October 31, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RUDY SHOULDN'T THROW STONES
To hear him tell it, Rudy Giuliani has been aware of the terrorism threat for years and only he can really protect us from terrorists. But in testimony before the 9/11 Commission Rudy was fairly clueless about terrorism. This commentary by Joe Conason is at www.observer.com:
Although cable channels and newspapers devote endless amounts of space and time to consider the authenticity of Mrs. Clinton’s laughter, they seem unable to cover an extraordinary scoop that raises questions about Mr. Giuliani’s authenticity.
Published in the Oct. 23 issue of The Village Voice—the New York alternative weekly that has excelled in covering the former mayor for many years—that scoop revealed the contents of his private testimony before the 9/11 Commission. The previously sealed memoranda summarizing Mr. Giuliani’s testimony, obtained by reporter Wayne Barrett, show profound contradictions between his stump speech and what he admitted to the commission behind closed doors.
For reasons that remain unclear, the minutes of his private testimony, marked “commission sensitive/unclassified,” were nevertheless to be locked away until the convenient date of December 2008. According to Mr. Barrett, nobody associated with the 9/11 Commission could explain how or why that decision had been made.
The Voice article discloses the embarrassing contents of a 15-page “memorandum for the record,” prepared by a commission attorney on April 20, 2004, which quotes Mr. Giuliani explaining that he knew little about Osama bin Laden’s organization until “after 9/11,” when “we brought in people to brief us on al Qaeda.” He recalled no such briefing earlier, which was “a mistake,” he acknowledged, since “if experts share a lot of info,” that would mean a “better chance of someone making heads and tails … [of the] situation.”
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN GOES THE BUSH ECONOMY
Consumer confidence is down. Home prices have dropped to a 16 year low. Some corporate behemoths are seeing their quarterly profits down. See what happens when you transfer almost all the wealth to just a few people at the top? This article by Francesco Guerrera, Jonathan Birchall and Daniel Pimlott is at news.yahoo.com:
A raft of bearish data fuelled fears of a US economic slowdown on Tuesday as consumer confidence slumped to a two-year low and house prices in major cities suffered the biggest drop in 16 years.
The growing evidence that the credit squeeze and housing meltdown are spreading to the rest of the domestic economy will increase pressure on the Federal Reserve to set aside concerns over rising inflation and cut interest rates on Wednesday.
Blue chips such as Procter & Gamble and US Steel added to the gloom with results that disappointed investors and contributed to a 0.3 per cent fall in the S&P 500 in New York midday trading.
The negative reaction to earnings by two companies with global operations reflects deepening investor concerns that the weak dollar and solid global economic growth might not be enough to help corporate America offset a US slowdown.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
October 30, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CAPITALISM RAVAGES THE EARTH
In this country you have it pounded into you about the glories of capitalism and the darkness of socialism. The power elite has managed to associate socialism with gulags and big government and oppression. Come to think of it, our system isn't that much different these days, is it? As writer Michael Lind has noted, the best system is probably a mixture of capitalism and socialism. You have a true social safety net and you have private means of production. You emphasize the virtues of both systems. Pure capitalism is toxic. It's about exploitation and it's about greed. The benefits accrue to just a very few and everyone else makes do, if even that. We can do better. This article by Jason Miller is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Capitalism, capitalism. How do I loath thee? Let me count the ways….
1. Few would argue with the conclusion that greed, selfishness, ruthlessness, and egocentrism are qualities that all of us humans possess, to varying degrees of course. Equally compelling is the argument that nearly all of us are capable of acting with kindness, compassion, justice, honesty, generosity, and empathy. Yet despite the sweeping epidemic of unnecessary suffering caused by torrential waves of avarice, self-centeredness, and brutality, our filthy moneyed elite, their well-compensated sycophants, and countless millions of deeply inculcated members of the working class defend the sacred cow of capitalism with the zeal of the Siccari. What a brilliant way to conduct human affairs and organize ourselves socioeconomically! Not only do we embrace the inevitability of our human frailties; we willfully and perpetually embrace a system that ensures that the worst elements of the human psyche will predominate AND which amply rewards those who act the most reprehensibly.
2. One of the idiocies advanced as a logical argument to justify the continued existence of the abomination of capitalism is that while it may be flawed, it is still better than any alternative. If capitalism is the best humanity can do, it’s time to cash in our chips and leave Earth to our non-human animal counter-parts. They may not have opposable thumbs and formidably sized frontal lobes, but at least they don’t engage in the systematic destruction of themselves and the rest of the planet. However, before we act too hastily and engage in mass Seppuku, perhaps it would make more sense to implement a mass reorganization of our socioeconomic structure, basing the new paradigm on far more egalitarian, sustainable, democratic, just, and rational principles. Or we could just keep destroying each other and the f****** planet….
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CAPITALISM RAVAGES THE EARTH
In this country you have it pounded into you about the glories of capitalism and the darkness of socialism. The power elite has managed to associate socialism with gulags and big government and oppression. Come to think of it, our system isn't that much different these days, is it? As writer Michael Lind has noted, the best system is probably a mixture of capitalism and socialism. You have a true social safety net and you have private means of production. You emphasize the virtues of both systems. Pure capitalism is toxic. It's about exploitation and it's about greed. The benefits accrue to just a very few and everyone else makes do, if even that. We can do better. This article by Jason Miller is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Capitalism, capitalism. How do I loath thee? Let me count the ways….
1. Few would argue with the conclusion that greed, selfishness, ruthlessness, and egocentrism are qualities that all of us humans possess, to varying degrees of course. Equally compelling is the argument that nearly all of us are capable of acting with kindness, compassion, justice, honesty, generosity, and empathy. Yet despite the sweeping epidemic of unnecessary suffering caused by torrential waves of avarice, self-centeredness, and brutality, our filthy moneyed elite, their well-compensated sycophants, and countless millions of deeply inculcated members of the working class defend the sacred cow of capitalism with the zeal of the Siccari. What a brilliant way to conduct human affairs and organize ourselves socioeconomically! Not only do we embrace the inevitability of our human frailties; we willfully and perpetually embrace a system that ensures that the worst elements of the human psyche will predominate AND which amply rewards those who act the most reprehensibly.
2. One of the idiocies advanced as a logical argument to justify the continued existence of the abomination of capitalism is that while it may be flawed, it is still better than any alternative. If capitalism is the best humanity can do, it’s time to cash in our chips and leave Earth to our non-human animal counter-parts. They may not have opposable thumbs and formidably sized frontal lobes, but at least they don’t engage in the systematic destruction of themselves and the rest of the planet. However, before we act too hastily and engage in mass Seppuku, perhaps it would make more sense to implement a mass reorganization of our socioeconomic structure, basing the new paradigm on far more egalitarian, sustainable, democratic, just, and rational principles. Or we could just keep destroying each other and the f****** planet….
Monday, October 29, 2007
October 29, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REPUBLICANS LOVE BOOGEYMEN
I bet Republicans love Halloween. Halloween is about scaring people and being scared. Ever since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration has done everything it can to keep us scared all the time. In the meantime, we don't notice things like the rotten economy, the shredding of civil liberties, the incredible corruption, or the failure to address global crises like AIDS or global warming. Them big bad terrorists are out there trying to get us. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:
Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.
Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”
Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”
THE CRIMES OF THE PROFESSIONAL CLASS
This is an interesting article talking about the crimes of professionals who make the crimes of "great" leaders possible. No politician/mass murderer could do his or her dirty deeds without lots of help. There are the lawyers who find ways to make murder or torture "legal." There are the scientists who, in the name of "pure" science, develop weapons that can kill millions of people, including biochemical weapons. There are the engineers who design killing machines and computer programmers who write programs that can launch death and destruction. This article by Zbignew Zingh is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
We already know about the attorneys who split hairs over the definition of torture, who plead for indefinite detention without charge or trial, who argue for retroactive immunity for those who illegally monitored our communications, or who plead “state secrets” as a bar to the redress of government crimes. These lawyers (and the judges who approve their specious arguments) might themselves be accessories to crime. It is not a defense to argue that every party is entitled to zealous representation when that misguided zeal facilitates the crime itself.
We already know about the so-called doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists who help keep kidnapped captives “alive” so that they can be tortured and interrogated again and again. These are not health care professionals but accessories to crime. They have not sworn a Hippocratic Oath, but a Hypocritical Oath, and they should be held accountable.
We already know about the economists and the money managers who boost profits by devising schemes to break unions, curtail jobs, cut wages, cut benefits and “externalize” the detritus of private enterprise. These professionals, as criminal enablers, share the responsibility for the death and pollution and despair caused by their principals.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REPUBLICANS LOVE BOOGEYMEN
I bet Republicans love Halloween. Halloween is about scaring people and being scared. Ever since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration has done everything it can to keep us scared all the time. In the meantime, we don't notice things like the rotten economy, the shredding of civil liberties, the incredible corruption, or the failure to address global crises like AIDS or global warming. Them big bad terrorists are out there trying to get us. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:
Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.
Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”
Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”
THE CRIMES OF THE PROFESSIONAL CLASS
This is an interesting article talking about the crimes of professionals who make the crimes of "great" leaders possible. No politician/mass murderer could do his or her dirty deeds without lots of help. There are the lawyers who find ways to make murder or torture "legal." There are the scientists who, in the name of "pure" science, develop weapons that can kill millions of people, including biochemical weapons. There are the engineers who design killing machines and computer programmers who write programs that can launch death and destruction. This article by Zbignew Zingh is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
We already know about the attorneys who split hairs over the definition of torture, who plead for indefinite detention without charge or trial, who argue for retroactive immunity for those who illegally monitored our communications, or who plead “state secrets” as a bar to the redress of government crimes. These lawyers (and the judges who approve their specious arguments) might themselves be accessories to crime. It is not a defense to argue that every party is entitled to zealous representation when that misguided zeal facilitates the crime itself.
We already know about the so-called doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists who help keep kidnapped captives “alive” so that they can be tortured and interrogated again and again. These are not health care professionals but accessories to crime. They have not sworn a Hippocratic Oath, but a Hypocritical Oath, and they should be held accountable.
We already know about the economists and the money managers who boost profits by devising schemes to break unions, curtail jobs, cut wages, cut benefits and “externalize” the detritus of private enterprise. These professionals, as criminal enablers, share the responsibility for the death and pollution and despair caused by their principals.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
October 28, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE OUT-OF-TOUCH CHRISTIAN RIGHT
When I think of the Christian right, those people like Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, the Christian Coalition, etc., I think of Shirley Jackson's great short story "The Lottery." In the story a town has this mysterious ritual where one citizen of the town is selected in a lottery to be stoned to death. The Christian right has clung to a mythical view of history and morality that they would like to impose on everyone else. They had great success in capturing the Republican party, especially George W. Bush, in pushing their agenda. But abortion remains legal, school prayer is still illegal, most Americans are becoming more tolerant of gay rights and women's rights, and current Republican front runner Rudy Giuliani is anathema to the Christian right. Frank Rich talks about it in this column at www.nytimes.com:
But the most significant — and happiest — explanation for the values czars’ demise as a political force is that white evangelical Christians and a new generation of evangelical leaders have themselves steadily tacked a different course from the Dobson crowd. A CBS News poll this month parallels what the Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick found in his examination of evangelicals for today’s Times Magazine. Like most other Americans, they are more interested in hearing from presidential candidates about the war in Iraq and health care than about any other issues.
