The BloggerSuicides

A Comment on Manners v. Self-Awareness

2007-08-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

I am, as usual, a little late on this, but I had to write something about a recent opinion piece by Peggy Noonan that has deservedly received quite a thorough mocking from many.

In this piece Noonan provides us with yet another example of how conservatives really feel about the average American. You see, not only do conservatives experience fear and loathing at the idea of having to interact with the common folk somewhere in cyberspace, but they also feel the need to fret about interactions with the struggling masses while shopping for clothes and handbags.

Peggy Noonan has recently taken to the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal of all places to inform the world that she is aware of and agrees that "We are living in the second great Gilded Age, a time of startling personal wealth." She then goes on to describe the signs of this Gilded Age, which has risen once more to envelope America from sea to shining sea:

In the West, the mansion after mansion with broad and rolling grounds; in the East, the apartments with foyers in which bowling teams could play....The Dow Jones Industrial Average has hit 14000. The wealthy live better than kings. There isn't a billionaire in East Hampton who wouldn't look down on tatty old Windsor Castle. We have a potential presidential candidate who noted to a friend that if he won the presidency the quality of his life would go down, not up.

And like so many others who have noted the rebirth of the Gilded Age in America, she realizes that there is something else to the story of so many billionaires scoffing at the Old World, aristocratic wealth and luxury of yore while they shit in solid gold toilets. Noonan notes that the "gap between rich and poor is great, and there is plenty of want, and also confusion."

And yet, as she contemplates these confusing, Dickensian times of growing disparity between those living better than kings and those who find themselves, day by day, sinking ever deeper into that abyss of want and epidemic financial insecurity, she can only turn back to the images of those spreading mansions and sky-rocketing stock markets:

What the superrich do for a living now often seems utterly incomprehensible, and has for at least a generation. There is no word for it, only an image. There's a big pile of coins on a table. The rich shove their hands in, raise them, and as the coins sift through their fingers it makes . . . a bigger pile of coins. Then they sift through it again and the pile gets bigger again.

You see, Ms. Noonan can't quite find the appropriate word to articulate exactly what it is that, if one could strip away the complex explanations of the world of global finance, the Market, ever increasing corporate profits, free trade, etc., could begin to explain how these billionaires were able to acquire these bigger and bigger piles of coins. Thus, she must rely on the imagery of the Gilded Age to convey her understanding and impression of how these billionaires have acquired so much.

I can understand her confusion. It certainly is hard to nail down exactly what these masters of the universe do because they wear so many hats and have their fingers in so many pies. Noonan correctly points out:

A general rule: If you are told what someone does for a living and it makes sense to you--orthodontist, store owner, professor--that means he's not rich. But if it's a man in a suit who does something that takes him five sentences to explain and still you walk away confused, and castigating yourself as to why you couldn't understand the central facts of the acquisition of wealth in the age you live in--well, chances are you just talked to a billionaire.

I can certainly sympathize with Noonan on this point. It's hard to give a specific job description to one of these billionaires who probably owns stock in a few multinational corporations that make their huge profits off of the cheap, third-world, slave-wage labor of 12 year olds in an impoverished Indian village, while at the same time owning stock in one or more of its subsidiaries in the United States that has grown its profit margins by outsourcing decent waged jobs with benefits and pensions to countries where the work can be done without basic minimum wage guarantees or labor and environmental laws and regulations. Such a billionaire is also likely to sit on one or more boards of any number of big corporations in which he is partly responsible for the financial and political maneuverings that are essential to things like vast mergers and acquisitions and the flow of finance through the world's markets as it enriches one billionaire after another, all the while sanctioning the dole out of vast sums of money in the form of campaign contributions to politicians and parties (on both sides of the aisle, to be sure) that will write and support legislation that greases the wheels for such financial gamesmanship (like taking a $20.00 bill out of the petty cash to buy some Xerox paper) and contributing even more sums to conservative and corporate friendly think tanks to support people (like Ms. Noonan herself) who write articles and papers on economic policy and in defense of the system that secures his wealth and who thus assist in providing a pseudo-intellectual and ideological cover for out of control free market, free trade, and globalization policies.

Up until this point, what Ms. Noonan is saying is making sense to me, but I lose her right after the first sentence of the previous paragraph. After Noonan remarks on the mysterious and inexplicable ways that billionaires amass such wealth she writes:

There are good things and bad in the Gilded Age, pluses and minuses. I write here of a minus. It has to do with our manners, the ones we show each other on the street. I think riches, or the pursuit of riches, has made us ruder. You'd think broad comfort would assuage certain hungers. It has not. It has sharpened them.

Yes, what outrages Noonan about this new Gilded Age with its rampant inequality and endemic financial insecurity and rising poverty juxtaposed, in her imagery, beside metaphorical billionaires rolling in their gold coins is...manners. Specifically what Noonan views as symbols of "the pushiness of the Gilded Age":

I walk into a shop on Madison Avenue daydreaming, trying to remember what it was I thought last week I should pick up, what was it . . .

"Hi! Let me help you find what you're looking for!" She is a saleswoman, cracking gum with intensity, about 25 years old, and she has made a beeline to her mark. That would be me....

In another shop, as soon as I walk in the door, "How are you today? How can I help you?" Those dread words.
"Oh, I'm sort of just looking."

"I like your bag!"

"Um, thanks." What they are forcing you to do is engage. If you engage--"Um, thanks"--you have a relationship. If you have a relationship, it's easier for them to turn you upside down and shake the coins from your pockets.

Of course she does concede that there are remnants of snobbishness in "the big stores (Macy's, Duane Reade drugstore), where [the sales people] ignore you" but obviously the biggest symbol of decaying manners and the boorish "pursuit of riches" are aggressive sales clerks who must do their part in sustaining the absolute wealth of the superrich by keeping the store's sales revenues at ever higher and higher levels because that is what their paycheck essentially depends on, if they are not working on commission, in which case a comparably insignificant amount of the profit from their sales is pretty much their paycheck.

After enduring such a traumatic experience, then walking out into the street only to be confronted by "the woman with the clipboard" who is concerned with the environment and is making Noonan feel a little uneasy, she ends her screed with an observation of another conspicuous image that has become all too common to our consumerist and money hungry society--the unrelenting use of the cellphone and blackberry:

It is possible that we are on the cellphone because we are lonely and hunger for connection, even of the shallowest kind; that we BlackBerry because we hope for a sense of control in a chaotic world; that we are frightened of stillness and must interrupt conversations; that we are desperate to make the sale in the highly competitive environment of the Banana Republic on 86th Street and must aggressively pursue customers.

Could it really be that a Gilded Age dominated by billionaires and the superrich whose vast wealth depends on a system that, by its very nature and design, creates and feeds off endemic financial insecurity, rising gaps between the rich and the rest of society, undermining of the middle classes, "plenty of want, and also confusion," and consumerist, workaholic, and get ahead at whatever cost cultural imperatives gone mad might make people "hunger for connection" or "a sense of control in a chaotic world"?

Of course not, Noonan only brings this up so she can be dismissive of this possibility and instead ends with this stunning insight:

It's also possible we have grown more boorish. I think it's that one. Many things thrive in the age of everything, including bad manners.

For a second there it looked as if Ms. Noonan was going to fall into the abyss of a little self awareness and delve into the possibility that the biggest "minus" of this second great Gilded Age might be the apt observation that, no matter what the specific explanation, at the bottom of "the utterly incomprehensible" nature of "what the superrich do for a living" lay pure, unadulterated greed and that a society whose economic, cultural and social institutions have come to be dominated by greed is just not good for anyone. But, being the true conservative that she is, Noonan took one look at that abyss and turned right back around to gaze in enchanted bewilderment at the billionaires and scoff at the sales clerks and their boorish manners.

All Paris, All the Time But Don't Blame the Media

2007-08-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

Via The Sideshow, an interesting new study by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press indicates that "87 percent of those surveyed said celebrity scandals receive too much coverage" and that the "public put most of the blame for the coverage squarely on the new media, with 54 percent responding that news organizations are at fault." But I'm sure the media will still continue to believe that they are just giving the people what they want.

Giving to Corporations but Not to the Troops

2007-08-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

I really think that King George should rethink those tax cuts (see previous post) and should change his mind and start supporting the Democrats' bill to give our veterans full educational benefits.

Quote of the Day~The Broken Record of Conservatism

2007-08-09T08:21:00.000-07:00

Today's quote comes from Kevid Drum commenting on Bush's latest call for yet more tax cuts:

He really is like a windup doll, isn't he? No matter what's going on in the outside world, no matter what problems we're facing, no matter what the political situation is, you pull the cord and he says "Tax cuts!" It's like he's the Manchurian President.

Pretty much sums it up to me. One of the most frightening things about King George is that no matter the reality of what we face as a nation he always sounds like a broken record--stay the course, fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, we are making progress in Iraq, tax cuts, more tax cuts, privatize (insert pretty much anything here).

As King George's approval ratings plunge ever lower (as they will no doubt continue to do) and as Republicans increasingly try to make the case that King George is not really a conservative or has betrayed conservatism (as they no doubt will continue to do), we just need to remind them and everyone else that King George is still faithfully reciting solutions from the ideologically conservative answers to anything and everything guide book. Only a true conservative would propose yet more tax cuts when we already have a spiralling deficit, grossly defunded government services, major problems with out country's infrastructure, a war that is projected to cost us over a $1 trillion, especially if Bush continues with his surges, a potential economic catastrophe about to let loose because of the housing market, rising income inequality, more and more people without adequate health coverage or no coverage at all, soaring gas prices, inflation...well, you get it. No honest conservative Republican should have anything to fear from King George because he is nothing if not truly conservative:

President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the remainder of his tenure.

....The focus on economic issues on Bush's last day in Washington before leaving town today for most of the rest of the month reflected a White House strategy to confront Democrats on tax and spending issues. With most of his second-term domestic legislative agenda in tatters and his strategy in Iraq under bipartisan fire, Bush appears eager to return to familiar issues that animated the beginning of his presidency and might rally disaffected Republicans behind him again.

The Cost of War~Toy Soldiers and Debt Slaves

2007-08-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

The cost of the Iraq war in dollars is now literally being dumped onto the shoulders of soldiers who are fortunate enough to have come back from Iraq without paying the ultimate cost of losing their lives. Veterans returning home from Iraq are now being billed by the Pentagon for a "debt of service." Via Crooks & Liars, this article from a couple of weeks ago reports that veterans are getting billed for government property that was lost or damaged while they were serving in Iraq.

One such case involves former Army Specialist Brian Rodrigues who served in Iraq as a combat engineer. Rodriguez "started getting bills for $700 for lost or damaged government property this summer. Although he was discharged some four years ago, bills recently arrived demanding payment, but giving no details on what or why -- nor do they offer a way to dispute the charges." This is happening to other veterans as well. According to a goverment report in 2006 "more than 1,000 soldiers [are] being billed a total of $1.5 million. "

These "debt of service" bills could put the furtures and financial stability of theses veterans and their families at risk. Rodriguez is trying to challenge the bills that he has received from the Army, but in the meantime he "will be reported to credit agencies next month." The article also quotes veterans' advocate Tod Ensign who describes what Rodriguez and others like him are facing: "They'll just pound him and call him, call his employers, and make his life as miserable as they can until he pays up." Ensign believes that this is "part of the military's push to be run more like a business."

This has been going on for some time. According to this Washington Post article from April 2006, soldiers are being billed for payroll "errors," as well as lost or damaged equipment. The post article states that the "underlying problem is an antiquated computer system for paying and tracking members of the military. Pay records are not integrated with personnel records, creating numerous errors. When soldiers leave the battlefield, for example, they lose a pay differential, but the system can take time to lower their pay." The system is so bad that it listed 400 soldiers killed in action as owing money to the government.

The post article quotes former Army finance officer Michael Hurst who studied the issue as saying that this problem resulted from a "complete leadership failure." Hurst says the military should have began to address this problem years ago.

I suspect that this is more than just a leadership failure, that it is, in fact, yet another symptom of a broken a system. How else can one explain why, in a country with the most powerful military in the world and in a country that spends as much on the military and defense as we do, troops are returning from war to face a financial crisis caused by a defunct military computer system that cannot accurately handle basic payroll functions and coordinate that with effective tracking of troops that have died or have been injured. With the billions we spend on defense there is no excuse why our military's computer systems should be so outdated and riddled with systemic problems such as these.

I'm still not exactly sure how the bills for equipment shortage fit into all of this except that the military is unable to keep an accurate track of battlefield injuries and integrate that with an accurate adjustment of inventory of lost or damaged equipment. Whatever the exact relationship between the inventory and payroll computer problems, it is evident that the basic IT infrastructure of the military has been in need of a significant overhaul for a long time. Either way, the fact these underlying deficiencies in the computer system were not addressed at an earlier point and the fact that basic computing and payroll systems are so outrageously deficient this far into the war points to more than just a leadership failure. In my opinion an ongoing failure of this sort has as much, if not more, to do with a system in which billions of dollars are wasted in a contracting system that is nothing but an egregious war-profiteering scheme and in which the Defense Department has prioritized privatization and the interests of private corporations over the well being of the nation's military.

In short, this phenomenon, which has been labeled by critics as "financial friendly fire," is just one more example of the troops becoming the victims of small government and free market ideology, an ideology whose core tenets include the belief that privatization, in the form of turning as many sections and functions of the federal government as possible over to private companies, is cheaper and more efficient in any context, including once effective and efficient functions of the US military. This process has proven to be, not only a massive transfer of tax payer money over to private corporations, but a practice that has caused incalculable damage in the Iraq war and one that has overwhelmingly contributed to the ever spiraling cost of the war from the very beginning. Thus, billions have been wasted that should have been put to better use in keeping basic military infrastructure up to par. But perhaps more to the point, this system creates a disincentive to insure that our military is efficiently funded and that funds are allocated in the most effective way.

Financial friendly fire is part of an ongoing list of atrocities that have resulted from this uber-privatization of the system. Troops returning from war are also dealing with inadequate healthcare and underfunded veterans' services, and troops in combat have been dealing with deficiencies in adequate and proper equipment. As early as 2003, for example, when problems with equipment shortages facing the troops were becoming apparent, Paul Krugman noted:

Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports....There's also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat - and the system failed.

(Emphasis mine). The war in Iraq has already costed us about $500 billion and is estimated, under the best of circumstances, to cost over a trillion dollars. A significant amount of that cost can be traced to the privitization of services once performed by the government and the military that have been handed over to private companies. In his article "The Bushites have Outsourced our Government to their Pals," Jim Hightower writes:

Since the BushCheney regime took office, Halliburton's government contracts have increased by a stunning 600%, including more than $10 billion in Pentagon contracts - many of them awarded without the fuss and muss of competitive bidding.

In return, Halliburton has delivered gas-price gouging, contaminated food and water, and a consis-These are our "savings" from privatization A 2006 federal audit of $1.7 billion in Pentagon purchases found that taxpayers were soaked for excessive fees from contractors and for tens of millions of dollars in waste. One reason was "poor contracting practices." Such as? The audit reports that 92% of the contracts were awarded without verifying that the contractors provided accurate cost estimates, and 96% of the work was inadequately monitored. 2 Hightower Lowdown June 2007 tent pattern of overcharges. It has been caught hiring Third World laborers to do its grunt work in Iraq, paying them as little as $5 a day, and then billing Uncle Sam more than $50 a day for each worker. In a February analysis of $10 billion in waste and overcharges by various contractors in Iraq, federal investigators found Halliburton responsible for $2.7 billion....

Hightower notes that "people see Halliburton as the face of privitized war in Iraq," but Halliburton is only one of many such contractors whose billions of dollars in profits amount to a rape of the US treasury and an outright theft of money from taxpayers through privatization, which has been the foundation of the Bush administration's handling of the war (as well as many domestic and intelligence activities):

Given the rampant corruption and waste that marks such policies, I cannot view these "debt of service" bills as anything but actions that are forcing the troops to directly pay for part of the financial cost of the war through the type of negligence that is produced by and that sustains a system that has created and maintained the enormous profits of these private contractors. This financial friendly fire may not be the result of a deliberate scheme to transfer part of the financial cost directly to the troops, but this did not occur in a vacuum. The underlying problems that have caused these computing and billing failures, combined with patterns of deficiencies in equipment, the veterans' healthcare system, and other veterans' services, along with unchecked waste and an alarming lack of accountability, amount to nothing less than gross negligence and are the inevitable result of a deliberate policy of favoring privatization over what is best for the military and the troops at any cost.

In fact, the Bush Administration has pushed its love for privatization so far that it now relies heavily ona private mercenary army to carry out its mission in Iraq. In January 2007 Jeremy Scahill noted that in his State of the Union speech Bush addressed "the very issue that has made the war's privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy - the need for more troops." Scahill writes:

The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps." Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush declared.

This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory. Iraq is its Frankenstein monster.

The Los Angeles Times reported in July 2007 that "the number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns." According to the State and Defense department figures obtained by the Times, "[m]ore than 180,000 civilians - including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis - are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts" a fact that "shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq - a mission criticized as being undermanned."

The Bush Administration has deliberately relied on private contractors and increasing privatization in general, not only as a means to supplement needed forces, but as a means to avoid accountability and oversight of the ways in which it allocates competing resources, addresses competing priorities, and carries out its policies. This privatized corporate shield from accountability prevents the Bush Administration from having to insure that the military's infrastructure and equipment needs are up to par and from having to deal with fallout from its failures. Having a private military force that is equal to or outnumbers US military personnel means that you don't have to care as much about what is happening to the people you send to fight your wars and that operations can be carried out without the bothersome interference of government and public accountability. After all, where does the overhaul of a computer system with systemic problems that handles basic personnel functions that are essential for the effective operation of the military fall on the list of priorities when so much of the occupation and other military functions can be outsourced to private companies who will be paid with tax payer dollars?

The Bush administration's belief that it should not be held accountable for anything is no doubt a significant part of the reason that the Bush Administration will not hold defense contractors and companies like Halliburton accountable for their war-profiteering even while the troops are going into debt because of a defunct computer system. If the military needs the estimated 1.5 million dollars that it has billed veterans for, then the Bush administration should go after the war profiteers and recover the billions in tax payer money that they have stolen and wasted.

But Bush's politicized Justice Department has never had any intention of doing this and "has opted out of at least 10 whistle-blower lawsuits alleging fraud and corruption in government reconstruction and security contracts in Iraq, and has spent years investigating additional fraud cases but has yet to try to recover any money."

This Boston Globe article from June of this year further points out:

The government's reluctance to join in any of the civil suits has sparked allegations of political interference.

One witness, Alan Grayson , a lawyer who represents several whistle-blowers, told the House subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security that the Justice Department has been stonewalling and dragging its feet in investigating the whistle-blowers' claims of fraud.

"In our fifth year in the war in Iraq, the Bush administration has not litigated a single case against any war profiteer under the False Claims Act," Grayson said....

Historically, the False Claims Act has served as an important tool in recovering money defrauded from the federal government. Last year, it was used to return more than $3 billion in domestic cases, but has recovered only about $6.1 million from Iraq since the war began. Those recoveries, however, were the result of settlements between the Justice Department and two contractors -- not civil lawsuits or prosecutions.

(Emphasis mine). Thus, do we really have to wonder why it is that only $6.1 million dollars in settlements has been recovered out of the possible billions in waste and over-priced services that the Bush Administration could recover from these greedy, war-profiteering bastards but the Pentagon is billing veterans for an estimated $1.5 million. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that these war profiteers have a lot of friends and influence:

Outfits like Halliburton, DynCorp, Blackwater, L-3, Titan, Custer Battles, Triple Canopy, and Wackenhut are reaping billions of our tax dollars doing military work that the Bush-Cheney Pentagon has outsourced. Not coincidentally, nearly all of these corporations are big-dollar donors to Republicans and/or are run by executives with tight GOP ties.

(Emphasis mine). Kurt Vonnegut once wondered about the inhumanity of those who would make the preposterous claim that criticizing the way this war has been handled and the basis upon which it was launched endangered the morale of the troops when soldiers were already "being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas." Maybe that was only the beginning. Now thousands of rich kids' toy soldiers are coming home to be the rich kids' debt slaves.

Quote of the Day~Dirty Fucking Masses!

2007-08-03T06:57:00.001-07:00

Conservatives rarely show what truly motivates them and their political philosophy as well as they do when you catch them saying what they really think about the dirty, worthless, stupid masses. Sometimes it slips out and it's painfully obvious. Other times it's ever so slightly subtle, but in plain view all the same.

Today's quote of the day comes from Whiskey Fire 's post on the GOP freakout over doing a YouTube Debate, which highlights one rather funny argument in "the intra-wingnut debate over the proposed GOP YouTube debate" from one particular wingnut whose reason for opposing it is that " 'dignity must be maintained.'" To which Whiskey Fire responds:

as regards a diehard GOP apologist these days, is like listening to a guy in a Tijuana circus with 49 daisies up his ass complaining about the deplorable goings-on in the donkey stall next door....One of the enduring problems the GOP has is that their entire "movement" is based upon transparent bullshit. Which is a problem for a bunch of loons obsessed with "dignity." "Respect my dignity," they declaim, while proudly waving their daisies rearward aloft to flutter in the stiffening breeze. It would be funnier were it not so corrosive to Our Republic, etc.

Yes, any time a conservtive starts talking about dignity, you can bet that conservative thinks he/she is smelling the stench from the unwashed masses or the filthy, cheap labor when, in fact, he/she is really smelling his/her own bullshit.

2007-08-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

Do Republicans understand anything about the purpose of things like search warrants or the basic way that our legal system works? Via Talking Points Memo Republican Sen. Larry Craig (ID) is all upset about some recent actions by the FBI, saying that the FBI "is a bit Gestapo-like in its style and tactics." He is of course referring to the situation involving Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens:

Agents from the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service raided the Alaska home of Sen. Ted Stevens (R) yesterday as part of a broad federal investigation of political corruption in the state that has also swept up his son and one of his closest financial backers, officials said....

The afternoon raid was conducted by FBI and IRS agents as part of a "court-authorized search warrant," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said in Washington. He declined to provide further details.

Craig is freaking out because "when you have the allegatiatons, you have the judicial segment of our government, the executive branch, out raiding the homes of senators, that is a very frightening propostion" and because "the FBI was offered a key and invited into the home, they chose publicize it to make sure the media was there first, and they broke in."

You see Stevens is part of an ongoing corruption probe so the Justice Department and the FBI could not possibly have any interest whatsoever in executing a legal search warrant in order to obtain documents that could be in Stevens' home rather than rely on an invite from Stevens to come to his house for a friendly chat so that he can hand them all the documents or other evidence pertinent to the case, even information that might implicate him in the crimes for which he is being investigated. And of course Craig rightly points out that it "makes senators very, very angry when they attempt to cooperate when for reason they are caught in these webs and yet they are denied that for the sake of the jduciary’s publicity" because when prominent U.S. Senators have their homes raided as part of an ongoing corruption probe it is highly unusual that there would be any media attention.

I'd like to point out something else that might justifiably be a little bit closer to "Gestapo-like in its style and tactics" and that might make U.S. Senators very, very angry:

An unusual FBI raid of a Democratic congressman's office over the weekend prompted complaints yesterday from leaders in both parties, who said the tactic was unduly aggressive and may have breached the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government.

Rep. William J. Jefferson (La.), who is at the center of a 14-month investigation for allegedly accepting bribes for promoting business ventures in Africa, also held a news conference in which he denied any wrongdoing and denounced the raid on his office as an "outrageous intrusion." Jefferson, who has not been charged, vowed to seek reelection in November....

