IRAQI RECRUIT:
A $70 per month target

SATURDAY 12.13.03 / 11:42 PM / LINK

Republican Pork (it's a lot like Democratic pork, only fatter)

You know, you've got to look at this Republican budget and realize they are really trying to bankrupt the U.S. government. This fiscal policy is no accident. It's a suicide pact.

The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby (who's no liberal) reports that "Federal spending is growing faster than at any time since LBJ, the budget is hundreds of billions of dollars out of balance, and the president appears to support new or expanded government programs for just about every voting bloc in America.

"The fiscal debauchery of the Bush administration is no joke," Jacoby continues. "Even before signing a huge expansion of Medicare into law this week, Bush was presiding over record-busting levels of federal spending. Brian Riedl, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, points out in a new monograph that government outlays in 2003 -- a staggering $2.15 trillion -- came to more than $20,000 per household. By that measure, government spending (in real dollars) is the highest it's been since World War II."

But what is especially outrageous about this Republican immoderation is how much of it is devoted to pure pork. Here's a partial pork list:

$725,000 for the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia;

$1.8 million for the Women's World Cup tournament;

$325,000 for the construction of a swimming pool in Salinas, Calif.;

$220,000 for the New Mexico Retail Association in Albuquerque;

$270,000 for "sustainable olive production";

$400,000 for the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky.;

$2 million for the First Tee golf program in St. Augustine, Fla.;

$315,000 for Formosan Subterranean Termite research;

$270,000 for potato storage in Madison, Wis.


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12.13.03 / 10:44 PM / LINK
Concept: How the west was won
Update: How the east was lost

Josh Marshall brings up an interesting idea at his TPM website. Actually he passes it along from some decidedly right-wing sources.

Referring to the latest ultimately self-abusive policy of freezing out France, Germany, and Russia from Iraq rebuilding contracts Marshall points out, "As those notorious Francophiles Bill Kristol and Bob Kagan put it in a column in the Standard yesterday, this policy is "stupid, and should be abandoned."

But Kristol and Kagan are not just pissed off at the Pentagon for the policy, they're annoyed at the administrations lack of subtlety. What they says is, "A deviously smart American administration would have quietly distributed contracts for rebuilding Iraq as it saw fit, without any announced policy of discrimination. At the end of the day, it would be clear that opponents of American policy didn't fare too well in the bidding process. Message delivered, but with a certain subtlety."

Have you ever heard the expression "ham fisted"? Well, when the nearer-to-god-than-thee administration of George Bush brings its hands together in one of its many tactical public prayers it might remind you of a couple of two-thousand-pound hogs meeting to make love. Nuance is just not a part of the foreign policy repertoire of the idiot-savant from Texas.

"This decision is a blunder. We trust it will be reversed," say the neo-ideologues. But even if it is there's like to be another stupid move in its wake. Look who's at the helm.

Look here for Paul Krugman's take on this.

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12.13.03 / 7:24 PM / LINK
Super-duper Power

There may be no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, but there can be something like one. There can be such a thing as a self-propagating, internally perpetuating nationalistic vision dilator. Think of such a pumped-up self-evaluation system as a political feedback loop.

In audiophile circles a feedback loop is when a microphone talks to a speaker and the speaker repeats it back into the microphone with added emphasis, which, in turn, repeats it to the speaker ad infinitum --or until such incredible squealing vibrations are generated between the two that the speakers blow. That is unless somebody's smart enough to pull the plug first.

Politically speaking, we've got one of those things happening right now. It's called the Bush Administration. Big squeal building up. Nobody smart enough to pull the plug.

Writer Robert Jay Lifton, in an article in The Nation, talks about what he calls the "superpower syndrome". What he means by that is, "...a national mindset--put forward strongly by a tight-knit leadership group--that takes on a sense of omnipotence, of unique standing in the world that grants it the right to hold sway over all other nations. The American superpower status derives from our emergence from World War II as uniquely powerful in every respect, still more so as the only superpower from the end of the cold war in the early 1990s."

And Lifton goes on, "More than mere domination, the American superpower now seeks to control history. Such cosmic ambition is accompanied by an equally vast sense of entitlement--of special dispensation to pursue its aims. That entitlement stems partly from historic claims to special democratic virtue, but has much to do with an embrace of technological power translated into military terms. That is, a superpower--the world's only superpower--is entitled to dominate and control precisely because it is a superpower."

Read Lifton's piece here. It's an interesting examination of how we got to this bizarre eardrum-busting place.

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12.13.03 / 6:49 AM / LINK

Well, everybody makes mistakes...

The 1st Battalion of the new Iraqi army, noticing they were as unprepared to be deployed as George Bush was to pick up the pieces in Iraq after "mission accomplished", took off for parts unknown.

450 of the 900 newly trained troops on the verge of being sent into action were apparently way more perceptive than the President or the Secretary of Defense, at least on issues of preparedness.

