Digby! Digby! Digby!

Hullabaloo:

"Let's face it, for many people in this country (and probably the president himself) all the high flown phony rhetoric about 'freedom and democracy' notwithstanding, this war is about killing arabs. For them,the terrorists were arabs therefore all arabs are terrorists. They couldn't care less about WMD or terrorist connections to Iraq.They wanted to make an example of somebody. It's pretty much nothing more than straight out bigotry."

ENRON TAPES - Archival postings now easily available.

I've created a section under my personal web site (with the very capable assistance of Godmoma, my wife and in-house web designer) to make the various postings related to The Enron Tapes that I've made on this blog more easily accessible. I encourage folks to link back to this site, and of course to Seeing The Forest as well.

--Thomas Leavitt

Google on what our elected representatives in Congress care about.

Google search results:

biodiversity site:house.gov - 401
biodiversity site:semate.gov - 254

iraq site:senate.gov - 20,300
iraq site:house.gov - 36,800

ecology site:senate.gov - 353
ecology site:house.gov - 582

"national security" site:house.gov - 28,500
"national security" site:semate.gov - 12,600

rainforest site:senate.gov - 64
rainforest site:house.gov - 113

military site:house.gov - 71,700
military site:senate.gov - 28,500

extinction site:senate.gov - 349
extinction site:house.gov - 496

bomber site:house.gov - 638
bomber site:house.gov - 329

submarine site:senate.gov - 548
submarine site:house.gov - 1000

How about some of the Green Party's 10 Key Values?

"Ecological Wisdom" site:senate.gov - 1
"Ecological Wisdom" site:house.gov - 0

"Nonviolence" site:senate.gov - 28
"Nonviolence" site:house.gov - 115

"Social Justice" site:senate.gov - 4830
"Social Justice" site:house.gov - 8600

"Grassroots Democracy" site:senate.gov - 3
"Grassroots Democracy" site:house.gov - 18

"Feminism" site:house.gov - 3
"Feminism" site:house.gov - 9

how about a variant? ... not much better

feminist site:senate.gov - 31
feminist site:house.gov - 103

sexism site:senate.gov - 23
sexism site:house.gov - 48

racism site:senate.gov - 191
racism site:house.gov - 576

"tax cut" site:senate.gov - 4390
"tax cut" site:house.gov - 9810

"environmental sustainability" site:senate.gov - 33
"environmental sustainability" site:house.gov - 64

"south america" site:senate.gov - 512
"south america" site:house.gov - 899

africa site:senate.gov - 3660
africa site:house.gov - 6510

china site:senate.gov - 4930
china site:house.gov - 13600

germany site:senate.gov - 2330
germany site:house.gov - 5460

"hate crime" site:senate.gov - 120
"hate crime" site:senate.gov - 214

pornography site:senate.gov - 998
pornography site:house.gov - 2090

Pretty interesting, eh? I suspect that most of you can guess what I think about the bipartisan priorities of our elected officials in the face of global ecological devastation and mass injustice worldwide.

Someone with more coding chops than myself might be able to create a pretty interesting website out of this.


--Thomas Leavitt

FreewayBlogger - Another Great One

FreewayBlogger.com has another good one:

Pretty Serious Stuff

Putin Says Russia Warned U.S. on Saddam:

"Russian President Vladimir Putin , in comments sure to help President Bush, declared Friday that Russia knew Iraq's Saddam Hussein had planned terror attacks on U.S. soil and had warned Washington. "

So Russia warned the US? And the CIA and no other agencies of the government have ANY recollection of this? Even though it would save their ASSES right now to be able to say this happened?

This is Putin's second venture into the US elections in a week. Last week he said the Democrats have "no moral right" to criticize Bush.

So we have some kind of deal between Putin and Bush to help Bush in the election. And we already know that Bush has a deal with the Saudis to lower gas prices at the pump in time for the election. (Raising them dramatically and then lowering them a little bit SEEMS like a reduction to the voters, yet brings in the cash as well.)

What's coming? Watch your backs.

ENRON TAPES - What people don't get about this case: it isn't about Enron alone.

The Enron Tapes and the Snohomish vs. Enron hearing aren't just about a few potty mouthed "bad apples" at Enron engaging in opportunistic exploitation of regulatory loopholes (as Enron's PR people would like you to believe). They highlight a fundamental problem of our system of governance: the balance of power between corporations and the average human citizen is way out of whack. This is a point that those of us on our side of the issue would be well served to bring to the fore.

Enron lobbied our legislators and regulatory agencies with the conscious and deliberate intent of creating a non-transparent marketplace full of inefficiencies that they could then exploit (see Dr. Carl Pechman's testimony, quoted in previous posts). AND OUR LEGISLATORS AND REGULATORS LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT... or rather, they did not intervene, because they saw nothing unusual in the process as it happened. This doesn't always result in disaster (apparently New York state managed the deregulation process better), but it happens way too often.

The technical term for this is "regulatory capture". (1) This term was created approximately thirty years ago by Richard Posner, so it is not a new problem - just an ever more pressing one. The theory is ultimately very logical, and meshes with that of another political truism: those with the most concentrated interest in a particular aspect of governmental policy will have the most influence over it... and since, in many cases, the entities with the greatest interest are those being regulated, and have the most resources to devote to influencing the regulators and legislators, the result is pretty predictable -- and especially dangerous, due to the amoral imperatives fostered by corporation based capitalism, as I'll discuss later on.

And it doesn't matter which party is running things. This particular instance was a bi-partisan effort: it happened under a Republican Governor and was initiated by a Democratic representative in a legislature throughly controlled by a strong Democratic Party majority (AB1890 passed the State Legislature unanimously, 77-0 in the Assembly and 39-0 in the Senate), and it blew up under a Democratic governor and a Democratic, then Republican President.

This goes beyond partisan ideology - what we are talking about here is the fact that elements of corporate America have systematically subverted our government's regulatory apparatus for private gain. This happens over and over and over again, regardless of which party is in power, at any level. In this particular instance, it just happened to go sour in a very big, and very public way.

The movie "The Corporation", subject of a feature article in Metro Santa Cruz (an alternative weekly newspaper published in my home town) posits that this is part and parcel of the behavior fostered in those participating in the economic structures of corporation based capitalism. I haven't seen the actual movie yet, but it is clear from the article that the movie's creators believe that until we change from a system based on the corporation as the basic operational economic unit, a system which makes amoral behavior not only legal, but essentially mandates it, all efforts to remediate the problems our society faces will be futile.

The fact that the motivations of those influencing our government and regulatory processes are essentially amoral would explain a lot, eh? It would also explain why, under this particular administration, so heavy with corporate types, amoral behavior has become par for the course.

I'll end this by re-emphasizing my core point: the Enron tapes are about more than Enron, they are about the fundamentally corrupted nature of our system of economic and social governance, as exemplified by Enron's efforts to influence the regulatory structure it would in turn operate within; our side needs to bring this aspect to the fore of the discussion, and not let itself be distracted by the more sensationalistic aspects of the case, which are essentially trivial in nature, and not particularly relevatory (which is one reason why I think that the phenomenon of these tapes simply hasn't produced the political and social firestorm one might have expected, given their inflammatory nature).

1. This is an economic term describing a situation where one operator (or group of operators) in the market uses its influence or resources to extract a regulatory decision, or lack of decision, for their own benefit rather than the benefit of society as a whole.
It is associated with patterns of behaviour on the part of a regulatory body in one, or a combination, of the following situations:

* the regulatory body is tending to further producer interests over consumer interests.
* the regulatory body has become overly protective towards the regulated entities.
* the regulatory body is tending to adopt objectives that are very close to those of the entities it is supposed to regulate.

(Definition source: www.betterregulation.ie/ getFile.asp?FC_ID=18&docID=48)

P.S. As a Green, I have to point out that Ralph Nader and the Green Party have made untrammeled corporate power a major theme from day one. In a sense, it can be said that the Democratic Party's systematic neglect of this issue has created the political breathing space for Naderism and the Green Party to emerge as an visible force in American politics, as it is clear from polls and surveys that their strongest support comes from those folks who see this as a core issue. In my opinion, John Kerry and the Democratic Party (as well as the nation as a whole) would be much better off if they attempted to secure their "left flank" by addressing this issue directly, rather than continuing the obviously futile (and rather annoying) tactics they've used to date.

--Thomas Leavitt

Stick It To Bush

See the Bush Voodoo Doll, in the ad on the right side of this page! A great Father's Day gift!

