Mr. David Corn,

Of course they will protect their own at our expense.

That goes without saying.

Thanks for another good post~!

Kirk

It will be interesting how this all plays out next year on the local level. Will congressperson's be made to account for the squelching of inquiries made to keep our government accountable? Probably not. My vote will at least.

Will the President take questions from reporters tonight? I doubt it, but if so why doesn't a reporter ask why a war time president is so lax on security (esp Karl Rove's use of his clearance).

It is critical for people to contact their representatives on this issue. I sure hope MOVE ON and others attempt to mobilize voters in mass on this issue of releasing the documents on pre-war intelligence having to do with the communications between British officials and the White HOuse. Whether an individual was "for, against or on the fence" about the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. It is completely unreasonable and "criminal" to withhold information that the american people and the world deserve to have get to the bottom of the manipulation of pre-war intelligence. FOLKS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY CONTACT THEIR REPRESENTATIVES........

It is critical for people to contact their representatives on this issue. I sure hope MOVE ON and others attempt to mobilize voters in mass on this issue of releasing the documents on pre-war intelligence having to do with the communications between British officials and the White HOuse. Whether an individual was "for, against or on the fence" about the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. It is completely unreasonable and "criminal" to withhold information that the american people and the world deserve to have get to the bottom of the manipulation of pre-war intelligence. FOLKS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY CONTACT THEIR REPRESENTATIVES........

David,

Thank you for bringing your attention back to the Plame/Rove leak.

Unfortunately, rover's crime(s) now has the appearance of a minor misdemeanor in comparison the horrific negligence and omissions in the face of the Katrina tragedy.

Keep the your postings coming. Scruntinize everything. Hold their cloven hooves to the fire.

Salute,
th

I just got this email and am posting it. It may be old news in your state but I haven't heard about it before. Jury Scam.

Jury Duty Scam Leads to Identity Theft
Here's a new twist scammers are using to commit identity theft: the jury duty scam. Here's how it works:

The scammer calls claiming to work for the local court and claims you've failed to report for jury duty. He tells you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest.
The victim will often rightly claim they never received the jury duty notification. The scammer then asks the victim for confidential information
for "verification" purposes.
Specifically, the scammer asks for the victim's Social Security number, birth date, and sometimes even for credit card numbers and other private information -- exactly what the scammer needs to commit identity theft.
So far, this jury duty scam has been reported in Michigan, Ohio, Texas,Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington state.
It's easy to see why this works. The victim is clearly caught off guard, and is understandably upset at the prospect of a warrant being issued for his or her arrest. So, the victim is much less likely to be vigilant about protecting their confidential information.
In reality, court workers will never call you to ask for social security numbers and other private information. In fact, most courts follow up via snail mail and rarely, if ever, call prospective jurors.
Action:Never give out your Social Security number, credit card numbers or other personal confidential information when you receive a telephone call.
This jury duty scam is the latest in a series of identity theft scams where scammers use the phone to try to get people to reveal their Social Security number, credit card numbers or other personal confidential information.
It doesn't matter *why* they are calling -- all the reasons are just different variants of the same scam.
Protecting yourselfFwd Jury Duty Scam.ems is simple: Never give this info out when you receive a phone call.

--------------------
This is sort of a no duh posting but pass it on to those who might be vulnerable to the scam.

The White House has taken heat since the disclosure this year of the "Downing Street memos," British documents that suggest the Bush administration had made up its mind by 2002 to invade Iraq.

^^^^^^^^^^6

what heat have they taken? the DSM was buried by the whore mcmedia almost immediately, and most of john Q. puplic remains unaware of them to this day. ha. I'm sure it's real hot in the white house with all the heat they are taking.

The words "I love my country, but hate my government" have never been more true. These scumbags need to be herded up like cattle and shipped off to Pluto.

On to 9/24!

Look What's Happenin' Out in the Streets!

Gotta Revolution!

I am fixated on calling cheney, bush, and that entire cabal as murderers. It seems like more and more evidence surfaces to reach the conclusion that they are murderers.

Talk about identity theft...not to belittle your post and the warning, Jeanne, because it's right and necessary to get that word out, but identity theft didn't start to happen until the Reagan revolution (so called) and the repubs started the trend of stealing the people's wealth. The prez and the vprez are doing it to the point of even stealing our reputation around the world.

An article in The Nation about how Greenspan's manipulations facilitated the constant shift of wealth from the many to the few is eye-opening.

Theft of ID, theft of wealth, theft theft theft.

The thing I find most disturbing abiut Cheney calling for special treatment for the pipeline is this:

Until now it has been reported that no one in the bushcamp was aware that anything significant had happened, this is a first response of the administration when faced with this catastrophe.

