May 31, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE DEADLY SPIRAL
We've learned now that U.S. Marines slaughtered innocent Iraqi civilians, including young children, last November in retaliation for the death of a comrade. This is the face of war in all its ugly barbarity. It's all the more sickening because this war was never necessary. And now it's like flypaper. It seems there's no way out, according to the pundit class in this country. They talk about "cut and running" and other nonsense. The alternative is to stay in Iraq with our military caught in the crossfire of a civil war. Our staying there is accomplishing absolutely nothing except recruiting generations of people who will hate the United States. Bob Herbert writes about Iraq in this column linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/bh/bh207.shtml:
Now we get word that U.S. marines may have murdered two dozen Iraqis in cold blood last November.
No one should be surprised that such an atrocity could occur. That's what happens in war. The killing gets out of control, which is yet another reason why it's important to have mature leaders who will do everything possible to avoid war, rather than cavalierly sending the young and the healthy off to combat as if it were no more serious an enterprise than a big-time sporting event.
Nothing new came out of the Bush-Blair press conference. After more than three years these two men are as clueless as ever about what to do in Iraq. Are we doomed to follow the same pointless script for the next three years? And for three years after that?
Leadership does not get more pathetic than this. Once there was F.D.R. and Churchill. Now there's Bush and Blair.
THE LIES ABOUT THE ESTATE TAX
If you believed Republicans, you'd think the estate tax was like those old silent movie villains who tie the pretty young widow to the railroad tracks. You hear this incredible gnashing of teeth about the loss of family farms and the insidiousness of the "death tax." It's all malarkey, of course. The estate tax has been an important bulwark against the development of a permanent aristocracy in the United States. We don't call people earls and knights and lords in this country, but we may as well if we keep slashing taxes for the rich and making society more and more unequal. Katrina vanden Huevel writes about it in this column at www.thenation.com:
Senator Bill Frist has promised a vote to repeal the estate tax soon after Memorial Day and the spin on this issue is as egregious as it is outrageous. So let's get one thing straight: it's not a "Death Tax" and it has absolutely nothing to do with the Family Farm.
Here are the facts: the estate tax is levied only on estates worth over $2 million ($4 million for couples), which means approximately one-fourth of one percent of all estates on America will pay it in 2006. Over 99 percent of all Americans will pass their estates on to their heirs completely tax free - and there is no tax whatsoever on assets left to a spouse no matter the amount.
The anti-estate tax American Farm Bureau Federation could not find a single case of a family farm lost due to the tax. (Moreover, if there were any evidence of such problems down the road one could easily protect family farms and small businesses by raising the exemption level.)
Saturday, May 27, 2006
May 27, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS
In his gleeful march to war George W. Bush is responsible for the deaths of countless innocents. He is also responsible for demoralizing our military, sending them where they should never have been deployed, giving them inadequate equipment, and cutting their benefits here at home. We have used horrific weapons such as white phosphorous, we have tortured, and now there is a story of Marines going on a rampage and slaughtering families, including children, because they were reacting to the death of a friend. Bush has dragged us down. This column by Maureen Dowd is at rozius.blogspot.com:
So I felt sickened to hear about the marines who allegedly snapped in Haditha, Iraq, and wantonly killed two dozen civilians — including two families full of women and children, among them a 3-year-old girl. Nine-year-old Eman Waleed told Time that she'd watched the marines go in to execute her father as he read the Koran, and then shoot her grandfather and grandmother, still in their nightclothes. Other members of her family, including her mother, were shot dead; she said that she and her younger brother had been wounded but survived because they were shielded by adults who died.
It's a My Lai acid flashback. The force that sacked Saddam to stop him from killing innocents is now accused of killing innocents. Under pressure from the president to restore law, but making little progress, marines from Camp Pendleton, many deployed in Iraq for the third time, reportedly resorted to lawlessness themselves.
The investigation indicates that members of the Third Battalion, First Marines, lost it after one of their men was killed by a roadside bomb, going on a vengeful killing spree over about five hours, shooting five men who had been riding in a taxi and mowing down the residents of two nearby houses.
THE ECONOMY IS NOT SO GREAT
The right-wing punditocracy will throw out a few statistics and claim that the U.S. economy is just wonderful. It's not that great for most of us. We're seeing the cost of almost everything increase, but our wages are remaining flat or falling. This article has some good statistics about the economy most of us face. The article by Todd Huffman is at www.opednews.com:
Tired of hearing as if a broken record the same old line from Bush Incorporated (oops, I mean the White House) about how well our economy is growing and creating new jobs? Feeling at a loss at how to counter this wash, rinse and spin of economic statistics? Want to know what to say to your Republican relatives at the annual family picnic this summer? Glad to help. Here’s some sobering facts about the U.S. economy under George W. Bush and his Republican cronies:
*Despite reasonably solid overall economic growth in the U.S. since the 2001 recession, average incomes after adjusting for inflation have been steadily falling. From 2001 to 2004, the average American income fell 2.3%, after increasing 17.3% from 1998 to 2001, and 12.3% from 1995 to 1998.
*The median, or “typical”, household income in 2004 was $43,200, up just 1.6% since 2001, a rate of growth slower than the inflation rate, which means that the median household income actually fell during Bush’s first term in office.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS
In his gleeful march to war George W. Bush is responsible for the deaths of countless innocents. He is also responsible for demoralizing our military, sending them where they should never have been deployed, giving them inadequate equipment, and cutting their benefits here at home. We have used horrific weapons such as white phosphorous, we have tortured, and now there is a story of Marines going on a rampage and slaughtering families, including children, because they were reacting to the death of a friend. Bush has dragged us down. This column by Maureen Dowd is at rozius.blogspot.com:
So I felt sickened to hear about the marines who allegedly snapped in Haditha, Iraq, and wantonly killed two dozen civilians — including two families full of women and children, among them a 3-year-old girl. Nine-year-old Eman Waleed told Time that she'd watched the marines go in to execute her father as he read the Koran, and then shoot her grandfather and grandmother, still in their nightclothes. Other members of her family, including her mother, were shot dead; she said that she and her younger brother had been wounded but survived because they were shielded by adults who died.
It's a My Lai acid flashback. The force that sacked Saddam to stop him from killing innocents is now accused of killing innocents. Under pressure from the president to restore law, but making little progress, marines from Camp Pendleton, many deployed in Iraq for the third time, reportedly resorted to lawlessness themselves.
The investigation indicates that members of the Third Battalion, First Marines, lost it after one of their men was killed by a roadside bomb, going on a vengeful killing spree over about five hours, shooting five men who had been riding in a taxi and mowing down the residents of two nearby houses.
THE ECONOMY IS NOT SO GREAT
The right-wing punditocracy will throw out a few statistics and claim that the U.S. economy is just wonderful. It's not that great for most of us. We're seeing the cost of almost everything increase, but our wages are remaining flat or falling. This article has some good statistics about the economy most of us face. The article by Todd Huffman is at www.opednews.com:
Tired of hearing as if a broken record the same old line from Bush Incorporated (oops, I mean the White House) about how well our economy is growing and creating new jobs? Feeling at a loss at how to counter this wash, rinse and spin of economic statistics? Want to know what to say to your Republican relatives at the annual family picnic this summer? Glad to help. Here’s some sobering facts about the U.S. economy under George W. Bush and his Republican cronies:
*Despite reasonably solid overall economic growth in the U.S. since the 2001 recession, average incomes after adjusting for inflation have been steadily falling. From 2001 to 2004, the average American income fell 2.3%, after increasing 17.3% from 1998 to 2001, and 12.3% from 1995 to 1998.
*The median, or “typical”, household income in 2004 was $43,200, up just 1.6% since 2001, a rate of growth slower than the inflation rate, which means that the median household income actually fell during Bush’s first term in office.
Friday, May 26, 2006
May 26, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
DISPOSABLE WORKERS
In this column Bob Herbert writes about disposable workers, the thousands upon thousands of us who have been downsized in this economy. Policy makers try to make it sound like it's our fault. We didn't get the necessary education or acquire the necessary skills, the line goes. Lack of skills and education isn't the problem. This column is linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/bh/bh206.shtml:
At the heart of the layoff phenomenon is the myth, endlessly repeated by corporate leaders and politicians of both parties, that workers who are thrown out of their jobs can save themselves, can latch onto spiffy new jobs by becoming better educated and acquiring new skills.
"Education and training create the jobs, according to this way of thinking," writes Mr. Uchitelle. "Or, put another way, a job materializes for every trained or educated worker, a job commensurate with his or her skills, for which he or she is appropriately paid."
That is just not so, and the corporate and political elite need to stop feeding that bogus line to the public.
There is no doubt that the better-educated and better-trained get better jobs. But the reality is that there are not enough good jobs currently available to meet the demand of college-educated and well-trained workers in the United States, which is why so many are working in jobs for which they are overqualified.
THE HORROR OF UNREGULATED CAPITALISM
It's only fitting that Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted. Enron was a despicable company that jobbed the energy market, and they hurt countless innocent people in the process. I remember rolling blackouts all too well. We have Enron executives on tape laughing about how they're ripping off people. But this goes beyond Enron. It shows the dangers of unregulated capitalism. This article by Wallace Roberts is at www.commondreams.org:
Despite the conviction of a couple of bad apples at Enron, its top management is not the real culprit in this case. The real culprit is a bad idea: deregulation of the natural gas and electric power industries.
Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the former chairman and CEO respectively, can be said to be just "sharp traders," businessmen who did what the free market demands of rational players: take advantage of every loophole they could find to make a profit.
Early in 2004, Jacqueline Lang Weaver, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, wrote, "In competitive electricity markets, participants can exploit legal loopholes or use market power to make millions of dollars in profits in a very short time period, and there is every reason to expect them to do so; it is the very nature of profit-based, market capitalism."
Enron played a unique role in deregulation, Weaver said, and the company’s subsequent collapse was, in some important respects, a product of its genius in creating "a business model that tracked the opening of deregulated energy markets…and was accompanied by a powerful and well-financed political lobbying arm that worked to push government regulation out of the markets."
RELIGION AND CENSORSHIP
Some Bible believers are up in arms about the new movie "The Da Vinci Code," which has the premise that Jesus Christ was married and fathered children. The book and movie also make the argument that Jesus wasn't considered divine by his earliest followers. The Catholic Church, in particular, has criticized the book and the movie, partly because they paint an unfavorable picture of Opus Dei. This is an interesting article about the historical facts surrounding Jesus Christ and the controversy over the movie. The article by Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D. is at www.onlinejournal.com:
Even before Ron Howard’s film version of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code hit the theaters, the Catholic Church and the Christian Right were disparaging and preparing “to Defend Against the ‘Code’.” Interesting how those whose dogma forbids independent thought and embraces only unconscious, unquestioning acceptance and obedience are so fearful of a movie that just might make people think.
Philadelphia’s Cardinal Rigali was “not telling anyone they shouldn’t see the movie, but ‘It would be odd for Christians, without some particular reason, to go and support financially this project, which is enormous.’”
Bishop Donald Wuerl, who will replace Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in June, advised Roman Catholics who want to see The Da Vinci Code to read the New Testament gospels first. His reasoning, so they will know “what actually happened.” Wuerl confessed he started but could not finish reading the novel because he found it “so unrelated to the reality of the church.”
Despite Wuerl’s and others’ claims to absolute, definitive knowledge (itself a preposterous proposition), no one knows “what actually happened.” And as for the “reality of the church,” does he mean the historical and still clandestine workings and machinations of Opus Dei? Perhaps he means the conspiracy to cover up decades of pedophilia by priests. Or perhaps he means the Vatican’s ongoing refusal to recognize the social realities of life in the twenty-first century.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
DISPOSABLE WORKERS
In this column Bob Herbert writes about disposable workers, the thousands upon thousands of us who have been downsized in this economy. Policy makers try to make it sound like it's our fault. We didn't get the necessary education or acquire the necessary skills, the line goes. Lack of skills and education isn't the problem. This column is linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/bh/bh206.shtml:
At the heart of the layoff phenomenon is the myth, endlessly repeated by corporate leaders and politicians of both parties, that workers who are thrown out of their jobs can save themselves, can latch onto spiffy new jobs by becoming better educated and acquiring new skills.
