JANUARY 7, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
THE SAGA OF WILBUR ROSS
I bet Wilbur Ross is a hero in right-wing land. Here's a guy who swoops down like a vulture, buys up bankrupt companies, and "saves" them. In the process, of course, he destroys unions and pension funds and squeezes every ounce of profit, even when it means life and death for people like the miners in West Virginia. This article by Ward Harkavy is at villagevoice.com:
Underground miners are famous for taking canaries down to their workplaces. When the canaries start gasping and dying, it's time for everyone to go back up to the surface before they, too, die.
Unfortunately for miners, "king of bankruptcy" Wilbur Ross, rescuer of dying industries (but not of dying miners), is waiting for them. He's not the canary in the coal mine. He's more like the vulture.
How much more tragedy could be heaped on poor Upshur County, West Virginia, site of the Sago disaster? The blunder by public officials in saying the trapped miners were alive, when actually all but one of the doomed dozen were dead, was brutal. The county's Stockert Youth Center has been converted into a grief-counseling headquarters, and people will be working overtime there.
BUSH'S SPYING WAS ILLEGAL
A new Congressional research report seems to state the obvious--that Bush's spying on Americans without warrants was illegal. We shouldn't even need a Congressional research report to tell us that. But at least it's one more piece of evidence for Bush's impeachment. This story by Carol D. Leonnig is at www.washingtonpost.com:
A report by Congress's research arm concluded yesterday that the administration's justification for the warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments.
The Congressional Research Service's report rebuts the central assertions made recently by Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales about the president's authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad.
BUSH ECONOMY NOT SO ROBUST AFTER ALL
I saw a headline today that the unemployment rate is 4.9%. That sounds pretty good by historic standards and the Bush administration will be trumpeting the benefits of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and telling us how wonderful the economy is. But the truth is the economy isn't doing that well at all. As this story points out, if people who had stopped looking for jobs were counted in the unemployment statistics, the unemployment rate would be 6.6%. Real wages have fallen every year since Bush took power. Job growth has been anemic by past standards. This story comes from thinkprogress.org/2006/01/06/low-wages-standards/
While we all hope that the economy will strengthen, the White House’s all-out PR effort today on the economy fails to recognize how historically weak both wages and job growth have been. Most Americans have good reason to believe the economy is not working for them. We should not lower our standards to the point where our leaders can state that our economy is doing great when the typical worker has seen his or her wages drop in real terms over the last four years and when job growth is at historic lows for this stage of a recovery.
A more candid assessment of the December jobs and earnings report – and the full 2005 job record – would recognize the following 3 points.
Friday, January 06, 2006
JANUARY 6, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
GIVING IN TO PARANOIA
You wonder if people like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney really do hear voices. It's those voices telling them that karma can be a very bad thing. The evil that men do eventually rebounds on them. Steal and it will be taken from you. Enslave and you will be enslaved. Paranoia has run like a virus through the Republican party for some time. Think back to the McCarthy era when Communists were everywhere. Think of the Richard M. Nixon presidency as Nixon compiled enemies lists and planted bugs in the offices of political opponents. George W. Bush has been responsible for so much evil it's no wonder he's paranoid. This article by Chris Elliott is at www.commondreams.org:
This arrogant administration is so assured of its own righteous providence that any kind of process associated with its self-appointed directives is regarded as a nuisance and optional at its own discretion. The NSA’s rogue wiretapping is a symptom of an administration drunk on its own power, and to imagine this program hasn’t already been abused is the height of naiveté.
A bureaucracy is carrying out this initiative, and within any bureaucracy there are always zealous individuals who dedicate themselves to the proscribed mission, and add some component of their own individual vision. There is always an Ollie North, a John Poindexter, a Henry Kissinger who will overarch even a wrong-headed undertaking such as the secret wiretapping of American citizens. Agencies and organizations that have already been shown to have fallen under the purview of this insidious program of illegal wiretapping and e-mail monitoring include the Quakers and PETA (People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals). And it’s only going to get worse.
Early administration response to the leaking of the NSA wiretaps was a denial of the program’s existence. When the evidence became irrefutable, the administration started talking about limitations of the program, such as it only being used in international communications, and only with individuals in the United States who have "a clear link to al-Qaida." Now that even this backpedaling has proven to be another series of lies, a frustrated Bush administration has cast it to the court of public opinion, and to my utter astonishment, has found a level of acceptance among many Americans, mostly knee-jerk Bush apologists.
THOSE NEOCON DREAMS
The people behind the Project for a New American Century were confident the United States could rule the world. It started with things like globalization, opening the borders for laissez-faire capitalism. It involved a huge military and the possible militarization of space. Iraq and its oil reserves would be just the beginning. How things have changed. In the past six years we've gone from having huge budget surpluses to oceans of red ink. Our military is tied down in Iraq with no good end in sight. China is rapidly gaining economic ground on the U.S. We're losing our edge in science and technology. This article by Rupert Cornwell is at www.commondreams.org:
After a pretty wretched 2005, how different everything appears.
Yes, the U.S. economy is still the largest. But the gap is shrinking. Last year China overtook Italy to become the world's sixth-largest economy, and in 2006 should surpass Britain and France. By 2035, it should have caught up with the United States.
The United States remains far and away the greatest military power on Earth. But Iraq has brutally revealed the limits of American "hard power."
The 2003 invasion will go down in the textbooks for the brilliance of its execution. But despite spending $5 billion a month, and 140,000 troops on the ground, the United States can not ensure stability or security in Iraq.
Instead, Iraq has stretched the United States' all-volunteer military close to the breaking point. Washington intends to cut that force by a third this year. In truth, it has no choice.
BUSH'S BETRAYAL OF THE MILITARY
George W. Bush lied us into a war and sent our troops in harm's way unnecessarily, which is the greatest crime. But now we learn that the Pentagon has failed to even supply adequate body armor, which could have saved countless lives of soldiers with wounds in the upper body. Bush likes to do his photo-ops with the troops, he likes to stage stunts like landing on aircraft carriers, and use tough cowboy rhetoric, but he fails to even adequately supply the troops. This article by Michael Moss is at www.nytimes.com:
A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
The ceramic plates in vests currently worn by the majority of military personnel in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.
Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields "would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome," according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times.
IMPEACH BUSH
GIVING IN TO PARANOIA
You wonder if people like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney really do hear voices. It's those voices telling them that karma can be a very bad thing. The evil that men do eventually rebounds on them. Steal and it will be taken from you. Enslave and you will be enslaved. Paranoia has run like a virus through the Republican party for some time. Think back to the McCarthy era when Communists were everywhere. Think of the Richard M. Nixon presidency as Nixon compiled enemies lists and planted bugs in the offices of political opponents. George W. Bush has been responsible for so much evil it's no wonder he's paranoid. This article by Chris Elliott is at www.commondreams.org:
This arrogant administration is so assured of its own righteous providence that any kind of process associated with its self-appointed directives is regarded as a nuisance and optional at its own discretion. The NSA’s rogue wiretapping is a symptom of an administration drunk on its own power, and to imagine this program hasn’t already been abused is the height of naiveté.
A bureaucracy is carrying out this initiative, and within any bureaucracy there are always zealous individuals who dedicate themselves to the proscribed mission, and add some component of their own individual vision. There is always an Ollie North, a John Poindexter, a Henry Kissinger who will overarch even a wrong-headed undertaking such as the secret wiretapping of American citizens. Agencies and organizations that have already been shown to have fallen under the purview of this insidious program of illegal wiretapping and e-mail monitoring include the Quakers and PETA (People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals). And it’s only going to get worse.
Early administration response to the leaking of the NSA wiretaps was a denial of the program’s existence. When the evidence became irrefutable, the administration started talking about limitations of the program, such as it only being used in international communications, and only with individuals in the United States who have "a clear link to al-Qaida." Now that even this backpedaling has proven to be another series of lies, a frustrated Bush administration has cast it to the court of public opinion, and to my utter astonishment, has found a level of acceptance among many Americans, mostly knee-jerk Bush apologists.
THOSE NEOCON DREAMS
The people behind the Project for a New American Century were confident the United States could rule the world. It started with things like globalization, opening the borders for laissez-faire capitalism. It involved a huge military and the possible militarization of space. Iraq and its oil reserves would be just the beginning. How things have changed. In the past six years we've gone from having huge budget surpluses to oceans of red ink. Our military is tied down in Iraq with no good end in sight. China is rapidly gaining economic ground on the U.S. We're losing our edge in science and technology. This article by Rupert Cornwell is at www.commondreams.org:
After a pretty wretched 2005, how different everything appears.
Yes, the U.S. economy is still the largest. But the gap is shrinking. Last year China overtook Italy to become the world's sixth-largest economy, and in 2006 should surpass Britain and France. By 2035, it should have caught up with the United States.
The United States remains far and away the greatest military power on Earth. But Iraq has brutally revealed the limits of American "hard power."
The 2003 invasion will go down in the textbooks for the brilliance of its execution. But despite spending $5 billion a month, and 140,000 troops on the ground, the United States can not ensure stability or security in Iraq.
Instead, Iraq has stretched the United States' all-volunteer military close to the breaking point. Washington intends to cut that force by a third this year. In truth, it has no choice.
BUSH'S BETRAYAL OF THE MILITARY
George W. Bush lied us into a war and sent our troops in harm's way unnecessarily, which is the greatest crime. But now we learn that the Pentagon has failed to even supply adequate body armor, which could have saved countless lives of soldiers with wounds in the upper body. Bush likes to do his photo-ops with the troops, he likes to stage stunts like landing on aircraft carriers, and use tough cowboy rhetoric, but he fails to even adequately supply the troops. This article by Michael Moss is at www.nytimes.com:
A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
The ceramic plates in vests currently worn by the majority of military personnel in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.
Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields "would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome," according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
JANUARY 5, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
WHAT BUSH IS REALLY SAYING
When George W. Bush admitted that he had violated the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and said he would continue to violate it to "protect" the country what he was really saying that he can arbitrarily violate his Constitutional oath of office. He's commander-in-chief, you see, in a "time of war," so the rules don't apply anymore. I don't remember any asterisks in the Constitution saying the Bill of Rights apply except in a time of war. If anything, the Bill of Rights should be adhered to even more strongly when national security is at risk. Gene Lyons takes a look in this column linked at www.nwanews.com:
Every time George W. Bush gets caught in a tight spot, he does the same thing : He plays the 9 / 11 fear card, wraps himself in the flag, emits jawdropping falsehoods and all but accuses his critics of treason. So it is with the stunning revelation that the White House has ordered the illegal, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens in brazen defiance of federal law and the U. S. Constitution. If allowed to stand, Bush’s actions will have taken the United States a long way down the road to military dictatorship. Indeed, that’s essentially what his legalistic enablers, starting with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Vice President Dick Cheney, argue : that in wartime, the commander-in-chief can take any action he deems appropriate to protect the nation, bypassing Congress and the courts to assert the primacy of the presidency until declaring victory in the “war on terror.” As terrorism is not an enemy, but a tactic—a vile, cowardly tactic, but by definition not subject to being defeated—the metaphorical war against it could last indefinitely. And as long as it lasts, the commander-in-chief rules by fiat. Our constitutional rights exist at his sufferance.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
Politicians like to crow about favorable statistics. The GDP grew a certain percentage in the last quarter. A certain percentage of Americans own their own homes, and on it goes. If people like George W. Bush were giving the full picture, they would also mention the percentage of people who live in poverty, the percentage of children who go to bed hungry, and the number of Americans who don't have health insurance. In this article César Chelala looks at the less publicized side of the U.S. economy. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Although there are several federal and state social-benefit systems in the U.S., a variety of obstacles, such as the high cost of health care and the lack of adequate housing, leads people further into poverty and becomes an abuse of their human rights. Official statistics show that 12.7 percent (or 37 million) of the population in the U.S. lived in poverty in 2004, while 15.7 percent (45.8 million) lacked health-insurance coverage; 11.9 percent of households (comprising 38.2 million people, including 13.9 million children) experienced food insecurity.
It is estimated that 33 million Americans continue to live in households without an adequate supply of food. According to statistics from the Bread for the World Institute, 3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger (9.6 million people, including 3 million children.) Children are a disproportionate share of the poor in the U.S. Although they are 26 percent of the total population, they constitute 39 percent of the poor.
IMPEACH BUSH
WHAT BUSH IS REALLY SAYING
When George W. Bush admitted that he had violated the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and said he would continue to violate it to "protect" the country what he was really saying that he can arbitrarily violate his Constitutional oath of office. He's commander-in-chief, you see, in a "time of war," so the rules don't apply anymore. I don't remember any asterisks in the Constitution saying the Bill of Rights apply except in a time of war. If anything, the Bill of Rights should be adhered to even more strongly when national security is at risk. Gene Lyons takes a look in this column linked at www.nwanews.com:
Every time George W. Bush gets caught in a tight spot, he does the same thing : He plays the 9 / 11 fear card, wraps himself in the flag, emits jawdropping falsehoods and all but accuses his critics of treason. So it is with the stunning revelation that the White House has ordered the illegal, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens in brazen defiance of federal law and the U. S. Constitution. If allowed to stand, Bush’s actions will have taken the United States a long way down the road to military dictatorship. Indeed, that’s essentially what his legalistic enablers, starting with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Vice President Dick Cheney, argue : that in wartime, the commander-in-chief can take any action he deems appropriate to protect the nation, bypassing Congress and the courts to assert the primacy of the presidency until declaring victory in the “war on terror.” As terrorism is not an enemy, but a tactic—a vile, cowardly tactic, but by definition not subject to being defeated—the metaphorical war against it could last indefinitely. And as long as it lasts, the commander-in-chief rules by fiat. Our constitutional rights exist at his sufferance.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
Politicians like to crow about favorable statistics. The GDP grew a certain percentage in the last quarter. A certain percentage of Americans own their own homes, and on it goes. If people like George W. Bush were giving the full picture, they would also mention the percentage of people who live in poverty, the percentage of children who go to bed hungry, and the number of Americans who don't have health insurance. In this article César Chelala looks at the less publicized side of the U.S. economy. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:
Although there are several federal and state social-benefit systems in the U.S., a variety of obstacles, such as the high cost of health care and the lack of adequate housing, leads people further into poverty and becomes an abuse of their human rights. Official statistics show that 12.7 percent (or 37 million) of the population in the U.S. lived in poverty in 2004, while 15.7 percent (45.8 million) lacked health-insurance coverage; 11.9 percent of households (comprising 38.2 million people, including 13.9 million children) experienced food insecurity.
