SUNDAY
12.05.04 / 7:31
AM /
LINK /
COMMENT
The unthinkable happens
when you're too busy thinking other thoughts
Taking us one step closer
to Oceania,
the news media hops on the
red state bandwagon and molds it's news to fit a red audience.
This is Frank
Rich's take on the situation, and you know he's right. The
object of a news organization now, Rich speculates, is to tow
the party line and come up with good news, not to get at the
truth --whatever that's become.
And you can be sure the news will become happier and happier
when reporters are called "traitors" for doing their
jobs, and threatened with death. What better way to create Happy
Land than to squash nay-sayers. The grapevine will soon enough
spread gruesome stories of what happens to the honest. It'll
ward off the timid with an iron claw. We have historical precedence
for this kind of thing you know.
The most effective way to achieve
consensus, thinks the Inner
Party, is to mold the mind. This is why God invented media.
Voting is so, so, blue-state.
Is it unthinkable that we might morph into what we've traditionally
despised? The unthinkable happens when you're too busy thinking
other things.
And the unstoppable is often identicle to the unthinkable, which
usually flows from the unthunk. Think about it.
TOP
SATURDAY
2.04.04 / 8:32 AM
/
LINK
/ COMMENT
Networks ban wrong kind
of inclusion
The United Church of
Christ wants to run a TV add that calls for inclusion of all
people in the category of "God's children", but because
the Bush administration is pushing an anti-gay agenda the ad
will not get network airplay. It's being banned by ABC, NBC,
and CBS.
This is interesting because it puts a fresh twist on something
the left has been saying for a while now: corporate television
news organization tailor their content to suit politicians, especially
right-wing politicians.
The twist here is that a church message is being kept
off screens. Some church messages are not acceptable for viewing
either. Acceptable church messages are those that contain the
correct political content. The church can only be used
when it genuflects before government. Politics trumps real Christianity.
This is what we call faith-based governance.
As reported
in The Nation, "The ad in question is part of an ambitious
new national campaign by the UCC to appeal to Americans who feel
alienated from religion and churches, and to equip the denomination's
6,000 congregations across the U.S. to welcome newcomers. ...
the UCC ad features an arresting image: a pair of muscle-bound
bouncers standing in front of a church and telling some people
they can attend while turning others away.
"After people of color,
a disabled man and a pair of men who might be gay are turned
away, the image dissolves to a text statement that: "Jesus
didn't turn people away. Neither do we." The problem seems
to be with the suggestion that God might not be biased against
gays.
At CBS they came right out and said, "Because the commercial
touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups
by other individuals and organizations, and the fact the Executive
Branch has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define
marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot
is unacceptable for broadcast on the PN) networks."
CBS's excuse is that the president made me not do it.
You've got to ask yourself, what else the president might be
telling them they may or may not include in their broadcasts?
As Eric Alterman aks, "What liberal media bias?"
TOP
THURSDAY
2.02.04 / 9:46 PM
/
LINK
/ COMMENT
Same League?
Here's
smirking George sitting with FDR & Winston Churchill by means
of a White House designed backdrop on his recent foray into enemy
territory --specifically, Canada.
This is the closest the president will ever get to those guys
physically, or metaphysically. Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt
fought against fascists.
Thank you
www.wonkette.com
TOP
12.02.04
/ 9:18 PM /
LINK / COMMENT
You can believe anything
you want to, it makes no goddam difference...
A pro-Bush
think tank in London that gets healthy financial support from
Exxon/Mobile (which doesn't like negative stories on the greenhouse
effect) is coming out with a report that the greenhouse effect
just might be a good thing. It
says in The Observer that, "The International Policy NetNetwork
will publish its long-awaited study, claiming that the science
warning of an environmental disaster caused by climate change
is 'fatally flawed'."
But can we believe anything from a think tank that receives generous
funding from pro-greenhouse lobbiests and then reports that their
benefactors are probably doing the planet a big carbon-spewing
favor?
You can believe anything you want to, it doesn't make a goddam
bit of difference. This is the new ground rule of American politics.
And if you don't like it, fuck you, as Dick Cheney likes to say.
The opposition is going to have to get up to speed on that line
of reasoning if it doesn't want to be chewed to death by a pack
of ruthless Orwellian hyenas.
