December 31, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

SORROW AND ANGER

In right-wing land you're an "America hater" if you don't cheerlead everything about the United States and its history. You aren't supposed to talk about the blemishes on American history--things like slavery, Native American genocide, and wars of conquest. You aren't supposed to talk about the war big capital has waged on labor throughout our history. But, try as they may, right-wingers can't get around the crimes committed by the Bush administration They launched an illegal and immoral war against Iraq, a war that has claimed as many as one million civilians. They have bled the treasury dry to pay for this war, while giving tax breaks to their fat cat friends and benefactors. They have looked at short term profits for corporations while ignoring the possible planet-killing effects of global climate change. They have violated the Constitution time and time again and sunk us into the gutter by kidnapping and torturing people in the name of the "global war on terror." The New York Times takes a look in this editorial at www.nytimes.com:

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

December 27, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

PULLING FOR EDWARDS

Ralph Nader justified running a presidential campaign that he knew would hurt Democrats because he said Democrats and Republicans were just different versions of the same party. I don't think that's true. But some candidates, such as Clinton and Obama, are certainly more in the pockets of big corporations than I would like. John Edwards has a message that resonates with me. As a working class person, I believe John Edwards is speaking to the traditional Democratic Party values. This article is at www.thenation.com:

To a far greater extent than Obama or Clinton, Edwards has struck at the heart of issues that should matter most in the race to replace not just George W. Bush, but the Bush agenda of corporate giveaways, job-crushing free trade deals, war profiteering in Iraq, and subprime mortgage profiteering in Indiana, Idaho, Illinois and, yes, Iowa.
Edwards summed up his increasingly aggressive and powerful anti-corporate themes with a declaration: "What makes America is at stake: jobs, the middle class, health care, preserving the environment in the world for future generations.
"But all those things are at risk. And why are they at risk? Because of corporate power and corporate greed in Washington, D.C. And we have to take them on. You can't make a deal with them. You can't hope that they're going to go away. You have to actually be willing to fight. And I want every caucus-goer to know I've been fighting these people and winning my entire life. And if we do this together, rise up together, we can actually make absolutely certain, starting here in Iowa, that we make this country better than we left it."
IT'S NOT "BUSH HATING"
I see the phrase "Bush haters" in letters to The Fresno Bee all the time. Right-wingers want to trivialize all the justified anger we feel about this administration and the damage it has done to the country by reducing our anger to a personality contest. I wouldn't like George W. Bush under any foreseeable circumstances, but it is the absolute disregard for ethics, morality, and the Constitution that outrages me the most. It is all the innocent blood that has been shed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the destruction of our credibility around the world and the failure to do anything about the threat of global warming. My anger extends far beyond George W. Bush. It's all the people who enable this administration, who even shout approvingly of its despicable policies. This commentary by David Michael Green is at www.regressiveantidote.net:
Regressives like to call people like me Bush-haters, and so it is important to address that claim before proceeding, because the entire intent of hurling that label at the president’s critics is to undermine their credibility. If you simply hate the man, they imply, you’re not rational, and your critiques can be dismissed. But it isn’t that simple - not by a long shot. First, it should be noted that the regressive right is far wider a phenomenon than just one person. It currently includes an entire executive branch administration, almost (and, just a year ago, more than) half of Congress, a majority of the Supreme Court and probably a majority of the lower federal courts, a biased-to-the-point-of-being-a-joke mainstream media, and tons of lobbyists, think tanks and profitable industries.

December 24, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

HUCKABEE THE FLAT TAXER

Mike Huckabee's fundamentalist Christian beliefs are disturbing and his ideas for a "fair tax," another name for a flat tax, are just as disturbing. The progressive income tax, when it's been allowed to work, has served us well. But Republicans just don't believe rich people should pay taxes. In economic terms Americans are far from equal, but for some reason I'm supposed to pay the same tax rate as billionaires. This article by Tim Watkin is at www.commondreams.org:

There are any number of practical reasons why a flat tax is a bad idea in practice. For one, switching to the Fair Tax - that is, an effective 30% tax rate on every purchase, with rebates paid in advance on purchases up to the poverty level - would mean repealing the 16th amendment of the US constitution , which empowers Congress to "collect taxes on incomes", but not consumption. Huckabee’s as likely to get the constitution amended for tax reform as he is to walk on water. (Some commentators, such as Dean Baker in Comment is Free earlier this week an>.html>, point out that in reality the rate could climb as high as 40%.) For another, government services would depend on people continually increasing their spending at a time in history when we need to learn to live sustainably and save more.

