Without Fanfare, Building of New Trade Center Starts
Published: November 4, 2005
When are they ever going to start building the new World Trade Center?
Yesterday.
Thirty-nine years after the first concrete was poured into the first trench for the first telephone vault for the first trade center, carpenters built a 168-foot-long wooden trough in a gentle S curve through the south tower footprint at ground zero. From this sinuous sprout, Santiago Calatrava's PATH terminal and transportation hub will emerge.
Carpenters prepared a wooden trough at the World Trade Center site Thursday.
Don't laugh; it's a milestone day, said Charles A. Gargano, vice chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site and is building the $2.21 billion terminal over the next four years.
Until now, milestones at ground zero have tended to be ceremonial.
There was not a hint of ceremony yesterday. Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were nowhere to be seen in the 70-foot-deep pit. The Freedom Tower cornerstone of July 4, 2004, sat hidden under a blue plywood box.
But anyone looking out from a PATH train screeching around the corner into the temporary World Trade Center station would have seen a crew from the Beaver Concrete Construction Company of Brooklyn.
They're finally doing something with this big hole, said Anthony Martelli, one of the workers, standing inside the newly completed trough. It's about time.
It was Mr. Martelli's first day back at ground zero since early 2002, after a six-month tour cleaning up debris and pulling out pieces of steel. Yesterday, he was building again - he and Paul Klein and Frank De Guida and Robert Manella and Tonino Sacino.
Starting at 7 a.m., they built a trough 18 inches high and 6 feet 3 inches wide out of thick wood planks. Cagelike frames of steel reinforcing bars, or rebar, will be set into the trough beginning today. Then concrete will be poured over the rebar.
That will form the footing of a seven-foot-high concrete retaining wall. The wall will hold about four feet of fill, on top of which ballast will be laid for a temporary PATH track, No. 6, alongside the future Platform D, the fourth and westernmost platform.
Currently, there are five tracks among three platforms, two of which occupy a corner of the south tower footprint, as they did in the original station. Platform D would take up more space in the south footprint and a tiny bit of the north footprint.
Once Platform D and Track No. 6 are usable, in early 2007, other tracks can be taken out of service temporarily to allow construction of the permanent terminal while commuters are traveling through the tubes to and from New Jersey.
The construction manager is a joint venture of Parsons Brinckerhoff, which counts the first New York City subway line among its earliest achievements, and the URS Corporation. A general contractor is to be chosen in the next few months.
Icanda was the contractor in 1966 when the first concrete was poured, at West and Cortlandt Streets. John M. Kyle, the chief engineer of the Port Authority, threw in a silver dollar, a 100-lire coin from Italy, a 5-franc coin from France and a British penny.
Asked about the absence of fanfare yesterday, Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman of the Port Authority, said: I think people have become so jaded by the inordinate amount of ceremonies that have occurred at that site - disproportionate to what's actually happened - that I didn't want to add to that. This is about actually building.
There is a potential snag, however. A lawsuit filed last month by the Coalition of 9/11 Families seeks to halt the project on the ground that it violates a federal law requiring that historic sites not be used for transportation projects unless there are no feasible or prudent alternatives.
Anthony Gardner, one of the plaintiffs, whose brother was killed on 9/11, said the authority had never justified the need for Platform D.
Our focus has always been to ensure the maximum preservation and access to the remains of the footprints for the American people and future visitors to the site, Mr. Gardner said yesterday.
The Port Authority and the Federal Transit Administration have yet to answer the complaint, he said. A spokesman for the authority said it would not discuss pending litigation.
But Steven Plate, deputy director of the priority capital programs department, did talk about the authority's sense of stewardship as he inspected the site, pointing out that the tower footprints had been covered by polyethylene liners and 12 inches of stone fill to protect them during construction. We're very committed, personally and professionally, to preserving the site, he said. Eighty-four of our own perished here.
I don't want to sound melodramatic, but there is no monopoly on caring for the site. This is the Port Authority's home.
