On all the matters that touch upon the critical moral issues, Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the evil side. This is a fact. A mere list of the positions he supports is enough to make this plain: abortion as a ‘right,’ cloning of human beings, governmental classification of citizens by race, public benefits for sexual partners outside of marriage, disrespect for property rights against environmental extremism, repudiation of the right to bear arms - no more need be said to show that this candidate is wrong where human decency, human rights and human responsibility bear directly on political issues.

"Sudan's Osama: The Islamist roots of the Darfur genocide"

and

"Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap" which I linked to earlier, but wanted to recommend again.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, former U.S. Treasurer and 2004 California delegate Rosario Marin, and Maryland Lt. Gov. and 2004 delegate Michael Steele today announced a 70 percent increase among minority delegates compared to the 2000 Republican convention. With President George W. Bush leading the ticket, African- American representation is up an estimated 65 percent and Asian-American representation is up nearly 40 percent. This month, Hispanic delegates will be the largest minority group represented, adding another 15 percent to the 100 percent surge the Republican Party saw between the 1996 and 2000 delegations.

[edit]

The Republican National Committee recently completed certification of the 2,509 delegates and 2,344 alternate delegates who will make up the most diverse Republican delegation in the party's history. In 2004, minorities make up 17 percent of total delegates and women make up 44 percent. In 2000, minorities made up 10 percent of total delegates and women made up 36 percent. In 1996, minorities made up 6.3 percent of total delegates and women made up 33 percent.

Such past statesmanship only adds to the current disgust one has over the toxic culture of the Senate Judiciary Committee and New York Sen. Charles Schumer's effort to corrupt judicial selection with ideology. While Sen. Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, bears responsibility for the partisanship, if only by his consistent surrenders to the bullying of Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont Democrat,Democratshave stepped well beyond that pale. Liberals under Sen. Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, are attacking constitutional supremacy itself and the independent judiciary that John Adams so carefully crafted.

It's time to worry about the economy, again.

Consumers are balking about pulling out their wallets, particularly to buy new cars. Paychecks for low-wage workers are not keeping up with inflation. And the price of crude oil has spiked up yet again to a new record high of $43.85 a barrel.

... If the economy doesn't kick into a higher gear, it won't have enough oomph to create more jobs, and the unemployment rate might actually begin to climb. The slower-paced economy, which will be especially noticeable in the industrial Midwest, also gives the Democrats room to criticize President Bush. And it may call into question how fast the Federal Reserve raises interest rates this year.

The impetus for the new economic worries came last Friday when the Commerce Department reported the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a 3 percent annual pace, a number that economists considered to be disappointingly soft.

... "The soft patch is deeper and bigger than we anticipated," says [Wells Fargo Banks chief economist Sung Won] Sohn.

The nation's payroll growth slowed dramatically in July with a paltry 32,000 jobs being added a potentially troubling sign that the rough patch the economy hit in June could spread.

The unemployment rate, however, dipped down a notch to 5.5 percent last month, from 5.6 percent in June, the Labor Department reported Friday. The new jobless rate was the lowest since October 2001.

The payrolls figure and the unemployment rate can sometimes go in different directions because they are derived from two separate statistical surveys. Economists, however, look more closely at the payroll figure as a better barometer of the health of the jobs market.

The 32,000 net jobs added in July represented the smallest gain in hiring since December .... Analysts were expecting the economy to add anywhere from 215,000 to 247,000 jobs in July. They were predicting the jobless rate to hold steady at 5.6 percent.

Four More Posts!
Four More Posts!
Four More Posts!

O Sage of the Web, your words bring me great hope and tranquility.

Our president makes America safer.
You make America wiser.
Mission accomplished!

You 'du man!

This post was almost as inspiring as listening to Josh Grobin sing, "You Raise Me Up."

