By MARC McDONALD
Many commentators have lamented the widening gulf between Democrats and Republicans in recent years. Personally, I think part of the problem may be misunderstandings in communication between the two parties. Even though Right Wingers technically speak English, a lot of us on the Left often have trouble understanding what they're talking about these days. So in the interests of harmony, I'd like to present a handy guide to understanding the modern-day GOP vocabulary:
1. "The War On Terror." A widely-used term among Republicans that in reality refers to the disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. To Democrats, the term has a totally different meaning: namely to work to prevent terror attacks on America and pursuing members of Al-Qaeda.
2. "Capitalism." As modern-day Republicans understand it, an economic system that steals from working-class and middle-class Americans and gives billions of our tax dollars in closed, no-bid contracts to wealthy, politically connected corporations like Halliburton. The way the Democrats understand the term, capitalism refers to private corporations earning an honest profit in the private sector and competing in the marketplace like the rest of us.
3. "Christianity." You know the values that Christ talked about? Helping the poor? Compassion and love? Turning the other cheek? Blessing the peacemakers? Well, none of that has anything to do with "Christianity" as the present-day Republicans understand the term. To them, somehow Christianity has something to do with repression, hatred of gays, bigotry, ignorance, and a general distrust of anyone who isn't a white Republican Protestant.
4. "Patriotism." A great deal of confusion exists over this term these days. Democrats take the term to mean support of one's nation. Republicans interpret "patriotism" to mean blind, fanatical, unswerving loyalty to George W. Bush. Indeed, they call anyone who criticizes Bush for any reason "unpatriotic." (They also throw a temper tantrum---much the same as Bush himself does when he doesn't get his way).
5. "John Kerry." To non-Republicans, this term refers to a U.S. senator and a decorated war hero, who was wounded in action while serving in combat in the Vietnam War. To NeoCons, this term seems to refer to something entirely different: they interpret it to mean a (fictional) person who was weak, traitorous, and who faked his war wounds and then somehow conspired with none other than the United States Navy to be awarded military decorations he didn't deserve, such as the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and three Purple Hearts.
6. "Fiscal responsibility." To Democrats, this term refers to setting taxes at a level in which the nation can afford to pay its bills. (During wartime, this also involves raising taxes in order to pay for the war effort). To Republicans, this term refers to giving away billions in tax cuts to the richest 1 percent of Americans and simply ignoring the resulting titanic wartime deficits.
7. "Family values." To Democrats, this means things like policies that actually help America's families, like decent wages, maternity leave, affordable health care, and good schools. To Republicans, the term refers to ramming their narrow, twisted interpretation of "Christianity" (See #3, above) down the throats of the rest of us.
8. "Exploitation." This term, as Democrats understand it, generally is in agreement with the Webster's dictionary interpretation: "To make unethical use of for one's profit." (Note this term is completely absent from the Republican vocabulary and they have no idea what it means).
9. "Bipartisanship." To Democrats, this means reaching across the aisle and working with the opposite party, in an effort to serve the American people (who, after all, pay the bills). To Republicans, this means that you need to agree with and rubberstamp EVERYTHING Bush wants, from legalizing torture to illegal wiretaps, or you will be branded as an anti-American traitor.
10. "Health care system." To Democrats, this refers to a system that helps keep the nation's population healthy and provides medical care to the sick. To Republicans, this refers to yet another way to make lots of money (and the fact that sick people are often desperate and have no other options just sweetens the deal).
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
How Bush Thugs In Armani Suits Stole Elections: Chapter 87
By MANIFESTO JOE
If there were still any doubt that the last two presidential elections were blatantly stolen, a story that was all but buried by the Mainstream Media this week should dispel that. I realize that it was a busy news week, with the horror of the Virginia Tech massacre. But this revelation should have rated lead-story treatment at least one day. As the The Sun of Baltimore reported on April 19:
WASHINGTON -- For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written records.
The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.
Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. ...
Civil rights advocates contend that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.
The administration ... has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.
Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.
On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.
The chief of the Voting Rights Section from 1999 to 2005, Joseph D. Rich, saw the partisan pattern firsthand. Rich wrote in the March 29 edition of latimes.com:
THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.
I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.
Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.
It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.
At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats. ...
This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.
Morale plummeted, resulting in an alarming exodus of career attorneys. In the last two years, 55% to 60% of attorneys in the voting section have transferred to other departments or left the Justice Department entirely.
At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions. ...
The implications of the Bush hooligans' election thefts are enormous. And yet, the allegedly liberal Mainstream Media mostly gave this story passing, secondary coverage. At last count, U.S. military deaths in Iraq stood at 3,309. It is unlikely that we will ever know approximately how many Iraqis have died. British government scientists recently endorsed the validity of a study that estimated 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as the result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
And, it's even more unlikely that this needless and vastly damaging war would have occurred had just 1,000 or so legitimate voters not been disenfranchised in Florida in 2000.
Of course, this critically important story just wasn't enough to compete with, say, the real daddy of Anna Nicole's baby, as the day's lead.
And this is why our "free" press is in serious trouble -- almost as much as is our pseudo-republic.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
If there were still any doubt that the last two presidential elections were blatantly stolen, a story that was all but buried by the Mainstream Media this week should dispel that. I realize that it was a busy news week, with the horror of the Virginia Tech massacre. But this revelation should have rated lead-story treatment at least one day. As the The Sun of Baltimore reported on April 19:
WASHINGTON -- For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written records.
The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.
Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. ...
Civil rights advocates contend that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.
The administration ... has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.
Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.
On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.
The chief of the Voting Rights Section from 1999 to 2005, Joseph D. Rich, saw the partisan pattern firsthand. Rich wrote in the March 29 edition of latimes.com:
THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.
I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.
Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.
It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.
At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats. ...
This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.
Morale plummeted, resulting in an alarming exodus of career attorneys. In the last two years, 55% to 60% of attorneys in the voting section have transferred to other departments or left the Justice Department entirely.
At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions. ...
The implications of the Bush hooligans' election thefts are enormous. And yet, the allegedly liberal Mainstream Media mostly gave this story passing, secondary coverage. At last count, U.S. military deaths in Iraq stood at 3,309. It is unlikely that we will ever know approximately how many Iraqis have died. British government scientists recently endorsed the validity of a study that estimated 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as the result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
And, it's even more unlikely that this needless and vastly damaging war would have occurred had just 1,000 or so legitimate voters not been disenfranchised in Florida in 2000.
Of course, this critically important story just wasn't enough to compete with, say, the real daddy of Anna Nicole's baby, as the day's lead.
And this is why our "free" press is in serious trouble -- almost as much as is our pseudo-republic.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wild West Era Had Stricter Gun Control Than America Has Today
By MARC McDONALD
Despite the exaggerated violent stereotypes perpetuated by dime novels and Hollywood, the so-called Wild West wasn't quite as violent as we've been led to believe over the years.
Take, for example, the 1881 "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," the most famous shootout in the history of the Old West. A mere three people died in this gunfight---an event that would be barely noticed in today's blood-soaked America, where many thousands of people are gunned down annually.
And yet, the O.K. Corral shootout has come to symbolize a wild, lawless West. It's part of the mythology of America that NRA gun lovers claim captures the "rugged individualism" and essence of what our nation is all about (as they furiously work to oppose any and all gun legislation as downright "un-American").
There's only one problem: the image of the Old West that exists in the popular imagination is largely fictional. It's all part of a myth that was created in the late 19th century by the dime novel authors, who enthralled their breathless, eager readers back East. The "Wild West" fantasy created by the dime novel was later taken up by generations of Hollywood films.
Any serious historian will tell you that the truth about the Wild West is rather more mundane. The Wild West era, in fact, was considerably less bloody than the violent reputation it has garnered over the years.
In fact, the exploits of the famous Wild West outlaws were often exaggerated. Take the most famous and notorious outlaw of them all: Billy the Kid. He was reported to have killed 21 men, "one for each year of his life."
The reality was more mundane. Billy the Kid's real name was Henry McCarty and he was born in New York City, of all places. And in truth, he likely only killed only two to four people. In fact, his exploits wouldn't even rate a front page story in today's violent America.
The only reason Billy the Kid is known at all today is because his killer, Sheriff Patrick Garrett, published a fictionalized, wildly exaggerated account of The Kid, hoping to cash in on McCarty's story by hyping it to the dime novel audience of the time.
The dime novelists had to exaggerate the exploits of the Wild West's most notorious killer in order to sell their books. By contrast, no writer today would need to exaggerate the actions of a Charles Whitman or Cho Seung-hui to horrify their audience.
Still, today's gun nuts tend to often point to the Wild West era in making their arguments that guns are somehow an inevitable, integral aspect of American life and culture. The problem is, these people get their ideas about the Wild West from watching John Wayne movies, rather than reading actual history.
Occasionally, a Hollywood film will attempt to actually portray a realistic aspect of the Wild West. For example, Clint Eastwood's 1992 film, Unforgiven depicted a Wild West locale in which a city ordinance requires people entering the town to hand over their guns to the sheriff's office. The ordinance is harshly enforced. At various points in the film, newcomers to the town fail to observe the law. They are then visited by the sheriff, who forcibly disarms them at the barrel of a gun (and viciously beats them for good measure).
Gasp! Isn't this gun control?
The NRA gun nuts went ballistic when Eastwood's film was released. They claimed Eastwood was "inventing" history. When serious historians rose in Eastwood's defense to point out that many Old West towns did in fact have such policies, they failed to silence the NRA gun nuts who were upset that their John Wayne wet dream fantasies of the Old West were, in fact, bullshit.
Here we are, a century later, and there are less gun control laws on the books today in many areas of the U.S. than there were in many parts of the Old West. Despite what today's gun nuts would have us believe, in most of the U.S., it is still remarkably easy to buy a gun these days.
Of course, you'd never guess this was the case, if you listen to the NRA's hysterical propaganda. The NRA would have us believe that guns are already heavily regulated in America today and that the feds are on the verge of kicking in our doors and confiscating every last gun in the nation.
However, if you take a close look at the specific issues that drives the NRA ballistic these days, you realize just how weak gun control laws are in this country.
Take, for example, the NRA's furious, ongoing opposition to the Brady Bill. This modest legislation does nothing more than simply require a check on the backgrounds of gun buyers for criminal activity. And thanks to the NRA, the law is filled with enough loopholes to drive a truck through (such as the gun show loophole).
It's hard to imagine any sane person opposing the Brady Bill. But the NRA took up the case and raised such a hysterical fuss that one might have guessed that the law called for nothing less than the repeal of the Second Amendment.