It is estimated that 33 million Americans continue to live in households without an adequate supply of food. According to statistics from the Bread for the World Institute, 3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger (9.6 million people, including 3 million children.) Children are a disproportionate share of the poor in the U.S. Although they are 26 percent of the total population, they constitute 39 percent of the poor.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
JANUARY 4, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
ANYTHING FOR A BUCK
The mining disaster in West Virginia that killed twelve miners reminds us that under the Bush administration and its ideology of cutting regulations this is what we get. Big corporations pay pocket change in fines for gross safety violations. And the lives of workers are put at risk so the people who own the mining companies can enhance their profit margins. This item from David Sirota is at www.workingforchange.com:
EXCLUSIVE: Bush ignored explicit warnings in 2002 about mine safety
The tragic news about the death of 12 mine workers this week has brought up all sorts of questions about the Bush administration's record protecting mine workers. Back in 2002, I was working for the House Appropriations Committee. At the time, you may recall there was a big mining accident in Western Pennsylvania. President Bush held a big photo-op to pretend like he cared - but he never responded to the fact sheet that House Democrats put out questioning why he had made so many cuts to mine safety programs.
CONGRESS: LET GEORGE DO IT
As Maureen Dowd points out in this column, many members of Congress have adopted a totally laissez-faire attitude toward their advise and consent function in the federal government. They are more interested in getting perks from big time lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and living the good life than in actually fulfilling their Constitutional duties. This column is at www.topplebush.com:
Think about it: all those congressmen don't really need to do their jobs anymore. With the president able to make war more or less as he chooses, treat the enemy as he sees fit and snoop on Americans at will, our representatives have more time for the duty many are clearly best suited to: playing golf gratis in Scotland. (Remember how the White House press used to give poor Bill Clinton such a hard time about mere mulligans?)
Now that Dick Cheney has freed Congress from the bother of advising and/or consenting, lawmakers can work on new ways to game the system and wallow in the G.O.P.'s culture of corruption - while tut-tutting about the decline in American moral values.
Since the Republican-run Capitol doesn't have to worry about holding the Bush White House accountable for excesses in torture and spying and the other myriad ways it has placed itself above the law, congressmen have more leisure hours for Abramoff successors to treat them to some Redskins games and steak dinners.
ENDLESS WAR, UNCHECKED POWER
George W. Bush has frequently talked about the "war on terror." The whole concept is ludicrous, of course. Terrorists are criminals. You can no more win a war on terror than you can win a war on crime. All you can really do is contain it. You can search out and apprehend the criminals and process them through the appropriate legal machinery. But by declaring a "war on terror" Bush and his minions have been trying to stretch Constitutional boundaries to give Bush unchecked power in his role as commander-in-chief. This is an interesting commentary by Tom Engelhardt is at www.commondreams.org:
This is why the announcement of (and definition of) the "global war on terror" almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks was so important. It was to be a "war" without end. No one ever attempted to define what "victory" might actually consist of, though we were assured that the war itself would, like the Cold War, last generations. Even the recent sudden presidential announcement that we will now settle only for "complete victory" in Iraq is, in this context, a distinctly limited goal because Iraq has already been defined as but a single "theater" (though a "central" one) in a larger war on terror. A war without end, of course, left the President as a commander-in-chief-without-end and it was in such a guise that the acolytes of that "obscure philosophy" of total presidential power planned to claim their "inherent" constitutional right to do essentially anything. (Imagine what might have happened if their invasion of Iraq had been a success!)
IMPEACH BUSH
ANYTHING FOR A BUCK
The mining disaster in West Virginia that killed twelve miners reminds us that under the Bush administration and its ideology of cutting regulations this is what we get. Big corporations pay pocket change in fines for gross safety violations. And the lives of workers are put at risk so the people who own the mining companies can enhance their profit margins. This item from David Sirota is at www.workingforchange.com:
EXCLUSIVE: Bush ignored explicit warnings in 2002 about mine safety
The tragic news about the death of 12 mine workers this week has brought up all sorts of questions about the Bush administration's record protecting mine workers. Back in 2002, I was working for the House Appropriations Committee. At the time, you may recall there was a big mining accident in Western Pennsylvania. President Bush held a big photo-op to pretend like he cared - but he never responded to the fact sheet that House Democrats put out questioning why he had made so many cuts to mine safety programs.
CONGRESS: LET GEORGE DO IT
As Maureen Dowd points out in this column, many members of Congress have adopted a totally laissez-faire attitude toward their advise and consent function in the federal government. They are more interested in getting perks from big time lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and living the good life than in actually fulfilling their Constitutional duties. This column is at www.topplebush.com:
Think about it: all those congressmen don't really need to do their jobs anymore. With the president able to make war more or less as he chooses, treat the enemy as he sees fit and snoop on Americans at will, our representatives have more time for the duty many are clearly best suited to: playing golf gratis in Scotland. (Remember how the White House press used to give poor Bill Clinton such a hard time about mere mulligans?)
Now that Dick Cheney has freed Congress from the bother of advising and/or consenting, lawmakers can work on new ways to game the system and wallow in the G.O.P.'s culture of corruption - while tut-tutting about the decline in American moral values.
Since the Republican-run Capitol doesn't have to worry about holding the Bush White House accountable for excesses in torture and spying and the other myriad ways it has placed itself above the law, congressmen have more leisure hours for Abramoff successors to treat them to some Redskins games and steak dinners.
ENDLESS WAR, UNCHECKED POWER
George W. Bush has frequently talked about the "war on terror." The whole concept is ludicrous, of course. Terrorists are criminals. You can no more win a war on terror than you can win a war on crime. All you can really do is contain it. You can search out and apprehend the criminals and process them through the appropriate legal machinery. But by declaring a "war on terror" Bush and his minions have been trying to stretch Constitutional boundaries to give Bush unchecked power in his role as commander-in-chief. This is an interesting commentary by Tom Engelhardt is at www.commondreams.org:
This is why the announcement of (and definition of) the "global war on terror" almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks was so important. It was to be a "war" without end. No one ever attempted to define what "victory" might actually consist of, though we were assured that the war itself would, like the Cold War, last generations. Even the recent sudden presidential announcement that we will now settle only for "complete victory" in Iraq is, in this context, a distinctly limited goal because Iraq has already been defined as but a single "theater" (though a "central" one) in a larger war on terror. A war without end, of course, left the President as a commander-in-chief-without-end and it was in such a guise that the acolytes of that "obscure philosophy" of total presidential power planned to claim their "inherent" constitutional right to do essentially anything. (Imagine what might have happened if their invasion of Iraq had been a success!)
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
JANUARY 3, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
TALKING ABOUT FIFTH COLUMNISTS
Today's Fresno Bee featured a letter from a right-winger wailing about the "fifth column" in the media that says George W. Bush lied about Iraq and other matters. I think the real fifth columnists are the people who continue to support Bush even though he obviously lied about the war in Iraq and has consistently violated the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. It depends on what kind of country you want. Do you want the United States that existed prior to September 11, or do you want to live in a totalitarian country that is little different from the old Soviet Union?
MORE PROOF BUSH LIED ABOUT IRAQ
A new book by a New York Times reporter presents even more evidence that the CIA and the Bush administration knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. Maybe the right-winger I mentioned above has some other word for "lie," but as Gertrude Stein might have said, a lie is a lie is a lie. This story is from www.makethemaccountable.com:
A new book on the government's secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.
Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad of Cleveland made the dangerous trip to Iraq on the CIA's behalf. The book said her brother was stunned by her questions about the nuclear program because — he said — it had been dead for a decade.
New York Times reporter James Risen uses the anecdote to illustrate how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. His book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" describes secret operations of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
The major revelation in the book has already been the subject of extensive reporting by Risen's newspaper: the National Security Agency's eavesdropping of Americans' conversations without obtaining warrants from a special court.
BUSH'S CONSISTENT LYING
George W. Bush is on videotape stating that, of course, the government would seek a warrant before doing any surveillance on American citizens. This is a tacit admission that a warrant is required to do the kind of spying Bush now claims is absolutely essential to American security--so much, in fact, that he has to run around the FISA court. This statement on videotape also came after Bush had already been illegally spying on Americans. This article by Robert Parry is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
George W. Bush's dysfunctional relationship with the truth seems to be shaped by two complementary factors - a personal compulsion to say whatever makes him look good at that moment and a permissive environment that rarely holds him accountable for his lies.
How else to explain his endless attempts to rewrite history and reshape his own statements, a pattern on display again in his New Year's Day comments to reporters in San Antonio, Texas? In that session, as Bush denied misleading the public, he twice again misled the public.
Bush launched into a defense of his honesty by denying that he lied when he told a crowd in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2004 that "by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order."
Two years earlier, Bush had approved rules that freed the National Security Agency to use warrantless wiretaps on communications originating in the United States without a court order. But Bush still told the Buffalo audience, "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
IMPEACH BUSH
TALKING ABOUT FIFTH COLUMNISTS
Today's Fresno Bee featured a letter from a right-winger wailing about the "fifth column" in the media that says George W. Bush lied about Iraq and other matters. I think the real fifth columnists are the people who continue to support Bush even though he obviously lied about the war in Iraq and has consistently violated the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. It depends on what kind of country you want. Do you want the United States that existed prior to September 11, or do you want to live in a totalitarian country that is little different from the old Soviet Union?
MORE PROOF BUSH LIED ABOUT IRAQ
A new book by a New York Times reporter presents even more evidence that the CIA and the Bush administration knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. Maybe the right-winger I mentioned above has some other word for "lie," but as Gertrude Stein might have said, a lie is a lie is a lie. This story is from www.makethemaccountable.com:
A new book on the government's secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.
Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad of Cleveland made the dangerous trip to Iraq on the CIA's behalf. The book said her brother was stunned by her questions about the nuclear program because — he said — it had been dead for a decade.
New York Times reporter James Risen uses the anecdote to illustrate how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. His book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" describes secret operations of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
The major revelation in the book has already been the subject of extensive reporting by Risen's newspaper: the National Security Agency's eavesdropping of Americans' conversations without obtaining warrants from a special court.
BUSH'S CONSISTENT LYING
George W. Bush is on videotape stating that, of course, the government would seek a warrant before doing any surveillance on American citizens. This is a tacit admission that a warrant is required to do the kind of spying Bush now claims is absolutely essential to American security--so much, in fact, that he has to run around the FISA court. This statement on videotape also came after Bush had already been illegally spying on Americans. This article by Robert Parry is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
George W. Bush's dysfunctional relationship with the truth seems to be shaped by two complementary factors - a personal compulsion to say whatever makes him look good at that moment and a permissive environment that rarely holds him accountable for his lies.
How else to explain his endless attempts to rewrite history and reshape his own statements, a pattern on display again in his New Year's Day comments to reporters in San Antonio, Texas? In that session, as Bush denied misleading the public, he twice again misled the public.
Bush launched into a defense of his honesty by denying that he lied when he told a crowd in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2004 that "by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order."
Two years earlier, Bush had approved rules that freed the National Security Agency to use warrantless wiretaps on communications originating in the United States without a court order. But Bush still told the Buffalo audience, "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
Monday, January 02, 2006
JANUARY 2, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
2005: A ROTTEN YEAR UNDER BUSH
You have to wonder what parallel universe diehard Bush supporters reside in. These are the people with the floppy shoes and the big red noses who think Bush is doing a wonderful job. Just what has this guy done that is good for the country or for the world? We know about the lousy economy, the crummy record on the environment, the lies that got us into a war in Iraq and that have gotten thousands of innocent people killed, the war crimes such as using white phosphorus, the use of torture and even attempts to legalize torture, the utter incompetence at dealing with Hurricane Katrina and the havoc in New Orleans, and the egregious violation of the Constitution in illegal spying on American citizens. Rob Kall writes about it in this article at www.makethemaccountable.com:
The horrific fall of the most basic rights and strengths of America-- democracy, privacy, truth and trust in government, transparency-- did not happen at once. But 2005 was the year when we the people, and the rest of the world were finally able to see clearly that the Bush Administration and its rubber stamp republican sycophants were not just a little, but outrageously, historically corrupt, brazenly breaking laws and flaunting their criminal actions.
2005 was the year when Bush decided he could declare his illegal actions. Perhaps he's appointed enough judges to make him feel safe that they will rule in his favor.
2005 was the year that the truth came out that the job of the Justice department to prevent bad laws from being implemented at the state level was blocked by political appointees who over-ruled career appointees who said laws allowing gerrymandering in Texas and pricey voter ID cards in Georgia should be illegal. This will forever cast a negative light on Attorney's General Gonzalez and Ashcroft. These two are running an agency that should be investigating and incarcerating them.
UNFETTERED POWER
When it was revealed that George W. Bush had broken the law in doing an end around the FISA court--illegally spying on American citizens--Bush admitted he had broken the law, said he would break it again, and claimed that the leak about his actions were "shameful." He went even further and claimed that Congress had given him the go-ahead to break the law when Congress passed the Iraq war resolution, even though Congress gave absolutely no authorization to ignore the FISA court. As Jonathan Schell points out in this article, if Congress allows Bush to get away with this, then Congress has ceased to be a meaningful institution. What's the point of the Constitutional system of checks and balances when Congress totally abdicates its responsibility? This article is at www.thenation.com:
Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration. Previously when it was caught engaging in disgraceful, illegal or merely mistaken or incompetent behavior, he would simply deny it. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction!" "We do not torture!" However, further developments in the torture matter revealed a shift. Even as he denied the existence of torture, he and his officials began to defend his right to order it. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, refused at his confirmation hearings to state that the torture called waterboarding, in which someone is brought to the edge of drowning, was prohibited. Then when Senator John McCain sponsored a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, Bush threatened to veto the legislation to which it was attached. It was only in the face of majority votes in both houses against such treatment that he retreated from his claim.
But in the wiretapping matter, he has so far exhibited no such vacillation. Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.
TRULY HONORING THE VICTIMS OF 9/11
George W. Bush can't go very far into a speech without mentioning 9/11 and how it changed "everything." But did it really? It was a horrific and murderous act, but the world goes on. What did change was the way our government behaves. The attacks on 9/11 have been used by the Bush administration as a permission slip to destroy fiscal sanity, to declare preemptive war, to torture, to commit war crimes, and to shred the Bill of Rights. Is that the kind of legacy the victims of 9/11 would have wanted? Shouldn't we instead be making the Bill of Rights even stronger and more meaningful? Shouldn't we be pursuing a course that truly makes the United States the shining city on the hill? In this article Bud A. McClure speaks out for the Bill of Rights. The article is at www.commondreams.org:
To much of the world we have become a monster. Lying, killing, and torturing are now justified and accepted by many Americans as necessary ingredients to keep us safe from another 9/11. We are an uglier, meaner, less compassionate country. In letters to editors around the country people routinely support and even advocate for more control, more sanctions, more government intrusion into our lives. Have we lost our minds? We have certainly lost our way.
