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FRIDAY 09.03.04 / 6:27 AM / LINK

A convention of billionaires

What do you expect from a convention by and for millionaires and billionaires, and sycophants of billionaires, a view from the street? The lies and vitriol than flowed from the stage of the Republican convention and through Madison Square Garden is a sad comment on Bush's America and the American political scene.

Cheney may want to obscure and ridicule the truth, but there really are two Americas. There are the haters of the real uniqueness of its founder's vision as opposed to those who still believe in it despite the blow of 9/11. As Paul Krugman says of the first, "... many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity."

But they may come to understand, with four more years of Bush, just what a corporate-government monolith really means. The rich have their corporations, their money, and, increasingly, our government. But they need government only to smooth their way. The poor and the middle class have only government, remove that power from us and we're at the mercy of the rich. This is what those founders knew in their bones and tried to forestall. The America they conceived, Republicans are working to destroy.

As one of the nastiest speakers at the GOP (Got Only Prevarication) convention put it, "Republicans have dealt in cynicism and skepticism" and "mastered the art of division and diversion." That was "Democrat" Zell Miller. But he didn't say it there, of course. He said it back in 1992 at the Democratic Convention when he whe was still a Democrat before he flip and flopped. But Miller's speech itself was filled with odious division and diversion.

Krugman wraps up his commentary with this: "Mr. Bush, it's now clear, intends to run a campaign based on fear. And for me, at least, it's working: thinking about what these people will do if they solidify their grip on power makes me very, very afraid."

For those who love this country and its liberty and diversity, fear is appropo.

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08.31.04 / 9:22 PM / LINK

I'm really starting to loathe these guys

You know, I'm really starting to loathe these guys. They all seem to be climbing deeper into the gutter. There is no slimey depth they will not sink to. And this is why, not in a million years, could I ever imagine voting for one. A George Bush Republican, that is.

Garrison Kiellor says it well here.

A taste:

How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?

Anyway, what I started to say was (and Kiellor is on the same wavelength), these people are turning into real bottom-feeders by the school. Even that rolly-poley nice grandpa-looking Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, has a real freakin' mean streak. He acts like this guys looks.

Revealing, huh? Now you tell me this man is a compassionate anything in his heart. This image, right here, is a glimpse of what's under that supposedly affable edifice.

And it must be catching because Hastert has been running off at the mouth saying George Soros, the mega-millionaire (or billionaire ...but whose counting, because for me anything over $45,000 is a really big number), is probably making his fortune in the drug trade. And he repeated the slur when asked by a reporter later to comment on it. I kid you not, as Jack Paar liked to say.

See, Republicans are mad at Soros because he's been spending millions to unseat Bush. By GOP standards he's not playing fair. Big money is not supposed to be used against the wealthy elite. It's supposed to be employed only to bash the ..uh, well, the employed ...or the under-employed ...or the unemployed... as the case may be as Bush administration policies continue their ravages.

What Hastert said in an interview with Chris Wallace was, "You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where - if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from ....for a number years - George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there .... I don't know where groups - could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know."

You'd think a guy who just said "I don't know" four times in a short paragraph would learn to keep his mouth shut. But that's a Bush minion for you.

And a question for Chris Wallace: Why are you interviewing a guy who doesn't know anything?


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08.29.04 / 4:51 AM / LINK

HUH?

What the hell does this mean? I found it in the Huston Chronicle and read it a couple of times now and I still haven't figured it out. Apparently it's something the adminstration copped from business jargon. It does sound like something dreamed up by an ad man.

"In an interview with Time Magazine, the president suggested he had underestimated the struggle of the postwar period in Iraq. 'Had we to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day,' Bush said."

"Catastrophic success"? There he goes again, sucking the life out of the language. Rendering it meaningless. Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat ...in word only. Or is the president admitting he's so incompetent even his "successes" are catastrophic. I'd lean that way.

Following this line of thought the old Politburo might imagine the collapse of the Soviet Union as a catastrophic success, since its brand of deceit and it's doubletalk are aped and issued daily from the bowels of the Bush administration.

