JUNE 15, 2005
WHO KNEW GITMO WAS A RESORT?
Mike Malloy has been playing a soundbite featuring Republican Representative Duncan Hunter talking about the meals supposedly served to the detainees at Guantanamo. He claims the prisoners there get things like lemon chicken, rice, and two kinds of fruit. Maybe he'll be telling us next about the free continental breakfasts and gourmet coffee. Who do these jackasses think they're fooling anyway?
BUSH WANTS TO KNOW WHAT WE READ
The invasive and unconstitutional Patriot Act received a blow from the House of Representatives, which voted to restrict access to library and reading records. George W. Bush has threatened a veto because we can't have privacy when there's a "war on terror." I'm reading Beach Music by Pat Conroy in case that helps. It's all very strange when you consider the level of Bush's reading, something along the lines of My Pet Goat. This story by Andrew Taylor is at news.yahoo.com:
In a slap at President Bush, lawmakers voted Wednesday to block the Justice Department and the FBI from using the Patriot Act to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips.
The House voted 238-187 despite a veto threat from Bush to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.
SOBERING STATISTICS ON MINIMUM WAGE
The loons who believe in the totally free market don't believe we should have things like the minimum wage. Supposedly, if you're a working person you can choose to work or not to work for poverty wages. The minimum wage has been one of the most decent and humane laws on the books. Leave it to Republicans, of course, to subvert the minimum wage. The current federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour is virtually impossible to live on. This article shows how many people have fallen into poverty under the reign of George W. Bush, the number of raises Congressman have given themselves, and the total outrage of a miserly minimum wage. This article is at thinkprogress.org:
Morgan Spurlock is at it again. The man who exposed the unsavory side of fast food in the popular documentary Supersize Me takes on minimum wage in his new series “30 Days.” In the show, which launches tomorrow night on FX, Spurlock will submerge an average American in a completely different lifestyle for one month. (The Center For American Progress is holding an advance screening of the show in Washington, DC tonight.) For his first episode, Spurlock decided to explore exactly how hard it is to live on a minimum wage income for thirty days. He and his fiancee, Alex, moved to Columbus, OH and lived on $5.15 an hour for a month. They found out it’s pretty impossible. Here are the facts behind minimum wage in America:
THE GROPER MEETS SOME REAL CONSTITUENTS
California Governor Groper probably thought he would be making a triumphant return to his alma mater in Santa Monica. Instead, the Groper got a rude awakening about what most Californians think of his lousy policies. The Groper is calling for a special election this November to get some pet initiatives passed. The initiatives are mostly directed at people like teachers and firefighters. The Groper wants to blame their unions for California's budget woes. This article is at www.cnn.com:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to his alma mater turned into an exercise in perseverance when virtually his every word was accompanied by catcalls, howls and piercing whistles from the crowd.
Schwarzenegger's face appeared to redden during his 15-minute commencement address Tuesday to 600 graduates at Santa Monica College, but he ignored the shouting as he recalled his days as a student and, later, his work as a bodybuilder and actor.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
JUNE 14, 2005
STEALING CORNFLAKES MAKES YOU A TERRORIST
In the surreal universe of Bushworld there are terrorists everywhere. It reminds you of the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Communist witch hunt. People were hauled in to testify before Congress and rat out their friends as Communists. People who had done nothing wrong were blacklisted and couldn't make a living. The Bushies have taken it even beyond "Tailgunner Joe." They want our medical records, our reading records, to tap our phones, access to our Internet records, and on and on. This story shows just how ridiculous the sniffing out of terrorists has become. Some guys were put on a terrorism watch list for stealing cornflakes. The story by Jerry Markon is at www.washingtonpost.com:
More than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the FBI nabbed two Arab grocers loading boxes onto a tractor-trailer outside a drab gray apartment building here. The cargo: stolen Kellogg's cereal.
Agents did not charge the men that day, and set them free. But 16 months later, soon after hijacked planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI was back. This time, agents arrested the pair and a third Arab grocer. After they were grilled about the terrorist attacks, the men were charged and pleaded guilty -- to conspiracy to possess the pilfered cornflakes.
TEXAS MUST BE ONE WEIRD PLACE
Molly Ivins calls Texas Governor Rick Perry "Good Hair" Perry. I'll take her word for it. There are indications Governor Perry is gay, allegedly getting caught with another man in his bed, but the good Republican Governor recently called for all gays to leave the great state of Texas. "Good Hair" also doesn't put much stock in the doctrine of separating church and state. He actually signed legislation in a church. Maybe he thinks that will absolve him of all his sins. This story by Matt Curry is at hosted.ap.org (Richmond Times-Dispatch):
Even for Texas, the scene was remarkable: The governor, flanked by an out-of-state televangelist and religious right leaders, signing legislation in a church school gymnasium amid shouts of "amen" from backers who just as well could have been attending a revival.
It wasn't just the blatant blend of church and state that made the gathering in Fort Worth unusual. Advance publicity also attracted about 300 angry protesters - unheard of for the routine business of ceremonial bill signings.
HOWARD DEAN MERELY TOLD THE TRUTH
It's just amazing that the masters of hate speech on the right have the audacity to say that Howard Dean was guilty of hate speech when he said the Republican party was white and Christian (faux Christian, mind you). Then some Democrats reacted like a snail doused by salt and started melting away. This is one Democrat who wants someone to tell it like it is. The stakes are too high for our country and for our planet to let Republican bullies get away (literally) with murder. This column by Jon Carroll is at www.sfgate.com:
I believe the American people want a party that will express their displeasure at the elitist and corrupt Bush administration in strong and vigorous terms.
People should stop believing the bullfluff that Fox News represents some significant percentage of the populace. The latest Nielsen ratings show that the Fox News Channel has 1,758,000 viewers in prime time, with only 416,000 falling into the 25-54 demographic. This is in a nation of 300 million people. However much noise it makes and however much room it takes up in the brains of media people, Fox is a very small muffin in a very large bakery -- a small, wizened, bitter muffin. Ignore it; everyone else does.
FOR BUSH THE SWORD IS MIGHTIER THAN THE PEN
Excuse me, but I thought Jesus Christ was called "The Prince of Peace." Well-known "Christian" George W. Bush disregards the idea of peace as he markets weapons all around the world. This story by William D. Hartung and Frida Berrigan talks about the sales of arms has dramatically increased under the Bush administration. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Despite President George W. Bush's vow to promote freedom and democracy around the world, U.S. arms sales policy is doing just the opposite.
Most major recipients of U.S. arms sales in the developing world are undemocratic, as defined by our own State Department. And U.S.-supplied weaponry is present in a majority of the world's active conflicts.
The Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations were no strangers to the policy of transferring U.S. arms to dictators, but this trend has intensified dramatically under the administration of George W. Bush.
Perhaps no single policy is more at odds with President Bush's pledge to "end tyranny in our world" than the United States' role as the world's leading arms-exporting nation. Although arms sales are often justified on the basis of their purported benefits, from securing access to overseas military facilities to rewarding coalition partners, these alleged benefits often come at a high price.
"CHRISTIAN FUNDIES": KKK WITHOUT THE SHEETS
Some on the Christian right are aggrieved (what else is new?) because the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors hate groups, has branded them as hate group just like the KKK. I mean just because they foam at the mouth about gays or abortion or Muslims or anyone who doesn't share their warped view of the Bible, does that make them a hate group? This item comes from americablog.blogspot.com:
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization historically devoted to fighting racial discrimination, has decided to brand the entire pro-family movement as "hate groups" and "extremists," like the Ku Klux Klan. Yet it seems odd to apply the label "extremist" to a majority of Americans, since their lengthy article (titled "Holy War") admits that in 2003 "opposition to gay marriage had climbed from 53 to 59%" and that a "majority of Americans, 55%, now characterized gay sex as a sin." Be assured that the Family Research Council will continue to stand, with a majority of Americans, where we have always stood--against violence toward homosexuals, but also against celebrating a behavior that is harmful to those who engage in it and to society as a whole.
STEALING CORNFLAKES MAKES YOU A TERRORIST
In the surreal universe of Bushworld there are terrorists everywhere. It reminds you of the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Communist witch hunt. People were hauled in to testify before Congress and rat out their friends as Communists. People who had done nothing wrong were blacklisted and couldn't make a living. The Bushies have taken it even beyond "Tailgunner Joe." They want our medical records, our reading records, to tap our phones, access to our Internet records, and on and on. This story shows just how ridiculous the sniffing out of terrorists has become. Some guys were put on a terrorism watch list for stealing cornflakes. The story by Jerry Markon is at www.washingtonpost.com:
More than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the FBI nabbed two Arab grocers loading boxes onto a tractor-trailer outside a drab gray apartment building here. The cargo: stolen Kellogg's cereal.
Agents did not charge the men that day, and set them free. But 16 months later, soon after hijacked planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI was back. This time, agents arrested the pair and a third Arab grocer. After they were grilled about the terrorist attacks, the men were charged and pleaded guilty -- to conspiracy to possess the pilfered cornflakes.
TEXAS MUST BE ONE WEIRD PLACE
Molly Ivins calls Texas Governor Rick Perry "Good Hair" Perry. I'll take her word for it. There are indications Governor Perry is gay, allegedly getting caught with another man in his bed, but the good Republican Governor recently called for all gays to leave the great state of Texas. "Good Hair" also doesn't put much stock in the doctrine of separating church and state. He actually signed legislation in a church. Maybe he thinks that will absolve him of all his sins. This story by Matt Curry is at hosted.ap.org (Richmond Times-Dispatch):
Even for Texas, the scene was remarkable: The governor, flanked by an out-of-state televangelist and religious right leaders, signing legislation in a church school gymnasium amid shouts of "amen" from backers who just as well could have been attending a revival.
It wasn't just the blatant blend of church and state that made the gathering in Fort Worth unusual. Advance publicity also attracted about 300 angry protesters - unheard of for the routine business of ceremonial bill signings.
HOWARD DEAN MERELY TOLD THE TRUTH
It's just amazing that the masters of hate speech on the right have the audacity to say that Howard Dean was guilty of hate speech when he said the Republican party was white and Christian (faux Christian, mind you). Then some Democrats reacted like a snail doused by salt and started melting away. This is one Democrat who wants someone to tell it like it is. The stakes are too high for our country and for our planet to let Republican bullies get away (literally) with murder. This column by Jon Carroll is at www.sfgate.com:
I believe the American people want a party that will express their displeasure at the elitist and corrupt Bush administration in strong and vigorous terms.
People should stop believing the bullfluff that Fox News represents some significant percentage of the populace. The latest Nielsen ratings show that the Fox News Channel has 1,758,000 viewers in prime time, with only 416,000 falling into the 25-54 demographic. This is in a nation of 300 million people. However much noise it makes and however much room it takes up in the brains of media people, Fox is a very small muffin in a very large bakery -- a small, wizened, bitter muffin. Ignore it; everyone else does.
FOR BUSH THE SWORD IS MIGHTIER THAN THE PEN
Excuse me, but I thought Jesus Christ was called "The Prince of Peace." Well-known "Christian" George W. Bush disregards the idea of peace as he markets weapons all around the world. This story by William D. Hartung and Frida Berrigan talks about the sales of arms has dramatically increased under the Bush administration. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Despite President George W. Bush's vow to promote freedom and democracy around the world, U.S. arms sales policy is doing just the opposite.
Most major recipients of U.S. arms sales in the developing world are undemocratic, as defined by our own State Department. And U.S.-supplied weaponry is present in a majority of the world's active conflicts.
The Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations were no strangers to the policy of transferring U.S. arms to dictators, but this trend has intensified dramatically under the administration of George W. Bush.
Perhaps no single policy is more at odds with President Bush's pledge to "end tyranny in our world" than the United States' role as the world's leading arms-exporting nation. Although arms sales are often justified on the basis of their purported benefits, from securing access to overseas military facilities to rewarding coalition partners, these alleged benefits often come at a high price.
"CHRISTIAN FUNDIES": KKK WITHOUT THE SHEETS
Some on the Christian right are aggrieved (what else is new?) because the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors hate groups, has branded them as hate group just like the KKK. I mean just because they foam at the mouth about gays or abortion or Muslims or anyone who doesn't share their warped view of the Bible, does that make them a hate group? This item comes from americablog.blogspot.com:
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization historically devoted to fighting racial discrimination, has decided to brand the entire pro-family movement as "hate groups" and "extremists," like the Ku Klux Klan. Yet it seems odd to apply the label "extremist" to a majority of Americans, since their lengthy article (titled "Holy War") admits that in 2003 "opposition to gay marriage had climbed from 53 to 59%" and that a "majority of Americans, 55%, now characterized gay sex as a sin." Be assured that the Family Research Council will continue to stand, with a majority of Americans, where we have always stood--against violence toward homosexuals, but also against celebrating a behavior that is harmful to those who engage in it and to society as a whole.
Monday, June 13, 2005
JUNE 13, 2005
BUSH'S DEAFENING SILENCE ON DOWNING STREET MEMO
Remember a few years ago when a stained blue dress was a big enough story to dominate cable news channels 24/7 and to reach page one of major newspapers? But a memo showing that the U.S. and British governments conspired to launch a war against a country that didn't pose a threat gets little attention in the U.S. media. It was up to the British press to get the story out about the memo. It's only now that the crimes of Bush and Blair are getting some attention on this side of the Atlantic. This story by Michael Smith is at www.timesonline.co.uk:
Six weeks ago The Sunday Times published the leaked minutes of a July 2002 Downing Street meeting in which Tony Blair committed Britain to war in Iraq months before parliament was consulted.
They detailed a secret pledge to President George W Bush to help oust Saddam, showed that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, had warned such action could be illegal and that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, had thought the case for war was “thin”.
By any standards these were fascinating revelations. Nothing, however, could have prepared us for what a worldwide impact the story would have. More than a month later it still features in the daily top 10 most popular stories on our website, with 330,000 people estimated to have logged on to read it.
YOU CAN'T TRUST THE USDA ON MAD COW DISEASE
In the Bush administration when the facts don't fit your agenda you just change the facts. You create a phony reason for war against Iraq. You create a phony reason to justify tax cuts for your rich friends. You create phony reports about the impact of global climate change. Why should this pattern change when it comes to protecting the food supply? It appears now that the Bush administration has been covering up the reality of mad cow disease in the food supply. This article by John Stauber is at www.prwatch.org:
The US government’s elaborate cover-up of mad cow dangers in the United States has begun to unravel. Twenty-four hours after our successful protest (with Organic Consumers Association) of the US Department of Agriculture’s mad cow dog-and-pony show in St. Paul, USDA Secretary Johanns was forced to admit that a cow tested last year and declared safe in fact DID have mad cow disease.
I’ve often charged that the USDA is hiding US cases of mad cow by using the wrong testing procedures and by failing to conduct food safety tests on millions of animals and this announcement proves it. USDA finally used the correct test - the Western Blot test - on this suspect animal and it has proven to be a case of mad cow disease.
