AUGUST 31, 2005

SLOW RESPONSE BY BUSH IS TYPICAL

George W. Bush is drawing some fire for his slow response to the damage by Hurricane Katrina. His vacation was too important, I guess. Why is it every time this guy takes a vacation some disaster happens, or is on the verge of happening? In 2001 while on vacation he received the Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Bush's response was to go fishing. Just days later the 9/11 attack occurred. When the devastating tsunami hit around last Christmas Bush was embarrassingly slow to respond. Warnings that a Category 5 hurricane would devastate the Gulf Coast went unheeded by the Bush administration. Preparedness is not the watchword for this administration. This article by Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey is at msnbc.msn.com:

Then there’s the speed of the Bush administration’s response to such disasters. Just one week ago the White House declared that a major disaster existed in Louisiana, specifically most of the areas (such as Jefferson Parish) that are now under water. Was the White House psychic about the disaster ahead? Not exactly. In fact the major disaster referred to Tropical Storm Cindy, which struck the state a full seven weeks earlier. That announcement triggered federal aid for the stricken areas, where the clean-up had been on hold for almost two months while the White House chewed things over.

Now, faced with a far bigger and deadlier disaster, the Bush administration faces at least two difficult questions: Was it ready to deal with the long-predicted flooding of New Orleans? And is it ready to deal with the long-predicted terrorist attack that might some day strike another of our big cities?

ANOTHER PROBLEM IN THE MIDDLE EAST

We know about the painful events in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know about the Bush administration saber rattling about Iran. But how much attention is being paid to Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia has been the major source of the world's oil. We know the Bush family and the Saudi royal family have had a chummy relationship for a long time. We also know that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, and that the Saudis are the main source of funds for terrorists around the world. What happens if the Saudi royal family loses control? That's the question posed by this article in The Atlantic Monthly. The article by Robert Baer is at www.theatlantic.com:

In the decades after World War II the United States and the rest of the industrialized world developed a deep and irrevocable dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, the world's largest and most important producer. But by the mid-1980s—with the Iran-Iraq war raging, and the opec oil embargo a recent and traumatic memory—the supply, which had until that embargo been taken for granted, suddenly seemed at risk. Disaster planners in and out of government began to ask uncomfortable questions. What points of the Saudi oil infrastructure were most vulnerable to terrorist attack? And by what means? What sorts of disruption to the flow of oil, short-term and long-term, could be expected? These were critical concerns. Underlying them all was the fear that a major attack on the Saudi system could cause the global economy to collapse.

AUGUST 30, 2005

BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH WRECKING HAVOC

We were told that drastic tax cuts favoring the rich would jumpstart the economy. We were told the same thing during the Reagan administration. It didn't happen then and it hasn't happened now. What has happened is massive deficits. To help offset those deficits, programs that benefit the middle class and the poor get slashed or eliminated altogether. There's something really wrong with this picture. This analysis comes from www.americanprogressaction.org:

Congress must determine next week how to cut approximately $35 billion from mandatory spending programs through an annual process called budget reconciliation. The reason for the drastic slashing of critical social spending? President Bush’s massive tax cuts for the rich have failed to jumpstart our economy, and in turn, have produced record deficits that middle and working class Americans must now pay off. As vital programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, student loans, and other forms of government assistance sit on the chopping block, President Bush continues to push for permanent extension of his costly and inequitable tax cuts. The budget calls for $70 billion in additional tax cuts, and a pending repeal of the estate tax would cost about $750 billion over the first 10 years of enactment. What’s at stake?

POVERTY RATE RISES AGAIN

Since George W. Bush stole his way into the White House the poverty rate has increased every year. Think it's just a coincidence? Republican administrations always lead to lousy economies, but this administration goes even further than past Republican administrations. This story is from news.bbc.co.uk:

The number of people classed as poor in the US has increased - despite strong economic growth, say official figures.

An extra 1.1 million Americans dropped below the poverty line last year, according to the US Census Bureau.

There were 37 million people living in poverty in 2004, up 12.7% from the previous year.

GLOBAL WARMING IS JUST A MYTH. RIGHT?

Because dealing with global warming isn't business friendly, George W. Bush said the issue needed "more study." The extreme weather we're getting now should be pretty good evidence for global warming. That's not to mention things like glaciers melting and even the ice on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro melting. The evidence is everywhere. Hurricane Katrina is an example of what we can expect if we don't deal with global warming This article by Ross Gelbspan is at www.boston.com:

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.

Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.

HIGH ASTHMA RATES IN THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY

Just another selling point for Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley is the lousy air quality here, which contributes to high childhood asthma. This article is from www.sfgate.com:

At Mayfair Elementary in the Fresno Unified School District, color- coded flags tell asthma-suffering sixth-grader Robert Hinojoza whether that day's air pollution is low enough to play hard during recess or just have a walk around and chit-chat with friends.

"If it's a red day, I shouldn't be running around as much. If it's an orange day, I should probably be in the shade," said Hinojoza, 11.

Of Fresno Unified's 79,000 students, about 30 percent have some form of asthma. This fall, after a successful pilot program, flags will fly at all of the district's 95 schools. Modesto City Schools will fly similar flags over its 33 campuses starting Sept. 1. A handful of Stockton schools are starting to do the same.

AUGUST 29, 2005

CIVIL WAR LOOMING IN IRAQ

George W. Bush rides his bike and vacations and talks about the messy process of democracy in Iraq. Messy indeed. It appears the country is ready to explode into civil war. Throughout his life Bush had made a mess of things, and there has always been someone there to bail him out. Now he's in a position where that won't happen. It's the personification of the "Peter Principle," where people rise to the level of their incompetence. This story by Raymond Whitaker in London and Andrew Buncombe in Washington is at www.commondreams.org:

Barring a sudden change of mind by the Sunnis, the stage is set for a bitter political battle ahead of the referendum when the bloodshed in Iraq is increasingly acquiring a sectarian character. Even the optimists who still describe the violence as an insurgency might be forced to acknowledge that Iraq is in the grip of civil war.

The apparent derailing of the Iraqi constitution is a severe blow to George Bush, who urged a senior Shia leader last week not to push the Sunnis to the brink. With nearly 80 per cent of the population, the Shias and their Kurdish allies are gambling that the draft would win approval in the referendum. But if two-thirds of voters in any three of the 18 provinces reject the constitution, it will be defeated.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

I just read Cormac McCarthy's new novel No Country For Old Men. One of the characters in the novel is a professional hitman, totally without conscience, willing to kill everyone in his way. In some ways that's Karl Rove. And I don't have any doubt that Karl Rove, the master of dirty tricks, innuendo, and sleaze, is just doing what George W. Bush wants him to do. In this editorial The Boston Globe looks at the sordid record of Karl Rove. The editorial is at www.boston.com:

Rove's record has been consistent. Over 35 years, he has been a master of dirty tricks, divisiveness, innuendo, manipulation, character assassination, and roiling partisanship.

He started early. In 1970, when he was 19 and active as a college Republican -- though he didn't graduate from college -- Rove pretended to volunteer for a Democratic candidate in Illinois, stole some campaign stationery, and used it to disrupt a campaign event. Later, in Texas, he gave testimony in court that was embarrassing to an opponent of one of Rove's clients, even though it was not true, according to the book ''Bush's Brain," by two veteran Texas newsmen, James Moore and Wayne Slater.

BUSH'S IGNORANCE OF OUR HISTORY

As a sham constitution gets debated in Iraq, George W. Bush tries to compare the process to what happened with our own Constitution. It's a bad analogy in several ways. The United States was not engaged in a war when our Constitution was debated. We didn't have rival religious factions blowing each other up. We had a history of democratic government, going back to our English forebears and the Magna Carta. The Iraqis have no such history. This article takes a look at the absurdity of comparing our history to what is happening in Iraq. The article by John Nichols is at www.commondreams.org:

To hear members of the Bush Administration and their amen corner in the media tell it, suicide bombs must have been going off like clockwork in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Charleston back in the 1780s. But, of course, that was never the case.

While there were rowdy demonstrations and loud dissents during the years following the end of the British occupation of the Empire's former colonies along the Eastern Seaboard of North America, the period was characterized by relative calm as factions within the new nation debated the extent to which states should cooperate with one another.

