The Angry Democrat Forum

Bogus Bush Bashing

2006-03-20T14:52:00.000-05:00

March 20, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Paul Krugman

"The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is 'incompetent,' and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: 'idiot' and 'liar.' " So says the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, whose most recent poll found that only 33 percent of the public approves of the job President Bush is doing.

Mr. Bush, of course, bears primary responsibility for the state of his presidency. But there's more going on here than his personal inadequacy; we're looking at the failure of a movement as well as a man. As evidence, consider the fact that most of the conservatives now rushing to distance themselves from Mr. Bush still can't bring themselves to criticize his actual policies. Instead, they accuse him of policy sins — in particular, of being a big spender on domestic programs — that he has not, in fact, committed.

Before I get to the bogus issue of domestic spending, let's look at the policies the new wave of conservative Bush bashers refuses to criticize.

Mr. Bush's new conservative critics don't say much about the issue that most disturbs the public, the quagmire in Iraq. That's not surprising. Commentators who acted as cheerleaders in the run-up to war, and in many cases questioned the patriotism of those of us who were skeptical, can't criticize the decision to start this war without facing up to their own complicity in that decision.

Nor, after years of insisting that things were going well in Iraq and denouncing anyone who said otherwise, is it easy for them to criticize Mr. Bush's almost surreal bungling of the war. (William Kristol of The Weekly Standard is the exception; he says that we never made a "serious effort" in Iraq, which will come as news to the soldiers.)

Meanwhile, the continuing allegiance of conservatives to tax cuts as the universal policy elixir prevents them from saying anything about the real sources of the federal budget deficit, in particular Mr. Bush's unprecedented decision to cut taxes in the middle of a war. (My colleague Bob Herbert points out that the Iraq hawks chose to fight a war with other people's children. They chose to fight it with other people's money, too.)

They can't even criticize Mr. Bush for the systematic dishonesty of his budgets. For one thing, that dishonesty has been apparent for five years. More than that, some prominent conservative commentators actually celebrated the administration's dishonesty. In 2001 Time.com blogger Andrew Sullivan, writing in The New Republic, conceded that Mr. Bush wasn't truthful about his economic policies. But Mr. Sullivan approved of the deception: "Bush has to obfuscate his real goals of reducing spending with the smokescreen of 'compassionate conservatism.' " As Berkeley's Brad DeLong puts it on his blog, conservatives knew that Mr. Bush was lying about the budget, but they thought they were in on the con.

So what's left? Well, it's safe for conservatives to criticize Mr. Bush for presiding over runaway growth in domestic spending, because that implies that he betrayed his conservative supporters. There's only one problem with this criticism: it's not true.

It's true that federal spending as a percentage of G.D.P. rose between 2001 and 2005. But the great bulk of this increase was accounted for by increased spending on defense and homeland security, including the costs of the Iraq war, and by rising health care costs.

Conservatives aren't criticizing Mr. Bush for his defense spending. Since the Medicare drug program didn't start until 2006, the Bush administration can't be blamed for the rise in health care costs before then. Whatever other fiscal excesses took place weren't large enough to play more than a marginal role in spending growth.

So where does the notion of Bush the big spender come from? In a direct sense it comes largely from Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, who issued a report last fall alleging that government spending was out of control. Mr. Riedl is very good at his job; his report shifts artfully back and forth among various measures of spending (nominal, real, total, domestic, discretionary, domestic discretionary), managing to convey the false impression that soaring spending on domestic social programs is a major cause of the federal budget deficit without literally lying.

But the reason conservatives fall for the Heritage spin is that it suits their purposes. They need to repudiate George W. Bush, but they can't admit that when Mr. Bush made his key mistakes — starting an unnecessary war, and using dishonest numbers to justify tax cuts — they were cheering him on.

Day of Reckoning for the Current Occupant

2006-03-16T12:23:00.000-05:00

By Garrison Keillor
The Chicago Tribune

Wednesday 15 March 2006

Spring arrived in New York last week for previews, a sunny day with chill in the air, but you could smell mud, and with a little imagination you could sort of smell grass. I put on a gray jacket, instead of black, and went to the opera and saw Verdi's "Luisa Miller," a Republican opera in which love is crushed by the perfidiousness of government. A helpful lesson for these times. I am referring to the Current Occupant.

The Republican Revolution has gone the way of all flesh. It took over Congress and the White House, horns blew, church bells rang, sailors kissed each other, and what happened? The Republicans led us into a reckless foreign war and steered the economy toward receivership and wielded power as if there were no rules. Democrats are accused of having no new ideas, but Republicans are making some of the old ideas look awfully good, such as constitutional checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, and the notion of realism in foreign affairs and taking actions that serve the national interest. What one might call "conservatism."

The head of the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan, Lt. Gen. William Odom, writes on the Web site NiemanWatchdog.org that he sees clear parallels between Vietnam and Iraq: "The difference lies in the consequences. Vietnam did not have the devastating effects on US power that Iraq is already having." He draws the parallels in three stages and says that staying the course will only make the damage to US power greater. It's a chilling analysis, and one that isn't going to come from the Democratic Party. It's starting to come from Republicans, and they are the ones who must rescue the country from themselves.

I ran into a gray eminence from the Bush I era the other day in an airport, and he said that what most offended him about Bush II is the naked incompetence. "You may disagree with Republicans, but you always had to recognize that they knew what they were doing," he said. "I keep going back to that intelligence memo of August 2001, that said that terrorists had plans to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. The president read it, and he didn't even call a staff meeting to discuss it. That is lack of attention of a high order."

Over the course of time, the Chief Occupant has been cruelly exposed over and over. He sat and was briefed on the danger of a hurricane wiping out a major American city, and without asking a single question, he got up from the table and walked away and resumed his vacation. He played guitar as New Orleans was flooded. It took him four days to realize his responsibility to do something. When the tsunami killed 100,000 people in Southeast Asia, he was on vacation and it took him 72 hours to issue a statement of sympathy.

The Republicans tied their wagon to him and, as a result, their revolution is bankrupt. He has played the terrorism card for all it is worth and campaigned successfully against Adam and Steve and co-opted whole vast flocks of Christians, but he is done now, kaput, out of gas, for one simple reason. He doesn't represent the best that is our country. Not even close.

He openly, brazenly, countenanced crimes of torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram. He engaged in illegal surveillance, authorized the arrest of people without charge and "disappeared" them to foreign jails. And he finagled this war, which, after three years of violence, does not look to be heading toward a happy ending. And now it's up to Republicans to put their country first and call the gentleman to account.

The Current Occupant is smart about handling a political mess. The best strategy is to cut and run and change the subject. You defend the Dubai ports deal in manly terms until you lose a vote in a House committee and then you retreat - actually, you get the Dubai people to do it for you - and that's it, End of Story.

Harriet Miers was fully qualified one day and gone the next. Social Security was going to be overhauled to give us the Ownership Society, and then the stock market went in the toilet and Republicans got nervous, and suddenly it was Never Mind and on to the next new thing.

Let's bring the boys home. Otherwise, let's send this man back to Texas and see what sort of work he is capable of and let him start making a contribution to the world.

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Garrison Keillor is an author and the radio host of "A Prairie Home Companion."

Graduates Versus Oligarchs

2006-02-27T10:36:00.000-05:00

February 27, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist, Paul Krugman

Ben Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot wrong on monetary or fiscal policy.

But Mr. Bernanke did stumble at one point. Responding to a question from Representative Barney Frank about income inequality, he declared that "the most important factor" in rising inequality "is the rising skill premium, the increased return to education."

That's a fundamental misreading of what's happening to American society. What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.

I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group — that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.

The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.

So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.

A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.

Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system — and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.

The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.

Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project.

And I'm with Alan Greenspan, who — surprisingly, given his libertarian roots — has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat to "democratic society."

It may take some time before we muster the political will to counter that threat. But the first step toward doing something about inequality is to abandon the 80-20 fallacy. It's time to face up to the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates.

Help!

2006-02-22T14:42:00.000-05:00

Take a look at this picture -

February 17, 2006 | A Capitol staffer noticed that the Senate was in session at 10 a.m. Friday and that it was flying an upside down US flag - the universal symbol of distress.

No kidding. They're barely breathing.

G.O.P. to W......You're Nuts!

2006-02-22T10:38:00.000-05:00

Let's do a test drive first.......let the U.A.E. guart the ports that surround Texas first......then if after a few years, if no terrorists make it to Dubya's ranch, maybe we'll let 'em guard NYC..

G.O.P. to W.: You're Nuts!
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

It's enough to make you nostalgic for those gnarly union stevedores in "On the Waterfront," the ones who hung up rats on hooks and took away Marlon Brando's chance to be a contend-ah.

Maybe it's corporate racial profiling, but I don't want foreign companies, particularly ones with links to 9/11, running American ports.

What kind of empire are we if we have to outsource our coastline to a group of sheiks who don't recognize Israel, in a country where money was laundered for the 9/11 attacks? And that let A. Q. Kahn, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, smuggle nuclear components through its port to Libya, North Korea and Iran?

It's mind-boggling that President Bush ever agreed to let an alliance of seven emirs be in charge of six of our ports. Although, as usual, Incurious George didn't even know about it until after the fact. (Neither did Rummy, even though he heads one of the agencies that green-lighted the deal.)

Same old pattern: a stupid and counterproductive national security decision is made in secret, blowing off checks and balances, and the president's out of the loop.

Was W. too busy not calling Dick Cheney to find out why he shot a guy to not be involved in a critical decision about U.S. security? What is he waiting for — a presidential daily brief warning, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S. Ports?"

Our ports are already nearly naked in terms of security. Only about 5 percent of the containers coming into the country are checked. And when the White House assures us that the Homeland Security Department will oversee security at the ports, is that supposed to make us sleep better? Not after the chuckleheaded Chertoff-and-Brownie show on Capitol Hill.

"Our borders are wide open," said Jan Gadiel of 9/11 Families for a Secure America. "We don't know who's in our country right now, not a clue. And now they're giving away our ports." The "trust us" routine of W. and Dick Cheney is threadbare.

The more W. warned that he would veto legislation stopping this deal, the more lawmakers held press conferences to oppose it — even conservatives who had loyally supported W. on Iraq, the Patriot Act, torture and warrantless snooping.

Mr. Bush is hoist on his own petard. For four years, the White House has accused anyone in Congress or the press who defended civil liberties or questioned anything about the Iraq war of being soft on terrorism. Now, as Congress and the press turn that accusation back on the White House, Mr. Bush acts mystified by the orgy of xenophobia.

Lawmakers, many up for re-election, have learned well from Karl Rove. Playing the terror card works.

A bristly Bush said yesterday that scotching the deal would send "a terrible signal" to a worthy ally. He equated the "Great British" with the U.A.E. Well, maybe Britain in the 12th century.

Besides, the American people can be forgiven if they're confused about what it means in the Arab world to be a U.S. ally. Is it a nation that helps us sometimes but also addicts us to oil and then jacks up the price, refuses to recognize Israel, denies women basic rights, tolerates radical anti-American clerics, looks the other way when its citizens burn down embassies and consulates over cartoons, and often turns a blind eye when it comes to hunting down terrorists in its midst?

In our past wars, America had specific countries to demonize. But now in the "global war on terror" — GWOT, as they call it — the enemy is a faceless commodity that the administration uses whenever it wants to win a political battle. When something like this happens, it's no wonder the public does its own face transplant.

One of the real problems here is that this administration has run up such huge trade and tax-cut-and-spend budget deficits that we're in hock to the Arabs and the Chinese to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. If they just converted their bonds into cash, they would own our ports and not have to merely rent them.

Just because the wealthy foreigners who own our debt can blackmail us with their economic leverage, does that mean we should expose our security assets to them as well?

As part of the lunatic White House defense, Dan Bartlett argued that "people are trying to drive wedges and make this to be a political issue." But as the New Republic editor Peter Beinart pointed out in a recent column, W. has made the war on terror "one vast wedge issue" to divide the country.

Now, however, the president has pulled us together. We all pretty much agree: mitts off our ports.

Can We Come Home Now?

2006-02-16T10:31:00.000-05:00

By Charlie Anderson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Saturday 11 February 2006

My friend Doug Barber died on Martin Luther King Day. I hadn't known him long, but we had a lot in common. We both lived in the south, were both veterans of the Iraq War, both felt betrayed by our government for sending us to a war without purpose. Both of our marriages had been destroyed in the aftermath of the war, and finally, we were both struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Doug and I both fought during the invasion of Iraq. He was an army National Guardsman and I was attached to the Marines. I don’t really know how Doug’s PTSD first manifested, but I do know he had a different battle than I did. I had been back less than a month when I found myself diving for cover when the neighbors launched bottle rockets. Soon I was unable to stand any noise that sounded like gunfire. I felt profound guilt that I had come home alive when others I knew did not, and I was plagued by nightmares of the horrors I had experienced far from home.

Because I was still in the navy, I was able to refer myself to the psychiatry department at the local military hospital and was diagnosed with PTSD. After a year and a half of treatment, I was discharged from the military with disability pay. Doug was not so lucky: he was a National Guardsman and not entitled to care in the regular military system. He had to turn to the Veteran’s Administration, who determined he had a Personality Disorder. A malady which, by definition, exists before a person becomes of military age, and thus, the VA will not compensate for it or treat it. The VA thus would not acknowledge his subsequent PTSD that afflicted him in Iraq. So Doug suffered the demons of war without adequate treatment. He struggled for two years trying to make ends meet, all the while fighting with the VA for the disability benefits he had earned in the sands of Iraq. He drifted from job to job because of his temper or, as he put it, because he had been trained to kill and that was what he knew. Yet, even though our paths were different, we had yet another thing in common. After fighting so hard against the torment of life after warfare, we were both tired. We just wanted our lives back, and Doug knew, as I do, that this can never happen.

Doug and I are not alone. 30% of Iraq veterans have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The divorce rate among Iraq Veterans is very high. Homelessness, unemployment and drug abuse are also on the rise. As Doug put it in an article written shortly before he took his own life, “All is not okay ... for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers ... will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand.”

Doug and I are America’s returned veterans, her sons, left on our own to suffer after the torment of war. I still struggle through life. I often remind myself that I have to bring myself through for my daughter. I force myself to hope that even though my personal finances are in shambles, my marriage destroyed, and nearly everything I once held dear left on the rubbish heap created by this war, this torture cannot last forever. Some days I believe it; on many, I don’t.

Though some may question his actions or his motives, Doug was just one of thousands of the forgotten casualties of the Iraq War. He was killed in action long before he died. On my darkest days, I almost envy Doug, because he had the courage to end his suffering. But in reality, I know that his act was not one of courage, but one born out of the deepest despair. There are hundreds of thousands of Iraq veterans, 150,000 still in Iraq and every one of us is in harm’s way. Doug has gone to rest, but you the citizens of America cannot; you do not have that luxury. While you are tucked safe in your beds, we veterans are still out here in the cold asking, “Can we come home now?”

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Charlie Anderson served as a Navy Hospital Corpsman with Marine Corps’ Second Tank Battalion during the invasion of Iraq. He is the Southeast Regional Coordinator of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Cheney "Inadvertently" Caused Death of Man He Stabbed On Previous Hunting Trip, Says White House

2006-02-14T12:23:00.000-05:00

Eyewitnesses: Man Ran Into Cheney's Knife

Vice President Cheney accidentally killed a man during a previous hunting trip, the White House reluctantly confirmed today. During a deer hunting expedition on a friend's eight billion dollar ranch, a man "ran into Cheney's knife" several times while Cheney was gutting and dressing a deer, wealthy Republican Party donors and eyewitnesses said.

The man who died was Willford Buchs, a Bush family accountant who "took care of the books" for the Bushes and several Bush companies, and was later appointed Director of the Texas Accounting Commission after the previous commissioner was dismissed for revealing irregularities in the accounting practices of Buchs's clients.

Buchs's death was ruled a suicide by Sen. Dr. Bill Frist, who examined Mr. Buchs by polaroid. Cheney's involvement with the death has not previously been disclosed, although it occurred a little more than a year ago. The incident was uncovered by the press after reporters discovered Buchs's mummified carcass on the ground last week and began asking questions.

Questions have arisen as to why the White House failed to report the incident to the press or the authorities for more than a year. "The Vice President's office deferred to the people who owned the knife that he borrowed for the expedition," said Candy Ricks, a spokesman for the Veep. "It really was up to them." Ricks also maintained that it was not necessary to report the incident to the authorities because the Vice President and his party were authorities, "and very powerful and influential ones, too, I might add."

Ricks denied that Mr. Cheney needed to exercise more caution during hunting trips. "Mr. Cheney is every bit as careful with hunting as he is with civil liberties, foreign policy and democracy," she said.

Lack of Policies = Lack of Hope

2006-02-13T13:31:00.000-05:00

If this isn’t an indictment against the Bush administration’s careless policies on guns, exporting jobs, educational program cuts, and an anti-abortion agenda…I don’t know what else is. Add it to dubya’s list of crimes and misdemeanors since he took office…and some of the policies, concerning gun laws contribute greatly. Gee, you’d think that logic would fly in the face of someone claiming to want to keep us all safe?

Violent Crime Rising Sharply-National-February 12, 2006

MILWAUKEE — One woman here killed a friend after they argued over a brown silk dress. A man killed a neighbor whose 10-year-old son had mistakenly used his dish soap. Two men argued over a cellphone, and pulling out their guns, the police say, killed a 13-year-old girl in the crossfire.

Violent crime is rising sharply here and in many other places across the country.
And while such crime in the 1990's was characterized by battles over gangs and drug turf, the police say the current rise in homicides has been set off by something more bewildering: petty disputes that hardly seem the stuff of fistfights, much less gunfire or stabbings.

Police Chief Nannette H. Hegerty of Milwaukee calls it "the rage thing."
"We're seeing a very angry population, and they don't go to fists anymore, they go right to guns," she said. "A police department can have an effect on drugs or gangs. But two people arguing in a home, how does the police department go in and stop that?"

Here in Milwaukee, where homicides jumped from 88 in 2004 to 122 last year, the number classified as arguments rose to 45 from 17, making up by far the largest category of killings, as gang and drug murders declined.

"When we ask, 'Why did you shoot this guy?' it's, 'He bumped into me,' 'He looked at my girl the wrong way,' " said Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson of Philadelphia. "It's not like they're riding around doing drive-by shootings. It's arguments — stupid arguments over stupid things."

While arguments have always made up a large number of homicides, the police say the trigger point now comes faster.

Nationally, the homicide rate peaked in 1991, declined steadily after 1993 and has remained essentially flat since 1999. But in the first six months of 2005, according to preliminary statistics from the F.B.I., the number of homicides nationwide rose 2.1 percent, with the greatest increase, 4.9 percent, in the Midwest.

A large part of the problem, the police say, is simply more guns on the streets as gun laws have loosened around the country. In Philadelphia, Commissioner Johnson said, since the government made it easier to get a gun permit in 1985, the number of people authorized to carry a gun in the city has risen from 700 to 32,000.

The neighborhoods with the most murders tend to be the poorest. In Milwaukee, Mallory O'Brien, an epidemiologist brought in to direct the new homicide review commission, said suspects and victims tend to have been born to teenage mothers.

Chief Corwin of Kansas City said that in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, people had explained it as a "lack of hope." "If I don't have skills, I don't have training, my socioeconomic situation looks desperate, do I really have hope?" he said.

Boston, which peaked with 151 murders in 1990, had declined to 31 in 1999.—[Thank you, Bill Clinton…..my insert]

"We didn't get here in a day," said Ms. O'Brien, the epidemiologist. "There's no simple solution."

Yeah, I have one. Impeach Bush and Co.

Economically, the American Empire was born in 1945.

2006-02-12T11:33:00.000-05:00

We are and have been in a weather war, an economic war, an oil war, and physical wars. The big controllers are fighting for control of this world.

Who will win? I read an article the other day that explains the economic and oil war very well, written by Krassimir Petrov. He currently teaches Macroeconomics, International Finance, and Econometrics at the American University in Bulgaria. I found this article so interesting that I want to share part of it with you.

"Economically, the American Empire was born in 1945. The U.S. dollar was not fully convertible to gold, but was made convertible to gold only to foreign governments. This established the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. It was possible, because during WWII, the United States had supplied its allies with provisions, demanding gold as payment, thus accumulating significant portion of the world's gold."

"An Empire would not have been possible if, following the Bretton Woods arrangement, the dollar supply was kept limited and within the availability of gold, so as to fully exchange back dollars for gold. However, the guns-and-butter policy of the I960's was an imperial one: the dollar supply was relentlessly increased to finance Vietnam and LBJ's Great Society.
Most of those dollars were handed over to foreigners in exchange for economic goods, without the prospect of buying them back at the same value. The increase in dollar holdings of foreigners via persistent U.S. trade deficits was tantamount to a tax - the classical inflation tax that a country imposes on its own citizens, this time around an inflation tax that the U.S. imposed on the rest of the world."

"When in 1970-1971 foreigners demanded payment for their dollars in gold. The U.S. Government defaulted on its payment on August 15, 1971. While the popular spin told the story of severing the link between the dollar and gold, in reality the denial to pay back in gold was an act of bankruptcy by the U.S. Government. Essentially, the U.S. declared itself an Empire. It had extracted an enormous amount of economic goods from the rest of the world, with no intention or ability to return those goods, and the world was powerless to respond - the world was taxed and it could not do anything about it."

"From that point on, to sustain the American Empire and to continue to tax the rest of the world, the United States had to force the world to continue to accept ever-depreciating dollars in exchange for economic goods and to have the world hold more and more of those depreciating dollars. It had to give the world an economic reason to hold them, and the reason was OIL."

"In 1971, as it became clearer and clearer that the U.S. Government would not be able to buy back its dollars in gold, it made in 1972-73 an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saudi in exchange for accepting "only" U.S. dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and also accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had a reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. Because the world needed ever increasing quantities of oil at ever increasing oil prices, the world's demand for dollars could only increase. Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil."

"The economic essence of this arrangement was that the dollar was now backed by oil. As long as that was the case, the world had to accumulate increasing amounts of dollars, because they needed those dollars to buy oil. As long as the dollar was the only acceptable payment for oil, its dominance in the world was assured, and the American Empire could continue to tax the rest of the world."

If, for any reason, the dollar lost its oil backing, the American Empire would cease to exist. Thus, Imperial survival dictated that oil be sold only for dollars. It also dictated that oil reserves were spread around various sovereign states that weren't strong enough, politically or militarily, to demand payment for oil in something else. If someone demanded a different payment, he had to be convinced, either by political pressure or military means, to change his mind."

"The man that actually did demand EURO for his oil was Saddam Hussein in 2000. At first, his demand was met with ridicule, later with neglect, but as it became clearer that he meant business, political pressure was exerted to change his mind. When other countries, like Iran, wanted payment in other currencies, most notably EURO and Yen, the danger to the dollar was clear and present, and a punitive action was to order Bush's Shock and Awe in Iraq. The war was not about Saddam's nuclear capabilities, about defending human rights, about spreading democracy, or even seizing oil fields: it was about defending the dollar, the American Empire. It was about setting an example that anyone who demanded payment in currencies other than U.S. dollars would likewise be punished."

"Many have criticized Bush for staging the war in Iraq in order to seize Iraqi oil fields. However, those critics can't explain why Bush would want to seize those fields - he could simply print dollars for nothing and use them to get all the oil in the world that he needs. He must have had some other reason to invade Iraq. Bush must have went into Iraq to defend his
Empire. Indeed, this is the case: two months after the United States invaded Iraq, the oil for food program was terminated, the Iraq EURO accounts were switched back to dollars, and oil was sold once again only for U.S. dollars. No longer could the world buy oil from Iraq with EUROs. Global dollar supremacy was once again restored. Bush descended victoriously from a
fighter jet and declared the mission accomplished - he had successfully defended the U.S. dollar, and thus the American Empire."

"Now we have the Iranian Oil Bourse. The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate 'nuclear' weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire. That weapon is the Iranian Oil Bourse slated to open in March 2006. It will be based on a EURO-oil-trading mechanism that naturally implies payment for oil in EURO.
In economics terms, this represents a much greater threat to the hegemony of the dollar than Saddam's because it will allow anyone willing either to buy or sell oil for EURO to transact on the exchange, thus circumventing the
U.S. dollar altogether. If so, then it is likely that almost everyone will eagerly adopt this EURO oil system."

"The Europeans will not have to buy and hold dollars in order to secure their payment for oil, but would instead pay with their own currencies. This will benefit the European at the expense of the Americans."

"The Chinese and the Japanese will be especially eager to adopt the new exchange, because it will allow them to drastically lower their enormous dollar reserves and diversify with EUROs, thus protecting themselves against the depreciation of the dollar."

"The Russians have inherent economic interest in adopting the EURO - the bulk of their trade is with European countries, with oil-exporting countries, with China, and with Japan. The Russians seemingly detest holding depreciating dollars, for they have recently found a new religion with gold. Russians have also revived their nationalism, and if embracing the EURO
will stab the Americans, they will gladly do it and smugly watch the Americans bleed."

"The Arab oil-exporting countries will eagerly adopt the EURO as a means of diversifying against rising mountains of depreciating dollar. Just like the Russians, their trade is mostly with European countries, and therefore will prefer the European currency both for its stability and for avoiding currency risk, not to mention their jihad against the Infidel Enemy."

That really says a mouthful. Iran is backed by Russia and China. It looks like the world is turning against the U.S. dollar and moving toward the EURO. This means the United States is in crisis. What can we do about that? Hopefully, we can get through this crisis without blowing ourselves up.

This about sums up our national budget.

2006-02-09T09:49:00.000-05:00

Who's Hormonal: Hillary or Dick?

2006-02-08T13:15:00.000-05:00

February 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

By Maureen Dowd

The Republicans succeed because they keep it simple, ruthless and mythic.

In 2000 and 2004, G.O.P. gunslingers played into the Western myth and mined images of manliness, feminizing Al Gore as a Beta Tree-Hugger, John Kerry as a Waffling War Wimp With a Hectoring Wife and John Edwards as his true bride, the Breck Girl.