"Education and training create the jobs, according to this way of thinking," writes Mr. Uchitelle. "Or, put another way, a job materializes for every trained or educated worker, a job commensurate with his or her skills, for which he or she is appropriately paid."
That is just not so, and the corporate and political elite need to stop feeding that bogus line to the public.
There is no doubt that the better-educated and better-trained get better jobs. But the reality is that there are not enough good jobs currently available to meet the demand of college-educated and well-trained workers in the United States, which is why so many are working in jobs for which they are overqualified.
THE HORROR OF UNREGULATED CAPITALISM
It's only fitting that Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted. Enron was a despicable company that jobbed the energy market, and they hurt countless innocent people in the process. I remember rolling blackouts all too well. We have Enron executives on tape laughing about how they're ripping off people. But this goes beyond Enron. It shows the dangers of unregulated capitalism. This article by Wallace Roberts is at www.commondreams.org:
Despite the conviction of a couple of bad apples at Enron, its top management is not the real culprit in this case. The real culprit is a bad idea: deregulation of the natural gas and electric power industries.
Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the former chairman and CEO respectively, can be said to be just "sharp traders," businessmen who did what the free market demands of rational players: take advantage of every loophole they could find to make a profit.
Early in 2004, Jacqueline Lang Weaver, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, wrote, "In competitive electricity markets, participants can exploit legal loopholes or use market power to make millions of dollars in profits in a very short time period, and there is every reason to expect them to do so; it is the very nature of profit-based, market capitalism."
Enron played a unique role in deregulation, Weaver said, and the company’s subsequent collapse was, in some important respects, a product of its genius in creating "a business model that tracked the opening of deregulated energy markets…and was accompanied by a powerful and well-financed political lobbying arm that worked to push government regulation out of the markets."
RELIGION AND CENSORSHIP
Some Bible believers are up in arms about the new movie "The Da Vinci Code," which has the premise that Jesus Christ was married and fathered children. The book and movie also make the argument that Jesus wasn't considered divine by his earliest followers. The Catholic Church, in particular, has criticized the book and the movie, partly because they paint an unfavorable picture of Opus Dei. This is an interesting article about the historical facts surrounding Jesus Christ and the controversy over the movie. The article by Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D. is at www.onlinejournal.com:
Even before Ron Howard’s film version of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code hit the theaters, the Catholic Church and the Christian Right were disparaging and preparing “to Defend Against the ‘Code’.” Interesting how those whose dogma forbids independent thought and embraces only unconscious, unquestioning acceptance and obedience are so fearful of a movie that just might make people think.
Philadelphia’s Cardinal Rigali was “not telling anyone they shouldn’t see the movie, but ‘It would be odd for Christians, without some particular reason, to go and support financially this project, which is enormous.’”
Bishop Donald Wuerl, who will replace Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in June, advised Roman Catholics who want to see The Da Vinci Code to read the New Testament gospels first. His reasoning, so they will know “what actually happened.” Wuerl confessed he started but could not finish reading the novel because he found it “so unrelated to the reality of the church.”
Despite Wuerl’s and others’ claims to absolute, definitive knowledge (itself a preposterous proposition), no one knows “what actually happened.” And as for the “reality of the church,” does he mean the historical and still clandestine workings and machinations of Opus Dei? Perhaps he means the conspiracy to cover up decades of pedophilia by priests. Or perhaps he means the Vatican’s ongoing refusal to recognize the social realities of life in the twenty-first century.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
May 24, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CATO INSTITUTE REPORT ON BUSH'S ABUSES
I don't agree with the Cato Institute on much of anything, but I do applaud them for releasing a report outlining the many Constitutional abuses by George W. Bush and his administration. This administration has used the "war on terror" as an excuse to trample our civil liberties time and time again. We are dangerously close to giving the federal government totalitarian power. This item is at www.talkleft.com:
.... far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad ....
PROTECTING ENVIRONMENT GOOD BUSINESS
I don't like Wal-Mart. I don't shop at Wal-Mart. I hope I never shop at Wal-Mart. But it's a pleasant surprise that even Wal-Mart is talking about the dangers of global climate change. It's not because Wal-Mart cares about the environment. It's because global climate change can really have adverse affects on business. This column by Mark Morford is at www.commondreams.org:
There has been, to date, very little good to say about this most voracious and powerful of low-end, trashy retailers, and certainly nothing from anyone even remotely concerned with the health of the planet and of the attuned consumers who inhabit it. Wal-Mart has always been, quite appropriately, the devil.
Until now. As juicy and warmhearted eco-blog Treehugger mentions in its latest Wal-Mart roundup (and as the New York Times later discussed in its huge "Business of Green" section last week), it seems that back in October, Wal-Mart's president, Lee Scott, delivered a "secret" speech to employees about "21st Century Leadership," in which he outlined a whole slew of what can only be called truly remarkable and potentially world-altering agenda items to help ensure the future health of the world's biggest shopping hell.
And what a speech it was. Packed with all sorts of pledges and goals of such a green and sustainable and forward-thinking nature it might as well have been floating on boats of tofu on waves of Sierra Club blown by winds of Utne Reader. It was, in a word, surreal. And if even half of it is true, more than a little revolutionary.
There was talk of stores eventually being supplied with 100-percent renewable energy. Talk of ultimately creating zero waste, of pledging to reduce packaging materials across the board and create more recyclables and replace PVC packaging in all Wal-Mart branded items with more eco-friendly materials. And when you're talking megatons of plastic, that's saying a lot.
CHAVEZ STEPPED UP
While fuel prices skyrocket George W. Bush does the equivalent of scraping Nero's fiddle. Bush is always quick to tout the "market" and say oh me, oh my, I just can't interfere with the "market." That's even when poor people in this country suffer, sometimes even die, from the inaction of the federal government. So it's admirable that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez stepped up and provided discounted or free heating oil for American citizens. This story by Audrey Sasson is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced last September that he wanted to help low income Americans cover the costs of their rising heating bills, his critics were quick to question the sincerity of his motivations. Was he saying this just to get a rise out of his diplomatic rival, President Bush? Would he actually deliver on such a 'populist' promise? But only a couple of months later, he launched a pilot program in the Bronx to transform rhetoric into action. Through the Venezuelan-owned, American-based Citgo Petroleum Corporation, Chavez has provided 181,000 American households with 40 million gallons of heating oil at a 40 percent discount, as well as free heating oil to hundreds of homeless shelters across the Northeast.
While she was aware of Chavez's promise, Bronx resident T. Patrice White-McGleese never imagined that she and her family would ultimately benefit from the plan. "I would never have thought that they would just happen to choose The Bronx... and of the three CDCs [Community Development Corporations] they picked, I happen to live in one," she says enthusiastically. "C'mon, what are the odds?" Since its inception, the program has expanded to include communities in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Maine.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CATO INSTITUTE REPORT ON BUSH'S ABUSES
I don't agree with the Cato Institute on much of anything, but I do applaud them for releasing a report outlining the many Constitutional abuses by George W. Bush and his administration. This administration has used the "war on terror" as an excuse to trample our civil liberties time and time again. We are dangerously close to giving the federal government totalitarian power. This item is at www.talkleft.com:
.... far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad ....
PROTECTING ENVIRONMENT GOOD BUSINESS
I don't like Wal-Mart. I don't shop at Wal-Mart. I hope I never shop at Wal-Mart. But it's a pleasant surprise that even Wal-Mart is talking about the dangers of global climate change. It's not because Wal-Mart cares about the environment. It's because global climate change can really have adverse affects on business. This column by Mark Morford is at www.commondreams.org:
There has been, to date, very little good to say about this most voracious and powerful of low-end, trashy retailers, and certainly nothing from anyone even remotely concerned with the health of the planet and of the attuned consumers who inhabit it. Wal-Mart has always been, quite appropriately, the devil.
Until now. As juicy and warmhearted eco-blog Treehugger mentions in its latest Wal-Mart roundup (and as the New York Times later discussed in its huge "Business of Green" section last week), it seems that back in October, Wal-Mart's president, Lee Scott, delivered a "secret" speech to employees about "21st Century Leadership," in which he outlined a whole slew of what can only be called truly remarkable and potentially world-altering agenda items to help ensure the future health of the world's biggest shopping hell.
And what a speech it was. Packed with all sorts of pledges and goals of such a green and sustainable and forward-thinking nature it might as well have been floating on boats of tofu on waves of Sierra Club blown by winds of Utne Reader. It was, in a word, surreal. And if even half of it is true, more than a little revolutionary.
There was talk of stores eventually being supplied with 100-percent renewable energy. Talk of ultimately creating zero waste, of pledging to reduce packaging materials across the board and create more recyclables and replace PVC packaging in all Wal-Mart branded items with more eco-friendly materials. And when you're talking megatons of plastic, that's saying a lot.
CHAVEZ STEPPED UP
While fuel prices skyrocket George W. Bush does the equivalent of scraping Nero's fiddle. Bush is always quick to tout the "market" and say oh me, oh my, I just can't interfere with the "market." That's even when poor people in this country suffer, sometimes even die, from the inaction of the federal government. So it's admirable that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez stepped up and provided discounted or free heating oil for American citizens. This story by Audrey Sasson is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced last September that he wanted to help low income Americans cover the costs of their rising heating bills, his critics were quick to question the sincerity of his motivations. Was he saying this just to get a rise out of his diplomatic rival, President Bush? Would he actually deliver on such a 'populist' promise? But only a couple of months later, he launched a pilot program in the Bronx to transform rhetoric into action. Through the Venezuelan-owned, American-based Citgo Petroleum Corporation, Chavez has provided 181,000 American households with 40 million gallons of heating oil at a 40 percent discount, as well as free heating oil to hundreds of homeless shelters across the Northeast.
While she was aware of Chavez's promise, Bronx resident T. Patrice White-McGleese never imagined that she and her family would ultimately benefit from the plan. "I would never have thought that they would just happen to choose The Bronx... and of the three CDCs [Community Development Corporations] they picked, I happen to live in one," she says enthusiastically. "C'mon, what are the odds?" Since its inception, the program has expanded to include communities in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Maine.
Monday, May 22, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
TIME TO BID LIEBERMAN ADIOS
Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, Democrat in name only, is a prime example of how so many Congressional Democrats have betrayed their constituents by supporting George W. Bush time after time after time. Lieberman has supported Republicans on the Iraq war, on destruction of Social Security, and on government intervention into the Terri Schiavo case. It's time for Joe and other phony Democrats to be sent packing. This column by Paul Krugman is linked at jurassicpork.blogspot.com:
What happened to Mr. Lieberman? Some news reports may lead you to believe that he is in trouble solely because of his support for the Iraq war. But there's much more to it than that. Mr. Lieberman has consistently supported Republican talking points. This has made him a lion of the Sunday talk shows, but has put him out of touch with his constituents — and with reality.
Mr. Lieberman isn't the only nationally known Democrat who still supports the Iraq war. But he isn't just an unrepentant hawk, he has joined the Bush administration by insisting on an upbeat picture of the situation in Iraq that is increasingly delusional.
Moreover, Mr. Lieberman has supported the attempt to label questions about why we invaded Iraq and criticism of the administration's policies since the invasion as unpatriotic. How else is one to interpret his warning, late last year, that "it is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be Commander-in-Chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation's peril"?