Try as Bush and his followers may, they will find no historical record of Ayatollah Alexander Hamilton's militia hunting down followers of radical secularist Thomas Jefferson, nor of rival Christian gangs blowing up one another's houses of worship. Nor will they find a record of renegade Green Mountain Boys gunning down foreign troops who were supposedly present to "help young democracies succeed."

YOU KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN

Here in Freeper country you knew some yahoo would write a letter to the editor of The Fresno Bee defending Pat Robertson's comments about assassinating Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. This writer defended Robertson because he's an "old man" and, besides, "Clinton apologist" George Stephanapolous talked about assassinating Saddam Hussein several years ago. I don't know about the Stephanapolous quote yet. I'll have to research it. But it should be pointed out that Saddam Hussein was a dictator; Hugo Chavez is a democratically-elected leader.

I'm sure many leaders on the right could be found on record supporting assassinating Saddam Hussein. Pat Robertson is supposedly a Christian. His primary role and responsibility should be emulating and teaching what Christ represented. I don't think Christ ever advocated assassination. I don't know about you, but I'm really sick of right-wingers trying to defend their deranged politics by trying to blame everything on Bill Clinton. The editorialist at The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, talks about the Robertson comments. This editorial is linked at www.commondreams.org:

The problem with Robertson's statement is that Chavez is not a dictator. He is an elected president with broad popular support in his home country and growing popularity in Latin America.

Chavez is not a perfect player. But he has left no doubt that he is on the side of the great mass of people in Venezuela and the rest of Latin America who are poor. At a time when the Bush administration is pushing for trade policies that will make the most disenfranchised people of that region even poorer, Chavez's popularity will only increase.

Robertson has a right to his warped opinions - even when he tries to gloss over them with the disingenuous suggestion that he wasn't really talking assassination, but rather some other strategy to "take out" Chavez. But the fact that he is a key player on the same team that produced President Bush has done more than merely make one more right-wing television personality look like a fool. It has provided another reminder to the great majority of Latin Americans that when a leader stands up on their behalf, powerful players in America want him dead.

AUGUST 28, 2005

BUSH'S MEDIA COCOON

All indications are that Al Gore won the presidential election in 2000. Various post-election analyses of the recount in Florida found Gore the winner. But the major media such as The Washington Post and The New York Times slanted their coverage to make it appear that George W. Bush was indeed the winner. That same cocoon that existed then has continued to shield Bush and his administration from its multitude of failures and lies. Robert Parry writes about it in this article linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

This early example of the U.S. news media building a protective cocoon around George W. Bush's presidency is relevant again today as many Americans try to understand how Bush was able to lead the nation so deeply into a disastrous war in Iraq and why the U.S. news media has performed its watchdog duties so miserably.

The history of the mis-reported Election 2000 recount also attracted the recent attention of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. After referencing Gore's apparent Florida victory in one column, Krugman said he was inundated by an "outraged reaction" from readers who thought they knew the history but who really had learned only a false conventional wisdom about how the recount supposedly favored Bush.

In a second column entitled "Don't Prettify Our History," Krugman argues that "we aren't doing the country a favor when we present recent history in a way that makes our system look better than it is. Sometimes the public needs to hear unpleasant truths, even if those truths make them feel worse about their country. ...

U.S. FAILED TO SECURE IRAQI WEAPONS SCIENTISTS

We know now that Saddam Hussein and his regime didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. But what Saddam did have was a cadre of weapons scientists. These are people with the knowledge and expertise to build nuclear and biological weapons. The Bush administration, in its characteristic way, failed to account for these scientists, and they have dispersed all over the planet. This article by Kurt Pitzer is at www.motherjones.com:

Nobody knows how many Iraqi scientists may have been lured over the borders into Iran, Syria, or beyond. Nobody knows because no one is keeping tabs. But several observers agree that so little attention is being paid to Iraq's scientists, the war may actually have increased the chances of nuclear capabilities proliferating beyond the country's borders. Between its unemployed scientists and the disappearance of large amounts of WMD-related materials from former weapons sites, Iraq now poses a nightmare scenario, according to Ray McGovern, who spent 27 years analyzing intelligence for the CIA and afterward cofounded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. "The danger is much more acute, both from the proliferation side and the terrorism side," McGovern says. "Before we invaded, there was no evidence that Iraq had any plan or incentive to proliferate. They didn't even have a current plan to develop WMDs. They just hadn't been doing it. Now, my God, we have a magnet attracting all manner of foreign jihadists to a place where the WMD expertise is suddenly unprotected. It just boggles the mind."

THE IMMORALITY OF LAND MINES

Land mine technology is one that just keeps giving and giving, if you mean killing and killing. They are among the most insidious and barbaric weapons used by any country. They go on killing and maiming years after a conflict is over, often victimizing small children. The United States had made some steps away from using land mines, but then along came the Bush administration. Howard Zinn writes about it in this article at www.progressive.org. I agree with Zinn's larger point that war itself is the greatest immorality.

Since the early 1990s, when the movement to ban land mines became widespread, forty mine-producing countries stopped producing, and millions of land mines have been destroyed, the result being that the casualty rates dropped from 26,000 people a year to between 15,000 and 20,000. But fifteen countries still insist on producing land mines.

The United States maintains a stockpile of more than ten million land mines and insists on the right to produce more and to use them when it sees fit. Both Democratic and Republican Administrations consider the land mines strewn on the border between North and South Korea to be sacrosanct.

AUGUST 27, 2005

BUSH ALIENATES THE WORLD AGAIN

For such a good "Christian," George W. Bush seems to forget some of the basic tenets of Christianity. Things like turn the other cheek and do unto others as you would have do unto you. Mr. Bush's philosophy is my way or the highway. But bullying is reaching its limits. Bush sent another bully, John Bolton, as U.N. Ambassador, even though Bolton had strong opposition in the Senate. Bush used his recess appointment authority to stick Bolton into the U.N., where Bolton is already having a major negative impact. Even the British are up in arms about the Bush/Bolton U.N. "reform" plans. This story by Ewen MacAskill is at www.commondreams.org:

But it was revealed this week that Mr Bush's new ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, was seeking 750 changes to the 36-page draft plan to be presented to a special summit in New York on September 14 to 16. Mr Bolton's amendments, if successful, would leave the plan in tatters.

The Foreign Office confirmed yesterday that Britain was standing behind the original plan, putting it at odds with Mr Bush.

The concern in British and other international circles is that the American objections, if adopted, would severely undermine the UN summit, the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders.

At least 175 world leaders have accepted an invitation to attend. The UN said yesterday that Mr Bush had confirmed that he would be there.

THE RELIGIOUS CASE AGAINST EMPIRE

I think some of the things the Roman Empire accomplished were good, but there were many negatives that went with empire too. That's especially true when you look at the oppressive human rights record of the Roman Empire, including subjugation, slavery, and torture. In this article Rich Gamble looks at the lust for empire from his own Christian perspective, and notes how the United States is taking on the worst aspects of the old Roman Empire. This article is at www.commondreams.org:

As a Christian, I claim a particular historical perspective, namely that handed down by the Bible. The Bible stands as the most anti-imperial tome in human history. It is the story of a people at odds with empire from its inception. The Bible gives us a look at empire from the perspective of the victims. The Jewish people experienced slavery, slaughter, exile and occupation at the hands of various empires.

In his critique of economic practices that allowed the rich to get richer while the poor starved, Jesus was undermining the very foundation of the exploitative Roman economic system. In his opposition the puppet government of the Temple, Jesus was denouncing Roman political repression. In his denial of the use of violence, Jesus was de-legitimizing the most important tool of imperial repression.

Jesus was legally crucified for his actions (a demonstration of that famed Roman rule of law). Christians, along with the Jews, remember that it was Rome that laid waste to Judea (Roman political enfranchisement), slaughtered thousands, took thousands more as slaves, destroyed the Temple (a taste of Roman religious tolerance), and basically shattered the Jewish nation so thoroughly that it took it more than 18 centuries to reconstitute itself.

MORE STUPIDITY IN THE FRESNO BEE

Right-wingers consistently prove themselves cruel, callous, and vacuous. All you have to do is read the letters page of The Fresno Bee. Today's missive that attracted my attention claimed that Cindy Sheehan is a "pawn of Moveon.org." I don't know of any strong connection between Moveon and Cindy Sheehan. I believe Cindy Sheehan is her own person, not a pawn of anyone. People can actually oppose George Bush and this vile war on their own accord, and that point seems lost on brain dead right-wingers. Right-wingers are very good at repeating Bush administration talking points, and the bile from right-wing shills like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. I wonder who is really a pawn.

