September 30, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
YOU CAN'T TRUST MC CAIN
Senator John McCain has been labeled by some as a "maverick." Senator McCain, we're told, doesn't follow the administration line. He stands up against the worst abuses of the Bush administration. The truth is something far different. McCain has been adept at putting on a show of opposing the administration, and then finally supporting Bush. The latest example is the bill that gives Bush authority to torture detainees accused of being terrorists. Bob Kuttner has a column at www.boston.com:
But wait. There's John McCain! Isn't he the Republican who challenged Bush on Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Didn't he fearlessly investigate the corrupt Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff? Didn't he resist the right's immigrant-bashing? Didn't he cross the aisle to work with Democrats John Kerry on Vietnam POWs and MIAs, and Russ Feingold on the (worse than useless) McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act?
What a guy! You can just imagine the truly revolting columns by gullible Washington pundits on McCain as just the kind of bipartisan that the republic needs.
In fact, McCain votes 90 percent of the time as an ordinary far-right conservative, and when push comes to shove, he gives the administration what it wants. The morning line used to be that the fundamentalist GOP base would never go for McCain, but that was last year. This year, McCain has made highly publicized appearances genuflecting to religious-right icons.
Despite an abiding mutual distaste, he and Karl Rove have kissed and made up, because they need each other -- McCain to get elected president, Rove to continue the regime. If we are taken in by this act, we will face a permanent right-wing takeover of our democracy.
VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS MEANS END OF OUR REPUBLIC
This Republican Congress has been a rubber stamp for every repressive and corrupt law the Bush administration wants. We got the sham prescription drug bill, we got a bankruptcy bill gift-wrapped for the credit card industry, we have gotten all kinds of funding for Bush cronies like Halliburton, and now we have the truly awful bill allowing torture. Bush has demonstrated time and time again that he has no respect for the Constitution, and Congress has been compliant in allowing him to assume dictatorial powers. The only restraint on the destruction of our democracy--and possible prevention of a world wide war--is to vote against any and all Republicans. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:
The big question is how many voters understand the larger implications of Bush’s vow to stay on “the offensive” against Muslim militants, whom he calls “Islamic fascists.”
Beyond battling al-Qaeda, the terrorist group behind 9/11, Bush has expanded what he once called his “crusade” to include victory in Iraq and the elimination of other Muslim leaders lumped in the “terrorist” camp, such as the governments of Iran and Syria and militant movements Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.
Bush’s vision effectively sets the United States on course to wage what his neoconservative advisers call “World War III,” a battle against Islamic militants from the Atlantic coast of north Africa to Indonesia and the Pacific Ocean.
Yet, given the anti-Americanism sweeping the Islamic world, this war is almost certain to pit U.S. forces against substantial numbers of the world’s one billion Muslims. That was the significance of the newly disclosed National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that the Iraq War has created a new generation of jihadists ready to fight the United States.
Friday, September 29, 2006
September 29, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BYE, BYE, AMERICA, BYE BYE
The United States I've known my whole life is disappearing just as surely as glaciers around the world are melting due to global climate change. Since the presidential election of 2000, all the good things we took for granted have been disappearing. We had honest elections once. We once took international treaties seriously. We once believed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We didn't advocate or actually commit torture. We didn't lie and deliberately attack a country that didn't attack us. If you worked hard, you had a chance to climb the economic ladder. Now all of that is changing. This article shows how the middle class is also becoming a memory. The article by Joanne Morrison is at www.boston.com:
Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children's college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton.
The middle class's financial condition has been a key issue ahead of the November elections, as Democrats warn that this group is fast losing economic ground amid skyrocketing prices and tax cuts that offer them little benefit.
"In our estimates, it's becoming harder for families to afford what we consider a typical middle-class lifestyle," said economist Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress, the political think tank headed by John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff.
Weller cautioned that while Americans are taking on more debt to cover higher costs, wages have not kept pace.
BUSH IS OSAMA'S DREAM COME TRUE
If Osama bin Laden really wanted to destroy the United States, he couldn't have found a better vehicle than George W. Bush and his administration. Bush lived up to all the worst things bin Laden could say about the United States when Bush invaded Iraq. Now our military is demoralized and stretched to the limit, we are divided here at home, and our treasury is bleeding. Our credibility around the world is gone, and people who may have admired the United States now despise us. This column by Bob Geiger is at www.alternet.org:
Republicans have become so accustomed to using the phrase "cut and run" that they probably mumble it while sleeping and their childlike leader, George W. Bush, babbled it again yesterday, saying at yet another GOP fundraiser that "the party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run."
That takes a ton of nerve coming from a Chickenhawk like Bush, who used Daddy's connections to avoid Vietnam and then went AWOL from his cushy stateside post. But we've heard that empty phrase from the cretins in the right-wing of the Republican party so many times that it barely even registers any longer.
They like to question the courage and patriotism of Democrats for being unwilling to shed more American blood and waste billions more on a pointless war, that the country was lied into and that's made us far less safe and more despised throughout the world. Aside from the fact that the majority of Americans no longer support the Iraq war -- and, thus, they must all be cut-and-run defeatists as well -- it is the Republicans who have shown themselves to be the lily-livered cowards among us.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BYE, BYE, AMERICA, BYE BYE
The United States I've known my whole life is disappearing just as surely as glaciers around the world are melting due to global climate change. Since the presidential election of 2000, all the good things we took for granted have been disappearing. We had honest elections once. We once took international treaties seriously. We once believed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We didn't advocate or actually commit torture. We didn't lie and deliberately attack a country that didn't attack us. If you worked hard, you had a chance to climb the economic ladder. Now all of that is changing. This article shows how the middle class is also becoming a memory. The article by Joanne Morrison is at www.boston.com:
Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children's college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton.
The middle class's financial condition has been a key issue ahead of the November elections, as Democrats warn that this group is fast losing economic ground amid skyrocketing prices and tax cuts that offer them little benefit.
"In our estimates, it's becoming harder for families to afford what we consider a typical middle-class lifestyle," said economist Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress, the political think tank headed by John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff.
Weller cautioned that while Americans are taking on more debt to cover higher costs, wages have not kept pace.
BUSH IS OSAMA'S DREAM COME TRUE
If Osama bin Laden really wanted to destroy the United States, he couldn't have found a better vehicle than George W. Bush and his administration. Bush lived up to all the worst things bin Laden could say about the United States when Bush invaded Iraq. Now our military is demoralized and stretched to the limit, we are divided here at home, and our treasury is bleeding. Our credibility around the world is gone, and people who may have admired the United States now despise us. This column by Bob Geiger is at www.alternet.org:
Republicans have become so accustomed to using the phrase "cut and run" that they probably mumble it while sleeping and their childlike leader, George W. Bush, babbled it again yesterday, saying at yet another GOP fundraiser that "the party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run."
That takes a ton of nerve coming from a Chickenhawk like Bush, who used Daddy's connections to avoid Vietnam and then went AWOL from his cushy stateside post. But we've heard that empty phrase from the cretins in the right-wing of the Republican party so many times that it barely even registers any longer.
They like to question the courage and patriotism of Democrats for being unwilling to shed more American blood and waste billions more on a pointless war, that the country was lied into and that's made us far less safe and more despised throughout the world. Aside from the fact that the majority of Americans no longer support the Iraq war -- and, thus, they must all be cut-and-run defeatists as well -- it is the Republicans who have shown themselves to be the lily-livered cowards among us.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
September 28, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
LEGALIZING TORTURE
It used to be that torture was something that happened in dictatorial and repressive regimes somewhere else in the world. The United States were the good guys. We were the beacon of justice and human rights. That has changed. We know already that the United States has tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Gitmo in Cuba. Now our so-called "representatives" in Congress are poised to give George W. Bush legal authority to torture, to deny due process, to trash habeas corpus. What are we becoming? This article by Molly Ivins is at www.commondreams.org:
This bill is not a national security issue—this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.
Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.
The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.
THE PEASANTS OF THE WORKING CLASS
We have satellites and computers and automobiles, but you would swear we're reverting to the Middle Ages. We have a society of a few aristocrats who live like kings and the many of us in the working class who live like peasants. The gross disparity in wealth between the few at the top and everyone else is breathtaking. But, of course, we're supposed to believe that these favored few are so much more virtuous, hard-working, clever, and industrious than everyone else. This article by Holly Sklar is at www.commondreams.org:
U.S. corporate profits increased 21 percent in the past year, Market Watch reported in March. "Profits have been so high because almost all of the benefits from productivity improvements are flowing to the owners of capital rather than to the workers," said Market Watch.
The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans (minimum net worth $6 million) owned 62 percent of the nation's business assets, 51 percent of stocks and 70 percent of bonds as of 2004, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances -- which excludes the Forbes 400. That's way up from 1989, when the wealthiest 1 percent owned 54 percent of business assets, 41 percent of stocks and 52 percent of bonds.
Our growing economy is not producing a growing middle class, but a richer aristocracy.
The high point for median household income -- the income of the household in the middle -- was $47,671 in 1999, adjusted for inflation. In 2005, median household income was $1,345 less at $46,326. In the same period, the Forbes 400 gained more than 100 billionaires.
Government policies are fueling rising inequality. Taxpayers with incomes above $1 million will see their after-tax income grow by about 6 percent this year thanks to tax cuts the nation can't afford.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
LEGALIZING TORTURE
It used to be that torture was something that happened in dictatorial and repressive regimes somewhere else in the world. The United States were the good guys. We were the beacon of justice and human rights. That has changed. We know already that the United States has tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Gitmo in Cuba. Now our so-called "representatives" in Congress are poised to give George W. Bush legal authority to torture, to deny due process, to trash habeas corpus. What are we becoming? This article by Molly Ivins is at www.commondreams.org:
This bill is not a national security issue—this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.
Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.
The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.
THE PEASANTS OF THE WORKING CLASS
We have satellites and computers and automobiles, but you would swear we're reverting to the Middle Ages. We have a society of a few aristocrats who live like kings and the many of us in the working class who live like peasants. The gross disparity in wealth between the few at the top and everyone else is breathtaking. But, of course, we're supposed to believe that these favored few are so much more virtuous, hard-working, clever, and industrious than everyone else. This article by Holly Sklar is at www.commondreams.org:
U.S. corporate profits increased 21 percent in the past year, Market Watch reported in March. "Profits have been so high because almost all of the benefits from productivity improvements are flowing to the owners of capital rather than to the workers," said Market Watch.
The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans (minimum net worth $6 million) owned 62 percent of the nation's business assets, 51 percent of stocks and 70 percent of bonds as of 2004, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances -- which excludes the Forbes 400. That's way up from 1989, when the wealthiest 1 percent owned 54 percent of business assets, 41 percent of stocks and 52 percent of bonds.
Our growing economy is not producing a growing middle class, but a richer aristocracy.
The high point for median household income -- the income of the household in the middle -- was $47,671 in 1999, adjusted for inflation. In 2005, median household income was $1,345 less at $46,326. In the same period, the Forbes 400 gained more than 100 billionaires.
Government policies are fueling rising inequality. Taxpayers with incomes above $1 million will see their after-tax income grow by about 6 percent this year thanks to tax cuts the nation can't afford.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
September 27, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH'S DECEPTIVE RHETORIC
George W. Bush can't give a straight or honest answer to questions about his debacle in Iraq, so he makes up ridiculous straw man arguments that can easily be knocked down. For instance, he implies that people who want us out of Iraq don't want to go on the offensive against terrorism. If this such a righteous and just war, why can't Bush be honest? This column by Dan Froomkin is at www.washingtonpost.com:
"PRESIDENT BUSH: I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that because of our successes against the leadership of al Qaeda, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent. I'm not surprised the enemy is exploiting the situation in Iraq and using it as a propaganda tool to try to recruit more people to their -- to their murderous ways.
Here comes the straw man:
"Some people have guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naive. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe."
GOVERNMENT BY CORPORATION
The Founding Fathers of the United States were children of the Enlightenment. In some ways they were far more enlightened than the political, religious, and business elite we have now in this country. We constantly hear propaganda about the virtue of the United States. It is almost heretical to suggest there is a seamy side to U. S. history. This article by Jason Miller is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
For a nation that Thomas Paine, the intellectual catalyst of the American Revolution, envisioned as “an asylum for mankind”, the United States has not been very hospitable to dissent or dissidents. How can this be?
A simple summation of a highly complex answer is that powerful reactionary forces are consistently poised to suppress those who dare to challenge the tyranny of the de facto aristocracy and corporatocracy. And they have an extraordinary propaganda machine known as the mainstream media to sustain the myth that the United States is a nation governed by and for “We the People”.