TAX CUT SNAKE OIL
Any time you talk taxes you'll get a bleeding heart conservative moaning about the horrible way we treat the rich. Those folks are just getting taxed to death, to hear right-wingers tell it. But as the Bush train wreck continues rolling out more tax cuts for the haves and the have-mores it's a little hard to claim the rich are getting soaked by the tax man. While the incomes of the very wealthy have skyrocketed, the incomes of most of us are stagnant. We're getting virtually nothing from Bush's tax cuts except deficits that will be passed to our children and our grandchildren. This article by David R. Francis is at www.csmonitor.com:
Jared Bernstein, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, uses two words to describe the conservative argument that tax cuts making the rich richer will grow the economy faster and therefore pay for itself in government revenues: "snake oil."
Mr. Bernstein cites economic studies indicating that, particularly in a time of federal deficits, tax cuts for the rich have no special economic benefit for the nation. Rather, they raise interest rates higher than they might otherwise be.
"Someone is trying to sell you magic beans," Bernstein says. "Pixie dust."
He suspects one reason Americans tolerate tax cuts favoring the wealthy is that many anticipate becoming rich themselves and thereby benefiting.
Americans tell themselves that tomorrow, "I, too, will be a fat cat," Bernstein says. But that probability is "tiny."
Sunday, May 21, 2006
May 21, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MINIMUM WAGE IS A MORAL ISSUE
Republicans have made much of being about "family values," but you wonder what kind of families and what kind of values. Congressmen who consistently raise their own salaries or provide huge tax cuts for fat cats don't have a problem with people working full time and living below the poverty line. It's not only the rankest hypocrisy, it's immoral. This article by Holly Sklar and Rev. Paul Sherry is at www.commondreams.org:
The Golden Rule—the ethic of reciprocity—is the most universal moral value: Do to others what you would have them do to you.
Violating the Golden Rule, CEO pay has risen astronomically, while a growing number of workers can't make ends meet on salaries above the minimum wage, much less at $10,712 a year. Violating the Golden Rule, Congress has taken eight pay raises since 1997, bringing their pay to $165,200, while giving none to minimum wage workers who make just $10,712 a year.
Clearly, the minimum wage has become a poverty wage rather than an anti-poverty wage. The federal minimum wage buys less today than it did when Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton opened his first Walton's 5-and-10 in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1951. Adjusted for inflation, today's minimum wage is $4 an hour less than it was in 1968. It takes nearly two workers earning the federal minimum wage to make what one worker made four decades ago.
When the minimum wage is stuck in quicksand, it drags down wages for workers up the pay scale as well. Between 1968 and 2005, worker productivity rose 111 percent, but the average hourly wage fell 5 percent, adjusted for inflation—and the minimum wage fell 43 percent. Workers are not getting their fair share of rising productivity. This discrepancy underscores how our economy is not working for working people.
NAFTA AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
The push for globalization with treaties such as NAFTA and GATT has hurt American workers and it is devastating workers in other countries. Mexico is a prime example. Globalization is one of the major reasons we've seen a flood of illegal Mexican immigration into the United States. People are doing what they have to do to survive. If we care about illegal immigration, a good first step would be to junk NAFTA and take a hard look at free trade policies. This article by Jeff Faux is at www.commondreams.org:
This was not supposed to happen. Thirteen years ago, when illegal immigration from Mexico across a less-protected border was half of what it is today, we were assured that the North American Free Trade Agreement would transform Mexico into a prosperous middle-class society. "There will be less illegal immigration," promised President Bill Clinton, "because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home." Mexican President Carlos Salinas told Americans it was a choice between getting Mexican tomatoes or tomato pickers.
But NAFTA did not deliver. Mexico has grown too slowly to create enough jobs for its people, and the benefits of trade have largely gone to the wealthy, making it one of the most unequal societies in Latin America. Moreover, the agreement flooded Mexico with highly subsidized U.S. and Canadian grain, driving between 1 million and 2 million Mexican farmers off the land and adding to the supply of desperate Mexicans looking for work.
NAFTA stands in vivid contrast to the experience of the economic integration of Western Europe, which actually provided for free migration among the participating nations. Originally there was great fear that Germany, France and the other rich economies would be flooded with workers from Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece. To avoid this, the European community provided funds for economic development programs, which stimulated job growth in the poorer nations and insisted on domestic reforms that assured that the economic growth would be broadly shared. The result was that the people of the poorer nations stayed home and prospered.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MINIMUM WAGE IS A MORAL ISSUE
Republicans have made much of being about "family values," but you wonder what kind of families and what kind of values. Congressmen who consistently raise their own salaries or provide huge tax cuts for fat cats don't have a problem with people working full time and living below the poverty line. It's not only the rankest hypocrisy, it's immoral. This article by Holly Sklar and Rev. Paul Sherry is at www.commondreams.org:
The Golden Rule—the ethic of reciprocity—is the most universal moral value: Do to others what you would have them do to you.
Violating the Golden Rule, CEO pay has risen astronomically, while a growing number of workers can't make ends meet on salaries above the minimum wage, much less at $10,712 a year. Violating the Golden Rule, Congress has taken eight pay raises since 1997, bringing their pay to $165,200, while giving none to minimum wage workers who make just $10,712 a year.
Clearly, the minimum wage has become a poverty wage rather than an anti-poverty wage. The federal minimum wage buys less today than it did when Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton opened his first Walton's 5-and-10 in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1951. Adjusted for inflation, today's minimum wage is $4 an hour less than it was in 1968. It takes nearly two workers earning the federal minimum wage to make what one worker made four decades ago.
When the minimum wage is stuck in quicksand, it drags down wages for workers up the pay scale as well. Between 1968 and 2005, worker productivity rose 111 percent, but the average hourly wage fell 5 percent, adjusted for inflation—and the minimum wage fell 43 percent. Workers are not getting their fair share of rising productivity. This discrepancy underscores how our economy is not working for working people.
NAFTA AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
The push for globalization with treaties such as NAFTA and GATT has hurt American workers and it is devastating workers in other countries. Mexico is a prime example. Globalization is one of the major reasons we've seen a flood of illegal Mexican immigration into the United States. People are doing what they have to do to survive. If we care about illegal immigration, a good first step would be to junk NAFTA and take a hard look at free trade policies. This article by Jeff Faux is at www.commondreams.org:
This was not supposed to happen. Thirteen years ago, when illegal immigration from Mexico across a less-protected border was half of what it is today, we were assured that the North American Free Trade Agreement would transform Mexico into a prosperous middle-class society. "There will be less illegal immigration," promised President Bill Clinton, "because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home." Mexican President Carlos Salinas told Americans it was a choice between getting Mexican tomatoes or tomato pickers.
But NAFTA did not deliver. Mexico has grown too slowly to create enough jobs for its people, and the benefits of trade have largely gone to the wealthy, making it one of the most unequal societies in Latin America. Moreover, the agreement flooded Mexico with highly subsidized U.S. and Canadian grain, driving between 1 million and 2 million Mexican farmers off the land and adding to the supply of desperate Mexicans looking for work.
NAFTA stands in vivid contrast to the experience of the economic integration of Western Europe, which actually provided for free migration among the participating nations. Originally there was great fear that Germany, France and the other rich economies would be flooded with workers from Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece. To avoid this, the European community provided funds for economic development programs, which stimulated job growth in the poorer nations and insisted on domestic reforms that assured that the economic growth would be broadly shared. The result was that the people of the poorer nations stayed home and prospered.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
May 20, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
A NATIONAL YELLOW STREAK
You wonder when Americans morphed into a nation of cowards. We've constantly heard the refrain about giving up another civil liberty to be "kept safe." Even if giving up our civil liberties guaranteed safety, which it doesn't, it would be disgusting to cast away all the rights so many Americans fought and died to attain. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:
Instead of swapping safety for liberty, this generation – traumatized by the 9/11 attacks and under the leadership of George W. Bush – has chosen to trade liberties for safety.
Instead of Patrick Henry’s stirring Revolutionary War cry of “give me liberty or give me death,” this era has Sen. Pat Roberts’s instant-classic expression of self over nation. “You have no civil liberties if you are dead,” the Kansas Republican explained on May 18 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he chairs.
Roberts’s dictum echoed through the mainstream media where it was embraced as a pithy expression of homespun common sense. But the commentators missed how Roberts’s preference for life over liberty was the antithesis of Henry’s option of liberty or death.
Roberts’s statement also represented a betrayal of two centuries of bravery by American patriots who gave their own lives so others could be free.
BUSH'S "PERSONALITY"
We used to hear about how Americans liked George W. Bush. He was the guy they'd want to have a beer with. They could tolerate his constant butchering of language and logic because he was "charming." I've never liked the guy. I've always thought he was a spoiled frat boy and a bully. He's used the fact he was born rich to get anything he wants, not because he has talent or has worked hard.
It appears the veneer of "likeability" is wearing thin as people see the real Bush. This article by Steven Thomma is at www.realcities.com:
It's not just the way he's doing his job. Americans apparently don't like President Bush personally much anymore, either.
A drop in his personal popularity, as measured by several public polls, has shadowed the decline in Bush's job-approval ratings and weakened his political armor when he and his party need it most.
Losing that political protection - dubbed "Teflon" when Ronald Reagan had it - is costing Bush what the late political scientist Richard Neustadt called the "leeway" to survive hard times and maintain his grip on the nation's agenda. Without it, Bush is a more tempting target for political enemies. And members of his party in Congress are less inclined to stand with him.
"When he loses likeability, the president loses the benefit of the doubt," said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Iowa. "That makes it much harder for him to steer."
THE RETURN POLITICAL ROCK AND ROLL
You can't think of the 1960s without thinking of Vietnam, major political assassinations, cities burning, and the civil rights movement. You also can't help thinking of the music that defined the 1960s. Among the most important dissenting voices were those of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Now that we find ourselves in another unnecessary war, defined by cruelty and lies, it's only fitting that Neil Young is once again performing great protest music. This article by Steven Laffoley is at www.commondreams.org:
A week or so ago - arriving like a screaming banshee lamenting the dead along a cold, desolate heath - Neil Young and Rock and Roll suddenly roared back, giving a big middle finger to all that has gone wrong with America, and a big middle finger to all those trying to explain away inconvenient truths, again.
From behind those rolling, raunchy guitar chords, hear the lyrics from Young's After the Garden, the title track from his new, anti-war album, Living with War: "Won't need no shadow man, runnin' the government. Won't need no stinkin' WAR. Won't need no haircut. Won't need no shoe shine. After the Garden is Gone."
Neil's middle finger never stuck out so much.
But this ain't the 1960s anymore. And, oh, how the times have changed. Read today's self-important critics of American politics and culture. Read how they dismiss Neil Young's new album and Rock and Roll's rediscovered zero tolerance for lies. Read how these Fox News minions - those helping the president dish out his lies - offer up dubious details disguised as criticism: "Neil Young's just a Canadian, did ya' know"; "Neil Young once supported Ronald Reagan, did ya' know"; "Neil Young still smokes dope, did ya' know."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
A NATIONAL YELLOW STREAK
You wonder when Americans morphed into a nation of cowards. We've constantly heard the refrain about giving up another civil liberty to be "kept safe." Even if giving up our civil liberties guaranteed safety, which it doesn't, it would be disgusting to cast away all the rights so many Americans fought and died to attain. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:
Instead of swapping safety for liberty, this generation – traumatized by the 9/11 attacks and under the leadership of George W. Bush – has chosen to trade liberties for safety.
Instead of Patrick Henry’s stirring Revolutionary War cry of “give me liberty or give me death,” this era has Sen. Pat Roberts’s instant-classic expression of self over nation. “You have no civil liberties if you are dead,” the Kansas Republican explained on May 18 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he chairs.
Roberts’s dictum echoed through the mainstream media where it was embraced as a pithy expression of homespun common sense. But the commentators missed how Roberts’s preference for life over liberty was the antithesis of Henry’s option of liberty or death.
