A Random View

Moving Right Along

2010-08-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

Whoah! My last post, I'm noticing, was Aug, 2006. That's four years ago!!

That's when my Mom's dementia reached a critical stage and I ended up having to move her into an Alzheimer's facility. It was downhill from there. The following February, 2007, HP offered an enhanced early retirement program which I decided I couldn't pass up. My Mom passed away on 23 April 2007 and my last day of work was 31 May 2007. Two life-changing cataclysms within a month of each other.

Long story short: I've been licking wounds ever since but now I feel like I'm ready to start letting my voice be heard.

I just hope that someone, somewhere feels that I have something worthwhile to say. We'll see.

An Immodest Proposal

2006-08-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

My poor mailman. Every day he brings more pounds of mail from Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, James Carville, Charles Schumer, the DNC, the DFA and it never ends. All are asking, begging, shaming, cajoling, entreating me for money, and it's money that I'm happy to give. However, I also think back to 2004, 2002, 2000 and remember receiving the same appeals. I often responded to those pleas by writing out checks and in 2004 when the full ugly stink of the Bush presidency was apparent, I dipped into my meager pocketbook to the tune of a couple grand.

However, I also remember the anger and frustration at seeing my candidates ducking bullets instead of returning fire, of meeting slime boat attacks with a curious silence and the surprising and still puzzling news that the end of the 2004 campaign saw the loser with 15-20 million still in the bank.

So this year, I'm drawing the line.

Attention: Dr. Howard Dean, Hon. Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Charles Schumer, et al. If I'm going to continue to share my paltry means with the Democratic Party, I expect you to do a few things that I would be embarrassed to know that you haven't done yet.

1. Rent a nice economical but secure room somewhere and gather together a group of politically knowledgeable, dependably partisan and aggressively persuasive people with a fax machine and the fax numbers of all significant newsrooms across these 50 States. Tell this group that their job is to monitor all trash, sewage and other effluent spilling forth from the Republican noise machine and immediately formulate an effective response for each and every piece of poison and toxic waste that floats into the political discourse. Then fax it out to the media universe to counter lies, to set the record straight but most of all, to seize the initiative and not let Karl Rove once again control the conversation.

2. On the other side of the room, gather together a similar but more devious group with their own matching fax machine. Tell these people to dig up dirt about any Republican that is in a close race with a Democrat. And let me define dirt: Anything that exposes the Republican as being an enthusiastic corporate shill (to the detriment of their constituents), or a stealth religious fanatic or simply any kind of a hypocrite (which covers most of the current Grand Old Party).

3. On the 12th anniversary of the "Contract with America," I implore Minority Leader Reid and Minority Leader Pelosi to devise a catalogue of liberal ideals.

My immodest proposal is

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

a. That no one is above the law no matter what position they hold in the government and each of the three branches of government is in all circumstances fully accountable to either and both of the other two.

b. That all Americans are born equal as human beings and are entitled to maintain their self-respect and their freedom from catastrophic circumstances and should thus be provided at least minimal access to food, shelter and medical care.

c. That while all citizens have a serious responsibility to their nation, their government should at all times respect their privacy, show them due respect and refrain from interfering in their affairs.

d. That taxes are a burden to be shared by all and those who have reaped the greatest rewards from our free and prosperous society should return a greater share than those who have not.

e. That families are the cornerstone of our nation and that families, in whatever form they exist, are to be supported so that they both provide a healthy nurturing environment for children to grow and develop as well as provide a medium for human affection, devotion and love to thrive and prosper.

f. That social security and Medicare reflect our nation's unswerving commitment to fully guarantee a comfortable, safe and secure life for each and every citizen as they age.

g. That while our nation's giant corporations provide essential products and services that generate much of our wealth, their interests must be balanced with the interests of its workers, our small businesses and the global environment.

h. That consumers have a right to safe, usable and honest products and services and that the penalties for failing to deliver those should be grievous, since a breech of contract between supplier and consumer strikes at the very heart of the American business enterprise.

i. That those whose labor drives our economy have full and unencumbered recourse to air grievances, block unfair and unsafe workplace practices, negotiate fair compensation and have the freedom to organize without hindrance.

j. That this nation's history eloquently speaks to the necessity of having a viable two-party system and that the genius of our Constitution lies largely in its intricate and essential checks and balances which must never be subverted or undermined.

4. Finally, I implore all of the above-named Party figures. Please develop a third group whose mandate is to prepare, to brief and to groom all Party spokespersons who will appear on "talking head" shows, who will give press conferences, who will provide spin, who will in any way represent the message, the vision and the spirit of the Democratic Party, especially on the electronic media, so that they don't look unprofessional, so that they make compelling and lucid arguments, and so that they don't look weak and clueless against articulate, highly prepared and aggressive Republicans.

5. And most important of all. Please find a way to develop, disseminate, and enforce message discipline. Unless and until Democratic spokespersons are on the same page with the Party's message (and there should be one), the Republicans will continue to play them off one against the other.

And who am I to be making these demands of the High and the Mighty? In a word, I am nobody. I am simply a voice in the crowd, a random citizen saying what I feel needs to be said. I am one of the horde of small contributors who together hope we can make a difference.

I am also serious when I say that I have no intention of sending good money after bad. If the leadership of the Democratic Party elects not to make a convincing stand against Republican hegemony this election cycle, then there's nothing that my paltry few dollars can do to stem the tide. If the corporate heroin is so irresistible, if the elites' siren song is so compelling, then my lonely voice in the crowd must remain in obscurity. I can only say, I tried.

Finally, and sadly, I'm hearing other like voices in this bluest part of the bluest of states. And that news should serve as a wake-up call to Party leaders.

Patience is not unlimited. And time is running out.

Half of Americans Still Think Saddam Had WMDs

2006-08-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

This is not only unbelievable, but profoundly disappointing and even downright scary. Read the article posted on Alternet. Amitabh Pal, of the Progressive, writes a full discussion including who's at fault for this disinformation.

This Week in Review: 1984, Meet Soviet America

2006-08-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

The only good thing I can say about the terror bombshell dropped on US voters last week is that it was an "August Surprise" and not an "October Surprise." But don't think for a minute that Karl isn’t planning a “September Surprise," an "October Surprise" and even a "November "Surprise."

My thought above dramatizes the mental state the Bushoviks have created over time to provide themselves with Election Insurance. Dramatic disclosures dropped during election cycles smell bad because they've used them shamelessly and repeatedly in the past. And we’ve all heard the tale of the boy who cried wolf, right?

But the reality is far worse. It's time we acknowledge the stark truth of US politics: This country is in the grip of a clique with aggressive ambitions and with a propaganda machine whose only purpose is self-preservation and self-propagation.

Welcome to the merger of 1984 with Soviet America.

Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman highlighted a glaring truth: The US has moved decisively from speaking Standard English to Orwellian Newspeak.

War is peace. Lies are truth. And we are so there.

Lamont's victory as a "tragedy" for the Democratic Party has been plastered across cable and broadcast news and trumpeted by everyone from Lieberman himself, to Mehlman, Cheney and Bush. The Party has fallen into the hands of dangerous "left wing fanatics" who hate America and want to “cut and run” from Iraq.

These are only the latest and most egregious examples of a ruling class willing to say and do anything to stay in power. And their ambitions clearly run beyond staying in power. They are entrenching themselves deeply into American government, American society and above all into American culture to install their agenda permanently into American history. Since their hateful agenda requires self-propagation, it is not an easy sell, so they must lie, spin, and exaggerate to candy coat the bitter pill.

This is reminiscent of the Russian press during the Soviet era. State-run organs like Izvestia , Pravda and the Tass News Service unabashedly and shamelessly spouted the party line, however counter-intuitive and transparent the lie. The problem was that everywhere one looked there were obvious signs the ideology had failed. Therefore the “truth” had to be “sanitized” to maintain dogmatic purity. The result was that after a while no one took Soviet "journalism" seriously. Soviet citizens shrugged and rolled their eyes a lot when they read a newspaper or watched TV.

Soviet Realism should be very familiar to Americans in the Bush era. The whole reign of Bush II has been the World Series of incompetence and cluelessness. The only reason it has eluded exposure has been the compliant and complicit US press. With the near total collapse of American journalism and it’s metamorphosis into a mouthpiece for the corporate elites (aka Republican Party et al), any hope of everyday citizens getting unbiased news has nearly evaporated.

The only near-term remedy for Newspeak in the press, is the same aggressive hostility with which the Right has so successfully neutered the MSM. Now even mild critical mention of a Republican coming from journalists is met with a thermonuclear email dump, foaming mouths with teeth bared across talk radio and outraged fulminations from False (Fox) News.

So, folks, are we in for a penny, or in for a pound?

Until and unless the left begins to grow some backbone, show some outrage and make itself feared, then I suspect we are going to continue drifting in the political doldrums much as we have since Bush II’s accession.

It’s near impossible for individuals to become effective agents of change without affiliating themselves with a group. The groups are out there and they need to aggressively recruit citizens to fill out their ranks. Just as concerned citizens need to find a group and join up. And then they need to join the battle.

I wrote a suggestion to MoveOn.org recently (viewable here). I urged MoveOn to launch an intensive media watch, much like the right has done and perhaps modeled on the very effective NRA model. When media outlets tilt against progressive interests, they should be instantly and intensely enlightened. Should that not work, should the outlet continue to undermine progressive interests, then start a drive to cancel subscriptions and avoid advertisers. Progressives who are part of Nielsen and Arbitron surveys should avoid cable news channels and broadcast news throughout the survey period.

Only by hitting in the profit center will any impact be felt, will any changes result.

Over the long term, a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President need to restore the “fairness doctrine.”

The policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission that became known as the "Fairness Doctrine" is an attempt to ensure that all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be balanced and fair.

Airwaves in the United States are the property of the people. They are leased out on the condition that the lessee serve the public interest and not become a political tool. If political viewpoints are to be presented through the electronic media, they should either be balanced by alternative viewpoints, or be paid for by those wishing to express that opinion. One-sided advocacy must stop.

Finally, and this could be the subject of an entire posting of its own, we simply must find a way to separate money from politics. We must implement campaign finance reform. Otherwise, the rich will always win and the rest of us will always dine on their crumbs.

Hate Bush? Nah. Can't Be Bothered.

2006-08-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

Right wingers often try to defuse criticism of The Leader by accusing critics of being "Bush Haters." Talking heads of the O'Reilly, Krauthammer, and Jacoby ilk hurl the term like a thunderbolt from Olympus. I guess to them (and all "right-thinking" people like them) hating Bush is on par with hating apple pie, Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother Theresa.

My own reply to the "allegation" of Bush hating is, "No." My reaction to Mr. Bush is on the one hand, a profound and an anguished embarrassment, and on the other thorough-going outrage. When you consider the line of Presidents from Washington to Clinton and find George W. Bush there, it's a total mismatch. He just doesn't belong. Of course, Right Wingers will quickly point out that Bill Clinton doesn't belong there either, but I'll refute that. There are many things that you can legitimately lay at Bill Clinton's doorstep, but he was no lightweight. He had a vision, he had the political acumen to survive breathtaking adversity (often of his own making), and he was unfailingly well-spoken and clearly focused on the issues of his time.