Rumsfeld Must Go!

Rumsfeld Ordered Secret Arrest in Iraq,

WASHINGTON - At the request of CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the military to secretly hold a suspected terrorist in Iraq , a Pentagon spokesman said.

The suspected terrorist has been held since October without being given an identification number and without the International Committee of the Red Cross being notified, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Both conditions violate the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners of war.

[. . .] The Bush administration has argued that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to suspected terrorists who do not follow the conventions themselves. But Rumsfeld and other administration officials have said the Geneva Conventions applied to all U.S. military activities in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

LIARS! We can't trust a word this man says. WHY IS HE STILL THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE?!

And, as a result, no American captured in a war will ever again be safe from torture or other crimes.

And, from the story, there's this gem:

Maj. David Kolarik, a spokesman for the military's Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, said all prisoners are treated "in accordance with the principles" of the Geneva Conventions "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity."

In other words, we follow the rules when we feel like it.

Very Strange E-mail Problem

Has anyone out there heard of a problem like this? I can't send file attachments. If I attach a picture or a Word file, it never arrives at its destination. I can, however, attach a very short text file and it arrives. This started yesterday morning.

I thought it was only through my nuthouse account. But then I also couldn't send attachments through another account.

So I went to another computer - a Mac now - and sent some files through Hotmail and .Mac accounts. THOSE files also did not arrive.

I find that I CAN send files through my Comcast account that comes with the cable modem service.

The files sent yesterday still have not arrived.

Any ideas?

Still Dead

Ronald Reagan is still dead!

Suicidal Tendencies

Today's paper is running a "comic strip" that in essence tells people not to read newspapers because they are pro-terrorist and have a, quote, "blame America first attitude".

This link is good for a short period only, for the particular comic I am referring to. But later you can go here and look up the week of June 14. (The week of June 7 begins the attack.)

How do the newspaper serve their interests by publishing a cartoon that INSULTS half of their readers, with right-wing stuff that divides the country to the point of fomenting civil war? I mean, if you BELIEVE that half the country is pro-terrorist, which puts you LIFE at risk, and anti-American ...

What The Left Coaster Said

Hatch and McCain on Their Knees:

"What's unfortunate is that John McCain has lost whatever pair he has left and doesn't cite the Pentagon for contempt of Congress too. It's hard to imagine what's more appalling--executive public servants with so little regard to serving the people openly, or two such distinguished, senior members of the United States Senate forsaking their duty in such loathsome, obsequious, craven capitulation to ethical principles and their oversight responsibilities"

ENRON TAPES - The Web Site

www.enrontapes.com

Coverage of the Enron Tapes should be on major media outlets (CNN, NBC) tonight.

The site above contains individual links to each of the 82 publicly released audio files and associated transcripts, as well as the motion and testimony describing them and documenting their significance. It also contains links to information on the Snohomish PUD Web site.

Disclaimer: My wife and I received (a small amount of) financial compensation to design and assemble this site on behalf of my former employer and Snohomish, their client. She is a professional web site designer, and I assist her with content development and grunt HTML coding. :)

--Thomas Leavitt

Whatever It Takes

the american street: Proto-fascist thuggery:

"None of this will ever be directly connected to George W. Bush, of course. There's no need. There are too many people out there willing to do whatever it takes to keep him in office. Whatever it takes."

Whatever it takes.

Watch your backs.

Abu Ghraib 6-13

Abu Ghraib 6-13

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002017.html

I am astonished by the silence of a lot of libertarian types about a lot of things. What a bunch of frauds! If I’m not mistaken, the inexplicably-respected Jane Galt recently signed on to the Bush team (tacitly, by her use of the word “we” in a political context).

Volokh’s shame over his squeamishness (i.e., decency) is rather sickeningly characteristic of our times. In law, philosophy, PR, political consultancy, and advertising, “rationality” is regarded as the willingness to argue for or against any position whatsoever.

I read somewhere (Hannah Arendt??) that most of the anti-Nazi resisters (and shelterers of Jews) were naive, simple-minded people who had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Whereas Eichmann had a Kantian explanation for what he did.

There’s a second factor. The 9/11 attack was not an unprecedented murderous attack on civilians. There were several technically and organizationally unique aspects to 9/11, but the murderousness was normal-range.

The reason that 9/11 is thought to be a world-historical event is that it was an attack on the militarily most powerful nation in the history of the world. It was an attack on someone who was able to retaliate.

At some point the Bosnians, the Salvadorans, the Guatamalans, the Ruandans, the Timorese, and many other have had to learn to forget about murderous episodes which were absolutely much worse, and proportionate to population enormously worse. But these are powerless peoples.

Even the French, the Germans, the Poles, et. al. — larger, more prosperous nations — have had to learn to go on with their lives.

Where does the belief come from that this particular attack is so uniquely horrible that it justifies forgetting about a century or more of attempts to reduce the inhumanity of warfare? As far as I know, it comes from America’s historical impunity. We’ve really been very favored and don’t know how to deal with this.

The secrecy of the adversaries adds to the urgency, but now that we’re focussing on them they have become much less mysterious.

I think that the worst interpretation of what’s happening is the best. The Bush plan is to fight an endless war against a nebulous enemy, and to use the war as a pretext to ram through a lot of programs which are often unrelated to the war, together with an enormously increased police and surveillance powers and much less oversight or Constitutional limitation on the executive.

Libertarians who fail to realize this are pornographic and entirely without redeeming social value and absolutely worthless for any human purpose and should be mercifully put to sleep. Remember, we’re talking about people who are thrown into a rage by the very idea of the unconstitutional Smithsonian Institute and the unconstitutional National Academy of the Arts.

http://philosophy.thereitis.org/displayarticle248.html

What 800-lb. Gorilla?

The hapless winger hack at the Portland Oregonian, David Reinhard, has revived the Iraq - 9/11 connection. It's mostly based on a possible meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in the Czech Republic, with some new twists. Reinhard's case probably can be traced back to Edward Jay Epstein's work, which has been partly refuted by Spinsanity.

But really, who cares? We know a lot about al Qaeda. They had and still have high-level supporters (both in government and among private citizens)in Saudi Arabia and in Pakistan. One of the hijackers may even have received money (indirectly, of course!) from Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

The Saudi gorilla is right there in the room, but the wingers are still running all over the place trying to catch the Iraqi mouse. Perhaps there was some connection between Iraq and the hijackers, but if you're trying to figure out what happened on 9/11, Iraq isn't the place to look. Saudi Arabia is the place to look.

Something that might be considered is tracking cash transfers to al Qaeda from Saudi Arabia. But they're much more interested (5.2 times more interested, to be precise) in tracking money going to Cuba.

Why? Because there are a lot of Cuban votes in Florida, to begin with. But the real reason is that several members of the Bush administration have reasons to be a bit touchy about investigations of cash transfers from Saudi Arabia. Unger's book House of Bush, House of Saud can tell you more.

Or you can just go to my Bandar Bush page.

Reagan is the Greatest American President Ever, Except Maybe Van Buren

The wingers have disappointed me; the only prominent self-described conservative to describe Reagan as the greatest American President of all is Larry Kleiman, of Clinton-impeachment infamy, and he did it several years ago.

Perhaps the rest of them are reluctant to unseat the founder of the Republican party, especially since people might then start talking about the fact that a significant part of the Republican core constituency really, really hates Lincoln.

Note that Van Buren has strong support from a hyper-winger. If you read the PDF, you'll find that he also ranks Harding and Coolidge in the top five. You can't make this stuff up.

After playing a memorable clip of one of President Ronald Reagan's speeches, Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman praised the life of the greatest American president.

Historians seldom give the eighth president of the United States the recognition he deserves. Van Buren’s avoidance of foreign wars, successful fight to reduce central authority, unsurpassed ideological clarity and enduring positive influence on the Democratic Party make him arguably the president most responsible for the freedoms enjoyed by the American people.

"The SBL organization is group of US patriots dedicated to having the Statue of Liberty sent back to the French. We believe that the French Government has effectively betrayed the safety of the United States of America by refusing to accept the fact that Saddam Hussein is a danger to every freedom-loving nation and by blocking any UN resolution to oust Saddam from power.....As Liberty Island is an important tourist attraction, we believe a better, more American statue should be put in Liberty's place. Here is our suggestion: Ronald Reagan"

Simply put, Bell said he believes that Reagan is the greatest American president.