POLITICS ERODES RELIGION
In the last presidential campaign the issue of "moral values" was raised. Supposedly, people voted for George W. Bush because he more closely represented their values. Never mind that Mr. Bush seems to embody the very opposite of what Christianity teaches, especially the Golden Rule. This author, a religious leader, makes the case that mixing politics and religion erodes the value of religion. This article by Dr. N. Graham Standish is at www.post-gazette.com:
This current mixture of Christianity and politics is troublesome because the more religion identifies with a particular political movement, the more that movement erodes religion. Politics, by its very nature, is a realm that is often tainted by pride and a desire for power that can bring out the worst in humans because the pursuit of power corrupts. It's for this reason that Jesus said we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's. Mixing politics and religion causes too many people to confuse Caesar's empire with God's kingdom.
Religion does have a place in political discourse, yet Christians need to be sure they don't confuse a politically expedient position with God's position. God's position is often unclear, especially in many of the gray areas of life. Presenting one political party as "the Christian party" is particularly troublesome because distilling religious faith down to political terms drains religion of its ability to lead people to move beyond a politics of self-interest.
WASHINGTON POST ANALYSIS OF BUSH'S LOUSY POLL NUMBERS
George W. Bush's certitude is supposedly one of his assets. He has stated that he means what he says and says what he means. He pushes his agenda no matter how unpopular or unjustified it is. I'm not sure if I think it's conviction or arrogance. Mr. Bush has enough arrogance for several presidents. In this article David S. Broder examines Bush's tanking poll numbers. The column is at www.washingtonpost.com:
But Iraq is only in second place when it comes to the public's priorities. The No. 1 concern is the economy and jobs.
And here is where Bush ought to be considering a new game plan. Although Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan declared the economy to be "on a reasonably firm footing" the other day, six out of 10 of those in the Pew survey said jobs are hard to find in their local areas -- including almost half of those with household incomes over $75,000. Three out of 10 said they did not have enough money last year to pay for their medical and health care needs.
Bush has had relatively little to say about these economic anxieties. His economic initiatives, including the plea to make past tax cuts permanent, would mainly benefit the affluent. Instead, Bush has devoted his energies to selling a Social Security reform that the public views with deep suspicion. By a 2 to 1 margin, it thinks Bush's proposals would not improve the long-run financial stability of Social Security, and nearly as many people think they would reduce the retirement income most seniors will receive.
THE BOOK OF REVELATION IS NOT CHRISTIANITY
I was reading some of James Walcott's comments and I came across a quotation from war correspondent Chris Hedges. Mr. Hedges writes about the absolute certitude of fundamentalist Christians who draw their world view from the very strange and very gory Book of Revelation in the Bible. This item can be found at jameswalcott.com:
This myth, the lie, about war, about ourselves, is imploding our democracy. We shun introspection and self-criticism. We ignore truth, to embrace the strange, disquieting certitude and hubris offered by the radical Christian Right. These radical Christians draw almost exclusively from the book of Revelations, the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, peddling a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army of heavenly avengers. They rarely speak about Christ's message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They relish the cataclysmic destruction that will befall unbelievers, including those such as myself, who they dismiss as 'nominal Christians.' They divide the world between good and evil, between those anointed to act as agents of God and those who act as agents of Satan. The cult of masculinity and esthetic of violence pervades their ideology. Feminism and homosexuality are forces, believers are told, that have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian Right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Anti-Christ, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. The language is one not only of exclusion, hatred and fear, but a call for apocalyptic violence, in short the language of war.
FRANK RICH ON OUR SUPINE MASS MEDIA
Richard M. Nixon could only dream of a supine and compliant mass media that has protected George W. Bush. If Nixon had the benefit of today's media, Watergate would have been largely ignored, he would have done even more harm to the Constitution, and probably left office hailed as a hero. New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes about then and now in his column at www.nytimes.com:
This is the kind of lapdog news media the Nixon White House cherished. To foster it, Nixon's special counsel, Charles W. Colson, embarked on a ruthless program of intimidation that included threatening antitrust action against the networks if they didn't run pro-Nixon stories. Watergate tapes and memos make Mr. Colson, who boasted of "destroying the old establishment," sound like the founding father of today's blogging lynch mobs. He exulted in bullying CBS to cut back its Watergate reports before the '72 election. He enlisted NBC in pro-administration propaganda by browbeating it to repackage 10-day-old coverage of Tricia Nixon's wedding as a prime-time special. It was the Colson office as well that compiled a White House enemies list that included journalists who had the audacity to question administration policies.
Such is the equivalently supine state of much of the news media today that Mr. Colson was repeatedly trotted out, without irony, to pass moral judgment on Mr. Felt - and not just on Fox News, the cable channel that is actually run by the former Nixon media maven, Roger Ailes. "I want kids to look up to heroes," Mr. Colson said, oh so sorrowfully, on NBC's "Today" show, condemning Mr. Felt for dishonoring "the confidence of the president of the United States." Never mind that Mr. Colson dishonored the law, proposed bombing the Brookings Institution and went to prison for his role in the break-in to steal the psychiatric records of The Times's Deep Throat on Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg. The "Today" host, Matt Lauer, didn't mention any of this - or even that his guest had done jail time. None of the other TV anchors who interviewed Mr. Colson - and he was ubiquitous - ever specified his criminal actions in the Nixon years. Some identified him onscreen only as a "former White House counsel."
ANOTHER SIDE EFFECT OF IRAQ WAR:
IRAQ NOW A TRANSIT POINT FOR HASHISH AND HEROIN
If you factor in all the deaths and misery from the world being flooded by heroin and hashish, I wonder how many more deaths George W. Bush will have on his hands. According to this story, hard drugs such heroin were rare during the reign of Saddam Hussein. Since the U.S. invasion Iraq is a transit point for heroin and hashish from Iran and Afghanistan. Remember, freedom is on the march. This story by Jonathan Finer is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Hamid Ghodse, president of the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board, said that since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraq has become a transit point in the flow of hashish and heroin from Iran and Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium poppies, to Persian Gulf countries and Europe.
Under Hussein's authoritarian rule, alcoholism and addiction to medications such as Valium were prevalent, health officials here say. The use of illegal drugs, a subject not discussed publicly, was thought to be rare. But since the invasion, the same porous borders that U.S. and Iraqi officials describe as conduits for foreign insurgents have become well-traveled smuggling routes for drug traffickers, according to U.N. and government officials. As a result, the Health Ministry says, addiction rates are climbing steadily.
BUSH'S DEAFENING SILENCE ON DOWNING STREET MEMO
Remember a few years ago when a stained blue dress was a big enough story to dominate cable news channels 24/7 and to reach page one of major newspapers? But a memo showing that the U.S. and British governments conspired to launch a war against a country that didn't pose a threat gets little attention in the U.S. media. It was up to the British press to get the story out about the memo. It's only now that the crimes of Bush and Blair are getting some attention on this side of the Atlantic. This story by Michael Smith is at www.timesonline.co.uk:
Six weeks ago The Sunday Times published the leaked minutes of a July 2002 Downing Street meeting in which Tony Blair committed Britain to war in Iraq months before parliament was consulted.
They detailed a secret pledge to President George W Bush to help oust Saddam, showed that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, had warned such action could be illegal and that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, had thought the case for war was “thin”.
By any standards these were fascinating revelations. Nothing, however, could have prepared us for what a worldwide impact the story would have. More than a month later it still features in the daily top 10 most popular stories on our website, with 330,000 people estimated to have logged on to read it.
YOU CAN'T TRUST THE USDA ON MAD COW DISEASE
In the Bush administration when the facts don't fit your agenda you just change the facts. You create a phony reason for war against Iraq. You create a phony reason to justify tax cuts for your rich friends. You create phony reports about the impact of global climate change. Why should this pattern change when it comes to protecting the food supply? It appears now that the Bush administration has been covering up the reality of mad cow disease in the food supply. This article by John Stauber is at www.prwatch.org:
The US government’s elaborate cover-up of mad cow dangers in the United States has begun to unravel. Twenty-four hours after our successful protest (with Organic Consumers Association) of the US Department of Agriculture’s mad cow dog-and-pony show in St. Paul, USDA Secretary Johanns was forced to admit that a cow tested last year and declared safe in fact DID have mad cow disease.
I’ve often charged that the USDA is hiding US cases of mad cow by using the wrong testing procedures and by failing to conduct food safety tests on millions of animals and this announcement proves it. USDA finally used the correct test - the Western Blot test - on this suspect animal and it has proven to be a case of mad cow disease.
POLITICS ERODES RELIGION
In the last presidential campaign the issue of "moral values" was raised. Supposedly, people voted for George W. Bush because he more closely represented their values. Never mind that Mr. Bush seems to embody the very opposite of what Christianity teaches, especially the Golden Rule. This author, a religious leader, makes the case that mixing politics and religion erodes the value of religion. This article by Dr. N. Graham Standish is at www.post-gazette.com:
This current mixture of Christianity and politics is troublesome because the more religion identifies with a particular political movement, the more that movement erodes religion. Politics, by its very nature, is a realm that is often tainted by pride and a desire for power that can bring out the worst in humans because the pursuit of power corrupts. It's for this reason that Jesus said we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's. Mixing politics and religion causes too many people to confuse Caesar's empire with God's kingdom.
Religion does have a place in political discourse, yet Christians need to be sure they don't confuse a politically expedient position with God's position. God's position is often unclear, especially in many of the gray areas of life. Presenting one political party as "the Christian party" is particularly troublesome because distilling religious faith down to political terms drains religion of its ability to lead people to move beyond a politics of self-interest.
WASHINGTON POST ANALYSIS OF BUSH'S LOUSY POLL NUMBERS
George W. Bush's certitude is supposedly one of his assets. He has stated that he means what he says and says what he means. He pushes his agenda no matter how unpopular or unjustified it is. I'm not sure if I think it's conviction or arrogance. Mr. Bush has enough arrogance for several presidents. In this article David S. Broder examines Bush's tanking poll numbers. The column is at www.washingtonpost.com:
But Iraq is only in second place when it comes to the public's priorities. The No. 1 concern is the economy and jobs.
And here is where Bush ought to be considering a new game plan. Although Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan declared the economy to be "on a reasonably firm footing" the other day, six out of 10 of those in the Pew survey said jobs are hard to find in their local areas -- including almost half of those with household incomes over $75,000. Three out of 10 said they did not have enough money last year to pay for their medical and health care needs.
Bush has had relatively little to say about these economic anxieties. His economic initiatives, including the plea to make past tax cuts permanent, would mainly benefit the affluent. Instead, Bush has devoted his energies to selling a Social Security reform that the public views with deep suspicion. By a 2 to 1 margin, it thinks Bush's proposals would not improve the long-run financial stability of Social Security, and nearly as many people think they would reduce the retirement income most seniors will receive.
THE BOOK OF REVELATION IS NOT CHRISTIANITY
I was reading some of James Walcott's comments and I came across a quotation from war correspondent Chris Hedges. Mr. Hedges writes about the absolute certitude of fundamentalist Christians who draw their world view from the very strange and very gory Book of Revelation in the Bible. This item can be found at jameswalcott.com:
This myth, the lie, about war, about ourselves, is imploding our democracy. We shun introspection and self-criticism. We ignore truth, to embrace the strange, disquieting certitude and hubris offered by the radical Christian Right. These radical Christians draw almost exclusively from the book of Revelations, the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, peddling a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army of heavenly avengers. They rarely speak about Christ's message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They relish the cataclysmic destruction that will befall unbelievers, including those such as myself, who they dismiss as 'nominal Christians.' They divide the world between good and evil, between those anointed to act as agents of God and those who act as agents of Satan. The cult of masculinity and esthetic of violence pervades their ideology. Feminism and homosexuality are forces, believers are told, that have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian Right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Anti-Christ, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. The language is one not only of exclusion, hatred and fear, but a call for apocalyptic violence, in short the language of war.
FRANK RICH ON OUR SUPINE MASS MEDIA
Richard M. Nixon could only dream of a supine and compliant mass media that has protected George W. Bush. If Nixon had the benefit of today's media, Watergate would have been largely ignored, he would have done even more harm to the Constitution, and probably left office hailed as a hero. New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes about then and now in his column at www.nytimes.com:
This is the kind of lapdog news media the Nixon White House cherished. To foster it, Nixon's special counsel, Charles W. Colson, embarked on a ruthless program of intimidation that included threatening antitrust action against the networks if they didn't run pro-Nixon stories. Watergate tapes and memos make Mr. Colson, who boasted of "destroying the old establishment," sound like the founding father of today's blogging lynch mobs. He exulted in bullying CBS to cut back its Watergate reports before the '72 election. He enlisted NBC in pro-administration propaganda by browbeating it to repackage 10-day-old coverage of Tricia Nixon's wedding as a prime-time special. It was the Colson office as well that compiled a White House enemies list that included journalists who had the audacity to question administration policies.
Such is the equivalently supine state of much of the news media today that Mr. Colson was repeatedly trotted out, without irony, to pass moral judgment on Mr. Felt - and not just on Fox News, the cable channel that is actually run by the former Nixon media maven, Roger Ailes. "I want kids to look up to heroes," Mr. Colson said, oh so sorrowfully, on NBC's "Today" show, condemning Mr. Felt for dishonoring "the confidence of the president of the United States." Never mind that Mr. Colson dishonored the law, proposed bombing the Brookings Institution and went to prison for his role in the break-in to steal the psychiatric records of The Times's Deep Throat on Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg. The "Today" host, Matt Lauer, didn't mention any of this - or even that his guest had done jail time. None of the other TV anchors who interviewed Mr. Colson - and he was ubiquitous - ever specified his criminal actions in the Nixon years. Some identified him onscreen only as a "former White House counsel."
ANOTHER SIDE EFFECT OF IRAQ WAR:
IRAQ NOW A TRANSIT POINT FOR HASHISH AND HEROIN
If you factor in all the deaths and misery from the world being flooded by heroin and hashish, I wonder how many more deaths George W. Bush will have on his hands. According to this story, hard drugs such heroin were rare during the reign of Saddam Hussein. Since the U.S. invasion Iraq is a transit point for heroin and hashish from Iran and Afghanistan. Remember, freedom is on the march. This story by Jonathan Finer is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Hamid Ghodse, president of the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board, said that since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraq has become a transit point in the flow of hashish and heroin from Iran and Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium poppies, to Persian Gulf countries and Europe.
Under Hussein's authoritarian rule, alcoholism and addiction to medications such as Valium were prevalent, health officials here say. The use of illegal drugs, a subject not discussed publicly, was thought to be rare. But since the invasion, the same porous borders that U.S. and Iraqi officials describe as conduits for foreign insurgents have become well-traveled smuggling routes for drug traffickers, according to U.N. and government officials. As a result, the Health Ministry says, addiction rates are climbing steadily.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
JUNE 12, 2005
WAR ON TERROR: NOT MUCH BANG FOR THE BUCK
In the much hyped "war on terror" we launched a ghastly war on Iraq, which had very little to do with terrorism. We attacked Afghanistan, but allowed terror mastermind Osama bin Laden to get away. We've inspired thugs in the Middle East to kidnap and behead people. We've tortured people at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. We've shredded civil liberties here at home. We've spent billions of dollars that could have been better spent on our domestic needs. Now we learn that the "war on terror" hasn't even produced much in the way of convicted terrorists. This article by Dan Eggen and Julie Tate is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush said that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."
Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best.