I don't want to live in a country where anyone's rights are abridged, even terrorists. Where the government operates in secrecy and abuses it power and it's people. Where the president can commit crimes and not be held accountable. I don't give a damn about living securely if I have to give up one tiny bit of my freedom guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Not one bit!! In this regard I consider myself in line with the patriots of New Hampshire whose motto "Live Free or Die" is right on! There can be no erosion of these Rights if we are to remain free. These Rights are the bedrock of our security, of our freedoms, and our liberty. Let's reaffirm those rights for everyone, especially those who died back in 2001.
Let's sing Auld Lang Syne to the term 9/11.
IMPEACH BUSH
2005: A ROTTEN YEAR UNDER BUSH
You have to wonder what parallel universe diehard Bush supporters reside in. These are the people with the floppy shoes and the big red noses who think Bush is doing a wonderful job. Just what has this guy done that is good for the country or for the world? We know about the lousy economy, the crummy record on the environment, the lies that got us into a war in Iraq and that have gotten thousands of innocent people killed, the war crimes such as using white phosphorus, the use of torture and even attempts to legalize torture, the utter incompetence at dealing with Hurricane Katrina and the havoc in New Orleans, and the egregious violation of the Constitution in illegal spying on American citizens. Rob Kall writes about it in this article at www.makethemaccountable.com:
The horrific fall of the most basic rights and strengths of America-- democracy, privacy, truth and trust in government, transparency-- did not happen at once. But 2005 was the year when we the people, and the rest of the world were finally able to see clearly that the Bush Administration and its rubber stamp republican sycophants were not just a little, but outrageously, historically corrupt, brazenly breaking laws and flaunting their criminal actions.
2005 was the year when Bush decided he could declare his illegal actions. Perhaps he's appointed enough judges to make him feel safe that they will rule in his favor.
2005 was the year that the truth came out that the job of the Justice department to prevent bad laws from being implemented at the state level was blocked by political appointees who over-ruled career appointees who said laws allowing gerrymandering in Texas and pricey voter ID cards in Georgia should be illegal. This will forever cast a negative light on Attorney's General Gonzalez and Ashcroft. These two are running an agency that should be investigating and incarcerating them.
UNFETTERED POWER
When it was revealed that George W. Bush had broken the law in doing an end around the FISA court--illegally spying on American citizens--Bush admitted he had broken the law, said he would break it again, and claimed that the leak about his actions were "shameful." He went even further and claimed that Congress had given him the go-ahead to break the law when Congress passed the Iraq war resolution, even though Congress gave absolutely no authorization to ignore the FISA court. As Jonathan Schell points out in this article, if Congress allows Bush to get away with this, then Congress has ceased to be a meaningful institution. What's the point of the Constitutional system of checks and balances when Congress totally abdicates its responsibility? This article is at www.thenation.com:
Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration. Previously when it was caught engaging in disgraceful, illegal or merely mistaken or incompetent behavior, he would simply deny it. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction!" "We do not torture!" However, further developments in the torture matter revealed a shift. Even as he denied the existence of torture, he and his officials began to defend his right to order it. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, refused at his confirmation hearings to state that the torture called waterboarding, in which someone is brought to the edge of drowning, was prohibited. Then when Senator John McCain sponsored a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, Bush threatened to veto the legislation to which it was attached. It was only in the face of majority votes in both houses against such treatment that he retreated from his claim.
But in the wiretapping matter, he has so far exhibited no such vacillation. Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.
TRULY HONORING THE VICTIMS OF 9/11
George W. Bush can't go very far into a speech without mentioning 9/11 and how it changed "everything." But did it really? It was a horrific and murderous act, but the world goes on. What did change was the way our government behaves. The attacks on 9/11 have been used by the Bush administration as a permission slip to destroy fiscal sanity, to declare preemptive war, to torture, to commit war crimes, and to shred the Bill of Rights. Is that the kind of legacy the victims of 9/11 would have wanted? Shouldn't we instead be making the Bill of Rights even stronger and more meaningful? Shouldn't we be pursuing a course that truly makes the United States the shining city on the hill? In this article Bud A. McClure speaks out for the Bill of Rights. The article is at www.commondreams.org:
To much of the world we have become a monster. Lying, killing, and torturing are now justified and accepted by many Americans as necessary ingredients to keep us safe from another 9/11. We are an uglier, meaner, less compassionate country. In letters to editors around the country people routinely support and even advocate for more control, more sanctions, more government intrusion into our lives. Have we lost our minds? We have certainly lost our way.
I don't want to live in a country where anyone's rights are abridged, even terrorists. Where the government operates in secrecy and abuses it power and it's people. Where the president can commit crimes and not be held accountable. I don't give a damn about living securely if I have to give up one tiny bit of my freedom guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Not one bit!! In this regard I consider myself in line with the patriots of New Hampshire whose motto "Live Free or Die" is right on! There can be no erosion of these Rights if we are to remain free. These Rights are the bedrock of our security, of our freedoms, and our liberty. Let's reaffirm those rights for everyone, especially those who died back in 2001.
Let's sing Auld Lang Syne to the term 9/11.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
JANUARY 1, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
THE DELAY-ABRAMOFF DUO
Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay weren't quite Martin and Lewis, but they had quite an interlocking relationship, according to a new story in The Washington Post. DeLay may be one of the most corrupt members in the history of Congress, and he is just a reflection of the current Republican party. This story by R. Jeffrey Smith is at www.washingtonpost.com:
The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.
BUSH LIKES SOME LEAKS, NOT OTHERS
George W. Bush is in high dudgeon over the leak about a secret program to illegally spy on American citizens in violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. He has appointed a special prosecutor to sniff out the leaker. Mr. Bush has not been so outraged, however, at the leak of CIA agent's Valerie Plame's name. Maybe Bush is only concerned about leaks that reveal his own criminality. This item comes from www.ostroyreport.blogspot.com/#123105
Here's the scenario: our over-zealous, corrupt president flicks the switch some three-dozen times since 2001, authorizing the National Security Agency to use illegal wiretaps and other surveillance tactics on American citizens to supposedly intercept terrorist chatter and protect the nation from acts of terrorism. And when news of this flagrant violation of Congressional law finds its way to the front pages, as it did Dec. 16 in the NY Times, Bush's ire is raised and a special prosecutor is soon named to investigate the leak. Why? Because as we all know, Bush hates leaks and the leakers who leak them. Except of course when they're card-carrying Busheviks, in which case leaks are just fine. The hypocrisy is mind-blowing.
As reported in the Times Saturday, the Justice Department announced Friday that it had opened a criminal investigation into the leak about Bush's secret eavesdropping scheme. Incredulously, the DOJ finds it more appropriate to legally pursue the whistle-blowers than those who may have committed the original crime.
THE LOUSY TREATMENT OF AMERICAN WORKERS
The productivity of American workers has doubled since 1969. That should mean an increase in salaries and benefits. It's not happening under administrations such as George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. All the rewards go to the richest Americans. Instead, workers are working mandatory overtime, not getting paid sick leave, not getting enough vacation time, seeing health care insurance costs soar, and either having no pensions or having their pension funds raided. It's time to get rid of these Republican monsters and get leadership that will represent working people. This article by Joe Robinson is at www.latimes.com:
IT WAS A GREAT YEAR for labor — if you worked at a call center in India, made your living as a CEO or sold real estate to big-box stores. But deep in Cubicle Nation, the average American worker remained on a fast track to the Industrial Revolution, with soaring workweeks, declining wages and health, pension and vacation benefits vanishing faster than you can say job security.
Add to the siege outsourcing, cutbacks, the dismantling of ergonomics rules and forced overtime — all while business is racking up historic profits — and even a nearsighted dingo could see that the trends are unsustainable for families, personal health, company medical plans or an informed and involved citizenry. And completely unnecessary.
IMPEACH BUSH
THE DELAY-ABRAMOFF DUO
Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay weren't quite Martin and Lewis, but they had quite an interlocking relationship, according to a new story in The Washington Post. DeLay may be one of the most corrupt members in the history of Congress, and he is just a reflection of the current Republican party. This story by R. Jeffrey Smith is at www.washingtonpost.com:
The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.
BUSH LIKES SOME LEAKS, NOT OTHERS
George W. Bush is in high dudgeon over the leak about a secret program to illegally spy on American citizens in violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. He has appointed a special prosecutor to sniff out the leaker. Mr. Bush has not been so outraged, however, at the leak of CIA agent's Valerie Plame's name. Maybe Bush is only concerned about leaks that reveal his own criminality. This item comes from www.ostroyreport.blogspot.com/#123105
Here's the scenario: our over-zealous, corrupt president flicks the switch some three-dozen times since 2001, authorizing the National Security Agency to use illegal wiretaps and other surveillance tactics on American citizens to supposedly intercept terrorist chatter and protect the nation from acts of terrorism. And when news of this flagrant violation of Congressional law finds its way to the front pages, as it did Dec. 16 in the NY Times, Bush's ire is raised and a special prosecutor is soon named to investigate the leak. Why? Because as we all know, Bush hates leaks and the leakers who leak them. Except of course when they're card-carrying Busheviks, in which case leaks are just fine. The hypocrisy is mind-blowing.
As reported in the Times Saturday, the Justice Department announced Friday that it had opened a criminal investigation into the leak about Bush's secret eavesdropping scheme. Incredulously, the DOJ finds it more appropriate to legally pursue the whistle-blowers than those who may have committed the original crime.
THE LOUSY TREATMENT OF AMERICAN WORKERS
The productivity of American workers has doubled since 1969. That should mean an increase in salaries and benefits. It's not happening under administrations such as George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. All the rewards go to the richest Americans. Instead, workers are working mandatory overtime, not getting paid sick leave, not getting enough vacation time, seeing health care insurance costs soar, and either having no pensions or having their pension funds raided. It's time to get rid of these Republican monsters and get leadership that will represent working people. This article by Joe Robinson is at www.latimes.com:
IT WAS A GREAT YEAR for labor — if you worked at a call center in India, made your living as a CEO or sold real estate to big-box stores. But deep in Cubicle Nation, the average American worker remained on a fast track to the Industrial Revolution, with soaring workweeks, declining wages and health, pension and vacation benefits vanishing faster than you can say job security.
Add to the siege outsourcing, cutbacks, the dismantling of ergonomics rules and forced overtime — all while business is racking up historic profits — and even a nearsighted dingo could see that the trends are unsustainable for families, personal health, company medical plans or an informed and involved citizenry. And completely unnecessary.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
DECEMBER 31, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
TAX CUTS AND RED INK
When he first took office Bill Clinton wanted to raise taxes, rather modestly really, on the richest Americans. Republicans caterwauled that the tax increases were certain to shove the country into recession. Instead, we set off a path of budget surpluses and a sound economy. George W. Bush came along like a termite in the foundation and started pushing through tax cuts for the very affluent. Now we have a sea of red ink, programs such as student loans are getting cut, and the rich are still getting tax cuts. This editorial comes from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:
A surprise awaits the nation's highest earners when they file their 2006 tax returns. Their taxes are going down again - whether or not Congress passes the investor tax cuts the lawmakers have been promising. On New Year's Day, two additional tax cuts will kick in, allowing people who earn upward of $200,000 a year to claim bigger write-offs for a spouse, their children and other expenses, like mortgage interest on a vacation home.
The bolstered write-offs were enacted in 2001, but with a delayed start date because of their high cost: according to Congressional estimates, the new breaks will cost $27 billion over the short term, exploding to $146 billion from 2010 through 2019. By then, most of the benefits would flow to taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year.
With the nation deep in debt, at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Congress voting last month to slash programs for health care and student loans, and with a debilitating shortfall building in Medicare - the decision by Congress to let these particular tax breaks take effect now is flabbergasting. But it is not out of character.
PUNISHING COMPASSION
A few years ago George W. Bush made a big deal about being a "compassionate conservative." That phrase in itself is an oxymoron. The very basis of conservatism is anti-compassion, bigotry, intolerance, and greed. Now some of the members of the "compassionate conservative" party want to pass legislation making it a crime to provide help to illegal immigrants. This would include people like nurses. This article by Rachel L. Swarns is at www.nytimes.com:
Churches, social service agencies and immigration groups across the country are rallying against a provision in the recently passed House border-security bill that would make it a federal crime to offer services or assistance to illegal immigrants.
The measure would broaden the nation's immigrant-smuggling law so that people who assist or shield illegal immigrants would be subject to prosecution. Offenders, who might include priests, nurses or social workers, could face up to five years in prison. The proposal would also allow the authorities to seize some assets of those convicted of such a crime.
FANNING THE FLAMES OF WAR
I've read that when the first Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War was taking place several members of Washington's high society went out to take a look. It was like an afternoon picnic to watch soldiers involved in combat. Death and maiming made for a great afternoon's entertainment until the Confederates started winning the battle and suddenly the elite spectators were themselves in danger. In Fresno we're "blessed" with the august Victor Davis Hanson, professor of classical studies, and intellectual guru of Bush's war in Iraq. . Hanson draws classical analogies from the travails and triumphs of the ancient Greeks and in a sort of copy and paste maneuver applies the "lessons" from that time to the present day. In this column James Wolcott looks at the changing rationales Hanson, the elite spectator, offers to justify the carnage in Iraq. The column is at http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/12/the_pericles_of.php:
A nation of Homer Simpsons lacks physical and moral sinew, laments Hanson, cracking a walnut with one hand.
"...our affluent society is at a complete disconnect with hard physical work and appreciation of how tenuous life was for 2,500 years of civilization. Those in our media circus who deliver our truth can't weld, fix a car, shoot a gun, or do much of anything other than run around looking for scoops about how incompetent things are done daily in Iraq under the most trying of circumstances. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that our technologies and wealth give us a pass on the old obstacles of time and space — as if Iraq 7,000 miles away is no more distant than Washington is from New York. Perhaps soldiers on patrol who go for 20 hours without sleep with 70 pounds on their back are merely like journalists pulling an all-nighter to file a story. Perhaps the next scandal will be the absence of high-definition television in Iraq — and who plotted to keep flat screens out of Baghdad."
He's really full of the ripest fertilizer. It may be true that the jugglers and acrobats in the "media circus" would useless trying to fix the septic tank, but why single them out as distinctive soft products of the information age? It's not as if those who support the Iraq war clank around with tool belts around their waists. How handy does Hanson think his colleagues at NRO are around the house and garage, and how much manual work does he imagine Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Reuel Marc Gerecht, and the editors of the Weekly Standard have done in their pampered existence? Find me the correlation between the ability to weld and the steely resolve to prosecute preemptive war--there isn't one. And I would note that conservatives reverence men and women who toil with their hands and technical knowhow, until of course they form a union and try to negotiate better working conditions and health benefits. Then they become blue-collar blackmailers who ought to consider themselves lucky their jobs haven't been outsourced--yet.
