INTELLIGENCE AND FACTS, PART 3

So Bush is merely continuing the longtime conservative gambit of making sure that facts are treated as opinions. Because they know that fair-minded people will then feel compelled to “look at both sides.” That’s what’s happening in the evolution vs. “intelligent design” debate. And the “look at both sides” argument is even being used by intelligent design proponents as a reason to “study” intelligent design. Their argument is “well, no one really knows for sure whether evolution or intelligent design is a fact, so it behooves us to teach and study both theories.”

They’ve done it with global warming. Objective science has existed for a while now that makes a clear case that global warming is in fact taking place. So the conservatives have some of their think tanks do a “study” that arrives at the opposite conclusion and use their control of the mainstream media to inject that conclusion into the public debate. And then fair-minded people feel compelled to “look at both sides.”

This obfuscation has gotten to the point where people that I know personally have said that they don’t even read anything about politics anymore because they know that both sides are defended by people with hidden agendas and inappropriate biases. And that’s what the conservatives want, because then they are able to take advantage of this confusion and appeal to people through religion, xenophobia, nationalism, and the like–appeals which have no rational basis.

And liberals still insist on trying to deal with issues on a rational basis, as they ideally should. But the conservatives have been far too successful in calling objective facts into question, and so people have become convinced that there is no objective reality and therefore support and vote for candidates who give lip service to their pet religious and nationalistic issues that have been merely a matter of personal preference from time immemorial.

So how do you convince people of the truth of something if they believe that there is no objective reality? That is the critical question facing progressives and other keepers of the democratic flame. We can fact-filled, footnoted, exquisitely sourced blogs, books, and letters all day long but they can still be dismissed easily as being "biased" simply because they only support "one side" even if that side happens to be the truth. And that is because Bush and familiars in the media say things like the pre-Iraq war intel was "wrong," even though it was unquestionably right.

INTELLIGENCE AND FACTS PART 2

Here are a couple more reasons Bush wants to uphold the meme that the pre-war intelligence was wrong (even though it was exactly right):

1) There are more and more leaks and documents being declassified, revealing what the pre-war intelligence actually said and it’s clear that it contradicts what Bush & Co told us it said before the war. For example, the recent National Journal story which revealed that Bush was told by his intel people on Sept. 21, 2001 that there was no evidence for an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. Colin Powell has also said, post-invasion, that he “never saw” any evidence to credibly link Iraq and al Qaeda. And Sen. Carl Levin had a DIA document declassified last month that showed that even before the war, intelligence officers believed that the testimony of al-Libi (which Bush and Cheney frequently cited as proof of an Iraq-al Qaeda link) should not be trusted.

Given these revelations, it is in Bush’s best interests to “catapult the propaganda” that the pre-war intelligence he way privy to was “wrong” even though the opposite is true. He’s trying to use his supposed charm to convince people that no one should even listen to what “the intelligence” has to say because he’s our noble, righteous, and thoroughly decisive leader. We should just trust him because he tells us to.

Given the power of the conservative media, he will be able to make people forget all of the above facts, just like he was able to make people forget what a horrible job he had done in his first term during the 2004 election.

2) Bush and the neocons will face much less resistance from the public and from the press when they invade or Iran or Syria next year (or ask for authorization to do so right before the midterm elections) if they are able to make the case that the intelligence is wrong and that we should just trust them. Liberals, Democrats, progressives, and anyone else opposed to the war should vigorously resist this demonization of our intelligence capabilities. Because if the public is convinced that our intelligence officers cannot be trusted, they will feel that they have no choice but to trust Bush. And the negativity about the intelligence services will linger after the invasion of the next country after what Bush was actually told starts to trickle out afterward. It’s a can’t-lose strategy for Bush and the neocons and will pay dividends to the neocons for years after Bush is long gone from office.

However, it’s the only strategy the neocons have–the ol’ smear and fear. And here they are using it to try to discredit even their own administration, or at least the parts of it that they feel could leave them vulnerable. They are trying to create a situation in which Bush, as the elected (or, more accurately, “selected”) leader, is the only person that can be trusted just because he was elected–in other words, they want to foist this proposition on the country: “You elected me so I must be right.” And everything to the contrary be damned.

INTELLIGENCE AND FACTS...

So I'm lying in bed this morning thinking about the letter to the editor I wrote yesterday, pointing out that even though Bush said that the pre-war intelligence "turned out to be wrong," you shouldn't believe him. Then I cited the Powell/Rice quotes, talked about the recent National Journal article, talked about Hussein Kamel and how Bush was obviously aware of him because he used Kamel as a source in a speech. The intelligence Bush received before the war was right, and he was wrong.

But his sudden "admission" of being "wrong" bothered me. I knew there had to be an ulterior motive but I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. But it hit me like a bolt of lightning this morning in bed.

Hope this makes sense...

Bush and the Republicans will now try to turn a supposed humble admission that the Iraq intelligence was wrong but we were right to go into Iraq into a cudgel like they did with the term "liberal media" or "liberal media bias." In other words, they're trying to create the meme that we can't trust the facts (i.e., the "intelligence") in a given situation, but we can always trust them. That's why Bush felt like he could say some intelligence turned out to be wrong, because he immediately followed that statement with one about how he was right to go into Iraq anyway.

Noise Machine

And that's what David Brock and others have been pointing out that the Republicans have been doing for decades now--turning objective facts into just another political opinion. That's what they did with their most successful canard, the myth of the "liberal media." Anytime some solid, factual reporting conflicts with what the conservatives are trying to prove, they'll say in essence "who are you gonna believe, me and your gut or the liberal media."

And that shit has worked like a charm...

And so that's what Bush has been doing all along, like with Social Security. Bush said it would be bankrupt in a number of years and that it needed to be fixed, meanwhile all the numbers coming from the SS trustees and the CBO basically proved that what Bush was saying was wildly off the mark. But Bush said we should trust him, not the facts.

So the writer of the famous Downing Street minutes really captured something when he pointed out that "the facts and intelligence were being fixed around the policy" of going to war with Iraq. That is undoubtedly true, and that becomes clearer with each passing week. But I had never thought about that description applying to everything Bush tries to do. But it is very apt. Because the facts and intelligence are nearly always against Bush and corporatists. So they try to discredit the facts by simply saying "the intelligence was wrong, but I was right."

That is dangerous notion that far too many people buy into...

DEMOCRACY, INTELLIGENCE, FREEDOM, ETC.

Friends, here is a touching letter I saw recently from an American child regarding his Christmas list...

Dear Baby Jesus:
I have a two-part Christmas wish. What I'd like for Christmas is for Iraq to be a strong, vibrant democracy. Then, once that's happened, I would like for Iraq to invade the United States to force democracy on it--to change the face of the region. After all, we do have WMD (no doubt at all) and we are a threat to the rest of the world, and our president wasn't elected (he was court-appointed once and had people cheating for him the second time).
We are also a haven for terrorism and many of our citizens are adherents of a violent, hostile, false sect of an otherwise peaceful, ennobling religion. They are Christo-fascists and hate freedom, just like we were told the Iraqis did before our glorious invasion that destroyed our democracy.

Isn't that just the sweetest thing ever, good friends? Ah, the innocence of a child...

Democracy

OK, so I wrote that and tried to pass it off as something else...whatever. Alterman did me a favor today and quoted from a Free Press article by those "enemies of the state" Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. It's worth quoting, as Alterman did, because it is so motherfucking frightening:

A law that will make democracy all but moot in Ohio is about to pass the state legislature and to be signed by its Republican governor. Despite massive corruption scandals besieging the Ohio GOP, any hope that the Democratic party could win this most crucial swing state in future presidential elections, or carry its pivotal U.S. Senate seat in 2006, are about to end.

House Bill 3 has already passed the Ohio House of Representatives and is about to be approved by the Republican-dominated Senate, probably before the holiday recess. Republicans dominate the Ohio legislature thanks to a heavily gerrymandered crazy quilt of rigged districts, and to a moribund Ohio Democratic party. The GOP-drafted HB3 is designed to all but obliterate any possible future Democratic revival. Opposition from the Ohio Democratic Party, where it exists at all, is diffuse and ineffectual.

