Growth In Las Vegas

Everyone knows that Las Vegas is the city of fast growth. Why is that? Maybe this opinion piece has a clue to the answer. What Wal-Mart Has Wrought:

"Anyone who doubts the ability of these unions to transform dead-end jobs into productive careers should check out the improbable union city of service-sector America: Las Vegas. By organizing almost every Strip hotel, HERE has created an employer-funded training academy where maids and dishwashers can become cooks and servers and wine stewards, and a hotel workforce that makes enough to purchase new homes. The biggest housing boom in the nation today spreads across the Vegas desert and, as in Los Angeles a half-century ago, it is largely the consequence of unionization."

Sounds sort of like how the REST of the country was, back when unions were strong. Unions brought good wages, benefits, overtime, vacations, health insurance and created the middle class. Now they're weak, overtime is gone, wages are dropping, we're losing our health insurance, the middle class is being split up into the poor (if you add in debt, most of the middle class is worth very little now) and a few rich who own almost everything. I wonder if this is related?

Most Recent Kerry Smear is Fake

Below Dave has posted a piece of GOP-USA disinformation about Kerry's Vietnam service -- a story claiming that Kerry received an unearned medal for killing a Vietnamese who was unarmed and dying. Here's the truth (from Snopes):

"Kerry earned his Silver Star on 28 February 1969, when he beached his craft and jumped off it with an M-16 rifle in hand to chase and shoot a guerrilla who was running into position to launch a B-40 rocket at Kerry's boat. Contrary to the account quoted above, Kerry did not shoot a "Charlie" who had "fired at the boat and missed," whose "rocket launcher was empty," and who was "already dead or dying" after being "knocked down with a .50 caliber round." Kerry's boat had been hit by a rocket fired by someone else — the guerrilla in question was still armed with a live B-40 and had only been clipped in the leg; when the guerrilla got up to run, Kerry assumed he was getting into position to launch a rocket and shot him."

(Incidentally, if some winger starts raving about Kerry murdering innocent civilians -- that accusation has been made against Sen. Kerrey from Nebraska, not Kerry.)

There's a lot more at Snopes: Snopes on Kerry's Vietnam Service

9/11 Survivors Protest Rove Ads

Here's a nice site by 9/11 survivors. It's got a rundown of the various protests of the Bush administration's use of 9/11 images.

They don't want the Democrats to capitalize on 9/11 either, but you can tell that they have major objections to Bush's whole approach.

They've gambled and, so far, they've lost

I've said for more than a year now that the Bush team was trying to rerun Reagan's 1984 campaign. Reagan, who was one of the luckiest presidents in my lifetime was also one of the most unpopular presidents ever judging from his poll numbers in 1982 and early 1983. Reagan lucked out in 1984 when the economy recovered just in the nick of time (you and I can debate whether it had a damn thing to do with his policies) and Americans rewarded him with a second term. I have long contended that if the economy recovers and jobs start returning in any way we'll get another four years of W, immoral war based on lies and exaggeration notwithstanding.

Well W and the boys clearly thought they were going to be able to party like it was 1984 again. As Atrios so perceptively points out in this post, W and the boys have essentially revved the engine up and dropped the clutch as far as fiscal and monetary policy is concerned. There's nothing left they can do. They keep expecting the economy to respond and it stubbornly refuses to do so. We're still essentially in the same place as we were two years ago.

Furthermore, continuing the engine metaphor, I would contend that the RPMs are currently nearing the redline point and the wheels are spinning but we're not going anywhere. If the tires don't get traction soon folks, there could be one helluva mess. (A "dubya dip" recession perhaps?) And, as Atrios notes, any sort of shock to the system at this point (say, a major terrorist attack) would be nothing short of disastrous for the economy.

Through pursuing such reckless economic policies in order to assure his re-election, W has actually left us all in a very vulnerable position economically. Politically, W had certainly better hope nothing at all goes wrong in the next eight months because he has absolutely no margin for error now.

And, even if things go relatively well, I'm really beginning to think he may still lose.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Smears -- "Invented By Democrats"?

Cross-posted at american street.

When you hear a line like this one: "Nothing is sacred in today's politics of personal destruction - invented and perfected by the Democrats" on a website called GOP USA, you know there's really going to be some nastiness in the coming Presidential campaign. Republicans accuse others of what they are doing, as a tactic to give them cover. "Self-acquittal."

And then it begins:

"In the debate about which man has given more to his country, no evidence has been more emotionally persuasive than Senator Kerry's own claims of war heroism. One basis for this assertion is that while serving in Vietnam, Kerry showed great courage in leaping off his boat to attack and kill a wounded North Vietnamese soldier."

Some time back I said that the Republicans are going to spread so many disgusting smears that soon YOU will hate your own candidate. This is an example. This kind of stuff is so nasty, so wrong, so foul, and so low that you feel sick just being in the same country where it is being said. It makes my stomach turn, and I want OUT of the campaign already. And there are 8 months of this to go.

If you think the stuff they were saying about and doing to President Clinton was bad, this is going to be so much worse. If THIS smear doesn't "have legs" then they'll try a different one. And another one. And another one. And on and on until they either find one that DOES have an effect, or until the accumulation of dirt just makes the guy look bad. People will say, "Where there's smoke there's fire." Today people still talk about "all the Clinton scandals" even though NO ONE in the Clinton administration was EVER found to have done something wrong! Every single person accused was exonerated of every single charge. (Except Clinton got a blow job.) I'll be surprised if Kerry gets even ONE vote.

"Evidence suggests the Vietnamese soldier had previously been wounded by a 50-caliber round. Veteran friends of mine tell me if a person is hit by a 50-caliber round, it is highly unlikely they could continue to be a threat, because of the hydro-shock associated with the impact of the round. I am assured this is true regardless of where the enemy was hit.

I know from my own FBI training that certain high-powered rounds can destroy vital organs and blow away entire limbs - due to this same hydro-shock factor. Kerry's claims that he saved his fellow soldier's lives by taking the life of the wounded Vietnamese fighter now lie in reasonable doubt."

This is what they are spreading, especially in the South, where they worry that Kerry's service to the country might carry some weight against Bush.

"Also, Kerry's ardent fans clamor over the Purple Hearts he received for each of his several wounds. What is not widely known is that even a minor wound can qualify for a Purple Heart, and a combination of Purple Hearts can be the basis for reassignment to a safer post. Kerry did, in fact, take a safer post after accepting his war medals.

Other veterans tell me they didn't even put in for Purple Hearts, because they did not want to be transferred home unless they were seriously wounded. These veterans didn't want to leave their buddies behind just to seek the safety of distance from the battle."

Got that? Kerry wasn't BRAVE for volunteering to serve in VietNam, and getting wounded saving men he commanded, he was in fact TRYING TO LEAVE HIS BUDDIES BEHIND by receiving multiple Purple Heart medals for being injured several times. (And what about his Silver Star?)

"In total, it appears Kerry was in-country less than five months. Yet some prisoners of war served more than seven years and had many serious wounds. "

This Kerry guy, what a wimp. Trying to shirk his duty to his country, trying to leave his buddies behind. But wait, there's something EVEN MORE sinister about this Kerry guy:

"Did he only participate in peaceful war protests, or did he join the Hard-Left, anti-US, pro-Communistic cabal of Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and other well-known Hard-Left, anti-US radicals?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do know where to find them. Every significant leader of any anti-war, anti-US protest from the 1960s has a large file sitting in a file drawer over at the FBI Headquarters.

The Bureau's headquarters is located at 9th street and Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington, D.C. To get a copy of the FBI file, which would clear up this entire thing, Senator Kerry merely has to file a form. But HE must be the one to do it. Nobody else can get a copy - only John F. Kerry."

My God! The guy is a COMMUNIST AGENT! We need to see his (illegally obtained, in the Nixon years) FBI file. He has an FBI FILE!

"Today I am announcing the formation of an exploratory committee to encourage and assist Senator John F. Kerry in the acquisition and distribution of these two [FBI and Navy record] files. In due course, we will send the appropriate forms to Senator Kerry to be filled out. Soon, following President Bush's lead, Senator Kerry can reveal to the mainstream media the various documents establishing the truth about his conduct."

The truth about his conduct. Right.

If you think for a minute this was really written by Aldrich... This is the real thing: pure, researched, focus grouped, professional stuff here. And we're going to see a LOT more of it!

Update - One more thing I want to say. As I said above, this isn't Aldrich speaking. This isn't even Bush - even though it is the Bush style to "stay above the fray" while sending out surrogates to do their dirty work. Like Bush did with McCain in the 2000 primaries. This is "The Party" at work here. This is who they are, and what they do. This is how they get power and keep it. Be ready for it.

Why Did They Drop It?

Why did the Democrats drop the AWOL controversey? Why did they stop talking about it? It was just starting to get somewhere. It was just starting to penetrate America's conciousness?

