AUGUST 20, 2005

EVEN GINGRICH CRITICAL OF IRAQ WAR

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, architect of the "Contract on America," master of coded political speech, even he is critical of the Bush quagmire in Iraq. Maureen Dowd writes about Gingrich, Henry Kissinger, and the late Richard M. Nixon in this column at www.nytimes.com:

"Any effort to explain Iraq as 'We are on track and making progress' is nonsense," Newt Gingrich told Adam Nagourney and David D. Kirkpatrick for a Times article on G.O.P. jitters about the shadow of Iraq over the midterm elections. "The left has a constant drumbeat that this is Vietnam and a bottomless pit. The daily and weekly casualties leave people feeling that things aren't going well."

TEACHING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

There were letters in today's Fresno Bee defending the concept of "Intelligent Design." One writer made a reference to the "missing link" and said that defenders of evolutionary theory accept that on faith. Another writer made the claim that "Intelligent Design" is testable. The United States suffers from a severe lack of understanding about the scientific method and what constitutes science. This article by Bernard Wasow at www.motherjones.com talks about how we have come to know what we know:

Today's world is built on a foundation of scientific exploration. Our wealth, our health, and much of our work and our leisure are based on advances in technology, which in turn result from the practice of the scientific method.

The scientific method is not democratic, based on majority consensus, nor is it based on peer review by fellow scientists. In science, the validity of an idea or hypothesis is not determined thorough an election, or by polling the peers of the scientist who made the particular claim; those methods are best reserved for answering questions such as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin

AUGUST 19, 2005

REMINDERS OF THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Only in right-wing land could someone say that George W. Bush was legitimately elected president in the 2000 election. First, he lost the election nationally by about 500,000 votes. There were so many irregularities in Florida it would make a Mafia don blush. There were the infamous butterfly ballots where people were confused into voting for the wrong candidate. Republicans actively worked to disenfranchise voters who almost certainly would have voted for Gore. The Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, was a member of the Bush campaign. His brother Jeb was Governor. Several analyses have shown that an honest recount would have given the election to Gore. The final indignity was the Supreme Court weighing in and in effect appointing Bush president. Paul Krugman has a look in this column at www.nytimes.com:

In his recent book "Steal This Vote" - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I've seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election."

DO "CHRISTIANS" HAVE TO TELL THE TRUTH?

I wonder how much of the hot air emanating from leaders of the religious right is what they really believe, and how much is intended to fire up their base. Claims that "Christians" are persecuted in the United States, for instance, are absurd when you look at the history of religious persecution around the world. These people got in a lather because people said "happy holidays" last Christmas instead of "Merry Christmas." The claim that they are persecuted is a lie, so I wonder just what their Bible says about lying. This article by Rob Garver is at www.prospect.org:

In the imaginary world painted by the leaders of “Justice Sunday II,” conservative Christian Republicans may control the White House, the Congress, and several seats on the Supreme Court, but they remain oppressed and victimized. Speakers invoked Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Susan B. Anthony, all in service of the meme that Christians in America are being silenced, persecuted, and prevented from practicing their religion.

AUGUST 18, 2005

WORKING POOR SHOULD BE THE MOST POLITICALLY MOTIVATED

George W. Bush has succeeded at greatly increasing the number of working poor in the United States. Strangely enough, it was either not voting at all, or voting for Bush, by the working poor that put him into office and worsened the situation for workers. Any time you talk about the great class divide right wingers will foam at the mouth and scream "class warfare." But class warfare has been waged against working people for a long time. It's time the war was waged by us against the economic system that is absurdly tilted to the rich. This article by Paul Nyhan is at seattlepi.nwsource.com:

The working poor offer a political reward because their concerns -- job security, health care costs and stagnating wages -- are increasingly concerns shared by many middle-class voters, political analysts say. Such worries provide opportunities to de-emphasize social issues such as gay marriage, which alienated swing voters in the recent past, they note.

Onetime and possibly future presidential candidate John Edwards already recognizes the two classes are connected. The North Carolina Democrat swung through Seattle this week to endorse efforts to unionize local security guards. Since his failed bid for the White House, Edwards has made poverty his defining cause.

BUSH STAYS TRUE TO CHARACTER

I don't believe George W. Bush has ever taken responsibility in his whole life. He's always had someone to bail him out of jam after jam, or he's managed to tuck and run. He got into the Texas Air National Guard so he could avoid Vietnam, although he was a big supporter of Vietnam when someone else did the fighting. He has left countless business partners in the dust. And now he refuses to take responsibility for his war in Iraq and face Cindy Sheehan face to face. Maybe that bulge on his back during the debates wasn't just a transmitter, but a part of his yellow streak. This article by August Keso is at www.progressivedailybeacon.com:

When the going gets tough the Bush gets well, "W"idow-Maker takes to hiding. Poor, poor George "W"(as in Widow-Maker) Bush, all his life he has been dodging any situation that would have required him to stand alone and fight. For example: Back in the days of Vietnam, George could have fought for his country but instead he joined and then left the National Guard early. To this day nobody knows for sure where "W"idow-Maker was for about six months of his supposed "service" to country. Popular theory is that he was hiding somewhere in Alabama...working, supposedly, on a campaign. He was supposed to report for Guard duty there, but only one officer can recall seeing him...and even then the implausible spin was that "W"idow-Maker sat in that particular Officer's office "reading."

THE REAL MOTIVES OF "STRICT CONSTRUCTIONISTS"

You'll often hear conservatives talking about being strict Constitutional constructionists. They say you have to look at the Constitution as it was originally written. Never mind that the Constitution was ratified in 1789, a time far removed from now. Things have changed some in over 200 years. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who noted that the Constitution was for the living, not for the departed. It's convenient for strict constructionists, of course, because their stance means no rights for women or minorities or working people. It's more about their plutocratic economic dreams than it is about fealty to the Constitution. This article by Allen Snyder is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

It's about turning back the clock on defending the rights of individuals, women, minorities, and the environment. It's about placating big business, religious zealots, angry white men, and loony social regressives. It's about doing away with regulations that provide for a safe workplace, eliminating limits on pollution and the defiling of the natural landscape, ending affirmative action, ending campaign finance limits, allowing prayer and bible crap in public schools, posting the ten commandments, bringing back discrimination and segregation, criminalizing homosexuality, and reducing the power of the legislative branch while exalting that of the executive (as long as he's a regressive).

AUGUST 17, 2005

INSIDER SCOOP ON BUSH

George W. Bush likes to portray himself as macho man who is also possessed of "compassionate conservatism." We know that the compassionate conservatism is a hoax, and from what some White House insiders are saying Mr. Bush is irritable with wild mood swings, and frequently profane. So much for being a good Christian. This article by Doug Thompson is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.

They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with “get out of here!”

In fact, George W. Bush’s mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain “weather reports” to warn of the President’s demeanor. “Calm seas” means Bush is calm while “tornado alert” is a warning that he is pissed at the world…

COLOR THE ELECTORAL MAP BLUE

I really, really wish we had a parliamentary system of government sometimes. When someone as bad as George Bush gets a guaranteed four years to wreck havoc there's something wrong. The new electoral map shows that if an election were held today George W. Bush would lose in a landslide. Of course, we know he probably lost both the past two elections if the votes were counted fairly. But even the mass media can't pretend Bush is a popular president anymore. This chart showing the massive dislike of Bush is at www.surveyusa.com.

CHICKENHAWKS ALL TALK, NO ACTION

The chickenhawks who beat the drum for the war in Iraq are mysteriously missing in action when it comes to them or their family serving in the war. If this war is the titanic clash between good and evil that they claim, such a "noble cause," why aren't they rushing to enlist, especially in light of the manpower shortages in the military? That's the subject of this commentary by Linda Milazzo is at www.commondreams.org:

George W. Bush decrees again and again that every American killed in Iraq was killed for a noble cause. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Melanie Morgan fill the airwaves with bellicose testimonials to the righteousness of the war. Tom Delay, Donald Rumsfeld, Rick Santorum, Elizabeth Dole and Kay Bailey Hutchison profess that the war is necessary for the safety and strength of America, and freedom and democracy in Iraq. Chickenhawk after chickenhawk forcefully proclaim the legitimacy of this war. Yet in appearance after appearance on NBC, NPR, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, CSPAN, PBS, et al, I have yet to hear a media host or reporter ask any one of them the most relevant question of all: 'Who in YOUR family is fighting in this war?' If this question were mandatory for those who tout the war, then its most vocal defenders would be silenced. For aloft in the bloggesphere, one can't fabricate for long.