Now, in the distaff version of Swift-boating, they are casting Hillary Clinton as an Angry Woman, a she-monster melding images of Medea, the Furies, harpies, a knife-wielding Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" and a snarling Scarlett Johansson in "Match Point." (How many pregnant mistresses does Woody Allen have to kill off in movies before he feels he's reversed Dostoyevsky and proved that if the crime is worth it, there should be no punishment?)

Republicans think that men who already have nagging, bitter women in their lives will not want for president the sort of woman who gave W. a dyspeptic smile or eye-rolling appraisal during State of the Union addresses.

In "Commander in Chief," writers were careful to make Geena Davis's chief executive calm and controlled under pressure — even when her rival, played by Donald Sutherland, made an insulting menopause crack.

The hit on Hillary may seem crude and transparent. But in the void created by dormant Democrats, crouching in what Barack Obama calls "a reactive posture," crude and transparent ploys work for the Republicans. Just look at how far the Bushies' sulfurous scaremongering on terror, and cynical linkage of Saddam and Osama, have gotten them.

The gambit handcuffs Hillary: If she doesn't speak out strongly against President Bush, she's timid and girlie. If she does, she's a witch and a shrew. That plays particularly well in the South, where it would be hard for an uppity Hillary to capture many more Bubbas than the one she already has.

It's the riddle of the Sphinx that has been floating around since the selection of Geraldine Ferraro. Betty Friedan worried then that a woman seen as a threat to men would not get to the White House. But how can a woman who's not a threat to men get there?

The G.O.P. honcho Ken Mehlman kicked off the misogynistic attack on George Stephanopoulos's Sunday show. "I don't think the American people, if you look historically, elect angry candidates," he said. Referring to Hillary's recent taunts about Republicans, he added, "Whether it's the comments about the plantation or the worst administration in history, Hillary Clinton seems to have a lot of anger."

Hillary did not sound angry when she made those comments — she's learned since her tea-and-cookies outburst in the '92 campaign. A man who wants to undermine a woman's arguments can ignore the substance and simply dismiss her as unstable and shrill. It's a hoary tactic: women are more mercurial than men; they get depressed more often and pop pills more often. As a top psychiatrist once told me, women are "hormonally more complicated and biologically more vulnerable."

But as the G.O.P. tars Hillary as hysterical, it is important to note that women are affected by lunar tides only once a month, while Dick Cheney has rampaging hormones every day.

Republicans have also labeled men hysterical (from the Greek for "womb"). Howard Dean was skewered on the Scream. And when John McCain was soaring in the 2000 primaries, Bush supporters viciously whispered that his fits of temper signaled that he had come back from Vietnam with snakes in his head.

Senator McCain went over the top again this week in a letter to Senator Obama. Although Mr. McCain tried to cast his "I'm the reformer — you back off, new guy" letter as "straight talk" after an Obama dis, it was snide and bitchy, more like an angry missive of a spurned lover to an ex-boyfriend than a note from a respected senior senator to a respected junior one.

Mr. McCain could take a lesson from Condi Rice, who gets hyperarticulate and bristly when she's mad, but not bitchy. Or Oprah, whose anger at James Frey had a Mosaic dignity.

Hillary's problem isn't that she's angry. It's that she's not angry enough. From Iraq to Katrina and the assault on the Constitution, from Schiavo to Alito and N.S.A. snooping to Congressional corruption, Hillary has failed to lead in voicing outrage. She's been too busy triangulating and calculating to be good at articulating.

The Republicans can't marginalize Hillary. She has already marginalized herself.

An Open Letter to Bubba

2006-02-06T15:06:00.000-05:00

by Charlie Anderson

I’ve seen you around. I’ve seen you driving your gas guzzling SUV with the “Support Our Troops” ribbon on the back. I’ve seen you wearing your pro-war/pro-bush t-shirts as you walk right past me in my Iraq Veterans Against the War t-shirt as if I don’t exist. And I’ve seen you at anti-war rallies and meetings where I often speak, as you wave your American flag and call me a traitor. In this country we have freedom of speech. But you owe me and every other veteran of this war the respect of listening to our experience.

Your magnet says “support our troops,” but what have you done for us? Not a penny of the proceeds go to us, instead they go to sweatshops in China. You say that I am not supporting the troops when I say that they should come home. But I am, because I know that there was no threat to our nation from Saddam Hussein, I know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and I know that we were not welcomed in Iraq as liberators. I know that the Iraq war was not worth fighting. I know, because I fought there. You say I’m confused. But what do you know about Iraq? You’ve never been there.

You have the audacity to claim that by not supporting the president, I don’t support the troops. Yet, the president chose to send over 160,000 of us to Iraq unprepared and without a defined mission. We had no body armor, no vehicle armor, and poor supplies of ammunition. Our families spent thousands of dollars that they did not have to supply us, while President Bush did nothing. In fact he didn’t even scold his Offensive Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when he told our forward deployed troops, “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.” Moreover, the mission was originally about weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. Then it was making Iraq a democracy, but yet the “insurgency” worsens. Now the president has decided that in order to honor those who died for nothing, more must die for nothing.

At present, 2,241 of my brothers and sisters in arms have died. In some way, they may be the lucky ones. Over sixteen thousand others have been wounded in this war, thousands more than planned. The term wounded sounds sterile, bland, and inoffensive. But, in reality, many of them have been so horribly damaged that medical science had to create a new word to describe their wounds: polytrauma. These people would have died in earlier wars, but because of the gallant efforts of brave doctors and medics, they get to live. They get to live with teams of ten or more doctors just trying to get their broken, mangled bodies through another day, as their families look on in horror. They get to live in a physical and emotional hell, not able to recover and not able to voice the pain they feel or the psychological demons they face. All the while suffering with a Veterans Administration under funded by nearly three billion dollars and unable to care for them in the manner they deserve.

So which one of us supports the troops? You, who has never set foot in Iraq and wants to leave my brothers and sisters there until they complete whatever the undefined mission of the week is, or me, the veteran of this war who has seen the carnage of battle, the rampant indifference of my countrymen, and just wants to bring my brothers and sisters home alive and care for them when they get here?

Keep coming to the rallies. Maybe I’ll get through your thick skull eventually. But remember I waved my flag in Baghdad, so you can sit down, shut up, and listen to me.

Charlie Anderson served in Iraq with the Marine Corps’ Second Tank Battalion. He is the Southeast Regional Coordinator of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Doublethink.

2006-02-03T11:04:00.000-05:00

Here is how George Orwell defines a term he invented - Doublethink - in his book 1984 -
the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

So, I want to show you how good the Republicans are at this.

Look at this political cartoon from Denmark -

The Republicans are howling at the Muslims saying basically, to chill out. There is such a thing as freedom on speech in Denmark, they say, and so the cartoonist is free to say anything he wants, regardless of who he offends. To be fair, a good deal of Democrats are saying the same thing. But that's not the point. To get to the point, look at this second political cartoon -

These same Republicans who are condemning the Muslims for being upset about the Danish cartoons are screaming about how this cartoon is degrading to our troops. It's offensive, they say.

???????????

So offensive political cartoons are okay as long as it's someone else who is offended. If it offends me then it's wrong.

I sometimes wonder how Republican's heads don't explode like those Fembots in Austin Powers. Trying to hold all these contradictory thoughts in their head must take an amazing amount of will power.

The 'sorry-ass" State of the Union

2006-01-31T13:39:00.000-05:00

The State of the Union
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 31 January 2006

i knew that i was dying.
something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become
them, accept.
then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
bit.
it needn't be much, just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on
fire.
just a spark.
save it.

- Charles Bukowski

"He shall from time to time," reads the Constitution, "give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." And so it shall be. George W. Bush will be speaking tonight from the podium in the House of Representatives. Before him will be arrayed Senators, Representatives, generals and judges. The balconies will be filled with observers, luminaries, reporters and a few so-called "special guests" whose presence will be used to reinforce some argument or another.

It shall be quite a thing to see, a show worth watching if only to observe exactly how many lies, distortions, threats, taunts and smirks can be crammed into a single speech. This will be Mr. Bush speaking, after all, and the truth is not in him. It will be in every pertinent sense a mere commercial, a television advertisement from a failing company, a whitewashing of ugly truths by a staggering CEO whose sole desire is to keep the stockholders in line for another quarter.

In the interests of truth, the actual state of this union deserves to be displayed for all to see. This is the deal. This is how it is.

The Real Economy

Since 2000, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen to nearly 37 million. More than 13 million of these are children. More than one in four American families with children make less than $30,000 a year. Look within that number and you will find 46% of African American families with children and 44% of Hispanic families with children fall below this mark. Average annual income for Americans fell once again in 2005. 46 million Americans live without health insurance.

The response to this? Vice President Cheney, three days before Christmas, cast the tie-breaking vote on a spending reduction bill that will fall most heavily on the poor, the infirm and the elderly. Funding for health care, child support, and education subsidies for low-income families has been gutted. Medicaid benefits for the poor were cut by $7 billion, and Medicare programs for the elderly were cut by $6.4 billion. Federal student-loan programs were cut by $12.7 billion.

On the very same day, the Senate passed legislation that drastically cut funding for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The Head Start program was hit especially hard: the cuts here eliminate some 25,000 slots for low-income children. All in all, these spending reductions are expected to save $40 billion.

Meanwhile, recently-passed tax cuts ravage the budget far more deeply than these drastic budget cuts. Two tax cuts in particular that went into effect on New Year's Day will cost $27 billion, more than half of what the spending reductions are supposed to save. These cuts will cost more than $150 billion over the next ten years. 97% of the money from these cuts will go to households making more than $200,000 a year. Households with incomes under $100,000 will get 0.1% of these cuts.

If all of Mr. Bush's tax cuts are stopped or allowed to expire, $750 billion will be added to the federal budget. That is more than enough to pay for the programs that have been eviscerated. It won't happen, not with the priorities of this administration, but that is the simple math of the matter.

New Orleans Drowned in a Bathtub

The first weeks of September brought to all Americans a devastating tragedy. The city of New Orleans was all but obliterated by Hurricane Katrina when levies meant to hold back the waters failed. The failure of these levies came, in no small part, because of unprecedented budget cuts for the Army Corps of Engineers, which was tasked to keep the levies viable.

The tragedy was compounded by the utterly incompetent management of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its head, Michael Brown, whose experience with disaster management came while he was serving as an attorney for owners of Arabian horses. In the weeks to follow, lavish promises were made by Mr. Bush. "We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives," he said on September 15th.

Those promises have been broken. We have gone from oaths to revive this cherished city to this: "I want to remind people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot," said Bush on January 26th. Hundreds of thousands of Americans remain displaced, many holding on by the skin of their teeth in cramped trailers. Thirty million cubic yards of debris remain uncollected - the Washington Post estimated over the weekend that this was "enough to build a five-sided column more than 50 stories tall over the Pentagon." There is not even a plan in place to begin to attack the problem. The Bush administration has left New Orleans to rot, and the next hurricane season is four months away.

Mark Folse, a New Orleans native, operates a blog called "Wet Bank Guide." On Monday, Mr. Folse posted a message for Mr. Bush. "I've never lost the deepest allegiance I've ever held: to my city," wrote Folse. "We have always known we were a people different and unique, as divided as we may seem. That sense of identity as a New Orleanian is the powerful bond that draws me on. It is the deep love of country that drives me - of my country, New Orleans and southern Louisiana. It is the irrational emotional attachment to my piece of America that leads men and women to go willingly up Bunker Hill, to follow General Pickett, to volunteer for Iraq."

"A life of assured privilege has protected you from having to take these sorts of risks," continued Folse, "to find the strength to get up and go into the maw of uncertainty, to risk and gamble your own and not other peoples' lives or money. You can pledge allegiance or sing the anthem or give a stirring speech as well as any, but you know you have no allegiance except self-interest."

"If nothing moves you except your own self-interest," concluded Folse, "then consider this. There are hundreds of thousands of us, scattered throughout most of the United States. We are everywhere you and your party will go to campaign: Arkansas and Atlanta and Austin, Dallas and Detroit and Denver, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Baltimore and Boston, Chicago and Charlotte. Many will remain there indefinitely, unable to go home, precisely because you have lied to them and betrayed them. We will not let you escape from the net of lies you have woven. Wherever you turn, you will find us, ready to call you out."

The situation in New Orleans is a problem that will not go away. Men like Mark Folse will make absolutely sure of that.

"Scandal" Is Too Small a Word

The Abramoff scandal directly touches some sixty Republican congresspeople, according to campaign finance records that show where the disgraced lobbyist sent his money. Mr. Bush recently promoted the lead investigator in this case, effectively removing him from the investigation. Despite this, the hard look into Mr. Abramoff's dealings continue. Mr. Abramoff's plea deal has a lot of people in Washington suffering from flop-sweat.

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of a deep-cover CIA agent by administration officials continues apace, and has already cashiered Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby. According to t r u t h o u t investigative reporter Jason Leopold, Fitzgerald has "spent the past month preparing evidence he will present to a grand jury alleging that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove knowingly made false statements to FBI and Justice Department investigators and lied under oath while he was being questioned about his role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity more than two years ago, according to sources knowledgeable about the probe."

None of this will be mentioned in the State of the Union speech tonight. The Bush administration continues to stonewall these investigations with all its might - Mr. Bush has denied ever knowing Jack Abramoff, despite the existence of several pictures showing them glad-handing each other in the White House - and the Republican-controlled congress will certainly do nothing to advance the questions being asked.

In contrast, a portion of the speech will certainly be dedicated to moralistic sloganeering about values. Remember, as high-flown words about truth and justice are spoken, what the Abramoff and Plame scandals represent: a government run by thieves, stroked by swindlers, and staffed by assassins who sing of defending the nation even as they cast us down into greater danger.

And, by the way, the Enron trial started on Monday.

The Middle East

2,242 American soldiers have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands more are grievously wounded. Tens and tens of thousands of civilians are dead or maimed. Scores more simmer in rage and pick up weapons to attack American forces. American soldiers wishing to go around the Pentagon to augment their meager armor have been threatened with the revocation of death benefits for their families. A coalition of fundamentalist Shiite groups has taken over the government, the two main parts of which are notorious terrorist organizations with umbilical ties to Iran. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to do this. There is no end in sight.

Three years ago, in another State of the Union address, Mr. Bush told the nation that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons (which is 1,000,000 pounds) of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, mobile biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program. Mr. Bush will have to work very hard tonight to tell a lie as vast, dramatic and bloody as this.

The Unitary Executive Tapping Your Phone

Mr. Bush and friends have been jumping through flaming hoops to justify the blatantly illegal policy of spying on Americans by way of the National Security Agency. Their tortured arguments in favor of this action, and their flat-footed declaration that the policy will continue, makes confetti of the Fourth Amendment.

More than that, however, it moves this nation one step closer to having an Executive Branch that supersedes all others in power and scope. Not only will Mr. Bush spy on whomever he pleases, but he will also torture whomever he pleases. Put simply, the constitutionally-required separation of powers, the checks and balances that have maintained the stability of this republic, is being destroyed. This will echo down the corridors of our history long after Mr. Bush has left his office.

The Reign of Witches

The state of this union is not good. We are poorer, frightened, faced with the swelling ranks of enemies our leaders have created, and hell-bent to do away with the most precious aspects of our system of government. We are surveilled, propagandized, intimidated. We empower the radicals and disenfranchise the common good. We are fed swill via the television and thus convinced that what they tell us is what we already believe. We are bought, and we are paid for.

The radicals running this country have long desired to destroy the government's ability to govern - they found things like taxes intrusive, which is amusing when one hears them now defending warrantless spying on Americans - and they are well along the path towards success. The budget is destroyed, spent on tax cuts and the Iraq occupation, while millions of Americans suffer the loss of necessary services. The one percent of the one percent is making a killing, and the rest of us are left behind.

If there is hope to be found in all this, it is in the words of Thomas Jefferson, written 208 years ago after the passage of the Sedition Act.

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."

Can You Imagine George Bush by Another Name?

2006-01-30T14:33:00.000-05:00

Here is an excellent article by Beth Quinn.
If any of our conservative brethren wonder by here and read this I want you to answer honestly, if that is at all possible for you.

There is a courtroom scene in the movie "A Time to Kill" that comes to mind when I hear Bush fans blindly defend their president.

The movie is about the black father of a little girl who is raped, beaten and thrown off a bridge by two white men in Mississippi. Knowing that justice won't be served for a black child, her father kills her attackers and goes on trial for murder.

The scene that comes to mind these crazy days is this:

The defense attorney knows this heartbroken father is facing an all-white jury. And this jury will be incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of a black man.

So the lawyer asks them to close their eyes as he describes in excruciating detail the attack the little girl endured. "Can you see it?" he asks. "Can you see her being tortured?" And then he tells them: "Now imagine she was white."

It is a similar use of imagination that I would ask the blind faithful in Bush's camp to try.

Please, just close your eyes for a moment as I catalog the abuses George Bush has committed against our country. And then imagine he is Bill Clinton, a man you're predisposed to hate - and tell me you would still defend those actions.

When you consider that George Bush declared war in Iraq based on a lie, close your eyes and imagine it was Bill Clinton who had told that lie. Keep your eyes closed and picture it. In fairness and honesty, would you defend him?

When you consider that George Bush has been secretly and illegally spying on Americans, close your eyes and concentrate. Picture how you would react if it were Clinton wiretapping our phones. Would you defend him?

When you consider that George Bush partied for days at his Texas ranch while New Orleans was dying, close your eyes and picture Clinton partying on Martha's Vineyard. Can you see it? Can you imagine Clinton ignoring the plight of thousands of homeless and dying? Would you defend him?

When you consider that George Bush continues to promote the lie that "we do not torture" even as he declares the right to violate McCain's amendment barring torture, squeeze your eyes tight and picture it. Can you see Clinton defying the Geneva Convention and Congress? Would you defend him?

When you consider that George Bush has paid journalists to promote his propaganda, close your eyes and imagine Clinton buying off the Fourth Estate. Would you like that? Would you defend him?

When you consider that George Bush continues to send our young men and women into danger in Iraq without protective armor, then hides their coffins from the cameras when they are sent home dead, close your eyes and imagine Clinton doing such a thing. Is this a good thing? Would you defend him?

In the movie, the jurors' collective eyes pop open when the defense lawyer asks them to imagine the little victim was white. It's clear they have seen the light and justice will be done.

In real life, blind allegiance is no better than blind hatred. Both spring from fear and ignorance. It would be gratifying if the Bush defenders were to open their own eyes to see this president for what he really is.

George Bush, by any name, is nothing more than a power-mad liar.

There are 1,091 days 'til Inauguration 2009.

What's Sad About It?

2006-01-25T12:08:00.000-05:00

I can think of a lot of things.....

Audit Describes Misuse of Funds in Iraq Projects

A new audit of American financial practices in Iraq has uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets, an American soldier in the Philippines who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq, and three Iraqis who plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital elevator that had been improperly certified as safe

The audit, released yesterday by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, expands on its previous findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion as the American occupation poured money into training and rebuilding programs in 2003 and 2004. The audit uncovers problems in an area that includes half the land mass in Iraq, with new findings in the southern and central provinces of Anbar, Karbala, Najaf, Wasit, Babil, and Qadisiya. The special inspector reports to the secretary of defense and the secretary of state.

Agents from the inspector general's office found that the living and working quarters of American occupation officials were awash in shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills, colloquially known as bricks.

One official kept $2 million in a bathroom safe, another more than half a million dollars in an unlocked footlocker. One contractor received more than $100,000 to completely refurbish an Olympic pool but only polished the pumps; even so, local American officials certified the work as completed. More than 2,000 contracts ranging in value from a few thousand dollars to more than half a million, some $88 million in all, were examined by agents from the inspector general's office. The report says that in some cases the agents found clear indications of potential fraud and that investigations into those cases are continuing.

Some of those cases are expected to intersect with the investigations of four Americans who have been arrested on bribery, theft, weapons and conspiracy charges for what federal prosecutors say was a scheme to steer reconstruction projects to an American contractor working out of the southern city of Hilla, which served as a kind of provincial capital for a vast swath of Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority.

But much of the material in the latest audit is new, and the portrait it paints of abandoned rebuilding projects, nonexistent paperwork and cash routinely taken from the main vault in Hilla without even a log to keep track of the transactions is likely to raise major new questions about how the provisional authority did its business and accounted for huge expenditures of Iraqi and American money.

Instead, large amounts of that money may have been wasted or stolen, with strong indications that the chaos in Hilla might have been repeated at other provisional authority outposts.

Others had a similar reaction. "It does not surprise me at all," said a Defense Department official who worked in Hilla and other parts of the country, who spoke anonymously because he said he feared retribution from the Bush administration. He predicted that similar problems would turn up in the major southern city of Basra and elsewhere in the dangerous desert wasteland of Anbar province. "It's a disaster," the official said of problems with contracting in Anbar.

"What's sad about it is that, considering the destruction in the country, with looting and so on, we needed every dollar for reconstruction," said Wayne White, a former State Department official whose responsibilities included Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and who is now at the Middle East Institute, a research organization.

What's sad about it, is that millions of dollars are being cut from worthy American projects that would help America's neediest cases. Also from Education, and the Environment. And how many people in NOLA and Mississippi are still without homes?
But just try and get a straight answer out of this Bush Administration. I bet they put a block or gag order on getting to the bottom of this too. Now, we come to find, they had the information warning them about Katrina, before the storm hit? And there's a gag order and block on obtaining those documents. too. But, this is the guy who needs no permission to rifle through your underwear drawer looking for secrets.

He wants you to cough everything up, while he and his administration continue to get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, breaking the law, and he doesn't want to answer for any of it. If he can't live by the laws he prescribes, he shouldn't be prescribing them. This should bother a lot more Americans. I don't understand why it doesn't. Don't let him fuck you over with his excuses he's 'protecting' you form some imagined harm...He's not protecting you from anything. 9/11 and Katrina blew the lid off that bullshit he tried handing us around the elections. He's not competent to keep us safe from any harm.

We need to be protected from him.

My Right to Roe

2006-01-24T13:43:00.000-05:00

By Judith Warner
She is an author and currently the host of "The Judith Warner Show" on XM Satellite Radio.

I found this to be a thoughtful piece to share here and it sheds light on both sides of this debate:

With the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court all but certain, it’s becoming accepted wisdom that Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision granting women the right to abortion, is likely soon to be reversed.

I’m not sure, though, that Roe really will be overturned by an Alito (and John Roberts) court. I’m not sure that it really is in the interest of the Republican Party to usher in a court that overturns Roe.

I’m also not sure, at this point, that Roe really matters.

I’m exaggerating — somewhat — but let me explain what I mean.

Decades of abortion-rights restrictions pushed through Congress and the statehouses by wily abortion opponents with the acquiescence — indeed, the encouragement — of the public have made the right to choose granted by Roe an empty promise for large numbers of American women.

This has been an unqualified triumph for abortion opponents and has put Republican leaders in an enviable position; even with a majority of the American public still solidly “pro-choice” (in the abstract), they can rest easy in the knowledge that, at this time, Roe is, in certain parts of the country, close to meaningless.

The restrictions on Roe include such things as forcing women to endure misleading state-mandated lectures when they seek abortions; making them spend time and money they don’t have driving back and forth to faraway clinics as they sit out state-mandated “waiting periods”; making doctors deal with labyrinthine regulations intended to make it all but impossible for them to provide abortions; making young women seek their parents’ or a judge’s permission for an abortion — no matter how fraught, dysfunctional or downright dangerous their relationship with their parents might be. (And show me the teenager who’s going to hunt down a judge to discuss the most intimate aspects of her personal life.)

Ever since Sandra Day O’Connor — hailed now generally as the swing vote who saved Roe — paved the way for the decision’s eventual evisceration by writing an opinion, in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, that permitted states to regulate abortion if those regulations didn’t place an “undue burden” on women, more than 400 new restrictions have been placed on a woman’s right to choose.

These restrictions seem right and common-sensical to most people. Wouldn’t most parents want to know if their daughter was to have an abortion? Should taxpayers be forced to pay for procedures they morally abhor? Isn’t it an abomination to violently maim and murder a viable infant in the womb?

I myself, a committed abortion-rights supporter, permitted myself to grow complacent about these restrictions in recent years. Like many other former donors to NOW and Naral Pro-Choice America, I let the abortion-rights issue slip to the very far back burner of my political thinking during the “safe, legal and rare” years of the pro-choice Clinton administration.

I became a mother during those years as well, and, I’m ashamed to admit, issues relating to motherhood and family life loomed much larger in my personal and professional mind than did bodily integrity and family planning. I, like just about everyone else in the country, was nauseated by the picture of late-term “partial birth” abortion painted by its opponents: images of scissors gashing through the heads of infants in utero, images of babies getting their brains removed by suction tube.

Intellectually, I knew that these depictions were a political manipulation by people whose true goal was to ban abortion outright. But emotionally, I played right along with their game.

I didn’t even get all that worked up about Roberts and Alito — until last month, when I read Kate Michelman’s new book, “With Liberty and Justice for All: A Life Spent Protecting the Right to Choose.’’

Michelman is the former president of Naral, and that her book would argue for abortion rights is no surprise. But it does offer something else that is vital, which is why I’m writing about it today. It draws on stories, testimonials, letters and phone calls from Michelman’s years at Naral, and as a result, it gives a human face — many faces — to the impact of the aforementioned restrictions. And those faces — those voices — just can’t be ignored.

Take the testimony of Coreen Costello, a mother of two, who was seven months pregnant when she learned her fetus had a fatal neurological defect and had become rigid in the birthing position. She wanted to carry her to term and deliver her normally, but her doctors argued that doing so would put her own life in danger. After great soul-searching, she decided she was unwilling to take the risk of leaving her children motherless and allowed the fetus to be aborted through the kind of procedure long vilified by the opponents of “partial birth’’ abortion.

