Author: jpol

Cross-Posted at Op-Ed News By Jerry Policoff

With Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s Prescription For Pennsylvania all but dead in its original form, his political allies in the State Legislature, led by Todd Eachus, a member of the Democratic Leadership in the House, seem intent upon salvaging what they can via an amended bill they hope will pass the Pennsylvania House this Monday, March 17th. Gone is “Cover All Pennsylvanians,” a title that was never even remotely appropriate. In its place comes “Pennsylvania Access to Basic Care” (PABC), an even weaker program that is being baselessly hailed by its proponents as a “huge” step forward toward insuring all Pennsylvanians.

Before examining the new Rendell/Eachus legislative initiative and the accompanying full court press to pass it – with an assist from predominantly favorable, even sycophantic media coverage — some background regarding the original Rendell plan might prove helpful and enlightening.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Governor Rendell unveiled Prescription for Pennsylvania amidst much national and local fanfare on January 17, 2007 in the spacious and historically decorated conference room adjacent to his Capitol office in The Harrisburg, Pa. State Capitol Building. “We can no longer stand by while health care costs spiral out of control,” he said at the time, promising to expand “access” to affordable health care to most of the “767,000 adult Pennsylvanians” who lacked health insurance. That is the number of uninsured Pennsylvania adults the Governor has cited ever since (though the number mysteriously morphed down to 747,000 in the PABC initiative launched earlier this week. It is a number the media has accepted virtually on faith and seemingly never challenged, or questioned, but more about that later.

There was something of a carnival atmosphere in that large, yet surprisingly packed chamber that day. The media was there en masse, but they were clearly outnumbered. The room was virtually swarming with men and women in business attire whose round colored pins identified them as lobbyists, mostly from the health insurance and related healthcare industries. The Governor also chose to have someone by his side on the podium that day to share this historic moment with him. It wasn’t another politician or some trusted aide, nor his wife, nor some other loved one. It was Anita M. Smith, CEO of Capitol Blue Cross, a major Pennsylvania Health Insurance company with headquarters in Harrisburg. Although the Governor introduced Ms. Smith to the assembled crowd very early in his opening remarks few subsequent media accounts of the press conference mentioned her prominent role at the Governor’s side. The media also took little interest in the generous campaign finance support Governor Rendell had received from the health care industry including well over $1 million in contributions to underwrite the $2.5 million cost of his inaugural ceremonies held the same week he unveiled his health care initiative. Such donations are not regulated by the State Election Bureau because they are not considered campaign contributions. Capitol Blue Cross, Independence Blue Cross, Keystone Health Plan, United Health Group, Highmark Blue Shield and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center each contributed $50,000 toward the inaugural festivities while Blue Cross of Northeastern Pa,, GlaxoSmith Kline and Shire Pharmaceuticals contributed a more modest $25,000. One might be forgiven for wondering whether the Governor’s efforts to bring so-called “universal” health care to Pennsylvania would inflict much pain on the health insurance or pharmaceuticals industries, both of which have contributed toward making American Healthcare by far and away the most expensive in the world while leaving 47 million uninsured and millions more underinsured.

HOW MANY UNINSURED? GOVERNOR RENDELL’S FUZZY MATH

To hear Governor Rendell tell it Pennsylvania is pretty well off when it comes to health care, having one of the lowest uninsured rates in the country. The fact that his estimate of 767,000 uninsured adults is based upon a highly dubious 2004 survey and is contradicted by other surveys that utilized far more orthodox methodology does not seem to bother him, nor the media, which has apparently has never heard of the Census Bureau or of Google.

The uninsured statistics Rendell regularly cites come from a survey commissioned by the Pennsylvania Insurance Bureau in 2004. The methodology utilized in that survey borders on the bizarre if the true goal was to get accurate and reliable estimates. This writer feels compelled to wonder if the true objective in commissioning that survey was not a quest for accurate data, but rather an attempt to come up with more conservative numbers than had been arrived at by the Census Bureau, numbers that would make the problem appear less severe than it is, and hence make the Governor’s proposed reforms appear to be more wide-reaching than they really are.

For starters, the survey estimated that 8% of the Pennsylvania population, 900,000 people, was uninsured. The Governor’s lower number of 767,000 represents that number less the 133,000 estimated uninsured non-adults. It is unclear why Governor Rendell chooses to include only the number of adults when citing the numbers of uninsured. Those non-adults are, after all, uninsured. The survey itself was conducted by the research group Market Decisions, utilizing a telephone sample frame and targeting 100 households in each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties (except for Philadelphia whose sample was 173 households). Thus Forest County with a population of 4,946 was targeted for 100 interviews (1 in every 49 of the households in the county); Alleghenny County (Pittsburgh), with a population of 1,281,666 was also targeted for 100 interviews (1 in every 12,817 households); and Philadelphia County with a population of 1,517,550 accounted for 173 interviews (one in every 8,772 households). The sample frame itself poses a problem because non-telephone households tend to be poorer than the general population with a larger percentage of ethnic minorities – the very demographics most likely to lack health insurance. A study that specifically examined this issue back in 1990 found that non-telephone households were three times as likely to be uninsured than telephone households and concluded that “there are marked differences between the telephone and nontelephone groups, and adjusting the former is unlikely to result in reasonable overall population estimates or to lead to increased understanding of being uninsured. In this case, telephone ownership appears to introduce a bias unreconcilable by recourse to social demographic and health status measures.” Translation: Any survey attempting to determine the extent to which a population is uninsured that utilizes a telephone sample frame will understate the extent of the problem.

Moreover, the spreading out of the sample equally across the state’s 67 counties regardless of their population virtually guaranteed a radical under-sampling of the inner city neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (as well as other smaller cities throughout the state) where residents were most likely to want for health insurance. Finally, Market Decisions interviewed only one individual per household, but collected responses relating to every member of that household from that individual. Market Decisions own web site cautions that this methodology has its drawbacks: “Respondents may not be familiar with coverage of all members in extended household;” and “systematic error – larger households will have a greater error and are also associated with specific demographics.” (Read: lower income minority households). The Prescription for Pennsylvania web site acknowledges, but is dismissive of the fact that Market Decisions’ uninsured estimates are lower than those of the Census Bureau. It states that “the Census Survey contacted far fewer Pennsylvania households than the Insurance Department’s survey did,” suggesting that this in itself renders the Market Decisions, data more reliable than the Census estimates. In fact, the Census Bureau survey consists of 6,000 Pennsylvania households per year which, from a purely statistical viewpoint, would generate numbers nearly as reliable as a sample of 6,700. But the Census Bureau also samples all households, not just telephone households, and their cooperation rate is enhanced by personal visits by Census Bureau employees when all else fails. Moreover, the Census Bureau encourages use of three-year rolling averages with a sample of roughly 18,000 – far more than the 6,700 in the Market Decisions survey. Only the homeless are excluded from the Census Bureau sample frame, and it is likely that if the homeless were included the estimates for the number of uninsured would increase.

At a State Democratic Committee workshop held in Lancaster, Pa, this past January 10th, I challenged RoseMarie B. Greco, director of the Gov.’s Office of Health Care Reform, as to the validity of the 767,000 figure that she, the Governor, and his other surrogates are continually citing. She responded in a disbelieving voice bristling with contempt: “you’re not suggesting the Census Bureau numbers are more accurate than ours, are you,” she asked? I unhesitatingly responded: “Yes I am.” She quickly moved on rather than engage in a discussion over the accuracy of her numbers.

Susan Korbel, PhD., owner of Core Research in San Antonio, Texas writes: “Researchers have long known that new arrivals (read: migrants) are less likely to participate in telephone research, especially if it sounds official due to concerns about other governmental institutions. In order to overcome these obstacles, it is necessary to OVERsample urban areas, as well as those in neighborhoods more likely to have English as a second language.” She adds: “This is a very curious sampling procedure… it does nothing for a state-wide aggregate estimate, and weighting geographically would create very large swings in data, especially if they also were weighting by demographics as well.” Ms. Korbel also dismisses as a “fallacy” the notion that sample size alone “regardless of distribution” is better, citing as an example a football stadium holding 100,000 people filled on one occasion with people who came to see the Pope speak, and on another with people who came to see the Rolling Stones. “Would you say that the responses of the 100,000 sample would be similar for all questions because they were both the same size? Probably the Pope goers would be able to represent Catholics in the region, but if you were asking about abortion, they wouldn’t be representative of all people living in the area, any more than the Rolling Stones fans would be representative respondents.”

So just how many Pennsylvanians are actually uninsured? Estimates vary, but there is a consensus among all except the Governor’s office that the number is considerably higher than 900,000 (or 767,000 adults). The most recent <a href=”http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/hlthin06/p60no233_table8.pdf”<Census Bureau estimate (is 1,255,000, a number that includes only people who are chronically uninsured. A study released last year by the Center for Disease Control estimated that 10% of Pennsylvania’s population was uninsured, which would project to 1,235,000, virtually the same number arrived at by the Census Bureau. An October 2005 Keystone Research Center press release concluded that 494,000 Pennsylvanians had lost their employer-sponsored health insurance since 2000, implying that the number of uninsured might be as high as 1.8 million. It should be noted that Pennsylvania clearly has a lower uninsured rate than the rest of the nation, part of which is explained by its large elderly population resulting in a higher per capita enrollment in Medicare. Still, any effort to bring true healthcare reform to Pennsylvania is ill-served by the Governor’s attempts to minimize the true scope of the problem by low-balling the estimates regarding the number of uninsured.

A 2003 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that Census uninsured estimates are actually significantly under-stated because they include only people who are uninsured for a full year or more. They concluded that the real number, including people who were uninsured for only part of the year, was as much as 44% higher than the published Census figures. This is a shortcoming that researchers at the Census bureau readily acknowledged in discussions with this writer.

“UNDERINSURED,” A WORD GOVERNOR RENDELL AVOIDS

A group often left out of the debate over health care is the underinsured who, according to a recent study by Consumer Reports, account for 24 % of the U.S. population. If these numbers are accurate there are actually 50% more people in this country who are underinsured than are uninsured. According the Consumer Reports survey, the underinsured have a median household income of “$58,950, well above the U.S. median. Twenty-two percent live in households making more than $100,000. Still, many of the “underinsured” don’t have the resources to keep up with the rising costs of deductibles and co-pays, so much so that 43% reported that they postponed going to the doctor because they couldn’t afford it.”
According to a recent study by Families USA, 2.2 million Pennsylvanians are in families that will spend more than 10% of their pre-tax income on healthcare costs in 2008. 87.1% of them are insured. These people live with the constant threat of being overwhelmed by their healthcare costs, including health insurance, and when their numbers are combined with the number of uninsured Pennsylvanians the numbers of uninsured or underinsured Pennsylvanians starts to look more like 4 million or more (about a third of Pennsylvania’s population), rather than the Governor’s 767,000. The budget the Governor submitted to the Legislature last year, but never drew attention to publicly, and which also went unnoticed by the media, aspired to insure an additional 359,101 uninsured Pennsylvanians by year five if his plan passed. In his recently submitted 2008/2009 budget (which has also largely escaped notice by the public or the media) that number had declined by more than 40% to 210,214, a number that probably represents only about 12% of Pennsylvania’s uninsured and only about 5% of the combined uninsured and underinsured. One wonders whatever inspired Governor Rendell to dub this plan “Cover All Pennsylvanians.” Under PABC the year five goal has been further down-sized to 202,466 and even that woefully small number is contingent upon the Governor getting everything he asks for from the Legislature, assuming it even passes. Neither the original nor the new plan does anything to help the millions of Pennsylvanians who are insured but still face financial ruin because of healthcare bills. Little wonder that more than 46% of personal bankruptcies in this country are directly caused by medical expenses.