And, while I'm talking about Democrats dropping things, what about Harken Oil?

On His Watch

Bush Defends His Sept. 11 Ads, Economic Policies:

"Despite pressure from Sept. 11 families and firefighters, Bush said he 'will continue to speak about the effects of 9/11 on our country and my presidency.'

'I have an obligation to those who died. I have an obligation to those who were heroic in their attempts to rescue (the victims). And I won't forget that obligation,' Bush said.

But he added: 'How this administration handled that day, as well as the war on terror, is worthy of discussion. And I look forward to discussing that with the American people. And I look forward to the debate about who best to lead this country in the war on terror.' "

An OBLIGATION to exploit their tragedy for political gain? WTF does that mean?

This happened on his watch. He shouldn't be bragging about it.

Update - George W. Bush acts like he's entitled to treat the remains of a dead man like a souvenir. Maybe he feel this way because it happened ON HIS WATCH.

Anonymous voice of America's unemployed

Go here and click "Hear the Tape" : Anonymous voice of America's unemployed

"This week I got a call from America, who happens to be a 43-year-old unemployed woman living in the Valley. She is angry. She is sad. America got my answering machine and left a message. George Bush's line must have been busy. John Kerry was probably out of town.

The woman on my recording does not actually claim to be America, but she is. She is a mother and a wife whose husband also recently lost his job. There are millions like her, she says, and no one is paying attention."

Anyway, go click "Hear the Tape"

Truths

Go see 120 truths about liberals, including gems such as "The liberal must create an atmosphere of crisis and fear to justify collectivist oppression."

The Message From Martha

I fear the real message from the sweeping investigation, swift prosecution, and conviction of Martha Stewart is: if you are a high profile person of some wealth, you had better not be contributing to Democrats.

Martha is the symbolic prosecution for the corporate accounting scandals in which billions and billions were stolen. Ken Lay is not. End of message.

Outrage?

I left a comment to this post: Whiskey Bar: Bush Hits the Trifecta Again. My comment:

As a marketer, I think that all this "outrage" is going to do is amplify Bush's message, which is "Bush 9/11 Bush 9/11." It's intentional - carefully calculated, releasing the first ads with these pictures. Of course they knew what the response would be -- they counted on it. It's free advertising to have all the news outlets reporting that people are outraged that Bush is using 9/11 pictures in his ads. His TARGET audience will be reinforced by that. To them the news reports will just be seen as liberals whining. (I haven't tuned in to Limbaugh for a few days, but wanna bet something like that is today's theme?)

Others, regular Americans who don't pay a lot of attention, will take in the message, the association between Bush and 9/11 and nothing else. "Bush 9/11 Bush 9/11". They aren't going to spend a lot of time. They'll see the ads, and it will push a message into one side of the brain -- Bush 9/11 Bush 9/11 -- and then they'll hear some news report or some discussion and that will push it in the other side - Bush 9/11 Bush 9/11. That's how marketing works -- it's called "spell my name right."

NO ONE BUT US understands or cares about the finer point of the politicization of 9/11 as a bad thing. The REASON they politicize 9/11 is that it WORKS for them. We can be as outraged as we want, but as long as there is no consequence to them, of course they'll politicize 9/11. Because it does work. These ads show that this is where they are going to go 100% - because it works.

An anecdote -- a friend in Intel marketing told me that the best thing that ever happened to Intel was that math error as they were releasing the Pentium chip. They were in the process of changing from a number - 80586 or something - to a name so they could "brand" the idea of a processor chip. So "Pentium" was the brand. And then they have this math error and every news outlet in the country writes about it. But all consumers came away with was that Intel is now naming chips instead of numbering them, and everyone remembered the name. The math error was worth tens of millions in free advertising for their new branding campaign.

The Bush people aren't stupid. They are the people who market tobacco to kids. They convince people to kill themselves but to hand them their money first.

I left a similar comment to this post at american street.

Update - I just came across this: Bush Campaigns Amid a Furor Over Ads,

Mr. Bush's aides said that they would not pull the commercials and that the battle over them could even work to their advantage by focusing new attention on what they said was the president's forceful response to the attacks and the continued threat from terrorists.

They said the controversy had been expected and was serving their aim of changing the debate from Democratic turf like health care and jobs to Mr. Bush's strongest suit, national security.

"Are we on the Democrats' issue of health care, or are we on the Republican issue of national security?" said one Republican official with ties to the campaign. "On Wednesday we rolled out the spot — we changed the tone fundamentally. They missed the opportunity to tell the American people what the campaign is about. This is how the president has framed the question before the American people."

Doh!

February Job Numbers

Lately all the right-wing radio shows have been touting the "Household Survey" over they "Payroll Survey" because the Household shows that unemployment is not as bad as the Payroll shows. (Economists say the latter, Payroll, is the more reliable number.) But today's job numbers for February are terrible if you use the Household numbers, which actually fell. Don't expect to be hearing about the Household Survey on right-wing radio anymore.

The numbers are here: Employment Situation Summary.

Scalia Knows No Law

Justice Scalia denies that there are any problems with his two recent hunting trips paid for by people with cases coming before the Supreme Court. (His precise response: "Quack quack".)

As far as I know, Supreme Court justices are invulnerable to any challenge except impeachment by Congress, and with the Delay-Lott Congress we still have, impeachment is unthinkable. Thus Scalia is untouchable and knows it, and is acting accordingly.

The authors of the constitution certainly must have recognized that there are certain critical points of vulnerability in our system of checks and balances, and that Supreme Court Justices are among the most important of these. I would imagine that over the years, quite a bit has been written about the system's dependence on having individuals of a high ethical standard located at these critical positions. (Nope, no citations. Am I wrong?)

But like most people who call themselves conservatives, Scalia seems entirely indifferent to conflict-of-interest considerations. Whereas the founding fathers presumably hoped that people in these positions would discipline themselves, Scalia seems to have decided that since there are no real legal restrictions on his behavior, that means that he can do anything he damn well pleases.

This feeling of sovereign and invulnerable entitlement, rather reminiscent of that of a feudal lord or a Saudi prince, is also widely felt among the captains of industry and by Republican political leaders. Many of these recognize no limits to their actions except the letter of the law, and often enough they feel justified in ignoring the law too if it cramps their style. "Trust us!" is their motto.

If you're wondering who I'm talking about, Scalia's hunting partner Dick Cheney would be a pretty good example. And also the Idiot King imposed on us in the year 2000 by Scalia and four of his friends.

Scalia / Cheney hunting trip

Scalia's Kansas hunting trip

The Court Ignores its Own Principles

P.S. Note Lessig's dilemma in "The Court Ignores Its Own Principles". He thought that he could win by arguing on the basis of the principles in which he knew the Justices believed. He's puzzled that that didn't work, but there's no mystery here at all if you assume that at least five of the justices are political operatives.

This Is Very Good

This is very good: the american street: The Po-Mo Prez and Identity Politics. Values vs issues.

And this: With God as my Copilot. Very good indeed. Bush saying he hadn't realized America could be attacked. He doesn't read papers, so I guess he never knew about the Soviet Union.

On His Watch

Furor over Bush's 9/11 ad

"After 3,000 people were murdered on his watch, it seems to me that that takes an awful lot of audacity. Honestly, it's in poor taste.' - Kristen Breitweiser, with her husband's ring."

I’d like to see a TV ad with this script:

"3000 people were killed on his watch, our worst national tragedy, when he was on vacation. He had already taken more time off than any president before him, but he went to his ranch in Texas, after he had been warned by the FBI, by the CIA and by the outgoing Clinton Administration, that we could be attacked at any time.

Before 9/11 Bush blocked funding for anti-terrorism. He blocked the FBI from looking into the bin Laden family and other Saudi connections to terrorism.

After 9/11 Bush used the attack for politics. He used it to justify a war with Iraq they had been planning all along. He used it to influence the 2002 elections. He even used it to justify more tax cuts for the rich.

And since 9/11 Bush has been doing everything he can to block investigations into how we let ourselves get attacked, into where our intelligence failed and what we can do to improve things.

This happened on his watch. Why isn't anyone held accountable? Why won’t he take responsibility for ANYTHING?"

Make suggestions for changes to this script. Maybe we can get something going, raise some money to put it on the air.

I don't want to let him get away with using 9/11 again.

Oh my!

With Tuesday’s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

...

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” Cressey added.

And despite the Bush administration’s tough talk about hitting the terrorists before they strike, Zarqawi’s killing streak continues today.

But W would tell you that all of this is not his fault.

Apparently, "prosperity is just around the corner" as W attempts to replay Reagan's "Morning Again in America" campaign but without any of the, um, positive news that Reagan could brag about back in 1984.

One for the good guys

Shockingly, the really bad guys lost really badly.