TOP
12.02.04 / 8:56 PM / LINK / COMMENT
Good thing we're the good
guys
The home
of the brave and the land of the free is now 
the
only country in the world still using napalm.
For Bushtians taking a short break from church services or Bible
study who might not know what napalm is, it's burning jellied
gas designed to stick to the flesh of it's victims. It was outlawed
in 1980 by a UN Convention after pictures of that naked and screaming
little Vietnamese girl who survived a napalm attack were circulated
worldwide. According to all known New Testament exegesis, napalm
is not Jesus approved.
But we don't have to adhere to world law or scriptural references.
We're an empire. We make our own rules. We create our own canons.
We're
history's actors.
The report of our napalm recidivism is from the United Kingdoms'
Sunday
Mirror.
It says we're using it now in Iraq --in case you needed another
Vietnam analogy. Needless to say "insurgents" aren't
the only ones being burned alive by this rather imprecise instrument
of democratic reform.
It's a good thing
we're the good guys. I'd hate to think what we'd do if we were
a member of the axis of evil. Depending upon which side of the
flame thrower you're on, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
Are you 51 percenters
taking notes? Break out your popcorn and freedom fries. Keep
watching, it's gonna get worse.
TOP
12.02.04 / 7:21 AM / LINK
/ COMMENT
Till Hell Freezes Over
We all
need a break from the dismal political scene, and here's one.
I got this in an email from a friend. It's fresh, bright, and
funny --the exact opposite of the ugliness at large these days.
This kid is exactly the kind of person who'll never be president.
He's too thoughtful and clever.
The following is supposedly
an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry
mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound"
that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet,
which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying
it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic
(gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs
of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands
and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the
following:
First, we need to know how the
mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate
at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they
are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul
gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for how many souls are entering
Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the
world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not
a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there
is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong
to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to
Hell.
With birth and death rates as
they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase
exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume
in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature
and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has
to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a
slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the
temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell
breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a
rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature
and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given
to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, " it will
be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you, and take into
account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number
2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and
has already frozen
over.
The corollary of this theory
is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not
accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving
only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which
explains why last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."
|
TOP
12.02.04
/ 6:13 AM /
LINK /
COMMENT
Twin terrorist victories:
9/11 & 11/2
"You
know that all these guys know better," said Clyde Prestowicz,
head of the Economic Strategy Institute. Prestowics was talking
about several of president Bush's top advisors and what they
know about fiscal matters.
You can find that quote in Thomas Friedman's column
today
in the NY Times. The question is, if these guys know better,
then is Friedman suggesting we're being driven into a premeditated
national train wreck? An internal terrorist attack on the United
States by ruthless men at the higest levels? It sure sounds like
it.
As Friedman reports "The 9/11 crisis has been used as a
license to spend and cut taxes rather than to set priorities
and focus our resources on what is critically important to our
nation's security," said Robert Hormats, vice chairman
of Goldman Sachs International."
The starting point of the column is what Friedman surmises is
Treasury Secretary John Snow's imminent departure from his job
(Friedman says he'll be getting sacked), and the gutting of the
Treasury Department itself.
This, of course would be right in line with what faux-messiah
Bush has been doing with his cabinet these past weeks, filling
it with yes-folks who pray. This is no time for faithful ideologues.
We have an incredibly serious problem on our hands. With a bunch
of like-minded suck-ups praying loudly for the camera while running
the executive branch from pulpits and aided by a corrupt congress
can this nation be saved? No, is my answer. It defies common
sense and history.
For a less apocalyptic rendering
of the same thought Friedman gives us this from David Rothkopf,
a former Clinton Commerce Department official who just wrote
a history of the National Security Council. Rothkopf said that
President Bush is obviously "seeking consensus and homogeneity.
But the system works better when the president gets choices.
If everyone is on the same page and it turns out to be the wrong
page - you're really up a creek."
In our present situation I'd add another "really" in
there.
As Friedman points out, Bush had the luxurious option of going
to war because he had a huge budget surplus at his disposal.
But now that he's disposed of that completely and ushered us
into massive debt, what happens if we have another disaster?
Oh, but we've had such a disaster. We can call it 11/2. Time
will prove it to be far worse than 9/11. Short time methinks.
