June 08, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

MCCAIN IS BUSH VERSION 2.0

John McCain advertises himself as a "straight talker" and a "maverick" who has broken from the Republican party numerous times. In fact, McCain has consistently supported Bush's policies. Mr. "Straight Talk" is in the hip pocket of Washington lobbyists. They have even ridden on his campaign bus! This article by Robert Parry is at www.consortiumnews.com:

Since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has sought to hide the forest of his neoconservative alignment with George W. Bush amid the trees of details, such as stressing differences over military tactics used in Iraq.

But the larger reality should be clear: McCain is a hard-line neoconservative who buys into Bush’s "preemptive war" theories abroad and his concept of an all-powerful "unitary executive" at home.

From McCain’s pre-Iraq invasion speeches to his campaign’s recent embrace of Bush’s imperial presidency, American voters should realize that if they choose John McCain, they will be locking in at least four more years of war with much of the Islamic world while selling out the Founders’ vision of a democratic Republic where no one is above the law.

THE POSITIVES OF HILLARY'S CAMPAIGN

My first choice for the Democratic nomination was John Edwards. When Edwards dropped out my allegiance shifted to Hillary Clinton. There were things about her campaign that irritated me. Some of what occurred will be used against Barack Obama by the Republicans. But she's intelligent, strong, and dedicated to the things she believes in. Even though she won't get the nomination, she has assumed an important place in history. She has proved that a woman should be judged on her individual accomplishments and policies and not on her gender. Women of future generations should thank her. This column by Gail Collins is at www.nytimes.com:

Over the past months, Clinton has seemed haunted by the image of the "nice girl" who gives up the fight because she’s afraid the boys will be angry if they don’t get their way. She told people she would never, ever say: "I’m the girl, I give up." She would never let her daughter, or anybody else’s daughter, think that she quit because things got too tough.

And she never did. Nobody is ever again going to question whether it’s possible for a woman to go toe-to-toe with the toughest male candidate in a race for president of the United States. Or whether a woman could be strong enough to serve as commander in chief.

Her campaign didn’t resolve whether a woman who seems tough enough to run the military can also seem likable enough to get elected. But she helped pave the way. So many battles against prejudice are won when people get used to seeing women and minorities in roles that only white men had held before. By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses, Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal.

June 01, 2008


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IMPEACH CHENEY

MCCLELLAN DIDN'T TELL US ANYTHING NEW

From all the commotion, you'd think former White House spokesman Scott McClellan's "tell all" book gave us stunning new revelations. All McClellan really did was verify what many of us already knew, that Bush and company took us into an unnecessary war. Despite the hideous immorality of that war, McClellan claims he still feels an affection for Bush. In this column Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel look at the craven media and its failure to hold Bush accountable as Bush took us into this war. The column is at washingtonbureau.typepad.com:

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

Second, we find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to "set the record straight" (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country.

But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.

BLEEDING OURSELVES DRY

The United States is addicted to military spending. We have bases all around the world. We have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over. We are looking at militarizing space. We have aircraft carriers and bombers and fighter planes and attack drones. There's no real enemy now except for ragtag bands of terrorists armed with low tech weapons. But military spending continues to increase. This commentary by Robert Scheer is at www.latimes.com:

The Soviets had developed the most modern arsenals, and the 9/11 hijackers were armed with box cutters, so how could we justify spending more to defeat Al Qaeda than we ever did to combat the communist enemy? That is the third-rail issue that politicians and the media dread touching because of the national security hysteria generated after the 9/11 attacks. Yet no presidential candidate can be serious about cutting the federal debt, improving education, holding down taxes or paying for any of the other things that the candidates of both parties promise without cutting military spending.


Without slashing the inflated military budget, the next president, who will inherit at least a $400-billion current-accounts deficit along with debt service on seven years of profligate military spending, will not be able to finance any of the domestic reforms that both the surviving Republican candidate and his two Democratic opponents advocate.

May 31, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


TRY BUSH FOR MURDER

If you suggest that George W. Bush be tried for murder there will be those who claim that you're only a "Bush hater" or some other nonsense. But when you look at some of the mass murderers in history, people like Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, or Pol Pot what separates Bush? The evidence is clear and overwhelming that Bush lied the United States into a war against Iraq that has resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 of our own military and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Bush and the senior members of his administration shouldn't be allowed to go into a quiet retirement living on government pensions and their obscenely-acquired wealth. Vincent Bugliosi is calling for Bush to be tried for murder with the death penalty as a possible penalty. This article by Russell Mokhiber is at www.commondreams.org:

If Vincent Bugliosi were prosecuting George W. Bush for the murder of the more than 4,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq, he would seek the death penalty.”If I were the prosecutor, there is no question I would seek the death penalty,” Bugliosi told Corporate Crime Reporter in a wide-ranging interview.

Bugliosi is the author of the just published book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (Vanguard Press, 2008).

“I’m urging here that an American jury try George Bush for first degree murder. I want to see him on trial for murder before an American jury. And if they convict him, it will be up to the jury to decide what his punishment is. One of the options would be the imposition of the death penalty. If I were prosecuting him, absolutely I would seek the death penalty. As Governor of Texas, George Bush signed death warrants - 152 out of 152 - most of them for people who only committed one murder.”

Bugliosi said he is sending a copy of his book to all fifty state Attorneys General, offering his assistance in prosecuting Bush for homicide.

“I’m herein enclosing a copy of my book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” Bugliosi writes in the letter to the Attorneys General. “I hope you will find the time to read it and that you will agree with its essential conclusion - that George W. Bush is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers who have died fighting his war in Iraq.”

May 29, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BAD COMPANIES

I've been thinking about the bad experiences I've had working for some companies down through the years. In some cases, the companies are "clients" of the company where I'm working. But this is a brief list:

Inland Starr Trucking--I worked there as a temp for one day. It was the single worst day of my working life. "Training" essentially consisted of demeaning me throughout the day.

Zenith Insurance--I guess they're proud of their new office in north Fresno. It was more like a mausoleum than an office. You're so far from windows you have to depend on artificial lighting. When I went there as a temp I had to read something like 30 pages of rules about their policies and procedures. You have to use an electronic key to go almost anywhere in their office. It's more like a prison than a workplace.

Producers Dairy--Years ago, when I was even more down and out than I am today I applied for a clerical job that paid $7.50 an hour. You had to get a background check for a miserable job that paid $7.50 an hour. Somehow that exemplifies control.

Gottschalk's Department Store--I had a temp job one Christmas season in their corporate credit department out near Riverpark. You took phone calls all day from their stores. You had to shout out "over limit!" any time a customer exceeded their credit limit. You had to get permission even to take your scheduled break. We constantly got complaints about how many calls were in the queue.

Travelers Insurance--I haven't directly worked for this company, but more in the capacity of a vendor. Their system is extremely cumbersome, which makes it difficult to do your job well, but then you get constantly barraged by complaints that you didn't do the job to their satisfaction. They have something called "Millennium," which sounds strangely cultish to me.