Straussians With Nukes

Sometimes I think that the right-wingers are competing to get weirder and weirder, like rock bands appealing for new teenagers by trying to top last year's acts. But the stuff going on on the Right matters, because they are firmly in charge and have nukes. For an introduction to the kind of thinking the Right is engaged in, Matthew Yglesias writes about the Straussian influence on Bush's Bioethics Council:

"Simply put, the view is that scientific research holds the promise of radically improving human health and therefore must be stopped.

To be clear, the view is not that scientific research holds the promise of radically improving human health and nevertheless must be stopped because of some other issue (this would be, I take it, the 'pro-life' thought on stem cell research). No. The view is that the problem with the research is that it might succeed in letting people live longer.

Now it's been hypothesized to me that the really really real reason for Gulf War II is that Straussians believe it's a good thing when lifespans are shorter (because this makes people more religious, which makes them more virtuous) and that therefore war is a good thing per se because it decreases life expectancy."

This article confirms the above, discussing Bush's appointments to the Council on Bioethics, headed by University of Chicago bioethicist Leon Kass. Please read or scan this article to get a sense of the kind of appointments being made by our government.

"A surprising number of the council members, including Kass, are closely associated with the neoconservative religious magazine First Things. [. . .] Leon Kass is a physician and philosopher with a decidedly anti-modernist bent. A disciple of University of Chicago anti-modernist philosopher Leo Strauss, Kass has long believed that the Enlightenment was something of a mistake. In his view, its focus on individual rights and individual conscience undermines the traditional bases for morality."

So... Straussian philosophy. Before I start - I don't claim to have particularly studied it, except to scratch the surface. Straussians are basically anti-modern -- the Enlightenment brought with it a liberal ideology of social-political progress. Strauss felt this liberalism allowed (or inevitably created) a weak German government that would fall to evil -- Nazism.

"The modern world is held to be the deliberate creation (with some unintended consequences) of the modern philosophers -- namely, the Enlightenment, which gave birth to both scientific-technological progress and the liberal ideology of social-political progress. The Enlighteners argued (though still covertly) that instead of hiding philosophy, philosophers should reform society to make it more hospitable to philosophy: in particular, by undertaking the "project" of modern science, by which reason masters nature and provides material gratifications -- safety, health and wealth -- to common men, bribing them into acquiescence to philosophy. Physical science and technology would provide the know-how, while a new kind of regime, liberalism, would provide the conditions of liberty and equality enabling men to pursue their self-interest. "

One of the points of Straussian philosophy is that there are a special few who are supposed to run the world. And this elite is also the group that will understand "straussian writings" - philosophy written by previous philosophers on two levels, one for the masses and one that the ruling elite will understand. There's a sort of Calvinist idea here: Only a few people are Chosen to go to Heaven, and they will know who they are -- only a few elite people are Chosen to understand the higher-level messages in Straussian writings -- and therefore be rulers -- and they will know who they are by understanding these messages. Here is a discussion of Straussian philosophy from a far-right viewpoint:

"The key Straussian concept is the Straussian text, which is a piece of philosophical writing that is deliberately written so that the average reader will understand it as saying one ("exoteric") thing but the special few for whom it is intended will grasp its real ("esoteric") meaning. The reason for this is that philosophy is dangerous. Philosophy calls into question the conventional morality upon which civil order in society depends; it also reveals ugly truths that weaken men's attachment to their societies. Ideally, it then offers an alternative based on reason, but understanding the reasoning is difficult and many people who read it will only understand the "calling into question" part and not the latter part that reconstructs ethics. Worse, it is unclear whether philosophy really can construct a rational basis for ethics. Therefore philosophy has a tendency to promote nihilism in mediocre minds, and they must be prevented from being exposed to it. The civil authorities are frequently aware of this, and therefore they persecute and seek to silence philosophers. Strauss shockingly admits, contrary to generations of liberal professors who have taught him as a martyr to the First Amendment, that the prosecution of Socrates was not entirely without point. This honesty about the dangers of philosophy gives Straussian thought a seriousness lacking in much contemporary philosophy; it is also a sign of the conviction that philosophy, contrary to the mythology of our "practical" (though sodden with ideology and quick to take offense at ideas) age, matters.

Strauss not only believed that the great thinkers of the past wrote Straussian texts, he approved of this. It is a kind of class system of the intellect, which mirrors the class systems of rulers and ruled, owners and workers, creators and audiences, which exist in politics, economics, and culture. He views the founding corruption of modern political philosophy, which hundreds of years later bears poisonous fruit in the form of liberal nihilism, to be the attempt to abolish this distinction. It is a kind of Bolshevism of the mind.

Some dispute whether Straussian texts exist. The great medieval Jewish Aristotelian Moses Maimonides admitted writing this way. I can only say that I have found the concept fruitful in my own readings in philosophy. On a more prosaic level, even a courageous editor like my own canÂ’t print certain things, so I certainly write my column in code from time to time, and other writers have told me the same thing.

According to Strauss, Machiavelli is the key turning point that leads to modern political philosophy, and Machiavelli's sin was to speak esoteric truths openly. He told all within hearing that there is no certain God who punishes wrongdoing; the essence of Machiavellianism is that one can get away with things. Because of this, he turned his back on the Christian virtue that the belief in a retributive God had upheld. Pre-Machiavellian philosophy, be in Greco-Roman or Christian, had taught that the good political order must be based upon human virtues. Machiavelli believed that sufficient virtue was not attainable and therefore taught that the good political order must be based on men as they are, i.e. upon their mediocrity and vices. This is not just realism, or mere cynicism. It amounts to a deliberate choice as to how society should be organized and a decided de-emphasis on personal virtue. It leads to the new discipline of political science, which is concerned with coldly describing men as they actually are, warts and all. It leads ultimately to Immanuel Kant's statement that,

"We could devise a constitution for a race of devils, if only they were intelligent."

The ancient view is that this will get you nowhere, because only men with civic virtue will obey a constitution. The modern view leads naturally to value-free social science and social policies that seek to solve social problems through technocratic manipulation that refrains from "imposing value judgments" on the objects of its concern.

The key hidden step in the Machiavellian view, a bold intellectual move that is made logically rigorous and then politically palatable by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, is to define man as outside nature. Strauss sees this as the key to modernity. Man exists in opposition to nature, conquering it to serve his comfort. Nature does not define what is good for man; man does. This view is the basis for the modern penchant to make freedom and comfort (read "prosperity") the central concerns of political philosophy, whereas the ancients made virtue the center. Once man is outside nature, he has no natural teleology or purpose, and therefore no natural virtues. Since he has no natural purpose, anything that might give him one, like God, is suspect, and thus modernity tends towards atheism. Similarly, man's duties, as opposed to his rights, drop away, as does his natural sociability. The philosophical price of freedom is purposelessness, which ultimately gives rise to the alienation, anomie, and nihilism of modern life."

Please read on, and you'll find:

"In a nutshell, Strauss would lead us back to the Aristotelian conception of man as naturally political. Politics implies natural goods that are prior to human thinking about them. If man is political by nature, the goods of politics also exist by nature. The goods of politics are the ways man must behave to make political community work. If there are natural goods, there is a natural hierarchy of goods, and therefore a natural hierarchy of men, as different men pursue different goods. Civic equality may be salutary for the functioning of society, but men are not truly equal in value. All these things and more follow. Following Strauss's arguments, it is not hard to realize that much of what conservatives find attractive in society is ultimately premised on philosophy that is pre-modern and to some extent anti-modern. We realize that our America is a modern society but not only a modern society. This alone is worth the price of the Straussian ticket."

I wonder where I fit in this hierarchy?

I don't really think there has been an ongoing conspiracy of secret organizations of elites who control the world. I do, however, wonder if those in today's right-wing movement listened to all the theories and decided, "That would be cool, as long as it's US doing the controlling," and got started setting it up.

A friend just said, "It's a good thing we're unable to actually do anything about all this stuff, because otherwise they'd shoot us for talking like this."

More Strauss stuff: Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception, The long reach of Leo Strauss.

Working The Polls

I worked at the polls today. Just got home. This time I was the "inspector" -- the person in charge of the precinct operation... Got there at 6am, home after 9pm. Long day. Exhausted. Might blog tomorrow. Might sleep.

Congrats to Kerry. Good night.

Is Kerry a Liberal?

Well, yeah, sort of. I'm not the guy to defend Kerry against this particular charge; my hero is the late Paul Wellstone, who was unquestionably more liberal than Kerry.

And yeah, Kerry really is from Massachusetts too. Kerry and the Democrats are really going to have to take the bull by the horns on this one. Kerry has stated his intention of attacking rather than letting himself be put on the defensive -- thank God -- and once Bush's wretched record on counter-terrorism is widely known, half the "Massachusetts liberal" smear will become inoperative. Bush is supposedly "strong on defense", but you don't become strong on defense by talking loud, strutting around in a flight suit, and tying the American military down in the wrong country. Iraq was never the main problem.

