PetSugar

G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats

Tulipe — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:09:10 -0800

By MICHAEL COOPER
January 20, 2010
The New York Times

BOSTON - Scott Brown, a little-known Republican state senator, rode an old pickup truck and a growing sense of unease among independent voters to an extraordinary upset Tuesday night when he was elected to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy in the overwhelmingly Democratic state of Massachusetts.

By a decisive margin, Mr. Brown defeated Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, who had been considered a prohibitive favorite to win just over a month ago after she easily won the Democratic primary.

With all precincts counted, Mr. Brown had 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Coakley’s 47 percent.

“Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” Mr. Brown told his cheering supporters in a victory speech, standing in front of a backdrop that said “The People’s Seat.”

The election left Democrats in Congress scrambling to salvage a bill overhauling the nation’s health care system, which the late Mr. Kennedy had called “the cause of my life.” Mr. Brown has vowed to oppose the bill, and once he takes office the Democrats will no longer control the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome filibusters.

There were immediate signs that the bill had become imperiled. House members indicated they would not quickly pass the bill the Senate approved last month.

And after the results were announced, one centrist Democratic senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, called on Senate leaders to suspend any votes on the Democrats’ health care legislation until Mr. Brown is sworn into office. The election, he said, was a referendum on both health care and the integrity of the government process.

Beyond the bill, the election of a man supported by the Tea Party movement also represented an unexpected reproach by many voters to President Obama after his first year in office, and struck fear into the hearts of Democratic lawmakers, who are already worried about their prospects in the midterm elections later this year.

Mr. Brown was able to appeal to independents who were anxious about the economy and concerned about the direction taken by Democrats, now that they control both Beacon Hill and Washington. He rallied his supporters when he said, at the last debate, that he was not running for Mr. Kennedy’s seat but for “the people’s seat.”

That seat, held for nearly half a century by Mr. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, will now be held for the next two years by a Republican who has said he supports waterboarding as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects, opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions and opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they leave the country. It was a sharp swing of the pendulum, but even Democratic voters said they wanted the Obama administration to change direction.

“I’m hoping that it gives a message to the country,” said Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover, a lifelong Democrat who said she cast her first vote for a Republican on Tuesday. “I think if Massachusetts puts Brown in, it’s a message of ‘that’s enough.’ Let’s stop the giveaways and let’s get jobs going.”

Mr. Brown ran strongest in the suburbs of Boston, where the independent voters who make up a majority in Massachusetts turned out in large numbers. Ms. Coakley did best in urban areas, winning overwhelmingly in Boston and running ahead in Springfield, Worcester, Fall River and New Bedford, but her margins were not large enough to carry her to victory.

In a concession speech before cheering supporters, Ms. Coakley acknowledged that voters were angry and said she had hoped to deal with the concerns.

“Our mission continues, and our work goes on,” she said, echoing well-known remarks by Mr. Kennedy. “I am heartbroken at the result, as I know you are, and I know we will get up together tomorrow and continue this fight, even with this result tonight.”

The crowd at Mr. Brown’s victory rally, upset by reports that Democrats might try to vote on the health care bill before he takes office, chanted, “Seat him now!” Mr. Brown, for his part, noted that the interim senator holding the seat had finished his work, and that he was ready to go to Washington “without delay.” And he effusively praised Mr. Kennedy as a big-hearted, tireless worker, and said that he hoped to prove a worthy successor to him.

Ms. Coakley’s defeat, in a state that Mr. Obama won in 2008 with 62 percent of the vote, led to a round of finger-pointing among Democrats. Some criticized her tendency for gaffes - in a radio interview she offended Red Sox fans when she incorrectly suggested that Curt Schilling, a beloved former Red Sox pitcher, was a Yankee fan - while others criticized a lackluster, low-key campaign.

Mr. Brown presented himself as a Massachusetts Everyman, featuring the pickup truck he drives around the state in his speeches and one of his television commercials, calling in to talk radio shows and campaigning with popular local sports figures.

The implications of the election drew nationwide attention, and millions of dollars of outside spending, to the race. It transformed what many had expected to be a sleepy, low-turnout special election on a snowy day in January into a high-profile contest that appeared to draw more voters than expected to the polls. There were reports of traffic jams outside suburban polling stations, while other polling stations had to call for extra ballots.

The late surge by Mr. Brown appeared to catch Democrats by surprise, causing them to scramble in the last week and a half of the campaign and hastily schedule an appearance by Mr. Obama with Ms. Coakley on Sunday afternoon.

“Understand what’s at stake here, Massachusetts,” Mr. Obama said in his speech that day, repeatedly invoking Mr. Kennedy’s legacy. “It’s whether we’re going forwards or backwards.” He all but pleaded with voters to support Ms. Coakley, to preserve his agenda.

As voters went to the polls, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, made it clear that the president was “not pleased” with the situation Ms. Coakley found herself in. “He was both surprised and frustrated,” Mr. Gibbs said.

Although the race has riveted the nation largely because it was seen as contributing to the success or defeat of the health care bill, the potency of the issue for voters here was difficult to gauge. That is because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage, thanks to a law passed when Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor.

Thus Massachusetts is one of the few states where the benefits promised by the national bill were expected to have little effect on how many of its residents got coverage, making it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill.

On Capitol Hill, the fate of the health care legislation was highly uncertain as Democratic leaders quickly gathered to plot strategy in the wake of the Republican victory.

Sentiment about how to proceed was mixed, with several lawmakers saying the House would not accept the Senate-passed plan. Top officials had said that approach was the party’s best alternative, and many members said they still believed it was crucial that Democrats pass a plan.

“It is important for us to pass legislation,” said Representative Baron P. Hill, a conservative Democrat from Indiana.

Reporting was contributed by Katie Zezima, Danielle Ossher and Bret Silverberg in Massachusetts, and Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn in Washington.

Hail the tea bag, weapon of terror

samantha999 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 06:58:49 -0700

Hail the tea bag, weapon of terror

By Wesley Pruden

These are not your granny's tea parties. One tea party even panicked Secret Service bodyguards when a foolish tea-sipper threw a harmless tea bag over the White House fence.

"Tea-bag parties" erupted - and "erupted" is the correct verb - across the country on April 15, celebrated by joyous "progressive" taxpayers and loathed by everybody else as the day to report the intimate details of your life, along with cash, to the Internal Revenue Bureau (which the bureau insists that we call not a bureau but a "service"). Bureau or service, it's run by bureaucrats, not servants, and always the target of April ire.

More than 300, perhaps even 500 such tea parties broke out, at least one in every state, as demonstrations in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party. These were eruptions not only against high taxes but against the way the Obama administration is determined to plunder the nation's wealth in behalf of mismanaged banks, bankrupt automobile manufacturers, greedy states and cities looking for handouts and anyone else who can think up a reason to tap the public till.

Benjamin Franklin, among others of the founding fathers, warned that the republic would survive until ordinary citizens learned to tap that public till. It looks like we're there.

The actual numbers are not big enough to frighten most politicians, certainly not a president or even a governor, but what scares the politicians is how the phenomenon seemed to come out of nowhere, with neither sponsoring organizations nor central command that makes tightly scripted demonstrations look spontaneous. Given time to steep, who knows how strong the brew might be.

The tea-baggers seem to be authentically nonpartisan; several tea parties pointedly declined offers by Republican officials, notably Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, to speak at rallies. "We've heard enough already from politicians," one California tea-bagger said. The lowly tea bag threatens to become a weapon of righteous terror.

"So what's behind the Tax Day tea parties?" asks Glenn Reynolds in the Wall Street Journal. "Ordinary folks, who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing 'flash crowds' - groups of people, co-ordinated by texting or cell phone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month."

But tea parties are serious, constructive rages against how the government confiscates wealth and, after the bureaucrats take a big bite, regurgitates it back to towns, cities and states with specific and harshly enforced instructions on when and how to spend it.