May 25, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

TORTURE CAME FROM THE TOP

Republicans self-righteously talked about "the rule of law" during the Clinton years. But as George W. Bush makes up the rules as he goes along Republicans don't seem concerned about Bush's flagrant disregard for the law, for the Constitution, and for basic human decency. Agents from the FBI documented countless human rights abuses against prisoners held as alleged terrorists. The consistent pattern of the abuses and other evidence shows that orders came from the highest levels of the United States government. There is no justification for this torture just as there was no justification for this war. This editorial is from The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/:

The study said F.B.I. agents reported this illegal behavior to Washington. They were told not to take part, but the bureau appears to have done nothing to end the abuse. It certainly never told Congress or the American people. The inspector general said the agents’ concerns were conveyed to the National Security Council, but he found no evidence that it acted on them.

Mr. Bush claims harsh interrogations produced invaluable intelligence, but the F.B.I. agents said the abuse was ineffective. They also predicted, accurately, that it would be impossible to prosecute abused prisoners.

For years, Mr. Bush has refused to tell the truth about his administration’s inhuman policy on prisoners, and the Republican-controlled Congress eagerly acquiesced to his stonewalling. Now, the Democrats in charge of Congress must press for full disclosure.

SOME PERSPECTIVE, PLEASE

This article caught my eye because I received a mailer from a mayoral candidate in Fresno that appropriated the text from the e-mail the author discusses. I respect veterans who actually have defended freedom. Too many of our wars haven't been protecting freedom, though. They've had other motivations even though they've been dressed up as something far more noble. This article by Monica Benderman is at http://www.smirkingchimp.com/:

Truth Matters.

How can there be freedom of religion if we are not willing to tolerate the religions of others?

How can there be freedom of the press if we are not willing to question the information we are given?

How can there be freedom of speech if the speeches we give are nothing more than a criticism of what others are trying to say?

How can we expect the exercise of our freedom to assemble to have any value if the assembled masses are doing little more than throwing temper tantrums at not being in control?

How can we expect fair treatment in a court of law if we are not willing to respect the laws in our own actions of living?

May 22, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


BUSH'S WAR CRIMES

There is little hope the United States Congress will fulfill its Constitutional duty to impeach and remove George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from office, although the case for impeachment reaches to the skies. As this author expresses, I hope that prosecutors in other countries will indict Bush and the senior members of his administration as war criminals. Bush is responsible for unspeakable crimes against children in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, among his other atrocities. This article by Dave Lindorff is at www.buzzflash.com:

In the 2004 assault by U.S. Marines on the city of Fallujah, things were even worse. Dexter Filkins, a reporter for The New York Times, reported that before that invasion, some 20,000 Marines encircled the doomed city, which the White House had decided to level because it harbored a bunch of insurgents and had angered the American public by capturing, killing, and mutilating the bodies of four mercenaries working for U.S. forces. The residents of the 300,000-population city were warned of the coming all-out attack. Women and children and old people were allowed to flee the city and pass through the cordon of troops. But Filkins reported that males determined to be "of combat age," which in this case was established as 12 and up, were barred from leaving, and sent back into the city to await their fate. Young boys were ripped from their screaming mothers and sent trudging back to the city to face death.
In the ensuing slaughter, as the U.S. dumped bombs, napalm, phosphorus, anti-personnel fragmentation weapons, and an unimaginable quantity of machine gun and small arms fire on the city, it is clear that many of those young boys died.

NO DISTRACTIONS THIS TIME

Republicans have won presidential elections in recent years over non-issue issues. George H. W. Bush ran on Willie Horton. George W. Bush ran by "Swift boating" John Kerry. At the station where I normally buy gas the price shot from $4.11 a gallon two days ago to $4.31 a gallon today. Fresno has among the highest gas prices in the country, but you can be sure it will be this bad or worse everywhere unless there is a change. The working class has been trampled during this administration. CEO's and the wealthy have done very well, but we have seen stagnant or falling wages, disappearing pensions, unaffordable health care, and jobs getting outsourced. Bush has us stuck in an unnecessary and never-ending war in Iraq. This article by Bob Herbert is at www.nytimes.com:

In his book, "Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?," Jared Bernstein reminds us that the economic expansion from 2000 to 2006 was something less than nirvana for working people. The economy grew by 15 percent during that period, and the official rates of joblessness and inflation were low. But as most of us know, the benefits of that expansion were skewed to the high end of the economic ladder.

Mr. Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, writes: "Over the course of this highly touted economic expansion, poverty is up, working families’ real incomes are down and some key prices are growing a lot faster than the average."

May 19, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

DISTURBING HISTORICAL PARALLELS

George W. Bush frequently uses historical analogies. He uses them completely wrong, of course. His most recent historical reference was to "appeasement" of the Nazis in the years before World War II. Bush suggested that diplomacy with today's terrorists would be equivalent to appeasement back then. But history if used correctly can be instructive. There are disturbing parallels in the fall of previous world powers and the United States today. This article by Kevin Phillips is at www.washingtonpost.com:

More than 80 percent of Americans now say that we are on the wrong track, but many if not most still believe that the history of other nations is irrelevant -- that the United States is unique, chosen by God. So did all the previous world economic powers: Rome, Spain, the Netherlands (in the maritime glory days of the 17th century, when New York was New Amsterdam) and 19th-century Britain. Their early strength was also their later weakness, not unlike the United States since the 1980s.

There is a considerable literature on these earlier illusions and declines. Reading it, one can argue that imperial Spain, maritime Holland and industrial Britain shared a half-dozen vulnerabilities as they peaked and declined: a sense of things no longer being on the right track, intolerant or missionary religion, military or imperial overreach, economic polarization, the rise of finance (displacing industry) and excessive debt. So too for today's United States.

May 18, 2008


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IMPEACH CHENEY


SLIME BY ANY OTHER NAME

Republicans are worried they are going to get clobbered in the November elections. Why would that possibly happen? We're mired in a war that is bleeding us dry and killing thousands upon thousands of innocent people. What's more, it isn't doing anything to negate the threat of terrorism. The economy is worse than even the usual Republican economy. We see no action from Republicans to address the very real threat of global warming. What we get are the usual tactics of more tax cuts for the wealthy, nothing to protect the working class, and bigotry everywhere--against gays, against immigrants, against racial minorities. Talk now is that the party has to "reinvent" itself. Whitewashed graves are still graves. This article by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten is at www.latimes.com:


The bad news has come from Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi -- a string of unexpected Republican defeats in congressional elections that have prompted GOP leaders to say, with candor unusual in politics, that the party is facing an outright catastrophe this November.

Increasingly, top Republicans are calling on their party to reinvent itself or risk driving away more voters and donors. The GOP image is so stale, said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), in a memo to colleagues last week, that "if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf" because nobody is buying it.