In 1995, when the Senate Judiciary Committee was debating an earlier version of the ban that went into effect in 2003, she pleaded with them to remember the humanity of the families put in the position of having to choose to end a wanted pregnancy. “We are the families that ache to hold our babies, to tame them, to love and nurture them,” she said. “We are the families who will forever have a hole in our hearts.” She survived the potentially fatal pregnancy and went on to have another child.

Another testimonial from Michelman’s book: The voice of Becky Bell, a high school junior who died of an illegal abortion in 1998 because she didn’t want to have to tell her parents that she was pregnant — and her state, Indiana, required parental notification or judicial bypass. As she lay dying on a hospital gurney, Becky pulled off her oxygen mask to speak to her parents. “Forgive me,” she said.

If these stories don’t shame us into greater vigilance about the effects of laws that we — the lucky, the privileged, the protected — allow to come into being because they don’t affect us, then nothing will.

If they don’t make us stop and ask ourselves what kind of society we have allowed ourselves to become, then truly we are lost.

If they don’t shake us from our tight-hearted complacency, temper our judgments about those less deserving and with-it and “responsible,” and inspire in us greater empathy for those who face desperate decisions, often alone, then we are irredeemable.

And to those who repeat, without cease, that abortion rights amount to state-sanctioned murder, I would say: remember Becky Bell.

Another list.

2006-01-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

Someone posted on this site a while ago a list that belittled Democrats.
I shot down the premise of the whole thing and any intelligent Republican (are there any?) will be able to shoot down what follows but I thought I'd post it in a sort of equal time sort of thing.

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.

"Standing Tall for America" means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

Democracy in America, Then and Now, a Struggle Against Majority Tyranny

2006-01-23T14:58:00.000-05:00

During the War of 1812, an angry mob smashed the printing presses of a Baltimore newspaper that dared to come out against the war. When the mob surrounded the paper's editors, and the state militia refused to protect them, the journalists were taken to prison for their own protection. That night, the mob broke into the prison, killed one journalist and left the others for dead. When the mob leaders were brought before a jury, they were acquitted.

Alexis de Tocqueville tells this chilling story in "Democracy in America," and warns that the greatest threat the United States faces is the tyranny of the majority, a phrase he is credited with coining. His account of his travels through America in the 1830's, which is often called the greatest book ever written about America, is both an appreciation of American democracy, and a cautionary tale about its fragility.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the well-known French intellectual, has just written "American Vertigo," about his own travels along Tocqueville's route. It is an entertaining trip, as much in the tradition of Jack Kerouac as Tocqueville. Mr. Lévy visited Rikers Island and a Dallas gun show, and interviewed Americans ranging from Richard Perle to Sharon Stone. His outsider's perspective sometimes lends insight, as with his reflections on the sad plight of Detroit and Buffalo. At other times, it just leads to odd advice. (He puts surprising faith in Warren Beatty as a political leader.)

Unfortunately, Mr. Lévy, who is most passionate about American foreign policy, pays little attention to the issue Tocqueville was most intent on: how closely even a thriving democracy like America borders on tyranny. It is a subject that is particularly relevant today, with the president claiming he can wiretap ordinary Americans without a warrant, insisting on his right to imprison without trial anyone he labels an "enemy combatant," and warning critics of the Iraq war against "emboldening" the enemy. Entertaining as Mr. Lévy's book is, "Democracy in America" - 170 years old, and notoriously difficult to distill - still provides far greater insight into contemporary American democracy.

Tocqueville, who was born into the French aristocracy, was just 25 years old when he landed in Newport, R.I., in 1831 with the professed aim of studying the American penal system. In his travels, he visited prisons, but he also interviewed important personages, including President Andrew Jackson, former president John Quincy Adams and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story.

The book Tocqueville produced - a first volume published in 1835, and a more somber one five years later - is full of keen observations about America. Many are highly quotable. ("There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.") Some are merely durably accurate. ("The most outstanding Americans are seldom summoned to public office.")

Tocqueville is hard to place on the modern political spectrum. He was raised in a royalist family that suffered mightily in the French Revolution: his grandfather and an aunt were guillotined, and his parents nearly suffered the same fate. He brought to his study of American democracy - which he was transmitting back to Europe, where democracy was on the march - the fear that democracy combined with a strong central power could lead to tyranny.

It was a very different America that Tocqueville was writing about in the Jacksonian Age, but the concerns he raised still resonate strongly. He worried that the state's power would end up concentrated in a single authority, until its citizens were "reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." He feared the majority would trample on minorities, like the mob that attacked the Baltimore editors, or the whites of Pennsylvania who intimidated blacks into not voting. And he was concerned about tyranny of opinion, saying he knew of no country with "less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion" than America.

Tocqueville pointed to some bulwarks against tyranny. He was a firm supporter of checks and balances. He believed in the power of American law to limit the excesses of the ruler - the exact issue in today's debate over the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. He had great hopes for the judiciary. "The courts correct the aberrations of democracy," he wrote, and "though they can never stop the movements of the majority, they do succeed in checking and directing them." Tocqueville would not be surprised that the Supreme Court has limited the Bush administration's excesses in the war on terror - or that the administration has been eager to nominate justices with an expansive view of presidential power.

Tocqueville would not have been distracted by all the talk that warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detainment of enemy combatants and other civil liberties incursions are serving the cause of freedom. He understood that the newest incarnation of despotism was likely to be ushered in by the "avowed lover of liberty" who is a "hidden servant of tyranny."

Nor, though, would he be likely to despair. One reason "Democracy in America" has remained so popular is that despite his fears, Tocqueville remained nervously optimistic about democracy. He knew that the kind of equality that had taken hold in America could lead to tyranny, but he also believed that it gave people a "taste for free institutions," which would lead them to resist. Equality "insinuates deep into the heart and mind of every man some vague notion and some instinctive inclination toward political freedom," he insisted, "thereby preparing the antidote for the ill which it has produced."

Adam Cohen is an Editorial Observer
for the NYTimes

Wayward Christian Soldiers

2006-01-20T10:21:00.000-05:00

By CHARLES MARSH
Charlottesville, Va.

IN the past several years, American evangelicals, and I am one of them, have amassed greater political power than at any time in our history. But at what cost to our witness and the integrity of our message?

Recently, I took a few days to reread the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. That period, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2003, is not one I will remember fondly. Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president's war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine.

Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, whose weekly sermons are seen by millions of television viewers, led the charge with particular fervor. "We should offer to serve the war effort in any way possible," said Mr. Stanley, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. "God battles with people who oppose him, who fight against him and his followers." In an article carried by the convention's Baptist Press news service, a missionary wrote that "American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

As if working from a slate of evangelical talking points, both Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, and Marvin Olasky, the editor of the conservative World magazine and a former advisor to President Bush on faith-based policy, echoed these sentiments, claiming that the American invasion of Iraq would create exciting new prospects for proselytizing Muslims. Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the hugely popular "Left Behind" series, spoke of Iraq as "a focal point of end-time events," whose special role in the earth's final days will become clear after invasion, conquest and reconstruction. For his part, Jerry Falwell boasted that "God is pro-war" in the title of an essay he wrote in 2004.

The war sermons rallied the evangelical congregations behind the invasion of Iraq. An astonishing 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported the president's decision in April 2003. Recent polls indicate that 68 percent of white evangelicals continue to support the war. But what surprised me, looking at these sermons nearly three years later, was how little attention they paid to actual Christian moral doctrine. Some tried to square the American invasion with Christian "just war" theory, but such efforts could never quite reckon with the criterion that force must only be used as a last resort. As a result, many ministers dismissed the theory as no longer relevant.

Some preachers tried to link Saddam Hussein with wicked King Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, but these arguments depended on esoteric interpretations of the Old Testament book of II Kings and could not easily be reduced to the kinds of catchy phrases that are projected onto video screens in vast evangelical churches. The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.

Such sentiments are a far cry from those expressed in the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. More than 2,300 evangelical leaders from 150 countries signed that statement, the most significant milestone in the movement's history. Convened by Billy Graham and led by John Stott, the revered Anglican evangelical priest and writer, the signatories affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that "the church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology."

On this page, David Brooks correctly noted that if evangelicals elected a pope, it would most likely be Mr. Stott, who is the author of more than 40 books on evangelical theology and Christian devotion. Unlike the Pope John Paul II, who said that invading Iraq would violate Catholic moral teaching and threaten "the fate of humanity," or even Pope Benedict XVI, who has said there were "not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq," Mr. Stott did not speak publicly on the war. But in a recent interview, he shared with me his abiding concerns.

"Privately, in the days preceding the invasion, I had hoped that no action would be taken without United Nations authorization," he told me. "I believed then and now that the American and British governments erred in proceeding without United Nations approval." Reverend Stott referred me to "War and Rumors of War, " a chapter from his 1999 book, "New Issues Facing Christians Today," as the best account of his position. In that essay he wrote that the Christian community's primary mission must be "to hunger for righteousness, to pursue peace, to forbear revenge, to love enemies, in other words, to be marked by the cross."

What will it take for evangelicals in the United States to recognize our mistaken loyalty? We have increasingly isolated ourselves from the shared faith of the global Church, and there is no denying that our Faustian bargain for access and power has undermined the credibility of our moral and evangelistic witness in the world. The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.

Charles Marsh, a professor of religion at the University of Virginia, is the author of "The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today."

Stop being cowards.

2006-01-17T16:06:00.000-05:00

From Al Gore's speech -

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

The Imperial Presidency

2006-01-17T09:40:00.000-05:00

You would think that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain would have learned by now that you cannot deal in good faith with a White House that does not act in good faith. Yet both men struck bargains intended to restore the rule of law to American prison camps. And President Bush tossed them aside at the first opportunity.

Mr. Bush made a grand show of inviting Mr. McCain into the Oval Office last month to announce his support for a bill to require humane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons run by the American military and intelligence agencies. He seemed to have managed to get Vice President Dick Cheney to stop trying to kill the proposed Congressional ban on torture of prisoners.

The White House also endorsed a bargain between Mr. Levin and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which tempered somewhat a noxious proposal by Mr. Graham to deny a court hearing to anyone the president declares to be an "unlawful enemy combatant." The bargain with Mr. Levin removed language that stripped away cases already before the courts, which would have been an egregious usurpation of power by one branch of government, and it made clear that those cases should remain in the courts.

Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous "signing statement" on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program.

Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court last week that it no longer had jurisdiction over detainee cases. It said the court should drop an existing case in which a Yemeni national is challenging the military tribunals invented by Mr. Bush's morally challenged lawyers after 9/11. The administration is seeking to eliminate all other lawsuits filed by some of the approximately 500 men at Gitmo, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to pose any threat.

Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right.

The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade.

Letterman Top 10 List.

2006-01-13T11:07:00.000-05:00

Top Ten George W. Bush Solutions For Global Warming

10. NASA mission to turn down the sun's thermostat

9. Federal subsidies to boost production of Cool Ranch Doritos

8. Fast track Rumsfeld's "Colonize Neptune" proposal

7. Convene blue-ribbon committee to explore innovative ways of ignoring the problem

6. Let Hillary worry about it when she takes over

5. I dunno---tax cuts for the rich?

4. Give the boys at Halliburton 90-billion dollar contract to patch hole in ozone

3. Switch to celsius so scorching 98 becomes frosty 37

2. Keep plenty of Bud on ice

1. Invade Antartica

The Lawbreaker in the Oval Office

2006-01-12T09:44:00.000-05:00

The country has set the bar so low for the performance of George W. Bush as president that it is effectively on the ground.

No one expects very much from Mr. Bush. He's currently breaking the law by spying on Americans in America without getting warrants, but for a lot of people that's just George being George. Forget the complexities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or even the Fourth Amendment's safeguards against unwarranted (pun intended) government intrusion into matters that we have a right to keep private.

On his frequent trips home to his ranch in Texas, the president likes to ride his bicycle. He's not studying the Constitution.

"People are changing phone numbers and phone calls, and they're moving quick," said Mr. Bush, as he defended his authorization of warrantless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency on phone calls and e-mail into and out of the U.S.

As the president put it, "If somebody from Al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why."

Well, that's true, Mr. President. But Congress and the Constitution have spoken as clearly as a bright sun on a cloudless afternoon about these matters: if you're going to eavesdrop on Americans in the U.S., you'd better run out and get a warrant.

You have to act fast? O.K., do what you have to do - but you then have to apply for a warrant within 72 hours. If, after three days, you can't explain to a court - a secret court, at that - why you need to be spying on somebody, then you need to stop that spying.

It has become fashionable to say that this controversy is about the always difficult problem of balancing civil liberties and national security. But I think the issue is starker than that. The real issue is President Bush's apparent belief - stoked at every opportunity by that zealot of zealots, Dick Cheney - that he can do just about anything he wants (mistreat prisoners, lock people up forever without filing charges), and justify it in the name of fighting terror.

"There's an enemy out there," said Mr. Bush.

That's also true. But this is not China or the old Soviet Union. The United States should be the one place on the planet where even a devastating terror strike by Al Qaeda is unable to shake the foundations of the government, which is grounded in the rule of law, the separation of powers and a constitution that guarantees the fundamental rights of the citizenry.

A group of former government officials and law professors from some of the nation's most distinguished universities sent a letter to Congressional leaders on Monday expressing their deep concern about the president's domestic spying program. They said:

"Although the program's secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly, the program appears on its face to violate existing law."

Among those who signed the letter were William Sessions, the former F.B.I. director, and Philip Heymann, a former deputy attorney general who is now a professor at Harvard Law School.

The Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, also took issue with the administration's defense of the warrantless eavesdropping. Its analysts searched diligently but apparently in vain for a legal justification of the spying authorized by the president. Their detailed report on the constitutional and statutory issues raised by the program said, "It appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the N.S.A. electronic-surveillance operations here under discussion."

The administration's attempt to justify the program, the analysts said, "does not seem to be as well grounded" as the administration seems to believe.

President Bush and others in the administration have repeatedly argued that the president's wartime powers trump some of the important constitutional guarantees and civil liberties that Americans had previously taken for granted. They don't seem to see the irony of fighting on behalf of liberty in Afghanistan and Iraq while curtailing precious liberties here at home.

The administration should not be allowed to use war as an excuse. The U.S. is a very special place in large part because no one, not even the president, is above the law.

Bob Herbert
NYTimes op-ed

Late night humor.

2006-01-11T08:58:00.000-05:00

So stuff I got from The Daily Kos -

"The Supreme Court confirmation hearings are under way for Judge Sam Alito. Democrats want to know his position on privacy. Republicans want to know his position on prison terms for bribery."
---Jay Leno

-

"According to the Washington Post, Vice President Dick Cheney is limping today because he injured his foot. Cheney said, 'If you think my foot looks bad, you should see the old lady I was kicking.'"
---Conan O'Brien

-

"You know how sometimes during war time, civil liberties can take a back seat to national security? Well, I got good news and bad news. The good news is this: no Japanese people are being sent to any camps. The bad news is: that time you got hammered and drunk-dialed your ex-girlfriend who's studying abroad and sang her that WHAM! song that was 'your song?' The government's got that on tape."
---Jon Stewart

-

"Indicted congressman Tom Delay has announced he is resigning as House Majority Leader. However, he's still going to run for re-election. So apparently he feels he is too corrupt to be a leader but not too corrupt to be just a congressman."
---Jay Leno

-

"Congressmen are actually now returning illegal gifts. I called the weather bureau and, sure enough, hell has frozen over."
---David Letterman

Sins of the son.

2006-01-09T10:42:00.000-05:00

Read this quote -

Trying to eliminate Saddam .. would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ...there was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

Guess who said it?
Yep, George Bush the Senior.
The current president Bush claims to be a religious man, what about the Commandment
"Honor thy Father and Mother?"

The New Red, White and Blue

2006-01-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

As we enter 2006, we find ourselves in trouble, at home and abroad. We are in trouble because we are led by defeatists - wimps, actually.

What's so disturbing about President Bush and Dick Cheney is that they talk tough about the necessity of invading Iraq, torturing terror suspects and engaging in domestic spying - all to defend our way of life and promote democracy around the globe.

But when it comes to what is actually the most important issue in U.S. foreign and domestic policy today - making ourselves energy efficient and independent, and environmentally green - they ridicule it as something only liberals, tree-huggers and sissies believe is possible or necessary.

Sorry, but being green, focusing the nation on greater energy efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue. It is actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we can do. Living green is not for sissies. Sticking with oil, and basically saying that a country that can double the speed of microchips every 18 months is somehow incapable of innovating its way to energy independence - that is for sissies, defeatists and people who are ready to see American values eroded at home and abroad.

Living green is not just a "personal virtue," as Mr. Cheney says. It's a national security imperative.

The biggest threat to America and its values today is not communism, authoritarianism or Islamism. It's petrolism. Petrolism is my term for the corrupting, antidemocratic governing practices - in oil states from Russia to Nigeria and Iran - that result from a long run of $60-a-barrel oil. Petrolism is the politics of using oil income to buy off one's citizens with subsidies and government jobs, using oil and gas exports to intimidate or buy off one's enemies, and using oil profits to build up one's internal security forces and army to keep oneself ensconced in power, without any transparency or checks and balances.

When a nation's leaders can practice petrolism, they never have to tap their people's energy and creativity; they simply have to tap an oil well. And therefore politics in a petrolist state is not about building a society or an educational system that maximizes its people's ability to innovate, export and compete. It is simply about who controls the oil tap.

In petrolist states like Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Sudan, people get rich by being in government and sucking the treasury dry - so they never want to cede power. In non-petrolist states, like Taiwan, Singapore and Korea, people get rich by staying outside government and building real businesses.

Our energy gluttony fosters and strengthens various kinds of petrolist regimes. It emboldens authoritarian petrolism in Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Sudan and Central Asia. It empowers Islamist petrolism in Sudan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. It even helps sustain communism in Castro's Cuba, which survives today in part thanks to cheap oil from Venezuela. Most of these petrolist regimes would have collapsed long ago, having proved utterly incapable of delivering a modern future for their people, but they have been saved by our energy excesses.

No matter what happens in Iraq, we cannot dry up the swamps of authoritarianism and violent Islamism in the Middle East without also drying up our consumption of oil - thereby bringing down the price of crude. A democratization policy in the Middle East without a different energy policy at home is a waste of time, money and, most important, the lives of our young people.

That's because there is a huge difference in what these bad regimes can do with $20-a-barrel oil compared with the current $60-a-barrel oil. It is no accident that the reform era in Russia under Boris Yeltsin, and in Iran under Mohammad Khatami, coincided with low oil prices. When prices soared again, petrolist authoritarians in both societies reasserted themselves.

We need a president and a Congress with the guts not just to invade Iraq, but to also impose a gasoline tax and inspire conservation at home. That takes a real energy policy with long-term incentives for renewable energy - wind, solar, biofuels - rather than the welfare-for-oil-companies-and-special-interests that masqueraded last year as an energy bill.

Enough of this Bush-Cheney nonsense that conservation, energy efficiency and environmentalism are some hobby we can't afford. I can't think of anything more cowardly or un-American. Real patriots, real advocates of spreading democracy around the world, live green.

Green is the new red, white and blue.

Thomas L. Friedman
NYTimes op-ed contributor and
author of The World is Flat

Cheney Cites Justifications For Domestic Eavesdropping

2006-01-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

By Jim VandeHei and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers

Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks might have been prevented if the Bush administration had had the power to secretly monitor conversations involving two of the hijackers without court orders.

As part of an effort to sell Americans on the administration's recently disclosed program to eavesdrop on telephone and e-mail communications between the United States and people overseas without a warrant, Cheney told a small group of conservatives at the Heritage Foundation that instead of being able to "pick up" on the terrorist plot "we didn't know they were here plotting until it was too late."

--Oh, yeah, and how about if you read your PDB's?.....that might have also prevented the 911 attacks......you incompetent fuck asses....bet that never occurs to you.

It's Not Personal, Jack, It's Strictly Business

2006-01-04T12:37:00.000-05:00

The sight of Jack Abramoff striding out of federal court here yesterday, looking like a stocky gangster from a 40's movie in black fedora and trench coat, may seem like the strongest evidence so far of how graft and hubris have overwhelmed the capital.

It could have been a scene from "The Godfather," a favorite film of the felonious lobbyist. The Washington Post reported that he "did business with people linked to the underworld," bilked Indian tribes of tens of millions and then lavished a bundle in tribal gambling profits on greedy members of Congress.

The Post said Mr. Abramoff loved to amuse colleagues by imitating Michael Corleone as he rejected a corrupt politician's demand for a share of Mafia gambling money: "Senator, you can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this: nothing."

But just because this is a scale of amorality and blatant sale of government that astonishes even Washington cynics, why look on the dark side?

The Abramoff plea bargain may have left his former business partners and political pals panicking, wondering if the rat will rat them out. The Republican congressmen Tom DeLay and Bob Ney are among the sleazy solons caught up in the scandal, and the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, scrambled yesterday to launder $69,000 in dirty Abramoff contributions, donating the wad to charity. And then there's Ralph Reed, the choirboy Bible thumper who used his links to Christian groups to immorally play Indian tribes off against each other.

But looking at the big picture, in some ways the imperial presidency is working out quite well for everyone.

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.

Checks and balances are now as quaint as the Geneva Conventions. Congress is complicit in putting its thumb on the scale for the executive branch.

The Post reported that W. had taken advantage of an innovation started years ago by Samuel Alito Jr. to shore up executive privilege. As a young Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, Mr. Alito created a strategy that has the president declare what laws mean when he signs them. Mr. Alito wanted the courts to focus as much on the president's interpretation of a law as on what he called "legislative intent."

W. has issued at least 108 such statements, The Post said, rejecting "provisions in bills that the White House regarded as interfering with its powers in national security, intelligence policy and law enforcement."

And since the imperial presidency is run by the vice president, W. has a lot of free time to do the things he likes to do. Confined with his wife and mother-in-law at the Crawford ranch, he spent his Christmas vacation mountain-biking and clearing brush.

He left the ranch for a brief visit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where he kidded in a way that again showed his jarring lack of empathy with the amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan: "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself - not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, colonel."

W. also used the occasion to defend the Nixonian eavesdropping program that even made John Ashcroft and his deputy, James Comey, skittish. As The Times reported, Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales had to make an emergency trip to see the reluctant Mr. Ashcroft in the hospital in March 2004 to get the program recertified because Mr. Comey had balked.

You know you're in trouble when John Ashcroft is worried about overreaching.

MAUREEN DOWD
NYTIMES

Heck of a Job, Bushie

2006-01-03T10:07:00.000-05:00

A year ago, everyone expected President Bush to get his way on Social Security. Pundits warned Democrats that they were making a big political mistake by opposing plans to divert payroll taxes into private accounts.

A year ago, everyone thought Congress would make Mr. Bush's tax cuts permanent, in spite of projections showing that doing so would lead to budget deficits as far as the eye can see. But Congress hasn't acted, and most of the cuts are still scheduled to expire by the end of 2010.

A year ago, Mr. Bush made many Americans feel safe, because they believed that he would be decisive and effective in an emergency. But Mr. Bush was apparently oblivious to the first major domestic emergency since 9/11. According to Newsweek, aides to Mr. Bush finally decided, days after Hurricane Katrina struck, that they had to show him a DVD of TV newscasts to get him to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

A year ago, before "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" became a national punch line, the rising tide of cronyism in government agencies and the rapid replacement of competent professionals with unqualified political appointees attracted hardly any national attention.

A year ago, hardly anyone outside Washington had heard of Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay's position as House majority leader seemed unassailable.

A year ago, Dick Cheney, who repeatedly cited discredited evidence linking Saddam to 9/11, and promised that invading Americans would be welcomed as liberators - although he hadn't yet declared that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes" - was widely admired for his "gravitas."

A year ago, Howard Dean - who was among the very few prominent figures to question Colin Powell's prewar presentation to the United Nations, and who warned, while hawks were still celebrating the fall of Baghdad, that the occupation of Iraq would be much more difficult than the initial invasion - was considered flaky and unsound.

A year ago, it was clear that before the Iraq war, the administration suppressed information suggesting that Iraq was not, in fact, trying to build nuclear weapons. Yet few people in Washington or in the news media were willing to say that the nation was deliberately misled into war until polls showed that most Americans already believed it.

A year ago, the Washington establishment treated Ayad Allawi as if he were Nelson Mandela. Mr. Allawi's triumphant tour of Washington, back in September 2004, provided a crucial boost to the Bush-Cheney campaign. So did his claim that the insurgents were "desperate." But Mr. Allawi turned out to be another Ahmad Chalabi, a hero of Washington conference rooms and cocktail parties who had few supporters where it mattered, in Iraq.

A year ago, when everyone respectable agreed that we must "stay the course," only a handful of war critics suggested that the U.S. presence in Iraq might be making the violence worse, not better. It would have been hard to imagine the top U.S. commander in Iraq saying, as Gen. George Casey recently did, that a smaller foreign force is better "because it doesn't feed the notion of occupation."

A year ago, Mr. Bush hadn't yet openly reneged on Scott McClellan's 2003 pledge that "if anyone in this administration was involved" in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity, that person "would no longer be in this administration." Of course, some suspect that Mr. Bush has always known who was involved.

A year ago, we didn't know that Mr. Bush was lying, or at least being deceptive, when he said at an April 2004 event promoting the Patriot Act that "a wiretap requires a court order. ...When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest.

A year ago, we didn't know for sure that almost all the politicians and pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the president isn't above the law have changed their minds. But now we know when it comes to presidents who break the law, it's O.K. if you're a Republican.

-PAUL KRUGMAN
NYTIMES, Op-Ed

The time is now.

2005-12-28T20:28:00.000-05:00

ImpeachPAC
Impeach Bush Coalition

An invitation.

2005-12-28T10:28:00.000-05:00

Dear Bush Administration,

I hear you have been spying on Americans.
I hear you are worried about people who want peace.
I hear you're nervous about your perceived enemies.
Well, I just want to help you out with that -

I’m one of them.
Here I am, standing up to you and your bullying thugs.
I will not submit to your brown shirted minions.
Spy on me all you want, I have nothing to hide, I am not afraid of scrutiny.
I bet you can’t say the same.