Commissioner Roger Baenziger reserved his comments for the Central Park Ceremony, where he referred to Reagan as the greatest American president.

"As far as I'm concerned, he was our greatest American president," he said.

While the site is still under development, it contains some vital and important information about the man who many consider the greatest American president.

My name is Reid Davis. I am a civilian. I just want to say that a carrier named after the greatest American President is awesome.

Also out in force Thursday were post-Reagan Reaganites, those too young to ... be 18 years old, but I know he was the greatest American president ever." (Get the whole story by registering!).

BREAKING NEWS!

BREAKING NEWS!

Ronald Reagan is still dead!

Am I Against "Conservatives"?

Thanks to Digby (Dibgy! Dibgy! Dibgy!) I found this Mike Finley piece:

"But my enemy is not conservatism (which is rooted in wariness of human nature) but corporate radicalism (rooted in laissez-faire, let-it-rip economics) - what was called fascism just before Hitler confused the term - government that works hand in glove with select large corporations, with amassed wealth. Our current government is 'fascist' in the 1920s Italian sense of the word. It is a radical form of assisting the wealthy to increase and maintain economic power. This is not a good thing. It seeks to undermine democracy and turn the nation into a 'market' and nothing more.

Billionaires, who understand the danger of wealth imbalance to society's fabric -- oppose this regime - Gates, Buffett, Allen, Soros, McCartney. 'Mere' millionaires, who are still glorying in their tax reductions, love it.

Evangelical Christians, whom I love (I voted for two of them, Clinton once and Carter twice), have sold their virtue to the radical elements of the fascist neo-conservative movement. In return for a couple of dinky maneuvers - anti-gay marriage amendment (which will fail), and anti-partial birth abortion law (which has already been declared unconstitutional) - they get in bed with the devil. I say shame on them - they are hiding behind their innocence, which is a form of abdication of responsibility.

If the devil is alive today (and I believe he is) wouldn't he tempt people every possible way? Including manipulating them to "vote for virtue" and keep the money class on top? Honesty: will one rich family forswear an abortion for their pregnant 14 year old daughter? No. The law is only for the poor and middle classes to obey. This is why I oppose it. My wife works in a poverty clinic, and it seems very wrong to her that our country wants to only allow the wealthy to get abortions."

(Digby found it through Avedon Carol.)

Bridging the Gap on Health Care

This is important:

From SEIU's Fight For The Future Blog:



Bridging the Gap on Health Care

Before you finish reading this blog post, five more people will have lost their health care coverage. Nationwide, 44 million people have no health insurance, and 80 percent of those without coverage come from working families.

Under President Bush, 4 million more Americans lost their coverage, average health care costs have gone up nearly 50 percent, and premiums have gone up more than three times faster than average wages.

For many, these statistics are appalling, but not surprising, because we have seen our friends and family struggle with too little health care. We understand their fear of losing it altogether. Or we ourselves have fought for better coverage at the bargaining table, or have had to walk the picket line for it.

But the bottom line is nobody should have to choose between paying the bills and getting prescription drugs. And nobody should have to forgo treatment because they won’t be able to put food on the table.

It’s a national problem. We need a national solution.
It’s going to take a national action to help achieve it.

[. . .] On Saturday, June 19th, tens of thousands of people -- those who have health insurance and those who don't, those who fear losing coverage and those who have too little -- will join together across the country to bridge the gap in health care.

From the Golden Gate Bridge to the Brooklyn Bridge, I’m asking you to be a part of a national action to call for quality, affordable, health care for all!

The national Day of Action is sponsored by Rock the Vote, Jobs with Justice, and SEIU’s own Americans for Health Care. Each of us has an important role to play -- Let’s build a movement and bridge the gap.

To find an event near you, or to start your own event, go to:
http://www.ImAHealthCareVoter.org/BridgingTheGap

June 19 is next Saturday.

Host a Kerry House Party!

Digby! Digby! Digby!

Continuing my occasional Digby! Dibgy! Digby! series, we have this today:

"The stench of defeat is starting to rise off of him. I watched it happen to Carter and Senior. People keep a little distance. They don't look him in the eye. The winner's gloss is replaced by a sheen of desperation. He's got trouble. You can smell it."

Mathew Gross: Going Negative

Mathew Gross: Going Negative:

"It's not just the hollowness of Bush's 'uniter, not a divider' rhetoric that we're dealing with any longer; it's the reality that only through division can he win."

Bush's toxic negativity is poisoning the public environment. It sets us against each other, and is a recipe for an unmanagable country after the election - if there even is one. Watch your backs.

Researcher's Haiku

How long do birds live?
Go look on the internet
Everything is there

Ad Sale

No BlogAds ads right now, so ads are cheap for a while. Got something you want to sell to thousands to informed, influential readers like yourself? Click on "Advertise at Seeing the Forest" over on the right.

A True Honor

I am honored, I say, HONORED to be mentioned in a piece that contains this line:

"I should add that if Capitol Hill Blue really can be trusted, Rove has much bigger problems than being called an idiot by a GOP consultant, which is really like being called smelly by a wart hog with a bowel control problem."

My name anywhere near that line ranks WAY up there in my lifetime achievements list.

Not Calming Down

Rebels Launch an Array of Attacks Across Iraq.

Once Again, Democrats Not Invited

GOP Leaders Eulogize The 40th President.

This was a "state funeral." But only Republicans were invited. And some ex-heads of state from other countries. Presidents Carter and Clinton, for example, were excluded. So ex-heads of foreign states attend a STATE FUNERAL, held in the US CAPITAL ROTUNDA, but not former Presidents of the United States, which has been the tradition until now. Yet barely a mention in the press.

Compare the Democrats' response to this nasty snub with the way Paul Wellstone's funeral was handled. The Republicans used that as a political stunt, and took back the Senate as a result. But the Democrats don't even mention what the Republicans have done here -- thereby ACCEPTING being excluded from the life of the country! ACCEPTING the Right's politicization and division of everything in American life. Well they are supposed to represent ME, and are failing me by accepting that the Republicans exclude me and the rest of my half of the country from participating in America.

They are being clear about this, it is THEIR country, not OUR country. Democrats are NOT invited to participate in America anymore.

Update - another story, "CLINTON FURIOUS AT REAGAN SNUB"

Pandagon: Killing the Middle

Ezra at Pandagon has chimed in on the discussion (continued in the post below this one) of how to deal with the Right, and the comments are many and interesting. Go read, and join in - leave a comment there and/or here.

Not Getting the Point

Matthew Yglesias responds to the Matt Stoller post I pointed to (twice) yesterday. (Which is similar to this scary piece I wrote yesterday.) He doesn't seem to get the point. I left this comment:

Your post misses his point and makes his point at the same time. You're talking about "the merits of pragmatic compromise" and wishing you could have good-faith debates on issues with these guys, while they're creeping up on you carrying a noose.

Matt left a coment too,

This attitude is what I'm pointing at. The passive voice 'are given sufficiently solid defeats...' implies a certain reticence in realizing that WE are the ones who must administer the defeats. Moreover, the question is not just of electoral defeats, but of punishment. If you accept that this is essentially a criminal gang running a fraudulent political apparatus based on increasing their amount of power and institutionalizing the placement of certain monied classes above the law, then electoral defeats don't begin to address the political problem that we must deal with. Well, they begin to, but only just.

My question is still as follows: When Kerry takes office (let's assume), what happens to the people who have run this government, and run it ignoring law and moral probity? Do they get off like the Iran-Contra people did? Do they get off like the Clinton haters did? After all, these are the same people who from Watergate onward have sought to subvert US legality in pursuit of illiberal objectives. They have committed electoral fraud, financial fraud, intelligence fraud, and torture. This is not hyperbole, but reality. So how do you deal with criminal actions at the highest levels of power?

Sending them back to their proverbial ranches in Texas doesn't involve enough handcuffs for my taste.

(Matt uses more words than me.)

Richard and Thomas - what do YOU think we should do with them after the election? (Assuming your boy Ralph doesn't siphon off enough votes and get Bush back in.)

A Beautiful Comment

Over at The Smirking Chimp they posted my "Country in Crisis" piece, and someone left this comment:

"Remember that great scene from Jackie Brown, with Jackson and de Niro in the van? That's the situation on a global scale now: the rest of the world is sitting next to America and asking, in Samuel L. Jackson's voice, "What happened to you man? Your ass used to be so beautiful!" And America, like De Niro, has no answer."

Beautiful.