HB3's most publicized provision will require positive identification before casting a vote. But it also opens voter registration activists to partisan prosecution, exempts electronic voting machines from public scrutiny, quintuples the cost of citizen-requested statewide recounts and makes it illegal to challenge a presidential vote count or, indeed, any federal election result in Ohio. When added to the recently passed HB1, which allows campaign financing to be dominated by the wealthy and by corporations, and along with a Rovian wish list of GOP attacks on the ballot box, democracy in Ohio could be all but over.

The GOP is ramming similar bills through state legislatures around the U.S., starting with Georgia and Indiana. The ID requirements in particular have provoked widespread opposition from newspapers such as the New York Times. The Times, among others, argues that the ID requirements and the costs associated with them, constitute an unconstitutional discriminatory poll tax.

But despite significant court challenges, the Republicans are forcing changes in long-standing election laws that have allowed citizens to vote based on their signature alone. Across the U.S., GOP Jim Crow laws will eliminate millions of Democratic voters from the registration rolls. In swing states like Ohio, such ballots are almost certain to be crucial.

Oh but it can't happen here, the conservatives will shout! This is America! The land of the rich and the home of the wage slave...I mean, well you know what I mean!
Conservatives would say of this article, "this is the liberal media! And you can't believe a damn word they say! Now close your eyes, bow your heads--I don't want any eyes looking around the room... "

And then you and I, being our dutiful, cooperative selves, will bow our heads and close our eyes and when the mumbo-jumbo prayer is up, democracy will be gone.

Democracy In Iraq

I only wish that Alterman had gone on to point out that this story is coming out the day before we are ostensibly bringing "Democracy" to Iraq. I mean, what greater irony? Democracy's packing her bags, I guess. She's had enough abuse here and she's just gonna up and move to Baghdad. Is there anything we can do to change her mind?

I mean, this is fucking IN-FUCKING-SANE. It's unbelievable.

So on Hardball tonight, whenever they talked about Iraq, they titles on the screen said "Democracy In Iraq." And that phrase was onscreen a lot--Democracy in Iraq, democracy in Iraq, democracy in Iraq...and it really just seems like a sick joke.

I mean, we've sacrificed the lives of over 2,000 soldiers and killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in order to force democracy on them, and so today, as if they're playing straight man to Bush's terrible lounge comedian, the House renews the Patriot Act. Oh, and then it turns out that the military has been fucking spying on U.S. citizens.

How do you like your democracy now? Because it's being exported to Iraq. It's being outsourced, like all the jobs, but for a different reason. Since democracy here was just elemental, it was in the water, it was in our hearts, it was intangible and therefore no one, no corporation could profit from it. So they decided to send it to Iraq, where all the familiar faces get a big slice of the pie--Halliburton, General Electric, etc.

"Democracy" is big business in Iraq, but you can't make a dime off it here, not the way you used to, dude. It's a bummer and all, but hey, you don't stay in business if you don't turn a profit, right? You gotta go where the money is!

Intelligence

I gotta go to sleep, but I just had to point this out right quick--Bush is a prick and he takes us for fools. Today he says

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq," Bush told a foreign policy forum on the eve of elections to establish Iraq's first permanent, democratically elected government.

"And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that."

He states as "truth" that "much of the intelligence" was wrong, but we didn't know that until after the fact, with the "fact" being the beginning of the war. Right? Isn't that more or less what he's saying--that our intelligence lead us to certain assumptions and conclusions that turned out to be somewhat inaccurate after we actually invaded Iraq.

But that is a load of HORSESHIT. HE'S DOING IT AGAIN. He's saying the opposite of what he knows is true. He always does it. Every word out of that motherfucker's mouth is untrustworthy.

He wants us to think that the intelligence he's referring to is the intelligence regarding basically two things: 1) Iraq had WMD, 2) Iraq and al Qaeda were best friends.

But here's the kicker--Rice and Powell both said, prior to 9/11, that Saddam didn't have the ability to threaten his neighbors and that he was contained. Here are the most relevant parts of their quotes:

POWELL: "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."

RICE: " We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

So if Bush's underlings Powell and Rice had been briefed on these things, don't you imagine the President was also?

So therefore, we had good intelligence. We knew Saddam didn't have WMD and Powell explicitly said so.

And regarding links to al Qaeda, we already know from the National Journal that Bush was briefed on Sept. 21, 2001 by his intelligence people that Iraq and al Qaeda had no ties. There's also an article about the subject in the latest issue of Newsweek that says, that as time goes on, that fact just becomes ever clearer.

So it was the intelligence that was right and it was Bush that was wrong. See how simple?

BUSH LIED? NATCH!


The evidence for impeachment keeps pouring in. First there was the Downing Street minutes. Then there was the indictment of Scooter Libby in the ongoing Plame investigation.

Then, just the other day, there was this story about how the intelligence was actually right. On September 21, 2001 Bush was told by his intelligence officers that there was no link between Saddam and al Qaeda. But Bush insisted on making that case anyway. That's what we call a lie, class.

Now today comes a story that more than a year before Bush uttered the infamous "16 words"--"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa"--that the French government had a very different take on the issue. The French said that there was no proof of such a charge.

In fact, had George Bush been honest (which he wasn't) in his 2003 State of the Union speech, he might have said this instead of what he actually said:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. But the French have told us the exact opposite. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. They also tell us that there is no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

And this is exactly what people mean when they say that Bush lied, or at the very least "manipulated intelligence" and didn't present the whole case--that the Bushies left out the info they were getting that didn't help make their case and was in fact contrary to their claims. The right-wingers and Bushistas will say that the intelligence was "flawed." Well, here we have two recent stories about pre-war intelligence that was presented to George Bush indicating that the intelligence wasn't flawed at all. The intelligence was accurate--much more accurate than the underhanded omissions of caveats,such as the ones contained in these stories, by Bush and others in the administration.

And of course there's another story debunking the Iraq-al Qaeda ties that recently surfaced. The New York Times reports that the "evidence" of such a link came to a large degree from a man who was tortured by us. The man recanted his testimony after the Iraq war began.

Recap

So, to recap how we know even more about how Bush lied and that despite what he and his cronies say, the intelligence was good (funny how Bush kept saying that in defense of the war, but he was referring to the bad intelligence):

1. 9/21/01 Bush told by intel officers that Iraq and al Qaeda had no ties.
2. In late 2001, the French government told Bush that the Niger/uranium story could not be proven.
3. Iraq/al Qaeda connection info came from a tortured Egyptian who recanted after the war started and said he made up the story to end his torture.

And this doesn't even include all the other ways we know, yes know, that Bush lied--yes, lied.

POLISHING TURDS

Just happened to see a condensed version of Brian Williams' "A Day With The President" on "Countdown." There was one segment that looked like it was shot in the White House portrait studio--Bush looked really good somehow. The light was soft but not gay, and he looked and sounded very reasonable. Not the things he said, but the tone of his voice.

Congratulations to NBC News for winning the bid in the PR campaign to polish the turd that is Bush's presidency.

And as I watched the end of Hardball leading into Countdown, I thought again about why it is that the same pundits, journalists and political hacks are always on such shows. Always spouting the same bullshit.

I mean, both Countdown and Hardball always have Dana Milbank on. Who the fuck is Dana Milbank? I mean, I know he's a reporter for the Washington Post, but what does he know about what is actually going on in a given situation. Aside from the fact that he too, is an intelligent human being, like a lot of people.

But I mean why are those types--not just those types, really, but always the same people--always on these shows talking their talking heads off about whatever happens to be the topic. What I'm getting at is--why doesn't some enterprising news organization talk to real people on a regular basis instead of these insular, highly-paid, politically-motivated types.

And when I say "real people," I don't mean people presented to the press by the Rendon Group or some other gigantic PR firm as a "real" person, I mean, why don't they have actual people who are affected by whatever policy issue is being discussed. And don't have them on as a token "real" person, followed by the government spokesperson to really set the record straight. Let the real people be the authorities.