Trust Him With Our Rights? Never.

2005-12-22T12:37:00.000-05:00

George Bush's problem is that Washington is not a courtroom. If it were, he or his lawyer (Dick Cheney?) could rise and object to the mention of his "previous convictions." That way, every offense against custom, law, international agreements and common sense could be treated in isolation. Too bad for Bush, he has a rap sheet.

It is his record of nonstop belligerence toward anything that would limit his powers that works against him as he tries to make a case for what in shorthand is called domestic spying. Any other president would have earned the solicitous attention and understanding of the country, including his critics.

The trouble with Bush is that it is hard to separate the reasonable from the unreasonable. It seems reasonable to me to listen in on phone calls from overseas to people here -- Americans or not -- if there is any link at all to suspected terrorists. If, say, a cell phone is found with certain numbers on it, I would monitor them all. That might not meet a strict legal standard, but it does seem to be common sense. With all due regard to law, the highest law of all is "better safe than sorry."

A stretching of the law in this respect becomes mighty suspect and somewhat scary when everything else is brought to mind. After all, the very same people who assure us that they are merely being prudent -- trust us -- are the same guys who held out until the last minute to retain torture as an option in questioning terrorist suspects and others. They are the same people -- Cheney in particular -- who are so tone-deaf to appearances, not to mention the opinions of the military, that they would publicly fight a restriction on torture.

This Bush administration announced that it had no use for the Geneva Conventions. It would apply them as it saw fit --Why should we abide by any conventions? The answer, as many military officers said, is that we still could hold our enemies to a standard of conduct toward prisoners. If we did not adhere to it ourselves, there was no chance they would. The Bush administration brushed aside these objections. It established a vast Siberia that could be anywhere and where a suspect could be held forever on charges that were never brought.

So an administration that makes a case when it comes to tapping the international phone calls of American citizens has its standing and veracity considerably weakened by what went before. The White House cannot explain why it did not ask Congress for this authority because, it is now clear, it does not want to ask Congress for anything. It will not explain why it could not seek warrants from a judge because, really, it does not want to seek warrants from a judge. This is the Louis XIV school of government: In matters of national security, Bush must say to himself, he is the state.

Such a president cannot be trusted. In Bush's case, the extra inch that would be given another president in wartime has to be measured out in increments of tenths. He is so suffused with his own sense of righteousness that he cannot imagine his laws being abused -- not by him, certainly, and not by his chummy group of nicknamed nincompoops, either. He listens to Cheney, who still smarts from post-Watergate reforms that made the Gerald Ford presidency less imperial than Richard Nixon's -- and on purpose. Cheney was Ford's chief of staff.

In courtroom trials, it does not matter what went before. The fact that the defendant had robbed does not necessarily mean that he has robbed again. But life is about rap sheets -- reputations and permanent records and personnel files. Read George Bush's and then ask yourself if it was exigency or ideology that prompted him to tap the international calls of American citizens without showing a court why. In his case, the record speaks for itself.

Does This Ring a Bell?

2005-12-21T10:56:00.000-05:00

Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both.

No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it.

In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them.

In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.

The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

--James Madison, from "Political Observations," April 20, 1795 in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Volume IV, page 491.

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

2005-12-21T08:27:00.000-05:00

HARRISBURG, Pa. - In one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania public school district Tuesday from teaching "intelligent design" in biology class, saying the concept is creationism in disguise.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

The ruling was a major setback to the intelligent design movement, which is also waging battles in Georgia and Kansas. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.

Jones decried the "breathtaking inanity" of the Dover policy and accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.

A six-week trial over the issue yielded "overwhelming evidence" establishing that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," said Jones, a Republican and a churchgoer appointed to the federal bench three years ago.

The policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade lessons on evolution. The statement said Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps." It referred students to an intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People."

But the judge said: "We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom."

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.

Eric Rothschild, an attorney for the families who challenged the policy, called the ruling "a real vindication for the parents who had the courage to stand up and say there was something wrong in their school district."

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which represented the school district and describes its mission as defending the religious freedom of Christians, said the ruling appeared to be "an ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God."

It was the latest chapter in a debate over the teaching of evolution dating back to the Scopes trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law against teaching evolution.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in Georgia heard arguments over whether a suburban Atlanta school district had the right to put stickers on biology textbooks describing evolution as a theory, not fact. A federal judge last January ordered the stickers removed.

President Bush also weighed in on the issue of intelligent design recently, saying schools should present the concept when teaching about the origins of life.

In his ruling, Jones said that while intelligent design, or ID, arguments "may be true, a proposition on which the court takes no position, ID is not science." Among other things, the judge said intelligent design "violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation"; it relies on "flawed and illogical" arguments; and its attacks on evolution "have been refuted by the scientific community."

"The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources," he wrote.

The judge also said: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

Former school board member William Buckingham, who advanced the policy, said from his new home in Mount Airy, N.C., that he still feels the board did the right thing.

"I'm still waiting for a judge or anyone to show me anywhere in the Constitution where there's a separation of church and state," he said. "We didn't lose; we were robbed."

Orwell was 20 years too early.

2005-12-20T08:56:00.000-05:00

Maybe George Orwell should have titled his book 2004 instead of 1984.
I'm not going to get into a big rant here.
We've all heard about the secret wire tapings authorized by the President, circumventing the legal avenues required.
We know about the Administration's outing of Valerie Plame because her husband contradicted their rationale for going to war.
And we've all heard the Conservative rhetoric about how anyone who is against the war is anti-American. In fact, this Administration has the Pentagon spying on war protesters.
And the Administration is now fighting for the right to torture. The have lost that fight, at least in public and as far as we know, but the fact is they advocate it.
And you know what?
It's not really surprising to me. Power corrupts and seeing these guys succumb to it is upsetting but not surprising.
What is really upsetting are all the "regular" people who back these clowns.
They support these fascists and allow their civil liberties to be undermined and taken from them. And not only don't they protest, they give these idiots their blessing.
Remember what Benjamin Franklin said - They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving, just not to anyone who needs it...

2005-12-19T16:38:00.000-05:00

A recent study showed something I think I could have guessed, and that is that the “superrich” are not the most generous.

You need only study today’s administration and their politics to see this point rammed home.

The study, which was I.R.S. data collected from the NewTithing Group, a philanthropic research organization, found that working class Americans drawing salaries of $50,000 to $100,000 a year, were TWO to SIX times more generous in their share of investment to charity than Americans who make $10 Million. The least generous of these, were the younger well to do, those who were 35 and under, making more than $10 Million—there are 285 of them. They only gave what amounted to approximately 0.4% of their assets, while those in the first group, the 50 thousand to 100 thousand annual salary makers gave 2.5% of their assets. That’s about 6 times more of their far wealthier peers.

The rich cannot relate to the daily suffering of the common man, and when the rich get elected into office or politics on any level, their policies can reflect their ignorance, and the poor get the shaft. Rich policies, get put forth by rich corporate lobbyists and this small circle of rich people get continuously rewarded. And the poor or middle class interests? They of course get cut from budgets, so that we can make room for more pork contributions to those who don’t need more pork.

This becomes important, when the rich try to push through laws and want to cut programs that provide aid for the poor or low income Americans. They’ll tell you that the deficit can be picked up in charitable donations……yeah, from the other poor, who are already poor and don’t have that much left over to give. Because, as I’ve suspected, the rich aren’t parting with any of their excesses. That’s why it’s also ridiculous to propose tax cuts to these people. They don’t need the tax cuts, first of all, and second, they’re not taking that money and putting it back in society, benefiting the poor.

Now, all we have to do is figure out a better way to communicate this to more of the common man, like us. If we could help people realize they need to vote in their interests, we could take the country back and have it be represented by people and policies we don’t have to be ashamed of.

Iraq and the Democrats

2005-12-15T09:39:00.000-05:00

By William Rivers Pitt
Thursday 08 December 2005

There is a tactic in the art of debate and argument known as "Rejecting the premise." To wit: when someone tosses a straw-man into a debate, you are wise to point it out as such, instead of validating its existence by arguing against it. A perfect example of where this can apply comes in the latest round of nonsense from the far Right about a so-called "War on Christmas."

Person #1: "Do you think the liberal elite are aiding in the war against Christmas?"

Person #2: "I reject the premise. There is no war against Christmas. Christmas is doing just fine."

Here's another good one. Vice President Cheney was speaking on Tuesday to troops at Fort Drum, NY.

Cheney: "Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq, we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq, and the terrorists hit us anyway."

Me: "I reject the premise. The fact that we had not invaded Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. As Richard Cohen said of Cheney's comments in Thursday's Washington Post, 'Yes, and the crowing of the rooster makes the sun come up. Cause and effect is being mocked here.'"

See? It's that simple. By the way, when did you stop beating your wife?

There is a cluster of Democrats who could learn about rejecting the premise, especially when it comes to the occupation of Iraq. The most recent and galling example came after Congressman John Murtha made his courageous demand for a withdrawal from Iraq. Murtha is the guy the generals talk to, because the generals know they are wasting their breath trying to talk to Rumsfeld, Cheney or Bush. Murtha knows exactly how bad things are in Iraq. His call for withdrawal specifically said that such an action should come "at the earliest practicable date."

Nowhere but nowhere in the text of Murtha's resolution were the words "immediate withdrawal" to be found. The reaction of congressional Republicans, however, was to paint Murtha's call as exactly that, a "cut-and-run" demand for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. The "immediate withdrawal" GOP talking point was broadbanded across the media spectrum, and was used in a farcical legislative attempt to derail the conversation. Congressional Republicans tossed up a resolution demanding "immediate withdrawal," daring the Democrats to vote for it.

Scott Shields, writing on the MyDD blog, pegged it perfectly. "My advice to the entire Democratic caucus," wrote Shields when this garbage GOP resolution was introduced, "is to not take the bait. Theentire caucus should abstain from voting altogether. And the Republicans should be called out for their bullying tactics. The Democrats must make it clear to anyone who will listen that this 'Murtha vote' is not a vote on the Murtha resolution at all, but rather a caricature of his resolution, thrown together by hot headed Republicans, eager to jam up the opposition."

Was this advice heeded? Did we hear, "I reject the premise that Murtha's resolution called for immediate withdrawal" and expose the GOP's scurrilous actions for what they were? Hardly. A bunch of dumb Democrats instead took the bait and threw Rep. Murtha under the bus. They knocked over furniture and old people in their rush to the microphones, where they validated the GOP talking point about "immediate withdrawal" by defending themselves against it.

Senator Clinton got up and said immediate withdrawal would be a "big mistake" before beginning a hare-brained crusade against flag-burning.

Senator Biden echoed Clinton by saying immediate withdrawal would be a mistake, never bothering to point out that "immediate withdrawal" was not part of Murtha's resolution.

Governor Mark Warner of Virginia, in rejecting Murtha's non-existent call for immediate withdrawal, said, "This Democrat doesn't think we need to re-fight how we got into the Iraq war. I think we need to focus more on how to finish it." Great work, Governor. Rather than call this administration to account for the manner in which we were dragged into this disaster, let's give them a pass and trust them to do the right thing in the future. Brilliant. Oh, psssst, Murtha never said "immediate withdrawal" in his resolution. Pass it on.

Senator Lieberman, whose pandering to Republican extremism has reached an extraordinary level of sublime hilarity, outstripped his fellow Democrats by orders of magnitude. On top of dismissing "immediate withdrawal," he went on to say, "It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander-in-chief for three more years. We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril."

It should be noted that Murtha thumped Lieberman's defense of Bush but good. "Undermining his credibility?" asked Murtha. "What has he said that would give him credibility?" That, friends and neighbors, is a golden example of rejecting the premise.

Joementum wants us to do as we are told, shut up, and accept the Bush/Cheney view of things. Criticism of the administration is tantamount to treason. Let the word go forth from this time and place that silence is golden and critics are aiding terrorism. Even for Joe, this was a spectacular statement. One wonders if the word on the street about him replacing Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense has anything to do with this gibberish. From the sound of things, he already believes himself to be a member of Bush's Cabinet.

Sadly, four Democratic ninnies cuddled right up to it, validating a GOP talking point intended to destroy debate on the signal issue of our day. Clinton, Biden, Warner, Lieberman ... what do these four have in common? As far as can be seen, they share one common characteristic: they all think they will be President after 2008.

Wesley Clark, another Democrat who hopes to be redecorating the Oval in 2009, took the whole thing one big step further with an editorial in Tuesday's New York Times titled "The Next Iraq Offensive." The article detailed a series of troop maneuvers that would redeploy American and Iraqi forces along the borders with Syria and Iran. Clark warned that Iraq was becoming a Shia-dominated buffer state that serves to protect Iran, and that a radical shift in tactics must be undertaken to avoid the creation of an Iran/Iraq superstate. At bottom, Clark said the United States must remain in Iraq, and that his plan was one that could achieve victory in this conflict.

It was a cogent and effective argument centered around an undeniable fact: this occupation has empowered Shia fundamentalism in Iraq, said fundamentalism being deeply tied to Shia fundamentalism in Iran. This union poses a danger to the Mideast region and, in the long run, a danger to the United States both at home and abroad. There is one significant dent in Clark's thinking, however. In making his argument, he accepted a number of premises that should be rejected as deeply flawed.

Here's the deal: we invaded Iraq to establish a permanent, muscular military presence in the Middle East; we invaded Iraq to take control of their petroleum reserves for the next hundred years, a pretty little piggy bank in a world where oil is becoming harder to find; we invaded Iraq so we could use our military presence there to attack and invade several other countries in the region; we invaded Iraq to establish strategic positioning for any economic and/or resource struggles with China and Russia; we invaded Iraq because administration officials who think they are members of the Likud Party believed this war would serve to protect and defend the state of Israel; we invaded Iraq so a bunch of military contractors with umbilical ties to the administration could get paid.

All of this is enshrined in the codicils of the Project for a New American Century, the organization whose membership rolls include Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Libby and a pile of others who have crafted our insane foreign policy and thrown us into this mess. This is what they wanted. They've been planning it for years, well before they ever got into the White House with Bush. For them, victory had nothing to do with defeating Hussein or fighting terrorism or establishing democracy. Victory means we stay in Iraq forever.

Period. End of file.

When Wesley Clark and these other Democratic aspirants talk about "winning" in Iraq before we get out, they accept a premise that should be rejected out of hand. For the architects of this war, victory has already been achieved, and all arguments in favor of remaining in Iraq until impossible goals are reached strengthen that victory. There is no democracy at the end of this tunnel, only more tunnel.

When Wesley Clark and these other Democratic aspirants talk about "winning" in Iraq, they buy into the fantasy that there is anything to win. The invasion and occupation created a breeding ground for terrorism, immeasurably strengthened the resolve of Islamic fanaticism, ravaged the US treasury, and has seriously weakened our ability to defend ourselves against other global threats.

We cannot stay in Iraq. Were we to withdraw tomorrow, we would sow the seeds of future bloodshed and risk an all-out civil war. We would compound the crime already committed against the Iraqi people. But if we stay, if we buy into the idea that remaining in Iraq will cure these problems, we do exactly the same thing.

Rep. Murtha was right. It is the presence of American troops in Iraq that inspires the violence today. The solution, therefore, is beyond sloganeering or open-ended promises that cannot be fulfilled. We have to exit Iraq, but we must do so far more responsibly than the manner in which we first arrived there. We need a plan that involves international cooperation with organizations like NATO and the Arab League. The Iraqi people must be given the help they need to take over the security and economy of their own country, but this help cannot be provided by the United States. We do no good there, but only harm.

We absolutely need a timetable established for this to happen. Some have argued that the "terrorists" will use a timetable for withdrawal against us. This may be true, but such statements blue-sky right past a glaring reality: they are presently using the lack of a timetable for withdrawal against us, they are doing so effectively, and the body count continues to rise because of it.

An exit from Iraq is the only rational course of action. How and when we do it must become the central point of discussion in American politics. Timetables for that withdrawal must be established, and a real plan must be agreed upon. This administration, which has no interest in withdrawal for its own nefarious reasons, must be forced to accept this.

Democrats who aspire to higher office must not derail this process by accepting GOP talking points, talking points which serve to do little more than ensure that we will still be in Iraq when our great-grandchildren are old enough to vote.

Take all the rhetoric you've heard from Republicans and Democrats alike regarding "winning" in Iraq, wad it up, throw it into a metal wastecan, and set it on fire. Put all the talk about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda alliances and Hussein was a bad man and bringing democracy to the torch. Give this nonsense a good, old-fashioned Viking funeral, which provides far more of a dignified departure from this world than it deserves. Cast the ashes to the wind. Salt the earth where the ashes fall so that nothing so pestilently wrong can grow there.

We can win nothing in Iraq. We can only hope to survive the incredible disaster that has been foisted upon us. Rejecting the premise of "winning" is the first step toward that survival. Rejecting wrong-headed, deliberately misleading GOP talking points would be a good idea, as well. Getting out of Iraq is the only sane, sensible, responsible course of action. Any Democrats who hope to be President should heed this. They are ten steps behind the rest of the country, and when they buy into the nonsense, they only ensure their electoral doom.

W Won't Read This

2005-12-14T13:28:00.000-05:00

December 14, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYTimes
WASHINGTON

Never ask a guy who's in a bubble if he's in a bubble. He can't answer.

'Cause he's in a bubble.

But the NBC anchor Brian Williams gamely gave it a shot, showing the president the Newsweek cover picturing him trapped in a bubble.

"This says you're in a bubble," Brian told W. "You have a very small circle of advisers now. Is that true? Do you feel in a bubble?"

"No, I don't feel in a bubble," Bubble Boy replied, unable to see the bubble because he's in it. "I feel like I'm getting really good advice from very capable people and that people from all walks of life have informed me and informed those who advise me." He added, "I'm very aware of what's going on."

He swiftly contradicted himself by admitting that "this is the first time I'm seeing this magazine" - his version of his dad's Newsweek "Wimp Factor" cover - and that he doesn't read newsmagazines.

The anchor and the anchorite spent a few anodyne moments probing the depths of what it's like to be president. "I just talked to the president-elect of Honduras," W. said. "A lot of my job is foreign policy, and I spend an enormous amount of time with leaders from other countries."

Brian struggled to learn whether W. read anything except one-page memos. Talking about his mom, Bubble Boy returned to the idea of the bubble: "If I'm in a bubble, well, if there is such thing as a bubble, she's the one who can penetrate it."

"I'll tell the guys at Newsweek," the anchor said impishly.

"Is that who put the bubble story?" W. asked. First he didn't know about it, and now he's forgotten it already? That's the alluring, memory-cleansing beauty of the bubble.

The idea that W. is getting good advice from very capable people is silly - administration officials have blown it on everything from the occupation and natural disasters to torture. In the bubble, they can torture while saying they don't. They can pretend that Iraqi forces are stronger than they are. They can try to frighten people with talk of Al Qaeda's dream of a new Islamic caliphate - their latest attempt to scare Americans into supporting the war they ginned up.

"Whether or not it needed to happen," the president told the anchor, "I'm still convinced it needed to happen." The Bubble Boy can even contradict himself and not notice.

W.'s contention that he's informed by people from all walks of life is a joke, as is his wacky assertion that he can "reach out" to the public more than Abraham Lincoln because he has Air Force One. Lincoln actually went to the front in his war, with Minié balls whizzing by. No phony turkey for him.

The president may fly over all walks of life in Air Force One or drive by them and hide behind dark-tinted windows. In his bubble, he floats through a comforting world of doting women, respectful military audiences, loyal Republican donors and screened partisan groups - with protesters, Democrats, journalists, critics and coffins of dead soldiers kept at bay.

(He has probably even been shielded from the outrage of John and Stacey Holley, both Army veterans, who were shocked to learn that their only child, Matthew, killed in Iraq, would be arriving in San Diego as freight on a commercial airliner.)

Jack Murtha, a hawkish Democrat close to the Pentagon who supported both wars against Iraq waged by the Bushes, has been braying against the Bush isolation. He told Newsweek that a letter he wrote to the president making suggestions about how to fight the Iraq war was ignored for seven months, then brushed off by a deputy under secretary of defense. Even after he went public, he still did not get a call from the White House.

"If they talked to people," he said, "they wouldn't get these outbursts."

Mr. Murtha told Rolling Stone that the administration's deafness had doomed Iraq: "Everything we did was mishandled. Plans that the military and the State Department had in place - they ignored 'em. The military tells me that when they were planning the invasion, the administration wouldn't let one of the primary three-star generals in the room."

The president's bubble requires constant care. It's not easy to keep out huge tragedies like Katrina, or flawed policies like Iraq. As Newsweek noted, a foreign diplomat "was startled when Secretary of State Rice warned him not to lay bad news on the president. 'Don't upset him,' she said."

Heaven forbid. Don't burst his bubble.

It Takes a Potemkin Village

2005-12-12T12:13:00.000-05:00

December 11, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
New York Times
By FRANK RICH

WHEN a government substitutes propaganda for governing, the Potemkin village is all. Since we don't get honest information from this White House, we must instead, as the Soviets once did, decode our rulers' fictions to discern what's really happening. What we're seeing now is the wheels coming off: As the administration's stagecraft becomes more baroque, its credibility tanks further both at home and abroad. The propaganda techniques may be echt Goebbels, but they increasingly come off as pure Ali G.

The latest desperate shifts in White House showmanship say at least as much about our progress (or lack of same) in Iraq over the past 32 months as reports from the ground. When President Bush announced the end of "major combat operations" in May 2003, his Imagineers felt the need for only a single elegant banner declaring "Mission Accomplished." Cut to Nov. 30, 2005: the latest White House bumper sticker, "Plan for Victory," multiplied by Orwellian mitosis over nearly every square inch of the rather "Queer Eye" stage set from which Mr. Bush delivered his oration at the Naval Academy.

And to no avail. Despite the insistently redundant graphics - and despite the repetition of the word "victory" 15 times in the speech itself - Americans believed "Plan for Victory" far less than they once did "Mission Accomplished." The first New York Times-CBS News Poll since the Naval Academy pep talk, released last Thursday, found that only 25 percent of Americans say the president has "a clear plan for victory in Iraq." Tom Cruise and evolution still have larger constituencies in America than that.

Mr. Bush's "Plan for Victory" speech was, of course, the usual unadulterated nonsense. Its overarching theme - "We will never accept anything less than complete victory" - was being contradicted even as he spoke by rampant reports of Pentagon plans for stepped-up troop withdrawals between next week's Iraqi elections and the more important (for endangered Republicans) American Election Day of 2006. The specifics were phony, too: Once again inflating the readiness of Iraqi troops, Mr. Bush claimed that the recent assault on Tal Afar "was primarily led by Iraqi security forces" - a fairy tale immediately unmasked by Michael Ware, a Time reporter embedded in that battle's front lines, as "completely wrong." No less an authority than the office of Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, promptly released a 59-page report documenting his own military's inadequate leadership, equipment and training.

But this variety of Bush balderdash is such old news that everyone except that ga-ga 25 percent instantaneously tunes it out. We routinely assume that the subtext (i.e., the omissions and deliberate factual errors) of his speeches and scripted town meetings will be more revealing than the texts themselves. What raised the "Plan for Victory" show to new heights of disinformation was the subsequent revelation that the administration's main stated motive for the address - the release of a 35-page document laying out a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" - was as much a theatrical prop as the stunt turkey the president posed with during his one furtive visit to Baghdad two Thanksgivings ago.

As breathlessly heralded by Scott McClellan, this glossy brochure was "an unclassified version" of the strategy in place since the war's inception in "early 2003." But Scott Shane of The New York Times told another story. Through a few keystrokes, the electronic version of the document at whitehouse.gov could be manipulated to reveal text "usually hidden from public view." What turned up was the name of the document's originating author: Peter Feaver, a Duke political scientist who started advising the National Security Council only this June. Dr. Feaver is an expert on public opinion about war, not war itself. Thus we now know that what Mr. McClellan billed as a 2003 strategy for military victory is in fact a P.R. strategy in place for no more than six months. That solves the mystery of why Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Army, who is in charge of training Iraqi troops, told reporters that he had never seen this "National Strategy" before its public release last month.

In a perfect storm of revelations, the "Plan for Victory" speech fell on the same day that The Los Angeles Times exposed new doings on another front in the White House propaganda war. An obscure Defense Department contractor, the Lincoln Group, was caught paying off Iraqi journalists to run upbeat news articles secretly written by American Army personnel and translated into Arabic (at a time when American troops in harm's way are desperate for Arabic translators of their own). One of the papers running the fake news is Al Mutamar, the Baghdad daily run by associates of Ahmad Chalabi. So now we know that at least one P.R. plan, if not a plan for victory, has been consistent since early 2003. As Mr. Chalabi helped feed spurious accounts of Saddam's W.M.D. to American newspapers to gin up the war, so his minions now help disseminate happy talk to his own country's press to further the illusion that the war is being won.

The Lincoln Group's articles (e.g., "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq") are not without their laughs - for us, if not for the Iraqis, whose intelligence is insulted and whose democratic aspirations are betrayed by them. But the texts are no more revealing than those of Mr. Bush's speeches. Look instead at the cover-up that has followed the Los Angeles Times revelations. The administration and its frontmen at once started stonewalling from a single script. Mr. McClellan, Pentagon spokesmen, Senator John Warner and Donald Rumsfeld all give the identical answer to the many press queries. We don't have the facts, they say, even as they maintain that the Lincoln Group articles themselves are factual.

The Pentagon earmarks more than $100 million in taxpayers' money for various Lincoln Group operations, and it can't get any facts? Though the 30-year-old prime mover in the shadowy outfit, one Christian Bailey, fled from Andrea Mitchell of NBC News when she pursued him on camera in Washington, certain facts are proving not at all elusive.