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, one of the first governors who "gets it," calls the tea parties a result of "the genuine frustration, the genuine concern, the genuine angst erupting all across the country" - a revolt against federal arrogance to take it all, spend it all and do it all the government's way. The tea-baggers are persuaded that "printing money you don't have" is the recipe for disaster employed by Argentina and the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920s, even in Zimbabwe this year. That should be a caution for everyone.

Most of the coverage in the mainstream media has been snarky and contemptuous, particularly by the cable-TV networks. The big mainstream newspapers have tried to ignore the tea parties: the Boston Globe finally found a small hole on an inside page to run a wire story about a tea party in Kentucky, ignoring a larger eruption in Boston. The intended implication was that the tea parties are merely the social life of unwashed Bible Belt bumpkins and hayseeds in the nation's backwoods. CNN's reporters complain that the tea parties are even "anti-CNN," though it's not clear why. CNN's disappearing audience suggests that being "anti-CNN" is no distinction, since nearly everybody is.

Carefully planned or not, the organizers of the tea parties are learning to focus rage for maximum effect. A thousand or even five thousand demonstrators can get lost on the Mall in Washington, but five hundred angry tea-baggers can terrorize easily frightened aldermen, even in big cities.

Organizers in Tucson, for example, intend to concentrate this fall on city council elections, and officials with edifice complexes in several cities have backed down from grandiose schemes to waste money in the face of angry taxpayers overwhelming council chambers. These are voters who so far constitute no recognizable "movement," but a popular uprising of people who actually took seriously a certain promise of hope and change.

They believed it, even if no one now in Washington did.

teh moon rulez numba one!!!!111

bluejeanie — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 07:14:35 -0800

Boston officials livid over ad stunt By KEN MAGUIRE, Associated Press Writer

BOSTON - Livid about a publicity campaign that disrupted the city by stirring fears of terrorism, Boston officials vowed to prosecute those responsible and seek restitution, while others mocked authorities on Thursday for what they called an overreaction.

Officials found a slew of blinking electronic signs adorning bridges and other high-profile spots across the city Wednesday, prompting the closing of a highway and part of the Charles River and the deployment of bomb squads.

The 38 signs were part of a promotion for the Cartoon Network TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball. The network's parent is Turner Broadcasting Systems Inc.

"It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme," Mayor Thomas Menino said. "I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred."

The 1-foot tall signs, which were lit up at night, resembled a circuit board, with protruding wires and batteries. Most depicted a boxy, cartoon character giving passersby the finger - a more obvious sight when darkness fell.

Two men who put up the promotions were to be arraigned Thursday on charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. Authorities say Peter Berdovsky, 27, of Arlington, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown, were hired to place the devices.

Berdovsky, an artist, told The Boston Globe he was hired by a marketing company and said he was "kind of freaked out" by the furor.

"I find it kind of ridiculous that they're making these statements on TV that we must not be safe from terrorism, because they were up there for three weeks and no one noticed. It's pretty commonsensical to look at them and say this is a piece of art and installation," he said.

Fans of the show mocked what they called an overreaction as about a dozen gathered outside Charlestown District Court on Thursday morning with signs saying "1-31-07 Never Forget" and "Free Peter."

"We're the laughing stock," said Tracy O'Connor, 34.

"It's almost too easy to be a terrorist these days," said Jennifer Mason, 26. "You stick a box on a corner and you can shut down a city."

O'Connor said there's nothing wrong with being vigilant, but said she said it was ridiculous to shut down a city "when anyone under the age of 35 knew this was a joke the second they saw it."

Authorities vowed to hold Turner accountable for what Menino said was "corporate greed," that led to at least $750,000 in police costs.

As soon as Turner realized the Boston problem around 5 p.m., it said, law enforcement officials were told of their locations in 10 cities where it said the devices had been placed for two to three weeks: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia.

"We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger," said Phil Kent, chairman of Turner, a division of Time Warner Inc.

Kent said the marketing company that placed the signs, Interference Inc., was ordered to remove them immediately.

Interference had no comment. A woman who answered the phone at the New York-based firm's offices Wednesday afternoon said the firm's CEO was out of town and would not be able to comment until Thursday.

Messages seeking additional comment from the Atlanta-based Cartoon Network were left with several publicists.

A voice mail box for Berdovsky was full Wednesday night. The Associated Press was unable to find whether Stevens had a lawyer.

Authorities are investigating whether Turner or other companies should be criminally charged, Attorney General Martha Coakley said. "We're not going to let this go without looking at the further roots of how this happened to cause the panic in this city," Coakley said.

In Seattle and several suburbs, the removal of the signs was low-key. "We haven't had any calls to 911 regarding this," Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb said Wednesday.

Police in Philadelphia said they believed their city had 56 devices.

The New York Police Department removed 41 of the devices - 38 in Manhattan and three in Brooklyn, according to spokesman Paul Browne. The NYPD had not received any complaints. But when it became aware of the situation, it contacted Cartoon Network, which provided the locations so the devices could be removed.

"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" is a cartoon with a cultish following that airs as part of a block of programs for adults on the Cartoon Network. A feature length film based on the show is slated for release March 23.

___

Associated Press Writer Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.

i hope you can see this because i'm doing it as hard as i can.

boston's finest.

a friend emailed me this story this morning and i haven't been able to stop laughing since. i am soooo watching aqua teen hunger force tonight.

20 cat deaths leave Fla. communities worried

starangel82 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:02:56 -0700

At first I thought they were talking about a poison or maybe contaminated cat food, then I read the story. There are some sick and twisted people in this world.

MIAMI – The black cat's body was found in the grass, just feet from the hedges where she slept each day.

Miss Kitty was still warm to the touch when the South Florida couple who cared for her found her in the yard next door. Her head was smashed and her back legs skinned, like pieces of chicken in a grocer's freezer. And she was not the only one to suffer such a fate.

Horrified owners have been finding their cats killed and mutilated for the past month in two south Miami-Dade County communities. Many of the cats were missing fur and appeared to have been cut with a sharp, straight instrument, police said. In all, investigators are looking into about two dozen deaths, with enough evidence to try to prosecute at least 15 of the cases.

"Every time I hear about someone else, I'm in their shoes and I see my cat again," said Mary Lou Shad, who fed and cared for Miss Kitty with her husband for the past year. Although the cat was feral, they considered her their pet.

"I feel terrorized to the point where everywhere I go, I'm looking for dead cats on the side of the road," Shad said.

Investigators don't yet know who or what is behind the gruesome cat deaths in Cutler Bay and Palmetto Bay, but owners are keeping their pets inside, raising reward money and warily eyeing strangers.

Police spokeswoman Rebeca Perez said the manner of death indicates a person killed the animals, and that the deaths could be linked. So far, there's no indication the killer or killers plan to attack people.

Whoever's responsible "hasn't given any indication that this is some sort of a threat where this person's going to commit these crimes against a human being," Perez said.

The Shads' canary-colored home sits in a calm suburban neighborhood of small one-story houses, neat lawns and caring neighbors. There is a school nearby and a park with swings and playground equipment. An ice cream truck rumbles through, its tune echoing down the streets.

But the apparent tranquility belies residents' anger and fear.

"Be aware that there is a psychopathic coward, killing cats," reads one poster taped to a neighborhood street sign.

The sign is not far from the home of 68-year-old Barbara Wiesinger, whose cat, Cami, was found in a neighbor's yard this month. Wiesinger said she saw the calico's fur poking up in a patch of grass. She immediately knew her pet was dead.

"This is not an accident. This is somebody sick," she said.

Allison Smith, who watched her 4-year-old son and her 6-year-old nephew play barefoot in the local park on a muggy afternoon this week, said she recently called the police to her Palmetto Bay home after she found bowls in her front yard. She worried someone might be trying to lure out her two cats, Marvin and Molly, but the bowls simply belonged to a neighbor. Still, she is keeping the cats inside.

"They were inside-outside," Smith said. "But not anymore."

