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TUESDAY 03.30.04 / 5:50 AM / LINK

Blinded by the Right

What's a keyword in creating and running a world? Well, if you really believe God's evidence, that would be d-i-v-e-r-s-i-t-y. There's obviously something to be said for wide ranging variety. It seems to be inseprable from vitality.

It's diversity everywhere we look --except within the Bush administration. Diversity of thought is not something those guys put a high value upon. In that faith-based and sinful administration no one seems to takes their cues from the Lord. They're too busy watching their wealth accrue.

According to Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder News, "Accounts from insiders in the Bush White House describe a tightly controlled, top-down organization that pushes a predetermined agenda, shuns dissenting views and discourages open debate."

In a nutshell, I'd call this flirting with the devil.

"George Bush tends to make decisions on the basis of hunch and intuition, and then pulls together groups that confirm his decisions," said Paul Light, director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research center. "The only people who are invited to be on the team are people who agree with him."

The Bush Policy Research Method:

Have a hunch Get sychophants and thought-clones to find facts that back hunch Make policy Collect money

Even Richard Nixon looks good to me at this point.

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03.30.04 / 5:50 AM / LINK

Nitrogen Bomb?

Don't worry, this bomb only sucks oxygen out of the oceans. But as fish die for lack of breath, can trouble be far behind for a world which depends to a large extent upon food from oceans?

According to this report posted at Common Dreams News, "The spread of oxygen-starved 'dead zones' in the oceans, a graveyard for fish and plant life, is emerging as a threat to the health of the planet, experts say.

"For hundreds of millions of people who depend on seas and oceans for their livelihoods, and for many more who rely on a diet of fish and seafood to survive, the problem is acute.

"Some of the oxygen-deprived zones are relatively small, less than one square kilometer (0.4 square miles) in size. Others are vast, measuring more than 70,000 square kilometers."

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03.30.04 / 5:10 AM / LINK

Sucking the air out of democracy, as well

Abuse of power and character assassination are certainly ways to get things moving in your direction, but they've traditionally been frowned upon when they're blatant. Not so among Republicans and the Republican-tainted press corps.

But despite the reporting of journalists like Wolf Blitzer, Paul Krugman says, "Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an Associated Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks were "standard operating procedure" for this administration."

Krugman cites Bush administration offenses and concludes his piece with an unsettling quote from John Dean's book, "Worse Than Watergate."

Deans says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy."

Related:

Given their trend it would not take much for the Bush conspirators to shut down newspapers right here.


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"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt,the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it.

To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To
choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice.

Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."
-- Michael Rivero

03.28.04 / 6:57 AM / LINK

Tom Friedman's 115th Dream

I was riding on the Mayflower when though I spied some land...
Oops! Wrong guy wrong dream.

But NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman is having some significant dreams lately. They're about a global dearth of imagination. Lack of imagination --one of the deadliest of all lacks.

To imagine, you have to step out of your frame of reference. To a large extent what has made this country what it is is imagination. Not always moral imagination, not always wise imagination, not always compassionate imagination, but imagination nevertheless. Without imagination we're nothing but a nation of hacks. Without wise and compassionate imagination we're a nation of dangerous hacks. Seems like we're turning into a nation of dangerous hacks top down.

Empathy requires imagination. But imagination doesn't necessarily produce empathy. This is why for Friedman, "...it seems ... that the only people with imagination in the world right now are the bad guys."

A three-pronged approach for waking from a bad dream: 1. Get rid of George Bush in November ..2. Write on the blackboard 5 billion times (a quantity that equals the tax-cut president's budget deficit), "Our situation will not improve if we continue to think the USA is the center of the universe.".. 3. Nurture imagination.

Read Friedman's lament on the planetary state of imagination here.

Get a load of the rest of Ms. Ivin's comments here.

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03.27.04 / 5:44 AM / LINK

Dissing Clarke

As they did with ambassador Joe Wilson, ex-faith-based czar John Dilulio, and former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Niell, the administration will try to tear Richard Clarke apart. For such a narcissistic and unprincipled cabal this is just acting according to character. But Clarke is no idiot. We can be sure he knew exactly what to expect in coming out against the president as he did. But, how far will they go this time?

In the case of Joe Wilson they went so far as to out his C.I.A. agent wife, Valerie Plame. In doing so they undermined the operation of the C.I.A. and damaged national security, which some call treason. So we know nothing is beyond belief and not much is really sacred to these people, despite their faux-moral positions.

With Clarke the first tactic seems to be to declassify some records in an effort to show that Clarke perjured himself either before the 9/11 commission the other day, or when he testified under oath earlier at congressional hearings.

As reported in the NY Times today, "Republican Congressional leaders said Friday that they would seek to declassify past Congressional testimony from Richard A. Clarke, President Bush's former counter terrorism chief, in an effort to demonstrate that the former aide had lied this week about Mr. Bush's record."

