Savage

How many of you have spent time listening to Michael Savage? The other day I suggested that it would be smart to spend some time listening to Rush, to become familiar with the thinking of the Right.

I won't go so far as to suggest actually spending time listening to Savage -- he is so vile, so beyond civility and decency that it is actually a sickening experience to tune in. And I mean that I believe that listening to his show regularly would affect one's mental health. (A subject of a piece I hope to write soon - the effect on one's mental health of listening to right-wing radio.) But I do want to point this out - Michael Savage now has a show on MSNBC! I think little more needs to be said about television and the quality of the information one receives from watching television. Michael Savage is on TV and Phil Donahue is not. (Not to mention - when was the last time you saw an advocate of the labor unions on TV?) That says it all.

I realized the other day that I have almost completely stopped watching TV news! Both network and cable. I think that around the time MSNBC got rid of Donahue and put Savage on that all of the cable networks seemed to change, and move violently to the right. Every time I turned on the TV I found myself disgusted and just turned it off, and soon I just stopped turning it on at all. I get my news online now, and listen to the radio. In fact, I find myself listening mostly to ieAmericaRadio.com online now during the day. Later in the day, sometimes, NPR.

This has made a big difference in how I see the world. The biggest difference is that I have stopped worrying about what the smarmy Washington pundits think! Because I am not exposed to them, I have stopped thinking like them. I don't worry about the "horse race." Instead I look at issues. I don't spend endless time thinking about the strategizing. I don't spend time on gossip-style character assassination concerns. I'm still trying to put words on this difference in my outlook, but as I withdraw from the effects of the TV Nation I feel like my mind is spending time more honestly and rationally evaluating the information I get.

Rather than get into that I wanted to say that I see this huge gap between people who are getting news from a variety of sources - namely online - and people who are getting news from major media - TV and radio. And the polls clearly reflect this division. Professional politicians and pundits tend to think that once the public has a belief, that settles the issue -- that spin determines the truth. It's a Gingrichian view that says what the public believes is what is true politically, so they should play the game according to what they can make the public believe, and according to what the public already believes, rather than according to truth and honesty. I think there is an opportunity here. I think that the actual truth can be very hard to argue with, so there is always a possibility of restoring the public to sanity by exposing them to the truth.

Anyway, I'm in a hurry, and rambling, and I'll try to put this into better words soon. That's what a blog is about, right?

New Official Dean Weblog

The Howard Dean campaign has launched a new, redesigned weblog at a new address. It's called Blog for America. I have updated this in the blogroll, except there it's called Howard Dean Blog For America.

It's The Information, Stupid

Please go read this poll, Many Americans Unaware WMD Have Not Been Found. It says a lot about what's going on in the country. It's the information, stupid.

While 59% of those polled correctly said the US has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, 41% said they believed that the US has found such weapons (34%) or were unsure (7%).
...

Another widespread misperception is that Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons in the war. Twenty-two percent held this misperception, with 9% being unsure, while 69% correctly said that Iraq had not used such weapons.
...

Asked, "Thinking back to when the US government was making the case for going to war with Iraq, according to the government, what was the most important reason for going to war with Iraq?" 60% said "the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction," and 19% said "the evidence that Iraq was working with the terrorist group al'Qaeda." But 20% said the most important reason was "the fact that Saddam Hussein was an oppressive dictator." Asked for the second most important reason, another 32% chose "the fact that Saddam Hussein was an oppressive dictator," while weapons of mass destruction were chosen by 24% and links to al'Qaeda by 42%.

Got that? We went to war because Iraq HAD weapons of mass destruction, and because they were working with al-Queda. They used WMD against us during the war, and those WMD have been found.

It seems like we have such a struggle in front of us, when the public isn't even getting basic factual information. One thing that we CAN do at this stage is work to get people informed. I can't think of anything more important. Please write to everyone in your address book to let them know that there are places they can get honest news. Look at the way MoveOn and the Dean campaign have been able to get their message out. But we need to add more people to the "base" of people who are getting honest information. I think the most important place to tell them about is BuzzFlash, because it offers frequently updated headlines of basic news. And, of course, refer them to your favorite weblogs.

Kerry or Edwards, etc.

I'm curious. Can someone please point me to some weblogs that actively support Kerry or Edwards or Gephardt or any of the Democratic presidential candidates other than Dean? Thanks!

Update - I found one for Edwards, and it lists some other blogs, but none are up-to-date. One, Regular People for Edwards, requires a password. The Edwards campaign website doesn't link to any blogs.

The Kerry website doesn't link to any blogs.

The Gephardt website doesn't.

The Bob Graham website doesn't.

The Kucinich website doesn't.

The Al Sharpton website doesn't.

I found a weblog called "Bush Lites." Does that qualify? HEY - it links to Seeing the Forest! Oh, never mind, it's a pro-Dean blog.

Should I count this? I hope this isn't really Kerry's weblog!

UPDATE - OK, I found this: John Kerry's Unofficial Blog.

Update - Here's an active pro-Edwards weblog.

Blog Hero

A coveted Seeing the Forest Blog Hero Award goes to Billmon at Whiskey Bar. Whiskey Bar posted a list of pre-war quotes from Bush Administration officials that, it appears, many "journalists" have picked up on. But the Blog Hero Award is given for this post.

Keeping track of what those in power say -- and holding them accountable for it -- is not brilliance. It is (or should be) the stuff of ordinary journalism. It's the kind of thing the American media used to do, sometimes -- before 9/11 and our endless "war" on terrorism caused it to shut down the part of its collective brain devoted to critical thinking.

The fact that some dinky little blog now has to do the job does not reflect great credit on the blogger, but rather great shame on the media. Like the rest of American society, American journalism appears to have flushed some of the most important lessons of the Vietnam War down the toilet.

Top 100

Well, Seeing the Forest is back in the top 100. Number 100 anyway. Today, anyway.

Link slutting: If you're weblog is on the left there in my blogroll, consider linking back. (Link slutting is such an ugly thing.)

Update -Well THAT sure didn't work. 104.

Electability

For those who think that a Southern, conservative Democrat is more electable, I offer you this, from the Des Moines Register, about Senator Bob Graham:

Republican National Committee spokesman Chad Colby said Graham's comments are "outrageous statements."

"He's a conspiracy theorist," Colby said. "That's the only way he can get his name out there."

Also this kind of crap, from the Republican National Committee:

A Tax-And-Spend Liberal In Moderate's Clothing
...
Graham's Liberal Record On School Choice

In other words, if you want to play the "electable" game instead of talking about what's the right thing to do on the issues, you aren't going to get anywhere. The right-wingers are going to use their character assassination on you no matter what. So you just gotta be real.

I'm not criticizing Bob Graham here, and previously wrote that he also represents the Democratic Wing.

Bush, Politics and Policy

A great read in the LA Times today, Bush's Scorched-Earth Campaign.

From the moment of his disputed election in 2000, President Bush has been dramatically reversing the traditional relationship between politics and policy. In his administration, politics seem less a means to policy than policy is a means to politics. Its goal is not to further the conservative revolution as advertised. The presidency's real goal is to disable the Democratic opposition, once and for all.
...

The difference between Rove and former political operatives like Michael Deaver in the Reagan administration and Dick Morris in Clinton's is that he doesn't just advise on the political consequences of policy; he seems to be involved in crafting policy, making him arguably the single most important advisor in the White House. Rove's hand and guiding spirit are everywhere evident. As John DiIulio, who briefly headed Bush's faith-based initiative, indiscreetly put it in an interview last year, everything in this administration is political, by which he meant that everything is the product of political calculation and everything is devised specifically for political advantage.

The column goes on to say that the model for getting rid of political opposition is "defunding" in the same way that the tax cuts are really about defunding government so it just dries up and goes away. Specifically:

• Tort Reform - Caps on jury awards are really caps on trial lawyer income, so they can't donate to the Democrats.
  
• School Vouchers - Getting rid of public schools gets rid of teacher's unions, so they can't donate to the Democrats.
  
• The FCC Ruling - Getting rid of opposing voices in the media is really about getting Democrats off the air.
  
