Seen on C-span. Rosa Parks' family arrived via a 1955 era bus. Ms. Parks' casket was taken into the Capitol rotunda by pall bearers, while We Shall Overcome was hummed quietly. She was placed on a bier, and then the Morgan State University choir sang. President and Mrs. Bush were there. Bush looked like he had been made to attend, he had that sucked up, thinned lip look that he affects when he is doing things he doesn't like. He kept looking right and left like he had never seen that many black people assembled in one place in his entire life; obviously uncomfortable. In the background I could see Sen. Frist (with a dorkey smile) and Sen. Harkin (IA)looking thoughtful. (And yes, I am biased, because I like Sen. Harkin). Bush and wife shook hands, I could not read his lips all the time, the one time I could, I think he said, God be with you. Then they left.
Rosa Parks deserves to be remembered as a woman of great strength. If you have not read any history of her life, google her name and get to work. What a gracious and courageous woman.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Rosa Parks to lie in state in Capitol
Congress gave final approval Friday to a resolution to allow the public to pay respects to Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capitol building Sunday and Monday - a unique honor for a private citizen.
When I was about 4 years old (1955) we lived in Montgomery, Alabama while my father attended the US Air Force War College. We lived in a rented house in downtown Montgomery. It's one of my earliest memories. There was a big, wide front porch, and a scary, scary whole house fan on the 3rd floor (where my oldest sister's bedroom was). That fan was so huge I felt it would suck me in! I remember several things about living in Montgomery for that short period of time:
• I got a cracker smeared in my face at the playground for drinking from the “wrong” water fountain (the “colored” one)
• I remember my father talking about civil rights, and seeing KKK rallies either on TV or on our block, I am not sure
• Our maid, telling my father that she would walk home rather than accept a ride, because it was important that she walk and not ride the bus
Background on this is important. My father, a USAF Chaplain and veteran of WW II, was a missionary in the Philippines from 1949 to 1952 (and was a USAF reservist). He returned to active duty during the Korean War, and we were transferred to Japan when I was less than 2. I spent most of my time in the car of maids, who did not speak English, and who certainly did not look like me. My first language was Japanese. Obviously from a very young age I thought all people were the same inside, some just looked different on the outside. To this day I do not know why I remember the bus boycotts so vividly, but I do. I like to think it is because I had already experienced the fact that a person’s outward appearance has nothing to do with what they can and cannot do, achieve, or aspire to be.
I was also fortunate to have a father who marched with Martin Luther King, who heard King’s “I have a dream” speech in person, and who worked for civil rights, freedom of expression, and the downtrodden all his life. I helped him with an equal housing initiative in Allentown, Pa while I was in high school.
Rosa Parks, took a seat so my father could stand up, so I could stand up, so my children could stand up, so we could all stand up for the promotion of equal rights in this country.
So, over the next 2 weeks or so, during early voting this week, or on Nov. 8th, remember Rosa Parks and vote NO on proposition 2. In doing so, we will be violating the civil rights of many people.
Proposition 2: "The constitutional amendment providing that marriage in this state consists only of the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
When I was about 4 years old (1955) we lived in Montgomery, Alabama while my father attended the US Air Force War College. We lived in a rented house in downtown Montgomery. It's one of my earliest memories. There was a big, wide front porch, and a scary, scary whole house fan on the 3rd floor (where my oldest sister's bedroom was). That fan was so huge I felt it would suck me in! I remember several things about living in Montgomery for that short period of time:
• I got a cracker smeared in my face at the playground for drinking from the “wrong” water fountain (the “colored” one)
• I remember my father talking about civil rights, and seeing KKK rallies either on TV or on our block, I am not sure
• Our maid, telling my father that she would walk home rather than accept a ride, because it was important that she walk and not ride the bus
Background on this is important. My father, a USAF Chaplain and veteran of WW II, was a missionary in the Philippines from 1949 to 1952 (and was a USAF reservist). He returned to active duty during the Korean War, and we were transferred to Japan when I was less than 2. I spent most of my time in the car of maids, who did not speak English, and who certainly did not look like me. My first language was Japanese. Obviously from a very young age I thought all people were the same inside, some just looked different on the outside. To this day I do not know why I remember the bus boycotts so vividly, but I do. I like to think it is because I had already experienced the fact that a person’s outward appearance has nothing to do with what they can and cannot do, achieve, or aspire to be.
I was also fortunate to have a father who marched with Martin Luther King, who heard King’s “I have a dream” speech in person, and who worked for civil rights, freedom of expression, and the downtrodden all his life. I helped him with an equal housing initiative in Allentown, Pa while I was in high school.
Rosa Parks, took a seat so my father could stand up, so I could stand up, so my children could stand up, so we could all stand up for the promotion of equal rights in this country.
So, over the next 2 weeks or so, during early voting this week, or on Nov. 8th, remember Rosa Parks and vote NO on proposition 2. In doing so, we will be violating the civil rights of many people.
Proposition 2: "The constitutional amendment providing that marriage in this state consists only of the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
Scooter Libby's indictment
A Washington Post editorial noted, "And as absorbing as this criminal investigation has been, the big point Americans need to keep in mind is this: There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." link
The key issue, IMHO, is that there is a potential that this investigation into the Plame leak will lead to a broader investigation of abuse of power and the lies that led us into Iraq. We can only hope that in the end, the liars will be exposed. This is a matter of national security, and is of utmost importance to our democracy.
The key issue, IMHO, is that there is a potential that this investigation into the Plame leak will lead to a broader investigation of abuse of power and the lies that led us into Iraq. We can only hope that in the end, the liars will be exposed. This is a matter of national security, and is of utmost importance to our democracy.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
A SEAT ON THE BUS, A SEAT AT THE TABLE
This is from my favorite Episcopal Priest, and is one of her almost daily eMo's (eletronic meditation)
To the end of her life, Rosa Parks was beautiful: her radiant smile, the knowing snap of her black eyes, the braided coronet of her hair that went from coal black to white over the years. Her clothes were classic and understated, and you never saw a photograph of her in which she was not elegant.
But these things were details, not at all her main focus in life. She had more important things to think about than her hair or her clothing, and she thought about those important things for as long as she could think at all. The dangerous act of integrating the seating arrangements on Montgomery's public transportation was begun by this slight young woman and carried forward by thousands of people who walked, drove, bicycled, even skated to work and school -- got there any way they could that did not involve taking a city bus, and did it there for more than a year.
A lovely young woman, looking younger than her 42 years. A very young Dr. King -- we forget how young he was when all this was going on: he was only 39 when he was killed in 1968. We forget how young and how human they were: not supermen and superwomen, not without fault and not without error -- just human beings who understood their own worth and were brave enough to claim what they knew was theirs by right. And smart enough to know that the rightness of their cause would not by itself ensure its success, but that sheer numbers would, that you can't run a bus system if nobody rides the bus.
Depending on how you count, Mrs. Parks either had no children or millions of them. "The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," she is often called, although she herself usually brushed that title aside. She was more interested in the movement. She knew that the movement had many fathers and many mothers, that it was in its unity that its strength and its future lay.
And in its children. Mrs. Parks feared that young people would take their freedoms for granted, would not remember what it had cost to win them. That their parents would be embarrassed to tell them how they used to live, about the colored restrooms and drinking fountains, the restaurants in which they could not eat, the car trips they planned carefully, carefully, so that there would be a colored motel to stay in, a colored gas station on the way, a place to pull over and have a picnic of food they brought themselves because there might be no place for a black person to buy any. About being cautioned never to look a white person in the eye. About yielding, always yielding, always giving place, no matter what.
White people didn't know the strength of the black community. Didn't know about its dedicated teachers, doctors, ministers, merchants and business people. Did not know about its reverence for education and civility. Did not know how self-sufficient it had been forced to become, and what that self-sufficiency would mean for the system of American apartheid that was beginning to show cracks.
But on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a city bus to a white man who demanded it, they were about to find out.
Copyright © 2005 Barbara Crafton - http://www.geraniumfarm.org
This is from my favorite Episcopal Priest, and is one of her almost daily eMo's (eletronic meditation)
To the end of her life, Rosa Parks was beautiful: her radiant smile, the knowing snap of her black eyes, the braided coronet of her hair that went from coal black to white over the years. Her clothes were classic and understated, and you never saw a photograph of her in which she was not elegant.