And not the same stable of "real" people over and over again. Different, actual untrained people. People who aren't media savvy at all. I mean, reality TV is popular, right? What is more real than what I'm talking about?

CHOMSKY-WITZ

Saw the Chomsky-Dershowitz debate on C-Span last night. Chomsky kicked Dershowitz's ass, of course, if for no other reason than that the only weapon Dershowitz seemed to have in his arsenal was a dull smear. He kept saying that whatever Chomsky said was only true on "planet Chomsky," and insinuating that Chomsky uses sources out of context, and so forth.

And Chomsky displayed his knack for being "simple-minded," as he has described himself. When Dershowitz held up a map of a proposed Palestinian state which was contiguous except for the West Bank (which he did repeatedly) and said that such a state was really a good deal for Palestinians, Chomsky said that there is a simple test to determine whether that's a good deal or not: impose it on the Israelis and see if they think it's then such a great deal.

Dershowitz claimed that Arafat was the problem in the Camp David talks with President Clinton because Clinton privately told Dershowitz that that was the case. Chomsky easily punctured the veracity of that argument by saying essentially, "are you going to believe the public historical record or something that Dershowitz claims someone told him?"

The Gadflyer has a great take on the debate here, in which he did what Dershowitz kept suggesting, which is to check Chomsky's sources against Chomsky's claims. And lo and behold, Chomsky's claim is borne out.

OH, THIS IS GOOD...

Check out this story about what Bush knew before the Iraq war. Here's a quote:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

I wonder if the Congress saw this "same intelligence," hmmm?

Sick of Politics

A friend told me he was sick of politics because no matter what he reads, no matter which side it's written from, he can't believe it because it's written from biases, not from truth.

I'm currently reading "The Republican Noise Machine" by David Brock, and it mentioned a study that kind of gets at this point. Here is a link to the study (.pdf) and here is a quote from the Brock book about the study's findings:

...the liberal papers criticized President Bill Clinton 30 percent of the
time, while the conservative papers criticized President George W. Bush only 7
percent of the time. The conservative papers praised George W. Bush's
administration 77 percent of the time, while the liberal papers praised the
Clinton administration only 30 percent of the time. The liberal papers
criticized Bush 67 percent of the time, while conservative papers criticized
Clinton 89 percent of the time (p. 133).

So, the point is, it would seem that, from the results of this study, the liberal papers are more trustworthy than the conservative papers, if only because they are more willing to be fair, even-handed, and accepting of arguments and ideas that don't necessarily line up exactly with their own.

Or something...

A BAD MURTHA-FUCKA

Dennis Hastert has it all wrong, that fucker. He had this to say about Murtha's call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq:

"I am saddened by the comments made today by Rep. Murtha. It is clear that as Nancy Pelosi's top lieutenant on armed services, Rep. Murtha and Democratic leaders have adopted a policy of cut and run. They would prefer that the United States surrender to the terrorists who would harm innocent Americans. To add insult to injury, this is done while the President is on foreign soil."

Surrender? The United States cut and run? Fuck you, Hastert! We won the fucking Iraq war! Remember May 1, 2003? Mission Accomplished!

What I want to know is why the Republicans are so down on the United States, acting as though we can't defeat a pissant country like Iraq. They're hurting the morale of our troops with that kind of talk--saying that the "terrorists" aren't yet contained and that we haven't won yet. They proudly say, "we don't want an 'exit' strategy, we want a 'victory' strategy" (i.e., Bill Frist). We won already, you jackasses--there's no need for a strategy.

As Murtha plainly explained in his statement today:

"Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, and captured or killed his closest associates. "

Hey Republicans--we stuck a boot up Iraq's ass, in the colorful parlance of one your favorite "artists." We fucking mowed 'em down, we're running the entire country, their leader is about to be tried--we won, you sickos! Let the soldiers come home!

The Real Reason We're Still In Iraq

All sarcasm aside, though, it is patently ridiculous to equate the idea of withdrawal with surrender. As Murtha pointed out, we did what we came to do so let's get the fuck out. Of course, as I and so many others have said since before the war, we never should've gone to war with Iraq in the first goddamn place.

The real reason we're still in Iraq is simple. It's political leverage for the Republicans (and some Dim-ocrats). Or more precisely, leverage for what Justin Raimondo accurately and disparagingly calls "the War Party."

Let's face it, this immoral, hideous mistake of a war is the only reason there weren't riots in the streets when Bush (and/or Bush cronies at Diebold and ES&S) stole Ohio from Kerry. Sitting presidents don't lose when there are wars on. Period. It's never happened. The flag waves and the eagle soars...

But of course, with Bush now in a second term, the Corporate-crats and the Anti-Peace party need to keep a diversion going whereby they can continue their stated goal of undoing all the progressive improvements of the 20th century. So a war that whips up undue patriotic fervor (undue because the Iraq war is unjust, we were lied into it, we're not even picking on someone our own size) is just what the doctor ordered.

That's why the Republicans continue to insult the work the troops have done. Even though it's clear we have won the Iraq war, they keep insisting that acknowleding our achievements and moving on to bigger and better things (like peace and saving money rather than blowing a couple billion a month) is chickenshit. When the Republicans who lied us into this war say that our clear victory in Iraq is not good enough and that more Americans have to stay there and die so that the Corporatists can complete their takeover of society and the dismantling of our government--that is fucking PURE EVIL.

THEY DENIED IT EARLIER: Pentagon admits use of white phosphorous

Well, well, well...the Eye Talian press got it right after all, huh...maybe some U.S. journalists need to pay a little more attention to that La Repubblica story...

But here's the telling line in the BBC story linked above:

The US earlier denied it [white phosphorous] had been used in Falluja at all.

Sound familiar? How about Scott McClellan assuring us that he talked to Rove and Libby personally and they told Scottie they weren't involved in the leak. They denied it earlier...

And there are many more such incidents. Incidents like this phosphorous business are just par for the course. It's kindergarten simple--whatever anyone in the Bush administration says, the opposite is true. Listen for it--the next denial or assertion of fact you hear from Bush's or McClellan's mouth, know that the opposite is true.

Pentagon a week ago: We not only didn't use white phosphorous as a munition, we didn't use it at all. THE OPPOSITE WAS TRUE.

Just saying...

Letter To The Editor

Another one appeared today: First the one I responded to, then my response...

Pray earnestly for our president

Regarding the letter to the editor published Oct. 7 in the Hattiesburg American ("President Bush should step down") by D.E. Dawsey of Columbia, how did Mr. Dawsey come to believe his opinion is that of the American public? I, for one, do not agree with anything Mr. Dawsey has said.

I believe President Bush is a man of high integrity and intelligence. I have never seen or heard any evidence to the contrary. The fact that over 100 countries offered aid to the U.S. after Katrina speaks very highly of President Bush, who personally dealt with the leaders of these countries and earned their respect.

Concerning the war in Iraq, I have never been more proud of my son than the day he left to serve our country in Iraq, even though my heart grieved every moment. I knew he was on a mission for good and right, peace and liberty for the oppressed and downtrodden.

President Bush has told us he prays daily for God's guidance. When God is using someone, Satan goes after them with everything he has to destroy them. Are we as Christian people going to let Satan destroy our leader who seeks God's guidance?

If we sit back and allow this, then shame is on us.

We need to pray earnestly that God will guide and protect President Bush as he stands for the right.

Sandra Price,

Brooklyn
----------------------------------------------------

Willful ignorance pervades nation

In response to Sandra Price's letter to the editor on Veterans Day ("Pray earnestly for our president," Nov. 11), I would say that we don't need to pray; we need to acknowledge the mountain of evidence that confirms the Bush administration's grave errors and take appropriate action to correct those errors.

I'll sum up Price's main points and then rebut them.

First, she can't believe the American public is unhappy with Bush - to which I say that even Fox News shows in a recent poll that only 36 percent of Americans approve of Bush's job performance.

Second, she says Bush is a "man of high integrity and intelligence," and she has "never seen or heard any evidence to the contrary." To which I reply, open your eyes and take your fingers out of your ears, as have 58 percent of Americans who recently told ABC News/Washington Post pollsters that they doubt Bush's honesty both as president and as a person.