BUSH'S "ACTION" ON GLOBAL WARMING IS HOT AIR
George W. Bush only believes in scientific evidence when it suits his purposes. He rejects evolution, although the evidence supporting evolutionary theory is overwhelming. He rejects the scientific and moral arguments for stem cell research. He has sidestepped doing anything about global climate change because he wants more "scientific evidence." We learned this past week that an official in his administration has been doctoring reports to minimize the evidence for global climate change. It's no coincidence this guy is connected to the oil and gas industry, as is Bush himself. It all boils down to profits. Admitting the evidence for global climate change means drastic changes in the way we do things in the United States and it means major hits to the profits of oil companies. The Washington Post talks about it in an editorial at www.washingtonpost.com:
"I'VE ALWAYS SAID it's a serious long-term issue," said President Bush on Tuesday, when asked about his climate change policy. "And my administration isn't waiting around to deal with the issue. We're acting." Clearly, the president's definition of "acting" is different from ours. For the past five years, Mr. Bush has responded to all talk of climate change with demands for more scientific evidence. Now, a former employee of the government office that coordinates climate change research has released documents showing that a White House aide has been doctoring official reports on climate change precisely to avoid "acting" on the scientific evidence. The aide, Philip A. Cooney -- chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- is alleged to have made dozens of changes to official reports, inserting qualifiers designed to cast doubt on findings about climate change and to play down the link between climate change and industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
TWENTY-FIVE CASES FOR IMPEACHMENT
The Declaration of Independence is one of the greatest documents in human history. In the Declaration Thomas Jefferson stated some of the most fundamental ideas that have made the United States great. He also laid out a damning case against King George III. In this article the author, inspired by Jefferson, lays out the case against a latter-day King George. The article by Gary Steven Corseri is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Among other things, the U.S. Declaration of Independence is a lengthy bill of particulars against the "abuses and usurpations" of King George III. If the revolutionary founders had had their own government, Jefferson would have used his writing skills to frame an impeachment bill. Among the "abuses" T.J. cited was the King's refusal to "Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." If the colonists were riled enough over taxes on stamps and tea to shake the world with revolution, what will their inheritors do with the "usurpations" of our present Chief Executive? As Jefferson wrote, "Let facts be submitted to a candid world":
THE BOTTOMLESS PIT OF MILITARY SPENDING
You'll often hear that nineteen cents of every tax dollar goes to defense spending. That's a vast understatement, according to this analysis. In fact, about two-thirds of every tax dollar goes to defense while all our other needs go unmet or unfunded at all. This article by Jurgen Brauer and Nicholas Anglewicz is at www.tompaine.com:
Many Americans believe that 19 cents on defense for every 81 cents on non-defense is a reasonable way to spend a tax dollar. But by another calculation, the tax dollar splits 68 cents for defense and 32 cents on everything else. It is a common misconception that U.S. defense expenditure is equivalent to the Department of Defense outlays. Instead of $436.4 billion of defense expenditure, as Congressional budgeteers count, government statisticians in the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) counted $548.0 billion for calendar year 2004-a whopping $112 billion difference. And by our own calculations, U.S. defense expenditure is much higher than even the BEA's numbers suggest, namely $765.6 billion in calendar year 2004-about $330 billion or 75 percent more than the Department of Defense outlays.
To account for the difference, one needs to recognize that, for example, nuclear weapons-related outlays are budgeted under the Department of Energy line item, not that of the Department of Defense. Likewise, Veterans Affairs has its own department and budget. It is a defense-related category, reflecting obligations incurred to American servicemen and women on account of past U.S. military activity. Picking through the budget, the BEA, housed in the Department of Commerce, reclassifies each line item into "defense" and "non-defense" categories. For calendar year 2004, national defense outlays thus amounted to the aforementioned $548.0 billion.
TRADE DEFICIT JUMPS AGAIN
During the Reagan years the United States went from being the world's leading creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation, and it keeps getting worse. According to a new report, the trade deficit in April reached almost $57 billion. Even countries can go bankrupt, and the irresponsible economic policies of the Bush administration are pushing us toward bankruptcy. One other point to note is that oil imports are among the big contributors to the trade deficit. That's yet another reason to lessen our dependency on fossil fuels. This article by MARTIN CRUTSINGER is at news.yahoo.com:
The U.S. trade deficit rose to $56.96 billion in April as a big jump in exports was swamped by record foreign oil prices and heavy American demand for imports.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that both exports and imports climbed to record levels. Imports rose 4.1 percent to $163.38 billion, led by a higher foreign oil bill.
Exports were up 3 percent to $106.42 billion, thanks to strong demand for American-made commercial aircraft, computer chips, industrial machinery and cars.
WAR ON TERROR: NOT MUCH BANG FOR THE BUCK
In the much hyped "war on terror" we launched a ghastly war on Iraq, which had very little to do with terrorism. We attacked Afghanistan, but allowed terror mastermind Osama bin Laden to get away. We've inspired thugs in the Middle East to kidnap and behead people. We've tortured people at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. We've shredded civil liberties here at home. We've spent billions of dollars that could have been better spent on our domestic needs. Now we learn that the "war on terror" hasn't even produced much in the way of convicted terrorists. This article by Dan Eggen and Julie Tate is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush said that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."
Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best.
BUSH'S "ACTION" ON GLOBAL WARMING IS HOT AIR
George W. Bush only believes in scientific evidence when it suits his purposes. He rejects evolution, although the evidence supporting evolutionary theory is overwhelming. He rejects the scientific and moral arguments for stem cell research. He has sidestepped doing anything about global climate change because he wants more "scientific evidence." We learned this past week that an official in his administration has been doctoring reports to minimize the evidence for global climate change. It's no coincidence this guy is connected to the oil and gas industry, as is Bush himself. It all boils down to profits. Admitting the evidence for global climate change means drastic changes in the way we do things in the United States and it means major hits to the profits of oil companies. The Washington Post talks about it in an editorial at www.washingtonpost.com:
"I'VE ALWAYS SAID it's a serious long-term issue," said President Bush on Tuesday, when asked about his climate change policy. "And my administration isn't waiting around to deal with the issue. We're acting." Clearly, the president's definition of "acting" is different from ours. For the past five years, Mr. Bush has responded to all talk of climate change with demands for more scientific evidence. Now, a former employee of the government office that coordinates climate change research has released documents showing that a White House aide has been doctoring official reports on climate change precisely to avoid "acting" on the scientific evidence. The aide, Philip A. Cooney -- chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- is alleged to have made dozens of changes to official reports, inserting qualifiers designed to cast doubt on findings about climate change and to play down the link between climate change and industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
TWENTY-FIVE CASES FOR IMPEACHMENT
The Declaration of Independence is one of the greatest documents in human history. In the Declaration Thomas Jefferson stated some of the most fundamental ideas that have made the United States great. He also laid out a damning case against King George III. In this article the author, inspired by Jefferson, lays out the case against a latter-day King George. The article by Gary Steven Corseri is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Among other things, the U.S. Declaration of Independence is a lengthy bill of particulars against the "abuses and usurpations" of King George III. If the revolutionary founders had had their own government, Jefferson would have used his writing skills to frame an impeachment bill. Among the "abuses" T.J. cited was the King's refusal to "Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." If the colonists were riled enough over taxes on stamps and tea to shake the world with revolution, what will their inheritors do with the "usurpations" of our present Chief Executive? As Jefferson wrote, "Let facts be submitted to a candid world":
THE BOTTOMLESS PIT OF MILITARY SPENDING
You'll often hear that nineteen cents of every tax dollar goes to defense spending. That's a vast understatement, according to this analysis. In fact, about two-thirds of every tax dollar goes to defense while all our other needs go unmet or unfunded at all. This article by Jurgen Brauer and Nicholas Anglewicz is at www.tompaine.com:
Many Americans believe that 19 cents on defense for every 81 cents on non-defense is a reasonable way to spend a tax dollar. But by another calculation, the tax dollar splits 68 cents for defense and 32 cents on everything else. It is a common misconception that U.S. defense expenditure is equivalent to the Department of Defense outlays. Instead of $436.4 billion of defense expenditure, as Congressional budgeteers count, government statisticians in the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) counted $548.0 billion for calendar year 2004-a whopping $112 billion difference. And by our own calculations, U.S. defense expenditure is much higher than even the BEA's numbers suggest, namely $765.6 billion in calendar year 2004-about $330 billion or 75 percent more than the Department of Defense outlays.
To account for the difference, one needs to recognize that, for example, nuclear weapons-related outlays are budgeted under the Department of Energy line item, not that of the Department of Defense. Likewise, Veterans Affairs has its own department and budget. It is a defense-related category, reflecting obligations incurred to American servicemen and women on account of past U.S. military activity. Picking through the budget, the BEA, housed in the Department of Commerce, reclassifies each line item into "defense" and "non-defense" categories. For calendar year 2004, national defense outlays thus amounted to the aforementioned $548.0 billion.
TRADE DEFICIT JUMPS AGAIN
During the Reagan years the United States went from being the world's leading creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation, and it keeps getting worse. According to a new report, the trade deficit in April reached almost $57 billion. Even countries can go bankrupt, and the irresponsible economic policies of the Bush administration are pushing us toward bankruptcy. One other point to note is that oil imports are among the big contributors to the trade deficit. That's yet another reason to lessen our dependency on fossil fuels. This article by MARTIN CRUTSINGER is at news.yahoo.com:
The U.S. trade deficit rose to $56.96 billion in April as a big jump in exports was swamped by record foreign oil prices and heavy American demand for imports.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that both exports and imports climbed to record levels. Imports rose 4.1 percent to $163.38 billion, led by a higher foreign oil bill.
Exports were up 3 percent to $106.42 billion, thanks to strong demand for American-made commercial aircraft, computer chips, industrial machinery and cars.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
JUNE 11, 2005
MILITARY RECRUITMENT DOWN AGAIN
Bush's unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are putting enormous strains on the U.S. military. Try as they may, the Bushies can't keep a lid on the nightmare that is Iraq. Even though they won't allow media coverage of the coffins coming home in the dead of night, you can't keep mass death a secret forever. How long do you think it will be before the military draft becomes a reality again? This story by Ann Scott Tyson is at www.washingtonpost.com:
The Army announced yesterday that it missed its recruiting goal for the fourth consecutive month, a deepening manpower crisis that officials said would require a dramatic summer push for recruits if the service is to avoid missing its annual enlistment target for the first time since 1999.
The Army will make a "monumental effort" to bring in the average 10,000 recruits a month required this summer, said Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, head of the Army's recruiting command. An additional 500 active-duty recruiters will be added in the next two months -- on top of an increase of 1,000 earlier this year.
GOOD NEWS FROM MONTANA
With the federal government controlled by right-wing reactionaries maybe the states will have to lead the way in moving us forward, whether it be on stem cell research, medical marijuana, a woman's right to choose, assisted suicide, or protecting the environment. There is good news out of Montana. Legislation has been passed insuring that everyone, no matter how poor, can have a lawyer. This article is at www.aclu.org:
The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the Montana Legislature's passage of groundbreaking public defender legislation that creates a new statewide office and guarantees constitutional rights to all Montanans, not just those who can afford to pay lawyers.
"A national movement is underway to protect the legal rights of poor people, and Montana is leading the charge," said Vincent Warren, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU who worked with the local ACLU to promote the law's passage. "A year ago, poor people accused of crimes in Montana regularly had the doors to justice slammed in their faces. Thankfully, for them today is a new day."
BUSH AND CHENEY SHOULD RESIGN
We have the most corrupt and most incompetent president and vice-president in our history. They stole the 2000 election and probably stole the election in 2004. Scandals are brewing everywhere, we're stuck in a bloodbath in Afghanistan and Iraq, deficits are astronomical, the gap between the rich and poor is at record levels, good jobs are disappearing like ice in the summer time, the Constitution has been trampled like a rug, and there is absolutely no action on dealing with global warming, the most serious issue ever to face the human race. These guys are not up to the job and they should never have been in power in the first place. It's time for them to step down. This article by Dan Froomkin shows that the American people are finally waking up to the nasty reality. This article is at www.washingtonpost.com:
When President Bush says "polls go up, and polls go down," he's about half right.
Two new public-opinion surveys show Bush's poll numbers are dropping into solidly negative territory.
In the just-out Associated Press/Ipsos poll , Bush's job approval ratings and the public's confidence in the direction he's taking the nation are both at their lowest levels ever.
A whopping 55 percent of those polled actually disapprove of the job he's doing, compared to 43 percent who approve.
Bush's "favorability" ratings have consistently been higher than his "approval" ratings, but even there, for the first time, there is trouble. This week's Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that 51 percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable impression of the president.
O'REILLY GETS IT WRONG AGAIN ON TAXES
Right-wing blowhard Bill O'Reilly is consistent at a few things. He's good at lying and he's good at making a jackass of himself. He made the outrageous claim that 50% of Americans don't pay federal income taxes and then went on to claim the other half is funding the "war on terror." This piece at mediamatters.org sets the record straight:
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly falsely asserted that "50 percent of Americans don't pay any federal income tax" and that therefore "the other half is waging the whole war on terror." He also claimed that the estate tax is "unconstitutional," an assertion the Supreme Court rejected in a 1921 decision that has been repeatedly upheld over the years.
While O'Reilly claimed that half of all Americans do not pay income taxes, figures from the Tax Policy Center show that only 37.2 percent of total tax units -- single people or married couples -- pay either zero or negative taxes, or do not file at all, leaving 62.8 percent who do pay taxes.
O'Reilly's claim that the "the other half is waging the whole war on terror" is also false. Most Americans are funding the federal government's expenses, including military spending and foreign aid, though Social Security payroll taxes. All wage-earning Americans pay Social Security taxes on those wages, and as the Congressional Budget Office explains: "Although separate taxes are collected for Social Security, the money left over after benefits are paid is used to fund other government programs or to pay down the debt held by the public." In 2004, that surplus was $151.1 billion, approximately 6.6 percent of the total outlays of the federal government. By contrast, President Bush requested $82 billion in February to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Previously, Congress had allocated $25 billion during fiscal 2005 for those operations.
MILITARY RECRUITMENT DOWN AGAIN
Bush's unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are putting enormous strains on the U.S. military. Try as they may, the Bushies can't keep a lid on the nightmare that is Iraq. Even though they won't allow media coverage of the coffins coming home in the dead of night, you can't keep mass death a secret forever. How long do you think it will be before the military draft becomes a reality again? This story by Ann Scott Tyson is at www.washingtonpost.com:
The Army announced yesterday that it missed its recruiting goal for the fourth consecutive month, a deepening manpower crisis that officials said would require a dramatic summer push for recruits if the service is to avoid missing its annual enlistment target for the first time since 1999.
The Army will make a "monumental effort" to bring in the average 10,000 recruits a month required this summer, said Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, head of the Army's recruiting command. An additional 500 active-duty recruiters will be added in the next two months -- on top of an increase of 1,000 earlier this year.
GOOD NEWS FROM MONTANA
With the federal government controlled by right-wing reactionaries maybe the states will have to lead the way in moving us forward, whether it be on stem cell research, medical marijuana, a woman's right to choose, assisted suicide, or protecting the environment. There is good news out of Montana. Legislation has been passed insuring that everyone, no matter how poor, can have a lawyer. This article is at www.aclu.org:
The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the Montana Legislature's passage of groundbreaking public defender legislation that creates a new statewide office and guarantees constitutional rights to all Montanans, not just those who can afford to pay lawyers.
