Notes from a Different Kitchen

Recently Yusuf Islam broke with Muslim militants, condemning extremism and pledging proceeds from a CD set to 9/11 families. Jewish leaders in Britain praise him as a moderate and say an Islamic school he set up in North London teaches a peaceful brand of Islam. "All indications are that his move away from extremism is entirely genuine, and he now concentrates on his school and his music," said Michael Whine, a spokesman for Britain's Jewish community.

I'm hopeful that the best person is elected. I would ask whoever is voted in to keep in mind that he is the president of the Latinos, of the poor whites in West Virginia and wherever else, of the blacks, of the Jews, of the growing Arab community. He is our president, whether we voted for him or not. The moment he is voted in, he becomes president of all America. And that means, just as all Americans are responsible to him, he is responsible to all Americans. I would love to see an end to the polarization, the "they and the we." I would love to see that.

John Kerry is being pilloried for his shocking Senate testimony 34 years ago that many U.S. soldiers—not just a few "rogues"—were committing atrocities against the Vietnamese. U.S. military records that were classified for decades but are now available in the National Archives back Kerry up and put the lie to his critics. Contrary to what those critics, including the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have implied, Kerry was speaking on behalf of many soldiers when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971

Comparing the swift boat attacks on John Kerry with attacks on George W. Bush regarding his Air National Guard duty does not make for balanced news. One involves tearing down behavior in battle that was deemed worthy of several Purple Hearts. The other involves filling in gaps in a service record embarked on (with whose help?) to avoid battle, and notable more for absence from—rather than attendance to—duty. Trying to equate these in any substantive way is not balance—it is spin.
Gregory Bachelis
West Bloomfield, Mich.

Your cover story implies that because mud is being slung, it is fairest to blame both parties. This is false, and most of the media know it. Bush's campaign workers have spent a large part of the election, and a large part of their ad dollars, smearing John Kerry. They have smeared him for not being wounded badly enough in a war they didn't bother to participate in. They have smeared him for voting to cut funding from the B-2, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the Apache helicopter and other weapons programs—the same cuts that the then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney asked for. The charges made by the Kerry campaign have been largely, demonstrably, measurably true. The Bush camp has engaged in far more distortion, negativity and deception, and thrown far more mud in this campaign. It is dishonest to try to paint a "balanced" picture where there isn't one.
Eric Hanson
Minneapolis, Minn.

The enemies of freedom are using suicide bombings, beheadings, and other horrific acts to try to block progress. We are sickened by their atrocities, but we will never be intimidated, and freedom is winning.

We're making steady progress in implementing our five-step plan toward the goal we all want: completing the mission so that Iraq is stable and self-governing, and American troops can come home with the honor they have earned.

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CIARA CONTEST



Ciara's Goodies album is in stores TODAY. I clowned it at first but now I play cRunk&B anthem "Goodies" like three times a night whenever I spin minimum. It's mandatory like Kevin Lyttle, "Lean Back" and Usher right now. And now, thanks to Cornerstone & Blue Marlin, we offer you a chance to win her album and a Blue Marlin hoodie.

To enter, just answer the question: "Who is the producer that has mentored Ciara's career (and seeming) overnight success by signing here to his label?" (hint: I think you can even just search this site to get the answer)

Email responses to me with the subject line "Ciara Contest" along with your sweatshirt size. A winner will be selected at random from all correct entries received. Contest ends 11:59:59pm on Sunday October 3rd.

In the meantime enjoy a bonus mp3 from the album where Ciara gets her Aaliyah on in a very serious way with an asisst from Ludacris (doing a Dirty South take on Eminem's flow?) - "Oh"

NB: by entering this contest you agree to allow Blue Marlin to collect your email address.