Reagan Picture on Money

The wingnuts are proposing that Reagan's picture replace Hamilton's on the $10 bill.

I'm thinking it would be MUCH more appropriate to put Reagan's picture on T-Bills! After all, he printed about $4 TRILLION of them, didn't he?

Why THAT ad?

Take a look at the Right Wing Conspiracy ad (on the right there...) that Google for some reason puts at this site. Huh?

Update - Now it's Reagan ads.

One commenter points out that this could be construed as "incentivising" people to click on the ads. Don't click on the ads, because then the right-wing advertisers have to pay Seeing the Forest for the clicks.

Another Must-Read

The Choice This Year Is Between Empire and Democracy:

"When Attorney General William Wirt delivered Thomas Jefferson's eulogy on October 19, 1826 in the Hall of the U.S. House of Representatives, he noted how Jefferson believed in democracy, national humility, and abhorred empire. Jefferson well understood, Wirt noted, the danger of past empires as well as the dangerous possibility of a future president who may seize more power than the Constitution intended.
'The successful warrior, who had desolated whole empires for his own aggrandizement,' Wirt wrote about such a dangerous leader, 'the successful usurper of his country's rights and liberties, may have their hours of swelling pride, in which they may look back with a barbarous joy upon the triumph of their talents, and feast upon the adulation of the sycophants that surround them.'
In the next paragraph, however, Wirt cited Jefferson's certain knowledge that those who seek empire will not only see their nation's downfall, but their own internal spiritual destruction as well. '...but, night and silence come; and conscience takes her turn. The bloody field rises upon the startled imagination. The shades of the slaughtered innocent stalk in terrific procession before the couch. The agonizing cry of countless widows and orphans invades the ear. The bloody dagger of the assassin plays, in airy terror, before the vision.'
Empire, Jefferson believed, always ended in disaster, as the nations oppressed by empire invariably rebel. As Wirt summarized Jefferson's sentiments: 'Violated liberty lifts her avenging lance, and a down-trodden nation rises before them, in all the majesty of its wrath.'
Which brings us to today. The battle of the election of 2004 - from local races to the presidency - is fundamentally a battle of visions: Empire versus Democracy. "

There's more. Go read.

skippy on ashcroft

skippy, on ashcroft's contempt of congress today, in you'll just have to trust us, we hate torture.

Worse and Worse - Country in Crisis

In Salon.com | The Reagan legacy, Rick Perlstein writes:

"It is a quirk of American culture that each generation of nonconservatives sees the right-wingers of its own generation as the scary ones, then chooses to remember the right-wingers of the last generation as sort of cuddly. In 1964, observers horrified by Barry Goldwater pined for the sensible Robert Taft, the conservative leader of the 1950s. When Reagan was president, liberals spoke fondly of sweet old Goldwater."

I think Republican administrations actually have been worse each time, moving farther and farther to the right as well as into greater illegalities. I think this reflects the extent to which their party has been increasingly taken over by this far-right, post-Bircher, Scaife-funded, fanatical cult-like corporate/Christian/libertarian "movement conservatism."

Nixon had to resign for things that Reagan picked up and did from day 1 without apology. Reagan, of course, instructed underlings to violate the law and lie to Congress about it. Bush I used parts of the government to obstruct the Iran/Contra investigations, then pardoned several criminals who had worked for him. And Iran/Contra -- and avoiding the mistakes that led to exposure -- was the model for the current Bush's first day in office - with this Bush this proudly hiring convicted (but pardoned by Dad) felons!

Elected Democrats and moderate Republicans keep letting far-Right conspirators off the hook, and failing to expose the true nature of their activities to the public. Perhaps this is because they honestly did not and do not recognize them for what they are. Some of Nixon's cronies went to jail -- none of Reagan/Bush I's. Worse, the Carter and Clinton administrations did not ask for a full accounting of the transgressions -- political and financial -- of the prior administrations. In a way, this signaled to the public to expect such activities as part of "business as usual." By allowing the Right to publicly get away with an "everybody does it" excuse, the legitimacy of our democratic form of government was eroded.

I believe that had Clinton recognized that the Republican Party has truly changed into a dangerous revolutionary movement intent on overthrowing our form of government, and taken action, purged the government of far-right ideologues and begun an investigation into his predecessor's political crimes as well as how money was siphoned out of the Treasury under Reagan and Bush, he would not have gone through the impeachment, and we would not be facing the national and international disaster we face now.

I think it is hard now to avoid seeing the true nature of the group that has taken over the Republican Party. The record is certainly clear, their intentions are clear, their activities are clear, and it's time to take a stand. After seizing control of the country by the narrowest of margins in 2000 the Republicans have illegally excluded Democrats and the public from almost all aspects of management of the government. They have positioned ideological agents throughout the departments, agencies and the courts. In one of their first acts in power they allowed companies like Enron to "harvest" the people of California and Oregon, and appointed FERC members would not do their job to stop this. Their tax cuts, that went to only a few, have bankrupted the country and spent our Social Security retirement money. They have handed out our country's natural resources, and given the right to pollute our air and water for profit to a few rich cronies. They have launched aggressive war in an imperialistic scheme to bring the Middle East's oil supplies under their control.

And they increasingly poison the public environment with lies. They are intentionally dividing the country right down the middle. Matt Stoller writes about what they are telling the public in their presidential campaign,

"In other words, even if a Democrat wins an election, it's just a prelude till his negatives can be driven up and a political castration opportunity appears.

That this is happening without much comment reveals cracks in the foundation of the American political system. It's breaking down.

Legitimacy is the key to governance. If an authoritarian government isn't seen as legitimate, it must act incredibly harshly to sustain its rule, or it will fall. The legitimacy of a liberal democracy goes further than this; it relies on an acknowledgement that the opposition has a right to exist, and even, to oppose. When this assumption breaks down, when the loyal opposition finds itself considered treasonous, a slew of terrifying events is set in motion, and ultimately, liberal democracy fights back, or liberal democracy falls. We are in the midst of seeing this struggle play out."

In The War at Home, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton write,

The Republican party's hard right - "movement conservatives," as they like to call themselves - hold views and long-term objectives that are considerably to the right of mainstream public opinion, but they had managed to maneuver themselves into a position of control over nearly every branch of the American government. As we will explore, politics for them is not a debate. It is, quite literally, a "war by other means."

During the 2000 presidential and congressional elections, every Republican member of the U.S. Congress received a free pamphlet, compliments of Congressman Tom DeLay, the party's majority whip. Written by conservative activist David Horowitz, the pamphlet was called The Art of Political War: How Republicans Can Fight to Win. It came with an endorsement on the cover by Karl Rove, the senior advisor to then-candidate George W. Bush. According to Rove, The Art of Political War was "a perfect pocket guide to winning on the political battlefield from an experienced warrior." In addition to DeLay's gift to members of Congress, the Heritage Foundation, one of the leading conservative think tanks in Washington, found Horowitz's advice so impressive that it sent another 2,300 copies to conservative activists around the country.

True to its title, The Art of Political War argues that "Politics is war conducted by other means. In political warfare you do not fight just to prevail in an argument, but to destroy the enemy's fighting ability. ... In political wars, the aggressor usually prevails." Moreover, "Politics is a war of position. In war there are two sides: friends and enemies. Your task is to define yourself as the friend of as large a constituency as possible compatible with your principles, while defining your opponent as the enemy whenever you can. The act of defining combatants is analogous to the military concept of choosing the terrain of battle. Choose the terrain that makes the fight as easy for you as possible."

We have to realize that we are dealing with an organized revolutionary conspiracy to seize power, enrich the few, and subject us to an ideological/theocratic/imperialist dictatorship. They often describe THEMSELVES as being modeled on the old Communist Party and their methods for infiltrating and seizing power.

"You cannot cripple an opponent by outwitting him in a political debate," he explains in The Art of Political War. "You can do it only by following Lenin's injunction: 'In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.'"

This is an emergency and we must recognize it as such. These people will go to all costs to succeed, including fomenting civil war.

If Kerry does win this election AND take office, he has his work cut out for him -- there are some things to take care of right away -- if he expects to also govern the country. We simply MUST expose widely the Right's anti-democracy agenda. Crimes have been committed and this is not an occasion for a healing amnesty. We have to stop them once and for all. We need a complete financial accounting for the entire four years of Bush. Every single recipient of rigged no-bid contracts, tax break in exchange for "contributions", or any other corrupt activities should be prosecuted and put in jail to ensure that this does not happen should another right-wing administration take office.