Third, Price argues that the Iraq war is "good and right" and is being fought for "peace and liberty for the oppressed and downtrodden." Only people who are deluding themselves (and/or being deluded by others) could really think those things are true of an illegal conflict in which we invaded a country that never attacked us, tortured prisoners taken there and caused the deaths of thousands of civilians.

I plead with Price and others who share her views to stop intentionally ignoring information unfavorable to the president just because he says he prays every day. Is that really all he has to do to get a pass - merely speak those words (whether he means them or not) and then no matter what else may come to light about him, he has your support?

Even the devil can cite scripture for his purpose.

Unfortunately, such willful ignorance pervades this country and can only lead to more sorrow, death and destruction.

Clinton Kirby

WELL, WELL, WELL...

So the Katrina contracts have not been rebid, a month after the pledge was made. Must everything the Bush administration tries to do regarding Katrina turn to shit?

Well, I guess that's really a rhetorical question...unfortunately.

THE ROAD TO HELL...

A few entries ago, I mentioned Sam Harris and his book “The End Of Faith” in a favorable light. That was before I read the book.

For such a gifted writer who is fearless and unrelenting in his puncturing of religious belief, his voracious appetite for received wisdom is unsettling.

In short, he thinks we’re the good guys and the “terrorists” (read Muslims and non-Westerners) are the bad guys. He goes to great lengths to demonstrate this. He writes as though he is not aware of the work of Robert Pape, but he in fact does refer to Pape’s work.

Here’s an example of what I mean about us being good and them being bad:

(p. 141)
Take the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceuticals plant [in Sudan]:according to Chomsky, the atrocity of September 11 pales in comparison with that perpetrated by the Clinton administration in August 1998. But let us now ask some very basic questions that Chomsky seems to have neglected to ask himself: What did the U.S. government think it was doing when it sent cruise missiles into Sudan? Destroying a chemical weapons site used by Al Qaeda.

Harris points out that Chomsky’s justification for this charge is that the bombing of the plant resulted in thousands of deaths in Sudan because pharmaceuticals are hard to come by in Sudan to begin with and then when a plant that makes them gets blown up, Sudan is then even worse off than usual.

Harris then goes on to ask this question:

(Continuing directly) Did the Clinton administration intend to bring about the deaths of thousands of Sudanese children? No. Was our goal to kill as many Sudanese as we could? No.

Intent Or Result

My problem with this line of reasoning is that it doesn’t matter if we didn't intend to cause the deaths of thousands of people. What matters is that we caused it. In other words, no matter what our intent may have been, the result is the same–thousands of innocent people dead.

It reminds me of a child who causes a lamp to fall off a table, breaking it. The parent scolds the child but the child protests that he didn’t mean to do it. But the parent points out the obvious–the lamp is still broken.

Harris then goes on to say that “asking [the above] questions about Osama bin Laden and the nineteen hijackers puts us in a different moral universe entirely.” And that is the crux of my problem with the Harris book so far–that Harris won’t tolerate violence from Muslims directed at the West because of their beliefs and their intentions. But violence carried out by the West against Muslims is A-OK because of our intentions and our beliefs.

That is to say, in Harris’ mind, the violence of Muslims is always only the result of a religious belief and never the result of a legitimate political grievance buttressed by a religious belief.

For such a learned person, his apparent naivete about geopolitical concerns is disturbing. For instance, he writes disapprovingly of Iraqi reaction to the U.S. occupation of that country, saying that “the idea of an army of infidels occupying Baghdad simply could not be countenanced, no matter what humanitarian purpose it might serve (p. 128).” Again, he attempts to exonerate the U.S. with our supposedly good intentions. But the road to Abu Ghraib is paved with good intentions.

An Honest Peanut Farmer

Speaking of that, on BookTV this weekend, Brian Williams played devil’s advocate with Jimmy Carter, pointing out that neocons would defend the war, however ill-advised it may have been and however atrociously it may now be going, by asking “Don’t you think that, if nothing else, the world is better off without Saddam in power?”

I was afraid that like most Democrats and liberals who are on pundit shows, he would be forced to admit that “yes, the world is better off without Saddam” and then just leave it at that. But thankfully, to his credit, Carter didn’t do that. He pointed out the obvious–yes, the world is better off without Saddam in power, but that didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s cost hundreds of billions of dollars for us to do that, over 2,000 American lives, 15,000 + wounded, scores of thousands of Iraqi dead and wounded, and a big drop in our support around the world. Was getting rid of Saddam, who had no WMD (acknowledged by Rice and Powell prior to Sept. 11) and never threatened us worth all of that, Carter shot back?

Just Turned The Page

OK, I read on and was stunned again by Harris’ naivete but don’t have time to write about it. He buys the argument that, as Arundhati Roy says in a passage he quotes, America is a “well-intentioned giant.” Roy uses the term in derogation, Harris uses it as absolution. But what Harris fails to see is that our intentions are “good” to us–but they are bad to others. Harris will not hear of a Muslim’s intentions being “good” because they are often counter to our intentions, and therefore bad, even though from a Muslim perspective they are “good.”

And this is where the “moral equivalence” canard gets shown for the bullshit it is. If anyone’s intentions are “good” but result in deaths of innocents, that is bad. The ends do not justify the means (Scott Ritter asked anyone who believed that to turn in their passports and get out of the country in a session with Seymour Hersh yesterday on C-Span). If you mean to do good, but hurt people in the process of doing “good,” you’ve done bad.

Why is that? Well, because anyone can claim to be well-meaning. You cannot see people’s “good” intentions, but you can see the dead bodies that may well result from them.

OK, that’s as far as I can take this tonight. But I think Harris would make a great guest on “The Majority Report”–a neoconservative that thinks religion is harmful.

RECORD PROFITS FOR THEM, SAME OLD SHIT FOR US
Or, PROFIT OVER PEOPLE

Exxon Mobil announced an almost $10 billion profit for the 3rd quarter of this year. That's not $10 billion for a year, that's $10 billion for a three month period. It's the highest profit by a publicly-owned company ever in the history of the world, breaking their own record which they set last year.

I...don't even know where to begin...I'm driven to write something about this after watching (on C-Span tonight--can't find a link) several Democratic senators (Stabenow, Schumer, Dorgan, Dayton) decry these exorbitant profits. Schumer had a good point that the oil company mergers of the last several years have greatly decreased competition, thereby effectively making the ol' standby of "supply and demand" kind of a moot point.

None suggested getting off oil.

They had some "solutions" but the only one I can remember is something easily demonized by Rush and Fox--a tax on windfall profits.

Republicans--This is America?

Dennis Hastert's suggestion for how to handle the coming high natural gas price/low winter temperature crisis was to "keep the thermostat down" (how far down is "down", one wonders--would he have us keep it high enough to not freeze to death?). He also suggested that citizens "drive less." He acknowledged that oil companies are posting record profits, which he justified with the deceptively simple and seemingly innocuous phrase "This is America." He said "oil companies are making record profits, but that's all right--this is America."

Then he said that he and other people on Capitol Hill are turning off lights when they leave rooms and turning off computers and computer monitors when they're not being used.

He also said something I didn't expect him to say--something that seems contrary to what the usual Republican spin on the economy is. He said that "these are tough times."

What the fuck are we gonna do about this?

Well, I can tell you who's not having "tough times." Exxon Mobil. They're having a great time. On their website, they try to justify their record-breaking/setting profit by claiming that their profit-per-dollar is in the same range as other U.S. corporations.

Here is a sample of how they put their profits "in perspective":

The total earnings numbers in the news reflect not just performance but also the company’s significant scale and global scope. For example,
ExxonMobil’s investment of $106 billion in property, plant and equipment
alone exceeds the GDP of many of the countries of the world.
These earnings, over two thirds of which stem from non-U.S. businesses, enable
us to take on the challenge of meeting the world’s vast and growing energy
needs.

