Democratic Contenders Attack Bush on Iraq, Terrorism, Trade and Economy

”A president has to be able to walk and chew chewing gum at the same time,” said Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, arguing that Mr. Bush had focused on the war on terrorism at the expense of other domestic needs.

A cutting remark from the nice guy, but not quite up to his earlier dig. mjh

mjh’s Weblog Entry – 05/05/2003: Big Belt Buckle

”Just because you speak the language of regular Americans does not mean your agenda is not the agenda of corporate America. Just because you walk around on a ranch in Texas with a big belt buckle doesn’t mean you understand and stand up for rural America.”

Security Poor in Electronic Voting Machines, Study Warns By JOHN SCHWARTZ, NYTimes

Electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. that are widely used in several states have such poor computer security and physical security that an election could be disrupted or even stolen by corrupt insiders or determined outsiders, according to a new report presented today to Maryland state legislators.

Authors of the report — the first hands-on attempt to hack Diebold voting machine systems under conditions found during an election — were careful to say that the machines, if not hacked, count votes correctly, and that issues discovered in the “red team” exercise could be addressed in a preliminary way in time for the state’s primaries in March. …

The authors of the report said that they had expected a higher degree of security in the design of the machines. “We were genuinely surprised at the basic level of the exploits” that allowed tampering, said Mr. Wertheimer, a former security expert for the National Security Agency.

William A. Arbaugh, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Maryland and a member of the Red Team exercise, said, “I can say with confidence that nobody looked at the system with an eye to security who understands security.” …

In the security exercise, members of the attack team said they were surprised to find that the touch-screen machines used by voters all used the same physical key to the two locks that protect their innards from tampering. With hand-held computers and a little sleight of hand, they found, the touch screens could be reprogrammed to make a vote for one candidate count for an opponent, or results could be fouled so that a precinct’s tally could not be used.

In addition, they said, communications between the terminals and the larger server computers that tally results from many precincts do not require that machines on either end of the line prove that they are legitimate, an omission that could allow someone to grab information that could be used to falsify whole precincts worth of votes.

And the server computers do not have the latest protection against the security holes in the Microsoft operating systems, and they are vulnerable to hacker attacks that would allow an outsider to change software, the group found.

The authors of the report also said smart cards that are shipped with the system for voters and supervisors to use during elections have standard passwords that are easily guessed. …

Mr. Wertheimer said the application of security was inconsistent, with encryption applied in some places without the accompanying technology of authentication to ensure that the machines that are communicating with each other are the ones that are supposed to be communicating and that an interloper has not jumped in. “It’s like washing your face and drying it with a dirty towel,” he said. …

There is much more to be done, Mr. Arbaugh said. Working on the exercise for just a week to prepare for the one-day attack, he said, “we got the tip of the iceberg.”

He added, “It seemed everywhere we scratched, there was something that’s pretty troubling.”

The panel recommended that election officials take several steps to improve security, including placing tamper-proof tape on vulnerable parts of voting machines and installing software that will alert officials to any changes to the machine.

If those steps are taken, Mr. Arbaugh said, “the assurance of this election will be comparable to that of past elections.”

The report can be found at www.raba.com.

Georgia Takes on ‘Evolution’ By ANDREW JACOBS, NYTimes

A proposed set of guidelines for middle and high school science classes in Georgia has caused a furor after state education officials removed the word ”evolution” and scaled back ideas about the age of Earth and the natural selection of species.

Educators across the state said that the document, which was released on the Internet this month, was a veiled effort to bolster creationism and that it would leave the state’s public school graduates at a disadvantage. …

A handful of states already omit the word “evolution” from their teaching guidelines, and Ms. Cox called it “a buzz word that causes a lot of negative reaction.” She added that people often associate it with “that monkeys-to-man sort of thing.” … [mjh: yeah, ignorant people]

“Evolution” was replaced with “changes over time,” and in another phrase that referred to the “long history of the Earth,” the authors removed the word “long.” Many proponents of creationism say Earth is at most several thousand years old, based on a literal reading of the Bible. …

In the past, Ms. Cox, has not masked her feelings on the matter of creationism versus evolution. During her run for office, Ms. Cox congratulated parents who wanted Christian notions of Earth and human creation to be taught in schools. …

“Creation is not science, so it should not be taught in science class,” said Dr. Ayala, a professor of genetics at the University of California at Irvine. “We don’t teach astrology instead of astronomy or witchcraft practices instead of medicine.”

