Some thoughts on oil, dollar, gold in Ominous: The US deficit vs the dollar
Economic vodoo, if you are not familar with this stuff, but serious for your financials. I´ll try to boil this down tomorrow.

Posted by: b | Oct 13 2004 22:31 utc | 4

If you haven’t seen it yet, head over to thesmokinggun.com and read the torrid details of the sexual harrassment suit against Bill O’Reilly of Fox, brought against him by producer Andrea Makris. The guy is clearly ill, and the suit will finish him. It is unbelievable (and disturbing) reading.

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 14 2004 0:40 utc | 6

JMFeeney…
I am glad someone can tell if he is coming or going or chilling.
If you are right–and his eyes were rather watery tonight (did you note also the lack of muscle tension on the left side of his face?)–our best bet is to hope they continue to slip extra tranqs into his Mickeys.
This is especially so if he should win the election. A mellow Bush is about all the world can take for another four.
And speaking of mellow….Kerry was nearly somnolent tonight. Initially I was furious at his passivity. He should have wound up with at least a few caffeine pills. Or maybe, avoided that bike ride yesterday.
But then, as with Bush, maybe a somnabulist is really what a doctor would order for America right now. Someone who is too tired or too tranqed to push the boundaries of Empire any further.
Americans may be in a mood to give their vote to the candidate who demonstrates the least initiative. Someone who will put us gently to sleep everynight. If so, Kerry won big tonight.

Posted by: koreyel | Oct 14 2004 4:06 utc | 8

I am sure all of you have noticed the heartfelt news over at Today in Iraq.
As much as we all miss Billmon’s brilliant pen, I suspect Yankee Doodle is equally missed.
There are two huge holes now out there.
Hopefully Yankee Doodle will be back in a week or so to continue his good work for gratis. What a remarkable person.
While none of us are irreplaceable, some of us are more irreplaceable than others.
Salud Yankee Doodle, Salud.

Posted by: koreyel | Oct 14 2004 4:27 utc | 10

Catlady,
I saw a production of Aida in that building.
At intermission I walked to all the building’s corners and visited the various seating sections.
I noted the carpets, the bathrooms, the ceilings, the hallways, the aisles, the seats, the stair railings.
It was all so damn gorgeous.
I didn’t think my perspective could be further enriched. Thanks for the further enrichment.
Fascinating.

Posted by: koreyel | Oct 14 2004 4:36 utc | 12

History may rhyme. (But you already suspected as much, didn’t you?) From the Seattle Times:
Provisional votes could be this year’s hanging chads
By Anne Gearan
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Call it the law of unintended consequences.
A new national backup system meant to ensure that millions of eligible voters are not mistakenly turned away from the polls this year, as happened in 2000, could wind up causing Election Day problems as infamous as Florida’s hanging chads.
Congress required conditional, or provisional, voting as part of election fixes passed in 2002. For the first time, all states must offer a backup ballot to any voter whose name does not appear on the rolls when the voter comes to the polling place on Nov. 2. If the voter is later found eligible, the vote will count.
But Congress did not specify exactly how the provisional votes will be evaluated.
Add the ordinary problems that come with something new, and the result is a recipe for mix-ups at the polls and lawsuits over alleged unequal treatment of some voters, said Doug Chapin, executive director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for information on election reform.
“If I had to pick the one thing that will be source of controversy on Election Day, it will be provisional voting,” Chapin said.
State election officials have adopted differing standards for when a provisional ballot will count; some of those rules are still in flux three weeks from the election.
Rules for who casts provisional ballots and how they are counted probably will vary even within states, especially if there are long lines, confusion and hot tempers at the polls, election experts said.
Some states where the race is tightest, such as Florida and Ohio, also have the strictest rules for provisional ballots.
Democrats and Republicans are training lawyers and election monitors to look for problems with provisional voting. Already, suits in five states claim officials are adopting too strict a standard, denying the right to vote to some eligible voters.
Questions about provisional ballots could produce a battle after the election, too, with echoes of the Florida fight of 2000.
Lawyers for President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are ready for a new overtime contest in states where, if the election is close enough, the winner could be determined by provisional votes.
Like Florida’s punch cards, provisional ballots are pieces of paper that must be evaluated individually and counted by hand. The task is time-consuming, and most states have short deadlines to get the job done, said Doug Lewis, director of the Election Center, a nonpartisan research and training organization for state and local election administrators.[…]