Louis B. Schlesinger, a professor of forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said residents should be cautious, even if initial signs don't indicate humans are in danger. He said the man believed to the "Boston Strangler" also shot cats with arrows.

"This should be taken as seriously as could possibly be," he said.

Local authorities are urging pet owners to keep their animals indoors. A tip line has also been established, and local organizations have contributed thousands in reward money for information would helps lead to the arrest of the culprit.

A month ago, 42-year-old Alicia Glatzer's husband found their cat, Sarah, outside their Palmetto Bay home. The cat had been skinned and half of her face was missing. The family initially thought that the cat had been hit by a car, but a week later learned of the other killings.

These days, Glatzer looks at people's hands and arms for scratch marks. She hopes for a stronger police presence in their neighborhood after what happened to Sarah, a pretty white cat with a black and tan tail that adopted the family about three years ago.

"I'm afraid that we are going to be prey," Glatzer said. "Our cats have fallen to prey. Who's to say that we are not next?"

W.'s Greatest Hits

Woop — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:26:15 -0800

http://www.slate.com/id/2208132/

The top 25 Bushisms of all time.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Monday, Jan. 12, 2009, at 3:43 PM ET

I started gathering Bush's verbal slip-ups while covering his first presidential campaign. From the first one we published in Slate in October 1999-"The important question is, how many hands have I shaked?"-adding to the collection has been my main pleasure, perhaps my only pleasure, in watching the man.

Since then, I've collected-with help from Slate readers-more than 500 Bushisms. What follows is a list of my 25 favorites. There were many to choose from, but in my opinion, the greatest Bushism of all was delivered on Aug. 5, 2004, when the president declared: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

People often assume that because I've spent the past nine years collecting Bushisms, I must despise George W. Bush. To the contrary, Bushisms fill me with affection for the man-and not just because of the income stream they've generated. I find the Bush who flails with words, unlike the Bush who flails with policy, to be an endearing character. Instead of a villain, he makes himself into an irresistible buffoon, like Mrs. Malaprop, Archie Bunker, or Homer Simpson. Bush treats words the way he treated recalcitrant European leaders: When they won't do what he wants them to, he tries to bully them into submission. Through his willful, improvisational, and incompetent use of language, he tempers (very slightly) his willful, improvisational, and incompetent use of government. You can't, in the end, despise someone who regrets that, because of the rising cost of malpractice insurance, "[t]oo many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."

It helps his case that Bush, like Yogi Berra, is in on the joke. This was clear from the first White House correspondents' dinner, in March 2001, when the new president read from the first collection of Bushisms, which he described as like Mao's "little red book," only not in Chinese. "Now ladies and gentlemen," he said, "you have to admit that in my sentences I go where no man has gone before." Of course, he bumbled his speech, claiming that he'd invented the term misunderstanding. He meant to say "misunderestimated."

Being able to laugh at yourself is a rare quality in a leader. It's one thing George W. Bush can do that Bill Clinton couldn't. Unfortunately, as we bid farewell to Bushisms, we must conclude that the joke was mainly on us.

1. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."-Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

2. "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."-Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

3. "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"-Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

4."Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."-Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

5. "Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican."-declining to answer reporters' questions at the Summit of the Americas, Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001

6. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.''-Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

7. "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."-Washington, D.C., April 18, 2006

8. "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."-Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

9. "I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that."-discussing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as quoted by the Sun newspaper, June 27, 2007

10. "And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq."-meeting with Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008

11. "We ought to make the pie higher."-South Carolina Republican debate, Feb. 15, 2000

12. "There's an old saying in Tennessee-I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee-that says, fool me once, shame on-shame on you. Fool me-you can't get fooled again."-Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

13. "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."-speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

14. "We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers."-Houston, Sept. 6, 2000

15. "It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet."-Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

16. "One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures."-U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 3, 2000

17. "People say, 'How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?' You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you."-Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

18. "Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness."-CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000

19. "I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend."-on the prospect of visiting Denmark, Washington, D.C., June 29, 2005

20. "I think it's really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to-the beauty of playing baseball."-Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 2006

21. "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."-LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

22. "You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war president. No president wants to be a war president, but I am one."-Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 26, 2006

23. "There's a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, 'I don't want you to let me down again.' "-Boston, Oct. 3, 2000

24. "They misunderestimated me."-Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

25. "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."-Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

Will the Democrats let Obama put the country ahead of the party?

