June 29, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH'S POSTURING
George W. Bush and the right-wing echo chamber have been in a major lather the past few days over publication of a story by The New York Times about illegal spying into Americans' financial records. Some right-wingers have been free about using words like "treason" and suggesting this story is a major blow to the anti-terrorism effort. Well, it turns out that Bush and company have previously revealed far more about the tracking of financial transactions involving possible terrorists than was revealed by The Times. You get the feeling that what really upsets Bush and company is that we, Americans, know the administration has been busily stomping on the Constitution again. This item comes from americablog.blogspot.com:
It appears the Bush White House is once again at the head of the line when it comes to making classified leaks.
From DefenseTech:
Bush administration officials have been lining up to condemn The New York Times for revealing a program to track financial transactions as part of the war on terrorism. But if the Times’ revelation about a program to monitor international exchanges is so damaging, why has the administration been chattering about efforts to monitor domestic transactions for nearly five years?
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many journalists — including this one — were briefed by U.S. Customs officials on Operation Green Quest, an effort to roll up terrorist financiers by monitoring, among other things, "suspicious" bank transfers and ancient money lending programs favored by people of Middle Eastern descent.
TERRORISM EXPERTS: US IS LOSING
George W. Bush and his administration have talked ad nauseam about the attacks on 9/11 and the "war on terror." Since the "war on terror" has been the major focus of this administration (except for tax cuts for rich people) you would think the administration might have at least some competence in that one area. Not so, it appears. The majority of terrorism experts say the U.S. is losing the war. This article by Bob Deans is linked at www.rawstory.com:
The United States is losing its fight against terrorism and the Iraq war is the biggest reason why, more than eight of ten American terrorism and national security experts concluded in a poll released Wednesday.
One participant in the survey, a former CIA official who described himself as a conservative Republican, said the war in Iraq has provided global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza, a valuable training ground and a strategic beach head at the crossroads of the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Turkey, the traditional land bridge linking the Middle East to Europe.
"The war in Iraq broke our back in the war on terror," said the former official, Michael Scheuer, the author of "Imperial Hubris," a popular book highly critical of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts. "It has made everything more difficult and the threat more existential."
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
June 27, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MILITARIZING SPACE
As this article points out, we have three major problems confronting the human race. I personally consider global climate change the greatest danger. This author points out, though, that nuclear proliferation and the move to militarize space are quickly becoming very dangerous problems. U.S. policy makers are already foreseeing war with China and they want to weaponize space in a preemptive move against the Chinese. This will set off a whole new arms race. And the Bush administration has proven itself incompetent at everything it does. Does we really want to trust this administration to put weapons in space that might go haywire and vaporize millions of people? This article by Mel Hurtig is at thetyee.ca:
Three terrible dangers face the world.
The first, global warming, has received much attention, if only relatively modest political action so far.
The second threat is the very real and increasing dangers of nuclear proliferation, and the dangers of terrorists acquiring nuclear materials and weapons. The collapse of the May 2005 non-proliferation talks, mostly due to U.S. intransigence, is a tragedy. And, despite the importance of nuclear proliferation, I doubt if one in a thousand are even aware of or concerned with the issue. The Bush administration failed to send a single high-ranking official to the May talks, even though they were held in New York with 153 nations in attendance.
The third issue, the weaponization of space, may represent the greatest and most urgent danger for the future and the survival of our civilization.
When we talk about the weaponization of space, we're not simply postulating about something that might happen in the distant future. There is already an abundance of irrefutable evidence that the United States intends to place weapons in space, beginning as early as 2008.
BEING GAY IS BIOLOGICAL
There's a new study being released that provides more evidence that gay people are born that way. It's not a choice on their part, but the way they are biologically "wired." Just as heterosexuals can't imagine being with a partner of the same sex, gay people aren't attracted to members of the opposite sex. I wonder how people like the guy I call Mr. Anti-Choice will react to this. Mr. AC frequently writes The Fresno Bee with diatribes against gay people and against abortion. This article by Jonathan Montpetit is at www.cbc.ca:
A new study suggests a male's sexual orientation is not the product of his environment but rather is influenced by biological factors present before birth.
Researchers at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., have found evidence that "a prenatal mechanism(s) . . . affect men's sexual orientation development."
The study's author, Prof. Anthony F. Bogaert, explored the causes behind what is known as the fraternal birth order, research that shows a correlation between the number of biological older brothers a man has and his sexual orientation.
But that concept leaves unclear whether older brothers have a socializing effect on sexuality, or if biological factors are at play.
Bogaert's study, which will be published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues for the so-called nature, instead of nurture, explanation of homosexuality.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MILITARIZING SPACE
As this article points out, we have three major problems confronting the human race. I personally consider global climate change the greatest danger. This author points out, though, that nuclear proliferation and the move to militarize space are quickly becoming very dangerous problems. U.S. policy makers are already foreseeing war with China and they want to weaponize space in a preemptive move against the Chinese. This will set off a whole new arms race. And the Bush administration has proven itself incompetent at everything it does. Does we really want to trust this administration to put weapons in space that might go haywire and vaporize millions of people? This article by Mel Hurtig is at thetyee.ca:
Three terrible dangers face the world.
The first, global warming, has received much attention, if only relatively modest political action so far.
The second threat is the very real and increasing dangers of nuclear proliferation, and the dangers of terrorists acquiring nuclear materials and weapons. The collapse of the May 2005 non-proliferation talks, mostly due to U.S. intransigence, is a tragedy. And, despite the importance of nuclear proliferation, I doubt if one in a thousand are even aware of or concerned with the issue. The Bush administration failed to send a single high-ranking official to the May talks, even though they were held in New York with 153 nations in attendance.
The third issue, the weaponization of space, may represent the greatest and most urgent danger for the future and the survival of our civilization.
When we talk about the weaponization of space, we're not simply postulating about something that might happen in the distant future. There is already an abundance of irrefutable evidence that the United States intends to place weapons in space, beginning as early as 2008.
BEING GAY IS BIOLOGICAL
There's a new study being released that provides more evidence that gay people are born that way. It's not a choice on their part, but the way they are biologically "wired." Just as heterosexuals can't imagine being with a partner of the same sex, gay people aren't attracted to members of the opposite sex. I wonder how people like the guy I call Mr. Anti-Choice will react to this. Mr. AC frequently writes The Fresno Bee with diatribes against gay people and against abortion. This article by Jonathan Montpetit is at www.cbc.ca:
A new study suggests a male's sexual orientation is not the product of his environment but rather is influenced by biological factors present before birth.
Researchers at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., have found evidence that "a prenatal mechanism(s) . . . affect men's sexual orientation development."
The study's author, Prof. Anthony F. Bogaert, explored the causes behind what is known as the fraternal birth order, research that shows a correlation between the number of biological older brothers a man has and his sexual orientation.
But that concept leaves unclear whether older brothers have a socializing effect on sexuality, or if biological factors are at play.
Bogaert's study, which will be published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues for the so-called nature, instead of nurture, explanation of homosexuality.
Monday, June 26, 2006
June 26, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH VS. THE PRESS
If anything, the mainstream media have been too willing to parrot the Bush administration line on almost everything, so it's a rare occasion when the press actually does its job. It's no surprise when that happens that the Bush operatives start spinning that the press is endangering "national security" or "aiding the enemy." That has occurred with The New York Times publishing the story that the Bush administration has been illegally spying on financial records. Bush has used the attacks on 9/11 as a carte blanche excuse to shred the Constitution. In this article New York Times editor Bill Keller talks about the right-wing outrage over the revelation of another scandal. This comes from www.nytimes.com:
Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting the threat of terror.
It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.
THE COST OF CRONYISM
Right-wing mythology is that the private sector always does things better. But that doesn't stop right-wing administrations like the Bush administration from using the government as a tremendous cash cow to reward its cronies in the private sector. The combination of government money and corrupt private sector companies not only rips off taxpayers and takes money needed for legitimate reasons, it gets people killed. We're seeing that in the administration's dismal failure in Iraq and in the failure to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Frank Rich takes a look in this article linked at donkeyod.blogspot.com.
But the most lethal impact of competitive sourcing, as measured in human cost, is playing out in Iraq. In the standard narrative of American failure in the war, the pivotal early error was Donald Rumsfeld's decision to ignore the advice of Gen. Eric Shinseki and others, who warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure the country once we inherited it. But equally reckless, we can now see, was the administration's lax privatization of the country's reconstruction, often with pet companies and campaign contributors and without safeguards or accountability to guarantee results.
Washington's promises to rebuild Iraq were worth no more than its promises to rebuild New Orleans. The government that has stranded a multitude of Americans in flimsy "housing" on the gulf, where they remain prey for any new natural attacks the hurricane season will bring, is of a philosophical and operational piece with the government that has let down the Iraqi people. Even after we've thrown away some $2 billion of a budgeted $4 billion on improving electricity, many Iraqis have only a few hours of power a day, less than they did under Saddam. At his Rose Garden press conference of June 14, the first American president with an M.B.A. claimed that yet another new set of "benchmarks" would somehow bring progress even after all his previous benchmarks had failed to impede three years of reconstruction catastrophes.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH VS. THE PRESS
If anything, the mainstream media have been too willing to parrot the Bush administration line on almost everything, so it's a rare occasion when the press actually does its job. It's no surprise when that happens that the Bush operatives start spinning that the press is endangering "national security" or "aiding the enemy." That has occurred with The New York Times publishing the story that the Bush administration has been illegally spying on financial records. Bush has used the attacks on 9/11 as a carte blanche excuse to shred the Constitution. In this article New York Times editor Bill Keller talks about the right-wing outrage over the revelation of another scandal. This comes from www.nytimes.com:
Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting the threat of terror.
It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.
THE COST OF CRONYISM
Right-wing mythology is that the private sector always does things better. But that doesn't stop right-wing administrations like the Bush administration from using the government as a tremendous cash cow to reward its cronies in the private sector. The combination of government money and corrupt private sector companies not only rips off taxpayers and takes money needed for legitimate reasons, it gets people killed. We're seeing that in the administration's dismal failure in Iraq and in the failure to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Frank Rich takes a look in this article linked at donkeyod.blogspot.com.
But the most lethal impact of competitive sourcing, as measured in human cost, is playing out in Iraq. In the standard narrative of American failure in the war, the pivotal early error was Donald Rumsfeld's decision to ignore the advice of Gen. Eric Shinseki and others, who warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure the country once we inherited it. But equally reckless, we can now see, was the administration's lax privatization of the country's reconstruction, often with pet companies and campaign contributors and without safeguards or accountability to guarantee results.
Washington's promises to rebuild Iraq were worth no more than its promises to rebuild New Orleans. The government that has stranded a multitude of Americans in flimsy "housing" on the gulf, where they remain prey for any new natural attacks the hurricane season will bring, is of a philosophical and operational piece with the government that has let down the Iraqi people. Even after we've thrown away some $2 billion of a budgeted $4 billion on improving electricity, many Iraqis have only a few hours of power a day, less than they did under Saddam. At his Rose Garden press conference of June 14, the first American president with an M.B.A. claimed that yet another new set of "benchmarks" would somehow bring progress even after all his previous benchmarks had failed to impede three years of reconstruction catastrophes.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
June 25, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT-WING CONTRADICTIONS
Regular Fresno Bee correspondent Mr. Anti-Choice was back today. The whole letter was the usual attack on liberals, including the latest Bush administration cliche about "cut and run."