THE SINGLE-PAYER ALTERNATIVE

While the media lavishes praise on Governor Rendell’s efforts to reform healthcare in Pennsylvania, and unquestioningly parrots his estimate of 767,000 uninsured adults, a better and cheaper alternative is out there virtually pleading for media coverage. The Pennsylvania Family and Business Healthcare Security Act would bring true comprehensive universal healthcare to every man, woman and child in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. With little fanfare the act, being promoted by HealthcareforALLPA.org (a group of unpaid citizens from around the State which, in the interests of full disclosure, this writer is a member of) is co-sponsored by thirty-eight members of the Pennsylvania House (HB 1660) and six members of the Pennsylvania Senate (SB 300). The single-payer bill would preserve privately delivered health care, but would remove health insurance companies from their role as gatekeepers of the healthcare system. A new Government agency would be created to administer the system, seeing to it that both those in need of healthcare and those providing it are properly attended to. Under this system co-pays and deductibles would become a thing of the past, and prescription drugs (which would be bulk purchased by the new agency in a manner similar to what the Veterans Administration has employed for years) would also be covered. Virtually the entire industrialized world operates under a single-payer universal healthcare system or something akin to it except for the United States, whose per capita healthcare costs are more than double those of the rest of the world while depriving millions of adequate care. The Pennsylvania plan would be financed with a 10% payroll tax (far less than most businesses contribute to the health coverage of their employees); a 3% personal income tax surcharge (again, far less than the average person pays for insurance, co-pays, deductibles, and prescription drugs); Federal funding that is already available; and proceeds from the tobacco settlement. Proponents of the plan maintain that it will save billions of dollars a year, and while that figure is difficult to precisely predict in the absence of an Economic Impact Study, they have long urged Governor Rendell to commission one. Similar studies in other states have found that a single-payer system would save hundreds of millions of dollars, and in the case of California (which actually passed single-payer legislation in 2006 only to see it vetoed by Governor Schwarznegger), $8 billion.

There are some tantalizing bits of anecdotal evidence out there suggesting that a single-payer plan would represent a financial windfall for Pennsylvania. A recent study by the Pew Charitable Trust reveals that the City of Philadelphia will spend $374 million for employee health insurance in 2008, a number that represents 26% of payroll and that they anticipate will increase by 23% by the year 2013. The city will spend an additional $43.5 million in 2008 for health insurance for its retirees which brings the total Philadelphia spends for health insurance up to $417.5 million this year alone. If a single-payer system were currently in place in Pennsylvania where employers healthcare obligations are limited to a 10% payroll tax, Philadelphia’s healthcare tab in 2008 would be $146 million dollars – a savings of nearly $272 million this year alone. That does not include savings in administrative costs as well as reduced Workers Compensation taxes, among other things. According to numbers supplied this writer by the Finance Department for the city of Pittsburgh, that city also would realize substantial savings under a single payer system. Pittsburgh currently spends 24% of payroll on employee health insurance, a number that is projected to increase to 27% by 2010. $136 million is currently budgeted for Pittsburgh employee health insurance over the next three years, a figure that would be reduced to less than $82 million under a single-payer system, for a savings of $54 million dollars.

The Pennsylvania single-payer advocates have one advantage other states with similar initiatives lack. Governor Rendell has pledged to sign it if it reaches his desk. At an April 4, 2007 healthcare forum at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., broadcast around the State by the Pennsylvania Cable Network, Governor Rendell, while minimizing the prospects of a single-payer bill making it through the State Legislature, said “A single-payer system would serve America well. Would I like to see a single-payer system? Would I sign a single-payer bill if it got through the Legislature? Absolutely.” Expressing perhaps a bit more candor than he intended, the Governor later in the same forum observed “Lobbyists are… very, very, very influential… Legislators will stand up to the lobbyists if they believe the public is angry enough. But you have to let them know that this is important, and that you’re angry enough.”

Despite these remarks, the Governor has consistently refused to engage the single-payer advocates and has denied them a seat at the table on any and all discussions regarding Legislative healthcare reform. At least one co-sponsor of HB 1660 privately admits to having been pressured by the Democratic Leadership not to support the single-payer bill.

DAYS OF DECISION APPROACH

Barring its revival at some future date, Governor Rendell’s “Cover All Pennsylvanians” initiative is dead, but the plain facts are that despite the Governor’s inferences to the contrary, and despite his use of banner props at rallies containing the words “Healthcare for all” ( a slogan he borrowed from the single-payer advocates), The Governor never aspired to cover more than a small fraction of Pennsylvania’s uninsured population, nor to outstretch a helping hand to its millions of underinsured. His plan did nothing to loosen the grip of health insurance companies whose outrages and monopolistic practices are well-documented in Michael Moore’s documentary, “SiCKO,” or to force Pharmaceutical companies to divert some of their immense profits and outrageous CEO compensation packages into lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

The new Rendell initiative, PABC, is even worse. It will, over a five year period, provide low-cost, subsidized insurance to a maximum of 137,000 uninsured Pennsylvanians whose family income is below 200% of the Federal poverty level (up to $20,800 per year for an individual and $42,400 for a family of four). It claims to aspire to insure an additional 65,000 Pennsylvanians who are below 300% of the Federal Poverty level (up to $31,200 for an individual and $63,600 for a family of four), though at an unsubsidized year one cost of $311 per person per month, a cost one finds difficult to imagine too many people in that wage bracket will find affordable. These are the Governor’s own numbers, and they are maximums that assume that that the Legislature will allow the Governor to divert $246, million (in year one) from the fund set up by the State of Pennsylvania to protect doctors from runaway malpractice rates (HCRPA), and that the General Assembly will allocate an additional $120 million (again in year one) to cover the cost of the plan. The anticipated cost of PABC is $579.2 million in year one, and $1.1 billion in year five. If the bill passes but is under-funded, enrollment will be frozen when the available money has been spent. Under “Cover All Pennsylvanians,” families and individuals earning between 200% and 300% of the Federal Poverty level were eligible for subsidized coverage at a cost to them of $80 per person per month. Under PABC it will cost them $311 in year one and perhaps considerably more in subsequent years. Persons earning more than 300% of the Federal poverty Line will not be permitted to buy into this plan except under extremely limited circumstances, and even then, only at the unsubsidized year one rate of $311 per month. Health insurance companies will continue to manage patient care under PABC, insuring continued cost inefficiencies and continued interference with doctors and their judgment regarding required remedies for their patients. It is unfortunate that the forces rallying around PABC continue to grossly exaggerate its objectives, touting it as “a huge step forward… in the fight to bring quality, affordable healthcare to every Pennsylvanian. It is also worth noting that even if PABC succeeds in adding 202,000 Pennsylvania uninsured to the insurance roles in the next five years, it is likely that at least that number will lose their insurance during that time, and perhaps many more. In other words, even if PABC is fully funded and delivers on all of its promises, there will likely be more uninsured Pennsylvanians in 2013 than there are in 2008.

For the very poor and uninsured in Pennsylvania, PABC actually represents a step backwards for many. PABC will replace and absorb Adult Basic, a program enacted in June 2001 under then-Governor Tom Ridge, that invested the proceeds of the State’s $11 billion Tobacco settlement (over 25 years). It was designed to provide subsidized basic medical coverage to uninsured Pennsylvanians between the ages of 19 and 64 earning up to 200% of the Federal poverty level, and again was contracted out to four “for profit” insurance companies. As of December 2007, 51,056 people were enrolled in Adult Basic while 95,649 Pennsylvanians were on the wait list (up 28% from 74,456 in January 2007). From the inception of Adult Basic it has been plagued by long wait lists of at least a year. On the positive side, many of those who have endured a long wait to enroll in Adult Basic will be able to enroll sooner in PABC, but there is a tradeoff. The monthly cost of enrollment will increase by 19-20% for those at 150-200% of the Federal poverty line, and any one losing their insurance will now have to wait 180 days before qualifying to apply for coverage under PABC – double the 90-day wait period for Adult Basic.

The ball is now in the court of the Pennsylvania Legislature, and in the hands of Pennsylvania voters who now have an opportunity to press their Legislators
to enact true healthcare reform by supporting and co-sponsoring HB 1660 and SB300. Attend hearings on the single-payer bill, due to begin in Harrisburg this coming Wednesday, March 19th. Send money. This effort is woefully under-funded and needs your financial support.

Pennsylvania has an opportunity to become a shining beacon for progressive healthcare reform in this country, and it will reap the benefits of a newly energized economy if it does. If Pennsylvania enacts single-payer universal healthcare other states will follow, and it will not be long before pressure to enact it nationally becomes overwhelming. Only then will we join the rest of the industrialized world in providing truly civilized healthcare for all. Can we, in good conscience, do any less?

November 2006 cable ratings are in, and the Keith Olbermann juggernaut continues ubabated.

MSNBC General Manager Dan Abrams issued a memo to staffers, officially proclaiming that MSNBC is “on a roll.” “In primetime, we’re up more than any other cable news network” proclaimed the memo.

Abrams’ memo failed to make specific note of the fact that MSNBC clearly owes its new found ratings fortune to Keith Olbermann who weighed in with 266,000 Adults 25-54 and 689,000 total viewers, some 230,000 more viewers than any other program on MSNBC.

Some highlights:

• Olberman’s 266,000 Adults 25-54 represent a 63% increase versus November 2005. His 689,000 total viewers represent a 49% increase.

• Olbermann is now a solid number two among the cable newsers at 8pm. He was a distant number three a year ago.

• Competitively Bill O’Reilly continues to slide, -19% in total viewers from a year ago.

• A Year ago Paula Zahn on CNN maintained a 67% edge over Olbermann in total viewers, but her 11% slide coupled with Olbermann’s 49% inclrease has catapulted Olbermann past her into second place.

Olbermann far outpaced his network in primetime.

• His 63% increase among the 25-54 “money demographic” compares with a 44% overall primetime increase for MSNBC.

• His 49% increase in total viewers compared with a 25% overall primetime increase for MSNBC.

Olbermann is currently engaged in contract negotiations with MSNBC, and that may explain the absence of ecstatic praise for Olberman in the Abrams memo cited above. But one thing every one ought to agree on is that it is Olbermann who is on a roll, and MSNBC would be lost without him. It is high time for them to offer Keith Olbermnann some big bucks and a multi-year contract.

Also posted at Op-Ed News

Voters in Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional district have a chance to make history this Tuesday by tossing out 5-term Republican Congressman Joe Pitts and electing Democrat Lois Herr in his place. This district has never sent a Democrat or a woman to Congress, but a lot of people in this district sense that history will be made tomorrow. Lois has run indefatiguable campaign and raised over $300,000 with no help from the DCCC. Her TV spots and billboards have enabled her to greatly expanded her name recognition despite limited media coverage, and her yard signs are everywhere. She has earned the endorsement of, among others, the AFL-CIO, The National Education Association, the Political Action Committee for Education, the National Farmers Union Political Action Committee, the National Organization for Women (NOW), the National Women’s Political Caucus, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the Sierra Club’s National Political Committee and its Pennsylvania Chapter, the Alliance for Retired Americans, et al. She has won the endorsement of the Lancaster Pa. Intelligencer-Journal. In short, Lois Herr has won broad-based support because of her common-sense and principled approach to the issues.