• The Faith-Based Initiative - Funneling money to the Right's friends and undermining "more liberal-oriented community institutions and advocates that might aid the Democrats."
  
• Appointing Far-Right Federalist Society Judges - To "disable laws -- like the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act -- that favor Democrats by regulating fund-raising, but also to make laws that will aid Republicans in a host of areas, from the environment to product safety to redistricting."
  
• Getting Rid of Affirmative Action - "a long-range political plan to slow the growth of a minority professional class that would be likely to vote Democratic."
  
• Privatizing Social Security and Medicare - "a blow aimed at the base of the Democratic Party, because these programs are most identified with Democrats and are still a reliable source of goodwill for the part."
  
• Iraq War - "struck the Democratic Party at one of its vulnerabilities: the idea that Democrats are weak on defense."
  
• Middle-East Peace - "pry Jewish voters and contributors from the Democratic Party."
  
• 9/11 Response - "an all-purpose excuse for any anti-Democratic policy and pronouncement, including accusing Democrats of deficient patriotism."
  

From the column:

Rove can operate in broad daylight partly because what he is doing is perfectly legal, partly because his plan is so bold that he realizes no one in the media is likely to call him on it, and partly because demonizing and destroying Democrats is now a tenet of the party he guides. It has been said of Bush that he intends to finish the Reagan revolution by embedding conservatism so deeply into the governmental fabric that it will take generations to undo it. What he is really finishing, though, is not the Reagan revolution but the Clinton wars, which had far less to do with ideology than with politics.

For Bush policy is about politics ONLY. There is no "policy" in this administration that is designed to help the citizens of the country or the interests of the nation. It is ALL politics.

That is why, one suspects, Bush elicits such deep antagonism from the left — deeper perhaps than any political figure since Nixon, even though he is personally genial and charming. At some level, maybe only subliminally, liberals know what the president and Rove are up to and fear that they will succeed in dismantling an effective two-party system. The left knows that Rove and company aren't keen on debating issues, negotiating, compromising and horse-trading, the usual means of getting things done politically. On the contrary: The administration is intent on foreclosing them.

As much as liberals abhor the conservative agenda, there is something far more frightening to them now — not that Republicans have an ideological grand plan but that they don't have one. Instead, the GOP plan is policy solely in the service of politics, which should terrify democrats everywhere.

Maybe the clue was when Bush said during the campaign that he would work with the Democrats, and said he was "a uniter, not a divider." That was a tip-of that he wouldn't work with the Democrats and would divide the country right down the middle. This is the guy who said he doesn't look at polls and focus groups - because polls and focus groups told him to say that. The guy who was willing to say Al Gore would say anything to win.

Update - Calpundit comments on the same column:

[Bush is] a furious political animal who is uninterested in compromise and whose main goal is to defeat his enemies, not advance a cause. Ideology is actually secondary, and is useful mainly as a way to batter his political opposites.

Although this has been evident in a number of battles, nowhere was it more striking than in the runup to the Iraq war. From the very beginning, it was clear that Bush wasn't trying to build bipartisan support, the normal course for a president embarking on a foreign war, but was using it as a partisan club and a campaign issue, a way of dividing the Democrats and making them look weak on national security. It's true that it's been a while since politics truly stopped at the water's edge, but Bush has well and truly put that particular political maxim to bed once and for all.

The 2004 election is going to be one of the nastiest on record, I think. I hope the Democratic nominee is up to it.

Comments

I'm working on fixing the comments, and maybe changing over to Squawkbox for comments. In the meantime I'll have both HaloScan and Squawkbox comments here. Chaos.

Update - OK Sqauwkbox comments lasted about 15 minutes. I couldn't get their home page to come up so I could login and change my preferences. That's a bad enough start that I took them back off. Sorry if you left a comment - it's gone.

Out It Goes

I just thought I'd post a reminder that the money going out to Bush's tax cuts today is the money that was supposed to pay our Social Security when we retire.

S&L Crisis

Don't I recall that one of the causes of the S&L Crisis was long-term fixed-rate mortgages at relatively low interest rates? Wasn't another an administration intent on deregulation?

The Far Right

I'm listening to Thom Hartmann's radio show. He just talked about Nelson Rockefeller's speech preceeding Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican Convention, warning of the takover of the party by right-wing extremists. So I looked it up.

The atmosphere at the Republican convention was heated as Nelson Rockefeller stepped up to the podium to address the belligerent crowd: "During this year I have crisscrossed this nation, fighting … to keep the Republican party the party of all the people ... and warning of the extremist threat, its danger to the party, and danger to the nation," he said, taking his time as the crowd cheered "We want Barry!" "These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror, [they have] no program for America and the Republican Party... [they] operate from dark shadows of secrecy. It is essential that this convention repudiate here and now any doctrinaire, militant minority whether Communist, Ku Klux Klan or Birchers." It was, according to many, Nelson Rockefeller's finest moment -- but it did little to stop the conservative wave that was transforming the GOP.

Goldwater responded with his famous line: "Let our Republicanism, so focused and dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels," he summoned the crowd. "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice -- and let me remind you also, moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Do you think Rockefeller was warning us of what's happening to the country today.

For Real?

Is this for real, or is it more babies being thrown from incubators?

OK Kerry, Go For It

OK John Kerry, here's your chance. You have been handed what potentially is the biggest presidential scandal in American history: the President, intentionally or incompetently, mislead the public and the Congress into starting a war with a nation that had not attacked or even threatened us.

For the good of the country and the world, this is not the time to hold back. I was in the room when you said you had seen no secret intelligence beyond what the public had been told backing up the President's claims that Iraq was an imminent threat, so I don't think you are holding back because you know something that the public does not.

You're the front-runner, so it's your responsibility as well as your opportunity to take the lead on this one -- and if you do then you might just deserve the presidency for that alone. Otherwise, perhaps you should think about getting out of the way.

Update - Since writing that I came across this:

IN FIERY SPEECHES Sunday to 400 Democratic activists gathered in Mount Pleasant, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio assailed President Bush. While Kucinich said the Bush administration "lied to the American people," Dean compared Bush to President Nixon during the Watergate crisis. "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Dean asked, in a reprise of the famous question posed about Nixon in 1974.

"The country is facing a serious crisis," Dean told the crowd. "Our people are dying in Iraq at the rate of nine a week and the American people may not have had the full information about why we went there."

Now all we have to do is get the media to actually report the facts.

This One is Worth Sending

Everybody in the country should read John Dean's piece on Bush and weapons of mass destruction. This is one that is worth e-mailing to everyone you know.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

Of course, the right controls the Justice Department, the Congress and the Courts. And the media. This is the big one. This is where we find out if we are still a nation of laws.

Books

In my opinion, a key book for understanding why liberals and conservatives think the way they do is Moral Politics by George Lakoff. Lakoff's research shows that conservatives use a "strict father family" metaphor for thinking about government, and outlines the morality that follows from this. Obedience to authority, reward and punishment, things like that. The book explains why conservatives think it is immoral to help the poor. He says that liberals use a "nurturing parent" family metaphor, and follow a moral structure of helping each other. Lakoff's book gives you a good insight into why right-wingers mocked Hillary Clinton for writing a book titled It Takes a Village.

A key book for understanding "movement conservatives" is Blinded by the Right, by David Brock.

"My Fight"

To understand the Republican plan, read this. Then tell me if it doesn't confirm this.

Wording It Well

Balkinization puts the right words to the WMD problem:

If the Administration did not deceive the American people about the existence of WMD in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, then the possibility that these weapons have already proliferated and spread to terrorist groups becomes much greater. And that should be troubling for any Administration that insists it is acting to make the American people safer. (Which raises an interesting question: should we be happier if it turns out that the Administration was merely dishonest because it misled the public about WMD's in Iraq or incompetent because it let the WMD's fall into the hands of terrorists?)

Did he lie, or was he just incompetent?

Republican Crony Club

Here's a story about more blatant Republican Crony Club corruption that will not result in any indictments or headlines. And especially no leading Democrats calling for investigations. Update - Here's another one.

By the way - still no no leading Democrats calling for investigation of Bush's corruption with Harken Oil, or Cheney's corruption with Halliburton.