TURNING THE TABLES ON THE "INTELLIGENT DESIGN" CROWD

This is an interesting piece talking about "relativism." Back in the Reagan days right-wingers abhorred relativism. There was absolute truth back then. Now that the theory of intelligent design, pushed by right-wing think tanks, is in the public sphere right-wingers suddenly believe in relativism. They say intelligent design should be taught along with evolution This author makes a good point Why not, then, teach about condoms along with abstinence, or say that homosexuality is an alternative to heterosexuality? This article by Rosa Brooks is at www.latimes.com:

Of course, maybe we secular types are wrong to keep resisting the right's new relativism. What would happen if we embraced it? Sure, we'd have to tolerate a lot of claptrap about intelligent design in the classroom, but think of the potential benefits.

If the right is sincerely dedicated to supporting pluralism and openness, surely they'd have no further objection to sex education classes that urge condom use, for instance, as long as abstinence-only arguments get equal time. And presumably they wouldn't mind if teachers tell kids that homosexuality is a legitimate form of human behavior, as long as teachers also explain that some people consider it a sin. Nor would conservatives have any

AUGUST 26, 2005

TELL YOUR STATISTICS TO SHUT UP

Charley Brown once told Lucy, "Tell your statistics to shut up." That's the way many of us feel when Bush administration defenders tell us how great the economy is doing. Maybe in some parallel universe. I know from first hand experience how difficult it is to find a better job. I was downsized in the Bush economy and I've been trying to get back to where I was for years. I'm still not there. Recently, in the Bay Area 11,000 people applied for jobs at Wal-Mart. That's a far better indicator of where we are than statistics spouted by Bush administration shills. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:

The administration and some political commentators seem genuinely puzzled by polls showing that Americans are unhappy about the economy. After all, they point out, numbers like the growth rate of G.D.P. look pretty good. So why aren't people cheering?

Some blame the negative halo effect of the Iraq debacle. Others complain that the news media aren't properly reporting good economic news. But when your numbers tell you that people should be feeling good, but they aren't, that means you're looking at the wrong numbers.

American families don't care about G.D.P. They care about whether jobs are available, how much those jobs pay and how that pay compares with the cost of living. And recent G.D.P. growth has failed to produce exceptional gains in employment, while wages for most workers haven't kept up with inflation.

MICHAEL MOORE IS THE RIGHT'S DEMON

These days when right-wing knuckledraggers want to invoke horror they drag out the name of Michael Moore. I saw one right-wing commentator refer to Cindy Sheehan as "Michael Moore in a dress." Today a nitwit in The Fresno Bee calls an editorial writer "Michael Moore without the baseball cap." What's wrong with Michael Moore, I ask. He told the truth in Fahrenheit 9/11, and as Jack Nicholson famously said, "You can't handle the truth!"

BUSH'S PRESS SYCOPHANTS

People in power, whether it's political, economic, or celebrity power, tend to attract hangers-on. In baseball they talk about "Baseball Annies," the women who are on the prowl for a night with a major league ballplayer. There are similar people in other sports. As tawdry as that may be, it's nothing compared to people in the press corps selling whatever integrity and objectivity they may have so they can suck up to people in power. How are those supposed to party with George W. Bush and then investigate and report on his administration? Today's press corps doesn't seem to have an ethical dilemma about that, though. This story is at www.editorandpublisher.com:

NEW YORK More than four dozen members of the press corps accepted an invitation to a barbeque at the Bush ranch in Texas last night, even though it was off-the-record and they had to ride a bus past the Cindy Sheehan-led antiwar camp site.

The party was pool side, though no one stripped and swam. The president wore jeans and served Texas beer.

The Associated Press reported, "The casual affair of fried catfish, potato salad, coleslaw, homemade cheese and chocolate-chip cookies followed a tradition in which Bush and his wife, Laura, have the press covering his annual August vacation out to the their ranch in central Texas as a sort of thank-you.


STAY WHAT COURSE?

Karl Rove or some other White House spinmeister has brought out an old oldie but a goodie: Stay the course. It brings back memories of Vietnam. The Vietnam war drug this country down, got thousands killed or wounded, divided the country, and South Vietnam fell to the Communists anyway. If you review the whole history of this little Iraq adventure, what faith can you place in anything the Bush administration says? They lied us into the war, they had no plans for an exit, and they had no plans for reconstruction. It's catch-as-catch-can and in the meanwhile people are dying every day. This article by James Maynard is at www.commondreams.org:

President Bush's recent statement about needing to "stay the course" in Iraq gives pause for reflection and concern. To "stay the course" implies that there is a charted course to follow, a defined course objective, navigational tools to guide the progress and an expected time of arrival.

None of these appear to be the case in our Iraq adventure, and the president's statement rings hollow. Broader analysis may cause us to question the entire "course" laid out by a neo-conservative philosophy grounded in a belief that the United States is a divinely inspired empiric instrument for global transformation whose immediate goal is the creation of a democratic Iraq to usher in a new era of peace and freedom in the Middle East.

On the face of it, this course is not a course at all, but a naïve ephemeral projection of individuals who do not value the lessons of history and have no real understanding of the complexities of the Middle East.

History tells us that nations rise and fall, empires are made and unmade, and that devolution is a companion of evolution. Much of this occurs in a fashion unpredictable to the protagonists of the moment and only much later understandable by historians. The British Empire is no more and no amount of British riding on U.S. coattails can change that fact.

AUGUST 25, 2005

CEOs PROFITING FROM IRAQ WAR

Maybe this is what right-wingers mean when they pontificate about "supporting the troops." CEO pay at the largest defense contractors has increased around 200% in the last three years. I don't think there's anything lower than a war profiteer. This article is at www.faireconomy.org:

The report found that CEOs are individually profiting from the Iraq War, with huge average raises at the biggest defense contractors.

At the 34 publicly traded US corporations among the 2004 top 100 defense contractors with 10% or more of their revenues from defense contracts – companies such as United Technologies, Textron, and General Dynamics – average CEO pay increased 200% from 2001 to 2004, versus 7% for all CEOs.

For example, David H. Brooks, CEO of bulletproof vest maker DHB Industries, earned $70 million in 2004, 3,349% more than his 2001 compensation of $525,000. Brooks also sold company stock worth about $186 million last year, spooking investors who drove DHB’s share price from more than $22 to as low as $6.50. In May 2005, the US Marines recalled more than 5,000 DHB armored vests after questions were raised about their effectiveness. By that time, Brooks had pocketed over $250 million in war windfalls.

THE GROPER GETS BAD REVIEWS IN BOSTON

Governor Groper must have been thinking it was never this way in the movies. He went to a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park in Boston to raise money for an election this fall where he may take a trouncing. He was followed by his biggest nemesis, members of the California Nurses Association. He got booed by the crowd at Fenway Park when he was introduced and even had to take a dig from Mick Jagger. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. This item comes from www.polizeros.com:

There was "No Sympathy" for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Sunday night as he sought to turn a Rolling Stones concert in Boston into a fundraiser only to be picketed by registered nurses from California, Illinois and Massachusetts outside the stadium and loudly booed by thousands of rock fans when introduced inside.

Inside sitting nearly alone in his private box, Schwarzenegger must have been looking for Wild Horses to drag him away. Hundreds of fans held up the CNA signs. When Stones lead singer Mick Jagger welcomed the governor, he was lustily booed, and even Jagger mocked Schwarzenegger noting "As a matter of fact, he was seen out in front of Fenway Park tonight raising funds by scalping tickets and tee-shirts."

BUSH VACATIONS; MANY GET NO VACATION AT ALL

If George W. Bush is so convinced that taking lots of time off is good for physical and mental health, I wonder why he doesn't take a look at the American work force and advocate the same for working people. Mr. Bush has set a new record for presidential time off. Working people, in the meantime, get less and less vacation, or no vacation at all. This article by John Nichols is at www.commondreams.org:

While Bush may not be very good at managing major endeavors--he ran four corporations into the ground and then took a make-work job as a baseball team executive before finally turning to the family business of politics--the President is no slacker when it comes to rest and relaxation.

Now, if only he'd help the rest of us to get a break.

While Bush has been taking almost one week out of every month off since assuming the presidency, a substantial proportion of Americans are lucky if they get one week a year of paid vacation. And millions of workers get no compensated time off.

