POOR GEORGE BUSH

Everybody wants to hurt him--or that's what Karl Rove wants you to think, so that everyone will love Dear Leader and have sympathy for him and acquiesce when he rises to smite the evildoers with his nuclear fist...first a "grenade" in Georgia, and today, a tiny plane comes within 3 miles of the White House. That shit sucks up all the ink and airtime, while much more important stories like the secret war memo and Tom Ridge's admission today that terror alerts were based on "flimsy" (i.e., politically motivated and campaign motivated) evidence are in the background.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out in six months or a year that the pilot of today's plane was personally hired by Karl Rove to fly near the White House so TV cameras could get a shot of it and the cops on the ground could make everybody run so that the Tom Ridge story would get little to no coverage. Such a story would come out on Raw Story or Americablog, maybe make A-17 of the New York Times, and that would be it. No one would ever be held accountable, just like what's happening with the war memo.

The war memo is the single most explosive piece of news to come out since the war started, and what do Rush and Chris Matthews talk about? Hillary Clinton's campaign staffer who's on trial. Because they have to start smearing her now (not that they haven't been smearing her all along). It's never too early to start your election smears. See, they have to start doing it now so that this will drag on for three years and people will just be sick of Hillary Clinton in the news and not want to have anything to do with her just because of that.

Uggghhh...

The Kurt Vonnegut postcard to Iraq that's making the rounds today is quite good...as Dickhead Rumsfeld said, "Freedom is messy"...

FOR FUCK'S SAKE...

John Conyers is the man. He's admonishing the media to stop covering the fucking runaway bride that has absolutely consequence for the country and instead, cover this:

"The London Times reports that the British government and the United States government had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in 2002, before authorization was sought for such an attack in Congress, and had discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so."

Hello!! PNAC, anyone? Lies and falsification? This is an outrage and is so beyond the pale that 1)this happened and 2)the mainstream media is not saying word one about it.

And I felt dirty today because Bush visited my home state today...where he had this to say:

"If you're getting a social security check today, you're going to keep getting your check, I don't care what the propogandists say."

Well, it takes one to know one...and by the way, if you clicked the link to the WLBT "story"--what the fuck kinda piss poor jackassery is that? "Bush made his mark on the state?" "There was no beating around the Bush?" Bush put forth ideas to "Reform [sic] the system?"

The word "reform" means to change something for the better. Bush wants to "deform" the system. For an exhausting yet lucid discussion on Social Security and semantics, see the Daily Howler...

WEEKEND/LETTER TO EDITOR

Saw some cool stuff on Book TV this weekend--the LA Times Book Festival. Arianna's letting her hair grow out...nice. I thought Amy Goodman handled the jarhead Bush plant in the audience very well. I also liked her comment about the difference between CNN and al-Jazeera: CNN shows where the U.S. missiles take off and al-Jazeera shows where they land.

Also picked up a few DVDs this weekend--Bill Hicks and Zappa among them. They both stick it to the Repukelicans, so that's an added bonus.

Got a letter to the editor printed this past Friday, my sister's birthday. Here's a link until it goes dead and the whole text is below (with their headline included)...

No justification for the Iraq war

The top weapons inspector in Iraq has now concluded, once and for all, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the several years prior to our illegal and immoral invasion of that country, and that there is no evidence that the nonexistent WMD were transferred to Syria, as some have argued.

Simply put, Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

Remember, those figments of the Bush-Cheney imagination were the main justification for our ill-advised foray into Iraq. Remember Bush's reasoning as to why we had to invade Iraq? He said that we were "facing clear evidence of peril," that "we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

A new Gallup poll this week shows that 50 percent of Americans think that Bush misled the country about WMD. Last week Gallup had a poll showing that 53 percent of Americans don't think the Iraq invasion was worth it. Public opinion is turning against this vile, foul war and with good reason.

The next time you go to the PX - I mean Wal-Mart - look around at the dozens of soldiers you see who are stationed at Camp Shelby before being shipped off to Iraq. How many of them will lose life or limb fighting in an illegitimate war whose main justification has now been proven false, and which is now unpopular with a majority of their countrymen?

How many will have to be sacrificed before we all take heed of those yellow ribbon magnets and really support our troops by ending the war and bringing the troops home?

Clinton Kirby,

Hattiesburg


Originally published April 29, 2005

They actually printed it right--no errors or anything. Unusual...

Also, great Raimondo article over at antiwar.com today...when he's on, he is indeed on. A little sample of his commemoration of the 2nd anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech:

Mission accomplished? If the mission was to create conditions giving rise to sectarian violence, a growing insurgency, and all-out civil war, while dragging us to the brink of bankruptcy, then, yes, you might say that. But only if you were Osama bin Laden.

They only need $60,000 to stay afloat this quarter. Please give 'til it hurts.

ARE PEOPLE WISING UP?

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick–so it comes out today that not only were there never WMD in Iraq when we were being told that failure to invade Iraq and slaughter hundreds of thousands of people and spend over $300 BILLION on our war machine would result in American cities being nuked, but Iraq never surreptitiously tried to send the nonexistent WMD to Syria or anywhere else.

Do you know why they couldn’t send the WMD to Syria or anywhere else?

Because they never had them to begin with! It was all a lie perpetrated by George “Killer” Bush’s corporate-ocracy!

If I had a child fighting in this illegal war right now, I would be so fucking pissed! That whole WMD thing was a snow job and now people’s kids, husbands, wives, etc. are being killed and/or wounded every day. For what? FOR GEORGE BUSH’S LIES!

And by the way, Clinton lied too, as have lots of other politicians. But Clinton got his dick sucked. George Bush is sending our sons and daughters to their deaths and squandering our money on a war that is illegal, immoral, ill-advised, and now, apparently by his government’s own admission, completely for naught...

The Wising Up Part

But lo, what doth I see? New polls showing that a majority of Americans are catching on the the fact that George W. Bush is a rapacious, psychopathic pinhead and the most dangerous person in the world. Here’s the skinny from the Washington Post:

The survey found that Bush's overall job approval rating stood at 47 percent, matching his all-time low in Post-ABC News polls. Half disapproved of the job he is doing as president.

On several other key measures of performance, Bush's standing with the public was at or near new lows, with less than half the public supporting the way the president is handling the economy, energy policy and Iraq. Four in 10 approved of Bush's handling of the economy, down six points since the start of the year [This strikes me as not the best way to phrase this statistic--the setup in the preceding paragraph leads us to believe we're going to hear about the public's disapproval, but these disapproving statistics are phrased in terms of the public approving]. Slightly more than a third of the public approved of Bush's energy policies, and Americans were more inclined to blame the president rather than oil companies or other countries for soaring gasoline prices.

Just over four in 10 -- 42 percent -- endorsed the way the president
is dealing with the situation in Iraq, a slight increase from the all-time low
in March of 39 percent. Almost six in 10 (58 percent) said the United States has
gotten bogged down there, and 39 percent said they are confident Iraq will have
a stable, democratic government in a year [More with this confusing phrasing--wouldn't the point of all this be clearer if the text read thusly: "58 dislike the way the president is dealing with the situation in Iraq...etc."]

Bush continues to get strong marks on his handling of the campaign against terrorism, with 56 percent supporting his actions, down five points since January. But the survey also found that the sluggish economy has eclipsed terrorism on the public's list of top priorities, fueling Bush's drop in the polls.

A third of those interviewed (32 percent) said the economy should be the highest priority for the administration and Congress, up five points in the past month, followed by Iraq (22 percent) and health care (15 percent). Only 12 percent cited terrorism as the top issue, down five points since March.

Of course this is all great, but it’s too little too late–Bush is in for a second term. So what are we gonna do about it?

THEY’RE FUCKING US AGAIN

Wages haven’t kept up with inflation for the past two months. Jane Bryant Quinn’s column in the 4/25/05 issue of Newsweek has this to say:

Bush wants to make his tax cuts permanent, at a long-term cost to the budget that’s triple the cost of making Social Security solvent again...So we’re talking priorities, not money: tax cuts versus the safety net.

So what are the Bush crime family’s priorities?

Moral Bankruptcy act, signed into law this week. Eighty-one billion more dollars for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. An energy bill that is a giveaway to corporations.

