A brief open letter to Joe Lieberman

 
Joe,

Stop pretending to be a Democrat. Drop out of the Democratic primary race and go over to the Get Oil Party where you belong.

More sincerely than you can possibly imagine,
Rick

Bush 's Guard absence was not without leave--eventually

Should Wes Clark have distanced himself from Michael Moore's comments about George W. Bush's "desertion," as suggested by Tim Russert and Peter Jennings? Eric Alterman writes:

In the first place, what a weird question. When, in the 1992 or 1996 elections was either George H.W. Bush or Bob Dole asked to disassociate himself from any supporter who termed Bill Clinton a "draft dodger?" Clinton did not "dodge" the draft. He sought and was given a deferment. But the term became common currency among conservatives.

Moreover, why would Wes Clark be expected to be sufficiently familiar with the complicated history of Bush's record of military service in the early 1970s to pass judgment on whether the term "deserter" was so outrageous so as to demand repudiation? Almost no reporters seem to be.

Alterman goes on to say that Bush did get permission to leave his unit and go to Alabama. He simply failed to return to his unit as ordered when the transfer was overturned. And eventually he succeeded in getting the overturning overturned. So...

Dare we call the president of the United States a "deserter?" Well, technically, no, of course. If he eventually got the papers, he's retroactively innocent of that charge. But what would have happened if, say, during late 1972, some by-the-books Alabama MP had happened upon Bush in a bar and was unaware that this son of a congressman would eventually be able to work out a deal with the higher-ups. He would be in Alabama without permission while his unit was training in Texas. Might that have been enough to throw Bush into the brig?

It's hardly an outrageous question, but even raising it seems to place one beyond the pale. And I doubt Tim Russert or Peter Jennings could have answered it more articulately than Gen. Clark had either one been willing to examine the issue with the seriousness it so clearly deserves.

Michael Moore: You say deserter, I say more dessert

 
Michael Moore ("Bowling for Columbine," "Dude, Where's My Country?") has clarified a thing or two:

I would like to apologize for referring to George W. Bush as a "deserter." What I meant to say is that George W. Bush is a deserter, an election thief, a drunk driver, a WMD liar and a functional illiterate. And he poops his pants. In fact, he shot a man in Tucson "just to watch him die."

Moore then thanks the news media for the 15 million hits his website received over the weekend.
"The weird thing about all this," he says,"is that during my routine I never went into any details about Bush skipping out while in the Guard...." Why, he muses, did the media assume he was referring to military desertion at all? He could have meant that the President was deserting the 43 million Americans who have no health insurance, or that he has deserted the American workers who have lost three million jobs on his watch...or that he has deserted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as he continues his assault on our freedom of speech and right to privacy?

Then he proceeds to sum up the documented facts. Bush was AWOL for somewhere between 7 and 17 months, depending on how you count. The US Army defines desertion as being AWOL for 31 days or more.

Do you think ABC or NBC will give Moore's serious exposition of the facts the prominent publicity they gave his playful pep talk? All together now: "Yeah, right."

NBC, Russert join in ABC's shame

Wes Clark appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, and host Tim Russert grilled him on the subject of George W. Bush's military record.

Russert kept asking Clark if it had been appropriate for Michael Moore to call Dubya a deserter. Clark tried again to sidestep the question, saying the issue was not Bush's Vietnam era record but his recent performance; Russert, however, wouldn't let it go. He kept asking Clark whether the label was accurate.

Afterwards, Russert brought up the subject again with his panel of analysts. Tom Brokaw admitted that Bush had a record of "absenteeism" during his days in the Guard, but that scarcely does justice to the breadth and scope of the known facts. Bush was, from all indications, AWOL for over a year, twice failing to comply with written orders to report for duty. He was grounded for failure to report for a physical--which he knew might include a random drug test--during a period when he has admitted he was drinking heavily, and is alleged to have been abusing other drugs (a charge he has never denied).

Was Bush guilty of desertion? That's not for Clark to say. Could he have been charged? Absolutely. If he had not been the son of a Congressman, would he have been charged and convicted? Nobody can say for sure. But rather than pressuring Wes Clark to say whether he believes Bush was a deserter, the job of NBC and the rest of the news media is to research and report the facts. That is a duty in which NBC, ABC, and the rest of the corporate media have been sadly, shamefully AWOL for years.

Democracy at Risk

Paul Krugman writes in a NY Times article:

The disputed election of 2000 left a lasting scar on the nation's psyche. A recent Zogby poll found that even in red states, which voted for George W. Bush, 32 percent of the public believes that the election was stolen. In blue states, the fraction is 44 percent.

Now imagine this: in November the candidate trailing in the polls wins an upset victory — but all of the districts where he does much better than expected use touch-screen voting machines. Meanwhile, leaked internal e-mail from the companies that make these machines suggests widespread error, and possibly fraud. What would this do to the nation?

