aWol

Texas Air National Guard George W Bush Action Figure.

$20,000 bonus to official who agreed on nuke claim

A comment at Atrios led me to this story, WorldNetDaily: $20,000 bonus to official who agreed on nuke claim.

Thomas Rider, as acting director of Energy's intelligence office, overruled senior intelligence officers on his staff in voting for the position at a National Foreign Intelligence Board meeting at CIA headquarters last September.

His officers argued at a pre-briefing at Energy headquarters that there was no hard evidence to support the alarming Iraq nuclear charge, and asked to join State Department's dissenting opinion, Energy officials say.

Rider ordered them to "shut up and sit down," according to sources familiar with the meeting.

The White House bribed an intelligence chief to agree that there were nukes in Iraq. This should be the biggest story in the news. But, of course, it won't be.

Today We Face Another 'Watergate'

Yesterday I wrote about the new Iran Contra,

There is no branch of government that will investigate these, and other, obviously illegal activities. There is no branch of government interested in enforcing the law. It is all about the interests of The Party now.

Today I read Sam Dash's piece Today We Face Another 'Watergate':

"Each of the branches must have the leadership and the courage to do its job. For, if the Congress and the courts are passive in the face of a president's assertion of excessive power, and the people are uninformed of the danger, the country can once again face the loss of precious constitutional freedoms."

He must be brilliant! (He agrees with me.)

Listen, I know that most of the people reading this are too young to understand what Watergate was, and how serious it was, and what it exposed about the Repubican Party. Well, it WAS serious. People rightly saw what Nixon and the Republicans did as threatening democracy itself.

And then, Reagan just picked up where Nixon left off, as if nothing ever happened. Later, Iran/Contra was vastly more serious than Watergate because it involved making war on other countries. And the things going on today are vastly more serious than that. In fact, Bush has HIRED (scroll to "Since") the people who committed the Iran/Contra crimes! Think about what that MEANS!

The crimes routinely committed by the White House - and ignored by the Congress and the press - today are much, much worse than those that utterly shocked the nation in the 70's.

Update - More here:

Poindexter was appointed National Security Adviser in 1985 under President Reagan. He was forced to resign less than a year later and was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, obstructing a congressional inquiry, defrauding the government and destroying evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal. A federal appeals court overturned the convictions because Poindexter had been granted immunity in his testimony before Congress.

Although Poindexter is not a convicted felon, it remains true that he lied to Congress, the American people and falsified and destroyed evidence. Yet the Bush administration chose this man to run DARPA.

That the Bush administration hires this man says all you really need to know about the Bush administration's intentions.

Update - Link fixed.

The Thom Hartmann Radio Program

I'm listening to The Thom Hartmann Radio Program, and I just have to recommend that people listen. You can listen over the Internet, even with a dial-up connection. He's talking about energy right now, but he covers a variety of issues. I have friends that listen to ieAmericaRadio on the Internet all day.

Voting Machines Petition

BlackBoxVoting.org has a petition to Jimmy Carter to become an advocate for voting machines with a voter-verified paper trail.

A Progressive Look At Dean

At the Guerrilla News Network.

Thanks to the unofficial Dean blog.

Voting Machines

Jolted Over Electronic Voting (washingtonpost.com)

The report has brought square into the mainstream an obscure but increasingly nasty debate between about 900 computer scientists, who warn that these machines are untrustworthy, and state and local election officials and machine manufacturers, who insist that they are reliable.

Right. The election officials know more than the computer scientists about the computers. Right.

Here's an idea. Let's just make it known that in any district that holds an election without voter-verified paper backups, we'll sue, and claim that the election was fixed, and require them to prove it wasn't. And since they can't prove it without paper backups, they will have to hold the elections over again, and over again, until they put in systems with paper backups so we can all rest assured that OUR votes were counted and not The Party's votes.

I mean, it's really so simple. Without a voter-verified paper backup there is no way to know if the votes are recorded correctly. Period. And if we don't have any way to be sure our votes are correctly recorded, why should we trust the results? Someone ALWAYS tries to rig elections! Is this a difficult concept to understand?

And the voting machine companies would make more money if they sold add-ons that print voter-verifiable paper trails. So why are they fighting this so hard? That certainly makes me suspicious! And one suspicious voter is too many. So it's settled. Right?

But How Would It Work In Theory?

An article in Minnesota Law & Politics, The Conscience of an (ex-)Conservative, A blow-by-blow report of a dissolution of a political, is very interesting. Philip Gold has been in the "conservative movement" since the days of Goldwater, and has left. He writes,

"The proximate cause of my recent departure from Discovery Institute, Seattle's main conservative think tank, was my opposition to President Bush's Iraq war. But I also left because I could no longer abide the purposes of the movement. Over the last several years, I've become sadly convinced that American conservatism has grown, for lack of a better word, malign."

and

"And there was always a darker side to this particular force -- segregationists, Birchers, militias, homophobes and male supremacists (words I do not use lightly), plus the 'Christ died so we could tell you what to do' brigades."

and my favorite,

...libertarians, a pert little faction composed mostly of people who, when told about something going on in the world, reply, "Yes, but how would it work in theory?"

This is an absolutely wonderful piece, and brings to mind why I refuse to call the current right wingnuts "conservatives." Please read it, there is much more.

Thanks to Media Transparency.

Thanks, Ralph

What did you expect, Ralph? You broke the coalition, Ralph. You divided and they conqured, Ralph. There's a reason Solidarity is such a widely used word among those fighting the moneyed interests, Ralph. There's a reason pepole say we need to "band together" to fight the power, Ralph.

Now we know what happens when we don't stick together, Ralph.

Iran-Contra, Amplified

Story here.

There is no branch of government that will investigate these, and other, obviously illegal activities. There is no branch of government interested in enforcing the law. It is all about the interests of The Party now.

Stimulate This

Does cutting interest or tax rates actually stimulate the economy? They're supposed to make it more favorable for businesses and investors to borrow and invest, which then "stimulates investment."

Let me offer an alternative viewpoint -- I think that having something worth investing in "stimulates investment" and it DOESN'T MATTER what the tax and interest situation is!

My experience from business is that if you have a hot product or service that people want, you won't have any trouble finding investment capital NO MATTER WHAT the tax or interest rates might be. And if you don't have a product or service that people want, people are not going to invest NO MATTER WHAT the tax or interest rates might be.

What cutting tax rates for certain kinds of investment accomplishes is that it moves money into that kind of investment AND OUT OF other kinds of investment. It upsets the balance of a marketplace. For example, if you cut tax rates for capital gains, it changes the ROI calculation -- so you might want to move money out of interest-bearing or rent-producing investments, and into equities. Cutting interest rates makes it cheaper to borrow money, thereby increasing your debt. Neither affects the value or wisdom of the investment.

I think the effect of cutting interest and certain tax rates might be worse than just ineffective -- I think the current housing price bubble is about to demonstrate that cutting interest rates too low encourages people to pay too much, and get themselves in a lot of trouble. I think we also learned in the 80's that tax favoritism can cause similar trouble, when Reagan's accelerated depreciation tax deduction encouraged the investments that led to the S&L bailout.

One place where cutting interest rates has an effect is by reducing the incomes of retired people trying to live off of their savings, and lowering the growth rate in savings accounts of people trying to save for their retirement. Reducing consumer demand, certainly hurts the economy.

Cutting taxes for the rich does nothing to stimulate consumer demand. The idea that cutting taxes "creates jobs" or "stimulates the economy" is a trick. It is a lie. It is false. It is the result of decades of messaging blasted at us from the right's think tanks, repeated endlessly until people just accept it as "conventional wisdom" without thinking about it.