And if you support the wars we’re fighting, remember–Osama bin Laden is on the loose, and there were no WMD in Iraq. Does that sound like these motherfuckers are doing a good job? Hell, no. And for God’s sake, this is serious business. The latest $81 billion brings the total spent on these useless wars to $300 billion +...why is it that the Senate can agree 99-zip on money for war but money for education or healthcare or anything useful is oh so divisive and "political" and oh well, let them eat war...

This town is a soldier's town

And every time I go to Wal-Mart (I know, I know...), or anywhere in town at night, I see military guys being bussed in from Camp Shelby, I’m assuming. I keep wanting to say something to them, but I always think better of it...I don’t really even know what I’d say. I want to see if they support the war or not, but I’m fairly certain they kinda have to put up the bulldog front...

But this town is crawling with military types and what do they see everywhere? Fucking yellow ribbon magnets on most cars...the most egregious ones now have crosses where the loop is. So what these stupid magnets say to these guys is “We don’t want to try to stop the war so you won’t get killed, we just want to show all our shallow friends that we know how to go along with the marketing schemes foisted on us by our corporate-ocracy, so we have to have gas-guzzling SUV with the magnet so we can look sincere but really those two things just cancel each other out...”

And oil prices are still high, which means the price of everything is still high...what the fuck is going on? Please let’s wake up and do something about it, together. Watch “The Corporation.” You’ll probably have to either buy it online or rent it online if you live in a red state like I do. It is so eye-opening. Here’s a teaser–in the 30s, corporate leaders wanted to take down FDR and install a fascist dictatorship...is that what you hear in the history books written about the “greatest country in the world”?

Oh, we are all so fucked...

DID YOU HEAR?

Hey, just curious—did you hear the pope died?
Did you hear that Tom DeLay’s hold on power is getting looser and looser?
Did you hear that Iraq declared a new president?
Did you hear about the helicopter crash in Afghanistan today that killed 18 American soldiers?

Well, even if you didn’t hear about that other stuff, at least you heard about the Pope. I mean, wow…it was so sudden and unexpected…

Songs Of ‘05

The new Of Montreal album “The Sunlandic Twins” is really cool. The melodic and lyrical invention is worth the price, and the funky bass just makes you glad you decided to pay attention.

Also, the new John Prine album “Fair & Square” is surprisingly enjoyable. I’m surprised because I would’ve thought he’d be washed up and out of ideas by now. But he’s still got some “zazz,” if you know what I mean. He even takes a swipe at Bush, so that kicks ass off course.

Amy Ray’s new album “Prom” is also nice. I’m glad she’s getting to rock and talk about gay issues in a very open way.

WHITEWASH

So it was the intelligence on Iraq that was “dead wrong?” Oh, I see. What about this, from Alterman, back in fighting trim:

A former CIA agent quoted in The New Yorker: who resigned over his “sense that they were using the intelligence from the C.I.A. and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn’t like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write the stuff. They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with—to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God.”

Alterman provides several other such quotes. Was the Office of Special Plans looked at in this intelligence report (honestly, I haven’t even looked at it, but why should I or anyone else bother—with the Republicans in power, anyone could have predicted before this commission even met for the first time what the result would be; the pure and innocent president was misled by the evil, bumbling intel people)? Here’s what an investigative piece on the OSP in Mother Jones had to say:

Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials‚ -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.
Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews‚ -- some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity‚ -- exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.

This is a fucking outrage. Bush should be led out of the White House in handcuffs, if not worse, for lying us into war. And after the more than 10,000 killed and wounded in his evil war of choice, he has the nerve to say today that “the strong should protect the weak” and that that attitude is spawned by a “culture of life?” Every American should be laughing in his motherfucking face. As Mike Malloy says, Bush is a giggling killer—maybe that’s why everyone holds their tongue (Happy Birthday, Air America, by the way)...


TWO BIG STORIES?

And then Hardball comes on tonight and guest host David Gregory says they’re working on “two big stories” and what springs to my mind is Schiavo (R.I.P) and the intelligence report. I was half right. The two “big stories” are Schiavo and the friggin’ Pope. I mean, Jesus Christ almighty, we’re fighting an illegal war that Bush and co. lied us into and a whitewash report comes out today about it and the big story besides Schiavo is the fucking decrepit Holy Father? For God’s sake, the man is old! Old people die! Is an old man dying a bigger story than a motherfucking war?

And speaking of Schiavo, why in hell’s bells did the mainstream media never cover that godawful story fairly? Why were there no doctors on Scarborough and Hardball with CAT scans and X-rays and MRIs showing what Schiavo’s cerebral cortex looked like? Is it because Randall Terry’s smug, adulterous ass gets better ratings than actually enlightening people? What the fuck?

Maybe these damn religious freakos are right—the end times are upon us…

ALSO, WHY SCHIAVO NOW?

Why is the Schiavo case springing up now? What important and sordid story is being deflected by this story? Is it just delaying Tom DeLay's ethics violations becoming a major issue in the mainstream media? Are U.S. troops massing on the Iranian or Syrian border so that when the media wake up from this Schiavo nightmare, invasions of either or both those countries will be faits accompli? What the fuck is going on? Is there a new terrorist attack being plotted that will final bring about full-blown fascism in the U.S.--remember how the Gary Condit story numbed the media just prior to 9/11?

ERRING ON THE SIDE OF WHAT?

This Schiavo thing is…sheesh, I don’t know. Is she or isn’t she in a persistent vegetative state? Can she or can’t she smile or talk? Is her cerebral cortex liquefied or not? As the brilliant Bob Somerby points out today, there are apparently now two realities—one for the freakos and the actual reality. Somerby points out daily the way in which the pundits from all media fuck up our public discourse.

The Schiavo case is a perfect example of a comment Eric Alterman made at the panel discussion held recently at the U.S. Comedy Arts festival in Aspen. He said something along the lines of “Today’s punditry has made uninformed opinion equal to objective fact.” And so it has.

The answer to all those questions above depend on who you ask. But I must say that the Republicans are giving a command performance—it’s an object lesson in professional bullshit-slinging, fakery, and rank hypocrisy. Err on the side of life, Dear Leader says patronizingly, when he oversaw a record number of executions while governor? While he signed a bill authorizing the discontinuation of life support ("Bioethicists familiar with the Texas law said yesterday that if the Schiavo case had occurred in Texas, her husband would be the legal decision-maker and, because he and her doctors agreed that she had no hope of recovery, her feeding tube would be disconnected")? When he lied us into war a war that has claimed over 100,000 lives? When his newly-proposed budget guts health-care programs that help families and people like Terri Schiavo?

I mean, if Bush and the ‘Pukes get away with this one, this game is so over it’s not funny. If they can claim to always be for states’ rights and then tell Florida its business in this case and so forth and just have people go along with it, then we are so fucked. If the majority of Americans can’t see his bullshit for what it truly is, then they deserve whatever ruin befalls them as a result.

Unfortunately, that ruin will come to all of us, even those of us who can see right through the ruse…

ARMY AD BUYS

I’ve been seeing ads for the Army a lot lately. You know, the ads that are kind of like the trailer for a movie, and then you’re supposed to go see the thrilling conclusion at GoArmy.com (I’ve also been seeing Navy ads that play up the whole “get your degree” in the Navy—the ones where the narrator says “wear your school colors proudly” as the camera pans past guys with camo makeup on—it’s the very picture of masculinity)?

Well, surprise, surprise, those ads kinda bug me. Not necessarily because they try to make a loathsome activity (i.e., fighting in a war) look cool and exciting (I’m quite sure that it is actually very exciting—until your arms get blown off), although that’s a big part of it. I mean, the very problem with selling peace rather than war is because peace is the absence of conflict and conflict, as any beginning fiction class will tell you, is what makes something interesting.

On that note, I should mention that I also saw a commercial for the Peace Corps recently. The thing is, I didn’t look up to see it until it was almost over and the Peace Corps logo was on the screen. So I can’t really comment on it, but I did see an ad for peace—or rather, I am aware that someone is trying to advertise helping people rather than killing them.

But I’ve seen many more military ads than Peace Corps ads. And that’s the point I was trying to get to—why don’t we see peace and cooperation glorified in the media the same way that we see war and conflict glorified? And I don’t really know the answer, but it seems to me that if there were a Dept. of Peace, we could have lots of ads and propaganda that would make peace and peacekeeping attractive to young people.