THE FREEWAY AS METAPHOR

We Americans love our cars and our illusion of freedom and mobility. But how free are we really when it takes so much time, energy, and money to maintain the whole automobile infrastructure? It's not only our individual cars and the costs associated with them, but the massive network of roads and freeways that connect the country from sea to shining sea. How will the future look when this petroleum-fueled beast is gone? This is an interesting essay by Phil Rockstroh is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Riding American interstate highways one feels the confluence of so much contemporary madness and tragedy ... so much barely-submerged fear and aggression ... yet, through it all, the yearning to see what lies over to next horizon remains in our hearts. Even though, sadly, what lies over the next horizon has become as sterile, inhospitable, ugly, and inhuman as what was experienced at the last. Here: The realities of global capitalism are displayed, in stark relief: it's all based on oil -- sustained by brutal imperialism and the wholesale destruction of the natural world -- and, for all our self-impressed proclamations that these things are the progenitors of freedom and human advancement -- we Americans, the supposed beneficiaries of it all, have been left spoiled, stupefied, and alienated -- both from the banality and garishness of our nation's commercially tortured, community-devoid landscape as well as from our own inner-most longings.

AUGUST 16, 2005

HUMMERS AND SUPPORT THE TROOPS

On the way home stopped at a red light there was a Hummer in one lane and a car bearing one of those "Support the Troops" magnets in the other lane. Could it get more ironic than that? Gas-guzzling Hummers and SUVs have helped to create the situation we see in Iraq now. If the U.S. took energy conservation more seriously, and found alternatives to petroleum, maybe "supporting the troops" wouldn't be such an issue now.

THINGS IN IRAQ ARE FALLING APART

As I've said before, the war against Iraq should never have been launched in the first place because Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to the United States. Even if you could make a case for attacking Iraq, you would have to say the Bush administration has made a total mess of things. We alienated many of allies by more or less declaring war unilaterally. There was some token support from the British and the sham called the "Coalition of the Willing." There was no plan to rebuild Iraq, no plan to withdraw, and no realistic plan for financing this farce. Now we have our military stretched dangerously thin, with many soldiers having their tours of duty extended, inadequate equipment, and no end in sight. Thomas Oliphant writes about it in this column at www.boston.com:

Because Bush based the 2003 invasion and follow-up occupation on the false promise of ease -- a flop of epic proportions for which not a single individual in authority has been held responsible -- the administration has had to scramble for more than two years to keep pace with a growing insurgency as a well as the gargantuan task of reconstruction for which America was not financially prepared.

Tours of duty were extended. The reserves were raided. The National Guard was raided. Military commitments in the rest of the world, including the fight against terrorism and the effort to establish stability in Afghanistan, were compromised. The American people were deceived about the true cost of this war. But all this juggling and deception hasn't been enough. The fact remains: The military cannot rotate troops out of Iraq as their tours end and rotate others in without drastic change and a policy switch that includes telling people the truth.

THE NEOCON PUNDITS ARE RESPONSIBLE TOO

This article by Harold Meyerson talks about the neocon "intellectuals" and pundits who helped provide intellectual fodder for Bush's war against Iraq. As Mr. Meyerson points out, a war of choice needs lots of people to sell the war. When Pearl Harbor happened people didn't need much urging to support the war. This article interests me because Mr. Meyerson names Victor Davis Hanson, who is a beloved columnist of the right-wingers in this area, as one of Bush's pundits. Mr. Hanson is a classical scholar, an expert in the ancient Greeks, and I'm not quite sure how that qualifies him as an expert on Iraq. But his opinions have helped create an "intellectual" facade for this criminal war. This article is at www.prospect.org:

Hanson has been called President Bush’s favorite historian, and for good reason. Soon after 9-11, the San Joaquin Valley classics professor began writing regularly for The National Review, demanding we go into Iraq, imparting martial lessons from Greece and Rome to an America abruptly at war. In short order, Hanson became a fellow at Palo Alto’s Hoover Institute, a dinner companion of Bush and Dick Cheney, and the most unswerving defender of administration policies -- even the ones the administration barely bothers to defend.

Hanson, you see, knows things you and I don’t. His considerable certainty as to the strategic soundness of the war has been rooted not just in supposition but in historical analogy. “In the same way as the death of Hitler ended the Nazi Party and the ruin of the Third Reich finished the advance of fascist power in Europe,” he predicted in 2002, “so the defeat of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi dictatorship will erode both clandestine support for terrorism and murderous tyranny well beyond Iraq.” Oops.

A BLISTERING EDITORIAL ABOUT BUSH

Call a spade a spade in the Bush administration and you get smeared. That has been the modus operandi of George W. Bush for some time. He did it to John McCain. He did it to Al Gore. He did it to John Kerry. He did it to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Bush operatives smeared Max Clelland, a man who lost most of his limbs in Vietnam. Right-wingers have tried to smear Michael Moore for telling the truth in "Fahrenheit 9/11." This editorial pretty much lays it on the line. The editorial is linked at www.commondreams.org:

The President of the United States, who lacked the courage to serve his country during the Vietnam War, has once again shown his cowardice. Scores of brave American soldiers have given their lives since he went on vacation a couple of weeks ago. And yet, when the mother of one of our war dead -- Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed awhile back in Sadr City -- showed up at his Texas ranch asking to speak to him, he didn't even have the cojones to ask her in for a cup of coffee.

Instead, he had Karl Rove contact the Drudge Report and other sleazy news outlets across the land with a couple of comments Mrs. Sheehan made to her hometown paper in Vacaville, Calif., shortly after her son's death. Taken out of context, the quotes make her look like she spoke in favor of Bush and his dirty little war. On reading the full interview, however, it is clear that, from the beginning, she thought her son had died for nothing and was -- as we all might in such a situation -- just trying to be polite to the president.

AUGUST 15, 2005

CINDY SHEEHAN'S STAND: FROM JAMES MOORE

I really like this eloquent post by James Moore about Cindy Sheehan's stand against an unprincipled and blood-thirsty president like George W. Bush. This post can be found at www.huffingtonpost.com:

There are things worth fighting for. And there are even some worth dying for. But Iraq is not one of them. And none of us asked enough questions when it came time to send the Casey Sheehan's of the country into the desert hell of Iraq. More of us ought to be asking the questions now because it is just as important now as it was the day the war was launched. But we at least have Cindy Sheehan to do our asking. There are mothers' sons out there who will live full lives because the pressure being created by Cindy Sheehan will accelerate the end of this absurd American involvement in Iraq.

A DEAD IRAQI CHILD

This article by Robert Fisk talks about how a Bradley armored vehicle burst through a gate and ran over a sleeping little boy who was trying to deal with the intense summer heat. The best the Americans could do was offer monetary compensation to the father. This little boy and countless others like him should still be alive and would be alive if not for this immoral war launched by George W. Bush. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

There's the wreckage of a car bomb that killed seven Americans on the corner of a neighbouring street. Close by stands the shuttered shop of a phone supplier who put pictures of Saddam on a donkey on his mobiles. He was shot three days ago, along with two other men who had committed the same sin. In the al-Jamia neighbourhood, a US Humvee was purring up the road so we gingerly backed off and took a side street. In this part of Baghdad, you avoid both the insurgents and the Americans - if you are lucky.

Yassin al-Sammerai was not. On 14 July, the second grade schoolboy had gone to spend the night with two college friends and - this being a city without electricity in the hottest month of the year - they decided to spend the night sleeping in the front garden. Let his broken 65 year-old father Selim take up the story, for he's the one who still cannot believe his son is dead - or what the Americans told him afterwards.

