Year: 2005

SMALL PRINT

John T Bennett: ‘In Firefox, hold down ctrl and hit it either + or – . With Internet Explorer, click View and then text size.’

Michael Axelrod: ‘There are many other reasons to switch to Firefox as well.’

KOOL-AID

Dan: ‘I have long enjoyed your thought provoking comments. This makes it hard not to come back to your column anymore. Which is my first response to your anti-church columns of late. I am a Christian and I vote my conscience. That does not make me a whacked out drone who thinks Bush II is the greatest man since Jesus. Your columns do not adequately portray American Christians. In fact, you seem intent on reinforcing negative stereotypes that serve no purpose but to further separate the reds and blues in this country. This is really troubling, as what we need is coming together on values that we all share, not focusing on the differences. I want to threaten never to read your column again, but I know I will. Just don’t know why you want to bash one specific group because you don’t agree with them. Maybe I’ll boycott a week or so.’

☞ Thanks, Dan. My intention is not to offend, let alone bash. And I totally agree that – as I read the Bible – true Christians are nothing like the ones in power who relentlessly favor the rich over the poor, reject every plea for clemency (even mock the condemned, as Bush did Karla Faye Tucker), abuse the environment, and, far from turning the other cheek, rush to war even when not attacked. (Iraq did not attack us.)

GOOGLE EARTH

Risë Vandenburg: “We are loving Google Earth like no other software we have ever had.”

Brad: “I found the Google Moon site today.  To see the best part, keep hitting the plus key (zoom in) until you reach the highest level.  It made me laugh!”

MARRIAGE $$$

Sue Rinne: “I’m 43, and only beginning to think about saving for retirement.  Oops.  Luckily, a previous employer was thinking about it for me, so I have $60k in a pension fund.  Luckier still, I married a wonderful man a couple of years ago.  He began thinking about retirement only a couple of years before I did.  Feeling anxiety from his slow start in this area, he is now a zealot for savings, and immediately upon our marriage he gave me $3000 and told me to open a Roth IRA (my first, at the age of 42!)  Here’s my point:  Next time you update your investment book, one piece of advice might be this:  Get married.  John and I were ‘together’ for almost 17 years before we got married.  For a variety of reasons, we never shared a home.  That meant we had two sets of living expenses.  Now we have one.  For the 5 years immediately preceding our marriage, we lived 250 miles apart.  That cost us a little in phone bills and travel expenses, but it cost even more in boredom-and-loneliness-prevention tactics for me.  I bought CDs, books, and clothes not because I needed them or even wanted them, but because I was bored and – sometimes – lonely.  Most importantly, I am now somewhat responsible for someone else’s financial security and future.  When I was single, I spent what I wanted to and saved nothing, because I was only hurting myself.  It was nobody’s business if I hit 65 without a penny in the bank – and, frankly, I thought much more about the present than about that distant future.  Now, my husband and I are in this together and THAT HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE FOR ME.  I am responsible to him – as he is to me – for our financial picture.  I’m also more future-oriented.  We are looking forward to a lovely, comfortable retirement by living off of one modest salary and investing the entirety of another modest salary.  We’re catching up quickly!  So, for some of your readers, the best advice might be: Get married.

☞ Or, for those of us forbidden by law to marry: “live together.”  Thanks, Sue!

BEST VIDEO OF THE YEAR

Whatever you may think of dogs that play the piano – or national ID cards – your day will be brighter if, broadband enabled, you watch this. (Thanks, Jackie!)

MY OLD BOOK

Jack Nettleton: ‘When I read your book 20 years ago, there was some good advice to forget about commodities since 90% of commodities speculators lose money. I noticed that the 2005 edition has the same advice. I wonder whether the availability of PCRIX changes the situation. The fund invests in indexed commodity futures and puts the collateral in TIPS. The institutional class shares are available to anyone who pays $35 – through Vanguard Discount Brokerage in my case.’

☞ Good question. The risks are obviously much smaller, because instead of your competing with giant market pros like Pimco (or General Foods or whatever example I used in the book), you have the advantages of their expertise and the diversification that $3.75 billion under management can bring. Also, the expense ratios for this fund are way below average for comparable funds. So it’s somewhat risky, but by no means suicidal the way individual commodities speculation is.

MY NEW BOOK

Before the investment guide I wrote Fire and Ice, a biography of Charles Revson, who founded Revlon. I was so lucky with it, I often thought of turning it into a series: Firewater and Icecubes would be the Samuel Bronfman/Seagrams story, and Fire and Life was what I wanted to call my insurance industry book. (I was overruled.) All this, long ago. The memories came flooding back with this suggestion from Rene: ‘Why don’t you write a new book about the Bush gang and Mr. Rove called Fire (Him) and Rice ?

BOREF

You’ve read about Borealis; now you can hear an interview with the head of Power Chips, one of its subsidiaries. Does he sound credible? Beats me. Click here. (Often, companies pay to be interviewed on this site. A representative of Borealis told me that, in this case, no compensation was involved.)