Department of Peace

If there were a Dept. of Peace, the Secretary of Peace would argue for huge expenditures for canvasses, paint, paper, ink, orchestras, gardening tools, books, etc.—the tools of peace. Who knows, maybe Bush will create a Peace Department. But that would only be to confound progressives and it would be an Orwellian type of agency that would merely be an extension of the “Defense” Department. In fact, since everything that comes from the Bush admin. is the opposite of what it purports to be, the Peace Dept. would actually be just a way to funnel more money to arms makers and the like, but under the guise of seeking peace.

Self-Defense Force

It seems to me that we should not have a standing army—and I’m not sure exactly what I mean by that, but I think I have a pretty good idea. And that idea is, we shouldn’t have a military machine built up during peacetime—i.e., there shouldn’t be hundreds of thousands of soldiers in training or on duty during peacetime. And I say that for two reasons: 1) it costs a lot of money to do that, and that money could be put to far better use than maintaining an army we’re not even really using (i.e., to provide health care, education, shelter, etc. for our citizens) and 2) it would make starting wars a really big hassle, which would be a great thing.

Oh, well that’s stupid, some will say. We have to have a standing army, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Other countries have standing armies, just waiting for us to drop our defenses. Oh please…other countries have standing armies because we have a standing army, not the other way around. In other words, we don’t need any more military force in peacetime than that required for self-defense. We need a self-defense force, and that’s it.

And here’s something that most Americans wouldn’t want to contemplate and I don’t have the energy to get into right now, but this article talks about the domestic threat of a standing army…

CREDIT CARD RATES CONTINUE TO CLIMB...

Says Greg McBride in the Bankrate.com Personal Finance Minute (March 10th broadcast). He points out that the rate for a platinum variable card "spiked" from 12.3% to 12.9% "and is now the highest in more than three years." Average car loan rates also surged, McBride says, jumping to a "two year high of 7.61%" on a four-year loan.

So why is it that the credit card industry feels that they have to kick people when they're down? The Moral Bankruptcy Act of 2005 passed the Senate this evening. Remember if the jag-offs who represent you (and who you may have even voted for) voted for this when you have a medical emergency or your job gets outsourced or you get divorced or any number of other emergencies happen to you over which you have no control and you want to try bankruptcy but these new rules say that, "No, you earn enough income to pay them off" and you have to pay for credit counseling and you have debt on top of debt. And if your jag-offs voted for it (mine did), fucking throw them out at the earliest available oppportunity.

MS MEDICAID-Will 1/4 of MS Be Let Down Tomorrow?

Still no fix. Barbour's answer is to ask health care providers to continue to treat Medicaid patients even if Medicaid goes bust tomorrow because somehow, some way, he says, the doctors will eventually get paid. And how the fuck will that happen? Hopefully when Haley Barbour is impeached and removed from office and somebody who is not a repeal-the-20th-century-and-court-the-racist-vote-fat-fucking-jackass will get in office and raise some motherfucking taxes and help out our needy like Jesus has told us to do. We'll see...

Remember this, you who voted for Haley. His campaign had signs and stickers with every imaginable group of people "for Haley"--Sportsmen for Haley, Fuck-The-Poor-Racists For Haley, and so forth. The thing is, Haley is not for you! If this Medicaid debacle doesn't prove it, what the fuck will?

INFRASTRUCTURE GETS A 'D', RAPE-UBLICANS GET AN 'F-'

So the Republican Congress feels that the most important things to do right out of the gate are to let Wall Street hijack the Social Security system and to punish people for having medical/job-loss-related financial problems. All this while the country's infrastructure is going to shit.

Speaking of Social Security, always remember that "personal/private accounts"=Wall Street hijack. Also, even though it's sometimes excruciating to read, the Daily Howler covers and corrects the Social Security misinformation in a fashion and with a passion that is second to none. Oh, and the head of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has said today that Social Security "does not face an immediate crisis."

PREDICTIONS/OBSERVATIONS

Like the Iraq war and the Congressional election of 2002 before it, I predict that saber-rattling toward and/or actual invasion of Syria or Iran will be the Republican strategy of attempting to get a stranglehold on the Congress in the 2006 midterm elections. The strategy should be transparent: they use war to get in/stay in office and then set about making the country a hellhole for the less fortunate and making it a haven for the super-rich. It worked in 2002 and 2004 and you can bet your sweet ass they'll be trotting it out again in 2006 in one form or another.

Checked out the book "Secrecy & Privilege" by Robert Parry this week. It opens with an observation I never really thought about: when Clinton took office in '92, there were still several Reagan/Bush malfeasance investigations and hearings going on but Clinton let them die on the vine (things like Iran-Contra, Iraqgate, the 1980 October Surprise, and so forth--read an interview with Parry about these matters here if you scroll about 3/4 of the way down). Parry points out that if Clinton had pursued those investigations, chances are that by the present, people would have had a very different and much more negative perception of the Reagan/Bush years than they currently do. And that had that been the case, the Bush name might not have been so appealing to some in the 2000 election.

Haley Barbour Is A Fat Fuckhead of an Asshole

He won't raise taxes, not even on cigarettes. The Medicaid program in Mississippi only has enough money to operate through this Friday, March 11. Mississippi has always been among the poorest, if not the poorest states. Could that be why so many people in the state are dependent on Medicaid? And why it will be such a disaster if they don't come up with the money to fix the problem?

If Medicaid does go unfunded after Friday, Grover Norquist and Stephen Moore will rejoice. So will that fat, greedy, evil motherfucker Haley Barbour. This is what they want, to get back to a time when there was no Medicaid and the less fortunate had to be in constant debt to private individuals and companies. When Barbour says "I cannot think of any worse public policy or any bigger dereliction of duties by elected officials than to let this program shut down," he is doing what is known as bullshitting. He takes a high and mighty stance but yet won't actually do anything about it. GRRRRR...stay tuned...

A POEM ON THE COMMENTS OF MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY) ON "MEET THE PRESS"

The full transcript is here. The relevant section is this:

MR. RUSSERT:: Senator McConnell, 1,500 Americans now dead. How long will we be there?

SEN. McCONNELL: The ink-stained index fingers of the Iraqis going to vote are a symbol of how the president's Iraq policy has galvanized this change that's sweeping the Middle East. We--this Iraq policy is changing the area of the world most resistant to the things we believe in: democracy, human rights and freedom. It's sweeping the whole area.

Here's the poem (and notice how McConnell didn't answer Russert's question--he just held up his index finger)...


They got ink on their fingers
we got blood on our hands
the ink will eventually fade away
but the blood—not so much

The blood stays with you
it’s the mark of a killer
to God if to no one else
most men can’t see the red hands
after soap and water is applied
but it’s there

The men who can see it
are the victims or the victim’s friends
or tribesmen or countrymen
and they know whose hands
their blood is on
and they figure maybe
bloody hands aren’t such a bad thing
after all

So then your son
was ripped apart by that IED
and your brother
was in the the way of that RPG
bloody bloody hands for everyone

Maybe a finger dipped in ink
will stop your silent sobbing
in line at Wal-Mart
(now populated like the PX
with queues of future IED/RPG targets)
or mitigate your rage in the hallway
when you pass the photographs there
that you can’t bear to take down
or look at
or maybe not

Maybe it would take another hand
ripping out another heart
on another dusty desert highway
then dripping with blood
to make you feel better
or maybe, hopefully
that’s the opposite of what it would take

Stories To Ignore

Martha Stewart: Who knew insider trading and jail time could be good for your career?

Michael Jackson: What will the media do when the testimony gets explicit?

STORIES TO NOTICE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bankruptcy Rape Bill-S.256: Those campaign donations sure make a difference. Here's a good summary of what's happening:

Rhetoric can tell you a lot about what senators really stand for—maybe even more than their actual votes. If you listen closely, you quickly realize that the bankruptcy debate is not just between supporters and opponents, but also between two distinct visions of the world: one which corresponds to reality, and one which does not.

