AUGUST 31, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


NOW YOU CAN'T TRUST AAR

Just when you think you can't feel any more betrayed, or get any more cynical, you find out there always new outrages in store. Yesterday we learned that Air America Radio fired talk show host Mike Malloy, supposedly for financial reasons. I've been listening to Mike since the days on ieamericaradio, and I was delighted when Air America brought Mike on board. Up until then I'd listened half-heartedly to AAR. I can't get excited about Al Franken. This is a time when we need fiery voices exposing the lies and crimes of the Bush administration. Air America should be mostly a political voice, not an entertainment medium. I understand that money has to be made. That's the reality of a capitalist society. But Air America can garner far more listeners and acquire more advertising revenue by being a voice of truth. I have to wonder just what the behind the scenes story is with this cowardly act by Air America. I challenge their management to go on the air and give us an explanation.

THE HOLLOWNESS OF LABOR DAY

For the past three decades the political and business classes in the United States have made war on labor. What we've seen is a steady decline in wages and benefits for workers. Some would argue that this is the effect of globalization. Globalization has made things worse, but the attacks on labor began back during the Nixon years. Harold Meyerson has a good column at www.washingtonpost.com:

As a remarkable story by Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt in Monday's New York Times makes abundantly clear, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of gross domestic product since 1947, when the government began measuring such things. Corporate profits, by contrast, have risen to their highest share of the GDP since the mid-'60s -- a gain that has come chiefly at the expense of American workers.


Don't take my word for it. According to a report by Goldman Sachs economists, "the most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor's share of national income."


As the Times story notes, the share of GDP going to profits is also at near-record highs in Western Europe and Japan.

AUGUST 30, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH PLAYS PRESIDENT AGAIN

George W. Bush made his way to New Orleans again and went into cheerleader mode. Bush was a cheerleader in college in between snorting cocaine and getting drunk and being dismissive of poor people. In the meantime, Bush sent his attack dog Donald Rumsfeld to attack war critics. Critics of the war, says Rumsfeld, are like Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler. It's a totally phony and inappropriate comparison. Critics of this immoral war in Iraq are not advocating appeasement of terrorists. We're advocating saving innocent lives and U. S. resources to go after the real terrorists. Where is Osama anyway? Maureen Dowd writes it in this column at rozius.blogspot.com:

He was brazen enough to pose as the man of action even in a city ruined by his initial and continuing inaction. “I’ve been on the levees,’’ he told a crowd at a high school here yesterday. “I’ve seen these good folks working.’’

He spoke to a small number of residents in the boiling sun before the one house that had been tidily restored in a blighted working-class neighborhood in Biloxi. Outside the TV frame, there was a toilet on its side in the yard of a gutted house full of dangling wires, iron scraps and other sad detritus. On one fence spoke there was a child’s abandoned stuffed toy.

At a stop at a building company in Gulfport, Miss., he chirped biblically: “There will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered. Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses.”

CEO WAR PROFITEERS

While death and destruction have rained down on Iraq defense industry CEOs in this country have done very well. They have raked in an estimated one billion dollars while their poorer countrymen die in this war, and while their handiwork kills civilians. This article by Derrick Z. Jackson is at www.commondreams.org:

The litany of US mistakes and excessive force has the Pentagon commissioning at least two secret strategy studies in Afghanistan and Iraq. ``This is a struggle for the soul of the Army," said Colonel Peter Mansoor, the head of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center.

Just as odorous, a mountain of corporate cash grows next to the piles of bodies. In this bizarre war where Iraqi civilians fear both suicide bombers and the United States, the biggest sacrifice that President Bush asked of American civilians was to get on a plane and show those terrorists a thing or two by going to Disney World.

Defense contractors took that request to a logical extreme. They built their own fantasy land.

There is no evidence of a contractor having a soul in the 13th annual Executive Excess CEO survey by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. The report found that 34 defense CEOs have been paid nearly $1 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

August 29, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH IS A BIG TALKER

In many ways George W. Bush is the prototypical politician. Those are the politicians out on the stump who promise everyone everything if you just vote for them. Bush made big promises about rebuilding Iraq. Iraq is a disaster. He made a staged speech from New Orleans, back lit by a cathedral, and promised the federal government would do everything possible to get aid to the Hurricane Katrina victims. A year later people are still waiting. If it were Bush's corporate buddies, you can bet they wouldn't be waiting. Paul Krugman writes about it in this column linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/pk/pk229.shtml:

Last September President Bush stood in New Orleans, where the lights had just come on for the first time since Katrina struck, and promised "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." Then he left, and the lights went out again.

What happened next was a replay of what happened after Mr. Bush asked Congress to allocate $18 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. In the months that followed, congressmen who visited Iraq returned with glowing accounts of all the wonderful things we were doing there, like repainting schools and, um, repainting schools.

But when the Coalition Provisional Authority, which was running Iraq, closed up shop nine months later, it turned out that only 2 percent of the $18 billion had been spent, and only a handful of the projects that were supposed to have been financed with that money had even been started. In the end, America failed to deliver even the most basic repair of Iraq's infrastructure; today, Baghdad gets less than seven hours of electricity a day.

BUSH THE WAR CRIMINAL

In what seems an eternity ago, Nazi war criminals were tried in Nuremberg. The Nuremberg trials established the principle that even in war there are certain standards of ethics and morality that must be met. Combatants or those who command them cannot claim they were “just following orders.” By almost any measure, George W. Bush and members of his administration are war criminals. Paul Craig Roberts discusses it in this article at www.smirkingchimp.com:

President Bush maintains that Israel has "a right to protect itself" by destroying Lebanon.

Bush blocked the attempt to stop Israel's aggression and is, thereby, equally responsible for the war crimes. Indeed, a number of reports claim that Bush instigated the Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

Bush has other war crime problems. Benjamin Ferencz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, recently said that President Bush should be tried as a war criminal side-by-side with Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars, Hussein for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The U.S. Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crimes charges under both the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration's military tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.

August 28, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH IS SMUG AND ARROGANT

George W. Bush is one of those people who was born privileged who thinks that accident of birth makes him superior to other people. Nothing in his life demonstrates that Bush is superior at much of anything. He has been a dismal failure as a businessman. He had to steal two presidential elections to get into the White House. He has stood on the bodies of the 9/11 victims to frame his fraudulent presidency. He is responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people. But Bush's arrogance never subsides. This article by Robert Parry is at www.commondreams.org:

The swelling of Bush’s head was apparent in his interview for Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, .which took a largely flattering look at Bush’s “gut” decision-making but reported some disturbing attitudes within the White House.

