MARCH 31, 2005
BUSH HAS DESTROYED U.S. CREDIBILITY
In his swaggering cowboy way George W. Bush offered up the doctrine of preemptive war, attacking the other guy before he can attack you. It's an asinine policy at best. The only real rationale that you can offer is if you have rock solid evidence against your potential adversary. It seems that Bush didn't have that. You and know, of course, that Bush and the neocons in his administration wanted a war against Iraq, no matter what. But it's disturbing that U.S. intelligence could be so faulty, and our credibility with our allies has taken such a hit. This story by Tom Raum is at www.guardian.co.uk:
The latest intelligence-failure report to land on President Bush's desk raises serious questions about his policy of pre-emptive action against potential foes. How can he order such strikes if he doesn't have solid information?
Findings by the special presidential commission could also complicate American efforts to mend fences with allies who opposed the Iraq war. U.S. officials might have a hard time persuading other nations to accept new American intelligence on the world's next hot spot after being ``dead wrong,'' as the panel put it, on Iraq.
``Obviously the report creates severe doubt about the administration's ability to implement a policy of pre-emption,'' said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank.
GANNON/GUCKERT MAY BE PLAGIARIST TOO
The mainstream media haven't paid much attention to Jeff Gannon a.k.a. James Guckert, the fake journalist who tossed Bush some major softball questions at White House press conferences, and subsequently was revealed to be a gay male prostitute. It seems that Gannon may also be a plagiarist, which is no surprise. Almost any "journalist" favorable to this administration seems to be on the payroll or corrupt. This story by John Byrne is at www.rawstory.com:
A Massachusetts newspaper reporter and her then-editor have accused former White House correspondent 'Jeff Gannon' of plagiarizing an article at which the reporter was the only media witness, RAW STORY has learned.
The alleged plagiarism was discovered by blogger Ron Brynaert, who has tracked other plagiarism by Gannon and various Talon News correspondents at his blog, WhyAreWeBackInIraq.
A Jun. 17, 2003 article published by Jim Guckert, who wrote under the pen name Jeff Gannon, contains numerous identical quotes and similar phrasing to an written by Melissa Beecher for the Waltham Daily News Tribune five days earlier. A comparison of the two articles compiled by Brynaert follows.
THE DEAD END JOBS BUSH CREATES
It's hard to believe that once upon a time in the United States you had a chance at making it to the middle class. You could work at a union job in a factory and make enough to afford a house, a new car every few years, and even put some money into savings. If you went to college, you could open the gates to the middle class even easier. Not anymore. Most of the jobs being created these days are non-union, service sector jobs that are cul-de-sacs. This story Elana Berkowitz is at www.commondreams.org:
Welcome to the new service economy where hundreds of thousands of young people are spending hours making decaf lattes, folding jeans, grilling burgers or unpacking boxes of books and records for minimum wage. It used to be that these jobs were thought of as a summer fling, a right of passage on the way to making it big in the adult world of employment. But in our current economy, which our president seems to think is doing just fine, seven out of ten new jobs are service sector jobs like cashiers and baristas. (McDonald’s is the largest youth employer in the nation.) Chains like Starbucks and Wal-Mart and Blockbuster are opening stores at the breathless pace of one every day. Are these the kinds of careers that you took out all those college loans for? Didn’t think so.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
MARCH 30, 2005
SUFFERING OF IRAQI CHILDREN
Here's another story for the "right to life" crowd to chew on. A U.N. report says that a substantial number of children in Iraq are now suffering from malnutrition. Malnutrition rates for children under five have doubled since the U.S. occupation. But these right-wing monsters will crow about all the wonderful achievements in Iraq. This story is at news.bbc.co.uk:
Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished, a UN report says.
Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says.
THIS SHOULD BE A PRIORITY--NOT TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH
A study compiled by 1,300 scientists from 95 countries paints a dire picture for the future of our little planet. According to the report, the earth has suffered massive degradation over the past 50 years because of human activity. Instead of posturing about "moral values" and "markets" and giving tax cuts to obscenely wealthy people, we should be making preserving our planet a priority. Once again, it's proof that George W. Bush is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He should have been running a mini-market somewhere. This story by Steve Connor is at www.commondreams.org:
Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.
OUR OPINIONS DON'T COUNT WITH THE BUSHES
George W. Bush stole the White House in 2000 and may have stolen it again in 2004. Assuming the vote count was legitimate, he squeaked his way back in, but had the audacity to claim a "mandate." Now that he's back in office, of course, opinions don't count anymore. The same is true if the Florida Godfather, Jeb Bush. This story by Robert Steinback is at www.commondreams.org:
If a 51.1 percent to 48.6 percent margin of election victory constitutes a ''mandate,'' as President Bush claimed in November, anything above that should be an overwhelming mandate, right?
Not in Bushworld.
In the America of the Bush-led Republicans, it appears that public opinion only matters on Election Day. After that, we subjects apparently are supposed to shut up and let the rulers rule.
That, of course, hasn't been the nation's tradition. Until recently, the U.S. public has expected its voice -- whether expressed through referendum, poll, petition, public demonstration or letters and calls to congressmen -- to be heard and respected, regardless of the election cycle. We took seriously the idea of politicians as ``public servants.''
This has changed with the disturbingly imperial administrations of the Brothers Bush -- President George and Florida Gov. Jeb -- which have been marked by a pattern of disregarding or defying public sentiment, when those sentiments have run counter to the Bush agenda.
SUFFERING OF IRAQI CHILDREN
Here's another story for the "right to life" crowd to chew on. A U.N. report says that a substantial number of children in Iraq are now suffering from malnutrition. Malnutrition rates for children under five have doubled since the U.S. occupation. But these right-wing monsters will crow about all the wonderful achievements in Iraq. This story is at news.bbc.co.uk:
Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished, a UN report says.
Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says.
THIS SHOULD BE A PRIORITY--NOT TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH
A study compiled by 1,300 scientists from 95 countries paints a dire picture for the future of our little planet. According to the report, the earth has suffered massive degradation over the past 50 years because of human activity. Instead of posturing about "moral values" and "markets" and giving tax cuts to obscenely wealthy people, we should be making preserving our planet a priority. Once again, it's proof that George W. Bush is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He should have been running a mini-market somewhere. This story by Steve Connor is at www.commondreams.org:
Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.
OUR OPINIONS DON'T COUNT WITH THE BUSHES
George W. Bush stole the White House in 2000 and may have stolen it again in 2004. Assuming the vote count was legitimate, he squeaked his way back in, but had the audacity to claim a "mandate." Now that he's back in office, of course, opinions don't count anymore. The same is true if the Florida Godfather, Jeb Bush. This story by Robert Steinback is at www.commondreams.org:
If a 51.1 percent to 48.6 percent margin of election victory constitutes a ''mandate,'' as President Bush claimed in November, anything above that should be an overwhelming mandate, right?
Not in Bushworld.
In the America of the Bush-led Republicans, it appears that public opinion only matters on Election Day. After that, we subjects apparently are supposed to shut up and let the rulers rule.
That, of course, hasn't been the nation's tradition. Until recently, the U.S. public has expected its voice -- whether expressed through referendum, poll, petition, public demonstration or letters and calls to congressmen -- to be heard and respected, regardless of the election cycle. We took seriously the idea of politicians as ``public servants.''
This has changed with the disturbingly imperial administrations of the Brothers Bush -- President George and Florida Gov. Jeb -- which have been marked by a pattern of disregarding or defying public sentiment, when those sentiments have run counter to the Bush agenda.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
MARCH 29, 2005
THERE MIGHT BE A CONNECTION
Most Americans don't pay much attention to foreign policy. We react like Pavlov's dogs when there's talk of war and the "enemy," whoever they are, get demonized. But the ordinary stuff like treaties and tariffs and arms sales don't get much attention. The Bush administration has sold F-16 airplanes to Pakistan, a country governed by a dictator. I guess not all dictators are alike. Saddam Hussein was bad, but this guy is not. Anyway, the Bushies are trying to promote this as a good way to improve prosperity in the area, although India and Pakistan are mortal enemies. The Indians aren't going to like us much. It couldn't be that defense contractors in Texas will do nicely with this deal, could it? This story by Christopher Kremmer is at www.commondreams.org:
The Bush Administration's latest contribution to peace, prosperity and democracy - to sell 24 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan - seems to have sailed under the radar. Perhaps that is why it was announced just before Easter. No swords into ploughshares this year.
A State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said the sale would "improve security and improve prosperity and improve development of the entire region". Oh yes, and the Easter Bunny is an arms dealer.
By "region", we can only assume he meant George Bush's home state of Texas, where the jobs of 5000 workers at Lockheed Martin Corporation's F-16 factory are on the line due to declining orders.
THAT CLASSIC NEO-CON REASONING
If you're against the Iraq war, then you must have liked Saddam Hussein, according to the skewed reasoning of right-wingers. It doesn't seem to occur to them you can be against both. This is a humorous deconstruction of neo-con "thinking" by R. J. Eskow linked at www.commondreams.org:
"I have to infer from that (statement) that you would be happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power."
- Paul Wolfowitz
Let's deal with this question once and for all, OK? It's the classic retort given by neocons and other war supporters when anyone questions the wisdom of the Iraq War. In this case, it was Wolfowitz's response to a student who had just said the following: "We are tired, Secretary Wolfowitz, of being feared and hated by the world. We are tired of watching Americans and Iraqis die, and international institutions cry out in anger against us."
Let's say I get disturbed by a spider crawling the garage wall. I slam the car into it at 50 miles an hour, destroying the car and causing a few thousand dollars in damage to the garage. When my wife objects, I say:
"I have to infer from that statement that you would be happier if that spider were still crawling up the wall." No, schmuck, she says, I'd be happier if we still had a car and didn't have to fork out ten thousand dollars to fix the garage.
A LOOK AT DARTH CHENEY
Dick Cheney may be one of the most evil men to occupy the highest levels of the U.S. government. It's hard to say because there are so many truly evil people in this administration, including George W. Bush. But as Molly Ivins points out, if it's a truly terrible policy it's usually got Cheney's fingerprints on it. Cheney's specialty is rotten energy policy. You know, take away tax credits for driving hybrid cars, which conserve oil and protect the environment, and give huge tax breaks for buying Humvees, those awful gas-guzzling testaments to greed and arrogance. This column is linked at www.workingforchange.com:
As a general rule about Bush & Co., the more closely a policy is associated with Dick Cheney, the worse it is. Which brings us to energy policy -- remember his secret task force? In the long history of monumentally bad ideas, the Cheney policy is a standout for reasons of both omission and commission. Dumb, dumber and dumbest.
Ponder this: Next year, the administration will phase out the $2,000 tax credit for buying a hybrid vehicle, which gets over 50 miles per gallon, but will leave in place the $25,000 tax write-off for a Hummer, which gets 10-12 mpg. That's truly crazy, and that's truly what the whole Cheney energy policy is.
BUSH LOVES TO COMPILE DOSSIERS
We've had one assault against privacy rights after another since George W. Bush stole his way into the White House. The onerous PATRIOT Act shreds many of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Admiral John Poindexter was trying to develop a national database on almost everything we do. The Bushes were encouraging us to spy on each other and to report "suspicious" activity. Now we learn that the Department of Education wants to compile a database on every college student. Orwell must have looked into the future to see this rotten administration in action. This story by Katherine Haley Will is at www.washingtonpost.com:
A proposal by the Education Department would force every college and university in America to report all their students' Social Security numbers and other information about each individual -- including credits earned, degree plan, race and ethnicity, and grants and loans received -- to a national databank. The government will record every student, regardless of whether he or she receives federal aid, in the databank.
The government's plan is to track students individually and in full detail as they complete their post-secondary education. The threat to our students' privacy is of grave concern, and the government has not satisfactorily explained why it wants to collect individual information.
THERE MIGHT BE A CONNECTION
Most Americans don't pay much attention to foreign policy. We react like Pavlov's dogs when there's talk of war and the "enemy," whoever they are, get demonized. But the ordinary stuff like treaties and tariffs and arms sales don't get much attention. The Bush administration has sold F-16 airplanes to Pakistan, a country governed by a dictator. I guess not all dictators are alike. Saddam Hussein was bad, but this guy is not. Anyway, the Bushies are trying to promote this as a good way to improve prosperity in the area, although India and Pakistan are mortal enemies. The Indians aren't going to like us much. It couldn't be that defense contractors in Texas will do nicely with this deal, could it? This story by Christopher Kremmer is at www.commondreams.org:
The Bush Administration's latest contribution to peace, prosperity and democracy - to sell 24 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan - seems to have sailed under the radar. Perhaps that is why it was announced just before Easter. No swords into ploughshares this year.
A State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said the sale would "improve security and improve prosperity and improve development of the entire region". Oh yes, and the Easter Bunny is an arms dealer.
By "region", we can only assume he meant George Bush's home state of Texas, where the jobs of 5000 workers at Lockheed Martin Corporation's F-16 factory are on the line due to declining orders.
THAT CLASSIC NEO-CON REASONING
If you're against the Iraq war, then you must have liked Saddam Hussein, according to the skewed reasoning of right-wingers. It doesn't seem to occur to them you can be against both. This is a humorous deconstruction of neo-con "thinking" by R. J. Eskow linked at www.commondreams.org:
"I have to infer from that (statement) that you would be happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power."
- Paul Wolfowitz
Let's deal with this question once and for all, OK? It's the classic retort given by neocons and other war supporters when anyone questions the wisdom of the Iraq War. In this case, it was Wolfowitz's response to a student who had just said the following: "We are tired, Secretary Wolfowitz, of being feared and hated by the world. We are tired of watching Americans and Iraqis die, and international institutions cry out in anger against us."
Let's say I get disturbed by a spider crawling the garage wall. I slam the car into it at 50 miles an hour, destroying the car and causing a few thousand dollars in damage to the garage. When my wife objects, I say:
"I have to infer from that statement that you would be happier if that spider were still crawling up the wall." No, schmuck, she says, I'd be happier if we still had a car and didn't have to fork out ten thousand dollars to fix the garage.
A LOOK AT DARTH CHENEY
Dick Cheney may be one of the most evil men to occupy the highest levels of the U.S. government. It's hard to say because there are so many truly evil people in this administration, including George W. Bush. But as Molly Ivins points out, if it's a truly terrible policy it's usually got Cheney's fingerprints on it. Cheney's specialty is rotten energy policy. You know, take away tax credits for driving hybrid cars, which conserve oil and protect the environment, and give huge tax breaks for buying Humvees, those awful gas-guzzling testaments to greed and arrogance. This column is linked at www.workingforchange.com:
As a general rule about Bush & Co., the more closely a policy is associated with Dick Cheney, the worse it is. Which brings us to energy policy -- remember his secret task force? In the long history of monumentally bad ideas, the Cheney policy is a standout for reasons of both omission and commission. Dumb, dumber and dumbest.
Ponder this: Next year, the administration will phase out the $2,000 tax credit for buying a hybrid vehicle, which gets over 50 miles per gallon, but will leave in place the $25,000 tax write-off for a Hummer, which gets 10-12 mpg. That's truly crazy, and that's truly what the whole Cheney energy policy is.
BUSH LOVES TO COMPILE DOSSIERS
We've had one assault against privacy rights after another since George W. Bush stole his way into the White House. The onerous PATRIOT Act shreds many of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Admiral John Poindexter was trying to develop a national database on almost everything we do. The Bushes were encouraging us to spy on each other and to report "suspicious" activity. Now we learn that the Department of Education wants to compile a database on every college student. Orwell must have looked into the future to see this rotten administration in action. This story by Katherine Haley Will is at www.washingtonpost.com:
A proposal by the Education Department would force every college and university in America to report all their students' Social Security numbers and other information about each individual -- including credits earned, degree plan, race and ethnicity, and grants and loans received -- to a national databank. The government will record every student, regardless of whether he or she receives federal aid, in the databank.