Abortion and same-sex marriage landed at the bottom of that list; fighting poverty outpolled abortion as a personal priority by a 3-to-2 margin. To see just how large a gap separates that evangelical electorate from the values organizations that purport to speak in its name, just look at the Values Voter Summit that the Family Research Council convened to much press attention in Washington last weekend. In a survey of participants to determine which issue would be “most important” in choosing a presidential candidate, the summit’s organizers didn’t even think to list the war, health care or fighting poverty among the 12 hot-button options.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE OUT-OF-TOUCH CHRISTIAN RIGHT
When I think of the Christian right, those people like Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, the Christian Coalition, etc., I think of Shirley Jackson's great short story "The Lottery." In the story a town has this mysterious ritual where one citizen of the town is selected in a lottery to be stoned to death. The Christian right has clung to a mythical view of history and morality that they would like to impose on everyone else. They had great success in capturing the Republican party, especially George W. Bush, in pushing their agenda. But abortion remains legal, school prayer is still illegal, most Americans are becoming more tolerant of gay rights and women's rights, and current Republican front runner Rudy Giuliani is anathema to the Christian right. Frank Rich talks about it in this column at www.nytimes.com:
But the most significant — and happiest — explanation for the values czars’ demise as a political force is that white evangelical Christians and a new generation of evangelical leaders have themselves steadily tacked a different course from the Dobson crowd. A CBS News poll this month parallels what the Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick found in his examination of evangelicals for today’s Times Magazine. Like most other Americans, they are more interested in hearing from presidential candidates about the war in Iraq and health care than about any other issues.
Abortion and same-sex marriage landed at the bottom of that list; fighting poverty outpolled abortion as a personal priority by a 3-to-2 margin. To see just how large a gap separates that evangelical electorate from the values organizations that purport to speak in its name, just look at the Values Voter Summit that the Family Research Council convened to much press attention in Washington last weekend. In a survey of participants to determine which issue would be “most important” in choosing a presidential candidate, the summit’s organizers didn’t even think to list the war, health care or fighting poverty among the 12 hot-button options.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
October 27, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE MORAL TALE OF THE LITTLE RED HEN (REVISED)
You know the story of the Little Red Hen. She goes around the barnyard asking for help in baking a cake and gets turned down by the other animals. After she industriously gets the ingredients and bakes the cake herself, the other animals decide they want a cut. Conservatives would say it illustrates the way society works. The rich work hard and everyone else does not, but we sloths want to take what the rich have rightfully earned. It's a nice little fable, but not quite true to real life. In this satirical piece the tale of the Little Red Hen gets another look. This is at www.conceptualguerilla.com:
The last time I checked, the little red hen was living in a brand new air-conditioned ten thousand square foot chicken house. She is the queen of the barnyard. She is respected. She is feared. She is hated. She attributes this hatred to “envy”. In fact, for all her wealth and power, she is miserable, because she can never rest. She spends her days on the roof of her chicken palace looking at the other animals in the barnyard, and wondering. When will they figure out the game? When will they ask why all ten of them can't work in her bakery? When will they figure out that the starvation of the two is being used as a weapon against the other eight? When will they realize that they and the two “deadbeats” are being screwed by the same little red hen?. When will they unite – once again – and force her to offer them a fairer deal? When will they realize that they don’t need her at all, and her oven can cook more than just bread and pastry?
I hear oven baked chicken is delicious.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE MORAL TALE OF THE LITTLE RED HEN (REVISED)
You know the story of the Little Red Hen. She goes around the barnyard asking for help in baking a cake and gets turned down by the other animals. After she industriously gets the ingredients and bakes the cake herself, the other animals decide they want a cut. Conservatives would say it illustrates the way society works. The rich work hard and everyone else does not, but we sloths want to take what the rich have rightfully earned. It's a nice little fable, but not quite true to real life. In this satirical piece the tale of the Little Red Hen gets another look. This is at www.conceptualguerilla.com:
The last time I checked, the little red hen was living in a brand new air-conditioned ten thousand square foot chicken house. She is the queen of the barnyard. She is respected. She is feared. She is hated. She attributes this hatred to “envy”. In fact, for all her wealth and power, she is miserable, because she can never rest. She spends her days on the roof of her chicken palace looking at the other animals in the barnyard, and wondering. When will they figure out the game? When will they ask why all ten of them can't work in her bakery? When will they figure out that the starvation of the two is being used as a weapon against the other eight? When will they realize that they and the two “deadbeats” are being screwed by the same little red hen?. When will they unite – once again – and force her to offer them a fairer deal? When will they realize that they don’t need her at all, and her oven can cook more than just bread and pastry?
I hear oven baked chicken is delicious.
Friday, October 26, 2007
October 26, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE REALITY OF POVERTY
Right-wing think tanks, their mouthpieces in the media, and the average beer belly right-winger love to ostracize the poor. If you're poor, the story goes, it's your own fault. You're lazy, you're stupid, you don't plan ahead, you drink or use drugs, you're promiscuous, and so on. The Horatio Alger myth of rags to riches should have died a long time ago, but it serves the power elite for people to buy into the idea that success in the United States is based on merit. This article by Alyssa Katharine Ritz Battistoni is at www.thenation.com:
There are some who would point out that poor people in America are still rich by world standards, that compared with the 1 billion people who live on the oft-repeated "dollar a day," they are doing pretty well for themselves. It's certainly true that those of us who live in this country are very lucky to do so. But a key aspect of evaluating poverty is considering the ability to participate in one's society, and that is growing increasingly difficult for poor Americans to do.
The opportunities and choices available to low-income individuals and families are so different from those available to their wealthy and even middle-class counterparts that they might as well be living in another country. You're more likely to get sent to Iraq, more likely to go to jail, more likely to have an unplanned child, more likely to have asthma from breathing polluted air if you're poor. More likely to have to choose between paying for food (none of that organic stuff, either) and medical treatment, less likely to get adequate care if you choose the latter. Pointing out that there are still people in the world who are worse off in an absolute sense does not absolve us of the responsibility to address our own country's need.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE REALITY OF POVERTY
Right-wing think tanks, their mouthpieces in the media, and the average beer belly right-winger love to ostracize the poor. If you're poor, the story goes, it's your own fault. You're lazy, you're stupid, you don't plan ahead, you drink or use drugs, you're promiscuous, and so on. The Horatio Alger myth of rags to riches should have died a long time ago, but it serves the power elite for people to buy into the idea that success in the United States is based on merit. This article by Alyssa Katharine Ritz Battistoni is at www.thenation.com:
There are some who would point out that poor people in America are still rich by world standards, that compared with the 1 billion people who live on the oft-repeated "dollar a day," they are doing pretty well for themselves. It's certainly true that those of us who live in this country are very lucky to do so. But a key aspect of evaluating poverty is considering the ability to participate in one's society, and that is growing increasingly difficult for poor Americans to do.
The opportunities and choices available to low-income individuals and families are so different from those available to their wealthy and even middle-class counterparts that they might as well be living in another country. You're more likely to get sent to Iraq, more likely to go to jail, more likely to have an unplanned child, more likely to have asthma from breathing polluted air if you're poor. More likely to have to choose between paying for food (none of that organic stuff, either) and medical treatment, less likely to get adequate care if you choose the latter. Pointing out that there are still people in the world who are worse off in an absolute sense does not absolve us of the responsibility to address our own country's need.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
October 24, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
GO RED SOX
I'm not a Red Sox fan ordinarily. In fact, I usually root against the Red Sox. But I'm for the Red Sox in this World Series because I'm an American League fan and because I don't like the mix of religion and sports propagated by the Colorado Rockies. According to Rockies management, they want players with "character," which translates into being their version of a Christian. I don't like religion in politics and I don't like it in sports. This article by Dave Zirin is linked at www.thenation.com:
Have the Rockies really turned over a tolerant new leaf--as the Times report suggested--or is this merely the sin of spin? Relief pitcher Jeremy Affeldt said, "When you have as many people who believe in God as we do, it creates a humbleness about what we do. I don't see arrogance here, I see confidence. We're all very humbled about where this franchise has been and where it is now, and we know that what's happening now is a very special thing."
Humility and confidence are fine--indeed, novel--traits in an athlete. But the troubling part of that statement is the assumption that Christianity by definition brings character to the table. Maybe it's because I live in Washington, DC, a town full of politicians who blithely invade other countries with other people's children and deny healthcare to millions of kids and say they are guided by God. Maybe it's because I find a team using a publicly funded stadium as a platform for an event originally dubbed "Christian Family Day" exclusionary and a gross misuse of tax dollars. (Later, the events were renamed "Faith Day" to sound more inclusive.)
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
GO RED SOX
I'm not a Red Sox fan ordinarily. In fact, I usually root against the Red Sox. But I'm for the Red Sox in this World Series because I'm an American League fan and because I don't like the mix of religion and sports propagated by the Colorado Rockies. According to Rockies management, they want players with "character," which translates into being their version of a Christian. I don't like religion in politics and I don't like it in sports. This article by Dave Zirin is linked at www.thenation.com:
Have the Rockies really turned over a tolerant new leaf--as the Times report suggested--or is this merely the sin of spin? Relief pitcher Jeremy Affeldt said, "When you have as many people who believe in God as we do, it creates a humbleness about what we do. I don't see arrogance here, I see confidence. We're all very humbled about where this franchise has been and where it is now, and we know that what's happening now is a very special thing."
Humility and confidence are fine--indeed, novel--traits in an athlete. But the troubling part of that statement is the assumption that Christianity by definition brings character to the table. Maybe it's because I live in Washington, DC, a town full of politicians who blithely invade other countries with other people's children and deny healthcare to millions of kids and say they are guided by God. Maybe it's because I find a team using a publicly funded stadium as a platform for an event originally dubbed "Christian Family Day" exclusionary and a gross misuse of tax dollars. (Later, the events were renamed "Faith Day" to sound more inclusive.)
Monday, October 22, 2007
October 22, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
A GORDON GECKO ECONOMY
In the movie Wall Street Michael Douglas portrayed a high rolling financier named Gordon Gecko. Gordon Gecko was famous for the statement that epitomized the Reagan era, "Greed is good." In one memorable scene Gecko talked how he didn't produce or make anything. He moved money around. He destroyed unions and took their pension funds. He used insider trading techniques to manipulate stock prices. Our version of Gordon Gecko is the billionaire hedge fund traders, the kind of people who benefited from unregulated subprime mortgages. The number of billionaires in the United States has increased and the number of poor has increased. We have millions of people without even basic health care insurance. This is what we get with reactionary administrations like the Bush administration. This article by Holly Sklar is at www.commondreams.org:
The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn’t party time for America.
We have a record 482 billionaires — and record foreclosures.
We have a record 482 billionaires — and a record 47 million people without any health insurance.
Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires — and 5 million more people living below the poverty line.
The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won’t get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525).
Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.
Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.
THE REALITY OF PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK
Thanks to Republican economics, whether you want to blame Alan Greenspan, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, or a combination of right-wing politicians,economists, and think tanks, have created a situation for many of us where survival is getting harder and harder. Essentials such as food and energy are getting horrendously expensive. Rents go up, but incomes to do not. This article by ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, is at news.yahoo.com:
Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It's starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.
Food pantries, which distribute foodstuffs to the needy, are reporting severe shortages and reduced government funding at the very time that they are seeing a surge of new people seeking their help.
While economists debate whether the country is headed for a recession, some say the financial stress is already the worst since the last downturn at the start of this decade.
From Family Dollar to Wal-Mart, merchants have adjusted their product mix and pricing accordingly. Sales data show a marked and more prolonged drop in spending in the days before shoppers get their paychecks, when they buy only the barest essentials before splurging around payday.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
A GORDON GECKO ECONOMY
In the movie Wall Street Michael Douglas portrayed a high rolling financier named Gordon Gecko. Gordon Gecko was famous for the statement that epitomized the Reagan era, "Greed is good." In one memorable scene Gecko talked how he didn't produce or make anything. He moved money around. He destroyed unions and took their pension funds. He used insider trading techniques to manipulate stock prices. Our version of Gordon Gecko is the billionaire hedge fund traders, the kind of people who benefited from unregulated subprime mortgages. The number of billionaires in the United States has increased and the number of poor has increased. We have millions of people without even basic health care insurance. This is what we get with reactionary administrations like the Bush administration. This article by Holly Sklar is at www.commondreams.org:
The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn’t party time for America.