George W. Bush, from the first moment I became aware of him, failed my own personal smell test. For a time I couldn't figure out what bothered me about him. I finally fell back on my 20 years as an airline airport supervisor. In dealing with many angry, frustrated and often volatile people, I developed a keen nose for sensing a phony. And that's what bothered me about George W. Bush. The man is a phony.

His biography explains a lot. He is the scion of a wealthy New England establishment family. His grandfather and father were wildly successful, both in business and politics. He is likely not one who learned to take "no" for an answer. His journey through the Ivy League was preordained and funded both financially and academically by family tradition. His military obligations were dealt with as such families deal with those things: Calls were made, strings were pulled, outcomes were secured. Even irresponsibly walking away from the commitment was rewritten and covered up. Later, various ill-starred business failures were cushioned, resolved and reversed by the omnipresent family retainers.

Simply put, this man is a spoiled brat with a hyper-developed sense of entitlement. His biography was easy to revise and refashion into the Right Wing idol he is today. His past peccadilloes were simply "not discussed" because they happened "before he found Jesus." (Try and imagine that working for Bill Clinton.) He ran for President in 2000 as a "compassionate conservative" who assured America that he was a moderate, a centrist who would bring respect back to the Presidency.

In short, George W. Bush is the result of packaging, of product placement, of costuming and makeup. His persona was created to gratify the various right-wing appetites for an action figure that would poke a stick in the eye of the hated "liberals." Whether his political views were thoughtfully arrived at and genuinely held, I have no way to know. Whether his religious conversion, his finding Jesus, was bogus and a political calculation, I would not presume to guess. However, when cast against the backdrop of the rest of his life and his actions of late, one has to think that it's all about appearance, about selling the product, about controlling the agenda.

Almost everything George W. Bush did after taking office belied his moderate campaign assurances. One of his first appointments was John Ashcroft as Attorney-General, a certifiable right wing extremist and religious fanatic to boot. To date, he has done nothing to demonstrate any integrity, any honesty, any acknowledgement that he only holds office with the support of a scant 50% of the population. Yet he has recklessly and ruthlessly implemented an extremist and esoteric agenda which clearly benefits only a small clique of wealthy and powerful interests.

It would be very easy to "hate" George W. Bush, but that would give him far too much credit. He is a figurehead, a puppet and a shill for the corporate elites who paid for his elevation to office and whose interests he so fervently promotes. Hate in that context is simply not a useful tool to express ones view of Bush.

Embarrassment is unavoidable. That the packaging worked, the contrived religiosity sold and the strained "authenticity" was bought hook, line and sinker by half of this country is profoundly disillusioning.

Outrage is almost automatic. One can scarcely glance at Bush's trail of blunders, favoritism and perversion of our institutions and history without feeling a withering and intense outrage that this wonderful country has fallen into such unworthy hands, that this land for which so much blood has been spilled has fallen into the grip of Philistines whose only thought is to promote and enrich themselves.

As the old saying goes: Don't get mad, get even.

Do You Belong to the "Democrat" Party?

2006-08-04T17:08:00.000-07:00

I think that the first time I consciously remember hearing it was in a comment by Bob Dole. It grated from the first time I heard it and I guess I wondered if Dole just misspoke. Then I heard it again and then again and it quickly became clear that big time dissing was underway. The "Democrat" Party.

Hendrik Hertzberg's "Talk of the Town" in the Aug 7 & 14 issue of
The New Yorker discusses this issue at length. Click here to read the article.

It's almost the perfect put down for the Republicans to use because it sounds like bad grammar which helps burnish their good ole boy credentials and exalts the ignorance to which they seem so fervently to aspire.

Hertzberg's article speaks to the pejorative use of the noun "democrat" in lieu of the adjective, "democratic." It's like saying, "You're NOT democratIC." By misspeaking the name it quickly transitions into a put down.

I find it grating, but it falls a few terabytes short of being devastating. Again, most of the negative impact reverts to the speaker because they simply sound ignorant and ill-spoken.

The one development that I would vigorously protest, would be if the butt-heads in the media adopted the usage, and started saying "Democrat" Party. The name "Democratic Party" has been around even longer than Republican Party and if any name changes are to be made, it should be up to the members of the DemocratIC party to make them.

How would the Republicans like it if Democrats started referring to them as Repugnants? The Repugnant Party. I'm sure that's how most of us feel anyway, but of course most of us are way too polite to start doing that.

At least it's good English.

The Storm-Tossed Sea of Debt

2006-07-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

Digby at Hullabaloo devotes a lot of space today to one of the US's scariest and least discussed problems, personal debt. Now that Bush has paid off his campaign contributors in the banking/finance industries by tightening the bankruptcy laws, the highway robbers can reach even deeper into our wallets. Click here to read. Below is a quote that Digby cites from a study by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. Click here to see.

In a survey of 1,000 adults, we find a public widely aware of the problem of growing household debt and overwhelmingly supporting solutions to this issue. The public’s concern over this issue results from perceptions of an economy performing unevenly, from perceptions of rising costs of living, and for a surprising and pressing number, from first-hand experience with excess or unmanageable debt.

Topping most people's list of scary items are catastrophic medical issues. There is no forgiveness, no slack, no margin for error. A case of cancer, a serious accident, or any number of unanticipated calamities can knock even the most frugal and sensible saver right out of the water.

There is also too much spending for toys and items of no consequence. Driving around Silicon Valley, you can see driveways laden with boats, monster (and beyond) trucks with bells, whistles and huge tires, seadoos, huge RVs and none of those come cheap. I'm constantly amazed to see teenagers at the car wash with shiny, new wheels that cost major bucks. Are people paying cash for all of this? Who can say, but those toys can add up to some huge monthly payments.

But what do we expect? I grew up in the 50's and TV was mercifully absent until I was in high school. Now kids are bombarded with commercials before they even learn to talk. Every stage of life is now marked by a "demographic." My mother once complained about a silly car commercial and I pointed out that she wasn't part of the target demographic.

It's almost disappointing how vulnerable and how easily manipulated people are by ads. But having said that, millions of dollars are spent on research, testing and production so that each ad strikes its target with maximum impact. We are a nation being driven to consume. It's almost portrayed as a patriotic duty to consume in order to keep the economy firing on all cylinders, keep the corporate coffers flush with ever-increasing revenue.

So is it any wonder that the pursuit of goods is driving so many deeper into debt? Digby's post isn't easy on the banking industry either, and rightly so:

It isn't taxes that are keeping American up at night and it probably isn't jobs, at least on a massive scale. It isn't even terrorism or the war.

It's debt. People are going to be looking for some help with this problem and one place to start would be to rein in these avaricious credit card companies who got a nice handsome payoff with that heinous bankruptcy bill. This is an issue to which average Americans can relate: greedy credit card companies who can literally raise your rates for any reason at all causing your debt to cascade from manageable to overwhelming overnight. It wouldn't be hard to fix. There used to be laws against usury --- we can just dust them off.

Not a day goes by that I don't get not one, but several pitches from banks to apply for their credit cards. I recently canceled one of my MasterCards because I just didn't use it anymore. I had to actually argue with the representative to get her to cancel the account. They don't let go lightly.

Where is all of this headed? I'm a cycle believer, and I think that if (God forbid) we don't have an economic disaster of some kind, that people are just going to get sick and tired of buying, of getting, of having.

It's ironic that we keep hearing about "values voters" and the rise of religion in the US, while at the same time what we see are "values shoppers" and the continuing upward spiral of consumerism. Materialism is winning so far. It will be interesting to see how long we can sustain this decades-long shopping spree without bankrupting vast segments of the population, as well as the Treasury of the US.

Anger--When All Else Fails

2006-07-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

James Wolcott has two very angry columns today. And he makes some very good points and quotes some very poignant narrative from Beirut. To read click here and here.. And Kevin Drum has a very different take. Click here.

In my view there should be more anger over this Middle East savagery. There should in fact be blinding, foaming outrage at the level of barbarism that is meted out in the name of the United States and Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas. It was apparently not enough for Bush and his gang to drive Iraq into an insane and bloody civil war, but now they're urging Israel to rain destruction on Lebanon and perhaps Syria and Iran as well.

Whatever or whomever is nominated as "root cause" of this bloodshed, the delivery service is decidedly the US and Israel and their vicious counterparts Hamas and Hezbollah.

Yes, Hamas and Hezbollah are the original fomenters and the provocateurs. They are not nice people. They are as barbaric and as self-aggrandized a pack of criminals as have ever waltzed across the world stage. And their crimes are magnified by their dispersal among the civilian population of Lebanon. Yet the Israelis, knowing this, persist in killing all in the fashion of Arnold Amaury (Slay them all. God will know his own.)

In fact, it's hard to argue that the Likud (and succeeding) governments in Israel have played their cards very well over the years. While the Palestinians have been near impossible to deal with, Israel has still largely controlled the game. When one extremist group or the other committed an atrocity in Israel, the government made no distinction between the extremists and the rest of the population, but punished all as one, refusing to recognize that the Palestinians are a diverse people with all levels of political involvement from the extremists to the disengaged.

Israel's population is likewise stratified from the most conservative Likudniks and strident settlers to religious Hassidim and secular Russians. Israelis like Palestinians come in all flavors of political orientation. But the Palestinian extremists persisted in wantonly and randomly blowing themselves up in the middle of innocent Israeli crowds, prompting the population to support the most severe reaction.

So due to the actions of both sides, even the marginalized are now radicalized and the disengaged are now militant. It has been a noble achievement to go from the hopes of the Oslo accords to the despair of the intifada in a few brief years.

There are no victories in such an historic failure and few heroes. Both societies bear the guilt of their intransigence. The blood that is shed will linger over their history for generations and will spell hostility and damnation for their peoples for decades.

The Bush Administration's history of blunders and openly enabling Israeli's reactionaries to seize the initiative in the complex dance between the parties has effectively ceded the moment to the most extremist factions on both sides. One hears from all of the talking head "experts" that the situation is spinning out of control so completely and so rapidly that no one may be able stop it now. We may soon see the entire region go up in flames.

Anyone who happily embraces that legacy has sunk so far into barbarism that redemption is beyond all the powers of heaven and earth. God help us all.

On the Same Page as Digby

2006-07-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

See my post below and then read Digby. Here's what he has to say on the same subject at Hullabaloo. He sees Rove twittering with delight also because:

Karl Rove must be very happy this morning. He is convinced that "war" (it doesn't matter who or why) always accrues to the Republican party's benefit. And the media agree that when things heat up, they really want the guys with the big swinging members in charge.

Read the whole thing. He puts it much better than I can.

The Summer of our Malcontent or July Surprise

2006-07-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

The news for the past week has been déjà vu all over again. Remember 2002?…The last Congressional mid-term elections. It was Iraq then, and in summer 2002 we were being programmed to go to war with Saddam Hussein who was going to have nuclear weapons and all kinds of other Weapons of Mass Destruction real soon. Condi said:

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Source: Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, CNN (9/8/2002).
Quoted from http://www.bushoniraq.com/rice6.html

This week we hear that we’re already engaged in World War III, or is it World War IV? Newt Gingrich and the ubiquitous haranguing Neo-Cons can’t seem to decide, but it’s “definitely another World War”. (Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says "America is in World War III and President Bush should say so.")

Come on folks. Are we going to buy into this again? The Repugs launched the Iraq adventure midsummer of 2002, just in time to whip up fervor among the electorate and propel their candidates to an unusual mid-term gain for the Party holding the White House.