But what of Joe Pitts who has represented this district for ten years and is now seeking a sixth term in violation of a pledge not seek more than five terms? (the Intelligencer Journal reported on December 19, 1995: “Pitts… promised that he would only serve 10 years in Congress. ‘I will support term limits. I always have for Congress.’). To call Joe Pitts “conservative” is an understatement of epic proportions. He is among the most right-wing members of Congress with an anti-women, anti-labor, anti-environment, pro-torture, agenda. He has consistently attempted to weaken the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. He supports <the war but turns his back on veterans' benefits. Joe Pitts is, in short, the pits.

But don’t take my word for it. I do not like Joe Pitts, but I have a lot of company:

• Pitts received a “0%” voting record from NARAL with votes against embryonic stem cell research; for restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions; for providing funding for health providers who refuse to provide abortion info; for banning family planning funding in U.S. aid abroad et al.

• Pitts received a 7% score from the American Civil Liberties Union for voting to make the PATRIOT Act permanent; yes on a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage; yes on a constitutional amendment prohibiting flag desecration; yes on banning gay adoptions; yes on allowing torture and suspending habeus corpus, et al.

• Pitts received a 100% rating from the conservative United States Chamber of Commerce for voting yes on replacing illegal export tax breaks with $140B in new breaks; yes on Bankruptcy Overhaul requiring partial debt repayment, et al.

• On education, the National Education Association (NEA) scored Pitts at 8% for voting no on $84 million in grants for Black and Hispanic colleges; yes on allowing school prayer during the War on Terror; yes on allowing vouchers in schools; yes on vouchers for private & parochial schools; yes on allowing schools to display the words “God Bless America,” et al. Pitts also supports a Constitutional Amendment for school prayer.

• Pitts received a 5% rating from the League of Conservation Voters by voting no on increasing AMTRAK funding; no on barring a website promoting Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump; yes on deauthorizing “critical habitat” for endangered species; yes on speeding up approval of forest thinning projects, et al. He also supports oil drilling in the ANWR wildlife preserve.

• Pitts is rated “A” by the National Rifle Association for voting yes on prohibiting suing gunmakers & sellers for gun misuse; yes on decreasing gun waiting period from 3 days to 1, et al.

• Pitts received an 11% score from the American Public Health Association (APHA) for voting yes on denying non-emergency treatment for lack of Medicare co-pay; yes on limiting medical malpractice lawsuits to $250,000 damages; yes on limited prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients; no on allowing reimportation of prescription drugs; yes on capping damages & setting time limits in medical lawsuits, et al.

• Pitts was rated 11% by SANE for voting yes on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight; yes on deploying SDI, et al.

• Pitts was rated 7% by the AFL-CIO for his anti-union voting record.

• Pitts was rated 100% by the Christian Coalition for his “pro-family voting record.”

• Pitts was rated “0” by the Alliance for Retired Americans for his “anti-senior” voting record.

• Despite his strong support for the Iraq war Pitts received a “0” rating from Disabled War Veterans.

• The Drummager Institute annual scorecard ranking members of the House and Senate on how they voted on bills that advanced the middle class position gave Joe Pitts “a perfect score: 0 for 10. A perfect ‘F'”

In an October 11th roundtable sponsored by the Rotary Club Joe Pitts showed his compassion for the less fortunate by stating: “My own personal philosophy is that the purpose of government is not to meet the needs of the people. The purpose of government is to provide an atmosphere in which people can meet their own needs and in free society we have the freedom to succeed, the freedom of opportunity.”

In the wake of the Foley scandal Pitts was among the first to come to the aid of Dennis Hastert, issueing a joint press release with fellow leader of the Republican Study Committee, Mike Pense: “Regardless of our reservations about how this matter was handled administratively, we believe Speaker Hastert is a man of integrity who has led our conference honorably and effectively throughout the past eight years. Speaker Dennis Hastert should not resign.”

Joe Pitts is also head of the Congressional “Values Action Team” formed by Tom Delay in 1988 to “unite conservative Members [of Congress] with pro-family coalitions by establishing legislative goals, identifying key tasks for Members and coalitions to perform, and executing action items that would lead to conservative victories.”

Joe Pitts is one of the leading proponents of legislation limiting legal access to contraception.

Joe Pitts also supports a bill that would rewrite federal tax law to allow churches and other houses of worship to use their tax-exempt resources to support political candidates, entitled the “House of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act.” This bill would allow partisan political activities in American houses of worship and permit religious institutions to endorse or oppose candidates for public office. The bill was drafted by the American Center for Law and Justice, the Reverend Pat Robertson’s legal group. Among those who have lobbied for its passage are Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy and James Dobson. Joe Pitts co-sponsored the legislation along with Tom Delay.

I could go on, but you get the picture. It is time to retire Joseph Pitts

The ratings are out for the October broadcast month, the first full month of the 2006-2007 TV season, and for those of you who are fretting about whether the bravery of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann would motivate his bosses at NBC to send him packing a la Phil Donahue, you can probably rest easy. Keith’s numbers are quite literally going through the roof, and he seems to be bringing the rest of MSNBC’s primetime lineup along for the ride.
In October 2005 Olbermann’s 8pm numbers were already on the rise, but they were not necessarily the stuff of which job security is made. He was delivering 381,000 total viewers — 53,000 fewer than his 7pm lead-in, Chris Matthews’ Hardball, and 2,000 fewer than Rita Cosby which then occupied the 9pm MSNBC slot. He fared a little better among Adults 25-54, the “money” demographic advertisers crave. At 145,000 Adults 25-54, Olbermann was already # 1 at MSNBC, 8,000 ahead of “Hardball” and 10,000 ahead of “Rita Cosby.”

Relative to his CNN and FOX competition however, Olbermann was a very, very distant third in October 2005. Bill O’Reilly over at FOX was delivering 603% more total viewers and 257% more Adults 25-54. At CNN Paula Zahn was delivering 116% more total viewers and 61% more Adults 25-54.

What a difference a year makes:

Olbermann delivered 637,000 total viewers in October 2006.

• That is an increase of 67% versus October 2005
• Olbermann left the other MSNBC talk shows in the dust, delivering 39% more viewers than “Hardball” (457,000 viewers, +5% versus a year ago); and 52% more viewers that Joe Scarborough’s 9pm show (418,000 viewers, +9% versus Rita Cosby a year ago).
• Olbermann is still number 3 behind FOX and CNN, but not by all that much. O’Reilly is still way ahead at 2,081,000 viewers, but that is -22% and more than half-a-million viewers versus a year ago. Paula Zahn is also -22% and beat Olberman by a mere 2,000 viewers.
• Olbermann was delivering 10% of the total 3-network total viewer pie (FOX, MSNBC, and CNN) in October 2005. In October 2006 he is up to 19%. That represents a 111% share increase.

Olbermann delivered 233,000 Adults 25-54 (the “money” demographic) in October 2006.

• That is an increase of 61% versus October 2005
• Again this places Olbermann well ahead of the other MSNBC talk shows. He is delivering 34% more Adults 25-54 than “Hardball” (174,000 Adults 25-54, +5% versus a year ago); and 53% more Adults 25-54 than Joe Scarborough’s 9pm show (152,000 Adults 25-54, +13% versus Rita Cosby a year ago).
• Again, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly still leads the time period with 470,000 Adults 25-54, but that is -9% versus a year ago, and over at CNN Paula Zahn is now in third place behind Olbermann with 217,000 Adults 25-54, -7% versus a year ago.
• And again, Olbermann’s share of the 8pm 3-network Adult 25-54 pie is way up — from 16% in October 2005 to 25% in October 2006 — a 56% increase.

Those stodgy and conservative executives at NBC and parent company General Electric are probably wishing they had clamped a lid on Keith Olbermann some time ago. He is after all one of the very few main stream media figures who dares speak truth to power. With numbers like these though — and those numbers are still on the rise — those of us who worry about Keith can probably rest easy.

Right on Keith!!!

While Karl Rove expresses confidence that the GOP will maintain control of both the House and the Senate on November 7th and darkly hints about “private polls” containing “the numbers” that assure a GOP triumph, a growing number of not-so-private polls suggest that Rove has little to be cocky about.

The new AP/Ipsos poll out today is such a poll. The AP story (Poll: Middle class voters abandoning GOP) paints a rosy picture of the Democrats’ chances for taking the House. Excerpts of the AP story, and more, below the fold:

Poll: Middle class voters abandoning GOP

The 2006 election is shaping up to be a repeat of 1994. This time, Democrats are favored to sweep Republicans from power in the House after a dozen years of GOP rule.

Less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 election, the latest Associated Press-AOL News poll found that likely voters overwhelmingly prefer Democrats over Republicans. They are angry at President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, and say Iraq and the economy are their top issues.

At the same time, fickle middle-class voters are embracing the Democratic Party and fleeing the GOP — just as they abandoned Democrats a dozen years ago and ushered in an era of Republican control…

The AP-AOL News telephone poll of 2,000 adults, 970 of whom are likely voters, was conducted by Ipsos from Oct. 20-25.

In it, 56 percent of likely voters said they would vote to send a Democrat to the House and 37 percent said they would vote Republican — a 19-point difference. Democrats had a 10-point edge in early October…

Likely voters have low opinions of both Bush’s job performance and that of the GOP-controlled Congress. The president’s approval rating is at a dismal 38 percent while Congress’ is even lower — 23 percent. Two-thirds of adults say America is on the wrong track…

Voters have grown increasingly angry at the Bush administration and Republican leadership in Congress throughout October.

Only 12 percent of likely voters say they are enthusiastic about the administration. The percentage of those who say they are angry with it has grown to 40 percent from 32 percent in early October. As for the GOP-controlled Congress, 32 percent of likely voters call themselves angry, up from 28 percent.

Groups of voters who grew more angry throughout the month include: women, minorities, liberals, moderates, Democrats and people who voted for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., for president in 2004…

As strong as this AP article makes the Ipsos poll appears for Democratic House candidates, I was struck by how much stronger the actual data appeared to be when I reviewed the poll for myself. I was also impressed at the lengths Ipsos appears to have gone to, and the transparency they showed in determining just who among their sample of 2,000 adults was most likely to actually vote (they came up with a sub-sample of 970 “likely voters”). Every pollster has its own formula for determining “likely voters,” many of them highly suspect. Rarely do they share with the public the questions they use to determine just who is likely to vote. Ipsos does, and clearly a respondent’s insistence that he or she plans to vote is not good enough for Ipsos to determine that they actually will.

Below are some of my observations from reading the actual poll that I did not think were readily apparent from simply reading the AP article:

President Bush’s Job Approval Rating

• 61% of the likely voters disapprove of Bush’s job performance versus only 37% who approve. Those are scary numbers for Republicans to contemplate on their own, but the intensity of feelings is even grimmer (or brighter, depending upon your point of view).
• More than twice as many “strongly disapprove” of Bush (42%) than “strongly approve” of him (19%).

Congress’ Job Approval Rating

• 75% of the likely voters disapprove of Congress versus only 23% who approve, but again the intensity of those feelings are remarkable.
• 43% “strongly disapprove” of the job Congress is doing versus only 4% who “strongly approve. That is a staggering ratio of 10 to 1.

How do likely voters plan to vote in upcoming Congressional elections?

• Among “likely voters” 56% say they plan to vote for Democrats versus 37% who say they plan to vote for Republicans, a very strong 19-point Democratic advantage. But again, the fine print suggests an even stronger Democratic advantage.
• Of likely voters who will “definitely” or “probably” vote Democratic, only 11% say they might change their minds.
• On the other hand, 18% of likely voters who currently plan to vote Republican say they still might change their minds.
• Even if all of the Democratic leaners who say they might change their minds actually did so and switched to the Republicans, and none of the fence-sitting Republicans ended up switching (and the probability of that happening is virtually nil), The Democrats would still come out ahead with 50% of the votes to 44% for the Republicans. That suggests that even a stampede of second thoughts about voting for the Democratic House candidates would still leave the Democrats with a solid, statistically significant advantage over the Republicans.
  