I've added the Black Box Voting site to my blogroll. Check it out for the latest on the dubious accuracy of electronic vote counting.

An open letter to ABC News: Tell the Truth

ABC's Peter Jennings, in the January 22 New Hampshire debate among the Democratic candidates, put this question to Wesley Clark: "The other day you had a rally here and one of the men who stood up to endorse you was the controversial filmmaker Michael Moore. You said you were delighted with him. At one point Mr. Moore, said in front of you that President Bush, he was saying he'd like to see a debate between you the General and President Bush who he called a deserter. Now that's a reckless charge not supported by the facts so I was curious to know why you didn't contradict him and whether or not you think it would have been a better example of ethical behavior to have done so."

ABC News has an "Email World News Tonight" page where they invite listeners to suggest stories "you'd like us to explore." I submitted this suggestion:

Here's a story I'd like you to explore.

Peter Jennings, in the recent New Hampshire debate, asserted in a question to Wes Clark that Michael Moore's characterization of George W. Bush as a deserter was "reckless" and "not supported by the facts."

I would like to see Mr. Jennings present the facts--including the National Guard commanders who claim Bush was a no-show; the official records of his failure to report for a drug test and his subsequent grounding; and the unclaimed reward for anyone who can produce evidence that Bush showed up at all during the period he is alleged to have been AWOL--and let the viewers decide for themselves whether Moore's charge was reckless and unfounded, or whether ABC News and the rest of the mainstream media have themselves been AWOL in failing to picl up this story after it was broken in 2000 by the Boston Globe.

Mr. Jennings, your credibility is on the line. Do you and ABC have the courage to present both sides of this story?

Would you like to have America learn the truth about George W. Bush's shameful National Guard record? Visit ABC News and tell them so.

For more on this topic, to to MichaelMoore.com.

Mea Culpa, But Still... (more on the raising of the media cap)

First, an apology. It appears I jumped the gun when I said the media rider attached to the Omnibus Spending Bill would allow Clear Channel to proceed with their plans to further dominate the broadcasting industry.

What the rider apparently does is raise the limit on a broadcaster's national share of the TV market. According to a story at tvtechnology.com,

The bill effectively raises the national audience reach limit of a single broadcaster to 39 percent, down from the 45 percent lid in the FCC's revised ownership rules, but up from the old 35 percent limit, where several Democrats and a few Republicans wanted it to stay.

Bipartisan opponents of the FCC's ownership revisions led a charge against the 45-percent cap that started immediately after the rules were adopted last summer, and culminated in a bill to hold them at the previous 35-percent level. That bill was crafted, off the clock, in the days right before Congress recessed for the holidays. Four days later, Republican lawmakers got together with White House officials in the night and bumped the legislative lid up to 39 percent. Democrats were livid, and the vote on the measure, which became part of the overall spending bill, was delayed.

Both Viacom and News Corp. exceeded the 35-percent cap, and effectively challenged it in court. Each of the companies have stations that collectively reach about 39 percent of the national audience.

Reacting to the news that the 39-percent threshold would likely pass, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who opposed lifting the lid, reportedly said, "the fix is in."

That said...here's another interesting "coincidence." At the forefront of industry lobbying to raise the media cap was CBS/Viacom, which happens to be refusing to air both a PETA-produced satire promoting vegetarianism and the winning ad from MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 seconds" contest--although both organizations were willing to pay top dollar to air the ads during the Super Bowl. The CBS refusal to air these ads is ostensibly due to a long-standing policy of refusing "advocacy ads" because they don't want to "trouble" the audience with "controversial" statements about important subjects.

You may remember the firestorm of controversy that ensued after, during last year's Super Bowl, CBS aired a Bush administration ad claiming that drug use supports terrorism. CBS reportedly intends to air another Bush ad during this year's Super Bowl.

MoveOn.org is sponsoring a petition drive to demand that CBS give the loyal opposition a fair chance to have their message heard. I urge everyone who cares about free speech to sign the petition. It's time to rein in the corporate media and start holding them accountable for failure to live up to their obligation to serve the public interest.

Controlling the questions

Someone sent me an article today that they had found on the Heritage Foundation website. The article said that a recent poll conducted in New Hampshire by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance found that "when asked if the US should have a missile defense, 75 percent of 600 registered New Hampshire voters said it should."

There was of course no mention of who the 600 voters were, how they were selected, or exactly how the question was phrased. I replied, in part:

If you control the questions, you can get just about any answer you want.

For instance, if the only question you ask is: "Should we have a strong defense?" then of course the answer you'll get is "Of course we should." But there are a lot of other questions that deserve to be asked, and seldom are. Questions that in the past, the loyal opposition would ask. Newspapers and local broadcast media of every political stripe--often paired off against each other in major cities--would keep the debate alive, ensuring that the public would at least be aware of the questions.