The Saturday raid of Jefferson's quarters in the Rayburn House Office Building posed a new political dilemma for the leaders of both parties, who felt compelled to protest his treatment while condemning any wrongdoing by the lawmaker. The dilemma was complicated by new details contained in an 83-page affidavit unsealed on Sunday, including allegations that the FBI had videotaped Jefferson taking $100,000 in bribe money and then found $90,000 of that cash stuffed inside his apartment freezer....

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) expressed alarm at the raid. "The actions of the Justice Department in seeking and executing this warrant raise important Constitutional issues that go well beyond the specifics of this case," he said in a lengthy statement released last night.

"Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by Members of Congress," he said. "Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years."

[....]

Legal experts were divided on the legality and propriety of the FBI's raid, but many said that it could raise serious evidentiary problems for prosecutors at trial. In scores of cases of alleged congressional wrongdoing, federal prosecutors and FBI agents have most commonly sought to issue subpoenas for documents rather than conducting an impromptu raid on congressional property, experts said.

At issue is the "speech or debate" clause of the Constitution -- language intended to shield lawmakers from intimidation by the executive branch. Historically, courts have interpreted the clause broadly, legal experts said.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), in an e-mail to colleagues with the subject line "on the edge of a constitutional confrontation," called the Saturday night raid "the most blatant violation of the Constitutional Separation of Powers in my lifetime." He urged President Bush to discipline or fire "whoever exhibited this extraordinary violation."

[....]

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, asked about the raid during an unrelated news conference in Washington, declined to discuss the case in detail but said "the executive branch intends to work with the Congress to allay" any concerns.

"I will admit that these were unusual steps that were taken in response to an unusual set of circumstances," he said. "I'll just say that."

GOP Presidential Candidate Advocates All Out Holy War Against Terrorists

2007-07-31T16:36:00.000-07:00

Via Talking Points Memo here is another extraordinary story to add to our little collection of anecdotes about the GOP presidential candidates:

Followers of radical Islam must be deterred from committing a nuclear attack on U.S. soil, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo said Tuesday morning, saying that as president he would take drastic measures to prevent such attacks.

"If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina," the GOP presidential candidate said. "That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent or you will find an attack. There is no other way around it. There have to be negative consequences for the actions they take. That's the most negative I can think of."

As if King George hasn't fucked things up enough already, the proposed policies and solutions to the threat of terrorism from this GOP presidential candidiate is to make things so much more fucking worse.

Bush's Department of Justice Still Working Hard to Protect Repbulicans?

2007-07-31T14:57:00.001-07:00

Wow, you'd think the Republicans' political hacks in the DOJ would be very careful these days considering that the Attorney General is facing possible impeachment after he perjured himself in testimony to congress during the ongoing investigations into the NSA wiretapping program. I mean considering that the AJ's recent actions and testimony were so bad that Fox news couldn't even find a conservative to defend Gonzo on the air.

Well, maybe not.

This diarist at Daily Kos came across something interesting in a Washington Post article about the search of Republican Senator Ted Stevens' Alaska home:

The blog Is That Legal? notices something funny buried in today's Washington Post story about the FBI and IRS search of Sen. Ted Stevens' Alaska home:

Stevens said in a statement that his attorneys were advised of the impending search yesterday morning. (emphasis mine)

Apparently the blogger from Is That Legal? was a federal prosecuter and finds the possibility that someone from the DOJ would have notified Stevens' attorneys of the search warrant a little suspicious.

I guess we'll just have to see if there is anything more to this, but I have to say that anytime I think it's not possible that these people can be even more outrageous and stupid, I'm always wrong.

Quote of the Day~Whores and Pianos

2007-07-26T13:28:00.001-07:00

Via Talking Points Memo, the Seattle Times describes the perjury prone Attorney General:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales portrays himself as the piano player in the bordello, unaware of what is going on around him.

Is it possible that the party of moral values is turning into the party of good times with whores? (For additional examples see here, here, and here).

Quote of the Day~Recruit College Republicans for a Shopping Spree in Iraq

2007-07-24T17:46:00.000-07:00

More good news from Iraq, via Americablog, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann has this to say about her trip to one of Saddam Hussein's palaces:

"It's absolutely huge," she said. "I turned to my colleagues and said there's a commonality with the Mall of America, in that it's on that proportion. There's marble everywhere. The other thing I remarked about was there is water everywhere. He had man-made lakes all around his personal palace -- one for fishing, one for boating."

Of course, the stores are a little different over there, so check out the neat little comparison chart at Americablog as you start preparing your next vacation.

I think this bit of remarkable insight into the situation in Iraq could be useful in couple of ways.

First, military recruiters are having an increasingly difficult time reaching their recruitment goals and are having to lower the standards required for military service. And yet, all the while, some of the most staunch supporters of the war in Iraq are to be found among College Republicans. See this post and video, Generation Chickenhawk: The Unauthorized College Republican National Convention Tour. Although College Republicans have a sincere belief that we have to fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here and that the war on terrorism is, uh like, our generation's World War II, they have a profound antipathy to actually serving in Iraq and potentially putting themselves in the way of a roadside bomb. I would have thought that lower recruitment requirements would have had a positive impact on the ability/willingness of College Republicans to enlist. For example, while I'm sure that most College Republicans haven't had enough experience this early in their political careers and activism to have acquired a criminal record (just give them time and a little more experience), but even among the prodigies of the movement that may already have been indicted and/or convicted of a crime, the fact that the military can now recruit criminals to serve in Iraq has had little impact on recruitment levels among these military age Republicans. So, perhaps this "Mall of Iraq" angle would provide a little more of incentive if used by military recruiters to get College Republicans to actually follow in the footsteps of The Greatest Generation .

Second, I'm sure that the firm that is handling the "Madison Avenue" marketing techniques recommended in this report ordered by the Pentagon to brush up the Iraq War Brand in an attempt to renew Americans' excitement for the war could use this angle as well.

Outrage Epidemic

2007-07-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have not been able to post anything for almost a whole week. I've been keeping up with things, but there have been a couple of days in the past week when I have forbidden myself to even read a blog or sit through a whole night of Countdown with Keith Olbermann. I have also sat down a couple of times to post something but have just been completely overwhelmed with the urge to shut myself in the basement and scream until my vocal chords suffer permanent damage. Yes, I know there is no excuse for this, but I have had a bad flare up of outrage fatigue. This is a chronic condition and has become somewhat of an epidemic, so I wanted to share some of the ways that I have dealt with this problem over the past week.

The important thing is not to completely shut down, hence no total outrage blackout. However, a day or two of obliviousness has been necessary for me and I think has allowed me to get it under control more quickly than I otherwise would have. However, the most effective way that I have dealt with my flare up of outrage fatigue is by taking some time to drink...a lot...spend more time with my friends and focus on some personal stuff. Oh, and of course, I should be a little more specific about the drinking therapy--the vodka shots chased with beer and the giant bottle of cheap wine early on a Sunday afternoon were especially good.

Quote of the Day~It's Not Obstruction When We Do It

2007-07-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

Digby on Republican obstruction and Republicans' history of blaming Democrats of obstruction when they held up confirmation of King George's judicial nominees:

It is so rich listening to these Republicans decry the tyranny of the majority and stand up for the inalienable right to filibuster after their tiresome "up-or-down vote!" mantra of the last six years. Nobody ever accused them of being intellectually consistent....The Republicans are betting that the public will blame the indulgent parents when the children run wild and it's a pretty creative plan for a party that has a deeply loathed president and monumentally unpopular agenda.

Republicans are only obstructing a vote on withdrawing the troops from Iraq and, well...everything else.

The Latest from the Party of Obstruction

2007-07-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

One thing you can always count on Republicans for is more of the same. This is just great. We have our intelligence agencies warning us of resurgent operations by al-Qaeda in Pakistan with intelligence officials "cit[ing] heightened concerns that al-Qaeda is regrouping, reorganizing and -- based on recent threats delivered by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri -- increasingly confident of its ability to conduct similar relatively low-scale attacks against U.S. or other Western targets." The situation in Iraq continues to worsen, and a vast majority of Americans want a withdrawal of troops from Iraq but we just get more Republican obstruction.

Americablog describes Republicans' tactics in response to the latest attempts by Democrats to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq as "a permanent filibuster on any Iraq related issue." The Washington Post reports:

Majority Leader Harry M. Ried (D-Nev.) had hoped to convince Republicans to allow a simple-majority vote on a Democratic proposal to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by next spring, But GOP leaders held firm to a 60-vote threshold for passage -- a routine maneuver in today's closely divided Senate but a number Democrats have been unable to meet all year. And Republicans decried Reid's decision for a marathon session as a stunt....

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) responded to Reid with a counteroffer: an automatic 60-vote threshold for all key Iraq amendments, eliminating the time-consuming process of clearing procedural hurdles. Democrats agreed to similar terms on several Iraq votes earlier this year, and all the controversial war-related votes held since Democrats took control of the Senate in January have required 60 "yeas" to pass.

"It's a shame that we find ourselves in the position that we're in," McConnell said. "It produces a level of animosity and unity on the minority side that makes it more difficult for the majority to pass important legislation."

Assuming neither side blinks, the Senate is expected to vote Wednesday on the Democratic amendment, offered by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.). It would require Bush to begin reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq within four months, while reassigning remaining forces to specific missions, including the training of Iraqi security forces and counterterrorism operations. Under the proposal, most U.S. troops would leave Iraq by April 30, 2008....

(Emphasis mine). Seems like I've read about this kind of thing recently:

Americans elected a new Congress to get things done. But the conservative minority has chosen a strategy of obstruction in the Senate. They have used the threat of a filibuster to delay or block virtually every major initiative. Bills with majority support....Conservatives boast about the “success” of their strategy in discrediting the new majority. As Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., put it, “the strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it’s working for us.”

His Highness the Royal Fuckup Believes Americans are Stupid

2007-07-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post reported last Thursday on an intelligence report by the National Counterterrorism Center entitiled "Al-Quaida Better Positioned to Strike the West":

Six years after the Bush administration declared war on al-Qaeda, the terrorist network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks, according to a new Bush administration intelligence report to be discussed today at a White House meeting....

[The report] concludes that the group has significantly rebuilt itself despite concerted U.S. attempts to smash the network.

The article quotes the CIA's deputy director for intelligence, John A. Kringen telling a House comittee on Wednesday "that al-Qaeda appears 'to be fairly well settled into the safe haven in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan. We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications.'"

On Tuesday Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said "that reports of heightened al-Qaeda activity and public threats gave him a "gut feeling" that the country faces an increased chance of a terrorist attack this summer." The Post reports that he later informed everyone that this remark was based on '"a more general, strategic sense of the threat environment,' [and] on publicly reported information rather than secret intelligence." According to the article there was no definitive word on whether Chertoff's statement had anything to do with the new intelligence report.

That's nice to know considering that the increasing activity of al-Qaeda is a concern for many others in the intelligence community. According to the Post article:

A U.S. counterterrorism official said the new intelligence report, whose existence was first reported by the Associated Press, did "not really" differ from recent statements by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell; his predecessor, John D. Negroponte; and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden.

Those officials have cited heightened concerns that al-Qaeda is regrouping, reorganizing and -- based on recent threats delivered by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri -- increasingly confident of its ability to conduct similar relatively low-scale attacks against U.S. or other Western targets.

While asserting that al-Qaeda is still considerably weaker than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the new report concludes that the group is stronger than it has been in years. "There is heightened concern given al-Qaeda's operational activity [and] . . . operational levels" along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the U.S. official said.

Via The Left Coaster, this Newsweek article points out that the renewed threat from al-Qaeda's operating in Pakistan might have something to do with a peace agreement signed by this ally of ours with, as Left Coaster points out, the Bush Administration's encouragement:

The primary development that has allowed all this to happen, U.S. officials say, was the peace agreement signed last year between the Pakistani government of President Pervez Musharraf and pro-Taliban tribal leaders in the remote region of North Waziristan. The withdrawal of Pakistani troops under that agreement gave Al Qaeda leaders new freedom to operate with relative impunity, officials said. "Clearly, they are resurgent,” said one senior U.S. intelligence official about Al Qaeda. (The official, who is familiar with the NIE’s findings, asked not to be identified because the document remains classified.)

On his show Thursday night Keith Olbermann did a great job of covering this latest in terror politics. As one would expect, His Royal Fuckup King George responded to the new report from the National Counterterrorism Center regarding al-Qaeda's strengthening operations by reassuring us that:

There is a perception in the coverage that al Qaeda may be as strong today as they were prior to September 11. That‘s just simply not the case. I think the report was since 2001, not prior to September 11, 2001.

Olberman then pointed out that, in his address at the White House, "Mr. Bush also repeating the lie that the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks were and are in any way connected to Iraq."

Yep, the Royal Fuckup responded to a new report confirming what others in the intelligence community have expressed concerns about, that al-Qaeda is strenthening its operations and ability to attack us in the United States largely as a result of being able to operate in Pakistan because of a peace agreement that the Fuckup and his administration encouraged, by letting us know that:

Al Qaeda in Iraq have sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And the guys who perpetuated the attacks on America, obviously the guys on the airplane are dead and the commanders, many of those are dead or in captivity like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

But the people in Iraq—al Qaeda in Iraq has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And we need to take al Qaeda in Iraq seriously like we need to take al Qaeda anywhere in the world seriously.

Of course, Olbermann had to then remind His Highness Fuckup that:

Of course the allegiance to Osama bin Laden was only sworn in 2004. And of course al Qaeda in Iraq is only in Iraq because of the power vacuum that was created by the U.S. invasion and ongoing military operations there.

After that Olbermann brought on MSNBC's analyst Wesley Clark, retired four-star army general and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, to discuss King George's all too predictable response:

The truth is al Qaeda has not only reconstituted its base area, this time along the border in Pakistan next to Afghanistan, but its also used our mission in Iraq as a huge recruiting magnet....Well, I do believe that the strategy in Iraq and the way it‘s been executed and the president‘s fear to face the facts and the administration‘s blindness on homeland security—and all of this, and the alienation of our allies, yes, we‘re more at risk as a result of Iraq than we were prior to the invasion of Iraq. There‘s no doubt about it. We‘re not winning the battle against al Qaeda.

Obviously the Royal Fuckup thinks the American people and the troops are completely fucking stupid. He tells us that it is necessary for our security to continue to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq while his own intelligence agencies tell us that al-Qeada is resurging in Pakistan. As if we can't put two and two together; he may not be able to, but we certainly can. And because we can, the fear-mongering has to be turned up a notch. Thus, as if on cue, his Secretary of Homeland Security told us the day before the CIA's deputy director of intelligence reported to a House Committee about the activities of al-Qaeda in Pakistan that we may be facing another terrorist attack. Olbermann did an excellent job, as usual, in commenting on what Chertoff's "gut" feeling really means to those of us who know that two + two does indeed = four:

Michael Chertoff‘s gut feeling, which he took pains to emphasize was based on no specific, nor even vague intelligence—you got that right—that we are entering a period of increased risk of terrorism here. He got as specific as saying that al-Qaeda seems to like the summer, but as to the rest of it, he is perfectly content to let us sit and wait and worry and to contemplate his gut.

His gut. We used to have John Ashcroft‘s major announcements. We used to have David Paulson‘s breathless advisories about how to use duct tape against radiation attacks. We used to have Tom Ridge‘s color coded threat levels. Now we have Michael Chertoff‘s gut....

Now, it turns out, we are risking all of our rights and all of our protections, and risking the anger and hatred of the rest of the world for the sake of Michael Chertoff‘s gut. I have pondered this supreme expression of diminished expectations for parts of three days now. I have concluded that there are only five explanations for Mr. Chertoff‘s remarkable revelations about his transcendently important counter-terrorism stomach.

Firstly, Mr. Chertoff, you are, as Richard Wolfe said here the other night, actually referencing not your gut, but your backside, as in covering it, C.Y.A. Not only has there not been a terrorist attack stopped in this country, but your good old Homeland Security has not even unraveled a plausible terrorist plan.

You and your folks there have a different kind of stomach pain, know that with a track record that consist largely of two accomplishments, inconveniencing people at airports and scaring them everyone else, your department doesn‘t know what the hell it is doing. And even you, Mr. Chertoff, know that.

Secondly, of course, there is the possible explanation of choice for those millions of us who have heard the shrill and curiously timed cries of wolf over the last six years, what we‘ve called here the nexus of politics and terror. But there isn‘t anything cooking, and your gut feeling was actually that you better throw up a diversion soon on Mr. Bush‘s behalf for something real, like Republican revolt over Iraq, and the nauseating gut feeling the rest of us have that we have gotten 3,611 Americans killed there for no reason; that it was actually going to seep into the American headlines and American consciousness.

It is impossible to prove a negative, to guarantee that you and your predecessors deliberately scared the American public just for the political hell of it, even though your predecessor, Mr. Ridge, admitted he had his suspicions about exactly that. Suffice to say, Mr. Chertoff, if it ever can be proved, there will be a lot of people from Homeland Security and other outposts of this remarkably corrupt administration who will be going to prison.

Thirdly, and most charitably, I guess, Mr. Chertoff, there is the possibility that you have made some credible inference, that we are really at greater risk right now, but that any detail might blow some attempt at interruption. There is some silver lining in this, but the silver lining would have been a greater one if this counter terrorism center report had not leaked out the day after you introduced us to your gut. It was a report suggesting that al-Qaeda had rebuilt its operational capacity to re-9/11 levels.

Not only did this latest hair on fire missive remind us that al Qaeda‘s regrowth has been along the Pakistan/Afghan border; not only did it remind us that your boss let this happen by shifting his resources out of Afghanistan to Iraq for his own vain an foolish purposes, to say nothing of ignoring Pakistan; not only did it underscore the ominous truth that if this country is victimized by al-Qaeda, the personal responsibility for the failure of our misplaced defenses would belong to President Bush and President Bush alone.

On top of all of that, Mr. Chertoff, it revealed you for the phony expert you are, the kid who hears in confidence something smart from somebody smart and then makes his prediction that what the smart kid said confidentially is about to happen. It reads, just as you revise the gut remark this morning sir, the informed opinion, the kid telling stories out of school.

The fourth possibility is a simple reversal of third, Mr. Chertoff. You shot off your basso (ph) and then this National Counter Terrorism Center report was rushed out, even created to cover you, to give you credibility, to cloud the reality that you actually intoned to the “Chicago Tribune” the 21st century equivalent of by the pricking of my thumb, something wicked this way comes.

But the fifth possible explanation of your gut, Mr. Chertoff, is the real nightmare scenario, and it is simple, that you, the man who famously told us Louisiana is a city that is largely under water, meant this literally, that we really have been reduced to listening to see if your gut will growl, that your intestines are our best defense, that your bowels are our listening devices. Your digestive track is full augers. Your colon produces the results that the torture at Gitmo does not.

All hail the prophetic gut.

So there are your choices, bureaucratic self-protection, political manipulation of the worst kind, the dropping of opaque hints, a gaffe back filled by an instant report, or the complete disintegration of our counter terrorism effort.

Even if there really is never another terror attempt in this country, we have already lost too much in these last six years to now have to listen to Michael Chertoff‘s gut, no matter what its motivation. We can not and will not turn this country into a police state. But even those of us who say that most loudly and instantly acknowledge that some stricter measures under the still stricter supervision of as many watch dogs as we can summon are appropriate.

(Emphasis mine). A "supreme expression of diminished expectations" indeed. I'm not sure which aspect of this is more infuriating at this point. That His Royal Fuckup King George, upon being informed by his intelligence agencies that al-Qaeda is resurging along the Pakistan/Afghan border, would pull out the same tired spin and repetative bullshit that we have to continue to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq because al-Qaeda is now, thanks to him, also in Iraq--oh, and Afghanistan and Pakistan, and god knows where else.

Or that he chose to bother even addressing us at all on this point rather than just outright ignoring this latest intelligence report. Right now I'm leaning toward the second aspect. Most of us have been aware for quite some time that King George just doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks--not the overwhelming majority of the American people, not the troops actually serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, not congress, not the people jumping ship in his own party, not the generals who have resigned over the mess he's made or have been fired, not his own intelligence agencies, not the rest of the world.

But in response to this latest bit of profoundly disturbing news on his failures in fighting the war on terrorism, to address the American people at all, except with an announcement of his and Cheney's resignations, is to insult the intelligence, common sense and most basic ability to reason of all but the tiny minority of authoritarian minded Americans who would literally run screaming off a giant precipice if His Highness the Royal Fuckup told them to. As to the rest of us non-authoritarian Americans who possess a functioning brain, common sense and a basic ability to reason I think it would have been better if he had just not said anything at all to avoid the appalling spectacle of the Royal Fuckup talking down to us as if we don't know better. Why add insulting our intelligence and ability to reason and conclude that 2 + 2 does, in fact, =4 to the increasingly apparent injury that he has done to us and the state of our national security?

Quote of the Day~Drinking and Driving Edition

2007-07-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

"Note to America: Next time you feel like voting for the guy you'd rather drink beer with, do us all a favor and write in the name of the guy you actually drink beer with." ~The Freeway Blogger

Watching Edwards

2007-07-12T14:36:00.000-07:00

The other day I posted a link to a speech that Edwards made in which he criticized trade deals such as NAFTA with some comments on the treatment that Edwards has been receiving for his $400 haircuts. This post led to a good discussion with someone who left a comment on this post about the sincerity of Edwards' populist message. I certainly understand people's skepticism and I believe it's a good thing. We need to pay attention, not only to what candidates say, but to what they do and the specific policies that they propose.

Although I will vote for whatever candidate receives the Democratic nomination for president, even Hillary (god forbid!) because I will not vote for any of the GOP candidates for the simple reason that we need to go in a different direction in this country (and I will not abstain from voting). But Edwards is my first pick for the Dem nomination thus far, and I'm quite impressed with a lot of his platforms. That being said, learning more about the candidates is important so I want to post a link to this diary by David Mizner at DailyKos. Although from an Edwards supporter, this diary provides a good summary of why Edwards is receiving a lot of support from progressives and provides some good links to more info on Edwards, his campaign and his policy proposals.

Mizner also points out that even if Edwards is facing a very uphill battle to receive the Dem nomination, the fact that he is running on such a strong progressive and populist platform and taking unpopular and strong stances on important issues is in itself a good thing:

But we like where Edwards is. Liberated, he'll force Clinton and Obama to take positions they wouldn't have otherwise (He already has.) And he'll take positions the other two won't dare take. He'll lose the right way, or win the right way. He'll do himself proud. He'll scare the hell out of the other candidates.

To me this is one of the most important things about Edwards' campaign and the influence that it has had and will have on the other candidates and whoever wins the nomination. Even if he loses the nomination, if he gives the other candidates a good fight, his strong progressive message and the support that he is receiving can also help to build influence and pressure for any Dem candidate if that candidate is elected in 2008.

It's Easy to Accuse Your Opposition of Not Supporting the Troops, but Actually Supporting the Troops is Much More Difficult

2007-07-12T13:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Americablog posted the full statement by Virginia Senator Jim Webb in response to GOP Senators fillibustering of a bill that he introdued to address the extended deployments and rotations of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Senator Webb said in his statement:

Americans....are tired of the procedural strategies designed to protect politicians from accountability, and to protect this Administration from judgment. They are looking for concrete actions that will protect the well-being of our men and women in uniform.