Supporters of the bill are determined to ignore the empirical data that shows about 50% of bankruptcies are traceable to medical emergencies (and about 90% stem from illness, divorce, job loss or deaths in the family) and that this bill would disproportionately harm those who go broke through no fault of their own. Instead, they mouth empty platitudes about “morality” and “responsibility,” as if it was immoral and irresponsible to have a heart attack or get laid off. Exhibit A, B and C:

“I think everybody knows when they take those credit cards and they accrue debt, they are supposed to repay that debt. Frankly, we have far too many people taking advantage of credit cards and not paying their debt.”(Senator Orrin Hatch, R-UT)

“Instead of falling back on bankruptcy as an option of last resort, more Americans misuse it as a financial tool to wipe away their debts altogether.” (Senator Charles Grassley, R-IA)

“We are drifting a bit to suggest there is no real obligation to pay the debts we incur. If we get to that point, then we have eroded some very important fundamental moral principles about commerce in America.” (Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL)

Sessions is indeed drifting to suggest anyone wants to eliminate that obligation. Opponents of the bill want no such thing; they too want to fight fraud, but not by punishing moral and responsible people who have simply fallen on hard times. In their own words:

Isn't it interesting at a time when health care in America is so hard to come by and so expensive, when the Government is talking about cutting back on Medicaid … that we come up with a bill that is going to make it tougher for those who cannot pay their medical bills? It tells you about this Congress and its priorities. (Senator Dick Durbin, D-IL)

This legislation … rewrites the bankruptcy laws in a way that kicks average families while they're down, in order to pad the already high profits of the credit card industry and other lenders. It is greed, pure and simple. (Senator Ted Kennedy, D-MA)

1,500 U.S. Soldiers Dead In Iraq: Stop the war. The war is wrong. It was based on lies. And now people are dead. And not just any people--people you know and people I know.

DAN WAS FUCKING HARDCORE...

If you didn't see "Wife Swap" this evening, you missed a treat. An Air Force (?) veteran mother of 3 younger kids switched places with a peacenik art teacher. It was fascinating, especially the confrontations between the peacenik's adopted son Dan and Cheri, the military mom.

Dan refused to pledge allegiance to the flag and was actually able to coherently defend his positions. As his mother pointed out later after the families were reunited, he should probably learn to express his views in a way that comes across as less cruel. I thought the best exchange was when Cheri was telling Dan he needed to respect the soldiers that died for his right to be able to say the things he was saying, and Dan used that opportunity to point out that even though the U.S. may have played defense a time or two, we also did a lot of aggressive killing of our own not the least of which was the theft of the land from the Indians.

Anyhoo, Dan was hardcore (looked like a pretty good drummer, too)...

Security Fence?

Today was the first I'd ever heard of a security fence between Mexico and the U.S. near San Diego. And a couple weeks ago the House passed the "Real ID Act" which apparently would give the Homeland Security Director vast powers--dictatoresque powers. To wit:

WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

House passes “Real ID Act”
US legislation targets immigrants, refugees in “terror war”
By Bill Van Auken
16 February 2005
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

The US House of Representatives passed legislation February 10 that would intensify a repressive crackdown against immigrants and refugees under the pretext of combating terrorism.

The bill, known as the “Real ID Act,” would effectively slam the door in the face of refugees fleeing persecution, facilitate the deportation of both asylum seekers and legal residents and deny drivers’ licenses to the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US. Another provision would grant the Secretary of Homeland Security extra-legal powers to complete the walling off of a section of the US-Mexican border.

This is the first major piece of legislation to be considered by the Congress since the beginning of the Bush administration’s second term, and it underscores the reactionary trajectory of both big business parties. The bill passed the House in a 261-161 voice vote, with 42 Democrats joining the Republican majority to support the measure.

The anti-immigrant initiative was originally attached to intelligence “reform” legislation approved last year, but was removed because of opposition within the Senate. Now it is expected that the bill will be attached to other “must pass” legislation, like the funding of the US war in Iraq.

The “Real ID Act” requires that states demand proof of legal immigration status in the US from anyone seeking a driver’s license. The legislation’s author, Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, claimed that it would “prevent another 9/11-type attack by disrupting terrorist travel.” He and other supporters of the bill pointed to the ability of the September 11 hijackers to obtain drivers’ licenses in several states.

In reality, the measure would do nothing to avert terrorist attacks, but would have the effect of reinforcing the pariah status of an estimated 10 million undocumented immigrant workers in a country where the ability to drive is often a precondition for finding work.

At present, 11 states issue licenses without requiring proof of legal residency, but a number of others are considering granting them to undocumented immigrants, rather than forcing millions of people to drive illegally and without accident insurance.

The other key component of the bill would impose insurmountable new hurdles for refugees seeking asylum in a system that—as a government-organized commission recently admitted—already treats those fleeing oppression as criminals.

Refugees would be compelled to bear an extraordinary burden of proof to establish their right to asylum. They would be required to produce corroborative evidence of their claims of persecution, and even then would have to prove that the intent of their persecutors was to punish them for their race, religion or political beliefs. These requirements constitute a clear breach of international treaties signed by Washington that govern the treatment of refugees.

Human rights activists have pointed out the obvious: those engaged in such persecution are not likely to issue documents explaining their actions, and proving the intent of those who carry out killings, torture and other abuse is next to impossible.

The bill further expands the arbitrary power of immigration officers and judges to reject asylum claims on entirely subjective grounds. Asylum could be denied based solely on their assessment of the “demeanor” of applicants, meaning that these officials could send people back to be murdered, tortured or imprisoned just because they didn’t like the look on their faces or the tone of their voices.

Another provision allows for denial of asylum based on any inconsistencies between written and oral statements “made at any time and whether or not under oath.” Such discrepancies are common among people fleeing state persecution, who fear retribution. Under this statute, a woman who reveals that she was raped by her persecutors can be sent back on the grounds that she did not provide details of her ordeal to the first immigration cop who interviewed her at the airport.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which issued a report on the treatment of asylum seekers on February 8, found that records of such statements are, in any case, “unreliable and incomplete.”

The House legislation’s impact extends well beyond those seeking asylum. It allows for the summary deportation of immigrants who have been legally living and working in the US for decades for supposed offenses that include providing nonviolent, humanitarian assistance to organizations labeled “terrorist” by the US government. This penalty can be applied retroactively for contributions made to groups that were not designated as foreign terrorist organizations at the time and were therefore entirely legal.


Deportation for “terrorist” speech

Terrorism itself is defined to include not just acts of violence, but to “endorse or espouse” policies or positions with the aim of inducing others to “support a terrorist organization.” It thus abrogates the constitutional protection of free speech for immigrants.

The bill also specifically declares that “an alien who is an officer, official, representative, or spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization is considered, for purposes of this Act, to be engaged in a terrorist activity.” The US State Department has never officially defined the PLO as a foreign terrorist organization, and Washington hailed the recent election of its chairman Mahmoud Abbas to replace Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority.

The penalty of deportation would apply not only to individuals charged with supposed support for terrorism, but also to their spouses and children.

Taken together, these clauses would allow the deportation of a Palestinian immigrant residing in the US legally for the “crime” of writing a newspaper article or an essay critical of the state of Israel and expressing sympathy for the PLO, or of a Colombian criticizing the state repression against anti-government guerrillas in his or her country. Moreover, their entire families could be thrown out with them.

The bill also places severe new limits on the jurisdiction of courts to reverse rulings by immigration officials. The language is directed at overriding a 2001 US Supreme Court ruling in the case of St. Cyr vs. the INS, which affirmed that immigrants have the constitutional right to challenge their deportation and cannot be held without charges. The case, which involved the deportation of an immigrant for a minor criminal offense, was cited in the recent court ruling on the illegal detention of prisoners at the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Finally, the legislation contains an extraordinary passage that grants the Secretary of Homeland Security the unilateral power to override all laws—federal, state and local—in order to complete construction of a security fence along a stretch of the US-Mexican border near San Diego, California.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads,” the legislation states. It adds that no court shall have any jurisdiction over the Secretary of Homeland Security’s actions and that no cases, either civil or criminal, may be heard in the matter.

That strikes me as troublesome, a testing of the waters. It's like a mini-Reichstag Fire Decree--short and to the point and devastating. Maybe if this gets passed without much hassle, we'll have real, national Reichstag Decree and Enabling Act (if we don't already). I mean, "no court shall have jurisdiction over the Secretary?" What incentive is there for the fence to ever be finished, then? Why wouldn't the Secretary just keep work on the fence going ad infinitum, so he could savor his above-the-law status.

This, I think, amounts to a dry run for the right wing...

HEY, GEORGE--DON'T BE SO "SYRIAS"...

Justin Raimondo, love him or hate him, is a brilliant political writer who knows what he believes and why and has a very finely tuned bullshit detector. One paragraph from his column today just leapt out at me:

The imperial era has a different way of looking at these things: truth emanates not from reality, but from power – which is the only reality. The Empire is so powerful that it creates its own reality, and this crazed belief permeates Imperial America, especially among the elites.