Roberts’s statement also represented a betrayal of two centuries of bravery by American patriots who gave their own lives so others could be free.
BUSH'S "PERSONALITY"
We used to hear about how Americans liked George W. Bush. He was the guy they'd want to have a beer with. They could tolerate his constant butchering of language and logic because he was "charming." I've never liked the guy. I've always thought he was a spoiled frat boy and a bully. He's used the fact he was born rich to get anything he wants, not because he has talent or has worked hard.
It appears the veneer of "likeability" is wearing thin as people see the real Bush. This article by Steven Thomma is at www.realcities.com:
It's not just the way he's doing his job. Americans apparently don't like President Bush personally much anymore, either.
A drop in his personal popularity, as measured by several public polls, has shadowed the decline in Bush's job-approval ratings and weakened his political armor when he and his party need it most.
Losing that political protection - dubbed "Teflon" when Ronald Reagan had it - is costing Bush what the late political scientist Richard Neustadt called the "leeway" to survive hard times and maintain his grip on the nation's agenda. Without it, Bush is a more tempting target for political enemies. And members of his party in Congress are less inclined to stand with him.
"When he loses likeability, the president loses the benefit of the doubt," said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Iowa. "That makes it much harder for him to steer."
THE RETURN POLITICAL ROCK AND ROLL
You can't think of the 1960s without thinking of Vietnam, major political assassinations, cities burning, and the civil rights movement. You also can't help thinking of the music that defined the 1960s. Among the most important dissenting voices were those of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Now that we find ourselves in another unnecessary war, defined by cruelty and lies, it's only fitting that Neil Young is once again performing great protest music. This article by Steven Laffoley is at www.commondreams.org:
A week or so ago - arriving like a screaming banshee lamenting the dead along a cold, desolate heath - Neil Young and Rock and Roll suddenly roared back, giving a big middle finger to all that has gone wrong with America, and a big middle finger to all those trying to explain away inconvenient truths, again.
From behind those rolling, raunchy guitar chords, hear the lyrics from Young's After the Garden, the title track from his new, anti-war album, Living with War: "Won't need no shadow man, runnin' the government. Won't need no stinkin' WAR. Won't need no haircut. Won't need no shoe shine. After the Garden is Gone."
Neil's middle finger never stuck out so much.
But this ain't the 1960s anymore. And, oh, how the times have changed. Read today's self-important critics of American politics and culture. Read how they dismiss Neil Young's new album and Rock and Roll's rediscovered zero tolerance for lies. Read how these Fox News minions - those helping the president dish out his lies - offer up dubious details disguised as criticism: "Neil Young's just a Canadian, did ya' know"; "Neil Young once supported Ronald Reagan, did ya' know"; "Neil Young still smokes dope, did ya' know."
Thursday, May 18, 2006
May 18, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
ANOTHER BOONDOGGLE FOR CONTRACTORS
Lately the subject is illegal immigration. Something that has been virtually ignored for years is now taking center stage as the latest crisis to be dealt with by the manly and decisive George W. Bush. Bush likes military solutions for almost anything. For a guy who dodged serving in Vietnam, he loves to send other men and women to do the dirty work. There's also another component to the militarization of our border with Mexico. Big military contractors are waiting eagerly in the wings. This story by Eric Lipton is at www.commondreams.org:
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders.
Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan — like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment — the military contractors are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.
It is a humbling acknowledgment that despite more than a decade of initiatives with macho-sounding names, like Operation Hold the Line in El Paso or Operation Gate Keeper in San Diego, the federal government has repeatedly failed on its own to gain control of the land borders.
Through its Secure Border Initiative, the Bush administration intends to not simply buy an amalgam of high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders — a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy that ties together the personnel, technology and physical barriers.
WHEN IT COMES TO BEING WORST BUSH STANDS OUT
As this article points out, there was a recent article in Rolling Stone that asked, "The Worst President in History?" By almost any measure, George W. Bush wins the prize. He trumps really bad presidents like Ulysses S. Grant, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon. It's not only the staggering incompetence, it's the determination to lie about anything and everything to get what the administration wants. This article by Andrew Bard Schmookler is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
"The Worst President in History?" is the title of a recent article about the presidency of George W. Bush by Princeton historian Sean Wilentz published in Rolling Stone. It's a fine piece, which has deservedly made the rounds of the blogosphere. Therefore it is not to denigrate that article that I now suggest that the question mark in that title can be dropped.
Wilentz cites a poll conducted among more than 400 historians in early 2004. Already at that point, more than 80% of these historians regarded the Bush presidency as a failure. Now factor in all that has become known about this administration in the almost two-and-a-half years since that poll was taken: how more fully disclosed are the lies leading to the war in Iraq and the blunders that assured its disastrous consequences; how incompetent the administration has proved to be in the face of hurricane Katrina; how clear has become the picture of this administration's disdain for the Constitution and the law, with its bypassing of the required judicial oversight in the issuing of warrants; how shamelessly they have sought to suppress scientific and economic facts, and so forth-- a list that could be vastly expanded.
The worst presidency in history? Where's the competition?
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
ANOTHER BOONDOGGLE FOR CONTRACTORS
Lately the subject is illegal immigration. Something that has been virtually ignored for years is now taking center stage as the latest crisis to be dealt with by the manly and decisive George W. Bush. Bush likes military solutions for almost anything. For a guy who dodged serving in Vietnam, he loves to send other men and women to do the dirty work. There's also another component to the militarization of our border with Mexico. Big military contractors are waiting eagerly in the wings. This story by Eric Lipton is at www.commondreams.org:
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders.
Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan — like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment — the military contractors are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.
It is a humbling acknowledgment that despite more than a decade of initiatives with macho-sounding names, like Operation Hold the Line in El Paso or Operation Gate Keeper in San Diego, the federal government has repeatedly failed on its own to gain control of the land borders.
Through its Secure Border Initiative, the Bush administration intends to not simply buy an amalgam of high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders — a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy that ties together the personnel, technology and physical barriers.
WHEN IT COMES TO BEING WORST BUSH STANDS OUT
As this article points out, there was a recent article in Rolling Stone that asked, "The Worst President in History?" By almost any measure, George W. Bush wins the prize. He trumps really bad presidents like Ulysses S. Grant, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon. It's not only the staggering incompetence, it's the determination to lie about anything and everything to get what the administration wants. This article by Andrew Bard Schmookler is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
"The Worst President in History?" is the title of a recent article about the presidency of George W. Bush by Princeton historian Sean Wilentz published in Rolling Stone. It's a fine piece, which has deservedly made the rounds of the blogosphere. Therefore it is not to denigrate that article that I now suggest that the question mark in that title can be dropped.
Wilentz cites a poll conducted among more than 400 historians in early 2004. Already at that point, more than 80% of these historians regarded the Bush presidency as a failure. Now factor in all that has become known about this administration in the almost two-and-a-half years since that poll was taken: how more fully disclosed are the lies leading to the war in Iraq and the blunders that assured its disastrous consequences; how incompetent the administration has proved to be in the face of hurricane Katrina; how clear has become the picture of this administration's disdain for the Constitution and the law, with its bypassing of the required judicial oversight in the issuing of warrants; how shamelessly they have sought to suppress scientific and economic facts, and so forth-- a list that could be vastly expanded.
The worst presidency in history? Where's the competition?
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
May 16, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE CONSTITUTION IS INCONVENIENT
A lot of conservatives like to tout themselves as "strict constructionists" on the Constitution. That has been convenient in opposing social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and affirmative action. They're very pro-Constitution on the Second Amendment, but the First Amendment is really inconvenient. There's that thing about freedom of speech and something else about not establishing a religion. These days conservatives aren't too fond of the Fourth Amendment. It's really inconvenient to have an amendment that prohibits unlawful searches and seizures. Lawrence Tribe takes a look in this column at www.boston.com:
THE ESCALATING controversy over the National Security Agency's data mining program illustrates yet again how the Bush administration's intrusions on personal privacy based on a post-9/11 mantra of ''national security" directly threaten one of the enduring sources of that security: the Fourth Amendment ''right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."
THE UNITED STATES AS DORIAN GRAY
Oscar Wilde's famous novel about Dorian Gray was about a man who saw himself in the mirror in an unflattering way as he became more and more corrupt. If the United States became Dorian Gray, it would not see a pretty face looking back from the mirror. During the entire 20th century we held ourselves up, and the world mostly saw us, as the shining city on the hill. We were the world's beacon of freedom. Since George W. Bush came along, we've started an unnecessary war in Iraq, we've tortured people, we've thrown the rights we supposedly cherish overboard. We've not been the land of the free and the home of the brave, but instead have been the land of bullies and the home of the fearful. This column by Bob Herbert is at 64.226.238.78/PA/bh/bh204.shtml
Short of having them taken away from us, there is probably no way to fully appreciate the wonder and the glory of our rights and liberties here in the United States, including the right to privacy.
The Constitution and the elaborate system of checks and balances were meant to protect us against the possibility of a clownish gang of small men and women amassing excessive power and behaving like tyrants or kings. But the normal safeguards have not been working since the Bush crowd came to power, starting with the hijacked presidential election in 2000.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, all bets were off. John Kennedy once said, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war." But George W. Bush, employing an outrageous propaganda campaign ("Shock and awe," "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"), started an utterly pointless war in Iraq that he still doesn't know how to win or how to end.
If you listen to the Bush version of reality, the president is all powerful. In that version, we are fighting a war against terrorism, which is a war that will never end. And as long as we are at war (forever), there is no limit to the war-fighting powers the president can claim as commander in chief.
BUSH IN THE PINBALL MACHINE
George W. Bush seems like a ball in a pinball machine, bounding from disaster to disaster. Everything Bush has touched has been a catastrophe. Instead of learning or admitting mistakes, Bush continues the same behavior that created the problem in the first place. The latest round of tax cuts for fat cats is just one more instance of throwing more gasoline on the fire. Using the military instead of diplomatic solutions is another case of throwing more bad policy on the heap, as we see in our dealings with Mexican immigrants or the saber rattling with Iran. This column by Molly Ivins is at www.commondreams.org:
The consistent pattern that runs through all these problems is the failure to distinguish fantasy from reality. Mexican immigrants keep crossing the border because they can get jobs here—and most of those jobs are provided by companies whose CEOs support George W. Bush. That’s where he can have an impact on the problem, should he choose to do so.
The $70-billion tax cut is part of a continuing right-wing fantasy going back to the Laffer curve. Of course, clinging to demonstrably false economic precepts is understandable when you benefit from them, but at some point reality does intervene.
As for the Iraq fantasy and those who pushed it on a reluctant country through lies, disinformation and bending intelligence—isn’t there a law against that?
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE CONSTITUTION IS INCONVENIENT
A lot of conservatives like to tout themselves as "strict constructionists" on the Constitution. That has been convenient in opposing social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and affirmative action. They're very pro-Constitution on the Second Amendment, but the First Amendment is really inconvenient. There's that thing about freedom of speech and something else about not establishing a religion. These days conservatives aren't too fond of the Fourth Amendment. It's really inconvenient to have an amendment that prohibits unlawful searches and seizures. Lawrence Tribe takes a look in this column at www.boston.com:
THE ESCALATING controversy over the National Security Agency's data mining program illustrates yet again how the Bush administration's intrusions on personal privacy based on a post-9/11 mantra of ''national security" directly threaten one of the enduring sources of that security: the Fourth Amendment ''right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."