On the one hand, I’m thinking that people are a lot wiser and a lot more skeptical now after watching the Katrina fiasco unfold and after months of unceasing bad news from Iraq. But even on Air America, both Ed Schultz and Randi Rhodes still get callers who are fully committed to war with Hezbollah and Hamas and of course Syria and Iran “who are behind it all.”

I guess that there’s that one knee-jerky element of the population that just never gets it. It’s hard not to lapse into pejoratives, but in reading comments to some of the blogs, it’s definitely a less well-educated segment of the population. If they can’t do grammar and they can’t do spelling, you’ve just got to think that they don’t do history or politics too well either.

However, I’m sitting here in front of the TV watching the flames lick higher and higher in Israel and Lebanon and my profound skepticism keeps a close eye pealed for Karl Rove’s fingerprints, as well as a keep-Congress-Republican angle, in addition to a new campaign to spread fear and anger among the unplugged and disengaged electorate.

War drums are already deployed across the Corporate Media. False News, CNN and the NBC conglomerate have all crafted signature screens and martial music for breathless “Breaking News” interrupts. Gabberatchiks are providing the usual talking heads with platforms to relentlessly advance The Agenda.

No doubt task forces are in place with war rooms humming throughout the corporate establishment hatching plans to get in early and grab those government no-bid contracts and suck in billions in easy loot.

Ominously, I keep hearing that Syria and Iran are the “real problem.” The tone sounds a lot like the above remark from Condi, the sort of flat pronouncement framed with infallibility which strikes terror into soccer moms and drives testosterone levels off the charts in NASCAR dads. It’s the perfect prop for generating doubt about the opposition party and providing Republican candidates with a powerful tool to singe their adversaries in the upcoming general election.

So I hope that Howard Dean and Company are watching all of this unfold and are developing a better strategy than the slack-jawed, deer in the headlights confusion that saw us falter in 2002.

Sorry for the Lapse

2006-07-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry that I've fallen silent for over a week, but family matters and my pesky day job have reasserted their claims on my time. I'm hoping to be more consistent in my posting. With all the excitement in the world today, heaven knows, there's all kinds of material just waiting to be blogged. Cheers!

What in the World Do We Do with Iraq?

2006-07-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

What should we do about Iraq? Should we follow Cindy Sheehan’s advice and pull the troops out ASAP? Or do we listen to Congressman Murtha and redeploy the troops to a nearby staging area where they can respond to ad hoc threats? Or what about the Bush/Republican party line to “stay the course?”

Who knows? How does a random citizen sitting in any corner of the USA gather enough information to know which plan to support given the state of the media? How does any citizen know which of the many options carries the highest promise of success and the least danger of failure? In short, who does one vote for in the upcoming Congressional elections? Those who are determined to stay the course? Or those who want to either pull out or redeploy?

There’s probably enough information around to put two and two together and come up with something resembling four.

The first thing that we have to consider is that George W Bush has never disclosed the real reason for invading Iraq in the first place. It strains credulity to believe that the CIA and other intelligence services didn’t have a clearer view of reality inside Iraq around the time of the invasion. If that is in fact the case, then their incompetence exceeds even the most exaggerated estimates. True, there were many with ample reason to want Saddam gone and Iraq under new management, but for those groups to orchestrate such a successful fraud as presented by Colin Powell to the UN simply beggars the imagination and certanly ain't consistent with their subsequent laughable performance.

So if the WMD tale is camouflage, then that leaves Oil. While an oil grab is not beyond the Bush Administration, that alone wouldn't justify a full scale invasion. It was doubtless a contributing factor, but an oil grab would be too obvious and the rest of the world would be very unhappy. But don't count it out completely, at least not yet. There’s got to be more to the story.

Saddam Hussein was one of the bad guys. Nobody disputes that. He had taken a pot shot at George H.W. Bush and was definitely not an asset to the neighborhood. Given the opportunity he certainly might start reconstituting his WMD programs and thus should be taken out while he was weak, the “oppose Hitler before he marches into the Rhineland” argument. There may have been a glimmer of attention paid to this issue, but it probably wouldn't have been particularly compelling given the huge disparity between the US’s capabilities and anything that Iraq could ever mount.

Yet another side of the oil picture, however, might bring us some clarity. However strenuous Bush and oil companies’ denials, oil is a finite commodity. X-number of barrels of oil exist and once those are found and consumed, they are gone, gone, gone. Oil company executives must have some idea where things stand in the consumption of their product. When you consider the two oil company executives who are respectively President and Vice-president of the United States, then you know that this knowledge is found at the highest levels of the US government.

With India and China industrializing and their economies growing at double-digit rates, the quest for oil has the potential to get real ugly real soon. Consider that pre-World War II Japan resorted to military action when FDR turned off their oil. Oil is the lifeblood of industrial nations. They’ve got to have it or droop and die.

So are we in Iraq because Bush’s Neocons factored in the rising geo-political need for oil thinking that it would be worth weathering domestic criticism and overseas ill-will if that would put the US government in a position to exercise influence over Iraqi oil?

If that’s the case, then that explains Bush’s “stay the course” policy in Iraq. By various reports coming out of Iraq, the US is busily building bases across the country. The cynic would conclude that Bush and the Republicans feel that they can (must) hang on to control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections, and then they can fully consolidate their penetration of Iraq; get the US so fully committed that pulling out would be inconceivable no matter which party was in power.

That way, when China, India et al come looking for oil, they will have to do business, not with an unpredictable Saddam Hussein, but with an American puppet government in Iraq.

Plausible? Frankly, I don’t know. But nothing else about Bush’s open-ended commitment to Iraq makes sense either.

The Democrats need to harp on Republican incompetence and total lack of any plan to gain traction against the "conventional wisdom" that the Republicans will keep us safer. The fact that three plus years after the invasion we still don’t have a clear idea why we went there in the first place, what “victory” might look like if and when we ever get it, or how in the hell to get out in any case, tells us that there never was much of a plan. There was a military plan in the beginning and it worked beautifully, but there was clearly no political plan and things went to hell very quickly and have plumbed deeper the depths of hell ever since.

How dumb is that…to invade Iraq against the expressed wishes of most of the rest of the world and not even have a plan for what to do with the country once it is conquered? The mind reels.

No Time for Faint Hearts

2006-06-29T20:57:00.002-07:00

The Karl Rove strategy for the fall elections is now becoming very clear. True to form, Karl has devised a plan that is as breathtaking in its simplicity as it is starkly evil. Since the weakest point in the Bush and Republican armor is Iraq, Karl has clearly decided to run ON IRAQ. What, you say? How can that be?

It's no secret. Already they are shouting campaign mantras at the Democrats, "Cut and run,"Retreat before the mission is done," "wave the white flag of surrender." AmericaBlog has a good write up plus quotes and links. It's worth a look.

I have to ask, where in the hell are the Congressional Democrats? Who's making the case against Bush and Karl? Even if the Democrats in Congress don't have a magic plan to extract us from an impossible situation, why aren't they making the case that Bush and his keystone kronies have proven one thing since the invasion of Iraq: They don't know what the fuck they're doing...period, exclamation point. But all I hear from House and Senate Democrats are meek little denials that even I don't find convincing, let alone compelling.

They need to get on the stick, or Karl and Krew will reign on come November. This latest Supreme Court decision (Hamdan v Rumsfeld) should have brought complete clarity to any remaining doubters. Bush has four solid, reliable SCOTUS votes and one more death or resignation, he's got it all. Nothing will then stand in his way to becoming Emperor George W and then God help the rest of us.

The Rich Get Richer...and say, "Screw the Poor!"

2006-06-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

This blog posting from a DailyKos diary covers some familiar ground, but the writer's (Brettnet) got some fresh insights which are worth reviewing. He quotes a reporter asking Gore Vidal how it is to live full-time in the United States and Gore replies:

If you care about America it's dreadful," he said. "If you are making money you don't care.

Brettnet describes sitting next to a couple of Republicans on a plane recently and they say that they regard John Edward's "two Americas" meme as divisive because they don't see it. They are completely oblivious to the existence of the poor in this country.

I often see this same attitude among the stolid middle class. But fine friends, watch out. As long as the lower percentiles get their crumbs, they may continue to tolerate this benign and clueless neglect, but if the crumbs stop flowing, watch out. If the Right thinks that it's big and bad right now, it ain't seen nuthin' yet. If the unempowered and the disadvantaged ...ever find themselves in a real corner where food and other basic needs of life become hard to get, their anger is going to grow and then explode and we should all fear for the outcome.

It's one thing for a pack of middle class Right Wing, Limbaugh-Coulter lovers to get pissed off. Besides the fact that only they really know what they are pissed off about, they've got an investment to protect. Most of them have homes, jobs and some wealth and status. If conditions ever deteriorate for the underclasses to the point that rage develops and escalates, they have nothing to lose and the Rodney King riots in South Central LA will be just the foretaste of what kind of violence and anarchy that we might face.

Nature abhors a vacuum. And vacuums come in all shapes, sizes and socio-economic statuses. For examples, study the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, post-World War I Germany and the list goes on.

It ain't pretty, but I see us plunging headlong into the trap in much the same way that we are sublimely and blissfully plunging into a global warming disaster. To quote a very tired cliche, Denial is more than a river in Egypt.

CNN in a Nutshell

2006-06-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

This is one of the funniest commentaries that I have read in a very long time. The butt of the humor is already a butt in other respects and deserves all of the ridicule that it gets. And that bulls eye is: CNN.

Here is Nance Gregg working over CNN...couldn't happen to a nicer _____. You fill in your own description. Click here.

The Seven Cons

2006-06-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

Ian Welsh provides one of the best quick-reference rundowns of the seven main components of the Right Wing coalition that I have seen. His posting is at The Agonist and can be accessed by clicking here.

I slightly disagree with one element of his assessment. He assigns the lead role in the coalition to the "TheoCons" or the Religious Right. I agree that they are the muscle of the coalition, the foot soldiers, but I remain convinced that the core, the brains, the driving force is what he calls the "CorporateCons." The corporate elites provide the financing for just about everything in the Right Wing coalition, from the think tanks and their prolific publications and talking heads to the Republican National Committee with its ruthless tentacles reaching into every level of American politics.

Looking at the Reagan/Bush I era and then at Bush II, all successful initiatives benefited the Corporate elites (tax breaks, reduced regulation, laissez-faire approach to mergers, marketing tactics, “free trade” and off-shoring, etc) while a lot of noisy lip service was paid to the "TheoCon's," the Religious Right's "social issues" (abortion, gay rights, separation of church and state, school prayer, etc)without any tangible, concrete results.

In fact, my bet is that the movers and shakers among the CorporateCons are terrified that Roe v Wade might be overturned. That would de-energize the TheoCons and throw high octane gasoline on the liberal coalition's agenda and arguably give the whole Right Wing four flat tires.

Actually, none of the Religious Right’s central issues have been effectively promoted, let alone implemented, by any of the Right Wing administrations from Reagan to Bush II. I think that in addition to the above-stated reasons, the Republican Party knows that most of the Religious Right’s agenda is just too scary for mainstream America and they are playing the same slippery and cynical game with the Religious Right that they played with Southern segregationists back during Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.” They use all the code words, they make backroom assurances, but never follow through because they know well that none of it will fly in mainstream America.