But these things were details, not at all her main focus in life. She had more important things to think about than her hair or her clothing, and she thought about those important things for as long as she could think at all. The dangerous act of integrating the seating arrangements on Montgomery's public transportation was begun by this slight young woman and carried forward by thousands of people who walked, drove, bicycled, even skated to work and school -- got there any way they could that did not involve taking a city bus, and did it there for more than a year.
A lovely young woman, looking younger than her 42 years. A very young Dr. King -- we forget how young he was when all this was going on: he was only 39 when he was killed in 1968. We forget how young and how human they were: not supermen and superwomen, not without fault and not without error -- just human beings who understood their own worth and were brave enough to claim what they knew was theirs by right. And smart enough to know that the rightness of their cause would not by itself ensure its success, but that sheer numbers would, that you can't run a bus system if nobody rides the bus.
Depending on how you count, Mrs. Parks either had no children or millions of them. "The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," she is often called, although she herself usually brushed that title aside. She was more interested in the movement. She knew that the movement had many fathers and many mothers, that it was in its unity that its strength and its future lay.
And in its children. Mrs. Parks feared that young people would take their freedoms for granted, would not remember what it had cost to win them. That their parents would be embarrassed to tell them how they used to live, about the colored restrooms and drinking fountains, the restaurants in which they could not eat, the car trips they planned carefully, carefully, so that there would be a colored motel to stay in, a colored gas station on the way, a place to pull over and have a picnic of food they brought themselves because there might be no place for a black person to buy any. About being cautioned never to look a white person in the eye. About yielding, always yielding, always giving place, no matter what.
White people didn't know the strength of the black community. Didn't know about its dedicated teachers, doctors, ministers, merchants and business people. Did not know about its reverence for education and civility. Did not know how self-sufficient it had been forced to become, and what that self-sufficiency would mean for the system of American apartheid that was beginning to show cracks.
But on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a city bus to a white man who demanded it, they were about to find out.
Copyright © 2005 Barbara Crafton - http://www.geraniumfarm.org
Monday, October 24, 2005
Hutchison flip-flops on the importance of perjury
Yesterday, offering a hint of the attack White House allies will launch on special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald if and when he announces any indictments, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison dismissed the possible felony indictment of perjury as a mere “technicality”
BUT......
On February 2, 1999, Hutchison stood with a bipartisan group of senators at a press conference announcing a resolution to open the Senate trial on the impeachment of President Clinton. At the time, Hutchison said it was vitally important to prosecute on perjury charges because telling the truth is the lynch pin of our criminal justice system link
What a hypocrite! I plan to call her on it, do you?
BUT......
On February 2, 1999, Hutchison stood with a bipartisan group of senators at a press conference announcing a resolution to open the Senate trial on the impeachment of President Clinton. At the time, Hutchison said it was vitally important to prosecute on perjury charges because telling the truth is the lynch pin of our criminal justice system link
What a hypocrite! I plan to call her on it, do you?
Friday, October 21, 2005
While vacationing in California, we found that DeLay surrended to a Sheriff
We were thrilled to read about it in the local paper, the San Diego Union Tribune!
Hurrah, it's just too bad that he deprived the Democrats of well deserved footage of his arrest.
Here is an article on it:
DeLay Quietly Surrenders to a Texas Sheriff
By BILL DAWSON and CARL HULSE
Published: October 21, 2005 link
HOUSTON, Oct. 20 - Representative Tom DeLay, forced by criminal charges to step aside last month as House majority leader, was fingerprinted, photographed and released on $10,000 bond Thursday after turning himself in at the Harris County sheriff's office in downtown Houston.
Harris County Sheriff's Office, via Associated Press
The booking photo of Tom DeLay was taken soon after he surrendered Thursday in Houston.
Forum: The 109th Congress
The booking photo of Mr. DeLay, whose surrender was carefully choreographed, showed him smiling, his Congressional pin visible on his suit lapel, and did not include booking numbers that many associate with a mug shot. His allies on Capitol Hill joked that the picture was suitable for the Congressional Directory.
"I just may use that photographer for my family Christmas photo," Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. DeLay, said in Washington.
Mr. DeLay had been expected to surrender in adjacent Fort Bend County, his home. By doing so here instead, he avoided a scrum of about 25 journalists waiting outside the Fort Bend sheriff's office, many with cameras. Democrats were thus deprived of powerful videotape.
Hurrah, it's just too bad that he deprived the Democrats of well deserved footage of his arrest.
Here is an article on it:
DeLay Quietly Surrenders to a Texas Sheriff
By BILL DAWSON and CARL HULSE
Published: October 21, 2005 link
HOUSTON, Oct. 20 - Representative Tom DeLay, forced by criminal charges to step aside last month as House majority leader, was fingerprinted, photographed and released on $10,000 bond Thursday after turning himself in at the Harris County sheriff's office in downtown Houston.
Harris County Sheriff's Office, via Associated Press
The booking photo of Tom DeLay was taken soon after he surrendered Thursday in Houston.
Forum: The 109th Congress
The booking photo of Mr. DeLay, whose surrender was carefully choreographed, showed him smiling, his Congressional pin visible on his suit lapel, and did not include booking numbers that many associate with a mug shot. His allies on Capitol Hill joked that the picture was suitable for the Congressional Directory.
"I just may use that photographer for my family Christmas photo," Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. DeLay, said in Washington.
Mr. DeLay had been expected to surrender in adjacent Fort Bend County, his home. By doing so here instead, he avoided a scrum of about 25 journalists waiting outside the Fort Bend sheriff's office, many with cameras. Democrats were thus deprived of powerful videotape.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
The death knell of the middle class
"The next shoe to drop will be the report of the Bush Advisory Commission on Tax Reform. The commission is scheduled to deliver its recommendations on November 1. We may have gotten a sneak peek in the past few days, as commission members have floated a few trial balloons. The chief option put forward is to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which would be a tax cut for relatively wealthy, and to replace the cut revenue by reducing or eliminating deductions for health insurance, home mortgage interest and state and local income tax." full article
This is the continuation of the Republican party's genocide of the middle class. Bush adds to it by saying he will quarantine cities for avian flu (although IMHO wouldn't it be better to plan for Tamiflu stockpiles, and medical treatment?). Well, you figure it....46% of us have no health insurance, so no access to medical care anyway, then you quarantine the rest of us, with no access to medical care, and poof! you can kill off a bunch of the middle class and poor with the flu. If that isn't enough, add to it the cold weather and a 50% increase in the cost of heating oil and natural gas, and plenty of poor and middle class and the elderly will freeze to death, thus eliminating more of those pesky folks. Oh, don't forget taxing the few of those who still have medical insurance, on their insurance, and it will make it too costly for them to carry insurance, and businesses will have an excuse to drop coverage for their employees. And don't forget that new bankruptcy bill....if you get sick, with perhaps the avian flu, and require expensive medical care, well you can't declare bankruptcy if your expenses are too much to bear. Therefore you will be stuck paying back every creditor, while being unable to afford food, housing or further medical care. Then there is also that dirty little secret...if you need surgery or a procedure of any kind, you have to put money down on the procedure BEFORE they will perform it. So, if you can't afford it, too bad for you.
Now, does this sound like the country you grew up in? Does this sound like America? Hardly. It sounds more like a third world country where only the rich can afford anything, where there is no middle class and the poor are treated with contempt.
Don't forget history has a lesson for us: In Bonn, Gottingen, Heidelberg, Munich, and other cities throughout Germany, Nazi youth performed similar ceremonies, mostly aimed at "cleansing" public, church, and other types of community lending libraries of books and journals thought to be "un-German." By the end of July 1933, Hitler was in complete control of the government, and the Nazis were the only legal political party in Germany. They had created the first concentration camps, restricted the freedoms of speech and of the press, enforced boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, and had begun a sterilization campaign of citizens the new government considered genetically undesirable. Read more at this website, When Books Burn
Suggested reading: 1984 by George Orwell; The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood.