May 14, 2008


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ALL MCCAIN HAS IS WEDGE ISSUES

If most of us voted for our own interests, Republicans would never win an election. Republicans consistently represent the rich and powerful to the detriment of everyone else. But Republicans have consistently used racism, abortion, "family values," flag burning, school prayer, and bigotry against gays to arouse the most primitive instincts of people. This article by Harold Meyerson points out that all John McCain has is wedge issues. Republicans lose on all the issues that matter most to Americans. The column is at www.washingtonpost.com:

There are good reasons Republicans are focusing on identity rather than issues this year: In poll after poll, there's not a single major issue on which the public agrees with them or their presumptive nominee. Not Iraq, certainly. Not the economy. Should the election turn on the question of "What are you going to do for America?" rather than "Are you a real American?" Republicans are doomed. They offer no solutions for the stagnation (or decline) of American living standards, or for the weakening of America's economic power. They offer no resolution to America's war of choice in Iraq. Their party leader, the incumbent president, let a great American city drown. They are the American party, and McCain the American nominee, that hasn't a clue about how to help America in its (prolonged, I fear) moment of need.

What remains for the GOP is a campaign premised more on issues of national identity, aimed largely at that portion of our population for which "American" is synonymous with "white" and "Christian," than any national campaign has been since the American Party (also known as the Know Nothings) based its 1856 campaign chiefly on Protestant bigotry against Irish and German Catholic immigrants. In Appalachian America (the heart of which went to the polls yesterday in West Virginia), as Mark Schmitt notes in the forthcoming issue of the American Prospect (which I edit), a disproportionate number of people write "American" when answering the census question on ethnic origin. For some, "American" is a race -- white -- no less than a nationality, and it's on this equation that Republican prospects depend.

May 11, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

LET LOOSE THE DOGS OF WAR

War is an integral part of the history of the United States. It took a war to break away from Britain. We had a second war against Britain in the War of 1812. Then there were wars against Native Americans, a contrived war to steal territory from Mexico, the Civil War, and the bloody wars of the 20th century. The 21st century has given us the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and George W. Bush would really like a war against Iran. Former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev has observed that the United States seems to need war. This article by Walter C. Uhler is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Mikhail Gorbachev is not a frivolous man. He was the Soviet leader who introduced the conceptual breakthrough of "mutual security" to Soviet-American relations, as well as the man who did more than any other individual to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion . In my opinion, he ranks as the greatest statesman of the twentieth century (something I was able to tell him personally, when we talked in St. Petersburg, Russia in May 2006).

So, when Mr. Gorbachev says, "Every US president has to have a war," and "I sometimes have the feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world," - as was reported by the Telegraph.co.uk on May 7, 2008 -- I take him seriously. More to the point, Gorbachev's assertions probably elicited widespread agreement, not only in Russia, but also across Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

May 10, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

THE GHOST OF NIXON PRESENT

Richard Nixon was a paranoid and bitter man. People were always out to "get" him, so he was determined to "get" them back. He used his inherent mean streak effectively in his political career. He tarred a Senate opponent as a Communist sympathizer. As president, he used racism as a tactic to arouse the rage and get the votes of working class whites. A media coach named Roger Ailes worked for Nixon and went on to create the FOX Network, which has carried on Nixon's mean-spirited tactics, doing anything it takes to win elections. There is a new book about Nixon by Rick Perlstein called "Nixonland." This review by Evan Thomas is at www.newsweek.com:

Nixon understood. Full of bitterness about his hardscrabble youth, he knew how to exploit the bitterness of others. At Whittier, the small California college attended by Nixon, the smoothies and swells had formed a club called the Franklins. The campus Big Men were envied—but they were also resented, Nixon perceived. So he formed his own club, of strivers and nerds, called the Orthogonians. Nixon knew that there were many more natural Orthogonians than Franklins at Whittier—and before long he was elected student-body president.

Nixon was the ultimate striver. At law school they called him "Iron Butt," but he still got turned down by all the white-shoe law firms on Wall Street. As a politician, he told a friend, he would do anything, make any sacrifice, to get where he wanted to go. "Anything," he said. "Except see a shrink." Nixon's base was the "silent majority," the vast mass of white middle-class Americans who felt threatened by the tumult of the '60s. As the Democrats' New Deal coalition of rich and poor collapsed, he was able to "co-opt the liberals' populism, channeling it into middle-class rage at the sophisticates, the well-born, the 'best circles'—all those who looked down their noses at 'you and me' (a favorite phrase of Ronald Reagan's, who was both a student and a teacher of Richard Nixon)," writes Perlstein.

May 09, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

MCCAIN THE RIGHT-WINGER

If you hear about John McCain's "straight talk," or how he's a "maverick," beware. It's on a par with the "compassionate conservatism" we heard from George W. Bush back in 2000. An analysis of McCain's voting record shows he votes very far to the right on most issues. This article by Ronald J. Hansen is at www.azcentral.com:

Over the years, Sen. John McCain has publicly condemned Republican Party leaders and occasionally voted against the GOP on selected issues.
But an Arizona Republic analysis of his Senate votes on the most divided issues in the past decade shows that McCain almost never thwarted his party's objectives.

The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote.

BUSH'S MURDEROUS RECORD

Serial killers like Ted Bundy gain notoriety and infamy for killing ten or twenty people. That is heinous. But leaders of governments who are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people get lauded as heroic. The evidence is clear that George W. Bush deliberately lied the United States into war. He proceeded with full knowledge of what he was doing. He has been responsible for the deaths of over 4,000 U. S. military and possibly as many as one million Iraqi civilians. If there were any justice, Bush would be prosecuted for murder. This article by Vincent Bugliosi is at www.commondreams.org:

In his first nationally televised address on the Iraqi crisis on October 7, 2002, six days after receiving the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a classified CIA report, President Bush told millions of Americans the exact opposite of what the CIA was telling him -a monumental lie to the nation and the world.
On the evening of October 7, 2002, the very latest CIA intelligence was that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the U.S. This same information was delivered to the Bush administration as early as October 1, 2002, in the NIE, including input from the CIA and 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies. In addition, CIA director George Tenet briefed Bush in the Oval Office on the morning of October 7th.

According to the October 1, 2002 NIE, "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological warfare] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war." The report concluded that Hussein was not planning to use any weapons of mass destruction; further, Hussein would only use weapons of mass destruction he was believed to have if he were first attacked, that is, he would only use them in self-defense.

Preparing its declassified version of the NIE for Congress, which became known as the White Paper, the Bush administration edited the classified NIE document in ways that significantly changed its inference and meaning, making the threat seem imminent and ominous.

In the original NIE report, members of the U.S. intelligence community vigorously disagreed with the CIA’s bloated and inaccurate conclusions. All such opposing commentary was eliminated from the declassified White Paper prepared for Congress and the American people.

May 07, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

SPECULATORS 1, HUNGRY PEOPLE 0

I've written before that war profiteers are the lowest of the low. But we have some other speculators who can join the war profiteers in their own circle of hell. People are making money now by driving up food prices, which has the effect of starving millions of people around the world. How proud they must be, those canny investors! Governments around the world should make it against the law to profit from exploiting people for basic necessities such as food and energy. This article by Geoffrey Lean is at www.alternet.org:

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor -- who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food -- into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12 billion. Its profits increased from $1.44 billion to $2.22 billion.

Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030 billion over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

May 04, 2008

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IMPEACH CHENEY

TELL BUSH'S STATISTICS TO SHUT UP

In "Peanuts" an exasperated Charlie Brown once told Lucy, "Tell your statistics to shut up." That's the way I feel about the blather you get from George W. Bush and right-wingers. They can take any statistic, shake it up, turn it around, and upside down and make it say something that doesn't fit with reality. We see that with the latest unemployment numbers. We still had a net loss in jobs, the fourth month in a row, but it was less than expected. So that's a good thing! Unemployment statistics are among the most deceptive we get every month because they don't include all the people who have gotten discouraged and aren't actively looking for work. The true unemployment numbers are two to three times the "official" count. This article by Allison Kilkenny is at http://www.smirkingchimp.com/:

I'll let it pass that Dubya's a douche bag, a condescending, spoiled brat who is more preoccupied with preserving D.C. cronyism than protecting American citizens' interests. But what I won't let slide is how he has treated the American people like children when he dressed up a recession in a clown suit and called it a "slow down." In this regard, President Bush and his sterling troop of economists have executed nothing resembling "decisive action." They have spent their time in denial and casting blame everywhere but at their own failed policies. They certainly have done nothing to fix the economy.

Unless, of course, you count forcing a shotgun wedding with JPMorgan and Bear Stearns with $236 million of taxpayer money. Personally, I see that as the rich protecting the wealth, but I've been called paranoid and moody in the past.

But I know when I'm beat, so if protecting rich people is decisive action, then yes, George W. Bush is the most decisive president in the history of the United States. Call him "the Decisiver." Tell him it's a real word. He'll believe you.

FACING THE FACTS

Despite all the screams about the "liberal media," the media in the United States swing very far to the right. They are all owned by big corporations and corporations are more interested in profits than anything else. Right-wingers also put the value of profits and the "free market" above human life and the environment. It should be abundantly clear to all but the most ignorant right-winger that conservative policies and economics don't work. But the media continue to act as if the right wingers have legitimate counterpoints to the reality we on the left acknowledge. The war in Iraq is a lost war. It's a war that should never have been started. It does nothing to deter global terrorism. Global warming is a fact and all the denial in the world will not make it go away. Tax cuts for the rich do not produce prosperity for all. This commentary by Arianna Huffington is at www.huffingtonpost.com:

So that 28 percent of the population that continues to support George W. Bush no matter how many bodies pile up in Iraq, how many jobs disappear overseas, how many For Sale signs go up on their block, or how high gas prices get, continues to dominate our politics.

Let's take them one by one, starting with the media which remains hopelessly addicted to the false belief that in order to be fair and balanced every story needs to be given the "on the one hand... and on the other" treatment. But not every story has two sides -- and the truth is often to be found not in the middle but solidly on one side or the other.

The earth is not flat. Global warming is a fact. Evolution is a fact -- sorry Mike Huckabee. And not even Republicans still believe in the unfettered, free market. Look how they rushed to Big Government to save their beloved Bear Sterns.
Nor are there two sides to the proposition that Iraq is our generation's greatest foreign policy disaster. It is. Period. Full stop. Yet the same media that enabled the administration to sell us the multi-trillion dollar war are -- nearly six years later -- still pushing the Right's line that "the surge is working." Green Zone bombardments be damned.

April 29, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSINESS "EFFICIENCY" IS OVERRATED

When you hear the word "bureaucracy" you tend to think of government. Government can be annoying sometimes. But anyone who thinks there is no bureaucracy in the business sector hasn't worked in business or dealt with corporations. I've worked for businesses my entire working life, and I'm frequently amazed at the fog of bureaucracy you encounter every day. This article by Pierre Tristam is at www.commondreams.org:

Every “expansion of government in business,” Herbert Hoover had said, “poisons the very roots of liberalism — that is, political equality, free speech, free assembly, free press, and equality of opportunity.” That is, exactly the values reactionary Republicanism, aided by the courts it’d been packing since President McKinley’s day, clobbered as it turned the 1920s into “the most expensive orgy in history” (as F. Scott Fitzgerald would describe it in 1931, when the party was over), “the whole upper tenth living with the insouciance of grand dukes and the casualness of call girls.”


That was before the orgies Reagan, that value-added conservative, unleashed in the 1980s, and that his dry-drunk ideological godson George W. Bush managed to squeeze in between two recessions. That they used government to underwrite their upper-class orgies while calling government names is among those elitist ironies men-of-the-people like Reagan and Bush chose not to consort with. It helps to live in the world of slogans.

But in the real world, is it really true that government is the problem, that business does it better than government? Not in my experience. Getting naturalized a citizen of this country was simpler than getting bogus charges taken off my cell phone account. Getting my passport or driver’s license or tags renewed has always been more pleasant and efficient than dealing with the cable company (long since abandoned). Filing taxes? Give me that over dealing with health insurers any day. At least with tax returns, I usually get money back. Insurers just garnishee my wages and shave years off my life. I envy my parents’ comparatively non-existent Medicare bureaucracy, and their complete freedom to choose what doctor they please — up to and including the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, which I’d have to pay for on top of the $5,000 I pay in private health insurance premiums for me and my family for often mediocre services and artery-clogging bureaucratic grief. Seems to me private-sector insurance is the problem here, and government the demonstrable solution.

BUSH'S PERMANENT RECESSION

According to the propaganda, there was a recession at the start of the Bush administration that started in the final stages of the Clinton presidency. Then there was an alleged "robust" recovery. But during Bush's years job growth has not even kept pace with the need for new jobs. Wages and benefits for most of us have been on a steady decline. Bush's defenders blame 9/11 and his wars for some of our problems, but wars have traditionally been good for the economy. Right-wingers claim it took World War II to bring us out the Great Depression, but they take a different tune with George W. Bush. This article by Larry Beinhart is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The recession of 2001 never ended.

At least not for ordinary Americans.

Ordinary Americans found that their income was declining. From 2001 to 2007, median family income declined -- depending on where you get your figures from -- by somewhere between $500 and $1,000. Median individual income went down by at least $1,000.

The yearly average number of new private sector jobs created from 2001-2008 was just 369,000, not even keeping up with the growth in population. It should be compared to the average number of new private sector jobs created from '92 to 2,000: 1,760,000 per year.

The number of people in manufacturing jobs decreased by over 3 million.

The number who got healthcare at work went down, from 64.2 million to 59.7 million. The number of people without healthcare went up from 38.4 to 46.9 million.

The number of people in poverty increased from 31.6 million to 36.5 million.

April 27, 2008

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CENTRAL VALLEY LOONS

I don't know how sociologists or political scientists would explain it, but the Central Valley of California is infested by right wingers. You can get a sampling of that by reading The Fresno Bee. There are some regular right wing correspondents that I've mentioned before. Occasionally, you see letters from other right wingers emerging from their crypts.