Sponsored by:


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Bonus free ish jumpoff: are there any a serious videogamers who read this site and want to get a free copy of a hot new game? Read on to find out what's really good: a marketing company called the Hype Council hit me saying they are willing to pass me Def Jam Fight for NY -the new game featuring 40 of the biggest Hip Hop artists and celebrities, such as Busta Rhymes, Carmen Electra (huh?), Freeway, Ice T, Joe Budden, Kimora Lee Simmons (!), Lil' Kim, Ludacris, Method Man, Redman, Sean Paul, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit with five brutal fighting styles, 22 interactive venues, and the ability to build your own street-ready fighter- in exchange for banner placement and a site reveiew but I don't really f-cks with gaming like that so holla at the kid if you are willing to do a guest shot reveiw for the game. Email me with proof of your gaming credentials/addiction and I'll select a worthy candidate for the game. Also specify your gaming plaform in your email (only Game Cube, X-Box and PS2 users need apply).

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Monday 20 September 2004

Dear Friends,

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the
doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally
calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush
IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and
bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous
ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans
are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh,
it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win!
Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last
ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they
just keeping moving forward like sharks that never
sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking,
lying.

They are relentless and that is why we secretly
admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up.
Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet
the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both
houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority
of the governorships. How do you think they've been
able to pull that off considering they are a minority?
It's because they eat you and me and every other
liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the
day wreaking havoc on the planet.

Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets
a bounce after his convention and you would have
thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The
Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they
caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they
found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it.
Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS
FALLING!"

No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me
how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win...
Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a
Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic,
they even lose the elections they win! What were you
expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket?
Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like
him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like
Kerry run.

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better,
smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have
smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty
bastards down. But WE are not running for president --
Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we
have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you
see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming,
"Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they
were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an
engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well,
I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a
good year. And it was a VERY good year.

My friends, it is time for a reality check.

1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map
like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points
ahead -- and another poll had them both tied. There
are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they
are polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who
have consistently voted in the past few elections. So
that cuts out young people who are voting for the
first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely
going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not
polling people who use their cell phone as their
primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking
to young people. Finally, most of the polls are
weighted with too many Republicans, as pollster John
Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if
you believe any of these polls.

2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team.
Instead of shunning Clinton (as Gore did), Kerry has
decided to not make that mistake.

3. Traveling around the country, as I've been
doing, I gotta tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of
unrest out there. Much of it is not being captured by
the mainstream press. But it is simmering and it is
real. Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of
angry white people scare you. Turn off the TV! (Except
Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is just
a sugar-coated lie).

4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is
decided on "9/11" (the fear of terrorism), Bush wins.
But if it is decided on the job we are doing in Iraq,
then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have
noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell
we used to call Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a
full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags will
sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry
meant by his original war vote, he ain't the one who
sent those kids to their deaths -- and Mr. and Mrs.
Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to show up
when he was in the "service" he might have somewhat of
a clue as to how to recognize an immoral war that
cannot be "won." All he has delivered to Iraq was that
plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this
failure of monumental proportions that is going to
cook his goose come this November.

So, do not despair. All is not over. Far from it.
The Bush people need you to believe that it is over.
They need you to slump back into your easy chair and
feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate
another four years of George W. Bush. They need you to
wish we had a candidate who didn't windsurf and who
was just as smart as we were when WE knew Bush was
lying about WMD and Saddam planning 9/11. It's like
Karl Rove is hypnotizing you -- "Kerry voted for the
war...Kerry voted for the war...Kerrrrrryyy vooootted
fooooor theeee warrrrrrrrrr..."

Yes...Yes...Yesssss....He did! HE DID! No sense in
fighting now...what I need issleep... sleeep...
sleeeeeeppppp...

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half
of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger
environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons
are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war
is wrong. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY
OF THIS -- YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE
AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO
THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is
almost back in our hands. Not another negative word
until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about
how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who
once had the courage to stand up for something.
Personally, I think that kid is still inside him.
Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why
not hold out a hand to him and help the inner
soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of
evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other
choice?

Yours,

Michael Moore
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K-os - The Love Song
• Real Player: High | Low
• Windows Media: High | Low (via ballerstatus.net)

Dear Friends and Family:

Some of you hear from me regularly while some of you I unfortunately only keep in touch with every so often. However events over the past three years have compelled me to reach out to everyone I know with this letter and invitation.