• Regardless of who they plan to vote for, likely voters prefer a Congress controlled by the Democrats to one controlled by the Replicans by a margin of 55% to 37%.

The Bush Factor

• 33% of likely voters say their vote for Congress will at least in part be to “show opposition to President Bush.”
• 15% of likely voters say their vote for Congress will at least in part be to “show support for President Bush.”

Lots of Anger, Little Enthusiasm

Asked: “Which comes closest to your feelings about the Bush Administration?”

• 65% of likely voters expressed dissatisfaction, but nearly two-thirds of those, 40%, expressed “anger.”
• 37% of likely voters indicated they were satisfied, but less than one-third of those, only 12%, said they were “enthusiastic.”

Asked the same question about the Republican Leadership in Congress:

• 65% of likely voters said they are dissatisfied, and nearly half of those, 32%, are “angry.”
• Only 34% said they were satisfied and less than one in five of those, 6%, said they were “enthusiastic.”
• 63% of likely voters indicated that “recent disclosures of corruption and scandal in Congress” were “moderately” to “extremely” important and would influence how they voted in Congressional elections.
• Only 23% indicated that these disclosures were “not at all important.”

Likely Voters on the Issues

Issues favored by the Republicans rank far down the list of issues that are important to likely voters. Issues considered “Extremely/Very Important” in declining order are:

• Iraq: 90%
• The economy: 89%
• Health Care: 84%
• Terrorism: 80%
• Social Security: 77%
• Political Corruption: 76%
• Taxes: 75%
• Gas Prices: 65%
• Immigration: 61%
• Same-sex Marriage: 40%

Democrats are the Party Likely Voters Trust to do a Better Job

On virtually every issue likely voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to do a better job:

• Terrorism: Democrats 43%; Republicans: 42%
• Protecting the country: Democrats 45%; Republicans 42%
• Handling the situation in Iraq: Democrats 51%; Republicans 36%
• Handling the economy: Democrats 52%; Republicans 39%
• Taxes: Democrats 47%; Republicans 41%
• Health Care: Democrats 58%; Republicans 30%
• Social Security: Democrats 55%; Republicans 32%
• Same-sex marriage: Democrats 46%; Republicans 36%
• Immigration: Democrats 45%; Republicans 37%
• Gas prices: Democrats 52%; Republicans 29%
• Political corruption: Democrats 43%; Republicans 25%

You may recall that I titled this post: “A Democratic Romp; Or a Stolen Election?” By way of a postscript allow me to point out another AP/Ipsos poll released last week but almost totally ignored by the mainstream media. That poll interviewed 1,000 adults in each of nine countries including the United States and asked: “How confident are you that votes in [the United States] elections are counted accurately?” The findings for residents of the United States are extremely interesting:

• Very confident: 26 percent
• Somewhat confident: 40 percent
• Not very confident: 20 percent
• Not at all confident: 14 percent

The actual poll is hidden behind a subscription wall, but of the 9 countries surveyed (Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States), only Italians expressed less confidence in the integrity of the vote count than Americans.

Based on the AP/Ipsos poll regarding likely voters and the general elections as well as other polls that suggest similar conclusions, I see no way the Republican Party can maintain control of the House of Representatives… unless, that is, they get a strong assist from the likes of Diebold and ES&S.

Also Main-Headlined at Op-Ed News

Last week Joe Lieberman, Connecticut’s Junior Senator currently defending his seat against a primary challenge from insurgent candidate Ned Lamont, reacted testily to charges that he is not a true Democrat. He told NBC’s Chip Reid “if people question whether I‘m a democratic, the democratic party is in trouble.” Perhaps so, But it was conservative Republicans who helped put Joe Lieberman in the Senate in the first place, and Republicans, including some of the most strident and right-wing members of the GOP, have often praised him and allied themselves with him. He has rarely hesitated to ally himself with Republicans nor to heed their call when they have sought his help.

Most recently, for example, When prominent Democrats introduced Senate amendments this past June calling for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, the Republicans saw a golden opportunity to politicize the proposed legislation by scheduling a day of debate on the Senate floor — a debate which they had the power to choreograph. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, the floor manager of the debate charged with making it a propaganda coup for the White House, had reserved the first 30 minutes of comment for himself. But Warner chose not to be the first to speak. Instead he gave that opportunity to a Democrat who was only too willing to oblige, announcing that “I’d like to now offer the first fifteen minutes [of my time] to the Senator from Connecticut.” Lieberman, quoting scripture, rose to “oppose the amendments introduced by the Senator from Michigan and others and the other amendment introduced by the Senators from Massachusetts and Wisconsin.” Lieberman’s speech drew strong praise from Warner, and also from Pennsylvania GOP Senator Rick Santorum who was only too eager to “associate myself with the remarks made by the Senator from Connecticut. I agree with them wholeheartedly.” Lieberman was one of only six Democratic Senators who voted on June 22nd against both the Feingold-Kerry amendment calling for removing U.S. troops from Iraq by next year, and also against the Levin-Reed bill that merely urged the administration to begin considering an exit strategy. Only Lieberman availed himself of Republican floor time to speak out against the proposals being presented by his fellow Democrats.

Back in late 2002 when the Bush Administration was anxious to sell war with Iraq, an organization was formed at the request of the Bush White House called “the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.” Its membership was composed primarily of hard-line Conserative Republicans, mostly of the Neocon persuasion. One of the few Democrats to sign on was Joe Lieberman who joined John McCain as Honorary co-chair. Other prominent members included Republican stalwarts George P. Schultz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert Kagan, Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, and James Woolsey.

Perhaps Joe Lieberman’s affinity for Republicans and their causes has its roots in the fact that he made it to the Senate in the first place with a big assist from Republican notable William F. Buckley and his conservative publication The National Review. Buckley despised Connecticut’s incumbent Senator Lowell Weicker, a liberal Republican who had split with many within his own party by calling for the impeachment of Richard Nixon following Watergate revelations. In 1988 Buckley resolved to rid the Senate of Weicker by aggressively supporting and helping to finance the campaign of then Connecticut Democratic Attorney General Joe Lieberman.

National Review has long taken credit for electing Joe Lieberman to the Senate, and in fact did so as recently as last December in a piece that reminisced about the causes it had championed over the years:

Throughout the half-century, NR has engaged in a variety of causes, some of them successful, some less so — all worthy. Below [is one of them]:

‘BuckPac Kills!’

Lowell Weicker, the one-time Republican senator and perpetual liberal gasbag from the state of Connecticut, was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970. He met his waterloo in 1988, when the September 2 issue of NR announced the formation of “Buckleys for Lieberman.” The impromptu association’s stated purpose was “to generate support for the defeat of Lowell Weicker” by endorsing his challenger, Joe Lieberman. Lieberman, it was explained, “is a moderate democrat, and it is always possible that he will progress in the right direction.” There was, on the other hand, “no such hope for Lowell Weicker.”

The group (which came to be known simply as “BuckPac”) contained several vital organs, such as the precisely named “Horse’s Ass Committee,” the purpose of which was “to document that Lowell Weicker is the Number One Horse’s Ass in the Senate.” This was accompanied by the “Degasification Committee,” which was “engaged in attempting to clean up the quality of public thought,” as well as in demonstrating that “the bombast, murk, and pomposity of Lowell Weicker’s public declarations are a threat to democratic ecology.” Every issue of NR leading up to the election featured a “Weicker Watch,” heralding the latest in the anti-Weicker crusade.

When BuckPac was first launched, Weicker held a 17-point lead over Lieberman in the polls. By November 2 that lead had vanished, and Weicker was toppled. “BuckPac Kills!” proclaimed the December 9, 1988, issue of NR. “By the mere act of pointing at the nudity of the emperor, the searing point was made. Namely that Mr. Weicker was an arrogant, bigoted bore and that the Republicans who, as galley slaves, had voted for him should feel free to vote for the Democratic alternative . . .” That alternative, Lieberman, still occupies Weicker’s Senate seat, attending our 50th-anniversary gala in October. We continue to regard him as a marked improvement over Mr. Weicker.

What was that about National Review’s 50th-anniversary gala? We learn more about that event from none other than Rush Limbaugh:

Rush Limbaugh: Great Night at National Review’s 50th Anniversary (posted October 7, 2005)

Folks let me tell you a little bit about my evening last night… Last night was the 50th anniversary of National Review magazine. Now, National Review magazine, of course, is the creation and brainchild of William F. Buckley, Jr., who will celebrate his 80th birthday in November… and I was seated at Mr. Buckley’s table with his wife, Pat. Also at the table was Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who I’d never met but I did meet last night. He’s a very, very nice man. We had a nice conversation….Also, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas was at the table as well.

…Judge Bork was there. As I said, Kay Bailey Hutchinson was there along with, I met, Senator Lieberman, and you may ask, “Well, what was Senator Lieberman doing there?” Bill Buckley is responsible for Senator Lieberman being in the Senate.

Back in the ’80s, Bill Buckley and the National Review staff got fed up with Lowell Weicker. They had had it with Lowell Weicker. So they set up a PAC called BuckPAC, and BuckPAC essentially got Lieberman elected. They knew they weren’t going to elect a Republican up there. So he was there and Buckley, even in his speech last night, made mention of the fact that Joe Lieberman is his favorite Democrat… Kay Bailey Hutchison was on one side of our table, circular tables and Lieberman was two seats to my right. He was on Buckley’s right; I was on Buckley’s left…

And so Joe Lieberman, with a big Republican assist, made it to the United States Senate, where he has won the adoration of many prominent right-wingers who rarely have anything good to say about any Democrat.

Take Keith Olbermann’s favorite “Worst Person in the World,” Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, for example, who enthusiastically endorsed Joe Lieberman on June 16th:

Look what’s going on with Lieberman in Connecticut. They’re after Lieberman, their own Democrats are after him…

Silly me to think that Joe should have to actually prove himself to the good folks in CT… Fear not, Joe just received the stamp of approval by Bill and the Factor…

I wonder if Joe will use this endorsement in his next campaign ad?

Joe Lieberman appeared with Sean Hannity on FOX News on February 22, 2006, Hannity offered the Senator his endorsement as well:

HANNITY: (Laughter) I’m thinking… I’m thinking Hannity Conservatives for Lieberman and I’ll do a big fundraiser in Connecticut.

LIEBERMAN: Yeah, yeah. Let me just say, I appreciate your friendship, and I appreciate your support. Really.

HANNITY: So you want my endorsement?

LIEBERMAN: What can I… if you support me… Look, I’ve always gotten elected by people from all parties. Now if there’s a Democratic primary against me, which there might be, I might ask you to come in and endorse my opponent. (Laughter)

And then there is Ann Coulter who rarely has a good word for any Democrat… unless that Democrat happens to be Joe Lieberman, whom she told Neil Cavuto she “admires” when she appeared on FOX News on June 22nd:

COULTER: … I would admire a politician, not as much as basically your run of the mill garden-variety Republican, but as far as Democrats go like Lieberman, who apparently does want to defend America and fight the war on terrorism. He is the one facing a primary fight.

CAVUTO: You know, there is talk about him maybe bolting to a third party. The seeds are there for a third party movement. Do you buy that?

COULTER: I think he should come all the way and become a Republican.