“I am the commander, see,” Bush told Woodward. “I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they need to say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”

So, Bush had come to see himself as beyond accountability, much as ancient royalty viewed their own powers as unlimited under the divine right of kings. In the traditional droit du seigneur, a nobleman had the right to deflower the bride of a male subject on their first night of marriage.

Now we’re told that George W. Bush has another way of demonstrating his supremacy over subordinates: when new White House aides are brought in to be introduced to the President of the United States, the President farts.

DON'T BLAME DARWIN FOR HITLER

The times we live in are some ways like the period after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was a time mostly of intellectual darkness that didn't pass until the Enlightenment. What we're seeing now is a kind of anti-Enlightenment as we see assaults upon science by the reactionary right. We see phony ideas like Intelligent Design offered to dispute evolutionary theory. Now there is a “documentary” that claims Adolf Hitler wouldn't have happened without evolutionary theory. Never mind all the murderous thugs who lived long before Darwin published his theory. This article by Walter C. Uhler is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Yes, as Jared Diamond has observed: "Without evolution, one has no chance of understanding the living world around us, human uniqueness, genetic diseases and their possible cures, and genetically engineered crops and their possible dangers." [Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, pp. ix-x] Or, as the highly esteemed Ernst Mayr observed: "Evolution is the most important concept in biology. There is not a single Why? question in biology that can be answered adequately without a consideration of evolution." [Ibid, xiii]

Dr. Kennedy's failure to disclose the minority position of the show's two scientists was hardly an accident. He needed to deceive viewers in order to assure them that that the theory of evolution is "crumbling."

Unfortunately, none of these distortions in Darwin's Deadly Legacy so clearly demonstrate the contempt with which these crackpot Christians view their audience as does the very appearance of Ann Coulter. Having Ann Coulter appear in a show devoted to evolution is like going to the Governor's Ball and finding a turd in the punch bowl. It's simply outrageous.

August 27, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

WE HAVE A FAILING INFRASTRUCTURE

The “American way of life” hasn't just been about civil liberties, or about consumerism; it has also been about a sound infrastructure. People haven't had to joke about coming to the United States and not drinking the water. We've had an efficient road and bridge system, efficient electrical grid, a dependable air traffic control system, and safe drinking water. But our basic infrastructure systems are in danger now. New Orleans should have been a major wakeup call. This article by Chuck McCutcheon is at seattletimes.nwsource.com:

A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.

None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.

"When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation," said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).

The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.

JUST WHAT BIN LADEN WANTED

Days before the 2004 presidential election Osama bin Laden released a videotape denouncing George W. Bush. Bin Laden, who is reportedly a keen observer of U. S. politics, was aware that his tape would boost Bush's chances to be elected the following week. Having George W. Bush and his failed policies in the White House was everything that Osama bin Laden could have asked for. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:

So, in fall 2004, with Bush fighting for his political life in a tight race against Democrat John Kerry, bin Laden took the risk of breaking nearly a year of silence to release a videotape denouncing Bush on the Friday before the U.S. election.

Bush’s supporters immediately spun bin Laden’s tirade into his “endorsement” of Kerry and pollsters recorded a jump of several percentage points for Bush, from nearly a dead heat to a five- or six-point lead. Four days later, Bush hung on to win a second term by an official margin of less than three percentage points. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Bush-Bin Laden Symbiosis.”]

The intervention by bin Laden – essentially urging Americans to reject Bush – had the predictable effect of driving voters to the President. After the videotape appeared, senior CIA analysts concluded that ensuring a second term for Bush was precisely what bin Laden intended.

August 25, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

CONSERVATIVES AND BIG GOVERNMENT

Here in Freeper country you often hear right-wingers railing against "big government.” That's the government that does things for you and me, providing services such as unemployment insurance, consumer safety laws, and Social Security. Conservatives absolutely love the authoritarian side of government. They love the military (except for providing benefits to soldiers, of course) and they love prisons. They love trade policy that benefits big corporations and lowers wages here at home. This article by Dean Baker is at www.commondreams.org:

Conservatives want the government to redistribute income upward. This is done through a variety of mechanisms, the most obvious of which are their tax policies, which favor upper income people. But conservatives want the government to intervene in the market in a wide variety of ways that have the effect of redistributing income from those at the middle and the bottom to those at the top.

Conservatives promote a long list of government policies that shift pre-tax income upward. The most obvious is trade policy. The conservative trade agenda is to put less educated workers (the 70 percent of the work force that lacks a college degree) in direct competition with workers in developing countries like Mexico and China. This competition lowers the wages of workers in manufacturing, construction, and many other sectors. Pushing down the wages of these workers benefits the wealthy both by increasing corporate profits and by making it cheaper for them to get a wide range of services, like having their house painted or buying restaurant meals.

A more progressive trade policy would focus on subjecting the most highly paid workers to international competition: doctors, lawyers, accountants. This would lead to huge economic benefits in the form of lower medical costs, as well as lower prices for a wide range of goods and services, as wages for the most highly paid workers declined under the pressure of international competition. But conservatives count on the government to protect the six figure salaries of highly educated professionals.

LIKE GOOBER PYLE

The King of Flatulence has allegedly read 60 books on very weighty topics indeed. Based on his jumbled syntax and reliance on a few pet phrases, it's difficult to envision George W. Bush as any kind of intellectual. I was thinking about an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Goober Pyle joined a computer dating service. On the application Goober indicated that he had read hundreds of books. When he finally met an educated and sophisticated lady it turned out that Goober's “books” were comic books. Maybe that's the reading the Gas King has been doing. This article by Bob Cesca is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

I honestly don't believe he's read one book ever in his entire life, much less 60. Furthermore, how can his feeble monkey brain possibly retain or comprehend anything he's reading? Does he look at the pages and just see a series of squiggly lines? I think he does. Why else would he say the following?

"That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing about him is that I read three--three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting?"--Showing German newspaper reporter Kai Diekmann the Oval Office, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006 (from Slate)

He admitted to reading three (or four -- he's not sure about that either) books about George Washington, yet the only knowledge he could pass along to the German reporter was that... he read three (or four) books about George Washington. I mean, he couldn't even regurgitate anything beyond "the first president."