The question on this amendment is not whether you support this war or whether you do not. It is not whether you want to wait until July or September to see where one particular set of benchmarks or summaries might be taking us. The question is this: more than four years into ground operations in Iraq, we owe stability, and a reasonable cycle of deployment, to the men and women who are carrying our nation’s burden. That is the question. And that is the purpose of this amendment.

(Emphasis mine). Americablog also posted links to Webb's bill and a fact sheet that explains the legislation. The fact sheet includes statements from many articles on the effects of this extended and repeated deployment, which the bill aims to address including:

Troop deployments have been extended from 12 to 15 months, resulting in less time at home with families

The increased risk of psychological problems from combat stress

The impact on the families of the troops who are not getting adequate and standard time between deployments to spend with them

The increasing levels of troops leaving the military

The negative impact on military training, manpower and readiness and the ability of the National Guard to respond to disasters at home

Senator Webb comes from a long family tradition of military service, was a marine who served in Vietnam and was also Secretary of the Navy. He knows what he is talking about when it comes to the subject of the military and what is best for the tropps, which is probably why his bill has been endorsed by the Military Officers' Association of America, Veterans for America, and VoteVets.org. This is an egregious example of continued Republican obstruction and is completely inexcusable. (See posts here and here.)The biggest thing we should be concerned about regarding the war in Iraq is the impact that it is having on the troops and doing whatever we can to actually support them.

It's easy to put a yellow sticker on your car, and I don't criticize anyone for doing this. But we need to do more. Americans have shown their support for the troops in many other ways but we need to be more aware of politicians who tell us to support the troops but who in fact don't support the troops.

News Hounds Outrageous Quote of the Week

2007-07-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

Avedon pointed out a mistake that I made in my post "More Quotes~"Health Care Terror and the Greatest Threat to Capitalism Since the Cold War." The Ann quote won the contest last week. The quote from NewsHounds that I posted is up for a vote this week. So, I went over and voted for it. If anyone else is interested in voting here is the link again.

2007-07-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

This is a post that I started on last Friday but didn't get around to finishing. So, I'm posting it now, with a couple of updates.

As support among Americans to begin some type of withdraw from Iraq continues to build, it is hard to understand just how Bush, his loyalists and his enablers can so willfully ignore the situation and the mounting anger and frustruation of the American people. Americablog reported Friday that a bipartisan group of senators is attempting to do Bush's bidding, trying to keep us in Iraq for, oh say, the next 100 years or so and introducing their legislation as an attempt to get us out of Iraq:

A bipartisan group of Senators has prepared legislation that they want to offer in the next few weeks that would keep US troops in Iraq indefinitely. What's worse, they're claiming that the legislation implements the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Studgy Group, when in fact, the legislation codifies George Bush's current failed policies in Iraq....

Specifically, the legislation buries a little nugget on page 18 of the bill. In a section entitled "Sense of Congress on Redeployment of United States Forces from Iraq," the legislation spells out the following preconditions to withdrawing US troops:

1. A massive list of suggested policies need to first be accomplished before the US withdraws. These include transferring the Iraqi National Police to the Ministry of Defense, reorganizing the Iraqi security forces, upgrading Iraq's police communications equipment, establishing courts, training judges, prosecutors and investigators, drafting oil legislation, implementing metering at the oil pipelines, reorganizing the entire Iraqi oil industry, and more. But that's not all that has to happen before our troops are permitted to withdraw from Iraq. Oh no. Read on.

2. Additional Iraqi brigades need to deployed. Meaning, the exact same policy we have now under George Bush. No withdraw until the Iraqi security forces are up to par. And our military people on the ground in Iraq say this could take 40 to 50 years, if ever.

3. The eventual withdrawal of US forces is "subject to unexpected development in the security situation on the ground." Meaning, if things don't get better, we don't leave. That's the current policy. And things aren't getting better.

At least they are trying to mislead the American public that this is some kind of plan for withdrawal when it clearly is an attempt to get congress to pass a law requiring troops to stay in Iraq indefinitely. And meanwhile, the situation in Iraq is worsening by the day, as evident in just these few stories reported in the last week, and the American people know it.

First,Wired blog reported on the projected cost of the war and it is astounding:

Additional war costs for the next 10 years could total about $472 billion if troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010, or $919 billion if troop levels fall to 70,000 by about 2013. If these estimates are added to already appropriated amounts, total funding about $980 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2017.

Costs for the war have been spiralling out of control. The Bush Administration has been handing out no-bid cotracts to private companies and compaines with close ties to the Bush Administration have been raking in billions. This is all old news, of course. But this is the kind of thing we get for that money:

Thursday the Washington Post reported:

U.S. diplomats in Iraq, increasingly fearful over their personal safety after recent mortar attacks inside the Green Zone, are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months ahead.

A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards' base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world....

The first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15....

But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the sleeping trailers....

Such challenges with construction contracts inside the fortified enclave known as the Green Zone reflect the broader problems that have thwarted reconstruction efforts throughout war-torn Iraq.

This is FEMA in Iraq. As the Bush Administration's love affair with privitization continues to sour (for all but Bush anyway and his fellow free market idealogues), The Iraqi government, according to recent reports, is in terrible shape and may be falling apart as we speak.

Also reported Thursday in the Washington Post, sectarian strife continues unabated and greater numbers of people are being killed:

During the month of June, 453 unidentified corpses, some bound, blindfolded, and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

In January, 321 corpses were discovered in the capital, a total that fell steadily until April but then rose sharply over the last two months, the statistics show.

Overall, the level of violent civilian deaths in Iraq is declining, according to the U.S. military and Health Ministry statistics, and there has been a steady drop in fatalities from mass-casualty bombings that have torn through outdoor markets, university bus stops and crowds assembled to collect food rations.

But the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets is considered a key indicator of the malignancy of sectarian strife. While the declining number of bombing victims suggests that efforts to control violence are showing some success, the daily slayings of individuals, in aggregate, speak to an enduring level of aggression.
"That's the cancer that keeps eating the neighborhoods," Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said at a meeting with reporters Saturday. "It never stops. It's a tit for tat. It's a cycle of violence that has to be broken."

To make matters worse for Bush he continues to lose support from key allies in his own party:

New Mexico's Republican Senator, Pete Domenici, publicly broke with George Bush over Iraq today. He wants a new strategy immediately. Like Dick Lugar who broke with Bush last week, Domenici is one of the Republican old-timers.

Americablog also reported Thursday that General Odom, former Director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Regan, recently wrote an essay in which he argued that we needed to start withdrawing troops from Iraq. Americablog points out that "this guy's credentials are beyond stellar."

Bush reminded us this Independence Day, yet again, that we cannot leave Iraq becuase he just doesn't want us to. I think it was Colin Powell that warned Bush that if we invaded Iraq we would own it. He was right. We are occupying that country unless things change really soon. Bush is going to leave office in 2008 and leave it to the next guy, hopefully a Democrat, to clean up his mess. And when Bush hands over his mess, he and his cronies will walk away being richer than ever and the American people and our troops will be left paying for this war in ways we can scarcely imagine even as we contemplate the horrors already apparent from this occupation and the projected $1.4 trillion price tag. Not to mention the cost in lives lost, lives shattered, and the psychological toll that this war will have on the troops who are lucky enough to come home.

And one more update, this is what we get despite all that money that has been given to contractors:

At least 20 mortar rounds and Katyusha rockets struck the fortified Green Zone on Tuesday afternoon, killing an American service member and two other people in an attack on the heart of U.S. and Iraqi government facilities in the capital.Those killed included an Iraqi and a person whose nationality was unknown, according to a statement released by the U.S. Embassy. About 18 people were injured, including two U.S. military personnel and three American contract employees, the statement said.

The Democrats need to stop caving to Bush and find a way to get us out. And Bush and Cheney need to be impeached.

Thank God For the Kennedy's

2007-07-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

Via Democratic Underground, a speech by RFK Jr. at Live Earth:

Now we've all heard the oil industry and the coal industry and their indentured servants in the political process telling us that global climate stability is a luxury that we can't afford. That we have to choose now between economic prosperity on the one hand and environmental protection on the other. And that is a false choice.

In 100% of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy --- if we want to measure our economy, and this is how we ought to be measuring it, based upon how it produces jobs and the dignity of jobs over the generations, how it preserves the values of the assets of our community and how it averts the catastrophe of global warming.

If, on the other hand, we want to do what they've been urging us to do on Capitol Hill which is to treat the planet as if it were a business in liquidation, convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, have a few years of pollution based prosperity, we can generate an instantaneous cash flow and the illusion of a prosperous economy. But our children are going to pay for our joyride with denuded landscapes, with poor health, with huge cleanup costs and with climate chaos which is going to amplify over time and that they will never be able to pay.

Environmental injury is deficit spending. It is a way of loading the costs of our generation's prosperity on to the backs of our children. Climate change is upon us. Its impacts are going to be catastrophic and we are causing it. The good news is, we have the scientific and technological capacity to avert its most catastrophic impacts. We only need the political will.

If we raise fuel economy standards in our automobiles by one mile --- we generate twice the amount of oil that is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee. If we raise fuel economy standards by 7.6 miles per gallon we yield more oil than we now import from the Persian Gulf. We can eliminate 100% of Persian Gulf oil.

Think about what that would do for our economy, for our foreign policy, for our global leadership, it would dramatically improve our balance of payments, reduce our national debt and make all of us more prosperous and more independent and spare us from wars in the Mid-East that are costing us, already, a trillion dollars and from entanglements with Mid-Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.

Now you've heard today a lot of people say that there are many little things that you all can do today to avert climate change on your own. But I will tell you this, it is more important than buying compact flourescent light bulbs or than buying a fuel efficient automobile. The most important thing you can do is to get involved in the political process and get rid of all of these rotten politicians that we have in Washington D.C. --

Who are nothing more than corporate toadies for companies like Exxon and Southern Company, these villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of American interest and ahead of the interest of all of humanity. This is treason and we need to start treating them now as traitors.And they have their slick public relations firms and their phony think tanks in Washington D.C. and their crooked scientists who are lying to the American people day after day after day.

And we have a press that has completely let down American Democracy. That's giving us Ana Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton instead of the issues that we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy - like global warming.

And so I am going to tell you this, that the next time you see John Stossel or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity --- these flat-earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public, and telling you that global warming doesn't exist --- you send an email to their advertisers and tell them that you are not going to buy their products anymore.

And I want you to remember this, that we are not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds, we are protecting it because nature is the infrastructure of our communities. And if we want to meet our obligation as a generation, as a civilization, as a nation, which is to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity, and enrichment, and good health, and prosperity, and stability as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting our environmental infrastructure.

The air we breathe, the water we drink, the wildlife, the public lands, the things that connect us to our past to our history that provide context to our communities and that are the source, ultimately, of our values and our virtues and our character as a people and the future of our children.

And I will see all of you on the barricades.

More Quotes~"Health Care Terror" and The Greatest Threat to Capitalism Since the Cold War

2007-07-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

Via The Sideshow, News Hounds has "The Outrageous Quote of the Week @ July 7, 2007." Their readers apparently chose Ann Coulter for what she spewed in her latest bout of head spinning. You can check it out if you want, but personally, I think it would be worthy of note if Ann had said something that wasn't outrageous.

Personally, had I voted, my pick would have been this one:

"I think this election poses the greatest threat to capitalism that this country has seen in a long - since the Cold War. I'm really serious. You know, we have candidates on the Democratic side that are saying they're anti-ownership society, they want to raise taxes. I am afraid of what could happen to corporate America, particularly at a time when the rest of the world is much more competitive." - Charles Payne, discussing whether or not a "President" Fred Thompson would be good for stocks. Cavuto on Business, 7/7/07

(Emphasis mine). A few days ago I did a post on Fox News picking up the insane ranting of a conservative blogger and turning his ravings into a discussion that universal healthcare would make us more vulnerable to terrorism. Then I pointed out:

for a lesson in how the insane elements on the right so often influence the news cycle and the debate with their deranged fear-mongering, MSNBC later took the scare tactics and ran with them and, jumping on the bandwagon as well was, not surprisingly, The New York Sun.

I now submit that the above quote from Charles Payne is the real "threat" from Micheal More's new film, the overwhelmingly positive reactions that it has been evoking, and the debate that it is instrumental in furthering. Conservatives, the healthcare industry, and the free market ideologues are freaking out over a threat, yes, but it is to their ideology.

This diary at Daily Kos sums up the tactics employed by CNN's medical expert in a segment prior to Moore's recent appearance on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. This diarist points out that CNN's medical expert falsely accused Moore of omitting facts that are plainly and conspicuoulsy included in Moore's film, tried to twist Moore's arguements by citing only part of the facts, and just plain lied. Moore didn't put up with any of it. Not only did he call out CNN and its expert and correct their errors and misrepresentations, he also immediately followed up with a fact check of CNN's claims including the following:

CNN: Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures, like hip replacement, cataract surgery, or knee repair.

THE TRUTH:

This isn't the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures. Of the six countries surveyed in that study (United States, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Australia) only Canada had longer waiting times than America for sick adults waiting to schedule a doctor's appointment for a medical problem. 81% of patients in New Zealand got a same or next-day appointment for a non-routine visit, 71% in Britain, 69% in Germany, 66% in Australia, 47% in the U.S., and 36% in Canada. (The Doc's in, but It'll be AWhile. Catherine Arnst, Business Week. June 22, 2007 http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/tc20070621_716260_page_2.htm)

[....]

One way America is able to achieve decent waiting times is that it leaves 47 million people out of the health care system entirely, unlike any other Western country. When you remove 47 million people from the line, your wait should be shorter. So why is the U.S. second to last in wait times?

For a little more context, Moore also posted an internal, confidential memo sent to him by an employee who works at Capital BlueCross that discusses how to deal with the impact that "Sicko" is going to have. Moore points out some interesting things that the VP of Corporate Communications, Barclay Fitzpatrick stated in the memo:

He then assesses the film's impact: "[T]he impact on small business decision makers, our members, the community, and our employees could be significant. Ignoring its impact might be a successful strategy only if it flops, but that has not been the history of Moore's films ... If popular, the movie will have a negative impact on our image in this community."

[....]

BlueCross V.P. Fitzpatrick seems downright depressed about the movie he just saw. "You would have to be dead to be unaffected by Moore's movie," he writes. "Sicko" leaves audiences feeling "ashamed to be...a capitalist, and part of a 'me' society instead of a 'we' society."

(Emphasis mine). Here Fitzpatrick is expressing the real "threat" and the source for anxiety behind what we see when the corporate media runs with right-wing ravings, distorts the facts and plays the fear card by trying to associate universal healthcare with terrorism.

In a column yesterday, aptly entitled "Health Care Terror," Paul Krugman sums up perfectly what has been happening:

These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.

“National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?” read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.

While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens....

What outrages people who see “Sicko” is the sheer cruelty and injustice of the American health care system — sick people who can’t pay their hospital bills literally dumped on the sidewalk, a child who dies because an emergency room that isn’t a participant in her mother’s health plan won’t treat her, hard-working Americans driven into humiliating poverty by medical bills.

“Sicko” is a powerful call to action — but don’t count the defenders of the status quo out. History shows that they’re very good at fending off reform by finding new ways to scare us.
These scare tactics have often included over-the-top claims about the dangers of government insurance.

“Sicko” plays part of a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association, warning that a proposed program of health insurance for the elderly — the program now known as Medicare — would lead to totalitarianism.

Right now, by the way, Medicare — which did enormous good, without leading to a dictatorship — is being undermined by privatization.

Mainly, though, the big-money interests with a stake in the present system want you to believe that universal health care would lead to a crushing tax burden and lousy medical care.

Now, every wealthy country except the United States already has some form of universal care. Citizens of these countries pay extra taxes as a result — but they make up for that through savings on insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. The overall cost of health care in countries with universal coverage is much lower than it is here.

(Emphasis mine). Apparently, somewhere between Regan and the current fear-mongering about terrorism, conservatives dropped the ball. Now they have to find a way to connect the terror threat to what corporate interests and conservatives see as the real threat--the threat to their version of capitalism, which should more accuratley be called corporatism.

CNN had previously fact-checked Moore's film and found "surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film" and informed us that "In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film." Despite what the corporate interests, the corporate media and conservatives would like us to believe, this is not an ideological debate (unless they can succeed in scaring us into making it one). The facts are clearly on Moore's side and some kind of universal healthcare is a commen sense reform and, as Krugman points out, a moral issue.

Quote of the Day~The Fifth Grade Class at the New York Times

2007-07-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

From a post by Scats on a recent Op-Ed in the NY Times entitled "The Road Home" that makes the stunning observation that Bush is absolutely not going to call for or agree to a withdrawal from Iraq:

Now we know the real plan! Now we're all scrubbed and shiny and ready to gradumate to the the fifth fucking grade! Now we know there's a difference between what the Preznit says, and what's in the world outside my cocktail party! And the truth is: he ain't leavin'!Well, you know what that means?

Let's write two whole single-spaced pages on construction paper for our show-and-tell project DEMANDING THAT HE DO WHAT WE'VE JUST REALIZED HE HAS NO INTENTION OF DOING!!!!!

2007-07-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Eric also brought up a some good points with regard to my second post from Saturday, my latest "Fuck You King George" rant, that need further discussion. He points out:

What I find interesting is that when the Democrats were in the minority, their supporters claimed that there was nothing that they could do to stop the Republicans because they were the minority, but now that the roles are reversed, the Dems say that the Repub. minority has the ability to stop the majority.By the way, I am not a Repub or Dem. I find both disasteful.

Some of this has to do with which party controls which house, on how those numbers break down, and on the amount of influence that certain sections within each party have over the party as a whole and its leadership. So, when comparing the specific maneuvering of each party while in the minority on specific legislative initiatives etc., the situation gets much more complicated. And each party will of course try to use whatever power and influence they can to block or weaken certain legislation proposed by the majority. That's not a bad thing in itself; it just means there is an opposition, which is good. But, ideally, opposition is a good thing because it should, in most cases, lead to compromise, especially on popular legislation.

I'm afraid I would do a poor a job in doing a comparison on that level of the previous Democratic and Republican minorities in congress because something that extensive would be better handled by an expert, or at least someone with more extensive knowledge, on congressional politics. I do want to bring up, however, this article by Matt Taibbi in which Taibbi does some in depth research and analysis of the previous Republican dominated congress. Taibbi starts out his article by pointing out:

To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.

This blanket criticism applies, of course, to congress in general and thus to whoever is occupying the majority or minority positions. However, the recent 109th congress, dominated by Republicans while their party also controlled the White House, was something altogether different:

But the 109th Congress is no mild departure from the norm, no slight deviation in an already-underwhelming history. No, this is nothing less than a historic shift in how our democracy is run. The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority, abdicated their oversight responsibilities mandated by the Constitution, enacted a conscious policy of massive borrowing and unrestrained spending, and installed a host of semipermanent mechanisms for transferring legislative power to commercial interests. They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.

"The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment," says Jonathan Turley, a noted constitutional scholar and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School. "I think that if the Framers went to Capitol Hill today, it would shake their confidence in the system they created. Congress has become an exercise of raw power with no principles -- and in that environment corruption has flourished. The Republicans in Congress decided from the outset that their future would be inextricably tied to George Bush and his policies. It has become this sad session of members sitting down and drinking Kool-Aid delivered by Karl Rove. Congress became a mere extension of the White House."

Taibbi goes on to provide a lengthy examination of how the Republicans, not only abdicated their oversight responsibilities, but actively did everything they could to limit the role of the opposition (which under what had been the overall historical normal run of things in congress should have produced some meaningful compromise and went some way toward performing congress' overall function), and showed nothing but contempt for and often outright violated normal congressional procedure to an extent that has little precedent in congress' history:

It is no big scoop that the majority party in Congress has always found ways of giving the shaft to the minority. But there is a marked difference in the size and the length of the shaft the Republicans have given the Democrats in the past six years. There has been a systematic effort not only to deny the Democrats any kind of power-sharing role in creating or refining legislation but to humiliate them publicly, show them up, pee in their faces. Washington was once a chummy fraternity in which members of both parties golfed together, played in the same pickup basketball games, probably even shared the same mistresses. Now it is a one-party town -- and congressional business is conducted accordingly, as though the half of the country that the Democrats represent simply does not exist.

American government was not designed for one-party rule but for rule by consensus -- so this current batch of Republicans has found a way to work around that product design. They have scuttled both the spirit and the letter of congressional procedure, turning the lawmaking process into a backroom deal, with power concentrated in the hands of a few chiefs behind the scenes. This reduces the legislature to a Belarus-style rubber stamp, where the opposition is just there for show, human pieces of stagecraft -- a fact the Republicans don't even bother to conceal....

Although cooperation between the two parties has ebbed and flowed over the years, historians note that Congress has taken strong bipartisan action in virtually every administration. It was Sen. Harry Truman who instigated investigations of wartime profiteering under FDR, and Republicans Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker Jr. played pivotal roles on the Senate Watergate Committee that nearly led to Nixon's impeachment.

But those days are gone. "We haven't seen any congressional investigations like this during the last six years," says David Mayhew, a professor of political science at Yale who has studied Congress for four decades. "These days, Congress doesn't seem to be capable of doing this sort of thing. Too much nasty partisanship."
One of the most depressing examples of one-party rule is the Patriot Act. The measure was originally crafted in classic bipartisan fashion in the Judiciary Committee, where it passed by a vote of thirty-six to zero, with famed liberals like Barney Frank and Jerrold Nadler saying aye. But when the bill was sent to the Rules Committee, the Republicans simply chucked the approved bill and replaced it with a new, far more repressive version, apparently written at the direction of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"They just rewrote the whole bill," says Rep. James McGovern, a minority member of the Rules Committee. "All that committee work was just for show."

To ensure that Democrats can't alter any of the last-minute changes, Republicans have overseen a monstrous increase in the number of "closed" rules -- bills that go to the floor for a vote without any possibility of amendment. This tactic undercuts the very essence of democracy: In a bicameral system, allowing bills to be debated openly is the only way that the minority can have a real impact, by offering amendments to legislation drafted by the majority.

In 1977, when Democrats held a majority in the House, eighty-five percent of all bills were open to amendment. But by 1994, the last year Democrats ran the House, that number had dropped to thirty percent -- and Republicans were seriously pissed. "You know what the closed rule means," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida thundered on the House floor. "It means no discussion, no amendments. That is profoundly undemocratic." When Republicans took control of the House, they vowed to throw off the gag rules imposed by Democrats. On opening day of the 104th Congress, then-Rules Committee chairman Gerald Solomon announced his intention to institute free debate on the floor. "Instead of having seventy percent closed rules," he declared, "we are going to have seventy percent open and unrestricted rules."

How has Solomon fared? Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open. Of those, eleven were appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote -- H. Res. 255, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005.

In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, outside of appropriation votes. Under the Republicans, amendable bills have been a genuine Washington rarity, the upside-down eight-leafed clover of legislative politics.

(Emphasis mine). This is just a small excerpt from Taibbi's article, but the whole thing is worth reading for a much more in-depth analysis and for the profiles of the Republican congressmen that were voted out in 2006. In his article he makes a good argument that it has not been business as usual in congress (or in our government overall) since Bush has been in office and since the Republican party has largely been in charge.

Thus, the Republicans' continued obstruction is even worse. The post that I pointed to for further explanation in my original post makes the key point that Republicans are obstructing for the sake obstructing as evidenced by the many legislative initiatives they have held up that are immensely popular across the political spectrum and much needed by any objective and even centrist point of view. Furthermore, Republicans have been obstructing meaningful, popular, and much needed legislation as a political strategy and then bragging that their strategy of obstruction is having the purely political effect that they want. There is simply no excuse for this other than putting party and ideology above what's good for the whole country for no good reason and at a time when these reforms are very much needed. This is the kind of thing that makes the Republican party unique these days.