NTMD’s 2 CENTS

So I listened to the nearly three-hour conference call Friday morning. The company’s drug, BiDil, all seem to agree, will save lives and shorten hospital stays. Indeed, by that standard, it will have a negative cost – the $2,000 annual cost of the drug is less than the estimated $3,800 average annual savings on hospitalization.

The only thing not addressed at much length: why would people – or insurers – pay $2,000 a year for this combo pill when the generic version of the same two drugs is available separately for about $350? (And what would keep a generic pill maker from one day bringing out its own generic combo pill?)

To me, the people from the company sounded well-meaning and well-motivated. They have confirmed a life-saving therapy that almost surely has highly positive results among African-Americans. They are making it available free, or almost free, to anyone without insurance. They have 195 sales people now out selling 10,000, soon to be 30,000, docs on the benefits of this therapy. How can this not be good?

The analogy that comes to mind is a study that shows that a combination of a 225 milligrams of aspirin and 1000 milligrams of vitamin E – when ingested with an artichoke heart – cuts the duration (and mortality!) of influenza in half. What a boon to the world such a discovery would be!

But how would the drug company that had done the hard work to discover this, and the far harder work of getting FDA approval of the claim, make money from this discovery?

And, I asked my guru genius doctor guy who got me started on this in the first place, how come the people at the company and the analysts on the conference call don’t see this?

He e-mailed back in a language I only partly understand (like gangsta): ‘KOSP was at $40 in front of their launch of long-acting niacin for cholesterol. Six months later it is at 6. EYET was at 45 on Dec 31 as it launched a new drug for macular degeneration with partner Pfizer. It is now 13. NTMD has (1) no partner, (2) a tiny sales force, (3) a drug that is identical to existing generics. And so it goes.’

I should stress that buying NTMD puts (let alone shorting the stock) is – clearly – risky. Maybe insurers will decide to reimburse for BiDil after all. Maybe the company lawyers will be able to defend their intellectual property rights and keep insurers from substituting generics for BiDil. Maybe a Chinese pharmaceutical company will swoop in and acquire NTMD at 50. Maybe a short squeeze will develop and the stock will rocket to 90 before eventually falling to 3.

At the peak of the conference call, with a very rosy picture being painted, the stock briefly broke 23. It closed the day up 2 cents, at $22.82 – a $690 million valuation for a company with no sales or profits, but on the cusp of what they hope will be large ones.

In the next few months, prescriptions will be written for BiDil – or not. (For sure, a lot will be given away free.) So it’s not quite as dramatic as waiting by the side of an oil rig to see if anything comes gushing out. And not nearly as dramatic as watching Geraldo open Al Capone’s vault. But it could be a dramatic fall for Nitromed bulls and bears nonetheless.

KRUGMAN ON ROVE

Here.

Tomorrow (or soon): Notes from a Former Cultist
(Yes, One of Our Readers Helped Lead a Cult!)

NTMD

Michael: ‘Glad to see you have baited more shorts so as to run my gains that much higher. Thanks Toby!! Hahahaha be very, very, very funny to watch you cartwheel your way out of this but I wager you won’t even address it after you beating tomorrow. BTW maybe you should read the facts about the conference calls before you make lame statements!’

☞ Thanks, Michael. Why do you think insurers and HMOs (and patients) will choose BiDil over the generic when it costs six times as much? (Roughly $2,000 a year instead of roughly $350.) Separately, what proportion of the market do you think qualifies for the free BiDil that the company has promised (or the $25/month BiDil)? Let’s hope these questions get answered on this morning’s 8:30am-10:30am open-to-the-public call.

ROVE

Below is a bit more clarity than you will get from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on the Karl Rove scandal. It all ties in to the attempt to ‘fix the facts around the policy’ and take us into a war with Iraq that was front and center on the Bush agenda long before September 11. (He lied to us about intending to pursue a humble foreign policy, just as he lied to us that the ‘vast majority’ of his proposed tax cuts would go to ‘people at the bottom of the economic ladder.’ And the Republican leadership marches in lockstep with the program.)

The Big Lie About Valerie Plame
By Larry Johnson
From: TPMCafe Special Guests

The misinformation being spread in the media about the Plame affair is alarming and damaging to the longterm security interests of the United States. Republicans’ talking points are trying to savage Joe Wilson and, by implication, his wife, Valerie Plame as liars. That is the truly big lie.

For starters, Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. Novak’s column was not an isolated attack. It was in fact part of a coordinated, orchestrated smear that we now know includes at least Karl Rove.

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover–in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport–i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.

A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she [c]ould have been executed.

The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O’Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her.

The Republicans now want to hide behind the legalism that “no laws were broken”. I don’t know if a man made law was broken but an ethical and moral code was breached. For the first time a group of partisan political operatives publicly identified a CIA NOC. They have set a precedent that the next group of political hacks may feel free to violate.

