February 21, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
THE OVERREACTION TO TERRORISM
Since the attacks on 9/11 many Americans have acted like Chicken Little. The sky is falling! They're so paranoid and so consumed by terror they're ready to sacrifice all our civil liberties. They're willing to give a liar like George W. Bush carte blanche to do anything he wants to do. As this article points out, terrorism really ranks pretty low on the threats to most of us. The article by Ben Friedman is at www.sfgate.com:
Conventional wisdom says that none of us is safe from terrorism. The truth is that almost all of us are.
The conventional belief is that in response to terrorism, the federal government has spent huge sums on homeland security. The fact is the increased federal spending on homeland security since Sept. 11 pales in comparison to increases in the U.S. defense budget. But homeland security has costs beyond spending, costs that conventional thinking rarely considers. U.S. homeland security policy conjures up a flawless enemy that could strike at any moment, in any place. That policy institutionalizes the fears terrorists created and harms liberal values.
Most homeland security experts say that Hurricane Katrina's flooding of New Orleans shows how vulnerable we are to terrorists. In fact, it shows that most Americans have better things to worry about. By any statistical measure, the terrorist threat to America has always been low. As political scientist John Mueller notes, in most years allergic reactions to peanuts, deer in the road and lightning have all killed about the same number of Americans as terrorism.
BEWARE THOSE JOB STATISTICS
Any time you hear the Bush administration and its sycophants talking about job growth bear in mind that the vast majority of jobs being created now are deadend service sector jobs that pay far below the average wage. We're being given an economy that rewards a very few, such as CEOs, and expects the rest of us to subsist on peasant wages. This item comes from newstandardnews.net:
Buried in the rosy economic scenario portrayed by recentBLS reports is the fact that few jobs in the fastest-growing categories pay well. According to the BLS January jobs report, food-service and service-provider jobs grew a combined 69,000 in January.
The report was followed this month by the BLS annual Occupational Outlook Handbook, which projects continued rapid growth in demand for home-healthcare workers, medical assistants and personal-care aides, all service-related jobs that generally pay little more than the minimum wage.
BUSH'S DETENTION CAMPS
For anyone concerned about civil liberties, and anyone who has read the history of the Third Reich, this story raises major concerns. The Bush administration has talked of building detention camps, supposedly to deal with a major invasion of illegal immigrants. But the administration's talk of being "with them" or "against them," the warrantless spying on American citizens, the detention of people like Jose Padilla, and the general contempt for the Bill of Rights makes you concerned they want to lock up dissidents. This story by Nat Parry is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.
Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by "news informers" in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com "Upside-Down Media" or below.]
Sunday, February 19, 2006
February 19, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
THERE'S NO FOOD IN THIS HOUSE
Country music great Lefty Frizzell once recorded a song called "There's No Food in this House." All the mythology to the contrary, the United States has always had its share of poverty. Some people try to dismiss the poor as lazy and shiftless, but the reality is that many of the poor work at multiple jobs in an effort to survive. It is the system--and always has been the system--that is the primary culprit for producing poverty. Many of the poor are children, so I don't know how right-wingers can claim that children are responsible for their poverty. Poverty always increases under right-wing administrations. Since George W. Bush lied and stole his way into the White House, over five million more Americans have dropped below the poverty line. This article by Paul Harris is at observer.guardian.uk.co:
A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.
Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.
Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.
WHO IS THE "FRINGE ELEMENT"?
Mr. Anti-Choice makes his periodic visit to the pages of The Fresno Bee's letters section today talking not about abortion, but about how we on the left "hate" America's "values." Mr. AC takes issue with some interviews on Pacifica radio where the people interviewed suggested protecting coral reefs should be on the same level as dealing with terrorism. Just how that is "hating American values" isn't really made clear. He also has a problem with the idea that American consumerism has influenced China's major appetite for oil. The balance of trade deficit we have with China, which fuels China's industries, which fuels their appetite for oil, is all just coincidental, no doubt.
If there is a "fringe" element in this country, it's the people who would destroy the Bill of Rights. It's the people who would ignore the mounting danger of global climate change. It's the people who turn a blind eye, or actively support, lies that got us into a war and that allows the torture of people. The "fringe" element coldly and cruelly ignores the growth of poverty in this country. Then they have the unmitigated gall to say we "hate" America. It is they who hate America and everything it's supposed to stand for.
REAGAN WAS WRONG
Ronald Reagan famously proclaimed that government wasn't the solution; government was the problem. Reagan and right-wing ideologues are in love with the idea that business is better than government at fixing problems, and that business in inherently more efficient. Business has its place, but there are many areas where business isn't particularly effective or even interested. Business is about making money and not everything is about making money. This article by Chris Satullo is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The nation is run by people who savor power but disdain governing. The Abramoff scandal shows the wages of that combination. It also underscores why turning public works over to corporations often produces poor results for taxpayers.
If you assume government is too inept to do anything useful itself, then you reduce its role to dispensing contracts to the companies that "get things done." This turns sleazy deal-brokers like Jack Abramoff into VIPs.
Once you're there, abandon hope that corporations will do public work well. Businesses work efficiently because smart customers and strong competitors spur them.
IMPEACH BUSH
THERE'S NO FOOD IN THIS HOUSE
Country music great Lefty Frizzell once recorded a song called "There's No Food in this House." All the mythology to the contrary, the United States has always had its share of poverty. Some people try to dismiss the poor as lazy and shiftless, but the reality is that many of the poor work at multiple jobs in an effort to survive. It is the system--and always has been the system--that is the primary culprit for producing poverty. Many of the poor are children, so I don't know how right-wingers can claim that children are responsible for their poverty. Poverty always increases under right-wing administrations. Since George W. Bush lied and stole his way into the White House, over five million more Americans have dropped below the poverty line. This article by Paul Harris is at observer.guardian.uk.co:
A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.
Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.
Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.
WHO IS THE "FRINGE ELEMENT"?
Mr. Anti-Choice makes his periodic visit to the pages of The Fresno Bee's letters section today talking not about abortion, but about how we on the left "hate" America's "values." Mr. AC takes issue with some interviews on Pacifica radio where the people interviewed suggested protecting coral reefs should be on the same level as dealing with terrorism. Just how that is "hating American values" isn't really made clear. He also has a problem with the idea that American consumerism has influenced China's major appetite for oil. The balance of trade deficit we have with China, which fuels China's industries, which fuels their appetite for oil, is all just coincidental, no doubt.
If there is a "fringe" element in this country, it's the people who would destroy the Bill of Rights. It's the people who would ignore the mounting danger of global climate change. It's the people who turn a blind eye, or actively support, lies that got us into a war and that allows the torture of people. The "fringe" element coldly and cruelly ignores the growth of poverty in this country. Then they have the unmitigated gall to say we "hate" America. It is they who hate America and everything it's supposed to stand for.
REAGAN WAS WRONG
Ronald Reagan famously proclaimed that government wasn't the solution; government was the problem. Reagan and right-wing ideologues are in love with the idea that business is better than government at fixing problems, and that business in inherently more efficient. Business has its place, but there are many areas where business isn't particularly effective or even interested. Business is about making money and not everything is about making money. This article by Chris Satullo is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The nation is run by people who savor power but disdain governing. The Abramoff scandal shows the wages of that combination. It also underscores why turning public works over to corporations often produces poor results for taxpayers.
If you assume government is too inept to do anything useful itself, then you reduce its role to dispensing contracts to the companies that "get things done." This turns sleazy deal-brokers like Jack Abramoff into VIPs.
Once you're there, abandon hope that corporations will do public work well. Businesses work efficiently because smart customers and strong competitors spur them.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
February 18, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
RIGHT-WING TALKING POINTS
The red herring is a favorite device of right-wingers who try to defend George W. Bush. In today's Fresno Bee we have a letter to the editor from a guy who says he "has problems" with Republicans (yeah, sure), but he's "terrified" of Democrats. He recites this litany: Japanese-Americans were confined after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Robert Kennedy authorized wiretaps on Martin Luther King, Bill Clinton authorized "illegal wiretaps" (with no evidence), and so on.
The confinement of Japanese-Americans was wrong and the country has since paid reparations, although that doesn't excuse the treatment of American citizens back then. I have a feeling Republicans back then were fully on board with confining Japanese-Americans. RFK authorized wiretaps on Martin Luther King reluctantly because of the pressure from J. Edgar Hoover. There were some Communists affiliated with the civil rights movement, and Communism was a very hot button issue back then. The FBI was already wiretapping King, and the Kennedy administration was trying to protect King and the civil rights movement as much as it could.
I don't know of any evidence that Bill Clinton authorized illegal wiretaps.
Look at the history of the Republican party in this century if you want to be "terrified." We had the Teapot Dome scandal under the corrupt and inept Warren G. Harding. We had the Great Depression occur because of the inept economic policies of Herbert Hoover. We had the Constitutional crisis caused by the crimes of Richard Nixon. We've had massive deficits and crimes aplenty under the Reagan-Bush administration. Under the current Bush administration we've been lied into a war, spied upon, had our national treasure transferred to the very wealthy, the environment neglected, and hatred fueled against us around the world. That's not even to mention Republican obstructionism against the United Nations, Social Security, civil rights, the environmental movement, the women's movement, labor laws, and civil liberties.
The Democrats have committed sins, but all of the progress we've seen for the middle class, poor people, and minorities has been thanks to Democrats.
THE PLACE WE ARE NOW
I forgot in my commentary above to mention people like Senator Joseph McCarthy, the forerunner to George W. Bush. McCarthy had no problem with dropping bombshells about Communists being everywhere, smearing people by innuendo, and destroying lives and careers. During the Reagan years we had a end run around Congress that created the Iran-Contra scandal. We had the savings and loan debacle that came about thanks to the Reagan administration. Now our country, under this administration, is like a barren landscape. Civil liberties lie in blazing hulks, the economy like a rotting and sagging building, and our credibility blown to smithereens. This commentary by Steve Osborn is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Now I live in an America I don't dare leave for fear of being spat upon, shot, bombed or kidnaped. I am looked upon as a citizen of a rogue nation that has no concept or respect for any law except bullying and strength. I need a passport even to visit Canada, which was to be our sister nation with open borders forever. I must expect to be required to show my "papers" at any time, to any official. I must accept that the government can break into my house and rifle my belongings and papers any time it wishes on the thinnest of excuses and it is not even required to let me know it has violated my home and my privacy. I must accept the fact that the government can listen in to my private conversations, my phone, my e-mail, can probably read my snail mail if they wish and can put a gag order on anyone who has information on me so I may not even be made aware that I am being spied upon. George Orwell's absolute dictatorship has crept in to my home and my life and thrown out my beloved Constitution and Bill of Rights. The difference between the United States, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is steadily and inexorably diminishing and the people are letting it happen while they remain paralyzed with fear. Fear incited by the gang that runs the White House and their cronies in the propaganda ministry that used to be our last bulwark against tyranny; our once free press.
IMPEACH BUSH
RIGHT-WING TALKING POINTS
The red herring is a favorite device of right-wingers who try to defend George W. Bush. In today's Fresno Bee we have a letter to the editor from a guy who says he "has problems" with Republicans (yeah, sure), but he's "terrified" of Democrats. He recites this litany: Japanese-Americans were confined after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Robert Kennedy authorized wiretaps on Martin Luther King, Bill Clinton authorized "illegal wiretaps" (with no evidence), and so on.
The confinement of Japanese-Americans was wrong and the country has since paid reparations, although that doesn't excuse the treatment of American citizens back then. I have a feeling Republicans back then were fully on board with confining Japanese-Americans. RFK authorized wiretaps on Martin Luther King reluctantly because of the pressure from J. Edgar Hoover. There were some Communists affiliated with the civil rights movement, and Communism was a very hot button issue back then. The FBI was already wiretapping King, and the Kennedy administration was trying to protect King and the civil rights movement as much as it could.
I don't know of any evidence that Bill Clinton authorized illegal wiretaps.
Look at the history of the Republican party in this century if you want to be "terrified." We had the Teapot Dome scandal under the corrupt and inept Warren G. Harding. We had the Great Depression occur because of the inept economic policies of Herbert Hoover. We had the Constitutional crisis caused by the crimes of Richard Nixon. We've had massive deficits and crimes aplenty under the Reagan-Bush administration. Under the current Bush administration we've been lied into a war, spied upon, had our national treasure transferred to the very wealthy, the environment neglected, and hatred fueled against us around the world. That's not even to mention Republican obstructionism against the United Nations, Social Security, civil rights, the environmental movement, the women's movement, labor laws, and civil liberties.
The Democrats have committed sins, but all of the progress we've seen for the middle class, poor people, and minorities has been thanks to Democrats.
THE PLACE WE ARE NOW
I forgot in my commentary above to mention people like Senator Joseph McCarthy, the forerunner to George W. Bush. McCarthy had no problem with dropping bombshells about Communists being everywhere, smearing people by innuendo, and destroying lives and careers. During the Reagan years we had a end run around Congress that created the Iran-Contra scandal. We had the savings and loan debacle that came about thanks to the Reagan administration. Now our country, under this administration, is like a barren landscape. Civil liberties lie in blazing hulks, the economy like a rotting and sagging building, and our credibility blown to smithereens. This commentary by Steve Osborn is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Now I live in an America I don't dare leave for fear of being spat upon, shot, bombed or kidnaped. I am looked upon as a citizen of a rogue nation that has no concept or respect for any law except bullying and strength. I need a passport even to visit Canada, which was to be our sister nation with open borders forever. I must expect to be required to show my "papers" at any time, to any official. I must accept that the government can break into my house and rifle my belongings and papers any time it wishes on the thinnest of excuses and it is not even required to let me know it has violated my home and my privacy. I must accept the fact that the government can listen in to my private conversations, my phone, my e-mail, can probably read my snail mail if they wish and can put a gag order on anyone who has information on me so I may not even be made aware that I am being spied upon. George Orwell's absolute dictatorship has crept in to my home and my life and thrown out my beloved Constitution and Bill of Rights. The difference between the United States, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is steadily and inexorably diminishing and the people are letting it happen while they remain paralyzed with fear. Fear incited by the gang that runs the White House and their cronies in the propaganda ministry that used to be our last bulwark against tyranny; our once free press.
