Booga booga. Big bad mostly mythical al-Qaeda will strike soon, probably in September. It all depends on how well the Dems do against Bush. ...

But maybe it won't be a terrorist attack. Maybe it will be Osama or a Osama double delivered on the eve of the election, just so the numbers line up right and the Neocon Master Plan can move forward.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The chairman of American International Group Inc., the world's largest insurer by market value, on Tuesday called lawyers opposed to tort reform "terrorists" and said class-action lawsuits are a "blight" on the United States.

AIG Chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg's remarks came a day after U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige sparked an uproar when he called the nation's largest teachers' union a "terrorist organization" during a meeting with U.S. governors. The White House said he later apologized.

In remarks to business executives in Boston, Greenberg likened the battle over reforming class-action litigation to the White House's "war on terror." AIG insures corporations against multibillion-dollar claims of damages in asbestos lawsuits, for example.

"It's almost like fighting the war on terrorists," Greenberg told Boston College's Chief Executives' Club. "I call the plaintiff's bar terrorists."

Roberts and his Republican colleagues decided to preclude the possibility that some recalcitrant senator might ask why INR was able to get it right on Iraq when everyone else was wrong.

This is actually pretty astonishing when you think about it. This is an annual briefing, presumably to provide background needed to guide this committee's work in the coming year. One would think then that the committee would want as thorough a briefing as possible, and that would require the inclusion of the INR. What Chairman Roberts has effectively done then is to place national security concerns second behind protecting the President's backside.

And this is the party that claims to be tough on defense? Tough on defending Bush's image perhaps, but the rest of us? We're only second.

Just one clip: "Reality has never been a constraint" to Neoconservatives. "A parasitic entity." "They are not the kind of people that America as a nation is proud of."

[NOTE: My link above is high bandwidth. If you are on dial-up, you might want this link instead.]

Few people realize that voting rights are left up to the states -- a legacy of the South's post-Civil War effort to prohibit newly freed slaves from voting.

California's voting laws, however, are relatively liberal compared to the 14 states that permanently bar ex-felons from voting and the 29 states that prevent criminals from voting while on probation. Only two states -- Maine and Vermont -- follow the European pattern of allowing all inmates and ex-convicts to vote.

You're probably thinking this has nothing to do with you. But you would be wrong. It could affect your troubled teenager. As New York defense attorney Andrew Shapiro has noted, "An 18-year-old first-time offender who trades a guilty plea for a nonprison sentence may unwittingly sacrifice forever his right to vote."

• "It's part of the punishment." ~ But isn't the threat of punishment supposed to be the deterrent? Has anyone ever not committed a crime because they feared losing their right to vote?

• "Well, murderers might vote to legalize murder!" ~ So what? How can anyone entertain the sillyness that murders will ever have enough votes to elect a pro-murder candidate?

The bottom line on felony disenfranchisement is that it is a tool being used by the Republican Party to lower opposition voting. Let's call a spade a spade.

[From Black Box Notes.]

Alan Greenspan's got a lot of nerve.

Instead of excoriating Bush for running up a $521 billion deficit, instead of demanding an end to the tax giveaways to the rich, which will bloat the deficit for years to come, Greenspan says slash Social Security and Medicare, and make the poor and the middle class suffer.

The class bias of the Fed chief could not be more clear.

As expected, Krugman is too cautious regarding protectionism here for my tastes, but he does make one quite essential point: Up to now, the public defenders of free trade have been making their defense strictly from the economics viewpoint, largely ignoring the political side. Krugman's point is that it is in the total interest of the free traders to fully address the political side, because if they don't, polititians will, and that will not be good for the free traders' cause.

Wise caution, but will they get it?

[The NY Times arcives ($) it's articles. A permanent link is here.]

Leave it to Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to stir the political pot. Theoretically above politics, Greenspan has more influence on the political class than almost any human being, presidents -- perhaps -- excepted. This week Greenspan did something no Democrat could do: He made Social Security an issue in the 2004 election.

Dionne well places the issues on this: If we are going to keep these outrageous tax cuts, Social Security as we know it is out the door. The problem is that this is not what Greenspan said. Greenspan acted as if the two were separate issues, and the Bush campaign will use its money to promote that quite rediculous spin.

Dionne sees this as a good wedge issue for the Democrats and it well should be. Are we willing to trade the retirements of the poor and middle class for the benefit of the rich? Classic class warfare.