They try to hide behind the specious claim that Joe Wilson “lied.” Although Joe did not lie let’s follow that reasoning to the logical conclusion. Let’s use the same standard for the Bush Administration. Here are the facts. Bush’s lies have resulted in the deaths of almost 1800 American soldiers and the mutilation of 12,000. Joe Wilson has not killed anyone. He tried to prevent the needless death of Americans and the loss of American prestige in the world.

But don’t take my word for it, read the biased Senate intelligence committee report. Even though it was slanted to try to portray Joe in the worst possible light this fact emerges on page 52 of the report: According to the US Ambassador to Niger (who was commenting on Joe’s visit in February 2002), “Ambassador Wilson reached the same conclusion that the Embassy has reached that it was highly unlikely that anything between Iraq and Niger was going on.” Joe’s findings were consistent with those of the Deputy Commander of the European Command, Major General Fulford.

The Republicans insist on the lie that Val got her husband the job. She did not. She was not a division director, instead she was the equivalent of an Army major. Yes it is true she recommended her husband to do the job that needed to be done but the decision to send Joe Wilson on this mission was made by her bosses.

At the end of the day, Joe Wilson was right. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration that pushed that lie and because of that lie Americans are dying. Shame on those who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a pass. That’s the true outrage

SUMMER RE-RUN

I came across this from last year, and in the spirit of summer reruns, couldn’t resist offering it again.

‘At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago,’ writes Professor Yoshi Tsurumi, ‘George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that ‘people are poor because they are lazy.’ He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to ‘free market competition.’ To him, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was ‘socialism.’ Recently, President Bush’s Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California’s Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt’s New Deal.’

Compassionate?

Tucker Carlson, until recently the ‘right’ wing of CNN’s Crossfire, profiled then-governor Bush for the premier issue of the now-defunct Talk magazine. He reported:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker’s] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ ”

“What was her answer?” I wonder.

“Please,” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “don’t kill me.”

‘I think it is nothing short of unbelievable,’ Gary Bauer was quoted at the time, ‘that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death.’

Monday (or soon): Notes from a Former Cultist
(Yes, One of Our Readers Helped Lead a Cult!)

WHIPSAWED

Peter M.: ‘I was short NTMD like you but covered at a loss when it broke above 23. Now I am long it. Can’t beat them, join them. I will ride it till before the conference call on July 15th. Eventually I would like to short this baby again. How about your short? Are you gonna ride it till NTMD comes home to roost?’

☞ Peter and I have a different strategy. I like to buy undervalued stocks and short overvalued ones. It’s boring, but the odds in the long run are pretty good – or they would be, anyway, if I could reliably identify over- and undervalued stocks. NTMD, which I believe is overvalued, closed last night at $21.86, so Peter took a loss when it went up and now has a small paper loss, as it’s gone down. This may impel him to take that loss as well and go short again. It’s called ‘getting whipsawed.’ I have no idea what will go on during the conference call. (I didn’t know there was a conference call.) I assume the company will be brimming with optimism. But I expect the analysts on the call may ask pointed questions. E.g., why will patients and insurance companies pay six or seven times the price for a pill whose two components are readily available separately for a tiny fraction of the cost? And how will you make money on the many patients to whom you’ve pledged to give the pill free?

SECOND MORTGAGE

Mark L: ‘The recent postings about the real estate bubble got me to thinking about getting a second mortgage. I bought my first house, in Northern California, just over a year ago, thinking I must be buying at the top of the market, but lo and behold the house has appreciated about 25% – slightly more than my 20% down payment (which was a huge chunk of my savings, and still is). We got a 30-year fixed mortgage at 5.5%, which is a great loan, and I don’t want to mess with it. I’ve been wondering for a while how to hedge against (what I think is) an inevitable drop in real estate values and thought of a second mortgage. I can pull out my entire down payment, plus a little extra, at a 7% interest rate (the lender on the second will allow us to borrow up to 90% loan-to-value), which would give me a “blended” rate on the two loans below 6%. If you had told me last year that I could finance 100% of my house at under 6%, I would have jumped at the chance. So shouldn’t I do it now? I should hasten to add that I have no intention of buying a boat with the proceeds! It would just be nice to have a liquid cushion instead of most of my savings tied up in the house. I figure I could invest 1/3 of the proceeds in short term treasuries, 1/3 in a domestic equity index fund, and 1/3 in an international index fund. Simple, inexpensive, and much more diversified than having all that money in one thing (the house). Obviously I’m paying a premium for the liquidity, and it’s another sizable (though partially tax deductible) payment we’ll have to make every month, but if short term rates keep climbing, even a 7% loan may look very cheap in a few years. Any thoughts?’

☞ I’d consider setting up a home equity loan that allows you to borrow against the value of the house, should you really need to. But would I actually borrow money at 7% today? Being a conservative type – no.