Friday, February 17, 2006
February 17, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
CHENEY THE ALBATROSS
I don't know who I dislike more, George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, because both of them are so vile. I guess some people would cut Bush some slack because he's not real bright, but Cheney emanates pure evil. There is much evidence that Cheney has been the major influence behind attacking Iraq, torture, and our incredibly short-sighted energy policy. Cheney's hunting accident, and the loathsome way he handled it, just symbolize all that Cheney is. This article by Bob Herbert is at www.topplebush.com:
There's a reason Dick Cheney is obsessive about shunning the spotlight. His record is not the kind you want to hold up for intense scrutiny.
More than anyone else, he was fanatical about massaging and distorting the intelligence that plunged us into the flaming quagmire of Iraq. He insisted that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was hot on the trail of nukes. He pounded away at the false suggestion that Iraq was somehow linked to Al Qaeda. And he spread the word that the war he wanted so badly would be a cakewalk.
"I really do believe," he told Tim Russert, "that we will be greeted as liberators."
Well, he got his war. And while the nation's brave young soldiers and marines were bouncing around Iraq in shamefully vulnerable Humvees and other vehicles, dodging bullets, bombs and improvised explosive devices, Mr. Cheney (a gold-medal winner in the acquisition of wartime deferments) felt perfectly comfortable packing his fancy 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun and heading off to Texas with a covey of fat cats to shoot quail.
WILL THEY NEVER LEARN?
You think of the old song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" when you hear right-wing rhetoric these days. The Fresno Bee had yet another letter saying the writer had no problem with wiretapping, and saying that we're engaged in World War III. Talk about hyperbole. We've allowed the actions of nineteen nuts who were criminals to dictate international policy. Far from talking about world war, we should be talking about banding together to make the lives of everyone on earth better, including the eradication of criminal gangs like al-Qaeda. Instead, the Bush administration tries to apply an old geopolitical template in a new world. Right-wingers who would give George W. Bush unlimited power apparently haven't learned much from the history of the Third Reich. They had a "leader" who promised to protect them too. This article by Paul Craig Roberts is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The siren call of "national security" is all the cover Bush needs to have the FISA law repealed, thus legally gaining the power to spy however he chooses, the protection of political opponents be damned. However, Bush and his Federalist Society Justice Department are not interested in having the law repealed. Their purpose has nothing to do with national security. The point on which the regime is insisting is that there are circumstances (undefined) in which the president does not have to obey laws. What those circumstances and laws are is for the regime to decide.
The Bush regime is asserting the Fuhrer Principle, and Americans are buying it, even as Bush declares that America is at war in order to bring democracy to the Middle East.
IMPEACH BUSH
CHENEY THE ALBATROSS
I don't know who I dislike more, George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, because both of them are so vile. I guess some people would cut Bush some slack because he's not real bright, but Cheney emanates pure evil. There is much evidence that Cheney has been the major influence behind attacking Iraq, torture, and our incredibly short-sighted energy policy. Cheney's hunting accident, and the loathsome way he handled it, just symbolize all that Cheney is. This article by Bob Herbert is at www.topplebush.com:
There's a reason Dick Cheney is obsessive about shunning the spotlight. His record is not the kind you want to hold up for intense scrutiny.
More than anyone else, he was fanatical about massaging and distorting the intelligence that plunged us into the flaming quagmire of Iraq. He insisted that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was hot on the trail of nukes. He pounded away at the false suggestion that Iraq was somehow linked to Al Qaeda. And he spread the word that the war he wanted so badly would be a cakewalk.
"I really do believe," he told Tim Russert, "that we will be greeted as liberators."
Well, he got his war. And while the nation's brave young soldiers and marines were bouncing around Iraq in shamefully vulnerable Humvees and other vehicles, dodging bullets, bombs and improvised explosive devices, Mr. Cheney (a gold-medal winner in the acquisition of wartime deferments) felt perfectly comfortable packing his fancy 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun and heading off to Texas with a covey of fat cats to shoot quail.
WILL THEY NEVER LEARN?
You think of the old song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" when you hear right-wing rhetoric these days. The Fresno Bee had yet another letter saying the writer had no problem with wiretapping, and saying that we're engaged in World War III. Talk about hyperbole. We've allowed the actions of nineteen nuts who were criminals to dictate international policy. Far from talking about world war, we should be talking about banding together to make the lives of everyone on earth better, including the eradication of criminal gangs like al-Qaeda. Instead, the Bush administration tries to apply an old geopolitical template in a new world. Right-wingers who would give George W. Bush unlimited power apparently haven't learned much from the history of the Third Reich. They had a "leader" who promised to protect them too. This article by Paul Craig Roberts is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The siren call of "national security" is all the cover Bush needs to have the FISA law repealed, thus legally gaining the power to spy however he chooses, the protection of political opponents be damned. However, Bush and his Federalist Society Justice Department are not interested in having the law repealed. Their purpose has nothing to do with national security. The point on which the regime is insisting is that there are circumstances (undefined) in which the president does not have to obey laws. What those circumstances and laws are is for the regime to decide.
The Bush regime is asserting the Fuhrer Principle, and Americans are buying it, even as Bush declares that America is at war in order to bring democracy to the Middle East.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
February 16, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
BUSH'S MEDICAL SAVINGS ACCOUNT SCAM
The Bush administration's philosophy is to take any situation and make it worse. You have Saddam Hussein contained and people aren't getting killed by the thousands, but hey start a war, destabilize the country, and get the military bogged down in an endless war. Take budget surpluses, pass massive tax cuts for the rich, and create red ink for decades to come. Ignore the evidence for global climate change and let global warming wreck our ecosystem. Do doing about 46 million Americans without health insurance and advocate a plan likely to create millions more without health insurance. That will the effect of Bush's Medical Savings Account sham. This article by Karen Dolan is at www.commondreams.org:
First, the proposal is to increase from $2,000 to $10,500 the amount that a couple or family can put away tax free to spend on high deductible insurance plans. Only the wealthy can afford to do this. Further, these tax benefits increase as tax brackets increase;
Second, high deductible plans simply discourage average and low-income people from getting the care they need, consequently escalating costs as health problems compound;
Third, the vast majority of our nation's health costs come from chronic illness and end-of-life care; high deductible health plans are for the more healthy;
Finally, as the wealthy and healthy choose the tax sheltering HSAs, the remaining risk pool becomes sicker and premiums for traditional plans skyrocket out of reach. As January's issue of the well-respected magazine, The Economist, puts it, "The Bush agenda may speed the reform of American health care, but only by hastening the day the current system falls apart."
RELIGION AS BIG BUSINESS
When I think of Jesus Christ I don't think of big cathedrals or hateful rhetoric against gays or other minorities, and I don't think of Christianity as the way to personal riches. But religion has been a good gimmick to make money for some people. Some of these "evangelists" are quite open in their lust for money. Give them "seed" money and you too can drive a Rolls Royce or wear a Rolex. It's the worst combination of superstition and greed. This article by Karen Horst Cobb is at www.commondreams.org:
According to a 2003 article in Forbes Magazine big churches are big business. Researchers found that in 2003 there were 740 mega churches each averaging 6,876 participants. The average net income of each was $4.8 million at the time of the study. The Forbes article states, “[the] entrepreneurial approach has contributed to the explosive growth of mega churches“.
Is it the entrepreneurial spirit or the Holy Spirit which is enticing the converts to this new religion? Some used to say that the love of money is the root of all evil and the rich man (like the camel) will forever be outside the kingdom. I guess that is just “too first century” for the modern believer. The millennium church makeover is all about Christian capitalism, he who the free market has set free shall be free indeed! Remember, this is the year God wants me to be a millionaire.
PRIVACY IS DISAPPEARING
Not that long ago people would have been offended if you wanted to intrude into their privacy. Now right-wingers act offended if you want to protect your privacy. After all, if you have "nothing to hide" you shouldn't mind the government tracking your every move, seeing your Internet searches, delving into your medical and financial records, tracing every purchase you make, and spying on your e-mail and other communications. The vast majority of us aren't terrorists and deplore terrorists. We shouldn't have to give up our civil liberties because of few loons running around in this country and the rest of the world. This article is about chips being implanted into the arms of some employees so that the company can follow their every movement. It seems there's just no end to authoritarianism these days. This article by Cheri Delbroccio is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
For all the FOX News-loving Freedom Fighters who continue to bang their war drums insisting that Iraq was invaded to spread freedom while defending the Bush regime's calls for Americans to be wiretapped, thumb-printed, filmed, wanded, searched, carded, frisked, and scanned in the name of "security" - how about this? Are you ready to be "chipped"? No, we're not talking computers, fingernails, or china. "Tagged" - it's not just for Spot and Fluff anymore. And it may be coming to a workplace near you.
A company in Ohio recently embedded silicon-tracking chips into a couple of its employees. The two workers complied with a request to have their right arms implanted with a glass-encased radio transmitter that can be read by a special monitor that tracks their every move at work. It's a human OnStar for employers. The private video surveillance company who was hired to test the technology claims the devices are necessary for controlling access to company security rooms. The employer defends it by saying it is not compulsory. Not yet, anyway. Of course, the device can also be used to track the "wearer" any time of day and night without their knowledge.
IMPEACH BUSH
BUSH'S MEDICAL SAVINGS ACCOUNT SCAM
The Bush administration's philosophy is to take any situation and make it worse. You have Saddam Hussein contained and people aren't getting killed by the thousands, but hey start a war, destabilize the country, and get the military bogged down in an endless war. Take budget surpluses, pass massive tax cuts for the rich, and create red ink for decades to come. Ignore the evidence for global climate change and let global warming wreck our ecosystem. Do doing about 46 million Americans without health insurance and advocate a plan likely to create millions more without health insurance. That will the effect of Bush's Medical Savings Account sham. This article by Karen Dolan is at www.commondreams.org:
First, the proposal is to increase from $2,000 to $10,500 the amount that a couple or family can put away tax free to spend on high deductible insurance plans. Only the wealthy can afford to do this. Further, these tax benefits increase as tax brackets increase;
Second, high deductible plans simply discourage average and low-income people from getting the care they need, consequently escalating costs as health problems compound;
Third, the vast majority of our nation's health costs come from chronic illness and end-of-life care; high deductible health plans are for the more healthy;
Finally, as the wealthy and healthy choose the tax sheltering HSAs, the remaining risk pool becomes sicker and premiums for traditional plans skyrocket out of reach. As January's issue of the well-respected magazine, The Economist, puts it, "The Bush agenda may speed the reform of American health care, but only by hastening the day the current system falls apart."
RELIGION AS BIG BUSINESS
When I think of Jesus Christ I don't think of big cathedrals or hateful rhetoric against gays or other minorities, and I don't think of Christianity as the way to personal riches. But religion has been a good gimmick to make money for some people. Some of these "evangelists" are quite open in their lust for money. Give them "seed" money and you too can drive a Rolls Royce or wear a Rolex. It's the worst combination of superstition and greed. This article by Karen Horst Cobb is at www.commondreams.org:
According to a 2003 article in Forbes Magazine big churches are big business. Researchers found that in 2003 there were 740 mega churches each averaging 6,876 participants. The average net income of each was $4.8 million at the time of the study. The Forbes article states, “[the] entrepreneurial approach has contributed to the explosive growth of mega churches“.
Is it the entrepreneurial spirit or the Holy Spirit which is enticing the converts to this new religion? Some used to say that the love of money is the root of all evil and the rich man (like the camel) will forever be outside the kingdom. I guess that is just “too first century” for the modern believer. The millennium church makeover is all about Christian capitalism, he who the free market has set free shall be free indeed! Remember, this is the year God wants me to be a millionaire.
PRIVACY IS DISAPPEARING
Not that long ago people would have been offended if you wanted to intrude into their privacy. Now right-wingers act offended if you want to protect your privacy. After all, if you have "nothing to hide" you shouldn't mind the government tracking your every move, seeing your Internet searches, delving into your medical and financial records, tracing every purchase you make, and spying on your e-mail and other communications. The vast majority of us aren't terrorists and deplore terrorists. We shouldn't have to give up our civil liberties because of few loons running around in this country and the rest of the world. This article is about chips being implanted into the arms of some employees so that the company can follow their every movement. It seems there's just no end to authoritarianism these days. This article by Cheri Delbroccio is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
For all the FOX News-loving Freedom Fighters who continue to bang their war drums insisting that Iraq was invaded to spread freedom while defending the Bush regime's calls for Americans to be wiretapped, thumb-printed, filmed, wanded, searched, carded, frisked, and scanned in the name of "security" - how about this? Are you ready to be "chipped"? No, we're not talking computers, fingernails, or china. "Tagged" - it's not just for Spot and Fluff anymore. And it may be coming to a workplace near you.
A company in Ohio recently embedded silicon-tracking chips into a couple of its employees. The two workers complied with a request to have their right arms implanted with a glass-encased radio transmitter that can be read by a special monitor that tracks their every move at work. It's a human OnStar for employers. The private video surveillance company who was hired to test the technology claims the devices are necessary for controlling access to company security rooms. The employer defends it by saying it is not compulsory. Not yet, anyway. Of course, the device can also be used to track the "wearer" any time of day and night without their knowledge.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
February 15, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACHMENT BY THE NUMBERS
The fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are still in office is proof that the Republican party doesn't care about the Constitution, the country, or the vaunted "rule of law." Since Congress is controlled by Republicans, some people think talk of impeachment is just a pipe dream. We haven't got the numbers to get Articles of Impeachment introduced and passed in the House, and then to have Bush and Cheney tried and convicted in the Senate. But as this article points out, impeachment is a step by step process. The author talks about "moral impeachment." I believe we're already at that stage as even the mainstream media is acknowledging the horrific failure to aid the Hurricane Katrina victims, the increasing debacle in Iraq, and the crony capitalism such as giving away billions of dollars to the oil and gas industry. This article by Jamin B. Raskin is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
1. Moral Impeachment: One meaning of impeachment is to charge with malfeasance in office, but the other is "To challenge or discredit." We can debunk the administration's policies all over America, especially with the excellent work done by Rep. John Conyers and his staff on the fraudulent rush to war. Institutions with moral authority like universities, municipalities, unions and churches should conduct their own "Impeach-Ins" to impeach the various frauds and policy deceptions of the administration. The Federalist Society and others who support Bush should be invited to defend the constitutionality of Bush's actions.