We recently had a letter saying that Bush is better than Bill Clinton because the Branch Davidian incident occurred during the Clinton administration. David Koresh, a religious fanatic, set up an armed camp in Waco, Texas, and fired on ATF agents. Koresh and company preferred to burn down their compound rather than surrender peacefully. This guy compared that to the polygamist sect in San Angelo, Texas, that was essentially seized by Texas authorities. Never mind that state authorities were involved in one case, and federal agents in another case. Never mind that Koresh was armed, and that the sect in San Angelo didn't offer armed resistance. Never mind that thousands of body bags have come back from Iraq thanks to George W. Bush.

Then we had another letter from a guy claiming that action against global warming is a socialist plot. He called Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth "error-filled," although he didn't cite one error. Never mind that evidence of global warming is everywhere. Trying to save the planet has nothing to do with socialism.

April 21, 2008

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MCCAIN'S SMOKE AND MIRRORS ECONOMICS

John McCain has said that he doesn't know much about economics, which certainly isn't unique among Republicans. He's offering up the typical Republican menu of tax cuts for the very rich and vague promises about spending cuts elsewhere. This article by Ryan J. Donmoyer and Indira Lakshmanan is at news.yahoo.com:

McCain's proposal, outlined April 15, would extend President George W. Bush's tax cuts, reduce the top corporate rate, repeal the alternative minimum tax and double exemptions for dependents. Price: $3.3 trillion by the end of a President McCain's second term in 2017, according to figures from his campaign and the Treasury.

The Arizona senator said that would be offset by eliminating pork-barrel spending, freezing a portion of the budget, and saving from Medicare spending. He could cut the budget by $100 billion a year ``in a New York minute,'' he said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday.

April 18, 2008


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THE RIGHT WING EDIFICE IS CRACKING

P. T. Barnum must have known about people who vote for Republicans when he famously said, " A sucker is born every minute." For years now Republicans have persuaded people to vote against their self-interests with a host of irrelevant distractions. We heard talk of "values." We've heard about how the country has gone to heck since the Supreme Court ruled that school-sanctioned school prayer was unconstitutional. We've been told to turn a wary eye toward those "other" people, such as racial minorities, immigrants, feminists, and gays. We've been told that a fair and progressive tax system is "socialism" and "class warfare." Barack Obama is sending a chill down the spines of the regressive right when he openly talks about the real reasons people are angry. This column by David Michael Green is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Of course, that turned the right absolutely apoplectic. You can argue with them about tax cuts (which were really tax transfers) and they'll just call you stupid. You can dispute with them about the faux war on terror, and they'll merely label you naive. You can point out the breathtaking stupidity of Iraq, and they'll only question your patriotism. But undermine the whole stupidity-industrial-complex upon which they're fully dependent, and watch them shake with fear and storm in desperation. They know full well that - were Americans ever to elevate their political discourse above a level that wouldn't embarrass your fifth-grader's civics class - the entire premise of the regressive agenda would unravel faster than a yarn store staffed by cats. You'd be able to count the entire national vote for the GOP presidential nominee on two hands and maybe a couple toes. You could fill Guantanamo sixteen times over with all the criminals in and around the Republican Party. And you'd be happy to do it, too.

The idea of an honest discourse in American politics means the unraveling of the entire premise of the regressive movement, and it must be fought with a ferocity that makes Stalingrad look like a dispute over seating arrangements at a dinner party. That is why Obama must be muzzled, and hammered, and especially mocked. Once we breach the wall and start taking an honest political analysis seriously, the tellers of the Big Lies are finished, hated and destroyed.

"INTELLIGENT DESIGN" ARGUMENTS DON'T WORK

We occasionally read or hear comments from creationists who claim that the belief in evolution is what prompted the horrors of Stalinist Russia or other "godless Communists." That conveniently ignores the atrocities committed for centuries by the devout of whatever faith. It also tries to link a biological process to political acts. The scientific evidence for evolution is overwhelming. But the latest creationist wrinkle is to claim that life is simply too complex to have arisen without a "designer." I would have to ask why the "designer" designed disease and parasites, among other things. This commentary by Richard Dawkins is at www.latimes.com:

Theologians attempt two (mutually incompatible and pathetically inadequate) answers to this unanswerable point. Some say their God is not complex but simple. This obviously won't wash. No simple god could design bacterial flagellar motors or universes, let alone forgive sins or impregnate virgins. Presumably recognizing the justice of that, other theologians go to the opposite extreme. They admit that their god is complex but assert that he had no beginning: He was always there and always complex. But if you are going to resort to that facile cop-out, you might as well say flagellar motors were always there. You cannot have it both ways. Visitations from distant star systems are improbable enough to attract ridicule, not least from the advocates of intelligent design themselves. A creator god who had always existed would be far more improbable still.

April 16, 2008

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ABOUT THAT "BASKET OF CONSUMER GOODS"

Right-wing think tanks, which are really just propaganda merchants, tell us we're living better than ever. We of the working class own DVD players (made in China), televisions (made in China), stereos (made in China), and, by golly, we can probably even go to McDonald's every now and then. They don't mention how our standard of living has been steadily declining since the early 1970's while they pursue globalization and free trade and privatization. In the meantime, the very wealthiest among us are enjoying even greater bounty at our expense. This article by Nicholas von Hoffman is at www.thenation.com:

In his new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times writes, "Since 1979, hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers (those in private-sector, non-supervisory jobs) have risen by just 1, after inflation. For male workers, the average hourly wage actually slid by 5 percent since 1979.... the nation's economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece." A 1 percent raise in almost thirty years? Still not bitter?

And who is getting ever larger chunks of pie? The Wall Street Journal has isolated some of the most energetic pie pigs: "the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19 percent in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8 percent set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks. The bottom 50 percent earned 12.8 percent of all income, down from 13.4 percent in 2004 and a bit less than their 13 percent share in 2000." You can be sure that a substantial portion of the bottom half of the population is living in small towns similar to the ones in which Obama sniffed out a degree of bitterness.

DEGREES OF OPPRESSION

As the Olympic Torch made its way around the world, protestors turned out to highlight China's horrific human rights record in Tibet. But we shouldn't forget that the United States has dropped several notches on the morality meter during the Bush years. We have practiced "preemptive" war. We have tortured. We have abandoned our commitment to the Bill of Rights. The "war on terror" justifies anything and everything. We aren't as bad as China--yet. But we shouldn't even be talking about the United States in the same breath as China when it comes to human rights. This commentary by Mark Morford is at www.sfgate.com:

Overall, even under the deformed and wretched Bush regime and despite how much Dick Cheney's dead raisin of a heart leaps with excitement when he sees the videos of those bloodied and dead Tibetan protesters ("Damn hippies had it coming"), America is still far from the brutality and inhumanity happening right now in Lhasa and beyond.

Or maybe not. For here is what we do have: We have torture . We have a frighteningly simpleminded cowboy-wannabe president who supports and endorses the most inhumane treatment of prisoners imaginable despite its utter failure as a tactic, and this violent belief, this dark energy infects the national bloodstream like prehistoric malaria.