Flat taxes also mean an end to tax deductions, which in the US means an end to deductions on household mortgages and the whole array of deductions businesses claim each year. If you’ve every wondered if the current mortgage crisis could get worse, or asked what it could take to tip America over the edge and into, not just a recession, but a full-on stock market crash, there’s your answer.

Without doubt it would increase inequality in a country that is already as dangerously skewed as it was in the Gilded Age of the 1920s. Averaged across the 1920s, the richest 10% of Americans grabbed 43.6% of total income (excluding capital gains), and the richest 1% a whopping 17.3%. In 2005 the comparable figures were 44.3% and 17.4%. The richest Americans already have a much greater slice of the pie than they have had for several generations and are doing very nicely indeed under a graduated tax rate (complete with Bush’s tax cuts). A flat tax would destroy the system that seeks to redistribute some of the country’s finite wealth amongst its people in the form of schools, roads and other public goods. And before the whining begins, this isn’t a cry of class warfare, it’s economic common sense. Even if you reject arguments around fairness and moral obligations to those less fortunate, by and large economies with more equality are more prosperous and the countries more stable.

THE RIGHT WING INEQUALITY DODGE

Right-wingers go into contortions to downplay the issue of inequality in the United States. They'll claim that the very rich are there because they're more deserving. The poor are there, they claim, because they're lazy or into drugs or alcohol or other dysfunctional behaviors. They never acknowledge that the system is designed to create inequality. When conservative policies are pursued inequality invariably worsens even for people who are not particularly dysfunctional. This article by Paul Krugman examines some of the great dodges right-wingers will use to justify their vile economic and social policies. The article is at www.nytimes.com:

First is a narrow technical issue — the misuse of the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which is used to claim that there hasn’t been much rise in spending inequality. First of all, that’s not true even if you believe the survey; plus, there’s good reason to believe that the Survey has been systematically underreporting the growth in higher-income-group consumption. See CBPP on all this.

Second is the use of very long-run comparisons — what I think of as the "but even Louis the XIV didn’t have electricity!" defense. Yes, over the centuries economic progress has reduced some gross disparities — modern Americans are relatively unlikely to simply starve to death (though it can happen), so in that sense the gap between rich and poor has narrowed. But the question isn’t whether society is, in some sense, more equal than it was in 1900. It’s whether it is radically more unequal than it was in 1970. And of course it is.

Third is the downplaying of poverty. Seventy percent of the poor have cars! They must be doing fine! Except that they often can’t afford medical care, sometimes can’t afford enough food, and usually can’t find a way to get their children a decent education.
Finally, there’s the failure to appreciate just how rich today’s rich are. They’re not people who drive cars just like the rest of us, only fancier. In his book Richistan, Robert Frank (the other one) of the Wall Street Journal’s Wealth Report — yes, the Wall Street Journal — reports what he found when he began looking at how the rich live:

December 23, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

EDWARDS FOR THE WORKING CLASS

We members of the working class have been hammered by Republican administrations and by Democrats who have been complicit in voting for Republican policies. We've heard about the advantages of "free trade," but agreements like NAFTA and GATT have exported good jobs from this country and left disaster in their wake. We've seen politicians make tax cut after tax cut for the very rich and for corporations, but basic infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Millions of us don't have health insurance. Millions of Americans live in desperate poverty. FDR was called a "traitor to his class" and John Edwards has been attacked by right-wingers for being rich, but talking about helping the poor, the working class, and the middle class. I support John Edwards for president. This article is by Stephen Crockett from www.democratictalkradio.com:

The wages of Americans have been suppressed. The ability to unionize in order to achieve higher standards of living has been attacked by federal legislation, right wing court rulings and harassment by oppressive federal government regulation by the Bush Administration. Edwards is the most labor-friendly Presidential candidate of the top-tier candidates. With Edwards, we have a candidate who both walks the walk and talks the talk. Edwards is strongly opposed to outsourcing American jobs and is committed to ending unfair international trade deals or tax policies that encourage corporations to move jobs out of the nation.