As for the rest of it: deep down, most Americans would rather live in Massachusetts, California, or Minnesota than in Texas or Alabama. There is indeed a bigoted demographic which has a bitter hatred of Northerners and liberals, and they should be allowed to vote for George W. Bush. But there are also a lot of voters who thoughtlessly buy the "Northern liberal" smear without really being quite that bigoted, and we should change their minds. Massachusetts is America too.

P.S. And New York is also America. When al-Qaeda wanted to hurt us, they didn't attack Dallas.

Really, why should they have? They have lots of friends in Dallas.


Conason on the "Liberal" Charge

Blasts Kill 143 at Iraq Shiite Shrines

Link

KARBALA, Iraq - Simultaneous explosions ripped through crowds of worshippers Tuesday at Shiite Muslim shrines in Baghdad and the city of Karbala, killing at least 143 people on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar, a U.S. official said. It was the bloodiest day since the end of major fighting.

The blasts came during the Shiite festival of Ashoura and coincided with a shooting attack on Shiite worshippers in Quetta, Pakistan that killed at least 29 people and wounded more than 150.

Three suicide bombers set off their explosives in and around Baghdad's Kazimiya shrine, killing 58 and wounding 200, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters. At least one suicide attacker blew himself up and pre-set explosives went off in Karbala, killing 85 and wounding more than 100, he said.

A fourth suicide bomber whose explosives did not detonate was captured at Kazimiya, and four people were arrested in connection to the attack in Karbala, Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad.

Aren't you glad we started this war in Iraq?

We sure have improved life for the people of Iraq, haven't we?

Bush & Guard Inflation

Boston.com / Bush bio on Web inflates Guard service:

"But the State Department biography of Bush, which has been on its website since 2001, makes the president out to be more of a frequent flyer than the embellished account in Bush's 1999 autobiography, 'A Charge To Keep.' In that book, Bush said he flew with his unit for 'the next several years' after his five months of training on the F-102 concluded in June 1970."

You can be sure these websites will soon will be set to "never said that."

More on "Who is Bandar Bush?"

I'll be continually updating my Kerry Smear and Who is Bandar Bush? files from here on. Here are some recent samples from the latter:

From the March, 2004 Harpers:

"Since September 2001, the administration has designated hundreds of individuals and organizations, including several Islamic charities, as terrorists or sponsors of terrorism and frozen their assets. Yet Saudi organizations and individuals have emerged relatively unscathed.... And although in January the Treasury Department designated several branches of the Saudi charity al-Haramain, U.S. officials declined to freeze the assets of the group's dozens of other offices worldwide, including the one in Riyadh....."

From the Sept 11, 2003 Time Magazine:

"U.S. investigators, he says, sometimes suspect that the Saudis are fishing, trying to ferret out details of U.S. intelligence, or stalling, to protect Saudi individuals from embarrassment. One of the Administration's top counterterrorism officials says the Saudis still appear to be protecting charities associated with the royal family and its friends.....

.....Indeed, when President Bush spoke to Abdullah for 20 minutes by phone last week [fall 2003], say U.S. and Saudi sources, he went out of his way to compliment the Prince on Saudi Arabia's efforts to combat terrorism."

There's more.

Haiti Takeover Part Of Bush's "War On Terror?"

Something's going on concerning Haiti, and I don't know what it is. Listening to AM radio this morning, the local far-right station followed the network news with a "War on Terrorism" report that President Aristide has left Haiti, and American troops are securing the country following over 100 killed in the uprising to get rid of him - the wording implying that Aristide had been behind the rioting and killings. Then O'Reilly comes on and rants about how the mainstream media just lies, and you should never listen to or read mainstream media news reports because they are all liberals and just lie because they truly believe that government solves every problem and they want to tax you to pay for their big-government solutions and will always take the side of the Democrats.

Then I tuned to Limbaugh who was going on about the "atrocities committed by Aristide," and how "the Democrats" are circulating stories that the Bush administration was behind the uprising against Aristide because they were against this just like they were against invading Iraq to get rid THAT dictator (and Democrats always support dictators,) and it is really all about securing "the black vote." (Limbaugh is ALWAYS pre-emptive, telling his audience that "the Democrats" or "liberals" are circulating stories that... and it's always way ahead of any stories actually appearing, but the stories he refers to will be accurate reports of what is really happening... And he ALWAYS tells his audience that what Democrats do is about "the black vote" and not about "real Americans...")

So I think (tinfoil hat guy) something is going on concerning Haiti. For some reason they are selling the takeover of the elected government of Haiti as part of Bush's strong leadership in the war on terror...

Read Billmon

When I combine this with Aaron Brown blowing his stack over the GOP machine's attempt to deep six the 9/11 investigation, I can only conclude the Matrix is experiencing a serious program run error in its CNN subroutine.

If this keeps up, Agent Rove may have to reboot the system -- in which case I assume we'll all wake up tomorrow and it will be September 10, 2001 again.

And, under Agent Rove's direction, the system is about to crash.

If you start seeing green numbers, be very afraid.

$97

The Left Coaster: Bush Tax Package Has Led To Average Refund Increases Of Less Than $100.

Republicans and October Surprises

In response to comments following this post, In October? No Surprise.

Fears that Republicans will attempt to manipulate elections using some kind of "October Surprise" go back further than the 1980 election when Iran released the hostages just after Reagan's inauguration, after President Carter had worked so hard to get them released with no success -- and no rational reason for the Iranians to hold out so long. (Doing that only makes sense if the Iranians wanted something in writing signed by a representative of the new President, not by a candidate, and coincidentally two weeks later the Reagan administration started shipping arms to Iran -- a fact that became public from the Iran/Contra investigation.). In fact, this story about the 1968 election, Nixon 'Wrecked Early Peace In Vietnam', describes events that helped people who knew about them realize what was going on in 1980: (Other sources here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

At the heart of the new account was Nixon's fear that Vietnam peace efforts by President Johnson in the run-up to the November 1968 US presidential election could wreck Nixon's bid to oust Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate, and capture the White House.

Nixon's response to Johnson's efforts was to use a go-between, Anna Chennault, to urge the South Vietnam's president, Nguyen van Thieu, to resist efforts to force them to the peace table.

Nixon's efforts paid off spectacularly. On October 31, Johnson ordered a total halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, the precondition for getting the North and their Vietcong allies to join the talks. Two days later, under intense secret urgings from Nixon and his lieutenants, Thieu announced his government would not take part. Less than a week later, Nixon was elected president with less than a one-point margin in the popular vote over Humphrey.

The charge that the Reagan campaign interfered with attempts to get the hostages released in order to manipulate the elections came from people who knew that Republicans had interfered to block peace negotiations of a previous Democratic administration in order to make Democrats look weak on national security. They understood what Republicans are capable of. And now we have more history. We have Nixon in 68, Reagan in 80 and Bush forcing the Iraq vote to manipulate the 2002 election. So the question is not what are they capable of doing for the 2004 elections, it's what ARE they going to do?

(Gotta go -- My wife's looking at me with that 'there I go again' look...)

Race To The Bottom

Over at The Zeitgeist: Lay off the Kool-aid Tom...:

"I've been a software developer since the late 1970s when I was running my own business in high-school. I was a VP in technology on Wall St. for many years, and even helped jump-start this whole Internet thing by putting JPMorgan & Co. on the Internet back in early 1991 -- JPMorgan was the very first bank in the world on the Internet -- and helping to fund the development of a little program called Mosaic (which later became Netscape). I've run my own consulting business. I am the founder of a start-up. God help me.

I am 41, I've got 25 years in this business and I know lots and lots and lots of people. I have never seen such pessimism from so many smart, smart people before. Why are they so blue? Its simple:

They know that no matter how hard they work, no matter how many degrees they have, no matter how much have contributed/created in the past, and no matter how much they are capable of creating in the future -- it doesn't matter one bit. They're all toast. Because you see, its not about training, or capability, or creativity, or past contributions, or future potential... its only about cost. And there's no way they can win.

Ask any employer who's fired their IT people. they'll tell you: It doesn't matter what their American staff was capable of creating or achieving. They just don't want Americans, no matter what. Its all about a race to the bottom; a race to see who can get away with paying the least.

With about 3 Billion people in the world willing to work for pennies, and with selfish, greedy, thoughtless corporate thugs willing to put the shaft to Americans and others who made our high-technology world possible, there's no possible way for American (or other) workers to survive. There's just no competing with essentially free labor."

I don't think the job loss situation is about "trade" at all. I think the use of the terms "trade" and "free trade" are clever ways to distract from the real problem. "Trade" sounds great, OF COURSE we should "trade" with others. Duh! But the arguments I have heard promoting sending jobs offshore are pretty much the same argument as those for getting rid of the minimum wage, for not having unions, for workers keeping quiet, doing what they're told and being grateful that they have food and shelter at all. As I wrote the other day in Trade, Jobs and the Ongoing Struggle,

"Show me where the current trade arguments are different from the minimum wage arguments? They argue that raising (or even having) a minimum wage keeps the poor from getting jobs. And they argue that asking trade partners to protect workers rights and safety and pay higher wages keeps THEIR poor from getting jobs."