August 24, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

A STORY OF BODY WASHING

It is a custom in the Muslim religion to cleanse bodies before they are buried. This is a story about a body washer in Baghdad who is seeing the horrific violence in Iraq up close and personal. The story by Jeffrey Fleishman and Suhail Ahmad is at www.latimes.com:

"I've washed clergy, doctors, policemen, soldiers, laborers and painters," says Abid, a slight man with the whisper of a mustache. "I've washed Sunni and Shiite. This sectarian violence touches everyone. Once came a child of 12 killed in a mortar attack. They are all dear to me. They are all Iraqis."

To visit Abid's washing room is to see how brutal and battered Iraq has become. In July, Baghdad recorded more than 1,800 violent deaths: husbands snatched, tortured and beheaded; wives incinerated in market stall explosions; worshipers gunned down in front of mosques; the throats of laborers slit in the orchards. Children die too, or they are left without a parent, like the boy the other day who ran through the smoke of a suicide bomber to find only his father's twisted motorcycle.

"We curse the devils for all this death," Abid says.

THE BUSH WAR TEMPLATE

Republicans, and the Bush administration in particular, talk tough about national security, while they're busily undermining it. The attack on Iraq was akin to a SWAT team taking out an entire neighborhood while the killer languished in another county. The logical and the right response to the attack on 9/11 was to get the perpetrators of the attack. Instead, Bush and his gang thought they would use the attacks on 9/11 as an excuse to take over Iraq and its resources. It would also establish a U.S. presence in that oil rich region. This whole enterprise has been far more about power, money, and oil than it was ever about fighting terrorists. Israel made the mistake of following the Bush template when Israel attacked Lebanon. Now Israel's enemy Hezbollah is stronger than ever. This article by Paul Waldman is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Republicans have also built every presidential campaign for the last 40 years around the idea that the Democrat is weak and effeminate, while the Republican is strong and manly. They'll do it again in 2008. So Democrats need to not argue, "Yes, we are too strong"--again, that's talking about whether Democrats are strong or not--and argue instead that Republicans are weak. Nor is it enough to say, "They're strong, but dumb." The truth is they're a bunch of insecure wimps, so unsure of their masculinity they feel a burning need to invade somebody every couple of years to show they're real men. Don't imply it, say it. The Republicans should be characterized as the party of whiny fearful sissies, and until they get the keys to the military taken from them, we're all at risk. Had we not invaded Iraq, al-Qaida might have been destroyed by now.

The Israeli debacle in Lebanon is an excellent opportunity to make this case. The Israeli operation was Bushism in action, all the more surprising coming from a government that is supposed to have a better understanding of their foes. Afraid of being seen as weak, the Olmert government--led by a prime minister and defense minister who both lacked the lengthy military careers of most of the country's recent leaders and who thus were particularly keen to prove their toughness--responded to a provocation by launching a massive air assault followed by a ground invasion. They believed that if they inflicted enough damage on Lebanon's infrastructure, the Lebanese people would turn against Hezbollah--just as neoconservatives now argue that a strategic bombing campaign would cause the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the mullahs. (And no, I'm not kidding. People like Bill Kristol are actually arguing that.)

August 23, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

YES, BUSH IS TO BLAME

Right-wingers find a variety of ways to go into contortions. Among the most disgusting—or amusing, depending on your viewpoint—is the attempt to deflect blame from the Bush administration. Bush, according to them, isn't to blame for anything, even though he's been in the White House since 2001 and got a good deal of his odious agenda passed. 9/11 wasn't Bush's fault, they claim. It was Clinton's fault. North Korea getting nuclear weapons isn't Bush's fault. It's Clinton's fault. The lousy economy isn't Bush's fault. It's the fault of all those liberal entitlement programs. And so it goes. Mark Morford takes a look at the blame deflectors in this column at www.sfgate.com:

It has become the default wail, the last remaining lament available to a frazzled and bitch-slapped GOP, a group now completely unable to dredge up a single defensible position for Bush in the wake of so much scandal and abuse and wiretap, failed war and environmental devastation and global meltdown:

It's not all Bush's fault! He cannot be blamed for, say, teen sex and bad sitcoms and Mel Gibson! As for national policy, well, Bush inherited years of complicated problems which clearly overwhelmed his unsophisticated brain and attacked him like a swarm of angry multifaceted mosquitoes which he could only flail and swat at like a terrified child! In other words, Bush is merely one little man swimming in a massive swirling tide of corruption and misprision and difficult-to-pronounce countries. Leave him alone!

It's all so true, isn't it? Bush is innocent as a lamb. Just look at, say, global warming. Libs love to point the finger at Bush's astonishing environmental policy for the hastening of Earth's meltdown, but the truth is, the planet's been heating up for decades, with little concern from any politician except that silly little Al Gore.

BUSH IS A HYPOCRITE ABOUT DEMOCRACY

In his so-called news conference a couple of days ago George W. Bush was mouthing the usual platitudes about how the terrorists want to stop democracy in the Middle East. From a guy who has subverted civil rights here at home, it's a little strange to hear lectures about democracy. Even more, Bush didn't acknowledge that there has been genuine democracy in the Middle East. It just isn't his favorite brand. In this column Eugene Robinson looks at the disconnect between Bush and reality. The column is at www.washingtonpost.com:

Here's another line from the president's news conference: "What's very interesting about the violence in Lebanon and the violence in Iraq and the violence in Gaza is this: These are all groups of terrorists who are trying to stop the advance of democracy."

Now, whatever you think about George Bush's intellect, he knows full well that the Hamas government in Gaza was democratically elected. He also knows full well that Hezbollah participates in the democratically elected government of Lebanon, or what's left of Lebanon. And so he has to know full well that U.S.-backed Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon -- even if you believe they were justified -- had the impact of crippling, if not crushing, two nascent democracies of the kind the Bush administration wants to cultivate throughout the Middle East.

He also knows that the Iraqi government has real sovereignty over only the Green Zone in Baghdad -- a fortress made secure by the presence of U.S. troops -- and assorted other enclaves where American and British troops enforce the peace. He has heard the leader of that nominal government praise Hezbollah and denounce Israel.

August 22, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH NOT A CLASS ACT

George W. Bush has demonstrated on several occasions that he's a boor. He likes to insult men who are balding. He gave an unwanted massage to the Chancellor of Germany. He was caught on mike uttering a barnyard profanity at the G-8 Summit. He hasn't attended a single funeral of our military killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He stayed on vacation even as Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast. He thought making jokes about missing weapons of mass destruction was appropriate, even though that was the false justification for his attack on Iraq. So it's really no surprise that Bush likes flatulence jokes. This item comes from Paul Bedard at www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/articles/060820/28whisplead.htm:

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we're learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he's still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that.