IMPEACH BUSH
TAX CUTS AND RED INK
When he first took office Bill Clinton wanted to raise taxes, rather modestly really, on the richest Americans. Republicans caterwauled that the tax increases were certain to shove the country into recession. Instead, we set off a path of budget surpluses and a sound economy. George W. Bush came along like a termite in the foundation and started pushing through tax cuts for the very affluent. Now we have a sea of red ink, programs such as student loans are getting cut, and the rich are still getting tax cuts. This editorial comes from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:
A surprise awaits the nation's highest earners when they file their 2006 tax returns. Their taxes are going down again - whether or not Congress passes the investor tax cuts the lawmakers have been promising. On New Year's Day, two additional tax cuts will kick in, allowing people who earn upward of $200,000 a year to claim bigger write-offs for a spouse, their children and other expenses, like mortgage interest on a vacation home.
The bolstered write-offs were enacted in 2001, but with a delayed start date because of their high cost: according to Congressional estimates, the new breaks will cost $27 billion over the short term, exploding to $146 billion from 2010 through 2019. By then, most of the benefits would flow to taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year.
With the nation deep in debt, at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Congress voting last month to slash programs for health care and student loans, and with a debilitating shortfall building in Medicare - the decision by Congress to let these particular tax breaks take effect now is flabbergasting. But it is not out of character.
PUNISHING COMPASSION
A few years ago George W. Bush made a big deal about being a "compassionate conservative." That phrase in itself is an oxymoron. The very basis of conservatism is anti-compassion, bigotry, intolerance, and greed. Now some of the members of the "compassionate conservative" party want to pass legislation making it a crime to provide help to illegal immigrants. This would include people like nurses. This article by Rachel L. Swarns is at www.nytimes.com:
Churches, social service agencies and immigration groups across the country are rallying against a provision in the recently passed House border-security bill that would make it a federal crime to offer services or assistance to illegal immigrants.
The measure would broaden the nation's immigrant-smuggling law so that people who assist or shield illegal immigrants would be subject to prosecution. Offenders, who might include priests, nurses or social workers, could face up to five years in prison. The proposal would also allow the authorities to seize some assets of those convicted of such a crime.
FANNING THE FLAMES OF WAR
I've read that when the first Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War was taking place several members of Washington's high society went out to take a look. It was like an afternoon picnic to watch soldiers involved in combat. Death and maiming made for a great afternoon's entertainment until the Confederates started winning the battle and suddenly the elite spectators were themselves in danger. In Fresno we're "blessed" with the august Victor Davis Hanson, professor of classical studies, and intellectual guru of Bush's war in Iraq. . Hanson draws classical analogies from the travails and triumphs of the ancient Greeks and in a sort of copy and paste maneuver applies the "lessons" from that time to the present day. In this column James Wolcott looks at the changing rationales Hanson, the elite spectator, offers to justify the carnage in Iraq. The column is at http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/12/the_pericles_of.php:
A nation of Homer Simpsons lacks physical and moral sinew, laments Hanson, cracking a walnut with one hand.
"...our affluent society is at a complete disconnect with hard physical work and appreciation of how tenuous life was for 2,500 years of civilization. Those in our media circus who deliver our truth can't weld, fix a car, shoot a gun, or do much of anything other than run around looking for scoops about how incompetent things are done daily in Iraq under the most trying of circumstances. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that our technologies and wealth give us a pass on the old obstacles of time and space — as if Iraq 7,000 miles away is no more distant than Washington is from New York. Perhaps soldiers on patrol who go for 20 hours without sleep with 70 pounds on their back are merely like journalists pulling an all-nighter to file a story. Perhaps the next scandal will be the absence of high-definition television in Iraq — and who plotted to keep flat screens out of Baghdad."
He's really full of the ripest fertilizer. It may be true that the jugglers and acrobats in the "media circus" would useless trying to fix the septic tank, but why single them out as distinctive soft products of the information age? It's not as if those who support the Iraq war clank around with tool belts around their waists. How handy does Hanson think his colleagues at NRO are around the house and garage, and how much manual work does he imagine Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Reuel Marc Gerecht, and the editors of the Weekly Standard have done in their pampered existence? Find me the correlation between the ability to weld and the steely resolve to prosecute preemptive war--there isn't one. And I would note that conservatives reverence men and women who toil with their hands and technical knowhow, until of course they form a union and try to negotiate better working conditions and health benefits. Then they become blue-collar blackmailers who ought to consider themselves lucky their jobs haven't been outsourced--yet.
Friday, December 30, 2005
DECEMBER 30, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
TAKING THE LOW ROAD
For the past five years of the Bush administration average incomes in the United States have fallen every year. Bush has borrowed more foreign capital than all the previous presidents combined. We are not becoming more competitive in the much-hyped global economy; we're increasingly in debt and with an increasingly low-paid workforce. We're seeing the United States transformed into a Third World country. Holly Sklar takes a look in this article at www.commondreams.org:
"The vast majority of American workers (70 percent) think 'the American Dream' has been or will be harder for them to financially achieve than it was for their parents' generation," according to the Principal Financial Well-Being Index.
We are living the American Dream in reverse.
The hourly wages of average workers are 11 percent lower than they were back in 1973 (adjusted for inflation), despite rising worker productivity. CEO pay, by contrast, has skyrocketed -- up a median 30 percent in 2004 alone, in the Corporate Library survey of 2000 large companies.
Median household income has fallen an unprecedented five years in a row. It would be even lower if not for increased household work hours. Americans work over 200 hours more a year on average than workers in other rich industrialized countries.
THE NIXON MALIGNANCY
Until George W. Bush came along Richard M. Nixon was the most paranoid president in our history. Nixon compiled "enemies lists" and abused the powers of his office, justifying it in the name of national security. We have a history of paranoid Republicans who see enemies everywhere and want to destroy civil liberties. Senator Joseph McCarthy thought Communists were under every bush and it became customary to tar people and destroy their lives because they might or might not have some association with Communists. In this administration you're "with them or against them," either anti-terrorist or pro-terrorist, with no thought of protecting civil liberties and the right of dissent. It doesn't seem to occur to Bush and his cronies that you can be anti-terrorist and very much pro-civil liberties. Molly Ivins looks at the Nixon influence on the current administration at www.commondreams.org:
For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country.
The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.
The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be killed off, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old crap.
PORTRAIT OF BUSH
It's probably not sufficient to look at the hideous policies of George W. Bush. We need to look at the kind of person that he is. I've been baffled for some time at how some people can think Bush is a "Godly man" or that he has integrity. His entire life history contradicts that. This article by Tim Abbott is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In Iraq, he took us into an unnecessary war.
He uses fear, intimidation, distortion and lies. I cannot tell whether the man cannot tell the truth or he doesn't know the truth.
From these few examples of many, what kind of man is Bush? Is he like Washington or Lincoln? Or is he a man of another kind? Not a Cincinnatus, but a Tarquin.
When I think of Bush, I do not think of liberty and courage, compassion and justice. No, I think of arrogance, greed and lies. He is a thug, a buffoon and a coward. Not only is he incompetent, he is corrupt.
He is of a kind with the dictators; a strutting, sanctimonious buffoon who talks democracy but acts like Saddam Hussein. Bush might differ in degree from Hussein, not having been in power as long, but in behavior, with torture and the corruption of government, they are of a kind.
IMPEACH BUSH
TAKING THE LOW ROAD
For the past five years of the Bush administration average incomes in the United States have fallen every year. Bush has borrowed more foreign capital than all the previous presidents combined. We are not becoming more competitive in the much-hyped global economy; we're increasingly in debt and with an increasingly low-paid workforce. We're seeing the United States transformed into a Third World country. Holly Sklar takes a look in this article at www.commondreams.org:
"The vast majority of American workers (70 percent) think 'the American Dream' has been or will be harder for them to financially achieve than it was for their parents' generation," according to the Principal Financial Well-Being Index.
We are living the American Dream in reverse.
The hourly wages of average workers are 11 percent lower than they were back in 1973 (adjusted for inflation), despite rising worker productivity. CEO pay, by contrast, has skyrocketed -- up a median 30 percent in 2004 alone, in the Corporate Library survey of 2000 large companies.
Median household income has fallen an unprecedented five years in a row. It would be even lower if not for increased household work hours. Americans work over 200 hours more a year on average than workers in other rich industrialized countries.
THE NIXON MALIGNANCY
Until George W. Bush came along Richard M. Nixon was the most paranoid president in our history. Nixon compiled "enemies lists" and abused the powers of his office, justifying it in the name of national security. We have a history of paranoid Republicans who see enemies everywhere and want to destroy civil liberties. Senator Joseph McCarthy thought Communists were under every bush and it became customary to tar people and destroy their lives because they might or might not have some association with Communists. In this administration you're "with them or against them," either anti-terrorist or pro-terrorist, with no thought of protecting civil liberties and the right of dissent. It doesn't seem to occur to Bush and his cronies that you can be anti-terrorist and very much pro-civil liberties. Molly Ivins looks at the Nixon influence on the current administration at www.commondreams.org:
For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country.
The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.
The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be killed off, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old crap.
PORTRAIT OF BUSH
It's probably not sufficient to look at the hideous policies of George W. Bush. We need to look at the kind of person that he is. I've been baffled for some time at how some people can think Bush is a "Godly man" or that he has integrity. His entire life history contradicts that. This article by Tim Abbott is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
In Iraq, he took us into an unnecessary war.
He uses fear, intimidation, distortion and lies. I cannot tell whether the man cannot tell the truth or he doesn't know the truth.
From these few examples of many, what kind of man is Bush? Is he like Washington or Lincoln? Or is he a man of another kind? Not a Cincinnatus, but a Tarquin.
When I think of Bush, I do not think of liberty and courage, compassion and justice. No, I think of arrogance, greed and lies. He is a thug, a buffoon and a coward. Not only is he incompetent, he is corrupt.
He is of a kind with the dictators; a strutting, sanctimonious buffoon who talks democracy but acts like Saddam Hussein. Bush might differ in degree from Hussein, not having been in power as long, but in behavior, with torture and the corruption of government, they are of a kind.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
DECEMBER 29, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
WHINY RIGHT-WINGERS
The past several days I've seen some incredibly cowardly letters from local right-wingers published in The Fresno Bee. One letter that I mentioned a few days ago parroted Rush Limbaugh and said liberals don't like Bush's spying because we "have something to hide." Another letter that appeared on December 28 said eavesdropping wasn't as bad as bombs and went on to suggest that maybe the Constitution was out of date, being ratified in 1789 and all.
These people are letting the actions of nineteen criminals on September 11 and the fear-mongering of George W. Bush persuade them to throw civil liberties away. Without civil liberties what really separates the United States from totalitarian countries? If you want perfect security (well almost perfect except for the night-time rapes), go into a prison. Gene Lyons writes about the new contagion of cowardice we see among the "security at all costs" crowd in this column at www.nwanews.com:
My man Digby (digbysblog. blogspot. com ) may have put it best : "Suddenly the he-men of Wal-Mart and the NRA leaped into Big Brother's arms and shrieked 'save me, save me ! Do whatever you have to do, they're trying to kill us all !' They now look to Daddy Government... to check under the bed for them every night, reassure them that the boogeyman won't hurt them and then read them a nice bedtime story about spreading freedom and democracy. It turns out that underneath all this swaggering bravado, the Republicans aren't the Daddy party-they're the baby party." Constitution ? We don't need no stinkin' constitution. Our dear leader, George W. Bush-the same guy who went fishing after somebody read him a Daily Briefing titled "bin Laden Determined to Strike in U. S." -is the only guarantee we need to protect our freedoms. Just this morning, I had an e-mail from a Bush supporter who assured me that if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear. Thanks, comrade.
THE QUACKING OF A LAME DUCK
Second terms for U.S. presidents can often prove brutal. Richard M. Nixon was dethroned by the Watergate scandal in his second term. Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra dominate much of his second term. Bill Clinton had the Monica thing. Now George W. Bush is meeting the reality of being a lame duck and the bubbling scandals of a second term in just his first year. I don't know why people didn't see through this guy earlier, but the amalgamation of greed, incompetence, and lying is becoming a gathering storm. This article by Rupert Cornwell is at news.independent.co.uk:
Re-elected presidents almost always have a rough time (witness LBJ and Vietnam, Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal, not to mention Bill Clinton and a certain Monica Lewinsky). Rarely, though, has "second term-itis" struck so quickly and so fiercely. More than three years before he leaves the White House, President Bush is already something of a lame duck. Can the trend be reversed? The omens are not promising. Bush once preached his doctrine of "compassionate conservatism". But he has become a desperately polarising figure, of whom half the country will hear no good under any circumstances. One of his strongest selling points was managerial competence, but Katrina banished that illusion. Even more than previous presidents, he surrounds himself with courtiers and is almost never exposed to dissenting views. Presidents live in bubbles, but few are as sealed off from reality as much as George W Bush. "We make our own reality," once boasted an aide.
NO, NO, NO
A combination of smear and fear politics has helped the Republicans in control of the federal government push through much of their onerous agenda. But in 2005 we saw a change. Formerly timid Democrats and some principled Republicans are finally standing up against the Bush administration. The administration lost the battle to despoil the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the benefit of oil companies. They lost on getting their Constitution-destroying Patriot Act extended indefinitely. And "intelligent design" took a major hit with a court decision in Pennsylvania. Let's hope and work for some more major victories in 2006. This article by Froma Harrop is at seattletimes.nwsource.com:
The right-wing takeover of this sensible country has been stopped. With this pleasant thought, we enter 2006.
In one golden week, three things happened that bore a common thread. In each case, mainstream positions won out over the bluster of blowhards. People of principle stared down charges that they were unpatriotic, loved Osama or hated religion. The results were gratifying — not only to liberals, but to moderates and a good number of self-described conservatives, who have distanced themselves from their leaders' excesses.
For starters, the Senate said "no" to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. It has saved the refuge before, but this time the Republican oilmen turned the vote into a game of chicken. The drilling provision was first stuck to the budget bill. When lawmakers balked, it was unstuck and attached to the defense-spending bill. Once there, the gamesters figured they could smear anyone voting against it as uncaring about the troops.
IMPEACH BUSH
WHINY RIGHT-WINGERS
The past several days I've seen some incredibly cowardly letters from local right-wingers published in The Fresno Bee. One letter that I mentioned a few days ago parroted Rush Limbaugh and said liberals don't like Bush's spying because we "have something to hide." Another letter that appeared on December 28 said eavesdropping wasn't as bad as bombs and went on to suggest that maybe the Constitution was out of date, being ratified in 1789 and all.