That's why this bill provides $95 million to help the people of Darfur, in western Sudan. Brutal militias there are causing human suffering on an immense scale. The new funding will provide famine relief, assistance for refugees and other humanitarian aid. Yet not amount of aid can substitute for true and lasting peace. The Government of Sudan must stop the violence of Janjaweed militias, and all parties must respect the cease-fire and allow the free movement of humanitarian workers and supplies.

The atrocities carried out by the Janjawiid are aimed at speakers of Fur, Tunjur, Masalit and Zaghawa. They are systematic and sustained; the effect, if not the aim, is grossly disproportionate to the military threat of the rebellion. The mass rape and branding of victims speaks of the deliberate destruction of a community. In Darfur, cutting down fruit trees or destroying irrigation ditches is a way of eradicating farmers' claims to the land and ruining livelihoods. But this is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad against the Nuba was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit.

The Bush administration is, of course, occupied with many things, including the prosecution of a supremely important war against terrorists. But the President's "heart for Africa" is well-known; and the prevention of genocide in the Sudan deserves a place high on the list of his priorities

It is time for the world to do something about this. The actions of the Sudanese regime and its militia allies violate universally accepted norms of law - their actions violate the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, and the Anti-Slavery Conventions. During the past decade, the world has acted against other instances of ethnic cleansing, of slavery, of political rape. Why is the government of Sudan permitted, through its militia stooges, to commit such atrocities? Is it because the victims are Africans? It is time to convene war crimes tribunals to try the murderers and rapists in Sudan. The victims cry out for justice. Can you hear them?

The refugees tell the same story: first comes the attack from the air, and then the Janjaweed militia arrive to mop up. Women are raped in front of their sons, their fathers, their husbands. Families are chained together and burnt alive.

Ibrahim Salim Musa and his family arrived in Nayala from a village outside Ta'asha in the north-east three weeks ago. Their home, and those of their neighbours, was burnt down, he said, by the Janjaweed. About 10 people, including two children, were killed. The rest fled.

Mr Musa, 37, his wife Safeera and their four children aged between three and 12 live in a room in a half-built house with shattered windows. They share with four other families. Mr Musa said of the attack: "We had heard there would be trouble. These men were boasting they were going to get rid of the Zurghas (a pejorative term for blacks)so we were prepared to get out quickly.

"It was very late; the children were asleep. We heard a lot of shouting and then rifle-firing. They were mostly on foot, but there were trucks and some had horses. They were dressed in white; we knew who they were.

"We ran. We were lucky because our house was towards the end of the village. We looked out from the trees; homes were burning. Later we heard who died.''

In another room, an old woman in a black chador sat rocking, locked in her private misery. Another woman shouted out: "They killed her sons, her brother. They want to kill us all. They are devils, just devils."

July 14, 2004

To: Rep. Shelley Moore Capito

I am not sure what your position is on gay marriages but I am asking you to PLEASE vote AGAINST gay marriages.

I have worked hard at my marriage, something I value tremendously. I feel if gay marriages are approved, then everything I have worked for was useless. I have friends who are gay, however, I do not believe they should be married. A marriage is between a man and a woman. Marriage is special.

Israel is planning to build thousands of housing units in the West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim in an attempt to link it to Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Thursday. The plan is apparently meant to ensure a large Jewish majority in Jerusalem to counter a high Arab growth rate. Maaleh Adumim is four miles east of Jerusalem.

The United States publicly condemned a smaller plan to expand Maaleh Adumim earlier this week, but Israeli officials said they will seek U.S. approval for this and other similar expansion projects.

U.S. officials said Washington opposes all settlement construction. Another U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mideast envoy Elliot Abrams will discuss the Maaleh Adumim plans during a meeting in Jerusalem later Thursday with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

When you hear "human rights," think gays. When you hear "human rights," think only one thing: someone who wants to rape your son. And you'll get it just right. OK, you got it, right? When you hear "human rights," think only someone who wants to molest your son, and send you to jail if you defend him. Write that down, make a note of it.

On Tuesday:

Since we last visited the Illinois Senate race, much has happened.

The Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, has become a national celebrity after giving the keynote address at the Democratic convention. His ancestors are working-class whites from Kansas and black goat herders from Africa. That puts even John Edwards' mill-worker background to shame. Nothing beats the descendant of goat herders, especially when he's second in his class at Harvard Law School. The national media loves him. Pundits predict a run for president in 2012.

The Republican nominee, Jack Ryan, whose divorce files indicated that he tried to get his wife (now ex-wife), actress Jeri Ryan, to perform sex acts with him in front of strangers at sex clubs, has finally officially quit the race -- something that he'd promised to do a month earlier. Republican officials were nervous that he was lying about quitting the race, since he'd told them before the primary that there was nothing at all embarrassing in his divorce
files.

The Republican central committee has groveled to find a candidate. Former Bears coach Mike Ditka said no. So did a Cook County commissioner who nobody ever heard of. Sammy Sosa is busy, and is not an American citizen.

That brings us to today, when the GOP central committee held a meeting to interview candidates for the office. Fourteen people were talked to, including a Florida man wearing a George Washington-style powdered wig. The only hopeful who was barred was a guy dressed in lederhosen and waving a Bavarian flag. He stood outside the meeting and protested his exclusion. I am not making up any of this.

Among the candidates considered at the last minute: Alan Keyes, who has run for president twice, and for the U.S. Senate from Maryland twice. He's a smart, telegenic, energetic candidate. Two problems: He's never won anything, and he is a carpetbagger, having never lived in Illinois. (This is not New York. Illinoisans have this funny idea that their senator ought to live in their
state.)

The Republicans, unable to settle on a candidate, picked two finalists today: Keyes and former DEA deputy director Dr. Andrea Grubb Barthwell. She, like Keyes, is African American, which guarantees that Illinois will have a black senator, unless the Libertarian, a white high school teacher with a $500 campaign fund, rockets to the lead.

... In a particularly inappropriate piece of metaphor, the GOP state chairman declares, "We don't quite have white smoke yet." It's a reference to the ritual of choosing a pope, but black residents of Illinois have seen a lot of "white smoke" over the years.

... According to [a DEA] employee complaint, [Barthwell] questioned the sexual orientation of a male subordinate and used a kaleidoscope to make sexual gestures. The complaint called it "lewd and abusive behavior," but Barthwell called it "lighthearted humor." While admitting "an error in judgment," she denied any inappropriate use of the kaleidoscope during the office party.
Obama, being a smart politician, has not yet cackled in public.

On Wednesday:

... if Keyes says no ... [t]he Repubs will have wasted four more days and will probably have to go begging to the woman they rejected today -- former DEA deputy chief Andrea Barthwell, the woman who has denied performing an offensive sexual gesture with a kaleidoscope at an office party. Even more offensive to the GOP are revelations that she's really a Democrat, if you look at her campaign contributions and her primary voting. If Keyes says no, she may not even be a viable alternative, and this whole Diogenean exercise may progress from comic to pathetic.

Keyes will be fun to watch, but the carpetbagger thing will kill him here. The state law is lax -- he'd only have to establish residency before taking the oath of office -- but the electorate will not accept him.

Plus, one of his big issues is his opposition to "murder in the womb," which makes him the favorite of a passionate 10 percent and maybe 25 or 30 percent more less passionately. That does not add up to a majority.

In the past weeks, I have witnessed and visited dozens of camps throughout Darfur. I estimate I have seen the homes of a quarter of a million people. It is truly staggering.

Some of the camps are not bad by refugee standards, but too many are horrendous. Huts too close, no toilets, no running water the stench of human waste mingles with the rotting carcasses of dogs and donkeys.

It was a dreadful breeding ground for disease before the seasonal rains hit - now it's a viral and bacterial feast - and humans are the main course.

I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton's willingness to go into a state she doesn't even live in and pretend to represent people there. So I certainly wouldn't imitate it.