Posted by: Pat | Oct 14 2004 5:03 utc | 14

More on O’Reilly..via Drudge
OCTOBER 13–Hours after Bill O’Reilly accused her of a multimillion dollar shakedown attempt, a female Fox News producer fired back at the TV star today, filing a lawsuit claiming that he subjected her to repeated instances of sexual harassment and spoke often, and explicitly, to her about phone sex, vibrators, threesomes, masturbation, the loss of his virginity, and sexual fantasies. Below you’ll find a copy of Andrea Mackris’s complaint, an incredible page-turner that quotes O’Reilly, 55, on all sorts of lewd matters. Based on the extensive quotations cited in the complaint, it appears a safe bet that Mackris, 33, recorded some of O’Reilly’s more steamy soliloquies. For example, we direct you to his Caribbean shower fantasies. While we suggest reading the entire document, TSG will point you to interesting sections on a Thailand sex show, Al Franken, and the climax of one August 2004 phone conversation.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 14 2004 10:50 utc | 16

The FT really is a must-read these days.
Leading Republican lambasts Bush
Money quote:

A leading Republican says President George W. Bush is “mesmerised” by Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister, and that the Bush administration’s recent co-operation with the United Nations and Nato in Afghanistan and Iraq is a desperate move to “rescue a failing venture”.
Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser and close collaborator of former president George H. W. Bush, told the Financial Times that the US administration’s “unilateralist” stance had contributed to the decline of the transatlantic relationship.
“It’s in general bad,” he said. “It’s not really hostile but there’s an edge to it.”
(…)
“Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger”, Mr Scowcroft said. “I think the president is mesmerised.”
“When there is a suicide attack [followed by a reprisal] Sharon calls the president and says, ‘I’m on the front line of terrorism’, and the president says, ‘Yes, you are. . . ‘ He [Mr Sharon] has been nothing but trouble.”
(…)
Mr Scowcroft said the US’s initial failure to take up Nato offers of assistance in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 was a “severe rebuff”. “We had gotten contemptuous of Europeans and their weaknesses,” he said. “We had really turned unilateral.”

Go read the whole thing. Of course, we already know that Mr Scowcroft is “stuck in 9/10 mode”, but how often can you read these things about Mr Sharon from a person like him?!

Posted by: Jérôme | Oct 14 2004 11:44 utc | 18

From Jérômes FT article

“When I first heard Sharon was getting out of Gaza I was having dinner with Condi [Rice] and she said: ‘At least that’s good news.’ And I said: ‘That’s terrible news . . . Sharon will say: ‘I want to get out of Gaza, finish the wall [the Israelis’ security fence] and say I’m done’.”

Shows how little understanding Mrs. Rice has of dealing with complex problems.
The worst National Security Adviser ever.

Posted by: b | Oct 14 2004 12:39 utc | 20

The other part of Monday’s new law:
US to rate its allies on their treatment of Jews
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 13/10/2004)
Telegraph on New Law
“In another test of America’s frayed relations with France, Russia and other allies, the US Congress has ordered the State Department to start rating governments throughout the world on their treatment of Jewish citizens.
“The resulting report cards on anti-Semitism would be published in annual US surveys of human rights abuses around the world.
“The proposed law was passed by the House of Representatives on Monday, in response to what its sponsors called an alarming surge in anti-Semitism, especially in Europe. It has already been passed by the Senate.
“Congress overruled strong opposition from diplomats at the State Department who complained in an internal memo that a special focus on Judaism, “opens us to charges of favouritism and challenges the credibility of our reporting.”
“There is little doubt that the new law will create diplomatic waves.
“France, Russia, Malaysia, Egypt, Canada and Australia were singled out by congressional sponsors of the law as countries that had witnessed disturbing outbreaks of discrimination against Jews in the past year.
“The law, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, also ordered the establishment of an office at the State Department dedicated to monitoring anti-Semitism, again over the department’s protests.
“The resulting internal row must now be resolved by President George W Bush as the legislation heads to his desk from Congress. With the act overwhelmingly backed by both parties, officials in Congress said they expected he would sign it into law.
“A three-page State Department memorandum, leaked to The Telegraph yesterday, complained that congressional plans would throw US human rights reporting “out of balance”, and “erode our credibility by being interpreted as favouritism in human rights reporting.”
“In a sign of the diplomatic anxieties, the State Department argued for anti-Semitism monitoring to remain a task conducted behind closed doors, by the department’s existing “special envoy for holocaust issues.”
“At the moment, US diplomats discreetly gather data on anti-Semitism from other governments, in multilateral conferences held in Europe and an annual international religious freedom round table sponsored by Washington.
“There is no need for the special envoy to hold public hearings, take testimony or receive evidence to effectively monitor and combat anti-Semitism,” said the memo, which was sent to congressional sponsors of the new law.
“Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and Holocaust survivor who was one of the sponsors, denounced State Department talk of “favouritism” as an alarming nod to “the worst stereotypes of Jews perpetrated in anti-Semitic tracts throughout modern history”.
“Mr Lantos said the objections from diplomats overlooked existing offices at the State Department dedicated to promoting religious freedom, women’s rights, and Tibetan rights.
” did not touch directly on the risk of offending French or other allied sensibilities.
“Lynne Weil, his communications director, said: “It’s unclear why anyone would be offended by this.
“If a government takes offence at this, that government should be offended by the acts of its own citizens, if they are hateful.”
Thoughts?