Grandpa — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:31:47 -0800

The Note, 1/9/09: Obama Pressed From Left on Stimulus
January 09, 2009 8:37 AM
By RICK KLEIN
With the rollout comes the blowback. And with them both comes the presidential-sized challenge for the not-yet president.
It turns out you don’t have to look very hard to find the fault lines in President-elect Barack Obama’s bid for a massive stimulus bill. He tried to scare Congress into acting quickly on Thursday -- and more pressure is coming Friday and beyond -- but there’s still no measure to act on, or even the outlines of one.
Now there may not be one for a while. For the moment, at least, he’s got more to worry about on his left than on his right. (And if leaving Howard Dean feeling snubbed helps sell the package -- please explain how that one works.)
Democrats in Congress, it turns out, have gotten used to having their own ideas. With more questions being raised about billions and bailouts on Friday, it’s only going to get harder for the Obama sales team.
“President-elect Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan ran into crossfire from his own party in Congress on Thursday, suggesting that quick passage of spending programs and tax cuts could require more time and negotiation than Democrats once hoped,” Peter Baker and David M. Herszenhorn report in The New York Times. “Further complicating the picture, Democratic senators said Thursday that they would try to attach legislation to the package that would allow bankruptcy courts to modify home loans, a move Republicans have opposed.”
“But the broad support he has enjoyed so far for the basic concept is now being tested as the specifics become clearer,” Baker and Herszenhorn write.
“It was a remarkable speech for someone who isn't president yet and hasn't revealed the details of his economic rescue plan,” ABC’s Jake Tapper reports. “The most pointed criticism of the plan came from Democrats who objected to Obama's plans to cut taxes for businesses and for middle class families.”
This is not about losing a vote. It’s about losing a weapon. The stimulus package is Obama’s first big legislative push, the one he absolutely cannot afford not to win, on his terms. Winning in style (think 75 or 80 Senate votes) enhances his power when the hard stuff begins.
Recall that congressional Democrats had a two-year head-start on Obama in taking control of Washington. In that time, they’ve learned to like pursuing paths of their own -- and they remember well what they don’t like.
“The Democrat-led Congress is eager to assert some control and is beginning to chafe at the president-elect's demand for quick approval of a stimulus program pegged at $800 billion and likely to grow,” The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Weisman and Greg Hitt report. “The fight could begin to define how Mr. Obama deals with his former senate colleagues. During much of his eight years in office, Mr. Bush dominated Congress in the battle to set the agenda. Mr. Obama will face demand among lawmakers for a more assertive role.”
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos sees three main questions defining the debate on Capitol Hill: “1) Can the money get out very, very quickly? 2) Will the spending programs really be temporary? 3) Can this package be targeted to create the most jobs per dollar to get the most bang for the buck?”
Was leading with tax cuts the right call? It’s muted the GOP opposition, but hardly made Republicans enthusiastic. And it’s given some Democrats what’s looking like a rallying point.
This is what happens when you talk about a tax cut bigger than President Bush’s: “Democrats on Capitol Hill questioned the lengths to which Barack Obama was seeking to win over Republicans,” The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports. Said House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank: “I have some difference because I think they may be doing too much tax-cutting and not enough direct spending from the standpoint of immediate job creation.”
“Barack Obama got a lesson Thursday from his old Senate Democratic colleagues: a little more time for takeoff could avoid a crash landing of his economic recovery plan,” Politico’s David Rogers reports. “At a closed-door party meeting in the Capitol, top political and economic advisers to the president elect were met with questions and pressure for adjustments to the $775 billion plan if lawmakers are to meet Obama’s schedule of completing passage by mid-February.”
Rogers: “In each case, the tone was described as businesslike, more questioning than hostile and even Republicans said later that a plan could jell for all sides. But at this stage Democrats are in too many different places to proceed quickly despite a common belief that action is needed.”
Throw this in the mix: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is urging the incoming Obama administration to stick to its campaign pledge and immediately increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans, a position that President-elect Barack Obama has wavered on since winning election,” per The Washington Post’s Paul Kane.
“The individual tax cuts Obama envisions would be permanent. The business tax breaks are meant to be temporary, but you can count on this: Once enacted, some will prove difficult to get rid of,” Scot Lehigh writes in his Boston Globe column. “Even deficit hawks acknowledge that bold action is required in these troubled times. But they rightly say that the focus should be on temporary measures, not permanent (or likely to be permanent) tax cuts. . . . Obama's bid for bipartisanship will only aggravate our fiscal imbalance -- without paying any political dividends when the time comes to get our house in order.”
David Brooks isn’t sold -- but is plenty sarcastic: “This will be the most complex piece of legislation in American history, and as if the policy content wasn’t complicated enough, Obama also promised to pass it via Immaculate Conception -- through a new legislative process that will transform politics. The process, he said, will be totally transparent. There will be no earmarks, no special-interest pleading. In a direct rebuttal to Federalist No. 10, he called on lawmakers to put aside their parochial concerns and pass the measure in weeks,” Brooks writes in his New York Times column.
“Maybe Obama can pull this off, but I have my worries. By this time next year, he’ll either be a great president or a broken one,” he writes.
Paul Krugman isn’t sold, either: “Mr. Obama’s prescription doesn’t live up to his diagnosis. The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat. In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed,” Krugman writes in the Times. “To be sure, a third of a loaf is better than none. But right now we seem to be facing two major economic gaps: the gap between the economy’s potential and its likely performance, and the gap between Mr. Obama’s stern economic rhetoric and his somewhat disappointing economic plan.”
On the other side, relative quiet, for now: “Here's some change you might find hard to believe in,” per ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “Republican congressional leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, say they like what they are hearing so far on Obama's economic plans.”
Before he can look forward -- don’t forget that other pot of money: “Confronted with intense skepticism on Capitol Hill over the $700 billion financial rescue program, Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy F. Geithner and President-elect Barack Obama's economic team are urgently overhauling the embattled initiative and broadening its scope well beyond Wall Street,” David Cho reports in The Washington Post. “Geithner has been working night and day on the eighth floor of the transition team office in downtown Washington with Lawrence H. Summers and other senior economic advisers to hash out a new approach that would expand the program's aid to municipalities, small businesses, homeowners and other consumers.”
“That challenge is underscored by a report from a congressional oversight panel scheduled to be released today that hammers the outgoing Treasury Department for its handling of the financial rescue, including ‘what appear to be significant gaps in Treasury's monitoring of the use of taxpayer money,’ ” Cho writes.
That report is likely to complicate the politics of bailouts: “The recent refusal of certain private financial institutions to provide any accounting of how they are using taxpayer money undermines public confidence,” the draft of the report says. “For Treasury to advance funds to these institutions without requiring more transparency further erodes the very confidence Treasury seeks to restore.”
ABC’s Chris Cuomo asked panel chair Elizabeth Warren, on “Good Morning America,” does Treasury have too much discretion? “Congress may want to take a very hard look at that question,” she said. “I’ll be perfectly blunt with you: I’m shocked that we have to ask these questions.”
What will Obama do? “There will be a pretty dramatic change in the program,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos reported on “GMA.”
Always worth recalling: The real big battles are still far into the future. “For Barack Obama, winning a giant economic revival bill in Congress should be the easy part,” the AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn reports. “For now Obama is using his considerable political muscle and public goodwill to leverage a massive stimulus bill -- big spending, big tax cuts -- to inject adrenaline into an economy in crisis. But he best save a significant part of that political capital if he wants to overhaul so-far politically inviolable programs such as Social Security and Medicare and avert a looming crisis that few Americans now feel or comprehend.”
Yet notice how broad the stimulus has become -- to include everything from technology in schools to computerized medical records. “If the plan is passed, Obama will get, in one fell swoop, a running start on large swaths of his long-term agenda, the ultimate cost of which no one yet knows,” Time’s Jay Newton-Small reports.
So, Obama will sell -- leading with labels: “President-elect Barack Obama’s top political aides are adapting their campaign tactics to selling policy, using data from polls and focus groups to shape the debate over a stimulus plan that may cost at least $775 billion,” Bloomberg’s Hans Nichols and Lorraine Woellert report. “David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political adviser, along with campaign media adviser Jim Margolis, are encouraging lawmakers to use the word ‘recovery’ instead of recession and ‘investment’ instead of ‘infrastructure.’ Those recommendations came from focus-group research indicating that such framing would make the package more appealing to voters.”
Frank Luntz is a fan: “The language he is using is brilliant because it’s future-focused.”
Obama sits down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday’s “This Week,” in an exclusive interview with the president-elect.
While Obama watches his left -- could it have been a mistake that Howard Dean wasn’t invited to see his successor named?
“If he had been asked to go to that event, he would have been there,” Jim Dean, the chairman’s brother, noted twice in an interview with Politico’s Jonathan Martin.
Martin: “The conspicuous absence of Howard Dean from Thursday’s press conference announcing Tim Kaine’s appointment as Democratic National Committee chair was no accident, according to Dean loyalists. Rather, they say, it was a reflection of the lack of respect accorded to the outgoing party chairman by the Obama team.”
Obama’s line of praise for Dean probably made it worse (since anyone who knew the first thing about it probably laughed out loud): “He launched a 50-state strategy that made Democrats competitive in places they had not been in years, working with my chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to give Democrats a majority in the House for the first time in over a decade.”
The wheels grind in Illinois: Gov. Rod Blagojevich, D-Ill., could be impeached on Friday.
“Paving the way for an unprecedented House vote Friday to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a legislative panel unanimously approved a scathing report accusing the two-term Democrat of a wide array of offenses, including criminal corruption and wasting taxpayer money,” Rick Pearson and Ray Long report in the Chicago Tribune. “A House vote in favor of impeachment -- as predicted by Speaker Michael Madigan --would be the first ever for an Illinois governor and would send the issue to the Senate for a trial.”
A hiccup for Roland Burris? “A potentially troublesome new detail emerged about Roland Burris' controversial U.S. Senate appointment Thursday after a state House panel voted unanimously to recommend Gov. Blagojevich be impeached,” Dave McKinney and Jordan Wilson report in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“For the first time, Burris indicated that he asked Blagojevich's former chief of staff and college classmate, Lon Monk, to relay his interest in the Senate seat to the governor last July or September. . . . That testimony appears to differ from an affidavit Burris submitted to the impeachment panel this week in which he stated he spoke to no ‘representatives’ of the governor about the Senate post prior to Dec. 26.”
Obama’s day: A 10:30 am ET press conference at transition headquarters, where he unveils his least intelligently handled pick yet.
“As every previous director could attest, succeeding at the helm at the Central Intelligence Agency requires an uneasy balance: being firm enough to impose a White House agenda without inciting a revolt, while winning allegiance at the agency without being co-opted by its bureaucracy,” Mark Mazzetti writes in The New York Times. “For Leon E. Panetta, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for the job, the task is made even more difficult because of intense pressure on Mr. Obama from members of Congress and outside groups to hold agency officials accountable for counter-terrorism policies in which the C.I.A. played a leading role.”
Charlie Cook, on the lack of consultation: “This was more a misstep in congressional relations than a personnel mistake. But good relations with Congress are hugely important, and it will be instructive to see whether the Obama team learns from this goof,” Cook writes in National Journal. “No question, the USS Obama has taken a pair of hits in recent days, but it's too early to say whether this carefully crafted ship has taken on any water.”
Colin Powell’s role will be defined at a 12:15 pm ET press conference Friday, per the transition office: “General Powell and the Presidential Inaugural Committee will hold a press conference at the Mayflower Hotel this afternoon about President-elect Obama's call to national service.”
Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, keeps up the fight. This from an extraordinary press release Thursday -- after her entertaining interview with a documentary filmmaker was posted online: “Governor Sarah Palin today expressed dismay at continuing efforts in the media to take her comments out of context to create adversarial situations. Ironically, the latest media eruption concerning the governor came out of an interview she gave to a filmmaker who is creating a documentary on distortions by the national press.”
“Forget moose -- Sarah Palin is back in Alaska and training her sights on other big game, from Caroline Kennedy to Tina Fey and Katie Couric,” David Saltonstall reports in the New York Daily News. “In an interview posted Thursday on the Web, the former Republican veep nominee complains that Kennedy's blue-blood pedigree will get her softball treatment from the press as she chases Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat.”
Could “pragmatic progressive” be the new “compassionate conservative”? ABC’s Teddy Davis notices Obama using the label to describe himself.
He didn’t run his letter through spell-check first, but House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., is organizing opposition to Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s bid to become Surgeon General. (The House, of course, doesn’t get a say in confirmation.)
This is called the double standard: “Senate Democratic leaders won’t shut the door on the possibility of seating Democrat Al Franken before the state of Minnesota issues a certificate declaring a winner in the race,” CQ’s Kathleen Hunter reports. “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid . . . would not commit to waiting until the state issues a certificate, which, under Minnesota law, can only happen once Coleman’s legal contest is resolved.”
Reading tea leaves on Caroline: “Her ties to Barack Obama help Caroline Kennedy -- but her lack of political experience hurts her chances of being named to the Senate, Gov. Paterson said Thursday,” Kenneth Lovett reports in the New York Daily News.
Paterson: “She has areas where's she's stronger and areas where she's not, just like the other candidates.”
In a radio interview, Paterson said: “She does not have much political, I mean legislative experience, which is a minus. She has pluses and minuses.”
President Bush gets reflective -- and maybe restless, too: “After eight years of days carved into five-minute increments, each begun with an update on mortal threats to the nation, President George W. Bush said Thursday that he's eager for a more carefree life in Dallas He's just not sure what that will entail,” The Dallas Morning News’ Todd J. Gillman writes.
“The routine is gone,” Bush said, relaxing in a high-backed Oval Office chair, sounding wistful and a bit relieved that soon, the burdens will fall to the next president. “Being a type-A personality, I'm confident I'll be able to fill my days with activities.”
And: “I don't intend to be very political,” Bush said, pivoting to a critique of the Republican Party. “I do know that our party must be broad-gauged, must be for things and not against things.”
New idea, out Friday from the Financial Services Forum: “A white paper, commissioned by the Forum, and to be released [Friday] morning, details two innovative programs designed to help stabilize and stimulate American communities struggling with steep budget shortfalls and falling tax revenues.”
“The Forum’s white paper proposes ‘structural stimulus.’ That is, new government programs that will not just temporarily boost income or demand, but rather will also address long-standing structural deficiencies in the U.S. economy that impede long-run economic growth.”

