The Bush Cheney conf call begins at 10:45 pm. To join call:
1-800-262-1292. That's 1-800-262-1292, password Miami Debate.

Angèle Boyd, a vice president at IDC, a market research firm in Framingham, Mass., concurred: "This industry has shifted away from selling boxes to selling solutions, which include services around the box, and this branding change is right in line with that."

Of many health problems plauging Americans....

Racketeering (Rico)Charges filed Against NutraSweet, Dr. Moser of NS,
American Diabetes Assn, Monsanto, Press Conf 9/16 A.M. Sacramento

Racketeering Charges filed for knowingly marketing a deadly neurotoxic
drug for human consumption, NutraSweet/Aspartame/Equal/Spoonful, and
stumbling the public into believing it to be a safe additive

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 17, 2004 -- A RACKETEER INFLUENCED &
CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS
As evidence, an explosive affidavit from a former translator for the G.D. Searle Co - the developer of aspartame - will be made public at a National Press Conference on Thursday, September 16 at 11:00 a.m. at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel, 1230 J Street, Sacramento, California 95814, phone (916) 447-1700.

For 16 years, the FDA denied approval of aspartame because of compelling evidence of its contributing to brain tumors and other serious disabilities. Donald Rumsfeld, present Secretary of Defense in the Bush Administration, left President Ford's administration as Chief of Staff to become the CEO of aspartame producer G D Searle Co. in 1981. Shortly after, Rumsfeld became the CEO, and the day after President Reagan took office, aspartame was quickly approved by FDA Commissioner Arthur Hayes over the objections of the FDA's Public Board of inquiry. Hayes had been recently appointed by the Reagan Administration. Shortly after aspartame's approval by the FDA, Hayes joined NutraSweet's public relations firm under a ten year contract at $1,000 a day.

Aspartame/NutraSweet was the product of the G. D. Searle Co. In January 1977, the FDA wrote a 33 page letter to U.S. Justice Department Attorney Sam Skinner: "We request that your office convene a Grand Jury investigation into apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act." Skinner allowed the Statute of Limitations to run out.

Three FDA Commissioners and eight other officers and Skinner took jobs in the aspartame industry.

The Food and Drug Administration once listed 92 adverse reactions from 10,000 consumer complaints and would send the list to all inquirers. In 1996 the FDA stopped taking complaints and now denies existence of the report. Seizures, blindness, sexual dysfunction, obesity, testicular, mammary and brain tumors and death, plus dozens of other dread diseases named in the suit arise from the consumption of this neurotoxin.

Defendant Moser, past CEO of NutraSweet, is cited for misrepresenting facts to public and commercial users with full knowledge of the deceptions. The toxin is sold to Bayer, Con Agra Foods, Dannon, Smucker, Kellogg, Wrigley, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods (Crystal Light), Conopco (Slim-Fast), Coke, Pfizer, Wal-Mart and Wyeth (to name a few), who use it in some of their products, including children's vitamins. These
entities are named in other suits now in California Courts.

Defendant American Diabetes Association's mission is to care for diabetics. A 35 year ADA member, world famous diabetic specialist H.J.Roberts, M.D., discovered aspartame can precipitate diabetes and reacts harmfully with insulin. ADA rejected his report which was then published in a prestigious medical journal.

The seven count indictment includes charges for violation of California Consumers Legal Remedies Act, Fraud, violations of California Civil Code \x{00A7}1780-1784 and Injunctive Relief: that Defendants be enjoined from future use/sale of aspartame.

"At some point the Iraqis will get tired of getting killed."

Fox News had William Campenni (the guy who served in the same unit as Bush in the early '70s, and who wrote the letter touted by Ed Gillespie as proving that Bush actually existed back then) on the Brit Hume show this evening. Campenni was brought on to give his opinion that the Colonel wouldn't have routinely written a memo ordering a pilot to show up for his physical, because pilots usually had until the end of their birth month to get checked out -- which for Bush would have been a couple of months after the date on the memo -- and they took said exam without needing a special order to do so. Campenni added that drug and alcohol screening also wasn't routine in 1972, and was only done when requested by a commanding officer who had reason to suspect there was a problem.

So, Fox News is making it sound like Col. Killian had reason to suspect that George Bush was using drugs (or seriously abusing alcohol) in 1972, and so he specifically ordered the young officer to show up for a physical which would have included special screening for alcohol and/or drugs. And Bush refused to obey that order.

And then George was whisked out of state by his family. And he was later given permission to serve in a non-flying unit in Alabama (even though he had signed a commitment to serve his country as a pilot, in recognition of the fact that it had invested thousands and thousands of dollars training him to fly planes), all so it wouldn't come out that George had a drug problem. But he didn't even bother to show up to read the magazines (or whatever other cushy made-up work they arranged for him in Alabama) during the time he was there, because a commitment to his country meant so little to him at the time. And then associates of his family put pressure on George's superiors to write up undeserved performance ratings for him, showing their contempt for honorable military service. And then most of the records which could embarrass him were illegally destroyed in the past decade or so, in order to help George's political prospects, because his career is more important than the law or the truth.