Today, "loyal opposition" is treated as an oxymoron. Opposition is portrayed as disloyalty, and disloyalty to the President as treason--even by many commentators who showed about as much loyalty to the previous President as a piranha shows a water buffalo.

What happened to cause this change? Both print and broadcast media today are dominated by a few corporations whose sole interest is in making a profit (for which they can hardly be blamed--making a profit is, after all, a corporation's rightful purpose). These corporations have shown a remarkable, if predictable, tendency to curry favor from a government that can greatly enhance or detract from their profitability. Was it coincidence that a year ago, Clear Channel was sponsoring rallies across the country in support of the administration's march to war, while they lobbied the same administration to let them grab an even bigger share of the mass media than they already had? Sure it was--and I've got a bridge to sell you.

Anyway, here are some questions that you aren't likely to hear on Fox or Clear Channel, or read in the Wall Street Journal or at the Heritage Foundation website. Feel free to disagree with my answers, but do yourself the service of at least thinking about the questions.

Is Star Wars a strong defense? No. It doesn't exist today.

Will it ever be? That can't be answered without defining how strong, and even then it could only be speculated on.

Will it ever be 100% effective? Certainly not.

How effective is it expected to be? 90% is pretty optimistic.

Is 90% good enough? Again, that depends on the definition of good enough. On average, one out of every ten missiles would get through. There are hundreds of missiles aimed at us. Tens of hits is not an acceptable outcome. Even if we assume only one missile is launched, 90% effectiveness means there would be a 10% chance that it would get through. Would you start your car every morning if there were even a 1% chance that it would cause a relatively minor personal injury, say, a broken arm? Probably not.

If the cost to build a 90%-effective missile defense system could be used in some other way to reduce by 95% the probability of an attack occurring in the first place, would that be a more effective use of the money?  If "more effective" means decreasing the probability of a successful nuclear attack against us, yes.

Is there a way to do that? I don't know. I think there are some good ideas out there.

Is it worth thinking about and talking about? You tell me.

Someone who had seen both the original article and my reply came back with, "I think you should gave said 'a piranha shows a bleeding, fallen water buffalo.' ...so in case of a reckless regime, is preemptive action to effect "regime change" a discussable option?

Of course, I said; in a free society every option is discussable. However, I think the best way to bring about regime change is to vote the reckless regime out by a big enough margin that Brother Jeb's machinations can't throw the election this time.

And then this evening, I heard the news: the Senate had passed the omnibus appropriations bill with a rider reinstating the Bush League's relaxation of media ownership limits. So much for the bipartisan blow to media oligopoly. Goodbye to media diversity, or what was left of it. Hello to more bushwa from the Bush League monolithic media; to less coverage of real issues and more parroting of the party line; to replacement of political dialogue with a "unipolar" propaganda monologue; and to more and more power of the right wing to control the answers by controlling the questions.

Bush League continues to exploit fear of terrorism

I thought one of the most interesting and revealing moments during last night's State of the Union address was this little vignette:

BUSH: Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.

[DEMOCRATS applaud]

BUSH: [smirks] The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule.

[REPUBLICANS stand and cheer]

What's interesting is that the Democrats applauded the sunset of the onerous Patriot Act; whereas the Republicans, with the smug approval of their commander in chief, gave the terrorist threat a standing ovation. What's revealing is that the Republicans considered this a winning exchange. It seems that in their playbook, terrorism and civil liberties--like so many other serious matters--are just two more divisive topics to be exploited for political gain.

One could reasonably ask why such cynical ploys are in the GOP playbook. But the greater question is why there's a playbook at all. Rather than a contentious game of one-upmanship and "playing to the base," shouldn't politics be a serious search for solutions that work for everyone?

Bush celebrates MLK by appointing racist judge

The day after laying a wreath at the crypt of Dr. Martin Luther King, George W. Bush chose to honor King with a "recess appointment," an end run around the Senate approval that he knew would not be forthcoming, giving District Judge Charles Pickering a lifetime appointment to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Pickering has a long, sad history on issues from civil rights to judicial misconduct. He has supported the Ku Klux Klan, opposed civil rights activists, coddled cross burners, and thrown cases against corporate polluters out of court on thin technicalities. He has solicited support for his nomination from lawyers who appear in his court. In short, he epitomizes the spirit of the Bush League. No wonder Bush considers him well qualified.

Bush vs. King

George W. Bush yesterday laid a wreath at the crypt of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As far as I know, there is no truth to the rumor that the wreath spontaneously burst into flames, or that the rumbling sound reported by some observers was confirmed to be caused by the slain civil rights leader rolling over in his grave.

However, I'm quite sure that I myself heard Dr. King's voice yesterday.

"I say to you today," I heard him proclaim, "that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth. "

("Where do we go from here?" - August 16, 1967)