Arguments8

10/13/2008

10/13/2008

wisdom obscurus

Tobias and -- Ask not for whom the chimp smirks...

http://smirkingchimp.com/

***

ANOTHER REPUBLICAN FOR OBAMA

This comes – via a friend who forwarded it – from a 63-year-old capitalist, John H. Scully, who sits on the board of, among other things, our very own Plum Creek Timber. (Yes, the trees keep growing.)

It’s an email to members of a social and investing club that he and other members of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Class of 1968 set up:

Dear Fellow Stanco Member,

Like most of us I have never asked anything of my wonderful classmates in the GSB Class of 1968. I am now. Allow me to make it clear that I write to you as a concerned citizen, not representing Stanco or the Stanford GSB, but expressing my own personal views.

Some of you may share these views and some of you may not. I respect everyone’s right to differ, but allow me mention that I am hardly a political zealot. (I voted for the republican presidential candidate in every election from 1976 up to and including, I’m embarrassed to say, 2000). But as Americans, whose country has been so good to us, I believe we are now all called upon to take action in response to the extraordinary incompetence of the last eight years that has so seriously marginalized our great nation and put us at real risk.

It is very clear to me that we are now in our worst economic crisis since 1929, and the possibility of systemic failure is real. While reasonable men and women can differ on the immediate steps we should be taking, it is demonstrably apparent after eight dreadful years of gross mismanagement and incompetency that we need to expunge from our polity the Bush-Cheney-McCain-Palin axis of ideological pap and judgemental disasters.

With all due respect I ask, indeed implore, that you join me and millions of others in the mission to elect Barack Obama as the next president of these United States. We have a long road ahead of us to reverse the disastrous damage done to our nation in the last eight years, and Barack is the leader with the intellect, character and courage to do it. We are blessed to have his candidacy in this moment of crisis. Smart, inspirational and endowed with superb judgement, Barack is the real agent of change. He’s a man of character and principles, who wants to give back to the country that has blessed him with the “audacity of hope.” And at the core he’s a market oriented moderate, not an ultra liberal – please read the key excerpts from his book that I have attached. Those of you that like to focus on your personal taxes, you will notice that he proposes lower capital gains rates than Reagan’s era and zero for start ups!

There can be little doubt that Bush 43 will go down as the worst president in the modern era. Besides the damage to our economy, our international standing has dropped precipitously, our brave military has been fundamentally weakened and our wonderful sense of limitless potential sadly compromised. Ronald Reagan’s beautiful image of the “shining city on a hill” is in real peril.

Consider the legacy of the last eight years:

§ Huge annual fiscal deficits – $450 B in the current year BEFORE the bailout, which will more than double to over $1 trillion. (Remember the democratic surpluses under fiscal conservative Bob Rubin?)

§ Trade deficits in excess of $600B annually

§ $700B down the drain in Iraq and over 100,000 dead – in a country that did not attack us! Ultimate costs of well over $1 trillion (Couldn’t we use those funds now!). Near exhaustion of our military capacity.

§ Patent neglect of Afghanistan, the source of the real threat, which has lead to the resurgence of our true enemy.

§ Zero energy policy – putting trillions of dollars in hostile or questionable hands

§ Environmental disregard on all fronts

§ China now our lender of last resort holding $1 trillion of US government paper (We had to save Fannie and Freddie because they and others own so much of this “agency “paper)

§ No thoughtful oversight (in fact further liberalization of leverage limits) of the Wall Street casinos. (Lehman had 30x leverage)

§ A decline in real family income of $2,500 in a supposed economic expansion period now ending with a thud.

THESE HORRIFIC DEFICITS AND COSTS OF AN ELECTIVE WAR HAVE PUT US IN A POSITION WHERE OUR RESPONSES TO THIS HIGHLY DANGEROUS FINANCIAL PANIC ARE SEVERELY CONSTRAINED AND THE CORE OF OUR SYSTEM AND OUR VERY CURRENCY ARE AT SYSTEMIC RISK. The Bush republicans have been more effective at weakening our country than any enemy, domestic or foreign, has ever been. And we are supposed to reward this incompetence by reelecting the same party and Bush’s chosen successor? IF YOU WERE ON THE BOARD OF THIS “COMPANY USA,” WOULD YOU SUPPORT THE SUCCESSOR CHOICE AND PROTOGEE OF THE OUTGOING CEO, WHO HAD FAILED SO COMPLETELY?

McCain a change agent? He has 26 years in DC. He has supported Bush 90% of the time. His campaign is run by lobbyists and the ads by Rove wanabees. He admits to a weak skill set in economics. What economic views he has were formed under the tutelage of Phil Gramm, who opposes even prudent government oversight. He’s been pro Iraq war from the outset. He wants more truncation of our tax code to favor the rich and further weaken the middle class. The projections for his policies are massive deficits and, unlike Obama, he has not presented any detailed deficit estimates, only saying the budget would be balanced in 2013! Then there are the total lies in advertising (straight talking express?) in an ad campaign produced by the same attack squad that ironically beat him working for Bush in South Carolina in 2000 with a series of clear lies.

Then he chooses Palin – solely on the basis that she can boost his chances and reverse his sagging outlook, irrespective of her qualifications. Well, at least she is a change. Three prominent conservative intellectuals, led by George Will, have charitably phrased their view that, “She’s not ready.” Yet this is someone who would be a step away from a 73-77 year old president, who has had recurring melanoma. Her finger on the red button. Uncomprehensible and irresponsible risk – what kind of judgement does that show?

Now I ask you to be part of the change that will allow us to emerge from this darkness and support Barrack Obama as generously as you can. A TOTAL OF UP TO $65,000 CAN BE GIVEN PER PERSON, less whatever other federal contributions you have made in the last two years (ask your legal advisor). Regina and I have each done this. Clearly most of you have the capacity to contribute generously. Most of these funds can go directly to the Campaign For Change, all of which is used exclusively to help fund the presidential race in the 18 battleground states. This is a highly focused and efficient way of getting the message out and combating the lies where it matters the most.

I would be delighted to answer any questions and discuss the giving options by email or phone. If you are ready to contribute, please send the checks to me, and I will make sure they get to the appropriate party and promptly.

This is a critical moment in our nation’s history. Just as our class has excelled in so many other callings, I would suggest that we are now called upon once again to lead.

John

F Actually, it’s $67,800, not $65,000 (and on questions of federal campaign giving limits, feel free to ask me). But with literally millions of donors, the biggest push comes not from those who give all the law allows (truly grateful though we are and proud though they should be) – like the Scullys – but from those who give what their straitened circumstances permit, whether it’s $20, $50, or $250.

***

It’s Not That They Don’t Care

And a Few Thoughts on Your Money

Published on October 06, 2008

JOHN McCAIN AT HIS BEST

This clip is only 38 seconds long, so suffer the first half (the McCain

campaign goes negative this week) . . . because the second half is John

McCain at his best.*

*That John McCain deplored the despicable negative campaign Bush ran to

beat him in South Carolina in 2000. This John McCain has hired the same

firm to try to beat Obama.

HIS CHARITABLE GIVING - I

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, last year the McCains gave

$211,000 to the John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation (the vehicle

through which they do their charitable giving).

Although it’s impossible to know for sure, it’s a pretty fair guess that

they’ve spent substantially more operating their private jet each year

than they’ve contributed to charity.

That’s totally their choice. But it speaks to their priorities.

The John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation gave out $78,000 last year

and $188,000 in 2006 - $93,000 of it to the private prep school his sons

attended and the private prep school his daughter attends.

These are huge amounts to give to charity (or to prep schools) if your

household income is a few hundred thousand dollars . . . but theirs tops

$6 million.

We should honor their wealth (this is America). And it is absolutely

theirs to with as they please. But that is the point. You can learn a lot

about a family’s priorities from how it spends its money.

HIS CHARITABLE GIVING - II

Ah, some will say, but it’s not his money.

Fair enough. But while it is fine to imagine that the Senator would be

more charitable if it were his money, what does it say about his ability

to lead others that he has not been able to inspire his wife, whose net

worth is estimated at $100 million, to do more?

Has he no say over the number of houses they have, how many cars they

have, how much he spends on a pair of shoes?

Are there no pressing world problems the McCain’s have been exposed to

that so alarm or concern them or tug at their heartstrings that they

would like to use more that $78,000 of their $100 million wealth to

address them?

The Bible calls many to tithe - but those are ordinary people, who might

even have to sacrifice to do it. I’m not sure what the Bible says about

people with 13-bedroom houses (in case you missed the video). But I know

lots of people who, because their incomes are extraordinary, give half or

more to worthy causes - and still have twenty times as much to spend on

themselves as a normal upper-middle-class family. (In the McCains’ case,

20 incomes of more than $150,000.)

You can’t say they don’t give because they expect the government to step

in and help. If there’s one thing on which John Sydney McCain III has

neither flipped nor flopped, it’s his adamancy that government not help,

that government be cut back (except for military expenditures). Like many

good Republicans, he expects private charity to be primary in helping

those in need.

The problem with that is that - even with centimillionaires giving

$78,000 to charity - it’s not enough.

We should respect McCain’s right to want to eliminate the estate tax on

$100 million estates and to make permanent - even increase - the Bush tax

cuts for the very wealthy.

But it’s not good social or economic policy - especially when we are

running enormous deficits.

We should respect his right to oppose benefits for returning Iraq vets

and to fight relentlessly, time after time, year after year, to prevent a

hike in the minimum wage (that at $5.15 an hour worked out to $25,000 a

year if you worked 100-hour weeks).

But why would we vote for him?

It’s not that John McCain doesn’t care - he just doesn’t get it.*

*And you know what? - and I can say this because I’m not the candidate -

maybe it is, at least a little, that he doesn’t care. How else does one

explain $78,000 in giving on an income that tops $6 million a year?

Living so lavishly when there’s so much suffering and so much that needs

doing in the world?

***

Buffett

Published on October 03, 2008

THE DEBATE

Governor Palin’s weeks of cramming paid off. Not only was she

well-prepared (if you put your mind to it, you really can learn to be

President in two weeks), she actually winked at me! Who could fail to

love that?

My friend Peter, a life-long Republican financial whiz at whose most

recent birthday party a congratulatory note from President Bush was read,

writes: “I feel like I just watched an adult debating a college student.”

Peter voted for Bush twice but just wrote $60,000 for Obama.

FAUX NEWS

This 26-second video shows why Obama wins Pennsylvania - and why Fox is

truly pathetic.

FAUX REGULAR GUY

This 60-second tour of the McCain home (13 bedrooms, 14½ baths) gives you

a sense of how the family has lived the past 20 years.

In that context, the level of the family’s charitable giving is pretty

astounding. Specifics on Monday, but they sure seem not to have used any

meaningful slice of their giant Bush tax cut to support nonprofits. Which

is totally their choice. It’s their fortune to do with as they please.

But it speaks to their core priorities. Thirteen cars, seven or eight

houses, a private jet - it’s been a positively grand time to be rich and

powerful in America, and John McCain has vowed, with his promise to make

the tax cuts permanent, to keep it that way.

Tomorrow: ANOTHER Republican for Obama - a Texan, No Less, Former Publisher of the National Review!

ANOTHER REPUBLICAN FOR OBAMA

Wick Allison - former publisher of the nation’s leading conservative

magazine, The National Review - is editor-in-chief of the Dallas-Fort

Worth city magazine, D. He maxed out to McCain in the primary, but now

writes:

My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to

lead the country.

The more I listen to and read about “the most liberal member of the U.S.

Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like

no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to

explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.

In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for

Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the

conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was

invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I

later became its publisher.

Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a

recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions.

Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it

represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives

the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the

crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and

utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and

always ready to test any political program against actual results.

Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do

this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it

works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on

feeling good rather than doing good.

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political

programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts_a solution for

which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the

nation went to war_led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth

in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative”

credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that

once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth

of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy

using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming

bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John

McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological

expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough

out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced

financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral

authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to

make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made

the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was

still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is

almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I

disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what

Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody

can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or

listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful,

pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after

eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually

read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as

McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as

an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain,

I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless

American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a

business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause,

conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments

in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the

instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

***

54 MINUTES WITH WARREN BUFFETT

All is explained.

***John Yoo, David Addington Stonewall Congress; National Lawyers Guild Urges special Prosecutor, Congressional War Crimes Commission

Medea Benjamin | US Mayors Step Into Iran Fray Calling for Diplomacy, Not War

Johann Hari | Our Infantile Search for Heroic Leaders

Marjorie Cohn | Scalia Cites False Information in Habeas Corpus Dissent

“To bolster his argument that the Guantanamo detainees should be denied the right to prove their innocence in federal courts, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush: ‘At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield.’ It turns out that statement is false.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: Bush, White House Push ‘Faith-Based’ Agenda Despite Mounting Record of Misuse

Union of Concerned Scientists: More Drilling Extends National Addiction to Oil; Will Not Save Americans Money at the Pump

***

NOT SURPRISED

From the January 2005 edition of The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need:

I am dismayed by the reelection of George Bush. Yes, my taxes are likely to stay low, but I don’t see how we become more prosperous if much of the world hates us . . . if we are adding to our national debt at a tremendous rate . . . if we are investing in missile systems instead of education . . . if we are giving tax incentives to encourage the purchase of Hummers rather than fuel-efficient vehicles. And that just begins the list.

Under either Bush or Kerry, we would have faced challenges: Terrorism, which even when it doesn’t strike costs us dearly (security guards make us safer but they do not make us richer). Globalization, which will make the whole world more prosperous in the long run, including us, but which threatens our manufacturing base and puts high-wage jobs at risk of being teleported abroad. And more. (The likelihood of high energy prices for a very long time could be another.)

But under Bush, I see the problems just getting worse, not better.

[ . . . ]

When Alan Greenspan spooked the world by talking about “irrational exuberance” in December of 1996, the Dow was 6500. Well, we’ve all worked very hard and smart these last few years, and earnings are up and we’ve built the Internet and laid a zillion miles of fiber optic cable and made astonishing breakthroughs in medicine—we’re richer than we were—so maybe 6500 on the Dow is no longer irrational at all. . . .

F But 14,000 sure was. And even once the bailout does pass, we’ll want to be realistic. I think we have to view the next decade as an exciting opportunity for our nation to tighten its belt, rebuild its infrastructure, achieve energy independence, and repair its balance sheet. At which point, in real terms (who knows what inflation or deflation will do the actual number), the Dow might reach 14,000 again.

For all our problems, we also have tremendous strengths. And technological progress is an economic tailwind. But as the last 8 years have so tragically shown (and as the 8 years before that also showed, by contrast), who runs the show really matters.

***

HOW SURPRISING WOULD A PALIN PRESIDENCY BE?

This piece by Bob Rice (Three Moves Ahead: What Chess Can Teach You About Business) takes the fairly conservative view that it would be a one in six or seven chance if John McCain were elected.

My view, of course, is that a McCain Presidency alone – never mind a handoff to Governor Palin – would be a calamity. Our country and the world yearn for a fresh start. Our youth, in particular, yearn for an inspirational call. We can do this. But it is not four more years of Republican leadership that will provide the fresh start. And it is not John McCain who is best suited to issue to our youth – who are our future – that inspirational call.

But what if it did become a Palin presidency? Rice helps us think through what a one in six or seven chance means.

If McCain is elected, he notes, a Palin Presidency is more likely than your getting the flu this winter.

Or about as likely as your rolling doubles with a pair of dice.

***

HOW SCARY WOULD IT BE?

Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria puts the chance of a Palin Presidency, if we elect Senator McCain, at about one in five. Others put it higher still. But the point is – unless you’d sleep well knowing you had a round of Russian roulette to play tomorrow, a six-gun to your left temple – you really need to decide whether you’d be okay with a Palin presidency.

Zakaria is not. Like the conservative columnist I linked to yesterday, he thinks she should step down. On CNN yesterday he said, “it’s not that she doesn’t know the right answer; it’s that she clearly does not understand the question.” To her claim of “executive experience,” Zakaria responds that 85% of Alaska’s budget comes from oil revenues, and that her main job is in distributing that oil money to the citizenry: “This is good training to be president of Saudi Arabia, not the United States.”

The whole clip is worth watching.

We live in interesting times.

***

McCAIN: JUMPING THE GUN

The McCain campaign was so pleased with their man’s performance Friday they released an ad saying he had won – several hours before the debate began.

McCAIN: DISRESPECTING THE COUNTY

Have you seen Sarah Palin in the swimsuit contest? Hot! AND she can field dress a moose, got a D in macro-economics, and can see Russia from her house. I think she’s pretty neat (the creationism stuff and her political views notwithstanding), but one of my formerly-Republican acquaintances put it best: “McCain disrespected the country by choosing her to be next in line to be President of the United States.”

***

These are seriously challenging times. They require serious, brilliant, thoughtful people who make carefully considered decisions.

Which brings us to . . .

ELITISM

Nobody likes the smart kids. Maybe Doogie Howser; maybe Malcolm (in the middle). But those were TV scripts written by smart kids, for ratings. In real life, the smart kids had better dumb it down. Have you noticed how even John Kerry – who used the phrase “who among us” when responding to a question about NASCAR (“who among us doesn’t love NASCAR?”) – was persuaded somehow to drop half the G’s from his gerunds? (Tryin’ to be a regular guy.)

Fine.

But in every other field, we seek and celebrate excellence. The most talented athlete, not the one who runs like us. The most talented singer, not the one who sounds the way we do in the shower. The teacher of the year. The most skilled surgeon. The rocket scientist who is a rocket scientist.

So, sure, a President does need to be “of the people.”

But the Rhodes Scholar who came from nothing and went to Yale Law School, who lives and breathes public policy and keeps a billion statistics straight in his head (think President Clinton) really may serve us better than the guy who got into Yale because of his dad, writes off his first 40 years to youthful indiscretion, and failed in business despite his father’s connections (our current affable leader).

Do we want a man born in a log cabin who made it through law school and became an Illinois State senator based on his brains, good judgment and eloquence (think Abe Lincoln) . . .

. . . a man raised on food stamps who became President of the Harvard Law Review and an Illinois State senator, then a United States senator, based on his brains, good judgment and eloquence, whose presidential bid is backed by Warren Buffett, Susan Eisenhower, and Hillary Clinton?

. . . a man in his prime who can do more than one thing at a time?

Or do we want a guy more like George W. Bush, great to party with, descended from and married to “royalty” (to the extent America has such a thing), whose presidential bid is backed by all-Enron-roads-lead-to Phil Gramm; whose campaign is run by lobbyists (and by the same guys who slimed him in South Carolina in 2000); who won’t release his medical records; and who, for all we honor his service – as we should – is, arguably, past his straight-talking prime?

***

Prongs

Published on October 07, 2008

What now?

The very top line is that worse is likely to come – but then better.

As no one knows the timing or order of events – deflation, inflation, stagflation, prosperity – the best asset-deployment strategy, for those who have the luxury of assets to deploy (but also the burden and angst of trying to figure out how to deploy them), is the simple-minded “four prong” strategy I have been suggesting since long before there was an Internet.

I’ll get to that.

The other top line I think is that less than a month from now we will have a President-elect, I hope, who can restore confidence around a simple but powerful vision to renew America.

I’ll get to that, too.

But first, a little perspective.

1987 – I remember being in Detroit on a book tour when the market fell 22.6% on October 19, 1987. The world didn’t end, and in the intervening 21 years life, for most, in many ways, has gotten better. (We’ve also done some colossally dumb stuff and squandered trillions of dollars, which is much of the reason we are where we are.) In that time, the Dow has risen from that day’s close of 1739 to last night’s 9955.

1996 – Eight years after the 1987 crash, in December of 1996, with the Dow in the 6,500 range, Alan Greenspan warned obliquely of “irrational exuberance,” but failed to do anything about it. (What he could have done, as I’ve argued here and elsewhere, is gradually deflate a little of that exuberance by raising the margin requirement from 50% to 55%, and then perhaps 57.5%, and just keep gradually inching, winching, and Grinching it up, thereby to temper market psychology until the fever broke – with the added benefit it could then temper the collapse a bit by unwinding those hikes.)

What seemed irrationally high in 1996 might ironically wind up being our bottom this go-around. “We’ve all worked very hard and smart these last few years,” I wrote a few years ago, reprised last week . . . “we’ve built the Internet and laid a zillion miles of fiber optic cable and made astonishing breakthroughs in medicine – we’re richer than we were – so maybe 6500 on the Dow is no longer irrational at all.”

So maybe we bottom at 6500 or maybe yesterday was the bottom or maybe the bottom won’t come for a long time.

But there will be a bottom at some point, and then – with further ups and downs along the way that fake us all out (or at least me) so we wind up knowing for sure it was the bottom only long after that knowledge can do us any good – there will be gains.

John McCain’s chief economic advisor from his 2000 run for President, the previously referenced co-author of Dow 36,000, will eventually be proven right, as sure as you can see Russia from Alaska. It just may take a while.

1998 – Ten years ago, on October 19, 1998, the 11th anniversary of the 1987 crash, I posted this response to a reader query:

From cheery old Lubenovic: “What kind of financial strategies/tactics would you recommend for a worldwide recession or .... depression?”

F This would be so easy if you knew for sure recession/depression were coming. It’s a possibility, of course, but by no means something you can “count on.”

If you could, you would sell all your stocks and real estate and buy puts. (Puts leverage your pessimism much more than selling stocks short directly—and have the virtue of limiting your loss to 100% rather than leave it open-ended if you are wrong.) And/or you would put a good chunk of your money into U.S. Treasury securities. And you might put a few bucks into silver dimes, just to have some walking around money if the value of paper currency were ever called into question.

And then, when things seemed worst and most hopeless . . . when stocks were being given away at prices that would look good unless the world ended altogether . . . you would trade most of your profits in those puts and Treasuries and buy like a bandit. Because I can say with the confidence of a man who knows you will not be around to rebuke me if I am wrong: the world will not end.

But here’s the catch with a disaster strategy: We may already be a good deal of the way into that disaster. Just ask that sliver of the globe that lives East of Prague all the way on out to the Pacific and Hawaii. So it may be that the world is poised to reinflate and grow, that interest rates will rise, puts expire worthless and Treasury bonds (at least those of the long-term variety), sink like a stone.

My guess is that the true path lies someplace in between those two scenarios. We will not have a worldwide depression; but the easy years are behind us for a while. A quarter-point drop in the fed funds rate—swell surprise though it was—may not be enough to turn the world economy around.

Hence it makes sense, I think, to spread your money—if you’re fortunate enough to have enough to spread—over the “four prongs” I have written about from time to time: some cash/liquid money first (money-market funds, T-bills, whatever); an inflation hedge in case the world reflates (your home, stocks over the long run, though inflation would kill most stocks at first); a deflation hedge (long-term Treasuries); and a “prosperity hedge” in case we really have already hit bottom (stocks). How you best weight these prongs depends on your own circumstances (80-year-old widows and 29-year-old eye surgeons are not the same) and your own view of what might happen (or at least your own view of how unhappy you would be if certain things happened, so you can try to stay within your tolerance for pain).

What will happen?

All I know for sure is that no one knows. If things get bad enough, prudence could even come back into fashion. That, no doubt, will be the bottom.

2008 – So here we are 10 years after that, back at one of those times when people are worrying about bad times. And the truth is, we’re in a much weaker position than we were in 1998. The Dow is 1500 points higher today (before adjustment for inflation) – yet we are far more deeply in debt, bogged down in two wars, poorly led, less well respected around the world, and – by the reckoning of almost everyone the pollsters ask – seriously on the “wrong track.”

The four prongs continue to make sense – though for most Americans, even just covering the first one, a substantial liquid emergency fund – cash – is beyond their reach.

A few comments to update the prongs:

Cash – for most people, the bank or money market fund or T-bills are fine. If you have a lot of cash, you might consider, as has been discussed here a few times, whether all of it should be in U.S. dollars. It seems to me we will have a few years of gargantuan deficits – and should, to get out of this mess – and that in the short run, at least, this could weaken the dollar relative to some other currencies.

An Inflation Hedge – to the general categories of real estate (which has mostly not yet hit bottom) and stocks (which probably haven’t either) you might add timber (however bad earnings may prove to be in the short run, PCL’s trees do keep growing) and oil (APC is off by more than half from its 52-week high) and long-term TIPS, yielding about 2.5% over inflation (at least as uncle Sam chooses to define inflation).

A Deflation Hedge – Long-term Treasury bonds would get killed in an inflationary environment, yet do well in a flight to safety and when the cost of living falls. I doubt we will have any sort of sustained deflation. We’ve learned a lot since the 1930s and have mechanisms in place like FDIC insurance and the various social safety nets that we didn’t have then. We’ve also gone off the gold standard and are printing massive amounts of new money to fund what will continue to be massive deficits for several years to come. None of that spells prolonged deflation to me.

A Prosperity Hedge – things just might work out. Indeed, I think they will. So if you’re 26 and have begun putting $300 a month into an index fund or two – rejoice! You’re getting the shares at a serious markdown, and they bargains may become better still. If you’re 50 and just inherited $5 million in cash, hoping to put $3 million of it into stocks once it’s fully deployed, you might consider investing $100,000 a month over the next 30 months. But if you’ve got money in the stock market you may genuinely need in the next few years – like, to pay rent or to eat – then you have to ask yourself what it was doing there (don’t you listen? The stock market is never a place for money you might need in the next few years) and, probably, take it out. I would also note that stocks are not likely to do well if we have either deflation or serious inflation, or even just some continuing turmoil. So I, for one, have not sold my RSW.

#

However hard it is to know how to navigate these waters, one thing is simple and applies to everyone: live frugally, light on the land, saving for the future, and recognizing that many of the best things in life are free, or nearly so.

Tomorrow (or soon): Less than a month from now we will have a President-elect, I hope, who can restore confidence around a simple but powerful vision to renew America.

***

Watch It

Published on October 08, 2008

AYERS / KEATING

The McCain/Palin team have decided to take the campaign negative, suggesting Senator Obama’s love for his country is suspect when he consort with terrorists. The “terrorists” referred to are a guy named Bill Ayers who, in his efforts to stop the Vietnam War, did a really terrible thing – 40 years ago, when Obama was 8 years old – which Senator Obama has publicly deplored, and which, just for the record, I deplore, too.

Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois. Does that make all the professors and students who know him terrorist sympathizers, too?

According to the Washington Post, the two men served on the board of an anti-poverty group from 1999 to 2002. Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s Illinois State Senate race in 2001.

But since the McCain campaign has decided this is important . . . and since we are evidently supposed to be upset with Obama for associating with a Professor of Education who did deplorable things when Obama was 8 . . . how should we feel about Senator McCain’s association with Charles Keating?

Instead of $200, McCain received $112,000 in campaign contributions. And a lavish family vacation. And his wife had ties to Keating as well. Billions of taxpayer dollars were ultimately affected – our money – and, at the very least, Senator McCain was found guilty of having used “poor judgment.”

Watch this video and see what you think. Which association – Obama associating with a Professor engaged in anti-poverty work or McCain associating with a savings and loan executive known at the time to have grossly violated the banking laws – is the more disturbing?

GREED AND EXCESS

In last night’s debate, Senator McCain repeatedly referred to “greed and excess.” We all deplore greed. And it’s comforting to know that Senator McCain – whose family owns seven homes (see one here), 13 cars, and a private jet – deplores excess. But haven’t the tax cuts for the very wealthy, when we have giant deficits and are fighting two wars, been excessive? He wants to preserve and widen them.

PLANETERIA

The Senator mocked $3 million earmarked to replace a failing 40-year-old projector for Chicago’s planetarium. You can certainly argue that things like this should not be approved without Congressional debate. Or, more realistically – since it would be completely unworkable to discuss every $3 million item in a $3 trillion budget ($3 million is literally one millionth of the budget) – you could argue that the federal government should fund no small local projects. But is this really where Senator McCain wants to put his emphasis in a Presidential debate when the economy is in crisis? That we should not upgrade a failing planetarium at a time we hope to educate and excite school kids about science and their universe?

Meanwhile, Governor Palin led the way for construction of a $15 million sports complex for what she likes to call “the City of Wasilla.” I don’t mock the complex – the townsfolk voted for raising their sales tax to pay the interest on the debt incurred to build it. But given that Chicago is even larger than Wasilla, and that science education may be as important as sports, why is $3 million for the planetarium worth mocking? (It was presumably the Senator’s best example of Obama’s profligacy, or he would have used a different one.)

This earmark was less than one-hundredth the size of the Bridge to Nowhere earmark that McCain’s own running mate had been pushing for (before it became an embarrassment, was killed, and she said, “no thanks”).

But see? He’s managed to get me off track. We should be talking about the economy, not a planetarium. And if you can find a few minutes, you should watch the Keating video.

***Temperament

A Video and a Cover Story

Published on October 09, 2008

FEAR

Senator McCain and Governor Palin want to make us afraid that Senator Obama is dangerously liberal – a charge made laughable by the support of, among so many others, Susan Eisenhower, Warren Buffett, and Wick Allison (the former publisher of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s National Review, who maxed out to McCain in the primary but has switched to Obama).

The thing to be afraid of is Senator McCain’s dangerous temperament. He is an angry man. Click here for a short video that makes the case.

WHY ALL THE BASHING?

It’s distasteful – but we just can’t suffer four more years of unsuccessful leadership. It’s not clear to me we can survive four more years of this. I want “elite” leadership from people whose intelligence and judgment are superb. Any man who would impulsively choose to entrust our future, if something happened to him, to a woman who got a D in macroeconomics and whose foreign policy credentials consists of being able to see Russia from her house is simply not a man of good judgment.

***It seems to me we are headed for a rough recession, no matter what (but, hey, we’ve had them before), followed by a rough inflation (we’re printing money like crazy, as we should be, but that devalues the currency), followed by rising interest rates to tamp down the inflation, followed by another recession . . . this is not going to be an easy decade, any more than the post-Vietnam decade was in any sense easy.

Recssions depress earnings, which depress stock prices. Higher interest rates depress price-earnings ratios (not to mention home values, as mortgages become less affordable), which also depress stock prices.

Then again, through hard work . . . more prudent personal, corporate, and national behavior . . . the increases technology will bring in productivity and opportunity . . . and just the passage of time, like the time it takes to digest a gigantic meal and finally feel fit again . . . we will one day return to better times. At which point, because of the inflation, the companies that have survived may see their stock prices significantly higher than they are today because the price of everything is by then significantly higher . . . except the price of fixed income securities, like long-term bonds, which, by not gaining a dime in face value, will in fact have lost value adjusted for inflation.

In the long run, if you had bought stocks every month starting in 1929, or any other time in our history, you would eventually have made out far, far, far better than keeping your money someplace safe.

With both Vietnam and Iraq, we attempted to have both “guns and butter.” In the Vietnam era, it was to fight the war and simultaneously wipe out poverty – a well-intentioned but significantly flawed and hugely expensive effort. During the latest tragically misguided war, we have attempted simultaneously to slash taxes on hedge fund managers and oil company CEOs. Not as noble a goal as eradicating poverty, perhaps, but uniquely Republican (Senator McCain is fully on board) and similarly expensive.

The world will probably not end. The basics, as always, apply. Spend less than you earn, live light on the land, enjoy the simpler things, get plenty of exercise, floss, and look for ways to brighten the lives of those around you – it will brighten your own as well.

Have a great weekend.

THE DEBT

President Bush continues to exceed all expectations. Our 232 years of accumulated National Debt, I have been writing in this space for some years, “will have reached $10 trillion or so by the time President Bush leaves office – up from under one trillion when Ronald Reagan took office.”*

Well, he hasn’t left office yet, and he’s already there – and with a quarter trillion to spare!

You go, Mr. President.

*Consider: 75% of all the debt our 43 presidents have racked up since 1776 was racked up by just three of them: Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

THE TRAGEDY

It didn’t have to be this way.

It wasn’t necessary to slash taxes on the rich – even a previous version of John McCain opposed doing that.

Nor was it necessary to oppose the kinds of regulation that could have kept unqualified buyers from getting loans (the less pumped the bubble, the less painful the bust).

And it surely wasn’t necessary to invade Iraq. (Even though it’s rarely said, or listened to, I’ll say it again: Most of the Democratic Senators who “voted for the war,” and perhaps many of the Republicans, were not in fact voting for war; they were voting to give the President the authority, to give his negotiations teeth, foolishly taking him at his word that he would use the authority only as a last resort. Only later did we learn Iraq was the agenda long before 9/11.)

Here’s what a 41-year-old Barack Obama told a crowd of Chicago protestors in October, 2002, five months before we attacked:

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

Clear thinking. A steady temperament. Don’t forget to vote.

© 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Andrew Tobias

***

John McCain: The Mount Vesuvius of Mud

by Brent Budowsky | October 7, 2008 - 11:08am

Equity markets collapse. Credit markets are strangled. Economic pain skyrockets. Global markets shake. And John McCain campaigns on Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, pit bulls with lipstick, slanders, smears, falsehoods, lies and fear -- a Mount Vesuvius of mud that will drag Republicans to defeat.

Americans endure a crisis of economic pain while McCain suffers a crisis of his own identity. The McCain who ran in 2000 would be scandalized by the McCain who runs in 2008. And McCain and Sarah Palin hit bottom with the last refuge of dying campaigns, suggesting Obama is not a real American, questioning his patriotism, with warm-up acts invoking his middle name when what voters want to hear is how the candidates can make their lives better and more secure.

***

Campaign Enters Silly Season

by Dave Lindorff | October 6, 2008 - 10:08am

I’ve been getting some emails that refer to Barack Obama as a “Manchurian Candidate,” a guy who is somehow hiding a secret radical and/or Muslim jihadist agenda that will burst forth if he’s elected president. There is a certain idiot factor at work here, since if Obama were a closet Weatherman, who somehow learned of and adopted that 1960s college dropout organzation’s creed at the tender age of 8, it would have clashed badly with any Muslim teaching he might have picked up as a student in an Indonesian public school at the same time (he attended an Indonesian public school from the age of 6 to 8 before transferring to a Catholic-run institution).

But since some low-wattage and conspiracy-minded people seem ready to believe this kind of stuff, let’s consider John McCain’s early background, and the possibility of his being a Manchurian Candidate too. Fair’s fair, right?

***

Obama and Bill Ayers

by Avram Mirsky | October 5, 2008 - 10:49pm | permalink

article tools: email | print | read more Avram Mirsky

Caribou Barbie’s (Sarah Palin for those of you who never listen to Mike Malloy) latest wink fest is to try and once again associate Barack Obama with former Weather Underground radical William Ayers (now, a respected education Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois). This says more about the total and complete bankruptcy of the McCain-Palin campaign than anything else, but if there is even one right-brained reader of this blog who is convinced by such calumny, I suggest that you check out the article in yesterday’s NY Times entitled “Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths.”

First and foremost, Barack Obama was 8 years old when Bill Ayers was plotting and carrying out acts of violence. As Steven Benen reports in the Washington Monthly:

“OBAMA AND SOME GUY HE BARELY KNOWS.... About a week or so ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial page ran an 1,100-word piece from conservative writer Stanley Kurtz about Barack Obama’s past with 1960’s-era radical William Ayers. The Journal gave it a provocative headline -- ‘Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism on Schools’ -- and far-right blogs got really excited about it. “There was one small problem: Kurtz, after exhaustive research, couldn’t find any meaningful dirt.

***

Mccain’s Exit From Michigan Highlights His Failures

by Bill Gallagher | October 5, 2008 - 9:09pm

Detroit - John McCain does get it. The election is about judgment. On the defining issues for the presidential candidates- America’s role in the world, the economy and the selection of a vice presidential candidate, voters, particularity those previously undecided, are now concluding they don’t trust McCain’s judgment.

That trend is most evident here in Michigan-a state the Republicans said was critical for victory in November. Yet, last week, the McCain campaign abruptly surrendered, effectively ceding 17 electoral votes to Obama.

***

The Ugly Implications of McCain and Palin’s Questions

by Cenk Uygur | October 13, 2008 - 9:20am

Sarah Palin keeps asking people to ask more questions about Barack Obama. Now McCain has joined in on this refrain. But I don’t get it. What more do they need to know? They keep saying he has to answer more questions about Bill Ayers, for example. But he has answered every ridiculous question on this topic a hundred times over. So, what are they really looking for?

***

GOP’s Defense: She Shot the Sheriff, But She Did Not Shoot the Deputy

by RJ Eskow | October 12, 2008 - 3:31pm

It’s hard out there for a shill. A bipartisan panel in Alaska finds that Sarah Palin abused her power and broke the law, and the best defense the campaign can muster is that she “acted within her proper and lawful authority in firing Walt Monegan.” Hey, she did some things that weren’t illegal.

Yes, Officer, I robbed that bank. But I didn’t break any traffic laws on my way home.

It sounds like they’re working up to that shopworn Scooter Libby defense, “there was no underlying crime.” That’s the phrase that showed a lot of seemingly legitimate right-wing political commentators to be nothing more than cynical partisans - so much so that they would cheerfully defend naked criminality in defense of their political interests. (We’re not naming names, Bill Kristol.)

***

John McCain’s Campaign of Hate

by Brent Budowsky | October 12, 2008 - 2:33pm

John McCain parades around the nation with a campaign that has become a pure, 100 percent machine of personal attacks, character assassination, expressions of anger and rage by a man who aspires to be president and inspires chants at what have become hate rallies such as: “Kill him.” “Off with his head.” “Terrorist.” “Arab.” “Traitor.” “Messiah.”

When McCain reaches a level of pure personal invective in his rallies, his ads, his vice presidential nominee’s spewing venom, lies such as “palling with terrorists,” innuendo such as “Who is Obama?” warm-up speakers talking of “Hussein,” various versions of anti-foreigner fear, he is acting in a way that inspires a sick kind of anger and hate from his supporters.

***

Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2008

Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis

By David Goldstein and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that’s what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They’ve specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren’t true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

***

Getting lost in the media furor over McClellan’s memoir is the new autobiography of retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the onetime commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, who is scathing in his assessment that the Bush administration “led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions.”

***Iraqi auditor Salam Adhoob told Congress on Monday that $13 billion in American aid was embezzled by Iraqi politicians or ended up being wasted. Some of the money actually made its way from the Iraqi Defense Ministry to ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).” Iraqi officials also stand accused of coordinating petroleum theft from the Baiji refinery with AQI.

***

Yes, This System Deserves A Bailout...
Madness:

But the seizure and the deal with JPMorgan came as a shock to Washington Mutual’s board, which was kept completely in the dark: the company’s new chief executive, Alan H. Fishman, was in midair, flying from New York to Seattle at the time the deal was finally brokered, according to people briefed on the situation. Mr. Fishman, who has been on the job for LESS THAN THREE WEEKS, is eligible for $11.6 million in cash severance and will get to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus, according to an analysis by James F. Reda and Associates.

That’s not a golden parachute. It’s a next-generation orbital reentry vehicle.

***Key Lehman Employees to Get $2.5 Billion in Bonuses
Richard S Fuld Jr
Total Compensation
$71.90 mil
5-Year Compensation Total
$354.03 mil
Richard S Fuld Jr has been CEO of Lehman Bros Holdings ( LEH) for 15 years.

--Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros., Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns
in total for 2007 paid in bonuses: $39,000,000,000.

***”The fact is, the markets work, and they are working. And people - some of the big companies obviously - have taken risks. Risk means risk. And there’s an upside as well as a downside in some of the choices they’ve made. We have to be careful not to have this set of developments lead us to significantly expand the role of government in ways that may do damage long-term for the economy. We don’t want to interfere with the basic, fundamental working of the markets.”
Dick Cheney 11/26/07

Winston Churchill said that “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

“If one is going to change things, one has to make a fuss and catch the eye of the world.”

Elizabeth Janeway, 10/7/1913- , US novelist and critic

****

10/14/2008

I do like reading what the “far left” is putting out there. I still see this as a McCain victory, once people get into the voting booth I can’t see a majority voting for B. Obama. I mean, his name, think about it. Obama, rhymes with Osama and when you put the name on a yard sign with Biden (Binladen) they just have too many letters in their names that are in common with terrorists, to win a majority of votes in these United States, agreed?
My buddies Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly have been very entertaining lately.

I used to think Christopher Hitchens was smart when he hated Bill Clinton, but if he thinks Obama would make a good President I think he’s gone off the deep end again.

I am always first trying to determine if you are creating clever satire, repeating dogmatic commentary, or applying the current version of Republican logic. To equate the Democratic yard signs with terrorists is quite a stretch, even the minds of the rednecks. To express a newfound concern about the “majority of votes” is ironic, when it’s clear from many sources and scientific exit polling that Bush most likely never did get them. It too seems unfortunate that there are so many among us who choose to get their “news“ from the “very entertaining.” And I doubt that a statement acknowledging that “Christopher Hitchens was smart” should be negated by a future example where his conclusions differ from those of the reader....