That first sentence just captures the whole tenor of not only the Bush administration, but the neocon agenda in general. Thank God for antiwar.com!

Truth Is Not The Secret Of A Few

If I could hype myself for a hot minute, my book of poetry "Truth Is Not The Secret Of A Few," came in today from Cafe Press. Let me say, the quality of the printing is beyond my expectations. They printed it exactly as I gave it to them (typos and all!), the covers are glossy and retail-ready, the paper is smooth and creamy (I expected rough, pulpy paper), and the printing looks fantastic. I would highly recommend using them if you want to have a book printed, and of course if you want to have T-shirts, hats or stickers made.

Here is a sample of one of the poems in the book--please don't get the idea that it's a book of political poetry from this example. Out of 154 poems, about 5 of them are unquestionably political, and then maybe 5 more are sort of political. Anyway, here's one about Iraq:

Tigris & Euphrates, Euphrates & Tigris
does that mean anything anymore?

Can the so-called “war against civilization”
really come from civilization’s birthplace?

They gave the world writing—
we gave it nuclear weapons
which is more civilized?

History will not be ignored
even if you’d like to forget it
it has a way of creating the future

The oil wars are coming to an end soon
the reserves will be gone
before you know it

We’re preoccupied with occupation
no wonder there’s retaliation
and Mesopotamia belongs to them

The poems in the book were written between 1985 and last year. Again, Cafe Press does a high quality job with the book printing! My book looks like I got it from Barnes and Noble!

BUSH BUDGET TO INCREASE POVERTY?

You betcha--via the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top. Labor spent centuries wresting control of the country away from capital only to have it yanked back full force (not entirely--yet) upon the illicit coronation of the current president. This article at workingforchange.com gives us some idea of the upward wealth distribution that is being foisted on the American people (in two paragraphs, the whole scheme is revealed):

Bush has used enormous tax cuts, primarily directed toward the wealthy, an expanded federal bureaucracy, largely devoted to corporate welfare, and the costs of post-9-11 militarism, primarily benefiting Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, and other military contractors, to drive up the federal deficit. He is then trying to alleviate that deficit by reducing programs that don't primarily benefit the wealthy: education, health care, housing, environmental protection...

...Follow the money. This is not fiscal prudence; it is a massive wealth transfer scheme, an effort to use the power of federal spending to benefit the economic elites who are George W. Bush's core constituency. This is the thank-you for the hundreds of millions poured into Bush's re-election campaign.

And Repukes like Norquist and Limbaugh have convinced enough otherwise perfectly lovable people that this is how it should be--Jesus himself has approved. You know, the weak are weak because they're just simply not strong and there's absolutely nothing you can or should do about it. They just have to work harder for less money--it's the only way they'll ever learn anything about life. It's the Christian--and therefore, the American--way, so they say.

Plot to kill Bush? Or plot to incite fear?

Right now it kinda looks like the latter. Note that the suspect, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, has been held "without charges" in Saudi Arabia since June 2003 even though he's an American citizen. He's also been tortured while in captivity and "federal prosecutors have been fighting attempts to get the government to disclose why he was being held in Saudi Arabia." That language comes from this story in The Guardian. Supposedly he had contacts with al Qaeda--if this were true, why wouldn't federal prosecutors be holding a press conference instead of trying to keep the reason he was in Saudi Arabia quiet?

As we know, none of the 5,000 or so detainees caught in the post-9/11 sweep have been convicted of anything. Maybe they'll get it right on the 5,001 try? Or maybe not...

POVERTY--ALWAYS A TIMELY TOPIC

The book "One Nation, Underprivileged" by Mark Robert Rank continues to provide really great insight into not only why poverty exists in America, but also how to help establish a new paradigm for thinking about poverty. The book challenges the received wisdom that one hears--well, I'm trying to think of a specific place or places one hears this "wisdom"--one just hears it in the air. It's everywhere, this idea that "there is opportunity for all" and anyone in America can go "from rags to riches," and so forth. Of course, such thinking is predominantly heard from the right side of the political spectrum. But here's a good excerpt that challenges such assumptions:

Poverty exists primarily because there is a shortage of viable economic opportunities and social supports for the entire population. Given this shortage, a certain percentage of the population is ensured of experiencing poverty [p. 179].

He explains that the American labor market is like a game of musical chairs in which there are perpetually ten players (jobseekers) but only eight chairs (jobs). In other words, our so-called "free market economy" with all its globalization, privatization, and outsourcing, is designed to produce losers. Therefore, when a person can't find a job (by this we of course mean a job capable of supporting the person and the person's family, regardless of size), that does not necessarily mean that that person therefore has brought poverty on himself. Remember, our great system is designed to produce losers.

Survival of the fittest

Most rightwingers will point out that hey, that's life--some people win, some people lose. Are you suggesting that the government should make everybody equal? But when the layers of rhetoric and ideology are pulled back, one can see clearly that what some call survival of "the fittest"--i.e., the ability of those who manage to acquire lots of wealth (which rightwingers would say is due to their keen business sense, their discipline and love of Christ) is actually the result of government policies that favor the haves over the have-nots. For example, Rank points out that, according to a 2003 IRS document, "the 400 wealthiest taxpayers earned over 1 percent of all income in 2000, doubling their share since 1992, while at the same time paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes [p. 160]." (For those who would like to verify, go here to the publication Rank refers to and look at column 56 "average tax rate" and then go here to look at p. 14 and compare percentages).

Rank also points out that "the average income of a top CEO in this country has gone from 39 times the average worker's salary in 1970 to more than 1,000 times what the average worker earns [in the present] [p. 161]." Oh but the average worker salary has also gone up--from $32, 522 in 1970 to $35, 864 in the present. And there are other signs that the well-off receive more favors than their less fortunate fellow citizens--as Rank puts it, "Exorbitant stock options and bailouts appear almost routine within the upper echelons of American business [p. 161]."

Solutions

I haven't yet read over Rank's proposed solutions. To be sure, he does offer them. But I'm still amazed at his accurate description of the problems. Or, more precisely, I'm amazed that even though any adult in the job market has experienced or knows someone who has experienced the problems Rank is pointing out, a majority and then some cling to the pleasing myths of fair opportunity for all in America--you know, America, where any bum can strike it rich. As Rank says:

"Ultimately, the old paradigm reflects and reinforces the myths and ideals of American society--that there economic opportunities for all, that individualism and self-reliance are paramount, and that hard work is rewarded. Although poverty may be regrettable, it would be a mistake to call it unfair. It should not be surprising that the dominant paradigm of poverty is a reflection of the overall dominant ideology of America [p. 175]."

Rank then goes on to state the obvious about a step toward developing a new paradigm which will allow real, substantive changes in approaches to eradicating poverty. He says:

"A new paradigm must be built not upon the myths of America but upon its realities. It should reflect a fuller appreciation of the meaning of poverty, rather than the one-dimensional view to which we are too often exposed [i.e., in the rightwing rantings of Limbaugh and O'Reilly]. It must ultimately stimulate a fundamental shift in how we conceptualize and act toward the problem of poverty [p.176]."

Reality, Morality, and Morass

Indeed, Rank's words apply to more situations than just the attempt to cure poverty. From foreign policy to Social Security to everything in between, America's great debate has been seized and perverted and cheapened by the right wing talk radio commandos. On The Majority Report tonight, I heard at least 3 or 4 people call in to say that they were changing their party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. One caller from Colorado attributed at least part of the change in his thinking to the fact that until Air America came along, there was only right wing ideas available on the airwaves where he lived. So in less than a year, Air America has been able to open some people's minds and begin to correct and counter some of the vicious untruths and half-truths the right has been pumping out with no let up since the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

So the tide is slowly, ever so slowly turning left...and that is a good thing for America.

HISTORY, POVERTY, ETC.

Antiwar.com has a great piece on the general public's ignorance of history. And not facts from 200 years ago, like who the first president was, but more recent stuff, like which side did the U.S. support in the Vietnam War and why?