Or maybe George is hoping our two-hundred-plus-year-old experiment in democracy is finally climaxing in a catastrophic success owing to the policies of his presidency. Sounds plausible.

Have there been other catastrophic successes in history we can relate to? What about this: Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and is in turn bombed into nuclear submission by the U.S.A. (resulting in the flattening of two of it's cities at the cost of tens-of-thousands of lives) only to rise again from radioactive ashes and overrun us with Toyotas, Nissans, and sushi bars --but that would really be a success only for those who weren't in Hiroshima or Nagasaki at the moment of catastrophe.

Catastrophic success? Gimme a break. Is there no end to Rovian thought pollution?

And, as if the expression itself wasn't utterly mind-bending and self serving, he follows it with an explanation. He says he was dealing with an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in but escaped to live to fight another day.

Too bad he wasn't dealing with an enemy that did surrender or had been destroyed. It would have been so much better for everybody involved. As it is, they lived to fight another day.

Correct me if I'm wrong but in the old days, when words had meaning, wouldn't it have been correct to say that if you engaged the enemy and they didn't surrender, or were not done in, and lived to fight another day (to the tune of a thousand or so fatalities and thousands more wounded --and that's not counting innocent Iraqis); in that case wouldn't it have been more like a failure than a success? But maybe I'm just nit-picking.

Isn't there anyone in the big-guy media who will step up and pick this absurdity apart? I'm trying, but I'm such a little voice.

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08.29.04 / 10:19 AM / LINK

If these guys are close to God, call me an atheist.

I posted something earlier about this administrations lack of character.
It had to do with supporting the war. But here's more about lack of character in conducting it.

A an editorial in the up-till-now pro Bush Washington Post says, "When the prisoner abuse allegations first became public in May, many members of Congress, including several senior Republicans, vowed to pursue the evidence up the chain of command and not to allow low-ranking reservists to be prosecuted while more senior officials escaped sanction. Yet, as matters now stand, Mr. Rumsfeld, Gen. Sanchez and other senior officials are poised to execute just such an escape. When the scandal began, these leaders told Congress they were prepared to accept responsibility for the wrongdoing. As it turns out, they didn't mean that in any substantive respect. Their dodge shames not only them but the legal and legislative bodies charged with enforcing accountability."

Lack of shame and lack of character. If these guys are the ones who are so close to God, call me an atheist.



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08.29.04 / 8:36 AM / LINK

But at least we're not over-taxing the rich...

Just read a post at Rittenhouse Review that says our guys entering the war zone are still under-armored. Why? Well according to RR's source at the 427th Transportation Company, based in nearby Norristown, Pa., its because "...the Pentagon simply doesn't have the money for it,' though my source adds that according to Army regulations no vehicle is supposed to enter any theater of operation without full armor plating."

Maybe, just maybe, if this administration's brain was not laid out in a tax cut coffin, everybody but the rich would be better off. Starting with the guys in the 427th.


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08.29.04 / 8:36 AM / LINK

Weeding our garden

Hypocrisies in politics are like weeds in gardens, and, as any gardener knows, pulling weeds is a perennial task. Therefore, to say that politics is a weed-bed of hypocrisy is hardly earth-shattering news, but we'd better keep pointing it out if we have any hope of staying ahead of blossom-choking vermin vegetation.

With this in mind, here's a note on some Republican blossom-choking vermin vegetation.

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SATURDAY 08.28.04 / 7:32 AM / LINK

Through the looking-glass

Incredible as it may seem to the common-sensical, John Kerry, who put himself in harm's way in Vietnam and was wounded, is defending himself against a man who ducked for cover in the Texas Air National Guard and didn't get a scratch. We have actually become Alice's looking-glass nation.

How might we characterize it? It's nuts. Topsy-turvy is too cartoony. Upside-down is too prosaic. Inside-out ain't quite right. Inverted and perverted is getting close. Twisted and contorted sounds painful enough to be used. Bent out of shape is accurate and street-wise. But my father's traditional old stand-by is definitely best. This national political argument is completely and woefully ass-backwards.