Listen to Rush

A comment I left over at Billmon's blog, after a posting about how Americans are uninformed - or misinformed - about the WMD situation:

I'm surprised by how many of "us" - progressives and moderates - don't ever listen to Rush or Sean Hannity, which happen to be where a very large fraction of America gets its news. I think it's important to understand what they are saying. You won't BELIEVE it if you turn on Rush or Sean, but it's what the public is hearing, and you'll see why Bush is so popular. Try it.

I'm serious. It is a very good thing to know what your opponents are saying. It's also a good way to know what you're going to be hearing about everywhere else. Also, you'll understand just how serious the right is, and how hard they are ready to fight.

Go Read

Every, every, everybody should read Arianna Huffington's piece The Enronization of Public Policy!

More On Bush vs Veterans

Democratic Veteran has caught Bush out on another one - involving the government pulling back the number of contracts to veteran-owned small businesses.

The Democratic Wing

I think pundits who think the phrase "The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" refers to the lefties "just don't get it." In my opinion the phrase refers to Democrats willing to be an opposition party and stand up and challenge the Republicans when it is in the interest of the country. Senator Bob Graham, candidate for President certainly is no leftie, but he certainly is willing to stand up and challenge the Republicans, calling on President Bush to release information about what led up to 9/11. I respect that, even if his politics are not in line with my own. The politics of Sen. John Kerry DO line up with mine, but I feel that he does not stand up to the Republicans as necessary, and THAT is why he does not earn the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" label.

Graham is a quiet man who is considered a long shot among Democratic contenders. But he is the only one so far to stake out an aggressive position on the basis of classified information obtained during his tenure as co-chair of a special House-Senate panel. That panel has been investigating failure by the intelligence community to anticipate the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

Not only has he complained that the administration has dragged its feet for five months on declassifying the panel's 800-page report, but he has warned that he will take his case later this month to Vice President Dick Cheney, who oversaw the inquiry.

"I was raising my voice about my concern on this long before I became a candidate," said Graham, the only senator running for president who voted against congressional authorization of the war in Iraq, arguing that the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden should be the top priority for the administration.

"The American people deserve to know what their intelligence agencies have done or not done, and Congress needs to know so that reforms can be made," Graham said in an interview.

Being in the Democratic wing is about being an opposition party and standing up for the people of the country and the interests of the nation instead of cowering before the Bush intimidation machine, allowing the right to persue their radical agenda to take the country back to the 19th century. That's what it's about, not about being a leftie. And it's about getting it. Checking in with weblogs is getting it. Reading BuzzFlash is getting it. Understanding what the grassroots are talking about is getting it. THAT is why Governor Howard Dean is doing so well with the grassroots, and THAT is why Dean can use the phrase "from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

Priorities

U.S. Begins to Excavate Bomb Crater in Search for Hussein's Remains.

A team of American military engineers began an intensive effort today to excavate the site of a bombing on April 7 that military officials still think may have killed Saddam Hussein.

The operation, involving a backhoe, two bulldozers, two cranes and 17 dump trucks, appeared to be by far the largest American effort to discover whether Mr. Hussein was killed in the raid.

Weapons hunters haven't examined Iraqi missile site.

But no U.S. weapons hunters or intelligence officials have visited the heart of Iraq's missile programs -- the state-owned Al-Fatah company in Baghdad, which designed all the rockets Saddam Hussein's troops fired in 1991 and again this year. Not only that, it's not even on their agenda.

``We have the most sensitive documents here,'' said Marouf al-Chalabi, director-general of Al-Fatah. ``We were sure the Americans would target us, but they haven't even dropped by.''
...

Plans for rocket engines, guidance systems and even missile warheads are strewn across the dusty office floors and swirl in the parking lot outside. Some have been blown into nearby bushes. ``They're scattered everywhere,'' Chalabi said, marveling at the mess.

American missile experts who have accompanied U.S. weapons teams in Iraq expressed astonishment this week when told that the design plans and engineers behind the Iraqi Scuds and other missile projects were available. The experts, who couldn't be identified for security reasons, said Al-Fatah wasn't on any target list they had seen.

They sure as hell immediately secured the oil fields, and sent the troops necessary to accomplish that. But they never did put much effort into locating and securing the supposed weapons. Yes, the same weapons that were a terrible, unimaginable threat to our security. Weapons that not only Saddam could use against us, but terrorists could get their hands on. But after the war they didn't even bother to send more than a few teams out to look for them -- surely not a major effort to secure all these weapons before they could be used on us or dispersed to terrorists. It's almost like they didn't want to waste resource on something that was nothing more than a story - a pretense - an excuse.

Sense of Decency

Reading Krugman, and reading other news questioning whether Bush lied claiming Iraq was a threat to us, I think we might be having a "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" moment. If so, I want Al Franken to get the historical credit, for going after O'Reilly the other day. I heard about it from several blogs, and saw it on C-Span. You gotta see it, it's historic. You can watch by clicking here (scroll to where it says Franken, and click "Watch") or, if you have DSL or cable, here. (Use RealPlayer's slide bar if you want to skip to where Franken starts - about 27 or 28 minutes into it.)

Franken went after Bush and Limbaugh and O'Reilly (in person - he was sitting right next to him) for lying. I mean he really went after them. At the end of his talk he said that we're tired of the lies from the right and tired of just taking it and "we're not going to sit for it anymore, we just aren't." Franken's upcoming book is titled, "LIES, And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them:A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" and O'Reilly is on the cover.

Then today Paul Krugman's column just got real and said it.

It's long past time for this administration to be held accountable. Over the last two years we've become accustomed to the pattern. Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters — a group that includes a large segment of the news media — obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. And some Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies.

This stuff MATTERS. We went to WAR based on their lies! Bush lied, people died. As I am hearing more and more people saying, this is a lot worse than Watergate or Iran/Contra. This might even be worse than getting a blowjob!!!!!!!

So this might be a turning point, a "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" moment that crystallizes people's thinking and helps guide them back to doing the right thing. It's hard to ignore this one. Getting us into a war is serious businesses. Many people died. We were asked to trust the President, that he knew things we didn't, that there were stockpiles of dangerous chemical, biological, even nuclear weapons -- and it's hard to reconcile that with what we have found on the ground. Now we're bogged down with at least 150,000 troops stuck there, getting shot at, for years. And if we leave there is little doubt that Iraq will become a Shiite fundamentalist country and that WILL be a threat to us. So this one is going to be very hard to slip past the public, even with the extent of control of the media they have now. They just lie and lie, and look where it gets us.

We're not going to sit for it anymore. We just aren't.

Update - Here, from a former war supporter.

I trusted Bush, and unless something big develops on the weapons front in Iraq soon, it appears as though I was fooled by him. Perhaps he himself was taken in by his intelligence and military advisers. If so, he ought to be angry as hell, because ultimately he bears the responsibility.

It suggests a strain of zealotry in this White House that regards the question of war as just another political debate. It isn't. More than 100 fine Americans were killed in this conflict, dozens of British soldiers, and many thousands of Iraqis. Nobody gets killed or maimed in Capitol Hill maneuvers over spending plans, or battles over federal court appointments. War is a special case. It is the most serious step a nation can take, and it deserves the highest measure of seriousness and integrity.

When a president lies or exaggerates in making an argument for war, when he spins the facts to sell his case, he betrays his public trust, and he diminishes the credibility of his office and our country. We are at war. What we lost in this may yet end up being far more important than what we gained.

Afternoon Update - Let's look at Senator Byrd's May 21 speech.

Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.

But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it -- more than I would ever have believed -- right on this Senate Floor.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.
...

The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually became one.

What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S.
...

But, the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?
...

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

Please go read the whole thing. As it begins to dawn on America that they were hoodwinked into war, I have a sense that we are experiencing history and this will go down as one of its great speeches.

It's Just Gone

Also, read this letter from Charles Rangel. The Bush tax cuts were your Social Security and Medicare. The money is going to these tax cuts instead. No question about it. The money is just gone now, and you won't be getting Social Security or Medicare.

The Social Security and Medicare trust funds — financed through the payroll tax on workers — are being rapidly funneled out to "give the money back" to wealthy taxpayers. This lays the groundwork for the end of those two programs — not reform, end — because the money will simply not be there.