Bill Kristol, the Republican neocon editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, apparently is not a huge contributor to political campaigns. Reportedly none of his political contributions since 1998, save one, were over $200, and all except one went to Republican candidates. The lone exception was a $500 check written to Joe Lieberman’s 2006 Senate re-election campaign.

When President Bush appeared on the Larry King Show on CNN on June 7, king sprung a question on him about Joe Lieberman:

KING: Move to politics. An unusual situation in Connecticut. Joe Lieberman is running for re-election to the Senate. He’s in the primary fight, may lose, and has said that if he loses, he might well run as an Independent. He supported you staunchly on Iraq, and Iraq is the major issue in that campaign, the primary. Would you support him if he ran as an Independent?

When you think about it, there was only one acceptible response. Bush, as a Republican president, is the head of the Republican party. Any response other than that he planned to support the Connecticut Republican Senate nominee would have been the wrong one. Instead Bush hemmed and hawed and opined that a Bush endorsement of Lieberman might hurt Lieberman more than help him. It was probably as close as Bush dared go toward endorsing his Democratic friend:

G. BUSH: First, the Democrats have to sort out who their nominee is going to be and that’s going to be up to the Democrats. And the rest of it’s hypothetical.

KING: But he said he would run as an Independent, if he were…

G. BUSH: He also has said he’s going to win his primary.

KING: I know you like him.

G. BUSH: You’re trying to get me to give him a political kiss, which may be his death…

Then there was that July 20th New York Times ananysis of campaign contributions that found a strange affinity for Joe Lieberman among donors who normally favor the GOP:

Lieberman Finds Favor Among Donors That Usually Support G.O.P.

When it comes to supporting candidates for public office, the Associated General Contractors of America gives 90 percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans.

And then there is Senator Joseph I. Lieberman.

The group, which represents the construction industry, wrote a $4,000 check last month to Mr. Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat who is facing a spirited challenge for his party’s nomination from a political novice, Ned Lamont. The money was just a sliver of the $260,000 he has collected from political action committees since March.

But that donation and others like it have fed a perception, stoked by the Lamont campaign and its supporters on the Internet, that Mr. Lieberman is too cozy with Republicans. It is a vexing assertion for Mr. Lieberman, whose centrist politics and pragmatic style, once a source of pride, are now being held against him by liberals and antiwar Democrats.

…Anyone looking for evidence of Mr. Lieberman’s bipartisan appeal can find it in his roster of recent contributors, which includes organizations that traditionally give more to Republicans. They include engineering and construction firms, some with contracts in Iraq. Those firms include Bechtel, Fluor International and Siemens, which support Republicans 64 to 70 percent of the time, according to data compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks campaign and lobbying activities.
Florida Power and Light, which supports Republicans 84 percent of the time, gave $5,000 to Mr. Lieberman. Areva Cogema, a builder of nuclear power plants that gives 70 percent of its contributions to Republicans, contributed $1,000…

The reasons for their support differ, and are not always clear. Most of these contributors did not support Mr. Lieberman in 2000, and many have supported only Republican candidates in Connecticut; the only other Connecticut candidate to receive a contribution this year from Areva Cogema, for example, was Representative Nancy L. Johnson, a Republican…

There have also been some odd Lieberman alliances over the years, like the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), an organization whose pitch includes fulfilling “Biblical prophesy,” and whose work Lieberman actively supported from 1994-1999. Its Advisory Board has included prominent conservative Republicans like Gary Bauer; Bill Bennett; Chuck Colson; Jeane Kirkpatrick; Ralph Reed; Jack Kemp; and William Kristol, and its speakers have included Pat Robertson; Jerry Falwell; Pat Boone; and Donald Rumsfeld.

Next Tuesday Connecticut Democrats will go to the polls to decide who will represent the Democratic Party this fall in the U.S. Senate race. Once considered a shoo-in for the nomination, a primary victory for Lieberman is now in serious doubt. If he does lose the primary Lieberman is planning to remain in the race, running as an independent. Perhaps it is only fitting that his conservative Republican friends will finally have the option of voting for him without having to vote Democrat.

Also Main head-lined at Op-Ed News

Taking its cue from a press release that accompanied the latest Quinnipiac poll, the mainstream media is predicting a close Connecticut primary contest that could go either way. Ned Lamont holds a narrow 4-point edge over Joe Lieberman, but that falls well within the polls +/- 3.8 percentage point margin of error. Is it really that close? Careful analysis of the data suggests otherwise. In fact, Lamont may be heading for a landslide victory on August 8th.

The Quinnipiac Press Release:

July 20, 2006 – Lamont Inches Ahead Of Lieberman In Dem Primary, Quinnipiac University Connecticut Poll Finds; Incumbent Still Leads In 3-Way November Match up

Anti-war Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont has surged to a razor-thin 51 – 47 percent lead over incumbent Sen. Joseph Lieberman among likely Democratic primary voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today…”

“Lamont has turned what looked like a blowout into a very close Democratic primary race,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D.

“Lamont is up, while Lieberman’s Democratic support is dropping. More Democrats have a favorable opinion of Lamont, who was largely unknown last month, and see him as an acceptable alternative to Lieberman. But Lieberman’s strength among Republicans and independents gives him the lead in a three-way match up in November.”…

Just how does a narrow 4-point lead translate into an August blow-out? Read on.

LIEBERMAN IS IN A FREE-FALL THAT HAS YET TO BOTTOM OUT:

Lieberman’s job approval rating in the latest Quinnipiac poll conducted July 13-18, 2006 stands at 55%, down from 73% in January 2005 (-25%); down from 62% in January 2006 (-11%); and down 31% from his 80% approval rating in September 2000 when he last ran for the Senate. Ironically, it is only among Republicans that he has not suffered severe job approval erosion. He has a 70% job approval rating among registered Republicans versus 73% in January 2005 (-4%). Among Democrats he has slipped from a 72% Job Approval rating to 47% (-35%). Among Independents he has dropped from 72% to 52% (-28%).

Perhaps even more dramatic are his disapproval ratings. From January 2005 to July 2006 Lieberman’s disapproval ratings have increased by 133% among all registered voters (from 15% to 35%); by 193% among Democrats (from 15% to 44%); and by 157% among independents (from 14% to 36%). Among Republicans he is disapproved of by only 22% versus 18% in January 2005.

A declining percentage of voters also have a favorable opinion of Lieberman personally. In the latest Quinnipiac poll he was viewed favorably by only 40% of Democrats (down from 50% in January 2006) and by 42% of Independents (down from 52% in January 2006).

Keep in mind that the numbers cited above are trends. The latest Quinnipiac poll was completed nearly two months before the August 8th Connecticut Primary, and if these trends continue unabated, Lieberman’s job approval and favorable ratings could be much lower by Primary Day. The fact that Joe Lieberman decided to collect signatures for a possible independent run for the Senate at a time when he maintained a still strong 15-point lead against Lamont in the polls suggests that private polling told him he was not looking good in the August primary. There is no reason to believe that Lieberman has bottomed out as of yet. Indeed his downward spiral could well accelerate as growing national media attention causes Connecticut voters to focus more closely on the fast-approaching August primary.

NED LAMONT’S SURGE:

A 51 to 47 Lamont edge over Lieberman in the latest Quinnipiac poll may not sound like much — until you put it in context. That number represents a very significant 19-point swing since the previous Quinnipiac poll was completed only six weeks earlier. Indeed the Lamont surge is nothing short of spectacular since he formally declared his candidacy barely four months before, on March 13, 2006:

• The February 2006 Quinnipiac poll (February 10-16), conducted before Lamont formally entered the race, gave Lieberman a seemingly insurmountable 55-point edge (68% to 13% with 17% undecided).
  

• The April 2006 Quinnipiac poll (April 25-30) showed a slight improvement for Lamont, but Lieberman still held a commanding 46-point point lead (65% to 19% with 14% undecided) with only three and-a-half-months remaining until the primary.
  

• The June 2006 Quinnipiac poll (May 31-June 6), still seemed, at first glance, like good news for Lieberman. It showed him with 25-point lead over Lamont (57% to 32% with 11% undecided). Those numbers represented healthy gains for Lamont, but they still seemed to leave him too far behind to catch up. This time, however, Quinnipiac also included “likely Democratic Primary voters,” and among that group Lieberman’s lead dropped to a much slimmer 15-point lead (55% to 40%). For the first time Lamont seemed within striking distance of catching Lieberman, though it still seemed a daunting task.
  

• As noted earlier, the July 2006 Quinnipiac poll revealed a paper-thin 4-point lead for Lamont over Lieberman (51% to 47% with 2% undecided). Were it not for the trend-line the Lamont lead would be statistically insignificant, but the trend-line is there and it is impossible to ignore. In barely four months since declaring his candidacy, Lamont has gone from a 46-point deficit to a 4-point advantage against Lieberman — an incredible 50-point vote shift. If that trend were mathematically projected forward Lamont would enjoy a 24-point edge over Lieberman by the August 8th Primary Day.

QUINNIPIAC DATA SUGGESTS LAMONT MAY BE PULLING AWAY:

• According to the July 2006 Quinnipiac poll 24% of respondents who had intended to vote for Lieberman, informed of his strong support for the Iraq war, indicated that they disagreed with his position on the war. Of those who disagreed, another 24% indicated that they would change their vote based on that issue alone. Those respondents would have swung Lamont’s 4-point edge to a 9-point edge.
• WHO IS NED LAMONT? That may seem like a strange question to ask about someone who is beating a three-term, 18-year incumbent Senator and former Vice-Presidential and Presidential candidate in the polls, but the majority of Connecticut voters surveyed in the latest Quinnipiac poll, indicate that they do not know enough about Ned Lamont to have an opinion about him. In February, when Lamont trailed Lieberman by 55-points, 93% of those polled by Quinnipiac said they did not know enough about Ned Lamont to form an opinion about him. In July, When Lamont had surged to a 4-point lead, 51% still maintained that they did not know enough about Ned Lamont to form an opinion about him. The trend-line demonstrates unmistakably that Lamont’s support among voters grows as they learn more about him. The attention this race is generating virtually guarantees that the vast majority of Democratic voters will know plenty about Ned Lamont by Primary Day, and the evidence suggests that his advantage over Joe Lieberman will grow as the voters get to know him better

• The Bush albatross will continue to haunt Joe Lieberman, George Bush’s favorite Democrat. Lamont is already running a commercial showing Joe Lieberman morphing into George W. Bush, and photos of the infamous Bush “kiss” follow Joe wherever he goes. Nationally George Bush’s job approval ratings are languishing in the mid to high 30’s. In Connecticut only 27% approve of Bush, and only 7% of Democrats do.

VOTER TURNOUT FAVORS LAMONT:

The June 2006 Quinnipiac poll suggested that “likely Democratic Primary voters” were more likely to vote for Lamont than for Lieberman (a 25-point Lieberman lead among all Democrats dropped to a 15-point lead among likely Primary voters).

In the July 2006 Quinnipiac poll 68% of respondents who identified themselves as Democrats were determined to be “likely Primary voters.” That percentage far exceeds the actual likely turnout. Of 22 U.S. primaries held as of July 16th, the average turnout was only 20%. The average Connecticut turnout in that state’s last four competitive primaries was 23%. It is a pretty safe bet that only about one in three respondents determined by Quinnipiac to be “likely voters” will actually turn out to vote in the August 8th primary. The evidence suggests that those who do will be more favorably disposed toward Lamont than Lieberman. If so, the July Quinnipiac poll probably understates Lamont’s Primary Day advantage over Lieberman.

.

The conventional wisdom is that the Connecticut Primary will be a squeaker. I think not. I believe that analysis of the most recent poll along with the 5-poll trends suggests an August landslide for Ned Lamont.

