I was sixteen years old when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President of the United States. I remember hearing that he was the oldest person to ever take the oath of office...and worrying that he might not be able to fulfill his duties. I remember thinking Nancy Reagan was much too thin.....and that Reagan, despite his age, really looked good with the flag in the background. He was the picture of patriotism to my young eyes.

I have three especially strong memories of Reagan's time in office. The first, and probably the most positive, is the speech he gave after the Challenger space shuttle blew up in front of the eyes of so many Americans. I was in college at the time and I heard about the shuttle explosion during my first class of the day. I was an Elementary Education major and we'd all been following Christa McCauliffe's journey. Her loss was devastating to us. When I watched Reagan give his speech about the disaster I had tears streaming down my face. I can still hear his voice in my head...the comforting words of a grandfatherly voice saying, "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God."

I also remember the summit at Reykjavik, Iceland with then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. I watched with dread in my heart when reports of the summit began to emerge. The treaty they were trying to hammer out was held up when Reagan would not acquiese on the Star Wars Defense Initiative program. The missile defense shield was a sticking point for Gorbachev and he wouldn't relent. Neither would Reagan. At the time it was frightening....but in the end it turned out to be the breaking point for a struggling Soviet Union.

And then there was The Iran/Contra Scandal. Reagan was clearly struggling to deal with his falling approval ratings and perhaps the onset of his illness. I remember watching him give his speech to the American people on television:

Let's start with the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages. This runs counter to my own beliefs, to administration policy, and to the original strategy we had in mind. There are reasons why it happened, but no excuses. It was a mistake.

As a political liberal, I disagree with many of Reagan's policies. I also disagree strongly with those on the right who seek to canonize Reagan...to whitewash his record and to keep the whole truth of his life and his Presidency from being told.

I believe that Reagan will be remembered first as "The Great Communicator". I think he would want that most of all. Reagan was a man who, like President Bill Clinton, charmed his way into office and even managed to charm his most vehement foes. I hope that in a few years that it will finally be okay to remember Reagan as a whole...and not just the parts that come across as positive. He presided over a complex, difficult and great time for the US. His life and his Presidency should be remembered in that way as well.

Rest in peace, Mr. President

Senator John Kerry has outlined part of his plan to get health insurance all Americans.

Kerry's plan seeks to attack the greatest cost of rising health insurance: catastrophic claims. These claims account for roughly 1% of all claims but approximately 20% of the costs.

From the cited article:

At the center of Kerry's ideas is his proposal to have the federal government reimburse employers 75 percent of medical bills over $50,000 that a worker runs up in a year. The reimbursement would, in effect, make the government a secondary insurer and ease costs for employers, workers and private insurers.

In exchange for the benefit, Kerry would require employers to offer insurance to every worker and to provide health programs that detect and manage chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure early enough to prevent the diseases from worsening.

Response from critics, including the Bush Campaign, is predictable:

Because he intends to pay for the voluntary program by rolling back President Bush's tax cuts for people earning more than $200,000, analysts such as Jack A. Meyer call it a "surcharge on the rich."

But the Kerry team as well as several independent analysis of the plan believe it will save the country as a whole billions of dollars:

Emory University health economist Kenneth E. Thorpe estimates the reinsurance program would save businesses and employees $288 billion in premiums over a decade but cost the government $257 billion because of administrative reductions. His computer model projects the catastrophic proposal alone would result in 3 million of the 44 million uninsured Americans getting coverage.

Hubbard and two colleagues calculate that for each percentage-point rise in the price of health insurance, the number of uninsured increases by 300,000.

Kerry's plan is the only new healthcare plan being proposed by either Presidential camp.

This would also offset the problems from the meager new jobs being created lately. Given that the sectors with the most job growth are in service and retail (low wage and no health insurance), this plan would at least offset the cost to some degree for middle to low wage workers.

