Bush League

My new blog: Random Canyon

2007-01-05T08:38:00.000-05:00

Well, I find myself very dissatisfied with the blogging capabilities of iWeb, but I started a new blog anyway. I just did it here on Blogger. Time will tell what shape the new blog will take, but it has a name, and I guess that's a start. Come visit me at Random Canyon.

Bush is not the enemy

2006-12-16T08:49:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been nearly a year since I posted, and I may not post to this blog again. Have I lost the faith? Have I gone over to the dark side? Have I lost my Internet access, fallen into a black hole, or joined a monastery? Hardly. But I've been concerned for some time (read: years) about the personalization of the debate between right and left. I've seen progressives referred to from both the right and the left as "Bush haters." And we need to remind ourselves that while Bush is an enemy of democracy, tolerance, fair play, and everything progressives stand for, he is not the enemy. Nor was Tom Delay, nor is Dick Cheney. Evil men all, but in the big picture, just figureheads. Just personifications of the greater evil that has this country in its clutches.

This article sums it up pretty well:

Blaming everything on a handful of people at the top, no matter how destructive and abusive they've been, misses a critical point. Systems tend to self-perpetuate. Remove one player and the next comes in to ensure business as usual.

Remove Rumsfeld, a man who helped prop up Hussein in the 80's and skewed intelligence towards war, and who do you get? Robert Gates, a man who helped prop up Hussein in the 80's and skewed intelligence towards war.

Replacing those in power won't help if the power structure itself doesn't change. And that means addressing how our own actions maintain this dysfunctional system.

Bush is undeniably a bad guy, but we'll be rid of him in a couple of years at most (sooner, if the legislature does its job). But we won't be rid of the things that got us into this mess in the first place. And I don't mean the Christianist right, the corporate greed, or the pandering Democrats, although they all contributed their share. I'm referring to the apathy, ignorance and downright intellectual laziness of the American people. We need to change our country; we need to change our society; we need to change our culture. And to do that, we need to change ourselves. In the immortal words of Walt Kelly's Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

So although Bush is a nasty, self-serving, evil being who richly deserves to be impeached and then sent off to the Hague (or Nuremberg!) for his war crimes trial, I believe his part in the overall scheme of things is actually much smaller than we give him credit for when we focus our criticism on the individual. And while I've always tried to keep focus on the whole bunch of them, calling them the Bush League still gives the draft dodging frat-boy twerp way more than his due.

So I'm not going to do that anymore.

I may finally start a personal blog over at .Mac, and if so, I'll publish a link here. Such a thing would cover a variety of subjects near and dear to my heart, including computing in general and Mac computing in particular, music, the New York Yankees, and University of Louisville athletics (go Cards!) - as well as the occasional political rant. Meanwhile, I'm leaving this site here if only to host my political blogroll. I may even update the links from time to time. And you won't go wanting for reading matter: there are plenty of other people writing more and better stuff about the criminals who have taken over Washington than I could ever manage.

[Edited to correct a factual error - I had misstated the time since I last posted.]

Cheney didn't say this

2006-02-15T18:44:00.000-05:00

As far as I know, there is no truth to the rumor that the following message was found on a certain Texas lawyer's answering machine:

"Harry, this is Dick. I just wanted to call and thank you for your support of the administration over the years, and for your candor in explaining to me about the second thoughts you've had lately about supporting the brave new direction we're taking the country. I'm really sorry you feel that way, but I just wanted to let you know that I still consider you a friend. In fact, just to show you there are no hard feelings, I'd like to - I'm going to be down there next week and I thought you might like to go on a little quail hunt with me. Let me know if you're available, and we'll go bag us a few, OK? Talk to you soon."

Farming terrorists - the game Bush plays

2006-02-11T16:29:00.000-05:00

I confess that I am a player of games. I'll play virtually any game at the drop of a hat. I play pool and poker and pinball. I play board games, word games, card games, and video games. If I can't find people to play with, I'll play a computer opponent.

One computer game I play entirely too much of involves running around a dungeon, earning points by killing virtually everything in sight. I know some people consider it pointless, even sick; but so far, it hasn't led me to commit mayhem in real life. To the contrary, I think it provides an outlet for aggression and negative emotions, allowing me to blow off steam in a nondestructive way. Occasionally, it also provides me with insight into real-life situations.

One of the critters that you run into in this game is the giant white mouse. Giant white mice are easy targets, so you don't get a lot of points for killing just one. You have to kill them in large numbers to get any significant credit. However, they also reproduce very rapidly. So players often do something they call farming.

The way it works is this: you find a giant white mouse in a room with only one exit, ideally a door leading to a narrow passage where mice won't have room to run around you. You do something to rile it up, then run to the exit and close the door. You wait outside the room while one mouse becomes two mice, then four, then eight... and soon you have a whole room full of giant white mice. You just open the door and stand in the doorway, inviting them to attack you and killing them as they come within reach.

The secret of successful giant white mouse farming is to avoid killing the last mouse. When their numbers run low, you close the door and let them multiply undisturbed for awhile. Once the room is full of mice, you open the door and kill most of them again. But not all. Because if you kill them all, you have to go run around the dungeon and find something else to kill. And let's face it, it's a lot easier farming giant white mice than doing battle with trolls and ogres and dragons.

This situation has many real-life parallels. The so-called health care industry in America is actually in the business of (and makes a tidy profit from) treating illness; it's geared towards corrective rather than preventive medicine. After all, without sick people to cure, how would the industry turn a profit? Likewise, the criminal justice system is all about exacting revenge on those who are judged to have offended society, rather than rehabilitating them - because the growing and profitable prison industry needs a constant supply of criminals to justify its existence.

And then there's the "War on Terror."

The Long War, to use the marketing term currently favored by Bush League mouthpieces, is what these people need in order to further their real aims. It's what they use to excuse their trampling of the Constitution, their abandonment of the environment, their ballooning budget deficit, and anything else they want to shove down our throats. They repeat the mantra at every opportunity. We're a nation at war. Dissent is treason.

They need the war to justify their excesses. Without the war, we might question the GESTAPO Act (I refuse to call it patriotic when its purpose is Granting Every Surveillance Tactic the Autocratic President Orders). Without the war, we might challenge the use of torture. Without the war, we might even dare wonder aloud at the suppression of dissent. Without the war, we'd probably have thrown the scoundrels out already.

They desperately need the war to convince us that we need them.

So they need to cultivate enemies. And they know it. How else to explain a foreign policy that often seems to have as its central purpose the pissing off of most of the world? How else to explain practices that accomplish nothing but to drive Arabs and Palestinians - and increasingly, Muslims around the world - into the waiting arms of the terrorist groups we claim to be opposing?

To return for a moment to the computer game: there is a danger in farming giant white mice. If somehow the explosively breeding critters escape confinement, they can take over the place - and then there's no getting them under control. The player's only recourse is to find a stairway and retreat to another level of the dungeon that hasn't been overrun with rodents. In the fantasy world of the game, you see, monsters don't follow you up or down stairs; once you've departed a level, everything on that level magically ceases to exist.

Unfortunately, there are no magical staircases in real life. For us, there's no escaping the world we create. Once you've cultivated a world full of enemies - or poisoned the rivers, or melted the polar ice caps, or wrecked the economy, or abolished civil liberties - you have to live with the consequences. We Americans, and the whole world, will have to live a long time with the consequences of the Bush League's folly.

Asking Gold and the War on Fiction

2006-02-07T23:46:00.000-05:00

Now, I'm no huge fan of Arlen Specter, but I think he's on the right track here:

You think you're right, but there are a lot of people who think you're wrong. As a matter of public confidence, why not take it to the . . . court? What do you have to lose if you're right?

As far as I'm concerned, that's one of the Golden Questions of politics, and it's exactly what the public needs to hear asked. "If you're so sure, what are you afraid of?" It's a sensible solution to a common problem in politics -- spinsters claiming that there's no reason to investigate, they're certain of the outcome. (It's worth distinguishing this question from its twisted cousin, the accusation that "If you're so concerned about your privacy, you must have something to hide.") Anyway, I applaud the Republican of PA for asking this question, and I hope the public hears it.

Arlen doesn't stop there, though -- he also wants to talk to Ashcroft. Why? Apparently John Ashcroft had concerns about the legality of this program. Hm. Maybe it's not as clear cut as AG AG says.

So Senator Specter, keep grilling Gonzales. Though I do wish you'd ask yourself that same Golden Question about putting him under oath: if he's willing to do it, why not ask it of him? You lose nothing by putting him a little more firmly on the record.

Speaking of the GOP spin machine (and "If you're so sure, what are you afraid of?"), did anybody notice Rumsfeld recently trying to have his war and win it, too? They say that the U. S. is winning the war on terror, but that the threat is greater than ever before. Their argument seems to be that the enemy is more determined and has better weapons. (Is that an admission that they didn't have the worst possible weapons when we started? I mean, I know they didn't, but that was supposedly a major reason we went, so I'd like to hear the clear admission on that point.)

Anyway, if they were talking about fighting a particular group -- say the Martians -- and that the group was more dangerous now because they're more desperate, I might believe that. Them Martians, man, they can get mean when they're cornered. And they're fighting for their homeland, after all. So yeah, the most dangerous time might be when we've pounded on them for a while and are about to wipe them out. But we aren't fighting the Martians. We have nothing against them as a people; we claim to accept them as our own. The U. S. even claims to take genocide seriously, so we say we have no plans to completely eradicate them. It's a good thing, too, because soem of oru best friends are Martians, and if they thought we were out to get them all... well, it wouldn't be pretty. And I'd not be proud to be an American.

But this war is -- supposedly -- on "terror"; and if the threat -- the reason to fear -- is greater, then terror is winning. That, to me, seems obvious from the definition of "terror". (Will this teach them not to declare war on nebulous, non-sentient enemies? Abstract, intangible nouns are hard to beat. Even the tangible ones are pretty hard to defeat if you don't define them rigidly. If only we had learned anything from the war on drugs, war on poverty, war on illiteracy, or war on Christmas. The nouns are winning those wars, too.)

So if we're winning, which war are we winning? The war on a people? Or the war on our own emotions? Or maybe just the war on news coverage of the problems we have here at home...

Alito Ad Nauseum?

2006-01-13T16:43:00.000-05:00

If you're sick of the media coverage, but still want a better understanding of the outcome, or at least a cuttingly humorous but also cuttingly insightful commentary, I recommend nonnihil's take on the matter.

If, on the other hand, you Just Can't Get Enough... well, I still recommend nonnihil's take.

He's just good.

As a footnote, it looks like the political machine is starting to get more serious about Bush Impeachment, and the MSM is still trying not to notice. but it's getting closer...

Laziness and Craziness

2005-12-06T15:30:00.000-05:00

A pretty lazy post on my part, but this guy has done his homework, and I just think everybody should read this fantastic article on the breadth and depth of corruption in DC.

On a totally other note, in case you're confused about US torture policy, John Yoo has this to say:

"The Bush administration policy is against torture of any kind; it's prohibited by federal criminal law. ... The debate is whether you can use interrogation methods that are short of torture. Some who have been critical of the Bush administration have confused torture with cruel, inhumane treatment."

Apparently this lawyer, who wrote substantial portions of the PARANOIA Act, is implying that though torture is not acceptable, cruel, inhumane treatment is fine. I admit that this may be the quote making less sense out of context, so I invite Mr. Yoo to clarify his meaning.

Shame On Lamar

2005-12-03T10:17:00.000-05:00

On November 18, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) lambasted Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), a US Marine Corps veteran, for rethinking his support for the occupation of Iraq. Her remarks included this:

A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.

Schmidt's comments were immediately condemned from both sides of the aisle, and Bubp later said Schmidt had misquoted him.

The Democratic Party saw red, and decided it was time to call the GOP on their continuing policy of mounting ad hominem attacks on honored military veterans who dare criticize the Bush League's warmongering. They announced a program to erect billboards in the home districts of legislators who engage in this sordid tactic, starting with Schmidt. Thousands of people responded, contributing money specifically to support the program.

The Democrats contracted with Lamar Outdoor Advertising to place two billboards near Schmidt's Portsmouth, OH headquarters, and due to the overwhelming response, were planning to post more of them elsewhere in her district; but Thursday, Lamar suddenly reversed course.

"Unfortunately," says a letter I received from Democratic spokesman Tom McMahon, "at about 10 AM, we got two phone calls -- the first came from Lamar's Cincinnati office informing us that because of the content of the ad, they are refusing to continue to work with us. The second call came a few minutes later from Lamar's Huntington, West Virginia office, informing us that despite our signed contract, they were also rejecting our ad."

Lamar supposedly rejected the billboards because they were "too negative."

Funny, that. In Richmond, VA, there is a classic-rock radio station that has run a billboard for years emblazoned with the AC/DC song title "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" - and caricatures of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Guess who owns the billboard?

So alluding to an infamous blowjob for years after the people involved have moved on is not too negative, but calling someone out for politically-motivated slander is. Go figure.

The Democrats' lawyers wrote a letter to Lamar demanding that they honor their contract. In case you'd like to let Lamar know how you feel, their President and CEO is Kevin P. Reilly, Jr., kreilly@lamarhq.com, and their COO and President of the Outdoor Division is Sean Reilly, sreilly@lamarhq.com.

Bothersome details

2005-11-22T18:47:00.000-05:00

Is it possible to win the war in Iraq on the ground? I don't think so. U.S. Soldiers kill civilians, and yet the real suicide bombers succeed.

In other news, we have convicted a terrorist.

Great. Does this mean we can set free the detainees against whom no charges have been brought, now? What about the innocent ones?

We cannot win this war in anything like the way we are going about it. We might be able to win it if we follow Jesus' advice, but with the Neocons running the show, that isn't an option.

Still, I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers

2005-11-04T01:17:00.000-05:00

So a recent article in the Washington Post about DeLay's trouble getting a fair judge has me wondering just how deeply this country can be divided before it falls apart. We're already basically cleft in twain, and animosity between those who identify with the major parties is only deepening, as far as I can tell. I'm sure I've made this point before, but can people start learning about the issues or at least the individuals they are voting for, rather than the parties that claim to support them and instead seem to control them?

I love New Jersey's Forrester loudly proclaiming that he's pro-choice and would not support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. (Call me crazy, but I also loved Kerry's official stand -- he's against abortion. But he's also against the government stepping into a private matter and banning it.) Rarely do major political leaders step "out of line" from their party, because they are afraid -- rightly -- that without their lock-step agreement with party line, they'll miss out on help from the party (read: funding) and without that, they can't get elected. Which means, to me, that the political parties have too much power. Unfortunately, the people who get to decide if that will change are the people who least want it to change.

Don't get me wrong. I urge you to vote Democrat in 2005, 2006, and most likely 2008.

But I wish I could vote for people regardless of party at some point in my life.

Oh, and as for DeLay, don't worry too much. Where are they going to find twelve rich, unethical white men in Texas?

Well, if that's all you were looking for...

2005-10-28T15:27:00.000-04:00

My vote for Quote of the Day (cribbed from the Guardian Unlimited):

Thanks for the chance to get out of Washington.