TOP
SUNDAY
11.28.04 / 9:24
PM /
LINK / COMMENT
Not Dark Yet
Comments here
at Atrios about Niall Ferguson's Colossus: The Price of America's
Empire. He says, "Ferguson's argument is that we (Americans)
just aren't ruthless enough, yet. Which means, yes, we could
have won in Vietnam, if we'd just had the belly for it. Now America
faces 'the growing power of liberalism' (don't you all feel better
now?), which prevents us from exercising our true authority as
the benevolent Empire the Romans...oh, sorry, the British, once
were."
"How to overcome this and other obstacles to the Pax
Americana," asks Atrios? "Apparently by reining
in the deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare spending.
The 'less privileged' (quoting Greg Grandin in the latest Harper's)
would be made: 'leaner and meaner, more willing to shoulder the
burdens of empire. Just as poverty drove the Irish and Scots
into Britain's colonial army, 'illegal immigrants, the jobless,'
and 'convicts' could help fill the ranks of Washington's imperial
legion.' (Apparently Jonathan Swift and Jeremiah were both wrong:
poverty is good for sovereigns!). Ferguson is especially enthusiastic
that African Americans might become 'the Celts of the American
Empire.' And once he dispenses with what here passes for social
democracy, he sets his sights on political democracy. Successful
empires, Ferguson writes, require 'the resolve of the masters
and the consent of the subjects.' "
Not ruthless yet, but we're getting there.
Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.
............................--Bob
Dylan, It's Not Dark Yet
|
TOP
11.28.04 /3:33 PM / LINK
/ COMMENT
Half-full/half-empty
Here's
a half-full/half-empty look at dropping dollar situation.
And here's
the half-empty view previously posted.
TOP
11.28.04 / 8:16 AM / LINK / COMMENT
When the consitution equals
a wad of Charmin we'll be in deep, uh... trouble.
According to certain
right-wingnuts congress can make any law it wants including one
limiting the power of the court. It doesn't matter to them that
this makes the constitution exactly equal to a wad of Charmin,
they have a mandate, and they're talking "values".
According to Palm Beach Post columnist George McEvoy, Rep. John
Hostettler of Indiana thinks the congress supercedes the court
in value matters. McEvoy says, "Rep. Hostettler, addressing
a special legislative briefing of the Christian Coalition last
month in Washington, reportedly talked at length about a bill
he plans to introduce. It would deny federal courts the right
to hear cases challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, which
bans same-sex marriage."
"Congress
controls the federal judiciary," Rep. Hostettler was quoted
as saying. "If Congress wants to, it can refer all cases
to the state courts. Congress can say the federal courts have
limited power to enforce their decision."
But, as McEvoy
points out, "Apparently, the Hoosier congressman has not
heard of the balance of power among the three arms of our government."
Heard of it or not, if conservatives with backbone don't mount
a challenge to this thinking, "balance of power" will
be a moot point.
McEnvoy's conclusion: "Constitutional or not, the scary
part of all this is realizing how dizzy success has made these
people. A week or two after the presidential election, I happened
to tune in to the Rev. Pat Robertson's program. He was chortling
and practically jumping up and down with elation.
"He kept
saying what a great opportunity the Christian Right now had to
change the nation.
"It sounds
as if they intend to begin by ripping apart the Bill of Rights."
TOP
11.28.04 / 7:14 AM / LINK
/ COMMENT
A value may strangle an
opinion, that's ok. But an opinion that tries that on a value
will get creamed on Fox News
Good article my Michael
Kinsley here.
"Why does an ideological position become sacrosanct when
it gets labeled as a 'value'," Kinsley asks? ... For some
reason, the views of those who feel that marriage requires a
man and a woman are considered to be a "value," while
the views of those who believe that gay relationships deserve
the same legal standing as straight ones barely qualify as an
opinion.
"Those labels don't confer any logical advantage. But they
confer two big advantages in the propaganda war. First, a value
just seems inherently more compelling than a mere opinion. That's
a big head start. Second, the holder of a value is held to be
more sensitive to slights than the holder of an opinion. An opinion
can't just slug away at a value. It must be solicitous and understanding.
A value may tackle an opinion, meanwhile, with no such constraint."