His essay is of a piece with the works of Chomsky in that he doesn't take the side of the West just because he's a Westerner. He takes the side of what's right. And that's the problem with most neocons--they're cheerleaders for their team rather than cheerleaders for what's right. For example, Alberto Gonzales called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and implied if not said outright that torture is permissible in certain circumstances. Neocons (Dems and Repukes) fell all over themselves praising him and couldn't wait to confirm him. Because Gonzales was who Bush wanted, and Bush is the leader (at least the figurehead) of their team, and therefore since it's their team they'll do it even if torture is always wrong and we've tried to mature to that way of thinking in the several centuries since the Enlightenment.

Anyway, here's some highlights of the Pilger essay:

Do they not read history? Or is the history they know, or choose to know, subject to such amnesia and omission that it produces a world view as seen only through a one-way moral mirror? There is no suggestion of conspiracy. This one-way mirror ensures that most of humanity is regarded in terms of its usefulness to "us," its desirability or expendability, its worthiness or unworthiness: for example, the notion of "good" Kurds in Iraq and "bad" Kurds in Turkey. The unerring assumption is that "we" in the dominant West have moral standards superior to "them." One of "their" dictators (often a former client of ours, like Saddam Hussein) kills thousands of people and he is declared a monster, a second Hitler. When one of our leaders does the same, he is viewed, at worst like Blair, in Shakespearean terms. Those who kill people with car bombs are "terrorists"; those who kill far more people with cluster bombs are the noble occupants of a "quagmire."

Pretty damn perceptive if you ask me. Again, a rightwing radical/neocon type would scream "moral relativism" and strenuously point out all the good we've done in the world. And conveniently leaving out the bad, which is far more memorable to the victims than to the perpetrators.

Then Pilger discusses a pat, inaccurate and overly broad history of the Vietnam War and concludes finally:

"Phew, loads for you to learn here..." say the authors of the revision guide, "so get it learned right now." Phew, the British empire did not happen; there is nothing about the atrocious colonial wars that were models for the successor power, America, in Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, to name but a few along modern history's imperial trail of blood, of which Iraq is the latest.

And now Iran? The drumbeat has already begun. How many more innocent people have to die before those who filter the past and the present wake up to their moral responsibility to protect our memory and the lives of human beings?

And about the last bit--Iran. Bush said yesterday that he's "heard the rumors" and the scuttlebutt about how we're getting ready to take down Iran. But rest assured, says he, we're going to use diplomacy. That must be why we already have troops in the country ostensibly doing reconnaissace when in fact they're there to provoke an attack against us so Bush can say that we tried diplomacy but these evil Muslims attacked us so what were we to do...

One Nation, Underprivileged

The more I read of "One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All" byt Mark Robert Rank, the more astonished I am. You know how Bill O'Reilly and his ilk are always complaining that liberals want "redistribution of wealth" and mean it to imply that our side just wants to burn the rich at the stake and start a class war? Why don't those guys ever acknowledge the massive redistribution of wealth that has taken place in the opposite direction in the last thirty years? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer:

In particular, the very top of society has been reaping temendous material rewards over the past thirty years, while the middle has remained stagnant and the poor have fallen further behind. the levels of income and wealth concentration have reached or surpassed those of the Gilded Age of the 1920s. For example, the top 10 percent of the U.S. population earned 41 percent of total income in 1998, up from 33 percent in 1980...Between 1983 and 1998, the top 20 percent of the population experienced 91 percent of the total gain that occurred in net worth. For example, the wealthiest 1 percent of American households saw their total net worth go from $7,175,000 in 1983 to $10,204,000 in 1998 (in 1998 dollars). On the other hand, the bottom 40 percent of households saw their net worth drop from $4,700 in 1983 to $1,100 in 1998. [p. 160]

So Bill O'Reilly will complain bitterly about wealth redistribution, even though he's got plenty of wealth and so do those in his same financial stratum. But the facts are clear--wealth has been redistributed, all right, from the bottom and middle to the top. And not just the top, but the very top. And that's how O'Reilly and Limbaugh and their kind want it. And that's how the flashy TV Christians think it should be.

I mean, the rich are getting what they want--more money, more tax breaks while the rest of us are getting screwed. Then the rich pundits go on the air and complain bitterly about how being taxed a little more is communistic wealth redistribution. Remember, they only say that when they're referring to wealth from them going to the common good and helping out you and me and our families. If it helps the little guy, it's evil communism. If it helps the rich, it's the free market. It's all a semantic game for a scheme thousands of years old--it's called "Fuck The Poor."

Stop the War

Again, stop the war. Bring the troops home NOW. Jeff Gannon sucks. I hope he is the freak that helps bring down GWB and ends this nightmare...

JEFF, I MEAN JAMES, I MEAN--HOW MUCH FOR JUST A HAND JOB?

For those of us who don't quite get the import of the ongoing Gannon/Guckert story, a good summary of why it has a lot of potential to taint the Repukes is in this Homeland Security FOIA request from Reps. Conyers and Slaughter:

Recent news reports indicate that James D. Guckert, a Republican activist gained access to the White House press briefing room and Presidential press conferences in violation of standard security procedures and was allowed to work under the assumed name, "Jeff Gannon." News reports also indicate that Mr. Guckert would not be considered a bona fide journalist by his peers in the press corps, as most of his claims to legitimacy have already been discredited. Access to the President and his press corps is highly competitive, and many seasoned journalists have not had the honor of attending the events or enjoying the access Mr. Guckert has.

We are concerned that such an individual was allowed within a few feet of the President when the public is routinely disallowed any possible contact with either the President or the White House. We understand that your security policies are developed in conjunction with the White House and want to ascertain your respective roles in this decision as it appears to deviate significantly from heightened security measures you have employed recently. To the extent that White House policies were incorporated into the Secret Service's files and have been read by the Secret Service, we would also like records from the White House.

Plus, Gannon/Guckert was given access to the secret memo regarding the Valerie Plame matter (read the whole thing if you please, but make sure to at least scroll down and read "In Conclusion"). All of this done as a "reporter" for the Talon News "service" that was established a mere 96 hours (that's four days--not even a week) before Gannon/Guckert was given press credentials to sit in on White House press briefings and to ask leading softball questions of McClellan and/or the President.

On the prostitution question, AmericaBlog has the scoop here. I mean, Christ almighty, if this was going on under Clinton--a former (or current) male prostitute with no credentials or experience gets a press pass to sit in on White House briefings for a website that was established four days before he got his first pass--Republicans would say hanging was too good and that the republic was crumbling...

SONGS OF '05

Stars-Set Yourself On Fire (Arts & Crafts): exquisite, detailed pop music with male/female vocal goodness. Reminds me of Beulah's "Yoko." Songs that are good--"Reunion" "Ageless Beauty" "What I'm Trying To Say"

Sweet Apple Pie-Between The Lines (Not Lame): This is actually from 2004, but I didn't hear it til this year. Stereolab-ish retro rock with expert pop touches. More male/female vocal goodness.

GOOD "REFRAME": "Deficit increases" instead of "Tax Cuts"

Refer to "tax cuts" (a favorite Bush/Republican term) as "deficit increases?"

Let the words "tax cut" never pass the lips of a Democrat/progressive in the media when referring to attempts to "starve the beast." Or, when Republicans do "tax cuts," it's "deficit increases." When Democrats do tax cuts to help consumers and not defund important and historic progressive programs, it's "consumer aid" or some such.

I know this all sounds stupid, but the Republicans have been playing a semantic game for years that has actually been quite successful. If they want to dismantle a program or agency, they say they will "reform" it. The estate tax became the "death tax." Even "tax cuts" were determined by Republican pollster Frank Luntz to be better sold as "tax relief." And of course, anyone who disagrees is "anti-American" at best and a "terrorist" at worst.

Just an idea...

GLASS HOUSES AND STONES

Been almost a week since my last entry...gotta get crackin'. Got a fax today from the Mississippi Republican Party which attempts to blast Dean (ahead of his visit to the Magnolia State on March 1). It's headed "Dowdy To Dean: Will You Be Mine?" and notes sarcastically that "Wayne Dowdy, chief of the Mississippi Democratic Party is one of many Democrat's recently struck by Cupid's arrow." Is he saying Dean and Dowdy are gay lovers? Is that what he's trying to imply? Because the new head of the Republican National Committee ain't exactly no man's man, if you catch my meaning.

Jim Herring, head of the MS Republican Party, needs to watch it with the gay jokes, given that gays in or related to people in his party include the following:

Ken Mehlman, RNC Chair
David Dreier, Representative from CA
Mary Cheney, the Vice-President's daughter
Newt Gingrich's sister Candace
Alan Keye's daughter Maya (who was just kicked out of her father's house for being "out")
Jeff Gannon/James Guckert of Talon "News"
and so on...