Poverty in America has largely been ignored by our political leadership since the 1980’s. We waste trillions of dollars fighting unnecessary wars but seem unwilling to seriously commit to eliminating institutionalize poverty. Edwards is the only candidate really talking about poverty in America. Poverty is a serious issue in many rural American communities and inner cities. Most candidates ignore the poor because they do not write big campaign donation checks. Edwards can give the poor hope and get them voting.

We remain the only nation out of the 75 most economically advanced nations not to have government guaranteed universal health insurance. We cripple our corporations in international competition by forcing them to provide for healthcare. As a nation we spend 17% of our economy on healthcare while our competitors spend 8%. Our competitors cover all citizens while we have 47 million uninsured citizens and even more underinsured. If we had not abandoned our FDR political traditions, this situation would have been corrected long ago. Edwards is committed to universal healthcare.

AMERICAN DREAM IS DISAPPEARING

We get told in the United States that if you work hard and play by the rules you'll be a success. Now if you work hard and play by the rules you lose ground. The productivity of workers in the United States is the highest in the world. But the gains from our productivity are going to fat cats and not being shared with us. This column by Bob Herbert is at www.truthout.org:

Record bonuses on Wall Street at a time when ordinary working Americans are filled with anxiety about their economic future are signs that the trickle-down phenomenon that was supposed to have benefited everyone never happened.
The rich, boosted by the not-so-invisible hand of the corporate ideologues in government, have done astonishingly well in recent decades, while the rest of the population has tended to tread water economically, or drown.

A study released last month by the Pew Charitable Trusts noted that "for most Americans, seeing that one's children are better off than oneself is the essence of living the American dream." But for the past 40 years, men in their 30s, prime family-raising age, have found it difficult to outdistance their dads economically.

As the Pew study put it: "Earnings of men in their 30s have remained surprisingly flat over the past four decades." Family incomes have improved during that time largely because of the wholesale entrance of women into the work force.

For the very wealthy, of course, it's been a different story. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the after-tax income of the top 1 percent rose 228 percent from 1979 through 2005.

What seems to be happening now is that working Americans, and that includes the middle class, have exhausted much of their capacity to tread water. Wives and mothers are already working. Mortgages have been refinanced and tremendous amounts of home equity drained. And families have taken on debt loads - for cars, for college tuition, for medical treatment - that would buckle the knees of the strongest pack animals.

December 22, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE CLASS WARFARE ADMINISTRATION

The eyes of right-wingers bulge out and their faces turn puffy in fury if you talk about making the very rich pay their fair share of taxes. Class warfare! they howl. But they have absolutely no problem with top down class warfare the way we've seen in the Bush administration. Whether it's the failure to pass real minimum wage reform, or gutting environmental regulations, or eviscerating consumer safety laws, Bush has done everything he can to enrich the already rich and shaft the rest of us. This article by Peter Dreier is at www.commondreams.org:

Virtually every week since he took office, the Bush administration has made or proposed changes in our laws designed to help the rich and powerful while harming the most vulnerable people in society and putting the middle class at greater economic risk. The list of horrors can be so numbing that one can lose sight of the cumulative impact of these actions. Taken together, they add up to the most direct assault on working people, the environment and the poor that the country has seen since the presidency of William McKinley over a century ago.

Bush has been a persistent practitioner of top-down class warfare , but the media rarely characterize his actions that way. In contrast, when progressive activists, unions, environmental groups, community organizations and politicians support legislation and rules to redress the balance of power and wealth, they are inevitably described as engaging in class warfare . Top-down class warfare seems to be OK, but bottom-up class warfare is apparently a no-no.

The class warfare rap is now being used against John Edwards, when he talks about challenging the power of the insurance and drug corporations. In a recent speech, Edwards said that his campaign was about challenging "the powerful, the well-connected and the very wealthy." But wary of being criticized for fueling class resentments, even Edwards felt it necessary to say "This is not class warfare. This is the truth."

