McCain POW Wow
The New York Times leads with how business lobbyists view the
just-concluded session of Congress. Very enthusiastically, says the paper, in a
story running under a brutal headline: "CONGRESS LEAVES BUSINESS LOBBIES ALMOST
ALL SMILES." The Washington Post goes with a sum-up of the FBI
investigation into EgyptAir 990--an effort that by now involves hundreds of
agents in Washington, Cairo, and elsewhere. The Los Angeles Times
leads with a mushrooming source of medical inflation--the rising cost of
prescription medications advertised on television--which are typically at least
twice as expensive as older, over-the-counter, unadvertised counterparts. The
paper explains that since the FDA's 1997 decision to permit prescription drug
TV commercials, average prescription costs have climbed at more than double the
general inflation rate. USA Today goes with a nonpartisan group's
recently compiled figures indicating that Bill Bradley has a fund-raising lead
over Al Gore in California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey, and is also
leading the money race in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two earliest primary
states.
According to the NYT , congressional victories for the business
lobby this past year included: repeal of Depression-era laws preventing banks,
securities firms, and insurance concerns from entering one another's line of
business, a five-year extension of the business R&D tax credit, no increase
in the minimum wage, no regulation of health-care plans, no campaign finance
reform, and no ban on agribusiness mergers. The paper says business's
"knockout"legislative feat was a triumph over the trial lawyers: passage of a
law limiting Y2K lawsuits.
According to the Post lead, the FBI's willingness to let the NTSB
(the government's accident investigation body) remain for the time being in
charge of the EgyptAir investigation, rather than officially ratcheting it up
into an up-front criminal probe, has a payoff: It placates the Egyptian
authorities, who therefore have been more cooperative in sharing flight and
personnel records with the Bureau, which outside the U.S. has no power to seize
evidence. Also, shades of the dog who didn't bark, the Post reveals
that investigators are paying close attention to what the praying co-pilot
didn't say: "There was no shocked expletive or puzzled comment, as pilots
typically make in an emergency or when highly computerized aircraft suddenly
take action without pilot input."
Both the NYT and WP front stories about the
self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland, which broke off from Somalia five years
ago to escape the daily fighting between warlords there. The papers report that
Somaliland has indeed accomplished its goal of becoming a peaceful enclave, but
needs foreign cash if it is to actually become an independent nation. This at a
time when the developed world is spending less and less on foreign aid.
An inside WP item by Howard Kurtz reports that in an Al Gore radio
ad making the rounds, the two women chatting about health care are not the
ordinary folks they seem to be, but are actresses reading from a script. Why is
this news? Hasn't Kurtz ever heard of Harry and Louise?
In a NYT op-ed, retired Adm. James B. Stockdale responds to recent
allegations that some Senate colleagues of John McCain think he was rendered
unbalanced by his five years in a North Vietnamese prison. Stockdale vouches
for the rock-solid temperament of his fellow former Hanoi Hilton resident.
That's to be expected--but what's really newsy here is that Stockdale reports
that an old friend he describes as close to the George W. Bush campaign
recently called him soliciting comments on McCain's "weaknesses." This is the
first solid link between Bush and the anti-McCain whispering campaign.
The Wall Street Journal features a Desert Storm memoir by
active-duty Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh that was originally delivered to cadets
at the Air Force Academy. The talk contains the following compelling and
reassuring passage, about a transport helicopter pilot, who came up on the
radio volunteering to go pick up a fighter pilot shot down over a heavy
concentration of Iraqi troops: "You need to remember a Chinook is about the
size of a double-decker London bus with props, and it doesn't have guns. We kid
around a lot about interservice rivalries, but I guarantee that I would follow
that Army helicopter pilot into combat. I'll never forget her voice."
