OCTOBER 27, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

BUSH AS CORPORATE BEARD

Rich people seem to benefit from the policies of George W. Bush, no matter how disastrous they are for the rest of us. Bush has been propped up by other people his whole life, including various suspect business deals. If he weren't the son of a powerful man like George H. W. Bush, you have to think Junior might be running a 7-11 somewhere. In this article Stephen Pizzo talks about Junior's career as a beard for the rich and the ruthless. The article is at www.alternet.org:

In a poll conducted Oct 21-23 and released on Tuesday, 90 percent of those asked said they believed top Bush administration officials are guilty of either illegal or unethical behavior in the CIA leak case.

So where does that leave an un-indicted George W. Bush? There really are only two explanations, and neither reflect well on him. First, he can claim his closest aides conspired behind his back while he was otherwise occupied. I call that the "Exxon Valdez Defense" -- the captain was not at the helm when a careless crewman ran the ship of state aground. Unfortunately for Captain Bush, that defense did not wash for the real captain of the ill-fated tanker. Because, you see, the captain is always responsible.

The other explanation is worse: that the President of the United States knew what was going on, maybe even participated in it.

BUSH'S MACABRE DANCE WITH DEATH

George W. Bush is a man who never served in combat, but is only too happy to send young men and women off to a die in a war that wasn't necessary. Then there are the thousands who are like living dead, the young people who will never be the same because they are blind or burned or missing limbs. There are the orphaned children in Iraq, or the children who are disfigured by war, or among the multitude of the dead. Bob Herbert writes about the incompetence and callousness of the Bush administration in this column linked at www.topplebush.com:

You can spin it any way you want, but Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby et al. is ultimately about the monumentally conceived and relentlessly disseminated deceit that gave us the war that never should have happened.

Oh, it was heady stuff for a while - nerds and naïfs swapping fantasies of world domination and giddily manipulating the levers of American power. They were oh so arrogant and glib: Weapons of mass destruction. Yellowcake from Niger. The smoking gun morphing into a mushroom cloud.

TAKE, TAKE, TAKE FROM THE POOR

I wonder if it's just greed that possesses Republican politicians in their quest to make the very rich even richer at the expense of the poor and the working class. Maybe they take some kind of sadistic pleasure in making life more difficult for the people at the bottom. Their policies certainly don't have any long term benefit except for the people who are among the richest who have ever lived. This story by Brian Morton is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

When historians look back on the first decade of the 21st century, they'll likely note that the United States made more strides toward paying rich people simply for breathing, while life for people at poverty's edge got harder every time their millionaire lawmakers got together to strip-mine the republic. Washington Monthly magazine blogger Kevin Drum did a quick analysis of the tax reform panel's recommendations on Oct. 18 and determined that most of them would benefit the already well-off.

OCTOBER 26, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

SOURCE: FIVE INDICTMENTS COMING

Waiting for Patrick Fitzgerald's to announce whether he will or will not indict high ranking officials in the Bush administration is getting excruciating. Word is that we'll know on Thursday. According to an insider source, 1-5 indictments are coming. This item comes from www.thewashingtonnote.com:

An uber-insider source has just reported the following to TWN (since confirmed by another independent source):

1. 1-5 indictments are being issued. The source feels that it will be towards the higher end.

2. The targets of indictment have already received their letters.

3. The indictments will be sealed indictments and "filed" tomorrow.

4. A press conference is being scheduled for Thursday.

The shoe is dropping.

More soon.

SCOWCROFT ON JUNIOR'S IRAQ WAR

Brent Scowcroft is the former National Security Adviser to George H. W. Bush and heard all the criticism of the first Bush not pushing on into Baghdad in the first war against Iraq. Junior Bush decided not to repeat his old man's "mistake" and proceeded to invade Iraq and finally capture Saddam Hussein. Are things better now? We have 2,000 dead Americans, thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, and no end to this nightmare. Gene Lyons writes about Scowcroft and his assessment of the current Iraq war in this column linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Scowcroft sees in Iraq the realization of his worst fears. Now as then, he's assumed to be speaking with the elder Bush's tacit consent. He reiterated to The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg why they decided not to invade Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Goldberg wrote : "It would have been easy to reach Baghdad, Scowcroft said, but what then ? At the minimum, we'd be an occupier in a hostile land. Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and once we were there, how would we get out ? What would be the rationale for leaving ? I don't like the term 'exit strategy' --but what do you do with Iraq once you own it ?... This is exactly where we are now. We own it. And we can't let go. We're getting sniped at. Now, will we win ? I think there's a fair chance we'll win. But look at the cost. '" Above all, Scowcroft emphasized, the current administration's policies are anything but "conservative," in the classical sense of the term. Instead, White House neo-cons are devotees of a particularly heedless brand of radical utopianism. "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism," he said. So now what ? In part because both men, like many genuine conservatives, chose not to speak plainly in October 2004 when it might have made a difference, we're stuck with these foolhardy incompetents for the foreseeable future. Except that, as Wilkerson implies, functioning democracies usually find ways to change policies and rid themselves of politicians they no longer trust.

BUSH'S WAR ADDICTION

We know that George W. Bush used to snort coke and drank heavily. He may be drinking heavily again. But the addiction of addictions for George W. Bush and his administration is making war. It's like salted peanuts for this guy. He just can't quit. He invaded Afghanistan, he invaded Iraq, and now he's making noise about attacking Syria. Paul Craig Roberts writes about the rhetoric to ramp up a war against Syria in this column at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Someone should tell Condi Rice that the game is up. With the Bush administration dissolving in illegalities committed by key officials in their attempts to protect the lies that they used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the secretary of state is trying to ramp up war against Syria.

Grasping a UN report that uses unreliable witnesses to implicate Syria in the assassination of a former Lebanese government official, Condi Rice told the BBC on Oct. 23 that Syria's crime cannot be "left lying on the table. This really has to be dealt with."

This is amazing for many reasons. Here is the person in charge of U.S. diplomacy acting as if she is the secretary of war unsheathing military force. Whoever heard of an American diplomat wanting to start a war because a former Middle Eastern government official was assassinated?

OCTOBER 25, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE DOWN

Headlines say consumer confidence "unexpectedly" fell in October. I don't know why it would be unexpected. Look who's in power in Washington. Look at the debacle in Iraq. Look at the devastation from a series of hurricanes and the pitiful federal response. Look at the increase in gasoline and fuel oil prices. Look at the credit card squeeze many of us are facing from higher minimum payments. Look at the stagnant wages most Americans are facing. A fall in consumer confidence shouldn't be unexpected at all. This story by ANNE D'INNOCENZIO is at news.yahoo.com:

The Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 85 in October, the lowest level since October 2003 and down from September's revised reading of 87.5, which had been the sharpest drop in 15 years. Analysts expected an October reading of 88 for the index, which is compiled from a survey of U.S. households.

BUSH "FRUSTRATED, ANGRY"

Sources from inside the White House say that George W. Bush is frustrated and angry at the nasty turn of events in his second administration. All I can say is that Mr. Bush is feeling just a little of what the rest of the world feels thanks to his rotten policies. He stole the White House and has tried to ram an extreme right-wing agenda down our throats, and to impose his policies on the rest of the world. He's the architect of thousands of deaths, record deficits, environmental devastation, and misery around the globe. It's the rest of us who should be angry. This story by Khalid Hasan is at www.dailytimes.com:

President George Bush is said to be “frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter,” according to a newspaper report quoting his associates.

The New York Daily News reported on Monday that with a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from the impending combat death in Iraq of the 2,000th American GI. Last week alone, 23 military personnel were killed in Iraq, and five were wounded on Sunday. This week could also bring a special prosecutor’s decision that could “shake the foundations of the Bush government”.

Karl Rove and L ‘Scooter’ Libby, the right-hand men respectively of the president and the vice president, are at the centre of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely.