Now that's an intelligent point of view, so it'll never go anywhere
in this climate.
TOP
FRIDAY
11.26.04
/ 3:10 PM /
LINK / COMMENT
More Tumbling Dollar News
In Todays
NY Times: "Investors and market analysts are increasingly
worried that the last big source of support for the American
dollar - heavy buying by foreign central banks - is fading."
"Sell U.S., buy Europe," summed up Richard Berner,
chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley, in a report
last week. Mr. Berner noted that investors have begun demanding
higher yields for 10-year Treasury securities than for comparable
European bonds, and he predicted that the spread would widen.
But, forever enslaved to free-market ideology, "The Bush
administration has essentially condoned the dollar's decline.
At meetings with foreign ministers last week, the Treasury secretary,
John W. Snow, repeated the American mantra of support for a 'strong
dollar' but also for letting "market forces" determine
exchange rates.
Related post.
TOP
FRIDAY
11.26.04 / 3:10M
/
LINK / COMMENT
The scripture shysters
have it bassackwards
Let me make this perfectly
clear, I don't think God is ass-backwards; I think fundamentalists
are ass-backwards --or bassackwards as my grandpa liked to say.
David
Neiwert (dneiwert.blogspot.com) says it this way, "Science
and fundamentalism are natural enemies, because they represent
diametrically opposite models for understanding the world.
"Fundamentalism begins with articles of faith, gleaned from
Scripture, for which it then goes in search of evidence as support
-- ignoring, along the way, all contravening evidence.
"Science begins with the gathering of evidence and data,
which are then assembled into an explanatory model through a
combination of hypothesis and further testing. This model must
take into account all available facts, including contradictory
evidence."
Approaching it from a slightly different aspect we can say it
this way: science starts with an idea then sets out to subvert
it through a series of tests. If the idea passes all tests
we can say that we've taken a step closer to a more complete
truth.
Fundamentalists, on the other
hand, start with a "revealed truth" and try to subvert
any facts that get in it's way. If then, by every means available,
all facts are successfully subverted we can say that we've taken
a step closer to a more complete ignorance.
This is sad because Jesus taught that the truth shall
make us free, not scripture. The truth. The truth shall
make us free.
Jesus, at least, did not get it ass-backwards.
Somehow though, as Jesus' word (at first so straight-forward
and exhalted) tumbled through history, bouncing between Jewish
law and early Christian myth-makers; caroming through palaces
of popes and cloisters of theologians; loaded into canons and
fired into communities of heretics; nailed to the doors of cathedrals
and entombed in leather-bound books; sailing to the new world
on rough seas and stepping off exhausted, threadbare, and battered
from it's journey --well, the inspired word of Jesus wound up
a shell of its former self. It was dizzy, disoriented, and confused;
straight-jacketed in the doctrines of the South Baptist Convention,
Bob Jones University, and other mind mausoleums. In fact, in
spite of their original straight ahead thrust to the true meaning
of things, the teachings of Jesus found themselves utterly turned
around, facing backward.
And it's this backword that's now being pawned off as
authentic by the scripture shysters of our time --the backword
being used to subvert the constitution --and reason and logic
to seal the deal. The same backword being pushed by creationist
elves working day and night to institutionalize in our public
school curriculums the religious doctrine called "Intelligent
Design".
But don't be fooled by the term. "Intelligent design"
has little to do with intelligence and all to do with dogma.
It's the Creationist's newest conduit into the minds of the innocent.
God must certainly be angry with the United States to allow our
children to be subjected to the threat of superstition parading
as science and ignorance passing as enlightenment. Going this
way we'll all meet up back in the Dark Ages shaking hands with
scribes, monks, and mullahs trying to figure out how many Republicans
and Shiites can minuet on the head of a pin.
I'm not being alarmist dear 51 Percenters. Neiwert reports that,
"The most recent example of [the assault of the Creationists]
came last week when the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania decided
to include so-called "intelligent design" programs
in their schools' science curriculum. In the friggin' science
curriculum!
And there's more. In Ohio the school board voted to change state
science standards, mandating that biology teachers "critically
analyze" evolutionary theory. This fall, teachers will adjust
their lesson plans and begin doing just that. In some cases,
that means introducing the basic tenets of intelligent design.