The problem is that Kerry, for some unfathomable reason, can't seem to look directly into the camera and say to the American people, i.e.:

"My fellow Americans, I earned those medals. But I could not have earned them if I'd avoided service in Vietnam as George Bush did. Mr. Bush received no medals or ribbons at all. Not one. Because you don't receive commendations for running from combat. "I'm proud of my service, and having (by God's grace) survived, I'm also proud of the fact that I worked to bring it to attention of the nation just what a useless, wasteful, and brutal war it was. "What's more, history has proven me right."

Why won't Kerry say that? Defense Department documentation is on his side. He has the support of the men he commanded.... it beats me.

Meanwhile:

Others make excuses for Bush (and themselves) --Marvin Olansky, for instance.

Olansky, was the creative genius who came up with the (as it turns out) oxymoronish term "compassionate conservative" for Dubya. He writes:

"Neither Kerry nor Bush nor I wanted to fight in Vietnam, and we all did what we could in our situations: Naval Reserves (Kerry), Texas Air National Guard (Bush), draft lottery No. 278 (me), which meant immunity from having to serve. In his circumstances, Kerry's choice was smart: Navy or Coast Guard folks were much less likely to see combat service than their counterparts in the Army or Air Force, and the safest Navy spot may have been that of a Naval Reserve officer."

Smart choice? It obviously wasn't as smart as Bush's or Orlansky's because Kerry wound up getting shot at while Bush wasn't even showing up for required meetings in his cushy Air National Guard job back in the states. He was probably on an extended bender.

I don't know what Orlansky was doing. Maybe he was holed up in a room typing away on his Smith Corona safely composing hollow phrases for Republican politicians.

Personal note:

I was fortunate enough to have volunteered for service in 1959 right out of high school. I got out just about the time the national Viet Nam misery was beginning. I say fortunate because my prior service insulated me from the draft so I was not subject to the anxiety of those my age who faced call up.

As Orlansky points out, young men of that time made various decisions about the war and military service. And most of those I knew had a strong intimation the whole thing was bogus and chose to avoid it all together, or, if possible, to at least avoid combat. History shows those intimations were correct and that the war, on almost every level, was a huge and tragic blunder which, as we can see, still affects our national life and self-perception.

The thing I find so infuriating now is that many Republicans and fellow travelers who love the president's war (Delay, Lott, Hastert, Gingrich, Armey, Frist, McConnell, Santorum, Jeb Bush, Rove, Ailes, Perle, Wolfowitz, Bennett, Keyes), the journalist's who hype it (O'Rielly, Will, Hume, Limbaugh), and those who actually started it (Bush, Cheney) made sure they escaped the horror of Vietnam through whatever means possible. Yet they have the balls to mug a man who had the courage to fight, then had the courage to return to question what he was asked to do.

My view is that such hypocrites do not simply have flawed character, they have no character. They're chickenhawks.

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WEDNESDAY 08.25.04 / 7:39 AM / LINK

Headed for a one-party system

You're going to need at least a Salon day pass to read this article by Charles Tiefer, but it's worth the trouble.

"President Bush's plans for a second term threaten a devastating series of far-reaching challenges to the viability of the Democratic Party itself. Under Bush's slogan of an "ownership society," the Republicans intend a long-term effort, using changes in Medicare, Social Security and taxes to pit better-off and worse-off Democrats against each other, offering all-but-irresistible incentives for some to desert the others -- and any progressive national coalition. Congressional Democrats reeling from the impact of the last four years of Republican government in the White House and Congress (apart from the brief Democratic-controlled Senate in part of 2001-02) will find no respite in the platform's sub text about the party-splitting wedges ahead. A second-term Bush agenda will constantly impale Democrats on the dilemma of abandoning their poorer, sicker, older and minority groups, or seeing their better-off, healthier and younger members lured off to the other party. If it sounds like a political nightmare for the Democrats, that's because that's what it is planned to be."

