"Life ain't worth a darn unless you have challenges,"

"Life ain't worth a darn unless you have challenges," West said, recounting how his appetite for GM'ing gradually returned. (ESPN)

Unlike the current Iraq contracts, the company's efforts to do business in Iran occurred under Cheney's watch.

Halliburton has come under renewed fire for its dealings in Iran. A federal grand jury in Houston is investigating whether the firm violated U.S. sanctions by operating in Iran through a Cayman Islands subsidiary headquartered in Dubai.

Unlike the current Iraq contracts, the company's efforts to do business in Iran occurred under Cheney's watch.

U.S. companies may do business in Iran only through foreign-owned subsidiaries that operate independently of the parent firm. It is unclear when Halliburton's subsidiary, Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., began its business in Iran, though it reportedly opened in 2000.

The Iran dealings have the potential to hit closest to Cheney. Using the contacts he formed during decades of government work, Cheney sought to expand Halliburton's reach overseas. He was simultaneously an outspoken advocate during his tenure as chief executive for putting an end to sanctions against Iran, which he called "bad policy."

"We're kept out of [Iran] primarily by our own government, which has made a decision that U.S. firms should not be allowed to invest significantly in Iran, and I think that's a mistake," Cheney told the World Petroleum Congress in a 2000 speech, before Bush, then Texas' governor, tapped him as his running mate on the Republican ticket.

Halliburton is also a target in ongoing investigations in France, Nigeria and the U.S. into whether a consortium of it and other companies paid about $160 million in bribes beginning in 1995 to obtain contracts for a natural gas plant in Nigeria.

Halliburton has maintained that it played little role in the deal, since it became a member of the consortium only in 1998 by buying Dresser Industries, another company that was already a member. Cheney was Halliburton's CEO at the time.

However, documents recently obtained by the Los Angeles Times show that after becoming part of the consortium, Halliburton played an important role in retaining a lawyer accused of shuttling money between the consortium and the Nigerian government.

Cheney's office referred questions about the Nigeria case to Halliburton. Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said the company had found no evidence that would implicate Cheney in wrongdoing.

This August, Halliburton paid $7.5 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle an investigation of an accounting practice that appeared to artificially boost the company's revenue. The questionable practice occurred while Cheney was in charge.

The firm admitted no wrongdoing in agreeing to pay the fine.
(L.A. Times)

Balloons!

Balloons!

The Hallway of Doom

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Rooftop

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Originally uploaded by 13 Beachwood.

What a beautiful day for a chimney

Bush opposed creation of an independent Sept. 11 commission, then supported it. He first refused to speak to its members, then agreed only if Vice President Dick Cheney came with him.

If he is a flip-flopper, Kerry has company.

--In 2000, Bush argued against new military entanglements and nation building. He's done both in Iraq.

--He opposed a Homeland Security Department, then embraced it.

--He opposed creation of an independent Sept. 11 commission, then supported it. He first refused to speak to its members, then agreed only if Vice President Dick Cheney came with him.

--Bush argued for free trade, then imposed three-year tariffs on steel imports in 2002, only to withdraw them after 21 months.

--Last month, he said he doubted the war on terror could be won, then reversed himself to say it could and would.

--A week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden ``dead or alive.'' But he told reporters six months later, ``I truly am not that concerned about him.'' He did not mention bin Laden in his hour-long convention acceptance speech.

``I'm a war president,'' Bush told NBC's ``Meet the Press'' on Feb. 8. But in a July 20 speech in Iowa, he said: ``Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president.''

Bush keeps revising his Iraq war rationale: The need to seize Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction until none were found; liberating the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator; fighting terrorists in Iraq not at home; spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Now it's a safer America and a safer world. (AP)

"If you look in the four corners of the Earth, you wouldn't find a regime as cruel as this one."

SHIGAKARO, Sudan - Hawa Basi, cradling her sick child in the fierce sunlight, has nowhere to go and nowhere to return to.

She lived in the hamlet of Bameshi, not too far from here. But when Sudanese planes bombed a nearby village, she and her three children fled for the hills, forced out as much by the hunger in their bellies as the fear in their hearts.