Ms. Mitchell and other reporters have learned that Mr. Bailey has had at least four companies since 2002, most of them interlocking, short-lived and under phantom names. Government Executive magazine also discovered that Mr. Bailey "was a founder and active participant in Lead21," a Republican "fund-raising and networking operation" - which has since scrubbed his name from its Web site - and that he and a partner in his ventures once listed a business address identical to their Washington residence. This curious tale, with its trail of cash payoffs, trading in commercial Iraqi real estate and murky bidding procedures for lucrative U.S. government contracts, could have been lifted from "Syriana" or "Glengarry Glen Ross." While Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. McClellan valiantly continue their search for "the facts," what we know so far can safely be filed under the general heading of "Lay, DeLay and Abramoff."

The more we learn about such sleaze in the propaganda war, the more we see it's failing for the same reason as the real war: incompetence. Much as the disastrous Bremer regime botched the occupation of Iraq with bad decisions made by its array of administration cronies and relatives (among them Ari Fleischer's brother), so the White House doesn't exactly get the biggest bang for the bucks it shells out to cronies for fake news.

Until he was unmasked as an administration shill, Armstrong Williams was less known for journalism than for striking a deal to dismiss a messy sexual-harassment suit against him in 1999. When an Army commander had troops sign 500 identical good-news form letters to local newspapers throughout America in 2003, the fraud was so transparent it was almost instantly debunked. The fictional scenarios concocted for Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman also unraveled quickly, as did last weekend's Pentagon account of 10 marines killed outside Falluja on a "routine foot patrol." As the NBC correspondent Jim Miklaszewski told Don Imus last week, he received calls within hours from the fallen's loved ones about how the marines had been slaughtered after being recklessly sent to an unprotected site for a promotion ceremony.

Though the White House doesn't know that its jig is up, everyone else does. Americans see that New Orleans is in as sorry shape today as it was under Brownie three months ago. The bipartisan 9/11 commissioners confirm that homeland security remains a pork pit. Condi Rice's daily clarifications of her clarifications about American torture policies are contradicted by new reports of horrors before her latest circumlocutions leave her mouth. And the president's latest Iraq speeches - most recently about the "success" stories of Najaf and Mosul - still don't stand up to the most rudimentary fact checking.

This is why the most revealing poll number in the Times/CBS survey released last week was Mr. Bush's approval rating for the one area where things are going relatively well, the economy: 38 percent, only 2 points higher than his rating on Iraq. It's a measure of the national cynicism bequeathed by the Bush culture that seeing anything, even falling prices at the pump, is no longer believing.

Sharing the Sacrifice, or Ending It

2005-12-08T11:01:00.000-05:00

December 8, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
By BOB HERBERT

If it is true, as President Bush and many others have argued, that horrific consequences will result if American forces are pulled from Iraq in the near future, then how is it that we are even considering a significant drawdown of troops in advance of next fall's Congressional elections?

Opponents of a swift withdrawal speak of potential consequences that are dire in the extreme: the eruption of a wider civil war with ever more horrendous Iraqi casualties; the transformation of Iraq into a safe haven and even more of a training ground for anti-American terrorists; the involvement of neighboring countries like Iran, Syria and Turkey in a spreading conflict that could destabilize the entire Middle East.

Vice President Dick Cheney told troops at Fort Drum, N.Y., on Tuesday that in the event of a swift withdrawal of American troops, Iraq "would return to the rule of tyrants, become a massive source of instability in the Middle East and be a staging area for ever greater attacks against America and other civilized nations."

Senator John McCain, who defines "complete victory" in Iraq as the establishment of a "flawed but functioning democracy," told Tim Russert of NBC that achieving even that modest goal would be "long and hard and tough."

If the hawks are right, if all of this is so - and if this war is, indeed, still winnable - then the Bush administration has an obligation to level with the American people, explaining clearly what will be required in terms of casualties, financial costs and other sacrifices, and telling the truth about the shabby, amateurish state of the Iraqi security forces.

As it stands now, the United States is incapable of defeating the insurgency with the forces it has in Iraq. So it is beyond preposterous to think that Iraq can be pacified in a year or 18 months or two years by a fledgling, underequipped Iraqi Army and a hapless police force riddled with brutal, partisan militias.

What's more, the U.S. military itself is in danger of cracking under the strain of this endless Iraq ordeal. Troops are being sent into the war zone for their third and fourth tours, which is hideously unfair. The more times you roll the dice, the more likely snake eyes will pop up.

Even with lowered standards, the Army can't meet its recruitment goals. And the National Guard and Reserves have been all but exhausted by the war effort.

The combination of troop shortages, declining public support for the war and the Republicans' anxiety over next year's elections all but ensures some substantial reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq over the next eight to 12 months.

And yet the hawks say we must continue the fight. Well, wars fought with one eye on the polls and one eye on the political calendar get lots of people killed for nothing.

If this war is worth fighting, it's worth fighting right. And that means mobilizing not just the handful of troops who have borne the burden of this wretched conflict, but the entire nation. Taxes would have to be raised, the military expanded, the forces in Iraq bolstered and a counterinsurgency strategy developed that would have some chance of actually defeating the enemy.

To do that would require implementing a draft. It's easy to make the case for war when the fighting will be done by other people's children.

If this war is as important as the hawks insist it is, the burden should be shared by all of us. The youngsters sacrificed on the altar of Iraq should be drawn from the widest possible swath of the general population.

If most Americans are unwilling to send their children to fight in Iraq, it must mean that most Americans do not feel that winning the war is absolutely essential.

The truth is that no one knows for sure what will happen if we pull our troops out of Iraq. Many of those who insist that the sky will fall were insisting three years ago that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that invading U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators.

The public initially supported this war because the administration was very effective at promoting the canard that Iraq was somehow linked to Al Qaeda and involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Now the hawks must once again bear the burden of persuasion. They must persuade the public that the U.S. should continue indefinitely fighting this war, which has embedded us in such a hellish predicament and taken such a horrendous toll.

If it's not worth fighting, then we should be preparing an orderly exit now.

Mr. Bush, Have I Got an Exit Strategy for You

2005-12-07T16:55:00.000-05:00

By Gus R. Stelzer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Monday 05 December 2005

Despite much talk about an exit strategy from the Iraq quagmire in which our nation is embroiled, the No. 1 exit strategy has not been proposed. Let me fill that void. First you have a right to know where I'm coming from.

When I reached the legal voting age of 21 in 1936, I voted for Republican Alfred Landon against Franklin D. Roosevelt. I continued voting Republican through 1980, when I founded a PAC in San Diego with my own money to help Ronald Reagan defeat Jimmy Carter.

But I didn't vote for Reagan in 1984 because of his misguided trade and fiscal policies.

Whereas the United States enjoyed a $28 billion trade surplus and only $700 billion in federal debt in the previous 36 years, in eight years Reagan piled up $1.042 trillion in trade deficits and $1.692 trillion in federal debt. That was 186 percent more than all 39 prior presidents.

I haven't voted for a Republican or Democrat candidate since because I have no desire to vote for the lesser of two evils. I retired in 1976 as a senior executive of General Motors, with responsibility for more than 35,000 employees, and have been a member of the World Affairs Council, the Institute for the Americas at the University of California, the Advisory Board of the School of Education at the University of San Diego, a Rotary Club president, etc. I've traveled widely and lived in many states.

Any CEO of a corporation who screwed up as many things as George W. Bush would have been fired by its board of directors. Here's a few of the ways:

Invasion of Iraq, which is the biggest strategic blunder and scandal in US history. Saddam Hussein never initiated a belligerent act of aggression or terrorism against us. The buildup to that war was based on fabrications, deception and lies.

Death of 2,100 US soldiers, wounding 15,000 more, and the death of 30,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children.

Immoral and unconstitutional trade policies that caused $2.824 trillion in trade deficits in just five years.

The worst fiscal performance in our history, piling up $2.472 trillion in added federal debt in five years en route to a major economic collapse.

Tax policies that are an insult to working people who make dividends possible but who are required to pay a higher marginal tax rate than those who collect dividends without working.

Foreign policies that have alienated most of the rest of the world.

A misguided attempt to turn future Social Security pensions over to Wall Street.
In typical arrogance, Bush said we must stay the course in the Iraq war, which means continuing his tragic record while killing and wounding more US soldiers. That has no more credibility than to say a fox should be put in charge of maintaining order in a hen house after he has just created mayhem therein.

Earlier this year, Terri Schiavo lay in a permanent coma connected to a feeding tube. Her husband said she would have wanted that tube removed. But Republican members of Congress passed a resolution to maintain the tube, causing Bush to fly from his ranch in Texas to Washington to sign that legislation.

As his pen was poised to sign the document, Bush said, "If there is an error in this matter, it is best to err on the side of life."

Why didn't Bush make that same judgment in early 2003 when millions of Americans protested against a possible invasion of Iraq, as did many foreign leaders? Bush had no qualms about killing and wounding thousands of soldiers and innocent civilians.

In view of his miserable record, his arrogant lack of good judgment and his failure to understand the gravity of his record, President Bush (and Vice President Dick Cheney) should be shown the exit door with a proviso to never darken the Oval Office again.

That should be exit strategy No. 1!

I was a Republican, but never a knee-jerk Republican.

W's Head in the Sand

2005-12-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

December 3, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
By MAUREEN DOWD

In the Christmas spirit, the time has come for the reality-based community to reach out to the White House.

The Bush warriors are so deluded, they're even faking their fakery.

This week, the president presented a plan-like plan for "victory" in Iraq, which Scott McClellan rather pompously called the unclassified version of their supersecret master plan. But there would be no way to achieve victory from this plan even if it were a real plan. If this is what they're telling themselves in the Sit Room, we're in bigger trouble than we thought.

Talk about your unknown unknowns, as Rummy would say.

The National Strategy for Victory must have come from the same P.R. genius who gave President Top Gun the "Mission Accomplished" banner about 48 hours before the first counterinsurgency war of the 21st century broke out in Iraq.

It's not a military strategy - classified or unclassified. It's political talking points - and not even good ones. Are we really supposed to believe that anybody, even the most deeply delusional Bush sycophant, believes the phrase "Our strategy is working"?

The president talked about three neatly definable groups of insurrectionists. But as Dexter Filkins reported in yesterday's New York Times, there are dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred, groups fighting the U.S. Army in Iraq, and they have little, if anything, in common.

Mr. Bush's presentation claimed that the U.S. was actually making progress in Iraq. But outside the Bush-Cheney-Rummy bubble, 10 more marines were killed by a roadside bomb outside Falluja, for a total of 2,125 U.S. military deaths so far.

The administration must realize it needs a real exit strategy, because it's advertising for one. The U.S. Agency for International Development is offering more than $1 billion for anyone - anyone at all - who can come up with a plan to pacify and rebuild 10 Iraqi cities seen as vital in the war.

Maybe the White House should apply - Usaid's proffer says the "invitation is open to any type of entity."

When Bush officials weren't telling us fairy tales about the big, bad W.M.D. in Iraq, they were assuring us that the unprovoked war would be a kindness for Iraq, giving it democracy. But they are not just failing to bring democracy to Iraq as they help Iranian-backed mullahs install an Islamic republic with Saddamist torture chambers. They are also degrading democracy in America.

They've tarnished American moral leadership with illegal detentions, torture, secret C.I.A. prisons in countries only recently liberated from the Soviet gulag, and Soviet-style propaganda both at home and in Iraq.

Guess the Bush administration didn't learn anything this fall when federal auditors said it had violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of its education polices. Bush officials got right back into the fake news business, paying to plant propaganda in the Iraqi press. They outsourced this disinformation campaign to something called the Lincoln Group - have they no shame?

You have to admire Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman. He kept a straight face when he called the U.S. "a leader when it comes to promoting and advocating a free and independent media around the world." He added, "We've made our views very clear when it comes to freedom of the press."

Exceedingly clear. The Bushies don't believe in it. They disdain the whole democratic system of checks and balances.

At the Naval Academy, President Bush talked about how well the Iraqi security forces were fighting. He claimed that 40 Iraqi battalions were taking the lead in the fight against insurgents, and that in the battle of Tal Afar this year, "the assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces - 11 Iraqi battalions backed by 5 coalition battalions providing support."

Anderson Cooper of CNN swiftly produced Time magazine's Baghdad bureau chief, Michael Ware, who was embedded with the U.S. military during the entire Tal Afar battle. "With the greatest respect to the president, that's completely wrong," Mr. Ware said, adding: "I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with Al Qaeda. They were not leading."

He also told Mr. Cooper: "I have had a very senior officer here in Baghdad say to me that there's never going to be a point where these guys will be able to stand up against the insurgency on their own."

Mr. Ware recalled that in a battle two weeks ago, he saw an Iraqi security officer put down his weapon and curl up into a ball when he was under attack. "I have seen that on - on many, many occasions," he said.

Curling up in a ball. Good National Strategy for Victory.

The Cyborg.

2005-11-28T16:19:00.000-05:00

Published on Monday, November 28, 2005 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)
Cheney Threatens America
Editorial

There is something reassuring about the battering that Vice President Dick Cheney has taken in recent weeks. Finally, it appears, the Washington intelligentsia is waking up to the reality that has been obvious for years to thinking Americans: The most powerful vice president in American history is a deeply dishonest and an even more deeply dangerous man.

Cheney has been taking hits from all sides ever since his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted for lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury. Lewis has been linked to a scheme to destroy the reputation of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, the man who exposed the lies on which the Bush-Cheney administration based its "case" for invading Iraq.

The indictment of Libby mentioned Cheney's name repeatedly and in the most compromising of circumstances: as one of the first people to mention to Libby that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative and as a participant with Libby in sessions where schemes were hatched to "respond" to Wilson.

Even before the smoke had cleared from the Libby indictment, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who had served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, charged that Cheney and his allies had hijacked U.S. foreign policy - often without the knowledge or consent of President Bush. Recalling his service during the Bush administration's first term, Wilkerson charged: "What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

Using an approach that Wilkerson described as "not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy," the colonel argued that Cheney's cabal had "produced a series of disastrous decisions" - policymaking - with disastrous consequences for America.

Then, as if to confirm Wilkerson's observation, Cheney was exposed as the federal government's primary proponent of the use of torture. In an attempt to counter a congressional move led by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, Cheney pressed lawmakers to exempt the CIA from the new standard.

Amid revelations that Cheney's office had long been the administration's chief advocate for the use of torture, former CIA Director Stansfield Turner has labeled Cheney America's "vice president for torture." Declaring that "I just don't understand how a man in that position can take such a stance," Turner labeled Cheney "reprehensible."

The vice president lived up to the description after U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Cheney immediately suggested that the old soldier had lost his "backbone."

But Murtha wasn't giving Cheney any ground. Recalling the vice president's determined efforts to avoid serving in Vietnam, the congressman said, "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and (have) never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

Cheney lost that round, as he has most rounds in recent months.

If this keeps up, President Bush might yet come to recognize what most Americans already well understand: Dick Cheney is too crooked, too cruel and too crazy to be allowed to continue warping this country's policies. And if Bush doesn't recognize the need to get rid of Cheney, Congress should.

© 2005 The Capital Times

How the might have fallen...

2005-11-27T10:39:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving.

2005-11-25T09:03:00.000-05:00

Scenes From A Bush Thanksgiving - Dubya Pouts, Cheney Scowls, No One Brings Pie - and Why is Rove Looking at Barb That Way?
by Mark Morford

Ah yes, it is that time again. The smell of roasting turkey and cigar smoke and Polo cologne, perfume like florid gasoline. Copious forced laughter that sounds like geese mating in a broom closet. It is Thanksgiving dinner at the Bush White House, where the guests mingle as though their genitals were being squeezed by manic elves, as if they were all coated in vanilla pudding being licked off by Pat Robertson. Which, truth be told, some of them seem to enjoy. A lot.

They await the appearance of the bird in the cozy, heavily paneled White House drawing room with the grand chandelier sparkling there since the Truman administration, the rest of the space engorged with stuffy furniture Laura chose herself and which she thinks is manly and presidential but which actually looks like it was bought at a Jersey consignment store run by Ethan Allen's stoned brother.

Barbara rules. Owns the house, despite how she hasn't lived here in over 13 years. Laura can only look at her in numb awe, her own stiff skirt pleats appearing humble and small in comparison to Barb's massive teal dress ensemble, so epic and balloon-like it would seem to envelope all it comes near, like a giant ocean algae bloom, a massive amoeba, a cloud of righteous know-it-allness that makes easy mockery of Laura's little beige blouse of meek sexless humility. Barb is a force of nature, commanding the staff and chatting up the various heads of state and smiling at everyone with that glassy omnivorous stare. They all hate her.

George Sr. notices this, of course, from his usual place back beside the old bookcase that hasn't been perused in five years, sips his gin fizz and chuckles softly at the scene, thinkin' about golf, thinkin' about how long ago it all seems since his reign of tepid ineptitude, but thinkin', also, about how history will be much kinder to him now that his son has run the country into a blood-drenched wall. He-he-he. He'll drink to that.

It's the thing no one mentions, but which hangs over the room like a pall. Junior's current miserable poll numbers now mean that he and his father share the honor of being two of the four most unpopular presidents in modern history, right alongside Carter and Nixon. But Bush 41 does not care. He gets to hang with Clinton now. He is grandfatherly and forgettable and almost invisible. In other words, his stature has improved considerably, in relation to his son. Damn this gin is good. Too bad Junior can't have some. Looks like he could use it.

George Jr. is perturbed. He is sulky and pouty and has to force a smirky grin at the guests as they enter the banquet room, pretending as if he really wanted them all there, all these betrayers and backstabbers and people he thought he knew but who turn out, instead, to be involved in whole big bunches of illegal and traitorous stuff he has no clue about. They are all a bunch of goddamn boogerheads, he thinks.

He forces a smile. No one is willing to hold his blinky little gaze for more than three seconds. He wants to scream. He wants to run away. He wants a beer. He wants 10 beers. He grabs a fistful of baseball-shaped hors d'oeuvres (Gul-dang, I love baseball, he thinks). Barb shoots him a look: Sit up straight, stop pouting or else, use a napkin. He sips his mineral water, sullenly, chats with McClellan while scanning the room for Condi, though his eyes first find Rove, slithering around as usual.

Rove works the room, shakes hands, squeezing a little too hard to remind everyone who "the architect" really is. Everyone understands, even as they furtively wipe their hands on their pants after he touches them. Rove grabs fistfuls of baby shrimp and shoves them into his mouth when he thinks no one's looking, swallows without chewing. He smells like baby aspirin and old bacon.

Karl sneaks furtive glances at Barb. He is awed by her natural power, her girth, her effortless cunning. That teal makes her look so ... so ... seaworthy. He wants her. Badly. She knows it. They have a secret thing -- it is matronly and sweaty and creepy as hell and takes place every other Sunday in a Ritz-Carlton just off the Beltway.

Rummy knows all about it. He and Dick stand near the bar and take huge swigs of scotch and puffs from thick Cuban cigars and speak in low, mean tones out the sides of their mouths, occasionally bursting into dark laughter that sounds like a brick being dragged over a cheese grater. Rummy says something about the Karl/Barb flesh-fest and wonders, a little too loudly, if Oedipus would have felt differently about his mother if she had spanked him. Cheney grunts, retorts with a joke about how pleasurable it must be to hold a lit cigarette near the open eyeball of a terrified prisoner in Guantanamo and demand Osama's cell phone number. Ha.

Dick glances over at Lynne, who is, of course, eyeing one of the Latina servants with open-mouthed hunger. Dick hasn't seen Lynne naked in years. He realizes this is a very good thing. Something to be thankful for, certainly. But Lynne is happy. Her life is full of joyous bridge tournaments and bashing of gay rights and copious lesbian fantasies. She is nothing like poor, lost Condi.

Condi is lonely. So, so lonely, sitting over in the far corner, all by herself, nursing her one glass of white wine. No one really talks to her anymore except Dubya and a maybe few brusque words from Rummy, who she suspects is always imagining her cleaning his guns and polishing his boots and calling him "master." Suddenly, her heart jumps. She sees Dubya looking at her from across the room. She smiles that demonic, dominatrix-y smile that always creeps out the Asian press. He does that thing with his thin little lips, that little gesture only she understands. Her body is instantly warmed. Oh their special bond, a dark secret. It is her breath, her raison d'être. It keeps her alive.

Sam Alito stops by, darts in and out, stealing bites, patting everyone on the back, runs up and gives Dubya a big hug, which embarrasses Dubya and makes Cheney look at him even more disdainfully. Sam is laughing too loudly. He smells of tequila and bad ideas. Laura, however, giggles and looks at him coyly. Her legs quiver. She is wearing way too much White Diamonds and her hair hasn't moved since 2003. No one cares.

Meanwhile, Jenna and Barbara Jr. sneak tequila shots in the Rose Garden and flirt with the Secret Service for, like, the millionth time, to no effect. Jenna is so, like, buzzed. She adjusts her bra strap, again. Then her thong. Damn but she hates these formal things. That Alito guy keeps coming out, begging for shots. They don't want to go back into that miserable, dank banquet room. Barbara Jr. stares vacantly into the near distance. Why couldn't life be more like it is on "The West Wing"? That show, like, totally ruled.

The banquet room reeks and coils and sighs. It is full of bleak energy and missed opportunities, spiritual paranoia and repressed desire and dishonest laughter. The turkey comes out dry. There is not enough pie for Dubya. Rumsfeld slurps his scotch, drunkenly. Dick eyes the dark thigh meat. Condi has to pee. There is little to be thankful for, inside this room.

Outside, however, among the nation's awakening throngs, gratitude and hope are beginning to swell and grow anew. Only three years left. It's long but not that long. Every person in that gloomy room will be gone. History. Nothing left but an ugly stain, oily residue, scar tissue. The room will be refreshed. The turkey will be moist. There will be more cranberry sauce. This dark, warmongering chapter will finally end. Pie all around.

It is not, the world realizes, too early to be thankful for that.

WTF is wrong with Republicans?

2005-11-23T09:35:00.000-05:00

A quote about the recent budget cuts voted on in Congress -

Some of the most powerful words on the budget cuts came from one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. Rep. Gene Taylor, whose district was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, couldn't believe that cuts in programs for the poor were being justified as necessary to cover the costs of relief for hurricane victims. Taylor's syntax only underscored the emotion he brought to the floor: "Mr. Speaker, in south Mississippi tonight, the people . . . who are living in two- and three-man igloo tents waiting for Congress to do something, have absolutely got to think this place has lost their minds. The same Congress that voted to give the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans tax breaks every time . . . suddenly after taking care of those who had the most, we have got to hurt the least. . . . Folks, this is insane. . . . This is the cruelest lie of all, that the only way you can help the people who have lost everything is by hurting somebody else."

3 hours of my life...

2005-11-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

I spent 3 hours last night watching a show on Bravo about the 100 Top Movie Quotes.
Since I wasted all that time I've decided to waste your time and make you read them.
Here they are -

1
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
GONE WITH THE WIND
2
I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.
THE GODFATHER
3
You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.
ON THE WATERFRONT
4
Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
THE WIZARD OF OZ
5
Here's looking at you, kid.
CASABLANCA
6
Go ahead, make my day.
SUDDEN IMPACT
7
All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.
SUNSET BLVD.
8
May the Force be with you.
STAR WARS
9
Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.
ALL ABOUT EVE
10
You talking to me?
TAXI DRIVER
11
What we've got here is failure to communicate.
COOL HAND LUKE
12
I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
APOCALYPSE NOW
13
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
LOVE STORY
14
The stuff that dreams are made of.
THE MALTESE FALCON
15
E.T. phone home.
E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
16
They call me Mister Tibbs!
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
17
Rosebud.
CITIZEN KANE
18
Made it, Ma! Top of the world!
WHITE HEAT
19
I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!
NETWORK
20
Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
CASABLANCA
21
A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
22
Bond. James Bond.
DR. NO
23
There's no place like home.
THE WIZARD OF OZ
24
I am big! It's the pictures that got small.
SUNSET BLVD.
25
Show me the money!
JERRY MAGUIRE
26
Why don't you come up sometime and see me?
SHE DONE HIM WRONG
27
I'm walking here! I'm walking here!
MIDNIGHT COWBOY
28
Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'
CASABLANCA
29
You can't handle the truth!
A FEW GOOD MEN
30
I want to be alone.
GRAND HOTEL
31
After all, tomorrow is another day!
GONE WITH THE WIND
32
Round up the usual suspects.
CASABLANCA
33
I'll have what she's having.
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
34
You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
35
You're gonna need a bigger boat.
JAWS
36
Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
37
I'll be back.
THE TERMINATOR
38
Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES
39
If you build it, he will come.
FIELD OF DREAMS
40
Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.
FORREST GUMP
41
We rob banks.
BONNIE AND CLYDE
42
Plastics.
THE GRADUATE
43
We'll always have Paris.
CASABLANCA
44
I see dead people.
THE SIXTH SENSE
45
Stella! Hey, Stella!
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
46
Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars.
NOW, VOYAGER
47
Shane. Shane. Come back!
SHANE
48
Well, nobody's perfect.
SOME LIKE IT HOT
49
It's alive! It's alive!
FRANKENSTEIN
50
Houston, we have a problem.
APOLLO 13
51
You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?
DIRTY HARRY
52
You had me at "hello."
JERRY MAGUIRE
53
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.
ANIMAL CRACKERS
54
There's no crying in baseball!
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
55
La-dee-da, la-dee-da.
ANNIE HALL
56
A boy's best friend is his mother.
PSYCHO
57
Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
WALL STREET

58
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
THE GODFATHER II
59
As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.
GONE WITH THE WIND
60
Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!
SONS OF THE DESERT
61
Say "hello" to my little friend!
SCARFACE
62
What a dump.
BEYOND THE FOREST
63
Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?
THE GRADUATE
64
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
DR. STRANGELOVE
65
Elementary, my dear Watson.
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
66
Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape.
PLANET OF THE APES
67
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.
CASABLANCA
68
Here's Johnny!
THE SHINING
69
They're here!
POLTERGEIST
70
Is it safe?
MARATHON MAN
71
Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!
THE JAZZ SINGER
72
No wire hangers, ever!
MOMMIE DEAREST
73
Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?
LITTLE CAESAR
74
Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.
CHINATOWN
75
I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
76
Hasta la vista, baby.
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY
77
Soylent Green is people!
SOYLENT GREEN
78
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
79
Striker: Surely you can't be serious.