It is also true that the excuse has been made by Dem supporters that the Democrats were limited in what they could do while in the minority. Progressives and Democratic supporters have lamented the fact that we did not have enough numbers to easily block things in the recent past, such as Bush's nominees to the Supreme Court, Roberts and Alito. This is probably the type of criticism that has often been given as a means of explanation by many of the Dem strategists and pundits on a lot of cable news commentary. However, this type of commentary may be a bit misrepresentative of a good deal of criticsim that that has been leveled at the Democrats by their base in recent years. Thus, while I can't really dispute that this kind of explanation is given as to why Democrats have been unable to provide a more meaningful opposition, I want to point out that the majority of the really strident criticism of the Dem's performance prior to 2006 and currently from the progressive base, which I believe is increasingly representative of the views of many Dem supporters across the country (and which is starting to have some real impact on the Democrats), is that the Dems didn't fight hard enough while in the minority (with the Roberts and Alito confirmations, the Patriot Act, and other legislation) to provide a tough and meaningful opposition, even if their efforts would have ended up failing, and that they aren't fighting hard enough even in the majority.

And despite whatever failures the Democrats should be rightly criticized for, any such criticism coming from the Republican party (with very, very few exceptions), especially from Bush given his and the Republican party's performance as a whole since he has been in office, is nothing short of transparently blatant hypocrisy. Bush and the Republican party have ensured that it hasn't been business as usual in our country for long time now, so for Bush to engage in the usual tactics of accusing the majority of not getting things done because they face stiff opposition at this point in the game is bordering on the absurd.

2007-07-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

I want to respond to comments left on my previous two posts becuase both comments bring up some valid points.

In response to the first post, "On $400 and Haircuts and Mill Workers" Eric writes:

While I think the media is overplaying Mr. Edward's haircuts, it does seem to point to a potential disconnect between his populous message. When he rails against the fat cats, it is difficult not to see him as one of them. I personally don't care the gentleman spends to have his hair cared for, it is his hair and his money. He has every right to spend it as he sees fit. There are a lot of rich folks that were born 'poor' and worked there way into money, and here is the shocker, they are on both sides of the aisle.

I have to agree with Eric on not caring how Edwards, or any Republican for that matter, spends their money and whether or not they get expensive haircuts. And he is right to point out that there are examples on both sides of the aisle of individuals who came from modest backgrounds and ended up wealthy. I don't have a problem with that either. There are also individuals on both sides of the aisle that were born into money.

Eric also wrote:

when the Republicans get blasted for being the lackeys for Big Business, I find it funny that no one seems to notice that most of the same Big Business folks donate to the other side and often fund their parties.It is extremely naive to believe that politicians on either side actually care for the poor or the working class.

This is also a legitimate point. It's true that a lot of corporate cash flows to both sides. As we saw with the recent K-street incidents and scandals, however, there is a slightly higher amount of money, especially from certain industries, that goes to Republicans (the K-street fiasco was a pretty telling case of how Repubicans were using their ties to big business specifically to keep their party on top and trying to run K-street as a Republican operation using their connections). But the Democrats are also beholden to corporate interests and receive huge amounts of money from big business. That is an issue that is starting to be addressed by many Democrats in congress and one that has been of significant importance to the progressive movement. That is part of the reason that I wanted to highlight Edwards' speech criticizing NAFTA and other Free Trade Deals. Edwards is in the Democratic estabishment, but he is starting to talk seriously about things that need to change, things that, if followed through on by the Democrats in congress and the next president if he or she is a Democrat, would actually help the middle and working classes.

Both parties have been guilty in recent years for doing the bidding of corporate America. We saw this under Bill Clinton and one of the best examples is what Edwards was criticizing--NAFTA. However, there is a movement within the Democratic party and the Democrats in congress to challenge this and make serious reforms. No Republican candidate that I am aware of has made any serious criticisms about corporate money and influence. We are only really beginning to see that on the Democratic side of the aisle.

I pointed out Edwards' recent speech and the field day that the media have been having with his haircut to prove a point. The media doesn't engage in such tactics with respect to Repubicans and yet, not only are none of the Republican candidates proposing any serious reforms vis-a-vis corporate influence, the conservative movement is and always has been about corporate interests, whereas there is a genuine tradition of real populist reforms in the Deomcratic party (FDR being the biggest example). Republicans have also enganged in their own phony populism in the past, and yet, the media seems incapable of challenging the populist image that Republicans have tried to cultivate with the ferocity that they reserve for Democrats. Thus, I don't necessarily agree with Eric's comment that "Mr. Edward's haircuts,...[do] seem to point to a potential disconnect between his populous message." I think the media would like for people to see it that way. But it doesn't matter how much money any candidate has or what they spend on themselves personally, if that candidate is proposing the right reforms and addressing serious economic issues that affect the middle and working classes and if he or she works with the movement for change in these areas that is starting to take shape and influence the Democratic party.

I more or less agree with Eric's comment that "It is extremely naive to believe that politicians on either side actually care for the poor or the working class." Thre is reason to be skeptical of a populist message coming from any source. The Democrats have certainly sold out the working and middle classes in recent decades, so we do have to be careful and increase the pressure on them to match their actions with their words.

However, I pointed out the treatment that Edwards has been receiving to point out that the media wants people to believe that no politician is or can ever be sincere about serious economic reforms. This is self-defeating if we buy into it and it happens again and again with Democrats precisely because, if any serious economic reforms are going to be made, they are going to made by the Democrats and the progressive movment and as a result of the pressure that that movement is putting on the Democrats.

This latest Edwards incident is yet one more example of the media's penchant for going after Democrats in ways they do not go after Republicans, especially when it comes to issues related to economic reforms and to class. Paperwight's Fair Shot describes exactly what is happening here with Edwards and the media in the following post, discussing what is often referred to as the "class traitor" phenomenon, as it has been exemplified in situations involving other Democrats:

According to No More Mister Nice Blog, some wingnuts are now whining about how rich Barack Obama is. I noticed that they did this with Kerry and Edwards, and George Soros, and are doing it with Nancy Pelosi. I continue to be fascinated that they don't whine about how rich the Bushes are, or how rich all of the funders of the Right Wing Noise Machine are, or the eighteen wealthy families who spent millions on tearing down the estate tax to save themselves billions. But I think I understand it: wealthy liberals are class traitors.

See, one has to understand that one of the key characteristics of wingnuttery (and I'm beginning to believe, conservatism in general) is an absolute lack of empathy. So, all of the wingnuts are all cool with the super-rich acting in the most venal and self-interested ways, because that's what all the wingnuts would do....

When someone has a fair bit of money* but actually looks beyond themselves, and worse, might actually engage in some structural change that allows regular people to have decent lives without prostrating themselves before the ruling classes (see, e.g., wingnut welfare), well, those people must be destroyed. They undermine the wingnut worldview of unalloyed 24 carat selfishness as the primary human condition.

They are class traitors.

(Emphasis mine) That pretty much sums up, in my opinion, the central difference between the Democratic party and the progressive movement on one hand and the Republican party and the conservative movement on the other and the respective treatment that candidates in each party receive with regard to the class they belong to and the images the media helps to create v. their actual positions on specific issues. So, while I do agree with Eric that it is niave to believe either party really cares about the middle and working classes (we shouldn't just take the Democrats, or the Republicans for that matter, on their word), but that doesn't mean that we should not believe that there are politicians out there who will, especially if given support and pressured, live up to many of the reforms that are part of that populist message. That's why we have to pay attention to what candidates are saying with regard to specific issues such as Free Trade and, if we vote them into office, hold them accountable if they do not live up to what they say. This is also why we should see the media's obsession with Edwards' haircut and the "elistist" image of the Democrats, an image that the media is always more than happy to reinforce and never question against an examination of the specific issues, for what it is.

On $400 Haircuts and Mill Workers

2007-07-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

Go check out this video of a presidential candidate slamming Free Trade Deals like NAFTA and the ones that the Republicans and Democratic leadership are trying to pass, against much opposition from rank and file Democratic congressman and the progressive movement. Here's a little excerpt from the speech:

The last thing we need is more trade agreements like NAFTA....No American corporation should be able to lift up, go overseas, and hire children or slave labor to do their work. Nobody should do that. It's not only economically unjust, it's not only unfair, it is immoral....for me this is a very personal issue....my father worked in mills his whole life....and I saw what happened to him and the poeple who worked with him...

This guy is not running for the Republican presidential nomination. What a surprise. But this is the guy that the media keeps implying that you shouldn't vote for becuase he has nice hair and gets $400 haircuts. And becuase he was a lawyer from a modest background who got rich suing the big guys on behalf of little people--you know, one of those elitist trial lawyers--and not a lawyer who was working for the big guys to screw the rest of us. Digby describes this phenomenon in a post about yet another article on the Edwards haircut:

Television gasbags have been gleefully recycling this Edwards nonsense all day, based upon the latest Soloman story and treating it like it's news. Matthews said "sometimes small stories can reveal big things." He pretends he's cleverly pointing out that Edwards is a phony populist for getting expensive haircuts but what he's really doing is pushing GOP propaganda that Edwards is effeminate and soft. Like all Democrats.

You see, if you're a Republican and you've spent your life getting rich, or if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, spent your whole life as a miserable failure and had to have everything handed to you becuase you were incapable of making anything of yourself, all you have to do for the media to fall all over you and christen you "a regular guy" is to spend lots of time dressed in jeans while clearing brush at your ranch, get a fucking pathetic education from all the time your rich connections got you at Harvard, and have a stupid, confused look on your face as you mangle your speeches. The media is too busy inspecting the grooming habbits of Democrats to report on the acutal issues. They continue to do this becuase they think the average American is a boob like the "regular guy" Republican image that they mistake for "authentic." They don't grasp the concept that Americans actually care about things like healthcare and trade policy and so they don't report on actual policies and issues.

Once Again, Fuck You King George! You Have Always Been and Always Will Be a Miserable Fucking Failure-At Everything!

2007-07-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

This is a classic, textbook case of conservative strategy: fuck everything up and when the Democrats come into power and try to clean up the mess, obstruct the hell out of everything they try to do and then blame the Democrats for not fixing anything.

We all know all the miserable fuckups the Republicans are responsible for. Yes, they have had some help from Democrats in the past six years; however, Republicans are the ones who have pretty much been in charge for the last six years. And now that the public got disgusted and voted them out of power in the 2006 elections (and while Republicans are still being investigated, indicted and convicted left and right for their crimes and corruption) Bush still has the nerve the chastise the Democrats. Via Digby:

President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Saturday of being unable to live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to fund the federal government.

"Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "This moment is a test."

In the article that Digby excerpts from a spokesman for the White House brings up immigration as one of the Democrats' failures. Of course, the article then goes on to explain that the immigration bill died because of "staunch opposition from Bush's own base--conservatives."

The Democrats can be criticized for many things, as they so often are by their base and by voters in general. However, Republicans, especially the criminals in the Bush White House, have absolutely no right to open their fucking mouths! Robert Borosage reminds us of their continued obstruction and the things the Democrats have been able to accomplish despite these assbags:

Americans elected a new Congress to get things done. But the conservative minority has chosen a strategy of obstruction in the Senate. They have used the threat of a filibuster to delay or block virtually every major initiative. Bills with majority support—raising the minimum wage, ethics reform, a date to remove troops from Iraq, revoking oil subsidies and putting the money into renewable energy, fulfilling the 9/11 commission recommendations on homeland security—get blocked because they can’t garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

In its first 40 hours, the new majority of the House of Representatives kept their promise to voters and passed legislation—increasing the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, empowering Medicare to negotiate lower prices on drugs, cutting interest rates on student loans in half, revoking big oil subsidies and using the money to invest in renewable energy—that provided a down payment for a new direction for this country.
These bills are overwhelmingly popular, and are simply common sense reforms. Yet every one of them—and many more—got held up in the U.S. Senate.

Conservatives boast about the “success” of their strategy in discrediting the new majority. As Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., put it, “the strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it’s working for us.”

How is it working? It’s dragging the reputation of the Congress down to the level of the failed president. Conservatives lie in the road of progress and then complain that nothing is moving.
This values partisan posturing over reforms vital to the country. It must be challenged.

It’s time to take the gloves off.

It's time to start kicking their obstructionist asses!

Parenting Advice from Fox News:"It harms children when you make them feel special for no reason."

2007-07-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Once again, I kid you not. Apparently, Fox & Friends is blaming Mr. Rogers for ruining a generation. My only question at this point is, what isn't Fox News threatened by. Fox was the first chanel to pick up on the crazy ranting of this fuckwit conservative blogger that universal healthcare will make us more vulnerable to terrorism. And for a lesson in how the insane elements on the right so often influence the news cycle and the debate with their deranged fear-mongering, MSNBC later took the scare tactics and ran with them and, jumping on the bandwagon as well was, not surprisingly, The New York Sun. God, these people are just total pussies!

2007-07-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I see that Fox news has jumped on board with the righty blogosphere's attempt to equate Michael Moore's new documentary and the growing support for universal healthcare with terrorism. Check out the link to this segment in which Fox informs us that universal healthcare will make the US more vulnerable to terrorism. And, once again, no I'm not making this up. I'm simply not that creative when it comes to bullshit artistry, so just click on the link and see for yourself.

Just a thought. Since polls indicate that a sizable majority of Americans want some kind of universal healthcare (in one poll included in this lenghty report, about 70% of Americans believe it should be the government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have health coverage), is Fox news saying that most Americans want us to be more vulnerable to terrorism? Just asking.

And one last thought. When all hell breaks loose in the world's weather patterns and with rising sea levels and Republicans finally wake up and understand that we have a serious global crisis, are they going to attempt to blame these things on the terrorists or will they finally acknowledge the scientific reality of global warming? I'm betting a $100 they blame it on the terrorists? Any takers?

What Happens When Moral Values and Supporting the Troops Collide?

2007-07-06T10:00:00.001-07:00

Scooter Libby gets special treatment directly from the President after being convicted of obstruction of justice. This same president loves to accuse those who disagree with his war in Iraq of not supporting the troops. Well, what happens when a veteran returns from that same war, develops a deep personal and religious conviction and decides based on his moral convictions that he could not redeploy after "seeing scenes of devastation in Iraq, and through his readings of both the Bible and the Qu’ran." Scenes of devastation such as this:

“Homes were bombed, people lived in mud huts and drank water from the mud puddles," Benderman wrote in his conscientious objector application. "I could not ignore the little girl standing by the side of the road with her mother. Her arm was burned to her shoulder, and she cried in pain. To be aware of the mass graves throughout the area that we were in, full of bodies of women and children and men, all who had died by the hand of war, maybe not our war, but war.”

Well, Mr. President of the party of moral values, where was your commutation or pardon for this 10-year Army mechanic and Iraqi veteran? This guy "spent 14 months in prison for filing a conscientious objector application against redeployment to Iraq." According to his wife, it gets worse from there and she's, justifiably, a little pissed off at the President's actions:

"Parole was denied to Kevin because he had not been 'sufficiently rehabilitated.'", she said. "What were they rehabilitating him from? Not wanting to go to war. During those 14 months Kevin would be sitting in a plastic chair getting shouted at; he was denied his mail at times, they tried to prevent his talking to his attorney and our congressperson. Meanwhile, Libby -- who covered up the truth on issues of war that affect the lives of people like my husband -- is going to walk away."

Kevin Benderman is this veteran's name, and I want to know one thing, when is Bush going to pardon Mr. Benderman? Probably never.

An outrage, you say? No, I think we're well beyond the point of outrage.

Quote of the Day~The New Buzz about Rape and Equal, That's a Sweetener, Right Edition

2007-07-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

Today, there are going to be two quotes of the day. It seems that in the excitement surrounding the Libby commutation, Republicans are just having too hard a time containing themselves in the midst of all the spin they are spewing and are letting what they really mean slip out a little more often than they normally do.

First slip:
“I think ‘rape and incest’ is a buzzword. It’s a bit of a throwaway line and not everybody who says that really understands what that means. How are you going to define that?” –South Dakota state Rep. Joel Dykstra (R-Lincoln County) on why the state legislature didn’t include those exceptions in its abortion ban, April 20, 2006.

Mr. Dykstra has entered the race for the Republican nomination to run against South Dakota's Democratic Senator, Tim Johnson.

Second slip:
" Well, I guess I don’t know what you mean by “equal justice under the law.”

Response from Scott Stanzel, one of the White House's propagandists, I mean, spokespersons to this question:
Q: Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

Of course you don't know what that phrase means, Scotty, you work for the Bush White House.

Getting a Whole Lot Less for Your Money

2007-07-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

Why now? has a post linking to this post at Facing South that compared the taxes paid in the US to those in the UK and France. Conservatives are always throwing up the "fact" that people in countries like the UK and France have to pay so much more in taxes in order to support their "welfare states," which provide their citizens with services such as universal healthcare that we in American could only dream of. As if having to pay slightly higher taxes in order to have free, universal healthcare were even a bad thing as opposed to having no insurance or inadequate insurance and getting saddled with outrageous medical bills were a bad thing, it actually turns out that differences in what people pay here v. France and the UK are not that much.

A person making $50,000 a year would pay the following in combined payroll and income tax: (US) $14,445
(UK) $13,916 and (France) 18, 415. The amount this person would pay in France is higher because "the French employee is paying the extra 8% in supplemental insurance so 100% of their medical care is covered." In France "the basic plan... covers 70% of their health care costs, [thus with the basic plan] the payroll tax would only be $6500, and their total taxes would be $14,415." Not only are the discrepencies slight, as Facing South points out, we should "keep in mind that the US employee (and/or his/her employer) still has to pay for health insurance."

This post also has some interesting comparisons on value added taxes, which is similar to sales tax. The post is not very long and is well worth reading. It looks to me like we're pretty much getting screwed.

"With Liberty and Justice for" those Deemed Worthy

2007-07-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

Setting aside the predictable reactions to Bush's commuting of Libby's sentence from Democrats and Republicans, as well as the seriousness of the issues surrounding the outing of Valerie Plame, the investigation of which Libby was convicted and sentenced to prison for obstruting, I want to point out something that I wrote a post about not too long ago regarding the larger issue of justice and fairness that makes Bush's actions so reprehensible. Digby pointed this out yesterday, as well:

He is compassionate after all, isn't he? Thirty months is just too excessive. Well, at least when it comes to the right kind of people: He has different plans for everyone else:

The Bush administration is trying to roll back a
Supreme Court decision by pushing legislation that would require prison time for
nearly all criminals.

The Justice Department is offering the plan as
an opening salvo in a larger debate about whether sentences for crack cocaine
are unfairly harsh and racially discriminatory.

Republicans are seizing the administration's
crackdown, packaged in legislation to combat violent crime, as a campaign issue
for 2008.

In a speech June 1 to announce the bill,
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged Congress to re-impose mandatory minimum
prison sentences against federal convicts — and not let judges consider such
penalties “merely a suggestion.”

[...] Judges, however, were livid over the proposal to
limit their power.

“This would require one-size-fits-all justice,”
said U.S. District Judge Paul G. Cassell, chairman of the Criminal Law committee
of the Judicial Conference, the judicial branch's policy-making
body.

“The vast majority of the public would like the
judges to make the individualized decisions needed to make these very difficult
sentencing decisions,” Cassell said. “Judges are the ones who look the
defendants in the eyes. They hear from the victims. They hear from the
prosecutors.”

[...] The Justice Department wants to return to the
old system of mandatory minimum sentences, under which judges could grant
leniency only in special cases. Without those required floors, Justice officials
maintain that different judges could hand out widely varying penalties for the
same crime.

Justice officials also point to a growing number
of lighter sentences as possible proof that crime is on the rise because
criminals are no longer cowed by strict penalties.

I heard GOP strategist Ed Rollins say earlier that "it's always hard to see a man like this go to jail," which is so true. He's not "one of them" you know. (Like these awful people, for instance.)

So, at the same time that Republicans have been urging Bush to pardon Libby, expressing either silence or approval when Bush commutes his sentence, the Bush Justice Department "wants to return to the old system of mandatory minimum sentences, under which judges could grant leniency only in special cases" as the Bush Administratin is "pushing legislation that would require prison time for nearly all criminals." And meanwhile, "Republicans are seizing the administration's crackdown, packaged in legislation to combat violent crime, as a campaign issue for 2008."

As if that isn't outrageous enough, this same Justice Department is under congressional investigation and mired in its own scandal. Here is a summary of the current investigations into the activities of the Justice Department and their connection to the Republican party from one of the most reputable sources in the print media:

The investigations into the Bush administration’s decision to fire nine U.S. attorneys have exposed how the administration has eroded the firewall between partisan politics and the Justice Department and compromised the independence of the nation's top law enforcement agency.

As early as 2002, administration policymakers, Republican legislators and GOP party officials began injecting politics into criminal investigations and civil and voting rights enforcement and applying political litmus tests to judges and career lawyers at the Justice Department.

Based on what has come out so far, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Bush Adminstration has politicized a brach of the federal government that has historically been one of the most independent and immune to politicization. What we are learning from the scandal and investigations surrounding the firing of the U.S. Attorneys and politically motivated interferring in prosecutions is profoundly disturbing (but more on that later as it deserves much more attention). This same Justice Department now wants minimum sentencing while Bush commutes the sentence for conviction of obstruction of justice of the former aide to the Vice President.

Repbulicans have gone out of the way to paint themselves as the law and order party, as the party that is tough on crime, all about personal responsibility, dealing with the consequences of one's action etc. The Republican party, in fact, is only about the Republican party, taking care of its own, covering its ass--the rule of law, principles, and broader concerns of justice and fairness be damned.

The phony law and order, tough on crime stance is just a tool to be used, as we see with the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney scandal, against the political opposition and, as we see with Bush's records of pardons, against the poor class of criminals and those deemed "unworthy" of justice and mercy. In pointing this out, Digby mentions Bush's appalling lack of compassion while governor of Texas and Lawyers, Guns, and Money excerpts this letter to the editor of NY Times addressing this as well, and the letter is well worth reading:

To the Editor:

When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he presided over more than 150 executions. In more than one-third of the cases — 57 in all — lawyers representing condemned inmates asked then-Governor Bush for a commutation of sentence, so that the inmates would serve life in prison rather than face execution.

Some of these inmates had been represented by lawyers who slept during trials. Some were mentally retarded. Some were juveniles at the time they committed the crime for which they were sentenced to death.

In all these cases, Governor Bush refused to commute their sentences, saying that the inmates had had full access to the judicial system.I. Lewis Libby Jr. had the best lawyers money can buy. His crime cannot be attributed to youth or retardation. He has expressed no remorse whatsoever for lying to a grand jury or participating in the administration’s effort to mislead the American people about the war in Iraq. President Bush’s commutation of Mr. Libby’s sentence is certainly legal, but it just as surely offends the fundamental constitutional value of equality.

Because President Bush signed a commutation, a rich and powerful man will spend not a day in prison, while 57 poor and poorly connected human beings died because Governor Bush refused to lift a pen for them.

David R. DowHouston, July 3, 2007
The writer is a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who represents death row inmates, including several who sought commutation from then-Governor Bush.