Further, we need to implement SYSTEMIC changes to prevent anything like the "conservative movement" from happening again. This crisis has exposed the vulnerability of our system.

Let's look at it this way for a minute. Suppose that the intentions of the Bush people are entirely on the up-and-up. But looking at the way they have eroded accountability, oversight, and constitutional protections, suppose some OTHER people, with less-than-honorable intentions, examine these openings and see this as an opportunity to step in and seize power. The mechanisms for this are all in place, including the mechanisms to squash opposition and dissent. The Patriot Act, for example, allows the government to spy on anyone the President designates as an "enemy." And new technologies enable comprehensive tracking of a person's every action. We already have a precedent of Congress looking the other way and avoiding their oversight responsibilities no matter how extreme the transgression. We already have the precedent of the Justice Department covering up instead of investigating crimes. We already have the precedent of the Courts overruling law in favor of ideology.

Stauber and Rampton again,

The likelihood that those powers will be abused has increased, moreover, as the conservative movement accuses its ideological adversaries of "treason," "terrorism" and "un-Americanism," threatening long-standing traditions of tolerance and diversity.

It is time for those who think this is the OLD Republican Party to take their head out of the sand and see that things have changed. Turn on the radio and listen to Limbaugh or Hannity for ten minutes -- yes they ARE the mainstream of the Republican Party now -- and you'll KNOW that the country is crisis.

Purpose of Iran/Contra

I'm tired of hearing the Right apply noble (to them) intentions to the Iran/Contra perpetators. The COVER STORY was that they used the money to supply the Contras. Whatever else it was, this was a typical corrupt right-wing scheme to grab the money and run.

Lawrence Walsh was the independent investigator for the Iran/Contra case. His final report is available here. It is well worth browsing.

On Ollie North:

North stood trial beginning in February 1989 on 12 counts. On May 4, 1989, he was found guilty of three counts, including aiding and abetting obstruction of Congress, shredding and altering official documents, and accepting an illegal gratuity from Secord.

[. . .]

Count Ten: Receipt of an illegal gratuity, charging North with accepting a home-security system paid for by Secord, in exchange for official acts performed by North.

Count Eleven: Conversion of traveler's checks, charging that North from April 1985 to July 1986 personally used $4,300 in traveler's checks from approximately $90,000 in checks given to him by Calero for hostage-release and contra-related expenses.

Remember, these were the things they could PROVE. But their motivation for bringing financial enrichment charges was the pattern they saw of diversions of cash for private use. Of $16 million, only $3.8 million made it to the Contras. And this does not count another $10 million that the Sultan of Brunei wired to North's operation, but was diverted to another Swiss account. The cover story for that was that someone transposed two numbers on the wire transfer and the money "disappeared."

General Richard Secord was Ollie North's partner-in-crime. From Walsh's report:

One of Secord's central purposes in establishing and carrying out the operations of the Enterprise was the accumulation of untaxed wealth in secret overseas accounts. Testimony and records obtained from the Enterprise's Swiss financial manager, Willard Zucker, show that Secord personally received at least $2 million from his participation in the Enterprise during 1985 and 1986, that he set up secret accounts to conceal his untaxed income, and that he later lied and encouraged others to lie to keep it concealed.

Secord was indicted in March 1988 for conspiring with North, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter and Hakim to defraud the U.S. Government of money and services, and for theft of Government property. After the trials were severed and the main conspiracy counts dropped due to problems with classified information, the Grand Jury in April 1989 charged Secord with nine additional felonies as a result of his false testimony before Congress in 1987.

Secord pleaded guilty on November 8, 1989, to the felony charge of lying to Congress about illegal gratuities he provided to North.1 Secord entered his plea five days before he was to be tried on 12 felony charges. As part of his plea, Secord promised to cooperate in the pending trials and ongoing investigation of Independent Counsel.

I remember Secord testifying that he bought a Ferrari...

An Update

I forgot to mention 100,000 killed in Guatemala in the post "Gaddafi Regrets Reagan Died Without Facing Trial".

Talk vs Action

Tired of hearing right-wing lies about how Clinton didn't do anything to stop terrorism?

Take a look at this:

"However, Clarke says Clinton chose not to attack Iran but ordered an 'intelligence operation' that seemed to have worked.
'Following the intelligence operation, and perhaps because of it and the serious U.S. threats, among other reasons, Iran ceased terrorism against the U.S.,' Clarke wrote. 'War with Iran was averted.'"

So Clinton actually DID something, AND KEPT QUIET ABOUT IT, even now, because it was a classified intelligence operation. He has chosen the good of the country over the good of his political party.

Compare that to the current administration's treatment of classified intelligence, AND their success against terrorism. Remember, 9/11 occurred ON HIS WATCH.

What He Says

What he says here.

More coming. I've been thinking about this for some time, and working on a piece for weeks. Great minds think alike. Or maybe it's that the obvious becomes obvious.

Even if Kerry wins, we have a huge fight on our hands, and we'd better all realize it!

Watch your backs.

666

A comment to a post below reminded me of one of my favorite Reagan facts.

RONALD WILSON REAGAN

Number of letters: 6 6 6

Anagram - INSANE ANGLO WARLORD

And, lest we forget, after he left office a group of rich supporters BOUGHT HIM A RESIDENCE, and it was at 666 St. Cloud Road. Nancy had the address changed to 668.

Speaking of rich supporters, Reagan had what was called a "kitchen cabinet." Not long after his election one of the members of this group was found ... orgy scene ... model killed with baseball bat ... oh, just read about it here.

Reagan

Headlines over at Drudge:

REAGAN HATERS UNITE: PALAST: 'KILLER, COWARD, CON-MAN GOOD RIDDANCE, GIPPER ... MORE PROOF ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG'...

HITCHENS: 'A cruel and stupid lizard'...

RALL: 'I'm sure he's turning crispy brown right about now'...

I report, you decide. (Maybe Hitchens isn't as bad as all that after all...)

Randi Rhodes just said, "He lived long enough to not be our worst president ever."

I remember that Reagan's first week in office involved taking down the solar panels that President Carter had installed on the White House roof, and pardoning the FBI agents who had been convicted of illegal activities involving spying on, intimidating and breaking into the houses of Nixon's political opponents.

Update - More memories -- When Reagan was inaugurated President the TV showed a split screen, with the hostages that the Iranian government was holding being released about ten minutes after he was sworn in -- just about the right amount of time for someone now working officially for the President of the United States to sign something with the full authority of the U.S. Government. And we started shipping weapons to Iran about two weeks later.

Wingnut Letter

Got this in the e-mail today:

You are a nut and belong in a nuthouse.... obviously you don't know anything about business or economics. Look at the historical tax rates and compare it to recessions and depressions here in the US. By overtaxing the people, it only creates less investment. God where did you go to school and how can someone be this dumb in a land like America. If I as a businessman have more money not taxable, DUH, I spend it on investments which hire more people who get paychecks and guess what idiot..... they then pay more taxes. Take you anti liberal, anti American left wing communist thought to another country. We have had enough of you and the garbage you throw out. Academically if you cannot understand maybe the joke below will give you some foresight.

Sometimes Politicians can exclaim; "It's just a tax cut for the rich!", and it is just accepted to be fact. But what does that really mean? Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, we hope the following will help.

Tax Cuts - A Simple Lesson In Economics

This is how the cookie crumbles. Please read it carefully.

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh $7.
The eighth $12.
The ninth $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share'?

The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being 'PAID' to eat their meal.

So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for
even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they
just may not show up at the table anymore. There are lots of good restaurants in Europe and the Caribbean.

OK, violating the first rule of Seeing the Forest, I'm going to go through the trees.

"obviously you don't know anything about business" He's right. Oh, wait, I did run a corporation for over ten years, and was recently VP Marketing and Sales for a tech company. But he is right, except for that.

"Look at the historical tax rates and compare it to recessions and depressions here in the US." Well, I have, and, obviously, he hasn't, because he would discover that higher tax rates at the top coincides with periods of high GNP growth. Probably that is because we have a consumer economy, and more money in the hands of consumers means higher growth. And putting more of the tax burden on corporations and the rich means more money in the hands of average people. Remember, in 1993 Clinton RAISED taxes on the rich while cutting them on the low end. What followed was the greatest economic expansion in our history. And Bush CUT taxes on the rich while raising them on everyone else by cutting services, and what followed has been a long period of zero or slow job growth and massive concentration of wealth to the top few percent.