Despite what the NRA would have us believe, controls on guns in America have actually weakened over the past quarter century. For example, when George W. Bush was Texas governor, he signed a "concealed-carry law" at the NRA's bidding. When he did so, Texas joined 22 other states that since 1986 had made it legal to carry concealed weapons. Today, some 48 states allow some form of concealed carry.
Bush also signed a bill denying Texas cities the ability to sue gun manufacturers (so much for his lip service to the idea that local entities ought to be able to conduct their affairs without meddling interference from state government).
And speaking of gun control ordinances, as Wikipedia points out, the O.K. Corral shootout itself was sparked by Virgil Earp's efforts to "enforce Tombstone's law prohibiting the carrying of deadly weapons."
The fact is, the Old West was downright safe, compared to today's blood-soaked streets in America. For one thing, no one in the Old West ever had to face down a lethal killing instrument like a modern-day Glock semi-automatic pistol. Firearms in the Old West were downright crude and tame, compared to a Glock.
If even a Wild West town like Tombstone could have strict gun control ordinances, why can't we do the same as a nation today?
Despite the exaggerated violent stereotypes perpetuated by dime novels and Hollywood, the so-called Wild West wasn't quite as violent as we've been led to believe over the years.
Take, for example, the 1881 "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," the most famous shootout in the history of the Old West. A mere three people died in this gunfight---an event that would be barely noticed in today's blood-soaked America, where many thousands of people are gunned down annually.
And yet, the O.K. Corral shootout has come to symbolize a wild, lawless West. It's part of the mythology of America that NRA gun lovers claim captures the "rugged individualism" and essence of what our nation is all about (as they furiously work to oppose any and all gun legislation as downright "un-American").
There's only one problem: the image of the Old West that exists in the popular imagination is largely fictional. It's all part of a myth that was created in the late 19th century by the dime novel authors, who enthralled their breathless, eager readers back East. The "Wild West" fantasy created by the dime novel was later taken up by generations of Hollywood films.
Any serious historian will tell you that the truth about the Wild West is rather more mundane. The Wild West era, in fact, was considerably less bloody than the violent reputation it has garnered over the years.
In fact, the exploits of the famous Wild West outlaws were often exaggerated. Take the most famous and notorious outlaw of them all: Billy the Kid. He was reported to have killed 21 men, "one for each year of his life."
The reality was more mundane. Billy the Kid's real name was Henry McCarty and he was born in New York City, of all places. And in truth, he likely only killed only two to four people. In fact, his exploits wouldn't even rate a front page story in today's violent America.
The only reason Billy the Kid is known at all today is because his killer, Sheriff Patrick Garrett, published a fictionalized, wildly exaggerated account of The Kid, hoping to cash in on McCarty's story by hyping it to the dime novel audience of the time.
The dime novelists had to exaggerate the exploits of the Wild West's most notorious killer in order to sell their books. By contrast, no writer today would need to exaggerate the actions of a Charles Whitman or Cho Seung-hui to horrify their audience.
Still, today's gun nuts tend to often point to the Wild West era in making their arguments that guns are somehow an inevitable, integral aspect of American life and culture. The problem is, these people get their ideas about the Wild West from watching John Wayne movies, rather than reading actual history.
Occasionally, a Hollywood film will attempt to actually portray a realistic aspect of the Wild West. For example, Clint Eastwood's 1992 film, Unforgiven depicted a Wild West locale in which a city ordinance requires people entering the town to hand over their guns to the sheriff's office. The ordinance is harshly enforced. At various points in the film, newcomers to the town fail to observe the law. They are then visited by the sheriff, who forcibly disarms them at the barrel of a gun (and viciously beats them for good measure).
Gasp! Isn't this gun control?
The NRA gun nuts went ballistic when Eastwood's film was released. They claimed Eastwood was "inventing" history. When serious historians rose in Eastwood's defense to point out that many Old West towns did in fact have such policies, they failed to silence the NRA gun nuts who were upset that their John Wayne wet dream fantasies of the Old West were, in fact, bullshit.
Here we are, a century later, and there are less gun control laws on the books today in many areas of the U.S. than there were in many parts of the Old West. Despite what today's gun nuts would have us believe, in most of the U.S., it is still remarkably easy to buy a gun these days.
Of course, you'd never guess this was the case, if you listen to the NRA's hysterical propaganda. The NRA would have us believe that guns are already heavily regulated in America today and that the feds are on the verge of kicking in our doors and confiscating every last gun in the nation.
However, if you take a close look at the specific issues that drives the NRA ballistic these days, you realize just how weak gun control laws are in this country.
Take, for example, the NRA's furious, ongoing opposition to the Brady Bill. This modest legislation does nothing more than simply require a check on the backgrounds of gun buyers for criminal activity. And thanks to the NRA, the law is filled with enough loopholes to drive a truck through (such as the gun show loophole).
It's hard to imagine any sane person opposing the Brady Bill. But the NRA took up the case and raised such a hysterical fuss that one might have guessed that the law called for nothing less than the repeal of the Second Amendment.
Despite what the NRA would have us believe, controls on guns in America have actually weakened over the past quarter century. For example, when George W. Bush was Texas governor, he signed a "concealed-carry law" at the NRA's bidding. When he did so, Texas joined 22 other states that since 1986 had made it legal to carry concealed weapons. Today, some 48 states allow some form of concealed carry.
Bush also signed a bill denying Texas cities the ability to sue gun manufacturers (so much for his lip service to the idea that local entities ought to be able to conduct their affairs without meddling interference from state government).
And speaking of gun control ordinances, as Wikipedia points out, the O.K. Corral shootout itself was sparked by Virgil Earp's efforts to "enforce Tombstone's law prohibiting the carrying of deadly weapons."
The fact is, the Old West was downright safe, compared to today's blood-soaked streets in America. For one thing, no one in the Old West ever had to face down a lethal killing instrument like a modern-day Glock semi-automatic pistol. Firearms in the Old West were downright crude and tame, compared to a Glock.
If even a Wild West town like Tombstone could have strict gun control ordinances, why can't we do the same as a nation today?
Monday, April 16, 2007
Poll: Americans Trust Democrats Over Bush on Iraq Policy
.
The latest polls show that the American people strongly support the Democrats over George W. Bush on Iraq. Which begs the question: will the Democrats stand firm and make Dick Cheney eat his words?
From the Washington Post:
Congress and the White House will move this week toward a final showdown over a contested war funding bill with most Americans trusting Democrats over President Bush to set Iraq policy but with sentiment deeply divided over Congress's push to set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces.
Democratic leaders will formally convene House and Senate negotiators tomorrow to hammer out a final version of the war funding bill, hoping to have the compromise on Bush's desk by the end of next week. The president and Democratic leaders again exchanged verbal fire today.
Bush used a backdrop of military families to declare "we should not legislate defeat in this vital war." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), flanked by retired Army generals, fired back, "The president and the vice president continue to desperately cling to their failed escalation strategy and attack those who disagree with them."
Democrats appear to be standing on firm political ground, as they work toward a final bill this week. A Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,141 adults, conducted April 12-15, found that 58 percent trusted the Democrats in Congress to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq, compared to 33 percent who trusted Bush.
The president has taken advantage of the congressional spring recess to pound Democrats over their legislation, which would impose benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, set strict rules for resting, equipping and training combat troops, and set a 2008 date for the final withdrawal of U.S. troops. Despite those efforts, Bush has actually lost a little ground to Democrats, who were trusted by 54 percent to set Iraq policy in February.
And pessimism about the war continues to grow. For the first time, a narrow majority of Americans, 51 percent, say the United States will lose the war in Iraq, compared to 35 percent who said the United States will win. Bush continued today to say victory in Iraq is pivotal to the larger war on terrorism, but Americans are increasingly siding with the Democratic view that the issues are separate. Some 57 percent now say the United States can succeed in the war on terrorism without winning the war in Iraq, a 10-percentage point increase since January, when Americans were almost evenly divided on the question.
The percentage of Americans who favor withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, even if that means civil order is not restored, held steady from February at 56 percent.
More here.
The latest polls show that the American people strongly support the Democrats over George W. Bush on Iraq. Which begs the question: will the Democrats stand firm and make Dick Cheney eat his words?
From the Washington Post:
Congress and the White House will move this week toward a final showdown over a contested war funding bill with most Americans trusting Democrats over President Bush to set Iraq policy but with sentiment deeply divided over Congress's push to set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces.
Democratic leaders will formally convene House and Senate negotiators tomorrow to hammer out a final version of the war funding bill, hoping to have the compromise on Bush's desk by the end of next week. The president and Democratic leaders again exchanged verbal fire today.
Bush used a backdrop of military families to declare "we should not legislate defeat in this vital war." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), flanked by retired Army generals, fired back, "The president and the vice president continue to desperately cling to their failed escalation strategy and attack those who disagree with them."
Democrats appear to be standing on firm political ground, as they work toward a final bill this week. A Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,141 adults, conducted April 12-15, found that 58 percent trusted the Democrats in Congress to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq, compared to 33 percent who trusted Bush.
The president has taken advantage of the congressional spring recess to pound Democrats over their legislation, which would impose benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, set strict rules for resting, equipping and training combat troops, and set a 2008 date for the final withdrawal of U.S. troops. Despite those efforts, Bush has actually lost a little ground to Democrats, who were trusted by 54 percent to set Iraq policy in February.
And pessimism about the war continues to grow. For the first time, a narrow majority of Americans, 51 percent, say the United States will lose the war in Iraq, compared to 35 percent who said the United States will win. Bush continued today to say victory in Iraq is pivotal to the larger war on terrorism, but Americans are increasingly siding with the Democratic view that the issues are separate. Some 57 percent now say the United States can succeed in the war on terrorism without winning the war in Iraq, a 10-percentage point increase since January, when Americans were almost evenly divided on the question.
The percentage of Americans who favor withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, even if that means civil order is not restored, held steady from February at 56 percent.
More here.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Pssst. Wanna Know How To Reduce Your Tax Bill? Simple: Become Rich
By MARC McDONALD
Tax season is here again. Would you like to know a sure-fire way of reducing your tax bill?
Simple. Become rich. The richer, the better.
Example: let's say your wealth puts you in the top 1/100th of 1 percent of all Americans. That's about 28,000 people in the U.S. These people, on average, make around $2 million every five days, which is what the average American earns over the course of a lifetime.
The tax burden for these super-rich people has been steadily falling for years. For example, in 1993, they paid 30 cents of every dollar into federal income tax. In 2000, that had fallen to 22 cents. Now, with the Bush tax cuts, it has fallen to 18 cents.
In his book Perfectly Legal, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston details an outrageously unfair tax system that screws the poor and working class. It's a tax system that has been increasing shifting the burden away from the rich and onto lower-income taxpayers for years, a phenomenon that's gotten little coverage in the mainstream media.