These people are letting the actions of nineteen criminals on September 11 and the fear-mongering of George W. Bush persuade them to throw civil liberties away. Without civil liberties what really separates the United States from totalitarian countries? If you want perfect security (well almost perfect except for the night-time rapes), go into a prison. Gene Lyons writes about the new contagion of cowardice we see among the "security at all costs" crowd in this column at www.nwanews.com:
My man Digby (digbysblog. blogspot. com ) may have put it best : "Suddenly the he-men of Wal-Mart and the NRA leaped into Big Brother's arms and shrieked 'save me, save me ! Do whatever you have to do, they're trying to kill us all !' They now look to Daddy Government... to check under the bed for them every night, reassure them that the boogeyman won't hurt them and then read them a nice bedtime story about spreading freedom and democracy. It turns out that underneath all this swaggering bravado, the Republicans aren't the Daddy party-they're the baby party." Constitution ? We don't need no stinkin' constitution. Our dear leader, George W. Bush-the same guy who went fishing after somebody read him a Daily Briefing titled "bin Laden Determined to Strike in U. S." -is the only guarantee we need to protect our freedoms. Just this morning, I had an e-mail from a Bush supporter who assured me that if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear. Thanks, comrade.
THE QUACKING OF A LAME DUCK
Second terms for U.S. presidents can often prove brutal. Richard M. Nixon was dethroned by the Watergate scandal in his second term. Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra dominate much of his second term. Bill Clinton had the Monica thing. Now George W. Bush is meeting the reality of being a lame duck and the bubbling scandals of a second term in just his first year. I don't know why people didn't see through this guy earlier, but the amalgamation of greed, incompetence, and lying is becoming a gathering storm. This article by Rupert Cornwell is at news.independent.co.uk:
Re-elected presidents almost always have a rough time (witness LBJ and Vietnam, Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal, not to mention Bill Clinton and a certain Monica Lewinsky). Rarely, though, has "second term-itis" struck so quickly and so fiercely. More than three years before he leaves the White House, President Bush is already something of a lame duck. Can the trend be reversed? The omens are not promising. Bush once preached his doctrine of "compassionate conservatism". But he has become a desperately polarising figure, of whom half the country will hear no good under any circumstances. One of his strongest selling points was managerial competence, but Katrina banished that illusion. Even more than previous presidents, he surrounds himself with courtiers and is almost never exposed to dissenting views. Presidents live in bubbles, but few are as sealed off from reality as much as George W Bush. "We make our own reality," once boasted an aide.
NO, NO, NO
A combination of smear and fear politics has helped the Republicans in control of the federal government push through much of their onerous agenda. But in 2005 we saw a change. Formerly timid Democrats and some principled Republicans are finally standing up against the Bush administration. The administration lost the battle to despoil the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the benefit of oil companies. They lost on getting their Constitution-destroying Patriot Act extended indefinitely. And "intelligent design" took a major hit with a court decision in Pennsylvania. Let's hope and work for some more major victories in 2006. This article by Froma Harrop is at seattletimes.nwsource.com:
The right-wing takeover of this sensible country has been stopped. With this pleasant thought, we enter 2006.
In one golden week, three things happened that bore a common thread. In each case, mainstream positions won out over the bluster of blowhards. People of principle stared down charges that they were unpatriotic, loved Osama or hated religion. The results were gratifying — not only to liberals, but to moderates and a good number of self-described conservatives, who have distanced themselves from their leaders' excesses.
For starters, the Senate said "no" to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. It has saved the refuge before, but this time the Republican oilmen turned the vote into a game of chicken. The drilling provision was first stuck to the budget bill. When lawmakers balked, it was unstuck and attached to the defense-spending bill. Once there, the gamesters figured they could smear anyone voting against it as uncaring about the troops.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
DECEMBER 28, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
WHAT PRICE SAFETY?
Recently, a Republican politician suggested that giving up some civil liberties was worth it to get more security. I like Senator Russ Feingold's response, "Give me liberty or give me death." There is no such thing as 100% security, and totalitarianism in any form isn't acceptable. As Eugene Robinson points out in this column, there are countries that have vast amounts of security--such as Cuba. Crush dissent, throw any potential opponent into prison, watch everyone, spy on everyone, and sure you can have some security. But you also have no more freedom. This column is at http://www.washingtonpost.com:
If potential terrorists may be walking among us, why not have police officers stand on street corners all day and subject anyone who looks "suspicious" to questioning and a search? That's what Fidel Castro does in Cuba, and believe me, Cuba is an extremely safe country.
In Vietnam we destroyed villages in order to save them. In this war on terrorism, why not go ahead and destroy our freedoms in order to save them?
The reason we don't do these absurd things, of course, is that we see a line between the acceptable and the unacceptable. That bright line is the law, drawn by Congress and regularly surveyed by the judiciary. It can be shifted, but the president has no right to shift it on his own authority. His constitutional war powers give him wide latitude, but those powers are not unlimited.
THE CORPORATE PARTY
The Republican party has a history of supposedly representing small business, but the twenty-first century version of the party is corporate all the way. Republicans are willing to step all over the poor and the middle class to fulfill the interests of corporate lobbyists. They get handsomely rewarded by campaign contributions and other perks. Both major parties should be looking out for the interests of the majority of citizens in this country, not people who can ante up big bucks for campaign contributions. In this column E. J. Dionne looks at the corruption in the latest budget. The article is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/26/AR2005122600532.html
The Medicaid cuts include increased co-payments and premiums on low-income Americans, and the budget assumes savings because fewer poor people will visit the doctor. As Kevin Freking of the Associated Press reported: "The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all -- contributing to some of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next five years."
Ah, say their defenders, but these cuts will be good for poor people. According to the New York Times, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Tex.), an architect of the Medicaid proposals, said the higher co-payments were needed to "encourage personal responsibility" among low-income people. Spoken like a congressman who never has to worry about his taxpayer-provided health coverage.
And that is just one instance among many of corporate interests being shielded from cuts, while child support enforcement and foster care programs were sliced. Shortly before the bill went to the House floor, Republican leaders, at the insistence of a group of GOP lawmakers from Ohio, dropped a $1.9 billion cut that would have changed Medicare payments to oxygen equipment manufacturers. The main beneficiary of this change was Invacare Corp. of Elyria, Ohio.
REMAKING NATIONS AND CULTURES
George W. Bush has spoken of creating democracy in the Middle East, starting with Iraq. It's a little ironic since has been busily destroying democracy here at home. What he is saying, in essence, that he and the United States can impose a new political system in the Middle East, by force if necessary. But it's not working out quite the way Bush and his neocons planned. This article by Richard Drayton is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1674184,00.html
For the American imperial strategists invested deeply in the belief that through spreading terror they could take power. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the recently indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, learned from Leo Strauss that a strong and wise minority of humans had to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than persuasion or compromise. They read Le Bon and Freud on the relationship of crowds to authority. But most of all they loved Hobbes's Leviathan. While Hobbes saw authority as free men's chosen solution to the imperfections of anarchy, his 21st century heirs seek to create the fear that led to submission. And technology would make it possible and beautiful.
On the logo of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, the motto is Scientia est potentia - knowledge is power . The IAO promised "total information awareness", an all-seeing eye spilling out a death-ray gaze over Eurasia. Congressional pressure led the IAO to close, but technospeak, half-digested political theory and megalomania still riddle US thinking. Barnett, in The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action, calls for a "systems administrator" force to be dispatched with the military, to "process" conquered countries. The G8 and a few others are the "Kantian core", writes Barnett, warming over the former Blair adviser Robert Cooper's poisonous guff from 2002; their job is to export their economy and politics by force to the unlucky "Hobbesian gap". Imperialism is imagined as an industrial technique to remake societies and cultures, with technology giving sanction to those who intervene.
IMPEACH BUSH
WHAT PRICE SAFETY?
Recently, a Republican politician suggested that giving up some civil liberties was worth it to get more security. I like Senator Russ Feingold's response, "Give me liberty or give me death." There is no such thing as 100% security, and totalitarianism in any form isn't acceptable. As Eugene Robinson points out in this column, there are countries that have vast amounts of security--such as Cuba. Crush dissent, throw any potential opponent into prison, watch everyone, spy on everyone, and sure you can have some security. But you also have no more freedom. This column is at http://www.washingtonpost.com:
If potential terrorists may be walking among us, why not have police officers stand on street corners all day and subject anyone who looks "suspicious" to questioning and a search? That's what Fidel Castro does in Cuba, and believe me, Cuba is an extremely safe country.
In Vietnam we destroyed villages in order to save them. In this war on terrorism, why not go ahead and destroy our freedoms in order to save them?
The reason we don't do these absurd things, of course, is that we see a line between the acceptable and the unacceptable. That bright line is the law, drawn by Congress and regularly surveyed by the judiciary. It can be shifted, but the president has no right to shift it on his own authority. His constitutional war powers give him wide latitude, but those powers are not unlimited.
THE CORPORATE PARTY
The Republican party has a history of supposedly representing small business, but the twenty-first century version of the party is corporate all the way. Republicans are willing to step all over the poor and the middle class to fulfill the interests of corporate lobbyists. They get handsomely rewarded by campaign contributions and other perks. Both major parties should be looking out for the interests of the majority of citizens in this country, not people who can ante up big bucks for campaign contributions. In this column E. J. Dionne looks at the corruption in the latest budget. The article is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/26/AR2005122600532.html
The Medicaid cuts include increased co-payments and premiums on low-income Americans, and the budget assumes savings because fewer poor people will visit the doctor. As Kevin Freking of the Associated Press reported: "The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all -- contributing to some of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next five years."
Ah, say their defenders, but these cuts will be good for poor people. According to the New York Times, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Tex.), an architect of the Medicaid proposals, said the higher co-payments were needed to "encourage personal responsibility" among low-income people. Spoken like a congressman who never has to worry about his taxpayer-provided health coverage.
And that is just one instance among many of corporate interests being shielded from cuts, while child support enforcement and foster care programs were sliced. Shortly before the bill went to the House floor, Republican leaders, at the insistence of a group of GOP lawmakers from Ohio, dropped a $1.9 billion cut that would have changed Medicare payments to oxygen equipment manufacturers. The main beneficiary of this change was Invacare Corp. of Elyria, Ohio.
REMAKING NATIONS AND CULTURES
George W. Bush has spoken of creating democracy in the Middle East, starting with Iraq. It's a little ironic since has been busily destroying democracy here at home. What he is saying, in essence, that he and the United States can impose a new political system in the Middle East, by force if necessary. But it's not working out quite the way Bush and his neocons planned. This article by Richard Drayton is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1674184,00.html
For the American imperial strategists invested deeply in the belief that through spreading terror they could take power. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the recently indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, learned from Leo Strauss that a strong and wise minority of humans had to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than persuasion or compromise. They read Le Bon and Freud on the relationship of crowds to authority. But most of all they loved Hobbes's Leviathan. While Hobbes saw authority as free men's chosen solution to the imperfections of anarchy, his 21st century heirs seek to create the fear that led to submission. And technology would make it possible and beautiful.
On the logo of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, the motto is Scientia est potentia - knowledge is power . The IAO promised "total information awareness", an all-seeing eye spilling out a death-ray gaze over Eurasia. Congressional pressure led the IAO to close, but technospeak, half-digested political theory and megalomania still riddle US thinking. Barnett, in The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action, calls for a "systems administrator" force to be dispatched with the military, to "process" conquered countries. The G8 and a few others are the "Kantian core", writes Barnett, warming over the former Blair adviser Robert Cooper's poisonous guff from 2002; their job is to export their economy and politics by force to the unlucky "Hobbesian gap". Imperialism is imagined as an industrial technique to remake societies and cultures, with technology giving sanction to those who intervene.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
DECEMBER 27, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
America is a melting pot, the people at the bottom get burned while all the scum floats to the top.
- - - Charlie King
WOULD BUSH ARREST JESUS?
If you read the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount, you'd have to conclude he was truly a radical leader. Love your neighbor as yourself? If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other one to him also? Blessed are the poor? That's the real Jesus Christ, not the warrior king George W. Bush would have you believe. This commentary by Chris Floyd is at chris-floyd.com:
And what would happen today if a swarthy Middle Eastern man without wealth or political connections suddenly appeared in front of the White House proclaiming such a radical doctrine of mercy, forgiveness, charity, self-abnegation and love – love even for the "evildoers" who "want to destroy our way of life"? Would he be targeted by the lawless spy gangs that Bush has personally loosed upon the nation? Would he be condemned as a terrorist sympathizer and expelled from the country? Would he be seized and "rendered" to some secret CIA prison or Bush-friendly foreign torture chamber for "special interrogation"?
Or perhaps Woody Guthrie saw the truth years ago, as he sat in a cold boarding house in New York City, transfiguring an old folk song about an outlaw into a gospel for modern times: "If Jesus was to preach here like he preached in Galilee, they would lay Jesus Christ in his grave."
YEAR IN REVIEW
After Christmas is over it's standard for the media to take a look at the year in review. It has been a notable year. The Bush blitzkrieg appears to have finally been slowed. To wit: the incredible intrusiveness into the Schiavo case, which alienated many, the indictment of Tom DeLay, the suspicion surrounding Bill Frist around insider trading, the scandal swirling around Jack Abramoff, the ineffectual and corrupt handling of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the plan to privatize Social Security, the ongoing tragedy in Iraq, secret torture prisons operated by the CIA, and Bush's unconstitutional spying on Americans, there are almost too many Republican scandals to count. This article by Bob Burnett is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
As America staggers out of 2005, it's time to look back at what hit us. There were five major events: Bush deflation, Republican corruption, Iraq quicksand, American shame, and Mother Nature acts out.
"Oh yes, I'm the great pretender, pretending that I'm doing well." Shortly after being reelected in November 2004, George Bush bragged about his new political capital.
The President promised Republican donors that they would see new tax cuts and entitlement reductions. He promised to "reform" Social Security. One of the big stories of the year was the scuttling of Bush's ambitious agenda. Congressional Democrats united and the President's political capital evaporated. By the end of the year, congressional Republicans were abandoning battleship Bush. Separating from the Administration on torture, renewal of the Patriot Act, and his economic legislation. Dubya lost so much face that he was forced to do what previously had been unthinkable - admit making a mistake.
IMPEACH BUSH
America is a melting pot, the people at the bottom get burned while all the scum floats to the top.
- - - Charlie King
WOULD BUSH ARREST JESUS?