-- President Bush, in an address earlier in the day as Washington awaited the indictment, to members of the military in Norfolk, Va.

Well, heck, Georgie! If that's all it takes, I'm more than pleased to invite you to my house. I'll even let you have my bed, and I'll take the couch. Go ahead, take off your coat and stay for three years. Seriously. It's a great chance to get out of Washington.

Breaking a boycott

2005-10-20T08:12:00.000-04:00

What's the answer when the Christianist brownshirts of the Bush League boycott a business for supporting a nonprofit "dedicated to inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold"? Make sure it backfires. Buy your daughter an American Girl doll or donate directly to Girls, Inc.

Bush on democracy: hypocrisy, thy name is George

2005-10-20T00:59:00.000-04:00

How George W. Bush dares lecture anyone on democracy is a mystery. That he manages to say the things he says without being struck dead by lightning on the spot is a potent argument against the existence of any just deity.

"After all, the purpose of a democracy is to make sure everybody is -- participates in the process," says the man who became president through vote fraud and suppression in Florida and remained president through vote suppression in Ohio.

"Democracies are peaceful countries," says the war criminal who initiated and continues to wage a war of aggression in Iraq.

"We believe, and the Iraqis believe, the best way forward is through the democratic process. Al Qaeda wants to use their violent ways to stop the march of democracy because democracy is the exact opposite of what they believe is right," says the leader of the party that is trying its damnedest to ensure one-party rule for the foreseeable future in America.

Truth be told, democracy is the opposite of what the Bush League wants for America and the world. Bush is doing all he can get away with to implement a nightmare blend of theocracy and fascism.

Quote Of the Day

2005-10-20T00:38:00.000-04:00

I was going to point out the "bush league" reference from the Bush League source, but I see Vynce beat me to it. Instead, I'll offer this as my Quote Of the Day:

Do I believe that Miller can't remember who told her "Valerie Flame's" name? A child wouldn't believe it. The more clever of my two basset hounds would be suspicious.
Gene Lyons
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Melange

2005-10-19T20:13:00.000-04:00

Rice sums up the problem with Bush:

I don't think the president ever takes any of his options off the table concerning anything to do with military force

No, he doesn't, does he? She specifically doesn't rule out our occupation lasting another decade, or expanding our empire to include Iran and Syria. Of course, I don't think we will be in all three countries for the next ten years, but that's mostly because I expect the Democrats to do a little winning over the next 37 months.

Meanwhile, Bill O'Reilly is complaining that people don't like him.

I don't need the approval of the press, but I just wish they'd stop the viciousness. It's reached a level of almost comical proportions and it does affect people around me and they do get upset.

On the other hand, Bill, you are professionally hateful; perhaps turnabout is fair play.

This quote from a "well-placed source" basically needs no introduction:

Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way

And in better news, did anyone notice that the US is leading the world again? Germany, Liberia, and New Zealand all took our lead in not making up their minds; Iraq seems to have followed Afghanistan into Election Fraud. (What else do these two nations have in common?)

Well, you know what they say about Immitation and Flattery. . .

But I believe flattering a bully is just called testimony under duress.

Finally, there's a warrant out for DeLay's arrest. So the news isn't all bad.

Manufacturing consent by reselling terror

2005-10-13T08:01:00.000-04:00

The Ostroy Report has a summary of a Keith Olbermann piece showing the alarming correlation between bad political news for the Bush administration and subsequent terror alerts.

As Olbermann points out, there is a danger here of a logical fallacy called post hoc, ergo propter hoc: just because one event follows another doesn't mean there's a causal relationship. However, we should also be mindful of Occam's Razor: given a sizable set of facts, the simplest theory that explains them all tends to be the most likely.

You don't suppose these people would manipulate the fear of terror for political gain, do you?

Yeah, me too.

The good news is that it appears not to be working so well anymore. In fact, Bush's approval rating has dipped to an all-time low. The bad news is that this is such bad news for Bush, they're likely to try to terrify us again. In fact, I'm declaring a terror alert alert right now. I'd say conditions are such that the terror alert risk level stands at Orange. It's highly likely that within the next few days, the administration will announce some new threat to our republicans - er, aherm, republic - to take our minds off of their incompetence and corruption.

And if that doesn't work, they may resort to more desperate measures.

Stop calling it the Patriot Act

2005-10-06T08:11:00.000-04:00

The word is that Harriet Miers was on the team that drafted the constitutional abomination that is commonly referred to as the Patriot Act. That fact alone should be sufficient to disqualify her from ever ruling on constitutional law, but that's not the reason I've climbed up on my soapbox this morning.

The official name of the law in question is "The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001," a mosntrosity that was invented for the sake of its acronym, USAPATRIOT. The corporate and independent media alike have acquiesced in using this term, although the latter sometimes puts "so-called" in front of it - as if that absolves them of complicity in the insertion of the "Patriot Act" meme in the American mindset.

We have to do better. We have allowed the right to define the language of the discourse for too long. They foisted "partial birth abortion," "war on terror," and "death tax" on us, to name a ferw. The point is, it's not enough to put "so-called" in front of their term and then continue to use it. We need to use other language that is more expressive of the reality.

For example, the aforementioned giveaway of power to the executive branch would be better referred to buy its true purpose, which was Protecting Authoritarian Rulers Against Needed Oversight by Intelligent Americans - so call it the PARANOIA Act.

And the estate tax is, as has been pointed out, not a tax on death, but a tax on the passing of (extreme) wealth. It is a check on the total passing of riches - including untaxed capital gains - from generation to gentrified generation as the royalty of Old Europe did for centuries before our country was founded. So call it what it is, a ROYALTY (Riches and Opulence Your Ancestors Left To You) tax. When they speak of the "Clear Skies Initiative," we have to correct the inherent lie. Call it the Pollution Permission Project. The "Healthy Forest Act" is really the Wealthy Foresters Act. And so on.

You can't win the argument by adopting the other side's distorted terminology.

Unacceptable

2005-10-04T21:34:00.000-04:00

Inidiana republicans want more control over who gets help having babies. Under the law they're drafting, you must have a certificate; the scariest qualification is that you must be married. It's not quite the monstrosity it could be, but this law is overstepping the bounds of government's role in private lives and bedrooms. I understand what they're trying to do; however, this road is paved with good intentions. It's not far from here to deciding who gets to have babies at all. And the questions of what exactly constitutes Unauthorized reproduction seem to me full of loopholes.

To my mind, it's unacceptable.

Note: This post was rewritten when I read enough of the law to realize it was not exactly the scary monster I thought it was.

A Crisis of Faith

2005-10-04T18:29:00.000-04:00

A graphic from CNN gives a little context to the rising number of american dead in the Iraqi war. The total (1941 to date according to Anti War, 1942 elsewhere on CNN) hopped up by another 5 so far this week. It is nearing the raw numbers for the Spanish-American War and the War of 1812. Admittedly, there were fewer Americans total then -- but I'd argue there are no more to spare now. America has work to do. Is this war as necessary, as important to who we are as those were?

Based on past trends, it will likely be over 2,000 by the end of the year. The cost of the war in dollars (displayed conveniently on this page) will also pass such a landmark soon -- $200,000,000,000. But of course, the sum cost is impossible to calculate. The damage to the environment, the trauma and heartache for the survivors, the cost of having our emergency services and home guard spread out over the globe during national emergencies are only a portion of the unseen. What about the reputation of our nation in the rest of the world? Tourist dollars, favorable trading, general love and respect? What about the opinions and attitudes of those we are trying to convince? Iraq has become, as Bush always claimed it was, the central battleground for the war between the terrors. But could it not be that by fighting fire with fire we are only going to burn down the house? We are costing ourselves the minds of the next generation. The resolve of those opposed to the Great Satan only grows stronger as we demonstrate our monstrosity; simultaneously, the resolve of many fine young americans to be fine young Americans, dedicated to freedom and liberty and justice for all, under god or not, is wavering. Yes, sales of Flag Decals are up. That doesn't matter.

That is the real cost. America becomes less American with every extension of police powers, every executive order granting a temporary relief from the liberties we fight to uphold. With every crony placed in a position of power for no reason other than to secure safety for those who sell off our rights to the highest bidder, or give them away in no-bid contracts, we become the Great Satan. When we force children to swear to a G-d they do not believe, or impose religious ideas of marriage, family, sexual mores, and health practices, we become the oppressive sort of society we claim to oppose — a society lacking in freedom and human rights because those in power choose not to exercise those rights and think they should be taken away from any who would. We support, officially, a model of democracy abroad that does not meet with international standards. We implement, at home, a model of democracy that discriminates against those to whom democracy is supposed to be the biggest boon. We were supposed to be America, the leader of the free world. But it has become a case of the blind leading the visually impaired.

Australia's democracy is more fair than ours. Britain's is more representative. The Netherlands' grants more rights to more people. Who are we? Who have we become? And who do we want to be?

We must overcome this crisis of faith, not by blind conviction, but by soul-searching meditation. Turn your eyes inward, young America, and decide what you want to be for the next century. I hope you find that you are still dedicated to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, in equal portions and for all. A policy of non-interference in matters of opinion and aesthetics, and a policy of taking the high road to battle real evil and win. A decision to re-examine your idea of democracy without throwing out the firm foundations of our system, which though not perfect is a solid start. A position of having a government which represents the people who by choice or by chance fall under its umbrella, so that it can govern with the clear consent and full support of the governed. A belief that people should be accountable for what they do in the guise of mobs, corporations, or governments. I hope you realize you must make a stand to prevent our current government from walking backwards through history into tyranny and empire; that like Alice we must work as hard as we can just to keep from falling behind. Decide how to be America.

Then do that.

PS, sorry for the general lack of links. This one just comes from me for now. I might add some more links later.

Quote of the day

2005-10-01T11:07:00.000-04:00

"I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

William Bennett, author of The Book Of Virtues and former Education Secretary under Ronald Reagan

Etan Thomas schools the Bush League

2005-09-28T06:25:00.000-04:00

Power forward Etan Thomas of the Washington Wizards delivered one of the most memorable speeches of the weekend at the Washington anti-war rally on Saturday. The speech, which offered a glimpse of Thomas' poetic side (the Syracuse University graduate is author of a book of poetry, More Than an Athlete), offered right-wingers some opportunities to get in touch with what their world looks like from the underside.

Below is a transcript - but to get the real impact, listen to the speech at the Democracy Now! website.

Giving all honor, thanks and praises to God for courage and wisdom, this is a very important rally. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts, feelings and concerns regarding a tremendous problem that we are currently facing. This problem is universal, transcending race, economic background, religion, and culture, and this problem is none other than the current administration which has set up shop in the White House.

In fact, I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the ‘hood. Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.

I’d show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I’d employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.

I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.

Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They’ll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.

Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I’d fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.

Then I’d introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I’d show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they’d soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason. Harassment ain’t even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I’d introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we’ll see if they finally weren’t aware of the truth, if their eyes weren’t finally open like a box of Pandora.

I’d show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders and how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida. See, for some, injustice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. T.K.O.d by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.

They keep telling us all is equal. I’d tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers and leading us into unnecessary wars and under-table dealings with Enron and Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful. Instead, they take more and more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation and build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.

Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out and vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.

I hope when his NBA career is over, Thomas will consider running for Congress. Oh, wait. He can't. He lives in a place where they have taxation without representation.

Atheists Talk to God! and other Good Clean Fun

2005-09-26T20:07:00.000-04:00

The dead get no say in this, of course, but they're being blessed. I wonder if they hired any Pastafarian chaplains. I'm even more concerned about the living, though; a FEMA spokeswoman claims I talk to God. Oh, I guess I shouldn't worry about it --

A prayer is not necessarily religious. Everybody prays.

I wonder if the Bush administration would stand by some parallel claims.

Masturbation isn't necessarily sexual. Everybody masturbates.

Embezzling isn't necessarily stealing. Everybody embezzles.

Hiring incompetent friends isn't necessarily favoritism. Everybody hires incompetent friends.

Hating poor people isn't necessarily discrimination. Everybody hates poor people.

Well, here's one I can get into.

Tossing an effigy of the President around like a virtual rag doll isn't necessarily sick and twisted. Everybody should do it. It's good clean fun.

The right to protest

2005-09-26T18:21:00.000-04:00

In response to Saturday's Iraq war protest, which by all accounts drew more than 100,000 demonstrators from around the country, a pro-war counter-rally was held yesterday. Attendance? About 400, according to the Associated Press.

The AP report included this gem: "One woman noted that if Sheehan was in the one of countries where U.S. troops are fighting, she wouldn't have the right to do what she's doing here."

Gee, that's right. In a country that wasn't free, she could have been arrested for peacefully protesting. Or if not arrested, at least led away in restraints.

Bush to Tour Mansions Ravaged by Estate Tax

2005-09-25T19:19:00.000-04:00

From the Swift Report:

President George W. Bush is encouraging Congress to focus on perhaps the most dire issue facing the nation today: the estate tax and its devastating impact on the richest Americans. Mr. Bush said that repealing the tax could aid tens, even dozens of Americans. Former FEMA chief and Arabian horse expert Michael Brown has been tapped to reach out to the victims of the tax ...

President Bush plans to visit Bridgehampton, NY, Aspen, CO and Rancho Santa Fe, CA later this week, where he will tour the mansions of some of the Americans hardest hit by the tax. Aides to the President say that he will first survey the properties from the air in an effort to assess the impact of the estate tax on landscaping, pool maintenance and fleets of cars ... Air Force One will be accompanied by cargo planes loaded with emergency supplies for the mansion occupants. On its way: individual servings of fois gras, chilled veuve clicquot with champagne flutes and an allotment of truffles for residents who have gone without them for as many as two days.

On a more serious note, factcheck.org has a page debunking two more or less typical pieces of right-wing rhetoric aimed at reversing the public's 2-to-1 opposition to repeal of the Rich Kids' Tax - which had been part of American law since the Stamp Act of 1797 and was advocated in its modern form by millionaire Andrew Carnegie and Republican President Theodore Roosevelt.

Thanks to the Green Dog Democrat for sharing the Swift Report article, and for additional background.

My President, Al Gore

2005-09-22T14:39:00.000-04:00

What happened to the uninspiring overly christian wealthy man who should have been our president? He turned into an inspiring overly christian wealthy man who actually helps people. Here's my quote of the day:

We're told this is not a time to hold our national government accountable because there are more important matters that confront us. This is not an either/or choice. They are linked together. . . When the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic floodwaters five days after a hurricane strikes, it is time not only to respond directly to the victims of the catastrophe but to hold the processes of our nation accountable, and the leaders of our nation accountable, for the failures that have taken place.

Ah, Mr. Gore. Thanks -- but can you say that louder?

It's important to establish accountability in order to make our democracy work.

Yeah.

Sounds like Old Hat

2005-09-21T13:54:00.000-04:00

A billion dollars goes missing in over-paid or under-delivered no-bid contracts. Sounds like old home week, right? There's one tiny difference... the Iraqis noticed.

If George doesn't stop the free flow of information, those American insurgents might catch wind and get ideas. But, since they're his citizens, he'll feel free to put them in their place.