Complete Discussion Below: marks the location of current message within thread
I did not say anything about the Republican organization being apolitical. I said the Palestinian organization you cite state on their website that they are APOLITICAL. Perhaps you should call them on it?
I did not say Obama was a Jew hater. Jesse Jackson said he was. I did not twist Barack Obama's arm and force him to go to a gathering for someone who hates Jews, be close personal friends with someone who hates Jews, and want to sit down and talk with no pre-requisites to a man who has called for the annhilation of Israel. He did that all on his own. Now common sense would tell you "if the winds turn ugly he would fall on the side of Muslims..." Look up THAT quote why don't you. Then it appears to me that his sympathies are NOT with Israel or the Jewish people.
As to what happened at the farewall dinner...I did read the transcript on the LA Times site. It does say that he praised and toasted the man. If that is all that is there, release the tape. Releasing the tape DOES NOT identify the source. That is an excuse. If it was the goods on McCain, every news outlet on the face of the planet would be hammering the LA Times for the tape. They sure didn't mind demanding that the source who outed Plame be revealed did they?
They only trot out "ethics" when it suits them to do so.
I don't think I am the only one in need of help intrepreting...got a mirror handy?
sorry came out off center. Fixed version.
I decided to post this at the top since things get lost in the shuffle so quickly here.
Right now there are single, low income mothers (and fathers I would assume) who by the time they get the earned income credit and claim head of household do not owe taxes and actually get back more than they paid in to begin with. So why haven't you been carrying on about that all along? (And when people without children are contributing to this with their tax money, why isn't that considered socialism?)
I don't get all the chaos over this issue. It is probably in a "community type center" in the
apartment building. In my town they are held in the fire station, schools, community centers, etc.
If all these taxes keep building up
only the rich are going to be able to pay them. The regular Joe won't be able to keep up. This is what p!sses me off and yet Obama said he was all about the middle class. He wasn't going to make the rich richer. He was going to help the middle class. Yeah yeah......liar liar pants on fire.
I am, however, for building that wall...
Along the Mason-Dixon Line!! I guess I would say more center because I have sort of walked (sm)
the line between democrat and republican all along, so that would be more along with my thinking. I guess as far as what I would want to lose to get more to the center, I would have to say that I would want partial-birth or late term abortions to be illegal unless it was a threat to the mother's life. I would want unwanted babies who are born alive to have human rights to receive appropriate medical care. The other issue I have with O is his associations, but of course that has nothing to do with whether he is farther right or left, so I guess abortion is my only right/left issue.
Elvis may have left the building.....
But it is real hard to forget the damage he and his administration did (which will be ongoing for a REALLY long time) and I will make it my goal to make sure NO ONE forgets. History tends to repeat itself and I intend to do my best to inform so we don't elect another one like him. I am hoping the investigations into the activities of his administration do find resolution so his name will evoke revulsion in all who hear it. Burn 'em at the stake!
BILOXI, Miss. — Joy Schovest swam for her life, fighting Hurricane Katrina's (search) storm surge and its angry winds, brushing aside debris and floating cars to reach higher ground.
Behind her, at least 30 of her neighbors in the Quiet Water Beach (search) apartments were dying, trapped in their crumbling two-story building as it was swept away with much of this Mississippi coast community Monday.
We grabbed a lady and pulled her out the window and then we swam with the current, said Schovest, 55, breaking into tears. It was terrifying. You should have seen the cars floating around us. We had to push them away when we were trying to swim.
The tragedy at the apartment building represented the biggest known cluster of deaths caused by Katrina. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (search) said the death toll in the county where Biloxi is located could be as high as 80.
The only remaining evidence of the Quiet Water Beach apartments was a concrete slab surrounded by a heap of red bricks that were once the building's walls. A crushed red toy wagon, jewelry, clothing and twisted boards were mixed in with the debris. The four-lane road that separated the building from the beachfront was buckled and covered with rubble.
This is all that's left of my house, said nearby resident Jack Crochet, 56, shaking his head and looking at the rubble. It's never going to be the same. It's over.