THE PEOPLE SCREWING UP AMERICA

Whiny former TV "journalist" Bernard Goldberg is making a living these days by attacking the alleged "liberal media." His latest screed has a list of the 100 people who are supposedly screwing up America. I like this abbreviated list by Robyn Blumner better, but I would probably have put Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage on my list. This article is linked at www.commondreams.org:

According to the new book by conservative author and journalist Bernard Goldberg, 100 people are to blame for the sad state of our country, and most are decidedly liberal.

In 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is No. 37), Goldberg insists that people like Eminem, Courtney Love and Maury Povich, who contribute to America's corrosive culture, and those like Barbra Streisand, Barbara Kingsolver and Bill Moyers, who are outspoken liberals, are our nation's greatest villains. His naive rantings take aim largely at the entertainment and infotainment industries, as if changing to a steady diet of ''Ozzie and Harriet'' would fix things. You know: bring our troops home, pay off our national debt and make prescription drugs affordable.

BEWARE THE URBAN LEGENDS

You have to think a lot of right-wing populism is made up of urban legends. Ronald Reagan paved his way to the White House on tales of welfare mothers driving Cadillacs. Republicans deliberately renamed the estate tax the "death tax" to make people outraged that the big bad government would tax the estates of small family farmers and deprive their rightful heirs. Lately, we've heard that trial lawyers and outrageous lawsuits are responsible for the increase in health care costs. This article by Myron Levin is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

Merv Grazinski set his Winnebago on cruise control, slid away from the wheel and went back to fix a cup of coffee.

You can guess what happened next: The rudderless, driverless Winnebago crashed.

Grazinski blamed the manufacturer for not warning against such a maneuver in the owner's manual. He sued and won $1.75 million.

His jackpot would seem to erase any doubt that the legal system has lost its mind. Indeed, the Grazinski case has been cited often as evidence of the need to limit lawsuits and jury awards.

There's just one problem: The story is a complete fabrication.

AUGUST 14, 2005

BUSH BELIEVES HE'S KING GEORGE

The pattern of the way George W. Bush has conducted the presidency--even the way he got installed into office--shows that he doesn't believe in representative government, and that he doesn't believe in accountability. He has blown off numerous Congressional requests for records, whether it be documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, documents related to John Bolton, photos and videos related to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, documents from the energy task force conducted by Dick Cheney, and the manipulation of facts that are inconvenient to Bush administration objectives. This column by Robyn Blummer is at www.herald-mail.com:

This is all part of a pattern that is illustrative of Bush’s view of the office he holds. Bush’s arrogant swagger is more than a cowboy affectation; it is a state of mind. To Bush, being president is not an act of public service in which you are accountable to the press and the people and are limited by the power of two other governmental branches. It is the anointing of a regent for a four- or eight-year stint. That includes the ability to imprison people at will, to offer untruths without compunction as justifications for war and to spend the entire treasury (and more) without worrying about the consequences. In that now-famous press-conference question, Bush was unable to identify a single mistake he made as president, because monarchs don’t err.

ALL THE NEEDLESS DEATH IN IRAQ

War is always a tragedy. It's the failure of nations to reach agreements without the use of force. Sometimes it's brought on by the lust for conquest such as we saw in the Nazi regime in Germany. Sometimes it's dressed up as something noble when the goal is to secure geopolitical goals. That was the reason for Iraq. All the talk of mushroom clouds, links to terrorism, phony ties to the attacks on 9/11, were just the window dressing to persuade Americans to attack a country that didn't attack us. Now the daily headlines recount the deaths of more U.S. soldiers, usually at the hands of suicide bombers. How do you win a war when people are willing to commit suicide just to pick off Americans one by one? This was all brought about by a series of monstrous lies and incompetence and too many innocent people have already died. Frank Rich writes about the Bush administration and Iraq in this column at www.nytimes.com:

It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a Congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Mr. Bush.

KILLING ESTATE TAX IS ABOUT MAKING THE RICH RICHER

There was another snide little letter in today's Fresno Bee talking about the estate tax being "double taxation" and taxing money that was "already taxed." A lot taxes paid, not just by the rich, are "double taxation" in some form or other. And a lot of money subject to the estate tax wasn't taxed before. Opponents of the estate tax have used all kinds of phony arguments to justify its repeal. What its repeal really means is that a very small number of rich people get to skate once again on paying taxes and the shortfall gets dumped onto people who aren't affluent. It also means the creation and sustaining of an American aristocracy. This article by Edmund L. Andrews is at www.nytimes.com:

But despite the populist rhetoric and oft-repeated horror stories about families being forced to sell their farms in order to pay estate taxes, the battle is over a very large amount of money held by a very small number of families. A report last month by the Congressional Budget Office found that in 2000 only 2 percent of all estates - about 52,000 - were subject to any estate tax. At that point, taxes were imposed only on estates worth $675,000 or more. The limit rose to $1.5 million in 2004, and if that limit had been in effect in 2000, only 13,771 estates - fewer than 1 percent - would have been subject to the tax. All but 740 of them would have had enough in liquid assets to cover estate tax liabilities, the office estimated.

AUGUST 13, 2005

THE GROPER AND A PREDATORY LENDER

You have Governor Groper + Rolling Stones tickets + AmeriQuest Mortgage=money to fund an election attacking unions. That's quite an equation. AmeriQuest is a predatory lender that has preyed on the poor, but that doesn't stop the Groper from taking their money and attacking working class people. This item is from www.pensitorereview.com:

Arnold Schwarzenegger - who pledged during his campaign for governor of California in 2003 that, if elected, he would not seek donations while in office, and then, upon election, quickly became the most aggressive fundraiser in state history - will sell tickets to sit with him in a luxury box at a Rolling Stones concert in Boston for $100,000 each. The money will be used to fund the governor’s campaign for anti-union ballot measures in the special election this November.

The concert tickets were donated by Ameriquest, the embattled Orange County mortgage lender that is fighting charges in multiple states that it has engaged in predatory lending practices.

The Stones have made it clear that they are not involved in the deal.

FUNDAMENTALISM'S HEAVY PRICE

The old saying is that "Ignorance is bliss," and that seems to be hallmark of religious fundamentalists, whether they call themselves Christians, Moslems, Jews, or any other denomination. They prefer to see the world as run by gods and demons, and solutions to problems being prayer or sacrifice or ritual. The Enlightenment and its quest for knowledge is a threat to fundamentalism, and that's the subject of this article by Lee Salisbury is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Religious leaders hate rival sources of authority. 18th Century European Enlightenment thinking with its concepts of rationalism and science provided religious authoritarianism with that rival. America’s founding fathers, products of the Enlightenment, had the audacity to effectively say to Christianity, "worship all you want, but our Constitution does not need your influence!" Roman Catholic traditionalists and Protestant Christian bible-based fundamentalists still seethe over this rejection.

Then as now, zealous Catholics and Protestants claim to speak for God versus Enlightenment thinkers who boldly experiment with new ideas independent of Christian dogma. Today's clergy shudder if their members hear the Thomas Edisons of this world, whose invention catapulted America to prosperity, exclaim as he did that, "religion is all bunk!"

THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL MEMORY

We in the United States sometimes have an abysmal ignorance about other cultures and other ways of looking at the world. We don't have much historical memory in this country. Vietnam seems like ancient history to some, although it just happened yesterday in historical terms. One of the great follies perpetrated by the Bush administration is seeding hatred of the United States by the world's Moslems for generations to come. In this article Robert Parry talks about the consequences of invading countries and setting the process of historical memory into motion. The article is linked at www.opednews.com:

For many people in the world, grievances of past centuries can be as real as the events of last week and often more powerful. Animosities born of brutality and perceived injustice can distort relations even between countries with strong economic and cultural ties.

Which is what Colin, with his close-cropped hair and strong Scottish accent, recalled to me as we sat in the bar on the night of July 4, 2005, talking about the bloody wars waged against Scotland and Wales by Edward I, the ruthless and cunning English monarch of the late 13th Century.