AL-QAEDA WELL AWARE OF SPYING
In a recent appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested that members of al-Qaeda might forget they're being spied on if not reminded by the American media. Who does this guy think he's kidding? Al-Qaeda is a thuggish organization with no respect for human life, even willing to commit suicide to achieve its objectives, but its members aren't stupid. A training manual for al-Qaeda even made a special point about avoiding wiretapping and other surveillance. This column by Gene Lyons is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Alas, the CIA has long had in its possession an al-Qa'ida training manual from the 1990s warning would-be terrorists to be wary of U. S. wiretaps and to take evasive measures. The New York Times' revelation of NSA's warrantless spying on American citizens told the enemy nothing they didn't already know and weakened national security not at all. The only damage was to the Bush White House's political interests.
Gonzales' legal justifications of the spy program are similarly preposterous, proving only something else we already knew: that for a fancy title and an office filled with expensive leather furniture, you can find a shyster to argue damn near anything. They practically had to tear White House mouthpieces off Richard Nixon's leg before he embarked upon that helicopter ride into the sunset.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACHMENT BY THE NUMBERS
The fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are still in office is proof that the Republican party doesn't care about the Constitution, the country, or the vaunted "rule of law." Since Congress is controlled by Republicans, some people think talk of impeachment is just a pipe dream. We haven't got the numbers to get Articles of Impeachment introduced and passed in the House, and then to have Bush and Cheney tried and convicted in the Senate. But as this article points out, impeachment is a step by step process. The author talks about "moral impeachment." I believe we're already at that stage as even the mainstream media is acknowledging the horrific failure to aid the Hurricane Katrina victims, the increasing debacle in Iraq, and the crony capitalism such as giving away billions of dollars to the oil and gas industry. This article by Jamin B. Raskin is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
1. Moral Impeachment: One meaning of impeachment is to charge with malfeasance in office, but the other is "To challenge or discredit." We can debunk the administration's policies all over America, especially with the excellent work done by Rep. John Conyers and his staff on the fraudulent rush to war. Institutions with moral authority like universities, municipalities, unions and churches should conduct their own "Impeach-Ins" to impeach the various frauds and policy deceptions of the administration. The Federalist Society and others who support Bush should be invited to defend the constitutionality of Bush's actions.
AL-QAEDA WELL AWARE OF SPYING
In a recent appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested that members of al-Qaeda might forget they're being spied on if not reminded by the American media. Who does this guy think he's kidding? Al-Qaeda is a thuggish organization with no respect for human life, even willing to commit suicide to achieve its objectives, but its members aren't stupid. A training manual for al-Qaeda even made a special point about avoiding wiretapping and other surveillance. This column by Gene Lyons is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Alas, the CIA has long had in its possession an al-Qa'ida training manual from the 1990s warning would-be terrorists to be wary of U. S. wiretaps and to take evasive measures. The New York Times' revelation of NSA's warrantless spying on American citizens told the enemy nothing they didn't already know and weakened national security not at all. The only damage was to the Bush White House's political interests.
Gonzales' legal justifications of the spy program are similarly preposterous, proving only something else we already knew: that for a fancy title and an office filled with expensive leather furniture, you can find a shyster to argue damn near anything. They practically had to tear White House mouthpieces off Richard Nixon's leg before he embarked upon that helicopter ride into the sunset.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
February 14, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
CORETTA SCOTT KING FUNERAL
I've picked up on another right wing meme in letters to the editor the past couple of days. I saw two letters in The Los Angeles Times and one today in The Fresno Bee that were talking about how awful--terrible!--it was that the "left" used the funeral as a political "rally." They're referring mostly to former President Carter's remarks. President Carter merely stated the obvious, that Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King were wiretapped by the government. We know that the same activity has taken place under George W. Bush. If Mr. Bush is so convinced wiretapping is the right thing to do, why all the gnashing of teeth?
What really got me was someone talking about "hate speech" from President Carter. I didn't hear a single hateful word from Mr. Carter, but I've heard plenty from right-wingers. Ann Coulter has made numerous hateful statements, from suggesting that President Clinton be assassinated, that an attack on The New York Times building by terrorists would be a good thing, that killing leaders in the Middle East would be good, and so on. Pat Robertson has openly called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said that we should just bulldoze New Orleans. It goes on and on. These people engage in real hate speech.
THE P.R. ADMINISTRATION
The General Accounting Office has released a report showing that the Bush administration has spent $1.6 billion in advertising and public relations efforts. We already know that some "journalists" such as Armstrong Williams were bought and paid for. This administration can't stand the truth, so they spin and lie and deceive, mostly at taxpayer expense. This article by Timothy Karr is at www.commondreams.org:
The tab for the fleecing and flogging of Americans comes to at least $1.6 billion. That's the amount seven Bush administration agencies spent from 2003 through mid-2005 on hundreds of contracts with advertising agencies, PR firms, and individuals, according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday.
The GAO report carefully itemizes this administration’s preference for pre-packaged reporting at the expense of real news and information – in a scheme to make U.S. taxpayers pay for their own deception.
The report found that White House public relations spending goes well beyond the practices of any prior administration. The contracts included $2.5 million to present the Army's strategy in the global war on terrorism; $86 million to explain the new Medicare prescription drug benefit in a bilingual ad campaign; and a $6.3 million agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security educate Americans about how to respond to terrorist attacks.
FREE MARKET ECONOMISTS WERE WRONG
It's almost like right-wingers go into a trance and start to chant: free market good, free market good. Despite all the rose-colored scenarios about global trade, what we're seeing down is a disaster. Millions of jobs have been exported from the United States to cheaper labor markets. The middle class in the United States is shrinking. Our balance of trade deficit is hitting new records. We're spending money on imports for stuff that should be made here at home and that should provide middle class jobs at home. Just like the wackos who advocate trickle down economics, the free trade ideologues are dead wrong. This article by Paul Craig Roberts is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is.
Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.
Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in goods producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities--primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.
US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.
IMPEACH BUSH
CORETTA SCOTT KING FUNERAL
I've picked up on another right wing meme in letters to the editor the past couple of days. I saw two letters in The Los Angeles Times and one today in The Fresno Bee that were talking about how awful--terrible!--it was that the "left" used the funeral as a political "rally." They're referring mostly to former President Carter's remarks. President Carter merely stated the obvious, that Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King were wiretapped by the government. We know that the same activity has taken place under George W. Bush. If Mr. Bush is so convinced wiretapping is the right thing to do, why all the gnashing of teeth?
What really got me was someone talking about "hate speech" from President Carter. I didn't hear a single hateful word from Mr. Carter, but I've heard plenty from right-wingers. Ann Coulter has made numerous hateful statements, from suggesting that President Clinton be assassinated, that an attack on The New York Times building by terrorists would be a good thing, that killing leaders in the Middle East would be good, and so on. Pat Robertson has openly called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said that we should just bulldoze New Orleans. It goes on and on. These people engage in real hate speech.
THE P.R. ADMINISTRATION
The General Accounting Office has released a report showing that the Bush administration has spent $1.6 billion in advertising and public relations efforts. We already know that some "journalists" such as Armstrong Williams were bought and paid for. This administration can't stand the truth, so they spin and lie and deceive, mostly at taxpayer expense. This article by Timothy Karr is at www.commondreams.org:
The tab for the fleecing and flogging of Americans comes to at least $1.6 billion. That's the amount seven Bush administration agencies spent from 2003 through mid-2005 on hundreds of contracts with advertising agencies, PR firms, and individuals, according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday.
The GAO report carefully itemizes this administration’s preference for pre-packaged reporting at the expense of real news and information – in a scheme to make U.S. taxpayers pay for their own deception.
The report found that White House public relations spending goes well beyond the practices of any prior administration. The contracts included $2.5 million to present the Army's strategy in the global war on terrorism; $86 million to explain the new Medicare prescription drug benefit in a bilingual ad campaign; and a $6.3 million agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security educate Americans about how to respond to terrorist attacks.
FREE MARKET ECONOMISTS WERE WRONG
It's almost like right-wingers go into a trance and start to chant: free market good, free market good. Despite all the rose-colored scenarios about global trade, what we're seeing down is a disaster. Millions of jobs have been exported from the United States to cheaper labor markets. The middle class in the United States is shrinking. Our balance of trade deficit is hitting new records. We're spending money on imports for stuff that should be made here at home and that should provide middle class jobs at home. Just like the wackos who advocate trickle down economics, the free trade ideologues are dead wrong. This article by Paul Craig Roberts is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is.
Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.
Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in goods producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities--primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.
US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.
Monday, February 13, 2006
February 13, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
PLAME LEAK DID MAJOR DAMAGE TO NATIONAL SECURITY
Lately we're hearing the saber rattlers in the Bush administration making menacing noises about the danger of a nuclear Iran. I don't relish nuclear proliferation by anyone, much less a fundamentalist theocratic state like Iran But you have to wonder how the administration can justify outing CIA operative Valerie Plame when Valerie Plame was an integral part of gathering intelligence about Iran. If Iran is the threat we're being lead to believe, the administration is guilty of gross negligence in revealing Valerie Plame's name. This article is at http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001246.php
An important and provocative report has just been published that suggests that Iran was the target of much of Valerie Plame's covert investigative work and that outing her identity had far worse consequences than has thus far been acknowledged.
This information also dovetails with information TWN has been digging up on Iran's interests in Niger uranium.
Raw Story has just published this piece by Larisa Alexandrovna.
The core of the article is:
The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.
THE ARROGANT SCOTT MCCLELLAN
If the Bush administration wanted to find a press secretary who exemplifies the character of the administration, they couldn't do better than Scott McClellan. McClellan is a liar and consistently condescends to the White House press corps (and by proxy the rest of us). McClellan has certain standard responses when he doesn't want to answer a question. There's the old reliable, "We don't comment on a matter under investigation" (everything in this administration is under investigation). Lately McClellan dodges by saying he already answered the question. He must think reporters have awfully short memories. This item by Mark Silva is at newsblogs.chicagotribune.com:
The atmosphere can get pretty testy in the White House press briefing room from time to time.
But there were no cameras rolling in the Monday morning "gaggle'' today, the morning after news belatedly broke about Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shooting a hunting companion on Saturday. The broadcast sessions of press encounters with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan are saved for formal afternoon briefings, with the morning gaggles serving as more informal warm-ups. And David Gregory, the chief White House correspondent for NBC News, was warmed up.
Why was the White House relying on a Texas rancher to get the word of Cheney's hunting accident out over the weekend, asked Gregory, accusing McClellan of "ducking and weaving.''
"“David, hold on… the cameras aren't on right now,'' McClellan replied. "You can do this later.''
"Don't accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras,'' the newsman said, his voice rising somewhat. "Don’t be a jerk to me personally when I’m asking you a serious question.''
"You don't have to yell,'' McClellan said.
MACHO DICK CHENEY
Dick Cheney got five deferments from the Vietnam war draft, but the guy is a man, don't you know. He can send young men off to die in unnecessary wars and he can shoot fellow hunters in the face. What makes this incident even more despicable is that it was a so-called "canned" hunt. Birds that don't know how to survive in the wild are released for the sadistic pleasure of people like Dick Cheney. This item is at scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/these_guys_at_the_top_are_desp.php
Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney's 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.
IMPEACH BUSH
PLAME LEAK DID MAJOR DAMAGE TO NATIONAL SECURITY
Lately we're hearing the saber rattlers in the Bush administration making menacing noises about the danger of a nuclear Iran. I don't relish nuclear proliferation by anyone, much less a fundamentalist theocratic state like Iran But you have to wonder how the administration can justify outing CIA operative Valerie Plame when Valerie Plame was an integral part of gathering intelligence about Iran. If Iran is the threat we're being lead to believe, the administration is guilty of gross negligence in revealing Valerie Plame's name. This article is at http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001246.php
An important and provocative report has just been published that suggests that Iran was the target of much of Valerie Plame's covert investigative work and that outing her identity had far worse consequences than has thus far been acknowledged.
This information also dovetails with information TWN has been digging up on Iran's interests in Niger uranium.
Raw Story has just published this piece by Larisa Alexandrovna.
The core of the article is:
The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.
THE ARROGANT SCOTT MCCLELLAN
If the Bush administration wanted to find a press secretary who exemplifies the character of the administration, they couldn't do better than Scott McClellan. McClellan is a liar and consistently condescends to the White House press corps (and by proxy the rest of us). McClellan has certain standard responses when he doesn't want to answer a question. There's the old reliable, "We don't comment on a matter under investigation" (everything in this administration is under investigation). Lately McClellan dodges by saying he already answered the question. He must think reporters have awfully short memories. This item by Mark Silva is at newsblogs.chicagotribune.com:
The atmosphere can get pretty testy in the White House press briefing room from time to time.
But there were no cameras rolling in the Monday morning "gaggle'' today, the morning after news belatedly broke about Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shooting a hunting companion on Saturday. The broadcast sessions of press encounters with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan are saved for formal afternoon briefings, with the morning gaggles serving as more informal warm-ups. And David Gregory, the chief White House correspondent for NBC News, was warmed up.
Why was the White House relying on a Texas rancher to get the word of Cheney's hunting accident out over the weekend, asked Gregory, accusing McClellan of "ducking and weaving.''
"“David, hold on… the cameras aren't on right now,'' McClellan replied. "You can do this later.''
"Don't accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras,'' the newsman said, his voice rising somewhat. "Don’t be a jerk to me personally when I’m asking you a serious question.''
"You don't have to yell,'' McClellan said.
MACHO DICK CHENEY
Dick Cheney got five deferments from the Vietnam war draft, but the guy is a man, don't you know. He can send young men off to die in unnecessary wars and he can shoot fellow hunters in the face. What makes this incident even more despicable is that it was a so-called "canned" hunt. Birds that don't know how to survive in the wild are released for the sadistic pleasure of people like Dick Cheney. This item is at scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/these_guys_at_the_top_are_desp.php
Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney's 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
February 12, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
BUSH HATES THE TRUTH
Facts are often inconvenient for George W. Bush. A system of checks and balances as mandated by the Constitution is also inconvenient. Bush, according to a CIA analyst, "cherry picked" intelligence to justify attacking Iraq. Bush has made end runs around Congress and the Constitution to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. If Republicans in Congress were true to their oaths to preserve and protect the Constitution, we would already have impeachment hearings for Bush and Cheney. This editorial comes from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:
We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.