Mr. Anti-Choice always get in a note about abortion, this time calling it the "slaughter" of the unborn. Yet, he supports the war in Iraq. Killing living and breathing children must be all right, but removing a fetus is not. If Iraqis could remain fetuses, they'd be safe from people like Mr. AC, I guess.
I have to wonder, too, how such good "Christians" can support the exploitation of the poor by the Republican party. The evidence is clear and convincing that a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class is taking place. The United States is becoming very much like the Third World in having a plutocrat class and the rest of us. What kind of God does Mr. AC worship? Is it the same Jesus Christ who talked about the difficulty of a rich man getting into heaven?
IF MARK TWAIN WERE HERE TODAY
Many people think of Mark Twain as primarily a humorist. He was the writer who wrote about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. But Twain also had some serious things to say about religion and about imperialism. If Mark Twain were alive today, he'd probably be writing about the Iraq war the way he wrote about the U.S. incursion into the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. This quote comes from an article by Ed Tant at www.smirkingchimp.com:
As the war drags on and the death toll mounts, the Bush team is hoping more and more Americans will swallow the line predicted so well and so mordantly by Mark Twain in "The Chronicle of Young Satan" back in 1900:
"Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame on the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT-WING CONTRADICTIONS
Regular Fresno Bee correspondent Mr. Anti-Choice was back today. The whole letter was the usual attack on liberals, including the latest Bush administration cliche about "cut and run."
Mr. Anti-Choice always get in a note about abortion, this time calling it the "slaughter" of the unborn. Yet, he supports the war in Iraq. Killing living and breathing children must be all right, but removing a fetus is not. If Iraqis could remain fetuses, they'd be safe from people like Mr. AC, I guess.
I have to wonder, too, how such good "Christians" can support the exploitation of the poor by the Republican party. The evidence is clear and convincing that a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class is taking place. The United States is becoming very much like the Third World in having a plutocrat class and the rest of us. What kind of God does Mr. AC worship? Is it the same Jesus Christ who talked about the difficulty of a rich man getting into heaven?
IF MARK TWAIN WERE HERE TODAY
Many people think of Mark Twain as primarily a humorist. He was the writer who wrote about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. But Twain also had some serious things to say about religion and about imperialism. If Mark Twain were alive today, he'd probably be writing about the Iraq war the way he wrote about the U.S. incursion into the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. This quote comes from an article by Ed Tant at www.smirkingchimp.com:
As the war drags on and the death toll mounts, the Bush team is hoping more and more Americans will swallow the line predicted so well and so mordantly by Mark Twain in "The Chronicle of Young Satan" back in 1900:
"Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame on the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
Saturday, June 24, 2006
June 24, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT-WINGERS AND THE RICH
Historical examples show that perhaps the strongest foundation for democracy is a strong and thriving middle class. With right-wing economics in play we've seen the middle class shrinking, or their wages stagnating, and the ranks of the poor on the increase. Republicans in Congress refuse to raise the disgraceful minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, give themselves handsome pay raises, and shovel out cash in tax breaks to the already stratospheric rich. Robert Kuttner writes about it in this article from www.boston.com:
Unlike most of the undeclared Democratic field, Edwards is not putting his finger to the prevailing wind. He's trying to change it. After his 2004 vice-presidential run, Edwards admirably went home to the University of North Carolina to head its Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity.
Though the speech was long-scheduled, Edwards' timing was unerring. On Wednesday, Senator Edward Kennedy's bill to raise the federal minimum wage from its paltry $5.15 an hour to $7.25 won the votes of 52 senators, a majority, including eight Republicans. But the Republican leadership blocked it with a filibuster.
Meanwhile, as if to underscore just whose interests they serve, the Republican majority in the House pushed through a bill to repeal the estate tax, except for the mega-rich. Only estates of over $5 million ($10 million for couples) would pay any tax; most of them would pay just 15 percent.
GREENLAND ICE MELT
Conservatives who claim there is no global warming taking place should take a look at the glaciers in Greenland. The glaciers are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the glaciers were to melt suddenly, world sea levels would rise by twenty-one feet. That would have major ramifications for people living in coastal areas. This article by Robert Lee Hotz is at www.latimes.com:
Gripping a bottle of Jack Daniel's between his knees, Jay Zwally savored the warmth inside the tiny plane as it flew low across Greenland's biggest and fastest-moving outlet glacier.
Mile upon mile of the steep fjord was choked with icy rubble from the glacier's disintegrated leading edge. More than six miles of the Jakobshavn had simply crumbled into open water.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT-WINGERS AND THE RICH
Historical examples show that perhaps the strongest foundation for democracy is a strong and thriving middle class. With right-wing economics in play we've seen the middle class shrinking, or their wages stagnating, and the ranks of the poor on the increase. Republicans in Congress refuse to raise the disgraceful minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, give themselves handsome pay raises, and shovel out cash in tax breaks to the already stratospheric rich. Robert Kuttner writes about it in this article from www.boston.com:
Unlike most of the undeclared Democratic field, Edwards is not putting his finger to the prevailing wind. He's trying to change it. After his 2004 vice-presidential run, Edwards admirably went home to the University of North Carolina to head its Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity.
Though the speech was long-scheduled, Edwards' timing was unerring. On Wednesday, Senator Edward Kennedy's bill to raise the federal minimum wage from its paltry $5.15 an hour to $7.25 won the votes of 52 senators, a majority, including eight Republicans. But the Republican leadership blocked it with a filibuster.
Meanwhile, as if to underscore just whose interests they serve, the Republican majority in the House pushed through a bill to repeal the estate tax, except for the mega-rich. Only estates of over $5 million ($10 million for couples) would pay any tax; most of them would pay just 15 percent.
GREENLAND ICE MELT
Conservatives who claim there is no global warming taking place should take a look at the glaciers in Greenland. The glaciers are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the glaciers were to melt suddenly, world sea levels would rise by twenty-one feet. That would have major ramifications for people living in coastal areas. This article by Robert Lee Hotz is at www.latimes.com:
Gripping a bottle of Jack Daniel's between his knees, Jay Zwally savored the warmth inside the tiny plane as it flew low across Greenland's biggest and fastest-moving outlet glacier.
Mile upon mile of the steep fjord was choked with icy rubble from the glacier's disintegrated leading edge. More than six miles of the Jakobshavn had simply crumbled into open water.
Friday, June 23, 2006
June 23, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MORE BUSH SPYING
George W. Bush just can't get enough spying. We learned about the National Security Agency spying a few months ago that revealed government snooping into telephone records. Bush wants to know who we call or get calls from, what we buy at the grocery store, what books we buy or check out from the library, what websites we visit, and now the government is peeking into bank accounts. Bush has in effect made Americans the enemy in his "war on terror." This article talks about how the administration tried to prevent publication of the story detailing the latest unconstitutional activity by Bush. The article by the Editor and Publisher staff is at www.mediainfo.com:
NEW YORK The New York Times and Los Angeles Times on Friday published a major story on government surveillance of private banking records over the objections of the Bush administration.
The same team that produced the Pulitzer-winning National Security Agency (NSA) "domestic spying" program, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, put together the New York Times' piece. In the middle of the article, they reveal that the White House had asked the paper not to run it. This had happened with the NSA story as well, and the Times put off running the pair's key findings for a year.
"We know the terrorists pay attention to our strategy to fight them, and now have another piece of the puzzle of how we are fighting them," Dana Perino, a White House spokesman said late Thursday. "We also know they adapt their methods, which increases the challenge to our intelligence and law enforcement officials."
THE END TIMES ZEALOTS
There is great danger in allowing religious fundamentalists into power. Religious fundamentalists, unlike sane people, want the world to end. They want to see the return of the Messiah, even if it involves oceans of blood, so they can be raptured off into some kind of heavenly bliss. This article talks about some of these fanatics are taking steps to hasten the apocalypse, including growing red heifers. The article by Louis Sahagun is at www.latimes.com:
For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.
Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.
For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.
With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MORE BUSH SPYING
George W. Bush just can't get enough spying. We learned about the National Security Agency spying a few months ago that revealed government snooping into telephone records. Bush wants to know who we call or get calls from, what we buy at the grocery store, what books we buy or check out from the library, what websites we visit, and now the government is peeking into bank accounts. Bush has in effect made Americans the enemy in his "war on terror." This article talks about how the administration tried to prevent publication of the story detailing the latest unconstitutional activity by Bush. The article by the Editor and Publisher staff is at www.mediainfo.com:
NEW YORK The New York Times and Los Angeles Times on Friday published a major story on government surveillance of private banking records over the objections of the Bush administration.
The same team that produced the Pulitzer-winning National Security Agency (NSA) "domestic spying" program, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, put together the New York Times' piece. In the middle of the article, they reveal that the White House had asked the paper not to run it. This had happened with the NSA story as well, and the Times put off running the pair's key findings for a year.
"We know the terrorists pay attention to our strategy to fight them, and now have another piece of the puzzle of how we are fighting them," Dana Perino, a White House spokesman said late Thursday. "We also know they adapt their methods, which increases the challenge to our intelligence and law enforcement officials."
THE END TIMES ZEALOTS
There is great danger in allowing religious fundamentalists into power. Religious fundamentalists, unlike sane people, want the world to end. They want to see the return of the Messiah, even if it involves oceans of blood, so they can be raptured off into some kind of heavenly bliss. This article talks about some of these fanatics are taking steps to hasten the apocalypse, including growing red heifers. The article by Louis Sahagun is at www.latimes.com:
For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.
Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.
For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.
With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
June 22, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MIDDLE CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS DISAPPEARING
The United States is becoming a nation of a very few rich people and lots of poor people. More evidence of that is provided by a Brookings Institution study showing the rapid decline of middle class neighborhoods. This news comes at the time the Republican controlled Senate refused to vote to increase the minimum wage. Why should we continue to support such a blatantly unjust economic system? This article by Blaine Harden is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Middle-class neighborhoods, long regarded as incubators for the American dream, are losing ground in cities across the country, shrinking at more than twice the rate of the middle class itself.
In their place, poor and rich neighborhoods are both on the rise, as cities and suburbs have become increasingly segregated by income, according to a Brookings Institution study released Thursday. It found that as a share of all urban and suburban neighborhoods, middle-income neighborhoods in the nation's 100 largest metro areas have declined from 58 percent in 1970 to 41 percent in 2000.
SCIENCE VS. SUPERSTITION
With the advent of right-wing politics we've seen a concomitant rise in superstition and intolerance. The advocacy of "intelligent design" walks in lockstep with proposals to ban gay marriage. What is particularly irritating about "intelligent design" is that it masquerades as science. Now some leading scientists are mounting a counteroffensive. This article by Sarah Cassidy is at www.commondreams.org:
The world's scientific community united yesterday to launch one of the strongest attacks yet on creationism, warning that the origins of life were being "concealed, denied or confused".
The national science academies of 67 countries warned parents and teachers to ensure that they did not undermine the teaching of evolution or allow children to be taught that the world was created in six days.
Some schools in the US hold that evolution is merely a theory while the Bible represents the literal truth. There have also been fears that these views are creeping into British schools.
The statement, which the Royal Society signed on behalf of Britain's scientists, said: "We urge decision-makers, teachers and parents to educate all children about the methods and discoveries of science and foster an understanding of the science of nature. Knowledge of the natural world in which they live empowers people to meet human needs and protect the planet.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MIDDLE CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS DISAPPEARING
The United States is becoming a nation of a very few rich people and lots of poor people. More evidence of that is provided by a Brookings Institution study showing the rapid decline of middle class neighborhoods. This news comes at the time the Republican controlled Senate refused to vote to increase the minimum wage. Why should we continue to support such a blatantly unjust economic system? This article by Blaine Harden is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Middle-class neighborhoods, long regarded as incubators for the American dream, are losing ground in cities across the country, shrinking at more than twice the rate of the middle class itself.