The government's plan is to track students individually and in full detail as they complete their post-secondary education. The threat to our students' privacy is of grave concern, and the government has not satisfactorily explained why it wants to collect individual information.
Monday, March 28, 2005
MARCH 28, 2005
BIG BUSINESS LOVES BUSH
Early indicators in the Bush second term are---surprise!--big business is making out like bandits. Whether it be credit card companies like MBNA or big oil companies they're raking in the bucks while you and I descend into peonage. This article by Jim VandeHei is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century.
MBNA Corp., the credit card behemoth and fifth-largest contributor to Bush's two presidential campaigns, is among those on the verge of prevailing in an eight-year fight to curtail personal bankruptcies. Exxon Mobil Corp. and others are close to winning the right to drill for oil in Alaska's wildlife refuge, which they have tried to pass for better than a decade. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., another big contributor to Bush and the GOP, and other big companies recently won long-sought protections from class-action lawsuits.
GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA POSING AS NEWS IS UNDEMOCRATIC
There's really something sinister about the federal government producing spots that look like news, having them inserted into local news shows, and not mentioning their creators. We know that the Bush administration openly paid "journalists" such as Armstrong Williams to promote its policies in the guise of independent commentary. We know now that phony news spots produced by the government have made their way into the news. Jim Hightower writes about the dangers in this article at www.alternet.org:
You're used to hearing television reporters give their signature tag lines: "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." "This is Jennifer Morrow reporting." "I'm Pat O'Leary reporting."
But these days, you can't know if your news presenter is a reporter ... or a ringer. Karen Ryan, for example, is a veteran of the government's propaganda machine, having posed as a "reporter" for fake news segments produced and distributed by seven federal agencies in the past two years. Ryan is really a PR consultant, who candidly calls herself a "paid shill for the Bush administration."
NOW THE VATICAN IS CONCERNED ABOUT A NOVEL
The Vatican in its august way has condemned the novel The DaVinci Code and instructed the true believers not to buy the book. The cardinal who gave the speech condemning the book made the interesting comment that the book has "fables." This comes from an organization that has pushed a belief system almost totally built on fables. It's what talk show host Mike Malloy calls "the talking snake theory of creation." It seems the Vatican could concern itself with weightier matters, including the sex abuse scandal in its own ranks. Maureen Dowd writes about it at www.nytimes.com:
It's a little late, now that the two-year-old thriller by Dan Brown is a publishing miracle - with 25 million copies sold in 44 languages, a cascade of other books inspired by the novel and a movie with Tom Hanks set to start filming this spring - for Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to intone on a Vatican radio broadcast: "Don't read and don't buy 'The Da Vinci Code.' "
But when you think of the history of the Catholic Church, the Vatican is acting with lightning speed. It took the church more than 350 years to reverse its condemnation of Galileo. The Vatican only began an inquisition of the 16th-century Inquisition in 1998. It wasn't until the reign of Pope John Paul II that the Vatican apologized for the crimes of the Crusaders and offered contrition for the silence of Catholics in the Holocaust. The church has still not apologized for shameful dissembling by its hierarchy on the sex abuse scandal. And America's Catholic bishops only last week announced they were finally going to get serious about opposing the death penalty.
BIG BUSINESS LOVES BUSH
Early indicators in the Bush second term are---surprise!--big business is making out like bandits. Whether it be credit card companies like MBNA or big oil companies they're raking in the bucks while you and I descend into peonage. This article by Jim VandeHei is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century.
MBNA Corp., the credit card behemoth and fifth-largest contributor to Bush's two presidential campaigns, is among those on the verge of prevailing in an eight-year fight to curtail personal bankruptcies. Exxon Mobil Corp. and others are close to winning the right to drill for oil in Alaska's wildlife refuge, which they have tried to pass for better than a decade. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., another big contributor to Bush and the GOP, and other big companies recently won long-sought protections from class-action lawsuits.
GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA POSING AS NEWS IS UNDEMOCRATIC
There's really something sinister about the federal government producing spots that look like news, having them inserted into local news shows, and not mentioning their creators. We know that the Bush administration openly paid "journalists" such as Armstrong Williams to promote its policies in the guise of independent commentary. We know now that phony news spots produced by the government have made their way into the news. Jim Hightower writes about the dangers in this article at www.alternet.org:
You're used to hearing television reporters give their signature tag lines: "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." "This is Jennifer Morrow reporting." "I'm Pat O'Leary reporting."
But these days, you can't know if your news presenter is a reporter ... or a ringer. Karen Ryan, for example, is a veteran of the government's propaganda machine, having posed as a "reporter" for fake news segments produced and distributed by seven federal agencies in the past two years. Ryan is really a PR consultant, who candidly calls herself a "paid shill for the Bush administration."
NOW THE VATICAN IS CONCERNED ABOUT A NOVEL
The Vatican in its august way has condemned the novel The DaVinci Code and instructed the true believers not to buy the book. The cardinal who gave the speech condemning the book made the interesting comment that the book has "fables." This comes from an organization that has pushed a belief system almost totally built on fables. It's what talk show host Mike Malloy calls "the talking snake theory of creation." It seems the Vatican could concern itself with weightier matters, including the sex abuse scandal in its own ranks. Maureen Dowd writes about it at www.nytimes.com:
It's a little late, now that the two-year-old thriller by Dan Brown is a publishing miracle - with 25 million copies sold in 44 languages, a cascade of other books inspired by the novel and a movie with Tom Hanks set to start filming this spring - for Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to intone on a Vatican radio broadcast: "Don't read and don't buy 'The Da Vinci Code.' "
But when you think of the history of the Catholic Church, the Vatican is acting with lightning speed. It took the church more than 350 years to reverse its condemnation of Galileo. The Vatican only began an inquisition of the 16th-century Inquisition in 1998. It wasn't until the reign of Pope John Paul II that the Vatican apologized for the crimes of the Crusaders and offered contrition for the silence of Catholics in the Holocaust. The church has still not apologized for shameful dissembling by its hierarchy on the sex abuse scandal. And America's Catholic bishops only last week announced they were finally going to get serious about opposing the death penalty.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
MARCH 26, 2005
A NEW DARK AGE
When the Roman Empire fell the world plunged into darkness for centuries until the Renaissance came along and there was light again. With the Bush gang in power you feel a little like the Romans must have felt when the barbarians breached the gates. Mark Morford talks about our new Dark Age in this column at www.sfgate.com:
The sad fact is, there are a great many among us who believe we have entered into a new Dark Age, that it will be a long and brutal slog indeed and BushCo is merely the precursor, the devil's handmaiden, and that we have a long way to go into the bleak and the bloody and the environmentally devastating before the pendulum begins its slow swing back toward the light.
CAN ANYONE TAKE ADAM NAGOURNEY SERIOUSLY?
Adam Nagourney is an alleged "journalist" at The New York Times. What he really does is collect paychecks from The Times to write fawning propaganda for the Bush family. He did it abundantly in the 2004 presidential campaign and now he has turned his affection toward brother Jeb Bush, the current godfather of Florida. James Wolcott dissects Nagourney in this piece at jameswalcott.com:
Have an airsick bag handy should you embark upon Adam Nagourney's lipsmacking love letter to Jeb Bush on page one of today's NY Times. Nagourney, who once boasted on Charlie Rose that he had more charisma than poor John Kerry (a claim that one glimpse of Nagourney in action or repose would refute), has found a load of charisma he can look up to and fetch slippers for.
THEY SHOULD BE WEARING CLOWN SUITS
Mark Twain once wrote something along the lines of, "Suppose you are an idiot. Then suppose you are a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." If Congress was bad in Twain's day, it has made quantum leaps backward since then. We have a gang that is destroying everything from our credibility with other countries, our economy, our justice system, our environment, and even intensely personal decisions on life and death such as the Terri Schiavo case. Marc Cooper writes about it at www.laweekly.com:
The rest is pretty much history and bears little rehearsal except for a few egregious points. It says a lot about us as a nation that millions would be spent so these Congress members could scurry back to their chamber from airports across the country and the world in the middle of a holiday weekend, merely to stick their noses into the already adjudicated and settled legal affairs of a single family. So here we have a House majority that can’t wait to chop up Medicare, Social Security and just about every other hated government program that helps sustain the most vulnerable. But it’s willing to pass personalized “laws” to protect a single, stunted life — so long as there is a political advantage to be had. As these clowns ambled back on to the floor, a memo of GOP talking points on the Schiavo case was folded over their hearts, reading in part:
A NEW DARK AGE
When the Roman Empire fell the world plunged into darkness for centuries until the Renaissance came along and there was light again. With the Bush gang in power you feel a little like the Romans must have felt when the barbarians breached the gates. Mark Morford talks about our new Dark Age in this column at www.sfgate.com:
The sad fact is, there are a great many among us who believe we have entered into a new Dark Age, that it will be a long and brutal slog indeed and BushCo is merely the precursor, the devil's handmaiden, and that we have a long way to go into the bleak and the bloody and the environmentally devastating before the pendulum begins its slow swing back toward the light.
CAN ANYONE TAKE ADAM NAGOURNEY SERIOUSLY?
Adam Nagourney is an alleged "journalist" at The New York Times. What he really does is collect paychecks from The Times to write fawning propaganda for the Bush family. He did it abundantly in the 2004 presidential campaign and now he has turned his affection toward brother Jeb Bush, the current godfather of Florida. James Wolcott dissects Nagourney in this piece at jameswalcott.com:
Have an airsick bag handy should you embark upon Adam Nagourney's lipsmacking love letter to Jeb Bush on page one of today's NY Times. Nagourney, who once boasted on Charlie Rose that he had more charisma than poor John Kerry (a claim that one glimpse of Nagourney in action or repose would refute), has found a load of charisma he can look up to and fetch slippers for.
THEY SHOULD BE WEARING CLOWN SUITS
Mark Twain once wrote something along the lines of, "Suppose you are an idiot. Then suppose you are a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." If Congress was bad in Twain's day, it has made quantum leaps backward since then. We have a gang that is destroying everything from our credibility with other countries, our economy, our justice system, our environment, and even intensely personal decisions on life and death such as the Terri Schiavo case. Marc Cooper writes about it at www.laweekly.com:
The rest is pretty much history and bears little rehearsal except for a few egregious points. It says a lot about us as a nation that millions would be spent so these Congress members could scurry back to their chamber from airports across the country and the world in the middle of a holiday weekend, merely to stick their noses into the already adjudicated and settled legal affairs of a single family. So here we have a House majority that can’t wait to chop up Medicare, Social Security and just about every other hated government program that helps sustain the most vulnerable. But it’s willing to pass personalized “laws” to protect a single, stunted life — so long as there is a political advantage to be had. As these clowns ambled back on to the floor, a memo of GOP talking points on the Schiavo case was folded over their hearts, reading in part:
Friday, March 25, 2005
MARCH 25, 2005
IN SOME WAYS BUSH IS WORSE THAN HITLER
I don't believe you should lightly make comparisons to the most notorious dictator in human history. Adolf Hitler stands in a league of his own. But a new book offers a new perspective of the Nazi dictator. The question has often been asked about how the Germans could support a tyrant like Hitler. According to this book, Hitler was a "feel good" dictator. As long as Hitler was in power the Germans didn't go hungry and they had jobs. What enabled Hitler to do that, of course, was conquering other people and using slave labor. George W. Bush has emulated Hitler in attacking other countries, but certainly not in providing jobs, food, or low taxes for most of us. It's pretty stunning to realize that Bush, in some ways, is worse than Hitler. This article is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:
Hitler not only fattened his adoring "Volk" with jobs and low taxes, he also fed his war machine through robbery and murder, says a German historian in a stunning new book. Far from considering Nazism oppressive, most Germans thought of it as warm-hearted, asserts Goetz Aly. The book is generating significant buzz in Germany and it may mark the beginning of a new level of Holocaust discourse.
A well-respected German historian has a radical new theory to explain a nagging question: Why did average Germans so heartily support the Nazis and Third Reich? Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a "feel good dictator," a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state.
TAXES MAKE SERVICES POSSIBLE
I wrote a little while back about a local right-wing talk show host who once snarled, "Get the damned government off my back!" I remember writing to Mr Right Winger that a Supreme Court Justice--I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes--said that paying taxes made civilization possible. There are lots of things we take granted that are made possible by taxes, whether it be parks, airports, roads, libraries, schools, police and fire protection, water and sewage disposal systems, safe over the counter drugs, safe food, cleaner air, and military protection. Some of the loonier right-wingers call almost any taxation that benefits another group "socialism," but in a sense "socialism" is what makes a decent society possible. Ernest Partridge has an interesting article linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The Proposal: If the "tax refuseniks" are so opposed to paying their taxes, let's make all tax payment voluntary.
Grover Norquist of "Americans for Tax Reform" proclaims that he wants to "drown government in the bathtub," by which he must mean abolish government services. What gives government the right, we are often asked, to seize our property through taxation? "It's your money!" Bob Dole shouted. And George Bush repeatedly asks, "who is better qualified to spend your money? You, or the government?" To the libertarian-right, tax payments for any purpose other then the protection of individual rights to life, liberty and property, is theft.
BUSH PRIORITIES ARE FOR THE RICH
Some of us tried to warn about George W. Bush and we were ignored. The press cozied up to Bush, demonized Al Gore for even the most minor missteps, and the Bush cohorts on the Supreme Court were able to get their boy into the White House. September 11 came along and the Bushies were able to exploit it to the hilt while they began dismantling the foundation that has made the United States the greatest country in the world since World War II. In the 2004 election the press largely ignored Bush's lousy record on almost everything, including lying about the war in Iraq and sanctioning torture. But they found time to exploit a phony "scandal" in the Swift Boat Veterans attacks on John Kerry's war record. The distractions continue now with Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, American Idol, Martha Stewart, and any other sensationalist story of the day. Bob Herbert writes about the dark and dismal reality of the Bush policies at www.nytimes.com:
These are the new American priorities. Republicans will tell you they were ratified in the last presidential election. We may be locked in a long and costly war, and federal deficits may be spiraling toward the moon, but the era of shared sacrifices is over. This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich.
THE MANY INCONSISTENCIES OF THE PRO-LIFE CROWD
Even though he signed a law (as Governor of Texas) allowing patients to be removed from life-sustaining equipment against their will, George W. Bush was only too happy to throw himself into the middle of the Terry Schiavo tragedy. Most of the people who call themselves pro-life are rabid supporters of the death penalty, gun rights, and an aggressive military policy that has killed thousands. E. J. Dionne talks about the many inconsistencies of those who call themselves pro-life in a column at www.washingtonpost.com:
What does it mean to be pro-life? As far as I can tell, most of those who would keep Schiavo alive favor the death penalty. Most favored allowing the assault weapons ban to expire and oppose other forms of gun control. The president makes an excellent point when he says we "ought to err on the side of life." It's a shame how rarely that principle is put into practice.