If, like me, you feel the direction this country has been headed in under the leadership of George W. Bush has been the wrong one, I ask you to make your voice heard and help make a difference this November. One of the ways I am trying to make that difference is through my love of hip hop and by working with the Slam Bush PAC. Slam Bush’s mission is to mobilize young music fans of the hip hop nation and turn them into voters through grassroots efforts and the tremendous power of hip hop culture.

The centerpiece of the Slam Bush strategy has been a series of anti-Bush hip hop "MC battles" — half concert, half contest — that challenged rappers and slam poets to grab the mic and "debate the President." Contest prizes and heavy local promotion drew thousands of potential anti-Bush voters to these grassroots slams, and attracted the attention of the hip hop community and media around the country. Local hip hop voices were given an opportunity to be heard on a national political stage, and Slam Bush facilitated an innovative, new form of peer-to-peer political organizing.



However, even grassroots organizing doesn’t come cheap and there are expenses and costs that still have to be paid from the over twelve regional Slam events that were held as well for the National Championship Wednesday, September 29 (see flyer above), so Slam Bush is holding a fundraiser event this Wednesday to help defray some these costs and to educate people more about the organization and its mission.

Many of you might not view yourselves as being political but this November’s election is far too important for potential voters to remain apathetic on the sidelines. At the very least, come check out the event this Wednesday and see how a music and culture many of us love and have made a living form is being used a tool for political change and some good and maybe even become inspired to become even more involved. Details follow in the invitation below and hopefully I will see you all at Sugar Bar on Wednesday.

Best,

-- Ian


The Slam Bush NYC Host Committee:


Billy Wimsatt • Sharese Bullock • Tate Hausman • Don Hazen • Nick Adler • Stephanie Low • Carol Lapidus • Ian Steaman • Belin Meslin • Nick Rudikoff • Shawna Kaplan • Chris Wangro • Diane Hatz • Johanna Schaetzke • Saranii Muller


Invites you to a "Hip Hop Reception and Spoken Word Smackdown"
benefiting

S L A M B U S H


2004's most Innovative, Bold and Effective Anti-Bush Campaign


Wednesday, Sept. 22,
6-8 pm
Sugar Bar - 311 Church St
(Take 1/9, A/C/E, N/R, J/M/Z or 6 to Canal, walk 1 block south on
Church)

• No door fee
• Open bar to 7
• Suggested donation of $50 - $500
• Bring your anti-Bush friends!

Special performances by:

Andrew "Tyree" Clinkscale
New York's own Slam Bush Champion

Verbal Tec
Slam Bush Online Champion (Philly)


Come hear how SLAM BUSH is successfully converting urban youth into lifetime voters. With support from friends like you, we can mobilize this crucial voting bloc. Bring your checkbook and prepare to be inspired!

Please RSVP by Tuesday, Sept. 21 to Tate Hausman by email or calling (212) 932-0934.

IF YOU CANNOT ATTEND, but still wish to support this important effort, you can make an online donation through our secure website:

For more information, click for the evite here or check out and www.slambush.net.

The Fine Print:
Federal Election Commission Compliance: Donations to Slam Bush are not tax-deductible because we are a political action committee (PAC). Individuals may contribute up to $5,000 to Slam Bush per calendar year. Individuals may contribute up to $95,000 per two-year election cycle to all candidates and committees and up to $37,500 per two-year cycle to PACs. In compliance with Federal Election Commission requirements, we cannot accept your donation unless the following statements are true:
• I am a United States citizen or a permanent resident alien.
• I am at least 18 years of age.
• I am making this contribution from my own funds.
• I am making this contribution on my own personal credit card and not with a corporate or business credit card or a credit card issued to anyone else.
• This contribution does not exceed my personal contribution limit.
• I am not a federal contractor.

A DAY OF congressional hearings yesterday confirmed two glaring gaps in the Bush administration's response to hundreds of cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first is one of investigation: Major allegations of wrongdoing, including some touching on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, have yet to be explored by any arms-length probe. The second concerns accountability. Although several official panels have documented failings by senior military officers and their superiors in Washington, those responsible face no sanction of any kind, even as low-ranking personnel are criminally prosecuted....

Cynics will not be surprised to learn that senior military commanders and Bush administration officials are on the verge of avoiding any accountability for the scandal of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan -- despite the enormous damage done by that affair to U.S. standing in Iraq and around the world; despite the well-documented malfeasance and possible criminal wrongdoing by those officials; despite the contrasting prosecution of low-ranking soldiers....