In their place, poor and rich neighborhoods are both on the rise, as cities and suburbs have become increasingly segregated by income, according to a Brookings Institution study released Thursday. It found that as a share of all urban and suburban neighborhoods, middle-income neighborhoods in the nation's 100 largest metro areas have declined from 58 percent in 1970 to 41 percent in 2000.
SCIENCE VS. SUPERSTITION
With the advent of right-wing politics we've seen a concomitant rise in superstition and intolerance. The advocacy of "intelligent design" walks in lockstep with proposals to ban gay marriage. What is particularly irritating about "intelligent design" is that it masquerades as science. Now some leading scientists are mounting a counteroffensive. This article by Sarah Cassidy is at www.commondreams.org:
The world's scientific community united yesterday to launch one of the strongest attacks yet on creationism, warning that the origins of life were being "concealed, denied or confused".
The national science academies of 67 countries warned parents and teachers to ensure that they did not undermine the teaching of evolution or allow children to be taught that the world was created in six days.
Some schools in the US hold that evolution is merely a theory while the Bible represents the literal truth. There have also been fears that these views are creeping into British schools.
The statement, which the Royal Society signed on behalf of Britain's scientists, said: "We urge decision-makers, teachers and parents to educate all children about the methods and discoveries of science and foster an understanding of the science of nature. Knowledge of the natural world in which they live empowers people to meet human needs and protect the planet.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
June 21, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
SEE NO TRUTH, HEAR NO TRUTH, SPEAK NO TRUTH
Film critic Roger Ebert recently wrote a review praising Al Gore's documentary about global warming "An Inconvenient Truth." He got the usual avalanche of right-wing hate mail saying that the movie is "liberal propaganda," even though the writers haven't even seen the movie. It's easier to listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, or O'Reilly than actually think for yourself. This isn't an issue that should be lightly dismissed. It's not fun to face up the fact that we need to take action, including changing our way of life, to save the planet. This article by Roger Ebert is at rogerebert.suntimes.com:
Many are supportive. More are opposed to the movie and just about everything in it, and are written by people who have not seen the movie and will not see it for a variety of reasons, including the theory that it is "liberal propaganda." What I fail to understand is why global warming should be a liberal or conservative issue. It is either happening or is not, and we can either take action to try to slow it, or we cannot. That is why a great many conservatives have agreed with Gore on this.
When I am told "this is another one you're trying to blame on Bush and Halliburton," all I can say is, somebody is listening to way too much talk radio on which they are told global warming is being blamed on Bush and Halliburton. Actually, Gore blames neither and mentions neither. "It got worse on his watch as vice president." Yes, it did. "He flies around on a jet to warn against it." Yes, one of thousands of jet flights every day.
CONGRESSIONAL HYPOCRITES
The Republican controlled Congress has voted itself yet another pay raise, but has refused to raise the inexcusably low federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour. Right-wingers have a variety of excuses for why they don't want to raise the minimum wage. Suddenly, they care about "small business" and claim that raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses. They'll claim that raising the minimum wage costs jobs, or they'll claim that minimum wage workers are people like college students who won't be at minimum wage jobs for long. All their rationales get shot down when examined. Holly Sklar writes about it in this article at www.commondreams.org:
Congressional pay raises between 1997 and 2007 will add up to $34,900. That's more than average workers make in a year.
It would take more than three workers to make $34,900 at the minimum wage stuck at $5.15 an hour -- just $10,712 a year -- since Sept. 1, 1997.
Full-time workers at minimum wage make less than $900 a month to pay rent, food, healthcare, gas and everything else. No wonder the U.S. Conference of Mayors Hunger and Homelessness Survey found that 40 percent of adults requesting emergency food assistance were employed, as were 15 percent of the homeless.
Childcare workers and security guards struggle to care for their own children. EMTs and health care aides can't afford to take sick days.
Yet Congress has given itself raise after raise, while giving none to minimum wage workers.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
SEE NO TRUTH, HEAR NO TRUTH, SPEAK NO TRUTH
Film critic Roger Ebert recently wrote a review praising Al Gore's documentary about global warming "An Inconvenient Truth." He got the usual avalanche of right-wing hate mail saying that the movie is "liberal propaganda," even though the writers haven't even seen the movie. It's easier to listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, or O'Reilly than actually think for yourself. This isn't an issue that should be lightly dismissed. It's not fun to face up the fact that we need to take action, including changing our way of life, to save the planet. This article by Roger Ebert is at rogerebert.suntimes.com:
Many are supportive. More are opposed to the movie and just about everything in it, and are written by people who have not seen the movie and will not see it for a variety of reasons, including the theory that it is "liberal propaganda." What I fail to understand is why global warming should be a liberal or conservative issue. It is either happening or is not, and we can either take action to try to slow it, or we cannot. That is why a great many conservatives have agreed with Gore on this.
When I am told "this is another one you're trying to blame on Bush and Halliburton," all I can say is, somebody is listening to way too much talk radio on which they are told global warming is being blamed on Bush and Halliburton. Actually, Gore blames neither and mentions neither. "It got worse on his watch as vice president." Yes, it did. "He flies around on a jet to warn against it." Yes, one of thousands of jet flights every day.
CONGRESSIONAL HYPOCRITES
The Republican controlled Congress has voted itself yet another pay raise, but has refused to raise the inexcusably low federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour. Right-wingers have a variety of excuses for why they don't want to raise the minimum wage. Suddenly, they care about "small business" and claim that raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses. They'll claim that raising the minimum wage costs jobs, or they'll claim that minimum wage workers are people like college students who won't be at minimum wage jobs for long. All their rationales get shot down when examined. Holly Sklar writes about it in this article at www.commondreams.org:
Congressional pay raises between 1997 and 2007 will add up to $34,900. That's more than average workers make in a year.
It would take more than three workers to make $34,900 at the minimum wage stuck at $5.15 an hour -- just $10,712 a year -- since Sept. 1, 1997.
Full-time workers at minimum wage make less than $900 a month to pay rent, food, healthcare, gas and everything else. No wonder the U.S. Conference of Mayors Hunger and Homelessness Survey found that 40 percent of adults requesting emergency food assistance were employed, as were 15 percent of the homeless.
Childcare workers and security guards struggle to care for their own children. EMTs and health care aides can't afford to take sick days.
Yet Congress has given itself raise after raise, while giving none to minimum wage workers.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
June 20, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WE'RE SUBSIDIZING THE RICH
The usual right wing spin is that taxes are just too high on the rich. The high taxes allegedly kill incentive, so if you cut taxes on the very rich they'll take those tax savings and create jobs, innovate, and build, and the wealth will shower down on all of us. It hasn't worked that way, of course. The obscenely wealthy don't have to do anything with their tax savings except stick it somewhere where it can earn lots of interest. While the very wealthy have been getting wealthier, wages have stagnated for working people. Benefits have been slashed. All of this has occurred while productivity has surged. It seems to me that working people are subsidizing the rich. In this article Larry Beinhart looks at economics under George W. Bush. The article is at www.commondreams.org:
With tax cuts, massive spending and wars, Bushenomics does pump a lot of money into the economy. But what Bushenomics doesn’t do is create places for the money to go. It does not enrich the vast mass of working people who are the ultimate consumers, so their spending does not increase.
Actually, as wages are driven down, pension funds are under funded or looted, public services are cut and the public debt is increased, it means that the money Bushenomics is spending is from the general population. In that circumstance, corporate profits are not so much profits, but a transfer of value and productivity into cash. It is a sort of hollowing out of our businesses and indeed of the entire country.
It’s a big country with a lot of money, a lot elasticity, a lot of creativity and a lot of variety. So this can go on for a while without a major crash. Plus the world depends on American consumption, so the rest of the world will go along with it. For a while.
MORE RIGHT WINGDOM IN THE FRESNO BEE
Today's Fresno Bee featured a letter from a right-winger decrying the "support" given by the "far left" to professor Ward Churchill. Churchill had some biting things to say about the 9/11 attack. According to our conservative pundit, Churchill referred to the 9/11 victims as "little Eichmanns." Then conservative pundit went on to defend Harpy Ann Coulter for her latest venom about the so-called "Jersey Girls," widows of 9/11 victims who called for an investigation into that attack. Conservative pundit had a problem with Churchill being a tenured professor while Coulter earns her dollars in the free market.
I consider the 9/11 victims to be that just that-- victims. They didn't deserve to have airplanes smashed into their buildings. The First Responders who died that day or from complications later didn't deserve to die either. So I would condemn any remarks by Ward Churchill that attacked the 9/11 victims. But Churchill has not made a handsome living feasting off of tragedy the way Ann Coulter and so many right-wingers have done. The whole Bush administration has been about exploiting the tragedy that occurred on 9/11 and then compounding that tragedy by launching a war in Iraq that has killed thousands upon thousands of more innocent people.
Why won't right-wingers condemn the Ann Coulters in their midst? Why don't they care about all the innocent people killed by Bush's war?
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WE'RE SUBSIDIZING THE RICH
The usual right wing spin is that taxes are just too high on the rich. The high taxes allegedly kill incentive, so if you cut taxes on the very rich they'll take those tax savings and create jobs, innovate, and build, and the wealth will shower down on all of us. It hasn't worked that way, of course. The obscenely wealthy don't have to do anything with their tax savings except stick it somewhere where it can earn lots of interest. While the very wealthy have been getting wealthier, wages have stagnated for working people. Benefits have been slashed. All of this has occurred while productivity has surged. It seems to me that working people are subsidizing the rich. In this article Larry Beinhart looks at economics under George W. Bush. The article is at www.commondreams.org:
With tax cuts, massive spending and wars, Bushenomics does pump a lot of money into the economy. But what Bushenomics doesn’t do is create places for the money to go. It does not enrich the vast mass of working people who are the ultimate consumers, so their spending does not increase.
Actually, as wages are driven down, pension funds are under funded or looted, public services are cut and the public debt is increased, it means that the money Bushenomics is spending is from the general population. In that circumstance, corporate profits are not so much profits, but a transfer of value and productivity into cash. It is a sort of hollowing out of our businesses and indeed of the entire country.
It’s a big country with a lot of money, a lot elasticity, a lot of creativity and a lot of variety. So this can go on for a while without a major crash. Plus the world depends on American consumption, so the rest of the world will go along with it. For a while.
MORE RIGHT WINGDOM IN THE FRESNO BEE
Today's Fresno Bee featured a letter from a right-winger decrying the "support" given by the "far left" to professor Ward Churchill. Churchill had some biting things to say about the 9/11 attack. According to our conservative pundit, Churchill referred to the 9/11 victims as "little Eichmanns." Then conservative pundit went on to defend Harpy Ann Coulter for her latest venom about the so-called "Jersey Girls," widows of 9/11 victims who called for an investigation into that attack. Conservative pundit had a problem with Churchill being a tenured professor while Coulter earns her dollars in the free market.
I consider the 9/11 victims to be that just that-- victims. They didn't deserve to have airplanes smashed into their buildings. The First Responders who died that day or from complications later didn't deserve to die either. So I would condemn any remarks by Ward Churchill that attacked the 9/11 victims. But Churchill has not made a handsome living feasting off of tragedy the way Ann Coulter and so many right-wingers have done. The whole Bush administration has been about exploiting the tragedy that occurred on 9/11 and then compounding that tragedy by launching a war in Iraq that has killed thousands upon thousands of more innocent people.