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TUESDAY 08.24.04 / 7:52 PM / LINK

A case of the thimble calling the kettle black

This post by Juan Cole is such an excellent analysis of why no American who loves their country should vote for George Bush. And it meshes perfectly with this one one by Josh Marshall.

Some of the best points by Cole:

"The true absurdity of the entire situation (Bush stooges bashing Kerry's service) is easily appreciated when we consider that George W. Bush never showed any bravery at all at any point in his life...If some of John Kerry's wounds were superficial, Bush received no wounds...Kerry saved a man's life while under fire. Bush did no such thing."

"What was Bush doing with his youth? He was drinking...For decades. He gave no service to anyone, risked nothing, and did not even slack off efficiently."

"The history of alcoholism and possibly other drug use is a key issue because it not only speaks to Bush's character as an addictive personality, but may tell us something about his erratic and alarming actions as president."

"(Bush's) explosive temper probably provoked the...siege of Fallujah last spring, killing 600 Iraqis, most of them women and children, in revenge for the deaths of 4 civilian mercenaries, one of them a South African ...Newsweek reported that Bush commanded his cabinet, 'Let heads roll!' "

"Bush has a sadistic streak...His delight in killing people became a campaign issue in 2000 when he seemed, in one debate, to enjoy the prospect of executing wrong-doers a little too much."

There's more...

As for Josh Marshall's very related posting, he argues, simply, that George Bush lack moral courage.

You can read Marshall's post here.


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SATURDAY 08.21.04 / 3:221 PM / LINK

A guest spot by John Adams

I was reading some things this morning at The Founders Constitution and happened to run across this. It's a scarily prescient couple of paragraphs by John Adams.

It's wierd. It's as if Adams had been here, taken a bunch of notes, then headed back to spread the bad news. Maybe the rotund little Adams hitched from the mid 1700s to 2004 with Marty McFly and Doc Brown in their DeLorean. One look at the Bush/Cheney fiasco was probably enough to send him back highly motivated to make sure he and his cohorts came up with a fool-proof constitution.

Here's what he wrote in 1787 in defense of that document:

"...those who should think themselves most distinguished by blood and education, as well as fortune, would be most ambitious; and if they found an opposition among their constituents to their elections, would immediately have recourse to entertainments, secret intrigues, and every popular art, and even to bribes, to increase their parties. This would oblige their competitors, though they might be infinitely better men, either to give up their pretensions, or to imitate these dangerous practices. There is a natural and unchangeable inconvenience in all popular elections. There are always competitions, and the candidates have often merits nearly equal. The virtuous and independent electors are often divided; this naturally causes too much attention to the most profligate and unprincipled, who will sell or give away their votes for other considerations than wisdom and virtue. So that he who has the deepest purse, or the fewest scruples about using it, will generally prevail. It is from the natural aristocracy in a single assembly (or dominant party -my add) that the first danger is to be apprehended in the present state of manners in America; and with a balance of landed property in the hands of the people, so decided in their favor, the progress to degeneracy, corruption, rage, and violence, might not be very rapid; nevertheless it would begin with the first elections, and grow faster or slower every year. Rage and violence would soon appear in the assembly, and from thence be communicated among the people at large. The only remedy is to throw the rich and the proud into one group, in a separate assembly, and there tie their hands; if you give them scope with the people at large or their representatives, they will destroy all equality and liberty, with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves. They will have much more power, mixed with the representatives, than separated from them. In the first case, if they unite, they will give the law and govern all; if they differ, they will divide the state, and go to a decision by force. But placing them alone by themselves, the society avails itself of all their abilities and virtues; they become a solid check to the representatives themselves, as well as to the executive power, and you disarm them entirely of the power to do mischief."

Like I said, Back to the future.