The resulting reduction in government revenue forces spending cuts -- which means laying people off or cutting back what is spent on goods which results in laying people off. And the tax cuts cause government borrowing, which increases our debt, which means we all must pay higher taxes to cover the interest on that debt forever or pay extra taxes to pay down that debt. And THAT spending does NOT increase jobs in any way. Worse, what we're doing is borrowing money to give money to rich people, who use the money to buy government bonds -- loaning the money back to the government! Think about the circular logic of this. We're borrowing money from rich people to GIVE THE MONEY WE BORROW FROM THE RICH BACK TO THE RICH! And forever after paying them interest on the money we borrowed from them! It's like giving your house to someone, then borrowing the money from them to pay for the house you gave them! Since Reagan this tax cut process has shifted our economy to an economy where most of us work harder and harder just to pay taxes that go out as interest payments to the rich! (And don't forget that the money we're giving to the rich is OUR SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY! Jeeze, don't even get me started on that!)

It seems to me that this idea that cutting tax and interest rates is good for investment comes from an "investor class" viewpoint. "I'm an investor, and I'm certainly a wiser and better type of person than my stupid employees, so it is certainly better to give me breaks for what I do for a living, and not the stupid workers." And look how it plays out -- more and more money flowing from the people who work to the people who collect interest.

I Got Yer Stimulation Right Here - I Been Keepin' It Wam Fa Ya

Well here's a "consumer class" viewpoint: If you have customers breaking down your door, trying to give you their money because they want to purchase what you offer, only an idiot is going to pass up the opportunity to get a piece of your business. If they have to borrow at 20%, and they're going to make 50% by owning a piece of your business, they're going to borrow at 20%. If they're going to have to pay 40% taxes on the profits they make from owning a piece of your business, they're going to jump at the chance! And if they don't think they're going to make money by owning a piece of your business they're not going to do it, even if the tax rate is 0%, and they're not going to borrow money to put into your business, even at 1% interest.

This investor class way of thinking is ideologically driven, not based on scientific analysis. Science says that theories should be DEscriptive rather than PREscriptive. They're supposed to explain what happens instead of say "great things would happen if only people would do so-and-so like they are supposed to."

History demonstrates that regular people having more money to spend stimulates the economy, and concentrating income at the top hurts the economy. Policies that reduce the share of the wealth held by people at the top, and distribute that money among the people at the bottom and in the middle boosts the economy. Times of higher tax rates at the top have been more prosperous. Times when unions are stronger, resulting in wages being higher are better economic times. Periods after minimum wage increases have been better economically than periods when the minimum wage is lower. And all the crap you have been told over and over about lower wages being better for businesses, and giving tax cuts to the rich being better for the economy, and giving special breaks to investors helping the economy -- it's crap, and just crap, and they're telling you to believe them rather than what you can see in front of your face.

---

Previously in Voodo Economics I wrote about how tax cuts for the rich "take money out of the economy." In Stimulation I wrote about how giving money to the rich does not create jobs - customers with money to spend creates jobs. In Taxing Businesses I pointed out that taxes are not a cost. Profits are taxed, so businesses can not pass taxes on to their customers.

Later let's talk about whether increasing the minimum wage "costs jobs" or actually increases demand -- more customers with money to spend -- which INCREASES jobs?

Dean On A Stick

Oliver Willis:

"This is the center of Dean's argument. Not that Democrats aren't standing up for the working man (versus the Republicans and the corporate chieftains) but that the people we have in the party leadership have sacrificed long term progressive ideals for short term political gain. You don't always have to oppose the Republicans for the hell of it, but Christ on a stick - stand for something once in a while!"

Christ on a stick?

Blog Graham

Presidential Candidate Bob Graham has started Blog Graham.

ANOTHER Provocative Column!

Arrogance, or something darker?

"Then came that fateful August intelligence briefing noted above, the full report of which was excised from the recently issued Congressional report on the 9/11 tragedy for "national security" reasons.

National security my foot. That information was blacked out to protect the arrogant bunch in the White House that ignored warnings that might have prevented the attacks.

But perhaps the Bushies had a reason for ignoring the warnings. Something brushed over in the Congressional 9/11 report suggests the possibility of one of the worst conspiracies of American history.

PNAC, Project for the New American Century, was organized in 1997 by Zionist neo-cons Robert Kagen and William Kristol. It is funded by three foundations closely tied to Persian Gulf oil and the weapons and defense industries.

Members of PNAC included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, a director of the organization.

All signed a statement of principles, one of which was to promote "American global leadership" with special emphasis on Arab countries. Another was to "transform" the U.S. military with huge increases in defense spending.

Here's the chilling kicker: To convince the American people to spend extra billions for defense instead of on Social Security, Medicare, etc., PNAC suggested it would take a "catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." (PNAC's exact words.)"

I report, you decide.

Wingnut

Now that Michael Ledeen has been in the news, you might realize how serious this was, coming from him. I know it's old stuff, but I was thinking about it today and though I'd bring it up again.

First this, What if there’s method to the Franco-German madness?:

How could it be done? No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America's vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we'll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.

Then this, The War Against America:

Lately the forces arrayed against America have grown to include mainstream Old European diplomacy, whose sabotage of the United States has spread from constant WTO harassment to full-blown hijacking of NATO and the hostile use of the U.N. Security Council. Year after year, Americans lose their lives by terrorism. American families suffer terrible grief. Old Europe and its surrogates all over the world struggle frantically to fetter Americans' efforts to protect themselves.

He ain't just ANY wingnut. If you want to understand just how far out the Right -- and that means the Bush administration -- has gotten, read these pieces.

Iran/Contra AGAIN?

Newsday.com has a story, Secret Talks With Iranian, that has the SAME CROWD from the first Iran/Contra affair doing it AGAIN!

Bush hired the very people behind the first Iran/Contra affair, and here they are again, working outside of the government, trying to work a secret foreign policy. Bush hired them, some of them convicted criminals, so he can't claim ignorance. But this time we have a Republican congress that refuses to look into any crimes by the White House, no matter how serious, and a media that refuses to investigate anything Republican.

Thanks to Altercation.

Blogger

OK. This does it. Links are not working again so the BuzzFlash link to the voter registration piece goes to nowhere. I'll be looking for an alternative to Blogger. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Party Leadership and Voter Turnout

To people complaining about the leadership of the Democrats:

This is what we have gotten for staying out of the process ourselves for so long. So many people have had a "hands off" approach to politics. For so many of us, politics has been something for other people to do. Other people set up tables in front of supermarkets and registered people to vote. Other people go door to door in their neighborhoods talking to people about voting and about who they support and why. Other people show up at political party meetings.

Well, that's what politics IS! Politics and democracy are about showing up and voting. What do you think the Democratic Party would be like if the people who voted Green had instead actually bothered to show up and vote for local Democratic Party leadership? That translates into state party leadership, which translates into national party leadership. How many people reading this even KNOW what a Democratic Club is, and how to join the one where they live?

Do you know why so many people don't vote? Because people aren't getting them registered, and then getting them to the polls on election day! That's the old fashioned way -- walking your neighborhood and talking to people and then getting every single one of them to the polls on election day! Voter turnout has dropped because the day-to-day work of getting people registered and getting them to the polls has dropped.

Think about this -- A couple of decades ago the Christian Right started showing up at Republican Party clubs and meetings and events, and look what the Republican Party is now. And THEY are getting people to the polls. It takes some work, and some "foot soldiers." And it brings results. We're living under the results of THEIR organizing efforts, and not liking it too much.

And think about this -- about half the eligible people don't vote, while polls show that more than half of those people see things our way. Well that means there are a lot of people who could be voting our way. If we got off our asses and started going out and talking to people and registering them to vote and then getting them to the polls on election day we could increase the Democratic vote count quite a bit -- at a time when an increase only 2 or 3% would swing the entire congress and Presidency to our side!

Politics takes a bit of work, and if YOU aren't out there DOING that work, then shut up. (Not you, of course, I mean people in general.)