This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.
DOMESTIC SPYING After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.
NOW THEY'RE QUOTING CICERO
Today's right-wing defense of Bush's domestic spying (in The Fresno Bee) offers up a quote from the Roman Cicero. Cicero said that in a time of war the rules are at rest. We should probably remember that ancient Rome went from being a Republic to being a dictatorship. Our writer suggests that Bush "can't win" with us on the left. We criticize Bush for not "connecting the dots" before 9/11 and then we criticize him for his actions post 9/11.
We should remember that Bush had ample warning of an impending terrorist attack before 9/11, including a Presidential Daily Briefing that flatly stated, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." On the day the attacks occurred, Bush was in the classroom of a Florida elementary school even after being informed of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Even as four airliners were hijacked and flight controllers were aware that something was dreadfully wrong, nothing was done to intercept the airliners.
As is typical of right-wingers, this guy says that other administrations have wiretapped too. He mentioned something called Project Echelon during the Clinton years that I'll have to research. He also mentioned that the Kennedy administration wiretapped Martin Luther King. We should probably put that into context, however. Both JFK and Robert Kennedy were supporters of Martin Luther King. They were trying to protect King from the psychopathic J. Edgar Hoover. They weren't trying to to derail the civil rights movement. I don't have confidence that the Bush administration wouldn't use information it gathered to hamper or destroy political opposition.
It was recently revealed that Bush's domestic spying has largely resulted in sending the FBI on wild goose chases. They get directed to people who aren't doing anything terrorist related. So we're devoting resources that should be used to finding real terrorists to spying on totally innocent Americans.
If Bush has such a compelling need for domestic surveillance, he also has the FISA courts, which almost always approve warrants. Warrants can even be obtained retroactively. So I don't buy the argument that Bush has to supersede the Constitution, Congress, and the courts to spy on Americans without warrants.
BUSH HATES AMERICA
If you believe in a United States that promotes peace around the world, or you believe in a United States that offers equal opportunities to all its citizens, or you believe in a United States that stands for human rights, or you believe in a United States that remains true to its greatest ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, you have to believe that George W. Bush and his supporters hate the United States. They believe in a country that is an international bully, a country that promotes torture, a country that shoves most of its citizens to the bottom of the economic heap and puts a foot on their necks, and a country that hypocritically espouses freedom while doing everything it can to destroy freedom. This article by Jaime O'Neill is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Beyond that, we have the shameful spectacle of Americans who call themselves patriots urging a forfeiture of our rights and liberties as U.S. citizens the rights to due process and the protections devised by the founding fathers to guard against abuses of power.
And beyond that, we have breaches of national security in the outing of a CIA agent for no better reason than spite. We have the staffing of all kinds of highly paid and important government jobs with incompetent administration cronies and partners in crime. We have repeated and massive failures of imagination. No one could have imagined a) people flying planes into U.S. skyscrapers, b) a storm of the magnitude of Katrina, or c) a Palestinian militant group like Hamas winning elections in Palestine these being just a few of the things Condoleezza Rice has said the administration couldn't imagine.
Beyond all of that, we have the growing gap between rich and poor, the exportation of American jobs by the hundreds of thousands, the wasteful and exploitive health care system that continues to bankrupt American industries, the packing of the Supreme Court with judges confirmed despite their stonewalling before the congressional oversight committees charged with vetting them before they assumed lifetime appointments. We have been unable or unwilling to secure our borders. We have seen corruption on an unprecedented scale and massive neglect of dozens of urgent national needs. Science has been disregarded whenever it runs afoul of the profit motive, and we have a foreign policy no one, least of all the people in charge of it, seems to understand.
IMPEACH BUSH
BUSH HATES THE TRUTH
Facts are often inconvenient for George W. Bush. A system of checks and balances as mandated by the Constitution is also inconvenient. Bush, according to a CIA analyst, "cherry picked" intelligence to justify attacking Iraq. Bush has made end runs around Congress and the Constitution to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. If Republicans in Congress were true to their oaths to preserve and protect the Constitution, we would already have impeachment hearings for Bush and Cheney. This editorial comes from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:
We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.
This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.
DOMESTIC SPYING After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.
NOW THEY'RE QUOTING CICERO
Today's right-wing defense of Bush's domestic spying (in The Fresno Bee) offers up a quote from the Roman Cicero. Cicero said that in a time of war the rules are at rest. We should probably remember that ancient Rome went from being a Republic to being a dictatorship. Our writer suggests that Bush "can't win" with us on the left. We criticize Bush for not "connecting the dots" before 9/11 and then we criticize him for his actions post 9/11.
We should remember that Bush had ample warning of an impending terrorist attack before 9/11, including a Presidential Daily Briefing that flatly stated, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." On the day the attacks occurred, Bush was in the classroom of a Florida elementary school even after being informed of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Even as four airliners were hijacked and flight controllers were aware that something was dreadfully wrong, nothing was done to intercept the airliners.
As is typical of right-wingers, this guy says that other administrations have wiretapped too. He mentioned something called Project Echelon during the Clinton years that I'll have to research. He also mentioned that the Kennedy administration wiretapped Martin Luther King. We should probably put that into context, however. Both JFK and Robert Kennedy were supporters of Martin Luther King. They were trying to protect King from the psychopathic J. Edgar Hoover. They weren't trying to to derail the civil rights movement. I don't have confidence that the Bush administration wouldn't use information it gathered to hamper or destroy political opposition.
It was recently revealed that Bush's domestic spying has largely resulted in sending the FBI on wild goose chases. They get directed to people who aren't doing anything terrorist related. So we're devoting resources that should be used to finding real terrorists to spying on totally innocent Americans.
If Bush has such a compelling need for domestic surveillance, he also has the FISA courts, which almost always approve warrants. Warrants can even be obtained retroactively. So I don't buy the argument that Bush has to supersede the Constitution, Congress, and the courts to spy on Americans without warrants.
BUSH HATES AMERICA
If you believe in a United States that promotes peace around the world, or you believe in a United States that offers equal opportunities to all its citizens, or you believe in a United States that stands for human rights, or you believe in a United States that remains true to its greatest ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, you have to believe that George W. Bush and his supporters hate the United States. They believe in a country that is an international bully, a country that promotes torture, a country that shoves most of its citizens to the bottom of the economic heap and puts a foot on their necks, and a country that hypocritically espouses freedom while doing everything it can to destroy freedom. This article by Jaime O'Neill is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Beyond that, we have the shameful spectacle of Americans who call themselves patriots urging a forfeiture of our rights and liberties as U.S. citizens the rights to due process and the protections devised by the founding fathers to guard against abuses of power.
And beyond that, we have breaches of national security in the outing of a CIA agent for no better reason than spite. We have the staffing of all kinds of highly paid and important government jobs with incompetent administration cronies and partners in crime. We have repeated and massive failures of imagination. No one could have imagined a) people flying planes into U.S. skyscrapers, b) a storm of the magnitude of Katrina, or c) a Palestinian militant group like Hamas winning elections in Palestine these being just a few of the things Condoleezza Rice has said the administration couldn't imagine.
Beyond all of that, we have the growing gap between rich and poor, the exportation of American jobs by the hundreds of thousands, the wasteful and exploitive health care system that continues to bankrupt American industries, the packing of the Supreme Court with judges confirmed despite their stonewalling before the congressional oversight committees charged with vetting them before they assumed lifetime appointments. We have been unable or unwilling to secure our borders. We have seen corruption on an unprecedented scale and massive neglect of dozens of urgent national needs. Science has been disregarded whenever it runs afoul of the profit motive, and we have a foreign policy no one, least of all the people in charge of it, seems to understand.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
February 11, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
SELF FULFILLING PROPHECY
Right-wingers love to bash government as incompetent. So when right-wingers get elected to government it's no major surprise that government becomes grossly incompetent. Conservatives view government as a way to reward their cronies, suppress labor, shut down regulation, and pursue their crackpot ideas of global hegemony. Paul Krugman writes about the gross incompetence of the Bush administration in this column at www.topplebush.com:
We are ruled by bunglers. Every major venture by the Bush administration, from the occupation of Iraq to the Medicare drug program, has turned into an epic saga of incompetence. In retrospect, the Clinton years look like a golden era of good government.
Given the Bush administration's evident inability to govern, Democratic electoral victories should be a sure thing. But they aren't. Why?
Before I try to answer that question, let me justify my assertion -- which is sure to generate a lot of angry mail -- that Bill Clinton knew how to govern, while George W. Bush doesn't. All you have to do is consider the rise and fall of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
THAT TRADE DEFICIT THING
If deficits were accomplishments, George W. Bush would have rightfully earned his place in history. Unfortunately, deficits are not usually considered a good thing, and under the Bush administration we're seeing massive deficits in both the federal government and in our trade. We frankly have an insane trade policy that allows jobs to be shipped offshore, that takes away our manufacturing base here at home, and that means we import all kinds of stuff we should be making here. And our reliance on oil is a major contributor to our trade deficit. If we could use alternative fuels, we would shore up our economic house. This story by Martin Crutsinger is at www.businessweek.com:
The U.S. trade deficit soared to an all-time high of $725.8 billion in 2005, pushed upward by record imports of oil, food, cars and other consumer goods. The deficit with China hit an all-time high as did America's deficits with Japan, Europe, OPEC, Canada, Mexico and South and Central America.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that the gap between what America sells abroad and what it imports rose to $725.8 billion last year, up by 17.5 percent from the previous record of $617.6 billion set in 2004.
It marked the fourth consecutive year that America's trade deficit has set a record and was certain to spark increased debate in Congress over President Bush's trade policies. Since mid-2000 the country has lost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs and Democrats blame the administration's policy of emphasizing free trade agreements.
The rising trade deficits must be financed by increased borrowing from foreigners, who so far have been happy to sell us their products and hold U.S. dollars in payment which they invest in U.S. stock, bonds and other assets. The concern is that at some point foreigners will want to reduce their dollar holdings. If the change occurs at a rapid pace it could send the value of the dollar, U.S. stocks and bond prices all plunging.
DOWN THE MILITARY RATHOLE
It's not really accurate to call the Pentagon budget the "defense budget." Far more is appropriated to the Pentagon and to military spending than is necessary to defend the country. It might be more precise to call it the "global domination" budget. Global hawks, such as the members of PNAC, see the United States as an empire. They want the U.S. to extend its reach, economically and militarily, around the world and even into space. This article by Amitabh Pal is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The Pentagon's hunger for money seems to be insatiable. The Bush Administration has requested a whopping $439.3 billion to feed its appetite the next fiscal year, an increase of seven percent.
This is just the regular military budget. There will be an estimated $50 billion in supplemental spending for Iraq and Afghanistan. And then there's the money proposed to be spent on nuclear weapons, $16 billion, which is separately tallied in the Department of Energy budget. This brings the total to at least $506 billion or so, provided the "supplemental" demand does not reach higher.
What is the reason for this unrestrained expenditure? To maintain U.S. global supremacy in the years to come. Don't take my word for it. Read the primary military strategy document of the Bush Administration, made public in September 2002. "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries for pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling the power of the United States," states the National Security Strategy. No wonder The Washington Post said that the doctrine "gives the United States a nearly messianic role."
IMPEACH BUSH
SELF FULFILLING PROPHECY
Right-wingers love to bash government as incompetent. So when right-wingers get elected to government it's no major surprise that government becomes grossly incompetent. Conservatives view government as a way to reward their cronies, suppress labor, shut down regulation, and pursue their crackpot ideas of global hegemony. Paul Krugman writes about the gross incompetence of the Bush administration in this column at www.topplebush.com:
We are ruled by bunglers. Every major venture by the Bush administration, from the occupation of Iraq to the Medicare drug program, has turned into an epic saga of incompetence. In retrospect, the Clinton years look like a golden era of good government.
Given the Bush administration's evident inability to govern, Democratic electoral victories should be a sure thing. But they aren't. Why?
Before I try to answer that question, let me justify my assertion -- which is sure to generate a lot of angry mail -- that Bill Clinton knew how to govern, while George W. Bush doesn't. All you have to do is consider the rise and fall of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
THAT TRADE DEFICIT THING
If deficits were accomplishments, George W. Bush would have rightfully earned his place in history. Unfortunately, deficits are not usually considered a good thing, and under the Bush administration we're seeing massive deficits in both the federal government and in our trade. We frankly have an insane trade policy that allows jobs to be shipped offshore, that takes away our manufacturing base here at home, and that means we import all kinds of stuff we should be making here. And our reliance on oil is a major contributor to our trade deficit. If we could use alternative fuels, we would shore up our economic house. This story by Martin Crutsinger is at www.businessweek.com:
The U.S. trade deficit soared to an all-time high of $725.8 billion in 2005, pushed upward by record imports of oil, food, cars and other consumer goods. The deficit with China hit an all-time high as did America's deficits with Japan, Europe, OPEC, Canada, Mexico and South and Central America.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that the gap between what America sells abroad and what it imports rose to $725.8 billion last year, up by 17.5 percent from the previous record of $617.6 billion set in 2004.
It marked the fourth consecutive year that America's trade deficit has set a record and was certain to spark increased debate in Congress over President Bush's trade policies. Since mid-2000 the country has lost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs and Democrats blame the administration's policy of emphasizing free trade agreements.
The rising trade deficits must be financed by increased borrowing from foreigners, who so far have been happy to sell us their products and hold U.S. dollars in payment which they invest in U.S. stock, bonds and other assets. The concern is that at some point foreigners will want to reduce their dollar holdings. If the change occurs at a rapid pace it could send the value of the dollar, U.S. stocks and bond prices all plunging.
DOWN THE MILITARY RATHOLE
It's not really accurate to call the Pentagon budget the "defense budget." Far more is appropriated to the Pentagon and to military spending than is necessary to defend the country. It might be more precise to call it the "global domination" budget. Global hawks, such as the members of PNAC, see the United States as an empire. They want the U.S. to extend its reach, economically and militarily, around the world and even into space. This article by Amitabh Pal is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The Pentagon's hunger for money seems to be insatiable. The Bush Administration has requested a whopping $439.3 billion to feed its appetite the next fiscal year, an increase of seven percent.