After months of Senate hearings and eight Pentagon investigations, it is obvious that the administration does not intend to hold any high-ranking official accountable for the nightmare at Abu Ghraib. It was pretty clear yesterday that Senator John Warner's well-intentioned hearings of the Armed Services Committee are not going to do it either....

Sixteen months after the war's supposed end, Iraq's insurgency is spreading. Each successful demand by kidnappers has spawned more hostage-takings—to make Philippine troops go home, to stop Turkish truckers from hauling supplies into Iraq, to extort fat ransom payments from Kuwaitis. The few relief groups that remain in Iraq are talking seriously about leaving. U.S. forces have effectively ceded entire cities to the insurgents, and much of the country elsewhere is a battleground.

"We're dealing with a population that hovers between bare tolerance and outright hostility," says a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad. "This idea of a functioning democracy here is crazy. We thought that there would be a reprieve after sovereignty, but all hell is breaking loose."

"It's like Plato's republic in here, all of these well-meaning, smart people who want to do the right thing," says one security contractor and Green Zone regular. "But they never leave here and they have no idea what's happening in the country they're supposed to be building. It's totally absurd."

By deciding to invade Iraq, the Bush Administration decided not to do many other things: not to reconstruct Afghanistan, not to deal with the threats posed by North Korea and Iran, and not to wage an effective war on terror.

If you are looking for a fun, effective way to make a difference in this election, you've found it!

The Slam Bush NYC Host Committee:

Billy Wimsatt • Sharese Bullock • Tate Hausman • Don Hazen
• Nick Adler • Stephanie Low • Carol Lapidus • Ian
Steaman • Belin Meslin • Nick Rudikoff • Shawna Kaplan •
Chris Wangro • Diane Hatz • Johanna Schaetzke • Saranii
Muller

Invites you to a "Hip Hop Reception and Spoken Word Smackdown" benefiting ...

S L A M B U S H
at
Sugar Bar - 311 Church St

Wednesday, Sept. 22
6-8 pm

(take 1/9, A/C/E, N/R, J/M/Z or 6 to Canal, walk 1 block South on Church)

• no door fee
• open bar to 7
• suggested donation of $50 - $500
• bring your anti-Bush friends!

Special performances by:

Andrew "Tyree" Clinkscale - New York's own Slam Bush Champion

Verbal Tec - Slam Bush Online Champion (Philly)

Come hear how SLAM BUSH - 2004's most innovative, bold and effective Anti-Bush Campaign- is successfully converting urban youth into lifetime progressive voters. With support from people like you, we can activate this crucial voting bloc. Bring your checkbook and prepare to be inspired!

Please RSVP by Tuesday, Sept. 21 to Tate Hausman by email or at 212.932.0934.

IF YOU CANNOT ATTEND, but still wish to support this important effort, you can make an online donation through our secure website by clicking here.

For more information, check out the official Slam Bush website.

If you are looking for a fun, effective way to make a difference in
this election ... you've found it!

People, hands in the air
We got guns, Cris' and white rum bacardi
Let's have a party
Got love for everybody

The organizers of this year's Republican National Convention engaged in some very shrewd rewriting of history. If you watched carefully, you noticed a narrative of the war on terrorism in which most of the past two years disappeared.

Viewers got enormous detail on the bravery displayed by Americans after the attacks of Sept. 11. But [no discussion of] how so many of its assumptions went haywire or why our strategy was so flawed that we have now conceded large parts of the Sunni Triangle to our enemies. There were no reminders of "Mission Accomplished" or "bring 'em on."

Of course the Bush team wants voters to shield their eyes from the specifics of its record in Iraq. Otherwise, Americans just might hold the president accountable.

So President Bush and Vice President Cheney get us to look the other way by focusing on the vague question of which candidate is "tough" enough to handle terrorists.

Any analysis of Bush's anti-terrorism record has to be divided into pre-Sept. 11 and post-Sept. 11. And in both periods, there is considerable evidence to challenge Bush's contention that his actions have made the country safer.