W is for Worst

2005-09-19T08:33:00.000-04:00

From the TV News Finally Gets It Right department: check the caption on the image at left.

Image courtesy of votetoimpeach.org

Quote of the day

2005-09-18T11:08:00.000-04:00

"80 percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on."

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Quote of the Day

2005-09-16T20:02:00.000-04:00

"Everything you need to know about the GOP can be gleaned from the politics of three states. They cheat when they win (Texas); they cheat when they lose (California); they cheat when they're just not sure (Florida)."

Jon Perr

Administration playing the blame game

2005-09-16T19:19:00.000-04:00

If ever a single email revealed the character of the Bush administration, this is the one.

FROM: US Department of Justice

TO: Various U.S. Attorney's offices

SUBJECT: Have you had any cases involving the levees in New Orleans?

QUESTION: Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps' work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation.

District: __________
Contact: _________
Telephone: ________

While anyone who points out the shameful failure to do anything to prevent this disaster and the criminal failure to get to work once it occurred is accused of "playing the blame game," the administration is casting about for someone to blame.

This bunch is above nothing.

Impeachment Parade

2005-09-16T15:56:00.000-04:00

Now I know the readership here is a bit left-leaning, so I suspect you are all aware of many liberals calling for Bush's Impeachment. But Are you aware of Pat Buchanan and other Republicans also calling for impeachment? And yet, last I checked, major news sources were not mentioning it. Now, I'm not asking them to call for it -- I leave their editorializing up to them -- but just to report the fact that others are calling for it.

(and yeah, I know Buchanan's reasons are not the same as mine. still. it would be nice to get rid of the bloke.)

Exploiting Katrina

2005-09-16T01:08:00.000-04:00

In his White House Briefing column in the Washington Post, Dan Froomkin points out the obvious: as in all things from 9/11 to gay marriage, the Bush administration puts politics before governance.

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

That explains why Bush felt a need to spend taxpayer dollars jetting down to the Crescent City so he could continue to interfere with the ongoing recovery effort for a photo op in front of St. Louis Cathedral.

Dying for oil... in America

2005-09-14T18:37:00.000-04:00

Americans don't have to go to Iraq or Afghanistan to die for oil. All they have to do is be in the wrong hospital at the wrong time.

The Hattiesburg American reported Sunday that two hospitals and several community water systems had their power rerstoration delayed by 24 hours - because the White House ordered that top priority be given to a pipeline carrying oil to the Northeast.

"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association - which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.

"I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority," Compton said. "Our people were told to work until it was done.

"They did it in 16 hours, and I consider the effort unprecedented."

The orders actually came from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, according to the report.

Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney's office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately.

Jordan dated the first call the night of Aug. 30 and the second call the morning of Aug. 31. Southern Pines supplies electricity to the substation that powers the Colonial pipeline.

Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike Callahan said the U.S. Department of Energy called him on Aug. 31. Callahan said department officials said opening the fuel line was a national priority.

Cheney's office referred calls about the pipeline to the Department of Homeland Security. Calls there were referred to Kirk Whitworth, who would not take a telephone message and required questions in the form of an e-mail.

Business as usual in the corporate White House. What's more important than American lives? In a word: oil.

Onion Article Accidentally Runs in Times

2005-09-14T15:03:00.000-04:00

OK, maybe this really happened, but I find it amazing that he has the gall.

President Bush called on the UN to rid itself of corruption and operate according to the standards it sets for others in a strongly worded speech...

Great. Now, if only Kofi Annan would step up and say "I'm rubber, you're glue..."

No links, just a couple thoughts

2005-09-13T17:14:00.000-04:00

Barbara Bush is taking a lot of flak over her comments regarding the evacuation "working well" for the underprivileged, but in my opinion, none of that flak is well-aimed. The problem isn't that she said it. The problem is that the underprivileged were underprivileged enough that it is at all possible that she's right. There are poor people living in America. So poor that they are better off in the Superdome than the places they usually sleep. Tumbledown tarpaper shacks, ramshackle tenements, or just plain street grates are all some people have until there's a national, attention-getting disaster. Two thousand dollars to recover will make September a better month, financially, than they might have otherwise expected.

I mean, heck: $2000 a month -- that's above the official poverty line, I believe, even if it is a little bit shy of what it takes to buy a house, a car, and the wardrobe it takes to get and keep a job in this country.

.

Similarly, there is a fair amount of uproar over whether or not the president's reaction (or lack of reaction) was racially motivated. "It wasn't race!" cry many people who claim they are not racist but won't live in a "black" neighborhood. No? What was it? "It was much more about class. It was an economic divide."

Great.

It was an economic divide that was nearly indistinguishable from a racial bias. Does that even register when you say it? It raises the bigger question: why is it so close to the same thing? Have we gotten nowhere in the last 40 years? Oh, yeah, we have -- the rich are richer, the poor are poorer.

Actually, we have come a long way, baby. And I realize that. But we can't rest on our laurels now.

(Soemthing like 67 percent of white people interviewed said that Bush does care about black people -- and that's good enough? Can't we elect someone who 95% of people believe cares about 100% of the country?)

.

Finally, the Bush Approval Poll numbers. Think about how low they are. Think about how much his support fell out from under him. Now realize that the polls done since the disaster have probably mostly not even asked those in the most affected areas. One poll I read said as much; none that I've seen have directly said they did include the Gulf Coast. Why should they? They call until they get enough people -- the fact that every call to the affected region gets nowhere probably isn't accounted for by the computer programs. Statistical sampling -- it always works! Well, every professional pollster I've asked has claimed that it does, at least.

Of course, even if the phone lines weren't down, and people were at home -- a phone sampling is likely to have some failures, in that some people are too poor to afford a phone. But that's OK. They're probably too poor to bother voting, or get educated on the political system and why they should bother. But I digress.

Point being, I suspect that the president's actual approval is lower than the polls show. But unfortunately, as big a hit as Bush is taking on Katrina, he's getting off easy. Brown took most of the heat for FEMA's failure. Bush is deflecting a lot onto the locals (well, the Democratic ones, anyway -- whom he had stiffed in a number of ways before the hurricane struck). And the war in Iraq and travesties in Abu Gharib and Guantanamo are being ignored. We are still in a war, folks. A war that we shouldn't be in.

.

Lest we forget...

...but he's a professional idiot

2005-09-13T09:18:00.000-04:00

Oh great.

Brownie takes a long walk off a short pier, and Bush gives us the duct tape guy.

The new FEMA chief is the same David Paulison who infamously recommended Americans try to seal their houses with duct tape and plastic sheeting in the event of a biological or chemical attack. Of course there were only two minor problems with that suggestion: first, it's impossible to make the typical American home airtight by sealing the doors and windows; and second, if you somehow managed to do so, you'd eventually suffocate. Still, gullible Americans ran out and bought up all the duct tape they could get.

At least he has some background in emergency management, if only as a laughingstock.

Mercenary warriors in New Orleans

2005-09-12T01:01:00.000-04:00

Guess who's looking after the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans?

According to their web site:

Blackwater USA consists of six separate business units: Blackwater Training Center (the largest private firearms and tactical training center in the U. S.), Blackwater Target Systems, Blackwater Security Consulting, Blackwater Aviation Worldwide Services, Blackwater Canine, and Raven Development Group.

We are not simply a "private security company." We are a turnkey solution provider for 4th generation warfare.

Do we really need a bunch of mercenaries from a paramilitary organization notorious for its wet work in Iraq patrolling the devastated city?

Some accounts say the mercs are there at taxpayer expense; other accounts say they've been hired by businesses and wealthy individuals to protect antebellum estates, gated communities, and commercial properties. But either way, the news is bad. Either the government is hiring mercenary soldiers more at home in Fallujah to police the streets of the Big Easy, or employees of a private security company--excuse me, "a turnkey solution provider for 4th generation warfare"--are being allowed to remain in New Orleans, in violation of a supposedly mandatory evacuation order, armed to the teeth--while ordinary citizens of New Orleans are having their weapons confiscated.

"Won't be another New Orleans"

2005-09-09T19:11:00.000-04:00

Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson says he won't let people turn his city into another New Orleans by, you know, crossing the bridge [2 pop-ups] they were told was their best way out of the sunken City. Apparently he thinks if you didn't get out earlier, you should stay in for the long haul or hold out for a nice ride from the navy boys. This article also touches on some other details of what happens when you try to help yourself in a FEMA-run emergency.

The thing that gets me is that if we could get on the phone and get 10 buses, why couldn't FEMA make that call?

And they had promised the bus company less than $2k a head. Fascinating.

Follow the money -- who signs the checks?

2005-09-09T13:53:00.000-04:00

FEMA head man Brown has been "removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts" -- but don't fall for it. I mean, yes, he was totally unqualified, but he couldn't have done it all himself. Don't let a little bait-and-switch keep you from tackling the big game. Someone hired him. Let's figure out who that was, and fire that guy.

Quick. Before he hires another grossly incompetent twit.

Meanwhile, a little shout out to our boys in the Navy, who showed more initiative than their commander-in-chief. More compassion, too. But seriously, men, try to stay on task. Everybody has to stick to the plan.

Don't tell the people, they don't want to know

2005-09-08T22:26:00.000-04:00

Once again the Bush League would like to shelter its poor, innocent voters from the harsh light of the big bad world -- presumably to keep them from realizing just how much has gone wrong. If they worry too much, they might wonder why it happened (and we all know Bush & crew don't want to play the blame game). So, just like before, they have "asked" journalists not to show the dead.

Now, the article mentions that FEMA refused to let the journalists tag along on FEMA boats, and frankly, I'm not surprised and not outraged at that. FEMA has a lot to do, a lot of pressure over perceived ineptitude, and I wouldn't want a journalist watching me freak out and screw up, either. But to not show pictures taken in the normal course of reporting a tragedy? Dig behind that and you'll find either sinister intent, or some muddled thinking.

Here's some:

Nobody wants to wake up in the morning and see their dead uncle on the front page. That's just common decency. -- Mark Tapscott

Well, Mr. Tapscott, that's true ... to a point. But assuming my uncle is dead, and supposing I have no other way of knowing, then yes, actually, I kinda do. Think I'm weird? Then why do so many people's pictures appear with their obituaries?

And especially if my uncle is dead, in part, due to the incompetence and negligence of a government spinning out of control in a fantasy of dynastic glory -- because if that's the case, I want the world to know why my uncle is dead, and I want the mistake makers to answer for their failures. Better that than a silent death swept under a carpet.

Incidentally, Uncles Dale, Gary, Hank, John, Nick, and Silas -- I hope you are all alive and well. I'd hate to see you on the front page.

Quotes of the Day

2005-09-06T21:53:00.000-04:00

I couldn't pick just one. We report, you decide.

Most of these quotes are one to four years old; the last one, though, is quite current.

"A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. . . . Boxes of body bags are stacked eight feet high. . . . A direct hit is inevitable. . . . the low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now, another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh -- an area the size of Manhattan -- will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes."

"Drowning New Orleans"
Scientific American
October, 2001

"More than 1.2 million people in metropolitan New Orleans were warned to get out Tuesday as [the] 140-mph hurricane churned toward the Gulf Coast, threatening to submerge this below-sea-level city in what could be the most disastrous storm to hit in nearly 40 years."

USA Today
September 14, 2004

"The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath."

"Poor, Black, and Left Behind"
tomdispatch.com
September 23, 2004

"So many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were - were underprivileged anyway, this is - this is working [chuckle] very well for them."

Barbara Bush, discussing evacuees housed in the Astrodome
Marketplace
September 5, 2005
Audio clip at Crooks and Liars

“One of the Worst Abandonments of Americans on American Soil Ever”

2005-09-06T19:06:00.000-04:00

The President of Jefferson Parish has made some disturbing statements on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday about how FEMA is operating in New Orleans.

"Three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines…"

Transcript here. Video here.

Let them eat PR

2005-09-04T14:45:00.000-04:00

Friday, while victims of Hurricane Katrina waited for relief, three tons of food sat baking on the sun on the Crescent City Connection Bridge because the helicopters waiting to deliver it were grounded. It seems all air traffic in the city was halted for President Bush's visit. In Bush World, one doesn't let a little thing like disaster relief get in the way of a photo op.

(source: nola.com/times-picayune via Liberty News)

Reflections on Katrina

2005-09-03T14:01:00.000-04:00

In the unfolding disaster that has turned one of America's most beloved cities into a third-world slum, a few things are becoming clear:

1. Much of this was preventable.

No, we don't know how to stop a hurricane; and no, nobody could have predicted a month ago that a strong Category 4 hurricane would strike New Orleans. But the city was unprepared for even a Category 3 storm, and there were plenty of warnings.

And there was much the government could have - indeed, should have - done to reduce the threat. Hurricanes derive their energy from warm water; development of a major storm depends on a surface temperature of at least 81°F. Not surprisingly, most if not all global warming models predict increased hurricane severity. A recent MIT study confirms that over the past 50 years, the strength (as measured by maximum wind speeds) and duration of tropical cyclones has increased by 50% - and that the strength variations from year to year parallel ocean temperature changes, implying a causal relationship. While the rest of the world, and even some US states, implement programs to reduce the threat of global warming, the Bush administration refuses to cooperate.

It's established fact that coastal wetlands provide a buffer zone, absorbing the storm surge before it comes ashore. The Clinton administration instituted tough new wetlands protection policies, which were overturned - over the protests of environmentalists and local governments - by the Bush administration.

Bush also cut FEMA budgets and hurricane preparedness funding (including levee improvement studies in New Orleans), again over the protests of local government.

2. The situation is being badly mismanaged, and the effects are falling disproportionately on the poor.

The governor of Louisiana bemoans the fact that so many people"chose" not to evacuate before the storm. But the overwhelming majority of those who stayed had no choice in the matter. New Orleans has a larger percentage than any other American city, including New York, of residents who do not own cars. The poor (New Orleans is also a national leader in per capita poverty) and the homeless had no way out of harm's way, and now those who survived the hurricane and the initial flooding are dying in the streets while they wait for relief.

It's apparent that planning for hurricane recovery also did not include caring for the survivors. Within 48 hours of the tsunami that hit Asia last December, food and water were being air-dropped to the survivors. It has taken twice that long for supplies to begin to trickle into New Orleans. Meanwhile, President Bush has announced a policy of "zero tolerance for looters." Press Secretary Scott McClellan, asked if the zero-tolerance policy applies to desperate people taking only what they need to survive, confirmed that it does. There are other ways to get what they need, he said. Let them eat cake.

The same policy is espoused by the Democratic governor of Louisiana, the one who gave the mandatory evacuation order but did not provide a means for the destitute to comply, and now has given the National Guard shoot-to-kill orders.

3. This tragedy is not an isolated incident, and it will not be the last.

The failure to confront global warming, the siphoning of funds from hurricane preparedness to help cover wartime tax cuts for the wealthy, and the abandonment of wetlands protections were not deliberately or specifically targeted at exacerbating the misery in New Orleans. They are all parts of larger patterns, patterns that include other components and have other effects.