Voting In America 2008

samantha999 — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:30:27 -0700

Voting In America 2008

By Greg Crosby

Election Day is almost upon us, and so many disturbing facts linger on. All of the following are actual news items gathered in the final days before the presidential election.

From The Columbus Dispatch. Tuesday, Oct. 28: COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A federal judge in Ohio has ruled that counties must allow homeless voters to list park benches and other locations that aren't buildings as their addresses. U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus also ruled that provisional ballots can't be invalidated because of poll worker errors.

From CNN: Indiana's secretary of state has requested a criminal investigation into the community organizing group ACORN which is accused of submitting hundreds of bogus voter registration forms in northern Lake County. The request is based on Secretary of State Todd Rokita's preliminary examination and analysis of 1,438 questionable voter registration applications ACORN submitted in the county, which includes the city of Gary.

Rokita has stated that there is "significant, credible evidence" that ACORN violated Indiana and federal law. "This is a fraud perpetrated on all of the people of Indiana, because fraudulent registrations are the first step in diluting the voice of honest voters and rendering an inaccurate tally on Election Day," Rokita wrote in his request to state and federal law enforcement officials.

From Jackson, Mississippi: Mississippi's voter situation is a little tough to swallow. Places like Madison County have over 123% more registered voters than people over the age of 18. The first District Election Commissioner in Madison County tried to purge the rolls, which go back decades, but ran into trouble when it was discovered it takes a vote of three of the five election commissioners and the purge cannot take place within 90 days of a federal election.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is the first to admit the situation with voter registration in this state is awful. "It is terrible," he says. "Combined with the fact that we don't have voter ID in Mississippi, anybody can show up at any poll that happens to know the people who have left town or died - and go vote for them."

In Galax, Virginia two people were arrested last Monday afternoon after an altercation led to five Republican campaign workers being sprayed with Mace by Obama supporters at their headquarters. Galax Police Chief Rick Clark said officers were dispatched shortly before 1 p.m. to the Galax Republican headquarters on East Grayson Street when a caller reported someone had sprayed office workers with Mace.

As reported by Newsmax last week, the Los Angeles Times refused to release a videotape showing Barack Obama attending an event in Chicago honoring a Palestinian activist who formerly served as a spokesman for Yasser Arafat. In 2003 a farewell party was held for Rashid Khalidi, who was leaving the University of Chicago to take a position at Columbia University in New York.

Obama, then an Illinois state senator, lavished praise on Khalidi at the party, which was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network. So did unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, according to Andrew C. McCarthy, contributing editor at National Review, who disclosed Khalidi's link to "master terrorist" Arafat.

Back in April, Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times wrote about the party and disclosed: "The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times." But as the Boston Herald noted about the videotape, "The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it." McCarthy observed: "Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that The Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?"

The LA Times disclosed: "At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, one young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, 'then you will never see a day of peace.' "One speaker likened 'Zionist settlers on the West Bank' to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been 'blinded by ideology.'"

Will we ever get to see what was on that videotape? Don't bet on it. The Los Angeles Times as of this writing is still refusing to release it - which only goes to show, yet again, that when the newspaper gods handed out journalistic ethics, the Times called in sick that day.

Yes, sir - the 2008 presidential election may be almost over, but the cheat goes on.

Inside the Cult of Scientology

Shiloh Jolie Pitt — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:35:59 -0800

I was reading an article in Vanity Fair magazine, that referred to the one below published in 1991 on Time magazine about the intrincate dealings inside the "church" of Scientology.

Monday, May. 06, 1991
Cover Story: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power
By RICHARD BEHAR

By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a normal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his parents drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in cash, virtually the only money he hadn't yet turned over to the Church of Scientology, the self-help "philosophy" group he had discovered just seven months earlier.

His death inspired his father Edward, a physician, to start his own investigation of the church. "We thought Scientology was something like Dale Carnegie," Lottick says. "I now believe it's a school for psychopaths. Their so-called therapies are manipulations. They take the best and brightest people and destroy them." The Lotticks want to sue the church for contributing to their son's death, but the prospect has them frightened. For nearly 40 years, the big business of Scientology has shielded itself exquisitely behind the First Amendment as well as a battery of high-priced criminal lawyers and shady private detectives.

The Church of Scientology, started by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard to "clear" people of unhappiness, portrays itself as a religion. In reality the church is a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner. At times during the past decade, prosecutions against Scientology seemed to be curbing its menace. Eleven top Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife, were sent to prison in the early 1980s for infiltrating, burglarizing and wiretapping more than 100 private and government agencies in attempts to block their investigations. In recent years hundreds of longtime Scientology adherents -- many charging that they were mentally or physically abused -- have quit the church and criticized it at their own risk. Some have sued the church and won; others have settled for amounts in excess of $500,000. In various cases judges have labeled the church "schizophrenic and paranoid" and "corrupt, sinister and dangerous."