LAND OF THE POOR

While we read about huge bonuses going to Wall Street moguls we learn that millions of Americans are having a hard time getting even necessities like food and shelter. Many of those Americans are children. Let's hear about "family values" and the other drivel we get from right-wingers. We're a country that spends and wastes billions of dollars on military expenditures. We're a country that cuts taxes for the already obscenely wealthy, but we can't even provide adequate food and shelter for our citizens. This article is at www.cbpp.org/12-20-07pov.htm:

During the holidays, many Americans make a special effort to help the less fortunate. Sadly, there is no shortage of families in need.[i] According to the latest government figures:

36.5 million Americans — roughly one in eight — live in poverty.[ii] Despite relatively strong economic growth since 2001, poverty has remained stubbornly high, and today’s poverty rate is higher than it was during the last recession. That the poverty rate is still above its recession level is especially distressing given that poverty usually declines during recoveries and rises during recessions. If the economy goes into a slowdown or recession in 2008, poverty likely will only increase further.

15.4 million Americans live in extreme poverty. In other words, their family’s cash income is less than half of the poverty line, or less than about $10,000 a year for a family of four.

December 17, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE ENLIGHTENMENT PREVAILED IN SPITE OF RELIGION

One of the major right wing canards is that the United States is a "Christian" nation and founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs. Right-wingers claim that the Founding Fathers were Christian and that there is nothing in the Constitution establishing a wall of separation between church and state. In fact, the Founders were Deists, who were concerned about the intersection of religion and politics. This article by James Carroll is at www.commondreams.org:

Romney’s "Faith in America" speech, riddled with mistaken assertions about religion, was itself a warning. But other presidential candidates, debate moderators, pundits, and religious leaders all share a dangerous confusion about questions of faith and citizenship. Here are only a few: Is America’s goodness grounded in God? When Romney and others assert that American virtues, generally summed up in the idea of "freedom," are based on faith, a cruel fact of history is being ignored. The politics of human rights, like the idea of individual freedom, were born not in religion but in the Enlightenment struggle against it.

When Thomas Jefferson located "inalienable rights" in an endowment from the Creator, he was decidedly speaking from outside the mainstream of any denominational faith. Jefferson’s point was not to affirm God, but to deny King George.

It is not an accident that "God" does not appear in the Constitution. Following the American lead, religions, too, learned from the nonreligious improvements of modernity, but it is dishonest to claim after the fact that religions somehow sponsored them.

Were "the Founders" religious? It is a convention of political speechmaking to ascribe faith to the Founders, but what kind of faith, and what Founders? The Pilgrims, for whom "freedom" and "rights" meant nothing, wanted a theocracy. One hundred fifty years later, the Deist revolutionaries assumed a distant God whose interest in creation, much less the young nation, was minimal.

By Lincoln’s time, traumas of war drove piety, and it was only then that present notions of public devotedness were born. (It was Lincoln who established the motto "In God We Trust.") In truth, the power of faith in American politics has waxed and waned. There is no consistent tradition to be upheld or to be betrayed. Is "secularism" dehumanizing? When Mitt Romney praised vital American religion in contrast to Europe where churches are "so grand, so inspired, so empty," one could wonder what the collapse of institutional faith in Europe actually means. Romney condemned the "religion of secularism."

December 16, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

"CHRISTIAN" CONTROL FREAKS

After the miserable experience of George W. Bush, you hope that people will be properly skeptical of anyone claiming to be a Christian and using that as a basis for their presidential campaign. So it is with GOP candidate Mike Huckabee. These so-called "Christians" are really control freaks. They want to dictate what we watch, what we read, that we celebrate their version of Christmas, that their morality can intrude into our personal lives, and that religion and government can mix. This article by Nick Paccione is at www.smirking.com:
It's clear that Christian religious fanatics want their way in regards to religion and public life. They are determined to impose their views on all Americans. They constantly cry that they are the victims of discrimination when in fact they are the relentless discriminators.

Fundamentalist Christians including Huckabee want American tax dollars used to fund private religious schools. Is there any similar request coming from Jews, Muslims, atheists, wickens, gays, lesbians, liberals or soothsayers?
They want laws passed to keep Gays from marrying. Are Gays trying to pass any laws that infringe on a Christian's personal life or rights?