You’ll lose money on the Treasuries, and what if the stocks drop instead of rise? Eventually, they would likely come back; but might you be too scared at that point and sell out at a loss? (See: Whipsawed, above.)

Why not take the payments you’d make on the second mortgage and just put THAT straight into the index funds each month? (Or build a rainy day fund with it first if you prefer.)

Vive la France!

But first . . .

$$$

PPD closed last night at $51.60. Intrinsic value of the VPXAE calls we bought for $11.80 in March: $26.60. Thanks, Glenn.

Not too late to buy American Express (AXP) as a strong core holding.

GOOGLE EARTH

Brian Clark: ‘This is incredible. I realize that this can’t be real time for public safety reasons. It actually appears to be images that are over a year old, based on industrial buildings that have been built near my home – they are still trees in these satellite images. Still, it’s way cool!’

MIGHT YOU BE NEXT?

You gotta read the transcript . . . but first, just to get in the mood, skim this:

Who’s Watching the Watch List?
By John Graham
Posted July 7, 2005 on the AlterNet

My name is on a list of real and suspected enemies of the state and I can’t find out what I’m accused of or why, let alone defend myself.

Heading for Oakland from Seattle to see my grandkids last week, the Alaska Airlines check-in machine refused to give me a boarding pass. Directed to the ticket counter, I gave the agent my driver’s license and watched her punch keys at her computer.

Frowning, she told me that my name was on the national terrorist No Fly Watch List and that I had to be specially cleared to board a plane. Any plane. Then she disappeared with my license for 10 minutes, returning with a boarding pass and a written notice from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirming that my name was on a list of persons “who posed, or were suspected of posing, a threat to civil aviation or national security.”

No one could tell me more than that. The computer was certain.

Back home in Seattle, I called the TSA’s 800 number, where I rode a merry-go-round of pleasant recorded voices until I gave up. Turning to the TSA web site, I downloaded a Passenger Identity Verification form that would assist the TSA in “assessing” my situation if I sent it in with a package of certified documents attesting to who I was.

I collected all this stuff and sent it in. Another 20 minutes on the phone to the TSA uncovered no live human being at all, let alone one who would tell me what I’d presumably done to get on The List. Searching my mind for possible reasons, I’ve been more and more puzzled. I used to work on national security issues for the State Department and I know how dangerous our country’s opponents can be. To the dismay of many of my more progressive friends, I’ve given the feds the benefit of the doubt on homeland security. I tend to dismiss conspiracy theories as nonsense and I take my shoes off for the airport screeners with a smile.

I’m embarrassed that it took my own ox being gored for me to see the threat posed by the Administration’s current restricting of civil liberties. I’m being accused of a serious – even treasonous – criminal intent by a faceless bureaucracy, with no opportunity (that I can find) to refute any errors or false charges. My ability to earn a living is threatened; I speak on civic action and leadership all over the world, including recently at the US Air Force Academy. Plane travel is key to my livelihood.

According to a recent MSNBC piece, thousands of Americans are having similar experiences. And this is not Chile under Pinochet. It’s America. My country and yours.

With no real information to go on, I’m left to guess why this is happening to me. The easiest and most comforting guess is that it’s all a mistake (a possibility the TSA form, to its credit, allows). But how? I’m a 63-year-old guy with an Anglo-Saxon name. I once held a Top Secret Umbra clearance (don’t ask what it is but it meant the FBI vetted me up the whazoo for months). And since I left the government in 1980, my life has been an open book. It shouldn’t be hard for the government to figure out that I’m not a menace to my country.

If they do think that, I can’t see how. Since 1983 I’ve helped lead the Giraffe Heroes Project, a nonprofit that moves people to stick their necks out for the common good. In the tradition of Gandhi, King and Mandela, that can include challenging public policies people think are unjust. In 1990, the Project’s founder and I were honored as “Points of Light” by the first President Bush for our work in fostering the health of this democracy. I’ve just written a book about activating citizens to get to work on whatever problems they care about, instead of sitting around complaining.

I’m also engaged in international peacemaking, working with an organization with a distinguished 60-year record of success in places ranging from post-war Europe to Africa. Peacemakers must talk to all sides, so over the years I’ve met with Cambodians, Sudanese, Palestinians, Israelis and many others. You can’t convince people to move toward peaceful solutions unless you understand who they are.

As I said, I’m not into conspiracy theories. But I can’t ignore this administration’s efforts to purge and punish dissenters and opponents. Look, for example, at current efforts to cleanse PBS and NPR of “anti-administration” news. But I’m not Bill Moyers and the Giraffe Heroes Project is not PBS. We’re a small operation working quietly to promote real citizenship.

Whether it’s a mistake or somebody with the power to hassle me really thinks I am a threat, the stark absence of due process is unsettling. The worst of it is that being put on a list of America’s enemies seems to be permanent. The TSA form states:

The TSA clearance process will not remove a name from the Watch Lists. Instead this process distinguishes passengers from persons who are in fact on the Watch Lists by placing their names and identifying information in a cleared portion of the Lists.