"A national movement is underway to protect the legal rights of poor people, and Montana is leading the charge," said Vincent Warren, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU who worked with the local ACLU to promote the law's passage. "A year ago, poor people accused of crimes in Montana regularly had the doors to justice slammed in their faces. Thankfully, for them today is a new day."
BUSH AND CHENEY SHOULD RESIGN
We have the most corrupt and most incompetent president and vice-president in our history. They stole the 2000 election and probably stole the election in 2004. Scandals are brewing everywhere, we're stuck in a bloodbath in Afghanistan and Iraq, deficits are astronomical, the gap between the rich and poor is at record levels, good jobs are disappearing like ice in the summer time, the Constitution has been trampled like a rug, and there is absolutely no action on dealing with global warming, the most serious issue ever to face the human race. These guys are not up to the job and they should never have been in power in the first place. It's time for them to step down. This article by Dan Froomkin shows that the American people are finally waking up to the nasty reality. This article is at www.washingtonpost.com:
When President Bush says "polls go up, and polls go down," he's about half right.
Two new public-opinion surveys show Bush's poll numbers are dropping into solidly negative territory.
In the just-out Associated Press/Ipsos poll , Bush's job approval ratings and the public's confidence in the direction he's taking the nation are both at their lowest levels ever.
A whopping 55 percent of those polled actually disapprove of the job he's doing, compared to 43 percent who approve.
Bush's "favorability" ratings have consistently been higher than his "approval" ratings, but even there, for the first time, there is trouble. This week's Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that 51 percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable impression of the president.
O'REILLY GETS IT WRONG AGAIN ON TAXES
Right-wing blowhard Bill O'Reilly is consistent at a few things. He's good at lying and he's good at making a jackass of himself. He made the outrageous claim that 50% of Americans don't pay federal income taxes and then went on to claim the other half is funding the "war on terror." This piece at mediamatters.org sets the record straight:
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly falsely asserted that "50 percent of Americans don't pay any federal income tax" and that therefore "the other half is waging the whole war on terror." He also claimed that the estate tax is "unconstitutional," an assertion the Supreme Court rejected in a 1921 decision that has been repeatedly upheld over the years.
While O'Reilly claimed that half of all Americans do not pay income taxes, figures from the Tax Policy Center show that only 37.2 percent of total tax units -- single people or married couples -- pay either zero or negative taxes, or do not file at all, leaving 62.8 percent who do pay taxes.
O'Reilly's claim that the "the other half is waging the whole war on terror" is also false. Most Americans are funding the federal government's expenses, including military spending and foreign aid, though Social Security payroll taxes. All wage-earning Americans pay Social Security taxes on those wages, and as the Congressional Budget Office explains: "Although separate taxes are collected for Social Security, the money left over after benefits are paid is used to fund other government programs or to pay down the debt held by the public." In 2004, that surplus was $151.1 billion, approximately 6.6 percent of the total outlays of the federal government. By contrast, President Bush requested $82 billion in February to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Previously, Congress had allocated $25 billion during fiscal 2005 for those operations.
Friday, June 10, 2005
JUNE 10, 2005
THE POLITICS OF GREED
I have found it interesting that right-wingers who want to redistribute wealth to the already wealthy try to cloak themselves in righteousness. I remember a guy I used to work with who was a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. I remember this guy hitting me with the argument that a progressive income tax "punished the achievers." I never realized before that possessing a big bank account in and of itself made a person an achiever. That statement also strongly implies that anyone without a lot of money is a failure. Under that definition, some of the greatest people who ever walked the planet were dismal failures. Paul Krugman addresses the issues of a disappearing middle class and the Republican politics of greed in this column at www.nytimes.com:
Above all, the partisans engage in name-calling. To suggest that sustaining programs like Social Security, which protects working Americans from economic risk, should have priority over tax cuts for the rich is to practice "class warfare." To show concern over the growing inequality is to engage in the "politics of envy."
But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.
Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.
THE USUAL "CLASS ENVY" ARGUMENTS
You would think top right-wing "intellectuals" could come up with better arguments than "class envy" or "hating the rich" when you talk about the rich paying more taxes. But, alas, that seems not to be the case. In this column Jonathan Chait talks about some of the right-wing screeching in response to David Cay Johnston's articles in The New York Times. This column is at www.latimes.com:
The first two techniques were on vivid display in a recent column by Lawrence Kudlow, the CNBC talking head, occasional GOP advisor and high priest of the cult of supply-side economics. In a recent National Review Online column in which he was forced to acknowledge the higher incomes enjoyed by the super-rich, Kudlow fired off the following sarcastic ripostes to a New York Times article by reporter David Cay Johnston on the rich: "How dare they be successful earners and investors"; "Should we go out and shoot these 145,000 [taxpayers] for their success?"; and "Germans have an 'equality sickness' that makes them dependent on the welfare state. Is that what David Cay Johnston has in mind for America?"
GIVE TAX CUTS TO THE RICH, CUT HOUSING FOR THE POOR
The Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to cut Section 8 housing for the poor. We can spend billions of dollars on unnecessary wars, we can give massive tax cuts to the already wealthy, and we can throw money at boondoggles like space weaponry, but we can't help people afford something as fundamental as housing. This story by Dan Frosch is at www.alternet.org:
The Section 8 program, created in 1974 during the Nixon years, offers poor families a housing voucher to rent an apartment or home put on the market by participating landlords. With the voucher, a family only has to pay 30 percent of their adjusted income toward the rent, with the local housing authority paying for the balance with HUD money. Under HUD regulations, 75 percent of a housing authority’s vouchers must go to families making 30 percent or less of the median income in their area.
The program represents a vital lifeline for families with extremely low incomes who get the opportunity to move their family out of public housing in poor and often dangerous neighborhoods. Currently, more than two million families use Section 8 vouchers to pay a subsidized rent.
The Department of Housing, however, is planning to cut that lifeline.
BUSH HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO
I believe the Downing Street Memo is conclusive proof that the Bush administration and the British government under Tony Blair lied to justify a war against Iraq. The memo, which details the minutes of a meeting at the highest levels of the British government, shows that the U.S. and British governments acknowledged months before starting the war that Iraq posed little or no threat. The memo also shows that intelligence was being deliberately shaped to justify the war to the United Nations, the American people, and the British people. This is just one more brick in the towering wall of lies about Iraq, and Bush and Blair should have to come clean and face the legal consequences. This editorial is at www.sfgate.com:
PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words.
If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values.
The memo, recounting the details of a July 23, 2002, meeting at British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence on 10 Downing St., strongly suggested that the message had been sent across the Atlantic that the Bush White House had made the decision to wage war on Iraq. The minutes of the meeting indicated that Blair and his top-level intelligence and foreign-policy aides were given clear signals that military action was "inevitable."
In the most disturbing passage of the minutes, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, reporting on his recent trip to Washington, told the group that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
THE POLITICS OF GREED
I have found it interesting that right-wingers who want to redistribute wealth to the already wealthy try to cloak themselves in righteousness. I remember a guy I used to work with who was a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. I remember this guy hitting me with the argument that a progressive income tax "punished the achievers." I never realized before that possessing a big bank account in and of itself made a person an achiever. That statement also strongly implies that anyone without a lot of money is a failure. Under that definition, some of the greatest people who ever walked the planet were dismal failures. Paul Krugman addresses the issues of a disappearing middle class and the Republican politics of greed in this column at www.nytimes.com:
Above all, the partisans engage in name-calling. To suggest that sustaining programs like Social Security, which protects working Americans from economic risk, should have priority over tax cuts for the rich is to practice "class warfare." To show concern over the growing inequality is to engage in the "politics of envy."
But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.
Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.
THE USUAL "CLASS ENVY" ARGUMENTS
You would think top right-wing "intellectuals" could come up with better arguments than "class envy" or "hating the rich" when you talk about the rich paying more taxes. But, alas, that seems not to be the case. In this column Jonathan Chait talks about some of the right-wing screeching in response to David Cay Johnston's articles in The New York Times. This column is at www.latimes.com:
The first two techniques were on vivid display in a recent column by Lawrence Kudlow, the CNBC talking head, occasional GOP advisor and high priest of the cult of supply-side economics. In a recent National Review Online column in which he was forced to acknowledge the higher incomes enjoyed by the super-rich, Kudlow fired off the following sarcastic ripostes to a New York Times article by reporter David Cay Johnston on the rich: "How dare they be successful earners and investors"; "Should we go out and shoot these 145,000 [taxpayers] for their success?"; and "Germans have an 'equality sickness' that makes them dependent on the welfare state. Is that what David Cay Johnston has in mind for America?"
GIVE TAX CUTS TO THE RICH, CUT HOUSING FOR THE POOR
The Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to cut Section 8 housing for the poor. We can spend billions of dollars on unnecessary wars, we can give massive tax cuts to the already wealthy, and we can throw money at boondoggles like space weaponry, but we can't help people afford something as fundamental as housing. This story by Dan Frosch is at www.alternet.org:
The Section 8 program, created in 1974 during the Nixon years, offers poor families a housing voucher to rent an apartment or home put on the market by participating landlords. With the voucher, a family only has to pay 30 percent of their adjusted income toward the rent, with the local housing authority paying for the balance with HUD money. Under HUD regulations, 75 percent of a housing authority’s vouchers must go to families making 30 percent or less of the median income in their area.
The program represents a vital lifeline for families with extremely low incomes who get the opportunity to move their family out of public housing in poor and often dangerous neighborhoods. Currently, more than two million families use Section 8 vouchers to pay a subsidized rent.
The Department of Housing, however, is planning to cut that lifeline.
BUSH HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO
I believe the Downing Street Memo is conclusive proof that the Bush administration and the British government under Tony Blair lied to justify a war against Iraq. The memo, which details the minutes of a meeting at the highest levels of the British government, shows that the U.S. and British governments acknowledged months before starting the war that Iraq posed little or no threat. The memo also shows that intelligence was being deliberately shaped to justify the war to the United Nations, the American people, and the British people. This is just one more brick in the towering wall of lies about Iraq, and Bush and Blair should have to come clean and face the legal consequences. This editorial is at www.sfgate.com:
PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words.
If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values.
The memo, recounting the details of a July 23, 2002, meeting at British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence on 10 Downing St., strongly suggested that the message had been sent across the Atlantic that the Bush White House had made the decision to wage war on Iraq. The minutes of the meeting indicated that Blair and his top-level intelligence and foreign-policy aides were given clear signals that military action was "inevitable."
In the most disturbing passage of the minutes, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, reporting on his recent trip to Washington, told the group that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
JUNE 9, 2005
SOCIETY SUFFERS WHEN GOVERNMENT CATERS TO THE RICH
Thanks to Republican tax and economic policies, we see a few very rich people accumulating massive wealth while the majority of us who are less privileged are actually losing ground. This goes beyond such denigrating terms as "class envy" that right-wingers like to use. It means that a few people have more money than they can ever spend while programs that make society function get cut It's a moral and ethical outrage. Molly Ivins writes about it in this column at www.workingforchange.com:
Look, Medicare is being cut, Pell grants are way down, food stamps are being cut -- every day we get news from Washington that some new measure hurting the poor or the middle class has been put in place. At the same time, the country is running up a monstrous debt that will be passed to our children.
This is ruinous folly. This is not about class envy, it is about ridiculous, unfair and harmful public policy.
The Times has also been running a series on class in America. The bad news is that social mobility in this country -- the old Horatio Alger idea that we can get rich by working hard -- is less true now than it ever was. It turns out the American dream of moving up is now more likely to occur in Britain and France, those supposedly class-riddled countries. I suggest this has happened in large part because our government now functions as a fully paid arm of the wealthy and of corporate interests. The country is becoming internally calcified.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION SHOWS CONTEMPT FOR WORLD AGAIN
It's bad enough that George W. Bush appointed John Bolton to be the next U.N. ambassador. Now the Republican dominated Congress has voted to cut U.S. funding to the U.N. by half. Bush frequently used a U.N. resolution to justify the attack on Iraq, but like most right-wingers Bush really hates the U.N. It's not about national sovereignty, the way right-wingers will tell you, but it's about empire. You hope people around the world can see that Bush doesn't represent all Americans, but you have to wonder. This story by Jim Lobe is at www.commondreams.org:
In a move virtually certain to add to strains between the U.S. Congress and the United Nations, the International Relations Committee (HIRC) of the House of Representatives Wednesday approved a sweeping bill that, if passed into law, will require Washington to withhold up to half of assessed U.S. contributions to the world body unless it implements specific reforms.
Among other ”reforms,” The United Nations Reform Act of 2005, which is expected to be approved on the House floor next week, would also require the U.N. to fund most of its programs through voluntary contributions, rather than mandatory dues from its 191 member-states, and enable Washington to pick and choose those programs it wished to fund.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE AWFUL BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Sometimes you wish you could look into the future and see what the histories about this time will look like. That's assuming that this current generation isn't responsible for the extinction of life on this planet. I wonder if revisionists will be able to recast George W. Bush as a visionary leader who took huge gambles with foreign policy, the environment, and the U.S. economy. One hopes that historians will be honest about the massive corruption, the deception, and the blood lust of this administration. This article by Alan Bisbort gives a brief and candid summary of this rotten president and his administration. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
As Our Fearless Leader pedals his Pee Wee Herman bike more maniacally than usual these days, he's in desperate need of another monumentally weird news story to distract the nation "bigtime," as Dick Cheney would say. His approval ratings are in the low 40s (in the 30s on Social Security); Iraq refuses to behave the way he fantasized it; Congress has defied him on stem cells and lunatic-fringe judges; John Bolton and his moustache are on ice; prisoners have been tortured on his watch; dead bodies are piled in mounds everywhere he looks.
Poor boy. It's a wonder he doesn't just hide out on his ranch with his pillow over his head blissfully ignoring reality the way he ignored classes at Yale, his military commitment, his failed businesses, even his baseball team. If things get any worse, he may have to rename his ranch NeverNeverLand and invite young boys in for sleepovers.
SOCIETY SUFFERS WHEN GOVERNMENT CATERS TO THE RICH
Thanks to Republican tax and economic policies, we see a few very rich people accumulating massive wealth while the majority of us who are less privileged are actually losing ground. This goes beyond such denigrating terms as "class envy" that right-wingers like to use. It means that a few people have more money than they can ever spend while programs that make society function get cut It's a moral and ethical outrage. Molly Ivins writes about it in this column at www.workingforchange.com:
Look, Medicare is being cut, Pell grants are way down, food stamps are being cut -- every day we get news from Washington that some new measure hurting the poor or the middle class has been put in place. At the same time, the country is running up a monstrous debt that will be passed to our children.
This is ruinous folly. This is not about class envy, it is about ridiculous, unfair and harmful public policy.