The United States, unlike other industrialized countries, fails to set a base standard for paid holidays. European countries have long required corporations to provide workers with three, four or even five weeks of paid vacation time. "Even developing countries often force companies to allow employees some time to recharge their batteries," the Financial Times notes. "El Salvador, Indonesia and Mongolia have all established a minimum of 10 to 15 days paid leave a year."

AUGUST 24, 2005

"TORT REFORM" ISN'T ABOUT REFORM

Right-wing think tanks have been adept at giving issues phony frames. When progressives accept those frames, arguing on the basis of the frames, they have already lost half the battle. It's that way with the "death tax," or "welfare reform," or "tort reform." As linguist George Lakoff points out in this interview, "tort reform" is really about destroying the civil justice system and about business maximizing profits, no matter how they do it. This interview is at www.rockridgeinstitute.org:

First, we have to recognize that when the right wing says “tort reform,” what they really mean is destruction of the civil justice system. Just what is the civil justice system? Most people have a frame for the criminal justice system, but not the for the civil justice system. Since a corporation isn't literally a person, it can't be put in jail for performing harmful or murderous acts. When corporations engage in practices that harm or kill people, the only way through the legal system to punish them and give them an incentive to stop their harmful practices is to sue them and make them pay.

BUSH'S HOSTILITY TO SCIENCE

One of the darkest times in human history was when the Roman Empire fell and the human race entered the Dark Ages. It was a time when superstition ruled and knowledge acquired over thousands of years was lost. You fear that with the faux Christian in the White House we may be headed back to the Dark Ages. Bush only believes in science if it supports his view of Christianity, which also supports making lots and lots of money no matter the consequences. This article by Harold Evans is at newsvote.bbc.co.uk:

Professor Neal Lane at Rice University was the science adviser reporting directly to President Clinton, but as a former director of the National Science Foundation he cannot be dismissed as partisan.

Like others I spoke with, he is less concerned with the international league tables and the familiar salami processes of the budget, than the well-documented readiness of the Bush administration to manipulate and suppress scientific findings - manifestly to appease industrial interests and religious constituencies.

This is not just on global warming and stem cells, currently in the news, but on a whole range of issues - lead and mercury poisoning in children, women's health, birth control, safety standards for drinking water, forest management, air pollution and on and on.

"It's disturbing," Professor Lane told me. "This is the first time to the best of my knowledge through successive Republican and Democratic administrations, that the issue of scientific integrity has reared its head."

BUSH AND THE BIG LIE

A few years ago Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank wrote a puff piece about George W. Bush running on his "ranch" and talking to the cows and about the scholarly material Bush was allegedly reading. The White House decided to paint Dubya as intellectual again this summer by claiming he's reading history about salt and influenza epidemics. It's part of the image making and lying that go hand in hand with this administration. Kir Slevin talks about it in this column linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

So this summer, the President is reading Salt: A World History. That is, when he gets done with Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar. Or maybe he's first reading The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. I'm not sure of the order, but I am surprised. Not even I, a bona fide Ph.D. nerd addicted to books with footnotes, read tomes like this on vacation. My 400-page summer books are by Lisa Scottoline.

So am I impressed? Well, not really. Apparently the media was not either; of major papers, only the L.A. Times covered the booklist as straight news. Makes you wonder if the mainstream outlets are catching on, finally, and that they saw the administration's attempt to portray Bush as an intellectual as what it was: a big lie, the deliberate seeding of misinformation.

AUGUST 23, 2005

THEORY OF UNINTELLIGENT DESIGN

Since the right-wing is pushing the ludicrous theory of "intelligent design" as science, this tongue-in-cheek article about the myriad screwups by the Bush administration is apropos. The author postulates a theory of unintelligent design to explain wrong turn after wrong turn. This article by Linwood Barclay is at www.commondreams.org:

How does one explain all the misguided, unwise, sometimes outright boneheaded things the Bush administration has done since taking over nearly five years ago, and continues to do on a pretty much daily basis? How is it possible for a group of supposedly intelligent, experienced individuals to take this many wrong turns? Wouldn't you think that once in a while, even by accident, that George W. Bush and his advisers would make a decision that made sense?

Can this much mismanagement happen totally at random? Would the occupants of the Bush White House have us believe that all these things, these missteps, these miscalculations, these attempts to deceive, that they all, you know, just kind of happened?

I'm not so sure. And I'm not the only one starting to ask questions. More and more, it seems unlikely that mere human beings could make this many mistakes without some sort of misguiding force, a kind of supernatural entity that has trouble remembering where it put its car keys.

BUSH ALWAYS A LYING CREEP

Back in the Clinton years we used to hear a lot about "character" and how much "character" matters. It was just an excuse to try to bring down a duly-elected president. If right-wingers really cared about character, they would have second thoughts about George W. Bush. He has displayed certain character traits throughout his life: bullying, condescension, egomania, self-righteousness, irresponsibility, and lying. This column by Patricia Goldsmith talks about Bush's personal traits have been morphed into the personality of his administration with the machinations of Karl Rove. They "get" people they don't like, whether it be Valerie Plame or Cindy Sheehan. This column is at www.dissidentvoice.org:

George W. Bush is the kind of guy you remember if you happen to cross his path -- at least his economics professor at Harvard Business School thinks so. Bush, you will recall, was at Harvard immediately after he left the Alabama National Guard -- if he was ever there to begin with. He openly boasted to Tsurumi about using pull to get into a champagne unit, and Tsurumi was shocked. Most people wouldn’t do that, especially back then.

Tsurumi has an even lower opinion of George Bush than Bush’s commander in the Texas Air National Guard, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, did:

He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. . . .

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. “In class, he couldn’t challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that’s how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy.

THEY LOVE DEATH

From the way they conduct policy to their public statements, you have to think a lot of prominent right-wingers really like death. While decrying the non-existent weapons of mass destruction owned by Saddam Hussein, they pursue all kinds of death machines such as bunker buster nukes and space weaponry. "Gun rights" even include automatic weapons. And Pat Robertson, that good Christian, openly talks about assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Bill O'Reilly fantasized about killing columnist Michael Kinsley. And the list goes on and on. This item comes from www.mediamatters.org:

Pat Robertson's recent call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has sparked significant media coverage. But Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, is not the first to make a comment of this sort. Indeed, Media Matters for America has documented several other instances of conservative media figures advocating or musing about the execution of people with whom they disagree.

BUSH'S RELAXATION TIME

People who support George W. Bush say he has a good sense of balance in his work life and his leisure life. Those same people have no problem with working people spending longer and longer hours at work. They've even made efforts to take away overtime compensation for working people. Bush is taking his 50th vacation in five years. What's more, he's taking all this vacation time in the midst of a war where thousands and thousands have already died. I wonder how the troops in the field feel about their commander-in-chief taking so much vacation while they're dodging bullets. This article by Josh Burek is at www.csmonitor.com:

Critics, however, charge Bush with setting a bad example. A reported tally of his time in office shows he's spent as much as 20 percent of his days in Crawford. In fact, this Sunday, Bush passed Ronald Reagan for most days spent away from the Oval Office.

"We're the hardest-working people in the world, and we have a president who seems to not only be working bankers' hours, but taking French bankers' vacation," says Rick Shenkman, a presidential historian who wrote "Presidential Ambition: Gaining Power at Any Cost."

AUGUST 22, 2005

HELEN KELLER AND CINDY SHEEHAN

Helen Keller was an advocate for the handicapped, and she was a socialist. She spoke out against war and against exploitation. In some ways, her treatment reminds me of Cindy Sheehan. When Helen Keller ventured out of her customary venue she was patronized as being used by other people with an agenda. You hear the same about Cindy Sheehan. According to the right-wingers, Cindy Sheehan has hooked up with "left wing extremists" and is the female equivalent of Michael Moore. This article by Mickey Z. is at www.onlinejournal.com:

As the militaristic frenzy spread across America, Keller appeared at New York City's Carnegie Hall on January 5, 1916. "I have a word to say to my good friends, the editors, and others who are moved to pity me," she said. "Some people are grieved because they imagine I am in the hands of unscrupulous persons who lead me astray and persuade me to espouse unpopular causes and make me the mouthpiece of their propaganda. Now, let it be understood once and for all that I do not want their pity; I would not change places with one of them. I know what I am talking about. My sources of information are as good and reliable as anybody else's. I have papers and magazines from England, France, Germany and Austria that I can read myself. Not all the editors I have met can do that. Quite a number of them have to take their French and German second hand. No, I will not disparage the editors. They are an overworked, misunderstood class. Let them remember, though, that if I cannot see the fire at the end of their cigarettes, neither can they thread a needle in the dark. All I ask, gentlemen, is a fair field and no favor. I have entered the fight against preparedness and against the economic system under which we live. It is to be a fight to the finish, and I ask no quarter."