IN SOME WAYS BUSH IS WORSE THAN HITLER
I don't believe you should lightly make comparisons to the most notorious dictator in human history. Adolf Hitler stands in a league of his own. But a new book offers a new perspective of the Nazi dictator. The question has often been asked about how the Germans could support a tyrant like Hitler. According to this book, Hitler was a "feel good" dictator. As long as Hitler was in power the Germans didn't go hungry and they had jobs. What enabled Hitler to do that, of course, was conquering other people and using slave labor. George W. Bush has emulated Hitler in attacking other countries, but certainly not in providing jobs, food, or low taxes for most of us. It's pretty stunning to realize that Bush, in some ways, is worse than Hitler. This article is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:
Hitler not only fattened his adoring "Volk" with jobs and low taxes, he also fed his war machine through robbery and murder, says a German historian in a stunning new book. Far from considering Nazism oppressive, most Germans thought of it as warm-hearted, asserts Goetz Aly. The book is generating significant buzz in Germany and it may mark the beginning of a new level of Holocaust discourse.
A well-respected German historian has a radical new theory to explain a nagging question: Why did average Germans so heartily support the Nazis and Third Reich? Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a "feel good dictator," a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state.
TAXES MAKE SERVICES POSSIBLE
I wrote a little while back about a local right-wing talk show host who once snarled, "Get the damned government off my back!" I remember writing to Mr Right Winger that a Supreme Court Justice--I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes--said that paying taxes made civilization possible. There are lots of things we take granted that are made possible by taxes, whether it be parks, airports, roads, libraries, schools, police and fire protection, water and sewage disposal systems, safe over the counter drugs, safe food, cleaner air, and military protection. Some of the loonier right-wingers call almost any taxation that benefits another group "socialism," but in a sense "socialism" is what makes a decent society possible. Ernest Partridge has an interesting article linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The Proposal: If the "tax refuseniks" are so opposed to paying their taxes, let's make all tax payment voluntary.
Grover Norquist of "Americans for Tax Reform" proclaims that he wants to "drown government in the bathtub," by which he must mean abolish government services. What gives government the right, we are often asked, to seize our property through taxation? "It's your money!" Bob Dole shouted. And George Bush repeatedly asks, "who is better qualified to spend your money? You, or the government?" To the libertarian-right, tax payments for any purpose other then the protection of individual rights to life, liberty and property, is theft.
BUSH PRIORITIES ARE FOR THE RICH
Some of us tried to warn about George W. Bush and we were ignored. The press cozied up to Bush, demonized Al Gore for even the most minor missteps, and the Bush cohorts on the Supreme Court were able to get their boy into the White House. September 11 came along and the Bushies were able to exploit it to the hilt while they began dismantling the foundation that has made the United States the greatest country in the world since World War II. In the 2004 election the press largely ignored Bush's lousy record on almost everything, including lying about the war in Iraq and sanctioning torture. But they found time to exploit a phony "scandal" in the Swift Boat Veterans attacks on John Kerry's war record. The distractions continue now with Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, American Idol, Martha Stewart, and any other sensationalist story of the day. Bob Herbert writes about the dark and dismal reality of the Bush policies at www.nytimes.com:
These are the new American priorities. Republicans will tell you they were ratified in the last presidential election. We may be locked in a long and costly war, and federal deficits may be spiraling toward the moon, but the era of shared sacrifices is over. This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich.
THE MANY INCONSISTENCIES OF THE PRO-LIFE CROWD
Even though he signed a law (as Governor of Texas) allowing patients to be removed from life-sustaining equipment against their will, George W. Bush was only too happy to throw himself into the middle of the Terry Schiavo tragedy. Most of the people who call themselves pro-life are rabid supporters of the death penalty, gun rights, and an aggressive military policy that has killed thousands. E. J. Dionne talks about the many inconsistencies of those who call themselves pro-life in a column at www.washingtonpost.com:
What does it mean to be pro-life? As far as I can tell, most of those who would keep Schiavo alive favor the death penalty. Most favored allowing the assault weapons ban to expire and oppose other forms of gun control. The president makes an excellent point when he says we "ought to err on the side of life." It's a shame how rarely that principle is put into practice.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
MARCH 24, 2005
TOM DELAY IN A NUTSHELL
Maureen Dowd writes about the Republican posturing and hypocrisy in the Terri Schiavo case. We hear this screeching and wailing from right-wingers in this one tragic case, while their policies create ongoing tragedies for many of us. I thought the last paragraphs of Dowd's column summarized Tom DeLay and the Republican party quite nicely. The column is at www.nytimes.com:
Mr. DeLay moved yesterday to file a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court asking that Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube be restored while the federal court is deciding what to do. But as he exploits this one sad case, Mr. DeLay has voted to slash Medicaid by $15 billion, denying money to care for poor people in nursing homes, some on feeding tubes.
Mr. DeLay made his personal stake clear at a conference last Friday organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. He said that God had brought Terri Schiavo's struggle to the forefront "to help elevate the visibility of what's going on in America." He defined that as "attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others."
So it's not about her crisis at all. It's about his crisis.
BULLIED BY A MINORITY
Frank Rich writes about the theatrics of the Terri Schiavo case by going back to the release of the movie The Ten Commandments by Cecille B. DeMille. DeMille used replicas of the Commandments to promote his blockbuster film. Mr. Rich points out that the religious extremists who are ready to trample the Constitution in the Schiavo case are a minority in this country. His column is at www.nytimes.com:
All this is happening while polls consistently show that at most a fifth of the country subscribes to the religious views of those in the Republican base whom even George Will, speaking last Sunday on ABC's "This Week," acknowledged may be considered "extremists." In that famous Election Day exit poll, "moral values" voters amounted to only 22 percent. Similarly, an ABC News survey last weekend found that only 27 percent of Americans thought it was "appropriate" for Congress to "get involved" in the Schiavo case and only 16 percent said it would want to be kept alive in her condition. But a majority of American colonists didn't believe in witches during the Salem trials either - any more than the Taliban reflected the views of a majority of Afghans. At a certain point - and we seem to be at that point - fear takes over, allowing a mob to bully the majority over the short term. (Of course, if you believe the end is near, there is no long term.)
CONGRESSMAN RUBBER STAMP
I have the misfortune to live in the district of one of the most right wing members of Congress, George Radanovich. Today I got a letter from the Congressman about ANWR. Mr. Radanovich asserts that there is more than six months worth of oil in ANWR (without offering proof), that developing ANWR is for the benefit of the local people (you mean like oil companies?), and the amount of land actually affected isn't that great. Drilling in ANWR will destroy one of the most pristine places on earth forever, there won't be that much oil extracted, and the benefit will be for a few rich oil company investors. We should be going full speed to break our petroleum addiction, but Mr. Radanovich is more concerned with the profits of a few. I call him Congressman Rubber Stamp because I don't know of a single major issue on which he has gone contrary to the Bush administration, even though the Bush administration's policies clobber most of his constituents.
NEW SOCIAL SECURITY TRUSTEES REPORT
The new report by the Social Security Trustees says that the program will run of money in 2041, instead of 2042 as earlier projected. They also said that the fund will be paying out more than it takes in by 2014, earlier than previously estimated. Time to run to Bush's privatized plan, right? Nope. Any problems Social Security faces can be addressed by raising the cap on earnings. The current cap is around $90,000, which means the very wealthy pay Social Security taxes on a small percentage of their incomes. And it should be noted, according to this report, that the reason the Social Security Trustees revised their estimates is because of Bush's lousy economy. One of the major things we can do to protect Social Security is get rid of Republicans in government. They're like corrosive acid. This report quotes Congressman Dennis Kucinich and is at feeds,bignewsnetwork.com:
In response to the release today of the 2005 Social Security Trustees' Report, which estimated that Social Security Trust Fund would be depleted in 2041, rather than 2042 as projected by last year's trustees report, Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich said:
"A poor economy in 2004 was the reason the Trustees, who are all political appointees of the President, changed their projection of the future date of depletion of the Social Security trust fund. Near term economic assumptions they had made, including real wages and employment for 2004, turned out to be wrong, as the actual performance of the economy was weaker in 2004 than they had guessed it would be."
TOM DELAY IN A NUTSHELL
Maureen Dowd writes about the Republican posturing and hypocrisy in the Terri Schiavo case. We hear this screeching and wailing from right-wingers in this one tragic case, while their policies create ongoing tragedies for many of us. I thought the last paragraphs of Dowd's column summarized Tom DeLay and the Republican party quite nicely. The column is at www.nytimes.com:
Mr. DeLay moved yesterday to file a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court asking that Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube be restored while the federal court is deciding what to do. But as he exploits this one sad case, Mr. DeLay has voted to slash Medicaid by $15 billion, denying money to care for poor people in nursing homes, some on feeding tubes.
Mr. DeLay made his personal stake clear at a conference last Friday organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. He said that God had brought Terri Schiavo's struggle to the forefront "to help elevate the visibility of what's going on in America." He defined that as "attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others."
So it's not about her crisis at all. It's about his crisis.
BULLIED BY A MINORITY
Frank Rich writes about the theatrics of the Terri Schiavo case by going back to the release of the movie The Ten Commandments by Cecille B. DeMille. DeMille used replicas of the Commandments to promote his blockbuster film. Mr. Rich points out that the religious extremists who are ready to trample the Constitution in the Schiavo case are a minority in this country. His column is at www.nytimes.com:
All this is happening while polls consistently show that at most a fifth of the country subscribes to the religious views of those in the Republican base whom even George Will, speaking last Sunday on ABC's "This Week," acknowledged may be considered "extremists." In that famous Election Day exit poll, "moral values" voters amounted to only 22 percent. Similarly, an ABC News survey last weekend found that only 27 percent of Americans thought it was "appropriate" for Congress to "get involved" in the Schiavo case and only 16 percent said it would want to be kept alive in her condition. But a majority of American colonists didn't believe in witches during the Salem trials either - any more than the Taliban reflected the views of a majority of Afghans. At a certain point - and we seem to be at that point - fear takes over, allowing a mob to bully the majority over the short term. (Of course, if you believe the end is near, there is no long term.)
CONGRESSMAN RUBBER STAMP
I have the misfortune to live in the district of one of the most right wing members of Congress, George Radanovich. Today I got a letter from the Congressman about ANWR. Mr. Radanovich asserts that there is more than six months worth of oil in ANWR (without offering proof), that developing ANWR is for the benefit of the local people (you mean like oil companies?), and the amount of land actually affected isn't that great. Drilling in ANWR will destroy one of the most pristine places on earth forever, there won't be that much oil extracted, and the benefit will be for a few rich oil company investors. We should be going full speed to break our petroleum addiction, but Mr. Radanovich is more concerned with the profits of a few. I call him Congressman Rubber Stamp because I don't know of a single major issue on which he has gone contrary to the Bush administration, even though the Bush administration's policies clobber most of his constituents.
NEW SOCIAL SECURITY TRUSTEES REPORT
The new report by the Social Security Trustees says that the program will run of money in 2041, instead of 2042 as earlier projected. They also said that the fund will be paying out more than it takes in by 2014, earlier than previously estimated. Time to run to Bush's privatized plan, right? Nope. Any problems Social Security faces can be addressed by raising the cap on earnings. The current cap is around $90,000, which means the very wealthy pay Social Security taxes on a small percentage of their incomes. And it should be noted, according to this report, that the reason the Social Security Trustees revised their estimates is because of Bush's lousy economy. One of the major things we can do to protect Social Security is get rid of Republicans in government. They're like corrosive acid. This report quotes Congressman Dennis Kucinich and is at feeds,bignewsnetwork.com:
In response to the release today of the 2005 Social Security Trustees' Report, which estimated that Social Security Trust Fund would be depleted in 2041, rather than 2042 as projected by last year's trustees report, Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich said:
"A poor economy in 2004 was the reason the Trustees, who are all political appointees of the President, changed their projection of the future date of depletion of the Social Security trust fund. Near term economic assumptions they had made, including real wages and employment for 2004, turned out to be wrong, as the actual performance of the economy was weaker in 2004 than they had guessed it would be."
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
MARCH 23, 2005
BIN LADEN: DEAD OR ALIVE?
You remember George W. Bush blustering about "smoking out" Osama bin Laden, about bringing him in "dead or alive." According to this story, bin Laden was in Tora Bora and should have been captured if the search for him had been competent. Osama is still out there for all we know. He was the guy responsible for the attacks on September 11, not Saddam Hussein, and he's still out there. This story by Robert Burns is at news.yahoo.com:
A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a commander for Osama bin Laden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and helped the al-Qaida leader escape his mountain hide-out at Tora Bora in 2001, according to a U.S. government document.
The document, provided to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee "assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora." It is the first definitive statement from the Pentagon that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and evaded U.S. pursuers.
FRIST HAS "PULLED THE PLUG" REGULARLY
Senator Bill Frist, the Majority Leader, is a heart surgeon. Like other right wing Republicans, Mr Frist was pontificating about the Terri Schiavo case. Mr. Frist hasn't even seen Ms Schiavo in person, but that didn't stop him from making a diagnosis. It's interesting that in his history as a doctor that Mr Frist has regularly "pulled the plug" on terminal patients. This story by Richard Sisk and Kenneth R,. Bazinet is at www.nydailynews.com:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has championed the "rescue" of Terri Schiavo, is a renowned heart surgeon who has pulled the plug on a "regular basis," his office acknowledged yesterday.
But Frist (R-Tenn.) ended life support only when the patient was ruled brain-dead, and he is convinced Schiavo is not brain-dead.
"He certainly has a lot of clinical experience" in the withdrawal of life support, said Frist spokeswoman Amy Call.
FOLLOW THE CREDIT CARD INDUSTRY MONEY
Some Democrats who are Democrats in name only are upset about being outed by David Sirota as being major recipients of credit card industry donations. Could there be a relationship between the campaign contributions and the support of the Democrats? Surely not, you say! This story by Hans Nichols is at www.hillnews.com:
John Podesta, president of the progressive Center for American Progress (CAP), faced pointed questions from lawmakers at last Thursday’s New Democrat Coalition (NDC) meeting about an inflammatory e-mail his organization sent to liberal activists and bloggers.
In a March 9 e-mail, David Sirota, a fellow at CAP, accused 16 pro-business Democrats of supporting bankruptcy-reform legislation because they received political contributions from the commercial banks and credit-card companies that stand to benefit if the legislation becomes law.
BIN LADEN: DEAD OR ALIVE?
You remember George W. Bush blustering about "smoking out" Osama bin Laden, about bringing him in "dead or alive." According to this story, bin Laden was in Tora Bora and should have been captured if the search for him had been competent. Osama is still out there for all we know. He was the guy responsible for the attacks on September 11, not Saddam Hussein, and he's still out there. This story by Robert Burns is at news.yahoo.com:
A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a commander for Osama bin Laden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and helped the al-Qaida leader escape his mountain hide-out at Tora Bora in 2001, according to a U.S. government document.
The document, provided to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee "assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora." It is the first definitive statement from the Pentagon that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and evaded U.S. pursuers.
FRIST HAS "PULLED THE PLUG" REGULARLY
Senator Bill Frist, the Majority Leader, is a heart surgeon. Like other right wing Republicans, Mr Frist was pontificating about the Terri Schiavo case. Mr. Frist hasn't even seen Ms Schiavo in person, but that didn't stop him from making a diagnosis. It's interesting that in his history as a doctor that Mr Frist has regularly "pulled the plug" on terminal patients. This story by Richard Sisk and Kenneth R,. Bazinet is at www.nydailynews.com:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has championed the "rescue" of Terri Schiavo, is a renowned heart surgeon who has pulled the plug on a "regular basis," his office acknowledged yesterday.
But Frist (R-Tenn.) ended life support only when the patient was ruled brain-dead, and he is convinced Schiavo is not brain-dead.
"He certainly has a lot of clinical experience" in the withdrawal of life support, said Frist spokeswoman Amy Call.