This is the continuation of the Republican party's genocide of the middle class. Bush adds to it by saying he will quarantine cities for avian flu (although IMHO wouldn't it be better to plan for Tamiflu stockpiles, and medical treatment?). Well, you figure it....46% of us have no health insurance, so no access to medical care anyway, then you quarantine the rest of us, with no access to medical care, and poof! you can kill off a bunch of the middle class and poor with the flu. If that isn't enough, add to it the cold weather and a 50% increase in the cost of heating oil and natural gas, and plenty of poor and middle class and the elderly will freeze to death, thus eliminating more of those pesky folks. Oh, don't forget taxing the few of those who still have medical insurance, on their insurance, and it will make it too costly for them to carry insurance, and businesses will have an excuse to drop coverage for their employees. And don't forget that new bankruptcy bill....if you get sick, with perhaps the avian flu, and require expensive medical care, well you can't declare bankruptcy if your expenses are too much to bear. Therefore you will be stuck paying back every creditor, while being unable to afford food, housing or further medical care. Then there is also that dirty little secret...if you need surgery or a procedure of any kind, you have to put money down on the procedure BEFORE they will perform it. So, if you can't afford it, too bad for you.
Now, does this sound like the country you grew up in? Does this sound like America? Hardly. It sounds more like a third world country where only the rich can afford anything, where there is no middle class and the poor are treated with contempt.
Don't forget history has a lesson for us: In Bonn, Gottingen, Heidelberg, Munich, and other cities throughout Germany, Nazi youth performed similar ceremonies, mostly aimed at "cleansing" public, church, and other types of community lending libraries of books and journals thought to be "un-German." By the end of July 1933, Hitler was in complete control of the government, and the Nazis were the only legal political party in Germany. They had created the first concentration camps, restricted the freedoms of speech and of the press, enforced boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, and had begun a sterilization campaign of citizens the new government considered genetically undesirable. Read more at this website, When Books Burn
Suggested reading: 1984 by George Orwell; The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Bush hammers like a girlie man
To get maximum use of a hammer you don't 'choke up' toward the head of the hammer, if you do you have less leverage and it takes a lot more effort to hammer in a nail.
I may not be President, but I sure do know how to swing a hammer!
F is for Freddie
We needed to find something for the letter F, that was tonight's homework. Freddie (the dog) suited the bill. After all, he is Freddie From Fredericksburg!
A Snake Oil President
Timothy Karr
October 11, 2005
...in its zeal to promote sales of the Bush brand, this administration has crossed the line that separates honest brokers from snake oil salesmen.
Bush and company sold Americans defective goods in clear violation of federal law. Yet Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hasn’t budged. Instead, the man charged with enforcing our laws has tasked his army of lawyers to throw a legal shield around the White House, telling the administration to ignore investigations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which repeatedly has blasted Team Bush for using taxpayer money to fund “covert propaganda.”
In its latest report, issued on Sept. 30, the GAO’s federal auditors scolded the White House for squandering American tax dollars to hire fake news reporters and unleash a pre-packaged new blitz in advance of the 2004 elections. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids the domestic dissemination of government-authored propaganda or "official news" deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy. The law singles out materials that serve "a solely partisan purpose." The GAO has now found on at least four separate occasions that administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions when they disseminated news written by the government or its contractors without disclosing the conflict of interest.
Justice says that all the government’s publicity is legal, because they have been fact-based...since the legal prohibition on propaganda does not apply to government-made television news segments that are "factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers." The GAO’s most recent investigation correctly shot down that sophistry, saying that pre-packaged government news is inherently false because "the essential fact of attribution is missing."
The ball is now back in Gonzales’ court. But if Bush’s sagging approval rating is any guide, Americans are no longer buying.
link
Timothy Karr
October 11, 2005
...in its zeal to promote sales of the Bush brand, this administration has crossed the line that separates honest brokers from snake oil salesmen.
Bush and company sold Americans defective goods in clear violation of federal law. Yet Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hasn’t budged. Instead, the man charged with enforcing our laws has tasked his army of lawyers to throw a legal shield around the White House, telling the administration to ignore investigations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which repeatedly has blasted Team Bush for using taxpayer money to fund “covert propaganda.”
In its latest report, issued on Sept. 30, the GAO’s federal auditors scolded the White House for squandering American tax dollars to hire fake news reporters and unleash a pre-packaged new blitz in advance of the 2004 elections. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids the domestic dissemination of government-authored propaganda or "official news" deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy. The law singles out materials that serve "a solely partisan purpose." The GAO has now found on at least four separate occasions that administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions when they disseminated news written by the government or its contractors without disclosing the conflict of interest.
Justice says that all the government’s publicity is legal, because they have been fact-based...since the legal prohibition on propaganda does not apply to government-made television news segments that are "factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers." The GAO’s most recent investigation correctly shot down that sophistry, saying that pre-packaged government news is inherently false because "the essential fact of attribution is missing."
The ball is now back in Gonzales’ court. But if Bush’s sagging approval rating is any guide, Americans are no longer buying.
link
A *Real* Contract With America
by ROBERT L. BOROSAGE
[from the October 24, 2005 issue of The Nation Magazine]
Lethal incompetence and indifference in Katrina's wake. Republican House boss Tom DeLay indicted--twice. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Casino Jack" Abramoff's cynical cesspool of conservative corruption. Stagnant wages and rising prices. Quagmire in Iraq. Have Americans had enough? Will Katrina and corruption threaten the right's hold over Congress and open a broader challenge to the conservatism that has dominated our politics over the past twenty-five years? It's possible--but only if Democrats can make themselves a compelling force for change.
1994 and the Gingrich Revolt
The last successful effort to nationalize Congressional races in a nonpresidential year came in 1994, when Newt Gingrich and movement conservatives unfurled their Contract With America and shocked themselves by gaining fifty-four seats to take control of Congress, ending forty years of Democratic rule. That election offers pointed lessons for Democrats hoping for a similar reversal twelve years later.
Conservatives like to paint 1994 as a noble campaign run on ideas and values, with Republicans offering voters a concrete agenda and a principled choice. The reality was something different. The right set up the election with two years of unrelenting, scorched-earth assault on the newly elected Bill Clinton. The resignation under a cloud of the Democratic Speaker and minority whip, the indictment of a powerful committee chair and the post office and House banking scandals helped Gingrich paint Democrats as corrupt, arrogant and out of touch.
Gingrich's Contract With America was a notably cynical document. The controversial social passions of the conservative base--abortion, school prayer, guns--were left out. The Contract promised a balanced-budget amendment to appeal to Perot voters but also more tax cuts. It called for term limits for legislators that few would observe. Most of the measures were poll-tested conservative staples--tax cuts, a bigger military, tough on crime and welfare, plus the inevitable corporate pandering of "tort reform" and deregulation.
Substance was less important than symbol. Republicans had a specific plan that included bold political reform, and they promised to be held accountable. Despite Democratic attacks, most voters didn't know the details, yet the Contract helped the GOP present itself as a unified party with a positive plan for change.
2006: A Liberal Revolution?
Twelve years later Democrats face a far more forbidding challenge in attempting to nationalize the election. Reapportionment has left fewer contested districts. The political machine built by the right still has no Democratic equivalent. In 1994 the country was at peace. Now the Iraq War--even as Americans turn against it--divides Democratic politicians from their voters. Rebuilding after the Katrina catastrophe blurs partisan differences on the role of government. Yet the potential for a landmark election is clear. The corruption and crony capitalism of the Republican Congress and Administration are sources of unending scandal; it is simply the way they do business. The folks who came to make a revolution stayed to run a racket, and independent voters might well conclude that it's time for them to go. Moreover, Katrina exposed the tragic costs of the conservative scorn for government, and it brought to public attention the spreading poverty that marks Bush's failed economic policies.
