably not pass math."
Holtz-Eakin, a soft-spoken economist who said Monday he will leave CBO at the end of the year, takes a different approach. Less prone to giving speeches, he sees his role as a consultant and truth-sayer to Congress. "Numbers are the currency of the realm in Washington," he says, and most agree his agency has the best in town. But he concedes, "Sometimes it falls to the consultant to tell the client the bad news."
Holtz-Eakin's father was in steel, a cyclical business rocked by strikes and shutdowns. "I thought, 'This is nuts. No one should live like this,' " he says. That explains why he wants the government to prepare for new demands on its New Deal and Great Society benefit programs. "The baby boom has been getting older one year at a time with a striking regularity," he says.
MacGuineas is the outside agitator. An independent, she worked for Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record)'s presidential campaign in 2000. She respects politicians who deliver bad news, as presidential candidate Walter Mondale did in 1984 when he said tax increases were inevitable - and then was defeated in 49 states.
"I want to see a presidential election where the candidates are talking about what taxes they'll raise and what spending they'll cut," she says. "It's not always a winning campaign slogan."
Conrad ran for the Senate in 1986 promising to reduce the budget deficit or quit after six years. By 1992, the deficit had hit an all-time high, and he said he would not seek re-election. Only the death of North Dakota's other senator kept him in Congress.
The former state tax commissioner has been doing this longer than other congressional budget officials - and he has the most charts. He's so numbers-oriented that at baseball games, he can instantly compute a hitter's average after each at-bat. "Numbers speak to me in a way that they don't speak to others," he says. "I guess it's the way my brain is wired."
Sawhill and Butler, from opposite ends of the political spectrum, lead a group of about 15 budget experts at Washington think tanks who gather periodically to discuss their dour crusade. Aided by Walker and the non-partisan Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog group, they have taken their show on the road.
Butler, a native of Britain, witnessed there in the 1960s and '70s the effects of slow growth and high unemployment, driven partly by generous government benefits. "We have a responsibility" to start the debate, he says, "because we don't have to get re-elected." But Sawhill says it's "an indictment of our political leadership that it is being left to outside groups such as ours to put these issues on the agenda."
After three decades in the business, Rivlin is frustrated by lawmakers' inaction and blames balanced-budget advocates for not better articulating the problem. "There may be better ways to talk about it," she says. "I sometimes think, 'Where's Ross Perot when we need him?' "Tuesday, November 15, 2005
SGT. PEPPER WAS FRAGGED BY THE NOWHERE MAN
Man Who Killed Lennon Couldn't Have Stopped
NEW YORK, Associated Press - The man who murdered John Lennon 25 years ago says "nothing could have stopped" his twisted quest to track down and assassinate the ex-Beatle.
"I was under total compulsion," killer Mark David Chapman says in a segment to be aired Friday on "Dateline NBC."
"It was like a train, a runaway train, there was no stopping it."
Chapman fatally shot Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980, as the musician and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned home from a night in a Manhattan recording studio. Chapman's comments came from audiotapes made in 1991-92 and first used as part of a British documentary.
Chapman recalled waiting for Lennon that night, then reacting as he saw a limousine pull up outside the ex-Beatle's home.
"I heard a voice in my head saying, `Do it, do it,'" Chapman recounted. "And as he passed me I pulled out the gun, aimed at his back and pulled the trigger five times in succession."
Chapman recalled that his desire to kill Lennon began one day in his apartment in Hawaii, where he was sitting on the floor and looking at the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album. His animosity soon began to consume Chapman.
"There was a successful man who kind of had the world on a chain, so to speak, and there I was, not even a link of that chain, just a person who had no personality," Chapman said. "And something in me just broke."
Monday, November 14, 2005
YES, LET'S USE MORE TAX DOLLARS TO DEFEND DOWNTRODDEN RICH WHITE MEN
Bush's DoJ Fights Racism -- Against White Men
HuffingtonPost.com - In the good old days, the notion that white men were victims of racism was confined to the far shores of the racist right. When GOP politicians invoked this idea, they usually did so by calling for so-called "states' rights" -- a euphemism for beating back minority aspirations cloaked in seemingly libertarian terms. Rarely, if ever, has a White House overtly attempted to legitimize the idea of anti-white discrimination. Until now.
With Bush's approval ratings in the sewer, and a new poll by right-wing direct mail dean Richard Viguerie reflecting conservative discontent with Bush's supposedly "moderate" tilt (apparently Genghis Khan has become the new standard bearer of conservative ideology), the Bush Justice Department is suing Southern Illinois University for "engag[ing] in a pattern or practice of intentional discrimination against whites, non-preferred minorities and males." Yes, that is the actual language from its letter to SIU.