They want abortion made illegal and don't believe that it's a private matter to be discussed by a pregnant woman and her doctor.

They want to be a part of people's life and death decisions in matters like the Terri Schiavo case.

December 11, 2007

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IMPEACH CHENEY

THE RULING CLASS ISN'T BETTER

The French Enlightenment philosopher Diderot once observed that people will not be truly free until the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest. Through the ages the human race has been held prisoner to superstition and to an unwarranted awe of the rich and powerful. To maintain their hold, the ruling class have propagated a variety of myths. They're powerful because God wants them to "lead" and other blather. Working people are "supposed to know our place" and be grateful for whatever crumbs come down from the ruling class. Enough of that nonsense. This article by Bob Higgins is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The forces which have so cynically manipulated public opinion to bring about the death of democracy have always been with us and have, at various times, risen and ebbed as evil tides, of "red scares," "commie menaces," of "outside agitators," and the currently in vogue "Islamofascism," <> a term popularized by some Goebbelian marketing wonk in the bowels of Dick Cheney's office and pressed forward by money driven waves of irrational fear, and the malignant energy of powerful and pathologically dishonest men.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, caused in large measure by the abdication of reason by rank and file Democrats, the racist and anti-democratic march to plutocracy, halted and long delayed since the thirties by the common blessings of FDR's "New Deal," was born again, hidden behind thinly disguised code words like "silent majority," "hard hats," or "family values."

The incubation of this poisonous philosophical monstrosity did not begin to reach it's full virulence until large measures of neo-conservative and rabid theocratic ingredients stirred into the mix at the millennium, at which point those who most despised the Constitution and the rule of law were then able, due to a perfect storm of world events, a combination of public dread and apathy, congressional and judicial meekness, and the complete corporate takeover of the fourth estate, to seize control of the very government they long held in such contempt and begin it's thorough looting, dismantlement and replacement with corporate rule.

Now we have a Department of Agriculture run by agribusiness, the Mine Safety and Health Administration run by corporate mining interests, a Department of Energy thoroughly in the control of multinational oil and gas and coal conglomerates, a health care system run by the insurance and drug industries and on and disgustingly on through every federal department and agency.

December 10, 2007


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IMPEACH CHENEY

THE RIGHT'S PROPAGANDA ON HUNGER

According to right-wing think tanks, there is no poverty in the United States. If you have an old car that's falling apart, a VCR, an old TV, whatever, you can't possibly be poor. They're expanding their argument into the issue of hunger. People don't go hungry, they say; the poor eat too much. If you believe people like the Heritage Foundation, slaves had it good. They had food and a roof and a place to labor every day. This article by James Ridgeway is at www.motherjones.com:

There's another side of the story, of course, that addresses realities Heritage and its followers choose to ignore. Adam Drewnowski, professor of epidemiology and director of the University of Washington's Center for Obesity Research, believes diet is determined by economic and social factors far more than by personal choice. "Healthier diets are more expensive," he says flatly. It's easy to point to specific exceptions like doughnuts vs. beans or Coke vs. milk (well, not always; my local Safeway charges 40 cents more for a half-gallon of milk than for a two-liter bottle of Coke). But research generally has shown that "energy-dense foods," which often are high in refined grains and added sugar and fat, "provide dietary energy at a far lower cost than do lean meats, fish, fresh vegetables, and fruit," as Drewnowski wrote in a 2004 article for Nutrition Today. Processed foods also dominate store shelves in poor neighborhoods, are quick to prepare, and simply taste better to some people than some nutritious foods available on the cheap—think cabbage, condensed milk, and canned fish.

Drewnowski calls Rector's arguments "rubbish, written from a position of class privilege—let them eat broccoli, indeed." He cites the suggestion that the poor should purchase cheap, nutritious foods rather than processed stuff. "When you suggest that people buy rice, pasta, and beans," he says, "you presuppose that they have resources for capital investment for future meals"—since these healthy staples come in large bags—"a kitchen, pots, pans, utensils, gas, electricity, a refrigerator, a home with rent paid, the time to cook. Those healthy rice and beans can take hours; another class bias is that poor people's time is worthless. So this is all about resources that middle-class people take so much for granted that they do not give them another thought. Not everybody has them."

