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ARCHIVE:
6/27/04-7/11/04
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SUNDAY
07.11.04 / 8:51
PM /
LINK
In case you were wondering about the end
of American democracy...
In case you were wondering
(as I've been for at least a year and a half) when the Bush administration
would float the idea of canceling or postponing the election,
wonder no more. The news is here.
Info from some wacked out blog? Skewed left wing propaganda from
The Nation. Something from The Kerry campaign? Nah. Just
go to innocuous old Newsweek for the
story.
How are we gonna wrest the presidency away from these guys? We'll
have to pry it from their cold, dead hands --to paraphrase Moses.
Hmmmm... Maybe the Republican's have cloned Stalin and have him
heading a clandestine DOTT (Despot Oriented Think Tank) in the
basement of the whited sepulcher.
Isn't it exciting to be alive at the very moment Tom Jefferson's
(et.al.) splendid experiment tanks. Oh, the history of it! Oh,
the irony. The brain-child of those great minds of the Enlightenment
undone by a smug under-achieving C-student from Texas.
 TOP
07.11.04
/ 6:49 AM /
LINK
Fessing up is hard to do
Not that
they'd ever admit it, but the Senate Intelligence Committee's
just released report said George Bush took us to war on bogus
intelligence. Of course the president did nothing wrong. He was
just following orders. The CIA's orders. The buck never stops
in this oval office.
Fessing up is not something
politicians or governments do easily or well. For both, admitting
error is never politically correct, so shifting blame or stone-walling
is usually standard procedure.
Richard Nixon, the only president ever forced to resign, took
out his cold chisel and three pound sledge right  after
Gordon Liddy and his crew of (thank God) incompetents were found
breaking into the National Democratic Party headquarters at the
Watergate. Nixon chiseled and shaped (but mostly chiseled) his
way through the rest of his presidency until his stone wall finally
caved in and crushed it.
Bill Clinton did the same during the Monica maelstrom, but was
spared a complete collapse of his reign due to the fact that
the people knew the difference between lust and looting.
Politics, then, is one constraint on owning error.
Another constraint is that some people are not compelled by character
to admit error. To them, admitting error is the definition of
"wuss". In some circles the diameter of one's cajones
is the true mark of a man, and cajones, by nature, shrink in
the presence of contrition. True men require construction-grade
wheelbarrows to transport their cajones. These men, upon falling
into the sea of redemption, will find that their cajones might
as well be a couple of bowling balls.
Machismo is a second constraint on owning error.
Still one more bar to redeeming compunction is that some wouldn't
know error even if it lead them into needless war and the excesses
of war, such as torture. There is no error in the presence of
necessity, these folks say. To them necessity is the mother of
intention, while necessity itself is mothered by invention, not
the other way around. At least that's the way it works in the
Bush administration. Between such folks and tyranny stands a
wall of gossamer.
So, ignorance inflated by arrogance is a third contraint on owning
error.
Jim Hoagland in today's
Washington Post covers some of this ground. Citing the fictional
character Jack Bauer of the tv series "24",
Hoagland observes that "...Bauer has on cue savagely beaten,
tortured and even killed bad and good guys to save American cities
from nuclear bombs, deadly viruses and other weapons of mass
destruction wielded by terrorists."
But fictional Jack Bauer is not inhibited by thoughts of butt-covering.
He acts out of the conviction that necessity trumps all and doesn't
look for the approbation of policy-makers. But for Jack the program's
over when the station logo pops on screen and we segue into what
comes next (unless we're watching Law and Order reruns
which come back-to-back ad infinitum).
Unfortunately for us, however, our current policy makers all
seem to be Jack Bauers. The rub is, in real life there are moral
and practical repercussions to human rights digressions. Governments
have been digressing from human rights out of "necessity"
since time immemorial. That's why they invented the idea of the
United States of America. Do we really want to un-become ourselves
so abruptly after over two hundred years of trying to become
(as Ronald Reagan fantasized), "...a shining city on a hill"?
Such is our 2004 electoral dilemma.
TOP
FRIDAY 07.09.04 / 6:49 AM / LINK
Is God a Republican?