Now she's too frightened to return to Bameshi and too weak to make the two-week-long journey on foot to the refugee camps of neighboring Chad.

Tens of thousands of others share her plight, hunkered down in rebel-controlled portions of Sudan's Darfur region, in a kind of humanitarian no-man's land.

They spend their nights huddled in caves and bushes, hiding from the bombers, Sudanese soldiers and the state-backed Arab militias, called the janjaweed, that have hunted them for months. They survive on wild roots and the mercy of strangers who are barely better off in villages such as Shigakaro that are protected by rebels.

"We are just waiting for help," said Basi, wearing a blue shawl and a faint smile....

....Ongoing insecurity, overstretched aid workers and a shortage of funding are largely to blame for the lack of aid in rebel-controlled areas.

"Tell them we're suffering from three things - lack of food, (lack of) medicines and the enemy," implored Umda Ali Hassib, the chief of Shigakaro, 70 miles east of Sudan's border with Chad. "If you look in the four corners of the Earth, you wouldn't find a regime as cruel as this one." (Knight Ridder)

Annual cost to insure a family almost 60% higher than in 2001, study finds

Health insurance premiums jumped 11.2 percent this year, growing five times faster than inflation and U.S. workers' salaries, according to a survey released Thursday.

This was the fourth consecutive year the premiums rose by double digits, according to the nationwide study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust. The study found the average annual cost to insure a family of four jumped to nearly $10,000--almost 60 percent higher than it was in 2001. Of that total cost, employers paid an average premium of $7,289 per year.

Such soaring costs have prompted more firms to drop or limit insurance and have fueled a dramatic increase in the number of uninsured Americans.

Compared with 2001, 5 million fewer jobs come with health insurance, and the average premium paid directly by workers has climbed more than $1,000 to nearly $2,700 in family plans, the study found.

Premiums are expected to continue rising sharply in the coming years because it's unlikely that strong managed-care plans will re-emerge or new government-led health-care programs will drive down costs.

"We're at a different place now because we're stuck with no big new idea," said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"I see no scenario other than health-care costs continuing to outdistance wage increases and inflation by a very wide margin," Altman said. (Chicago Tribune)

Fiscal Conservatives Challenge Bush

But even fiscal conservatives, traditionally allied with the Republican White House, were skeptical of Bush's plans.

"While it's true that Kerry hasn't provided a detailed plan, neither has the president," said Heritage Foundation budget analyst Brian Riedl.

William Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, said Bush's warnings about Kerry's spending plans were "inconsistent" with his own proposals. "There's no way to accomplish (Bush's) major new measures, including tax reform, without substantial increases in spending," Niskanen said.

Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth, a group that raises money for conservative political candidates, said Bush was not being "very forthright" about his plans. He called Bush's fiscal record "abysmal," adding that under both Bush and Kerry "fiscal responsibility takes the back seat."

This week congressional analysts warned the deficit will balloon to a cumulative $2.29 trillion over the next decade. (Reuters)

a tendency to view stress as a challenge rather than as a burden.

Studies of professional musicians show that people in orchestras are often less satisfied and more stressed than those in small chamber groups because they lack autonomy, according to Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford and the author of "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers." Orchestra musicians are at the mercy of their maestro's every whim. For years, they had no power even to take regular bathroom breaks.

"The people who are under someone's thumb, who are low-ranking and don't have any decision-making,'' Dr. McEwen said, "these are the people who always experience more anxiety."

People who exhibit hardiness are reluctant to cede control. They are also less likely to feel victimized by their bosses or by unpredictable life circumstances. When there is a crisis at work, they can tough it out because they accept a harsh workload or the occasional pink slip as an unsavory but inevitable part of life, psychologists say.

"They know there'll be different challenges, some you can't even anticipate, yet they train their minds to say these things are expected," said Dr. Robert Brooks, a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School and the author of "The Power of Resilience."....

...."When you feel that you're accomplishing something, it's akin to a sense of control," Dr. Morgan said. "When people start feeling that what they're doing is not meaningful, then they take more sick days, begin looking for another job, and complain of health problems." (New York Times)