Apparently, a draconian view of crime and punishment is reasonable for all but powerfully connected Republicans as Talking Points Memo also reports that Mitt Romney refused to ever issue a commutation or pardon for anyone while governor of Massachusettes making him the first governor in that state's history to hold that title. One such request for a pardon was submitted by a soldier serving in Iraq who was convicted of assault when he was 13 for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun and the other boy wasn't even injured. This soldier "worked his way through college, joined the Army National Guard and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq's deadly Sunni triangle." He requested the pardon, while still in Iraq, so that he could continue to serve his community by becoming a police officer after he finished serving his country in Iraq. Mitt, not seeing fit to grant a pardon to someone so obviously deserving for so many reason, believes Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence is "reasonable."

To further illustrate to the slavish devotion to powerful, no matter what their crimes, this was reported yesterday about Fred Thompson, who was also pleased that Libby's sentence was commuted:

The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight -- asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system -- he telephoned Nixon's lawyer.

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public... It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."

I believe it would be impossible to find a more glaring example of rank hypocrisy and blatant disregard for the ideal of "justice for all" than that which is exemplified in these stories, all part of a much bigger pictures, that are coming out in the wash, so to speak, as Bush exercises his special powers in favor of little Scooter.

Tom Paine Kicks the President's Ass in Celebration of the 4th of July

2007-07-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

There was a rather interesting story reported at the Smirking Chimp today:

Tom Paine's ghost had been spinning in its grave for years, ever since the Bush administration first began making a mockery of America's noble, founding ideals, in crass service to greedy monopolists whose only allegiance is to the Almighty Dollar.

On the Fourth of July, 2007, after the last fireworks turned to acrid smoke, and patriotic clichés died in the darkness, Old Tom's spirit finally broke free, with a supernatural "Whoosh!" that startled sleeping robins, sending them abruptly into flight.

...

Not more than two blocks toward his destination, a police car suddenly shot a spotlight on Tom, as a metallic voice ordered him not to move.

He stood straight and faced the menacing beam.

Two officers of the law approached, demanding to know his name and intentions.

"I'm Thomas Paine, author of 'Common Sense' and an enemy of all that defiles democracy, exploits the people, and offends Sweet Providence. I'm off to kick your President's ass."

...

"So why d'ya wanna whack Bush's behind, Tommy Boy?"

"The reason ought to be plain," Tom replied.

"Not only is he an absolute Tory in inclination and temperament, aligning himself with oppressive, exploitative powers, but he does their bidding by ruling as a virtual king. He doesn't heed the people's contrary will...

"He's corrupted our dear America. A nation intended to set the global standard for liberty and worthy, just purpose has been outrageously transformed into a land of fading freedoms, while its young soldiers are sent to aggress countries abroad without appropriate or honest cause...

"Americans fought a revolutionary war to free themselves from tyranny rooted beyond the sea. Now, under Bush, the United States is the occupying tyrant, forcefully preventing others' sovereign self-determination. Like England in my time, America is the empire-keeper today."

...

At about 3:30 AM on the Fifth of July, 2007, as George W. Bush lay sleeping on his Presidential Posturepedic, a mighty blow was delivered squarely into Dubya's rear.

"Yeow! What the hell! Jesus, Laura -- ouch, ouch -- cut your damned toenails!"

But Laura was facing the other direction and snoring loudly.

"Our" President will never admit it, but in his night light's glow that morning, he saw a ghostly figure: a barefoot, grinning man, dressed in Colonial clothing, dancing a very spirited jig.

Then the apparition vanished, with a hair-raising, otherworldly "Whoosh!"

Barney still hasn't come out of hiding, and his master will certainly seem even more goofily disconnected than usual for months to come.

Meanwhile, Tom's back beneath the sod, at peace at last, wearing fuzzy slippers he "liberated"from the Bush's bedroom as he departed.

All's well that ends well.

~reported by Dennis Rahkonen

2007-07-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

As we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, I want to post this excerpt from Thom Hartmann's book, What Would Jefferson Do? A Return to Democracy in which Hartmann describes the sacrifices that the signers of the Declaration made:

The cost to those who fought for democracy

The Declaration of Independence was the logical extension of the Revolution initiated by the Boston Tea Party, and was signed by a group bearing similar diversity to those in the various states who later ratified the Constitution.

A dozen of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were politicians, physicians, or Protestant ministers; 11 were merchants; 9 were farmers. Ben Franklin was hard to define, although at the time he was referred to as a printer and a Renaissance man; another was a musician, and one was a teacher. They ranged in age from their 20s to the octogenarian Franklin, although he was the only one who was truly elderly. Thomas Jefferson, at 33, represented the average age.

These men were the most idealistic and determined among the colonists. While the conservatives of the day argued that America should remain a colony of England forever, these liberal radicals believed in both individual liberty and societal obligations. A nation must care for the lives of its own, guarantee liberty, and ensure its citizens "happiness"--a radical concept that had never before appeared in any nation's founding documents.

....The day they each signed that document, each legally became a traitor and was sentenced to death for treason by the legal government that controlled their lands and their homes. As Ben Franklin pointed out, they stood at a point of no return, and, "Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately."

....John Hancock, the wealthiest among them, signed his name large enough that the king "could read [Hancock's] name without glasses and could now double the reward," of 500 pounds that had already been put on his head for sedition. Just six months later, Hancock would lose his newborn daughter to complications of childbirth arising from his wife's fleeing the oncoming British army. Although wealthy by the standards of the day, he would hardly qualify as "rich" by today's standards: he founded no dynasty, and no foundations today dispense his money; his legacy was our nation.

....the British...seized [Thomas Nelson's] home and lands. When George Washington attacked the British in Nelson's hometown, Nelson encouraged Washington to attack the Nelson homestead, which the British General Cornwallis had taken as his headquarters, with canons...after the war Nelson, unable to repay loans he'd taken out against it to help finance the Revolution, lost much of his property and died in debt at the age of 50.

The wealthy Philadelphia merchant Robert Morris lost 150 ships at sea in the war, wiping out his small fortune. Signer William Ellery of Rhode Island similarly lost everything, as did Virginia's Benjamin Harrison, Pennsylvania's George Clymer, New York's Philip Livingston, Georgia's Lyman Hall, and New Jersey's Francis Hopkinson.

The British destroyed New York's Francis Lewis's property and threw his wife into such a hellhole of a jail that she died two years later. Three of South Carolina's four signers--Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward Jr., and Arthur Middleton--were captured by the British and held in a filthy, unheated prison and brutally tortured for over a year before George Washington freed them in a prisoner exchange.

New Jersey Farmer John Hart's wife died shortly before he signed the Declaration, and his 13 children were scattered among sympathetic families to hide them from the British and conservative loyalists. He never saw them again, dying alone and wracked with grief three years later.

Altogether, 17 of the signers were wiped out by the war they declared.

New Jersey State Supreme Court justice Richard Stockton took his wife and children into hiding after he signed the Declaration, but conservatives loyal to the Crown turned them in. He was so badly beaten and starved in the British prison that he died before the war was over. His home was looted, and his wife and children lived the rest of their lives as paupers.

Altogether, nine of the men in that room died, and four lost their children as a direct result of putting their names to the Declaration of Independence. Every single one had to flee his home, and, after the war, twelve returned to find only rubble.

After the war was over...the survivors of the new American nation met to put into final form the legal structure of the nation they had just birthed. It was not to be a nation of cynical, selfish libertarians who believed the highest value was individual freedom from society, or that the greatest motivator was greed. It was not be a kingdom, ruled by a warlord elite. It was not to be a theocracy, where religious leaders made the rules (as had been several of the states). And it was not to be a feudal nation, ruled by the rich.

As Benjamin Franklin told Philadelphia's Mrs. Powell after she asked him what sort of nation had been conceived in the Constitutional Convention, it was to be, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

In remembrance of those who lost so much in signing the document that declared our independence from England's King George III, as well as to all those who sacrificed and worked in whatever capacity while securing that independence, I have a few things to say.

Our George has never sacrificed anything for this country. He is the spoiled, arrogant, short-sighted son of a wealthy family who would not serve in Vietnam but sends other Americans' sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors to die in a war to, as he claims, bring democracy to Iraq, while he shows nothing but disdain for democracy in America.

Our George sends these Americans to die in service for their country while members in his administration award no-bid contracts to greedy for profit corporations that steal billions of dollars from the tax payers to return a profit on services that are either deliberately over priced, rendered inadequately or, in some cases, not at all, as billions have literally disappeared in Iraq.

Our George and his enablers rape the treasury to finance a war in which these greedy, war-profiteering bastards short change Americans and the troops serving this country, thus producing a sky rocketing deficit that will leave the next generation saddled with crushing debt, a debt that will ensure that this next generation will face an even greater challenge as they have to rebuild what he, his administration and his enablers have worked diligently to destroy by giving ever more to the private sector and turning ever more government functions into profit making ventures for the greedy.

Our George has ensured that the next generation will be saddled with this debilitating debt while having to deal with the effects of global climate change, a challenge perhaps unprecedented in history, a problem that he has done nothing to address while those whom he has appointed to oversee agencies responsible for addressing this environmental threat impede efforts to mitigate the coming disasters.

Our George, his administration and his enablers watch the national debt spiral ever upward and send others to die and all the while, with the help of his party in congress, he has passed and signed into law tax cuts that benefit only the richest, tiniest percentage of Americans while veterans returning from combat go without the adequate medical care that they deserve and are entitled to.

Our George repeatedly lies to the American public about the war, the actions of those who serve him in his administration and his political sycophants who put into place programs to illegally spy on Americans and infringe on Americans' civil liberties, work to politicize the Justice Department, and attempt to erode the separation of Church and State

Our George secures zones around his public appearances to keep Americans' protests of his actions invisible to him and those around him, repeatedly accuses those who do not support his ill-considered and disastrously executed policies, a group of people that has for a while now included the majority of Americans, of emboldening the terrorists and uses the rhetoric fear and terror as an instrument to suppress and dismiss the legitimate grievances and concerns of Americans and their elected representatives.

Our George clings to his own deluded, self-righteous conviction that he, and the few closest to him that agree with him, are the only ones who have the knowledge and the insight to determine the future course of our nation in Iraq, relying on the self-serving belief that God is the reason that he is president and that God sanctions his convictions and actions, when in fact, the American people are the reason he occupies his position because our will, and only our will, is sovereign in this country. And yet, in his arrogance and moral certitude, he ignores the sovereign will of the people, their wiser and better judgment, and the attempts of those who were elected by the people to exert our will and judgment that we put in place a plan to withdraw our troops from Iraq and bring them home.

Our George questions the will and nerve of the American people to stay the course in Iraq in order to bring democracy to that country while he, his administration and his judicial henchman try to subvert democracy at home by claiming ever expanding executive privileges and prerogatives that undermine the separation of powers and are designed to undermine the power and prerogatives of the people's elected representatives.

Our George has supported and allowed officials in his administration and under his command to engage in torture, to hold people in detention without being charged with a crime and without recourse to a means of challenging that detention, a group of people whom only he as the authority to designate as enemy combatants, a group of people that has included American citizens.

Our George, entrusted with the power to pardon and show mercy as president and while governor of Texas, has refused to even give the slightest consideration to, and in at least one case has mocked, hundreds of convicted criminals for whom he was the last source of human mercy and leniency. Yet, right before Independence Day he renders that power of intervention and consideration to commute the sentence of a man convicted, according to our nation's laws and with every advantange and means to obtain justice within our legal system, of obstruction of justice in an investigation into the outing of a covert CIA agent, an investigation that implicates officials close to him in the White House.

The founders who signed their name to the Declaration of Independence put their lives, their families, and their security in jeopardy in the conviction that "A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." With the consideration of what they declared and the ideas that they sacrificed for, they gave us a constitutional means to remove, through impeachment, any leader from power who would break the laws of our country and hold our system of government and our democracy in contempt. If for some reason we persist through the duration of our George's last term in office without summoning the courage and the will to excercise our right to impeach this would be tyrant and his accomplice in the vice president's office, I only hope that none of George's crimes and outrages is forgotten and that we remember our George as the antithesis of that which our founders sacrificed for.

So, on this 4th of July, 2007 I have one final thing to say in remembrance of the day our country declared its independence and of the sacrifices that the signers of the Declaration of Independence made:
Fuck You King George!

2007-07-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

With Justice and Libbyerty for All

2007-07-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

I don't think I can add much to the reactions that are pouring forth from all over regarding Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence. But I do want to post a few statements that have been made regarding this latest travesty starting with Amb. Joseph Wilson whose wife's outing was the reason behind Libby's trial and conviction. In an interview with Keith Olbermann last night Amb. Wilson made the following remark:

The president himself acknowledged in his statement today that Mr. Libby was guilty of serious crimes, and then he makes himself an accessory to the obstruction of justice by the mere act of commuting the sentence, so that now Mr. Libby—there is under no incentive whatsoever to tell the truth to the prosecutor, to remove that sand that Fitzgerald said that he threw into his eyes, or to do anything to lift the cloud that Mr. Fitzgerald says continues to exist over the office of the vice president.

The most appropriate follow up to Amb. Wilson's statement is that by Special Prosecuter Patrick Fitzgerald, the man who investigated Libby and secured his conviction:

We fully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative.

We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as "excessive." The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

Although the President's decision eliminates Mr. Libby's sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.

On last night's Countdown, Olbermann had this to say regarding Bush's actions:

A president who lied us into a war and, in so doing, needlessly killed 3,584 of our family and friends and neighbors, a president whose administration initially tried to destroy the first man to nail that lie, a president whose henchmen then ruined the career of the intelligence asset that was his wife, when intelligence assets were never more essential to the viability of the Republic, a president like that has tonight freed from the prospect of prison the only man ever to come to trial for one of the component felonies in what may be the greatest crime of this young century.

Along with Amb. Wilson, Olbermann also interviewed John Dean, former Nixon White House Counsel, who provided some historical context to Bush's actions:

Well, it‘s certainly in just an internal regulation. It‘s totally within his power to do this. I‘ve been thinking about the historical parallel of this, and it would be like if Richard Nixon, on his way out, or Gerald Ford on his way in, had commuted the sentence of Bob Haldeman, the former chief of staff, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, or John Ehrlichman, same convictions, or former attorney general John Mitchell. That‘s sort of the parallel.

And that shows the seriousness of it. But Nixon nor Ford was about to touch that.

There have been very strong statements from leading Democrats condemning Bush's actions. But the important thing to remember, as Greenwald reminds us, is that:

The Plame investigation was urged by the Bush CIA and commenced by the Bush DOJ, Libby's conviction pursued by a Bush-appointed federal prosecutor, his jail sentence imposed by a Bush-appointed "tough-on-crime" federal judge, all pursuant to harsh and merciless criminal laws urged on by the "tough-on-crime/no-mercy" GOP. Lewis Libby was sent to prison by the system constructed and desired by the very Republican movement protesting his plight.

Predictably, though, cheerleaders for Libby on the right are no doubt ecstatic today as so many in the conservative movement have been loudly bemoaning Libby's conviction and sentencing. Included amongst those Republicans and conservatives who are quite happy that Bush has intervened on behalf of Libby are the following:

"I am very happy for Scooter Libby. I know that this is a great relief to him, his wife and children. While for a long time I have urged a pardon for Scooter, I respect the president’s decision. This will allow a good American, who has done a lot for his country, to resume his life." ~Fred Thompson

"After evaluating the facts, the president came to a reasonable decision and I believe the decision was correct." ~ Rudy Giuliani.

Meanwhile, editorial pages all over the country are condemning this outrage. As Republicans continue to take care of their own, even somone who was convicted of obstruction of justice in a case that involved serious national security matters, the outing of a covert CIA agent for political purposes, the Washington Post reports:

At a time when his popularity is as low as any president's in modern history, Bush's action also defied public opinion. Shortly after Libby was convicted in March, three national public opinion polls found that seven in 10 Americans said they would oppose a pardon of Libby.

Not only is this inexcusable from the perspective of the broader principles of justice and what is good for the nation's national security interests, it is politcially damaging as well. As John Dean stated in last night's interview with Olbermann:

Keith, the public‘s very savvy about this kind of issue. This isn‘t a question of who leaked what and why and what the statute said. This is a question of somebody who lied before a grand jury. The American public understands that. The right is trying to spin this that there was no underlying crime. The public gets it, though, that the man lied in front of a grand jury and was prosecuted and found guilty beyond a reasonable of a doubt.

The president has short-circuited that. He‘s tried to say that the sentence was too great. I don‘t think the public‘s going to buy it. So I think we‘ve just heard a little bit of what‘s an ongoing story.

And yet, you have prominent conservatives all over the place cheering Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence and candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination approving Bush's actions. Republicans have in few other instances illustrated quite so well their disdain for the public's opinion and desires when those views undercut loyalty to the Republican party and the Republican cause, not to mention the disdain for the rule of law and common decency that has come to characterize the Republican party.

Only Terrorists Want Healthcare Reform

2007-07-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

Wow, it sure didn't take long for the right wingers to start blaming Michael Moore's new film for terrorism. This from the guy who was honored with today's quote of the day, that's right, the guy who proudly proclaimed that he no longer writes for the NY Times becuase "fanatical "fact-checking" copy-editors edited my copy into unreadable sludge":

One writer, Mark Steyn, who contributes to the National Review Online's Corner blog, posted an e-mail he received in order to identify the connection between Moore's Sicko and the British terrorists.

"'Would these be Doctors who work for the U.K. health care system so lavishly praised by Michael Moore? ...Perhaps they are not Jihadists at all but simply men driven insane by their employer? Maybe Michael Moore has spawned an entirely new breed of suicide bomber — the alienated UK health care worker'" Steyn quotes from one e-mail, after noting "I've been getting more than a few letters along these lines."

He also posted a second e-mail, and observed, "Now that Dr Mohammed Asha has been arrested in the Glasgow/London terrorist investigation, several readers have noticed that this artfully combines Michael Moore's two most recent enthusiasms, 'insurgents' and socialized health care." Steyn, however adds, "Mr Moore has yet to call these medico-jihadists 'Minutemen.'"

The National Review's The Corner was not the only leading conservative website to try to link Moore with the British attacks.

Conservatives' War on Reality~Quote of the Day

2007-07-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

Via Tbogg, why conservatives hate the NY Times:

Incidentally, I stopped writing for the (New York) Times a few years ago because their fanatical "fact-checking" copy-editors edited my copy into unreadable sludge.

~Mark Steyn

Yes, it was the facts that made it "unreadable sludge."

The Party of Moral Values~Animal Cruelty, Drugs, Racism and Rape Edition

2007-07-02T15:50:00.001-07:00

I admit that I get some kind of perverse satisfaction in pointing out the incidents of of cruelty, indecency, illegality, hypocrisy, and just downright sadism that seems to surround so many members of the political party that has spent the last two decades or so lecturing Americans on moral values and using Jesus as a campaign prop. That's probably because I am, by default, one of those most immoral of immoral beings--a liberal.

Oh well, the following are related to those paragons of morality, the candiates for the Republican presidential nomination, and their campaigns:

So, not only did Giuliani's SC campaign chairman have to quit the Rudy team when he was indicted on charges related to cocaine, it seems that Mr. Giuliani decided to replace the guy with a guy who called the NAACP the "National Association for Retarded People." Classy.

In addition to this, it seems that Mitt Romney has managed to anger many people, especially people who own dogs or at least would never think of doing this to any sentient being:

The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus’s rather visceral protest.

And if that is not repulsive enough, there's Republican nominee, Sen. Sam Brownback, who tells the National Catholic Men's Conference that a woman who has been raped and becomes pregnant should have to carry the child to term b/c, as the saying goes, "two wrongs don't make a right." Indeed. Brownback's speech apparently elicited a standing ovation in support of encouraging (forcing) rape victims to carry the child of their rapists.

And a couple more:

This from a Republican congressman who not too long ago talked about running for president. This guy lied to the folks at the local animal shelter when he told them he was adpoting those cats as pets when he was, in fact, using them to practice his skills as a surgeon while in medical school.

If this story was in any way a factor in his decision not to run, well, if he only knew then what we all know now...

And the last one from one of the Republicans' favorite allies on the relious right, Dr. Dobson:

When I returned I held up the belt and again told my angry dog to get into his bed. He stood his ground, so I gave him a firm swat across the rear end and he tried to bite the belt. The tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast… I eventually got him to bed, but only because I outwieighed him 200 to 12.

I am, as always, rendered speechless by the glowing example of morality, virtue and compassion that those in the Republican party display as examples of the moral values that they insist all other Americans practice.

And, By the Way

2007-07-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

CNN has apparently fact-checked Moore's documentary and found:

that his numbers were mostly right, but his arguments could use a little more context. As we dug deep to uncover the numbers, we found surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film. In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film....Like Moore, we also found that more money does not equal better care. Both the French and Canadian systems rank in the Top 10 of the world's best health-care systems, according to the World Health Organization. The United States comes in at No. 37.

CNN does helpfully point out that, "Sicko" also ignores a handful of good things about the American system. Believe it or not, the United States does rank highest in the patient satisfaction category. Americans do have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when it comes to nonemergency elective surgery such as hip replacements, cataract removal or knee repair."

But that's not really the point of the movie, nor does it seem very comforting given the facts and the horror stories that I have read about in reviews of the film. Can't wait to see it!

2007-07-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

Micheal Moore is someone who stirs up a lot of strong reactions, positive and negative. While there is definitely some truth to the criticism of Moore's work that it has a strong bias and while Moore does intend to provoke people and often ends up turning off some of the very people he would probably like most to reach, I think that this is all going to be beside the point with his latest documentary, Sicko. I have read great reviews about this film, even from some very mainstream sources that usually can't abide anything to the left of Hillary Clinton. Of course the right will push its talking points and smear tactics through to many of the usual suspects in the MSM and the healthcare industry will bombard Americans with a counter-offensive of the usual propoganda. But there appears to be some indication that these efforts may not be that successful.

In his July 16, review of Sicko, Christopher Hayes explains why Moore's latest documentary may resonate with a more widespread audience that is not usually receptive to his work and is sometimes downright hostile to Moore himself:

...unlike in his previous film Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore focuses relatively little attention on the villains in his story, choosing instead simply to allow their victims to tell their tales. It's a montage of hard luck and innocence. [Moore introduces] us to the horror stories all too typical among even the 250 million Americans fortunate enough to have health insurance....In what may be a tacit acknowledgment of this unfortunate fact, Sicko is different from Moore's last two efforts. Not just because of an absence of gimmicky gotcha moments, or a reduction in screen time for Moore himself, but because its topic isn't fundamentally polarizing in the way his previous works were. There's a whole lot of Americans who love their guns, and in 2004 there were a lot of Americans who loved their President, but it's pretty hard to find anyone who loves their health insurance company.

(Emphasis mine) It seems Moore might have hit upon something that will allow him to reach the audience he has wanted to connect with, the "blue-collar factory workers and members of the working class" that has been largely hostile to Moore, as well as the vast majority of the middle class, as this film is about the working and middle classes who do have insurance and the hell that they often expereince at the hands of their, as I like to call them, homicidal HMOs.

Hayes points out the irony in the fact that the group of Americans that Moore has always wanted to speak to, the "elusive Reagan Democrat--the heartland-dwelling, beer-drinking, blue-collar guy (or gal) who bowls on the weekend, loves his country and is fighting to stay afloat in winner-take-all America" is the group that Moore has so often angered and alienated in the past because, despite his "accesible, populist voaculary, his public image is that of an ideologue, a lighting rod, a polarizing figure: more Barry Goldwater than Ronald Reagan."