FOLLOW THE CREDIT CARD INDUSTRY MONEY
Some Democrats who are Democrats in name only are upset about being outed by David Sirota as being major recipients of credit card industry donations. Could there be a relationship between the campaign contributions and the support of the Democrats? Surely not, you say! This story by Hans Nichols is at www.hillnews.com:
John Podesta, president of the progressive Center for American Progress (CAP), faced pointed questions from lawmakers at last Thursday’s New Democrat Coalition (NDC) meeting about an inflammatory e-mail his organization sent to liberal activists and bloggers.
In a March 9 e-mail, David Sirota, a fellow at CAP, accused 16 pro-business Democrats of supporting bankruptcy-reform legislation because they received political contributions from the commercial banks and credit-card companies that stand to benefit if the legislation becomes law.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
MARCH 22, 2005
THE HYPOCRITE IN CHIEF
When he was Governor of Texas George W. Bush signed legislation that allowed patients to be taken off of artificial life support--get this--if the patient's ability to pay was in question! Now this man who is responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq has the unmitigated gall to talk about "a culture of life" and to parade his sanctimony in the Terri Schiavo case. This story from the Associated Press is at www.nytimes.com:
The federal law President Bush signed to prolong Terri Schiavo's life in Florida appears to conflict with a Texas law he signed as governor, attorneys familiar with the legislation said Monday.
The 1999 Advance Directives Act in Texas allows for a patient's surrogate to make end-of-life decisions and spells out how to proceed if a hospital or other health provider disagrees with a decision to maintain or halt life-sustaining treatment.
BEATING CEASELESSLY TO THE PAST
In his lyrical conclusion to The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." That's the Bush administration approach to science. As Mr Spock of Star Trek once observed, it's like stone knives and bear skins. What is truly ironic, tragic, and ludicrous all at the same time is the hypocritical right wingers flinging themselves into the Terri Schiavo case. Science has made it possible to keep Terri alive. If the medical equipment that has kept her alive hadn't been invented, she would have died years ago. Otherwise, the Bushies don't like science at all. This article by Tristram Hunt is at www.guardian.co.uk:
Thanks to the policies and prejudices of the Bush administration, science has become a dirty word. The American century was built on scientific progress. From the automobile to the atom bomb to the man on the moon, science and technology underpinned American military, commercial and cultural might. Crucial to that was the presidency. From FDR and the Los Alamos laboratory to Kennedy and Nasa to Clinton and decoding the genome, the White House was vital to promoting ground-breaking research and luring the world's scientific elite. But Bush's faith-based, petro-chemical administration has reversed that tradition: excepting matters military, this presidency exhibits an abiding aversion to scientific inquiry that is in danger of affecting the entire country.
COST OF MONEY FALLS ON POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS
In the past two decades or so lenders have increasingly tied interest rates to the prime rate created by the Federal Reserve. Variable interest rates became a significant portion of home loans and credit cards are now tied to the prime rate. Every time the Fed raises the prime rate it washes through the entire economy because lenders follow suit. It makes it more difficult for borrowers to repay their loans because interest takes a larger and larger bite. It may also create a backlash because people will stop spending on credit cards, or buying homes, because interest rates are too high. If people stop buying, you can imagine the rest. This story by Ron Scherer is at www.csmonitor.com:
As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates - as it is expected to do again Tuesday - everyone from students to car buyers to anyone carrying a credit-card balance will start to notice that lenders are charging more.
At this point, the actual impact on the economy as a whole is relatively modest. It won't stop consumers from spending. However, the impact is disproportionate - falling more on lower- and middle-income wage earners - and will affect almost everyone who borrows.
THROW OUT THE PLUTOCRATS
I don't know why people did (some still do) believe in trickle down economics. The idea is that giving the very affluent "incentives" by giving them tax cuts and other goodies will result in their investing their windfalls and creating prosperity for everyone else. It hasn't worked. Some defenders of the Reagan administration try to talk about what a great economy we had. We didn't. Go back and examine the real numbers. Poverty increased during the Reagan years. Real incomes for most people stagnated. During the Bush years the grab by the very affluent is unprecedented. The rest of us shouldn't accept this kind of inequality. This story by Kurt Nimmo is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
So greedy are the plutocrats and their constituent base—about three percent of the population in the United States—even the New York Times is alarmed. “In 2005 alone, almost half of the tax savings from dividend and capital gains rate cuts will go to investors who make more than $1 million a year, the top 0.2 percent of the income ladder. Nearly three-quarters of the tax benefits will go to those making more than $200,000, about the top 3 percent. The cost to everyone else in the form of forgone revenue will be $23 billion,” explains a New York Times editorial. In “budget blueprints for 2006,” the Republican plutocrats will “slash domestic spending by upwards of $150 billion over the next five years. Yet they still managed to increase the projected deficit by more than $125 billion over the same period (and by more than $1 trillion through 2015)” by simply making sure the stinking rich among us pay no taxes. Slated for destruction are social programs such as education, a nutrition program for women, infants and children, Head Start; and homeownership, job-training, medical research and science programs.
THE HYPOCRITE IN CHIEF
When he was Governor of Texas George W. Bush signed legislation that allowed patients to be taken off of artificial life support--get this--if the patient's ability to pay was in question! Now this man who is responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq has the unmitigated gall to talk about "a culture of life" and to parade his sanctimony in the Terri Schiavo case. This story from the Associated Press is at www.nytimes.com:
The federal law President Bush signed to prolong Terri Schiavo's life in Florida appears to conflict with a Texas law he signed as governor, attorneys familiar with the legislation said Monday.
The 1999 Advance Directives Act in Texas allows for a patient's surrogate to make end-of-life decisions and spells out how to proceed if a hospital or other health provider disagrees with a decision to maintain or halt life-sustaining treatment.
BEATING CEASELESSLY TO THE PAST
In his lyrical conclusion to The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." That's the Bush administration approach to science. As Mr Spock of Star Trek once observed, it's like stone knives and bear skins. What is truly ironic, tragic, and ludicrous all at the same time is the hypocritical right wingers flinging themselves into the Terri Schiavo case. Science has made it possible to keep Terri alive. If the medical equipment that has kept her alive hadn't been invented, she would have died years ago. Otherwise, the Bushies don't like science at all. This article by Tristram Hunt is at www.guardian.co.uk:
Thanks to the policies and prejudices of the Bush administration, science has become a dirty word. The American century was built on scientific progress. From the automobile to the atom bomb to the man on the moon, science and technology underpinned American military, commercial and cultural might. Crucial to that was the presidency. From FDR and the Los Alamos laboratory to Kennedy and Nasa to Clinton and decoding the genome, the White House was vital to promoting ground-breaking research and luring the world's scientific elite. But Bush's faith-based, petro-chemical administration has reversed that tradition: excepting matters military, this presidency exhibits an abiding aversion to scientific inquiry that is in danger of affecting the entire country.
COST OF MONEY FALLS ON POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS
In the past two decades or so lenders have increasingly tied interest rates to the prime rate created by the Federal Reserve. Variable interest rates became a significant portion of home loans and credit cards are now tied to the prime rate. Every time the Fed raises the prime rate it washes through the entire economy because lenders follow suit. It makes it more difficult for borrowers to repay their loans because interest takes a larger and larger bite. It may also create a backlash because people will stop spending on credit cards, or buying homes, because interest rates are too high. If people stop buying, you can imagine the rest. This story by Ron Scherer is at www.csmonitor.com:
As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates - as it is expected to do again Tuesday - everyone from students to car buyers to anyone carrying a credit-card balance will start to notice that lenders are charging more.
At this point, the actual impact on the economy as a whole is relatively modest. It won't stop consumers from spending. However, the impact is disproportionate - falling more on lower- and middle-income wage earners - and will affect almost everyone who borrows.
THROW OUT THE PLUTOCRATS
I don't know why people did (some still do) believe in trickle down economics. The idea is that giving the very affluent "incentives" by giving them tax cuts and other goodies will result in their investing their windfalls and creating prosperity for everyone else. It hasn't worked. Some defenders of the Reagan administration try to talk about what a great economy we had. We didn't. Go back and examine the real numbers. Poverty increased during the Reagan years. Real incomes for most people stagnated. During the Bush years the grab by the very affluent is unprecedented. The rest of us shouldn't accept this kind of inequality. This story by Kurt Nimmo is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
So greedy are the plutocrats and their constituent base—about three percent of the population in the United States—even the New York Times is alarmed. “In 2005 alone, almost half of the tax savings from dividend and capital gains rate cuts will go to investors who make more than $1 million a year, the top 0.2 percent of the income ladder. Nearly three-quarters of the tax benefits will go to those making more than $200,000, about the top 3 percent. The cost to everyone else in the form of forgone revenue will be $23 billion,” explains a New York Times editorial. In “budget blueprints for 2006,” the Republican plutocrats will “slash domestic spending by upwards of $150 billion over the next five years. Yet they still managed to increase the projected deficit by more than $125 billion over the same period (and by more than $1 trillion through 2015)” by simply making sure the stinking rich among us pay no taxes. Slated for destruction are social programs such as education, a nutrition program for women, infants and children, Head Start; and homeownership, job-training, medical research and science programs.
Monday, March 21, 2005
MARCH 21, 2005
THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY
According to George W. Bush, the sky is falling on Social Security. It isn't true, of course. Social Security is actually stronger than any time in its history, and will remain strong for decades. This article by Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker looks at Social Security and is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Let's start with the facts. According to the numbers President Bush is using, Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 37 years without any changes at all. Even if nothing were done by 2043, the program would still pay a higher real (adjusted for inflation) benefit than what people receive today.
And even looking into the science-fiction future of the Social Security Trustees' 75-year planning period, the projected shortfall is less than what we fixed in each one of the decades of the '50s, '60s, and '80s. In other words, according to the president's own numbers, Social Security is financially stronger today than it has been throughout most of its history. If we use the projections of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it's even better: Social Security is rock-solid for nearly half a century.
So this attack on Social Security has nothing to with the solvency of the program. Nonetheless last week, a Quinnipiac University poll found that respondents, by a 49 to 42 percent margin, believed that Social Security would not be able to pay them a benefit when they retire. But this is a ridiculous idea, based completely on misinformation. It is even more far fetched than the notion, which also commanded a majority before the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the massacre of 9/11.
THE ROULETTE ECONOMY
This article talks about a new rip-off concept called the "Paid Time Off" bank. It's a new tactic by companies to merge sick days and vacation days into a bank. It sounds good at first glance because you get more days. But say you can take a vacation, using that portion of your "bank," and then you get sick you may not have paid time off for being sick. It gets even worse. A sizable number of the work force don't get any vacation or sick leave. The United States is far behind other countries that make sick leave a requirement. This story by Joe Robinson is at www.latimes.com:
In the meantime, American workers have to hone their gambling instincts in the Roulette Economy, which requires a knack for betting the house, car, liver and spleen to get what the citizens of 96 other countries get by law - the chance to indulge the fruits of your labor on guaranteed vacations, not dependent on a roll of the medical dice.
WORKS DON'T COUNT FOR THIS CHURCH
I'm no Biblical expert, but I recall a scripture that says, "Faith without works is dead." This story talks about a church that has severed ties with a food bank because the food bank works with Roman Catholics and because the church doesn't believe in "works based" salvation. This is the kind of madness you get with religion and one of the obvious reasons church and state should be kept separate. This story is at www.heraldsun.com:
A church has withdrawn its support for a food pantry serving the needy because the pantry works with Roman Catholics.
Central Church of God explained its decision in a letter March 1 from minister of evangelism Shannon Burton to Loaves & Fishes in Charlotte.
"As a Christian church, we feel it is our responsibility to follow closely the (principles) and commands of Scripture," the letter said.
THE REALITY OF BUSH'S BUDGET
While the tragic case of Terri Schiavo garners all the media attention, George W. Bush's cruel and inhumane budget passed. In this article Fran Shor looks at the harsh results of Bush's budget for living and breathing people inside the United States. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
So, what does one make of this past week's Congressional activities and the Republican agenda? Passing the Bush Budget in the House, Tom DeLay and his wretched crew just terminated aid for food stamps for 300,000 working families with children. Low income families lost out on child care assistance involving close to 300,000 children. Cuts in health insurance for children were passed with nary a tear being shed by a single Republican. Capping off this mean-spirited attitude towards children and the working poor was a profligate package of tax benefits for the very wealthy. One can only assume that Republicans want the poor to die off even in the face of their dramatic efforts to rescue the brain-dead Terry Schiavo.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY
According to George W. Bush, the sky is falling on Social Security. It isn't true, of course. Social Security is actually stronger than any time in its history, and will remain strong for decades. This article by Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker looks at Social Security and is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Let's start with the facts. According to the numbers President Bush is using, Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 37 years without any changes at all. Even if nothing were done by 2043, the program would still pay a higher real (adjusted for inflation) benefit than what people receive today.
And even looking into the science-fiction future of the Social Security Trustees' 75-year planning period, the projected shortfall is less than what we fixed in each one of the decades of the '50s, '60s, and '80s. In other words, according to the president's own numbers, Social Security is financially stronger today than it has been throughout most of its history. If we use the projections of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it's even better: Social Security is rock-solid for nearly half a century.
So this attack on Social Security has nothing to with the solvency of the program. Nonetheless last week, a Quinnipiac University poll found that respondents, by a 49 to 42 percent margin, believed that Social Security would not be able to pay them a benefit when they retire. But this is a ridiculous idea, based completely on misinformation. It is even more far fetched than the notion, which also commanded a majority before the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the massacre of 9/11.
THE ROULETTE ECONOMY
This article talks about a new rip-off concept called the "Paid Time Off" bank. It's a new tactic by companies to merge sick days and vacation days into a bank. It sounds good at first glance because you get more days. But say you can take a vacation, using that portion of your "bank," and then you get sick you may not have paid time off for being sick. It gets even worse. A sizable number of the work force don't get any vacation or sick leave. The United States is far behind other countries that make sick leave a requirement. This story by Joe Robinson is at www.latimes.com:
In the meantime, American workers have to hone their gambling instincts in the Roulette Economy, which requires a knack for betting the house, car, liver and spleen to get what the citizens of 96 other countries get by law - the chance to indulge the fruits of your labor on guaranteed vacations, not dependent on a roll of the medical dice.
WORKS DON'T COUNT FOR THIS CHURCH
I'm no Biblical expert, but I recall a scripture that says, "Faith without works is dead." This story talks about a church that has severed ties with a food bank because the food bank works with Roman Catholics and because the church doesn't believe in "works based" salvation. This is the kind of madness you get with religion and one of the obvious reasons church and state should be kept separate. This story is at www.heraldsun.com:
A church has withdrawn its support for a food pantry serving the needy because the pantry works with Roman Catholics.
Central Church of God explained its decision in a letter March 1 from minister of evangelism Shannon Burton to Loaves & Fishes in Charlotte.
"As a Christian church, we feel it is our responsibility to follow closely the (principles) and commands of Scripture," the letter said.