The Times has also been running a series on class in America. The bad news is that social mobility in this country -- the old Horatio Alger idea that we can get rich by working hard -- is less true now than it ever was. It turns out the American dream of moving up is now more likely to occur in Britain and France, those supposedly class-riddled countries. I suggest this has happened in large part because our government now functions as a fully paid arm of the wealthy and of corporate interests. The country is becoming internally calcified.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION SHOWS CONTEMPT FOR WORLD AGAIN
It's bad enough that George W. Bush appointed John Bolton to be the next U.N. ambassador. Now the Republican dominated Congress has voted to cut U.S. funding to the U.N. by half. Bush frequently used a U.N. resolution to justify the attack on Iraq, but like most right-wingers Bush really hates the U.N. It's not about national sovereignty, the way right-wingers will tell you, but it's about empire. You hope people around the world can see that Bush doesn't represent all Americans, but you have to wonder. This story by Jim Lobe is at www.commondreams.org:
In a move virtually certain to add to strains between the U.S. Congress and the United Nations, the International Relations Committee (HIRC) of the House of Representatives Wednesday approved a sweeping bill that, if passed into law, will require Washington to withhold up to half of assessed U.S. contributions to the world body unless it implements specific reforms.
Among other ”reforms,” The United Nations Reform Act of 2005, which is expected to be approved on the House floor next week, would also require the U.N. to fund most of its programs through voluntary contributions, rather than mandatory dues from its 191 member-states, and enable Washington to pick and choose those programs it wished to fund.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE AWFUL BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Sometimes you wish you could look into the future and see what the histories about this time will look like. That's assuming that this current generation isn't responsible for the extinction of life on this planet. I wonder if revisionists will be able to recast George W. Bush as a visionary leader who took huge gambles with foreign policy, the environment, and the U.S. economy. One hopes that historians will be honest about the massive corruption, the deception, and the blood lust of this administration. This article by Alan Bisbort gives a brief and candid summary of this rotten president and his administration. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
As Our Fearless Leader pedals his Pee Wee Herman bike more maniacally than usual these days, he's in desperate need of another monumentally weird news story to distract the nation "bigtime," as Dick Cheney would say. His approval ratings are in the low 40s (in the 30s on Social Security); Iraq refuses to behave the way he fantasized it; Congress has defied him on stem cells and lunatic-fringe judges; John Bolton and his moustache are on ice; prisoners have been tortured on his watch; dead bodies are piled in mounds everywhere he looks.
Poor boy. It's a wonder he doesn't just hide out on his ranch with his pillow over his head blissfully ignoring reality the way he ignored classes at Yale, his military commitment, his failed businesses, even his baseball team. If things get any worse, he may have to rename his ranch NeverNeverLand and invite young boys in for sleepovers.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
JUNE 8, 2005
BUSH DIDN'T SIGN KYOTO BECAUSE OF OIL COMPANY PRESSURE
The designation "fossil fuels" applies to the executives of oil companies too. Even though there is overwhelming evidence for global warming, big oil companies want to deny the obvious because it hurts their bottom lines. They also are only too willing to use politicians like George W. Bush to block any attempts to find alternative energy sources. This story by John Vidal is at www.commondreams.org:
President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.
The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.
In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.
BUSH CAN BE BOUGHT
Joe McGinnis wrote a book about one of Richard M. Nixon's presidential campaigns called The Selling of the President. The McGinnis book dealt with the media campaign to get Nixon into the White House. Maybe someone can write a book now about George W. Bush called The Buying of the President. Mr. Bush seems ready and willing to be sold to the highest bidder. This story by Lou Dubose shows how a high-powered lobbyist named Jack Abramhoff and political flunkie Grover Norquist have been selling time for clients to see Mr. Bush up close and personal. This isn't the way democracy works. This story is at www.tompaine.com:
Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.
BUSH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND BIG TOBACCO
You begin to notice a pattern with the Bush administration. Big corporations that can make big campaign contributions seem to get an awful lot of breaks, whether it be deregulation, tax breaks, or fishy-smelling deals from the Justice Department. This story talks about how the Justice Department is settling a huge judgment against Big Tobacco for about eight percent of the expected penalty. Never mind that Big Tobacco has knowingly marketed a product that is addictive, causes excruciating health problems, and kills people. This story by Carol D. Leonnig is at www.washingtonpost.com:
After eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers abruptly upset a landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry yesterday by asking for less than 8 percent of the expected penalty.
As he concluded closing arguments in the six-year-old lawsuit, Justice Department lawyer Stephen D. Brody shocked tobacco company representatives and anti-tobacco activists by announcing that the government will not seek the $130 billion that a government expert had testified was necessary to fund smoking-cessation programs. Instead, Brody said, the Justice Department will ask tobacco companies to pay $10 billion over five years to help millions of Americans quit smoking.
BUSH DIDN'T SIGN KYOTO BECAUSE OF OIL COMPANY PRESSURE
The designation "fossil fuels" applies to the executives of oil companies too. Even though there is overwhelming evidence for global warming, big oil companies want to deny the obvious because it hurts their bottom lines. They also are only too willing to use politicians like George W. Bush to block any attempts to find alternative energy sources. This story by John Vidal is at www.commondreams.org:
President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.
The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.
In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.
BUSH CAN BE BOUGHT
Joe McGinnis wrote a book about one of Richard M. Nixon's presidential campaigns called The Selling of the President. The McGinnis book dealt with the media campaign to get Nixon into the White House. Maybe someone can write a book now about George W. Bush called The Buying of the President. Mr. Bush seems ready and willing to be sold to the highest bidder. This story by Lou Dubose shows how a high-powered lobbyist named Jack Abramhoff and political flunkie Grover Norquist have been selling time for clients to see Mr. Bush up close and personal. This isn't the way democracy works. This story is at www.tompaine.com:
Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.
BUSH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND BIG TOBACCO
You begin to notice a pattern with the Bush administration. Big corporations that can make big campaign contributions seem to get an awful lot of breaks, whether it be deregulation, tax breaks, or fishy-smelling deals from the Justice Department. This story talks about how the Justice Department is settling a huge judgment against Big Tobacco for about eight percent of the expected penalty. Never mind that Big Tobacco has knowingly marketed a product that is addictive, causes excruciating health problems, and kills people. This story by Carol D. Leonnig is at www.washingtonpost.com:
After eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers abruptly upset a landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry yesterday by asking for less than 8 percent of the expected penalty.
As he concluded closing arguments in the six-year-old lawsuit, Justice Department lawyer Stephen D. Brody shocked tobacco company representatives and anti-tobacco activists by announcing that the government will not seek the $130 billion that a government expert had testified was necessary to fund smoking-cessation programs. Instead, Brody said, the Justice Department will ask tobacco companies to pay $10 billion over five years to help millions of Americans quit smoking.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
JUNE 7, 2005
EUROPEANS HAVE A GREAT MODEL
Many of us in the United States have ancestry dating back to Europe. Maybe it's time we learn some lessons from our cousins across the sea when it comes to balance between private life and work life. In the United States we have become slaves to the "free market," working harder and harder and having little or no time to enjoy a quality of life. This article by Linda McQuaig is at www.thestar.com:
In fact, European-style social welfare systems do nothing to prevent a country from being highly competitive in the modern world.
If you doubt this, check out the latest findings of the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, which ranks the economic competitiveness of more than 100 countries around the globe. Among the top six globally competitive nations are four European countries that have extremely comprehensive social welfare systems - Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Altogether, 15 European countries rank in the top 30.
Right-wing commentators find it best to ignore this reality. It's easy to see why - it utterly destroys their argument that generous social welfare systems undermine competitiveness.
BAD POLL NUMBERS FOR BUSH
This new poll from The Washington Post and ABC News shows really bad news for Bush and his Republican cohorts. People are increasingly concerned over the quagmire in Iraq and the lousy economy. I have to wonder why it took so long. This story by Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Overall, more than half-- 52 percent -- disapprove of how Bush is handling his job. A somewhat larger majority-56 percent-- disapproved of Republicans in Congress and an identical proportion disapproved of Democrats.
However, there were signs that Bush and Republicans in Congress were receiving more of the blame for the recent standoffs over such issues as Bush's judicial nominees and Social Security. Six in ten respondents said Bush and GOP leaders are not making good progress on the nation's problems; of those, 67 percent blamed the president and Republicans while 13 percent blamed congressional Democrats. For the first time, a majority, 55 percent, also said Bush has done more to divide the country than to unite it.
U.S. LEADS WORLD IN WEAPONS
In the brief heady days following the collapse of the old Soviet Union it looked as though the human race might have turned a corner. We in the U.S. were going to enjoy a "peace dividend." It looked like we might back away from the nuclear precipice. A new report shows that spending for weapons in the world rose for a sixth straight year, and the United States, our supposedly Christian nation, leads the way. This story by Peter Starck is at www.commondreams.org:
World military spending rose for a sixth year running in 2004, growing by 5 percent to $1.04 trillion on the back of "massive" U.S. budgetary allocations for its war on terror, a leading research institute said on Tuesday.
But world military expenditure was still 6 percent below all-time highs recorded in 1987-88 toward the end of the Cold War, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its annual yearbook.
With expenditure of $455 billion, the United States accounted for almost half the global figure, more than the combined total of the 32 next most powerful nations, said SIPRI, which is widely recognized for the reliability of its data.
BUSH OFFICIAL PHONIED UP GLOBAL WARMING REPORTS
In the Bush administration if you don't like environmental reports you just take out the blue pencil and edit out all the information you don't like. This story is about a guy named Philip A. Cooney, who had oil industry connections, and how he excised information from environmental reports showing a connection between greenhouse gases and global warming. Think of it this way: if someone was putting little portions of poison into your food and drinking water, gradually killing you and your family, would you consider that person a murderer? That's exactly what the greedheads in the Bush administration are doing to us and our planet. This story by Andrew C. Revkin is at www.nytimes.com:
A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved.
EUROPEANS HAVE A GREAT MODEL
Many of us in the United States have ancestry dating back to Europe. Maybe it's time we learn some lessons from our cousins across the sea when it comes to balance between private life and work life. In the United States we have become slaves to the "free market," working harder and harder and having little or no time to enjoy a quality of life. This article by Linda McQuaig is at www.thestar.com:
In fact, European-style social welfare systems do nothing to prevent a country from being highly competitive in the modern world.
If you doubt this, check out the latest findings of the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, which ranks the economic competitiveness of more than 100 countries around the globe. Among the top six globally competitive nations are four European countries that have extremely comprehensive social welfare systems - Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Altogether, 15 European countries rank in the top 30.
Right-wing commentators find it best to ignore this reality. It's easy to see why - it utterly destroys their argument that generous social welfare systems undermine competitiveness.
BAD POLL NUMBERS FOR BUSH
This new poll from The Washington Post and ABC News shows really bad news for Bush and his Republican cohorts. People are increasingly concerned over the quagmire in Iraq and the lousy economy. I have to wonder why it took so long. This story by Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Overall, more than half-- 52 percent -- disapprove of how Bush is handling his job. A somewhat larger majority-56 percent-- disapproved of Republicans in Congress and an identical proportion disapproved of Democrats.
However, there were signs that Bush and Republicans in Congress were receiving more of the blame for the recent standoffs over such issues as Bush's judicial nominees and Social Security. Six in ten respondents said Bush and GOP leaders are not making good progress on the nation's problems; of those, 67 percent blamed the president and Republicans while 13 percent blamed congressional Democrats. For the first time, a majority, 55 percent, also said Bush has done more to divide the country than to unite it.
U.S. LEADS WORLD IN WEAPONS
In the brief heady days following the collapse of the old Soviet Union it looked as though the human race might have turned a corner. We in the U.S. were going to enjoy a "peace dividend." It looked like we might back away from the nuclear precipice. A new report shows that spending for weapons in the world rose for a sixth straight year, and the United States, our supposedly Christian nation, leads the way. This story by Peter Starck is at www.commondreams.org:
World military spending rose for a sixth year running in 2004, growing by 5 percent to $1.04 trillion on the back of "massive" U.S. budgetary allocations for its war on terror, a leading research institute said on Tuesday.
But world military expenditure was still 6 percent below all-time highs recorded in 1987-88 toward the end of the Cold War, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its annual yearbook.
With expenditure of $455 billion, the United States accounted for almost half the global figure, more than the combined total of the 32 next most powerful nations, said SIPRI, which is widely recognized for the reliability of its data.
BUSH OFFICIAL PHONIED UP GLOBAL WARMING REPORTS
In the Bush administration if you don't like environmental reports you just take out the blue pencil and edit out all the information you don't like. This story is about a guy named Philip A. Cooney, who had oil industry connections, and how he excised information from environmental reports showing a connection between greenhouse gases and global warming. Think of it this way: if someone was putting little portions of poison into your food and drinking water, gradually killing you and your family, would you consider that person a murderer? That's exactly what the greedheads in the Bush administration are doing to us and our planet. This story by Andrew C. Revkin is at www.nytimes.com:
A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved.
Monday, June 06, 2005
JUNE 6, 2005
REMEMBER D-DAY
FUNDIES DISRESPECT THE FOUNDING FATHERS
Christian fundamentalists who would like to discard the doctrine of separation of church and state are creating an incendiary situation that could backfire on them. They're also disregarding and disrespecting the founding fathers of this country, who clearly saw the danger of mixing religion and politics. Harvey Wasserman has some thoughts at www.freepress.org:
The right-wing's multi-front war on American democracy now aims at our core belief in separation of church and state. It includes an attempt to say the founding fathers endorsed the idea that this is a "Christian nation," with an official religion.
But the founders---and a vast majority of Americans---repeatedly, vehemently and with stunning clarity denounced, rejected and despised such beliefs.
Nowhere in the Constitution they wrote does the word "Christian" or the name of Christ appear. The very first phrase of the First Amendment demands that "Congress shall make no law concerning an establishment of religion."
TAX SCAMS FOR BUSH DONORS BEING PROBED
You have to think that maybe greed is like drug addiction. The very rich have more money than they could ever spend, but they keep looking for ways to amass even more money, whether it be by moving jobs to countries with dirt cheap labor and benefits, buying off favorable politicians, or looking to dodge taxes. This article talks about some of George W. Bush's big donors and the bob and weave tax dodge. This article by Jason Nisse is at www.truthout.org:
The Manhattan District Attorney, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are jointly probing a tax-shelter plan run out of the Isle of Man.
The scheme, devised by one of America's biggest banks and used by two billionaire donors to George Bush's election campaign among others, is being probed for possible breaches of securities and anti-money-laundering rules.
The investigating bodies believed that up to $100m (£55m) of tax was saved through one scheme alone, and as much as $700m in taxes may have been avoided over an 11-year period. The scheme involved executives and corporations handing over stock to trusts that they declared they neither owned nor controlled. When the options were cashed in, no tax was payable. However, the IRS changed the rules in 2003 to say that tax should be paid anyway.
In the previous 11 years, tax schemes were marketed by Bank of America to at least 42 corporations.