The storm also inflicted a punishing blow to Biloxi's waterfront casinos, down the beach from the apartment building. The Grand Casino gambling barge and a second casino broke away from their moorings, ending up in a ditch now filled with water and slot machines.
Basically, it's a total loss, and that's in excess of $100 million to replace what was lost here, Bernie Burkholder, president and chief executive of Treasure Bay Casino in Biloxi, said as he walked around the casino property.
People examined the slot machines to see if they still contained coins, and looting broke out in other areas of Biloxi.
People are just casually walking in and filling up garbage bags and walking off like they're Santa Claus, said Marty Desei, owner of a Super 8 motel in Biloxi. I haven't seen anything like this in my whole life.
The lucky ones in the Quiet Water Beach apartment building and other vulnerable areas of Biloxi described a scene of pandemonium as they fled the rising water. When asked why they ignored evacuation orders, some said they did not think the storm would be that bad; others would not give a reason.
Apartment tenant Landon Williams, a 19-year-old construction worker, said he and his grandmother and uncle ran from the crumbling building as the storm hit. As they later swam through the swirling water and debris, we watched the apartments disintegrate. You could hear the big pieces of wood cracking and breaking apart.
He said the winds flung two-by-fours and drywall.
I lost everything. We can't even find my car, he said. I'm looking through this wreckage to see if I can find anything that's mine. If not, I'm moving on. I think I'll move on to North Carolina and do some work over there. I can't take it here anymore — not after this.
Williams said six of his neighbors in the building who remained behind also survived. As the second story collapsed, they climbed onto the roof and part of it floated away and they floated to a house that made it, he said.
Paul Merritt, 30, surveyed the damage in Biloxi with his 18-year-old wife and their 3-month-old son, Brandon. He said the water rose to the second story of his townhouse, which is less than a block off the beach.
I've never seen destruction of this magnitude, Merritt said. You see this stuff on TV and you hope that it never happens to you. Everything's gone.
Ida Punzo rode out the storm with a friend and two neighbors in her 130-year-old home on the beachfront in Biloxi. The first two floors of the old house were almost completely gone, but she survived.
It was a miracle, Punzo said. This place is held together with God's spit. We're not supposed to be alive.
He has all the building blocks of socialism in place...
the government is owning more and more shares in banking, car manufacturing...and as far as controlling the media, the majority of them are in his hip pocket anyway. Mesmerized with tingling legs. He doesn't have to exert control over them. They are happy to oblige. The mainstream media was all OVER the Bush administration to disclose who visited the white house, and you don't hear a PEEP out of anyone but Fox News when Obama does the EXACT same thing. And so many people STILL can't see the emperor has no clothes...LOL. Just pitiful it is. Socialized health care is on the way, and after he kicks in the taxes that he will have to so that the government doesn't go bankrupt he will have us all by the short hairs. I bet he sits in the oval office and laughs his tailend off about how EASY it was to fool so many....and boy did he. Hook, line and sinker!
Media Research Center's Best Notable Quotables of 2008...
ALEXANDRIA, VA. --- The Media Research Center today announced its Best Notable Quotables of 2008: The 21st Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting, and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews “won” the dubious honor of Quote of the Year for gushing over a Barack Obama speech back in February: “I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often….And that is an objective assessment.”
Top runner-up for Quote of the Year went to Reuters for this ridiculous post-election headline: “Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race.”
MRC President Brent Bozell: “Year after year, the liberal media outdo themselves in providing conservatives the sheer joy of laughing at their own words. The year of the Obama Paparazzi was no different, as they salivated over their savior and did everything in their power to crush conservatives. And we wonder why Americans don’t trust the media.”
This year’s winners were selected by a panel of 44 judges, consisting of radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and media observers. Judges this year include columnist Cal Thomas, radio host Neal Boortz, economist Walter Williams, American SpectatorEditor R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., and former National Review publisher William A. Rusher. To read all the award-winning quotes, along with audio and video clips of the broadcast quotes, please visit www.MRC.org.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE MRC’s 2008 AWARDS:
The Obamagasm Award "Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope." — Time’s Nancy Gibbs in the November 17 cover story.
Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin "The fact of the matter is, the comparison between her [Sarah Palin] and Hillary Clinton is the comparison between an igloo and the Empire State Building!" — MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, October 14.
The Irrelevant Reverend Wright Award "To see his [Jeremiah Wright’s] career completely destroyed by three 20-second soundbites, all of the work he has done, his entire legacy gone down the drain, has been absolutely devastating to me — to him, sorry....We are still a racist country." — Washington Post writer Sally Quinn on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 30.
From Camelot to Obamalot Award "Today, the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny....Obama is now an adopted son of Camelot. His candidacy blessed not just by the Lion of the Senate, patriarch of the clan, but by JFK’s daughter." — David Wright on ABC’s Nightline January 28.
The Crush Rush Award for Loathing Limbaugh Author/humorist P.J. O’Rourke: "It’s the twilight of the radio loud-mouth, you know? I knew it from the moment the fat guy [Rush Limbaugh] refused to share his drugs...." Host Bill Maher: "You mean the OxyContin that he was on?...Why couldn’t he have croaked from it instead of Heath Ledger?" — HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, February 8.
Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis "Not doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals." — CNN founder Ted Turner on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 1.
Madness of King George Award "When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation; when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead; this advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the h@!! up! Good night and good luck." — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in a "Special Comment" on Countdown, May 14.
Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity "If you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you ‘Pope.’ It’s like, if you can’t pay your mortgage, you’re a deadbeat. But if you can’t pay a million mortgages, you’re Bear Stearns and we bail you out. And that is who the Catholic Church is: the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia." — Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time, April 11.
Admitting the Obvious Award “When NBC News first assigned me to the Barack Obama campaign, I must confess my knees quaked a bit....I wondered if I was up to the job. I wondered if I could do the campaign justice.” — NBC reporter Lee Cowan in an article for NBC’s “The Peacock” advertising supplement, March 23-29.
Other 2008 Award Categories:
• The "Pay Up You Patriots" Award • D%$N Those Conservatives Award • Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award for Soft & Cuddly Interviews • Media Hero Award • The Great Goracle Award • Good Morning Morons Award • The John Murtha Award for Painting America as Racist • MSNBC = Maudlin Sycophantic Nutty Blathering Chris Award
The bottom line is that the GOP estimates are way off, and they don't account for relief programs.
Fat lady starts her song!
You know it has to be pretty darned bad when virtually all you see on the left-wing blogs is searing criticism of Democratic congresscritters. And I have to say, I absolutely agree with them. I'm still partial to progressive values but let's face it, elected Democrats are worthless, and have been since 2000, if not long before.
I have to wonder if that's been part of the plan all along, and if there are not much larger forces than the RNC focused on literally destroying America, her political system, her people and her former glory. With Alito's confirmation it's a done deal. The right can yuk it up all it wants and assume a smugness off the scale - but they don't appear to be aware that it's their nation too that is being dismantled. What is their powerful, pushy, money-grubbing and quasi-criminal majority party without a strong minority to watchdog it?
There's only one answer, and it is bad news 99% of the American people.
So let the fat lady sing over America's flag-draped coffin. Enjoy the song, enjoy the carnage, pop the champagne corks - it's all one big party now.
Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that spewing fossil fuel carbon into the air is a sin and should be stopped. It pollutes the atmosphere, it heats the planet, creates acid rain, yada, yada, yada. And let's just suppose that some group of geniuses comes up with this idea:
We can let you increase your privilege to commit sin by buying somebody else's privilege if they aren't using all of their sin ration. Or if you are very virtuous, we can let you sell your allotment of sin to someone. Or maybe you can pay me some money to plant a tree for you, and that will 'offset' your sin, so now we're all even, sin-wise.
Holy cow! I think I've just described the Catholic 'selling of indulgences' that Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation over!
Add to that the fact that with cap and trade,
electric will cost more, so you'll be adding to your use if you have a hybrid that you have to plug in. Doesn't make much sense, does it?