Not only do the rich avoid paying taxes, but they also usually avoid tax audits. Johnston points out that working class people are eight times more likely to face an audit than the wealthy.
Johnston is only one of a number of high-profile investigative journalists who've detailed America's unfair tax system over the years.
In 1994, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele published an eye-opening account of America's unfair tax system in their book, America: Who Really Pays the Taxes?
Barlett and Steele painted a gloomy picture of a beleaguered middle- and working class that is soaking up more and more of the nation's tax burden. They also detail how the tax burden is quietly shifting in other ways.
For example, the tax burden in the U.S. over the years has been shifting from corporations to individual taxpayers. In the 1950s, corporations paid around half of all taxes. Today, their burden has shrunk to less than 10 percent. In fact, today, 60 percent of all U.S. corporations pay zero income tax.
Johnston, Bartlett and Steele point out numerous cases in which wealthy individuals don't even bother to file a tax return.
Johnston cites the example of two billionaires, Alec and Jocelyn Wildenstein, who admitted under oath that for 30 years, they never even filed a tax return---and faced no consequences as a result.
In their book, Barlett and Steele point out that in 1989, there were 1,081 people earning over $200,000 who paid zero income tax. I would suspect that since Barlett and Steele's 1994 book was released that the number of wealthy tax avoiders has increased further still.
In the interviews they conducted to research their books, Barlett, Steele and Johnston describe ordinary taxpayers' seething anger and frustration with the unfairness of the tax code.
Johnston, in particular, seems pessimistic that the U.S. tax system will ever be fixed. He considers open revolt and social disruption a possibility in the future.
For their part, Barlett and Steele, offer modest proposals for making the tax system more equitable, such as closing all loopholes. However, the odds of real change to make the tax system more fair in Bush's America seem remote indeed.
Tax season is here again. Would you like to know a sure-fire way of reducing your tax bill?
Simple. Become rich. The richer, the better.
Example: let's say your wealth puts you in the top 1/100th of 1 percent of all Americans. That's about 28,000 people in the U.S. These people, on average, make around $2 million every five days, which is what the average American earns over the course of a lifetime.
The tax burden for these super-rich people has been steadily falling for years. For example, in 1993, they paid 30 cents of every dollar into federal income tax. In 2000, that had fallen to 22 cents. Now, with the Bush tax cuts, it has fallen to 18 cents.
In his book Perfectly Legal, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston details an outrageously unfair tax system that screws the poor and working class. It's a tax system that has been increasing shifting the burden away from the rich and onto lower-income taxpayers for years, a phenomenon that's gotten little coverage in the mainstream media.
Not only do the rich avoid paying taxes, but they also usually avoid tax audits. Johnston points out that working class people are eight times more likely to face an audit than the wealthy.
Johnston is only one of a number of high-profile investigative journalists who've detailed America's unfair tax system over the years.
In 1994, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele published an eye-opening account of America's unfair tax system in their book, America: Who Really Pays the Taxes?
Barlett and Steele painted a gloomy picture of a beleaguered middle- and working class that is soaking up more and more of the nation's tax burden. They also detail how the tax burden is quietly shifting in other ways.
For example, the tax burden in the U.S. over the years has been shifting from corporations to individual taxpayers. In the 1950s, corporations paid around half of all taxes. Today, their burden has shrunk to less than 10 percent. In fact, today, 60 percent of all U.S. corporations pay zero income tax.
Johnston, Bartlett and Steele point out numerous cases in which wealthy individuals don't even bother to file a tax return.
Johnston cites the example of two billionaires, Alec and Jocelyn Wildenstein, who admitted under oath that for 30 years, they never even filed a tax return---and faced no consequences as a result.
In their book, Barlett and Steele point out that in 1989, there were 1,081 people earning over $200,000 who paid zero income tax. I would suspect that since Barlett and Steele's 1994 book was released that the number of wealthy tax avoiders has increased further still.
In the interviews they conducted to research their books, Barlett, Steele and Johnston describe ordinary taxpayers' seething anger and frustration with the unfairness of the tax code.
Johnston, in particular, seems pessimistic that the U.S. tax system will ever be fixed. He considers open revolt and social disruption a possibility in the future.
For their part, Barlett and Steele, offer modest proposals for making the tax system more equitable, such as closing all loopholes. However, the odds of real change to make the tax system more fair in Bush's America seem remote indeed.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Don Imus Still Has A Bright Future On America's Toxic Airwaves
By MARC McDONALD
Please, whatever you do, don't feel sorry for Don Imus. Mark my words: he still has a bright and lucrative future ahead of him.
Sure, Imus is in hot water at the moment. But it won't last.
As soon as the current fuss has died down, you can take it to the bank that another network will step in to pick up Imus's program. In fact, the smart money would have to be on Fox News.
In fact, I would bet that Imus winds up coming out ahead in this whole deal. For one thing, the huge controversy sparked by his bigoted comments has made millions of people aware of him who've never previously heard his program. His media profile is much higher than it was before.
I look for Fox News to step in and give Imus a nice, fat, new contract. After all, your average Fox News viewer is unlikely to be offended by Imus's bigoted comments. On the contrary, most Fox News viewers are likely to see Imus as a "victim" of political correctness run amok in our society. (This point of view is a recurring theme, for example, on that network's highest rated program, The O'Reilly Factor).
Let's face it, bigotry sells in America these days. There are tens of millions of angry, frustrated white males in our society who feel victimized by affirmative action and "political correctness." Never mind the fact that affluent white males still control all the levels of power in the worlds of business and politics in America. Never mind the fact that racism still permeates every corner of American society today.
African-Americans are incarcerated at vastly higher rates than whites. Studies show that black people get much harsher prison sentences than white people for doing identical crimes. Blatant racism permeates our justice system, our legal system, our schools---in fact, every American institution. And let's not forget the 2000 election, in which hundreds of thousands of black people were denied the vote.
The horrible plight of poor black people was briefly brought to white, middle-class America's attention during the Hurricane Katrina crisis (but I doubt it came as much of a surprise to black people across America).
My point is, despite all of the above, there are still millions of white people in our society who are convinced that African-Americans somehow get all the breaks in our society.
It's crazy, it's nutty, it's insane---but that's how these sadly deluded people feel.
And the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck cannily know just how to push the emotional hot buttons of Angry White Males these days. Make no mistake: much of the appeal of hate radio is based in subtle racism and bigotry. After all, it's no mystery why Limbaugh, when he had a brief contract with ESPN, immediately plunged into racial issues and attacked quarterback Donovan McNabb (and ludicrously claimed that "the media" was part of a sinister plot to help black quarterbacks).
The fact is, bigotry sells in America today. It's the reason talk radio's Neal Boortz can have a lucrative career after saying that Rep. Cynthia McKinney "looks like a ghetto slut." It's the reason that CNN's Glenn Beck can get away with calling the predominately African-American victims of Hurricane Katrina "scumbags."
Nor is bigotry in America limited only to the nation's airwaves. Recall when Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond--a politician who ran on a campaign of racial segregation.
And last, but not least, let's not forget George W. Bush himself, whose actions over the years have set the whole tone for the nation's current rising tide of bigotry. Recall how during the 2000 election campaign, Bush made it a point to stop by Bob Jones University, which incredibly still had a ban on interracial dating.
So before you shed a tear for Imus, just stop and consider this: he clearly has a bright future ahead of him, as long as Republicans encourage and tolerate bigotry and our nation's airwaves are full of poisonous bile and racism.
Please, whatever you do, don't feel sorry for Don Imus. Mark my words: he still has a bright and lucrative future ahead of him.
Sure, Imus is in hot water at the moment. But it won't last.
As soon as the current fuss has died down, you can take it to the bank that another network will step in to pick up Imus's program. In fact, the smart money would have to be on Fox News.
In fact, I would bet that Imus winds up coming out ahead in this whole deal. For one thing, the huge controversy sparked by his bigoted comments has made millions of people aware of him who've never previously heard his program. His media profile is much higher than it was before.
I look for Fox News to step in and give Imus a nice, fat, new contract. After all, your average Fox News viewer is unlikely to be offended by Imus's bigoted comments. On the contrary, most Fox News viewers are likely to see Imus as a "victim" of political correctness run amok in our society. (This point of view is a recurring theme, for example, on that network's highest rated program, The O'Reilly Factor).
Let's face it, bigotry sells in America these days. There are tens of millions of angry, frustrated white males in our society who feel victimized by affirmative action and "political correctness." Never mind the fact that affluent white males still control all the levels of power in the worlds of business and politics in America. Never mind the fact that racism still permeates every corner of American society today.
African-Americans are incarcerated at vastly higher rates than whites. Studies show that black people get much harsher prison sentences than white people for doing identical crimes. Blatant racism permeates our justice system, our legal system, our schools---in fact, every American institution. And let's not forget the 2000 election, in which hundreds of thousands of black people were denied the vote.
The horrible plight of poor black people was briefly brought to white, middle-class America's attention during the Hurricane Katrina crisis (but I doubt it came as much of a surprise to black people across America).
My point is, despite all of the above, there are still millions of white people in our society who are convinced that African-Americans somehow get all the breaks in our society.
It's crazy, it's nutty, it's insane---but that's how these sadly deluded people feel.
And the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck cannily know just how to push the emotional hot buttons of Angry White Males these days. Make no mistake: much of the appeal of hate radio is based in subtle racism and bigotry. After all, it's no mystery why Limbaugh, when he had a brief contract with ESPN, immediately plunged into racial issues and attacked quarterback Donovan McNabb (and ludicrously claimed that "the media" was part of a sinister plot to help black quarterbacks).
The fact is, bigotry sells in America today. It's the reason talk radio's Neal Boortz can have a lucrative career after saying that Rep. Cynthia McKinney "looks like a ghetto slut." It's the reason that CNN's Glenn Beck can get away with calling the predominately African-American victims of Hurricane Katrina "scumbags."
Nor is bigotry in America limited only to the nation's airwaves. Recall when Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond--a politician who ran on a campaign of racial segregation.
And last, but not least, let's not forget George W. Bush himself, whose actions over the years have set the whole tone for the nation's current rising tide of bigotry. Recall how during the 2000 election campaign, Bush made it a point to stop by Bob Jones University, which incredibly still had a ban on interracial dating.
So before you shed a tear for Imus, just stop and consider this: he clearly has a bright future ahead of him, as long as Republicans encourage and tolerate bigotry and our nation's airwaves are full of poisonous bile and racism.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
The Word "Republican" Has Vanished From The Vocabulary Of Right-Wingers
By MARC McDONALD
Scan any right-wing blog these days and it's hard not to notice that something is missing.