The reason Moore has been unable to connect with his target audiene may have as much to do with the overall political climate of the past few decades than Moore himself. Hayes' recounts an interesting story from the last chapter in Moore's book, Downsize This!:

Moore spends the final chapter of his first book...talking to Norman Olson, a co-founder of the Michigan Militia: "You know, you guys were right in the sixties," Olson tells him. "The government lied to us.... So when we finally wised up in the nineties after all these jobs were lost, where were you liberals when we needed your help?" Writing in this magazine in November 1997, in an article titled "Is the Left Nuts? (Or Is It Me?)," Moore asked a variation of the same question, "just who the hell is reading this? Who is the Nation readership? Is it my brother-in-law, Tony, back in Flint, who last night was installing furnace ducts until 9 o'clock?"

(Emphasis mine) Although the tone of this documentary is different than Moore's past works, according to the reviews that I've read, Moore does provide a context for the healthcare crisis in America. In doing so, he brings up Regan, which I hope, if Moore's target audience actually watches this film, will at least trigger some doubt with more people that a lot of what they have been fed by the right in the past few decades is pretty much bullshit. As Hayes points out:

It's a little-studied chapter of Reagan's career, but perhaps the most formative. As chronicled in Thomas Evans's The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism, Reagan was employed by GE first as a spokesman and later as a kind of employer-to-employee ambassador. With management facing a restive labor force, an obscure PR guru named Lemuel Boulware hatched the idea of using the emerging techniques of public relations to turn factory-line workers against their own unions. Reagan would be the vessel for this message, and it was in the hours he spent propagandizing the working class about the benefits of free markets that he forged the distinctive Reagan appeal: hard-right economics delivered in the sunny cadence of an amiable uncle.

So as momentum for national, universal healthcare built during the Truman Administration, foes such as the American Medical Association sought to build grassroots opposition. In an ingenious stroke, as Moore reports in Sicko, it organized thousands of coffee klatches across the country where suburban housewives could sip coffee, gossip and listen to a special recorded message about the evils of socialized medicine, a message delivered by the one and only Ronald Reagan.

(Emphasis mine) Maybe there is reason for hope...

Quote of the Day~"See you at the bitter end"

2007-06-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

The title of today's Quote of the Day post is from one of my favorite bands, Placebo. The Bitter End is also probably one of my favorite Placebo songs. For some reason it just popped into my head after I read this:

A year and a half before the Bush era comes to its merciful end, cataloging its failures and pathologies has become not merely a cottage industry but a kind of mass mobilization, a task so vast that it requires the combined efforts of thousands of writers, talkers, thinkers, activists, and ordinary citizens. Every new look at the last six and a half years yields new insight into how government should not operate, another object lesson for future administrations. And one of those lessons of the Bush years is surely that potential disaster lurks behind what we had previously assumed to be a grand virtue: loyalty.

Paul Waldman in The American Prospect

Let's Put This in Terms the President Can Understand: "Bring it On"

2007-06-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Go ahead and give Americans further, undeniable proof that you have no respect for the rule of law and do not recognize that congress has the power, under the Constitution of the United States, which you took an oath of office swearing that you would, to best of your ability, "preserve, protect and defend," to provide oversight of the activities of the executive branch and to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by you and those in your administration:

Conyers Threatens Contempt Citation After White House Asserts Privilege
By Rachel Van Dongen Roll Call
Thursday 28 June 2007

Setting up a battle royal between Congress and the White House, the Bush administration asserted executive privilege Thursday morning in denying requests from lawmakers for documents and testimony from former top White House officials related to the ongoing U.S. attorneys probe.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) immediately suggested that a contempt of Congress citation may be necessary.

"The President's response to our subpoena shows an appalling disregard for the right of the people to know what is going on in their government," Conyers said.

"At this point, I see only one choice in moving forward, and that is to enforce the rule of law set forth in these subpoenas."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) called the move a "further shift by the Bush administration into Nixonian stonewalling."

"This White House cannot have it both ways. They cannot stonewall Congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred," he added.

"Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law - in America no one is above law."

Added Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been leading the U.S. attorneys probe: "The president seems to be saying: 'How can I stonewall? Let me count the ways.'"

"Maybe everyone has acted honorably. But show me an administration that craves secrecy, and I'll show you an administration that probably has something to hide," Schumer continued.

Both chambers had set this morning as a deadline for complying with subpoenas for information related to the ousting of nine federal prosecutors in 2006. The data includes documents and testimony from ex-White House counsel Harriet Miers and former White House political director Sara Taylor.

Democrats claim that the prosecutors were dismissed for improper political reasons with undue influence from the White House. The administration claims that the dismissals were entirely legitimate and well within the president's prerogative.

In a June 28 letter to Conyers and Leahy, White House counsel Fred Fielding argued that both the documents and witness testimony would not be provided because they are protected by executive privilege.

"With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation," Fielding wrote. "We had hoped this matter could conclude with your Committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke Executive Privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion."

The White House response may foreshadow another confrontation with Congress over subpoenas issued yesterday for information related to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program.

Leahy subpoenaed documents related to the program and set a deadline of July 18 for compliance.

In his letter to Democrats, Fielding argued that "fear of being commanded to Capitol Hill to testify or having their documents produced to Congress" would prevent top presidential advisers from communicating "openly and honestly" with the president in making decisions.

He also asserted that the confidentiality protection was "especially strong" in this case because the president has the sole constitutional authority to appoint and remove federal prosecutors.

"Furthermore, it remains unclear precisely how and why your Committees are unable to fulfill your legislative and oversight interests without the unfettered requests you have made in the subpoenas," Fielding wrote.

"Put differently, there is no demonstration that the documents and information you seek by subpoena are critically important to any legislative initiatives that you may be pursuing or intending to pursue."

Fielding reminded lawmakers that the president had proposed a compromise on the U.S. attorneys issue that involved releasing communications between the White House and Justice Department, and the White House and third parties, but not internal White House communications. Fielding also had offered to allow top aides to testify, but in private, not under oath and without a transcript. He said that offer still stands.

The terms were roundly rejected by Democrats, and no other serious proposals were ever publicly floated by the White House.

Fielding's letter was accompanied by another letter to President Bush from Justice Department Solicitor General Paul Clement buttressing Fielding's arguments.

Clement states that in all cases, it was appropriate for Fielding to claim executive privilege.

Clement argues that "Congress's interests in the documents and related testimony would not be sufficient to override an executive privilege claim."

As far as internal White House deliberations, Clement contends that while the president routinely consults with Congress over the nomination of U.S. attorneys, that is a "courtesy" that does not give Congress the right to "inquire into the deliberations of the President" and his appointment authority.

"Consequently, there is reason to question whether Congress has oversight authority to investigate deliberations by White House officials concerning proposals to dismiss and replace U.S. attorneys, because such deliberations necessarily relate to the potential exercise by the President of an authority assigned to him alone," Clement wrote.

Clement further contends that any oversight interest is "sharply reduced" by the plethora of documents already provided to Congress by the Justice Department on the matter. Clement claims the 8,500 pages of documents turned over by Justice to Congress constitute an "extraordinary - and indeed, unprecedented" insight into the matter.

"The Committee's legitimate oversight interests have therefore have already been addressed by the Department," Clement argues, adding there would be "little additional legislative purpose" in revealing internal White House communications.

Furthermore, Clement wrote that communications between the White House and third parties, and between the White House and the Justice Department - some of which have already been disclosed - also are covered by executive privilege.

Clement advances similar arguments in asserting that executive privilege also covers the testimony of Taylor and Miers.

The Congressional investigation into the president's appointment authority "falls outside its core constitutional responsibilities" and that it would be "very difficult, if not impossible" for White House aides to "separate in their minds" knowledge from protected and unprotected deliberations, Clement wrote.

Fuck You Master of the Universe-Shit Grinning-Propaganda Spewing-Thought Crushing Fuckhead Who is Responsible for Fox News Murdoch

2007-06-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

Shorter version of the following statement from the reporters at the Wall Street Journal:

Newspaper Guild release
June 28, 2007 11:00 A.M.
A statement from Wall Street Journal reporters:

Wall Street Journal reporters across the country chose not to show up to work this morning.

We did so for two reasons.

First, The Wall Street Journal's long tradition of independence, which has been the hallmark of our news coverage for decades, is threatened today. We, along with hundreds of other Dow Jones employees represented by the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal’s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence.

Second, by our absence from newsrooms around the country, we are reminding Dow Jones management that the quality of its publications depends on a top-quality professional staff. Dow Jones currently is in contract negotiations with its primary union, seeking severe cutbacks in our health benefits and limits on our pay. It is beyond debate that the professionals who create The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications every day deserve a fair contract that rewards their achievements. At a time when Dow Jones is finding the resources to award golden parachutes to 135 top executives, it should not be seeking to eviscerate employees’ health benefits and impose salary adjustments that amount to a pay cut.

We put the reputation of The Wall Street Journal and the needs of its readers first. That's why we will be back at our desks this afternoon, producing the day's news reports. But we hope this demonstration will remind those entrusted with the future of Dow Jones that our publications' integrity must be protected, and sustained, from top to bottom.

"The rich getting richer. Pardon me for being brusk, Robert, but tell us something we don't know?"

2007-06-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post a few days ago in which I pointed out how the rich are getting insanely richer by the day and how the rest of us are facing more and more economic insecurity. I also pointed out how we are constantly bombarded with the message that most Americans are doing fine and how it's rare to even see anyone, let alone anyone with any political influence, actually even admit that the vastly expanding gap between the rich and poor even exists. Well, even when someone does admit it, they will tell you that it's a good thing. So, don't worry as you struggle to pay your medical bills, buy gas to get you back and forth to work while still having enough money left over to feed your family, ponder what you are going to do when your job finally gets outsourced, etc. Just remember this: hang in there, eventually, one day really soon, that weatlth that's being amassed by the richest, smallest percent of Americans is going to start to trickle down to you!

TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Scott Jagow: Today, we found out exactly how many people on this planet are millionaires. 9.5 million people. About a third of them live in the United States.

Last year, the U.S. saw a 9 percent increase in the number of millionaires over the year before. And those people control a lot more money. This came out in a report from Merrill Lynch and CapGemini today.

Joining us to talk about it is Robert Frank. He writes the Wealth Report column for the Wall Street Journal. Thanks for being here, Robert.

Robert Frank: Thank you.

Jagow: The rich getting richer. Pardon me for being brusk, Robert, but tell us something we don't know?

Frank: The rich are getting richer, and what's happened that we really don't know, or that we underestimated, was the speed with which the rich are getting more numerous. The number of millionaires has been the real story over the past 10 years, and we saw that continue in 2006. In the U.S., as you mentioned, 9 percent growth. Worldwide, 8 percent growth. These growth rates are two and three times the growth rates of those economies.

Jagow: So, what is good about having this many millionaires?

Frank: Well . . . I have to think about this for a minute, what's good about it . . . I mean, one of the impacts of having all this wealth is more and more trickle-down. Now clearly, this hasn't been enough trickle-down to address inequality issues in America . . .

Jagow: That's a dangerous term there, Robert.

Frank: Inequality?

Jagow: No, trickle-down.

Frank: Oh, trickle-down, that's right. But what we are seeing is a growing economy built around the wealthy. There is in America today a shortage of yachts, a waiting-list for Ferraris, for gulf-stream jets. The starting salary for a butler today is $80,000. There's so much demand at the high end for services and products that serve the wealthy that it is creating jobs and economies for the rest of America.

Jagow: OK, Robert Frank. He writes the Wealth Report column for the Wall Street Journal. His book is called, "Richistan." Thanks for joining us.
Frank: Thank you.

Ok, now before people start getting all upset and pissed off at the idea that this guy is just shoveling a huge pile of bullshit in our direction and hoping that the distracted, stressed out and stupid masses will smile and just be glad that someone is at least trying to reassure them, perhaps we should consider this calmly. I realize that we've been waiting for this trickle down thing to swing into gear and start showering us with economic security and possibly prosperity since Regan was in office. And decades later the wealth is still being sucked upwards. However, maybe it's possible that the weatlhy were just waiting until they had accumulated enough wealth to make sure there was enough to trickle down to everyone. I mean, if the rich are about anything it's about what's fair, best for the common good and what helps the most number of people, right? Oh, never mind, it's like I said before, we're all fucked.

Wow, Even Satan Can Apologize for a Total Fuckup, Not So for Those Who Occupy the Highest Offices in the Land

2007-06-27T16:47:00.000-07:00

Coulter Was A Major Fuckup

An Open Letter From Lucifer

Dear Viewers of Hardball,

For more years than I wish to admit I had discharged upon the Earth some pretty awesome shit: Hitler, cancer, Katrina, O'Reilly. All considered major extensions of myself meant to revile or have an affect that would cause humanity to weigh what they themselves had wrought.

Nothing that I would apologize for. After all, it's what I do.

But I guess there comes a time for everyone to dig deep, take a good long look at their body of work and examine its value.

So it is that I need to apologize for the existence of Ann Coulter. Quite frankly, I don't know what I was thinking.

Quote of the Day~The Cheney

2007-06-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

Following up on the Dick's proclamation to the American people that he and his office are not part of the executive branch of government (you know, even though the President and his office are) we get this analysis from Jon Carroll:

Soon, civics classes will be taught a revised version of our precious system of checks and balances. There's the administrative, the legislative, the judicial and the cheney. The exact function and duties of the cheney are unknown. The cheney does not report to the president because that would be a violation of the separation of powers. The cheney just does what it does because it is what it is.

I think that pretty much sums it up nicely. I just have to add a random observation about this new thing called "the cheney." The name does have a nice ring to it, "the cheney," and brings to my mind the names of past national dance crazes such as "the twist" or "the macarena" (however that's spelled). However, despite how easily the name could lend itself to being the title of such a passing fad, I fear instead that "the cheney" may one day inspire a newly "enhanced interrogation technique" of some sort or, at the very least, be given to an already existing one as a new and catchy nickname.

We're All Fucked

2007-06-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who reads my blog pretty regularly recently sent me an email listing several general topics/observations that she would like for me to write about. Her list included things like the recent minimum wage bill, the high interest rates and penalties on credit cards and loans, the lack of jobs, the fact that she and so many other people everywhere you look are just barely struggling to get by, and the debate on immigration and its effect on the economy. I was thinking about how to narrow down the issues that she was pointing out into something specific--a specific economic or policy trend, specific bills--and considered writing about the current debate, such that it may be, on a specific issue--immigration, the economy, trade, healthcare. But I couldn't figure out exactly where to start, not because I can't think of at least 15 specific issues off the top of my head all very much related to one or more of the things in her emai, but because there are so many reasons why she and I, as well as countless other Americans who have somewhat decent jobs, work very hard and get to spend very little are just scraping by. And we're the fortunate ones who don't work in slightly more than minimum wage jobs with no benefits. So, I finally concluded, as the title of my post says, that, to put it simply and effectively, we're all just fucked.

There really is no other way to start addressing the economic woes and catastophes that are effecting most Americans these days, plights that the mainstream media rarely addresses at all and never in a coherent, connected and in-depth manner. As a matter of fact, if you watch TV and look around at the endless images of wealth and rampant consumerism on display everywhere and even if you watch the news and read the front pages and business sections of just about any newspaper you will get the impression that ours is a strong, healthy economy and that most Americans are doing just fine and are happy. A little overworked and stressed out with the pace of modern life maybe, but happy, healthy, and sane nevertheless.

The occasional economic or social problem potentially facing the average American is presented by the media and the corporate and political elites as little more than an unfortunate side effect of an overall healthy system. This is a lie. Whether a conscious one of the part of particular journalists who know what is happening but won't write about it or an unconscious one because these journalists know on some level that they couldn't get their story published or aired in most mainstream news outlets even if they did. The assertion or assumption that there is nothing seriously wrong with the structure of our economy and our society is a lie that is spoonfed to Americans in the purposefully skewed debates and news stories and in the morass of issues left unexplored. Of course, there are exceptions but they are few enough to go unnoticed. Meanwhile the devastating facts and the realities pile up while the happy lie continues to get printed and spewed out of the mouths of TV pundits as a result of the editorial or managerial processes and decisions that utlimately determine what gets reported, in what outlets and by whom in the increasingly consolidated American corporate media.

The lie is so insistently and so repeatedly told that if the average person didn't hear the same familiar refrain from friends, family, and acquaintances of endless debt, inadequate pay, and the ever rising cost of living, he or she would believe that the particular circumstances in his or her life sufficiently account for the economic problems of his or her situation. This person would thus believe without question that his or her circumstances are the result of a few years of consistent and unrelenting bad luck, some kind of crisis, a pathological habit of making bad choices or some combination thereof. And if, in an attempt to understand what's going on, this person could not find a satisfactory explanation among these reasons and justifications, he or she would make up reasons and explanations if only for the simple, human psychological imperative of needing a reason why, needing to understand and just needing a fucking explanation. In most cases, this too would be a lie. But this person would succeed in convincing him or herself that this is just the way things are and have always been and that nothing ever changes. This too is a lie and so on it goes.

Behind all the lies, however, the facts and realities keep piling up and if you stop listening to and repeating the lie, these facts can start to help you understand what's really going on. The gap between what we see on TV, on the news, and in the constant bombardment of corporate propoganda desguised as advertising and what we here from elites in the business community and their paid for political hacks in the government on the one hand, and the facts, statistics, and realities that we and those around us experience daily on the other, is where we can start to understand the real explanation, the real reasons why we're all fucked. What follows is a long list of statistics and pesky facts, offered with little or no comment becuase for most of us it only confirms what we already know through experience:

figures show that from 2003 to 2004, the latest year for which there is data, the richest Americans pulled far ahead of everyone else. In the space of that one year, real average income for the top 1 percent of households - those making more than $315,000 in 2004 - grew by nearly 17 percent. For the remaining 99 percent, the average gain was less than 3 percent

In all, the top 1 percent of households enjoyed 36 percent of all income gains in 2004, on top of an already stunning 30 percent in 2003.

In 2003, the latest year for which figures are available, the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, generally dividends and capital gains, up from 53.4 percent a year earlier.

[as of 2004] The top 10 percent of households had 46 percent of the nation's income, their biggest share in all but two of the last 70 years.

[as of 2004] The top 1 percent held a bigger share of total income than at any time since 1929, except for 1999 and 2000 during the tech stock bubble.

for most American households - the bottom 60 percent - average income grew by less than 20 percent from 1979 to 2004, with virtually all of those gains occurring from the mid- to late 1990's. Before and since, real incomes for that group have basically flatlined.

the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans accounted for 33.4 percent of total net worth in 2004, compared to 30.1 percent in 1989. Over the same period, the other Americans in the top 10 percent saw their share of the nation's net worth basically stagnate, at about 36 percent

the bottom 50 percent accounted for just 2.5 percent of the wealth in 2004, compared to 3.0 percent in 1989.

In 2006, the average tax cut for households with incomes of more than $1 million - the top two-tenths of 1 percent - is $112,000 which works out to a boost of 5.7 percent in after tax income

[the average tax cut for ] the middle fifth of households [was a] 2.5 percent increase [and that] of the poorest fifth of households [was a] 0.3 percent gain.

Earlier this year, President Bush signed into law a measure that will cut $39 billion over the next five years from domestic programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and $99.3 billion from 2006 to 2015.

the Bush administration's own Economic Report of the President in 2006 shows that average annual earnings of college graduates fell by 5 percent from 2000 to 2004. In those four years, the difference between the average yearly pay of a college graduate and a high school graduate shrank from 93 percent to 80 percent.

All of the statistics above were reported in a single artilce,"The Rise of the Super-Rich" by Teresa Tritch. However, they come from various sources ranging from studies and research done by academics and economists, private companies, and the federal government. There are many more sources from which I can draw and that I will use to write about the issues evident in this post, as well as the specific issues mentioned at the beginning of the post. There is so much more to discuss as to the how and the why we're all fucked. But just to provide a basis for further discussion, no matter how you slice it in terms of the rich/poor/in between, richer/poorer, richest/poorest, the evidence is clear that the everyone below the very top of the economic strata in our society is sinking more and more to the bottom every day. This is not accident and it doesn't have to be this way, and anyone who tells you otherwise it lying.

Survivor Nation

2007-06-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

Personally, I hate most reality TV. There have been a few shows that aren't as bad as most, but overall reality TV just sucks! I fear, however, that the worst part of this phenomenon might not be having to watch the shallow twits who actually appear in these shows make the characters in the movie Heathers look like Ghandi, but that reality TV is further eliminating Americans' ability to tell the difference between reality, things that are scripted to mimic (or distort) reality, and pure fiction. This has gotten so bad that one of our Supreme Court justices has recently used a character from a fictional TV drama (not even a TV "reality" show, just a TV drama) as the basis for a heated arguement in defense of his position on torture. I realize that our Founding Fathers did not have access to the wonderful and enlightening vision that is modern television when they took a firm stance against torture, but somehow, limited as their insight was in the pre-Apprentice/Bachelorette/Bridezilla days, I still trust them more on a question of such philosophical and moral importance than I do the creaters of 24. Call me crazy, but there it is.

If It Isn't Broke, Leave It the Fuck Alone

2007-06-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Bush has nothing but contempt for the system of government that has served this country well since it was founded. He has absolutley no respect for or understanding of the concept of separation of powers. Bush "has used signing statements to rewrite some 1100 laws enacted by Congress, which is more than all other presidents in our nation’s history–combined." He likes to terrorize the American people and insist that national security interests trump quaint concepts such as the separation of powers, but his usurpation of powers not granted him by the constitution and his dismantling of our system of government is not limited specifically to national security. Didn't he make a remark once, something about things being easier if this were a dictatorship.

Filed Under: Why Bother?

2007-06-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Remember those military personnel, over 50 of them, who spoke fluent Arabic but were nevertheless kicked out of the military in recent years becuase they were gay. Couldn't we have let some of them help out at the Bagdahd Embassy where there are only 10 out 200 Foreign Service Officers, including the Ambassador, who are fluent in Arabic? Oh hell, what's does it really matter how many Arabic speakers we have working for us while we're occupying a couple of countries in the Middle East. After all, here in America we twice elected a president who can barely even speak English.

I'm not your average, traditional, macho everyman, I just play one on TV

2007-06-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

A good way to understand the real nature of the Republican party these days is to pay attention to the things they unite against, like anything that might redistribute wealth from the spoiled CEO class to the blue collar types. This way it's harder to be taken in by their silly, macho, moralistic, "I really do represent the values of the average American because I'm not an effeminate, elitist like those lefties" poses that they stike in front of TV cameras. Their need to have this hollow image branded into their party's identity explains their love for actors turned politcians, Regan, the Terminator, and the latest dipshit Fred Thompson.

Women Should be Able to Make Choices Because They too Have a Conscience

2007-06-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

So, apparently the idea of women's rights and the idea that women are human beings and thus are equal to men shares an interesting history with the concept, beleaguered as of late, of the Separation of Church and State. Via Talk to Action:

In 1636, when Roger Williams founded Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island) he created the first purely civil state formed by social contract. It granted religious liberty to every inhabitant, guaranteed that no one "should be molested for his conscience," and ascribed power to the magistrate "only in civil things."

The first case to test Williams' new principle of civil government came in the spring of 1638 when Joshua Verin was disenfranchised at a town meeting "for restraining of liberty of conscience." Williams and others had organized the first Baptist church in America. Attendance at its services was entirely voluntary. Joshua Verin didn't care to attend the settlement's church services. His wife did. She exercised her liberty to attend a preaching service without his permission and, according to town records, "He hath trodden her underfoot tyrannically and brutally . . . with his furious blows she went in danger of her life...."