On the other hand, he says, "buying a doughnut for dinner does not involve any of those middle-class resources. You pay 55 cents for this meal only and there you are. Yes, rice would be cheaper if only people had the time and were not working two jobs on minimum wage."

December 06, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

MONEY FOR NOTHING

In their never-ending quest to give everything to the rich, right-wingers even reshape the language. The inheritance tax suddenly became the "death tax." You're taxing the money twice! they wail. It was taxed once when Rich Person #1 made it and then taxed again when it was passed on to the Heirs. It's a stupid argument. We're all paying taxes on money that has already been taxed. When you get your undoubtedly modest paycheck you're paying taxes. Your employer has paid taxes on the income that trickled down to you in your paycheck. What right-wingers want is a rich aristocracy that doesn't pay taxes like you and I do. This article by R. J. Eskow talks about Whoopi Goldberg buying into the "death tax" nonsense. The article is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Why, you may ask, do wealthy children get a tax break that others don't? Because our country's lawmakers have traditionally favored the idle rich over working people. Whoopi, I think you understand that. And while everybody understands the desire to leave our wealth to the children we love, hardworking Americans aren't really happy about the 'tax-free' part.

This "death tax" phrase was designed and marketed by conservatives to confuse people into supporting the idea that rich kids shouldn't pay any tax at all on their unearned multi-million dollar income. And it won't go away. I saw a headline the other day that read "Dexter: Let's drop death tax." I thought it was referring to the serial killer on TV named Dexter. If he paid taxes for every victim he murders, that would be a "death tax."

(Actually, "Dexter" is a Canadian politician who's using the phrase for its intended purpose, which is to confuse voters.)

"If I have to give something to my kid I (when) already paid the tax," says, Whoopi, "why do I have to pay it again because I died?" Er, Whoopi ... you don't. They do. Just the same way your gardener and maids have to pay taxes on the money you give them, even though you paid taxes when you earned it. (Except for the fact that they don't get the first two million tax-free.)

THE BUSH ECONOMY IN ACTION

Worker confidence in November hit a record low. We're seeing exploding costs in health care, food, and energy, but our wages remain flat. Jobs are being shipped to other countries, but no one tells us what is supposed to replace those jobs. George W. Bush and right-wingers are creating an economic perfect storm. This article from Reuters is at news.yahoo.com:

Worker confidence stumbled to a record low in November, reflecting growing pessimism over jobs and personal finances stemming from housing and credit troubles, a survey released on Wednesday shows.

The Hudson Employment Index dropped to 91.9 points, the lowest ever for this gauge. The November reading was lower than the 100.8 in October and 105.3 a year ago.

"Simply put, U.S. workers are worried that job growth is going to slow significantly in the coming months," Robert Morgan, co-president of recruitment and talent management at job placement firm Hudson Highland Group (HHGP.O), said in a statement.

December 04, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH'S LETHAL LIES

Politicians lie. Presidents and their administrations lie. But the magnitude of George W. Bush's lies surpasses ordinary lies. He deliberately and with aforethought committed mass murder in Iraq. He wants to do the same thing in Iran. The administration has blustered about a nuclear threat in Iran. A new National Intelligence Estimate shows that, once again, Bush and his henchmen couldn't care less about the truth, about decency, or about preserving the lives of innocent people. This commentary by Tony Hendra is at http://www.smirkingchimp.com/:

Here are the salient points from the NIE:

We judge with high confidence that the halt (in trying to develop nuclear weapons, not producing them) has lasted at least several years. (Four to be exact, a lifetime in war and politics).

We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon. (Or has ever had one).

We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015. (Which Bush - and for that matter Gates - flatly lied about this morning implying that the NIE said they could re-up anytime).