Top Ten Ways John McCain Can Turn It Around
Top Ten

Try the old “I’ll vote for you if you vote for me” trick
Inspire America by jumping Straight Talk Express over Snake River Canyon
Change name to Jorack McBama
Start wearing a cape
Step one: send Bin Laden free tickets to Giants game. Step two: when he shows up in East Rutherford, New Jersey expecting to enjoy some big blue smashmouth football: gotcha sucka!
Sizzling tango with Cloris Leachman on “Dancing With The Stars”
Put more effort into budget plan, less effort into Facebook status updates
Point out his steady leadership got us through the Great Depression
Assure voters the only poll that matters is in his pants
Get Sarah Palin to illegally fire herself
***
Published on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 by Informed Comment
The Great Reagan Pyramid Scheme Comes Crashing Down
by Juan Cole
The Republican Party that Nixon invented melded the moneyed classes of the Northeast with the white evangelicals of the South. This odd couple went on to simultaneously steal from and oppress the rest of us. The moneyed classes were happy to let the New Puritans impose their stringent morality, since they could always just buy any licentiousness they wanted, regardless of the law. And the New Puritans were so consumed with cultural issues such as homosexuality, abortion, school prayer and (yes) fighting school desegregation that they were happy to let the northeastern Money Men waltz off with a lion’s share of the country’s resources, consigning most Americans to stagnant wages and increasing debt. The Reagan revolution consolidated this alliance and brought some conservative Catholic workers into it.
These domestic policies at home were complemented by wars and belligerence abroad, which further took the eye of the public off the epochal bank robbery being conducted by the American neo-Medicis, and which were a useful way of throwing billions in government tax revenue to the military-industrial complex, which in turn funded the think tanks and reelection campaigns of the right wing politicians. The Reagan fascination with private armies and funding anti-communist death squads contributed mightily to the creation of al-Qaeda, blowback from which fuelled even bigger Pentagon budgets, spiralling upward and feeding on itself. Terrorism is much better than Communism as a bogey man, since you can just intimate that there are a handful of dangerous people out there somewhere, and force the public to pay over $1 trillion to combat them. In fact, of course, less US interventionism abroad would create less blowback, and genuine threats are better addressed through good police work by multilingual FBI agents than by a $700 billion Pentagon budget.
As a result of the Second Gilded Age and its serf-like subservience to big capital, most corporations in the US don’t pay any income taxes, despite doing $2.5 trillion annually in business.
The Reagan Revolution included the stupid idea that you can cut taxes, starve government, abolish regulation of securities, banks, & etc., and still grow the economy. The irony is that capitalist markets need to be regulated to avoid periodically becoming chaotic (as in ‘chaos theory,’) but the people who most benefit from regulation are most zealous in attempting to abolish or blunt it.
What those policies did was create the preconditions for a long-term bubble or set of bubbles that benefited (for a while) the wealthiest 3 million Americans and harmed everyone else.
The average wage of the average worker is lower now than in 1973 and has been lower or flat for the past 35 years. That’s the condition of the 300 million or so Americans.
In the meantime, the top 1 percent has multiplied its wealth many times over and now takes home 20% of the national income, owning some 45 percent of the privately held wealth in the US.
The Right keeps promising us growth, but it turns out that “growth” is mainly for them, i.e. for the 3 million (and indeed mainly for about 100,000 within the 3 million).
Those 3 million are a new aristocracy, lords of the economy, who reward each other with tens of millions in bonuses for ceremonial reasons that have nothing to do with the jobs they actually perform. Bush has been trying to make them a hereditary aristocracy by getting rid of the estate tax.
That is why banks are refusing the government bailout if it restricts the salaries of the top officers-- you don’t mess with the feudal lord’s prerogatives.
The enormous wealth of a thin sliver or people at the top of US society allows them to buy members of congress and to write the legislation that regulates their industries.
Congress capitulates to this ‘regulatory capture’ because its members have to buy hugely expensive television ads to remain competitive in elections. So they fundraise from the rich, and the rich have expectations (as Keating did of McCain).
These problems could be fixed with a graduated income tax and a closing of tax loopholes ( after we get out of the recession or crash or whatever this is); by legislation criminalizing regulatory capture; by requiring mass media to run political ads for free as a public service (the public owns the airwaves); and by much shortening the election season (please).
A lot of America’s fiscal and educational problems were caused by congressionally mandated fixed sentences imposed on judges with regard to marijuana possession, as a sop to the New Puritans that make up 1/3 of the Republican Party. You have a lot of people serving 5 years in jail for having small amounts of pot. The states had to build new prisons to hold them all. They took the money out of the budget for higher education, abolishing the whole idea of state universities and causing tuitions to rise.
So you’ve got more ignorant people (because people can’t afford even “state” college), and fewer high-tech firms are founded; and you’re feeding and housing large numbers of harmless potheads with your tax dollars instead. The US maintains a vast gulag of nearly 2 million prisoners, putting us in the same league as Putin’s Russia. No country in Western Europe incarcerates a similar proportion of its population.
Mexico’s president wants to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin for personal use, though an arrest on possession charges would require entry into a program to kick addiction.
Decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs; decriminalizing marijuana altogether (and taxing the resulting industry); removing mandatory federal sentencing requirements; and letting states go back to educating their children instead of putting millions in jail; would solve another big batch of America’s problems.
So there you have it. Abolish puritanism in government policy; go back to using the government to regulate industries and finance and provide services; and fight terrorism with better public diplomacy and better police work instead of with militarization-- and you might get out of this thing intact.
© 2008 Juan Cole
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.
***
Published on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 by TruthDig.com
The Hoover-Palin Ticket
by Robert Scheer
And the winner is ... Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Remember him-the great Democratic president who saved capitalism from the capitalists by reining in their exorbitant greed? Forget the Reagan Revolution heralding a new era of small government, which turned out to be nothing more than a fig leaf for legalized corporate crime. The hero of the hour is FDR, as the essential wisdom of his New Deal is now embraced by most Republicans as well as Democrats.
Roosevelt’s legacy was acknowledged Monday when GOP presidential nominee John McCain absurdly accused his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, of advocating policies pursued by Herbert Hoover, the Republican incumbent whom Roosevelt defeated in 1932. While clueless GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin prattled on at the same rally about Reaganomics and getting government out of the way of business, most other Americans noticed-and are grateful-that the federal government now directly manages many of our biggest businesses in the all-important financial sector.
The banking bailout is pure FDR at his big-government best. Greedy bankers are being taken to the woodshed and read the riot act: If they behave, then they will once again have the opportunity to be filthy rich-that’s the American way.
As McCain put it Tuesday: “I will begin by making certain that the $700 billion already committed to economic recovery is not used to further enrich the very people and institutions that invited these troubles with their own reckless conduct.”
Yes, McCain finally gets it: “I will not play along with the same Washington games and gimmicks that got us into this terrible mess in the first place. I am going to Washington to fight for you.” I didn’t check whether this performance made it into the “Moment of Zen” in “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” but it should have. “I am going to Washington” is a classic proclamation of stupidity that assumes the rest of us are unaware of where McCain has been these past three decades.
The “gimmicks that got us into this terrible mess in the first place” were made legal by the passage of radical deregulatory legislation that McCain, as much as anyone in Washington, enthusiastically supported. Those gimmicks-hybrid instruments, credit swaps and so on-were codified in laws pushed through Congress by Phil Gramm, the man McCain esteemed so highly that he chaired the then-senator’s 1996 presidential campaign and then chose Gramm to co-chair his 2008 run for the White House.
No one in Washington had a clearer warning of the dangers of those games and gimmicks than McCain, who, as one of the Keating Five, ran interference for the savings-and-loan swindlers of an earlier era. But McCain did not personally share in the financial misfortune of those who lost their life’s saving in the SL meltdown; his wife, Cindy McCain, had an inside track with Charles Keating and made more than a million bucks participating in Keating’s swindles before the financier was dispatched to prison.
Instead of learning the harsh lessons of the SL debacle, McCain plunged ahead, crusading for even more extreme deregulatory measures that dismantled the financial safeguards FDR had put in place to prevent another Great Depression. McCain, as much as anyone, is responsible for the decriminalization of the reckless conduct that he now attributes to Wall Street: “We will learn from this crisis to prevent the next one, with much stricter oversight. No more wild over-leveraging, no more liabilities concealed from the public and from shareholders, no more bundling of assets to maximize profit by assuming insane risks. Those days are over on Wall Street. With new rules of public disclosure and accounting, my reforms will make certain those betrayals of shareholders and the public trust are never repeated.”
Why not begin with a reversal of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Gramm sneaked into an omnibus bill only hours before Congress adjourned for the 2000 Christmas recess, codifying “Legal Certainty for Swap Agreements”? Or that act’s Title IV, which explicitly exempted from regulation the new gimmicks (which McCain now condemns) by forbidding the government to “exercise regulatory authority with respect to ... an unidentified banking product which had not been commonly offered, entered into, or provided in the United States by any bank on or before Dec. 5, 2000 ...”?
Over the last eight years, McCain has consistently opposed all efforts to modify the legislation that gave the bandits the keys to the banks. It’s McCain who is the Herbert Hoover in this presidential race.
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
Robert Scheer is the editor in chief of Truthdig and author of a new book, “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.”
***
October 14, 2008
Whistleblower: Oil watchdog agency ‘cult of corruption’
Story Highlights
Whistleblower said oil regulators in bed with oil industry: “It’s disgusting”
Department of Interior said it can’t comment on Bobby Maxwell’s specific claims
Maxwell was auditor for 20-plus years, said he lost job due to scrutiny of oil giants
Recent report found the agency Maxwell worked for took improper gifts from oil reps
Next Article in U.S. »
From Dan Simon and David Fitzpatrick
CNN
HONOLULU, Hawaii (CNN) -- Bobby Maxwell kept a close eye on the oil industry for more than 20 years as a government auditor. But he said the federal agency he worked for is now a “cult of corruption” -- a claim backed up by a recent government report.
Bobby Maxwell, a long-time auditor of the oil industry, says his former agency is corrupt “top to bottom.”
1 of 2 “I believe the management we were under was showing favoritism to the oil industry,” Maxwell told CNN.
Maxwell is referring to a tiny agency within the Department of the Interior called the Minerals Management Service, which manages the nation’s natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on federal lands.
A report, conducted by the Interior Department’s inspector general and released earlier this month, found that employees at the agency received improper gifts from energy industry officials and engaged with them in illegal drug use and inappropriate sexual relations. It looked at activities at the agency from 2003 through 2006.
Maxwell said the report doesn’t surprise him. The agency, he said, is corrupt “top to bottom.” Watch a failure to “protect America’s interests” »
“It sounds like they forgot they work for the government,” he said. “It’s disgusting. ... There’s no excuse for that. Those people should not be working in those positions at all.
“They crossed a lot of lines that should never have been crossed,” he said. “They lost all objectivity.”
Maxwell was in charge of keeping track of the millions in royalty payments owed taxpayers by oil and gas companies who explored and found oil on U.S. government lands.
He estimates he and his team were responsible for saving the government close to $500 million in royalties, either underpaid or somehow skipped by oil and gas companies, over the years.
He received the Interior Department’s highest award in 2003 for his work. But not long afterward, his job was killed.
He believes it was retribution for his cracking down on Big Oil and blowing the whistle on what he believes was a “cult of corruption” within the agency. The Interior Department denies that, saying his job was reorganized as part of routine restructuring.
Just before he lost his job, he said, one of his superiors in Washington ordered him not to investigate why Shell Oil had raised its oil transportation costs. Maxwell said it jumped from 90 cents to $3 a barrel without adequate explanation. The government paid Shell to transport oil from offshore platforms.
When asked why a government worker would tell an auditor not to investigate, he said: “I believe it started from the top down,” he said.
Shell Oil told CNN it “pays the same rate any shipper does” and that it has “never engaged in fraudulent transactions or entered into sham contracts as Mr. Maxwell alleges.”
Maxwell, a registered independent, said the shift in attitude at the agency began about seven or eight years ago, about the time the Bush administration came into power. He said he was discouraged from aggressively auditing oil companies.
“Laws and regulations were not applied, also not enforced,” he said.
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The inspector general’s 27-page summary says that nearly a third of the roughly 60 people in Maxwell’s former office received gifts and gratuities from oil industry executives.
Two received improper, if not illegal, gifts at least 135 times, the report says. It goes on to describe a wild atmosphere in which some staff members admitted using cocaine and marijuana.
In addition, two female workers at the Minerals Management Service were known as the “MMS chicks” and both told investigators they had sex with oil industry officials they were supposed to be auditing.
One e-mail from a pipeline company representative invited government workers to a tailgating party: “Have you and the girls meet at my place at 6 a.m. for bubble baths and final prep ... Just kidding.”
Inspector General Earl Devaney said in a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne accompanying the report that it details “a textbook example of improperly receiving gifts from prohibited sources.”
Maxwell is now retired from the government and teaches at the University of Hawaii. He said it was just a matter of time until the agency’s behavior was exposed. He feels vindicated now in the wake of the inspector general’s report, but is still disgusted by what he was happening at the Minerals Management Service.
“Their job is to protect United States taxpayers’ interest. It’s like they completely forgot that, like they just became part of the oil companies,” he said.
The Interior Department said it could not comment on Maxwell’s specific allegations or removal, saying his former supervisor no longer works for the Interior Department either.
Kempthorne said he was “outraged” by the disclosures in the inspector general’s report and that the actions “of a few has cast a shadow on the entire agency.”
But the department said there is no evidence taxpayers lost money as a result of unethical behavior between government workers and the oil and gas industry.
Maxwell doubts that.
The former auditor said he’d love to put all the government royalty records under his magnifying glass.
“I think the government should be transparent. We are for the people, by the people. This is the government. We’re here to serve,” he said.
Maxwell has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the Kerr-McGee Corp., an energy company involved in oil and gas exploration. In it, he claims the company defrauded taxpayers out of millions in oil royalty payments.
The company denies the accusation. If Maxwell wins, the government would recieve about $40 million in additonal revenue and Maxwell would be entitled to about a third of that.
***
updated 11:40 a.m. EDT, Wed October 15, 2008
Commentary: Time for Palin to answer tough questions
Story Highlights
Roland Martin: Gov. Palin talks tough on the campaign trail
Martin: Palin has ducked questions about many difficult issues
Palin has given only a limited number of interviews, Martin says
Palin hasn’t been forthcoming on the Alaska ethics investigation, he says
Next Article in Politics »
By Roland Martin
CNN Contributor
Editor’s note: Join Roland S. Martin for his weekly sound-off segment on CNN.com Live at 11:10 a.m. ET Thursday. If you’re passionate about politics, he wants to hear from you. A nationally syndicated columnist and Chicago-based radio host, Martin has said he will vote for Barack Obama in November. He is the author of “Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith” and “Speak, Brother! A Black Man’s View of America.” Visit his Web site for more information.
Roland Martin says Gov. Sarah Palin talks tough but ducks a lot of difficult questions.
(CNN) -- Do you know what was so great about Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan? They were three of the biggest trash talkers in the history of the NBA, but they had the game to back it up.
Somebody should tell that to Gov. Sarah Palin.
Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential running mate has been running around the country, firing up her -- yes, her, and not necessarily McCain’s -- loyal supporters by blasting Sen. Barack Obama for “palling around with terrorists” and demanding that the American people know exactly when he learned of the past of 1960s radical William Ayers.
She has stoked the crowds by saying, “This is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America.” We all know what that is designed to do: Portray Obama as a foreigner who isn’t as American as she. Or you. Or Joe Six-pack, the hockey mom, soccer mom, Wal-Mart mom, NASCAR dad and the other coded words she uses regularly.
But what is truly pathetic is that Palin talks tough, but is really scared of facing her own issues.
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Since she is good at proclaiming that the American people need to know who Barack Obama is -- an attempt to paint him as a shady figure who might occupy the White House -- the American people deserve to hear Palin answer if her husband, Todd, a former member of the Alaska Independence Party, agreed with its founder, who wanted to secede from the union.
Is there anything more anti-American than wanting to sever ties with the country? Send Roland Martin your questions and listen to his program on CNNRadio and CNN.com Live, Thursday at noon ET.
It’s critical that Palin answer questions about whether she disagrees with John McCain’s criticism of the Bush administration’s decision to remove North Korea from the terrorist nation list. She spoke in favor of it. McCain didn’t. Are they on the same page or not?
The American people deserve to hear from Palin as to why she didn’t say a word to rebuke the hateful, pathetic and degrading comments made at rallies featuring her, such as when someone in the crowd called Obama a terrorist, someone else shouted, “Off with his head” and others suggested he is a traitor.
Lastly, don’t you think the self-described maverick needs to own up to what really happened with the firing of the commissioner in Alaska? She was declared by a special investigator to have been within her rights in firing the commissioner, but she was blasted for abuse of power and violating the state’s ethics act.
So what did she say in a conference call with Alaska reporters -- who were not allowed by the McCain camp to ask follow-up questions? That she was cleared of all wrongdoing, legally and ethically.
That’s right. She repeated over and over and over an absolute lie, and we are supposed to say, “Hey, it’s all fine. She winks at us. We love her hockey mom schtick. Don’t worry about that abuse of power thing.”
Well, after having to deal with Vice President Dick Cheney being accused of beating the drum for war by berating and pushing our intelligence apparatus to match his political views on Iraq, don’t you think we should really care about someone who has been accused in a report, authorized by Democrats and Republicans, of using their power and influence to get their way?
Sure, her supporters will say she’s talked to the “media.” She was questioned by Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh and that self-described journalist -- yes, he really called himself that -- Fox’s Sean Hannity.
Palin has done interviews with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and CBS’s Katie Couric, and local TV folks. But why is she so scared of NBC’s Brian Williams? And why is she so fearful of CNN?
Does she somehow think that our big guns like Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Campbell Brown are just too tough in asking questions? My goodness, Tina Fey has actually done more interviews about playing Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin has done about being Sarah Palin!
Hmmm. McCain, Sen. Joe Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Cindy McCain and even McCain’s 95-year-old momma and Palin’s daddy have all done interviews with CNN, sharing their thoughts on the campaign. But Palin? Not a whisper.
It’s clear that Palin really isn’t a true frontier woman. See, when you tote a gun, carry a big stick and spit fire, you aren’t afraid to take on all comers.
So, Sarah, if you want to talk big on the campaign trail to those audiences that don’t talk back, go right ahead. But if you truly are the maverick politician you say you are, come on and talk to us soft, coddled, elitist journalists. Surely we aren’t as tough as the moose you like to take down with your Second Amendment-protected hunting rifle.
***
Published on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 by The Providence Journal
Americans Unwilling to Face Reality
by John R. MacArthur
It’s not as though no one saw it coming. Here’s the economist Michael Hudson, writing in the May 2006 issue of Harper’s Magazine: “The reality is that, although home ownership may be a wise choice for many people, this particular real-estate bubble has been carefully engineered to lure home buyers into circumstances detrimental to their own best interests. . . . The bubble will burst, and when it does, the people who thought they would be living the easy life of a landlord will soon find that what they really signed up for was the hard servitude of debt serfdom.”
Other commentators, including this paper’s editorial writers and Warren Buffet, said similar things about the derivatives market. It was prescient stuff for anybody who cared to listen, but hardly anybody did. Americans, perhaps even more than other people, have difficulty embracing the concept of “reality.”
In part, this is religious. America remains the land of infinite redemption where any crook can suddenly go straight. In part, it stems from our turbo-charged ethos of capitalism. America has always been the land of get-rich-quick and damn the consequences. We are a nation of fantasists, and things have to get really bad before a politician has the right to trade in hard truth.
So far, I don’t think they’ve gotten bad enough. Even with all the frenzied commentary about the credit crisis now choking the media (while the financial geniuses assembled at the corner of Wall and K Streets scramble to save their hides), I’m struck more by what’s not being said than what is.
Every day I add to a list of critical omissions from the debate. Where, for example, is the voice of organized labor? In previous generations, we could have expected to see the president of the AFL-CIO or the United Auto Workers on the sets of the major talk shows. Apart from David Brancaccio’s NOW on PBS, I couldn’t find a single TV program that featured what might be called a “labor leader.”
Where are the alternative candidates for president like Ralph Nader and Bob Barr? I was pleased to hear that Nader, a long-time critic of the deregulated economy, was permitted to appear on CNN and The O’Reilly Factor after the second McCain-Obama debate, but the time for that was before the House passed the bailout bill.
Why is the heavy financial support for Barack Obama and John McCain from Wall Street off limits for discussion? It’s unlikely they will be asked about it in tonight’s debate - the two parties write the rules to discourage tough questions - but some impertinent journalist might. If you can’t get the media-trained Obama to give a straight answer, why not simply present a graphic contrasting Obama’s Reno speech supporting the bailout and Nader’s argument against it?
For that matter, in its recent take-down of Alan Greenspan and Clinton administration deregulation (including the refusal to regulate derivatives trading), why didn’t The New York Times mention that former Clinton Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers are principal advisers to Obama on the economy? In the same vein, why isn’t Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, challenged on his slow response to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failures?
The only serious critic I’ve found was interviewed in France’s Le Monde: Columbia finance Prof. Rama Cont argues that six months ago the bailout of the two mortgage agencies would have cost $100 billion instead of an eventual $400 billion to $500 billion. Who pocketed the difference, thanks to Paulson’s “indulgence” of his former colleagues? According to Cont, it was short sellers at Goldman Sachs and hedge funds.
Meanwhile, where are the deep thinkers who might enlighten us in this hour of fear, including Karl Marx? Don’t laugh. Marx had much to say about the so-called “contradictions of capitalism” that bears re-reading today. Nothing he wrote is perfectly applicable to subprime mortgages and the derivatives crapshoot. But Marx’s understanding that unfettered capitalism, while fantastically productive, leads to instability by concentrating wealth in too few hands - that a mass-production/mass-consumption society is fundamentally incompatible with oligarchic control of wealth - is something even Rush Limbaugh could appreciate.
If Marx is too rich for your blood, at least we might hear from John Gray, the renegade former adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Gray is today’s most intelligent critic of globalization and “free trade.” He could explain to a television audience that a great deal of America’s “real economy” (as opposed to an economy based on derivatives trading and shopping at Wal-Mart) has already left the country for cheap-labor locales such the Pearl River Delta, in China, and the south bank of the Rio Grande, never to return. And he could describe the destruction wreaked on traditional societies that suddenly become host to outsourced American factories. Youngstown and Utica are hurting, to be sure, but it’s no picnic either these days for the working class in Nogales or Dongguan.
Finally, there are the great realist novelists, who often see more clearly than journalists. So far, my Google search has not picked up any excerpts from Zola’s novel Money being read on the nightly news. In this brilliant chronicle of a speculative stock bubble, launched by a character named Saccard in 1860s Paris, Zola cuts right to the heart of America’s boom-and-bust neurosis: “Wasn’t such great and rapid prosperity the result of the methods for which [Saccard] was now being blamed. All of this came together. If one accepted the success, one had to accept the risks. When you overheat a machine, it sometimes explodes.”
© 2008 The Providence Journal Co.
John R. MacArthur, a monthly contributor, is publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of the forthcoming book You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America.
***
Published on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 by The Boston Globe
The Reality of War in Afghanistan
by Stephen Kinzer
Despite their differences over how to pursue the US war in Iraq, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both want to send more American troops to Afghanistan. Both are wrong. History cries out to them, but they are not listening.
Both candidates would do well to gaze for a moment on a painting by the British artist Elizabeth Butler called “Remnants of an Army.” It depicts the lone survivor of a 15,000-strong British column that sought to march through 150 kilometers of hostile Afghan territory in 1842. His gaunt, defeated figure is a timeless reminder of what happens to foreign armies that try to subdue Afghanistan.
The McCain-Obama approach to Afghanistan, like much of US policy toward the Middle East and Central Asia, is based on emotion rather than realism. Emotion leads many Americans to want to punish perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. They see war against the Taliban as a way to do it. Suggesting that victory over the Taliban is impossible, and that the United States can only hope for peace in Afghanistan through compromise with Taliban leaders, has been taken as near-treason.
This knee-jerk response ignores the pattern of fluid loyalties that has been part of Afghan tribal life for centuries. Alliances shift as interests change. Warlords who support the Taliban are not necessarily enemies of the United States. If they are today, they need not be tomorrow.
In recent weeks, this elemental truth has begun to reshape debate over Western policy toward Afghanistan. Warlords on both sides met quietly in Saudi Arabia. The Afghan defense minister called for a “political settlement with the Taliban.” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates would not go that far, but said he might ultimately be open to “reconciliation as part of the political outcome.”
Gates, however, struck a delusionary note of “can-do” cheeriness by repeating the McCain-Obama mantra: More US troops can pacify Afghanistan. Speaking days after a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the United States was caught in a “downward spiral” there, Gates asserted that there is “no reason to be defeatist or underestimate the opportunity to be successful in the long run.”
In fact, long-run success in Afghanistan - defined as an acceptable level of violence and assurance that Afghan territory will not be used for attacks against other countries - will only be possible with fewer foreign troops on the ground, not more.
A relentless series of US attacks in Afghanistan has produced “collateral damage” in the form of hundreds of civilian deaths, which alienate the very Afghans the West needs. As long as the campaign continues, recruits will pour into Taliban ranks. It is no accident that the Taliban has mushroomed since the current bombing campaign began. It allows the Taliban to claim the mantle of resistance to a foreign occupier. In Afghanistan, there is none more sacred.
The US war in Afghanistan also serves as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. It is attracting a new stream of foreign fighters into the region. A few years ago, these jihadists went to Iraq to fight the Great Satan. Now they see the United States escalating its war in Afghanistan and neighboring regions of Pakistan, and are flocking there instead.
Even if the United States de-escalates its war in Afghanistan, the country will not be stable as long as the poppy trade provides huge sums of money for violent militants. Eradicating poppies is like eradicating the Taliban: a great idea but not achievable. Instead of waging endless spray-and-burn campaigns that alienate ordinary Afghans, the United States should allow planting to proceed unmolested, and then buy the entire crop. Some could be turned into morphine for medical use, and the rest destroyed. The Afghan poppy crop is worth an estimated $4 billion per year. That sum would be better spent putting cash into the pockets of Afghan peasants than firing missiles into their villages.
Deploying more US troops in Afghanistan will intensify this highly dangerous conflict, not calm it. Compromise with Al Qaeda would be both unimaginable and morally repugnant, but the Taliban is a different force. Skillful negotiation among clan leaders, based on a genuine willingness to compromise, holds the best hope for Afghanistan. It is an approach based on reality, not emotion.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company
Stephen Kinzer is author of “A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It.”
***
October 14, 2008
McCain and Rolling Thunder
War Hero or War Criminal?
By ROBERT RICHTER
As character assassination attacks on Sen. Barack Obama have now taken over Sen. John McCain’s campaign, and because McCain cites his military experience as of prime importance, now is the time to focus closer attention on a facet of the Arizona Senator’s own character. This is related to his 23 combat missions for Operation Rolling Thunder - the Pentagon’s name for U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.
I will never forget how stunned I was when Gen. Telford Taylor, a chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials after World War Two, told me that he strongly supported the idea of trying the U.S. pilots captured in North Vietnam as war criminals - and that he would be proud to lead in their prosecution.
An ardent opponent of the Vietnam conflict, Taylor spoke with me in the fall of 1966 when I was looking into producing a documentary on this controversy for CBS News, where I was their National Political Editor. While he did not mention any pilot’s name, then U.S. Navy Lieut. Commander John McCain who was captured a year later, would have been among the group Taylor wanted to prosecute.
Why would anyone have wanted to prosecute McCain and the other captured pilots? Taylor’s argument was that their actions were in violation of the Geneva conventions that specifically forbid indiscriminate bombing that could cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects. Adding to the Geneva code, he noted, was the decision at the Nuremberg trials after World War Two: military personnel cannot defend themselves against such a charge with a claim that they were simply following orders.
There were questions raised about whether the Geneva conventions applied to the pilots, since there had been no formal declaration of war by the U.S. against the Hanoi regime - and the Geneva rules presumably are only in force in a “declared” war.
Anti-war critics at the time claimed that despite the Pentagon’s assertion that only military targets were bombed, U.S. pilots also had bombed hospitals and other civilian targets, a charge that turned out to be correct and was confirmed by the New York Times’ chief foreign correspondent, Harrison Salisbury.
In late 1966 Salisbury described the widespread devastation of civilian neighborhoods around Hanoi by American bombs: “Bomb damage...extends over an area of probably a mile or so on both sides of the highway...small villages and hamlets along the route [were] almost obliterated.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara conceded some years later that more than a million deaths and injuries occurred in northern Vietnam each year from 1965 to 1968, as a result of the 800 tons of bombs a day dropped by our pilots.
In one of his autobiographies McCain wrote that he was going to bomb a power station in “a heavily populated part of Hanoi” when he was shot down.
If Gen. Taylor tried McCain, would he have defended himself as “just following orders” despite the Geneva conventions barring that kind of bombing and the Nuremberg principles negating “just following orders?“
The targets McCain and his fellow pilots actually bombed in Vietnam and his justification then or now for the actions that led to his capture, are no longer simply old news. They are part of what must be taken into account today, as voters weigh support for him or Obama to be the next President of the United States.
This is not about the hugely unpopular war in Vietnam. It is about the character of a man who seeks to be U.S. President, who perhaps was not simply a brave warrior, but a warrior who by his own admission, bombed and was ready to bomb targets in violation of the Geneva conventions and Nuremberg principles.
_____
When I passed along Gen. Taylor’s comments to my network superiors the program was scrapped: too hot to handle. Instead Air War Over the North was telecast, about “precision bombing” North Vietnam military targets by U.S. pilots. A few years after that broadcast, a Pentagon public information executive gleefully told Roger Mudd in The Selling of the Pentagon that he, the Pentagon official, not only had persuaded CBS to produce Air War Over the North, he even chose those to be interviewed and coached them about what they should say. This unethical collaboration and intercession by the Pentagon in the news media is sadly all too familiar a tactic repeated in the Bush-Cheney years.
Robert Richter was political director for CBS News from 1965 to 1968.
***
Just How Sick is John McCain?
A source tells CounterPunch that McCain received grim news during a recent, secret visit to a top cancer hospital in Los Angeles. Read the complete file of Alexander Cockburn and Fred Gardner’s probe of the McCain health dossier.
***
McCain is too hot, so desperate to make a connection that he bobs about like a demented troll and steps on his own best lines.
Theoretically, the performances of the candidates should have been improved by prodding from able moderators.
Not this year.
***
Published on Thursday, October 16, 2008 by Medical News Today/UK
US Falling Behind In Infant Mortality
Compared to other developed nations the United States appears to be falling behind in infant mortality, that is the percentage of babies that die before reaching their first birthday.
The gap between the US and countries with the lowest infant mortality appears to be widening, and in 2004, the US shared its 29th place with Poland and Slovakia. (Image: photobucket)According to new figures from the National Center for Health Statistics of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published on 15th October, the US ranked 29th in infant mortality in 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available from all countries, 27th in 2000, 23rd in 1990 and 12th in 1960.
The gap between the US and countries with the lowest infant mortality appears to be widening, and in 2004, the US shared its 29th place with Poland and Slovakia.
The US infant mortality rate was 6.78 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2004. 22 countries had infant mortality rates below 5 in 2004, and the lowest rates, below 3.5 deaths per 1,000, were in Scandinavian (Sweden, Norway, Finland) and East Asian (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore) countries.
Between 2000 and 2005 the US infant mortality rate stayed steady, but preliminary data for 2006 suggests a significant 2 per cent decline over the previous year, said the report.
***
An Old Boxer Who Has Been in One Too Many Fights
by Cenk Uygur | October 16, 2008 - 10:28am | permalink
article tools: email | print | read more Cenk Uygur
John McCain on Wednesday night delivered the worst performance in a debate I have ever seen. I would call it sad, even pathetic, but it was so bad that I feel guilty about pointing it out too forcefully.
McCain looked like an old boxer who had been in one too many fights. You wanted to pull him from the ring. The whole time I was thinking, “Who let him get into this fight?” Don’t you have a conscience? Throw the towel. Throw the towel!
The weird, angry, desperate attacks were punctuated by uncomfortable sighs and eye rolls. It was a train wreck. I literally averted my eyes on a couple of occasions.
» article continues...
read more | Cenk Uygur’s blog | 9 comments | email this blog | 1014 reads
Homeland Security | Law
Running Scared
by Brian Morton | October 16, 2008 - 10:24am | permalink
article tools: email | print | read more Brian Morton
America is now a nation living on a foundation built of fear.
It’s as if we’re living in an alternate universe where time started traveling backward from the Gilded Age and Pearl Harbor, and now we’re skidding toward the stock-market crash of 1929. We are afraid of fear itself. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have thrown us headlong into the past.
***
DEBATE REACTION: Arianna Huffington: McCain’s Losing Strategy: Double Down On The Anger... Nora Ephron: McCain Seemed Off His Meds... Bob Shrum: Put McCain Out Of His Misery... Marty Kaplan: The Relentless Close-Ups Of McCain Were Cruel... Ari Melber: McCain’s Entire Offensive Muddled... David Gergen: McCain “An Exercise In Anger Management... He Brought Back Memories Of Bob Dole In 1996”... NYT: McCain Seemed “Angry And Desperate”...
Ambinder: “We Saw A McXplosion”... Josh Marshall: McCain Didn’t Land “Any Solid Punches”
***
Les Weisbrod
Posted October 15, 2008
Bush Administration Made Complete Immunity for Negligent Corporations a Top Priority
In the past three years federal agencies, under the direction of Bush administration officials and with the blessing of corporate America, have engaged in a campaign to hand corporations a ‘get-out-of jail-free’ pass when their products have harmed consumers. According to a report released by the American Association for Justice, seven federal agencies (FDA, CPSC, NHTSA, FRA, DHS, PHMSA, and TSA) have included language in federal regulations that give corporations complete immunity preemption. The effect has been to usurp stricter state laws and rob citizens of their right to justice after they have been injured by a hazardous product.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests, AAJ obtained correspondence between the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and numerous federal agencies that show OMB drafted preemption language for agencies to include in their rules, language that gives corporations a free pass to make dangerous products and escape any responsibility for harming consumers.
The lasting effect is yet to be determined, with the Supreme Court soon to weigh in when they take up the issue next month with Wyeth v. Levine. Diana Levine was injected with a drug that the manufacturer knew could cause gangrene and even possible amputation when injected incorrectly. Yet the company did not update the warning label to warn about the possible side effects they knew about. Instead, Wyeth is claiming since the FDA approved the warning labeling, they are shielded from any wrong-doing.
Protecting consumers has always required both strong government regulations and a strong civil justice system to keep greedy corporations in check. In fact, Attorneys General from 47 states agree and have filed a brief in the Wyeth v. Levine case. The AGs argue preemption clauses break with decades of historical precedence that have relied on a strong civil justice system to compliment federal agency protections to keep consumers safe.
We only need to look at the recent recalls of spinach, toys with lead, meat, pet food, and toothpaste to know the government alone cannot ensure all drugs, food, and other consumer products are safe. Preemption not only gives corporations an escape from misconduct, but takes away the incentive for manufacturers to compete with one another to make products safer. When political appointees interfere and grant corporations complete immunity from making harmful products, everyone suffers. The constitutional right to fight for justice in a court of law must be preserved. The Bush legacy must not be “get-out-of-jail-free” for corporate irresponsibility.
***
The Faces of John McCain

Marty Kaplan, 10.15.2008
Ninety minutes of John McCain making faces was more than enough for a lifetime. It’s hard to imagine anyone willingly inviting that antic lemon-sucking grinfest into their homes for the next four years.
John McCain NakedMichael Seitzman, 10.16.2008
Mccain and Palin and their ilk don’t laugh. They patronize. They don’t smile, they snicker. They don’t debate, they denigrate. They don’t talk, they condescend. They don’t argue, they ridicule.

“I’m Not President Bush”: Uh, Senator, Sorry, But Your Voting Record Says You Are
Mitchell Bard, 10.16.2008
While Jay, Dave, Conan and countless other comedians always roast whoever resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, can anyone remember any sitting president that has been so frequently portrayed as a buffoon on the big screen? Let’s recap with these categories:
To read the rest of this story, click here:
http://www.fandango.com/commentator_g.w.bush’sfilmlegacy_195
****

11/4/2008

mccain landslide

7 Reasons McCain Will Win in a Landslide Today

Seth Grahame-Smith, 11.03.2008
Who better to set a new course than a man who’s been in the Senate for 26 years? Who better to lead us into the future than a seventy-two-year-old who doesn’t use email? That leader is John McCain.
Seth Grahame-SmithPosted November 3, 2008 | 02:15 PM

Back in July, I wrote a piece predicting a huge Obama win. I even offered a recipe for an Election Night drink called the “McCrush” (vodka and Orange Crush over crushed ice, served in a hollow flip-flop with a sprig of pandering). But that was an electoral eternity ago -- before the phenomenal rise of Sarah Palin, the phenomenal collapse of Wall Street, and the phenomenal scalp of Joe the Plumber. Call it my mea culpa, or my heaping serving of crow, but I feel compelled to state the obvious. John McCain will “McCrush” Barack Obama today. Here are seven reasons why:
1. The Power of Palin -- On paper, she sounds like a superhero: Attractive. Stylish. Handy with an assault rifle. Impervious to witchcraft. But when it comes to the power of Palin, that’s only the tip of the rapidly-melting iceberg. She’s given a voice to America’s willfully-ignorant secessionist religious fanatics, and energized women who haven’t felt this eager to vote since Studdard vs. Aiken. She’s a transformational leader, as evidenced by her unique ability to transform many longtime Republicans into Obama supporters.
2. America’s Hunger for Change -- 90% of Americans think our country is on the wrong track. We want a leader who’ll roll up his sleeves and start pulling survivors from the smoldering rubble of the Bush presidency. Clearly, that leader is John McCain. Who better to set a new course than a man who’s been in the Senate for 26 years? Who better to lead us into the future than a seventy-two-year-old who doesn’t use email? Who better to represent “change” than a man who changes campaign themes every few days?
3. The Economic Crisis -- Isn’t it time for a president who knows how to spend money responsibly? Whether on nine houses, thirteen cars, or $150,000 in designer clothes? Isn’t it time for a leader who understands that building a strong economy starts at the top and works its way down -- just like building a strong skyscraper starts with the top floor and ends with the foundation? A leader who’s seen* workers losing their jobs and families struggling to get by on food stamps?
* (from the windows of his wife’s private jet)
4. A Unified Republican Party -- To outsiders, it might look like traditional “Ronald Reagan” Conservatives and traditional “Ted Haggard” Christianists are slugging it out to see who gets to steer the SS Irrelevant. It might even look like John McCain and Sarah Palin are slugging it out to see who gets to steer their campaign off a cliff. Well consider yourselves duped, Liberals. It’s all part of the GOP’s elaborate plan to let you rule for the next few decades while we groom Bristol for 2044.
5. Joe the Plumber -- John McCain recently looked out into a crowd of supporters and proclaimed, “You’re all Joe the Plumber.” What he meant was, if we all look deep into our hearts, we’ll see someone who seeks to cash in on his fleeting fame with record deals, corporate sponsorships, and paid personal appearances while pretending to be the quintessential “little guy.” In other words, we’ll see the perennial balancing act between old-fashioned American values and old-fashioned American greed. It was a powerful insight into our national identity. Or maybe McCain was just pandering out of embarrassment because Joe didn’t show up to his rally. But still...
6. McCain’s Experience -- Criticize McCain all you want for running a “disgraceful campaign.” For “smearing” Obama as a Marxist Muslim elitist terrorist-lover who wants to enslave the white race and send our children to homosexuality conversion camps. But the reality is, John McCain is merely using his wealth of political experience -- by employing the same race-based fear-mongering that defeated him in the 2000 primaries. Experience counts, people.
7. Country First -- Loving America means loving every single thing about America. It means never, ever criticizing it. It means shouting down even the slightest whispers of dissent with wild-eyed chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” It means doing what’s right for the country, not what’s right for your campaign. People in the Pro-American parts of America understand this. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if our forefathers had been as unpatriotic as Obama’s supporters? As elitist and arrogant? Can you imagine if they’d had the audacity to question -- or even rebel against their own country?
What a nightmare that would’ve been....

***

Rove Predicts Obama Landslide ...
The final Rove & Co. electoral map of the 2008 election cycle points to a 338-200 Barack Obama electoral vote victory over John McCain tomorrow, the largest electoral margin since 1996.

***

No Currency Left to Buy the Big Lies

John Cusack, 11.02.2008
We watch millionaires and paid Republican hacks appear on television yelling “Socialist!” at Obama as if the Bolsheviks are coming to rape our daughters.

****

11/18/2008

votes

A few notes from outside that cave: one of the recurring themes is how Republicans cannot win elections without disenfranchising voters- below is a good summary...

Election protection in Ohio (and America) isn’t over
November 18, 2008 - 9:21am
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
As the sun sets on Bush 2, it is clear that a very thin line of electoral protection preserved Barack Obama’s victory in Ohio--and the nation.
And it’s no accident the vote count battle for a Columbus-area Congressional seat still rages.
The GOP’s 2008 electoral strategy again emphasized massive voter disenfranchisement and rigging the electronic vote count. The twin tactics very nearly gave Ohio to McCain/Palin, and threatened to set precedents capable of winning them the national election.
Prior to the 2004 vote, Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell stripped some 308,000 Ohio citizens from the registration rolls in heavily Democratic districts. This mass disenfranchisement alone may have accounted for the 118,000-plus official margin that gave George W. Bush a second term in the White House.
After the 2004 vote, Blackwell disenfranchised another 170,000 voters in heavily Democratic Franklin County (Columbus).
But in 2006, Democrat Jennifer Brunner was elected to replace Blackwell. Ironically, the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Blackwell over 2004 election irregularities has carried over, making Brunner the defendant (we are plaintiff and defendant in that suit). As a result, negotiations between Brunner and election protection attorneys have been on-going since she took office.
In the lead-up to the 2008 elections, the GOP tried yet another massive voter purge. Through the “caging” technique of sending unsolicited “do not forward” junk mail, GOP operatives obtained by returned mail the names of some 600,000 registered Ohio voters. Some were serving in Iraq. Also, the GOP once again fought to purge voters for “inactivity” as they sought to eliminate voters who hadn’t voted in four-years as opposed to eight, even if they voted in state and local eletions..
The GOP demanded the right to disenfranchise these voters. But Brunner directed that each was entitled to notice and an individual in-person hearing.
As Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have reported, the GOP used similar caging throughout the US, aimed at millions of likely Democratic voters.
The GOP also went after 200,000 new Ohio voters whose registrations showed minor discrepancies. Included were variations in social security and drivers’ license numbers, or changes in middle names, nicknames and addresses.
But Brunner fought to protect these names from GOP challenge, and was upheld by the US Supreme Court, who refused to hear the GOP case prior to the election.
Based on projected demographic and voter turnout statistics, the elimination of these four-fifths of a million voters (some 5.4 million votes were counted in Ohio 2008) could have shifted a 200,000-vote victory for Obama to a 40,000-vote triumph for McCain. This projection is based on a conservative estimate that 80% of these targeted voters vote Democratic and 50% would have turned out to vote.
Partly in response to pressure from election protection activists, Brunner also facilitated early and absentee voting. Polling stations opened by September 30 throughout the state. Despite GOP efforts, a full week was available to those who wished to register and vote at the same time. As least 25% of Ohio’s voters cast their ballots prior to Election Day. By most accounts these votes went overwhelmingly for Obama. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Democrats outvoted Republicans 12-1 in early voting.
Brunner also tried to make paper ballots available to all voters who wanted them. Under often dubious financial arrangements with a direct conflict of interest as a stockholder, Blackwell installed Diebold electronic voting machines designed to account for as many as half Ohio’s 2008 votes.
But the GOP-controlled legislature manipulated the finances behind the push for paper ballots. Ohio’s 88 counties eventually provided enough of them for at least 25% of the voters. But so many voted early that reports now indicate there were ultimately enough paper ballots at the Election Day polling stations for nearly all who wanted them.
Other GOP attempts at disenfranchisement also fell flat. When the Republican sheriff of Greene County attempted to prosecute 304 students (many of them African-American) for “voter fraud” he ignited a massive public outcry. At issue was the common confusion over whether a student will vote at home or at college. Under widespread attack, the sheriff backed off. But students at public universities and liberal arts colleges throughout the rest of the state reported GOP harassment.
Despite widespread attempts to avoid them, there were 186,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio 2008, some 40,000 more than the 141,000 cast in 2004 (16,000 of which have never been counted). Independent observers reported on-going confusion about the use of provisional ballots, largely attributed to poor pollworker training.
A federal database used to check driver’s license information went down for nearly three hours on Election Day due to what the Ohio Department of Public Safety said was “a large fiber-optic cable being cut in Texas.”
Despite an increase of 319,000 registered Ohio voters in 2008 over 2004, the official turnout was actually lower. Barack Obama received 22,000 fewer votes than John Kerry. John McCain got 317,000 fewer than Bush. Election protection experts attribute this to a selective GOP padding of the 2004 vote count, especially in three heavily Republican southwestern counties where irregularities and improbabilities abounded.
An observer in Miami County reported that a Republican election director illegally forced recently-moved citizens to vote provisionally. In Franklin County, pollbooks wrongly identified 35,000 voters as provisional. Four black voters in Fairfield County reported being purged despite stable long-term residencies. The Republican-connected company Triad, infamous for its secretive work on central tabulators in 2004, emerged in the majority of Ohio counties as the keeper of electronic pollbooks for the boards of elections.
While these and other irregularities bruised the election, there were far fewer than reported in 2004. The presence of hundreds of well-trained and equipped election protection volunteers throughout the state seem to have staved off any GOP attempt to repeat the massive disenfranchisement that gave the 2004 Ohio vote count to George W. Bush. Key Ohio polling stations were graced with independent election observers appointed by the Green Party. Independent video-the-vote teams, nonpartisan election observers, and Obama supporters were placed outside the polls documenting all that happened. With an apparently workable distribution of voting machines and sufficient paper ballots as a backup (along with a clear sunny day) the horrors of long lines in Ohio’s 2004 election were avoided in 2008.
The Ohio vote count also seems to have been successfully protected. In Licking County, a voter reported that his paper ballot was put in a bag without an envelope. In Youngstown, Joyce Stewart reports being given a paper ballot that had no place to choose a president.
E-voting machines in three Columbus precincts double-counted votes. In heavily Democratic Lucas County, four out of eight e-voting machines in precinct 20, recorded no votes for president, while recording far higher vote counts for such minor offices as county coroner.
The poll judge in Columbus precinct 25G tried to have legitimate exit pollers arrested. In Trumbull County, Warner Lange observed that “all of the votes cast using a paper ballot between the hours of 6:30am and 8:15 am are invalid because none of the voters were asked, as required, to sign the pollbook.”
In Hamilton and Franklin Counties (Cincinnati and Columbus) early and absentee ballots were not counted on Election Night, as originally planned. It took three hours after the polls closed for Union County election officials to get their ballots scanned. Terry Grimm reported that “everything was wrong” coming from the Summit County town of Barberton, causing a delayed tabulation.
Kevin Egler in Portage County reported that after 2800 votes were scanned on election night, a “corrupted card signal” came out, forcing election officials to start the vote count over.
Ultimately, despite Brunner’s attempts to get rid of them, hundreds of thousands of votes were again cast and counted on electronic voting machines with no paper trail and no way to do a reliable recount.
But missing this time was an electronic theft apparatus under the control of Blackwell and Karl Rove.
On Election Night 2004, Blackwell e-mailed Ohio’s electronic vote count to a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee that also housed the servers for the Republican National Committee. The tally “miraculously” shifted from Kerry to Bush between 12:30 and 2 am, ultimately giving Bush a second term.
The data was handled under a state contract funneled by Blackwell to Michael Connell, a shadowy Bush family IT specialist who programmed the official Bush-Cheney website in 2000 and 2004.
On the day before the 2008 election, Connell was forced to testify under oath under cross-examination by King-Lincoln-Bronzeville attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis. Among the questions at issue was whether Connell left any “Trojan Horse” programs in place in the Ohio electronic vote count structure through which he could have hacked the 2008 outcome.
There has yet to be a definitive answer to that question, or to what he actually may have done to the 2004 vote count. But, for what it’s worth, Karl Rove did shift his predictions from a McCain victory to one for Obama shortly after the federal court agreed to force Connell to testify.
There may be much to celebrate in the apparent legitimacy of the Ohio 2008 vote count.
But half the state’s ballots are still slated to be cast on electronic voting machines whose source codes remain under private lock and key. There is no guarantee Ohio voters will have universal access to paper ballots in future elections. In direct violation of federal law, no fewer than 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties destroyed all or most of their federal election records after the 2004 election, making a definitive recount impossible. There have been no state or federal prosecutions.
The “minor” irregularities and attempted voter disenfranchisements observed in Ohio 2008 were repeated throughout the US, and could easily resurface in future elections if they are not again thoroughly observed.
And in Columbus, the Republicans are right now suing Brunner to throw out thousands of provisional ballots cast in a Congressional race still in hot dispute. Incredibly, the GOP is operating on inside information fed it by Franklin County assistant BOE director Matt Damshroder.
Damshroder accepted a $10,000 check in his BOE office from a Diebold representative. The check was made out to the Republican Party. Damshroder was given a one-month paid suspension for this in 2005. With Democratic assent, he remains a key player in the vote count that will determine whether heavily Democratic Franklin County could be stopped from sending its first Democrat to Congress since 1980.
Nationwide the GOP successfully disenfranchised millions of likely voters in Election 2008. Easily hacked, un-monitorable e-voting machines are still spread throughout the United States. The opportunities to steal future elections that are certain to be far tighter than 2008 remain readily available.
Much has been learned in the Bush era of the Unelected President. There is simply no doubt that the thousands of volunteers who worked tirelessly to protect the election of 2008 in Ohio and throughout the nation in fact prevented the GOP from stealing yet another one.
But unless this administration implements automatic voter registration, universal hand counted paper ballots, the total elimination of electronic voting machines, expanded windows for voting and a far more secure system of impartial citizen observation, the specter of still more stolen elections will haunt our democracy.
Indeed, we will still have to wonder if that’s what we really have here.
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman’s four co-authored books on election protection include HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, and AS GOES OHIO, both available at www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. Their next and final book and movie on the topic are in the works. Their radio shows are broadcast at WVKO 1580AM, central Ohio’s Air America affiliate.
_______
About author
Harvey Wasserman is co-author, with Bob Fitrakis and Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by the New Press. He is author of SOLARTOPIA! and HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE U.S., available at www.harveywasserman.com.
***
Rush Limbaugh: Making Millions Spouting Deceitful Nonsense
Media Criticism
by Bill Hare | November 17, 2008 - 7:38pm
article tools: email | print | read more Bill Hare
When Rush Limbaugh left his job as a nurse he switched to radio broadcasting in Sacramento. It has been reported that a discovery he made prompted him to develop an approach that has served him ever since as a key to riches.
Limbaugh observed that when he turned into a sour curmudgeon spouting hate for the approval of the perpetually disgusted his ratings soared. The rest is history as he achieved a radio standing in which he reportedly plays to an audience of 30 million listeners per week as delighted sponsors reward him with contracts involving millions of dollars.
Limbaugh’s on the air blitzkriegs, while offensive to those of sensibility and sensitivity, provide a measure of comfort to those who delight in being uncomfortable.
His non-stop gutter sniping at anyone to the political left of his listening audience, which might well be anyone other than his 30 million faithful along with those so busy watching Fox News that they lack sufficient opportunity to pay him sufficient due, is a two step approach.
The first step is to unleash a barrage of hatred to develop and hold an audience comparable to a depression version of Archie Bunker. The difference is that the late Carroll O’Connor fashioned his character as comedic and lived in the real world, a well read and highly articulate political liberal.
Limbaugh may lay claim to injecting comedy, but it is aimed at the violently ill, the type that enjoys stripping the wings off caterpillars.
Limbaugh’s second point is that you deliver consistent, unrelenting verbal fusillades to reinforce the collective ignorance of your audience by distorting the true and reality at staggering levels to the point at which one must be willing to accept what is said as blind article of faith.
The erudite Lewis Carroll, creator of “Alice in Wonderland,” had a word describing what Limbaugh does regularly, and on which he has become a specialist. The word is jabberwocky, defined as nonsensical poetry, but generically means spouting perpetual absurdity, that which is totally lacking in reason or logic.
With Limbaugh a commentary does not have to make any kind of logical sense. The only essential component is playing to a warped gallery constantly hungering for red meat.
Limbaugh fed some red meat of jabberwocky to his lap dog faithful affectionately known as “ditto heads” while they collectively snarled over the election of Obama.
With the stock market recording reverses during a period marking the culmination of radical right economics which Limbaugh and his listeners heartily supported, he asserted that America is currently immersed in a “Barack Obama recession.”
This absurdity was mouthed more than two months from the time that Obama will take office on January 20, 2009. Such reasoning is obviously unfair because it constitutes reason in a Limbaugh world monopolized by red meat jabberwocky.
Get ready for much more of the same not only because a Democrat is assuming presidential office, but due to Limbaugh’s filthy-mouthed racism, which in the past has prompted him to tell one African American caller to “take the bone out of your nose.” The radio king of red meat jabberwocky also stated that he has noticed how much certain criminal defendants resemble Jesse Jackson.
One time Limbaugh’s foul racist act cost him a job at ESPN after the sports network unwisely hired him to do commentaries.
Racism trumped any semblance of reason as Limbaugh lamented that Donovan McNabb, star quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, had achieved his status not due to physical talent but because that vast liberal conspiracy he sees everywhere wanted to promote an African American at that showcase position.
The racist content was matched by a pathetic level of football ignorance. At the time McNabb was cited by Limbaugh as a quarterback being promoted because of his race he had already been chosen by his peers with 3 Pro Bowl selections.
The good news was that the pressure generated by the McNabb comment resulted in his dismissal, an unscheduled landing on his backside.
Such landings are the only known acts of man or beast that can rival the volume of Limbaugh’s on the air tirades.
***

Divide and be conquered
The GOP relied on talk radio to carry its water, but votes are worth more than ratings
By BY STEVEN STARK | November 14, 2008 |
What with their decisive loss in the presidential election and the party’s distinct minority status in the House and Senate, the Republicans could be forgiven for being pessimistic. Things do indeed look bad for their Grand Old Party.
Actually, it’s even worse than they think.
Since the dawn of the 20th century, guess how many times the incumbent party has failed to succeed itself in the White House after one term. Once in 11 tries — in 1976 when Reagan took out Jimmy Carter. Statistically at least, the odds are not good for a Republican in 2012.
On top of that, counting last Tuesday, the Republicans have now failed to win the popular vote in four of the past five presidential elections. And in the fifth, they barely got by John Kerry. So despite appearances (owing to Washington’s high neocon profile), it’s actually been 20 years since the GOP was a dominant force in presidential politics.
There are plenty of theories circulating about how the GOP got itself into this mess, but one prime suspect clearly isn’t getting its due — conservative talk radio.
The partisans will howl in protest, but while certainly not the only culprit, the relentless stream of invective from the right side of the dial has undeniably been a major contributor to the GOP’s demise. It’s no coincidence that the Republican eclipse began just when conservative talk radio found its audience.
Rush Limbaugh’s show was syndicated in 1988. It’s been a steady climb toward the top of the ratings for him and his imitators ever since, but pretty much downhill for the party they all support. Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the others are enormously successful media performers and they may have single-handedly rescued AM radio from financial oblivion over the past two decades.
But while wildly popular with their devotees, these partisan bloviators are enormously unpopular with the electorate as a whole. Limbaugh, for example, has about a two-to-one unfavorable rating nationally, according to a Rasmussen Poll.
What’s more, these figures are all rabble-rousers — high intensity, “hot” performers whose appeal is based on energizing their base. That’s all well and good for radio — it works, after all. But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that it’s a terrible way to structure the energy of a mainstream political movement that seeks to win more than 50 percent of the national vote.
The pet politician of many of these talk-show hosts may be Ronald Reagan. But Reagan, himself a radio performer, had exactly the opposite media persona. He was genial, low key, calm, and measured. He was a political version of the pre-Kennedy-era radio and TV host Arthur Godfrey, whose folksy, homespun style would be an on-air anachronism today.
Both Reagan and Godfrey, of course, grew up in a different media age. With far fewer outlets, the key back then was to attract a mass audience — just like a presidential candidate.
Today, in a media universe of thousands of choices, the key to economic success is to find your intense minority and play to it for all it’s worth. But divisiveness is as profitable in radio as it is fatal to a mass political movement.
One can see this tension being played out even now. Sarah Palin energizes the talk-radio base and is already being pushed as the inevitable next GOP leader. But Palin — like most talk-radio champions — is enormously divisive. Good for ratings; bad for politics.
The Republicans do have a Reagan/Godfrey-like figure right in their midst. Aside from Barack Obama, of course, the biggest political success story of 2008 was Mike Huckabee, who emerged from absolutely nowhere, with no money, to become a national figure. He is quite conservative but virtually alone in his party. He speaks the language of economic populism in an amiable way that reassures voters.
The key to a Republican revival will be whether they head in the direction of Huckabee and the stylistic mainstream embodied by Reagan, or in the discordant direction of Palin. The economic imperatives of talk radio will push them toward Palin. But unless the Republicans learn how to preach to the masses and not the choir, they’re going to remain in the proverbial wilderness for a very long time.