So when you hear someone defending these tax cuts, ask them if they understand that it means no Social Security or Medicare for them.

Lying

I know you've seen this and I'm sure everyone else is putting this on their weblogs, but it is so important that I'm referring to it as well. Read Paul Krugman's column today!

I'm in a "light blogging" period, but I want to write about this and will soon. You know I've been writing about the lying that is going on.

Good Kerry Piece

Here's a good piece about John Kerry.

Blog to Check

An Old Soul

Dean Meetups Wednesday

The next Howard Dean for President Meetup day is this coming Wednesday, June 4. If you have heard about Governor Dean and want to learn more, or already know enough and want to get more involved, or just want to go spend a couple of hours with other people who feel the way you do, then this is your chance.

When you arrive at your Meetup location you'll probably see a sign or someone with a Dean t-shirt on, maybe a sign-in table. Often these days you'll see a crowd. Usually they're at a coffee shop or somewhere that serves beer and can accommodate enough people. Usually Dean Meetups involve spending a bit of time mingling with other Dean supporters, then one or two people making a few announcements, and then showing a Dean speech or other video. After they finish people are asked if they want to join a committee to work on organizing, or perhaps to have a house party.

You can find out where your nearest meetup is at Dean2002.Meetup.com. At this website you can sign up, find a local Meetup, read messages from other local Dean supporters and learn more about the Meetup process. Meetup is not part of the Dean campaign, it is a commercial service that the Dean campaign is using for this purpose. Dean is currently the largest of Meetup's clients.

Go. You'll enjoy it and you'll feel like you are helping the country.

Bush Lied People Died

Bush Lied
People Died

Getting Our Message Out

I have a piece at Smirking Chimp today. It's an improved version of a recent piece posted here. (Edited to make me look better.)

Go leave a comment.

Voting Machines Petition

Working For Change has a voting machines petition.

Stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 election
Computers threaten accountability of voting system

Today, there is a new and real threat to voters, this time coming from touchscreen voting machines with no paper trails and the computerized purges of voter rolls.

You can join SCLC President Martin Luther King III and investigative reporter Greg Palast in opposing the "Florida-tion" of the 2004 Presidential election by signing this petition. A complete copy of the petition will be delivered by Working Assets to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

I think it's more about publicizing the problem than getting anything done. Imagine - giving a petition to Ashcroft and thinking anything is going to get done! But publicizing is good, so sign the petition and pass the word.

Nothing But Lies

I'm loaded down today reading weblogs and pundits complaining about hypocrisy from the Bush administration on one issue after another. Altercation writes, "The hypocrisy of this administration is absolutely mind-boggling and the mainstream media are its unindicted co-conspirators." because the Bushies have been claiming they're doing a lot of help AIDS in Africa, when they are actually doing nothing. Tbogg is upset that the Bushies are lying about WMD, contracting out the federal workforce, saving Private Lynch, etc. Democratic Veteran says they say they want to win the "Hearts and Minds" of Iraqis but aren't DOING that, and saying we won in Iraq when we're still fighting, and going after Iran, etc. In the New York Times Bob Herbert writes about the Bush tax bill saying it's about job growth but having nothing in it that will grow jobs. And I just heard someone on a ieAmericaRadio.com show say "and it just turns out that everything they were saying was lies."

Come on! Don't you get it? This is not hypocrisy or stupidity or incompetence - this is laying down a smokescreen of words to cover their real agenda. Get used to it - they just lie. Everyone gets worked up about the illogical arguments they make, and spends so much time and energy arguing with what the Bush people are SAYING and not much time effectively fighting what they are DOING. Gosh, do you think that's part of their plan for getting things done?

Eschaton shows that he has a clue when he writes today, "At what point will our media just accept that they get nothing but lies?"

I'll be writing about the influence on the right wingers of philosopher Leo Strauss soon. He taught that deception is necessary in politics - leaders should tell the people what they need to tell them to keep them calm and then do what they think is best. Oh yeah, there is a lot more. Here's a good place to study up: Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception

Corporate Share of Cost of Government

I was looking into what has happened to the share of taxes paid by corporations, and came across this interesting article, The 50-Year Swindle. Here are a few excerpts:

Year by year during the last half of the twentieth century, Congress and the Internal Revenue Service have shifted the national tax burden away from corporations and onto the backs of individuals and families.

The numbers are painfully simple. After World War II, corporations and individuals carried the tax burden together. Year by year, this has been altered until the corporate-individual split is now closer to 20-to-80--and guess who pays the 80 percent?

In 1953, if you count only income taxes, not various other excises, sales taxes, and special duties, individuals and families paid 59 percent of federal revenues and corporations 41 percent, according to The Statistical Abstract of the United States. By the latest confirmed figures in the Abstract, the corporate share has dropped from 41 to 20 percent, while that of individuals has increased from 59 to 80 percent.
...

On the flip side, it has made corporations steadily larger and more powerful. This has led to the "legal corruption" of huge campaign contributions that accelerated the ability of corporations to avoid more and more of their responsibility for keeping the country's civic system in decent economic health.

The half-century of stealth attacks have had the insidious effect of conditioning most of the public to accept seemingly unconnected annual changes that, with time, look like acts of God or some force of economics beyond human intervention.
...

The big swindle that shifts taxes from corporations to individuals is concealed by another myth that politicians keep drumming into the American consciousness: The citizens of the United States are being crushed by ever-rising tax burdens. We are told that we're all taxed to the eyebrows and this must be changed. It is almost mandatory rhetoric in every election campaign.

But, according to the Century Foundation (formerly the middle-of-the-road Twentieth Century Fund) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of all the industrialized democracies, the United States is near the bottom in paying taxes when calculated as a percentage of the country's total wealth, its Gross Domestic Product. Our total taxes as percentage of our GDP are 29.7 percent, Britain's are 33.6 percent; Canada's are 33.6 percent; Germany's are 39 percent; and Sweden's are 49.9 percent. If that makes us feel lucky, we need to add that all those other countries provide health, housing, and other services we do not.

Some ammunition for any of you who still bother to argue with right-wingers instead of just realizing that what they do is lay down a smokesreen of lies to cover what they are really doing... Much of this article does that -- it refutes the arguments of the right-wingers point by point. Of course, by the time the article had been written all the arguments had shifted, because they were never meant as serious arguments at all.

Anyway, the article has some good numbers to help you understand what has been happening to the tax structure over time, and some good stories. A good read.

Welcome

Welcome BadGimp.

The Mood of Intimidation In Bush's America

Here's a story about a teachers being punished for not supporting Bush enough. One was suspended for not taking down posters done by students - the pro-war posters were not "pro-war enough." Another was suspended because a student on the school's poetry-slam team read an anti-war poem. The poetry-slam team has also been disbanded. Four more were suspended for having anti-war posters in their classrooms. Most are terminated as of the end of this school year. All have letters inserted in their files which will make it difficult to find another job. And this is just in Albuquerque.

"Meanwhile, pro-war, militaristic signs, posters and bumper stickers abound at many Albuquerque and Rio Rancho schools."

Has Bush spoken out condemning these violations of people's rights? Has he spoken out against the mood of intimidation that is spreading across America? After you're done spitting your coffee out of your nose and laughing, please remember to read the rest of Seeing the Forest.

As I wrote below in Agents of The Party, "This is not a man condemning thuggery, this is a man gratefully utilizing it."

Space - For Americans Only

tendentious brought to my attention that the U.S. is now talking about denying all other countries the use of space for intelligence gathering satellites. They're talking about total military domination of the planet.

If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have 'no veto power.'

See PENTAGON: SPACE IS FOR AMERICANS ONLY at Defense Tech.

Another Stealth Bill

It looks like the new Defense Department authorization bill has a hidden surprise in it - it ends civil service protection for Pentagon employees! This means the loss of almost half the civil service union jobs in the country! Apparently the House has passed this but the Senate has not yet passed it. The American Federation of Government Employees has more information.

Please visit their website, and then call your Senators right away!

"Starving the Beast"

Read this, Stating the Obvious from Krugman today.