William Arnold, one of Verin's defenders, is reported to have said "when he consented to that order [liberty of conscience] he never intended that it should extend to the breach of any ordinance of God, such as the subjection of wives to their husbands."

That last bit sounds a lot like something you might hear coming from some leaders of the Religious Right these day. Coincidence?

Quote of the Day~"we reject as a candidate for Chief Executive and Commander in Chief and hell, Big Chief Fucklebunnies..."

2007-06-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

Via one of my favorite sites in all of blogtopia, Whiskey Fire, on why it does matter at this point in the game whether the people who hold public office understand and acknowledge what a huge fucking mistake Iraq was from the beginning, not just that it's fucked up now :

The constant between the original decision to invade and the question of what to do now is named GEORGE W FUCKING BUSH....Even at this late date in his miserable presidency, he calls the shots with respect to Iraq....What the fuck do "we" do "now"? For openers, we reject as a candidate for Chief Executive and Commander in Chief and hell, Big Chief Fucklebunnies, anyone who doesn't have the stones or ovaries to say that this war was a goddamn stupid fucking idea and to fire and bury its planners, and to discredit its unrepentant enablers....What the fuck IS it with these people? Honest to Christ, the building is on fire and these dickheads are toasting cheese and debating the finer points of the Ontology of Getting out of the House v. the Ontology of Getting Charred to a Fucking Cinder.

So, It's Not Because of Homosexuals, Feminists, or Separation of Church and State

2007-06-19T18:05:00.000-07:00

Via The Grey Matter: The religious right is working to make America more secular:

In a paper in the American Sociological Review, Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer announced the startling fact that the percentage of Americans who said they had “no religious preference” had doubled in less than 10 years, rising from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population. This unexpected spike wasn’t the result of growing atheism, Hout and Fischer argued; rather, more Americans were distancing themselves from organized religion as “a symbolic statement” against the religious right.

Law and Order Republicans

2007-06-19T17:54:00.000-07:00

I wonder how Republicans feel about those mandatory sentences (see today's first post) when it comes to one of their own, namely Giuliani's SC campaign chairman for charges related to cocaine.

Groundhog Year~1984

2007-06-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

The Army is considering whether it will have to extend the combat tours of troops in Iraq if President Bush opts to maintain the recent buildup of forces through spring 2008....Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren testified Tuesday that.... the decision to extend tours from 12 to 15 months was made to ensure soldiers were guaranteed one year at home. Previously, soldiers deployed for 12-month cycles but were unsure when they would be sent back.

Americablog: Yes, we're going to extend their tours AGAIN so that they get more time at home. Kind of like saying, I have to work late tonight so I can spend more time with the kids. Here's a thought, why not just bring them home?

Quote of the Day~"it is often best to keep the lights off"

2007-06-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

The above quote comes from a column in today's Washington Post by Richard Cohen. In his column at Salon, Glenn Greenwald demonsrates beautifully how the position that Cohen takes in his column, and more particularly, the mentality evident in the this sentence, so spectacularly "captur[es] the essence of our Beltway media."

Cohen is essentially lamenting the fate of Scooter Libby, the guy who more or less formed the basis of the my previous post. Greenwald spells out exactly what this quote means when he states that "when it comes to the behavior of our highest and most powerful government officials, our Beltway media preaches, 'it is often best to keep the lights off."' But the real quote of the day comes from Greenwald himself. The quote is rather long, but Greenwald outdoes himself in exposing the profound sense of victimzation that the powerful feel when they are called to account for their actions:

The Libby prosecution clearly was the dirty work of the leftist anti-war movement in this country, just as Cohen describes. After all, the reason Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate this matter was because a left-wing government agency (known as the "Central Intelligence Agency") filed a criminal referral with the Justice Department, as the MoveOn-sympathizer CIA officials were apparently unhappy about the public unmasking of one of their covert agents.

In response, Bush's left-wing anti-war Attorney General, John Ashcroft, judged the matter serious enough to recuse himself, leading Bush's left-wing anti-war Deputy Attorney General, James Comey, to conclude that a Special Prosecutor was needed. In turn, Comey appointed Fitzgerald, the left-wing anti-war Republican Prosecutor and Bush appointee, who secured a conviction of Libby, in response to which left-wing anti-war Bush appointee Judge Reggie Walton imposed Libby's sentence.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/19/cohen/index.html

"Fist in the Air in the Land of Hypocrisy"

2007-06-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I run across a story here and there, something that doesn't receive much attention because it isn't exactly groundbreaking news, but which, nevertheless, makes me stop and think a little differently about the stories that have recently been dominating the media landscape. Everyday there is a barrage of news and information that inevitably gets overlooked in the daily coverage of important events. I'm not trying to comment on the relative importance of certain stories and this is not a post about the media's obsession with the trivial and the absurd. This is more of a "that just figures" kind of rant. These snippets of recent news that I stumbled upon just seem to, coincidentally of course, put the major events of late into a crisper perspective if you will, and so I just wanted to share them.

Not too long ago "I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - once Vice President Cheney's most trusted adviser - [was] sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury. Lying. Not a white lie, mind you. A killer lie. Scooter Libby deliberately poured poison into the drinking water of democracy by lying to federal investigators, for the purpose of obstructing justice. "

Amidst the coverage in recent weeks of Libby's sentencing, the uproar among conservatives and a few pseudo-Democrats who "flooded the judge's chambers with letters of support for their comrade and took to the airwaves in a campaign to "free Scooter" and the endless calls from the same crowd for Bush to pardon him, there have been some less significant stories that have stuck out in my mind for some reason.

One such story was reported Sunday in the Boston Globe. According to the Globe, "The Bush administration is trying to roll back a Supreme Court decision by pushing legislation that would require prison time for nearly all criminals." It seems that the Supreme Court took issue with mandatory sentencing guidelines in the past, which has sparked a "debate, pitting prosecutors against jurists, [that] has been ongoing since a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that declared the government's two decades-old sentencing guidelines unconstitutional." Bush's Justice Department, currently under extensive investigation by Congress that potentially implicates important people in the White House, believes that "a growing number of lighter sentences [is possibly] proof that crime is rising because criminals are no longer cowed by strict penalties."

Despite the Justice Department's concern, many agree with the Supreme Court's decision and there has been "a larger debate about whether sentences for crack cocaine are unfairly harsh and racially discriminatory." According to "US District Judge Paul G. Cassell, chairman of the Criminal Law committee of the Judicial Conference, the judicial branch's policy-making body[,] 'the vast majority of the public would like the judges to make the individualized decisions needed to make these very difficult sentencing decisions."' He further argues that '"Judges are the ones who look the defendants in the eyes. They hear from the victims. They hear from the prosecutors."'

All of this started me thinking about the larger issue of justice in our society and so, when I ran across this article, "Twenty Things you Should Know About Corporate Crime" reported Saturday in Alternet, I was immediately interested. This article was full of interesting statistics that I was not aware of. For example, I had no idea that "the losses from a handful of major corporate frauds -- Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron -- swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined." While the "FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year" it seems that "Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year."

I was beginning to get excited about those mandatory sentencing guidelines but upon further reading I found out that "corporate criminals are the only criminal class in the United States that have the power to define the laws under which they live." The article describes how corporations "have marinated Washington -- from the White House to the Congress to K Street -- with their largesse" and how "out [of] the other end come the laws they can live with."

Thinking about the seeming injustice of it all, I tried to comfort myself with the thought that corporations aren't like street thugs who go around with guns killing people. I mean, really, the loss of affordable medical coverage, a pension, investments or a livelihood is not likely to kill you and anything is better than being dead. But then I remembered that I had just previously read that "corporate crime is often violent crime" and that the "FBI estimates that, 16,000 Americans are murdered every year" as compared to "the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases... and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice."

God, I'm Glad I Don't Live in New Jersey

2007-06-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

According to the Bush Administration and its enablers we have to continue to fight a war in Iraq to protect ourselves from terrorism, a war that's costing, oh, somewhere around a trillion dollars with billions of that unaccountably being poured into the coffers of private contractors and war profiteering corporatons. Ok. Fine. But if protecting America from devastating terrorist attacks is importat enough that Bush the Decider decided we had to invade a country that didn't attack us, depose its dictator, and drain the treasury and the military then we must surely spare no expense at securing areas that are at high risk for a terrorist attack on American soil. In case, you know, a few terrorists somehow slip through the cracks in Iraq (or elsewhere in the world where there just might be terrorists) and actually make it, you know, "over here" to attack us. Personally, I am not so confident that all the terrorists in the world are and forever always will be in Iraq that I wouldn't take heed of the following:

less than two months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11,...publicly released government documents disclosed the existence of more than 100 factories and other facilities where a successful attack would produce toxic clouds with the potential to severely sicken or kill at least a million people.

But apparently that's just me. Personally, I thing that when it comes to things that might actually keep us safe, spending money seems like a good idea. Bush and his Administration see things differently. They want to prevent congress and state legislatures from passing and enforcing laws that "require stringent anti-terror security measures at facilities storing poisonous materials such as chlorine and methyl mercaptan." So, taxpayers can pay for waste and excess in Iraq but when it comes to anti-terror regulations for chemical plants at home Bush suddenly has a problem with "tax increases and runaway spending." I feel so safe.

Update on Secret Free Trade Deal

2007-06-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

I first posted something on this topic back in May. I have not been posting as consistently as I would like and wanted to do a follow up on this topic sooner. However, I have several drafts on different topics that I have not gotten around to finishing either because of time constraints or because there are just some days when it is necessary for the sake of my mental health to focus on other things besides shit like this and the latest daily outrages. However, here is a post that I started on a couple of weeks ago followed by some recent news:

Basically, the latest trade deal means more of the same NAFTA-like trade policies. The corporate controlled Democratic leadership is, as usual, teaming up with Repbulicans to screw workers. However, there still seems to be some significant opposition from most rank and file Democrats in congress. As of today, here are some of the latest updates via David Sirota, posted on May 31, regarding the secret free trade deal:

Three weeks after a group of senior Democrats announced a secret free trade deal with top Bush administration officials, Democratic K Street lobbyists are now telling reporters they are making passage of the deal their top priority. Many - if not most - of these lobbyists are former lawmakers and Capitol Hill staff using their ties to Congress to twist arms.

Nonetheless, despite the K Street campaign, business interests say they are increasingly worried that they will not have the votes in Congress to pass the secret deal, whose legislative text remains secret.

According to the National Jounral, Democratic corprate lobbyist Scott Parven stated, “We need to provide a substantive counterpoint to activists on the left who are banging members over the head saying this is a terrible deal.” Another Democratic business lobbyist added, “The reality is that Democrats are going to be split on trade issues, so the business community’s main agenda is going to be to shore up virtually unanimous support among Republicans in the House and work with Rangel and Levin and the leadership to get 70 to 100 Democrats.”

Rank and file Democrats, led by Reps. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), are planning to push a Democratic caucus resolution barring the Speaker of the House from bringing the Bush administration’s request for reauthorization of fast track to the House floor for a vote unless a majority of Democrats approve. When asked about this resolution this week, Inside U.S. Trade reports that Pelosi balked, indicating she will ignore the resolution.

Inside U.S. Trade reports that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel expects he will require votes from the vast majority of Republicans in order to pass the secret deal - over the objections of most Democrats. Rangel is still declining to give an estimate of how many Democrats would support the secret deal “except to signal he did not expect a majority of the [Democratic] caucus.” Observers “say the most Democratic votes Peru and Panama will attract is roughly 70″ - or less than a third of all Democrats in Congress.

Also from Sirota here is the latest on the free trade deal as of last Friday, June 8th:

Can the Clinton machine deliver another NAFTA? That is the question in Washington on trade these days, as dynamics similar to the NAFTA debate begins to take shape. The Colombian government, which has been tied to paramilitary gangs that execute union organizers, is spending lavishly to enlist top Clinton administration officials - including Hillary Clinton’s top campaign strategist and President Clinton himself - to pressure Democrats on Capitol Hill to pass the Colombian Free Trade Agreement - an agreement that is part of the bigger secret deal. This campaign is being backed up by a wide array of businesses such as Wal-Mart and Citigroup. To date, the legislative language of the secret trade deal has still not been released - but that hasn’t stopped the furious efforts to build a coalition of Clinton administration officials-turned-lobbyists, a handful of top Democrats in Congress and corporate interests to ram the secret deal through Congress. Here is today’s report.

K STREET TARGETS SPECIFIC DEM GROUPS IN PUSH FOR SECRET DEAL: The Hill Newspaper reports that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who is under a cloud of scandal in connection to right-wing paramilitary gangs and ant-union violence, “will lobby members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition.” He will also meet with Rangel, Ways and Means trade subcommittee Chairman Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and GOP Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.). His lobbying efforts are being backed up by, among others, Caterpillar, Citigroup and Wal-Mart. “The three companies chair the Latin American Trade Coalition, which will brief House staff Thursday on all three Latin American trade deals,” the Hill reports. “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also preparing a campaign to push all three deals forward.”

CHI TRIB - FRESHMEN DEMS “TEAR AT PARTY UNITY ON TRADE”: The Chicago Tribune reports that “first-term Democrats are leading a vocal charge against their own leadership over several proposed international trade deals.” Most Democrats “remain largely skeptical” of the proposed South Korea and Colombia trade pacts, which were part of the secret deal. But “party leaders — including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the caucus chairman, who helped shepherd NAFTA to approval when he worked for Clinton — announced last month they would move ahead.” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said of the secret deal: “It’s not a good step forward, it’s good lip service.”

There is more if you click on the link. Unfortunately, still no indications from Pelosi that she or other Dem leaders are willing to work with the Democratic opposition to the deal.

Quote of the Day~The Real World is Like Your Worst Junior High Memory

2007-06-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

"You’ve been told during your high school years and your college years that you are now about to enter the real world, and you’ve been wondering what it’s like. Let me tell you that the real world is not college. The real world is not high school. The real world, it turns out, is much more like junior high. You are going to encounter, for the rest of your life, the same petty jealousies, the same irrational juvenile behavior, the same uncertainty that you encountered during your adolescent years. That is your burden. We all share it with you. We wish you well."
---Tom Brokaw at Skidmore College

He must be speaking from experience; the mainstream media is the perfect example of this. Even more perfect than the Bush Administration and the Republican Party because they have left Junior High for the Twighlight Zone or, in many cases, a long journey through the nation's legal system followed, in a few cases, by prison.

2007-06-09T18:41:00.001-07:00

My baby sister graduated from high school today. Her graduation ceremony was in a church that used to be part of a shopping mall, and no, I'm not making that shit up. Anyway, the ceremony was nice. The Vice Principal passed out about mid-way through announcing the names of the graduates. He had to be carried off stage but we found out at the end of the ceremony that he was ok and I'm very glad for that. It was kind of scary. Anyway, my beautiful, wonderful baby sister graduated from high school today. I am so happy for her! We are throwing her a party and we are all having a wonderful time. I'm taking a break now, as I have just gotten around to eating something after I've worked my way through a good part of a bottle of gin. Anyway, I just want to congratulate my sister. She has went to school and held down a steady job for the past couple of years, which she will continue to do as she enters college. And, since this blog deals mostly with politics and since I just want to finish with this quote as I think about how hard my sister has had to work to just to be able to have a car to drive back and forth to school and to have some small amount of money to spend on herself and doing things that she enjoys and how hard she will have to continue to work to maintain a job and go to school once she starts college:

The universal loathing for Paris Hilton crosses all borders. There are no liberals, no conservatives, no blacks, no whites, no rich, no poor who don't hate Paris Hilton. We all can't stand her and are jubilant at her misery and downfall.
Who didn't absolutely cherish the pictures of Hilton crying like a baby when she was forced to serve out the rest of her sentence like any other citizen? Who didn't adore the stories of her crying out, "Mom!" Or better yet, "It's not right!"
I laughed and laughed. I nearly wept with joy at the comeuppance. I believe the Germans invented the word schadenfreude in anticipation of this very event. Schade! Schade! For shame!

2007-06-09T14:43:00.000-07:00

This blog comments on an Op-Ed in the NYT by a gay man who joined the Navy, studied Arabic, and became an Arabic translator, but before he was to be deployed to Iraq he was kicked out of the military under the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. He is one of about 58 Arabic linguists that have been kicked out under this policy when we have a significant shortage of people serving in the military and elsewhere who are fluent in Arabic and can thus translate the intelligence that our troops and national security agencies gather. I link the safety of the troops and our national security interests should take precedence over the homophobia or unease that some people have over gays, especially the Religious Right, which only fuels fears and negative attitudes toward homosexuals at every turn, while the Republican Party continues to pander to them at every turn and while "centrist" Democrats continue to act as enablers.

Update to Previous Post

2007-06-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the Blackwater Victims Defense Fund. These families are being sued by a company that has comparitively endless funds, very well connected friends in high places and an extremely effective and aggressive legal team. All this after they have had loved ones die in Iraq and just because they wanted answers to questions about and accountability for their loved ones' deaths. Our tax dollars are essentially paying for this company to go after these people because it is our tax dollars that have made Blackwater so wealthy. Congress has begun investigations into this company but in the meantime, I'm donating a little bit of money to the families' defense fund. Even if you can't give but $5 or $10 or less, please donate what you can.

I Don't know What to Say

2007-06-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

This is probably one of the most appalling things that I have read about in a very long time. I'm really just about speechless to describe how furious this article makes me except to say that this is one of those things that makes me hope that there is a literal hell (and I'm not religious in any traditional sense) and that the people who head this company spend an eternity of abject misery there. Blackwater is a privat security company that pretty much operates as a privately controlled mercenary force. This company has bilked tax payers for billions with almost no oversight. They are pretty much accountable to no one and many people in the Bush Administration and the Department of Defense would love to keep it that way. Only a company controlled by complete sociopaths would do this:

Raleigh, NC -- The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men's estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court.

Following these gruesome deaths which were broadcast on worldwide television, the surviving family members looked to Blackwater for answers as to how and why their loved ones died. Blackwater not only refused to give the grieving families any information, but also callously stated that they would need to sue Blackwater to get it. Left with no alternative, in January 2005, the families filed suit against Blackwater, which is owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Erik Prince.

Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

Over 300 contractors have been killed in Iraq with very little inquiry into their deaths. The families claim that Blackwater is attempting to cover up its incompetence, its cutting of corners in favor of higher profits, and its over billing to the government. Due to lack of accountability and oversight, Blackwater's private army has been able to obtain huge profits from the government, utilizing contacts established through Erik Prince's relationships with high-ranking government officials such as Cofer Black and Joseph Schmitz.

In addition to assembling its litigation troops, Blackwater also stonewalled the families concerning any information about how the men were killed. Over the past two and a half years, Blackwater has not responded to a single question or produced a single document. When the families' attorneys, Callahan & Blaine, obtained a Court Order to take the deposition of a former Blackwater employee with critical information about the incident, Blackwater quickly re-hired him and sent him out of the country. When the witness returned to the United States more than a year later, the families obtained another Court Order for his deposition. Blackwater again prevented them from taking his deposition by seeking the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office to block the deposition under the guise that he possibly possessed national secrets. Following an investigation, the U.S. Army reported that the witness had no secret information and that it had no objection to the deposition.

There's more so click on the link and read the whole article if you can stomach it.

Quote of the Day~ This Guy Should Do Advertisements for Viagra

2007-06-08T20:48:00.000-07:00

I, too, am now suffering from erectile dysfunction, or ED....Worse than the discovery that I am now suffering from ED was the subsequent realization that I have been suffering from it for several years.In 2001, I was jogging on campus when I passed a group of feminists marching in the annual "Take back the night" event. After they marched by me shaking their fists and screaming, I first experienced ED.

This is truly pathetic but oh so funny. This guy, a professor and contributer to conservative Townhall.com, has had problems getting it up becuase of feminists and sluts. Apparently, the idea of women as sexual beings has the opposite effect on him that it would have on the average heterosexual male. It comes as no surprise that he was #1 on World O'Crap's "Ultimate Wingnut of 2005." I went to an all women's college that had a large number of dirty feminists sluts and lesbians. My brother and his friends, as well as many of my guy friends, were always thrilled by the presence of so many women--feminists, lesbians it didn't matter--when they visited me. But I guess that's just because women don't scare them and they just like them in general.

Bush Hearts Big Oil Profits and Mad Cow Disease

2007-06-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

The Bush Administration doesn't want the Justice Department to go after oil companies for price gouging or to be able to sue OPEC under U.S. anti-trust laws. So what does the Bush Administration think the role of the federal government should be vis-a-vis the greedy and potentially dangerous practices of corporations v. the needs and safety of American citizens? Well...

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.[..]

The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it.

And no, this is not a joke.

2007-06-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

The Religious Right has entirely too much influence on our political system. They have more or less attached themselves to the Republican Party and, while there is dissatisfaction among the RR that Republican politicians more or less just pander to them and don't go far enough in legislating their agenda (a very valid point, and I'm glad about that at least), the Republican Party, particlularly under the Bush Administration, has rewarded them quite nicely in many areas. I wrote a post on the inroads that the RR and its ideology are making into the public health policy arena here. When I write about things like this the point is to call attention to the fact that the RR's influence and agenda affect everyone who doesn't live the way that the RR thinks that they should. Most people who aren't part of a group whose civil liberties the RR explicitly attacks or who have never thought about what it would be like to need or want an abortion or contraception and not be able to obtain them, probably think the RR poses no threat to them. But it really does. For example:

In Ohio, [the Religious Right's] "ban gay marriage" amendment was used to stop a woman from being able to charge her abusive boyfriend with "domestic violence."

Surprise, surprise the consequences of banning gay marriage end up screwing anyone who doesn't have the moral/legal blessing of the RR:

Ohio’s domestic violence law allows unmarried same-sex and opposite-sex couples to obtain protection orders in family court, and requires local police departments to enforce them.
Johnson’s attorney argued that, under Article 15, section 11 of the Ohio Constitution, Phelps could not be given a protection order.

That amendment, passed last year as Issue 1, reads, “Only a union between one man and one woman may be marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions. This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unwed partners that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.”

Celebrezze ruled that the second sentence bars courts from granting protection orders to a member of an unmarried couple.

“In Ohio only married individuals generally have a right to use the domestic relations court as a forum to resolve their differences,” Celebrezze wrote. “The one exception to this general rule was provided by the domestic violence act, which recognized the importance of providing the victims of domestic violence with a convenient and efficient forum for protection, separate from the criminal justice system, even if said victim is not legally married to the perpetrator.”

After describing the mechanisms of the domestic violence law, Celebrezze concluded, “Clearly, the extraordinary access to the domestic relations court, provided by the domestic violence act, is a ‘legal status’ that approximates a status granted to married couples.”

Emphasis mine. So, when you deny the legal and constitutional protections and benefits to gay couples that they are entitled to under the Constitution based on the RR's narrow, ideological definition of "marriage," then you open the door to taking away the legal and constitutional protections of heterosexual unmarried couples. No shit! It shouldn't really surprise anyone because no matter what your opinion on anything, the RR will not be happy unless you think and live according to their interpretation of what God wants. Nothing, not even battered, heterosexual, unmarried women, should be allowed to get in the way of the RR's attempt to legislate their morality.