THE REPUBLICAN ART OF PROPAGANDA
Have you ever had the experience of having a song going through your mind repeatedly, even though you wish it would stop? That, in some ways, is the way Republicans have used the major media. You take a few basic hot button themes and you repeat the same lies over and over. You can even get your opponents to frame the debate using your language. Take, for instance, the estate tax. Republicans rechristened it the "death tax" and even media people were using the phrase "death tax," which was absurd on its face. In this article by Anthony Wade there is a discussion of the need to totally remake the media, among other things. The article is at www.opednews.com:
Media “reform” is crucial as well. The right wing has done a masterful, over decades, of building a massive media machine. I have written on this many times. It is multi-faceted and its main purpose is to generate propaganda, not news. It is the art of taking opinion, and turning it into news. It is the art of being repetitive. If you say something enough, it resonates. Look at the current situation in the world. Most Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911, when nothing could be further from the truth. Most believe that Al Gore said he invented the Internet, when he said no such thing. Most believe that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were buddies, when they actually were diametrically opposed. Recently, we saw what I call the Corporate Media, report about how we caught the number 3 guy in al Qaeda. It was reported all over the news, in print, and on the talk show circuit for days. Then it was revealed that we did NOT catch the number 3 guy in al Qaeda, we caught their clerk (essentially). The connection for this story is obvious as right before this story broke, the Bushies were under intense pressure about the latest terrorism numbers which indicated that 2004 was the worst year in 19 years for terrorist activity. When the truth came out that we did not catch the number 3 guy, the media was silent. THAT is the Corporate Media in action. You will remember the lie, not the truth.
PARTY HACK MAKES FOOL OF HIMSELF AGAIN
There's a local far right correspondent to The Fresno Bee who is a Republican party functionary. I simply call him Party Hack. Today Party Hack has a letter attacking the public employee unions for the "fiscal mess" in California and putting all the blame on former Governor Gray Davis. He doesn't mention how former Republican Governor Pete Wilson signed legislation deregulating energy in California. It was legislation that benefited Enron, that good friend of George W. Bush, and the phony energy crisis in California a few years ago did much to create our fiscal woes. He also doesn't mention the absolutely disastrous fiscal policies of the Bush administration, which have done far more to create our "fiscal mess" than anything done by the public employee unions. But that's the function of Party Hack, to dissemble (Bush's word), and to scatter as much propaganda as possible.
REPUBLICANS LOVE THE CHASM BETWEEN RICH AND POOR
I think of a line from George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. The pigs emerge as the new leaders on Animal Farm and their early rhetoric is that "all animals are equal." Later on, after they've gathered the power to themselves and their clique, the language changes to "some animals are more equal than others." That's life in the U.S. of A. You'll hear all the hot air about social mobility in the United States, but increasingly there is no social mobility. It's our own form of caste system. Bob Herbert writes about it in his column at www.nytimes.com:
As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the gap between the rich and the rest of us is not growing fast enough. An analysis by The Times showed the following:
"Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000. Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000."
The social dislocations resulting from this war that nobody mentions have been under way for some time. But the Bush economic policies have accelerated the consequences and intensified the pain.
BILL MOYERS ON THE DISAPPEARING AMERICAN DREAM
Near the end of the 19th century there was an era in American history called the Gilded Age. It was a time of immense wealth for a few and poverty for the many. We are seeing a second Gilded Age with Republicans in power. It was enraging during the Reagan and Bush I years, but now it has gone beyond enraging. Bill Moyers gave an address at the Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C.. The speech is published at www.alternet.org:
You know the story: For years now a relatively small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income as large economic and financial institutions obtained unprecedented levels of power over daily life. In 1960 the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30-fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold. (See Joshua Holland, AlterNet, posted 4/25/05.)
Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if everyone were benefiting proportionally. But that's not the case. Statistics tell the story. Yes, I know -- statistics can cause the eyes to glaze over, but as one of my mentors once reminded me, "It is the mark of a truly educated man [or woman] to be deeply moved by statistics."
Let's see if these statistics move you.
REMEMBER D-DAY
FUNDIES DISRESPECT THE FOUNDING FATHERS
Christian fundamentalists who would like to discard the doctrine of separation of church and state are creating an incendiary situation that could backfire on them. They're also disregarding and disrespecting the founding fathers of this country, who clearly saw the danger of mixing religion and politics. Harvey Wasserman has some thoughts at www.freepress.org:
The right-wing's multi-front war on American democracy now aims at our core belief in separation of church and state. It includes an attempt to say the founding fathers endorsed the idea that this is a "Christian nation," with an official religion.
But the founders---and a vast majority of Americans---repeatedly, vehemently and with stunning clarity denounced, rejected and despised such beliefs.
Nowhere in the Constitution they wrote does the word "Christian" or the name of Christ appear. The very first phrase of the First Amendment demands that "Congress shall make no law concerning an establishment of religion."
TAX SCAMS FOR BUSH DONORS BEING PROBED
You have to think that maybe greed is like drug addiction. The very rich have more money than they could ever spend, but they keep looking for ways to amass even more money, whether it be by moving jobs to countries with dirt cheap labor and benefits, buying off favorable politicians, or looking to dodge taxes. This article talks about some of George W. Bush's big donors and the bob and weave tax dodge. This article by Jason Nisse is at www.truthout.org:
The Manhattan District Attorney, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are jointly probing a tax-shelter plan run out of the Isle of Man.
The scheme, devised by one of America's biggest banks and used by two billionaire donors to George Bush's election campaign among others, is being probed for possible breaches of securities and anti-money-laundering rules.
The investigating bodies believed that up to $100m (£55m) of tax was saved through one scheme alone, and as much as $700m in taxes may have been avoided over an 11-year period. The scheme involved executives and corporations handing over stock to trusts that they declared they neither owned nor controlled. When the options were cashed in, no tax was payable. However, the IRS changed the rules in 2003 to say that tax should be paid anyway.
In the previous 11 years, tax schemes were marketed by Bank of America to at least 42 corporations.
THE REPUBLICAN ART OF PROPAGANDA
Have you ever had the experience of having a song going through your mind repeatedly, even though you wish it would stop? That, in some ways, is the way Republicans have used the major media. You take a few basic hot button themes and you repeat the same lies over and over. You can even get your opponents to frame the debate using your language. Take, for instance, the estate tax. Republicans rechristened it the "death tax" and even media people were using the phrase "death tax," which was absurd on its face. In this article by Anthony Wade there is a discussion of the need to totally remake the media, among other things. The article is at www.opednews.com:
Media “reform” is crucial as well. The right wing has done a masterful, over decades, of building a massive media machine. I have written on this many times. It is multi-faceted and its main purpose is to generate propaganda, not news. It is the art of taking opinion, and turning it into news. It is the art of being repetitive. If you say something enough, it resonates. Look at the current situation in the world. Most Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911, when nothing could be further from the truth. Most believe that Al Gore said he invented the Internet, when he said no such thing. Most believe that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were buddies, when they actually were diametrically opposed. Recently, we saw what I call the Corporate Media, report about how we caught the number 3 guy in al Qaeda. It was reported all over the news, in print, and on the talk show circuit for days. Then it was revealed that we did NOT catch the number 3 guy in al Qaeda, we caught their clerk (essentially). The connection for this story is obvious as right before this story broke, the Bushies were under intense pressure about the latest terrorism numbers which indicated that 2004 was the worst year in 19 years for terrorist activity. When the truth came out that we did not catch the number 3 guy, the media was silent. THAT is the Corporate Media in action. You will remember the lie, not the truth.
PARTY HACK MAKES FOOL OF HIMSELF AGAIN
There's a local far right correspondent to The Fresno Bee who is a Republican party functionary. I simply call him Party Hack. Today Party Hack has a letter attacking the public employee unions for the "fiscal mess" in California and putting all the blame on former Governor Gray Davis. He doesn't mention how former Republican Governor Pete Wilson signed legislation deregulating energy in California. It was legislation that benefited Enron, that good friend of George W. Bush, and the phony energy crisis in California a few years ago did much to create our fiscal woes. He also doesn't mention the absolutely disastrous fiscal policies of the Bush administration, which have done far more to create our "fiscal mess" than anything done by the public employee unions. But that's the function of Party Hack, to dissemble (Bush's word), and to scatter as much propaganda as possible.
REPUBLICANS LOVE THE CHASM BETWEEN RICH AND POOR
I think of a line from George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. The pigs emerge as the new leaders on Animal Farm and their early rhetoric is that "all animals are equal." Later on, after they've gathered the power to themselves and their clique, the language changes to "some animals are more equal than others." That's life in the U.S. of A. You'll hear all the hot air about social mobility in the United States, but increasingly there is no social mobility. It's our own form of caste system. Bob Herbert writes about it in his column at www.nytimes.com:
As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the gap between the rich and the rest of us is not growing fast enough. An analysis by The Times showed the following:
"Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000. Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000."
The social dislocations resulting from this war that nobody mentions have been under way for some time. But the Bush economic policies have accelerated the consequences and intensified the pain.
BILL MOYERS ON THE DISAPPEARING AMERICAN DREAM
Near the end of the 19th century there was an era in American history called the Gilded Age. It was a time of immense wealth for a few and poverty for the many. We are seeing a second Gilded Age with Republicans in power. It was enraging during the Reagan and Bush I years, but now it has gone beyond enraging. Bill Moyers gave an address at the Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C.. The speech is published at www.alternet.org:
You know the story: For years now a relatively small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income as large economic and financial institutions obtained unprecedented levels of power over daily life. In 1960 the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30-fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold. (See Joshua Holland, AlterNet, posted 4/25/05.)
Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if everyone were benefiting proportionally. But that's not the case. Statistics tell the story. Yes, I know -- statistics can cause the eyes to glaze over, but as one of my mentors once reminded me, "It is the mark of a truly educated man [or woman] to be deeply moved by statistics."
Let's see if these statistics move you.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
JUNE 5, 2005
ANEMIC JOB CREATION AGAIN
Trickle down economics really works, doesn't it? The latest jobs report shows just 78,000 jobs created in the last month. Where is all that investment the wealthy are supposed to make when they get their fat tax cuts? How long are we going to buy into this scam? This article by Paul Craig Roberts is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In May the Bush economy eked out a paltry 73,000 private sector jobs: 20,000 jobs in construction (primarily for Mexican immigrants), 21,000 jobs in wholesale and retail trade, and 32,500 jobs in health care and social assistance. Local government added 5,000 for a grand total of 78,000.
Not a single one of these jobs produces an exportable good or service. With Americans increasingly divorced from the production of the goods and services that they consume, Americans have no way to pay for their consumption except by handing over to foreigners more of their accumulated stock of wealth. The country continues to eat its seed corn.
THE VERY RICH ARE DOING VERY WELL
To hear right-wingers tell it the very rich got there by being harder working, more innovative, thriftier, and all around good souls. They never mention luck or ruthlessness or stepping on other people. They also don't mention that the great divide between the very rich and everyone else is a threat to democracy because the very rich have so much more influence over the political and legal system. This article by David Cay Johnston is at www.nytimes.com:
When F. Scott Fitzgerald pronounced that the very rich "are different from you and me," Ernest Hemingway's famously dismissive response was: "Yes, they have more money." Today he might well add: much, much, much more money.
The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population, an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Call them the hyper-rich.
TOM FRIEDMAN THINKS YOU AND I ARE LAZY
Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist, is a mouthpiece for the power elite in this country. While they enjoy their investment incomes, their country club lifestyles, and other accouterments of the well off, they don't think you and I work hard enough. Forty hours a week and having weekends off is positively socialist. David Sirota has an item about Mr. Friedman and Friedman's condemnation of the thirty-five hour work week in Europe. This item is from www.davidsirota.com:
Friedman may call his column "Race to the Top" - but what he's describing in no uncertain terms is a race to the bottom. I'd like to see him work 70 hours a week at a minimum wage job while trying to balance family needs, and then see whether his attitude might change a bit from the well-paid confines of his cushy job as a columnist.
THE GROPER AND SPECIAL INTERESTS
Governor Groper has frequently spouted off about "special interests" in California. It's a coded reference to unions mostly. The Groper wants to lay the blame for budget deficits on those greedy firemen, nurses, and teachers. He never talks about the corporate special interests whose bidding he wants to do. This article by Robert Salladay is at www.latimes.com:
When wealthy contributors write checks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, they often get a few canapes and a drink — and a secret telephone number that grants them access to his closest advisors and even the governor himself.
Twice a month, donors can become insiders' insiders — invited to participate in conference calls featuring information about Schwarzenegger campaign strategy that his political enemies would love to have. In turn, donors who dial in can give the governor advice.
ANEMIC JOB CREATION AGAIN
Trickle down economics really works, doesn't it? The latest jobs report shows just 78,000 jobs created in the last month. Where is all that investment the wealthy are supposed to make when they get their fat tax cuts? How long are we going to buy into this scam? This article by Paul Craig Roberts is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In May the Bush economy eked out a paltry 73,000 private sector jobs: 20,000 jobs in construction (primarily for Mexican immigrants), 21,000 jobs in wholesale and retail trade, and 32,500 jobs in health care and social assistance. Local government added 5,000 for a grand total of 78,000.
Not a single one of these jobs produces an exportable good or service. With Americans increasingly divorced from the production of the goods and services that they consume, Americans have no way to pay for their consumption except by handing over to foreigners more of their accumulated stock of wealth. The country continues to eat its seed corn.
THE VERY RICH ARE DOING VERY WELL
To hear right-wingers tell it the very rich got there by being harder working, more innovative, thriftier, and all around good souls. They never mention luck or ruthlessness or stepping on other people. They also don't mention that the great divide between the very rich and everyone else is a threat to democracy because the very rich have so much more influence over the political and legal system. This article by David Cay Johnston is at www.nytimes.com:
When F. Scott Fitzgerald pronounced that the very rich "are different from you and me," Ernest Hemingway's famously dismissive response was: "Yes, they have more money." Today he might well add: much, much, much more money.
The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population, an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Call them the hyper-rich.
TOM FRIEDMAN THINKS YOU AND I ARE LAZY
Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist, is a mouthpiece for the power elite in this country. While they enjoy their investment incomes, their country club lifestyles, and other accouterments of the well off, they don't think you and I work hard enough. Forty hours a week and having weekends off is positively socialist. David Sirota has an item about Mr. Friedman and Friedman's condemnation of the thirty-five hour work week in Europe. This item is from www.davidsirota.com:
Friedman may call his column "Race to the Top" - but what he's describing in no uncertain terms is a race to the bottom. I'd like to see him work 70 hours a week at a minimum wage job while trying to balance family needs, and then see whether his attitude might change a bit from the well-paid confines of his cushy job as a columnist.
THE GROPER AND SPECIAL INTERESTS
Governor Groper has frequently spouted off about "special interests" in California. It's a coded reference to unions mostly. The Groper wants to lay the blame for budget deficits on those greedy firemen, nurses, and teachers. He never talks about the corporate special interests whose bidding he wants to do. This article by Robert Salladay is at www.latimes.com:
When wealthy contributors write checks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, they often get a few canapes and a drink — and a secret telephone number that grants them access to his closest advisors and even the governor himself.
Twice a month, donors can become insiders' insiders — invited to participate in conference calls featuring information about Schwarzenegger campaign strategy that his political enemies would love to have. In turn, donors who dial in can give the governor advice.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
JUNE 4, 2005
BUSH ADMINISTRATION: FOXES IN THE HENHOUSE
For a good part of my life I've heard right-wingers proclaim the horrors of "big government" and wasteful spending, especially any spending for social programs. But any fraud in social programs pales in comparison to the looting that's taking place under the Bush administration, whether it be no-bid contracts for Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, or the huge boondoggle that is the Department of Homeland Security. This article talks how money supposedly used to protect the country from terrorism has been used instead to buy decorations and appliances. This article from the Associated Press is at www.usatoday.com:
Investigations by the Homeland Security Department's internal watchdog yielded the arrests of 146 workers and grant recipients and identified $18.5 million in unsupported costs during a six-month period that began last fall.