***November 14, 2008
Bush has two regrets; We provide the other 37
Wish I’d been a little more awesome. In an interview on Veterans Day, President Bush was asked to reflect on his regrets over his two terms in office. Bush said he regrets, “saying some things I shouldn’t have said, like “dead or alive” and “bring em on.” Bush also said he wishes he hadn’t spoken in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner to declare an end to major combat operations in Iraq in 2003.
Okay, that’s two! Looks like he needs help with the others, so we threw together a brief list of some (thirty-seven) of the things Bush should probably be regretting right about now.
A Quick List Of Stuff George Bush Should Regret
(Off The Tops Of Our Heads)
His existence
His decision to go into politics
Not learning how to better run oil companies so he wouldn’t have to go into politics
His decision to run for president
His decision to run for a second term as president
Every word spoken into a microphone since January 20th, 2001
That time in 2001 when he shouted at Dick Cheney, “You know what, screw it. You run the country if you’re so smart!”
Ignoring the way Alberto Gonzales was always saying, “Geneva Convention, Schmeneva Schmonvention!”
Those times when he let Donald Rumsfeld make decisions
Revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative. Not cool!
That time when he said “Osama, Saddam. What’s the damn difference?”
Letting the country fall into economic ruin
Not getting Scooter Libby to take the fall for some more stuff
That “wait for this to blow over” position on Katrina
Not learning how to keep from smirking while addressing the nation about certain issues, such as Katrina
Not figuring out how to control the weather to keep Katrina from happening
Not giving more people hilarious nicknames, like “Turd Blossom”
That “Iraq” kerfuffle
Not giving more speeches in front of banners that read, “Danger: Under Construction” or “Not Finished” or “This Mission is going to take at least six or seven years, if we’re lucky!”
Saying, “all right Harriet, you’ve talked me into it.”
Never really savoring the good moments.
Giving up alcohol
Giving up coke
Going back on coke
Giving it up again
Betting Cheney $1,000 they’d lose in 2004
Not getting to know Terri Schiavo better
Not constantly losing wars
Beating Dad’s “years in office” record.
Thinking, what the heck, it’s just a pretzel
Not flipping the bird more often at Cindy Sheehan from behind the tinted windows of his passing limo
Not taking it as a bad sign that Karl Rove has a forked tongue
Responding to a report titled “Osama Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside The United States” by repeating the title in a mocking, high-pitched voice that made Cheney laugh real hard
Not saying, “Brownie, we should sit down for a performance review in the next week or so”
Not calling it, “No Super-Gifted Child Left Behind”
Those twenty or twenty-five times when he should have offered his resignation but decided to “wait it out”
Not doing more to avoid the inevitable indictments sure to come next February once they start finding out about “the real bad stuff”
***


Let them eat carburetors
by Bill Gallagher | November 18, 2008 - 9:40am | permalink
DETROIT -- President George W. Bush, a man consistently wrong about matters of great importance, kept despair alive when he told us not to worry. Market forces, like manna from heaven, will feed and comfort the masses, struggling through the chaos and suffering cowboy capitalism has brought us.
“I’m a market-oriented guy” Bush assured in a speech at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, last week, adding cautiously,” But not when I’m facing a global financial meltdown.”

***
The Predictable Disaster of George W. Bush
by Robert Parry | November 17, 2008 - 9:03am | permalink
In his trademark goofy way, George W. Bush explained why he supported a bailout of the U.S. financial markets, saying he was “a free-market person, until you’re told that if you don’t take decisive measures then it’s conceivable that our country could go into a depression greater than the Great Depression.”
So, with a smirk on his face, President Bush explained the predicament that the United States and the world face after eight years of his incompetence and mismanagement – teetering on the edge of a catastrophe “greater than the Great Depression.”
Yet what is remarkable about American news coverage of this extraordinary moment – and Bush’s strangely light-hearted comment at the end of the Nov. 15 global economic summit – is how little blame is being laid specifically at Bush’s door.
***

Unfinished Business: Tasks Ignored During the Bush Reign of Horror
by Michael Collins | November 17, 2008 - 4:30am | permalink
“Scoop” Independent News
The last eight years can best be described as the illegitimate rule of deviant forces bent on enriching the few at the expense of the many. Poverty is up, real income is flat for the majority of citizens while the elite have “super sized” their holdings with a callous disregard for the nation and economic realities.

***
GM must re-make the mass transit system it murdered
by Harvey Wasserman | November 17, 2008 - 8:33am | permalink
Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system?
First let them remake what they destroyed.
GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy-efficient Toyota and Honda.
GM met the rise of the hybrids with “light trucks.”
GM built a small electric car, leased a pilot fleet to consumers who loved it, and then forcibly confiscated and trashed them all.
GM now wants to market a $40,000 electric Volt that looks like a cross between a Hummer and a Cadillac and will do nothing to meet the Solartopian needs of a green-powered Earth.
***
Why the Economy Grows Like Crazy Amid High Taxes
Economic Policy
by Larry Beinhart | November 17, 2008 - 9:21am
The real-world effects of tax policy are counterintuitive.
They run exactly opposite the conventional wisdom. They defy what the Heritage Foundation calls common sense and what the American Enterprise Institute calls logic.
Reality laughs at the Laffer curve, calls Ronald Reagan wrong and says George W. Bush is a loon.
High marginal tax rates correlate with economic growth.
Examples include World War II and the Truman-Eisenhower years, when it was around 90 percent, and the Clinton years, when it was high relative to the preceding and following administrations.
Tax rate increases are followed by real economic growth.
Examples include Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt in 1936 and 1940, Bush the Elder in 1991 and Clinton in1993.
Moderate tax cuts are followed by a flat economy.
This is a generalization from one example: Johnson in 1964.
Large tax cuts are followed by a boom, a bubble and a crash.
1929, 1987 and 2008 are examples.
These are covered in more detail in the first part of the article “Tax Cuts: The B.S. and the Facts.”
Why do high taxes create a stronger economy?
I used to run a small business -- a commercial film production company.
Every time we took a dollar out as personal income, it instantly turned into 50 cents.
If we didn’t really need the money, that was an incentive to keep it in the company and to find ways to spend it that took it out of the taxable profit column but increased the value of the company.
High taxes create an incentive to reinvest profits into long-term growth.
With high taxes, the only way to retain the bulk of the wealth created by a business is by reinvesting it in the business -- in plants, equipment, staff, research and development, new products and all the rest.
The higher taxes are (and from 1940 to 1964 the top rates were around 90 percent), the more this is true.
This creates a bias toward long-term planning.
If a business is planning for the long term, it wants a happy, stable work force. It becomes worthwhile to pay good wages and offer decent benefits.
Low taxes create an incentive for profit taking.
It is easy to confuse profitability with wealth creation.
They are not the same.
President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. There is no doubt that this gave the country an asset of great value, one that was very productive. It created great “wealth.” But, aside from the construction companies that contracted the work, it was not profitable.
Selling subprime mortgages, trading in derivatives, packaging mortgage-backed securities and “flipping” condos were all very profitable but did not create wealth.
The theory is that if the rich can keep their money, they will invest in businesses that create jobs, more businesses, more tax revenue and greater “wealth” for the nation.
That sounds like logic and common sense. But is it, in practice, what happened?
Once tax cutting began, the culture of business changed.
It was no longer enough for a business to be a reasonably good business, making steady, reliable profits.
Indeed, that became a very bad condition for a business to be in. It made it a target for takeovers by people who were willing to milk them of their profits.
Among the ways you can get more profit out of a going business are:
Cutting the workforce -- possibly sacrificing long-term productivity
Cutting salaries -- who cares if the employees are unhappy? The balance sheet improves.
Selling off assets -- who cares what happens in 10 years? We can take the money now.
Outsourcing -- which sends the “wealth” somewhere else.
A whole host of devices were developed to do all of the above: junk bonds, leveraged buyouts, hostile takeovers, greenmail and the like.
Lots of money could be made that way -- for a small number of individuals. But it doesn’t produce “wealth.”
An environment in which profit-taking is cheap creates the conditions for a bubble.
Once you’ve taken your profit, and you have the cash in hand, you look for a place where you can get profits quickly, then again and again. Instead of examining how sound a company is, how well it’s run, its debt load and its long-term prospects, other things become important -- such as the speed at which you can profit and the ease of entry.
Instead of investing in business -- which is difficult, slow and complicated -- investors go into markets.
They look for sectors that are hot. When investors find such an area, they flock to it. It heats up even more. People are seen making money, quickly and easily, simply by buying and selling, and they don’t want to miss out.
Then there’s a bubble -- which is followed by a crash.
Proponents of tax cuts take the position that taxes take money out of the economy.
That’s flat out not true.
Governments don’t keep the money they collect; they spend it. It goes right back in. It just takes a different route. It goes to different places.
The places that government puts money are important. More to the point, they are important for business.
All infrastructure is an invisible subsidy for all business.
It’s easy to understand this when we’re talking about roads.
It doesn’t matter if your business doesn’t ship anything by truck or even by bicycle. The fact that you can get to your office quickly and easily, that your mailperson can get to you without traveling on the back of a mule, is a subsidy of your business.
It’s a little harder to see that when we’re talking about soft infrastructure.
Laws, regulations and their enforcement. Social Security, unemployment insurance, public health and welfare. Education, research, support of sports, arts and culture. Parks and playgrounds. All of them create a society that is safer, more stable, and more able to produce and consume. They produce a better place in which to do business.
Tax cutters also claim -- and I paraphrase the essence of the argument -- that the money government gets disappears in wasteful stupidities.
There’s some truth in that.
They might point out all sorts of cultural and scientific projects, like a museum for the Woodstock Festival, counting the fish in Waldon Pond or studying the sex life of prairie dogs. I would point to the Star Wars missile defense shield, farm subsidies, the ethanol program, the privatized non-reconstruction of Iraq and all of Halliburton’s contracts.
But it is also true that businesses spend money on all sorts of wasteful stupidities.
I am sitting here wondering how anyone -- in fact, a succession of people -- could run a company with the power and resources of General Motors into the ground.
In the mythological marketplace, they should fail and suffer for their faults. In the real world, the arrogant fools who ran the place will walk away with millions, and the hundreds of thousands of people who worked for them and their suppliers, who offered services and goods to those in turn, will be the ones who suffer.
The point is that relying on the magic of the marketplace is like relying on any other kind of magic.
There are things that are necessarily done for the common good.
Clean water, sewer systems, garbage collection and public health initiatives create a healthy population, able to work and consume. Take those away, and we return to the plague years. Imagine what that does to business.
Polluted air, toxins in the groundwater, viruses and bacteria jump the borders of even the wealthiest communities.
Bad health created by lack of care for the common good becomes an economic drain on society.
This is not to say that a full-out, state-run economy is better than capitalism. It’s not.
That produces different problems that are even worse.
It is not even meant to imply that all “sound” investments in “real” businesses stopped with tax cuts. They didn’t. Start-up money and venture capital were relatively easy to come by. Lots of new and good businesses were built in low-tax environments.
But low taxes produced great excesses of negative activity as well. There is a propensity in business, and as a nation, to hollow out our businesses, and mortgage and sell off our assets, in order to grab short-term profits.
A sound economy is based on a mix of market and government actions -- and a host of other factors as well.
These explanations are speculative, a search to explain what is observed in nature, if you will.
What is certain is that tax cuts on the top brackets, and in particular on unearned income, do not produce healthy economic growth. Contrary to all expectations, tax hikes seem to produce the desired growth. All the explanations in the world, funded by all the right-wing anti-tax think tanks in the world, won’t change that reality. If these explanations don’t suit you, then supply a better one that will.
***
There’s Skullduggery Afoot
by Trish Purcell | November 13, 2008 - 11:06pm | permalink
If you haven’t read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, you have missed a clear account of how the powerful operate behind the scenes. It should be required reading for all our elected officials. Perhaps then, they would not be so easily snookered.
The powerbrokers, with a laundry list of goals, just keep pushing to achieve them. No matter how many times they fail, they just keep trying. Sometimes they manage to distract the populace and quietly slip something in under the radar. But their biggest moves take place whenever there is any kind of turmoil – be it a natural calamity or a man made crisis. During these times they take advantage of the confusion and shock caused by the upheaval to force something through and pressure Congress using fear. The fear of looking unpatriotic as with the Iraq war resolution, or in this case, the fear of making waves that might add to the financial crisis.
***

Dick Cavett
November 14, 2008, 10:00 pm
The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla
Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn’t ailing. Three out of these five implements — answering machine, fax machine, printer, phone and electric can-opener — all dropped dead on me in the past few days.
Now something has gone wrong with all three television sets. They will get only Sarah Palin.
I can play a kind of Alaskan roulette. Any random channel clicked on by the remote brings up that eager face, with its continuing assaults on the English Lang.
There she is with Larry and Matt and just about everyone else but Dr. Phil (so far). If she is not yet on “Judge Judy,” I suspect it can’t be for lack of trying.
What have we done to deserve this, this media blitz that the astute Andrea Mitchell has labeled “The Victory Tour”?
I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.
I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed.
What will ambitious politicos learn from this? That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate’s valuable traits?
And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high.
What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”
My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.
And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”
It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.
(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)
(How many contradictory and lying answers about The Empress’s New Clothes have you collected? I’ve got, so far, only four. Your additional ones welcome.)
Matt Lauer asked her about her daughter’s pregnancy and what went into the decision about how to handle it. Her “answer” did not contain the words “daughter,” “pregnancy,” “what to do about it” or, in fact, any two consecutive words related to Lauer’s query.
I saw this as a brief clip, so I don’t know whether Lauer recovered sufficiently to follow up, or could only sit there, covered in disbelief. If it happens again, Matt, I bequeath you what I heard myself say once to an elusive guest who stiffed me that way: “Were you able to hear any part of my question?”
At the risk of offending, well, you, for example, I worry about just what it is her hollering fans see in her that makes her the ideal choice to deal with the world’s problems: collapsed economies, global warming, hostile enemies and our current and far-flung twin battlefronts, either of which may prove to be the world’s second “30 Years’ War.”
Has there been a poll to see if the Sarah-ites are numbered among that baffling 26 percent of our population who, despite everything, still maintain that President George has done a heckuva job?
A woman in one of Palin’s crowds praised her for being “a mom like me … who thinks the way I do” and added, for ill measure, “That’s what I want in the White House.” Fine, but in what capacity?
Do this lady’s like-minded folk wonder how, say, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, et al (add your own favorites) managed so well without being soccer moms? Without being whizzes in the kitchen, whipping up moose soufflés? Without executing and wounding wolves from the air and without promoting that sad, threadbare hoax — sexual abstinence — as the answer to the sizzling loins of the young?
(In passing, has anyone observed that hunting animals with high-powered guns could only be defined as sport if both sides were equally armed?)
I’d love to hear what you think has caused such an alarming number of our fellow Americans to fall into the Sarah Swoon.
Could the willingness to crown one who seems to have no first language have anything to do with the oft-lamented fact that we seem to be alone among nations in having made the word “intellectual” an insult? (And yet…and yet…we did elect Obama. Surely not despite his brains.)
Sorry about all of the foregoing, as if you didn’t get enough of the lady every day in every medium but smoke signals.
I do not wish her ill. But I also don’t wish us ill. I hope she continues to find happiness in Alaska.
May I confess that upon first seeing her, I liked her looks? With the sound off, she presents a not uncomely frontal appearance.
But now, as the Brits say, “I’ll be glad to see the back of her.”
***

$20 million worth of intolerance
by Jaime O’Neill | November 16, 2008 - 10:57am | permalink
— from the Paradise Post
Twenty million dollars will buy a great deal of division, hurt, and hatred if you can’t think of anything better to do with such a large sum. $20 million is how much the Mormon Church spent to pass Proposition 8 here in California, with a blizzard of last minute TV spots intended to spread the fear that if gay marriage was allowed to stand, then 2nd graders would be exposed to homosexual indoctrination in California’s classrooms.
It was all fear-based and dishonest, but as the saying goes, “it pays to advertise.” If you don’t believe $20 million can buy a lot of hate, here’s a sampling of just the prejudices unleashed locally by Mormon moolah.

***
Retired Military Leaders Denounce ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
Posted on Nov 18, 2008
One-hundred-and-four retired admirals and generals have signed a statement calling on the military to allow gay soldiers to serve openly.
“As is the case with Great Britain, Israel, and other nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, our service members are professionals who are able to work together effectively despite differences in race, gender, religion, and sexuality,” the officers wrote.
***
Bush aggression makes life in Iraq “unbearable”
by Sherwood Ross | November 18, 2008 - 9:16am | permalink
President Bush’s attack on Iraq has made daily life there “unbearable” for most people, two prominent American financial authorities write.
“Five years after the United States occupied Iraq with the stated goal of bringing democracy to its people, the war has essentially ruined the country’s economy, society, and sovereignty,” writes Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz with Linda Bilmes in “The Three Trillion Dollar War(W.W. Norton).” Bilmes is a former CFO of the U.S. Commerce Department.
“For most Iraqis, daily life has become unbearable---to the point that those who can afford to leave their country have done so,” Stiglitz and Bilmes say. An estimated two million have done just that, precipitating what the UN calls a “humanitarian crisis,” and two million more have remained in Iraq but have been displaced their homes.

***
Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondant for The Independent, discusses the Iraqi National Intelligence Service threat to sue Ahmed Chalabi, the myth that the “surge” pacified Iraq, the continued scarcity of clean water and electricity in Baghdad, a likely new UN resolution by the new year and how a Shia-dominated government may be strong enough to take over from the U.S.
Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent of The Independent, has been visiting Iraq since 1978. He was awarded the 2005 Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting in recognition of his writing on Iraq. He is the author of, his memoir, The Broken Boy, and with Andrew Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession, The Occupation: War, Resistance and Daily Life in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the Struggle for Iraq.
***
Top judge: US and UK acted as ‘vigilantes’ in Iraq invasion
Former senior law lord condemns ‘serious violation of international law’
Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Tuesday November 18 2008
One of Britain’s most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a “world vigilante”.
Lord Bingham, in his first major speech since retiring as the senior law lord, rejected the then attorney general’s defence of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed.
Contradicting head-on Lord Goldsmith’s advice that the invasion was lawful, Bingham stated: “It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had.” Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as the British government had done, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq had broken UN resolutions “passes belief”.

***


Tomgram: Tariq Ali on the Flight Path to Disaster in Afghanistan
by Tom Engelhardt | November 17, 2008 - 9:16am | permalink
One of the eerier reports on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan appeared recently in the New York Times. Journalist John Burns visited the Russian ambassador in Kabul, Zamir N. Kabulov, who, back in the 1980s, when the Russians were the Americans in Afghanistan, and the Americans were launching the jihad that would eventually wend its way to the 9/11 attacks… well, you get the idea…
In any case, Kabulov was, in the years of the Soviet occupation, a KGB agent in the same city and, in the 1990s, an adviser to a U.N. peacekeeping envoy during the Afghan civil war that followed. “They’ve already repeated all of our mistakes,” he told Burns, speaking of the American/NATO effort in the country. “Now,” he added, “they’re making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright.” His list of Soviet-style American mistakes included: underestimating “the resistance,” an over-reliance on air power, a failure to understand the Afghan “irritative allergy” to foreign occupation, “and thinking that because they swept into Kabul easily, the occupation would be untroubled.” Of present occupiers who have stopped by to catch his sorry tale, Kabulov concludes world-wearily, “They listen, but they do not hear.”

***
America’s Wars of Self-Destruction
By Chris Hedges
War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate. The poison of war courses unchecked through the body politic of the United States. We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We embrace the dangerous self-delusion that we are on a providential mission to save the rest of the world from itself, to implant our virtues—which we see as superior to all other virtues—on others, and that we have a right to do this by force. This belief has corrupted Republicans and Democrats alike. And if Barack Obama drinks, as it appears he will, the dark elixir of war and imperial power offered to him by the national security state, he will accelerate the downward spiral of the American empire.
Obama and those around him embrace the folly of the “war on terror.” They may want to shift the emphasis of this war to Afghanistan rather than Iraq, but this is a difference in strategy, not policy. By clinging to Iraq and expanding the war in Afghanistan, the poison will continue in deadly doses. These wars of occupation are doomed to failure. We cannot afford them. The rash of home foreclosures, the mounting job losses, the collapse of banks and the financial services industry, the poverty that is ripping apart the working class, our crumbling infrastructure and the killing of hapless Afghans in wedding parties and Iraqis by our iron fragmentation bombs are neatly interwoven. These events form a perfect circle. The costly forms of death we dispense on one side of the globe are hollowing us out from the inside at home.
The “war on terror” is an absurd war against a tactic. It posits the idea of perpetual, or what is now called “generational,” war. It has no discernable end. There is no way to define victory. It is, in metaphysical terms, a war against evil, and evil, as any good seminarian can tell you, will always be with us. The most destructive evils, however, are not those that are externalized. The most destructive are those that are internal. These hidden evils, often defined as virtues, are unleashed by our hubris, self-delusion and ignorance. Evil masquerading as good is evil in its deadliest form.

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12/4/2008

more than a humorist

10/20/1998, Molly Ivins said_.

“AUSTIN - Watch the House pass a bad bill. Watch the Senate make it

worse. Watch the banking industry dig its own grave. Watch supposedly

smart people set up a financial disaster. Can we see President Clinton

veto this mess? Veto, Clinton, veto.

..”In May, the House passed (by one vote) a bill to eliminate barriers

between banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies. This sets up

financial holding companies that can offer all three types of services

simultaneously. The most obvious risk is that a blunder in the insurance

or brokerage end of the business could bring down a bank, putting insured

deposits at risk. The taxpayers, of course, then wind up with the tab, as

we did with the savings-and-loan mess.

..”The purpose of this bill, long sought by the financial industry, is to

legalize such mergers as the proposed Citicorp-Travelers Insurance

mega-merger. Many experts believe the effect will be the emergence of

nine or ten enormous institutions after the consolidation of hundreds of

insurance companies, banks and brokerage firms. Even before this

consequence comes to pass, it is apparent that the bill will harm

consumers. Last week - on a straight party-line vote of 12-10 in the

Senate Banking Committee, all the Republicans against all the Democrats -

consumer protections were stripped out of the bill_.

****

12/5/2008

One-Note Horn
Economic Policy | Republicans | Ronald Reagan
by Brian Morton | December 4, 2008 - 10:31am
One of the clearest signs that the Republican brand is in for a long stint in the woods is the fact that Republicans continue to shill for the same policies that got us into the financial hole we find ourselves in. George Bush spent eight years making the argument that for any ill that ails the country, the answer was a tax cut, usually for the wealthy. When gas prices soared higher and higher, he said, “Pass my tax cut.” As he started a second war after his first one and deficits mounted ever higher, his response was, “Pass my tax cut.” Short of stemming the rising waters of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, if there was a problem, a tax cut was the solution.
This of course goes all the way back to Ronald Reagan, the Jesus of Republican economic evangelism. Reagan and his budget director David Stockman latched onto the arguments made by 1940s era economist Arthur Laffer and his belief that when you lower taxes, you increase revenues. Stockman later spilled the beans on the whole con when he let on to Esquire magazine that the point of the plan was in reality just to lower the tax rate on the top brackets, which also happens to be the Republican base. Scratch their backs, and they’ll scratch ours, Reagan and Stockman found out, and since that time, the GOP has bought the allegiance of the wealthy lock, stock, and barrel. As Nobel prizewinning economist James Tobin said in 1992, “[the] ‘Laffer Curve’ idea that tax cuts would actually increase revenues turned out to deserve the ridicule with which sober economists had greeted it in 1981.”
Sooner or later, the bills had to come due, and when the greed of the mid-to-late 2000s began outstripping even the greed of the Gordon Gekko years of the late 1980s, it became apparent to everyone except those at the tiller that the crash was on its way. As 2008 Nobel economics laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman told a policy maker who asked him why couldn’t they see the imminent destruction, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”
Krugman pointed out that staffers on Capitol Hill were frantically calling him in the days after Sept. 11, because the GOP leadership was trying to shove through a capital gains tax cut. And just last week, Republican majority leader John Boehner was claiming that if the country’s economy really needs a stimulus, the best way to do it--stop me if you’ve heard this one before--is to cut the tax on capital gains, and the corporate income tax.
Why, sure! Because we all know how responsible those corporations are in times of economic crisis? Like the executives of AIG, who, not long after their bailout, went on a fancy corporate retreat and began calculating their annual bonuses. Or those CEOs from the Big Three automakers who flew their corporate jets to Washington from Detroit to argue for taxpayer handouts after their companies have lost billions of dollars while the executives’ salaries still rose. The middle class and those less well off can only listen so long to claims that cutting taxes on the rich is good for everybody before they start to notice that the rising tide isn’t lifting everybody’s boats.
Now here we are at the end of 2008 and the crisis caused by the hijinks of the mortgage loan industry isn’t even near its peak yet, but conservatives still argue that the worst thing that could happen would be more and better regulation of the industry. But even now, news emerges about how the Bush administration took the hands-off approach to the loan industry even when experts were warning about the possible dangers.
On Dec. 1, an Associated Press report showed that “[The] Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown.” The review of regulatory records showed that a gamut of proposed regulations and sensible guidelines--such as ones that would require bankers tell buyers with bad credit that some “exotic mortgages” were a bad idea, or that bankers put a cap on risky loans so as not to overextend the bank--were stripped from the end product, which didn’t even require a presidential signature. In short, back in 2005, the GOP dismantled the handbrake.
Digging ourselves out of the hole the Bushies have put us in may take quite a few years; even longer than it took the Clinton administration to erase the Reagan-Bush deficits from the 1980s. And we can be certain that even in the minority, the Republicans will be using their only remaining microphone--the giant GOP media Wurlitzer of Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch media empire, Sun Myung Moon, and Matt Drudge--to constantly argue that the way out of the problem is more of the same that got us into it. The fortunate thing about the fact they can only play one note over and over again is that for at least the next two years, they’ll be fairly easy to tune out.
***
When Will We Liberate the Iraqis?
by David Swanson | December 3, 2008 - 4:25pm | permalink
article tools: email | print | read more David Swanson
I know, I know, Bush liberated the Iraqis. But when will we liberate them from Bush’s liberation? Well, ideally, the American people will rise up tomorrow and force Congress to cease funding the occupation and to vote an immediate and complete withdrawal with a veto-overriding supermajority, not to mention impeaching Bush and Cheney. I raise that possibility not so much because I’ve been drinking as because long-term movements for systemic reform require awareness of what we’re missing. If we ever replace a Congress dominated by money, media, and parties with one loyal to us the people, it will be because we tragically realize what so very easily could have been.
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Palin’s Stylists Were Paid $55,000 In Final Weeks Of Campaign
Quick Read |Comments (829)|
***



(BETTER SEEN AT THE LINK...)
http://www.236.com/news/2008/12/04/the_defending_bushs_legacyotro_10529.php
December 04, 2008
The Defending Bush’s Legacy-O-Tron
It’s easier to remember the things that he didn’t ruin. During a panel discussion of Bush’s potential legacy last night, Karl Rove defended Bush’s decision to go to war saying, “We wouldn’t have gone to war if the intelligence was better.” He of course neglected to mention that he’s talking about intelligence that they fabricated.
The revisionist legacy builders are kicking it into high gear. But finding the silver lining in the Bush cloud is gonna be pretty difficult. So to help conservatives defend their guy, we provide this handy Defending Bush’s Legacy-O-Tron, with all the excuses, concessions, and outright lies one might need in their effort to convince somebody that Bush wasn’t the worst president ever.
The Defending Bush’s Legacy-O-Tron
Okay, okay, okay. So maaaaaybe he wasn’t our best president.
But the guy did one or two okay things, right? Sure, he had his bad moments. Like, Iraq. Katrina. Plame-gate. the housing crisis. the failure to even try and find Osama Bin Laden. the strained relations with all foreign nations. Abu Graib. the wire-tapping. the attorney general firings. um, Cheney, and everything that he touched. And yeah, there were a bunch of snafus, like that Mission Accomplished banner. those times when Rumsfeld made decisions. the whole “sending Powell to lie to the UN” thing. the whole “screw the UN weapons inspectors, we’re goin’ in anyway” thing. the whole “becoming President in 2000 even though he wasn’t elected” thing. no child left behind. that time he messed with old people’s prescriptions. that time he tried to privatize social security. all those ways he tried to fuck up the environment. Mars. Remember when he wanted to go to Mars? Jesus... But there are a few bright spots, right? I mean, during his two terms, the American people were never on fire all at once. forced into sexual slavery all at once. sold to gypsies all at once, for a sweet bulk rate. Right? Could’a happened but didn’t. And by bringing our country down a few notches, we have a real appreciation for how great it used to be. maybe we’ll stop acting all snobby. No one likes a braggart. people want to bomb us less. They think Al Qaeda already did the job. I dare say Bush loved this country more than most other Presidents, which is why he decided to show us how easily our country could lose it’s way if we elect someone like him again. to attack imaginary enemies who had made-up WMDS. Can’t be too careful! to destroy our constitution so no one will be able to steal it. Think about how you are today compared to eight years ago. Are you more aware of the legal and illegal ways a president can go to war? the legal and illegal ways a president can wiretap citizens? the legal and illegal ways a president can leak the identity of a covert agent? You can thank Bush for that knowledge. He’s did more to teach people about the legal limitations of the office of the president than any social studies teacher ever did.
Now, sure, if you press me to name one Bush policy that ended up benefiting this country, I’ll pretend to have a heart attack and lay on the ground until you go away. point behind you and shout “Look, is that George Clooney?” Then I’ll run. say that I know some but I’m not gonna tell you because you’re being a dick. But if you press me to think of one good thing that’s come of the Bush Presidency? That’s easy: He’s steered our country to such a lowpoint that things can only get better. Jeb can’t run for president now. Obama won.
***
From the Room: Cheney Refuses to Set Timetable for Withdrawal from White House
Filed under:
***December 03, 2008
Posted by: Bob Powers
Who’s Worse: Bush or Nixon?
It’s like the difference between AIDS and SuperAIDS. Things got kind of heated the other night at a post-screening discussion of the “Frost/Nixon” movie. Chris Wallace of Fox News reportedly challenged a statement by one of the researchers for the actual Frost/Nixon interview which compared Bush negatively to Richard Nixon. Wallace argued that Nixon’s crimes were in the interest of personal gain, while Bush’s were in the interest of national security.
So this is where the shaping of Bush’s legacy is at. His supporters are just trying to help him jump the “Worse Than Nixon” hurdle. We’re betting the question of who was the worse president will be debated for years to come, but we’d like to weigh in with our pick right now.
It’s Bush. Bush is a worse president than Richard Nixon. Chris Wallace made his argument, but we’ve got ten arguments of our own after the jump...
1. Nixon tried to steal an election. Bush succeeded.
2. Nixon never responded to a domestic attack by invading the wrong country.
3. Nixon managed to end his war. Bush is just gonna let someone else figure his out.
4. No major cities were allowed to drown under Nixon’s administration.
5. Nixon had the decency to resign. Bush didn’t.
6. Nixon’s VP also had the decency to resign. Bush’s VP is the worst human being who ever lived.
7. No one ever called Nixon’s economy “the worst since the Great Depression.”
8. Nixon built our relationship with China. Bush destroyed our relationship with everybody.
9. Nixon only wire-tapped the Democratic National Committee. Bush wiretapped everybody.
10. Nixon was intelligent enough to be called “Tricky Dick.” Bush is stupid enough to be called “a fucking imbecile.”
That pretty much clinches it. If we’ve left out any supporting arguments, or if anyone anywhere can think of one reason why the Bush administration wasn’t entirely awful, let us know in the comments section. But our mind is made up,
***
http://www.dickipedia.org/dick.php?title=Karl_Rove
***

Former U.S. Interrogator: Torture Policy Has Led to More Deaths than 9/11 Attacks
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted December 5, 2008.
“How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me,” says the author of How to Break a Terrorist.


***
Published on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 by The Miami Herald
Our Destructive Love of Stuff
by Leonard Pitts Jr.
I like stuff as much as the next guy. My closet is stuffed with stuff, my shelves groan with stuff, boxes full of stuff jam my garage. I like stuff just fine.
But I would not kill for it.
Last week, a 34-year-old man was trampled to death by a mob rushing into a Wal-Mart to buy stuff. Jdimytai Damour was a seasonal worker manning the door of a store in Valley Stream, N.Y., as shoppers eager for so-called ‘’Black Friday’‘ bargains massed outside. The store was scheduled to open at 5 a.m., but that was not early enough for the 2,000 would-be shoppers. At five minutes before the hour, they were banging their fists and pressing their weight against the glass doors, which bowed and then broke in a shower of glass. The mob stormed in.
Four people, including a pregnant woman, were injured. And Damour was killed as people stomped over him, looking for good prices on DVDs, winter coats and PlayStations. Nor was the mob sobered by his death. As authorities sought to clear the store, some defiantly kept shopping; others complained that they had been on line since the night before.
And here, it seems appropriate to observe the obvious irony: Black Friday is the traditional beginning of the Christmas shopping season, Christmas being the holiday when, Christians believe, hope was born into the world in the form of a baby who became a man who preached a gospel of service to, and compassion for, our fellow human beings.
It is hard to see evidence of either in the mob’s treatment of Jdimytai Damour, and if your inclination is to heap scorn upon them, I don’t blame you. But I would caution against regarding them as freaks or aberrations whose callous madness would never be seen in sane and normal people like ourselves. That would be false comfort.
You may think I’m talking about mob psychology and to a degree, I am. From soccer riots to the Holocaust itself, human beings have always had a tendency to lose individual identity and accountability when gathered in groups. You will do things as part of a crowd that you never would as an individual. Theoretically, anyone who lacked a strong-enough moral center and sense of self could have been part of that mob in Valley Stream.
But it’s not just our common vulnerability to mob psychology that ties the rest of us to last week’s tragedy. It is also our common love of stuff. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a starker illustration of our true priorities. Oh, we pay lip service to other things. We say children are a priority, but when did people ever press against the door for Parents’ Night at school? We say education is a priority, but when did people ever bang against the windows of the library? We say faith is a priority, but when did people ever surge into a temple of worship as eagerly as they do a temple of commerce?
No, sale prices on iPods, that’s our true priority. Jdimytai Damour died because too many of us have bought, heart and soul, into the great lie of American consumerism: acquiring stuff will make you whole. ‘’You, Happier,’‘ is how a sign at my local Best Buy puts it. As if owning a Jonas Brothers CD, an Iron Man DVD, a Sony HDTV, will elevate you to a level of joy otherwise impossible to attain. Hey, you may be a total loser, may not have a friend, may not have an education, may not have a job, may not have a clue, but it will all be OK as soon as you get that new Canon digital camera, especially if you get it for 50 percent off.
It would be nice to think -- I will not hold my breath -- that Damour’s death would lead at least some of us to finally see that for the obscene lie it is, to realize that seeking wholeness in consumer goods is an act of emptiness, not joy.
You, Happier? No.
Just you, with more stuff.
****

1/13/2009

Christmas message

What’s Christmas time but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer...

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

At this festive season of the year, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts.

Under the impression that Social Services scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude, a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.

It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, to witness what might be shared on earth, and turned to happiness!

Any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused!

Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.

-A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens, December, 1843.

Ahhh. A new year is upon us. I could try to come up with an old year in review, but it seems so commonplace. Besides, it would involve recalling some of the many injustices that will likely not be corrected on this earth, before getting to those items of good news that might be worth relating... Go Democrats!

Pew Poll: “Incompetent” Word Most Associated With Bush
December 19, 2008 09:15 AM
Via Think Progress, a new Pew Poll finds that only 11% of respondents say “Bush will be remembered as an outstanding or above average president” -- “by far the lowest positive end-of-term rating for any of the past four presidents.” Moreover, when asked to describe Bush in a word, a majority of those polled chose “incompetent.”

***

Muntadar al-Zaidi Did What We Journalists Should Have Done Long Ago
2008-12-15

By Dave Lindorff
When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, he did something that the White House press corps should have done years ago.
Al-Zaidi listened to Bush blather that the half-decade of war he had initiated with the illegal invasion of Iraq had been “necessary for US security, Iraqi stability (sic) and world peace” and something just snapped. The television correspondent, who had been kidnapped and held for a while last year by Shiite militants, pulled off a shoe and threw it at Bush—a serious insult in Iraqi culture—and shouted “This is a farewell kiss, you dog!” When the first shoe missed its target, he grabbed a second shoe and heaved it too, causing the president to duck a second time as al-Zaidi shouted, “This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!”
I’ll admit, listening to Bush lie his way through eight years of press conferences, while pre-selected reporters played along and pretended to get his attention so they could ask questions which had been submitted and vetted in advance, I have felt like throwing my shoes at the television set.

***

Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by The New York Times
Add Up the Damage
by Bob Herbert

The catalog of his transgressions against the nation’s interests - sins of commission and omission - would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don’t hold your breath. He’s hardly the contrite sort.
He told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it.”
The president chuckled, thinking - as he did when he made his jokes about the missing weapons of mass destruction - that there was something funny going on.

***

Pack of Liars
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, December 12, 2008; 12:48 PM
Yesterday’s bipartisan Senate report on the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere doesn’t just lay out a clear line of responsibility starting with President Bush, it also exposes the administration’s repeated explanation for what happened as a pack of lies.
“The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own,” the report finds. “The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”

***

Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by The Independent/UK
Leaders Lie, Civilians Die, and Lessons of History are Ignored
by Robert Fisk
***

Tortured Reasoning
David Rose, Vanity Fair: “George W. Bush defended harsh interrogations by pointing to intelligence breakthroughs, but a surprising number of counterterrorist officials say that, apart from being wrong, torture just doesn’t work. Delving into two high-profile cases, the author exposes the tactical costs of prisoner abuse.”

***

Published on Monday, December 15, 2008 by Salon.com

Senate Report Links Bush to Detainee Homicides; Media Yawns

by Glenn Greenwald

The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report issued on Thursday -- which documents that “former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba” and “that Rumsfeld’s actions were ‘a direct cause of detainee abuse’ at Guantanamo and ‘influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq’” -- raises an obvious and glaring question: how can it possibly be justified that the low-level Army personnel carrying out these policies at Abu Ghraib have been charged, convicted and imprisoned, while the high-level political officials and lawyers who directed and authorized these same policies remain free of any risk of prosecution? The culpability which the Report assigns for these war crimes is vast in scope and unambiguous:

The executive summary also traces the erosion of detainee treatment standards to a Feb,. 7, 2002, memorandum signed by President George W. Bush stating that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the U.S. war with al Qaeda and that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or legal protections.

***

Guantanamo Prisoner’s Lawyers Accuse US Defense Secretary
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian UK: “Lawyers for a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay have accused Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, of signing a ‘flagrantly false’ affidavit to avoid having to disclose evidence of torture. In a sworn affidavit to a district court in Washington, Gates says the US authorities have provided Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers and the British government with all the information they possess relating to Mohamed’s treatment while held in secret prisons. Gates declared his affidavit to be the truth ‘under penalty of perjury.’”

***

The Real News Network: Why Did Cheney Confess on National Television?

***

Robert Parry | Cheney’s Contempt for the Republic

***

Marjorie Cohn | Cheney Throws Down Gauntlet, Defies Prosecution for War Crimes
“Dick Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, ‘I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared.’ He also said he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the agency waterboarded three al-Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. US courts have long held that waterboarding, where water is poured into someone’s nose and mouth until he nearly drowns, constitutes torture. Our federal War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.”

***

Murray Waas | Cheney’s Admissions to the CIA Leak Prosecutor and FBI
“Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.”

***

David Latt

Emmy-Winning Television Writer, Producer
Posted December 17, 2008
Cheney Taunts Bush, Pardon Me or Else
With his ABC interview Vice President Dick Cheney put a smoking gun on the table. He admitted that he, along with other top administration officials, personally approved the CIA’s waterboarding of prisoners. That he said it unapologetically is merely his low-keyed way of declaring open war.
President Bush has been working on his legacy by circulating an upbeat, 2-page talking point memo with a description of his successes in office. Bush likes to white-wash and obfuscate. Cheney prefers a more aggressive approach.
Always blunt, two-fisted, and condescending, the question is, why admit that he approved waterboarding? And why now? Maybe it was egotism, pure and simple, his own version of a legacy campaign where he takes credit for a policy that he asserts made America safe. But to his detractors it is an admission of guilt that is prosecutable, as damning as Jack Kervorkian’s 60 Minutes interview that landed him in prison.

***

Don’t do as I do

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

In a classic case of irony, U.S. prosecutors are pushing for a sentence of 147 years in prison for someone who was just convicted of torturing people. The defendant is Charles Emmanuel, son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Emmanuel was born in the US, but the torture was committed when he was chief of a brutal paramilitary unit during his father’s presidency, between 1997 and 2003. His conviction was the first use of a 1994 US law that allows prosecution in the US for acts of torture committed overseas.

As part of his defense, he argued that he was being unfairly prosecuted for acts similar to hose committed by the US in Iraq and elsewhere.

***

Former U.S. Interrogator: Torture Policy Has Led to More Deaths than 9/11 Attacks
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted December 5, 2008.
“How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me,” says the author of How to Break a Terrorist.

Amy Goodman: Writing under the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, a former special intelligence operations officer, who led an interrogations team in Iraq two years ago, has written a stunning op-ed in the Washington Post called “I’m Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq.” In it, he details his direct experience with torture practices put into effect in Iraq in 2006. He conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than a thousand and was awarded a Bronze Star for his achievements in Iraq.
In the article, he says torture techniques used in Iraq consistently failed to produce actionable intelligence and that methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which rest on confidence building, consistently worked and gave the interrogators access to critical information.

***

Rumsfeld’s Attempts to Rewrite Himself on the Right Side of History Are Laughable
Gary Brecher

***

Leading Lawyer Calls for Rumsfeld Prosecution

***

Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders

***

Norwegian Doctor: They Are Bombing 1.5 Million People In A Cage

— Jan 5 2009 - 8:20pm

***

U.S.-installed Iraqi ex-PM says Bush “utter failure”

— Jan 3 2009 - 10:30pm

***

Iraqis Hope to Sue US Troops Under New Accord
Adam Ashton, McClatchy Newspapers: “The families of three men who were killed last week during a search of a grain warehouse want to press charges against American soldiers under the terms of a new security agreement between the US and Iraq.”

***

Pity the Poor Neocons
by Robert Parry | January 4, 2009

As bloody and grotesque as Israel’s pounding of Gaza has been, it marks a bitterly disappointing end for seven-plus years of neoconservative dominion over U.S. foreign policy, a period that was supposed to conclude with the dismantling of Israel’s Muslim enemies in the region.
Contrary to those neocon plans, George W. Bush is limping toward a historical judgment as possibly “the worst President ever”; U.S. power is waning in Iraq under a “status-of-forces agreement” that is showing the Americans the door by 2011 if not earlier; and key neocon targets – Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon – have gained in regional influence.

***

Top 5 Lies About Israel’s Assault on Gaza
by Jeremy R. Hammond | January 4, 2009

***

Published on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 by The Independent/UK
Why Do They Hate The West So Much, We Will Ask
by Robert Fisk
So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?
What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. “Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties,” yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night’s butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.
What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I’m afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against “international terror”. The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

***

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown | They Lied About Iraq in 2003, and They’re Still Lying Now

***

Let’s Negotiate With Iran!
Gilles Anquetil, Le Nouvel Observateur: “Former CIA Chief for the Middle East Robert Baer has published a provocative essay in which - in order to avoid war - he exhorts the United States to stop demonizing Iran.”