Which may or may not, the form continues, reduce the airport hassles.

Huh? My name is on a list of real and suspected enemies of the state and I can’t find out what I’m accused of or why, let alone defend myself. And I’m guilty, says my government, not just until proven innocent or a victim of mistaken identity – but forever.

Sure, 9/11 changed a lot. Tougher internal security measures (like thorough screenings at airports and boundary crossings) are a dismal necessity. But, in protecting ourselves, we can’t allow our leaders to continue to create a climate of fear and mistrust, to destroy our civil liberties and, in so doing, to change who we are as a nation. What a victory that would be for our enemies, and what a betrayal of real patriots and so many in the wider world who still remember this country as a source of inspiration and hope.

I don’t think it’s like Germany in 1936 – but, look at Germany in 1930. Primed by National Socialist propaganda to stay fearful and angry, Germans in droves refused to see the right’s extreme views and actions as a threat to their liberties.

And don’t forget that frog. You know that frog. Dropped into a pot of boiling water, he jumps out to safety. But put him into a pot of cold water over a steady flame, he won’t realize the danger until it’s too late to jump.

So how hot does the water have to get? When the feds can rifle through your library reading list? When they can intimidate journalists? When a government agency can keep you off airplanes without giving you a reason? When there’s not even a pretense of due process? We’re not talking about prisoners at Guantanamo; this is you and me. Well, after last week, it sure as hell is me and it could be you, next.

Oh, yes — Washington State just refused to renew my driver’s license online, a privilege given others. I had to wait in line at the DMV before a computer decided I could drive home. This conspiracy theory debunker smells a connection to the Watch List.

I’m mobilizing everything I’ve got to challenge the government on this issue, in a country that I love and have served. Whatever your politics, it’s your fight too. Yes, there needs to be a list of the bad guys, coordinated among the security agencies with a need-to-know. But we must demand that the government make public its criteria for putting people on this list – and those reasons can’t include constitutionally protected dissent from government policies.

The feds can’t be allowed to throw names on the list without first doing simple checks for mistaken identity. And no one’s name should be added to the list, or kept on it, without a formal, open explanation of charges and the opportunity to challenge and disprove them. This assault on civil liberties must not stand – not for me, not for anybody.

John Graham is the author of Stick Your Neck Out: A Street-smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005). He is also president of the Giraffe Heroes Project and a former US diplomat.

And now . . .

QUESTIONS FOR THE PRESS SECRETARY

Here’s the transcript. Either the press secretary lied to the press about Karl Rove or else Karl Rove lied to the press secretary. Yesterday, though, ‘mum’ was clearly the word:

Q: Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in a leak of the name of a CIA operative?

MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked related to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point.

And as I’ve previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it.

The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation. And as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren’t going to comment on it while it is ongoing.

Q: I actually wasn’t talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the president said that he would fire anybody who was involved in this leak to the press about information. I just wanted to know: Is that still his position?

MCCLELLAN: Yes, but this question is coming up in the context of this ongoing investigation, and that’s why I said that our policy continues to be that we’re not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium.

The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium….

Q: Scott, if I could point out: Contradictory to that statement, on September 29th of 2003, while the investigation was ongoing, you clearly commented on it. You were the first one to have said that if anybody from the White House was involved, they would be fired. And then, on June 10th of 2004, at Sea Island Plantation, in the midst of this investigation, when the president made his comments that, yes, he would fire anybody from the White House who was involved. So why have you commented on this during the process of the investigation in the past, but now you’ve suddenly drawn a curtain around it under the statement of, ‘We’re not going to comment on an ongoing investigation’?

MCCLELLAN: Again, John, I appreciate the question. I know you want to get to the bottom of this. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States. And I think the way to be most helpful is to not get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation. And that’s something that the people overseeing the investigation have expressed a preference that we follow.

And that’s why we’re continuing to follow that approach and that policy. Now, I remember very well what was previously said. And, at some point, I will be glad to talk about it, but not until after the investigation is complete.

Q: So could I just ask: When did you change your mind to say that it was OK to comment during the course of an investigation before, but now it’s not?

MCCLELLAN: Well, I think maybe you missed what I was saying in reference to Terry’s question at the beginning. There came a point, when the investigation got under way, when those overseeing the investigation asked that it would be – or said that it would be their preference that we not get into discussing it while it is ongoing.

I think that’s the way to be most helpful to help them advance the investigation and get to the bottom of it.

Q: Scott, can I ask you this: Did Karl Rove commit a crime?

MCCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to a ongoing investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation. And I don’t think you should read anything into it other than: We’re going to continue not to comment on it while it’s ongoing.

Q: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, “I’ve gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this”?

MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation, we’re not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time as well.

Q: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you’re going to stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching this that somehow you’ve decided not to talk. You’ve got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?

MCCLELLAN: I’m well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation…

Q: (inaudible) when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?