Hmmm...I don't have the time, inclination, or energy to search for a link or links to document this assumption, but the part about two-thirds of their earnings "stem from non-U.S. businesses" is a shorthand, bloodless way to say that their supposed 8% profit margin is realized by hiring workers in their "non-U.S. businesses" at barely a living wage with no health care, no benefits, etc. And that's not even going into the offshore tax shelters and tax cuts and other corporate welfare they are almost certainly receiving.

The Profit over People part

And that brings us to the profit over people part of this already too-long blog entry. I was amused by the simple, no-nonsense way the AP story accounted for Exxon Mobil's profits--"Thursday's outsized earnings are a result of surging oil and natural gas prices that pushed pump prices to record territory after Hurricane Katrina." I liked the Reuters take on it also--"Record profits for Big Oil at a time when consumers are paying sky-high prices for gasoline have brought calls for a windfall profits tax".

In other words, Exxon made more because they charged us more.

But I wasn't able to suddenly and inexplicably charge my employer more for my services, were you? As a result, I not only didn't have a record increase in profits this quarter, I had no increase at all.

But a monkey could do what I do for a living, that's why I don't get to set my price. Not many people or companies can do what Exxon does (as Schumer pointed out), so they should be able to charge whatever they feel like charging, right? That's the free market, loser.

Well, that ain't the "free market." Again, as Schumer pointed out, a "free market" would have competition. And also, as Stabenow pointed out, gasoline is a necessity, not a luxury. That's why these companies shouldn't be allowed to charge simply what the market will bear.

But Hastert has the solution--just drive less. Does Hastert think that everyone in America lives in a convenient little town square where everyone's office, day care, grocery store, hospital, church, etc. is within walking distance. Does Hastert think every small town has a robust public transit system?

Because if that were true, his exhortation to simply drive less might make some fucking sense.

And for those of you who still don't think that Exxon Mobil and corporate America in general are about profit over, and the expense of, people, here's an "oil analyst" from the same AP article mentioned above:

"Exxon is a good corporate citizen but it does not work for the welfare of the country," said oil analyst Fadel Gheit at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York.

No shit, Sherlock.

BYE BYE HARRIET...

Will the new SCOTUS pick be timed for Fitzmas as a distraction?

It'd be a good move...for them.

My local paper didn't print my later today. Maybe tomorrow.

What Tom DeLay must not realize is that "conservative politics" as currently constituted is already "criminalized."

I agree with Michael Moore and everyone else--thanks, Mr. Kerry for saying we should bring the troops home, but fucking honestly, man--too little too late. By at least a year.

The new Kurt Vonnegut book is delicious, as is the new Al Franken book.

End the war.

Impeach Bush.

Rock on.

P.S. Lord, please save us from the "Christians"...

IS TOMORROW THE DAY?

Let's hope so...there are so many conflicting reports it's hard to keep it all straight. But I gather that at least Rove and Libby are being indicted, Libby on possibly two counts. And apparently Rove wouldn't deal for a lesser charge--he's counting on his pardon, I guess. But whatever happens, I generally follow the action at AmericaBlog...

Letter To The Editor

Here's a letter from my local paper, followed by my response to it:

Don't dishonor nation's heroes

It is a human tragedy that we as Americans must take into account in the war on terror - that being the deaths of 2,000 Americans in Iraq. The kooky left is exploiting that number as a milestone in 313 cities.
How do I know? Go to www.afsc.org/2000/default.php and see for yourself.

Why would this upset me, you ask? Well, just the night before last, I watched the WW II movie "The Battle of the Bulge" and a documentary about that battle. Yes, I have seen it before, but I am still in awe of the heroism of the Greatest Generation.

Those men and women who went to war to preserve our freedoms from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are real heroes.

In just that one 15-day battle, 75,000 allies were either captured, wounded or killed, and I can't find in WW II history one party celebrating their grief. That war led us to the Cold War, a 50-year battle that Ronald Reagan brought to a head with his military buildup. We won both wars and we don't speak Russian, German or Japanese. We don't live in a totalitarian society under an emperor or a chancellor.

This generation of young Americans stands toe to toe with the WW II vets and deserves our respect and support, and not to be spat on when they return the heroes they are.

A mother dishonors her child's decision to defend his country with activism and blots that heroism to obscurity. Don't do the same.

Frank Ross,

Lumberton

And my response, which will hopefully by printed tomorrow...

In his letter of Oct. 26, Frank Ross decries vigils being held by what he calls the "kooky" left to mourn the 2,000 U.S. combat casualties in Iraq and then spends the rest of his letter describing a WWII movie.

I would like to remind Mr. Ross that the Iraq war is not WWII (in which we were attacked by Japan) and it is not a movie.

Iraq never attacked us and never had the ability to do so. In a 2004 debate with John Kerry, even President Bush himself acknowledged that we were attacked by al Qaeda and not Saddam. If the Bush administration had not railroaded us into this illegal, immoral war, we would have eventually found out from the weapons inspectors that Iraq had no WMD of any kind without having to lose 2,000 of our own soldiers (to say nothing of the several thousand wounded) or killing tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Does Mr. Ross truly think that the Quakers (the sponsors of the vigils he mentioned) represent "kookiness"or that a vigil is at all similar to a "party" that is "celebrating" the grief of a fallen soldier's family? Does he truly think that the efforts of Cindy Sheehan and others to end the war so that American and Iraqi lives can be spared amount to "spitting on"our troops? If so, is it not clear that he and his fellow travellers have no concept of what Jesus meant when he said "blessed are the peacemakers?"

Hopefully the indictments looming over the Bush administration will help bring the distorted, misguided emotionalism and intellectual dishonesty of Mr. Ross and others to an end. We were lied into this unjust war and we need to end it now.

Kelpie Rules!!!

And one more thing...I heard "Hey Friends, It's Kelpie" by...Kelpie today and wrote this gushing review:

Kelpie's latest album "Hey Friends, It's Kelpie" is extremely refreshing due to its ambitious wilingness to confound pop songwriting conventions couple with it's obvious accessibility. One would think that songs with so many changes of mood and meter within the same tune would frustrate the listener, but these songs are so well constructed and catchy that the expansiveness feels perfectly natural.

The album comes across like Badfinger playing the songs from Steely Dan's "Aja" or if Yes decided to make a Jellyfish album (or should that be the other way around?). Which is to say that there are complicated song structures but they're tied together with an exquisite pop sensibility--gorgeous harmonies come floating in and out of the mix at just the right time, garage rock handclaps propel songs forward, etc.

Kelpie exudes a wonderfully familiar strangeness not only in their music, but also in their packaging. For example, the lyrics are included but written phonetically, as are some of the song titles, like "Kunspyers" and "Wandurr Eng," the latter of which happens to be one of the album's strongest tunes.

The band is from Lawrence, Kansas and you may have never heard of them before and may never hear from them again, but "Hey Friends, It's Kelpie" is not just a record, it's an event. And not some empty, they've-got-a-great-look-but-no-talent type of event--this music is enveloping, timeless, and forward-looking. You simply must listen to this album.

MORE FITZMAS SOURCES

Ever-intrepid and in-like-Flynn Raw Story has a slightly different take on Fitzmas...this story sounds like fewer presents under the Fitzmas tree to me...

Fitzgerald will seek at least two indictments, the sources say. They note that it remains to be seen whether the grand jury will approve the charges.

Those familiar with the case state that Fitzgerald may not seek indictments that assert officials leaked Plame's name illegally. Rather, they say that he will focus charges in the arena of lying to investigators. The sources said, however, they wouldn't rule out charges of conspiracy.

It'll be interesting to see whose predictions and sources are borne out...it doesn't really matter to me as long as the war ends and the Bush presidency is effectively, if not actually, brought to a grinding halt...

MERRY FITZMAS EVE (?)

The Washington Note ups the ante:

An uber-insider source has just reported the following to TWN:

1. 1-5 indictments are being issued. The source feels that it will be towards the higher end.

2. The targets of indictment have already received their letters.

3. The indictments will be sealed indictments and "filed" tomorrow.

4. A press conference is being scheduled for Thursday.

CBS also reported this evening that ol' St. Pat will show his hand tomorrow, says ThinkProgress (didn't see the broadcast myself)...