***

Military Plans to Violate Iraq Withdrawal Terms

***

Senior Federal Banking Regulator Removed
Binyamin Appelbaum, The Washington Post: “A senior federal banking regulator has been removed from his job after government investigators concluded that he knowingly permitted IndyMac Bancorp to present a misleading picture of its financial health in a federal filing only months before the California thrift was seized by regulators. The Office of Thrift Supervision removed Darrel Dochow as director of its western region, where he was responsible for regulating several of the largest banks that failed or were sold in the past year, including Washington Mutual, Countrywide Financial, IndyMac and Downey Savings and Loan.”

***

SEC Report: Employees Browsed Adult Material, Ran Private Businesses
Jake Bernstein, ProPublica: “The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a drubbing these days for its abject failure - despite detailed tips - to catch Bernie Madoff in what appears to be the biggest Ponzi scheme in our nation’s history. Now, thanks to a little-noticed report from the agency’s inspector general, we have a detailed glimpse into other bad behavior by some SEC employees.”

***

SEC Whistleblower Speaks on Madoff Fraud
Matt Renner, Truthout: “After the revelation of a massive fraud scheme, a former government investigator has accused government law enforcement officials of repeatedly turning a blind eye to Wall Street crime and, in doing so, allowing the foundational trust of the global financial system to crumble. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the oversight body which was set up to enforce laws regulating finance in order to prevent a repeat of the stock market crash of 1929, has admitted to falling down on the job, missing the long-running scheme allegedly perpetrated by Bernard L. Madoff - potentially the largest scandal ever to rock Wall Street.”

***

AP Study Finds $1.6 Billion Went to Bailed-Out Bank Executives
Frank Bass and Rita Beamish, The Associated Press: “Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals. The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.”

***

Wall Street Still Flying Corporate Jets
“http://www.truthout.org/122208O”
Stevenson Jacobs, The Associated Press: “Crisscrossing the country in corporate jets may no longer fly in Detroit after car executives got a dressing down from Congress. But on Wall Street, the coveted executive perk has hardly been grounded. Six financial firms that received billions in bailout dollars still own and operate fleets of jets to carry executives to company events and sometimes personal trips, according to an Associated Press review.”

Ford’s new CEO, Alan Mulally, got $27.8 million in salary and bonus in his first few months on the job, including an $18.5 million signing bonus.
Toyota’s top 37 executives earned a combined $21.6 million in salary and bonuses, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At Honda, the top 21 earned $11.1 million, combined, in salary and bonuses, SEC filings show.

Obama Names Holdren, Lubchenco to Science Posts
Hope Yen, The Associated Press: “President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named Harvard physicist John Holdren and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to top science posts, signaling a change from Bush administration policies on global warming that were criticized for putting politics over science.”

***

Thain of Merrill Lynch Wants Taxpayers to Pay Him $10 Million Bonus

by Bill Hare | December 9, 2008

***

Beyond Decadence

by Stephen Fleischman | December 23, 2008

The story of Bernie Madoff is the perfect paradigm for morality in the era of monopoly capitalism.

As an investment broker with a “black box”, Madoff managed to swindle $50 billion, yes, billion--before being caught. Madoff targeted his own people in the Jewish community and even ripped off charitable organizations that were supporting humanitarian projects in Israel. He used the oldest of the old scams, the Ponzi or pyramid scheme--paying off old investors with exorbitant fictitious interest, money from new investors, while investing nothing.

***

Republicans Bring Socialism to America

by Robert Scheer | December 10, 2008

— from TruthDig

Let the record show that it was George W. Bush, the rich Texas Republican, who brought socialism to America, so don’t blame it on that African-American Chicago Democrat community organizer who made it into the White House. The government takeover of the banking and automobile industries not only happened on President Bush’s watch, it was also the deregulatory mania of this president’s family, beginning with his father, which took this country into such starkly unfamiliar territory.

What a betrayal of free-market capitalism. And who would have thought that it would be the candidates backed by conservative pundits Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh who made it possible? You actually could trace the destruction of corporate capitalism to the much-ballyhooed “Reagan Revolution” of the movie actor who got his main training for the presidency as a huckster for General Electric, where he honed the message of “getting government off our backs.” The revolution of unfettered corporate capitalism led to an era of unfettered corporate greed, which sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

***

Published on Monday, December 15, 2008 by Mother Jones

The Seven Deadly Deficits

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

When president George W. Bush assumed office, most of those disgruntled about the stolen election contented themselves with this thought: Given our system of checks and balances, given the gridlock in Washington, how much damage could be done? Now we know: far more than the worst pessimists could have imagined. From the war in Iraq to the collapse of the credit markets, the financial losses are difficult to fathom. And behind those losses lie even greater missed opportunities.

Put it all together-the money squandered on the war, the money wasted on a housing pyramid scheme that impoverished the nation and enriched a few, and the money lost because of the recession-and the gap between what we could have produced and what we did produce will easily exceed $1.5 trillion. Think what that kind of money could have done to provide health care for the uninsured, to improve our education system, to build green technology...The list is endless.

And the true cost of our missed opportunities is likely even greater.

***

Published on Sunday, December 14, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

Bush Sneaks Through Host of Laws to Undermine Obama

The lame-duck Republican team is rushing through radical measures, from coal waste dumping to power stations in national parks, that will take months to overturn

by Paul Harris

After spending eight years at the helm of one of the most ideologically driven administrations in American history, George W. Bush is ending his presidency in characteristically aggressive fashion, with a swath of controversial measures designed to reward supporters and enrage opponents.

***

Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by Rolling Stone
Bush’s Final F.U.
The administration is rushing to enact a host of last-minute regulations that will screw America for years to come
by Tim Dickinson

***

Destroying What the UAW Built
Harold Meyerson, The Washington Post: “In 1949, a pamphlet was published that argued that the American auto industry should pursue a different direction. Titled ‘A Small Car Named Desire,’ the pamphlet suggested that Detroit not put all its bets on bigness, that a substantial share of American consumers would welcome smaller cars that cost less and burned fuel more efficiently.”

***

Assembly Line
by Jonathan Cohn
Debunking the myth of the $70-per-hour autoworker.
Post Date Friday, November 21, 2008

***

Blaming the workers

by Jack Lessenberry | December 10, 2008

Blame the workers. Especially, blame the United Auto Workers. That’s what we’ve been hearing from the talking heads over the last several weeks as our auto industry skidded toward the brink of extinction and politicians debated a bailout.

Over and over again, I’ve heard people repeat that the trouble was that the average UAW worker costs the auto companies $73 per hour. Nice work if you can get it. Matter of fact, it made me want to pack a lunch bucket and trudge off to Dodge Main. Trouble is, when I checked, I found that this statistic is simply not true.

***

http://www.236.com/news/2008/12/12/poll_what_is_the_best_part_of_10691.php

Strange that the company behind this would be having problems

***

Published on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 by Boston Review
Free Market Myth
Regulation is everywhere. Let’s choose who benefits.
by Dean Baker

***

Bush’s Rotten Revisionism, Jesse’s Reality

by Bill Gallagher | December 9, 2008

“Drive a hybrid back to Texas.”

-- Reverend Jesse Jackson suggesting the best thing outgoing President George W. Bush could do for the U.S. auto industry.

Detroit. George W. Bush’s final days in office are both a painful reminder of his failed presidency and provide more illustrations of his serial delusions and the thought processes of a damaged mind. He remains incapable to recognizing his monumental failures and is chillingly detached from human suffering.

Last Friday, after the November job losses were announced -- 533,000 -- showing the biggest decline in 34 years, Bush lapsed into a rare moment of reality finally acknowledging “Our economy is in recession.”

***

We Told You
by David Sirota
Please, forgive me for saying it. I know it’s a tad annoying, but it has to be said to America’s ruling class in this humble column space. Because if it’s not said here you can bet it won’t be said anywhere else in the media, and it needs to be said somewhere on behalf of the millions of citizens who were right.
We told you so.
In the slow-motion train wreck that became the current economic meltdown, our bipartisan political Establishment and the sycophantic punditburo have been wrong over and over and over again. They told us that eviscerating consumer protections would unleash the market’s benevolent power and boost the economy. They told us that a trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout would solve a credit crisis. They told us that bailout would be subjected to intense oversight and scrutiny.
Wrong, wrong and wrong -- and when critics predicted just that, sneering commentators and congressional leaders berated us as know-nothing Luddites, conspiracy theorists, or both.
But with the release of three new reports, there’s no debate anymore about who was correct and who wasn’t. The studies prove that the critics were right and the ideologues of Washington were wrong.
When in 2005 Congress overwhelmingly passed a credit card industry-written bill gutting bankruptcy laws, progressives were right to try to stop it -- and not just because it was an immoral move to legalize usury. We were right because as the New York Federal Reserve Bank reports, the bill played an integral role in the recent foreclosure surge that crushed the economy.

***

The Axe, the Book and the Ad: On Reading in an Age of Depression
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: “Worlds shudder and collapse all the time. There’s no news in that. Just ask the Assyrians, the last emperor of the Han Dynasty, the final Romanoff, Napoleon, or that Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff. But when it seems to be happening to your world, well, that’s a different kettle of fish. When you get the word, the call, the notice that you’re a goner, or when your little world shudders, that’s something else again. Even if the call’s not for you, but for a friend, an acquaintance, someone close enough so you can feel the ripples, that can do the trick.”

***

The Significance of Nixon’s ‘Treason’

by Robert Parry | December 9, 2008

You might have thought that when audiotapes were released of President Lyndon Johnson accusing Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign of “treason” for sabotaging Vietnam peace talks – as 500,000 U.S. troops sat in a war zone – the major U.S. news media would be all over it, providing insight and context.

If you thought that, of course, you would be wrong.

Instead the story last week out of Johnson’s presidential library received only cursory attention in the big newspapers and TV outlets, mostly references to a brief Associated Press wire story that treated the disclosure more as a curiosity than a clue to a dark historical mystery.

***

Bush’s Last-Minute “Conscience” Rules Cause Furor
Julie Rovner, NPR News: “Health care workers, hospitals and even entire insurance companies could decline to perform, refer or pay for abortion or any other health care practice that violates a ‘religious belief or moral conviction’ under new rules issued by the outgoing Bush administration.”

***

Does Old Glory Have a Dark Side?
Lee Drutman, Miller-McCune: “Research suggests that seeing the flag doesn’t make Americans feel more patriotic. But it does make them feel more nationalistic and more superior to non-Americans.”

***

The Grinning Skull: The Homicides You Didn’t Hear About in Hurricane Katrina
Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch.com: “What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? While the national and international media were working themselves and much of the public into a frenzy about imaginary hordes of murderers, rapists, snipers, marauders, and general rampagers among the stranded crowds of mostly poor, mostly black people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a group of white men went on a shooting spree across the river. Their criminal acts were no secret but they never became part of the official story.”

***

Man Is a Cruel Animal
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: “It was Joseph Conrad I thought of when I read an article in The Nation magazine this month about white vigilante groups that rose up out of the chaos of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to terrorize and murder blacks. It was Conrad I thought of when I saw the ominous statements by authorities, such as International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warning of potential civil unrest in the United States as we funnel staggering sums of public funds upward to our bankrupt elites and leave our poor and working class destitute, hungry, without health care and locked out of their foreclosed homes. We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes.”

***

US: Soaring Rates of Rape and Violence Against Women
Human Rights Watch: “A new government report showing huge increases in the incidences of domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault over a two-year period in the United States deserves immediate attention from lawmakers and the incoming administration, Human Rights Watch said December 18. The statistics show a 42 percent increase in reported domestic violence and a 25 percent increase in the reported incidence of rape and sexual assault.”

***

Housing Starts Fall Through the Floor
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research: “The Census Bureau reported a sharp drop in housing starts in November from a downwardly-revised October rate.... In fact, the start reported for November is lower than any rate reported for the last fifty years.”

***

Clay Evans | Bad Company: US Fails Gay, Lesbian Citizens

***

AIG’s Past Could Return to Haunt
Lucy Komisar, Inter Press Service: “The U.S. will invest 40 billion dollars in American International Group (AIG), and will provide credit lines that could bring federal funding up to 144 billion dollars. It’s the largest subsidy that a U.S. corporation has ever received. In exchange, the U.S. gets nearly 80 percent of AIG stock.” Bailout of AIG reveals elaborate offshore tax fraud scheme by US insurance companies.

***

Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by Corporate Crime Reporter
Documentary Doc Says AARP Is Major Impediment to Single Payer

***

Amazon Unsafe 20 Years After Crusader’s Killing
Bradley Brooks, The Associated Press: “More than 1,100 activists, small farmers, judges, priests and other rural workers have been killed in disputes over preserving land in the Amazon.”

***

Published on Tuesday, December 16, 2008 by the Associated Press

Report: Political Interference Tainted Most Endangered Species Rulings for 5 Years

WASHINGTON - A high-ranking Interior Department official tainted nearly every decision made on the protection of endangered species over five years, a new inspector general report finds, concluding she exerted improper political interference on many more rulings than previously thought.

***

New Popularity for Dr. Seuss’ ‘The Lorax’

***

Climate Change: Chasm Widens Between Science and Policy

Stephen Leahy, Inter Press Service: “The roof of our house is on fire while the leaders of our family sit comfortably in the living room below preoccupied with ‘political realities’ - that was essentially the message from 1,000 scientists from around the world along with northern indigenous leaders gathered in Quebec City for the International Arctic Change conference that concluded last weekend. Presenting data from hundreds of studies and research projects detailing the Arctic region’s rapid meltdown and cascading ecological impacts, participants urged governments to take ‘immediate measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.’”

***

Published on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by The Independent/UK
Has the Arctic Melt Passed the Point of No Return?
by Steve Connor
Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.
***

Published on Monday, January 5, 2009 by Foreign Policy.com
Think Again: Climate Change
Act now, we’re told, if we want to save the planet from a climate catastrophe. Trouble is, it might be too late. The science is settled, and the damage has already begun. The only question now is whether we will stop playing political games and embrace the few imperfect options we have left.
by Bill McKibben
“Scientists Are Divided”
No, they’re not. In the early years of the global warming debate, there was great controversy over whether the planet was warming, whether humans were the cause, and whether it would be a significant problem. That debate is long since over. Although the details of future forecasts remain unclear, there’s no serious question about the general shape of what’s to come.
Every national academy of science, long lists of Nobel laureates, and in recent years even the science advisors of President George W. Bush have agreed that we are heating the planet. Indeed, there is a more thorough scientific process here than on almost any other issue: Two decades ago, the United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and charged its scientists with synthesizing the peer-reviewed science and developing broad-based conclusions. The reports have found since 1995 that warming is dangerous and caused by humans. The panel’s most recent report, in November 2007, found it is “very likely” (defined as more than 90 percent certain, or about as certain as science gets) that heat-trapping emissions from human activities have caused “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.”
If anything, many scientists now think that the IPCC has been too conservative-both because member countries must sign off on the conclusions and because there’s a time lag. Its last report synthesized data from the early part of the decade, not the latest scary results, such as what we’re now seeing in the Arctic.
***

January 5, 2009
3:13 PM
CONTACT: Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)
Phone: 202-332-9110
Govt. Science Panels Skewed Toward Industry, Says Report
CSPI Urges Legislation to Restore Balance

***

EPA Ruling Could Speed Up Approval of Coal Plants

EPA Eases Emissions Regulations for New Power Plants
David A. Fahrenthold and Steven Mufson, The Washington Post: “The Environmental Protection Agency ruled yesterday that new power plants are not required to install technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, rejecting an argument from environmental groups.”

***

Deeper Cuts, Widespread Pain
Annys Shin, The Washington Post: “Recessions can be notoriously uneven. They can wreak havoc with the livelihood of factory workers, but not that of bank tellers or nurses. Whole industries can see jobs washed away forever, while others hum along and even grow.”

***

Planned Parenthood Says Midnight Regulation Jeopardizes Women’s Health
Salem-News.com: “The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) sharply criticized a last-minute regulation by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that poses a serious threat to patients’ rights to receive complete and accurate health care information and services.”

Last-Minute Rule Threatens Reproductive Rights, Healthcare

***

Health Insurance Options Limited After Job Loss
Victoria Colliver, The San Francisco Chronicle: “With the recession and the expectation that job losses will get worse next year, a growing number of American workers will find themselves not only out of a job, but without access to affordable health coverage. Already, about 46 million Americans have no health insurance.”

***

Published on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 by Tikkun Magazine
Memo to Obama: National Health Insurance The Only Solution
by John Geyman, MD

***

http://politicalirony.com/2008/12/29/ronald-reagan-for-workers-rights/

Ronald Reagan for Worker’s Rights

Here’s an amazing audio recording of Ronald Reagan, campaigning for Harry Truman for president and Hubert Humphrey for Senate in 1948. How many people know that Reagan was originally a Democrat?

***

Activists Sue to Ban Voting Touch Screens
United Press International: “Activists in Pennsylvania say they’re pressing ahead with a lawsuit to ban touch-screen voting machines in the state’s 67 counties.”

***

Pentagon Seeks Private Firm to Oversee Contractors
Walter Pincus, The Washington Post: “Shortly after an inspector general questioned the practice of the Pentagon issuing contracts to administer contracts, the US Army began advertising this week for an American firm to manage oversight of private security companies in Afghanistan.”

***

With all the blood on their hands, certainly not above killing a witness...

Rove’s IT Guru Warned of Sabotage

“http://www.truthout.org/122408J”Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!: “A top Republican internet strategist who was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio has died in a plane crash. Mike Connell was the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove and created websites for the Bush and McCain electoral campaigns. He also set up the official Ohio state election website reporting the 2004 presidential election returns. Connell was reportedly an experienced pilot. He died instantly Friday night when his private plane crashed in a residential neighborhood near Akron, Ohio.”

***

http://dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2008/12/21/Ziegler_ART_12-21-08_H4_Q6C9213.html?sid=101

Republicans hungry to win elections

Sunday, December 21, 2008 3:45 AM

I respond to the Associated Press article “Republicans hail improbable House victor,” in last Sunday’s Dispatch, about the election of Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, who also heads the Republican National Committee, said “even battered and bruised from political drubbings in the past two years, Republicans still know how to win elections. The future is Cao.”

So, let me get this straight: The future of the GOP is that its candidates run against Democrat incumbents who are tainted with corruption, that the candidate is not really a Republican but an independent, that the candidate has a name, look and a life story that sounds like a Democrat, and that the party hopes for low voter turnout on Election Day.

This is a strategy? Sounds more like desperation to me.

RUTH ZIEGLER

Newark

***

http://dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2008/12/21/Thompson_ART_12-21-08_H4_Q6C929P.html?sid=101

GOP lost votes by wandering off-track

Sunday, December 21, 2008 3:45 AM

Perhaps the leaders of the Republican Party would be interested in hearing how they lost this voter.

For decades, I was a registered Republican. I felt that the party was fiscally conservative and socially moderate.

Then, some of the leaders latched onto the idea of portraying themselves as being closer to God than the Democrats. They even gave serious consideration to nominating a pray-for-pay evangelist for president. That is when I bailed out.

I enjoy an excellent relationship with my Creator, but I suspect that the average atheist scores better than the average politician when it it comes to ethics and morals.

Republicans started catering to the holier-than-thou crowd. Many wanted to make all sins into crimes. My God does not need help from lawmakers. Lawmakers need help from God.

Then, to cap it all off, Republicans sold out to the rich. They came up with the scam that giving to the wealthy would enrich us all; that the money would trickle down to everybody. How did that work out for you?

CLIFFORD L. THOMPSON
Gahanna

***

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/12/21/MIKE21_ART_12-21-08_B1_C4CA21V.html

Mike Harden commentary: Writers fill Santa letters with doubts, fears, hopes

Sunday, December 21, 2008 3:39 AM

By Mike Harden

More Mike Harden

Column archive

I knew it was going to be a good year for Santa letters when I read Jordan’s plea to St. Nicholas:

“Dear Santa Claus, I am so, so, so, so, so, so very sorry for kicking my mom and everything else. Can you put me on the good list, please?”

On Wednesday, I sifted through about 600 letters to Santa in search of those gems, addressed to the North Pole, that end up in the dead-letter pile at the Main Post Office on Twin Rivers Drive.

The post office hangs on to the letters to ensure that each correspondent receives a response from Santa, thanks to volunteers from Local 232 of the American Postal Workers Union.

For the past 15 years that I’ve written a Santa-letters column, I’ve always found a few dozen missives from youngsters on the brink of learning the truth about St. Nick:

Caroline wrote, “Don’t think that I think you are going to be here forever because you aren’t. I got the whole story from my best friend.”

An apparently older writer charged, “There is no way that one fat guy can fit through a chimney and deliver gifts to so many families. Besides, how could he know who’s being naughty or nice. If he does, it means that he has way too much time on his hands.”

Still, for every doubter, there were 50 letters from true believers who think Santa can do the impossible.

Elizabeth implored, “Dear Santa, Can you turn me into a real mermaid so when I get into the water I grow a tail?”

Richie had an even more impossible wish: “Could you please bring a Super Bowl to the Cincinnati Bengals next year?”

“Could you maybe have my boyfriend ask me to marry him on Christmas Eve?” Tara inquired.

Kylie, sandwiching a personal request between broader concerns, noted, “I wish for world peace, Wii games and for homeless people to find homes.”

Sweeney, mixing generous compassion with self-interest, proclaimed, “I wish that on Christmas Eve every person will get what they want, especially me.”

A child named Faith blew off any thoughts of charity for others, informing Santa instead, “I want it all.”

An impatient Dylan commanded, “Tell your elves to get started.”

Victor, concerned that the lay of his house might confuse Santa, drew a you-are-here map with a key that included the likeness of Claus (identified “you”), of St. Nick’s team (”your deer”), the location of the bribe (”cookies and milk”) and the precise spot beneath the tree where he expected to find an Xbox 360 and a hundred dollars.

A precocious Michael wrote, “I am going to still give you cookies, but I’m worried about your health.”

Madelyn asked Santa, “Do you ever get air sick?”

Hayden thoughtfully pointed out, “We have a fireplace for you to come into, but the door might be easier.”

David posed, “To stay off the naughty list, what do I have to do?”

Among the hundreds of Santa letters, I found myself hoping that, in the spirit of the season, the wishes of the following folks would be answered:

Hannah: “Make my mom be well after her surgery.”

Amanda: “Please take care of my husband while he is in Iraq.”

Alyson: “I would like for my sister to stay cancer free forever. That’s all I want.”

And, finally, from Katy: “A new bike, a hopscotch twister and my two front teeth.”

***

Not a great story, but liked the last line...

State sues company, alleging mortgage-rescue scam

Sunday, December 21, 2008 3:48 AM

By Steve Wartenberg

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The flier’s claim seemed too good to be true: “Regardless of your present mortgage or loan situation, we will be able to assist you by arranging a repayment plan to bring your loan current.”

It was too good to be true, said Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, who filed a lawsuit against James Van Putten of Ashtabula County in northeastern Ohio.

The suit says that Please Save My Home, a company based in Van Putten’s home, collected $650 from homeowners in the midst of foreclosure, and then did nothing to help them.

Mortgage-rescue scams are becoming more common.

“With more people going through foreclosure, this is a scam we’re seeing more and more of,” said Manilath Southammavong, spokeswoman with the attorney general’s office.

The office has filed 11 lawsuits since August 2007 against companies involved in mortgage-rescue scams, including some based in Ohio as well as in California, Arizona and Florida, she said.

“And we are currently mediating other complaints against similar companies,” Southammavong said.

The lawsuit against Van Putten says that he obtained the names of homeowners in foreclosure from court records and used direct mail to sell his services.

He is not registered with the attorney general’s office as a telemarketer, and Please Save My Home is not registered with the Ohio secretary of state as required by law, according to the lawsuit.

Van Putten is accused of engaging in unfair and deceptive practices, and the lawsuit asks that his business be shut down and he pay damages to victims and civil penalties of $25,000 for each violation of the law.

“As of now, no criminal charges have been filed (against Van Putten), just civil,” Southammavong said.

A Please Save My Home flier says the company can delay the foreclosure process, help with loan modifications and pay attorney fees.

“This type of thing has been going on for a number of years,” said Paul Bellamy, a lawyer with the Equal Justice Foundation in Columbus. “It is the lowest of the low, essentially exploiting people who are as far down and out as you can be.”

Bellamy said the best bet for homeowners in trouble is to contact Ohio’s Save the Dream program at www.com.ohio.gov/

SavetheDream/ to find legitimate nonprofit agencies that provide foreclosure counseling.

Consumers also can contact the attorney general’s hot line: 1-877-244-6446.

“A lot of these save-your-home scams pretend to be nonprofits, and they confuse people that way,” Bellamy said.

“It’s really just a guy with a computer and a phone trying to scam you.”

***

Serve this, Laura Bush
by Richard Mathis | January 8, 2009 - 12:08pm
New china at the White House. Some fine china. $485,000 worth. Surely there are some new dessert plates for them to eat cake.
Damn, it’s about time. God forbid the President and his guests eating off a plate old enough for Abe Lincoln to have used. The rest of us might not be able to afford anything to put on a plate but God knows when the rich and powerful come to feast at the shrine of democracy that they ain’t going to be drinking out of Dixie cups and eating charred weiners.

***

http://politicalirony.com/

A Farewell to Bush

Sunday, January 4, 2009

I have often complained that the American media isn’t doing its job anymore, so I have to speak up when they do. And especially when they do it so well as the excellent article in Vanity Fair “Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House“. This is a detailed history of the Bush administration, told almost entirely using direct quotes from major players in and around the presidency. If you have ever looked at the Bush administration and wondered why they did something or how they screwed up so badly, this is the closest thing to an answer you are ever going to see.

***

Published on Saturday, December 13, 2008 by Consortium News
Bush’s Farewell Hallelujah Chorus
by Michael Winship
With all the interviews President Bush has been giving out lately, you’d think he has a new movie coming out for Christmas.
ABC, NBC, National Review, Middle East Broadcasting, the Real Clear Politics Web site - even a talk with the Washington Post’s NASCAR expert. For a fellow who’s sometimes gone for months without a press conference, suddenly, the President’s a regular chatterbox, spreading the word in these final days that his eight years in office really, really weren’t all that bad. Honest.

***

Tales From The Planet Bizarre, Episode 473: Still Lying, Still Allowed To Lie
by David Michael Green | December 15, 2008
I’m sorry, but there are moments when I just feel like a total alien who stumbled onto some planet full of bizarre life forms. They call this place America, and it sure is weird. And, lemme tell ya, I know what I’m talking about here. I’ve visited some pretty weird places in this part of the universe.
Try this on for size as an example. You might think that a president who is widely known for lying, who leads a party also known for the same, who is at the end of his term and virtually without any punitive power worth speaking of, and who is widely despised at home and abroad - you might think such a president would get a serious grilling when sitting down with the American media for an exit interview. And, even if that might seem like a giant leap for some, perhaps you’d at least be surprised if such an individual was allowed to continue to tell revisionist historical lies without being called to account in the slightest for doing so.

***

Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House

The threat of 9/11 ignored. The threat of Iraq hyped and manipulated. Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Hurricane Katrina. The shredding of civil liberties. The rise of Iran. Global warming. Economic disaster. How did one two-term presidency go so wrong? A sweeping draft of history—distilled from scores of interviews—offers fresh insight into the roles of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other key players.

by Cullen Murphy and Todd S. Purdum February 2009 With assistance from Philippe Sands.

***

Published on Monday, January 5, 2009 by The Nation
Bush’s Last War Crime?
by Robert Dreyfuss
The Israeli invasion of Gaza, launched Saturday, might very well be George W. Bush’s last and final war crime. For eight years, Bush has coupled unparalled ignorance of the Middle East with supreme arrogance. It is precisely that deadly combination of ignorance and arrogance that is on display now, as a politically motivated Israeli invasion of Gaza unfolds with the full support of the Bush administration.
***

Published on Monday, January 5, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
George W. Bush’s Legacy of Failure
The president’s defenders are puffing his record in a positive light - but reality keeps getting in the way
by Cliff Schecter
With only days left until his term expires, it appears that the Bush legacy project, an attempt by the usual corps of serial sycophants to rehabilitate the lame-duck generalissimo’s image, is falling upon the deaf ears and self-gouged eyes of an American public sickened by the last eight years.

***

Media Lapdogs

Sunday, December 28, 2008

An article in The Guardian gives a scary view at the depths that the US media will sink in order to kiss up to the Bush administration.

***

Wed, Dec 17, 2008
Sean Hannity: Media Matters’ 2008 Misinformer of the Year
As Media Matters for America has demonstrated time and again, Fox News’ Sean Hannity has been a prolific and influential purveyor of conservative misinformation. But never has he so enthusiastically applied his talents for spreading misinformation as he did to the 2008 presidential race, focusing his energies primarily on President-elect Barack Obama. Day after day, Hannity devoted his two Fox News shows and his three-hour ABC Radio Networks program to “demonizing” the Democratic presidential candidates, starkly explaining in August: “That’s my job. ... I led the ‘Stop Hillary Express.’ By the way, now it’s the ‘Stop Obama Express.’ “ Hannity’s “Stop Obama Express” promoted and embellished a vast array of misleading attacks and false claims about Obama. Along the way, he uncritically adopted and promoted countless Republican talking points and played host to numerous credibility-challenged smear artists who painted Obama as a dangerous radical. When he was not going after Obama, Hannity attacked members of Obama’s family, as well as Sen. Hillary Clinton and other progressives, and denied all the while that he had unfairly attacked anyone.

***

Wed, Dec 17, 2008
Hannity was not alone in smearing, misinforming on Fox News in 2008
While Fox News’ Sean Hannity earned Media Matters for America’s “Misinformer of the Year” title for 2008, he was not alone in spreading conservative misinformation on Fox News. Indeed, smears of President-elect Barack Obama and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton were prevalent during the presidential campaign, and false claims about progressive policies, issues, and individuals were common throughout Fox News programming.

***

Wrap-up: the end of an error

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Even though most people probably just want to forget about the Bush presidency (what were we thinking, anyway?), there are two wrap-ups that are definitely worth reading:

The first is AlterNet’s “The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency” with some outrageous lines like “One of the Bush administration’s favorite pastimes over the past eight years has been gleefully urinating in the faces of the other two branches of government.”

Second is a special edition of Harper’s Index dedicated to Bush, which includes statistics like “Portion of his presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3″, “Percentage change since 2001 in U.S. government spending on paper shredding: +466″, and “Estimated amount Bush-era policies will cost the U.S. in new debt and accrued obligations: $10,350,000,000,000″

As a special bonus, we leave you with a quote from Vice President Dick Cheney, who when asked last week by the Casper Tribune why he’s so unpopular, responded “I don’t have any idea. I don’t follow the polls.”

***

The Ponzi Scheme Presidency: Bush’s Legacy of Destruction
by Tom Engelhardt | January 5, 2009
— from TomDispatch
It may finally be 2009, but in some ways, given these last years, it might as well be 800 BCE.

***

CARNAGE

It’s hard to imagine the economy will bottom in the middle of this year, as many are anticipating – though naturally I hope I’m wrong. We’ve lived beyond our means for decades now.

(How we’ve laughed at the French in their tiny four-cylinder cars – the French! They barely use credit cards at all, preferring debit cards – sad, no? They lacked the sense, or perhaps the cojones, to see the wisdom of the Iraq war when even Tonga sent troops – the French! And their health care? Never mind that it’s been rated first in the world – it’s socialist!)

Not to say there isn’t more than enough good about our wonderful country to brim with pride. But it still can set one’s teeth to gnashing thinking how dumb we’ve been about so much these past few decades.

And now the chickens really are coming home to roost, with a lot left to come.

***

Bush: A disaster to those he held most dear
By JOEL KOTKIN | 1/7/09
Like the 1944 pop standard says, President George W. Bush has hurt the most all those he professed to love the most — from the conservative ideologues and born-again Christians to the free-market enthusiasts, energy producers and red state political class. Perhaps no politician in recent memory has done more damage to his political base.

***

History unlikely to be kind to Bush
By MATTHEW DALLEK | 1/6/09
Haunting images of Americans dying in a major metropolitan area while Bush flew overhead showed a depth of presidential detachment and disengagement that will be featured in any serious debate about Bush’s legacy.

***Published on Thursday, January 8, 2009 by Salon.com
Neoconservatism Dies in Gaza
by Juan Cole
The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel’s north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas.

***

HISTORY:

Published on Sunday, September 16, 2001 in the Independent/UK
Bush is Walking Into a Trap
by Robert Fisk
Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. Let us have no doubts about what happened in New York and Washington last week. It was a crime against humanity. We cannot understand America’s need to retaliate unless we accept this bleak, awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrated – it becomes ever clearer – to provoke the United States into just the blind, arrogant punch that the US military is preparing.

***

VOCABULARY:

adamantine
Definition: (adjective) Impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, reason.

***

BOOKSHELF:

The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration

by Jack Goldsmith
Norton, 256 pp., $25.95

“The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush,” is available for the cost of $12; and a free downloadable PDF is available on the same site.

“The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld,” is an indictment of the entire torture team, including Bush and Cheney, a guide to prosecution for torture.

“The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” by Vincent Bugliosi, argues that state and local prosecutors have jurisdiction to prosecute Bush for the murder of US soldiers from their states and counties who died in Iraq.

“Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law,” by Marjorie Cohn, documents the laws and the violations, and reminds us why Jefferson warned against elected despotism.

“United States v. George W. Bush et al.,” by Elizabeth de la Vega, an indictment, a presentation to a grand jury charging Bush and gang with fraud -- very well argued and documented, even entertaining.

“The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism,” by John Nichols, a masterpiece that should be required reading in every high school and college in the United States, a history and portrait of the practice of impeachment.

“Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush,” by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a short book that lists and explains four (multi-part) articles of impeachment.

“The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens,” by Elizabeth Holtzman (former Congresswoman and member of the Nixon impeachment panel) and Cynthia L. Cooper, an excellent and readable book laying out five major grounds for impeachment of Bush, plus an extra section on Dick Cheney.

“The Case for Impeachment,” by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky, an amazingly popular and extremely readable book that explains the context while also setting forth six articles of impeachment against Bush, plus an extra section on Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales.

“Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney,” edited by Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips, with an introduction by Howard Zinn, a wonderfully well written collection of essays organized around a list of 12 grounds for impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

“George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying,” by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff, a book that not only collects the evidence but also tells us what Congressman John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, is thinking (the full text, minus a new introduction by Joseph Wilson, is available here.)

“Verdict and Findings of Fact,” by the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration of the United States, a report that looks at five major international crimes and overlaps significantly with most lists of impeachable offenses (the full text is available at the link and can also be purchased for $10);

“Impeach Bush: A Funny Li’l Graphical Novel About the Worstest Pres’dent in the History of Forevar,” a comic book account of Bush’s impeachable offenses – the crimes really are self-evident, but pictures don’t hurt.

“Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration,” by Lewis Lapham, a collection of essays from Harper’s magazine, concluding with one called “The Case for Impeachment,” which focuses on Rep. Conyers’ report.

“The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America,” by Jennifer Van Bergen. Find out what the Bush Plan is and how it diverges from what the law and Constitution say.

***

Dave Barry’s 2008 Year in Review

BY DAVE BARRY
How weird a year was it?
Here’s how weird:
• O.J. actually got convicted of something.
• Gasoline hit $4 a gallon -- and those were the good times.
• On several occasions, Saturday Night Live was funny.
• There were a few days there in October when you could not completely rule out the possibility that the next Treasury Secretary would be Joe the Plumber.
• Finally, and most weirdly, for the first time in history, the voters elected a president who -- despite the skeptics who said such a thing would never happen in the United States -- was neither a Bush NOR a Clinton.
Of course not all the events of 2008 were weird. Some were depressing. The only U.S. industries that had a good year were campaign consultants and foreclosure lawyers. Everybody else got financially whacked. Millions of people started out the year with enough money in their 401(k)’s to think about retiring on, and ended up with maybe enough for a medium Slurpee.

***

Published on Saturday, January 3, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Making ‘Duck Soup’ Out of 2009
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Forced at knifepoint to make such lists, at least ours would be a little different. One would be favorite headlines of the year from The Onion, the hilarious weekly that doesn’t bill itself as “America’s finest news source” for nothing. If you can read it without laughing, you probably have been paying too much attention to your 401K.
Some of those we liked best:
$700 BILLION BAILOUT CELEBRATED WITH LAVISH $800 BILLION EXECUTIVE PARTY
GM COVERED WITH GIANT TARP UNTIL IT HAS MONEY TO WORK ON CARS AGAIN
AMERICAN AIRLINES NOW CHARGING FEES TO NON-PASSENGERS
CHINA RECALLS EVERYTHING
HOUSING CRISIS VINDICATES GUY WHO STILL LIVES WITH PARENTS
FACTUAL ERROR FOUND ON INTERNET.
Of course, the problem The Onion’s editors have is that reality too often resembles parody.

***

Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party’s approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals. In our late canvass half of the nation passionately believed that in silver lay salvation, the other half as passionately believed that that way lay destruction. Do you believe that a tenth part of the people, on either side, had any rational excuse for having an opinion about the matter at all? I studied that mighty question to the bottom – came out empty. Half of our people passionately believe in high tariff, the other half believe otherwise. Does this mean study and examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. I have deeply studied that question, too – and didn’t arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it the Voice of God.
-Corn-pone Opinions, By Mark Twain, Written in 1901

***

“From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step. Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

- Denis Diderot, 10/5/1713-7/31/1784, French philosopher and writer

“Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
-- Socrates

****

3/21/09

More reflections on anniversaries and celebrations, six years of folly, eight of failure, ...

2007: The Year in Evidence

by David Swanson | December 29, 2007 - 8:34am

The past year has seen the public exposure of enough evidence of old, ongoing, and new crimes, abuses of power, and impeachable offenses by George Bush and Dick Cheney that in any remotely representative democracy, these two thugs would be out of office and behind bars. The chief reason this does not shock us is that the same could be said, and was said, of each of the previous six years. It’s been quite a millennium so far for Washington, D.C.

***

Published on Thursday, January 8, 2009 by Salon.com
Neoconservatism Dies in Gaza
by Juan Cole
The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel’s north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas.

***

George W Bush: We Will Never Forget

by Chris Rowthorn | January 19, 2009

George W. Bush, on January 15, 2009, you stood before the American people and said that there is a battle being waged between “a small band of fanatics [that] demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology” and “[an]other system [that] is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.”

Make no mistake, Mr. Bush, you belong to that small band of fanatics. That band of fanatics has been terrorizing people since the beginning of recorded history and probably well before. You are only the latest incarnation of an evil and timeless beast that has worn the faces of Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Tojo Hideki. Let us not mince words, Mr. Bush, what you did to this country is exactly what those men did to theirs: you stole power by filthy means, you committed the nation to disastrous wars, and left your country in ruin. If this was your goal, then you can pronounce a hearty “Mission Accomplished.”

Bush’s Final Approval Rating: 22 Percent — Jan 17 2009 - 1:15pm

Surviving the Bush Nightmare

by Gary Johnson | January 19, 2009

Which began eight years ago this week

Sex, Drugs and the End of Bush

by Theo Talcott | January 19, 2009

I am experiencing a near-sexual thrill at the ending of the Bush Administration. Each news tidbit adds to the growing sense of pleasure. Dana Perino, the charming & deceptive Press Secretary does a goodbye photo montage at the Last Bush Press Conference! ooOOOHH

On the Daily Show, Perino said the vibe at the White House was a little like the end of the semester at school, because everybody knew there was an exact end date and nobody knew what they were doing next. (Spoiler alert! Writing Tell-All memoirs that duck blame and dodging subpoenas). uuhhhnnn.

Bush getting on plane waving for a last trip to camp David. aAAhhhhh.

Confessions of a Bush-Hater

by Steve Young | January 19, 2009 - 9:08am

This is my final column written during the George W Bush presidency. While I have never been a fan, I was incredibly taken by this president’s ability for consistency. No matter how many opportunities to make the past eight years somewhat bearable for the Union, his judgement mostly sided against what the American people would have wished. He called them tough decisions. His favorability ratings called them wrong.

Many in the right wing have called it Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), believed to be originally coined by Anything Not Far-Right Derangement Syndrome (ANFRDS) sufferer, neo-conservative pundit, Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer defined BDS as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- the very existence of George W. Bush.”] It stems from the belief that some extreme criticisms of President Bush are emotional rather than based on facts or logic.

Good Riddance, Rotten Prince

by Bill Gallagher | January 19, 2009

He had political pedigree and little else. He was a child of privilege and entitlement. His name, not his merit, brought him to Yale and Harvard where the affirmative action of legacy provided him slots denied to the more accomplished lacking his royal family’s wealth and heritage.

For him, life was like an elite box of chocolates where he always knew what he would get. Just ask daddy and it’s done. Do what you like, fail and never face the consequences.

He cut in line to get into the Air National Guard and avoid the perils of a war he said he supported but others -- those with no influence or money- should bleed and die for. He skipped officer candidate school, got a direct commission and become a pilot, just like daddy.

Why Conservatives Are Such Bad Media Critics

by Eric Boehlert | January 18, 2009 - 1:31pm

Because they suggest journalists who deliver bad news for Republicans are biased. For real.

Obama must undo misrule of the Bush years

by Ed Tant | January 17, 2009 - 3:58pm

Three more days!

Not “four more years,” but three more days and the rogue regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney will at last come to an end. When Barack Hussein Obama is sworn in as this nation’s 44th president at noon Tuesday, sighs of relief and shouts of joy will resound across America and around the world. At long last, citizens of this country and the rest of the world will celebrate the end of the corruption, contumely and cronyism that made the past eight years of White House misrule a living and lackluster embodiment of what Shakespeare’s Hamlet meant when he scorned “the insolence of office.”

Farewell to America’s First Catastrophic President

by Brent Budowsky | January 17, 2009

At least Richard Nixon negotiated with Russia, opened doors to China and created the Environmental Protection Agency. What did George Bush achieve? Many historians already name Bush as the worst president in history. I go further: He may well be our nation’s first catastrophic president. It will take years to clean up the financial fiasco that occurred on his watch, a unique combination of incompetence, corruption and massive social inequity. It will take years to clean up the military mess he leaves behind with one war we should not have fought, another war that is not going well and our greatest enemy, who masterminded the World Trade Center attacks, still alive doing his dirty deeds.

Bush’s Only Gift to America

by Robert Parry | January 17, 2009

George W. Bush’s gift to the American Republic may be that he has discredited a host of right-wing theories and practices – “trickle-down economics”; “self-regulating markets”; “tough-guy” foreign policy; the “imperial presidency”; and the notion that “government is the problem.”

As the United States gazes out on the wreckage of the past eight years – a $1.2 trillion (and growing) budget deficit, 7.2 percent (and rising) unemployment, two open-ended wars, a sullied U.S. image abroad, environmental degradation and a world that seems to be ripping apart – the hope must be that Bush has so tarnished these policies, which trace back to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, that they will never be tried again.

http://torturingdemocracy.org/

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torturingdemocracy/documents/td_transcript.pdf

Published on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 by Consortium News

Historical Mystery of Bush’s Presidency

by Robert Parry

After little more than two years of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon resigned and his successor, Gerald Ford, famously declared, “our long national nightmare is over.” But the painful end game of Nixon’s presidency was nothing compared to the eight excruciating years of George W. Bush.

Even on Inauguration Day 2009, as most Americans rejoice that Bush’s disastrous presidency is finally heading into the history books, there should be reflection on how this catastrophe could have befallen the United States - and on who else was responsible.

Indeed, it may become one of the great historical mysteries, leaving future scholars to scratch their heads over how a leader with as few qualifications as George W. Bush came to lead the world’s most powerful nation at the start of the 21st century.

How could a significant number of American voters have thought that an enterprise as vast and complicated as the U.S. government could be guided by a person who had failed at nearly every job he ever had, whose principal qualification was that his father, George H.W. Bush, was fondly remembered as having greater personal morality than Bill Clinton?

Why did so many Americans think that a little-traveled, incurious and inarticulate man of privilege could lead the United States in a world of daunting challenges, shifting dangers and sharpening competition?

What had transformed American politics so much that, for many Americans, personal trivia, like Al Gore’s earth-tone sweaters, trumped serious policy debates, like global warming, health care for citizens, prudent fiscal policies and a responsible foreign policy? How could George W. Bush, who was born with a shiny silver spoon in his mouth, sell himself as a populist everyman?

***

The Country Was Made Ours

by Cenk Uygur | January 21, 2009 - 9:15am | permalink

I know I have emphasized this theme before, but I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have the Reign of Error over (I don’t know who to credit for that turn of phrase; I saw it on the internet somewhere and thought it’s perfectly appropriate). I love that Obama was inaugurated today. But I have to confess that I think I loved Bush leaving more. That was the world’s greatest helicopter ride out of town.

I was even more relieved when they swore Joe Biden in, knowing that Dick Cheney could not torture one more man, break one more law or invade one more wrong country.

I feel released from the oppression of one more injustice or one more grave error around the corner. What will they do next? What heinous or negligent act lies ahead for us? But, now it’s over. It feels like a burden has been lifted off of me. I feel liberated.

***

The American people played for fools

by Jaime O’Neill | January 31, 2009 - 7:54pm | permalink

— from the Paradise Post

That old 19th century huckster, P.T. Barnum, is usually credited with the observation that “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” a quote that should be chiseled on the tombstone of just about every member of the Bush administration, all those cronies and thieves who have returned to private life ever so much richer for placing their faith in the stupidity of the American people.

They thought we were dumb as sticks, and we proved them right - twice. We elected a man who put his own stupidity on display just about every time he opened his mouth, and still we followed, blindly, as he led us into one disaster after another. With somewhat brighter and more nefarious henchmen manipulating him at every turn, Bush got us bogged down in Iraq, made a natural disaster on our gulf coast even worse than it needed to have been, appointed woefully incompetent people to key positions, squandered trillions, failed to provide proper oversight of our financial institutions, awarded a virtual blank check to his VP’s old friends and acquaintances, sat idle as the economy was looted, threw money around in Iraq without accounting for where it was going, allowed such shoddy work to be done there that American servicemen were electrocuted in the showers built for them by Cheney’s old company, permitted spying on American citizens in violation of the U.S. Constitution, transformed the image of the U.S. from the good guys to the torture people, and turned the Justice Department into an Injustice Department.

***

Richard Reeves

01/30/2009

THE REPUBLICAN IDIOCY

LOS ANGELES -- It was John Stuart Mill in the middle of the19th century who dismissed Great Britain’s Conservative Party as “the stupid party.” Commenting on that immediately after last year’s presidential election, The Economist, published in London, said this:

“The title of the ‘stupid party’ now belongs to the Tories’ trans-Atlantic cousins, the Republicans.

“There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat on Nov. 4. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000 -- many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases -- by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.”

The proof of that pudding was dramatized last week in Washington when every single Republican in the House of Representatives voted against the ew president’s economic stimulus plan. It is not that the nay-saying Republicans have a plan of their own; they agree on nothing except cutting taxes. Their leader, Rush Limbaugh, the entertainer, has told them that their job is to make sure that Obama fails.

Now, led by wacko pundits like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and a bunch of less-prosperous firebugs, the Republicans have lost all sense of what is happening in the country.