MCCLELLAN: If you’ll let me finish.

Q: No, you’re not finishing. You’re not saying anything. You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn’t he?

MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

Q: Do you think people will accept that, what you’re saying today?

MCCLELLAN: Again, I’ve responded to the question.

Q: You’re in a bad spot here, Scott… because after the investigation began — after the criminal investigation was under way — you said, October 10th, 2003, “I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby. As I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this,” from that podium. That’s after the criminal investigation began.

Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation?

MCCLELLAN: No, that’s not a correct characterization. And I think you are well aware of that…..

And we want to be helpful so that they can get to the bottom of this. Because no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.

I am well aware of what was said previously. I remember well what was said previously. And at some point I look forward to talking about it. But until the investigation is complete, I’m just not going to do that.

Q: So you’re now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore and since then you haven’t.

MCCLELLAN: Again, you’re continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing criminal investigation and I’m just not going to respond to them.

Q: When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you pin down a date?

MCCLELLAN: Back in that time period.

Q: Well, then the president commented on it nine months later. So was he not following the White House plan?

MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response.

Q: Well, we are going to keep asking them. When did the president learn that Karl Rove had had a conversation with a news reporter about the involvement of Joseph Wilson’s wife in the decision to send him to Africa?

MCCLELLAN: I’ve responded to the questions.

Q: When did the president learn that Karl Rove had been…

MCCLELLAN: I’ve responded to your questions.

Q: After the investigation is completed, will you then be consistent with your word and the president’s word that anybody who was involved will be let go?

MCCLELLAN: Again, after the investigation is complete, I will be glad to talk about it at that point.

Q: Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove’s lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff, here?

MCCLELLAN: Well, those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigation while it’s ongoing. And that was what they requested of the White House. And so I think in order to be helpful to that investigation, we are following their direction.

Q: Does the president continue to have confidence in Mr. Rove?

MCCLELLAN: Again, these are all questions coming up in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation. And you’ve heard my response on this.

Q: So you’re not going to respond as to whether or not the president has confidence in his deputy chief of staff?

MCCLELLAN: You’re asking this question in the context of an ongoing investigation, and I would not read anything into it other then I’m simply going to comment on an ongoing investigation.

Q: Has there been any change, or is there a plan for Mr. Rove’s portfolio to be altered in any way?

MCCLELLAN: Again, you have my response to these questions….

***

Q: There’s a difference between commenting publicly on an action and taking action in response to it. Newsweek put out a story, an e-mail saying that Karl Rove passed national security information on to a reporter that outed a CIA officer. Now, are you saying that the president is not taking any action in response to that? Because I presume that the prosecutor did not ask you not to take action and that if he did you still would not necessarily abide by that; that the president is free to respond to news reports, regardless of whether there’s an investigation or not.

So are you saying that he’s not going to do anything about this until the investigation is fully over and done with?

MCCLELLAN: Well, I think the president has previously spoken to this.

This continues to be an ongoing criminal investigation. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States. And we’re just not going to have more to say on it until that investigation is complete.

***

Q: When the leak investigation is completed, does the president believe it might be important for his credibility, the credibility of the White House, to release all the information voluntarily that was submitted as part of the investigation, so the American public could see what transpired inside the White House at the time?

MCCLELLAN: This is an investigation being overseen by a special prosecutor. And I think those are questions best directed to the special prosecutor.

Q: Have you or the White House considered whether that would be optimal to release as much information and make it as open…

MCCLELLAN: It’s the same type of question. You’re asking me to comment on an ongoing investigation and I’m not going to do that.

Q: I’d like you to talk about the communications strategies just a little bit there.

MCCLELLAN: Understood. The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and that’s what he expects people in the White House to do.

Q: And he would like to do that when it is concluded, cooperate fully with…

MCCLELLAN: Again, I’ve already responded.

Q: Scott, who in the investigation made this request of the White House not to comment further about the investigation? Was it Mr. Fitzgerald? Did he make a request of you specifically?

MCCLELLAN: You can direct those questions to the special prosecutors. I think probably more than one individual who’s involved in overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference that we not get into commenting on the investigation while it’s ongoing.

Shades of Watergate.

But first . . .

COOL BEYOND WORDS

With the free Google Earth download, you can see your own rooftop, type in an address, and ‘fly’ way into the sky, zoom towards location, then slow and ‘land’ on the roof of your destination. (Be careful!)

HEALTH ADVICE

Keep your feet warm and your head cool and you will live a long, healthy life.

And yet heat rises.

Nothing’s easy.

And now . . .

THE F WORD

Some of you write to say that even if I preface something by saying it’s ‘extreme but interesting,’ that doesn’t get me off the hook. ‘You quote it, you own it,’ to adapt a line from Colin Powell.