THE UNITED STATES AS DORIAN GRAY
Oscar Wilde's famous novel about Dorian Gray was about a man who saw himself in the mirror in an unflattering way as he became more and more corrupt. If the United States became Dorian Gray, it would not see a pretty face looking back from the mirror. During the entire 20th century we held ourselves up, and the world mostly saw us, as the shining city on the hill. We were the world's beacon of freedom. Since George W. Bush came along, we've started an unnecessary war in Iraq, we've tortured people, we've thrown the rights we supposedly cherish overboard. We've not been the land of the free and the home of the brave, but instead have been the land of bullies and the home of the fearful. This column by Bob Herbert is at 64.226.238.78/PA/bh/bh204.shtml
Short of having them taken away from us, there is probably no way to fully appreciate the wonder and the glory of our rights and liberties here in the United States, including the right to privacy.
The Constitution and the elaborate system of checks and balances were meant to protect us against the possibility of a clownish gang of small men and women amassing excessive power and behaving like tyrants or kings. But the normal safeguards have not been working since the Bush crowd came to power, starting with the hijacked presidential election in 2000.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, all bets were off. John Kennedy once said, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war." But George W. Bush, employing an outrageous propaganda campaign ("Shock and awe," "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"), started an utterly pointless war in Iraq that he still doesn't know how to win or how to end.
If you listen to the Bush version of reality, the president is all powerful. In that version, we are fighting a war against terrorism, which is a war that will never end. And as long as we are at war (forever), there is no limit to the war-fighting powers the president can claim as commander in chief.
BUSH IN THE PINBALL MACHINE
George W. Bush seems like a ball in a pinball machine, bounding from disaster to disaster. Everything Bush has touched has been a catastrophe. Instead of learning or admitting mistakes, Bush continues the same behavior that created the problem in the first place. The latest round of tax cuts for fat cats is just one more instance of throwing more gasoline on the fire. Using the military instead of diplomatic solutions is another case of throwing more bad policy on the heap, as we see in our dealings with Mexican immigrants or the saber rattling with Iran. This column by Molly Ivins is at www.commondreams.org:
The consistent pattern that runs through all these problems is the failure to distinguish fantasy from reality. Mexican immigrants keep crossing the border because they can get jobs here—and most of those jobs are provided by companies whose CEOs support George W. Bush. That’s where he can have an impact on the problem, should he choose to do so.
The $70-billion tax cut is part of a continuing right-wing fantasy going back to the Laffer curve. Of course, clinging to demonstrably false economic precepts is understandable when you benefit from them, but at some point reality does intervene.
As for the Iraq fantasy and those who pushed it on a reluctant country through lies, disinformation and bending intelligence—isn’t there a law against that?
Monday, May 15, 2006
May 15, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
IT IT WORKS, BREAK IT
That appears to be the philosophy of the Bush administration. You have a successful program like Social Security and they want to destroy it. You have Saddam Hussein contained in Iraq, but you launch an unnecessary war to depose Hussein and destabilize the entire Middle East. You have a program like Medicare that has provided much needed assistance to our elderly and you add a botched up prescription drug program called Medicare Part D. Paul Krugman writes about it in this column linked at rozius.blogspot.com:
But Part D's bad start isn't just another illustration of the administration's trademark incompetence. It's also an object lesson in what happens when the government is run by people who aren't interested in the business of governing.
Before we get there, let's talk for a moment about the problems older Americans have encountered over the past few months.
Even Mr. Bush has acknowledged that signing up for the program is a confusing process. But, he says, "there is plenty of help for you." Yeah, right.
There's a number that people needing help with Part D can call. But when the program first went into effect, there were only 300 customer service representatives standing by. (Remember, there are 43 million Medicare recipients.)
THE REAL REASON FOR NSA SPYING
Forget all the baloney about protecting us from terrorists. The real reason the NSA is monitoring phone calls is to keep a check on political opponents of the Bush administration. Now we learn that the NSA has been spying on reporters, almost certainly in an attempt to find whistleblowers against this administration. With this administration you can take your greatest paranoid fantasies, magnify them by two, and you'd probably be right. This item comes from americablog.blogspot.com:
A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
THE IDIOCY OF SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS
Defenders of Ronald Reagan tried to wriggle out of explaining the huge budget deficits that resulted from his policies. You would hear that it was spending, not Reagan's tax cuts, that caused the deficits. You would hear the Democrats blamed. But now we've had Supply Side II: The Nightmare under the Bush administration. We've had it with a Republican Congress. We're drowning in debt. It's no coincidence that a second round of massive tax cuts for the rich has been a disaster. This article by Robert Freeman is at www.commondreams.org:
In 1980, Ronald Reagan promised that, if elected, he would cut taxes, raise military spending AND balance the budget—all at the same time. His opponent, George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics”. But Reagan won the election and kept his promise. He cut the marginal tax rate on the highest income earners from 75% to 38%. What happened?
In 1982, the first full year for Reagan’s policies, the economy shrank by 2%, the worst performance since the Great Depression. Investment — the magic transmission belt through which all other Supply Side benefits were supposed to flow — actually declined as a percent of GDP over the 1980s. Worse, Reagan’s Supply Side policies created the biggest budget deficits in history. The numbers tell the story.
Jimmy Carter’s last budget produced a deficit of $77 billion. At the time, it seemed huge. But Reagan’s first budget swelled the deficit to $128 billion. By the next year, 1983, it had exploded to $208 billion and was creating severe problems for the economy. By 1992, at the end of the “Reagan Revolution,” (under Reagan’s Vice President and successor, Bush, Sr.) the deficit was approaching $300 billion a year.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
IT IT WORKS, BREAK IT
That appears to be the philosophy of the Bush administration. You have a successful program like Social Security and they want to destroy it. You have Saddam Hussein contained in Iraq, but you launch an unnecessary war to depose Hussein and destabilize the entire Middle East. You have a program like Medicare that has provided much needed assistance to our elderly and you add a botched up prescription drug program called Medicare Part D. Paul Krugman writes about it in this column linked at rozius.blogspot.com:
But Part D's bad start isn't just another illustration of the administration's trademark incompetence. It's also an object lesson in what happens when the government is run by people who aren't interested in the business of governing.
Before we get there, let's talk for a moment about the problems older Americans have encountered over the past few months.
Even Mr. Bush has acknowledged that signing up for the program is a confusing process. But, he says, "there is plenty of help for you." Yeah, right.
There's a number that people needing help with Part D can call. But when the program first went into effect, there were only 300 customer service representatives standing by. (Remember, there are 43 million Medicare recipients.)
THE REAL REASON FOR NSA SPYING
Forget all the baloney about protecting us from terrorists. The real reason the NSA is monitoring phone calls is to keep a check on political opponents of the Bush administration. Now we learn that the NSA has been spying on reporters, almost certainly in an attempt to find whistleblowers against this administration. With this administration you can take your greatest paranoid fantasies, magnify them by two, and you'd probably be right. This item comes from americablog.blogspot.com:
A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
THE IDIOCY OF SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS
Defenders of Ronald Reagan tried to wriggle out of explaining the huge budget deficits that resulted from his policies. You would hear that it was spending, not Reagan's tax cuts, that caused the deficits. You would hear the Democrats blamed. But now we've had Supply Side II: The Nightmare under the Bush administration. We've had it with a Republican Congress. We're drowning in debt. It's no coincidence that a second round of massive tax cuts for the rich has been a disaster. This article by Robert Freeman is at www.commondreams.org:
In 1980, Ronald Reagan promised that, if elected, he would cut taxes, raise military spending AND balance the budget—all at the same time. His opponent, George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics”. But Reagan won the election and kept his promise. He cut the marginal tax rate on the highest income earners from 75% to 38%. What happened?
In 1982, the first full year for Reagan’s policies, the economy shrank by 2%, the worst performance since the Great Depression. Investment — the magic transmission belt through which all other Supply Side benefits were supposed to flow — actually declined as a percent of GDP over the 1980s. Worse, Reagan’s Supply Side policies created the biggest budget deficits in history. The numbers tell the story.
Jimmy Carter’s last budget produced a deficit of $77 billion. At the time, it seemed huge. But Reagan’s first budget swelled the deficit to $128 billion. By the next year, 1983, it had exploded to $208 billion and was creating severe problems for the economy. By 1992, at the end of the “Reagan Revolution,” (under Reagan’s Vice President and successor, Bush, Sr.) the deficit was approaching $300 billion a year.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
May 14, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT-WING DISLIKE OF HUGO CHAVEZ
A few months ago televangelist Pat Robertson made the astonishing suggestion that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez should be assassinated. Chavez rankles right-wingers in this country because Chavez has a commitment to improving the lives of ordinary people. His policies, unlike those of George W. Bush, are not designed to enrich the already rich and exploit the poor. This article by John Pilger is at www.commondreams.org:
I have spent the past three weeks filming in the hillside barrios of Caracas, in streets and breeze-block houses that defy gravity and torrential rain and emerge at night like fireflies in the fog. Caracas is said to be one of the world's toughest cities, yet I have known no fear; the poorest have welcomed my colleagues and me with a warmth characteristic of ordinary Venezuelans but also with the unmistakable confidence of a people who know that change is possible and who, in their everyday lives, are reclaiming noble concepts long emptied of their meaning in the west: "reform", "popular democracy", "equity", "social justice" and, yes, "freedom".
The other night, in a room bare except for a single fluorescent tube, I heard these words spoken by the likes of Ana Lucia Fernandez, aged 86, Celedonia Oviedo, aged 74, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95. A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two young children. Until about a year ago, none of them could read and write; now they are studying mathematics. For the first time in its modern era, Venezuela has almost 100% literacy.
This achievement is due to a national programme, called Mision Robinson, designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education because of poverty. Mision Ribas is giving everyone a secondary school education, called a bachillerato. (The names Robinson and Ribas refer to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century.) Named, like much else here, after the great liberator Simon Bolivar, "Bolivarian", or people's, universities have opened, introducing, as one parent told me, "treasures of the mind, history and music and art, we barely knew existed". Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor.
IT ISN'T JUST BUSH
The buzzards are circling over the Bush administration, the absolute worst administration in our history. Someone writing a political horror novel couldn't have conceived anything worse than this incompetent, bumbling, corrupt, arrogant man and his pack of neocons. The damage they have done to our country and the world is incalculable. Some of the damage can never be undone, such as the thousands upon thousands of innocent people killed and maimed in Iraq. But if any good can come of this whole nasty business it's the historical lesson. Bush has ripped off the cover of the whole corporate-military-Christian fundamentalist cabal that has dominated the cultural and economic structure of this country. It's a system that exploits the planet, fosters greed, and creates a permanent underclass. It's time not only for Bush and his cohorts to be held accountable; it's time to junk the whole rotten system and start afresh. This article by Mike Whitney is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
There's no place to hide now. 6 years of demagoguery and deception have smashed the Orwellian facade and fueled the public rage. The country is on tender-hooks; one paltry incident away from a citizen revolt and massive political upheaval.
Don't believe it? The fury of the masses is silently brewing just below the surface. The specter of violence is quite real.
Bush's popularity is now somewhere below Nixon's and just above venereal disease; the perfect spot for a draft-dodging poseur whose bravado cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT-WING DISLIKE OF HUGO CHAVEZ
A few months ago televangelist Pat Robertson made the astonishing suggestion that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez should be assassinated. Chavez rankles right-wingers in this country because Chavez has a commitment to improving the lives of ordinary people. His policies, unlike those of George W. Bush, are not designed to enrich the already rich and exploit the poor. This article by John Pilger is at www.commondreams.org:
I have spent the past three weeks filming in the hillside barrios of Caracas, in streets and breeze-block houses that defy gravity and torrential rain and emerge at night like fireflies in the fog. Caracas is said to be one of the world's toughest cities, yet I have known no fear; the poorest have welcomed my colleagues and me with a warmth characteristic of ordinary Venezuelans but also with the unmistakable confidence of a people who know that change is possible and who, in their everyday lives, are reclaiming noble concepts long emptied of their meaning in the west: "reform", "popular democracy", "equity", "social justice" and, yes, "freedom".