And ending the horror that has now claimed the 2,000th U.S. soldier is what Fitzmas is all about...

I can't friggin' wait!!!

TRUTH (with jokes)

This new Franken book rules!! He debunks, he unspins, he kicks Republican ass!! The audio version (which I've been listening to) is very enjoyable...

GO SAM GO!!

Sam Seder was losing his shit tonight on the Majority Report. And I mean that in a good way–some Rape-ublican lurker called in saying that “hate speech” on Air America was turning him off and that Seder was entitled to “his opinion” about Plame-gate. And Sam let him have it, citing facts about the Plame/Libby/Cheney/Wilson case and screaming at the caller “What part of what I just said is ‘opinion’” and so forth...it was great. I think I like the show even better when Janeane is away (not that I don’t like Janeane, but Sam gets to go the fuck off a lot more often when she’s not there).

Check 21

Remember Check 21? You know, you used to be able to “float” a check, i.e., write a check even when you knew you didn’t have the funds at the precise moment you wrote the check but could be reasonably sure that the funds would be there by the time the recipient deposited the check? And how all that changed with Check 21?

And do you remember why they had to take that small privilege of “floating” away from millions of wage earners? Terrorism–something that may one day happen (I mean, there is a strong likelihood that there will be another Sept. 11, but no one knows that for sure–except those planning it and they ain’t tellin’), but has really only happened once on the magnitude of Sept. 11.

Anyway, banks don’t operate on that same principle in reverse. The Consumer's Union website puts it this way:

"You may not get access to the funds from checks you deposit any sooner, because the new law does not shorten check hold times. After 30 months, there must be a study on whether banks are making funds available to consumers earlier than the allowable hold periods."

For example, recently I deposited a healthy sum of money in an account on Saturday and then a slightly less healthy amount of money in that same account on Monday morning. Then my wife and I both tried to make withdrawals against that money later in the day on Monday.

But guess what? Our debit cards were rejected, even though the amounts we were trying to use were way below what the balance should have been. Finally we talked to someone at the bank who told us, with a straight face, that “weekend deposits aren’t posted until Monday night.”

Fucking excuse me? I can’t get my money two days after I deposit it but you’re going to punish me for writing a check a little earlier than the money will appear in my account? Isn’t all of this debit/credit shit at banks just computer data anyway?

Anyway, that’s how fear and use of the bogeyman argument affects my everyday life–and probably yours. Why in fuck's name are we putting up with this bullshit?

Cheney Cheney Cheney Cheney Cheney Cheney

You suck, ya vindictive bastard...

MY FITZMAS WISH...

Of course I hope that Fitzmas deals a death blow to the Bush administration. But even more than the demise of Bushco, I would hope that this Fitzmas season would make the fabled Mandate 51 portion of the population awake from their stupor.

I hope that, much in the same way that Christmas ostensibly celebrates a birth, Fitzmas will also mean a birth of skepticism and critical thinking in that mass of the population that trusted Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, Miller, et. al. despite much evidence contradicting their claims.

It seems like a little much to ask, I know, but with George W. Satan’s approval rating at 39% generally and 2% with blacks, maybe my Fitzmas wish can come true...

FITZMAS/HURRICANE PATRICK

Oh, I love getting online to check out the latest news about Fitzmas…It seems that we’ll get to exchange Fitzmas gifts this week. And Hurricane Patrick will make the White House think Katrina was just a wet fart…Oh, I cannot wait.

Please, Mr. Fitzgerald, don’t take a ride in any private aircraft, don’t take a walk at night to clear your head, and so forth. Because these false Republican bastards have no morals…

And even though Justin Raimondo, the proprietor of Antiwar.com, has no problem tooting his own horn, I’ll toot it also—he has had ultimate faith in Patrick Fitzgerald from the moment his investigation opened. Raimondo has been accurately predicting and sussing out much of what’s going on in this case and this evil war and in Plame-gate for years now. Check his shit out—his column appears Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

BRING ON THE INDICTMENTS

Christ almighty I can’t wait for these motherfuckers to get indicted already...and for this holy war against decency (that is, the one in Iraq) to end...

Also, instead of worrying about liberating Iraq or the rest of the world, I’d rather me and everyone else worry about the erosion of our freedoms here in this country. Let’s not let all the bullshit about “land of the free” blind us to what is happening. Or as the Buffalo Nickel song “Already” puts it: “glory glory hallelujah/don’t let anyone fool you.” Or as e.e. cummings put it: “I will not kiss your fucking flag” and “there is some shit I will not eat.”

But on to my point about the erosion of freedoms here. My wife just had to show I.D. and be entered in a computer database to purchase Claritin-D at Target here. Now I know this is happening across the country and it is supposed to keep ingredients for meth out of the hands of meth-heads, but I don’t care. I don’t like it–it’s creeping fascism. PLus, the meth-freaks will just be forced to take more drastic and violent measures to get their fix.

I also don’t like video cameras installed on top of traffic lights. That’s creeping fascism.

And they get a majority of people to go along with it using scare tactics, i.e., if we don’t have traffic light cameras, the terrorists will kill us and if we don’t keep track of everyone who buys allergy medicine, the meth freaks will...I don’t know, keep killing themselves in meth lab explosions.

Now, of course neither meth nor terrorism are good things, no matter who’s doing them. But the threat of these things is so minimal. I don’t know anybody who does meth or even know anybody who knows anybody that does meth, do you? Even if you do, do you really think that the vast majority of people who aren’t making/taking meth but just find relief from decongestants should have to be treated as potential lawbreakers every time they want to buy a legal medicine?

And that’s what bugs me–because some companies and politicians want to look tough on crime, they’ve decided to make policies that bring everyone under suspicion. And it doesn’t seem like there are many steps from that to suspension of habeas corpus, waiver of the right to see an attorney or to a speedy, public trial. Oh yeah...we’re already there...

MISTAKES WERE MADE...AND ARE BEING MADE

Oooh...can't wait for the Rove/Libby/Frist indictments...sweet! Let the frogs march!

Why can't gas stations around here make mistakes like this?

And these kind of poll numbers are starting to make my "Impeach Bush" bumper sticker look less and less like wishful thinking...oh hell yeah!

And this book, "The End Of Faith" is really intriguing...one of its arguments is that "religious moderates" basically need to shit or get off the pot...

IS THIS WHAT THE RED STATERS WANTED?

I want to point out three related stories today that have to do with the state of the American economy and why you and I are getting worse off instead of better off.


The first story is from David Cay Johnston, author of Perfectly Legal, who turns in more stellar work. He reports on anIRS report that was released yesterday. Keep in mind that it’s the Republican, conservative IRS that is reporting this bit of news:

After falling for two years, the share of income going to the richest slice of Americans - the top tenth of 1 percent - grew significantly in 2003 while the share going to 99 percent of Americans fell, tax data released yesterday showed.

What the sentence says in plain English is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And guess what? That’s what today’s Republican party wants. They give tax cuts to those with the highest incomes, which of course has the consequence of making their incomes even higher, as this new report shows.

Johnston goes on to point out another oddity about Bush’s tax cuts, which the yellow-ribbon-magnet-conservatives profess to love so dearly (the tax cuts, not the oddity):

The top 10th of 1 percent paid almost 23.6 percent of their reported income in
income taxes in 2003, down from just under 27 percent in 2002. That is a decline
of 3.4 percentage points. For taxpayers in the bottom 80 percent, the effective
tax rates fall by three-tenths of a percentage point or less.

Get that? For bottom dwellers like us, tax rates declined far less than the 129,000 richest people in the country. Recall that Bush said “by far the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum” when campaigning in 2000. Then he pushed through the tax cuts that produced this lopsided effect. Is this dishonesty on Bush’s part or merely a grievous, unforgivable unfamiliarity with the details of “his” tax plan?

But sweet Jesus, this quote has been proven false over and over again. When is Bush’s double dealing going to come back to haunt him? Let’s try to set a date for sometime in November 2006.