One can readily find multiple examples of other governments and nations guilty of heinous crimes against humanity, but with a foreign policy that has resulted in the annihilation of millions of civilians, the United States is as malevolent as some of history’s most despicable empires. And the “bastion of human rights” has a highly questionable track record domestically too. Ask Native Americans and Blacks how their ancestors fared in a nation populated largely by self-professed Christians and ostensibly governed as a constitutional republic.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH'S DECEPTIVE RHETORIC
George W. Bush can't give a straight or honest answer to questions about his debacle in Iraq, so he makes up ridiculous straw man arguments that can easily be knocked down. For instance, he implies that people who want us out of Iraq don't want to go on the offensive against terrorism. If this such a righteous and just war, why can't Bush be honest? This column by Dan Froomkin is at www.washingtonpost.com:
"PRESIDENT BUSH: I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that because of our successes against the leadership of al Qaeda, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent. I'm not surprised the enemy is exploiting the situation in Iraq and using it as a propaganda tool to try to recruit more people to their -- to their murderous ways.
Here comes the straw man:
"Some people have guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naive. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe."
GOVERNMENT BY CORPORATION
The Founding Fathers of the United States were children of the Enlightenment. In some ways they were far more enlightened than the political, religious, and business elite we have now in this country. We constantly hear propaganda about the virtue of the United States. It is almost heretical to suggest there is a seamy side to U. S. history. This article by Jason Miller is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
For a nation that Thomas Paine, the intellectual catalyst of the American Revolution, envisioned as “an asylum for mankind”, the United States has not been very hospitable to dissent or dissidents. How can this be?
A simple summation of a highly complex answer is that powerful reactionary forces are consistently poised to suppress those who dare to challenge the tyranny of the de facto aristocracy and corporatocracy. And they have an extraordinary propaganda machine known as the mainstream media to sustain the myth that the United States is a nation governed by and for “We the People”.
One can readily find multiple examples of other governments and nations guilty of heinous crimes against humanity, but with a foreign policy that has resulted in the annihilation of millions of civilians, the United States is as malevolent as some of history’s most despicable empires. And the “bastion of human rights” has a highly questionable track record domestically too. Ask Native Americans and Blacks how their ancestors fared in a nation populated largely by self-professed Christians and ostensibly governed as a constitutional republic.
Monday, September 25, 2006
September 25, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
COOKING THE PLANET
Right-wing policies are not only wrong; right-wing policies get people killed. Iraq is a dramatic example. The same is true with right-wing environmental policies, which amount to letting big corporations do whatever they want to do. Now we get more dramatic evidence that the earth is heating at an alarming rate. This story is at news.yahoo.com:
The planet's temperature has climbed to levels not seen in thousands of years, warming that has begun to affect plants and animals, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
That brings the overall temperature to the warmest in the current interglacial period, which began about 12,000 years ago.
The researchers noted that a report in the journal Nature found that 1,700 plant, animal and insect species moved poleward at an average rate of about 4 miles per decade in the last half of the 20th century.
NOSTALGIC FOR SADDAM?
What does it say about the American invasion and occupation of Iraq when it becomes obvious that most Iraqis had a better life under Saddam Hussein? We heard all the Bush administration charges: that Saddam gassed his own people, that Saddam ran rape rooms, and all the rest. There were atrocities then, and there have been atrocities under the U. S. occupation. As Mike Whitney points out in this article, in almost every aspect of daily life Saddam gave Iraqis a better life. This column is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Occupation is not freedom; it is servitude enforced at gunpoint. By every objective standard, life was better under Saddam Hussein. The people had reliable sources of electricity, clean water, food and medical supplies. Employment was high, crime was low, schools were open, markets were bustling and the socialist regime provided education and health services to the destitute.
Iraq was a dictatorship, but it was far superior in every way to the holocaust unleashed by the American invasion. In view of the ongoing devastation of infrastructure, the callous disregard for human life, and the absolute absence of personal security; Saddam's Iraq must now seem like Nirvana.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
COOKING THE PLANET
Right-wing policies are not only wrong; right-wing policies get people killed. Iraq is a dramatic example. The same is true with right-wing environmental policies, which amount to letting big corporations do whatever they want to do. Now we get more dramatic evidence that the earth is heating at an alarming rate. This story is at news.yahoo.com:
The planet's temperature has climbed to levels not seen in thousands of years, warming that has begun to affect plants and animals, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
That brings the overall temperature to the warmest in the current interglacial period, which began about 12,000 years ago.
The researchers noted that a report in the journal Nature found that 1,700 plant, animal and insect species moved poleward at an average rate of about 4 miles per decade in the last half of the 20th century.
NOSTALGIC FOR SADDAM?
What does it say about the American invasion and occupation of Iraq when it becomes obvious that most Iraqis had a better life under Saddam Hussein? We heard all the Bush administration charges: that Saddam gassed his own people, that Saddam ran rape rooms, and all the rest. There were atrocities then, and there have been atrocities under the U. S. occupation. As Mike Whitney points out in this article, in almost every aspect of daily life Saddam gave Iraqis a better life. This column is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Occupation is not freedom; it is servitude enforced at gunpoint. By every objective standard, life was better under Saddam Hussein. The people had reliable sources of electricity, clean water, food and medical supplies. Employment was high, crime was low, schools were open, markets were bustling and the socialist regime provided education and health services to the destitute.
Iraq was a dictatorship, but it was far superior in every way to the holocaust unleashed by the American invasion. In view of the ongoing devastation of infrastructure, the callous disregard for human life, and the absolute absence of personal security; Saddam's Iraq must now seem like Nirvana.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
September 24, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE GROPER AND BIG MONEY INTERESTS
Governor Groper here in California is running television ads talking about preserving the "California dream." His biggest pitch is no new taxes. What that really means is that the very rich won't be paying any more taxes. In his latest example of total disregard for the interest of ordinary Californians, the governor vetoed a universal health bill that would have provided health care for all Californians. It took the Groper a long time to sign an increase in the minimum wage, which I believe was for political expediency, so I'm not convinced of the Groper's commitment to the California dream. This article by Steve Lawrence is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a universal health care bill Friday, saying it would create a "vast new bureaucracy."
The bill would have provided every California resident with health insurance through a program administered by a new entity, the California Health Insurance Agency.
The system would have been partially financed by the state's current spending on health care and partly by consumers and their employers in place of private insurance payments. A state commission would have made recommendations on premiums for patients and businesses.
Schwarzenegger said the bill would create "a vast new bureaucracy to take over health insurance and medical care for Californians _ a serious and expensive mistake."
NO TORTURE
Back in the Clinton years we heard a lot from right-wingers about the moral decline of the nation. Denunciations thundered from right-wingers all over the land because Bill Clinton had oral sex in the Oval Office. Now those same right-wingers are strangely quiet, or worse, complicit as our government seeks to legalize torture. Torture isn't wrong merely because it exposes our own military to being tortured; it is a profoundly immoral act. Under this vile administration we're totally losing our moral compass. This article is from www.thenation.com:
As religious leaders in Connecticut we are deeply concerned, indeed horrified, that Congress is poised to legalize torture. Earlier this week, at a press conference at Hartford Seminary, we spoke in one voice to say emphatically: No torture anywhere anytime--no exceptions. We joined our voices with those of national religious leaders in the National Religious Campaign Against Torture who published an advertisement signed by national figures in Washington's Roll Call on the same day.
We are compelled to speak again because the just-announced Republican "compromise" threatens to compromise the rule of law and the laws of God. Torture is a moral and legal issue; it is also a profoundly religious issue, for it degrades the image of God in the tortured and the torturer alike. Our moral compass is swinging wildly. To tolerate, or worse decriminalize, torture jeopardizes the soul of our nation.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE GROPER AND BIG MONEY INTERESTS
Governor Groper here in California is running television ads talking about preserving the "California dream." His biggest pitch is no new taxes. What that really means is that the very rich won't be paying any more taxes. In his latest example of total disregard for the interest of ordinary Californians, the governor vetoed a universal health bill that would have provided health care for all Californians. It took the Groper a long time to sign an increase in the minimum wage, which I believe was for political expediency, so I'm not convinced of the Groper's commitment to the California dream. This article by Steve Lawrence is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a universal health care bill Friday, saying it would create a "vast new bureaucracy."
The bill would have provided every California resident with health insurance through a program administered by a new entity, the California Health Insurance Agency.
The system would have been partially financed by the state's current spending on health care and partly by consumers and their employers in place of private insurance payments. A state commission would have made recommendations on premiums for patients and businesses.
Schwarzenegger said the bill would create "a vast new bureaucracy to take over health insurance and medical care for Californians _ a serious and expensive mistake."
NO TORTURE
Back in the Clinton years we heard a lot from right-wingers about the moral decline of the nation. Denunciations thundered from right-wingers all over the land because Bill Clinton had oral sex in the Oval Office. Now those same right-wingers are strangely quiet, or worse, complicit as our government seeks to legalize torture. Torture isn't wrong merely because it exposes our own military to being tortured; it is a profoundly immoral act. Under this vile administration we're totally losing our moral compass. This article is from www.thenation.com:
As religious leaders in Connecticut we are deeply concerned, indeed horrified, that Congress is poised to legalize torture. Earlier this week, at a press conference at Hartford Seminary, we spoke in one voice to say emphatically: No torture anywhere anytime--no exceptions. We joined our voices with those of national religious leaders in the National Religious Campaign Against Torture who published an advertisement signed by national figures in Washington's Roll Call on the same day.
We are compelled to speak again because the just-announced Republican "compromise" threatens to compromise the rule of law and the laws of God. Torture is a moral and legal issue; it is also a profoundly religious issue, for it degrades the image of God in the tortured and the torturer alike. Our moral compass is swinging wildly. To tolerate, or worse decriminalize, torture jeopardizes the soul of our nation.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
September 20, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTS FOR IRAQ WAR
Today's Fresno Bee featured a letter saying that the writer couldn't support T. J. Cox, the Democratic candidate, for Congress against Rubber Stamp Radanovich. The writer doesn't like Mr. Cox's stand on the Iraq war. Mr. Cox advocates a troop withdrawal. The writer said that the United States has to stay in Iraq until a democratically-elected government can take control. Otherwise, he says Iraq will become a terrorist sanctuary that will allow terrorists to attack Europe and the United States.
I see some fallacies here. First, the writer assumes that a democratically-elected government will be established in Iraq. The evidence so far is that Iraq is descending into civil war. Iraq has no democratic tradition. The idea that Iraq will adopt a U. S. style of democratic government is making a major assumption.
Second, the writer assumes that terrorists are determined to strike Europe and the United States. Could it be that they want to attack us because we're in Iraq? If we are concerned about countries that are "sanctuaries" for terrorists, what about Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?
We have tried the neocon model of preemptive war, and terrorist attacks around the world have increased. We have stretched our military dangerously thin and spent money that could be much better spent at home improving our security here.
The U. S. presence in Iraq is killing far more innocent civilians than terrorists. It is, in fact, acting as a recruiting magnet for terrorists. We desperately need a new approach.
THAT FATEFUL SUPREME COURT DECISION
I wonder sometimes how the Justices on the United Supreme Court sleep at night. I speak of the Justices who voted for George W. Bush in the infamous Bush v. Gore decision that handed the presidency to Bush in the 2000 presidential election. If we survive as a country--or even as a species--it may become one of the great "what if" questions in history. What if Al Gore, not George W. Bush, had been in the White House on 9/11/2001? Would we be fighting an immoral and futile war in Iraq? Would we drowning in red ink from massive deficits? Most importantly, would we doing something about global climate change? That Supreme Court decision, installing George W. Bush as president, has made it far more difficult to address perhaps the most important problem that ever faced the entire human race. This article by Jonathan Freedland is at www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/09/17/1158431582825.html:
It worked on me. Four months after I saw the film, I find myself looking at the world through its lens. I now notice office buildings at night, aglow with electric light; or hotel rooms abroad, frigid with 24-hour air-conditioning even when empty. I read about the roaring economic expansion of China, building a new coal-fired power station every five days. I see all this and I fear for our planet.
The film leaves a more direct political thought. You watch and you curse the single vote on the US Supreme Court that denied this man — passionate, well-informed and right — the presidency of the United States in favour of George Bush.
But you also remember what that election turned on. The conventional wisdom held that Gore and Bush were so similar on policy — Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the pundits said — that the election was about personality. On that measure, Bush had the edge. Sure, he couldn't name any world leader, but the polls gave him a higher likeability rating. If you had to have a beer with one of them, who would you choose? Americans said Bush, every time.
Even that was not enough to give Bush a greater number of votes: remember, Gore got more of those. But it got him closer than he should have been. And the world has been living with the consequences ever since.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTS FOR IRAQ WAR
Today's Fresno Bee featured a letter saying that the writer couldn't support T. J. Cox, the Democratic candidate, for Congress against Rubber Stamp Radanovich. The writer doesn't like Mr. Cox's stand on the Iraq war. Mr. Cox advocates a troop withdrawal. The writer said that the United States has to stay in Iraq until a democratically-elected government can take control. Otherwise, he says Iraq will become a terrorist sanctuary that will allow terrorists to attack Europe and the United States.
I see some fallacies here. First, the writer assumes that a democratically-elected government will be established in Iraq. The evidence so far is that Iraq is descending into civil war. Iraq has no democratic tradition. The idea that Iraq will adopt a U. S. style of democratic government is making a major assumption.