The other night, in a room bare except for a single fluorescent tube, I heard these words spoken by the likes of Ana Lucia Fernandez, aged 86, Celedonia Oviedo, aged 74, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95. A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two young children. Until about a year ago, none of them could read and write; now they are studying mathematics. For the first time in its modern era, Venezuela has almost 100% literacy.
This achievement is due to a national programme, called Mision Robinson, designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education because of poverty. Mision Ribas is giving everyone a secondary school education, called a bachillerato. (The names Robinson and Ribas refer to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century.) Named, like much else here, after the great liberator Simon Bolivar, "Bolivarian", or people's, universities have opened, introducing, as one parent told me, "treasures of the mind, history and music and art, we barely knew existed". Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor.
IT ISN'T JUST BUSH
The buzzards are circling over the Bush administration, the absolute worst administration in our history. Someone writing a political horror novel couldn't have conceived anything worse than this incompetent, bumbling, corrupt, arrogant man and his pack of neocons. The damage they have done to our country and the world is incalculable. Some of the damage can never be undone, such as the thousands upon thousands of innocent people killed and maimed in Iraq. But if any good can come of this whole nasty business it's the historical lesson. Bush has ripped off the cover of the whole corporate-military-Christian fundamentalist cabal that has dominated the cultural and economic structure of this country. It's a system that exploits the planet, fosters greed, and creates a permanent underclass. It's time not only for Bush and his cohorts to be held accountable; it's time to junk the whole rotten system and start afresh. This article by Mike Whitney is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
There's no place to hide now. 6 years of demagoguery and deception have smashed the Orwellian facade and fueled the public rage. The country is on tender-hooks; one paltry incident away from a citizen revolt and massive political upheaval.
Don't believe it? The fury of the masses is silently brewing just below the surface. The specter of violence is quite real.
Bush's popularity is now somewhere below Nixon's and just above venereal disease; the perfect spot for a draft-dodging poseur whose bravado cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
May 13, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE POLITICAL ANGLE
George W. Bush has frequently proved he's capable of anything to suit his own political objectives. Stage a phony riot in Florida to disrupt a vote count during the presidential election of 2000. Call on his buddies on the Supreme Court to steal an election. Use push polling to smear John McCain. Use some Vietnam vets to smear John Kerry's war record. Lie about weapons of mass destruction to get us into a war in Iraq. So it's not unreasonable to think that the latest spy scandal involving the NSA and tracking our phone calls could be used for political ends. It would certainly put a chill on investigative journalists or their sources, for instance, because the information would be there in the NSA database. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:
Given George W. Bush’s history of outright lying, especially on national security matters, it may seem silly to dissect his words about the new disclosure that his administration has collected phone records of some 200 million Americans.
But Bush made two parse-able points in reacting to USA Today’s story about the National Security Agency building a vast database of domestic phone calls. “We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” Bush said, adding “the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities.”
BUSH'S DESTRUCTION OF THE CIA
When the Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the presidency in 2000 it was like introducing hordes of termites into the basement of our national house. Since then the termites have been chewing and feasting on our foundation and it's getting dangerously close to crumbling. Whether through incompetence or other reasons, Bush didn't prevent the attacks on 9/11. He started a bloody and vicious war in Iraq that has stretched our military too thin. His policies are leading to more nuclear proliferation around the world. And in his attempts to make the CIA a rubber stamp agency he has endangered our intelligence capabilities. This article by Sidney Blumenthal is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In Goss, Bush found the perfect hatchet man to take vengeance on a despised agency. Now Goss is gone, scandal looms -- and the CIA is ruined.
The CIA is no longer what it used to be. The moment that the destruction of the Central Intelligence Agency began can be pinpointed to a time, a place and even a memo. On Aug. 6, 2001, CIA director George Tenet presented to President Bush his presidential daily briefing, a startling document titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Bush did nothing, asked for no further briefings on the issue, and returned to cutting brush at his Crawford, Texas, compound.
In Bush's denial of responsibility after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the search for scapegoats inevitably focused on the lapse in intelligence and therefore on the CIA, though it was the FBI whose egregious incompetence permitted the plotters to escape apprehension. Bush's intent to invade Iraq set up the battle royal that followed.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE POLITICAL ANGLE
George W. Bush has frequently proved he's capable of anything to suit his own political objectives. Stage a phony riot in Florida to disrupt a vote count during the presidential election of 2000. Call on his buddies on the Supreme Court to steal an election. Use push polling to smear John McCain. Use some Vietnam vets to smear John Kerry's war record. Lie about weapons of mass destruction to get us into a war in Iraq. So it's not unreasonable to think that the latest spy scandal involving the NSA and tracking our phone calls could be used for political ends. It would certainly put a chill on investigative journalists or their sources, for instance, because the information would be there in the NSA database. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:
Given George W. Bush’s history of outright lying, especially on national security matters, it may seem silly to dissect his words about the new disclosure that his administration has collected phone records of some 200 million Americans.
But Bush made two parse-able points in reacting to USA Today’s story about the National Security Agency building a vast database of domestic phone calls. “We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” Bush said, adding “the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities.”
BUSH'S DESTRUCTION OF THE CIA
When the Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the presidency in 2000 it was like introducing hordes of termites into the basement of our national house. Since then the termites have been chewing and feasting on our foundation and it's getting dangerously close to crumbling. Whether through incompetence or other reasons, Bush didn't prevent the attacks on 9/11. He started a bloody and vicious war in Iraq that has stretched our military too thin. His policies are leading to more nuclear proliferation around the world. And in his attempts to make the CIA a rubber stamp agency he has endangered our intelligence capabilities. This article by Sidney Blumenthal is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In Goss, Bush found the perfect hatchet man to take vengeance on a despised agency. Now Goss is gone, scandal looms -- and the CIA is ruined.
The CIA is no longer what it used to be. The moment that the destruction of the Central Intelligence Agency began can be pinpointed to a time, a place and even a memo. On Aug. 6, 2001, CIA director George Tenet presented to President Bush his presidential daily briefing, a startling document titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Bush did nothing, asked for no further briefings on the issue, and returned to cutting brush at his Crawford, Texas, compound.
In Bush's denial of responsibility after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the search for scapegoats inevitably focused on the lapse in intelligence and therefore on the CIA, though it was the FBI whose egregious incompetence permitted the plotters to escape apprehension. Bush's intent to invade Iraq set up the battle royal that followed.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
May 11, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
ANOTHER OUTRAGE
Today USA Today ran the explosive story that major phone companies, with the exception of Qwest, have been giving all our phone records to the NSA. Supposedly, the NSA is just looking for patterns to detect those red-eyed, lurking terrorists out there. We heard months ago from Bush that he sought warrants for any suspected terrorists, but now we learn that was just another big lie. They want to know what we read, who we call, who we get calls from, the websites we visit, what we buy at the grocery store. This is not only an outrageous violation of our right to privacy; it's a total waste of resources. This story is from www.defensetech.com:
It'd be one thing if the NSA's massive sweep of our phone records was actually helping catch terrorists. But what if it's not working at all? A leading practitioner of the kind of analysis the NSA is supposedly performing in this surveillance program says that "it's a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free."
Re-reading the USA Today piece, one paragraph jumped out:
This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for 'social network analysis,' the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.
So I called Valdis Krebs, who's considered by many to be the leading authority on social network analysis -- the art and science of finding the important connections in a seemingly-impenetrable mass of data. His analysis of the social network surrounding the 9/11 hijackers is a classic in the field.
SUSPICIONS ABOUT 9/11
I don't know if we'll ever get the full truth about the 9/11 attacks. You have to wonder how 19 terrorists were able to slink around the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus, hijack four airplanes, and successfully crash three of them in terrorist attacks. We know that the Bush administration had ample warning that something was coming, but chose to ignore the warnings. We know that Bush has based his whole presidency on 9/11. He has justified everything from tax cuts for the rich to warrantless spying as fighting the "war on terror." Is it really just crazy to believe the Bush administration may have had some involvement with the attacks on 9/11? Some world leaders apparently think it's worth investigating. This story by Wayne Madsen is at www.onlinejournal.com:
The first skeptics to question what role the Bush administration played in the 9-11 terrorist attacks were a few cabinet ministers in the governments of America's NATO allies. They included German Science and Technology Minister Andreas Von Bulow and British Environment Minister Michael Meacher. They were joined by Belgian European Parliament Member Paul Lannoye.
However, in recent months the former cabinet ministers have been joined in their skepticism about the "official" version of the 911 events by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
In March, Chavez said Venezuela will open an official investigation into the 9-11 attacks. Now, Chavez has been joined by Ahmedinejad, who in a recent letter to President George W. Bush, asked, "Why have the various aspects of the [9-11] attacks been kept secret?" Ahmedinejad indicated that the attacks could not have been carried out without the knowledge of the U.S. "security services."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
ANOTHER OUTRAGE
Today USA Today ran the explosive story that major phone companies, with the exception of Qwest, have been giving all our phone records to the NSA. Supposedly, the NSA is just looking for patterns to detect those red-eyed, lurking terrorists out there. We heard months ago from Bush that he sought warrants for any suspected terrorists, but now we learn that was just another big lie. They want to know what we read, who we call, who we get calls from, the websites we visit, what we buy at the grocery store. This is not only an outrageous violation of our right to privacy; it's a total waste of resources. This story is from www.defensetech.com:
It'd be one thing if the NSA's massive sweep of our phone records was actually helping catch terrorists. But what if it's not working at all? A leading practitioner of the kind of analysis the NSA is supposedly performing in this surveillance program says that "it's a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free."
Re-reading the USA Today piece, one paragraph jumped out:
This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for 'social network analysis,' the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.
So I called Valdis Krebs, who's considered by many to be the leading authority on social network analysis -- the art and science of finding the important connections in a seemingly-impenetrable mass of data. His analysis of the social network surrounding the 9/11 hijackers is a classic in the field.
SUSPICIONS ABOUT 9/11
I don't know if we'll ever get the full truth about the 9/11 attacks. You have to wonder how 19 terrorists were able to slink around the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus, hijack four airplanes, and successfully crash three of them in terrorist attacks. We know that the Bush administration had ample warning that something was coming, but chose to ignore the warnings. We know that Bush has based his whole presidency on 9/11. He has justified everything from tax cuts for the rich to warrantless spying as fighting the "war on terror." Is it really just crazy to believe the Bush administration may have had some involvement with the attacks on 9/11? Some world leaders apparently think it's worth investigating. This story by Wayne Madsen is at www.onlinejournal.com:
The first skeptics to question what role the Bush administration played in the 9-11 terrorist attacks were a few cabinet ministers in the governments of America's NATO allies. They included German Science and Technology Minister Andreas Von Bulow and British Environment Minister Michael Meacher. They were joined by Belgian European Parliament Member Paul Lannoye.
However, in recent months the former cabinet ministers have been joined in their skepticism about the "official" version of the 911 events by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
In March, Chavez said Venezuela will open an official investigation into the 9-11 attacks. Now, Chavez has been joined by Ahmedinejad, who in a recent letter to President George W. Bush, asked, "Why have the various aspects of the [9-11] attacks been kept secret?" Ahmedinejad indicated that the attacks could not have been carried out without the knowledge of the U.S. "security services."
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
May 10, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BE GONE, FALAFEL BOY
If there's any joy to be found in the dismal Bush years, it's that Bush has been so awful, such an example of Reactionary 101 policies, that he is dragging down right-wing blowhards like Bill O'Reilly. Right-wingers have claimed for some time that we're a conservative nation, and they've used the ascendancy of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity of further evidence that conservatism reigns. Not anymore. The ratings for Fox News are falling in tandem with Bush's own awful polls. This story by Scott Collins is at www.channellive.com:
Late last week, a reliable television industry website, TVNewser.com, reported that in April, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly had his worst month in nearly five years among viewers age 25 to 54, the most coveted audience in TV news.