AUGUST 12, 2005

WHAT IS BUSH HIDING IN UNRELEASED DOCUMENTS?

George W. Bush and his administration are the most secretive executive branch in our history. They consistently refuse to release documents, even from previous administrations, using that old excuse of "executive privilege." We see a pattern. Now they're refusing to release documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. This editorial from The Minneapolis Star-Tribune talks about the paranoid, possibly criminal failure of the Bush administration to be up front with the American people. The editorial is at www.startribune.com:

As he was about to leave office in January 1989, President Ronald Reagan issued an executive order establishing policies and procedures for administering the act. Reagan also claimed the entire 12 years for many of his papers. The 12 years expired in January 2001, but President Bush ordered the archivist to delay release of the first batch of Reagan papers -- an authority not authorized by the 1978 law. Then in November 2001, Bush issued an executive order rescinding Reagan's and giving the sitting president the right to review all records before their release and the right to block release of some. Using that executive order as justification, the Bush White House now is vetting thousands of pages of Roberts' papers archived at the Reagan Library before deciding which ones it will provide the Senate in anticipation of Roberts' confirmation hearings.

In addition, the White House is withholding thousands of pages of Roberts' writings from his time in the solicitor general's office from 1989 to 1993, claiming executive privilege. That claim is spurious, as the courts found when prosecutor Kenneth Start sought similar documents from the Clinton administration.

GRAFFITI WITH A PURPOSE

It sometimes irritates me when I drive around Fresno and see ugly graffiti splashed against a wall or a fence. But a new form of graffiti is different. It's graffiti with a purpose. It's to wake up freeway drivers to the harsh realities of this rotten administration and its hideous war. It's freeway blogging. This article by Rupert Cornwell is at www.commondreams.org:

These are the domain of the freeway bloggers, a breed that have invented a tangible concrete and tarmac version of the internet to make their feelings known about George Bush. The messages, posted from overpasses, bridges and verges, are short, pithy and very, very rude.

How many of these bloggers are out there? No one really knows. Who are they? Mainly, it would seem, young men of a mildly anarchic disposition, with a message to get out, a modest talent for gymnastics and a pronounced taste for the adrenalin rush of their trade.

THE GROPER: SCANDALS KEEP COMING

Arnold hasn't been much of a governor, unless you like trash talk about unions and attacking working class people, but he certainly provides plenty of material for newspaper columnists. Arnold recently got embroiled in a scandal because he was a "consultant" for fitness magazines and in a position to sign or veto legislation that would help them and him as well. We know about his tendency to grope unwilling women. Now we learn that Arnold may have had a more conventional fling with a woman not his wife, and it was kept covered up as he ran for governor. This column by Steve Lopez is at www.latimes.com:

My colleagues Peter Nicholas and Carla Hall report that while Schwarzenegger was running for governor and negotiating a multimillion-dollar contract to shill for muscle magazines owned by the company that publishes the National Enquirer, the same outfit was paying Arnold's alleged former "masseuse" $20,000 not to go running her mouth.

More recently, the governor vetoed legislation that would have cracked down on the supplemental drug industry that keeps the muscle magazine advertising revenue pumped up.

AUGUST 11, 2005

PRIVACY IS A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT

The primary argument right-wingers have made against the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion is that privacy is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution. This is an important point because far more than Roe v. Wade is involved. But the very argument that we don't have a right to privacy is wrong as Jay Bookman points out in this article at www.commondreams.org:

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

That is a blunt, unequivocal rejection of the anti-abortion stance on the right to privacy. It obliterates the argument that since the right to privacy is not listed explicitly in the Constitution, it must not exist.

We do have a constitutional right to privacy. The right to speak as you wish, to pray as you wish, to be secure in your home against warrantless searches or seizures, are all based on the same underlying right to be left alone by government. The right to privacy, in fact, animates the entire Constitution, Bill of Rights included. The drafters of those documents felt no need to state what in their minds was already so obvious.

RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR PROGRESSIVES CAN WORK TOGETHER

I have a healthy skepticism about religious belief, but it's easy to get caught up in the hatred and bigotry of the Religious Right and forget that there is a gentle side to religious belief on the Christian Left. I respect Martin Luther King enormously, and Martin Luther King was a minister. I respect Jesse Jackson, who is a minister. There are countless others on the Religious Left who exemplify the compassionate message preached by Jesus Christ. In this column Katrina vanden Huevel writes about the possibilities of the Christian Left and progressives working together. The column is at www.thenation.com:

As Lerner wrote me last week, "...the need to overcome the potentially fascistic direction of American politics as the Religious Right and the secular right strengthen their alliance and their hold on American political institutions makes us want to transcend past upsets and focus on how to build the most effective social change movement for the future..."

We've done it before. Religious and secular progressives have a long history of working together, albeit in a dramatically different social and political climate. Almost every major social reform movement in America (and many around the world--think on this 25th anniversary summer of Solidarity's inception) has been fueled in part by faith.

THE REALITY OF WAR

Some people are squeamish about seeing the movie Saving Private Ryan because it's very graphic in showing the realities of war. You see men getting shot to pieces, their arms and legs blown away, and the horror of storming a beach. But you can always step back and tell yourself that this is just a movie. When it comes to footage of the victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though, you can't pretend. These were real people who were guinea pigs for the first atomic bombs used against other nation. The films are so graphic, in fact, they've been suppressed for sixty years. You wish the right-wing crazies who like all the punitive and bloody parts of the Bible might embrace what Isaiah said instead and "beat their swords into ploughshares and not learn war anymore." This article by Randolph T. Holhut is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

If people saw what really happens in war, there would never be another war. That's why we rarely see, read or hear anything but the most sanitized parts of warfare in our media.

We pay a high cost for that lack of truth telling in the form of more wars and more death. Each generation has to learn the horror for itself.

Sixty years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Americans have never been told and have never seen the true extent of the effects of the atom bomb on humans.

AUGUST 10, 2005

THE BLOOD ON BUSH'S HANDS

George W. Bush has been adept at providing quick sound bites. He talked about "smoking out" Osama bin Laden and "having him on the run." He told the insurgents in Iraq to "bring it on." He has called the deaths of U.S. military in Iraq a "noble cause." But he refuses to meet with Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in Iraq a year ago. He hasn't attended a single funeral, not even a memorial for the Ohio soldiers killed last week. Mr. Bush can take an extraordinary number of vacations, but he can't hide from the truth forever. In this article Normon Solomon writes about Bush and the reality of the war in Iraq. This column is at www.commondreams.org:

War PR and war grief have collided at the Crawford crossroads at a time when the Bush administration is in the midst of launching its scam about supposed plans to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that a spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "said he did not know how many extra troops might be needed during the referendum and election period" through the end of this year. The AP dispatch added: "Other officials have said that once the election period has passed and the troop total recedes to the 138,000 level, a further reduction in the range of 20,000 to 30,000 is possible next spring and summer. That could change, however, if the insurgency intensifies or an insufficient number of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces prove themselves battle-ready."

When a mass killer is at the helm of the ship of state, taking a bow now and again while "Hail to the Chief" booms from big brass bands, a significant portion of the country's population feels revulsion. And often a sense of powerlessness -- a triumph for media manipulation. Passivity is the health of the manipulative media state.

A NEW APOLLO PROJECT

The original Project Apollo was about sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to earth within a decade. We succeeded. Now a new Apollo project is about finding alternative energy and creating jobs for the future. This article is at www.makethemaccountable.com:

Now America has an Apollo project for the 21st century. Today the stakes are much, much higher. We face an economy hemorrhaging its highest paying and most productive jobs, cities falling apart with over a trillion dollars in unmet public investment in crumbling schools, transportation, and infrastructure. The middle class is increasingly insecure as career ladders are broken and not replaced in new service sector jobs. And on a global scale we face never before seen environmental disruption, rising social inequity, and the emergence of fundamentalist anger that threatens our very security. We need new leaders of vision, and a new unifying call to action.