HOLDING POLITICIANS ACCOUNTABLE

There's often a major disconnect between what we're told and what we see happening in the real world. In theory, in the United States we're all equal. But in practice it's like George Orwell's Animal Farm: some people are more equal than others. If you're a celebrity, or if you have lots of money, and in particular if you occupy high political office you get not one, but a continuous, get out of jail free cards. A guy who sticks up a liquor store gets thrown into the slammer and sent off to prison for years, but politicians responsible for graft and corruption and death on a mass scale don't suffer any consequences. Take the Bush administration as prima facie evidence. This article by Chris Floyd is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

For years -- years -- we have bashed and banged and clanged the bell on this theme over and over here at Empire Burlesque, and in the Moscow Times, and CounterPunch and anywhere else they'd let us come in with the hammer: George W. Bush and his minions are committing crimes -- actual crimes, clear-cut violations of American and international law, genuine offenses in the most literal sense, not just metaphorical transgressions against some moral law or political ideal. They are criminals by their own admission, have even boasted about their offenses: the unprovoked invasion of Iraq and all the putrid horror that has followed in its wake; the kidnapping of captives off streets all over the world and their "rendition" to secret prisons and foreign torture chambers; the "extrajudicial killing" -- i.e., murder -- of uncharged, untried individuals, including at least one American citizen; "taking the gloves off" on torture techniques that were carefully considered, in detail, in formal legal documents seen and signed by the highest government officials; and on and on.

None of this has been hidden. Almost everything I've written about the crimes of the Bush Administration has been taken from articles in the mainstream media -- articles which very often were laudatory in tone, not "exposes" or muckraking pieces. (Although there have been many excellent examples of the latter -- again, published in venues of broad national reach, available for anyone who cared to see.)

August 21, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has dubbed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales “Torture Guy” because Alberto appears to have a thing for torture. He tries to dress it up as something necessary to win the “war on terror.” He gives torture legal sanction, although legal sanction has been used to justify much evil in world history. But when the U.S. tortures its prisoners it means U.S. military and civilians are more likely to be tortured if taken prisoner. This article by David Irvine is at www.commondreams.org:

As if soldiers risking their lives are not already in enough jeopardy, this remarkable announcement, that the United States should abandon a central Geneva Conventions protection for prisoners, is unfathomable.

If sexual degradation and humiliation is acceptable for Muslim prisoners, the inescapable consequence will be that such inhumanity is not a war crime if the prisoners are American. If this really is White House policy, it is singularly cavalier toward soldiers and their families.

It either assumes that our enemies in Iraq or elsewhere will follow Geneva more rigorously than we do, or that they are so ruthless that American prisoners should expect to be tortured, castrated and beheaded, no matter what.

RELIGION = SOCIAL PATHOLOGY

Past studies have shown that the highest divorce rates and highest rates of teen pregnancy tend to occur in the parts of the U.S. where the belief in religion is the strongest. Now we have a new study showing that countries that have the least belief in traditional religion are safer and more peaceful places to live. This article by Martin Foreman is at www.humaniststudies.org/enews/index.html?id=219&article=7:

Several weeks ago, a ground-breaking study on religious belief and social well-being was published in the Journal of Religion & Society. Comparing 18 prosperous democracies from the U.S. to New Zealand, author Gregory S Paul quietly demolished the myth that faith strengthens society.

Drawing on a wide range of studies to cross-match faith – measured by belief in God and acceptance of evolution – with homicide and sexual behavior, Paul found that secular societies have lower rates of violence and teenage pregnancy than societies where many people profess belief in God.

Top of the class, in both atheism and good behavior, come the Japanese. Over eighty percent accept evolution and fewer than ten percent are certain that God exists. Despite its size – over a hundred million people – Japan is one of the least crime-prone countries in the world. It also has the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy of any developed nation.

August 20, 2006

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE BUSH WAR RECORD

George W. Bush likes to strut around and tout himself as “the war president.” I'm not sure that killing and maiming people is the best way to define your legacy. But Bush is bad even at prosecuting war. We've heard about “mission accomplished” and about elections in Afghanistan. The current situation in both Afghanistan and Iraq could hardly be called successful, and now we have the destruction of Lebanon by the Israelis to add to the dismal record. This article by Eric Margolis is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

For a leader who styles himself "the war president," U.S. Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush's military record now stands at 0 for 4. Even Italy's born-again "imperial Roman conqueror," Benito Mussolini, fared better.

- Fiasco I: Five years after Bush ordered Afghanistan invaded and proclaimed "total victory," U.S. and allied forces are fighting a losing war against Afghan resistance groups. Afghan heroin exports are up 90%. The U.S. just quietly deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan to hunt Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in a desperate attempt to save Republicans from getting clobbered in November midterm elections.

- Fiasco II: "Mission accomplished" in Iraq. Bush's war in Iraq is clearly lost, but few dare admit it. The U.S. has spent $300 billion on Afghanistan and Iraq, with nothing to show but bloody chaos, deficits, body bags, and growing hatred of America. The Bush/Dick Cheney "liberation" of Iraq has now cost more than the Vietnam War.

- Fiasco III: The White House had the CIA and Pentagon spend tens of millions bribing Somali warlords to fight Islamist reformers trying to bring law and order to their strife-ravaged nation. The Islamists whipped CIA-backed warlords and ran them out of Somalia. Following this defeat, the U.S. is now urging ally Ethiopia -- shades of Lebanon -- to invade Somalia, thus raising the threat of a wider war between Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Good work, Mr. President.

THE HISTORIC OPPRESSION OF ARABS

I've been reading Stanley Karnow's book Paris In the Fifties and I came across a passage that sounds right of current news. Karnow was talking about the French battling Arabs in Algeria. The French were colonialists, and the native Arabs wanted them out. Sound familiar? This passage describes how the French tortured their Arab captives:

“A left-wing Catholic author, Pierre-Henri Simon, stirred Parisians with a book, Contre la Torture, in which he detailed examples of French soldiers and gendarmes interrogating Arabs by suspending them nude from ceiling beams and attaching electrodes to their ears, fingers, and testicles. 'We fought against Hitler's racist monstrosities,' he charged, 'and today we ourselves employ his grisly methods.' Another scathing indictment came from Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the perceptive editor of L'Express who had served for six months as a lieutenant in Algeria and won the Croix Militaire. In a series of articles, he related case after case of his fellow officers promiscuously killing innocent Moslems. Underlining the futility of the mission, he quoted a Major Marcus: 'This is blind repression. For each false fellagha we wipe out, ten genuine ones fill the gap. We must either exterminate everybody—or quit.'”