GOP PRIORITIES ON DISPLAY

Republicans are once again pushing for cuts in programs that benefit the poor and the middle class. In the meantime, they push for tax cuts for their rich friends. They continue to fund the madness in Iraq. They don't have the decency to start impeachment proceedings against this vile administration. This story by Jonathan Weisman is at www.washingtonpost.com:

Republicans began targeting key programs for budget cuts yesterday, from student loans and health care to food stamps and foster care. But the tough measures immediately drew staunch opposition from anti-poverty groups, businesses and moderate Republicans.

Sixteen congressional committees began cobbling together one of the most comprehensive bills in years, touching issues such as trade policy, prescription drug reimbursements, agriculture price supports and the future of welfare.

OCTOBER 24, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

PLAME LEAK INQUIRY WIDENING

I wonder if George W. Bush and his minions are like the characters in Poe's short story where a murderer hears the heartbeat of his victim. Bush and company are dealing now with a scandal that is growing. It's not just a leak of CIA operative's Valerie Plame's name now. Now the inquiry is going into the whole Niger yellowcake story. Was it a total fabrication from the very beginning, meant to give justification for Bush's attack on Iraq? I think it was, but it's good to know that an official inquiry is taking place. This story by Martin Walker is at www.upi.com:

Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the government of Bush's closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair's aides has "sexed up" the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

There can be few more serious charges against a government than going to war on false pretences, or having deliberately inflated or suppressed the evidence that justified the war.

PENGUINS NOT GOOD EXAMPLES RIGHT-WINGERS THINK

A reportedly terrific documentary about penguins was seized upon by members of the Christian right in the United States as an example of "intelligent design," monogamy, and other things. The director of the film, Luc Jacquet, says penguins are not a good example of "family values" at all. This story by Jack Malvern is at www.timesonline.co.uk:

Yesterday, days before the film’s British premiere at The Times bfi London Film Festival next week, the director hit back at the commentators he believes have wilfully misread his film. “If you want an example of monogamy, penguins are not a good choice,” Luc Jacquet told The Times. “The divorce rate in emperor penguins is 80 to 90 per cent each year,” he said. “After they see the chick is OK, most of them divorce. They change every year.”

In fact the rate is substantially worse than the American divorce rate, which is about 50 per cent.

REPUBLICAN BIG "IDEAS"

Republicans have represented themselves, absurdly, as the party of new "ideas" the past few years. Their ideas are as old as empire and greed and exploitation are, but never mind that. We've gotten a good dose of new "ideas" the past few years. Get less votes, but you win the election! Torture is okay! Civil liberties are bad! Separation of church and state is so old school. Deficit spending that just makes the rich richer and wrecks the economy is swell. Wars against countries that didn't attack us are fine and dandy. In this article by Rich Procter some more Republican "ideas" get a look. The article is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

On yesterday's "Meet the Press," "Big Idea" Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson told America that lying before a Grand Jury on a matter of national security is a - NEW IDEA INBOUND - "technicality!"

(Hutchinson) "I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury "technicality" where they couldn't indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars."

OCTOBER 23, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

KUDOS TO HAG

I've been a fan of Merle Haggard for a long time. I admire Hag for his talents as a singer, songwriter, and musician. I like the fact he's from the Central Valley and has recorded songs that talk about the Valley. I also admire his candor. I didn't necessarily agree with the sentiments of "Fightin' Side of Me" back in the Vietnam war era. But Hag is no lemming, blindly following the government line. He's proven that with a song called "That's the News," a commentary on the misadventure in Iraq. Now Hag has a new album and a new song talking about Iraq. This story by Chet Flippo is at www.counterpunch.org:

That said, there is little doubt that Haggard's achievements will stand as being among the highest in all of popular music history, not just in country music. His new album, Chicago Wind, is a fresh reminder of just why he is so important. And it speaks volumes about him that he was asked this year to open shows for both Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones.

At age 68, he's just about seen it all and done it all and heard it all, but he still has many things on his mind. Over the years, he's commented on the state of affairs in this country, but he's never been politically predictable. Haggard has always been deeply patriotic, but obviously that does not always mean hewing to a particular political stance or political party. He speaks his mind.

BUSH'S CYNICAL USE OF RELIGION

When it comes to Christianity George W. Bush doesn't walk the walk. A Christian wouldn't lie about the reasons to start a war. A Christian wouldn't ignore the dangers to the planet of global climate change. A Christian wouldn't engineer massive transfers of wealth to the already wealthy at the expense of the poor and working class. A Christian wouldn't give a wink and a nod at torturing other human beings. This article by Derrick Z. Jackson is at www.topplebush.com:

Two and a half years after the invasion, Bush has said nothing about the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who were sacrificed to serve his own political vision. There is no doubt that the blood of former dictator Saddam Hussein ran cold, with thousands of deaths on his hands. But with chaos still in the streets of Iraq, with car bombs taking out dozens of people every few days, and a constitution that does not even try to separate church and state, it remains frightfully unclear what Bush has taught us.

In the speech on his ''war on terror" last week, Bush had the gall to quote the part of the Koran that says ''killing an innocent human being is like killing all humanity. . . . the time has come for all responsible Islamic leaders to join in denouncing an ideology that exploits Islam for political ends." He said this as a president who has exploited Christianity for his own political ends, in a presidency that has displayed a cold-blooded contempt for innocent Iraqis and democracy right here at home.

OCTOBER 22, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

SCOWCROFT SET TO RIP BUSH ADMINISTRATION

According to this item, an upcoming interview in The New Yorker features former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft laying into the Bush administration. Scowcroft was the National Security Advisor to former President George H. W. Bush. This item is at www.thewashingtonnote.com:

The revered-in-tons-of-corners former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft definitively breaks ranks with the Bush administration in an article by nearly the same name, "Breaking Ranks," appearing in the upcoming Monday issue of The New Yorker.

The article will outline what decisions and events have built up to turn Brent Scowcroft against this Bush administration. Yes, that's right. . ."turned Brent Scowcroft against this Bush administration."

Jeffrey Goldberg, the author of the piece, has pulled off a stunning coup by not only getting Brent Scowcroft to talk -- but also getting some incredibly juicy commentary from President George H.W. Bush on the performance of his son's national security team.

JUDY MILLER THE PROPAGANDIST

New York Times reporter Judith Miller wrote story after story supporting the Bush administration's phony case for war against Iraq. She was heavily involved in the leak of CIA operative's Valerie Plame's name, but refused to name her source. She went to jail, but she was no heroine standing up for the First Amendment. She finally testified before the Grand Jury. Now even the editors at The Times are upset with Ms. Miller, but they didn't do their jobs before all this developed. Thousands of people are dead or maimed in part thanks to the propaganda aided and abetted by Judith Miller and The Times. Maureen Dowd writes about Miller in this column linked at cyphering,blogspot.com:

Judy's stories about W.M.D. fit too perfectly with the White House's case for war. She was close to Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who was conning the neocons to knock out Saddam so he could get his hands on Iraq, and I worried that she was playing a leading role in the dangerous echo chamber that Senator Bob Graham, now retired, dubbed "incestuous amplification." Using Iraqi defectors and exiles, Mr. Chalabi planted bogus stories with Judy and other credulous journalists.

OCTOBER 21, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

UNDOING BUSH'S DAMAGE

Look anywhere and you see a wasteland thanks to the Bush administration. Foreign policy is a mess because of Bush's arrogant my-way-or-the-highway approach, which led to the unprovoked and unjustified attack on Iraq. The economy is a mess because most of us are sinking while the very rich acquire more and more wealth. We have deficits that put our economic security in danger because we're depending on money from countries like China. Bush ignores global climate change. We need to put environmental concerns on the front burner. Global warming is a reality. The series of monster hurricanes we've seen this season should be a major wake up call. Molly Ivins talks about some priorities in this column at www.creators.com:

But that's still not stepping up to the plate to take a swing at the always-relevant question, "What the hell do we do now?" Yes, we should follow the First Rule of Holes and stop digging. True, we need to go back to doing a lot of things we used to before George W. Bush "won" that remarkable "election" in 2000. And we need to go back to NOT doing a lot of things we didn't do before the 5-4 vote. But that still won't get us out of the fix we're in now.