And that's the problem. Today's Democratic Party hasn't figured out how to fight the class warfare fight yet. And if they fight it poorly here, we might as well just carve the tombstone for our social safety net.

The opponents of gay marriage are on the wrong side of history. The interests of civilization are not served by driving mature love underground. And the interests of the United States, which is supposed to be the quintessence of a free society, are not served by enshrining bigotry in law.

George Bush wants a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He wants to place a hard limit on the equal protection clause of our Constitution, the very clause he himself invoked in Bush v. Gore. George Bush doesn't get it.

But that thing about the Constitution granting rights? I heard that from a 10-year old. And that comparison to Rosa Parks? The little girl who said that was eight. People are getting it because it really is that simple. Simple enough for children to understand.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer doesn't get it either, but Richard Cohen does.

1. Bill Gates netted a cool $5.3 billion last year, mere peanuts next to Warren Buffett's $12.4 billion take home, but he's still several billion ahead of Warren as the world's richest person.

2. The sixth thru tenth richest people are all tied at $20 billion, but that's OK because it's all in the family: The Walton Family.

3. There are 587 billionaires around the world, 111 more than there was last year. Half of these new billionaires are simply returning to the billionaires list after previously falling off.

4. Three billionaires are currently in jail, two in Russia and one in Japan.

Why did George W. Bush insist -- with such fanatical certainty, despite the well-established, clearly-stated doubts of his own intelligence services -- that Saddam Hussein was hoarding a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction? Why the insistence on this pathological disassociation from reality, which led directly to the death of thousands of innocent people? Why did he tell such lies, such cynical lies, such horrible lies, lies dripping blood, lies breeding more lies like rats on a plague ship?

That's easy -- his family was making money from it.

• The history of Iraq is public knowledge. It is an artificial country created by the British back in the 20's. It has never held a single unifying identitiy since then. It has always held it's three major religions as above it's own nationalism. Anyone entering this country as we did was going to run into the exact unresolved issue that we have. That the Neocons could not see this (or simply did not wish to) places as suspect every thought they have and every word they say.

  These people are not sparsely educated. Indeed, most have benefited from their educations at the finest universities in the world. They have been priviledged over others to listen in their training to some of the finest minds in the world. I say this as an Ivy League graduate myself. These people were taught by the finest minds in the world.

  I mention my own education not as a boast. Even thirty years later, I consider it an honor to have even been allowed among these great minds. I mention it rather for contrast: How did these people who had that same honor bestowed upon them turn out so very different? After all, we listened back then to the same brilliant people. We just heard different words. How can that be?

  These people are ideologues. Given access to the education I recieved, they filtered all of it through their own preconceived notions of truth. The benefits of their access to these great thinkers was muted by their unwillingness to actually hear what they were saying.

  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

• The idea that democracy (at least in its American form) could ever take hold in Iraq was insanity from its start. Democracy requires an educated population, and as much as some Iraqis have been given quality educations, this is not the norm. Most education in Iraq is found though religious elders. That is not bad per se; some education is better than none. The problem is that this is just not condusive to democracy. What it is condusive of is theocracy, and this is what Iraq will become.

  It is all well and nice to wish this to not be the case, but the fact is that it is. A theocracy is what Iraq will become because it has no other option. When it does, our troops will die in droves.

  To date, it is the Sunnis who are fighting us. If the Shi'ites join as Sistani has said, we simply do not have the force levels necessary to prevent our own slaughter. We will be forced to either withdraw, or enter into what we faced in Vietnam: An endless war of occupation that we cannot win.

• Most of the Neocons began as war hawk Democrats. They moved to the Republican party because it was more conducive to their war hawking.

  We have an election coming up. We have a "gay" issue being forced upon us by a Bush team that cannot run upon their own dismal record. We have an economic situation that this administration wishes to ignore in its own denials. And we have Iraq.

  Go figure.

A controversial associate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has resigned from his seat on a key Pentagon advisory panel, ABCNEWS has learned.

Richard Perle, a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration's national security policies, informed Rumsfeld more than two weeks ago he was quitting the Defense Policy Board. He confirmed the decision in a letter to the defense chief last Wednesday.

"We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which I have strong views will be widely discussed and debated," Perle wrote. "I would not wish those views to be attributed to you or the President at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign."