***

Monday, September 29, 2008

Top Ten Features Of The Rejected $700 Billion Bailout

Top Ten

First 500 billion comes from Regis

If this bailout fails, promise of another $700 billion bailout to bailout the bailout

To give Americans a break, this week gas is being lowered to 9 bucks a gallon

For $20 you can bail yourself out with the hilarious Late Show Fun Facts book available now!

A billion dollars to rebuild the Mets bullpen

Instead of securities, they’re now called “insecurities.” Hey, you’ve been great. Enjoy Richard Lewis

For some reason, Haliburton gets $500 billion

No number 3 -- economy so bad writer sold computer

Everything west of the Mississippi will be sold to China

President Bush must send every American a “Sorry I’m a dumbass” card

***

Satire Needs a Bailout

by Steve Young | February 2, 2009 - 9:03am | permalink

The helicopter lifted off - along with my heart - carrying off into the past a comedy writer’s life’s dream; leaving behind a new day, a new administration, a new colorful target with heartfelt hopes of providing a daily menu from which we writers are able to select the laugh du jour.

Note to self: Watch the “color” references...unless it’s really clever.

So long W, you’ve been a great sport. Flying off into presidential comedy history along with Nixon, Reagan, Carter, Bush, Clinton. I wasn’t around for Taft, but granddad could peel off the President is so fat jokes like there was no tomorrow. Some were better than others. Some needed a perfectly timed ingenue or a well-placed cigar (or both), but really, they were all setting ‘em up for us to knock ‘em down. ‘Course, W, the grandest punchline of them all, left them all in the dust. The Wayne Gretzky of Presidential hi-jinks and just stunning failure, he could score unintended laughs from almost any angle. Stewart and Colbert have Emmys that should be named after the Crawford retiree. We may never see his kind again. But, alas, we must move on. Leno and Letterman have needs. Limbaugh and Hannity have anemic impressions.

***

Published on Wednesday, February 4, 2009 by TheWall Street Journal

Wall Street Bonuses Are an Outrage

by Thomas Frank

Just a mere $18.4 billion in Wall Street bonuses, and suddenly the entire country is like Kansas in the 1890s, raising hell instead of corn, screaming for revenge on money power that has done us so wrong while rewarding itself so generously.

The outburst of populist rage is particularly alarming when we consider how easily such sentiments were managed just a short while ago. Americans have known about mounting inequality and king-sized Wall Street bonuses for years. But we also had an entire genre of journalism dedicated to brushing the problem off.

It is merely this: That Wall Street’s compensation system isn’t just aesthetically displeasing to liberal snobs. It is the very heart of the problem. According to Bill Black, a professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and an authority on dysfunctional financial systems, “It is the compensation system that has proved to be the weak point in everything critical that went wrong, that has produced a global catastrophe.”

At each stage of the disaster, Mr. Black told me -- loan officers, real-estate appraisers, accountants, bond ratings agencies -- it was pay-for-performance systems that “sent them wrong.”

The need for new compensation rules is most urgent at failed banks. This is not merely because is would make for good PR, but because lavish executive bonuses sometimes create an incentive to hide losses, to take crazy risks, and even, according to Mr. Black, to “loot the place through seemingly normal corporate mechanisms.” This is why, he continues, it is “essential tore design and limit executive compensation when regulating failed or failing banks.”

Our leaders may not know it yet, but this showdown between rival populisms is in fact a battle over political legitimacy. Is Wall Street the rightful master of our economic fate? Or should we choose a broader form of sovereignty?

Let the conservatives’ hosannas turn to sneers. The market god has failed.

***

Madam Jane predicts: Social Security pensioners will be the new upper class

by Jane Stillwater | February 1, 2009 - 8:49pm | permalink

Things have been totally out of whack in the political world lately. The American economy is all shot to hell, 1.7 million Americans just lost their jobs, Congress is giving Israel billions of dollars to shoot Hamas-infiltrated zoo animals in Gaza -- and it looks like the Republicans are turning to Rush Limbaugh as their next commander-in-chief. Can it be any wonder that I’m worried about the future?

***

GOP Loves Limbaugh, Loathes Ledbetter

by Bill Gallagher | February 2, 2009 - 10:01am | permalink

The Grand Obstructionist Party is basking in the partisan sun, soaking in the regressive and reactionary rays that have turned the once important national party into a shriveled prune of narrow interests, greed and bigotry.

The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower exists now only as a nostalgic memory, an historic footnote. Any sense of moderation, inclusion and public service for the public good have been effectively purged from the party that now takes its strategic marching orders exclusively from a money-grubbing huckster and third-rate entertainer. Rush Limbaugh is the indisputable face and soul of the post-Bush Republican Party.

***

Film: “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder”

by David Swanson | February 3, 2009 - 9:20am | permalink

Anyone following attempts to hold George W. Bush and gang accountable knows about Vince Bugliosi’s best-selling book, which has finally just been mailed to all district prosecutors. Everything you can do to make a prosecution of Bush for murder happen is posted here.

I just watched a still incomplete version of the forthcoming film of the same title, which should be available someday soon from these guys. I strongly recommend getting a copy for everyone you know, and holding events to view and discuss it before taking action.

The film lays out the same case that’s in the book, but adds faces and voices, including those of Bugliosi but also those of gold star families, veterans, and citizens. This makes the case all the more powerful and motivating.

***

Published on Tuesday, February 3, 2009 by The San Francisco Chronicle

A Military Solution to a War on Terrorism is Doomed

by Deepak Chopra & Ken Robinson

Any solely military solution to terrorism is doomed to fail. Right now, U.S. intelligence knows that the jihadist movement is endemic in the extremist sects of Islam. It exists from neighborhood to neighborhood, dinner table to dinner table, across a vast swath of the globe. Although terrorism is a tactic, what lies behind it is an idea, and once an idea seeps into people’s brains, bombs and mortar attacks won’t defeat it. That’s why Israel’s overwhelming military superiority to Hezbollah and Hamas hasn’t defeated those movements and never will - this is an enemy for whom death is a victory of the spirit.

Our only hope against Islamic terrorism is to police it in the short run, and offer a more enticing idea in the long run. Peace and social reform are both enticing ideas. Changing our strategic relationship with corrupt regimes that receive significant foreign assistance from the United States is a second important step. The United States must shift its anti-terrorism policy in those directions. Because the United States kept pursuing a military solution, the 2004 presidential election was a poisoned chalice. Whoever won it would be plunged into the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq. The 2008 election was better. Both candidates pledged to leave Iraq, Republican Sen. John McCain under the face-saving banner of “victory;” Democratic Sen. Obama under the more realistic banner of ending an unjust war that should never have been started.

***

What, them worry?

by Ed Naha | February 5, 2009 - 11:44am

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” He was wrong. “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is the definition of the Republican Party. Look at their reaction to the current stimulus bill.

Newly elected RNC stooge Michael Steele announced this week, “Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.” Republican Senator Jim DeMint sniffed: “Let’s not say it’s a stimulus (plan) when it’s a government spending plan.”

Now, it would be easy to scoff at the dour duo by referring to them as “Steal” and “DeLusion” (really easy, see?) or to point out that maybe Steele doesn’t know about government jobs because he failed to get that Senate one a few years back and DeMint doesn’t realize that the government funding infrastructure projects, for instance, causes the creation of jobs and, hence, stimulates the economy but, unfortunately, they’re accurate reflections of their Party’s attitude right now. Screw the public. Republicans have to retake Congress. Period.

***

Published on Tuesday, February 3, 2009 by The New York Times

Risking the Future

by Bob Herbert

I wonder what it will take to get this country serious about repairing and rebuilding its crumbling and increasingly obsolete infrastructure.

The catastrophe in New Orleans didn’t do it. Yes, that was an infrastructure tragedy. As the historian Douglas Brinkley wrote in his remarkable book, “The Great Deluge”:

“What people didn’t yet fully comprehend was that the overall disaster, the sinking of New Orleans, was a man-made debacle, resulting from poorly designed levees and floodwalls.”

And the spectacular rush-hour collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, which killed 13 people, was not enough to get us serious.

Not even the terrible economic downturn that has gripped the country - a downturn that could be eased by a truly big-time surge of infrastructure investment - has been enough to get the leaders of the country to do the right thing.

***

Family Planning - Republican advice to America’s women: stop having sex

by Alan Bisbort | February 5, 2009 - 11:00am | permalink

Last week, the Republicans rose up on their hind legs and stood, as one unanimous bloc, against affordable contraception for the nation’s women. That’s a sizeable group of potential voters for the GOP to permanently alienate, but far be it from me to offer any advice to a drowning party other than: toss it an anvil.

***

Bush SEC Holdovers Cite Exec Privilege In Stonewalling Congress About Madoff Scandal

by David Sirota | February 5, 2009 - 9:43am | permalink

***

Socialism is not a Four-Letter Word

by Michael Fox | February 4, 2009 - 12:53pm | permalink

Blame it on fifty years of fierce misinformation campaigns perpetrated by both the government and business interests that have supported it. First, let’s set this straight once and for all, for those who seem to have allowed the prevailing meme to sink in: Socialism is not Communism (for the rest of us, “Duh.”).

Strangely, due to a decades-long and highly simplistic rhetorical merger, that simple fact is not understood by most Americans. For years, socialism was such a popular concept that the word was co-opted by the ultra right (as National Socialism) and left (Soviet Socialism). However, when applied responsibly, Democratic Socialism is the only way to achieve some measure of equality in society. In fact, democratic socialism is entirely compatible with capitalism, though, unfortunately, those who have the most to lose - that is to say, the vastly overpaid - are and always have been in the position to persuade those with the most to gain – that they should oppose it (without understanding it).

***

First, Jail All Bush’s Lawyers

by Robert Parry | February 4, 2009 - 11:45am | permalink

If new Attorney General Eric Holder really means what he said in his oath – that he will “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” – then he must give serious consideration to prosecuting crimes committed by the Bush administration, including its torturing of detainees.

And Holder might be advised to begin the process at his own agency, the Department of Justice. To paraphrase Shakespeare, Holder might start by first jailing all of George W. Bush’s lawyers.

The logic of targeting former Justice Department lawyers – the likes of John Yoo and Jay Bybee – is that they were the linchpin for justifying acts that were clearly illegal; they provided the paper cover for both the interrogators in the field and the senior officials back in Washington.

***

Obama and Holder Must Prosecute War Crimes or Become Guilty of Them Themselves

by Dave Lindorff | March 3, 2009 - 2:25pm | permalink

The dithering and ducking going on in the Obama White House and the Holder Justice Department over the crimes of the Bush administration are taking on a comic aspect.

On the one hand, we have President Obama assuring us that under his administration, there will be respect for the rule of law, and on the other hand we have this one-time constitutional law professor and his attorney general declaiming that there is no need for the appointment of a prosecutor to bring charges against the people in the last administration, in the CIA, in the National Security Agency and in the Defense Department and the military who clearly have broken the law in serious and felonious ways.

***

Appoint a Special Prosecutor

by David Swanson | March 3, 2009 - 11:10am | permalink

142 Organizations Agree With Leading Senators and Congress Members: The

Crimes of Bush, Cheney, and Other Top Officials Must Be Prosecuted

Statement on Prosecution of Former High Officials

We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan

independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial

investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President

George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys

formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to

justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.

***

Published on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 by The Capital Times (Wisconsin)

Bush Era Lies Will Linger for a Long Time

by Rosa Brooks

How did they ever get away with it?

Last week, the Justice Department released a batch of memos drafted in 2001 and 2002 by lawyers in the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel. Written mainly by John Yoo, then a deputy director in the office, they laid out the purported legal justifications for a theory of presidential power amounting to virtual dictatorship.

***

Beyond the Pale: The Newly-Released, Indefensible Office of Legal Counsel Terror Memos

by John W. Dean | March 13, 2009 - 9:07am | permalink

— from FindLaw

On March 1, the Obama Department of Justice released nine memos written in the aftermath of 9/11 by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Seven of these documents, written between 2001 and early 2003, outlined the authority of the president to fight terror, but they gave a misleading picture of that authority as virtually unlimited by ignoring treaties, statutes, and even the Constitution itself. (Others have summarized the content of these documents.) These documents are extraordinary, as were the previously-released OLC legal opinions justifying torture.

Even the Bush Administration, at its very end, finally retreated from the seven memos’ conclusions. Memos dated October 6, 2008 and January 15, 2009, issued by the acting head of OLC, Steven Bradbury, in effect repeal, reject and repudiate the conclusions of the seven prior memos. The question for historians now is how the memos came about, and the issue for policymakers is how to avoid similar disgraces in the future.

***

Published on Thursday, March 5, 2009 by The Nation

On Bush, Cheney Crimes: Seek Truth and Accountability

by John Nichols

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, deserves credit for pressing ahead with his modest proposal to establish a truth and reconciliation commission to review the assaults on the Constitution and general lawlessness of the Bush-Cheney administration.

***

Martin Garbus

Posted March 9, 2009 | 03:33 PM (EST)

The Bush Lawbreakers Should be Criminally Prosecuted -- Commissions Don’t Do It

It’s really quite simple. Truth and Reconciliation commissions, Congressional committees and blue ribbon commissions like the 9/11 Commission, are not deterrents to torture, illegal surveillance or lawyers on the Justice Department who attempted to justify the torture. They have a very limited function.

But they don’t punish anyone; don’t deter anyone, don’t even put pressure on the people who committed the acts and cannot really get at the truth to determine responsibility. They do not bring the full force of America’s 230 years of law down on the offenders. They don’t truly help rein in the powers of future presidents or defense secretaries who want to do the same or similar acts the next time they react to what they see as an extraordinary crisis.

***

Published on Thursday, March 5, 2009 by ConsortiumNews.com

War Crimes and Double Standards

by Robert Parry

New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof - like many of his American colleagues - is applauding the International Criminal Court’s arrest order against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for his role in the Darfur conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

While Kristof writes movingly about atrocities that can be blamed on Third World despots like Bashir, he won’t hold U.S. officials to the same standards.

Most notably, Kristof doesn’t call for prosecuting former President George W. Bush for war crimes, despite hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush’s illegal invasion of their country. Many Iraqi children also don’t have hands - or legs or homes or parents.

But no one in a position of power in American journalism is demanding that former President Bush join President Bashir in the dock at The Hague.

***

updated 6:27 a.m. EDT, Tue March 10, 2009

GOP becoming a cartoon

By Jack Cafferty

CNN

Editor’s note: Jack Cafferty is the author of a new book, “Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business of Saving Our American Dream,” to be published in March. He provides commentary on CNN’s “The Situation Room” daily from 4 to 7 p.m. ET. You can also visit Jack’s Cafferty File blog.

Jack Cafferty says Republicans are missing a golden opportunity to redeem themselves.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The Republican Party is becoming a cartoon.

Where to start?

Bobby Jindal: “I’m certainly not nearly as good of a speaker as Obama.” Good OF a speaker? How about not as good at eighth-grade grammar either. It’s embarrassing.

Sarah Palin? Billing the taxpayers for her kids to travel to official events the children weren’t even invited to? She finally agreed to pay back the state for that money she took.

Her per diem charges to the state in the amount of $17,000 while she was living at home instead of in the governor’s mansion? She has now agreed to pay the taxes owed on that money. Another tawdry grab at a few dollars that didn’t belong to her.

Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, down on his knees apologizing to the helium-filled poster boy of the conservative right? Pathetic.

If the Republicans are ever to emerge from the long dark night they have created for themselves it will have to be without pandering to the right wing nuts that comprise Rush Limbaugh’s radio audience. Didn’t they learn anything in the last election?

The country had had a bellyful of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the messengers of darkness in Washington who had sold out the principles of the Republican Party in favor of huge deficits, a doubling of the national debt, and a growing intrusion of the federal government into people’s private lives.

But instead of getting on board the change train and recognizing the incredible amount of damage their people had done to the country, Republicans go blithely along as though nothing has happened. They’re busy obstructing Obama’s programs and criticizing the Democrats’ spending plans that are aimed at trying to bring the country out of a horrible recession.

I hate to break it to them, but a lot has happened. And they’re not going to like any of it.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows the Republican Party’s favorability rating at an all-time low. President Obama’s is at an all-time high. The same poll shows that Republicans are getting most of the blame for the partisanship that hinders governmental progress. And perhaps most telling, when asked which party is best equipped to lead the country out of recession, the Republicans trail the Democrats by a stunning 30 points.

And while all this is going on, the GOP ran a straw poll on who the party’s nominee should be for president in 2012. Ready?

Mitt Romney finished first followed by Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.

The Republican Party is marching double-time down the road to irrelevance and they don’t even know it.

***

Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by The Independent/UK

New Information Shows How UK Govt ‘Spun’ Britain Into Iraq Invasion

Secret emails show Iraq dossier was ‘sexed up’; Intelligence chiefs criticised ‘iffy drafting’ of key document

by Nigel Morris

***

Will War Ever End?

by David Swanson | February 10, 2009 - 9:20am | permalink

I wrote recently about the possibility of outgrowing the use of war. Today I got a book in the mail that makes a strong argument intended as a tool for ending war. The book is called “Will War Ever End: A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century” by Captain Paul K. Chappell, U.S. Army. It’s short, more of a hardcover pamphlet than a book, but it is packed with ideas.

David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press and of the introduction to “The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush” published by Feral House and available at Amazon.com. Swanson holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ConvictBushCheney.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace, a member of the legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice, and convener of the accountability and prosecution working group of United for Peace and Justice.

***

submitted by Gerard Pierce on February 10, 2009 - 2:22pm

click to view article from krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

Acronyms

I was going to dub the new financial plan TANF 2 — temporary assistance to needy financial institutions, without, you know, any of the means-testing or work requirements involved when poor people get help.

But Jamie Galbraith (private communication) has trumped me; he says it’s the Bad Assets Relief Fund.

Paul Krugman

***

Why the GOP Is Going Down While Seeming to Go Up

by Bernard Weiner | February 10, 2009 - 3:08am | permalink

It’s like watching someone being sucked down into quicksand. I’m referring to the sad, desperate struggle of the Republican Party to try to resurrect its electoral fortunes by championing the exact same policies that took them to embarrassing defeat in the Obama/Democratic landslide. By their actions, it’s plain they got nuthin’.

Nothin’ except to flail about in self-destructive obstructionism, basically in temper-tantrum mode. If we can’t be victorious, they seem to be telling the Democrats (and, by extension, the country), we’ll make sure you go down with us. This kind of schoolboy behavior is rolled out at a time in American history when the country’s financial and governmental institutions are close to free-fall catastrophe unless some drastic corrective action is taken.

To a large extent, the GOP lost so big in the 2008 election because they were too overt about their true intentions. The usual art of governance is based on sleight-of-hand tricks, keeping our eyes focused on something while the real agenda is hidden away from view. But the CheneyBush Administation didn’t seem to care who knew what they were really up to.

The elites who pull the strings behind the curtain must have cringed every time George Dubya opened his mouth. The poor dummy couldn’t help blurting out aspects of the actual agenda. “My job is to catapult the propaganda,” he said. And, telling a citizen who criticized his policies: “Why should I care what you think?” And his thrice-stated “joking” remark: “If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I’m the dictator.”

It took a number of years for the American populace to figure out the ramifications of such policies. America was now hated and feared as a mad-dog, torturing, imperialist bully -- but not respected or liked or viewed as a moral force in the world. The midterm election of 2006 verified that the voters had rejected the arrogant, self-destructive style and policies of the CheneyBush Administration, and swept the Republicans into the minority in the House and Senate.

Did these results chastize CheneyBush? Not in the slightest. Under Karl Rove’s tutelage, the arrogance, the bullying, the endemic corruption, the lies, the wholesale destruction of the environment, the huge deficits occasioned by the Iraq War -- all continued as before. And so the voters once again, in November of 2008, sent an even louder message by sending the Republicans even further into a the minority role in Congress, and sweeping more Democrats into the House and Senate and Barrack Obama into the White House.

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers

***

The GOP’s Filibuster Hypocrisy

by Robert Parry | February 9, 2009 - 10:05am | permalink

Though seemingly forgotten by most TV talking heads, it was only three years ago, when the Republicans had control of both the White House and Congress – and “filibuster” was a dirty word.

It was usually coupled with “obstructionist” amid demands that any of George W. Bush’s proposals deserved “an up-or-down vote.”

Yet now, with the Democrats holding the White House and Congress, the Republicans and the Washington press corps have come to view the filibuster fondly, as a valued American tradition, a time-honored part of a healthy legislative process.

***

The American Experiment R.I.P.

by Jon Faulkner | February 9, 2009 - 8:57pm | permalink

The only thing that’s surprising about the government’s bailout of the financial industry is the American taxpayers surprise that over, depending on who’s adding, $7.36 trillion to $6.6 trillion of their dollars have gone up in smoke without any of the benefits the gargantuan handout was supposed to have brought. Many millions of those dollars were earmarked for executive bonuses. The bulk of the billions the busted banks and investment houses were so generously awarded were stuffed into their pockets and used in merger ventures. The agreement with the Bush Boys was the banks would lend the money to kickstart the economy. Goldman Sachs was given $12.5 billion and executive bonuses ate up $12.4 billion. It’s the same story throughout the private sector. Those vaunted wizards of high finance who could do no wrong have been exposed for what they’ve always been. Ordinary thieves, turned traitorous, who maneuvered for position through their campaign donations, then acted to steal every dime they could make off with.

After working Americans anteed up a few hundred billion, 1.6 billion was given to executives to buy Country Club Memberships, book travel aboard corporate jets, and most importantly, award themselves, on average, $2.6 million in bonuses. The public’s trust in the Holy Free Market went the way of those Supreme Court partisan hacks that decided to get into the business of presidential appointments, and foisted off on Americans the worst president Americans could have ever imagined in their worst nightmares. And who can ever forget the Bush whopper about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction? The government, at the mercy of a wholly owned corporate subsidiary of various broadcasting networks, says the tax payers have been good sports about bailing out the banks and investment houses. The irony rests in the unfortunate truth that republican conservatives have been richly rewarded by the government they profess to despise. Rewarded, according to an NBC News Poll, by $7.36 trillion.

It may be that Americans need to experience the results of their actions. Excusing the millions who didn’t vote for Bush or McCain, there are still roughly half of the nation’s electorate suffering from a kind of stupidity there is no answer or cure for. These are the people who think creationism is science. These are the people who subscribe to the right’s poisoness tirades - Limbaugh’s “Ditto Heads” who are quiet proud of their imbecilic beliefs, such at they are.

Rush: (i)The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.(/i)

Rush: (i)They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?(/i)

(i)Take that bone out of your nose and call me back (to an African American female caller).(/i)

Rush: (i)You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”(/i)

Limbaugh is the voice of conservatism. For that, Americans should be grateful. The fat tub of guts reveals his racism, for all to see. Limbaugh’s drooling hatred appeals to very stupid Americans. These Americans are found in places like Louisiana. The white voters there tried to install David Duke in a Senate seat. Duke, a Grand Dragon of the KKK, was defeated, but ran again for governor. The Dragon lost again. He just couldn’t muster enough black votes to put him into the winners column. Go, figure. Louisianan’s are still scratching their heads. They can’t quite put a finger on what went wrong. Major morons. Dumber than turkeys. Combine their imaginative self importance with their mistaken arrogance and the end product is stupidity tempered with arrogance. A sure formula for disaster.

Limbaugh’s abuse of his fellow countrymen should not be tolerated in a society of decent, caring people. That said, Limbaugh and his ilk are not only tolerated, but recognized by millions as authorities on American politics. It is for that reason that it’s perhaps best that the nation sink into depression. The morons who subscribe to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Show should suffer the most if there were justice in the world, but of course there isn’t. It is far more likely that those millions of halfwits who don’t care enough about their republic to know the most essential truths regarding the freedoms they’re guaranteed will go about their lives reveling in their gross ignorance. Just as they always have. A free republic can’t survive with almost half of its citizenry mired in stupidity and ignorance. The U.S. has gone as far as it’s ever going to go as a free republic. As the republicans themselves like to say, (i)“never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter.”(/i)

***

Republicans Must Go. Preferably tarred and Feathered

by Jon Faulkner | February 10, 2009 - 7:43pm | permalink

Listening to the republicans promoting their version of the stimulus package is astonishing as they argue the same tired out nonsense that has put the nation on an ever deepening economic morass. As one would expect, they want more tax cuts instead of sending desperately needed money to the states. Increasing health maintenance funding, and restoring state’s budgets for depleted unemployment insurance and infrastructure expenditures are, according to the world’s top economists, what is needed. But of course the fixated conservatives want more tax breaks for their rich pals.

Of course the republicans insist that rewarding the people who have visited such calamity on the nation is the right course. They’re talking about the people’s money. Handing it over without question, or accountability is the conservative way. Screw them. Let all those conservative bankers and republican campaign contributors bite the dust. Socialism would be far more preferable than what the republicans have demonstrated as Free Market Capitalism. If one more congressional republican says trickle down economics! Private sector deregulation! Take Grover Norquist’s advice and drown the SOB in the nearest bathtub

***

Blinded by greed, oblivious to need: How socially irresponsible Republicans are killing America

by Dennis Rahkonen | February 12, 2009 - 10:14am | permalink

Most of us aren’t old enough to remember the Great Depression.

But “The Grapes of Wrath,” stark photographs of pathetically poor folk with life’s spark absent from their eyes, and Dust Bowl accounts somberly related by Grandpa have given us grim insight into how hard times were for so many back then.

The elders of my family talked about it often while I was growing up.

What I recall most vividly from those retellings is the contemptuous sneering over Republican President Herbert Hoover’s response to the staggering calamity unleashed after Wall Street’s 1929 crash.

***

Why is that $50 billion radioactive antique toilet still in the stimulus bill?

by Harvey Wasserman | February 9, 2009 - 9:29am | permalink

The infamous $50 billion nuke power loan guarantee package meant to use your money to build new nuke reactors has gone missing from saturation media coverage of Obama’s Stimulus Package. But it’s still in the Senate version of the bill, it could be voted on this week, and it could kill us all.

Like that $30,000 antique toilet that disappeared into the banking bailout, the corporate media carries not a word about this gargantuan handout to the dying reactor industry. All the hype about a “nuclear renaissance” will come to naught without this massive taxpayer handout. But if it goes through, the landscape could be pock marked with lethal new nukes.

***

Limbaugh Declares War, Cheney Declares Torture, Dick Morris Declares Treason

by Brent Budowsky | February 8, 2009 - 12:44pm | permalink

They never learn. Barely days after leaving office, in the strangest political move, Dick Cheney is back declaring war again, while barely hours after the Senate stimulus deal, Dick Morris is back accusing the handful of responsible Republicans of “treason.”

Cheney’s return to center stage reminds us why Obama has such a global mess to clean up, while Morris’s contribution reminds us why Republicans were clobbered in 2006 and 2008, are not welcome in major regions of the nation and could be a minority party for 30 years.

***

February 11, 2009 | 06:22 AM (EST)

Will You Help Me With My Next Film? ...a request from Michael Moore

I am in the middle of shooting my next movie and I am looking for a few brave people who work on Wall Street or in the financial industry to come forward and share with me what they know. Based on those who have already contacted me, I believe there are a number of you who know “the real deal” about the abuses that have been happening. You have information that the American people need to hear. I am humbly asking you for a moment of courage, to be a hero and help me expose the biggest swindle in American history.

All correspondence with me will be kept confidential. Your identity will be protected and you will decide to what extent you wish to participate in telling the greatest crime story ever told.

The important thing here is for you to step up as an American and do your duty of shedding some light on this financial collapse. A few good people have already come forward, which leads me to believe there are many more of you out there who know what’s going on. Here’s your chance to let your fellow citizens in on the truth.

If you have any info that would help, please contact me at my private email address: bailout@michaelmoore.com.

For the rest of you on my email list who don’t work in the financial industry, you’re probably wondering, “What the heck is this all about? I thought he said he was making a romantic comedy!”

Well, I just can’t say much right now. I’m sure you can understand why. One thing I can tell you is that you’re gonna like this movie when I’m done with it. Oh, yeah...

So, again, if you work for a bank, a brokerage firm or an insurance company -- or if you have seen things or heard things that you believe the American people have a right to know -- please contact me at bailout@michaelmoore.com.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Yours,

Michael Moore

***

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=2426

January 30, 2009 / Volume CXXXVI, Number 2 SHORT TAKE

American Triumphalism

A POSTMORTEM

Andrew J. Bacevich

Although George W. Bush is a man without intellectual pretensions, his departure from office brings down the curtain on a distinctive era of American political thought. Ideas that recently qualified as smart have suddenly become passé. Propositions once alluringly au courant now appear not simply obsolete but absurd. The bubble of American triumphalism has burst.

***

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/10/is-an-empire-necessary/

Is an empire necessary?

Bruce Fein

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

An affirmative answer has been assumed without challenge at least since World War II. But too much is at stake in American lives and liberties to ignore the advice of Bertrand Russell: “In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

The United States sports military personnel in a staggering 135 countries, and, approximately 1,000 foreign military installations. To borrow from the Bible, no sparrow falls that escapes the national security eye of the United States.

For more than 60 years, unquestioned orthodoxies have insisted that a global empire is necessary to make the United States safer from foreign enemies, to make it richer from foreign trade, and to dominate the world (which is presumed to be a good thing). But all three propositions are dubious.

***

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,184757,00.html

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) commanded an E-2C Hawkeye squadron and was operations officer of a Navy air wing and an aircraft carrier. Jeff’s essays have been required reading at the U.S. Naval War College where he earned a master’s degree in preemptive deterrence in 1995. His satires on military and foreign policy affairs appear at Military.com, Aviation Week and Pen and Sword. Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals, a lampoon of America’s rise to global dominance, is on sale now.

***

Worse Than Madoff: Amway Launches Domestic Revival

by Bill Berkowitz | February 12, 2009 - 9:43am | permalink

While the alleged Ponzi scheme of New York investment manager Bernie Madoff has claimed significant parts of the fortunes of celebrities, B-list millionaires, charities, and foundations, another outfit has left a trail of a slightly different sort over the years: the broken dreams of middle-class wannabe entrepreneurs left only with garages full of products, motivational tapes, and get-rich-quick books doing little but gathering dust.

***

WHAT THE PRESIDENT SAID MONDAY NIGHT

On the subject of his press conference . . . John Kasley: “I lavished in complete declarative sentences with nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates washing over me. Whole paragraphs with consistent subject matter just formed and became waves lapping at the shores of our minds. In a country that was founded on an idea, we have a leader who understands ideas. This is a class act. It’s a pleasure to admire the President of the United states again.”

***

02.16.09 - 8:53 AM

More English Language Triumphs, Modest But Welcome

While the former resident of the White House committed plentiful crimes against candor, honor, decency and humanity, his abuses of language, while often entertaining, were ceaselessly aggravating as well. So it remains a source of wonder, still, to hear our new President speak. His language is graceful, concise, astute. He uses full sentences. He is even funny. Literates, rejoice.

--Abby Zimet

***

On the Joy of Not Cringing at Our President

Jeffrey Feldman, 02.19.2009

A funny thing happened as I was watching President Obama’s press conference with Prime Minister Harper in Ottawa: I did not cringe with embarrassment.

***

Fed: No Wealth Created in US Since 2001

...

http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=fff3278f-1d5c-4c86-abc1-a821e742ea06

THE PARTY THAT LOST ITS MIND

By David Frum

Sunday, February 15, 2009 7:13 AM

The US economy has plunged into severe recession (94% of Americans describe economic conditions as “bad,” according to the Feb 2-4 CBS poll, and 51% say conditions are getting even worse).

Could we possibly act more inadequate to the challenge? More futile? More brain dead?

Almost 70% of Americans say that President Obama will change the country for the better, the CNN poll found Feb. 7-8. Asked whether President Obama is doing enough to cooperate with Republicans, 74% said yes. Asked whether Republicans are doing enough to cooperate with President Obama, 60% said no.

In every poll I’ve seen, hefty majorities approve of President Obama’s economic performance. Approval numbers for congressional Republicans remain dismal.

If we’re to make progress in 2010, we have to look serious. This week we looked not only irrelevant, but clueless and silly.

***

Pat Robertson Says Obama ‘Showing Partisanship,’ Denounces Rush Limbaugh’s ‘I Hope He Fails’ Remark

February 17, 2009 10:37 AM ET | Dan Gilgoff | Permanent Link | Print

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

So you don’t subscribe to Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope he fails” school of thought?

That was a terrible thing to say. I mean, he’s the president of all the country. If he succeeds, the country succeeds. And if he doesn’t, it hurts us all. Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally.

***

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Bush_not_worst_prez_ever_Hes_0216.html

Reporteing on a debate featuring former White House adviser Karl Rove arguing against ranking George W. Bush as the worst US president, despite a History News Network poll showing 61% of historians favored that ranking.

***

Missing Iraq billions could be ‘greatest fraud in US history’

Stephen C. Webster

Published: Monday February 16, 2009

The US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), the Army’s criminal Investigation Command and the Justice Department are investigating US soldiers and officials in the alleged misuse of a portion of the $125 billion initially sent to Iraq for reconstruction shortly after the fall of Saddam.

***

Burning Questions: What Does Economic “Recovery” Mean on an Extreme Weather Planet?

by Tom Engelhardt | February 18, 2009 - 9:43am | permalink

— from TomDispatch

It turns out that you don’t want to be a former city dweller in rural parts of southernmost Australia, a stalk of wheat in China or Iraq, a soybean in Argentina, an almond or grape in northern California, a cow in Texas, or almost anything in parts of east Africa right now. Let me explain.

As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows, southeastern Australia has been burning up. It’s already dry climate has been growing ever hotter. “The great drying,” Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery calls it. At its epicenter, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever this month at a sweltering 115.5 degrees, while temperatures soared even higher in the surrounding countryside. After more than a decade of drought, followed by the lowest rainfall on record, the eucalyptus forests are now burning. To be exact, they are now pouring vast quantities of stored carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas considered largely responsible for global warming, into the atmosphere.

***

Published on Sunday, February 22, 2009 by the Associated Press

Mass Migrations and War: Dire Climate Scenario

by Charles J. Hanley

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - If we don’t deal with climate change decisively, “what we’re talking about then is extended world war,” the eminent economist said.

***

Published on Thursday, March 12, 2009 by The Globe and Mail (Canada)

UN Warns of Widespread Water Shortages

Constantly rising demand for a finite resource raises risk of political upheaval and economic stagnation over next 20 years, report says

by Martin Mittelstaedt

The world faces a bleak future over its dwindling water supplies, with pollution, climate change and rapidly growing populations raising the possibility of widespread shortages, a new report compiled by 24 agencies of the United Nations says.

***

Published on Thursday, March 5, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Biofuels Do Far More Harm Than Good

Yesterday the EU imposed temporary tariffs on US biodiesel because subsidies over there distort trade - but that shouldn’t be the only reason to stop the biofuels juggernaut

by George Monbiot

Is there any trade crazier than the liquid biofuel business? Apart from a handful of cars and vans running on used chip fat, it exists only because of government rules and subsidies. So what social benefits do these buy?

Biofuels are supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They do the opposite. Almost all of them produce more greenhouse gases than petrol (gasoline) or diesel, for two reasons:

emissions of nitrous oxide (a very powerful greenhouse gas) caused by the application of nitrogen fertilisers

the destruction of grassland, wetland and forest caused by the expansion of agriculture stimulated by this new market (see this study on the biofuel carbon debt and this one on biofuels increasing greenhouse gases

So here’s what we gain from the biofuels trade:

1. Global environmental destruction

2. Higher greenhouse gas emissions

3. Mass starvation

4. The loss of hundreds of millions of dollars

5. The prospect of a new trade war.

Is there anyone out there who still thinks they are a good idea?

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.

***

Published on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Carbon Emissions Creating Acidic Oceans Not Seen Since Dinosaurs

Chemical change placing ‘unprecedented’ pressure on marine life and could cause widespread extinctions, warn scientists

by David Adam

***

Published on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 by The Times/UK

Scientists Warn of Catastrophic Rises in Sea Level

by Lewis Smith

Sea levels will rise much faster over the next century than has been expected, even if governments are successful at controlling greenhouse gas emissions, scientists warned yesterday.

The Pacific island of Tarawa is one of many communities at risk (Peter Jordan)Advances in the understanding of the mechanisms that control how quickly ice sheets melt have shown that sea levels are likely to rise by a metre before 2100. The estimate is almost double the projection of 20cm to 59cm made in 2007 by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Equally worrying, the sea rises would continue to speed up and would have catastrophic impacts for generations, scientists were told at a conference in Copenhagen.

Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, of Potsdam Institute for Climate Change, said that unless greenhouse gas emissions were controlled within 50 years, the planet would be locked into rises of “tens of metres”.

***

Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Climate Change? Try, Climate Breakdown

What’s clear from Copenhagen is that policymakers have fallen behind the scientists: global warming is already catastrophic

by George Monbiot

The more we know, the grimmer it gets.

Presentations by climate scientists at this week’s conference in Copenhagen show that we might have underplayed the impacts of global warming in three important respects:

***

Inside America’s Biological Warfare Center: Q. & A. Interview With Attorney Barry Kissin

by Sherwood Ross | February 18, 2009 - 8:33am | permalink

One legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration is the grandiose expansion of our germ warfare research program. This was declared to be necessary because of the September-October 2001 anthrax letters’ attacks on Congress and the media--attacks the public is now being told came not from the Middle East but from within our own government’s facilities. As a result, developmental work is going forward with deadly and loathsome pathogens capable of triggering plagues and epidemics.

***

Scoundrel Of Great Wealth

by Brian Cloughley | February 18, 2009 - 7:53am | permalink

In the splendid and very funny film ‘Trading Places’ the main hero, played by Eddy Murphy, falls in with two slick commodities traders who explain to him their method of making money. Then they ask him what he thinks about it and he sums up the whole seamy system of money manipulation by replying that “You’re nothing but a couple of bookies.”

Indeed they were; just like so many other rich reptiles whose greed in recent years has brought the world to the catastrophic economic state from which uncountable millions are suffering.

The great American President Franklin Roosevelt declared in 1937 that “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics,” which was predicting the effects of the atrocious selfishness demonstrated in our time by so many vulgar con-artists, these scabby bankers and feculent financiers whose amoral antics have enriched a few and impoverished so many. Exactly 30 years earlier another illustrious President, Theodore Roosevelt, observed that people who made money by taking advantage of society were “malefactors of great wealth” - scoundrels, in fact.

***

Nobody gets it: We don’t NEED the economy to grow!

by Jane Stillwater | February 18, 2009 - 3:35am | permalink

Since as long as I can remember, I’ve heard it repeated to me again and again that the health of America’s economy depends on the rate of its growth. That’s crazy!

***

updated 8:10 a.m. EDT, Wed March 18, 2009

GOP’s “small government” talk is hollow

Story Highlights

Julian Zelizer: Republicans talk earnestly about wanting small government

He says they haven’t delivered it when they’ve had control over nation

Bush presided over a major expansion of government, Zelizer says

He says Bush followed in a tradition of expansive GOP presidents since 1950s

By Julian E. Zelizer

Special to CNN

Editor’s note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism,” will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.

Julian Zelizer says Republicans talk small government in theory but don’t practice it in power.

***

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

Total Public Debt Outstanding (from “http://www.treasurydirect.gov/”)

Sources: DoD, MNF, Justforeignpolicy.org, and iCasualties.org

***

Socialism Without a Soul

by Robert Scheer | March 11, 2009 - 10:42am | permalink

— from Truthdig

Newt Gingrich is right: “It is European socialism transplanted to Washington.” How else to describe an economy in which the government controls the entire financial center and is now supplying life support for the auto industry? That’s on top of the existing socialist economy run by the military-industrial complex, which, thanks to George W. Bush, now absorbs upward of 60 percent of the non-entitlement federal budget.

Although we still have a way to go to catch up with the good parts of the European system, including universal health care, high-quality public education and decent working conditions, we do have a system that is now as socialist in budget size as Europe’s. That part I get when I listen to the right-wingers on Fox News bemoaning the reversal of the Reagan Revolution. But what I don’t understand is how in the world they can blame this startling turn of events on Barack Obama.

***

David Fiderer

Banker/Journalist

Posted March 9, 2009 | 04:01 PM (EST)

The Simple Arithmetic of the Mortgage Crisis Debunks Right Wing Media Narratives

***

Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Said without Joy: We Told You So

by Robert Weissman

Is it fair to complain about the actions of the financial deregulators?

Could anyone reasonably have foreseen the consequences of a decades-long regulatory holiday for the financial sector?

In a word, yes.

In preparing “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” a report that documents a dozen deregulatory steps to financial meltdown, it was remarkable to see that, at almost every step, public interest advocates and independent-minded regulators and Members of Congress cautioned about the hazards that lay ahead. Those ringing the alarm bells were proven wrong only in underestimating how severe would be the consequences of deregulation.

Policymakers ignored the warnings. Good arguments could not compete with the combination of political influence and a reckless and fanatical zeal for deregulation. $5 billion -- the amount the financial sector invested in the political sector over the last decade -- buys a lot of friends.

***

Cross of irony: A hellish vision of unchecked military spending is now here

by Robert C. Koehler | February 19, 2009 - 8:31am | permalink

“Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. . . . Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”

So is it time to start doing this now, 48 years down that road?

These words were part of Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 presidential farewell speech, in which he famously warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

***

Ice Water and Sweatboxes

The long and sadistic history behind the CIA’s torture techniques.

By Darius Rejali

Posted Tuesday, March 17, 2009, at 5:23 PM ET

***

Silence Implies Consent

by Bob Patterson | March 16, 2009 - 4:16pm | permalink

After the news stories broke last week that Seymour Hersh would be publishing a story about a death squad that reported directly to Dick Cheney, we sat back and waited for a tsunami of editorials decrying the appearance of the final link in the chain of similarities between the Nazis and the Bush Junta.

When the story about U. S. actions at Abu Ghraib Prison first broke, back when many U. S. newspapers had large staffs and would have had the resources to check for any relevant editorials from the Nuremberg trial era, did any one of them, some, or none; bother to check to see if any of the rules, which America helped establish, had been broken? Were the ones who remained silent giving their tacit approval to whatever happened?

***

Military rape reports rise, prosecution still low

ANNE GEARAN | March 17, 2009 06:19 PM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — More people came forward to report sexual assaults in the military last year, but a significant percentage wouldn’t give crucial details needed for an investigation.

The Pentagon said it received 2,923 reports of sexual assault across the military in the 12 months ending Sept. 30 2008. That’s about a 9 percent increase over the totals reported the year before, but only a fraction of the crimes presumably being committed.

Among the cases reported, only a small number went to military courts, officials acknowledged.

The Pentagon office that collects the data estimates that only 10 percent to 20 percent of sexual assaults among members of the active duty military are reported _ a figure similar to estimates of reported cases in the civilian sphere.

***

Toothless: The Watchdog Press That Became the Government’s Lapdog

by Walter Brasch | February 20, 2009 - 8:41am

***

Chronicling the Economic Apocalypse

by Michael Fox | February 19, 2009 - 2:52pm

I spent several years documenting the whittling-away of the economy in real time, but recently have found myself just observing. I have no interest in “I-told-you-so’s”. On the contrary, I seek action. As such, I have been keenly observing the responses of our new administration to the dirty diaper they were left. Of course, it’s going to take a lot of Clorox, and sometimes that much bleach can stink worse than the soiled mess itself.

If Henry Paulson was emblematic of the last big-swindle-before-we-go of the Bush administration, the TARP was the bank heist to end them all. The TARP can be seen as nothing else, as there has still been neither transparency nor results from the $350 billion distributed to Mr. Paulson’s Wall St. colleagues.

***

02.19.09 - 10:00 AM

We Know How You Feel, Though Of Course Not Quite

Iraqi journalist Muntadher al-Zaidi, who appeared in court Thursday to cheers and loud applause, said he threw his shoes at then-president Bush at a December press conference because he couldn’t stand looking at the “bloodless and soulless smile” of “the man who killed our nation.”

“I could only see Bush and feel the blood of the innocents flow under his feet... I was expressing my inner feelings and those of all the Iraqi people from east to west and north to south and the feelings of hatred they hold for him.”

***

Limbaugh: Trying To Understand A Dem Like Trying To Understand A Murderer Or Rapist

February 19, 2009 03:35 PM

Coming off of a tone-deaf cartoon that compared the author of the stimulus bill with a crazed, shot-dead chimpanzee, it seemed likely that, for the time being, provocative political metaphors would be put on hold. But on his radio show Thursday, Rush Limbaugh pushed the envelope once more.

***

In 1953, Charles Wilson, GM’s president, did become President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of defense. Asked in his Senate confirmation hearings whether he would have a problem making governmental decisions that might not be in the interest of GM, he famously replied that he found it hard to imagine a conflict of interest “because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.” (Soon, that would be simplified to: “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”)

***

Telling it like it is: A dozen books every American must read

by Sherwood Ross | February 23, 2009 - 9:44am |permalink

***

Hey, Republicans - Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

by Jaime O’Neill | February 21, 2009 - 12:17pm |permalink

Now that they no longer hold the purse strings, the Republican Party has decided that its only role is to obstruct all attempts to heal the illness they visited upon the nation, the huge financial mess that occurred due to their profligate spending, the lax oversight of the financial markets, and the deeply embedded corruption they nourished under the guise of deregulation. Having brought the nation (and the state) to the brink of ruin, having run up the national debt to astronomical levels, and having cut taxes on the wealthiest people in the country while running a couple of expensive wars, the Republicans have suddenly become fiscal conservatives again. They’ve re-adopted the Nancy Reagan mantra of “just say no” when it comes to any government spending not designed to enrich Halliburton or other friends of the Bush/Cheney consortium.

***

Look who passes as a “populist” to the media elite

by Eric Boehlert | February 21, 2009 - 12:02pm |permalink

Yep, the CNBC reporter who yesterday claimed the all-white, all-male traders surrounding him on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange represented a cross-section of America. In fact, at one point on Thursday, CNBC’s Rick Santelli turned to face the floor, extended his arms toward the six-figure salaried employees and announced,”This is America!”

***

Are We Doing It Right? Not So Much

by Trish Purcell | February 20, 2009 - 9:25pm | permalink

Let’s see if I have this straight:

The banks are insolvent.

The guys who ran these banks into the ground are still in charge of them.

These “best and brightest” should get a big salary plus bonus on the taxpayer’s tab because if they don’t get the big bucks they will take their talent someplace else.

It seems like there are some pertinent questions that need asking. The first one that comes to mind is, “What exactly is this “talent” that must be retained?” These people have shown a talent for enriching themselves. They have certainly demonstrated a talent for building a house of cards that produces profits during its construction and has its collapse financed by taxpayers. Is this the kind of talent that best serves the interests of a sound financial system? I don’t think so. If these people are our best and brightest we are in deep dodo.

***

REPUBLICAN INSURGENCY

Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) has famously called the Taliban a model for GOP insurgency. Bob Shrum comments on Republican hopes for Obama’s failure. (“Facts don’t matter to the GOP anymore. Nor, incredibly, does the opinion of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is urging swift passage of the stimulus. The pro-business party is willing to wreck business itself if it takes a Democratic president down with it.”)

***

Published on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 by Agence France Presse

Climate Change Risk Underestimated: Study

WASHINGTON - The risk posed to mankind and the environment by even small changes in average global temperatures is much higher than believed even a few years ago, a study said Monday.