Namely, the word "Republican."
As he so often does these days, Rush Limbaugh sets the trends in the right-wing noise chamber. If you've listened to Limbaugh's radio show lately, you'll notice that he has rarely mentioned the word "Republican" since November. Indeed, he goes out of his way every 30 seconds to mention that he's actually a "conservative."
It's quite a change of pace from four years ago, when the Republicans were riding high in the heady early days of the (then still popular) Iraq War. Back then, George W. Bush's approval rating was sky-high. The Iraq War initially appeared as though it might be a cake-walk, after all. Most Americans were still confident that the WMDs would be found (for that matter, most Americans still believed Saddam was behind 9/11).
Back in those days, Rush and his Ditto-Head followers embraced the word "Republican" and wore it as a badge of honor.
But that's no longer the case these days, especially in the aftermath of the Republicans' disastrous showing in the November elections.
Like Rush, the right-wing blogosphere has recently quietly tiptoed away from the word "Republican." A casual scan of popular right-wing Web sites and blogs today reveals few or no mentions of the word "Republican" over the past month.
The following right-wing sites (none of which I will dignify by linking to) have few, if any, mentions of the word "Republican" on their main pages (or any of their recent articles): Limbaugh's own site, The Drudge Report, Flopping Aces, Little Green Footballs, and Captain's Quarters. Note that the latter two sites have archives dating back several years. Click on any month pre-dating November 2006, and you'll find the word "Republican" in abundance.
Clearly, the word "Republican" is tainted these days---even to the point where fanatical, Bush-worshipping, Kool-Aid-drinking right-wingers have begun to avoid the word like the plague.
One might ask: why are today's right-wingers avoiding labeling themselves as Republicans?
Is it because today's Republican Party has been hijacked by extremists? No.
Is it because today's Republicans have done untold damage to the U.S., from lying our nation into war to embracing torture as official state policy to shredding our nation's Constitution to making America the most feared and hated nation on the planet? Is it because the recent Republican-led Congress was the most evil, corrupt Congress in American history?
Uh, no.
Actually, the right-wingers have no problem with any of the above, chillingly enough.
No, they decided to tiptoe away from calling themselves Republicans simply because they know goddamn well that the word "Republican" is heavily tainted these days. It's electoral poison.
Today, America is a mess. Our relationship with the rest of the world is in tatters. Given the appalling human rights record of the Bush White House, America no longer has any moral authority to lecture other nations.
And the American voters know damn well who is to blame for the decline and fall of America as a respected nation: the Republicans.
As they try to rehabilitate their devastated Republican Party, right-wingers no doubt will continue to embrace the "conservative" label. But no matter what they call themselves, they can't hide the fact that the GOP and their beloved leader Bush did untold damage to America from 2000 to 2006. I'd suspect it'll take the majority of American voters many years before they trust the Republicans again.
Update: This is interesting: two of the right-wing blogs that I noticed had no mentions of the word "Republican" on their main pages on March 31 (Captain's Quarters and Flopping Aces) must have gotten wind of my article. Both blogs posted new content today smothered with numerous mentions of the word "Republican." Maybe the right-wing blogs will rediscover the word "Republican" again for a few days in an attempt to try to show everyone that they're not really afraid of this tainted label....but mark my words, it won't last.
Scan any right-wing blog these days and it's hard not to notice that something is missing.
Namely, the word "Republican."
As he so often does these days, Rush Limbaugh sets the trends in the right-wing noise chamber. If you've listened to Limbaugh's radio show lately, you'll notice that he has rarely mentioned the word "Republican" since November. Indeed, he goes out of his way every 30 seconds to mention that he's actually a "conservative."
It's quite a change of pace from four years ago, when the Republicans were riding high in the heady early days of the (then still popular) Iraq War. Back then, George W. Bush's approval rating was sky-high. The Iraq War initially appeared as though it might be a cake-walk, after all. Most Americans were still confident that the WMDs would be found (for that matter, most Americans still believed Saddam was behind 9/11).
Back in those days, Rush and his Ditto-Head followers embraced the word "Republican" and wore it as a badge of honor.
But that's no longer the case these days, especially in the aftermath of the Republicans' disastrous showing in the November elections.
Like Rush, the right-wing blogosphere has recently quietly tiptoed away from the word "Republican." A casual scan of popular right-wing Web sites and blogs today reveals few or no mentions of the word "Republican" over the past month.
The following right-wing sites (none of which I will dignify by linking to) have few, if any, mentions of the word "Republican" on their main pages (or any of their recent articles): Limbaugh's own site, The Drudge Report, Flopping Aces, Little Green Footballs, and Captain's Quarters. Note that the latter two sites have archives dating back several years. Click on any month pre-dating November 2006, and you'll find the word "Republican" in abundance.
Clearly, the word "Republican" is tainted these days---even to the point where fanatical, Bush-worshipping, Kool-Aid-drinking right-wingers have begun to avoid the word like the plague.
One might ask: why are today's right-wingers avoiding labeling themselves as Republicans?
Is it because today's Republican Party has been hijacked by extremists? No.
Is it because today's Republicans have done untold damage to the U.S., from lying our nation into war to embracing torture as official state policy to shredding our nation's Constitution to making America the most feared and hated nation on the planet? Is it because the recent Republican-led Congress was the most evil, corrupt Congress in American history?
Uh, no.
Actually, the right-wingers have no problem with any of the above, chillingly enough.
No, they decided to tiptoe away from calling themselves Republicans simply because they know goddamn well that the word "Republican" is heavily tainted these days. It's electoral poison.
Today, America is a mess. Our relationship with the rest of the world is in tatters. Given the appalling human rights record of the Bush White House, America no longer has any moral authority to lecture other nations.
And the American voters know damn well who is to blame for the decline and fall of America as a respected nation: the Republicans.
As they try to rehabilitate their devastated Republican Party, right-wingers no doubt will continue to embrace the "conservative" label. But no matter what they call themselves, they can't hide the fact that the GOP and their beloved leader Bush did untold damage to America from 2000 to 2006. I'd suspect it'll take the majority of American voters many years before they trust the Republicans again.
Update: This is interesting: two of the right-wing blogs that I noticed had no mentions of the word "Republican" on their main pages on March 31 (Captain's Quarters and Flopping Aces) must have gotten wind of my article. Both blogs posted new content today smothered with numerous mentions of the word "Republican." Maybe the right-wing blogs will rediscover the word "Republican" again for a few days in an attempt to try to show everyone that they're not really afraid of this tainted label....but mark my words, it won't last.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Who's Bankrupt Now? Thoughts On "How The Right Went Wrong"
By MANIFESTO JOE
In Time magazine's March 26 cover story, "How the Right Went Wrong," Karen Tumulty began by quoting Ronald Reagan in a sort of "bandwagon" logical fallacy at the 1985 Conservative Political Action Conference. "... the other side is virtually bankrupt of ideas. It has nothing more to say, nothing to add to the debate. It has spent its intellectual capital." The core argument: Cons rule; get with it.
The writer seemed to veer even more off the track after that, going into the general gloom among conservatives -- but failing to adequately discuss the many failures of policy and ideas that put the Right in this mood. This kind of obfuscation is common in the Mainstream Media.
I'd like to get this back on the real track. Fast-forward to 2007.
For all but two of the past 26 years, the Republican Party, dominated by its "conservative" wing, has controlled either the executive branch, the legislative branch, or both, of the federal government. In that time:
-- The national debt has grown to over $5 trillion. When Reagan entered office, it was less than $1 trillion. The only balanced budgets, or surpluses, run during the past 26 years were in the final years of the Clinton presidency, when the rich were being taxed somewhat more than they are now, or were in the '80s.
So much for fiscal responsibility.
-- The welfare state has actually grown overall. An Associated Press analysis of government data shows that nearly 1 in 6 Americans relies on some kind of public assistance, the most since the government began the measurements two decades ago.
I can already hear the "cons" muttering, but this didn't happen because of liberals. The 1996 welfare "reform" was mainly a GOP idea. It has indeed cut the welfare rolls, by nearly two-thirds. But when former recipients went to low-wage, no-benefits jobs like those at Wal-Mart, guess what? Applications for food stamps grew, and the number of Medicaid recipients went off the charts. The new, not-so-improved welfare state is basically a huge subsidy for low-paying corporations like Wal-Mart.
More results: Real wages had already been slipping for decades, and the trend accelerated. Could it have been all those low-wage workers pouring into the work force? And all the while, other sets of numbers have been trending up--consumer debt and corporate profits. Call me paranoid, but sometimes it seems like somebody in a boardroom thought all this up.
The problem is, what's generating short-term profits for the few seems to mean long-term misery for many. Census figures show that the number of Americans categorized as severely poor--not just under the official poverty line--grew by 26 percent, to 16 million, between 2000 and 2005.
-- For two generations we've heard politicians rant about "law and order," even many Democrats. But the GOP Right Wing got by far the most political capital out of the issue, mainly by promising to lock up drug offenders and throw away the key, and to whittle Death Row down to about a dozen inmates.
I won't dwell on the possibility that some undetermined number of innocent people have been executed. (Although recent DNA-testing breakthroughs give some hint at the number of wrongful convictions.) I'll focus instead on "The Drug War." America had a serious crack cocaine problem in the '80s--but the approach to drugs in general became shotgun-style, where a rifle was needed. With that, and mandatory sentences, the federal prison population exploded. People were getting hard time for small-amount possession. From 1980 to 2000, the overall U.S. prison population quadrupled, despite a decline in violent crime and property crime since the early '90s. In federal pens, 57 percent were in for drug offenses. The overall U.S. incarcerated population in 2006: 2.2 million. In 2005, 1 out of every 136 Americans was in some kind of jail. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population, and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. (Source of all stats above: Wikipedia.)
Predictably, the taxpayers, even Republicans, got tired of paying for the U.S. being the world's biggest jailer. Here in Texas, Republican state legislators are introducing bills to cut way down on probation revocations, especially for nonviolent offenders. Even in the GOP, "lock 'em up" for damn near anything has become an impractical notion whose time has passed.
-- Tumulty wrote that Reagan "... helped bring about the defeat of what he very undiplomatically christened 'the Evil Empire.' " She apparently buys, at least to some degree, the notion that Reagan presided over a military buildup that "bankrupted" the Soviet Union.
This is one of the most toxic myths that the Right has sold to many as history. When Russian economists have been interviewed about this, their response has often been laughter. Everybody there who could see the big picture knew what the problems were, and they had been serious for many years before Reagan took office. All economic indicators had been declining for years. Life expectancy, down. Absenteeism, alcoholism, infant mortality--all up alarmingly. (Dartmouth College historians Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth.) It was requiring 25 percent of the Soviet GDP to support their military empire. But military spending, CIA stats show, was very level between 1975 and 1985.