Although the network still churns out ratings light-years ahead of competitors' and O'Reilly remains cable news' No. 1 host, Fox News' explosive growth appears to be, like the president's 90% approval rating in the days following Sept. 11, a relic from the first Bush term.
THE BUSH CANCER
Back in the Watergate days John Dean told President Nixon that the scandal was a cancer on the presidency. When you look at the Bush family you have to conclude this family is a cancer on the country. Kevin Phillips details many of the Bush family crimes in his book American Dynasty. Bush I was a director of the CIA, which seems to be a personal toy of the Bush family. This article is by Robert Parry at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Since the 9/11 terror attacks, the U.S. government has tried both structural and personnel changes to fix the nation's intelligence services - including now the ouster of CIA Director Porter Goss - but the remedies have failed because they've missed the core problem.
What's wrong with the U.S. intelligence community is that over the past three decades its ethos of telling truth to power has been corrupted by politics to such a degree that George W. Bush now sees the Central Intelligence Agency as virtually his family's fiefdom, with the Langley, Virginia, headquarters even named for his father, George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BE GONE, FALAFEL BOY
If there's any joy to be found in the dismal Bush years, it's that Bush has been so awful, such an example of Reactionary 101 policies, that he is dragging down right-wing blowhards like Bill O'Reilly. Right-wingers have claimed for some time that we're a conservative nation, and they've used the ascendancy of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity of further evidence that conservatism reigns. Not anymore. The ratings for Fox News are falling in tandem with Bush's own awful polls. This story by Scott Collins is at www.channellive.com:
Late last week, a reliable television industry website, TVNewser.com, reported that in April, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly had his worst month in nearly five years among viewers age 25 to 54, the most coveted audience in TV news.
Although the network still churns out ratings light-years ahead of competitors' and O'Reilly remains cable news' No. 1 host, Fox News' explosive growth appears to be, like the president's 90% approval rating in the days following Sept. 11, a relic from the first Bush term.
THE BUSH CANCER
Back in the Watergate days John Dean told President Nixon that the scandal was a cancer on the presidency. When you look at the Bush family you have to conclude this family is a cancer on the country. Kevin Phillips details many of the Bush family crimes in his book American Dynasty. Bush I was a director of the CIA, which seems to be a personal toy of the Bush family. This article is by Robert Parry at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Since the 9/11 terror attacks, the U.S. government has tried both structural and personnel changes to fix the nation's intelligence services - including now the ouster of CIA Director Porter Goss - but the remedies have failed because they've missed the core problem.
What's wrong with the U.S. intelligence community is that over the past three decades its ethos of telling truth to power has been corrupted by politics to such a degree that George W. Bush now sees the Central Intelligence Agency as virtually his family's fiefdom, with the Langley, Virginia, headquarters even named for his father, George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director.
Monday, May 08, 2006
May 08, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH'S DISAPPROVAL RATINGS UP AGAIN
Most polls tend to emphasize favorable ratings for sitting presidents. But since George W. Bush's disapproval ratings are astronomical maybe we should emphasize those. What we see in action is the worst administration in U.S. history and I wouldn't be surprised if Bush's disapproval ratings top those of Richard Nixon. This item comes from www.mydd.com:
Gallup has a terrible new poll for Bush: 31% approve, 65% disapprove. Since the main benefit of the Gallup poll are its trendlines stretching back more than sixty years, here are some facts about this poll in historical perspective:
* A net approval of -34 is worse than the low suffered by either Jimmy Carter (-31) or Bush's father (-31). Only Truman and Nixon ever fared worse. (click for more on this)
* Since 1950, this is the lowest job approval for a President facing midterm elections by more than ten points.
* This is the first poll showing Bush's disapproval to be more than twice the size of his approval.
THE OTHER AMERICA
In the early 1960s Michael Harrington wrote a book called The Other America that showed the insidious and persistent problem of poverty in the United States. The book helped raise JFK's awareness of poverty and may have been partly responsible for the social programs that were enacted in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Those programs did in fact reduce poverty. Since the Republican dominance that began with Ronald Reagan we've seen poverty once again increasing. John Edwards, former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate, is talking about poverty. This article by Peter Dreir and John Atlas is at www.alternet.org:
He has joined a campaign by Unite Here, the union of hotel, restaurant and apparel workers, to pressure hotels around the nation to improve wages for not just 90,000 unionized hotel workers, but also for more than a million nonunion hotel workers. "Can we still really call America the land of opportunity when hotel workers who work full time for profitable hotel companies cannot afford to make ends meet?" Edwards said. "This is not just unjust. It is immoral, and we need to do something about it."
In a speech in Baton Rouge, La., he said Hurricane Katrina made the poor "impossible to ignore."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH'S DISAPPROVAL RATINGS UP AGAIN
Most polls tend to emphasize favorable ratings for sitting presidents. But since George W. Bush's disapproval ratings are astronomical maybe we should emphasize those. What we see in action is the worst administration in U.S. history and I wouldn't be surprised if Bush's disapproval ratings top those of Richard Nixon. This item comes from www.mydd.com:
Gallup has a terrible new poll for Bush: 31% approve, 65% disapprove. Since the main benefit of the Gallup poll are its trendlines stretching back more than sixty years, here are some facts about this poll in historical perspective:
* A net approval of -34 is worse than the low suffered by either Jimmy Carter (-31) or Bush's father (-31). Only Truman and Nixon ever fared worse. (click for more on this)
* Since 1950, this is the lowest job approval for a President facing midterm elections by more than ten points.
* This is the first poll showing Bush's disapproval to be more than twice the size of his approval.
THE OTHER AMERICA
In the early 1960s Michael Harrington wrote a book called The Other America that showed the insidious and persistent problem of poverty in the United States. The book helped raise JFK's awareness of poverty and may have been partly responsible for the social programs that were enacted in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Those programs did in fact reduce poverty. Since the Republican dominance that began with Ronald Reagan we've seen poverty once again increasing. John Edwards, former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate, is talking about poverty. This article by Peter Dreir and John Atlas is at www.alternet.org:
He has joined a campaign by Unite Here, the union of hotel, restaurant and apparel workers, to pressure hotels around the nation to improve wages for not just 90,000 unionized hotel workers, but also for more than a million nonunion hotel workers. "Can we still really call America the land of opportunity when hotel workers who work full time for profitable hotel companies cannot afford to make ends meet?" Edwards said. "This is not just unjust. It is immoral, and we need to do something about it."
In a speech in Baton Rouge, La., he said Hurricane Katrina made the poor "impossible to ignore."
Sunday, May 07, 2006
May 07, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REPUBLICAN POLICIES IN ACTION
George W. Bush keeps saying we have a robust economy, but it's a robust economy only for the people at the top of the economic pyramid. The rest of us are getting clobbered by stagnating wages, higher interest rates, higher state and local taxes, and higher energy costs. Republican economic policies are designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many. This story by By Nell Henderson, Cecilia Kang and Tomoeh Murakami Tse is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Most everybody these days can point to their own list of rising expenses. Electricity, air travel, medical care and even staples such as diapers cost more. Rents are jumping as the housing boom cools, just as property taxes are soaring to reflect the price appreciation of the hotter days.
Plus, interest charges are rising on credit card balances, home-equity lines of credit and adjustable-rate mortgages.
RIGHT WING TALK SHOW HOST ON BUSH
Right-wing pundits have typically fallen in lockstep and parroted the White House talking points as we see one Bush disaster piled upon another Bush disaster. But this talk show host, a guy named Doug McIntyre, has stopped lying for the administration. This item is from www.crooksandliars.com:
Talk Show host Doug McIntyre, has turned on Bush. Will this start to become a trend?
"So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period. After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works."
BUSH'S MISUSE OF SIGNING STATEMENTS
George W. Bush doesn't think the law applies to him. He also conveniently ignores ethical considerations when they are an obstacle. Witness the theft of the 2000 presidential election, or the smearing of John Kerry's war record. Bush declassified intelligence information when that declassified information could be used to out CIA operative Valerie Plame and smear her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. He has ignored the Fourth Amendment in authorizing illegal warrantless spying on American citizens. He has allowed "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist suspects so they can be tortured in other countries. The list goes on and on. The latest egregious trampling of the Constitution is the use of "signing statements" to ignore portions of laws that Bush doesn't like. This article by Bob Egelko is at www.sfgate.com:
Civics textbooks say presidents have two choices when Congress passes a bill that's not completely to their liking: They can sign it into law, or they can veto it and let Congress try to override them.
Bush, far more than any of his predecessors, is resorting to a third option: signing a bill while reserving the right to disregard any part of it that he considers an infringement on his executive authority or constitutional powers.
In more than five years in office, the president has never vetoed a bill. But while approving new laws, he has routinely issued signing statements interpreting the legislation in ways that amount to partial vetoes of provisions to which he objects.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REPUBLICAN POLICIES IN ACTION
George W. Bush keeps saying we have a robust economy, but it's a robust economy only for the people at the top of the economic pyramid. The rest of us are getting clobbered by stagnating wages, higher interest rates, higher state and local taxes, and higher energy costs. Republican economic policies are designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many. This story by By Nell Henderson, Cecilia Kang and Tomoeh Murakami Tse is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Most everybody these days can point to their own list of rising expenses. Electricity, air travel, medical care and even staples such as diapers cost more. Rents are jumping as the housing boom cools, just as property taxes are soaring to reflect the price appreciation of the hotter days.
Plus, interest charges are rising on credit card balances, home-equity lines of credit and adjustable-rate mortgages.
RIGHT WING TALK SHOW HOST ON BUSH
Right-wing pundits have typically fallen in lockstep and parroted the White House talking points as we see one Bush disaster piled upon another Bush disaster. But this talk show host, a guy named Doug McIntyre, has stopped lying for the administration. This item is from www.crooksandliars.com:
Talk Show host Doug McIntyre, has turned on Bush. Will this start to become a trend?
"So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period. After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works."
BUSH'S MISUSE OF SIGNING STATEMENTS
George W. Bush doesn't think the law applies to him. He also conveniently ignores ethical considerations when they are an obstacle. Witness the theft of the 2000 presidential election, or the smearing of John Kerry's war record. Bush declassified intelligence information when that declassified information could be used to out CIA operative Valerie Plame and smear her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. He has ignored the Fourth Amendment in authorizing illegal warrantless spying on American citizens. He has allowed "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist suspects so they can be tortured in other countries. The list goes on and on. The latest egregious trampling of the Constitution is the use of "signing statements" to ignore portions of laws that Bush doesn't like. This article by Bob Egelko is at www.sfgate.com:
Civics textbooks say presidents have two choices when Congress passes a bill that's not completely to their liking: They can sign it into law, or they can veto it and let Congress try to override them.
Bush, far more than any of his predecessors, is resorting to a third option: signing a bill while reserving the right to disregard any part of it that he considers an infringement on his executive authority or constitutional powers.
In more than five years in office, the president has never vetoed a bill. But while approving new laws, he has routinely issued signing statements interpreting the legislation in ways that amount to partial vetoes of provisions to which he objects.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
May 06, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BIG OIL: DON'T BUILD REFINERIES, MAKE MONEY
George W. Bush and others on the far right have claimed that the astronomical jump in oil and gasoline prices is due to "market forces." It turns out that "market forces" are often manipulated. The evidence is a memo from Chevron in 1995 that suggested less refineries meant more profit. This story is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12652455/
A Chevron memo is raising suspicion that oil executives intentionally reduced refining capacity in an effort to boost profits. The 1995 memo, obtained by Consumers Union, reads:
"If the U.S. petroleum industry doesn't reduce it's refining capacity, it will never see any substantial increase in refinery profits."
In the last 20 years, 18 of California's 32 refineries have shut down. The industry is now seeing record prices and profits at the pump.