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08.21.04 / 1:23 AM / LINK

A goon for all seasons

There are these dreams we sometimes have where all the elements seem to make fleeting sense but the big picture is just about incomprehensible. You know the ones I mean? Like the one we're all having now: where reality's a corkscrew to the brain (to paraphrase Dylan), and where the president comes off as a goon --an inexplicably likeable goon to some, a very bad goon to others, but a goon nevertheless-- a guy who either doesn't understand our system of government, or understands it too well and just doesn't believe in it, and has every intention of roughing it up and undermining it by creating distrust and fear where and whenever possible.

The New Face of America

Kevin Drum talks about this president's anti-American (but personally coherent) perspective here.

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08.19.04 / 10:19 PM / LINK

Ever been here?:

Utopia by Wislawa Szymborska Island where all becomes clear. Solid ground beneath your feet. The only roads are those that offer access. Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs. The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here with branches disentangled since time immemorial. The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple, sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It. The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista: the valley of Obviously. If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly. Echoes stir unsummoned and eagerly explain the secrets of the worlds. On the right a cave where Meaning lies. On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction. Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface. Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley. Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things. For all its charms, the island is uninhabited, and the faint footsteps scattered on its beaches turn without exception to the sea. As if all you can do here is leave and plunge, never to return, into the depths. Into unfathonable life.

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08.19.04 / 10:19 PM / LINK

Oh what a difference a screwed up war (among other things) can make

Remember how General Norman (Desert Storm) Schwarzkopf, George Bush # 1's main man in the sand, said such nice things about George Bush 2 at the last Republican convention? As it stands now he's being much less forthcoming as we roll into this year's election.

The General



What could have happened to make the man change his mind? A four year botch job?

At The Daily Kos we find that Norman's being pretty coy about who he'll be voting for when Bush comes to shove.

Reporting on Schwarzkof's interview with Chris Matthews we have this:

MATTHEWS: Who are you voting for? (LAUGHTER) SCHWARZKOPF: I`ve--you know, I`ve--I`ve always told you--I`ve always told you I`m an independent. MATTHEWS: But you got to vote, you know? Is it going to be for Bush, Kerry, or Nader. I don`t think it`s Nader, so how about one of the other two? SCHWARZKOPF: What`s wrong with Nader? You don`t like Nader? MATTHEWS: --I`m trying to probe here, General. I`m just probing. No comment? SCHWARZKOPF: Let me put it this way. You know,-- I`ll know exactly who I`m voting for the day I pull the lever on that machine or push the buttons, whatever it happens to be.

The general also had a less-than-glowing assessment of the president's plan to cut and run out of Korea.

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WEDNESDAY 08.18.04 / 8:33 PM / LINK

Better late than never

A Republican speaks out. Rep. Dog Bereuter in his retirement letter to constituents says, "I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action." Bereuter is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.


He doesn't look like an unpatriotic radical















Better late than never, I guess.

Here's Republican Bereuter's list of Bush blunders and their effects:

"...the attack was initiated without a broad and engaged international coalition." " ...(the) reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal..." "...our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened." "The cost in casualties is already large and growing, and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible." "From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force." "Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world." "The toll in American military casualties and those of civilians, physical damages caused, financial resources spent..." "American and coalition forces were inadequate in number to take effective control of Iraq when the initial military action was completed." "Other mistakes included disbanding the Iraqi army and placing responsibility for reconstruction with the Department of Defense instead of the Department of State."

You can read the whole article here.


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08.18.04 / 6:31 AM / LINK

Maybe the report wasn't buried, but...

An editorial in the NY Times today discusses bad news for charter schools. The gist of the Time's view: "The Bush administration's education program received a devastating setback this week when long-awaited federal data showed that children in charter schools were performing worse on math and reading tests than their counterparts in regular public schools."

Apparently the new info had to be exumed by forensic reporters. The editorial says, "The new data that came to public attention this week was unearthed from a mound of federal reports, where it seemed to have been buried. While government officials denied that they were trying to hide the report, there's no denying that it casts a cloud on the gospel of privatization pushed by the Bush administration."

Bush government officials burying info? Come now.

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