HARRIET MIERS AND FLATTERY

Harriet Miers wrote such blatant suck-up notes to George W. Bush it has provided much humor on the Internet. But it's also disgusting that such obvious sucking up gets people big jobs in this administration. A president of the United States should be open to all viewpoints, not only to those that stroke his ego. Lord knows, Bush already has an ego of gargantuan proportions. This article by Robin Abcarian is at www.latimes.com:

Move over Eddie Haskell. Harriet E. Miers could teach you a thing or two about sucking up. Papers released last week by the Texas state archives show a woman who admired the boss and wasn't afraid to show it, with puppy dog cards and flowery notes in her own hand, often added to official typed correspondence.

"You are the best Governor ever - deserving of great respect!" Miers wrote to George W. Bush in a belated card for his 51st birthday. (Which is why the puppy on the front of the card has such a hangdog look). At the bottom of the greeting card, she added, "At least for thirty days - you are not younger than me." In a flowery thank you card, she wrote, "Hopefully Jenna and Barbara recognize that their parents are 'cool' - as do the rest of us … All I heard is how great you and Laura are doing … Texas is blessed!"

MORE POOR, MORE BILLIONAIRES

According to reports from the U.S. Census and from Forbes magazine, the ranks of the poor and the ranks of billionaires are growing. Is is it mere coincidence? Policies of the Bush administration and Republicans in general are geared to move wealth to the already affluent. The use the carrot and stick approach in their campaigns, implying that if you go with Republicans you too will be rich someday. It has never worked that way and it won't work. This article by Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel is at www.commondreams.org:

In 2004, after three years of economic recovery, the U.S. Census reports that poverty continues to grow, while the real median income for full-time workers has declined. Since 2001, when the economy hit bottom, the ranks of our nation's poor have grown by 4 million, and the number of people without health insurance has swelled by 4.6 million to over 45 million.

Income inequality is now near all-time highs, with over 50 percent of 2004 income going to the top fifth of households, and the biggest gains going to the top 5 percent and 1 percent of households. The average CEO now takes home a paycheck 431 times that of their average worker.

At the pinnacle of U.S. wealth, 2004 saw a dramatic increase in the number of billionaires. According to Forbes Magazine, there are now 374 U.S. billionaires. The growth in billionaires took a dramatic leap since the early 1980s, when the average net worth of the individuals on the Forbes 400 list was $400 million. Today, the average net worth is $2.8 billion. Wal-Mart's Walton family now has 771,287 times more than the median U.S. household.

OCTOBER 20, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

AMERICANS NOT MORE CONSERVATIVE

Just as you'll hear from right-wingers that the United States is a "Christian country," you'll hear that we're also a conservative country. Bush's election last November was supposed to set that fact in stone. But reality, in its way, intervenes again. Studies show that the majority of Americans are not any more conservative than they were in 1972. This article by Christopher Hayes is at www.washingtonmonthly.com:

Yet, as political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue convincingly in Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, there are scant public opinion data to suggest that is so. They cite political scientist James Stimson, who's been recording the “national mood” through a survey of over 200 questions for over two decades and finds Americans no more conservative today than they were in 1972. National Election Survey data reveals that Americans are less likely than they were in the '70s to say that the government is “too powerful,” and the percentages of the electorate that identify as liberal and conservative respectively have remained unchanged for nearly three decades. “It is striking,” they write, “that across all of the major left-right issues, one is hard pressed to find any evidence that Americans are markedly more conservative today than they were in the recent (and even relatively distant) past.”

FINALLY THE PRESS GOES AFTER BUSH

For most of his illegitimate presidency George W. Bush enjoyed a largely supine puppy dog press. They fawned over Bush. Now that the levees of the Bush administration are flooded with incompetence and scandal the press is not so accommodating anymore. This story by Mark Jurkowitz is at www.bostonphoenix.com:

For the Bush administration, menacing signs are everywhere. From the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina to the furor over unqualified Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, from the bloodshed in Baghdad to the Plamegate scandal engulfing Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, the embattled White House finds itself on the defensive and on the run. Gallup polls show the country turning thumbs down on the president’s handling of big issues such as the economy, Iraq, and Katrina. The president’s job-approval numbers — once a stratospheric, record-breaking 90 percent in the aftermath of 9/11 — have now plunged below 40.

From Richard Nixon’s Watergate disaster to Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra fiasco and Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal, second terms have historically been full of headaches and political turmoil for modern American presidents. And with Bush looking very vulnerable now, the media assault has begun. Some observers believe the tide turned when the public cheered outraged journalists’ willingness to challenge administration officials aggressively in the aftermath of Katrina. Others say the stunning onslaught of friendly fire — the angry response of Bush’s conservative base to the Miers nomination — was a pivotal moment. What is certain is that the news media — playing their traditional role as followers rather than as shapers of public currents and perhaps itching to even the score with a White House that has tried to marginalize them — have become greatly emboldened by mounting evidence of presidential weakness.

RICE-RUMSFELD-CHENEY "CABAL"

An aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says that U.S. foreign policy was hijacked by what he calls a "cabal" of Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. What we see with Cheney and Rumsfeld, both Secretaries of Defense, is what President Dwight Eisenhower warned about when he spoke about the military-industrial complex. This article by Jim Lobe is at www.commondreams.org:

As top officials in the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office await possible criminal indictments for their efforts to discredit a whistleblower, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Wednesday, accused a ''cabal'' led by Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld of hijacking U.S. foreign policy by circumventing or ignoring formal decision-making channels.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell’s chief of staff from 2001 to 2005 and when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces during the administration of former president George H.W. Bush, also charged that, as national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice was ''part of the problem'' by not ensuring that the policy-making process was open to all relevant participants.

OCTOBER 19, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

LOUSY JOBS AT LOUSY WAGES

In his 1988 presidential campaign Michael Dukakis talked about good jobs at good wages. But that was in another universe far, far away. A new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that 75% of Americans don't have jobs that are "good jobs" as defined by making $16 an hour, having health benefits, and a pension. That concept is so 21st century and the Bush administration and its supporters want to shove us back to the 19th century. This article is linked at www.commondreams.org:

Only 25.2 percent of American workers have a job that pays at least $16 per hour and provides health insurance and a pension, according to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The report, "How Good is the Economy at Creating Good Jobs?" found that between 1979 and 2004 the share of American workers in good jobs remained unchanged at about 25 percent, despite strong economic growth over that period. (The report defines a "good job" as one that offers at least $16 per hour or $32,000 annually, employer-paid health insurance and a pension.) In the last quarter century, the U.S. workforce has become older, more experienced and better educated, but 75 percent of workers are still struggling in jobs that do not provide health insurance, a pension and solid middle-class wages.

NO WAY SHOULD MIERS BE CONFIRMED

The more we learn about Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, the more obvious it becomes she should be rejected ASAP. The fact she is a crony of Bush should give us grave concern. The fact she has no judicial experience should raise some red flags. Her evangelical record should definitely cause us to question the wisdom of this nomination. She is on record as saying Roe v. Wade should be overturned, so that should disqualify her. The Supreme Court should be protecting rights, not limiting them. Maureen Dowd writes about Ms. Miers in this column linked at cyphering.blogspot.com:

The White House gambits to soothe the wrath of the right and flesh out the views of Ms. Miers, in lieu of an actual judicial record, are creating more confusion. In order to sell her, officials had to expose her by sending her anti-abortion positions from 1989 to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She's on record as favoring one of the most restrictive positions on abortion: "actively" supporting a constitutional amendment to make abortion illegal except when the mother is actually about to die (never mind if her health might be severely impaired or she's a victim of rape or incest).