The Bush administration has made it standard policy to downplay, ignore, or suppress science if it conflicts with the administration's ideology, or with the profitability of its corporate sponsors. In the wake of 9/11, the EPA was pressured to remove or soften warnings about the air quality in downtown Manhattan. Scientists who warn of global warming are harassed by Big Oil-aligned Congressional Republicans. Pandering to the religious right, Bush advocates the teaching of "creation science" and "intelligent design" as viable alternatives to evolution. Good science, like good intelligence, consistently takes a back seat to politics and ideology. Decisions are made based on preconceived notions of what the administration and its cronies want to do; science and intelligence are then "sexed up," distorted, or discarded altogether if they show that the decisions are flawed.

But these decisions have consequences. Setting religious fundamentalism up as equal or superior to science leaves a generation of Americans misled by those who should be educating them; as a result, the US will continue to decline among the best educated workforces in the world, and more and more high-tech jobs will go to the countries that are better educated. Insisting on abstinence-only sex education leaves teens more vulnerable to pregnancy and STDs, including AIDS. Failure to steward the environment has far-reaching effects that we can only begin to guess at, from global warming to mass extinctions to public health nightmares. The continuing, accelerating transfer of wealth to the wealthy pushes more and more Americans into poverty. The concentration of media ownership into a few hands, coupled with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, turns American media into a giant propaganda machine and allows the government to lead us into disastrous wars that earn us international contempt and make us less secure. The erosion of civil rights, especially when combined with the lifetime appointments of right-wingers to the judiciary, threatens to turn our society into a police state.

4. Americans care.

Americans are opening their hearts and their homes and their wallets to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Across the nation, donations are pouring into disaster relief efforts. As we were in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we are united in sympathy and support for those affected by this disaster.

If the storm clouds that rained death and destruction on Louisiana and Mississippi have a silver lining, it is that they have awakened Americans to the fact that the path down which the corporate-sponsored right has taken our country is a path fraught with peril. If we're lucky - if we're very lucky - it might not be too late to turn things around.

Bush to offers of aid: Thanks but no thanks

2005-09-03T00:19:00.000-04:00

Some of the nations hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami last December, recipients of American aid at the time, have offered to return the favor in New Orleans' hour of need. Our president's response? That's very kind of you, but we don't need your help. We can take care of our own.

Good to know the president has the situation in New Orleans under control. Kind of like the one in Baghdad.

Quote of the day

2005-08-31T11:29:00.000-04:00

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana
June 8, 2004

source: Editor & Publisher

Managing up

2005-08-30T11:48:00.000-04:00

As global warming feeds cyclones, states are going where Bush won't

TIME.com asked an interesting question Monday: Is global warming contributing to an increase in the ferocity and frequency of hurricanes?

The people of New Orleans are surely not thinking about wind vortices, the coriolis effect or the dampness of the troposphere as they hunker down during hurricane Katrina this morning. They're mostly thinking about the savage rains and 140 mph winds that have driven them from their homes. But it's that meteorological arcana that's made such a mess of the bayou, and to hear a lot of people tell it, we have only ourselves--and our global-warming ways--to blame.

The article says the jury is still out on whether gobal warming increases the frequency of tropical cyclones, but an MIT study shows that the intensity (as measured by the wind speed) of hurricanes is up 50% in the past 50 years.

Actually, the study - recently published in Nature - found that both the top wind speeds and duration of tropical cyclones were up 50% over the past 50 years, and that "these increases in storm intensity are mirrored by increases in the average temperature at the surface of the tropical oceans, suggesting that this warming...is responsible for the greater power of the cyclones."

And still the Bush administration refuses to sign onto the Kyoto agreement. But nine Eastern states are going over Dubya's head to adopt their own version of the Kyoto Protocol, three Western states are poised to follow suit - and there are signs of progress in other places as well. For example, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality recently shut down an Alexandria power plant that feeds the Washington, DC grid for violating federal pollution standards - standards the Bush administration has failed to enforce.

Patriotic Dissent: Missing In Action

2005-08-26T23:52:00.000-04:00

Ken Sanders, in his "Politics Of Dissent" blog, issued a stirring appeal to Republican members of Congress to do the right thing. Here's an excerpt:

Love Your Country? Demand Impeachment

Those who, in the name of nationalism disguised as patriotism, would remain silent when faced with the Bush administration's common plan to wage war and torture captives in violation of customary and treaty-based international law; those who would waive their rights while they wave their flags; those who would turn a blind eye to evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify its preconceived war; they would do well to consider the oath of office taken by all members of the civil service or uniformed services. The oath is not to the President or any other person. Rather, those who take the oath swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

I have taken this oath. All members of Congress have taken the same oath, as has every member of the armed services. Every naturalized citizen is likewise sworn to support and defend the Constitution. All of us, regardless of any particular political affiliation, are sworn to support and defend the Constitution. None are sworn to support and defend this or any other President. While the military concerns itself with challenging foreign enemies of the Constitution, it is up to the rest of us to defend the Constitution and the principles it embodies against its domestic enemies. Right now, there is no greater domestic enemy of the Constitution than President George W. Bush.

There is an untruth here. George W. Bush is, to be sure, an awful man who deserves every bit of contempt that can be mustered against him. Unfortunately, though, the threat is much bigger, much more serious, than one demagogue. The legislators from the right wing of the Republican Party don't merely fail to defend the Constitution: they actively participate in the attack on it. Witness the gerrymandering of Texas; witness the closed-door GOP caucuses where major legislation is drafted without the knowledge, let alone the input, of the loyal opposition; witness the across-the-board pandering to religious fundamentalists who would turn our nation into a theocracy; witness, of course, the enthusiastic pursuit of an illegal war of aggression; witness, finally, the extension of the so-called Patriot Act.

And the representatives of the aforementioned loyal opposition, for their part, are either too cowed by the right or too beholden to the same corporate interests to raise their voices. Not one of them has yet, for example, shown up in Crawford to support Cindy Sheehan's call to stop the madness. Instead, the supposed leaders of the opposition party step all over each other as they race to call for still more troops to bolster the occupation of Iraq. The woman who warned the nation of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" now appears to kowtow to the right wing, even as the right continues to vilify her and her husband. It's a tragedy akin to Winston Smith shouting "Long live Big Brother" at the moment of his execution.

'Listen up, you Christo-Fascist bullies'

2005-08-25T18:55:00.000-04:00

I love a good rant.

Looking back on the rise of you Christo-fascist bastards, I'm mortified as to how it came to be socially and politically acceptable for you to bandy such vicious and demented assertions in the public arena, without them meeting with the derision they deserve ... And don't bother going into one of your pat victim-swoons over being called on it, because when you go so far as to claim that you alone have been bestowed with the secrets of boundless creation -- and that anyone who chooses not to buy into your version of events will be condemned to the torments of eternal damnation -- then you can bet your fatuous asses that your asinine assertions will be ridiculed. What in the blue blazes did you expect, for us simply to fall to our collective knees before you?

Gravestone sloganeering

2005-08-24T19:34:00.000-04:00

The Bush League has reached a new low in exploitation of the dead. The Associated Press reports that families of fallen soldiers are being offered, at no cost (save the lives of their loved ones, of course), the opportunity to embellish the headstone of the departed with one of the catchy PR names the Pentagon uses for their adventures nowadays - names like "Operation Enduring Freedom" and "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

This is, needless to say, a new thing.

The vast majority of military gravestones from other eras are inscribed with just the basic, required information: name, rank, military branch, date of death and, if applicable, the war and foreign country in which the person served.

. . .

Since 1997, the government has been paying for virtually everything inscribed on the gravestones. Before that, families had to pay the gravestone makers separately for any inscription beyond the basics.

It wasn't until the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that the department instructed national cemetery directors and funeral homes across the country to advise families of fallen soldiers and Marines that they could have operation names like "Enduring Freedom" or "Iraqi Freedom" included on the headstones.

I wonder whether DOD would foot the bill if the bereaved family wanted the headstone inscribed with something more honest, like "Bush's Folly" or "illegal war of aggression."

Look at all the middle fingers

2005-08-24T08:24:00.000-04:00

According to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune, George W. Bush was amused by the thousands of demonstrators who turned out to protest the Iraq war during his visit to Salt Lake.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who accompanied the president, said the president saw the protesters along the motorcade route.
"[Bush] got a chuckle. He said 'Look, look at all the middle fingers.' Frankly, we ought to show respect to the office and the person regardless of what party they come from."

Frankly, the President ought to lead by example. Oh, wait; he did that, didn't he?

Novak's delusions

2005-08-23T22:28:00.000-04:00

I just read that Bob Novak, before walking off the CNN set in the little tantrum that earned him an indefinite suspension early this month, accused The Left of "Photoshopping" his images, as he and Katherine Harris allege They do to hers - and as Bill O'Really accused Al Franken and his publisher of doing on the cover of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look At the Right.

Why on earth would anybody want to do that? Why try to improve on perfection? As you can see from this un-Photoshopped picture of old Bob (honestly, I don't even have Photoshop, let alone know how to use it), nobody needs to do a thing with that mug to make it look bad. I mean, his face is almost as ugly as his so-called journalism! If you ask me, the man is suffering from delusions of mediocrity.

Christianist Mullah issues fatwah

2005-08-23T19:18:00.000-04:00

What part of "Thou shalt not kill" does this man not understand?

Pat Robertson's recent declaration that we should send someone into Venezuela to off their populist President Hugo Chavez is just another not-too-subtle reminder that 9/11 was a faith-based initiative.

Cindy's "commercial" ad offensive?

2005-08-22T08:27:00.000-04:00

The Clear Channel-owned ABC-TV affiliate in Salt Lake City, KTVX, is refusing to run Cindy Sheehan's message to President Bush, calling it an "inappropriate commercial advertisement for Salt Lake City."

By what definition Ms. Sheehan's message is commercial, I don't know - she's not advertising a product or doing anything related to commerce - but that's not what really has my curiosity aroused. What I wonder is whether KTVX airs those awful "This is Bob" ads, or the grossly offensive Pepto-Bismol ads that show people bending over and grabbing their asses at the mention of diarrhea in the ad's stupid jingle. If it's OK to advertise "male enhancement" and simulate defecation but it's offensive to ask the President for what noble cause he's sent thousands of mothers' sons to their deaths, what have we come to in this country?

If anyone reading this has information about what conmercials do air on KTVX, or how to get a complete list of commercial advertisers whose messages the station accepts, I'd appreciate a comment or an email.

The Abu Ghraib cover-up continues...

2005-08-19T19:32:00.000-04:00

So the administration doesn't want to release additonal photos and videos from Abu Ghraib because it would foment unrest. In other words, they think if this stuff were made public, somebody would be really pissed off.

Duh.

Secrecy is not the way to show that we do not use torture. Full disclosure of what has happened in the past, combined with free access to the prisoners by Red Cross and Amnesty International is the way to do that. Three guesses why that's not happening.

Time Out, George

2005-08-15T23:58:00.000-04:00

OK, that's it. Time for the grownups to step in and give Georgie a time-out. If only the grownups were in charge of the playground!

We are enmeshed in two wars already, neither of which we are winning. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan, and the Iraqi insurgency is gaining strength every day. The American people are rapidly becoming fed up with the whole sorry mess.

So what's our President's response? He's rattling his saber in Iran's direction. .

"All options are on the table," he said.

I thought for a minute that I was watching old footage from the fall of 2002.

"In all these instances we want diplomacy to work and so we're working feverishly on the diplomatic route and we'll see if we're successful or not."

That's exactly the same thing he said about Iraq. But as we have learned from former administration insiders, he was already dead set on war. He neither had then, nor has now, any desire to see diplomacy succeed. The Cowboy In Chief is itchin' for another fight.

"As I say, all options are on the table. The use of force is the last option for any president and you know, we've used force in the recent past to secure our country."

George, three things.

First, we've heard the line about war being the last resort before - and we're not buying it anymore. You smugly call yourself a "war president," and Americans are finally beginning to understand what you mean. War, although you ran from it when you were of fighting age, is not a last resort for you now that you get to stay home and push the buttons. War is your modus operandi; war is what you do. So don't give us this "last resort" bullshit anymore. We know better.

Second, Americans have also caught onto the fact that you did not use force to secure our country - far from it. In fact, you have made us less secure with your bellicose rhetoric, your "bring it on" bravado, and your warmongering. So your claim of having used force to secure our country ring false. What you used force for was to lash out at someone you didn't like; securing our country was just a pretext - and, as it turns out, a pretense.

And third, your mouth is writing checks your ass can't cash. Well, not that your ass expects to cash them anyway. You and your Vice President and the rest of your chickenhawk administration, when your own asses were on the line, "had other priorities" than putting yourselves in harm's way. But I digress. The point is, you've already - despite warnings from your own advisors - stretched our military to the breaking point. What makes you think you can afford to start a third war? What makes you think the American people are going to stand for it?

Somebody has got to say "enough is enough." If the right-wing rubber-stamp Republicans in Congress don't find a way to rein in their boy, the grown-ups - which is to say, the voters - are likely to pull the plug on the whole bunch of them in about 15 months. And then the quagmire will really hit the fan.

Black Box Voting finds more Florida irregularities

2004-11-18T22:37:00.000-05:00

Bev Harris and her investigators from blackboxvoting.org have managed to get voting records in Volusia County, Florida, put under lockdown after finding some pretty bizarre things going on there.

Friday Black Box Voting investigators Andy Stephenson and Kathleen Wynne popped in to ask for some records. They were rebuffed by an elections official named Denise. Bev Harris called on the cell phone from investigations in downstate Florida, and told Volusia County Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe that Black Box Voting would be in to pick up the Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request, or would file for a hand recount. "No, Bev, please don't do that!" Lowe exclaimed. But this is the way it has to be, folks. Black Box Voting didn't back down.

Monday Bev, Andy and Kathleen came in with a film crew and asked for the FOIA request. Deanie Lowe gave it over with a smile, but Harris noticed that one item, the polling place tapes, were not copies of the real ones, but instead were new printouts, done on Nov. 15, and not signed by anyone.

Harris asked to see the real ones, and they said for "privacy" reasons they can't make copies of the signed ones. She insisted on at least viewing them (although refusing to give copies of the signatures is not legally defensible, according to Berkeley elections attorney, Lowell Finley). They said the real ones were in the County Elections warehouse. It was quittin' time and an arrangment was made to come back this morning to review them.

Lana Hires, a Volusia County employee who gained some notoriety in an election 2000 Diebold memo, where she asked for an explanation of minus 16,022 votes for Gore, so she wouldn't have to stand there "looking dumb" when the auditor came in, was particularly unhappy about seeing the Black Box Voting investigators in the office. She vigorously shook her head when Deanie Lowe suggested going to the warehouse.

Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 Tuesday morning, Nov. 16. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised. She ordered them out. Well, they couldn't see why because there she was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes. You know, the ones with the signatures on them. Harris and Wynne stepped out and Volusia County officials promptly shut the door.