I believe most Americans who consider themselves conservatives, spell the word with a lower case "c." I also believe that most are primarily concerned with raising their families and leading a comfortable and fulfilling life. To date, Republicans have succeeded in convincing them that they can best provide the political context in which that can happen. They have done it by controlling the media, playing fast, loose and scornfully with the truth, by pandering shamelessly with wedge issues and by relentlessly pushing hate and fear buttons.

And so far, it has worked. They are very lucky in having the disengaged and self-absorbed population that calls 21st Century America home. They are also fortunate that the preceding generation of Right Wingers effectively castrated the media and forged the entire institution into a willing and compliant tool.

Welsh's piece in The Agonist will give you good clarity on the main players on the Right.

The Media is the (Right Wing) Message

2006-06-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

This is the text of feedback I submitted to MoveOn.org:

As Jamison Foser writes in Media Matters (http://mediamatters.org/items/200605260016),

"The defining issue of our time is the media...

The dominant political force of our time is the media.

Time after time, the news media have covered progressives and conservatives in wildly different ways -- and, time after time, they do so to the benefit of conservatives."

From Russert and Broder to the foaming mouths of talk radio, Progressives are under assault as never before. And what makes this so serious is that there is simply NO BALANCING counterweight. The So-Called Liberal Media (SCLM, thank you, Eric Alterman) is not just missing in action, it is a Right Wing red herring.

Most Americans dismiss politics as "not their thing" and as a result base their voting choices on the blather from Sunday talking heads, shameless Right-wing op-ed pages and the slanted views expressed on talk radio and cable and broadcast news.

This has to stop if Progressives are going to make any inroad into the relentless takeover of America by the Religious Right, the Corporate elites and the Neo-Con imperial expansionists.

There is only one way to address this and it's to hit them in the pocket book. I propose that MoveOn.org support existing efforts (The Daily Howler, Media Matters , Crooks and Liars, and others) to monitor TV, newspapers and periodicals and perhaps even expand their scope to include the entire media spectrum.

The results should be publicized to promote a movement to cancel subscriptions to unbalanced outlets and to focus purchasing power on Progressive-friendly media and their advertisers and away from Right Wingnut advertisers (like Domino's Pizza, Amazon.com and WalMart). Web sites like Media Matters, BuyBlue.org. should be aggressively supported. Progressives selected by Nielsen and Arbitron should be encouraged to NEVER include Right Wing-supporting media when they report their viewing and listening.

The Right has been doing this for decades with the result that they now OWN the media. NBC can get away with lionizing Ann Coulter on the Today Show and Jay Leno because there's no price to pay, there's no outcry from Progressives, their advertisers peacefully continue to advertise, their ratings remain untouched. CNN, MSNBC and Fox can maintain their stable of Right Wingnuts who cover the airwaves with venom simply because they can...there's perhaps only the slightest murmur from the Left but no other impact.

My own hometown newspaper, the San Jose Mercury-News, has been a balanced paper since I began subscribing 30 years ago. However, its parent company Knight-Ridder has recently been sold and the Mercury-News has been bought by some conglomerate I have never heard of before. I'm keeping a close eye, however, and if they start moving to the Right, my 30-year subscription is coming to an end.

I did cancel my 40-year Time magazine subscription when they put Ann Coulter on the cover with a long and supportive article.

Only with a concerted, organized and relentless effort from a group like MoveOn.org can this be effective. We can have house parties, we can have contribution drives and we can sign petitions all we want, but until we address the nature, quality and orientation of the media where most of the US population gets its news and forms its political judgements, we are simply putting out forest fires with a dixie cup.

Onward Christian Soldiers.....

2006-05-30T17:59:00.000-07:00

There is a fascinating article by Michelle Goldberg on the Alternet, "The Tyranny of the Religious Right." Goldberg discusses the growing power and influence of evangelical Christianity:

Whenever I talk about the growing power of the evangelical right with friends, they always ask the same question: What can we do? Usually I reply with a joke: Keep a bag packed and your passport current.

I don't really mean it, but my anxiety is genuine. It's one thing to have a government that shows contempt for civil liberties; America has survived such men before. It's quite another to have a mass movement -- the largest and most powerful mass movement in the nation -- rise up in opposition to the rights of its fellow citizens. The Constitution protects minorities, but that protection is not absolute; with a sufficiently sympathetic or apathetic majority, a tightly organized faction can get around it.

The mass movement I've described aims to supplant Enlightenment rationalism with what it calls the "Christian worldview." The phrase is based on the conviction that true Christianity must govern every aspect of public and private life, and that all -- government, science, history and culture -- must be understood according to the dictates of scripture. There are biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates, and only those with the right worldview can discern them. This is Christianity as a total ideology -- I call it Christian nationalism. (Read the rest)

One of the very troubling developments of the past several decades has been the emergence if not the explosion of Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism. I say "troubling" not because I'm anti-religious although I am unabashedly areligious. However, the forces that are afoot across the land are not the benign Christians of our sunday school days or even the strict, no-nonsense nuns of my parochial school days.

These are fire-breathing, take-no-prisoners zealots who have set their sights on taking over the USA and changing it into a "Christian nation." One can only speculate that their vision has not yet happened because most of the people in the US are simply not interested in their style of living. However, the "Dominionists" and the "Reconstructionists" both proclaim their goal to be taking over the USA "for Jesus."

So if the majority of the population is not willing to jump on the bandwagon and join these fanatics in launching a "Christian nation," then one can only conclude that once they take over, conversions will be at gun-point, knife-point or by whatever means of intimidation and coercion works.

We've already seen a glimpse of this totalitarianism at the Air Force Academy. A Jewish cadet complained to his father that he was coming under increasing criticism for his religion. The criticism was coming from evangelical "Christian" cadets and the officer corps. One article that I read even implicated the Academy commandant in the move to intimidate non-Christians.

My first thought at reading about the Air Force Academy was that they were packing the officer corps with "Christian" soldiers. Then I wondered if this same scenario was playing out at West Point and Annapolis. What a perfect scheme, to infiltrate the officers' corps of the various branches. Enlisted troops do what they're told. If an officer orders them to take part in a coup d'etat, it would be hard to refuse as an individual.

All I can tell any readers that may happen along and read this is, keep your eyes open. If you see things moving in ways that you find uncomfortable, jump in and become active. These "Christians" are not just motivated, they are fanatical and literally will stop at nothing to implement their agenda. Also, I put "Christians" in quotes because that is how they describe themselves. I personally find very little similarity between 21st Century fundamentalists and evangelicals and anything that I've ever read in the New Testament. They're entire movement is about as far from anything that we hear from or see of Jesus Christ in the gospels.

The Enron Elite Meet the Street

2006-05-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

So Ole Jeffrey Skilling and Kenny-boy Lay couldn't put one over on the jury. I would imagine that champagne corks would be popping around the nation if Enron's victims could still afford champagne.

There is no part of me that feels sorry for these two. The destruction of lives that they apparently set in motion makes them very special thugs. Their victims may number in the tens (hundreds?) of thousands and include simple workaday stiffs like you and me who only wanted to save for their retirement and now have nothing.

To me the most distasteful part has been how Skilling and Lay have been making themselves out to be the victims. How they have tried to paint their prosecution as persecution. It sounds a lot like the gang in the White House. They always have someone else to blame for their failures. It's always them who are the victims.

What a pack of despicable scum. And I don't have any more to say about these two.

Remarkable Capitulation

2006-05-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

Senate Democrats have again jumped into their role as Bush enablers. Four Democrats on the Senate Intelligence (?) Committee voted to confirm Michael Hayden as Director of the CIA. They included my own Senator, Diane Feinstein (see separate posting). To get a full discussion on this topic (including links), see Glenn Greenwald's, Unclaimed Territory.

Feinstein Totally Blows It!

2006-05-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

Senator Feinstein, what in God's name were you thinking??!!

How could you even think about voting to approve the nomination of Gen Michael Hayden as the Director of the CIA? This is the man who not only oversaw the illegal and unconstitutional eavesdropping on millions of Americans' phone conversation, but who designed, promoted and implemented it. He is the focal point of the whole program.

Senator Feinstein, are you prepared to guarantee your constituents that this program will never be used for partisan political purposes? Because if your beltway blindness obscures that line of thinking from view, that's what a lot of people out in the real world feel that this is all about. This administration's leaders are committed idealogues who have demonstrated time and again that nothing stands in the way of their implementing their agenda...that has included the laws of the United States and even the Constitution of the United States. And many see eavesdropping as a further example of their grab for power.

I can't understand how you could vote for this man and still look yourself in the mirror and say that you are not violating your oath to uphold the Constitution. This nomination for most progressive Americans was a no-brainer. This guy is simply unacceptable.

So Senator Feinstein, the impact on me as your constituent is total. Quite simply, I will never vote for you again...and to visualize that, know that I have voted for you repeatedly going back to your days as a San Francisco Supervisor and later for mayor. Whatever mindless partisan the California Republican Party decides to run against you next time (and it will be a mindless partisan, I have no doubt), I will simply leave the ballot blank or vote for a Green or Peace and Freedom candidate. However, I will never vote for you again.

This action tells me that you "don't get it." You don't understand the idealogical nature of this administration and you don't understand their agenda to promote the interests of the Corporate Elites, the fanatical religious fringes and the paranoid militarists over the vast multitude of middle class citizens.

Real Men are...Republicans?

2006-05-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

Francis Wilkinson, in the online American Prospect (tip of the hat to Donkey Rising) has a long discussion about how the Republicans have styled themselves as the "testosterone party." His central example is George W alighting on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in his crotch revealing flight suit. That particular example has gone down as a mix of arrogance and pandering.

This is a fairly long article, but well worth your time.

The Real Problem with NSA Surveillance

2006-05-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

Annalee Newitz has a great article on Alternet about the NSA phone eavesdropping episode. She wonders why the polls are finding only 53% of the population who have a problem with their telephone conversations being recorded and stored by the US Government.

Here's what disturbs me: in light of recent revelations that the National Security Agency has been illegally collecting vast databases of information about every single phone call made in the United States since late 2001, only 53 percent of US citizens polled by Newsweek think the government has gone too far in its efforts to stop terrorism.

That's a majority, but not a very large one. And in the same poll, 41 percent said they thought spying on phone calls made to and from everyone in the country was necessary.

This arouses the same sinking feeling I got many years ago when I was a young graduate student at UC Berkeley, grading my very first set of papers. From that sample, and many others in subsequent courses, I learned that 70 percent of college students in an upper-division English course at a top university cannot construct a coherent argument using evidence taken from books they've read.

That's what convinced me that most people, even highly educated ones, go through their lives without ever examining the way rhetoric works, and the way evidence is used (or abused) in its service.

I can't disagree with anything that she writes. However, I was not surprised by the percentages of approval/disapproval. I've long since abandoned any hopes that my fellow citizens will do any work to inform themselves about the compelling issues of the day.

While I'm in full agreement with Ms Newitz about the complacency and/or cluelessness of 47% of the population, I have an even worse fear about this additional "crossing of the line" by the Bush crew. Two of the possible outcomes of this arrogant and illegal tactic include this type of surveillance becoming routine and commonplace, or on the other hand, for us to overreact and pass draconian legislation which hampers legitimate and legal attempts to pursue intelligence.