If you read the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount, you'd have to conclude he was truly a radical leader. Love your neighbor as yourself? If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other one to him also? Blessed are the poor? That's the real Jesus Christ, not the warrior king George W. Bush would have you believe. This commentary by Chris Floyd is at chris-floyd.com:
And what would happen today if a swarthy Middle Eastern man without wealth or political connections suddenly appeared in front of the White House proclaiming such a radical doctrine of mercy, forgiveness, charity, self-abnegation and love – love even for the "evildoers" who "want to destroy our way of life"? Would he be targeted by the lawless spy gangs that Bush has personally loosed upon the nation? Would he be condemned as a terrorist sympathizer and expelled from the country? Would he be seized and "rendered" to some secret CIA prison or Bush-friendly foreign torture chamber for "special interrogation"?
Or perhaps Woody Guthrie saw the truth years ago, as he sat in a cold boarding house in New York City, transfiguring an old folk song about an outlaw into a gospel for modern times: "If Jesus was to preach here like he preached in Galilee, they would lay Jesus Christ in his grave."
YEAR IN REVIEW
After Christmas is over it's standard for the media to take a look at the year in review. It has been a notable year. The Bush blitzkrieg appears to have finally been slowed. To wit: the incredible intrusiveness into the Schiavo case, which alienated many, the indictment of Tom DeLay, the suspicion surrounding Bill Frist around insider trading, the scandal swirling around Jack Abramoff, the ineffectual and corrupt handling of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the plan to privatize Social Security, the ongoing tragedy in Iraq, secret torture prisons operated by the CIA, and Bush's unconstitutional spying on Americans, there are almost too many Republican scandals to count. This article by Bob Burnett is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
As America staggers out of 2005, it's time to look back at what hit us. There were five major events: Bush deflation, Republican corruption, Iraq quicksand, American shame, and Mother Nature acts out.
"Oh yes, I'm the great pretender, pretending that I'm doing well." Shortly after being reelected in November 2004, George Bush bragged about his new political capital.
The President promised Republican donors that they would see new tax cuts and entitlement reductions. He promised to "reform" Social Security. One of the big stories of the year was the scuttling of Bush's ambitious agenda. Congressional Democrats united and the President's political capital evaporated. By the end of the year, congressional Republicans were abandoning battleship Bush. Separating from the Administration on torture, renewal of the Patriot Act, and his economic legislation. Dubya lost so much face that he was forced to do what previously had been unthinkable - admit making a mistake.
Monday, December 26, 2005
DECEMBER 26, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
BUSH'S PRESS MANIPULATION
The Bush administration has demonstrated a pattern of dishonesty, lying, bullying, and manipulation in dealing with the press. The press in the United States has been largely the puppy dog variety anyway, but occasionally there's a reporter who tries to publish the truth. That's when the Bush administration springs into action, citing "national security" or other concerns to cover up unfavorable stories. Then there's always money. We know that the administration has paid "journalists" such as Armstrong Williams to promote its policies. We know that the administration also planted stories in Iraqi papers. This article by Howard Kurtz is at www.washingtonpost.com:
President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.
The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics.
BUSH THE POWER ADDICT
The original Star Trek series had an episode called "The Ultimate Computer." It was a computer that could think like a human, but with the vastly faster speeds of a computer. But the computer had its paranoid delusions. At one point it reached out to tap some more power and vaporized a crewman. Its creator said the man "simply got in the way." That's a lot like George W. Bush. In his quest for more and more power people simply get in the way. The Constitution gets in the way. The Bill of Rights is a major impediment. Bush has the delusion that HE is the United States. In his world what is good for George W. Bush justifies anything. This article by Steve Chapman is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration's secret eavesdropping program is justified because "I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it."
But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.
IMPEACH BUSH
BUSH'S PRESS MANIPULATION
The Bush administration has demonstrated a pattern of dishonesty, lying, bullying, and manipulation in dealing with the press. The press in the United States has been largely the puppy dog variety anyway, but occasionally there's a reporter who tries to publish the truth. That's when the Bush administration springs into action, citing "national security" or other concerns to cover up unfavorable stories. Then there's always money. We know that the administration has paid "journalists" such as Armstrong Williams to promote its policies. We know that the administration also planted stories in Iraqi papers. This article by Howard Kurtz is at www.washingtonpost.com:
President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.
The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics.
BUSH THE POWER ADDICT
The original Star Trek series had an episode called "The Ultimate Computer." It was a computer that could think like a human, but with the vastly faster speeds of a computer. But the computer had its paranoid delusions. At one point it reached out to tap some more power and vaporized a crewman. Its creator said the man "simply got in the way." That's a lot like George W. Bush. In his quest for more and more power people simply get in the way. The Constitution gets in the way. The Bill of Rights is a major impediment. Bush has the delusion that HE is the United States. In his world what is good for George W. Bush justifies anything. This article by Steve Chapman is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:
His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration's secret eavesdropping program is justified because "I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it."
But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
DECEMBER 25, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
CEO ROBBER BARONS
Garrett Morris used to portray a character on "Saturday Night Live" who was a former baseball player turned commentator. He would comment, "Baseball has been very good to me." CEOs at America's largest companies can certainly say things are going just great for them. As the living standards for most of us are declining, CEOs get compensation packages in the tens of millions of dollars. You have to wonder why some people, whose value to society is minimal, get paid so handsomely and other people who contribute far more get scraps. This article by David Lazarus is at sfgate.com:
CEO pay continues to soar, wildly outpacing the salaries of rank-and-file workers. That probably won't stop anytime soon, but legislation in Congress might at least make companies more accountable for fat compensation packages lavished on the boss.
The Protection Against Executive Compensation Abuse Act -- HR 4291 -- would require companies to spell out clearly what their top execs are making (including pensions, golden parachutes and other perks). Such disclosure would have to be made in an annual report to shareholders.
The report also would have to include all "short- and long-term performance measures" that will be used to determine future CEO pay. Shareholders would be able to reject any performance measures deemed inappropriate or inadequate.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
DECEMBER 24, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
NEW HOME SALES PLUNGE
George W. Bush once said that terrorists hate us because we can buy homes. Well, not anymore. The sales of new homes dipped to its lowest level in twelve years, which signals that the "strong" Bush economy is a sham. This article by MARTIN CRUTSINGER is at news.yahoo.com
Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, the most dramatic evidence yet that the booming housing market is starting to cool off.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that sales of new single-family homes fell by 11.3 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units.
Analysts had been expecting a drop of around 8.7 percent given that sales in October had jumped unexpectedly to an all-time high. But many said the size of the decline was a clear indication that the five-year boom in housing has peaked.
KING GEORGE
If you go back and read the magnificent Declaration of Independence, written mostly by Thomas Jefferson, you'll see a list of the offenses of British King George III. Jefferson was building a case for why the British colonies should declare their independence from Britain. If we did a similar list today, we can build a case for declaring our independence from the tyrannical rule of George W. Bush. Fortunately, our Founders gave us a legal and peaceful mechanism called impeachment to remove criminals and tyrants from power. This article by Stephen Crockett is at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_stephen__051223_impeach_the_liar_in_.htm
Bush falsely stated that wiretaps under his government were only being conducted under authorization of the federal courts. This was false. Bush violated the law by not getting court authorization for his wiretapping of American citizens. This has not been done since the government of Richard Nixon. Nixon was driven from office based in large part because of this behavior. Bush broke the law passed in the aftermath of Watergate to prevent this kind of governmental abuse of power. Carter and Clinton permitted wiretaps of a handful of foreigners who were agents of foreign governments. Bush wiretapped thousands of American citizens without proven connections to terrorism.
Bush and Cheney has repeatedly lied to the American taxpayers over the impact of their program of excessive tax breaks to the Super Wealthy who have financed their political machine. During the 2000 Presidential Election, they promised tax breaks for the wealthy only because our government was in surplus because of the wise management of President Clinton. They stated that they would not support tax cuts if the government budget was in deficit. This was false. They promised a balanced budget but gave use the largest budget deficits in history. They have spent money in the most reckless manner of any American government in history with huge amounts going to their political supporters with much accountability or plan to pay the bills.
I KNOW: LET THE POOR FREEZE
Congressional Republicans, apparently miffed they can't pillage ANWR, have cut two billion dollars in emergency heating money for the poor. The cut will mean poor people in the coldest areas of the country will have to make choices about whether to buy food or cut back to afford heat. I need to go to my thesaurus to find all the synonyms for "despicable" or "vile" or "hateful" to describe Republicans. This item comes from the Center and Policy Priorities at http://www.cbpp.org/12-22-05bud-pr.htm
Forced to drop a controversial provision authorizing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from the defense appropriations bill, Senate leaders also stripped from the bill a provision adding $2 billion in badly needed energy assistance funding this winter for low-income households. This development, which early media accounts have misreported, was not necessitated by the removal of the ANWR provision and will result in greater hardship for large numbers of low-income Americans this winter, a new Center analysis explains.
Studies demonstrate that poor families that face high heating costs in winter months and do not receive adequate assistance often cut back on expenditures for food and other necessities, and that adverse effects on children can result.
IMPEACH BUSH
NEW HOME SALES PLUNGE
George W. Bush once said that terrorists hate us because we can buy homes. Well, not anymore. The sales of new homes dipped to its lowest level in twelve years, which signals that the "strong" Bush economy is a sham. This article by MARTIN CRUTSINGER is at news.yahoo.com
Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, the most dramatic evidence yet that the booming housing market is starting to cool off.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that sales of new single-family homes fell by 11.3 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units.
Analysts had been expecting a drop of around 8.7 percent given that sales in October had jumped unexpectedly to an all-time high. But many said the size of the decline was a clear indication that the five-year boom in housing has peaked.
KING GEORGE
If you go back and read the magnificent Declaration of Independence, written mostly by Thomas Jefferson, you'll see a list of the offenses of British King George III. Jefferson was building a case for why the British colonies should declare their independence from Britain. If we did a similar list today, we can build a case for declaring our independence from the tyrannical rule of George W. Bush. Fortunately, our Founders gave us a legal and peaceful mechanism called impeachment to remove criminals and tyrants from power. This article by Stephen Crockett is at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_stephen__051223_impeach_the_liar_in_.htm
Bush falsely stated that wiretaps under his government were only being conducted under authorization of the federal courts. This was false. Bush violated the law by not getting court authorization for his wiretapping of American citizens. This has not been done since the government of Richard Nixon. Nixon was driven from office based in large part because of this behavior. Bush broke the law passed in the aftermath of Watergate to prevent this kind of governmental abuse of power. Carter and Clinton permitted wiretaps of a handful of foreigners who were agents of foreign governments. Bush wiretapped thousands of American citizens without proven connections to terrorism.
Bush and Cheney has repeatedly lied to the American taxpayers over the impact of their program of excessive tax breaks to the Super Wealthy who have financed their political machine. During the 2000 Presidential Election, they promised tax breaks for the wealthy only because our government was in surplus because of the wise management of President Clinton. They stated that they would not support tax cuts if the government budget was in deficit. This was false. They promised a balanced budget but gave use the largest budget deficits in history. They have spent money in the most reckless manner of any American government in history with huge amounts going to their political supporters with much accountability or plan to pay the bills.
I KNOW: LET THE POOR FREEZE
Congressional Republicans, apparently miffed they can't pillage ANWR, have cut two billion dollars in emergency heating money for the poor. The cut will mean poor people in the coldest areas of the country will have to make choices about whether to buy food or cut back to afford heat. I need to go to my thesaurus to find all the synonyms for "despicable" or "vile" or "hateful" to describe Republicans. This item comes from the Center and Policy Priorities at http://www.cbpp.org/12-22-05bud-pr.htm
Forced to drop a controversial provision authorizing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from the defense appropriations bill, Senate leaders also stripped from the bill a provision adding $2 billion in badly needed energy assistance funding this winter for low-income households. This development, which early media accounts have misreported, was not necessitated by the removal of the ANWR provision and will result in greater hardship for large numbers of low-income Americans this winter, a new Center analysis explains.
Studies demonstrate that poor families that face high heating costs in winter months and do not receive adequate assistance often cut back on expenditures for food and other necessities, and that adverse effects on children can result.
Friday, December 23, 2005
DECEMBER 23, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
THE OUT OF WHACK ECONOMY
Once upon a time when there was rising productivity the productivity would be matched by a rise in wages. That's not true in Bush world. Even though productivity has been on the rise, wages have been stagnant or are falling. More people are living in poverty. But the priorities of Bush and the Republicans is to give tax cuts to the already obscenely rich. This item comes from www.epi.org/content.cfm/pm110
1. Profits are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.
* Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity—the growth of the economic pie—is up by 13.5%.
* Wage growth has been shortchanged because 35% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 22% in previous periods.
* Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.
2. More and more people are deeper and deeper in debt.
* The indebtedness of U.S. households, after adjusting for inflation, has risen 35.7% over the last four years.
* The level of debt as a percent of after-tax income is the highest ever measured in our history. Mortgage and consumer debt is now 115% of after-tax income, twice the level of 30 years ago.
BUSH SPYING ANOTHER VIETNAM PARALLEL
It sounds almost like a cliche to compare George W. Bush to Richard M. Nixon or the situation in Iraq to what we faced in Vietnam in the 1960s. But the parallels are almost scary sometimes. Bush is at least as paranoid as Nixon, but less intelligent and less skilled. Iraq was a sovereign nation and Vietnam was divided into two sections and more or less in a civil war. We deployed a massive number of troops to Vietnam for vague reasons and no clear objective. We deployed thousands of troops to Iraq based on a lie, and with no exit strategy. The federal government in the Vietnam era spied on anti-war groups and dissidents in the name of "being at war" and we're seeing the same abuses and more by the Bush administration because "we're at war." Former Senator Gary Hart writes about it in this article at http://www.alternet.org/story/29990/
Today, one has only to consider the behavior of the Bush administration during the Iraq war to appreciate how soon we forget, how little we learn and how pervasive is the tendency to violate civil and constitutional liberties in the name of war. Virtually all of the reforms recommended by the Church Committee -- many of which were passed into law -- have been evaded, ignored or violated in the name of the "war on terrorism."
It is often said that the first victim of war is the truth. In fact, the first victim of American war is the liberty of Americans.
During our investigations of intelligence abuse, we discovered that the government had engaged in widespread surveillance of a very large number of American citizens. Civil rights leaders were monitored. Antiwar groups were under surveillance. Domestic phones were tapped. Mail was opened. The FBI conducted warrantless "black bag" break-ins of private residences and offices. We wrote an entire report on warrantless electronic surveillance by the FBI -- exactly what the NSA has now been authorized to do by the president.