This is just the regular military budget. There will be an estimated $50 billion in supplemental spending for Iraq and Afghanistan. And then there's the money proposed to be spent on nuclear weapons, $16 billion, which is separately tallied in the Department of Energy budget. This brings the total to at least $506 billion or so, provided the "supplemental" demand does not reach higher.
What is the reason for this unrestrained expenditure? To maintain U.S. global supremacy in the years to come. Don't take my word for it. Read the primary military strategy document of the Bush Administration, made public in September 2002. "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries for pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling the power of the United States," states the National Security Strategy. No wonder The Washington Post said that the doctrine "gives the United States a nearly messianic role."
Friday, February 10, 2006
February 10, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
MORE INDIFFERENCE FROM BUSH ADMINISTRATION
George W. Bush ignored numerous warnings that a terrorist attack was coming against the United States, and then we got 9/11. He has ignored numerous warnings about the effects of global climate change, and we're starting to see the consequences. He ignored warnings about the impact of Hurricane Katrina, according to former FEMA head Michael Brown. But we're supposed to trust Bush with national security. This article by Eric Lipton is at www.nytimes.com:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.
THE PHONY CASE FOR WAR
You wonder how long it will take the Bush administration to smear a former CIA official who says the administration manipulated intelligence to justify attacking Iraq. This story by CNN is at www.commondreamsorg:
The Bush administration disregarded the expertise of the intelligence community, politicized the intelligence process and used unrepresentative data in making the case for war, a former CIA senior analyst alleged.
In an article published on Friday in the journal Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, called the relationship between U.S. intelligence and policymaking "broken."
"In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made," Pillar wrote.
Although the Clinton administration and other countries' governments also believed that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, they supported sanctions and weapons inspections as means to contain the threat, he said.
FUNDAMENTALISTS THE SAME
Religious fundamentalists, whether you call them Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever all seem to be the same. They may call their god or gods different names, but their suppression of speech, their persecution of women, and their lack of reasoning is remarkably consistent. This story by R. J. Eskow is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
It's striking, isn't it? American conservatives are so like the radical Muslims taking to the streets this week. Both claim moral superiority based on religion. Both use the language of hatred as political speech. Both advocate violence against those with whom they disagree. And they both despise the concept of a free press.
Lest we forget, here are a few choice quotes to remind the Bill Bennetts of this world just what they and their friends really stand for:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter
"And if Al-Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it ... You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." Bill O'Reilly
"I have to say I'm all for public flogging." Ann Coulter
IMPEACH BUSH
MORE INDIFFERENCE FROM BUSH ADMINISTRATION
George W. Bush ignored numerous warnings that a terrorist attack was coming against the United States, and then we got 9/11. He has ignored numerous warnings about the effects of global climate change, and we're starting to see the consequences. He ignored warnings about the impact of Hurricane Katrina, according to former FEMA head Michael Brown. But we're supposed to trust Bush with national security. This article by Eric Lipton is at www.nytimes.com:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.
THE PHONY CASE FOR WAR
You wonder how long it will take the Bush administration to smear a former CIA official who says the administration manipulated intelligence to justify attacking Iraq. This story by CNN is at www.commondreamsorg:
The Bush administration disregarded the expertise of the intelligence community, politicized the intelligence process and used unrepresentative data in making the case for war, a former CIA senior analyst alleged.
In an article published on Friday in the journal Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, called the relationship between U.S. intelligence and policymaking "broken."
"In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made," Pillar wrote.
Although the Clinton administration and other countries' governments also believed that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, they supported sanctions and weapons inspections as means to contain the threat, he said.
FUNDAMENTALISTS THE SAME
Religious fundamentalists, whether you call them Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever all seem to be the same. They may call their god or gods different names, but their suppression of speech, their persecution of women, and their lack of reasoning is remarkably consistent. This story by R. J. Eskow is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
It's striking, isn't it? American conservatives are so like the radical Muslims taking to the streets this week. Both claim moral superiority based on religion. Both use the language of hatred as political speech. Both advocate violence against those with whom they disagree. And they both despise the concept of a free press.
Lest we forget, here are a few choice quotes to remind the Bill Bennetts of this world just what they and their friends really stand for:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter
"And if Al-Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it ... You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." Bill O'Reilly
"I have to say I'm all for public flogging." Ann Coulter
Thursday, February 09, 2006
February 09, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
LIBBY IMPLICATES CHENEY IN PLAME LEAK
"Scooter" Libby is already under indictment for his part in allegedly outing the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. Now it appears that Libby is saying he was "authorized" by Dick Cheney to leak Plame's name. Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, had published information that didn't suit the Bush administration's propaganda buildup for an attack on Iraq. This story by Murray Waas is at nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0209nj1.htm#
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION JUST ISN'T CREDIBLE
Howard Dean was on Good Morning America today and host Charles Gibson was asking Dean about polls that supposedly show Americans trust Republicans more on national security than they trust Democrats. You have to wonder why. We had the most disastrous failure in American intelligence in our history on September 11. Despite countless warnings of an impending terrorist attack, George W. Bush did nothing. Then, either through deliberate lying or gross incompetence, Bush declared Iraq a center of terrorism and attacked that country. We know now that Saddam Hussein had no real ties to al-Qaeda. Bush has not captured the mastermind of September 11, Osama bin Laden. But we're supposed to trust the administration to ferret out terrorists as they shred our civil liberties. This article by Greg Mitchell is at www.editorandpublisher.com:
Given the administration’s track record on accuracy, why does anyone, let alone everyone, in the major media go along with this instead of saying, “Why should we believe these guys know an al-Qaeda operative when they see one?”
Until proven otherwise, they should be considered The Gang That Couldn't Snoop Straight.
This was driven home this week, if not before, by a must-read cover story in the non-partisan National Journal by Corine Hegland. It’s much too exhaustive to detail here, so let me stick to the useful summary provided by the Journal’s much-respected senior writer and columnist Stuart Taylor.
He declares flatly that the Hegland article shows that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Press Secretary Scott McClellan have repeatedly made false statements about the “terrorists” locked up at Guantanomo. And these assertions came “long after the evidence of their falsity should have been manifest to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their subordinates.”
A WASTED OPPORTUNITY
History is filled with "what if" questions. Now that we've been engaged in an oil war in Iraq for the past few years and now that China is competing for oil you have to think back to the l970s when Jimmy Carter was president. President Carter warned us back then that we had to do something about our wasteful ways. We had to find alternatives to oil or we would pay a price. Right-wingers love to denigrate President Carter for saying we needed to conserve. They prefer the fantasy offered by Ronald Reagan, who said we could consume all we wanted. This article by Bill Berry is at www.commondreams.org:
It seemed appropriate that the Enron trial got under way here the same week that Bush admitted in his State of the Union address that time had run out on the big lie, the one first foisted on a gullible public by the Great Deceiver, Ronald Reagan. He's the one who had the solar collectors torn from the White House roof soon after he ousted Jimmy Carter, the only American president to have admonished the nation to look in a mirror and see its wasteful ways.
Reagan is the one who told us we should just go ahead and consume. He's the one who led the charge to weaken fuel efficiency standards, to gut research on new energy technologies, to dampen government support for energy conservation in any way, shape or form. Those who followed him, from the first Bush to Clinton, did nothing to expose the lie, and thus they were accomplices. So is the conservative machine, which has abandoned its own core principles in embracing rapacious consumption.
Odd though it seemed last week, here was Bush, the son of oil, proclaiming more than a quarter century later that Carter was right all along and that America needs to come to terms with its oil gluttony. Bush's words may have been the result of the carefully crafted spin that marks the current regime. They may be a response to an insider's knowledge that the spigot is, indeed, drying up. Perhaps they're a belated nod to renewable energy initiatives under way in more than a third of the states. Bush didn't say much at all, really, but he said something. That is a small step in the right direction.
IMPEACH BUSH
LIBBY IMPLICATES CHENEY IN PLAME LEAK
"Scooter" Libby is already under indictment for his part in allegedly outing the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. Now it appears that Libby is saying he was "authorized" by Dick Cheney to leak Plame's name. Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, had published information that didn't suit the Bush administration's propaganda buildup for an attack on Iraq. This story by Murray Waas is at nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0209nj1.htm#
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION JUST ISN'T CREDIBLE
Howard Dean was on Good Morning America today and host Charles Gibson was asking Dean about polls that supposedly show Americans trust Republicans more on national security than they trust Democrats. You have to wonder why. We had the most disastrous failure in American intelligence in our history on September 11. Despite countless warnings of an impending terrorist attack, George W. Bush did nothing. Then, either through deliberate lying or gross incompetence, Bush declared Iraq a center of terrorism and attacked that country. We know now that Saddam Hussein had no real ties to al-Qaeda. Bush has not captured the mastermind of September 11, Osama bin Laden. But we're supposed to trust the administration to ferret out terrorists as they shred our civil liberties. This article by Greg Mitchell is at www.editorandpublisher.com:
Given the administration’s track record on accuracy, why does anyone, let alone everyone, in the major media go along with this instead of saying, “Why should we believe these guys know an al-Qaeda operative when they see one?”
Until proven otherwise, they should be considered The Gang That Couldn't Snoop Straight.
This was driven home this week, if not before, by a must-read cover story in the non-partisan National Journal by Corine Hegland. It’s much too exhaustive to detail here, so let me stick to the useful summary provided by the Journal’s much-respected senior writer and columnist Stuart Taylor.
He declares flatly that the Hegland article shows that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Press Secretary Scott McClellan have repeatedly made false statements about the “terrorists” locked up at Guantanomo. And these assertions came “long after the evidence of their falsity should have been manifest to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their subordinates.”
A WASTED OPPORTUNITY
History is filled with "what if" questions. Now that we've been engaged in an oil war in Iraq for the past few years and now that China is competing for oil you have to think back to the l970s when Jimmy Carter was president. President Carter warned us back then that we had to do something about our wasteful ways. We had to find alternatives to oil or we would pay a price. Right-wingers love to denigrate President Carter for saying we needed to conserve. They prefer the fantasy offered by Ronald Reagan, who said we could consume all we wanted. This article by Bill Berry is at www.commondreams.org:
It seemed appropriate that the Enron trial got under way here the same week that Bush admitted in his State of the Union address that time had run out on the big lie, the one first foisted on a gullible public by the Great Deceiver, Ronald Reagan. He's the one who had the solar collectors torn from the White House roof soon after he ousted Jimmy Carter, the only American president to have admonished the nation to look in a mirror and see its wasteful ways.
Reagan is the one who told us we should just go ahead and consume. He's the one who led the charge to weaken fuel efficiency standards, to gut research on new energy technologies, to dampen government support for energy conservation in any way, shape or form. Those who followed him, from the first Bush to Clinton, did nothing to expose the lie, and thus they were accomplices. So is the conservative machine, which has abandoned its own core principles in embracing rapacious consumption.
Odd though it seemed last week, here was Bush, the son of oil, proclaiming more than a quarter century later that Carter was right all along and that America needs to come to terms with its oil gluttony. Bush's words may have been the result of the carefully crafted spin that marks the current regime. They may be a response to an insider's knowledge that the spigot is, indeed, drying up. Perhaps they're a belated nod to renewable energy initiatives under way in more than a third of the states. Bush didn't say much at all, really, but he said something. That is a small step in the right direction.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
February 08, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
SWEDEN AIMS TO BE OIL FREE
The government of Sweden has announced that it plans to become oil free by the year 2020. And Sweden intends to do it without building nuclear power plants. Sweden is offering an example for the rest of the world. We need to end our oil dependency for a number of reasons: oil is becoming more and more scarce, the addiction to oil will create armed conflicts all over the world, and fossil fuels greatly contribute to global climate change. This article by John Vidal is at www.commondreams.org:
Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.
The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.
The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.
"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."
THE DEBATE OVER RETIRING CLEMENTE'S NUMBER
1997 marked the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking Major League baseball's color barrier. Baseball recognized the importance of that anniversary by retiring Robinson's number. Now there are fans and admirers of Latino star Roberto Clemente who believe Clemente merits a similar honor. Surprisingly, Jackie Robinson's daughter opposes giving the honor to Clemente. I think Clemente was one of the most graceful and most intense players ever in the game. The way he died in trying to help others said much about his life. Retiring his number in no way diminishes the importance of Jackie Robinson. This article by Dave Zirin is at www.commondreams.org:
When Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color line in 1947, baseball ceased to be just a game. In the dark years of McCarthyism, as his biographer Arnold Rampersad wrote, "only Jackie Robinson insisted day in and day out on challenging America on questions of race and justice." As Martin Luther King said of Robinson, "He was a sit-inner before sit-ins. A freedom rider before freedom rides." In 1997, on the fiftieth anniversary of Robinson's rookie season, MLB commissioner Bud Selig took the unprecedented step of retiring Robinson's number, 42, from the league.
Now a new push is taking place to honor another legend in a similar way. An appeal has been made by Hispanics Across America (HAA) to retire the number 21 of Pittsburgh Pirate Roberto Clemente. A native of Puerto Rico, Clemente was not the game's first Latino but its first breakout star. Clemente was a regular season and World Series MVP with 3,000 career hits, but he is especially revered for his efforts to support Latin American communities in the United States and abroad. Clemente's almost Bolivarian reputation was cemented when he perished in a 1972 plane crash taking medical, food and clothing supplies to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua.
But the effort to honor Clemente has met resistance from a surprising source: Jackie Robinson's daughter Sharon. In January, she said, "To my understanding, the purpose of retiring my father's number is that what he did changed all of baseball, not only for African-Americans but also for Latinos, so I think that purpose has been met. When you start retiring numbers across the board, for all different groups, you're kind of diluting the original purpose."
THIS IS FIGHTING TERRORISM?