It's no secret that right-wing ideologues want to abolish programs Americans take for granted. But not long ago, to suggest that the Bush administration's policies might actually be driven by those ideologues — that the administration was deliberately setting the country up for a fiscal crisis in which popular social programs could be sharply cut — was to be accused of spouting conspiracy theories.

Then read this, Taxing Credibility by Bruce Bartlett from the LA Times Sunday, arguing from the right that yes this is exactly what they are doing, and for good reason.

Neoconservatives thought that attacking massively popular spending programs was both counterproductive and politically hopeless. Congress would never vote to cut such programs directly, and would not even restrain their growth unless under enormous political pressure.

And so, they approached things differently. First, they concluded that it is the relative size of government, not its absolute size, that is most important. In other words, government spending as a share of the gross domestic product was what mattered. For neocons, increasing the GDP is as important as lowering spending. Earlier conservatives had concentrated almost exclusively on controlling spending, assuming that increasing GDP was beyond government's grasp.

Second, neoconservatives absorbed the insights of Public Choice, an economic school led by Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan. One of Buchanan's theories, developed in academic papers and books during the mid-1970s, held that the size of government is better controlled on the tax side than the spending side. Cutting spending directly, while desirable, was often impossible in the absence of special circumstances, because the beneficiaries of spending were well organized and motivated, while those favoring lower spending were disorganized and diffused.

Neoconservatives saw tax cuts as a single solution to both problems. Lower tax rates would spur economic growth. If growth increased faster than spending, then spending's share of GDP would fall without the necessity of cutting spending directly. At the same time, they reasoned, budget deficits resulting from lower taxes would mobilize movements advocating reduced spending.
...

When California's Proposition 13 came along in 1978, Kristol saw another way in which tax cutting was useful. By denying government its fuel, tax cuts forced politicians to cut spending. In this sense, supply-side economics echoed the thinking of conservative economist Milton Friedman, who wrote in a 1978 column that "the only effective way to restrain government spending is by limiting government's explicit tax revenue — just as a limited income is the only effective restraint on any individual's or family's spending."
...

Starving the beast and increasing incentives for work, saving and investment are still good reasons to cut taxes today.

Yes, it's obvious, especially when they clearly say that their intent is to bankrupt the country IN ORDER TO get rid of Social Security and Medicare They call it "starving the beast" and they are proud to be bankrupting the country, because that brings the desired goal of getting rid of all of our pensions and health care.

If you asked the average Bush voter if they think Bush is trying to get rid of Social Security or Medicare they'll look at you like you are a crazy conspiracist. But how do you get through to them, when all of AM radio is a 24/7 Republican party ad, the TV networks replace Phil Donahue with Michael Savage, and most people won't go near a newspaper? Well, I've been writing about how to do that.

Search is Gone

I got rid of the search capability becuase it sucked too much. One of these days Blogger will have its search working.

Update - Maybe one of these days Blogger will get Blogspot working, too!

So Much for That Idea

The huge Bush tax cut was supposed to immediately lift the stock market, creating a "wealth effect" which would then boost consumer confidence and revive the economy.

Well, the tax cut passed Friday night. This is Tuesday morning (markets were closed yesterday), and the stock market opened ... down. Down 45 as I write, 5 minutes after the open.

Oops. Oh well, so much for that idea. Sorry about that HUGE increase in the deficit.

Update -The market went up later, because of consumer confidence and housing numbers. But the initial movement, in response to passing the tax cut bill, was down.

Who Is Responsible?

I'm reading this NY Times story about the Democrats trying to find a message, etc. I don't agree that the problem is that the Democrats don't have a message, or that it is their responsibility to develop one. Politicians RESPOND to the public. That's their job. A while back I wrote a piece about this, Don't Blame the Democrats. I'm going to repeat and expand on that piece here, and tell you who I blame - who I challenge to step up to the plate and fix this problem.

I have written about how the right has in place a broad, extremely well-funded "idea development and communication infrastructure" and how this has successfully moved the public to the right. This infrastructure consists of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute (the people who brought you the Iraq war) to develop and refine their ideology, and a communications infrastructure that pumps their message out. This is the "message amplification infrastructure." Some of the communication channels are Rush Limbaugh and all of AM radio, Fox News and most of the TV pundits, the Washington Times and other newspapers, various magazines, various book publishers, and numerous organizations endlessly repeating the ideological messages to the public.

As I wrote before: "After the public has been barraged with the messaging from The Mighty Wurlizter, the Republican politicians step in and harvest the results." In other words, politicians respond to the public. To change the country don't rely on the politicians, instead you must change the public. This is how the right has accomplished so much. They have been pumping their ideological message to the public, following a long-term strategy, and over time succeeded in moving the public to the right. Only then would the public vote for their candidates.

As one example of this process, let's look at the right's movement to get rid of public schools. For so many years the right-wing infrastructure has been pumping out the message that "public schools are failing." After some time, hearing this message over and over, a consensus grows that there is a problem with public schools. Right-wing politicians can then promise "solutions," like vouchers, and their message resonates with a public that is primed to believe there is a "problem" requiring a solution. This public is also primed, through repetition of other messaging, to believe that private companies are more effective than government, etc. So the environment for accepting private schools as a "solution" to the "problem" of failing public schools has been set up. (It doesn't matter if there really is a problem, as long as a large enough share of the voting public believes there is.)

Now contrast this with the progressive approach to the health care problem. A progressive politician can come to the public saying we need "single-payer health insurance" or even the shorter "universal health care." The response from the public is going to be, "What?" because so few of the public have heard of these terms, much less been pounded with progressive messages about the problems with the health care system. So the way things work now, progressive politicians have to come in explaining from scratch the problems, and trying to educate the public with their detailed solutions. This is because the support base for their ideas was not developed in advance by a comparable ideological infrastructure.

Do we blame the Democrats for this? The Republican Party "harvests" the environment set up by the well-funded "idea development and communication infrastructure." But it wasn't the Republican Party that set up this infrastructure. So I don't think we can blame the Democratic Party for the absence of a comparable infrastructure on the left. The right-wing infrastructure was set up by a few right-wing philanthropists with a vision and not by the Republican Party.

So when looking for someone to "blame" perhaps we should look to someone other than Democratic politicians. Perhaps we should look to the people who FUND moderates and progressives. Let me explain what I mean.

Here's how the right manages to have such an infrastructure in place, while progressives and moderates are left struggling with each other and barely getting their messages out to the public. There's a lot of money out there on the right, but there's also a lot of moderate and progressive money out there. The difference is that the right uses its money to provide general operating funding to "advocacy" organizations that exist to come up with ways to convince the public to vote Republican. The organizations on the right are funded just to exist, and the money continues year after year, so they do not have to spend so much of their time raising money, instead concentrating on effectively carrying out their ideological objectives.

On the other hand, moderate and progressive philanthropists have traditionally provided money for specific programs with the intent of doing good in specific ways. This system of "program funding" evolved as the best way to apply scarce resources to projects with goals for which there was a general public consensus of support. This system evolved at a time when helping the poor, protecting the environment were all widely supported by the public.

But now the right's ideology machine has eroded that public support, and the programs funded by this system are less effective. The right uses their machine to get politicians elected that will carry out their agenda of dismantling almost everything that the moderates and progressives have been funding. When this happens, the moderate and progressive money is wasted. The example I like to use is a program to protect a redwood grove, costing $500,000 a year for the last 10 years. But now an elected official issues a decree that the best way to protect forests from fire is to remove the trees, or an ideological judge rules that trees are better used for industry -- and just like that the redwood grove is gone, and the $5,000,000 spent over 10 years is completely wasted. AND on top of that the local radio stations are mocking the funders as "evironmental whackos" or "eco-terrorists," and perhaps people are picketing their offices with signs saying they are "anti-capitalist."

Program funding was not designed to counter the current destructive opposition from the right. Moderate and progressive funding must start taking this into account, and start building an infrastructure that reaches the general public with messaging that moves underlying attitudes back toward moderate and progressive principles. This would provide an environment where moderates and progressives can get public support to protect the programs that are so important to all of us.