It gets weirder. The investigators went on to find some of the "missing" poll tapes in the garbage, and saw what looked like more of them being removed from Hires' office and spirited away. And there were significant discrepancies between the original, signed tapes they were able to get their hands on, and the unsigned printouts released under the FOIA request:

Black Box Voting began to compare the special printouts given in the FOIA request with the signed polling tapes from election night. Lo and behold, some were missing. By this time, Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson had joined the group at Volusia County. Some polling place tapes didn't match. In fact, in one location, precinct 215, an African-American precinct, the votes were off by hundreds, in favor of George W. Bush and other Republicans.

Hmm. Which was right? The polling tape Volusia gave to Black Box Voting, specially printed on Nov. 15, without signatures, or the ones with signatures, printed on Nov. 2, with up to 8 signatures per tape?

Well, then it became even more interesting....

For the whole story, go to www.blackboxvoting.org.

Columbus hearings reveal massive voter suppression in Ohio

2004-11-18T22:25:00.000-05:00

From the Columbus Free Press:

Hearings on Ohio voting put 2004 election in doubt
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 18, 2004

Highly-charged, jam-packed hearings held here in Columbus have cast serious doubt on the true outcome of the presidential election.

On Saturday, November 13, and Monday, November 15, the Ohio Election Protection Coalition’s public hearings in Columbus solicited extensive sworn first-person testimony from 32 of Ohio voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal observers, party challengers. An additional 66 people provided written affidavits of election irregularities. The unavoidable conclusion is that this year's election in Ohio was deeply flawed, that thousands of Ohioans were denied their right to vote, and that the ultimate vote count is very much in doubt.

Most importantly, the testimony has revealed a widespread and concerted effort on the part of Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to deny primarily African-American and young voters the right to cast their ballots within a reasonable time. By depriving precincts of adequate numbers of functioning voting machines, Blackwell created waits of three to eleven hours, driving tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters away from the polls and very likely affecting the outcome of the Ohio vote count, which in turn decided the national election.

Read the rest of the article, including excerpts from several witnesses' testimony, here.

Study finds Bush got extra votes from paperless polls

2004-11-18T21:39:00.000-05:00

A multiple-regression analysis of Florida voting, published in a working paper by social scientists at UC Berkeley, concludes with 99.9% certainty that non-voter verifiable touch-screen voting machines gave George W. Bush about 130,000 extra votes in Florida - as many as 72,000 votes in Broward County alone.

Here's the authors' "Summary of Findings:"

The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections

Summary:

- Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida.
- Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population.
- In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes.
- We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance.

Details:

Because many factors impact voting results, statistical tools are necessary to see the effect of touch-screen voting. Multipleregression analysis is a statistical technique widely used in the social and physical sciences to distinguish the individual effects of many variables.

This multiple-regression analysis takes account of the following variables by county:
- number of voters
- median income
- Hispanic population
- change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004
- support for President Bush in 2000 election
- support for Dole in 1996 election

When one controls for these factors, the association between electronic voting and increased support for President Bush is impossible to overlook. The data show with 99.0% certainty that a county’s use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush.

The data used in this study come from CNN.com, the 2000 US Census, the Florida Department of State, and the Verified Voting Foundation – all publicly available sources. This study was carried out by a group of doctoral students in the UC Berkeley sociology department in collaboration with Professor Michael Hout, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center.

The full study can be found here.

Secession revisited

2004-11-13T13:52:00.000-05:00

This is one pissed-off liberal. Tell it, brother!

About those electronic votes...

2004-11-06T13:46:00.000-05:00

This article discusses the odd coincidence that the exit polls - usually a rock-solid indicator of actual election results - were significantly farther off the mark in precincts where paperless electronic voting machines were used.

This one shows how placing the most unreliable machines in the areas most likely to vote Democratic easily cost Kerry enough votes to win Ohio, New Mexico, and the White House.

And this one examines the larger implications of allowing private companies' computers, whose source code we're not allowed to see and whose results are completely unverifiable, to count our votes.

But enough sour grapes. Fair and square or not, we lost our bid to oust the Bush League. Which means that, barring a miraculous awakening of the Republican legislature to the necessity of putting country above party, this site and others have four more years of cataloging to do. America will regret the day they put this bunch in office, but only if they are made to see what it did to our country. It's our responsibility to show them, to keep it in their faces, and to make sure they never forget. More about that soon....

The tension mounts

2004-11-02T21:43:00.000-05:00

CNN exit polls showed Kerry winning in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Early returns have Bush leading in 2 of the three. If he wins them, is it because the exit polls were wrong? Or could it be that the fix was in? Studies of results where DREs were used will be very interesting.

[edited 11/6 to correct the name of the network whose election polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio and Florida until they changed them - the next morning - to agree with the puzzling results.]

Has "Osama bin Forgotten" been forgotten? Only by Bush

2004-10-15T01:39:00.000-04:00

George W. Bush says the darnedest things.

First he didn't know he owned a small stake in a timber concern, and thus counted as one of the "small businesses" that would be affected by a rollback of his tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. (That the insignificance of Bush's stake in a small business was exactly Kerry's point is an irony that seems completely lost on the chimpanzee-in-chief.)

And now Dubya denies having said he was not concerned about Osama bin Laden.

Well, George, you said it. I heard you say it. The whole world heard you say it. And it's disturbing that you could say such a thing and then forget having said it.

You and your buddy Karl Rove delight in twisting John Kerry's words to make it look like he's flip-flopping. But we don't have to play that game to make you look bad. Because your flip-flops, unlike Kerry's, are real--and are a matter of public record.

On September 13, 2001, George, you said: "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."

Six months later, on March 13, 2002, you said: "Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I--I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.”

Then on October 13, 2004, you denied it altogether: "Gosh, I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden."

Maybe you just shouldn't talk on the 13th of the month. More likely you shouldn't be believed on any day of the month.

Various clips of Bush talking about bin Laden (and about flip-flopping) ought to be juxtaposed in a MoveOn ad. How about this montage:

"...the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon." (9/14/01)

"Gosh, I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden." (10/13/04)

"Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him." (3/13/02)

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden." (9/13/01)

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." (3/13/02)

"It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." (9/13/01)

"It's kind of one of those--exaggerations." (10/13/04)

"I truly am not that concerned about him.” (3/13/02)

"Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden." (10/13/04)

"I--I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.” (3/13/02)

"We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden." (10/13/04)

"...exaggerations."

"And again, I don't know where he is..."

"...number one priority,,,"

"And, again..."

"...really don't care."

"I can see why people at your workplace think he changes positions a lot, because he does." (10/8/2004)

[pause]

"You cannot lead if you send mixed messages." (9/30/2004)

The "It Could Be Worse" Defense

2004-09-11T15:12:00.000-04:00

An AP report in the Washington Post has Donald Rumsfeld still justifying torture of prisoners by saying worse things have been done by others:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, responding to allegations that he fostered a climate that led to the prisoner-abuse scandal, said yesterday that the military's mistreatment of detainees was not as bad as what terrorists have done.

"Does it rank up there with chopping someone's head off on television?" he asked. "It doesn't."

I'm waiting for somebody to try that ploy in court. "Yes, your honor, I did kill my wife, but does that rank up there with what Jack the Ripper did to all those women in London? It doesn't."

Would that defense hold up? It wouldn't.

Celebrating Kerry's service

2004-09-05T20:29:00.000-04:00

That George W. Bush effectively skipped out on his National Guard duty thirty years ago might be irrelevant today but for three things: the fact that he continues to lie about it; the fact that he keeps sending American troops into harm's way for all the wrong reasons; and the fact that his henchmen keep going after John Kerry, who served honorably--even heroically, by all credible accounts--in the war Bush avoided.

I am of the opinion that Kerry should not run away from his military record. He should flaunt it at every opportunity, especially now that the AP has (finally) picked up the story of Bush's lost year, and the mysteriously recurring absence of National Guard records that could prove definitively whether he actually served or not.

Kerry is showing signs of rising to the occasion. Referring to Dick Cheney's calling him unfit to lead, he said he'd let America judge how five deferments compare to two tours of duty. I don't know whether he'll continue to press the battle or not, but his supporters can. Here's a desktop picture (Wallpaper to you Windows users) celebrating Kerry's military record. It is intended as a reminder of which candidate actually lived up to a familiar slogan often heard from the right. You can click on the image below to download a full 1024x768 version.

Milking the tragedy will backfire

2004-08-30T22:40:00.000-04:00

I turned on CSPAN to see the first night of the Greedy Oil Party convention, and what was the first thing I saw? Bowed heads in darkness, and the words "September 11, 2001" splayed across the screen. Then a hymn for the departed of that awful day. Then Rudy Giuliani came out and said "September 11 September 11 Saddam Hussein September 11 George W. Bush thank God horror shock devastation George W. Bush." And of course, the crowd roared.

The Repugnant Party is playing the September 11 card for all they think it's worth. They are doing it because September 11, 2001, was the best day of George W. Bush's political career (with the possible exception of the day the five Republican appointees to the Supreme Court handed him the White House). They are hoping to reawaken the bump Bush got out of that attack. They want to bring back the day Bush hit the trifecta. But that's a desperate ploy. It's almost certain to backfire on them--because today America knows how badly Bush botched both the prevention of and the response to the attacks. America knows how, having heard of the attacks, he sat there stunned for seven interminable minutes in that Florida classroom "collecting my thoughts," then flew away and hid until he was assured that his own skin would be safe if he got back to work in Washington. America knows the White House pressured the EPA to lie to the people of New York about the safety of the air in lower Manhattan. America knows that Bush exploited the tragedy of 9/11 as an excuse to attack Iraq although there was and is not a shred of evidence linking that country to the attacks.

They're still trying to tie Iraq to the September 11 attacks, although they know full well that there is no such tie. They're trying desperately to convince us that they are the party that can win the war on terror, although Bush himself said today that the war on terror cannot be won. And one almost has to suspect that they are trying to convince themselves that their message of fear and loathing can be spun into a supposed message of hope, that their systematic attacks on American freedom can be justified as a defense of American freedom, and that they can win an election with a mishmash of losing ideas.

Greg Palast Blogs Another Bombshell

2004-08-29T16:30:00.000-04:00

In his latest blog entry, "STILL UNREPORTED: THE PAY-OFF IN BUSH AIR GUARD FIX," investigative reporter Greg Palast presents evidence bearing on the how and why of George W. Bush's having gotten into the Texas Air Guard, and the price Bush eventually paid for the favor.

In 1994, George W. Bush was elected governor of Texas by a whisker. By that time, [confessed string-puller and former Lt. Gov. Ben] Barnes had left office to become a big time corporate lobbyist. To an influence peddler like Barnes, having damning information on a sitting governor is worth its weight in gold – or, more precisely, there’s a value in keeping the info secret. Barnes appears to have made lucrative use of his knowledge of our President’s slithering out of the draft as a lever to protect a multi-billion dollar contract for a client. That's the information in a confidential letter buried deep in the files of the US Justice Department that fell into my hands at BBC television.

How much of this will you see in the corporate American media? Probably very little, considering that when Palast first reported it in 1999 they ignored it, and that last year they declined BBC's offer to run Palast's one-hour "Bush Famnily Fortunes" report ("Wonderful film, but Time-Warner is not going to let us put this on the air") which included the story. However, you can buy it on DVD next month--and see a preview here right now.

Michael Moore Makes Nice With Bush

2004-08-29T16:12:00.000-04:00

Here's a must-read: Michael Moore's open letter to George W. Bush thanking him for clearing up John Kerry's wartime record, and offering to let bygones be bygones...

I know you and I have had our differences in the past, and I realize I am the one who started this whole mess about "who did what" during Vietnam when I brought up that "deserter" nonsense back in January. But I have to hand it to you on what you have uncovered about John Kerry and his record in Vietnam. Kerry has tried to pass himself off as a war hero, but thanks to you and your friends, we now know the truth.
. . .
What would we do without you, Mr. Bush? Criticize you as we might, when it comes to pointing out other men's military records, there is no one who can touch your prowess. In 2000, you let out the rumor that your opponent John McCain might be "nuts" from the 5 years he spent in a POW camp. Then, in the 2002 elections, your team compared triple-amputee Sen. Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden, and that cost him the election. And now you are having the same impact on war hero John Kerry. Since you (oops, I mean "The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth!") started running those ads, Kerry's poll numbers have dropped (with veterans, he has lost 18 points in the last few weeks).

Some people have said "Who are you, Mr. Bush, to attack these brave men considering you yourself have never seen combat -- in fact, you actively sought to avoid it." What your critics fail to understand is that even though your dad got you into a unit that would never be sent to Vietnam -- and even though you didn't show up for Guard duty for at least a year -- at least you were still IN FAVOR of the Vietnam War!

Moore goes on to point out some of the injuries Bush sustained while Kerry was over there playing war hero just so he could come back and run for President some day...and proposes some straightforward ads that put forth the Bush League's position on Kerry's (and Sen. Max Cleland's) service in the armed forces.

When Bob Dole Said No

2004-08-26T19:06:00.000-04:00

Noel Koch, former Special Assistant to President Richard M. Nixon and Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, writes in the Washington Post that Bob Dole should know better--and used to know better--than to serve as a GOP attack dog over the quality of the opposition candidate's record of military service.

It is not surprising to hear John Kerry's wounds belittled by men who have avoided all risk of being wounded. Someday perhaps we will be able to plumb the neuroses of those who avoided Vietnam and have ever after had difficulty living with the choice. But it is surprising to hear Bob Dole doing it.
...
Time in-country, how often a man was wounded, how much blood he shed when he was wounded -- it is hurtful that those who served in Vietnam are being split in so vile a fashion, and that the wounds of that war are reopened at the instigation of people who avoided serving at all. It is hurtful that a man of Bob Dole's stature should lend himself to the effort to dishonor a fellow American veteran in the service of politics at its cheapest.

Taking the Florida show south of the border

2004-08-12T06:52:00.000-04:00

Greg Palast is at it again.

The investigative reporter's work has been deemed not ready for prime time by the corporate media in the US, so now he reports for the BBC and the Guardian in a country where they have no "First Amendment rights" but somehow they have freer speech than we in George W. Bush's America.

Anyway, Palast and his team have uncovered evidence that our government is paying ChoicePoint, the company that helped Brother Jeb disenfranchise thousands of Florida Democrats in 2000, $67 million to compile dossiers on the citizens of Venezuela and a handful of other Latin American countries....

The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?

What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates -- presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez -- have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush.

The last time ChoicePoint sold voter files to our government it was to help Governor Jeb Bush locate and purge felons on Florida voter rolls. Turns out ChoicePoint's felons were merely Democrats guilty only of V.W.B., Voting While Black.

Palast also notes that our government is paying tens of thousands of dollars to the organizers of this Sunday's recall election in Venezuela, "who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered." Hmmm...

read Palast's full article here: Will The Gang That Fixed Florida Fix the Vote in Caracas this Sunday?

68-year-old called up to serve in Iraq

2004-07-21T03:49:00.000-04:00

From the AP via Yahoo! News: a 68-year-old psychiatrist, Marine, and Alabama Guardsman has been reactivated for the Iraq war.

The Army sent John Wicks a postcard last fall saying that they have a shortage of mental health experts needed to help soldiers cope with what's going on over there, and asking him if he was fit to serve.