BUSH'S CANCEROUS PRESIDENCY
John Dean once told Richard Nixon that a "cancer was growing on the presidency" in the midst of the Watergate scandal. George W. Bush's presidency is a cancer growing on the country. Cancer is a disease that destroys from within, and that is what Bush has been doing to the Constitution since he stole his way into the White House in 2000. In this article John Atcheson looks at "snoopgate." The article is at www.commondreams.org/views05/1222-32.htm
It is not hyperbole to say that our 230 year experiment in democracy is now threatened more than at any time in our history save one. We have proved that our democracy can withstand assaults from without, now the test is whether it can survive the cancerous erosion of freedoms from within. We have witnessed under this administration, a continued and concerted attempt to manipulate, deceive, bully, intimidate and cajole the people and the press to bend them to its will, rather than to hear and execute the will of the people.
For more than two centuries, the press has fulfilled the role envisioned by our founders – giving citizens the information they needed to hold our leaders accountable, to guard against the insidious and perhaps inevitable grasp for power by those in positions of authority. But for nearly six years now, the press has ceased functioning as a profession with ethics and started operating as a business with nothing more than a bottom line. The result has been he-said, she-said reporting in which facts, truth, and reality have taken a back seat to "balance" and "fairness." Inevitably, propaganda has supplanted truth; deception has replaced discourse; and now, expedience has replaced liberty.
IMPEACH BUSH
THE OUT OF WHACK ECONOMY
Once upon a time when there was rising productivity the productivity would be matched by a rise in wages. That's not true in Bush world. Even though productivity has been on the rise, wages have been stagnant or are falling. More people are living in poverty. But the priorities of Bush and the Republicans is to give tax cuts to the already obscenely rich. This item comes from www.epi.org/content.cfm/pm110
1. Profits are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.
* Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity—the growth of the economic pie—is up by 13.5%.
* Wage growth has been shortchanged because 35% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 22% in previous periods.
* Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.
2. More and more people are deeper and deeper in debt.
* The indebtedness of U.S. households, after adjusting for inflation, has risen 35.7% over the last four years.
* The level of debt as a percent of after-tax income is the highest ever measured in our history. Mortgage and consumer debt is now 115% of after-tax income, twice the level of 30 years ago.
BUSH SPYING ANOTHER VIETNAM PARALLEL
It sounds almost like a cliche to compare George W. Bush to Richard M. Nixon or the situation in Iraq to what we faced in Vietnam in the 1960s. But the parallels are almost scary sometimes. Bush is at least as paranoid as Nixon, but less intelligent and less skilled. Iraq was a sovereign nation and Vietnam was divided into two sections and more or less in a civil war. We deployed a massive number of troops to Vietnam for vague reasons and no clear objective. We deployed thousands of troops to Iraq based on a lie, and with no exit strategy. The federal government in the Vietnam era spied on anti-war groups and dissidents in the name of "being at war" and we're seeing the same abuses and more by the Bush administration because "we're at war." Former Senator Gary Hart writes about it in this article at http://www.alternet.org/story/29990/
Today, one has only to consider the behavior of the Bush administration during the Iraq war to appreciate how soon we forget, how little we learn and how pervasive is the tendency to violate civil and constitutional liberties in the name of war. Virtually all of the reforms recommended by the Church Committee -- many of which were passed into law -- have been evaded, ignored or violated in the name of the "war on terrorism."
It is often said that the first victim of war is the truth. In fact, the first victim of American war is the liberty of Americans.
During our investigations of intelligence abuse, we discovered that the government had engaged in widespread surveillance of a very large number of American citizens. Civil rights leaders were monitored. Antiwar groups were under surveillance. Domestic phones were tapped. Mail was opened. The FBI conducted warrantless "black bag" break-ins of private residences and offices. We wrote an entire report on warrantless electronic surveillance by the FBI -- exactly what the NSA has now been authorized to do by the president.
BUSH'S CANCEROUS PRESIDENCY
John Dean once told Richard Nixon that a "cancer was growing on the presidency" in the midst of the Watergate scandal. George W. Bush's presidency is a cancer growing on the country. Cancer is a disease that destroys from within, and that is what Bush has been doing to the Constitution since he stole his way into the White House in 2000. In this article John Atcheson looks at "snoopgate." The article is at www.commondreams.org/views05/1222-32.htm
It is not hyperbole to say that our 230 year experiment in democracy is now threatened more than at any time in our history save one. We have proved that our democracy can withstand assaults from without, now the test is whether it can survive the cancerous erosion of freedoms from within. We have witnessed under this administration, a continued and concerted attempt to manipulate, deceive, bully, intimidate and cajole the people and the press to bend them to its will, rather than to hear and execute the will of the people.
For more than two centuries, the press has fulfilled the role envisioned by our founders – giving citizens the information they needed to hold our leaders accountable, to guard against the insidious and perhaps inevitable grasp for power by those in positions of authority. But for nearly six years now, the press has ceased functioning as a profession with ethics and started operating as a business with nothing more than a bottom line. The result has been he-said, she-said reporting in which facts, truth, and reality have taken a back seat to "balance" and "fairness." Inevitably, propaganda has supplanted truth; deception has replaced discourse; and now, expedience has replaced liberty.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
DECEMBER 22, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
ENEMIES OF THE CONSTITUTION
For years I've heard right-wingers proclaim themselves "strict constructionists" on the Constitution. I wonder, then, how they can justify George W. Bush's egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures when Mr. Bush spied on Americans. We have extreme right-winger Max Boot writing in The Los Angeles Times that people upset about the Valerie Plame leak aren't consistent in not being outraged about the leak concerning Bush's violation of the Constitution. First, the Valerie Plame leak was strictly about political revenge. It was breaking the law. It compromised U.S. intelligence. It undoubtedly got people killed.
The leak of Bush's lawbreaking is what we might call whistle-blowing. If you have someone in power threatening the Constitution, it's patriotic to leak that information. Bush's unique combination of greed, arrogance, and contempt for civil liberties has put us into a very dangerous place. This article by Gene Lyons is at http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=24111&mode=nested&order=0
Anybody who rationalizes George W. Bush's illegal use of secret, warrantless wiretaps against American citizens is no friend of democracy. They may call themselves "conservatives." But they might with equal accuracy dub themselves Martians or Zoroastrians. In reality, they are ideologues who place party over country, enemies of the Constitution and its freedoms.
There's evidently no outrage they won't rationalize so long as a Republican's doing it. For reasons best left to historians, the Republican right has made itself captive to a brand of callow authoritarianism that's found its hero in this swaggering mediocrity who appears invariably to draw the wrong lessons from what few scraps of history he knows. The last time no-warrant, presidentially authorized wiretaps came before the Supreme Court was 1972, courtesy of President Richard M. Nixon, who used the FBI to spy on political foes and famously decreed that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal."
THOU SHALT NOT LIE
Religious conservatives, who want the Ten Commandments posted everywhere, should be aware of the commandment that says, "Thou shalt not lie." You have to wonder why they're lying so effusively about the "war on Christmas." Fox News commentator John Gibson, for example, has an entire book about the alleged "war on Christmas." Americans United for Separation of Church and State did an investigation and found out the "war on Christmas" is so much smoke blowing in the wind. This item comes from http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=pr&page=NewsArticle&id=7719&JServSessionIdr005=9sry03e7d1.app7b
“This isn’t a war on Christmas it’s not even a skirmish,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “When the facts are exposed, the Religious Right’s ‘war on Christmas’ melts faster than a snowman on an 80-degree day.”
Among the incidents debunked by Americans United is a tale frequently told by Fox News Channel commentator John Gibson. In Gibson’s new book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought, he asserts that the public schools in Plano, Texas, have banned students from wearing green and red clothes. The story has been reported uncritically in other media outlets and hyped by Bill O’Reilly but it is apparently untrue.
A spokeswoman for the Plano schools told Americans United that the district has no such policy and expressed frustration that the story continues to circulate. The Plano schools have posted an item on its website denying the rumor. A similar claim about public schools in Saginaw Township, Mich., is also false.
ABRAMOFF READY TO SING?
Super lobbyist Jack Abramoff, friend of Tom DeLay, and sugar daddy to so many Republicans in Congress may be ready to cop a deal. Some interesting people, such as Michael Scanlon, a former aide to Tom DeLay, and David Safavian, White House procurement officer, have ties to Abramoff. Lots of Republican Congressmen have taken donations from Abramoff. It makes you almost want to sing, "On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me a series of indictments against Republicans." It doesn't rhyme, but it sounds good just the same. This item comes from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=acmbNn2_QjLQ
Jack Abramoff, a Republican lobbyist at the center of a U.S. Justice Department-led investigation, may plead guilty in a Florida wire-fraud case as early as next week, a person close to the case said.
A plea a may help federal prosecutors build cases against lawmakers and their staffs in both the Florida investigation and in a related probe of Abramoff's lobbying activity in Washington.
Abramoff's former business partner, Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to bribe members of Congress and their staffs, including Representative Robert Ney, an Ohio Republican.
Another Abramoff associate, Adam Kidan, pleaded guilty last week to wire fraud in the Florida case. Abramoff and Kidan were indicted in August in connection with a $147.5 million purchase of a casino boat company.
THE GREAT DIVIDE
A series of Bush scandals involving intelligence and spying is showing a great divide in the United States. There are those of us who believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Then there are those who think we should toss the Bill of Rights overboard because it will make us more "secure." Today's Fresno Bee features a typically sneering, hysterical, hateful letter from a right-winger who pooh-poohs the very idea of privacy. What have liberals got to hide, she asks. I wonder what the Founding Fathers, who wrote the Fourth Amendment, had to hide. If conservatives are so blase about privacy, I suggest they post all their private information on the Internet for the world to see. Maybe they should go Big Brother and put webcams in their homes so we can watch them scurry about 24/7. You can read this asinine letter at http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/lets_ed/story/11618204p-12348799c.html
I don't mind if someone listens in on my conversations in order to protect me or my family. The liberal, however, clings tightly to his sordid privacy because he has much to hide. He doesn't understand that his present demand for "privacy" will be the undoing of his civil liberties in the days ahead.
IMPEACH BUSH
ENEMIES OF THE CONSTITUTION
For years I've heard right-wingers proclaim themselves "strict constructionists" on the Constitution. I wonder, then, how they can justify George W. Bush's egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures when Mr. Bush spied on Americans. We have extreme right-winger Max Boot writing in The Los Angeles Times that people upset about the Valerie Plame leak aren't consistent in not being outraged about the leak concerning Bush's violation of the Constitution. First, the Valerie Plame leak was strictly about political revenge. It was breaking the law. It compromised U.S. intelligence. It undoubtedly got people killed.
The leak of Bush's lawbreaking is what we might call whistle-blowing. If you have someone in power threatening the Constitution, it's patriotic to leak that information. Bush's unique combination of greed, arrogance, and contempt for civil liberties has put us into a very dangerous place. This article by Gene Lyons is at http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=24111&mode=nested&order=0
Anybody who rationalizes George W. Bush's illegal use of secret, warrantless wiretaps against American citizens is no friend of democracy. They may call themselves "conservatives." But they might with equal accuracy dub themselves Martians or Zoroastrians. In reality, they are ideologues who place party over country, enemies of the Constitution and its freedoms.
There's evidently no outrage they won't rationalize so long as a Republican's doing it. For reasons best left to historians, the Republican right has made itself captive to a brand of callow authoritarianism that's found its hero in this swaggering mediocrity who appears invariably to draw the wrong lessons from what few scraps of history he knows. The last time no-warrant, presidentially authorized wiretaps came before the Supreme Court was 1972, courtesy of President Richard M. Nixon, who used the FBI to spy on political foes and famously decreed that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal."
THOU SHALT NOT LIE
Religious conservatives, who want the Ten Commandments posted everywhere, should be aware of the commandment that says, "Thou shalt not lie." You have to wonder why they're lying so effusively about the "war on Christmas." Fox News commentator John Gibson, for example, has an entire book about the alleged "war on Christmas." Americans United for Separation of Church and State did an investigation and found out the "war on Christmas" is so much smoke blowing in the wind. This item comes from http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=pr&page=NewsArticle&id=7719&JServSessionIdr005=9sry03e7d1.app7b
“This isn’t a war on Christmas it’s not even a skirmish,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “When the facts are exposed, the Religious Right’s ‘war on Christmas’ melts faster than a snowman on an 80-degree day.”
Among the incidents debunked by Americans United is a tale frequently told by Fox News Channel commentator John Gibson. In Gibson’s new book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought, he asserts that the public schools in Plano, Texas, have banned students from wearing green and red clothes. The story has been reported uncritically in other media outlets and hyped by Bill O’Reilly but it is apparently untrue.
A spokeswoman for the Plano schools told Americans United that the district has no such policy and expressed frustration that the story continues to circulate. The Plano schools have posted an item on its website denying the rumor. A similar claim about public schools in Saginaw Township, Mich., is also false.
ABRAMOFF READY TO SING?
Super lobbyist Jack Abramoff, friend of Tom DeLay, and sugar daddy to so many Republicans in Congress may be ready to cop a deal. Some interesting people, such as Michael Scanlon, a former aide to Tom DeLay, and David Safavian, White House procurement officer, have ties to Abramoff. Lots of Republican Congressmen have taken donations from Abramoff. It makes you almost want to sing, "On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me a series of indictments against Republicans." It doesn't rhyme, but it sounds good just the same. This item comes from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=acmbNn2_QjLQ
Jack Abramoff, a Republican lobbyist at the center of a U.S. Justice Department-led investigation, may plead guilty in a Florida wire-fraud case as early as next week, a person close to the case said.
A plea a may help federal prosecutors build cases against lawmakers and their staffs in both the Florida investigation and in a related probe of Abramoff's lobbying activity in Washington.
Abramoff's former business partner, Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to bribe members of Congress and their staffs, including Representative Robert Ney, an Ohio Republican.
Another Abramoff associate, Adam Kidan, pleaded guilty last week to wire fraud in the Florida case. Abramoff and Kidan were indicted in August in connection with a $147.5 million purchase of a casino boat company.
THE GREAT DIVIDE
A series of Bush scandals involving intelligence and spying is showing a great divide in the United States. There are those of us who believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Then there are those who think we should toss the Bill of Rights overboard because it will make us more "secure." Today's Fresno Bee features a typically sneering, hysterical, hateful letter from a right-winger who pooh-poohs the very idea of privacy. What have liberals got to hide, she asks. I wonder what the Founding Fathers, who wrote the Fourth Amendment, had to hide. If conservatives are so blase about privacy, I suggest they post all their private information on the Internet for the world to see. Maybe they should go Big Brother and put webcams in their homes so we can watch them scurry about 24/7. You can read this asinine letter at http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/lets_ed/story/11618204p-12348799c.html
I don't mind if someone listens in on my conversations in order to protect me or my family. The liberal, however, clings tightly to his sordid privacy because he has much to hide. He doesn't understand that his present demand for "privacy" will be the undoing of his civil liberties in the days ahead.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
DECEMBER 21, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
IRVING BERLIN AND CHRISTMAS
With all the foaming mouth conservatives screaming about the mythical "attack on Christmas" this is an interesting article about composer Irving Berlin. Berlin wrote the holiday classic "White Christmas," and as this article points out, his nonsectarian view of Christmas has predominated over the past sixty years. The article by Harold Meyerson is at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001011.html
Berlin kept Christmas in the public square and, more than anyone before or since, sent it out over the public airwaves. But it was an American, not a Christian, Christmas. And by the crass index of number of recordings sold, and the not-so-crass index of number of spirits touched, Berlin's nonsectarian holiday has been the predominant version of Christmas in this country for the past 60 years.