THE REALITY OF BUSH'S BUDGET
While the tragic case of Terri Schiavo garners all the media attention, George W. Bush's cruel and inhumane budget passed. In this article Fran Shor looks at the harsh results of Bush's budget for living and breathing people inside the United States. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
So, what does one make of this past week's Congressional activities and the Republican agenda? Passing the Bush Budget in the House, Tom DeLay and his wretched crew just terminated aid for food stamps for 300,000 working families with children. Low income families lost out on child care assistance involving close to 300,000 children. Cuts in health insurance for children were passed with nary a tear being shed by a single Republican. Capping off this mean-spirited attitude towards children and the working poor was a profligate package of tax benefits for the very wealthy. One can only assume that Republicans want the poor to die off even in the face of their dramatic efforts to rescue the brain-dead Terry Schiavo.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
MARCH 20, 2005
MOST WOULD BE WORSE OFF UNDER BUSH PLAN
Even as support for his Social Security demolition plan erodes, George W. Bush is out in front of his hand-picked crowds promoting the terrible idea. Analysis after analysis shows this is a terrible plan. According to this story, three-quarters of us would be worse off under Bush's plan than under the traditional system. This article by Jonathan Weisman is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Nearly three-quarters of workers who opt for Social Security personal accounts under President Bush's "default" investment option are likely to earn less in benefits than those who stay with the traditional Social Security system, a prominent finance economist has concluded.
A new paper by Yale University economist Robert J. Shiller found that under Bush's default "life-cycle accounts," which shift assets from stocks to bonds over a worker's lifetime, nearly a third of workers would bring in less in benefits than if they remained in the traditional system. That analysis is based on historical rates of return in the United States. Using global rates of return, which Shiller says more closely track future conditions, life-cycle portfolios could be expected to fall short of the traditional system's returns 71 percent of the time.
NOW THEY'RE LYING ABOUT NORTH KOREA
I long for the good old days when you could believe at least some of what the U.S. government said. If the government said a country had nuclear weapons, you could actually put some credence in that. If they said a program would be safe from being eviscerated, such as Social Security, you could be reasonably sure they would keep their word. Now you can't believe much of anything said by the U.S. government. The latest example is lies about North Korea. The Bush administration claimed that North Korea sold nuclear material to Libya. In fact, North Korea sold material to Pakistan, which is a U.S. ally. Then Pakistan sold the material to Libya. So they want to make the North Koreans the bad guys in trying to create a new nuclear state in Libya. This article is at rawstory.com:
In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state, the Washington Post reports Sunday. Excerpts follow.
But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride – which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium – to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.
BRITISH: CASE AGAINST IRAQ WAS "FIXED"
The head of the British Intelligence Service told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the case the United States was making against Iraq was "fixed" and that war was "inevitable." According to this story, the motive for the war was regime change. This story is at story.news.yahoo.com:
The head of Britain's foreign intelligence agency told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the case for war in Iraq was being "fixed" by Washington to suit US policy, according to a BBC documentary.
MI6 supremo Richard Dearlove briefed Blair and a group of ministers on the United States' determination to launch the invasion nine months before hostilities began in March 2003, the BBC programme will claim on Sunday.
ANOTHER BLOW TO BASEBALL'S IMAGE
I've been a baseball fan for a long time, but I have to say I'm getting disillusioned. First, there's the incredible greed by both the owners and the players. Then we have the game tainted by alleged steroid use. I know almost all the owners and many of the players also support the Republican party, going contrary to the interests of the fans who make their lavish lifestyles possible. Now we learn that the Boston Red Sox may have provided a plane used to transport a man to Egypt to be tortured. This story by John Crewdson and Tom Hundley is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team's championship season.
But what was the very same Gulfstream - owned by one of the Red Sox's partners, but presumably without the team's logo on its fuselage - doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?
Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport.
MAJOR BANKS ARE GREEDY AND DISGUSTING
It's not enough that credit cards have been become a legalized way of loan sharking, but now major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America have a new fee structure that mostly targets self-employed and low-income people. Call in to check on your account and you get dinged with a fee. It's almost enough to make you want to stuff your money under a mattress. This story by David Lazarus at www.sfgate.com:
Here are some more bank fees to watch out for, primarily targeting lower-income people or self-employed workers.
If you're a Wells Fargo customer with less than $300 in your checking account, you'll be charged $2 any time you call a service rep with a question that could have been handled by the bank's automated phone system.
MOST WOULD BE WORSE OFF UNDER BUSH PLAN
Even as support for his Social Security demolition plan erodes, George W. Bush is out in front of his hand-picked crowds promoting the terrible idea. Analysis after analysis shows this is a terrible plan. According to this story, three-quarters of us would be worse off under Bush's plan than under the traditional system. This article by Jonathan Weisman is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Nearly three-quarters of workers who opt for Social Security personal accounts under President Bush's "default" investment option are likely to earn less in benefits than those who stay with the traditional Social Security system, a prominent finance economist has concluded.
A new paper by Yale University economist Robert J. Shiller found that under Bush's default "life-cycle accounts," which shift assets from stocks to bonds over a worker's lifetime, nearly a third of workers would bring in less in benefits than if they remained in the traditional system. That analysis is based on historical rates of return in the United States. Using global rates of return, which Shiller says more closely track future conditions, life-cycle portfolios could be expected to fall short of the traditional system's returns 71 percent of the time.
NOW THEY'RE LYING ABOUT NORTH KOREA
I long for the good old days when you could believe at least some of what the U.S. government said. If the government said a country had nuclear weapons, you could actually put some credence in that. If they said a program would be safe from being eviscerated, such as Social Security, you could be reasonably sure they would keep their word. Now you can't believe much of anything said by the U.S. government. The latest example is lies about North Korea. The Bush administration claimed that North Korea sold nuclear material to Libya. In fact, North Korea sold material to Pakistan, which is a U.S. ally. Then Pakistan sold the material to Libya. So they want to make the North Koreans the bad guys in trying to create a new nuclear state in Libya. This article is at rawstory.com:
In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state, the Washington Post reports Sunday. Excerpts follow.
But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride – which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium – to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.
BRITISH: CASE AGAINST IRAQ WAS "FIXED"
The head of the British Intelligence Service told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the case the United States was making against Iraq was "fixed" and that war was "inevitable." According to this story, the motive for the war was regime change. This story is at story.news.yahoo.com:
The head of Britain's foreign intelligence agency told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the case for war in Iraq was being "fixed" by Washington to suit US policy, according to a BBC documentary.
MI6 supremo Richard Dearlove briefed Blair and a group of ministers on the United States' determination to launch the invasion nine months before hostilities began in March 2003, the BBC programme will claim on Sunday.
ANOTHER BLOW TO BASEBALL'S IMAGE
I've been a baseball fan for a long time, but I have to say I'm getting disillusioned. First, there's the incredible greed by both the owners and the players. Then we have the game tainted by alleged steroid use. I know almost all the owners and many of the players also support the Republican party, going contrary to the interests of the fans who make their lavish lifestyles possible. Now we learn that the Boston Red Sox may have provided a plane used to transport a man to Egypt to be tortured. This story by John Crewdson and Tom Hundley is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team's championship season.
But what was the very same Gulfstream - owned by one of the Red Sox's partners, but presumably without the team's logo on its fuselage - doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?
Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport.
MAJOR BANKS ARE GREEDY AND DISGUSTING
It's not enough that credit cards have been become a legalized way of loan sharking, but now major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America have a new fee structure that mostly targets self-employed and low-income people. Call in to check on your account and you get dinged with a fee. It's almost enough to make you want to stuff your money under a mattress. This story by David Lazarus at www.sfgate.com:
Here are some more bank fees to watch out for, primarily targeting lower-income people or self-employed workers.
If you're a Wells Fargo customer with less than $300 in your checking account, you'll be charged $2 any time you call a service rep with a question that could have been handled by the bank's automated phone system.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
MARCH 19, 2005
BUSH AND BLAIR HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS IN COLOMBIA TOO
The ongoing tragedy in Iraq gets most of our attention, but it's not the only place where the leaders of the United States and Britain have blood on their hands. Things in Colombia fly more under the radar, but grave human rights abuses are happening there, and the U.S. military presence is far greater than most Americans know. This article by John Pilger is at www.zmag.org:
For just as Bush and Blair are soaked with blood in Iraq, so they are in Colombia. The Colombia military and police have the worst human rights record in the Western hemisphere. That the government of "Oxford-educated" Uribe is any better than his predecessors and that drugs alone are the cause of more than 20,000 murders every year is a fiction promoted in Washington and London. No one doubts that FARC, the peasant-based guerrilla group, has trafficked in cocaine, but the overwhelming majority of the drugs trade and the violence in Colombia are the responsibility of the state, its military and paramilitaries, funded and trained, directly and indirectly, by the American and British governments.
BUSH HAS DESTROYED THE GREATNESS OF THE U.S.
If you read much history about the United States, you know that there are many blemishes. The worst was the institution of slavery that endured until the end of the Civil War. The white Europeans who came here and founded this country were also adept at stealing the land of Native Americans. Various immigrant groups have been exploited such as the Irish, the Chinese, and now Hispanics. Women still have not attained equality even as we move on into the 21st century. But throughout it all we were moving forward. Most of the world found reasons to admire the United States. George W. Bush has changed all that. Now most of the world sees the United States as an arrogant bully, ready to trash treaties, ready to saber rattle to get what it wants, ready to grab all the world's resources for itself. This article by Bill Gallagher is at www.niagarafallsreporter.com:
People who once looked toward America with admiration and respect and as a beacon for liberty and civility now see a supremely arrogant rogue nation that holds international law and institutions in disdain.
George W. Bush and the neocon crazies who pull his strings, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, have created this reality and an indelible image and ignominious legacy that will take generations to erase.
Every day, we see Bush's high and hamhanded arrogance toward the rest of the world. The bullying and unipolar madness are despicable qualities more suitable for 19th-century British colonialism and 20th-century Stalinism than the behavior of a great nation.
THE MIDDLE EAST REALITY
If you have pursued a disastrous and murderous foreign policy, maybe all you can do is try to find some sunny rationale to justify it all. Bush apologists have pursued that rationale like a feather in the wind in justifying the unprovoked war against Iraq. The argument is that Iraq will lead the way to democracy in the Middle East, and what a "visionary" Bush was after all. Any democracy that results will not be due to Bush, I suspect, but in spite of him. Iraq certainly is no model. It's a country riven by civil war that may likely become an Islamic theocratic state, the last thing the United States wanted. This article by Juan Cole is at www.tompaine.com:
First, it must be said that Washington's Iraq policy, contrary to its defenders' arguments, is not innovative. In fact, regime change in the Middle East has often come about through foreign invasion. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser intervened militarily to help revolutionaries overthrow the Shiite imam of Yemen in the 1960s. The Israelis expelled the PLO from Lebanon and tried to establish a pro-Israeli government in Beirut in 1982. Saddam Hussein briefly ejected the Kuwaiti monarchy in 1990. The U.S. military's invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein were therefore nothing new in Middle Eastern history. A peaceful evolution toward democracy would have been an innovation.
BUSH AND BLAIR HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS IN COLOMBIA TOO
The ongoing tragedy in Iraq gets most of our attention, but it's not the only place where the leaders of the United States and Britain have blood on their hands. Things in Colombia fly more under the radar, but grave human rights abuses are happening there, and the U.S. military presence is far greater than most Americans know. This article by John Pilger is at www.zmag.org:
For just as Bush and Blair are soaked with blood in Iraq, so they are in Colombia. The Colombia military and police have the worst human rights record in the Western hemisphere. That the government of "Oxford-educated" Uribe is any better than his predecessors and that drugs alone are the cause of more than 20,000 murders every year is a fiction promoted in Washington and London. No one doubts that FARC, the peasant-based guerrilla group, has trafficked in cocaine, but the overwhelming majority of the drugs trade and the violence in Colombia are the responsibility of the state, its military and paramilitaries, funded and trained, directly and indirectly, by the American and British governments.
BUSH HAS DESTROYED THE GREATNESS OF THE U.S.
If you read much history about the United States, you know that there are many blemishes. The worst was the institution of slavery that endured until the end of the Civil War. The white Europeans who came here and founded this country were also adept at stealing the land of Native Americans. Various immigrant groups have been exploited such as the Irish, the Chinese, and now Hispanics. Women still have not attained equality even as we move on into the 21st century. But throughout it all we were moving forward. Most of the world found reasons to admire the United States. George W. Bush has changed all that. Now most of the world sees the United States as an arrogant bully, ready to trash treaties, ready to saber rattle to get what it wants, ready to grab all the world's resources for itself. This article by Bill Gallagher is at www.niagarafallsreporter.com:
People who once looked toward America with admiration and respect and as a beacon for liberty and civility now see a supremely arrogant rogue nation that holds international law and institutions in disdain.
George W. Bush and the neocon crazies who pull his strings, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, have created this reality and an indelible image and ignominious legacy that will take generations to erase.
Every day, we see Bush's high and hamhanded arrogance toward the rest of the world. The bullying and unipolar madness are despicable qualities more suitable for 19th-century British colonialism and 20th-century Stalinism than the behavior of a great nation.
THE MIDDLE EAST REALITY
If you have pursued a disastrous and murderous foreign policy, maybe all you can do is try to find some sunny rationale to justify it all. Bush apologists have pursued that rationale like a feather in the wind in justifying the unprovoked war against Iraq. The argument is that Iraq will lead the way to democracy in the Middle East, and what a "visionary" Bush was after all. Any democracy that results will not be due to Bush, I suspect, but in spite of him. Iraq certainly is no model. It's a country riven by civil war that may likely become an Islamic theocratic state, the last thing the United States wanted. This article by Juan Cole is at www.tompaine.com:
First, it must be said that Washington's Iraq policy, contrary to its defenders' arguments, is not innovative. In fact, regime change in the Middle East has often come about through foreign invasion. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser intervened militarily to help revolutionaries overthrow the Shiite imam of Yemen in the 1960s. The Israelis expelled the PLO from Lebanon and tried to establish a pro-Israeli government in Beirut in 1982. Saddam Hussein briefly ejected the Kuwaiti monarchy in 1990. The U.S. military's invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein were therefore nothing new in Middle Eastern history. A peaceful evolution toward democracy would have been an innovation.
Friday, March 18, 2005
MARCH 18, 2005
ALIENATING THE WORLD
Bush's nomination of hawk Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank is just another example of what one writer termed "imperial hubris." Bush has a way of nominating people to positions when those people are sworn enemies of the institutions they're supposed to lead. John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador is a classic example. Wolfowitz, as you'll recall, made the sunny prediction that Iraqis would throng American troops and offer hosannas upon the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Paul Krugman writes about this and other issues in his column at www.nytimes.com:
The result has been the rise of governments that, to varying degrees, reject policies they perceive as made in America. Venezuela's leader is the most obstreperous. But the most dramatic example of the backlash is Argentina, once the darling of Wall Street and the think tanks. Today, after a devastating recession, the country is run by a populist who often blames foreigners for the country's economic problems, and has forced Argentina's foreign creditors to accept a settlement that gives them only 32 cents on the dollar.
ENRON IS THE MODEL OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
For anyone who wants to believe George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security is a good thing, there is the example of Enron, one of Bush's major campaign contributors. Enron was riding high atop the business world with its stock prices soaring. Then it all came crashing down because Enron was run by crooks. This column by Frank Rich is at www.nytimes.com:
Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a documentary seen at Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you're not among those whose 401(k)'s and pensions were wiped out, it's morbidly entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there's the sight of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the "Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service" only days after Enron has confessed to filing five years of bogus financial reports. Then again, given the implicit quid pro quo in this smarmy tableau, maybe that's the Enron drama's answer to a sex scene.
BUSH HAD DESIGNS ON IRAQI OIL BEFORE 9/11
Let's see how they spin this. New information has come to light that George W. Bush and his administration were already planning to get their mitts on Iraq's oil even before the September 11 attacks. They were just looking for any excuse to attack Iraq. It was never about weapons of mass destruction, about links to terrorists, or about bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. This story Greg Palast is at news.bbc.co.uk:
Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".