"I stuck the thing in my pocket and carried it around for several weeks agonizing on how I should respond," he told The Decatur Daily in a story Sunday. "The truth is I consider myself fit to serve, so that's how I marked it and sent it back."

"My wife said 'You'll never hear from them.' Well, it was no time at all till I heard from them," Wicks said.

Wicks said recruiters initially hinted he could go to Europe or a stateside base to relieve a younger psychiatrist who would go to Iraq. The Army even gave him three choices should that scenario play out, and Dr. Wicks chose Italy, Germany and England.

"Well, I now wonder if this was just to get me hooked. Because there's no way I'm going to Italy or any of these places," he said. "I'm going to Iraq."

Here's Dubya's chance to make up lost time. If this Desert Storm veteran who did two years of active duty with the Marines and eighteen years in the Alabama National Guard can be called up at the age of 68, surely a slacker who spent most of his Guard "career" shirking his responsibilities, and now takes every opportunity to don military clothing and play dress-up, can go spend a year wearing a real uniform and doing real service. It's not like he's doing anything worthwhile in his current job.

Shades of Rosemary Woods

2004-07-10T01:38:00.000-04:00

Remember the 18-minute gap? The segment of the Nixon White House tapes that might have shown once and for all whether the President had been directly involved in the Watergate cover-up, and which (accidentally, of course) was destroyed by his personal secretary while she was transcribing it?

Well, it seems the same fate has befallen some of George W. Bush's National Guard records. The New York Times reported this morning that according to C. Y. Talbott, the Pentagon's top Freedom of Information officer, "the microfilm payroll records of numerous service members"--including Bush--were damaged "in a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm" in 1996 and 1997. The destroyed records included Bush's payroll records from the third quarter of 1972, which had been sought under the FOIA by the Associated Press.

There have been questions about Bush's military service record dating back to his gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and Air Guard insiders have said there was an effort in 1997 to "cleanse" Bush's record.

Now there are new questions...

If these records were destroyed in 1996 or 1997, why didn't it come to light until the AP FOIA suit?

Given that microfilm is estimated to last from 100 to 500 years, why were 25-year-old microfilm archives in such a state?

Is it mere coincidence that the records that could establish whether Bush actually fulfilled his Guard duties are now said to have been destroyed (accidentally, of course) during the very time that then-governor Bush was preparing to run for President, and his staff was allegedly conspiring with Texas Guard commander Daniel James III to make sure there was nothing embarrassing in Bush's file?

Is it also coincidence that once Bush ascended to the Presidency, he made James the director of the Air National Guard for the whole country?

If Bush is committed to getting the truth out, why did Talbott's office refuse to answer questions about the "inadvertent" destruction of Bush's records without another Freedom of Information application?

Of course, the big question is really this: how stupid do they think we are?

Cheney to Leahy: Fuck You!

2004-06-24T22:41:00.000-04:00

A little over a year ago, we heard about Paul Wolfowitz's eloquent response to an Al Franken taunt at the 2003 White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Now comes word that you don't have to be a smart-ass liberal writer to get that kind of response out of the darlings of the religious right in Washington. Indeed, the very same four-letter salute can be evoked from our great Vice President simply by reminding him of his own comments, as Sen. Patrick Leahy did at the annual Senate "class picture" photo op.

Senate aides with knowledge of the encounter Tuesday said the vice president confronted Leahy about some of the Democrat's criticism about alleged improprieties in Iraq military contracts awarded to Halliburton Co. Cheney, who as vice president is president of the Senate, is a former CEO of Halliburton.

Leahy responded by saying the vice president had once called him a "bad" Catholic.

Cheney then responded, "F--- off" or "F--- you," two aides said, both speaking on condition of anonymity.

What a Dick.

Police Violence at GOP Convention Will Only Hurt Bush if It's Reported

2004-06-24T20:59:00.000-04:00

Writing in the Berkshire Eagle, Joel Stonington suggests that a reprise at the 2004 GOP Convention in New York of the police riot that occurred at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago could have a similar effect on George W. Bush's re-election prospects as the original had on the campaign of Hubert Humphrey:

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, police lines advanced through protesters, shot tear gas, and clubbed students. The violence was splashed across the front page of every major paper. Some say the Convention doomed the chances of Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey. Will New York in 2004 define Generation X in a similar way?

History, from the last four years at least, suggests that New York may well resemble Chicago. The refusal of permits and massive build-up of security measures points toward a pattern of suppressing dissent, exemplified by the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia and the protests at the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks in Florida last November.

I have no doubt that there will be ample police violence in New York, and possibly at the Democratic Convention in Boston as well. The question is whether the media will have the intestinal fortitude to report it this time around--and I have serious misgivings about that. Judging by the recent record, the outlook is not good. A case in point is the coverage afforded the aforementioned FTAA protests. Stonington continues:

[P]rotests at the FTAA talks last November saw the use of unrestrained violence by police. For instance, members of the Miami-Dade County's Independent Review Panel of police actions said, in a draft report released a few weeks ago, "Civil rights were trampled and the socio-political values we hold dear we undermined."

In fact, Stonington's description of the police brutality in Chicago applies almost word-for-word to what happened in Miami--except that the protesters weren't necessarily students, and the police had added tasers and rubber bullets to their arsenal.

How much of the violence was reported in the mainstream media?

A search at the New York Times website for any articles about FTAA and Miami from November 1, 2003, to the present returns...nothing.

A similar search of the LA Times yields 8 stories. Of those, only this one is about the protests:

Miami Plans for Wave of Protests at Trade Meeting

[John F. Timoney] said his force of more than 1,000 officers has received training on how to ignore verbal insults impugning their sexuality, ethnicity and parentage. Special squads have been formed to swiftly dismantle "sleeping dragons," the human chains reinforced with PVC pipe, concrete barrels and other materials that antiglobalization protesters have used in the past to paralyze the flow of traffic and people.

There is no record, as far as I know, of any "sleeping dragons" in Miami; nor is there any reasonable doubt that the police illegally and violently stifled peaceful dissent there. But it was hardly "splashed across the front page of every major paper." Why? Because the corporations that own the major news media are in favor of "free trade," and they aren't eager to print stories that conflict with their self-interest. Those same corporations short-sightedly believe they stand to gain from the Bush League's pro-corporate agenda, and will again be loath to bite the hand that feeds them.

Police violence will occur at the GOP convention, and it will be recorded by thousands of amateurs with VCRs, cameras, audio cassettes, and old-fashioned paper and pencil. Their accounts will be published in blogs, online journals, and independent news media. The job of every partiotic American will be to make sure that the mainstream press is held accountable for covering the story too. Keep a watchful eye on indy media coverage of the convention, and make sure your local news outlets hear from you when they fail to tell the whole story.

Ray Charles versus Ronald Reagan...

2004-06-11T19:29:00.000-04:00

I almost fell out of my chair last night when I heard Tom Brokaw say that Ray Charles "was to music what Ronald Reagan was to politics."

Here is a list of the top ten ways that Ray Charles was not the Ronald Reagan of music:

10. Ray Charles did not come to music as a refugee from B movies where he had co-starred with a chimpanzee.

9. Ray Charles never joked on the air about launching an air strike on those who played other forms of music than his own.

8. Ray Charles did not arm Osama bin Laden, the Mujahideen, the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein--nor did he sell arms to Iran and ilegally funnel the proceeds to an insurgency that was in open rebellion against a legitimately elected government.

7. Ray Charles did not drive his record label trillions of dollars into debt.

6. Ray Charles did not advocate putting a network of loudspeakers in space to prevent attacks on America by foreign musicians.

5. Ray Charles did not claim credit for the death of disco just because he happened to be there when it died.

4. Ray Charles did not hand over control of music to rich people, or circulate wealthy, powerful businessmen through his band like a revolving door.

3. Ray Charles did not remember a time when America didn't know it had a blues problem.

2. Ray Charles never advocated denying the services of musicians to "welfare queens."

And the number one reason Ray Charles was not Ronald Reagan: Ray Charles knew he was blind.

2004-06-02T03:33:00.000-04:00

Last week, Reuters published a pair of photos which they said reflected the declining popular opinion of the war in Iraq. The first photo showed a smiling Jessica Lynch, in dress uniform, shaking the hand of an admiring child while beaming adults looked on in the background; the second showed Lynndie England holding the end of a leash with an apparently naked Iraqi man at the other end.

In the accompanying story, journalism experts said the pictures are a measure of the change in public opinion.

"Between the time Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital in April 2003 and England was revealed posing in pictures of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib this spring," says the story, "public opinion has traveled a parallel path from hopeful to skeptical over the American role in Iraq."

You might expect that opinion polls would rise and fall with good and bad news from the front. Less intuitive--and more disturbing--is that according to the experts, the relationship goes both ways.

What images the media choose to portray the story relies heavily on those polls, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of Washington's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

"Which image they select is usually influenced by their sense of public attitudes, so polls tend to have a very substantial impact on framing the way journalists think," Rosenstiel said.

An unflattering picture of a candidate may get no coverage if he is ahead but be widespread if he is losing, he said. Thus, he said, declining support for the war is reflected in what we see.

The same dynamic seems to be at work in the Paper of Record. For several years, the New York Times has parroted the Bush administration's pronouncements on everything from Homeland Security to yellowcake uranium. Now, as public dissatisfaction grows, the paper has suddenly rediscovered its proper role. The editors apologize for having been taken in, and promise to be more discriminating in running Bush League blather as straight news in the future. But as Megan Boler writes in the Toronto Star, "The N.Y. Times admission cannot help but smell like last-minute political jockeying to distance itself from an increasingly unpopular Bush administration." Again, we see supposedly hard news being shaped by public opinion.

Broadcast news, for its part, has long been more entertainment than information. The networks sensationalize in search of ratings, they reduce issues to sound bites, they cover every election as if it were a sporting event--and if anything, more blatantly and overtly than print media, they cater to the perceived tastes of their target audience.

In general (there are exceptions, but they're even worse), the media aim to tell us what they think we already believe. Forget about telling us the truth, or telling us what we need to know--they tell us what they think the masses want to hear. Or as the strip-joint proprietor says in John Prine's "Living In the Future," "Hell, we give 'em what they wanna see."

Excellence in journalism? This is hardly journalism at all. It's just plain pandering. The job of the news media is to inform us, not to amplify and reinforce whatever we already think.

If there's a silver lining, it's in the form of a lesson in how to work the media: to impact what they present as news, you simply have to impact what they perceive public opinion to be. This is a technique the right wing learned years ago, and they have been using it to their advantage ever since. By convincing the media that the population thinks they are biased toward the left, they've pulled the editorial slant far to the right.

It's time to fight back. Write your local paper. Write your local radio and TV stations. Write the networks. Let them know that you expect them to dig beneath the party lines and sound bites and easy answers, do some real research, and report the facts. When they fail to do so, call them on it. Let them know you won't stand for lazy journalism, recycled propaganda, and focus-group pandering. It's the only way to take back the media.

Oops!

2004-06-01T19:29:00.000-04:00

I just discovered today that at least some versions of MS Internet Explorer don't like self-terminating script tags...or don't like the way I was trying to use them, anyway. So ever since the last time I updated the template, the blog has looked rather empty to most visitors. (Hey, the page rendered fine in Safari.)

Moral for bloggers, webmasters and other writers of HTML: test your code by viewing it in every browser you can get your hands on!

I think everything's fixed now. You might see a few changes, now that you can see anything at all. For example:

Headlines from the Irregular Times--offbeat, often entertaining, consisently worthwhile progressive commentary--are now found at the bottom of the left-hand column;

A running tabulation of the cost of the Iraq war, courtesy of costofwar.com, is shown at the top of the right-hand column. Click "More details" to see how the dollars translate to schools we could have built, children we could have insured, and other ways we could have used the money that has gone down the drain in Bush's Folly; and

We have comments! You can now register your opinions and reactions to Bush League posts by clicking on the "Comments" link below each post. Please do!

And now, back to our blog....

In Memoriam

2004-05-31T13:42:00.000-04:00

It is the day when we pause to remember those who have died in service to our nation, from the Revolutionary War to the present day - those who, it's said, died to keep America free.

We question, and rightfully so, whether this war or that war is worthwhile enough to justify putting our teenagers and young adults in harm's way. We question the wisdom of a war that has no clear aim and no definable end, yet in which some of those uniformed young Americans as well as a number of innocent civilians are sure to lose their lives.

That does not mean we don't support our troops. Rather, it means we cherish their lives and we don't want them squandered. They are our children and friends and husbands and wives. We owe it to them to ask these questions, because as members of the armed forces, they are not permitted that luxury. They go because they are sent. Whether you believe the war in Iraq or any other war is just or unjust, right or wrong, wisdom or folly, you must recognize the fact that our troops are there because their commander-in-chief, the President of the United States, decided that they would go.

They go, knowing that they may be called upon to take human lives, or to sacrifice their own, or both. They go, and they do their duty as they understand it. They go where they are ordered to go; they do what they are ordered to do. And we are left at home to question the wisdom of their orders.

There is time the rest of the year to debate such matters - as we surely will over the next few months. This day we set aside to honor the memory of those who went and did not return.

The man generally acknowledged as the greatest American President in history - a Republican, as it happens - had a few words to say on ths subject nearly 141 years ago. His simple words ring as true today as when he first wrote them on the back of an envelope:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Bad Apples

2004-05-28T13:16:00.000-04:00

The Bush League says the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were the work of "a few bad apples," and for a change I agree with them. Here's why. (CAUTION: This page contains graphic images of the Abu Ghraib atrocities.)

Mission Accomplished

2004-05-28T11:49:00.000-04:00

Way to go, George. You're really winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people now.

Reuters, by the way, reports that the occupational forces are working with Iraqi police to eliminate anti-coalition graffiti. That's freedom of expression, Bush League style - rather like the way they restrict protest to out-of-the-way "free speech zones" in George W. Bush's America.

Gore Scores

2004-05-27T21:36:00.000-04:00

How about that speech by President-Elect Al Gore?

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name. President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists.

If he had shown the public more of this side of himself four years ago, the Bush League might not have managed to usurp the Presidency even with all their cheating....

US puts known abusers in charge of Iraqi prisons

2004-05-21T17:42:00.000-04:00

According to a story in the New York Times, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has written a letter to Attorney General John Asshcroft asking the Justice Department to look into the part played by US civilians in the prison system in Iraq.

At least two high-ranking civilians in the US-run Iraqi prison system have spotted records at best when it comes to prisoner abuse.

John J. Armstrong resigned last year as Commissioner of Corrections in Connecticut after he sent two inmates to their deaths in a "supermaximum security" facility in Virginia, where one of them was apparently treated for diabetic shock by being zapped with a stun gun and restrained, and another hanged himself by jumping from his bunk while a guard stood by and did nothing.

Armstrong had also been criticized repeatedly over his eight years in charge of Connecticut's prisons for failing to deal with complaints of sexual harassment of female guards by their male coworkers.

Armstrong is Assistant Director of Operations of the US prisons in Iraq. He is said to be working under contract for the State Department, although State declined to confirm or deny it.

Lane McCotter was forced out as Director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after guards killed a mentally ill inmate by leaving him "shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16 hours."