Whatever else we know, we must acknowledge that Planet Earth is a dangerous and a challenging place. The most powerful nation on earth is a natural target for all sorts of terrorists, loose cannons, opportunists and bad people. No one in their right mind would suggest that intelligence gathering is not vital to our security. However, the very people whose security is at stake should not be the subject of the surveillance or should the act of gathering this surveillance be done in violation of the Constitution or the laws of the United States.

Intelligence gathering must be done with due respect for our laws and our lives as well as those of law-abiding citizens everywhere. What I don't buy is that "if people do get stepped on, they're just collateral damage" in the War on Terra. BS!

The final thought on this topic is that we have no guarantee that the Bushoviks are really gathering intelligence on Al Qaida. Given their track record and their M.O. in many past capers, they may well be using this data to spy on political enemies. These are idealogues, remember, and they have consistently demonstrated in the past that they are willing to desecrate the Constitution, violate the law and otherwise trash our national integrity and whatever mores and other long-standing customs that might get in the way of them advancing their agenda.

More Molly

2006-05-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

Molly Ivins has two new posts that provide good information and are (as always) good reading. To see click here and here.

Mollie Gets It Right Again

2006-05-20T17:04:00.000-07:00

There are few things or people in this world that you can count on. Molly Ivins is one of the people that always come through with valuable insight. Click on this link to be cybernetically transported to Molly-land and read what she has to say about Dear Leader and his Partei.

Five Points About High Oil Prices

2006-05-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

Bob Higgins at http://agonist.org talks about Tyson Slocum of The Public Citizen appearing on Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central program. Click this link to go see. You'll be glad you did.

Molehill or Mt Everest?

2006-05-15T16:53:00.000-07:00

I apologize in advance, but I just can't get worked up over the "undocumented worker" crisis in this country. Yes, our borders should be secure. Yes, foreign citizens of any stripe should not be sneaking across our borders. Yes, "amnesty" is "not fair." I "kinda" agree with everybody and also disagree with everybody.

My take: First of all, this is not a law enforcement problem. It is an economic imbalance problem. If Mexico were a country with a real economy, a real government and real political parties, then it would most certainly solve its own problems. However, Mexico is none of those things. I remember a Senator (I believe it was Daniel Patrick Moynihan) opposing NAFTA because Mexican courts were neither impartial nor honest and getting a fair judgement relies heavily on how well the palms are greased.

My own impression (however uneducated) is that Mexico, along with much of Latin America has a stark "have/have not" problem. Enhancing that problem is the "haves" unwillingness or inability to figure out how to bring more of their population into the mainstream economic process. If you are born poor in Mexico, you are likely to remain poor unless you stumble on a very lucky break, are inordinately good looking/beautiful or are a frigging genius. Otherwise, get used to tortillas and beans and perhaps a couple of grains of rice on holidays. With prospects like those, who would want to stick around?

You can extrapolate that description to much of Central and even South America. An individual not "to the manor born" can either fall in love with manual labor (when they can find it), and enjoy the rigors of hunger and the challenge of disease without viable health care. It sounds like a regular paradise.

Now that might have flown 50 years ago, but now, whatever else the poor in Mexico may lack, they do see television and movies. Also, likely many of the same gringos now bleating loudest about the "illegal problem" have built resorts along the Mexican coasts. Now the Mexican poor may view the "other side" as they luxuriate within walking distance of desperate slums. Now the poor camposinos can clearly see what they're missing and want some of it too.

The answer to the US illegal immigration problem is not to erect an iron curtain between Mexico and the USA. That didn't even work too well for the USSR. And yes, the iron curtain was installed to keep their people in, our wall would be to keep the barbarians out. However you slice and dice, a wall will become a symbol of failure for both countries, for both societies. For Mexico it will symbolize a failed economy, a failed political system and a failed society which can't or won't provide for its citizens and from all appearances, doesn't care. For the US it will mean a failure of vision, a failure as a neighbor and perhaps worst of all, a triumph of mean-spiritedness.

The Right has shown us the ugliness of intolerance and xenophobia. It has shown us the triumph of hyper-chauvinism and the embarassment of affluent paranoia. I have heard numerous Anglos spitting nails over the "wetbacks" and not one that I've met can show any evidence that they have themselves been personally injured by an illegal alien.

What we're seeing, I believe, is what was historically called "know nothing-ism." This is a blanket hatred of the group du jour. It could be Catholics, Jews, Blacks, Irish, Italians, Poles and the list goes on. It's like the survivors in a lifeboat pulling in the life savers before anyone else can climb in. They made it, screw the rest.

Unfortunately, for a country with a very short event horizon, this will not be solved in a year. And it will not be solved ever with the steps being taken so far. The only solution I can see is for Mexican society to evolve to where it can take care of its own.

It is a total and complete disgrace for a country, as rich and as blessed by nature with resources as Mexico, to keep its citizens in such abject poverty. The US needs to start using some of its resources to help Mexico find its way toward being a viable modern state.

Short term, I don't think that anything will work. This problem has been long in the making and will likely take long to resolve.

NSA Spying Scandal

2006-05-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

BobcatJH at Democratic Underground has another posting that asks THE big question...are they really listening for Al Qaeda or is this really just domestic political spying. You know, with this crowd anything is not just possible, but probable. Read his posting for a lot more.

Lions and Tigers and Bears!! OH MY!!

2006-05-12T20:31:00.000-07:00

Another visit to Democratic Underground to see what BobcatJH wants to ask the administration. He's afraid that George W and minions may have some "shock and awe" up their sleeve to help get their groove back.

I sure hope not, but with this crowd, I've learned to expect not just the worst, but the worst imaginable and beyond.

Wow!! You Gotta Read This One!!

2006-05-12T20:23:00.000-07:00

Democratic Underground has a real champagne cork popper at this URL. I've been hoping for this article for a very long time.

Update: The posting that this links to has been called into question. It hasn't been totally discredited, but obviously the predicted events have not as yet transpired, and until they do, caveat lector!

Second Update: This issue is continuing to evolve. Click here and here for the latest.

How to Start a War

2006-05-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

This is a fascinating (and too true) post which gets right into the NeoCon game plan.

The Colbert Effect

2006-05-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

What is left to say about Stephen Colbert's tour de force at the White House Correspondent's and Stenographer's Association black tie dinner? The outraged Right appears to be so tongue tied that only raspy barking is coming from their pet carriers.

Most of the outrage that I have read about is coming from the Press. A good overview is presented in the Chicago Sun Times (thanks to AmericaBlog for the link) I guess that they are the one with the most to be ashamed of. Bush is just being Bush and his minions are just being good storm troopers, but the press is supposed to be (dare I say it?) fair and balanced. Well, as we all have known since early in the Clinton Administration, they are anything but.

So all in all, I would like to extend my profound gratitude and hearty salutation to Stephen Colbert, for his courageous and ballsy performance (click for video) (thanks to Crooks and Liars for the link to Google Video). I encourage all to watch it.

The Repug spin seems to revolve around it "not being funny." Well, maybe not, but I know that I wasn't looking for "funny" as much as "effective." Let's be real clear, Stephen Colbert stood feet away from George W Bush and proceeded to skewer him and his pack of jackals and their long trail of misdeeds every way but loose. In short, he did what the news media should have been doing all the while, but haven't.

Again, thanks to Stephen Colbert for speaking up for all of us...where it counts and to whom it counts.

Another Fine Mess

2006-05-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

Well, you'd never know it by reading the daily newspaper or listening to the broadcast news or (gag) cable news, but the Bush era is exploding in a dizzying array of scandal. It's hard to know where to begin, so I won't. I'll add some links to other blogs who cover it much better than I possibly could such as Talking Points Memo, Glenn Greenwald, and Hullabaloo. There are many, many more, but I'll let you find those.

The first cynical thought that jumps into my mind, harking back to the (wink wink, elbow in the ribs) Clinton "bimbo eruptions," is "scandal eruptions." And the word on the street is that you ain't seen nuthin yet! Couldn't happen to a nicer group of creeps.

This now seems to involve the entire Repugnican experience...Congress, the Executive and of course the owners of the above, the Corporate Elites. I thought that I was pretty well jaded after living though the JFK assassination, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran hostages, Reaganomics and the right wing rabies epidemic during the Clinton administration, but I stand humbled. I am daily flabbergasted by the latest news from the front lines.

There appears to be no depth to which they won't descend. The chutzpah of Rumsfeld staring into the camera lens saying, "I'm not a liar," harks back to Nixon's, "I'm not a crook." Now we find out after Goss resigned from the CIA this week, that we've got "Hookergate." Apparently "the Dukestir's" defense contractor friends provided limousines, prostitutes and suites in (where else?) the Watergate complex in Washington. I've read that for these paragons of the anti-gay Right even may have enjoyed the services of male prostitutes. Just when you thought that this bunch had hit bottom, something else comes along that blows that bar away.

So fasten your seat belt, stow your tray tables in their original upright position and enjoy the turbulence.

I'm Back!!

2005-09-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

I sort of rolled up and stayed out of sight after last year's disappointing election results. My greatest disappointment came from knowing that when such a huge number of my fellow countrymen look at George W. Bush, they see something different than I do. To me it's so obvious what a deceitful, self-promoting, spoiled little-rich kid that GWB is that I guess I can't understand why everyone doesn't see him as I do.

However, they don't and it's time for me to get over it. Events have almost overtaken my disappointment in any case. The Bush Administration appears to be in a state of rapid disintegration even as we speak. And if I might indulge myself for a moment, it couldn't happen to a nicer group of assholes.

Anyway, none of it portends a Democratic sweep in the next election. I think that the Democrats lately would be losing elections even if they were running unopposed. This party needs some fresh ideas and some fresh leaders. The Congressional group appears to want to hold on to power as long as they possibly can no matter what the price. They certainly have raised ineptitude to an art form.

I'm still, however, of the belief that the family dog could run this country with more imagination and honesty than the Bush administration has demonstrated so far. So I will continue to support anyone opposing the usual array of right-wing fanatics that the Republicans are seeing fit to put up for election, no matter who their opponent is. As I said to anyone who asked during the past year's election: I'd vote for a pile of horse shit before I'd vote for George W. Bush or any of his ilk.

And I still feel the same way.

How did all this get started?(Part 3)

2004-11-20T23:35:00.000-08:00

God, Gays, Guns and Jezebel Fonda

As opposition to the Viet Nam war, the draft and the increasingly successful civil rights movement began gaining traction in the late Sixties, Middle America moved in the opposite direction. Richard Nixon called them the “Silent Majority” and claimed them as his own in his narrow defeat of Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Now we call their part of the country the “flyover states.” But back then all the rioting and marching on either coast pissed them off. Jane Fonda was widely regarded as a Jezebel, an enemy of America. And "liberal" started to become a dirty word.

Lyndon Johnson is said to have remarked after signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that “the Democratic Party had lost the South for a generation.” He turned out to be right. And just like clockwork, Richard Nixon launched his “Southern Strategy” during the 1968 election campaign which pandered to white Southerners and offered them a receptive ear. They bought in and have been Republicans ever since.

So briefly, the Democratic Party sacrificed its entire southern wing to support civil rights for Blacks which took the Democrats from a comfortable majority party to being on a rough parity with the Republicans. That is why I grind my teeth about people like Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice and J.C. Watts.