"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.
DESTROY ANWR FOR JUST A LITTLE OIL
Relatively speaking, the oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve isn't going to help our energy problem very much. It will take years to even get the oil flowing. But what drilling in ANWR does is give the oil slick Republicans a chance to spit in the face of environmentalists, which is more of a motive than solving energy shortages. This article by Warren Cornwall is at seattletimes.nwsource.com:
Yet even some drilling supporters acknowledge ANWR oil will do little to dent the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Dennis O'Brien, director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Policy at the University of Oklahoma, said oil from the refuge could be valuable as a way to help reduce the overall U.S. trade deficit. But he said it's too small to have implications for national security and reliance on foreign oil.
"The national-security argument for producing ANWR is a little bit of a, well, it doesn't really meet the national-security test," said O'Brien, who was deputy assistant secretary for international energy security under President Reagan.
ALIENATING THE WORLD
Bush's nomination of hawk Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank is just another example of what one writer termed "imperial hubris." Bush has a way of nominating people to positions when those people are sworn enemies of the institutions they're supposed to lead. John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador is a classic example. Wolfowitz, as you'll recall, made the sunny prediction that Iraqis would throng American troops and offer hosannas upon the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Paul Krugman writes about this and other issues in his column at www.nytimes.com:
The result has been the rise of governments that, to varying degrees, reject policies they perceive as made in America. Venezuela's leader is the most obstreperous. But the most dramatic example of the backlash is Argentina, once the darling of Wall Street and the think tanks. Today, after a devastating recession, the country is run by a populist who often blames foreigners for the country's economic problems, and has forced Argentina's foreign creditors to accept a settlement that gives them only 32 cents on the dollar.
ENRON IS THE MODEL OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
For anyone who wants to believe George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security is a good thing, there is the example of Enron, one of Bush's major campaign contributors. Enron was riding high atop the business world with its stock prices soaring. Then it all came crashing down because Enron was run by crooks. This column by Frank Rich is at www.nytimes.com:
Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a documentary seen at Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you're not among those whose 401(k)'s and pensions were wiped out, it's morbidly entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there's the sight of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the "Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service" only days after Enron has confessed to filing five years of bogus financial reports. Then again, given the implicit quid pro quo in this smarmy tableau, maybe that's the Enron drama's answer to a sex scene.
BUSH HAD DESIGNS ON IRAQI OIL BEFORE 9/11
Let's see how they spin this. New information has come to light that George W. Bush and his administration were already planning to get their mitts on Iraq's oil even before the September 11 attacks. They were just looking for any excuse to attack Iraq. It was never about weapons of mass destruction, about links to terrorists, or about bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. This story Greg Palast is at news.bbc.co.uk:
Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".
"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.
DESTROY ANWR FOR JUST A LITTLE OIL
Relatively speaking, the oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve isn't going to help our energy problem very much. It will take years to even get the oil flowing. But what drilling in ANWR does is give the oil slick Republicans a chance to spit in the face of environmentalists, which is more of a motive than solving energy shortages. This article by Warren Cornwall is at seattletimes.nwsource.com:
Yet even some drilling supporters acknowledge ANWR oil will do little to dent the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Dennis O'Brien, director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Policy at the University of Oklahoma, said oil from the refuge could be valuable as a way to help reduce the overall U.S. trade deficit. But he said it's too small to have implications for national security and reliance on foreign oil.
"The national-security argument for producing ANWR is a little bit of a, well, it doesn't really meet the national-security test," said O'Brien, who was deputy assistant secretary for international energy security under President Reagan.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
MARCH 17, 2005
REPUBLICANS CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
According to this story, Congressional Republicans aren't going to hold "town hall" style meetings to promote George W. Bush's Social Security destruction plan. Last month Republicans actually got asked some real and tough questions and we can't have that in Bush world. We can only have those touchy feely propaganda fests where all the questions are softballs. This article by Andrea Stone is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Republicans in Congress have a game plan to avoid "March madness" when they go home this weekend to talk to constituents about Social Security during a two-week holiday recess.
Shaken by raucous protests at open "town hall"-style meetings last month, House Republican Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce of Ohio and other GOP leaders are urging lawmakers to hold lower-profile events this time.
Republicans plan to heed President Bush's call Wednesday "to talk to their constituents not only about the problem, but about solutions" to Social Security's looming financial shortfall. The president wants to allow workers to divert some payroll taxes into private investment accounts.
IT'S RAINING NON SEQUITURS!
There's a local Republican functionary I call Party Hack. Party Hack is known for making inane statements such as comparing Social Security to a Ponzi scheme, among other bright things. In today's Fresno Bee Party Hack was at it again. He was saying we on the left aren't consistent on "choice." We want choice on little matters like reproductive rights, but we take away choice from good old boys like him when it comes to investing. Like any typical Republican, all he really cares about is money.
You could turn the argument around. If Party Hack is such a believer in choice, will he support a woman's right to choose? Will he support the right to assisted suicide? Will he support the legalization of drugs such as marijuana? I doubt it.
More importantly, though, it's almost obscene to compare a personal and intimate choice on abortion rights to investing. There's a world of difference. And the fact is Social Security protects most Americans against becoming totally destitute when they get old. As I've said before, anything that helps ordinary working people is something Republicans hate.
WANT TO LIVE IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY?
If you've ever wondered what it's like to live in one of those poor Third World countries you may not even have to move. The Bush administration's policies are rapidly moving us in that direction. The old saying "sound as a dollar" doesn't mean much these days. The dollar has been growing weaker and weaker against foreign currencies, we're having to borrow billions just to keep the government running, we have lost most of our manufacturing base, we have very little credibility with the rest of the world, and we're bogged down in an endless war in Iraq. Mike Whitney writes about it in an article linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Don't look now, but Bush's house-of-cards economy is about to come crashing to earth. Just yesterday the Commerce Dept announced that the trade deficit soared to an all time high of $665 billion in 2004; a whopping 25% increase from the previous year. America's gluttonous appetite for cheap foreign goods and its inability to produce more of what it consumes is quickening the country's inevitable day of reckoning. Despite the rosy projections from the Bush clan and their friends in the media, the probability of an economic meltdown becomes more likely every day.
THE GOP IS LIKE A GIANT LEECH ON THE BODY OF AMERICA
If you're feeling listless these days, it may be because the GOP is sucking the life out of ordinary Americans. With their huge tax cuts for the rich, the jobs they've exported, the blocking of lawsuits by ordinary people against big corporations, the destruction of environmental protections, the incredibly cruel bankruptcy bill, the massive deficits, and the unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the GOP is sucking away all that made the United States a great country. Ernest Partridge has an interesting piece that is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
George Bush has said that he wants to run the government like a business. He has achieved his objective, for although Bush was allegedly elected as President of all the people, Bush, Inc. is in effect less a government than it is a vast holding company.
The firm's executive officers are Bush, Cheney, and the Bush Cabinet. The Board of Directors are the Republican Party and the GOP Congressional leadership. The stockholders are the contributors to the Republican campaigns. The accounts receivable to the firm are the federal tax revenues from American citizens, who receive in return poor, if any, government services. Finally, the product of Bush, Inc., is regulatory relief, legislation, and government contracts, all designed to benefit the stockholders.
In almost all instances the dividends to the stockholders are generated and the product is delivered at the expense of those who produce the national wealth - the vast majority of our fellow citizens.
REPUBLICANS CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
According to this story, Congressional Republicans aren't going to hold "town hall" style meetings to promote George W. Bush's Social Security destruction plan. Last month Republicans actually got asked some real and tough questions and we can't have that in Bush world. We can only have those touchy feely propaganda fests where all the questions are softballs. This article by Andrea Stone is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Republicans in Congress have a game plan to avoid "March madness" when they go home this weekend to talk to constituents about Social Security during a two-week holiday recess.
Shaken by raucous protests at open "town hall"-style meetings last month, House Republican Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce of Ohio and other GOP leaders are urging lawmakers to hold lower-profile events this time.
Republicans plan to heed President Bush's call Wednesday "to talk to their constituents not only about the problem, but about solutions" to Social Security's looming financial shortfall. The president wants to allow workers to divert some payroll taxes into private investment accounts.
IT'S RAINING NON SEQUITURS!
There's a local Republican functionary I call Party Hack. Party Hack is known for making inane statements such as comparing Social Security to a Ponzi scheme, among other bright things. In today's Fresno Bee Party Hack was at it again. He was saying we on the left aren't consistent on "choice." We want choice on little matters like reproductive rights, but we take away choice from good old boys like him when it comes to investing. Like any typical Republican, all he really cares about is money.
You could turn the argument around. If Party Hack is such a believer in choice, will he support a woman's right to choose? Will he support the right to assisted suicide? Will he support the legalization of drugs such as marijuana? I doubt it.
More importantly, though, it's almost obscene to compare a personal and intimate choice on abortion rights to investing. There's a world of difference. And the fact is Social Security protects most Americans against becoming totally destitute when they get old. As I've said before, anything that helps ordinary working people is something Republicans hate.
WANT TO LIVE IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY?
If you've ever wondered what it's like to live in one of those poor Third World countries you may not even have to move. The Bush administration's policies are rapidly moving us in that direction. The old saying "sound as a dollar" doesn't mean much these days. The dollar has been growing weaker and weaker against foreign currencies, we're having to borrow billions just to keep the government running, we have lost most of our manufacturing base, we have very little credibility with the rest of the world, and we're bogged down in an endless war in Iraq. Mike Whitney writes about it in an article linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Don't look now, but Bush's house-of-cards economy is about to come crashing to earth. Just yesterday the Commerce Dept announced that the trade deficit soared to an all time high of $665 billion in 2004; a whopping 25% increase from the previous year. America's gluttonous appetite for cheap foreign goods and its inability to produce more of what it consumes is quickening the country's inevitable day of reckoning. Despite the rosy projections from the Bush clan and their friends in the media, the probability of an economic meltdown becomes more likely every day.
THE GOP IS LIKE A GIANT LEECH ON THE BODY OF AMERICA
If you're feeling listless these days, it may be because the GOP is sucking the life out of ordinary Americans. With their huge tax cuts for the rich, the jobs they've exported, the blocking of lawsuits by ordinary people against big corporations, the destruction of environmental protections, the incredibly cruel bankruptcy bill, the massive deficits, and the unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the GOP is sucking away all that made the United States a great country. Ernest Partridge has an interesting piece that is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
George Bush has said that he wants to run the government like a business. He has achieved his objective, for although Bush was allegedly elected as President of all the people, Bush, Inc. is in effect less a government than it is a vast holding company.
The firm's executive officers are Bush, Cheney, and the Bush Cabinet. The Board of Directors are the Republican Party and the GOP Congressional leadership. The stockholders are the contributors to the Republican campaigns. The accounts receivable to the firm are the federal tax revenues from American citizens, who receive in return poor, if any, government services. Finally, the product of Bush, Inc., is regulatory relief, legislation, and government contracts, all designed to benefit the stockholders.
In almost all instances the dividends to the stockholders are generated and the product is delivered at the expense of those who produce the national wealth - the vast majority of our fellow citizens.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
MARCH 16, 2005
HOW MUCH CREDIBILITY DOES GREENSPAN HAVE?
Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman, is a disciple of the loony Ayn Rand, the advocate of selfishness as a virtue. Mr. Greenspan remains unrepentant that he backed George W. Bush's obscene tax cuts for the rich and says he would do it all over again. But he has no qualms about demolishing Social Security. Back in the Reagan years Greenspan advocated--and got--an increase in the payroll tax that targets mostly working class people. That tax increase was intended to buttress Social Security and, in fact, Social Security has been solvent. This story talks about "Mr. Selfishness" Greenspan. The story by Jeannine Aversa is linked at www.sfgate.com:
Alan Greenspan and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton clashed briefly Tuesday over rosy surplus forecasts the Federal Reserve chairman relied on to support President Bush's 2001 tax cuts, estimates that turned out to be considerably off the mark.
"It turns out that we were all wrong," Greenspan conceded at a Senate hearing.
"Just for the record, we were not all wrong, but many people were wrong," Clinton, D-N.Y., quickly shot back.
Greenspan lent critical support for Bush's first-term tax cuts, saying they would stimulate the then-ailing economy. Clinton and many Democrats voted against the tax cuts, arguing that they would mainly benefit the wealthy and that federal deficits would balloon.
RIGHT ON, HERMAN MELVILLE!
I found this quote from Herman Melville at www.makethemaccountable.com. Melville was apparently an astute observer as well as a classic novelist. He must have known some Republicans in his day:
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
- Herman Melville
REPUBLICAN THUGS WANT TO DESTROY ANWR
The Senate in a 51-49 vote is going to allow the oil companies to get their greasy mitts into the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, which will desecrate one of the most pristine places on earth. The oil in ANWR won't even do very much to solve any energy problems in this country. This is just another loathsome action by the loathsome GOP. This article H. Josef Hebert is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush.
The Senate, by a 51-49 vote, rejected an attempt by Democrats and GOP moderates to remove a refuge drilling provision from next year's budget, preventing opponents from using a filibuster - a tactic that has blocked repeated past attempts to open the Alaska refuge to oil companies.
The action, assuming Congress agrees on a budget, clears the way for approving drilling in the refuge later this year, drilling supporters said. The House has not included a similar provision in its budget, so the issue is still subject to negotiations later this year to resolve the difference.
REPUBS IN THE HIP POCKET OF BIG BUSINESS
The absolutely horrible bankruptcy bill the Senate passed is just one of my many goodies Republicans are offering up to big business. The disgracefully low minimum wage isn't going to be increased thanks to Republicans. "Tort reform" gives big business a get out of jail free card. Republicans would like corporations not to pay any taxes at all so you and I can pick up the entire tab. The list goes on and on. This article by Paul Waldman is at www.tompaine.com:
The recently passed bankruptcy bill is just the latest in a line of moves unabashedly serving corporate interests at the expense of ordinary Americans. These are moves that Congress has made with President Bush’s blessing, including limits on class-action lawsuits and voting down an increase in the minimum wage. And they’re just getting warmed up: Next up are moves to limit medical liability (a boon to the insurance industry), and “tax reform"—for which some are actually advocating doing away with corporate taxation altogether. This comes at a time when—according to a General Accounting Office report last year—the corporate share of federal taxes has fallen to its lowest point since 1983 and the second-lowest since 1934.
HOW MUCH CREDIBILITY DOES GREENSPAN HAVE?
Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman, is a disciple of the loony Ayn Rand, the advocate of selfishness as a virtue. Mr. Greenspan remains unrepentant that he backed George W. Bush's obscene tax cuts for the rich and says he would do it all over again. But he has no qualms about demolishing Social Security. Back in the Reagan years Greenspan advocated--and got--an increase in the payroll tax that targets mostly working class people. That tax increase was intended to buttress Social Security and, in fact, Social Security has been solvent. This story talks about "Mr. Selfishness" Greenspan. The story by Jeannine Aversa is linked at www.sfgate.com:
Alan Greenspan and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton clashed briefly Tuesday over rosy surplus forecasts the Federal Reserve chairman relied on to support President Bush's 2001 tax cuts, estimates that turned out to be considerably off the mark.
"It turns out that we were all wrong," Greenspan conceded at a Senate hearing.
"Just for the record, we were not all wrong, but many people were wrong," Clinton, D-N.Y., quickly shot back.
Greenspan lent critical support for Bush's first-term tax cuts, saying they would stimulate the then-ailing economy. Clinton and many Democrats voted against the tax cuts, arguing that they would mainly benefit the wealthy and that federal deficits would balloon.