Well, I don’t buy that. The following strikes me as extreme, but interesting:

Supreme Court – Media Ignore Possible “Fascist” Play
by Thom Hartmann

The Bush administration is spectacularly good at sleight-of-hand tricks, directing public attention in one direction while they’re working diligently in another. The latest trial balloon of “probable” Supreme Court nominees is no exception.

While everybody is worried about abortion rights and corporate power, a far more insidious agenda may be at play.

Anti-abortion forces and women’s rights groups alike are up in arms about the possibility that the next nominee may or may not have an opinion about the Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment (and others) in Roe v. Wade. This battle is being loudly played out in the mainstream corporate media, with every analysis and question ultimately turning back to Roe.

Because Alberto Gonzales isn’t on the record with regard to abortion rights, both sides are wary of him.

At the same time, corporatist “conservatives” are salivating at the opportunity to pack the Court with judges who will further erode the rights of communities and increase the power of multinational corporations and the super-rich in America. On June 28, 2005 The Wall Street Journal ran a major story (“For a High Court Nomination, Business Has Its Own Agenda”) on how corporate Republicans may be at odds with “social” Republicans, because the latter generally endorse states’ rights. Corporatists prefer a strong federal government where all politicians can be bought centrally in Washington, DC, and federal rules and agencies can be used to back down states that may want clean air or water.

Because Alberto Gonzales has a very limited record in ruling or writing on corporate rights and powers, the corporatists are not as enthusiastic about him as they are about others.

What nobody seems to be noticing, though, is what may well be the real agenda of George W. Bush and those around him – neo-fascism.

For this agenda, Alberto Gonzales is the perfect man.

Although he testified that “I don’t recall today whether I was in agreement with the analysis” on the meeting that led to the infamous 2002 torture memo that said “injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions – [are necessary] in order to constitute torture,” he actually chaired the committee that drafted it. As The Washington Post noted on January 5, 2003 (“Gonzales Helped Set Course On Detainees”), “White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales chaired the meetings on this issue, which included detailed descriptions of interrogation techniques such as ‘waterboarding,’ a tactic intended to make detainees feel as if they are drowning.”

Gonzales looked over death penalty cases in Texas as Governor Bush’s counsel, and, according to an article in The Atlantic Monthly and others, contributed to an environment in which children, mentally retarded persons, and almost certainly innocent men were executed by Bush’s order. In 2001, he helped draft Executive Order 13233, which began the shutdown of the transparency and accountability that have been hallmarks of American government since its inception. In 2002 he argued that the Geneva Conventions were “quaint” and that their language was sufficiently vague that the Bush administration could essentially ignore them.

He also wrote a Presidential Order saying that terror suspects could be tried by secret military tribunals and sentenced to death, and enthusiastically pushed for passage of the USA PATRIOT Act just as Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle and Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy – the two men in the Senate who could have shot down the PATRIOT Act – were receiving anthrax in the mail. Today, as Attorney General, the investigation of that terrorist incident is entirely in his hands.

There is no official count at the moment as to how many people have died at the hands of our interrogators since Gonzales authored his infamous memo, or how many people have been turned over to torturers in other nations by a process euphemistically called “extraordinary rendition.” (Estimates run from a low of around 60 up into the thousands.) This is because Gonzales and others in the administration have led a process where, The New York Times notes, “government secrecy has reached a historic high by several measures, with federal departments classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute…”

For that matter, we don’t even know how many American citizens are, like Jose Padilla, currently “disappeared,” being held incommunicado within or outside the United States, in clear violation of the Constitution but at the behest of the Bush administration. Such information is “classified.”

Although the Supreme Court under Earl Warren declined to rule on the legality of LBJ’s Vietnam War, a variety of anti-liberty dimensions of Bush’s so-called “war on terror” are almost certain to end up before the Court. An administration that can use the final imprimatur of the Supreme Court to “disappear” dissidents, corral Democratic Party campaigners into “free speech zones” with guns and bayonets, and declare a perpetual “war on terror” to prevent any investigations of its failures and crimes doesn’t need to worry about the politics of abortion. Or John Conyers snooping into voting machine irregularities in Ohio. Or any other political debate, for that matter.

The Framers of the Constitution didn’t give to the Supreme Court the power to interpret the constitutionality of laws made by Congress. The Supreme Court itself did this, in an unanimous opinion written by the notorious Federalist Chief Justice John Marshall, in the case of Marbry v. Madison in 1803. This decision – handed down when Thomas Jefferson was president – so upset Jefferson that he suggested (in a letter to Abigail Adams on 9/11/1804) that if the Court were to fall into the wrong hands, it “would make the judiciary a despotic branch.”

He noted in that letter that he tried to prevent this sort of danger within the courts in general by achieving balance between his own Democratic Republican Party (now called simply the Democratic Party) and the Federalists (who today are reincarnated as Republicans). “In making these appointments,” he wrote, “I put in a proportion of federalists, equal, I believe, to the proportion they bear in numbers through the Union generally.”