This shows that they did know and it also shows where their priorities lie. It also proves the chain of command. If Cheney has a fatal heart attack, the presidency passes to Bush.

There are some things that most US citizens don't know about their oil and gas products. Among these are the thousands of miles of large pipelines that move oil, gasoline, natural gas, and propane, throughout the country. We were somewhat aware of the Alaskan pipeline, the images and the general nature of its building and use, but most are ignorant about what transits beneath their towns, pastures, cities, and waterways. The Colonial pipeline is one of the most important providers of oil and gasoline to the distribution points and further refining plants in the Northeast corridor. From my environmental work in Alaska i learned that oil and gasoline are sent through the pipes with RFID chips, moving along past sensors that provide data on pressure, flow, and volume. If any changes occur alarms go off all over the system (ostensibly to warn about leaks and spills); in this case i am sure the alarms went off all along the route(more than a thousand miles). Since the largest corporations in the world feed off that pipeline, it should never come as a surprise to any of us that the White House staff would be notified immediately to take action. Given that Cheney has been the go to guy for Energy since day one, i am sure he has more than one staffer who came to his post via ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco et al. IT wouldn't take much more than a simple phone call to let them know the extent of the problem and how to fix it.

geof01 - good points. They can't say they didn't know how bad it was when Cheney was on the horn on Aug 30!

spyder - more good points

It just goes to show that Cheney & Co are not only controlling this country but they also don't GIVE A DAMN about anything other than lining their own pockets. While the majority of the folks posting to this site have known this all along, my only hope is that this will help educate the rest of the country.

It's time to write you House Members of your district. Do not assume others will request. Demand for support for the investigation. If they do not vote for an Investigation.
Write to your local papers, and keep the story going in the editorals. People need to know the truth and there is so many unanswered questions.

Rhetorical question. The Republicans got in line as they always do, and vote in unison like the lemmings they are.

This is not new, and will continue so long as they are beholden to the WH for support in their next campaigns. So, what else is new...other than the NEW REPUBLICAN HERD - well described:

HERE

More importantly, what were the consequences of the delay in restoring power? Were lives lost? If so this may be another case of their criminal negligence.

Well, this is a no-brainer.

Given a choice between losing the profits from inanimate oil not passing through a pipeline because a major hurricane knocked out electricity...or possibly losing some human lives at several Mississippi hospitals because a major hurricane knocked out electricity...well, what's a Vice President with major ties to oil (and no relatives in either of the two hospitals) supposed to do?

Of course, just what the cold-hearted SOB Cheney did...divert utility work crews from the fractured hospital power lines to repair the "life-threatening" power lines that feed electricity to the oil pipeline.

Apparently, from reports, the hospitals and their patients "only" went another 8 to 10 hours without juice running their life-saving equipment, while the oil pipeline was up and running 8 to 10 hours earlier.

Oh, I get it, it's all about oil profits to Dick Cheney...not the saving of human lives.

Oh, he and some other partisan hacks at the Department of Homeland Screwed-up-ness must have been the one's who kept interfering with the FEMA disaster coordinators on the ground in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama...those FEMA professionals assigned to those states before Katrina hit based on White House executive orders.

Oh, this is why the White House and congressional Republicans are desperate that no valid, trustworthy investigation is ever conducted into White House culpability for the disaster after the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Cheney, Bush, the White House, DHS, and congressional Republicans essentially put oil and profits before the saving of human lives, put partisan politics and greed before the saving of human lives.

And I'm not even going to go into Halliburton and it's nefarious ties to Dick Cheney. But I figure that Dickie will be 20 to 50 million dollars richer by the time he leaves the White House, especially with all the Halliburton stock he still owns that is in a "blind" (HaHa) trust.

If the policies of Bush, Cheney and the congressional Republicans weren't getting people killed, it would be great material for a comedy sketch. Unfortunately, what they have done would only be suitable in a Greek tragedy.

Well, this is a no-brainer.

Given a choice between losing the profits from inanimate oil not passing through a pipeline because a major hurricane knocked out electricity...or possibly losing some human lives at several Mississippi hospitals because a major hurricane knocked out electricity...well, what's a Vice President with major ties to oil (and no relatives in either of the two hospitals) supposed to do?

Of course, just what the cold-hearted SOB Cheney did...divert utility work crews from the fractured hospital power lines to repair the "life-threatening" power lines that feed electricity to the oil pipeline.

Apparently, from reports, the hospitals and their patients "only" went another 8 to 10 hours without juice running their life-saving equipment, while the oil pipeline was up and running 8 to 10 hours earlier.

Oh, I get it, it's all about oil profits to Dick Cheney...not the saving of human lives.