This is one thing that is so great about the Dean campaign! They are reaching out to thousands and thousands of regular people and getting them involved. 75,000 people showed up at Meetups last night and wrote letters to voters in New Hampshire. I was at one of those Meetups, and it was an exhilarating experience seeing so many people doing something like that for the first time in their lives, as well as knowing the effect those letters are going to have! And the Dean people are starting to talk about getting people walking their neighborhoods and all of the things I wrote about above. REGULAR people! If this keeps up it is going to make a huge difference to America because people like US are going to get involved, and get other people to vote, and choose the party leadership and maybe even run for office. Wow!

It is our own non-involvement that is responsible for the kind of leadership we're all complaining about.

This came from something I left as a comment over at Hullabaloo.

Promise Breakers

Great piece over at P.L.A. on breaking promises.

Voting Machines

RuminateThis on voting machines.

Just One More Example

Here's just one more example of the benefits of privatization.

A recruiting firm hired by the Bush administration to hire airport screeners set up "recruiting centers" at posh resorts. For example, "20 recruiters to lived for seven weeks in a Telluride resort in order to hire 50 screeners."

The total bill to the government? Only $700 million.

No wonder the screeners aren't allowed to join a union.

Did They Read It?

Al Gore's speech got me thinking:

"Two years ago yesterday, for example, according to the Wall Street Journal, the President was apparently advised in specific language that Al Qaeda was going to hijack some airplanes to conduct a terrorist strike inside the U.S.

I understand his concern about people knowing exactly what he read in the privacy of the Oval Office, and there is a legitimate reason for treating such memos to the President with care. But that concern has to be balanced against the national interest in improving the way America deals with such information. And the apparently chaotic procedures that were used to handle the forged nuclear documents from Niger certainly show evidence that there is room for improvement in the way the White House is dealing with intelligence memos. Along with other members of the previous administration, I certainly want the commission to have access to any and all documents sent to the White House while we were there that have any bearing on this issue. And President Bush should let the commission see the ones that he read too. "

This made me think about National Security Advisor Rice's excuse for the Nigerian uranium claim finding its way into the President's State of the Union speech:

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other aides pointed repeatedly to the fact that doubts about the intelligence appeared in a footnote, written by the State Department, buried deep in a top-secret National Intelligence Estimate.

That footnote was thus not read by Bush, Rice or other top aides, said a White House official, on condition of anonymity.

So here is my question. We now know that the President's briefing prior to September 11, 2001 stated that al-Queda was going to hijack some airplanes. Did they bother to read it?

Remember, President Bush was on his month-long vacation. He is known to avoid doing his homework. Their excuse for the Nigerian uranium claim was that none of them read the intelligence briefing in depth. Did 9/11 happen because Bush and the people around him didn't bother to read their intelligence briefings? Is this why the Republicans are blocking a serious look at what led to 9/11? They are obviously hiding something. Is it this?

Steve Gilliard's News Blog

Steve Gilliard, who posts at Daily Kos, has a new blog of his own.

Gore's Speech to MoveOn

The text of Al Gore's speech to MoveOn today is here. Excerpt:

"Earlier, I mentioned the feeling many have that something basic has gone wrong. Whatever it is, I think it has a lot to do with the way we seek the truth and try in good faith to use facts as the basis for debates about our future -- allowing for the unavoidable tendency we all have to get swept up in our enthusiasms.

That last point is worth highlighting. Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith, and we're all used to that. I've even been guilty of it myself on occasion. But there is a big difference between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty.

Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that what the country is dealing with in the Bush Presidency is the latter. That is really the nub of the problem -- the common source for most of the false impressions that have been frustrating the normal and healthy workings of our democracy.

Americans have always believed that we the people have a right to know the truth and that the truth will set us free. The very idea of self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred method for pursuing the truth -- and a shared respect for the Rule of Reason as the best way to establish the truth.

The Bush Administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole basic process, and I think it's partly because they feel as if they already know the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas. "

And this:

"The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle.

For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone, rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes. "

Sounds JUST like what I wrote yesterday in Think Tanks!

The right has a comprehensive, coordinated network of advocacy organizations, working to change public attitudes, pushing an entire ideological framework that says there are "market solutions" to almost every problem. (Recently, as you know, they even pushed a market solution to terrorism - a "trading room" in the Pentagon where people would place bets on terrorist attacks.)

The right's advocacy organizations advocate privatization, deregulation, and limiting government. Moderates and progressives need organizations that perform a similar function -- to counter this right-wing ideological marketing effort.

Worst-Case Scenario

Global Warming May Be Speeding Up, Fears Scientist.

This certainly isn't going to "thaw" relations between Europe and the Bush administration.

Rather Provocative!

Brief Intelligence says some rather provocative things in "Connecting the Dots - Part One" and "Part II". Rather provocative indeed! Yes, indeedy! Provocative. Rather. Oh, my!

Even more so if you read those after reading this, as I had just done. (Speaking of connecting dots...)

Think Tanks

This is a replacement of a Think Tanks piece that was posted yesterday by accident.

A good article on right-wing think tanks, reprinted at, of all places, the Heritage Foundation, The charge of the think-tanks.

A key point, similar to one I made before in Don't Blame the Democrats. From Charge of the think tanks:

"The think-tanks' influence is partly related to the intellectual barrenness of America's two main parties. The Democrats and Republicans are little more than vehicles for raising and distributing campaign contributions. They have no ability to generate ideas of their own, and little control over individual politicians trying to burnish their reputations with new thinking."

From Don't Blame the Democrats:

The Republicans have in place a broad "idea development and communication infrastructure" that has successfully moved the public to the right. This involves "think tanks" like the Heritage Foundation supplying position papers, talking points and commentary that goes through a marketing department and are endlessly repeated to the public through so many channels, from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to the Washington Times. This communications machine has been called "The Mighty Wurlitzer."

After the public has been barraged with the messaging from The Mighty Wurlizter, the Republican politicians step in and harvest the results.

Politicians and parties respond to the public. To change the direction of the country we need organizations that work to change the underlying attitudes of the public. The right has a comprehensive, coordinated network of advocacy organizations, working to change public attitudes, pushing an entire ideological framework that says there are "market solutions" to almost every problem. (Recently, as you know, they even pushed a market solution to terrorism - a "trading room" in the Pentagon where people would place bets on terrorist attacks.)

The right's advocacy organizations advocate privatization, deregulation, and limiting government. Moderates and progressives need organizations that perform a similar function -- to counter this right-wing ideological marketing effort. Moderates and progressives have lots and lots of narrow-focus, single-issue organizations that speak about their specific issues and only their issues - environmental organizations, peace organizations, family planning organizations, you name it - but do not generally reach out to the general public, and when they do it is with a narrowly focused message concerning their issue.

So what about organizations that reach the general public to defend ideas of community, sharing, taking care of each other, working together to solve our mutual problems, and democracy? Without organizations that work to address underlying public attitudes, the work of all the single-issue organizations is undermined.

Let me give an example of what I mean. Recently People For the American Way came out with an important study of the school voucher movement, concluding that the voucher idea is only a step toward privatizing - yes getting rid of, not improving - public schools. The report is "Voucher Veneer: The Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education." (There is a short press release describing this report: "PFAWF Report Exposes Disturbing Agenda Behind Attacks On Public Education.")

Well how do you fight this? Do you put out information opposing vouchers? Put out facts and figures, and refute each pro-voucher point? Do you put out information about how public schools are good and necessary?

Here is the problem with this. The school voucher concept and the school privatization concept rest on a larger ideological framework involving privatization, free markets and Darwinian competition. So when you try to refute each of their voucher arguments point-by-point, it just bounces of a preventative shell of underlying ideological beliefs. When a person has come to believe the underlying ideology that free markets are always good, government is always bad, Darwinian competition is always good, privatization is always good, then your anti-voucher arguments are just going to bounce off of that person. The anti-voucher arguments are surface-level arguments that will not penetrate that underlying ideological shell - that framework of concepts that the right has inserted into that person's head. Until that person is exposed to messaging that counters that underlying right-wing ideological crap, you will not have success with surface single-issue arguments.