I think this is about the moneyed interests -- corporations in this case -- being able to make use of global unemployment to drive down not just wages and benefits (costs) but also the power of workers. This is about the struggle between labor and capital that has been going on and will go on. Since they started shipping jobs to Mexico they have been able to substantially weaken the unions and by weakening the unions they have weakened the power of the Democratic coalition (with some help from Ralph).

It seems that the question, Who is our economy FOR, anyway? gets more and more relevant every day.

Who Are "Vietnam Vets Against John Kerry"?

Kerry's positions on defense issues and his opposition to the Vietnam War are both legitimate political issues and well worthy of discussion. However, the motivation of this anti-Kerry demonstration is quite dubious.

The leader of "Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry", Ted Sampley, is a con man who has been making an excellent living off his POW-MIA non-profit organization. Sampley was one of those who helped George W. Bush smear John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary.

In McCain's words: "I am well familiar with Mr. Sampley, and I know him to be one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit."

Ironically, one of the operatives attacking McCain for Bush, Thomas Burch, attacked the first President Bush in 1988 for naming the National Guardsman Dan Quayle as his Vice Presidential candidate! Apparently it's not just Democrats who have questions about the Vietnam-era National Guard.

Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry

McCain on Sampley

Sampley's non-profit; Burch

More on Burch and Sampley

2000 McCain smear; Burch attacking Bush the First

Conason on McCain and Kerry Smears

In October? No Surprise.

Over at Calpundit Kevin says:

"The idea that the Bush administration is somehow keeping Osama under wraps in order to spring an 'October Surprise' that will guarantee their reelection is a common topic of gossip, but not something that anyone (yet) has been willing to broach in serious news pages -- and for pretty obvious reasons."

What are the obvious reasons? Thinking this through, (sorry, Tom), I can come up with a number of reasons but there aren't any obvious ones - at least to me.

Is Kevin saying that it is obvious the press isn't picking this up because it's a wild, fringe idea that the Bush people might do something like this? How wild is it when you consider that this is the crowd that took the country to war against a country that had not attacked or even threatened us instead of finishing the task of capturing or killing the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11? AND that this is the crowd that used the timing of that war to manipulate the 2002 elections? Wild compared to that?

Or is he saying that it is obvious the press isn't writing about this because the press is either controlled by or intimidated by the Bush corporatists?

Is he saying it is obvious because it is obvious that they are holding Osama for use in an October surprise?

Uh oh, my wife is looking at me tapping faster and faster on the keys, and she's getting that "there you go again getting all worked up" expression that tells me I had better calm down.

Email to Dave

I sent an email to Dave with this thought I had over a salad this evening. He seems to like it:

I have the campaign slogan for the Demos. They don't deserve it -- it should go to Ralph, but then nobody will hear it.

AMERICANS FIRST!
Kerry/Edwards 2004


Also, another related one:

Kerry/Edwards for Americans!


If any right-winger is stupid enough to play some word game and compare it to America First, YOU JUST RIP THEM A NEW ONE: "What! It's really no surprise to anyone who's been watching you guys, but I'm really shocked you'd make it so clear, so openly, that YOU DO NOT PUT AMERICANS FIRST!" Scream. Scream a lot.

This could even win back the Congress.

There's lots of ways you could take this. Edwards might do particularly well with it. (Dean would have done great with it, alas.)

I'm embarrassed...

for this guy actually. My goodness! This guy is darn near illiterate. He writes at about the fourth grade level.

As someone who worked with hundreds of IU students as a teaching assistant a few years ago, I'm happy to report that this guy is not typical.

Atrios is right though, this guy's ignorance, illiteracy, and bigotry certainly seems to give us an indication where the conservative movement is heading these days, doesn't it?

If you were curious as to exactly what kind of person W was appealing to with the "Defense of Marriage" constitutional amendment, now you know.

Extra Unemployment Benefits Lose in Senate

Yahoo! News - Extra Unemployment Benefits Lose in Senate:

"A Senate measure to extend federal unemployment benefits failed by two votes Thursday despite the election year support of 12 Republicans from states hit hard by layoffs.

Democrats tried to attach the amendment to a gun liability bill, but it failed 58-39 in the GOP-controlled Senate. The margin was two votes shy of the 60 needed to overcome a procedural objection. "

A "procedural objection" -- meaning the Republicans filibustered it, right?

"[Republican Senator] Nickles said jobless workers have more incentive to find a job when the extra unemployment benefits stop. "The more you pay people not to work, the less inclined they are to work," he said.

Right. All those people are just sitting around on their butts, turning down all the jobs they are being offered.

Did US and UK Know?

Juan Cole asks a VERY good question about US and British bugging of UN officials:

"The Blix wiretaps raise an interesting question. Did the US and UK know even more about the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction than we thought, from what Blix was saying privately in spring of 2003 before the war?"

Trade, Jobs and The Ongoing Struggle

Following is a comment I left following this post at Brad DeLong's blog. (Of course, what I'm posting here is edited, selected, massaged, even tortured to make me look better.)

Responding to a claim that '...Americans are told that trade destroys jobs...'.:

"I don't know what is gained by misrepresenting the positions of people opposed to the current trade situation! Who is telling Americans that? NO ONE IS.

What I hear people saying is that trade with countries that do not honor their agreements, and/or countries that do not permit labor to organize or that do not allow their citizens to vote on their country's policies or do not have environmental regulations, etc. is inherently stacked against OUR interests AS WELL AS the interests of the people in the countries we trade with. And it is not harming JUST the interests of Americans who lose their jobs but also the interests of our country as a whole. How do we benefit by trading away our jobs, assets, manufacturing base, technological expertise and revenue base, to trade partners who are not purchasing enough from us, not paying their own citizens well, not protecting the environment, not letting workers organize, not letting their citizens vote, not floating their currency so their goods cost what they should relative to ours, etc.?

Ultimately this is about more than trade, it is the ongoing struggle over who gets what share of the pie. Of course corporations will always try to lower costs. They should. But this can mean trying to repeal the minimum wage, or use child labor, or bribing inspectors. So it's up to us, the people, to try to put in place controls that protect the public interest. It is our duty. Is it 'protectionist' to support a higher minimum wage, or national health insurance or worker safety regulations, or the right to unionize? YOU BET IT IS! It protects the people who work for a living. Here AND with our trading partners.

Without worker protections in place in countries like China, and without agreements in place that mean that our trade "partners" REALLY DO balance out our job losses by purchasing US goods, and by allowing their currencies to follow the market, it is NOT A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. It is NOT "FREE" TRADE AT ALL! All we are doing is trading away American living standards, increasing our debt, to enrich corporate executives and corrupt Chinese officials!

"Protectionism" means PROTECTING AMERICANS. A $500 billion trade deficit indicates a problem with our idea of "free trade," doesn't it? Stagnant income growth for the middle class since the 70's indicates a problem, doesn't it? With the trade portion of the struggle between moneyed interests and the public, we are trading away jobs and assets in return for loans. The public takes on the trade debt load and the executives walk away with the cash. With other forms of this struggle, like the minimum wage and the right to organize, we are experiencing the corruption of our own political system, trading away our retirement income for tax cuts to the rich, and other signs that the public's position in this ongoing battle is weakening...

The trade situation is just another part of that battle - it's the scene in 'Grapes of Wrath' where they're bussing in the strikebreakers so they can keep wages low. It's just that they're bussing them over the border now.

---

Let me add to that. Show me where the current trade arguments are different from the minimum wage arguments? They argue that raising (or even having) a minimum wage keeps the poor from getting jobs. And they argue that asking trade partners to protect workers rights and safety and pay higher wages keeps THEIR poor from getting jobs.

But, in fact, history shows that increasing the minimum wage and other income redistribution policies precedes higher growth, not lower growth. And periods of wealth concentration coincide with periods of lower growth. This is a consumer economy and customers with money to spend grows the economy. Clinton's tax HIKES and minimum wage HIKES and EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) HIKES brought about a boom.

So policies that promote higher wages and income redistribution benefit everyone, and policies that reduce wages and concentrate wealth promote that "race to the bottom." Policies for labor OUTSIDE the country have the same effect as those for labor IN the country. Promoting workers rights increases growth, and benefits all of us."

Go join the discussion.

The Stonewalling Continues

Why are Republicans still stonewalling the 9/11 Commission?

Again, for the hundredth time, what are they hiding?

I have a suspicion that I'll go ahead and share. I suspect that somewhere in the President's Daily Briefing (probably on different days in August) an analyst mentioned a concern about hijacking and domestic terrorism by al-Qaeda -- maybe even going so far as to suggest that targets like the World Trade Center would be vulnerable.