Either George Bush is
the luckiest man alive, God is a Republican, or Satan is still
going to and fro in the world, this time among U.S. military
archives.
In one of those amazingly coincidental 18-minute-gap-in-the-tape
moments that often benefit politicians, the very records that
would spell out exactly when George did or didn't show up for
service in the air national guard have been accidentally
destroyed.
Should we be surprised? I think not.
TOP
MONDAY 07.05.04 / 9:43 PM / LINK
Tax cuts for deep pockets = jobs for the
lowers eschelons? Nah.
Paul
Krugman says
latest job numbers show it ain't working. What Krugman says is,
"If you want a single number that tells the story, it's
the percentage of adults who have jobs. When Mr. Bush took office,
that number stood at 64.4. By last August it had fallen to 62.2
percent. In June, the number was 62.3. That is, during Mr. Bush's
first 30 months, the job situation deteriorated drastically.
Last summer it stabilized, and since then it may have improved
slightly. But jobs are still very scarce, with little relief
in sight."
He asks in today's commentary when the "optimism" of
the Bush administration will give way to reality so we can do
something to correct this trend to fewer and lower paying jobs.
The answer is, probably never. Being the true fundamentalist
he is, George Bush will drive this juggernaught into the rocks
before he discards his faith. Flexibility is not in his lexicon.
TOP
MONDAY
07.05.04
/ 9:43 PM /
LINK
A few apt quotes
Thanks
to Body
and Soul
"I distrust
those who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice
it always coincides with their own desires." -- Susan B. Anthony
"It
is the first duty of every citizen to question authority." -- Benjamin Franklin
"War
is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong;
and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses." -- Thomas Jefferson
"True patriotism
hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else."
-- Clarence
Darrow
TOP
07.05.04 / 9:19 PM / LINK
Sometimes the people are smarter
Sometimes
Americans are smarter than some of their legislators, sometimes
they're as dumb as they are. So far, on the issue of gay marriage
they seem to be on the smarter side; or so this
article
in The Hill says.
TOP
07.05.04
/ 9:26 AM / LINK
What happens when the blind lead the blind?
Here's
an essay from "Anonymous"
summarizing what he or she has to say about imperial hubris in
his book Imperial Hubris. Anonymous is telling us something
vital; something that all American not only have to hear but
internalize.
The essay is posted at Common
Dreams News Service which explains that "The author
is a senior counterintelligence official at the CIA who served
from 1996 to 1999 as head of a special unit tracking Osama bin
Laden. The CIA allowed publication of his book, 'Imperial Hubris'
(Brassey's, 2004), in which the author is identified as 'Anonymous.'
"
The telling phrase in that explaination
is "The CIA allowed
publication of his book..." Why would an agency presidcated
upon secrecy allow publication of this information? Because it's
importance surpasses the requirements of secrecy.
As Anonymous says, "I have long experience analyzing and
attacking Bin Laden and Islamists. I believe they are a growing
threat to the United States — there is no greater threat
— and that we are being defeated not because the evidence
of the threat is unavailable but because we refuse to accept
it at face value and without Americanizing the data. This must
change, or our way of life will be unrecognizably altered."
TOP
SUNDAY
07.04.04 / 8:35
AM / LINK
Fahrenheit 541 redux
Taking
a page from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit
541, R.L. Fridley, the owner of some midwestern
movie theaters would love to burn Fahrenheit 9/11 --or
so it seems.
Assuming the identity of Bradbury's Capt.
Beatty,
he says it incites terrorism.
Maybe it's just a coincidence, but isn't this exactly the rational
that motivates the Bush administration to chip away at the foundation
of the republic using John Ashcroft as a pick axe and the Justice
Department as a shovel?
TOP
07.04.04
/ 7:43 AM /
LINK
What's bad for Bush is good for the nation
Columnist
Dan Payne covers some bad
news for Bush.
And bad news for Bush is good for the nation, especially if you're
talking election prospects.
SATURDAY
07.03.04
/ 1:45 PM / LINK
Being on the right side
You might
want to read this
apt eulogy
for Brando by David Zirin.