We have a record 482 billionaires — and record foreclosures.
We have a record 482 billionaires — and a record 47 million people without any health insurance.
Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires — and 5 million more people living below the poverty line.
The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won’t get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525).
Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.
Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.
THE REALITY OF PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK
Thanks to Republican economics, whether you want to blame Alan Greenspan, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, or a combination of right-wing politicians,economists, and think tanks, have created a situation for many of us where survival is getting harder and harder. Essentials such as food and energy are getting horrendously expensive. Rents go up, but incomes to do not. This article by ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, is at news.yahoo.com:
Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It's starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.
Food pantries, which distribute foodstuffs to the needy, are reporting severe shortages and reduced government funding at the very time that they are seeing a surge of new people seeking their help.
While economists debate whether the country is headed for a recession, some say the financial stress is already the worst since the last downturn at the start of this decade.
From Family Dollar to Wal-Mart, merchants have adjusted their product mix and pricing accordingly. Sales data show a marked and more prolonged drop in spending in the days before shoppers get their paychecks, when they buy only the barest essentials before splurging around payday.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
October 20, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MEDIA PUSHES RIGHT-WING LIE ON SOCIAL SECURITY
If you listened to some of the major media outlets, you would think Chicken Little was right and the sky was falling when it comes to Social Security. Oh Lord! The system is about to go bankrupt! Young people will be saddled with paying for the baby boomers' retirement! It's nonsense. This is once again a ploy to privatize Social Security so the sharks on Wall Street can get their hands on the money.
This article is at www.fair.org:
This rhetoric is profoundly misleading. Social Security has built up a massive surplus in order to pay for the long-anticipated retirement of the baby boomers. As FAIR reported in 2005 (Extra!, 1-2/05):
The Social Security Administration predicts the program will be able to fully pay all promised benefits through 2042, when most baby boomers will be dead--even using pessimistic assumptions about future economic growth. Annual productivity growth is forecast by SSA at only 1.6 percent through 2078; in the years 1913-1990 (including the Great Depression), it grew by about 2.3 percent, a rate that would more than wipe out any future shortfall (2004 Social Security Trustees' Report; The World Economy, OECD, 2001).
But for most of the media, no such context is allowed. The sole economic expert who appeared on ABC was David John of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, who likened the situation to a "horror movie." Milbank chided a Social Security commissioner for "whistling past the graveyard of entitlement insolvency" because he had the temerity to say, "There's no reason to have any immediate panic." Milbank even suggested that young people are "more likely to believe in UFOs than in receiving their Social Security checks"--a claim based on a misleading poll (Extra!, 3-4/97). Milbank offered the usual prescription--namely, "painful changes everybody knows will be needed."
THE CRIMINAL BILLIONAIRE CLASS
Money has perverted the entire political and governmental process in the United States. The rich have purchased the government and the government acts as a faithful servant to the whims of the very rich. In the meantime, the rest of us get more impoverished. This imbalance is bad not only for democracy, but for the planet as a whole. The very rich are never satisfied and, as a group, they don't much care about the common good. This article talks about David Cay Johnston's new book that details the outright criminal behavior of the very rich. The article by Russell Mokhiber is at www.counterpunch.org:
In the book, Johnston takes shots at the corporate criminal class that would never make it by his editors at the New York Times.
"Unlike the common thief or bandit, these executives have the best and the brightest lawyers to explain away misconduct or to obfuscate.," he writes in the book. "In the rare instances when indictments are handed up, the cheated shareholders sometimes end up paying to defend the thieves who robbed them. Added to this are the legions of publicists who are paid to report what their bosses want us to hear--the antithesis of journalism's call to pursue the facts without fear or favor. The ranks of these image shifters are growing, while across the country a quarter or more of journalists are being fired, reducing further the chances that inconvenient facts will become known."
"The checks and balances provided by oversight, inspection, investigation and in extreme cases, prosecution have all been gutted in the name of deregulation and shrinking the size of government," he writes. "When there is no policeman on the beat the greatest beneficiary is not the taxpayer who is relieved of the cost of maintaining the police officer, but the thief."
Johnston points out that we used to prosecute loan sharks. But then we got rid of usury laws and passed new laws that allow "Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, MBNA and Citibank to exploit the poor, the unsophisticated and the foolish."
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MEDIA PUSHES RIGHT-WING LIE ON SOCIAL SECURITY
If you listened to some of the major media outlets, you would think Chicken Little was right and the sky was falling when it comes to Social Security. Oh Lord! The system is about to go bankrupt! Young people will be saddled with paying for the baby boomers' retirement! It's nonsense. This is once again a ploy to privatize Social Security so the sharks on Wall Street can get their hands on the money.
This article is at www.fair.org:
This rhetoric is profoundly misleading. Social Security has built up a massive surplus in order to pay for the long-anticipated retirement of the baby boomers. As FAIR reported in 2005 (Extra!, 1-2/05):
The Social Security Administration predicts the program will be able to fully pay all promised benefits through 2042, when most baby boomers will be dead--even using pessimistic assumptions about future economic growth. Annual productivity growth is forecast by SSA at only 1.6 percent through 2078; in the years 1913-1990 (including the Great Depression), it grew by about 2.3 percent, a rate that would more than wipe out any future shortfall (2004 Social Security Trustees' Report; The World Economy, OECD, 2001).
But for most of the media, no such context is allowed. The sole economic expert who appeared on ABC was David John of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, who likened the situation to a "horror movie." Milbank chided a Social Security commissioner for "whistling past the graveyard of entitlement insolvency" because he had the temerity to say, "There's no reason to have any immediate panic." Milbank even suggested that young people are "more likely to believe in UFOs than in receiving their Social Security checks"--a claim based on a misleading poll (Extra!, 3-4/97). Milbank offered the usual prescription--namely, "painful changes everybody knows will be needed."
THE CRIMINAL BILLIONAIRE CLASS
Money has perverted the entire political and governmental process in the United States. The rich have purchased the government and the government acts as a faithful servant to the whims of the very rich. In the meantime, the rest of us get more impoverished. This imbalance is bad not only for democracy, but for the planet as a whole. The very rich are never satisfied and, as a group, they don't much care about the common good. This article talks about David Cay Johnston's new book that details the outright criminal behavior of the very rich. The article by Russell Mokhiber is at www.counterpunch.org:
In the book, Johnston takes shots at the corporate criminal class that would never make it by his editors at the New York Times.
"Unlike the common thief or bandit, these executives have the best and the brightest lawyers to explain away misconduct or to obfuscate.," he writes in the book. "In the rare instances when indictments are handed up, the cheated shareholders sometimes end up paying to defend the thieves who robbed them. Added to this are the legions of publicists who are paid to report what their bosses want us to hear--the antithesis of journalism's call to pursue the facts without fear or favor. The ranks of these image shifters are growing, while across the country a quarter or more of journalists are being fired, reducing further the chances that inconvenient facts will become known."
"The checks and balances provided by oversight, inspection, investigation and in extreme cases, prosecution have all been gutted in the name of deregulation and shrinking the size of government," he writes. "When there is no policeman on the beat the greatest beneficiary is not the taxpayer who is relieved of the cost of maintaining the police officer, but the thief."
Johnston points out that we used to prosecute loan sharks. But then we got rid of usury laws and passed new laws that allow "Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, MBNA and Citibank to exploit the poor, the unsophisticated and the foolish."
Friday, October 19, 2007
October 19, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE FULL SCOPE OF PRIVACY
Some people make the inane argument that they don't mind if the government spies on them because they have "nothing to hide." Privacy is a fundamental right. A desire for privacy does not mean a person is hiding something bad. They are simply claiming the personal space to which all people should be entitled. This article by John Dean is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
For several years I have been reading the work of George Washington University Law School Professor Daniel J. Solove, who writes extensively about privacy in the context of contemporary digital technology. The current apathy about government surveillance brought to mind his essay "'I've Got Nothing To Hide' And Other Misunderstandings of Privacy."
Professor Solove's deconstruction of the "I've got nothing to hide" position, and related justifications for government surveillance, is the best brief analysis of this issue I have found. These arguments are not easy to zap because, once they are on the table, they can set the terms of the argument. As Solove explains, "the problem with the nothing to hide argument is with its underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things." He warns, "Agreeing with this assumption concedes far too much ground and leads to an unproductive discussion of information people would likely want or not want to hide." Solove's bottom line is that this argument "myopically views privacy as a form of concealment or secrecy."
WORKING PEOPLE DON'T COUNT WITH THIS GOVERNMENT
It's despicable that George W. Bush vetoed a bill extending health care to millions of children in the United States. It's despicable that Congress failed to override that veto. We have a disgraceful health care system in this country. I have a friend who had to get some dental work done. It cost $4,000. The insurance plan provided by her employer pays about $1,000 of that bill. No one should have to be confronted with that situation in this country. This article by Donna Smith at www.smirkingchimp.com expresses some of my outrage:
So, President Bush vetoes the State Children's Health Insurance Program expansion and Congress fails to override that veto. So this is our government? No, it is not. It may be the insurance companies' government and the health care profiteers' government, but it sure as hell isn't mine.
This government tries to protect life in the womb but devalues that life once a child is born and fails to provide basic health care for working-class children. That's not my government.
This government doesn't value my work ethic or my determination to provide for myself. Since I am among those classified as the "working poor," I can fend for myself for health care coverage. That's not my government.
This government does an awful lot of finger-pointing about who's to blame for what but never watches out for my health care needs. It's a weak Congress. It's a bumbling administration or worse - it's a selfish one. That's not my government.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE FULL SCOPE OF PRIVACY
Some people make the inane argument that they don't mind if the government spies on them because they have "nothing to hide." Privacy is a fundamental right. A desire for privacy does not mean a person is hiding something bad. They are simply claiming the personal space to which all people should be entitled. This article by John Dean is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
For several years I have been reading the work of George Washington University Law School Professor Daniel J. Solove, who writes extensively about privacy in the context of contemporary digital technology. The current apathy about government surveillance brought to mind his essay "'I've Got Nothing To Hide' And Other Misunderstandings of Privacy."
Professor Solove's deconstruction of the "I've got nothing to hide" position, and related justifications for government surveillance, is the best brief analysis of this issue I have found. These arguments are not easy to zap because, once they are on the table, they can set the terms of the argument. As Solove explains, "the problem with the nothing to hide argument is with its underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things." He warns, "Agreeing with this assumption concedes far too much ground and leads to an unproductive discussion of information people would likely want or not want to hide." Solove's bottom line is that this argument "myopically views privacy as a form of concealment or secrecy."
WORKING PEOPLE DON'T COUNT WITH THIS GOVERNMENT
It's despicable that George W. Bush vetoed a bill extending health care to millions of children in the United States. It's despicable that Congress failed to override that veto. We have a disgraceful health care system in this country. I have a friend who had to get some dental work done. It cost $4,000. The insurance plan provided by her employer pays about $1,000 of that bill. No one should have to be confronted with that situation in this country. This article by Donna Smith at www.smirkingchimp.com expresses some of my outrage:
So, President Bush vetoes the State Children's Health Insurance Program expansion and Congress fails to override that veto. So this is our government? No, it is not. It may be the insurance companies' government and the health care profiteers' government, but it sure as hell isn't mine.
This government tries to protect life in the womb but devalues that life once a child is born and fails to provide basic health care for working-class children. That's not my government.