The problem was systemic. The Soviets' particular experiment with socialism was a debacle--a top-heavy, command economy that basically collapsed under its own weight and inflexibility. Yet, many cons argue that Reagan's goofy "Star Wars" initiative was the final blow. With the Soviet economy already so dead in the water, this was like giving Reagan credit for every sunrise that occurred on his watch. If he even hastened their collapse, I doubt that it was by as much as a year.
But the Right has had uncanny success at selling such mendacity to tens of millions of Americans. They've built a hard core of about 30 percent of the electorate that will swallow any such B.S. and lick their lips like it's a fudge brownie.
How did they do this? One must go back in history. Liberal hegemony in U.S. politics was roughly 1932-1980. At the start of that period, about one-third of Americans lived in poverty. It was more serious then, with no food stamps or Medicaid. By the '70s, poverty had been cut by about two-thirds, down to around 11 percent. By the '50s, union membership peaked at 35 percent. In 1959, corporations paid 39 percent of federal income tax revenue (Barlett and Steele citing IRS stats, 1990. It's a fraction of that now).
Gradually, progressives and liberals became victims of their own successes, convictions, and coincidences. In the '60s, the Democrats lost the white South by embracing civil rights. In the '70s, demand-pull inflation, fueled in no small way by the OPEC embargo, began plunging the U.S. economy into deep recessions.
And, when people become affluent enough, they forget about G.I. Bills, federal housing loans, Pell Grants and the like that helped them get there. Lower taxes and higher property values become the main concerns. The Democrat becomes a "Reagan Democrat."
Then came the wedge issues: Abortion, affirmative action and gun control drive a bigger "wedge." And finally, the Reagan Democrat, under pressure from his golf buds, becomes a Republican.
And, the Right never has a problem getting money. Starting in the '70s, a network of "think tanks" formed, lavishly financed by Corporate America, to undertake such campaigns as selling "intellectuals" such spurious ideas as the Laffer Curve and utility deregulation. Such ideas eventually "trickle down" to the general public, even if the real money doesn't.
Tumulty talks about "conservatives," not liberals, being victims of their successes. Which triumphs are those? The ones I just reviewed?
The main success I can see is that the "conservative movement" ran one of the most longlasting and successful "cons" on the public in U.S. political history. They have nothing at all to show for 26 years of being more or less in power. Their astonishing talent is for keeping discredited ideas alive:
-- Cutting taxes on the rich and big corporations was supposed to increase revenue and eliminate the deficit by growing the economy. It never happened, even when tried twice.
-- The Clinton economic plan, which passed in 1993 without a single Republican vote, was supposed to wreck the economy. It didn't. (What it did do, eventually, was balance the budget, and even produce a surplus.)
-- We have heard over and over that raising the minimum wage is supposed to set off inflation and increase unemployment. It's been done many times, and it never has.
I won't stoop to Reagan's fallacy of intellectual bankruptcy. It's more like a case of a high-roller who finally goes into debt so deeply that the bank just keeps lending him more money, because if he goes under, the bank does, too.
But fortunately, more voters are deciding he's not the guy to put in charge of the Treasury.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
In Time magazine's March 26 cover story, "How the Right Went Wrong," Karen Tumulty began by quoting Ronald Reagan in a sort of "bandwagon" logical fallacy at the 1985 Conservative Political Action Conference. "... the other side is virtually bankrupt of ideas. It has nothing more to say, nothing to add to the debate. It has spent its intellectual capital." The core argument: Cons rule; get with it.
The writer seemed to veer even more off the track after that, going into the general gloom among conservatives -- but failing to adequately discuss the many failures of policy and ideas that put the Right in this mood. This kind of obfuscation is common in the Mainstream Media.
I'd like to get this back on the real track. Fast-forward to 2007.
For all but two of the past 26 years, the Republican Party, dominated by its "conservative" wing, has controlled either the executive branch, the legislative branch, or both, of the federal government. In that time:
-- The national debt has grown to over $5 trillion. When Reagan entered office, it was less than $1 trillion. The only balanced budgets, or surpluses, run during the past 26 years were in the final years of the Clinton presidency, when the rich were being taxed somewhat more than they are now, or were in the '80s.
So much for fiscal responsibility.
-- The welfare state has actually grown overall. An Associated Press analysis of government data shows that nearly 1 in 6 Americans relies on some kind of public assistance, the most since the government began the measurements two decades ago.
I can already hear the "cons" muttering, but this didn't happen because of liberals. The 1996 welfare "reform" was mainly a GOP idea. It has indeed cut the welfare rolls, by nearly two-thirds. But when former recipients went to low-wage, no-benefits jobs like those at Wal-Mart, guess what? Applications for food stamps grew, and the number of Medicaid recipients went off the charts. The new, not-so-improved welfare state is basically a huge subsidy for low-paying corporations like Wal-Mart.
More results: Real wages had already been slipping for decades, and the trend accelerated. Could it have been all those low-wage workers pouring into the work force? And all the while, other sets of numbers have been trending up--consumer debt and corporate profits. Call me paranoid, but sometimes it seems like somebody in a boardroom thought all this up.
The problem is, what's generating short-term profits for the few seems to mean long-term misery for many. Census figures show that the number of Americans categorized as severely poor--not just under the official poverty line--grew by 26 percent, to 16 million, between 2000 and 2005.
-- For two generations we've heard politicians rant about "law and order," even many Democrats. But the GOP Right Wing got by far the most political capital out of the issue, mainly by promising to lock up drug offenders and throw away the key, and to whittle Death Row down to about a dozen inmates.
I won't dwell on the possibility that some undetermined number of innocent people have been executed. (Although recent DNA-testing breakthroughs give some hint at the number of wrongful convictions.) I'll focus instead on "The Drug War." America had a serious crack cocaine problem in the '80s--but the approach to drugs in general became shotgun-style, where a rifle was needed. With that, and mandatory sentences, the federal prison population exploded. People were getting hard time for small-amount possession. From 1980 to 2000, the overall U.S. prison population quadrupled, despite a decline in violent crime and property crime since the early '90s. In federal pens, 57 percent were in for drug offenses. The overall U.S. incarcerated population in 2006: 2.2 million. In 2005, 1 out of every 136 Americans was in some kind of jail. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population, and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. (Source of all stats above: Wikipedia.)
Predictably, the taxpayers, even Republicans, got tired of paying for the U.S. being the world's biggest jailer. Here in Texas, Republican state legislators are introducing bills to cut way down on probation revocations, especially for nonviolent offenders. Even in the GOP, "lock 'em up" for damn near anything has become an impractical notion whose time has passed.
-- Tumulty wrote that Reagan "... helped bring about the defeat of what he very undiplomatically christened 'the Evil Empire.' " She apparently buys, at least to some degree, the notion that Reagan presided over a military buildup that "bankrupted" the Soviet Union.
This is one of the most toxic myths that the Right has sold to many as history. When Russian economists have been interviewed about this, their response has often been laughter. Everybody there who could see the big picture knew what the problems were, and they had been serious for many years before Reagan took office. All economic indicators had been declining for years. Life expectancy, down. Absenteeism, alcoholism, infant mortality--all up alarmingly. (Dartmouth College historians Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth.) It was requiring 25 percent of the Soviet GDP to support their military empire. But military spending, CIA stats show, was very level between 1975 and 1985.
The problem was systemic. The Soviets' particular experiment with socialism was a debacle--a top-heavy, command economy that basically collapsed under its own weight and inflexibility. Yet, many cons argue that Reagan's goofy "Star Wars" initiative was the final blow. With the Soviet economy already so dead in the water, this was like giving Reagan credit for every sunrise that occurred on his watch. If he even hastened their collapse, I doubt that it was by as much as a year.
But the Right has had uncanny success at selling such mendacity to tens of millions of Americans. They've built a hard core of about 30 percent of the electorate that will swallow any such B.S. and lick their lips like it's a fudge brownie.
How did they do this? One must go back in history. Liberal hegemony in U.S. politics was roughly 1932-1980. At the start of that period, about one-third of Americans lived in poverty. It was more serious then, with no food stamps or Medicaid. By the '70s, poverty had been cut by about two-thirds, down to around 11 percent. By the '50s, union membership peaked at 35 percent. In 1959, corporations paid 39 percent of federal income tax revenue (Barlett and Steele citing IRS stats, 1990. It's a fraction of that now).
Gradually, progressives and liberals became victims of their own successes, convictions, and coincidences. In the '60s, the Democrats lost the white South by embracing civil rights. In the '70s, demand-pull inflation, fueled in no small way by the OPEC embargo, began plunging the U.S. economy into deep recessions.
And, when people become affluent enough, they forget about G.I. Bills, federal housing loans, Pell Grants and the like that helped them get there. Lower taxes and higher property values become the main concerns. The Democrat becomes a "Reagan Democrat."
Then came the wedge issues: Abortion, affirmative action and gun control drive a bigger "wedge." And finally, the Reagan Democrat, under pressure from his golf buds, becomes a Republican.
And, the Right never has a problem getting money. Starting in the '70s, a network of "think tanks" formed, lavishly financed by Corporate America, to undertake such campaigns as selling "intellectuals" such spurious ideas as the Laffer Curve and utility deregulation. Such ideas eventually "trickle down" to the general public, even if the real money doesn't.
Tumulty talks about "conservatives," not liberals, being victims of their successes. Which triumphs are those? The ones I just reviewed?
The main success I can see is that the "conservative movement" ran one of the most longlasting and successful "cons" on the public in U.S. political history. They have nothing at all to show for 26 years of being more or less in power. Their astonishing talent is for keeping discredited ideas alive:
-- Cutting taxes on the rich and big corporations was supposed to increase revenue and eliminate the deficit by growing the economy. It never happened, even when tried twice.
-- The Clinton economic plan, which passed in 1993 without a single Republican vote, was supposed to wreck the economy. It didn't. (What it did do, eventually, was balance the budget, and even produce a surplus.)
-- We have heard over and over that raising the minimum wage is supposed to set off inflation and increase unemployment. It's been done many times, and it never has.
I won't stoop to Reagan's fallacy of intellectual bankruptcy. It's more like a case of a high-roller who finally goes into debt so deeply that the bank just keeps lending him more money, because if he goes under, the bank does, too.
But fortunately, more voters are deciding he's not the guy to put in charge of the Treasury.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Tony Snow's Plight Would Be Vastly Worse If He Was An Ordinary, Working-Class American
By MARC McDONALD
Let's be clear on something: cancer is a horrible thing. And we wish a speedy recovery for Tony Snow, who is battling colon cancer.