Now welcome Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich who founded the Moral Majority in 1979, a major milestone in the fundamentalist Christian journey from pure religion to full engagement in politics. The Religious Right that we have today emerged in opposition to the various “liberation movements” of the Sixties and the Seventies. My own cynical view is that a huge block of those roots go back to white southerners’ rage against the success of the civil rights movement. Fundamentalist- evangelical Christianity is deeply embedded in southern culture and segregationists often used the Bible to condemn racial integration.

However, Roe v Wade in 1972, as well as the emergence and sporadic acceptance of Gay rights plus the cultural fall out from the “Sexual Revolution” further energized fundamentalists and evangelical Christians to organize and struggle against those forces. Abortion especially fueled the politicization and the coalescence of the Religious Right. Not only did they condemn it as “baby killing” but they reviled its emergence from “forbidden” sexual liaisons which in origin and result strike at the very heart and soul of the uncompromising patriarchal social system from which Christianity springs.

Finally, the always aggressive and ever-aggrieved National Rifle Association brought its own brand of uber-fanaticism to an ever-fanaticizing Republican Party. In 1991 Wayne LaPierre took over control of the NRA and proceeded to bring it to new heights of hyperventilation. Laugh all you want but the NRA had not only some of the most extensive mailing lists around, but on the other end of those lists were a hair-trigger membership who would fire off pungent telegrams and make outraged calls to senators and congressmen when word came down from LaPierre. They were potent political warriors right out of the box.

Add all these folks up and you’ve got quite a party. And if they can only forget about all the things that they don’t like about each other and really learn to hate those God-denying liberals, then they got the whole enchilada.

Well guess what? The very man that could pull that off rode into town on a white horse and wearing a white hat. That man could only be Ronald Reagan. With a nod of the head, the promise of a smile and a hearty “there you go again,” he devastated an already devastated Jimmy Carter and rode the resulting electoral landslide right to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Him’n Nancy.

I guess what brought in the “Reagan Democrats” and the southern good ole boys and the western “straight-shooters” was that after all that female liberation and gay rights and nigras jumping off'n the plantation, n’shit...that it was again all right to be a real gol durned MAN for Christ-sakes. All that PC crap about not pinchin’ dollies' fannies and not beatin’ up a fag or two was reeeeversed. It’s not that Ron ever actually said anything about it, but you just knew that he would if he could. He gave a tacit seal of approval to being a gol durned MAN again and not being ashamed of it. And that brought them into the heart of the Grand Old (man’s) Party.

Reagan also pandered to the Religious Right. When called upon to do so, he could give one of those Academy Award performances that he never got an opportunity to give during his actual movie career and bring tears to Pat Robertson’s and Jerry Falwell’s and Gary Bauer’s eyes and condemn, well, whatever they were condemning that day, abortion, gays, secular humanists, who knows? Reagan’s bravura performances for the Religious Right had them baying in tongues, which is very scary.

However, it built the base and the base was everything. It could take the conservative movement into the 21st Century and perhaps return the USA to fabled pre-Roosevelt times when corporations were triumphant and when the business of America was business.

Next post: Bringing it all together

How did all this get started?(Part 2)

2004-11-20T22:22:00.000-08:00

Conservatives Reframe the Conversation

In Part 1 , I expressed the opinion that the primary fault-line in today’s politics lies in the competition between the corporate establishment and the Federal government. I do not mean to minimize the Religious Right’s aggressive agenda or the libertarians’ historic alienation from government. However, I believe that in politics when you say “primary fault line” you have to look for the biggest power source. That is unquestionably US corporations.

US companies held sway over the late 19th Century and despite Theodore Roosevelt’s trustbusting, managed to maintain their hegemony even after the onset of the Great Depression. With the defeat of Herbert Hoover in 1932 by Franklin Roosevelt, US companies and the conservative, laissez-faire attitude of the US Government were overwhelmed by the New Deal. Liberalism was the pre-eminent political philosophy for the next fifty years. Even Republican politicians began to embrace the New Deal and found it politically unwise to suggest undoing it.

Barry Goldwater was the first presidential candidate to campaign on a platform of trying to unravel the New Deal and its liberal legacy. But his 1964 bid failed for that and other reasons. The magnitude of his defeat appeared to ensure a continuation of the liberal dynasty for the foreseeable future.

In the trenches of Goldwater’s presidential campaign, however, were scores of energized, committed foot soldiers who were seriously determined to promote the conservative philosophy. There was a rudimentary infrastructure already in place including William Buckley’s National Review, a variety of efforts funded by H.L. Hunt’s money, the John Birch Society, and the American Enterprise Institute.

The importance of Goldwater’s defeat in 1964 is that supporters from all corners of the conservative movement rolled up their sleeves and began the long task of building a Movement that could win elections. They were soon attracting attention from Big Money. Richard Mellon Scaife, David and Charles Koch, Joseph Coors and other wealthy donors began funneling funds into conservative think tanks that were springing up including the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Independence Institute. Add to these, the Business Roundtable and the US Chamber of Commerce plus other corporate groups and you have very fertile soil to nurse a movement toward full maturity.

With the think tanks doing the intellectual and academic heavy lifting, the trade and corporate associations pumping in the cash and the Republican Party developing grassroots organizations, the conservative movement became a lean, mean machine.

Richard Nixon resigned the presidency and was succeeded by Gerald Ford who was unable to overcome the reaction to his pardoning Nixon and was defeated by Jimmy Carter. So now the Republicans were faced with a conservative southern Democrat. But Carter’s presidency was fraught with missteps and bad luck and as the 1980 election approached, the Republicans selected former California Governor Ronald Reagan to be their candidate.

I am no Reagan fan, but it is impossible to understate the important role he played in making conservatism again a powerful force in American politics. In fact, history may show that Reagan launched a new Conservative era in American politics.

The hard work and the relentless cultivation of ideas, candidates and voters all came together during the Reagan presidency. He selected his appointees from a vast network of conservative believers. The think tanks were endlessly supplying talking points and rationales for legislation and for opposing legislation.

During Reagan’s presidency, the entire focus of American politics was reframed. Preserving the New Deal, while still popular with a huge segment of the population, was now on the table. The Republicans knew they had to tread cautiously, but they also knew that Reagan’s rapport with the electorate gave them cover when they wanted to rewrite popular and sacrosanct legislation.

One of the most effective ways of cutting unwanted regulations was to appoint “friendlies” to oversight departments who simply failed to enforce the regulations. Even if there was an outcry, they would just brazen it out. The Reagan administration discovered an important tool in the short attention span and the short memory of the American electorate.

Next post: Guns and God Join the Party

How did all this get started? (Part 1)

2004-11-20T20:45:00.000-08:00

I think that the invective flying back and forth between the Right and Left completely misses the mark. The Right calls the Left "latte sipping, brie eating limousine liberals" and the Left calls the Right "religious fanatics and gun-toting red-neck morons."

All of the above may indeed be true, but it misplaces the true battle line.

What does sipping lattes or toting guns have to do with today's political issues? Such sticks and stones are red herrings meant to divert attention from the real division in the USA.

Recall what Deep Throat told Bob Woodward long ago on the cusp of another national nightmare: Follow the Money!! And as the old saying goes: Money equals power and that leads to the defining issue of our time: Who runs this country!!!

To find out, we have to follow the money.

No one, no thing in this world has more money than US Corporations. They have more money than ordinary mortals can imagine. So the operative equation is: money equals power and that is the primary axiom of politics.

Corporate money buys corporate political power which to a greater or lesser extent is beginning to control everything in our time. And the single-minded goal of the elite who wield that power is to keep it and expand it. Their purpose is to guarantee a friendly environment for their companies to operate, to be the master of their own destinies and to maximize profits come hell or high water.

And there is also only one institution in our society that can match that power in any credible way, the US Government.

The US Government has been developing a corporate regulatory structure since the time of Theodore Roosevelt and the corporate hierarchy is determined to stop it.

Only the Federal Government is able to knock on a CEO's front door and tell them that they are being bad boys and girls. Only the Federal Government has the clout to cause enough pain to control corporate behavior.

So whatever else you hear, whatever other issues roil the body politic these days, I submit that everything boils down to the ongoing struggle between the US corporate establishment on the one hand and the Federal Government on the other. The corporate strategy to win that struggle is to de-claw and co-opt the government's ability to tax and especially regulate.

The corporate elite also regard social programs, the "welfare state," as an unwarranted expropriation of THEIR money. They don't accept any responsibility for the poor, the infirm or the elderly because they are Darwinians and believe that only the strong will survive.

The Right Wing mantra since Ronald Reagan has been "tax relief" (it's YOUR money!). And that along with the whole mythology of "government waste," "welfare state" and "creeping socialism" has been constructed to erode the effectiveness of the government in exercising control over corporations. Since tax money is the lifeblood of any government, that is the Right Wing's prime target. Tax cuts cause burgeoning deficits which, they expect will promote cutting government programs.

The Reagan deficits were no accident. They just didn't create the level of civil turmoil that would have justified a wholesale cutting of programs. However, this is a multi-pronged attack. Industry-friendly cabinet officers were appointed who viewed regulation with a wink and a nod. Over the twelve years of the Reagan/Bush administrations, the regulatory structure was severely eroded.

But an embarassing episode intervened in the Right Wing effort to wrest the government back into the hands of the corporate elite and return to the "golden years" before Franklin Roosevelt. In 1992, Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush and became president.

From the very beginning of his term, Right Wing operatives were unleashed to spread rumors and disinformation, undermine Clinton's popularity and ultimately bring him down one way or another. However, not only did Bill Clinton prove to be adept at staying one step ahead, but his tax reform, passed soon after the start of his first term, resulted in closing the deficits and ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity. Clearly Clinton had to go.

Early in Bill Clinton's Presidency, an extensive Right Wing infrastructure emerged. It consisted of a network of operatives from Matt Drudge on the internet, to Fox News to Rush Limbaugh and a legion of imitators across talk radio. The mainstream press was silenced with ever-present threats at intimidation. The epithet "Liberal Media" caused reporters and editors across the print and electronic media to cower under their desks.

A new and decidedly dangerous era had dawned in American politics. The Left found itself blindsighted and largely unprepared for the onslaught. The corporate elite had pumped money into think tanks, foundations and operatives to take up their cause and take back the government. They formed alliances with libertarians as well as the fanatic Religious Right. Each element of the coalition seemed ready to put its own ultimate agenda on hold until the hated liberals could be vanquished.

Next post "Reframing the Question"

The Religious Right Can Be So Wrong

2004-11-16T22:01:00.000-08:00

The following is a Letter to the Editor of the San Jose Mercury News in response to an article, `God gap' blocks understanding of `moral values' phenomenon which appeared in last Sunday's Perspective section.

I read your Op Ed piece in the Sunday Mercury News Perspective section with great interest. I am one who views with disbelief and, yes, horror the elevation of right wing fundamentalism to a dominant political force now in our country. This is not a knee-jerk secular-humanist liberal revulsion for all them “Bible thumpers.” It is a concern born of the history of religious and political interaction. The results have never to my knowledge been pretty.

Our Founding Fathers included the separation clause in the Bill of Rights, because they were much closer historically to the horrors of the church/state combination. From the persecution of the Albigensians and Gnostics in the early Church to the blood baths of the Inquisition and later the witch trials across Europe and colonial America, the record of the religious state has been one of singular and horrific human suffering.
That is why the concept of the separation of Church and State is central to the United States of America. You write that:

The main point on which conservative evangelicals ram up against the rest of American society is the separation of church and state.