Just as Clinton and the Democratic Congress's failure to deliver on a central promise--affordable healthcare--turned voters off in 1994, heading FEMA with incompetent cronies exposed the fact that Bush and the Republicans punted on the central promise they made after 9/11--that they would keep America safe. And the response to Katrina revealed how out of touch the antigovernment crowd is. To defend the Administration's ineptitude, they sang from the conservative hymnal, charging that the Administration's failures prove big government doesn't work (the Cato Institute even called once more for abolishing FEMA). They blamed the victims, or as Linda Chavez, head of the Civil Rights Commission under Reagan, said of those who were stranded: "You are dealing with the permanently poor--people who don't have jobs, are not used to getting up and organizing themselves...and for whom sitting and waiting is a way of life." Senator Rick Santorum called for "tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out." (He later amended this to exempt the one-fifth of the population in the Katrina disaster area that did not own a car.) But Karl Rove realized this wouldn't sell, so Bush vowed to spend whatever it takes to rebuild the Gulf Coast, while ruling out any rollback of his top-end tax cuts to pay for it. Conservatives then detailed offsetting spending cuts--mostly in Medicaid and Medicare, as well as other poverty programs--that would only add to the misery of the most vulnerable.
Americans are clearly looking for a way out. Bush's approval numbers have tanked. Congress stands in low repute, with Republican declines giving Democrats strong leads in generic Congressional face-offs. Pessimism about the country's course has deepened, along with opposition to Bush's signature policies--privatizing Social Security, the Iraq War and trickle-down economics. As home-heating bills soar this winter, disaffection with the crowd in power is likely to grow.
Can Democrats Get Their Groove Back?
Democrats are likely to pick up seats next year just by continuing to hammer at GOP failures and corruption. But to engineer a landmark election that dislodges incumbents and marks a fundamental shift, Democrats have to make themselves the party of change, championing an activist government in service to the common good. House leader Nancy Pelosi has stated that Democrats are working up their version of a Contract.
In concept, the task isn't too difficult. Simply putting forth popular progressive alternatives that contrast with glaring Republican failures would provide a clear platform for change. Central elements could include:
§ Crack Down on Corruption: In contrast to conservative cronyism, shut the revolving door between corporate lobbies and high office. Prohibit legislators, their senior aides and executive branch political appointees from lobbying for two years after leaving office. Require detailed public reporting of all contacts between lobbyists and legislators. Pledge to apply this to all, regardless of party. Take the big money out of politics by pushing for clean elections legislation.
§ Make America Safe: Commit to an independent investigation of the Department of Homeland Security's failures in response to Katrina. Detail action on the urgent needs that this Administration has ignored: Improve port security, bolster first responders and public health capacity, and require adequate defense planning by high-risk chemical plants. End the pork-barrel squandering of security funds.
§ Unleash New Energy for America: In contrast to the Big Oil policies of the Administration that leave us more dependent on foreign supplies, pledge to launch a concerted drive for energy independence like the one called for by the Apollo Alliance. Create new jobs by investing in efficiency and alternative energy sources, helping America capture the growing green industries of the future.
§ Rebuild America First: Rescind Bush's tax cuts for the rich and corporations, which create more jobs in China than here, and use that money to put people to work building the infrastructure vital to a high-wage economy. Start with challenging the Administration's trickle-down plans for the Gulf Coast, which will victimize once more those who suffered the most.
§ Make Work Pay: In contrast to the Bush economy, in which profits and CEO salaries soar while workers' wages stagnate and jobs grow insecure, put government on the side of workers. Raise the minimum wage. Empower workers to join unions by allowing card-check enrollment. Pay the prevailing wage in government contracts. Stop subsidizing the export of jobs abroad.
§ Make Healthcare Affordable for All: Pledge to fix America's broken healthcare system, with the goal of moving to universal, affordable healthcare by 2015. Start by reversing the Republican sellout to the pharmaceutical industry by empowering Medicare to bargain down costs and by allowing people to purchase drugs from safe outlets abroad.
§ Protect Retirement Security: In contrast to Bush's plan to dismantle Social Security, pledge to strengthen it and to require companies to treat the shop floor like the top floor when it comes to pensions and healthcare.
§ Keep the Promise of Opportunity: Instead of Republican plans to cut eligibility for college grants and to limit loans, offer a contract to American students: If they graduate from high school, they will be able to afford the college or higher technical training they have earned. Pay for this by preserving the tax on the wealthiest multimillion-dollar estates in America.
§ Refocus on Real Security for America: In contrast with Bush's pledge to stay in Iraq indefinitely, sapping our military and breeding terrorists, put forth a firm timeline for removing the troops from Iraq. Use the money saved to invest in security at home. Lead an aggressive international alliance to track down stateless terrorists, to get loose nukes under control and to fight nuclear proliferation.
These proposals are concrete, doable and poll well. They pose a sharp contrast to the priorities of the Republican Congress. Other measures or different framing could be proposed as well.
But gaining widespread agreement from risk-averse politicians--even on a poll-tested agenda--isn't easy. In 1994 many Republicans thought Gingrich's Contract was political folly, giving Democrats something to attack when they were down. Most Republican Senate candidates would have nothing to do with it. Some worried that excluding the right's social issues would alienate their base. The Contract was far more popular with the challengers Gingrich had helped groom than with incumbents.
Those same problems bedevil today's Democrats. As the corruption of the Republican majority makes headlines, Democrats continue to observe the truce against filing ethics complaints. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has even found it hard to get Democrats to unite behind basic reforms that would apply to them, like banning legislators from taking lucrative lobbying posts after leaving office. Calls to invest in energy independence and affordable college education poll off the charts, but Democrats are reluctant to support any large new investments in the face of Bush's deficits. Democrats who went through the collapse of Hillarycare shudder at the thought of taking on our broken health system. Controlling drug prices is a natural, but the drug-company lobby insures that even the Democratic leadership splits on this question. It is hard to present yourself as a party of change if you're not ready to break with the present.
Iraq poses the hardest questions. Democrats in office are deeply divided on the occupation, which their base overwhelmingly opposes. If they could, Democratic leaders would deal with Iraq the way Gingrich treated right-wing social issues, omitting it from any common platform, arguing that it isn't a problem voters expect Congress to solve and that Americans want more attention paid to domestic concerns anyway. But ducking on the war is likely to dismay more than Democratic activists. By next fall the war will have cost many more lives and more than $250 billion. With no compelling domestic agenda, Bush and the Republicans may seek to turn the election into a referendum on who stands with the troops. If they don't face the issue, Democrats will look like they're playing politics with the nation's security. And if they remain divided, Democrats will be hard pressed to say they are ready to lead.
Gingrich was able to pull off the Contract in 1994 partly because Republicans were ready to try anything after four decades in the minority. Gingrich also had built a farm team of candidates who were willing to follow his lead. And he had the support of an independent conservative movement on the march against Clinton and the Democratic Congress. If Democrats are to find their voice in 2006, it will take aggressive leaders who are willing to take big risks and overcome internal opposition as well as a strong citizen's movement that's driving the attack against the right and pushing Democrats to stand up.
It took DeLay's Republicans barely a decade to grow even more arrogant and corrupt than the old order they had challenged. The yet-unanswered question is whether Democratic politicians and progressive activists are as determined and desperate after a decade in the wilderness as Republicans were after forty years.
by ROBERT L. BOROSAGE
[from the October 24, 2005 issue of The Nation Magazine]
Lethal incompetence and indifference in Katrina's wake. Republican House boss Tom DeLay indicted--twice. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Casino Jack" Abramoff's cynical cesspool of conservative corruption. Stagnant wages and rising prices. Quagmire in Iraq. Have Americans had enough? Will Katrina and corruption threaten the right's hold over Congress and open a broader challenge to the conservatism that has dominated our politics over the past twenty-five years? It's possible--but only if Democrats can make themselves a compelling force for change.
1994 and the Gingrich Revolt
The last successful effort to nationalize Congressional races in a nonpresidential year came in 1994, when Newt Gingrich and movement conservatives unfurled their Contract With America and shocked themselves by gaining fifty-four seats to take control of Congress, ending forty years of Democratic rule. That election offers pointed lessons for Democrats hoping for a similar reversal twelve years later.
Conservatives like to paint 1994 as a noble campaign run on ideas and values, with Republicans offering voters a concrete agenda and a principled choice. The reality was something different. The right set up the election with two years of unrelenting, scorched-earth assault on the newly elected Bill Clinton. The resignation under a cloud of the Democratic Speaker and minority whip, the indictment of a powerful committee chair and the post office and House banking scandals helped Gingrich paint Democrats as corrupt, arrogant and out of touch.