In response to the City of Olympia's vote to draft a resolution disinviting the USS Olympia from taking shore leave in their city, Dennis Olson, "Chief Curmudgeon" at the TimeBomb2000 Pol/Gov forum, responded in a way that I, sadly, don't find surprising. He purportedly wrote an email to the Olympia City Council expressing his views on the matter. I say purported because all I have is his claim to have done so. But, let's take him at his word. Well... poor choice of words there on my part. LOL how 'bout we take what he said at face value?

As Olson openly admits, he predicated his email on a lie. Apparently thinking that it'd be taken more seriously by the City Council, he claimed to be a former Washington resident. Actually, he characterizes it as "Kind-of a fib." But, it's a bald-faced lie no matter how he mischaracterizes it.

But, Mr. Olson isn't content to express his unrighteous indignation. Oh no! He does it with a government computer where he works. Another member of the Olympia City Council, Curt Pavola, writes back.

Mr. Olson,

Your e-mail (on government time, i presume) about the community conversation that Olympia, WA, citizens are having about the safety and appropriateness of extaordinary visits to our community by nuclear submarines during a time of hightened terrorist threats is out of line and uninformed. As a government employee myself who LIVES UP TO ethics laws about inapporpriate use of resources and equipment to voice personal (and stupid...) comments, I'll ask you to keep your opinions to yourself. Your actions are disgraceful. Find out what the issues are before mouthing off on public time.

-- Olympia Councilmember Curt Pavola

To which Mr. Olson responds by ignorantly claiming that Mr. Pavola is trying to squelch Olson's First Amendment rights. And then he complains about how Pavola's pointing out the very real ethical problems inherant in misusing government property is nothing more than Pavola trying to "get back" at him.

For lying thru his teeth and misusing government property, Mr Olson gets my Morally Bankrupt Rightwinger award.

On Tuesday, May 18, the Olympia (Washington) City Council voted to draft a resolution opposing the impending visit by the nuclear sub USS Olympia - which is named after the city apparently. Councilman TJ Johnson made the motion and drafted the resulting resolution ostensibly out of concerns for the city's safety and secrecy surrounding the sub's visit. Indeed the draft of the resolution is all about those reasons and doesn't seem too terribly disconnected with reality, although I doubt I would have voted for it. But, in making the motion to draft the resolution, Councilman TJ Johnson made an incredible statement that belies his real reason for opposing the shore leave visit by the USS Olympia.

The Olympian quotes him as saying, "It is a publicly financed killing machine; there is no other way to look at this." This during the meeting where the Council voted 4 - 3 to draft the resolution.

Now let's examine that statement of Johnson's. I've looked and can't find anywhere that Councilman Johnson has ever called for a resolution to prevent Olympia City Police officers from bringing their guns to work with them each morning. Yet, the guns worn by police officers absolutely are "publically financed killing machines." I wonder if the City Council were to, God forbid, be taken hostage by a madman threatening to blow them all to kingdom come with a bomb, if Councilman Johnson would want the SWAT team to show up minus any "publically financed killing machines?"

What just blows me away about Johnson's statement is the kind of totally befuddled logic underpinning it. One can only hope that the Olympia City Police Department isn't part of his portfolio.

Olympia City Councilman TJ Johnson gets my Lunatic Fringe award for talking first and thinking later.

The more I read about Ahmed Chalabi, Bush, Tenet and the Iran situation...the weirder it gets.

The Washington Post is reporting that the CIA knew as far back as 1995 that Chalabi was connected with the Iranians:

The 1995 incident arose at a time when Chalabi was in northern Iraq, working with CIA backing against Hussein. The CIA case officer working with Chalabi at the time was Robert Baer.


Exactly who came up with the assassination idea is subject to some dispute. One U.S. official interviewed yesterday, who was familiar with the event, credited Baer with pushing the plan.


Baer has denied this. In his book "See No Evil: the True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism," published in 2001, he wrote that the plot to kill Hussein was phony, concocted by Chalabi in hopes of enticing Iranian support for his Iraqi opposition efforts.


