For The Trees
Who is our economy FOR, anyway? About the Authors: Dave Johnson John Emerson Richard Reich Thomas Leavitt
Recent Posts: BEST OF STF: Dave's: Articles not at STF: The ATLA Speech on building a progressive infrastructure Lowering the Bar The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors On the Right and their communications infrastructure: Why Republicans Win Win or Lose The "Conventional Wisdom" Machine Some History of the Conservative Movement HOW TO FIGHT BACK An Amplifier Of Our Own Don't Blame the Democrats How They Do It 1 2 3 4 Getting Rolled Other: You're Gonna Get Drafted Scalia and Self-Government Who is Our Economy For? Voting Machine Story Link Collection What's Wrong with this Picture? (Voting Machines) Like Meat in the Supermarket Get Active Thin Line 1 2 3 Fixing Social Security Seeing the Forest I, II, III "Incredibly Positive News" The Breadth of It The Republican Crony Club Moon Bush Ralph Nader is a Scab John's Best Of: Kerry Smear Page Bandar Bush 9/11 Commission Report Damages Bush -- if you read it Florida Goon Squad Intimidated the Supreme Court The Use and Abuse of George Orwell Zizka's Archives (John's previous identity) Zizka Sampler News Sources: AlterNet BuzzFlash Common Dreams Cursor Drudge Retort Information Clearing House Smirking Chimp TruthOut What REALLY Happened Links to Other Weblogs: |
![]() 7/12/2003 What If ... ? From the October, 2002 Joint Resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq: Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;So ... what if Iraq DIDN'T participate in the Sept. 11 attack, and DIDN'T have weapons of mass destruction, and WASN'T working with al-Queda? 7/11/2003 Deflation Wholesale prices increased .5 percent in June. What really happened was that energy prices increased a bunch, and the most other prices went down. I have heard some analysts say increasing energy prices are good, because it keeps the inflation rate up, which means the threat of deflation is lower. But this doesn't sound right to me. I'm not an economist, but isn't deflation - dropping prices - a symptom of the problem rather than the problem? The problem is reduced demand. So wouldn't increasing energy prices work to further reduce demand, as people and businesses divert more and more of their spending power into paying the higher energy bills? And wouldn't this make the problem worse instead of better? The Fear Do you remember the fear? The theme of the 2002 elections was this: Terrorists are everywhere, and are about to do terrible things to us. The Democrats won't protect you, but the Republicans will. The Republicans said that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, had weapons of mass destruction - including and especially nukes - and was going to give those weapons to terrorists or use those weapons on us SOON unless we act. "Dirty bombs" might go off at any moment. Smallpox might hit any day. We must go to war to save ourselves. Those Democrats are against the war - are against protecting ourselves. The threat was so imminent that we must take the unprecedented step of having a war vote just before the elections. The Republicans campaigned that they would protect the public from this terrible, immediate, imminent, mounting threat, and the Democrats won't. Their campaign ads said Democrats are weak and wishy-washy and we must not risk delay at this time. Their radio stations and columnists said that liberals hate America (just like the terrorists), and "objectively" support Saddam. In the South they said that liberals are not good Christians; they are on the side of evil. Remember how the terror threats were raised, and there was constant talk of the terrible dangers we faced? The public was pumped full of fear, day after day. The news was full of terrible stories about smallpox, and the horrific effects of nerve gas, even warnings about what to do if there is a nuclear explosion in your area. But now - what happened? Where are the threats? They didn't find any weapons in Iraq, which could only mean that terrorists possess them now. Yet, the "threat level" is lowered. The budget for homeland security is reduced, but not discussed. The papers and radio and television are not warning us that terrorists will strike at any moment. What changed? What happened to the fear? This Changes Everything Atrios points to Oliver Willis, who remind us: Condi June 8, Meet the Press: "We did not know at the time - no one knew at the time, in our circles - maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."Today's news: "There was even some discussion on that specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the CIA thought and the speech was cleared," Rice said.What are we talking about here? CBS News: CIA officials warned members of the President’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.Put the pieces together. They changed the speech to say "The British government has learned," AFTER the CIA said the story was bogus. But on June 8, Rice said on Meet the Press, "We did not know at the time - no one knew at the time, in our circles - maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery." We now know that June 8 statement was a flat-out lie. As far as I know this is the first instance of indisputable documentation of a flat-out, indisputable lie on the part of the Bush administration on this issue. This changes everything. This is no longer a "He said, She said" dispute. It is now a matter of how much of this was a lie, a plot to influence the 2002 elections, a plot to manipulate data to gain support for the conquest of a country? 