I doubt that the analyst who prepared the briefing connected the concern over hijackings and a heightened threat of domestic terrorism but they probably suggested both of these as potential concerns.

I also now suspect that someone suggested to the president that he increase the security at airports but W couldn't be bothered because he some brush to clear or a golf game to go to or some other pressing engagement during his month-long vacation in August of 2001.

Furthermore, don't you find the insistance that the president actually wants the commission's work to continue for the two months but can't seem to get Hastert to go along, a bit too convenient? I mean, heck folks, who really believes that little cover story?

And also, why just an hour with the commission, Mr. Bush? Here's a question from today's gaggle that really shows that some in the press recognize the president's hypocrisy on this issue:

In every speech he gives, President Bush invokes the atrocities of 9/11 and he talks about how that event has impressed on him a determination to always honor the victims of those atrocities in his daily conduct of his office. And I wonder if you could explain with some serious Texan straight talk here, Scott, how it is honoring the victims of 9/11 to restrict the questioning of the President on this subject to one hour?

How about it, Mr. President?

Answer that question for us all please.

Stern

Digby finds a strange coincidence in the firing of Howard Stern. Go read at Hullabaloo:

"So, suddenly John Hogan, Bush Ranger and CEO of Clear Channel discovers that Howards Stern talks about pornography on his show and is offended.

The day after Stern made the above remarks.

Coincidence, I'm sure."

And, the same piece has something I agree with:

"Furthermore, it's just a little bit galling that a violent, pornographic snuff film that features 15 minutes of big juicy close-ups of hunks of flesh flying off the human body as it is flogged with barbed whips is deemed appropriate for children by supposedly good Christians while they have a complete hissy fit over a 5 second long shot of Janet Jackson's nipple on television."

It seems so easy to sell stuff to the the fundies, if you use the right approach. This time it's movie marketing hype. Other times it's estate or capital gains tax cuts. GOD says go pay $9 and see the most violent film ever made. GOD says we should cut capital gains taxes. GOD says send me $100 so I can build a theme park or buy a diamond mine and get even richer. AND they all go out and DO it (or vote for it)! I wonder if I can think up a way to make some money off the right-wing Christians. The money would go to a great cause.

Accountability On the Right

For those who think that the investigation into the Plame affair (Bush aides revealing the identity of a covert CIA agent, working on preventing weapons of mass destruction from getting into terrorist hands) is likely to lead somewhere, or the 9/11 commission (looking into whether Bush f*cked up and let us get attacked), or the investigations into pre-Iraq WMD intelligence (looking into whether Bush f*cked up and got us into a war), I suggest looking at what happened to a couple of cases that involved right-wingnuts and actual dead bodies.

I don't have a high level of optimism that there is going to be ANY oversight or accountability or justice as long as the Right controls all the branches of government.

Update As with any Google search, if the page is no longer there you can still read it by clicking "Cached." This one, for example -- and it is really worth reading past the "about me" and into the "letter" part.

MoDo: "Stations of the Crass"

Our soldiers are being killed in Iraq; Osama's still on the loose; jobs are being exported all over the world; the deficit has reached biblical proportions.

And our president is worrying about Mars and marriage?

When reporters tried to pin down White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday on why gay marriage is threatening, he spouted a bunch of gobbledygook about "the fabric of society" and civilization.

The pols keep arguing that institutions can't be changed when, in fact, they change all the time. Haven't they ever heard of the institution of slavery?

The government should not be trying to legislate what's sacred.

When Bushes get in trouble, they look around for a politically advantageous bogeyman. Lee Atwater tried to make Americans shudder over the prospect of Willie Horton arriving on their doorstep; and now Karl Rove wants Americans to shudder at the prospect of a lesbian — Dick Cheney's daughter Mary, say — setting up housekeeping next door with her "wife."

When it comes to the Bushes' willingness to stir up base instincts of the base, it is as it was.

Indeed.

Kerry and Cleland Smears

I've started to collect anti-Kerry smears as they show up. So far I've put up the "Special Interest Money" smear, the "Didn't Really Earn His Medals" smear, the "Jane Fonda Photo" smear, and the "Kerry: Self-Hating Jew" smear. I've also thrown in the two Max Cleland smears: "Cleland-Saddam-Osama" and "Cleland Blew off his Arm and Legs Himself Out of Sheer Stupidity" (the last one courtesy of Ann Coulter.) This should end up being quite a lengthy file (!) so I've parked it at the other site.

I will also continue to update my Bush-Bin Laden site ("Who is Bandar Bush?"). Bush is vulnerable on the War on Terrorism if the Democrats have the guts to attack him. He's actually doing a crappy job and has some enormous skeletons in his closet.

I expect as dirty a campaign as I've witnessed in my lifetime, and I see it as my role to encourage the Democrats to respond with adequate ferocity.

Smear Page

Who is Bandar Bush?

Same-Sex Marriages

Thanks to Oliver Willis for pointing to these pictures of society coming apart, the end of civilization, the destruction of America, the ruin of all we stand for, etc.

I'm assuming...

that Greenspan's luck just ran out, right?

I mean, heck folks, W and the boys have to respond to this forcefully -- or there goes Florida.

And Dave's right. Greenspan is suggesting that the administration default on the nation's promises to senior citizens in order to save the taxcuts for the rich.

What are the odds Greenspan has got a job this time next week?

This is really getting fun to watch, isn't it?

So Here It Is

Not even bothering to disguise the relationship. First, the massive tax cuts for the rich, then the cuts in OUR retirement to help pay for a bit of those tax cuts. Greenspan Urges Cuts to Social Security to Reign In Deficit:

"Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged Congress on Wednesday to deal with the country's escalating budget deficit by cutting benefits for future Social Security retirees rather than raising taxes."

He is saying that the SAME money is better for the economy when given to rich people than when use to meet the needs of regular citizens.

And how else does he suggest solving the problem of the massive deficits resulting from the tax cuts for the rich?

"Tax rate increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base,'' Greenspan said. "The exact magnitude of such risks is very difficult to estimate, but they are of enough concern, in my judgment, to warrant aiming to close the fiscal gap primarily, if not wholly, from the outlay side.''

He says that we must cut spending on the needs of the public rather that tax the rich. He says that raising taxes on the rich threatens economic growth but that cutting the incomes of elderly, or making the sick pay for their treatment, or cutting the paychecks of teachers or construction workers, etc. does not. In other words, he is saying that THE SAME money given to rich people is better for the economy than money spent on the needs of regular people.

Also posted at Daily News Online.

What?

I just don’t get it. I’ve been trying to decide why W thinks a fight over prohibiting gay civil unions, an issue very few people in this world care about, is going to help his campaign. It just doesn’t make any sense.

I think, of course, that tolerance is always a good thing. If states want to do this, what’s the big deal? I just can’t understand why W and the boys feel threatened by states offering civil unions for gay folks. (I remind you that the state can’t legally preside over religious sacraments -- but you knew that, right?)

And, also, how does this really “threaten” your marriage or my marriage? Furthermore, if this passes, can you imagine what historians will say about this generation if the only amendment added to the constitution is this “Defense of Marriage” amendment? My goodness, what would this say about us?

Furthermore, while this issue might crank up the real knuckle-dragging bigots out there (like these guys), most people give it a big yawn. Most folks think, hey, why should prohibiting gay marriage be a priority for our government when there’s so many other important issues out there? And wait a minute, aren’t these the guys who are always talking about local control and state rights? How in the world is this proposed amendment consistent with those beliefs?

Or, more interestingly, is this yet another in a long line of issues designed merely to distract us? Have W and the boys just tossed this issue out there so that people will stop noticing that the economy is heading South (consumer confidence ominously dropped last month) and the Iraq situation is rapidly deteriorating – and that this administration has no earthly idea how to deal with either problem?

Unfortunately, this issue might also distract the folks in this administration from more important problems. Honestly folks, think about it, if there’s a terrorist attack anytime in the next couple of months, W and the boys may have missed the opportunity to thwart it because they were just too busy focusing on this oh-so-important “Defense of Marriage” amendment. I mean, heck folks, this issue is so out there that apparently even Tom DeLay thinks it’s an extremist and divisive issue – and Tom’s not exactly known for his, er, thoughtfulness.

I also think this has a real chance to backfire. It makes W and the boys look like insensitive bigots just at the point in the campaign when they need to appeal to someone outside of their base. A little over a year ago I can remember joking that W’s true base is made up of that 33% of the people in this country who would vote for W even if he sprouted pointy ears and a tail and began speaking in indecent iambic couplets. (Actually, didn’t W begin to do that just last week?)

But how does this issue appeal to anyone beyond these already rock solid Bush supporters?

If you recall, I also predicted that if W went down it would be an incredible show.

Pass the popcorn folks. I really do think that the show is just starting.

If these guys really think this is the issue to fight the 2004 elections over, can you imagine the bushel basket of hilarious missteps yet to come?