Posted by: Bea | Oct 14 2004 13:32 utc | 22

Is ‘The Onion’ a serious newsource? If yes, this sounds scary. Has Cheney gone over the edge?
Cheney vows to attack US if Kerry is elected
In an announcement that has alarmed voters across the nation, Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he will personally attack the U.S. if Sen. John Kerry wins the next election.
Above: Cheney issues a warning to Greensboro, NC voters.
“If the wrong man is elected in November, the nation will come under a devastating armed attack of an unimaginable magnitude, one planned and executed by none other than myself,” Cheney said, speaking at a rally in Greensboro, NC. “When they go to the polls, Americans must weigh this fact and decide if our nation can ignore such a grave threat.”
Added Cheney: “It would be a tragedy to suffer another attack on American soil, let alone one perpetrated by an enemy as well-organized and well-equipped as I am. My colleagues and I urge voters to keep their safety in mind when they go to the polls.”
Although Cheney would not comment on the details of his proposed attack on a John Kerry-led U.S., national-security experts said he possesses both the capabilities and the motivation to pose a serious threat.

Posted by: Fran | Oct 14 2004 16:00 utc | 24

Fran, the Onion is a serious parody. Always. Relax.

Posted by: rapt | Oct 14 2004 16:09 utc | 26

The Onion is certainly parody, but it is sometimes amazingly good at finding the truth via parody.
One of the best examples is their January 2001 article entitled “Bush – Our national nightmare of peace and prosperity if finally over”. Their archives are not accessible anymore, but someone recently pulled the article and inserted some links into that article (which, remember, was written just as Bush was entering the White House) to refer to actual events. The result can be found here
If you have not seen this previously, go see it, it’s really amazing.

Posted by: Jérôme | Oct 14 2004 17:04 utc | 28

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s top nuclear authority said on Thursday it had finished construction of an atomic power plant in Iran — a project the United States fears Tehran could use to make nuclear arms.
“We’re done. All we need to do now is work out (with the Iranians) the agreement on sending spent fuel back to Russia,” said a spokesman for Russia’s Atomic Energy Agency (RosAtom).
To allay U.S. concerns, Russia has promised not to start up the Bushehr plant in southern Iran until Tehran guarantees to return to Russia all spent nuclear fuel, which can be used in making weapons.
Looks like the mad mullahs have countered the mad likudnikes?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 14 2004 20:43 utc | 30

How is Iraq?
ginmar, feminist blogger GI somewhere in iraq, writes

They’re delivering mail at night—or trying to. Seven days without mail, because they keep getting attacked. Not enough people for an escort. Nobody has their election ballots yet. The people fighting to bring elections to the people here might not be able to participate in their own.

Next to that, the Green Zone, which should be the most secure place in Iraq was successfully penetrated by suicide bombers. Several Iraqis and GIs died. Allawi is threatening to have Fallujah bombed to rubble if the don´t hand over the (not existing) Zarqawi.
That war is lost for the US. The question now is only how long and how many dead and wounded will it take for the US to recognize it.