Once this is voted on and if it passes....we will all pay. Gas prices will go up. Obama himself said utility prices would skyrocket....not including all the prices of goods and services will go up. Will that not be a tax to everyone....not just the rich. It will also hurt an already hurting economy.
Common sense....you cannot tax just the rich for all the spending our governemt has done, is doing currently, and wants to do in the future. There aren't enough rich people to fund all of that. He campaigned on people making less than 250K would see no raise in taxes and yet dropped that number to 235K. Yet no one seems to be holding him accountable for that either. It isn't fearmongering to look at all the money that our government has spent during Bush's administration and now Obama's. It isn't fearmongering that our deficit keeps going up and will go higher. That is fact......not fearmongering.
Cap and trade - in some of it's glory
Here's where you can find the first 900+ pages of the bill. I haven't yet found anywhere that has up the 300+ pages of addendums that were added, but I'm still looking. Please try to read some of it if you have the time - I'm about 200 pages in and there's nothing good as far as I can see yet.
Don't forget to email and/or call your senators about this one - it's not too late to stop this thing. Go to congress.org, put in your zip code and you'll get the names and email addresses of your senators and for most of them, you can email them directly from this site or there will be a link to thier personal website and you can email them from there. She is a nice eloquent lady....until she starts...
with the "rabid Republicans" type comments. Not necessary to take potshots to impart information. Fact is, I like GP. We are from the same part of the country and have a lot in common, believe it or not.
I'm looking for a site where the administrator is neutral and ethical and doesn't threaten people with their ISP numbers.
If there is one out there, I'd appreciate knowing about it.
As far as your posting here, that's your decision. I couldn't care less because I'm only staying on this board long enough to see if anyone else it appalling that an administrator would track ISP numbers of posters for telling the truth about their employer. Then I won't be coming back any more, to any of the boards here.
And thanks for finally being honest and saying it's your preference, instead of the disingenuous I'll leave. Are you happy now? type comments that I doubt anyone believed, anyway.
"Senator Obama: "I believe in the Free Market. I believe in Capitalism. I believe in Free Trade. I am not worried about us being able to compete anywhere on earth with American workers"-Obama." Too bad, at least Hillary does."
One of the many links to this quote: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/17/171927/342
And now we have a huge trade imbalance with china..
because China has bought up all of our securities in the form of loans. That's why kids toys are full of lead. If you're smart, you will check the labels on ALL products you buy. Did you know that in China they string their chicken coops over shrimp ponds? The chicken feed is supplemented with shavings, dust, particles from plastics and fiberglass plants (to save money) and the chicken droppings are what the shrimp feed on. Crest toothpaste is made in Mexico. Hepatitis A outbreaks came from Mexico. Dollar store brands? Check the labels on vitamins, aspirin, EVERYTHING (China - they put ANYTHING in their products). Even Birdseye frozen vegetables are grown and packaged in Mexico. The only store I have found that the labels inevitably say: Grown and manufactured in the USA is SAVE-A-LOT!!! What happened to the FDA? Remember when Bush said we couldn't buy our medications from Canada? Guess who is making most of our meds now................
So...how's "cap & trade" like the House just passed
Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.
If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses — because that goes straight to the bottom line — then I hope I can help the country in some way, Brown told the Rocky Mountain News for its Thursday editions.
Brown said officials need to take inventory of what's going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.
In the aftermath of the hurricane, critics complained about Brown's lack of formal emergency management experience and e-mails that later surfaced showed him as out of touch with the extent of the devastation.
The lawyer admits that while he was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency mistakes were made in the response to Katrina. He also said he had been planning to quit before the hurricane hit.
Hurricane Katrina showed how bad disasters can be, and there's an incredible need for individuals and businesses to understand how important preparedness is, he said.
Brown said companies already have expressed interested in his consulting business, Michael D. Brown LLC. He plans to run it from the Boulder area, where he lived before joining the Bush administration in 2001.