THE QUALITY OF JOBS, NOT JUST NUMBERS, COUNTS

We know the real unemployment numbers are far higher than the government tells us based on "official" statistics because official statistics don't count the number of people who have simply given up looking. Even if you used just official statistics, the recovery from the last recession has been anemic. What's as bad, or possibly worse, is that the jobs being "created" are of the dead-end, low-paying service sector variety. We have outsourced our manufacturing jobs, jobs that actually provided a middle class lifestyle. We can buy cheap stuff from China, but we're losing the ability to manufacture anything in the United States. Paul Craig Roberts takes a look at our illusionary economy in this article linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

In the 21st century job growth in the US economy has consistently reflected that of a Third World country--low productivity domestic services jobs. This goes on month after month and no one catches on--least of all the economists and the policymakers.

Economists assume that every high productivity, high paying job that is shipped out of the country is a net gain for America. We are getting things cheaper, they say. Perhaps, for a while, until the dollar goes. What the cheaper goods argument overlooks are the reductions in the productivity and pay of employed Americans and in the manufacturing, technical, and scientific capability of the US economy.

What is the point of higher education when the job opportunities in the economy do not require it?

AUGUST 9, 2005

THE NEVER-ENDING RECOVERY

You have to hand it to the Bush administration. It took real talent to blow a big surplus and a good economy and turn the surplus into massive deficits and an economy that appears to be in constant critical condition. President Herbert Hoover promised that prosperity was "just around the corner" and that's pretty much what we get from another incompetent--but more far corrupt--administration. This column by Thomas Oliphant is at www.boston.com:

The underlying problem is that the vaunted recovery is well over three years old, way past the time when in the ordinary course of events recoveries morph into prosperity. In fact, this so-called recovery is already the slowest and puniest in post-Depression history, despite the fact that the event the country is supposedly recovering from was so minor it barely registered on the scales and despite the fact that the economy has received more stimulus from hemorrhaging deficits and easy money than it has ever received in modern times.

At the White House, ''recovery" is also the preferred term because of the public opinion polls to which its employees are addicted. Views of Bush's handling of the economy remain strongly negative -- by nearly 15 percent in latest samplings.

BUSH STILL FRIENDLY WITH SAUDIS

Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the leading funder of terrorists around the world. The Bush family has a long and friendly relationship with the monarchy in Saudi Arabia as documented in Craig Unger's book House of Bush, House of Saud. If Bush were truly serious in addressing the issue of terrorism, he would take a harder line with the Saudis. Robert Scheer writes about it in this column at www.latimes.com:

Yes, it has stuck deep in the craw of many of us Americans that after 9/11, Washington squandered global goodwill and a huge percentage of our resources invading a country that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, while continuing to pander to this dysfunctional dynasty. After all, Saudi Arabia is believed to have paid Bin Laden's murderous gang millions in protection money in the years before 9/11, and it lavishly funds extremist religious schools throughout the region that preach and teach anti-Western jihad.

"Al Qaeda found fertile fundraising ground in the kingdom," noted the 9/11 commission report in one of its many careful understatements. The fact is, without Saudi Arabia, there would be no Al Qaeda today.

A REMINDER OF BUSH'S TEXAS RANGERS SCAM

George W. Bush has gotten to ride the gravy train his whole life. He was born privileged and that sense of privilege counts far more with him than any sense of personal responsibility. In business deal after business deal Bush was unethical at best, criminal at worst. It's interesting to review how he became a managing partner of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise. He invested $600,000 and walked away with $15 million. In a new book sportswriter Dave Zirin revisits Bush and the Rangers. Sean Gonzalves talks about the book in this column at www.commondreams.org:

In one of Zirin's more hard-hitting chapters, ''Games That Bosses Play,'' instead of hopping on the athletes-are-all-overpaid-egomaniacs bandwagon, he takes aim at team owners, particularly one former baseball boss now occupying the most powerful seat in the world.

''No one ever fronted a stadium swindle better than George W. Bush,'' Zirin writes. And then he goes on to explain how Bush became managing partner of the Texas Rangers.

Like many sports teams, Bush and his partners threatened to move the Rangers out of Arlington if the city didn't buy them a new stadium. Local government gave in and ponied up $135 million in taxpayer money. This is the same Bush who now loves to say tax money belongs to the taxpayer.

AUGUST 8, 2005

OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE?

We know that Chief of Staff Andy Card gave at least 12 hours warning to the White House that an investigation of the Valerie Plame leak was going to take place. That sounds like obstruction of justice. Now we learn that George W. Bush may have taken steps to stop an investigation involving Tom DeLay, which also sounds like obstruction of justice. Richard M. Nixon largely fell because he obstructed justice, and Nixon's crimes pale in comparison to this administration. This story by Walter F. Roche, Jr. is at www.latimes.com:

A U.S. grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor and the inquiry ended soon after.

The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in Washington that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.

THINGS HAVE CHANGED SINCE THE 1960s

President Kennedy gave full support and encouragement to the United States to send a man to the moon and bring him back safely to earth. Once upon a time, the U.S. led the world in almost every good category. We led in science, we led in technology, we led in pursuing justice and civil liberties. We weren't perfect, but we were headed in the right direction. Now we have a man in the Oval Office more suited to the dark superstitions of the Middle Ages than to the 21st century. At a time when we need a real visionary, we have someone who wants to go back into the past. This article by Cynthia Tucker is at www.ajc.com:

This nation used to be exuberant about scientific achievement, confident (even arrogant) about our ability to solve any technological challenge, comfortable with the possibilities of scientific research. When the Soviets stunned the world with the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the United States rushed to the barricades with money for science labs and math classrooms. Nor was there any conflict among mainstream Christians about promoting scientific advancement.

But that was then. Now, this country is led by a cult of religious fundamentalists who wish to impose their narrow thinking on the rest of us. The dogma advanced by Bush and his ilk disputes more than a century of biological research, which relies on the foundations of Darwin's theories. It discounts the pain of countless sick and handicapped citizens, who might benefit from advances in stem cell research. It ignores the growing scientific prowess of other nations, including China and South Korea, where, just last week, scientists announced the successful cloning of a dog - a stunning development.

OH, THE HUMANITY!

On the last day of his life President Kennedy saw a full page ad in a Dallas newspaper calling him a traitor. He remarked that they were headed into "nut country." That pretty much describes the right-wing Central Valley. Today there was another wonderful letter to the editor in The Fresno Bee asserting that "immoral liberals" were pushing evolutionary theory. The wingnut claimed that very few scientists believed in evolution and that there was no scientific evidence for evolution. This has to be the prima facie example of a right-wing wacko.

We see evolutionary theory in action around all us all the time. Just look at our battle against various disease organisms. It seems as soon as you develop a vaccine or serum the disease becomes resistant. That's because of Darwin's theory of natural selection in action. How about the way insects develop immunity to various pesticides? Natural selection strikes again. Nuts like this make sweeping assertions, but never present any evidence. Just where is the proof that most scientists reject evolution? The real howler was a claim that teachers at the high school and college level "stop reading," so they don't know all the evidence against evolution. I have a hard time believing this person has read anything more difficult than Dick and Jane.

LET'S GET BACK TO ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY

In this column Molly Ivins talks about a new book by Thomas Frank, the author of What's the Matter With Kansas? In this book Mr. Frank looks at how we've been sold a bill of goods about the wonders of the "free market." A few very rich, very powerful, very amoral people benefit from the free market, but the rest of us get swept along with the tide and usually wind up drowning. This column is at www.commondreams.org:

Haven’t had so much fun reading a book since I was 12 and found “The Three Musketeers.”

Thomas Frank’s “One Market, Under God” is a populist romp over the most delicious idiocies of the past decade. The obligatory subtitle is “Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy,” which doesn’t sound promising, but this is a ring-tailed tooter.

The book is a delicious chronicle of the hubris of capitalism in our time, and it contains some of the most savagely funny cultural criticism I have ever come across.

Of course, it’s really not fair — all Frank has to do is quote them: business as God, technology as divinity, the New Economy as the end of history. We live in a culture that produces books like “God Wants You to Be Rich” and “Jesus, CEO.”