This will be interesting. The idea of declassification seems to conflict with the Bush administrations position that "...parts of the final report of the Congressional Sept. 11 investigation remain secret." If it's been so important to keep the report away from prying eyes up till now, wouldn't it be remarkable if that suddenly changed just so they could roast Clarke? Having already shown a willingness to undermined national security in the Plame case, they've established precedent. The way they see it, national security depends upon George Bush remaining president. Their security is national security. This permits every kind of traditionally loathsome behavior.

Then there's this odd twist of the fabric of law and reason. The White House is willing to allow Condoleeza Rice to testify again before the 9/11 commission to refute Clarke --but not under oath. This is spectacular chutzpa. They charge Clarke with lying under oath then want to refute him, but refuse to do it under oath. They want the opportunity to legally lie!

The Democratic response to Republican call for declassification owes something to jujitsu. Sure, says Senator Bob Graham. "But ... it should be released in its entirety and ... the White House should declassify other documents integral to Mr. Clarke's testimony, including his January 2001 plan for action against Al Qaeda." Graham has also sought to release 27 pages of the report examining the involvement of foreign nations in support of the 19 hijackers.

And Timothy J. Roemer, Democrat on the independent commission, a former House member from Indiana who also served on the joint Congressional panel, "... said he supported the effort to make Mr. Clarke's testimony public. Mr. Roemer added, though, that there should also be given consideration to 'carefully, within the bounds of security' declassifying the private interviews that Ms. Rice gave last month to the independent Sept. 11 commission."

More:

Go here for Josh Marshall's parsing of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's speech on the Senate floor denouncing Richard Clarke for perjury then later backing off.

As Marshall points out, Frist first said (in his speech):

“Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath.”

But later (almost in the same breath, but not quite --only long enough to have his damaging accusation draw blood) backpedaled, telling reporters that:

"... he personally had no knowledge that there were any discrepancies between Clarke’s two appearances."

As I said, "...every kind of traditionally loathsome behavior."


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03.26.04 / 6:15 AM / LINK

Being as infallible as the Pope

Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice and duck hunter, has refused to recuse himself (but does manage to excuse himself) from concerns of impending partiality in a case coming before the Supreme Court.

The case involves vice president Dick Cheney's big secret energy task force meeting back when the Bush administration was setting national energy policy. The issue is: the judge went duck hunting with the defendant. The question is: should judges go duck hunting with defendants?

Well, he and Cheney are friends after all, says el judico. And besides, he says his impartiality can’t be questioned. But isn’t this just another way of saying he can’t be questioned? Sounds too much like the president to me --or to put it in the ever more popular faith-based frame of reference, it's as if the president and Scalia both consider themselves to be as infallible as the Pope.

Due to mounting criticism, judge Scalia recently issued a 21 page memo in response to a petition by the Sierra Club asking that he remove himself from the Cheney case. The Sierra Club is suing Cheney to release a list of the people who attended what turns out to be a secret meeting with energy industry top dogs to set national energy policy. The Sierra Club wants to know who was there because it looks like not only energy policy, but the entire zietgiest of the administration has been influenced by the oil industry. The Club has the quaint notion that, as citizens, we have a right to know who's influencing our government.

The meeting is only secret because the vice-president won’t tell us who was there. It seems Cheney must swear by the old adage: you can tell some of the people all of the time, and you can tell all of the people some of the time, but you can’t tell any of the people anything important most of the time because they are, after all, just the people. I think Machiavelli said that. But Machiavelli was no democrat. I said that.

In a nutshell, Cheney, along with Scalia and the president (re: Iraq), thinks he did nothing wrong. So that makes three self-proclaimed infallibles and the Pope.

As spelled out in his memo, what bugs Scalia is the suggestion that he can't be trusted to rule fairly because of his friendship with the vice president. Scalia writes, "recusal would be required if ... my 'impartiality might reasonably be questioned.'' But Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne asks, "Would a rational person doubt that, all things being equal, the judge just might tilt toward the man with whom he is so 'well acquainted?" Despite the justice's denial that his integrity make's his fairness a forgone conclusion, coziness is often not next to godliness.

Remember the John Gotti Trial years ago? The Dapper Don all over the news grinning and contemptuous of the proceedings. Remember that?

Now imagine (just prior to the prosecution of the case) the judge for Gotti's' trial being shuttled in a plane provided by Mr. Gotti, to say, a duck-shoot in the Bronx --along with some other bigwigs, of course, so it couldn't be called an intimate affair, and no one actually slept in the same room with the Don, and there was no opportunity to discuss the trial ...

Anyway, imagine this big blue and white jet, like Airforce 2. Imagine it's Gotti's plane. But wait, that's not Gotti's plane.


The Scalia/Cheney/Gotti duck hunting plane

It's the one Cheney provided to judge Scalia for his duck hunting trip in Louisiana just before Scalia would be hearing Cheney's big secret meeting case...

Now ask yourself, would such an event be grounds for Gotti's judge to recuse himself?

What would a reasonable person think? What do you think?

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