This government doesn't value my work ethic or my determination to provide for myself. Since I am among those classified as the "working poor," I can fend for myself for health care coverage. That's not my government.
This government does an awful lot of finger-pointing about who's to blame for what but never watches out for my health care needs. It's a weak Congress. It's a bumbling administration or worse - it's a selfish one. That's not my government.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
October 17, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
DEPRAVED RIGHT-WINGERS
For years, faithful Rush Limbaugh fans have called themselves "Ditto Heads." They let Limbaugh do their thinking and their talking for them. So it's probably fair to assume that the Ditto Heads believe veterans of the Iraq war are "phony soldiers," or that Michael J. Fox was just faking his Parkinson's disease. After all, that's what Rush said. Limbaugh and others of his ilk just keeping sinking lower and lower into the muck. They can't talk about legitimate issues because the American people and people around the world don't support their hideous view of the world. So now they attack injured twelve year kids who get government health care assistance, or they foam at the mouth that Al Gore got awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe they're in such a frenzy because their time is quickly approaching its end. Let Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter go off into that place reserved for the vilest of the vile. This commentary by Eric Boehlert is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The examples of depravity were everywhere last week, with virtually every robotic right-wing blogger dutifully dumping on the Frost family, and often doing it with a demented sense of glee. Go here to read Weekly Standard blogger Samantha Sault's take on the Frost story and count the number of falsehoods she passed along, while making fun ("just for laughs") of the working family with two seriously injured children. Also note that when the right-wing lies about the Frosts were quickly disproved (i.e. they do not pay $20,000 a year to send their kids to private schools), Sault failed to acknowledge the litany of smears she helped spread about a 12-year-old boy who survived a coma. (No wonder so few people take the Weekly Standard seriously when it lectures The New Republic about journalism ethics; the Standard appears to have none of its own.)
But the whole messy slime offensive against the Frost family came as no surprise to anyone who follows Malkin and her army of true believers. As I detailed last winter and spring, they're most dangerous when they accidentally bump into some facts and suddenly think they're Woodward and Bernstein.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
DEPRAVED RIGHT-WINGERS
For years, faithful Rush Limbaugh fans have called themselves "Ditto Heads." They let Limbaugh do their thinking and their talking for them. So it's probably fair to assume that the Ditto Heads believe veterans of the Iraq war are "phony soldiers," or that Michael J. Fox was just faking his Parkinson's disease. After all, that's what Rush said. Limbaugh and others of his ilk just keeping sinking lower and lower into the muck. They can't talk about legitimate issues because the American people and people around the world don't support their hideous view of the world. So now they attack injured twelve year kids who get government health care assistance, or they foam at the mouth that Al Gore got awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe they're in such a frenzy because their time is quickly approaching its end. Let Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter go off into that place reserved for the vilest of the vile. This commentary by Eric Boehlert is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The examples of depravity were everywhere last week, with virtually every robotic right-wing blogger dutifully dumping on the Frost family, and often doing it with a demented sense of glee. Go here to read Weekly Standard blogger Samantha Sault's take on the Frost story and count the number of falsehoods she passed along, while making fun ("just for laughs") of the working family with two seriously injured children. Also note that when the right-wing lies about the Frosts were quickly disproved (i.e. they do not pay $20,000 a year to send their kids to private schools), Sault failed to acknowledge the litany of smears she helped spread about a 12-year-old boy who survived a coma. (No wonder so few people take the Weekly Standard seriously when it lectures The New Republic about journalism ethics; the Standard appears to have none of its own.)
But the whole messy slime offensive against the Frost family came as no surprise to anyone who follows Malkin and her army of true believers. As I detailed last winter and spring, they're most dangerous when they accidentally bump into some facts and suddenly think they're Woodward and Bernstein.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
October 16, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THEY CAN NEVER BE GRACIOUS
There are a few regular right-wing wacko correspondents to The Fresno Bee's letters page. One wacko is a guy I call Mr. Anti-Choice. He usually writes anti-abortion screeds. He would like to impose the Medieval "morality" of the Catholic Church on all of us today. Today Mr. A. C. is aggrieved that Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize. Mr. A. C. tries to denigrate the legitimacy of the award, first by saying that the Nobel Committee awarded the Prize a few years ago to that awful Yassar Arafat, thus making the prize "agenda-driven," and then claiming there are nine factual errors in the movie An Inconvenient Truth. I would have to research the alleged errors, but the basic premise of the documentary is true. We do have life-threatening global climate change taking place. The evidence is simply overwhelming. That's a terribly inconvenient concept for right-wingers, who think that we can keep on exploiting natural resources forever with no consequences. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:
The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.
But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.
Consider the policy implications of taking climate change seriously.
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said F.D.R. “We know now that it is bad economics.” These words apply perfectly to climate change. It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.
POSITIVE THINKING VS. REALITY
Probably the most famous proponent of "the power of positive thinking" was Norman Vincent Peale. If you just think positively, it's claimed, you can achieve whatever you want. But all the positive thinking in the world doesn't solve poverty, end war, address global climate change, or cure deadly illnesses. There is another right-wing think tank called The Templeton Foundation that is pushing what amounts to positive thinking. In the meantime, the head of the foundation is a Bush supporter and a supporter of the war in Iraq. This column by Barbara Ehrenreich is at www.thenation.com:
But the Templetons' most famous baby is the young field of Positive Psychology, launched by University of Pennsylvania's Martin Seligman after his five-year-old daughter accused him of being a "grouch" and he resolved improve his outlook. Pos Psych carves out everything ordinary psych, with its bent toward pathology, ignores, which is in itself an admirable ambition. In practice, though, it tilts dangerously, for something that considers itself a science, toward the prescriptive. If you're not happy--or optimistic or upbeat--you better get to work on that now, and we have the "coaches" to help you.
Put all this happiness and optimism together with John Templeton Jr.'s political agenda and you could come up with some pretty paranoid scenarios: for example, that the Templeton Foundation is a plot to numb Americans into smiley-faced acquiescence to the status quo. And could it be a coincidence that Templeton helped finance the re-election of the most optimistic President we've had since Ronald Reagan?
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THEY CAN NEVER BE GRACIOUS
There are a few regular right-wing wacko correspondents to The Fresno Bee's letters page. One wacko is a guy I call Mr. Anti-Choice. He usually writes anti-abortion screeds. He would like to impose the Medieval "morality" of the Catholic Church on all of us today. Today Mr. A. C. is aggrieved that Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize. Mr. A. C. tries to denigrate the legitimacy of the award, first by saying that the Nobel Committee awarded the Prize a few years ago to that awful Yassar Arafat, thus making the prize "agenda-driven," and then claiming there are nine factual errors in the movie An Inconvenient Truth. I would have to research the alleged errors, but the basic premise of the documentary is true. We do have life-threatening global climate change taking place. The evidence is simply overwhelming. That's a terribly inconvenient concept for right-wingers, who think that we can keep on exploiting natural resources forever with no consequences. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:
The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.
But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.
Consider the policy implications of taking climate change seriously.
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said F.D.R. “We know now that it is bad economics.” These words apply perfectly to climate change. It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.
POSITIVE THINKING VS. REALITY
Probably the most famous proponent of "the power of positive thinking" was Norman Vincent Peale. If you just think positively, it's claimed, you can achieve whatever you want. But all the positive thinking in the world doesn't solve poverty, end war, address global climate change, or cure deadly illnesses. There is another right-wing think tank called The Templeton Foundation that is pushing what amounts to positive thinking. In the meantime, the head of the foundation is a Bush supporter and a supporter of the war in Iraq. This column by Barbara Ehrenreich is at www.thenation.com:
But the Templetons' most famous baby is the young field of Positive Psychology, launched by University of Pennsylvania's Martin Seligman after his five-year-old daughter accused him of being a "grouch" and he resolved improve his outlook. Pos Psych carves out everything ordinary psych, with its bent toward pathology, ignores, which is in itself an admirable ambition. In practice, though, it tilts dangerously, for something that considers itself a science, toward the prescriptive. If you're not happy--or optimistic or upbeat--you better get to work on that now, and we have the "coaches" to help you.
Put all this happiness and optimism together with John Templeton Jr.'s political agenda and you could come up with some pretty paranoid scenarios: for example, that the Templeton Foundation is a plot to numb Americans into smiley-faced acquiescence to the status quo. And could it be a coincidence that Templeton helped finance the re-election of the most optimistic President we've had since Ronald Reagan?
Sunday, October 14, 2007
October 14, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
END THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY
"Illegitimate" might be a kind word to describe the entire Bush presidency. He was appointed to the White House by a partisan Supreme Court. The methods used in Florida to even make it possible for the Court to get involved were illegitimate, sleazy tactics like butterfly ballots and purging voters from the voter rolls. Bush has used "signing statements" to get around the Constitutional process of vetoing bills and possibly having vetoes overridden by Congress. He has spied illegally on Americans. He lied about the danger posed by Iraq and launched a war based on those lies. He has suspended habeas corpus,one of the most enduring and important concepts in the law. He has sanctioned torture. Now even some conservatives want a check on the "unitary executive" power grab by George W. Bush. This article by Bob Egelko is at www.sfgate.com:
President Bush's drive to expand executive power over surveillance, detention, interrogation and the meaning of new laws has drawn largely ineffectual protests from Congress. But a group of liberals and a handful of prominent conservatives are pressing would-be successors to renounce those powers before they take office.
Both the liberal American Freedom Campaign and the conservative American Freedom Agenda have adopted platforms complaining of administration muscle-flexing on issues ranging from the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Justice Department's threats to prosecute reporters for espionage.
The liberal group also has asked all presidential candidates to sign a pledge of limited executive authority, reading, "We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people's phones and e-mails without court order, and above all we do not give any president unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from attack by any president."
None of the nine Republican candidates has responded. The pledge has been signed by five Democratic hopefuls: Sens. Barack Obama and Chris Dodd, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Sen. Mike Gravel.
R.I.P. THE AMERICAN DREAM
The idea that anybody can make it in America should go alongside fairy tales like Cinderella and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It's been mostly a sham all along. But in the era from the end of the Second World War until the early 70's there was a thriving and growing middle class. Thanks to the reforms of the New Deal and programs like the G. I. Bill, there was actually some hope that people could advance from poverty to the middle class. It was still difficult for African-Americans even then. But even a modest rise in the standard of living was too much for the greedheads at the top of the economic pyramid and their rabid free-market supporters on the political right. They've been deliberately trying to reduce us to a state of peonage. This article by Joshua Holland is at www.alternet.org:
The American Dream is Dead, gone along with the era of good union jobs, comprehensive employer benefits and real upward mobility, and most working people are fully aware of the fact.
That's the takeaway from the latest installment of the American Dream Survey, a study of working Americans' views of the political-economy released in late September.
It paints a picture of an increasingly frustrated working majority who are having a harder time raising their families than the generation before them did, and who believe that things will be even worse for their kids. They have reason to believe it -- a 30-year assault on organized labor, neglected minimum wage increases, fewer educational opportunities and the constant tide of pro-business propaganda being pumped out by right-wing think tanks and business roundtables that enforces the idea that working people are faceless "inputs" -- costs that need to be controlled -- have left Americans with far less social mobility than they had a generation ago. Contrary to common belief, Americans have less opportunity to move up the economic ladder than Canadians and Western Europeans (except for those in the UK).