Gingrich's Contract With America was a notably cynical document. The controversial social passions of the conservative base--abortion, school prayer, guns--were left out. The Contract promised a balanced-budget amendment to appeal to Perot voters but also more tax cuts. It called for term limits for legislators that few would observe. Most of the measures were poll-tested conservative staples--tax cuts, a bigger military, tough on crime and welfare, plus the inevitable corporate pandering of "tort reform" and deregulation.
Substance was less important than symbol. Republicans had a specific plan that included bold political reform, and they promised to be held accountable. Despite Democratic attacks, most voters didn't know the details, yet the Contract helped the GOP present itself as a unified party with a positive plan for change.
2006: A Liberal Revolution?
Twelve years later Democrats face a far more forbidding challenge in attempting to nationalize the election. Reapportionment has left fewer contested districts. The political machine built by the right still has no Democratic equivalent. In 1994 the country was at peace. Now the Iraq War--even as Americans turn against it--divides Democratic politicians from their voters. Rebuilding after the Katrina catastrophe blurs partisan differences on the role of government. Yet the potential for a landmark election is clear. The corruption and crony capitalism of the Republican Congress and Administration are sources of unending scandal; it is simply the way they do business. The folks who came to make a revolution stayed to run a racket, and independent voters might well conclude that it's time for them to go. Moreover, Katrina exposed the tragic costs of the conservative scorn for government, and it brought to public attention the spreading poverty that marks Bush's failed economic policies.
Just as Clinton and the Democratic Congress's failure to deliver on a central promise--affordable healthcare--turned voters off in 1994, heading FEMA with incompetent cronies exposed the fact that Bush and the Republicans punted on the central promise they made after 9/11--that they would keep America safe. And the response to Katrina revealed how out of touch the antigovernment crowd is. To defend the Administration's ineptitude, they sang from the conservative hymnal, charging that the Administration's failures prove big government doesn't work (the Cato Institute even called once more for abolishing FEMA). They blamed the victims, or as Linda Chavez, head of the Civil Rights Commission under Reagan, said of those who were stranded: "You are dealing with the permanently poor--people who don't have jobs, are not used to getting up and organizing themselves...and for whom sitting and waiting is a way of life." Senator Rick Santorum called for "tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out." (He later amended this to exempt the one-fifth of the population in the Katrina disaster area that did not own a car.) But Karl Rove realized this wouldn't sell, so Bush vowed to spend whatever it takes to rebuild the Gulf Coast, while ruling out any rollback of his top-end tax cuts to pay for it. Conservatives then detailed offsetting spending cuts--mostly in Medicaid and Medicare, as well as other poverty programs--that would only add to the misery of the most vulnerable.
Americans are clearly looking for a way out. Bush's approval numbers have tanked. Congress stands in low repute, with Republican declines giving Democrats strong leads in generic Congressional face-offs. Pessimism about the country's course has deepened, along with opposition to Bush's signature policies--privatizing Social Security, the Iraq War and trickle-down economics. As home-heating bills soar this winter, disaffection with the crowd in power is likely to grow.
Can Democrats Get Their Groove Back?
Democrats are likely to pick up seats next year just by continuing to hammer at GOP failures and corruption. But to engineer a landmark election that dislodges incumbents and marks a fundamental shift, Democrats have to make themselves the party of change, championing an activist government in service to the common good. House leader Nancy Pelosi has stated that Democrats are working up their version of a Contract.
In concept, the task isn't too difficult. Simply putting forth popular progressive alternatives that contrast with glaring Republican failures would provide a clear platform for change. Central elements could include:
§ Crack Down on Corruption: In contrast to conservative cronyism, shut the revolving door between corporate lobbies and high office. Prohibit legislators, their senior aides and executive branch political appointees from lobbying for two years after leaving office. Require detailed public reporting of all contacts between lobbyists and legislators. Pledge to apply this to all, regardless of party. Take the big money out of politics by pushing for clean elections legislation.
§ Make America Safe: Commit to an independent investigation of the Department of Homeland Security's failures in response to Katrina. Detail action on the urgent needs that this Administration has ignored: Improve port security, bolster first responders and public health capacity, and require adequate defense planning by high-risk chemical plants. End the pork-barrel squandering of security funds.
§ Unleash New Energy for America: In contrast to the Big Oil policies of the Administration that leave us more dependent on foreign supplies, pledge to launch a concerted drive for energy independence like the one called for by the Apollo Alliance. Create new jobs by investing in efficiency and alternative energy sources, helping America capture the growing green industries of the future.
§ Rebuild America First: Rescind Bush's tax cuts for the rich and corporations, which create more jobs in China than here, and use that money to put people to work building the infrastructure vital to a high-wage economy. Start with challenging the Administration's trickle-down plans for the Gulf Coast, which will victimize once more those who suffered the most.
§ Make Work Pay: In contrast to the Bush economy, in which profits and CEO salaries soar while workers' wages stagnate and jobs grow insecure, put government on the side of workers. Raise the minimum wage. Empower workers to join unions by allowing card-check enrollment. Pay the prevailing wage in government contracts. Stop subsidizing the export of jobs abroad.
§ Make Healthcare Affordable for All: Pledge to fix America's broken healthcare system, with the goal of moving to universal, affordable healthcare by 2015. Start by reversing the Republican sellout to the pharmaceutical industry by empowering Medicare to bargain down costs and by allowing people to purchase drugs from safe outlets abroad.
§ Protect Retirement Security: In contrast to Bush's plan to dismantle Social Security, pledge to strengthen it and to require companies to treat the shop floor like the top floor when it comes to pensions and healthcare.
§ Keep the Promise of Opportunity: Instead of Republican plans to cut eligibility for college grants and to limit loans, offer a contract to American students: If they graduate from high school, they will be able to afford the college or higher technical training they have earned. Pay for this by preserving the tax on the wealthiest multimillion-dollar estates in America.
§ Refocus on Real Security for America: In contrast with Bush's pledge to stay in Iraq indefinitely, sapping our military and breeding terrorists, put forth a firm timeline for removing the troops from Iraq. Use the money saved to invest in security at home. Lead an aggressive international alliance to track down stateless terrorists, to get loose nukes under control and to fight nuclear proliferation.
These proposals are concrete, doable and poll well. They pose a sharp contrast to the priorities of the Republican Congress. Other measures or different framing could be proposed as well.
But gaining widespread agreement from risk-averse politicians--even on a poll-tested agenda--isn't easy. In 1994 many Republicans thought Gingrich's Contract was political folly, giving Democrats something to attack when they were down. Most Republican Senate candidates would have nothing to do with it. Some worried that excluding the right's social issues would alienate their base. The Contract was far more popular with the challengers Gingrich had helped groom than with incumbents.
Those same problems bedevil today's Democrats. As the corruption of the Republican majority makes headlines, Democrats continue to observe the truce against filing ethics complaints. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has even found it hard to get Democrats to unite behind basic reforms that would apply to them, like banning legislators from taking lucrative lobbying posts after leaving office. Calls to invest in energy independence and affordable college education poll off the charts, but Democrats are reluctant to support any large new investments in the face of Bush's deficits. Democrats who went through the collapse of Hillarycare shudder at the thought of taking on our broken health system. Controlling drug prices is a natural, but the drug-company lobby insures that even the Democratic leadership splits on this question. It is hard to present yourself as a party of change if you're not ready to break with the present.
Iraq poses the hardest questions. Democrats in office are deeply divided on the occupation, which their base overwhelmingly opposes. If they could, Democratic leaders would deal with Iraq the way Gingrich treated right-wing social issues, omitting it from any common platform, arguing that it isn't a problem voters expect Congress to solve and that Americans want more attention paid to domestic concerns anyway. But ducking on the war is likely to dismay more than Democratic activists. By next fall the war will have cost many more lives and more than $250 billion. With no compelling domestic agenda, Bush and the Republicans may seek to turn the election into a referendum on who stands with the troops. If they don't face the issue, Democrats will look like they're playing politics with the nation's security. And if they remain divided, Democrats will be hard pressed to say they are ready to lead.