Pain at the Pump

2007-06-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

In May the price of gas hit record levels in the United States. Many people might be relieved to know that Congress is passing legislation in an attempt to address part of the problem. The House passed a bill on Wednesday, May 23, "that would make gasoline price gouging a federal offense." Unfortunately, the White House is threatening to veto it. Tyson Slocum, the Director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, testified to Congress on May 22nd about gas prices and oil company profits. Here is some rather infuriating information that Mr. Slocum provided to congress:

Gasoline prices have nearly tripled in the last five years, creating financial hardship for millions of families, as the average annual expenditure on gasoline increased $1,000 for the typical family over that time....While American families pay record high prices, oil companies are enjoying the strongest profits in the economy. Since 2001, the largest six oil companies operating in the United States--ExxonMobil, Chevron Texaco, ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell and Valero--recorded $477 billion in profits....To add insult to injury, oil companies enjoy billions of dollars worth of subsidies courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer at a time when the industry records record profits....[oil companies'] largest capital expenditure in 2006 was to buy back stock and pay dividends to shareholders....In just the last few years, mergers between giant oil companies...have resulted in just a few companies controlling a significant amount of America's gasoline, squelching competition....and five oil companies are reaping the largest profits in history....The consolidation of downstream assets--particularly refineries--plays a big role in determining the price of a gallon of gas....A recent government study revealed that the 'source of potential market power in the wholesale gasoline market is at the refining level becuase the refinery market is imperfectly competitive and refiners essentially control gasoline sales at the wholesale level' and concluded that 'mergers and increased market concentration generally led to higher wholesale gasoline prices'....The industry leader, ExxonMobil, spent $37.2 billion buying back its stock and paying dividends to its shareholders in 2006, while spending only $19.9 billion on its oil exploration and refining capital investment....While major oil companies haven't applied for a permit to build a new refinery, a small start-up has: Arizona Clean Fuels....if a small company can do it, why can't ExxonMobil, the world's most profitable corporation, do it?

As if this is not infuriating enough, "The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights exposed internal oil company memos that showed how the industry intentionally reduced domestic refining capacity to drive up profits."

The bill passed by the House "directs the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to go after oil companies, traders or retail operators if they take “unfair advantage” or charge “unconscionably excessive” prices for gasoline and other fuels" and "would for the first time create a federal law making energy price gouging illegal." Based on testimony provided to congress and the memos mentioned above, this is pretty much what the oil companies are doing.

Bush's response: "The White House called the measure a form of price controls that could result in fuel shortages. It said President Bush would be urged to veto the legislation should it pass Congress."

The only people controlling prices are the oil companies, the energy traders and their enablers--the people in Bush Administration and those in Congress who didn't support the recent bill passed by the House.

Not surprising since Republicans have a cozy relationship with big oil:

Since 2001, energy corporations have showered federal politicians with $115 million in campaign contributions—with three-quarters of that amount going to Republicans....[the energy bill passed by the Republican controlled congress and signed by Bush in August of 2005] lavishes these lucrative corporations with billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, while doing little to curb energy demand.

Fortunately, when the Democrats took over congress in 2006 they passed legislation to eliminate some of those subsidies.

This is Terrifying!

2007-05-25T17:05:00.000-07:00

Our country has survived a civil war, two world wars, the cold war, 9-11, numerous natural disasters, Vietnam...well, you get it, without having to resort to something this drastic.

Oh Shit, We Now Have a War on the Rag

2007-05-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

Here is an addition to the previous post. Apparently, if you have gone through menopause and no longer have your period or if you haven't gone through menopause but have had to have a hysterectomy for any number of reasons then you are no longer a woman. I know a young mother, about 26, with two kids who had severe complications after having her second child and had to have her uterus removed and thus no longer has a period. I'm sure she would be completely shocked to find out that she had to give up being a woman so that she wouldn't bleed to death while her uterus fell out.

I Think We Should Start Calling These People Panty Sniffers

2007-05-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

Remember the guy the Bush Administration nominated to head the Title X program at HHS who headed a crisis pregnancy center that claimed that contraception was demeaning to women? And the link to other Bush nominees I included this post who seem to have an unhealthy obsession with other peoples' sex lives and specifically with what women are doing with their nether regions? Here's another crazed person with a vagina obession. Watch this woman completely freak out over a new birth control pill that is being approved by the FDA.

2007-05-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

How are we supposed to effectively fight the war on terror when the Department of Defense is firing Arabic linguists in the military for being gay when we already have a shortage of personnel fluent in Arabic?

Supporting the Troops Some More

2007-05-24T06:32:00.000-07:00

I am getting sick of hearing about how little the Bush Administration values veterans and those who are serving in our military. Bush has continued to call on the American public to support the troops and the war, all the while passing tax cut after tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. And now we end up with situations like this!

The Price of Gas

2007-05-23T08:24:00.000-07:00

Via Crooks & Liars

2007-05-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

For more information on the secret Free Trade deal negotiated by some leading Democrats and the Bush Administration, check out this segment by Bill Moyers. He interviews John MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper's magazine and author of the book The Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy. A transcript of the segment and the interview is here.

For My Dad

2007-05-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

I have not had a chance to do in-depth reading regarding the secret free trade deal "between a handful of senior Democrats and the Bush administration," although I hope to get more up to speed over the next several days. However, I did want to go ahead and mention it because reforming our trade policy is an extremely important issue. And because those members of the Democratic party who would sell out American workers need to be taken to task when they support such legislation and policies. So, I wil post more details as I have time to do some more thorough reading and research.

But, for the time being I want to share some personal insight into this issue and explain some of the reasons that deals such as the one mentioned above have come to be very important to me. But first, here is here is tidbit from the article linked to above:

TEAMSTERS SAY THEY WILL “FIGHT LIKE HELL” AGAINST THE DEAL: Teamsters President James Hoffa released a statement saying “Democratic leaders in Congress joined with the Bush administration yesterday to announce a trade ‘deal’ that sells out American workers” and that the Teamsters “will fight like hell to oppose this shortsighted agreement.” Particularly interest was Hoffa’s declaration that “I am baffled as to why there is such eagerness to give this president - who is unwilling to enforce current labor and trade laws — a victory” and his inquiry about “why there was so much urgency to have a ‘deal’” in the first place. Put another way, trade is the one area where if Democrats don’t do anything at all, they could create the strategic pause in bilateral trade deals called on by leading economists like EPI’s Jeff Faux and leading presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton. Why, then, would they instead move forward with a deal - especially one that has them embrace one of the most unpopular presidents in contemporary American history? Is K Street cash really that powerful?

Following this piece of information, I am very proud to say that my Dad is a Teamster. When talking about free trade deals and anti-union policies that would create more insecurity for American workers, most of media never discuss the real and immediate impact that such policies have on working Americans and families. I, like many kids fortunate enough to have parents who provided them with a decent home and opportunites, grew up taking much of what I had for granted. Since I have gotten older and have started working and pretty much supporting myself, I am now starting to realize how difficult it is to make a decent living. My Dad has worked very hard day in and day out and has given 110% to his job throughout his life and is one of the increasingly fewer number of American workers who are members of a union and thus have some negotiating power with the companies that would exploit years of hard work and dedication by selling them out in the form of outsourced jobs and declining wages and benefits all for the sake of more and more profits that will benefit few people. This is the real underlying issue of free trade and anti-union economic policies: people like my Dad do hard work all their lives to support themselves and their families and they deserve to be protected from the greedy individuals and companies who influence such policies and the politicians who are complicit in passing and implementing legislation that screws workers.

Thus, any legislation that would further diminish the rights of unions and their ability to protect people like my Dad who get up for work at 2:00 and 3:00 am to work 12 and 16 hour days driving trucks and that would accomodate more outsourcing needs to be stopped. This issue in general is about decent jobs, wages, adequate benefits, and secure retirment and pensions for people once they have spent a lifetime working. But, this is also about dignity. I love to hear my Dad tell stories about negotiations that he has been part of and helped to lead between his local chapter and the management of the company that he works for. When he tells these stories it illustrates in a very real and concrete way how unions can provide a way for workers to demand acknowledgement for their hard work and dedication and stand up for themselves against entities that would otherwise have astronomically more power than the people who perform the day to day jobs that make these entities successful and profitable.

I am a Democrat and a Liberal and there are not many, if any, Republicans these days whom I would ever consider voting for. Thus, I will vote Democratic, but I do not support the actions of any Democrats who are supportive of this secret trade deal with the Bush administration. Furthermore, because I will vote for and support Democrats in other capacities, I want to make it clear that there are plenty of Democrats who don't support such policies. And for the Democrats who do: there are many, many people just like me (as well as people who have traditionally voted Republican or leaned toward the Republican side of the aisle but are fed up with this shit and with Repbulicans in general) who get really pissed off when you sell out their Dads. My Dad is certainly not a Democrat and not a Liberal and we disagree on many political issues, but he did, just like me, vote for Kerry in 2004 becuase of issues like social security and unions. Yes, Kerry might have been little more than the lesser of two evils on these issues and many others, but there are plenty of new Democratic politicians in office worth supporting and plenty of seasoned politicians who would be much better leaders for the Democratic party!

2007-05-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

This guy has written a book about Bill O'Reilly whom he calls, "one of the most dishonest and deceitful persons I have ever known in my lifetime." Not surprisingly, the specific example he discusses in this post has to do with O'Reilly's attacks on the ACLU for being anti-religious. This is an extremely important point. O'Reilly is basically doing quite a bit of the dirty work for the Religious Right in their attempt to erode the separatio of church and state, which is fundamental to the religious freedom of all Americans, and to impose their narrow and intolerant religious beliefs on others. There are many people out there who would not be so willing to accept such a dangerous agenda if they were not misled by this type of propoganda into believing that organizations such as the ACLU were actively trying to limit religious freedom of Christians in this country. In this post, the author exposes what an unforgiably dishonest tactic this is because the ACLU is key to protecting the religious freedom and civil rights of Christians along with other groups. In this post he discusses one case among many (that he writes about in his book) that the ACLU has taken up in defending the rights of Christians to religious freedom:

One of the things I do in the book is I expose the tactics and the instruments O’Reilly uses to present his propaganda as “facts”. I identify eight instruments or devices he frequently utilizes to twist his lies into what he calls the “truth”. If one can grasp the underlying psychology surrounding these techniques, one will easily be able to debunk the lies and propaganda that O’Reilly engages in on a routine basis. For example, one of the techniques he constantly uses to deceive his viewers into accepting his point of view is what I call Omission. With this tactic, he deliberately omits information that does not support his argument, or leaves out facts that disprove his case. This may seem like a simple and straightforward idea, but yet it is one of the most powerful tools O’Reilly employs on a daily basis to get his propaganda across. This tactic is particularly effective because most of the time O’Reilly’s viewers don’t have all of the facts, and they tend to take what O’Reilly says and run with it. And to make matters worse, the mainstream media seems to be asleep and just lets O’Reilly get away with it without challenging him.

One of the themes he has persistently hammered home to his viewers is the falsehood that the ACLU is an anti-religious organization. He claims that the ACLU wants to remove religion from American society. In his own words, “The American Civil Liberties Union, along with legal secularists like Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and John Paul Stevens, are using the Constitution to bludgeon any form of public spirituality.” To back up his argument he would rehash the court cases that the ACLU has been involved with pertaining to the Separation Of Church And State. But what he completely omits is the fact that the ACLU has also repeatedly fought for freedom of religion in America. You wouldn’t believe it, but I myself at one time believed O’Reilly’s propaganda that the ACLU was anti-religious. It was only what I started doing my research for this book that I found out that the ACLU has been involved with many court cases fighting for the personal religious freedom of ordinary Americans. In my book I cite ten cases that the ACLU has been involved with whereby they fought consistently to protect individual’s religious rights.

One of these cases involved the issue of whether a church should be allowed to conduct baptisms in a public park, and you will probably be stunned when you find out what the ACLU’s position is on this. Here is the relevant section from Chapter Five of my book:

“On Sunday May 23, 2004 Rev. Todd Pyle of the Cornerstone Baptist Church had planned to conduct a series of baptism in Falmouth Waterside Park in Stafford County, but was advised by Brian Robinson, the Park Manager, that religious activities are not allowed in the park. The ACLU of Virginia immediately informed Rev. Pyle that he had a constitutional right to conduct baptisms in the park and threatened to challenge in federal court the Park Authority’s ban on religious activities. The Federicksburg–Stafford Park Authority which controlled access to the public park backed off and announced that it would issue written policies making it clear that religious groups have the same right to use the park as all other groups. Here is what Kent Willis, Executive Director ACLU of Virginia said about the matter: ‘The rules are really very simple, Government officials merely need to make sure that religious activities have the same rights as any other activities in a public park. If swimming is allowed, then baptism must be allowed. If groups can gather for sports or cultural activities, then groups can gather for religious ceremonies.’”

2007-05-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

So much for supporting the troops.

Happy Belated Mother's Day!

2007-05-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

I wonder which moms in this country this guy is referring to? Maybe the many moms who go back to school to get better jobs to help support themselves and their families, or the many single moms who have to work to support their children, or the many moms who are part of families in which both spouses have to work to adequately provide for their families. It's interesting how people who like to blame society's problems on women who are educated and who work for a living and have careers like to frame their tirades in a way that makes it seem like working women choose to work solely for their own selfish reasons, even though having the right and choosing to work even though you are a mom rather than a dad is not inherently selfish by any means. And who is out there pointing out all the selfish decisions that dads make? I mean, I'm sure there are men out there who work longer hours than necessary to avoid sharing household and child rearing responsibilities, right. Now, I really don't know if there are that many men who do this and I'm not being critical of a man's right to work outside the home while still being a good father, god forbid! What I'm trying to get at is that, if the people who like to lay the blame for society's problems at the feet of increasingly educated and working women were to acknowledge the majority of women that their tirades actually encompass, we'd have a hell of a lot of angry working moms!

2007-05-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

If anyone, who is remotely aware of the many deficiencies of the fourth estate in this country, has need of additional proof that the MSM is nearly completely unrelieable these days, then I believe it would probably be next to impossible to convince this person that the earth is indeed round and that the earth does indeed revolve around the sun. I have not checked out the website that was sourced by this news organization in a couple of years, but I was never under the impression that it was anything but very funny satire.

"A Woman's Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of..."

2007-05-15T16:22:00.000-07:00

As a follow up to what I posted earlier today about the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, here’s a question: Anyone have any idea what the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Population Affairs is for? You are probably thinkIng, "I could care less because it’s not particularly interesting and exciting to think about government health policy," despite the fact that the policies that the government sets in this area can potentially affect very intimate aspects of your life.

You probably take for granted that the policies that your government sets and funds with your tax dollars to educate, gather and provide information about, as well as to set standards related to, Americans’ sexual and reproductive health are based on science and making sure that reproductive health medicine is safe and effective. You probably take it for granted that such policies would leave the moral choices about your sex life to you.

You might not want to be so complacent.

If the idea of the government promoting health policies that focus on the morality of your sexual choices rather than on science and basic health frightens and creeps you out, keep reading.

To answer the question at the beginning of this post, the responsibilities of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Population Affairs include:

... the implementation of the mandated provisions of two categorical grant programs:

The Family Planning program authorized under Title X of the Public Health Service Act (PHSA), and
The Adolescent Family Life (AFL) Demonstration and Research program authorized under Title XX of the PHSA.

Here are some of the services that the Title X program provides:

The Title X program is the only Federal program devoted solely to the provision of family planning and reproductive health care. The program is designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons. A broad range of effective and acceptable family planning methods and related preventive health services are available on a voluntary and confidential basis. In addition to contraceptive services and related counseling, Title X supported clinics also provide a number of preventive health services such as: patient education and counseling; breast and pelvic examinations; cervical cancer, STD and HIV screenings; and pregnancy diagnosis and counseling. For many clients, Title X clinics provide the only continuing source of health care and health education.

The program supports a nationwide network of approximately 4,600 clinics and provides reproductive health services to approximately 5 million persons each year. Title X service funds are allocated to the ten DHHS Regional Offices. The Regional Offices manage the competitive review process, make grant awards and monitor program performance. In fiscal year 2003, Title X provided Federal funds for service delivery grants to 86 public and private organizations to support the provision of comprehensive family planning services and information. Services are delivered through a network of community-based clinics that include State and local health departments, hospitals, university health centers, Planned Parenthood affiliates, independent clinics, and public and non-profit agencies. In nearly 75 percent of U.S. counties, at least one provider of contraceptive services is funded by the Title X family planning program.

Title X funds are critical to maintaining and operating clinics which ensure the availability of family planning services to low-income and uninsured individuals in the United States. Over the last thirty years, the network of Title X family planning clinics has played a critical role in ensuring access to confidential family planning services for millions of low-income or uninsured women at no cost or at a reduced cost. Title X also provides access for many under-insured women who do not have coverage for contraceptive services, devices or drugs. For many women, Title X serves as an entry point into the health care system, as well as a source of primary health care services. Title X-funded services, available regardless of ability to pay, help ensure access to reproductive health care for low-income and uninsured persons, a population which is disproportionately composed of racial and ethnic minorities. Nearly two-thirds of Title X clients have incomes below 100 percent of the poverty level and 89 percent have incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level.

The contraceptive counseling and services available in Title X-funded clinic settings help couples space births and plan intended pregnancies, an important element in ensuring positive birth outcomes and a healthy start for infants. Each year, publicly subsidized family planning services help women avoid an estimated 1.3 million unintended pregnancies. Estimates also show that every public dollar spent for contraceptive services saves an average of $3 in Medicaid costs for pregnancy-related health care and for medical care of newborns. Title X services assist individuals in preventing sexually transmitted infections including HIV and concomitant complications and also play a major role in the early detection of breast and cervical cancer.

(Emphasis mine).

And here are some of the services provided by Title XX of the PHSA:

The Adolescent Family Life (AFL) Demonstration and Research program, created in 1981 as Title XX of the Public Health Service Act, supports both demonstration and research grants. Within OPA, the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs (OAPP) is responsible for administering the program. The AFL program is funded at $30.7 million in fiscal year 2006. Johanna Nestor is the Director, OAPP.

The AFL program supports demonstration projects to develop, implement and evaluate program interventions to promote abstinence from sexual activity among adolescents and to provide comprehensive health care, education and social services to pregnant and parenting adolescents. The program supports two basic types of demonstration projects: (1) prevention demonstration projects to develop, test, and use curricula that provide education and activities designed to encourage adolescents to postpone sexual activity until marriage, and (2) care demonstration projects to develop interventions with pregnant and parenting teens, their infants, male partners, and family members in an effort to ameliorate the effects of too-early-childbearing for teen parents, their babies and their families. The AFL program also funds grants to support research on the causes and consequences of adolescent premarital sexual relations, adolescent pregnancy and parenting.

The Title XX funds not only help the teens and families they serve directly, but also provide valuable information and evaluation findings that can serve as a basis for future strategies. Every program that receives AFL grant funds is required to include an independent evaluation component. This ensures that the lessons learned by each community will benefit others in the future.

In addition, to ensure that all AFL project staff at the local level have the necessary skills and training to implement these programs, the OAPP has conducted numerous technical assistance workshops annually since1998 to train front line care and prevention project staff to provide more comprehensive services to their clients.

In fiscal year 2006-2007, the AFL program is supporting 89 demonstration projects across the country. These projects consist of 57abstinence education programs and 32 care programs.

(Emphasis mine).

You might be interested to know that the person who was nominated by the Bush Administration and who occupied this post before being replaced by someone who is possibly even crazier than she is was Alma L. Golden, M.D. About Ms. Golden:

With support from a federal grant, Dr. Golden served as medical director for S.A.G.E. Advice, a program that trains physicians in techniques encouraging health risk avoidance and delay of sexual activity until marriage for preadolescents through young adults. Typical of the training is this directive: “I’m glad you haven’t started having sex. Waiting until marriage allows you to avoid STD’s, pregnancy, and a broken heart.” An additional sexual-risk avoidance tip Dr. Golden suggests is one that worked for her: Her father gave her flying lessons so she could expend her thrill-seeking enthusiasm in the air.

(Emphasis mine).

After Ms. Golden resigned, the Bush Administration nominated her replacement, Eric Keroack, M.D. About Mr. Keroack:

To the surprise of many that anticipated a more balanced approach to governing following the 2006 elections, the White House named Erik Keroack, MD to head government Title X programs that provide contraceptives, family planning, and other reproductive health services to lower income individuals in every state. Keroack, an ardent anti-choice OB-Gyn, opposes much of the mission of Title X and his career has been dedicated to promoting flawed abstinence-only programs, which have enjoyed federal support of more than $1 billion. He serves on the Medical Advisory Council for the Abstinence Clearinghouse and is a member of the Federal Expert Panel commissioned to define the guidelines for most governmental funding of abstinence education in our public schools-programs that have grown over recent years and have yet to be proven effective. In fact, a recent government report concludes that federally-funded programs do not always contain medically-accurate information. Keroack was the Medical Director of A Woman's Concern crisis pregnancy centes, an organization that opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at any of its six centers. Its website states, "A Woman's Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness." Unfortunatley, Dr. Keroack's clinics seem to be unaware that Title X programs have--among other things benefiting women--enabled them to avoid one million unintended pregnancies every year, which leads to fewer abortions as well. This position does ot require confirmation from the Senate, and Keroack began work in December 2006. The Massachusetts Office of Medicaid filed an action against Keroack in March and as a result, Keroack resigned from this position on March 28, 2007.

(Emphasis mine).

Anyone notice any contradiciton between the personal and moral beliefs of these two nominees (and the way that they have relied on those beliefs in their capacity as health professionals) and the responsibilities of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Population Affairs, a position funded by tax dollars to oversee programs that affect the sexual and reproductive health of millions of Americans, (potentially you) many of whom may not share such beliefs or want others' morals inappropriately and unjustly influencing policies that affect their own persoanl sexual choices?

2007-05-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

Jerry Falwell has died. So far, this is the best comment I have read regarding his death.

2007-05-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

Here is a description from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services website describing what it does:

"THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES is the United States government's principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to help themselves.

HHS REPRESENTS ALMOST A QUARTER OF ALL FEDERAL OUTLAYS, and it administers more grant dollars than all other federal agencies combined. HHS' Medicare program is the nation's largest health insurer, handling more than 1 billion claims per year. Medicare and Medicaid together provide health care insurance for one in four Americans.

HHS WORKS CLOSELY WITH STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS, and many HHS-funded services are provided at the local level by state or county agencies, or through private sector grantees. The Department's programs are administered by 11 operating divisions, including eight agencies in the U.S. Public Health Service and three human services agencies. In addition to the services they deliver, the HHS programs provide for equitable treatment of beneficiaries nationwide, and they enable the collection of national health and other data."

Let's recap some important points contained in this short description.

[ HHS] is the United States government's principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans
[ HHS] administers more grant dollars than all other federal agencies combined
[HHS'] Medicare program is the nation's largest health insurer, handling more than 1 billion claims per year
[HHS' programs] enable the collection of national health and other data

This is a very broad description of what this tax payer funded institution is responsible for. However, just reading this brief description and focusing on the bulleted information above it should be obvious that this agency affects the lives of most Americans in direct and indirect ways that many of us may not be aware of and, of course, probably don't ever really think about. It would be interesting to find some information or case studies of some sort that describe how an individual is affected by the policies, programs, and regulations which fall under the purview of the Department of Heath & Human Services in order to illustrate concretely how you or I are likely to benefit from or be affected by the the services that this department provides and the work that it does. However, for now I just wanted to post this basic description in order to bring some very general awareness regarding what HHS does. Now, there is a reason that I took valuable time out of my day to look up and post this information and it's not because I have temporarily gone insane or becuase I am just that bored. I have been working on a post that (is unfortunatley not quite finished) provides some very interesting and alarming information related to this agency, which I hope to have up soon. In the meantime, however, please take a few minutes and read the bulleted points again and then just think about them for a second or two.