Whew, that was a mouthful. I'm saying that you have to work on a person's deeper understanding of a framework that ALL the other concepts fit into. You can't argue environmentalism or libraries or public schools or helping the poor to a person who has bought into the free-market, anti-government, "strict father morality" ideological framework. Instead you have to work to counter that programming first, and then you can address your narrower issues. You have to do what school civics class used to do - explain and repeat the concept of the common good, the commons, sharing and cooperating. And you have to do a lot of work explaining and reinforcing the idea that people are created equal, that every person has equal representation in our society, that each person has an equal vote rather than each dollar.

Oops

At the AFL-CIO candidates forum today Sen. Kerry said he supports expensing of stock options. I was at a Silicon Valley Kerry fundraiser at the beginning of the year where he said he opposed it.

National Prayer Day

National Prayer Day.

I report. You decide.

Hiroshima

Discussion at Eschaton.

There seems to be a concensus that the nuclear bomb saved lives because otherwise we would have had to invade Japan.

My question - why did we have to invade Japan to win? We could have won without invading Japan.

Voting Machines in Michigan

Michigan moves toward uniform voting system.

"Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land said Monday that Michigan's system of choice will be optical scanners, the method already used by two-thirds of the state's 6.8 million voters."

"Touch screens didn't make sense, said Land, because the technology creates no paper trail."

Thanks Atrios.

Action In The Voting Machines World!

Scoop: E-Voting Expert Ousted From Elections Conference.

Things are heating up!

Napalm

We used Napalm on Iraqi troops.

Not a judgement, just a fact. I report, you decide.

3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference

3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference

The Man

Still Sticking It To The Man.

A Crime

We have here an actual crime committed by someone in the White House. And this crime may have jeopardized national security. No question about it.

So what is being done about it? What was done about Enron? What was done about Bush's illegal insider trading at Harken? What is being done about Bush's lies, telling the country that Iraq was working with al-Queda?

Virus

If someone sends you a warning message like this - it's for real. There is a new virus out there. This message was forwarded to me, as well as another from another company.

Subject: VIRUS ALERT: DO NOT OPEN ZIP ATTACHMENT ENTITLED "MESSAGE.ZIP"

This alert is to make you aware of a new e-mail virus that is spreading globally, and that XXXX employees have been receiving via email in Outlook as of Friday, 8/1/03. The subject line for this email message will say that it is regarding "your account" followed by your internet email address. The body of the message advises you that your email address will be expiring, then directs you to launch the ZIP file that is attached to the message.

DO NOT OPEN THIS ZIP FILE ATTACHMENT. THE FILE IS CALLED MESSAGE.ZIP. DELETE ANY MESSAGE RESEMBLING THE DESCRIPTION ABOVE.

I've gotten four of the virus messages already today. Do not open any attachments named "message.zip" no matter who it is from! If you use virus software, update it today!

The Pentagon has some explaining to do

HoustonChronicle.com - The Pentagon has some explaining to do:

"After eight years of Bill Clinton, many military officers breathed a sigh of relief when George W. Bush was named president. I was in that plurality. At one time, I would have believed the administration's accusations of anti-Americanism against anyone who questioned the integrity and good faith of President Bush, Vice President Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

However, while working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made.

Those observations changed everything."

Thanks to Whiskey Bar.

Neocon Men

Media Transparency led me to this article -- Neocon men:

...
The Government Which Governs Least ... Is Doomed to Fail

A similar message was instilled in a group of students who were invigorated by the political philosophy of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. Strauss, a Jewish immigrant who escaped Hitler's Germany, held an equally suspicious view of the state of American liberalism.

Strauss blamed the liberalism of the Weimar Republic in Germany for allowing the madness of Hitler into the world. Liberalism and egalitarianism eroded the foundation of truth, he argued, giving all ideas equal weight. Such a condition produces a nihilistic moral vacuum, and a society in such a state will eventually welcome anyone who gives it a strong, consistent set of values.

When Strauss came to the US, he saw the same type of conditions erupting, and he feared another Hitler was imminent. His solution to the problem of modernity was the creation of a philosophical elite that could guide the leaders who in turn guide society. He believed the truth was dangerous and should remain hidden from the people. Instead, power should be reserved for the few great men who can handle such truths, while feeding the population a steady diet of fear and superstition to keep them safe and content. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked he has to be governed," Strauss wrote in a letter to Carl Schmitt (a friend of Strauss' and a legal architect for the Nazis). "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united - and they can only be united against other people."

There are two effective antidotes to liberalism: religion and nationalism. Religion keeps people united by giving them shared values, and nationalism is based on having a common enemy, uniting people against an "other."

Media Transparency

Is Cursor's Media Transparency on your regular read list? It should be!

Greens Slap Kucinich Down

Recently, Congressman Kucinish wrote an open letter to Greens appealing to them to support his campaign for president.

We all know we will do better if we work together. Perhaps we can find common ground on issues and principles. I would like to open up that possibility. And I would like to ask that you give serious consideration to my candidacy for President. Because a better world is still possible.

Well the Greens slapped that boy right down.

Thanks to Thomas Leavitt.

Vorint Machines in eWeek

Another voting machines article - I think the word is getting out there. Trustworthy Voting in eWeek.

Selling the Parks

Democratic Veteran and South Knox Bubba have noticed that the Bush administration is working on privatizing the national parks.

I have been doing some research into this, to justify a statement to potential funders that the Republicans even want to sell the national parks. It seems that people think I'm a wild-eyed radical nutcase to even suggest that anyone would ever consider such a thing!

Here's my raw notes, except I'll turn them into links:

Privatize public parks:

Center for Free-Market Environmentalism

Embrace Proposal to Privatize Public Lands

Privatized Federal Land Would Yield Better Environmental Quality

PARKS, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE PRIVATE LAW

THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INTEREST IN WILDERNESS PROTECTION

THE PRIVATIZATION DEBATE: AN INSIDER'S VIEW

How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands

Land privatization plan sets off alarms

ENVIRO-CAPITALISM VS. ENVIRO-SOCIALISM

The Strategy To Privatize The Public Domain

Privatization of America's Public Lands

Government Proceeds with Privatizing Provincial Parks and Recreation Areas

Light Blogging

Yes, it has been a period of light blogging. I'm doing research on two projects, and hope to share some of this with you. In the meantime, posting that I'm not blogging much often seems to trigger periods of heavy blogging... we'll see.

How To Fight Back

A blast from the past: How To Fight Back.

Senator Tom Daschle Weblog

Senator Tom Daschle is keeping a weblog as he travels around South Dakota this summer.

The Right Answer

Whiskey Bar understands how it works.

The Meetup Numbers

I checked over at Meetup to see how the candidates are doing. Here's what I saw:

Dean in 2004 (>68,300 members)
Kerry in 2004 (>8,100)
Clark in 2004 (>5,900)
Kucinich in 2004 (>5,000)
Edwards in 2004 (>1,000)
Bush2004 (>800)
Gore2004 (>500)
Biden in 2004 (>400)
Gephardt in 2004 (>300)
Barack Obama for Senate (>200)
Lieberman in 2004 (>100)
Nader in 2004 (>100)
Graham in 2004 (>100)
Sharpton in 2004 (72)
Moseley-Braun in 2004 (69)

Voting Machines Story

In this story:

"Diebold Election Systems President Tom Swidarski defended his technology Tuesday as the safest, 'most advanced out there.' He dismissed the Hopkins study as a 'homework assignment' by a bunch of graduate students aimed as a 'misguided,' personal attack' on his company.

Swidarski called computer science election watchdogs such as those gathered in Denver this week 'fringe organizations' 'without much real practical knowledge of the election process.'"

This is a very odd statement coming from the president of a company that would MAKE MORE MONEY if they sold an add-on device to print voter-verifiable ballots! Why on earth is he opposing this add-on sale?