GET RID OF NAFTA
I think "free trade" is vastly overrated. We've heard in the past decade about globalization and all its supposed benefits. As Ross Perot noted, what we're getting is that giant "sucking sound" as jobs get outsourced to cheaper labor markets. It makes life worse here and it doesn't improve the lives of people in other countries. Dramatic evidence of that is Mexico, which has been hammered by NAFTA. I believe that NAFTA is largely responsible for the surge in illegal immigrants we've seen. Get rid of NAFTA, restore some sanity to trade policies, and we'll see a drop in illegal immigration. Molly Ivins takes a look in this column linked at www.commondreams.org:
Dec. 16, 2005, is a day that will live in infamy in the Hall of Fame of Unintended Republican Consequences.
A bunch of the guys were just noodling around in the House of Representatives in Washington, see, kind of fooling around with the idea that they might get some traction out of immigration as a hot-button issue. The old hot buttons have kind of cooled off here lately, with people up in arms about Iraq, oil, health insurance and all this other stuff that makes the boys say, "Who me?" Where's a good divisive social issue when you need one? They weren't that far wrong — some variation on the race card usually works.
Trouble is, they played the card, tried to make every illegal worker in the country a felon and woke up the Sleeping Brown Giant, instead.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BIG OIL: DON'T BUILD REFINERIES, MAKE MONEY
George W. Bush and others on the far right have claimed that the astronomical jump in oil and gasoline prices is due to "market forces." It turns out that "market forces" are often manipulated. The evidence is a memo from Chevron in 1995 that suggested less refineries meant more profit. This story is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12652455/
A Chevron memo is raising suspicion that oil executives intentionally reduced refining capacity in an effort to boost profits. The 1995 memo, obtained by Consumers Union, reads:
"If the U.S. petroleum industry doesn't reduce it's refining capacity, it will never see any substantial increase in refinery profits."
In the last 20 years, 18 of California's 32 refineries have shut down. The industry is now seeing record prices and profits at the pump.
GET RID OF NAFTA
I think "free trade" is vastly overrated. We've heard in the past decade about globalization and all its supposed benefits. As Ross Perot noted, what we're getting is that giant "sucking sound" as jobs get outsourced to cheaper labor markets. It makes life worse here and it doesn't improve the lives of people in other countries. Dramatic evidence of that is Mexico, which has been hammered by NAFTA. I believe that NAFTA is largely responsible for the surge in illegal immigrants we've seen. Get rid of NAFTA, restore some sanity to trade policies, and we'll see a drop in illegal immigration. Molly Ivins takes a look in this column linked at www.commondreams.org:
Dec. 16, 2005, is a day that will live in infamy in the Hall of Fame of Unintended Republican Consequences.
A bunch of the guys were just noodling around in the House of Representatives in Washington, see, kind of fooling around with the idea that they might get some traction out of immigration as a hot-button issue. The old hot buttons have kind of cooled off here lately, with people up in arms about Iraq, oil, health insurance and all this other stuff that makes the boys say, "Who me?" Where's a good divisive social issue when you need one? They weren't that far wrong — some variation on the race card usually works.
Trouble is, they played the card, tried to make every illegal worker in the country a felon and woke up the Sleeping Brown Giant, instead.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
May 04, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE FLYPAPER CALLED IRAQ
You think of the La Brea Tar Pits. We know from fossil remains that creatures would get stuck in the oily goo and predators thought they had easy prey until they too became trapped. It's like that with the U.S. in Iraq. We waded in with guns 'ablazin' and now we're stuck. In this article Maureen Dowd compares it to the famous O. H. Henry story "The Ransom of Red Chief." The column is linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/md/md200.shtml
Now we see this classic plotline in the Middle East. The inept captors have become the captives. The country the administration precipitously grabbed and overconfidently took over has ended up trapping, draining, flummoxing and alarming the administration, which is more and more desperate to hand it off and escape.
President Bush said Saturday, "As Iraqis continue to make progress toward a democracy that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, more of our troops can come home."
And in an interview in the new Vanity Fair, Todd Purdum asks Dick Cheney whether in his "darkest night" he has even "a little doubt" about the administration's course. "No," Vice says. "I think what we've done has been what needed to be done."
But even if they and their 33 percent unshakeable base are still in denial, there's a growing consensus that their plot was hatched, as O. Henry put it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition" and that we're the Middle East hostages now, to war and oil.
THE CORPORATE GODS
In the United States we're conditioned to pay homage to power, money, and celebrity. We're supposed to stand in awe of rich people like Donald Trump or the CEOs of major corporations. They're the "geniuses" who make capitalism work, we're told. But in recent years when the "geniuses" mess up, it's workers who pay the price. Workers lose their jobs, see their jobs outsourced, or see their wages and benefits slashed. Meanwhile, even CEOs of failing companies rake in huge salaries and perks. This article by Robert Steinback is at www.commondreams.org:
Since the dawn of the Reagan era in 1980, Americans have been conditioned to regard corporate executives as the gods of Western civilization. We view them as knowledgeable and wise because they have survived in the corporate jungle. And if you believe conservative contemporary wisdom, they've triumphed despite the meddling of thickheaded government clods and the sabotage of parasitic and corrupt labor unions.
But one can't blame government for Ford's domestic failures -- never in the history of this nation has there been a more corporation-friendly administration in Washington.
And it's hard to blame laborers for the closure of the Norfolk plant and 18 other Ford and General Motors plants around the country, which will eventually idle some 60,000 workers. All workers do is build the cars -- they're paid the same rate and apply the same expertise whether working on profitable or unprofitable lines. Management decides what cars to build, designs them and sells them. Ford earned $2 billion overall last year, but it lost $1.6 billion on North American operations, prompting the cutbacks.
RUMSFELD GETS AN EARFUL
The speech by Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner was a rarity in the Bush administration. It was one time that Bush got confronted with the unpleasant facts about his corrupt and inept administration. He got a similar splash of cold water during the Coretta Scott King funeral. Now Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld couldn't hide in the bubble when he was confronted by a former CIA analyst named Ray McGovern. This article by Shannon McCaffrey is at www.sfgate.com:
Protesters repeatedly interrupted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday and one man, a former CIA analyst, accused him of lying about Iraq prewar intelligence in an unusually vociferous display of anti-war sentiment.
"Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?" asked Ray McGovern, the former analyst, during a question-and-answer session.
"I did not lie," shot back Rumsfeld, who waved off security guards ready to remove McGovern from the hall at the Southern Center for International Studies.
With Iraq war support remaining low, it is not unusual for top Bush administration officials to encounter protests and hostile questions. But the outbursts Rumsfeld confronted on Thursday seemed beyond the usual.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE FLYPAPER CALLED IRAQ
You think of the La Brea Tar Pits. We know from fossil remains that creatures would get stuck in the oily goo and predators thought they had easy prey until they too became trapped. It's like that with the U.S. in Iraq. We waded in with guns 'ablazin' and now we're stuck. In this article Maureen Dowd compares it to the famous O. H. Henry story "The Ransom of Red Chief." The column is linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/md/md200.shtml
Now we see this classic plotline in the Middle East. The inept captors have become the captives. The country the administration precipitously grabbed and overconfidently took over has ended up trapping, draining, flummoxing and alarming the administration, which is more and more desperate to hand it off and escape.
President Bush said Saturday, "As Iraqis continue to make progress toward a democracy that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, more of our troops can come home."
And in an interview in the new Vanity Fair, Todd Purdum asks Dick Cheney whether in his "darkest night" he has even "a little doubt" about the administration's course. "No," Vice says. "I think what we've done has been what needed to be done."
But even if they and their 33 percent unshakeable base are still in denial, there's a growing consensus that their plot was hatched, as O. Henry put it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition" and that we're the Middle East hostages now, to war and oil.
THE CORPORATE GODS
In the United States we're conditioned to pay homage to power, money, and celebrity. We're supposed to stand in awe of rich people like Donald Trump or the CEOs of major corporations. They're the "geniuses" who make capitalism work, we're told. But in recent years when the "geniuses" mess up, it's workers who pay the price. Workers lose their jobs, see their jobs outsourced, or see their wages and benefits slashed. Meanwhile, even CEOs of failing companies rake in huge salaries and perks. This article by Robert Steinback is at www.commondreams.org:
Since the dawn of the Reagan era in 1980, Americans have been conditioned to regard corporate executives as the gods of Western civilization. We view them as knowledgeable and wise because they have survived in the corporate jungle. And if you believe conservative contemporary wisdom, they've triumphed despite the meddling of thickheaded government clods and the sabotage of parasitic and corrupt labor unions.
But one can't blame government for Ford's domestic failures -- never in the history of this nation has there been a more corporation-friendly administration in Washington.
And it's hard to blame laborers for the closure of the Norfolk plant and 18 other Ford and General Motors plants around the country, which will eventually idle some 60,000 workers. All workers do is build the cars -- they're paid the same rate and apply the same expertise whether working on profitable or unprofitable lines. Management decides what cars to build, designs them and sells them. Ford earned $2 billion overall last year, but it lost $1.6 billion on North American operations, prompting the cutbacks.
RUMSFELD GETS AN EARFUL
The speech by Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner was a rarity in the Bush administration. It was one time that Bush got confronted with the unpleasant facts about his corrupt and inept administration. He got a similar splash of cold water during the Coretta Scott King funeral. Now Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld couldn't hide in the bubble when he was confronted by a former CIA analyst named Ray McGovern. This article by Shannon McCaffrey is at www.sfgate.com:
Protesters repeatedly interrupted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday and one man, a former CIA analyst, accused him of lying about Iraq prewar intelligence in an unusually vociferous display of anti-war sentiment.
"Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?" asked Ray McGovern, the former analyst, during a question-and-answer session.
"I did not lie," shot back Rumsfeld, who waved off security guards ready to remove McGovern from the hall at the Southern Center for International Studies.
With Iraq war support remaining low, it is not unusual for top Bush administration officials to encounter protests and hostile questions. But the outbursts Rumsfeld confronted on Thursday seemed beyond the usual.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
May 02, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THIN-SKINNED BUSH
At the White House Correspondents Dinner Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert did a biting piece of satire that touched on almost all the facets of this disgraceful administration. There are reports that George W. Bush was about ready to "blow" as Colbert scored hit after hit. This story by Paul Bedard is at www.usnews.com:
Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert's biting routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner won a rare silent protest from Bush aides and supporters Saturday when several independently left before he finished.
"Colbert crossed the line," said one top Bush aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming.
"I've been there before, and I can see that he is [angry]," said a former top aide. "He's got that look that he's ready to blow."
VONNEGUT ON THE CLASS DIVIDE
Kurt Vonnegut's great novel Slaughterhouse-Five was copyrighted in 1969. The novel covers a wide range of topics, including torture, being a prisoner of war, and the Allied firebombing of Dresden Germany. I found a passage about the reality of being rich and poor in America that's even more true today. Vonnegut writes:
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. The most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THIN-SKINNED BUSH
At the White House Correspondents Dinner Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert did a biting piece of satire that touched on almost all the facets of this disgraceful administration. There are reports that George W. Bush was about ready to "blow" as Colbert scored hit after hit. This story by Paul Bedard is at www.usnews.com:
Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert's biting routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner won a rare silent protest from Bush aides and supporters Saturday when several independently left before he finished.
"Colbert crossed the line," said one top Bush aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming.
"I've been there before, and I can see that he is [angry]," said a former top aide. "He's got that look that he's ready to blow."
VONNEGUT ON THE CLASS DIVIDE
Kurt Vonnegut's great novel Slaughterhouse-Five was copyrighted in 1969. The novel covers a wide range of topics, including torture, being a prisoner of war, and the Allied firebombing of Dresden Germany. I found a passage about the reality of being rich and poor in America that's even more true today. Vonnegut writes:
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. The most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
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