To prove to the Iranians he had Washington's support to go after Hussein, Chalabi forged a letter on U.S. National Security Council stationery that asked him to contact the Iranian government for help, Baer wrote. The letter said Washington had dispatched to northern Iraq an "NSC team" headed by Robert Pope, a fictitious name.


In a meeting with Iranian intelligence officers, Chalabi left the letter on his desk while he took a phone call in another room, knowing the Iranians would read it, Baer wrote.


What happened next has not been previously reported.


The Iranian intelligence officers sent an encrypted message to Tehran about Chalabi's supposed plot, officials said yesterday. The United States intercepted the transmission. U.S. intelligence had broken Iran's secret communications codes during that period as well.


The contents of the 1995 intercept became the basis of a report that circulated fairly widely in Washington intelligence and law enforcement circles, an official recalled. The result was not only deep distrust within the CIA for Chalabi but also an FBI investigation of Baer.

It's pretty clear that the CIA in general didn't trust Chalabi. I can't imagine that Tenet as the head of the CIA trusted Chalabi either. Yet the media and the talk tv circuit (as well as rightwing talk radio) are proclaiming that Tenet left because of all of the intelligence foibles in the CIA. This would include the intelligence information on Iraq.

We had several organizations gathering information on Iraq in advance of our invasion. The CIA was one of them, most certainly. But we also had military intelligence including the Office of Special Plans within the Pentagon. The Office of Special Plans is the group that worked the most closely with Chalabi, according to reports. It's my understanding that the material Chalabi gave to intelligence sources was relied upon fairly heavily when it came to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Tenet may deserve some of the heat for intelligence failures in the lead up to 9/11 (along with the FBI,NSA,INS, etc). But why is he the one apparently falling on his sword for everything? It's pretty clear that the Iraq intelligence failures don't rest heavily on the shoulders of George Tenet (though he does bear some responsibility).

And why is Tenet resigning over this in the middle of an election year...? Why announce it when Bush is out of the country? And why on the same news cycle as Bush retaining counsel for the Plame case?

It's not all that often that I run across an organization I consider so worthwhile that I'd be willing to stand on a corner and ask folks to give money.

The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund is one such organization that I believe deserves the kind of funding usually reserved for building missile defense shields.

Families who lose a soldier in current operations recieve regular military benefits such as funeral costs, $12,000 death benefit, a continued payment of portion of salary,health care, short term base housing, etc. However often that isn't enough to meet the demands of some families, especially in the long term.

The Intrepid Fallen Heros Fund provides $10,000 grants to each dependent family plus $5,000 grants for each child. 100% of the public money raised goes to military familes. Adminstrative costs are absorbed through The Intrepid Foundation.

This a most worthwhile cause. Please consider a gift to these folks.

You can donate online here or call 1-800-340-HERO.

As a nod to Don King...the title includes lyrics from the musical Hair

In an effort to court the black vote, RNC Chair Ed Gillespie is now touring the country with boxing promotor Don King

Now I admit to being a bit cynical when it comes to Republicans...but DON KING? Couldn't they get Colin Powell or Condi Rice to schelp votes with Gillespie? They had to get a guy with a long rap sheet and a history of being a con man to promote the President?

It's rather odd to promote the President as tough on the bad guys when the Chairman of his party is touring the country with one.

As most of you are no doubt aware, Bob Woodward asserted in his book that the Bush Administration secretly diverted $700 million of money earmarked to fight the war in Afghanistan against Al Qaida to Iraq War planning.

Apparently the adage fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me isn't lost on Congress.

The Boston globe is reporting that the Senate voted 95-0 to give the White House the $25 million they requested for Iraq and Afghanistan. This time however, there are strings attached. Bush wanted to be able to shift monies at will to the different regions without consulting lawmakers. The Senate has restricted this amount to $2.5 billion as discretionary funds that can be shifted.