Go Read Digby

Go read Hullabaloo today instead of me. He get's it just right.

"The DLC is still saying exactly what they said back in 1985, (which should be terribly embarrassing because it indicates that they have failed spectacularly to change the party’s image.) The truth is that they succeeded quite well at first, but the result was a GOP that saw the Democrats moving their way and seized the opportunity to move the goalposts ever further to the right and also become more aggressive and hostile. They did not meet us in the middle, guys, they just kept on going in the direction they wanted to go anyway.

And they lost all compunction about tarring the opposition with outright lies and character assassination.

The fact is that it does not matter if our candidate actually supported the war in Iraq or not. If John Kerry is the nominee rather than Howard Dean, do they actually believe that the Republicans will not find a way to portray him as soft on national security? Please.

It. Does. Not. Matter. What. We. Actually. Do.

We could sign on to a 0% tax rate for millionaires, repeal of Social Security, prison terms for homosexuality and oil rigs in the middle of San Francisco Bay and they would still say we are liberal, tax and spend, tree hugging, treasonous pacifists because it is in their interest to do so. "

Exactly right. It's what they do.

2003 Legal Document of the Year

From The Smoking Gun:

"Yes, five months remain in the year, but we're ready to announce the winner of the prestigious 2003 Legal Document of the Year award. The below motion was filed earlier this month in connection with a criminal charge filed against a Colorado teenager. "

Read the whole thing!

Thanks Calpundit.

Bush Campaign Commercials

Driving to get some lunch today I was listening to Sean Hannity. He was repeating what Joe Lieberman said about other Democrats:

"Senator Lieberman's comments were aimed at some other Democratic presidential hopefuls, notably former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who are vocal opponents of the war. 'Some in my party are sending out a message that they do not know a just war when they see it, and more broadly, that they are not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom,' he said. "

Since there is no chance of Leiberman becoming the candidate, doesn't this kind of thing just hand the election over to Bush?

Democrats "are not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom." Thanks Joe! This quote will be a Bush campaign commercial!

Oil Profits

Thanks to BuzzFlash I saw this:

"Shell is the first of the world’s top three oil companies to report second-quarter results. World leader ExxonMobil Corp and No. 3 BP plc will follow next week.
All three have been producing some of the largest quarterly profits ever recorded by publicly traded companies, helped by oil prices that have soared on the back of the war in Iraq and supply disruptions in Nigeria and Venezuela. "

But no, it's not about the oil. Of course not.

I think this one is a "do" from the phrase "what what they are doing, not what they are saying."

Afhgan Election Scheduling

Karl Rove has scheduled the Afghanistan elections for October, 2004, and is sending $1 billion to help them look good. Do you think this might be timed to influence OUR elections a few weeks later?

U.S. mulls $1 billion in aid to Afghans: "The $1 billion package, which more than triples the $300 million Afghanistan receives, represents new spending on Afghanistan and is designed to fund projects that can be completed within a year to have maximum impact on the lives of the Afghan people before scheduled elections in October 2004, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity."

How much of that $1 billion do you think is for PR in the U.S.?

Thanks to Body and Soul.

Explain This

Air marshals pulled from key flights:

"Despite renewed warnings about possible airline hijackings, the Transportation Security Administration has alerted federal air marshals that as of Friday they will no longer be covering cross-country or international flights, MSNBC.com has learned. "

WTF???

Julia Butterfly Hill

I just learned that one of my heros, Julia Butterfly Hill, has started a weblog, called Circle of Life.

Julia stayed in an ancient redwood tree named Luna from December 10, 1997 to December 18, 1999 to keep it from being cut down.

Today's Google Experiment - Screwing Your Supporters

The San Jose News had a story this weekend - Bush, Republicans losing support of retired veterans.

Normally Republican, many retired veterans are mad that Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress are blocking remedies to two problems with health and pension benefits. They say they feel particularly betrayed by Bush, who appealed to them in his 2000 campaign, and who vowed on the eve of his inauguration that "promises made to our veterans will be promises kept."

This reflects a recent Army Times editorial,

In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately.
For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary — including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.

So for today's Google Experiment, let's look back to 1981. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization - PATCO - had endorsed Reagan for President. (Was it the ONLY union that did?) How did Reagan repay them?

Blood wasn't spilled, nor was a single life lost, but August 3, 1981 still stands as one of the darkest days in modern labor history. Tired of working clock-busting shifts on "obsolete" equipment, 13,000 members of the U.S. Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) chose this day to walk off the job. President Reagan fired back, threatening to fire any workers who were still on the picket line as of August 5th. A good chunk of the controllers stood their ground, though their determination wasn’t matched by the media and public relations savvy that now seem necessary for mustering-up popular support. Having seemingly won the battle of public perception, Reagan made good on his promise: citing a law that forbade strikes by federal employees, the President canned 11,500 strikers and decertified the union. A crop of replacement controllers was rounded-up, trained and quickly installed into the vacant positions. The PATCO strike ultimately triggered a protracted retreat by labor, as Reagan's tactics emboldened employers to take a more aggressive stance against union activity.

I'm reminded of Whoopi Goldberg's comedy routine about Reagan thanking PATCO for their support. Can I describe that in a blog? Let's just say it's a sight gag that has something to do with the title of this piece. Leave a comment if you know what I'm talking about.

Afghanistan

I was wondering why we never hear any news from Afghanistan, so I went to Google News, and found this:

A new threat of Taliban attacks in southern Afghanistan

The fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar is reported to have approved a new deputy military commander for southern Afghanistan.

A Taliban official says the leader has ordered the commander to intensify guerrilla attacks on international and government forces.

The announcement follows stepped-up activity by suspected Taliban guerrillas in southern Afghanistan which saw nine soldiers of the 11,500-strong U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan wounded in several attacks last weekend.

Mullah Abdul Samad, an intelligence officer in the hardline Taliban regime revealed the new strategy to Reuters newsagency.

He was speaking by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.

The location of the Mullah Omar remains unknown more than 18 months since the Taliban were forced out of Afghanistan.

Oh, I guess that's why we never hear any news from Afghanistan. No news is good news.

Also this and this and this.

No One Is Acting Like It's Real

War. Weapons of mass destruction. Presidential deception. Imminent threats. Nuclear bombs. Smallpox. Anthrax. Nerve gas. Let's try to back away from the politics for a minute and look at all the things we are discussing as if they were real things, and the words we are using had real meanings and were not shaded by agendas and innuendo and elections.

We just went to war with a country, bombed them, invaded their territory, killed a LOT of people, and risked disrupting a region and possibly the world, because we believed that our lives were at immediate risk from that country threatening us with imminent use of weapons of mass destruction.

Now we're occupying that country and we haven't found those weapons. Therefore we MUST conclude those terrible weapons are now in the hands of terrorists, and that we are much less safe than we were before we went to war. It means all of our lives are at much greater immediate risk than before we went to war. Right? It means that smallpox is imminent - or anthrax - or nerve gas attacks - or nuclear weapons. Right? That's WHY we went to war, and it is what the President's words MUST mean today!

So is this what we are all talking about - including the Bush administration? Is this how we are all acting? Are we expressing the appropriate level of concern that all of our lives are at greater risk today than before the war? Once again - we went to war because we were in immediate danger of losing our lives to weapons of mass destruction and now we face an even greater risk.

So is the government taking more or fewer steps to protect us? Has the administration set aside all other concerns, and is it spending 100% of its time and energy working on ways to keep us safe from the terrible threat from the missing WMD? Is the Congress in a frenzy of concern over the terrible threat we face? Is the "terror alert level" higher than before the war? Are the newspapers carrying more or fewer stories about threats to our safety - smallpox, anthrax, nerve gas, nuclear weapons?

But no one is acting like that, especially not the government! What must we conclude from that? That the Bush administration is not concerned that we are all about to die from smallpox or nuclear attack! This MUST mean that they do not believe it. They just aren't acting like we face the terrible risk that their WORDS must mean.