The semiannual report to Congress, issued by Homeland Security's inspector general, details findings of 325 internal investigations, audits and inspections between October 2004 and March 2005. A copy of the 54-page report, which has not yet been released publicly, was obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
RUMSFELD THY NAME IS HYPOCRITE
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may need to be a padded room. The guy just amazes me with some of the inane and breathtakingly hypocritical things he says. He was criticizing China for an arms buildup, saying that China isn't threatened by any other nation. This is while the U.S. continues to amass new and terrible weapons of mass destruction, including militarizing space. Rumsfeld should also bear in mind that China is financing the gargantuan deficits being run up by the Bush administration. If the Chinese pull the plug, I wonder what the Bushies have in mind. This article by Matt Kelley is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Saturday said China is not a threat to the United States but is building up its military without being threatened by any other country.
Rumsfeld challenged China at a regional security conference here, particularly its placing hundreds of missiles in range of Taiwan. He said China was also sharply increasing its military spending and buying large amounts of sophisticated weapons.
AMERICANS WALLOW IN SUPERSTITION
It has been 80 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee when reason seemed to triumph over superstition. But the reports of superstition's death were greatly exaggerated. Americans are still ready to believe in angels and devils and deny all the scientific evidence supporting evolution by a large margin. Republicans have been able to exploit the belief in primitive superstition. This author makes the case for opposing fundamentalist religion itself. This article by Matt Taibbi is at www.nypress.com:
What organized political resistance fundamentalists do encounter comes in the form of groups that oppose their political objectives, not Christianity itself. Even pro-choice groups like NARAL, which come into direct and often violent contact with Christians, restrict themselves to agitation for abortion rights, and leave the issue of their opponents' religion alone. In general, there is almost no public figure, anywhere, who has ever suggested publicly that fundamentalist Christianity, as a thing-in-itself, should be opposed. The strongest suggestion most critics will make is to say that it should be contained, and indeed that seems to be the best-case strategy of progressives: that the God-fearing set can be boxed in, kept from being a nuisance and from meddling in areas where they don't belong, just long enough for them to eventually die out of natural causes.
This is a mistake, and it is the same mistake people have made for centuries: underestimating the American zeal for superstition, for boobism, for living the intellectual lives of farm animals. A large statistical majority of Americans would rather live their whole lives in perpetual fear of the devil than listen to ten minutes of common sense. When you consider where these people live intellectually, the idea that the Democratic Party can somehow succeed in Middle America by making small tactical changes, by waving a few more flags, seems absurd. You either believe in the devil or you don't; and if you don't, you're never going to fool these people. The Republicans, for all their seeming "confusion," understand this now better than ever. Their seemingly open attempts in recent months to radicalize and embolden their evangelical base may have had a temporary desultory effect with regard to their poll numbers.
SAVING THE LIBRARIES IN SALINAS
There was a letter to the editor of The Fresno Bee once where the right-wing correspondent called John Steinbeck a "Marxist." You're a Marxist in right-wing land if you care about working people, the poor, the immigrants, the farm laborers, the dispossessed. John Steinbeck is one of my heroes, and it was devastating news when word came the libraries in his home town of Salinas, California, were going to be closed because of budget cuts. This is a very good article by Anne Lamott about the coming together of people who love books to save the Salinas libraries. The article is at www.commondreams.org:
A bunch of normally self-obsessed artist types came together to say to the people of Salinas: We care about your children, your stories, and your freedom. Something is broken in this country and inside you need to be fixed, and we care about that. Reading and books are medicine. Stories are written and told by and for people who have been broken, but who have risen up, or will, if attention is paid. Those people are you and us.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION: FOXES IN THE HENHOUSE
For a good part of my life I've heard right-wingers proclaim the horrors of "big government" and wasteful spending, especially any spending for social programs. But any fraud in social programs pales in comparison to the looting that's taking place under the Bush administration, whether it be no-bid contracts for Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, or the huge boondoggle that is the Department of Homeland Security. This article talks how money supposedly used to protect the country from terrorism has been used instead to buy decorations and appliances. This article from the Associated Press is at www.usatoday.com:
Investigations by the Homeland Security Department's internal watchdog yielded the arrests of 146 workers and grant recipients and identified $18.5 million in unsupported costs during a six-month period that began last fall.
The semiannual report to Congress, issued by Homeland Security's inspector general, details findings of 325 internal investigations, audits and inspections between October 2004 and March 2005. A copy of the 54-page report, which has not yet been released publicly, was obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
RUMSFELD THY NAME IS HYPOCRITE
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may need to be a padded room. The guy just amazes me with some of the inane and breathtakingly hypocritical things he says. He was criticizing China for an arms buildup, saying that China isn't threatened by any other nation. This is while the U.S. continues to amass new and terrible weapons of mass destruction, including militarizing space. Rumsfeld should also bear in mind that China is financing the gargantuan deficits being run up by the Bush administration. If the Chinese pull the plug, I wonder what the Bushies have in mind. This article by Matt Kelley is at www.washingtonpost.com:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Saturday said China is not a threat to the United States but is building up its military without being threatened by any other country.
Rumsfeld challenged China at a regional security conference here, particularly its placing hundreds of missiles in range of Taiwan. He said China was also sharply increasing its military spending and buying large amounts of sophisticated weapons.
AMERICANS WALLOW IN SUPERSTITION
It has been 80 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee when reason seemed to triumph over superstition. But the reports of superstition's death were greatly exaggerated. Americans are still ready to believe in angels and devils and deny all the scientific evidence supporting evolution by a large margin. Republicans have been able to exploit the belief in primitive superstition. This author makes the case for opposing fundamentalist religion itself. This article by Matt Taibbi is at www.nypress.com:
What organized political resistance fundamentalists do encounter comes in the form of groups that oppose their political objectives, not Christianity itself. Even pro-choice groups like NARAL, which come into direct and often violent contact with Christians, restrict themselves to agitation for abortion rights, and leave the issue of their opponents' religion alone. In general, there is almost no public figure, anywhere, who has ever suggested publicly that fundamentalist Christianity, as a thing-in-itself, should be opposed. The strongest suggestion most critics will make is to say that it should be contained, and indeed that seems to be the best-case strategy of progressives: that the God-fearing set can be boxed in, kept from being a nuisance and from meddling in areas where they don't belong, just long enough for them to eventually die out of natural causes.
This is a mistake, and it is the same mistake people have made for centuries: underestimating the American zeal for superstition, for boobism, for living the intellectual lives of farm animals. A large statistical majority of Americans would rather live their whole lives in perpetual fear of the devil than listen to ten minutes of common sense. When you consider where these people live intellectually, the idea that the Democratic Party can somehow succeed in Middle America by making small tactical changes, by waving a few more flags, seems absurd. You either believe in the devil or you don't; and if you don't, you're never going to fool these people. The Republicans, for all their seeming "confusion," understand this now better than ever. Their seemingly open attempts in recent months to radicalize and embolden their evangelical base may have had a temporary desultory effect with regard to their poll numbers.
SAVING THE LIBRARIES IN SALINAS
There was a letter to the editor of The Fresno Bee once where the right-wing correspondent called John Steinbeck a "Marxist." You're a Marxist in right-wing land if you care about working people, the poor, the immigrants, the farm laborers, the dispossessed. John Steinbeck is one of my heroes, and it was devastating news when word came the libraries in his home town of Salinas, California, were going to be closed because of budget cuts. This is a very good article by Anne Lamott about the coming together of people who love books to save the Salinas libraries. The article is at www.commondreams.org:
A bunch of normally self-obsessed artist types came together to say to the people of Salinas: We care about your children, your stories, and your freedom. Something is broken in this country and inside you need to be fixed, and we care about that. Reading and books are medicine. Stories are written and told by and for people who have been broken, but who have risen up, or will, if attention is paid. Those people are you and us.
Friday, June 03, 2005
JUNE 3, 2005
ANOTHER BUSH APPOINTEE FAVORS BIG BUSINESS
I don't have investments in the stock market. My income, such as it is, goes to trivial things like food and rent. But it's still illustrative of the Bush regime that the new appointee to the Securities and Exchange Commission is a friend of corporations. It just never stops with Bush, does it? This story by Stephen Labaton is at www.nytimes.com:
President Bush, hearing complaints about Mr. Donaldson's record from across the business spectrum, responded on Thursday by nominating Representative Christopher Cox, a conservative Republican from California, as a successor whose loyalties seem clear. And unlike the Supreme Court, where Justice Souter has a lifetime appointment, the S.E.C. provides the White House with an immediate opportunity to tip the balance of the five-person commission in a more favorable direction.
Mr. Cox - a devoted student of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unfettered capitalism - has a long record in the House of promoting the agenda of business interests that are a cornerstone of the Republican Party's political and financial support.
CLASS DIFFERENCES IN AMERICA
The story you're told is that if you work hard and play by the rules in the United States you can get ahead. You can move from poverty to the middle class or from the middle class to the affluent. There have always been problems with that story, but particularly now. Both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are doing studies of class differences in America. This article is at www.commondreams.org:
Class is more than money. As the Times observes, class "influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity." In a wonderful journalistic image, the Times writes "One way to think of a person's position in society is to imagine a hand of cards. Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, income, occupation and wealth, the four commonly used criteria for gauging class. Face cards in a few categories may land a player in the upper middle class."
KORAN ABUSE: PART II
Not very long ago George W. Bush and his minions were flaying Newsweek magazine for a story saying that the Koran had been flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo. There were subsequent riots in Afghanistan, which Bush and company blamed on the Newsweek story. Newsweek then backed down because their source wasn't entirely reliable. Now the Pentagon has released findings showing that several instances of Koran abuse have occurred. I wonder how long it will be before Amnesty International's findings about torture are also validated. This story is from news.yahoo.com:
The Pentagon on Friday released new details about mishandling of the Quran at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, confirming that a soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book and that an interrogator stepped on a Quran and was later fired for "a pattern of unacceptable behavior."
In other confirmed incidents, water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; a guard's urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.
BUSH STARTED IRAQ WAR BEFORE CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL
New documents show that George W. Bush and Tony Blair doubled bombing raids over Iraq before Bush got Congressional authorization for military action against Iraq. As the Downing Street Memo shows, Bush and Blair had already decided on a war months before the war officially started. The increased bombing raids were intended to provoke Saddam Hussein into doing something that could justify a full war. This story by Jeremy Scahill is at www.commondreams.org:
It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war.
But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.
ANOTHER BUSH APPOINTEE FAVORS BIG BUSINESS
I don't have investments in the stock market. My income, such as it is, goes to trivial things like food and rent. But it's still illustrative of the Bush regime that the new appointee to the Securities and Exchange Commission is a friend of corporations. It just never stops with Bush, does it? This story by Stephen Labaton is at www.nytimes.com:
President Bush, hearing complaints about Mr. Donaldson's record from across the business spectrum, responded on Thursday by nominating Representative Christopher Cox, a conservative Republican from California, as a successor whose loyalties seem clear. And unlike the Supreme Court, where Justice Souter has a lifetime appointment, the S.E.C. provides the White House with an immediate opportunity to tip the balance of the five-person commission in a more favorable direction.
Mr. Cox - a devoted student of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unfettered capitalism - has a long record in the House of promoting the agenda of business interests that are a cornerstone of the Republican Party's political and financial support.
CLASS DIFFERENCES IN AMERICA
The story you're told is that if you work hard and play by the rules in the United States you can get ahead. You can move from poverty to the middle class or from the middle class to the affluent. There have always been problems with that story, but particularly now. Both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are doing studies of class differences in America. This article is at www.commondreams.org:
Class is more than money. As the Times observes, class "influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity." In a wonderful journalistic image, the Times writes "One way to think of a person's position in society is to imagine a hand of cards. Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, income, occupation and wealth, the four commonly used criteria for gauging class. Face cards in a few categories may land a player in the upper middle class."
KORAN ABUSE: PART II
Not very long ago George W. Bush and his minions were flaying Newsweek magazine for a story saying that the Koran had been flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo. There were subsequent riots in Afghanistan, which Bush and company blamed on the Newsweek story. Newsweek then backed down because their source wasn't entirely reliable. Now the Pentagon has released findings showing that several instances of Koran abuse have occurred. I wonder how long it will be before Amnesty International's findings about torture are also validated. This story is from news.yahoo.com:
The Pentagon on Friday released new details about mishandling of the Quran at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, confirming that a soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book and that an interrogator stepped on a Quran and was later fired for "a pattern of unacceptable behavior."
In other confirmed incidents, water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; a guard's urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.
BUSH STARTED IRAQ WAR BEFORE CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL
New documents show that George W. Bush and Tony Blair doubled bombing raids over Iraq before Bush got Congressional authorization for military action against Iraq. As the Downing Street Memo shows, Bush and Blair had already decided on a war months before the war officially started. The increased bombing raids were intended to provoke Saddam Hussein into doing something that could justify a full war. This story by Jeremy Scahill is at www.commondreams.org:
It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war.
But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
JUNE 2, 2005
APPROACHING ECONOMIC DISASTER
Some right-wingers like to mock liberals for being too pessimistic. We tend to see the glass as half empty instead of half full, according to the merry old right wing. We shouldn't worry about global climate change or poverty or huge deficits because somehow miracles will occur and pull us out. Maybe it's time to see the world clearly for a change. This op-ed piece warns about the dire consequences to our economy if we don't make some changes. The article by William G. Gale and Peter R. Orszag is at www.latimes.com:
A family that saved nothing, borrowed a lot and lived well beyond its means just as it was nearing retirement would raise obvious red flags. The problems are no different - only bigger - at the national level. Low saving reduces our future national income. Borrowing from abroad is a deceptive palliative. Because our foreign creditors have to be paid back, foreign borrowing mortgages whatever future income the country generates.
The Bush administration and its apologists have responded to this situation with a mixture of denial and obfuscation. First, we are told that the current account deficit is a good thing because it indicates that the U.S. is a good place to invest. This would ring true if historically high borrowing from abroad were matched by historically high domestic investment, but it is not. Rather, we are investing about the same as in the past but borrowing a lot more.
THE RIGHT WING DEATH MACHINE
You often seeing right-wingers crying (mostly crocodile tears) about abortion. X number of "babies" have been killed since the Supreme Court decision allowing legal abortion, according to these people. George Lakoff, a linguist, says that we on the left need to redefine the issue in moral terms. We have to stop using right-wing language. We have to be open about how reactionary policies have killed and are killing actual living breathing babies. This article by George Lakoff is at www.alternet.org:
Conservatives have been killing babies -- real babies have been born and who people want and love. They have been responsible for the death of children in this country at an astounding rate -- and we should discuss this situation openly.
In addition, by denying access to contraception -- by stopping the distribution of condoms, for example -- the right-wing is exposing people to AIDS, and therefore, again, supporting death. Furthermore, by refusing to implement policies that would lower the incidence of toxins in our environment, conservatives are actually threatening the health of newborn babies. There are about a hundred toxins, including mercury, in mothers' breast milk, which means that there are a hundred toxins in newborn babies -- all thanks to right-wing anti-environmental policies.