Posted by: b | Oct 14 2004 21:10 utc | 32

The peak oil crisis is the million pound gorilla in America’s near-future. The trade imbalance is equally troubling. Seems to me, though I’m guessing, that Europe is better prepared, in an instrumental way, to cope w/ the end of oil. Nothing about the political campaigns here in the U.S. even attempt to address these structural failures in the global economy.
Perhaps the days of creative destruction are over. Now, the gyre of the historic balance of social relations and forces of production will not hold–will not be offered its regular restitutions. It is easy to fear for the future, though perhaps the form of life that emerges from this calamity will listen to freejazz and refuse to watch the NFL on Sundays.
…and how shall we presume,
and how shall we begin?…

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 15 2004 0:32 utc | 34

my esteemed comrade slothrop
i think we, here in europe will also be paying for bush stupidity for a long time to come.
he sd there would be no shelter for terrorists except the reality is the contraire – we will pay for the holy war of the americans. there is no refuge from the consequences. they are going to be felt everywhere
know that perhaps i am too apocalyptic in my tones but that is what i feel in my bones. the stupidity of what they have done does not reduce the enormity of their acts & deeds
& i still think that even though we are all devoting our best efforts to comprehend what is happening – what is happening is so terrible in its reality that we will wake decades from today feeling the aftereffects of what has gone down
what i have sd before here – this anarchic & clearly directionless (aalmost) resistance is capable of inflicting what it took the vietnamese thirty years to attempt with standing armies
this loose grouping of people is tearing the american army down forcing them time & time again to use puppets, to create fortresses & even then it does not work. it leaves american force with only one option – systematic massacres – as seymour hersh proved beyond any dount was the standard operating procedure in vietnam for the u s army
the bloodbaths that have been conducted & the bloodbaths to come will not wash away the sins of this administration
i’m so sick & tired of their endless & stupid narratives – al zaqarwi did this, al zaqarwi did that – as someone pointed out – a necesary narrative for them – i think someone here used the analogy of carlos the jackall – where everyhting north south east & west was pinned on him because it served their interests – meanwhile was smoking cigars & chasing women in syria & sudan
the narratives exist to hide the enormity of the failure
the narrative exists as it must have for effram zimbalist each week telling the stories of the fbi
the narrative exist to hide what is multiple is perverted into something singular
the narrative exist to hide all significant factors who? what? when?
the narrative exists in the end to be bought & sold like the whores they are
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 15 2004 0:53 utc | 36

Hurry…go to C-pan’s home page.
A picture is worth 10³ words.
The words say: Status of U.S. Economy
But Greenspan’s picture shows the real nature of America’s economy. It ain’t pretty, but it sure the hell is voluble.

Posted by: koreyel | Oct 15 2004 2:13 utc | 38

Josh Marshall has linked to this Article in Atlanic Monthly (August Edition) which he has written. It shows that there is a difference in the view and approach toward terrorism, between Bush and Kerry.
Kerry Faces the World – What would a John Kerry foreign policy look like? In some ways a lot like one the current President’s father could endorse

Posted by: Fran | Oct 15 2004 5:32 utc | 40

Pepe Escobar’s Asia Times article linked by b real includes, among other interesting things, this…
“Disinformation and propaganda are key. Creating a ‘face’ to terror is key. So these black psy-ops always include the creation of a cipher. One American psy-ops operative recently leveled with the Australian newspaper The Age: ‘We were basically paying up to US$10,000 a time to opportunists and criminals who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq.'”
Funny, I thought that statement, originally attributed to a “US military intelligence agent,” was made to a reporter (Adrian Blomfield) for the Telegraph, where the statement first appeared. Whatever, it’s circulating. It definitely caught my eye because here allegedly was a self-identified military humint guy volunteering to dishing newspaper reporters that he and his fellows were taken for a wild ride by their sources. (Shorter revelation: Boy, we suck.) Um, not LIKELY. And $10,000 a pop for information? The CIA bids up the price of intel wherever it goes – competition, what can you do? – but the DoD ceiling remains well below that lofty sum.
It wasn’t an MI agent who spoke to the reporter. But it WAS somebody seriously disgruntled with the administration. So whose bogus “psyops operative” or “military intelligence agent” was it? Inquiring Minds Want To Know (TM).

Posted by: Pat | Oct 15 2004 6:58 utc | 42

Pat………….Zarqawi must be superman…….. hiding in Fallujah………..bombing inside the Green Zone………..that the media buy this shit, especially the BBC is just a fucking disgrace.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 15 2004 8:32 utc | 44

@CP
That one man is responsible for the deaths of more Iraqi civilians than all Israeli citizens killed in the Intifada. Does that mean he’s killed every one of them personally? No. OBL is responsible for the murder of almost 3,000 on US soil. Last I checked, he didn’t do it himself.
If Zarqawi is, as some never tire to assert, a convenient invention, then he’s an invention that the intelligence services of the UK, Germany, France, Jordan, and others are busy contributing to.