McCotter's next stop was as an executive with a private corrections company. That company was roundly criticized by a Justice Department report that said an inmate in one of their jails hanged himself in part because the jail "lacked adequate medical and mental health care and had no suicide prevention plan," according to the story.

Just a month later, Asshcroft sent McCotter to Iraq and put him in charge of reopening Iraq's prisons.

Schumer reportedly asked, "Of all the people who have experience running prisons in this country and haven't run into trouble, how did they pick these guys?"

When the attorney general is a right-wing religious fundamentalist who thinks pain and suffering is what non-Christians deserve, the answer is pretty easy to guess.

2004-05-20T02:37:00.000-04:00

Update: Here is the source of the picture linked below. It is titled "War President."

Thanks to Vynce for providing the link.

2004-05-20T01:03:00.000-04:00

I don't know where this picture came from, but it needs no caption.

No Middle Ground

2004-05-19T22:29:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you get discouraged.

You write the same things as everybody else. You point out the same lies and the same corruption and the same cynical exploitaion of the hopes and fears of the masses for the profit of the few, and you see others pointing it out so much more eloquently than yourself...and still you see the corporate media ignoring the rising hue and cry...and you get discouraged. If they don't see it by now, you think, they're not going to see it by reading my drivel.

I've been on a long break from the Bush League blog because I was discouraged. I didn't feel like I was really making any significant difference. Anybody who can read my musings can get hard news from Greg Palast, and erudite opinion from Noam Chomsky, and press releases from the Sierra Club and CommonDreams and TruthOut and Buzzflash and the Smirking Chimp and a bizillion other web sites. What's one more voice in the crowd, after all?

Then I went to see my daughter's high school drama troupe and their Spring presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sitting there waiting for the opening curtain, I thought back to their Fall presentation. The Crucible, it was, Arthur Miller's tale of the Salem witch hunts. Written in the '50s as a parable about McCarthyism, the play finds new relevance in these times.

One theme that recurs through the play is "If you are not with us, you are against us." It was used by the judges in The Crucible, as it was used by the McCarthyites--and as it is used today by the latest bevy of self-righteous persecutors--to divide, to polarize, to coerce people into taking sides.

And you know what? They're right. There is no middle ground. You can't be neutral on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld. You can't have no opinion on the suspension of the Bill of Rights at home, or the holding of political prisoners at Guantanamo without trial; or on the slaughter of ten thousand Iraqi civilians, or the atrocities committed in your name in the torture chambers at Abu Ghraib and al-Assad and who knows where else...or the thousands of Muslims driven into the arms of Al Qaida by the abominations of the Bush League; you can't have no reaction to the hundreds of American lives lost, and the uncounted thousands of non-fatal American casualties of the Bush League's recklessness and folly. There's no room for indifference. You're either with the Bush League or against them.

The mathematician in me says that if you are not with us, you are against us is logically equivalent to if you are not against us, you are with us. As it turns out, it's also morally equivalent. Arundhati Roy says it so much better than I ever could: "The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."

And I know which side I want to be counted on.

What's one more voice in the crowd? About the same as one more vote in Florida. One more straw piled on the camel's back. The probability that my little-known and less-read blog will somehow be the difference between four more years of George W. Bush, on the one hand, and the dawning of sanity in America on the other, is very small; but it's not zero. If my ramblings and rants get just one more person pissed off enough about the corporate plunder of America to do something about it, or help one other blogger to find his voice, or persuade one fence-sitter to come down on the side of reason--or what would be best of all, if I should convince one disheartened voter that it's worth her while to go to the polls in November and vote to send George W. Bush and his pack of vermin back into the holes they crawled out of--then I will have succeeded.

So...once more, with feeling. I'm back.

Clarke's revelations elicit calls to action

2004-03-24T23:15:00.000-05:00

Richard Clarke's exposé--a triple whammy consisting of his book Against All Enemies, a blistering appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes, and his damning testimony before the 9/11 commission--is blowing the lid off the Bush League's attempt to cover up the dereliction of duty that first allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place, then delayed any effective response and substituted an attack on a country that the intelligence community knew had nothing to do with the attacks.

The White House response recalls the way the administration has handled other defectors like Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, and Richard Foster--if you can't deny the message, kill the messenger. Condi Rice, who refuses to testify publicly or under oath before the 9/11 commission, hit the morning talk-show circuit in full stride to make ad hominem attacks on Clarke, and Dick Cheney called his buddy Rush Limbaugh to claim Clarke was "not in the loop" on counterterrorism.

Rice's and Cheney's claims are debunked point for point in a press release from the Center for American Progress--where, by the way, you can also read a review of Clarke's book by Robert O. Boorstin.

Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times, has also written an interesting summary of the Clarke affair titled "Lifting the Shroud."

Taking Action

This is it, friends. The evidence of incompetence, negligence, duplicity, and abuse of power has reached critical mass. The cracks in the Bush League's wall of secrecy are becoming gaping holes; the wall itself is ripe to come crashing down. It's time for the forces of reason to press the case. From now until November, we must continue to demand a full accounting, not only of the pre-9/11 failings, but of all the rest too: the railroading of the unconstitutional USA PATRIOT Act; the lies and distortions that took us into Iraq; Cheney's clandestine meetings with Enron and their ilk that produced the White House energy plan; the deception concerning the cost of the administration's Medicare plan; and the countless other assaults on civil liberties, the environment, and the economy that have marked possibly the most dishonest White House in history.

Here are a few ways you can take action on this issue.

First, the Democratic National Committee is conducting a petition drive to demand a Congressional inquiry into this failure of leadership. It's free and it's easy. Just visit the site, give your name and address, and make your voice heard.

Second, MoveOn.org is urgently soliciting donations to fund an ad highlighting some of Richard Clarke's revelations. As MoveOn describes it, "the ad hinges on a direct quotation from Clarke: 'Frankly, I find it outrageous that a president is running for re-election on the grounds that he'd done such great things on terrorism. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.'" This may be a first for the Bush League blog; soliciting money, even for good causes, is not something I usually do. However, this is important enough that I've decided to make an exception. Please do what you can to help. You can view a PDF storyboard of the ad, and make a donation to help get it on the air, at the MoveOn PAC website.

Finally, I'll make my own plug for a third way to take action: contact your local paper, TV and radio news editors, and advertisers who sponsor the news. Tell them you want to get both sides of the story. Tell them you will refuse to read papers, and tune out stations, that unquestioningly parrot Bush League pronouncements. And while you're at it, tell them to report less on the "horse race" and more on the issues. The process of choosing a president is not a sporting event staged for our amusement. It's serious business, with repercussions that will ripple through our lives and those of our grandchildren for years to come.

The trickle of revelations about the duplicity and cynicism of the Bush administration has become a stream. If the public demands it, the stream will become a flood, and the flood will sweep the Bush League out of office. Then the real work of healing America can begin.

Hunt for Osama narrows...

2004-03-09T23:29:00.000-05:00

I just got a news flash from Joe Burgess, the"Green Dog Democrat":

Pentagon officials now believe they have been unable to locate Osama Bin Laden because he has found a place in which to hide where . . .

(1) it is easy to get in if you have the money;
(2) no one will recognize or remember you;
(3) no one will realize that you have disappeared;
(4) no one keeps any records of your comings and goings; and
(5) you have no obligations or responsibilities.

The analysts are still puzzled, however, as to how Bin Laden found out about the Texas Air National Guard.

Joe edits what he calls "an every-other-day 'op-ed' page from various sources" and sends it to a few like-minded folks here and there. He intentionally keeps his direct readership small, but encourages his readers to forward his missives to other like-minded (or not) friends. It's well worth reading--and forwarding to anyone you know who is (1) an otherwise sane Bush supporter, (2) on the fence concerning the 2004 election, or (3) interested in good government. If you'd like to start receiving the Green-Dog Democrat, email me via the Contact link on this page and let me know. I'll add you to my personal list of Green Dog readers, and forward them as I receive them.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

2004-02-20T08:16:00.000-05:00

Arianna Huffington strikes again.

In Bush Rouses The Sleeping Dogs Of The Culture War, the reborn progressive points out the latest tactic in the Bush League's desperate struggle to retain power:

With Silver Starred John Kerry threatening the president’s hold on the high ground of national defense, Team Bush has decided it’s time to switch battlefields and start screaming about Sodom and Gomorrah.
. . .
The Justice Department has recently assigned a team of FBI agents to focus exclusively on adult obscenity cases. That’s right, with the war on terror in full swing, our war president is going to have a group of G-men doing nothing but working the porn beat when they could be tracking down — oh, I don’t know — terrorist sleeper cells. Talk about your misguided allocation of manpower. I don’t know about you, but I certainly feel safer knowing the feds are going to be keeping close tabs on Jenna Jameson.

We see the same loopy sense of right and wrong being played out in the Janet Jackson firestorm. Less than two weeks after the shock and bra of the Super Bowl, Bush’s congressional cronies were already holding hearings on the matter. Compare that to the foot-dragging that followed 9/11. It took 14 months — and a candlelight vigil outside the White House by the victims’ family members — before the president finally relented and the 9/11 Commission was created. Now that’s indecent.

For the moral relativists in the Bush administration, the definition of sin seems to depend on whether the sinner can further their political purposes.

So Justin exposing Janet's boob is a sin, but White House staffers exposing Valerie Plame is a win. Profiting from porno is a sin, but Halliburton’s wartime profiteering is a win. Two men getting hitched is a sin, but Cheney and Scalia shacking up in a duck blind is a win. Telling students condoms can prevent STDs is a sin, but lying about WMD is a win. And so, apparently, is GOP staffers hacking into Senate computers and Tom DeLay illegally funneling corporate money to Texas politicians.

I think I'm in love.

USA Today: Prosecutor in terror case controversy sues Ashcroft

2004-02-17T20:12:00.000-05:00

A federal prosecutor in Detroit is suing the Justice Department alleging "gross mismanagement" of the war on terror, and seeking damages for First Amendment and Privacy Act violations.

Richard Convertino, an Assistant US Attorney in Detroit, worked on the successful prosecution of a case involving an alleged terrorist cell in Detroit, then told a Senate committee he had concerns about the management of the war on terror--whereupon he was targeted by an internal investigation. He alleges that the investigation was launched in retaliation for his testimony, violating his right to free speech.

He also says officials deliberately leaked the identity of a confidential informant in the case, also in retaliation for his testimony.

Sound familiar?

Just another case of Bush League Machiavellianism, as they callously sacrifice a valuable informant in order to punish one of their own for daring to speak the truth.

2004-02-17T19:13:00.000-05:00

Serial Liar

Bill Gallagher of the Niagara Falls Reporter has written a scathing indictment cataloguing Bush's lies about the pretext for war, his National Guard service, and what his tax cuts for the rich and famous have done for the economy. It's a handy list of facts, worth memorizing in order to counter the lies that are sure to be spewing forth soon with millions of dollars behind them.

2004-02-13T09:08:00.000-05:00

What is the Bush League hiding?

Remember how the Bush League cherry-picked intelligence reports to make it seem there was ironclad proof of WMDs in Iraq? It seems they're at it again....

The White House late Wednesday released a copy of a dental evaluation Bush had at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery on Jan. 6, 1973, which Bush's spokesman said documented that the president had served in Alabama as required.

The White House obtained the dental record, along with other medical records it did not release, from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The inch-tall stack of medical documents has been the subject of debate within the White House, where staff members have pored over the records while wrestling with how much to release to the public — and which contents inside the file would clear up lingering questions.

(AP story via USA Today)

As opposed to raising new ones, we can assume.

Surely I'm not the only one wondering why they don't just release the whole stack. When John Ashcroft wants to rummage through abortion records, the administration argues that there's no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality:

Citing federal case law, the department said in a brief that "there is no federal common law" protecting physician-patient privilege. In light of "modern medical practice" and the growth of third-party insurers, it said, "individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential."

In that case, all I can say about the President's records is "Bring 'em on!" For that matter, why not release all of the President's military records, as John McCain did in 2000 to disprove a Bush campaign smear?

But forget what Bush may be hiding about the performance of his military duties in the seventies. What is he hiding about the performance of his Presidential duties from 2001 to the present?

In a chilling article published by the New York Observer, Gail Sheehy writes that 9/11 commission executive director Philip Zelikow screens the evidence and witnesses that are seen by the commissioners. Incredibly, the commission was unaware of the story of Amy Sweeney. The flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 has been publicly honored by the state of Massachusetts and the FBI for her bravery; her in-flight phone call not only alerted American Airlines that a hijacking was in progress, it enabled them to identify three of the hijackers.

"Amy, this is Michael Woodward." The American Airlines flight service manager had been friends with Sweeney for a decade, so he didn’t have to waste any time verifying that this wasn’t a hoax. "Michael, this plane has been hijacked," Ms. Sweeney repeated. Calmly, she gave him the seat locations of three of the hijackers: 9D, 9G and 10B. She said they were all of Middle Eastern descent, and one spoke English very well.

Mr. Woodward ordered a colleague to punch up those seat locations on the computer. At least 20 minutes before the plane crashed, the airline had the names, addresses, phone numbers and credit cards of three of the five hijackers. They knew that 9G was Abdulaziz al-Omari, 10B was Satam al-Suqami, and 9D was Mohamed Atta—the ringleader of the 9/11 terrorists.

"The nightmare began before the first plane crashed," said Mike Sweeney, "because once my wife gave the seat numbers of the hijackers and Michael Woodward pulled up the passenger information, Mohamed Atta’s name was out there. They had to know what they were up against."

The commission did not learn about this in their January hearing on aviation security because Zelikow--a former Bush advisor--screened it from them, apparently along with a lot of other information about what the authorities knew and when they knew it.

What her husband wants to know is this: "When and how was this information about the hijackers used? Were Amy’s last moments put to the best use to protect and save others?"

"We know what she said from notes, and the government has them," said Mary Schiavo, the formidable former Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, whose nickname among aviation officials was "Scary Mary." Ms. Schiavo sat in on the commission’s hearing on aviation security on 9/11 and was disgusted by what it left out. "In any other situation, it would be unthinkable to withhold investigative material from an independent commission," she told this writer. "There are usually grave consequences. But the commission is clearly not talking to everybody or not telling us everything."

The article also reveals that authorities heard one of the hijackers "clearly threatening" the pilot, who was surreptitiously keying his microphone.. They also heard the hijackers saying "We have more planes. We have other planes."

Sheehy presents quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that United Flight 93, the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field, may have been shot down by F-16s, not wrestled to the ground by a passenger uprising as has been reported.

Melody Homer, the wife of Flight 93’s first officer, was at home in Marlton, N.J., the morning of Sept. 11 with their 10-month-old child. Within minutes of seeing the second plane turn into a fireball, Ms. Homer called the Flight Operations Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, which keeps track of all New York–based pilots. She was told that her husband’s flight was fine.

"Whether or not my husband’s plane was shot down," the widowed Mrs. Homer said, "the most angering part is reading about how the President handled this."