One of the state's sample lessons looks as though it were lifted
from an ID textbook. It's the biggest victory so far for the
(pro Intelligent Design) Discovery Institute."
"But scientists aren't buying it," Neiwert observes.
"What [Intelligent Design] calls 'biology for the information
age,' they call creationism in a lab coat. ID's core scientific
principles -- laid out in the mid-1990s by a biochemist and a
mathematician -- have been thoroughly dismissed on the grounds
that Darwin's theories can account for complexity, that ID relies
on misunderstandings of evolution and flimsy probability calculations,
and that it proposes no testable explanations."
Testable. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. If it ain't testable
it ain't science. World views that aren't testable have been
assigned another word by the reality-based community.They're
called religions.
TOP
11.26.04
/ 9:18 AM /
LINK
/ COMMENT
Fortress America's got
a banking problem...
... and it's not just
a little imbalance in the Master Card/Income equation. It's big.
And something's gotta give. But a simple loan consolidation by
DiTech.com ain't gonna do the trick.
Check out this article
by Joseph Stroupe at Asia Times Online, but before you do
read the following perfect segue into it.
I'm reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, the
American Revolution's banking and financial wiz, and came upon
this this morning. In a letter to Robert Morris, who'd just been
appointed Superintendent of Finances by the Continental Congress,
Hamilton writes:
" 'Tis by introducing order into our finances --by restoring
public credit-- not by gaining battles that we are finally to
gain our object.'
"Once again, [Hamilton] plumbed the deep sources of British
power. Where others saw lofty ships and massed bodies of redcoats,
Hamilton perceived a military establishment propped up by a 'vast
fabric of credit... 'Tis by this alone she now menaces our independence.'
America, he argued, did not need to triumph decisively over the
heavily taxed British: a war of attrition that eroded British
credit would nicely do the trick. All patriots had to do was
plant doubt among Britain's creditors about the war's outcome.
'By stopping the progress of their conquests and reducing them
to an unmeaning and disgraceful defensive, we destroy the national
expectation of success from which the ministry draws their resources.'
"
"America could defeat the British in the bond market
more readily than on the battlefield."
|
Some questions posed in the Stroupe
column:
- Do similar deep structural vulnerabilities exist within the
US economy?
- Are these currently being exploited by the al-Qaeda and others
to cause a US
economic collapse?
- Are the apparent strength, stability and imposing size of
the US economy deceptively masking an imminent collapse...?
- Have the initial stages of an attack on the towering US economy,
which might bring about a vertical collapse, already begun?
Some of Stroupe's observations:
- Fundamental vulnerabilities exist in the US economy ...
- (But) most contrarian experts dismiss the possibility of
an actual collapse. They generally speak only of a prolonged
"bear" period for the economy, not a collapse.
- (But) ...the almighty dollar, and the apparently firm and
virtually unbreakable international support the dollar supports
a massive load of debt, now totaling well over US$7 trillion
in the public sector alone ... (which) places an undue load upon
the lower, traditionally more stable part of the economic
framework.
- Federal Reserve Board and government policies over the past
20 years or so have been extremely shortsighted, leveraging the
economy's future stability and strength by means of large and
perpetual deficit spending.
- The US government, and its citizens ... have acted as if
there would never come a day of accounting for the immense debt
being amassed...
- In the past three to four years, debt encouraged by such
policies has mushroomed almost beyond imagination. So, in effect,
there now exists a mountainous load of debt concentrated within
the upper sections of the US economy, where it cannot easily
be neutralized to the ground level in an orderly fashion. How
much of such massive weight can the framework, the dollar, carry
and support before the structure caves in?
It makes you wonder. Has Bin Laden studied Hamilton? Have the
US's major lien holders, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Europeans,
and the Russians?
The Bush administration, with its tax givaway to its prime constituency
at the precise moment it launches a war, could not have played
into this Hamiltonian strategy more thoroughly. And it could
not have been a more perfect example a hubris --or calculation.
These leaders weaken us, they don't strengthen us. They've provided
such inept and destructive leadership it's beyond appalling.
It's as if they're operating from the camp of Benedict Arnold
who also did not believe in America. They need to be exposed
and repudiated. But by whom?