August 19, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


TIME TO STOP GROSS INEQUALITY

As I've noted before, when Republicans are in power you can count on a lousy economy for working people and boom times for the rich. Contrary to Republican claims, the wealth doesn't trickle down. At at time when CEO salaries are going through the roof the salaries of workers are either stagnating or actually falling. As a member of the working class, I thoroughly resent the way the economic system is stacked against me and every other working person. I resent the fact that upward mobility is almost impossible now. You can't get a job that allows you to climb the economic ladder even if you're skilled and educated. It's a gross betrayal of working people, and the Republican party should have to pay the price for decades to come. This column by Paul Krugman is linked at rozius.blogspot.com:

But it seems likely that government policies have played a big role in America’s growing economic polarization - not just easily measured policies like tax rates for the rich and the level of the minimum wage, but things like the shift in Labor Department policy from protection of worker rights to tacit support for union-busting.

And if that’s true, it matters a lot which party is in power - and more important, which ideology. For the last few decades, even Democrats have been afraid to make an issue out of inequality, fearing that they would be accused of practicing class warfare and lose the support of wealthy campaign contributors.

That may be changing. Inequality seems to be an issue whose time has finally come, and if the growing movement to pressure Wal-Mart to treat its workers better is any indication, economic populism is making a comeback. It’s still unclear when the Democrats might regain power, or what economic policies they’ll pursue when they do. But if and when we get a government that tries to do something about rising inequality, rather than responding with a mixture of denial and fatalism, we may find that Mr. Paulson’s “economic reality” is a lot easier to change than he supposes.

PARIS HILTON: REPUBLICAN SYMBOL

Could there be a more fitting symbol of the Republican party than hotel heiress Paris Hilton? She's vain, obnoxious, not particularly bright, and has no qualms about self-promotion, including an infamous internet sex video. The R's latest attempts to slash the estate tax would benefit people like Ms. Hilton. But right-wingers would say we're "punishing" poor Paris by keeping the estate tax. This column by Jim Hightower is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The truly rich are very different from you and me – they don't pay taxes. Instead, they pay millions of dollars in fees to lawyers, bankers, and accountants to devise scams so they can dodge paying billions of dollars in taxes they owe.

The Senate Permanent Investigations subcommittee has just issued the most detailed analysis ever of high-level tax schemes that are tailor-made to allow billionaires to cheat on their taxes. The 400-page report found that this cheating is widespread, deliberate, and tightly organized – costing our public treasury some $70 billion every year. By dodging their taxes, the superrich force the rest of us either to pay a greater share of the cost of our country's highways, wars, national parks, etc. – or to endure cutbacks in public services we need (for example, $70 billion a year would go a long way toward providing health care for everyone in America).

"Ain't capitalism great?" wrote one of the lawyers with a tax-shelter boutique that was devising a scam for Robert Wood Johnson IV, the billionaire owner of the New York Jets. These convoluted schemes use circular transactions, offshore tax havens, sham corporations, fantasy stock transactions, fake losses, and a complex veil of secrecy to ... well, to cheat.

August 17, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


THE UPWARD MOBILITY MYTH

American mythology says if you work hard and follow the rules you too can become rich. When right-wingers bluster about "freedom" what they're usually talking about is getting rich and staying rich. But the rags to riches story in the United States is mostly myth. What we've seen with recent Republican administrations has been a growing gulf between the rich and everyone else. This article by Joel S. Hirschhorn is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

An American myth is terrific upward economic mobility. The report presents data on the share of low-income families (where low-income was defined as earning less than half of the national median income) that escaped from low-income status over a three-year period in the mid-1990s. The U.S. had the lowest share of low-income workers that exit their low-income status from one year to the next (29.5 percent). In contrast, rates in several European countries are greater than 50 percent: Ireland (54.6), the Netherlands (55.7), the United Kingdom (58.8), and Denmark (60.4).

What about longer-term intergenerational mobility? Researchers have investigated the degree of correlation between fathers' and sons' incomes at different points in time. Intergenerational income coefficients quantify the economic advantage conferred by parents to their children. The higher the coefficient, the more likely are children born to poor parents remaining poor later in life. One study found the highest degree of economic mobility was in Germany (0.12), followed by Canada (0.18) and the United Kingdom (0.27). In contrast, intergenerational economic mobility was lowest, by a large margin, in the United States (0.45). Other studies also found a relatively high coefficient for the U.S., with high levels also in South Africa and the United Kingdom, but much lower levels in Canada, Finland, Germany, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.

REPUBLICANS AND ARISTOCRACY

I think it was Harper's editor Lewis Lapham who used the phrase "the wish for kings" to describe many Americans. That's particularly true among right-wingers. They would love a return to the days of powdered wigs and fox hunts. Conservatives, such as the guy I call Mr. Sarcasm, use the word "punish" to describe the rich paying taxes. Working class people, with far less money to spare, aren't being "punished," I guess. Republicans recently tried to link an increase in the disgustingly low minimum wage to a cut in the estate tax, a tax that affects only the richest of the rich. That compassionate conservatism was in full odious bloom again. This article by Christopher Brauchli is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The poor are such a nuisance. Just when Congress tries to bring sense to its self-created chaos, the poor get in the way. The most recent example is the collision between the very poor who are paid the minimum wage and the very rich that happen to die.

The minimum wage is a concept with which the rich have little familiarity and one they never expected to have an adverse effect on their well-being. The minimum wage provides that those who work for a living should be paid no less than a certain amount. The amount since 1997 has been $5.15 an hour or $10,712 a year if the worker foregoes any vacation. (Since 1997 Congress has increased its members' wages by $31,600 which coincidentally is slightly less than 3 times more the annual income of a minimum wage recipient.) Adjusted for inflation the minimum wage is at its lowest level in 50 years.