***

“Clean Coal” Merely a Marketing Ploy to Stop Climate Solutions

Brian Hardwick, 02.26.2009

***

Published on Sunday, March 8, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Scientists to Issue Stark Warning Over Dramatic New Sea Level Figures

Rising sea levels pose a far bigger eco threat than previously thought. This week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen will sound an alarm over new floodings - enough to swamp Bangladesh, Florida, the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary

by Robin McKie

***

Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

America Unprepared for Climate Change, Say Policy Advisers

National Research Council claims US agencies and political leaders not getting the right information or guidance

by Suzanne Goldenberg

***

Published on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Rape Is Cheaper Than Bullets

Amnesty’s latest campaign about sexual violence being used as a weapon of war may be offensive. But at least it’ll make us think

by Heather Harvey

***

Paul Jenkins

Posted February 26, 2009 | 06:31 PM (EST)

Worst Week Ever: Republicans Unhinged

When Republicans suffered a disastrous beating in November’s election, it would have been fair to assume that things could not get worse for them: the-most-liberal-Senator was to be president, Nancy-Pelosi-from-San-Francisco was going to lead a massive Democratic majority in the House, and assorted socialists were going to run things. That was bad, yes, but this week, just like the stock market (funny how that goes), Republicans hit yet a new low. In recent days, Republican leaders were called cheesy, off-putting, disastrous, untrustworthy, and inconsequential, not by Democrats, but by their party’s own members, from high-profile commentators to Governors.

The highlight of the GOP week was, of course, Governor Bobby Jindal’s response to Barack Obama’s Congressional address. The best that can be said for Jindal’s performance is that it channeled Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock, presumably not the objective, even for someone who willingly changed his name to “Bobby.” But the past seven days have offered so many moments of breathtaking inanity by the GOP that our head spins at trying to organize them cohesively. With the country on the verge of being swallowed up in its entirety by the spiraling economy, Republicans obsessed over Obama’s citizenship, gay people, pregnant women with HIV, helicopters, primary challenges to their own Senators from porn stars and Christian fundamentalists, registration forms, hopeless recounts, and assorted variations on the 1981 theme of “Government Is The Problem.”

***

Grateful Nation Thanks Jindal for Gift of Laughter

by Andy Borowitz | February 26, 2009 - 7:18am | permalink

One day after delivering the official Republican response to President Obama’s address to Congress, Gov. Bobby Jindal received high marks for cheering up a recession-weary nation that has not had a good laugh in months.

Across the country, Americans of all walks of life gave thanks to Gov. Jindal for giving them the most precious gift of all: the gift of laughter.

“They say that laughter is the best medicine,” said Toledo housewife Carol Foyler. “If that’s the case, Bobby Jindal is just what the doctor ordered.”

Tracy Klugian, a computer technician in Modesto, California, responded to Gov. Jindal’s speech in a way that was echoed by many others: “I peed myself.”

The Republican National Committee applauded Gov. Jindal for his performance, and announced that the official GOP response to the president’s radio address would be delivered by Carrot Top.

***

Bob Cesca

Political Author, Blogger, and New Media Producer

Posted February 26, 2009 | 05:48 PM (EST)

The Wingnut Revolution

After nearly three decades of Reaganomics in which the wealthiest two percent have grown exponentially wealthier while middle class wages have remained stagnant, a growing faction of super rich Americans is seriously pissed off -- and their Wingnut Revolution is upon us.

Sure, the interests and influence of the wealthiest two percent make them more responsible than most for the free market policies that created this current economic crisis. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about those responsible for this recession, it’s that the concept of accountability is about as foreign as their live-in au pairs. Instead, they’re trying to pin this on Barney Frank and a legion of “losers” (read that: working class minorities) even though Ben Bernanke himself has debunked this myth.

***

Tom Watson

Author of CauseWired, consultant, journalist and media critic.

Posted March 1, 2009 | 04:30 PM (EST)

Limbaugh in the Lead: A Gift for Obama

Looking for all the world like the sweating floor manager on the late afternoon shift at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club in an unbuttoned shiny black shirt and undersized sport coat, Rush Limbaugh leaned his meaty hands on the lectern at the CPAC conference and slipped a greasy dollar bill into the G-string of the writhing conservative dead-enders packed into the garishly lit Omni Shoreham in Washington DC.

Jowls rolling like thunder from the right via CNN’s unfortunate high-definition feed, Limbaugh took control of the sad and tattered remnants of the mainstream conservative movement, and urged continued allegiance to the noble Lost Cause of Reagan, metaphorically carrying his rebel-yelling followers into the hills like modern-day Quantrill’s Raiders standing firm against change.

***

Paul Abrams

Posted March 2, 2009 | 02:14 AM (EST)

Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot* -- Wants U.S. to Fail, Claims “Creator” Language in Declaration is Preamble to Constitution, Then Gets Constitution Award from CPAC

***

RUSH

Conservative David Frum sizes it up thus:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

☞ Not all Republicans, but quite a few – and certainly Rush Limbaugh’s millIons of proud “dittoheads” – join him in hoping for the failure of President Obama’s initiatives.

***

The Limbaugh Liability

How Rush is making the GOP the party of wimps.

By Jonathan Alter | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Mar 4, 2009

Rush Limbaugh, the man who did more than anyone else to create the modern Republican brand in the 1990s, is now destroying it. Everyone knows he has “jumped the shark” culturally—become a black-shirted joke even as he dominates the headlines. But it’s worse than that for Republicans. Limbaugh has taken the great GOP calling card—toughness—and shredded it. The party of Lincoln is in danger of becoming the party of Jell-O.

Witness the specter of party leaders from Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford to Republican Party chairman Michael Steele all issuing craven apologies to Limbaugh after uttering the truth, which is that Rush’s rhetoric is “ugly” and that he was wrong to say he hoped President Obama would fail. The monster the GOP collectively created—Rush’s “dittohead” army of conservative listeners—makes life miserable for anyone who dares criticize the Great Bloviator. By enforcing right-wing political correctness, the dittoheads are making their party leaders look weak.

***

Frank Schaeffer

New York Times best-selling author

Posted March 8, 2009 | 04:09 PM (EST)

Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)

Dear Republican Leaders: The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future. Check out the sermon I just delivered about the Republican Party on CNN when being interviewed by D.L. Hughley -- and/or read on.

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the “architect” America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year’s primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his “supply side” myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There’s more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with -- and useful to -- the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America’s “moral decline.” Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today’s wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson’s and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

***

Mike Lux

Author, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be

Posted March 4, 2009 | 03:25 PM (EST)

From Lincoln to Limbaugh: Oh How The Republican Party Has Fallen

Did you catch the newly crowned leader of the Republican Party’s “first address to the nation” Friday night? I am truly embarrassed for my Republican friends as to how far the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt has fallen.

As I discuss in my book, the Republican Party began as the party of radical reform. In the Big Change Moment of the 1860s, they abolished slavery, passed the three most far reaching progressive constitutional amendments in history outside of the Bill of Rights, made sure the freedoms of the Bill of Rights would be enforced in the states, gave away millions of acres of free land to poor people, started the land grant university system, and passed the nation’s first progressive income tax. Although they increasingly became the party of big business in the years afterwards, Teddy Roosevelt brought them back some of their glory by breaking up big corporate trusts, establishing a national parks system, instituting food safety measures for the first time, and establishing other reforms of the progressive era.

Sadly for the country and their party, though, Republicans have become more and more conservative in the years since. Not a single Republican House member supported Social Security, the minimum wage, or most of the other major reforms of the New Deal. Only a few remaining Northern moderates supported civil rights legislation in the 1960s, and most of those were driven out of the party when Goldwaterites and southern segregationists took over the leadership of the Republican Party in that decade.

Now they have sunk to a new low, as Rush Limbaugh has become their virtually undisputed leader.

***

The Blue Wave: Is Rush Limbaugh Unpatriotic?

Rush Limbaugh

by Brent Budowsky | March 3, 2009 - 1:41pm

Poor Michael Steele. He criticized the titular leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh. Rush slapped him down. Steele waved the white flag of surrender. He apologized. Steele is so very sorry he offended the man who says he hopes the president fails. Which means he hopes the economy fails. Which raises the fair question of whether someone who hopes our president fails is patriotic or not. And it tells the story of why the Republican Party is in such very big trouble.

***

Warren Holstein

A NYC Based Stand-Up Comedian and Writer

Posted March 5, 2009 | 12:43 AM (EST)

All Heil Rush!!!

(All Rushisms have been duly bolded and put in italics)

Well, I guess we all found out who the de facto leader of the Republican Remnant was this week, as RNC Chairman Michael Steele had to polish up his cue-ball head real special, get down on his rickety half-century old knees, and kiss the ring permanently wedged onto a certain popular persona’s plump porcine, OxyContin-stained pinky. Yes indeedy, Mikey’s middle-aged self-flagellation in front of Chief Waga-Waga El Rushbo of the El Conservo Tribe was immensely gratifying to Dittoheads and Long-haired, dope-smoking, maggot-infested, good time rock ‘n roll plastic banana FM-types alike.

Its official, folks: the Redheaded Stepchild Party is now being led by a second-semester Southeast Missouri State University dropout whose mommy dearest claims he “flunked everything,” including Modern Ballroom Dancing (especially shocking given his unique anti-svelte physique and solid ham-hock-thunder-thighed foundation). So Dumbo is now in charge of the elephants. Only his large goofy ears don’t have the ability to fly--in fact they can barely hear due to his rabid consumption of pachyderm-sized portions of the ole Hillbilly Heroin. Yee-haw!

What is it with the Right Wing and their obsession with under-educated broadcast journalists anywho? It’s not just the Chief of the Patriotism Police I speak of, but Joe Biden’s former Rapture Queen arch-nemesis Sarah Palin (who was just recently one old melanomy-heartbeat away from the Oval Office). Let’s review her intellectual credentials (since she has the political resilience of a Sith Lord and most certainly will return). A former runner-up Miss Alaska who took six years, going to five different colleges, finally graduating from the University of Idaho (not Harvard, Princeton or Yale) for a degree in communications-journalism. Now, let’s just stop at the University of Idaho for a sec, shall we? I’m sorry, we need to set standards. If you graduate from the University of Idaho you are not allowed to run for President of the United States. I don’t care if you’re the Phi Beta Kappa of Potato Research, the best and the brightest the Dust Bowl has to offer (let alone a second-rate hairdo of a sportscaster for an arctic hick affiliate in Anchorage (KTUU-TV)). ACCESS DENIED! Not to mention certain McCain aides who eventually came out and said she was not even aware that Africa was a continent. Which, if true, would be kind of ironic. You’d think she would have boned up on it, being that’s where her opponent came from (on daddy’s side most recently and mommy’s side at the origin of our species). [CLICK HERE FOR MORE]

Perhaps that’s why El Rushbo (the Doctor of Democracy) continues to pimp her out presently. Long after Chris Buckley, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks retreated with a minor modicum of their remaining self-respect and intellectual integrity (reluctantly backing Obama). Not only do the Maha Rushie and ole Barracuda share the self-same anemic academic prowess of a Twinkie, but both valiantly suffered through the Sisyphean struggles of Survey of Mass Communication 101 and mastering the avoidance of The 7 Deadly Camera Sins.

Rush, however, was ultimately blessed with a face for radio and now spends much of his time bombastically battering more objective media fare like Meet the Depressed with David Gregory and in a constant state of befuddlement and envy as to how Paul “the Forehead” Begala is able to be a regular talking head while he is forced to hide behind a microphone in a windowless studio stuffing his fat face with Pringles Potato Chips and warm Diet Cokes (apparently his dithering Dittoheads were not nearly enough to provide a rating Rusholution on the ole Nielsen Box, as his failed syndicated TV venture was mercifully put out of it’s misery in 1996).

Yet the Red-State Remainder continues to cower in front of this blathering toll troll on their Bridge to Nowhere. Recent polls have placed his public popularity ratings beneath Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers (but then Dr. Frankenstein was always less popular than his creations). Yet the Pubs continue to heed his word and hedge criticism. There is no corresponding force on the Left. We are actually allowed to critique our media for their content. We can even rag on Keith Olberman’s Easter Island head and schoolboy Edward R. Murrow crush, or make snarky remarks about Rachel Maddow’s awful pageboy haircut and ill-fitting butchy blazers, with no consequences. Perhaps even more important, our politicians can freely disagree with their unholy opinions without being forced to prostrate themselves publicly for penance. However, when a particular ideologically slanted media icon, with no relation to the voice of the majority of the people, begins to control and influence the government... that is facism. All Heil Rush???

***

Gingrich Takes Shot at Limbaugh (40 comments) ...

“You’re irrational if you don’t want the president to succeed. Because if he doesn’t succeed the country doesn’t succeed... I don’t think anyone should want the president of the United States to fail.” -- Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press

***

Why Rush is Wrong

The party of Buckley and Reagan is now bereft and dominated by the politics of Limbaugh. A conservative’s lament.

By David Frum | NEWSWEEK

Published Mar 7, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Mar 16, 2009

***

News Corp Trifecta

Keith Olbermann featured an all-News Corp “Worst Persons” Monday night, with Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and Bill O’Reilly taking top honors.

O’Reilly took the “Worse” bronze for his claims that the Bush administration had essentially defeated al Qaeda and effectively won the war on terror already.

“Tell that to the 17,000 troops the US is about to send to Afghanistan,” Olbermann said.

Fox News chief Roger Ailes got the “Worser” silver for allowing his anchors to read comments from the FoxNews.com community that compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler and to a monkey.

Olbermann gave the “Worst” award to Murdoch — who he declared “the font of all this evil” — for allowing his New York Post to publish gossip about his biographer Michael Wolff, which Olbermann posited was revenge for Wolff’s comments about Post editor Col Allan and the paper’s controversial chimp cartoon. This, Olbermann said, was reason enough to reexamine media ownership rules.

***

Arianna Huffington

Posted March 2, 2009 | 04:27 PM (EST)

Memo to The Media: Having Rove on to Pontificate on the Economy is like Having Madoff on to Pontificate on Investing

Yesterday, on Face the Nation, Rahm Emanuel declared that Rush Limbaugh is “the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”

This is a useful stance for the Obama administration. As David Frum puts it: “With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence -- exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix” to the GOP.

But, in truth, Rush is just a massive shiny object that distracts our attention from the real intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party, Karl Rove.

At the same time Emanuel was on CBS anointing Limbaugh top dog, over on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos Rove was demonstrating why he is the real force and the real danger in the wounded-but-still-destructive GOP.

For starters, there is the fact that he was even on the show. This Week would never have Rush on as a panelist, but there was Rove, amiably chatting about the week’s events with Stan Greenberg, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and George Will.

Then there is Rove’s decidedly anti-Limbaughian approach, whereby he calmly, lucidly, and shamelessly attempts to whitewash the past and rewrite history. A history he was front and center in making.

There he was yesterday, the picture of reasonableness, trying to eviscerate Obama’s proposals to get us out of the economic mess -- without ever once acknowledging that he was one of the prime architects of the mess. (Don’t forget that, according to Paul O’Neill, back in 2002, when Bush was having second thoughts about a fresh round of tax cuts for the wealthy -- wondering “Didn’t we already give them a break?” -- Rove urged him to “stick to principle.”)

What’s next? Inviting Chris Brown on to tsk-tsk about the dangers of domestic violence? Nadya Suleman to lecture about the need for family planning? Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis to hold forth on corporate responsibility?

Rove has studied his Orwell and understands that “who controls the past, controls the future.”

That’s why we saw Rove lambasting Obama’s budget deficit, conveniently skipping over the nearly $1.6 trillion added to the deficit by the administration he helped guide. Not one word about the role the massive tax cuts for the rich he championed played in creating the current economic crisis. Not a peep about the deregulation of Wall Street he held so dear.

Republicans have deservedly lost control of the government. And given the bankruptcy of their ideas for addressing the crisis we face, they realize their only chance to return to power is to try to change reality.

That’s what makes Rove so dangerous -- his unbending commitment to derailing our understanding of how we’ve gotten to where we are.

***

Bob Cesca

Posted March 4, 2009 | 07:08 PM (EST)

The Dittohead Party: Why the GOP is Screwing Itself

The “leader of the Republican Party” question has been thoroughly analyzed and debated. And after many days and many cable news roundelays, I think we can all agree that, yes, the GOP has been inextricably grasped within the meaty, sweaty mitts of that familiar planetoid of addiction, racism and self-indulgence known as Rush Limbaugh.

To fall under the rule of Limbaugh means that the Republicans have become the party of this:

The Republicans are bowing to the leadership of a man who physically mocked the involuntary tremors of a Parkinson’s disease victim. I can’t underscore this enough. Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party, actually imitated and exaggerated Michael J. Fox’s Parkison’s tremors.

Governor Jindal: “I think Rush is a great leader for conservatives.”

Chairman Michael Steele: “I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh.”

Congressman Mike Pence: “I think Rush Limbaugh -- who I admire, and like millions of Americans, I cherish his voice in the public debate.”

And so the Republicans expect to be taken seriously now?

***

Published on Thursday, March 5, 2009 by The Wall Street Journal

Conservatives and Their Pity Parties

Out of power and out of touch, they feast on stale slogans and whine.

by Thomas Frank

Just as the financial crisis has created toxic assets and “zombie” financial institutions, so has it transformed conservatism into a movement of the living dead. Its partisans cling to a now-toxic portfolio of discredited notions, rhetoric, gestures and strategies. They lumber comically on, their only goal being to obstruct efforts to save the economy from catastrophe.

***

Robert J. Elisberg

Posted March 3, 2009 | 10:49 AM (EST)

Republicans Decide at CPAC to Run on Empty

I don’t begin to have a clue what the Republicans are doing. If it’s any solace, apparently neither do they.

Conservatives are not merely the Republican “base,” they’ve become the party. So, when CPAC met for the big conservative gathering last week, it was significant. It was to show America the foundation from which the Republican Party will attempt to rebuild itself, after getting crushed in the last two national elections, and losing the White House.

It turns out that the foundation is papier-mâché.

With the nation’s economy in freefall and two wars being fought, how did the conservatives at CPAC make their case for having substance and depth?

Their keynote speaker was a radio host. “Joe the Plumber” headed a panel. And they had a 13-year-old child deliver a policy address.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the new face of the Republican Party. Who the GOP hopes to convince America will lead the nation out of its George Bush-created collapse.

***

When clever put-downs pass for fair and balanced political criticism

by Bob Patterson | March 5, 2009 - 12:38am | permalink

Bill O’Reilly told his radio audience that his mission was to point out errors committed by pin-heads in the media. After we ran columns about meeting an Australian woman who had worked on a war crimes trial connected to WWII and said that Bush qualified as a war criminal and, after looking up what was said about war crimes at Nuremberg, we noted that President Bush might merit some serious consideration for inclusion in a war crimes trial. Then we specifically invited Senior O’Reilly to honor his commitment to scrutinize our performance as his audience’s proxy and point out any errors. He didn’t challenge us and his “no spin zone” radio show went off the air last week. That settles that.

***

Deepak Chopra

Author, Sirius radio host, founder of the Alliance for a New Humanity

Posted March 8, 2009 | 07:02 PM (EST)

Rush Limbaugh: Icon of Anti-Morality

When Michael Steele, the hapless chairman of the Republican Party, lost his bearings and called Rush Limbaugh’s style ugly and incendiary, everyone knew it was the truth. But it was a perfect example of an inconvenient truth. The right wing has long used ugly, incendiary speech the way baseball players use steroids: to artificially pump themselves up. Limbaugh has taken to saying that he wants Obama’s policies to fail because they spell the end of an America based on personal freedom. This isn’t just a grotesque exaggeration; it disguises the very thing the right wing has been doing when it curtailed civil liberties in the name of national security.

Yet I know people who listen to Limbaugh every morning. They don’t believe a word he says. They deplore his rhetorical sins. They detect the whiff of hypocrisy. Basically, they tune in out of sheer incredulity.

Limbaugh has been plowing the field of moral outrage for decades, but unlike Billy Sunday and the other hot-headed radio preachers who cashed in on social resentment in the Great Depression, Limbaugh threw out God. With no religious tradition to anchor himself, he can swing wider. Anything Limbaugh judges against is condemned, not by scripture, but simply by him being pissed off. Whatever Limbaugh hates -- however petty, personal, and arbitrary his animus -- is ipso facto wrong.

This represents a huge social shift in American values. Before the Eighties there were a handful of right-wing outlets on the air; now there are well over a thousand. They exist purely as steam vents. The common citizen gets to be pissed off by the millions, unrelentingly, without cease or solution, and in return, he is praised. To be outraged is to be morally superior.

The Limbaugh effect fueled the anti-morality of the Bush years. Under ordinary morality, the wretched plight of illegal immigrants, for example, must be considered along with the fact that they are breaking the law. Being poor, illiterate, and desperate, their human condition makes them more sympathetic than ruthless lawbreakers would be. But under anti-morality, if you hate immigrants because they are foreigners who don’t look American enough, the argument is over. Your anger strips away tolerance, sympathy, and regard for “the other.” Hence the almost imperial bearing of Limbaugh, the bland certainty that because he never stops being angry, he never stops being right.

The same goes for a wide range of “others” who mightily tick off Limbaugh’s listeners: Muslims, feminists, people of color, gays, and environmentalists. There’s no need to understand them or try and accommodate their views. Just put them through the wringer of Limbaugh’s perpetual judgment and, poof, there’s no problem anymore. Of course, the whole scheme is delusional. Problems aren’t solved by remaining perpetually ticked off. Accords can’t be reached when you demonize the other side.

By any sane account, Rush Limbaugh is dead weight when it comes to finding a solution to anything. Like Sarah Palin, his spiritual bride, he lurks in the shadow of the human psyche, expressing the dark anger, resentment, jealousy, and vindictiveness that society can never escape. And yet, the next time you tune into Limbaugh’s censorious circus of insensitive scurrility, give him a kind thought. As far back as Mark Twain, the American character has been ornery. We secretly love rascals, bank robbers, tricksters, swindlers, hell raisers, and outlaws. And when we feel so inclined, we laugh at them. Rush Limbaugh may represent a toxic form of entertainment -- and the bile he spews bears no resemblance to true morality -- but the fact that America makes room for him is something to be proud of. I don’t pray that he goes away. I pray that we can keep laughing, even if our grin is crooked, at the pranks of the eternal shadow who is our companion for life, whether we want him or not.

***

Meghan McCain: Ann Coulter ‘Offensive, Insulting, Confusing’

March 9, 2009 11:08 AM

***

Andy Borowitz

BorowitzReport.com

Posted March 4, 2009 | 08:09 PM (EST)

Limbaugh Rooting for Planet to Explode

In remarks that seemed guaranteed to create controversy, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said today that he was “rooting for the planet Earth to explode” because it would help the GOP retake the White House.

Mr. Limbaugh elaborated on his planet explosion theory, explaining that if the world blows up in the next four years “it will happen on Barack Obama’s watch.”

“Let’s face it, the world exploding would be great for the GOP and Barack Obama knows it,” he said. “That’s why he is doing everything in his power to keep the planet from blowing up.”

While asserting that he had his fingers crossed that the planet would detonate sometime in the next four years, he said that there were other scenarios he found equally appealing.

“If the population of the U.S. was suddenly afflicted with plagues, locusts and open sores, that would be fantastic for the Republican Party,” he said. “I’m rooting for all of those things to happen.”

In an appearance on CNN, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele seemed to distance himself somewhat from Mr. Limbaugh’s remarks, telling Wolf Blitzer, “Rush is a great entertainer who just wants to make people laugh, like Bobby Jindal.”

Hedging a little, Mr. Steele insisted that despite perceived differences, he and Mr. Limbaugh are on the same page: “Rush is rooting for me to fail, and I am in fact failing.”

***

Scott Horton Interviews Noam Chomsky

March 3rd, 2009

Noam Chomsky, author of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, discusses the roots of U.S. imperialism, the often overlooked opportunity costs of empire, the exaggerated strength of U.S. economic rivals, the continuation of the Great Game into the 21st century, how the Western World’s observance of the Durand Line exacerbates problems in Afghanistan, the empire’s loss in Iraq, the U.S. doctrine of punishing Iran just to make an example out of them and the Israeli policy of incremental displacement of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories.

***

Study finds universal health care would cost less than bailouts

Joe Byrne

Published: Sunday March 1, 2009

The biggest obstacle to an enhanced national health care system wouldn’t be money, a study conducted by the Institute for Health and Socio-economic Policy found. The transformation of America’s current health care system into a single-payer ‘Medicare for all’ system could cost six times less than the bank bailouts.

***

Published on Friday, March 6, 2009 by The Nation

Talking About Health Reform, But Not About A Cure

by John Nichols

Health care reform is a vital and engaging concern for America - and for Americans.

But you would not know it from Thursday’s White House Forum on Health Reform, which was so narrowly focused and uninspiring that it almost made Hillary Clinton’s bumbling efforts of the 1990s look good.

Only a handful of serious reformers got in the room.

Thanks to pressure from the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare, Physicians for a National Health Program, Unions for Single Payer Health Care and the Progressive Democrats of America, an invitation was extended to House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, D-Michigan, the sponsor of H.R. 676, legislation that seeks to create a the single-payer insurance program that would take profiteering out of the health care system.

“That’s the reason the majority of the nation’s nurses and doctors -- the very people who have the most daily interaction with our healthcare system and see its failures and tragedies up front, favor a single-payer approach, or expanding Medicare to all.”

“To achieve the lasting and cost-effective reform the president seeks and most Americans desire, we must confront the source of the present crisis -- an insurance industry that has been steadily pricing people out of access to care, or bankrupting them if they attempt to use it,” Jenkins said. “Insurance company practices drive skyrocketing costs, a problem that won’t be solved by more technology, electronic medical records, or any other stopgap measures some propose.”

The insurance industry and its allies don’t want to start from scratch and make a system that works.

They want to keep patching up a system that doesn’t work -- that fails to provide care to roughly 50 million Americans, that leaves another 50 million under-insured and that is defined more by its cost overruns than its quality -- so that they can keep profiteering.

Thursday’s White House sessions provided a great forum for advocates of “patching up” and “tinkering” with a broken system.

But that’s not the treatment that is needed. That’s a prescription for failure.

Obama is better positioned that any president in decades -- perhaps ever -- to design a system from scratch.

The special interests, corporate insiders and congressional compromisers who made the mess and fear the change won’t remind him of that fact - as Thursday’s forum so amply illustrated.

Real reformers should keep banging on the doors and demanding a place at the table.

Single payer is not “an alternative.”

It is not one of “various treatment options.”

It is the cure.

***

Published on Saturday, March 7, 2009

Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare

FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)

Major newspaper, broadcast and cable stories mentioning healthcare reform in the week leading up to President Barack Obama’s March 5 healthcare summit rarely mentioned the idea of a single-payer national health insurance program, according to a new FAIR study. And advocates of such a system--two of whom participated in yesterday’s summit--were almost entirely shut out, FAIR found.

Single-payer--a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private, but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors, and comparable to Canada’s current system)--polls well with the public, who preferred it two-to-one over a privatized system in a recent survey (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09).

***

Published on Tuesday, March 10, 2009

If Private Insurers Compete with Government, They’ll Lose

Competing Views of Government: Universal Medicare or Government-Protected Insurance Companies

by Dean Baker

We all know that people have different ideologies about the proper role of government. Some people, who tend to be left of center, think that the government’s role is to try to promote the general good, by providing basic services, protecting the poor and the sick, and ensuring a well-working economy. On the other hand, there are others, who usually place themselves right of center, who believe that the proper role of government is to redistribute as much income as possible to the wealthy.

These competing views of government are coming to a head in the debate over national health care reform. Those who think that the role of government is to serve the public good are likely to favor some form of universal Medicare. Such a system would almost certainly save a huge amount in administrative costs at the level of insurers, providers and government oversight.

Private insurers spend more than 15 percent of the money they collect in premiums on administrative costs. By contrast, Medicare spends about 2 percent. Part of the insurers’ administrative expenses go toward marketing - an expense that would be unnecessary in a universal Medicare system.

The other major factor driving administrative costs with private insurers is associated with their efforts to game the system. Gaming is the best way to make profits in the current system. If insurers can find effective mechanisms for either keeping sick people from being insured, or finding ways to deny coverage for expensive care, then they stand to make large profits. Naturally, profit-maximizing insurers will therefore devote substantial resources to trying to avoid ways to provide health care to people who need it.

***

Robert Creamer

Political organizer, strategist and author

Posted March 10, 2009 | 08:44 AM (EST)

Poll: 73% of Voters Think Health Care Reform Must Include Choice of a Public Health Insurance Plan

The health reform plan proposed by President Obama during his campaign assures that consumers can keep the private health insurance plans that they already have. That is important, because it addresses one of the biggest concerns voters have about health care reform.

But voters also want a plan that gives them a choice not only of private health insurance plans - but a public health insurance plan as well. In fact a new poll by Lake Research found that a whopping 73% of voters want everyone to have a choice of private health insurance or a public health insurance plan while only 15% want everyone to have private insurance.

***

Published on Thursday, March 12, 2009 by Bloomberg

No Reason to Demonize US Single-Payer Health

by John F. Wasik

It’s time to stop kicking sand in the face of single-payer health care. It may be the strongest solution around to insure every American at a lower cost.

After decades of industry campaigns against this model -- dubbed by its critics as “socialized” medicine -- it’s important to stop whining and evaluate the many economic benefits. Health care is a fundamental human right.

***

Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by The San Francisco Chronicle

The Competitive Disadvantage of GOP Healthcare Rhetoric

by David Sirota

Despite the shock and awe of Democrats’ melodramatic press releases, nobody was genuinely bewildered or surprised by the recent McClatchy newspaper headline screaming that “GOP lawmakers tout projects in the stimulus bill they opposed.” We all know that politicians love to brag about bringing home the bacon - even the bacon they vote against.

Far more baffling are those same politicians contradicting their entire foundational philosophy. When that starts happening, as it is in the debate over health care, things can become authentically confusing.

That all changed, though, when Democrats this week began pushing to let citizens buy into a government-sponsored health plan similar to the one federal lawmakers enjoy.

The allegedly competition-loving GOP immediately stated its strong opposition on the grounds that the initiative would begin “forcing free market plans to compete with government-run programs,” as congressional Republicans lamented. While Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., insisted that the GOP remains “committed to common-sense solutions that promote competition,” he said his party is “concerned that if the government” is permitted to compete, “it will eventually push out the private health care plans.”

Hold on a second.

Don’t Republicans insist that “competition solves health care?” Yes, ad nauseam.

Haven’t they been telling us that government programs are obviously worse than private health insurance? Yes again.

Then, don’t they welcome a private-versus-public competition, believing that the former will easily trump the latter? Well ... uh ... no.

As I said, this is truly perplexing.

In one breath, GOP Jekylls say government medical plans will be inefficient, inferior to private insurance and thus hated by Americans. In another breath, Republican Hydes effectively admit that government programs would be so efficient, superior to private insurance and loved by Americans that they will attract most consumers and dominate a health care competition.

Of the two assertions, of course, the latter is closer to the truth - and the GOP knows it.

Republican lawmakers received the new Commonwealth Fund report showing that a public system would save consumers $2 trillion through reduced premiums and lower administrative costs. They see surveys showing the country overwhelmingly wants the government to create a public health program - and they know that if given a choice, many Americans will opt into that program rather than swim with the private insurance sharks.

Republicans can’t simply acknowledge these truisms, however, because doing so would undermine the insurance industry that’s filling their campaign coffers. So instead, we get pro-competition, government-is-ineffective “conservatives” working to thwart competition and implicitly admitting they believe government will be too effective.

***

RNs from Six States Rally for Single Payer Outside White House Healthcare Forum in Vermont

by Donna Smith | March 19, 2009 - 8:53am | permalink

***

Published on Monday, March 9, 2009 by The Miami Herald

Consumers Curb Medical Treatment to Save Money

by John Dorschner

More heart attacks, fewer breast implants. More ER visits, fewer trips to the doctor’s office. More aspirin, fewer echocardiograms. And many people are afraid to miss work for healthcare because they fear it might cost them their jobs.

That’s the anecdotal evidence from several dozen healthcare providers in South Florida about how the deepening recession is effecting treatment.

While it has been well-publicized that many people are losing health insurance when they lose their jobs, doctors and hospital leaders have been surprised about how many who still have coverage are scrimping on care because they can’t afford the co-pays or time away from work.

***

By Satyam Khanna on Mar 1st, 2009 at 11:20 am

Gates: Obama is ‘more analytical’ than Bush.

Today, on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to compare the “styles” and “temperaments” of Presidents Bush and Obama. Gates said Obama is “somewhat more analytical” than Bush, as Obama makes a concerted attempt to hear the views of every player involved in an issue:

GATES: I think that probably President Obama is somewhat more analytical, and he makes sure he hears from everybody in the room on an issue. And if they don’t speak up, he calls on them.

***

Published on Thursday, March 5, 2009 by Inter Press Service

Military Dominance in Mideast Proven a Costly Myth

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The arguments for maintaining a major U.S. combat force in Iraq at least through 2011, escalating U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and assuming a confrontational stance toward Iran appear to assume that the United States remains the dominant military power in the region.

But the pattern of recent history and current developments in the region has not supported that assumption. Not only has the United States been unable to prevail over stubborn nationalist and sectarian forces determined to resist U.S. influence, but it has not been able to use its military supremacy to wage successful coercive diplomacy against Iran.

Furthermore, even the ability of the United States to maintain troops in Iraq and Afghanistan turns out to be dependent on regimes which are by no means aligned with the United States.

***

Tens of Thousands Have TBI, Officials Say

Wednesday 04 March 2009

by: Kelly Kennedy | Visit article original @ Army Times

As Army officials announced the beginning of Brain Injury Awareness Month, they offered up a figure that makes it hard to believe anyone in the military could be unaware of the problem:

Between 45,000 and 90,000 troops have been treated for traumatic brain injury symptoms ranging from headaches to vision problems to an inability to function beyond a coma state.

Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, said between 10 percent and 20 percent of soldiers and Marines - about 180,000 people - have screened positive for TBI.

***

By Ali Frick on Mar 1st, 2009 at 10:41 am

‘Fair and Balanced’ Fox News allows only Republicans to debate Obama’s budget.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace welcomed Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to discuss President Obama’s budget plan — with not a single congressional Democrat or White House representative present to defend it. Predictably, Kyl and Ryan attacked Obama’s budget (Kyl called it “terrifying”); Fox News gave Obama’s critics an 15-plus minute opportunity to slam the budget without interruption.

***

When clever put-downs pass for fair and balanced political criticism

by Bob Patterson | March 5, 2009 - 12:38am | permalink

Bill O’Reilly told his radio audience that his mission was to point out errors committed by pin-heads in the media. After we ran columns about meeting an Australian woman who had worked on a war crimes trial connected to WWII and said that Bush qualified as a war criminal and, after looking up what was said about war crimes at Nuremberg, we noted that President Bush might merit some serious consideration for inclusion in a war crimes trial. Then we specifically invited Senior O’Reilly to honor his commitment to scrutinize our performance as his audience’s proxy and point out any errors. He didn’t challenge us and his “no spin zone” radio show went off the air last week. That settles that.

***

And a few Words About Taxes

Published on February 26, 2009

Be honest:

· Is the reason you’re not investing in stocks these days (a) the prospect of having to pay 15% capital gains tax? Or (b) the fear of further losses? (Well, or – c – that you don’t have any money?)

· Is the reason you don’t start a new business that (a) if it made you a lot of money you’d have to pay a lot of taxes? Or that (b) you can’t get anyone to risk the funds you need to finance it?

· Is the reason you don’t hire new workers that (a) you’re paying so much in taxes? Or that (b) with business down so much, you don’t need them?

· Is the reason you’re not spending money as freely as you used to that (a) your taxes are too high? Or that (b) you’re afraid of losing your job? (Well, or – c – that you’ve lost half your net worth and suddenly realize you’d better get serious about saving for a decent retirement?)

· Is the reason you’re unemployed that (a) taxes are too high to make you want a job? Or that (b) you’ve sent out 400 resumes and called every connection you have, but no one’s hiring.

If the answer to all – or any – of these questions is (a), then Louisiana Govenor Bobby Jindal and his fellow Republicans may have a point in trashing the President’s strategy and pushing tax cuts to get us out of this mess.

Otherwise, can we please stop with that?

***

From politicalirony.com: “One of the interesting ironies about the economic stimulus bill that just passed is that by most any measure it is the largest tax cut in US history. It includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years. In comparison, Bush’s largest tax cuts (in 2004/2005) totaled $231 billion. So why did the Republicans just vote overwhelmingly against the largest tax cut in history? Obama’s tax cuts are aimed mostly at the middle class, families and people who work. While Bush’s tax cuts primarily benefited the rich.”

***

Follow The Numbers

by Stephen Pizzo | March 3, 2009 - 11:43am | permalink

Let’s talk about numbers. Big numbers. Huge numbers. Numbers that have gotten so humongous Carl Sagan could build a PBS show around them, if he were still alive.

They’re so enormous that nothing in our everyday lives allows us to get our heads around them, so we we just let them wash over us as they rush at us from our media of choice.

But get our our heads around them we must. Because the right wing disinformation machine that gave us Newt and Rush and George haven’t gone away.

Here’s the breakdown, according to the International Bank of Settlements, which acts as banker for the world’s central banks:

Listed credit derivatives stood at USD 548 trillion;

The Over-The-Counter (OTC) derivatives stood in notional or face value at USD 596 trillion and included:

Interest Rate Derivatives at about USD 393+ trillion;

Credit Default Swaps at about USD 58+ trillion;

Foreign Exchange Derivatives at about USD 56+ trillion;

Commodity Derivatives at about USD 9 trillion;

Equity Linked Derivatives at about USD 8.5 trillion; and

Unallocated Derivatives at about USD 71+ trillion.

No, Rush et al didn’t mention any of that. But it’s precisely that, not Obama budget, or those “tax and spend liberals,” who are to blame for the worldwide systemic economic collapse we are experiencing. It’s the residue of all that Bernie Madoff, smoke and mirrors, wink and nod, cash for trash, phony-baloney, air-asset faux capitalism that’s collapsed on everyone.

***

MARCH 13, 2009

Americans See 18% of Wealth Vanish

By S. MITRA KALITA

The wealth of American families plunged nearly 18% in 2008, erasing years of sharp gains on housing and stocks and marking the biggest loss since the Federal Reserve began keeping track after World War II.

The Fed said Thursday that U.S. households’ net worth tumbled by $11 trillion -- a decline in a single year that equals the combined annual output of Germany, Japan and the U.K. The data signal the end of an epoch defined by first and second homes, rising retirement funds and ever-fatter portfolios.

***

Who Will Rescue Us As Our Economy Stays In Free Fall?

by Danny Schechter | March 3, 2009 - 11:24am | permalink

No One Seems To Know Or Be Willing To Say How Bad Things Are

“In 1930, right before the depression hit John Maynard Keynes wrote, ‘The world has been slow to realize that we are living this year in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history.’”

- Economist James Galbraith, Congressional Testimony (Monthly Review)

***

Greenspan’s Fraud: How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy (Hardcover)

by Ravi Batra (Author)

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class

by Thom Hartmann

Last Rites for the United States, and Himself

by Walter C. Uhler | March 3, 2009 - 10:39am | permalink

A Review of Last Rites, by John Lukacs

In 1990, at the age of sixty-five, John Lukacs wrote a well-received “auto-history” entitled Confessions of an Original Sinner. Now, almost twenty years later, Mr. Lukacs has given his readers part two: Last Rites. The book not only appears to constitute a valedictory for an erudite and influential 85 year old man -- who admits that his curiosity, reading and appetite for life are weakening -- but also the swan song for the five hundred years of European culture carried forward, until recently, by the United States.

Which is to say that Mr. Lukacs sees signs of America’s decadence all around: academics who neither buy nor read books, the widespread decline of serious reading, “the rapid deterioration of attention, the nervous constriction of its span,” an “unwillingness to think,” the rise of pictorial culture (a new “Dark Ages of symbols, pictures, images, abstractions”), and, most ominously, the emergence of a militaristic political conservatism in the United States.

He notes: “In 1950 there was not one American public or political or academic or intellectual figure who declared himself a ‘conservative.’ By 1980 more Americans declared themselves ‘conservatives’ than ‘liberals.’” Accompanying this rise of political conservatism was a “militarization of the popular imagination” that abetted the replacement of normal patriotism with aggressive nationalism.

Relying upon such ugly nationalism, the President and Vice President who occupied the White House prior to the Obama administration believed “that going in Iraq and crushing its miserable dictator in a quick war would be popular, resounding to the great and enduring advantage to…[their] reputation and to the Republican Party’s dominance in the foreseeable future. There have been many American presidents who had chosen to go to war for different reasons: but I know of no [other] one who chose to go to war to enhance his popularity.”

Sick, but widespread, American nationalism also goes far to explain why the opinion elite, the mainstream news media and the misinformed public would lend their support to an unprovoked, illegal, and thus evil, war of aggression. It wasn’t the behavior one would expect from a civilized people.

***

During his stay at the White House, George W. Bush accomplished what Adolph Hitler could only dream about doing -- bringing the American economy to a standstill. My friend Bob just told me that there are now actual tent cities forming up outside of Sacramento, CA, and that the people there call them “Bushvilles”.

If you could pick through the ruins of the American economy, one of the main artifacts you would find would be the pork barrels left over from the invasion of Afghanistan.

***

If It’s “Too Big to Fail,” Then It’s Too Big to Be Private

by David Sirota | March 4, 2009 - 8:58am | permalink

I appeared yesterday at the top of Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show to discuss the potential for financial industry nationalization. You can watch the clip here. I tried to use the opportunity to float a fairly simple - and old-fashioned - concept: If something is “too big to fail,” then it’s too big to be in private hands.

***

Published on Monday, March 9, 2009 by The New York Times

Behind the Curve

by Paul Krugman

President Obama’s plan to stimulate the economy was “massive,” “giant,” “enormous.” So the American people were told, especially by TV news, during the run-up to the stimulus vote. Watching the news, you might have thought that the only question was whether the plan was too big, too ambitious.

Yet many economists, myself included, actually argued that the plan was too small and too cautious. The latest data confirm those worries - and suggest that the Obama administration’s economic policies are already falling behind the curve.

***

The Real AIG Scandal

It’s not the bonuses. It’s that AIG’s counterparties are getting paid back in full.

By Eliot Spitzer

Posted Tuesday, March 17, 2009, at 10:41 AM ET

***

If It’s War They Want

by Brian Morton | March 12, 2009 - 9:31am | permalink

It’s getting to that time when we may have to man the barricades and wait for the telltale sound of squealing now that President Obama has released his budget. Not long after that, we’ll see the banners and hear the predictable charges of “Class warfare!” And if you think about it, that’s exactly what it is--and the class that has been taking it on the chin for the last 30 years is about ready to return fire.

It was Ronald Reagan who began this battle, on a number of fronts. It was Reagan, the first union member to become president, who cut the legs out from under the collective bargaining movement, beginning the steady erosion of union membership (thus giving power to the executive class whose salaries began their explosive and outrageous rise). It was Reagan who began the campaign to lower the top-tier tax rates, by a series of avuncular lies, the biggest of which was ridiculed as “trickle-down economics.” Give all the tax breaks to the top brackets and the largesse would trickle down to everyone else. Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, was even quoted in The Atlantic in 1981 as calling the Reagan tax plan “a Trojan Horse” to bring down the top rate. By the time George H.W. Bush took office, the top tax rate was down to 28 percent, and Reagan had yet to fulfill his promise to balance the budget with all the magical revenues that cutting taxes were supposed to bring.

***

Oh, What A Lovely Class War!

by Michael Winship | March 12, 2009 - 8:59am | permalink

My goodness, how they howl when the proverbial shoe is on the proverbial other foot. You’d think the Red Army had just left Moscow and was preparing a frontal assault on the Federal Reserve.

So what are conservatives, Wall Street and financial television commentators shouting? Socialists! That’s right. Spread the word: Socialists are swarming over our nation’s capitol, and making off with the means of production, otherwise known as campaign contributions and the Federal budget. You got trouble, my friends.

***

Who’s calling the shots now? The Death of American Empire

by Dave Lindorff | March 18, 2009 - 10:17am | permalink

It may not be obvious today, and certainly it’s not how the corporate media reported it, but future historians are likely to look back at March 13, 2009 as the day that American imperialism began it’s inexorable decline. That’s the day that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced that his country was “worried” about its holdings of over $1 trillion in US treasury securities, and warned that he wanted the US to assure China that it would maintain its good credit and “honor its promises” and “maintain the safety of China’s assets.”

There is no way that the US can accommodate Premier Wen and still finance and operate a global military system with over 1000 overseas bases, massive aircraft carrier battle groups, and with hundreds of thousands of men and women armed to the teeth with the latest high-tech military hardware, not to mention fight endless wars on the far side of the globe.

***

Lee Stranahan

Filmmaker, Writer, Photographer

Posted March 13, 2009 | 02:12 PM (EST)

An Insider’s Look At How Ayn Rand Destroyed The World

I know my Ayn Rand. In fact, when it comes to Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism I’ll put put my Ayn Cred up against almost anyone.

I attended her funeral in 1982. I was one of two students at experimental Objectivist high school back in 1980s. I did the audio taping on a lecture course taught by her ‘intellectual heir’, Leonard Peikoff. I’ve attended Objectivist conferences, owned first edition copies of Atlas Shrugged and I was personally kicked off the lawn of the Canadian power trio Rush’s drummer by Neil Peart himself asserting his property rights.

Today, I realize that Rand’s philosophy isn’t just wrong or misguided - it’s actually been destructive and dangerous.

***

Alex Leo | March 12, 2009 at 08:33 AM

In last night’s episode of “The Word” Stephen Colbert praised Ayn Rand for her novel “Atlas Shrugged,” a favorite of conservative commentators that blames government spending on social programs for the downfall of the country. Sales of the book have been on the rise since Obama came into office, proving that “things have gotten so desperate, Americans are actually reading.”

Colbert has wholeheartedly accepted Rand’s philosophy and wants to live on an island with the CEOs, hedge fund managers, House Republicans...

***

One Step Forward, Two Steps Toward Monarchy

by David Swanson | March 11, 2009 - 10:24am | permalink

It has become almost commonplace, since the release last week of seven “legal” opinions written in 2001 and 2002 by the Justice Department, to remark that unbeknownst to us we came within an inch of dictatorship.

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Postcards From the Edge: Crackpot Anti-Gay Crusader Goes Global

by Bill Berkowitz | March 4, 2009 - 1:26pm | permalink

Civil rights watchdog group the Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a list of hate groups. Scott Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries has made the list for a couple of years running, and he’s furious.

***

Reversing the Cycle of Violence

by Robert C. Koehler | March 12, 2009 - 8:36am | permalink

So much experience in the room, so much wisdom, so much. . . concentrated hope. Poke at it slightly and the truth comes out, in brief, quick anecdotes:

Two neighbors were at bitter loggerheads over a barking dog. After all communication broke off, they eventually found themselves in mediation. One of the parties was asked to state his point of view. His neighbor was then asked to summarize what he had said, but couldn’t do so; she could only spin and respin her own story, her own all-consuming grievance. This process took an hour or more, but finally, slowly, she managed to reiterate her enemy’s story. It was an ordeal. She had to state it word for word. But when she did so, the world changed.