What of November? The Quinnipiac poll suggests that Lieberman, running as an independent, wins a 3-way election in November by a healthy 23-point margin over Ned Lamont (Rasmussen, on the other hand calls it a 40/40 dead-heat). Again, I think not. Those polls mean little given the likely growth of Lamont’s name-recognition between now and November, and a decisive primary victory by Lamont and the accompanying publicity such a victory would bring would also likely have a major impact on the subsequent polls and on the fall election. One need only look at the last several Connecticut Quinnipiac polls to see how dramatically the landscape can change in a relatively short period of time. Will Lieberman even run as an independent if he suffers a humiliating defeat in the primary? Only 22% of Connecticut voters are registered Republicans, hardly a base that can sweep Lieberman to a November victory, even if they vote overwhelmingly for him.

My prediction: Lamont wins BIG in August and goes on to win in November!

Also main headlined and front-paged at Op-Ed News

In the heat of silly season attacks from the right against The New York Times for its “exposure” of Bush administration surveillance of international banking transactions, the public and mainstream media have forgotten about another highly publicized leak just two years ago. That story, which also ran in the Times, dealt a serious blow to the fight against terror. It exposed a mole that had penetrated Al Qaeda, and it crippled a sting operation, allowing numerous subjects of investigation to escape. Some of those subjects may have participated in a major terrorist attack a year later. Unlike the bank records “revelations” of 2006, which were not really secret at all, the leak of 2004 jeopardized national security, and almost certainly cost lives. Yet the right wing Republican spin machine — now calling for prosecutions under the Espionage Act, death in the gas chamber for Times’ Managing Editor Bill Keller, and investigations of the media and of leakers in the name of “national security” — were strangely silent in 2004. That leak, which occurred in the middle of a Presidential campaign, was clearly designed to advance a purely political agenda, and the leakers were unidentified sources within the George W. Bush administration.

The stage was set for this other leak in the early summer of 2004. The presidential campaign was heating up. The Democratic National Convention was just around the corner. And George W. Bush was sinking in the polls. His job approval ratings, which had been in the 80’s and 90’s just two years earlier in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, had fallen below 50% for the first time. The American public was even beginning to lose faith in the ability of the Bush Administration to protect it from terrorists. Most polls now showed more than 40% of Americans disapproved of Bush’s handling of the war on terror. Significantly, a June 2004 ABC News/Washington Post poll even had John Kerry inching ahead of George W. Bush on the question of which one was better able to deal with terrorist threats, an issue where Bush had once held a formidable advantage.

The administration needed a break, and in June 0f 2004 it got one, or so it evidently thought. On June 12, 2004 Abu Mus’ab al Baluchi was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan. Baluchi was a nephew of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and he was said to be a terrorist “facilitator” who helped others move and plan their attacks. News of his capture was a closely kept secret.

Information provided by Baluchi led Pakistani investigators to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani whom they captured on July 25, 2004 on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. Ghailani, an occupant of the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list had a $5 million price on his head. He was suspected of involvement in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people had lost their lives.

Though Ghalani was apprehended July 25th, his capture was not made public until four days later on July 29th, when it was revealed amid much fanfare by Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, in what The Washington Post described as “an unusual late-night announcement on Pakistan’s Geo television network.” The Post also noted that similar high-profile arrests of terrorist suspects were usually reported to the media “almost immediately.” “What difference will it make if we do not rush to make a hasty unconfirmed claim?” the Post quoted Hayat as saying, adding that Hayat “said he saw no connection between the late announcement of Ghailani’s arrest and the Democratic National Convention in the United States, where Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts was about to accept his party’s nomination for president.” [Emphasis added]

Virtually no one in the mainstream media mentioned an article that had appeared in The New Republic ten days before on July 19th entitled “July Surprise?” by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman and Massoud Ansari, excerpted below:

…This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan… to do more in the war on terrorism…

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver… high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November… Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations–according to a recently departed intelligence official…

…an official who works under [Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)] director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis “have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must.” What’s more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: “The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during… meetings in Washington.” …according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July”–the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.[Emphasis added]

The announced arrest of Ghailani just hours before John Kerry’s scheduled acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination in Boston diverted public attention and considerable news coverage away from John Kerry and his acceptance speech. Two days later that was followed by the declaration of a new terror alert by then Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. “We have no specific information that says an attack is imminent,” Ridge declared in a 2pm press conference on Sunday, August 2nd. He announced that Al Qaeda operatives were preparing to bomb specific buildings in the financial districts of New York City, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. The timing of the Ridge press conference and the heightened alerts would come under scrutiny only two days later when it was learned that the surveillance upon which the alerts was based had actually taken place three to four years earlier, prompting questions as to just why the U.S. government had suddenly perceived an imminent threat immediately following the official start of the presidential election campaign.

THE LEAK

The day after Ridge’s “revelations” regarding the financial districts “plot,” The New York Times went to press with an Exclusive story: “THREATS AND RESPONSES: INTELLIGENCE; Captured Qaeda Figure Led Way To Information Behind Warning,” excerpted below:

The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials.

The figure, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages.

A senior United States official would not confirm or deny that Mr. Khan had been the Qaeda figure whose capture led to the information. But the official said ”documentary evidence” found after the capture had demonstrated in extraordinary detail that Qaeda members had for years conducted sophisticated and extensive reconnaissance of the financial institutions cited in the warnings on Sunday.

One senior American intelligence official said the information was more detailed and precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence work. A second senior American official said it had provided a new window into the methods, content and distribution of Qaeda communications…

In fact, Khan was not the source of the financial district plot “intelligence” which had actually been gathered years earlier, nor was there any intelligence to indicate that an attack on New York area and Washington, D.C. financial centers was imminent. On this count the Times article contained some serious mis-information:

“The American officials said the new evidence had been obtained only after the capture of the Qaeda figure. Among other things, they said, it demonstrated that Qaeda plotters had begun casing the buildings in New York, Newark and Washington even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

While the Times article seemed to suggest that the original leak about Khan had come from a “Pakistani Intelligence official,” that also was not the case. The mainstream media did some reporting on the back end of this story, but a major debt of gratitude is owed to Middle East authority Juan Cole, who closely monitored and chronicled events on his respected and widely read web site, Informed Comment as they unfolded.

Within a few days a different version of events began to emerge, like this one in The Washington Post on August 4th:

“Bush administration officials said the terror alert for financial sectors in Washington, New York and Newark was based in part on the contents of a laptop computer, disks and other materials seized during an arrest of an al Qaeda fugitive in Pakistan in late July showing that al Qaeda operatives had conducted detailed surveillance of the five buildings. U.S. officials did not make clear until Tuesday that the surveillance was conducted three to four years ago and that authorities were not sure whether it had continued [Emphasis added].”

It soon became abundantly clear that the outing of Khan in the New York Times had seriously damaged the national security of the United States, Great Britain, and Pakistan, among others. Juan Cole’s report dated August 7, 2004:

Did the Bush Administration Burn a Key al-Qaeda Double Agent?

Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff of Reuters reveal the explosive information that the Bush administration blew the cover Monday of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. On Sunday August 1, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced a new alert against an al-Qaeda plot concerning financial institutions in New York and Washington, DC.

…Reuters alleges, “The New York Times published a story on Monday saying U.S. officials had disclosed that a man arrested secretly in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of information leading to the security alerts… The newspaper… did not say how it had learned his name. U.S. officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organizations on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch al Qaeda suspects.”

…Reuters implies that once the Americans blew Khan’s cover, the Pakistani ISI were willing to give [New York Times reporter David] Rohde more details in Karachi.

…Anyway, Khan had been secretly apprehended by Pakistani military intelligence in mid-July, and had been turned into a double agent. He was actively helping investigators penetrate further into al-Qaeda cells and activities via computer, and was still cooperating when the “senior Bush administration” figure told [New York Times reporter Douglas] Jehl about him.

Pakistani military intelligence… told Reuters,'”He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He’s a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz… He was cooperating with interrogators on Sunday and Monday and sent e-mails on both days…”‘

In other words, the Bush administration just blew the cover of one of the most important assets inside al-Qaeda that the US has ever had.

The announcement of Khan’s name forced the British to arrest 12 members of an al-Qaeda cell prematurely, before they had finished gathering the necessary evidence against them via Khan. Apparently they feared that the cell members would scatter as soon as they saw that Khan had been compromised. (They would have known he was a double agent, since they got emails from him Sunday and Monday!) One of the twelve has already had to be released for lack of evidence, a further fall-out of the Bush SNAFU. It would be interesting to know if other cell members managed to flee.

Why in the world would Bush administration officials out a double agent working for Pakistan and the US against al-Qaeda? In a way, the motivation does not matter. If the Reuters story is true, this slip is a major screw-up that casts the gravest doubts on the competency of the administration to fight a war on terror. Either the motive was political calculation, or it was sheer stupidity…

On August 9th Juan Cole observed:

…Then on [August 6th], after Khan’s name was revealed, government sources told CNN that counterterrorism officials had seen a drop in intercepted communications among suspected terrorists.”

Read between the lines, and CNN is suggesting that the outing of Khan has led to greater caution in al-Qaeda and similar groups about using electronic communications, which may make it more difficult to monitor them.

And the Washington Post reported on August 13th:

According to a Post report attributed to a senior U.S. official, “Khan became part of a sting operation organized by the CIA after he was captured last month [July 13] and agreed to send coded e-mail messages to al Qaeda contacts around the world.” That sting operation was blown instantly by the leak of Khan’s name.

Meanwhile, Condoleeza Rice had acknowledged to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on August 8, 2004 that the source of the Khan leak was the Bush administration, not Pakistani intelligence officials:

BLITZER: He was disclosed in Washington on background.

RICE: On background. And the problem is that when you’re trying to strike a balance between giving enough information to the public so that they know that you’re dealing with a specific, credible, different kind of threat than you’ve dealt with in the past, you’re always weighing that against kind of operational considerations. We’ve tried to strike a balance. We think for the most part, we’ve struck a balance, but it’s indeed a very difficult balance to strike.

Apparently neither Pakistani nor British officials were comforted by the “balance” Condoleeza Rice found so comforting. Juan Cole, August 8, 2004:

It turns out that both the United Kingdom and Pakistan are extremely angry with Bush for going public with the details gleaned from the computers of Khan and Ghailani.

In an article for the Observer, British Home Secretary David Blunkett lashed out at the Bush White House over last Sunday’s announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge of an old al-Qaeda plot against financial institutions in New York and Washington. Blunkett writes, …it is important to be able to distinguish if there is a meaningful contribution that helps to secure us from terrorism. And to understand if there isn’t. And there are very good reasons why we shouldn’t reveal certain information to the public…

Blunkett’s measured tones barely disguise his fury at the Bush administration for having gone public with details that have endangered an ongoing British investigation and forced the premature arrest of twelve suspects, against whom it is not clear a case can be made at this point…

Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, was also annoyed, according to Dawn:
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, in an interview on Friday, drew a veil over Khan’s contribution to the breakthroughs against Al Qaeda. “This is a very sensitive subject. We must be very careful, we must exercise extreme caution in coming out with such names and such information,” the minister said.