AUGUST 7, 2005

REPUBLICANS DON'T ACT IN THE INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES

Under the "leadership" of George W. Bush and Republicans the United States takes on more and more characteristics of a banana republic. At the highest levels of government we see what is in effect legalized bribery. High-powered lobbyists cozy up with members of Congress in return for big payoffs in legislation that benefits big corporations and the powerful and socks it to the rest of us. In this commentary Robert L. Borosage discusses graft in high places. The commentary is at www.thenation.com:

Congress and the President went home this week with the President on a roll. President Bush noted that "we got a lot done." The Republican spin machine cranked into full gear celebrating the President's leadership and triumphs. This provides "verification that this is a governing party," said House Republican whip Roy Blunt, with evident relief. But governing for what? What is apparent is that the more the President and the conservative majority in Congress win, the more the nation loses.

In the last week, Republicans voted in virtual lockstep for the following national priorities: (1) to give billions of taxpayer money to big oil companies, already wallowing in record profits, while doing nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil; (2) to extend to Central America the trade policies that have racked up the largest trade deficits in the annals of history; and (3) to weaken the cop on the corporate beat even as the corporate crime wave is still being uncovered. That's in addition to the bridge to nowhere in Alaska and the dam over the dry creek in Mississippi that is business as usual in the Congress.

COWARDLY BUSH WON'T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY

Cindy Sheehan lost her son Casey in Iraq, and she has since become a leading anti-war activist. She went to Crawford, Texas, to George W. Bush's "ranch" to ask him personally just what her son died for. The coward refused to meet with her. The administration has made sure Americans don't see all the flag-draped coffins coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and that we don't know about the number of soliders who have been maimed for life. This story is at news.baou.com:

Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Sadr City, Iraq,Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004, met with two Bush administration aides Saturday after president George W. Bush refused to come out to meet her.

Sheehan, 48 (shown here), traveled to the president's Crawford ranch after Bush said that fallen U.S. troops had died for a 'noble cause' and that the mission must be completed.

"I want to ask the president, 'Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?" Sheehan told reporters. "Last week, you said my son died for a noble cause' and I want to ask him what that noble cause is?"

WE NEED TO MAKE PRIVACY A RIGHT

One of the big right-wing talking points about abortion is that privacy was not a right enumerated in the Constitution. Privacy is the foundation of abortion rights. It's also a right that should be fundamental in other areas of our lives. It's being compromised everywhere you turn. Cameras are pointed at you everywhere now, it seems, your data is in databases of credit reporting companies, your personal information gets sold to every commercial enterprise imaginable, and Republicans want a national ID card that will in effect be a dossier that can be compromised by enterprising computer hackers. This article by Eric Dash presents a case of how we should follow Europe's example and make privacy a fundamental right. The article is at www.nytimes.com:

More fundamentally, these two systems for dealing with data arise from a cultural divide over privacy itself. In broad terms, the United States looks at privacy largely as a consumer and an economic issue; in the rest of the developed world, it is regarded as a fundamental right.

In the United States, said Trevor Hughes, executive director of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, debates over the privacy of personal data generally occurs piecemeal, when a particular abuse causes harm. "In Europe, " Mr. Hughes said. "data is just protected because it is data - information about you."

RELIGIOUS CRAZIES HELPING PUT U.S. BEHIND IN SCIENCE

That great philosopher George W. Bush came out in favor of allowing "intelligent design" to be taught in schools along with the theory of evolution. Bush's rationale was to allow different schools of thought. You could take that argument very far, of course. Why not allow Nazi theories of eugenics to be taught along with biology? They are, after all, "different schools of thought." Intelligent design is being advertised as a scientific theory that bears equal credibility with evolutionary theory, but it's not science. It's essentially the anti-evolution theory, trying to find holes in evolution and trying to fill those holes with religious belief. This article by Marie Cocco is at www.thestar.com:

The peril in this movement is not merely political hypocrisy. As a nation we are struggling to maintain our scientific edge in a world that is now producing as much brainpower and has as much potential to break through scientific barriers as we do. Yet American students have, at best, a mediocre understanding of science. About half of 12th-graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, fail to demonstrate even "basic proficiency" of scientific concepts. American eighth-graders perform about as well as those from Australia and some countries in Western Europe, but they lag behind those from Japan, Korea and Taiwan as well as Hungary and Estonia.

"The risk, if intelligent design is incorporated into school curricula, is to undermine scientific credibility and the ability of young people to distinguish science from non-science," says the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which has been struggling against the anti-evolution lobby for years.

AUGUST 6, 2005

LET'S GET RID OF LEAF BLOWERS

Leaf blowers have to be among the most annoying things ever invented. It seems around Fresno you can't escape them. I go to work and in the parking lot guys are running around with surgical masks and using these foul contraptions. In hot weather they're particularly obnoxious, not only because of the noise, but because of the pollutants from the motor and the particulates they fling into the air. It's the same when I get home. Some guy wearing a surgical mask is splitting the air with a leaf blower. This article talks about an effort in Emeryville to get rid of these ridiculous machines. The article by Chip Johnson is at www.sfgate.com:

Les Blomberg, executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse in Montpelier, Vt., never had much faith in the contraptions.

"I would say they rank as one of the stupidest things ever invented,'' Blomberg said. "They don't really do anything, they're harmful to the operator's hearing, he walks around in the exhaust stream of an internal combustion engine -- and they disturb the peace.''

Not only that, but much of the smaller particulate matter that is blown around comes to settle in pretty much the same place anyway.

IT'S THE ECONOMY (AMONG OTHER THINGS)

Bill Clinton won the presidency with the mantra "It's the economy, stupid." The 2000 presidential election seemed to defy the logic of the economy having a major influence on the presidential race. If economic concerns were the major factor, Al Gore should have won by an even bigger margin than he did, certainly by enough that Bush couldn't steal the election. But now the rotten Bush stewardship of the economy is becoming an issue. This story by Jonathan Weisman and Nell Henderson is at www.washingtonpost.com:

U.S. job growth jumped last month and the unemployment rate held steady at 5 percent, the government reported yesterday, the latest economic data to show the economy picking up steam.

Yet President Bush's economic approval ratings remain low, weighed down by anger over Iraq and concerns about lackluster wage increases and stubbornly high gasoline prices.

THE PASS THE BUCK PRESIDENCY

It's ironic that right-wingers always stress "personal responsibility," but they don't hold their politicians accountable for much of anything. Even though he has lied and made a monumental mess of everything, according to right-wingers George W. Bush is not responsible. Reggie Rivers discusses it in this article at www.commondreams.org:

Bush's critics have charged him with abandoning the political process and misusing a process that was designed for emergencies, not controversies. But Bush doesn't worry about his critics. Instead, he focuses on his supporters, who always give him absolution.

"It's not your fault," they've told Bush. The blame, they say, lies with partisan Democrats who held up Bolton's appointment. Bush had no choice but to ignore the Senate.

So far, nothing in Bush's 4 1/2 years in office has been his fault. He's either been ignorant of problems that developed within his administration or he was forced by outside groups to take drastic action.

It wasn't his fault that an impostor kept the Denver 3 from attending a March town hall meeting at the Wings Over the Rockies museum or that the Secret Service has refused to identify the man. It wasn't Bush's fault that his adviser, Karl Rove, was involved in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN: RIGHT

This week George W. Bush came out in favor of teaching the idea of "intelligent design" alongside evolution in our schools. Evolution is a scientific theory subject to the rigorous standards of scientific verification. Intelligent design is a faith-based idea trying to masquerade as science. People who want to insist that intelligent design is a valid idea of how we arrived here should consider some of the many unintelligent designs we see in nature. That's the subject of this article by Lisa Fullam linked at www.commondreams.org:

As the theory of intelligent design again hits the news with President Bush's encouragement this week that the theory be taught in schools alongside evolution, I have one question: What about unintelligent design?