NO GOOD NEWS IN BUSH ECONOMY FOR WORKING CLASS.

I kept wondering why poll after poll showed George W. Bush getting favorable approval ratings, especially on the economy. His administration has shot a hole in the side of the economy and it's listing very much to the well off. Now, with gas prices exploding, and inflation threatening, the stark reality is coming home. Most of us didn't benefit much or at all from the vaunted tax cuts. Our wages have stagnated and health care costs are shooting through the roof. Thomas Oliphant takes a look in this column at www.boston.com:

What is worse, the Labor Department reported that the average weekly earnings of people in the private sector who are not bosses fell during July by 0.2 percent.

If that were one month's statistical anomaly, that would be one thing, but it is a continuation of a trend that Americans have been feeling for a long time. The weekly earning data that the government collects involves roughly four out of every five participants in the labor force. Last year, for the first time in a decade since the US was emerging from a much different set of problems, the weekly earnings news after adjustment for inflation was negative.

By last month, earnings were trailing costs by roughly 0.5 percent compared to July of 2004. In this age of more than one paycheck per household, this disturbing situation dovetails with the decline in median household income (half above it, half below it) over the last four years. This highlights the important fact that even before the leap in energy costs, most working families saw the limited tax relief voted in 2001 more than wiped out by higher state and local taxes as well as inflation.

THE MESS BUSH HAS MADE IN IRAQ

Iraq is now one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't scenarios. Staying there fuels the bloody insurgency and is a recruitment magnet for terrorists. Leaving will likely result in a civil war. But I believe the U.S. has to get out of Iraq as soon as possible, build a true international coalition (maybe even using the U.N.), and begin to make peace with the Muslim world. Most Muslims condemned the 9/11 attack on the United States. But most Muslims don't want the United States occupying their countries. This analysis comes from Iain Macwhirter is at www.sundayherald.com:

There is no escaping the obvious. The invasion of Iraq was a massive miscalculation by right-wing ideologues in the Republican Party who believed that America had to assert its military hegemony. They were intoxicated by the sales talk of the arms industry which told them that it was possible now to win wars without casualties and that Iraq would instantly become a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Wrong on both counts.

Whatever government finally emerges, it’s clear that most of the country will become an introverted Islamic Republic, closer to Iran than America. In Basra, fundamentalism already has a power base. What will the service moms say when they discover their boys sacrificed their lives to create another Islamic dictatorship which loathes America and everything it stands for, which treats women as second-class citizens, persecutes non believers and which regards Christianity as evil?

THE DRAMATIC EFFECTS OF INEQUALITY

Right-wingers believe in inequality. It's at the core of their belief system. Anything to make life fairer outrages them, whether it be laws to help minorities or women, minimum wage laws, or a progressive income tax. It's ironic that the people who push "intelligent design" and thump their Bibles believe in Social Darwinism, a belief system totally at odds with the teachings of Christ. Inequality is much more than just grossly unjust, according to a new study. This article by Polly Toynbee is at books.guardian.co.uk:

Richard Wilkinson is a professor of social epidemiology, an expert in public health. From that vantage point he sees the world in terms of its physical and psychological wellbeing, surveying great sweeps of health statistics through sociological eyes. He has assembled a mountain of irrefutable evidence from all over the world showing the damage done by extreme inequality. However rich a country is, it will still be more dysfunctional, violent, sick and sad if the gap between social classes grows too wide. Poorer countries with fairer wealth distribution are healthier and happier than richer, more unequal nations.

AUGUST 21, 2005

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS BY BUSH

I admire the editor of The Lone Star Iconoclast, the hometown newspaper in Crawford, Texas. Crawford is a bastion of Bush-loving, war-favoring, closed-minded, neofascists, but the Iconoclast bravely asks questions we would like answered. Here's a sample:

• With this country so severely in debt, why did you grant tax cuts to the very wealthy?
• Why did you attempt to undo our country’s Social Security system and why did you go back on your pre-election promise to not raid the Social Security trust fund?
• Why did you develop plans, and then enact them, to disable fundamental portions of the Constitution of the United States?
• Why did you try to stop the efforts of the 9/11 commission? Why don’t you want a full investigation as to what happened?
• Why did you grant no-bid contracts to the Vice President’s former company?
• Why have you promoted the export of American jobs overseas?
• Why aren’t you supporting the needs of our veterans?
• Why don’t you ever listen to or surround yourself with Americans who might not agree with you politically?

BUBBLE BOY

George W. Bush acts like he's king, not an official responsible to the American people. Bubble Boy makes a big deal about people being prompt, about no cell phones, about a dress code, but he doesn't care as much about the Constitution and that mettlesome provision about free speech. This article talks about how Bush and his cronies decided they wouldn't meet with Cindy Sheehan. Bush doesn't want to "reward" protesters, you see. Meeting George W. Bush is no reward. The article by Mike Allen is at www.washingtonpost.com:

According to the accounts of several advisers, Bush and his aides concluded that it would be a mistake to yield to Sheehan's demand for a second meeting with Bush to discuss the death of her son, Casey, who was killed in Iraq at the age of 24 last year when his Army battalion was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. The president had made it clear, going back at least to a California railroad swing during his 2000 campaign, that he does not care to meet with protesters or to reward them.

"INTELLIGENT DESIGN" ALSO PRODUCT OF RIGHT WING THINK TANKS

If a truly bad and a truly harmful idea starts to get a lot of publicity, now you look at the usual suspects. Whether it's calls for trickle down economics, "privatizing" Social Security, or pushing "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary theory, right wing think tanks are often behind the scenes. We now learn that the crackpot, unscientific "intelligent design" campaign comes from something called the Discovery Institute, which has received money from that truly evil right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. This article by Jodi Wilgoren is at www.nytimes.com:

Like a well-tooled electoral campaign, the Discovery Institute has a carefully crafted, poll-tested message, lively Web logs - and millions of dollars from foundations run by prominent conservatives like Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Philip F. Anschutz and Richard Mellon Scaife. The institute opened an office in Washington last fall and in January hired the same Beltway public relations firm that promoted the Contract With America in 1994.

AUGUST 20, 2005

EVEN GINGRICH CRITICAL OF IRAQ WAR

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, architect of the "Contract on America," master of coded political speech, even he is critical of the Bush quagmire in Iraq. Maureen Dowd writes about Gingrich, Henry Kissinger, and the late Richard M. Nixon in this column at www.nytimes.com:

"Any effort to explain Iraq as 'We are on track and making progress' is nonsense," Newt Gingrich told Adam Nagourney and David D. Kirkpatrick for a Times article on G.O.P. jitters about the shadow of Iraq over the midterm elections. "The left has a constant drumbeat that this is Vietnam and a bottomless pit. The daily and weekly casualties leave people feeling that things aren't going well."

TEACHING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

There were letters in today's Fresno Bee defending the concept of "Intelligent Design." One writer made a reference to the "missing link" and said that defenders of evolutionary theory accept that on faith. Another writer made the claim that "Intelligent Design" is testable. The United States suffers from a severe lack of understanding about the scientific method and what constitutes science. This article by Bernard Wasow at www.motherjones.com talks about how we have come to know what we know:

Today's world is built on a foundation of scientific exploration. Our wealth, our health, and much of our work and our leisure are based on advances in technology, which in turn result from the practice of the scientific method.

The scientific method is not democratic, based on majority consensus, nor is it based on peer review by fellow scientists. In science, the validity of an idea or hypothesis is not determined thorough an election, or by polling the peers of the scientist who made the particular claim; those methods are best reserved for answering questions such as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin

AUGUST 19, 2005

REMINDERS OF THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Only in right-wing land could someone say that George W. Bush was legitimately elected president in the 2000 election. First, he lost the election nationally by about 500,000 votes. There were so many irregularities in Florida it would make a Mafia don blush. There were the infamous butterfly ballots where people were confused into voting for the wrong candidate. Republicans actively worked to disenfranchise voters who almost certainly would have voted for Gore. The Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, was a member of the Bush campaign. His brother Jeb was Governor. Several analyses have shown that an honest recount would have given the election to Gore. The final indignity was the Supreme Court weighing in and in effect appointing Bush president. Paul Krugman has a look in this column at www.nytimes.com:

In his recent book "Steal This Vote" - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I've seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election."