EUGENICS IN THE UNITED STATES

Among the many reprehensible policies of the Nazi regime was the idea that eugenics, breeding a "superior race," was morally and ethically justified. It was the excuse the Nazis used to kill millions of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and others. Gay people were among the persecuted in Nazi Germany and we see a disturbing trend in the United States toward discriminating against gay people, including denial of parental rights. The United States has its own history of eugenics, and if we aren't careful we could be there again. Gerald Plessner writes it about in this column at www.geraldplessner.com:

Are we seeing the rebirth of the American eugenics movement? Are state legislatures and medical professionals who are licensed by the state, going to determine that certain individuals are superior and should be encouraged to produce more children, while other individuals are not qualified and should be denied the right to bear and raise children, or to become adoptive parents?

America has a sordid history of eugenics that is little remembered. Between 1907 and 1963 the various states forcibly sterilized more than 64,000 individuals under eugenic laws. When accused of the crime of mass sterilization at the Nuremberg trials, the Nazi leaders cited the American record as their inspiration. Because of the Nazi atrocities, the concepts of eugenics have fallen into disrepute, considered "false science".

Eugenics is almost always proposed by the elite, who see the "scientific" benefit of selective breeding. Early proponents used as an example of its benefits, the results of selective breeding of horses and dogs. This was called "positive eugenics".

OCTOBER 18, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

REJECT ARNIE ON NOVEMBER 8

I don't trust Republicans. Even measures that might seem good on the surface are usually loaded with a ticking time bomb that will explode in our faces. Governor Groper got a totally unnecessary special election to push four ballot initiatives that are more fodder for the right wing. They are a direct attack against public service labor unions and indirectly an attack on all working people. Howard Dean made a visit to California and correctly called for rejecting the Groper. This story by Carla Marinucci is at www.sfgate.com:

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, labeling Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as just another Republican "right wing" politician, told hundreds of grassroots party activists Sunday they should send a message on Nov. 8 that will resonate nationwide by rejecting the governor's special election measures.

"Gov. Schwarzenegger put these things on the ballot because he is, in fact, the captive of special interests," Dean said to applause and cheers of the party's faithful who packed a union hall in Hayward to hear his fiery address. "Arnold Schwarzenegger came in and then sold himself, and the state of California, to special interests."

NOOSE TIGHTENING AROUND BUSH ADMINISTRATION

In the past few days we've learned of a group of White House insiders called the White House Iraq Group that included Condoleezza Rice, among others. The job of WHIG was to market a war against Iraq that the administration had already decided to launch. Ambassador Joseph Wilson's findings that Iraq did not try to buy enriched uranium from Niger was a monkey wrench in the marketing of the war. Rumors are flying that Dick Cheney may be in deep trouble and possibly resign. This story by Tim Harper is at www.thestar.com:

With the scent of political blood hanging in the autumn air, the White House is proceeding with business as usual as a federal prosecutor decides whether to lay charges against officials in the highest echelons of the Bush administration.

But analysts from all sides of the political spectrum expect charges are coming, sparking an unprecedented crisis for Bush, perhaps within days.

The president's inner circle is desperately trying to keep the focus of Patrick Fitzgerald's probe on a technical and arcane leak of a CIA operative's name, but the fears are that he is prepared to shine an unwelcome light on a White House team established to sell Americans on a pre-ordained Iraq war as early as the summer of 2002.


INCONVENIENT FACTS ABOUT IRAQ

Some time ago there was a memo circulating around the Internet from a guy named Ray Reynolds that talked about the good things happening in Iraq thanks to the kind and benevolent occupation by the Bush administration. The memo claimed that Iraqi girls were finally getting educated, that the infrastructure in Iraq was being rebuilt, and that medical services were truly enviable. Unfortunately, the memo was just more propaganda. A look at Iraq today reveals that most of the country doesn't have basic sanitation. Even in Baghdad the residents are without electricity a good part of the day.This article by Stan Cox looks at the reality inside Iraq. The article is at www.counterpunch.com:

As you already know -- because you're reading Counterpunch -- one look beyond your inbox shows that there's no shortage of documented facts about conditions in Iraq. Most of them, unfortunately, are pretty grim.

To cover one's eyes and pluck one example: The October 9 edition of USA Today carried a story by Rick Jervis headlined "Iraq rebuilding slows as U.S. money for projects dries up." From the information in that single article (which ran in a publication not known for publishing radical peacenik propaganda), you can assemble your own "Did You Know" email, and forward it all your friends and foes:

Did you know that half of all Iraqi households still don't have access to clean water?

OCTOBER 17, 2005

IMPEACH BUSH

WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP

The leak of CIA operative Valerie's Plame name is just one thread of a larger conspiracy to sell the people of the United States on an illegal and unjustified war against Iraq. It reminds you of how the Watergate break-in was just part of a larger conspiracy by the Nixon administration. Ambassador Joseph Wilson came back with inconvenient information for the Bush administration, that no evidence existed that Saddam Hussein tried to purchase enriched uranium from Niger. That threatened the plans the White House already had to invade Iraq. The selling was to be done by some of the highest ranking officials in the Bush administration as part of something called the White House Iraq Group. Frank Rich writes about it in this column linked at www.truthout.org:

What makes Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is its illumination of a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq. That conspiracy was instigated by Mr. Rove's boss, George W. Bush, and Mr. Libby's boss, Dick Cheney.

Mr. Wilson and his wife were trashed to protect that larger plot. Because the personnel in both stories overlap, the bits and pieces we've learned about the leak inquiry over the past two years have gradually helped fill in the über-narrative about the war. Last week was no exception. Deep in a Wall Street Journal account of Judy Miller's grand jury appearance was this crucial sentence: "Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group."

Very little has been written about the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG. Its inception in August 2002, seven months before the invasion of Iraq, was never announced. Only much later would a newspaper article or two mention it in passing, reporting that it had been set up by Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff. Its eight members included Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby, Condoleezza Rice and the spinmeisters Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. Its mission: to market a war in Iraq.

UH, WHAT CHARACTER?

During the entire hubbub about Monica Lewinsky we heard often from right-wingers about how "character counts." Character counts, apparently, if there is a sexual dalliance, but not for raping the treasury, lying about war, and stuffing positions with unqualified cronies. Robert Steinback takes a look in this column linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

So, why isn't character on the table this time?

Character, we were all so piously told seven years ago, was what elevated Bill Clinton's lie about an extramarital dalliance to an issue of national gravity and justified his impeachment. It was a lie that, to those of us who were not hyperventilating with rage, seemed trivial compared to matters concerning the ship of state, even if it was a lie told under oath in a trumped-up civil trial.

No, no, no, we were scolded; it goes to the character of the man. If you can't rely on a leader to confess before the entire ogling world that he dropped his pants for the wrong woman, how could you trust anything he said? Our children would abandon all respect for honesty, integrity and propriety, using the excuse, "Well, the president did it. Why can't I?"

ERODING WAGES

In a way the breached levees in New Orleans are symbolic of what has been happening to wages for working class people for two decades. The water washed over the New Orleans levees and flooded the city. Globalization has flooded the lifestyles of working class people, whose wages have barely kept pace with inflation. In the meantime, of course, CEOs are making astronomical incomes and even when a company goes bust the executives parachute out with nice severance and benefit packages. Paul Krugman writes about the squeeze on the middle class in this column at www.topplebush.com:

During the 1990's optimists argued that better education and worker training could restore the economy's ability to create good jobs. Mr. Miller of Delphi picked up that argument as part of his public relations campaign for wage cuts: "The world pays knowledge workers far more than it pays manual, industrial workers," he said. "And that's what's sweeping over here."

But that's a very 1999 sort of answer. During the technology bubble, it was easy to believe that "knowledge workers" were guaranteed good jobs. But when the bubble burst, they turned out to be as vulnerable to downsizing and layoffs as assembly-line workers. And many of the high-paid jobs that vanished when the technology bubble burst have never come back, partly because they have been outsourced to India and other rising economies.