In short, the right-wing is imposing a culture of death on this country and we shouldn't stand for it. Progressive values and politics are committed to preserving and nurturing life.
REASONS TO REMEMBER WATERGATE
It's approaching thirty-one years since Richard M. Nixon resigned as president because of the coverups and other crimes committed in the Watergate scandal. We learned this week the identity of the mysterious Deep Throat, the deep background source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. We should remember all the lies, death, and destruction that Richard M. Nixon was responsible for, and compare Mr. Nixon to George W. Bush, a man equally mired in deception and death. Bob Herbert writes about it in his column at www.nytimes.com:
The lessons of Watergate and Vietnam are that the checks and balances embedded in the national government by the founding fathers (and which the Bush administration is trying mightily to destroy) are absolutely crucial if American-style democracy is to survive, and that a truly free and unfettered press (which the Bush administration is trying mightily to intimidate) is as important now as it's ever been.
There you have it in a nutshell. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, drunk with power and insufficiently restrained, took the nation on hair-raising journeys that were as unnecessary as they were destructive. Now, in the first years of the 21st century, George W. Bush is doing the same.
IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY NOW
Sometimes I wish we had a parliamentary system of government similar to the government in Great Britain. An election could be called and we could vote out George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and let the justice system take its course. But our founding fathers gave us a method called impeachment. Federal officials guilty of misconduct can be brought up on charges in the House of Representatives and then tried in the Senate. If found guilty in the Senate, they can be removed from office. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" in the Constitution is pretty far-ranging, but I have no doubt it applies to people who have deliberately and consistently lied us into a war This editorial comes from www.bangornews.com:
It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.
What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.
Richard Nixon was impeached for a cover-up of a two-bit break-in. William Cohen, a young Maine Republican, played an important role for the prosecution in those proceedings. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex with an intern. Now we have the irrefutable evidence that George W. Bush lied about the reasons for taking the United States to war. The intelligence wasn't flawed. The weapons weren't hidden. Our elected leaders were lying.
APPROACHING ECONOMIC DISASTER
Some right-wingers like to mock liberals for being too pessimistic. We tend to see the glass as half empty instead of half full, according to the merry old right wing. We shouldn't worry about global climate change or poverty or huge deficits because somehow miracles will occur and pull us out. Maybe it's time to see the world clearly for a change. This op-ed piece warns about the dire consequences to our economy if we don't make some changes. The article by William G. Gale and Peter R. Orszag is at www.latimes.com:
A family that saved nothing, borrowed a lot and lived well beyond its means just as it was nearing retirement would raise obvious red flags. The problems are no different - only bigger - at the national level. Low saving reduces our future national income. Borrowing from abroad is a deceptive palliative. Because our foreign creditors have to be paid back, foreign borrowing mortgages whatever future income the country generates.
The Bush administration and its apologists have responded to this situation with a mixture of denial and obfuscation. First, we are told that the current account deficit is a good thing because it indicates that the U.S. is a good place to invest. This would ring true if historically high borrowing from abroad were matched by historically high domestic investment, but it is not. Rather, we are investing about the same as in the past but borrowing a lot more.
THE RIGHT WING DEATH MACHINE
You often seeing right-wingers crying (mostly crocodile tears) about abortion. X number of "babies" have been killed since the Supreme Court decision allowing legal abortion, according to these people. George Lakoff, a linguist, says that we on the left need to redefine the issue in moral terms. We have to stop using right-wing language. We have to be open about how reactionary policies have killed and are killing actual living breathing babies. This article by George Lakoff is at www.alternet.org:
Conservatives have been killing babies -- real babies have been born and who people want and love. They have been responsible for the death of children in this country at an astounding rate -- and we should discuss this situation openly.
In addition, by denying access to contraception -- by stopping the distribution of condoms, for example -- the right-wing is exposing people to AIDS, and therefore, again, supporting death. Furthermore, by refusing to implement policies that would lower the incidence of toxins in our environment, conservatives are actually threatening the health of newborn babies. There are about a hundred toxins, including mercury, in mothers' breast milk, which means that there are a hundred toxins in newborn babies -- all thanks to right-wing anti-environmental policies.
In short, the right-wing is imposing a culture of death on this country and we shouldn't stand for it. Progressive values and politics are committed to preserving and nurturing life.
REASONS TO REMEMBER WATERGATE
It's approaching thirty-one years since Richard M. Nixon resigned as president because of the coverups and other crimes committed in the Watergate scandal. We learned this week the identity of the mysterious Deep Throat, the deep background source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. We should remember all the lies, death, and destruction that Richard M. Nixon was responsible for, and compare Mr. Nixon to George W. Bush, a man equally mired in deception and death. Bob Herbert writes about it in his column at www.nytimes.com:
The lessons of Watergate and Vietnam are that the checks and balances embedded in the national government by the founding fathers (and which the Bush administration is trying mightily to destroy) are absolutely crucial if American-style democracy is to survive, and that a truly free and unfettered press (which the Bush administration is trying mightily to intimidate) is as important now as it's ever been.
There you have it in a nutshell. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, drunk with power and insufficiently restrained, took the nation on hair-raising journeys that were as unnecessary as they were destructive. Now, in the first years of the 21st century, George W. Bush is doing the same.
IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY NOW
Sometimes I wish we had a parliamentary system of government similar to the government in Great Britain. An election could be called and we could vote out George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and let the justice system take its course. But our founding fathers gave us a method called impeachment. Federal officials guilty of misconduct can be brought up on charges in the House of Representatives and then tried in the Senate. If found guilty in the Senate, they can be removed from office. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" in the Constitution is pretty far-ranging, but I have no doubt it applies to people who have deliberately and consistently lied us into a war This editorial comes from www.bangornews.com:
It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.
What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.
Richard Nixon was impeached for a cover-up of a two-bit break-in. William Cohen, a young Maine Republican, played an important role for the prosecution in those proceedings. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex with an intern. Now we have the irrefutable evidence that George W. Bush lied about the reasons for taking the United States to war. The intelligence wasn't flawed. The weapons weren't hidden. Our elected leaders were lying.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
JUNE 1, 2005
BUSH'S PASSIVE APPEASEMENT ON NORTH KOREA
On his last European trip George W. Bush, a man not fit to speak the names of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Winston Churchill, accused FDR and Churchill of condemning eastern Europe to a half century of Soviet domination because of the agreement made at the Yalta conference. History shows how absurd that charge is. However, this author notes that Bush himself may be guilty of appeasement with North Korea, perhaps the most dangerous rogue regime on earth. This article by Steve Andreasen is at www.latimes.com:
As for the U.S. diplomatic response, it might best be described as asleep at the wheel. The Bush administration rejected North Korea's demand for bilateral negotiations, agreeing only to six-party talks (Russia, China, Japan and South Korea in addition to the U.S. and North Korea). In the absence of meaningful U.S. incentives, it's an approach that has gotten nowhere.
Because of a lack of assertive diplomacy, the most isolated, dangerous regime on the globe has been permitted to increase its nuclear inventory. Only now - when North Korea appears ready to stage a nuclear test - is the administration considering establishing its own red line, backed by threats of negative consequences. But bilateral negotiations with the North apparently remain off the table.
WHY IS BUSH STONEWALLING DOCUMENTS ON BOLTON?
George W. Bush nominated John Bolton to be the next Ambassador to the United Nations, but there are lots of reasons Mr. Bolton shouldn't be confirmed by the Senate. Bolton has a history of abusing his staff. He has expressed great disdain for the United Nations, so how he is supposed to act as a negotiator with that body? Now Democrats have demanded documents about Bolton that George W. Bush doesn't want to release. If the information in the documents is that damning, then it's time for Bolton's nomination to die. This story by Richard W. Stevenson is at www.nytimes.com:
President Bush criticized Senate Democrats on Tuesday for "stalling" a vote on John R. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations, and indicated that he would not grant them access to intelligence documents they have demanded to see before allowing the confirmation to go ahead.
Mr. Bush's statements, at a news conference in the Rose Garden, suggested that he was intent on winning the battle over Mr. Bolton on his own terms when the Senate reconvenes next week, rather than negotiating a deal with Democrats and some Republicans who have been advocating a compromise.
BUSH'S LOUSY ECONOMY
Maybe it's because he knows the puppy dog media won't call him on it, but George W. Bush has a lot of nerve to come to a news conference and tout his "strong economy." Job creation during this administration has been anemic and so have salaries for most of us. CEOs have done great, of course, so maybe that is what Bush defines as a strong economy. David Lazarus writes about it at www.sfgate.com:
According to the U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, payrolls have hit record levels in 51 of the 66 years since 1939, or 77 percent of the time.
Of the 15 years when a president couldn't claim that more Americans are working than ever before, three have been on Bush's watch -- 2002, 2003 and 2004. It wasn't until January of this year that he could say this again.
Meanwhile, an interesting number was released by the White House on Friday, as most people were heading off for the long holiday weekend.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that U.S. employers engaged in 1, 274 mass layoff actions last month. A mass layoff is defined as any firing that involves 50 or more workers.
STUDY SAYS LAWSUITS NOT TO BLAME FOR HIGHER DOCTORS' PREMIUMS
Ask your typical right-wing politician about health care costs and you'll get a response that blames the cost on trial lawyers and lawsuits. That's why, they'll say, they passed "tort reform" to stop those greedy lawyers and those frivolous lawsuits. According this study, though, it isn't lawsuits driving the costs. It turns out that malpractice companies have jacked up premiums to compensate for falling investment returns. This article by Liz Kowalczyk is at www.boston.com:
Re-igniting the medical malpractice overhaul debate, a new study by Dartmouth College researchers suggests that huge jury awards and financial settlements for injured patients have not caused the explosive increase in doctors' insurance premiums.
The researchers said a more likely explanation for the escalation is that malpractice insurance companies have raised doctors' premiums to compensate for falling investment returns.
THE TORTURERS ATTACK AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Amnesty International's new report deploring conditions at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, has drawn fire from top Bush administration officials. George W. Bush claimed the Amnesty report was "absurd." We know that the U.S. has been guilty of human rights abuses from Abu Ghraib to using "extraordinary rendition" to send suspects to countries that torture. We know that people were murdered in Afghanistan while in U.S. custody, so what is "absurd" about a report saying conditions at Guantanamo are unacceptable? We also have to remember that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have demonstrated an unprecedented level of venality and incompetence. This story by Jim Lobe is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Stung by Amnesty International's condemnation of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere overseas, the administration of President George W. Bush is reacting with indignation and even suggestions that terrorists are using the world's largest human rights organization.
The latest denunciation came from Bush himself during a White House press conference Tuesday. ''I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world,'' he said, adding that Washington had ''investigated every single complaint against (sic) the detainees.''
BUSH'S PASSIVE APPEASEMENT ON NORTH KOREA
On his last European trip George W. Bush, a man not fit to speak the names of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Winston Churchill, accused FDR and Churchill of condemning eastern Europe to a half century of Soviet domination because of the agreement made at the Yalta conference. History shows how absurd that charge is. However, this author notes that Bush himself may be guilty of appeasement with North Korea, perhaps the most dangerous rogue regime on earth. This article by Steve Andreasen is at www.latimes.com:
As for the U.S. diplomatic response, it might best be described as asleep at the wheel. The Bush administration rejected North Korea's demand for bilateral negotiations, agreeing only to six-party talks (Russia, China, Japan and South Korea in addition to the U.S. and North Korea). In the absence of meaningful U.S. incentives, it's an approach that has gotten nowhere.
Because of a lack of assertive diplomacy, the most isolated, dangerous regime on the globe has been permitted to increase its nuclear inventory. Only now - when North Korea appears ready to stage a nuclear test - is the administration considering establishing its own red line, backed by threats of negative consequences. But bilateral negotiations with the North apparently remain off the table.
WHY IS BUSH STONEWALLING DOCUMENTS ON BOLTON?
George W. Bush nominated John Bolton to be the next Ambassador to the United Nations, but there are lots of reasons Mr. Bolton shouldn't be confirmed by the Senate. Bolton has a history of abusing his staff. He has expressed great disdain for the United Nations, so how he is supposed to act as a negotiator with that body? Now Democrats have demanded documents about Bolton that George W. Bush doesn't want to release. If the information in the documents is that damning, then it's time for Bolton's nomination to die. This story by Richard W. Stevenson is at www.nytimes.com:
President Bush criticized Senate Democrats on Tuesday for "stalling" a vote on John R. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations, and indicated that he would not grant them access to intelligence documents they have demanded to see before allowing the confirmation to go ahead.
Mr. Bush's statements, at a news conference in the Rose Garden, suggested that he was intent on winning the battle over Mr. Bolton on his own terms when the Senate reconvenes next week, rather than negotiating a deal with Democrats and some Republicans who have been advocating a compromise.
BUSH'S LOUSY ECONOMY
Maybe it's because he knows the puppy dog media won't call him on it, but George W. Bush has a lot of nerve to come to a news conference and tout his "strong economy." Job creation during this administration has been anemic and so have salaries for most of us. CEOs have done great, of course, so maybe that is what Bush defines as a strong economy. David Lazarus writes about it at www.sfgate.com:
According to the U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, payrolls have hit record levels in 51 of the 66 years since 1939, or 77 percent of the time.
Of the 15 years when a president couldn't claim that more Americans are working than ever before, three have been on Bush's watch -- 2002, 2003 and 2004. It wasn't until January of this year that he could say this again.
Meanwhile, an interesting number was released by the White House on Friday, as most people were heading off for the long holiday weekend.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that U.S. employers engaged in 1, 274 mass layoff actions last month. A mass layoff is defined as any firing that involves 50 or more workers.
STUDY SAYS LAWSUITS NOT TO BLAME FOR HIGHER DOCTORS' PREMIUMS
Ask your typical right-wing politician about health care costs and you'll get a response that blames the cost on trial lawyers and lawsuits. That's why, they'll say, they passed "tort reform" to stop those greedy lawyers and those frivolous lawsuits. According this study, though, it isn't lawsuits driving the costs. It turns out that malpractice companies have jacked up premiums to compensate for falling investment returns. This article by Liz Kowalczyk is at www.boston.com:
Re-igniting the medical malpractice overhaul debate, a new study by Dartmouth College researchers suggests that huge jury awards and financial settlements for injured patients have not caused the explosive increase in doctors' insurance premiums.
The researchers said a more likely explanation for the escalation is that malpractice insurance companies have raised doctors' premiums to compensate for falling investment returns.
THE TORTURERS ATTACK AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Amnesty International's new report deploring conditions at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, has drawn fire from top Bush administration officials. George W. Bush claimed the Amnesty report was "absurd." We know that the U.S. has been guilty of human rights abuses from Abu Ghraib to using "extraordinary rendition" to send suspects to countries that torture. We know that people were murdered in Afghanistan while in U.S. custody, so what is "absurd" about a report saying conditions at Guantanamo are unacceptable? We also have to remember that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have demonstrated an unprecedented level of venality and incompetence. This story by Jim Lobe is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Stung by Amnesty International's condemnation of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere overseas, the administration of President George W. Bush is reacting with indignation and even suggestions that terrorists are using the world's largest human rights organization.
The latest denunciation came from Bush himself during a White House press conference Tuesday. ''I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world,'' he said, adding that Washington had ''investigated every single complaint against (sic) the detainees.''
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