Forget the POLITICS of this - forget "how it is playing" or whether "the story has legs" or whether "the President can get past this" or "how it will affect his ratings" and look at what the WORDS mean! Are we in terrible danger or not? Either we face the most terrible and immediate risks to our lives OR we have been terribly deceived - one of the worst deceptions in the history of our country. There isn't any middle ground on this.

But none of us - not the Bush administration, not the public, not the press, not the Congress - are ACTING like the reality of the situation demands we act! It's like we're all hypnotized or something. It's like we are all playing a video game, or watching a TV show instead of living in the reality of the meaning of what is happening around us!


This started as a comment I left following this post over at CalPundit: The Real Reason for War. I edited it to make me look better.

WE : DESERVE : THE : TRUTH

WE : DESERVE : THE : TRUTH

Dean to President Bush: 'It's Time for the Truth'

I just read Dean to President Bush: 'It's Time for the Truth.' This is a very hard-hitting, extensive piece, and outlines some of the ways that Bush has been deceiving the country. It's very, very good. It starts out with:

"When George W. Bush ran for president three years ago, he promised us an era of responsibility in Washington--instead we've got an era of irresponsibility unparalleled in our history. A week after discovering that the cost of occupying Iraq will be double the original estimates, we found out that the nation's deficit is 50 percent higher than estimated just five months ago. In fact, during his two-and-a-half years in office, the President has misled us, the American people, on nearly every policy initiative his administration has put forth."

Go read the rest. It's also a good one to e-mail to people who don't know what to think of Dean.

TOE

The Right Christians: "why progressives need a TOE (Theory of Everything)"

Because Of The Government

Thomas Leavitt found this:

'Most of the things that have generated the enormous advances in our economy are things that started on some campus or in some laboratory,' [Bill] Gates [Sr.] said in an exclusive interview [with USA Today] last week. 'And most of those are because the government financed it.'

(And he says thanks to MyDD.com for the pointer.)

Don't Let the President Lie With Impunity

I'm doing some research and came across this petition from 96 conservative law professors, titled Don't Let the President Lie With Impunity.

It's talking about President Clinton, not Bush. Read it - it's hilarious in that context.

What's Up With This?

U.S. media still REFUSES to mention Bush sexual assault lawsuit that Texas woman continues to pursue.

Law

RuminateThis points to Pfaffenblog, talking about the killing of Saddam's sons. It's a good read.

Don't get me wrong. I'm cheering, like many Iraqis, that Saddam's two sons are dead. But it's a muted cheer.

Here's what bugs me. If you listen to President George W. Bush or British Prime Minister Tony Blair, we're in Iraq to create a stable, flourishing democracy -- and we can do that best, not by the force of weapons alone, but by demonstrating the worth of our principles. Surely, these principles include the right to live one's life without fear of arbitrary execution and the right to a trial. If Iraqis can find any hope in Saddam's fall and the American occupation, it's that they will no longer be subjected to state actions that violate the most basic principles of international law and human civility.

And here's my point. Like it or not, the facts strongly suggest that the killings violated international law -- in fact, to the extent that they were undertaken by an occupying power, they may amount to war crimes. That is precisely why many Iraqis are disturbed, even angered, by the manner in which the killings took place. For example, an Iraqi man told a television interviewer that he was very glad to see Saddam's sons dead, but he was disquieted by the way they were killed: "This shows that the principles [the Americans] talk about are just so much ink on paper."

I think the idea that the right wingers respect any kind of law, anywhere, is missing the forest.

Another Voting Machines Story

MSNBC: E-voting flaws risk ballot fraud

NY Times Voting Machine Story

Today in the NY Times: Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say:

"The software that runs many high-tech voting machines contains serious flaws that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter ballots without being detected, computer security researchers said yesterday.
'We found some stunning, stunning flaws,' said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who led a team that examined the software from Diebold Election Systems, which has about 33,000 voting machines operating in the United States.

The systems, in which voters are given computer-chip-bearing smart cards to operate the machines, could be tricked by anyone with $100 worth of computer equipment, said Adam Stubblefield, a co-author of the paper."

Where Did The WMD Go?

Every single person in the United States should go read this at Hullabaloo.

The Big Story - Retaliation And Intimidation

In his piece, VALERIE PLAME STORY CONFIRMED, Mark A. R. Kleiman outlines the story of the Bush administration "outing" a covert CIA agent in retaliation for her husband's involvement in the Niger uranium story.

Revealing this identity was a very serious crime, and had a potentially serious impact on national security. This is something that has happened, rather than just a wild charge that was made up - like the "Travelgate" charge, or the charge that Vince Foster was murdered, or that the President was involved with a failed Savings and Loan. But those charges warranted massive, multi-year, multi-million-dollar investigations of the Clintons - and everyone they had ever so much as spoken with. But we all know that this charge that they outed a CIA agent will not lead to an investigation, because the Bush administration controls all of the means of investigation, and they only investigate Democrats. (Who's indicted, Martha Stewart or Ken Lay?)

Think about that for a minute. Think about the state of the country. When Clinton was President we had eight years of wild-assed accusations that ran as headlines in the newspapers and lead stories on the TV news, leading to massive investigations involving hundreds of FBI agents, dozens of Congressional committees. The full apparatus of the federal government was put to the task of investigating the President, trying to find something - anything - to pin on him.

But now we have a different situation. The president is not even asked tough questions by the press. The worst transgressions are ignored. For example, the administration blocks an investigation into intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attack - and gets away with it. The President is involved in an insider trading and stock manipulation scandal that mirrors the huge Enron scandal - and it barely gets a mention in the press. Think about what the differences in treatment of the two Presidents says about the state of justice in America.

But wait - there's more. This was a very serious crime. But let's look at WHY they committed the crime, because this leads to something that is going on that is even more serious and sinister. This crime was committed as "a shot across the bow" of the intelligence community. It was a warning, an act of intimidation. And it is part of a pattern.

There are other acts of intimidation - a series of them - a pattern. Employees of government agencies who, as part of their everyday jobs release information that contradicts the right-wing ideology of this administration, are transferred or fired. Reporters who ask tough questions are retaliated against - denied access or moved to the back of the room thereby ending their careers. Today, another example of intimidation tactics: Senator Accuses White House of Retaliation.

Even countries that don't "toe the line" face threats and retaliation. Remember the boycott of French goods? Remember the threats the President made against Mexican citizens living in the U.S.?

Threats and intimidation are the M.O. of the people now "governing" us, and they continue to get away with it. Just how strong are our Deomcratic institutions, that we have fallen this far?

California Energy Crisis A Pre-9/11 Iraq Setup?

Thanks to Blah3, I discovered this story, Fraud Traced to the White House. It claims that the California energy crisis was not just a set-up to make Enron and other energy companies a ton of money. We do now know that the crisis was the result of energy company supply manipulation, assisted from the new Bush administration. But this story claims that it was also part of a set-up to provide a pretext for war with Iraq.

This is the second recent story I've seen claiming that Cheney's secret Energy Task Force was about setting up the invasion of Iraq. Until the Bush administration releases the full notes and other information, we'll never know.

Secrecy breeds rumors. Are these rumors worse than what's being hidden? I guess not, because if they were, the White House would release the information and clear things up.

Stealing Iraq's Oil?

Listening to Thom Hartmann's radio show this morning, he mentioned a story about weather satellite photos showing what looks like construction of an oil pipeline from Iraq's oil fields into Kuwait.

"At the State Department in Washington, D.C., David Staples on the Future of Iraqi Projects desk says he doesn't know if Iraq's oil is flowing into Kuwait. He referred the query to the Defense Department. A DoD spokesman suggested contacting the Office of Coalition of Provisional Authority (OCPA) in Baghdad. OCPA was not immediately available for comment. "

He also mentioned that Kuwait is increasing its refining capacity.