On August 9th Juan Cole wrote about and commented upon further fallout from the outing of Khan:

Neville Dean of PA News reports that… “Reports last week also claimed that five al Qaida militants were on the run in the UK after escaping capture in last Tuesday’s raids.” If this is true, it is likely that the 5 went underground on hearing that Khan was in custody. That is, the loose lips of the Bush administration enabled them to flee arrest…

…One [of those being held], Abu Eisa al-Hindi, is a high al-Qaeda official also wanted by the US. Because Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan’s identity was prematurely released, however, the British may not have enough evidence to extradite him. [note: to date al-Hindi apparently remains in British custody despite having been indicted in the United States — Jpol]

CNN.com noted Monday morning:
“The effort by U.S. officials to justify raising the terror alert level last week may have shut down an important source of information that has already led to a series of al Qaeda arrests, Pakistani intelligence sources have said.

Until U.S. officials leaked the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan to reporters, Pakistan had been using him in a sting operation to track down al Qaeda operatives around the world, the sources said…

The Boston Globe reported the following day:

…several senior intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed dismay at the level of information that has been revealed to the media — particularly the role that Khan’s arrest has played.

”Most of the people I talk to are most shocked by some of the recent details being revealed about Al Qaeda,” said one senior CIA analyst who works on terrorism issues.

On August 7, 2004 John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor and a terrorism expert, told FOX News that “By exposing the only deep mole we’ve ever had within al-Qaeda, it ruined the chance to capture dozens if not hundreds more.”

On September 16, 2004, more than seven weeks after Kahn’s identity was leaked to The New York Times, then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, in London for consultation with British officials, publicly acknowledged that the U.S. had been responsible for the leak and apologized for it. He told reporters that the leaking of the intelligence about alleged terrorist suspects in London was “regrettable.”

THE AFTERMATH

The story does not end here. Remember those alleged plans to attack financial centers in New York, Newark and Washington? It turns out that wasn’t true either. Michael Isakoff and Mark Hosenball reported in on the real targets in Newsweek two weeks after the November 2004 election:

The latest analysis of evidence that led to last summer’s Code Orange alert suggests that Al Qaeda operatives were plotting a “big bomb” attack against a major landmark in Britain—but had no active plans for strikes in the United States, U.S. intelligence sources tell NEWSWEEK.

The reassessment of Al Qaeda plans is the latest indication that much of the Bush administration’s repeatedly voiced concerns about a pre-election attack inside the United States was based in part on an early misreading of crucial intelligence seized months ago in Pakistan.

The new view is that there was indeed an active Al Qaeda plot underway earlier this year—one that involved coded communications between high-level operatives in Pakistan and a British cell headed by a longtime associate of September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

The plot was aimed at setting off a large bomb at a prestigious economic or political target inside the United Kingdom—in effect to make a political statement against the British government…

Some U.S. law-enforcement officers based in London, NEWSWEEK has learned, have become extremely concerned about evidence regarding possible active Al Qaeda plots to attack targets in Britain. According to a U.S. government official, fears of terror attacks have prompted FBI agents based in the U.S. Embassy in London to avoid traveling on London’s popular underground railway (or tube) system…[Emphasis added]

…The indications that plotters linked to a big election-season terror alert actually were actively planning to attack Britain rather than the United States is at least the second revelation which seems to partly undermine administration assertions that the U.S. homeland faced a heightened risk of attack during the presidential campaign.

Shortly before the election, administration officials quietly acknowledged that at least one informant who last winter had provided lurid intelligence about a possible pre-election attack in the U.S. had apparently fabricated his allegations. Yet given the importance that waging the war on terror had assumed during the presidential campaign, administration officials apparently were reluctant to announce a lowering of the Orange-alert threat until after the election…

THE LEAK COMES FULL CIRCLE

Fast forward to July 7, 2005 when a series of suicide terrorist attacks upon the London public transportation system left 52 dead and hundreds injured. Were these the attacks being planned in 2004 when the U.S. government outed Khan? Did members of a terrorist cell who escaped following Khan’s exposure go on to carry out their plans after all, a year later? ABC News reported on July 17, 2005:

…Officials tell ABC News the London bombers have been connected to an al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

The laptop computer of Naeem Noor Khan, a captured al Qaeda leader, contained plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway system…

Security officials tell ABC News they have discovered links between the eldest of the London bombers, Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, and the original group in Luton…

One of Khan’s friends informed the BBC today that Khan had undergone training for explosives at terror camps in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. This piece of information only strengthened the London-Pakistani connection.

So there you have it. A politically inspired election-year leak from the Bush administration to The New York Times outed an Al Qaeda mole and disrupted an ongoing sting operation that had the potential of uncovering and leading to the capture of untold numbers of Al Qaeda terrorists. Instead many remained unidentified while others escaped. A year later scores died in London.

To those who are screaming for the head of Bill Keller for “exposing” a bank-records program that the Bush administration had been openly boasting about for years, I ask: Where was your outrage back in 2004 when a Bush administration leak to the very same New York Times placed all of us in jeopardy?

Speaking to the media just a year ago against the backdrop of continued criticism of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, President Bush defended that treatment and urged the media to go down there and see for themselves:

You’re welcome to go down yourself — maybe you have — and taking a look at the conditions. I urge members of our press corps to go down to Guantanamo and see how they’re treated and to see — and to see — and to look at the facts. …

I would urge you to go down and take a look at Guantanamo….I seriously suggest you go down there and take a look. And — seriously, take an objective look as to how these folks are treated…

Bill O’Reilly did just that recently, claiming he had been given “almost total access to the prison” (a claim which, if true, suggests that O’Reilly was exempted from the very heavy restrictions usually imposed upon journalists visiting Guantanamo), and he returned to wax eloquent repeatedly that “there’s absolutely no evidence that I’ve seen that says any abuse is taking place at Guantánamo Bay.”

Three other journalists who visited Guantanamo shortly after the suicides of three detainees there on June 10th met with a somewhat different reception. Their permission to visit the base was revoked, and they were asked to leave. The story was played down initially by most of the mainstream media, including The New York Times, which carried a terse, 74 word article back on June 15th:

Reporters Must Leave Guantánamo By NEIL A. LEWIS

The Pentagon ordered three reporters at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to leave, officials and the reporters said. The reporters, from The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times and The Charlotte Observer, had been reporting on the suicides of three detainees last weekend. Lt. Cmdr. J. D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said other news organizations had threatened to sue if they were not given similar access or if the other reporters at Guantánamo did not leave.

It has since become clear that the reasons given for the expulsion were false, and the story has been gaining momentum, spurred on by articles written by the expelled journalists themselves. Editor & Publisher today carried a long article providing fresh and disturbing insight into this new round of Guantanamo censorship:

Fallout From Gitmo Reporter Expulsions Continues Coast to Coast By Joe Strupp

NEW YORK The fallout from last week’s expulsion of four journalists from Guantanamo Bay by military officials, who claimed the move was necessary to appease other media outlets seeking similar access, continued in recent days as newspapers from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times raised concerns about the move.

In addition, journalism organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists have weighed in on the reporter banishment, claiming the removal of journalists following the suicides of three detainees just a week ago was wrong.

“This is the sort of banana-republic intimidation of the press we sneer at when it occurs on other points on the globe,” Charles N. Davis, co-chairman of SPJ’s Freedom of Information Committee, said in a statement. “The American public deserves nothing less than knowing what’s going on at Guantanamo.”

But the latest reaction has come from newspapers themselves.

Carol Williams of the Los Angeles Times, one of the reporters forced to leave last Wednesday after five days in the area, wrote a harsh column Sunday in which she pointed out how the military’s willingness to remove journalists from the controversial base during a major news event there — such as the suicides — is misguided. Michael Gordon and Todd Sumlin of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer and Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald also were expelled on Wednesday.

“In the best of times, covering Guantanamo means wrangling with a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, with logistics so nonsensical that they turn two hours of reporting into an 18-hour day, with hostile escorts who seem to think you’re in league with Al Qaeda, and with the dispiriting reality that you’re sure to encounter more iguanas than war-on-terror suspects,” Williams wrote in her piece. “In the worst of times–this past week, for example–those quotidian discomforts can be compounded by an invasion of mating crabs skittering into your dormitory, a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an unceremonious expulsion to Miami on a military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available. In this case, that seat was the toilet.

“I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because of a baffling move by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office, in which the only three newspaper reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to covering the first deaths at Guantanamo were ordered off the base Wednesday,” she added. “Rumsfeld’s office said the decision was made ‘to be fair and impartial’ to the rest of the media, which the government had refused to let in. Rumsfeld’s gatekeepers have long made clear that they view outside scrutiny of the detention operations as a danger to the Bush administration’s secretive and often criticized campaign to indefinitely detain ‘enemy combatants.’ But this time, their actions seemed counterproductive because booting out [the four journalists] only provoked fresh demands to learn what the government is hiding.”

The E&P story also suggests that Col. Mike Bumgarner may have himself been ejected from Guantanamo for allowing just a little too much access to Michael Gordon of the Charlotte Observer.

“In a traditionally closed military society, Bumgarner, 47, is an open book. In the hours after the suicides, when some of his superiors wanted to close ranks, the Kings Mountain native kept a promise to throw open the doors on himself and his command,” Gordon wrote. “But he also may have jeopardized his career.”

Gordon went on to detail how Bumgarner had helped Gordon and his photographer report on the suicides in the hours and days after they occurred, saying, “while the Pentagon tried to lock off the military base that day, Bumgarner opened Camp Delta to two Observer journalists who flew in the same day of the suicides to do a long-scheduled story on the colonel. For the next two days, Bumgarner welcomed the pair in his war room as he and his staff discussed ways to make sure more suicides didn’t take place.”

But Gordon’s story ends with an epilogue indicating Bumgarner may have been silenced for his troubles. “Tuesday night, while packing to leave Guantanamo Bay, I called Bumgarner’s cell phone to say goodbye. A strange voice answered. I thought I dialed a wrong number, so I hung up. A few moments later, my phone rang. It was Navy Capt.-select Katie Hampf, Bumgarner’s second-in-command. She now had Bumgarner’s phone because she was acting prison commander. She wouldn’t say any more. The Pentagon would not talk about Bumgarner’s status. A spokesman said Bumgarner’s decision to allow us to listen in on staff meetings and observe other activities inside the prison ‘adds to an already complex and difficult situation’.”

Now back to The New York Times which today carried a much more detailed follow-up article to its earlier 74-word foray into this incident. Missed it, you say? Well that is quite understandable. The piece, “Evictions Raise the Tension Level at Guantanamo By Julie Bosman, is not mentioned among “Today’s Headlines” that the Times sends out daily via e-mail. If you go to the Home Page you’ll find “Playskool Is Expanding to Baby Care” among the Business Stories, but you won’t find any reference to Julie Bosman’s article. You won’t find any reference to it anywhere else on the home page either. But click on the Business section, and there you’ll find the seventh Business story under the sub-section of “Media & Advertising” is… yup, Julie Bosman’s story about media censorship at Guantanamo Bay.

One might well ask why a story about Pentagon censorship was assigned to someone on the business beat to begin with, but that question aside, Julie’s beat did not mean the story had to be carried in the Business section. Back in April she collaborated on a story about The New York Post: “Scandal Jolts a Scandal Sheet, and Gossip Swirls.” That story made the coveted New York Times Front Page.

Here are excerpts from today’s Times piece. Ask yourself why this story merited no mention in the e-mailed headlines nor a link on the Home Page. Ask why it landed in the Media and Advertising sub-set of the Business Section. Better yet, ask The New York Times.

Evictions Raise the Tension Level at Guantánamo By JULIE BOSMAN

Last Wednesday, after spending four days reporting from the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three newspaper reporters and a photographer were ordered off the island by the Pentagon.

…The journalists, from The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald and The Charlotte Observer, left Guantánamo after reporting on the suicides of three prisoners.