Food Stamps–Who Needs ‘Em?

Here’s another story about how “compassionate conservatism” has been code for “Fuck the poor”:

Democrats are fighting attempts to make cuts in food stamps and conservation programs at a time when people are coping with hurricanes and drought.

"Right now the difference between life and death for many Americans is the food stamp program," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. "We should not, we cannot, cut the very nutritional programs that are literally saving lives."

A Republican plan to cut agriculture spending by $3 billion had been scheduled for a vote Thursday in the Senate Agriculture Committee, but the panel's chairman, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., put off the vote indefinitely late Wednesday...The bill by Chambliss would cut food programs for the poor by $574 million and conservation programs and farm payments by more than $1 billion each.

Oh Saxby, you are doing so much for Georgia and your country. Much more than that evil America-hater and Vietnam burnout Max Cleland would’ve ever done.

Yeah, that’s a good one, Sax...cut food stamps right after the most costly natural disaster in the history of our country and when people have been affected in the way that they have in our third story below...

Katrina Unemployment Agency

Yes, also let’s not forget that the hundreds of thousands of people who have been thrown out of work and hence have had their incomes cut off need to stop sucking at the federal teat, right Sax, old chap?


Here’s a good quote (and by “good” I mean “extremely depressing”):

The number of Americans filing first- time claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week as workers displaced by Hurricane Rita joined Katrina's victims.

Claims for benefits rose by 21,000 to 390,000 for the week ended Oct. 1 from a revised 369,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said today in Washington. About 74,000 claims last week came from people who lost their jobs because of the two storms, a Labor spokesman said. He did not give figures for each hurricane.

Benefit claims may climb in coming weeks as workers displaced by Rita continue to file for payments. The rise in claims from Katrina, which submerged most of New Orleans and nearby areas, may lead to a loss of payroll jobs for the first time since May 2003 when the government reports September employment tomorrow.

Well, even though that story speaks for itself, I feel I must remind everyone that at the end of Bush’s first, unelected term, our economy had lost 2 million jobs.
And now here’s a quarter to half million more, all at once.

IT'S A GAS, GAS, GAS

Just to follow up on my gas prices rant...

Two stories appeared in local papers here about gas prices, one in the college paper and one in the city paper. The college paper has this to say:

The rising cost of gas is on everyone's mind, especially student commuters.According to mississippigasprices.com, the cost of gas per gallon has risen to $2.73, compared to $2.49 in August and $1.81 at the same time last year.

The gas prices have risen almost a dollar in a year's time? Is it just me or is that a gigantic increase for a basic necessity?

Here's a quote from an official with Pine Belt Oil from the local paper:

"Some have changed on us three times a day," Ellzey said. "It's just a very unique time. The fellow that founded this company in 1967 said never in the history of the gas business has he seen anything like this."

Ellzey had no idea when gas prices might subside or if they would keep going higher.

"Who knows?" Ellzey said. "If I knew what gas was going to do tomorrow, I'd be doing something else. No one knows. It's just until they see where the supply-and-demand line crosses."

A Perfect Circle Of Bullshitting And Greed

Well, I know what gas prices are going to do--keep going up. Know what's not going up? My income. Know what's going up besides gas prices? Everything. Know why everybody says prices are going up? Because of high gas prices. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Doesn't that circle of bullshit just make you giggle your ass off?

So of course gas prices will just steadily climb upward and never downward--why would a seller lower the price of something everyone needs when they know people will pay it without rioting, like students did in Indonesia? To wit:

Some of the protesters burned tires and threw rocks at riot police who responded
by firing tear gas and warning shots into the air. More rallies were expected,
and the government deployed thousands of soldiers and police at major
intersections, the presidential palace and other strategic locations.

They did this because gas prices are going to be raised by 87%. The price increase described by the college paper I mentioned is just over 50%. Got that? We're paying over 50% more for gas this year than we were last year!

Not quite (but almost) as dramatic as 87%, so maybe we aren't quite yet inspired to throw rocks at police and burn tires, but maybe we could, I don't know...impeach Saudi handholding George W. Bush and turn out the corrupt, profiteering Republican majority in 2006? And then if it goes up any more, maybe we should gather some rocks and tires and matches...

One More Thing

And here's an interesting and heartening group of comments on an earlier story from our local paper here regarding a White House directive to get power back to a nearby pipeline before worrying about getting power back to area hospitals...

MORE KATRINA PIX

Porch underneath tree one













Hallway ceiling













Bedroom ceiling













Mom and pup in front of uprooted oak tree (given "Katrina Award")

BACK ONLINE

This is my first post-Katrina blog entry...almost a month after the storm...or a little over a month, depending on how you count.

Not much to say, except that it's nice to see Tom Delay get indicted. It's nice to be able to get online at home again.

It's not nice, however, to pay $3/gallon for gas. What is the deal with that? The reasons that I hear for it are:

1. No new refining capacity has been added in the U.S. in the last 15 years or so. OK, that may be true, but if that's a cause of high gas prices, why are they making such spectacular leaps just in the last year? Why wouldn't gas prices started rising long before now. I'm not buying that load of shitsodd.

2. Hurricane Kat-rita disrupted the supply. True, but gas prices were way off the chart--well over $2/gallon (where I live, anyway) long before the storms, so I'm not buying that excuse, either.

3. There's an increased demand for gas due to the "war on terror." The implication here is that since they're fighting terror for us, we should just be so grateful that we'll pony up any amount for gas. But haven't American troops been deployed around the world for years in the same numbers, if not the same concentration as the troops in Iraq?
Could the increased demand be from all the SUVs with yellow ribbon magnets bellowing on about how they support the troops' having to fight to keep gas available for their gas guzzlers? And all those friggin' gigantic half-ton pickups that people are driving back and forth to office jobs?

What are we gonna do about it?

KATRINA REMODELING
I had planned to do a big "return to blog hurricane experience special," but let's just say that we got a tree in our house (and all of our rent houses), we're living in our front room with a tarp over the hole (actually we just got our first blue roof yesterday--nice job, fellas) and looking to buy another house.

The days after the hurricane were actually kind of harrowing, with 5 hour lines at Walgreen's and gas pumps, ice, water and food in short supply, and lots of other stressful things. I never did much chainsawing before this happened, and I hadn't done any work on a roof in a long, long time (and never put a tarp on one before).
My parents and my friends were very helpful (dad helped tarp our roofs, mom watched our son) and we met and hung out with neighbors we'd only kind of half-waved at before.

We didn't lose everything, we're just inconvenienced for a while. So I don't want to go on and on about how horrible I think our situation is, I'll just post some pictures and let them speak for themselves.

Tree number one













Trees one and two (the second tree just grazed the south edge of the house)

EVIL BROTHER PAT

Just listening to Mike Malloy on Air America...he made a good point in his inimitable way. He said that Christianity as practiced by the majority of Americans today has turned Christianity into a "gutter religion." He said "I spit on it." Amen to that, especially after Evil Brother Pat had his say the other day about assassinating Chavez.

I don't know much about Pat and I don't know much about Chavez, but I know that Pat got all cuddly with Mobutu Sese Seko, and I know that Chavez has enacted land reform in Venezuela.

Hmmm...which would Jesus prefer...consorting with dictators or helping the poor...

Glad Cindy's back in Tejas, giving 'em hell...

Try Skype and see what you think...

BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, AND MORE BULLSHIT...


So BRAC is closing down Naval Station Pascagoula, axing about 900 jobs...oh snap, that's fucking Trent Lott's home turf...see what a good job the "cat-herder" is doing for the good people of MS? He has already admitted that the Iraq war has diverted money away from Northrop Grumman , also in his home turf, and he couldn't do diddly-shit about it--and this has also cost 1,900 jobs in MS and Louisiana. O, what power he wields--is he not the Senator we need, o fellow Mississippians? Hath he not provided for thee and thine? Oh brother...where art thou?