Members of Congress who were concerned about the sad plight of those earning the minimum wage introduced legislation to increase the minimum wage. It was not to be a sudden increase that would startle the recipients. It was to take place slowly over the next three years so the poor could grow accustomed to their new found wealth and carefully consider how to dispose of it. When fully implemented the poor would be paid $7.25 an hour or $15,080 a year. A sad thing happened to the minimum wage as it was being pulled through the legislative process. Some members of Congress decided if Congress was going to do something for the poor, it should offset that by doing something for the rich. It came up with idea of linking the minimum wage increase to eliminating the estate tax.

August 15, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


HAIR GEL IS POINTED AT US

I grew up in a world where nuclear annihilation was a distinct possibility. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. When I went to sleep at night I wondered if I would ever wake. Now over four decades later we still have nuclear weapons, although not the consciousness we had about them back then, but our big fear is hair gel and shampoo! Never mind AIDS and ebola and smallpox because the terrorists will use exploding shoes or a tube of Crest to get us. Inspector Clousseau wasn't this ridiculous. This column by Ed Naha is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

With Britain's successful apprehension of the terrorist hair-gel cell, Homeland Security chief Michael ("Afterthought") Chertoff is already whining that his department just isn't powerful enough in terms of spying on American citizens.

Appearing on weekend talk shows, he wept: "What helped the British in this case is the ability to be nimble, to be fast, to be flexible, to operate based on fast-moving information. We have to make sure our legal system allows us to do that. It's not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants." (Ah, those were the days.)

"We've done a lot in our legal system the last few years, to move in the direction of that kind of efficiency," Chertoff opined.

To totally bring us up to speed with England, he then suggested we appoint a Queen.

Realizing that Homeland Security has not exactly done ANYthing since 9/11, the Department is toying with new measures to protect American citizens more effectively.

MR. SARCASM AND THE FRESNO BEE

There is a coterie of regular right-wing wackos who write The Fresno Bee. This crew would be described by Eric Hoffer as "true believers." They believe in the rich. They do, they do, they do! They believe in guns and in discrimination against women and gays and people who don't have the same religion they have. They won't believe in global warming until they spontaneously burst into flame some day and then they'll blame Bill Clinton. Mr. Sarcasm hasn't been in The Bee for a little while, thankfully, but today he was b-aaaa-ck!

Mr. S was making the claims that liberals advanced things back 50 years ago, but now liberals are impeding progress. Liberals don't believe in cutting the estate tax and instead "punish" the rich. Liberals don't want to lessen our dependence on foreign oil by allowing the oil companies to gut our coastlines. Liberals don't want to allow people to "invest" by destroying Social Security. Makes you feel so guilty, doesn't it?

I don't know what bizarro world extreme right-wingers live in, and I don't want to know. I just wish they'd retire to some island somewhere and practice their Lord of the Flies philosophy among each other, and leave the rest of us alone.

August 14, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


HARRY REID BETTER LOOK AGAIN

I'm frankly irritated that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid dismissed the idea of impeaching George W. Bush as something almost absurd. Today so-called "progressive" talk show host Ed Shultz was echoing Reid. Just what are these guys afraid of? The most compelling case in our nation's history for impeachment can be made against Bush and against Cheney. I think it will be difficult to limit the charges. These guys are corrupt, immoral, lying, killers who have betrayed their oaths of office repeatedly. This article is a little irritating, too, in taking the approach that you have to be almost on the fringe to want impeachment. I don't think so. The article by Doug MacEachern is at www.azcentral.com:

The desire among some Democrats to impeach Bush is every bit as passionate as that of the nuttiest Clinton-hating conspiracy theorists in 1994. Billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife has been replaced today by billionaire George Soros. Scaife's preposterous "Arkansas Project" has been replaced by Conyers' tail-chasing report, "The Constitution in Crisis." We know where Scaife's fever-blinded trip up the Whitewater River led. Conyers' little report, however dingy, is capable of kick-starting similar events.

For several weeks now, The Arizona Republic Editorial Board has been entertaining congressional candidates. Many of the Arizona Democrats chasing open or Republican-held seats told us that "impeachment" hearings would be bad. But most added that they would welcome formal hearings into various Bush transgressions. It is a distinction without a difference.

"There is no doubt in my mind the president is impeachable," said Democrat Herb Paine, who hopes to unseat Rep. John Shadegg, R-District 3. "But impeachment hearings would be very divisive." Paine insisted the nation shouldn't go down that road.

REPUBS ON THE RUN

The memory of Americans is notoriously short, but maybe the cavalcade of crimes, corruption, and awful decisions made by Republicans is catching up to them. Fearless Leader can't raise his poll ratings, no matter what terror concoction is stirred up by Karl Rove, and the Republican Congress is doing even worse than Bush. This column by Mollie Bradley-Martin is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The uptick in support for Democrats across the country is in part helped by the abject failure that is today's Republican Party, but it is also a result of Democrats acting like Democrats again. If there is one thing that the blogs have done, it's give voice to the principles we used to all share as Democrats, but that our representatives in DC abandoned long ago. More Americans say they would trust Democrats on national security and most would vote for a Democrat for Congress if the election were held today. Again, the Republican failures have helped, but look at the Democrats that have been in the news lately. Democrats that sound like Democrats.

Just look at how Republican loudmouths are responding to the Lieberman loss. They are going nuts and it's not because they care about the health of the Democratic Party, it's because they know that they have lost control of the message and Democrats standing up for the American people on principle, is the beginning of the end of what they have built.

August 13, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


OUSTING LIEBERMAN THE RIGHT THING

The hypocrisy of Senator Joe Lieberman and the right-wing scum who now support him is astonishing. Lieberman and his right-wing chorus are, in effect, accusing the voters who voted for Ned Lamont of disloyalty to the United States, of aiding the terrorists, of not having a pragmatic view of the world. But who has been consistently wrong in waging this "war on terror"? There were many who counseled against the invasion of Iraq because the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was so flimsy. It was only after the invasion and when things began to go wrong that the Bush administration tried to find any rationale, including links to terrorism, to justify their bloodbath. Lieberman has behaved like a right-wing Republican in his support of the war and on other matters and he's shocked that he lost the primary election? Paul Krugman writes about it in this column linked at 64.226.238.78/PA/pk/pk224.shtml:

After Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut, I saw a number of commentaries describing Joe Lieberman not just as a "centrist" — a word that has come to mean "someone who makes excuses for the Bush administration" — but as "sensible." But on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered sensible?