Take rabbit digestion, for example. As herbivores, rabbits need help from bacteria to break down the cell walls of the plants they eat, so, cleverly enough, they have a large section of intestine where such bacterial fermentation takes place. The catch is, it's at the far end of the small intestine, beyond where efficient absorption of nutrients can happen. A sensible system -- as we see in ruminant animals like cattle and deer -- ferments before the small intestine, maximizing nutrient absorption. Rabbits, having to make do with an unintelligent system, instead eat some of their own feces after one trip through, sending half-digested food back through the small intestine for re-digestion.

Horses are similarly badly put together: They ferment their food in a large, blind-ended cecum after the small intestine. Unlike rabbits, they don't recycle their feces -- they're just inefficient. Moreover, those big sections of hind gut are a frequent location for gut blockages and twists that, absent prompt veterinary intervention, lead to slow and excruciating death for the poor horse. The psalmist writes: "God takes no delight in horses' power." Clearly, if God works in creation according to the simplistic schemes of the intelligent design folks, God not only doesn't delight in horses, but seems positively to have it in for them.

AUGUST 5, 2005

SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY AIR POLLUTION DISTRICT AS BIG BROTHER

I'm a major environmental advocate. I believe we need to move away from a petroleum based economy and move toward renewable energy, and sources such as solar and wind power. So it was quite a shock to get a letter today from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution District telling me my car was seen emitting smoke at a time and place where I couldn't have been. What bothers me is that someone would "report" something like this. It has an eerie resemblance to Big Brother. I consider civil liberties on a par with the environment because without civil liberties it doesn't matter how clean the air and water are; life is still lousy. I would suggest the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution District find a better way to clean the air than taking false reports and sending semi-intimidating letters to innocent people.

ANOTHER RIGHT WING ROVE TALKING POINT

Right-wingers have nothing on circus contortionists. Right-wingers can bend and stretch themselves into any position to justify crime by the Bush administration. Today The Fresno Bee printed a letter defending Karl Rove. This guy said that "no one said anything" about Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon papers or President Clinton selling MIRV technology to China. He even went so far as to say that the two men involved in outing Valerie Plame, Bob Novak and Karl Rove, already knew her name, so what was the big deal? Well, the rest of the world didn't know her name, which is the point.

First, I suspect a little research will reveal lots of right-wing screaming when the Pentagon Papers were published. We know that the Nixon administration even went to court to try to prevent their publication. We know that Nixon operatives even stole Ellsberg's medical records. And I don't know of any intelligence assets that were current at the time being compromised by release of the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg was doing a public service, perhaps in an unorthodox way, in revealing the lies and distortions that got us bogged down in Vietnam. Karl Rove and Bob Novak outed Valerie Plame to get revenge against her husband, who was trying to prevent our getting involved in another Vietnam. According to right-wing logic, then, trying to prevent unnecessary bloodshed is worse than compromising our intelligence.

I haven't researched the Clinton and MIRV issue, but what about the Bush administration weakening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Does that pose a threat to us? How about allowing the sale of weapons that can shoot down an aircraft? Does that pose a threat?

60TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIROSHIMA BOMBING

I know that hindsight is always 20-20, but I have major qualms about the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan 60 years ago. It's hard to know exactly what intelligence was available to President Truman, or to know all the pressures he was subject to.

We know that many scientists, including some of those who built the bomb, had grave doubts about the necessity or the morality in dropping it on Japan. Some have argued that the Japanese would have fought an invasion to the death, so they say the bomb actually saved lives in the long run by ending the war quicker. But there is evidence the Japanese were ready to surrender if given the right terms. There is the haunting specter of racism and the thought that maybe these bombings were to avenge Pearl Harbor.

I think it's a dark stain on American history. We remain the only country to use a nuclear weapon against another country. In the process we killed thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians just as we are doing now in Iraq. This article by Matthew Rothschild is at www.progressive.org:

From the historical record, it's becoming increasingly clear that these atomic bombs—which killed more than 200,000 people immediately—were unnecessary.

Now I know a lot of old vets will tell you that the bombs saved hundreds of thousands of lives by forestalling a bloody invasion of the island.

My uncle was a commander in the Pacific, and he always made that argument.

But the argument is no longer holding.

HARVEST OF SHAME

One of the most incisive documentaries the great Edward R. Murrow produced was called "Harvest of Shame." It showed the tragic and brutal lives suffered by migrant farm workers. We've reached the twenty-first century, but things haven't changed much from Murrow's day, or for that matter, from the times of John Steinbeck's Okies in The Grapes of Wrath. Poor people, desperate to make a living, migrate from state to state and crop to crop to pick the produce that winds up our supermarkets, but the big agricultural companies get most of the rewards. It's astonishing that leaders like Cesar Chavez had to lead movements to ban the short-handled hoe, for example. And it's just this year, after farm workers have died from the brutal heat in California, that Governor Arnold Scharzenegger, to his credit, authorized emergency measures to protect people who work outdoors. This article is at guardian.uk.co.uk:

These are the labourers, the unseen and unacknowledged force behind the wealth of California's agriculture. They are all Latin Americans, most of them from Mexico. And many of them are "illegals", in the parlance of the time, undocumented migrants, illegally employed by legal Californian companies. Many of the estimated 11 million undocumented aliens in the US work in agriculture, picking oranges in Florida, strawberries in California, and everything in between. Without them, there would be little to show for US agriculture.

Constantino Cruz was one of these labourers, picking tomatoes in Kern County in California's Central Valley. The robust 24-year-old arrived from the Mexican province of Oaxaca two years ago to earn money to send back to his wife and three children. This year his wife and some of his immediate family joined him. His children stayed in Mexico.

AUGUST 4, 2005

LIBERALS HAVE THE REAL MORAL VALUES

The fire and brimstone types on the religious right would have you believe that morality is defined by abortion and gay rights. There are far more important and far more wide ranging moral imperatives where liberals have always taken the lead. It has been mostly liberals who have opposed this ghastly war in Iraq, not because we're sympathetic to terrorists as Karl Rove suggested, but because we don't believe in attacking countries that are not a threat to us. Thousands of innocent people have died thanks to the machismo of people like Karl Rove, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Liberals have taken the lead on civil rights and civil liberties and protecting the environment and protecting the rights of working people. In this article Jim Wallis, a theologian himself, talks about how we should define the far more encompassing morality represented by liberals. This article is at www.nytimes.com:

To be specific, I offer five areas in which the Democrats should change their message and then their messaging.

First, somebody must lead on the issue of poverty, and right now neither party is doing so. The Democrats assume the poverty issue belongs to them, but with the exception of John Edwards in his 2004 campaign, they haven't mustered the gumption to oppose a government that habitually favors the wealthy over everyone else. Democrats need new policies to offer the 36 million Americans, including 13 million children, who live below the poverty line, as well as the 9.8 million families one recent study identified as "working hard but falling short."

In fact, the Democrats should draw a line in the sand when it comes to wartime tax cuts for the wealthy, rising deficits, and the slashing of programs for low-income families and children. They need proposals that combine to create a "living family income" for wage-earners, as well as a platform of "fair trade," as opposed to just free trade, in the global economy. Such proposals would cause a break with many of the Democrats' powerful corporate sponsors, but they would open the way for a truly progressive economic agenda. Many Americans, including religious voters who see poverty as a compelling issue of conscience, desire such a platform.

HISTORY DOESN'T BODE WELL FOR GLOBALIZATION

Pundits such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman expound on the virtues of a global economy. But we're already seeing major cracks in the hull of the good ship Globalization. How long will working people be content to see their jobs outsourced and see their standard of living decline? How long can we sustain a system that is causing grave damage to our planet? How long can we tolerate such huge chasms between the rich and poor? How long can we continue with a finite source of energy such as oil? This article points out that a similar "golden era" of globalization took place from about 1870 to 1914 when it collapsed. The article by James Howard Kunstler is at www.commondreams.org:

This first phase of globalisation then took off under coal-and-steam power. There was no shortage of fuel, the colonial boundaries were stable, and the pipeline of raw materials from them to the factories of western Europe ran smoothly. The rise of a middle class running the many stages of the production process provided markets for all the new production. Innovations in finance gave legitimacy to all kinds of tradable paper. Life was very good for Europe and America, notwithstanding a few sharp cyclical depressions and recoveries. Trade boomed between the great powers. The belle époque represented the high tide of hopeful expectations. In America, it was called the progressive era. The 20th century looked golden.