A Special Little Law

Senate to Vote on Shielding Gun Makers. A special little law saying you can't sue gun manufacturers,

"has the support of the White House and 55 sponsors in the Senate, including the Democratic and Republican leaders."

The spine injection lasted only so long.

Coming soon, Sainthood for Joseph McCarthy. Later, honors for Jefferson Davis.

Tell The DNC To Launch The $100 Revolution

Go read NDN Blog: The DNC and the $100 revolution and then go to the DNC or the DNC Blog and tell them to launch the $100 revolution this summer!

And, donate $100 today. It's your duty. Seriously. How else are we going to win?

“Free” Trade, Offshoring, Jobs and the Concept of "Ownership" in General

I have a longer piece titled, “Free” Trade, Offshoring, Jobs and the Concept of "Ownership" in General over at the american street.

Education Secretary Calls Teacher Union a "Terrorist Organization"

More from the Cabinet of Mister "I'm going to change the tone in Washington" and "I'm a uniter not a divider."

Paige calls NEA 'terrorist organization':

"Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a 'terrorist organization' Monday as he argued that the country's largest teachers union often acts at odds with the wishes of rank-and-file teachers regarding school standards and accountability. "

What can I say? I suppose Bush's Labor Secretary considers the AFL-CIO to be the same thing. And the head of the EPA the Sierra Club. Etc.

And check out what he calls an "apology:"

"It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms.

"I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our nation's teachers, who have dedicated their lives to service in the classroom, are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live. "

This is the guy who's job is to WORK WITH the teacher unions!

Who Wins, Who Loses?

Let's suppose that the Democrat (presumably Kerry) wins this fall. When that happens, who will the other winners and losers be?

One loser will be Karl Rove and Bush's core constituency of anti-tax fanatics, Armageddon Christians, homophobes, and militarists. Rove has tied Bush's fate so closely to these groups (at the expense of more rational moderates and conservatives) that it seems that they might bring Bush down. When that happens, the Republicans are going to be less likely to cater to them in the future.

A second loser will be the media -- pretty much all of them, from the talk shows and Fox on up to the Times and the Post. Multiple signs of dissatisfaction about Bush are trickling in, and his poll numbers are about as bad as a sitting President has ever gotten, but the media are still reporting him as "a popular President". By and large, nothing Bush says or does is ever critically reported, no matter how ludicrous and outrageous it is.

From a professional point of view, of course, the media's imbecile coverage of Gore / Bush and the Bush administration has been a disaster. But from the more cynical point of view, the media's attempt to get Bush elected will have failed if Kerry wins, and if that does happen Jack Welch, the Rev. Moon, Rupert Murdoch, and Roger Ailes will whip their little loser media butts for them.

The third loser will be the Democratic pros. Below I linked to Kos calling the Democratic pros "the whiniest, most afraid people in the country". Before Howard Dean came along, the Democrats -- following the best professional advice -- were getting ready to slump through a loser campaign which would not even mention the Iraq War except to support it. Dean (along with a lot of grass-roots Dems) woke them up, and now it looks like we might actually have a fight on our hands. So if we win, it seems that maybe we should be getting some new pros.

Coda: What I just said is probably far too optimistic. Kerry -- who I'll be happy to vote for -- is now the candidate of the Democratic Establishment, and it's quite possible that in the end the media lords will pick up on Bush's weakness and get behind Kerry. So I guess my title should have read "Who should lose".

The media are probably beyond hope, but hopefully there will be someone in the Kerry campaign to put a bug in his ear about this. He might be educable.

Game Time

Below I agree with Matt Yglesias for once. He's responding to Josh Chafetz, who described Kerry's response to Saxby Chambliss (!!) as "slimy".

**********

Can't we get used to the idea that it's game time? Between games, and maybe before and after games, you can have a certain amount of idle chat between players of opposing teams, and maybe players from one of the teams team might admit that they got an unfair break in a previous game, or that one of their own players tends to travel a bit, etc., etc.

But once the whistle is blown you don't call fouls on your own side. And you also don't have people on the court who are still deciding which side they're on, or who believe that competition is a bad thing and that we should all just get along.

So there's no reason to listen to Ricky [Yglesias pet conservative]. He's on the other team. (Though it might be mentioned that his claim that "the Democrats started it" makes one guess that his long-term memory was seriously impaired during his heavy-metal-tweaker days.)

I don't see Chafetz as a Republican. Not quite -- presumably he's angling for the David Broder above-the-battle Ace Pontificater gasbag slot. Let him have that slot, I say -- but someone get him and Broder off the basketball court! (Come to think of it, though, wasn't Chafetz channeling the Krauthammer of a couple days ago? So maybe he really is a Republican.)

I think that after the Chambliss-Cleland race, the Bush-McCain race, and Gingrich's 1994 Sharon Smith smear (at my URL), whatever objective observers still remain will agree that the Republicans play as dirty as anyone ever has played. However, objective observers who blame the Republicans will be immediately smeared as Democratic sympathizers, so why should they even bother to try?

Tit for tat, and do unto others before they do unto you. If you don't like what you see, get your ass out of the way.

P.S. Chafetz seems have missed the subtext here. The man sent by the Republicans to attack Kerry, Saxby Chambliss, was the chickenhawk who defeated triple-amputee Vietnam vet Max Cleland. Chambliss' secret weapon was a TV ad which morphed Cleland's face into Saddam Hussein's. Kerry's statement (with Cleland right beside him) was partly getback for something which happened in the past, and partly a preemptive strike against the smears that are sure to be sent Kerry's way.

Howard Zinn says:

The quick Thanksgiving visit of Bush to Iraq, much ballyhooed in the press, was seen differently by an army nurse in Landstuhl, Germany, where casualties from the war are treated. She sent out an e-mail: "My 'Bush Thanksgiving' was a little different. I spent it at the hospital taking care of a young West Point lieutenant wounded in Iraq. . . . When he pressed his fists into his eyes and rocked his head back and forth he looked like a little boy. They all do, all nineteen on the ward that day, some missing limbs, eyes, or worse. . . . It's too bad Bush didn't add us to his holiday agenda. The men said the same, but you'll never read that in the paper."

As for Jeremy Feldbusch, blinded in the war, his hometown of Blairsville, an old coal mining town of 3,600, held a parade for him, and the mayor honored him. I thought of the blinded, armless, legless soldier in Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun, who, lying on his hospital cot, unable to speak or hear, remembers when his hometown gave him a send-off, with speeches about fighting for liberty and democracy. He finally learns how to communicate, by tapping Morse Code letters with his head, and asks the authorities to take him to schoolrooms everywhere, to show the children what war is like. But they do not respond. "In one terrible moment he saw the whole thing," Trumbo writes. "They wanted only to forget him."

In a sense, the novel was asking, and now the returned veterans are asking, that we don't forget.

Indeed.

Sometimes people forget that it was us anti-war folks who had enough foresight to worry about these problems before the war took place.

I really think W should spend a day per week visiting injured soldiers. It might make him a bit less likely to take us into an immoral and unnecessary war again.

Maybe.

Stealing From Dave Barry

I am going to have to steal the line, "I am not making this up" for this post. But I am giving credit.

Manufacturing jobs involve assembling things. Place item Bg on item Bn (bottom), then place Item L on the BgBn combination. To complete, place a Bn (top) unit on this, and wrap the completed assembly.

OK, so to make their job-creation record look better before the election the Bush administration is talking about reclassifying a certain job category as a manufacturing job. Item Bn is bun. Bg is burger and L is lettuce. I am not making this up.

Bin Laden

If the, Sunday Telegraph - Bin Laden 'surrounded', is true, they have Bin Laden cornered and are awaiting orders to go get him:

"'The timing of that order will ultimately depend on President Bush,' the paper says. 'Capturing bin Laden will certainly be a huge help for him as he gets ready for the election.'"

But they're waiting for the right time, and everyone seems to agree that election politics are the determining factor. So here's this guy who has had his forces attack us, is engaged in planning further activities to attack and kill Americans and others, and we're not getting him until the time is right to help Bush's election prospects. Just one more example of Party over Country.

Bush / Bin Laden 2.0

Bush / Bin Laden 2.0

We can expect a dirty Presidential campaign, and I agree with Kerry that we should go tit for tat and not lie down the way Dukakis did.

George W. Bush's unhealthy friendship with the Saudis and the fraudulence of his War on Terror are valid political issues. They are also red meat quite suitable for political hardball. What's not to like?

I've revised my long file documenting Bush ties with the Saudis (including the Bin Ladens), Bush favoritism to the Saudis, Saudi involvement in terrorism, Bush indifference to counter-terrorism before 9/11, the irrelevance of the Second Iraq War to terrorism, blowback, Pakistan, etc. All the material is available elsewhere; what I've done is sift and sort the material and organize it into an anti-Bush storyline.