Many conservative evangelicals simply don't believe in such a divide when it comes to ``traditional values.''

I can only recoil in horror at that thought. “Traditional values” for one is often very different for another. That is why the government of the United States must be secular, must be operated outside the confines of any specific religion. This is a diverse country and it must accommodate the needs, beliefs and aspirations of Christians, Jews, Moslems and anyone of any faith or no faith who comes to live on these shores. By demanding primacy for their views and their beliefs, the Christian Right is in my view engaging in exceptionalism and some degree of arrogance.

The tone of your article I took to be suggesting that we on the left don’t “get it.” You write:

Many overlooked the political power of conservative evangelical churches largely because they could not imagine so many people could have such a different worldview. That kept them from understanding how the culture of evangelical churches -- set up, after all, to convert people -- can be an ideal political mobilizing machine. There's a regular time and place to meet, a sense of mission, small communities accustomed to teamwork, and leaders who are often strong communicators.

Okay, they are a lean, mean, fighting machine, that does not in itself bestow legitimacy or validate their mission. I view that fact with an additional note of alarm. I see the Christian Right positioning itself to impose its belief system and its agenda on the rest of us whether we like it or not.

Unfortunately, many of us see very little to like in the Christian right. We see strident preachers condemning our lifestyles without sparing the pejoratives. We see open and aggressive intolerance for gays who are often upstanding citizens and even role models in their communities, for scientists whose theories and whose discoveries don’t pass biblical muster, and for artists whose works may provoke thoughts and feelings that may fall outside the permissible bounds.

So, far from welcoming “salvation” from the Religious Right, many of us see them as a retrograde force trying to undo the gains that have been made in social justice and the extension of equality to women, gays and minorities over the last century. Since the Religious Right has gone to no pains to make its message palatable or user friendly to those not of the flock, their message remains couched in a highly repellent envelope.

There are many issues that opponents of the Religious Right could find common ground with them on. The most contentious issue is of course abortion. In my view, the Religious Right has one answer to this question and that is to shut it off. As one raised in the Catholic Church, I too feel very uncomfortable with abortion, however, I feel that there are many ways to reduce if not eliminate abortion including sex education and contraceptives. However, for the Religious Right, none of that is on the table. It’s either “my way or the highway.” And while the argument will no doubt be that these are moral principles that can’t be compromised, I can only respond that this is planet earth…not the kingdom of heaven. One will seldom be granted perfect alternatives. In many cases, it is necessary to pick the lesser of two or more evils. And that is one of the areas where I feel that the Religious Right has displayed no imagination but has instead retreated into moral cowardice. Abortion is an extremely complex issue and just closing it down will result in a reversion to the world prior to Roe v Wade…where the pillars of religion can congratulate themselves on defeating evil, but the dirty deed is still being performed in filthy back-alley abortion mills anyway…resulting in a high risk of infection and death to the women involved. Not to my mind a very Christian outcome.

I regret that opponents have ridiculed evangelical Christians. That is never appropriate and I don’t believe that it represents the views of the majority of those outside the fold. As I’ve tried to point out above, however, many do view your co-religionists with alarm. I will admit that as the Religious Right is now constituted, I see no chance of rapprochement or dialogue. For apparent moderates like yourself who seem to maintain an open mind, that is a different story. However, with the likes of James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others, I expect to be in permanent opposition.

Thanks for a thought-provoking article.

Best Regards
Gene Eldridge

Some Great Cartoons

2004-11-12T20:04:00.000-08:00

Hoffman blogspot has some great cartoons here and here and here. Enjoy.

The Sorry Gallery

2004-11-12T18:49:00.000-08:00

You've got to visit the Sorry Gallery where many, many people have sent in their pictures with a written apology for the extended reign of King George W. Click here and You too can join.

Tanks in LA???

2004-11-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

This is scary. I guess King George W is going to jump start Bush II with some real kick-ass hard ball. Here's the link to AmericaBlog (thanks to TBogg for the heads up). Notice that the army says that they took a wrong turn. Was it from the Prague Spring or as TBogg suggests, Tiananmien Square?

A Festive Coronation

2004-11-11T11:47:00.000-08:00

King George W is apparently going to be crowned
in the fashion to which he has grown accostomed. Click the link to get full details.

A seating plan has already been prepared and may be viewed by clicking the link. Be sure to enlarge so that you can see all of the glittering attendees.

Nader asking for recounts

2004-11-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

Woohoo...Ralphie is getting into the act, asking for recounts in five states.

Good for him. I doubt that anything will come of it, but I'm really uncomfortable with the anecdotal evidence that I've been hearing. I've also heard some harsh words in the blogosphere about liberals "getting over it" and start working on figuring out how to prevail in 2006 and 2008. I kind of go along with that, but if there was hanky panky (and Rove's MO certainly includes some outrageous hanky panky), then we need to get to the bottom of it. I never felt like the true story of the 2000 election ever saw the light of day and there is still a serious stench about it.

So, I say, Go Ralph! If he can pry loose some of the glue that held whatever scheme came down, then that would certainly prime the pump for further investigation. I was surprised that there were no up-and-coming reporters willing to jump into investigating the 2000 election as a way to make a name for themselves. I guess Bernstein and Woodward had faded from memory by then.

It would definitely be traumatic to the country if fraud were uncovered as Watergate showed. However, if our electoral process has been tampered with, we must find out and the guilty severely punished. If we can't trust our electoral process, our country is headed down the road to a scary and undemocratic future.

A Profile in Selfishness

2004-11-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

This week I was reminded why I was so fervently backing John Kerry for President. In a Washington Post article, Juliet Eilperin details how the Bush Administration is fighting off the scientists and their warnings about global warming.

State Department representatives have argued that the group, which has spent four years examining Arctic climate fluctuations, lacks the evidence to prepare detailed policy proposals.

So to grasp every loose nickel and dime for the energy industry, the Bush Administration is putting our (and their) children's inheritance at risk. There can be no other possible explanation, because we haven't seen the bar so high for evidentiary acceptability since the heyday of the tobacco industry.

And to super size their hypocrisy, the Administration claims that it opposes cutting carbon emissions "because it will cost jobs." Now the outsourcing apologists are "worrying" about jobs.

And of course this is another issue where Bush is way out of step with the rest of the world and doesn't seem to give a rat's ass.

Some council participants have begun to grumble about U.S. resistance to articulating a global climate policy. One European negotiator said the administration is trying to "sidetrack the whole process so it is not confronted with the question, 'Do you believe in climate change, or don't you?' " He added that while the other member nations will try to press the United States on the matter in the final talks, "I cannot see any solution to this unless [the administration] clearly changes its position."

And there's not a snowball in the arctic's chance of the Administration changing their attitudes about this issue as long as the energy industry is heavily funding Republican campaigns, as long as the top echelon of the Administration are energy industry veterans and likely returnees and as long as the American public is transfixed by gay marriage and school prayer and seemingly blind to the substantive issues facing the country.

I guess what bothers me most about this craven conduct is that it reflects such a sense of total self-absorption, such a reckless disregard for the future of humanity. Just to help their sponsors make their quarterly numbers, the Bush Administration is willing to fight tooth and nail against supplying any legitimacy to the relentless onslaught of global warming.

The English language simply lacks the ability to describe behavior that despicable.

Media Marmalade

2004-11-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

The biggest spoiler in the ’04 Election next to Karl Rove was the MSM, which is blogspeak for “Main Stream Media,” both electronic and print. I’d like to see the blog lexicographers change that to the “Corporate Media.” Mainstream actually sounds respectable and gives them way too much credit.

Besides, “Corporate Media” more accurately establishes their pedigree. Electronic media are unabashedly owned by corporate behemoths: ABC by Disney; CBS by Viacom; CNN by Time Warner; NBC/CNBC/MSNBC by GE and Fox (Faux) “News” by Rupert Murdoch, the global media maggot, er magnate.

It is so easy to visualize a call from the Executive Suite to the VP-News, “Make sure that Bush looks good. And make Kerry look like an asshole.” Of course, there would never be a record of such a call and everyone would deny it, but it is certainly within the realm of Karl Rovian reality.

There has been a lot of discussion also about false equivalence. An example: In a speech, George Bush says, “John Kerry’s medical plan will be run by the government.” This is false, but when the “fact checking” is done by your network, local TV or newspaper, they will say that it’s false, but they will then cherry pick a comment from Kerry that is inaccurate. This would usually involve a whopper from George W. Bush and a minor misstatement by John Kerry. But they frame them as equivalent and say that both candidates are playing fast and loose with the truth.

This happened throughout the campaign on various levels. If there was any negative information about Bush, they had to dig up something negative about Kerry…and fabricate it if nothing appropriate could be found.

However, the media are sitting ducks for the Right Wing spinmeisters, cheer leaders, screechmasters and their well-stocked stable of assorted piranhas, barracudas and rabies carriers. For years, the Right has hurled “j’accuse” sticks and stones at the “Liberal Media.” They were probably right back twenty years ago and before. Not that the media was “liberal” through invidious intent, but the prevailing political regimen was forged in the (liberal) New Deal and for whatever reasons, reporters tended to self-identify as liberals, or at least that was the conventional wisdom.

But much changed with the accession of Ronald Reagan. A good master's thesis project for a journalism or history student would be on the evolution of media political spectrum identification over the last half of the twentieth century. Today, the “liberal media” has been fully transformed into what Eric Alterman has dubbed the SCLM (so-called liberal media) and it is dripping with invidious intent.

One more factor that has been discussed in various forums is called “working the ref.” Visualize a college basketball game. One side has a core group in the stands that lapses into a frenzy of boo’s, hisses and angry catcalls when a referee makes a call against their team. This is picked up by the team’s other fans and before long every call elicits a great chorus of remonstration. The intent is for the referee, hearing the reaction, to question his/her accuracy so that if there’s a close one, he/she may be reluctant to call it.

The Right does this all the time. They are ever-vigilant in watching the MSM and if they perceive that there is bias, they pull out the stops and the chorus sings. As you can imagine, no reporter likes bushel baskets of hate mail or to get clobbered with emails. I’ve posted comments on Right Wing blogs and I’ll tell you first hand that they get very abusive.

However, when a reporter writes something bad about the Left, there is little penalty to pay. They may get a letter to the editor or an email, calmly and rationally explaining the error of their ways, but nothing to cause fear for their life or that of their family.

Thus the Right controls the media from both ends. The corporate Executive Suite exercises influence if not outright pressure to bend copy to meet the party line. The consumer side rises up in a frenzy at any perceived slight.

Finally, several years ago I was listening to an NPR program with David Horowitz and an ineffectual “liberal” whose name I forget. David Horowitz is of course extremely voluble and very aggressive and the "liberal" was being eaten alive. However, one caller complained about having the liberal on the show. The moderator explained that they had Mr. Horowitz on to provide the conservative view as well. The caller said, “I just don’t care what a liberal says. I don’t know why you want to have him on the show.”

That incident rode around my head for some time and I finally concluded that people from the Right don’t want to hear both sides. They want to hear their side and to hell with the rest. I think that is the reason for the Right’s abiding criticism of media bias: They don’t want “fair and balanced,” they want outright advocacy. That’s why Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Fox News in general are embraced so fervently by the Right. They don’t present both sides, they present the Right side.