Second, the writer assumes that terrorists are determined to strike Europe and the United States. Could it be that they want to attack us because we're in Iraq? If we are concerned about countries that are "sanctuaries" for terrorists, what about Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?
We have tried the neocon model of preemptive war, and terrorist attacks around the world have increased. We have stretched our military dangerously thin and spent money that could be much better spent at home improving our security here.
The U. S. presence in Iraq is killing far more innocent civilians than terrorists. It is, in fact, acting as a recruiting magnet for terrorists. We desperately need a new approach.
THAT FATEFUL SUPREME COURT DECISION
I wonder sometimes how the Justices on the United Supreme Court sleep at night. I speak of the Justices who voted for George W. Bush in the infamous Bush v. Gore decision that handed the presidency to Bush in the 2000 presidential election. If we survive as a country--or even as a species--it may become one of the great "what if" questions in history. What if Al Gore, not George W. Bush, had been in the White House on 9/11/2001? Would we be fighting an immoral and futile war in Iraq? Would we drowning in red ink from massive deficits? Most importantly, would we doing something about global climate change? That Supreme Court decision, installing George W. Bush as president, has made it far more difficult to address perhaps the most important problem that ever faced the entire human race. This article by Jonathan Freedland is at www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/09/17/1158431582825.html:
It worked on me. Four months after I saw the film, I find myself looking at the world through its lens. I now notice office buildings at night, aglow with electric light; or hotel rooms abroad, frigid with 24-hour air-conditioning even when empty. I read about the roaring economic expansion of China, building a new coal-fired power station every five days. I see all this and I fear for our planet.
The film leaves a more direct political thought. You watch and you curse the single vote on the US Supreme Court that denied this man — passionate, well-informed and right — the presidency of the United States in favour of George Bush.
But you also remember what that election turned on. The conventional wisdom held that Gore and Bush were so similar on policy — Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the pundits said — that the election was about personality. On that measure, Bush had the edge. Sure, he couldn't name any world leader, but the polls gave him a higher likeability rating. If you had to have a beer with one of them, who would you choose? Americans said Bush, every time.
Even that was not enough to give Bush a greater number of votes: remember, Gore got more of those. But it got him closer than he should have been. And the world has been living with the consequences ever since.
Monday, September 18, 2006
September 18, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH: "TOO VAGUE"
Maybe George W. Bush is too much the pampered sadistic frat boy to understand a concept like human dignity. In a press conference Bush claimed that the Geneva Conventions prohibition against "outrages on human dignity" is vague.Here are some hints: Some things that might qualify are stripping prisoners naked and piling them in pyramids. It might mean things like smearing fake menstrual blood on prisoners. It might mean a practice called "water boarding," which makes a person feel like they're drowning. It might mean making naked prisoners confront vicious attack dogs. I wonder how comprehensive the list would have to be for Bush. This article by James Gerstenzang and Noam N. Levey is at www.latimes.com:
At the center of the dispute is the interpretation of a key section of the Geneva Convention, which sets international standards of treatment for wartime prisoners. Known as Common Article 3, the section bans "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
Bush says that this language is vague and that the lack of clarity has left intelligence agents in doubt about whether their interrogation tactics are legal. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'? That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation," he said Friday. He wants Congress to define the language.
But McCain and the senators siding with him say Congress should not unilaterally set a definition, or else other nations with less respect for human rights will do the same, potentially harming U.S. personnel. Weakening the international law "risks our reputation, our moral standing and the lives of those Americans who risk everything to defend our country," McCain said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said: "What is being billed as 'clarifying' our treaty obligations will be seen as 'withdrawing' from the treaty obligations. It will set precedent which could come back to haunt us."
IT'S ABOUT POWER
George W. Bush is the most anti-American president to ever occupy the office. He and his pals on the Supreme Court thwarted the will of the American people in the 2000 election by stealing an election. Bush and company probably stole the 2004 election as well. He has gone contrary to great thinkers like Thomas Jefferson, who believed rightly in the separation of church and state, by mixing a weird fundamentalist Christianity with government. He has defied the will of the American people in obstructing stem cell research. He has not acted on the threat of global climate change, which will affect everyone on earth. He has made a mockery of our traditions of being better than our enemies by sanctioning and actively advocating torture of detainees. It all comes down to power. Paul Krugman writes about it in this column at mparent7777.livejournal.com/12453068.html:
What torture produces in practice is misinformation, as its victims, desperate to end the pain, tell interrogators whatever they want to hear. Thus Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi — who ABC News says was subjected to both the cold cell and water boarding — told his questioners that Saddam Hussein’s regime had trained members of Al Qaeda in the use of biochemical weapons. This “confession” became a key part of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq — but it was pure invention.
So why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people?
To show that it can.
The central drive of the Bush administration — more fundamental than any particular policy — has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president’s power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it’s a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they’re asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary.
And many of our politicians are willing to go along. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is poised to vote in favor of the administration’s plan to, in effect, declare torture legal. Most Republican senators are equally willing to go along, although a few, to their credit, have stood with the Democrats in opposing the administration.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH: "TOO VAGUE"
Maybe George W. Bush is too much the pampered sadistic frat boy to understand a concept like human dignity. In a press conference Bush claimed that the Geneva Conventions prohibition against "outrages on human dignity" is vague.Here are some hints: Some things that might qualify are stripping prisoners naked and piling them in pyramids. It might mean things like smearing fake menstrual blood on prisoners. It might mean a practice called "water boarding," which makes a person feel like they're drowning. It might mean making naked prisoners confront vicious attack dogs. I wonder how comprehensive the list would have to be for Bush. This article by James Gerstenzang and Noam N. Levey is at www.latimes.com:
At the center of the dispute is the interpretation of a key section of the Geneva Convention, which sets international standards of treatment for wartime prisoners. Known as Common Article 3, the section bans "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
Bush says that this language is vague and that the lack of clarity has left intelligence agents in doubt about whether their interrogation tactics are legal. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'? That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation," he said Friday. He wants Congress to define the language.
But McCain and the senators siding with him say Congress should not unilaterally set a definition, or else other nations with less respect for human rights will do the same, potentially harming U.S. personnel. Weakening the international law "risks our reputation, our moral standing and the lives of those Americans who risk everything to defend our country," McCain said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said: "What is being billed as 'clarifying' our treaty obligations will be seen as 'withdrawing' from the treaty obligations. It will set precedent which could come back to haunt us."
IT'S ABOUT POWER
George W. Bush is the most anti-American president to ever occupy the office. He and his pals on the Supreme Court thwarted the will of the American people in the 2000 election by stealing an election. Bush and company probably stole the 2004 election as well. He has gone contrary to great thinkers like Thomas Jefferson, who believed rightly in the separation of church and state, by mixing a weird fundamentalist Christianity with government. He has defied the will of the American people in obstructing stem cell research. He has not acted on the threat of global climate change, which will affect everyone on earth. He has made a mockery of our traditions of being better than our enemies by sanctioning and actively advocating torture of detainees. It all comes down to power. Paul Krugman writes about it in this column at mparent7777.livejournal.com/12453068.html:
What torture produces in practice is misinformation, as its victims, desperate to end the pain, tell interrogators whatever they want to hear. Thus Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi — who ABC News says was subjected to both the cold cell and water boarding — told his questioners that Saddam Hussein’s regime had trained members of Al Qaeda in the use of biochemical weapons. This “confession” became a key part of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq — but it was pure invention.
So why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people?
To show that it can.
The central drive of the Bush administration — more fundamental than any particular policy — has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president’s power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it’s a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they’re asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary.
And many of our politicians are willing to go along. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is poised to vote in favor of the administration’s plan to, in effect, declare torture legal. Most Republican senators are equally willing to go along, although a few, to their credit, have stood with the Democrats in opposing the administration.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
September 17, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
ANOTHER HATEFUL RIGHT WINGER
Probably all right-wingers are hateful, but some stand out from the crowd. I've noticed a couple of letters to the editor of The Fresno Bee from a guy who signs as a "Reverend." The guy writes nasty, vitriolic letters in an attempt to defend the Bush administration. His approach seems to be that all Muslims are evil and should be killed. I don't find that either very Christian or very American. It's an approach that would recreate the Crusades, but with far more lethal weapons. Fundamentalists of any stripe have the absolute certainty that God is on their side and that they are entitled to kill anyone with different beliefs. I want some proof. If George W. Bush is doing the will of God, I think he should perform a verifiable miracle, like raising someone from the dead. Until then, I'll believe that Bush, fundamentalist "Christians" of any kind, and all people who claim that God directs them are full of hot air. We have to be careful not to dismiss them as crackpots, though, because they represent a very real danger to everyone on earth.
U. S INTELLIGENCE GATHERING IS A MESS
One of the defenses right-wingers have used for George W. Bush is that we haven't been attacked again in the United States since 9/11. But it may due more to luck than anything that Bush has done. It may also be because al-Qaeda has been greatly overexaggerated as a threat. The 9/11 Commission found gaping holes in our security, and most of those holes haven't been closed. This article shows what an incredible mess our intelligence gathering agencies have become. The article by Amy Zegart is at www.latimes.com:
FIVE YEARS AFTER the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, all our worst intelligence deficiencies remain. Intelligence is spread across 16 agencies that operate as warring tribes more than a team. The CIA is in disarray. And the FBI's information technology is stuck in the dark ages.
There are more intelligence agencies to coordinate than ever but still no one in firm charge of them all. In 2004, Congress established the post of director of national intelligence. Rather than integrating intelligence, however, the job's creation has triggered huge turf wars. For the last two years, while the office of the intelligence director has been fighting over who briefs the president and who staffs assignments, the Pentagon has quietly expanded its intelligence activities at home and abroad.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
ANOTHER HATEFUL RIGHT WINGER
Probably all right-wingers are hateful, but some stand out from the crowd. I've noticed a couple of letters to the editor of The Fresno Bee from a guy who signs as a "Reverend." The guy writes nasty, vitriolic letters in an attempt to defend the Bush administration. His approach seems to be that all Muslims are evil and should be killed. I don't find that either very Christian or very American. It's an approach that would recreate the Crusades, but with far more lethal weapons. Fundamentalists of any stripe have the absolute certainty that God is on their side and that they are entitled to kill anyone with different beliefs. I want some proof. If George W. Bush is doing the will of God, I think he should perform a verifiable miracle, like raising someone from the dead. Until then, I'll believe that Bush, fundamentalist "Christians" of any kind, and all people who claim that God directs them are full of hot air. We have to be careful not to dismiss them as crackpots, though, because they represent a very real danger to everyone on earth.
U. S INTELLIGENCE GATHERING IS A MESS
One of the defenses right-wingers have used for George W. Bush is that we haven't been attacked again in the United States since 9/11. But it may due more to luck than anything that Bush has done. It may also be because al-Qaeda has been greatly overexaggerated as a threat. The 9/11 Commission found gaping holes in our security, and most of those holes haven't been closed. This article shows what an incredible mess our intelligence gathering agencies have become. The article by Amy Zegart is at www.latimes.com:
FIVE YEARS AFTER the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, all our worst intelligence deficiencies remain. Intelligence is spread across 16 agencies that operate as warring tribes more than a team. The CIA is in disarray. And the FBI's information technology is stuck in the dark ages.
There are more intelligence agencies to coordinate than ever but still no one in firm charge of them all. In 2004, Congress established the post of director of national intelligence. Rather than integrating intelligence, however, the job's creation has triggered huge turf wars. For the last two years, while the office of the intelligence director has been fighting over who briefs the president and who staffs assignments, the Pentagon has quietly expanded its intelligence activities at home and abroad.
Friday, September 15, 2006
September 15, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE DECLINE OF EMPIRE
In world history we have seen a succession of empires rise and fall. There are ominous signs that the American Empire built up during the 20th century is crumbling. In some ways, that's not a bad thing. The U. S. has been directly or indirectly responsible for overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world. The corporate infrastructure in the United States has exploited the resources and the labor of poor countries. We had a chance after winning the Second World War to truly be a shining city on the hill. That opportunity grew even more with the fall of the old Soviet Union. But in the years since the Soviet Union fell the United States has continued to bully or attack weaker countries, we have descended into openly torturing people, and the propaganda issued by our government rivals that of the old Soviet Union. This article by John Chuckman is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The American establishment's vision of the future, implicit in its behavior and policies, has been that traditional manufacturing jobs will pass to developing countries while greater value-added high-tech jobs and intellectual property rights will provide America’s economic strength.
But that is a somewhat arrogant vision, because competitors like China and India do not plan to do only lower value-added work, and they are uniquely gifted to succeed. The Chinese, Japanese, and Indians have an extraordinary reservoir of natural mathematical and engineering talent – every international competition or test shows this starkly - that is only now beginning to be harnessed. There is every reason to believe that over any substantial time the US will decline to a secondary role in high-tech. China or India each likely have something on the order of three or four times the natural mathematical endowment of the US. Their new high-growth economies and emerging modern infrastructure prepare the way for full application of this priceless talent.