Moderate and progressive philanthropists must step up to the plate. As with anything that has been in place for a long time, program funding is an entrenched system, with bureaucracies in place, and lots of careers depending on the system staying just the way it is. But moderate and progressive philanthropists and foundations must recognize that this is no longer the most effective use of their money. Moderate and progressive philanthropists and foundations must step up to the plate and begin providing general operating funding to advocacy organizations who will work to move the public back away from this right-wing ideological nonsense that we have been subjected to for so long! This will provide an underlying base of support for the programs we all care about. This will help persuade the public to elect candidates who will protect the programs they care about. This will persuade the public to support the organizations that are trying so hard to protect the environment and help the poor and all the rest. We all need the work done to strengthen the underlying public attitudes of support for these goals, to strengthen and build the base of support upon which the organizations and programs rest.

If you are fortunate enough to have possession of so much of the resources, you have the responsibility to use them in the best possible way. You have the duty to see that there is a threat from the right that must be countered. It is not the job of a political party - politicians respond to the public. It is your job to use your resources to educate the public, to move them back from the right, to counter the ideological propaganda that the right is bombarding us with, to defend the programs we all care so much about.

Endorsement?

Is this an early endorsement of Dean?

Bill To Fix Voting Machines

I just learned that Congressman Rush Holt has introduced legislation to require a voter-verified paper trail for electronic voting machines. There is a description of the bill here.

Agents of "The Party"

You can see the controversial commencement speech where Chris Hedges was "booed off the stage" online now. You'll see that while some people stood and turned their backs it was actually just a few of the typically nasty and disruptive right-wing thug types who were shouting and blasting air-horns, even sneaking up and pulling the plug on the microphone. Most of the crowd was sitting calmly, wishing the ruffnecks would shut up. Some were shouting back at them "freedom of speech!" When the Dean asked the disrupting Party Members to allow the speaker to continue the crowd clapped and cheered. When Hedges finished there were as many people clapping as booing. Then some of the thugs rushed the state to threaten Hedges. (Keep in mind as you watch this that Hedges' message was simply, "war is bad.")

The message-amplification organs of The Party, fresh from their corporate-sponsored national trashing of the Dixie Chicks, trumpeted this event as another triumph for Bush and The Party, encouraging more of this sort of activity.

So here we have another example of what I'll call "agents of The Party" using thuggery - violating the rights of the rest of the crowd, shouting down a speaker for opposing The Party, and disrupting the graduation ceremony of a college - only to be praised in the media as heroes. Why do I call them "agents of The Party?" Because this behavior is occurring more and more in Bush's America, encouraged by "The Wurlitzer." Drudge shouts headlines of another pansy liberal "booed off the stage." Rush and Sean and all of AM radio talk about the elitist limousine liberal speaker out of touch with or hating America. Fox tells viewers of the heroes of Rockford patriotically rejecting the anti-American rant. Certainly no one from The Party has spoken up to denounce this type of behavior!

Bush's failure to condemn this signals his support and understanding of how it benefits his agenda. And occasionally he goes beyond silent approval, as he did with his endorsement the organized, coordinated campaign of intimidation against countries threatening to vote against us at the U.N.

While Bush said he did not expect "significant retribution from the government" against Security Council member nations that didn't line up with the United States, he pointedly left open the possibility of a popular backlash.

This is not a man condemning thuggery, this is a man gratefully utilizing it.

Blog Hero - Slactivist

I want to announce another Seeing the Forest Blog Hero award. Go read this by Fred Clark at Slacktivist, and you'll know why weblogs are important.

Thanks to Atrios for pointing to this.

A Short Poem

It just doesn't seem
that God's chosen one
would be a creature of
lies and arrogance and privilege
and secrecy and war

These Things MATTER!

An excellent column in today's NY Times, by Bob Herbert, Dancing With the Devil. Companies like Haliburton do business with America's enemies, and cheat our government. Meanwhile, the Dixie Chicks (and France and so many others) are subjected to an orchestrated campaign of derision from agents of The Party, with the press playing along.

All this energy and public attention focused on political protection of The Party. So little energy and attention focused on actually protecting the country and its people. No probe of the failures of our government to prevent the 9/11 attack, and how we can improve the government's efforts to stop such attacks, and the relevant documents all classified. No press coverage of The Party blocking the probe. But Haliburton and others are left alone, even rewarded with huge government contracts.

Here's what I think. 9/11 did "change everything." 9/11 showed why these things matter. 9/11 showed that the people of our country are vulnerable to attack and why we don't have time for this political nonsense that the right is subjecting us to. Before 9/11 we got used to orchestrated character assassination campaigns, like that conducted against President Clinton. After 9/11 we should all understand that it is important to stop this kind of nonsense, and restore a free press, because a REAL free press looks into the weaknesses of our government's efforts to protect us! But instead we get a double dose of propaganda and ass-covering. We get an administration with "no policy apparatus at all" -- only political manipulation.

For example, here is why it is important to know if the lack of WMD in Iraq is the result of an intelligence screw-up: If they could screw up that bad on such an important issue, then we have absolutely no assurance that they are effectively protecting us from terrorist attack.

These things MATTER! There ARE people attacking us, and right now we need an honest government and an honest press more than ever.

Today's Google Experiment

Anyone else old enough to remember just after Reagan took office, one of his "kitchen cabinet" was revealed to be involved in an orgy scene with a model who was later killed with a baseball bat? It's an intriguing story, and reveals a lot about the history of right-wingers campaigning on "morality" to get votes, then once in office divide up the loot from the US treasury.

For today's Google experiment let's search on "bloomingdale vicki morgan baseball bat" and see what turns up.

No WMDs

The right wingers now say that the reason for invading Iraq was to topple the dictator and liberate the Iraqi people.

OK, fine. So, in answer to the pre-war question, "Won't any Iraq war be a distraction from the war on terrorism, taking necessary resources from the battle to protect the country from al-Queda?," their answer is a resounding, "Yes!"

In the middle of this "war on terrorism" they took time out "free the Iraqi people." Great. What about US?

Savage Sleaze

A friend of mine has a website, www.savagestupidity.com. From the website:

Stuck Listening to the Savage Nation,
Even Though You're a Liberal (or Leftist)?
Or Just a Conservative Fed Up With Michael Savage?
This web site is for you!

Well, he's getting SUED by Michael Savage! Savage is also trying to take away his domain name savagestupidity.com as a trademark infringement! Go to the savagestupidity website for details.

He needs some help. He doesn't have the money to get a lawyer to defend himself and to get organized, contact organizations, etc. If you have even an extra $5, please go to his site and donate to help him out! Of course a larger amount would help even more.

I'll post more as I find out more information.

Oops

Remember the tax cut that passed the Senate because Republican gimmicks made it appear to be "only" $350 billion, which the Democrats had already been tricked into approving? Well, oops, it was really $420 billion. But it's too late to be stopped now because it has already passed out of the Senate.

And the reason for the oops was that the amount was calculated as if the dividend tax cut applied only to dividends paid out of "current-year earnings." But, from the same story, "Due to a drafting error, the tax cut actually covered dividends based on accumulated earnings." This is a BIG oops here. It means that companies like Microsoft can issue a huge dividend out of the $40 billion they are sitting on with NO TAXES paid by the recipients! By making this apply to money already saved up in corporations this is just a huge windfall with no policy incentives whatsoever, because whatever reasons for encouraging corporations to start to operate in a way that causes them to start paying dividends certainly doesn't apply to however they operated in the past, when they saved up the accumulated earnings. Oops. An accident. Right.

A previous "accident" made the tax cut cover companies that do not pay any taxes - meaning the money is never taxed - as well as companies that do pay taxes. This makes the "taxed twice" argument out to be a lie.

Se everything about this dividend tax cut has been a lie or a trick! They just say a bunch of stuff, and then go ahead and do something entirely different.

Creating Jobs

How about this? We launch a Federal program to hire people to retrofit federal, then state, then municipal buildings to be more energy efficient. Then start on private commercial buildings, then homes. Just think about the incredible benefits this would bring to all of us. Lower payments for energy, meaning more to spend on other priorities, public and personal. Lower costs for all U.S.-produced goods because all businesses would be paying less for energy. Lower overall demand for energy, bringing the costs down for the remaining amounts purchased. Lower demand for oil from the Middle-East. Not to mention the boost to the economy from hiring everyone who needs a job (and giving them a good wage and health insurance.)