April 15, 2008


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CHRISTMAS IN APRIL FOR THE RICH

In the old days of "Saturday Night Live" Garrett Morris did a sketch about a former baseball player turned sportscaster. "Baseball has been very, very good to me," he would say. The wealthiest Americans can look around on April 15 and say that, "George W. Bush has been very, very good to me." While most of us slide down the slope economically, the very wealthy have seen their incomes burgeon thanks to Bush's tax cuts. His tax cuts have dramatically increased inequality and even put our economy at risk. The deficits created by his gifts to the rich have made us heavily dependent on foreign borrowing. This article by Holly Sklar is at www.commondreams.org:

When it comes to cutting taxes for the wealthy, President Bush can truly say, "Mission accomplished."

The richest 1 percent of Americans received about $491 billion in tax breaks between 2001 and 2008. That’s nearly the same amount as U.S. debt held by China — $493 billion — in the form of Treasury securities.

Do you want our government to mortgage more of our nation’s future to finance tax breaks for the rich?

Tax cuts have already helped the richest 1 percent — whose annual incomes average about $1.5 million — increase their share of the nation’s income to a higher level than any year since 1928 on the eve of the Great Depression.

Wall Street’s five biggest firms paid "a record $39 billion in bonuses for 2007, a year when three of the companies suffered the worst quarterly losses in their history" and are eliminating thousands of jobs as losses mount from the subprime mortgage market collapse, reports Bloomberg.

The International Monetary Fund says the United States is in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Yet, we are borrowing money with interest to finance tax cuts for Wall Street executives.

THE FACE OF FASCISM

Fascism has elements that appeal to some people. It offers a sense of stability and security. People like to believe that the harsh aspects of fascism won't affect them. It only affects "other" people. Once again, we should learn from history. This commentary by Stacey Warde is at www.commondreams.org:

The danger of fascism is its seemingly benign mechanisms of control - fear, conformity, the state’s intermingling with religion and corporate enterprise - for keeping a populace in check, for making its people feel content with the way things are and never quick to protest occasional violations of human rights and infringements on their or another’s liberties.

The danger of fascism is its seemingly magical ability - through brilliant propaganda outlets like Fox News - to keep a people resigned to whatever the government does in their name, making them feel secure through its adventures in endless wars and policing the globe and the homeland.

The other great thing about fascism is its capacity for supporting, even indulging, denial on the most massive scale: "We don’t torture. …You can trust us. …If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about…."

Our phones are tapped, elections rigged, bogus wars planned and executed, real and imagined enemies created, and police acquire more powers to intimidate and harass while more rights are taken away from citizens.

Churches pray for the end of the world and offer their children as sacrifices for the war machine, and collude with the government colluding with the corporations and financial institutions - promising blood, anything, for National Security.

April 14, 2008

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MCCAIN=ELITISM

John McCain and the right-wingers of the Republican party are suddenly in high dudgeon about elitism. Barack Obama said truthfully that working class people in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) are "bitter" about their declining standard of living. They have voted against their own economic interests by supporting Republicans, who throw up a smokescreen over peripheral issues like guns, abortion, school prayer, gay rights, and illegal immigration. McCain, along with his wife, is reportedly worth $100 million. He has consistently supported policies that enrich the already wealthy (the elite) at the expense of working class Americans everywhere. This commentary by Robert Creamer is at www.huffingtonpost.com:

Damn right they're bitter; they have good reasons to be. And most of those reasons are the economic and trade policies that have -- and continue to be -- championed by George Bush and John McCain.

The McCain campaign is managed by a cadre of Washington-insider special interest lobbyists. He and his current wife are estimated to be worth about $100 million. He reportedly owns eight houses. His let-them-eat-cake economic policies are based on George Bush's failed radical conservative "you're on your own buddy" philosophy. One after another he supported trade agreements that protect the rights of corporations, but ignore the rights of labor, and have devastated one Pennsylvania community after another. He gets most of his campaign cash from the wealthiest corporate interests around. And he has the gall to call Barack Obama an "elitist"?

This is the same Barack Obama who spent years of his life organizing out-of-work steelworkers on the south side of Chicago -- people just like those who live in Allentown or Erie or Pittsburgh or the Monongehela Valley in western Pennsylvania. He stood shoulder to shoulder with them, sat at their kitchen tables, spent hours in their church basements.

EVERY RIGHT TO BE ANGRY

We of the working class have every right to be angry at the government that has consistently betrayed us economically. We should not let ourselves be distracted by the old canard about "class warfare." There has been class warfare all right; the wealthy and corporate elites have waged class warfare on working people for decades. This commentary by Isaiah J. Poole is at ourfuture.org:

Honest discussion about the roots of working-class angst and how to address it has gotten seriously burned in the firestorm of controversy fanned around comments by Sen. Barack Obama that working-class people are "bitter" about the economy and government.

However poorly phrased his original comments were, they were based on a fundamental truth: that conservatism, having failed for more than three decades in its promise to bring broad prosperity to all Americans, has exploited the issues of God, guns and gays—and the lie that government is their enemy—to keep their con going.

For awhile it worked, as millions of voters were convinced to vote against their interests by conservatives armed with polarizing rhetoric. But there is no disputing the anger as these same working-class voters are finding that they've been duped.

The percentage of Americans polled by Gallup who say that they are worse off than they were five years ago —31 percent—is the highest recorded by the polling firm since it started asking the question in the mid-1960s. And that belief is based in reality: Median household income in 2006, $48,201, was lower in inflation-adjusted dollars than it was in 1999, the Census Bureau reports . The latest Democracy Corps memo includes a poll finding that 74 percent of Americans believe the economy is seriously off track.

That same memo also suggests that voters have caught on that conservatives who claimed they were taking government "off the backs" of the working class have put in into the pocket of corporations. "The focus of people’s anger are the corporate special interests that dominate government, producing a demand that politicians make it a priority to take back government for middle class Americans," the memo says.

April 13, 2008

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THE FLIP-FLOP EXPRESS

John McCain has repeatedly demonstrated that the pursuit and grasp of power is more important than principle. McCain calls himself a "straight talker," but his record shows he's very willing to change position when it's expedient. During the 2000 presidential campaign George W. Bush's campaign smeared McCain and McCain's family. Bush did "push polling" that suggested McCain had fathered an illegitmate black child. But that hasn't stopped McCain from clinging to Bush like a barnacle on a ship. This editorial is from boston.com:

In 2001, McCain criticized President Bush's tax cuts with their lopsided tilt to the rich. More recently, he has called for extending them. The author of an amendment in 2006 banning torture by US officials, this year he backed Bush's veto of legislation banning torture by US intelligence agencies. The onetime proponent of comprehensive immigration reform now goes along with strictly punitive approaches. In 1998, McCain called for a $1.10 increase in the tax on cigarettes. Last year, he opposed a 61-cent increase in that tax.

The flip-flop on the tobacco tax is typical of the Arizona senator's willingness to trim his sails. In 1998, McCain was such a supporter of raising the tobacco tax to fund a campaign to reduce smoking by youths that industry advertisements blasted the measure as the "McCain Tobacco Tax Bill." McCain accused the tobacco companies of having "sacrificed the truth and our children to their greed." The industry managed eventually to kill the bill when backers failed to get enough Senate support to block a filibuster.