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
END THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY
"Illegitimate" might be a kind word to describe the entire Bush presidency. He was appointed to the White House by a partisan Supreme Court. The methods used in Florida to even make it possible for the Court to get involved were illegitimate, sleazy tactics like butterfly ballots and purging voters from the voter rolls. Bush has used "signing statements" to get around the Constitutional process of vetoing bills and possibly having vetoes overridden by Congress. He has spied illegally on Americans. He lied about the danger posed by Iraq and launched a war based on those lies. He has suspended habeas corpus,one of the most enduring and important concepts in the law. He has sanctioned torture. Now even some conservatives want a check on the "unitary executive" power grab by George W. Bush. This article by Bob Egelko is at www.sfgate.com:
President Bush's drive to expand executive power over surveillance, detention, interrogation and the meaning of new laws has drawn largely ineffectual protests from Congress. But a group of liberals and a handful of prominent conservatives are pressing would-be successors to renounce those powers before they take office.
Both the liberal American Freedom Campaign and the conservative American Freedom Agenda have adopted platforms complaining of administration muscle-flexing on issues ranging from the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Justice Department's threats to prosecute reporters for espionage.
The liberal group also has asked all presidential candidates to sign a pledge of limited executive authority, reading, "We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people's phones and e-mails without court order, and above all we do not give any president unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from attack by any president."
None of the nine Republican candidates has responded. The pledge has been signed by five Democratic hopefuls: Sens. Barack Obama and Chris Dodd, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Sen. Mike Gravel.
R.I.P. THE AMERICAN DREAM
The idea that anybody can make it in America should go alongside fairy tales like Cinderella and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It's been mostly a sham all along. But in the era from the end of the Second World War until the early 70's there was a thriving and growing middle class. Thanks to the reforms of the New Deal and programs like the G. I. Bill, there was actually some hope that people could advance from poverty to the middle class. It was still difficult for African-Americans even then. But even a modest rise in the standard of living was too much for the greedheads at the top of the economic pyramid and their rabid free-market supporters on the political right. They've been deliberately trying to reduce us to a state of peonage. This article by Joshua Holland is at www.alternet.org:
The American Dream is Dead, gone along with the era of good union jobs, comprehensive employer benefits and real upward mobility, and most working people are fully aware of the fact.
That's the takeaway from the latest installment of the American Dream Survey, a study of working Americans' views of the political-economy released in late September.
It paints a picture of an increasingly frustrated working majority who are having a harder time raising their families than the generation before them did, and who believe that things will be even worse for their kids. They have reason to believe it -- a 30-year assault on organized labor, neglected minimum wage increases, fewer educational opportunities and the constant tide of pro-business propaganda being pumped out by right-wing think tanks and business roundtables that enforces the idea that working people are faceless "inputs" -- costs that need to be controlled -- have left Americans with far less social mobility than they had a generation ago. Contrary to common belief, Americans have less opportunity to move up the economic ladder than Canadians and Western Europeans (except for those in the UK).
Saturday, October 13, 2007
October 13, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
NO LIMIT ON CHARACTER ASSASSINATION
George W. Bush suddenly found alleged fiscal responsibility when he vetoed a bill that provides health insurance for children. The Democrats used a beneficiary of that program, a 12-year-old named Graeme Frost, as their spokesman in response to Bush. The fact he's only twelve didn't stop the right wing smear machine from going full blast. They lied and claimed that Graeme's family was affluent and didn't need any government assisted health insurance. In fact, Graeme's family is lower middle class, couldn't afford private health insurance, and desperately needs this program. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:
The parents have a combined income of about $45,000, and don’t receive health insurance from employers. When they looked into buying insurance on their own before the accident, they found that it would cost $1,200 a month — a prohibitive sum given their income. After the accident, when their children needed expensive care, they couldn’t get insurance at any price.
Fortunately, they received help from Maryland’s S-chip program. The state has relatively restrictive rules for eligibility: children must come from a family with an income under 200 percent of the poverty line. For families with four children that’s $55,220, so the Frosts clearly qualified.
Graeme Frost, then, is exactly the kind of child the program is intended to help. But that didn’t stop the right from mounting an all-out smear campaign against him and his family.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
NO LIMIT ON CHARACTER ASSASSINATION
George W. Bush suddenly found alleged fiscal responsibility when he vetoed a bill that provides health insurance for children. The Democrats used a beneficiary of that program, a 12-year-old named Graeme Frost, as their spokesman in response to Bush. The fact he's only twelve didn't stop the right wing smear machine from going full blast. They lied and claimed that Graeme's family was affluent and didn't need any government assisted health insurance. In fact, Graeme's family is lower middle class, couldn't afford private health insurance, and desperately needs this program. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:
The parents have a combined income of about $45,000, and don’t receive health insurance from employers. When they looked into buying insurance on their own before the accident, they found that it would cost $1,200 a month — a prohibitive sum given their income. After the accident, when their children needed expensive care, they couldn’t get insurance at any price.
Fortunately, they received help from Maryland’s S-chip program. The state has relatively restrictive rules for eligibility: children must come from a family with an income under 200 percent of the poverty line. For families with four children that’s $55,220, so the Frosts clearly qualified.
Graeme Frost, then, is exactly the kind of child the program is intended to help. But that didn’t stop the right from mounting an all-out smear campaign against him and his family.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
October 11, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
PSST, THE WAR IS WRONG
There are some disturbing similarities between the war in Iraq and Vietnam, but there are also some stark differences. In the Vietnam era the streets were filled with protesters. This war has drawn some protests, but nothing on the scale of the Vietnam war. Maybe it's because there's a "volunteer" army now instead of the draft that existed back in the 1960's. Another difference is the lack of protest in music. Lots of anti-war music was recorded during the Vietnam era. Even now, after four years of this atrocity there is still little protest in music. On the country charts Tim McGraw has an anti-war song and Merle Haggard recorded an anti-Iraq war song. Film makers are beginning to address Iraq. And now Bruce Springsteen has a new album that takes on this issue. This article by Brian Morton is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Fast forward to today, and if you listen to the radio, it's hard to tell that America is in year four of a gigantic losing quagmire our leaders sank us into on the basis of lies. Turn on the television, and you'll only see a debate between those who were in favor of war and are in favor of staying, and those who were in favor of war and now are thinking we might want to be withdrawing. All those who were never in favor of the war in the first place are still sitting on the sidelines, wondering how those who were right all along still never get a chance to say their piece into the microphone.
Even some of the most powerful artistic statements in pop music about the war still tiptoed around the subject--Green Day's American Idiot and its elegy to the war's futility, "Wake Me Up When September Ends," didn't take on the issue of the war or our leadership directly but hinted at it in the lyrics or in the somber accompanying video depicting a young man leaving his girlfriend to go to war.
PROTECT FREE SPEECH IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
As technology advances, we should also advance civil liberties, not restrict them. Verizon Wireless tried to do that recently when they considered messages from NARAL, a pro-choice organization on abortion, to be improper. Verizon was trying old-fashioned censorship about an issue someone at Verizon didn't like. Fortunately, pressure forced Verizon to rethink its position. This editorial is from the New York Times and linked at www.truthout.org:
If Verizon had attempted it on normal phone lines, it would have been violating common carrier laws that bar interference with voice transmissions. Unfortunately, those laws do not apply to text messaging.
Given this chilling experience, the Federal Communications Commission should quickly issue regulations that also bar interference with text messaging. Unfortunately, the F.C.C. is in the thrall of the carriers, and the Bush administration has an unblemished record of siding with corporations over the rights and safety of American citizens. That means Congress will have to take the lead, as it must on other issues affecting the mushrooming world of digital communications.
Verizon admitted its mistake and pledged not to repeat it, but that's not enough. As admirable as Verizon's retreat was, the company reserved the right to change the rules at any time. Verizon still says "some well-intentioned employee" got too zealous. If its top executives were not engaged on this issue, they should have been.
Our democracy is built on basic freedoms not being left to individuals, or individual companies. And there is special cause for worry in our business. American newspapers can resist government intimidation because the Constitution is on our side, but also because we control the presses. That is the real meaning behind "freedom of the press," and authoritarian societies know it. In the 1980s in the Soviet Union, you had to have a license from the Communist Party to own a Xerox machine; the Soviets understood that it was a printing press.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
PSST, THE WAR IS WRONG
There are some disturbing similarities between the war in Iraq and Vietnam, but there are also some stark differences. In the Vietnam era the streets were filled with protesters. This war has drawn some protests, but nothing on the scale of the Vietnam war. Maybe it's because there's a "volunteer" army now instead of the draft that existed back in the 1960's. Another difference is the lack of protest in music. Lots of anti-war music was recorded during the Vietnam era. Even now, after four years of this atrocity there is still little protest in music. On the country charts Tim McGraw has an anti-war song and Merle Haggard recorded an anti-Iraq war song. Film makers are beginning to address Iraq. And now Bruce Springsteen has a new album that takes on this issue. This article by Brian Morton is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Fast forward to today, and if you listen to the radio, it's hard to tell that America is in year four of a gigantic losing quagmire our leaders sank us into on the basis of lies. Turn on the television, and you'll only see a debate between those who were in favor of war and are in favor of staying, and those who were in favor of war and now are thinking we might want to be withdrawing. All those who were never in favor of the war in the first place are still sitting on the sidelines, wondering how those who were right all along still never get a chance to say their piece into the microphone.
Even some of the most powerful artistic statements in pop music about the war still tiptoed around the subject--Green Day's American Idiot and its elegy to the war's futility, "Wake Me Up When September Ends," didn't take on the issue of the war or our leadership directly but hinted at it in the lyrics or in the somber accompanying video depicting a young man leaving his girlfriend to go to war.
PROTECT FREE SPEECH IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
As technology advances, we should also advance civil liberties, not restrict them. Verizon Wireless tried to do that recently when they considered messages from NARAL, a pro-choice organization on abortion, to be improper. Verizon was trying old-fashioned censorship about an issue someone at Verizon didn't like. Fortunately, pressure forced Verizon to rethink its position. This editorial is from the New York Times and linked at www.truthout.org:
If Verizon had attempted it on normal phone lines, it would have been violating common carrier laws that bar interference with voice transmissions. Unfortunately, those laws do not apply to text messaging.
Given this chilling experience, the Federal Communications Commission should quickly issue regulations that also bar interference with text messaging. Unfortunately, the F.C.C. is in the thrall of the carriers, and the Bush administration has an unblemished record of siding with corporations over the rights and safety of American citizens. That means Congress will have to take the lead, as it must on other issues affecting the mushrooming world of digital communications.
Verizon admitted its mistake and pledged not to repeat it, but that's not enough. As admirable as Verizon's retreat was, the company reserved the right to change the rules at any time. Verizon still says "some well-intentioned employee" got too zealous. If its top executives were not engaged on this issue, they should have been.
Our democracy is built on basic freedoms not being left to individuals, or individual companies. And there is special cause for worry in our business. American newspapers can resist government intimidation because the Constitution is on our side, but also because we control the presses. That is the real meaning behind "freedom of the press," and authoritarian societies know it. In the 1980s in the Soviet Union, you had to have a license from the Communist Party to own a Xerox machine; the Soviets understood that it was a printing press.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
October 10, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
GOP SHOULD PUT A SOCK IN IT
Even right-wingers wouldn't be so loathsome as to attack a sick twelve year old kid, would they? It seems they are. They wouldn't be so despicable as to attack military veterans of the war in Iraq? Yes, they would. They wouldn't resort to the same old tired and ridiculous cliches to describe a national health system, would they? Of course they would. We can't have any program that benefits the majority of us because that would be "socialism," according to this nest of vipers. This commentary by Joe Conason is at www.observer.com:
Once among the most frightening and effective epithets in American political culture, “socialized medicine” seems to have lost its juju. These days, that phrase sounds awfully dated, like a song on a gramophone or a mother-in-law joke or a John Birch Society rant against fluoridated water.
Yet despite their antique quality, the old buzzwords still appear regularly in columns, press releases and speeches. Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican presidential pack run around squawking about socialism whenever anyone proposes to reform the broken health care system.