DO "CHRISTIANS" HAVE TO TELL THE TRUTH?

I wonder how much of the hot air emanating from leaders of the religious right is what they really believe, and how much is intended to fire up their base. Claims that "Christians" are persecuted in the United States, for instance, are absurd when you look at the history of religious persecution around the world. These people got in a lather because people said "happy holidays" last Christmas instead of "Merry Christmas." The claim that they are persecuted is a lie, so I wonder just what their Bible says about lying. This article by Rob Garver is at www.prospect.org:

In the imaginary world painted by the leaders of “Justice Sunday II,” conservative Christian Republicans may control the White House, the Congress, and several seats on the Supreme Court, but they remain oppressed and victimized. Speakers invoked Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Susan B. Anthony, all in service of the meme that Christians in America are being silenced, persecuted, and prevented from practicing their religion.

AUGUST 18, 2005

WORKING POOR SHOULD BE THE MOST POLITICALLY MOTIVATED

George W. Bush has succeeded at greatly increasing the number of working poor in the United States. Strangely enough, it was either not voting at all, or voting for Bush, by the working poor that put him into office and worsened the situation for workers. Any time you talk about the great class divide right wingers will foam at the mouth and scream "class warfare." But class warfare has been waged against working people for a long time. It's time the war was waged by us against the economic system that is absurdly tilted to the rich. This article by Paul Nyhan is at seattlepi.nwsource.com:

The working poor offer a political reward because their concerns -- job security, health care costs and stagnating wages -- are increasingly concerns shared by many middle-class voters, political analysts say. Such worries provide opportunities to de-emphasize social issues such as gay marriage, which alienated swing voters in the recent past, they note.

Onetime and possibly future presidential candidate John Edwards already recognizes the two classes are connected. The North Carolina Democrat swung through Seattle this week to endorse efforts to unionize local security guards. Since his failed bid for the White House, Edwards has made poverty his defining cause.

BUSH STAYS TRUE TO CHARACTER

I don't believe George W. Bush has ever taken responsibility in his whole life. He's always had someone to bail him out of jam after jam, or he's managed to tuck and run. He got into the Texas Air National Guard so he could avoid Vietnam, although he was a big supporter of Vietnam when someone else did the fighting. He has left countless business partners in the dust. And now he refuses to take responsibility for his war in Iraq and face Cindy Sheehan face to face. Maybe that bulge on his back during the debates wasn't just a transmitter, but a part of his yellow streak. This article by August Keso is at www.progressivedailybeacon.com:

When the going gets tough the Bush gets well, "W"idow-Maker takes to hiding. Poor, poor George "W"(as in Widow-Maker) Bush, all his life he has been dodging any situation that would have required him to stand alone and fight. For example: Back in the days of Vietnam, George could have fought for his country but instead he joined and then left the National Guard early. To this day nobody knows for sure where "W"idow-Maker was for about six months of his supposed "service" to country. Popular theory is that he was hiding somewhere in Alabama...working, supposedly, on a campaign. He was supposed to report for Guard duty there, but only one officer can recall seeing him...and even then the implausible spin was that "W"idow-Maker sat in that particular Officer's office "reading."

THE REAL MOTIVES OF "STRICT CONSTRUCTIONISTS"

You'll often hear conservatives talking about being strict Constitutional constructionists. They say you have to look at the Constitution as it was originally written. Never mind that the Constitution was ratified in 1789, a time far removed from now. Things have changed some in over 200 years. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who noted that the Constitution was for the living, not for the departed. It's convenient for strict constructionists, of course, because their stance means no rights for women or minorities or working people. It's more about their plutocratic economic dreams than it is about fealty to the Constitution. This article by Allen Snyder is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

It's about turning back the clock on defending the rights of individuals, women, minorities, and the environment. It's about placating big business, religious zealots, angry white men, and loony social regressives. It's about doing away with regulations that provide for a safe workplace, eliminating limits on pollution and the defiling of the natural landscape, ending affirmative action, ending campaign finance limits, allowing prayer and bible crap in public schools, posting the ten commandments, bringing back discrimination and segregation, criminalizing homosexuality, and reducing the power of the legislative branch while exalting that of the executive (as long as he's a regressive).

AUGUST 17, 2005

INSIDER SCOOP ON BUSH

George W. Bush likes to portray himself as macho man who is also possessed of "compassionate conservatism." We know that the compassionate conservatism is a hoax, and from what some White House insiders are saying Mr. Bush is irritable with wild mood swings, and frequently profane. So much for being a good Christian. This article by Doug Thompson is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.

They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with “get out of here!”

In fact, George W. Bush’s mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain “weather reports” to warn of the President’s demeanor. “Calm seas” means Bush is calm while “tornado alert” is a warning that he is pissed at the world…

COLOR THE ELECTORAL MAP BLUE

I really, really wish we had a parliamentary system of government sometimes. When someone as bad as George Bush gets a guaranteed four years to wreck havoc there's something wrong. The new electoral map shows that if an election were held today George W. Bush would lose in a landslide. Of course, we know he probably lost both the past two elections if the votes were counted fairly. But even the mass media can't pretend Bush is a popular president anymore. This chart showing the massive dislike of Bush is at www.surveyusa.com.

CHICKENHAWKS ALL TALK, NO ACTION

The chickenhawks who beat the drum for the war in Iraq are mysteriously missing in action when it comes to them or their family serving in the war. If this war is the titanic clash between good and evil that they claim, such a "noble cause," why aren't they rushing to enlist, especially in light of the manpower shortages in the military? That's the subject of this commentary by Linda Milazzo is at www.commondreams.org:

George W. Bush decrees again and again that every American killed in Iraq was killed for a noble cause. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Melanie Morgan fill the airwaves with bellicose testimonials to the righteousness of the war. Tom Delay, Donald Rumsfeld, Rick Santorum, Elizabeth Dole and Kay Bailey Hutchison profess that the war is necessary for the safety and strength of America, and freedom and democracy in Iraq. Chickenhawk after chickenhawk forcefully proclaim the legitimacy of this war. Yet in appearance after appearance on NBC, NPR, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, CSPAN, PBS, et al, I have yet to hear a media host or reporter ask any one of them the most relevant question of all: 'Who in YOUR family is fighting in this war?' If this question were mandatory for those who tout the war, then its most vocal defenders would be silenced. For aloft in the bloggesphere, one can't fabricate for long.

THE FREEWAY AS METAPHOR

We Americans love our cars and our illusion of freedom and mobility. But how free are we really when it takes so much time, energy, and money to maintain the whole automobile infrastructure? It's not only our individual cars and the costs associated with them, but the massive network of roads and freeways that connect the country from sea to shining sea. How will the future look when this petroleum-fueled beast is gone? This is an interesting essay by Phil Rockstroh is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Riding American interstate highways one feels the confluence of so much contemporary madness and tragedy ... so much barely-submerged fear and aggression ... yet, through it all, the yearning to see what lies over to next horizon remains in our hearts. Even though, sadly, what lies over the next horizon has become as sterile, inhospitable, ugly, and inhuman as what was experienced at the last. Here: The realities of global capitalism are displayed, in stark relief: it's all based on oil -- sustained by brutal imperialism and the wholesale destruction of the natural world -- and, for all our self-impressed proclamations that these things are the progenitors of freedom and human advancement -- we Americans, the supposed beneficiaries of it all, have been left spoiled, stupefied, and alienated -- both from the banality and garishness of our nation's commercially tortured, community-devoid landscape as well as from our own inner-most longings.

AUGUST 16, 2005

HUMMERS AND SUPPORT THE TROOPS

On the way home stopped at a red light there was a Hummer in one lane and a car bearing one of those "Support the Troops" magnets in the other lane. Could it get more ironic than that? Gas-guzzling Hummers and SUVs have helped to create the situation we see in Iraq now. If the U.S. took energy conservation more seriously, and found alternatives to petroleum, maybe "supporting the troops" wouldn't be such an issue now.