IF ELITISM IS THE ISSUE

I checked out the FOX gabfest that features Chris Wallace and company this morning. There we have major league elitists like Brit Hume and William Kristol criticizing Barack Obama for being elitist. They try to spin Obama's recent remarks about people being "bitter" as elitist because Obama suggested that people get diverted into issues like guns and religion instead of focusing on what government should be doing about wages and health care and the environment. The government shouldn't be focused on flag burning or banning gay marriage or school prayer or forcing creationism into school science classes. It shouldn't be in the business of bashing immigrants, while looking the other way when big employers use illegal immigrants. But that's where right-wingers have taken us. This commentary by Katrina Vanden Heuvel is at www.thenation.com:

Right-wing ABC radio talkshow host John Batchelor has filled my in box in these last 18 hours with e-mails dissecting and skewering what Obama meant when he said at a private April 6 fundraiser that small-town voters in economically distressed areas of Pennsylvania are "bitter." Batchelor and Laura Ingraham and Monica Crowley and Sean Hannity and Rush and O'Reilly are ready and rearing to go, quick to their guns to paint Obama as an elitist. {Read the excerpt from Nation columnist Eric Alterman's "Why We're Liberals" in the April 14th issue of The Nation to understand the cynicism and hypocrisy at the root of the conservative cabal's forty-year campaign.}

April 12, 2008


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THE THINGS THAT DISTRACT US


They're called "wedge" issues. In another context they might be called "divide and conquer." They're the issues that politicians use to distract us from the really important things. Republicans have been skilled at using wedge issues. Richard Nixon used the "Southern strategy" to stir up anger among Southern whites about integration. Since then, Republicans have used issues like abortion, school prayer, flag burning, and anti-immigration rhetoric to distract people from the issues that affect their lives the most. Barack Obama had the temerity to say that out loud in a campaign appearance in San Francisco. This commentary by Catherine Crier is at www.huffingtonpost.com:

Inartful. That is the only fair criticism of this analysis. Let's ask the voters in Pennsylvania these questions. If the 'distracting' issues of guns, gay marriage and abortion were all resolved to their liking, would their economic lives change? How about immigration? If all illegal aliens were to disappear, would those rust belt jobs return? For so many years, such issues have been used to corral blue collar workers into a party and political philosophy that serves the elites in this country. When someone speaks the truth and acknowledges that this sector of our society has been royally deceived, that issues they rally around have little to do with their ultimate welfare, it is time to banish such a person from the campaign trail.

Heaven forbid we should suggest that bitterness might exist in this country of such optimism or that this emotion might be an appropriate and effective reaction to current circumstances. Hillary Clinton countered with this statement. "Well, that is not my experience," she said. "As I travel around Pennsylvania I meet people who are resilient, optimistic, positive...If we start acting like Americans," she said, "and role up our sleeves, we can make sure that America's best years are ahead of us." McCain's spokesman chimed in. "It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking...It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

RECLAIMING DEMOCRATIC IDEALS

Somewhere along the way the Democratic party abandoned its ideals and tried to emulate Republicans. We see the horrendous results of Republican policies now, and now is the time for the Democratic party to return to the ideals of FDR and JFK. We need a party that represents the majority of us, not the wealthy elites and corporations. This column by Robert Borosage is at ourfuture.org:

Let me offer a simple set of propositions.

1. Conservatism has failed—and conservatives, while they cannot admit it, understand that. You’ve heard this before, but it is important to repeat it. The failure is not simply that of clueless George. Conservatism failed not because the Bush administration was incompetent, although incompetence has been its hallmark. It failed not because Bush and the DeLay Congress were corrupt, although corruption has been pervasive. Conservatism failed because it is wrong. Wrong about the world. Wrong about the economy. Wrong about the society.

Its imperial and military fantasies led directly to Iraq, surely the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. Its market fundamentalism generated Gilded Age inequality, a Depression-era financial crisis, stagnant wages and rising insecurity, and left America the world’s largest debtor, dependent on the kindness of strangers. Their celebration of deregulation and scorn for government ended up poisoning our kids, with uninspected toxic toys and diseased lunch-room foods.

2. We are headed into not simply a change election, but an election that has the potential to mark a sea change, the end of the conservative era that Reagan launched in 1980 and the beginning of a new era of progressive reform. The election will take place in the midst of an unpopular war and a recession, with over three-fourths of the country looking for a dramatic change in course. Democrats will surely pick up seats in both the House and the Senate.

Democrats know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But the potential is there for an election that changes our course.

April 09, 2008

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GOVERNMENT CAN WORK

The right-wing mantra is that "big government" doesn't work. It's too bureaucratic and inefficient. It's a burden on business with all that cumbersome regulation. The private sector, they say, can work much more efficiently. When they get power right-wingers enact a self-fulfilling prophecy. They "prove" that government doesn't work. But government does work with the right people in charge. We're at a stage in our history again when we see the ruins left by conservative government, and we need a progressive government to address so many of our needs. This article by Paul Waldman looks at the claims of the right-wing pundits that the country is really "center-right." The article is at www.prospect.org:

Given the combination of dishonesty, corruption and incompetence that has marked the current administration, it's hard to blame the American people for their distrust. Republicans argue that government can't do anything right, then set about to prove it once they grab government's reins. Each successive Republican administration only provides more evidence for their contention that government is a bumbling beast incapable of solving problems. Few notice that they never deliver on their promises to reduce its size and scope; as a portion of GDP, the postwar federal government was at its biggest during the years of that famed enemy of big government, Ronald Reagan.

And what we hear from the soon-to-be Republican nominee sounds little different from the standard GOP litany: cut spending, cut taxes on the wealthy, have faith in the magic of the market. In other words, you're on your own. As Jacob Hacker put it in a 2005 New Republic article (not currently available on the web), "Call it the vicious cycle of insecurity -- if Americans feel no one can help them, they will back leaders who won't. In the '30s, Democrats saw economic security as the keystone of a broad coalition in support of their party. Today, Republicans appear to see insecurity in the same way." This has certainly been the strategy behind their doomsday predictions on Social Security: convince the public that the system is going bankrupt, and people will be much more open to dismantling it, because what does it matter?

WHY IS THE WEALTH-INCOME GAP A GOOD THING?

A new study shows the growing wealth income gap between the very rich and the rest of us. Some free-market advocates say that the poor and the middle class are living better than ever before because of the "basket of consumer goods" we supposedly have. It's the same asinine argument we've heard before. The claim is that there is no poor person in the United States because people have televisions and VCR's. The reality is that there is considerable hunger in the United States. There is considerable insecurity. You can do your job very well and suddenly find your job gone, or you suddenly don't get wages to keep pace with the cost of living. This article by Sam Zuckerman is at www.sfgate.com:

"We are not seeing shared prosperity," said Jean Ross, director of the California Budget Project, a liberal research group in Sacramento that is helping distribute the report. "There's a pulling away at the top that's leaving the bottom 80 percent of families behind."

The groups responsible for today's study issued a similar report two years ago. And government data show income inequality has been rising for more than 25 years.