There are more forces at work on the place of the American Empire than the emergence of other economic powers, important as that is. Major studies of the decline of empire – from Edward Gibbon to William Shirer - speak to the overwhelming importance of the moral dimension in a society and of the crucial role of capable and responsible leadership.
SCARIER THAN TERRORISTS
George W. Bush and his followers want Armageddon so badly they're willing to over hype terrorists as the purveyors of death and destruction for all humanity. Terrorists don't even make the top ten. Global warming is far more threatening, nuclear proliferation is a great concern, the disappearance of a middle class in the United States is troubling, the threats from genetically modified organisms, and numerous other issues should grab our attention more than terrorists. This article by Jane Stillwater is at www.opednews.com:
Now we have nothing to be afraid of ever again. Right? Wrong. Here's my list of the ten top things we will still have to deal with long after Bush's "terrorists" have disappeared off the face of the earth:
1. Without terrorists, global warming will STILL be pushing the waters of San Francisco Bay up over my roof. Category 5 hurricanes will still be forming in the Gulf. Droughts will dry up our water supply, kill our trees and reduce our long, luxurious half-hour showers down to two-minute sponge baths. All of America will smell bad. Hey, that's scary. I'm scared.
2. Without terrorists, we will STILL lose our jobs to outsourcing and the New World Order globalization's wet-dream of Cheap Labor -- now safely contained in the slums of third world countries -- will invade America from shore to shore. Shanty towns in Ohio? Sure.
3. Without terrorists, we will STILL face the neo-cons' obsession with "endless war" and the shame of knowing that OUR country is still responsible for dropping one million cluster bombs on a bunch of poor schmucks whose only curse is to live either over an oilfield or in the path of a proposed oil pipeline. With that on our conscience, we will all be going to Hell. That's REALLY scary!
4. Without terrorists, we will STILL have to deal with gasoline shortages because the jerks who run this country have spent all our money on the "War on Terror" instead of developing alternative energy sources. We will be stuck with no gas and no other means to heat our homes or drive our cars. Back to the "dark" ages for us!
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE DECLINE OF EMPIRE
In world history we have seen a succession of empires rise and fall. There are ominous signs that the American Empire built up during the 20th century is crumbling. In some ways, that's not a bad thing. The U. S. has been directly or indirectly responsible for overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world. The corporate infrastructure in the United States has exploited the resources and the labor of poor countries. We had a chance after winning the Second World War to truly be a shining city on the hill. That opportunity grew even more with the fall of the old Soviet Union. But in the years since the Soviet Union fell the United States has continued to bully or attack weaker countries, we have descended into openly torturing people, and the propaganda issued by our government rivals that of the old Soviet Union. This article by John Chuckman is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The American establishment's vision of the future, implicit in its behavior and policies, has been that traditional manufacturing jobs will pass to developing countries while greater value-added high-tech jobs and intellectual property rights will provide America’s economic strength.
But that is a somewhat arrogant vision, because competitors like China and India do not plan to do only lower value-added work, and they are uniquely gifted to succeed. The Chinese, Japanese, and Indians have an extraordinary reservoir of natural mathematical and engineering talent – every international competition or test shows this starkly - that is only now beginning to be harnessed. There is every reason to believe that over any substantial time the US will decline to a secondary role in high-tech. China or India each likely have something on the order of three or four times the natural mathematical endowment of the US. Their new high-growth economies and emerging modern infrastructure prepare the way for full application of this priceless talent.
There are more forces at work on the place of the American Empire than the emergence of other economic powers, important as that is. Major studies of the decline of empire – from Edward Gibbon to William Shirer - speak to the overwhelming importance of the moral dimension in a society and of the crucial role of capable and responsible leadership.
SCARIER THAN TERRORISTS
George W. Bush and his followers want Armageddon so badly they're willing to over hype terrorists as the purveyors of death and destruction for all humanity. Terrorists don't even make the top ten. Global warming is far more threatening, nuclear proliferation is a great concern, the disappearance of a middle class in the United States is troubling, the threats from genetically modified organisms, and numerous other issues should grab our attention more than terrorists. This article by Jane Stillwater is at www.opednews.com:
Now we have nothing to be afraid of ever again. Right? Wrong. Here's my list of the ten top things we will still have to deal with long after Bush's "terrorists" have disappeared off the face of the earth:
1. Without terrorists, global warming will STILL be pushing the waters of San Francisco Bay up over my roof. Category 5 hurricanes will still be forming in the Gulf. Droughts will dry up our water supply, kill our trees and reduce our long, luxurious half-hour showers down to two-minute sponge baths. All of America will smell bad. Hey, that's scary. I'm scared.
2. Without terrorists, we will STILL lose our jobs to outsourcing and the New World Order globalization's wet-dream of Cheap Labor -- now safely contained in the slums of third world countries -- will invade America from shore to shore. Shanty towns in Ohio? Sure.
3. Without terrorists, we will STILL face the neo-cons' obsession with "endless war" and the shame of knowing that OUR country is still responsible for dropping one million cluster bombs on a bunch of poor schmucks whose only curse is to live either over an oilfield or in the path of a proposed oil pipeline. With that on our conscience, we will all be going to Hell. That's REALLY scary!
4. Without terrorists, we will STILL have to deal with gasoline shortages because the jerks who run this country have spent all our money on the "War on Terror" instead of developing alternative energy sources. We will be stuck with no gas and no other means to heat our homes or drive our cars. Back to the "dark" ages for us!
Thursday, September 14, 2006
September 14, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE UNBALANCED ECONOMY
If you were to put the sectors of the economy on a scale, similar to the scales of justice, you would see the side occupied by the economic elite tilt so far it would likely topple the scale. Right wing propagandists will fire out statistics that claim the economy is in wonderful shape. Those of us who are struggling just aren't doing what it takes to "compete." Pundits like David Brooks at The New York Times are on the economic royalist bandwagon. Barbara Ehrenreich takes a look at the real economy, the one you and I confront in this article at www.alternet.org:
Connoisseurs of American political ideologies will note the delicate bind the Pew survey puts the conservatives in. For years, they've styled themselves as the "populists" -- upholding the supposed simple virtues and gut patriotism of the common person against the cynicism and "moral relativity" of the overeducated, Chardonnay-swigging, stem-cell-hating "liberal elite." What to do then when the average Joe and Joan say the economy sucks? Brooks falls back on the liberal elite theory -- attributing public pessimism to the baleful influence of those who dwell in "university towns." Chao wants us to believe that the disgruntled are simply those who haven't yet grasped the wonders of a "knowledge-based economy."
But right-wing populism never applied to economics. While bravely championing chastity, fetuses and heterosexual marriage, the right has pursued an unabashedly elitist economic program: cutting taxes for the wealthy and services for everyone else. The effects of these policies -- along with private sector layoffs and cuts in wages and benefits -- are finally coming home to roost. Real wages are declining; in fact, the share of the GDP that goes to wages and salaries has reached a 59-year low, while the share going to corporate profits is at a 40-year high.
WAR IS TERRORISM TOO
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney love to talk about war. They couch it in terms of fighting terrorists. It's a "war on terrorism." Never mind that the "war on terrorism" kills tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Can you imagine the terror of wondering if a missile or a bomb is going to drop onto your home and kill you and your family? Isn't that terrorism too? Howard Zinn has some thoughts in this article at www.alternet.org:
The history of wars fought since the end of World War II reveals the futility of large-scale violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, despite their enormous firepower, were unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak nations -- the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan -- and were forced to withdraw.
Even the "victories" of great military powers turn out to be elusive. Presumably, after attacking and invading Afghanistan, the president was able to declare that the Taliban were defeated. But more than four years later, Afghanistan is rife with violence, and the Taliban are active in much of the country.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE UNBALANCED ECONOMY
If you were to put the sectors of the economy on a scale, similar to the scales of justice, you would see the side occupied by the economic elite tilt so far it would likely topple the scale. Right wing propagandists will fire out statistics that claim the economy is in wonderful shape. Those of us who are struggling just aren't doing what it takes to "compete." Pundits like David Brooks at The New York Times are on the economic royalist bandwagon. Barbara Ehrenreich takes a look at the real economy, the one you and I confront in this article at www.alternet.org:
Connoisseurs of American political ideologies will note the delicate bind the Pew survey puts the conservatives in. For years, they've styled themselves as the "populists" -- upholding the supposed simple virtues and gut patriotism of the common person against the cynicism and "moral relativity" of the overeducated, Chardonnay-swigging, stem-cell-hating "liberal elite." What to do then when the average Joe and Joan say the economy sucks? Brooks falls back on the liberal elite theory -- attributing public pessimism to the baleful influence of those who dwell in "university towns." Chao wants us to believe that the disgruntled are simply those who haven't yet grasped the wonders of a "knowledge-based economy."
But right-wing populism never applied to economics. While bravely championing chastity, fetuses and heterosexual marriage, the right has pursued an unabashedly elitist economic program: cutting taxes for the wealthy and services for everyone else. The effects of these policies -- along with private sector layoffs and cuts in wages and benefits -- are finally coming home to roost. Real wages are declining; in fact, the share of the GDP that goes to wages and salaries has reached a 59-year low, while the share going to corporate profits is at a 40-year high.
WAR IS TERRORISM TOO
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney love to talk about war. They couch it in terms of fighting terrorists. It's a "war on terrorism." Never mind that the "war on terrorism" kills tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Can you imagine the terror of wondering if a missile or a bomb is going to drop onto your home and kill you and your family? Isn't that terrorism too? Howard Zinn has some thoughts in this article at www.alternet.org:
The history of wars fought since the end of World War II reveals the futility of large-scale violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, despite their enormous firepower, were unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak nations -- the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan -- and were forced to withdraw.
Even the "victories" of great military powers turn out to be elusive. Presumably, after attacking and invading Afghanistan, the president was able to declare that the Taliban were defeated. But more than four years later, Afghanistan is rife with violence, and the Taliban are active in much of the country.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
September 12, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
FLORIDA FORESHADOWED BUSH ADMINISTRATION
I remember during the 2000 presidential campaign that George W. Bush talked about the scenario that eventually developed, a candidate winning the popular vote, but losing the Electoral College vote. In his scenario, Bush won the popular vote. He was calling for a populist uprising if Al Gore won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote. Bush had no such problem when it was he who lost the popular vote. Not only did Bush lose the popular vote, he and his campaign operatives went out of their way to steal the election in Florida, including the use of a mob to intimidate officials in Miami-Dade County. It wasn't an anomaly. That's the way the Bushes operate. And it continued right on into this hideous administration. In this article Sidney Blumenthal looks at the moral depths of the Bush administration. The article is at www.salon.com:
Few political commentators at the time thought that the ruthless tactics used by the Bush camp in the Florida contest presaged his presidency. The battle there was seen as unique, a self-contained episode of high political drama that could and would not be replicated. Tactics such as setting loose a mob comprised mostly of Republican staff members from the House and Senate flown down from Washington to intimidate physically the Miami-Dade County Board of Supervisors from counting the votes there, and manipulating the Florida state government through the office of the governor, Jeb Bush, the candidate's brother, to forestall vote counting were justified as simply hardball politics.
SHILLS FOR INEQUALITY
It could almost be a slogan out Orwell's Animal Farm: inequality is good! That is really the core of right-wing economics. The people who think raising the minimum wage a dollar or two an hour is "socialistic" have no problem with CEOs getting millions in perks and salaries. That's the "free market," you see, and anything the "free market" does is just fine and dandy. It's wonderful that jobs get sent to cheaper labor markets abroad. It's swell that wages here are stagnating and falling. Who needs a middle class anyway? This article by Joel S. Hirshhorn looks at New York Times pundit David Brooks and his shilling for the economic elite. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
There are many reasons for the New York Times to be ashamed of what it publishes. A major one is giving space to columnist David Brooks. His values, opinions and worldview should be despised by most Americans. His latest attack on objective truth was the column "The Populist Myths on Income Inequality." It was a defense of the current American economic system and an attack on all those "populists" that see a morally bankrupt economy under the control of elitists and operated for their benefit. Brooks has a knack for turning reality upside down, inside out and getting away with it. Time for the Times to stop it.