Mr. Bush was notified 14 minutes after the first attack, at 9 a.m., when he arrived at an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla. He went into a private room and spoke by phone with his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and glanced at a TV in the room. Mrs. Homer’s soft voice curdles when she describes his reaction: "I can’t get over what Bush said when he was called about the first plane hitting the tower: ‘That’s some bad pilot.’ Why did people on the street assume right away it was a terrorist hijacking, but our President didn’t know? Why did it take so long to ground all civilian aircraft? In the time between when my husband’s plane took off [at 8:41 a.m.] and when the second plane hit in New York [9:02 a.m.], they could have turned back to airfield."

Melody LeRoy later learned from a member of the Air Force who worked with her husband that "a couple of weeks before the incident, they were all sitting around and talking about the intelligence that was filtering through the military that something big was going to happen. For all of this to get ignored," she said as she swallowed a sob, "it’s difficult to excuse that."

What is Bush's response to all of this? Stonewalling. He initially resisted any inquiry into the tragedy but the administration's own. According to Tom Daschle, Bush and Cheney repeatedly urged him in 2002 not to investigate the attack at all. After finally bowing to pressure and appointing the 9/11 commission to follow up on the Congressional inquiry he had tried to subvert, he has fought to keep information from them at every turn--refusing, for example, to give them access to the infamous Presidential Daily Briefs showing that, yes, they could have anticipated the use of airliners as missiles (in fact, the CIA anticipated exactly that).

The President, in bowing to public pressure again and appointing a commission to investigate the purported intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war, said he wants the "big picture." As Sheehy points out, the Congressional investigation has already given him the big picture on the pre-9/11 failures--900 pages' worth.

But as we know, the President doesn't read.

Nor, when it comes to information about his own failure to carry out his duties, does he want anyone else reading either.

2004-02-10T19:45:00.000-05:00

Redefining cooperation

February 8:

President Bush: We have given extraordinary cooperation with Chairmen Kean and Hamilton. As you know, we made an agreement on what's called "Presidential Daily Briefs," so they could see the information the CIA provided me that is unique, by the way, to have provided what's called the PDB, because -

Russert: Presidential Daily Brief?

President Bush: Right. And see, the danger of allowing for information that I get briefed on out in the public arena is that it could mean that the product that I receive or future presidents receive is somewhat guarded for fear of - for fear of it being revealed, and for fear of people saying, "Well, you know, we're going to second-guess that which you told the President."

I need good, honest information, but we have shared this information with both those gentlemen, gentlemen I trust, so they could get a better picture of what took place prior to September the 11th.

And again, we want - I want the truth to be known. I want there to be a full analysis done so that we can better prepare the homeland, for example, against what might occur.

Meet the Press

February 9:

Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks warned the White House on Monday that it could face a politically damaging subpoena this week if it refused to turn over information from the highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports given to President Bush before 9/11.

The panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and the former governor of New Jersey, said through a spokesman that he was hopeful an agreement would be worked out before the commission's next meeting, on Tuesday. Commission officials said that negotiations continued throughout the day on Monday and into the evening with the office of Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel.

But other members of the commission said that without an immediate resolution, they would call for a vote on Tuesday on issuing a subpoena to the White House for access to information in the documents. The papers are known as the President's Daily Brief, the intelligence summary prepared each morning for Mr. Bush by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Responding to earlier threats of a subpoena, the White House agreed last year to allow three members of the 10-member commission and the panel's Republican staff director to review portions of the daily briefings from before the Sept. 11 attacks that referred to intelligence warnings about Al Qaeda and its plans for terrorist attacks.

The commission has described the briefings as vital since they would show whether the White House had warnings of a catastrophic terrorist attack. The White House has acknowledged that one briefing Mr. Bush saw in August 2001 referred to the possibility of a Qaeda strike with commercial airplanes.

In recent weeks, however, the White House has refused to give permission for the four members of the delegation to share their handwritten and computerized notes - which have been retained by the White House under the agreement - with the full commission. That has outraged Democrats and Republicans on the panel and prompted the renewed threat of a subpoena.

NY Times

With apologies to the memory of Douglas Adams, this must be some new meaning of "extraordinary cooperation" which I was previously unfamiliar with.

2004-02-09T21:10:00.000-05:00

New fears of global warming: now, not later

According to some people, there is "growing evidence" that global warming may have disastrous consequences much more quickly than has been suggested--that a catastrophic change cold occur in the space of a decade, once the climate reaches a "tipping point" that could be upon us within a few years.

Although the change would be triggered by warming, say these people, the effect in much of the US and Europe could be drastic cooling, coupled with violent storms and severe drought. By 2010, global warming could cause the circular currents that ferry warm tropical surface water to the Northern Atlantic and return deeper, colder water to the tropics to shut down. Within a decade afterward, according to one scenario, vast stretches of the Southern US turn to dust bowls and burned-out forests. The Netherlands are inundated. Northern Europe goes into a deep freeze, and Southern Europe is overwhelmed by refugees from Africa. Widespread famine and a deepening energy crisis lead to global unrest, and eventually to all-out wars over food, energy, and other scarce and dwindling resources.

And this is based on a "midrange case" of abrupt climate change. Things might not go so badly--and then again, the reality could be much worse.

Who are the tree-huggers preaching this gloom-and-doom scenario? They include Pentagon planner Andrew Marshall and futurist Peter Schwartz, former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, according to FORTUNE Magazine.

Their scenario, detailed in an unclassified DOD report summarized in FORTUNE's January 26 edition, is far from certain, and may well be unlikely. But its consequences are so dire, says FORTUNE, that "it should be elevated beyond a scientific debate."

The FORTUNE article calls for "action now" to prevent the catastrophe, if possible, and to plan for ways to lessen its effects--climatoligically, economically, and politically.

It's becoming more and more apparent that the Bush League's abandonment of the Kyoto Treaty was a huge mistake. The issue of global warming cannot take a back seat to corporate profits or even national security--indeed, it could prove to be the biggest threat to both.

2004-02-09T19:16:00.000-05:00

Maybe the dog ate them

Ah, Dubya: the President Quayle we never had....

I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons. But David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons. And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we’ll find out. That's what the Iraqi survey group let me let me finish here.

But David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world.

--President George W. Bush, on NBC's Meet the Press, February 8, 2004

Right. While dodging cluster bombs and hiding in bunkers, with an unprecedented array of US military surveillance trained on them and the whole world watching on television, Saddam and his henchmen managd to secretly destroy or ship out their massive stores of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and get rid of every shred of evidence that they still existed, that they hadn't all been destroyed as long ago as 1991.

Or maybe the tooth fairy came in the middle of the night and took them. Or the Easter Bunny--that no-good terrorist! See, we knew he was in cahoots with the Iraqis all along.

Or maybe, just maybe, the cautions from our own intelligence community that the evidence for such weapons was sketchy; the reports from defectors that the weapons had been destroyed over a decade ago; the UN inspectors' claims that they needed more time to do their job--maybe all those things that the Bush League uber-hawks chose to ignore in their rush to judgment--were things that we should have paid attention to in the first place.

2004-02-09T02:58:00.000-05:00

Having it both ways

The Bush League neocons like to have it both ways.

For example, they continue to cite enforcing the will of the United Nations as a reason for the invasion of Iraq. George W. himself, in the Meet the Press interview of Feb. 8, said "U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 clearly stated show us your arms and destroy them, or your programs and destroy them. And we said, there are serious consequences if you don't. That was a unanimous verdict. In other words, the worlds of the U.N. Security Council said we're unanimous and you're a danger. So, it wasn't just me and the United States. The world thought he was dangerous and needed to be disarmed."

Of course, the UN also made it plain that they didn't want the US going in, but in that case George's answer is "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country."

So, when it's convenient to use the wishes of the UN as an excuse to do what he wants, Bush is more than willing to latch onto it. However, the wishes of the UN suddenly become irrelevant when they don't happen to match what he wants to do.

Bush and his apologists also like to have it both ways when talk turns to Iraqi resistance to the US occupation. When attacks on US forces in country subside, they say it's because we've been so successful at restoring order. When the attacks increase, it's a sign that our enemies are growing more desperate because we're so successful. Either way, whether attacks are up or down, they spin it into good news.

A variation on the same theme deals with terrorist attacks here. As long as there are no more terrorist attacks on US soil, they will say it's evidence that their "war on terrorism" is succeeding, and therefore we need to renew and extend the Patriot Act. If, heaven forbid, there should be another attack--as many Americans think there will be--you can rest assured that they'll say it only goes to show that the world is a dangerous place...and therefore we need to renew and extend the Patriot Act.

The same kind of doublethink pervades Bush League pronouncements on the economy, the environment, and health issues. Any good news is due to their foresight and their corporate-driven policies; any bad news is evidence that we need more of the same. Whatever happens, not only will they claim it proves their policies are right, they'll find a way to say it's exactly what they predicted and planned for. And as long as the lap-dog press plays along, the Bush League will continue to have it both ways.

2004-02-08T18:43:00.000-05:00

Madmen everywhere

Did anybody but me notice that on Meet the Press today, Tim Russert called Fidel Castro a madman, and implied that the rulers of Iran, North Korea, and Burma are madmen as well?

Did anybody notice that Bush claimed we had to fight a preemptive war (against a country he now admits was not an imminent threat) because dimplomacy had failed?

From the transcript:

Bush: ...He could have developed a nuclear weapon over time I'm not saying immediately, but over time which would then have put us in what position? We would have been in a position of blackmail.

In other words, you can't rely upon a madman, and he was a madman. You can't rely upon him making rational decisions when it comes to war and peace, and it's too late, in my judgment, when a madman who has got terrorist connections is able to act.

Russert: But there are lots of madmen in the world, Fidel Castro …

Bush: True.

Russert: … in Iran, in North Korea, in Burma, and yet we don't go in and take down those governments.

Bush: Correct, and I could that's a legitimate question as to why we like felt we needed to use force in Iraq and not in North Korea. And the reason why I felt like we needed to use force in Iraq and not in North Korea, because we had run the diplomatic string in Iraq.

The facts say otherwise. Since the war, it has come to light that Saddam tried desperately, before the invasion, to reach a diplomatic solution. He offered to let the US bring in its own inspectors, and to give them free access to anything they wanted to see.

Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If he didn't already know it, he knew when Saddam offered to meet whatever terms Bush wanted to impose in order to avoid war.

Dubya's response was similar to the one Mel Gibson, as William Wallace in Braveheart, gave to the commander of the British army he was about to fight:

"Scotland's terms: Lower your flags, march straight back to England stopping at every home you pass by to beg forgiveness for one hundred years of theft rape and murder...before we let you leave, your commander must cross that field, present himself before this army, put his head between his legs, and kiss his own arse."

This is one of Bush's favorite ways of "negotiating": demand terms so outrageous that you know they will not be accepted, so that you can claim you tried diplomacy before rushing to war.

There were many more lies in the Meet the Press interview, and I'm sure we'll see many of them pointed out in the coming days and weeks. From September 11, 2001 to the present, the Bush League has used the so-called "war on terrorism" to rationalize the taking away of Americans' freedom of speech, freedom of peaceable assembly, freedom of association, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure--and there's little or no evidence that this all-too-dear price has bought anything but increased profits for the administration's corporate cronies.

So here's another Braveheart quote, one the President should hear repeatedly--from his challenger, from the press, and from the American people--between now and November: "You think the people of this land exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it."

2004-02-05T19:18:00.000-05:00

Huffington: Cheney is Dems' best weapon

Arianna Huffington, America's most famous recovering conservative, asks: Will Cheney Provide The Margin Of Victory...For Democrats?:

GOP inner circles are buzzing with the rumor that President Bush is planning to drop Dick Cheney from his re-election ticket and replace him with 9/11 action hero Rudy Giuliani.

As one firmly committed to making sure Bush doesn't get another four years in office, all I can say to this is: Please, Mr. President, say it ain't so!

From his insistence on clinging to long-discredited "evidence" of WMDs in Iraq and links between Saddam and Bin Laden, to his cozy relationship with his warmongering former company, to his also cozy relationship with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Huffington explains why Democrats should hope to have Dick Cheney to kick around in the campaign. And she does so with her usual sense of humor. A couple of my favorite lines...

Paraphrasing Bush League talking heads backpedaling from earlier claims: "Did I say 500 tons of sarin and 25,000 liters of anthrax? I meant 'weapons of mass destruction-related program activities'."

Of the Cheney-Scalia duck-hunting trip in Louisiana: "Why bother with 'justice for all' when you've got hunting buddies who don't give a flying duck about fairness, impartiality, or the public's right to know?"

Of Scalia's claim that his impartiality can't be reasonably questioned: "That ranks right up there with Justin Timberlake's claim that the boob shot seen 'round the world was due to a 'wardrobe malfunction'."

2004-02-03T08:48:00.000-05:00

Another open letter

An open letter to Mitch Albom, sports writer for the Detroit Free Press:

Mitch,

Sorry for the presumption of familiarity, but I can't help myself. You've been in my living room so many times I feel as if we were old pals. You don't know me without you have read a weblog, but you've always been one of my favorites on The Sports Reporters.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks for standing up, in your Feb. 1 column, for your beliefs.. for sanity... for truth, justice, and the American Way. I'm sure you'll take a lot of flak over your stand, but it's refreshing to know that not all who cover sports are intellectually akin to Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Miller. (Come to think of it, those two didn't do particularly well covering sports, either, did they?)

The main thrust of your column reminds me of the Arundhati Roy quote that Jim Bouton chose to open Foul Ball: "...in the midst of putative peace, you could, like me, be unfortunate enough to stumble on a silent war. The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."

Thanks for being accountable.

2004-02-01T23:33:00.000-05:00

No controversy here...CBS's actions speak louder than words

It was OK for Janet Jackson to sing during her Super Bowl halftime show on CBS, "I'm so hot, I'm gonna take off all my clothes," and then have Justin Timberlake rip off part of her costume, exposing her bare breast. It was OK for a beer commercial to feature a Chimpanzee making crude sexual overtures to an attractive (human) female, and for a voice-over in another commercial to ask rhetorically if you'll be able to perform sexually when the moment is right--but not to show a tongue-in-cheek ad reminding you that meat consumption increases the probability that you won't.

It was OK for an insurance company to facetiously offer a "trunk monkey" with every policy--that is, a chimpanzee which, if you get into a verbal altercation with another motorist, can be released to clobber your adversary with a tire iron. It was OK for a credit-card commercial to depict Homer Simpson sloshing suds immediately before driving home to spend time with his family. It was OK to run an advocacy ad from Philip Morris, and other advocacy ads from anti-smoking groups--including one highly critical of advocacy ads from Philip Morris. But an ad suggesting that future generations will be left to pay off the Bush administration's record deficits? Sorry, that's over the top.

In rejecting ads from MoveOn.org and PETA, CBS had cited a "50-year-old policy" of not accepting advocacy ads that deal with controversial subjects; but they demonstrated their tolerance for controversy by airing nudity in prime time; ads that made light of bestiality, drinking & driving, and road rage; and both a Philip Morris ad and an "anti-Philip Morris ad" ad. It's apparent that the only "controversy" CBS finds unacceptable is telling the truth about the Bush League.

2004-01-30T08:22:00.000-05:00

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