January 15, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THE TEXAS STRATEGY

Savings and loans that made loans to crooked or incompetent real estate developers--and reported phony profits as a result--were using what became known as the "Texas strategy." One of the most infamous practitioners was Charles Keating. In this column Paul Krugman calls the Bush stalling on withdrawal from Iraq a variant of the Texas strategy. You throw out a few platitudes such as "we're making progress" or "freedom is on the march" long enough so you can dump the whole mess in someone else's lap. This column is at www.welcome-to-pottersville.com:

Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.

The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.

The “surge” is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.

Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits — it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers — came to be known as the “Texas strategy.”

TO MLK

Down through history there have been people who have stood out as the very embodiment of conscience. Jesus Christ certainly represented conscience in his calls for the meek to inherit the earth. Martin Luther King was, along with Gandhi, a living example of conscience. Doctor King was not only a great civil rights leader and a great defender of the oppressed, he spoke out unflinchingly against an immoral war in Vietnam. If Doctor King were here today, I believe he would be outspoken against the atrocity in Iraq. This article by Gary Vance is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

In a speech given on April 4, 1967 he indicted our national policies when he said, “…I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today- - my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.” He went on, “Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.”

The same speech clearly indicates what Reverend King might say to President Bush and the Congress regarding escalating this war. He said, “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now…I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.” Amen.

He spoke to people of faith in the same vein when he said, “Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.” He was arrested thirty times for protesting injustice. Would Dr. King commend the American churches today for their stand on this war?