According to today's Washington Post, "More than half the men in the first unit to be trained for the new Iraqi army have abandoned their jobs because of low pay, inadequate training, faulty equipment, ethnic tensions and other concerns, leaving the nascent 1st Battalion dramatically understaffed just days before it is scheduled to leave training camp for its first assignment, Iraqi, U.S. and other coalition officials say."

"It was a new experience for everyone," said U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Johnny Matlock, who is part of the multinational team overseeing the new army's training. "We had to learn by mistakes."

Learning by mistakes seems to be a key component of the administration of George W. Bush. But sometimes people make one mistake too many. If you're a hapless unknown living your life in obscurity the consequences of serial mistakes is not globally felt. You might just kill or maim your wife or child. But if you're the president of the United States....

Those in charge of the training program say the first mistake was to offer the new Iraqi recruits. This is about half the amount paid to the people who fill sandbags around the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led occupation authority, Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton said.

One official said the authority feels the soldier's "remuneration package is at least very fair." $70 a month to have targets painted on their chests and backs is very fair.

But that was just one mistake. There were others.

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FRIDAY 12.12.03 / 5:37 AM / LINK

Winning Bush's Brain

In the Bush administration's latest move to prove itself unfit to govern (snubbing Germany, France, and Russia on Iraq reconstruction contracts) Paul Krugman smells sabotage. He says administration hard-liners have just won another hand in the inside high stakes card game to win George Bush's brain.

Krugman asks, "...why torpedo a potential reconciliation between America and its allies? Perhaps because Mr. Wolfowitz's faction doesn't want such a reconciliation.

"These are tough times for the architects of the 'Bush doctrine' of unilateralism and preventive war. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow Project for a New American Century alumni viewed Iraq as a pilot project, one that would validate their views and clear the way for further regime changes."

While these guys deal, American foreign policy is tumbling into the latrine.

"The latest example – and an especially spectacular one – was when George Bush personally asked key European and other leaders on Wednesday to forgive tens of billions of dollars of Iraq's crushing debt. The very same day, the Pentagon announced on its website that companies from these countries will not be permitted to bid on 18.6 billion dollars in reconstruction contracts in Iraq. "

Jim Loeb, Alternet

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WEDNESDAY
12.10.03 / 12:30 AM / LINK
Funeral Thoughts

I went to a funeral today. There's nothing like a funeral to put things into perspective. Funerals focus.

Remember the ending scene of Saving Private Ryan? In it Ryan, now an old man, reflecting on the young men who sacrificed their lives to save his, asks his wife with great emotion ...pleading, "Have I lived a good life? Have I been a good man?"

In the end, this is the only question that matters. The only one.





12.10.03 / 12:08 AM / LINK
Trade policy views

Josh Marshall passes along some closeups of Howard Dean's takes on trade policy.





12.10.03 / 12:01 AM / LINK
Speeches or Sermons?

A thoughtful piece here about Bush administration's religious rhetoric.

The Nation writer, Juan Stam, examines George Bush's inclination to inject religious terminology into political discourse and to manipulate it.

"When Bush decided to run for office, political strategist Karl Rove helped him make the link with the evangelical sector. While other candidates were discussing polemical themes, Rove advised him that it was much better for him to simply speak about his faith. Bush presented himself as "a man with Jesus in his heart." When a reporter asked him who his favorite philosopher was, Bush replied: "Christ, because he changed my heart." That corresponded perfectly to the extreme individualism of fundamentalism, and it constituted what in the metalanguage of evangelical code words is called "personal witness.

"Politically, Bush's discourse has been very effective, but theologically the results have been more problematic, as evident in particular in three areas."

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TUESDAY
12.9.03 / 10:30 PM / LINK
To F or not to F, this is the freaking question

John Kerry said a swear. But of course so has George Bush ...also within earshot of the media. But White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card, is not upset with his boss, he just wishes John Kerry wouldn't be so much like his boss and would quit cussing the way he did in a recent Rolling Stone interview.

Card whined, "I'm very disappointed that he (Kerry) would use that kind of language. I'm hoping that he's apologizing at least to himself, because that's not the John Kerry that I know."

But Card's whining is nothing but the pot calling the kettle "Bush", because what George once said was, "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out." -George W. Bush; Time, March 2002.

Now ,of course, it could be said that the President was referring to somebody really despicable, so a well placed "fuck" was appropriate. But maybe that's what motivated Kerry too.

And then there was this bomb, which in 1987 George Bush dropped not only on journalist Al Hunt, but on his 4 year-old daughter who was standing next to him. What the future president said was, "You no-good fucking son of a bitch, I will never fucking forget what you wrote." It was not reported if the born-again president's veins were popping out of his head at the time, but it wouldn't be hard to imagine they were.

And what about the 4-year-old kid? Of course any self-respecting Texas he-man never frets about collateral damage.

Thank you Atrios.

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