Yet the outrage and litigation have failed to squelch Scientology. The group, which boasts 700 centers in 65 countries, threatens to become more insidious and pervasive than ever. Scientology is trying to go mainstream, a strategy that has sparked a renewed law-enforcement campaign against the church. Many of the group's followers have been accused of committing financial scams, while the church is busy attracting the unwary through a wide array of front groups in such businesses as publishing, consulting, health care and even remedial education.

In Hollywood, Scientology has assembled a star-studded roster of followers by aggressively recruiting and regally pampering them at the church's "Celebrity Centers," a chain of clubhouses that offer expensive counseling and career guidance. Adherents include screen idols Tom Cruise and John Travolta, actresses Kirstie Alley, Mimi Rogers and Anne Archer, Palm Springs mayor and performer Sonny Bono, jazzman Chick Corea and even Nancy Cartwright, the voice of cartoon star Bart Simpson. Rank-and-file members, however, are dealt a less glamorous Scientology.

According to the Cult Awareness Network, whose 23 chapters monitor more than 200 "mind control" cults, no group prompts more telephone pleas for help than does Scientology. Says Cynthia Kisser, the network's Chicago-based executive director: "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members." Agrees Vicki Aznaran, who was one of Scientology's six key leaders until she bolted from the church in 1987: "This is a criminal organization, day in and day out. It makes Jim and Tammy ((Bakker)) look like kindergarten."

To explore Scientology's reach, TIME conducted more than 150 interviews and reviewed hundreds of court records and internal Scientology documents. Church officials refused to be interviewed. The investigation paints a picture of a depraved yet thriving enterprise. Most cults fail to outlast their founder, but Scientology has prospered since Hubbard's death in 1986. In a court filing, one of the cult's many entities -- the Church of Spiritual Technology -- listed $503 million in income just for 1987. High-level defectors say the parent organization has squirreled away an estimated $400 million in bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Cyprus. Scientology probably has about 50,000 active members, far fewer than the 8 million the group claims. But in one sense, that inflated figure rings true: millions of people have been affected in one way or another by Hubbard's bizarre creation.

Scientology is now run by David Miscavige, 31, a high school dropout and second-generation church member. Defectors describe him as cunning, ruthless and so paranoid about perceived enemies that he kept plastic wrap over his glass of water. His obsession is to attain credibility for Scientology in the 1990s. Among other tactics, the group:

-- Retains public relations powerhouse Hill and Knowlton to help shed the church's fringe-group image.

-- Joined such household names as Sony and Pepsi as a main sponsor of Ted Turner's Goodwill Games.

-- Buys massive quantities of its own books from retail stores to propel the titles onto best-seller lists.

-- Runs full-page ads in such publications as Newsweek and Business Week that call Scientology a "philosophy," along with a plethora of TV ads touting the group's books.

-- Recruits wealthy and respectable professionals through a web of consulting groups that typically hide their ties to Scientology.

The founder of this enterprise was part storyteller, part flimflam man. Born in Nebraska in 1911, Hubbard served in the Navy during World War II and soon afterward complained to the Veterans Administration about his "suicidal inclinations" and his "seriously affected" mind. Nevertheless, Hubbard was a moderately successful writer of pulp science fiction. Years later, church brochures described him falsely as an "extensively decorated" World War II hero who was crippled and blinded in action, twice pronounced dead and miraculously cured through Scientology. Hubbard's "doctorate" from "Sequoia University" was a fake mail-order degree. In a 1984 case in which the church sued a Hubbard biographical researcher, a California judge concluded that its founder was "a pathological liar."

Hubbard wrote one of Scientology's sacred texts, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, in 1950. In it he introduced a crude psychotherapeutic technique he called "auditing." He also created a simplified lie detector (called an "E-meter") that was designed to measure electrical changes in the skin while subjects discussed intimate details of their past. Hubbard argued that unhappiness sprang from mental aberrations (or "engrams") caused by early traumas. Counseling sessions with the E-meter, he claimed, could knock out the engrams, cure blindness and even improve a person's intelligence and appearance.

Hubbard kept adding steps, each more costly, for his followers to climb. In the 1960s the guru decreed that humans are made of clusters of spirits (or "thetans") who were banished to earth some 75 million years ago by a cruel galactic ruler named Xenu. Naturally, those thetans had to be audited.

An Internal Revenue Service ruling in 1967 stripped Scientology's mother church of its tax-exempt status. A federal court ruled in 1971 that Hubbard's medical claims were bogus and that E-meter auditing could no longer be called a scientific treatment. Hubbard responded by going fully religious, seeking First Amendment protection for Scientology's strange rites. His counselors started sporting clerical collars. Chapels were built, franchises became "missions," fees became "fixed donations," and Hubbard's comic-book cosmology became "sacred scriptures."

During the early 1970s, the IRS conducted its own auditing sessions and proved that Hubbard was skimming millions of dollars from the church, laundering the money through dummy corporations in Panama and stashing it in Swiss bank accounts. Moreover, church members stole IRS documents, filed false tax returns and harassed the agency's employees. By late 1985, with high-level defectors accusing Hubbard of having stolen as much as $200 million from the church, the IRS was seeking an indictment of Hubbard for tax fraud. Scientology members "worked day and night" shredding documents the IRS sought, according to defector Aznaran, who took part in the scheme. Hubbard, who had been in hiding for five years, died before the criminal case could be prosecuted.

Today the church invents costly new services with all the zeal of its founder. Scientology doctrine warns that even adherents who are "cleared" of engrams face grave spiritual dangers unless they are pushed to higher and more expensive levels. According to the church's latest price list, recruits -- "raw meat," as Hubbard called them -- take auditing sessions that cost as much as $1,000 an hour, or $12,500 for a 12 1/2-hour "intensive."

Psychiatrists say these sessions can produce a drugged-like, mind-controlled euphoria that keeps customers coming back for more. To pay their fees, newcomers can earn commissions by recruiting new members, become auditors themselves (Miscavige did so at age 12), or join the church staff and receive free counseling in exchange for what their written contracts describe as a "billion years" of labor. "Make sure that lots of bodies move through the shop," implored Hubbard in one of his bulletins to officials. "Make money. Make more money. Make others produce so as to make money . . . However you get them in or why, just do it."

Harriet Baker learned the hard way about Scientology's business of selling religion. When Baker, 73, lost her husband to cancer, a Scientologist turned up at her Los Angeles home peddling a $1,300 auditing package to cure her grief. Some $15,000 later, the Scientologists discovered that her house was debt free. They arranged a $45,000 mortgage, which they pressured her to tap for more auditing until Baker's children helped their mother snap out of her daze. Last June, Baker demanded a $27,000 refund for unused services, prompting two cult members to show up at her door unannounced with an E-meter to interrogate her. Baker never got the money and, financially strapped, was forced to sell her house in September.

Before Noah Lottick killed himself, he had paid more than $5,000 for church counseling. His behavior had also become strange. He once remarked to his parents that his Scientology mentors could actually read minds. When his father suffered a major heart attack, Noah insisted that it was purely psychosomatic. Five days before he jumped, Noah burst into his parents' home and demanded to know why they were spreading "false rumors" about him -- a delusion that finally prompted his father to call a psychiatrist.

It was too late. "From Noah's friends at Dianetics" read the card that accompanied a bouquet of flowers at Lottick's funeral. Yet no Scientology staff members bothered to show up. A week earlier, local church officials had given Lottick's parents a red-carpet tour of their center. A cult leader told Noah's parents that their son had been at the church just hours before he disappeared -- but the church denied this story as soon as the body was identified. True to form, the cult even haggled with the Lotticks over $3,000 their son had paid for services he never used, insisting that Noah had intended it as a "donation."