Oh, he and some other partisan hacks at the Department of Homeland Screwed-up-ness must have been the one's who kept interfering with the FEMA disaster coordinators on the ground in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama...those FEMA professionals assigned to those states before Katrina hit based on White House executive orders.

Oh, this is why the White House and congressional Republicans are desperate that no valid, trustworthy investigation is ever conducted into White House culpability for the disaster after the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Cheney, Bush, the White House, DHS, and congressional Republicans essentially put oil and profits before the saving of human lives, put partisan politics and greed before the saving of human lives.

And I'm not even going to go into Halliburton and it's nefarious ties to Dick Cheney. But I figure that Dickie will be 20 to 50 million dollars richer by the time he leaves the White House, especially with all the Halliburton stock he still owns that is in a "blind" (HaHa) trust.

If the policies of Bush, Cheney and the congressional Republicans weren't getting people killed, it would be great material for a comedy sketch. Unfortunately, what they have done would only be suitable in a Greek tragedy.

Prior to our invasion and occupation of Iraq, Iraq was a secular nation.

Now is looks like the noble cause for which so many of our soldiers have sacrificed their lives for is to establish Iraq as a theocracy based on
Islamic fundamentalism.

Reading the Iraq constitution finds this direct quote: "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."

It seems to me that we should let the red-staters
know about this and then Bush's support by the
so-called Christian right will disentergrate.

Fargo Guard Unit is heading home early. The National Guard water purification unit headed home Thursday from Mississippi without getting a chance to help huricane victims as they expected. They
left Sept 5 and were stationed at Camp Shelby Training Center in Mississippi but never got a specific assignment. They expect to be back in
ND by Sunday.

It served the Persian Gulf War in 1990s and is set up to provide safe water to small communities and is capable of producing thousands of gallons of pure water in an hour.

For some reason, nothing was coordinated with hospitals or local, small cities. We have in the past been tied in with small cities water systems
to get them up and running.

Guard members worked in food shelters and helped
church groups with clean up debris while waiting
for assignments that never came.

Chief Warrent Officer Shane Arlien said it was a bit frustrating, not being used.
Bismarck Tribune.com Sept. 16th article.

Ebony
I wonder who has the water contract??

David:

When are you going to do a piece on the other laws that Karl Rove and others have broken in regards to Treason-Gate?

I specifically refer to Title 18, Section 793 and Title 18, Section 794:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00000793----000-.html

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00000794----000-.html

TARNISHING THE CONSERVATIVE BADGE

The reason Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House and the Supreme Court is because they have won the “language war.”

President Hoover called himself a “true liberal,” and President Eisenhower said that cutting federal spending on education would offend “every liberal — including me.”

“Liberal” has been made into a dirty word by Republican think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Republican linguist and pollster
Frank Luntz.

How did they do it? The first step was to make the sound of the word 'liberal' seem like something undesirable. Notice the tone of voice used by most so-called conservative politicians and so-called conservative radio and television talk show hosts when they say the word: liberal. They make the word liberal sound contemptible. They
always say it with a tone of voice of contempt, scorn and condensation.

They don't do this by accident. Most, if not all, probably have spend many hours in front of a microphone and video camera practicing and rehearsing their pronunciation of the word: liberal.

Obviously, Karl Rove, Frank Luntz and other special handlers from the Heritage Foundation have coached them very will.

And notice that when they use the word liberal it is often preceded with a negative word such as limousine, West Coast or Hollywood. Often
the word liberal is followed by the word: elite.

The fact is that the vast majority of limousine owners are Republicans. So are the vast majority of private country club members, the vast
majority of private yacht owners, the vast majority of private airplane owners, especially jet airplane owners are Republicans--not Democrats.

As well that they should be, if their prime goal in life is to advance their own economic self interest.

But the Republican Party would be a small minority party if they only attracted those who benefit from their policies. In order to become the
majority party they had to bamboozle, con and swindle "the mob" into voting them into power.

They did it by winning the "language war."

But the so-called conservatives live in glass houses. What they have done to the Liberals/Progressives, Liberals/Progressives can do to them.

One way is to always precede the word conservative with "so-called."

"So-called" is a great term for disrespecting your opponents. And disrespecting is what the Progressives need to do to win elections.
James J. Kroeger wrote an outstanding essay titled: "THE REPUBLICAN NEMESIS" http://taxwisdom.org/republican_nemesis.htm.

Perhaps most important is the way Progressives pronounce the word: conservative. There are two approaches that will work. One is to
emphasize the "con" in conservative and then shortly before or after you say the word CONservative, say something about con men or con
artists. That way CONservatives will be associated with con artists. Which most should be.