Pay for this with a tax on wealth. The tax would be, perhaps, 10% of holdings over $100 million. Shucks! A person with $100 million would "only" have $90 million left! But that would quickly be made up by the incredibly boosted economy.

DLC Increases Attack on Dean

The DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) increased their attack on Governor Dean today with a memo saying that the "intensity of their favorable reaction" of union members to hearing Dean speak proves that Dean is unelectable because union members "reflect views that are vastly different from those of rank-and-file Democrats around the country, not to mention the Independents who often dominate not only general elections but even primaries."

I think that says a LOT more about the DLC than it says about Dean.

The "Aspirin Factory"

How many of you have heard (and possibly even repeated) the story that President Clinton "bombed an aspirin factory" to distract the public from the Monica Lewinsky story? I just heard it repeated on the Peter Werbe radio show.

In light of current events I think it's a good idea to let people know what really happened. On August 7, 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by al-Queda, killing 257 people. In response, on August 20, 1998, President Clinton ordered a massive cruise missile attack on an al-Queda training camp in Afghanistan, and an attack on a chemical plant in Sudan. The attack missed killing bin Laden by a very short time. Here is a USA Today story on the attack. Here is a 1999 BBC roundup of stories about this.

From President Clinton's statement to the public, at the time -- remember, this is 1998, three years before 9/11:

Our target was terror. Our mission was clear -- to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Laden, perhaps the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today.
...
Earlier today, the United States carried out simultaneous strikes against terrorist facilities and infrastructure in Afghanistan. Our forces targeted one of the most active terrorist bases in the world. It contained key elements of the bin Laden network's infrastructure and has served as a training camp for literally thousands of terrorists from around the globe.

We have reason to believe that a gathering of key terrorist leaders was to take place there today, thus underscoring the urgency of our actions.

Our forces also attacked a factory in Sudan associated with the bin Laden network. The factory was involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons.

So when you hear that Clinton "bombed an aspirin factory," think about how this fits into the pattern of Republican lies claiming that President Clinton did little to fight terrorism and WMD (it was a chemical plant that they thought was making nerve gas components for bin Laden) in general and bin-Laden in particular. Think about how Republican criticism of Clinton's anti-terrorism efforts actually helped al-Queda and helped keep us unprepared for what happened on 9/11. And think about how their furthering this story is part of an attempt to cover up their own share of the responsibility for what happened.

Making the Integrity of Electronic Voting Into a National Issue

The Commonweal Institute, (http://www.commonwealinstitute.org) is launching a project to publicize the problems with electronic voting machines, and to make this a national issue.

For a description of this project please see "Making the Integrity of Electronic Voting Into a National Issue," online at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/VotingMachinesProject.htm.

Also, Commonweal is introducing a collection of links to articles and resources on this subject. This collection is online at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/VotingMachineLinks.html. This is a good collection to refer people to if they want to learn about this issue.

You can help bring this important issue to the attention of the public by making a tax-free donation to help launch this project online at http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/youcanhelp.html.

If you are in a position or know someone who is in a position to contribute a substantial amount to help launch this project, please contact Kate Forrest at Commonweal at 650-330-1395 or by e-mail at kforrest@commonwealinstitute.org.

Please consider copying this and sending it as an e-mail message to people who you know who are aware of this issue.

They Get It!

Here is a voting machines op-ed piece,"Voters must have faith in the vote count," by my local chief elections officer, in San Mateo County, California. I recommend printing this out and mailing it to the elections official in YOUR county! (And the link is to the version formatted for printing!)

The answer is so that California can have an accurate vote count and avoid the chaotic election scenarios that other states have experienced. The verification of the vote can help ensure the integrity of election results.

The way a voter would check his or her vote is simple. After he or she completes the electronic ballot, a paper summary prints out, and the paper record is compared to the electronic record. Once satisfied, the voter pushes a button, and the ballot is cast. The electronic ballot gets stored in computer memory, and the paper ballot is deposited into a locked ballot box.
...

The choice of providing voters an opportunity to check their votes is upon us. The consequences are serious. One computer scientist has said, ``Touch-screen voting systems have fatal security flaws so dangerous that they could allow people with access to the software to modify election results on a national level, and without detection. It is a matter of national security that we fix these flaws.''

And here is the San Jose Mercury News' editorial today on the subject.

Dozens of computer scientists, led by Stanford University Professor David Dill, have been calling for this reform. It's disappointing that most county election officials have been defensive instead of open-minded. They don't want to admit that they've been bamboozled by vendors' claims that the touch-screen systems are infallible. They don't want to concede that the software glitches and malfunctions that impeded elections in Florida last year and elsewhere could happen here.

Slocum has suggested how a paper audit might work. After you voted electronically, the machine would print out a copy of your ballot for you to look at but not touch. The printed ballots would be machine-readable (no more hand recounts), in large print and capable of being printed in many languages. If you or the touch-screen machine made a mistake, you'd catch the error and fix it before casting a final ballot.

Hooray for the San Jose Mercury News! They get it!

Dean on C-SPAN

I'm watching Governor Dean doing a town meeting in Iowa, on C-SPAN right now. It's on again at 6:30pm tonite Pacific time. This guy is great! I can't imagine any Democrat watching this and voting for anyone else.

Update - I can't wait to see the next Iowa poll!!!

Update - You can now watch it online here.

Dean Interview at Liberal Oasis

Liberal Oasis has an interview with Presidential Candidate Governor Howard Dean,

Republic and Empire

Gary Hart just posted Republic and Empire.

Help Me Understand

Read this, then tell me what the "endgame" of currency rebalancing will be? If the dollar plunges, which our massive current-account deficit demands, what happens to our economy? If that forces Europe and Japan into recession and deflation, then how much boost will the lower dollar give us, since they'll have trouble buying things from us? It WILL stop our deflation, which is good, but what else does it do for us? Help me out.

And how much effect is the widening gap between rich and poor having on all of this? If the general public has no savings, lots of debt, and less and less of the overall wealth, then how can "stimulus" do much good? It seems that most of the "stimulus" winds up going to fewer and fewer rich people. Seems to me that the rest of us gotta get rid of some of that debt and get a bigger share of the wealth before we can increase their consumption.

Help me out, leave a comment.

Senate Democrats Tricked Again

Do you remember when the DEMOCRATS in the Senate voted for a $350 billion tax cut? At the time I wrote, "The country has massive deficits, we are at war, programs that help the public are being slashed - and Democrats vote for another tax cut!"

But this was portrayed as a "victory" - the Democrats blocking an even bigger tax cut. Some "victory," huh?

Well guess what? The Senate today passed a mix of gimmicks designed to get around this $350 billion limit. For one thing, they eliminate taxes on dividends, but only until 2007. This trick keeps the bill within the already-agreed-to $350 limit, which means that it cannot be filibustered. So even though only three Democrats voted for this today, their previous "victory" means they can do nothing to block this sham that will further bankrupt the country. (Actually, the bill lowers taxes on the rich by $420 billion, but makes up for it by increasing taxes on middle-class workers, for example, increasing taxes on Americans working overseas.)

Meanwhile, Bush started today working to get all these limiting gimmicks made permanent. The Democrats, with their "victory," fell RIGHT into this trap. They should have had the integrity to simply vote against ANY tax cut at a time of massive deficits. I wonder if they ever heard the expression, "too clever by half?"

Update - It's much worse than it looks!

Vowing to tax income only once, Bush had said dividends should be tax-free only if they were paid out of fully taxed corporate profits. But for the sake of simplicity, the Senate bill breaks from that principle. Investors who own shares in corporations that pay little or no federal taxes would pay no taxes at the corporate or individual level.