Why won't right-wingers condemn the Ann Coulters in their midst? Why don't they care about all the innocent people killed by Bush's war?
Monday, June 19, 2006
June 19, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE END OF REPUBLICAN ECONOMICS
For a very long time Republicans and conservatives have lectured us about the virtues of the "market." According to them, take away government restraints and the market will provide a bonanza for us all. We've seen now, just as we saw during the 1920s, that Republican economics benefit the few at the expense of the many. You eventually wind up with huge government deficits, massive inequality, recession, depressions, and misery. This article by William Greider looks at the end of the current Republican economic era. The article is at www.alternet.org:
The economic engine is running on empty. It looks robust only if you ignore the underlying conditions. Household savings were negative last year for the first time since 1933; that is, families kept up by spending more than they earned and by borrowing to do so. The national economy, encompassing private-sector business and government as well as households, also had negative savings in the fall quarter of 2005, despite bountiful corporate profits.
The household accounting reflects a common reality: Wage incomes, adjusted for inflation, are stagnant or falling. The weekly wage for 92 million people in nonsupervisory jobs (82 percent of the private-sector workforce) has declined for three consecutive years, largely because total working hours shrank across the economy. Even per capita income -- a broader measure that includes the billionaires -- declined for four years in a row under Bush. One in six manufacturing jobs has been lost since 2000 (39 percent in communications equipment, 37 percent in semiconductors). These losses are explained as free-market "efficiencies" but mainly represent the global relocation of American production.
THE GOP CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE
I would suggest if you examined our history under Republican or Democratic control you would find the scales tilt way toward Republicans when it comes to outright corruption. Look at the history of Republicans in the 20th century. Warren G. Harding, Richard M. Nixon, and Ronald Reagan headed three of the most corrupt administrations. For all their piety about national security and "family values," what Republicans value most is money. Their function is to use government to collect and disseminate wealth to their fat cat friends. If that means unnecessary wars, so be it. If that means destroying the environment, go to it. If it means sticking future generations with massive debt, so what? This article by Robert R. Regl is at www.opednews.com:
The tragic truth is that the Republican party is a criminal enterprise and those in office are thugs in tailored suits. Under the leadership of George W. Bush they have broken international law by embarking on an unjustifiable war of aggression against a sovereign nation. They compound this monstrous evil by encouraging, condoning and even ordering torture of prisoners who may or may not have participated in acts against the United States. They look aside when the Bush controlled CIA kidnaps people from off the streets and secretly flies them to countries where they are tortured and kept for months or years uncharged with any crime.
Plutocrats have no religion save that of the worship if wealth, but they vociferously proclaim their piety to appeal to that segment of the electorate who would establish America as a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. Indeed wealthy televangelist are more plutocrat than preacher and they were Republicans long before the National party cynically professed Christian fundamentalism as the true faith of America. The likes of Pat Robertson and Rick Santorum are joined at the hip in service to plutocracy and their mutual expressions of devotion to Jesus ring hollow when they call for bombing innocent civilians and torturing prisoners, but their commitment to plutocracy is clearly reflected in their enthusiasm for dismantling Social Security and repealing the estate tax.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE END OF REPUBLICAN ECONOMICS
For a very long time Republicans and conservatives have lectured us about the virtues of the "market." According to them, take away government restraints and the market will provide a bonanza for us all. We've seen now, just as we saw during the 1920s, that Republican economics benefit the few at the expense of the many. You eventually wind up with huge government deficits, massive inequality, recession, depressions, and misery. This article by William Greider looks at the end of the current Republican economic era. The article is at www.alternet.org:
The economic engine is running on empty. It looks robust only if you ignore the underlying conditions. Household savings were negative last year for the first time since 1933; that is, families kept up by spending more than they earned and by borrowing to do so. The national economy, encompassing private-sector business and government as well as households, also had negative savings in the fall quarter of 2005, despite bountiful corporate profits.
The household accounting reflects a common reality: Wage incomes, adjusted for inflation, are stagnant or falling. The weekly wage for 92 million people in nonsupervisory jobs (82 percent of the private-sector workforce) has declined for three consecutive years, largely because total working hours shrank across the economy. Even per capita income -- a broader measure that includes the billionaires -- declined for four years in a row under Bush. One in six manufacturing jobs has been lost since 2000 (39 percent in communications equipment, 37 percent in semiconductors). These losses are explained as free-market "efficiencies" but mainly represent the global relocation of American production.
THE GOP CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE
I would suggest if you examined our history under Republican or Democratic control you would find the scales tilt way toward Republicans when it comes to outright corruption. Look at the history of Republicans in the 20th century. Warren G. Harding, Richard M. Nixon, and Ronald Reagan headed three of the most corrupt administrations. For all their piety about national security and "family values," what Republicans value most is money. Their function is to use government to collect and disseminate wealth to their fat cat friends. If that means unnecessary wars, so be it. If that means destroying the environment, go to it. If it means sticking future generations with massive debt, so what? This article by Robert R. Regl is at www.opednews.com:
The tragic truth is that the Republican party is a criminal enterprise and those in office are thugs in tailored suits. Under the leadership of George W. Bush they have broken international law by embarking on an unjustifiable war of aggression against a sovereign nation. They compound this monstrous evil by encouraging, condoning and even ordering torture of prisoners who may or may not have participated in acts against the United States. They look aside when the Bush controlled CIA kidnaps people from off the streets and secretly flies them to countries where they are tortured and kept for months or years uncharged with any crime.
Plutocrats have no religion save that of the worship if wealth, but they vociferously proclaim their piety to appeal to that segment of the electorate who would establish America as a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. Indeed wealthy televangelist are more plutocrat than preacher and they were Republicans long before the National party cynically professed Christian fundamentalism as the true faith of America. The likes of Pat Robertson and Rick Santorum are joined at the hip in service to plutocracy and their mutual expressions of devotion to Jesus ring hollow when they call for bombing innocent civilians and torturing prisoners, but their commitment to plutocracy is clearly reflected in their enthusiasm for dismantling Social Security and repealing the estate tax.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
June 17, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
FED SHOULD BE CAUTIOUS ABOUT INFLATION OVERREACTION
In the past couple of years we've seen the Federal Reserve raise the prime lending rate countless times because of a fear of inflation. Every time the Fed raises the prime rate it impacts housing, the automobile market, and anyone who has borrowed money tied to the prime rate. In the meantime, although productivity has exploded, wages have not. In the column Paul Krugman says the Fed should stop obsessing so much about inflation, which is being driven mostly by things like oil prices, and not wages. This article is linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/pk/pk212.shtml
The point is that wage increases can be a major driver of inflation only if workers consistently receive raises that substantially exceed productivity growth. And that just hasn't been happening.
In fact, the distinctive feature of the current economic expansion — the reason most Americans are unhappy with the state of the economy, in spite of good numbers for the gross domestic product and explosive growth in corporate profits — is the disconnect between rising worker productivity and stagnant wages. Over the past five years productivity, as measured by real G.D.P. per hour worked, has risen by about 14 percent, but the real wages of nonmanagerial workers have risen less than 2 percent.
Nor is there much sign that things are changing on that front. The official unemployment rate is low by historical standards, but workers still don't seem to have much bargaining power. (Does this mean that the official unemployment rate makes the job situation look better than it really is? Yes.) The Federal Reserve's Beige Book, an informal survey of economic conditions across the country, reports that over the last couple of months "wage pressures remained moderate over all, with the exception being workers with hotly demanded skills."
THE BUSH WHO WOULD BE KING
The single defining trait of the Bush presidency is arrogance. You could add a mix of other things like lying and incompetence, but arrogance is preeminent. Arrogance has been evident from the way Bush stole the 2000 presidential election, the abrogation of treaties, and claims of a nonexistent mandate. Perhaps the greatest example of hubris is the use of so-called "signing statements," an outline essentially of how Bush does not intend to enforce laws he has just signed. Bush claims that his office gives him inherent powers to do whatever he wants to do. This article by Martin Kettle is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
On April 30 the Boston Globe journalist Charlie Savage wrote an article whose contents become more astonishing the more one reads them. Over the past five years, Savage reported, President George Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws that have been enacted by the United States Congress since he took office. At the heart of Bush's strategy is the claim that the president has the power to set aside any statute that conflicts with his own interpretation of the constitution.
Remarkably, this systematic reach for power has occurred not in secret but in public. Go to the White House website and the evidence is there in black and white. It takes the form of dozens of documents in which Bush asserts that his power as the nation's commander in chief entitles him to overrule or ignore bills sent to him by Congress for his signature. Behind this claim is a doctrine of the "unitary executive", which argues that the president's oath of office endows him with an independent authority to decide what a law means.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
FED SHOULD BE CAUTIOUS ABOUT INFLATION OVERREACTION
In the past couple of years we've seen the Federal Reserve raise the prime lending rate countless times because of a fear of inflation. Every time the Fed raises the prime rate it impacts housing, the automobile market, and anyone who has borrowed money tied to the prime rate. In the meantime, although productivity has exploded, wages have not. In the column Paul Krugman says the Fed should stop obsessing so much about inflation, which is being driven mostly by things like oil prices, and not wages. This article is linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/pk/pk212.shtml
The point is that wage increases can be a major driver of inflation only if workers consistently receive raises that substantially exceed productivity growth. And that just hasn't been happening.
In fact, the distinctive feature of the current economic expansion — the reason most Americans are unhappy with the state of the economy, in spite of good numbers for the gross domestic product and explosive growth in corporate profits — is the disconnect between rising worker productivity and stagnant wages. Over the past five years productivity, as measured by real G.D.P. per hour worked, has risen by about 14 percent, but the real wages of nonmanagerial workers have risen less than 2 percent.
Nor is there much sign that things are changing on that front. The official unemployment rate is low by historical standards, but workers still don't seem to have much bargaining power. (Does this mean that the official unemployment rate makes the job situation look better than it really is? Yes.) The Federal Reserve's Beige Book, an informal survey of economic conditions across the country, reports that over the last couple of months "wage pressures remained moderate over all, with the exception being workers with hotly demanded skills."
THE BUSH WHO WOULD BE KING
The single defining trait of the Bush presidency is arrogance. You could add a mix of other things like lying and incompetence, but arrogance is preeminent. Arrogance has been evident from the way Bush stole the 2000 presidential election, the abrogation of treaties, and claims of a nonexistent mandate. Perhaps the greatest example of hubris is the use of so-called "signing statements," an outline essentially of how Bush does not intend to enforce laws he has just signed. Bush claims that his office gives him inherent powers to do whatever he wants to do. This article by Martin Kettle is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
On April 30 the Boston Globe journalist Charlie Savage wrote an article whose contents become more astonishing the more one reads them. Over the past five years, Savage reported, President George Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws that have been enacted by the United States Congress since he took office. At the heart of Bush's strategy is the claim that the president has the power to set aside any statute that conflicts with his own interpretation of the constitution.
Remarkably, this systematic reach for power has occurred not in secret but in public. Go to the White House website and the evidence is there in black and white. It takes the form of dozens of documents in which Bush asserts that his power as the nation's commander in chief entitles him to overrule or ignore bills sent to him by Congress for his signature. Behind this claim is a doctrine of the "unitary executive", which argues that the president's oath of office endows him with an independent authority to decide what a law means.