Gingrich was able to pull off the Contract in 1994 partly because Republicans were ready to try anything after four decades in the minority. Gingrich also had built a farm team of candidates who were willing to follow his lead. And he had the support of an independent conservative movement on the march against Clinton and the Democratic Congress. If Democrats are to find their voice in 2006, it will take aggressive leaders who are willing to take big risks and overcome internal opposition as well as a strong citizen's movement that's driving the attack against the right and pushing Democrats to stand up.
It took DeLay's Republicans barely a decade to grow even more arrogant and corrupt than the old order they had challenged. The yet-unanswered question is whether Democratic politicians and progressive activists are as determined and desperate after a decade in the wilderness as Republicans were after forty years.
Bush's Fantasy Foreign Policy
Rami G. Khouri
October 11, 2005
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
I heard then read President George Bush's speech on the war on terror last Thursday while my wife and I enjoyed a wonderful two-day, two-night train journey across most of the United States, from Chicago to San Francisco. But I only fully grasped the meaning of Bush's "global war on terror" when I arrived here and had a useful discussion with one of my sons on the fantasy football league that he and my other son in Beirut are deeply engaged in.
For readers who may not follow these things closely, fantasy football is a virtual world over the Internet in which individuals create their own teams by choosing real players from the existing rosters of the National Football League. Every week the performances of the real players are tallied to give the fantasy team a score, and the fantasy team with the highest score at the end of the season wins. The exciting week-to-week interaction between the actual and imagined worlds makes it hard to separate fantasy from realityŠ which brings me back to George Bush's speech and policy on terrorism.
My conclusion after this rich week of travel and conversation is that sensible middle class Americans get on with the hard work of making a living in challenging times, while their federal government in Washington conducts a fantasy foreign policy based more on make-believe perceptions and imagined realities. The latest public opinion poll figures here bear this out, showing that about one-third of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the Iraq war, while nearly two-thirds disapprove -- a sharp reversal of the situation two years ago.
The long train ride through the American heartland was an opportunity to visually see the varied beauty of this land and the socio-economic variety of its inhabitants, and to engage a small sample of ordinary Americans about the problem of terrorism and how they relate to it in their everyday lives. The Americans I spoke to -- a computer engineer from Denver, a train service employee from Chicago, a retired professor from Omaha, a seminary student from South Carolina, a young university engineering graduate from Alabama, among others -- expressed lingering anger about 9/11 and concern about a future attack. They also seemed perplexed about two important points: why this terror threat remains so vivid, and why so many people around the world criticize the United States.
I sensed a great disconnect in America today between the sentiments and perceptions of ordinary citizens and the rhetoric and foreign policies of their federal government, articulated again last week by Bush's cosmic speech about fighting the new global threat of Islamist jihadi terrorism. Bush and his ideological warhorses in Washington want to take this fight to the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere and keep fighting until freedom prevails everywhere. Ordinary Americans would settle for a more effective, productive policy that makes them feel safer at home and less opposed around the world. Bush's speech at the National Endowment for Democracy last week reaffirmed to me that Washington's policy to fight terrorism is a mishmash of faulty analysis, historical confusions, emotional anger, foreign policy frustrations, worldly ignorance, and political deception, all rolled into one. The fundamental flaw is that Bush confuses and conflates a range of separate issues that have very different causes and consequences. As a result, he formulates an ineffective or even counter-productive strategy on the basis of distorted analysis and a wrong reading of the symptoms and causes or terror.
He sees the Islamist jihadi movement of Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi as a global totalitarian threat in the same tradition as Communism and fascism, and sees all acts of terror, against American, Arab, European or Asian targets, as emanating from a single, common inspiration. This is nonsense taken to peculiarly Texan heights of intellectual contortion and confusion.
He completely ignores the impact of American, Israeli and other foreign policies on the mindsets of hundreds of millions of people in the Arab-Asian region, whose degraded political and economic environment eventually spawns the desperate and futile criminality of terrorism. This is willful political blindness that makes the analytical basis of American foreign policy a laughing stock around the world.
He correctly notes that more democratic, prosperous and free societies in the Arab-Asian region would spawn fewer terrorists, but he refuses to acknowledge that America's war-making, military-based approach to promoting democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq is more feared than admired in our troubled region, and creates more resistance to, than embrace of, America's rhetoric and policies.
He wildly exaggerates the capacity of Bin Laden-style jihadi terrorists to achieve their goals, which he correctly identifies as ejecting the U.S. and other foreign armies from the region, toppling Western-supported Arab regimes, and imposing their vision of Islamic rule. He also grossly misdiagnoses the relationship between the jihadi terrorists and regimes such as Syria and Iran, both of which have established records of political enmity and warfare against such Islamist movements.
Bush keeps making the same speech about fighting terror and promoting freedom around the world month after month, but with progressively less credibility with his own citizenry on every occasion. The cautious, sensible wisdom of ordinary Americans is challenging the emotional zealotry and reckless global militarism of the Bush foreign policy team. This is because Bush's policies have proved less effective than the rousing rhetoric of his speeches, and after a while Americans prefer genuine security to perpetual warfare, and reality to fantasy.
This was such a good article that I had to post the entire thing.
Rami G. Khouri
October 11, 2005
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
I heard then read President George Bush's speech on the war on terror last Thursday while my wife and I enjoyed a wonderful two-day, two-night train journey across most of the United States, from Chicago to San Francisco. But I only fully grasped the meaning of Bush's "global war on terror" when I arrived here and had a useful discussion with one of my sons on the fantasy football league that he and my other son in Beirut are deeply engaged in.
For readers who may not follow these things closely, fantasy football is a virtual world over the Internet in which individuals create their own teams by choosing real players from the existing rosters of the National Football League. Every week the performances of the real players are tallied to give the fantasy team a score, and the fantasy team with the highest score at the end of the season wins. The exciting week-to-week interaction between the actual and imagined worlds makes it hard to separate fantasy from realityŠ which brings me back to George Bush's speech and policy on terrorism.
My conclusion after this rich week of travel and conversation is that sensible middle class Americans get on with the hard work of making a living in challenging times, while their federal government in Washington conducts a fantasy foreign policy based more on make-believe perceptions and imagined realities. The latest public opinion poll figures here bear this out, showing that about one-third of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the Iraq war, while nearly two-thirds disapprove -- a sharp reversal of the situation two years ago.
The long train ride through the American heartland was an opportunity to visually see the varied beauty of this land and the socio-economic variety of its inhabitants, and to engage a small sample of ordinary Americans about the problem of terrorism and how they relate to it in their everyday lives. The Americans I spoke to -- a computer engineer from Denver, a train service employee from Chicago, a retired professor from Omaha, a seminary student from South Carolina, a young university engineering graduate from Alabama, among others -- expressed lingering anger about 9/11 and concern about a future attack. They also seemed perplexed about two important points: why this terror threat remains so vivid, and why so many people around the world criticize the United States.
I sensed a great disconnect in America today between the sentiments and perceptions of ordinary citizens and the rhetoric and foreign policies of their federal government, articulated again last week by Bush's cosmic speech about fighting the new global threat of Islamist jihadi terrorism. Bush and his ideological warhorses in Washington want to take this fight to the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere and keep fighting until freedom prevails everywhere. Ordinary Americans would settle for a more effective, productive policy that makes them feel safer at home and less opposed around the world. Bush's speech at the National Endowment for Democracy last week reaffirmed to me that Washington's policy to fight terrorism is a mishmash of faulty analysis, historical confusions, emotional anger, foreign policy frustrations, worldly ignorance, and political deception, all rolled into one. The fundamental flaw is that Bush confuses and conflates a range of separate issues that have very different causes and consequences. As a result, he formulates an ineffective or even counter-productive strategy on the basis of distorted analysis and a wrong reading of the symptoms and causes or terror.
He sees the Islamist jihadi movement of Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi as a global totalitarian threat in the same tradition as Communism and fascism, and sees all acts of terror, against American, Arab, European or Asian targets, as emanating from a single, common inspiration. This is nonsense taken to peculiarly Texan heights of intellectual contortion and confusion.
He completely ignores the impact of American, Israeli and other foreign policies on the mindsets of hundreds of millions of people in the Arab-Asian region, whose degraded political and economic environment eventually spawns the desperate and futile criminality of terrorism. This is willful political blindness that makes the analytical basis of American foreign policy a laughing stock around the world.