Since this is really important information somebody in the mass
media ought to be talking about it, don't you think? I wonder
if Rupert Murdoch could persuade Sean Hannity to get this info
out? Oh, I know I can get it into the local paper, but mass media
news outlets seem to be pretty much locked up by the corporate
class.
Well, maybe some handbills posted to telephone poles ....hmmm
... WWHD?*
Shopping
carts ad infinitum --or until the world calls in the debt
Sorry, I haven't meant to ruin the biggest shopping day of the
year for you, but I thought it important to have us think about
that last "collapse" question Stroupe posed. It's really
pertinent and could well blow next Black Friday completely unless
we give it serious consideration.
The article's
worth the read.
*What Would Hamilton Do?
Related
Post
TOP
THURSDAY
11.25.04 / 6:04
AM /
LINK / COMMENT
Shutting up is exactly
equal to shutting down
It sounds like Tom
Friedman is pissed off. This is good. He's sounded sort of
pissed off before, but in this
column, there's an edge. There should be more top columnists
pissed off at the status quo who reveal an edge. These are not
the times to --as Bill O'Rielly suggests -- shut up. Paul Krugman
calls these times "revolutionary". In revolutionary
times shutting up is exactly equal to shutting down.
But who's Tom pissed at? He's pissed at us. Why? For being the
kind of people who put up with the Tom Delays in politics and
the Republicans with no guts who voted for the DeLay rule; and
for suffering the likes of Latrell Sprewell and all the overpaid
sports celebrities who run back and forth on a basketball court
making millions while dedicated teachers make next to zip; and
for being so detached from reality and responsibility that we
insist on driving gas-sucking SUVs around town while young Americans
fight and die in a country we wouldn't care anything about if
it wasn't for the fact it sat on oil.
I'm glad Friedman is pissed. But we'll know we've made some moral
headway when more than 49% of American voters are pissed enough
to take to the streets and get this radical Republican faith-based
amoral clique under control.
TOP
WEDNESDAY
11.24.04 / 6:38
PM /
LINK
/ COMMENT
That movie's about us
Does anyone remember
the movie, In Broad Daylight, starring Brian Dennehey?
Dennehey plays a swaggering sociopath in some rural community.
I don't remember the details but what happens is, the rest of
the town gets fed up with his over the top, threatening me-ism,
joins forces and takes him out. Anyway that movie may be about
us.
Here's the comparative scenario, short and sweet: U.S. kicks
ass in the world and does a jig on everybody else's face pissing
everyone off, those everybody-elses form a coalition of the willing,
take a page from the Bush neocon playbook (specifically the chapter
that lays out how the administration sets out to kill the U.S
government by starving it of revenue), and shuts off the foriegn
investment spigot on which we've become pathetically hooked.
Impossible? Well, a lot of economists are talking about it these
days. You think John Kerry would have been bad news, you 51 percenters?
Well, there's a better than even chance that you screwed up real
bad. Don't come running to me to yank the hook from your cheek.
I'll be too busy trying to clean up your mess. You bit, now we
all have to chew.
Steve Clemons at The
Washington Note says, "In my view, we are about to be
taught a lesson by a world that wants America to be tethered
down. And the world is going to hit America where it has a serious
blindspot at the moment -- on the economic front. We are on
our way to becoming a much poorer, on relative terms, superpower
with the Chinese, Japanese and Europeans using currency management
and debt dependency to constrain our options.
Of course we could always bomb or invade China, Japan, and
Europe, but then who'd buy our manufactured goods ... uh, wait
...we don't make anything here anymore... and where would we
get the troops anyway? From middle America stupid, we'll need
the work.
What's clear, Clemons goes on is that,"... the Euro has
become increasingly important in global transactions, and its
vector is pointed up. The dollar's vector is pointed down. We
need to take stock of what that means -- and what it may mean
is that the bad behaviors America has been able to get away with
for so long in terms of piling up debt and maintaining an irresponsibly
high current account deficit may soon be impossible to maintain."
And, as for Alan Greenspan's late-ass acknowledgement that our
economic policy may be a tad off kilter and that a diving dollar
may really not be in our best interests, Clemons notes, "Alan
Greenspan is now saying ... the dropping dollar should concern
us. Some of us are ticked off that Alan Greenspan is three years
too late, and that this is Greenspan covering his ass -- not
good public policy commentary."