Can we do business with these people?

2004-11-04T15:12:00.000-08:00

In my previous post "The Morning After!" I quoted a comment to an article in "The Guardian" by Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos where a submitter, nin (probably European), takes Markos to task for suggesting that:

The United States is a bitterly divided nation, at war with itself. Tuesday was merely one battle in a long-term war for the heart and soul of our nation. There will be the usual blather about unity and nonesuch, but the time for that is past. Bush has won himself four additional years to further inflict damage upon the world. Half of of the US public is not happy about that tonight.

The comment writer asks Markos:

Characterizing your effort as a "war" is the reason for your failure. How many Bush supporters has your blog converted? Do you think demonizing or ridiculing the people who disagree with you and the leaders they support is going to change their minds? Instead of fighting a war against your own people, why don't you Americans on the left start talking with them? Figure out "tactics" that get them to listen to what you have to say instead of tactics that alienate them.

I cite this comment not because I in any way agree with it, but because it represents a position that must be considered. I've heard this position advanced in the media, "...the Democratic Party needs to learn how to speak to people of faith."

My problem is that people of faith don't give you any wiggle room. Their basic premise is by definition, “I and those who agree with me are absolutely right, and those who disagree are absolutely wrong.” That doesn't allow for any compromises or any tolerance around the edges.

So I'm very skeptical that any profitable discussions are possible between the Religious Right and a party of inclusion. I think that the more effective strategy is to wait for the Republican bloc to unravel. I can't imagine the three main segments of the Republican coalition (libertarians, corporatists and the religious right) coexisting indefinitely just because of the uncompromising attitude cited above.

Where the Religious Right gives no quarter, corporatists main focus is profit. Much-maligned Hollywood is owned and run by corporatists and they make money hand over fist from it. So right away there is a huge point of disagreement.

Also, libertarians are almost religiously averse to government intrusion. Yet the Religious Right would like to place a mullah, oh excuse me, a reverend to chase sin from every bedroom in America. In fact, if you consider the rules that the Religious Right would like to impose on the citizenry, you will find a rigid, stifling jailhouse in which I’m sure few Americans would choose to live.

The bottom line, I believe, is that it would profit the Democrats little to try to initiate a dialogue with the Religious Right. They are fully deployed in a rigid and uncompromising paradigm that would allow no room for tolerance or growth.

In that regard, I believe that it’s best to let the situation evolve and hope that rifts develop in what is a coalition of strange bedfellows.

The Morning After

2004-11-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

I found this post on "The Guardian" web site. It is a comment appended to an article by Markos of Dailykos. It mentions some interesting points. I'll post later to explain where I differ:

The American left lost the election precisely because it relied on the attitudes and methods you are proposing in this article. You hope Bush's reelection will galvanize the left, better prepare it for battle. But characterizing your effort as a "war" is the reason for your failure. How many Bush supporters has your blog converted? Do you thing demonizing or ridiculing the people who disagree with you and the leaders they support is going to change their minds? Instead of fighting a war against your own people, why don't you Americans on the left start talking with them? Figure out "tactics" that get them to listen to what you have to say instead of tactics that alienate them. And if you expect them to listen you'll have to listen to them too. Unless you change the nature of the debate, from a battle (what people currently in power want it to be) into a dialog, your people and the rest of the world will continue to suffer at the hands of your Republican leadership.

Comments posted by: min at November 3, 2004 10:59 AM

What a world!!

2004-11-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

Going into this Election Day I had expected a credible, if not decisive, Kerry win. However, as I turn off the TV at 10pm Pacific, NBC and Faux have called Ohio for Bush and it's looking meaner and meaner. So as I head for bed after a day of walking a precinct in San Jose, I'm going with the thought that we may not know the outcome until Ohio counts its provisional ballots in 10 days. Here we go again.

With George W. Bush getting as many votes as he has (and possibly really winning), I'm left wondering if 1) Bush/Rove are really that ingenious and ruthless in covering up their misdeeds, misfeasance and mistakes; 2) the Democratic Party and the Left are really that incompetent in spelling out and defining their positions and selling them to the American public; or 3) the American public is really that gullible, lazy, self-absorbed and incompetent at seeing its own self-interest. My feeling is that all of the above apply.

If it turns out that John Kerry must concede this election, I hope that he congratulates Bush, offers nominal cooperation and sternly warns that our principles remain and we will continue to fight for them. I also hope that he clearly draws the line in the sand: There is no free ride for George W. Bush. He will have to fight for every inch of his extreme Right Wing agenda.

The past four years the Democrats have been milquetoasts in allowing the Bushies to get by with as much as they have. It's time to take a chapter out of Karl Rove's playbook and swallow our restraint and stop trying to play well on the Sunday talk shows. It's past time to do what we have to do without expecting approval from the talking heads and emphatically without fearing condemnation from either the Right or the media.

Right Wing Outrage

2004-11-01T22:47:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in a typical Bay Area evening commute quagmire today and optimistically thinking, "The Kerry Administration HAS to be different from the Clinton Administration." We can't allow the Right Wing to grind them down the way they did the Clintons.

Democratic administrations have to face three main challenges these days: Right Wing ideologues, Corporate Media and insurrection and from within the party.

The first and the worst are the Right Wing idealogues. They are relentless and they are unprincipled. We got the picture during the Clinton years and we know they will stop at nothing to grind the opposition to dust. We know they will tell any lie and distort whatever distortions they need to advance their agenda and empower their base.

Their weapon is chutzpah. And do they have chutzpah!

George W. Bush, elected by the thinnest of margins in our most discredited election struts on stage and immediately appoints cabinet members from the Far Right Fringe with complete and total impunity.

And when criticized for being too Right Wing, the Bush Administration either didn't bother to listen or responded with outrage, Outrage! that anyone would be so rude as to say such a thing.

And yet the liberal side always seems too mellow and fuzzy by about three quarters. When Bush appointed Ashcroft, we heard a few muffled groans, and there was some "spirited" questioning at the confirmation hearings. But the very idea that the Democrats might have a problem with Ashcroft brought Orrin Hatch to his feet in outrage! (Orrin Hatch does outrage really well, and often.) And it worked! The Democrats in the Senate meekly allowed Ashcroft to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting citizenry.

There is no doubt that the Left needs to develop a sense of outrage and learn how to aim it. And learn to remain outraged despite calming voices and, well, facts. The Right never lets anything dampen their outrage.

Right Wing outrage scares the bejeezus out of the media. They will do anything to avoid an outraged Right Wingnut. But we'll talk about the media in the next post.

And Kerry wins?

2004-11-01T20:13:00.000-08:00

It's Election Day eve and The Outcome is anybody's guess. My money is on a Kerry landslide. I've looked at the 5-hour lines in Florida and Ohio and other places and I agree with Randi Rhodes on Air America: People don't wait in line 5 hours to vote for the status quo. I think that George W. Bush burned his bridges too many times over the past four years with far too many people. It's okay to run roughshod over anyone who gets in the way, as long as you can afford to pay the price...and the price as it turn out is very high.

We say, “What goes around, comes around, George.”

That's why I think that today is the last full day of George W. Bush's sordid reign.
When even Conservatives are abandoning the ship, you know that the game is over.

3 November--Then What?

2004-10-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

We know it's coming...finally...Tuesday night we're glued to our TVs and CNN calls this state for ? and NBC calls that state for ? And finally it's far into the night and far from settled so we go to bed and hope that the morning paper will bring much-needed finality.

Maybe, maybe not.

I am on the one hand scared to death. The Corporate Media keep spinning the polls for Bush and present him as The Inevitability and dismissively maintain Kerry as the long shot. There's certainly been no attempt at balance in the reporting so far. David Brooks appeared hyper-giddy on The News Hours today, even for him. I don't know if he truly believes that Bush will prevail, or if he's programmed by the spin chip that Rove had installed in all Right Winger talking heads...the spin is to present Bush's victory as inevitable to pump up the Big MO! Kind of like they did in Florida in 2000.

On the other hand, my gut still whispers "landslide" to me in unguarded moments. I keep doing the math. The economic voters + minority voters + liberals + disenchanted military families + on and on and I just keep smelling a sea change coming. But my brain just can't deal with another four years of BushCo.

There are two possible outcomes as we all know. And how should the Liberal/Progressive community deal with either outcome?

If Kerry wins, there will be no time to celebrate. The Right Wing propaganda mill is probably building up steam as we speak. The Mighty Wurlitzer will begin blasting out discordant tunes as soon as the polls close on Election Day. The Progressive community will have to take the challenge and present a solid front. We can't let them disrupt another Democratic Presidency like they did Bill Clinton's. And to that extend, I recommend everyone read Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars. He gives a detailed account of how right wing operatives dogged the Clintons every step of the way. The Clintons were often not effective in fending off the attacks because at that time this type of political action was simply unthinkable and totally unprecedented. How could they have known? Now there is no excuse. We should expect an even worse assault on the comfortable world that we have all grown to know and love.

If Bush wins, the Progressive community will have to present an aggressive face to Bush's headlong rush to implement Right Wing policies and appoint Right Wing fanatics to the Federal bench. If this is the outcome, I would hope that Kerry is far less conciliatory to Bush than Al Gore was in 2000. I was deeply troubled at the ultimate results of that election, but I was horrified at Gore's capitulation and "gentlemanly" concession speech. Given the circumstances, I felt that he should have registered his disdain for the despicable intrusion of an egregiously partisan Supreme Court into a process where it had no constitutional business being. I further felt that Gore did himself and all of us on his side a disservice by completely vanishing from the scene and taking no part in monitoring Bush's actions after inauguration. I'm sure that he was emotionally and physically depleted, but after getting his bearings, he could have provided a useful service by becoming the voice of the shadow opposition.

Should John Kerry not prevail, I hope that he will remain out front and assume the mantle of The Opposition.

Osama to the Rescue?

2004-10-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

It looks like Osama bin Laden jumped in to boost George W. Bush's stature once again. Without the catastrophic bin Laden-sponsored events of 9/11/2001, George W would have remained the trivial mediocrity that he certainly was.

He remains a trivial mediocrity to this day, but his hagiographers finally got the material they needed to pump up his stature. Judging by the polls, they have largely succeeded in taking the witless ne'er do well and transforming him into "The Commander-in-Chief." None of this would have been conceivable without Osama's assault on the World Trade Center.

Today the Corporate Media is telling us that Osama's latest video tape is a pre-election Bush support booster. We won't know if that's true until next Tuesday, but how the chickens come home to roost. I think that everyone will admit that OBL's latest shows a whole new side of Osama. He almost apologetically explains his decision to unleash his gang of hijackers. I haven't heard the whole tape yet, but if the rest of it is as weird as the part that I've already heard, then something is definitely new.

Now is that good or bad? I guess that if we get through the next several months/years without significant terrorist incidents, then it's good. However, to date, Osama's tapes have frequently been the prelude to some kind of attack.

So is this tape a signal to embedded cells to initiate an attack? I don't think any of us would put it past him. And with a heretofore wholly evil figure like bin Laden, I don't think that the US or the non-Islamic west would ever think to give him the benefit of any doubts.

The question remains, what will the impact on the Mother of all Elections be? Tune in Tuesday, 2 November for the exciting conclusion, or at least the beginning of the conclusion.