Friday, June 16, 2006
June 16, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE DANGER OF MELTING PERMAFROST
Warming global temperatures may cause the permafrost in Siberia to melt and release astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That, in turn, will warm the earth even more and cause the release of even more carbon dioxide. Global climate change is the paramount issue facing the human race now. This article by Keay Davidson is at www.sfgate.com:
Global warming might be significantly worse than expected during the next century because the melting of carbon-rich permafrost in Siberia could expel hundreds of billions of tons of extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, scientists warn in a new study.
Experts said they can't be certain how large the impact might be, because they can't accurately estimate how much of the extra greenhouse gases will be absorbed by plants and the oceans.
One of the more frightening possibilities is that the permafrost-caused warming could feed on itself in what one scientist called a "vicious cycle": That is, it could trigger the melting of additional ice, which would unleash more greenhouse gases and thus cause more warming, in a self-repeating cycle for no one knows how long.
SUPREME COURT POLICE STATE RULING
The Supreme Court has ruled that police who have a warrant are not required to knock and announce themselves. They can barge into a home. The ruling majority was aided by the most recent Bush appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. It's yet another disturbing move toward eliminating our rights to privacy. It shows why Democrats should have fought tooth and nail against the confirmations of Roberts and Alito, who will be on the Supreme Court for decades, taking away our rights and ruling for big business as they go. This editorial is from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:
The Supreme Court yesterday substantially diminished Americans' right to privacy in their own homes. The rule that police officers must "knock and announce" themselves before entering a private home is a venerable one, and a well-established part of Fourth Amendment law. But President Bush's two recent Supreme Court appointments have now provided the votes for a 5-4 decision eviscerating this rule.
This decision should offend anyone, liberal or conservative, who worries about the privacy rights of ordinary Americans.
The case arose out of the search of Booker T. Hudson's home in Detroit in 1998. The police announced themselves but did not knock, and after waiting a few seconds, entered his home and seized drugs and a gun. There is no dispute that the search violated the knock-and-announce rule.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE DANGER OF MELTING PERMAFROST
Warming global temperatures may cause the permafrost in Siberia to melt and release astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That, in turn, will warm the earth even more and cause the release of even more carbon dioxide. Global climate change is the paramount issue facing the human race now. This article by Keay Davidson is at www.sfgate.com:
Global warming might be significantly worse than expected during the next century because the melting of carbon-rich permafrost in Siberia could expel hundreds of billions of tons of extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, scientists warn in a new study.
Experts said they can't be certain how large the impact might be, because they can't accurately estimate how much of the extra greenhouse gases will be absorbed by plants and the oceans.
One of the more frightening possibilities is that the permafrost-caused warming could feed on itself in what one scientist called a "vicious cycle": That is, it could trigger the melting of additional ice, which would unleash more greenhouse gases and thus cause more warming, in a self-repeating cycle for no one knows how long.
SUPREME COURT POLICE STATE RULING
The Supreme Court has ruled that police who have a warrant are not required to knock and announce themselves. They can barge into a home. The ruling majority was aided by the most recent Bush appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. It's yet another disturbing move toward eliminating our rights to privacy. It shows why Democrats should have fought tooth and nail against the confirmations of Roberts and Alito, who will be on the Supreme Court for decades, taking away our rights and ruling for big business as they go. This editorial is from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:
The Supreme Court yesterday substantially diminished Americans' right to privacy in their own homes. The rule that police officers must "knock and announce" themselves before entering a private home is a venerable one, and a well-established part of Fourth Amendment law. But President Bush's two recent Supreme Court appointments have now provided the votes for a 5-4 decision eviscerating this rule.
This decision should offend anyone, liberal or conservative, who worries about the privacy rights of ordinary Americans.
The case arose out of the search of Booker T. Hudson's home in Detroit in 1998. The police announced themselves but did not knock, and after waiting a few seconds, entered his home and seized drugs and a gun. There is no dispute that the search violated the knock-and-announce rule.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
June 13, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT WING NON SEQUITURS
Today's classic letter in The Fresno Bee was critical of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for writing an article for Rolling Stone that examined how Bush stole the election in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. Harrumph, our correspondent says, what about the 1960 election and the balloting in Cook County, Illinois? He apparently wants to take the Wayback Machine to dispute a relative few ballots in Cook County that allegedly put JFK over the top. Subsequent examination of that election shows that JFK won that election even without Cook County. The Ohio vote in 2004 involves hundreds of thousands of votes. That's not even taking into consideration the 2000 election when Al Gore clearly won the popular vote. Again, I have to wonder how Republicans, supposedly so honorable, always resort to the argument, "Well, they did it too!" If Democrats are guilty of chicanery, how does that excuse Republicans?
GRIM ECONOMIC NUMBERS
The economy is a little like a rock. It looks okay until you turn it over and find all kinds of nasty critters residing there. The unemployment rate is "only" 4.6%, for example, but if the economy had recovered the way it has historically there were be four million more people employed now. Productivity has been impressive, but the gains are going into corporate profits, perks, and to investors, not to working people. Debt is at record levels. This article comes from www.epi.org:
1. Profits are up, but the wages and incomes of average Americans are down.
* Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity—the growth of the economic pie—is up by 14.7%.1 (Figure A)
* Wage growth has been shortchanged because 46% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 20% in previous periods.2
* Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.3
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT WING NON SEQUITURS
Today's classic letter in The Fresno Bee was critical of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for writing an article for Rolling Stone that examined how Bush stole the election in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. Harrumph, our correspondent says, what about the 1960 election and the balloting in Cook County, Illinois? He apparently wants to take the Wayback Machine to dispute a relative few ballots in Cook County that allegedly put JFK over the top. Subsequent examination of that election shows that JFK won that election even without Cook County. The Ohio vote in 2004 involves hundreds of thousands of votes. That's not even taking into consideration the 2000 election when Al Gore clearly won the popular vote. Again, I have to wonder how Republicans, supposedly so honorable, always resort to the argument, "Well, they did it too!" If Democrats are guilty of chicanery, how does that excuse Republicans?
GRIM ECONOMIC NUMBERS
The economy is a little like a rock. It looks okay until you turn it over and find all kinds of nasty critters residing there. The unemployment rate is "only" 4.6%, for example, but if the economy had recovered the way it has historically there were be four million more people employed now. Productivity has been impressive, but the gains are going into corporate profits, perks, and to investors, not to working people. Debt is at record levels. This article comes from www.epi.org:
1. Profits are up, but the wages and incomes of average Americans are down.
* Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity—the growth of the economic pie—is up by 14.7%.1 (Figure A)
* Wage growth has been shortchanged because 46% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 20% in previous periods.2
* Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.3
Monday, June 12, 2006
June 12, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH'S PLANS FOR IRAN
The Bush administration's saber rattling against Iran is very much like what we heard before the war against Iraq. Iran is being made into a terrible threat that requires a massive U.S. response before Iran can inflict harm upon us. Nuclear imagery is playing a major part in the propaganda campaign against Iran just as it did against Iraq. We get images of mushroom clouds thrust upon us. In this article Paul Craig Roberts writes about the neocon war plans against Iran, the plans to use nuclear weapons, and the very real danger of Armageddon. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Writing on Antiwar.com, University of California Professor Jorge Hirsch explains the tripwire that the Bush Regime has laid for Iran in order to have an excuse to launch an attack on that country. Just as the Bush Regime planned to attack Iraq and then orchestrated a case based on lies, the Bush Regime has already planned to attack Iran. Only this time, nuclear weapons will be used.
Nuking Iran is an essential part of the attack plan. The U.S. lacks the necessary conventional military force to invade and occupy Iran, but the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has a wider purpose. The neocons are determined not to have any more embarrassments, such as the Iraqi insurgency. By nuking Iran they intend to send a wider message that the U.S. will use every means at its disposal to ensure its hegemony. The neocons believe that the use of nukes will convince Arabs and the wider world that there is no recourse to accepting America's will.
The neoconservatives could not care less about public opinion. Neocons are contemptuous of the American people. Leo Strauss taught neocons that it was their duty to deceive the clueless American people in order to implement their agenda of global domination. The neocons believe that they have a perfect right, even the obligation, to manipulate the public through propaganda and black ops in order to create acceptance and support for their wars of aggression.
KEEPING TERRORISM IN PERSPECTIVE
From the time the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons technology until now the United States has been targeted by thousands of nuclear warheads. We, in turn, have thousands of nuclear warheads of our own. We lived under that nuclear Sword of Damocles for decades and no president demanded the kind of powers that George W. Bush has demanded or simply usurped for himself. Terrorism is a threat in the same way that lightning strikes or earthquakes are a threat. We take what precautions that are prudent, but we don't become obsessive. This column by Sean Gonsalves is at www.alternet.org:
It's as if the threat of a ''terrorist'' detonating a ''dirty bomb'' is somehow more menacing, and frightening, than thousands of nuclear warheads targeting every major city in the continental United States, as was the case during the Cold War era. I just don't get it.
Discredited domino theories and ''pragmatic'' policies of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) from ''the best and the brightest'' notwithstanding, the idea that a terrorist attack, even on the horrendous scale of 9/11, is more of a threat to national security than a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union (pre-glasnost) strikes me as both hysteria and comically hysterical.
Yet, we have highly educated pundits, politicians, and Supreme Court justices rationalizing the ''need'' for unprecedented presidential powers antithetical to founding constitutional principles in this ''new kind of war'' with no end in sight? Is it realistic to wage a temporal, material war on eternal, spiritual evil? Will this war end only with the Second Coming? I just don't get it.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH'S PLANS FOR IRAN
The Bush administration's saber rattling against Iran is very much like what we heard before the war against Iraq. Iran is being made into a terrible threat that requires a massive U.S. response before Iran can inflict harm upon us. Nuclear imagery is playing a major part in the propaganda campaign against Iran just as it did against Iraq. We get images of mushroom clouds thrust upon us. In this article Paul Craig Roberts writes about the neocon war plans against Iran, the plans to use nuclear weapons, and the very real danger of Armageddon. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Writing on Antiwar.com, University of California Professor Jorge Hirsch explains the tripwire that the Bush Regime has laid for Iran in order to have an excuse to launch an attack on that country. Just as the Bush Regime planned to attack Iraq and then orchestrated a case based on lies, the Bush Regime has already planned to attack Iran. Only this time, nuclear weapons will be used.
Nuking Iran is an essential part of the attack plan. The U.S. lacks the necessary conventional military force to invade and occupy Iran, but the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has a wider purpose. The neocons are determined not to have any more embarrassments, such as the Iraqi insurgency. By nuking Iran they intend to send a wider message that the U.S. will use every means at its disposal to ensure its hegemony. The neocons believe that the use of nukes will convince Arabs and the wider world that there is no recourse to accepting America's will.
The neoconservatives could not care less about public opinion. Neocons are contemptuous of the American people. Leo Strauss taught neocons that it was their duty to deceive the clueless American people in order to implement their agenda of global domination. The neocons believe that they have a perfect right, even the obligation, to manipulate the public through propaganda and black ops in order to create acceptance and support for their wars of aggression.
KEEPING TERRORISM IN PERSPECTIVE
From the time the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons technology until now the United States has been targeted by thousands of nuclear warheads. We, in turn, have thousands of nuclear warheads of our own. We lived under that nuclear Sword of Damocles for decades and no president demanded the kind of powers that George W. Bush has demanded or simply usurped for himself. Terrorism is a threat in the same way that lightning strikes or earthquakes are a threat. We take what precautions that are prudent, but we don't become obsessive. This column by Sean Gonsalves is at www.alternet.org:
It's as if the threat of a ''terrorist'' detonating a ''dirty bomb'' is somehow more menacing, and frightening, than thousands of nuclear warheads targeting every major city in the continental United States, as was the case during the Cold War era. I just don't get it.