Posted by: Pat | Oct 15 2004 8:55 utc | 46

Roach on the difference in the current economic development of Europe and the United States: Productivity Convergence?

Europe has nowhere to go but up, and that long and arduous journey now appears to be under way. America, by contrast, is at the top of its game — coming off eight fat years the likes of which most leading economies have rarely seen. But now burdened with an unprecedented shortfall of national saving, a record current-account deficit, and a massive overhang of debt, it will be exceedingly difficult for the US to keep the magic alive.
…
If US and European productivity growth were, in fact, to converge over the next few years, this would have very important implications for financial markets. Global investors have become convinced that America is the world’s best productivity story. This, together with outstanding earning performance, has had a profound impact on the perpetual overweight of US equities in global asset allocation portfolios. The US-centric productivity story has also been key to America’s seemingly effortless ability to finance an ever-widening current account deficit. Most believe that there is a “natural” demand for dollar-denominated assets since they represent a claim on the world’s greatest productivity story. The productivity convergence play could certainly challenge that presumption as well — undermining dollar support and providing a boost to the euro at just the time when America’s current account deficit is veering out of control.
Productivity growth is where the rubber meets the road for economic and financial market performance. One of the key assumptions embodied in the collective mindset of investors, businesspeople, and policy makers is that the United States has established permanent leadership in the global productivity sweepstakes. A corollary to that belief is that Europe will never get to the Promised Land of productivity revival. In the realm of economics, it’s change at the margin that always matters most. For a congenital euro-skeptic like me, it is very hard to admit it — the coming productivity convergence could force us to rethink the long-standing contrast between America and Europe.

Posted by: b | Oct 15 2004 14:44 utc | 48

Looks like the US is now also devolving into a third world nation concerning womens rights.
U.S. Rejects U.N. Plan for Women
UNITED NATIONS — The United States has refused to join 85 heads of state and government in signing a statement that endorsed a 10-year-old U.N. plan to ensure every woman’s right to education, healthcare and choice about having children.
…
The statement was signed by leaders of 85 nations, including those in the European Union, China, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and more than a dozen African countries, as well as 22 former world leaders.
Even China and Pakistan signed it!!!
I think Monford is pointing on a important issue.
Can John Kerry Cure Cancer? Miracle worker or no, after the tyranny of BushCo, a “normal” prez will be a blessed relief

Posted by: Fran | Oct 15 2004 15:31 utc | 50

Makes you wonder about Karma and all that stuff.
No flu vaccine aid from Canada is likely, as issue becomes political

Posted by: Fran | Oct 15 2004 16:12 utc | 52

A good one from the Guardian about an upcoming BBC documentation by Adma Curtis: The making of the terror myth

The Power of Nightmares seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The latter, it argues, is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have “sleeper cells”. It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.
Curtis’ evidence for these assertions is not easily dismissed. He tells the story of Islamism, or the desire to establish Islam as an unbreakable political framework, as half a century of mostly failed, short-lived revolutions and spectacular but politically ineffective terrorism. Curtis points out that al-Qaida did not even have a name until early 2001, when the American government decided to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence and had to use anti-Mafia laws that required the existence of a named criminal organisation.
…
They are not the only ones who find opportunities. “Almost no one questions this myth about al-Qaida because so many people have got an interest in keeping it alive,” says Curtis. He cites the suspiciously circular relationship between the security services and much of the media since September 2001: the way in which official briefings about terrorism, often unverified or unverifiable by journalists, have become dramatic press stories which – in a jittery media-driven democracy – have prompted further briefings and further stories. Few of these ominous announcements are retracted if they turn out to be baseless: “There is no fact-checking about al-Qaida.”
…
As Curtis traced the rise of the “Straussians”, he came to a conclusion that would form the basis for The Power of Nightmares. Straussian conservatism had a previously unsuspected amount in common with Islamism: from origins in the 50s, to a formative belief that liberalism was the enemy, to an actual period of Islamist-Straussian collaboration against the Soviet Union during the war in Afghanistan in the 80s (both movements have proved adept at finding new foes to keep them going). Although the Islamists and the Straussians have fallen out since then, as the attacks on America in 2001 graphically demonstrated, they are in another way, Curtis concludes, collaborating still: in sustaining the “fantasy” of the war on terror.

Posted by: b | Oct 15 2004 18:53 utc | 54

@biklett – that´s redicules – whats next?
The Statue of Liberty was created by Moses enginers?