Rumack: I am serious…and don't call me Shirley.
AIRPLANE!
80
Yo, Adrian!
ROCKY
81
Hello, gorgeous.
FUNNY GIRL
82
Toga! Toga!
NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE
83
Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.
DRACULA
84
Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.
KING KONG
85
My precious.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: TWO TOWERS
86
Attica! Attica!
DOG DAY AFTERNOON
87
Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!
42ND STREET
88
Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining armor. Don't you forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go, go!
ON GOLDEN POND
89
Tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper.
KNUTE ROCKNE ALL AMERICAN
90
A martini. Shaken, not stirred.
GOLDFINGER
91
Who's on first.
THE NAUGHTY NINETIES
92
Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac...It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!
CADDYSHACK
93
Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!
AUNTIE MAME
94
I feel the need - the need for speed!
TOP GUN
95
Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.
DEAD POETS SOCIETY
96
Snap out of it!
MOONSTRUCK
97
My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you.
YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
98
Nobody puts Baby in a corner.
DIRTY DANCING
99
I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!
WIZARD OF OZ, THE
100
I'm king of the world!
TITANIC

With apologies to DragonLady.

2005-11-15T14:15:00.000-05:00

From an e-mail I recieved that seems to be making the rounds.

Dear Red States:

We're ticked off at the way you've treated California and we've decided
we're leaving.

We intend to form our own country and we're taking the other Blue States
with us.

In case you aren't aware that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington,
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast.

We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation and especially to
the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.

We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states
pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian
Coalition's we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single
moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro choice and anti war
and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need
people to fight ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently
willing to send to their deaths for no purpose and they don't care if
you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home.

We wish you success in Iraq and hope that the WMDs turn up but we're not
willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand we will have firm control of 80% of the
country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92%
of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines (you can serve
French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90 percent of the high
te ch industry, most of the US low sulfur coal, all living redwoods,
sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States you will have to cope with 88% of all obese
Americans and their projected health care costs, 92% of all US mosquitoes, nearly
100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists,
virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a
whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death
penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam
was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people
with higher morals then we lefties.

We're! taking the good pot too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in
Mexico.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in New California

That stupid quote.

2005-11-15T11:11:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you've all heard the Churchill quote -

If you are 20 and a conservative, you have no heart. If you are 40 and a liberal, you have no brain.

I'm so sick of that quote.
It implies that to have a heart, you cannot also have a brain.
It also implies that if you have a brain, you cannot also have a heart.

I am a Liberal.
I resent that fact that by admitting I have feeling for the other human beings on this planet (and yet, being a misanthrope I hate them all, go figure) that I have no sense, no brains, no intelligence.
I understand that many Liberal policies cost money and many are hard to implement so my brains work just fine, but I know in my heart that they need to be done.

Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to have the ability to disconnect themselves from their hearts, becoming, well, heartless (hey, I'm the Angry Democrat). It's funny, really, they believe in a sort of Social Darwinism - only the strong survive, the weak and strong must fend for themselves but they don't believe in Biological Darwinism.

What I'm saying is that having a heart and a brain are not mutually exclusive, and to separate the two is a conscious choice, a choice I choose not to make and that conservatives choose to make.

Churchill made a lot of great speeches, I just wish he hadn't uttered this quote, it's annoying and it's wrong.

Loosing Sleep

2005-11-15T09:05:00.000-05:00

I'm having trouble sleeping lately. My bed is comfortable and warm, with lots of down comforters and soft sheets. Five pillows, plus assorted decorative throw pillows. It's cozy and warm and I'm so comfortable.....and that's just the problem.

Because I start to think about our soldiers over in Iraq, these poor kids sent on a Mission Impossible predicated on lies and I think to myself, how are they sleeeping?
In a mud hole? Under a jeep? In all their gear?

We need to get them out of there. Now. None of us should be comfortable in our beds while one of our soldiers are left to fight the BS lie in Iraq. We should all have insomnia till our kids come home. We should not spend a day forgetting about them.

November 10, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
An Army Ready to Snap
By BOB HERBERT
Have you heard what's been happening to the military?

Most people have heard that more than 2,000 American G.I.'s have been killed in the nonstop meat grinder of Iraq. There was a flurry of stories about that grim milestone in the last week of October. (Since then the official number of American deaths has jumped to at least 2,055, and it continues to climb steadily.)

More than 15,000 have been wounded in action.

But the problems of the military go far beyond the casualty figures coming out of the war zone. The Army, for example, has been stretched so taut since the Sept. 11 attacks, especially by the fiasco in Iraq, that it's become like a rubber band that may snap at any moment.

President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld convinced themselves that they could win the war in Iraq on the cheap. They never sent enough troops to do the job. Now the burden of trying to fight a long and bitter war with too few troops is taking a terrible toll on the men and women in uniform.

Last December, the top general in the Army Reserve warned that his organization was "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force" because of the Pentagon's "dysfunctional" policies and demands placed on the Reserve by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

As one of my colleagues at The Times, David Unger of the editorial board, wrote, "The Army's commitments have dangerously and rapidly expanded, while recruitment has plunged."

Soldiers are being sent into the crucible of Iraq for three and even four tours, a form of Russian roulette that is unconscionable.

"They feel like they're the only ones sacrificing," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former Army lieutenant who served in Iraq and is now the executive director of Operation Truth, an advocacy group for service members and veterans.

"They're starting to look around and say, 'You know, it's me and my buddies over and over again, and everybody else is living life uninterrupted.' "

When I asked Mr. Rieckhoff what he thought was happening with the Army, he replied, "The wheels are coming off."

The Washington Post, in a lengthy article last week, noted:

"As sustained combat in Iraq makes it harder than ever to fill the ranks of the all-volunteer force, newly released Pentagon demographic data show that the military is leaning heavily for recruits on economically depressed, rural areas where youths' need for jobs may outweigh the risks of going to war."

For those already in the Army, the price being paid - apart from the physical toll of the killed and wounded - is high indeed.

Divorce rates have gone way up, nearly doubling over the past four years. Long deployments - and, especially, repeated deployments - can take a vicious toll on personal relationships.

Chaplains, psychologists and others have long been aware of the many dangerous factors that accompany wartime deployment: loneliness, financial problems, drug or alcohol abuse, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, the problems faced by the parent left at home to care for children, the enormous problem of adjusting to the devastation of wartime injuries, and so on.

The Army is not just fighting a ruthless insurgency in Iraq. It's fighting a rear-guard action against these noncombat, guerrilla-like conditions that threaten its own viability.

There are reasons why parents all across America are telling their children to run the other way when military recruiters come to call. There are reasons why so many lieutenants and captains, fine young men and women, are heading toward the exit doors at the first opportunity.

A captain who is on active duty, and therefore asked not to be identified by name, told me yesterday:

"The only reason I stayed in the Army was because one colonel convinced me to do it. Other than that, I would have walked. Basically, these guys who are leaving have their high-powered educations. Some are from West Point. They've done their five years. Why should they stay and go back to Iraq and die in a war that's just going to keep on going?"

Beyond that, he said, "Guys are not going to stay in the Army when their wives are leaving them."

From the perspective of the troops, he said, the situation in Iraq is perverse.

He could find no upside. "You go to war," he said, "and you could lose your heart, your mind, your arms, your legs - but you cannot win. The soldiers don't win."

Why I'll never live in Kansas.

2005-11-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

I mentioned, in my last post, how what I'll call, "small government, free market" Republicans made a deal with the devil (aka The Religious Right) in order to get votes and win elections. The greedy corporate Republicans really have nothing in common with the Religious Right except to pay lip service to them to get into office.
And now they have to sit here with the rest of us as the Religious Right tries to turn this country into a Christian Fundamentalist country.

In Kansas they actually voted to allow Evolution to be challenged by "Intelligent Design" or Creationism in their schools. They can dress it up however they want to but it's still teaching religion in school.
To me, this is the single biggest issue of the next decade, after the war in Iraq.
In order to be a free, democratic country, we cannot allow religious zealots to turn us into a fundamentalist state.

Where oh where is the Flying Spaghetti Monster when we need him?

Thanks a lot, dorks.

2005-11-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

Read this -

And a chilling statement from Dan Swarthout, president of Christians Reviving America's Values, who lauded the Alito nomination with these words:

"We need someone on the U.S. Supreme Court who stands for the true principles of America. In fact, I think most of America would agree that it is time for our nation to stop our tolerance for diversity."

So, to all the hard working, intelligent, non-extreme Republicans out there, you know, the "average Republican", I want to thank you on behalf of the rest of the country for voting for this idiot President and all the idiot Congressmen. Because of you this country now has the chance to become just like the people we say are our enemies.
We rail against Islamic countries for their lack of freedoms, their lack of diversity yet here, in this country, we are headed for the same type of thing - different Prophet, same result.
And if all you "small government, States rights, gun toting, Market Economy" Republicans are comfortable with that, then you get what you deserve.
And to all the Liberals out there - because you can't get your act together, pick a candidate and define your issues, we allow these sort of people to run our country.

I don't think that the sort of country Mr. Swarthout aspires to is the kind of country most Americans want, despite what he thinks.
But if Republicans don't wake up, it's the one we'll get.
get.

NYC Marathon.

2005-11-07T08:34:00.000-05:00

The New York City Marathon was run yesterday and while most of you probably missed it, I didn't.
In 2001, just a few months after 9/11, I ran the NYC Marathon.
And let me just say that it was the single most awesome thing I've ever done.
Even without all the extra emotion that was running through the streets with the runners, it still is the coolest race ever.
37,000 runners, running through all 5 boroughs, being watched by over 2 million spectators. Sometimes the spectators are over 20 deep.
One amazing aspect of the race is the diversity of neighborhoods you run through. In Brooklyn alone you run the gamut of cultural diversity - from a white, middle class neighborhood one crosses a street to find a prodominately Hispanic neighborhood then after a few minutes you are running through an Hisidic Jewish neighborhood, all the while the people are there, cheering you on.
Crossing the bridge from Queens to Manhattan you go from the quiet of the bridge (the only places during the Marathon where there are no spectators are the bridges), to what has been described as a "wall of noise" as you enter Manhattan. The rush you get from the loud, often drunk fans as you turn off the bridge and onto 1st Avenue makes you feel, for a moment, like you are a sports hero being cheered on by home town fans.
And the finsih, in Central Park, in fall, is, I'm sure, a beautiful sight, although when you are running you are in no mood to enjoy it. By that time your body has long since told you it's time to stop and your mind is too preoccupied trying to convince the body it needs to continue on to enjoy the sights.
26.2 miles.
Think about it.
I am proud to say I have run the NYC Marathon (and 2 others as well).
It makes you feel as if you can do anything.

Water-boarding with Cheney

2005-11-04T12:23:00.000-05:00

From an article by Ray Mcgovern -

Earlier this month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who knows torture up close and personal, was joined by 89 other senators in voting for legislation that makes unlawful “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control of the United States government.” The McCain initiative took the form of an amendment to this year’s $440-billion defense authorization bill, which includes about $50 billion needed for operations in Iraq.

It will come as no surprise that Cheney is leading the fight against the amendment. It is an unseemly spectacle. Here we have a parvenu regarding things military—with multiple draft deferments to escape the war in Vietnam—importuning the highly decorated officer and torture survivor McCain to allow torture to continue in Iraq and elsewhere. No matter. Cheney descended on McCain and other senators last July and tried to twist their arms to put the amendment aside. Cheney was rebuffed, as he apparently was once again last week, when he and CIA chief Porter Goss made another attempt to dissuade McCain.

?????????????????????????????????????????????
Are you kidding me?
I have an idea -
Since these idiots seem to like torture so much, and find it so effective, maybe we ought to allow Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to try some of these methods on Scooter and the boys. I bet we'll get to the bottom of Plame-gate in no time.
I cannot believe 35% of people in the country still support these lunatics.
On second thought, I guess I can.

They must be stopped.

2005-11-02T20:59:00.000-05:00

Read the following paragraph from an article by Jim Oberg about the current Administration -

And look what they have done with that unchallenged power: Established torture as a policy of interrogation; instituted concentration camps around the world where those simply accused are sent to languish with no defense or hope of exoneration; illegally invaded a country based on fabricated intelligence, killing many thousands of innocents and turning the entire world community against us; pillaged our treasury and transferred untold wealth to their cronies, supporters and our largest corporations; devastated our environment by removing all protections that guard the very life support system of our planet. The list is long.

Not mentioned is the bungling of the Katrina relief effort.

And here’s a quote I used earlier in this blog -

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." - Herman Goering

All of this has been building up for me, forcing me, against my mostly innate disinterest in politics, to become engaged in some way.
What pushed me over the edge (and why it took so long I’m not sure) and led me to make the following statement was reading about the concentration camps my county, yes my country, has set up in other countries. I had read the above quote by Goering and it had lodged itself in the back of my mind and now you bring in the words “concentration camps” and even the most politically reticent of people such as myself have to shudder.

So here is my new rule -

There are two types of Republicans.
Type 1 are those who do not support the current President and his Administration.
Type 2 or those who do.

I have no problem with Type 1 republicans. I understand that people in a free society will have differing opinions, differing philosophies, different ways of thinking about government. And that’s how it should be.

Type 2 republicans are now and will always be my enemy. Type 2 republicans are half a step away from being Fascists, if they are even that far away. I can argue and debate the pros and cons of Welfare and State vs. Federal roles in government with Type 1 republicans. I cannot and will not debate turning my country into a Fascist state. The must either admit they’re wrong or they must be stopped by any means.
People in Germany in the 1930s stood aside and watched as their country was taken from them and by the time they realized it it was too late.
That must not happen in this country.
They must be resisted, impeached, arrested, jailed, whatever it takes to make sure our country remains free.
For a while, on this blog, we had a debate going with some Republicans who came here. I offered them the opportunity to say they believed in Conservative ideals but did not support this President and his Administration.
They refused.
They are the enemy.
No right thinking, freedom loving, sane, rational, intelligent person can say they support this President and his policies.
If they do, they are, even with they don’t know it or won’t admit it, Fascists.
There can be no debate, no trying to reason with them, no give and take.
They must be stopped.
Now.

Evolution works.

2005-11-02T09:28:00.000-05:00

Contrary to what our Creationist/Intelligent Design friends seem to think we now have proof that Evolution exists and actually works.
And what is this proof you ask?
Our Democratic leadership has developed a spine.
And while it took our aquatic, single celled ancestors millions of years to develop the rudiments of a skeletal structure our Democratic leadership has only taken 5 years.
A remarkable transformation and one in which Darwin would be proud.
I’m not a parliamentarian so I don’t know all the ins and outs of this Special Session move they pulled in Congress but I do know that it has pissed off the Republicans and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good start.
Hopefully, as they move forward, the spine will develop to the point where they can stand up on their own, formulate policies, communicate these policies to the country and win back some seats in Congress.
I see it progressing as Democrats begin evolving into the small furry mammals that scurry long the ground and in trees, trying to avoid the large, gigantic, dinosaur-like Republicans as they rend and roar over the earth. As the evolution continues, the Democrats develop opposable thumbs and larger brains while the Republicans begin to die out for lack of forward thinking (owing, no doubt, to their small brains). In the end, the Democrats walk upright, begin using tools and the Republican dinosaurs, in an act of sublime irony, die out, sink into the earth and become the fossil fuels they so greatly covet.
Yes my friends, Evolution works and we are seeing it unfold right before our eyes.

Quote

2005-11-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

Born Under a Bad Sign With a Blue Moon In Your Eye

2005-11-01T09:30:00.000-05:00

One thing about living in Northern New Jersey is you never know when you might run into the Sopranos. No, not real mobsters (although I once had lunch in a restaurant in Bloomfield, NJ and at the bar was a gentleman who looked a lot like Uncle June, and sitting next to him was a well developed woman in her 30s (he was in his 70s) holding her little pet dog, in a restaurant! They were both being fawned over by the staff in a manner suggesting respect, if you know what I mean) but the TV show.

I was driving home from work last night and suddenly traffic was all snarled, which never happens in my neighborhood. As I drove past I saw lights and trucks and police cars and people everywhere.

I go home, changed my clothes and walked across the street. I asked one of the cops what was going on and he said they were filming for the Sopranos.

This is the 4th time they have been in my neighborhood (the exterior for Tony’s mother’s house was filmed a few blocks from where I live), plus I have seen them twice filming along the road I take to work in the morning – Route 46 – one time at a place called The Fountains Of Wayne.

Anyway, I walk toward a house that’s all lit up in the dark.

Now here’s where it gets anticlimactic – I loitered around for 45 minutes and nothing happened except a bunch of people walking in and out of the commissary trailer. I did see a guy in a bear costume – it being Halloween and all – and I did hear some of the support people talking about where they wanted him. But no sightings of any stars or anything. Not that I care much about seeing famous people, I was more interested in seeing the technical aspects of shooting a scene. As far as I can tell, the technical aspects involve a lot of standing around and eating my the staff.

Anyway, I went home and now will have to wait to see if this scene will make it into the show.

While they're losing, they're winning.

2005-10-28T09:50:00.000-04:00

This is unbelievable -

"Exxon Mobil Corp. had a quarter for the record books. The world's largest publicly traded oil company said Thursday high oil and natural-gas prices helped its third-quarter profit surge almost 75 percent to $9.92 billion, the largest quarterly profit for a US company ever, and it was the first to ring up more than $100 billion in quarterly sales"

Even as the current Administation is under fire about Valerie Plame, the War in Iraq, the bungling of the Katrina relief effort, the withdrawl of Miers for Supreme Court, the total stalling of thier Social Security overhaul - all of it - even as things look the bleakest, they are still winning.

What was all of this for if not to get the results of the above quoted paragraph?

This just in...

2005-10-28T08:08:00.000-04:00

A new feature here at Angry Democrat Forum
Bill Maher has his New Rules, I'll have "This just in..."
Just my thoughts on things in general, mostly things that piss me off.
Anyway - This just in...

No more using the letter Z at the end of words to replace the letter S.
I saw a sign on the way to work today that said - "Come to our Kidz Day."
Putting a Z at the end of a word does not make it cooler.
The letter S has been fulfilling the making words plural role for centuries and has been doing a very good job of it, no need for a substitute.
This may seem like a small thing but it's one of a series of things that have been creeping into our language, things like jamming two words together - Reaganocmics, or Corporate-Speak (which is a whole other subject - outsourcing, god, the mere typing of that word creeps me out).
Please, for the love of all that is holy, make the insanity stop.

Nicknames.

2005-10-26T15:32:00.000-04:00

I want it known upfront that I am not a New York Yankee fan.

Okay - no man, with the exception of Phil Rizzuto, should be called or allow himself to be called Scooter.
Further, no man (again, with the exception of Phil Rizzuto) who is called or allows himself to be called Scooter, should be allowed into any kind of public service, except maybe coaching youth soccer in Iowa somewhere.
And even further, no man (Phil Rizzuto included this time) who is called or allows himself to be called Scooter should be anywhere near anything that even looks like it might contain National secrets.

Just my opinion.

When will we ever learn?

2005-10-25T11:09:00.000-04:00

From an aritcle by William Rivers Pitt on the current administration -

They are fascists, and this is what fascists do. They make people afraid. They turn a populace against an outsider while at the same time denying that populace information or even hope of a peaceful resolution. They mobilize for attack through intimidation and scare-tactics. Ask Herman Goering, who explained during the Nuremburg trials, "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." Welcome to the bunker mentality, courtesy of George W. Bush and the folks who brought you the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, the escape and continued freedom of Osama bin Laden, the annihilation of faith in the business community by way of Enron, the annihilation of any sense of personal security by way of Katrina, the annihilation of our standing on the international stage, the big lie about weapons of mass destruction, and an awful lot of dead American soldiers. They used September 11 against you to get these things, or to get away with these things, depending on the need at hand. The result is a proud, great nation on its knees.

Free Falling

2005-10-24T22:56:00.000-04:00

Check out this link. Have fun. It will make you feel better, like 'sticking pins in a voodoo doll' better!

http://www.yeeguy.com/freefall/

Who's right and who's left.

2005-10-21T15:52:00.000-04:00

From an article by Eric Alterman

More than 30 percent of Americans happily answer to the appellation "conservative," while 18 percent call themselves "liberal." And yet when questioned by pollsters, a super-majority of more than 60 percent take positions liberal in everything but name. Indeed, on many if not most issues, Americans hold views well to the left of those espoused by almost any national Democratic politician.

In a May survey published by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 65 percent of respondents said they favor providing health insurance to all Americans, even if it means raising taxes, and 86 percent said they favor raising the minimum wage. Seventy-seven percent said they believe the country "should do whatever it takes to protect the environment.'' A September Gallup Poll finds that 59 percent consider the Iraq War a mistake and 63 percent agree that US forces should be partially or completely withdrawn.

I just thought this was interesting.

The misanthrope speaks...

2005-10-19T10:18:00.000-04:00

As most of you can tell - I'm a misanthrope.
Here is the best definition I have found for what a misanthrope is -

"The misanthrope hates not man. The misanthrope hates idiocy, stupidity, self-righteousness, authoritarianism, selfishness, greed, ignorance, dishonesty, cant, and balderdash. All of these he hates rightfully. The problem is that all of these are shared by no other member of the animal kingdom but man. And the misanthrope does not entertain the vain hope that these traits will ever stop determining man's behavior."

So, I want you all to tell me the things people do to make you hate them.
The post below turned into this sort of thing but I want a general discussion on the topic. Invite your friends, tell people you hate, let's get a good discussion going about why people in general are so hate-able.

Brother can you spare a dime? or The Times They Are A Changin'

2005-10-18T14:27:00.000-04:00

After reading the deep and heavy Post below (one very worth reading, I might add) I thought it would be good to "change" the subject.
I was at the store, buying my salad for lunch, and this guy, two people ahead of me in line, was holding up the entire works digging into his pocket to find exact change. Then, he painstakingly counted out each dime, nickel and penny, reaching again into his pocket when the handful of coins he found didn't add up right. Then, the checkout girl counted each and every coin to make sure it was correct.
A 15 second transaction took 3 or 4 minutes.
Now, to those of you living in the more rural or laid back parts of the country, this might not seem such a big deal. But here in New Jersey, the guy almost got killed. The old lady behind him was snuffing loudly and the guy behind her (and front of me) was muttering, loudly and threateningly.
I almost reached into my wallet to grab a one and give it to the checkout lady just to move things along.
Almost as bad are the people with the little change purses. These things are so small they can't even get their little fingers into them to get the coin they're looking for.
Listen, give the checkout person bills and take the change. They have machines that will turn these coins into bills again so there's no need to pay with change, ever.
Or maybe, let's do away with change all together.

The Mindless American: A Tragedy In The Making

2005-10-18T12:44:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the length of this but it is a great article and needs to be read.

The Mindless American: A Tragedy In The Making
by Doug Soderstrom

As a result of nine-eleven’s jarring impact upon our nation, journalists have discovered a near paranoid rise in retaliation against individuals attempting to expose governmental malfeasance. Increasingly government officials have begun punishing individuals for nothing more than reasoned attempts to inform the American public concerning: How the military has systematically abused (tortured) foreign detainees; How the government intentionally withheld evidence suggesting that an attack upon the United States by Al Qaeda had been eminent; How the military has begun to wage war upon soldiers who, in good conscience, have come to believe that it is wrong for them to kill in a war that, according to international law, is illegal, one that, the reasons for going to war, were fabricated by the President of the United States; How the United States has a sixty-year history (1945- 2005) of assassinating foreign leaders who have chosen not to support the government’s foreign policy goals, initiating the overthrow of duly-elected foreign democracies, while simultaneously supporting brutal authoritarian dictatorships all in order to fill the coffers of America’s military-industrial complex, an egregious imperialistic force with but one goal: To take command of the world economy.

As a result, many of these individuals have been incarcerated, accused of being a traitor, of having sided with the enemy, told that their career will be destroyed, and threatened with extended imprisonment. Accordingly, on September 21, 2005, U.S. immigration officials banned Robert Fisk, an internationally renowned British journalist, on his way to deliver a speech in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from entering the United States of America due to incisive criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war. No doubt such a scenario has, and is, being repeated many times over in our country. A rather sad fact for a president who has chosen to make such a big deal about the oft-quoted ideals of “freedom and democracy!”

But even more shameful is the fact that there are people who seem not to care that such things are taking place in our country; a rather ignorant crowd of jingoes more comfortable choosing to sit back pretending that everything will be just fine, a people with apparently little regard for the facts. As a behavioral scientist, I am grieved at what appears to be a near pandemic of disinterest in what is happening to our country.

Given the election of George Walker Bush as our president, our country made it quite clear that it is pleased to have as its president a scoundrel, a true terrorist, one more than willing to bully the rest of the world, as opposed to having chosen a real man, one that humanity might embrace as a man of true character (someone like Jimmy Carter), an individual committed to doing what is best for the world (rather than what is most profitable for those running the petrol, armament, pharmaceutical, and construction industries), one with a desire to do what must be done in order to create a more humane world, one of peace, justice, and love. Although we claim to be a Christian nation, having chosen George Walker Bush to be the leader of our nation is a scandal beyond belief, one that mocks the very name of one whose life embodies that which we have been said to believe.

However, now that I am well into my seventh decade of life and very near retirement, I have come to the conclusion that the world basically sucks, that there are few who seem to have the investigative courage to take a good hard look at things that, if discovered, would no doubt destroy one’s image of a land that can do no wrong, one that they believe has somehow received the eternal blessing of God. So I must ask: How is it that we have become such a mindless nation, a society populated by deadheads, folks who seem to have little desire to look beyond the thinly-veneered surface of life?