Discredited domino theories and ''pragmatic'' policies of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) from ''the best and the brightest'' notwithstanding, the idea that a terrorist attack, even on the horrendous scale of 9/11, is more of a threat to national security than a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union (pre-glasnost) strikes me as both hysteria and comically hysterical.
Yet, we have highly educated pundits, politicians, and Supreme Court justices rationalizing the ''need'' for unprecedented presidential powers antithetical to founding constitutional principles in this ''new kind of war'' with no end in sight? Is it realistic to wage a temporal, material war on eternal, spiritual evil? Will this war end only with the Second Coming? I just don't get it.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
June 10, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE RIGHT'S SENSE OF SUPERIORITY
One trait that seems common to right-wingers is a smug sense of superiority. Conservatives are richer, more hard-working, thriftier, more moral, see the real world with a clearer eye, and so on, according to the myth. Conservatives will even put down smart people for being "out of touch" with the real world. Harpy Ann Coulter is a classic example of right-wing snottiness on display. This article by Kathleen Reardon is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
A good thing came from watching Ann Coulter on Hannity and Colmes. I'd been rereading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy had been described twice as a person of "consequence," someone not approachable by those of normal status. I realized listening to Coulter, that she is not merely a mad woman.
Indeed, she is actually a reflection of a superior way of thinking that permeates much of what is now America's leadership. By describing the widows of 9-11 as enjoying a claim to fame based on the deaths of their husbands, as if this horror is somehow a less viable means of gaining attention for a cause than being born into a wealthy family with major connections, Coulter is mouthing the view of the hateful arm of the Republican Party. Their agenda is power and greed; their insignia is despicable condescension.
STOP THE KILLING NOW
In the days of the Vietnam war the government and military kept assuring us that the war was almost won. There was light at the end of the tunnel. We would keep Vietnam from falling to the Communists. And Communists were truly to be feared. It didn't work out well. We have a wall in Washington emblazoned with over 58,000 U.S. military who were killed. Countless more Vietnam vets were scarred physically or psychologically. Even more Vietnamese were killed. Vietnam did fall to the Communists after all and the world went on. The arguments about Iraq are similar to what we heard about Vietnam. We continue to bleed our treasury, lose our military members for no good reason, and kill Iraqi civilians. Paul Craig Roberts writes about it in this article at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Faced with mounting civilian carnage, both from war crimes committed by demoralized and broken U.S. troops and from the raging civil war unleashed by Bush's ill-fated, illegal invasion of Iraq, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has decided to waste another $50 billion to continue the lost war for five more months. Our elected "representatives" are so in thrall to the powerful military-industrial complex that no amount of American shame, pariah status, and military defeat can shut off the flow of taxpayers' funds to the merchants of death.
Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing hard-pressed U.S. taxpayers $300,000,000 per day! These wars are lost. Yet, imbecilic members of Congress are in the process of funding the war for another year. Multiply $300 million by 365 days and you get $109,500,000,000. These are not the full costs. The huge figure does not include the destroyed equipment, destroyed lives, and long-term care of the maimed and disabled.
Gentle reader, are you getting enough vicarious pleasure from the slaughter of Iraqi women and children to justify this price tag? Is murdering "ragheads" that important to you? If so, you are one sick person, just like every member of the Bush administration.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE RIGHT'S SENSE OF SUPERIORITY
One trait that seems common to right-wingers is a smug sense of superiority. Conservatives are richer, more hard-working, thriftier, more moral, see the real world with a clearer eye, and so on, according to the myth. Conservatives will even put down smart people for being "out of touch" with the real world. Harpy Ann Coulter is a classic example of right-wing snottiness on display. This article by Kathleen Reardon is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
A good thing came from watching Ann Coulter on Hannity and Colmes. I'd been rereading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy had been described twice as a person of "consequence," someone not approachable by those of normal status. I realized listening to Coulter, that she is not merely a mad woman.
Indeed, she is actually a reflection of a superior way of thinking that permeates much of what is now America's leadership. By describing the widows of 9-11 as enjoying a claim to fame based on the deaths of their husbands, as if this horror is somehow a less viable means of gaining attention for a cause than being born into a wealthy family with major connections, Coulter is mouthing the view of the hateful arm of the Republican Party. Their agenda is power and greed; their insignia is despicable condescension.
STOP THE KILLING NOW
In the days of the Vietnam war the government and military kept assuring us that the war was almost won. There was light at the end of the tunnel. We would keep Vietnam from falling to the Communists. And Communists were truly to be feared. It didn't work out well. We have a wall in Washington emblazoned with over 58,000 U.S. military who were killed. Countless more Vietnam vets were scarred physically or psychologically. Even more Vietnamese were killed. Vietnam did fall to the Communists after all and the world went on. The arguments about Iraq are similar to what we heard about Vietnam. We continue to bleed our treasury, lose our military members for no good reason, and kill Iraqi civilians. Paul Craig Roberts writes about it in this article at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Faced with mounting civilian carnage, both from war crimes committed by demoralized and broken U.S. troops and from the raging civil war unleashed by Bush's ill-fated, illegal invasion of Iraq, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has decided to waste another $50 billion to continue the lost war for five more months. Our elected "representatives" are so in thrall to the powerful military-industrial complex that no amount of American shame, pariah status, and military defeat can shut off the flow of taxpayers' funds to the merchants of death.
Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing hard-pressed U.S. taxpayers $300,000,000 per day! These wars are lost. Yet, imbecilic members of Congress are in the process of funding the war for another year. Multiply $300 million by 365 days and you get $109,500,000,000. These are not the full costs. The huge figure does not include the destroyed equipment, destroyed lives, and long-term care of the maimed and disabled.
Gentle reader, are you getting enough vicarious pleasure from the slaughter of Iraqi women and children to justify this price tag? Is murdering "ragheads" that important to you? If so, you are one sick person, just like every member of the Bush administration.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
June 08, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
INEXCUSABLE INEQUALITY
The Senate actually did the right thing today for once and didn't endorse eliminating the estate tax on America's wealthiest citizens. Back in the Reagan days we were told that trickle down economics would benefit us all. Poverty has consistently risen under Republican economic policies. Inequality and democracy are not a good mix. This article by Paul Harris is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
A survey last year showed that such economic mobility (a measure of those people trying to make the Dream come true) was lower in America than Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In fact, the only country doing as bad as America was Britain (food for thought, there).
Now this is not some argument against capitalism. Inequality is inevitable. It is a good thing. People need incentives. People need competition. People need markets. Some people will always be poor. Others deserve to be rich. But at the moment it looks like the rules of the game are being fixed in America in favour of the wealthy. The gap between rich and poor will only get wider. That is very dangerous.
Don't just take my word for it. Take Buffet's. After all he doesn't have anything to gain from criticising current policy. In fact he has hundreds of millions of dollars to lose. 'If class warfare is being waged in America,' he has written 'My class is clearly winning.' When even the rich are starting to think they are getting too many tax cuts, then you know something has gone very wrong.
GOVERNMENT BY INFERIORS
Plato wrote that one of the penalties for failing to participate in politics is having a government run by your inferiors. We've seen that come to dramatic fruition with the installation of George W. Bush. It's not only intellectual inferiority; it's moral and ethical inferiority. We could have found a more honest leader by electing the local loan shark. This article by Charles M. Ashley is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The oligarchs understand in their cynical way that the great strength of democracy -- that the majority rules -- may also be its greatest weakness. Majorities are not always right. Indeed, it is entirely possible that they may more often be wrong. (And please, I don't want to hear about how right and wrong are relative terms. Anyone who calls what the Bush administration and the Republicans have done in the last few years "right" needs to have his or her head examined.) Nevertheless, majorities can, with shrewd technique, be manipulated. And the Republicans have done a damn fine job of manipulating.
The problem with democracy, obviously, is that all that matters is that one gets the most votes. Plato knew it; we know it. Those casting these votes don't have to be wise. They don't have to be intelligent. They don't have to be discerning. They can be nearly brain-dead. They don't have to know anything about whom or what they are voting for. All they have to do is get to the polls and cast a vote. A precinct captain can collect them and herd them onto a bus to get them there.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
INEXCUSABLE INEQUALITY
The Senate actually did the right thing today for once and didn't endorse eliminating the estate tax on America's wealthiest citizens. Back in the Reagan days we were told that trickle down economics would benefit us all. Poverty has consistently risen under Republican economic policies. Inequality and democracy are not a good mix. This article by Paul Harris is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
A survey last year showed that such economic mobility (a measure of those people trying to make the Dream come true) was lower in America than Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In fact, the only country doing as bad as America was Britain (food for thought, there).
Now this is not some argument against capitalism. Inequality is inevitable. It is a good thing. People need incentives. People need competition. People need markets. Some people will always be poor. Others deserve to be rich. But at the moment it looks like the rules of the game are being fixed in America in favour of the wealthy. The gap between rich and poor will only get wider. That is very dangerous.
Don't just take my word for it. Take Buffet's. After all he doesn't have anything to gain from criticising current policy. In fact he has hundreds of millions of dollars to lose. 'If class warfare is being waged in America,' he has written 'My class is clearly winning.' When even the rich are starting to think they are getting too many tax cuts, then you know something has gone very wrong.
GOVERNMENT BY INFERIORS
Plato wrote that one of the penalties for failing to participate in politics is having a government run by your inferiors. We've seen that come to dramatic fruition with the installation of George W. Bush. It's not only intellectual inferiority; it's moral and ethical inferiority. We could have found a more honest leader by electing the local loan shark. This article by Charles M. Ashley is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The oligarchs understand in their cynical way that the great strength of democracy -- that the majority rules -- may also be its greatest weakness. Majorities are not always right. Indeed, it is entirely possible that they may more often be wrong. (And please, I don't want to hear about how right and wrong are relative terms. Anyone who calls what the Bush administration and the Republicans have done in the last few years "right" needs to have his or her head examined.) Nevertheless, majorities can, with shrewd technique, be manipulated. And the Republicans have done a damn fine job of manipulating.
The problem with democracy, obviously, is that all that matters is that one gets the most votes. Plato knew it; we know it. Those casting these votes don't have to be wise. They don't have to be intelligent. They don't have to be discerning. They can be nearly brain-dead. They don't have to know anything about whom or what they are voting for. All they have to do is get to the polls and cast a vote. A precinct captain can collect them and herd them onto a bus to get them there.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
June 06, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
KEEP THE ESTATE TAX
A move has been afoot by Republicans to repeal the estate tax. The propaganda machine goes into full spin mode to tell us of horrible abuses like family farms being lost to the tax man. Oh, the injustice of it all! In fact, the estate tax affects a tiny portion of America's richest citizens, most of whom inherited their wealth. Rather than repeal the estate tax, why not eliminate income taxes for the millions of us who make less than $50,000 a year? This article by Joan Claybrook and Dave Eiffert
is at www.commondreams.org:
A recent report published by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy shows how a handful of superwealthy families quietly have helped finance and coordinate a massive campaign to fool the American public and repeal the estate tax. Those 18 families, worth a total of $185.5 billion, have worked mostly in the shadows but they have names you've heard before: Walton, Gallo, Mars and, closer to home, Nordstrom and Frank Blethen (publisher of The Seattle Times). Collectively, those families stand to save a total of more than $70 billion if the estate tax is repealed.
Opponents of the estate tax also claim it inhibits entrepreneurship and punishes those who take risks to succeed. In fact, the vast majority of the superwealthy families behind the campaign became wealthy through inheritance and untaxed assets, not through their own hard work or innovation.