 "...the Brando
I want to remember, especially now, is the actor who pulled back
in the 1960s to focus on supporting the Civil Rights Movement
and the broader struggles against war and oppression."
"It is tragic that we live in a world where most people's
talents never get to see the light of day. It is equally tragic
that those like Brando who actually get the opportunity to spread
their creative wings, can be consumed and yanked apart in process.
Yet whether Brando was on the top of Hollywood or alone and embittered,
he never forgot what side he was on."
TOP
07.03.04 / 7:19 AM /
LINK
Big box Salvation
"The
bigger we get, the faster it grows," said Rod Pearcy, who
runs the Calvary Chapel media centre in Fort Lauderdale. We are
in the age of the superstore, like Home Depot, Lowe's and Super
Target. The reason people go to them is there is so much more
to offer. It is the same thing with mega-churches."
 Ah,
the mega-church. Costco Christianity. An idea so perfectly American.
For those alarmed at the USA’s accelerating descent into
spiritism, it’s important to note that Calvary Chapel is
part of an evangelical "franchise" based in California
–or so a report in The Guardian says (July 3, 2004).
As we learn in
the
article
by Julian Borger, "Protestant mega-churches are spreading
exponentially. There are now 850 in America. They each have congregations
of more than 2,000 and a combined total of 3 million." And
most of these people, it seems, believe George Bush is a man
of God. They’ll vote for him even as the constitution turns
to dust. It’ll be an act of faith.
But what’s
wrong with acts of faith? Nothing, except that they’re based
on faith. And, for extremists, faith trumps rational discourse.
Faith is backed by divine authority such as the will of Allah
which is revealed in stories found in books like the Koran and
Bible. As such, faith is immune from rational critique and evaluation.
This can lead to serious problems in the human give and take
department.
For instance,
The World Trade Center attacks were probably based on faith.
The murder of abortion doctor Barnett Slepian several years ago
was likely based on faith. The chronic centuries-long persecution
and murder of Jews has been based on faith. The history of racism
in this country has been based on faith. The epidemic of suicide
bombings in Israel and elsewhere have almost certainly been based
on faith. And the decision to go to war in Iraq was essentially
based on faith. And although it’s true that good things
have also been based on faith they’re not nearly as problematic.
Few of us are likely to argue with a good samaritan caught in
the act and demand they stop doing what they’re doing. But
trying to argue with a faithful Muslim on a fatwa or an army
of faithful Christians under an evangelical Commander-in-Chief
is another story completely. Imagine cadres of charismatics pouring
out of mosques and mega-churches into congress and the courts
all bent on salting the constitution with religious scripture?
Whose scripture, and whose interpretation? This is what the separation
of church and state is all about. Where's Reason when you need
her? You see the problem.
But the faithful
seem to find succor under the big tents. It must bring deep peace
to know you’re among the Lord’s special people. A humble
but elite cog in a godly gear. In these huge new sectarian Malls
of Presumption group-think and convenience are being hyped as
high ideals. Oh, you’ll find well-equipped schools in a
mega church; cafeterias, bookshops. and multimedia centers producing
music videos and CDs of sermons. And you’ll find support
centers for people with cancer and those recently divorced (some
of the good effects of faith I mentioned). And you may even find
diving clubs and data ported pews with digital camera docks.
But there will be no Center for Reasoned Debate. There's room
enough in a mega church for practically everything but open discourse.
This is why these institutions have such an affinity for George
Bush and his administration which is itself a kind of secret
society demanding unquestioning fealty, patriotically speaking.
As reported in
the Guardian, "John Vaughan, whose organization Church Growth
Today monitors and encourages their expansion, says a new mega-church
appears in America every four days. Their success, he argues,
lies in a simple formula: 'inflexible with the word of God.'
"
Inflexibility.
Now there's an un-American ideal if ever there was one. And it’s
the watch-word of the Bush administration too. It's all so sadly
perfect ...and circular: the Age of Enlightenment, which motivated
and inspired the great minds of Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton
to conceive America in the 18th century, being aborted here at
the beginning of the 21st by their mutant offspring. It’s
as if they’re saying God did not give us our intellects
to exercise, but to exorcise.