Jefferson added: “Both of our political parties, at least the honest part of them, agree conscientiously in the same object – the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. … One [the Federalists] fears most the ignorance of the people; the other [the Democratic Republicans], the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove.”

The new Federalists – Bush’s Republicans – clearly fear We The People, and cherish their own power to rule independent of us. And if they can seize control of the Supreme Court before the next elections, their power may become nearly absolute.

Historically, when fascists have come to power they have used either the threat of enemies or social issues to get the people to agree to give them control of all branches of government. When their true agenda – raw power – comes out, it’s too late for the people to resist. As Francisco Franco famously said, “Our regime is [now] based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections.”

Thus, the nomination of Gonzales, or another candidate with strong fascistic leanings but no clear abortion record, will probably be trumpeted in the mainstream corporate media as a triumph of “moderation” on the part of Bush (or a tribute to his “stubbornness” or his “loyalty”).

In fact, it could mark the end of our 200+ year American experiment in democracy.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show and a morning progressive talk show on KPOJ in Portland, Oregon. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight,” “Unequal Protection,” “We The People,” “The Edison Gene”, and “What Would Jefferson Do?”

THE M WORD

July 5, 2005
The Heterosexual Revolution

By STEPHANIE COONTZ

Olympia, Wash.

THE last week has been tough for opponents of same-sex marriage. First Canadian and then Spanish legislators voted to legalize the practice, prompting American social conservatives to renew their call for a constitutional amendment banning such marriages here. James Dobson of the evangelical group Focus on the Family has warned that without that ban, marriage as we have known it for 5,000 years will be overturned.

My research on marriage and family life seldom leads me to agree with Dr. Dobson, much less to accuse him of understatement. But in this case, Dr. Dobson’s warnings come 30 years too late. Traditional marriage, with its 5,000-year history, has already been upended. Gays and lesbians, however, didn’t spearhead that revolution: heterosexuals did.

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked at the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too.

The first step down the road to gay and lesbian marriage took place 200 years ago, when Enlightenment thinkers raised the radical idea that parents and the state should not dictate who married whom, and when the American Revolution encouraged people to engage in “the pursuit of happiness,” including marrying for love. Almost immediately, some thinkers, including Jeremy Bentham and the Marquis de Condorcet, began to argue that same-sex love should not be a crime.

Same-sex marriage, however, remained unimaginable because marriage had two traditional functions that were inapplicable to gays and lesbians. First, marriage allowed families to increase their household labor force by having children. Throughout much of history, upper-class men divorced their wives if their marriage did not produce children, while peasants often wouldn’t marry until a premarital pregnancy confirmed the woman’s fertility. But the advent of birth control in the 19th century permitted married couples to decide not to have children, while assisted reproduction in the 20th century allowed infertile couples to have them. This eroded the traditional argument that marriage must be between a man and a woman who were able to procreate.

In addition, traditional marriage imposed a strict division of labor by gender and mandated unequal power relations between men and women. “Husband and wife are one,” said the law in both England and America, from early medieval days until the late 19th century, “and that one is the husband.”

This law of “coverture” was supposed to reflect the command of God and the essential nature of humans. It stipulated that a wife could not enter into legal contracts or own property on her own. In 1863, a New York court warned that giving wives independent property rights would “sow the seeds of perpetual discord,” potentially dooming marriage.

Even after coverture had lost its legal force, courts, legislators and the public still cleaved to the belief that marriage required husbands and wives to play totally different domestic roles. In 1958, the New York Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to the traditional legal view that wives (unlike husbands) couldn’t sue for loss of the personal services, including housekeeping and the sexual attentions, of their spouses. The judges reasoned that only wives were expected to provide such personal services anyway.

As late as the 1970’s, many American states retained “head and master” laws, giving the husband final say over where the family lived and other household decisions. According to the legal definition of marriage, the man was required to support the family, while the woman was obligated to keep house, nurture children, and provide sex. Not until the 1980’s did most states criminalize marital rape. Prevailing opinion held that when a bride said, “I do,” she was legally committed to say, “I will” for the rest of her married life.

I am old enough to remember the howls of protest with which some defenders of traditional marriage greeted the gradual dismantling of these traditions. At the time, I thought that the far-right opponents of marital equality were wrong to predict that this would lead to the unraveling of marriage. As it turned out, they had a point.

Giving married women an independent legal existence did not destroy heterosexual marriage. And allowing husbands and wives to construct their marriages around reciprocal duties and negotiated roles – where a wife can choose to be the main breadwinner and a husband can stay home with the children- was an immense boon to many couples. But these changes in the definition and practice of marriage opened the door for gay and lesbian couples to argue that they were now equally qualified to participate in it.

Marriage has been in a constant state of evolution since the dawn of the Stone Age. In the process it has become more flexible, but also more optional. Many people may not like the direction these changes have taken in recent years. But it is simply magical thinking to believe that by banning gay and lesbian marriage, we will turn back the clock.

Stephanie Coontz, the director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, is the author of “Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.”