The policies advocated by estate tax critics conflict with the priorities of Washingtonians. As America faces ballooning budget deficits and a record national debt, it is irresponsible to provide new tax breaks for the wealthiest citizens. Studies show repeal of the estate tax would cost the government roughly $1 trillion over the first 10 years, roughly what it would take to provide health insurance for every uninsured American.
THE HUCKSTERS ON THE RIGHT
Right-wing politics is mostly about snake oil. They have their magic elixir that will cure all your ills. Just put aside your conscience, your ability to reason, and your sense of justice and drink up. You see hucksters peddling their brand of religion, or their brand of tax cuts, or their brand of bigotry against gays, immigrants, or people of color. Harpy Ann Coulter has made a small fortune lying about liberals. She has a new book coming out, and I wonder how much is stolen or how many factual errors it contains. I won't buy it, of course, because Harpy Ann needs to be ignored more than anything else. This article by Davis Sweet is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Happy End-times! It's 6/6/'6, and you know what THAT means. Blood rain from outer space. The Holy Land moves to Texas. And we're all about to be visited by the One Horsewoman of the Apocalypse, Ann Coulter, her Hillary-blonde mane cascading behind her in the righteous wind as her flying steed seeks out the unbelievers who need to be slaughtered like so many Iraqi children.
Prepare for another round of can't-turn-on-the-news-channel-without-seeing-that-skull terrors. Ann's message: the (tiny) atheist subset among the lefties (whom she'll smugly call "the godless left," like that's an insult) are just not stupid enough to have political power in America. Of course, she'll be using code words, but "not stupid enough" is really the gist. Ann and pals need people to be embarrassingly, horrendously, born-again-level stupid. Or, to be charitable, as if that matters, embarrassingly, etc. "unexamined."
See, to be as mindless as Ann Coulter's model American, you'll need to be comfy believing all this:
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
KEEP THE ESTATE TAX
A move has been afoot by Republicans to repeal the estate tax. The propaganda machine goes into full spin mode to tell us of horrible abuses like family farms being lost to the tax man. Oh, the injustice of it all! In fact, the estate tax affects a tiny portion of America's richest citizens, most of whom inherited their wealth. Rather than repeal the estate tax, why not eliminate income taxes for the millions of us who make less than $50,000 a year? This article by Joan Claybrook and Dave Eiffert
is at www.commondreams.org:
A recent report published by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy shows how a handful of superwealthy families quietly have helped finance and coordinate a massive campaign to fool the American public and repeal the estate tax. Those 18 families, worth a total of $185.5 billion, have worked mostly in the shadows but they have names you've heard before: Walton, Gallo, Mars and, closer to home, Nordstrom and Frank Blethen (publisher of The Seattle Times). Collectively, those families stand to save a total of more than $70 billion if the estate tax is repealed.
Opponents of the estate tax also claim it inhibits entrepreneurship and punishes those who take risks to succeed. In fact, the vast majority of the superwealthy families behind the campaign became wealthy through inheritance and untaxed assets, not through their own hard work or innovation.
The policies advocated by estate tax critics conflict with the priorities of Washingtonians. As America faces ballooning budget deficits and a record national debt, it is irresponsible to provide new tax breaks for the wealthiest citizens. Studies show repeal of the estate tax would cost the government roughly $1 trillion over the first 10 years, roughly what it would take to provide health insurance for every uninsured American.
THE HUCKSTERS ON THE RIGHT
Right-wing politics is mostly about snake oil. They have their magic elixir that will cure all your ills. Just put aside your conscience, your ability to reason, and your sense of justice and drink up. You see hucksters peddling their brand of religion, or their brand of tax cuts, or their brand of bigotry against gays, immigrants, or people of color. Harpy Ann Coulter has made a small fortune lying about liberals. She has a new book coming out, and I wonder how much is stolen or how many factual errors it contains. I won't buy it, of course, because Harpy Ann needs to be ignored more than anything else. This article by Davis Sweet is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Happy End-times! It's 6/6/'6, and you know what THAT means. Blood rain from outer space. The Holy Land moves to Texas. And we're all about to be visited by the One Horsewoman of the Apocalypse, Ann Coulter, her Hillary-blonde mane cascading behind her in the righteous wind as her flying steed seeks out the unbelievers who need to be slaughtered like so many Iraqi children.
Prepare for another round of can't-turn-on-the-news-channel-without-seeing-that-skull terrors. Ann's message: the (tiny) atheist subset among the lefties (whom she'll smugly call "the godless left," like that's an insult) are just not stupid enough to have political power in America. Of course, she'll be using code words, but "not stupid enough" is really the gist. Ann and pals need people to be embarrassingly, horrendously, born-again-level stupid. Or, to be charitable, as if that matters, embarrassingly, etc. "unexamined."
See, to be as mindless as Ann Coulter's model American, you'll need to be comfy believing all this:
Monday, June 05, 2006
June 05, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH STOLE TWO ELECTIONS
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has just published an article in Rolling Stone magazine laying out the evidence of how George W. Bush stole the 2004 presidential election, mostly by manipulating the vote in Ohio. Some people are attacking Kennedy, but we have conclusive evidence Bush stole both this election and the election of 2000. This country has tumbled down a very slippery slope in the past few years. We've allowed the theft of elections, we've allowed the subversion of the Constitution, we've tolerated torture and war crimes. It's time to face up to the facts and work to restore our democracy. This article by Thom Hartmann is at www.commondreams.org:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written a brilliant new article about the biggest political story in the history of the United States: An American politician illegitimately took the office of president by outright theft and fraud. Although such high crimes and misdemeanors have been rumored in previous elections, none in the history of the republic have been so thoroughly documented. George W. Bush is not the legitimate president of the United States.
Schoolchildren read (in the few remaining civics classes in America) about the multiple pollings and tense standoff that led to Thomas Jefferson's election as president in "the Revolution of 1800," because newspapers of the day looked into and reported on such things. But - unless we speak out - odds are that few will read about what happened in Ohio in 2004 in future history books, because modern newspaper editors are increasingly corporate appendages, and many of today's "reporters" worry more about currying favor with institutional power than investigating stories that may inconvenience or upset their "sources."
Kennedy's story - "Was The 2004 Election Stolen?" - broke on Thursday, June 1, 2006, when Rolling Stone magazine put it on their website and it appeared on other websites including www.commondreams.org. It hit the newsstands soon thereafter. In the article, Kennedy lays out the details of exactly how the Republican Party, in several states but particularly in Ohio, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to both steal the 2004 election and to cover up the evidence of that theft.
The subtitle of the article lays out Kennedy's foundational premise: "Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House." And that's just the beginning of the story, which includes ballot-box stuffing, electronic voting machine manipulation, "caging" in defiance of a court order banning Republicans from the notorious practice, threats and intimidation of Democratic voters by imported Republican goon squads, and multiple illegal uses of the office of the Secretary of State to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
CONSERVATISM IS ABOUT BIGOTRY
If you look at the agenda of right-wingers, you conclude there are a few basic precepts: love of the very rich, love of exploitation, and bigotry. People aren't poor because of the system; they're poor because they're lazy or possibly because they're not white. People who are gay made a "lifestyle choice," not because they born gay. People who question the government's war policies are "anti-American," not people who are concerned the country has veered wildly off course. This article by Steve Horowitz is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Conservatives love their code words. But then, they need them. They can't call their priorities what they are: intolerance masquerading as morality. So their propagandists devise signifiers like "traditional values," and conservatives claim all "values" for themselves, because apparently only they know what the traditions are.
Or they call themselves pro-life, when the only thing they're pro- is their own personal opinions being shoved down the throats of everyone else.
Being forced to acquiesce in prayer at school, even if it contradicts your beliefs? "Honoring God."
Then there's my favorite: "judicial activism," at best an expansive catch-all covering any court decision they disagree with, at worst an attack on the very concept of judicial review.*
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH STOLE TWO ELECTIONS
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has just published an article in Rolling Stone magazine laying out the evidence of how George W. Bush stole the 2004 presidential election, mostly by manipulating the vote in Ohio. Some people are attacking Kennedy, but we have conclusive evidence Bush stole both this election and the election of 2000. This country has tumbled down a very slippery slope in the past few years. We've allowed the theft of elections, we've allowed the subversion of the Constitution, we've tolerated torture and war crimes. It's time to face up to the facts and work to restore our democracy. This article by Thom Hartmann is at www.commondreams.org:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written a brilliant new article about the biggest political story in the history of the United States: An American politician illegitimately took the office of president by outright theft and fraud. Although such high crimes and misdemeanors have been rumored in previous elections, none in the history of the republic have been so thoroughly documented. George W. Bush is not the legitimate president of the United States.
Schoolchildren read (in the few remaining civics classes in America) about the multiple pollings and tense standoff that led to Thomas Jefferson's election as president in "the Revolution of 1800," because newspapers of the day looked into and reported on such things. But - unless we speak out - odds are that few will read about what happened in Ohio in 2004 in future history books, because modern newspaper editors are increasingly corporate appendages, and many of today's "reporters" worry more about currying favor with institutional power than investigating stories that may inconvenience or upset their "sources."
Kennedy's story - "Was The 2004 Election Stolen?" - broke on Thursday, June 1, 2006, when Rolling Stone magazine put it on their website and it appeared on other websites including www.commondreams.org. It hit the newsstands soon thereafter. In the article, Kennedy lays out the details of exactly how the Republican Party, in several states but particularly in Ohio, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to both steal the 2004 election and to cover up the evidence of that theft.
The subtitle of the article lays out Kennedy's foundational premise: "Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House." And that's just the beginning of the story, which includes ballot-box stuffing, electronic voting machine manipulation, "caging" in defiance of a court order banning Republicans from the notorious practice, threats and intimidation of Democratic voters by imported Republican goon squads, and multiple illegal uses of the office of the Secretary of State to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
CONSERVATISM IS ABOUT BIGOTRY
If you look at the agenda of right-wingers, you conclude there are a few basic precepts: love of the very rich, love of exploitation, and bigotry. People aren't poor because of the system; they're poor because they're lazy or possibly because they're not white. People who are gay made a "lifestyle choice," not because they born gay. People who question the government's war policies are "anti-American," not people who are concerned the country has veered wildly off course. This article by Steve Horowitz is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Conservatives love their code words. But then, they need them. They can't call their priorities what they are: intolerance masquerading as morality. So their propagandists devise signifiers like "traditional values," and conservatives claim all "values" for themselves, because apparently only they know what the traditions are.
Or they call themselves pro-life, when the only thing they're pro- is their own personal opinions being shoved down the throats of everyone else.
Being forced to acquiesce in prayer at school, even if it contradicts your beliefs? "Honoring God."
Then there's my favorite: "judicial activism," at best an expansive catch-all covering any court decision they disagree with, at worst an attack on the very concept of judicial review.*
Saturday, June 03, 2006
June 03, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE VILE, VILE RIGHT WING
You think sometimes that even right-wingers have some moral center that will make them outraged at the crimes of the Bush administration. But the Haditha massacre in Iraq shows that there's nothing these people won't spin. The right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh have been busily trying to make people like Congressman John Murtha the villain, not the people responsible for slaughtering innocent civilians. This should be a historical lesson to never put right-wingers in charge of anything, especially not a killing machine like the U.S. military. This article by Robert Fisk is at www.dailykos.com:
Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave?
The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of the United States' army of the slums go further?