As a wealthy, high-profile public figure, Snow can expect the most advanced, cutting-edge, world-class medical care for his condition in the coming years. As the White House Press Secretary, he can expect the best treatment and the best doctors that money can buy.
If you want the nation's best health care, it also helps greatly if you're famous like Snow. After all, no HMO is going to jerk you around on paying your medical bills if you're in the national spotlight and on a first-name basis with the president of the United States.
But as a nation offers its sympathies and prayers to Snow, it's important to note that Snow's plight---as serious as it is---would be much worse if he were an ordinary working-class American.
Dealing with a catastrophic medical condition is hell. But it's even worse when you're not rich and the sky-high medical bills starting pouring into your mailbox.
Doctors always emphasize that, when one is recovering from cancer, it's important to be as optimistic as possible and to maintain a positive mental outlook.
That's a tall order for the millions of ordinary working-class Americans who not only face the challenge of dealing with a medical crisis--but also the nightmare of facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills that will hang over their heads like a dark cloud for the rest of their lives.
Snow faces a serious challenge in the coming years. But I'd suspect that one thing he won't have to worry about is paying his medical bills. After all, Snow earns $165,200 as the White House press secretary. That's a vastly higher salary than the average American earns. And Snow previously made $1.75 million yearly as a Fox News anchor.
Let's face it: when you're rich and famous in America, you get the best medical care. You get to see the best doctors. You get to stay at the best hospitals.
Europeans believe that health care is a basic human right. But in America, the health care you get is directly tied into how much money you have.
These days, the number of Americans with no health-care insurance is soaring, with no end in sight. The U.S. Census Bureau reported last year that the number of uninsured Americans rose by 1.3 million to a record 46.6 million, including over 400,000 children.
While the crisis of the uninsured gets the most media attention, it's important to remember that tens of millions of Americans have health insurance and still face huge obstacles in getting the medical treatment they need.
I have a friend whose wife developed breast cancer a decade ago. Both husband and wife worked full-time and paid thousands of dollars yearly for HMO medical coverage.
The problem is that the HMO didn't pay all their staggering medical bills. And my friend and his wife were socked with hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills that plunged them deeply into a debt hole that they have yet to climb out of a decade later.
I'd suspect that hundreds of thousands of Americans go through a similar hell every year. And bear in mind: we're not talking about the uninsured---we're talking about Americans who have health-care coverage.
So while a nation offers its "get well soon" wishes to Tony Snow, let's also spare a thought for the millions of working-class Americans who struggle every year to get the medical treatment they need from heartless HMOs that are more concerned about maximizing profits than offering health care.
America's broken health-care system is in an ongoing crisis that the Republicans (including Snow himself) have long turned an indifferent, cold shoulder to, in their zeal for putting profits over people.
Let's be clear on something: cancer is a horrible thing. And we wish a speedy recovery for Tony Snow, who is battling colon cancer.
As a wealthy, high-profile public figure, Snow can expect the most advanced, cutting-edge, world-class medical care for his condition in the coming years. As the White House Press Secretary, he can expect the best treatment and the best doctors that money can buy.
If you want the nation's best health care, it also helps greatly if you're famous like Snow. After all, no HMO is going to jerk you around on paying your medical bills if you're in the national spotlight and on a first-name basis with the president of the United States.
But as a nation offers its sympathies and prayers to Snow, it's important to note that Snow's plight---as serious as it is---would be much worse if he were an ordinary working-class American.
Dealing with a catastrophic medical condition is hell. But it's even worse when you're not rich and the sky-high medical bills starting pouring into your mailbox.
Doctors always emphasize that, when one is recovering from cancer, it's important to be as optimistic as possible and to maintain a positive mental outlook.
That's a tall order for the millions of ordinary working-class Americans who not only face the challenge of dealing with a medical crisis--but also the nightmare of facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills that will hang over their heads like a dark cloud for the rest of their lives.
Snow faces a serious challenge in the coming years. But I'd suspect that one thing he won't have to worry about is paying his medical bills. After all, Snow earns $165,200 as the White House press secretary. That's a vastly higher salary than the average American earns. And Snow previously made $1.75 million yearly as a Fox News anchor.
Let's face it: when you're rich and famous in America, you get the best medical care. You get to see the best doctors. You get to stay at the best hospitals.
Europeans believe that health care is a basic human right. But in America, the health care you get is directly tied into how much money you have.
These days, the number of Americans with no health-care insurance is soaring, with no end in sight. The U.S. Census Bureau reported last year that the number of uninsured Americans rose by 1.3 million to a record 46.6 million, including over 400,000 children.
While the crisis of the uninsured gets the most media attention, it's important to remember that tens of millions of Americans have health insurance and still face huge obstacles in getting the medical treatment they need.
I have a friend whose wife developed breast cancer a decade ago. Both husband and wife worked full-time and paid thousands of dollars yearly for HMO medical coverage.
The problem is that the HMO didn't pay all their staggering medical bills. And my friend and his wife were socked with hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills that plunged them deeply into a debt hole that they have yet to climb out of a decade later.
I'd suspect that hundreds of thousands of Americans go through a similar hell every year. And bear in mind: we're not talking about the uninsured---we're talking about Americans who have health-care coverage.
So while a nation offers its "get well soon" wishes to Tony Snow, let's also spare a thought for the millions of working-class Americans who struggle every year to get the medical treatment they need from heartless HMOs that are more concerned about maximizing profits than offering health care.
America's broken health-care system is in an ongoing crisis that the Republicans (including Snow himself) have long turned an indifferent, cold shoulder to, in their zeal for putting profits over people.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Waxman Had Better Move Quickly: GOP Has Long History Of Destroying Evidence In Scandals
By MARC McDONALD
Henry Waxman is determined to find out the truth in the AttorneyGate scandal. As a result, he has directed the Republican National Committee to preserve the emails of White House officials and to investigate what steps are being taken to protect the emails from destruction.
Waxman is right to be concerned about preserving the evidence in this scandal. After all, destroying evidence is a Republican specialty---and has been a hallmark of GOP scandals over the decades.
Take the Iran-Contra affair, for example. Two decades after this shocking Reagan White House scandal, the affair remains shrouded in mystery. At the time, investigators found that uncovering the slippery truth in this scandal was as frustrating as eating soup with a fork. When pressed for details by investigators, Reagan and his collaborators repeatedly insisted that they knew nothing, or were "out of the loop."
Indeed, it was difficult for investigators to ever uncover the truth in Iran-Contra. In November, 1986, Oliver North's secretary Fawn Hall removed and shredded a large number of official Iran-Contra documents from the White House.
And the Iran-Contra affair hardly marked the first time that key evidence disappeared during a GOP scandal. I mean, who can ever forget the infamous 18 minute gap on Nixon's Watergate tapes?
George W. Bush and his friends and allies are hardly strangers to the destruction of key evidence in scandals. Take Enron, for example. This company (which was Bush's all-time biggest campaign contributor) imploded in scandal and fraud in 2001. But we'll never know the full story: Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, shredded over a ton of Enron-related documents.
Given the GOP's long history of destroying scandal evidence, Waxman had better move quickly as he tries to secure evidence, if he is ever going to uncover the truth in the AttorneyGate scandal.
Henry Waxman is determined to find out the truth in the AttorneyGate scandal. As a result, he has directed the Republican National Committee to preserve the emails of White House officials and to investigate what steps are being taken to protect the emails from destruction.
Waxman is right to be concerned about preserving the evidence in this scandal. After all, destroying evidence is a Republican specialty---and has been a hallmark of GOP scandals over the decades.
Take the Iran-Contra affair, for example. Two decades after this shocking Reagan White House scandal, the affair remains shrouded in mystery. At the time, investigators found that uncovering the slippery truth in this scandal was as frustrating as eating soup with a fork. When pressed for details by investigators, Reagan and his collaborators repeatedly insisted that they knew nothing, or were "out of the loop."
Indeed, it was difficult for investigators to ever uncover the truth in Iran-Contra. In November, 1986, Oliver North's secretary Fawn Hall removed and shredded a large number of official Iran-Contra documents from the White House.
And the Iran-Contra affair hardly marked the first time that key evidence disappeared during a GOP scandal. I mean, who can ever forget the infamous 18 minute gap on Nixon's Watergate tapes?
George W. Bush and his friends and allies are hardly strangers to the destruction of key evidence in scandals. Take Enron, for example. This company (which was Bush's all-time biggest campaign contributor) imploded in scandal and fraud in 2001. But we'll never know the full story: Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, shredded over a ton of Enron-related documents.
Given the GOP's long history of destroying scandal evidence, Waxman had better move quickly as he tries to secure evidence, if he is ever going to uncover the truth in the AttorneyGate scandal.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
As Iraq War Enters Year 5, Bush Cabal Is Cooking Up A New, Bigger War
By MANIFESTO JOE
There's nothing like a good old-fashioned war to divert public attention away from scandal(s).
According to some sources, the Bush administration has one planned, and it may be just a question of when: days, weeks or months.
The Times of India published this report last month:
US preparations for invading Iran are complete: Report
By Rashmee Roshan Lal
LONDON: American preparations for invading Iran are complete and a major conventional war with Teheran could begin any day, according to a chilling new report that coincides with leading US Democrat Congressmen's warning to President Bush that he does not have the authority to go to war with Iran.
The report, by authoritative defence expert Dan Plesch, says American military operations for Iran "extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran's military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons."
Plesch, who is known to be well-connected and well-networked at the very highest reaches of the trans-Atlantic political and defence establishment, quoted unnamed British military sources to say that "the US military switched its whole focus to Iran" as soon as Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Baghdad.
He said his sources added that the US has continued this target-Iran strategy ever since, even though the American infantry continues to be bogged down fighting the insurgency in Iraq.
In an assertion that has astonished European capitals, the defence guru claimed that despite the gross failure to re-build post-Saddam Iraq, American hubris extends to plans for a "peaceful" post-invasion "settlement" for Iran. This plan will seek to create a federal nation, an "Iran of the regions", he said.
With the administration embattled with yet another scandal, involving the firing of U.S. attorneys, it's such a convenient time for Big Brother to get us a new, improved enemy, one that even many liberals can hate. After all, that country's leader is a hard-liner who has even denied that the Holocaust took place. He seems more than a bit of a kook -- even more of one than we have in the White House. (You know, the fella who has lots of meaningful dialogues with God, now that he's sober.)