Pretty damning stuff, which I never would have suspected without Fox News' efforts to discredit the memos. (Because, as even the White House said, the stuff about Bush basically bailing on the last couple of years of his National Guard service is old news.) Thanks, Fox News!

It sucks that we have to keep focusing on candidates' records from decades ago instead of actual issues that matter. I understand why it's happening (the Bushies have no ground to stand on in the present to get elected) but it makes the whole race seem like a joke, when it's anything but.

The most telling reaction to the milestone, however, involved the administration. Bush had no reaction -- not officially or unofficially. Left to speak for the government, Rumsfeld made reference only to the number, not the event. The number of deaths, he observed, was actually "relatively small" given the risks.

My first reaction was, if my son or daughter had been one of those thousand, I'm not sure that would have provided much comfort.

Ralph Nader, knocked off the presidential ballot in a series of states recently, lashed out against the Democratic Party on Thursday and accused its members of using intimidation tactics to prevent or dissuade people from signing petitions on his behalf.

The Green Party-turned-independent candidate said the Democrats are practicing "political bigotry," comparing the requirements that have kept him from appearing on some ballots to Jim Crow laws--segregation-era mandates that, among other things, prevented blacks in the U.S. from voting.

Petition signatures collected by supporters have been closely scrutinized and challenged by the Democratic National Committee, which has tried to keep Nader off the ballot on the basis of technicalities and "micro-provisions," Nader said.

"The whole process stinks, what we have to go through," he said, adding that fighting petition discrepancies in court is draining his campaign fund.

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney’s comments show how “out of touch” he and President Bush are with the economy.

“If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking,” Edwards said in a statement.

The residents of this town of dairy and cattle farmers did not know it then, but half a century ago, northern winds blew radioactive fallout into southeastern Idaho when the federal government set off about 90 nuclear bombs at its Nevada test site near Las Vegas.

There is not any doubt that Emmett, population 5,500, and other towns in four Idaho counties were exposed to high levels of radiation from the open-air atomic bomb blasts, receiving among the highest doses of a radioactive chemical that has been linked to increased risk for thyroid cancer. The National Cancer Institute in 1997 released a detailed study and a map plotting the locations of the fallout across the country, ranking concentrations of Radioactive Iodine-131, an isotope released when a nuclear bomb is detonated, from Nevada to upstate New York. The study put the four Idaho counties - Gem County, which includes Emmett; Lemhi; Blaine; and Custer - and one in Montana at the top of that list.

Camille Paglia observed on Salon in February, 2003 that the explosion of the Columbia shuttle on the eve of the war on Iraq was a "stunning omen," one that would make a Roman general think twice. A catastrophe strewing death, fire, and human remains across Bush's home state of Texas was inauspicious to our undertaking; and so it has proven to be. Frances is the second hurricane to afflict Florida, home of brother Jeb, in rapid succession.

The gods are not pleased.

My opponent's policies are dramatically different from ours. Senator Kerry opposed Medicare reform and health savings accounts. He opposes marriage, children, little puppies and lowered income taxes for kindly, old billionaires. To be fair, there are some things that he is for: satanic rituals, wife-swapping, and raising the taxes of innocent wealthy people. His policies are the policies of the past. Ours are the policies of the FUTURE! We are on the path to the future, and we are not turning back -- because we're lost, and we're too macho to ask for directions.

I'm an optimist. / I'm an optimist. / We're gonna get attacked again.

[Via Atrios]

DAN PATTERSON from Morning Sedition: I was talking to this stagehand and apparently they're going to reconstruct the stage after Dick Cheney's speech tonight. It's going to stick out into the audience so that Bush can be floating on the crowd. And there's a hydraulic lift that's going to lift him up out of the stage. He will come out of the stage, rise triumphantly above all of his followers.

LIZ WINSTEAD: Like Spinal Tap?

DAN: Yes, or like Jesus.

Back then a novice could not produce a viable typeface without having a type foundry or type shop make and sell it. Type design was the province of skilled artisans who were expert at achieving the finer points of legibility through graphic subtleties invisible to the reader's eye but crucial to a good reading experience.

Now, for well over a decade, computer programs like FontLab and Fontographer have allowed neophytes, as well as veterans, to create a new generation of digital type. During the ensuing digital typographic revolution of the 90's, a slew of designers and illustrators who had never designed an alphabet before flooded Internet sites with bizarrely named, peculiarly styled and sometimes illegible faces. Typeface design became something of an expressive art.

Odd examples in the slideshow though...where's Chank, Joe Gillespie, or Ray Larabie? They're the real amateurs.

During Schwarzenegger's speech, Kay grinned and/or laughed at the following Schwarzenegger lines: "What a greeting! This is like winning an Oscar ... as if I would know!" and "And I've been a Republican ever since! And trust me, in my wife's family, that's no small achievement!" She shook her head and scribbled on her notepad upon hearing this line: "If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope of democracy in the world ... then you are a Republican!" Midway through "Arnie's" (Kay's word) speech, the Daily News' DeFrank appeared and took his seat. Both "guest" and "talent" chuckled as Arnold gave the convention (and the nation) his guttural money line:

"Don't be economic girlie men!"