THINGS IN IRAQ ARE FALLING APART

As I've said before, the war against Iraq should never have been launched in the first place because Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to the United States. Even if you could make a case for attacking Iraq, you would have to say the Bush administration has made a total mess of things. We alienated many of allies by more or less declaring war unilaterally. There was some token support from the British and the sham called the "Coalition of the Willing." There was no plan to rebuild Iraq, no plan to withdraw, and no realistic plan for financing this farce. Now we have our military stretched dangerously thin, with many soldiers having their tours of duty extended, inadequate equipment, and no end in sight. Thomas Oliphant writes about it in this column at www.boston.com:

Because Bush based the 2003 invasion and follow-up occupation on the false promise of ease -- a flop of epic proportions for which not a single individual in authority has been held responsible -- the administration has had to scramble for more than two years to keep pace with a growing insurgency as a well as the gargantuan task of reconstruction for which America was not financially prepared.

Tours of duty were extended. The reserves were raided. The National Guard was raided. Military commitments in the rest of the world, including the fight against terrorism and the effort to establish stability in Afghanistan, were compromised. The American people were deceived about the true cost of this war. But all this juggling and deception hasn't been enough. The fact remains: The military cannot rotate troops out of Iraq as their tours end and rotate others in without drastic change and a policy switch that includes telling people the truth.

THE NEOCON PUNDITS ARE RESPONSIBLE TOO

This article by Harold Meyerson talks about the neocon "intellectuals" and pundits who helped provide intellectual fodder for Bush's war against Iraq. As Mr. Meyerson points out, a war of choice needs lots of people to sell the war. When Pearl Harbor happened people didn't need much urging to support the war. This article interests me because Mr. Meyerson names Victor Davis Hanson, who is a beloved columnist of the right-wingers in this area, as one of Bush's pundits. Mr. Hanson is a classical scholar, an expert in the ancient Greeks, and I'm not quite sure how that qualifies him as an expert on Iraq. But his opinions have helped create an "intellectual" facade for this criminal war. This article is at www.prospect.org:

Hanson has been called President Bush’s favorite historian, and for good reason. Soon after 9-11, the San Joaquin Valley classics professor began writing regularly for The National Review, demanding we go into Iraq, imparting martial lessons from Greece and Rome to an America abruptly at war. In short order, Hanson became a fellow at Palo Alto’s Hoover Institute, a dinner companion of Bush and Dick Cheney, and the most unswerving defender of administration policies -- even the ones the administration barely bothers to defend.

Hanson, you see, knows things you and I don’t. His considerable certainty as to the strategic soundness of the war has been rooted not just in supposition but in historical analogy. “In the same way as the death of Hitler ended the Nazi Party and the ruin of the Third Reich finished the advance of fascist power in Europe,” he predicted in 2002, “so the defeat of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi dictatorship will erode both clandestine support for terrorism and murderous tyranny well beyond Iraq.” Oops.

A BLISTERING EDITORIAL ABOUT BUSH

Call a spade a spade in the Bush administration and you get smeared. That has been the modus operandi of George W. Bush for some time. He did it to John McCain. He did it to Al Gore. He did it to John Kerry. He did it to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Bush operatives smeared Max Clelland, a man who lost most of his limbs in Vietnam. Right-wingers have tried to smear Michael Moore for telling the truth in "Fahrenheit 9/11." This editorial pretty much lays it on the line. The editorial is linked at www.commondreams.org:

The President of the United States, who lacked the courage to serve his country during the Vietnam War, has once again shown his cowardice. Scores of brave American soldiers have given their lives since he went on vacation a couple of weeks ago. And yet, when the mother of one of our war dead -- Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed awhile back in Sadr City -- showed up at his Texas ranch asking to speak to him, he didn't even have the cojones to ask her in for a cup of coffee.

Instead, he had Karl Rove contact the Drudge Report and other sleazy news outlets across the land with a couple of comments Mrs. Sheehan made to her hometown paper in Vacaville, Calif., shortly after her son's death. Taken out of context, the quotes make her look like she spoke in favor of Bush and his dirty little war. On reading the full interview, however, it is clear that, from the beginning, she thought her son had died for nothing and was -- as we all might in such a situation -- just trying to be polite to the president.

AUGUST 15, 2005

CINDY SHEEHAN'S STAND: FROM JAMES MOORE

I really like this eloquent post by James Moore about Cindy Sheehan's stand against an unprincipled and blood-thirsty president like George W. Bush. This post can be found at www.huffingtonpost.com:

There are things worth fighting for. And there are even some worth dying for. But Iraq is not one of them. And none of us asked enough questions when it came time to send the Casey Sheehan's of the country into the desert hell of Iraq. More of us ought to be asking the questions now because it is just as important now as it was the day the war was launched. But we at least have Cindy Sheehan to do our asking. There are mothers' sons out there who will live full lives because the pressure being created by Cindy Sheehan will accelerate the end of this absurd American involvement in Iraq.

A DEAD IRAQI CHILD

This article by Robert Fisk talks about how a Bradley armored vehicle burst through a gate and ran over a sleeping little boy who was trying to deal with the intense summer heat. The best the Americans could do was offer monetary compensation to the father. This little boy and countless others like him should still be alive and would be alive if not for this immoral war launched by George W. Bush. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

There's the wreckage of a car bomb that killed seven Americans on the corner of a neighbouring street. Close by stands the shuttered shop of a phone supplier who put pictures of Saddam on a donkey on his mobiles. He was shot three days ago, along with two other men who had committed the same sin. In the al-Jamia neighbourhood, a US Humvee was purring up the road so we gingerly backed off and took a side street. In this part of Baghdad, you avoid both the insurgents and the Americans - if you are lucky.

Yassin al-Sammerai was not. On 14 July, the second grade schoolboy had gone to spend the night with two college friends and - this being a city without electricity in the hottest month of the year - they decided to spend the night sleeping in the front garden. Let his broken 65 year-old father Selim take up the story, for he's the one who still cannot believe his son is dead - or what the Americans told him afterwards.

THE PEOPLE SCREWING UP AMERICA

Whiny former TV "journalist" Bernard Goldberg is making a living these days by attacking the alleged "liberal media." His latest screed has a list of the 100 people who are supposedly screwing up America. I like this abbreviated list by Robyn Blumner better, but I would probably have put Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage on my list. This article is linked at www.commondreams.org:

According to the new book by conservative author and journalist Bernard Goldberg, 100 people are to blame for the sad state of our country, and most are decidedly liberal.

In 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is No. 37), Goldberg insists that people like Eminem, Courtney Love and Maury Povich, who contribute to America's corrosive culture, and those like Barbra Streisand, Barbara Kingsolver and Bill Moyers, who are outspoken liberals, are our nation's greatest villains. His naive rantings take aim largely at the entertainment and infotainment industries, as if changing to a steady diet of ''Ozzie and Harriet'' would fix things. You know: bring our troops home, pay off our national debt and make prescription drugs affordable.

BEWARE THE URBAN LEGENDS

You have to think a lot of right-wing populism is made up of urban legends. Ronald Reagan paved his way to the White House on tales of welfare mothers driving Cadillacs. Republicans deliberately renamed the estate tax the "death tax" to make people outraged that the big bad government would tax the estates of small family farmers and deprive their rightful heirs. Lately, we've heard that trial lawyers and outrageous lawsuits are responsible for the increase in health care costs. This article by Myron Levin is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

Merv Grazinski set his Winnebago on cruise control, slid away from the wheel and went back to fix a cup of coffee.

You can guess what happened next: The rudderless, driverless Winnebago crashed.

Grazinski blamed the manufacturer for not warning against such a maneuver in the owner's manual. He sued and won $1.75 million.

His jackpot would seem to erase any doubt that the legal system has lost its mind. Indeed, the Grazinski case has been cited often as evidence of the need to limit lawsuits and jury awards.

There's just one problem: The story is a complete fabrication.

AUGUST 14, 2005

BUSH BELIEVES HE'S KING GEORGE

The pattern of the way George W. Bush has conducted the presidency--even the way he got installed into office--shows that he doesn't believe in representative government, and that he doesn't believe in accountability. He has blown off numerous Congressional requests for records, whether it be documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, documents related to John Bolton, photos and videos related to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, documents from the energy task force conducted by Dick Cheney, and the manipulation of facts that are inconvenient to Bush administration objectives. This column by Robyn Blummer is at www.herald-mail.com:

This is all part of a pattern that is illustrative of Bush’s view of the office he holds. Bush’s arrogant swagger is more than a cowboy affectation; it is a state of mind. To Bush, being president is not an act of public service in which you are accountable to the press and the people and are limited by the power of two other governmental branches. It is the anointing of a regent for a four- or eight-year stint. That includes the ability to imprison people at will, to offer untruths without compunction as justifications for war and to spend the entire treasury (and more) without worrying about the consequences. In that now-famous press-conference question, Bush was unable to identify a single mistake he made as president, because monarchs don’t err.