The first point of Brooks-the-liar was that "workers are not getting a smaller slice of the pie." Here is some economic injustice truth: Since 1970, the share of gross domestic product going to wages and salaries has shrunk 8.3 percent. If the 2006 American economic pie were divided into 1970-sized slices, with workers today receiving the same share of gross domestic product workers received in 1970, each American household would receive about $9,600 more in paycheck income this year. Brooks rejects arguments about rising economic inequality. Here's the latest truth: Income inequality grew last year, as the richest fifth of households took home 50.4 percent of all income, their largest share since the government began tracking the data in 1967. Of course, Brooks sees the world through elitist eyes, as shown by this statement: "The rich don't exploit the poor. They just out-compete them."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
FLORIDA FORESHADOWED BUSH ADMINISTRATION
I remember during the 2000 presidential campaign that George W. Bush talked about the scenario that eventually developed, a candidate winning the popular vote, but losing the Electoral College vote. In his scenario, Bush won the popular vote. He was calling for a populist uprising if Al Gore won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote. Bush had no such problem when it was he who lost the popular vote. Not only did Bush lose the popular vote, he and his campaign operatives went out of their way to steal the election in Florida, including the use of a mob to intimidate officials in Miami-Dade County. It wasn't an anomaly. That's the way the Bushes operate. And it continued right on into this hideous administration. In this article Sidney Blumenthal looks at the moral depths of the Bush administration. The article is at www.salon.com:
Few political commentators at the time thought that the ruthless tactics used by the Bush camp in the Florida contest presaged his presidency. The battle there was seen as unique, a self-contained episode of high political drama that could and would not be replicated. Tactics such as setting loose a mob comprised mostly of Republican staff members from the House and Senate flown down from Washington to intimidate physically the Miami-Dade County Board of Supervisors from counting the votes there, and manipulating the Florida state government through the office of the governor, Jeb Bush, the candidate's brother, to forestall vote counting were justified as simply hardball politics.
SHILLS FOR INEQUALITY
It could almost be a slogan out Orwell's Animal Farm: inequality is good! That is really the core of right-wing economics. The people who think raising the minimum wage a dollar or two an hour is "socialistic" have no problem with CEOs getting millions in perks and salaries. That's the "free market," you see, and anything the "free market" does is just fine and dandy. It's wonderful that jobs get sent to cheaper labor markets abroad. It's swell that wages here are stagnating and falling. Who needs a middle class anyway? This article by Joel S. Hirshhorn looks at New York Times pundit David Brooks and his shilling for the economic elite. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
There are many reasons for the New York Times to be ashamed of what it publishes. A major one is giving space to columnist David Brooks. His values, opinions and worldview should be despised by most Americans. His latest attack on objective truth was the column "The Populist Myths on Income Inequality." It was a defense of the current American economic system and an attack on all those "populists" that see a morally bankrupt economy under the control of elitists and operated for their benefit. Brooks has a knack for turning reality upside down, inside out and getting away with it. Time for the Times to stop it.
The first point of Brooks-the-liar was that "workers are not getting a smaller slice of the pie." Here is some economic injustice truth: Since 1970, the share of gross domestic product going to wages and salaries has shrunk 8.3 percent. If the 2006 American economic pie were divided into 1970-sized slices, with workers today receiving the same share of gross domestic product workers received in 1970, each American household would receive about $9,600 more in paycheck income this year. Brooks rejects arguments about rising economic inequality. Here's the latest truth: Income inequality grew last year, as the richest fifth of households took home 50.4 percent of all income, their largest share since the government began tracking the data in 1967. Of course, Brooks sees the world through elitist eyes, as shown by this statement: "The rich don't exploit the poor. They just out-compete them."
Monday, September 11, 2006
September 11, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
HISTORY WON'T BE KIND TO BUSH
It may take an encyclopedia to list all the crimes of the Bush administration, especially if you factor in all the incompetence. Bush stole the election that put him into the White House. He was busily ramming through his tax cuts for the rich and starting the process that would create record deficits when the attacks occurred on 9/11. Weeks before, Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing that flatly stated, "Osama Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U. S." Bush has since shamelessly exploited that attack to justify everything in his horrendous agenda, including lying the country into a war that has killed thousands of innocent people. In this column Brent Budowsky looks at the bloody and criminal history of George W. Bush. The column is at www.huffingtonpost.com:
Never before in our history has the patriotism and honor of our people inspired such respect and admiration throughout the free world.
And never before in our history has any leader of our Nation exploited such an event with such
smallness, such partisanship, such disunity, such contempt and such vindictiveness.
Never before in our history, has any leader of this country exploited a crisis by deliberately creating anger and hatred of some Americans against other Americans.
Never before in our history, has any leader of our country surrendered in the challenge of inspiring our people to bravery and valor, and tried to make our people act like a timid and fearful nation.
Never before in our history, never, has any President of the United States so aggressively surrendered his moral authority as leader of free world to create such worldwide anger, antipathy and fear directed not towards our enemy, but towards our President.
These words are not partisan.
The national leaders and national security establishment of the Democratic Party failed to serve our nation in October of 2002. They marched in lockstep with ideologues, extremists and the partisans of the Republican Party to support a war that should never have been fought, at great cost to our country.
TROUBLING ECONOMIC INDICATORS
I don't think you have to be an economist to be disturbed by the shaky American economic system. George W. Bush and the current variety of gung-ho capitalists have put our economy at great risk. In the zeal for globalization we have surrendered our manufacturing capacity. We are too dependent on foreign energy sources--one of the reasons we have the war in Iraq. Our deficits are unsustainable. We owe far too much money to the Chinese and others. The "casino economy" has been driven by the housing market, and now the housing market is teetering. This article by Mike Whitney is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The magnitude of the housing bubble is shocking and unprecedented. According to the Federal Reserves own figures, "The total amount of residential housing wealth in the US just about doubled between 1999 and 2006 up from $10.4 trillion to $20.4 trillion."(Times Online) This tells us that the Fed had a clear idea of the size of the equity balloon their low interest policies were creating, but decided not to take corrective action. It also tells us that there will be no "soft landing". When the market begins to fall, no one knows when it will hit bottom. $10 trillion is more than a "little froth", as Greenspan opined; it is an earth-shaking, economy-busting catastrophe that will put millions at risk of foreclosure, bankruptcy and ruin.
Greenspan and the privately-owned fed played a major role in putting us in this mess by rubber-stamping the new system of precarious loans (no down payments, interest-only loans, ARMs) and perpetuating their "cheap money" policies. Greenspan admitted this a few months ago when he said that current housing increases were "unsustainable" and would have corrected long ago if not for the "the dramatic increase in the prevalence of interest-only loans...and more exotic forms of adjustable rate mortgages that enable marginally-qualified, highly leveraged borrowers to purchase homes at inflated prices."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
HISTORY WON'T BE KIND TO BUSH
It may take an encyclopedia to list all the crimes of the Bush administration, especially if you factor in all the incompetence. Bush stole the election that put him into the White House. He was busily ramming through his tax cuts for the rich and starting the process that would create record deficits when the attacks occurred on 9/11. Weeks before, Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing that flatly stated, "Osama Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U. S." Bush has since shamelessly exploited that attack to justify everything in his horrendous agenda, including lying the country into a war that has killed thousands of innocent people. In this column Brent Budowsky looks at the bloody and criminal history of George W. Bush. The column is at www.huffingtonpost.com:
Never before in our history has the patriotism and honor of our people inspired such respect and admiration throughout the free world.
And never before in our history has any leader of our Nation exploited such an event with such
smallness, such partisanship, such disunity, such contempt and such vindictiveness.
Never before in our history, has any leader of this country exploited a crisis by deliberately creating anger and hatred of some Americans against other Americans.
Never before in our history, has any leader of our country surrendered in the challenge of inspiring our people to bravery and valor, and tried to make our people act like a timid and fearful nation.
Never before in our history, never, has any President of the United States so aggressively surrendered his moral authority as leader of free world to create such worldwide anger, antipathy and fear directed not towards our enemy, but towards our President.
These words are not partisan.
The national leaders and national security establishment of the Democratic Party failed to serve our nation in October of 2002. They marched in lockstep with ideologues, extremists and the partisans of the Republican Party to support a war that should never have been fought, at great cost to our country.
TROUBLING ECONOMIC INDICATORS
I don't think you have to be an economist to be disturbed by the shaky American economic system. George W. Bush and the current variety of gung-ho capitalists have put our economy at great risk. In the zeal for globalization we have surrendered our manufacturing capacity. We are too dependent on foreign energy sources--one of the reasons we have the war in Iraq. Our deficits are unsustainable. We owe far too much money to the Chinese and others. The "casino economy" has been driven by the housing market, and now the housing market is teetering. This article by Mike Whitney is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The magnitude of the housing bubble is shocking and unprecedented. According to the Federal Reserves own figures, "The total amount of residential housing wealth in the US just about doubled between 1999 and 2006 up from $10.4 trillion to $20.4 trillion."(Times Online) This tells us that the Fed had a clear idea of the size of the equity balloon their low interest policies were creating, but decided not to take corrective action. It also tells us that there will be no "soft landing". When the market begins to fall, no one knows when it will hit bottom. $10 trillion is more than a "little froth", as Greenspan opined; it is an earth-shaking, economy-busting catastrophe that will put millions at risk of foreclosure, bankruptcy and ruin.
Greenspan and the privately-owned fed played a major role in putting us in this mess by rubber-stamping the new system of precarious loans (no down payments, interest-only loans, ARMs) and perpetuating their "cheap money" policies. Greenspan admitted this a few months ago when he said that current housing increases were "unsustainable" and would have corrected long ago if not for the "the dramatic increase in the prevalence of interest-only loans...and more exotic forms of adjustable rate mortgages that enable marginally-qualified, highly leveraged borrowers to purchase homes at inflated prices."
Sunday, September 10, 2006
September 10, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WHAT DID 9/11 REALLY CHANGE?
We've heard that 9/11 was the day "that changed everything." Now, five years later, what has changed? American culture is pretty much the same it was five years ago. Checking in at the airport is more of a hassle. Bush launched a despicable war in Iraq, but that isn't much noticed in our daily lives at home. We had color alerts introduced into our lives, but an orange alert doesn't radically change our behavior. Republicans are doing what they always do, only worse so, in creating a great divide between the rich and the rest of us. 9/11 was a tremendous tragedy, especially for the victims and their families, but as the scripture says, "There's nothing new under the sun." Frank Rich writes about it in this column at rozius.blogspot.com:
On the very next day after that convocation, Mr. Bush was asked at a press conference "how much of a sacrifice" ordinary Americans would "be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines." His answer: "Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever." He, too, wanted to move on - to "see life return to normal in America, " as he put it - but toward partisan goals stealthily tailored to his political allies rather than the nearly 90 percent of the country that, according to polls, was rallying around him.
This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush's war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher's irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding 'all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. "Fear itself - the fear that paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance," as F.D.R. had it - was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.
Less than a month after 9/11, the president was making good on his promise of "no sacrifice whatsoever." Speaking in Washington about how it was 'the time to be wise' and 'the time to act,' he declared, 'We need for there to be more tax cuts.' Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the president on Air Force One to campaign donors and the White House would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in political ads.
And so here we are five years later. Fearmongering remains unceasing. So do tax cuts. So does the war against a country that did not attack us on 9/11. We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead.
I. F. STONE: A MODEL FOR OUR TIMES
There's a new biography of I. F. Stone, the iconoclastic journalist who was hated by J. Edgar Hoover and other fascists of his time. In this article Helen Thomas writes about Stone. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
An iconoclast and a pariah who became a journalistic icon in later life, Stone started his own newspaper at the age of 14. Known to friends and foes as "Izzy," Stone rooted for the underdog in the turbulent labor and racial struggles of the past century and later battled fascism and McCarthy witch hunts.
He was a leftist, sure, socialist, probably, but not a card-carrying communist, according to MacPherson.
Nonetheless, he was often dubbed a "commie" by his political detractors, especially J. Edgar Hoover, the formidable FBI director, who kept voluminous files on him.
Long before former Presidents Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush succeeded in demonizing the label "liberal," Stone was indeed a liberal until the day he died in 1989 at the age of 81.
In 1941, Stone escorted William Hastie, a black man and dean of Howard University Law School, to the all-white, all-male National Press Club but they were never served, "not even a glass of water," MacPherson wrote.
Stone resigned when his protest received little support from fellow members. Toward the end of his life, he was lauded at a club award luncheon.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WHAT DID 9/11 REALLY CHANGE?
We've heard that 9/11 was the day "that changed everything." Now, five years later, what has changed? American culture is pretty much the same it was five years ago. Checking in at the airport is more of a hassle. Bush launched a despicable war in Iraq, but that isn't much noticed in our daily lives at home. We had color alerts introduced into our lives, but an orange alert doesn't radically change our behavior. Republicans are doing what they always do, only worse so, in creating a great divide between the rich and the rest of us. 9/11 was a tremendous tragedy, especially for the victims and their families, but as the scripture says, "There's nothing new under the sun." Frank Rich writes about it in this column at rozius.blogspot.com:
On the very next day after that convocation, Mr. Bush was asked at a press conference "how much of a sacrifice" ordinary Americans would "be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines." His answer: "Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever." He, too, wanted to move on - to "see life return to normal in America, " as he put it - but toward partisan goals stealthily tailored to his political allies rather than the nearly 90 percent of the country that, according to polls, was rallying around him.
This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush's war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher's irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding 'all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. "Fear itself - the fear that paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance," as F.D.R. had it - was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.
Less than a month after 9/11, the president was making good on his promise of "no sacrifice whatsoever." Speaking in Washington about how it was 'the time to be wise' and 'the time to act,' he declared, 'We need for there to be more tax cuts.' Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the president on Air Force One to campaign donors and the White House would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in political ads.