If I as a businessman have more money not taxable, DUH, I spend it on investments which hire more people who get paychecks and guess what idiot..... they then pay more taxes. Actually these businessMEN ship the money to bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, lay off their workers and hire in lawless countries where they only have to pay a dime a day. Smart businessWOMEN invest when there is DEMAND, and do so regardless of the taxes. And, even if they DON'T have a ton of cash they GO GET IT when there is demand. And, by the way, taxes are not a cost. Costs are deducted.

As for his "joke" I have a math degree, and clearly he doesn't. But aside from that, his line "Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they
just may not show up at the table anymore" implies that the rich will just leave the country after taking what they can get from it. Now THAT'S a patriotic joke.

But let's just sum it up in simple terms. In the 20's we cut taxes on the rich and corproations, wealth became concentrated and we had the depression. Then we raised taxes on the rich and came out of the depression. Clinton raised taxes on the rich and we had the greatest economic and job expansion in our history. Bush cut taxes on the rich, no jobs and massive debt.

Update - I received the following after informing the writer that I had responded on the blog

:"I believe Cuba and China are still communist... you may want to move.."

Oh, I'll Vote for Bush, Then

Reagan died, so I guess I'll vote for Bush instead, then.

(In case you don't get it, that is the official Bush/CHeney 04 website you're looking at. Their website might only look like this for a few days...)

Gaddafi Regrets Reagan Died Without Facing Trial

I report, you decide.

Yahoo! News - Gaddafi Regrets Reagan Died Without Facing Trial:

"Muammar Gaddafi said Sunday he regretted that former U.S. President Ronald Reagan had died without ever being tried for 1986 air strikes that killed dozens of people, including the Libyan leader's adopted daughter."

Approx. 70,000 Nicaraguan civilians and an untold number of Central American death squad victims expressed their agreement.

Update - And 100,000 killed in Guatemala.

Bush losing it, bigtime...

[Read this, NOW. This is NOT fiction - this is a real reporter with deep ties to those on Capitol Hill. After you're done, forward it on to all your friends who are still considering whether to vote for Bush. Scary does not begin to describe the situation when this man holds the keys to the nuclear football. Oh, my, God. -Thomas]


Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 4, 2004, 06:15

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

[... continued at link above ...]

--Thomas Leavitt

This is one of my favorite quotes...

"The Greens are the only constituency in America whom the Democrats believe they can convince by insult." --Sam Smith, in Greening the Golden Triangle (courtesy of CounterPunch)

Few things more true have ever been said.

For the curious, Sam Smith is the editor of the Progressive Review. This article is mandatory reading for Democrats seriously interested in understanding where the hell Greens are coming from.

If you're wondering what prompted me to post this little gem, read on...

In response to my posting re: pro-Kerry or anti-Bush, I received an email that started off thusly: "Longing for Nader or Kucinich is infantile."

Not quite what I'd expect from someone attempting to seriously persuade me to their point of view. Seriously folks, and here I address my friends in the Democratic Party: Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. You're spent four years roundly berating every Green in sight, and what has it gotten you? Not much, so far as I can see... Nader still pulls 7% in the polls, and any Greens or Nader supporters (the two are not synonymous, by the way) that the tactic would've been effective with have long since been persuaded. It's time for a different strategy folks.

... here's another great quote:

"...the Democrats have spent the last decade in a masochistic effort to convince people that they were really just nicer Republicans, expanding the prison population and undermining social democracy to prove it. They should not be surprised if those whom they convinced included many Greens."

Now, clearly, a lot of you (judging by the tenor of the comments left here) are highly dissatisfied with this strategy, even if you haven't come to the conclusion that the solution is to abandon it for the Green Party.

The responses to my pro-Kerry or anti-Bush posting (21 comments and counting - I obviously hit a button) back me up on this: y'all are a lot more anti-Bush than you are pro-Kerry.

Unfortunately, anti-Bushism is hardly a sustainable ideology.

Which brings me to the primary point of this posting: how do we move beyond ABBA, and beyond Kerry's politics of triangulation, to facilitate the creation of a vision for a successful and sustainable progressive politics that has a snowball's chance in hell of making an impact on the American political system?

Much as I admire and respect Nader and Kucinich, clearly, they haven't come up with the right formula. It seemed for a moment like Dean had a handle on this (despite my reservations about his politics, I was fascinated enough by the Dean phenomenon to devote a category exclusively to him on my blog), but obviously something went wrong. Not to mention that, after the fact, it seems that the major validation of his approach, the ability to very quickly raise large sums of money over the Internet via appeals to the grassroots, wasn't that hard for Kerry to emulate once he became the clear front-runner.

I read a very thoughtful post-Iowa analysis by a no longer starry eyed Dean volunteer ("Losing My Religion", by Katy Bulter, in Salon) that explores the subject of why Dean failed, and which may offer some lessons for our movement as well. Kerry's victory in Iowa was not an accident, as this article makes clear... Dean appears to have failed to connect, in a very fatal way, with a substantial number of the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. The next candidate to come along can't afford to make that same mistake.

NOTE: I'm a Green (and have always been one, ever since I first registered to vote in 1990), so that tells you a little bit about what *I* think the solution is (it's called a "forklift upgrade" by us folks in the tech industry), but I'm curious to hear what YOU have to say on the subject. :)

Again: the question for discussion is, how do we go beyond ABBA to create a sustainable vision for a succesful more or less left of center politics in this country?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

--Thomas Leavitt

The Greatest American President, Part II

OK, it turns out that there were already people calling Ronnie the greatest American President of all. Links below.

Lots of people called him the Greatest American President Since Lincoln, or the Greatest American President of the Twentieth Century. Nobody actually came out and said that Lincoln sucked, but then I didn't dig very deep either. The most famous person so far to call Reagan the greatest President of all was Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, who is mostly famous for his Clinton-impeachment activities. One admirer proposed replacing the evil French Statue of Liberty with a statue of Ronald Reagan: here's the Google cache.

One contrarian, however, calls Martin Van Buren the greatest of American Presidents.


Klayman: http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2000/430.shtml

Gallup poll: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2001/03/reagan.html

Family values: http://www.familyfirst.com/archives/003148.html

Military: http://www.military.com/HomePage/UnitCreatedPage/0,11003,200190,00.html

Tennessee: http://www.knoxcounty.org/current/mrrmabe.html

Free term paper: http://www.freefortermpapers.com/show_essay/32844.html

The Greatest American President of Them All?

No, I don't think so either, but I am willing to bet that someone will say so.

Another in the E-mail

Another one just in:

President Bush gets out of his helicopter in front of the White House carrying a baby pig under each arm.

The Marine guard snaps to attention, salutes, and says: "Nice pigs, sir."

Bush replies: "These are not pigs, these are Texan Razorback Hogs. I got one for Vice-President Cheney, and I got one for Defence Secretary Rumsfeld."

The Marine again snaps to attention, salutes, and says, "Nice trade, sir."

Fools rush in: What the hell is going on? (Part II)

I'm a bit astonished about the lack of speculation about what's going on in Iraq, the CIA, the State Department, the Bush Administration, etc. Probably it's a sign that nobody really knows, and it's so messy that no one is willing to take a chance. So fools rush in, etc.

What are the relationships between Chalabi's disgrace, Allawi's nomination as Prime Minister, and Tenet's resignation? The only people who seem to be talking are Chalabi's neocon defenders, who blame the liberals, but fail to mention that the raids on Chalabi seemingly had President Bush's support.

The fact that Chalabi's "security chief" Aras Karim Habib has apparently taken refuge in Iran makes Chalabi's guilt seem pretty probable. While the U.S. always knew that Chalabi was in contact with Iran, his willingness to compromise American security the way he did apparently went beyond what we were willing to accept. There were already good reasons not to want Chalabi is the Iraqi head of state, and raiding his office and accusing him of spying had the added advantage of putting the neocons on the spot. So my theory is that the anti-Chalabi activity comes from the CIA, who got Bremer's and possibly Bush's support (though it might also be possible that Bremer simply presented Bush with a fait accompli.)

Meanwhile Brahimi of the UN, seemingly with US approval (probably by Powell's State Department), had selected Adnan Pachachi, a moderate, secular Sunni, as the first Prime Minister of the new Iraq. The IGC, however, which was not really supposed to play a big role in the process (a process which had been devised specifically for the purpose of freezing the IGC out) refused to accept Pachachi (after smearing him as an American tool) and instead nominated one of their own members, Iyad Allawi.