Two-and-a-half years after he was captured in Afghanistan and detained by the U.S. military as an "enemy combatant," a prisoner at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been told he will be allowed to go home, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

American interrogators working in Iraq have obtained as much as 50 percent more high-value intelligence since a series of coercive practices like hooding, stripping and sleep deprivation were banned, a senior American official said Monday.

At least nine people have been killed and as many as 160 injured in a massive blast outside the Australian embassy in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.

They were sent off by a president who ran and hid when he was a young man and his country was at war. They fought bravely and died honorably. But as in Vietnam, no amount of valor or heroism can conceal the fact that they were sent off under false pretenses to fight a war that is unwinnable.

How many thousands more will have to die before we acknowledge that President Bush's obsession with Iraq and Saddam Hussein has been a catastrophe for the United States?

The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own:

An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia... On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters.

This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".

They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.

The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic.

Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere [emphasis added].

Bush Campaign More Thought Out Than Iraq War
WASHINGTON, DC—Military and political strategists agreed Monday that President Bush's re-election campaign has been executed with greater precision than the war in Iraq. "Judging from the initial misrepresentation of intelligence data and the ongoing crisis in Najaf, I assumed the president didn't know his ass from his elbow," said Col. Dale Henderson, a military advisor during the Reagan Administration. "But on the campaign trail, he's proven himself a master of long-term planning and unflinching determination. How else can you explain his strength in the polls given this economy?" Henderson said he regrets having characterized Bush's handling of the war as "incompetent," now that he knows the president's mind was simply otherwise occupied.

"If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again -- that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States" (as published on CNN.com)

\Ter"ror*ism\, n. The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation [emphasis added]. --Jefferson.
(Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.)

I've been looking @ your site for months now, and from the first time I saw it it had me hooked. Anyways, that GTA bit got me a little emotional and I'm not even political. Just to think how muthaf--kas get over. Just saying thanks for posting that link, and I rarely even read through your political section, but I came across that for a reason I suppose. This will be my first year voting ( and I really didn't want to). But now I'm reminded of the reason for voting, cause those that need guidance and support from the "government" won't get it from people that run scams....

The problem with the president's speech was not the lofty goals he outlined, but the fact that his policies are not actually moving us any closer to achieving them. It's true that a democratic Afghanistan and Iraq would be powerful, progressive forces in the Muslim world. But our postwar policies in both places have done little to make that likely. We do not help democracy take root in Afghanistan by ceding large parts of the country to warlords and drug dealers. We have not helped democracy in Iraq by destroying the old order with no idea of what to do next.

There are huge personal and social costs to [individual Social Security accounts]: giving up a guaranteed benefit and cutting holes in our nation's most important safety net. You can't decide if private accounts are better than what we've got until you see the price. The Devil is in the details we haven't yet seen. How do we pay today's beneficiaries if workers put some of their Social Security taxes into individual accounts? The gap—we're talking at least a trillion dollars [emphasis added]—has to be filled somehow. The budget surpluses that Bush inherited are long gone, so where's the money going to come from? Huge government borrowings, massive cuts in other programs or raising taxes.

And private accounts don't address Social Security's long-term shortfall: projected revenues are about 30 percent below projected costs. Bringing Social Security into balance while letting people put some Social Security tax into private accounts implies a cut of at least 50 percent in the government's payment to future retirees.

Seven U.S. Marines were killed on Monday in an apparent suicide attack when a car bomb exploded near their military convoy on the outskirts of Fallujah, the U.S. military reported. The attack, which also killed three Iraqi National Guardsmen, was the deadliest against U.S. troops in four months.

There are three possible scenarios for the future of Iraq. The most probable scenario is that Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish factions will fail to cohere under the transitional governments, leading to fragmentation and civil war, says a new report published by Chatham House.

Veterans Affairs Budget Cuts
The latest budget plans put forth by the current administration will cut more than $910 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in the fiscal year 2006 budget (Source: OMB). In the last year, plans were announced by the current administration to close or drastically reduce services at 11 VA hospitals. Additionally, 572,000 veterans are estimated to be missing out on disability payments largely because they are unaware that payments are owed to them, and in an effort to maintain costs no effort is being made to inform them of what is rightfully theirs. In a time of war, it is immoral and unconscionable to treat our heroes of the past and present in this manner.