The House has an even more stringent restriction, requiring the President to consult lawmakers for amounts exceeding $1 billion. The House plan also allows for another $2 billion to be discretionary with the consent of lawmakers.

The White House is warm to the Senate plan but wants to negotiate with the House.

George Tenet resigned today as CIA Director citing "personal reasons". Bush accepted his resignation.


The resignation takes effect in mid-July at which time Deptuy Director John McGlaughlin will take the reigns.

It will be interesting to see how this ends up playing out. I've often maintained that Tenet wasn't fired because he had dirt on some of the players involved in the current and former administrations.

CBS has released some audio tapes of ENRON energy traders gloating about how they'd basically raped the California energy market in 2001.

I'm not even going to bother recreating it all here. Joe over at The Moderate Voice has a superb post on it already. Go read his piece and then ask yourself: Why in the name of God did the Justice Department try to block CBS from airing those audio tapes??? ENRON trying to block them I can easily see. They've got a horse in the race, so to speak. But, why the Justice Dept.?

I can't say this better than Wonkette so I'm going to blatantly cut and paste her comments:

So President Bush has "consulted" a lawyer about the investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's name to press. Everyone's been very careful to note that it doesn't mean Bush is target in the probe. Well. We wish him luck, because it's really hard to seem like an evil-fighting man of the people when you've got a criminal attorney on retainer.

CNN:Bush Consults Lawyer in CIA Leak Case

And check out this story which I found in the comments on this topic at Centerfield:

Bush Knew About CIA Operative Leak

The Brookings Institute has a couple of articles out right outlining plans for Iraq.

The first is a piece by Philip H Gordon (Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies
) and James Dobbins (Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center, Rand Corporation). This piece suggests that in order for the US to regain some sufferance from Iraqis, our military strategies must be adjusted to meet the political/diplomatic goals it has set forth:

Henceforth, American forces cannot afford to destroy villages to save them. They cannot afford to use artillery, gunships and ordnance from fixed-wing aircraft in populated areas, regardless of the provocation. They cannot afford to sacrifice innocent Iraqi civilians to reduce American casualties. They cannot afford to sweep up, incarcerate and hold for months thousands of Iraqis—many of them innocent—to apprehend a smaller number of guilty ones. They cannot afford to use pain, privation or humiliation to secure information.

Whether such actions are consistent with the laws of armed conflict is not the relevant criterion. What matters most is that such actions are inconsistent with the treatment of an allied population upon whose sufferance and support this mission depends.

James Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon, also of the Brookings Institute have outlined a three point plan for getting the US out of Iraq:

First, we must make clear that our military presence in Iraq is designed to permit the Iraqis to freely choose their own future -- even if it is not fully to our liking. We should indicate not just that we will leave if asked but that we will ourselves plan to end the deployment of coalition forces following the election of an Iraqi government and the adoption of a new constitution next year. We should make clear that we (as part of a wider international coalition) would be prepared to stay beyond that time -- but only at the request of the new Iraqi government, and as part of a new, U.N.-sponsored mandate on terms that are acceptable to the new Iraqi government and to us.

Second, we must be clear about our legitimate security interests in Iraq. We have a right to insist that a new Iraqi government not threaten peace and security -- by developing weapons of mass destruction, harboring terrorists or attacking other nations. And we should certainly seek to use our influence to encourage a tolerant, pluralist society. But because this is a responsibility Iraq owes to all, not just us, we should shift the focus away from the United States as the enforcement arm of the international community to Iraq's neighbors and others that share these interests, including NATO and the United Nations. We should begin by convening a major international summit on Iraq, involving not only Western allies but also Arab leaders and Iraqis, at the time of the NATO summit next month in Istanbul. And we should invite the International Atomic Energy Agency to play a role in ensuring that a new Iraqi government does not pursue weapons programs.