So what is the Bush DoJ's fuss all about? Well, to begin with, SIU is offering scholarships to minorities. It also is offering scholarship money for women. And finally, SIU has set a few thousand dollars aside for poor and "traditionally underrepresented students." Clearly, it's time for Whitey to kick the Mayflower into reverse. (Pam Spaulding at Pandagon has more.)
This transparently Rovian attempt to reinvigorate The Base's fervor for Bush comes on the heels of the Washington Post's report that, "Nearly 20 percent of the [Justice Department civil rights] division's lawyers left in fiscal 2005, in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did not share the administration's conservative views on civil rights laws." Ironically, the DoJ's racially-charged purge began in earnest only after the National Council of La Raza-backed Alberto Gonzales replaced John Ashcroft as Attorney General.
Gonzales's actions at the DoJ provide a perfect portrait of the Republican version of minority recruitment. Like Condi Rice, Claude Allen and lesser known but equally underqualified minority members of the Bush White House like Kay Coles James, Gonzales was guaranteed a high-level post on the condition that he work to reverse the policies that enabled his success and that of his peers. Meanwhile, the legacy programs that have ensured people like George W. Bush easy access to elite universities remain intact, thus preserving the future for victims of the new discrimination.Sunday, November 13, 2005
HAVING A GREAT IMMUNE SYSTEM COULD BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH
Bird flu causes immune "storm", study finds
WASHINGTON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Scientists in Hong Kong say they may have helped explain why the H5N1 bird flu virus kills so many healthy young adults -- it apparently causes a "storm" of immune system chemicals that overwhelms the patient.
They compared samples taken from patients infected with H5N1 to a sample from a patient with ordinary, seasonal H1N1 flu.
The H5N1 virus caused immune system chemicals known as cytokines to rush to infected lung tissue -- evidence of a so-called cytokine storm, an immune system overreaction that can be fatal.
The study, published in the online medical journal Respiratory Research, might suggest that if H5N1 does cause a pandemic, it could disproportionately affect the young and healthy as compared with seasonal flu, which kills many elderly people but few young adults.
It also raises questions about how effective drugs will be in controlling such a pandemic, experts said.
The H5N1 flu has swept through flocks of poultry but has so far infected only 124 people in four countries and killed 64 since it re-emerged in 2003.
"While human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 subtype influenza virus appears to be inefficient so far, the disease has exceptional severity in those affected with reported mortality rates ranging from 33 percent in Hong Kong in 1997 to 55 percent in Thailand and Vietnam in 2004," Michael Chan and Malik Peiris of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues wrote in their report.
"The reasons for this unusual severity of human disease have remained unclear."
They took samples of H5N1 from a patient who died of the infection in a 1997 outbreak, from two patients infected in Vietnam in 2004, and a sample of a Hong Kong patient with ordinary H1N1 flu.
They used the virus to infect lung tissue samples taken from other, non-flu patients.
CHEMICAL STORM
The H5N1 viruses brought in a storm of cytokines -- the immune system's signalling chemicals -- including IP-10, interferon beta, RANTES and interleukin-6.
And the later, Vietnamese strains caused a bigger cascade than the 1997 strain.
This could be because of continued mutations, the researchers said. "The H5N1 viruses have continued to reassort, acquiring different internal genes from other influenza viruses of avian origin," the researchers wrote.
The study, published on the Internet at http://respiratory-research.com/, explains the severe respiratory distress suffered by H5N1 patients, who often say they struggle to breathe.
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota who has been advising the U.S. government on the risks of a flu pandemic, said the study supports predictions that any possible H5N1 pandemic would be especially severe.
It means being young and healthy could actually work against people who become infected.
"Anyone could experience this very severe, life-threatening illness," Osterholm said in a telephone interview.
"This is looking more and more like an H1N1 1918."
The worst recorded influenza epidemic was in 1918, when an H1N1 strain swept the globe in a few months, killing anywhere between 20 million and 100 million people, depending on the estimate. In comparison, a pandemic in 1957 killed 2 million and one caused by an H3N2 virus in 1968 killed 1 million.
"In 1918, even among the very young and the very old, there was a ten-fold increase in deaths," Osterholm said. "There was a 1,000-fold increase in young adults."
This, in turn, could be bad news in trying to treat an pandemic, Osterholm said. Antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza can help if given within a day or so of infection.
"The idea that we may have 24 to 48 hours is based on the H3N2 model," Osterholm said. But if patients develop respiratory distress from a cytokine storm, even that may be too late, he said.