Let's be quite clear how far the men in the White House were willing to go. In the lethal linguistic fog these warmongers and the rightwing quislings who enable them, have plunged us, reasonable people seem to have lost sight of what we're talking about. Nuclear weapons aren't a bigger better version of Daisy Cutters. Nuclear weapons aren't just more bang for the buck. Nuclear weapons are the most cowardly killing devices ever devised by our benighted species. Nuclear weapons are instant genocide. Nuclear weapons are designed to murder as many unarmed noncombatants as possible, by the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Using nuclear weapons - even throwing around the threat to use them - was is and always should be unthinkable. Yet the monsters, yes monsters in the White House were willing to lie through their teeth - again - to get the chance to use them. On innocent people who posed no threat to us.

December 02, 2007

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IMPEACH CHENEY

GOP FIELD IGNORES ECONOMIC REALITY

When you listen to the GOP presidential candidates you hear the same old formula that has created massive deficits and put the U. S. economy into a perilous condition. It's mostly about tax cuts for the rich, slashing domestic spending, a huge military, an unending presence in Iraq, ignoring our crumbling infrastructure, ignoring our health care crisis, ignoring global climate change, ignoring the disintegration of the middle class, and pretending that everything is fine and dandy. This article by Robert Borosage is at www.tompaine.com:

The Republican CNN/YouTube debate lasted over two hours Wednesday night. But once more, we learned nothing about what the candidates would do about the economic straits we are in.

Not a word about the housing crisis—the rising tide of foreclosures, plummeting housing prices and sales—and the credit crunch that now roils banks across the globe.

Not a word about the recession that Wall Street is now betting on.
Not a word about the stagnant wages and rising costs of food and gas and college that had two-thirds of Americans thinking we were in a recession or near it when the Bush economy was at its best.
We learned nothing about what Republican candidates would do about our broken health care system. Nothing about what they’d do about gas prices, energy dependence, global warming or trade deficits that have made our economy dependent on the kindness of strangers—primarily Chinese and Japanese central bankers and Arab princes.

We learned only that these candidates can repeat the conservative gospel. All (except Duncan Hunter in an "emergency") vow not to raise any single tax while in office, not even the shameless tax break that has billionaire private equity barracudas taxed at half the rate of their secretaries.

With the economy slowing, all would slash domestic spending. Mitt Romney calls for capping and cutting by 1 percent a year, and promises to "go at something like our entitlements." Fred Thompson mumbles about his plan to "save Social Security," which does so by slashing benefits nearly in half over 60 years. Rudy Giuliani calls for "5 to 10 percent" across-the-board cuts, and cutting the federal workforce—already near record lows—by 25 percent through retirements. If the one guy named Bob who is tasked with testing toys for the Consumer Product Safety Commission retires, Giuliani will just leave it up to the Chinese to keep the lead out. John McCain fulminates about vetoing any pork-barrel spending, a Titan boasting of squashing a gnat. Ron Paul at least knows where the money is, pledging to bring the boys home and save billions out of the military budget.

No one—not one—gave any indication that cutting spending—and jobs—as the economy slows might not be such a good idea. These guys have been in campaign bubbles for so long they don’t have a clue about what is happening around them.

December 01, 2007

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IMPEACH CHENEY

A MEAN-SPIRITED BUNCH

When he ran for president George W. Bush advertised himself as a "compassionate conservative." That alone should have set off alarm bells because "compassion" and "conservative" are contradictory. Bush has run one of the most heartless and corrupt administrations in our history and the current crop of GOP candidates would like to continue the tradition. This editorial is from The Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com:

Even without a question from a talking snowman, Wednesday's CNN/YouTube Republican debate made for lively viewing. It also left an unsettling aftertaste. Eight years ago, George W. Bush began his first presidential campaign by proudly identifying himself as a "compassionate conservative." But on Wednesday, many of the Republicans who aspire to succeed Bush seemed to be competing for the title of "meanest candidate."

In pursuit of that goal, the candidates' hearts were especially hardened toward illegal immigrants, including children. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) boasted that "I built that border fence in San Diego" and promised that, as president, he would fence off the entire border in six months. Mitt Romney professed dismay at the fact that Mike Huckabee, his fellow former GOP governor, had "fought for giving scholarships to illegal aliens." Rudy Giuliani, on the defensive over charges that New York City was a "sanctuary city" during his administration as mayor, conceded he allowed undocumented children to attend public schools -- but insisted he wasn't interested in giving them an education as much as trying to keep them off the streets "at a time in which New York City was going through a massive crime wave."