ALL THE NEEDLESS DEATH IN IRAQ

War is always a tragedy. It's the failure of nations to reach agreements without the use of force. Sometimes it's brought on by the lust for conquest such as we saw in the Nazi regime in Germany. Sometimes it's dressed up as something noble when the goal is to secure geopolitical goals. That was the reason for Iraq. All the talk of mushroom clouds, links to terrorism, phony ties to the attacks on 9/11, were just the window dressing to persuade Americans to attack a country that didn't attack us. Now the daily headlines recount the deaths of more U.S. soldiers, usually at the hands of suicide bombers. How do you win a war when people are willing to commit suicide just to pick off Americans one by one? This was all brought about by a series of monstrous lies and incompetence and too many innocent people have already died. Frank Rich writes about the Bush administration and Iraq in this column at www.nytimes.com:

It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a Congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Mr. Bush.

KILLING ESTATE TAX IS ABOUT MAKING THE RICH RICHER

There was another snide little letter in today's Fresno Bee talking about the estate tax being "double taxation" and taxing money that was "already taxed." A lot taxes paid, not just by the rich, are "double taxation" in some form or other. And a lot of money subject to the estate tax wasn't taxed before. Opponents of the estate tax have used all kinds of phony arguments to justify its repeal. What its repeal really means is that a very small number of rich people get to skate once again on paying taxes and the shortfall gets dumped onto people who aren't affluent. It also means the creation and sustaining of an American aristocracy. This article by Edmund L. Andrews is at www.nytimes.com:

But despite the populist rhetoric and oft-repeated horror stories about families being forced to sell their farms in order to pay estate taxes, the battle is over a very large amount of money held by a very small number of families. A report last month by the Congressional Budget Office found that in 2000 only 2 percent of all estates - about 52,000 - were subject to any estate tax. At that point, taxes were imposed only on estates worth $675,000 or more. The limit rose to $1.5 million in 2004, and if that limit had been in effect in 2000, only 13,771 estates - fewer than 1 percent - would have been subject to the tax. All but 740 of them would have had enough in liquid assets to cover estate tax liabilities, the office estimated.

AUGUST 13, 2005

THE GROPER AND A PREDATORY LENDER

You have Governor Groper + Rolling Stones tickets + AmeriQuest Mortgage=money to fund an election attacking unions. That's quite an equation. AmeriQuest is a predatory lender that has preyed on the poor, but that doesn't stop the Groper from taking their money and attacking working class people. This item is from www.pensitorereview.com:

Arnold Schwarzenegger - who pledged during his campaign for governor of California in 2003 that, if elected, he would not seek donations while in office, and then, upon election, quickly became the most aggressive fundraiser in state history - will sell tickets to sit with him in a luxury box at a Rolling Stones concert in Boston for $100,000 each. The money will be used to fund the governor’s campaign for anti-union ballot measures in the special election this November.

The concert tickets were donated by Ameriquest, the embattled Orange County mortgage lender that is fighting charges in multiple states that it has engaged in predatory lending practices.

The Stones have made it clear that they are not involved in the deal.

FUNDAMENTALISM'S HEAVY PRICE

The old saying is that "Ignorance is bliss," and that seems to be hallmark of religious fundamentalists, whether they call themselves Christians, Moslems, Jews, or any other denomination. They prefer to see the world as run by gods and demons, and solutions to problems being prayer or sacrifice or ritual. The Enlightenment and its quest for knowledge is a threat to fundamentalism, and that's the subject of this article by Lee Salisbury is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Religious leaders hate rival sources of authority. 18th Century European Enlightenment thinking with its concepts of rationalism and science provided religious authoritarianism with that rival. America’s founding fathers, products of the Enlightenment, had the audacity to effectively say to Christianity, "worship all you want, but our Constitution does not need your influence!" Roman Catholic traditionalists and Protestant Christian bible-based fundamentalists still seethe over this rejection.

Then as now, zealous Catholics and Protestants claim to speak for God versus Enlightenment thinkers who boldly experiment with new ideas independent of Christian dogma. Today's clergy shudder if their members hear the Thomas Edisons of this world, whose invention catapulted America to prosperity, exclaim as he did that, "religion is all bunk!"

THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL MEMORY

We in the United States sometimes have an abysmal ignorance about other cultures and other ways of looking at the world. We don't have much historical memory in this country. Vietnam seems like ancient history to some, although it just happened yesterday in historical terms. One of the great follies perpetrated by the Bush administration is seeding hatred of the United States by the world's Moslems for generations to come. In this article Robert Parry talks about the consequences of invading countries and setting the process of historical memory into motion. The article is linked at www.opednews.com:

For many people in the world, grievances of past centuries can be as real as the events of last week and often more powerful. Animosities born of brutality and perceived injustice can distort relations even between countries with strong economic and cultural ties.

Which is what Colin, with his close-cropped hair and strong Scottish accent, recalled to me as we sat in the bar on the night of July 4, 2005, talking about the bloody wars waged against Scotland and Wales by Edward I, the ruthless and cunning English monarch of the late 13th Century.

AUGUST 12, 2005

WHAT IS BUSH HIDING IN UNRELEASED DOCUMENTS?

George W. Bush and his administration are the most secretive executive branch in our history. They consistently refuse to release documents, even from previous administrations, using that old excuse of "executive privilege." We see a pattern. Now they're refusing to release documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. This editorial from The Minneapolis Star-Tribune talks about the paranoid, possibly criminal failure of the Bush administration to be up front with the American people. The editorial is at www.startribune.com:

As he was about to leave office in January 1989, President Ronald Reagan issued an executive order establishing policies and procedures for administering the act. Reagan also claimed the entire 12 years for many of his papers. The 12 years expired in January 2001, but President Bush ordered the archivist to delay release of the first batch of Reagan papers -- an authority not authorized by the 1978 law. Then in November 2001, Bush issued an executive order rescinding Reagan's and giving the sitting president the right to review all records before their release and the right to block release of some. Using that executive order as justification, the Bush White House now is vetting thousands of pages of Roberts' papers archived at the Reagan Library before deciding which ones it will provide the Senate in anticipation of Roberts' confirmation hearings.

In addition, the White House is withholding thousands of pages of Roberts' writings from his time in the solicitor general's office from 1989 to 1993, claiming executive privilege. That claim is spurious, as the courts found when prosecutor Kenneth Start sought similar documents from the Clinton administration.

GRAFFITI WITH A PURPOSE

It sometimes irritates me when I drive around Fresno and see ugly graffiti splashed against a wall or a fence. But a new form of graffiti is different. It's graffiti with a purpose. It's to wake up freeway drivers to the harsh realities of this rotten administration and its hideous war. It's freeway blogging. This article by Rupert Cornwell is at www.commondreams.org:

These are the domain of the freeway bloggers, a breed that have invented a tangible concrete and tarmac version of the internet to make their feelings known about George Bush. The messages, posted from overpasses, bridges and verges, are short, pithy and very, very rude.

How many of these bloggers are out there? No one really knows. Who are they? Mainly, it would seem, young men of a mildly anarchic disposition, with a message to get out, a modest talent for gymnastics and a pronounced taste for the adrenalin rush of their trade.

THE GROPER: SCANDALS KEEP COMING

Arnold hasn't been much of a governor, unless you like trash talk about unions and attacking working class people, but he certainly provides plenty of material for newspaper columnists. Arnold recently got embroiled in a scandal because he was a "consultant" for fitness magazines and in a position to sign or veto legislation that would help them and him as well. We know about his tendency to grope unwilling women. Now we learn that Arnold may have had a more conventional fling with a woman not his wife, and it was kept covered up as he ran for governor. This column by Steve Lopez is at www.latimes.com:

My colleagues Peter Nicholas and Carla Hall report that while Schwarzenegger was running for governor and negotiating a multimillion-dollar contract to shill for muscle magazines owned by the company that publishes the National Enquirer, the same outfit was paying Arnold's alleged former "masseuse" $20,000 not to go running her mouth.

More recently, the governor vetoed legislation that would have cracked down on the supplemental drug industry that keeps the muscle magazine advertising revenue pumped up.