***

Turn left, take ten steps, discover a better world

Liberals and the Left

by Dennis Rahkonen | March 12, 2009 - 9:45am

1) God doesn’t exist, and never did. Belief in a Heavenly Father arose out of primitive ignorance and associated superstition. To think that an omnipotent old fellow with a white beard sits on a golden throne in the sky is wildly ridiculous. The only thing crazier is to believe said deity created us, governs our affairs, and deserves our blind obedience. Help stamp out witch-hunts and suicide bombings. Relegate God to the same dustbin of mythology where all ghosts, holy or otherwise, rightfully belong.

2) We don’t have souls and don’t go anywhere but into the ground to be eaten by worms when we die. Let’s bravely acknowledge that fact.

3) Quit contending that global warming isn’t real. Except for discredited, charlatan “scientists” of the kind who promote Intelligent Design, the overwhelming majority of truly qualified experts agree that manmade greenhouse gases are dangerously heating the planet. Conservatives can’t bring themselves to admit that “liberals” and United Nations types could ever be correct about anything, so they nay-say, sit on their hands, and would allow their grandchildren (and ours) to ultimately perish, fearfully gasping for precious breath.

4) Nationalism sucks. Belief that one’s own country is better or more important than all others has generated massively destructive jingoism and xenophobia through the ages. Combined with religion, it’s been the chief cause of war for bloody centuries. Join me in pledging to never take up arms against anyone on bogus pretexts -- or to imagine them inferior, “evil,” etc. -- just because they live beyond the ocean, look strange, and have unfamiliar customs.

5) Let’s jettison monopoly capitalism, which is so parasitically harmful that it makes a starving vampire bat seem benign. If we the people took over the economy, democratically controlling it for public profit and common gain, we’d never get robbed at the gas pump again, pay an arm and a leg for medical care or prescription drugs, lose our homes to usurious mortgage thieves, or get sent off to die in meddling neocons’ criminal invasions abroad. Fire the boss! Become a fair-minded owner of America, along with your fellow workers and neighbors!

6) Stop bashing immigrants. Each of our own arriving ethnic groups was accused by existing nativists of stealing jobs, being a societal drain, having criminal and otherwise unsavory tendencies, or spreading disease, just as mostly Hispanic immigrants are condemned today. Such successive discrimination plainly benefited divide-and-conquer corporate profiteers. It was only when ethnicities, races, and genders united -- understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all -- that the overall U.S. working class made decisive advances and acquired a mutually better living standard.

7) Admit that nothing worthwhile comes from conservatism. It’s abject selfishness masquerading as a valid ideology. Its sole purpose is to perpetuate minority privilege attained through illegitimate power wielded against consequently suffering masses. Conservatives will never utter the word “justice,” for it’s a shattering indictment of their consistently exploitative role in human affairs. Everything good has been fiercely resisted by the political Right: abolishing slavery and child labor, gaining women’s suffrage, struggling to achieve racial equality, raising the minimum wage, implementing progressive taxation, establishing health and safety standards in the workplace and the community at large, just to name a few.

8) Accept that, while abortion isn’t pretty, it’s often necessary. Furthermore, only each female in each specific, unique circumstance has the right to determine what constitutes a legitimate abortion need. No male, or male-dominated institution, should interfere in this most personal and difficult choice. Before guys say one word about the supposed impropriety of terminating an unacceptable pregnancy, they should produce ironclad guarantees about controlling their reckless libidos and keeping their penises in their pants, if that’s where they’re told they should remain.

9) Repeat after me: “Better gay than grumpy.” The only problem with homosexuality is that some straights, insecure about their own orientation, get uptight over it. Most animal species engage in same-sex contact on a minority basis. Therefore it isn’t “unnatural,” just different, and entirely involuntary, like being left-handed rather than right. Besides, aren’t the last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance “with liberty and justice for all”? Quit being hypocrites and get aboard the freedom train!

10) To nurture the collective human spirit, which is quite different than a religious “soul,” think less about what you can personally acquire, in a material sense. Instead, join struggles for shared prosperity. Know that the greatest reward is giving a deprived child reason to laugh. Honor and guard our earthly home. Lie down beside a blade of grass and contemplate its simple magnificence. Then, when relentless age takes its final toll, buy the farm with a contented smile. You lived well. You did the right thing.

Feed those worms and help make that grass grow!

***

Published on Monday, March 9, 2009 by TruthDig.com

We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction

by Chris Hedges

All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared.

***

Idiot Wind

by William Rivers Pitt | March 11, 2009 - 12:42pm | permalink

“Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,

From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,

You’re an idiot, babe.

It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.”

- Bob Dylan

One thing is certain: martial arts movie star Chuck Norris does not like President Obama. Not at all. Not one little bit. Norris dislikes Obama so much, in fact, that he discussed running for the office of president of Texas, which doesn’t exist, as part of a larger move by him and a variety of other right-wing groups to overthrow the American government and return honor and decency to the country.

No, really, he said all that, and more. Read it yourself if you don’t believe me. The best part is where he writes, “Remember the Alamo!” Great stuff.

***

Business Rules: No Democracy, No Decency, No Unions

by Dave Lindorff | March 11, 2009 - 11:55am | permalink

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The American Media Misdiagnosis

by Robert Parry | March 3, 2009 - 1:29pm | permalink

It’s widely agreed that there are a number of factors dragging down American newspapers, including the economic recession and the impact of the Internet, but a reason rarely mentioned is that the national news media failed in its most important job – to serve as a watchdog for the people.

As Americans look out over the wreckage of the past three decades – and especially the last eight years – there have been too many times when the constitutionally protected U.S. news media didn’t raise the alarm or even joined in spreading misinformation that advanced the disastrous mismanagement of the U.S. economy and government.

***

Reasons To Be Cheerful

by Ted Rall | March 13, 2009 - 8:37am | permalink

NEW YORK--It’s the end of the world as we know it and, while I can’t say I exactly feel fine, it’s all too easy to dwell on the downward spiral of our job prospects and 401(k)s. Even in the midst of economic collapse (possibly presaging political disintegration and ultimately social chaos), there’s cause for optimism. And so, in the same spirit of contrarianism that drove me to declare the boom economy of the late 1990s a sham we’d all live to regret, here are nine good reasons not to kill yourself over the economic meltdown:

***

Published on Thursday, March 12, 2009 by Creators Syndicate

Fighting Back in America’s 30-Year Class War

by Jim Hightower

***

Obama puts science back in government

by Mary Shaw | March 11, 2009 - 5:23am | permalink

Environmental attorney and activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has described George W. Bush as “the worst environmental president we’ve had in American history.” And I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.

During the eight years of the Bush administration, pollution, climate change, and scientific research all took a back seat to Bush’s agenda of a corporate free-for-all. The Bushies even went so far as to censor scientific reports to suit their agenda.

***

Remember

http://www.truthout.org/032009J

William Rivers Pitt: “Six years ago, the United States of America began the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since then, 4,259 American soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more have been wounded. There is no accurate accounting of Iraqi dead and wounded, because as we were told, we do not do body counts. Because the Bush administration left its Iraq expenditures off the budget, and because of the tremendous amount of war-profiteering, graft and theft that has been involved, we do not know exactly how much we have spent. For the record, 2,192 days later, this is how we got here.”

***

Many Iraqis Held by US to Go Free

Lara Jakes, The Associated Press: “Thousands of Iraqis held without charge by the United States on suspicion of links to insurgents or militants are being freed by this summer because there is little or no evidence against them. Their release comes as the US prepares to turn over its detention system to the fledgling Iraqi government by early 2010. In the six years since the war began, the military ultimately detained some 100,000 suspects, many of whom were picked up in US-led raids during a raging, bloody insurgency that has since died down.”

***

HISTORY

From the beginning, President Herbert Hoover viewed the Depression as a serious challenge to American capitalism, but wanted to attack the problems in a manner in keeping with his conservative philosophy. Hoover, supported by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, was adamant that the government take no direct action to aid people in distress.

The president was not tempted to attempt direct government relief efforts, fearing unbalanced budgets. His response was to cut federal spending and increase taxes.

***

Quit Lying About Roosevelt: Amity Shlaes, The GOP’s Great Depression Philosopher-Queen, Couldn’t Be More Dangerously Wrong

Wasting Away in Hooverville

by Jonathan Chait

Post Date Wednesday, March 18, 2009

***

VOCABULARY

notional

Definition: (adjective) Not based on fact; unreal.

Synonyms: imaginary, fanciful

***

Alan Greenspan testifying five days into the Bush Administration:*

“... The most recent projections indicate that, if current policies remain in place, the total unified surplus will reach $800 billion in fiscal year 2011...”

*F Good thing the Republicans had the wisdom to switch course.

“We must show courage in a time of blessing, by confronting problems instead of passing them on to future generations.”

Bushism, 2001

Don’t associate my name with anything you do--you’ve done more damage to the Republican Party than the Democrats have.

-Barry Goldwater

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.”

— Charles Richards

“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.”
-- James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

It is very difficult to see what is right in front of one’s eyes.

-Thoreau

“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.”

-Anatole France, 4/16/1844 - 10/12/1924, French writer; 1921 Nobel Prize for Literature

“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

- Patrick Henry

“Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little.”

- Sydney Smith, 1771–1845, English clergyman, writer, and wit

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

- William James

“The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

“I and the public know, what all schoolchildren learn, those to whom evil is done do evil in return.”

- W.H. Auden

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”

- Isaac Asimov

“The banality of evil describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.”

- Hannah Arendt 1906–75, German-American political theorist

“What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”

- Bertrand Russell

“One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

“Do not think of knocking out another person’s brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.”

- Horace Mann 1796–1859, American educator

“Be who you are and say what you feel ‘cause people who mind don’t matter, and people who matter don’t mind.”

- Theodor Seuss Geisel

“Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.”

- Nora Ephron, b. 5/19/1941, American film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, journalist

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

- George Bernard Shaw

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

- Thomas Paine

“The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have [to] bare the secrets of government and inform the people.”

- Hugo L. Black

“We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.”

- Livy (Titus Livius), 59 B.C.–A.D. 17, Roman historian

“We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.”

- George Steiner, (b. 1929), French–born U.S. critic, novelist. Language and Silence, preface (1967).

“The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.”

- Bertolt (Eugen Berthold Friedrich) Brecht, 1898–1956, German dramatist and poet

“God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed; Give us the courage to change what should be changed; Give us the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.”

- Reinhold Niebuhr, (1892–1971), or Anon. General Prayer, 14th Century England

We can see only with open eyes, hear with open ears, and think with open minds.

-Unknown

Certitude is not the test of certainty--we have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“Reason only visits those who welcome it.”

-Vince Bugliosi

No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.

-Joseph Conrad (Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski), 12/3/1857 - 8/3/1924, Polish born English novelist, Lord Jim

The mind in its own place, and in itself, Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

Milton

The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate.

Rousseau

Our aim is not to do away with corporations. We are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.

Theodore Roosevelt, 2/2/1902

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.”

- William James

To find yourself, think for yourself

-Socrates

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”

- Stephen Jay Gould, 1941–2002, US paleontologist and science writer

In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

-Charlie Chaplin, 4/16/1889 - 12/25/1977, English-born US actor, director, “The Great Dictator”

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

Arnold Toynbee

“War is civilization at its worst.”

-Andy Rooney, 60 Minutes, 3/8/2009

****

3/29/2009

I also wanted to let you know I still think private accounts are a good idea. The market will come back (although maybe not with this devout socialist as our leader).

I don’t think your conclusions are correct at the end of this email: 1,311,696 civilian deaths would equal 600 per day for the 2190 days the war has been engaged, why isn’t anyone reporting all of these deaths. Better check your facts on revenues increasing, they may need some adjustment as well.
We are living in the age of Obama now and I’m happy that all the liberals are getting a dose of liberalism. We have to go thru this every 30 years or so, so we know never to elect a liberal...can you spell quadrillion? This will be the new word, working it’s way into the budget process. Have a nice day.

As often occurs, it’s difficult to absorb your notes, or to comprehend the basis for their slants. It is easy to refute your doubts and claims, but I’m uncertain about picking an effective way to do it. You might not be more receptive now to quotes from my previous messages of the past six years (they are all in one easily searchable file) than you apparently were originally, in spite of the mountains of accumulated evidence which still support them. In addition to various headlines and summaries, I have repeatedly cited exact authorities, references, and url’s, and I don’t know why you don’t or choose not to accept the data. Although I thought you might be amused by some of the pointed, partisan, and satirical items, most of the articles and commentaries are reflective of incisive and rational analysis. Maybe using more my own words is worth a try.

About SS, it doesn’t seem possible for someone who understands the actuarial basis of the insurance business to say “private accounts are a good idea.” Only the entire customer base and government control allows the cost/ benefit ratio that makes it the most successful pension, survivor’s and disability program in the world. You could not sell those three policies to anyone at premiums as low as the public is now paying, let alone trying to sell them to everyone with no conditions. No one could tolerate the current stock market and financial collapse of 20 to 60% of their “private account” and the similar resultant cuts in their monthly checks. While it’s easy to guess that the “market will come back,” that is no certainty, and most retired people would find it catastrophic to try to live on 50% of their income during the next 5-10 years before a 12,000 Dow reappears. To anyone who truly wants to manage a personal account, all they have to do is call a broker.

To complement this topic, I also can remind you that in spite of right wing rhetoric and the direct skepticism you‘ve expressed, SS benefits are guaranteed through 2042 or so, and will continue at 70-78% for at least another 30 years after that. Furthermore, the SS Annual Report has repeatedly suggested that that gap can be covered completely right now by merely eliminating the income cap for those earning over $150,000. It’s Medicare where projections are really bad...

It’s probably not worth much time, but your use of the term “devout socialist” is a baited, shallow and fanciful pejorative, currently in vogue among the Better Red than Dead or Broke crowd, which echoes the bumper sticker mentality of a dittohead. It has no meaning and no definition based in reality other than being offered as an insult. As shown earlier and here below, it doesn’t match the record of economic progress that fits much more with policies of Dems than Reps.

It’s difficult to add sources in limited letters, but to line them up correctly, in case you didn’t click on the unidentified links I had buried in the last note, “1,311,696 civilian deaths” is not arbitrarily derived from “your conclusions” but is a synthesis of the best available information and is straight from the counter on Justforeignpolicy.org. (And incidentally now up to 1,320,110.) The science and methodology have been repeatedly verified in this country and others. Distinctions from another site iraqbodycount.org are said to be that they only count identified bodies, limit the reasons they will count a body, and then, admit not being an accurate source for total deaths, plus having a margin of error that could include a range of 10 times higher! (But even the very lowest figures are near 100,000, still enough to qualify Bush as a mass murderer.)

Rather, Hamit Dardagan, its co-founder and principal researcher, readily concedes that many Iraqi civilian casualties are not included in the IBC tally.

One persistent Republican weakness I’ve detected over the years is not acknowledging footnotes, definitions and explanations.

Iraqi Civilian Count

We maintain a daily count based on news reports. It is not intended to be complete. There is no agency that keeps track of accurate numbers of Iraqis killed. JustForeignPolicy maintains a running estimate based on the Lancet study with the rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count.

Comparing Civilian Casualty Studies

Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy explains the similarities between the Lancet and the Orb estimates. Numbers from the Iraq Body Count site and the study published in the Lancet are compared at OpenDemocracy.net. The BBC published an article, which includes a response from IBC. Middle East expert Juan Cole also gives his opinion on the Lancet study here.

http://www.juancole.com/2006/10/655000-dead-in-iraq-since-bush.html

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

655,000 Dead in Iraq since Bush Invasion

But the big news is a big new Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet that suggests that the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.

A careful Johns Hopkins study has estimated that between 420,000 and 790,000 Iraqis have died as a result of war and political violence since the beginning of the US invasion in March, 2003.

British Backtrack on Iraq Death Toll

By Jill Lawless

The Independent UK

Tuesday 27 March 2007

British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.

Published on Thursday, August 11, 2005

No End in Sight in Iraq

by Bob Herbert

The Iraqi dead are counted by the tens of thousands. But if Mr. Bush has experienced any regret about the carnage he set in motion when he launched the war, he’s not showing it.

Writing about Vietnam in the foreword to David Halberstam’s book “The Best and the Brightest,” Senator John McCain said:

“It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay.”

One obvious problem for calculating this figure is that Bush made a specific PR point of not allowing the military to count these bodies, as they did in Vietnam.

Published on Sunday, November 5, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Julius Caesar Had Gaul; Bush Just Has Gall

by Terry Jones

In 59BC, Julius Caesar declared he was so shocked by the incursions of the dangerous Helvetii tribe into Gaul, and the suffering of the Gaulish peoples, that he had himself appointed ‘protector of the Gauls’. By the time he’d finished protecting them, a million Gauls were dead, another million enslaved and Julius Caesar owned most of Gaul. Now I’m not suggesting there is any similarity between George W Bush’s protection of the Iraqi people and Caesar’s protection of the Gauls.

For a start, Julius Caesar, as we all know, was bald, whereas George W Bush has a fine head of hair.

One thing that George W Bush and Julius Caesar do have in common: pretending civilians are armed insurgents.

One of the most fundamental differences between Julius Caesar and George W Bush is that Julius Caesar counted his dead, whereas George W Bush can’t be bothered. It seems that, as commander-in-chief, George W Bush instructed his soldiers not to count the enemy dead. So the fact that he still sticks to an estimate of only 30,000 dead Iraqis, even when a recently published study in the Lancet suggests he’s slaughtered at least 655,000, can only be the result of his extraordinary modesty.

Why else would he dismiss the study as pure guesswork or claim it had used a ‘methodology [that] is pretty well discredited’, even though the US government has been spending millions of dollars a year to train NGOs in this exact same methodology? Julius Caesar would have seized on the figures with alacrity.

And that is the biggest difference of all: Julius Caesar was an ambitious, vainglorious, would-be tyrant. George W Bush is a modest and self-deprecating one.

Another review is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Iraqi_deaths

For your question “why isn’t anyone reporting all of these deaths.” what can I say? A lot of people could be earning PhD’s in many fields or live out careers and lifetimes trying to answer that one. It probably begins as we’ve discussed before, with the eye of the beholder, and using one‘s senses with an open mind. They have been widely reported by responsible outlets, but covering one’s ears and feeding their head at Fox makes it hard to see the truth. The Left’s complaints about the Main Stream Media corporate, rightwing bias are documented as being much more accurate than those whines from the Right. At the least, I have consistently highlighted this major theme over and over. If you were to look again at the entire Caesar story above or my email from 11/7/06:

Julius Caesar was also a very adroit propagandist who made damn sure that his version of events prevailed. He even wrote eight books about his wars in Gaul to make sure it did. George W Bush doesn’t need to go to such lengths. He has Fox News.

Or from 1/5/07, the reference I sent was,

Most authorities seem to place death toll during Saddam’s reign for innocent Iraqis at between 300 and 400,000 (excluding the Iran war.) Evidence accumulates from Lancet and other sources that the total in just the last 4 years is still growing above 600,000:

According to a survey conducted by U.S. and Iraqi doctors for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in the British Lancet Medical Journal Oct. 11 this year, 654,965 Iraqis, or 2.5 percent of the entire population of the country, have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.

Published on Monday, January 15, 2007 by the Times Herald-Record

(Middletown, New York)

Mistakes Were Made, but There Is No Mistaker

by Beth Quinn

By saying Mistakes have been made, the president also implies that those

mistakes occurred only in the past tense and that he is now ordering the

mistakes to stop happening in the future tense.

Actually, if I may wander over into math class for a moment, 3,018 mistakes

were made in the past if you count up the dead American soldiers (2,881

since Mission Accomplished!). If you also count wounded Americans, add

another 22,714 mistakes. If you include dead Iraqi civilians (not the

president’s favorite group!), add another 655,000 mistakes. And if you count

the money, add $350 billion more mistakes.

Robert Naiman

UK Poll Consistent with 1 Million Extrapolation of Lancet Death Toll

Posted September 14, 2007 | 03:20 PM (EST)

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday on a poll from Opinion Research Business, a British polling agency. The poll suggests that more than a million Iraqis have died from the conflict resulting from the U.S. invasion and occupation.

2007: The Year in Evidence

by David Swanson | December 29, 2007 - 8:34am

It too seems odd for me to “Better check your facts on revenues increasing” when your only opposition to them apparently revolves around preconceived notions and wishful thinking. Look at any data source and see a summary at: http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

The chart below, Figure 1, shows the United States national debt (per Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia[1] and US Government data[2]) with the various Presidents’ terms marked by vertical lines. Under President Clinton the growth in debt ceased, but note the radical change in direction since George W. Bush entered office. There is no question and a lot of mathematical proof that the steepest upward rises in debt since the end of World War II, started with President Reagan and continued with other so called Neo-Conservatives.

The contrast between Clinton’s tax policies and the second Bush’s are dramatically evident from this data. By setting up taxes to help the middle class and small business Clinton stimulated economy so much that we saw the largest increase in government revenue in history. The Neo-Con “trickle down” policy clearly does not work. You cut taxes and you reduce government revenue, period. That is the real truth, no matter how many times we are told you must make the wealthy just a little richer to improve the economy. That does not work and the numbers above prove it.

1. Since the Neo-Conservative movement has become the dominant force in the Republican Party the national debt has grown and continues to grow at an unsustainable rate, by any measure you care to use.

2. Experience has shown that “trickle down tax cuts” only work to concentrate the nation’s wealth into fewer hands and never help to rebound the economy.

3. Mr. Bush has no viable plan to deal with the debt he has already created, and we cannot count on him to contain government spending in the future.

4. The only time we have seen national debt reduction in the past 60 years was when Democrats were totally in charge of our government or when one party was in the White House and another ran Congress.

5. In the past 60 years when Republicans were in control of the presidency and both Houses of Congress, neither debt, nor government spending was ever reduced. The last time a Republican Congress reduced the national debt was in 1947, under Truman’s leadership.

6. The last time the debt was reduced was in 1961 during President Kennedy’s first year in office. It has been almost a half century, 46 years, since this nation has paid down any of its exponentially increasing debt. (Had President Bill Clinton been in office one more year we would probably have seen a debt decrease in 2001.)

7. The failure of the financial and insurance markets can be directly related to the tax and regulation policies of the Neo-Cons.

Total Public Debt Outstanding (from “http://www.treasurydirect.gov/”)

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway

US Debt at end of administration (in $ trillions)

Carter .994

Reagan 2.867

Bush 4.351

Clinton 5.769

Bush II 10.628 (or much more when looking at the end of the fiscal year and the ongoing horrific fiscal policy set in motion!)

SIMPLY PUT

Our friend Don George in Atlanta had the lead letter in Saturday’s New York Times – and totally nailed it:

Many Republicans claim that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal did not succeed in bringing us out of the Great Depression, but rather that the huge government spending related to fighting World War II did.

Let’s assume that’s true. I say, then, let’s spend as if we were in World War II and our very survival depended on it. President Obama’s budget appears to do exactly that.

A READER QUESTION

Steve Baker: “I saw Obama’s speech to the nation and the reply I have a question for you: Have the republicans ever confronted a problem in the last eight years that they think cannot be solved by a tax cut? From foreign wars which have at all other times been financed by tax increases or surcharges to anything else, all of which greatly increased the national debt to unsustainable levels at a time when, during prosperity, they should have been paying it down?”

NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

Dan Flikkema: “National Health care would encourage new entrepreneurs. You are correct that no serious person with a good business idea ever decided not to start up because the top tax rate was too high. But I’d bet a fair number decide not to because, in addition to all the inherent risks and complications, they don’t want to or can’t afford to lose health care benefits.”

SOLAR

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope that we don’t have to wait ‘til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

– Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)

The Writer’s Almanac for March 28, 2009

Suddenly

by Louis Simpson

The truck came at me,

I swerved

but I got a dent.

The car insurance woman

informs me that my policy

has been cancelled.

I say, “You can’t do that.”

She gives me a little smile

and goes back to her nails.

Lately have you noticed

how aggressively people drive?

A whoosh! and whatever.

Some people are suddenly

very rich, and as many

suddenly very poor.

As for the war, don’t get me started.

We were too busy watching

the ball game to see

that the things we care about

are suddenly disappearing,

and that they always were.

“Suddenly” by Louis Simpson, from Struggling Times. (c) BOA Editions, Ltd, 2009. Reprinted with permission.

****

4/7/09

musings

Perhaps a major baffling aspect of political dialogue is how someone can maintain the charade that the Rep platform is effectively about anything other that keeping and expanding power to the already powerful elite. There is absolutely nothing other than lipservice offered to the masses who swallow the swill about Christian or any other religion’s love, charity and grace; the proud who falsely think they have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and can look forward to continued future prosperity; the deluded militarists who think the country, its military services, soldiers, and veterans have benefited by administrations who have no interest in governing for the general welfare; or anyone who thinks the rich will trickle anything down to them other than crumbs.

Another question I don’t understand is how a father of daughters can hold on to and support the Republican cause when one of its implicit but fundamental tenets is little different from the fundamentalist repression from the Taliban and many other societies and individual males: keeping them barefoot and pregnant. It is right here in the US of A that a goal and result has been to keep building glass ceilings, permanently deny women economic equality, ignore the crimes of rape and abuse in society and the military, refuse them the chance to make decisions about pregnancy, and not help with pressing needs for work, childcare, fostercare, rearing, education, and medical attention.

And I suppose another myth you’ve purchased is that the surge has worked and that there is peace in Iraq. Although I’ve continued to cite opposing arguments, a summary can still be made. This Surge was nothing more than an escalation, and not even a change in strategy. Its association or timing with a lowering level of violence is not “success” and suggests only that ethnic cleansing works. They have run out of people to kill. Under the noses of US control, protection and the building of concrete walls, the warring segments of that society liquidated entire neighborhoods and geographic areas, forcing families and differing sects to flee and creating well over 2 million homeless and refugees. It is still not safe for a film crew or reporters to travel anywhere in Iraq.

Admiral Says War Veterans Will Suffer for Years
U.S. Wounded

Daily DoD Casualty Release

320,000 Vets Have Brain Injuries

War Veterans’ Concussions Are Often Overlooked

How Many Servicemembers Were Wounded?

18 Vet Suicides Per Day?

***

Baghdad’s water still undrinkable 6 years after invasion — Mar 18

***

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/40955

Iraq: A forgotten humanitarian disaster

Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2009-03-22 03:01. Iraq

The sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is a sad occasion for the balance sheet: during six years of occupation 1.2 million citizens were killed, 2,000 doctors killed, and 5,500 academics and intellectuals assassinated or imprisoned. There are 4.7 million refugees: 2.7 million inside the country and two million have fled to neighbouring countries, among which are 20,000 medical doctors. According to the Red Cross, Iraq is now a country of widows and orphans: two million widows as a consequence of war, embargo, war again and occupation, and five million orphans, many of whom are homeless (estimated at 500,000). Almost a third of Iraq’s children suffer from malnutrition. Some 70 per cent of Iraqi girls no longer go to school. Medical services, not so long ago the best in the region, have totally collapsed: 75 per cent of medical staff have left their jobs, half of them have fled the country, and after six years of “reconstruction” health services in Iraq still do not meet minimum standards.

Because of the use of depleted uranium in ammunition by the occupation, the number of cancer cases and miscarriages has drastically increased. According to a recent Oxfam report, the situation of women is most worrisome. The study states that in spite of optimistic bulletins in the press, the situation of women keeps deteriorating. The most elementary supplies are still not available. Access to drinkable water is for large parts of the population a problem and electricity is functioning only three to six hours a day, and this in a state that was once a nation of engineers. More than four in 10 Iraqis live under the poverty threshold and unemployment is immense (28.1 per cent of the active population). Besides 26 official prisons, there a some 600 secret prisons. According to the Iraqi Union of Political Prisoners, over 400,000 Iraqis have suffered detention since 2003, among which 6,500 minors and 10,000 women. Torture is practiced on a large scale, and some 87 per cent of detainees remain uncharged. Corruption is immense: according to Transparency International, Iraq, after Somalia and Myanmar, is the most corrupt country in the world. The American Foreign Affairs journal calls Iraq “a failed state”. This is symbolised by the fact that Iraq, a state that has the third largest oil reserves in the world, must import refined oil on a massive scale. Authorities are on the verge of giving oil concessions for 25 years to international (also European) oil companies, though they have no mandate or legal authority to do so. Instead of being paid reparations for the enormous destruction wrought on the infrastructure of the country, entailing billions in oil revenues lost, Iraq is again in line to be robbed. There is large scale ethnic cleansing going on against the Turkmen, the Christians, the Assyrians and the Shebak. Kirkuk is being “Kurdicised” by massive immigration and illegal settlements (of Israeli inspiration) and its history falsified.

This data, referenced in numerous reports, was presented during an information session in the European Parliament organised by the BRussells Tribunal on 18 March by a panel of Iraqi specialists. On 19 March, there was a session in the Belgian Parliament where a national representative after the statement of Dr Omar Al-Kubaissi, a renowned Iraqi cardiologist and expert on health, frankly admitted that he had no idea of the scale of the humanitarian disaster. Who can blame him? In the European press we hear little or nothing concerning this humanitarian disaster. In the newspapers there is talk of elections, of an occasional bomb attack, of the political process, of the positive results of the “surge”, etc, but concerning the suffering the Iraqi people _ next to nothing. We have fallen asleep and we console ourselves: Obama plans the retreat American troops; therefore the issue of Iraq is off the agenda. The truth is that we want to forget this humanitarian disaster, because the West is responsible. Of course, in the first and last instance the administrations of Bush and Blair, but also the Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, Poland and Italy were part of the coalition and hence accessory while Antwerp was a vital transit port for the invasion. Therefore also Europe bears a heavy responsibility. How is it possible that we can dissimulate the impact of the war, which initially stirred world public opinion, in spite of the flow of shocking reports? “Darfur” sounds a bell meanwhile (and correctly so) as a sort of African holocaust, but the crimes against the humanity of a near “genocidal” scale in Iraq are swept under the carpet. If the press does not do its job, how can public opinion be touched? Even activists and well meaning politicians are not on the level. This type of disinformation, and the indifference that comes with it, one could call a form of negationism, or at least a type of immoral ignorance. Wir haben es nicht gewusst, we will say. But the people of the Arab region will not forgive us. Let this be clear.

Lieven De Cauter

philosopher, initiator of the BRussells Tribunal

20 March 2009

***

Iraq: Deaths Rise, Pretense We Care Fades

by David Swanson | March 22, 2009 - 11:30am

Thus far, 4,261 members of the U.S. military have been killed in Iraq and 67,237 wounded, not counting many diagnosed after leaving Iraq, including estimated hundreds of thousands with traumatic brain injury, hundreds of thousands with post-traumatic stress disorder, unknown numbers poisoned by hexavalent chromium or depleted uranium, also not counting the many victims of murder by veterans unable to stop doing their jobs, not counting the one in three women in the military sexually assaulted by men in the military, and not counting 6,570 suicides, and twice that many attempts, per year by veterans, and rising. Suffering and death for U.S. troops resulting from the war on Iraq is rising, not diminishing. Veterans are becoming ill, homeless, murderous, and suicidal.

Meanwhile, for Iraqis, years of homelessness, imprisonment, lack of electricity, lack of medicine, injuries, trauma, lost family members, and poisoned environments are taking their toll. Of 1.2 million killed, 2,000 have been doctors. There are 4.7 million refugees, including 20,000 doctors. Almost a third of Iraq’s children suffer from malnutrition, and virtually all Iraqis lack adequate medical services, electricity, and -- in many areas -- drinking water. Cancer and miscarriages have increased dramatically. While violence is down, the same may not be true of deaths and suffering.

While the U.S. media obsesses over teeny fractions of the trillions of dollars the U.S. government is giving to bankers, 130,000 troops and 160,000 contractors continue to occupy Iraq in the name of the United States, and very few Iraqis are convinced they will ever leave, while even fewer want them to stay. The protest on Saturday at the Pentagon was smaller than on past anniversaries of the invasion of Iraq, apparently limited to those who do not leave it to their televisions to decide what is important to them. Very few voices in the U.S. media address the topic with any seriousness at all. A fake New York Times declared the war over in November as soon as a different brand was put on the “commander in chief,” but the corporate media, congress, and most of the public has accepted that story with a straight face.

Speaking of New York Times stunts, a year ago this week a former member of the German parliament named Jurgen Todenhofer placed three full-page ads in the New York Times setting out ten theses for reforming the West’s understanding of the Muslim world. Todenhofer has now published a book that includes those theses in the conclusion. I recommend reading the whole book, which carries the disturbing title “Why Do You Kill: The Untold Story of the Iraqi Resistance.”

***

Tyler E. Boudreau: “The Unmaking of A Marine”

Jason Leopold, Truthout: “These are the conclusions I arrived at after reading Marine Capt. Tyler E. Boudreau’s first-person exposé of the time he spent in Iraq and the struggles he and his comrades faced in the aftermath of their deployment.”

***

Katharine Gun: The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War

Marcia Mitchell: “Pigeons are coming home to roost in the prestigious halls of the United Kingdom’s Parliament building. Whether they make it across the Atlantic to the US Capitol is a matter that should be of interest to all Americans. On March 19, Katharine Gun testified before British lawmakers, asking them to commit to a full public inquiry into the decision to invade Iraq. Gun is well-known to Members of Parliament. She was the young British secret service officer who was arrested for leaking an illegal US spy operation against members of the UN Security Council debating the decision for war. The operation, mounted by the NSA, targeted six nations whose vote for a preemptive strike was considered essential to winning broad international support for war.”

***

Spain May Open Torture Probe of Six Bush Officials

Reuters: “A top Spanish court has moved toward starting a probe of six former Bush administration officials including ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in connection with alleged torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, The New York Times said on Saturday.”

***

Spain Investigates What America Should

Marjorie Cohn, The San Francisco Chronicle: “A Spanish court has initiated criminal proceedings against six former officials of the Bush administration. John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith may face charges in Spain for authorizing torture at Guantanamo Bay. If arrest warrants are issued, Spain and any of the other 24 countries that are parties to European extradition conventions could arrest these six men when they travel abroad.”

***

Officials: Torture Confessions Not Proven Useful

Peter Finn and Joby Warrick, The Washington Post: “When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an Al Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed.... In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations.”

***

Report Calls CIA Detainee Treatment “Inhuman”

Joby Warrick and Julie Tate, The Washington Post: “Medical officers who oversaw interrogations of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a confidential report that labeled the CIA program ‘inhuman.’ Health personnel offered supervision and even assistance as suspected al-Qaeda operatives were beaten, deprived of food, exposed to temperature extremes and subjected to waterboarding, the relief agency said in the 2007 report, a copy of which was posted on a magazine Web site yesterday. The report quoted one medical official as telling a detainee: ‘I look after your body only because we need you for information.’”

***

Bush’s Tortured Legacy

Dr. James J. Zogby: “Two major stories, prominently featured in The Washington Post and The New York Times last Sunday, dealt with the Bush administration’s use of torture. When combined, they raised several important issues. The front page banner headline in The Washington Post read ‘Detainee’s Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots,’ with the subhead continuing ‘Waterboarding, Rough Treatment of Abu Zubaidah Produced False Leads, Officials Say.’ Based on extensive interviews with former CIA and administration officials, the piece examined how the Bush administration dealt with Abu Zubaidah, a prisoner captured in 2002 in Pakistan. After a four-year stay at a ‘secret CIA site’, he was moved to Guantanamo. While, early on, President Bush heralded the capture of Abu Zubaidah (calling him ‘a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden’), the story notes how, within weeks of his imprisonment, analysts concluded that he was not an official member of al-Qaeda.”

***

Doug Feith a “Major Player” in Torture Policies

Jason Leopold: “Doug Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy, is best known for cooking up bogus prewar Iraq intelligence linking Iraq, al-Qaeda and 9/11. But in addition to his duties to his duties stove piping phony intelligence directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney, Feith was also a key member of a small working group of Defense Department officials who oversaw the implementation of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ at Guantanamo Bay that has been widely regarded as torture.”

***

Harry Shearer

Actor, author, director, satirist, musician, radio host, playwright, multi-media artist

Posted March 31, 2009 | 05:52 AM (EST)

Why the War Crimes?

Sunday’s Washington Post article, recapitulating much of Ron Suskind’s earlier reporting, that Abu Zubaydah wasn’t the feared number 3 of Al-Qaeda, and that the intelligence he spilled after being waterboarded was all junk, was--or should be--the last step in removing the scales from the eyes of all but the Cheney retainers. Along with the outing of the International Red Cross report, which clearly and unequivocally called “enhanced interrogation” what it is--torture, the Post piece and Dan Froomkin’s accompanying blog post make the case a slam dunk that our previous administration committed war crimes.

But why? Why persist in a policy that, according to the Post, wasted the time of FBI and CIA officers chasing down false leads, wasting millions, and didn’t make us any safer, all the while proudly boasting the opposite? Col. Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, offered a partial answer in a blog post three weeks ago. In it, Wilkerson asserts that high officials at State knew early on that most Guantanamo inmates were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong zip code, people who were rounded up and delivered to Americans because we were paying cash money for bodies in and around Afghanistan, and warlords and their friends were more than eager to settle some scores while replenishing the old coffers.

More importantly, he suggests why the knowledge that “the worst of the worst” were really innocent was no impediment to the continued incarceration and interrogation of these people: an intelligence program called Mosaic, in which even innocents could contribute useful shreds of information--where were the mailboxes on their street?--that could combine with actual intel to paint a broader picture.

That doesn’t explain, however, the case of Abu Zubaydah, known to higher-ups to be wasting time and resources with bogus intel just to stop the horror. Why persist with the charade? Froomkin cites one possible reason:

But according to (author Ron) Suskind, even as Bush was publicly proclaiming Zubaida’s malevolence, he was privately being briefed about doubts within the intelligence community regarding Zubaida’s significance -- and mental stability. Suskind quotes the following exchange between Bush and then-CIA director George Tenet:

“’I said he was important,’ Bush said to Tenet at one of their daily meetings. ‘You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?’

“’No Sir, Mr. President.’”

***

Published on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 by The Progressive

Cheney War Crimes: Just Look at the Statute

by Matthew Rothschild

President Obama needs to tell Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Dick Cheney, right now, for war crimes.

Just look at the statute, Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code, Section 2441. It says that someone is guilty of a war crime if he or she commits a “grave breach of common Article 3” of the Geneva Conventions. And then it defines what a grave breach would be.

One such breach is torture, or the conspiracy to commit torture, which Cheney was clearly in on, as when he repeatedly defended waterboarding and talked about the need to go to the “dark side” Here’s the language from the statute: “The act of a person who commits, or conspires to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.”

For each of these offenses, Cheney could receive life in prison, according to the statute.

That is where he belongs.

And it’s time for Obama to stop pussyfooting around. He should indict, arrest, and prosecute Cheney.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” said Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.), in the preface to the Physicians for Human Rights report, “Broken Laws, Broken Lives”. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

***

Going ‘Inside Iraq’ with alJazeera

by Aimee Kligman | April 4, 2009 - 8:19pm | permalink

Al-Jazeera (AP / CBS) For most Americans, Iraq was finally declared to have been a war of choice rather than necessity, and if one were to believe the polls, the majority of Americans would like to see those who brought this catastrophic conflict onto the US punished.

***

Published on Sunday, April 5, 2009 by The Miami Herald

We Betrayed the Rule of Law for ‘Fool’s Gold’

by Leonard Pitts Jr.

Our story so far:

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, hundreds of men identified as members of al Qaeda were captured and imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There, they were subjected to sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, dehydration, extreme temperatures, waterboarding, being chained to the floor for hours in their own waste, and other so-called ‘’enhanced interrogation’‘ techniques even as the president was assuring the world that we don’t torture because we are America and America doesn’t do that sort of thing.

The president was, of course, lying. And having thus sold our national honor, you might wonder what we received in exchange.

The answer: nothing.

The Post report is but the latest in a litany of revelations all suggesting the same thing: that in the wake of Sept. 11, a frightened nation betrayed one of its core principles -- the rule of law -- for the fool’s gold of security.

We tortured and then rationalized with stark illogic. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that when this debate was at its zenith, proponents, including columnist Cal Thomas, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, defended torture by pointing out how well it seems to work for counterterrorism expert Jack Bauer. One wondered sometimes if they were aware that Jack Bauer is a character on a TV show, 24.

This is what we are learning here, as revelations of Bush-era excesses continue to drip like water upon the stone of public conscience.

People came out of the McCarthy era marveling at how easily fear and paranoia had stampeded us into surrendering principles that are supposed to define us. Mark my words: We will look back on this era the same way.

Once again, we have sold our national honor for fool’s gold. And once again, we will live to rue the deal as fools usually do.

***

The Real Criminals are Neither Lynndie England nor the AIG Traders

by Thom Hartmann | March 23, 2009 - 10:56am | permalink

Whenever a politician or commentator bloviates about the brokers at AIG who are getting bonuses, we should all be remembering Lynndie England and Charles Granger. AIG brokers are to the financial meltdown what England was to the Iraq war.

Certainly she did things that were deplorable. But she thought they were legal (England, operating under orders to “soften up terrorists,” even thought she was helping defend our nation). And to the extent that John Yoo’s memos were law, arguably her actions were legal (although the Bushies never wanted it tested, so threw them to the wolves).

But the important point is that the real criminals of the Iraq War were not those like Lynndie England: they were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld (and their neocon buddies).

***

An American Outrage: Bernie, AIG, and Us

by Walter Brasch | March 23, 2009 - 10:13am | permalink

There have now been more than 4,000 deaths and 30,000 casualties of American military in the war in Iraq. More than 100,000 Iraqis and others, most of them civilian, have also been killed in what is now known to be an unnecessary war. But, we as a nation are not outraged.

We have recently learned that former President Bush and former Vice-President Cheney had authorized the use of torture. But, we as a nation are not outraged.

The Supreme Court has ruled there have been significant and substantial constitutional violations during the Bush-Cheney era. But, we as a nation are not outraged.

***

Go Ahead, Call Me Crazy - But...

by Stephen Pizzo | April 4, 2009 - 10:13am | permalink

This morning flipped on CNN, as I do every morning over my coffee and paper. A live broadcast was already in progress of a live town hall meeting of Obama in France.

Over the last eight years I’ve become so accustomed to cringing in embarrassment whenever our President spoke abroad that I was prepared turn the volume down and read my morning paper, letting the Prez just drone on in the background.

As it turned out, I never even glanced at my paper. From the get go I was riveted.

Fine, go ahead, call me a wuss, a sucker, a dupe. Who knows, maybe time will prove you right.

But for now I am convinced of this; Barack H. Obama is not your father’s Oldsmobile. And he most certainly is no George W. Bush, for which we can all breathe a gigantic sigh of relief.

***

America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout

Chris Hedges, Truthdig: “In decaying societies, politics become theater. The elite, who have hollowed out the democratic system to serve the corporate state, rule through image and presentation. They express indignation at AIG bonuses and empathy with a working class they have spent the last few decades disenfranchising, and make promises to desperate families that they know will never be fulfilled.”

***

Wall St. ticks off the world: Financial crisis, not armed terrorists, greatest threat to U.S. security

by Eric Margolis | April 6, 2009 - 10:18am | permalink

The current international financial disaster brought on by Wall Street has created 25 million unemployed around the globe. People everywhere are mad as hell at both their leaders and America.

U.S. intelligence says this financial crisis, not al-Qaida, is the greatest threat to national security.

***

Regressive Hypocrisy (Yawn...) Again

by David Michael Green | April 4, 2009 - 10:52am | permalink

Hey, what time is it? Does anybody know? Is it one o’clock? Two? Six? Ten?

It doesn’t matter. Whatever time of day it is, there is always one thing you can be assured of. You’ll never have a shortage of regressive hypocrisy on your hands. You’ll never have to deal with painful withdrawal symptoms.

Nobody does hypocrisy like the right in America. Nobody does it more shamelessly, more wantonly, or more promiscuously.

Speaking of which, for example, you can pretty much bet that any right wing freak - whether playing with himself under the clergy’s robes or dressed up in the politician’s suit - any one of them who preaches the loudest about matters of sexual morality is guaranteed to be the most twisted case when the cameras are switched off. Can you say “Ted Haggard”? “Newt Gingrich”? “Larry Craig”? “Wide stance”?

***

It’s a Depression

Robert Reich’s Blog: “We should stop worrying about Wall Street. Worry about American workers.”

***

Sheldon Filger

Writer, Author, Hillary Clinton Nude

Posted April 5, 2009 | 11:43 PM (EST)

U.S. Unemployment Rate Soars to Great Depression Levels

The March unemployment figures released by the U.S. Labor Department indicate that massive job redundancies in the United States are continuing unabated. According to the data, 663,000 jobs vanished in the past month, raising the official national unemployment rate from 8.2% to 8.5%, a level not seen since 1983. The Labor Departments statistics show that job losses occurred in all sectors of the U.S. economy: white and blue collar, manufacturing and service sectors, private and public arenas.

Since the current recession officially commenced in December of 2007, more than five million Americans have joined the ranks of the unemployed.

However, as bad as the official statistics clearly are, the underlying reality is actually much worse. For one thing, the Labor Department no longer includes “discouraged” workers in its unemployment figures. In addition, the underemployed are also excluded. This latter category reflects the somber reality that millions of Americans have been forced out of full-time employment, and can only find part-time jobs with much lower salaries and benefits. When these missing pieces to the unemployment picture are aggregated, the actual unemployment rate in the United States is a staggering 15.6%, which fits in the mid-range of the unemployment rates that the U.S. encountered during the years of the Great Depression.

***

Washington Post Elitists Feel for Their Wall St. Brethren

by Robert Parry | March 23, 2009 - 9:57am | permalink

One interesting trait of elitists is that they show remarkable class solidarity, often more so than people of lesser means. Which may help explain why the Washington Post’s editorial writers penned three editorials last week decrying the populist outrage over the AIG bonuses.

Yes, the Post gave a nod of understanding to why the American people are furious over the idea of giving $165 million in bonuses to executives in the American International Group’s financial products division after that bunch helped set in motion the economic catastrophe which is driving millions of people around the world out of their jobs and homes and into poverty and despair.

***

The Real Crime in the Bailout - Naked CDS Deals

by Cenk Uygur | March 27, 2009 - 9:33am | permalink

The size of our national economy this year is roughly $15 trillion. The size of the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) market is $64 trillion. The whole world GDP is about $56 trillion. How could the CDS market be larger than the world GDP combined? That doesn’t make any sense.

***

What Ails America? Giving 20% of Our Money to the Rich

by Paul Buchheit

Many people object to any ‘redistribution’ of income through taxes, because that, in their view, is socialist. It penalizes hard work and success, and it stifles the spirit of innovation.

But a great redistribution of wealth has already occurred, in the other direction. From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America nearly tripled their after-tax percentage of our nation’s income, while the bottom 90% has seen their share drop over 20%.

That’s TRIPLED, AFTER-TAX.

Either one and a half million rich people started working 3 times harder or we’ve experienced a redistribution of wealth not seen since the Great Depression.