"I do not take it for granted that it's a good idea to parachute into a state and go into a Senate race," he said before meeting the Republican leaders. "As a matter of principle, I don't think it's a good idea."

If, in spite of that media blitz [the Republicans] stand with integrity for what they believe to be right, a lot of people are gonna have to go, "Ooh, well gotta give it to those Republicans. They took all this political rift just to stand with the truth. Party of principle." And on the other hand, what would we have with the Democrats? "Well, you know those Democrats, they circled the wagons around this guy, sacrificed what we knew to be true and decent and principled, all for the sake of political power. We know what kind of party they are now." And I think that that impression--Democrat Party, party of power politics without principle, Republican Party, a party that at the end of the day even after much to-ing and fro-ing and shilly-shallying still ends up on the side of principle and integrity.

This contrast between a party of principle and a party without principle, a party of integrity and a party of no integrity, it will tell as the months pass.

Some pollsters, for example, will ask only whether the voter showed up for the last election and whether they plan on doing so again. Since many people feel slightly guilty about not voting, or want to appear more politically engaged than they really are, such polls tend to dramatically overstate the number of likely voters. Pollsters refer to this approach as a "soft screen."

1. How much thought have you given to the upcoming election for president -- quite a lot, or only a little?

Would you say you approve or disapprove of the 9/11 Commission's report about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, or haven't you heard enough about it to say?

Approve - 37%
Disapprove - 10%
Haven't heard enough to say - 52%

As you may know, a proposal has been made to extend the 9/11 Commission's work for another 18 months while Congress and the president consider the commission's recommendations. Do you favor or oppose this proposal?

Which comes closer to your point of view about the 9/11 Commission's recommendations: They require urgent action and Congress and the president should enact them immediately, or they are important, but Congress and the president should take the time they feel they need to adequately review and enact them?

Charlie Crouse, who works in an auto parts shop, said he felt that President Bush had "lost character and lied about Iraq," adding that he was embarrassed by the vicious oratory of presidential politics this year. ... But Mr. Crouse said he was American, patriotic, and religious, too, so he would vote on Nov. 2 -- for Mr. Bush.

"This is a Republican county," Mr. Crouse joked as he watched his granddaughter being crowned "Prettiest Baby'' recently at the Berkeley Springs Volunteer Fire Department's Annual Fair. "They couldn't care if you had Khrushchev on the ballot, if he was a Republican we'd check it off."

"Sure, I'm voting for Bush; I feel much more secure about terrorism with George Bush around," said Richard Jenkinson Jr., a retired Vietnam veteran who works in a junk store in this Civil War town that has not changed much in the last 100 years.

As Mr. Jenkinson offers a tour of his issues, it is easy to see why George Bush is his man. He believes that invading Iraq was a wise move, because "Saddam Hussein was a Hitler-type character, who needed to be taken out." He is opposed to abortion, except to save a woman's life. A gun owner and National Rifle Association member, like almost everyone else here, Mr. Jenkinson considers owning guns a civil right and "part of home protection."

On weekends, he and his friends shoot at pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. "It's a way of handling hostility, I guess," Mr. Jenkinson said, with a shrug.

Greg and Pat Rawlings of Chambersburg vote always, and always vote Republican, explained Mrs. Rawlings, who works as a clerk for Target. They are soft-spoken, well-informed people who bemoan the incursion of roads and teenage drug use into their orderly world, where signs on the main street must now warn: "No Cruising. Anyone who passes this spot more than three times in two hours will be fined." They sent their children to Christian school and are sick that Pennsylvania has recently decided to allow slot machines in to the state.

"Here, being a Republican is a question of faith," said Mr. Rawlings, who makes dental hardware. "There are a lot of life-and-death issues this year, like the war. I think if we didn't go in to Iraq, they'd be here taking our buildings down. Also, every life is important; to us that means no abortion."