"This kind of gives the lie to the argument that what this is all about is eliminating the double taxation of dividends," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Got that? You own a million shares in a company that moves to a mailbox in Bermuda to avoid paying ANY U.S. taxes. They company sends you a dividend and you never pay taxes on that either. The money is NEVER taxed. How long will it take for all the rich fucks to buy a zillion shares of these companies, or move their companies to Bermuda, and never again pay ANY taxes. This is a HUGE incentive to pull all money out of any company that pays any U.S. taxes, or to get your company to stop paying U.S. taxes. AND it is a huge incentive to pull your money out of any investment of any kind that does not pay dividends, and out of any company that reinvests profits in things like research, employee benefits, pensions, etc. The ONLY thing that matters now will be dividends. NO taxes at all!

Update - Certain companies that have been sitting on huge, huge hoards of cash can issue dividends now, and get it out of the way before 2007. I think this could save Gates about $8 billion in taxes.

Zizka Moved

Zizka has a new URL. Always, always worth reading! Go read his twelve reasons why he isn't much fun anymore.

Molly!

Molly Ivins: "If it makes no difference whether the government lied, why is Friedman a journalist? Why does journalism exist at all?"

Electronic Voting Machines Story in NY Times

This story, To Register Doubts, Press Here in the NY Times today.

But not everyone likes the switch to electronic balloting. Some of the loudest opposition, in fact, is coming from computer experts who say the new technology could prove more troublesome than its predecessors. They warn of equipment malfunction, unchecked tampering and the lack of secure proof for each vote.

A group of more than 100 technologists, led by David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, has called for tighter security measures on electronic voting apparatus and a "voter-verifiable audit trail," meaning a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy even after the election. (The group's "resolution on electronic voting" is at verify.stanford.edu/evote.html.)

Without such a trail, Dr. Dill warned, if a machine is tampered with or malfunctions, "then the votes in question are corrupted and you have no option but to hold another election or accept bad results." Thus the only reliable backup, the group contends, is for the machines to print out paper ballots after each vote, which can be hand-counted if necessary.

Dr. Dill and his counterparts, who in- clude computer science experts in academia and Silicon Valley, also assert that unlike more mechanical machines, electronic systems cannot be opened up to the public for verification. And the only people who know what is encoded on them are computer experts. "I think it's unreasonable for the public to be asked to accept the security of these machines on blind faith," he said. "There's no question the technology is open to tampering."
...
Paul Terwilliger, director of product development at Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the largest manufacturers of electronic systems, said that while no one disputes the need for safeguards, complaints about machines like his company's were uninformed. "I think the concerns being raised are 100 percent valid," Mr. Terwilliger said. "However, they're being raised by people who have little idea about what actually goes on."

Mr. Radke of Diebold added that voters have more, not less, confidence in electronic machines. He pointed to a study conducted in February at the University of Georgia that found that 70 percent of voters in the state's November 2002 elections, which were conducted on Diebold machines, reported being very confident that their vote was accurately counted. When this question was asked in September 2001, before electronic voting was in place in the state, only 56 percent of Georgia voters reported being very confident.
...

Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee state assemblyman from Memphis and a technology enthusiast, is concerned about future elections because the new machines are harder to get a look at. "We used to be able to check the machines and see if they'd been tampered with," he said. "It is now almost impossible." Mr. Kernell wonders whether he will have to hire a computer programmer in his next race to make sure the machines are working smoothly and haven't been tampered with. "We've hit a brick wall," he said.

Along with Dr. Dill, endorsers of the resolution include professors from Yale, M.I.T., Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, Bryn Mawr and Johns Hopkins, as well as industry experts from Apple, Sun Microsystems, Cisco and Unisys. Dr. Mercuri has written substantially on electronic voting and is one of the group's most outspoken members. She worries that no electronic voting system has been certified to even the lowest level of federal government or international computer security standards, nor has any been required to comply with such.

Dr. Mercuri said the machines had had problems in some elections. In March 2002, for example, in Wellington, Fla. (in Palm Beach County, the epicenter of the 2000 dispute), there were 78 unrecorded ballots in a City Council election conducted with electronic machines. That represents about 3 percent of the total votes.

"Computers are good for many things, but at the same time we need to be cautious. If a machine's not functioning, then it might not be able to shut itself down," Dr. Mercuri said.

I'll tell you what. If you think I'm going to go into a voting booth and touch a screen and leave the booth without some way of knowing what that machine recorded as my vote, then you've got another think coming. If I don't see for myself where that machine put down that I did not vote for Bush, then I do not believe that the machine didn't and that's all there is to it. You can substitute Hillary Clinton's name there and pretend you're hearing this on the Rush Limbaugh show, because there's no reason for them to trust this, either. It's suspicious that they aren't complaining.

Here is my question. Why are the voting machine companies working so hard to defend what they are selling? They would MAKE MORE MONEY if they sold systems that also printed out a voter-verifiable ballot that could be used as a backup and for recounts! So it doesn't make sense that they aren't pushing for that. Unless...

Note - I am quoting more extensively than I usually would because of the NY Times new policy of making readers pay to see stories after a month or so.

Domestic Political Espionage By Dept. Of Homeland Security

The first documented use of the Department of Homeland Security by the Republican Party for domestic political espionage against Democrats. The first, but surely not the last.

Are you surprised? Shocked? WHY? That's what the Department of Homeland Security is FOR! Remember how it was formed? Remember the fight over allowing unions or not? This is an entirely political operation from its very founding. Along with the FBI it is the political espionage arm of the Republican Party. Don't any of you remember Richard Nixon? This is what Republicans DO.

Are you also going to be surprised if John Poindexter's Office of Information Awareness is used for political espionage? Why do you think they put convicted criminal John Poindexter in charge of it?

Stop the FCC

As a blog reader you are probably already aware of the issue of media consolidation. This is one of the most important issues there is right now and you should be active. Here's a brief explanation from MoveOn:

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission intends to lift restrictions on media ownership that could allow your local newspaper, cable provider, radio stations, and TV channels all to be owned by one company. The result could be the disappearance of the checks and balances provided by a competitive media marketplace -- and huge cutbacks in local news and reporting. Good, balanced information is the basis for our democracy.

Be sure to sign MoveOn's petition!

What's The Point?

Why do so many bloggers from "the left" write about what Andrew Sullivan says? Why should anyone care what he says? Why should anyone be reading him, to know what he says? Why promote him by using his name? When you write about what he says, you're telling your readers that what he says matters. It doesn't.

This is the first and hopefully last time I ever use his name here. I don't read him. I wrote this about this issue once before:

Blog readers may have noticed that there are certain popular blog topics that I have avoided. I have specifically avoided ever mentioning a certain writer whose initials, if you add an 'S', would be "ASS."

The piece was titled Journalistic Integrity.

Something's Up

There were only 62 spams in the e-mail this morning. Something's up! Yes, I know I'll get approx. 300 more during the day but usually there's usually more than 62 in the morning.

The Next Corner After That

This at CNN: Poll: Consumer confidence is fading.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Consumer confidence continued to fade last week, following a brief spike during the war in Iraq.

The ABC News/Money magazine Consumer Comfort Index, based on ratings of current economic conditions, stands at -24 on a scale of positive-100 to negative-100 for the week ended May 11. The index surged by 13 points from March 23 through April 20, reaching a seven-month high.

Remember when Bush said his tax cuts would make the economy recover? This time the public was told that the war would restore the economy. It didn't. It has been one promise after another. My feeling is that this was about the last time the public is going to listen to a "prosperity is just around the corner" message.

I suspect that THIS time they aren't going to be so easily led around by the nose by the ever-optimistic business press. We'll see.

The stock market is up HOW much since the war started?

My Blogroll

My blogroll has gotten out of hand. I'm going to do something about it, just not sure what. I hate to divide it into "daily reads" and "other blogs", or something like that -- I don't want people to know whether I read them daily or not. But it is just too long - just too many good blogs. Any suggestions?

Moral Politics

TomPaine.com has an interview with George Lakoff. If you read nothing else today, please read this. I think Lakoff's view of how people use family metaphors as a basis for their political thinking is very important for understanding what is going on in the minds of conservatives and liberals. It boils down to "Strict Father" and "Nurturing Parent" viewpoints. (Which are you?)

Update - Here is part 2 of the interview.

Media Consolidation

Please go to Ruminate This and read everything on the FCC and media consolidation. Ruminate has been following this story and agitating with some suggestions for actions.

Sick Today

I'm sick today - bad cold. Not much blogging probably.