"No matter
what happens in Iraq, and no matter what the American economy
does between now and the presidential election," says Borger,
"Randy Bernsen (Christian) will be voting for George Bush.
It’ll be an act of faith."
No matter
what happens.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all were that irresponsible?
Screw the evidence. Go ahead, deny that God gave us brains to
do more with than sop doctrine. Where would we be if we’d
followed that advice? There would be no vital nation at all.
There would be no U.S. Capital, no White House, no Courts. No
freedom of religion or speech. No Disneyworld. We’d probably
be just another backwater fiefdom under the thumb of some north-american
warloard ayatolla. We’d probably feel a lot like Native
Americans. But fortunately, founder and 2nd president John Adams
(and rebel cohorts) embraced God’s gifts differently, and
it was their vision that helped this nation to greatness, not
the pinched preachings of the Falwells, Robertsons, and Bushes,
then and now.
In a letter to
Thomas Jefferson Adams wrote, "...human understanding is
a divine faculty ... which can never be disputed nor doubted.
There can be no skepticism . . . or incredulity, or infidelity
here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove the celestial
communication.
"This revelation
has made it certain that two and one makes three, and that one
is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain
of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle,
as we are from the revelation of nature, i.e., Nature’s
God, that two and two are equal to four. Miracles or prophecies
might frighten us out of our wits; might scare us to death; might
induce us to lie, to say that we believe that two and two make
five. But we should not believe it. We should know the contrary."
We must know
the contrary. Truth (and the bottom line of every accountant's
balance sheet but Enron’s) demands it.
TOP
07.03.04
/ 6:00 AM / LINK
The trouble with axe-to-grind tv news
. . .
"What
you see is what you want" might as well be the motto of
both Fox News and Al Jazeera suggests
Nicholas Kristof.
But they're not the place to expect to get accurate info. And
running a country based on the Fox skew ain't gonna get the desired
results. As a matter of fact, Kristof says the president might
do us all a favor if he watched Al Jazeera instead.
"If President Bush wants to rescue his Iraqi adventure,
here's a suggestion: Spend less time with C.I.A. sycophants like
George Tenet and more time watching Al Jazeera television."
It's not that he'd get un-skewed info from the "Fox of the
East News", but he'd have a better idea of what the Arab
street was thinking.
As commentator Kristof points out, "President Bush's narrative
for the war was: 'Altruistic Americans risk their lives to topple
evil dictator and establish democracy and human rights.' The
Arab narrative was: 'The same Yankees who pay for Israelis to
blow up Palestinians are now seizing Iraqi oil fields and maiming
Iraqi women and children.' "
The problem with George Bush is he's spent so much of his life
as an insulated, protected elite he doesn't seem to get the idea
that there are valid counter realities out there that must be
paid attention to.
TOP
FRIDAY
07.02.04 / 6:00
AM / LINK
Voting Machines R Us, but definitely not
them
The problem
with electronic voting machines is the same problem we have with
computers and the internet, it's: he who controls the input controls
the output. And, if hackers have had their way with computer
systems in the past why would they call voting machines off limits
in the future? You see, electronic voting machines are
computers.
Let's not forget that those millions of lines of computer code
that determine what your computer does are written by who-knows-who.
Do you know the political affiliation of the person who told
your computer what to do when you type X, Y, Z? Does it matter?
Probably not. But it might if the same person were writing code
for say, a Diebold voting machine.
As Molly Ivins points out here, such a situation "...was
rather dramatically underlined when Walden 'Wally' O'Dell, chairman
and CEO of Diebold Election Systems and a Bush campaign
'Pioneer' (meaning he raised at least $100,000), wrote in a 2003
fund-raising letter that he is 'committed to helping Ohio deliver
its electoral votes to the president.' "
Now we all know Republicans are faith-based straight shooters
and would never manipulate an election (not counting Florida).
But doesn't prudence dictate caution?