How 'bout a Democrat in '06? Why the hell not--Lott's letting jobs leak like a sieve from the state and he's a giant jackass to boot. And what of our portly governor, Whaley Barbour? Was it not hammered home again and again during his racist ("Keep the flag, change the governor" yet extremely effective campaign how many jobs he would bring to MS and how being tight with Lott and Bush would be a boon to MS citizens? Oh, I think it was, good people. And now what have we got? Dead soldiers and less jobs. Thanks, all you "sportsmen/Eagles/Rebels/mindless cretins for Haley." Way to go--we're really on top now!

And then of course there's ol' Dumb-ya, Whaley's ol' pal...he said in a speech today that if we leave Iraq now, that country will become a "staging ground" for more terror attacks on the U.S.

We will stay on the offense. We'll complete our work in Afghanistan and Iraq. An immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq, or the broader Middle East, as some have called for, would only embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America and free nations. So long as I'm the President, we will stay, we will fight, and we will win the war on terror.

Ummm, no...if leave Iraq, that will be a big incentive for would-be terrorists to think twice before attacking us...just ask Robert Pape...

Did anyone else see batshit-crazy neocon Melanie Morgan on "Hardball" last night? She spewed a lot of stupidity, but one statement took the cake:

"By the way, we‘re still going to find weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq]."

What world must this poor woman live on? Not planet Earth, that's for sure. Our guys have searched and searched and both Kay and Duelfer said there were no WMD in Iraq. Come to think of it, even though Morgan and other loonies like her like to protest that WMD weren't the only (some would add "or primary") reason that we went to Iraq, she still feels the need to make up some shit about how WMD will be found in Iraq. People like her obviously don't believe their own lies--they're just hoping we will.

Well fuck her...and God bless Cindy Sheehan--she hasn't let the bastards get her down...

And two more quick things...

Read this about "Able Danger" and how the U.S. government knew of and was tracking 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta at least as far back as 2000...the point being that we don't need a Patriot Act squashing our civil rights to prevent terrorism--we knew who Atta was and what he might be up to way before 9/11...

And then for those of you who wonder how "anti-terror"/anti-civil-rights legislation--i.e. the Patriot Act might affect you? Look no further than the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian immigrant who was shot in the head seven times because he was supposedly running from the bobbies, jumped the turnstile at the Tube, was wearing a bulky coat, etc.

Well, guess what? None of that shit was true and you can see a picture for yourself here. This is how the "anti-terrorist" forces commit terror--they kill you or anyone else for whatever reason they may have cooked up in their overheated brains, then try to cover it up.

Which is easy for them to do, because the media will breathlessly report the story of how a "terrorist"--by whom they might someday mean you was doing such-and-such a terrible thing so they had to shoot you in the head eleventy-million times. And all the news shows and papers and magazines pick it up and sing the praises of the police and point out that well, this is just how things have to be in this "post-9/11 world."

Only in actual fact, you did none of the things they accused you of, they had no reason to suspect you except that they needed to demonstrate somehow that they have crime and terror under control and you happen to walk out of building they're surveilling...

And then the actual truth of what happened gets a sentence on page A-20 of the Post, the blogs scream about it, and no one ever hears the fucking truth...and then those same non-hearers of the truth go "oh, we have to stop terror just like they did when they shot [insert your name here] that time--you heard he was running from the cops, etc." So when Patriot Act 10: The Enabling Act comes down the pike, they're all like "Yeah, it makes good sense to me--you can't never be too safe..."

FUCK NUKES, END THE WAR...

R.I.P P.J....

Heard a story on NPR about Iran and nukes and how that's a "crisis". What the hell is with that? Why are we constantly being told that if other countries have the bomb, it's a "crisis" for us?

The crisis, as non-nuclear countries see it, is us having the bomb, the only country to ever actually use nuclear weapons against another country--you never are reminded of that in these breathless "crisis" stories. But that's why they want the bomb, because they don't trust us. And for God's sake, why the hell should they?

In Iran, the CIA helped overthrow Mossadeq, the democratically elected leader (not that he was actually all that "democratic"), to install the Shah, who would give the West favorable oil deals. It's the same damn story with us over and over again.

Now we've invaded Iraq unprovoked, right next door to Iran, and are throwing out slander at Iran's new president, and so forth.


A little aside: As I predicted in this entry (6-30-05), it has come out that the CIA now says Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president wasn't one of the kidnappers in the embassy takeover in 1979.

And last week, a U.S. official told CNN that CIA analysis of a photograph of
a hostage-taker at the embassy, taken around the time of the siege, determined
the individual was not Ahmadinejad. But the official said it had not been
established whether Ahmadinejad had a role in the embassy takeover.

Note that this information is the last sentence in this story, not in the headline or first few paragraphs--it's just an afterthought, whereas the accusations of him being a kidnapper were headlines across the country, across the media, casting more aspersions and serving to demonize the country Puppet Bush will have us invading next--End of aside.

Of course they want the bomb. It's the best deterrent yet it's simultaneously useless. But it's the biggest stick you can wave around.

I say, the more countries with nukes, the better. Then everyone will be terrified of everyone else and we can finally leave each other the hell alone.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>And go Cindy go! <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

TAKING GOD'S NAME IN VAIN

I will tell you what taking God's name in vain means to me. It means calling yourself a follower but not really being a follower, not really acting like a follower. A good example of this phenomenon would be George W. Bush. He takes God's name in vain every second we're in Iraq.

I bring this up because I wanted to write some more about "The Christian Paradox," the great article in this month's "Harper's Magazine." There are so many good points made in it that it's difficult to pick which ones to quote...ummm, how about this one:

Despite the Sixth Commandment, we are of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven than other rich nations...Having been told to turn the other cheek, we're the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest. Despite Jesus' strong declarations against divorce, our marriages break up at a rate--just over half--that compares poorly with the European Union's average of about four in ten.

I actually read the Bible the other day, and I don't remember why, but I was shocked to see what I must have read a thousand times before, but just didn't remember it. Of course one always hears the part about "turning the other cheek," but the context is rarely given. Jesus says, in Matthew 5:39 not to resist evil, or ones who are evil, or evildoers, to wit:

NAB
"But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. "

KJV
"But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. "

More translations here.

Is this explicit instruction from Jesus why George Bush so frequently talks about "evil" and "evildoers?" Have you ever heard our great Christian leader George Bush say that we should'nt resist evil or "one who is evil?" But that's what Jesus, 'his favorite philosopher", said to do.

But hell, I didn't even plan on trashing Bush with this entry. Although did you see the news about his new lows in his approval rating? He's the least-liked he's yet been, on this the day he appoints John Bolton to the U.N. without the Senate's approval. Even people my wife and I know to have been big Bush supporters here in Mississippi are complaining about him, and that's saying something.

However, they follow such comments immediately with something inane like "Kerry just wasn't likable enough." What the fuck kind of logic is that? Were these people saying "I know Bush took us to war illegally, is fucking over the little man, giving tax breaks to the rich and all that other shit, but I just can't see myself voting against him?" People had to have been having doubts because the article about the approval rating drop points out that "Bush's previous low favorable rating came twice in October 2004, when 51% of Americans had a favorable opinion of the president and 46% had an unfavorable opinion." So something like my little screwed-up scenario must have taken place in about 3,00,000 minds (that is, if you believe the election wasn't stolen).

Gotta Go
But anyway, that's enough for tonight. But my point is that the Harper's article (written by Bill McKibben) is so right on and makes arguments so obvious that they needed to be pointed out. It's like this guy I know whose Protestant minister father made a racist remark in public. When the son pointed out to the father that maybe a minister shouldn't talk like that based on the teachings of Jesus, the father tried to explain that the racist remark wasn't really wrong and asked the son why everything has to come back to what Jesus said. And this happened only a week or so ago.

Sure, the Bible has a lot to offer the intolerant, homophobic redneck--especially the Old Testament. But Jesus, God in the flesh, contradicts a lot of that stuff. Always remember and never forget: Jesus never said the first word about homosexuality or abortion. But he did say to turn the other cheek, give people more than they ask for, treat other people how you'd like to be treated, love everyone as you love yourself, and so forth. And a lot of the most self-professed "Christian" leaders in America today are taking the lord's name in vain...for their own gain.