I remember clearly the first suspicions I had that murder most foul might be taking place in our name in Iraq. I was in the Baghdad mortuary, counting corpses, when one of the city's senior medical officials, an old friend, told me of his fears. "Everyone brings bodies here," he said. "But when the Americans bring bodies in, we are instructed that under no circumstances are we ever to do post-mortems. We were given to understand that this had already been done. Sometimes we'd get a piece of paper like this one with a body." And here the man handed me a U.S. military document showing with the hand-drawn outline of a man's body and the words "trauma wounds."
O'REILLY SINKS TO NEW LOW
In his attempts to spin the atrocities in Iraq Bill O'Reilly managed to smear American victims of a Nazi atrocity in World War II. The Americans, who were prisoners of war, were executed in cold blood by members of the SS. O'Reilly tried to switch it around and suggest that the Americans murdered the Nazis. The rationale: see, atrocities happen all the time during war. O'Reilly and other right-wing vermin need to be put on their own little private island so they can practice their Lord of the Flies philosophy on each other. This article by Robert Parry is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
If someone else had done what Fox News star Bill O'Reilly did the other day - malign American troops who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and at Iwo Jima - it's hard to imagine how ugly the Fox News reaction would be.
Think of how vicious the attacks from Fox News and right-wing commentators were on Sen. Dick Durbin for citing FBI criticism of detainee abuse at Guantanamo, or the smears against Dan Rather and other journalists who helped expose the scandal at Abu Ghraib, or the ugly campaign to boycott the Dixie Chicks for criticizing George W. Bush.
If one of those "usual liberal suspects" had said something one-tenth as offensive as O'Reilly's remarks, Fox News surely would have offered up one of its loaded questions, like "Is (fill in the blank) Anti-American or Just Blinded by Hatred of Our Troops?"
But it's hard to imagine any comments as outrageous as O'Reilly's loose talk about war crimes supposedly committed by U.S. Army forces fighting in Belgium and by U.S. Marines in the bloody battle at Iwo Jima.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE VILE, VILE RIGHT WING
You think sometimes that even right-wingers have some moral center that will make them outraged at the crimes of the Bush administration. But the Haditha massacre in Iraq shows that there's nothing these people won't spin. The right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh have been busily trying to make people like Congressman John Murtha the villain, not the people responsible for slaughtering innocent civilians. This should be a historical lesson to never put right-wingers in charge of anything, especially not a killing machine like the U.S. military. This article by Robert Fisk is at www.dailykos.com:
Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave?
The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of the United States' army of the slums go further?
I remember clearly the first suspicions I had that murder most foul might be taking place in our name in Iraq. I was in the Baghdad mortuary, counting corpses, when one of the city's senior medical officials, an old friend, told me of his fears. "Everyone brings bodies here," he said. "But when the Americans bring bodies in, we are instructed that under no circumstances are we ever to do post-mortems. We were given to understand that this had already been done. Sometimes we'd get a piece of paper like this one with a body." And here the man handed me a U.S. military document showing with the hand-drawn outline of a man's body and the words "trauma wounds."
O'REILLY SINKS TO NEW LOW
In his attempts to spin the atrocities in Iraq Bill O'Reilly managed to smear American victims of a Nazi atrocity in World War II. The Americans, who were prisoners of war, were executed in cold blood by members of the SS. O'Reilly tried to switch it around and suggest that the Americans murdered the Nazis. The rationale: see, atrocities happen all the time during war. O'Reilly and other right-wing vermin need to be put on their own little private island so they can practice their Lord of the Flies philosophy on each other. This article by Robert Parry is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
If someone else had done what Fox News star Bill O'Reilly did the other day - malign American troops who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and at Iwo Jima - it's hard to imagine how ugly the Fox News reaction would be.
Think of how vicious the attacks from Fox News and right-wing commentators were on Sen. Dick Durbin for citing FBI criticism of detainee abuse at Guantanamo, or the smears against Dan Rather and other journalists who helped expose the scandal at Abu Ghraib, or the ugly campaign to boycott the Dixie Chicks for criticizing George W. Bush.
If one of those "usual liberal suspects" had said something one-tenth as offensive as O'Reilly's remarks, Fox News surely would have offered up one of its loaded questions, like "Is (fill in the blank) Anti-American or Just Blinded by Hatred of Our Troops?"
But it's hard to imagine any comments as outrageous as O'Reilly's loose talk about war crimes supposedly committed by U.S. Army forces fighting in Belgium and by U.S. Marines in the bloody battle at Iwo Jima.
Friday, June 02, 2006
June 02, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
AN INVESTOR ECONOMY
Right-wingers are trumpeting the supposedly good economy. George W. Bush cited the low unemployment rate (which is very deceptive) and said that the economy added 75,000 jobs last month. That number of new jobs really isn't impressive. Another thing that's happening now is that the cost of living is increasing faster than pay raises. We have an economy that could be in serious trouble. This article by Mark Trumbull is at www.csmonitor.com:
Statistics for compensation, which is a broader measure of pay, appear to be brighter because benefits are included. But today's workers are reaping smaller rewards from rising productivity than they did in the past. In the 1960s and 1970s, hourly compensation grew 1.9 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.
From 1985-2004, real hourly compensation grew just 1.3 percent a year, even though per-hour output was rising at a similar pace of more than 2 percent.
One reason for the gap, economists say, is globalization, which has put downward pressure on American wages. Several billion workers are now part of a global labor market.
As labor has lost clout, investors have gained. More of the gains from productivity go to shareholders, in the form of higher profits, rather than to workers.
SPORTS AND RELIGION
I have always found it a major turnoff that religion and sports get mixed. You see hitters in baseball step up to the plate and make the sign of the cross. These days you hear "God Bless America" played at ballparks. You see football players kneeling and praying together. It reminds me of a scene from a movie where the football team had a team prayer in the locker room and one of the guys then said "Let's kill those blanks!" The Colorado Rockies, a team noted for its mediocrity, has apparently made a big deal about being Christian. If they want to believe in religion, that's fine. Just don't force it on everyone else. This article by Dave Zirin is at www.thenation.com:
In Colorado, there stands a holy shrine called Coors Field. On this site, named for the holiest of beers, a team plays that has been chosen by Jesus Christ himself to play .500 baseball in the National League West. And if you don't believe me, just ask the manager, the general manager and the team's owner.
In a remarkable article from Wednesday's USA Today, the Colorado Rockies went public with the news that the organization has been explicitly looking for players with "character." And according to the Tribe of Coors, "character" means accepting Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior. "We're nervous, to be honest with you," Rockies general manager Dan O'Dowd said. "It's the first time we ever talked about these issues publicly. The last thing we want to do is offend anyone because of our beliefs." When people are nervous that they will offend you with their beliefs, it's usually because their beliefs are offensive.
THE TOLL OF JOURNALISTS
I had the misfortune of hearing some right-wing radio today. One thing you can count on with right-wingers is a list of cliches. One of the most enduring is the one about the "liberal media." To hear right-wingers tell it, things in Iraq are going just swell. It's just that darned media reporting negative stuff all the time. Then we look at the death toll, which includes a number of journalists. This war has lasted almost as long as World War II and journalists are being killed with alarming frequency. Maureen Dowd writes about it in this column linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/md/md208.shtml
The administration and some right-wing commentators have blamed the press for not reporting positive news in Iraq. The radio host Laura Ingraham has suggested that the press is "invested in America's defeat" and has mocked TV journalists for "reporting from hotel balconies about the latest I.E.D.'s going off."
Conservative chatterers have parroted President Bush's complaint that "people resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the footage of an I.E.D. explosion."
But now two network personalities — Ms. Dozier and Bob Woodruff — have been severely injured by roadside bombs while embedded with the military, trying to do the sort of stories the administration wants.
"One thing I don't want to hear anymore," Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, told The Times's Bill Carter, "is people like Laura Ingraham spewing about us not leaving our balconies in the Green Zone to cover what's really happening in Iraq."
Even with constricted coverage, the tally of journalists killed in Iraq is now 71, more than the number killed in Vietnam or World War II. (This war is now six months short of the United States involvement in World War II, but at least then we knew we were winning by this point.)
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
AN INVESTOR ECONOMY
Right-wingers are trumpeting the supposedly good economy. George W. Bush cited the low unemployment rate (which is very deceptive) and said that the economy added 75,000 jobs last month. That number of new jobs really isn't impressive. Another thing that's happening now is that the cost of living is increasing faster than pay raises. We have an economy that could be in serious trouble. This article by Mark Trumbull is at www.csmonitor.com:
Statistics for compensation, which is a broader measure of pay, appear to be brighter because benefits are included. But today's workers are reaping smaller rewards from rising productivity than they did in the past. In the 1960s and 1970s, hourly compensation grew 1.9 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.
From 1985-2004, real hourly compensation grew just 1.3 percent a year, even though per-hour output was rising at a similar pace of more than 2 percent.
One reason for the gap, economists say, is globalization, which has put downward pressure on American wages. Several billion workers are now part of a global labor market.
As labor has lost clout, investors have gained. More of the gains from productivity go to shareholders, in the form of higher profits, rather than to workers.
SPORTS AND RELIGION
I have always found it a major turnoff that religion and sports get mixed. You see hitters in baseball step up to the plate and make the sign of the cross. These days you hear "God Bless America" played at ballparks. You see football players kneeling and praying together. It reminds me of a scene from a movie where the football team had a team prayer in the locker room and one of the guys then said "Let's kill those blanks!" The Colorado Rockies, a team noted for its mediocrity, has apparently made a big deal about being Christian. If they want to believe in religion, that's fine. Just don't force it on everyone else. This article by Dave Zirin is at www.thenation.com:
In Colorado, there stands a holy shrine called Coors Field. On this site, named for the holiest of beers, a team plays that has been chosen by Jesus Christ himself to play .500 baseball in the National League West. And if you don't believe me, just ask the manager, the general manager and the team's owner.
In a remarkable article from Wednesday's USA Today, the Colorado Rockies went public with the news that the organization has been explicitly looking for players with "character." And according to the Tribe of Coors, "character" means accepting Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior. "We're nervous, to be honest with you," Rockies general manager Dan O'Dowd said. "It's the first time we ever talked about these issues publicly. The last thing we want to do is offend anyone because of our beliefs." When people are nervous that they will offend you with their beliefs, it's usually because their beliefs are offensive.
THE TOLL OF JOURNALISTS
I had the misfortune of hearing some right-wing radio today. One thing you can count on with right-wingers is a list of cliches. One of the most enduring is the one about the "liberal media." To hear right-wingers tell it, things in Iraq are going just swell. It's just that darned media reporting negative stuff all the time. Then we look at the death toll, which includes a number of journalists. This war has lasted almost as long as World War II and journalists are being killed with alarming frequency. Maureen Dowd writes about it in this column linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/md/md208.shtml
The administration and some right-wing commentators have blamed the press for not reporting positive news in Iraq. The radio host Laura Ingraham has suggested that the press is "invested in America's defeat" and has mocked TV journalists for "reporting from hotel balconies about the latest I.E.D.'s going off."
Conservative chatterers have parroted President Bush's complaint that "people resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the footage of an I.E.D. explosion."
But now two network personalities — Ms. Dozier and Bob Woodruff — have been severely injured by roadside bombs while embedded with the military, trying to do the sort of stories the administration wants.
"One thing I don't want to hear anymore," Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, told The Times's Bill Carter, "is people like Laura Ingraham spewing about us not leaving our balconies in the Green Zone to cover what's really happening in Iraq."
Even with constricted coverage, the tally of journalists killed in Iraq is now 71, more than the number killed in Vietnam or World War II. (This war is now six months short of the United States involvement in World War II, but at least then we knew we were winning by this point.)
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