He correctly notes that more democratic, prosperous and free societies in the Arab-Asian region would spawn fewer terrorists, but he refuses to acknowledge that America's war-making, military-based approach to promoting democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq is more feared than admired in our troubled region, and creates more resistance to, than embrace of, America's rhetoric and policies.
He wildly exaggerates the capacity of Bin Laden-style jihadi terrorists to achieve their goals, which he correctly identifies as ejecting the U.S. and other foreign armies from the region, toppling Western-supported Arab regimes, and imposing their vision of Islamic rule. He also grossly misdiagnoses the relationship between the jihadi terrorists and regimes such as Syria and Iran, both of which have established records of political enmity and warfare against such Islamist movements.
Bush keeps making the same speech about fighting terror and promoting freedom around the world month after month, but with progressively less credibility with his own citizenry on every occasion. The cautious, sensible wisdom of ordinary Americans is challenging the emotional zealotry and reckless global militarism of the Bush foreign policy team. This is because Bush's policies have proved less effective than the rousing rhetoric of his speeches, and after a while Americans prefer genuine security to perpetual warfare, and reality to fantasy.
This was such a good article that I had to post the entire thing.
Monday, October 10, 2005
na na na na
Randi Rhodes is speaking and the conservative, Janet Parshall, can't listen to the truth!
listen to this craziness!
listen to this craziness!
Death toll rises for U.S. military reservists as their role grows in Iraq
by Robert Burns
By Robert Burns
ASSOCIATED PRESS
11:00 a.m. October 10, 2005
WASHINGTON – The National Guard and Reserves are suffering a strikingly higher share of U.S. casualties in Iraq, their portion of total American military deaths nearly doubling since last year.
Reservists have accounted for one-quarter of all U.S. deaths since the Iraq war began, but the proportion has grown over time. It was 10 percent for the five weeks it took to topple Baghdad in the spring of 2003, and 20 percent for 2004 as a whole.
The trend accelerated this year. For the first nine months of 2005 reservists accounted for 36 percent of U.S. deaths, and for August and September it was 56 percent, according to Pentagon figures.
By Robert Burns
ASSOCIATED PRESS
11:00 a.m. October 10, 2005
WASHINGTON – The National Guard and Reserves are suffering a strikingly higher share of U.S. casualties in Iraq, their portion of total American military deaths nearly doubling since last year.
Reservists have accounted for one-quarter of all U.S. deaths since the Iraq war began, but the proportion has grown over time. It was 10 percent for the five weeks it took to topple Baghdad in the spring of 2003, and 20 percent for 2004 as a whole.
The trend accelerated this year. For the first nine months of 2005 reservists accounted for 36 percent of U.S. deaths, and for August and September it was 56 percent, according to Pentagon figures.
Mier's helped cover up Bush's National Guard duty or lack thereof
While Miers was chairwoman of the Texas Lottery commission, the former executive director filed suit, claiming that he was fired to ensure that allegations were not made public that then-Gov. Bush had gained acceptance into the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 as a result of political favors. At roughly the same time -- and also during her tenure as chairwoman -- Miers was paid by Bush's re-election campaign to investigate Bush's Guard record in order to deflect allegations that Bush received preferential treatment.
Of course the whole story is available at Media Matters
Of course the whole story is available at Media Matters
Friday, October 07, 2005
Bush avian flu plan "madness"
Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told The Associated Press the president's suggestion was dangerous.
Giving the military a law enforcement role would be an "extraordinarily Draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.
"The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said.
Read on the dailykos.com.
Giving the military a law enforcement role would be an "extraordinarily Draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.
"The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said.
Read on the dailykos.com.
Assisted-reproduction bill would bar singles, gays
"An interim legislative committee is considering a bill that would prohibit gays, lesbians and single people in Indiana from using medical science to assist them in having a child. [sponsor: Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis]
The bill defines assisted reproduction as causing pregnancy by means other than sexual intercourse, including intrauterine insemination, donation of an egg, donation of an embryo, in vitro fertilization and transfer of an embryo, and sperm injection. It would require "intended parents" to be married to each other and says a single person may not be an intended parent." They would have to undergo screening in order to get the required gestation certificate before the assisted reproductive procedure could be performed. Anyone attempting to have or performing assistive reproductive procedures would be subject to arrest, a fine and imprisonment. The required information includes the fertility history of the parents, education and employment information, personality descriptions, verification of marital status, child-care plans and criminal history checks. A description of the family lifestyle of the intended parents also would be required, including participation in faith-based or church activities.
boingboing says it best:
If the Virgin Mary had been born 2000 years later, she might have ended up in an Indiana State prison, if Republican lawmakers there get their way. A proposed bill hopes to make criminals out of unmarried women in Indiana who conceive "by means other than sexual intercourse."
Peter Svensson says: "Under the proposed Indiana law, if [Mary] willingly accepted the Holy Spirit's visitation, that would be a misdemeanor:
As it the draft of the new law reads now, an intended parent 'who knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction procedure' without court approval, 'commits unauthorized reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor.' The criminal charges will be the same for physicians who commit 'unauthorized practice of artificial reproduction.'
"Presumably, if the Holy Spirit didn't give her a choice in the matter, she would have been let off. But in either case, the Holy Spirit would be charged."
"An interim legislative committee is considering a bill that would prohibit gays, lesbians and single people in Indiana from using medical science to assist them in having a child. [sponsor: Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis]
The bill defines assisted reproduction as causing pregnancy by means other than sexual intercourse, including intrauterine insemination, donation of an egg, donation of an embryo, in vitro fertilization and transfer of an embryo, and sperm injection. It would require "intended parents" to be married to each other and says a single person may not be an intended parent." They would have to undergo screening in order to get the required gestation certificate before the assisted reproductive procedure could be performed. Anyone attempting to have or performing assistive reproductive procedures would be subject to arrest, a fine and imprisonment. The required information includes the fertility history of the parents, education and employment information, personality descriptions, verification of marital status, child-care plans and criminal history checks. A description of the family lifestyle of the intended parents also would be required, including participation in faith-based or church activities.
boingboing says it best:
If the Virgin Mary had been born 2000 years later, she might have ended up in an Indiana State prison, if Republican lawmakers there get their way. A proposed bill hopes to make criminals out of unmarried women in Indiana who conceive "by means other than sexual intercourse."
Peter Svensson says: "Under the proposed Indiana law, if [Mary] willingly accepted the Holy Spirit's visitation, that would be a misdemeanor:
As it the draft of the new law reads now, an intended parent 'who knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction procedure' without court approval, 'commits unauthorized reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor.' The criminal charges will be the same for physicians who commit 'unauthorized practice of artificial reproduction.'
"Presumably, if the Holy Spirit didn't give her a choice in the matter, she would have been let off. But in either case, the Holy Spirit would be charged."
Subversive influence of money in politics
"Theodore Roosevelt warned a century ago of the subversive influence of money in politics. He said the central fact in his time was that big business had become so dominant it would chew up democracy and spit it out. The power of corporations, he said, had to be balanced with the interest of the general public. That warning was echoed by his cousin Franklin, who said a “government by organized money is as much to be feared as a government by organized mob.” Both Roosevelts rose to that challenge in their day. But 100 years later mighty corporations are once again the undisputed overlords of government."
Bill Moyers again speaks the truth loud and clear!
Bill Moyers again speaks the truth loud and clear!
Southwest boots woman because of her politically charged T-shirt.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Lorrie Heasley, of Woodland, Wash., was asked to leave her flight from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore., Tuesday for wearing a T-shirt with pictures of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a phrase similar to the popular film title "Meet the Fockers."
Hmmmm....what shall I wear on my upcoming flight on Southwest? It's not like I have a shortage of politically charged T-shirts!
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Lorrie Heasley, of Woodland, Wash., was asked to leave her flight from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore., Tuesday for wearing a T-shirt with pictures of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a phrase similar to the popular film title "Meet the Fockers."
Hmmmm....what shall I wear on my upcoming flight on Southwest? It's not like I have a shortage of politically charged T-shirts!