The Democratic Party has gays, sure, but that is seen as a strength, not a weakness or spiritual failing by members of that party.

Dean was very good in his press conference this weekend at which his chairmanship was confirmed. I was particularly impressed by his response to a reporter who asked him something to the effect of "people say you may not project the right image for the Democratic party" and Dean said "I don't respond to blind quotes." That was hot! Right outta the gate, Dean's letting people know he's not going to play foolish media games.

Iran All Night And Day

I agree wholeheartedly with this Reese piece in which he states the obvious:

But let's assume Iran does develop a nuclear weapon. I don't care. I've lived
most of my life 30 minutes from total destruction by tens of thousands of the Soviet Union's nuclear warheads. The Bush administration's claim that nuclear deterrence, which worked against a superpower, will not work against a smaller and poorer country is bunk. Israel alone has enough nuclear warheads to
pulverize Iran.

Indeed why should we care what countries have nuclear weapons and which don't? By itself the U.S. can destroy the whole world several times over and any country who would use nuclear arms against us knows that they would pay dearly for such an act:

When Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, stated in 1957 his belief that the equivalent of 720 warheads on invulnerable Polaris submarines would be enough to deter the Soviet Union, the United States already had almost six times as many deployed. When retired Army Chief of Staff General Maxwell Taylor wrote in 1960 that "a few hundred missiles" (presumably armed with a "few hundred" warheads) would satisfy deterrence, the United States already had some 7,000 strategic nuclear weapons. And when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara argued in 1964, that within a few years the equivalent of 400 megatons would be enough to achieve mutual assured destruction and hence deterrence, the U.S. stockpile had almost 17,000 megatons, 17 billion tons of TNT equivalent. In short, there has always been a tremendous gap between what informed military and civilian leaders thought necessary for deterrence and what was actually deployed, a state of affairs that has not changed with the end of the Cold War.

Besides, the only reason other countries want to have nuclear weapons is because we have them. Countries like Iran and North Korea do not trust us any more than we trust them. And why should they?

Bush Admits "Safety" Is An "Illusion"

So Bush wants the Patriot Act renewed. No surprise there, but what was his stated reason?

``We must not allow the passage of time, or the illusion of safety, to weaken our resolve in this new war,'' Bush said during a ceremony at the Justice Department in Washington.

He's saying that our safety is illusory? All this airport hassle, over 10,000 dead and wounded in Iraq, and yet our safety is still an "illusion?" Well, of course Bush meant this remark in the sense that safety is always an illusion. No person or nation can ever be totally "safe." No amount of weaponry, vigilance or what have you can ever make anything totally safe. It's not possible now, it never has been possible, and it never will be possible.

But supposedly that's why Bush was re-elected--because he'll keep/make us "safe." Then he comes out today and says that the drastic measures we have already taken only provide the "illusion of safety." It's incredible. It's sick. Especially when you consider that the simple idea of not endlessly provoking other people and other countries would go a long way toward insuring safety--insofar as safety is even possible (and that idea comes from uber-con Pat Buchanan. Oh but my my, that doesn't fit the Master Narrative that most red-state types carry around in their heads...

TRUCES & TRICKS

Did you see the picture of Abbas and Sharon shaking hands over the table? Was it just me, or did Abbas look like he was having to stretch a little farther, lean in a little more than Sharon? Is it just me or is that symbolic of the problem--the weak Palestinians are expected to make all the concessions while the U.S.-backed Israelis call them "terrorists" at every opportunity?

And before I could sit down this evening to write this post and make any predictions about how this won't last, I hear Bill Crowley report the first cease-fire violation on this, the day of the agreement. Note that the story uses the "Israeli military" as a source--the story doesn't quote any Palestinian sources (and we all know that news stories attributed to a single source are always totally accurate).

Is it just me, or is that likely to be used as an excuse to discredit Abbas (by both Christian Zionists and the Israeli hardliners) in the eyes of the world so that the Israelis can go ahead and clamp down tighter?

Like Iraq Election

The thing is, the handshake is nice and everything, just like the Iraqi ink fingers, but it's only a start. This is not even close to real peace--they're just agreeing not to kill each other right this minute, but as for 5 minutes from now, they can't really make that promise. Just like in Iraq, where the voting was nice but ultimately meaningless if the government fails, this handshake was great but let's see what comes out of actual negotiations where documents are signed and maps are drawn.

Not to be too pessimistic--equitable peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be fantastic (by which I mean both "really great" and "the stuff of fantasy"). But let's not break out the champagne just yet.

And Now For My Next Trick...

Paul Krugman's column today about how the radical right wants to dismantle Social Security, not "reform" it is right on the money. If you don't want to click the link, here is a key passage:

Why expose workers to that much risk? Ideology. "Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," declares Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

By the welfare state, Mr. Moore means Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - social insurance programs whose purpose, above all, is to protect Americans against the extreme economic insecurity that prevailed before the New Deal. The hard right has never forgiven F.D.R. (and later L.B.J.) for his efforts to reduce that insecurity, and now that the right is running Washington, it's trying to turn the clock back to 1932.

Medicaid is also in the cross hairs. And if Mr. Bush can take down Social Security, Medicare will be next.

That's what's going on here. The Republicans aren't trying to help you and me save more money for our future, they're trying to take apart the most successful social programs in American history for the benefit of Wall Street. As Majority Report's Sam Seder said, this Bush plan is really nothing more than "a Wall Street hijack."

My dad won't believe this. He won't believe that the president of the United States would actually call complete dismantling of Social Security a "reform." Millions of red state Americans won't believe that their precious, God-fearing Republicans actually mean to do away with a program that has rescued millions of hard-working people from poverty at retirement. Oh no, that would violate the Master Narrative, which as you know says that above all--"It can't happen here."

Bush uses the example of Chile's retirement privatization program as one to model our own on. But by all accounts, Chile's program is a failure. Rather, it's a success for the corporations, but it's a failure for retirees. Look it up. Write a letter to the editor. Don't let them get away with it.

P.S. Molly Ivins has a great point-by-point explanation of why Bush's Social Security plan is bad for you.

ANTI-BUSH MOVIE WEEKEND

Netflix is great...I've been wanting to see a lot of the progressive political movies that have been released over the past year or so but couldn't rent them locally and can't afford to buy them all...

Watched 3 this weekend:

1) Unprecedented: The 2000 Election

This documentary was very in-depth and put together very well. Just further proof that Bush didn't really win in 2000--not that it can be reversed or anything.

The most interesting point--do blacks really have the right to vote in the U.S.? This film (and particularly Greg Palast) says no, they don't. The disenfranchisement is done much more subtly now. Who needs a literacy test or a poll tax when you have computerized databases?

2) Bush Family Fortunes
Based on the revealing book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," this flick is basically Fahrenheit 9/11 Pt. 2. Palast lays it on a little thick with his gumshoe hat and overcoat, but it has some memorable scenes, especially when he confronts Florida election supervisor Clayton Roberts and shows Ari Fleischer talking about the status of "Operation Iraqi Liberation." He talks about the James R. Bath connection and Arbusto and Harken but doesn't go for the Prescott Bush/Nazi connection .

3) "Distorted Morality"
A talk given by Chomsky at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in which he points out the hypocrisy of American foreign policy. How's that, you say? Well, check out this article. Especially this part:

If we propose some principle that is to be applied to antagonists, then we must agree -- in fact, strenuously insist -- that the principle apply to us as well. Those who do not rise even to this minimal level of integrity plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of right and wrong, good and evil.

That's the basis of the film.

Check these out if you have the time--it'll be worth your while.

WHAT SHOULD THE GENERAL HAVE SAID?

That is what several callers with a pronounced drawl wanted to know when they called "Washington Journal" this morning when the topic turned to James Mattis and his apparent love of blowing away Muslims. "He's a warrior," one caller drawled, "what did you expect him to say?"

How about this--he could have said something along these lines: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." And what giant, appeasing, anti-American pussy-boy said that? Dwight D. Eisenhower, of course. A Republican. The Allied mastermind of WWII. Even if he didn't mean a word of it, it's still the best face to put forward to the public. Not some bullshit about how cool it is to shoot people.

That's how American soldiers should talk. Not like what Mattis said, which was virulently anti-American, pro-fascist, and anti-humanity. But every cable news program has brought on an apologist for him. It's disgusting.