RIGHT ON, HERMAN MELVILLE!
I found this quote from Herman Melville at www.makethemaccountable.com. Melville was apparently an astute observer as well as a classic novelist. He must have known some Republicans in his day:
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
- Herman Melville
REPUBLICAN THUGS WANT TO DESTROY ANWR
The Senate in a 51-49 vote is going to allow the oil companies to get their greasy mitts into the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, which will desecrate one of the most pristine places on earth. The oil in ANWR won't even do very much to solve any energy problems in this country. This is just another loathsome action by the loathsome GOP. This article H. Josef Hebert is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush.
The Senate, by a 51-49 vote, rejected an attempt by Democrats and GOP moderates to remove a refuge drilling provision from next year's budget, preventing opponents from using a filibuster - a tactic that has blocked repeated past attempts to open the Alaska refuge to oil companies.
The action, assuming Congress agrees on a budget, clears the way for approving drilling in the refuge later this year, drilling supporters said. The House has not included a similar provision in its budget, so the issue is still subject to negotiations later this year to resolve the difference.
REPUBS IN THE HIP POCKET OF BIG BUSINESS
The absolutely horrible bankruptcy bill the Senate passed is just one of my many goodies Republicans are offering up to big business. The disgracefully low minimum wage isn't going to be increased thanks to Republicans. "Tort reform" gives big business a get out of jail free card. Republicans would like corporations not to pay any taxes at all so you and I can pick up the entire tab. The list goes on and on. This article by Paul Waldman is at www.tompaine.com:
The recently passed bankruptcy bill is just the latest in a line of moves unabashedly serving corporate interests at the expense of ordinary Americans. These are moves that Congress has made with President Bush’s blessing, including limits on class-action lawsuits and voting down an increase in the minimum wage. And they’re just getting warmed up: Next up are moves to limit medical liability (a boon to the insurance industry), and “tax reform"—for which some are actually advocating doing away with corporate taxation altogether. This comes at a time when—according to a General Accounting Office report last year—the corporate share of federal taxes has fallen to its lowest point since 1983 and the second-lowest since 1934.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
MARCH 15, 2005
MT. KILIMANJARO SNOW CAP DISAPPEARING
One of the greatest short stories is Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." I don't know what Ernest would have to say these days with the snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro disappearing because of global warming. This is proof once again that global warming is not some fantasy dreamed up by environmental alarmists, but a real and present danger to the entire planet. This story by Jeremy Lovell is linked at www.commondreams.org:
A photo of Mount Kilimanjaro stripped of its snowcap for the first time in 11,000 years will be used as dramatic testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world's biggest polluters meet on Tuesday.
WAGE INEQUALITY A BIGGER THREAT
George W. Bush and his apologists react in horror at the idea of an increase in Social Security taxes (especially on the more affluent), but the wage inequality that has been growing over the past two decades is a bigger threat to most of us. The Center for Economic and Policy Research has some new research showing that the average worker has lost 9% of his or her income due to wage inequality over the past decade. This story is also at www.commondreams.org:
A typical worker lost an amount equal to 9 percent of their wages due to the increase of wage inequality over the last decade. By contrast, the Social Security trustees and the Congressional Budget Office project the size of the tax increase needed to keep Social Security fully solvent over its 75-year planning period as 1.9 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively.
REPUBLICANS AND BIG BUSINESS
The Republican party and big business have been waltzing together for a long time, but the level of venality and greed have never been as bad as they are now. The bankruptcy bill just passed in the Senate is a prime example of that. There is nothing decent in this law, and it certainly wasn't necessary to protect the credit card industry, which had record profits last year. I hope major backlash results from this, that people will stop using credit cards except when absolutely necessary, and that the profits of the credit card industry will crash and burn. This commentary by Robert Scheer is at www.latimes.com:
In the end, these individuals are simply not powerful enough to earn the protection of our by-the-powerful, for-the-powerful government. Creditors can scam consumers, Enron can burn California, Halliburton can gouge the Pentagon, the rich can enjoy obscene tax cuts, our "conservative" president can run up the deficit like a drunken sailor - and none of it seems to faze our elected leaders. For them, "fiscal responsibility" is just a high-minded prescription appropriate only for the commoners.
REAL CRETINS AT WESTCO EQUITIES
There's an apartment management company called WestCo Equities here in Fresno. I've had the dubious "pleasure" of dealing with WestCo a few times now. First, there are the guaranteed annual rent increases. A couple of years ago I was hit with a 16% rent increase in six months. Then, they fired the previous manager and gave her virtually no time to move or find another job. They claimed it was because she went over budget. Now I find out after having the same assigned parking spot for FIVE YEARS I have to park farther away from my apartment. This is just on a whim of the apartment management company.
Since I've lived in this complex, I've had stuff stolen from inside my car and I've had my license plate stolen twice. Recently, the apartment manager left a notice that cars had been vandalized here, but is there any hint that WestCo Equities might provide some security? You guessed it, pal. Now, with cars being vandalized, I have to park even farther away, making my car an even easier target. Way to go, WestCo.
So if you're looking for an apartment in Fresno, I highly recommend avoiding anything managed by WestCo Equities unless you like being treated like gum on the bottom of your shoe.
MT. KILIMANJARO SNOW CAP DISAPPEARING
One of the greatest short stories is Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." I don't know what Ernest would have to say these days with the snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro disappearing because of global warming. This is proof once again that global warming is not some fantasy dreamed up by environmental alarmists, but a real and present danger to the entire planet. This story by Jeremy Lovell is linked at www.commondreams.org:
A photo of Mount Kilimanjaro stripped of its snowcap for the first time in 11,000 years will be used as dramatic testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world's biggest polluters meet on Tuesday.
WAGE INEQUALITY A BIGGER THREAT
George W. Bush and his apologists react in horror at the idea of an increase in Social Security taxes (especially on the more affluent), but the wage inequality that has been growing over the past two decades is a bigger threat to most of us. The Center for Economic and Policy Research has some new research showing that the average worker has lost 9% of his or her income due to wage inequality over the past decade. This story is also at www.commondreams.org:
A typical worker lost an amount equal to 9 percent of their wages due to the increase of wage inequality over the last decade. By contrast, the Social Security trustees and the Congressional Budget Office project the size of the tax increase needed to keep Social Security fully solvent over its 75-year planning period as 1.9 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively.
REPUBLICANS AND BIG BUSINESS
The Republican party and big business have been waltzing together for a long time, but the level of venality and greed have never been as bad as they are now. The bankruptcy bill just passed in the Senate is a prime example of that. There is nothing decent in this law, and it certainly wasn't necessary to protect the credit card industry, which had record profits last year. I hope major backlash results from this, that people will stop using credit cards except when absolutely necessary, and that the profits of the credit card industry will crash and burn. This commentary by Robert Scheer is at www.latimes.com:
In the end, these individuals are simply not powerful enough to earn the protection of our by-the-powerful, for-the-powerful government. Creditors can scam consumers, Enron can burn California, Halliburton can gouge the Pentagon, the rich can enjoy obscene tax cuts, our "conservative" president can run up the deficit like a drunken sailor - and none of it seems to faze our elected leaders. For them, "fiscal responsibility" is just a high-minded prescription appropriate only for the commoners.
REAL CRETINS AT WESTCO EQUITIES
There's an apartment management company called WestCo Equities here in Fresno. I've had the dubious "pleasure" of dealing with WestCo a few times now. First, there are the guaranteed annual rent increases. A couple of years ago I was hit with a 16% rent increase in six months. Then, they fired the previous manager and gave her virtually no time to move or find another job. They claimed it was because she went over budget. Now I find out after having the same assigned parking spot for FIVE YEARS I have to park farther away from my apartment. This is just on a whim of the apartment management company.
Since I've lived in this complex, I've had stuff stolen from inside my car and I've had my license plate stolen twice. Recently, the apartment manager left a notice that cars had been vandalized here, but is there any hint that WestCo Equities might provide some security? You guessed it, pal. Now, with cars being vandalized, I have to park even farther away, making my car an even easier target. Way to go, WestCo.
So if you're looking for an apartment in Fresno, I highly recommend avoiding anything managed by WestCo Equities unless you like being treated like gum on the bottom of your shoe.
Monday, March 14, 2005
MARCH 14, 2005
EVEN DEGREED PEOPLE HAVING HARD TIME FINDING JOBS
It was once thought the path to success in the United States was getting a really good education. Go to college, earn your degree, and you had entree into a profession that could at least give you a middle class lifestyle. That is apparently changing. Even people with degrees are finding it difficult to get jobs now. This story by Nicholas Riccardi is at www.latimes.com:
Dan Gillespie never thought he'd have to look so hard for work.
When the Seattle-area resident left the Air Force in 1980, he earned a computer science degree and enjoyed 20 years of steady work. He saved enough money to buy his wife's childhood home last year.
Three months later, he was laid off.
MAYBE IT'S TIME FOR SOME PERSPECTIVE
According to a new FBI report, al Qaeda may not be the big boogeyman we've been lead to believe. This report even indicates there may not even be any "sleeper" cells in the United States. That doesn't mean we should stop pursuit of al Qaeda and its operatives, but it's absurd to continue an international "war on terror" against what is essentially a criminal organization. We should have treated Osama bin Laden and his band as criminals from the very beginning. Instead, we've depleted our treasury, lost over 1,500 of our military, alienated the world, and killed thousands of innocent civilians. Meanwhile, Osama is still out there. The billions spent in Iraq could have been better spent rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure at home, building a decent educational system, providing homes and healthcare for our people, and shoring up Medicare and Social Security. This story by Raymond Whitaker and Nick Meo is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
A secret FBI report has cast doubt on al-Qa'ida's ability to stage another "spectacular" attack in the US, three and a half years after the 9/11 suicide hijackings and a year after the Madrid bombings, the network's only other major strike in the West.
While the desire of the al-Qa'ida leadership to attack the US was "not in question", the report said, "their capability to do so is unclear, particularly in regard to 'spectacular' operations". Contrary to statements by prosecutors and the FBI's own chief, Robert Mueller, the February report, obtained last week by ABC News, says the agency knows of no al-Qa'ida "sleeper" agents in the US.
AVIATION SECURITY RISKS
A confidential government report concludes that much of U.S. aviation, such as helicopters and general aircraft, remain at risk for attack by terrorists. This story by Eric Lichtblau is at www.nytimes.com:
Despite a huge investment in security, the American aviation system remains vulnerable to attack by Al Qaeda and other jihadist terrorist groups, with noncommercial planes and helicopters offering terrorists particularly tempting targets, a confidential government report concludes.
ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX HITS MIDDLE INCOME TAXPAYERS
The alternative minimum tax was originally enacted to make sure rich people didn't escape all tax liability, but now the tax is increasingly hurting people who make around $70,000-$100,000 a year. When George W. Bush pushed through his mammoth tax cuts for the rich the adustments needed for the alternative minimum tax weren't made. The New York Times talks about the issues involved in an editorial at www.nytimes.com:
When the tax cuts were enacted, no long-term corresponding changes were made to the alternative tax system - even though the administration was well aware that was a recipe for disaster. Not only will many families that thought they were in for lower income taxes wind up feeling shortchanged, some will find that the Bush tax cuts have done nothing at all to cut their taxes.
AH, THE GOOD OLD DAYS
There was a right-wing talk show host I used to listen to occasionally in Fresno. The talk show host said he was a lawyer and had written a novel, which was self-published I believe. One day our talk show host went on a rant about "Get the damned government off my back." His complaint dealt with things like unemployment insurance, Social Security, and regulations on business. I wrote him a hot fax saying it seemed he wanted to go back to the 1920's. His no-response response was, "I didn't live back then." One of the problems with guys like this who condemn any and every government program that benefits working people is that they don't care and don't bother to acquaint themselves with history. We've been a lot better off with programs like Social Security than we were before. This article by Betty Lou R. Terry talks about the "good old days" and is located at www.thetandd.com:
Few people remember the time before Social Security. And, nobody wants to read about it.
Around the home tables and in the gathering places in the town of Brandon, Vermont, the people discussed that horrid President Roosevelt's latest "New Deal" program. The Social Security Bill passed on Aug. 14, 1935. Employers would have to "kick in" money for their employees' retirement. It would ruin businesses. Everybody knew that only the rich retired to a leisure lifestyle, not farmers, tradesmen, or businessmen.
Those same people seemed to forget that in the case of this town, there was the Town Farm, or another name was The Poor House, paid for by these same people. The Town Farm residents had no homes, families or incomes and were "housed" at the farm. They had the minimal necessities, but no medical care.
EVEN DEGREED PEOPLE HAVING HARD TIME FINDING JOBS
It was once thought the path to success in the United States was getting a really good education. Go to college, earn your degree, and you had entree into a profession that could at least give you a middle class lifestyle. That is apparently changing. Even people with degrees are finding it difficult to get jobs now. This story by Nicholas Riccardi is at www.latimes.com:
Dan Gillespie never thought he'd have to look so hard for work.
When the Seattle-area resident left the Air Force in 1980, he earned a computer science degree and enjoyed 20 years of steady work. He saved enough money to buy his wife's childhood home last year.
Three months later, he was laid off.
MAYBE IT'S TIME FOR SOME PERSPECTIVE
According to a new FBI report, al Qaeda may not be the big boogeyman we've been lead to believe. This report even indicates there may not even be any "sleeper" cells in the United States. That doesn't mean we should stop pursuit of al Qaeda and its operatives, but it's absurd to continue an international "war on terror" against what is essentially a criminal organization. We should have treated Osama bin Laden and his band as criminals from the very beginning. Instead, we've depleted our treasury, lost over 1,500 of our military, alienated the world, and killed thousands of innocent civilians. Meanwhile, Osama is still out there. The billions spent in Iraq could have been better spent rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure at home, building a decent educational system, providing homes and healthcare for our people, and shoring up Medicare and Social Security. This story by Raymond Whitaker and Nick Meo is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
A secret FBI report has cast doubt on al-Qa'ida's ability to stage another "spectacular" attack in the US, three and a half years after the 9/11 suicide hijackings and a year after the Madrid bombings, the network's only other major strike in the West.
While the desire of the al-Qa'ida leadership to attack the US was "not in question", the report said, "their capability to do so is unclear, particularly in regard to 'spectacular' operations". Contrary to statements by prosecutors and the FBI's own chief, Robert Mueller, the February report, obtained last week by ABC News, says the agency knows of no al-Qa'ida "sleeper" agents in the US.
AVIATION SECURITY RISKS
A confidential government report concludes that much of U.S. aviation, such as helicopters and general aircraft, remain at risk for attack by terrorists. This story by Eric Lichtblau is at www.nytimes.com:
Despite a huge investment in security, the American aviation system remains vulnerable to attack by Al Qaeda and other jihadist terrorist groups, with noncommercial planes and helicopters offering terrorists particularly tempting targets, a confidential government report concludes.
ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX HITS MIDDLE INCOME TAXPAYERS
The alternative minimum tax was originally enacted to make sure rich people didn't escape all tax liability, but now the tax is increasingly hurting people who make around $70,000-$100,000 a year. When George W. Bush pushed through his mammoth tax cuts for the rich the adustments needed for the alternative minimum tax weren't made. The New York Times talks about the issues involved in an editorial at www.nytimes.com:
When the tax cuts were enacted, no long-term corresponding changes were made to the alternative tax system - even though the administration was well aware that was a recipe for disaster. Not only will many families that thought they were in for lower income taxes wind up feeling shortchanged, some will find that the Bush tax cuts have done nothing at all to cut their taxes.