Our columnist noir ends with this: "America is walking blindly
into an economic morass of constraints that it has largely inflicted
on itself, and other key nations will not be able to help themselves
from helping to fasten a tether here and there to further tie
down the America that it wants to walk less boldly through their
world."
And why wouldn't they want to?
TOP
11.24.04
/ 3:05 PM /
LINK / COMMENT
Talks the talk, but afraid
to walk the walk -- sissyass president cuts and runs
You won't get a chance
to hear the president say "bring it on" to the Canadian
Parliament. He only does this when the lives of American troops
are threatened. In circumstanstances where he might personally
have to confront hostility the sissy pants cuts and runs.
The Canadian Globe
and Mail reports a source at the Whited Sepulcher saying,
"... President George W. Bush will not address Parliament
when he visits Canada next week to avoid possible negative reception
or heckling."
"We didn't see the need and, frankly, we didn't want to
be booed. There are other, better venues," said one U.S.
official.
"Better venues" must be like having "other
priorities". It's ok for young Americans to get thrown
into situations where they're likely get their heads shot off
or be blown to bits, but brave Bush is all swagger and pose.
He doesn't want to be booed, awww --I feel for him.
I imagine a marine in the middle of Falluja thinking, "there
are other, better venues"...
This is the Story of Bush in a nutshell. Avoid personal consequences;
let others take the heat.
TOP
TUESDAY
11.23.04 / 8:56
AM /
LINK
/ COMMENT
A
weltanschaunng
of wonder; a foriegn agency
The president of half-baked
theory and skewed moral philosophy --this is how Harold Myerson
of the Washington Post portrays George Bush in his column
today. And Myerson gets it exactly right.
Theory, ideology,
and dogma seem to drive Bush's "moral" views. For him,
facts have nothing to do with anything. The perspective of this
White House is nothing but a weltanschaunng of wonder.
There will be no good ending for average Americans when our Savonarola
completes his moral systems overhaul.
Sending troops to die and killing Iraqi civilians in a war based
upon etheral realities ..ghost WMDs, phantom yellowcake uranium,
mystical connections between Saddam and 9/11; taxing American
labor into a lower class while diminishing the tax burden of
the rich; ignoring the need for a comprehensive national health
care plan while removing tax breaks for business to provide a
share; breaking down the wall between church and state to appease
christian fundamentalists in clear view of what muslim theocracy
has produced; putting the choice of women to control their reproductive
lives into the hands of big government --these are all due to
George W. Bush's pinpoint view of morality. A view that disregards
huge moral essentials while codifying rightwing fundamentalist
dogma.
Myerson calls the Iraq war, "...a triumph of ideology over
the facts on the ground (it's certainly not a triumph of anything
else)."
He says, "Theory certainly is driving the administration's
tax policies. In his first term, Bush took an ax to the taxes
on dividends and mega-estates. In his second term, according
to a story by The Post's Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum,
the president is looking at eliminating taxes on dividends and
capital gains and creating generous tax shelters for all investment
income. The theory here is that investment, not labor, is the
real creator of wealth -- so the taxes on investment income will
be scrapped, while those on wages will keep rolling along."
But most significantly Myserson says, "...in the name of
... theory, Bush seems willing to sacrifice much of the social
compact that made America, in the second half of the 20th century,
the first majority middle-class nation in human history."
If ever a president seemed to be a foreign agent and necromancer
bent upon destroying what this nation has been, this man is it
in spades. He's bringing down our twin towers of law and compassion
without missing a beat in his golf swing.
TOP
TUESDAY
11.23.04 / 8:56
AM /
LINK / COMMENT
Some have successfully
descended from monkeys, but some have still not made the full
transition
According to the graph
below 57% of Americans believe in or lean toward a belief in
creationism.
Only 33% believe in or lean toward evolution as a way of explaining
human origin. 10% have no opinion (these were probably also among
the undecided voters in the last election).
I've only got one thing to say about this (and
this article). Insofar as we retreat into non-rational cloisters
there's really not much difference between us and the Taliban.
We just haven't slid that far yet. But with the Bush administration
greasing the skids we won't have long to wait.
TOP