Bill Earley, a libertarian who owns Chambersburg's bookstore, said that when he and 17 others organized an antiwar demonstration in front of the courthouse, people stopped their cars and screamed, "Get out of this country."

"It's all about God, family and loyalty here," Mr. Early said.

It is the love of guns, however, that will keep many in the Republican camp. In Berkeley Springs, schools are closed for the first week of deer-hunting season, in November.

Amid the mess over the weekend for travelers flying from Boston to Washington (lost luggage, delayed flights, etc.), those aboard Saturday's 7 p.m. US Airways shuttle from Logan International Airport -- which had been held up for 20 minutes because of luggage problems -- were surprised when the pilot announced that the plane would make a quick hop to Albany on its way to Reagan National.

"We land in Albany, and the doors open and in come Jenna and Barbara [Bush] and several Secret Service agents," our spy, who declined to be named "for fear of going to Gitmo," told us. "I kept thinking, I haven't heard of anybody diverting planes for all these other people being inconvenienced. This doesn't fit in the norm of airline travel."

But before blame goes to the first daughters, it turns out that it's not unusual for US Airways to make such diversions. "Yes, there are times when we will divert an airplane to pick up passengers off of another canceled flight. We do that when we have no other way to accommodate those customers," said airline spokesman David Castelveter. In addition to the Bush twins, 22 other beleaguered passengers also boarded in Albany.

I'm sure you recognize that, as a nation, we are standing at a crossroads. Our society's moral decline has accelerated at an alarming rate in recent years, and if trends continue, the America that you and I know and love will cease to exist. Issues critical to the future of the traditional family - abortion rights and same-sex marriage being chief among them - will be influenced by the values of our next president and his cabinet.

[edit]

Never in our history has it been more imperative that Christians bring their values and beliefs to bear upon the world around them by embracing the privilege and responsibility of voting. Those of us who are genuinely concerned about the direction of our great nation must be involved in deciding its future.

Under mounting international pressure, the government of Sudan has committed to disarm the “Janjaweed and other armed outlaw groups,” but the government’s interpretation of the term “Janjaweed” is ambiguous. Instead of being disarmed, members of government-backed militias are reportedly being absorbed into police and paramilitary forces operating in Darfur.

What's going to start killing them in large numbers, which will then create the dramatic graphics that will - three months from now - instill the kind of emotion necessary for sufficiently robust action, are the diseases that are going to rip through these camps. I think that there will eventually be some form of action, but it just may happen after a couple hundred thousand people who could have been saved will have died.

Speaking on the same day a U.S. soldier at the center of the prisoner abuse scandal is due to face a military court, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski said she was deliberately kept in the dark about abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners.

"A very reliable witness has made a statement indicating that, not only was I not included in any of the meetings discussing interrogation operations, but specific measures were taken to ensure I would not have access to those facilities, that information or any of the details of interrogation at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else," Karpinski told Britain's BBC radio.

Karpinski, responsible for the military police who ran prisons in Iraq when pictures were taken showing prisoners being abused, has been suspended from her post but not charged with any crime.

She said that those with "full knowledge" of what was going on in Abu Ghraib worked to keep her from discovering the truth. Asked if a cover-up meant involvement of the White House or Pentagon, she said: "I have not seen the statement but the indication is it may have."