Allawi has a rather unsavory reputation as a former Ba'athist who worked with Western intelligence services while in exile from Iraq. He is a political rival of Chalabi, but also his nephew, and it's most reasonable to guess that their clan hedged their bets by placing members in more than one faction. Chalabi himself is now cultivating the Shia leader Sistani and has declared his support for Allawi. Both Chalabi and Allawi are making anti-American nationalist noises from time to time, though Allawi has asked the American troops to stay to protect him (though at least he didn't call them "blond slaves" the way the Saudis do). One issue between Chalabi and Allawi is that Allawi opposed Chalabi's de-Ba'athification campaign, and Ba'ath people are increasingly being rehabilitated and taken into government service.

My interpetation here is that Chalabi was ultimately behind the IGC's initiative, and that the CIA and State Department endorsed it, willingly or not, at the cost of alienating the U.N. one more time and also of making the State Department look like idiots. (And Bush too, since he's been talking about the U.N.'s role for over a month). So the CIA is in the driver's seat so far, and we can look forward to a tough, old-fashioned Iraqi police state which the Chalabis will loot as fast as possible (given the precariousness of their mandate). "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.'

So why did Tenet quit? Well, the rest of the CIA thought he was too close to Bush and didn't fight hard enough against the neocon deceptions, so they wanted him out. And the CIA is going to be heavily-criticized in the 9/11 report, and he can be the fall guy for that. And the neocons all hate him too, for completely different reasons. So even though the CIA is winning, Tenet isn't.

The Bush goal, seemingly, is to neutralize the Iraq situation in any way whatever, regardless of who it is that ends up holding nominal Iraqi sovereignty. An election looms, and Bush will accuse the naysayers of treason, etc.

And meanwhile, the Plame affair grinds on. What's with that?



My previous post.

Chalabi is probably the smartest guy in the game

William Beeman: "The choice of Iyad Allawi as prime minister designate of Iraq further cements Ahmad Chalabi's hold on power -- virtually guaranteeing that he and his family will be the future rulers of Iraq."
(Subscription)

[Allawi] ran the IGC's security committee, which is responsible for training the new Iraqi police, army and intelligence services. However, an overall impression within informed circles in Iraq is that his excessive focus on security will push him in the direction of building strong security at the expense of even stymieing efforts to build democracy.

Adnan Pachachi, the man who turned down the Iraqi presidency earlier this week, accused rivals on the now defunct Governing Council of indulging in "dirty politics at its worst" in organising a smear campaign against him.

Put another way, the demand to bring U.S. troops home will be presented by the president - at the Security Council and in the campaign - as aid and comfort to the terrorist enemies of Iraq and America.

“Short-term expediency to get George Bush re-elected” is the verdict on the new transitional Iraqi administration from leading Iraqi expert Toby Dodge.

Chalabi cultivates Sistani

Sistani's support for the new government is conditional

Vincent Cannistero on Aras Karim Habib

Poll: Are you FOR Kerry, or AGAINST Bush?

O.K. folks, question time:

How many of you are FOR Kerry, more than you are AGAINST Bush? What's your sense on how the people around you feel? Do you know any Kerry partisans? What's the ratio of Kerry enthusiasts to Bush bashers in your circle?

Bush Conspiring With Foreign Government to Influence Election

Go read Whiskey Bar: Oil's Well That Ends Well.

This is a blatant as can be, and as illegal as can be. But there is no law, because The Party controls the Justice Dept. and the Congress and the media and everyone who matter will look the other way. Just like always.

ENRON TAPES - California energy markets: deliberately designed "... to provide wealth for Enron and others of its ilk."

I don't want to flood Dave's blog, but I have to say this:

Even more astonishing to me than the sheer calumny of Enron's trading staff, was the sheer absurdity of the way the California energy market was structured... I'm not an expert here, by any means, but it is my understanding that California choose to adopt a "bi-lateral" trading system - one in which sellers and producers contracted directly with each other to buy and sell power, and no public "market clearing price" existed in most cases... a structure that Dr. Carl Pechman contends, in his testimony of February 27th, 2004 (page 59 and onward) was deliberately fostered by Enron, with the goal of ultimately being able to profit from it due to what they believed were superior methods of garnering information about the true market price of energy (many of them based on "inside information" gained from various deals they had put together to manage other companies energy trading and sales). This is opposed to a "stock market" like model (POOLCO is the term, see pages 62-65 of Dr. Pechman's testimony), in which there are publicly disclosed bids and offers, which all eventually resolve to a single market price.

Here's a direct quote from Dr. Pechman's testimony:

"...many of the traders were benefiting from a market that they themselves had helped design. The market had been designed to be very inefficient to allow gaming, and to provide wealth for Enron and others of its ilk."

The following paragraphs of his testimony describe, in detail, exactly what Enron did to ensure that inefficient markets were created - ones with plenty of opportunities to "steal" ... oops, let me rephrase that, "arbitrage" millions of dollars a day, and the reasons why the inefficiencies in question were artificial in nature. If you care about understanding what happened to California, as I said in a previous posting, you've GOT to read Dr. Pechman's testimony (warning: 15 megabyte PDF). It is only 98 pages, and worth every minute spent downloading and reading it.

What this translated into, in practice, was an utterly insane system in which you had traders sitting around randomly calling each other to say, "Hey, you got any energy? No? Have you heard that anyone else is selling?" "Yeah, I hear that Bob over in Podunk's been selling for the past few hours." Then the energy trader calls Bob at Podunk Energy, Inc. and Bob says, "Nope, sold it all a few minutes ago... but I hear that Mary over at Pipsqueak's got some. Don't think it'll come cheap though." Then the energy trader calls Mary at Pipsqueak, and they cut a deal - often at a price that varied significantly from the one the trader cut just a few minutes before with someone else. Sometimes, Enron's traders would arrange to buy energy from one company, and then, before closing the deal, put them on hold, call up another company, and sell it at a premium, before going back and closing the first deal. Pretty cool if you're running a swap meet, not very cool if you're a ratepayer at either end of that deal.

Meanwhile, Joe Blow a couple of desks over is spending half his day trying to track down a 2 megawatt discrepancy in a power schedule. And Anna Podana is trying to figure out why her notes say Enron sold 25 megawatts to Bigassenergyco, but Bigassenergyco says they bought 30. When she calls them up, the trader over there says, "Oh yeah, sorry about that, I guess I wrote it down wrong." Doh!

I'm serious. This is the kind of craziness I listened to every day. It is a bleedin' miracle that the system worked as well as it did! The system was completely dependent on very labor intensive and error-prone manual accounting / papershuffling (whole categories of people existing to do nothing more than call each other up all day and arrange accounting "swaps" that canceled out debts the companies owed each other - at least this was my understanding of what they were doing) and subject to simple human error at every step of the way (something that appears to have happened regularly). As someone who built a multi-million dollar business on automating stupid, repetitive, human-error prone processes, what I heard just blew my mind. The politicians who allowed this system to be created oughta be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, and the Enron executives who promoted it ought to be sentenced to breaking rocks on a chain gang for the next fifty years! Even then, that hardly makes up for seeing my energy bill go from $120/mo. to $600/mo. and counting before I was finally forced to sell my house (for that and other reasons).

--Thomas Leavitt

ENRON TAPES - The Snohomish vs. Enron case itself...

The Seattle Times has one of the best "in-depth" articles covering the legal/regulatory battle that produced the tapes themselves.

At the most simplistic level, the dispute comes down to this: Did Enron's gaming practices and other activities constitute a violation of the tariffs (federal regulations) that allowed them to charge a "free market" price for energy? Did, as Dr. Carl Pechman contends in his testimony on February 27th, 2004 (warning: 15 megabyte PDF), these practices not only affect short term prices, but long term prices (driving them up) - and thus require that the price Snohomish contracted to pay Enron be recalculated on a "fair market" basis... thus, presumably, wiping out the $122 million dollar premium Enron claims it is entitled to as a result of the contract being canceled (its anticipated profit over the life of the contract)?

I can't quote specifics that I don't know are in the public record yet, but it is absolutely clear to me, having heard numerous discussions between Enron and its customers, that the latter were extremely alarmed by the unprecedented level of volatility and potential exposure that the short-term fluctuations in pricing induced by Enron's gaming practices created, and that their behavior changed dramatically as a result - specifically, many of them started considering signing contracts for much longer durations than they had ever considered before (as Snohomish did), and many of them started looking seriously at energy "products" offered by Enron and others that purported to allow them to "hedge" their risk against future volatility of this type. The volatility created a "market" for Enron and others that simply had not existed up to that point - and Enron's employees were not at all hesitant to serve that market or encourage consideration of such "products" - especially considering that while such contracts were usually priced at a discount to the then current price of energy, said prices were also at significant premiums to long term historical prices for energy.