Good Company

Over at The Smirking Chimp today you'll see pieces by Gov. Howard Dean, Paul Krugman, and, well..., me. Over at BuzzFlash today, too, actually.

Gary Hart

Democracy By Combat

Call Them "Cheap Labor" Conservatives

"LESS GOVERNMENT" AND "CHEAP LABOR".

Shouldn't We Be Afraid?

In today's Washington Post there's a story, Oct. Report Said Defeated Hussein Would Be Threat, that says that intelligence agencies told the Bush administration that attacking Iraq would expose the public to much greater dangers than leaving Iraq alone.

"In fact, the NIE, which began circulating Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States.

"Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," one key judgment of the estimate said.

It went on to say that Hussein might decide to take the "extreme step" of assisting al Qaeda in a terrorist attack against the United States if it "would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

The only honest intelligence they had said that attacking Iraq opened up the threat. So in pursuit of their imperial goals, the Bush people knowingly exposed the public to terrible, lethal danger.

So shouldn't we be afraid? I recently wrote about The Fear that was everywhere before the election and then the war. The constant terror alerts, the smallpox warnings, the talk of "dirty bombs," even instructions on what to do if there is a nuclear explosion nearby!

But now, there is very little fear in the air! Looking at what is going on, we are in a MUCH more dangerous situation than we were before the war. Al-Queda is regrouping. North Korea's nuclear weapons development is an extremely serious situation. Our military is stretched to its limit with the Iraq occupation. And most seriously, Iraq's WMD are missing, and we now know that intelligence sources had warned that Saddam would give them to terrorists if we attacked.

Where is the fear? Logically we should be much more afraid now, but we aren't.

I think the timing of the fear -- terrible fear leading up to the election and then the attack on Iraq, and absence of fear now -- points to something sinister. Fear before the election helped them scare voters into supporting The Party. Fear after the election helped them gain support for attacking Iraq. The Bush administration has more to lose than gain from fear now because they promised that electing them and supporting an attack on Iraq would reduce the fear. So fear now would lower the poll ratings of the President and The Party. I think all of this points to intentional manipulation of public emotions before the 2002 election, and the subsequent attack on Iraq.

It's one thing -- a bad enough thing -- to manipulate our thinking and reasoning with false information. It is another thing entirely to manipulate our deepest psychological triggers with stories of how smallpox is one of the most painful deaths, with rumors of nuclear bombs smuggled into the U.S. in shipping containers, and drawings of the "kill zone" of a "dirty bomb." I think this is worse than the evidence of cynical manipulation of information that is in the news now. To me, the manipulation of public emotions is a much more serious offense, because it strikes us at a much deeper level, a more basic instinctive level. It makes our children cry. It makes us lose sleep at night.

Maybe later I'll write about manipulation of our inner spiritual lives, circulating stories of signs of the apocalypse, and spreading tales of God speaking to our leaders.

GOP Voters

American Sucker

The Draft Is Coming

U.S. struggling to find replacement troops:

"The Pentagon is scrambling to find enough fresh troops to begin an orderly rotation program that would bring home some of the 147,000 soldiers spread thinly across troubled Iraq.
...

The need for replacement troops is putting great strain on both the active and reserve forces already stretched thin meeting obligations in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, South Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Sinai - and a brigade-sized force of up to 5,000 troops expected to be deployed to peacekeeping duties in Liberia.

With only ten active duty divisions the 480,000-man U.S. Army has been stretched almost to the breaking point by the Iraq deployments. While Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld and his top civilian aides have talked in the past of chopping another two divisions out of that Army, some in Congress have begun urging an increase in the active Army by as much as 25 percent."

Media Underplays U.S. Death Toll in Iraq

Media Underplays U.S. Death Toll in Iraq:

"According to official military records, the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq since May 2 is actually 85. This includes a staggering number of non-combat deaths. Even if killed in a non-hostile action, these soldiers are no less dead, their families no less aggrieved. And it's safe to say that nearly all of these people would still be alive if they were still back in the States.

Nevertheless, the media continues to report the much lower figure of 33 as if those are the only deaths that count. "

More On That Pension Bill

U.S. House Panel Backs Pension Fix

Companies with underfunded pension plans would get relief for three years under legislation backed by the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee on Friday, in an acrimonious session to which police were called.
...

Under the measure that the committee approved, traditional "defined benefit" pension plans would be allowed to assume a more generous return on investments based on an index of high-grade corporate bonds rather than the current formula based on 30-year U.S. Treasury bond yields.
...

But critics say changing the method of valuing the funds is an accounting device that doesn't address the shortfall.

Companies will be allowed to SAY they are getting higher returns on their pension savings than they really ARE making. And just how bad is the problem?

Total pension underfunding exceeds $300 billion at U.S. companies, with $60 billion in the auto industry, according to the agency that bails out troubled corporate pension plans.

That's right - the companies are $300 billion in the hole owed to pensions - but it is not on their books for purposes of evaluating investments in the companies. Hence the new stock market bubble.

Think about this - those companies that still give pensions don't have enough money saved up to PAY the pensions, and the Republicans are letting them off the hook here. Meanwhile, our Social Security money went away to pay for the huge Bush tax cuts! So the ENTIRE "baby-boomer" generation is losing its pensions, its Social Security and those lucky enough to have had jobs with 401Ks, well, half of that's gone, too. It MATTERS who wins elections!

And, by the way, how did the Republicans get this passed?

The measure was rushed through by the Republican majority as Chairman Bill Thomas of California called a voice vote while committee Democrats were conferring over last-minute changes in an adjacent library.

Dean's Questions for Bush

From Blog for America, these are Gov. Howard Dean's questions to President Bush:

"As the Niger uranium story has unfolded, what has become increasingly obvious is that there are many questions that must be answered about the way the Bush Administration led us to war, managed the conflict in Iraq, and failed to foresee the continuing resistance that our military is now confronting.

We must be clear: decisions regarding war and peace are the most serious and solemn that a Commander-in-Chief is called upon to make. There are now fundamental questions about President Bush’s leadership in taking us to war with Iraq.

There has been much discussion about the 16 words included in the State of the Union address. Today I call on the President to answer these sixteen questions to ensure that the American people can retain their trust in their government and to help ensure that the United States can retain its credibility as a moral force in the world.

1) Mr. President, beyond the NSC and CIA officials who have been identified, we need to know who else at the White House was involved in the decision to include the discredited Niger uranium evidence in your speech, and, if they knew it was false, why did they permit it to be included in the speech.

2) Mr. President, we need to know why anyone in your Administration would have contemplated using the Niger evidence in the State of the Union after George Tenet personally intervened in October 2002, to have the same evidence removed from the President’s October 7th speech. (The Washington Post, Walter Pincus and Mike Allen, 7/13/2003)

3) Mr. President, we need to know why you claimed this very week that the CIA objected to the Niger uranium sentence “subsequent” to the State of the Union address, contradicting everything else we have heard from your administration and the intelligence community on the matter. (Washington Post, Priest, Dana and Dana Milbank, 7/15/2003)

4) Mr. President, we urgently need an explanation about the very serious charge that senior officials in your Administration may have retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson by illegally disclosing that his wife is an undercover CIA officer. (The Nation, Corn, David, 7/16/2003)

5) Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration persisted in using the intercepted aluminum tubes to show that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear program and why your National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, claimed categorically that the tubes were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,” when in fact our own government experts flatly rejected such claims. (CNN, 9/08/2002, Knight Ridder News Service, 10/04/2002)

6) Mr. President, we need to know why Secretary Rumsfeld created a secret intelligence unit at the Pentagon that selectively identified questionable intelligence to support the case for war – including the supposed link to al-Qaeda – while ignoring, burying or rejecting any evidence to the contrary. (New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, 5/12/03)