In September 2001 DeLay founded a new organization, Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC -- the acronym soon made its way into the local political lexicon as "Trim-pack"). DeLay positioned himself as chairman of the honorary board, appointed Ellis its director, and ordered him to make sure their plan was carried through. To get things rolling, ARMPAC gave the new baby its first $ 50,000. Everything was to be modeled on the way ARMPAC raised money and jammed it into congressional races that conservative Republicans could win. And TRMPAC's fundraisers went back to the same proven feed troughs. Forty-three percent of the contributions came from interests outside Texas that had no business pending with its state Legislature. Certain transactions just seemed bizarre. Why would the Mississippi Choctaws give $ 6,000 to TRMPAC? Because well-connected Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff represented the tribe, and he took credit for convincing DeLay, a few years earlier, that their casino revenue should not be taxable. The largest contribution, $ 100,000, came from the Boston-based Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care. Why on earth? Some claims were later made that a couple of Texas companies were part of the organization, but the middle-man of that transaction was one Haley Barbour, the drawling old party warhorse, who was then lobbying for the consortium of nursing home companies seeking to block Medicare cuts while mounting a campaign for governor of Mississippi that he later won -- lending more evidence that in American politics all ambitions and reputations are redeemable short of the grave. Barbour had been quite thick with DeLay and ARMPAC. In Kansas City, Westar Energy sent $ 25,000 to TRMPAC in hopes of achieving, as one executive put it, a "strong position at the table" at the House of Representatives in Washington, not the one in Austin.

Most of the al Qaeda surveillance of five financial institutions that led to a new terrorism alert Sunday was conducted before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks .... More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.

"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."

... (Homeland Security Secretary Tom) Ridge and other officials stressed Sunday the urgency of acting on the newly obtained information, but yesterday a range of officials made clear how dated much of the intelligence was.

... "Most of the information is very dated but you clearly have targets with enough specificity, and that pushed it over the edge," the counterterrorism official said. "You've got the Republican convention coming up, the Olympics, the elections ..."

"It's serious business," (President) Bush said. "I mean, we wouldn't be, you know, contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real."

This is the audience the convention planners seem to play to. They respond predictably to words like "safer" and "first responder" and "daughter"; a keyword search reveals the phrases showing up 30, eight, and 23 times. Not so much to words having to do with official government malfeasance—which is why, strangely, John Kerry's single greatest achievement as senator, forcing Congress to face up to the Reagan administration's crimes negotiating with Iranian hostage-takers and sending the proceeds to death squads in Central America, was not mentioned at all.

No, this convention was supposed to make us feel good, be relentlessly positive. The theme was unity: national unity, party unity.

Niceness is nice. It makes a body feel good about himself. But it's no strategy with which to win a presidential election.

[edit]

These days, talking about things like the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us is judged not very nice. Fixing it might require breaking some eggs. The pundits would call it "class warfare." So whenever a concession is demanded in the interests of unity, it will be demanded of the party's left wing, never of the corporate types.

Consumer spending registered its biggest drop since September 2001 in June, falling 0.7% as spending on durable goods plummeted 5.9%. Personal income grew 0.2%.

Eric Greenberg, who made a fortune founding Internet companies during the technology boom, describes himself as a "centrist, moderate Republican." The 40-year-old San Francisco-area resident supported President Bush in 2000 and raised $100,000 for Republicans. Then, he says, the administration alienated him by restricting stem-cell research, a move he believes curtails medical science.

So when Greenberg let a Democratic senator, Nevada's Harry Reid, know that he was now willing to help beat Republicans, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee swung into action. Its chairman, Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, quickly got in touch with Mr. Greenberg ...

So far, Mr. Greenberg has donated and raised about $400,000 for Democrats .... Mr. Corzine and others are finding far deeper resevoirs of Democratic money than they imagined.

The economic boom of the 1990s put enormous sums, very quickly, in the pockets of some younger economic players who turned out to be socially liberal. This new generation of wealth -- men and women who grew up with working moms, black classmates and gay friends, during the rise of environmentalism -- is defying the traditional notion that as people swim up the income scale, they tend to become more Republican.

Among a broader slice of upper-income Americans, the top fifth in income, Al Gore collected 44% of the vote in 2000. That beat Bill Clinton's mark of 41% in 1996 and far eclipsed the 28% of these better-off people's votes that Walter Mondale received in 1984.

Sen. John F. Kerry urged President Bush on Monday to call a special session of Congress to implement the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, accusing Bush of foot-dragging and charging that the president's policies have encouraged the creation of more terrorists.