I'm doing a lot of good work with some great clients, Brown said. My wife, children and my grandchild still love me. My parents are still proud of me.
This whole Rove thing is not about outing anyone, it is about the uranium and Wilson finding no evidence that Saddam was trying to buy it. Great article. Link is below.
article Why Bush Can't Answer Cindy By Marjorie Cohn t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 18 August 2005
Cindy Sheehan is still waiting for Bush to answer her question: What noble cause did my son die for? Her protest started as a small gathering 13 days ago. It has mushroomed into a demonstration of hundreds in Crawford and tens of thousands more at 1,627 solidarity vigils throughout the country.
Why didn't Bush simply invite Cindy in for tea when she arrived in Crawford? In a brief, personal meeting with Cindy, Bush could have defused a situation that has become a profound embarrassment for him, and could derail his political agenda.
Bush didn't talk with Cindy because he can't answer her question. There is no answer to Cindy's question. There is no noble cause that Cindy's son died fighting for. And Bush knows it.
The goals of this war are not hard to find. They were laid out in Paul Wolfowitz's draft Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance in 1992, and again in the neoconservative manifesto - The Project for a New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses - in September 2000.
Long before 9/11, the neocons proclaimed that the United States should exercise its role as the world's only superpower by ensuring access to the massive Middle East petroleum reserves. To accomplish this goal, the US would need to invade Iraq and establish permanent military bases there.
If Bush were to give an honest answer to Cindy Sheehan's question, it would be that her son died to help his country spread US hegemony throughout the Middle East.
But that answer, while true, does not sound very noble. It would not satisfy Cindy Sheehan, nor would it satisfy the vast majority of the American people. So, for the past several years, Bush and his minions have concocted an ever-changing story line.
First, it was weapons-of-mass-destruction and the mushroom cloud. In spite of the weapons inspectors' admonitions that Iraq had no such weapons, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and Bolton lied about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Bush even included the smoking gun claim in his state of the union address: that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger. It was a lie, because people like Ambassador Joe Wilson, who traveled to Niger to investigate the allegation, had reported back to Cheney that it never happened.
The Security Council didn't think Iraq was a threat to international peace and security. In spite of Bush's badgering and threats, the Council held firm and refused to sanction a war on Iraq. The UN weapons inspectors asked for more time to conduct their inspections. But Bush was impatient.
He thumbed his nose at the United Nations and invaded anyway. After the "coalition forces" took over Iraq, they combed the country for the prohibited weapons. But they were nowhere to be found.
Faced with the need to explain to the American people why our sons and daughters were dying in Iraq, Bush changed the subject to saving the Iraqis from Saddam's torture chambers.
Then the grotesque photographs emerged from Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. They contained images of US military personnel torturing Iraqis. Bush stopped talking about Saddam's torture.
Most recently, Bush's excuse has been "bringing democracy to the Iraqi people." On June 28, 2004, he ceremoniously hailed the "transfer of sovereignty" back to the Iraqi people. (See Giving Iraqis What is Rightly Theirs). Yet 138,000 US troops remained in Iraq to protect US "interests."
And Iraq's economy is still controlled by laws put in place before the "transfer of sovereignty." The US maintains a stranglehold on foreign access to Iraqi oil, private ownership of Iraq's resources, and control over the reconstruction of this decimated country.
For months, Bush hyped the August 15, 2005 deadline for Iraqis to agree on a new constitution. But as the deadline came and went, the contradictions between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds over federalism came into sharp focus. The Bush administration admitted that "we will have some form of Islamic republic," according to Sunday's Washington Post.
So much for Bush's promise of a democratic Iraq.
The constitutional negotiations are far removed from the lives of most Iraqis. When journalist Robert Fisk asked an Iraqi friend about the constitution, he replied, "Sure, it's important. But my family lives in fear of kidnapping, I'm too afraid to tell my father I work for journalists, and we only have one hour in six of electricity and we can't even keep our food from going bad in the fridge. Federalism? You can't eat federalism and you can't use it to fuel your car and it doesn't make my fridge work."