Syndicated columnist Robert Novak warns that the federally financed, state-run Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is essentially a socialist conspiracy. So does President Bush, who has threatened to veto a modest increase in that program’s funding because he doesn’t want to “federalize health care.”
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
GOP SHOULD PUT A SOCK IN IT
Even right-wingers wouldn't be so loathsome as to attack a sick twelve year old kid, would they? It seems they are. They wouldn't be so despicable as to attack military veterans of the war in Iraq? Yes, they would. They wouldn't resort to the same old tired and ridiculous cliches to describe a national health system, would they? Of course they would. We can't have any program that benefits the majority of us because that would be "socialism," according to this nest of vipers. This commentary by Joe Conason is at www.observer.com:
Once among the most frightening and effective epithets in American political culture, “socialized medicine” seems to have lost its juju. These days, that phrase sounds awfully dated, like a song on a gramophone or a mother-in-law joke or a John Birch Society rant against fluoridated water.
Yet despite their antique quality, the old buzzwords still appear regularly in columns, press releases and speeches. Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican presidential pack run around squawking about socialism whenever anyone proposes to reform the broken health care system.
Syndicated columnist Robert Novak warns that the federally financed, state-run Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is essentially a socialist conspiracy. So does President Bush, who has threatened to veto a modest increase in that program’s funding because he doesn’t want to “federalize health care.”
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
October 09, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
PHONY NUMBERS FOR NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
George W. Bush is perhaps the most ignorant man ever to occupy the Oval Office, so it's weirdly ironic when Bush talks about education. Bush and his neocons thought the way to solve problems in the educational system was to mandate higher test scores. What has happened is that kids become test takers, not learners, and that the people whose livelihoods depend on those test scores find ways to enhance the numbers. This column by Bob Herbert is at www.commondreams.org:
It’s time to rein in the test zealots who have gotten such a stranglehold on the public schools in the U.S.
Politicians and others have promoted high-stakes testing as a panacea that would bring accountability to teaching and substantially boost the classroom performance of students.
“Measuring,” said President Bush, in a discussion of his No Child Left Behind law, “is the gateway to success.”
Not only has high-stakes testing largely failed to magically swing open the gates to successful learning, it is questionable in many cases whether the tests themselves are anything more than a shell game.
Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, told me in a recent interview that it’s important to ask “whether you can trust improvements in test scores when you are holding people accountable for the tests.”
The short answer, he said, is no.
If teachers, administrators, politicians and others have a stake in raising the test scores of students - as opposed to improving student learning, which is not the same thing - there are all kinds of incentives to raise those scores by any means necessary.
HOME OWNERSHIP DECLINING
It's going to be difficult for any future administration to achieve as many disasters as the Bush administration. This administration should go into The Guinness Book of World Records for doing everything wrong. Home ownership under Bush is going to decline from the time he took office. That old "free market" demon of deregulation or no regulation is haunting the economy like a Halloween spirit. This editorial from The New York Times is linked at www.truthout.org:
For the first time since the Carter administration, homeownership in the United States is set to decline over a president's tenure. When President Bush took office in 2001, homeownership stood at 67.6 percent. It rose as the mortgage bubble inflated but is projected to fall to 67 percent by early 2009, which would come to 700,000 fewer homeowners than when Mr. Bush started. The decline, calculated by Moody's Economy.com, is inexorable unless the government launches a heroic effort to help hundreds of thousands of defaulting borrowers stay in their homes.
These days, modest relief efforts are in short supply, let alone heroic ones. Some officials seem to think that assistance would violate the tenet of personal responsibility that borrowers should not take out loans they cannot afford. That is simplistic.
The foreclosure crisis is rooted in reckless - and shamefully underregulated - mortgage lending. Many homeowners - mainly subprime borrowers with low incomes and poor credit - are now stuck in adjustable-rate loans that have become unaffordable as monthly payments have spiked upward. Their predicament is not entirely of their own making, and even if it were they would need to be bailed out because mass foreclosures would wreak unacceptable damage on the economic and social life of the nation.
The relief efforts so far have been too little, too late. In August, the White House established a program to allow an additional 80,000 borrowers to refinance their loans through the Federal Housing Administration - on top of 160,000 who were already eligible. That's not enough. Foreclosure filings soared to nearly 244,000 in August alone.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
PHONY NUMBERS FOR NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
George W. Bush is perhaps the most ignorant man ever to occupy the Oval Office, so it's weirdly ironic when Bush talks about education. Bush and his neocons thought the way to solve problems in the educational system was to mandate higher test scores. What has happened is that kids become test takers, not learners, and that the people whose livelihoods depend on those test scores find ways to enhance the numbers. This column by Bob Herbert is at www.commondreams.org:
It’s time to rein in the test zealots who have gotten such a stranglehold on the public schools in the U.S.
Politicians and others have promoted high-stakes testing as a panacea that would bring accountability to teaching and substantially boost the classroom performance of students.
“Measuring,” said President Bush, in a discussion of his No Child Left Behind law, “is the gateway to success.”
Not only has high-stakes testing largely failed to magically swing open the gates to successful learning, it is questionable in many cases whether the tests themselves are anything more than a shell game.
Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, told me in a recent interview that it’s important to ask “whether you can trust improvements in test scores when you are holding people accountable for the tests.”
The short answer, he said, is no.
If teachers, administrators, politicians and others have a stake in raising the test scores of students - as opposed to improving student learning, which is not the same thing - there are all kinds of incentives to raise those scores by any means necessary.
HOME OWNERSHIP DECLINING
It's going to be difficult for any future administration to achieve as many disasters as the Bush administration. This administration should go into The Guinness Book of World Records for doing everything wrong. Home ownership under Bush is going to decline from the time he took office. That old "free market" demon of deregulation or no regulation is haunting the economy like a Halloween spirit. This editorial from The New York Times is linked at www.truthout.org:
For the first time since the Carter administration, homeownership in the United States is set to decline over a president's tenure. When President Bush took office in 2001, homeownership stood at 67.6 percent. It rose as the mortgage bubble inflated but is projected to fall to 67 percent by early 2009, which would come to 700,000 fewer homeowners than when Mr. Bush started. The decline, calculated by Moody's Economy.com, is inexorable unless the government launches a heroic effort to help hundreds of thousands of defaulting borrowers stay in their homes.
These days, modest relief efforts are in short supply, let alone heroic ones. Some officials seem to think that assistance would violate the tenet of personal responsibility that borrowers should not take out loans they cannot afford. That is simplistic.
The foreclosure crisis is rooted in reckless - and shamefully underregulated - mortgage lending. Many homeowners - mainly subprime borrowers with low incomes and poor credit - are now stuck in adjustable-rate loans that have become unaffordable as monthly payments have spiked upward. Their predicament is not entirely of their own making, and even if it were they would need to be bailed out because mass foreclosures would wreak unacceptable damage on the economic and social life of the nation.
The relief efforts so far have been too little, too late. In August, the White House established a program to allow an additional 80,000 borrowers to refinance their loans through the Federal Housing Administration - on top of 160,000 who were already eligible. That's not enough. Foreclosure filings soared to nearly 244,000 in August alone.
Monday, October 08, 2007
October 08, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WORKERS HAMMERED SINCE 1980
The Gipper stepped into the White House in 1981 and things have been bad for working class Americans ever since. I remember reading about some rich Texas oilmen who were celebrating Reagan's victory. They had a big cake with the shape of the Capitol dome. On the dome was the word "Ours." Since 1980 we had twelve years of Reagan-Bush, eight years of Clinton, and now six plus years of the current Bush. Even Bill Clinton was more a moderate Republican than a traditional Democrat. In this article Seth Sandronsky takes a look at Dean Baker's book The United States Since 1980. The article is at www.counterpunch.org:
What makes the U.S. so unlike other rich nations? There is no single answer. At the top of a list is the power of the business class to shape policy-making and the lives of the nation's populace. In The United States Since 1980, economist Dean Baker focuses on the policies that have set the country on a business-friendly path. There have been far-reaching effects.
"For most of the population of the United States, the quarter century from 1980 to 2005 was an era in which they became far less secure economically, and the decrease in security affected their lives and political attitudes," he writes. "It is important to note that this decrease was the result of conscious policy, not the accidental workings of the market."
Baker steers clear of ambiguous terms. This is a great help to the layperson searching for clear-headed policy analysis of this critical 25-year period. Ruling interests' efforts to roll back the popular gains of the vast mass of workers has marked this time.
"The change in the ground rules affecting the market distribution of income has had a much greater impact on the country than the change in tax and transfer policy," Baker writes. Accordingly, a changed rule of critical impact driving the wage gap between Americans on the bottom and in the middle and those at the top has been in employee-employer relations. What does (not) happen at the point of production, the workplace, matters.
WAR SUPPORTERS SHOULD PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEIR MOUTH IS
If the war in Iraq, or the war on "terror," is the titanic clash of good against evil, the effort to save western civilization we've been told, then supporters of the war should be happy to pay higher taxes to support it. So maybe Democrats in Congress should push the idea of a "war surtax" to make Republicans and their supporters put up or shut up. This article by E. J. Dionne is at www.truthdig.com:
Would conservatives and Republicans support the war in Iraq if they had to pay for it?
This is the immensely useful question that Rep. David Obey, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, put on the table this week by calling for a temporary war tax to cover President Bush’s request for $145 billion in supplemental spending for Iraq.
The proposal is a magnificent way to test the seriousness of those who claim that the Iraq war is an essential part of the “global war on terror.” If the war’s backers believe in it so much, it should be easy for them to ask taxpayers to put up the money for such an important endeavor.
Obey makes the case pointedly. “Some people are being asked to pay with their lives or their faces or their hands or their arms or their legs,” he said in an interview this week. “If you’re going to ask for that, it doesn’t seem too much to ask an average taxpayer to pay thirty bucks for the cost of the war so we don’t have to shove it off on our kids.”
Or as Obey said in a statement, “I’m tired of seeing that only military families are asked to sacrifice in this war.”
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WORKERS HAMMERED SINCE 1980
The Gipper stepped into the White House in 1981 and things have been bad for working class Americans ever since. I remember reading about some rich Texas oilmen who were celebrating Reagan's victory. They had a big cake with the shape of the Capitol dome. On the dome was the word "Ours." Since 1980 we had twelve years of Reagan-Bush, eight years of Clinton, and now six plus years of the current Bush. Even Bill Clinton was more a moderate Republican than a traditional Democrat. In this article Seth Sandronsky takes a look at Dean Baker's book The United States Since 1980. The article is at www.counterpunch.org:
What makes the U.S. so unlike other rich nations? There is no single answer. At the top of a list is the power of the business class to shape policy-making and the lives of the nation's populace. In The United States Since 1980, economist Dean Baker focuses on the policies that have set the country on a business-friendly path. There have been far-reaching effects.
"For most of the population of the United States, the quarter century from 1980 to 2005 was an era in which they became far less secure economically, and the decrease in security affected their lives and political attitudes," he writes. "It is important to note that this decrease was the result of conscious policy, not the accidental workings of the market."
Baker steers clear of ambiguous terms. This is a great help to the layperson searching for clear-headed policy analysis of this critical 25-year period. Ruling interests' efforts to roll back the popular gains of the vast mass of workers has marked this time.
"The change in the ground rules affecting the market distribution of income has had a much greater impact on the country than the change in tax and transfer policy," Baker writes. Accordingly, a changed rule of critical impact driving the wage gap between Americans on the bottom and in the middle and those at the top has been in employee-employer relations. What does (not) happen at the point of production, the workplace, matters.