I won't discuss whether such a war, to be fought over Iran's apparent nuclear ambitions, would be justified. I won't go back in time, to 1953, about how the U.S. set itself up for this dilemma by engineering a coup that overthrew a legitimate nationalist government and installed the Shah in power for 25 brutal years, largely because Big Oil coveted Iran's reserves. I won't even go into the usual tedious humanitarian objections to all the civilian carnage that would surely follow such an invasion. Let us assume here as the Right does, just for the sake of argument, that U.S. moral authority is beyond question and that we would have a perfect right to lay waste to large portions of Iran and its people, unless its government backs down on the nukes.
A new military adventure of this kind by the Bush neo-con cabal would have the potential to become a far worse disaster than the Iraq war has been. The problem is, and has been for four years now, that our all-volunteer military is severely overextended. We've already got two wars going, and even the one in Afghanistan now looks far from over. This administration, with its remarkable hubris, did not pick our battles wisely.
Afghanistan, historically, is a very bad place to make war. But toppling the Taliban seemed very much the thing to do at the time, since they were harboring bin Laden and al-Qaida. But then the neo-cons soon got us into an elective war in Iraq, one that at least initially had nothing at all to do with the particular terrorists we were supposed to be hunting. Message to the Right Wing: There was no verifiable link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida; even the administration conceded that, albeit long after the invasion.
To be sure, Saddam was an evil dude. But he was being effectively contained; and toppling him got U.S. troops caught up in a bloody civil war, and actually opened Iraq's borders so that al-Qaida terrorists could enter the country after that.
It's hard to understand how even the most indoctrinated super-patriot fails to see that this was, at the very least, a devastating blunder. And, there's not going to be any good way out of it.
And now we're looking at the possibility of war with Iran. Certainly they don't have the military technology to win, at least not outright. Their infrastructure would likely be demolished quickly.
But consider: This is a country of 70 million, over three times the size of Iraq, with the median age of the male population being 25.4 years, according to the CIA Factbook. And, as the Israelis discovered long ago, women can shoot, too. They can be very lethal rifle soldiers.
That's an awful lot of cannon fodder. Would there be an insurgency? Imagine Iraq, times 3 or 4. And Iran is overwhelmingly Shiite. The Iranians wouldn't likely be fighting each other very much, as the Iraqis are.
It's a bigger country than Iraq in land mass, too, and there's lots of mountains. It would require a huge occupation force. (Hey, young fellas -- ready to get that draft notice from Chickenhawk George?)
And, what will the neighbors think? Iraq has Shiite militias that aren't openly fighting us now. If we invade a Shiite neighbor, do you figure they might? And what about Syria, to name only one Arab country that might be chapped?
Let's think on an even broader scale. Is there a possibility that Israel would get involved on our side, and then attacked? (Not necessarily in that order.) They have nukes, by the way. And hey, I just remembered that Russia and China have nukes, too. Lots of them. And big armies. And they've already warned the U.S. against such military action. We can only hope that they would be loath to get involved in such a bloody mess and would limit themselves to strong condemnations of U.S. actions.
We've got the potential for World War III here, with the entire Mideast as Ground Zero. Surely, one would think, our leaders would be circumspect enough not to get us involved in such a needless Armageddon.
But think again. Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, has written about a group of men who served during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, and also Bush the First in early '90s, as high-level, but not top-level, officials. They were often referred to (reportedly, for one, by then-General Colin Powell) as "the crazies." Name any reckless military action you can imagine from that time, and they were for it.
Guess what? These are the men who have been in charge of Bush policy in the Mideast, for over six years.
And one thing we've seen over and over is that a nasty war, with lots of burning Humvees, bodybags and gutwagons, will be Page One, at least for a good while. In that news budget meeting, the fired U.S. attorneys wouldn't stand a chance. And flag lapel pins will become mandatory. ("Hey, hippie, America's at war. Git a f***ing haircut and join the f***ing Marines!")
I'm not much of a gambler. But if I were, I would bet a modest sum that the U.S., Israel and other allies would eventually win such a protracted, epic war -- but the costs would be almost unimaginable. Envision the United Kingdom in 1946 -- victorious, but in ruins. I would wager further that the U.S. would emerge in a similar condition, and our world "hegemony" would be ceded to up-and-comers like China, Japan and India. I don't think that's what the neo-cons, or any other "cons" for that matter, had in mind. Believe it or not, Righties, that ain't even what them godless liberals wants.
And by the way, this plan for postwar Iran -- sounds mighty familiar, doesn't it? Our officials seem to be stuck in a mode of: "We're going to make all the same mistakes again. But we're going to make them better this time."
Now back to that Times of India report:
Defence experts said the revelation that America's military planning is advanced and well-calibrated to wipe out chunks of Iran's installations and infrastructure and could lay bare swathes of the country was bound to scare policy makers and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic. ...
Plesch's report claimed the US Army, Navy, Air Force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for "Operation Iranian Freedom". He added that Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerised plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).
He chillingly claimed, "US defence establishment's programme called "Global Strike" means that, without any obvious signal, what was done to Serbia and Lebanon can be done overnight to the whole of Iran." He added saying, "We, and probably the Iranians, would not know about it until after the bombs fell. Forces that hide will suffer the fate of Saddam's armies, once their positions are known."
Semper fi, y'all.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his new blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
There's nothing like a good old-fashioned war to divert public attention away from scandal(s).
According to some sources, the Bush administration has one planned, and it may be just a question of when: days, weeks or months.
The Times of India published this report last month:
US preparations for invading Iran are complete: Report
By Rashmee Roshan Lal
LONDON: American preparations for invading Iran are complete and a major conventional war with Teheran could begin any day, according to a chilling new report that coincides with leading US Democrat Congressmen's warning to President Bush that he does not have the authority to go to war with Iran.
The report, by authoritative defence expert Dan Plesch, says American military operations for Iran "extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran's military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons."
Plesch, who is known to be well-connected and well-networked at the very highest reaches of the trans-Atlantic political and defence establishment, quoted unnamed British military sources to say that "the US military switched its whole focus to Iran" as soon as Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Baghdad.
He said his sources added that the US has continued this target-Iran strategy ever since, even though the American infantry continues to be bogged down fighting the insurgency in Iraq.
In an assertion that has astonished European capitals, the defence guru claimed that despite the gross failure to re-build post-Saddam Iraq, American hubris extends to plans for a "peaceful" post-invasion "settlement" for Iran. This plan will seek to create a federal nation, an "Iran of the regions", he said.
With the administration embattled with yet another scandal, involving the firing of U.S. attorneys, it's such a convenient time for Big Brother to get us a new, improved enemy, one that even many liberals can hate. After all, that country's leader is a hard-liner who has even denied that the Holocaust took place. He seems more than a bit of a kook -- even more of one than we have in the White House. (You know, the fella who has lots of meaningful dialogues with God, now that he's sober.)
I won't discuss whether such a war, to be fought over Iran's apparent nuclear ambitions, would be justified. I won't go back in time, to 1953, about how the U.S. set itself up for this dilemma by engineering a coup that overthrew a legitimate nationalist government and installed the Shah in power for 25 brutal years, largely because Big Oil coveted Iran's reserves. I won't even go into the usual tedious humanitarian objections to all the civilian carnage that would surely follow such an invasion. Let us assume here as the Right does, just for the sake of argument, that U.S. moral authority is beyond question and that we would have a perfect right to lay waste to large portions of Iran and its people, unless its government backs down on the nukes.
A new military adventure of this kind by the Bush neo-con cabal would have the potential to become a far worse disaster than the Iraq war has been. The problem is, and has been for four years now, that our all-volunteer military is severely overextended. We've already got two wars going, and even the one in Afghanistan now looks far from over. This administration, with its remarkable hubris, did not pick our battles wisely.
Afghanistan, historically, is a very bad place to make war. But toppling the Taliban seemed very much the thing to do at the time, since they were harboring bin Laden and al-Qaida. But then the neo-cons soon got us into an elective war in Iraq, one that at least initially had nothing at all to do with the particular terrorists we were supposed to be hunting. Message to the Right Wing: There was no verifiable link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida; even the administration conceded that, albeit long after the invasion.
To be sure, Saddam was an evil dude. But he was being effectively contained; and toppling him got U.S. troops caught up in a bloody civil war, and actually opened Iraq's borders so that al-Qaida terrorists could enter the country after that.
It's hard to understand how even the most indoctrinated super-patriot fails to see that this was, at the very least, a devastating blunder. And, there's not going to be any good way out of it.
And now we're looking at the possibility of war with Iran. Certainly they don't have the military technology to win, at least not outright. Their infrastructure would likely be demolished quickly.
But consider: This is a country of 70 million, over three times the size of Iraq, with the median age of the male population being 25.4 years, according to the CIA Factbook. And, as the Israelis discovered long ago, women can shoot, too. They can be very lethal rifle soldiers.
That's an awful lot of cannon fodder. Would there be an insurgency? Imagine Iraq, times 3 or 4. And Iran is overwhelmingly Shiite. The Iranians wouldn't likely be fighting each other very much, as the Iraqis are.
It's a bigger country than Iraq in land mass, too, and there's lots of mountains. It would require a huge occupation force. (Hey, young fellas -- ready to get that draft notice from Chickenhawk George?)
And, what will the neighbors think? Iraq has Shiite militias that aren't openly fighting us now. If we invade a Shiite neighbor, do you figure they might? And what about Syria, to name only one Arab country that might be chapped?
Let's think on an even broader scale. Is there a possibility that Israel would get involved on our side, and then attacked? (Not necessarily in that order.) They have nukes, by the way. And hey, I just remembered that Russia and China have nukes, too. Lots of them. And big armies. And they've already warned the U.S. against such military action. We can only hope that they would be loath to get involved in such a bloody mess and would limit themselves to strong condemnations of U.S. actions.
We've got the potential for World War III here, with the entire Mideast as Ground Zero. Surely, one would think, our leaders would be circumspect enough not to get us involved in such a needless Armageddon.
But think again. Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, has written about a group of men who served during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, and also Bush the First in early '90s, as high-level, but not top-level, officials. They were often referred to (reportedly, for one, by then-General Colin Powell) as "the crazies." Name any reckless military action you can imagine from that time, and they were for it.
Guess what? These are the men who have been in charge of Bush policy in the Mideast, for over six years.
And one thing we've seen over and over is that a nasty war, with lots of burning Humvees, bodybags and gutwagons, will be Page One, at least for a good while. In that news budget meeting, the fired U.S. attorneys wouldn't stand a chance. And flag lapel pins will become mandatory. ("Hey, hippie, America's at war. Git a f***ing haircut and join the f***ing Marines!")