Iraqi Shiite Leader Seyyid Ali Al-Sistani yesterday warned that he would call for an intifada (uprising) if American soldiers stayed in Iraq after the handover of power on June 30, 2004. He also insisted that there should be a significant role for the Shiite in the future administration of the country, as they make up the majority of the population.

Sistani spoke to the German magazine Der Spiegel and said: "The U.S. presence in Iraq should not be prolonged. The Iraqi public knows how to act. If the U.S. presence is drawn out longer than necessary, I will call for an intifada." The necessary posters reportedly have already been printed and are awaiting distribution to every corner of the country.

[Thanks to Norm Jenson at American Samizdat for the link.]

Viet Dinh has been called a "political pit bull" and "a foot soldier" for Attorney General John Ashcroft. But the 36-year-old author of the Patriot Act prefers to be called an "attendant of freedom."

In May 2001, the professor of law at Georgetown University was tapped by the Justice Department to work for two years as an assistant attorney general, working primarily on judicial nominations for the department. But three months later the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and Dinh was drafted to work on the USA Patriot Act, a bill that would give the government some of its most controversial surveillance powers. The bill, coupled with the government's subsequent treatment of immigrants and native-born citizens, prompted critics to charge the administration with overthrowing "800 years of democratic tradition."

• To the claim that 5,000 people have been detained using the Patriot Act with only five being actually charged under it and only one conviction, he responds that the number is probably closer to 500. Wonderful. Apparently it is OK to arrest 100 people for each person actually charged. Viet Dinh justifies all of the rest of these as anticipatory fishing expeditions.

• Group wants judge to order upgrades to e-vote machines

• PBS opens new site for Election 2004 coverage

• Public Relations Campaign Promotes Diebold Voting Machines

• Florida's election supervisors roll out voter education campaign, hoping to avoid 2000 repeat (Scroll down.)

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, stepping into the politically charged debate over Social Security, said Wednesday the country can't afford the benefits currently promised to the baby boom generation.

He urged Congress to trim those benefits to get control of soaring budget deficits, which he said threatened a "very debilitating" rise in interest rates in coming years. ...

The central bank chairman also repeated his view that Bush's tax cuts should be made permanent to bolster economic growth. He said the estimated $1 trillion cost should be paid for, preferably, with spending cuts so the deficit would not be worsened.

• Bush: Social Security Shouldn't Be Cut For Near Retirees
• Greenspan: Congress Shouldn't Allow Tax Cuts To Expire
• White House Coy Over Greenspan's Tax Cut Comments
• Greenspan Advises Cutting Spending to Shrink Budget Gap

Note: I have been unable to confirm this by any other source. Officially (via Defenselink), the June 30th date applies only to the return of Iraqi sovereignty, and that Iraqis favor a continued U.S. troop presense beyond that date.

A lot of all of this increase in visits has come from a few selected "big bear" bloggers who have featured some of my articles recently. A special thanks to them. It's hard to get noticed, and so they are my angels for this.

My crumbs? For those of you who visit regularly, take a few minutes to visit "my angels" if you don't do so already:

• David Neiwert at Orcinus ~ The "site of record" if the "violence against liberals" meme concerns you. Lots more also.

• Avedon Carol at The Sideshow ~ Good commentary and a great source of links to what is happening around blogdom.

• Bev Harris at Black Box Voting ~ The "mother site" for E-vote issues.

• South Knox Bubba ~ Linking today to my "What Our Supreme Hath Wrought" article and also commenting extensively on black box voting.

When Richard Perle and his neo-con henchman David Frum decided to write a book about "How to Win the War on Terror," they knew they been successful in persuading President Bush to go to war with Iraq. As their manuscript went to the publisher, it was clear the US-led coalition forces had won a quick and easy victory over Saddam Hussein. All that was left was some mopping up, installing their buddy Ahmad Chalabi as Saddam's successor, and then move on to the next war against the "axis of evil." But by the time the book arrived in the bookstores, it was even clearer that the war they and their Cabal had cooked up was a total mess, with no end in sight to either Iraq's miseries or to the costs to America in blood and treasure. Whoops!

Keep digging, Rick. I'll pick out the headstone.

• Journalists Views on Trade to Change? ~ This should make the debate on outsourcing a bit more interesting. It seems that Reuters news service has decided to outsource some of its routine business analysis to India.

  Imagine that. Now even reporters are being outsourced.