It all fell apart in 1914. Historians are still baffled about what really brought on the first world war. What did France or Britain really care about Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of a country already in deep eclipse? There were no active contests over territory at the time, not even in the Asian or African colonies. And yet the diplomatic failures of that fateful summer led to the great slaughter of the trenches, the death of a substantial portion of the younger generation, and a virtual nervous breakdown of authority in politics and culture. It would take a depression, fascism, and a second world war to resolve these issues and a new round of globalisation did not ramp up again until the mid-1960s.

BUSH'S STEROID TALK BACKFIRES

I thought it was curious that George W. Bush raised the issue of steroids in sports in the State of the Union address in 2003. With all the truly pressing problems facing us as a country and as a species steroids in baseball and other sports seemed pretty trivial. It's ironic that Bush's good friend, first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, has now been implicated in using steroids. Bush's moralizing suddenly stopped and he claimed to believe Palmeiro didn't lie before Congress. This story by Dave Zirin is at www.commondreams.org:

Bush called Palmeiro a "friend" and said, "He's testified in public [to being clean], and I believe him.... Still do." Presidential lickspittle Scott McClellan also made clear at a White House press briefing that Palmeiro has the full support of the Oval Office.

It no doubt will puzzle future generations (or present ones, for that matter) why the President felt compelled to comment on what a 40 year old ballplayer may or may not have ingested. But the reasons are clear enough. This is a case of how the Bush administration's Politics of Distraction have turned around to nip the President in the tush. It all began at the January 2003 State of the Union address when Bush inexplicably took time to talk tough on steroids. As New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady grinned next to the First Lady, Bush put the plague of steroids on the front burner of the national consciousness. This was Politics of Distraction 101, a classic ploy to give the public something to chew over instead of those two pesky countries the US armed forces happened to be occupying.

AUGUST 3, 2005

BUSH IS GOOD AT GIVING GOODIES TO HIS FRIENDS

The old-time snake oil salesman who went around in brightly-painted wagons and offered up medications for anything that ailed you had nothing on the snake oil we've been getting from George W. Bush and his administration. Bush has even been able to hoodwink his supporters. You offer up a grandiose plan to make us an "ownership society" to appeal to the right-wing base. You talk about "compassionate conservatism" and funnel money to religious organizations who are supposed to take over what government previously provided. You talk about "no child left behind" and under fund the program. It goes on and on. Paul Krugman takes a look in this column at www.nytimes.com:

The campaign for Social Security privatization has degenerated into farce. The "global war on terrorism" has been downgraded to the "global struggle against violent extremism" (pronounced gee-save), which is just embarrassing. Baghdad is a nightmare, Basra is a militia-run theocracy, and officials are talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq next year (just in time for the U.S. midterm elections).

On the other hand, the administration is crowing about its success in passing the long-stalled energy bill, the highway bill and Cafta, the free-trade agreement with Central America. So is the Bush agenda stalled, or is it progressing?

BUSH'S PATRIOT ACT IN ACTION

You know you should be concerned about the PATRIOT Act when even a staunch conservative like former Congressman Bob Barr has problems with it. This story talks about a provision of the law called "sneak and peak" that allows the government far-reaching authority to spy and conduct searches without a warrant. This specific case dealt with drug smuggling, which has nothing to do with terrorism. This story by Ari Bloomekatz is at seattletimes.nwsource.com:

As drug smugglers carried hundreds of pounds of marijuana through a tunnel from Canada to the U.S. last month, federal officials heard every word and watched nearly every movement with state-of-the-art surveillance.

Investigators were able to surreptitiously install video and audio bugging devices in the tunnel after receiving a judge's approval to search the passage under a controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act.

AUGUST 1, 2005

THIS IS SUPPORTING THE TROOPS?

George W. Bush loves photo-ops with the troops. He loves playing dress up such as when he landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. But when it comes to really supporting the troops Mr. Bush is lacking, whether you consider the lack of armored vehicles in Iraq, or Kevlar vests, or now lower pay. Now members of the military are seeing a pay cut as Congress hands out goodies to the very wealthiest people in the United States. This article is at www.military.com:

Untold numbers of servicemembers residing off base will see their next paycheck shrink by as much as $250 -- and many of them may not even know the blow is coming.

Disbursing shops at several 1st Marine Division and 1st Force Service Support Group battalions surveyed over the past week said they learned only recently about the elimination of "geographic rate protection" under the Basic Allowance for Housing.

The change, outlined in Marine Administrative Message 315/01 and slated to take effect Monday, shelves a DoD policy enacted nearly five years ago. The old policy allowed servicemembers to retain higher housing allowances even when they moved to cheaper neighborhoods, said Master Sgt. Ervin Ramos, staff noncommissioned officer-in-charge for the Consolidated Personnel Administration Center, Headquarters and Support Battalion, Marine Corps Base.

GLOBAL WARMING CREATING WORSE HURRICANES

Scientists who have studied models of global warming have forecasted various negative effects, including prolonged droughts in some areas, extinction of species, flooding in some parts of the world, the spread of tropical diseases, and an increase in the number and strength of tornadoes and hurricanes. A new study suggests that not only are hurricanes getting stronger, but they're lasting longer. This story by Joseph B. Verrengia is at www.sun-sentinel.com:

Is global warming making hurricanes more ferocious? New research suggests the answer is yes. Scientists call the findings both surprising and "alarming'' because they suggest global warming is influencing storms now -- rather than in the distant future.

However, the research doesn't suggest global warming is generating more hurricanes and typhoons. The analysis by climatologist Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows for the first time that major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific since the 1970s have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent.

THE BUSH HISTORY OF ESCAPING SCANDAL

In many ways, with George W. Bush it's like father, like son. You could take it further and say like grandfather, like grandson. The Bush family has a long and sordid history of scandal and corruption going back to Prescott Bush, who helped finance Adolf Hitler. This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:

If there is one trait that has followed the Bush family through generations of privilege, it is the ability to escape scandal - a skill that will be put to the test again over the leaking of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, apparently to get back at her husband for criticizing George W. Bush’s case for invading Iraq.

The criminal investigation into who revealed Valerie Plame’s identity - and endangered clandestine operatives working with her - has been building for two years. But it is finally reaching critical mass with the disclosure that Bush’s political guru Karl Rove discussed Plame’s CIA work with Time correspondent Matthew Cooper in July 2003.

Rove appears to have been part of a P.R. campaign to punish Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for writing an article on July 6, 2003, that the administration had reason to doubt claims about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium when Bush cited that dramatic allegation in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

ROBERTS OPPOSED COURT REMEDIES FOR DISCRIMINATION

Maybe Judge John Roberts isn't quite stealth enough for George W. Bush. As more details emerge about Roberts and his role as a Republican party hack, it raises serious questions about his suitability to serve on the Supreme Court. We know that Roberts worked in the Reagan-Bush administration. We know he played a role in the Florida "recount" that handed the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. We know he has been a member of the ultra right-wing Federalist Society, which he conveniently "forgot" about. We now know that he worked against using the courts to remedy racial and sexual discrimination. This guy will be an absolute disaster for most Americans if he gets confirmed to the Court. This story by R. Jeffrey Smith, Amy Goldstein and Jo Becker is at www.washingtonpost.com:

In the early 1980s, a young intellectual lawyer named John G. Roberts Jr. was part of the vanguard of a conservative political revolution in civil rights, advocating new legal theories and helping enforce the Reagan administration's effort to curtail the use of courts to remedy racial and sexual discrimination.

Just 26 when he joined the Justice Department as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, Roberts was almost immediately entrusted to counsel senior department officials on such incendiary matters of the day as school desegregation, voting rules and government antidotes to bias in housing and hiring.