[edit]

Standing in front of a firetruck under a blazing sun, Kerry said: "If the president had a sense of urgency about this director of intelligence and about the needs to strengthen America, he would call the Congress back and get the job done now. . . . The time to act is now, not later."

Hoping to add real electricity to the U.S. Senate race, Illinois Republicans have been secretly talking to former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes about taking on Democratic nominee Barack Obama — a move that would pit two eloquent, nationally known African Americans against one another.

[Keyes] said that he was open to the idea. And he felt that Obama didn't really represent the views of the people of Illinois.

Now this afternoon, we do have new and unusually specific information about where al-Qaeda would like to attack.

[edit]

[I]n light of new intelligence information, we have made the decision to raise the threat level for this sector, in these communities, to bring protective resources to an even higher level.

Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

[edit]

"You could say that the bulk of this information is old, but we know that Al Qaeda collects, collects, collects until they're comfortable,'' said one senior government official.

Thirty-five Evangelical Christian leaders have signed a letter urging President Bush to provide large-scale humanitarian aid and consider sending U.S. troops to stop what they called the "genocide" in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Contrary to official statements about improvement of the security situation and the voluntary return of the displaced, I found a situation of persistent insecurity and human rights violations as the paramount concern of the displaced.

• Working knowledge of the alphabet and whole numbers up to, and including, sixty-four
• Able to identify the fruit in any given still-life painting containing fruit
• Avid sleeper and television watcher

• Graduate of the Arthur Miller Dance Studio
  Bachelor of Science - Norwegian Interpretive Dance
  Minor - Oral Pantomime
• Graduate Study at the Typhoid Mary School of Culinary Arts
• Doctorates in Quantum Mechanics, Home Shoe Repair, and Exploratory Surgery from Degrees-R-Us Mail Order University, Inc.

• Director of Marketing - Merchants and Retailers eXchange (MARX) - a business organization dedicated to exploiting the proletariat for fun and profit
• Participated in the Million-Man March – inadvertently, I was on my way to the store
• Assistant Minister and Armed Guard - People’s Temple
  Jonestown, French Guyana
  * Dismissed for spiking the punch
• Founder of a local Neighborhood Watch Watch – You can't be too careful
• President: No Quarter – a nonprofit political organization dedicated to protecting the 3rd Amendment rights of all Americans. Thanks to our vigilance, no soldier has been quartered in any house in times of peace without the consent of the owner since 1996
• Editor-in-Chief of several socio-political magazines including: The Journal of Objective Media Studies and Liberals Are God-Hating Degenerates
• Author of the best-selling self-help book "It’s Not You, It’s Me: I Don’t Like You"

• Male Model of the Year - Emaciated Gents Quarterly
• Potential Grand Prize Winner - Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes
• Coined the phrase "You Go Girl!"
• Lauded for my performance as the title character in a local production of "Waiting for Godot"

... for as much as half the US workforce, or nearly 60 million workers, a day out sick is often a lost day's pay. And half to three-quarters of the lowest-paid workers, those who try to survive on roughly $20,000 or less, don't get any paid sick days, a situation that often leads to job loss, recent studies show.

Ruby Balbin, a single mother of two teenage boys from Revere, has two part-time jobs cleaning restaurants and offices but no paid sick time. If she's ill, she faces a tough choice: get paid or get healed. Mostly, she drags herself to work after one day at home, no matter how she feels. And if her sons are sick, she scrambles to find care for them. She needs every bit of the $350 she earns weekly before taxes.

... The issue is gaining attention, in part because more workers share Balbin's dilemma. The proportion of nonmanagerial and nonprofessional workers who get paid sick days slipped to 60 percent in 2002, from 67 percent in 1997, according to the Families and Work Institute, a New York-based nonprofit research group. That's both due to cutbacks in employer benefits, and the fact that recent job growth has come in the low-wage service sector, where benefits are lacking.