It's ironic that right-wingers who constantly harp about the inefficiency and fumbling of government are so ready to hand over all their privacy to the government. We have numerous examples of major flubs with people being placed on No Fly Lists who shouldn't be there, including Senator Edward Kennedy and young children. This article talks some of the really bizarre signs government looks for in trying to spot a potential terrorist. This article by James Bovard is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In the mass roundup of more than 1,200 people shortly after 9/11, for example, it took very little for a Muslim or Arab illegal immigrant to be considered a "suspected terrorist," according to a 2003 report by the Justice Department's inspector general. Arab students were locked up as suspected terrorists for working at pizza parlors (in violation of their student visas); a Pakistani immigrant was jailed after attracting attention because he and his Queens housemates let their grass grow long and hung their underwear out to dry on the fence; and one Muslim was arrested because "he had taken a roll of film to be developed and the film had multiple pictures of the World Trade Center on it but no other Manhattan sites," the inspector general noted. Some FBI agents were even instructed to look in phone books to find Arab- or Muslim-sounding names, according to Newsweek columnist Steven Brill.
IMPEACH BUSH
SWEDEN AIMS TO BE OIL FREE
The government of Sweden has announced that it plans to become oil free by the year 2020. And Sweden intends to do it without building nuclear power plants. Sweden is offering an example for the rest of the world. We need to end our oil dependency for a number of reasons: oil is becoming more and more scarce, the addiction to oil will create armed conflicts all over the world, and fossil fuels greatly contribute to global climate change. This article by John Vidal is at www.commondreams.org:
Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.
The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.
The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.
"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."
THE DEBATE OVER RETIRING CLEMENTE'S NUMBER
1997 marked the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking Major League baseball's color barrier. Baseball recognized the importance of that anniversary by retiring Robinson's number. Now there are fans and admirers of Latino star Roberto Clemente who believe Clemente merits a similar honor. Surprisingly, Jackie Robinson's daughter opposes giving the honor to Clemente. I think Clemente was one of the most graceful and most intense players ever in the game. The way he died in trying to help others said much about his life. Retiring his number in no way diminishes the importance of Jackie Robinson. This article by Dave Zirin is at www.commondreams.org:
When Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color line in 1947, baseball ceased to be just a game. In the dark years of McCarthyism, as his biographer Arnold Rampersad wrote, "only Jackie Robinson insisted day in and day out on challenging America on questions of race and justice." As Martin Luther King said of Robinson, "He was a sit-inner before sit-ins. A freedom rider before freedom rides." In 1997, on the fiftieth anniversary of Robinson's rookie season, MLB commissioner Bud Selig took the unprecedented step of retiring Robinson's number, 42, from the league.
Now a new push is taking place to honor another legend in a similar way. An appeal has been made by Hispanics Across America (HAA) to retire the number 21 of Pittsburgh Pirate Roberto Clemente. A native of Puerto Rico, Clemente was not the game's first Latino but its first breakout star. Clemente was a regular season and World Series MVP with 3,000 career hits, but he is especially revered for his efforts to support Latin American communities in the United States and abroad. Clemente's almost Bolivarian reputation was cemented when he perished in a 1972 plane crash taking medical, food and clothing supplies to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua.
But the effort to honor Clemente has met resistance from a surprising source: Jackie Robinson's daughter Sharon. In January, she said, "To my understanding, the purpose of retiring my father's number is that what he did changed all of baseball, not only for African-Americans but also for Latinos, so I think that purpose has been met. When you start retiring numbers across the board, for all different groups, you're kind of diluting the original purpose."
THIS IS FIGHTING TERRORISM?
It's ironic that right-wingers who constantly harp about the inefficiency and fumbling of government are so ready to hand over all their privacy to the government. We have numerous examples of major flubs with people being placed on No Fly Lists who shouldn't be there, including Senator Edward Kennedy and young children. This article talks some of the really bizarre signs government looks for in trying to spot a potential terrorist. This article by James Bovard is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In the mass roundup of more than 1,200 people shortly after 9/11, for example, it took very little for a Muslim or Arab illegal immigrant to be considered a "suspected terrorist," according to a 2003 report by the Justice Department's inspector general. Arab students were locked up as suspected terrorists for working at pizza parlors (in violation of their student visas); a Pakistani immigrant was jailed after attracting attention because he and his Queens housemates let their grass grow long and hung their underwear out to dry on the fence; and one Muslim was arrested because "he had taken a roll of film to be developed and the film had multiple pictures of the World Trade Center on it but no other Manhattan sites," the inspector general noted. Some FBI agents were even instructed to look in phone books to find Arab- or Muslim-sounding names, according to Newsweek columnist Steven Brill.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
February 07, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
ANOTHER JOURNALISM SCANDAL
In 2003 Time magazine ran an article quoting White House spokesman Scott McClellan denying that Karl Rove leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame. But at least three members of Time's staff, including people directly involved in writing the article, knew that was a lie. Why has the press not only bowed down to the Bush administration, but actively supported its crimes? This article is at mediamatters.org/items/200602070006
On October 13, 2003, Time magazine ran an article that included a quote from White House press secretary Scott McClellan insisting that White House senior adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with outing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. As Media Matters for America has previously noted, at least two Time editorial employees involved in the article knew McClellan's denial was false: correspondent Matthew Cooper and Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy. Cooper knew the denial was false because Rove had outed Plame to him. Duffy knew the denial was false because Cooper had sent him an email relating what Rove had told him.
Former Time White House correspondent John Dickerson, in a first-person account of his knowledge of the Plame matter, now acknowledges that he, too, knew that Rove was Cooper's source well before the October 2003 article -- an article on which he, like Cooper, received reporting credit.
Dickerson, now Slate.com's chief political correspondent, wrote a February 7 article in which he described being on a July 2003 presidential trip to Africa when two senior Bush administration officials, speaking to him on background, criticized former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had gone on a 2002 mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there. On July 6, 2003, The New York Times ran an op-ed by Wilson in which he challenged claims made by the administration in making its case for the Iraq war. According to Dickerson, the officials encouraged Dickerson to look into who sent Wilson to Niger. In his Slate article, Dickerson described a conversation he had with Cooper shortly after speaking with the Bush officials:
THE STRAWS IN THEIR OWN EYES
If you read the Gospel accounts in the Bible, you have to conclude that Jesus Christ wasn't real tolerate of hypocrites. He denounced the religious leaders of his day as the vile hypocrites they were. In our time we have the major league hypocrites like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. Right-wing evangelicals condemn everyone from gays to women who have abortions, but their own morality isn't as spotless as they would have us think. This article talks about right-wing evangelicals, Jack Abramoff, and gambling. The article by Max Blumenthal is at www.thenation.com:
Gambling might not rank as high as homosexuality or abortion on the list of social evils monitored by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, but its growth has provided many occasions for his jeremiads. The indictment of Indian casino lobbyist and influential GOP activist Jack Abramoff was one such occasion. In a January 6 press release issued three days after Abramoff's indictment, Dobson declared, "If the nation's politicians don't fix this national disaster, then the oceans of gambling money with which Jack Abramoff tried to buy influence on Capitol Hill will only be the beginning of the corruption we'll see." He concluded with a denunciation of vice: "Gambling--all types of gambling--is driven by greed and subsists on greed."
What Dobson neglected to mention--and has yet to discuss publicly--is his own pivotal role in one of Abramoff's schemes. In 2002 Dobson joined a coterie of Christian-right activists, including Tony Perkins, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, to spearhead Abramoff's campaigns against the establishment of several Louisiana casinos that infringed on the turf of Abramoff's tribal clients. Dobson and his allies recorded messages for phone banking, lobbied high-level Bush Administration officials and took to the airwaves. Whether they knew it or not, these Christian soldiers' crusade to protect families in the "Sportsmen's Paradise" from the side effects of chronic slot-pulling and dice-rolling was funded by the gambling industry and planned by the lobbyist known even to his friends as "Casino Jack."
The only Christian-right activist confirmed to be completely aware of Abramoff's rip-off was Ralph Reed. He and Abramoff have a long and storied history together. When Abramoff chaired the College Republican National Committee in the early 1980s, Reed served as the organization's executive director. They reunited in 1989, when Abramoff helped Reed organize the remains of Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential bid into the Christian Coalition. In 1997, with the Christian Coalition under IRS investigation and Reed facing accusations of cronyism from the group's chief financial officer, he left to start his own consulting firm, Century Strategies. Reed contacted Abramoff right away. "I need to start humping in corporate accounts," Reed told him in 1998. "I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."
IMPEACH BUSH
ANOTHER JOURNALISM SCANDAL
In 2003 Time magazine ran an article quoting White House spokesman Scott McClellan denying that Karl Rove leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame. But at least three members of Time's staff, including people directly involved in writing the article, knew that was a lie. Why has the press not only bowed down to the Bush administration, but actively supported its crimes? This article is at mediamatters.org/items/200602070006
On October 13, 2003, Time magazine ran an article that included a quote from White House press secretary Scott McClellan insisting that White House senior adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with outing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. As Media Matters for America has previously noted, at least two Time editorial employees involved in the article knew McClellan's denial was false: correspondent Matthew Cooper and Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy. Cooper knew the denial was false because Rove had outed Plame to him. Duffy knew the denial was false because Cooper had sent him an email relating what Rove had told him.
Former Time White House correspondent John Dickerson, in a first-person account of his knowledge of the Plame matter, now acknowledges that he, too, knew that Rove was Cooper's source well before the October 2003 article -- an article on which he, like Cooper, received reporting credit.
Dickerson, now Slate.com's chief political correspondent, wrote a February 7 article in which he described being on a July 2003 presidential trip to Africa when two senior Bush administration officials, speaking to him on background, criticized former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had gone on a 2002 mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there. On July 6, 2003, The New York Times ran an op-ed by Wilson in which he challenged claims made by the administration in making its case for the Iraq war. According to Dickerson, the officials encouraged Dickerson to look into who sent Wilson to Niger. In his Slate article, Dickerson described a conversation he had with Cooper shortly after speaking with the Bush officials:
THE STRAWS IN THEIR OWN EYES
If you read the Gospel accounts in the Bible, you have to conclude that Jesus Christ wasn't real tolerate of hypocrites. He denounced the religious leaders of his day as the vile hypocrites they were. In our time we have the major league hypocrites like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. Right-wing evangelicals condemn everyone from gays to women who have abortions, but their own morality isn't as spotless as they would have us think. This article talks about right-wing evangelicals, Jack Abramoff, and gambling. The article by Max Blumenthal is at www.thenation.com:
Gambling might not rank as high as homosexuality or abortion on the list of social evils monitored by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, but its growth has provided many occasions for his jeremiads. The indictment of Indian casino lobbyist and influential GOP activist Jack Abramoff was one such occasion. In a January 6 press release issued three days after Abramoff's indictment, Dobson declared, "If the nation's politicians don't fix this national disaster, then the oceans of gambling money with which Jack Abramoff tried to buy influence on Capitol Hill will only be the beginning of the corruption we'll see." He concluded with a denunciation of vice: "Gambling--all types of gambling--is driven by greed and subsists on greed."
What Dobson neglected to mention--and has yet to discuss publicly--is his own pivotal role in one of Abramoff's schemes. In 2002 Dobson joined a coterie of Christian-right activists, including Tony Perkins, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, to spearhead Abramoff's campaigns against the establishment of several Louisiana casinos that infringed on the turf of Abramoff's tribal clients. Dobson and his allies recorded messages for phone banking, lobbied high-level Bush Administration officials and took to the airwaves. Whether they knew it or not, these Christian soldiers' crusade to protect families in the "Sportsmen's Paradise" from the side effects of chronic slot-pulling and dice-rolling was funded by the gambling industry and planned by the lobbyist known even to his friends as "Casino Jack."
The only Christian-right activist confirmed to be completely aware of Abramoff's rip-off was Ralph Reed. He and Abramoff have a long and storied history together. When Abramoff chaired the College Republican National Committee in the early 1980s, Reed served as the organization's executive director. They reunited in 1989, when Abramoff helped Reed organize the remains of Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential bid into the Christian Coalition. In 1997, with the Christian Coalition under IRS investigation and Reed facing accusations of cronyism from the group's chief financial officer, he left to start his own consulting firm, Century Strategies. Reed contacted Abramoff right away. "I need to start humping in corporate accounts," Reed told him in 1998. "I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."
Monday, February 06, 2006
February 6, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
CREDIT CARD MINIMUM PAYMENTS
In its infinite wisdom, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency dictated that credit card companies raise their minimum payments to a level that in effect doubles the payments for many credit card customers. The rationale for this is that it's "tough love," that it forces consumers to pay down their balances each month instead of being strung along forever. However, this is blatantly unfair when you already have a balance based on the old rules. It also assumes that consumers actually have the money to make the higher payments. The OCC hasn't been quite as concerned about repulsive practices such as "universal default" or incredibly punitive late charge policies. This article by Mark Winston Griffith is at www.thenation.com:
It seems that these days working families just can't seem to catch a break. Short-term interest rates are currently at 4.25 percent. The benchmark rate has been raised thirteen times in a row since the Fed began raising rates in June 2004. Meanwhile, inflation has gone up 3.4 percent since December 2004, and real wages have dropped 0.4 percent over the same period. Recent dips in inflation have helped earnings recover a bit of lost ground, but working families are still not quite as well off as they were just a year ago, much less in November 2001, when the nation began to pull out of recession. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the nation's savings rate was negative in the third quarter of 2005, the first negative savings rate since quarterly updates were made available in 1947.
Ironically, this is partly what has the OCC so spooked in the first place--the day of reckoning for creditors and the cash-strapped consumers on whom they've been aggressively feeding. With families skating on the edge of default and bankruptcy, the effect on consumer spending and the overall health of the economy is potentially calamitous. "This advisory was not intended to help consumers," Robert Manning, author of Credit Card Nation, recently said on National Public Radio. "It was intended to force banks to essentially clean up their under-performing portfolios.... The average consumer is being penalized by the concern of regulators about the true value of many banks' credit card portfolios."
IRAQ ISN'T CONVENIONAL DEFINITION OF "WAR"
What we've seen since the emergence of George W. Bush on the national and international scene is a complete change in the rules. If there has been a pattern to George Bush and his cronies, it's that rules don't apply. If they don't like rules, they simply ignore them. It was that way when they stole the presidential election in 2000. It has been that way in ignoring international agreements such as the Kyoto Accords. It has been that way in using the United Nations when it's convenient and ignoring the U.N. when it's not convenient. It was that way in declaring "preemptive" war against Iraq and then invading that country. Iraq currently has many of the outward appearances of traditional war. There is the horror of death and destruction, but as this article points out, Iraq is not a war in the sense we've come to understand war. It's more evidence of Bush defying the rules. The article by James Carroll is at www.motherjones.com:
Here is the embarrassing question: Is America actually at war? We have a war president, war hawks, war planes, war correspondents, war cries, even war crimes - but do we have war? We have war dead, but the question remains. With young US soldiers being blown up almost daily, it can seem an absurd question, an offensive one. With thousands of Iraqis killed by American firepower, it can seem a heartless question, as if the dead care whether strict definitions of "war" are fulfilled. There can be no question that Iraq is in a state of war, and that, whatever its elements of post-Saddam sectarian conflict, the warfare is being driven from the Pentagon.