OCTOBER 16, 2005

THE POWDERED WIG SET

George W. Bush and right-wingers frequently talk solemnly about appointing judges who "won't legislate from the bench" and who are "strict constructionists" in interpreting the Constitution. That rationale doesn't stand up to reality, of course, not even among conservatives. Bush has grabbed immense power for the executive branch that would probably not stand up to a strict constructionist test. Even the founders knew that the Constitution would have to adapt to the times. It's a Constitution for the living, not for the dead. This is an interesting article by Jack M. Balkin is at slate.msn.com:

The notion of a Constitution that evolves in response to changing conditions didn't start with the Warren Court of the 1960s; it began at the founding itself. The framers expected that their language, not their intentions, would control future generations. They created, in John Marshall's words, a "constitution, intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."

The specific metaphor of a living, evolving Constitution arose in the 1920s to explain how a broad view of federal power that came with World War I (and later, the New Deal) was consistent with the American constitutional tradition. The Constitution's words, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1920, "called into life a being" whose "development … could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters." Hence we must interpret our Constitution "in the light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago."

REBUILDING CALIFORNIA?

Governor Groper has been running television ads attacking public service labor unions and calling them "big government labor unions." The Governor is promising to "rebuild California." It's a little like a termite promising to rebuild your house. Arnie has talked the talk about living within our means, but it's interesting that his wife, Maria Shriver, has a staff that costs $500,000 a year. Why, pray tell, does Maria need such a pricey staff? This article by Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross is at www.sfgate.com:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot call for California to live within its means is triggering questions about whether his own administration is living within its means -- especially when it comes to his wife, Maria Shriver.

Shriver doesn't hold elected office, but records show she does command a half-million-dollar-a-year staff -- which, depending on how you cut it, is anywhere from $60,000 to $180,000 more than what her predecessor, Sharon Davis, had.

BIRD FLU IN PERSPECTIVE

It's easy to panic when you hear some of the warnings about a bird flu pandemic. I saw one statement that bird flu could kill as many as one in 20 people on earth. Then we hear George W. Bush talking about bringing in the military to enforce quarantines of stricken areas. Resorting to martial law is totally the wrong approach on many levels. This article suggests that the panic may be out of bounds. So far there is no evidence that bird flu is infecting many people. The writer also says that a quarantine would create a deadlier flu. The best approach now is developing an effective vaccine. The article by Wendy Orent is at www.washingtonpost.com:

For two years, a deadly strain of chicken flu known as H5N1 has been killing birds in Asia. While slightly more than 100 people are known to have contracted the disease, and 60 of them have died, there is still no sign that the flu has begun to spread from person to person.

That hasn't prevented a recent outbreak of apocalyptic warnings from health officials and experts about the specter of a worldwide pandemic. In Hurricane Katrina's wake, health officials in the United States are talking more and more about pandemic preparation. Some of these ideas -- such as stockpiling vaccines -- are sensible, whether or not bird flu turns into a human disease and begins to spread rapidly.

But other ideas aren't. A few scientists have suggested "priming" people with a dose of the new vaccine against H5N1 before we even know whether a pandemic is coming. Vaccinating large numbers of people against a disease that may never appear carries its own risks. Remember the swine flu debacle of 1976? At least 25 people died from vaccine complications and no epidemic ever erupted. That should be warning enough.

OCTOBER 15, 2005

THE ART OF EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT

Right-wingers like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush like to deride the virtues of government. Government can't get the job done, they tell us, and when they are in power they proceed to make that statement true. This is a very good commentary by Gary Hart about the worst president in our history, George W. Bush, and the consequences of laziness, greed, and incompetence at the highest levels of government. The commentary is at www.commondreams.org:

Whatever one’s beliefs about the size of government, and the size of government has increased under Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, there ought to be some commonsense consensus that to seek to govern at all involves a solemn commitment to govern well. And to govern well means to be engaged, to step off the exercise bike and into the machinery of management, to appoint competent managers and actively inquire whether they are doing their jobs, to visit the levees before they give way, to order a snap emergency drill at Homeland Security and put a stop-watch on performance, to visit first responders (even without photographers) to see if they are awake and to offer encouragement.

Had we had a president who believed in effective, energetic government, levees might have been strengthened, drills coordinating disaster response among levels of government might have been carried out, mothballed military bases might have been made ready for victims, evacuation plans might have been current. We have now paid the somber price for the carefree neglect, the smirk and the wink, the frat-boy funny names, the swagger and the brush-cutting photo-ops. Now is the time for a sober understanding that governing America requires more than an attitude, especially one that guarantees ineffective government and incompetent governance.

We might then not have the most physically fit president in recent history, but we would surely have a more physically fit nation.

BUSH'S JUNGLE ETHICS

A hallmark of George W. Bush and Republicans in general is a willingness to do anything to win. If it means stealing a presidential election, to be it. If it means smearing war heroes like Max Cleland and John Kerry, go to it. If it means falsifying information to justify a war, what's the problem? I think most Americans expect political leaders to adhere to a certain standard of ethics and morality. When a president takes the oath of office, we believe he should actually live up to that oath. For George W. Bush it's mere window dressing. This article by Bob Burnett is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

When we question the actions of the Bush administration, it's useful to keep this distinction in mind, as George Bush and company talk as if they abide by the political version of the Marques of Queensbury rules but actually play by jungle ethics where anything goes--Bush rules.

Two recent news stories graphically illustrate the nature of Bush rules. It's been well documented that the administration was indifferent to the tragedy wrought by Hurricane Katrina, until there was an enormous public outcry. What hasn't been talked about is the contrast between this occasion and their response to Hurricane Frances in September of 2004. Two months before the presidential election, Frances was threatening Florida, with its 27 electoral votes, and the Bush administration leaped into action. The National Guard was mobilized and a federal-state-nonprofit task force was launched--before Frances hit.

WAL-MART'S LOW PRICES COST US ALL

I refuse to buy anything at Wal-Mart just out of principle. Wal-Mart pays its employees miserly wages, busts unions, and passes on the health care costs of its employees to the taxpayers. Meanwhile, the Walton family, some of the richest people on earth, continue to rake in the bucks. This article by Don Hazen is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Wal-Mart reportedly spends $4 million a day on public relations to obscure its corporate irresponsibility and position it as an American company that truly cares. But even $4 million a day can't hide the vicious business model of the largest corporation on the planet. With 1.4 million employees (larger than GM, Ford, GE and IBM combined), Wal-Mart's $258 billion in annual revenues make up 2 percent of the U.S. G.D.P.

In spite of its financial largesse, or maybe because of it, Wal-Mart constantly plays the miser. A congressional report in 2004 found that a typical 200-employee Wal-Mart store cost federal taxpayers $420,000 for children's health care, tax credits and deductions for low-income families. That equals about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee, or an annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million employees in America. What that boils down to is that Americans subsidize Wal-Mart so that its stockholders can continue to reap huge profits.

OCTOBER 14, 2005

HAROLD PINTER ON THE IRAQ WAR

From my perspective, creative writing is the most important endeavor in the arts. I've wanted to be a writer most of my life, and I have enormous respect for world class writers. Writers who win the Nobel Prize are the elite in the writing world. So I congratulate Harold Pinter upon his award of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This is an excerpt of a speech by Pinter talking about the atrocity the United States and Britain have created in Iraq. The speech is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it " bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East". But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.

You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well, President Bush himself answered this question when he said: "We cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military occupation". I had to read that statement twice before I realised that he was talking about Lebanon and Syria.

RECESSIONS AREN'T EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Most of us in the real world know the economy isn't very good. We're stuck with stagnant wages, rising health care costs, higher energy costs, and a job market that is flat-lining. And yet Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan keeps hiking interest rates, a strategy sure to slow the economy. As William Greider points out in this article, recessions hit the economically weak first and the hardest. We once again see government designed and executed for the rich. This article is at www.thenation.com:

In the basic design of American capitalism, recessions always deliver the most pain and severest losses in reverse order--punishing the weak and less affluent first. Thorstein Veblen called it "the slaughter of the innocents," a nasty ritual that sacrifices the lambs for the benefit of the lions. The rest of us may have to pull back a bit, but our lives are not greatly disrupted by recession. If we have wealth, it will be protected from inflation and possibly even enhanced in value. Businesses typically use a recession as an opportunity to reorganize, trimming surplus workers. If they were asked, many citizens would perhaps choose recession as the least-bad risk. Evidently so do our current leaders. The economy is not governed with the bottom half in mind.