And so here we are five years later. Fearmongering remains unceasing. So do tax cuts. So does the war against a country that did not attack us on 9/11. We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead.
I. F. STONE: A MODEL FOR OUR TIMES
There's a new biography of I. F. Stone, the iconoclastic journalist who was hated by J. Edgar Hoover and other fascists of his time. In this article Helen Thomas writes about Stone. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
An iconoclast and a pariah who became a journalistic icon in later life, Stone started his own newspaper at the age of 14. Known to friends and foes as "Izzy," Stone rooted for the underdog in the turbulent labor and racial struggles of the past century and later battled fascism and McCarthy witch hunts.
He was a leftist, sure, socialist, probably, but not a card-carrying communist, according to MacPherson.
Nonetheless, he was often dubbed a "commie" by his political detractors, especially J. Edgar Hoover, the formidable FBI director, who kept voluminous files on him.
Long before former Presidents Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush succeeded in demonizing the label "liberal," Stone was indeed a liberal until the day he died in 1989 at the age of 81.
In 1941, Stone escorted William Hastie, a black man and dean of Howard University Law School, to the all-white, all-male National Press Club but they were never served, "not even a glass of water," MacPherson wrote.
Stone resigned when his protest received little support from fellow members. Toward the end of his life, he was lauded at a club award luncheon.
Friday, September 08, 2006
September 08, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
JOURNALISTS ON THE TAKE
You like to believe that journalists are independent of the government, that they perform a watchdog role, and what you hear or read isn't government propaganda. But the Bush administration has consistently crossed the line between journalistic objectivity and government propaganda. Ten journalists in south Florida have been implicated in taking money from the government. This story by Oscar Corral is at www.commondreams.org:
At least 10 South Florida journalists, including three from El Nuevo Herald, received regular payments from the U.S. government for programs on Radio Martà and TV MartÃ, two broadcasters aimed at undermining the communist government of Fidel Castro. The payments totaled thousands of dollars over several years.
Those who were paid the most were veteran reporters and a freelance contributor for El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language newspaper published by the corporate parent of The Miami Herald. Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba and writes an opinion column, was paid almost $175,000 since 2001 to host shows on Radio Martà and TV MartÃ. El Nuevo Herald freelance reporter Olga Connor, who writes about Cuban culture, received about $71,000, and staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio Isla, who covers the Cuban exile community and politics, was paid almost $15,000 in the last five years.
Alfonso and Cancio were dismissed after The Miami Herald questioned editors at El Nuevo Herald about the payments. Connor's freelance relationship with the newspaper also was severed.
THE CATEGORIES OF BUSH SUPPORTERS
There's a consistent one-third of Americans polled who continue to support George W. Bush and his failed policies. They must be a little like the Germans who saw the Russians entering Berlin, the city burning all around them, who were convinced that somehow the Fuhrer would lead them out of disaster. This article looks at the capitalists, religious fundamentalists, and jingoistic Americans who will go down on Bush's Titanic. This article by Gerry Lower is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In general, Bush administration supporters fall into three overlapping categories that explain the bulk of the "Why" beneath support for the unsupportable.
1) Fundamentalist Conservative Capitalists [Capitalism]
Here we have both the ignorant and the educated who are loyal to conservatism - which has always embraced capitalism. It is that old conservative wisdom, you know, the pre-World War II common sense that "one ought not spend money that one does not have," never mind that the Bush administration has set the record at plunging America into debt. Beneath the surface here, the world is driven by greed and self-indulgence - and an inherent fear of "the people."
2) Fundamentalist Old Testament Roman "christians" [Romanism]
Here we have both the ignorant and the educated who are loyal to western Roman religion which has always embraced despotism and rule by the rich and powerful - in the form of imperialism, colonialism and today's capitalism. It is that old faith that the Roman way is the only way, as if God had some special relationship to the Romans. Beneath the surface here, the world is driven by ignorance, self-righteousness and belligerence in the name of Christian values - and an inherent fear of "the people."
3) Fundamentalist "Americans" [Nationalism]
Here we have both the ignorant and the educated who are "loyal" to America and the post-World War II "American Way," i.e., capitalism, right or wrong, America, right or wrong. Beneath the surface here, the world is driven by blind pride and blind faith that the sociopolitical system that has caused most of America's problems might somehow solve them. It is exemplified by the American press which, on the whole, simply "does not get it," i.e., that unbridled corporate capitalism has failed "the people."
Now, add to this all the gainfully-employed people who know better but who will happily let it all go down without a word for fear of losing their jobs and positions. These are America's silent citizens, so silent that they choose not to allow their professional knowledge to count for anything outside of comfortable personal and family survival.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
JOURNALISTS ON THE TAKE
You like to believe that journalists are independent of the government, that they perform a watchdog role, and what you hear or read isn't government propaganda. But the Bush administration has consistently crossed the line between journalistic objectivity and government propaganda. Ten journalists in south Florida have been implicated in taking money from the government. This story by Oscar Corral is at www.commondreams.org:
At least 10 South Florida journalists, including three from El Nuevo Herald, received regular payments from the U.S. government for programs on Radio Martà and TV MartÃ, two broadcasters aimed at undermining the communist government of Fidel Castro. The payments totaled thousands of dollars over several years.
Those who were paid the most were veteran reporters and a freelance contributor for El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language newspaper published by the corporate parent of The Miami Herald. Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba and writes an opinion column, was paid almost $175,000 since 2001 to host shows on Radio Martà and TV MartÃ. El Nuevo Herald freelance reporter Olga Connor, who writes about Cuban culture, received about $71,000, and staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio Isla, who covers the Cuban exile community and politics, was paid almost $15,000 in the last five years.
Alfonso and Cancio were dismissed after The Miami Herald questioned editors at El Nuevo Herald about the payments. Connor's freelance relationship with the newspaper also was severed.
THE CATEGORIES OF BUSH SUPPORTERS
There's a consistent one-third of Americans polled who continue to support George W. Bush and his failed policies. They must be a little like the Germans who saw the Russians entering Berlin, the city burning all around them, who were convinced that somehow the Fuhrer would lead them out of disaster. This article looks at the capitalists, religious fundamentalists, and jingoistic Americans who will go down on Bush's Titanic. This article by Gerry Lower is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In general, Bush administration supporters fall into three overlapping categories that explain the bulk of the "Why" beneath support for the unsupportable.
1) Fundamentalist Conservative Capitalists [Capitalism]
Here we have both the ignorant and the educated who are loyal to conservatism - which has always embraced capitalism. It is that old conservative wisdom, you know, the pre-World War II common sense that "one ought not spend money that one does not have," never mind that the Bush administration has set the record at plunging America into debt. Beneath the surface here, the world is driven by greed and self-indulgence - and an inherent fear of "the people."
2) Fundamentalist Old Testament Roman "christians" [Romanism]
Here we have both the ignorant and the educated who are loyal to western Roman religion which has always embraced despotism and rule by the rich and powerful - in the form of imperialism, colonialism and today's capitalism. It is that old faith that the Roman way is the only way, as if God had some special relationship to the Romans. Beneath the surface here, the world is driven by ignorance, self-righteousness and belligerence in the name of Christian values - and an inherent fear of "the people."
3) Fundamentalist "Americans" [Nationalism]
Here we have both the ignorant and the educated who are "loyal" to America and the post-World War II "American Way," i.e., capitalism, right or wrong, America, right or wrong. Beneath the surface here, the world is driven by blind pride and blind faith that the sociopolitical system that has caused most of America's problems might somehow solve them. It is exemplified by the American press which, on the whole, simply "does not get it," i.e., that unbridled corporate capitalism has failed "the people."
Now, add to this all the gainfully-employed people who know better but who will happily let it all go down without a word for fear of losing their jobs and positions. These are America's silent citizens, so silent that they choose not to allow their professional knowledge to count for anything outside of comfortable personal and family survival.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
September 07, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REPUBLICANS GOOD FRIENDS OF OSAMA
The ABC Television Network goes to great lengths once again to prove that the media love the Bush administration. ABC is planning to air an outrageously biased and inaccurate miniseries called "The Path to 9/11" that tries to blame the attacks on Clinton. Never mind that Bush was given countless warnings of an impending terrorist attack. It was more important to Bush to continue cutting brush on his Texas "ranch." In this article William Rivers Pitt points out that Clinton proposed over one billion dollars in anti-terrorism programs, and those programs were summarily slashed or defeated by Republicans like Jesse Helms and Trent Lott. Osama bin Laden was probably delighted when Clinton left office to be replaced by this bungling incompetent fool we have now. This article is at www.truthout.org:
Clinton's dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous "wag the dog" tactics. The news networks actually broadcast clips of the movie "Wag the Dog" while reporting on his warnings, to accentuate the idea that everything the administration said was contrived fakery.
In Congress, Clinton was thwarted by the reactionary conservative majority in virtually every attempt he made to pass legislation that would attack al-Qaeda and terrorism. His 1996 omnibus terror bill, which included many of the anti-terror measures we now take for granted after September 11, was withered almost to the point of uselessness by attacks from the right; Senators Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were openly dismissive of the threats Clinton spoke of.
Specifically, Clinton wanted to attack the financial underpinnings of the al-Qaeda network by banning American companies and individuals from dealing with foreign banks and financial institutions that al-Qaeda was using for its money-laundering operations. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, gutted the portions of Clinton's bill dealing with this matter, calling them "totalitarian."
In fact, Gramm was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off the Enron stockholders. It should also be noted that Gramm's wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron Board of Directors.
DISMAL STATE OF NETWORK NEWS
When you think of the history of American network television journalism you think of people like Edward R. Murrow, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, or Howard K. Smith. There was a time when real journalists worked in television news, and when real news got reported. Now television news is about ratings, about celebrity, and about pushing an ideological stance favored by corporate America. Katie Couric is just the latest example of the sellout of television news. This article by Mike Whitney is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
It is impossible to be an informed citizen by watching network news. The business-friendly script is carefully edited to portray America’s activities around the world in a positive light. This produces coverage which is invariably sympathetic to US foreign policy goals and lacks objectivity or depth. For the last decade or so, it didn’t matter what network broadcast one watched, the lead stories and commercial breaks were featured at just the same time, from just the same ideological perspective, using just the same talking points and buzzwords to present a solid wall of disinformation which was intended to overpower the viewer into believing that “this is the news”.
The internet has broken the spell of controlled information and provided us with unlimited access to divergent information and viewpoints. Intelligent people have naturally gravitated to the sites that give them a more accurate and detailed summary of the days’ events without the meticulously managed spin of network news. This has caused considerable frustration among the ruling class which claims a monopoly on information and which has spent a fortune building an empire to mislead the public on issues that are critical to their continued dominance. That’s why congress is currently getting involved in the internet, to destroy the citizens’ free access to unfiltered news. They don’t care about saving a few seconds of time for the transmission of information on business-related sites; that’s all nonsense. They want to control what you see, what you hear, and what you know. That’s the key for maintaining the class system which keeps them in power.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REPUBLICANS GOOD FRIENDS OF OSAMA
The ABC Television Network goes to great lengths once again to prove that the media love the Bush administration. ABC is planning to air an outrageously biased and inaccurate miniseries called "The Path to 9/11" that tries to blame the attacks on Clinton. Never mind that Bush was given countless warnings of an impending terrorist attack. It was more important to Bush to continue cutting brush on his Texas "ranch." In this article William Rivers Pitt points out that Clinton proposed over one billion dollars in anti-terrorism programs, and those programs were summarily slashed or defeated by Republicans like Jesse Helms and Trent Lott. Osama bin Laden was probably delighted when Clinton left office to be replaced by this bungling incompetent fool we have now. This article is at www.truthout.org:
Clinton's dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous "wag the dog" tactics. The news networks actually broadcast clips of the movie "Wag the Dog" while reporting on his warnings, to accentuate the idea that everything the administration said was contrived fakery.
In Congress, Clinton was thwarted by the reactionary conservative majority in virtually every attempt he made to pass legislation that would attack al-Qaeda and terrorism. His 1996 omnibus terror bill, which included many of the anti-terror measures we now take for granted after September 11, was withered almost to the point of uselessness by attacks from the right; Senators Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were openly dismissive of the threats Clinton spoke of.
Specifically, Clinton wanted to attack the financial underpinnings of the al-Qaeda network by banning American companies and individuals from dealing with foreign banks and financial institutions that al-Qaeda was using for its money-laundering operations. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, gutted the portions of Clinton's bill dealing with this matter, calling them "totalitarian."
In fact, Gramm was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off the Enron stockholders. It should also be noted that Gramm's wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron Board of Directors.