Take a look at Thomas Ricks's "Fiasco," the best account yet of how the U.S. occupation of Iraq was mismanaged. The prime villain in that book is Donald Rumsfeld, whose delusional thinking and penchant for power games undermined whatever chances for success the United States might have had. Then read Mr. Lieberman's May 2004 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, "Let Us Have Faith," in which he urged Mr. Rumsfeld not to resign over the Abu Ghraib scandal, because his removal "would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America's presence in Iraq."

And that's just one example of Mr. Lieberman's bad judgment. He has been wrong at every step of the march into the Iraq quagmire — all the while accusing anyone who disagreed with him of endangering national security. Again, on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered "sensible"? But I know the answer: on Planet Beltway.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT BUSH AND THE REPUBLICANS

If people want security from terrorists, then the wrong people are in power. Time after time George W. Bush and his administration have either not taken steps to protect the country, or they have made disastrous moves that have endangered us. This editorial is from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com:

We know that the war in Iraq is not a "war on terror."

We know that the loss of 2,600 good Americans, the injuries of 19,000 others and the wartime expense of $320 billion have been a tragic waste.

We know that because of the cost of Iraq, measures that might truly enhance homeland security, like technology that would spot sinister liquids at airport checkpoints, are hardly affordable.

We know that while the president has cut taxes for the rich, at a time when he says all Americans must do their part, U.S. borders are porous, cargo ships are vulnerable and sophisticated identity scanners remain a fantasy.

Yes, there is much that we don't know. What we do know, based on the foiled plot against U.S.-bound aircraft, is that five years of policies by George W. Bush and the Republicans who control Congress have made the country no more secure and its people no more safe. It is time for a change.

August 12, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


BUSH HAS MADE US MORE UNSAFE

It began with his failure to stop the attacks on 9/11. George W. Bush had ample warning that a major strike was planned on the United States. Instead, he continued his infinite Crawford, Texas, vacation. When the attacks were in progress he sat in a Florida elementary school classroom, looking like a deer in the headlights. He tucked his tail between his legs and headed away from the attacks instead of going to Washington, D.C., or to New York. He attacked Afghanistan and allowed the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, to escape at Tora Bora. He has devoured U.S. resources in an attack on Iraq that wasn't necessary. The list goes on and on. This column by Robert Kuttner is at www.boston.com:

There are really several different policy challenges and debates here. If you disentangle them, it adds up to a stunning indictment of Bush.

Did Al Qaeda have any connection to Saddam Hussein? (No.)

Was Bush's Iraq war a debilitating diversion of attention and resources from the more important ongoing battle against Al Qaeda? (Yes.)

Did Bush spend most of 2001 blowing off warnings about Al Qaeda, shutting out people like national security official Richard Clarke who actually knew something about terrorism, and ignoring escalating warnings of a plot in progress? (Yes.)

Has the Iraq war made America a more effective force for stability and against militant Islamism? (No.)

Did Bush's grand strategy advance the cause of Middle East democracy and civility? (No.)

Does Bush's larger design for the Middle East make Israel more secure? (No.)

Can we have effective levels of surveillance against terrorism and still remain a constitutional democracy with liberties for law-abiding Americans? (Yes -- but this administration is needlessly jeopardizing those liberties, and bungling intelligence operations despite expanded resources.)

CONSERVATISM IS A DISASTER

The basic premises of conservatism are flawed, and the consequences of conservative policy are disastrous. Conservatism believes in a foreign policy based almost solely on military might, and on economic policy based on "the free market." In both arenas it boils down to might makes right. A few people at the very top of the economic and social pyramid benefit. Everyone else suffers. We should move away from the age of kings, whether they be called CEOs, generals, or Popes. This article by Bob Burnett is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

After 9/11, the Bush Administration dismissed the advice of national-security experts that the war on terror should involve diplomacy, covert operations, economic sanctions, and law enforcement, as well as military action. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Lebanon, the U.S. pays lip service to diplomacy but instead wages war. The Bush Administration talks about spreading democracy, but where they’ve strengthened overseas alliances—for example in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan—they’ve forged partnerships with autocrats and overlooked their human rights’ abuses. Dubya’s heavy-handed approach has shattered traditional diplomacy and undone years of bipartisan work building international institutions.

Conservatives believe that if they do away with the Federal Government, the market will solve America’s domestic problems. They apply this same simplistic logic to international problems by arguing that if governments would get out of its way the international marketplace would deal with troubles such as pollution and genocide. Conservatives contend that organizations such as the United Nations and World Trade Organization are useless.

In the domestic arena the shortcomings of conservatism’s childlike beliefs are obvious: the market won’t take care of problems such as building levees to protect citizens from floods or inoculating children from Polio. The market cares only about profit: it has no conception of the common good or public morality.

August 11, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


THE FEAR AND DEATH MACHINE

George W. Bush and his administration were already in serious trouble when the attacks on 9/11 occurred. Bush's poll numbers were plummeting and his agenda was stalled. 9/11 proved one essential point to Bush. All he had to run on was fear itself. With fear clouding our reason, Bush could ram through his despicable right-wing agenda. Now fear has become a narcotic for this administration. They use it at every opportunity to make us cower under our beds. The latest example is the alleged scheme in Britain to blow up airplanes with liquid explosives. This editorial from www.philly.com looks at the latest fear fix:

Yesterday, Cheney bashed those who voted for Democrat Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate primary, claiming that these votes would encourage "al Qaeda types" to think that "they can break the will of the American people."

The idea is that since 18-year incumbent Joe Lieberman lost based on his support for Iraq, Americans opposing the war are waving a white flag of surrender to terrorists.

This is stunningly ignorant logic, as well as annoyingly consistent with the Bush administration's fundamentalist myth that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden - a claim by now well-discounted, most notably by a presidential commission.

And yet the presidential fog machine has continued to belch out its Iraq-al Qaeda-link fumes to the extent that a recent poll suggests that 64 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to al Qaeda. More people than ever now believe, according to a new poll, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Ironically, the number who believe in the al Qaeda link is almost precisely the same number of Americans - 62 percent - who believe we are bogged down in Iraq.

HOT A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Today's Fresno Bee featured another attempt to deny global warming. The writer was responding to a letter talking about the recent heat wave that broiled California and then moved east. The first letter writer believed there might be a connection between global warming and the heat. Today's pundit says the record high back in 19 whatever shows that it was hot back then too. Of course, he's ignoring all kinds of other evidence like the glaciers in Greenland melting. This article by David Perlman is at www.sfgate.com:

The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.

The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.

According to the scientists' data, Greenland's ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth's gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean.