Based on recent data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the total of all state and local taxes, social security taxes, and excise taxes (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco) consumes 21% of the annual incomes of the poorest half of America. For the richest 1% of Americans, the same taxes consume 7% of their incomes.

Internal Revenue Service figures show that almost half of our country’s income goes to the richest 10% of Americans (those making at least $283,000 a year). The distribution of wealth is even more skewed, with the richest 1% of Americans owning more than the poorest 90%.

Innovative, industrious business leaders certainly deserve to be well-compensated for their efforts. But even Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, realized that the wealthy benefit most from a strong economy, which we’ve had for most of the past 25 years. He recognized that reasonable limits must be in place to curb abuses. A progressive income tax is the best way to do this, no matter how much yelling we hear from the top.

***

In light of CEO’s pay, sparks should fly over electric-rate increases

Thomas Suddes, Columbus Dispatch

Sunday, April 5, 2009 7:09 AM

The average Ohio consumer is paying 6 percent more for electricity than a year ago, but, hey, somebody has to keep electriccompany fat cats purring.

Yet over roughly the same year, the Consumer Price Index didn’t rise 6 percent. It rose one-thirtieth as much - 0.2 percent.

But Ohio electric bills don’t track price-inflation. Instead, they track regulation (that’s what they call it in Columbus, anyway) by the PUCO. And based on federal filings, Ohio rates make living easy for electric-utility bosses.

Consider FirstEnergy Corp., the Akron octopus whose tentacles include the Illuminating, Ohio Edison and Toledo Edison companies, plus New Jersey and Pennsylvania electric utilities. According to a stock proxy filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, FirstEnergy in 2008 paid President and Chief Executive Officer Anthony J. Alexander about $1.33 million in salary. But that was just part of his compensation, a package worth about $13.45 million all told, including “financial planning and tax preparation services . . . country club dues . . . holiday gifts . . . entertainment tickets to cultural events” and more than $93,000 worth of personal use of First-Energy planes.
The median income of Ohio households, according to the Census, is $46,645: Half of Ohio households receive income greater than $46,645; half receive income less than that. At $46,645, what FirstEnergy pays Alexander could support 287 Ohio households. FirstEnergy instead supports 16 Statehouse lobbyists.

***

When will justice be served on all the Mini-Madoffs still running free?

by Alan Bisbort | March 19, 2009 - 10:23am | permalink

The thing most striking to me about the Bernard Madoff case was how quickly he confessed guilt for his $65 billion scam. From the moment he was caught, Madoff admitted he was running a Ponzi scheme; he almost seemed relieved to be free of it, and yet perversely proud at its sheer size.

With his assets, he could have dragged this thing out for years, the way the Enron crooks did. Indeed, because Ken Lay died while his case was on appeal, his conviction was “abated,” which means that, in the eyes of the law, he was never tried. Therefore, his wife, the equally crooked Linda Lay — who sold half a million shares of Enron 10 minutes before the company’s collapse went public — gets to keep all the stolen loot.

***

Pension insurer shifted to stocks

Concern increases as losses mount; Failing plans could overwhelm agency

By Michael Kranish

Globe Staff / March 30, 2009

WASHINGTON - Just months before the start of last year’s stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks.

Switching from a heavy reliance on bonds, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation decided to pour billions of dollars into speculative investments such as stocks in emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.

The agency refused to say how much of the new investment strategy has been implemented or how the fund has fared during the downturn. The agency would only say that its fund was down 6.5 percent - and all of its stock-related investments were down 23 percent - as of last Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year. But that was before most of the recent stock market decline and just before the investment switch was scheduled to begin in earnest.

No statistics on the fund’s subsequent performance were released.

Nonetheless, analysts expressed concern that large portions of the trust fund might have been lost at a time when many private pension plans are suffering major losses. The guarantee fund would be the only way to cover the plans if their companies go into bankruptcy.

“The truth is, this could be huge,” said Zvi Bodie, a Boston University finance professor who in 2002 advised the agency to rely almost entirely on bonds. “This has the potential to be another several hundred billion dollars. If the auto companies go under, they have huge unfunded liabilities” in pension plans that would be passed on to the agency.

In addition, Peter Orszag, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, has “serious concerns” about the agency, according to an Obama administration spokesman.

Last year, as director of the Congressional Budget Office, Orszag expressed alarm that the agency was “investing a greater share of its assets in risky securities,” which he said would make it “more likely to experience a decline in the value of its portfolio during an economic downturn the point at which it is most likely to have to assume responsibility for a larger number of underfunded pension plans.”

However, Charles E.F. Millard, the former agency director who implemented the strategy until the Bush administration departed on Jan. 20, dismissed such concerns. Millard, a former managing director of Lehman Brothers, said flatly that “the new investment policy is not riskier than the old one.”

***

Madoff to Help U.S. Sell Bad Assets: Legendary Swindler Pressed into Service

by Andy Borowitz | March 23, 2009 - 9:15am | permalink

The Obama administration, hoping to find investors to buy $1 trillion worth of so-called “toxic” assets from U.S. financial institutions, has turned to confessed swindler Bernie Madoff to mastermind the sales campaign.

While White House officials acknowledged that joining forces with the jail-bound scam artist was likely to raise some eyebrows, privately they are hoping that when it comes to selling bad assets to investors, the “Madoff magic” will carry the day.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said on CNN last night. “If anyone can convince investors to buy a worthless piece of paper, it’s Bernie Madoff.”

***

Borowitz April 5, 2009

Jim Cramer Declares Depression Over; Millions Panic

‘Run for Your Lives,’ Heard on Wall Street

CNBC financial pundit Jim Cramer declared the global depression “over” on his “Mad Money” program on Thursday, causing widespread panic around the world and sparking the largest stock sell-off in history.

Just moments after Mr. Cramer delivered his upbeat prediction, stock prices went into an epic free-fall unprecedented in the annals of modern trading as millions of investors rushed for the exits.

“Cramer says the depression is over!” one Wall Street trader was heard shouting on the NYSE floor. “Run for your lives!”

Carol Foyler, an equities analyst for Morgan Stanley, said that Mr. Cramer’s optimistic prediction “confirmed all of our darkest fears.”

“These are very scary times on Wall Street,” Ms. Foyler said. “This news from Jim Cramer may have been the last nail in the coffin.”

Seemingly oblivious to the panic he had caused, Mr. Cramer appeared on his program again on Friday and predicted that North Korea would never launch a long-range missile.

“Folks, I’m telling you, there’s no way that missile will be launched,” he said. “You heard it here first!”

***

Evening At The Tucker Carlson Improv

by Steve Young | March 23, 2009 - 9:07am | permalink

“To call me a partisan hack is ludicrous. I am the least partisan person I know.”

- Tucker Carlson, (CNN’s Reliable Sources, 3/15/09)

And they say that conservatives don’t know satire. Oh, excuse me. Carlson is a Libertarian. A Libertarian is a conservative who wants to do standup. I know. I am the criminal behind the stand up comedy of Libertarian presidential candidate, Bob Barr.

As part of his attempted comeback to pundit hilarity, the fired CNN co-host, fired MSNBC host, Tucker Carlson has hit the political cable and news circuit with a hysterical routine on Jon Stewart’s take on CNBC’s (and media-in-general) lack of oversight of big business and the stock market.

***

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/real-republican-road-to-recovery.html

3.26.2009

The Real Republican Road to Recovery

by Nate Silver @ 8:13 PM

Share This Content

The Republican “Road to Recovery” budget alternative, rolled out today by John Boehner, has been criticized by left and right for its lack of specificity and its promise to eliminate the national debt while significantly cutting taxes. FiveThirtyEight.com, however, has received an advance copy of additional details prepared by the Minority Leader’s office. Although some elements of the proposal are still under discussion -- Eric Cantor is said to want to eliminate North Dakota rather than Idaho, while Thaddeus McCotter has suggested using the balance of TARP funds to purchase scratch-off tickets -- the final plan can be expected to contain most or all of these components.

***

WATCH Letterman Tells O’Reilly: “I Think Of You As A Goon”

***

Insane Republicans Reveal An Insane Budget Plan

Bob Cesca, 04.01.2009

Political Author, Blogger, and New Media Producer

Congratulations, Republicans, you just released a budget that rewards wealthy corporate executives while blocking any attempt to dig us out of the economic catastrophe they created. Smart!

***

THIS IS NOT A PARODY

House GOP Offers More Detailed Alternative Budget Plan

Revision Proposes Deep Tax Cuts and Slash in Medicare, Medicaid Programs

By Lori Montgomery

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 1, 2009; 2:37 PM

After getting blasted last week for presenting a budget plan light on details, House Republicans today unveiled a more complete proposal that would cut taxes for business and the wealthy, freeze most government spending for five years, halt spending approved in the economic stimulus package and slash federal health programs for the poor and elderly . . .

☞ Slashing health care for the poor and elderly is a no-brainer – it’s what Jesus would have done.

***

Go back into hiding, GOP begs Dick Cheney

By Molly K. Hooper

Posted: 03/23/09 08:10 PM [ET]

Congressional Republicans are telling Dick Cheney to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input.

Displeased with the former vice-president’s recent media appearances, Republican lawmakers say he’s hurting GOP efforts to reinvent itself after back-to-back electoral drubbings.

Published on Thursday, April 2, 2009 by Salon.com

Endless Right-Wing Self-Pity

by Glenn Greenwald

The predominant attribute of the right-wing movement is self-victimizing petulance over the unfair treatment to which they are endlessly and mercilessly subjected. Last week, C-SPAN broadcast a Commentary Magazine event that almost certainly set a record for most tough-guy/warrior nepotism ever stuffed onto a single panel, as it featured William Kristol (son of Irv and Gertrude), John Podhoretz (son of Norm and Midge), and Jonah Goldberg (son of Lucianne). Jihadis around the world are undoubtedly still trembling at the sight of this brigade of Churchillian toughness.

Exemplifying the deeply self-pitying theme of the entire discussion, Jonah continuously insisted that conservative magazines are so very, very important to the political landscape -- indispensably so -- because conservative voices are frozen out of mainstream media venues by The Liberal Media, so that poor, lonely, stigmatized conservatives can only get right-wing opinion in places like Weekly Standard and National Review. In between Jonah’s petulant laments about how conservative opinion cannot be heard in The Mainstream Media, Bill Kristol talked about his New York Times column and his Washington Post column, John Podhoretz told stories about his tenure editing The New York Post Editorial Page and Charles Krauthammer’s years of writing a column for Time and The New Republic, and Jonah referenced his Los Angeles Times column. None of them ever recognized the gaping disparity between those facts and their woe-is-us whining about conservative voices like theirs being shut out of The Liberal Media. So important in conservative mythology is self-victimization that they maintain it even as they themselves unwittingly provide the facts which disprove it.

***

Stephen Colbert Rips Apart Glenn Beck: Building His Career On 9/11 (VIDEO)

Stephen Colbert ripped apart Fox News host (and New York Times cover boy) Glenn Beck Tuesday night, mocking his 9-12 project, meant to conjure the spirit of compassion and camaraderie Americans felt on September 12, 2001.

“We weren’t told how to behave that day after 9/11, we just knew,” Beck says to describe the project. “It was right, it was the opposite of what we feel today. Are you ready to be the person you were that day after 9/11, on 9/12?”

“Ready!” Colbert shouted, decked out in a gas mask, holding a gun, and wearing adult diapers.

Colbert then used a classic “Daily Show” tactic, exposing the hypocrisy of Beck’s 9-12 project by highlighting comments he made on September 9, 2005.

“This is horrible to say, and I wonder if I’m alone in this,” Beck said on his radio program that day, “you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims’ families? I don’t hate all of them. I hate probably about 10 of them. But when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I’m just like, ‘Oh, shut up!’ I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining. And we did our best for them.”

“The 9-12 project is not for families directly affected by 9/11, just people building their careers on it,” Colbert said.

***

Mark Nickolas

Managing Editor, PoliticalBase.com

Posted April 1, 2009 | 03:50 PM (EST)

Once Again, Real Journalism From Comedy Central (VIDEO)

Leave it to Comedy Central -- this time Stephen Colbert -- to do the traditional media’s job in exposing the fanatical charlatans like Glenn Beck, just as Jon Stewart masterfully dismantled CNBC last month:

Have you thought about how amazing it is that a great deal of the recent turnaround in America’s political fortunes over the past five years, and leading up to Barack Obama’s candidacy, can be traced to the exceptionally effective work of...two comedians (Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert), a former sportscaster (Keith Olbermann), a former right-wing journalist (David Brock), a former Republican activist and author (Arianna Huffington), a dedicated group of Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans (Jon Soltz, Paul Reickhoff, Brandon Friedman), a number of former Republican White House officials (Richard Clarke, John Dean), a group of fearless bloggers (Markos Moulitsas, Josh Marshall), two unsuccessful presidential candidates (Howard Dean and Wes Clark), a number of very committed activist groups (CREW, Center for American Progress, MoveOn, Sunlight Foundation), and the man who should have been president (Al Gore)?

It was only through their efforts that we learned of, and then challenged, the true agenda (often illegal) of the Bush Administration, the feckless media who were too scared of challenging our government, and an uninspiring Democratic Party that was too nervous about pissing-off its big donors instead of looking out for rank-and-file Democrats. Only then were candidates like Barack Obama able to step onto the main stage, generate meaningful grassroots excitement and support, and hundreds of millions of dollars in small-dollar donations, and be able to win the presidency as well as electing an impressive group of Senators (like Jim Webb) and Representatives (too many to name) who have given us hope that we will get our country back on path sooner rather than later.

It’s for this reason that I don’t shed tears -- even though I really should -- when I see the implosion of the traditional media. Sadly, the number of lackluster reporters and editors and journalists are quickly overshadowing the truly fine ones while casting a pall over the whole field to the point where we no longer trust the media to be the relentless watchdog they once were. Sadly, instead of cultivating more journalists like Bill Moyers we’re forced to accept the tabloid hackery of Politico, not to mention the propaganda outfits like Fox News, or those entities which happily promote its never-ending, self-serving conflicts of interest like CNBC.

Instead, I’m truly grateful that we’ve had this organic uprising of the most unlikely and unconnected people, who began their work outside the formal political and media establishments, who have provided the desperately needed leadership to stop our country’s slide into damaging right-wing orthodoxy and hypocrisy, and allow us to begin the process of fixing the horrific damage they have caused -- domestically and internationally -- and restoring America’s role as a moral leader of the world and a country that tries to lead by example.

We’ve got a long, long way to go, but I’m often reminded -- like with Colbert’s incredible takedown of the clownish Glenn Beck and the election of Barack Obama -- that we’re making real progress.

Mark Nickolas is the Managing Editor of Political Base, and this story was from his original post, “Once Again, Real Journalism From Comedy Central”

***

Greg Mitchell

Author, ‘Why Obama Won’

Posted April 1, 2009 | 10:30 AM (EST)

Colbert Went Where the New York Times Feared to Tread on Glenn Beck

Was it another Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer takedown? Another case of a faux newsman going where the mainstream media dared not go?

It was shocking last night to watch the usually pro-right-wing Colbert persona lay into Beck without an ounce of sympathy. It came just one day after the New York Times’ front page profile of Beck that failed to fully air his dirty laundry and mainly treated him as just another popular entertainer.

***

Lionel

lionel@airamerica.com

Posted April 1, 2009 | 01:13 PM (EST)

The Genius of Glenn Beck

“I’m a rodeo clown,” says Glenn Beck. No, this man’s a genius. And, no, Glenn, you’re no rodeo clown. The rodeo clown causes a diversion when a bull threatens a downed rider. The rodeo clown’s not the star. The circus clown is a more apt description. You’re a clown, and I say that with all due respect. The New York Times reports it. “Fox News’s Mad, Apocalyptic, Tearful Rising Star.” Genius.

“While Mr. O’Reilly, the 8 p.m. host, paints himself as the outsider and Mr. Hannity, at 9, is more consistently ideological, Mr. Beck presents himself as a revivalist in a troubled land.” Translation: characters. Shtick. Professional wrestling. All heel, no babyface. And get ready, you will see a surge of “conservative” talk like you’ve never seen. A Democratic House and Senate and a Black President?! Their worst nightmare converts to media overkill.

Enter Beck. His masterful creation of this crazed, lachrymating doomsayer is brilliant. And only he can do it. You have to dispossess your self of self-dignity and restraint in order to pull this con off. O’Reilly comes close when he loses it. Remember his piece with Barney Frank? Jeremy Glick? But, even then Bill doesn’t channel his inner maniac and close the nut deal. Beck does it in spades. Even Hannity can’t come close. Sean’s trying to act even professorial compared to these guys. He’s a political future to think of. Mark my words.

But Glenn Beck does it all.

***

RETIRED MARINE GENERAL QUESTIONS OBAMA

He and others dispute the need to study it any further: the nation will be stronger if its gay and lesbian citizens are allowed to serve openly. (“Dr. Laura Miller, a well-respected military sociologist who co-authored a study with the late Charles Moskos, author of the gay ban, said, ‘you don’t need a commission to tell you that you need to retain every able, trained, experienced and productive member at a time when both the stakes and the manpower needs are high.’”) Five years ago, 91% of people aged 18-29 supported allowing gays to serve openly. The number is likely even higher today.

***

Family Planning - Republican advice to America’s women: stop having sex

by Alan Bisbort | February 5, 2009 - 11:00am | permalink

Last week, the Republicans rose up on their hind legs and stood, as one unanimous bloc, against affordable contraception for the nation’s women. That’s a sizeable group of potential voters for the GOP to permanently alienate, but far be it from me to offer any advice to a drowning party other than: toss it an anvil.

***

Military rape reports rise, prosecution still low

ANNE GEARAN | March 17, 2009 06:19 PM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — More people came forward to report sexual assaults in the military last year, but a significant percentage wouldn’t give crucial details needed for an investigation.

The Pentagon said it received 2,923 reports of sexual assault across the military in the 12 months ending Sept. 30 2008. That’s about a 9 percent increase over the totals reported the year before, but only a fraction of the crimes presumably being committed.

Among the cases reported, only a small number went to military courts, officials acknowledged.

The Pentagon office that collects the data estimates that only 10 percent to 20 percent of sexual assaults among members of the active duty military are reported _ a figure similar to estimates of reported cases in the civilian sphere.

***

Healthcare Foxes are Building the Taxpayer Funded Hen House

by Donna Smith | March 23, 2009 - 9:25am | permalink

If we want to know who is truly at the helm of our national healthcare reform effort, all we need to do is keep watching who is asked to provide official testimony and guidance to Congress and who is left out completely. Those decisions are made at the highest levels in our government and the choices are purposeful and meant to illicit just the information that will bolster a predetermined outcome.

***

Out-of-Network Insurance Practices Face Scrutiny

Erica Werner, The Associated Press: “Ever wonder how that bill was calculated if you had to pay to see a doctor outside your insurance network? Might be a scam, says a senator investigating the issue.”

***

Insurance Industry is Simply a Parasite on the US Health System

by Dave Lindorff | March 26, 2009 - 9:16am

As the country contemplates a major reform and restructuring of the way we run our national health care system (if it can even be called that), it needs to be pointed out that the mammoth health insurance industry is nothing but a parasite on that system.

Health insurance companies add zero value to the delivery of health care. Indeed, they are a significant cost factor that sucks up, according to some estimates such as one by the organization Physicians for a National Health Program, as much as 31 percent of every dollar spent on medical services (a percentage that has been rising steadily year after year).

***

Healthcare Reform Vital, US Health Agency Says
***

Uwe Reinhardt: Hidden Costs Of Health Care

Listen Now [30 min 25 sec] add to playlist

Fresh Air from WHYY, March 11, 2009 ∙ Economist Uwe Reinhardt joins Fresh Air to discuss the hidden costs of the health-care bureaucracy.

Reinhardt is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and a Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He has been a member of the Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences since 1978. He has served on the editorial boards of many publications, including the Journal of Health Economics, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“The fact is that for the bottom half of the income distribution in America, social health insurance is the only solution.”

***

How Insurers Blacklist Millions With Common Ailments

John Dorschner, The Miami Herald: “Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You’ll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied. Do you take metformin, a popular drug for diabetes? Denied. Use the anti-clotting drug Plavix or Seroquel, prescribed for anti-psychotic or sleep problems? Forget about it. This confidential information on some insurers’ practices is available on the Web -- if you know where to look.”

***

Study: 37 Percent of Californians Without Health Insurance at Some Point

Rong-Gong Lin II, The Los Angeles Times: “More than one out of three California residents went without health insurance at least at some point in the last two years, according to a health advocacy group’s analysis of US Census Bureau data.”

***

More Senior Citizens Forced to Declare Bankruptcy

Ana Veciana-Suarez, The Miami Herald: “Hit hard by the slumping economy and surviving on fixed incomes, senior citizens have experienced the sharpest increase in bankruptcy filings. In 2007, Americans 55 and older accounted for 23 percent of the more than one million Americans who filed for bankruptcy, a threefold increase from 1991, according to a recent AARP study.”

***

Our Foreign Rivals Don’t Face These Health Care Costs

Richard Parker, The Modesto Bee: “You’ve heard the naysayers complaining that President Barack Obama’s $634 billion down payment on health care reform costs too much. We’re in a global economic crisis, they say. How can we afford it? But, having opposed reform for years, in good times and bad, their argument for leaving our health care system broken doesn’t compute. By looking at costs but not benefits, they pretend not to know what the advantage of health care reform really is - and why it’s a major benefit to us all.”

***

Health Care’s Year

E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post: “Yes, this is the year Congress will finally give every American access to health insurance. Getting there won’t be pretty. But for the first time since the passage of Medicare in the 1960s, the forces favoring action on health-care reform are stronger than the forces of cynicism and obstruction.”

***

More progress from progressives-- perhaps more of these economic and medical opportunities can now evolve in the US:

Page last updated at 23:58 GMT, Wednesday, 1 April 2009 00:58 UK

Stem cell ‘deafness cure’ closer

Inner ear cells could be replaced

Stem cells that could be used to restore hearing have been successfully created, scientists have said.

A Sheffield University team took stem cells from embryos and converted them into cells that behave like sensory hair cells in the human inner ear.

***

Getting Well

by William Rivers Pitt | February 18, 2009 - 10:16am | permalink

“In the beginning there is the stem cell; it is the origin of an organism’s life. It is a single cell that can give rise to progeny that differentiate into any of the specialized cells of embryonic or adult tissues.”

- Stewart Sell, M.D., Senior Scientist, Ordway Research Institute

***

A Real Stem-Cell Twister

by Stephen Pizzo | March 11, 2009 - 12:21pm | permalink

So, Obama reverses Bush’s ban on funding fetal stem cell research and the religious right (along with the sycophantic pols whose only vote-getting trick is to pander to them) came out of the woodwork.

***

Our Common Purpose

Pat Williams, Truthout: “For almost fifty years, we Americans held common purpose with our government. From the early 1930’s and Franklin D. Roosevelt through seven presidents, people believed that aggressive government made a positive difference in their lives. That belief was shared by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Eisenhower created the massive, job-producing interstate highway system; Nixon enacted vigorous federal wage and price controls to slow near-rampant inflation, encouraged the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and clean air and water; Ford, in his shortened term, vigorously negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty - SALT II. Under Democratic Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Carter, Americans embraced federal efforts from The New Deal through The New Frontier.”

***

Boom Times for Criminal Syndicates

Global Crime Wave? A Syndrome of Crime, Violence and Repression on the Way

by Tom Engelhardt | April 6, 2009 - 9:57am | permalink

— from TomDispatch

Last Wednesday, the front page of the Wall Street Journal pulled no punches. The lead headline was: “Global Slump Seen Deepening.” (”The outlook for the global economy worsened on the eve of a summit of the world’s 20 biggest economic powers…”) A chart just beneath that headline, labeled “Gloomier Outlook” and showing World Bank economic projections, was nothing short of dramatic. The graph line for world trade simply plunged off a visual cliff and, like an arrow heading for a target, went straight down. The last paragraph of the piece quoted World Bank President Robert Zoellick this way: “In London, Washington, and Paris, people talk of bonuses or no bonuses. In parts of Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, the struggle is for food or no food.”

“In all catastrophes, there are always winners among the host of losers and victims. Bad times, like good ones, generate profits for someone. In the case of the present global economic meltdown, with our world at the brink and up to 50 million people potentially losing their jobs by the end of this year, one winner is likely to be criminal activity and crime syndicates. From Mexico to Africa, Russia to China, the pool of the desperate and the bribable is expanding exponentially, pointing to a sharp upturn in global crime.”

***

Supremely Confident Predictions

Published on March 25, 2009

The President is doing exactly what he should, setting us on a hopeful long-term path with . . .

· an energy direction that will make us more efficient, more competitive, more prosperous, more secure, lower our balance of trade deficit and help to keep our planet habitable

· a health care direction that will make us more efficient, more competitive, more prosperous, and help to keep us healthier

· an education direction that will give our kids, and thus our country, the competitive skills to prosper in a global economy

. . . and accelerating embryonic stem cell research, and lifting the global gag order, and signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and treating with respect those who disagree with these and other initiatives.

The Republicans are quite sure the President’s approach is a disaster. But how is that any different from the last go-round?

It was “the economy, Stupid” in 1992. And again – only worse – in 2008.

An outgoing George Bush each time . . . and in incoming Democrat whose first budget received nearly unanimous Republican scorn.

Clinton’s first budget got not a single Republican vote in the House or the Senate – not one – and met with supremely confident Republican predictions of failure.

Thanks to Peter Stolz for collecting some of them:

Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), CNN, 8/2/93:

Clearly this is a job killer in the short run. The revenues forecast for this budget will not materialize; the costs of this budget will be greater than what is forecast. The deficit will be worse, and it is not a good omen for the American economy.

[Nope – this budget set the nation on a course toward job growth, deficit reduction, and unprecedented prosperity.]

Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), GOP Press Conference, House TV Gallery, 8/5/93:

I believe this will lead to a recession next year. This is the Democrat machine’s recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable.

[Nope, no recession – recovery.]

Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH), 5/27/93:

The votes we will take today will not be soon forgotten by the American voter. (They) will lead to more taxes, higher inflation, and slower economic growth.

[Nope – lower inflation, faster growth.]

Rep. Jim Bunning (R-KY), 8/5/93:

It will not cut the deficit. It will not create jobs. And it will not cut spending.

[Nope – it did create jobs, did cut the deficit.]

Rep. Robert Michel (R-IL), Los Angeles Times, 5/28/93:

They will remember who let loose this deadly virus into our economic bloodstream.

[Really?]

Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), CNN, 7/28/93:

This plan will not work. If it was to work, then I’d have to become a Democrat...

[It worked. Kasich remained a Republican.]

Rep. Robert Dornan (R-CA), 8/5/93:

The problem with our economy is that there is too little employment and too little growth. This plan will do nothing to improve that condition and will actually make it worse.

[Nope – just the opposite.]

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA), 5/27/93:

This is really the Dr. Kevorkian plan for our economy.

[Nope.]

Rep. Thomas Ewing (R-IL), 8/5/93:

...This bill is a disaster waiting to happen.

[Nope.]

Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-MN), 3/17/93:

...will stifle economic growth, destroy jobs, reduce revenues, and increase the deficit.

[Nope.]

Rep. Phil Crane (R-IL), 3/18/93:

...a recipe for economic and fiscal disaster.

[Nope.]

Rep. Clifford Stearns (R-FL), 3/17/93:

...It will be the kind of impact that this country can’t absorb. It will slow economic growth, contribute to the massive federal deficit....

[Nope.]

Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO), 8/4/93:

...It will raise your taxes, increase the deficit, and kill over one million jobs.

[Nope.]

PeterStolz: “The Republicans’ dire predictions were completely and totally wrong then just as they are now. Today’s predictions are those of a party that drags out the same old mantra and dogma no matter how many times their predictions prove to be the exact opposite of what actually happened.”

☞ Hear, hear. Pass it on.

***

Expert: Global Recession Could Be Time to Reverse ‘the Culture of Consumerism’
***

Paul Krugman | America the Tarnished

***

The End of Greed Conservatism

by Brent Budowsky | April 4, 2009 - 9:07am | permalink

One striking truth to emerge from the Group of 20 meeting is the growing triumph, among global conservatives, of an enlightened form of conservatism and the isolation, defeat and coming end of the Republican style of greed-based conservatism. Compare Harper of Canada, Merkel of Germany and Sarkozy of France with Republicans in Congress, Palin of Alaska and Jindal of Louisana.

Harper, Merkel and Sarkozy are conservatives, from conservative parties, with conservative philosophies. Yet they all favor strong new regulation to prevent the greed rampages that have gripped Wall Street. They all favor strong forms of national health insurance. They all favor major new action to combat global warming. They all favor a strong safety net to help the poor.

***

Corruption in America’s Banks?

Bill Moyers Journal: “The financial industry brought the economy to its knees, but how did they get away with it? With the nation wondering how to hold the bankers accountable, Bill Moyers sits down with Bill Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980’s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout. Also, Bill Moyers talks with alternative media heavyweights Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman about what can and can’t be addressed in big corporate media.”

***

Hooray for Juries: Ordinary Folks Once Again Defeat the System

by Dave Lindorff | April 4, 2009 - 9:14am | permalink

A group of 6 ordinary people in a Colorado courtroom saw through the McCarthyite political tactics of the University of Colorado officials and Colorado politicians who conducted a witch hunt against tenured professor and long-time Native American activist Ward Churchill, saying with remarkable clarity and sense that he never would have had his tenure revoked and been fired by the university had it not been for his unapologetic left-wing politics and writings.

It was an enormous victory for academic freedom and for the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech.

***

Iowa’s Supreme Court came down unanimously in favor of marriage last week – 6-0.

Thanks to today’s decision, Iowa continues to be a leader in guaranteeing all of our citizens’ equal rights.
The court has ruled today that when two Iowans promise to share their lives together, state law will respect that commitment, regardless of whether the couple is gay or straight.
When all is said and done, we believe the only lasting question about today’s events will be why it took us so long. It is a tough question to answer because treating everyone fairly is really a matter of Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency.
Today, the Iowa Supreme Court has reaffirmed those Iowa values by ruling that gay and lesbian Iowans have all the same rights and responsibilities of citizenship as any other Iowan.
Iowa has always been a leader in the area of civil rights.
In 1839, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected slavery in a decision that found that a slave named Ralph became free when he stepped on Iowa soil, 26 years before the end of the Civil War decided the issue.
In 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated “separate but equal” schools had no place in Iowa, 85 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.
In 1873, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against racial discrimination in public accommodations, 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.
In 1869, Iowa became the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law.
In the case of recognizing loving relationships between two adults, the Iowa Supreme Court is once again taking a leadership position on civil rights.
Today, we congratulate the thousands of Iowans who now can express their love for each other and have it recognized by our laws.

☞ The Majority Leader and Speaker are both Democrats. The Republican House and Senate leader both expressed “disappointment” over the ruling. (It is not known how their counterparts responded to the rulings in 1839, 1868, 1869, and 1873.)

***

Go Hawkeyes!

by Brady Bonk | April 3, 2009 - 11:52pm | permalink

I’m not sure if I’m happier about the decision in Iowa today regarding gay marriage because it’s another plodding step toward justice in these Untied States or because it makes me right. I’m like that; I’m an opinionated bastard who loves when developments make me right.

I’ve been saying this for years, that the courts are simply going to have to come around on gay marriage. They have to. Not because they love or hate homosexuals. Not because of politics, or culture, or “God.” But because of the law.

The striking thing about the decision of the Iowa Supreme Court is that it so frankly bears this out. The court simply said that the Iowa law defining “marriage” as “between a man and a woman” denied equal protection and therefore was unconstitutional.

***

Thomas Frank | Lock ‘em Up: Jailing Kids is a Proud American Tradition

***

Commodifying Kids: The Forgotten Crisis

Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: “As the United States and the rest of the world enter into an economic free fall, the current crisis offers an opportunity not only to question the politics of free-market fundamentalism, the dominance of economics over politics, and the subordination of justice to the laws of finance and the accumulation of capital, but also the ways in which children’s culture has been corrupted by rampant commercialization, commodification and consumption.”

***

Recession Alters College Admission Process

Russ Mitchell, CBS News: “The economic crisis has left students and parents wondering more than ever about being able to afford the cost of a four year college education - and that has radically changed the pattern of college applications.”

***

Lessons of the Exxon Valdez

March 22, 2009

Tuesday marks the 20th anniversary of one of this country’s great ecological disasters. The Exxon Valdez slammed into Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil, damaging 1,300 miles of shoreline, disrupting the livelihoods of thousands of Americans and fouling one of the country’s richest fishing grounds.

More than $2 billion has been spent on cleanup and recovery. Exxon has paid at least $1 billion in damages. Supertankers have been made safer with double hulls, emergency teams given better equipment. Some fish species, though not all, have recovered.

Yet the Exxon Valdez still sends a powerful cautionary message: oil development, however necessary, is an inherently risky, dirty business _ especially so in the forbidding waters of the Arctic.

***

Stick Your Damn Hand In It: 20th Birthday of the Exxon Valdez Lie

by Greg Palast | March 24, 2009 - 9:48am | permalink

“Gail, Please! Stick your hand in it!”

The petite Eskimo-Chugach woman gave me that you-dumb-ass-white-boy look.

“Gail, Gail. STICK YOUR DAMN HAND IN IT!”

She stuck it in, under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay, her village’s fishing ground. Gail’s hand came up dripping with black, sickening goo. It could make you vomit. Oil from the Exxon Valdez.

It was already two years after the spill and Exxon had crowed that Mother Nature had happily cleaned up their stinking oil mess for them. It was a lie. But the media wouldn’t question the bald-faced bullshit. And who the hell was going to investigate Exxon’s claim way out in some godforsaken Native village in the Prince William Sound?

***

Cracking the Corporate Media’s Iron Curtain Around Death at Three Mile Island

Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press: “Take National Public Radio’s Scott Simon. On March 28, Simon smirked on air that ‘no one was killed or injured’ at Three Mile Island, ‘not so much as a sprained ankle.’ Except when people are fleeing them, as they did 30 years ago, radiation releases have never been linked directly to joint sprains. But cancer, leukemia, birth defects, stillbirths, malformations, spontaneous abortions, skin lesions, hair loss, respiratory problems, sterility, nausea, cataracts, a metallic taste, premature aging, general loss of bodily function and more can be caused by radioactive emissions of the type that poured out of TMI. And all such ailments have been documented there OUTside the corporate media.”

***

Winds of Change Evident in US Environmental Policy

Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post: “After years of chafing under political appointees who viewed stricter environmental regulation with skepticism, long-serving federal officials are seeing work that had been gathering dust for years translate quickly into action.”

***

Ice-Free Arctic Ocean Possible in 30 Years, Not 90 as Previously Estimated

ScienceDaily: “A nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer may happen three times sooner than scientists have estimated. New research says the Arctic might lose most of its ice cover in summer in as few as 30 years instead of the end of the century.”

***

Antarctic Ice Shelf In Peril as Bridge Snaps

Michael Vincent, ABC News: “The Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica is in the final stages of collapse and scientists are concerned the event shows climate change is happening faster than previously thought.”

***

Ecological Emergency

In Le Nouvel Observateur, Guillaume Malaurie interviews European Parliament deputy and Green Party co-president Daniel Cohn-Bendit along with sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin. Cohn-Bendit says, “The response to the conjunction of economic, financial, social and environmental crises cannot be handled in segments, but must be met with an integrated strategy.”

***

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/feb/global.html

Winter Eighth Warmest on Record (91 comments) ...

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the ninth warmest on record for February and the eighth warmest for boreal winter (December-February) and the January-February year-to-date period.

***

Water: Commodity or human right?

by Mary Shaw | March 22, 2009 - 7:42am | permalink

I am writing this on March 22, World Water Day. And I am thinking about how spoiled we Americans are. We use and abuse our natural resources without giving it a second thought.

But our recklessness could soon turn around to bite us -- and the rest of the world.

***

Out West, a New Kind of Water War

DeeDee Correll, The Los Angeles Times: “In rural Chaffee County, Colorado, one of the world’s largest beverage companies has discovered water it deems fit for a bottle: clean and crisp, with the mountain spring flavor people are willing to pay for. Nestle Waters North America wants to tap an aquifer feeding a pair of springs near Salida, southwest of Colorado Springs, and draw 65 million gallons of water per year to bottle and sell under its Arrowhead brand. But many mountain residents say Nestle should go bottle someone else’s water.”

***

Page last updated at 18:17 GMT, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 19:17 UK

Earth population ‘exceeds limits’

By Steven Duke

Editor, One Planet, BBC World Service

LIVING ON A CROWDED EARTH

Current world population - 6.8bn

Net growth per day - 218,030

Forecast made for 2040 - 9bn

Source: US Census Bureau

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.

Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth’s “limits of sustainability”.

Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.

Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.

“We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people,” Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing “wild lands”, and in particular water supplies.

Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: “There are probably already too many people on the planet.”

***

Number of Chronically Hungry Tops 1 Billion
***

Gather `round Children and You Shall See_

by Trish Purcell | March 21, 2009 - 6:58pm | permalink

_Politicians, driven by self-interest, proving their incompetence and ethical shortcomings by pompously spouting hypocrisy as a substitute for working for the common good of the people and the country.

_Media, driven by ambition and profit, proving their cowardice and lack of integrity by parroting out-of-context sound bites instead of seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues..

_Pundits, driven by greed and a desire for celebrity, proving their superficiality and ineptitude by over simplification and deliberate distortion in place of presenting facts and encouraging honest debate.

_People, driven by rage and their own insecurities, proving their ignorance by churning out comments that lack logic and common sense rather than taking time to learn the facts.

***

Avenging Aunt: When Political Bonds Fracture Families

by Russ Wellen | March 26, 2009 - 2:41pm | permalink

A recent letter to Salon’s distinguished advice columnist Cary Tennis reads:

Like many extended families, ours has people who live and breathe Republican doctrine, and people who are liberal. Since the early Bush years, we have given each other a wide berth.

This week, someone sent out an e-mail talking about how Obama’s policies weren’t helping the economy and were probably killing it. Well, the floodgates on both sides opened. People felt personally attacked and were right to [feel that way]. _

***

Although poorly written and barely worth reading, the theme obviously deserves exposure:

Page last updated at 11:18 GMT, Thursday, 2 April 2009 12:18 UK

Why numbers no longer win arguments

GO FIGURE

Different ways of seeing stats

Numbers used to be cold, hard and clinical - a clincher in any argument. Now look at them: fluffy, soft and left meaningless by woolly-headed thinking, says Michael Blastland in his regular column.

Numbers lack warmth. Cold as last year’s love, they sit counting their fingers. Think of numbers and what do you see? Dust and ledgers and the yellow fingers of a parched accountant.

No longer. Numbers have had the mother of makeovers. No ordinary scrubbing up, shiny PR or new logo, this transformation is complete: they have turned into their opposite.

Once they stood aloof. Now they gush. Now you can’t shut them up for heart-felt passion. They cry and cheer and sneer and shout. Formerly a counterweight to emotion, they are often now nothing but. The one thing they don’t do is count.

A number in the news is no longer a cold fact, it is a killer fact, with all the murderous zeal that word implies. Journalists everywhere know the meaning of the phrase, the dagger of detail that runs the opposition through: the 23% up! The £16m wasted! The 140,000 children!

‘5.0, 50... how many fingers am I holding up?”

For an example, try 271. I have it on reliable authority that this is the percentage increase in the money supply in the US in five months. There, he’s gone cold on me again, you’re thinking. But stay a moment. This is the killer fact in a piece by a smart, famous former senior advisor to President Clinton.

The point is obvious. The economy is in weirdness overdrive, things are out of control, cash is flooding through nook and cranny, but barely a cent is spent.

Feel the peril. 271%!

This was no typo. That the writer really believed the magnitude is apparent when he says that 271% is nearly three times higher.

But mull that number. Let it count its fingers a while. This is actually an increase of nearly four times (£100 increased by 271% is £371. A 300% increase is four times bigger, not three). Imagine nearly four times as many dollars in five months. Four times, seriously? What would your salary look like x4? Or GDP?

The actual number in the US statistics was 27.1%. He had moved the decimal point. This is wrong with bells on, but with no evidence of any reflection on the absurdity. I have a number therefore I need not think.

A moment for the number to do what numbers are supposed to do, to count and take seriously the counting, must suggest - mustn’t it? - that an increase in the money supply of 271% in five months might be credible in a basket-case inflationary hell but not in America.

Perilous age?

My favourite example of this tendency is the heavyweight newspaper report that an increase in retirement age for men from 65 to 67 would mean one in five who formerly lived long enough to claim a pension would now die before they were eligible.

This column aspires to sobriety. The facts might be shocking, the tone will not. Today is an exception.

One in five? Twenty per cent of men die in the space of two years? They’d be turning up their toes all over the golf course, 100,000 of them more than usual. Being 65 would be more dangerous than the front line in Afghanistan.

This column aspires to sobriety. The facts might be shocking, the tone will not. Today is an exception. Today, I’ll be frank, the column is like its subject - a great Neanderthal grunt.

It will, from time to time, no doubt be wrong too. But these don’t feel like mistakes, they feel like a reality-check failure, a breathless dash into print without passing the corner shop of normal life, all because the number appears to fit the mood.

So 271 doesn’t mean 271, it means “wow!” The word “million”’ likewise lost its currency years ago. “Billions” might go the same way. As with cliches, so with figures, inflationary use means they buy you less impact. Debts used to be bad, now they’re toxic, regardless of whether they might make a good return. A plain old bad debt will never sound as problematic again. A billion will seldom sound so large.

Numbers become, in other words, the very thing numbers are supposed not to be: fur balls of undigested intellectual gunk. Writers who use them this way might as well say: “The government admits the figure is, like, you know, cor! oooooh!”

How big is huge?

Or here’s an idea. Why not replace figures with emoticons - a smiley or a frown? These numbers do not measure. They are arrows pointing limply, like vague adjectives, fuzzy conveyors of warmth or fear that beam at you with pride, or scowl with cynicism, expressive of how the writer feels but not of the world he or she claims to feel about.

Is the end nigh, if your colleagues present you with one of these?

Is this a scandal? Not really. Our treatment of numbers is not like our treatment of the old. It’s hard, except in rare cases, to be outraged by abused statistics. And in truth there’s nothing new here. But we’d do well to remember that numbers often represent people. To be careless of how we describe them in figures is to be careless of the truth about them, which in turn is not to care.

In a new book about energy, Professor David MacKay sees an obverse problem in another subject many care about: the environment. He notes a news report about CO2-reducing LED traffic lights. The energy savings, the report said, could be “huge”. Here are adjectives as if they were numbers. “Huge” being how big, exactly?

Professor MacKay found that traffic lights account for about 0.03% of UK energy consumption. Let’s say the huge savings cut that by a third. That’s 1/10,000th of the total.

One response is that every little helps. Mr MacKay replies that every big helps rather more - but it’s no good being dim to the distinction.

How do we get away with it? In the first case because we have a number - and that beats thinking any time; in the second because we don’t - and so elide the evidence entirely.

Numbers are often used without a sense of proportion. Proportion is often invoked without a sense of the numbers. But isn’t proportion what numbers are for? Perhaps it’s time to take out some of the heat.

***

Parker J. Palmer is founder and senior partner of the national Center for Courage & Renewal , which oversees “Courage to Teach” and “Courage to Lead” programs for people in the serving professions, including education, medicine, ministry, law and philanthropy. For fifteen years, he served as Senior Associate of the American Association of Higher Education. He now serves as Senior Advisor to the Fetzer Institute.

A writer, traveling teacher and activist, Dr. Palmer focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. His work speaks to people in many walks of life, including public schools, college and universities, religious institutions, corporations, foundations and grass-roots organizations.

He has published a dozen poems, some two hundred essays and seven books, including several best-selling and award-winning titles: A HIDDEN WHOLENESS, LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK, THE COURAGE TO TEACH, THE ACTIVE LIFE, TO KNOW AS WE ARE KNOWN, THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS, and THE PROMISE OF PARADOX.

Dr. Palmer’s work has been recognized with ten honorary doctorates, two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association, an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press, and major grants from the Danforth Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and the Fetzer Institute.

Parker J. Palmer received the Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. A member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker), he lives with his wife, Sharon Palmer, in Madison, Wisconsin.

** February 20, 2009

PARKER PALMER: I also feel having been born in 1939 and then sort of coming to an age of awareness in the ‘50s and ‘60s that I was inculcated with a lot of illusions about what was going on in this society, which are now being punctured and vaporized before our very eyes.

Yeah, illusions I think about, first of all, about America’s essential goodness as an economic system. I don’t want to deny that there is goodness in our national character or in our economy and certainly not in democracy rightly understood. But the notion that we always get it right, my country, right or wrong _ that somehow America is the noblest nation in the world, these are things that I’ve for a long time, been unable to believe. And I think a true patriot is one who loves his country.

But as you do when you love something, you also have a lover’s quarrel with it. And that means that you stand on some other ground than simply the inherent 100 percent continuing goodness and validity of that which you love.

So at the same time, I don’t think that we should ever doubt our capacity to deny reality. I mean, after all, until you get to be our age, you really believe you’re not going to die. That fundamental human fact of life.

And of course, that’s part of our problem. I mean, I could make the same argument about the current economic collapse. Who didn’t know it was coming? Who didn’t know that a system that encouraged us to live beyond our means and provided all kinds of devious and ethically doubtful ways for us to do that was going to fall apart someday?

Who didn’t know that housing was over-evaluated? That stocks were overpriced? Who didn’t know that a system the makes the rich richer while the poor get poorer will someday face a curtain call? We all knew that at some level, just like we know we’re going to die. And yet our capacity to deny reality is huge. And I think that we don’t want to know what we really know because if we did, we’d have to change our lives. And now we have to change our lives because the whole thing is crashing down around our head.

***

Susan Smalley

Posted April 2, 2009 | 08:32 AM (EST)

Listening to the Sound of Silence

“Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again...”

Simon and Garfunkel: The Sound of Silence)

I’ve heard the sound of silence loud and clear. It arises in the sounds of my house early in the morning before anyone awakens. I hear the hum of the central air conditioner or heating unit, I hear our cat move and meow, I hear a bird outside chirping, I hear the pen move across my paper. As I listen to the sounds of the early morning, they occur and fade away, occur and fade away, again and again. A slight humming is heard in the distance, a ringing from inside my head, a sound coming from my own ‘inner ear’, the internal sound of silence. Buddhists, I’ve learned, call this the nada sound, and often suggest it as an object of meditation, just like the breath may be used.

I didn’t seek this sound of silence, it just arose in the quiet discovery of an early morning before my family wakes, before the noises of the day, before the cacophony of thought and life rush in to mask it.

***

So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, Washington Post Associate Editor Robert Kaiser

“Their material possessed the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.”

Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 1837

∙ People who point out the emptiness of the pretensions of powerful people and institutions are often compared to the child who says that the emperor has no clothes.

“Through their own words

They will be exposed

And they’ve got a severe case of

The emperor’s new clothes.”

Sinead O’connor, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” lyrics, 1990

“I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible.”

-Sean (John) O’Casey, 3/30/1880 - 9/18/1964, Irish playwright

The greatest crime since World War II has been US foreign policy.

-William Ramsey Clark

“All the world’s a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.”

-Sean (John) O’Casey, 3/30/1880 - 9/18/1964, Irish playwright