7/10/2003 They Didn't Retract It CBS News : Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” Mr. Bush said.EVEN IF BUSH DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS A LIE, THEY NEVER RETRACTED BUSH'S STATEMENT! THEY LET THE COUNTRY GO TO WAR WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BELIEVING - BECAUSE BUSH HAD SAID SO IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH - THAT IRAQ WAS MAKING NUKES! Strong Statement Dean Says Those Who Misled Nation Should Resign : Manchester, NH -- Governor Howard Dean issued the following statement today: They Knew It Was A Lie When They Went To War In "Is there a plumber in the house?," over at Left Coaster, Mary points out that even if, as the White House is claiming, Bush didn't know that the Niger uranium story was a lie when he used it in the State of the Union speech, he DID know it was a lie when we went to war. The public's support for the war (and the President) was based partly - if not mostly - on belief and fear that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, a belief the public held because Bush had told them this story in the State of the Union speech. The story was not retracted until this week. More Focus Group Language? Bush again uses the "attempts to rewrite history" charge. I heard Rumsfield say the same the other day. Also on the right-wing radio shows. Focus groups and polls must have shown this to be a phrase that provides them some cover. Tort Reform If you are interested in tort reform, here is an index to the P.L.A. weblog's writings on this issue: Missing Class Can be Costly 7/09/2003 Meetup Numbers I was curious so I looked up the Meetup numbers for the different candidates as of today: Dean 59,661All the candidates have Meetups. All of them have websites. All of them take contributions online. I don't think it's the Internet that is behind Dean's grassroots popularity. I think Dean's grassroots popularity is what is behind his Internet activity. 7/08/2003 Fighting The Last War Good post over at Situation Room. It seems we're fighting a fourth generation war with techniques designed for 2nd and 3rd generation wars. Bush No Friend of Military Take a look at The Salt Lake Tribune -- No friend of military One of the most hypocritical sights I've ever seen was George W. Bush in full flight gear strutting around the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Iraq invasion. Given that he was AWOL from his National Guard post for over a year, Bush's actions were insulting to all former and present military personnel.I encourage readers to write similar letters to the editors of your local papers. Big Electronic Voting Machines Story Scoop: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program. This story says that votes can be changed in the software used at a county election headquarters, where the voting machines send their data after the election - and shows some evidence that suggests the software is set up for this! 7/07/2003 Precinct Work There's a guest post at Interesting Times, talking about how to do precinct work. THIS is how you win elections! Please go read this, and start thinking about it. If YOU could do this where YOU live, starting soon, getting your neighbors registered to vote, and then getting them to the polls on election day, it really can make enough of a difference to change the election results! This is the old-fashioned way, and it works. It's Not Just The Information In previous posts I have said that if more Americans were getting actual news they might change their opinion of President Bush and the far right. Recent polls showing that Americans still believe that Iraq was at least partly behind 9/11 are examples of beliefs based on lack of information or misinformation. Today I was reading the comments over at tacitus' blog. In particular this post. And in particular there look for comments from "carter." Or, if you can stand it, go read any comments over at Free Republic on any given day. I think the problem is deeper than just information, it goes to the context for understanding the information. For some, simply being told (by the right people, with the right code words) that Bush is "a good Christian" is enough, and after that it simply does not matter what he does or says, they'll support him. For others, knowing that Bush supports the correct policies of the right is enough, and it simply does not matter what else he does or says - even if he publicly says something completely opposite of what they know his position to be; the lying doesn't matter, doesn't bother them at all. An example of this is in the comments is AmeriCorps where the commenter faults Bush for starving AmeriCorps rather than killing it. So he understands that Bush is starving it - but in public Bush SUPPORTS AmeriCorps! I guess that's OK. That's something I have noticed - the lying is OK as long as you they think Bush is on "their side." Copyright © 2002-05. |
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