At a literary festival, where I had been describing the fear that lies at the heart of religious fundamentalism, a man in the audience told me that he found this quite incomprehensible. If you have true faith, he argued, you cannot suffer. I suggested that if he lived in a more troubled part of the world ..., he might find it more difficult to maintain his equanimity. But he seemed to regard religion as an anaesthetic that would even numb the pain of a concentration camp.

This is lazy, inadequate religion. ...

Paige later said he was sorry. Yes you are, Mr. Paige, but I wonder if you've heard of the words "election year" and "liability"?

The Office of Special Plans would take issue with those who say they were doing intelligence. They would say they were developing policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the invasion of Iraq.

But developing policy is not the same as developing propaganda and pushing a particular agenda. And actually, that?s more what they really did. They pushed an agenda on Iraq, and they developed pretty sophisticated propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress, and even internally to the Pentagon -- to try and make this case of immediacy. This case of severe threat to the United States. ...

Like most people, I've always thought there should be honesty in government. Working 20 years in the military, I'm sure I saw some things that were less than honest or accountable. But nothing to the degree that I saw when I joined Near East South Asia.

The problem, however, is that most state election officials are not demanding this extra security. Instead, many of these officials believe that the machines are secure because they've been "certified" by a private independent testing authority (ITA) that keeps both the tests and the results of the tests secret from the public.

Compounding this of course is the fact that most people selecting these systems operate in highly political environments; environments where it can be fatal to admit one's mistake. This results in a lot of the inertia we are seeing with these systems. Once the purchase is made, it must be defended regardless of any new evidence showing that the decision may have been less than perfect when made.

• So Ralph Nader is running. Good for him! Look, the Democrats really have no right to ask Nader not to. The party, drawn to the right by years of DLC dominance, was literally dead in the water. It was the Progressives (Nader-types) under Dean (and to a lesser extent, Kucinich) that put life back into it. And what did they get for it? They got a DNC that stood by silent when the media decided to go after Dean like a pack of wild dogs. Note that the DNC is now quite vocal as Kerry is being attacked. What's the difference?

  The difference is that to today's Democratic Party leadership, the Progressives are much like the Blacks, groups of voters the party wants but is willing to do little to get. Indeed, the operating prinicple in the party seems to be to expect these votes because "they have no place else to go." Well, sorry, but now they do.

  Some additional points:

  • As Nader pointed out, he was hardly the only third party candidate to run in 2000; he was simply the most successful. To ask him and not others to stay out of the race is to say that third party candidacies are acceptable only when they are marginal. This is avery dangerous way to think.

  • Special interests. All the main candidates are talking about them, hurling accusations back and forth. Nader didn't use that term. He used the term "corporations", and there's a big difference. Yes, corporations form SIGs, but so do environmentalist, gay rights advocates, pro-life proponents, and many more. All of these latter groups however are people coming together to influence legislation, and that's what people are supposed to do in a democracy. Corporate SIGs are different entirely. They are capital coming together to influence legislation, and we need to decide if this is how we want to run our country.

  Finally, VoteNader.org, and no, that's not an endorsement.

• The "Chickenhawk Defense!" I was wondering what Kerry was going to pull out against the "Hanoi Jane" charge, and this is fairly clever: He's simply pointing out that if the Republicans want to question his Vietnam record, they probably shouldn't be sending out chickenhawk front men to do it. The real question is whether the Republicans actually have any front men who are not chickenhawks to do this. I hardly expect John McCain to be volunteering for the job anytime soon.

  Of course, the RNC is already trying to dodge this bullet, claiming that we really shouldn't "revisit old wounds" from 30 years ago, a faint attempt to sideline both the chickenhawk tag and Bush's own service record. But the fact of the matter is that to many in the far right core of the Republican Party, Vietnam is still very much an issue. These are the people who, in spite of the revealed statements of every President invovled in that conflict, in spite of the more recent admissions of Robert MacNamara, and in spite of the personal testimonies of so many who fought in that conflict, still believe that the only reason we "lost" Vietnam was that we stopped "supporting our troops" there. It was these people after all who dusted off the old "Hanoi Jane" label, and it is these very same people to whom that label is as fresh today as it was when it was first minted.

  The RNC then, when it says we should not "revisit old wounds", is actually being quite disengenuous. The fact of the matter in fact is that many of their base are still living there.