August 09, 2006



IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


LET LAMONT WIN BE THE BEGINNING

The victory of Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic Senatorial primary against Senator Joseph Lieberman is just the first step in turning the tide against the political establishment that has betrayed us and our values over the past several years. It is an establishment that has sneered at democracy as it rigged elections, or got its friends on the Supreme Court to throw an election to George W. Bush. It's an establishment that represents only people with big money. We've seen that in the truly onerous bankruptcy bill and the giveaway to the drug companies with Bush's prescription drug plan. We've seen people profiting from war and death in Iraq. We've seen the victims of Hurricane Katrina left to fend for themselves. This editorial from The New York Times looks at the Lamont victory yesterday. The editorial is at www.nytimes.com:

Mr. Lieberman’s supporters have tried to depict Mr. Lamont and his backers as wild-eyed radicals who want to punish the senator for working with Republicans and to force the Democratic Party into a disastrous turn toward extremism. It’s hard to imagine Connecticut, which likes to be called the Land of Steady Habits, as an encampment of left-wing isolationists, and it’s hard to imagine Mr. Lamont, who worked happily with the Republicans in Greenwich politics, leading that kind of revolution.

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration’s contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person’s right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative.

THE GROPER'S RICH TAX-DODGING FRIENDS

Rich people just never have enough wealth, it appears. They already control most of the wealth in the United States. They've gotten bushels of tax cuts from the Bush administration, but they still dodge paying taxes. They leave those of us without money to pick up the slack. It appears some of Governor Groper's wealthy contributors are among the tax dodging elite. This item comes from www.dirtymoneywatch.org:

The Gov shares one key value with his big money backers -- they don't like taxes. Some of Arnold's billionaire contributors have been identified by a U.S. Senate probe as evading U.S. tax laws. The Senate Permanent Investigations Sub-committee found that entertainment mogul Haim Saban, NY Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson IV, and Texas tycoons Charles and Sam Wyly shielded billions in income from the IRS through the type of offshore tax scams that cheat the American taxpayer out of $70 billion annually. That's 7 cents of every tax dollar paid by the rest of us.

This Saturday Schwarzenegger bragged about Saban's endorsement of his gubernatorial campaign. Saban had already contributed $31,200 to the Gov's accounts. The Wyly family forked over $22,000 from Dallas. Woody Johnson hosted a big Central park fundraiser in New York for Schwarzenegger, while Jets co-owner and Woody's bro', Christopher Johnson, kicked in 10 grand to Arnold's committees.

THE LANGUAGE WARS

Right-wingers have been adept at perverting and abusing language to demonize their opposition and reduce complex arguments to soundbites. During the McCarthy era people were tarred as Communists or Communist sympathizers. In the era of Hannity, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly the word "liberal" has been turned into something evil and despicable, even though most of what we enjoy in the United States is thanks to liberals. It's time to reclaim our liberal heritage and put right-wingers on the defensive when they attack working class people, minority rights, abortion rights, and the right to a clean environment. This article by Paul Harris is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

A newly-published book on this, written by the respected linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, is making some deserved waves in US politics. It goes by the catchy title Talking Right. But it is the tongue-mangling subheading that really catches the attention. It reads: 'How Conservatives Turned Liberalism Into a Tax-Raising, Latte-drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, Body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, Left-wing Freak Show.'

That is jarring enough. And also very funny. Or at least it would be funny if I hadn't seen the highly effective political advert that it is quoting from. Note that I say 'quoting' not 'parodying'. For that subheading is taken directly from an attack on Howard Dean's doomed run for the Democratic nomination in 2004.

August 08, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


IRAQ'S CARNIVAL OF DEATH

No country should ever lightly enter into war. No country should have the hubris to believe that it can right all that is wrong at the point of a gun. No country should believe that it can remake a totally alien society in its own image. Yet that is just what the United States has done in Iraq. All the rationales for this war are just dust in the wind. The country is awash in blood thanks to George W. Bush and his gang of neocons. Bush may, in fact, have set back democracy for generations by this invasion of Iraq. In this column Bob Herbert looks at the disaster in Iraq. The column is at 64.226.238.78/PA/bh/bh224.shtml:

This was a war that never should have happened. There was a legitimate war for the United States to fight in Afghanistan, but that was not enough for the administration. The Bush gang wanted a war with Iraq, and less-than-courageous politicians like Mrs. Clinton and many others lined up as enablers to help make that war happen.

Many of the Democrats in Congress supported the war only because they remembered the price paid by party members who stood against the first gulf war, a stand that became an embarrassment when the war was easily won and was therefore popular.

Despite the rationalizations now suddenly on the lips of so many, the problem with the current war in Iraq is not the way it was conducted, but the fact of the war itself. It was launched amid blinding, billowing clouds of deceit. There was never any legitimate reason for the war. Iraq had not attacked the U.S. and there was no imminent threat of attack.

THE GREAT TAX SHAM

Republicans practically drool about the virtues of the very rich. If you have a big bank account, you're good people, according to Republicans (except for a few rich people who actually have a social conscience). I keep wondering why so many working class people consider themselves Republicans when they constantly give us the shaft. The latest egregious example was an attempt to tie an increase in the minimum wage to another tax cut for the very rich. Millions of dollars get siphoned away by the very rich into tax shelters, legal or illegal, while services get cut for the middle class. This article by Robert Kuttner is at www.commondreams.org:

In 1998, the Republican Congress cut the IRS's audit budget, and pressured the IRS to shift scarce enforcement resources from tax shelters used by the very rich to trivial errors in earned-income tax credit applications by the working poor. Audits on the richest fell, while audits on the working poor rose.

Last week, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a senior Democrat on the Senate Permanent Investigations subcommittee, released a staff report showing that outright cheating now costs the Treasury at least $70 billion a year. The report detailed sham transactions so complex that they overwhelmed IRS audit capacity. The subcommittee chairman, Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, was so dismayed that he took the almost unprecedented step of adopting the Democrats' minority report as the official subcommittee report.

Total taxes lawfully owed but uncollected are estimated at more than $300 billion a year -- roughly the size of the federal budget deficit. Much of the cheating involves very complex tax shelters and sham partnerships used only by the rich, and offshore tax havens. Yet the Bush administration gutted a proposed international tax agreement that would have increased reporting requirements on money-laundering transactions between US banks and foreign money tax havens.

After the Senate's deplorable action this week, our society remains a little more unequal, but our political choices have greater clarity.