I'm not much of a gambler. But if I were, I would bet a modest sum that the U.S., Israel and other allies would eventually win such a protracted, epic war -- but the costs would be almost unimaginable. Envision the United Kingdom in 1946 -- victorious, but in ruins. I would wager further that the U.S. would emerge in a similar condition, and our world "hegemony" would be ceded to up-and-comers like China, Japan and India. I don't think that's what the neo-cons, or any other "cons" for that matter, had in mind. Believe it or not, Righties, that ain't even what them godless liberals wants.
And by the way, this plan for postwar Iran -- sounds mighty familiar, doesn't it? Our officials seem to be stuck in a mode of: "We're going to make all the same mistakes again. But we're going to make them better this time."
Now back to that Times of India report:
Defence experts said the revelation that America's military planning is advanced and well-calibrated to wipe out chunks of Iran's installations and infrastructure and could lay bare swathes of the country was bound to scare policy makers and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic. ...
Plesch's report claimed the US Army, Navy, Air Force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for "Operation Iranian Freedom". He added that Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerised plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).
He chillingly claimed, "US defence establishment's programme called "Global Strike" means that, without any obvious signal, what was done to Serbia and Lebanon can be done overnight to the whole of Iran." He added saying, "We, and probably the Iranians, would not know about it until after the bombs fell. Forces that hide will suffer the fate of Saddam's armies, once their positions are known."
Semper fi, y'all.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his new blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Bush Has Set An Appallingly Bad Example For Wartime Sacrifice
.
This Los Angeles Times op-ed by Kitty Kelley really says it all. The only thing I'd like to add to this piece is that during World War II, FDR set taxes at a responsible level that enabled America to (A) fight the war without racking up crushing deficits and (B) make sure that everyone contributed---even those who stayed home while our soldiers fought overseas.
By contrast, today's fratboy-in-chief doesn't call for any war-time sacrifice on the home front, least of all from his family. And while FDR's war-time inauguration balls were low-key and subdued, Bush staged one of the most expensive, lavish inaugurations in American history in 2005. And now Bush seems to just spend all his time trying to figure out how to cut Paris Hilton's taxes. I guess letting Hilton buy yet another yacht is more important than giving our troops adequate armor for combat.
Why aren't the Bush daughters in Iraq?
By Kitty Kelley
When I was a little girl in a convent school, the nuns impressed on me the power of setting a good example. These beloved teachers are no longer around to instruct the president and his family, so I recommend that the Bushes learn from Mark Twain, who said: "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
My suggestion comes after the White House announcement earlier this month that Jenna Bush, one of the president's twin daughters, is writing a book on her all-expenses-paid trip to Panama, where she worked for a few weeks as an intern for UNICEF. Jenna Bush is quoted as saying she will donate her earnings from her book to UNICEF, a commendable gesture, considering her father's net worth of $20 million. But while the 25-year-old makes the rounds of TV talk shows this fall in a White House limousine, dozens of her contemporaries will be arriving home from Iraq in wooden boxes. In Britain, Prince Harry is insisting on going off to Iraq — even as his country is reducing its troop commitment.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed how the power of good example could also be powerfully good politics. When he led the country to sacrifice in World War II, his children enlisted and his wife traveled to military bases to counsel and comfort the families of soldiers. Newsreels showed the president's four sons fighting with the Marines in the Pacific, flying with the Army Air Forces in North Africa and landing with the Navy at Normandy. Soon other public figures followed suit — movie stars (James Stewart and Clark Gable) enlisted and sports heroes (Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg) went off to war.
The contrast between FDR's good example during wartime and that of George W. Bush is stark and sad. The Bush family rallies to the political campaigns of its scions and spends months on the road raising money and shaking hands to put their men into public office. In fact, the public image of their cohesive family — the pearl-choked matriarch surrounded by progeny and springer spaniels — helped cinch more than one presidency for the Bushes. Yet now, when its legacy is most in peril, the family seems to be squandering its good will on a mess of celebridreck.
The president tells us Iraq is a "noble" war, but his wife, his children and his nieces and nephews are not listening. None has enlisted in the armed services, and none seems to be paying attention to the sacrifices of military families. Until Jenna's trip to Panama, the presidential daughters performed community service only when mandated by a court after they were cited for underage drinking. Since then they have surfaced in public during lavish presidential trips with their parents, bar-hopping outings in Georgetown and champagne-popping art openings in New York.
The first lady, so often lauded for her love of literacy, has not been seen in the reading rooms of veterans' hospitals. The president's sister, Doro, publicly picketed Al Gore's last days in the vice president's mansion as he awaited the Supreme Court's decision on the Florida recount of 2000. Yet she has been strangely absent from publicly supporting her brother's war.
The presidential nieces and nephews also have missed the memo on setting a good public example. Ashley Bush — the youngest daughter of the president's brother, Neil, and Neil's ex-wife, Sharon — was presented to Manhattan society at the 52nd Annual International Debutantes Ball at the Waldorf Astoria. Her older sister, Lauren, a runway model, told London's Evening Standard that she is a student ambassador for the United Nations World Food Program, but she would not lobby her uncle for U.S. funds. Her cousin, Billy Bush, chronicles the lives of celebrities on "Access Hollywood."
"Uncle Bucky," as William H.T. Bush is known within the family, is one presidential relative who has profited from the Iraq war. He recently sold all of his shares in Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI), a St. Louis-based company that has flourished under the president's no-bid policy for military contractors. Uncle Bucky told the Los Angeles Times that he would have preferred that ESSI, on whose board he sits, was not involved in Iraq, "but, unfortunately, we live in a troubled world."
The only member of the Bush family to show the strains of our "troubled world" is former President George H.W. Bush, who shed tears recently while addressing the Florida Legislature. The elder Bush was talking about son Jeb's gubernatorial loss in 1994. Jeb, who was later elected, tried to console him. But the sobs of Bush 41 seemed to be more about his older son's "noble" war.
Perhaps the father's sadness sprang from his own experience fighting in what his parents called "Mr. Roosevelt's war" — the good war — the war that saved the world from tyranny. He enlisted at 18 to fly torpedo bombers. He flew 58 missions in two years and returned home a war hero. Since then, no one in his large family has seen fit to follow his sterling example of service and patriotism.
This Los Angeles Times op-ed by Kitty Kelley really says it all. The only thing I'd like to add to this piece is that during World War II, FDR set taxes at a responsible level that enabled America to (A) fight the war without racking up crushing deficits and (B) make sure that everyone contributed---even those who stayed home while our soldiers fought overseas.
By contrast, today's fratboy-in-chief doesn't call for any war-time sacrifice on the home front, least of all from his family. And while FDR's war-time inauguration balls were low-key and subdued, Bush staged one of the most expensive, lavish inaugurations in American history in 2005. And now Bush seems to just spend all his time trying to figure out how to cut Paris Hilton's taxes. I guess letting Hilton buy yet another yacht is more important than giving our troops adequate armor for combat.
Why aren't the Bush daughters in Iraq?
By Kitty Kelley
When I was a little girl in a convent school, the nuns impressed on me the power of setting a good example. These beloved teachers are no longer around to instruct the president and his family, so I recommend that the Bushes learn from Mark Twain, who said: "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
My suggestion comes after the White House announcement earlier this month that Jenna Bush, one of the president's twin daughters, is writing a book on her all-expenses-paid trip to Panama, where she worked for a few weeks as an intern for UNICEF. Jenna Bush is quoted as saying she will donate her earnings from her book to UNICEF, a commendable gesture, considering her father's net worth of $20 million. But while the 25-year-old makes the rounds of TV talk shows this fall in a White House limousine, dozens of her contemporaries will be arriving home from Iraq in wooden boxes. In Britain, Prince Harry is insisting on going off to Iraq — even as his country is reducing its troop commitment.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed how the power of good example could also be powerfully good politics. When he led the country to sacrifice in World War II, his children enlisted and his wife traveled to military bases to counsel and comfort the families of soldiers. Newsreels showed the president's four sons fighting with the Marines in the Pacific, flying with the Army Air Forces in North Africa and landing with the Navy at Normandy. Soon other public figures followed suit — movie stars (James Stewart and Clark Gable) enlisted and sports heroes (Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg) went off to war.
The contrast between FDR's good example during wartime and that of George W. Bush is stark and sad. The Bush family rallies to the political campaigns of its scions and spends months on the road raising money and shaking hands to put their men into public office. In fact, the public image of their cohesive family — the pearl-choked matriarch surrounded by progeny and springer spaniels — helped cinch more than one presidency for the Bushes. Yet now, when its legacy is most in peril, the family seems to be squandering its good will on a mess of celebridreck.
The president tells us Iraq is a "noble" war, but his wife, his children and his nieces and nephews are not listening. None has enlisted in the armed services, and none seems to be paying attention to the sacrifices of military families. Until Jenna's trip to Panama, the presidential daughters performed community service only when mandated by a court after they were cited for underage drinking. Since then they have surfaced in public during lavish presidential trips with their parents, bar-hopping outings in Georgetown and champagne-popping art openings in New York.
The first lady, so often lauded for her love of literacy, has not been seen in the reading rooms of veterans' hospitals. The president's sister, Doro, publicly picketed Al Gore's last days in the vice president's mansion as he awaited the Supreme Court's decision on the Florida recount of 2000. Yet she has been strangely absent from publicly supporting her brother's war.
The presidential nieces and nephews also have missed the memo on setting a good public example. Ashley Bush — the youngest daughter of the president's brother, Neil, and Neil's ex-wife, Sharon — was presented to Manhattan society at the 52nd Annual International Debutantes Ball at the Waldorf Astoria. Her older sister, Lauren, a runway model, told London's Evening Standard that she is a student ambassador for the United Nations World Food Program, but she would not lobby her uncle for U.S. funds. Her cousin, Billy Bush, chronicles the lives of celebrities on "Access Hollywood."
"Uncle Bucky," as William H.T. Bush is known within the family, is one presidential relative who has profited from the Iraq war. He recently sold all of his shares in Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI), a St. Louis-based company that has flourished under the president's no-bid policy for military contractors. Uncle Bucky told the Los Angeles Times that he would have preferred that ESSI, on whose board he sits, was not involved in Iraq, "but, unfortunately, we live in a troubled world."
The only member of the Bush family to show the strains of our "troubled world" is former President George H.W. Bush, who shed tears recently while addressing the Florida Legislature. The elder Bush was talking about son Jeb's gubernatorial loss in 1994. Jeb, who was later elected, tried to console him. But the sobs of Bush 41 seemed to be more about his older son's "noble" war.
Perhaps the father's sadness sprang from his own experience fighting in what his parents called "Mr. Roosevelt's war" — the good war — the war that saved the world from tyranny. He enlisted at 18 to fly torpedo bombers. He flew 58 missions in two years and returned home a war hero. Since then, no one in his large family has seen fit to follow his sterling example of service and patriotism.
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