Fisk reports that 1,100 civilian bodies were brought into the Baghdad morgue in July. The medical journal The Lancet concluded in October 2004 that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the first 18 months after Bush invaded Iraq.
Unfortunately, the picture in Iraq is not a pretty one.
Bush knows that if he talked to Cindy Sheehan, she would demand that he withdraw from Iraq now.
But Bush has no intention of ever pulling out of Iraq. The US is building the largest CIA station in the world in Baghdad. And Halliburton is busily constructing 14 permanent US military bases in Iraq.
George Bush knows that he cannot answer Cindy Sheehan's question. There is no noble cause for his war on Iraq.
Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.article
My mom, not Cindy Sheehan, is Bush’s biggest problem
Thursday, August 25, 2005
By John Yewell/City Editor
With Cindy Sheehan gone home to take care of her stroke-stricken mom, President Bush can enjoy the last week of his Texas vacation free of the distraction of her encampment outside his ranch. But a grieving liberal mom whose son died in Iraq demanding an audience may not be Bush’s biggest problem.
His biggest problem may be my mom.
My mother is a lifelong Republican. She got it from her father, a yellow-dog Republican if ever there was one. As unofficial GOP godfather of Fillmore, Calif., he collected absentee ballots every election for his large family and marked them himself. No sense in taking chances that someone might vote for a Democrat.
So when my mother called me the other day and told me she was considering registering as a Democrat, I was, well, stunned. Somewhere in a cemetery plot near Fillmore a body is spinning.
For the last year or more my mother has been gradually expressing ever greater exasperation with President Bush, the war, and the religious right. “Have you heard about this James Dobson guy?” she asked me on the phone, referring to the head of Focus on the Family. “If they overturn Roe vs. Wade, that’ll be it for me,” she said.
Then she mentioned Cindy Sheehan.
For all the efforts to discredit Ms. Sheehan, what she accomplished in drawing attention to the human cost of the war, if my mother’s opinion is any indication, crossed party lines. There’s a Mom Faction in American politics, and while it isn’t a monolithic Third Rail, it’s at least and second-and-a-half rail. When their children are dying on a battlefield of choice, you touch it at your peril.
My mother has her fingers on the pulse, and scalps, of many such women. She’s a hairdresser with a clientele that has been coming to her regularly for decades. Now grandmothers, these women were moms during Vietnam, in which over 50,000 American sons and daughters died. They worried then about their kids’ safety, now they’re worried about grandkids - theirs or someone else’s. Most are pretty mainstream, most Republican, and most, my mother tells me, pretty much fed up with George Bush.
There is other evidence of trouble on the Republican horizon. According to the latest compilation of state polls produced 10 days ago by surveyusa.com, of the 31 states Bush won in 2004, he now enjoys plurality job approval in only 10. This includes a 60 to 37 percent disapproval rate in the key state of Ohio, and a 53 to 44 disapproval rate in Florida.
A recent assessment from the influential and scrupulously nonpartisan Cook Political Report reads: “Opposition to and skepticism about the war in Iraq has reached its highest level, boosted by increased American casualties, a lack of political progress inside the country and growing signs of an imminent civil war. Given the centrality of the Iraq War to the Bush presidency and re-election, a cave-in of support for the president on the war would be devastating to his second-term credibility and influence.”
If Republicans are wondering where Cook is finding this “cave-in of support,” they could start looking in worse places than my mother’s one-chair salon, where Cindy Sheehan found sympathetic ears.
According to various reports, Bush and his team concluded that granting Sheehan an audience would only have encouraged other malcontents to demand similar attention from the president. Whatever the rationale, the decision alienated the clientele of Natalie’s Beauty Shoppe.
In the end my mother decided against changing her registration. Any criticism she might have of Bush, she decided, would be more credible if she stayed in the party, a sophisticated conclusion I admire and applaud.
Although Democrats can’t count on being the automatic beneficiaries of such dissatisfaction, Bush’s refusal to acknowledge fault, his “because I’m the Daddy and I say so” attitude, doesn’t work for a lot of women anymore. Women resent being patronized, and that’s how many view the president’s treatment of Cindy Sheehan.