GOP PATTERN OF CORRUPTION

Republicans have campaigned for years on "small government." But they love government that is big enough to enrich them. We see a definite pattern in the escapades of Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Dick Cheney, David Safavian, Jack Abramoff, and others. It's a grab the money and run kind of governance. In this commentary Michael K. Fauntroy talks about the demise of the GOP. The commentary is at www.tompaine.com:

Meanwhile, Republican elected officials are being caught in scheme after scheme to enrich themselves. Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham sold his house to a government contractor doing business before Cunningham’s committee for nearly twice its market value in what can only be called a bribe. Further, Cunningham lived for years on this same contractor's houseboat in D.C. Sen. Bill Frist is now under investigation for what may turn out to be insider trading. Numerous Ohio Republicans, most notably Governor Robert Taft, have had varying levels of investigations their way, not to mention legitimate concerns about voter suppression in the last election. And let's not forget former Gov. Ryan of Illinois, who is currently in court facing charges that he took cash and gifts to help insiders land lucrative state contracts.

DeLay’s indictment may turn out to be nothing. It may turn out to be a big deal. Either way you slice it, it's part of a long pattern of corruption that has developed over the years of GOP dominance of Congress and the White House. The Gingrich Revolution was largely built around the argument that 40 years of Democratic control led to arrogance and corruption. Now it's clear that the GOP has done more damage to the nation in a shorter time and we have to pay the bill.

OCTOBER 13, 2005

ROBERT FISK ON STATE OF IRAQ

Robert Fisk is simply one of the best and most courageous journalists working today. Fisk has worked the Middle East beat for a while now, often putting his own life in danger, as he reports on the reality in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reality Fisk sees isn't what you get from the Bush administration. According to Fisk, Iraq is in a state of anarchy, not the petri dish of a budding democracy. This story by Nigel Morris is at news.independent.co.uk:

Most of Iraq is in a state of anarchy, with insurgents controlling parts of Baghdad just half a mile from the so-called Green Zone, an Independent debate was told last night.

Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, whose new book The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East has just been published by 4th Estate, painted a picture of deepening chaos and misery in Iraq more than two years after Saddam Hussein was toppled.

THE RIGHT WING ON HARRIET MIERS

There are a number of right-wingers who don't like the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. But, of course, there's also a branch of the right wing that peers through the Looking Glass. That's what one letter in the today's Fresno Bee does today. Our pundit thinks it's a good thing that Harriet Miers didn't go to Stanford or have much legal experience (except for her corporate attorney work). There are millions of us who didn't go to Stanford Law School, so I guess we already have a leg up on getting to the Supreme Court. I have this funny idea that someone who is going to get a lifetime appointment and who will make decisions affecting millions of lives should actually present some qualifications for the job. Writing love notes to George W. Bush doesn't inspire me with confidence.

CIA WARNED ABOUT IRAQ CHAOS

Prewar assessments by the CIA warned of the kind of chaos we're now seeing in full bloom in Iraq. Far from the flowers and chocolates forecast by the Bush administration, the reports warned of political instability. George W. Bush and his administration have not quelled the rise of militant and fanatical Islam; they have been its biggest recruiters. This story by Douglas Jehl is at www.commondreams.org:

A review by former intelligence officers has concluded that the Bush administration "apparently paid little or no attention" to prewar assessments by the Central Intelligence Agency that warned of major cultural and political obstacles to stability in postwar Iraq.

The unclassified report was completed in July 2004. It appeared publicly for the first time this week in Studies in Intelligence, a quarterly journal, and was first reported Wednesday in USA Today. The journal is published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, which is part of the C.I.A. but operates independently.

The review was conducted by a team led by Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, working under contract for the C.I.A. It acknowledged the deep failures in the agency's prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs but said "the analysis was right" on cultural and political issues related to postwar Iraq.

OCTOBER 12, 2005

ARNIE THE HYPOCRITE

Governor Groper got his special election this November, but most of his initiatives appear to be in deep trouble. One that should be in trouble is Proposition 75. It's that old Republican canard about "paycheck protection." If you're a union member, under this proposal, you could opt out of having the union support political candidates you don't like. Sounds good on the surface, but what it really does it divert the resources of unions and weaken them in their confrontations with businesses over fair wages, benefits, and health and safety protections. Republicans aren't similarly concerned about "protections" when it's corporate money and shareholders don't have a say in how political money is spent. This article by Ezra Klein is at www.latimes.com:

Let me be clear: Getting the money out of politics is a good idea. Breaking the hold of special interests — unions included — over Sacramento is similarly laudable. But when Schwarzenegger steps out and complains that even after the recall election, "the same union bosses are there, the same legislators are there, the same special interests, the corporations, all of those forces are still there," and then proceeds to attack the unions while accepting enormous amounts of money from the corporations, it's a bit hard not to doubt his sincerity on the issue. And when he puts his considerable muscle behind an initiative as useless and hole-filled as Proposition 75, reform-minded watchers will be forgiven for throwing up their hands and stalking off into the night.

That's because Proposition 75 isn't about reform, it's about diversion. For their supporters, the beauty of paycheck protection measures isn't that they get the money out of politics or that they give union members control over their own money, it's that the propositions themselves divert union resources during elections. Schwarzenegger already saw his numbers tumble after last year's concentrated union offensive, and he'd much prefer not to watch his beloved initiatives wither in the face of another one. Thus, Proposition 75 — a cannon-fodder proposal that'll do little to clean up Sacramento but will distract the unions from focusing firepower on other portions of the ballot.

PUSHING US TO THE BOTTOM

Even though Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT, the major impetus behind globalization has come from the right wing. I don't forgive Clinton for signing those agreements, but they most certainly would have been aggressively pushed by a Republican president. Globalization is making life worse for working people all over the globe. We're now seeing the bitter fruits as Delphi Corporation, the auto parts manufacturer, slinks into bankruptcy mostly as a tactic to bust its unions. Middle class jobs are flying away like geese in winter to be replaced, if replaced at all, with low-paying dead-end jobs with few or no benefits. The American dream of upward mobility is becoming extinct. In this article Harold Meyerson writes about Delphi, unions, and economic devastation. The article is at www.washingtonpost.com:

And in the United States, auto isn't just any old industry. For much of the 20th century, it was, by many measures, our premier industry, the pride of the nation. Its Big Three manufacturers employed the most workers, produced the most output, made the largest profits, and paid their workers enough to transform the economic profile of the entire nation. In 1914, one year after he opened his first assembly line, Henry Ford doubled the daily pay of his workers, saying he wanted them to make enough to buy the cars they produced. The Fordist compact was greatly enhanced by the rise in the 1930s of the United Auto Workers, whose contracts (along with those of the United Steelworkers) created the first employment-based health insurance benefits in the land and soon became the model for our mid-century economy. In the post World War II decades, America became home to the first decently paid working class in the history of the world. This was no mean distinction.

But that was oh, so then. If Delphi gets its way, its employees will clearly not be able to buy new GM cars. (At the rate things are going, they'll have to save up to buy gas.) In the face of the combined onslaught of globalization, de-unionization and deregulation, the bottom may not be falling out of the American economy, but the middle certainly is. The very notion of a decently paid working-class job has become a defining oxymoron of our time.