It isn't fun reading and doesn't really break new ground. I mean it to be a resource for the campaign. Anyone who wants to can pirate it, excerpt it, reformat it, etc. I would be very happy to have it mirrored.

I also welcome for updates, corrections, and suggestions.

UPDATE:

I am planning to keep this page updated and am promoting it under the brand name "Who is Bandar Bush?". I hope as many sites as possible give it a permanent link: http://www.johnjemerson.com/zizka.binladen.htm .

I suspect that Kerry and the official Democrats will want to keep their hands off this, which is all the more reason for us freelancers to keep the question alive.

They're In Baghdad Now

Chalabi, asked whether his Iraqi National Congress manipulated the Bushies into invading a country that did not attack us and did not threaten us, has this to say:

"'Our objective has been achieved. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important.' "

Yep. Just like their friends the Republicans, you gotta learn to watch what they're DOING not what they SAYING if you want to know what they're up to. As I wrote before, "They're in Baghdad now."

All the Iraqi and American dead and wounded don't figure into this at all. And, of course, the casting away of international law, the hundreds of billions spent, the militarization of our culture, the possible coming Iraqi civil war, the credibility and reputation of the United States... None of that figured into the calculations at all. After all, they're in Baghdad now. They got what they want, fuck you very much.

Update - Thinking about this, I think this is huge. Just huge. This story needs to get OUT THERE. Chalabi as well as admits that the INC pursued a scheme to manipulate American intelligence. Fine, but the Bush people wanted war and fell for it. The cost is tremendous. The potential for disaster is vast.

Patriot Games

I think Billmon has some election ideas worth projecting to a wide audience. In Patriot Games he writes (along with so much else, all of it important):

"To really crack the GOP coalition, though, economic populism has to be wrapped in something larger -- like the flag. I'm coming around to the view that the winning theme for the Democrats in this election -- the one that could really tear the bark off Bush (to borrow somebody else's phrase) is 'economic patriotism.' The Dems need a rhetorical and substantive program that ties the job/trade issue into a broader set of arguments about the privileges and obligations of citizenship, the relationship between fiscal stewardship and national strength, and the enduring worth of basic American principles like opportunity, community and fairness. And they have to contrast those priorities with the increasingly warped values of the corporate crony capitalists and their Republican water boys in Washington.

In other words, the Democrats need to make the case that the GOP has been selling ordinary hard-working, middle-class Americans down the river - and thus selling the country down the river."

"Economic patriotism." I REALLY like that idea, and especially his wording. Some have called for "economic democracy" but I like this wording much better. There is a lot that can be done with this idea. After all, who IS our economy for, anyway?

the american street

Everything over at the american street for the last several days is good. Go read.

Duh!

The NY Times actually notices that Iraq is about politics, not security. The Transfer: U.S. Presidential Politics and Self-Rule for Iraqis:

"'This is entirely a schedule dictated by Karl Rove,' said an Arab diplomat who maintains close contacts with the administration, referring to the White House's political director. 'Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.'"

More on Free Trade and the Democrats

Matt's earlier piece was a response to Daniel Drezner. Drezner, in turn, responded to Matt. He made this interesting point:

"NAFTA has become unpopular among Republicans, while Democrats like it fine. It gets -5 from white evangelicals, -6 from rural whites, -4 in exurban counties, -5 among white male seniors, and a whopping -17 among white non-college married men."

These are Republican voters to whom a free-trade Democratic Party has nothing much to say, but whom a free-trade-skeptic Democratic Party might be able to recruit.

Right now the Republicans are working on making inroads on the Democratic core: labor, Jews, Hispanics, and blacks. They don't need to win those constituencies -- if they get 20% of the black vote or 30% of the Jewish vote they really hurt the Democrats. The Democrats have been playing a defensive game for at least the last 16 years. Are there any Republican core constituencies that the Democrats might be attacking? It seems to me that Drezner just named some prospects.

Democratic unanimity on free trade is driven by the donors, tby he media (who all have their own axes to grind), and by the party pros. Not by the voters. Considering how well the pros have been doing recently, I think that we should ask whether we need some replacement pros.

Free Trade and the Democrats

Two comments from a thread on Matt Yglesias (edited to stand alone, more or less).

Matt is a standard knee-jerk free-trade Democrat. My points below are, first, that while free trade is not the only bad thing or even the worst thing to happen to labor in the last 23 years, it's part of a larger anti-labor pattern; and second, that many of those hurt by free trade are part of the Democratic core, and that to remain viable as a party the Democrats have to take care of their constituents. If they were going to support free trade because it's a good thing "on the average", they should have extracted concessions to soften the blow. They knew this, they wanted to do this, and they failed. We're living with the consequences, and the party is weakened.

An example of a concession: make education more accessible. Retrain Americans for well-paying jobs. But education is becoming less accessible, not more.

The degree of contempt that middle-class white Democrats feel for the Democratic core constituencies ("can't pander to them!") is really appalling.


************

Yes, it was very wise of the Democrats to hurt one of their major constituencies. It really strengthened the party for its future battles. Certainly it would be wrong if Democrats actually represented ("pandered to") its constituents. And labor knows, deep down in its heart, that the Dems would have liked to have done some things to make the transition easier, retrain displaced workers, make education more accessible for their children, etc., and that it's not the Dems fault that that part of the bargain wasn't kept.

None of the statistics whizzes on Brad DeLong's site ever gave a specific number on the "few" Americans who have been hurt by free trade, leading me to suspect that nobody cared much how many they were, and that nobody wanted to ask that question for fear of finding that the "few" were indeed far too many.

I think that part of the indifference here comes from a disdain for the kind of corny, tacky,people labor is thought to consist of. The Democrats seem to have become the smart yuppie party.

The unanimity about free trade is among media people, Democratic political pros, donors to the Democratic party, and rich Republicans. Not among voters, especially not Democratic voters. (Given the overwhelming free-trade buzz coming from the media, stated opinions about free trade are not necessarily well-informed, but support for free trade is only about 50% even so.) So the Democratic party leadership has got itself into a position where a significant proportion of its own constituents are enemies not to be trusted. That's not a recipe for political strength, I don't think.

Certainly the Democrats' self-sacrifice was a noble one, though, as we move on our way toward the one-party state. Economically, averaging across the whole population, free trade may be as good as you said, but politically it was suicidal.

Talking to Democratic pros I've always met intense resistance to the idea of finding new support among those who seldom vote. Non-voters are most common among people near the poverty line -- the people who used to be represented by Democrats, but who are now essentially unrepresented. But to recruit them you'd have to make an effort, spend money, and make a solid offer of some kind of concrete benefit. And within the neo-conservative / neoliberal consensus, you can't do that.

**********

Politics (as opposed to economics) is like an activity in which general-good lump benefits averaged out over the whole population are less significant than the particular outcomes impacting specific individuals and groups, since it's individuals who vote and they're often recruited as group members.

Economists and lumpen-utilitarians all condemn politics and essentially dream of a politics-free world, but politics can give a voice to minorities who would otherwise be steamrollered. In our present situation, small minorities who have large amounts of money are well represented indeed, whereas much, much larger minorities such as industrial labor have been abandoned. (Matt himself is completely deaf to the losers, if the utilitarian calculation comes out positive on the average).

Right now Matt and Brad DeLong are explaining that the bad things happening right now are not the result of free trade, but are for other reasons. Fine, but when the Dems joined the Republicans in a bipartisan free-trade policy, they should have gotten a quid pro quo on the "other reasons". They failed to do so, and now we're screwed. Free trade is only part of the long-term (since 1980) national anti-labor policy which the Democrats have been unable to resist. And the other aspects of this anti-labor policy affect everyone working for a paycheck, not just industrial labor.

When the party leadership has the degree of hostility to its core constituency (can't pander to them!) that the Democrats do, it's no surprise if the party is weak.

Are You Having Problems?

I received an e-mail from a reader who has started having technical problems viewing Seeing the Forest recently. If you are having any problems please leave a comment or send me an e-mail. Thanks.

Update - That's TECHNICAL problems only, please. I'll say what I want and Bush does too suck.

Surprise, Surprise

Look where more than $75 of Education funds have gone!

People For the American Way | Funding a Movement:

"An initial People For the American Way analysis of federal education grants has uncovered a pattern of major — and at times unsolicited — grants made to a small cadre of pro-voucher private advocacy groups. The funds diverted to these groups total more than $75 million over the last three years, and were doled out by the U.S. Department of Education despite chronic underfunding of the Bush administration’s own landmark ‘No Child Left Behind’ education legislation. "

If the Education Department is funneling this kind of of money to far-right voucher proponents, how much do you think other departments of our government have channeled into the Right's network of organizations? For example, the founder and funder of the far-right Libertarian Cato Institute received the government contract to supply oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now, there's a HUGE chunk of cash funneled to the far right!

Is anyone investigating this? (Hint, hint.) We know that more than $10 million went into running Medicare ads that are actually Bush campaign ads.