"He had to say it, didn't he?" Kay remarked, off-air, to DeFrank. "Very smart," DeFrank answered. Once Schwarzenegger finished, Kay began her on-air interview with DeFrank, returning quickly to Schwarzenegger's "United Nations" line. "I think of all the lines he said, that went down the best with this crowd," Kay said. DeFrank concurred, explaining to Kay's British viewers that "this is a party that doesn't like the United Nations, you know the UN did not support the war in Iraq so [that] was a rallying cry for true believers of President Bush." Kay mused that a line like that is "somehow perhaps more palatable" coming from "an immigrant himself, foreign born himself, still with a thick foreign accent ..."

As President Bush's mug appeared on the big screen to introduce his wife, Kay whispered "Perfectly staged," to DeFrank. While Laura Bush spoke, DeFrank and Kay chatted off-air intermittently. "[Laura's] looking better than ever," Kay commented. "Her skin is looking flawless." DeFrank again concurred, adding, "She's never looked better. They fixed up her hair."

After the first lady's speech, Kay informed BBC viewers that the first lady is "a reluctant but effective campaigner," and discussed her appeal to those whom Kay called "that very key group of swing voters, suburban women" and whom DeFrank described as "soccer moms, independents, women in their forties and fifties who are not very comfortable with President Bush." DeFrank distilled the first lady's implicit message down to this for BBC viewers: "Anybody smart enough to marry this woman ought to be re-elected. That's the subliminal message."

Russians are spending a tense night as an armed group continued to hold up to 400 hostages, including many children, in a school in southern Russia.

Camouflage-clad troops have surrounded the school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan while distraught parents, crowded outside police cordons demanding information and accusing the government of failing to protect their children.

Wrapped in suicide-bomb belts, the hostage-takers are threatening to blow up the building and kill the captives if the school was stormed by Russian troops.

Russian news agencies said at least eight people have been killed in the hours since the armed group raided the school on Wednesday morning.

Three men were trampled to death in a rush to claim vouchers at the first IKEA furniture showroom in Saudi Arabia Wednesday, hospital officials said. Sixteen shoppers were injured at the Sweden-based furniture store opening in Jeddah. Medics revived some 20 customers who had fainted in the crush. IKEA said two were killed. The rush was triggered by an offer for the first 50 shoppers to receive $150 in vouchers. An IKEA statement said more than 20,000 people showed up.Hospital officials said two of the dead were a Pakistani and a Saudi national. The IKEA statement said the company had worked closely with Saudi security officials to plan the opening.

Giuliani: "I quote John Kerry: 'I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.' "

The context: The administration's request for the funding was controversial, even among Republicans, and various attempts were made to split off $67 billion for the troops from the $20 billion for reconstruction, or to turn the $20 billion grant into a loan, or to fund some of the spending by raising taxes on incomes greater than $312,000. Kerry voted for a different version of the bill, just as Bush had vowed to veto a version that originally passed in the Senate that would have converted half of the Iraq rebuilding plan into a loan.

Giuliani: "Just a few months ago, John Kerry kind of leaked out that claim that certain foreign leaders who opposed our removal of Saddam Hussein prefer him."

The context: The reporter who provided a pool report on Kerry's comments at a fundraiser in March later said she had mistranscribed the comments, and Kerry actually did not use the word "foreign." He also did not refer to Saddam Hussein. Speaking to supporters who noted the opposition to Bush overseas, Kerry said: "I've been hearing it, I'll tell you. The news, the coverage in other countries, the news in other places. I've met more leaders who can't go out and say it all publicly, but boy they look at you and say, you gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that."

From the full conversation, it appears clear Kerry is speaking about dislike of Bush and his policies by leaders overseas, but not necessarily the invasion of Iraq.

A commanding officer, telling the crowd of about 200 "you're all under arrest," ordered other officers to bring the "prison van" and the "orange netting" with which to enmesh the protesters.

"We don't know why we are being arrested, we were just crossing the street," said Lambert Rochfort, who was among the protesters. "We were told if we don't do anything illegal we would be allowed to march on the sidewalk and we did just that. Then they arrested us for no apparent reason."

Later in the afternoon, a clash erupted on the steps of the New York Public Library after two women tried to hang a protest banner over one of the lions atop the library steps. After the police pinned the women to the ground, a crowd of protesters struggled with police, answering requests to move with chants of "Oink, oink, oink."

People coming off the subways were thrown to the ground and the steps of the library were left littered with chairs and debris.

As protesters converged on Herald Square in the evening, the police tried to contain the increasingly raucous crowds. Hundreds of protesters seemed to get too close to the buses of delegates and the crowd became unruly as the police moved in metal barricades and used scooters to try to push the crowd back.

Those who would not move were arrested, and each time the police moved in to make an arrest, they were swarmed by protesters.