Third, we should accelerate the training and equipping of new security forces for Iraq. Less than 10 percent of the necessary numbers of soldiers and police have been properly trained to date. Filling this vacuum is critical to the success of this strategy, because indigenous forces are far more likely than foreign forces to succeed in defeating the residual Baathist and foreign fighters in Iraq. If Arab countries and NATO devoted just 10 percent of their police and military training capacity to Iraqi forces, we could complete an intensified training process by next year.


I have not been a supporter of the efforts in Iraq. I've thought that we were wrong from the outset to go in and do what we did...but we're there. The important thing is that we clean up our mess and get out as soon as possible. I think those ideas outlined above are a very good start toward that goal.

Being a self-confessed liberal and a bit of a contrarian I enjoy a debate now and then with my compadres on the other side of the ideological aisle. I have always enjoyed sparring with folks whose beliefs are opposed to my own.

I'm starting to think that this is a liberal trait and not a conservative one, for the most part. A few months ago when I posted views contrary to the ones on their message boards, Free Republic pulled my posts (to be fair I've been told that Democratic Underground does that too although I've never seen it done, personally). Then recently I posted at a proBush blog three or four times...very careful not to be strident but to be moderate...and the owner of the blog banned me. I can only assume it was because I wasn't towing the party line.

Then a few days ago Dean's World had a blog thread up about the war in Iraq. The premise was that Iraq was going great and that liberals were just mad and the liberal media was just trying to give the President a black eye. So I posted a contrary view and argument...and being me I backed it up with statistics and polls. Yesterday I go to post over there...and they've banned me. LOL

Now I realize that folks have every right to remove posts or block people from posting. It's their blog...most of them probably pay for the service they use. But what's the big deal with dissent? Why do so many people (especially conservatives, it seems) have such a difficult time with views that are different from their own?

John Kerry is offering his plan to deal with terrorism.

Some highlights:

Kerry called for an end to the Bush Administration's plan to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. Kerry proposes that the US take the lead in curbing nuclear proliferation.

Kerry proposes to have a presidential coordinator to secure nuclear weapons from countries like Russia...as well as work to to keep nuclear attacks from occuring. Kerry proposes working closely with countries like Russia to accelerate reductions in nuclear arsenals.


This is a crucially important proposal. It goes to the heart of US credibility in the world. We have no moral authority when it comes to nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran while at the same time developing new bunker busting bombs and new generations of nukes.

In my view..this is one of the main differences between Kerry and Bush. Kerry wants to negotiate from a position of credibility and strength when dealing with US foreign policy issues. Bush wants to force nations into doing what he says when he says it...or threaten them. It's a "do as I say not as I do" position.

Remember how the Republicans complained about President Clinton ripping off the taxypayers by flying Air Force One all over the place while campaigning? Well, turns out Bush has set the new record for ripping off the taxpayers via... you guessed it - using Air Force One for campaigning.

Tom at Backup Brain is where I first read this story. According to his short blurb about it, it costs the taxpayers $57,000 per hour to operate Air Force One. But, by law the President is only required to reimburse a fraction of that. And even then only if he doesn't claim that the trip is official business. According to the ABC piece that Tom cites, "But of the more than $203 million Bush has raised for his re-election, less than 1 percent has gone to reimbursing the government for travel costs this year."

So, we have the President who has broken all records raising campaign funds, for a primary season in which he was unopposed by any serious candidate no less, also breaking all records for using Air Force One for campaigning... during that same unopposed primary season, of course.

Rush Detector Correcting the Record AGAIN: Rush Limbaugh already tried to spin this issue back in March.

A federal judge in California has declared the ThePartial Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional.

The judge ruled that the Act created an "undue burden" on a woman's right to choose an abortion.

Two other cases filed by Planned Parenthood are awaiting rulings.

It seems to me that we're making a really big mistake in our handling of Cuba.