DISMAL STATE OF NETWORK NEWS
When you think of the history of American network television journalism you think of people like Edward R. Murrow, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, or Howard K. Smith. There was a time when real journalists worked in television news, and when real news got reported. Now television news is about ratings, about celebrity, and about pushing an ideological stance favored by corporate America. Katie Couric is just the latest example of the sellout of television news. This article by Mike Whitney is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
It is impossible to be an informed citizen by watching network news. The business-friendly script is carefully edited to portray America’s activities around the world in a positive light. This produces coverage which is invariably sympathetic to US foreign policy goals and lacks objectivity or depth. For the last decade or so, it didn’t matter what network broadcast one watched, the lead stories and commercial breaks were featured at just the same time, from just the same ideological perspective, using just the same talking points and buzzwords to present a solid wall of disinformation which was intended to overpower the viewer into believing that “this is the news”.
The internet has broken the spell of controlled information and provided us with unlimited access to divergent information and viewpoints. Intelligent people have naturally gravitated to the sites that give them a more accurate and detailed summary of the days’ events without the meticulously managed spin of network news. This has caused considerable frustration among the ruling class which claims a monopoly on information and which has spent a fortune building an empire to mislead the public on issues that are critical to their continued dominance. That’s why congress is currently getting involved in the internet, to destroy the citizens’ free access to unfiltered news. They don’t care about saving a few seconds of time for the transmission of information on business-related sites; that’s all nonsense. They want to control what you see, what you hear, and what you know. That’s the key for maintaining the class system which keeps them in power.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
September 05, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CORPORATE MOTIVATION
I've worked in corporations and other businesses longer than I care to remember, so I've become just a bit jaded about "motivation." You're told you're part of a "team" and that "teamwork" is important. In the meantime, you're supposed to figuratively cut your co-worker's throat if it means a promotion for you. One of the most amusing, or cynical, devices businesses use is motivational art. You have a big beautiful picture of the ocean with some "inspiring" slogan beneath it. In this article Pierre Tristam talks about the corporate use and misuse of art. The article is at www.commondreams.org:
It's now a given that workers are tight-leashed extensions of their company, and not just on the job. Stories abound of employees in all sorts of sectors losing their jobs for projecting an image or an opinion that clashes with the image their company wants to project. This strange and amazingly accepted conception of workers as company property is mirrored not only by what's not allowed on company walls, but by what does end up there. The trend for has been to nail "inspiration" and "motivation" to company walls. It beats nightsticks. But it's a difference of methods, not intentions.
You know the type. A beautiful Western sunset captioned by the words "Believe & Succeed"; one of those big thunderheads against a nice blue sky, over the ocean, with a tiny sailboat heading toward it and the words "Embrace the Challenge" beneath it. The posters are produced by companies like Successories, whose pitch is: "Motivate employees by surrounding them with messages of confidence and success on posters, calendars, awards, mugs and more."
The words are meaningless, but their intentions aren't. "Motivation," "inspiration," company-brand "confidence" have become substitutes for what companies are not surrounding their employees with: better pay, more stable benefits, fewer working hours. The national work force clocks in more work than in any other Western democracy. It's been watching its median income fall year after year like that relentless waterfall, its retirement security disappear into that Western sunset. And its health insurance is as vulnerable as that sailboat heading for the thunderhead, all while corporate profits have been soaring and shareholder value (rather than workers' value) treated as the mother of all deities. It's not the worker's "attitude" that could use a little adjustment.
RUMSFELD'S HISTORY IS ASKEW
Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration should be careful about using Nazi analogies. After all, George W. Bush's own grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a major financier of the Nazi regime. Much of George W.'s inherited wealth came from dealing with Nazis. Rumsfeld and others who talk about "appeasement" also conveniently forget that it was liberals in the 1930s who saw the threat from Hitler. It was conservatives of the time who called for the United States to be isolationist. This article by Randolph T Holhut is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Let us leave aside for now the absurdity of Rumsfeld and Bush conflating Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and the "war on terror" with Hitler, Nazi Germany and World War II. Instead, let us look at Bush and Rumsfeld's interpretation of history and the Bush administration's attempt to direct the familiar old cry of "appeasement" to today's critics of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In the 1930s, when Hitler and Benito Mussolini rose to power, it was the Republican Party who pushed for appeasement. While Franklin Roosevelt and his fellow internationalists in the Democratic Party sounded the first alarms about fascism, conservative Republican leaders like Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenburg maintained their isolationism right up until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
After the Munich Pact in September 1938, where France and Britain handed over Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany, it was Roosevelt who pushed for an arms embargo against Germany and Japan over the objections of the isolationists. It was Roosevelt who pushed for increased aid to Britain after World War II began and who had to fight the isolationists who opposed it.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CORPORATE MOTIVATION
I've worked in corporations and other businesses longer than I care to remember, so I've become just a bit jaded about "motivation." You're told you're part of a "team" and that "teamwork" is important. In the meantime, you're supposed to figuratively cut your co-worker's throat if it means a promotion for you. One of the most amusing, or cynical, devices businesses use is motivational art. You have a big beautiful picture of the ocean with some "inspiring" slogan beneath it. In this article Pierre Tristam talks about the corporate use and misuse of art. The article is at www.commondreams.org:
It's now a given that workers are tight-leashed extensions of their company, and not just on the job. Stories abound of employees in all sorts of sectors losing their jobs for projecting an image or an opinion that clashes with the image their company wants to project. This strange and amazingly accepted conception of workers as company property is mirrored not only by what's not allowed on company walls, but by what does end up there. The trend for has been to nail "inspiration" and "motivation" to company walls. It beats nightsticks. But it's a difference of methods, not intentions.
You know the type. A beautiful Western sunset captioned by the words "Believe & Succeed"; one of those big thunderheads against a nice blue sky, over the ocean, with a tiny sailboat heading toward it and the words "Embrace the Challenge" beneath it. The posters are produced by companies like Successories, whose pitch is: "Motivate employees by surrounding them with messages of confidence and success on posters, calendars, awards, mugs and more."
The words are meaningless, but their intentions aren't. "Motivation," "inspiration," company-brand "confidence" have become substitutes for what companies are not surrounding their employees with: better pay, more stable benefits, fewer working hours. The national work force clocks in more work than in any other Western democracy. It's been watching its median income fall year after year like that relentless waterfall, its retirement security disappear into that Western sunset. And its health insurance is as vulnerable as that sailboat heading for the thunderhead, all while corporate profits have been soaring and shareholder value (rather than workers' value) treated as the mother of all deities. It's not the worker's "attitude" that could use a little adjustment.
RUMSFELD'S HISTORY IS ASKEW
Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration should be careful about using Nazi analogies. After all, George W. Bush's own grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a major financier of the Nazi regime. Much of George W.'s inherited wealth came from dealing with Nazis. Rumsfeld and others who talk about "appeasement" also conveniently forget that it was liberals in the 1930s who saw the threat from Hitler. It was conservatives of the time who called for the United States to be isolationist. This article by Randolph T Holhut is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Let us leave aside for now the absurdity of Rumsfeld and Bush conflating Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and the "war on terror" with Hitler, Nazi Germany and World War II. Instead, let us look at Bush and Rumsfeld's interpretation of history and the Bush administration's attempt to direct the familiar old cry of "appeasement" to today's critics of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In the 1930s, when Hitler and Benito Mussolini rose to power, it was the Republican Party who pushed for appeasement. While Franklin Roosevelt and his fellow internationalists in the Democratic Party sounded the first alarms about fascism, conservative Republican leaders like Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenburg maintained their isolationism right up until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
After the Munich Pact in September 1938, where France and Britain handed over Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany, it was Roosevelt who pushed for an arms embargo against Germany and Japan over the objections of the isolationists. It was Roosevelt who pushed for increased aid to Britain after World War II began and who had to fight the isolationists who opposed it.
Monday, September 04, 2006
September 04, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FAITHFUL
I try to be tolerate of religious belief. The core belief of Christianity, the Golden Rule, is a wonderful concept. If everyone practiced the Golden Rule, we would eliminate so much that is hateful and harmful from the human condition. But so much of religion is superstition, so much is punitive and unreasoning hatred of people who are different, and so much is fixated on behaviors that are personal and private and of no concern to anyone except the people directly involved. Religion has been a drag on human progress. In this article Jerry Adler looks at the intolerance of atheism in the U. S. The article is at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14638243/site/newsweek/:
This year also saw the publication in February of "Breaking the Spell," by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, which asks how and why religions became ubiquitous in human society. The obvious answer—"Because they're true"—is foreclosed, Dennett says, by the fact that they are by and large mutually incompatible. Even to study "religion as a natural phenomenon," the subtitle of Dennett's book, is to deprive it of much of its mystery and power. And next month the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ("The Selfish Gene") weighs in with "The God Delusion," a book that extends an argument he advanced in the days after 9/11. After hearing once too often that "[t]o blame the attacks on Islam is like blaming Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland," Dawkins responded: Precisely. "It's time to get angry," he wrote, "and not only with Islam."
Dawkins and Harris are not writing polite demurrals to the time-honored beliefs of billions; they are not issuing pleas for tolerance or moderation, but bone-rattling attacks on what they regard as a pernicious and outdated superstition. (In the spirit of scientific evenhandedness, both would call themselves agnostic, although as Dawkins says, he's agnostic about God the same way he's agnostic about the existence of fairies.) They ask: where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever." He asks: How can anyone believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God who permits a tsunami to swallow 180,000 innocent people in a few hours? How does it advance our understanding of the universe to suppose that it was created by a supernatural being who communicates only through the one-way process of revelation?
A LABOR DAY APPRAISAL
It's difficult to tell sometimes if George W. Bush is just a liar or deliberately obtuse. Bush had the gall to say that times are good for American workers. Not for this American worker. My chances for upward mobility are nonexistent right now. Health care is more expensive. Wages are stagnant and not even keeping pace with inflation. And as long as Republican economics rule things are not going to get better. In this article Katrina Vanden Heuvel looks at the state of American workers as we reach another Labor Day. The article is at www.thenation.com:
According to the Washington Post, "the top fifth of American households received 50.4 percent of all income last year, the highest proportion since 1967, when the census bureau started following that trend. The biggest gains were concentrated in the top five percent."
Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt write in the New York Times that "wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's."
According to Greenhouse and Leonhardt, the median hourly wage since 2003 – adjusted for inflation – has declined 2 percent since 2003 while productivity "has risen steadily over the same period." Moreover, as Paul Krugman points out in an op-ed, "The most crucial benefit, employment-based health insurance, has been in rapid decline since 2000." In fact, according to the Center for American Progress, "the number of people living in the United States without medical insurance rose 2 percent--1.3 million--to a record 46.6 million over the last year alone as health-care costs climbed three times as fast as wages.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE FAITHFUL
I try to be tolerate of religious belief. The core belief of Christianity, the Golden Rule, is a wonderful concept. If everyone practiced the Golden Rule, we would eliminate so much that is hateful and harmful from the human condition. But so much of religion is superstition, so much is punitive and unreasoning hatred of people who are different, and so much is fixated on behaviors that are personal and private and of no concern to anyone except the people directly involved. Religion has been a drag on human progress. In this article Jerry Adler looks at the intolerance of atheism in the U. S. The article is at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14638243/site/newsweek/:
This year also saw the publication in February of "Breaking the Spell," by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, which asks how and why religions became ubiquitous in human society. The obvious answer—"Because they're true"—is foreclosed, Dennett says, by the fact that they are by and large mutually incompatible. Even to study "religion as a natural phenomenon," the subtitle of Dennett's book, is to deprive it of much of its mystery and power. And next month the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ("The Selfish Gene") weighs in with "The God Delusion," a book that extends an argument he advanced in the days after 9/11. After hearing once too often that "[t]o blame the attacks on Islam is like blaming Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland," Dawkins responded: Precisely. "It's time to get angry," he wrote, "and not only with Islam."
Dawkins and Harris are not writing polite demurrals to the time-honored beliefs of billions; they are not issuing pleas for tolerance or moderation, but bone-rattling attacks on what they regard as a pernicious and outdated superstition. (In the spirit of scientific evenhandedness, both would call themselves agnostic, although as Dawkins says, he's agnostic about God the same way he's agnostic about the existence of fairies.) They ask: where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever." He asks: How can anyone believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God who permits a tsunami to swallow 180,000 innocent people in a few hours? How does it advance our understanding of the universe to suppose that it was created by a supernatural being who communicates only through the one-way process of revelation?
A LABOR DAY APPRAISAL
It's difficult to tell sometimes if George W. Bush is just a liar or deliberately obtuse. Bush had the gall to say that times are good for American workers. Not for this American worker. My chances for upward mobility are nonexistent right now. Health care is more expensive. Wages are stagnant and not even keeping pace with inflation. And as long as Republican economics rule things are not going to get better. In this article Katrina Vanden Heuvel looks at the state of American workers as we reach another Labor Day. The article is at www.thenation.com:
According to the Washington Post, "the top fifth of American households received 50.4 percent of all income last year, the highest proportion since 1967, when the census bureau started following that trend. The biggest gains were concentrated in the top five percent."
Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt write in the New York Times that "wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's."