Now the Fox News demagogues want to impose a more sectarian Christmas on us, supplanting the distinctly American holiday we have celebrated lo these threescore years with a holiday that divides us along religious lines. Bill O'Reilly can blaspheme all he wants, but like millions of my countrymen, I take attacks on Irving Berlin's America personally. If O'Reilly doesn't like it here, why doesn't he go back to where he came from?
BANKRUPTCY LAW MAY BE BACKFIRING
There is no industry more loathsome than the credit card industry. Defense contractors may be as bad, but they're not worse. The credit card industry has used high-paid lobbyists and compliant members of Congress and regulatory agencies to push through one onerous provision after another. They can jack up interest rates if the wind blows the wrong way, hit you with punitive late charges for being a single day late, and they made bankruptcy almost impossible, no matter the circumstances. According to this column, that may be backfiring on them now. The article by Liz Pulliam Weston is at moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/bankruptcyguide/P135860.asp
Credit card issuers and other lenders spent a small fortune to get bankruptcy reform legislation passed. Now the new law is costing them even more.
An unprecedented spike in filings before reform took effect in fall 2005 is chewing into lenders' bottom lines, and the subsequent lull is showing signs of being short-lived. Bankruptcy attorneys say their caseloads are starting to pick up, and credit counseling agencies -- which provide now-mandatory sessions for consumers who want to file -- say they're seeing significantly more people than they initially predicted.
BAD TO THE BONE
When you read the history of the Bush family you have to wonder if there has ever been a decent member of the Bush-Walker clan. These people have been multigenerational bloodsuckers. Prescott Bush, grandfather of the faux president, was a financier of Adolf Hitler. George H. W. Bush had absolutely no principles to stop him from becoming Ronald Reagan's vice president or in lying about Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign. The current president is probably the worst of them all. That's not even considering the brothers and other spawn of this family. This article by Howell Raines is at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1221-28.htm
At this point, the policy legacy of George Bush seems pretty well defined by three disparate disasters: Iraq in foreign affairs, Katrina in social welfare, corporate influence over tax, budget and regulatory decisions. As a short-term political consequence, we may avoid another dim-witted Bush in the White House. But what the Bush dynasty has done to presidential campaign science — the protocols by which Americans elect presidents in the modern era — amounts to a political legacy that can haunt the Republic for years to come.
We are now enduring the third generation of Bushes who have taken the playbook of the "ruthless" Kennedys and amplified it into a consistent code of amorality in both campaign tactics and governance. In their campaigns, the Kennedys used money, image-manipulation, old-boy networks and, when necessary, personal attacks on worthy adversaries such as Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey. But there was also a solid foundation of knowledge and purpose undergirding John Kennedy's sophisticated internationalism, his Medicare initiative, his late-blooming devotion to racial justice, and Robert Kennedy's opposition to corporate and union gangsterism. Like Truman, Roosevelt and, yes, even Lincoln, two generations of Kennedys believed that a certain amount of political chicanery was tolerable in the service of altruism.
IMPEACH BUSH
IRVING BERLIN AND CHRISTMAS
With all the foaming mouth conservatives screaming about the mythical "attack on Christmas" this is an interesting article about composer Irving Berlin. Berlin wrote the holiday classic "White Christmas," and as this article points out, his nonsectarian view of Christmas has predominated over the past sixty years. The article by Harold Meyerson is at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001011.html
Berlin kept Christmas in the public square and, more than anyone before or since, sent it out over the public airwaves. But it was an American, not a Christian, Christmas. And by the crass index of number of recordings sold, and the not-so-crass index of number of spirits touched, Berlin's nonsectarian holiday has been the predominant version of Christmas in this country for the past 60 years.
Now the Fox News demagogues want to impose a more sectarian Christmas on us, supplanting the distinctly American holiday we have celebrated lo these threescore years with a holiday that divides us along religious lines. Bill O'Reilly can blaspheme all he wants, but like millions of my countrymen, I take attacks on Irving Berlin's America personally. If O'Reilly doesn't like it here, why doesn't he go back to where he came from?
BANKRUPTCY LAW MAY BE BACKFIRING
There is no industry more loathsome than the credit card industry. Defense contractors may be as bad, but they're not worse. The credit card industry has used high-paid lobbyists and compliant members of Congress and regulatory agencies to push through one onerous provision after another. They can jack up interest rates if the wind blows the wrong way, hit you with punitive late charges for being a single day late, and they made bankruptcy almost impossible, no matter the circumstances. According to this column, that may be backfiring on them now. The article by Liz Pulliam Weston is at moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/bankruptcyguide/P135860.asp
Credit card issuers and other lenders spent a small fortune to get bankruptcy reform legislation passed. Now the new law is costing them even more.
An unprecedented spike in filings before reform took effect in fall 2005 is chewing into lenders' bottom lines, and the subsequent lull is showing signs of being short-lived. Bankruptcy attorneys say their caseloads are starting to pick up, and credit counseling agencies -- which provide now-mandatory sessions for consumers who want to file -- say they're seeing significantly more people than they initially predicted.
BAD TO THE BONE
When you read the history of the Bush family you have to wonder if there has ever been a decent member of the Bush-Walker clan. These people have been multigenerational bloodsuckers. Prescott Bush, grandfather of the faux president, was a financier of Adolf Hitler. George H. W. Bush had absolutely no principles to stop him from becoming Ronald Reagan's vice president or in lying about Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign. The current president is probably the worst of them all. That's not even considering the brothers and other spawn of this family. This article by Howell Raines is at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1221-28.htm
At this point, the policy legacy of George Bush seems pretty well defined by three disparate disasters: Iraq in foreign affairs, Katrina in social welfare, corporate influence over tax, budget and regulatory decisions. As a short-term political consequence, we may avoid another dim-witted Bush in the White House. But what the Bush dynasty has done to presidential campaign science — the protocols by which Americans elect presidents in the modern era — amounts to a political legacy that can haunt the Republic for years to come.
We are now enduring the third generation of Bushes who have taken the playbook of the "ruthless" Kennedys and amplified it into a consistent code of amorality in both campaign tactics and governance. In their campaigns, the Kennedys used money, image-manipulation, old-boy networks and, when necessary, personal attacks on worthy adversaries such as Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey. But there was also a solid foundation of knowledge and purpose undergirding John Kennedy's sophisticated internationalism, his Medicare initiative, his late-blooming devotion to racial justice, and Robert Kennedy's opposition to corporate and union gangsterism. Like Truman, Roosevelt and, yes, even Lincoln, two generations of Kennedys believed that a certain amount of political chicanery was tolerable in the service of altruism.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
DECEMBER 20, 2005
IMPEACH BUSH
MORE BUSH SPYING
Support environmental causes, want to fight poverty, or support animal rights? Then you might be a terrorist according to the Bush administration. The New York Times has learned that the FBI had "loosened restrictions" under former Attorney General John Ashcroft and conducted surveillance on groups like PETA and Greenpeace and suggested an anti-poverty group had a "semi-communistic ideology." This is way beyond the pale. This article by Eric Lichtblau is at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/politics/20fbi.html?ei=5094&en=171df5b870cdd147&hp=&ex=1135141200&part
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.
But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.
One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
INEPT AND DANGEROUS
The attack on 9/11 never would have happened had the Bush administration done its job. The administration is making the excuse now that had the Patriot Act and its onerous provisions been in effect they could have prevented the attacks. But how much information did they need when Bush was presented with a Presidential Daily Briefing that flatly stated, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S"? They had numerous other warnings. The 9/11 Commission, whitewash that it was, still found the Bush administration derelict in taking action to prevent another terrorist attack. But now we're supposed to excuse Bush's abuse of his powers in spying on American citizens without a warrant. As this editorial states, this administration is both inept and dangerous. This editorial comes from http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1220-26.htm
If there are any Americans who still retain confidence in the Bush administration's judgment over foreign affairs -- after its inept pursuit of Osama bin Laden, its bungling of prewar intelligence on Saddam Hussein, its botched planning for the occupation of Iraq and its hostility to international norms on torture -- then surely they will be rattled by the disclosure last week that President Bush circumvented federal law and ordered a secret government intelligence agency to spy on Americans.
Even staunch Republicans such as Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania say they are troubled by the New York Times account. This raises the possibility that maybe -- finally -- moderates in Congress will begin to exercise some independent thinking and critical judgment toward the foreign policy of an administration that has proven itself arrogant, secretive and misguided.
In remarks on Saturday, the president tried to justify his secret order to the National Security Agency (NSA) by arguing that the nation's intelligence needs will sometimes override the privacy interests of its citizens.
This is an offensive, but by now predictable, effort at misdirection. No one has disputed that a nation must sometimes make tradeoffs between civil liberties and the requirements of national defense. The question is whether the president, alone and without independent review, gets to make that call.
ARNIE CHICKENED OUT ON WILLIAMS EXECUTION
I have major problems with the death penalty, although in some rare cases I think it may be justified. I think it's only justified in the case of a particularly heinous crime when there is absolutely no doubt about the guilt of the perpetrator and there are no mitigating circumstances such as mental illness. But there are major problems with the current system. Defendants who are poor, particularly if they are minorities, are much more likely to get the death penalty. It's absolutely appalling that some people have gotten the death penalty with totally inadequate representation at their trials. The arbitrary nature of the death penalty is also troubling. Why do some get life imprisonment for committing the same or worse crimes than death row inmates? Governor Groper could have taken a courageous stance that would have been supported by many if he had commuted the sentence of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. That's the subject of this article by Bill Press is at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1219-28.htm
Nobody really expected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute the sentence of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Yes, he went through the motions of meeting with Tookie's supporters. But that was pure political theater, designed to give the appearance of fairness - when, in fact, he'd already decided to appease California's blood-thirsty pack of wolves.
Arnold's political advisors told him he had to look tough by upholding the death penalty. But they were dead wrong. Refusing to commute Tookie's sentence from execution to life in prison without parole didn't make Arnold look tough. It made him look like a great big "girlie-man."
Arnold made a cowardly decision. In capital punishment cases, it's easy to follow the lynch mob. What takes courage is doing the right thing, even if politically unpopular. Instead of dancing to the drumbeat of death-penalty supporters, Arnold should have followed the lead of another Republican, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who commuted the sentences of everybody on death row - because he knew the death penalty itself was fatally flawed.
IMPEACH BUSH
MORE BUSH SPYING
Support environmental causes, want to fight poverty, or support animal rights? Then you might be a terrorist according to the Bush administration. The New York Times has learned that the FBI had "loosened restrictions" under former Attorney General John Ashcroft and conducted surveillance on groups like PETA and Greenpeace and suggested an anti-poverty group had a "semi-communistic ideology." This is way beyond the pale. This article by Eric Lichtblau is at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/politics/20fbi.html?ei=5094&en=171df5b870cdd147&hp=&ex=1135141200&part
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.
But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.
One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
INEPT AND DANGEROUS
The attack on 9/11 never would have happened had the Bush administration done its job. The administration is making the excuse now that had the Patriot Act and its onerous provisions been in effect they could have prevented the attacks. But how much information did they need when Bush was presented with a Presidential Daily Briefing that flatly stated, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S"? They had numerous other warnings. The 9/11 Commission, whitewash that it was, still found the Bush administration derelict in taking action to prevent another terrorist attack. But now we're supposed to excuse Bush's abuse of his powers in spying on American citizens without a warrant. As this editorial states, this administration is both inept and dangerous. This editorial comes from http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1220-26.htm
If there are any Americans who still retain confidence in the Bush administration's judgment over foreign affairs -- after its inept pursuit of Osama bin Laden, its bungling of prewar intelligence on Saddam Hussein, its botched planning for the occupation of Iraq and its hostility to international norms on torture -- then surely they will be rattled by the disclosure last week that President Bush circumvented federal law and ordered a secret government intelligence agency to spy on Americans.
Even staunch Republicans such as Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania say they are troubled by the New York Times account. This raises the possibility that maybe -- finally -- moderates in Congress will begin to exercise some independent thinking and critical judgment toward the foreign policy of an administration that has proven itself arrogant, secretive and misguided.
In remarks on Saturday, the president tried to justify his secret order to the National Security Agency (NSA) by arguing that the nation's intelligence needs will sometimes override the privacy interests of its citizens.
This is an offensive, but by now predictable, effort at misdirection. No one has disputed that a nation must sometimes make tradeoffs between civil liberties and the requirements of national defense. The question is whether the president, alone and without independent review, gets to make that call.
ARNIE CHICKENED OUT ON WILLIAMS EXECUTION
I have major problems with the death penalty, although in some rare cases I think it may be justified. I think it's only justified in the case of a particularly heinous crime when there is absolutely no doubt about the guilt of the perpetrator and there are no mitigating circumstances such as mental illness. But there are major problems with the current system. Defendants who are poor, particularly if they are minorities, are much more likely to get the death penalty. It's absolutely appalling that some people have gotten the death penalty with totally inadequate representation at their trials. The arbitrary nature of the death penalty is also troubling. Why do some get life imprisonment for committing the same or worse crimes than death row inmates? Governor Groper could have taken a courageous stance that would have been supported by many if he had commuted the sentence of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. That's the subject of this article by Bill Press is at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1219-28.htm
Nobody really expected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute the sentence of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Yes, he went through the motions of meeting with Tookie's supporters. But that was pure political theater, designed to give the appearance of fairness - when, in fact, he'd already decided to appease California's blood-thirsty pack of wolves.
Arnold's political advisors told him he had to look tough by upholding the death penalty. But they were dead wrong. Refusing to commute Tookie's sentence from execution to life in prison without parole didn't make Arnold look tough. It made him look like a great big "girlie-man."
Arnold made a cowardly decision. In capital punishment cases, it's easy to follow the lynch mob. What takes courage is doing the right thing, even if politically unpopular. Instead of dancing to the drumbeat of death-penalty supporters, Arnold should have followed the lead of another Republican, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who commuted the sentences of everybody on death row - because he knew the death penalty itself was fatally flawed.
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