Distorted Morality, cont.

So this morning I finished watching "Distorted Morality" and started to watch the Q & A session that is included in the special features. The first question was something along the lines of "why do you blame America for the situation in Afghanistan?" And Chomsky had a very good, thought-provoking answer. He said (I'm paraphrasing) "I blame you and I blame myself, not some abstract entity called America for the war in Afghanistan." The "situation" that the question referred to was the fact that our war in Afghanistan was very harmful to the civilian population. But the questioner obviously felt that the dirty people of Afghanistan brought the war on themselves.

Anyway, I thought, what a way to look at it. This war in Iraq is your fault and it's my fault. America is made up of you and me--it's not an entity separate from us--it is us. And we are letting this illegal ends-justify-the-means war happen. I cannot stop it by myself and you cannot stop it by yourself, but you and me and a few million of our friends can do it. But we have to be vocal. Let's not let it go on--let's make the war unpopular.

Master Narrative update

"Iranyanprncess" emailed with an addition to the master narrative list. She proposes "The rich are a lot better then the poor." I like it. It fits--it's like the time on "Hardball" when tax cuts were being discussed (maybe we on the left or the progressive left/right coalition should start referring to Bush's "tax cuts" as "deficit increases") and some jerk-off was defending the fact that the wealthiest people would benefit the most. He said something to the effect that rich people need the most help because they're the ones who give out the jobs. Then he asked smugly and rhetorically "When was the last time a poor person gave you a job?"

So let's add "The rich are better than the poor" to our master narrative identification project. Maybe tweak it just a smidge and substitute "superior" for "better." So here once again is the master narrative, the boundaries of debate, the starting and ending assumptions for the mainstream and/or conservative media (one and the same, really) all of which are either false, a matter of interpretation, or oversimplified:

They’re terrorists, we’re freedom fighters.
The U.S. is the greatest country in the world.
The U.S. is the most generous country in the world.
The U.S. takes better care of its less fortunate than other countries.
Capitalism is the best economic system, ever.
Making corporations and industries follow regulations is bad.
It’s bad because regulations keep them from maximizing profits.
Maximizing profits is the highest calling of an American businessperson.
America is a Christian nation.
Liberals (Democrats) are wusses and pansies that spend too much money.
Liberals (Democrats) hate the military and Jesus.
Liberals prefer abortions to births.
Conservatism is the moral high ground.
Conservatives are fiscally responsible.
Conservatives don’t want big government.
Liberals want to dismantle the military.
Liberals appease dictators.
We take every precaution to protect civilians in a war zone.
American leaders would never intentionally mislead us.
Welfare hurts the poor.
Specialized degrees help people find work easier.
There is no shortage of jobs to be had in this country.
Hard work is always rewarded with financial gain.
No privilege or financial gain ever comes without hard work.
Government only ever hurts the entrepreneur.
Taxes are legalized theft.
Statements issued from the White House place informing the public before seeking political gain.
The rich are superior to the poor.

And of course, the master narrative to end all master narratives:

It can't happen here...

The Master Narrative

I started compiling statements that I feel make up the master narrative, in a general sense. If you can think of more or think some I've included should be stricken, send me a comment.

The Master Narrative (or, what Karl Rove will get you to believe so that all dangerous Republican plans will be successful):

They’re terrorists, we’re freedom fighters.
The U.S. is the greatest country in the world.
The U.S. is the most generous country in the world.
The U.S. takes better care of its less fortunate than other countries.
Capitalism is the best economic system, ever.
Making corporations and industries follow regulations is bad.
It’s bad because regulations keep them from maximizing profits.
Maximizing profits is the highest calling of an American businessperson.
America is a Christian nation.
Liberals (Democrats) are wusses and pansies that spend too much money.
Liberals (Democrats) hate the military and Jesus.
Liberals prefer abortions to births.
Conservatism is the moral high ground.
Conservatives are fiscally responsible.
Conservatives don’t want big government.
Liberals want to dismantle the military.
Liberals appease dictators.
We take every precaution to protect civilians in a war zone.
American leaders would never intentionally mislead us.
Welfare hurts the poor.
Specialized degrees help people find work easier.
There is no shortage of jobs to be had in this country.
Hard work is always rewarded with financial gain.
No privilege or financial gain ever comes without hard work.
Government only ever hurts the entrepreneur.
Taxes are legalized theft.
Statements issued from the White House place informing the public before seeking political gain.

And of course, the master narrative to end all master narratives:

It can't happen here...

IT'S FUN TO SHOOT SOME PEOPLE

And or torture them. So Gonzales was confirmed, ratifying torture as the official policy of the United States. And some crazy general says it's fun to "shoot some people." He actually said it twice--the second time he said it's "a hell of a lot" of fun to shoot people who "ain't got no manhood left anyway."

What the hell kind of message does this send? I mean, it's one thing to talk about the glee one takes in shooting people, but atrocious grammar--that's beyond the pale!

That's a joke, of course. Remember how the Master Narrative required everyone to feel horror because supposedly Palestinians were dancing in the streets when they heard about 9/11? Well, this general's remark is basically the same type of thing. He's speaking for you and for me to the world when he says that, "Hey, I know the President and all his people have to pretend not to like killing Arabs, but I'm here to tell you that in reality, we love it--can't get enough!"

Imagine the right-wing reaction if Mahmoud Abbas or Zarqawi came out and said, "You know, these Americans let their women just run around half-naked all the time which is an insult to both man and God. They have no morals or manhood and so it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." Oh how Rush-O'Reilly-Coulter-Hannity would burn! Such a remark would be ultimate proof of the inhumanity of "the terrorists," they'd say. These animals actually enjoy shooting people--they just come out and admit it, they'd say. That's why we have to take them out, they'd say. Well, what must the Islamic Rush-O'Reilly-Coulter-Hannity types be saying in response to this general?

And Coulter made a fool of herself on Canadian television...it is awesome!

Hypocracy=hypocrisy + democracy

I received my copy of "Distorted Morality," the Chomsky speech at the Harvard School of Government in 2002. He basic argument is that America's "war on terror" (begun under Reagan) is in fact a logical impossibility because America is a terrorist state and one of the so-called "state sponsors" of terrorism. He lays it out so clearly and with a good deal more humor than is his wont.

Now saying that America is a terrorist state will not get you far on "Hardball" or "O'Reilly" or what have you. But that's because that statement violates the Master Narrative, which states that America is always right and everyone else is always wrong (with the possible exception of the British).

But Chomsky's point, and really it's very elementary, is that if an act is wrong for other people to do, then it is wrong for us to do. He points out that someone who doesn't act in accordance with that truism is what you would call a hypocrite. So for example, when George Bush bemoans the fact that "terrorists" killed 3,000 innocent civilians on 9/11, it is perfectly legitimate for Iraqis to bemoan the fact that U.S. "terrorists" have killed as many as 100,000 civilians. Or, if George Bush says that a "state sponsor of terrorism" like Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon because they support the Palestinians, it's perfectly legitimate for an ayatollah to say that the U.S. is a "state sponsor of terrorism" because of our support of Israel and yet we're allowed to have nuclear weapons. And so on.

Really, no one should be allowed to have nuclear weapons, but we can't uninvent them. The best way to confront them is to dispense with the idea that might makes right (which typical U.S. rhetoric disparages) and instead, negotiate and compromise with other nations.

Speaking of Iran...


Anybody see this story about Halliburton accepting a contract in Iran? I hope Robert Scheer confronts Tony Blankley with this on Left, Right and Center. Blankley suggested that Seymour Hersh is a traitor for his reporting on U.S. troop insertions in Iran. I wonder what Blankley thinks about Dick Cheney's former company contracting for business with an "evil" country. That would be quite in line with Republican morals and mores--remember Prescott Bush and a certain Austrian with a small mustache?


Johnny Cash and Gordon Perkins


I had no idea until this week that Johnny Cash lifted the melody and a good bit of the lyrics to "Folsom Prison Blues" from the Gordon Jenkins' tune "Crescent City Blues." I had never heard that until I checked out "Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison: The Making Of A Masterpiece" from the library. I guess that story doesn't fit the master narrative about rugged country stars...but it does say something that I've never heard "Crescent City Blues" while "Folsom Prison Blues" is available on 341 different collections done by everyone from the Gin Blossoms to Christ On A Crutch...