As a behavioral scientist, it appears that a vast share of folks in our nation have chosen to relinquish a quality no doubt essential to authentic human life….. an existential responsibility to think for themselves, an ontological need to discount the petty concerns that drive the minds of those directed by triviality. It seems that such individuals have become so fantastically preoccupied with, essentially enamored by, the norm of what others think, they have effectively relinquished, through a process of cognitive foreclosure, the capacity to think for themselves. Having become so extremely alienated from the core of their own being, they have little choice but to follow the crowd’s madding need to forge a symbiotic attachment to, in essence relationship with, a society, that for all practical purposes has become the basis of their own identity, the bedrock of their very being. Having done so, the image they have forged for themselves (who they believe themselves to be) has become every bit as fabricated, every bit as disconnected from reality, as their image of society. So in wanting to have at their disposal a more a positive image of themselves, they have been left with little choice but to construct a glorified image of society; an image of what they wish society would have been rather than what it has, in fact, turned out to be. Something like having chosen to have built an ego-incased frame constructed upon the shifting sands of inane social rumor and outright public lies…… truly a flight of fancy bordering on the absurd!

Very few would disagree with the proposition that in Hitler’s Germany there was a determined effort to brainwash the people so they might support Mein Fuhrer’s efforts to conquer the world. However, what if one were to suggest that much the same is occurring in the United States of America, that there has been a determined effort through the socializing influence of our schools, the government, the mass media, the churches we attend, even that of our own parents, to pressure us into believing (just as Hitler) that our country has received the blessing of God, and because of this, we therefore have not only the right, but more importantly, through the use of military weapons, a divine responsibility to see that the world acquiesces to our needs and expectations. Just as Hitler in the 1930’s prepared his countrymen to accept the authoritarian control of the Nazi government, much the same may well be occurring in the United States. Just as Hitler indoctrinated his people to believe that Germany had the right to conquer the world, George Walker Bush “in the name of freedom and democracy” may well be doing the same (preparing the American people to support his administration’s imperialistic drive to dominate the world).

Behaviorally, it is clear that citizens, from cradle to grave, are primed to conform to the dictates of those in power, instructed never to question the validity of what those who would like to take control of our lives have to say. Most Americans have no idea; that what we are fed by the news media (televised and paper-print news) is nothing more than a portrayal of what powerful corporations (those who pay the salaries of those who run mass media) want us to believe, that what happens to pass as education is as often as not mere propaganda (e.g. that Americans are the good guys and their enemies are, without exception, always the bad guys), that what we learn in church may have very little or nothing to do with the truth, that what our parents teach us may be nothing more than an accumulation of their own personal biases…… no doubt a rather subtle modification of what they were taught by their parents. And through such a process, governments and nations around the world wield control as to what their citizens, believe, value, and do.

And, of course, in our own society, the primary way most of us are controlled, the way the vast majority of us are forced “to tow the line,” is through the ominous threat of being fired. Something like this: If you are interested in keeping your career on track, that you would like to keep your job, then you ought to consider the following in order to assure your employer that you deserve the right to keep your job; get married and have a couple of kids, become a member of a social club (such as the Lions Club, the Kiwanis Club, or the Rotarians), be a good capitalist, be a patriotic citizen who loves his country, and make sure that you attend a local church so that everybody will know that you believe in God almighty. However, if, for whatever reason, you decide that you would like to become a rebel, that you would like to begin thinking for yourself, then you’d better brace yourself for trouble, because there is a reasonable likelihood that you will be fired! You see, in America, there is a rule of thumb concerning the working world which basically says that those who do what they are told to do are likely to keep their jobs, whereas those who tend to think for themselves, tend to buck the system, (tend not to do what they have been told to do) end up jobless, powerless, and left to fend for themselves on the mean streets of society.

But why? Why does such a thing occur? Why would America the beautiful, land of the free, do such a horrible thing to its own citizens? The answer is quite simple: Knowing that knowledge is power; the secret is control, controlling the out flow of information, making sure that citizens know no more than they “are supposed to know,” making sure that they remain relatively uninformed, making sure that they are given “just enough” that they will go along with, peacefully accept, the premise that they are well informed, that they have a good idea of what is going on. It is necessary then that the government keep the people from learning the truth. Keep them from even wanting to know the truth. Put the fear of God into them to the extent that they will never question what they have been told to believe. You see, those in power may say that they want their citizens to be educated, to be well informed as to what is going on, however, such is simply not the case. Ask yourself this question: What happens to those of us (teachers, preachers, philosophers, writers, journalists) who do not “tow the line,” those intent upon proposing alternate ways of looking at the world? Look at what happened to Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, even Socrates. I mean, really now, who among us wants to be crucified, assassinated, forced to drink hemlock……. wants to risk the possibility of losing one’s job, the ability to put food on the table for one’s family? However, just in case you do not believe me, try this on for size…… the next time you go to work tell the boss that you are an infidel (that you have grown up and no longer believe in God), that you have decided to become a socialist (that capitalism essentially sucks), that you no longer give a shit about your country (that you have decided to become a rebel, an actively-participating antiwar protester), and then see what happens. Do you get the point?

There are many (Robert Fisk, Cindy Sheehan, Sybil Edmunds, Bunnatine Greenhouse, Coleen Rowley, Captain Ian Fishback, Col. Anthony Shaffer, Kevin Benderman, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey, Camilo Mejia, among others) who have illustrated the courage to risk their jobs, their careers, their reputations, their marriages, their wealth, imprisonment, and, in some cases, even that of their own sanity. But the sad fact is that for every hero out there, there are literally thousands of citizens (each who no doubt consider themselves to be conscientious, hard-working individuals who have a sincere belief in God and a loyal commitment to their country) who yet, for whatever reason, detest men and woman such as these who have shown the moral gumption to put their lives on the line for no other reason than to make a stand for that which is right, a willingness to tell anyone, everyone who is willing to listen, that it is a far better thing for one to have sacrificed his own life so that others might see, than to have chosen to remain silent ensuring the blind pretense that all is well, that there is nothing to worry about, that Big Brother will no doubt take good care of us as long as we simply keep our mouths shut and do exactly as we are told.

Postscript: The most dangerous thing one can do is to tell the truth…… the sentence for which, one way or the other, is always death!

Doug Soderstrom is a psychologist in Wharton, Texas.

Time to build an Ark?

2005-10-14T08:02:00.000-04:00

After 8 straight days of rain here in New Jersey and another one on the way the question is this -

Long as I remember The rain been coming down.
Clouds of myst'ry pouring Confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages, Trying to find the sun;
And I wonder, Still I wonder, Who'll stop the rain.

I went down Virginia, Seeking shelter from the storm.
Caught up in the fable, I watched the tower grow.
Five year plans and new deals, Wrapped in golden chains.
And I wonder, Still I wonder Who'll stop the rain.

Heard the singers playing, How we cheered for more.
The crowd had rushed together, Trying to keep warm.
Still the rain kept pouring, Falling on my ears.
And I wonder, Still I wonder Who'll stop the rain.

New Dance Craze-"The Twitch"

2005-10-12T13:28:00.000-04:00

For President Under Duress, Body Language Speaks Volumes

It's only 6:17 a.m. Central time, and President Bush is already facing his second question of the day about Karl Rove's legal troubles.
"Does it worry you," NBC's Matt Lauer is asking him at a construction-site interview in Louisiana, that prosecutors "seem to have such an interest in Mr. Rove?"

Bush blinks twice. He touches his tongue to his lips. He blinks twice more. He starts to answer, but he stops himself.

"I'm not going to talk about the case," Bush finally says after a three-second pause that, in television time, feels like a commercial break. Only the president's closest friends and family know (if anybody does) what he's really thinking these days, during Katrina woes, Iraq violence, conservative anger over Harriet Miers, and legal trouble for Bush's top political aide and two congressional GOP leaders, because like all public appearances, even the interview on the "Today" show was labeled "closed press."
But this much could be seen watching the tape of NBC's broadcast during Bush's 14-minute pre-sunrise interview, in which he stood unprotected by the usual lectern. The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was "trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression," Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer -- along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism. Perhaps the set itself made Bush uncomfortable. However, he did allow himself to be shown hammering purposefully, with a jejune combination of cowboy swagger and yuppie self-consciousness.

As Lauer went through his introduction, the presidential eyes zoomed left, then right, then left and right again, then center, down and up at the interviewer. The presidential fidgeting spiked when Lauer mentioned the Democratic accusation that Bush was performing a "photo op." Bush pushed out his lower front lip, then licked the right corner of his mouth. Lauer's query about whether conservatives "are feeling let down by you" appeared to provoke furious jiggling of the right leg.

It's time to appease the FSM.

2005-10-12T09:03:00.000-04:00

It is obvious we have angered the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes are all part of his wrath for our sins and our porr judgment in election Presidents. We need to get back into his good graces so here's what I propose -

We make Friday - "Go to work or school dressed as a Pirate" day.
Maybe then we can induce the FSM to again embrace us in his great, noodly appendage.

Go here for more FSM details.

Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.

2005-10-06T09:02:00.000-04:00

Some songs really hold up.

2005-10-03T22:17:00.000-04:00

PBS had a documentary about Bob Dylan last week.
The was one of the songs they showed being done live.

Masters Of War

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Change of format.

2005-10-03T14:41:00.000-04:00

Hello all.
I'm back from vacation and have decided that this blog should be about more than just politics. I hate politics, really. So I'm going to change this blog to some random thoughts from my disordered mind.
There will still be some politics as events warrant.
And there will still be some anger.

So, today's random thought -

Am I the only one creeped out by that new Burger King guy?
I mean, he's hiding behind trees and peering into people's windows and hiding in the back seat of people's cars.
Am I the only one who thinks the guy's lucky he hasn't been shot?
Wouldn't you like to wipe that stupid smirk off his stupid plastic face?
I think communities should add a BKGA (Burger King Guy Alert) to their Neighborhood Watch programs.
He might even be a terrorist in disguise - does the Department of Homeland Security have a file on him?
He needs to be stopped before he does any more damage.

From vacation.

2005-09-28T18:39:00.000-04:00

What comes around goes around...

DeLay said he had done nothing wrong and denounced the Democratic prosecutor who pursued the case as a "partisan fanatic." He said, "This is one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history. It's a sham."

Now before you Cons start whining about the big, mean old Liberals read this -

Remember Kenneth Starr and Whitewater?
That wasn't a baseless, partisan motivated sham?

Of course it was.

So, to paraphrase Mr. O'Reilly - this Post is a No Whine Zone.
I won't have time to check this until I get back from vacation next week. And when I do, I better not see any whining here or there will be trouble.

America's Heartbeat

2005-09-27T13:29:00.000-04:00

One topic I often find myself returning to is what liberalism actually was in the 20th century, and how it worked. This is particularly pressing because in the public mind liberalism meant being liberal with public spending. In fact, many fiscal conservatives now are decrying George W. Bush and his fiscal priorities as "liberal." George Bush isn't a fiscal liberal, he's a fiscal libertine, and there is a wide difference.

There were a few essential insights that created the New Deal. One of them was brought to the table by FDR himself, and that was that the villages and farms were starved for buying power while money pooled up in the hands of the few. At the time, Will Rodgers quipped that gold sinks in water and floats on an economy. The insight goes back to David Hume and Adam Smith: where there is activity, people want to be close to it. Others will charge them money to be close to the action, without actually contributing anything to the party. Too much money brings not more activity but simply higher prices.

The solution was to use progressive taxation to collect money from where it was pooling up - which did not do anything to help the economy, merely bid up the price of assets - and to redistribute it out to the whole country. The people in the countryside would then have the buying power to acquire material goods, radios, cars, farm equipment, the conveniences of modern life. This would reduce costs by creating "economies of scale." As Churchill put it in Great Britain, the free market is neither a tiger to be shot, nor a cow to be milked, but a horse to be yoked to pull the cart.

Congress fit in to this picture because each Representative and Senator could be counted on to make sure that there was bacon to bring home. As long as the executive branch could keep a vision and make sure that most of the money went to advancing that vision, the system could work. It was, and is, the economic heartbeat of America.

This idea is the solution to a very old problem, "the city problem." Money pools up in cities because the concentration of activity allows it to be so. Gradually the money is leeched out of the farming areas of a nation and into the cities. Farmers then leave the farms searching for work, swelling the cities. Those who cannot find work stay in the cities because they cannot go back out to the countryside, they have nothing to return to. This leads to the need for "the dole," expenses to keep the city poor from revolting. This destroys both the source of food and the source of military men - in a pre-industrial economy, people in the countryside are healthier, longer lived, and stronger than their less well-fed counterparts in the city. The higher population also strained the infrastructure of the city - sewers, roads, as well as police and fire protection. Liberalism, by establishing a means to prevent money from pooling in the cities, solved this problem. While the largest cities exploded in size in the 19th century and early 20th century, America, instead, saw growth of more and more cities across the land.

There were two parts to this: one was to spread money out, the other was to strengthen the vertical distribution of money inside a city itself. Aid the urban poor, and it is less expensive to run a city; provide a larger work force for industry, and less money is needed to run the large factories. This led to a natural coalition between representatives from farm country that was within reach of the cities and the urban working class and middle class.

This coalition broke down over two key issues: the role of the military in American life and the social boundary between cosmopolitan and rural America. The Republican Party exploited these divides by convincing rural and exurban America to vote against the entire money pump on the grounds that the vertical pump was going to undeserving poor people and that the cities were receiving money from the countryside. The reverse was the case; money flowed out of the cities and into the countryside, and still does today. The anti-tax mania that was used became a self-sustaining cultural imperative. Whatever the problem was, "cut taxes!" became the battle cry of the Republican Party because, somehow, taxes were anti-freedom.

Thus a governing coalition was formed of those people who no longer wanted to pay for the economy and those people who hoped that by hobbling their economic rivals in the cities they would get ahead. The whole thing coasted for a generation on the massive amount of money the old system had piled up. America burned through its savings and is now burning through its credit. As anyone who has presided over a business will tell you, everything looks normal until the day your checks bounce, your line of credit won't be extended, and the bond holders won't roll the money over. The next day, the office is closed and everyone wonders why.

America voted for this, because ordinary Americans became asset inflation junkies and their 401k plans and houses became the paper wealth that allowed them to dream of a life of ease. That is the Bush political coalition: exurbanites getting Republican Pork, while suburbanites saw Will Rodgers' floating gold. Or to put it less poetically, they saw stock portfolios fatten and home prices spiral upward as the money that could have been spent improving the economy was squandered on asset inflation. Asset inflation is the modern-day equivalent of Adam Smith's "ground rents," money that does nothing but chase other money.

But without vision, and without cities to be the engines of export and creativity, the whole system was living on borrowed time. The reason we are in Iraq is because imperialization and militarization of America was the only way to make the countryside's supply of military men into a source of foreign cash. The first Iraq war turned a profit. The cost was that the US did not get to dictate the terms of the peace, but instead accepted arrangements that kept Iraq's oil off the market, but Saddam in power.

Many people are trying to draw lessons from the Katrina disaster. There are many, but one of them is that the reactionary economy is yesterday's economy. Liberalism was not spending run riot, because other than World War II and Johnson's attempt at "Guns and Butter," the liberal government largely did not "spend" money, it circulated it, looking for a more optimal balance of the economy. Bush spends money, or more accurately, he squanders it, because it does not produce the ends he wants. Despite having nearly total control of the government and having controlled Congress for over a decade, the reactionary vision of the economy and the society have largely not come to pass. While the religious right has been visible and active, the fact remains that they are losing. Equal marriage is now legal in more states under George Walker Bush than it was under William Jefferson Clinton ...

One of the important steps that needs to be taken in the next administration is to restore the circulation system, so that the projects that we fund across the country are coming out of what otherwise would be asset inflation. It means weaning Americans off the vision that someone is going to be foolish enough to buy their overpriced houses and overpriced stock. Generally a good roiling crash is enough to do this. It happened with stocks, and it is likely to happen with houses fairly soon. At this point, people will be more than willing to tax inflation that someone else is benefiting from.

To summarize: the liberal system taxed asset inflation, while the reactionary system has allowed asset inflation to explode and encouraged people to borrow against it. Our grandparents' liberal system was in rough balance because the money that was paying for additional activity was coming out of unproductive rent, out of the mad scramble at the top of the economy, just as Adam Smith predicted in 1776, rather than out of productive activity. Yesterday's reactionary system borrowed from the future; it did not seem to be reducing activity, because what it was doing was reducing activity in the future. Yesterday's economy borrowed and sent the bill to tomorrow. We don't have the money to fix New Orleans after Katrina and strengthen the brittle energy system, because the Forbes 400 has already spent it.

We are the tomorrow that yesterday sent the bill to. To get out of this trap, we are going to have to tax inflation, and that won't happen until the giant floating crap game is finally raided. Katrina and Rita have raided it in one corner of the world, and everyone else in the country, other than people like Rush Limbaugh who want Gulf Coasters to drown in the cold, realizes that something has to be done about it. The question is where to get the money. The creeping realization is that the next bill we send to tomorrow is going to come back marked "return to sender."

-Stirling Newberry

Senator John Kerry's Speech At Brown University

2005-09-20T14:06:00.000-04:00

Senator John Kerry's Speech at Brown University
As Prepared for Delivery
Monday 19 September 2005

Providence, RI - Thank you for your invitation to be here.

I also want to thank you for what the Brown community has done to help and comfort the many victims of Hurricane Katrina. This horrifying disaster has shown Americans at their best - and their government at its worst.

And that's what I've come to talk with you about today. The incompetence of Katrina's response is not reserved to a hurricane. There's an enormous gap between Americans' daily expectations and government's daily performance. And the gap is growing between the enduring strength of the American people - their values, their spirit, their imagination, their ingenuity, and their willingness to serve and sacrifice - and the shocking weakness of the American government in contending with our country's urgent challenges. On the Gulf Coast during the last two weeks, the depth and breadth of that gap has been exposed for all to see and we have to address it now before it is obscured again by hurricane force spin and deception.

Katrina stripped away any image of competence and exposed to all the true heart and nature of this administration. The truth is that for four and a half years, real life choices have been replaced by ideological agenda, substance replaced by spin, governance second place always to politics. Yes, they can run a good campaign - I can attest to that - but America needs more than a campaign. If 12 year-old Boy Scouts can be prepared, Americans have a right to expect the same from their 59 year-old President of the United States.

Katrina reminds us that too often the political contests of our time have been described like football games with color commentary: one team of consultants against another, red states against blue states, Democratic money against Republican money; a contest of height versus hair - sometimes. But the truth is democracy is not a game; we are living precious time each day in a different America than the one we can inhabit if we make different choices.

Today, more than ever, when the path taken last year and four years earlier takes us into a wilderness of missed opportunities - we need to keep defining the critical choices over and over, offering a direction not taken but still open in the future.

I know the President went on national television last week and accepted responsibility for Washington's poor response to Katrina. That's admirable. And it's a first. As they say, the first step towards recovery is to get out of denial. But don't hold your breath hoping acceptance of responsibility will become a habit for this administration. On the other hand, if they are up to another "accountability moment" they ought to start by admitting one or two of the countless mistakes in conceiving, "selling", planning and executing their war of choice in Iraq.

I obviously don't expect that to happen. And indeed, there's every reason to believe the President finally acted on Katrina and admitted a mistake only because he was held accountable by the press, cornered by events, and compelled by the outrage of the American people, who with their own eyes could see a failure of leadership and its consequences.

Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job - to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a "blame game" - but as I've said - this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.

This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power. And in all the often horrible and sometimes ennobling sights and sounds we've all witnessed over the last two weeks, there's another sound just under the surface: the steady clucking of Administration chickens coming home to roost.

We wouldn't be hearing that sound if the people in Washington running our government had cared to listen in the past.

They didn't listen to the Army Corps of Engineers when they insisted the levees be reinforced.

They didn't listen to the countless experts who warned this exact disaster scenario would happen.

They didn't listen to years of urgent pleading by Louisianans about the consequences of wetlands erosion in the region, which exposed New Orleans and surrounding parishes to ever-greater wind damage and flooding in a hurricane.

They didn't listen when a disaster simulation just last year showed that hundreds of thousands of people would be trapped and have no way to evacuate New Orleans.

They didn't listen to those of us who have long argued that our insane dependence on oil as our principle energy source, and our refusal to invest in more efficient engines, left us one big supply disruption away from skyrocketing gas prices that would ravage family pocketbooks, stall our economy, bankrupt airlines, and leave us even more dependent on foreign countries with deep pockets of petroleum.

They didn't listen when Katrina approached the Gulf and every newspaper in America warned this could be "The Big One" that Louisianans had long dreaded. They didn't even abandon their vacations.

And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn't mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they're designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments. They're already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries - and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!

The administration is recycling all their failed policies and shipping them to Louisiana. After four years of ideological excess, these Washington Republicans have a bad hangover - and they can't think of anything to offer the Gulf Coast but the hair of the dog that bit them.

And amazingly - or perhaps not given who we're dealing with - this massive reconstruction project will be overseen not by a team of experienced city planners or developers, but according to the New York Times, by the Chief of Politics in the White House and Republican Party, none other than Karl Rove - barring of course that he is indicted for "outing" an undercover CIA intelligence officer.

Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown - or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to "Mission Accomplished" and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.

This is the Katrina administration.

It has consistently squandered time, tax dollars, political capital, and even risked American lives on sideshow adventures: A war of choice in Iraq against someone who had nothing to do with 9/11; a full scale presidential assault on Social Security when everyone knows the real crisis is in health care - Medicare and Medicaid. And that's before you get to willful denial on global warming; avoidance on competitiveness; complicity in the loss and refusal of health care to millions.

Americans can and will help compensate for government's incompetence with millions of acts of individual enterprise and charity, as Katrina has shown. But that's not enough. We must ask tough questions: Will this generosity and compassion last in the absence of strong leadership? Will this Administration only ask for sacrifice in a time of crisis? Has dishonesty in politics degraded our national character to the point that we feel our dues have been paid as citizens with a one-time donation to the Red Cross?

Today, let's you and I acknowledge what's really going on in this country. The truth is that this week, as a result of Katrina, many children languishing in shelters are getting vaccinations for the first time. Thousands of adults are seeing a doctor after going without a check-up for years. Illnesses lingering long before Katrina will be treated by a healthcare system that just weeks ago was indifferent, and will soon be indifferent again.

For the rest of the year this nation silently tolerates the injustice of 11 million children and over 30 million adults in desperate need of healthcare. We tolerate a chasm of race and class some would rather pretend does not exist. And ironically, right in the middle of this crisis the Administration quietly admitted that since they took office, six million of our fellow citizens have fallen into poverty. That's over ten times the evacuated population of New Orleans. Their plight is no less tragic - no less worthy of our compassion and attention. We must demand something simple and humane: healthcare for all those in need - in all years at all times.

This is the real test of Katrina. Will we be satisfied to only do the immediate: care for the victims and rebuild the city? Or will we be inspired to tackle the incompetence that left us so unprepared, and the societal injustice that left so many of the least fortunate waiting and praying on those rooftops?

That's the unmet challenge we have to face together. Katrina is the background of a new picture we must paint of America. For five years our nation's leaders have painted a picture of America where ignoring the poor has no consequences; no nations are catching up to us; and no pensions are destroyed. Every criticism is rendered unpatriotic. And if you say "War on Terror" enough times, Katrina never happens.

Well, Katrina did happen, and it washed away that coat of paint and revealed the true canvas of America with all its imperfections. Now, we must stop this Administration from again whitewashing the true state of our challenges. We have to paint our own picture - an honest picture with all the optimism we deserve - one that gives people a vision where no one is excluded or ignored. Where leaders are honest about the challenges we face as a nation, and never reserve compassion only for disasters.

Rarely has there been a moment more urgent for Americans to step up and define ourselves again. On the line is a fundamental choice. A choice between a view that says "you're on your own," "go it alone," or "every man for himself." Or a different view - a different philosophy - a different conviction of governance - a belief that says our great American challenge is one of shared endeavor and shared sacrifice.

Over the next weeks I will address some of these choices in detail - choices about national security, the war in Iraq, making our nation more competitive and committing to energy independence. But it boils down to this. I still believe America's destiny is to become a living testament to what free human beings can accomplish by acting in unity. That's easy to dismiss by those who seem to have forgotten we can do more together than just waging war.

But for those who still believe in the great tradition of Americans doing great things together, it's time we started acting like it. We can never compete with the go-it- alone crowd in appeals to selfishness. We can't afford to be pale imitations of the other side in playing the 'what's in it for me' game. Instead, it's time we put our appeals where our hearts are - asking the American people to make our country as strong, prosperous, and big-hearted as we know we can be - every day. It's time we framed every question - every issue - not in terms of what's in it for 'me,' but what's in it for all of us?

And when you ask that simple question - what's in it for all of us? - the direction not taken in America could not be more clear or compelling.

Instead of allowing a few oil companies to drill their way to windfall profits, it means an America that understands we can't drill our way to energy independence, we have to invent our way there together.

Instead of making a mockery of the words No Child Left Behind when China and India are graduating tens of thousands more engineers and PhDs than we are, it means an America where college education is affordable and accessible for every child willing to work for it.

Instead of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, it means an America that makes smart investments in your future like funding the science and research and development that will assure American technological leadership.

Instead of allowing lobbyists to rewrite our environmental laws, it means an America where lakes and rivers and streams are clean enough that when a family takes the kids fishing, it's actually safe to eat the fish they catch.

Instead of letting a few ideologues get in the way of progress that can make us a stronger and healthier society, it means an America where the biology students here today will do the groundbreaking stem cell research tomorrow.

And instead of stubbornly disregarding intelligence, using force prematurely and shoving our allies aside, it means an America that restores its leadership in the world. An America that meets its responsibility of creating a world where the plagues of our time and future times - from terror to disease to poverty to weapons of mass destruction to the unknown - are overcome by allies united in common cause, and proud to follow American leadership.

That is the direction not taken but still open to us in the future if we answer that simple question - 'what's in it for all of us?' It comes down to the fact that the job of government is to prepare for your future - not ignore it. It should prepare to solve problems - not create them.

This Administration and the Republicans who control Congress give in to special interests and rob future generations. Real leadership stands up to special interests and sets the course for future generations. And the fact is we do face serious challenges as a nation, and if we don't address them now, we handicap your future. My generation risks failing its obligation of assuring you inherit a safer, stronger America. To turn this around, the greatest challenges must be the starting point. I hope Katrina gives us the courage to face them and the sense of urgency to beat them.