But, regarding the Iraq conflict as it involves the United States, something essential is lacking that would make it a war - and that is an enemy.
THE CASE AGAINST BOTTLED WATER
Right-wingers have this fantasy that if you privatize everything that's the way the world should work. We've seen moves to privatize or deregulate banking, airlines, telephone service, and electrical service. I'm not impressed with the results. There is even a move to privatize water. We see it in the form of bottled water. We've been sold the idea that bottled water is better and healthier than the stuff that comes out of the tap, even though frequently there's no difference. When we get water out of the tap we're also not using oil to make plastic and we're not filling up landfills with discarded bottles. This article by Abid Aslam is at www.commondreams.org:
Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief--often mistaken, as it happens--that this is better for us than what flows from our taps, according to environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
For a fraction of that sum, everyone on the planet could have safe drinking water and proper sanitation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said this week.
Members of the United Nations have agreed to halve the proportion of people who lack reliable and lasting access to safe drinking water by the year 2015. To meet this goal, they would have to double the $15 billion spent every year on water supply and sanitation.
''While this amount may seem large, it pales in comparison to the estimated $100 billion spent each year on bottled water,'' said EPI researcher Emily Arnold.
IMPEACH BUSH
CREDIT CARD MINIMUM PAYMENTS
In its infinite wisdom, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency dictated that credit card companies raise their minimum payments to a level that in effect doubles the payments for many credit card customers. The rationale for this is that it's "tough love," that it forces consumers to pay down their balances each month instead of being strung along forever. However, this is blatantly unfair when you already have a balance based on the old rules. It also assumes that consumers actually have the money to make the higher payments. The OCC hasn't been quite as concerned about repulsive practices such as "universal default" or incredibly punitive late charge policies. This article by Mark Winston Griffith is at www.thenation.com:
It seems that these days working families just can't seem to catch a break. Short-term interest rates are currently at 4.25 percent. The benchmark rate has been raised thirteen times in a row since the Fed began raising rates in June 2004. Meanwhile, inflation has gone up 3.4 percent since December 2004, and real wages have dropped 0.4 percent over the same period. Recent dips in inflation have helped earnings recover a bit of lost ground, but working families are still not quite as well off as they were just a year ago, much less in November 2001, when the nation began to pull out of recession. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the nation's savings rate was negative in the third quarter of 2005, the first negative savings rate since quarterly updates were made available in 1947.
Ironically, this is partly what has the OCC so spooked in the first place--the day of reckoning for creditors and the cash-strapped consumers on whom they've been aggressively feeding. With families skating on the edge of default and bankruptcy, the effect on consumer spending and the overall health of the economy is potentially calamitous. "This advisory was not intended to help consumers," Robert Manning, author of Credit Card Nation, recently said on National Public Radio. "It was intended to force banks to essentially clean up their under-performing portfolios.... The average consumer is being penalized by the concern of regulators about the true value of many banks' credit card portfolios."
IRAQ ISN'T CONVENIONAL DEFINITION OF "WAR"
What we've seen since the emergence of George W. Bush on the national and international scene is a complete change in the rules. If there has been a pattern to George Bush and his cronies, it's that rules don't apply. If they don't like rules, they simply ignore them. It was that way when they stole the presidential election in 2000. It has been that way in ignoring international agreements such as the Kyoto Accords. It has been that way in using the United Nations when it's convenient and ignoring the U.N. when it's not convenient. It was that way in declaring "preemptive" war against Iraq and then invading that country. Iraq currently has many of the outward appearances of traditional war. There is the horror of death and destruction, but as this article points out, Iraq is not a war in the sense we've come to understand war. It's more evidence of Bush defying the rules. The article by James Carroll is at www.motherjones.com:
Here is the embarrassing question: Is America actually at war? We have a war president, war hawks, war planes, war correspondents, war cries, even war crimes - but do we have war? We have war dead, but the question remains. With young US soldiers being blown up almost daily, it can seem an absurd question, an offensive one. With thousands of Iraqis killed by American firepower, it can seem a heartless question, as if the dead care whether strict definitions of "war" are fulfilled. There can be no question that Iraq is in a state of war, and that, whatever its elements of post-Saddam sectarian conflict, the warfare is being driven from the Pentagon.
But, regarding the Iraq conflict as it involves the United States, something essential is lacking that would make it a war - and that is an enemy.
THE CASE AGAINST BOTTLED WATER
Right-wingers have this fantasy that if you privatize everything that's the way the world should work. We've seen moves to privatize or deregulate banking, airlines, telephone service, and electrical service. I'm not impressed with the results. There is even a move to privatize water. We see it in the form of bottled water. We've been sold the idea that bottled water is better and healthier than the stuff that comes out of the tap, even though frequently there's no difference. When we get water out of the tap we're also not using oil to make plastic and we're not filling up landfills with discarded bottles. This article by Abid Aslam is at www.commondreams.org:
Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief--often mistaken, as it happens--that this is better for us than what flows from our taps, according to environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
For a fraction of that sum, everyone on the planet could have safe drinking water and proper sanitation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said this week.
Members of the United Nations have agreed to halve the proportion of people who lack reliable and lasting access to safe drinking water by the year 2015. To meet this goal, they would have to double the $15 billion spent every year on water supply and sanitation.
''While this amount may seem large, it pales in comparison to the estimated $100 billion spent each year on bottled water,'' said EPI researcher Emily Arnold.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
February 05, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
THE NEVER ENDING WAR
It's hard to believe that as recently as 1989 we were celebrating the end of the Cold War and talking about a "peace dividend." We went from the initial claims by the Bush administration after the attacks on 9/11 that Bush would "smoke out" Osama bin Laden , to attacking Iraq, to claims the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes," and now to a plan for a twenty year war. It's chillingly like the world in George Orwell's 1984 when Big Brother kept his country in a perpetual war. This article by Ann Scott Tyson is at www.washingtonpost.com:
The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.
Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.
REPUBS INCREDIBLY BAD RECORD
Issue, issue, give me an issue. That must be the Republicans' collective thought in the middle of the night as they toss and turn and break out in night sweats. Unless they are magicians like David Copperfield, it's difficult to turn monstrous deficits, unending war, Jack Abramoff, war crimes, and incompetence into a winning strategy. Harold Meyerson writes about it in this column at www.washingtonpost.com:
For, other than Bush's assertion that he's tougher than the Democrats in the post-Sept. 11 world, his speech provided precisely nothing on which Republican members of Congress can campaign this year. Switchgrass? Opposition to hybrid human-animal cloning? (Republicans Oppose "Island of Dr. Moreau"!) Which means they have to come before the voters running on what -- the war? The economy? Health care? Anybody out there got a theme that won't immediately backfire?
I fear they think they do. As their poll numbers continue to decline, I suspect an increasing number of embattled Republican incumbents will campaign for the criminalization of the 11 million undocumented workers in the United States.
This will cause a rift with those low-wage employers that are a mainstay of Republican finance (agribusiness and restaurants among them), and won't overjoy party strategists such as Rove, who fear the long-term effect of such campaigns on Latino voting. After all, then-California Gov. Pete Wilson's support for Proposition 187 in 1994, which denied public services to undocumented immigrants and their children, cost the party so much Latino support that the Republicans have been marginalized in that state ever since. But at the time, it also enabled Wilson, who had been trailing in the polls, to win reelection. A war on immigrants might backfire in the long run, but these guys are on the ballot in November.
THE ANTI-SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION.
In the 1960s NASA was an agency Americans could look to with pride. We were in a race with the Soviets to land a man on the moon. It was like science fiction dreams come true. We had men in space, men taking space walks, and finally we went to the moon and actually landed there in 1969. But instead of building and moving forward on those achievements, we're moving backward. A political appointee of Bush's has tried to censor talk of things like the Big Bang because it doesn't conveniently fit the beliefs of right-wing fundamentalists. In the meantime, information about the impact of global warming gets censored, even though global warming threatens all life on this planet. This item is from americablog.blogspot.com:
A week after the Bush administration told NASA global warming experts to stop talking about global warming, we now know have 24 year olds just out college telling senior scientists to water their lectures about Einstein. Literally. That's what the kid did. The scientists were going to be talking about Einstein and the big bang, and the Bush appointee got upset because the big bang might conflict with people's religions.
So NASA is now a church.
And we wonder why space shuttles blow up. Screw the repair job. Just slap some tape on that baby, put her on the launch pad, and let's all just pray why she takes off. After all, an intelligent designer would only blow up the shuttle as part of his plan, so who are we to say otherwise?
IMPEACH BUSH
THE NEVER ENDING WAR
It's hard to believe that as recently as 1989 we were celebrating the end of the Cold War and talking about a "peace dividend." We went from the initial claims by the Bush administration after the attacks on 9/11 that Bush would "smoke out" Osama bin Laden , to attacking Iraq, to claims the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes," and now to a plan for a twenty year war. It's chillingly like the world in George Orwell's 1984 when Big Brother kept his country in a perpetual war. This article by Ann Scott Tyson is at www.washingtonpost.com:
The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.
Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.
REPUBS INCREDIBLY BAD RECORD
Issue, issue, give me an issue. That must be the Republicans' collective thought in the middle of the night as they toss and turn and break out in night sweats. Unless they are magicians like David Copperfield, it's difficult to turn monstrous deficits, unending war, Jack Abramoff, war crimes, and incompetence into a winning strategy. Harold Meyerson writes about it in this column at www.washingtonpost.com:
For, other than Bush's assertion that he's tougher than the Democrats in the post-Sept. 11 world, his speech provided precisely nothing on which Republican members of Congress can campaign this year. Switchgrass? Opposition to hybrid human-animal cloning? (Republicans Oppose "Island of Dr. Moreau"!) Which means they have to come before the voters running on what -- the war? The economy? Health care? Anybody out there got a theme that won't immediately backfire?
I fear they think they do. As their poll numbers continue to decline, I suspect an increasing number of embattled Republican incumbents will campaign for the criminalization of the 11 million undocumented workers in the United States.
This will cause a rift with those low-wage employers that are a mainstay of Republican finance (agribusiness and restaurants among them), and won't overjoy party strategists such as Rove, who fear the long-term effect of such campaigns on Latino voting. After all, then-California Gov. Pete Wilson's support for Proposition 187 in 1994, which denied public services to undocumented immigrants and their children, cost the party so much Latino support that the Republicans have been marginalized in that state ever since. But at the time, it also enabled Wilson, who had been trailing in the polls, to win reelection. A war on immigrants might backfire in the long run, but these guys are on the ballot in November.
THE ANTI-SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION.
In the 1960s NASA was an agency Americans could look to with pride. We were in a race with the Soviets to land a man on the moon. It was like science fiction dreams come true. We had men in space, men taking space walks, and finally we went to the moon and actually landed there in 1969. But instead of building and moving forward on those achievements, we're moving backward. A political appointee of Bush's has tried to censor talk of things like the Big Bang because it doesn't conveniently fit the beliefs of right-wing fundamentalists. In the meantime, information about the impact of global warming gets censored, even though global warming threatens all life on this planet. This item is from americablog.blogspot.com:
A week after the Bush administration told NASA global warming experts to stop talking about global warming, we now know have 24 year olds just out college telling senior scientists to water their lectures about Einstein. Literally. That's what the kid did. The scientists were going to be talking about Einstein and the big bang, and the Bush appointee got upset because the big bang might conflict with people's religions.
So NASA is now a church.
And we wonder why space shuttles blow up. Screw the repair job. Just slap some tape on that baby, put her on the launch pad, and let's all just pray why she takes off. After all, an intelligent designer would only blow up the shuttle as part of his plan, so who are we to say otherwise?
Friday, February 03, 2006
February 3, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
STANDARD OF LIVING IS GOING, GOING, GONE
The truly inspirational economic policies of the Bush administration have resulted in mountainous deficits, lower wages, stagnant job growth, increasing health care costs, rising gasoline and heating oil costs, and NO health care for millions of Americans. Six million more Americans have been added to the rolls of people without health insurance since Bush took office. This item comes from www.democrats.com/node/7637
As you can see, 39.8 million of us had no health insurance when the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency and 45.8 million have no coverage as of the end of 2004. The numbers aren’t out yet, but you can bet that figure will go still higher when we see how many people lost their insurance in 2005.
So there you have it. Six million more Americans unable to go to the doctor since Bush took office and he crows that his team is “meeting that responsibility” on keeping America healthy and well.
"I am the master of low expectations," Bush once said of himself.
You can’t say he didn’t warn us.
ANYTHING FOR A WAR
It's like the snow melting in the spring. Everything that the snow covered and hid is coming into view. That's the way it is with George W. Bush and the war against Iraq. The snow keeps melting and more odious details about how Bush maneuvered us into war are becoming visible. We had the Downing Street Memos. We had the lack of WMDs in Iraq. We had the phony claim that Niger was selling yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Now we learn that Bush and Blair wanted to send in U.S. planes disguised as U.N. planes in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into firing on the planes and justifying a war. This story by Andy McSmith is at www.commondreams.org:
George Bush considered provoking a war with Saddam Hussein's regime by flying a United States spyplane over Iraq bearing UN colours, enticing the Iraqis to take a shot at it, according to a leaked memo of a meeting between the US President and Tony Blair.
The two leaders were worried by the lack of hard evidence that Saddam Hussein had broken UN resolutions, though privately they were convinced that he had. According to the memorandum, Mr Bush said: "The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
He added: "It was also possible that a defector could be brought out who would give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD, and there was also a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated." The memo damningly suggests the decision to invade Iraq had already been made when Mr Blair and the US President met in Washington on 31 January 2003 when the British Government was still working on obtaining a second UN resolution to legitimise the conflict.