The church has invented hundreds of goods and services for which members are urged to give "donations." Are you having trouble "moving swiftly up the Bridge" -- that is, advancing up the stepladder of enlightenment? Then you can have your case reviewed for a mere $1,250 "donation." Want to know "why a thetan hangs on to the physical universe?" Try 52 of Hubbard's tape- recorded speeches from 1952, titled "Ron's Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures," for $2,525. Next: nine other series of the same sort. For the collector, gold-and-leather-bound editions of 22 of Hubbard's books (and bookends) on subjects ranging from Scientology ethics to radiation can be had for just $1,900.

To gain influence and lure richer, more sophisticated followers, Scientology has lately resorted to a wide array of front groups and financial scams. Among them:

CONSULTING. Sterling Management Systems, formed in 1983, has been ranked in recent years by Inc. magazine as one of America's fastest-growing private companies (estimated 1988 revenues: $20 million). Sterling regularly mails a free newsletter to more than 300,000 health-care professionals, mostly dentists, promising to increase their incomes dramatically. The firm offers seminars and courses that typically cost $10,000. But Sterling's true aim is to hook customers for Scientology. "The church has a rotten product, so they package it as something else," says Peter Georgiades, a Pittsburgh attorney who represents Sterling victims. "It's a kind of bait and switch." Sterling's founder, dentist Gregory Hughes, is now under investigation by California's Board of Dental Examiners for incompetence. Nine lawsuits are pending against him for malpractice (seven others have been settled), mostly for orthodontic work on children.

Many dentists who have unwittingly been drawn into the cult are filing or threatening lawsuits as well. Dentist Robert Geary of Medina, Ohio, who entered a Sterling seminar in 1988, endured "the most extreme high-pressure sales tactics I have ever faced." Sterling officials told Geary, 45, that their firm was not linked to Scientology, he says. But Geary claims they eventually convinced him that he and his wife Dorothy had personal problems that required auditing. Over five months, the Gearys say, they spent $130,000 for services, plus $50,000 for "gold-embossed, investment-grade" books signed by Hubbard. Geary contends that Scientologists not only called his bank to increase his credit-card limit but also forged his signature on a $20,000 loan application. "It was insane," he recalls. "I couldn't even get an accounting from them of what I was paying for." At one point, the Gearys claim, Scientologists held Dorothy hostage for two weeks in a mountain cabin, after which she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown.

Last October, Sterling broke some bad news to another dentist, Glover Rowe of Gadsden, Ala., and his wife Dee. Tests showed that unless they signed up for auditing, Glover's practice would fail, and Dee would someday abuse their child. The next month the Rowes flew to Glendale, Calif., where they shuttled daily from a local hotel to a Dianetics center. "We thought they were brilliant people because they seemed to know so much about us," recalls Dee. "Then we realized our hotel room must have been bugged." After bolting from the center, $23,000 poorer, the Rowes say, they were chased repeatedly by Scientologists on foot and in cars. Dentists aren't the only ones at risk. Scientology also makes pitches to chiropractors, podiatrists and veterinarians.

PUBLIC INFLUENCE. One front, the Way to Happiness Foundation, has distributed to children in thousands of the nation's public schools more than 3.5 million copies of a booklet Hubbard wrote on morality. The church calls the scheme "the largest dissemination project in Scientology history." Applied Scholastics is the name of still another front, which is attempting to install a Hubbard tutorial program in public schools, primarily those populated by minorities. The group also plans a 1,000-acre campus, where it will train educators to teach various Hubbard methods. The disingenuously named Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a Scientology group at war with psychiatry, its primary competitor. The commission typically issues reports aimed at discrediting particular psychiatrists and the field in general. The CCHR is also behind an all-out war against Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, the nation's top-selling antidepression drug. Despite scant evidence, the group's members -- who call themselves "psychbusters" -- claim that Prozac drives people to murder or suicide. Through mass mailings, appearances on talk shows and heavy lobbying, CCHR has hurt drug sales and helped spark dozens of lawsuits against Lilly.

Another Scientology-linked group, the Concerned Businessmen's Association of America, holds antidrug contests and awards $5,000 grants to schools as a way to recruit students and curry favor with education officials. West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV unwittingly commended the CBAA in 1987 on the Senate floor. Last August author Alex Haley was the keynote speaker at its annual awards banquet in Los Angeles. Says Haley: "I didn't know much about that group going in. I'm a Methodist." Ignorance about Scientology can be embarrassing: two months ago, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, noting that Scientology's founder "has solved the aberrations of the human mind," proclaimed March 13 "L. Ron Hubbard Day." He rescinded the proclamation in late March, once he learned who Hubbard really was.

HEALTH CARE. HealthMed, a chain of clinics run by Scientologists, promotes a grueling and excessive system of saunas, exercise and vitamins designed by Hubbard to purify the body. Experts denounce the regime as quackery and potentially harmful, yet HealthMed solicits unions and public agencies for contracts. The chain is plugged heavily in a new book, Diet for a Poisoned Planet, by journalist David Steinman, who concludes that scores of common foods (among them: peanuts, bluefish, peaches and cottage cheese) are dangerous.

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop labeled the book "trash," and the Food and Drug Administration issued a paper in October that claims Steinman distorts his facts. "HealthMed is a gateway to Scientology, and Steinman's book is a sorting mechanism," says physician William Jarvis, who is head of the National Council Against Health Fraud. Steinman, who describes Hubbard favorably as a "researcher," denies any ties to the church and contends, "HealthMed has no affiliation that I know of with Scientology."

DRUG TREATMENT. Hubbard's purification treatments are the mainstay of Narconon, a Scientology-run chain of 33 alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers -- some in prisons under the name "Criminon" -- in 12 countries. Narconon, a classic vehicle for drawing addicts into the cult, now plans to open what it calls the world's largest treatment center, a 1,400-bed facility on an Indian reservation near Newkirk, Okla. (pop. 2,400). At a 1989 ceremony in Newkirk, the Association for Better Living and Education presented Narconon a check for $200,000 and a study praising its work. The association turned out to be part of Scientology itself. Today the town is battling to keep out the cult, which has fought back through such tactics as sending private detectives to snoop on the mayor and the local newspaper publisher.

FINANCIAL SCAMS. Three Florida Scientologists, including Ronald Bernstein, a big contributor to the church's international "war chest," pleaded guilty in March to using their rare-coin dealership as a money laundry. Other notorious activities by Scientologists include making the shady Vancouver stock exchange even shadier (see box) and plotting to plant operatives in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Export-Import Bank of the U.S. The alleged purpose of this scheme: to gain inside information on which countries are going to be denied credit so that Scientology-linked traders can make illicit profits by taking "short" positions in those countries' currencies.

In the stock market the practice of "shorting" involves borrowing shares of publicly traded companies in the hope that the price will go down before the stocks must be bought on the market and returned to the lender. The Feshbach brothers of Palo Alto, Calif. -- Kurt, Joseph and Matthew -- have become the leading short sellers in the U.S., with more than $500 million under management. The Feshbachs command a staff of about 60 employees and claim to have earned better returns than the Dow Jones industrial average for most of the 1980s. And, they say, they owe it all to the teachings of Scientology, whose "war chest" has received more than $1 million from the family.

The Feshbachs also embrace the church's tactics; the brothers are the terrors of the stock exchanges. In congressional hearings in 1989, the heads of several companies claimed that Feshbach operatives have spread false information to government agencies and posed in various guises -- such as a Securities and Exchange Commission official -- in an effort to discredit their companies and drive the stocks down. Michael Russell, who ran a chain of business journals, testified that a Feshbach employee called his bankers and interfered with his loans. Sometimes the Feshbachs send private detectives to dig up dirt on firms, which is then shared with business reporters, brokers and fund managers.

The Feshbachs, who wear jackets bearing the slogan "stock busters," insist they run a clean shop. But as part of a current probe into possible insider stock trading, federal officials are reportedly investigating whether the Feshbachs received confidential information from FDA employees. The brothers seem aligned with Scientology's war on psychiatry and medicine: many of their targets are health and biotechnology firms. "Legitimate short selling performs a public service by deflating hyped stocks," says Robert Flaherty, the editor of Equities magazine and a harsh critic of the brothers. "But the Feshbachs have damaged scores of good start-ups."