NOT ABOUT "VALUES" AFTER ALL

I read Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter With Kansas? and I thought he presented a good case why so many working class people vote against their own self interests by voting for Republicans. Frank's arguments mostly centered on issues like abortion and gay rights. But a new study suggests that "moral values" may not be as much of factor in voting patterns as Frank thought. I consider that a positive view. If voters aren't locked into an intractable "values" view of the world, it means that rationality and pragmatism may prevail after all. Katrina vanden Huevel writes about the new study in this article linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

I'm a Tom Frank fan. I think he's a wonderful and passionate writer. But, now a respected political scientist is arguing that the "Great Backlash" Frank chronicled in his last book, in which "conservatives won the heart of America" and created a "dominant political coalition" by convincing Kansans and blue-collar, working-class people to vote against their own economic interests in order to defend traditional cultural values against bicoastal elites "isn't actually happening--at least, not in anything like the way Frank portrays." (Thanks to Doug Henwood--editor of the invaluable Left Business Observer and longtime Nation contributing editor--for turning me on to this new study.)

OCTOBER 11, 2005

IMPEACHMENT NOW

This story is both encouraging and enraging. The encouraging part is that the majority of respondents said they would favor impeachment of George W. Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq. What do they mean "if"? The evidence is clear and overwhelming that he lied. What is enraging is that 44% of the respondents still wouldn't favor impeachment. What does it take for these people? This story is at www.afterdowningstreet.org:

By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,001 U.S. adults on October 6-9.

The poll found that 50% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."

THE INSIDIOUS LOGIC OF MASSIVE DEFICITS

At first glance, it would seem the creation of massive federal deficits was the act of totally irresponsible buffoons. That may be true, but there are other motivations behind massive tax cuts for the rich and oceans of red ink. The right wing dream is to take government out of almost everything, except defense, and turn over everything to their corporate friends. One way to do that is to bankrupt government. Need services? The government doesn't have the money anymore. You'll have to turn to the private sector. It's a form of modern feudalism they're creating. This article by Bill Willers is at www.commondreams.org:

The corporate sphere has spent countless millions lobbying for deregulation of its activities, for maintaining specific legislators in office, and for the privatization of everything from health care to education to Social Security to federal lands, including national parks. The goal is ownership and control of every corner of society by a "private sector" primarily in the form of corporations. Over more than a century of legal maneuvering, corporations have been able to create for themselves the status of “persons” in US law, so that the fortunes they lavish have, absurdly, become “free speech”. They have also acquired ownership of mainstream media and so have been able to obscure the significance and gravity of the situation while simultaneously perpetuating another widely believed absurdity, that of “the liberal media”.

A key mechanism for privatization is "outsourcing" to the private sector jobs that have historically been governmental. National parks, it seems, have been a trial area for this. Plans for the privatization of parks have lain obscurely on the rightwing to-do list for more than 20 years, and now the Bush Administration is allowing them to move ahead quickly. Terry Anderson, lead architect of a strategy to transfer America’s public lands into private ownership over a forty-year span, advises President Bush on public lands matters.

BUSH'S MANY LIMITATIONS

Someone once commented on a man who was an antagonist of Winston Churchill that he was a "modest man." Churchill's rejoinder was, "He has much to be modest about." Churchill could have been describing George W. Bush. While he has tried to represent himself as common folk, Bush has demonstrated a pronounced arrogance and swagger throughout his presidency. He prides himself on never changing his mind. But history is all about people finding new frontiers, finding new ideas, and changing their minds. This article by Sherman Yellen is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

George Bush can never flip flop. He cannot change his mind, because it is a lazy mind, incapable of the activity required for flip flopping which can be a wrenching experience. Between the flip and the flop is a lot of mental and moral activity. He is far from stupid, but lacks that curiosity which allows for growth and change. By "sticking to his guns" he thinks he is acting as a man should act, standing by his principles, while in fact all he demonstrates is his inability to tolerate change and the weakness of those principles.

A real man does not always have to "feel your pain" but he must be capable of alleviating it. Real men are healers. They are not towel snapping bullies like our president, whose target is the poor, those least able to defend themselves. For all his failing, Jimmy Carter was a real man. His was an unlucky presidency, but it was one in which the poor and the environment were given a chance to survive. His actions for peace and for building decent lives for the poor, following his presidency, reveal a man who is driven by true religious feelings, not one who uses his religion to beat down the poor because "the poor will always be with us."

OCTOBER 10. 2005

BUSH'S LOUSY RECORD OF KEEPING PROMISES

In a moment that columnist Maureen Dowd compared to Disneyland, George W. Bush gave a speech from New Orleans promising a massive federal relief effort for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. But Mr. Bush has insisted there won't be any tax increases to pay for the hurricane disaster or for the continuing nightmare in Iraq. Based on his track record, it's appropriate to wonder if Bush is all talk and no action. He also promised help for New York after the 9/11 attacks, but failed to deliver. Far from helping hurricane victims, Bush has impeded efforts. He signed an executive order rescinding provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act, which would require federal contractors to pay prevailing wages. That means lousy wages for people who need jobs in the area. The administration has also blocked other efforts to aid victims, such as extending Medicaid coverage. Paul Krugman writes about the possibly deliberately slow administration response in this column posted at www.topplebush.com:

Bear with me while I make the case for doubting whether Mr. Bush will make good on his promise.

First, Mr. Bush already has a record of trying to renege on pledges to a stricken city. After 9/11 he made big promises to New York. But as soon as his bullhorn moment was past, officials began trying to wriggle out of his pledge. By early 2002 his budget director was accusing New York's elected representatives, who wanted to know what had happened to the promised aid, of engaging in a "money-grubbing game." It's not clear how much federal help the city has actually received.

With that precedent in mind, consider this: Congress has just gone on recess. By the time it returns, seven weeks will have passed since the levees broke. And the administration has spent much of that time blocking efforts to aid Katrina's victims.

WHAT GOD?

The White House was in full denial mode that George W. Bush made the claim that God told him to attack Iraq. The quote has come from more than one source, and Bush sprinkles much of his rhetoric with religious allusions, so I believe he said it. It's disturbing that a guy who has his finger on the nuclear button claims that he talks to God. We know how many people have committed murder because God supposedly ordered them to. They're considered insane. In this article Iain Macwhirter writes about Bush's "mission" at www.sundayherald.com:

Now, you could argue that there is nothing objectionable in this. Many great leaders, like Abraham Lincoln or William Gladstone, have been inspired by evangelical Christianity. You could argue that Bush’s faith makes him a more rounded moral individual. That his militarism will be tempered by the pacifism of the Gospels and that he will show compassion to the poor and weak. However, we didn’t see a lot of that compassion in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, and there’s little evidence of a willingness on the part of the Bush administration to turn the other cheek, let alone love enemies.

Christianity in America is very different to the belief system in secular countries like Britain. Many Americans have what can only be described as a passionate love affair with the Bible. It is, for them, literally the word of God. Nearly half of Americans believe in creationism, now called “intelligent design”, which is taught in many schools as a theory which is as valid as Darwinian evolution.

OCTOBER 9, 2005

COMING APART AT THE SEAMS

You go back in time to the presidential campaign of 2000 and you wonder how so many people could be persuaded to vote for George W. Bush. We heard about "character," but the media didn't talk about the multitude of character flaws in Bush and the people surrounding him. The image created for Bush was that he was a likeable guy, the kind you'd want to have a beer with, and Al Gore was that stuffy dilettante associated with Bill Clinton. Now it's more and more obvious that George W. Bush was never qualified to be president. We're seeing a perfect storm of disasters forming and most of them are the fault of Mr. Bush. In this column David Broder, very representative of the establishment, writes about Bush's presidency gasping for air. This column is at www.washingtonpost.com:

Three front-page stories on a single day last week testified to the unraveling of the Bush presidency.

The lead story in The Post on Thursday reported that "the Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere," with 46 Republicans joining the Democrats to pass restrictions on prisoner abuse so unacceptable to President Bush that he has threatened his first veto.


A second story on the same page recounted that "the conservative uprising against President Bush escalated yesterday as Republican activists angry over his nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court confronted the president's envoys during a pair of tense closed-door meetings."