WAR SUPPORTERS SHOULD PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEIR MOUTH IS
If the war in Iraq, or the war on "terror," is the titanic clash of good against evil, the effort to save western civilization we've been told, then supporters of the war should be happy to pay higher taxes to support it. So maybe Democrats in Congress should push the idea of a "war surtax" to make Republicans and their supporters put up or shut up. This article by E. J. Dionne is at www.truthdig.com:
Would conservatives and Republicans support the war in Iraq if they had to pay for it?
This is the immensely useful question that Rep. David Obey, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, put on the table this week by calling for a temporary war tax to cover President Bush’s request for $145 billion in supplemental spending for Iraq.
The proposal is a magnificent way to test the seriousness of those who claim that the Iraq war is an essential part of the “global war on terror.” If the war’s backers believe in it so much, it should be easy for them to ask taxpayers to put up the money for such an important endeavor.
Obey makes the case pointedly. “Some people are being asked to pay with their lives or their faces or their hands or their arms or their legs,” he said in an interview this week. “If you’re going to ask for that, it doesn’t seem too much to ask an average taxpayer to pay thirty bucks for the cost of the war so we don’t have to shove it off on our kids.”
Or as Obey said in a statement, “I’m tired of seeing that only military families are asked to sacrifice in this war.”
Sunday, October 07, 2007
October 07, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
PARADE OF THE PITIFUL
Newt Gingrich withdrew from the presidential race, but perennial loser and one issue candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. So go things in Republican land. So we have flip-floppers like Mitt Romney and John McCain and cross-dressers like Rudy Giuliani heading the field for the GOP. If the American people are dumb enough to let any of these guys into the Oval Office, we can pretty much count on endless war in Iraq, no real movement to address global climate change, and continued transfer of wealth to the rich. This column by Gail Collins is at www.nytimes.com:
Before his unhappy collision with McCain-Feingold, Newt Gingrich had apparently surveyed the field and decided there was room for one more recovering womanizer among the front-runners. Keyes must have checked out the second tier and detected the need for more unelectable right-wing candidates who are obsessed with abortion.
The front-runners, as is now well known, all ditched the Morgan State debate, even though it was the only one focusing on African-American issues, so they could spend the time raising money before the quarterly reporting deadline. The ones who came were either driven by their concern for the feelings of the black community or because they had no money to raise and getting to be on television is the whole point of their candidacy. I debate therefore I am.
“Well, the main reason I’m here is because I was invited,” said Representative Ron Paul.
BUSH'S LIES ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY
I'm a few years shy of retirement age, but I would definitely like to retire and I would like to know that Social Security will be there when I need it. I'm a part of the Baby Boom generation, the generation that is supposedly going to place such a massive burden on "entitlement" programs like Social Security. George W. Bush and his neocon buddies would dearly love to take away Social Security. They would "privatize" it, which would mean that you and I would have to invest in stocks or other things to build our retirement fund. They market this like it's a wonderful thing, that we would have much more "return" on our "investment" than we get with Social Security. Similar experiments in places like Chile didn't turn out so well. On the flip side, Bush and company warn about dire "shortfalls" in Social Security. Under examination, those claims are big lies. This analysis by Dean Baker is at www.truthout.org:
The latest Bush story is the cry that Social Security is going bankrupt and will impose an unbearable burden on our children and grandchildren. Of course, this is not the first time President Bush has gone after Social Security. Immediately after the 2004 election, he tried to use his new political capital to privatize Social Security. As a result of a massive nationwide organizing campaign, the privatization drive soon hit a dead end.
But Bush is not through with Social Security. In an apparent effort to lay the groundwork for a future president to privatize and/or cut the program, the Treasury Department is circulating a new set of Bush stories designed to convince the public the Social Security program must be changed.
The main thrust of these Bush stories is the old massive burden line. The first point highlighted in Bush Social Security Story I is that the program faces a $13.6 trillion shortfall. That should make everyone really scared.
This number looks considerably less scary if we examine it more closely. The bulk of this projected shortfall is attributable to deficits projected for the 22nd century and beyond. The problem is, life expectancies are projected to continue to rise through time. If we never change the retirement age, then we end up supporting ever-longer retirements.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
PARADE OF THE PITIFUL
Newt Gingrich withdrew from the presidential race, but perennial loser and one issue candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. So go things in Republican land. So we have flip-floppers like Mitt Romney and John McCain and cross-dressers like Rudy Giuliani heading the field for the GOP. If the American people are dumb enough to let any of these guys into the Oval Office, we can pretty much count on endless war in Iraq, no real movement to address global climate change, and continued transfer of wealth to the rich. This column by Gail Collins is at www.nytimes.com:
Before his unhappy collision with McCain-Feingold, Newt Gingrich had apparently surveyed the field and decided there was room for one more recovering womanizer among the front-runners. Keyes must have checked out the second tier and detected the need for more unelectable right-wing candidates who are obsessed with abortion.
The front-runners, as is now well known, all ditched the Morgan State debate, even though it was the only one focusing on African-American issues, so they could spend the time raising money before the quarterly reporting deadline. The ones who came were either driven by their concern for the feelings of the black community or because they had no money to raise and getting to be on television is the whole point of their candidacy. I debate therefore I am.
“Well, the main reason I’m here is because I was invited,” said Representative Ron Paul.
BUSH'S LIES ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY
I'm a few years shy of retirement age, but I would definitely like to retire and I would like to know that Social Security will be there when I need it. I'm a part of the Baby Boom generation, the generation that is supposedly going to place such a massive burden on "entitlement" programs like Social Security. George W. Bush and his neocon buddies would dearly love to take away Social Security. They would "privatize" it, which would mean that you and I would have to invest in stocks or other things to build our retirement fund. They market this like it's a wonderful thing, that we would have much more "return" on our "investment" than we get with Social Security. Similar experiments in places like Chile didn't turn out so well. On the flip side, Bush and company warn about dire "shortfalls" in Social Security. Under examination, those claims are big lies. This analysis by Dean Baker is at www.truthout.org:
The latest Bush story is the cry that Social Security is going bankrupt and will impose an unbearable burden on our children and grandchildren. Of course, this is not the first time President Bush has gone after Social Security. Immediately after the 2004 election, he tried to use his new political capital to privatize Social Security. As a result of a massive nationwide organizing campaign, the privatization drive soon hit a dead end.
But Bush is not through with Social Security. In an apparent effort to lay the groundwork for a future president to privatize and/or cut the program, the Treasury Department is circulating a new set of Bush stories designed to convince the public the Social Security program must be changed.
The main thrust of these Bush stories is the old massive burden line. The first point highlighted in Bush Social Security Story I is that the program faces a $13.6 trillion shortfall. That should make everyone really scared.
This number looks considerably less scary if we examine it more closely. The bulk of this projected shortfall is attributable to deficits projected for the 22nd century and beyond. The problem is, life expectancies are projected to continue to rise through time. If we never change the retirement age, then we end up supporting ever-longer retirements.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
October 06, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WHAT DOES IT TAKE?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said "impeachment is off the table." I keep wondering why there isn't an immediate series of impeachment hearings for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. This administration makes the Nixon administration look law abiding by comparison. We learn once again that Bush lied, this time about torture. While publicly claiming that torture wasn't being used against U. S. detainees, the administration was still using torture and once again showing contempt for Congress, the American people, and the world community. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:
Now, President Bush has slapped the Democrats in the face again by misleading them on his continuing policy of allowing harsh interrogations (that many would call torture) of terror suspects. Bush apparently is confident that the Democrats will swallow whatever humiliation he serves up.
The New York Times revealed on Oct. 4 that the Bush administration only pretended to repudiate earlier legal opinions that Bush had the right to abuse and torture detainees. Secret memos from 2005, which reaffirmed that right, were kept from Congress.
“When the Justice Department publicly declared torture ‘abhorrent’ in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations,” the Times reported.
“But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
BUSH WANTED WAR NO MATTER WHAT
Former CIA Director George Tenet gave George W. Bush a report saying that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, which Bush dismissed as "worthless." Bush had already determined he was going to attack Iraq, kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people, stretch the U. S. military, and bleed our treasury even though Iraq did not present a threat. This commentary comes from Skeeter Sanders at www.skeeterbitesreport.com:
As millions of people around the world staged massive anti-war rallies in the streets in February 2003, President Bush vowed to push ahead with plans to invade Iraq and "get rid of" dictator Saddam Hussein "by the end of March" -- no matter what the rest of the world thought, according to secret transcripts obtained and published by a Spanish newspaper.
The president made his decision five months after he rejected as "worthless" a top-secret intelligence report -- presented to him personally by then-CIA Director George Tenet -- that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, instead relying on contrary information from a source who was later found to be unreliable, according to a new book scheduled to be published next week.
El Pais, the largest-circulation newspaper in Spain, published on September 26 what it said were previously secret transcripts of a conversation between Bush and then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain about the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, while Anzar was on an official visit to the U.S. in February 2003.
The conversation took place on February 22 as Bush hosted Anzar at his Crawford, Texas ranch. The Madrid daily did not say how it obtained the previously-confidential transcripts, but did report that they were prepared by Javier Ruperez, the Spanish ambassador to the U.S.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WHAT DOES IT TAKE?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said "impeachment is off the table." I keep wondering why there isn't an immediate series of impeachment hearings for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. This administration makes the Nixon administration look law abiding by comparison. We learn once again that Bush lied, this time about torture. While publicly claiming that torture wasn't being used against U. S. detainees, the administration was still using torture and once again showing contempt for Congress, the American people, and the world community. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:
Now, President Bush has slapped the Democrats in the face again by misleading them on his continuing policy of allowing harsh interrogations (that many would call torture) of terror suspects. Bush apparently is confident that the Democrats will swallow whatever humiliation he serves up.
The New York Times revealed on Oct. 4 that the Bush administration only pretended to repudiate earlier legal opinions that Bush had the right to abuse and torture detainees. Secret memos from 2005, which reaffirmed that right, were kept from Congress.
“When the Justice Department publicly declared torture ‘abhorrent’ in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations,” the Times reported.
“But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
BUSH WANTED WAR NO MATTER WHAT
Former CIA Director George Tenet gave George W. Bush a report saying that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, which Bush dismissed as "worthless." Bush had already determined he was going to attack Iraq, kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people, stretch the U. S. military, and bleed our treasury even though Iraq did not present a threat. This commentary comes from Skeeter Sanders at www.skeeterbitesreport.com:
As millions of people around the world staged massive anti-war rallies in the streets in February 2003, President Bush vowed to push ahead with plans to invade Iraq and "get rid of" dictator Saddam Hussein "by the end of March" -- no matter what the rest of the world thought, according to secret transcripts obtained and published by a Spanish newspaper.
The president made his decision five months after he rejected as "worthless" a top-secret intelligence report -- presented to him personally by then-CIA Director George Tenet -- that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, instead relying on contrary information from a source who was later found to be unreliable, according to a new book scheduled to be published next week.
El Pais, the largest-circulation newspaper in Spain, published on September 26 what it said were previously secret transcripts of a conversation between Bush and then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain about the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, while Anzar was on an official visit to the U.S. in February 2003.
The conversation took place on February 22 as Bush hosted Anzar at his Crawford, Texas ranch. The Madrid daily did not say how it obtained the previously-confidential transcripts, but did report that they were prepared by Javier Ruperez, the Spanish ambassador to the U.S.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
October 04, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH
Right-wingers frequently foam at the mouth about "socialism" if it involves any kind of program for the working class and disadvantaged. But the system is wonderful if it rewards the very wealthy, who never seem to have enough. George W. Bush's war in Iraq is costing the treasury billions. A few days of war expenditures would pay for children's health care, but Bush vetoed the bill and had the incredible gall to criticize spending by Democrats. This article by Dennis Rahkonen is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
President Bush, a pro-plutocracy ideologue who always opposes anything that doesn't have a profits-before-humanity priority, has vetoed Congressional legislation that would expand so-called SCHIP insurance to a broader segment of US children presently lacking adequate medical care.