Occasionally a Scientologist's business antics land him in jail. Last August a former devotee named Steven Fishman began serving a five-year prison term in Florida. His crime: stealing blank stock-confirmation slips from his employer, a major brokerage house, to use as proof that he owned stock entitling him to join dozens of successful class-action lawsuits. Fishman made roughly $1 million this way from 1983 to 1988 and spent as much as 30% of the loot on Scientology books and tapes.

Scientology denies any tie to the Fishman scam, a claim strongly disputed by both Fishman and his longtime psychiatrist, Uwe Geertz, a prominent Florida hypnotist. Both men claim that when arrested, Fishman was ordered by the church to kill Geertz and then do an "EOC," or end of cycle, which is church jargon for suicide.

BOOK PUBLISHING. Scientology mischiefmaking has even moved to the book industry. Since 1985 at least a dozen Hubbard books, printed by a church company, have made best-seller lists. They range from a 5,000-page sci-fi decology (Black Genesis, The Enemy Within, An Alien Affair) to the 40-year-old Dianetics. In 1988 the trade publication Publishers Weekly awarded the dead author a plaque commemorating the appearance of Dianetics on its best-seller list for 100 consecutive weeks.

Critics pan most of Hubbard's books as unreadable, while defectors claim that church insiders are sometimes the real authors. Even so, Scientology has sent out armies of its followers to buy the group's books at such major chains as B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks to sustain the illusion of a best-selling author. A former Dalton's manager says that some books arrived in his store with the chain's price stickers already on them, suggesting that copies are being recycled. Scientology claims that sales of Hubbard books now top 90 million worldwide. The scheme, set up to gain converts and credibility, is coupled with a radio and TV advertising campaign virtually unparalleled in the book industry.

Scientology devotes vast resources to squelching its critics. Since 1986 Hubbard and his church have been the subject of four unfriendly books, all released by small yet courageous publishers. In each case, the writers have been badgered and heavily sued. One of Hubbard's policies was that all perceived enemies are "fair game" and subject to being "tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." Those who criticize the church -- journalists, doctors, lawyers and even judges -- often find themselves engulfed in litigation, stalked by private eyes, framed for fictional crimes, beaten up or threatened with death. Psychologist Margaret Singer, 69, an outspoken Scientology critic and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, now travels regularly under an assumed name to avoid harassment.

After the Los Angeles Times published a negative series on the church last summer, Scientologists spent an estimated $1 million to plaster the reporters' names on hundreds of billboards and bus placards across the city. Above their names were quotations taken out of context to portray the church in a positive light.

The church's most fearsome advocates are its lawyers. Hubbard warned his followers in writing to "beware of attorneys who tell you not to sue . . . the purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win." Result: Scientology has brought hundreds of suits against its perceived enemies and today pays an estimated $20 million annually to more than 100 lawyers.

One legal goal of Scientology is to bankrupt the opposition or bury it under paper. The church has 71 active lawsuits against the IRS alone. One of them, Miscavige vs. IRS, has required the U.S. to produce an index of 52,000 pages of documents. Boston attorney Michael Flynn, who helped Scientology victims from 1979 to 1987, personally endured 14 frivolous lawsuits, all of them dismissed. Another lawyer, Joseph Yanny, believes the church "has so subverted justice and the judicial system that it should be barred from seeking equity in any court." He should know: Yanny represented the cult until 1987, when, he says, he was asked to help church officials steal medical records to blackmail an opposing attorney (who was allegedly beaten up instead). Since Yanny quit representing the church, he has been the target of death threats, burglaries, lawsuits and other harassment.

Scientology's critics contend that the U.S. needs to crack down on the church in a major, organized way. "I want to know, Where is our government?" demands Toby Plevin, a Los Angeles attorney who handles victims. "It shouldn't be left to private litigators, because God knows most of us are afraid to get involved." But law-enforcement agents are also wary. "Every investigator is very cautious, walking on eggshells when it comes to the church," says a Florida police detective who has tracked the cult since 1988. "It will take a federal effort with lots of money and manpower."

So far the agency giving Scientology the most grief is the IRS, whose officials have implied that Hubbard's successors may be looting the church's coffers. Since 1988, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the revocation of the cult's tax-exempt status, a massive IRS probe of church centers across the country has been under way. An IRS agent, Marcus Owens, has estimated that thousands of IRS employees have been involved. Another agent, in an internal IRS memorandum, spoke hopefully of the "ultimate disintegration" of the church. A small but helpful beacon shone last June when a federal appeals court ruled that two cassette tapes featuring conversations between church officials and their lawyers are evidence of a plan to commit "future frauds" against the IRS.

The IRS and FBI have been debriefing Scientology defectors for the past three years, in part to gain evidence for a major racketeering case that appears to have stalled last summer. Federal agents complain that the Justice Department is unwilling to spend the money needed to endure a drawn-out war with Scientology or to fend off the cult's notorious jihads against individual agents. "In my opinion the church has one of the most effective intelligence operations in the U.S., rivaling even that of the FBI," says Ted Gunderson, a former head of the FBI's Los Angeles office.

Foreign governments have been moving even more vigorously against the organization. In Canada the church and nine of its members will be tried in June on charges of stealing government documents (many of them retrieved in an enormous police raid of the church's Toronto headquarters). Scientology proposed to give $1 million to the needy if the case was dropped, but Canada spurned the offer. Since 1986 authorities in France, Spain and Italy have raided more than 50 Scientology centers. Pending charges against more than 100 of its overseas church members include fraud, extortion, capital flight, coercion, illegally practicing medicine and taking advantage of mentally incapacitated people. In Germany last month, leading politicians accused the cult of trying to infiltrate a major party as well as launching an immense recruitment drive in the east.

Sometimes even the church's biggest zealots can use a little protection. Screen star Travolta, 37, has long served as an unofficial Scientology spokesman, even though he told a magazine in 1983 that he was opposed to the church's management. High-level defectors claim that Travolta has long feared that if he defected, details of his sexual life would be made public. "He felt pretty intimidated about this getting out and told me so," recalls William Franks, the church's former chairman of the board. "There were no outright threats made, but it was implicit. If you leave, they immediately start digging up everything." Franks was driven out in 1981 after attempting to reform the church.

The church's former head of security, Richard Aznaran, recalls Scientology ringleader Miscavige repeatedly joking to staffers about Travolta's allegedly promiscuous homosexual behavior. At this point any threat to expose Travolta seems superfluous: last May a male porn star collected $100,000 from a tabloid for an account of his alleged two-year liaison with the celebrity. Travolta refuses to comment, and in December his lawyer dismissed questions about the subject as "bizarre." Two weeks later, Travolta announced that he was getting married to actress Kelly Preston, a fellow Scientologist.

Shortly after Hubbard's death the church retained Trout & Ries, a respected, Connecticut-based firm of marketing consultants, to help boost its public image. "We were brutally honest," says Jack Trout. "We advised them to clean up their act, stop with the controversy and even to stop being a church. They didn't want to hear that." Instead, Scientology hired one of the country's largest p.r. outfits, Hill and Knowlton, whose executives refuse to discuss the lucrative relationship. "Hill and Knowlton must feel that these guys are not totally off the wall," says Trout. "Unless it's just for the money."

One of Scientology's main strategies is to keep advancing the tired argument that the church is being "persecuted" by antireligionists. It is supported in that position by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Council of Churches. But in the end, money is what Scientology is all about. As long as the organization's opponents and victims are successfully squelched, Scientology's managers and lawyers will keep pocketing millions of dollars by helping it achieve its ends.

L. Ron Hubbard in the late 1960s, making an adjustment to the Mark V E-Meter. From The Book Introducing the E-Meter, by L. Ron Hubbard.