Another way is to emphasize the SERVATIVE part in the word conservative. Shortly after Progressives say the word conSERVATIVE, they should ask
who are being served by the so-called conSERVATIVES? Certainly it's not you, unless you happen to be a CEO or major share holder of a huge
oil corporation. It's not you, unless you happen to be the CEO or major share holder of a pharmaceutical company, it's not you unless you happen to be the beneficiary of a large inheritance, because the Bush Administration and the so-called conSERVATIVES in Congress want to make it completely tax free. It's not you, unless you always travel First Class and stay in five star hotels without having to be concerned about
the price.

Perhaps as important as what is said, is how it is said. I doubt that there is very much difference between what small congregation ministers
say to their congregation and what the TV preachers say. But there is a huge difference in how is it said. And there is a huge difference in
their incomes and lifestyles. Most small congregation ministers have modest incomes and modest lifestyles.

Not so with the TV preachers. Dateline reported that the Reverend Benny Hinn has an income of around $100 million a year, lives in a $10
million home on the ocean in California, owns a private jet airplane and stays in the royal suits of five star hotels.

The Republicans have very effectively used a debating technique and propaganda technique of 'Stealing their thunder.' The Republicans are
very vulnerable to being accused of creating 'Class Warfare.' That's because they do it. 'Stealing their thunder' is bringing up your
negative before the opposition does.

Instead of just stealing the Democrats thunder by bringing up the subject of Class Warfare first, they have accused the Democrats of doing exactly what they have done themselves.

But just because they accuse the Democrats of creating class warfare, that doesn't mean that the Democrats should not discuss the issue and
set the record straight.

In Kroeger's outstanding essay, he shows that the reason Republicans have been winning elections is because they are winning THE IMAGE CAMPAIGN. In politics, image is everything and the difference between winning and losing elections. Usually, the candidate who shows the most
respect for their opponent--will lose!

Kroeger points out that when Democrats are accused of hating Bush or any other Republican candidate, they should point out that we don't hate them: we FEAR them. We FEAR that the so-called conservative Republicans are taking our country down the path of financial ruin. We FEAR that
the Regressive Republican policies are turning the respect that the United States once had throughout the world, into hatred of the United States and contempt for, the United States.

David Michael Green wrote an outstanding essay titled: "WHAT'S IN A
NAME? EVERYTHING: How Progressives Can Start Winning Again By Renaming
Their Opponents and Reframing The Debate." His outstanding essay can be
viewed at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0208-21.htm.

Green suggests that we always call Republicans: Regressives. I agree.
But his outstanding idea has not gone very far because so far, it has
not been used. For a name to catch on it has to be used over and over
again with constant repetition.

Names are very important in politics. The Estate Tax, which only
effects the estates of multimillionaires, has been changed through
contestant repetition into the so-called Death Tax. Now Johnny
Lunchbuckett and Joe Sixpack are against the so-called Death Tax simply
because its name has been changed.

If you let the opposition name you, you are fighting their fight, on
their terms. And you will probably lose.

If Mohammed Ali had attempted to fight with the style and techniques of
either Joe Fraser or Mike Tyson, I doubt that he would have won a single
professional fight. On the other hand, if either Joe Fraser or
Mike Tyson had attempted to fight like Mohammed Ali, they probably would
never have won any fights.

The key to political victory is knowing your strengths and weaknesses
and knowing your opponents strengths and weaknesses, and fighting your
fight--not theirs.

Another key to political success is the ability to tell great stories.
Storytelling is a powerful persuasion and influencing tool. Outstanding
salesmen and other influencers are usually great storytellers. Winning
politicians are usually very good or great storytellers. Stories need
not be long to be effective. In fact, a one or two sentence story can
be a very effective.

I highly recommend a little book about the art of storytelling by
Annette Simmons titled: "THE STORY FACTOR: Inspiration, Influence and
Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling." One reviewer of this book
notes that the one thing history's greatest leaders have in common is
that they were all great storytellers.

No doubt, storytelling is at the top of the list of great persuasion
tools. Also on the list are metaphors and rhetorical questions.
Questions are quite often the key to political victory. Turning a
question around and framing it to your advantage is that key.

If you ask most adults whether or not they favor the legalization of
marijuana, most will say no. Ask these same people if they they believe
that marijuana should remain completely unregulated, untaxed and
controlled by criminals--criminals who often sell other, much more
dangerous drugs--and offer free samples of the more dangerous drugs to
their marijuana customers, and you will very likely get a completely
different answer.

The difference is how the question is framed.

Kirk Muse

The author lives in Mesa, Arizona with his wife and son. He has about
650 published letters to editors on the subject of drug policy reform.

Most of those letter can be viewed at www.mapinc.org/writer/muse.