RIGHT-WING INTELLECTUALS IN A SNIT

For those who would claim the United States is a conservative nation and that the country rejects liberalism, I offer up the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court as conclusive evidence that the opposite is true. If George W. Bush were confident the country was conservative, he would have nominated a hard-line right-winger to the Court. Instead, he picks a White House crony with no major legal record to throw out to the right-wing base. Bush had two objectives in this nomination, to have someone on the Court he can count on to do his will, and someone not so openly far to the right as to drive even more people away from the Republican party. That has the right-wing "intellectuals" foaming at the mouth. In this article Harold Meyerson looks at the meltdown on the right. The article is at www.prospect.org:

Consider the following from George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki, writing on a right-wing legal-affairs blog on Monday: "There are two possible ways to think about appointments: one is to appoint those who will simply 'vote right' on the Court, the other is to be more far-reaching and to try to change the legal culture. Individuals such as Brandeis, Holmes, Warren, all changed both the Court and the legal culture, by providing intellectual heft and credibility to a certain intellectual view of the law. . . . Bush's back-to-back appointments of [Chief Justice John] Roberts and Miers is a clear indication that his goal is at best to change the voting pattern of the Court. . . . Neither of them appears to be suited by background or temperament to provide intellectual leadership that will move the legal culture."

Note Zywicki's trio of legal heavyweights: Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Earl Warren, all figures in the liberal pantheon (though Holmes was less a liberal than a dissenter from his era's conservatism). Now, after three decades of a legal counterrevolution against the egalitarianism of the mid-20th century, the right had developed its own pantheon, its Brandeises-in-waiting. And Bush ignored them all.

OCTOBER 8, 2005

BUSH'S BLOODY PRIORITIES

In five very long years of the Bush administration George W. Bush has not vetoed a single bill from Congress, including pork barrel legislation like the recent transportation bill. Now Congress has passed a decent law for a change that would ban torture and Bush plans to veto it. What a Christian! Somewhere along the line George W. Bush got the idea that he's not accountable to the rest of the human race. He's wrong. This article by Francis Harris is at www.telegraph.co.uk:

The Bush administration pledged yesterday to veto legislation banning the torture of prisoners by US troops after an overwhelming and almost unprecedented revolt by loyalist congressmen.

The mutiny was the latest setback for an administration facing an increasingly independent and bloody-minded legislature. But it also marked a key moment in Congress's campaign to curtail the huge powers it has granted the White House since 2001 in its war against terrorism.

TUMULTUOUS CLIMATE CHANGE

I had not heard of Hurricane Catarina until I read this article. It was a hurricane that shouldn't have happened under conventional models. It brewed in the south Atlantic, the first such storm in history, and made landfall in the south Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. This article has some truly scary scenarios about how abrupt and devastating climate change can be. The article by Mike Davis is at www.commondreams.org:

The genesis of two category-five hurricanes (Katrina and Rita) in a row over the Gulf of Mexico is an unprecedented and troubling occurrence. But for most tropical meteorologists the truly astonishing "storm of the decade" took place in March 2004. Hurricane Catarina -- so named because it made landfall in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina -- was the first recorded south Atlantic hurricane in history.

Textbook orthodoxy had long excluded the possibility of such an event; sea temperatures, experts claimed, were too low and wind shear too powerful to allow tropical depressions to evolve into cyclones south of the Atlantic Equator. Indeed, forecasters rubbed their eyes in disbelief as weather satellites down-linked the first images of a classical whirling disc with a well-formed eye in these forbidden latitudes.

In a series of recent meetings and publications, researchers have debated the origin and significance of Catarina. A crucial question is this: Was Catarina simply a rare event at the outlying edge of the normal bell curve of South Atlantic weather -- just as, for example, Joe DiMaggio's incredible 56-game hitting streak in 1941 represented an extreme probability in baseball (an analogy made famous by Stephen Jay Gould) -- or was Catarina a "threshold" event, signaling some fundamental and abrupt change of state in the planet's climate system?

WAL-MART AS PART OF POLICE STATE

This story is about a student taking part in a school project to demonstrate freedom of speech. The student clipped a picture of George W. Bush, tacked the picture to a wall, turned his thumb upside down, and took a photo. Then he made a poster for his class. When he had the photo developed at his local Wal-Mart some bright light there called authorities. This kind of story is all too common in the Bush era. Bush talks about "freedom being on the march" while we consistently see civil liberties violated here at home. This story by Matthew Roshschild is at www.progressive.org:

One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

OCTOBER 7, 2005

SCOPES TRIAL ENCORE

A trial in Pennsylvania reminds you of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee from the 1920’s. This time creationism is being paraded under the banner of “Intelligent Design.” Intelligent Design proponents have tried to avoid use of the word “creationism” because teaching creationism in publicly funded schools is illegal. But a book recommended by the Intelligent Design crowd makes it clear that it’s just the same old malarkey. This article by Celeste Biever is at www.newscientist.com:

"Devastating" early drafts of a controversial book recommended as reading at a US high school reveal how the word “creationism” had been later swapped for “intelligent design”, a landmark US trial scrutinising the teaching of ID heard on Wednesday.

The early drafts of the book Of Pandas and People, were used as evidence to link the book to creationism, which it is illegal to teach in government-funded US schools.

“ID proponents have said for years that they are not creationists,” says Nick Matzke of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, which is advising 11 parents who are suing the school board of Dover High School in Pennsylvania for incorporating ID into the science curriculum. “This proves beyond a doubt that this is simply a new name for creationism.”

BUSH HAS NO MORAL COMPASS

Anyone with a conscience would have been appalled at the poverty revealed by Hurricane Katrina. The poverty shouldn’t have been a secret in the first place, but many Americans like to pretend that everything in the United States is fair and decent and just. They’re deluding themselves if they think someone like George W. Bush ever pursues policies that are for the benefit of us all, especially people at the bottom of the economic totem pole. This editorial from The Boston Globe talks about the renewed callousness of the Bush administration even after Hurricane Katrina. The editorial is at www.boston.com:

The Bush recovery plan features even more tax breaks and looser environmental and workplace regulations. He has already lifted affirmative action and prevailing wage rules for the reconstruction effort, and millions in contracts require no bids. He seems oblivious to the fact that low tax revenue and weak regulations are just what made Louisiana and Mississippi so vulnerable to Katrina's destruction in the first place.

But Bush seems oblivious to many of the truths in the ongoing Katrina disaster. Even the most costly economic stimulus plan will do little to lift the destitute without social policies that promote opportunity and equality. The people whom Katrina exposed to a shocked nation had no jobs, no decent housing, no healthcare, and no useful educations before everything was washed away. They cannot be left with no hope.

99% OF US ARE HEADED DOWN

You’ll frequently hear statistics citing growth in the Gross Domestic Product and claims that the U.S. economy is strong and growing. But there’s a disconnect there. Other statistics show that the only people benefiting in the United States are the top 1%. The rest of us are losing economic ground, and the Bush administration’s economic policies only exacerbate the problem. This article by Jonathan Tasini is at www.tompaine.com:

While the effects of hurricane Katrina are being blamed for the decline in people’s desire to go out and shop, I believe there is something deeper at play here. The hurricane—and the related rise in gasoline prices—only fueled a much deeper unease among people who feel that something very bad is happening in their lives, even if they can’t pull together all the economic strands to form a coherent explanation. They are reacting to real, on-the-ground facts that aren’t reflected by the GDP because that measure only tells us that stuff is being made and sold. It doesn’t tell us who is benefiting from all that activity.

It doesn’t tell the underlying story of the distribution of wealth in society. As The New York Times’ David Cay Johnston reported this week, data from the Internal Revenue Service shows that, “the share of income going to the richest slice of Americans—the top tenth of 1 percent—grew significantly in 2003 while the share going to 99 percent of Americans fell…”

It doesn’t tell us that workers’ wages are not going up, which means they have to borrow more to pay for the health care they don’t have, which is why personal debt is at an all-time high. The average consumer spends 1.22 for every dollar he or she earns, has 13 credit cards and is shouldering $9,312 in credit card debt—twice as much as 10 years ago.