The Bush Administration, over objections in Congress, has made travel restrictions more stringent to Cuba and continues to enforce heavy sanctions against the island nation. This appears to be less about Cuba being a Communist nation or a tryannical leader and more about the heavily Republican Cuban vote in Florida. This policy in my opinion is counterproductive.

China is also Communist nation with tyrannical leaders. Yet we can't get over their fast enough. China is growing by leaps and bounds US corporations are trying to market goods there like crazy. The Chinese have begun to embrace parts of capitalism. They're markets are slowly opening and the Chinese are slowly being exposed to American ideals of democracy and freedom.

Cuba remains a much more closed society...especially for Americans. Our sanctions against Cuba have done nothing over the years to get rid of Castro. In fact he's basically entrenched. The US should stop pandering to the Cuban community in Florida and begin to take proactive steps to market American goods and services in Cuba. Our citizens should go to Cuba for vacations and expose the Cuban people to American ideals of freedom and democracy. And maybe while we're there we could learn a few things from the Cubans...like how to provide good healthcare for all of our citzens, for example.

Al Gore has pissed the GOP off enough to now officially be labeled "unstable". Gore's speech last week that was sponsored by MoveOn.org seems to have created quite a stir. The thrust of Gore's speech was that Bush had brought dishonor to our nation with his handling of the Iraq situation...and that Bush has betrayed basic American values.

WorldNetDaily gets in on the action by referring to Gore as "psycho".

Those bastions of good journalism (rolling eyes) at NewsMax say about Gore and the Democrats,"This is a party that at its core believes that evil can be seduced or at least convinced to only eat one of your arms and legs.


The Boston Herald(the newspaper in Boston that carries the rightwing torch and is cited in Bush ads against Kerry all the time) is indignant that Gore would call Bush "incompetent. They call Gore a "disgrace" and "repugnant".

And finally...the rightwing birdcage liner New York Post says Gore is "insane" and his speech the "single craziest political performance" of the writer's lifetime. I guess "Bring it on" doesn't count.

As I read through each of these pieces I'm struck that none of them actually rebut anything Gore says. They smear Gore as a psycho. This is one of the consistent tactics used by the right and by the White House to attempt to dismiss criticism from individuals both outside and within.

As with many other Americans this Memorial Day is one I'm finding myself much more in tune with the meaning of the day than in years past.

This day we honor our war dead. Here is a list of American war dead from Iraq and Afghanistan. Their sacrifice for their nation is immeasurable. Thank you.

The United States currently has thousands of men and women serving in these regions. Many of them don't get regular mail. This site will hook you up with a person serving in the military and let you know what they might like to receive. I'm hoping my kids and I can put something together and send it off this week. This site offers a list of suggestions for what to send.

AFP is reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney coordinated a huge Haliburton Iraq contract despite Cheney's denials, according to a Time magazine story.

A March 5, 2003 email from an Army Corp of Engineers official details how Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith coordinated his approval of the huge Haliburton no-bid contract with the Vice President's office before submitting it to the White House for Bush's approval. Three days later Haliburton "won" the contract.

"As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" in September, Time said.

Time magazine's latest issue which hits the streets tomorrow has the whole story.

Cheney of course was Haliburton's CEO until he accepted the VP slot in 2000. Since then he has repeatedly denied having any personal interest or stake in Haliburton. This despite the fact that Haliburton is alleged to have formed a key constituent of the Cheney Energy Taskforce which the VP has fought tooth and nail to prevent anyone from finding out details of. Enron and others are also alleged to have formed core constituents of that same Energy Taskforce.

Didn't the Bush/Cheney team promise in 2000 to restore honor and dignity to the White House? They inherited a balanced budget with projected 10 figure surpluses. Four short years later we're running projected 10 figure deficits. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq account for only a small fraction of that spending.

All of this begs the question: Is the Bush Administration Enroning American? And who are they really serving - Corporate America or We The People?

Props to Carla for coining the phrase, "Enroning America" last year sometime.