According to Greenhouse and Leonhardt, the median hourly wage since 2003 – adjusted for inflation – has declined 2 percent since 2003 while productivity "has risen steadily over the same period." Moreover, as Paul Krugman points out in an op-ed, "The most crucial benefit, employment-based health insurance, has been in rapid decline since 2000." In fact, according to the Center for American Progress, "the number of people living in the United States without medical insurance rose 2 percent--1.3 million--to a record 46.6 million over the last year alone as health-care costs climbed three times as fast as wages.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
September 02, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE NEO-CON TERROR RHETORIC
Recent rhetoric from the Bush administration and the echo chamber on the right is using words like "Islamofascists" and describing the confrontation with terrorists as a war to save civilization. There is no doubt that Muslim fundamentalists are dangerous. Fanatical fundamentalists of any stripe, particularly if they belong to a religion, are dangerous. But the idea that Muslims are united in a world wide effort to conquer the west is absurd as this article points out. The article by Joshua Holland is at www.alternet.org:
But it's hard to imagine anything more profoundly unserious than taking a dozen complex conflicts that originated in a dozen countries, stripping them of all historical and political context and lumping them together in an amorphous blob called the "Clash of Civilizations." But that's exactly what we're talking about.
So let's take them at their word for a moment and think seriously about the framework they use to understand a dangerous and confusing world.
Consider this: in the epic struggle between East and West, some of our staunchest allies are the undisputed champs in spreading violent Islamic extremism. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan established fundamentalist, anti-Western madrassas all across the world, funneled gobs of cash to extremist groups, and nurtured and supported them in their infancy. It wasn't just random individuals within those countries; Saudi Arabia made it a foreign policy priority to spread its brand of Wahhabism, mostly to counter the perceived threat of Pan-Arabism and other anti-colonial ideologies. Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI -- sometimes called a "state within a state" -- not only supported the Taliban in Afghanistan but funded, equipped and helped train some of the most notorious terror groups that grew out of that country in the 1990s. Talk all you want about Syria and Iran supporting Hezbollah, these are the great terror-sponsoring states, and they're on the side of the Western democracies.
REALITY CHECK
Americans are becoming the victims of our own mythology. One of the most pervasive myths is that you too can be rich. Working class and middle class people often object to a progressive income tax because one day they might be rich and they don't want to be "punished" by higher income taxes. We all too often see the good life as defined by what we can buy. If we can just get that new computer, or that new DVD player, or that big screen TV all will be right with the world. While we live in our little delusional bubbles all that should make for a good life in this country is disappearing around us. Wages are stagnating, jobs are being outsourced to other countries, our civil liberties are being dismembered, and our very planet's existence is threatened. This article by Joel S. Hirschhorn is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The population at large FEELS good because of high consumption equality, despite their incredible debt. Collectively, this army of consumers has the power to change the economy. But individually they only keep buying more stuff that not so many years ago would have seemed impossible. They are drugged by consumption. So many high-tech, electronic gizmos available as affordable and NECESSARY consumer products. I see an American culture with one purpose. To provide continuing stimuli for consumption. Borrow more, buy more, owe more, worry more. No matter that virtually nothing bought is made in the USA. Sure, the Upper Class has access to an incredible array of luxury goods and services and an increasing financial capability to afford them. But the "losers" in our economy stay glued to their large plasma screen TVs and their high-tech computers, plugged into their cell phones and Ipods, consuming more crap food, remaining politically disengaged and distracted – but seemingly confident – consumers. Debt feeds their consumption addiction. Revolt is not on their minds. No matter what progressive writers say, the rich and powerful elites keep control. Consumers keep spending, elites keep increasing income and wealth inequality.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE NEO-CON TERROR RHETORIC
Recent rhetoric from the Bush administration and the echo chamber on the right is using words like "Islamofascists" and describing the confrontation with terrorists as a war to save civilization. There is no doubt that Muslim fundamentalists are dangerous. Fanatical fundamentalists of any stripe, particularly if they belong to a religion, are dangerous. But the idea that Muslims are united in a world wide effort to conquer the west is absurd as this article points out. The article by Joshua Holland is at www.alternet.org:
But it's hard to imagine anything more profoundly unserious than taking a dozen complex conflicts that originated in a dozen countries, stripping them of all historical and political context and lumping them together in an amorphous blob called the "Clash of Civilizations." But that's exactly what we're talking about.
So let's take them at their word for a moment and think seriously about the framework they use to understand a dangerous and confusing world.
Consider this: in the epic struggle between East and West, some of our staunchest allies are the undisputed champs in spreading violent Islamic extremism. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan established fundamentalist, anti-Western madrassas all across the world, funneled gobs of cash to extremist groups, and nurtured and supported them in their infancy. It wasn't just random individuals within those countries; Saudi Arabia made it a foreign policy priority to spread its brand of Wahhabism, mostly to counter the perceived threat of Pan-Arabism and other anti-colonial ideologies. Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI -- sometimes called a "state within a state" -- not only supported the Taliban in Afghanistan but funded, equipped and helped train some of the most notorious terror groups that grew out of that country in the 1990s. Talk all you want about Syria and Iran supporting Hezbollah, these are the great terror-sponsoring states, and they're on the side of the Western democracies.
REALITY CHECK
Americans are becoming the victims of our own mythology. One of the most pervasive myths is that you too can be rich. Working class and middle class people often object to a progressive income tax because one day they might be rich and they don't want to be "punished" by higher income taxes. We all too often see the good life as defined by what we can buy. If we can just get that new computer, or that new DVD player, or that big screen TV all will be right with the world. While we live in our little delusional bubbles all that should make for a good life in this country is disappearing around us. Wages are stagnating, jobs are being outsourced to other countries, our civil liberties are being dismembered, and our very planet's existence is threatened. This article by Joel S. Hirschhorn is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The population at large FEELS good because of high consumption equality, despite their incredible debt. Collectively, this army of consumers has the power to change the economy. But individually they only keep buying more stuff that not so many years ago would have seemed impossible. They are drugged by consumption. So many high-tech, electronic gizmos available as affordable and NECESSARY consumer products. I see an American culture with one purpose. To provide continuing stimuli for consumption. Borrow more, buy more, owe more, worry more. No matter that virtually nothing bought is made in the USA. Sure, the Upper Class has access to an incredible array of luxury goods and services and an increasing financial capability to afford them. But the "losers" in our economy stay glued to their large plasma screen TVs and their high-tech computers, plugged into their cell phones and Ipods, consuming more crap food, remaining politically disengaged and distracted – but seemingly confident – consumers. Debt feeds their consumption addiction. Revolt is not on their minds. No matter what progressive writers say, the rich and powerful elites keep control. Consumers keep spending, elites keep increasing income and wealth inequality.
Friday, September 01, 2006
September 01, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE WORDS OF THE DAY
The right-wing's favorite words these days are "fascist" and "appeasement." It's a desperate and absurd attempt to compare the "war on terror" to the war against the Axis powers in World War II. The people we fight now are basically outlaws. They use strategic murder to obtain their objectives. Adolf Hitler was the head of a massive and disciplined political and military machine. Nazi Germany was a political state with all the components that make a political state, from ambassadors, to armies, to navies, an air force, an economy, and the ability to make or break treaties completely on their own. They didn't hide out in caves in Afghanistan or Pakistan. And I would point out once again that wanting out of Iraq is not the same as "appeasement." Murderers, no matter what they call themselves, should be apprehended and prosecuted. This article by Jim Lobe is at www.commondreams.org:
The aggressive new campaign by the administration of President George W. Bush to depict U.S. foes in the Middle East as "fascists" and its domestic critics as "appeasers" owes a great deal to steadily intensifying efforts by the right-wing press over the past several months to draw the same comparison.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Network and The Weekly Standard, as well as the Washington Times, which is controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and the neo-conservative New York Sun, have consistently and with increasing frequency framed the challenges faced by Washington in the region in the context of the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, according to a search of the Nexis database by IPS.
All of those outlets, as well as two other right-wing U.S. magazines -- The National Review and The American Spectator -- far outpaced their commercial rivals in the frequency of their use of key words and names, such as "appeasement," "fascism", and "Hitler", particularly with respect to Iran and its controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Nexis, for example, cited 56 uses of "Islamofascist" or "Islamofascism" in separate programmes or segments aired by Fox News compared with 24 by CNN over the past year. Even more striking, the same terms were used in 115 different articles or columns in the Washington Times, compared with only eight in the Washington Post over the same period, according to a breakdown by Nexis.
REMEMBERING MAHFOUZ
This week the world lost the Nobel Prize winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz. I haven't had the pleasure of reading any of Mahfouz's work, although I'm always interested in work by Nobel Prize laureates. Writers like Mahfouz show how important writers and the written word and art are to human beings. Fiction oftentimes has more far more truth than what you see in the daily newspaper. Great fiction certainly endures far longer. This article by Laila Lalami is at www.thenation.com:
Mahfouz found inspiration in his country's history, both ancient and recent, and in its transformation into a modern nation. His first three novels (Mockery of the Fates, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War) were historical works about ancient Egypt. He portrayed Khufu as a man struggling against his destiny; he imagined Menenre as falling in love with the Nubian courtesan Rhadopis; and he depicted Egypt's fight for independence from foreign invaders. After the mid-1940s, Mahfouz's interest shifted to social realism. His masterpiece, the "Cairo Trilogy" (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street), written in 1952 and published in 1956 and 1957, portrayed three generations of an Egyptian family struggling against an autocratic ruler, the patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad. In trying to get out from under Jawad's thumb, his children and grandchildren successively turn to capitalism, communism and Islamic fundamentalism. During the 1960s and '70s, he experimented with other literary forms, such as Modernism, symbolism and even romance. In 1983 he combined his passions for ancient and modern Egypt in the ambitious and yet-untranslated novel Before the Throne, in which all of Egypt's rulers, up to and including Sadat, are brought before a court presided over by Osiris to be judged for their actions.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE WORDS OF THE DAY
The right-wing's favorite words these days are "fascist" and "appeasement." It's a desperate and absurd attempt to compare the "war on terror" to the war against the Axis powers in World War II. The people we fight now are basically outlaws. They use strategic murder to obtain their objectives. Adolf Hitler was the head of a massive and disciplined political and military machine. Nazi Germany was a political state with all the components that make a political state, from ambassadors, to armies, to navies, an air force, an economy, and the ability to make or break treaties completely on their own. They didn't hide out in caves in Afghanistan or Pakistan. And I would point out once again that wanting out of Iraq is not the same as "appeasement." Murderers, no matter what they call themselves, should be apprehended and prosecuted. This article by Jim Lobe is at www.commondreams.org:
The aggressive new campaign by the administration of President George W. Bush to depict U.S. foes in the Middle East as "fascists" and its domestic critics as "appeasers" owes a great deal to steadily intensifying efforts by the right-wing press over the past several months to draw the same comparison.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Network and The Weekly Standard, as well as the Washington Times, which is controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and the neo-conservative New York Sun, have consistently and with increasing frequency framed the challenges faced by Washington in the region in the context of the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, according to a search of the Nexis database by IPS.
All of those outlets, as well as two other right-wing U.S. magazines -- The National Review and The American Spectator -- far outpaced their commercial rivals in the frequency of their use of key words and names, such as "appeasement," "fascism", and "Hitler", particularly with respect to Iran and its controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Nexis, for example, cited 56 uses of "Islamofascist" or "Islamofascism" in separate programmes or segments aired by Fox News compared with 24 by CNN over the past year. Even more striking, the same terms were used in 115 different articles or columns in the Washington Times, compared with only eight in the Washington Post over the same period, according to a breakdown by Nexis.
REMEMBERING MAHFOUZ
This week the world lost the Nobel Prize winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz. I haven't had the pleasure of reading any of Mahfouz's work, although I'm always interested in work by Nobel Prize laureates. Writers like Mahfouz show how important writers and the written word and art are to human beings. Fiction oftentimes has more far more truth than what you see in the daily newspaper. Great fiction certainly endures far longer. This article by Laila Lalami is at www.thenation.com:
Mahfouz found inspiration in his country's history, both ancient and recent, and in its transformation into a modern nation. His first three novels (Mockery of the Fates, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War) were historical works about ancient Egypt. He portrayed Khufu as a man struggling against his destiny; he imagined Menenre as falling in love with the Nubian courtesan Rhadopis; and he depicted Egypt's fight for independence from foreign invaders. After the mid-1940s, Mahfouz's interest shifted to social realism. His masterpiece, the "Cairo Trilogy" (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street), written in 1952 and published in 1956 and 1957, portrayed three generations of an Egyptian family struggling against an autocratic ruler, the patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad. In trying to get out from under Jawad's thumb, his children and grandchildren successively turn to capitalism, communism and Islamic fundamentalism. During the 1960s and '70s, he experimented with other literary forms, such as Modernism, symbolism and even romance. In 1983 he combined his passions for ancient and modern Egypt in the ambitious and yet-untranslated novel Before the Throne, in which all of Egypt's rulers, up to and including Sadat, are brought before a court presided over by Osiris to be judged for their actions.
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