February 10, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

RIGHT-WING HATE

Today's Fresno Bee features a letter from a right-winger aggrieved about "liberal vitriol." The writer was praising a column by reactionary Victor Davis Hanson that criticized Senator John Kerry. Senator Kerry had the temerity to criticize U. S. foreign policy. We get the usual homilies from the writer about our being the greatest country, where you're free to pursue your dreams, yada, yada. When the United States lives up to its ideals and respects the Bill of Rights and human rights around the world it is the best country on earth.

But we can not pretend that the U. S. record on human rights is pristine. This was a country founded on slavery and on stealing the land of native Americans. We stole territory from Mexico. Our government has overthrown legitimate governments of other countries and interfered in their affairs.

It's better to face the truth than to adopt the old hear no evil, speak no evil, or see no evil mantra some right-wingers advocate. And, as for vitriol, conservatives have some nerve to criticize when they've constantly attacked people who are different to serve the agenda of right-wingers. Attack gays, attack feminists, attack anyone who doesn't believe in their version of God, attack the poor and working people. So, as the Scripture says, pull the straw from your own eye before you talk about the vitriol of others.

GROSS DISHONESTY

If George W. Bush and his administration are ever honest about anything, it might be a sign of the Apocalypse. This editorial in The Los Angeles Times points out how the administration disguises the true financial costs of the Iraq war. The administration uses "supplementals" to make it appear that the Pentagon budget is much smaller than it really is. If this war is so righteous, such an effort to save western civilization, why can't Bush be honest about the cost? This editorial by Veronique de Rugy is at www.latimes.com:

AT THE SAME TIME that President Bush requested more than $700 billion for the Pentagon budget this week, he managed to create the impression that he was asking for the much smaller amount of $481 billion. The trick he used — socking about $235 billion into two "emergency supplemental" funding requests for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — didn't fool the public for very long. But the longer the White House and Congress continue to treat "war-related" funding as a separate item from the budget for the Department of Defense, the harder it will be to control a ballooning federal budget.

Here's how the supplemental shell game works. The official defense budget for 2008 comes to $481 billion. That's a 10% increase over last year and a 62% increase over 2001. And it conveniently fails to include a supplemental request of $141.7 billion, which brings the 2008 defense total to $622.7 billion. On top of that, the president requested a 2007 supplemental in the amount of $93.4 billion, bringing this week's entire defense "budget authority request" to $716 billion (the figure of actual outlays is even higher because it includes billions already committed to the Pentagon).