Weak National Support Systems for Soldiers’ Families
When National Guard and Reserve soldiers are deployed, their families are left to fend for themselves. We need to create a solid network that embraces and protects families to the fullest. Child care, counseling services, job placement, spiritual support and financial safeguards need to be established formally to take proper care of those families who fight for us.

Proper Counseling and Treatment for the Soldiers
As of August 23, 2004, 961 American Soldiers have been killed in Iraq, but 6497 have been injured. The number of people suffering from psychological problems is even higher. Returning units have seen a spike in suicide rates. The long-term effects of Larium, the anthrax vaccine, and other medical treatments administered to troops have not been fully explored. The government must act quickly to provide adequate counseling and treatment for our wounded and traumatized Troops.

[L]eading Republicans said yesterday that things went a little too far when they had to publicly repudiate the actions of a delegate who was handing out adhesive bandages marked with Purple Hearts to mock Mr. Kerry's war wounds.

The bandages, distributed by Morton Blackwell of Arlington, Va., included a message that read, "It was just a self-inflicted scratch, but you see I got a Purple Heart for it." Mr. Blackwell said he was only trying to have fun, but the Military Order of The Purple Heart, an organization that says it represents wounded veterans, was not amused.

With tens of thousands of heavily armed police officers swarming around Madison Square Garden, helicopters whirling overhead and bomb-sniffing dogs on every corner, the Republican National Convention was supposed to be the most tightly secured political event in history.

But over the last four days, more than two dozen hecklers have proven that only a small device was necessary to penetrate the cordon and disrupt the convention: a delegate's spare guest credential or a media pass, which protesters said were surprisingly easy to get.

Students are returning to classes across the nation amid a cacophony of contradictory messages about the quality of their education, as thousands of schools with vaunted reputations have been rated in recent weeks as low-performing under a federal law.

"We have a school down here that is absolutely extraordinary - all the kids take Advanced Placement courses,'' said Jane Gallucci, chairwoman of the Pinellas County School Board and a past president of the Florida School Boards Association, "and the feds called it a failing school. Now that's ludicrous."

Health insurance premiums for senior citizens enrolled in Medicare will rise 17.5 percent in 2005, bringing the total monthly payment to $78.20, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

As most Americans began the Labor Day holiday weekend, federal health officials held a late-afternoon briefing to announce that the 42 million disabled and elderly Medicare beneficiaries will be hit with the largest premium increase in 15 years.

Nationwide, health care costs have been on a steady rise for several years, but the Medicare increase exceeds recent premium hikes for private health insurance.

BIG government is back. And while that fact may not have been heralded at Madison Square Garden this week, it is largely responsible for the best long-term economic statistic that Republicans cited.

By one measure, President Bush has presided over a reversal of the trend to smaller government that began nearly 30 years ago. That measure is the share of wage and salary income that comes directly from governments, and its rise has helped keep the economy growing.

Tonight, the only hot party is going down at VISCAYA! Brandon Marcell & D-Nice Present The official US Open tournament after party. Premium open bar at 10, and free admission! 191 Seventh Ave between 21st & 22nd streets! Doors open at 10 pm. Get there early! Tell the D-Nice sent you!

move on up! Second Year Anniversary!

HotButtered Soul & ThunderClap Reggae
from the 1960's & 1970's

Special Guests ZionGateSound
with Anousheh

Saturday, September 4

The Cloak&Dagger - 394 College Street

As always:

c'est free
c'est chic

Is there a double standard at MTV? Last week the network dropped Jamaican singer Beenie Man from a pre-Video Music Awards concert after gay-rights groups vowed to protest. Sample offensive lyric, from his 2000 track "Damn": "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica/Come to execute all the gays." Yet MTV let Eminem perform at the 2000 VMAs despite protests over his anti-gay verses. MTV says it couldn't guarantee a slur-free set after cordial talks with Beenie's reps at Virgin Records, which declined to comment.

"I'm the best and you young boys know
So I'mma fall back and let my young boy blow...."