''We need people to work in these jobs, and they need to be able to take care of their families," says Vicky Lovell, study director at the in Washington, D.C., and author of a report on sick leave issued in June.

According to the [Institute for Women's Policy Research] analysis of government data on employer policies, only about 25 percent of those in the bottom quarter of wage earners get sick pay, compared with about 70 percent of workers in the top quarter of wage earners.

For 12 dark years the Republicans have dealt in cynicism and skepticism. They've mastered the art of division and diversion, and they have robbed us of our hope.

Too many mothers today cannot tell their children what my mother told me, (that) working hard and playing by the rules can make your dreams come true. For millions, the American dream has become what the poet called "a dream deferred."

And if you recall those words, he warned us that a dream deferred can explode. Robbed of hope, the voices of anger rise up, rise up from working Americans, who are tired of paying more in taxes and getting less in services, and George Bush doesn't get it?

Americans cannot understand why the rich can buy the best health care in the world, but all the rest of us get is rising costs and cuts in coverage, or no health insurance at all, and George Bush doesn't get it?

Americans cannot walk our streets in safety, because our "tough-on-crime" president has waged a phony war on drugs, posing for pictures while cutting police, prosecutors and prisons, and George Bush doesn't get it?

Americans have seen plants closed down, jobs shipped overseas and our hopes fade away as our economic position collapses right before our very eyes, and George Bush does not get it.

On MSNBC, pollster Frank Luntz convened 20 Ohio swing voters and found that the nominee's speech played well in the heartland. The first piece of good news for Kerry is that 14 of the 20 who say they are undecided in 2004 voted for George W. Bush in 2000. The better news is that 16 of the 20 said Kerry's performance exceeded their expectations and four former Bush supporters decided to support the Democrat after his address.

''Kerry's speech actually moved voters," Luntz [said]. Before the convention, the Bush voters who had slipped into the undecided category did so more because of ''disappointment with Bush" than any real affinity for Kerry, Luntz said. After the candidate's moment on the national stage, he said, the converts were now ''pro-Kerry" voters who decided, '' 'I get this guy. I understand him. He's better than I expected.' "

Bush said wealthy taxpayers would find loopholes in the new tax structure and leave the burden to the middle class. ''He said he's only going to raise the tax on the so-called rich," Bush said. ''But you know how the rich is. They've got accountants. That means you pay."

13. Next, regardless of which presidential candidate you support, please tell me if you think John Kerry or George W. Bush would better handle each of the following issues: Terrorism

Kerry - 42%
Bush - 54%
Same - 2%
No opinion - 2%

20. How much confidence do you have in the Bush administration to protect U.S. citizens from future acts of terrorism -- a great deal, a moderate amount, not much, or none at all?

Great deal - 32%
Moderate amount - 32%
Not much - 22%
None at all - 14%

21. If he were elected president, how much confidence would you have in a John Kerry administration to protect U.S. citizens from future acts of terrorism -- a great deal, a moderate amount, not much, or none at all?

Great deal - 32%
Moderate amount - 36%
Not much - 18%
None at all - 13%

High level sources in Washington tell us that the US administration and congress have privately agreed that a military force is needed immediately to halt the genocide in Sudan. Key leaders have agreed to approve whatever is required to enable such a force. This commitment has been communicated to Kofi Annan. We believe that similar commitments have been made by other nations.

Military and logistical preparations have been made by the US, UK, France, Australia, and the Netherlands. The US and France have coordination teams on the ground in neighboring Sudan, and are now in position to provide technical assistance to the rescue mission.

Ibrahim told Refugees International about a week after the attack that among those captured during the assault were four of her brothers and six young children, including three of her cousins. As Ibrahim watched in horror, several of the attackers began grabbing the screaming children and throwing them one by one into a raging fire. One of the male villagers ran from his hiding place to plead for their lives. It was a fatal error. The raiders subdued the man and later beheaded him and dismembered his body. All six of the children were burned. Ibrahim's four brothers have not been heard from since.