Do you think it is a coincidence that barriers between church and state are being torn down by the born-again President? Is it coincidence that the same people who say there is no science supporting global warming also believe there is no science supporting evolution? Is it coincidence that education is declining as Christian radicals attack it right and left? An ignorant populace is more easily lead, especially by unscrupulous tyrants. Welcome to “faith-based democracy” (ie, a theocracy). mjh

In a Visit to New Hampshire, Bush Sounds Campaign Themes By ELISABETH BUMILLER, NYTimes

In the evening, at a lucrative drop-by in Old Greenwich, Conn., the state of his birth, Mr. Bush raised $1.1 million for his re-election campaign. The checks brought his fund-raising total to more than $130 million, an amount that dwarfs the $40 million raised and mostly spent by the next-biggest fund-raiser of the 2004 campaign, Howard Dean.

The major no-show at the event was Gov. John G. Rowland, a Republican who is enmeshed in a corruption scandal over free renovations to his lakeside cottage. Bush campaign officials did not say whether they had asked Mr. Rowland to stay away. …

In Old Greenwich, Mr. Bush was introduced by his cousin Debbie Stapleton, the Connecticut finance chairwoman of his campaign, who happily described the president as a Northeasterner with Ivy League roots.

“You may associate him with the Lone Star State, boots and spurs,” Ms. Stapleton said, “but I knew him in his earlier Connecticut days of family gatherings, Yale Bulldogs and Old Blue.”

Mr. Bush recalled his years at Yale as well as members from his class of 1968 who had turned up to see him.

Op-Ed Columnist: Where’s the Apology? By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYTimes

So where are the apologies? Where are the resignations? Where is the investigation of this intelligence debacle? All we have is bluster from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity language from Mr. Bush — and a determined effort to prevent an independent inquiry. …

In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America’s credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being held accountable. But that’s standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. …

These people politicize everything, from military planning to scientific assessments. If you’re with them, you pay no penalty for being wrong. If you don’t tell them what they want to hear, you’re an enemy, and being right is no excuse.

Still, the big story isn’t about Mr. Bush; it’s about what’s happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn’t. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?

Op-Ed Columnist: The Halliburton Shuffle By BOB HERBERT, NYTimes

[Halliburton] adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are used to shift income out of the U.S. But it’s indisputable that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton’s tax liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, “After foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the I.R.S. for our 2002 tax liability.”

That is effectively no money at all to an empire like Halliburton. Less than pocket change. Dick Cheney must be having a good laugh over the way his old company, following his road map, is taking the U.S. for such a ride.

In the early 90’s, when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary under the first President Bush, he hired the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to determine what military functions could be outsourced to private profit-making companies. Brown & Root came up with myriad ideas in a classified study and was handed a lucrative contract to implement its own plan.

Mr. Cheney took over as chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, and the defense contracts just kept on coming. When he returned to government as vice president in 2001, no firm was better positioned than Halliburton to cash in on the billions of dollars in contracts that resulted from the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq.

Op-Ed Contributor: Givers and Takers By DANIEL H. PINK, NYTimes

Republicans seem to have become the new welfare party — their constituents live off tax dollars paid by people who vote Democratic. Of course, not all federal spending is wasteful. But Republicans are having their pork and eating it too. Voters in red states like Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are some of the country’s fiercest critics of government, yet they’re also among the biggest recipients of federal largess. Meanwhile, Democratic voters in the coastal blue states — the ones who are often portrayed as shiftless moochers — are left to carry the load.

For President Bush, this invisible income redistribution system is a boon. He can encourage his supporters to see themselves as Givers, yet reward them with federal spending in excess of their contribution — and send the bill to those who voted for his opponent. It’s shrewd politics.

This is an intriguing take on a different national division. mjh