PROFITING FROM DEATH
The war in Iraq has been very profitable for some people. Billions of dollars have gone missing there even as the troops don't have adequate body armor, decent food, or armored vehicles. This story about corruption is just the tip of the iceberg. The story by the Associated Press is at www.msnbc.msn.com:
A former U.S. occupation official in Iraq pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to steal more than $2 million and rigging bids on $8.6 million in reconstruction contracts.
Robert J. Stein, 50, of Fayetteville, N.C., admitted that he and his coconspirators smuggled millions of dollars out of Iraq into the United States aboard commercial airliners and laundered cash through multiple bank accounts in Switzerland, Amsterdam and Romania.
Stein was a Defense Department employee who served as a contract official for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, controlling more than $82 million in funds slated for rebuilding the Middle Eastern country.
IMPEACH BUSH
STANDARD OF LIVING IS GOING, GOING, GONE
The truly inspirational economic policies of the Bush administration have resulted in mountainous deficits, lower wages, stagnant job growth, increasing health care costs, rising gasoline and heating oil costs, and NO health care for millions of Americans. Six million more Americans have been added to the rolls of people without health insurance since Bush took office. This item comes from www.democrats.com/node/7637
As you can see, 39.8 million of us had no health insurance when the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency and 45.8 million have no coverage as of the end of 2004. The numbers aren’t out yet, but you can bet that figure will go still higher when we see how many people lost their insurance in 2005.
So there you have it. Six million more Americans unable to go to the doctor since Bush took office and he crows that his team is “meeting that responsibility” on keeping America healthy and well.
"I am the master of low expectations," Bush once said of himself.
You can’t say he didn’t warn us.
ANYTHING FOR A WAR
It's like the snow melting in the spring. Everything that the snow covered and hid is coming into view. That's the way it is with George W. Bush and the war against Iraq. The snow keeps melting and more odious details about how Bush maneuvered us into war are becoming visible. We had the Downing Street Memos. We had the lack of WMDs in Iraq. We had the phony claim that Niger was selling yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Now we learn that Bush and Blair wanted to send in U.S. planes disguised as U.N. planes in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into firing on the planes and justifying a war. This story by Andy McSmith is at www.commondreams.org:
George Bush considered provoking a war with Saddam Hussein's regime by flying a United States spyplane over Iraq bearing UN colours, enticing the Iraqis to take a shot at it, according to a leaked memo of a meeting between the US President and Tony Blair.
The two leaders were worried by the lack of hard evidence that Saddam Hussein had broken UN resolutions, though privately they were convinced that he had. According to the memorandum, Mr Bush said: "The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
He added: "It was also possible that a defector could be brought out who would give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD, and there was also a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated." The memo damningly suggests the decision to invade Iraq had already been made when Mr Blair and the US President met in Washington on 31 January 2003 when the British Government was still working on obtaining a second UN resolution to legitimise the conflict.
PROFITING FROM DEATH
The war in Iraq has been very profitable for some people. Billions of dollars have gone missing there even as the troops don't have adequate body armor, decent food, or armored vehicles. This story about corruption is just the tip of the iceberg. The story by the Associated Press is at www.msnbc.msn.com:
A former U.S. occupation official in Iraq pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to steal more than $2 million and rigging bids on $8.6 million in reconstruction contracts.
Robert J. Stein, 50, of Fayetteville, N.C., admitted that he and his coconspirators smuggled millions of dollars out of Iraq into the United States aboard commercial airliners and laundered cash through multiple bank accounts in Switzerland, Amsterdam and Romania.
Stein was a Defense Department employee who served as a contract official for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, controlling more than $82 million in funds slated for rebuilding the Middle Eastern country.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
February 02, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY?
In the State of the Union speech George W. Bush made a big deal about breaking our "addiction" to oil and to finding alternative energy sources. Isn't it strange, then, that the Energy Department is laying off workers who do research in alternative fuels? You can discard about 99% of what Bush says. This article by Elisabeth Bumiller is at www.nytimes.com:
The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.
A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.
The budget for the laboratory, which is just west of Denver, was cut by nearly 15 percent, to $174 million from $202 million, requiring the layoff of about 40 staff members out of a total of 930, said a spokesman, George Douglas. The cut is for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.
OBSCENE OIL PROFITS FINE WITH BUSH
While Americans are getting hammered by high gasoline and fuel oil prices, major oil companies are making record profits. We're talking about billions of dollars in profits. Is Bush concerned about the average American who is having to give up other necessities to afford gasoline? Of course not. Bush loves the "market" because the "market" is great for rich people. This article by Terence Hunt is at news.yahoo.com:
In a wide-ranging interview, Bush defended the $36.13 billion profit Exxon Mobil Corp. posted in 2005 — the highest ever for a U.S. company. He said the profit reflected the market and that consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks.
"I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace and that's the way it should be," said Bush, a former Texas oil man.
But he added: "There's also a responsibility for energy companies to continue to invest and improve the ways that the American people can get energy.
"I would very much hope that Exxon would participate in the development of a pipeline out of Alaska, for example, in order to make sure there's more natural gas available for families and small business owners so the economy will grow," the president said.
DATA MINING IS A SERIOUS PRIVACY THREAT
I think the Internet is one of the greatest technological marvels in human history. But the Internet's dark side is that information is being gathered at an almost exponential rate on all of us who use the Internet. Every search we makes is on record somewhere. The government and private industry build profiles on us based on what information we seek, what we buy, and what we talk about in e-mails and other communications. Couple that with other databases that have our drivers license records, our insurance records, our medical histories, our employment histories, our credit histories, and other records, and you have a massive trove of information. I don't particularly like anyone building a profile on me without my consent. This article by Robert S. Boyd is at www.commondreams.org:
You may never have heard the term "data mining," but it's at the core of the argument that's raging over government eavesdropping on Americans. It's also how commercial companies learn about who you are, where you go, what you eat, what you like, what you buy.
Data mining is the process of using computer technology to extract the knowledge that's buried in enormous volumes of undigested information. Trillions of bits of raw data are culled from telephone calls, e-mails, the Internet, airlines, car rentals, stores, credit card records and a myriad of other sources spawned by the information age.
"A lot can be learned about a person through the combination of massive amounts of data and the use of sophisticated analytical techniques," said Daniel Solove, an associate law professor at George Washington University in Washington.
Whenever you search for information or a product on the Internet, say on Google or Yahoo, you leave a trace.
IMPEACH BUSH
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY?
In the State of the Union speech George W. Bush made a big deal about breaking our "addiction" to oil and to finding alternative energy sources. Isn't it strange, then, that the Energy Department is laying off workers who do research in alternative fuels? You can discard about 99% of what Bush says. This article by Elisabeth Bumiller is at www.nytimes.com:
The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.
A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.
The budget for the laboratory, which is just west of Denver, was cut by nearly 15 percent, to $174 million from $202 million, requiring the layoff of about 40 staff members out of a total of 930, said a spokesman, George Douglas. The cut is for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.
OBSCENE OIL PROFITS FINE WITH BUSH
While Americans are getting hammered by high gasoline and fuel oil prices, major oil companies are making record profits. We're talking about billions of dollars in profits. Is Bush concerned about the average American who is having to give up other necessities to afford gasoline? Of course not. Bush loves the "market" because the "market" is great for rich people. This article by Terence Hunt is at news.yahoo.com:
In a wide-ranging interview, Bush defended the $36.13 billion profit Exxon Mobil Corp. posted in 2005 — the highest ever for a U.S. company. He said the profit reflected the market and that consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks.
"I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace and that's the way it should be," said Bush, a former Texas oil man.
But he added: "There's also a responsibility for energy companies to continue to invest and improve the ways that the American people can get energy.
"I would very much hope that Exxon would participate in the development of a pipeline out of Alaska, for example, in order to make sure there's more natural gas available for families and small business owners so the economy will grow," the president said.
DATA MINING IS A SERIOUS PRIVACY THREAT
I think the Internet is one of the greatest technological marvels in human history. But the Internet's dark side is that information is being gathered at an almost exponential rate on all of us who use the Internet. Every search we makes is on record somewhere. The government and private industry build profiles on us based on what information we seek, what we buy, and what we talk about in e-mails and other communications. Couple that with other databases that have our drivers license records, our insurance records, our medical histories, our employment histories, our credit histories, and other records, and you have a massive trove of information. I don't particularly like anyone building a profile on me without my consent. This article by Robert S. Boyd is at www.commondreams.org:
You may never have heard the term "data mining," but it's at the core of the argument that's raging over government eavesdropping on Americans. It's also how commercial companies learn about who you are, where you go, what you eat, what you like, what you buy.
Data mining is the process of using computer technology to extract the knowledge that's buried in enormous volumes of undigested information. Trillions of bits of raw data are culled from telephone calls, e-mails, the Internet, airlines, car rentals, stores, credit card records and a myriad of other sources spawned by the information age.
"A lot can be learned about a person through the combination of massive amounts of data and the use of sophisticated analytical techniques," said Daniel Solove, an associate law professor at George Washington University in Washington.
Whenever you search for information or a product on the Internet, say on Google or Yahoo, you leave a trace.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
February 1, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
SELECTIVELY PRO-LIFE
I think it's a misnomer to call anti-abortion advocates "pro-life." They're not pro-life at all. They're anti-choice. If they were truly pro-life, they would be opposed to capital punishment. They would be opposed to all war. And they would want all children in this country and the world to have decent lives. Their entire focus is on the fetus. In this article Joyce Marcel looks at the hypocrisy of the anti-choice crowd and the possible ramifications of a Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
I could get behind any movement that takes as its starting point, "Thou shalt not kill." But these anti-abortion folks are the same ones who treasure capital punishment. They're the ones who scorn those of us who seek rehabilitation as well as retribution.
They call abortionists "baby killers" and support those who have the nerve to kill them, their secretaries and their patients. And if they don't themselves kill, they are the ones who hide the killers when they're running from the law and bring food to them in the woods.
Then there's the war-mongering. It's hard to take the Christian right seriously about being pro-life when the one thing they seem to agree upon is the right to bomb the hell out of Muslim countries - mothers, babies, fathers, dogs and cats - whether it's for oil, natural gas, religion or just because they have a different skin color or language. If the pro-life people were leading the anti-war movement, I would be a bit more reassured.
The general joke about pro-lifers is that for them, "Life begins at conception and ends at birth." That's when the poor, the disenfranchised, the overworked, the overloaded and the undersupported women without access to good health insurance have to start raising these unwanted children.
FEAR ITSELF
One of the most famous quotes from FDR is, "All we have to fear is fear itself." In the year 2006 all the Bush administration has to offer us is fear itself. Wrap fear around everything: tax cuts for the rich, destroying the environment, stealing civil liberties, starting unnecessary wars, torture, and using predator drones to kill innocent people. Strip away the wrapping of fear and what has Bush offered us? Gene Lyons writes about the fear-mongering that is the modus operandi of George W. Bush. This column is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Constantly invoking that fear, Bush has turned bin Laden into a political asset--evil incarnate, Satan in a turban. That's one reason the president remains so popular in the Deep South, where fundamentalist black / white thinking and a taste for authoritarianism run strong. But it's worse than useless against the actual threat. Granting the president king-like powers to spy on anybody he chooses not only diminishes our own freedoms, it simply doesn't work. FBI and CIA agents complain of being flooded with a tsunami of useless information they can't even translate, much less use. Real investigations grow narrower, not wider, as they proceed. Meanwhile, such tactics as torture, kidnapping combatants' wives and firing missiles from pilotless drones into Pakistani villages don't make terrorists fear us. They merely drag us down to their level, eroding America's moral authority while sowing rage like dragon's teeth.
IMPEACH BUSH
SELECTIVELY PRO-LIFE
I think it's a misnomer to call anti-abortion advocates "pro-life." They're not pro-life at all. They're anti-choice. If they were truly pro-life, they would be opposed to capital punishment. They would be opposed to all war. And they would want all children in this country and the world to have decent lives. Their entire focus is on the fetus. In this article Joyce Marcel looks at the hypocrisy of the anti-choice crowd and the possible ramifications of a Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
I could get behind any movement that takes as its starting point, "Thou shalt not kill." But these anti-abortion folks are the same ones who treasure capital punishment. They're the ones who scorn those of us who seek rehabilitation as well as retribution.
They call abortionists "baby killers" and support those who have the nerve to kill them, their secretaries and their patients. And if they don't themselves kill, they are the ones who hide the killers when they're running from the law and bring food to them in the woods.
Then there's the war-mongering. It's hard to take the Christian right seriously about being pro-life when the one thing they seem to agree upon is the right to bomb the hell out of Muslim countries - mothers, babies, fathers, dogs and cats - whether it's for oil, natural gas, religion or just because they have a different skin color or language. If the pro-life people were leading the anti-war movement, I would be a bit more reassured.
The general joke about pro-lifers is that for them, "Life begins at conception and ends at birth." That's when the poor, the disenfranchised, the overworked, the overloaded and the undersupported women without access to good health insurance have to start raising these unwanted children.
FEAR ITSELF
One of the most famous quotes from FDR is, "All we have to fear is fear itself." In the year 2006 all the Bush administration has to offer us is fear itself. Wrap fear around everything: tax cuts for the rich, destroying the environment, stealing civil liberties, starting unnecessary wars, torture, and using predator drones to kill innocent people. Strip away the wrapping of fear and what has Bush offered us? Gene Lyons writes about the fear-mongering that is the modus operandi of George W. Bush. This column is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Constantly invoking that fear, Bush has turned bin Laden into a political asset--evil incarnate, Satan in a turban. That's one reason the president remains so popular in the Deep South, where fundamentalist black / white thinking and a taste for authoritarianism run strong. But it's worse than useless against the actual threat. Granting the president king-like powers to spy on anybody he chooses not only diminishes our own freedoms, it simply doesn't work. FBI and CIA agents complain of being flooded with a tsunami of useless information they can't even translate, much less use. Real investigations grow narrower, not wider, as they proceed. Meanwhile, such tactics as torture, kidnapping combatants' wives and firing missiles from pilotless drones into Pakistani villages don't make terrorists fear us. They merely drag us down to their level, eroding America's moral authority while sowing rage like dragon's teeth.
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