And hey, Republicans! Although it does seem impossible to imagine
right now, but what if by some fluke, some intervention by the
whimsical Lord, Democrats controled the e-machines? But, oh,
Democrats have never committed voter fraud...
TOP
07.02.04 / 6:00 AM /
LINK
Terrorist this and terrorist that, blah,
blah, blah, blah ...now watch this drive.
Paul
Krugman says
Michael Moore's
movie may be flawed, but it exposes the essential George Bush
for what he is: an elite son who never did much to deserve the
U.S. Presidency. He says it gives a closer version of the truth
than the one most Americans have been operating under thanks
to the calculated lassitude of the US media.
TOP
WEDNESDAY 06.30.04 / 5:40 AM /
LINK
On turning it down a notch
Nicholas
Kristoff says here that the left should
turn down the rhetoric. He says it's damaging it's reputation
for subtlty and nuance.
Kristoff says, "In the 1990's, nothing made conservatives
look more petty and simple-minded than their demonization of
Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were even accused of spending their
spare time killing Vince Foster and others. Mr. Clinton, in other
words, left the right wing addled. Now Mr. Bush is doing the
same to the left."
TOP
06.30.04 / 5:40 AM /
LINK
And no one shouted "Bullshit!"
Of all
the reasons we wound up in the morass of Iraq two are the most
troubling. One is that the Democratic Party just up and disappeared
at a crucial moment in history. It turned it's back and walked
away. The other is that the national media became an adjunct
to the administration in it's hype for war. It became Dick Cheney's
propoganda machine.
Michael Moore addresses the failure of the Democrats in his Fahrenheit
911 in the segment of clips of the Senate's ratification
of the stolen election of 2000. In the scene numbers of black
congresspeople stand before the senate to condemn the disenfranchisement
of black Florida voters, but to no avail. Why? Because not one
senator would sign their letter to the senate challenging the
validity of the election. Only one senate signature was required
to make their case legitimate by the rules. But not one senator
signed. Not one. Where was Ted Kennedy? Where was Tom Daschle?
Where was John Kerry? At the time I was so frustrated I was kicking
dirt and cursing. It was all you could do.
As for troubling reason #2, that's dealt with pretty thoroughly
right here in article in the New
York Press by Matt Taibbi.
"If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush
press conference last year and shouted, 'Bullshit!' it might
have made a difference," Taibbi says. And, who but Christopher
Hitchens and other Bush administration apologists would refute
him?
TOP
SUNDAY
06.27.04 / 7:03
AM /
LINK
Scarier than King Kong,
more mechanical looking than Godzilla, as manipulative as Savanrola
...
 Frank Rich doesn't much
like John Ashcroft which makes him a discerning man in my book.
The NY Times commentator goes after the Attorney General here, examining his photo-op
strategies, his mysterious warnings, his bogus intelligence,
and questionable effectiveness as our legal protector.
It's a fun read if you're an eternal pessimist.
TOP
06.27.04 / 6:44 AM /
LINK
USA = Anti-al-Qaeda, Inc.
NY Times
columnists Thomas Friedman is going on sabbatical. His commentary
today
contains some headlines he'd like to see while he's gone. Here's
one:
Bush Administration Calls an End to the "War on
Terrorism."
No, I haven't taken leave of my senses on the way out the door.
I realize that we have enemies and they need to be confronted.
But I do not want this to be all that America is about in the
world anymore, and that is what has happened under this administration.
I don't want the rest of my career to be about an America that
exports fear, not hope, and ends up importing everyone else's
fears as a result. I don't want it to be about explaining to
young Chinese why my government can't give them student visas
anymore. I don't want it to be about visiting U.S. Embassies
around the world and finding them so isolated behind barbed wire,
they might as well not be there at all. Defeating "them"
has begun to define "us" in too many ways.
America is so much more than just "Anti-Al-Qaeda Inc."
— but our whole identity in the world, and too many aspects
of our way of life, are getting contorted around that mission.
If we're really having a relevant presidential campaign, I'll
come back and find the candidates debating, not who is the "toughest"
guy — the jungle is full of them — but who can be the
toughest guy while preserving the best of what we had and the
best of who we are.
TOP
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