AH, THE GOOD OLD DAYS
There was a right-wing talk show host I used to listen to occasionally in Fresno. The talk show host said he was a lawyer and had written a novel, which was self-published I believe. One day our talk show host went on a rant about "Get the damned government off my back." His complaint dealt with things like unemployment insurance, Social Security, and regulations on business. I wrote him a hot fax saying it seemed he wanted to go back to the 1920's. His no-response response was, "I didn't live back then." One of the problems with guys like this who condemn any and every government program that benefits working people is that they don't care and don't bother to acquaint themselves with history. We've been a lot better off with programs like Social Security than we were before. This article by Betty Lou R. Terry talks about the "good old days" and is located at www.thetandd.com:
Few people remember the time before Social Security. And, nobody wants to read about it.
Around the home tables and in the gathering places in the town of Brandon, Vermont, the people discussed that horrid President Roosevelt's latest "New Deal" program. The Social Security Bill passed on Aug. 14, 1935. Employers would have to "kick in" money for their employees' retirement. It would ruin businesses. Everybody knew that only the rich retired to a leisure lifestyle, not farmers, tradesmen, or businessmen.
Those same people seemed to forget that in the case of this town, there was the Town Farm, or another name was The Poor House, paid for by these same people. The Town Farm residents had no homes, families or incomes and were "housed" at the farm. They had the minimal necessities, but no medical care.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
MARCH 13, 2005
A LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The propaganda steamroller is that even though George W. Bush lied about the reasons for starting a war against Iraq the outcome is good because democracy is picking up momentum now. Amir Taheri points out that the desire for democracy has a long history in the Middle East. In fact, for decades the United States opposed change in the Middle East so long as people like George W. Bush could deal with the sheiks who controlled the oil. The dynamic changed when Bush and his cronies decided to launch a "war on terrorism" and realized that democracy is the best antidote to terrorism. You could almost give credit to Osama bin Laden, as much as to Bush, for the revived interest in democracy because it was bin Laden's despicable attacks against the U.S. that changed the whole equation in the Middle East. Mr. Taheri's article is at www.arabnews.com:
Popular aspiration for freedom and democracy has a long history in the Middle East. The first democratic movements appeared in Iran and Ottoman Turkey in the 1880s and led to constitutional revolutions that briefly transformed both states into constitutional monarchies. From the 1940s onwards the idea of democracy was pushed aside by that of nationalism in the context of independence movements in some Arab and other Muslim countries. From the mid-1950s socialism, in its various forms, was in the ascendancy. During the Cold War the Soviet bloc encouraged the anti-democratic left while the US threw its weight behind the anti-democratic establishments in place. From the mid-1970s Islamism emerged as an alternative to both the pro-Soviet left and the US-supported ruling elites.
BUSH TOWN HALL MEETINGS ARE A FARCE
Almost from the first day he was in office George W. Bush has kept dissenters away. When he travels to other cities protesters are kept in "First Amendment zones" out of sight of El Presidente. More recently, when he appears at an event all the members of the audience are hand-picked so that no nasty words of dissent are heard. This isn't the way a democracy is run. It makes for good images on TV, of course, which is what Bush and his crowd want. If a real representation of opinion were shown, the images on TV wouldn't be pretty. Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker write about the phony Bush appearances in this article at www.washingtonpost.com:
It sounded as if all of Graceland were clamoring for President Bush's plan to restructure Social Security.
The mostly white audience in this mostly black southern city clapped wildly as Bush took what he called the "presidential roadshow" to its 14th state Friday. He was greeted like Elvis -- adoring fans hooting and hollering, and hanging on his every word.
LOOTING OF IRAQI WEAPONS PLANTS
In the days following the U.S. takeover of Baghdad in 2003 the looting at weapons installations was "systematic," according to this story from The New York Times. Most disturbing, some of the equipment looted can be used to make nuclear bombs. There aren't words sufficient to describe the callousness, greed, and absolute numbing stupidity of the people who started this war. This article by James Glanz and William J. Broad is at www.nytimes.com:
In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.
The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants looking for valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away.
GOVERNMENT MANUFACTURED "NEWS"
Having a cheer-leading and compliant media hasn't been enough for the Bush administration. They put "journalists" like Armstrong Williams on the payroll. Now we learn that spots that have been presented as "news" are in fact propaganda pieces created by the federal government. Bush and company count on Americans getting their "news" from television and accepting this hokum as reality. This article by David Barstow and Robin Stein is at www.nytimes.com:
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
A LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The propaganda steamroller is that even though George W. Bush lied about the reasons for starting a war against Iraq the outcome is good because democracy is picking up momentum now. Amir Taheri points out that the desire for democracy has a long history in the Middle East. In fact, for decades the United States opposed change in the Middle East so long as people like George W. Bush could deal with the sheiks who controlled the oil. The dynamic changed when Bush and his cronies decided to launch a "war on terrorism" and realized that democracy is the best antidote to terrorism. You could almost give credit to Osama bin Laden, as much as to Bush, for the revived interest in democracy because it was bin Laden's despicable attacks against the U.S. that changed the whole equation in the Middle East. Mr. Taheri's article is at www.arabnews.com:
Popular aspiration for freedom and democracy has a long history in the Middle East. The first democratic movements appeared in Iran and Ottoman Turkey in the 1880s and led to constitutional revolutions that briefly transformed both states into constitutional monarchies. From the 1940s onwards the idea of democracy was pushed aside by that of nationalism in the context of independence movements in some Arab and other Muslim countries. From the mid-1950s socialism, in its various forms, was in the ascendancy. During the Cold War the Soviet bloc encouraged the anti-democratic left while the US threw its weight behind the anti-democratic establishments in place. From the mid-1970s Islamism emerged as an alternative to both the pro-Soviet left and the US-supported ruling elites.
BUSH TOWN HALL MEETINGS ARE A FARCE
Almost from the first day he was in office George W. Bush has kept dissenters away. When he travels to other cities protesters are kept in "First Amendment zones" out of sight of El Presidente. More recently, when he appears at an event all the members of the audience are hand-picked so that no nasty words of dissent are heard. This isn't the way a democracy is run. It makes for good images on TV, of course, which is what Bush and his crowd want. If a real representation of opinion were shown, the images on TV wouldn't be pretty. Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker write about the phony Bush appearances in this article at www.washingtonpost.com:
It sounded as if all of Graceland were clamoring for President Bush's plan to restructure Social Security.
The mostly white audience in this mostly black southern city clapped wildly as Bush took what he called the "presidential roadshow" to its 14th state Friday. He was greeted like Elvis -- adoring fans hooting and hollering, and hanging on his every word.
LOOTING OF IRAQI WEAPONS PLANTS
In the days following the U.S. takeover of Baghdad in 2003 the looting at weapons installations was "systematic," according to this story from The New York Times. Most disturbing, some of the equipment looted can be used to make nuclear bombs. There aren't words sufficient to describe the callousness, greed, and absolute numbing stupidity of the people who started this war. This article by James Glanz and William J. Broad is at www.nytimes.com:
In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.
The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants looking for valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away.
GOVERNMENT MANUFACTURED "NEWS"
Having a cheer-leading and compliant media hasn't been enough for the Bush administration. They put "journalists" like Armstrong Williams on the payroll. Now we learn that spots that have been presented as "news" are in fact propaganda pieces created by the federal government. Bush and company count on Americans getting their "news" from television and accepting this hokum as reality. This article by David Barstow and Robin Stein is at www.nytimes.com:
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
MARCH 12, 2005
SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN
The Bush administration and its military apparently didn't have qualms about holding children at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This story says that a boy who said he was twelve was being held, and his brother was also a prisoner. Yeah, kids are such terrorists, aren't they? This story is at www.iol.co.za:
Children held by the United States army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about eight years old, the former commander of the prison has told investigators, according to a transcript.
"He told me he was almost 12," Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."
MC CAIN HAS BEEN PROMOTING BUSH'S SS SCAM
For a time, before I found out much about him, I thought Senator John McCain was somewhat tolerable, even though he's a Republican. But it's obvious that being a Republican should have been enough to alert me not to trust McCain either. There's just something about being a Republican that turns people callous, mean, and untruthful. McCain has recently been out pushing Bush's Social Security disaster, claiming that similar plans have been successful in other countries. That's not true, of course. Joe Conason also makes the point that McCain and other Republicans don't mention that some of these countries, such as Sweden, have things like universal health care. Why isn't McCain promoting that? This article is at www.observor.com:
While comparisons between the Bush privatization scheme and those overseas foreign systems are illusory and false, the urge to look abroad might still prove educational. If conservatives truly think we should learn from those foreign retirement experiments, maybe we should also examine the progressive social and economic policies in countries like Sweden and Britain-such as universal health care, free or subsidized child care, and free or cheap higher education. Why should we imitate their failures and ignore their successes?
WANT TO LEARN CHINESE?
Our balance of trade continues to grow more imbalanced with China holding the cards. We have adopted this inane trade policy that ships manufacturing jobs abroad in order to find cheaper labor. The cheaper labor produces cheap goods, which we purchase. Unfortunately, the jobs that paid middle class wages are evaporating. So many of us don't have much choice but to buy those cheap imported goods. It's a nasty downward spiral. If China pulls the plug, the U.S. economy is going to take a major hit. This story by Elizabeth Becker is at www.nytimes.com:
The United States trade deficit hit $58.3 billion, its second-highest level on record in January, defying predictions that a weakened dollar and lower oil prices would improve the American trade picture.
Instead, American consumers continued to buy foreign-made goods at a record pace, including cars, electronics and business equipment, helping to increase the trade deficit by 4.5 percent from $55.7 billion in December, the Commerce Department reported today.
GIVE CORPORATIONS TAX BREAKS; THEY GIVE US THE SHAFT
Corporations have for the past few decades practiced a form of extortion. They use the threat of taking away jobs unless they get goodies from state and local governments. We subsidize corporations in many ways, from the infrastructure that provides airports and highways, police and fire departments, and a legal system. We subsidize them with public education. The way they thank us is to take their tax cuts and still cut jobs at home. This article by Steven D. Jones and Michael Rapoport is at online.wsj.com:
There is more evidence that a tax break intended to boost U.S. jobs isn't getting the job done.
Consider several major companies that say they are considering bringing home hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign profits under a tax holiday that is part of the American Jobs Creation Act passed last year. These include National Semiconductor Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. -- all of which recently cut staff. These companies' example calls into question how effective "repatriation" will be in spurring new jobs, adding to already reported concerns about the wiggle room the law gives companies in how to spend the money.
WORTHLESS IOU'S?
All kinds of absurd arguments have been thrown out by the right wing to justify the destruction of Social Security. I had the dubious pleasure of watching CNN for several hours and seeing anti-Social Security ads comparing the program to the cruise ship Titanic crashing into an iceberg and sinking. That analogy could more properly fit Bush's budgets and the horrendous deficits they're creating. But one of the most absurd arguments is that the bonds backing Social Security are "worthless pieces of paper." If that's so, then the whole U.S. financial system is based on "worthless pieces of paper." This little item comes from www.reachm.com:
Explain to them that if the United States Bonds and Treasury Bills that make up the Social Security trust fund are “worthless IOU’s,” then so is this twenty dollar bill.
You see, Gvt. bonds, t-bills and this twenty are all inherently worthless pieces of paper with some printing on them. They have no real, intrinsic value.
Their only value comes from being backed by the “full faith and credit” of the United States.
So, in essence, what the Bush monkeys and Bush himself are saying is that you just can’t count on the “full faith and credit of the United States.”
SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN
The Bush administration and its military apparently didn't have qualms about holding children at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This story says that a boy who said he was twelve was being held, and his brother was also a prisoner. Yeah, kids are such terrorists, aren't they? This story is at www.iol.co.za:
Children held by the United States army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about eight years old, the former commander of the prison has told investigators, according to a transcript.
"He told me he was almost 12," Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."
MC CAIN HAS BEEN PROMOTING BUSH'S SS SCAM
For a time, before I found out much about him, I thought Senator John McCain was somewhat tolerable, even though he's a Republican. But it's obvious that being a Republican should have been enough to alert me not to trust McCain either. There's just something about being a Republican that turns people callous, mean, and untruthful. McCain has recently been out pushing Bush's Social Security disaster, claiming that similar plans have been successful in other countries. That's not true, of course. Joe Conason also makes the point that McCain and other Republicans don't mention that some of these countries, such as Sweden, have things like universal health care. Why isn't McCain promoting that? This article is at www.observor.com:
While comparisons between the Bush privatization scheme and those overseas foreign systems are illusory and false, the urge to look abroad might still prove educational. If conservatives truly think we should learn from those foreign retirement experiments, maybe we should also examine the progressive social and economic policies in countries like Sweden and Britain-such as universal health care, free or subsidized child care, and free or cheap higher education. Why should we imitate their failures and ignore their successes?
WANT TO LEARN CHINESE?
Our balance of trade continues to grow more imbalanced with China holding the cards. We have adopted this inane trade policy that ships manufacturing jobs abroad in order to find cheaper labor. The cheaper labor produces cheap goods, which we purchase. Unfortunately, the jobs that paid middle class wages are evaporating. So many of us don't have much choice but to buy those cheap imported goods. It's a nasty downward spiral. If China pulls the plug, the U.S. economy is going to take a major hit. This story by Elizabeth Becker is at www.nytimes.com:
The United States trade deficit hit $58.3 billion, its second-highest level on record in January, defying predictions that a weakened dollar and lower oil prices would improve the American trade picture.
Instead, American consumers continued to buy foreign-made goods at a record pace, including cars, electronics and business equipment, helping to increase the trade deficit by 4.5 percent from $55.7 billion in December, the Commerce Department reported today.
GIVE CORPORATIONS TAX BREAKS; THEY GIVE US THE SHAFT
Corporations have for the past few decades practiced a form of extortion. They use the threat of taking away jobs unless they get goodies from state and local governments. We subsidize corporations in many ways, from the infrastructure that provides airports and highways, police and fire departments, and a legal system. We subsidize them with public education. The way they thank us is to take their tax cuts and still cut jobs at home. This article by Steven D. Jones and Michael Rapoport is at online.wsj.com:
There is more evidence that a tax break intended to boost U.S. jobs isn't getting the job done.
Consider several major companies that say they are considering bringing home hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign profits under a tax holiday that is part of the American Jobs Creation Act passed last year. These include National Semiconductor Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. -- all of which recently cut staff. These companies' example calls into question how effective "repatriation" will be in spurring new jobs, adding to already reported concerns about the wiggle room the law gives companies in how to spend the money.
WORTHLESS IOU'S?
All kinds of absurd arguments have been thrown out by the right wing to justify the destruction of Social Security. I had the dubious pleasure of watching CNN for several hours and seeing anti-Social Security ads comparing the program to the cruise ship Titanic crashing into an iceberg and sinking. That analogy could more properly fit Bush's budgets and the horrendous deficits they're creating. But one of the most absurd arguments is that the bonds backing Social Security are "worthless pieces of paper." If that's so, then the whole U.S. financial system is based on "worthless pieces of paper." This little item comes from www.reachm.com:
Explain to them that if the United States Bonds and Treasury Bills that make up the Social Security trust fund are “worthless IOU’s,” then so is this twenty dollar bill.
You see, Gvt. bonds, t-bills and this twenty are all inherently worthless pieces of paper with some printing on them. They have no real, intrinsic value.
Their only value comes from being backed by the “full faith and credit” of the United States.
So, in essence, what the Bush monkeys and Bush himself are saying is that you just can’t count on the “full faith and credit of the United States.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)