7) Mr. President, we need to know what the basis was for Secretary Rumsfeld's assertion that the US had bulletproof evidence linking Al Qaeda to Iraq, despite the fact that U.S. intelligence analysts have consistently agreed that Saddam did not have a "meaningful connection" to Al Qaeda. (NY Times, Schmitt, Eric, 9/28/2002, NY Times, Krugman, Paul, 7/15/2003)

8) Mr. President, we need to know why Vice President Cheney claimed last September to have “irrefutable evidence” that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, an assertion he repeated in March, on the eve of war. (AP, 9/20/2002, NBC 3/16/2003)

9) Mr. President, we need to know why Secretary Powell claimed with confidence and virtual certainty in February before the UN Security Council that, “Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.” (UN Address, 2/05/2003)

10) Mr. President, we need to know why Secretary Rumsfeld claimed on March 30th in reference to weapons of mass destruction, "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." (The Guardian, Whitaker, Brian and Rory McCarthy, 5/30/2003)

11) Mr. President, we need an explanation of the unconfirmed report that your Administration is dishonoring the life of a soldier who died in Iraq as a result of hostile action by misclassifying his death as an accident. (Time, Gibbs, Nancy and Mark Thompson, 7/13/2003)

12) Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration has never told the truth about the costs and long-term commitment of the war, has consistently downplayed what those would be, and now continues to try keep the projected costs hidden from the American people.

13) Mr. President, we need to know why you said on May 1, 2003 , that the war was over, when US troops have fought and one or two have died nearly every day since then and your generals have admitted that we are fighting a guerrilla war in Iraq. (Abizaid, Gen. John, 7/16/2003)

14) Mr. President, we need to know why your Administration had no plan to build the peace in post-war Iraq and seems to be resisting calls to include NATO, the United Nations and our allies in the stabilization and reconstruction effort.

15) Mr. President, we need to know what you were referring to in Poland on May 30, 2003, when you said, “For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them.” (Washington Post, Mike Allen, 5/31/2003)

16) Mr. President, we need to know why you incorrectly claimed this very week that the war began because Iraq would not admit UN inspectors, when in fact Iraq had admitted the inspectors and you opposed extending their work. (Washington Post, Priest, Dana and Dana Milbank, 7/15/2003)

If you can’t or won’t answer these 16 questions, Mr. President, I call on the Republicans in Congress to stop blocking efforts to create an independent, bipartisan committee to investigate what is a matter of the highest importance: whether your decision to go to war was sound and just.

The American public deserves answers to all of these questions. I urge you to lead with the honor and integrity that you promised as a candidate."

Blogs Today

skimble

skippy

Ruminate This

pfaffenBlog

Not Geniuses

Nathan Newman

Notes on the Atrocities

The Left Coaster

Brad DeLong

House Committee Approves $50 Billion Pension Bill (washingtonpost.com)

House Committee Approves $50 Billion Pension Bill. This is just another big ($50 billion) tax break that is only for the rich.

It's a bit complicated hot this one works, so I'll see if I can simplify it a bit. People who aren't rich need to use any money they have saved in retirement accounts, so this doesn't apply to them at all. When you take money out of a retirement account you have to pay income taxes. The government makes you start taking money out of a retirement account when you reach a certain age, as a protection against the money being sheltered forever and never subject to taxation. By increasing the age when one is required to take money out of a retirement account, they put off paying these taxes, and if the person dies, the money is inherited without paying taxes at all. Hence - another huge tax shelter just for the rich.

I wrote about how whole retirement account scam screwed workers out of their pensions in the post titled Screwing Workers.

How Does It Save Money?

News story: Republican Governors Studying Job Cuts

"Several Republican governors are studying ways to eliminate thousands of state jobs by turning the work over to private contractors, a strategy they say will save millions of tax dollars."

Let's see. You fire the state workers. They're hired by a private company. Private companies have higher overhead (example: CEO - $56 million). So how does this save money? Oh, wait, I get it - the workers are paid much less, and lose their health care, pensions, job safety protections, and other workers' rights.

This is good public policy? Of course, this is REPUBLICAN governors!

The Democrats Are Bad

Senate Defeats Call for Intelligence Probe. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said of the Democrats, by calling for a look into what happened with the pre-war intelligence, "They've sacrificed the national interest on the altar of partisan politics. "

Party Over Country

Read this story in The Nation. The Bush people intentionally outed an undercover CIA agent, for the purpose of ruining her career, as punishment for her husband's role in letting the public know about Bush's lying.

Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad, the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.

The resulting damage to national security is serious. And who is responsible for this?

"The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be 'two senior administration officials.' If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as 'nonofficial cover' and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, 'Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.' If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good. "

For Republicans it's ALL about the politics. NONE of it is about the security of the United States. Their methods are smears and intimidation. And, of course, lies.

This was a crime. An extremely serious one. So where is the investigation? Where are the headlines? Along these lines, yesterday the Republicans in the Senate defeated an attempt to start an investigation of the Iraq uranium story.

With Republicans closing ranks around President Bush, the Senate on Wednesday voted down a Democratic proposal to create an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the administration's use of secret intelligence to justify war with Iraq.

The interests of the country de damned! They conflict with the interests of The Party.

Good Sign

Not that kind of sign. A real sign.

Thinking It Through has a picture of a great sign on Interstate 5 somewhere.

It's Just A Campaign Issue

In this NY Times story, White House Tries to Dismiss Iraq Claim as Campaign Issue, the Republicans are all over the place talking about how this is all political.

The Republican National Committee issued a statement tonight asserting that "Democrats politicize war in Iraq," while party leaders declared that Democrats did not have the standing to challenge Mr. Bush on the subject.

What depth of cynicism is required to accuse the Democrats of politicizing the Iraq situation? What degree of irony is demonstrated in this statement? This from the people who forced a war vote just before the 2002 election, who moved their New York convention into September so their candidates can participate in 9/11 memorials, who pumped fear into the public to get them to vote their way.

They don't even get it, that this isn't about politics, or Democrats. They don't get it that the public is concerned with issues of war and peace, truth and honesty and integrity. They don't get it that the credibility of the country is diminished, and this is important and will have consequences. Truth, honesty and integrity are no more to them than words to use when focus groups show they are the best way to persuade a few more people to vote for The Party.

They aren't concerned with the substance, they're concerned with the politics. It's all they know. To them everything is politics, everything is The Party, everything is advancing their ideology. They don't even understand that people might be upset by what they did, upset that kids are dying, upset that we invaded a country with no reason, except to the degree that it comes up in a focus group, and then they'll design a "strategy" for "damage control" instead of answering the public's questions.

Light Blogging

I apologize that I have notbeen writing as much lately. I'll be back on the ball soon.

Bush Said WHAT?

Joe Conason writes about Bush's statement yesterday that we went to war not because Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but because,

"We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."

Joe asks the question, "What possessed the president to make an assertion that everyone on the planet knows to be untrue?" (Remember - Bush tried to prevent U.N. inspectors from going to Iraq, and then insisted they were taking too long.)

Go read it. It's astounding. Why isn't the press repeating this statement? Americans should know that their leader is seriously unhinged.

Court Denies Clintons' Request for Legal Reimbursement

A panel of judges turned down the Clintons' request for reimbursement of their legal costs for the Whitewater investigation.

So guess who the judges were?

The judicial panel, chaired by Judge David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said the Clintons should be entitled to reimbursement of $85,312. Sentelle was part of a three judge panel that appointed Starr to the case.

The judicial panel also included Judge Thomas M. Reavley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Peter T. Fay of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Peter T. Fay -- Senior appelate judge first appointed by Nixon later elevated to appeals court by Ford.

They just won't leave CLinton alone. They still have to do what they can to hurt him.

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Live, from Iraq...

CalPundit: Avoiding the Press

In CalPundit: Avoiding the Press, Kevin says the real reason Bush avoids foreign travel is because he has to actually answer questions from the press. And last week's news demonstrates what happens when Bush has to actually answer questions from the press.