The next election may be 14 months away, but when my mom and a lot of others like her walk into their voting booths, they may well be reflecting on their children and their choices, and which party is less likely to put either in harm’s way.
John Yewell is the city editor of the Hollister Free Lance. He can be reached at jyewell@freelancenews.com.
It's the name of an article. Hello??? nm thanks for the article!
Thank you for this article..its not too long for me to read, as others have suggested (the mentality of many in America and our downfall, if you ask me..dont want to spend the time to research, read, decide with their own mind..too much paper work to sift throught, oh please!)..as I care about what is going to happen to America and frankly the world..Bush has opened a Pandoras box and heaven help us all for the future..I dont get scared much about anything in life but what Bush has done sure concerns me to the max..Took an ant hill and created a mountain of monsters..
Here's another article Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches Does anyone remember that?
In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has inherent authority to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.
The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General.
It is important to understand, Gorelick continued, that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities.
Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.
Reporting the day after Gorelick's testimony, the Washington Post's headline — on page A-19 — read, Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches. The story began, The Clinton administration, in a little-noticed facet of the debate on intelligence reforms, is seeking congressional authorization for U.S. spies to continue conducting clandestine searches at foreign embassies in Washington and other cities without a federal court order. The administration's quiet lobbying effort is aimed at modifying draft legislation that would require U.S. counterintelligence officials to get a court order before secretly snooping inside the homes or workplaces of suspected foreign agents or foreign powers.
In her testimony, Gorelick made clear that the president believed he had the power to order warrantless searches for the purpose of gathering intelligence, even if there was no reason to believe that the search might uncover evidence of a crime. Intelligence is often long range, its exact targets are more difficult to identify, and its focus is less precise, Gorelick said. Information gathering for policy making and prevention, rather than prosecution, are its primary focus.
The debate over warrantless searches came up after the case of CIA spy Aldrich Ames. Authorities had searched Ames's house without a warrant, and the Justice Department feared that Ames's lawyers would challenge the search in court. Meanwhile, Congress began discussing a measure under which the authorization for break-ins would be handled like the authorization for wiretaps, that is, by the FISA court. In her testimony, Gorelick signaled that the administration would go along a congressional decision to place such searches under the court — if, as she testified, it does not restrict the president's ability to collect foreign intelligence necessary for the national security. In the end, Congress placed the searches under the FISA court, but the Clinton administration did not back down from its contention that the president had the authority to act when necessary.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — A former deputy director of the White House office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is charging that many members of the Bush administration privately dismiss its conservative Christian allies as “boorish” and “nuts.”
The former deputy director, David Kuo, an evangelical Christian conservative, makes the accusations in a newly published memoir, “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction” (Free Press), about his frustration with what he described as the meager support and political exploitation of the program.
“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’ ” Mr. Kuo writes.
In an interview, Mr. Kuo’s former boss, James Towey, now president of St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., said he had never encountered such cynicism or condescension in the White House, and he disputed many of the assertions in Mr. Kuo’s account.
Still, Mr. Kuo’s statements, first reported Wednesday evening on the cable channel MSNBC, come at an awkward time for Republicans in the midst of a midterm election campaign in which polls show little enthusiasm among the party’s conservative Christian base.
While many conservative Christians considered President Bush “a brother in Christ,” Mr. Kuo writes, “for most of the rest of the White House staff, evangelical leaders were people to be tolerated, not people who were truly welcomed.”
The political affairs office headed by Karl Rove was especially “eye-rolling,” Mr. Kuo’s book says. It says staff members in that office “knew ‘the nuts’ were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness.”
Without naming names, the book says staff members complained that politically involved Christians were “annoying,” “tiresome” or “boorish.”
Eryn Witcher, a spokeswoman for the White House, said that the administration would not comment without reading the book but that the faith-based program was “near and dear to the president’s heart.”
marks the location of current message within thread