The trend reflects a range of factors, according to the report's authors, including stagnant wages at the bottom of the income scale, robust pay increases at the top, and a hollowing out of jobs in the middle as manufacturing employment drops. In addition, investment income has grown faster than wages, benefiting those with large stock and bond portfolios. Government tax, trade and labor policies also contribute, the report contends.

April 08, 2008

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IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

It's ironic that George W. Bush has talked about his role in "protecting" the American people. He has used that phrase in describing his "war on terror." The "war on terror" has been costly and an abysmal failure. But, equally disturbing, is the failure of the federal government to live up to its responsibilities in protecting us in other ways. In the past few days we've learned about airlines flying possibly unsafe aircraft. We know that the Bush administration has failed to safeguard the food supply. The interests of agri-business have taken priority over the health of consumers. The failure to regulate home lending has put the economy at risk. This article by Marie Cocco is at www.commondreams.org:

There is little surprise left when someone-a whistle-blower, a member of Congress, a scientist who has been muzzled-reveals fresh insight into the evisceration of health and safety regulation or the retaliatory thrusts the Bush administration takes against those who dare complain. Seen in historical context, the meltdown of the credit markets, the unseemly Wall Street bailout and the shock that federal overseers seemed to display when it all cascaded upon them are merely a larger part of an ugly pattern. "Was someone asleep at the switch?" a puzzled Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked of the financial wizards who came before the banking panel.

Not exactly. It is more accurate to say the switch has been turned off.

It has remained in the off position through seven years of scandal, embarrassment-and now, incalculable economic hardship-that would have shamed any other administration into using the regulatory apparatus of the federal government for its stated purpose of safeguarding the public and taxpayers.

April 06, 2008

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BUSH'S WAR MACHINE

In the Bible's Book of Isaiah it says that people will one day beat their swords into plowshares and the lion will lie down with the lamb. We seem to be as far away from that prophecy now as when Isaiah wrote it. We had decades of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and when the Soviet Union dissolved we were told about a "peace dividend." That also hasn't worked out. The fact is that war and preparation for war is big business. As the quality of our lives declines in the United States, more and more money goes to defense contractors. It parallels the spending that dictators like Hitler and Stalin invested in their war machines. This article by Sherwood Ross is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Under Bush, U.S. military spending is now roughly equal to the combined total of all other nations. What's more, Uncle Sam is the world's Number One arms peddler, selling about half of all weapons bought by the developing nations, and showing few scruples about sales to dictators. The Center for Defense Information reported last year that U.S. arms sales to 25 countries it studied increased 400 percent over 9/11.

Of course, the two criminal 20th Century dictators didn't build their war machines for sport, and neither has Mr. Bush. By mutual agreement in 1939, the "CommuNazis," as they were known, carved up Poland, Hitler invading from the West and Stalin from the East. In the summer of 1941, Overy writes, Hitler remarked "what one needs and does not have, one must conquer." That's not much different from Bush's view of Middle East oil. Having made war on Iraq based on lies and having subjugated that small country by force, Bush is pushing its cabinet to put through a giveaway law to profit the oil companies. And he's threatening oil-rich Iran with an attack.

April 05, 2008

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TIME FOR PROGRESS AGAIN

There are differing opinions as to when the country went into reverse and swayed to right-wing politics and philosophy. In this article E. J. Dionne makes the case that it occurred when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. It was a traumatic year. Robert Kennedy was assassinated just weeks later. The Democratic convention in Chicago was beset by rancor and violence. Vietnam was dragging on and diverting us from what we should have accomplished. Now, 40 years after King's death, and after suffering from toxic conservatism under Reagan, Bush, and Bush, maybe it's time to pick up where we left off in 1968. This column is at www.tnr.com:

Forty years ago, American liberalism suffered a blow from which it has still not recovered. On April 4, 1968, a relatively brief but extraordinary moment of progressive reform ended, and a long period of conservative ascendancy began.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing riots that engulfed the nation's capital and big cities across the country signaled the collapse of liberal hopes in a smoky haze of self-doubt and despair. Conservatives, on the run through much of the decade, found a broad new audience for their warnings against the disorders and disruptions bred by reform.

A shrewd politician named Richard Nixon sensed the direction of the political winds. When President Johnson's commission on urban unrest released its report in early 1968 and blamed the previous year's rioting on "white racism," Nixon would have none of it. The commission, he said, "blames everybody for the riots except the perpetrators of the riots." He urged "retaliation."

THEY AREN'T SO SMART AFTER ALL

The old adage is that you can fool some of the people all of the time and some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. The right-wing that has controlled the Republican party and its benefactors has succeeded in fooling some of the people all of the time. Even after the train wreck of the Bush administration, there are still hardcore supporters of Bush, his war, and right-wing economic policy. But reality is hitting home for most Americans now. This administration should be taught in history classes as the way not to run a country. This article by David Michael Green is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The only amazing thing about the desperate attempts by BushCo to wring the very last drops of middle class wealth out of an imploding economy is the breathtaking shortsightedness of the monied class in whose name it’s all being done. Were they all absent from kindergarten that day when Miss Kinnian went over the parable of The Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs? Just who do they imagine will be shelling out the shekels needed to fuel their yachts, once they’ve wrecked the system itself? Lenin was right. These fools are so greedy, and so short-term in their focus, they’ve sold the rope with which to hang themselves. Unfortunately, by the time that happens the rest of us will have long ago drowned in the mud and the blood lapping up against the scaffold.

Brilliant, eh? Well, if the economy has come a cropper, at least the good news is that we’re not condemned to repeat history when it comes to that stubborn little conflict in Iraq. You know, the one that is sucking up all our money, wasting lives by the millions, ruining our military and trashing our good name abroad. Just like in Viet... er, never mind.

April 04, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

RIGHT WINGERS AND ELITISM

In advertising there is a technique called "snob appeal." The recipient of the ad is told that they're better than the average person. They're smarter, better looking, more hard working, have more common sense, or possess "values." Right wingers for years have talked about "liberal elites," those ivory tower people who just don't know about ordinary Americans and who, in fact, look down on you and me. But if you look at the record it's conservatives who applaud elitism. Dick Cheney recently demonstrated elitism on steroids when he dismissed the concerns we have about Iraq by saying, "So?" This article by Eric Alterman is at www.thenation.com:

It's quite a trick these right-wingers have pulled off, one that might even impress George Orwell. When they dislike a position, they deride it as "elitist," irrespective of the fact that it is supported by a majority of Americans. Personally, they enjoy exactly the same advantages as liberal elitists, but they insist that this does not matter, because they think about those advantages differently. When asked to define just what is so awful about the way liberals think, they fall back on a series of unproven--and ultimately unprovable--accusations of the kind made by totalitarian regimes against their dissidents. Somehow they've managed to persuade the so-called liberal media to repeat these same accusations, despite the rather inconvenient fact that they make no sense. In the meantime, they've managed to discredit virtually all of the people to whom they can successfully attach their wholly meaningless tag. It may not make much sense, but as the folks at American Express have taught us, success is its own reward.