The Charlotte Observer said its reporter, who was originally assigned to write a profile on a military commander at the base, may have obtained too many details about the military’s response to the suicides, leading the Pentagon to impose new restrictions on reporters.

Others have suggested that the decision was a bureaucratic tussle between the public affairs office at the Pentagon and military commanders on the base.

The Pentagon said it removed the reporters in an attempt to level the field with other reporters who had been denied access to the base after the suicides. The decision prompted protests from several lawyers representing prisoners and from Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for journalists.

But the abrupt expulsions also reflect the continuing tensions between the military personnel who oversee the base, which has served as a prison camp for suspected terrorists since early 2002, and reporters who are trying to gather information in the highly secure environment.
Journalists have complained that they are banned from interviewing detainees, that their movements around the base are tightly controlled and that they receive little information from public affairs personnel.

“Everybody would like unfettered access, come and go as you please, talk to everybody you want to, but that’s not what this is,” said Dave Wilson, the managing editor for news at The Miami Herald. “We understand that and have tried to work with it.”

Reporters who visit Guantánamo are usually reluctant to criticize the military publicly because it controls their access to the base. Once there, reporters are paired with “minders,” who organize and restrict their movements and escort them around the grounds.

The latest skirmish between the military and the press began June 10, when the Pentagon announced that three detainees had hanged themselves in their cells. A group of reporters already had been planning to travel to Guantánamo on a military plane from Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, to cover the scheduled hearing of an Ethiopian detainee on June 12. But after the suicides, the Pentagon quickly canceled the hearing and the reporters’ flight.
Two reporters, Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald and Carol J. Williams of The Los Angeles Times, who were traveling by a different route, were also notified by the Pentagon on June 10 that the hearing had been canceled and they were no longer authorized by the Pentagon to visit the base. But they requested authorization from the prison’s commander to visit anyway. Permission was granted, and they boarded their small commercial flight as planned…

One reporter, Michael Gordon of The Charlotte Observer, and Todd Sumlin, a photographer for the paper, were already on the base, preparing a profile of Col. Michael Bumgarner, a prison commander and a native of Kings Mountain, N.C., near Charlotte.

Rick Thames, the editor of The Charlotte Observer, said the Pentagon was unhappy with articles Mr. Gordon had filed, including an account of a morning staff meeting on June 12 led by Colonel Bumgarner.

Mr. Gordon had quoted Colonel Bumgarner as telling the staff, “The trust level is gone,” referring to the detainees. “They have shown time and time again that we can’t trust them any farther than we can throw them.” Mr. Thames of The Observer said, “We can’t be certain, but we believe the Pentagon was uneasy with close-up access to the operations of the prison at a time of crisis,” adding, “Clearly, they were at odds over this.”

…

Readers of The New York Times deserve to know about this story, and now they do. That is they do if they happened to wander over to “Media & Advertising” to get the news of the day about Guantanamo.

If you watched Countdown last night you were witness to a livid Keith Olbermann, devoid of his usual sense of humor, tearing into Bill O’Reilly for turning the facts on end and accusing American soldiers massacred at Malmedy during World War II of having been the perpetrators of the massacre rather than the victims.

Calling the latest O’Reilly rant the “Worst O‘Reilly mistake ever,” Olbermann played a clip from The O’Reilly Factor:

BILL O‘REILLY, HOST, “THE O‘REILLY FACTOR”: In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air, and they were unarmed, and they shot them down.

And following the clip Olbermann opened both barrels:

OLBERMANN: No, in World War II it was the other way around. Why is O‘Reilly insisting he‘s right? Why has Fox altered the transcripts? Why are they defending Nazi war criminals who killed American servicemen? The real story of Malmedy…

Olbermann continued:

The guilty pleasure offered by the existence of Bill O‘Reilly is simple but understandable, 99 times out of 100, when we belly up to the Bill-O bar of bluster, nearly every time we partake of the movable falafel feast he serves us nothing but comedy, farce, slapstick, unconscious self-mutilation, the Sideshow Bob of commentators forever stepping on the same rake, forever muttering the same grunted, inarticulate surrender, forever resuming the circle that will take him back to the same rake. The Sisyphus of morons, if you will. But this is the 100th time out of 100. It is not funny at all. Bill O‘Reilly has, for the second time in under eight months, slandered at least 84 dead American servicemen. He has turned them again from victims of the kind of atrocity our country has always fought against into perpetrators of that kind of atrocity. He has made these Americans into war criminals. They are dead and have been dead for 61 years. They cannot defend themselves against O‘Reilly. We will have to do it for them.

Last October Bill O‘Reilly railed against a ruling that more photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq might be released. His guest on his program was Wesley Clark. Clark is a retired four-star general, was for four years supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe. First in his class at West Point, wounded in Vietnam, earned the Bronze star, the Silver Star and has streets named for him in Alabama and in Kosovo. Therefore, naturally O‘Reilly knows much more about the military than General Clark does. Clark defended the release of the additional Abu Ghraib photos saying we need to know what happened and to correct it. O‘Reilly lectured him and concluded that there had always been atrocities, even by Americans in war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL O‘REILLY, “THE O‘REILLY FACTOR”: General, you need to look at the Malmady Massacre in World War II in the 82nd airborne.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Olbermann: It was a remarkable mistake. The Belgian town of Malmady did lend its name to one of the most appalling battlefield war crimes of the 20th century. But O‘Reilly‘s implication that the Americans committed it was entirely backwards. Americans, most of them, members of the Battery B of the 285th Fuel Artillery Observation Battalion, surrendered to German Panzer troops and were then shot by their captures by the S.S. Yet O‘Reilly had implied that the Americans had massacred these Germans in this one stark moment of the Battler of the Bulge. And he used this Alice through the looking glass view of history to somehow rationalize Abu Ghraib while trying to dress down a four-star American general.

Still it could have been a mistake, we make them. Even historians do. O‘Reilly had not explicitly called the Americans the war criminals of Malmady. Our war troops, too, were accused of crimes against prisoners in the Second World War. It was assumed last year that he had simply made a foolish error and though he got beaten up appropriately in some places, it was all largely dismissed as merely that, a mistake.

Then came this Tuesday night, again O‘Reilly‘s guest was General Wes Clark. This time the topic was the apparent murder of Iraqi civilians at Haditha. That O‘Reilly was dismissive of that event should be no surprise, that he should have described as the real crime of Iraq the events of Abu Ghraib, should be no surprise of those who know of his willingness to jettison his most important beliefs of yesterday for the expediencies and the ratings of today, but that he should have brought up Malmady again, that was a surprise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O‘REILLY: In Malmady, as you know, U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and they were unarmed and they shot them down. You know that. That‘s on the record. Been documented.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Olbermann: Thus was the full depth of Bill O‘Reilly‘s insult to the American debt of World War II made clear. The mistake of last October was not some innocent slip nor misrembered history. This was the way O‘Reilly understood and thus, this way it had to be. No errors corrected, no apologies offered, no stopping the relentless tide of bull even briefly enough to check one fact…

Olbermann proceeded to explain that what really happened at Malmedy was that Nazi troops had gunned down at least 84 captured American prisoners, not the other way around as O’Reilly had suggested. He went on to chastise O’Reilly further for trying to extricate himself from this mess:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O‘REILLY: Don Caldwell, Fort Worth, TX. Bill, you mentioned that Malmady as the site of an American massacre during World War II. It was the other way around, the S.S. shot down U.S. prisoners.”

In the heat of the debate with General Clark, my statement wasn‘t clear enough, Mr. Caldwell. After Malmady, some were executed by American troops.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Olbermann: Wrong answer. When you are that wrong, when you are defending Nazi war criminals and pinning their crimes on Americans and you get caught doing so twice, you‘re supposed to say I‘m sorry, I was wrong, and then you‘re supposed to shut up for a long time. Instead, FOX washed its transcript of O‘Reilly‘s remarks Tuesday. Its Web site claims O‘Reilly said in Normandy, when, as you heard, in fact, he said in Malmedy.

The rewriting of past reporting worthy of George Orwell has now carried over into such online transcription services as Burell‘s and Factiva. Whatever did or did not happen later in supposed or actual retribution, the victims at Malmedy were Americans, gunned down while surrendering by Nazis in 1944 and again Tuesday night and Wednesday night by a false patriot who would rather be loud than right.

In Malmedy, as you know, Bill O‘Reilly said on the air Tuesday night in some indecipherable attempt to defend the events of Haditha, “U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed and they shot them dead. You know that, that‘s on the record and documented.” The victims in Malmedy in December 1944 were Americans, Americans with their hands in the air, Americans who were unarmed. That‘s on the record and documented, and their memory deserves better than Bill O‘Reilly. We all do.

See the clip at Crooks and Liars.

So just how did O’Reilly get this story so wrong? How indeed, because when he wrote about Malmedy a year ago in Human Events, he got it right:

The Limits of Dissent

by Bill O’Reilly Posted Jun 27, 2005

…After German SS troops massacred 86 American soldiers at Malmedy in Belgium on Dec. 17, 1944, some units like the U.S. 11th Armored Division took revenge on captured German soldiers.

It appears O’Reilly was thinking about another incident, one that occured a week after Malmady when members of the 82nd Airborne did indeed murder captured German SS troops. I found this excerpt from a book entitled “Beyond Valor” in a Google search:

Veteran from the 82nd Airborne 505th PIR, talks about a massacre of German POWs.

Quote:

“I think one of the most memorable things [in Belgium] was Christmas eve [1944] along the Salm River line. We had some twenty-some-odd German prisoners that we’d taken and on Christmas eve, the 505th, in their deployment, stuck out in the overall [line] of the German advance. So the name of the game was to withdraw. You cannot make a night withdrawal with enemies in a bitter cold snow and bring these people back; I won’t go on record and say it was another Malmedy massacre. But it was in fact another massacre that took place that you can’t read about, you won’t hear about.

It was a matter of not being able to comply with the order to withdraw and do it without losing your own people and bring back a bunch of enemy people….No roads to speak of and you’re coming back through the damn woods, so the name of the game was, you don’t bring prisoners back. It’s a sad commentary, and this was on Christmas Eve, and we had to withdraw, and we had twenty-two to twenty-three [SS] prisoners. One of the German prisoners who was very well educated-an officer that went to school in the United States and spoke English very well – couldn’t understand the rationale. If the shoe had been on the other foot, you’d have said the same thing. To be just a statistic, that’s just some of the fate of being a wartime situation. It was right there and then, a matter of elimination. There were about eight or ten [Americans soldiers]. It was just doing a job and it was over.”

Ironically, the 505th PIR was facing 1st SS troops of Kampfgruppe Peiper. I wonder if news of the Malmedy incident had filtered down to these front line troopers and that made it easier for them kill the prisoners…

So does the fact that O’Reilly was apparently referring to a real, but different, incident in which members of the 82nd Airborne (which was not present at Malmady) did massacre German SS troops in any way excuse his misstatements about the American victims at Malmedy? The answer is of course not.

O’Reilly clearly has a difficult time recalling facts so he just mouths off. That is bad enough whenever it occurs, but this time he maligned dead victims of a massacre in the process, besmirching their memory by implicitly branding them war criminals on national television. Worse yet he refused, as usual, to fess up or apologize while FOX News tried to bury the evidence by altering the transcript.

And just what was his point anyway? Was he suggesting that the murder of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers is somehow justified because American troops also murdered German SS troops during WW II?

Bill O’Reilly is in need of some serious help. Kudos to Keith Olbermann for his very justified anger, and for continuing to hold O’Reilly’s feet to the fire.

Note: Olbermann closed tonight’s program by promising more on Bill O’Reilly and Malmedy on Monday. Stay tuned.