That's why the next few months are such a critical time. You'll read about the Katrina investigations and fact-finding missions. You'll get constant updates on the progress rebuilding New Orleans and new funding for FEMA. Washington becomes a very efficient town once voters start paying attention.

But we can't let political maneuvering around the current crisis distract people from the gathering, hidden crises - like energy, environment, poverty, healthcare and innovation - that present the greatest threats to our nation's competitiveness and character. The effort to rebuild New Orleans cannot obscure the need to also rebuild our country.

So realistically, I'm sure you're wondering: How do I change all this? What can I do? The answer is simple: you have to make your issues the voting issues of this nation. You're not the first generation to face this challenge.

I remember when you couldn't even mention environmental issues without a snicker. But then in the 70's people got tired of seeing the Cuyahoga River catch on fire from all the chemicals. So one day millions of Americans marched. Politicians had no choice but to take notice. Twelve Congressmen were dubbed the Dirty Dozen, and soon after seven were kicked out of office. The floodgates were opened. We got the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water. We created the EPA. The quality of life improved because concerned citizens made their issues matter in elections.

You are citizens in the greatest democracy in the world. Moments like Katrina are so difficult - so painful - but they help you define your service to your fellow citizens. I'll never forget as a teenager standing in a field in October of 1957 watching the first man made spacecraft streak across the night sky. The conquest, of course, was Soviet - and while not everyone got to see the unmanned craft pass overhead at 18,000 miles per hour that night - before long every American knew the name Sputnik. We knew we had been caught unprepared.

In the uncertain years thereafter, President Kennedy challenged Americans to act on that instinct. He said, "This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country...the question we have to decide as Americans," he said, is "are we doing enough today?"

Today, every American knows the name Katrina - and once again we know our government was undeniably unprepared, even as Americans have shown their willingness to sacrifice to make up for it.

But in these uncertain weeks of Katrina's aftermath, we must ask ourselves not just whether a great country can be made greater - the sacrifice and generosity of Americans these last weeks answered that question with a resounding yes.

No, our challenge is greater - it's to speak out so loudly that Washington has no choice but to make choices worthy of this great country - choices worthy of the sacrifice of our neighbors in the Gulf Coast and our troops all around the world.

What's in it for all of us? Nothing less than the character of our country - and your future.

Definition.

2005-09-13T16:28:00.000-04:00

Google the word "failure".
Go ahead, Google it now.

The real prices.

2005-09-13T14:39:00.000-04:00

When the levee breaks...

2005-09-13T09:56:00.000-04:00

Perception.

2005-09-13T07:21:00.000-04:00

The times they are a-changin'.

2005-09-06T22:01:00.000-04:00

I have been assigned a new position at work and due to the time and training involved, I will be unable to post here as often as I have been.
At least for a month or so.
I will still be able to sneak in and comment once in a while if any of you decide you still want to come here for the lively debates this site seems to have sparked.
So what I'm going to do is open this post to general debate, if anyone has anything they want to say, say it in the comment section and let's see where it goes.
Let's do all try to behave.

It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

2005-09-01T22:32:00.000-04:00

Hold on a minute, before anyone gets all upset here, I'm not posting the following article, by journalist Molly Ivins, to blame anybody for a hurricane of that size and force hitting New Orleans. Just read the article and realize that the environment is important and we need to think about the consequences of our policies.
The environment isn't there to be exploited, it's not there to be overcome, it's not there just to look pretty, there is a purpose to why things exist where they do and messing with it is not always the best way to go.
It's easy for us bloggers to sit around and talk about policies and economic growth and expansion of our infrastructure and how they outweigh the plight of some swamp or some endangered animal, but the ecosystem of the earth has been evolving for eons (or God created it this way for the ID fans out there) and either way, balance is what has been achieved, until man started messing with it. We have to be careful, we have to think and we have to plan and sometimes, we have to say - "No, we will not build here, we will not destroy this forest, we will leave it alone."

Why New Orleans is in Deep Water
by Molly Ivins

Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now.

To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.

This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.

This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."

Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the National Rifle Association would argue, "Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people.

One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, "The Democrats did it," or, "It's all Reagan's fault." Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river's delta.

But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies--ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.

Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.

Does this mean we should blame President Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Category 3 or Category 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under. At this point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe the First Rule of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging).

Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to hold off for a while, it's quite likely no one would even remember what the Bush administration did two months ago. The national press corps has the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik, Turkey, in A.D. 325.

Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant "major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."

The commander of the corps' New Orleans district also immediately instituted a hiring freeze and canceled the annual corps picnic.

Our friends at the Center for American Progress note the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans such as "Floods: A National Policy Concern" and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management." Unfortunately, the office was targeted by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.

In fact, there is now a governmentwide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans--it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.

Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.

The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)

This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.

The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.

The City Of New Orleans.

2005-08-29T18:48:00.000-04:00

I lived for 2 years in New Orleans.
I love that city.
I cringe when I think of the damage being done.
It's no time for angry rhetoric, it's time to hope everyone is all right.
Plus, let's all give Dragonlady, who live somewhere in Alabama, our best wishes.

It's getting harder and harder to breathe.

2005-08-25T20:33:00.000-04:00

How about this -

Officials in New York and eight other Northeastern states have come to a preliminary agreement to freeze power plant emissions at their current levels and then reduce them by 10 percent by 2020, according to a confidential draft proposal. The cooperative action, the first of its kind in the nation, came after the Bush administration decided not to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Once a final agreement is reached, the legislatures of the nine states will have to enact it, which is considered likely. The nine states in the Northeastern agreement are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. They were brought together in 2003 by a Republican governor, George E. Pataki of New York, who broke sharply and openly with the Bush administration over the handling of greenhouse gases and Washington's refusal to join more than 150 countries in signing the Kyoto Protocols, the agreement to reduce emissions that went into effect earlier this year.
The regional initiative would set up a market-driven system to control emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, from more than 600 electric generators in the nine states. Environmentalists who support a federal law to control greenhouse gases believe that the model established by the Northeastern states will be followed by other states, resulting in pressure that could eventually lead to the enactment of a national law. Enforcement of emission controls could potentially result in higher energy prices in the nine states, which officials hope can be offset by subsidies and support for the development of new technology that would be paid for with the proceeds from the sale of emission allowances to the utility companies.

Okay. That's what I'm talking about.
Something both Democrats and Republicans can agree on.
It's for the environment, which is something us pinko tree hugging Liberals can get behind and it's a market driven, States Rights kind of thing that heartless greedy Conservatives can get behind.
Okay, maybe the Conservatives won't be behind it so much, since it's a proposal the Bush Administration has already turned down.
I do find it interesting, however, to see that the States involved are the very ones I had proposed earlier on this blog to start their own country.
Listen, I know that the 9 States are among the leaders in producing pollution but as this proposal states, we are also willing to pay higher prices for it in order to fix it.
Now I'm sure my Conservative brethren have been given their talking points about how and why this is a bad idea, but you know what? I don't care. I live here and I'm willing to pay higher prices for cleaner air.
We all have to live on this Planet and every other civilized country has already backed the tougher emission standards.
I'm glad to be part of a region that understands this and acts in a responsible manner.
The rest of you in other parts of the country - keep your dirty air out of my space.

Equal time.

2005-08-24T22:30:00.000-04:00

I want to thank my friend Dragonlady for informing me about the following link.

Open Letter

When you're finished reading the letter go to Dragonlady's site and sign up for her cult, it's fun and it's free.

Supersized Nation.

2005-08-24T08:24:00.000-04:00

I'm going to take a break from partisan politics and rant about another topic.
The "bigger is better" mentality that prevades this country.
The results of a new study were just released and the implications are dire.

"About 119 million Americans are either overweight or obese. That's 64.5 percent of adult Americans."
So says the Trust for America's Health's "F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, 2005".
They also stated - "The number of obese American adults rose from 23.7 percent in 2003 to 24.5 percent in 2004." The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set a national goal that obesity would be reduced by 15 percent by 2010.
Even more alarming, seeing as how we're at war is this - "An estimated 16 percent of active duty U.S. military personnel are obese, and obesity is the biggest reason for discharging soldiers."

Another expert put it this way - "Obesity is arguably the gravest public health threat in the United States today," said Dr. David L. Katz, the director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.
Obesity is among the root causes of almost every major chronic disease you face, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, breathing disorders and cancer," he added.

And it's not only our bodies that are getting larger.
The sales of SUVs is increasing, or at least they were until gas prices shot up recently.

Which all goes to my point - We, as a country, have no self control.
We can't stop eating, or start exercising and we don't care about dwindling oil reserves because we want that big SUV.
Consequesces be damned.

While we're running around the world trying to change other countries maybe we should take some time and look at our own.

Will no one rid me of this meddlesome "priest"?

2005-08-23T11:19:00.000-04:00

Pat Robertson, The 700 Club and political assassination.
That is an unholy Trinity if I've ever seen one.
I want to quote Pat Robertson here so no one can accuse me of making it up.

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,"

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," it's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."
Why would Pat Robertson, a Christian, be more concerned with the cost in dollars, of the war, rather than the cost in human lives?

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," it's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

This is the same guy that said we should nuke the State Department.
This guy speaks, to and for, millions of people in this country and around the world.
And before the Christian among you start yelling at me about how Pat Robertson doesn't speak for you or most Christians, read this from their web site -

...the program is carried on ABC Family Channel cable network, FamilyNet, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and numerous U.S. television stations and is seen daily by approximately one million viewers. WorldReach broadcasts, which include the international editions of The 700 Club, have been viewed in more than 70 foreign languages, can be seen in more than 200 countries, and are accessible throughout the year by more than 1.5 billion people around the world.

When I started writing this post I was so upset I was going to call on someone to assassinate Pat Robertson.
But now, I've changed my mind, I really don't want to be brought down to his level.

Why?

2005-08-21T22:15:00.000-04:00

This post will be short.
I want someone to expain to me why we are fighting a war in Iraq.
Just one thing - the following answer will not be accepted -
We are in Iraq fighting terrorism.

If I only had a brain.

2005-08-17T20:09:00.000-04:00

Liberal, Conservative, Democrat, Republican.
We throw these labels around a lot in our blogs, as well as in "real life", trying to trap each other in the broad definitions these terms imply.
But let me ask you this - do all Liberals/Democrats believe everything these labels imply? Do all Conservatives/Republicans?
I don't think so.
There are people who may be Conservative in nature but still be Pro-Choice, just as there a people who may be Liberal in nature and still be Pro-Life.
And this applies to just about every issue you can name.
But still we rail at each other saying - "You Republicans always going on about your guns" or "You Democrats always saying we must increase taxes."
There's a term for this, it's called The Straw Man Tactic.
The Straw Man becomes the embodiment of everything that side stands for, everything.
Both sides are guilty of this - if you label someone as the most virulent strain of the opposing ideology, then they have to spend all their time defending themselves as not being that. And that takes away their ability to state what they do believe.
I've read a lot of blogs the past month or so, both sides, and there seems to be a general feeling that the extremes from both parties are the problem, the Far Left and the Far Right. Everyone is saying that there should be more moderation in our thinking - and I couldn't agree more.
But while saying this, and writing about their own moderate views, almost invariably they attack the other side's Far reaches - the Straw Man.
It would be foolish of me to say we should abandon these labels, they've been around a long time and will continue to be around, but what wouldn't be foolish is to actually listen to someone called a Liberal, and see what he or she, as a person, really believes, and the same for Conservatives.
The Scarecrow in Oz only wanted a brain, we have them already, let's use them.

Addendum - Let's try a little exercise.
State a Straw Man position the "other side" would use against you and say why it's not true in your case.
If you're chicken, feel free to post as anonymous or just make a general comment about what I said.

Liberal and Conservative, talking.

2005-08-16T14:31:00.000-04:00

Two sides to every story.

2005-08-14T21:39:00.000-04:00

Well, I seem to have some people's attention - for the moment at least.
So I thought I'd take to opportunity to ask a question.
After reading various blogs - from both sides of the aisle - I have found something very peculiar - both Conservatives and Liberals seem to think the MSM (Main Stream Media, it took me a while to figure out that particular acronym - what can I say, I'm new to this) is skewed - for the other side.
How can this be?
The Liberal Press?
The Media bought and paid for by the Administration?

One request - I'm not looking for examples, I'm looking for something deeper than that. I know you don't hear as much about the Air America scandal as Conservatives would like.
I know you don't hear as much about the Downing Street Memo as Liberals would like.

So what gives?
How can both sides think the same contradictory thing?

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

2005-08-11T20:22:00.000-04:00

As the title indicates, and as my Republican friends have stated in their comments, Religion is an issue that needs to be addressed.
As the title also indicates, no one is perfect.
No one has the right to stand there and shout - I'm better than you are. I'm more holy than you are. I'm morally superior to you.
No one has that right because none of us can say - I'll cast the first stone. If you stoop to pick up that stone then you're delusional or hypocritical.
So please, let's stop with that line of debate, shall we?

Now, to the question - Am I my brother's keeper?
Well, no, you're not.
And neither am I.
You have no right to sit in judgment of a 16 year old rape victim.
You have no right to tell me what I should say or think or believe.
I have no right to sit in judgment of you.
America was built on individual freedoms and everyone is free to live as they desire.
Want to be a crack addict, you can.
Want to be President, you can.
And it's not for you or me to decide how someone should live.
The best we can do is live our own lives, in our own ways, to the best of our beliefs and possibilities.

Liberals do not hate Christians.
Let me repeat that, Liberals do not hate Christians.
If so then you're telling me I hate my Mother and I don't think you want to go there.
All we are saying, when we try to keep prayer out of schools, or religion out of politics is that, just because it works for you, just because you believe Jesus Christ is your personal Savior, just because you were saved, doesn't mean I have to believe.
You are free to attend Church, or Temple or whatever, you are free to hang out with people of like beliefs, you are free to shout it from street corners and from the tops of mountains.
But you are not free to force me to listen or to make me believe.
Not in this country.
Other countries force their people to pray, we don't.
So please, be happy with attending services, be happy in your beliefs, I'm happy for you, I am.
Just don't try to legislate it.
That's not what this country is all about.

Open invitation.

2005-08-10T22:13:00.000-04:00

Okay, Republicans, NeoCons, moderates and even Liberals, here's your chance.
I'm giving this post over to anyone who wants participate.
Here's what I want - I want to know what one thing, and one thing only, you wish you could convince Liberals to change their minds about.
"Everything" is not an answer.
Saying, "Make them gun loving, Pro-choice, small government, etc., etc.," all in one comment is not an answer.
Pick one thing you really wish you could change our minds about.
I can't promise my Liberal friends won't try to call you out on things you say but I do hope we can make this a rational debate.
So, what say you?

8/11/05 -I want to apologize for the manner in which I solicited most of you to this discussion. I only wanted to get a productive discussion going here and couldn't think of another way to do it. I'm sorry if I spammed your site. But since you're here, please add your comment and let's see if we can accomplish anything, thanks.

Our separate ways.

2005-08-09T20:01:00.000-04:00

Needless to say, when the President won reelection in November, I was unhappy.
I wasn't sure what to do with that unhappiness but I had to do something. So I started a blog called The Northeast Secession Movement (see link on right). It was mostly a tongue in cheek endeavor throwing in a mixture of humor, frustration and politics with an eye towards softening the blow. And for the most part it worked. There was some lively debate with Republicans, a lot of Red State/Blue State maps, some offers from people who have been planning such a thing for a long time and a short lived movement to annex Toronto.
But after a while my interest waned and I posted less and less on the blog.
But my recent foray into the world of Republican blogs got me thinking about it again.
The more I read their thoughts and ideas the more I realized how little chance there is of ever really being one Nation again.
They want guns with no restrictions, we're a bunch of pussy wimps.
They want school prayer, we are godless heathens.
They want to teach Creationism, or Intelligent Design as they now call it, we want to teach Darwin's flawed theory.
They want small government, we want a government so big it chokes on itself.
They want Pro-life, we want Pro-murder.
They want to declare war on the world, we want to help the terrorists.
They want to drill for oil wherever they can, we're a bunch of tree hugging commies.
They hate the ACLU (except when it saves one of their asses), we hate America for backing people's right for free speech.
They want religion in government, we are, again, godless heathens.
They want to give tax breaks to the rich, we want to tax the crap out of everyone.
They oppose raising the Minimum Wage and Universal Heath Care because it hurts small business, we're a bunch of Socialists.

On and on down the line, they are so right and we are so wrong.
Fine.
Let us have the Northeast and whatever other states want to join us, and you can have the rest.
Why do they even want us around?
Wouldn't they rather just give us our own corner and then they can go on doing things as they please? Wouldn't that be better than having to fight with us about everything, especially when we're so misguided, stupid and wrong?
Don't they want their kids to say the Lord's Prayer right after the Pledge of Allegiance and then go and learn how God created the world, as it is, in 7 days?
Don't they want to disband the NRA because there would be no need of it?
Don't they want a small, barely taxing government?

Then what's the problem?
Let us go.
We can make a muck of everything, as we're destined to do, and they can laugh at us across the border - "Oh, look at the stupid Liberals, they failed just like we knew they would."

Isn't this way easier than the constant bickering?
Come Republicans, come on Conservatives, come on NeoCons, put your money where your ideals are, let's both try it our own ways.
What have you got to lose?

Dude, who stole my Freedom?

2005-08-04T20:13:00.000-04:00

Freedom isn't free.
It's a phrase you hear bandied about a lot these days, reminding us all of the thousands of people who have died for the ideals that Americans hold dear. They died so that America could exist and they died to preserve it, bodies strewn over the rocky road this nation has traveled in our 200+ years.
The Revolution, The Civil War, the World Wars, The Civil Rights Movement, men and women of all kinds gave their lives so we could live free.
And we respect and honor them for the gift they have given us.
We strive to reach higher on the backs their sacrifices, to build a better world where those sacrifices will no longer be needed.
But that phrase, freedom isn't free, is being used today with a different kind of meaning. Those who use it are trying to imply that unless you are for the war in Iraq you are unpatriotic or that you side with those who oppose our freedoms.
It's so strange.
We are told by those in power, the war mongers, the fear peddlers, and the fearful themselves that the terrorists hate our freedoms and want to attack America to destroy them, and they probably do.
But who is really taking our freedoms?
Really, think about it - have the terrorists really taken away any of our freedoms?
No, they have not.
The real entity involved in depriving us of our freedoms has been our own government.
The Patriot Act and it's Big Brother-ish measures have done more to take away our freedoms than any terrorist act.
And it's not only our freedoms that the government has taken, it our identity. We are the Good Guys, remember? We are not the people who torture prisoners. That's not what this country is all about.
Freedom isn't free, that's true.
But the real fight now is for our own future as a nation, as the nation we're supposed to be, not, the nation we are becoming.

1st, 2nd and 4th.

2005-08-02T20:21:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a good deal about the Bill Of Rights.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've been doing some browsing of Republican Blog sites. As is to be expected there was quite a bit said about the 2nd Amendment and the strict adherence that should be accorded that Amendment.
Fine.
I don't like guns myself and I'll even drop my quibble over the "well regulated Militia" part. And I'll drop my objection to the need for Uzis to hunt rabbits and birds with.
Whatever.
But something that did surprise me a bit was how a group so passionately devoted to the 2nd Amendment, and thus, to the Bill Of Rights, could be so blatantly un-Bill Of Rights-like when it comes to the 1st and 4th Amendments.
You should hear how they howl and curse about Jane Fonda and the ACLU.
Here is what one kind hearted soul said about Jane Fonda - "God Dammit, someone string this dumb bitch up once and for all."
No, you may not like what Jane did or said in Vietnam but you can't deny her the right to do or say it. She didn't commit treason, like so many bloggers seem to think, she didn't give away military secrets or "out' CIA spies, she spoke her mind.
You want your AK-47s then Jane gets to say what she wants.
It's really that simple.
Other Neocan bloggers are all upset because the ACLU is fighting to stop the government from unreasonable search and seizures of Arab citizens.
Yes, a bunch of Arabs attacked the United States.
Yes, I want to get the assholes who planned and financed it.
But as soon as we say "oh, it's okay to suspend the 4th Amendment for 'those people'" then we're all screwed.
As I pointed out to a Repub blogger - what if you lived near a place where a militia group blew up a government building. And what if eye witness accounts said the perpetrators were white males with brown hair and beards. What if the government decided that since you lived in the area, were a white male with brown hair and a beard, they could take you away to prison and torture you? Just for your race and hair color. Oh, you would be screaming about your 4th Amendment rights at the top of your lungs.

The Bill Of Rights is not an a la carte menu where you get to choose which ones you want and discard the rest.
All the Rights apply to all citizens, always.
If, as the NRA says, "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" then I say, "You can have my freedom of speech when you shoot me with your gun to stop me from talking, and not until then."

Some whine with your sleaze?

2005-08-01T08:09:00.000-04:00

I know I shouldn't have done it but I had to.
Yes, the Angry Democrat spent some time this weekend browsing the Republican Blog-o sphere to see how the other half lives. I rang some doorbells and left a nice burning bag of poo at their doors.
And here's what I have to report - for being the party in control of the government, at the moment, they sure are a bunch of whiney little bastards.
Here is what I learned -

The Liberals sleaze machine is kicking into full gear to smear John Roberts.
The Liberals are wasting their time pursuing Karl Rove, he is an innocent man guilty of nothing more than repeating what he heard and who cares anyway, Valerie Plame wasn't a "real CIA agent".
The Liberals want nothing more than to grow their beards long, cover our women's faces and turn the US into an Arabic wasteland with the terrorists in control.

Well then.

As to the first two points listed above I just have this to say -
Do the Republican bloggers remember 10 years ago?
Do they remember the hate and vitriol they hurled at the Clinton Administration.
Hello - Rush Limbaugh? Newt Ginrich? Bubba?
And all Clinton lied about was getting a blowjob from a chubby intern. His lie didn't cost the lives of thousands of Americans like the lie current President told.
And now, when the Democrats attempt to do what their Republican brethren did (granted, on a much more civil scale) they whine and complain about how sleazy the Liberals are.

To the Republican bloggers -

Poor little babies, how mean of us, how awful for you.
For god's sake you sniveling little brats, take it like big boys and girls.
If you can dish it out you had better be able to take it.
For the love of god it's politics, this stuff happens, this is how the game is played.
If you want to discuss things is a calm rational manner, then we're more than happy to do so (well, sites like The Underdog Democrat and Kos and willing, I'm not, I'm not so forgiving).
I have decided that if you guys want to roll around in the mud, kicking and scratching, I'm not backing down.
I thought I was angry before reading this tripe I saw this weekend, but I was wrong, I was merely miffed. Now I'm angry.
Let's have at it.

When a man loves his country.

2005-07-29T08:01:00.000-04:00

I think I have the answer to the whole Bolton question.
As I'm sure you're aware, the Bush Administration has been having problems getting their man Bolton cleared to be the US ambassador to the United Nations.
And now the situation has gotten worse - it seems he lied on his application.
It seems he forgot that he was questioned by the State Department inspector general about intelligence lapses leading up to the Iraq War.
Oops.
But, as I said, I have a solution.
The Republicans seem to want Bolton so let's give them Bolton, Michael Bolton.
Perfect, right?
I mean, the job calls for a great deal of diplomacy and who better than a middle aged crooner who makes women swoon.
Think of it, when a particularly difficult global situation arises that needs a deft touch to negotiate, send Michael Bolton to the podium at the UN and let him sing "Time, Love and Tenderness". That should smooth the situation over very nicely.
When a nation says it wants to leave the UN over some dispute he can stand up and sing "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You". Said nation will be back in the fold in no time.
The other Ambassadors wives will be putty in his hands and where the wives lead, the husbands will follow. Say the US is having troubles with a country and that country's Ambassador refuses to deal with us. Send Michael to a meeting with the Ambassador's wife and after a nice meal he breaks into "Can I Touch You There?". Problem solved.
Yes, it's time to stop this bickering over the nomination - if it's Bolton they want, let's give them Bolton.

The Proletariat Redux

2005-07-28T22:00:00.000-04:00

Pro.le.tar.i.at. n. The Laboring Class.

People are pissed off. I think the tide is going to turn. People cannot continue to be screwed by their government and all of that government's policies which favor corporations.

A morning news segment covered a story that referred to growing trend among workers, where they are cheating the companys they work for. According to these recent statistics it's getting to the point where companies are hiring people to spy on workers that are calling in sick, and video them. They cited many instances where the employee got caught golfing or mowing the lawn or packing up the car with BBQ equipment. We've all have hookey days for one reason or another. I like to think of them as 'mental health' days. Whatever. But apparently there is a growing culture to try and rip off your company you work for. The company representatives being interviewed were admitting they're not concerned about employees taking home office supplies, but rather employees like those who were being interviewed disguised in black out silhoutte, who spoke of making it a deliberate point of somehow screwing their employer right back. Whether they were finessing their call in sick stories and planning ahead, or were doing 'as little as possible' during their day, they were enjoying themselves.

Now, while I would never condone theft, I can't say I don't understand in part where these people are coming from.

Within today's corporate culture, we're seeing Enrons and United Airlines eclipsing people out of their pensions with nary a look back. People who had put decades of work and devotion into their companies. Gone, see ya. Ba-bye...And of course the legislature made bankruptcy laws in favor of companies so once again, the average person is going to get the shaft when faced with dire financial circumstances.
Our healthcare costs go up as companies force us to shoulder more and more of the burden, but our salaries don't go up to keep up with the cost of living. There isn't any devotion to the employees any more. We're on our own.
The CEO's, however have no problem misrepresenting stock options to show false profits, so they can pad their own salaries in the millions.

So the rationale is changing. If people no longer feel companies care about them, or pay them a living wage, they are going to revolt, even if in some small ways. But these things can add up. I don't understand how the corporate heads don't recognize that if you treat people fairly and pay them a decent wage, and give them a decent benefit package, they will extend themselves the extra mile because they're part of a mutual aggrement they're willing to invest their lives in.