Posted by: b | Oct 15 2004 21:45 utc | 56

@biklett
Unfuckingbelieveable
Meanwhile……..
21st Century Book-Burning
Mrs. Cheney, There’s More to U.S. History than Heroes.
by Steven J. Ross
One of the marks of authoritarian regimes is their effort to stop the spread of knowledge and free speech. In May 1933, Nazi sympathizers in Berlin burned 20,000 “degenerate” books, many of them written by Jews and anti-fascists such as Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht and Franz Kafka. Here at home, slaveholders were so frightened by the power of the word that throughout the antebellum South legislatures made it a crime to teach slaves to read and write.
Now, Lynne Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife and the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has placed herself in the company of dictators and slaveholders. At her urging, the Education Department destroyed more than 300,000 copies of a booklet designed to help parents and children learn more about America’s past.
Cheney objected to the booklet’s reference to the National Standards for History, guidelines for teaching history in secondary schools that were developed at UCLA in the 1990s and that suggest that American history should be taught with an eye not only to America’s successes but to its struggles and dark moments as well. …

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 15 2004 22:46 utc | 58

bicklett
So now we have a little clue as to what Jim Towey was up to over at Faith Based Initiatives, and the opening of offices in 10 government Departments. I suppose next we’ll see a faith based grant from the Dept of Agriculture promoting “prayers for rain” as the governments solution to droughts, or maybe funding “the crime prevention merits of stoning as opposed to incarceration” through the Dept of Justice. Who knows !!

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 16 2004 0:58 utc | 60

Actual Text of Senate/House Bills Kept Secret
thomas.loc.gov Oct 15, 2004:
The final versions of House Bill (HR 10) and Senate Bill (S2845) currently being reconciled to implement the recommendations of the 911 Commission and to implement an unconstitutional National ID System have apparently not been made available to the public in the thomas.loc.gov website.
Bill Summary & Status for the 108th Congress
S.2845
Title: A bill to reform the intelligence community and the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Collins, Susan M. [ME] (introduced 9/23/2004) Cosponsors (10)
Related Bills: H.R.10, H.R.5150, S.2840
Latest Major Action: 10/8/2004 Measure amended in Senate by unanimous consent after passage by Unanimous Consent.
Note: Per H.Res. 827, upon receipt of a message from the Senate transmitting S. 2845, the House shall be considered to have inserted H.R. 10 – as passed House – in S. 2845, insisted on its amendment to S. 2845, and requested a conference with the Senate on S. 2845. The texts of H.R. 10 / S. 2845 as passed House and as passed Senate are not yet available.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 16 2004 5:35 utc | 62

at the amazon page for the 911 commission rpt the customer recommendation (more than 160 customers too), in addition to the commissions book, is The American Prophecies: Ancient Scriptures Reveal Our Nation’s Future. It’s obvious from reading through the user reviews of the 911 book what’s going on. For fun, follow some of the poster’s other reviews, if the link even works.

Posted by: b real | Oct 16 2004 17:59 utc | 64

b, just the first day of Ramadan…………….

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 16 2004 20:19 utc | 66

Hi all – great to see/read everyone again. Just got spiffy new Mac w/ OS X/Safari so I can get this site. Netscape 4.x didn’t cut it!
@b 10/15 – 10:44am. Read entire essay on Productivity Convergence w/yr. link. Coming from a family monoculture of Business, I’m really weak on econ/business/finance, so I’d appreciate clarification. Is this article saying, in effect, that there’s a relationship bet. Bu$hCo’s huge tax cuts for top .001% & massive firings of the rest of us – shipping jobs overseas? That the latter was necessary to drive sufficient foreign capital into America via “artifically” inflating stock values etc. to offset deficits his tax cuts generated? thanks

Posted by: jj | Oct 17 2004 7:36 utc | 68

CP, thanks for the link. What I still do not understand is Blairs thinking and behavior. Bush was somehow clear to me from the very beginning, it was one of incompetence, if not of stupitity. But Blair somehow was able to convey an image of intelligence and even compassion for the weakest in the world. So was he just a brilliant image creator or has something happened that has turned him into a ‘poodle’, thereby risking everything that has seemed to be dear to him?
Or maybe, does the Bush administration blackmail him with something. How else to explain another Independent article today.
Star Wars deal places US missiles on UK soil

Posted by: Fran | Oct 17 2004 8:25 utc | 70