He claims the overwhelmingly supported, popular proposal is a harbinger of socialism.
He'd rather see very sick American kids' conditions get alarmingly worse, while helpless parents leave crude signs with coffee cans for donations at supermarket check-outs, hoping against hope that they can avoid not just the loss of dear loved ones, but family financial ruin as well.
Meanwhile, billions are squandered on a totally unnecessary, empire-building war.
THE CORROSIVE IDEAS OF MILTON FRIEDMAN
Milton Friedman was an economist and a member of the "Chicago school" of economists who believe unfettered free markets are just wondrous to behold. Never mind that most wealth tends to accumulate in just a few hands and everyone else is left to live like a peasant. Friedman's ideas, like those of Ayn Rand, have been a corrosive influence on American society. They have created inequality and abject misery for millions of people. This article by Stephen Lendman is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Rarely had so much praise been given anyone so undeserving in light of the human wreckage his legacy left strewn everywhere. He believed government's sole function is "to protect our freedom both from (outside) enemies....and from our fellow-citizens." It's to "preserve law and order (as well as) enforce private contracts, (safeguard private property and) foster competitive markets." Everything else in public hands is socialism that for free-wheeling market fundamentalists like Friedman is blasphemy. He said markets work best unfettered of rules, regulations, onerous taxes, trade barriers, "entrenched interests" and human interference, and the best government is practically none at all as anything it can do private business does better. Democracy and a government of, by and for the people? Forget it.
He preached public wealth should be in private hands, accumulation of profits unrestrained, corporate taxes abolished, and social services curtailed or ended. He believed "economic freedom is an end to itself....and an indispensable means toward (achieving) political freedom." He thought state laws requiring certain occupations be licensed (like doctors) a restriction of freedom. He opposed foreign aid, subsidies, import quotas and tariffs as well as drug laws he called a subsidy to organized crime (which it is as well as to CIA and money laundering international banks earning billions from it) and added "we have no right to use force....to prevent (someone) from committing suicide....drinking alcohol or taking drugs," while saying nothing about major banks and CIA partnering for profit with drug lords.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH
Right-wingers frequently foam at the mouth about "socialism" if it involves any kind of program for the working class and disadvantaged. But the system is wonderful if it rewards the very wealthy, who never seem to have enough. George W. Bush's war in Iraq is costing the treasury billions. A few days of war expenditures would pay for children's health care, but Bush vetoed the bill and had the incredible gall to criticize spending by Democrats. This article by Dennis Rahkonen is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
President Bush, a pro-plutocracy ideologue who always opposes anything that doesn't have a profits-before-humanity priority, has vetoed Congressional legislation that would expand so-called SCHIP insurance to a broader segment of US children presently lacking adequate medical care.
He claims the overwhelmingly supported, popular proposal is a harbinger of socialism.
He'd rather see very sick American kids' conditions get alarmingly worse, while helpless parents leave crude signs with coffee cans for donations at supermarket check-outs, hoping against hope that they can avoid not just the loss of dear loved ones, but family financial ruin as well.
Meanwhile, billions are squandered on a totally unnecessary, empire-building war.
THE CORROSIVE IDEAS OF MILTON FRIEDMAN
Milton Friedman was an economist and a member of the "Chicago school" of economists who believe unfettered free markets are just wondrous to behold. Never mind that most wealth tends to accumulate in just a few hands and everyone else is left to live like a peasant. Friedman's ideas, like those of Ayn Rand, have been a corrosive influence on American society. They have created inequality and abject misery for millions of people. This article by Stephen Lendman is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Rarely had so much praise been given anyone so undeserving in light of the human wreckage his legacy left strewn everywhere. He believed government's sole function is "to protect our freedom both from (outside) enemies....and from our fellow-citizens." It's to "preserve law and order (as well as) enforce private contracts, (safeguard private property and) foster competitive markets." Everything else in public hands is socialism that for free-wheeling market fundamentalists like Friedman is blasphemy. He said markets work best unfettered of rules, regulations, onerous taxes, trade barriers, "entrenched interests" and human interference, and the best government is practically none at all as anything it can do private business does better. Democracy and a government of, by and for the people? Forget it.
He preached public wealth should be in private hands, accumulation of profits unrestrained, corporate taxes abolished, and social services curtailed or ended. He believed "economic freedom is an end to itself....and an indispensable means toward (achieving) political freedom." He thought state laws requiring certain occupations be licensed (like doctors) a restriction of freedom. He opposed foreign aid, subsidies, import quotas and tariffs as well as drug laws he called a subsidy to organized crime (which it is as well as to CIA and money laundering international banks earning billions from it) and added "we have no right to use force....to prevent (someone) from committing suicide....drinking alcohol or taking drugs," while saying nothing about major banks and CIA partnering for profit with drug lords.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
October 03, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
KICK LIMBAUGH OFF ARMED FORCES RADIO
As if being in a nightmare like Iraq isn't enough, American troops there have to listen to Rush Limbaugh if they're listening to talk radio. Liberal voices tend to get censored. Limbaugh, who has smeared people for years, may have finally gone too far, though, when he called Iraq war veterans opposed to the war "phony soldiers." Limbaugh, who has never been in the military himself, doesn't mind taking potshots at actual combat veterans. Kicking him off Armed Forces Radio is the right and proper thing to do. This commentary by digby is at digbysblog.blogspot.com:
Newtie's now irrelevant. Delay is gone. Only Rush remains and he is probably the biggest prize. On a purely practical, hardball political basis, the Democrats should have been working to take him out for years. Now is their chance to turn the Republicans' patented hissy kabuki back on them and hoist an avowed political enemy with his own poisonous petard at the same time. There are many others who will happily take his place, no doubt about it. But his voice is uniquely associated with the radical wingnuts, and it is an important symbolic message to the country if they can finally make an example of him.
But it is more than just a political knife fight. It's principle. After all, the man was fired from ESPN for his racist statements. He talks about any women who don't worship him like they are either whores or doormats. He has been spewing dangerous eliminationist bile about liberals in general for years and he tells our troops in Iraq every single day on Armed Forces Radio, paid for by you and me, that the Democrats are unpatriotic traitors, which really is reprehensible.
WHEN THINKING IS BAD
Reactionaries in various forms have existed throughout history. They're the people who work to stifle any free thought or dissent from the existing order. You aren't supposed to question the shaman, the priest, the god, the king, the businessman, the CEO, the president, or whatever authority figure is being scrutinized. Rush Limbaugh, the pathological gasbag spokesman of the reactionary right, even tells his listeners that he will do their thinking for them. This article by Phil Rockstroh is at www.consortiumnews.com:
All coming to pass, as George W. Bush -- the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification -- is rocked to sleep by his handlers cooing preposterous tales of how history will place him in the pantheon of those men whose greatness was unrecognized by the shallow and petty minds of their own era.
When, in fact, Bush, whose ruinous wars of aggression, deficit-ballooning tax breaks for the wealthy, and policies of crony capitalism (that enabled the economy-decimating, easy credit banking scams of the present) displays the character traits of a man ridden with severe psychological trauma; his attempts to tamp down immense inner turmoil, by means of his grandiose bearing, his absolute certitude regarding his own infallibility, and his bullying behavior, have resulted in an exteriorizing of his pathologies on a global scale, and this is playing out ugly, for all concerned.
Why do the people of the nation (for the most part) slouch, slack-jawed and passive, before this assault upon their collective integrity and personal dignity?
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
KICK LIMBAUGH OFF ARMED FORCES RADIO
As if being in a nightmare like Iraq isn't enough, American troops there have to listen to Rush Limbaugh if they're listening to talk radio. Liberal voices tend to get censored. Limbaugh, who has smeared people for years, may have finally gone too far, though, when he called Iraq war veterans opposed to the war "phony soldiers." Limbaugh, who has never been in the military himself, doesn't mind taking potshots at actual combat veterans. Kicking him off Armed Forces Radio is the right and proper thing to do. This commentary by digby is at digbysblog.blogspot.com:
Newtie's now irrelevant. Delay is gone. Only Rush remains and he is probably the biggest prize. On a purely practical, hardball political basis, the Democrats should have been working to take him out for years. Now is their chance to turn the Republicans' patented hissy kabuki back on them and hoist an avowed political enemy with his own poisonous petard at the same time. There are many others who will happily take his place, no doubt about it. But his voice is uniquely associated with the radical wingnuts, and it is an important symbolic message to the country if they can finally make an example of him.
But it is more than just a political knife fight. It's principle. After all, the man was fired from ESPN for his racist statements. He talks about any women who don't worship him like they are either whores or doormats. He has been spewing dangerous eliminationist bile about liberals in general for years and he tells our troops in Iraq every single day on Armed Forces Radio, paid for by you and me, that the Democrats are unpatriotic traitors, which really is reprehensible.
WHEN THINKING IS BAD
Reactionaries in various forms have existed throughout history. They're the people who work to stifle any free thought or dissent from the existing order. You aren't supposed to question the shaman, the priest, the god, the king, the businessman, the CEO, the president, or whatever authority figure is being scrutinized. Rush Limbaugh, the pathological gasbag spokesman of the reactionary right, even tells his listeners that he will do their thinking for them. This article by Phil Rockstroh is at www.consortiumnews.com:
All coming to pass, as George W. Bush -- the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification -- is rocked to sleep by his handlers cooing preposterous tales of how history will place him in the pantheon of those men whose greatness was unrecognized by the shallow and petty minds of their own era.
When, in fact, Bush, whose ruinous wars of aggression, deficit-ballooning tax breaks for the wealthy, and policies of crony capitalism (that enabled the economy-decimating, easy credit banking scams of the present) displays the character traits of a man ridden with severe psychological trauma; his attempts to tamp down immense inner turmoil, by means of his grandiose bearing, his absolute certitude regarding his own infallibility, and his bullying behavior, have resulted in an exteriorizing of his pathologies on a global scale, and this is playing out ugly, for all concerned.
Why do the people of the nation (for the most part) slouch, slack-jawed and passive, before this assault upon their collective integrity and personal dignity?
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
October 02, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CLARENCE THOMAS--NOT FIT FOR THE COURT
Clarence Thomas, with the publication of his new memoir, just gives more evidence of why he should never have been nominated or confirmed to the Supreme Court. Thomas is using this memoir as a payback to the people he claims treated him unfairly during his confirmation hearings. This guy, who has consistently worked against civil liberties, had the nerve to call the hearings a "high tech lynching." Thomas's time on the Court, to put it kindly, has been undistinguished. In the new book he apparently can't lay off Anita Hill, who was his victim I believe, and continues to be his victim. This article by Anita Hill is at www.nytimes.com:
Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.
But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.
In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee — that I was a “combative left-winger” who was “touchy” and prone to overreacting to “slights.” A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
CLARENCE THOMAS--NOT FIT FOR THE COURT
Clarence Thomas, with the publication of his new memoir, just gives more evidence of why he should never have been nominated or confirmed to the Supreme Court. Thomas is using this memoir as a payback to the people he claims treated him unfairly during his confirmation hearings. This guy, who has consistently worked against civil liberties, had the nerve to call the hearings a "high tech lynching." Thomas's time on the Court, to put it kindly, has been undistinguished. In the new book he apparently can't lay off Anita Hill, who was his victim I believe, and continues to be his victim. This article by Anita Hill is at www.nytimes.com:
Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.
But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.
In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee — that I was a “combative left-winger” who was “touchy” and prone to overreacting to “slights.” A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.
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