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Interpreting Harriet Miers
Robert Reich
October 06, 2005
Excerpts:
Before 1937, a majority of justices, saying they were "strictly interpreting" the Constitution, struck down as unconstitutional laws setting minimum wages and maximum hours, and barring child labor.
The economic values of those justices favored private property over community standards of fair play. To them, due process of law was mostly about freedom to contract and liberty was the ability to accumulate personal wealth.
Then, early in 1937, one of those justice switched sides (coincidentally, his last name was Roberts) and the court’s new majority chose community over property. They said they were still strictly interpreting the Constitution. But suddenly, due process was about making laws fairly, and liberty was about giving people opportunities to get ahead.
We no longer have a Great Depression to contend with, as we did then. But we’ve still got big questions of economic values. The U.S. economy has been growing at a healthy clip. But the typical household’s income has barely budged for years. Meanwhile, the number of poor Americans continues to grow. According to the Census Bureau, only the top 5 percent of households have been enjoying real economic gains. Almost all the economic growth has gone to the top.
This raises profound questions about American values. Not since the Gilded Age of the 1890s has this nation experienced anything like the inequality of income, wealth and opportunity we’re now witnessing.
Should we try to reverse this trend? Does the Constitution require that we provide all our citizens with an equal opportunity to get ahead? Is the widening gap evidence we’re failing at this?
If you see our society as a group of individuals for whom government exists mainly to protect property, you’d probably answer these questions with a "no." If you see America as a national community whose citizens have responsibilities for the well-being of one another, you’d say "yes."
source
I say YES! We have a responsibility for the well being of each other. Guess some of these right wingers should review the words of Jesus.
Here is the lesson right from the pages of the CBN: (Why don't these folks practice what they preach?).
"While Jesus was teaching he admonished an expert in knowing God’s law to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. `Look after him,' he said, `and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'
Then Jesus asked, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:30-37 NIV)"
Robert Reich
October 06, 2005
Excerpts:
Before 1937, a majority of justices, saying they were "strictly interpreting" the Constitution, struck down as unconstitutional laws setting minimum wages and maximum hours, and barring child labor.
The economic values of those justices favored private property over community standards of fair play. To them, due process of law was mostly about freedom to contract and liberty was the ability to accumulate personal wealth.
Then, early in 1937, one of those justice switched sides (coincidentally, his last name was Roberts) and the court’s new majority chose community over property. They said they were still strictly interpreting the Constitution. But suddenly, due process was about making laws fairly, and liberty was about giving people opportunities to get ahead.
We no longer have a Great Depression to contend with, as we did then. But we’ve still got big questions of economic values. The U.S. economy has been growing at a healthy clip. But the typical household’s income has barely budged for years. Meanwhile, the number of poor Americans continues to grow. According to the Census Bureau, only the top 5 percent of households have been enjoying real economic gains. Almost all the economic growth has gone to the top.
This raises profound questions about American values. Not since the Gilded Age of the 1890s has this nation experienced anything like the inequality of income, wealth and opportunity we’re now witnessing.
Should we try to reverse this trend? Does the Constitution require that we provide all our citizens with an equal opportunity to get ahead? Is the widening gap evidence we’re failing at this?
If you see our society as a group of individuals for whom government exists mainly to protect property, you’d probably answer these questions with a "no." If you see America as a national community whose citizens have responsibilities for the well-being of one another, you’d say "yes."
source
I say YES! We have a responsibility for the well being of each other. Guess some of these right wingers should review the words of Jesus.
Here is the lesson right from the pages of the CBN: (Why don't these folks practice what they preach?).
"While Jesus was teaching he admonished an expert in knowing God’s law to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. `Look after him,' he said, `and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'
Then Jesus asked, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:30-37 NIV)"
Quarantined by the military?
WASHINGTON CNN -- "President Bush says the possibility of an avian flu pandemic is among the reasons he wants Congress to give him the power to use the nation's military in law enforcement roles in the United States.
"I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he told reporters during a Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday.
Such an event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, he said."
Ok, this is pretty frightening. There is no mention of how hospital care, antibiotics and/or other supportive care would be implemented. What is he planning to do, quarantine an entire town, leaving those who can afford medical care and medications to get what they can, and leaving the poor to die? Will they just deport folks to "flu camps'? Will martial law be far behind? The Bush administration is more and more fascist all the time, and it's scary.
"I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he told reporters during a Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday.
Such an event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, he said."
Ok, this is pretty frightening. There is no mention of how hospital care, antibiotics and/or other supportive care would be implemented. What is he planning to do, quarantine an entire town, leaving those who can afford medical care and medications to get what they can, and leaving the poor to die? Will they just deport folks to "flu camps'? Will martial law be far behind? The Bush administration is more and more fascist all the time, and it's scary.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
screw the poor in the gulf states some more...
Post-Katrina easing of labor laws stirs debate
Foreign workers may form a big part of Gulf Coast reconstruction.
read it here
Foreign workers may form a big part of Gulf Coast reconstruction.
read it here
Monday, October 03, 2005
Bush directly involved in leak scandal?
Source to Stephanopoulos: President Bush Directly Involved In Leak Scandal
Near the end of a round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this bomb:
Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions.
This would explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It would also fundamentally change the dynamics of the scandal. President Bush could no longer claim he was merely a bystander who wants to “get to the bottom of it.” As Stephanopoulos notes, if Bush played a direct role it could make this scandal completely unmanageable.
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.
Near the end of a round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this bomb:
Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions.
This would explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It would also fundamentally change the dynamics of the scandal. President Bush could no longer claim he was merely a bystander who wants to “get to the bottom of it.” As Stephanopoulos notes, if Bush played a direct role it could make this scandal completely unmanageable.
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.
Congress and Katrina...one more blow to the victims
What perfect timing: the bankruptcy law set to go into effect Oct. 17 is arriving just in time to inflict more pain on Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas residents who have been hit by the gulf hurricanes. They lost their homes, businesses and even loved ones and now may face financial ruin without the protection of bankruptcy. for more
It amazes me how little play the screwing of Katrina victims makes the news. Since you can't show this in pictures, I guess it's not newsworthy. What a sick society, and a namby pamby media!
It amazes me how little play the screwing of Katrina victims makes the news. Since you can't show this in pictures, I guess it's not newsworthy. What a sick society, and a namby pamby media!
Right wingers jumping off the cliff over Miers nomination
Conservatives jumping off the cliff over Miers nomination
A round up from crooksandliars
It seems like another crony nomination to me. Keeping it in the family. A little "Clemenza" action. Ezra Klein has some of the reactions from the right wingers. Here's an example:
"ConfirmThem.com: Harriet Miers? Are you freakin’ kidding me?! Oh, and if any of you RNC staffers are reading, you can take my name off the mailing list. I am not giving the national Republican Party another dime."
Atrios:J-Pod Said All That Needs to be Said/Armando: Leap of Faith/ AmericaBlog: Conserv. Bloggers not happy/Think Progress-Right-Wing Peanut Gallery Hits Miers Hard/Michelle Malkin: UTTERLY UNDERWHELMED/ Ben Winkler: David Frum just deleted his post/ John Cole: I Don't Get it/ Hugh Hewitt wants them to trust the President/Booman Tribune: A "Pitbull in Size 6 Shoes"
No word from God's Own Circus yet...(send me anything from the Circus Clowns)
A round up from crooksandliars
It seems like another crony nomination to me. Keeping it in the family. A little "Clemenza" action. Ezra Klein has some of the reactions from the right wingers. Here's an example:
"ConfirmThem.com: Harriet Miers? Are you freakin’ kidding me?! Oh, and if any of you RNC staffers are reading, you can take my name off the mailing list. I am not giving the national Republican Party another dime."
Atrios:J-Pod Said All That Needs to be Said/Armando: Leap of Faith/ AmericaBlog: Conserv. Bloggers not happy/Think Progress-Right-Wing Peanut Gallery Hits Miers Hard/Michelle Malkin: UTTERLY UNDERWHELMED/ Ben Winkler: David Frum just deleted his post/ John Cole: I Don't Get it/ Hugh Hewitt wants them to trust the President/Booman Tribune: A "Pitbull in Size 6 Shoes"
No word from God's Own Circus yet...(send me anything from the Circus Clowns)
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