In other words, California ratepayers and taxpayers shouldn't be left holding the bag for the high-priced contracts that Gray Davis was strong-armed into signing at the height of the energy crisis, because said prices were the product of artificial manipulations by Enron's traders (and others... this isn't just about Enron, a hell of a lot of other folks were playing the same games).

Side note: Dr. Pechman's testimony, and the accompanying exhibits, consists of a 15 megabyte PDF file of graphic images of text - but, it is well worth reading, even absent the specifics the case, it is a fascinating overview of how the American power system works.

--Thomas Leavitt

ENRON TAPES -- Quote from Dr. Carl Pechman's testimony (expert witness)

"The evidence I now present has never [my emphasis] before been analyzed by the Commission or FERC Trial Staff's witnesses. The recordings demonstrate an extremely callous abuse of consumers, large pattern of misconduct, and reckless disregard of government authority by Enron..." (my emphasis again)

... and he's right. This is good stuff - straight from the horse's mouth: the Enron traders and managers themselves. Raw evidence of the most valuable and indesputable sort.

Another question I have to ask... why was it left to a small public utility district in the state of Washington to expose this material to the light of day? Where was the State of California? Where was the Justice Department (who served the original warrants for these tapes along with the FBI)?

The Snohomish P.U.D. has $120 million+ at stake in this battle, a large sum to their ratepayers, but pennies in comparison to California's exposure -- why didn't the state ask the same question that Snohomish did - "where are the tapes"?

From the supplemental testimony asking leave to file these documents, it also appears that there was substantial resistance to their release from the Department of Justice, which claimed a desire to preserve the ability to use these materials in criminal prosecutions - a reasonable position... until you consider that these tapes sat in a warehouse At Aspen Systems Corporation for an extended period (at least a year or two), inaccessible to anyone and presumably likely to stay that way indefinitely. Why?

Again, even in an era of limited budgets, one has to ask why these tapes didn't surface earlier? Why was the DOJ dependent on a tiny little public utility to put up the cash to get these tapes into a useable format? What else is out there?!?

--Thomas Leavitt

ENRON TAPES -- Footnote... FERC Trial Staff "aligned with Enron"?

Footnote 35 of Snohomish's motion to file supplemental testimony (i.e., the transcripts of The Enron Tapes):

"The audio recordings also refute positions taken by FERC Trial Staff that are, alarmingly, aligned with Enron."

The also here is a reference to the fact that the tapes emphatically refute contentions by Enron's "expert witness" that Enron "engaged in little to no gaming practices, caused little to no economic harm, and earned little to no unjust profits".

The footnote above follows that paragraph.

Not knowing the particulars of the case, I can't comment on what positions Snohomish's counsel is referring to - but it is worth asking the question: "Why would FERC's lawyers be on Enron's side?"

--Thomas Leavitt

The Unvarnished Right

If you want an unvarnished look at the right wing's true agenda, take a look at the platform of the U.S. Constitution Party. These people are seriously scary... and then take a look at the Texas Republican Party's platform and ask yourself whether the difference is one of kind or degree (I vote for the latter). That Constitution Party platform is what the Texas Republicans WISH they could write. For the short of time among you, Theocracy Watch has a good summary of the most extreme elements. CalPundit also has a good analysis of the year 2000 version.

--Thomas Leavitt

ENRON TAPES - Full set of The Enron Tapes now available from FERC!

Feast your ears on this (but make sure your children's are protected):

Here's the filing:
Public Utility District 1 of Snohomish County, WA fowards Exhibit SNO-245, a CD containing .wav audio files that correspond to transcripts etc re Enron Power Marke ting Inc under EL03-180 et al.

And this should take you directly to the full list of audio files (all 82 of them, I think).

As I mentioned before, complete transcripts of all the posted audio files are available (10 megabyte PDF of graphic images, non-searchable). Anyone out there have a sheet fed scanner with OCR software that could convert these back to text format (they're a good candidate, the font and files are very clean)... I'd love to count how many times "fuck" can be heard in these files. :)

You can match up the posted sound files with the posted transcripts, by looking at Exhibit SNO-162 (starts on page 26 of the automatically generated PDF from FERC).

The ears of a lot of former Enron employees must be burning right now. :) Which may be why the #2 person in Enron's Investor Relations department pleaded out two days after the transcripts went public.

To look at even more files, do a search here and enter "EL03-180*" in the "docket" field, along with a suitably broad date range... we were told that there was ANOTHER team of listeners out there, composed of lawyers(?) who had access to the same set of raw materials that my group did. Presumeably, at some point, whatever they've found will be made public, and posted to the FERC web site.

--Thomas Leavitt

The Stuff I Come Across

I spend a good part of each day researching the Right on the web. Sometimes its for articles, sometimes for reports, sometimes for pieces I post here. I'm currently doing research (not on the Right, for once) for a union project. Anyway, all of this has me reading a lot of stuff written by right-wingnuts and their organizations. I'm immersed in it, and I "have my arms around" a certain amount of it... But the extent of it, and the intensity of it ... even I am continually shocked, depressed, disillusioned, discouraged, stunned, horrified and terrified by what's going on out there.

But I digress. ;-) I want to share with you something I came across this morning. I'm sharing it because I think it helps explain the mindset of anti-Semitism. This is NOT (I think) reflective of the mainstream Christian Right's thinking, it's by (apparently) an actual fringe wingnut (I hope) - as contrasted with the mainstream Right wingnuts that many who don't know better THINK are the fringe. If you start reading this, it's sort of hilarious and saddening at the same time. From the "Caucasian Pride Report" here is A Report To The People:

"Between the Christians whose beliefs and faith are in God and the Son of God; and the Jews who are devotees and followers of Satan there is nothing capable of existing together. Those who espouse the Judeo-Christian lies betray God and Jesus Christ, the Son of God. They must remain absolutely separate.

As I wrote more than 20 years ago in my book, `There's a Fish in the Courthouse,' quote, "Ages and ages ago the world's wickedness began. Satan offered the Jews the secret of acquiring great wealth and political power, but in return they must accept him as their leader. Upon the acceptance of his evil contract Satan impregnated into Jews a primordial, bestial lust for gold and power. It was their inexorable curse struck with the mark of Cain, the evil ways established by Satan worked fine for the Jews. As the years passed they became wealthier and more powerful. Then Jesus Christ, son of God, the Savior appeared. Entering into the Jews Temples he toppled their idols of gold and denounced the evils of murder and usury.

"Raging at this intrusion into their lucrative, well organized rackets the Jews screamed for Satan's protection. Obeying Satan's order of covert intrigue and vicious lies they conspired to kill Christ. For gold, the Savior was betrayed, the Jews perpetrated their ultimate crime. On Mount Calvary, blood flowing from hands and feet cruelly spiked to the wooden cross, Christ was crucified. A sight that can never be forgotten or forgiven, except by God himself, father of Jesus Christ. Upon his death the Jews were stricken suddenly, not by remorse but by uncertainty. They'd been enticed by Satan's sly words, `Seize the wealth of the world, steal, kill and lie. Sate yourselves lavishly, fear no spiritual punishment for `believe me,' there is no here-after, you have no soul, when you die you are dead. This is the secret of your power. Now go, propagate, teach your off-spring in our ways to perpetuate themselves as possessors of all wealth.' A psychalgiac dread smote the Jews, they'd been tricked. Satan had said, 'When you die you are dead.' Though they could control the wealth of the universe, shadowy, brooding wings of death constantly hovered over the Jews while Christians had eternal life in the here-after."

Anyway, it goes on and on. There are several websites that reference this guy or his book... Scary stuff.

What the hell is going on?

I don't really know what's going on either in Iraq or within the Bush administration, but nobody else seems to either, and as far as I can tell, very few seem to completely appreciate the weirdness and importance of the present situation. As far as I can tell, there are five or more factions fighting within the Bush administration, and more than that in Iraq, and new alliances and new double-crosses are happening every day.

I think that from an American point of view, we're seeing a Bush attempt to find a face-saving solution in Iraq before the election, and an internal struggle within the administration to find a scapegoat for a policy which, ironically, they still have to insist was successful. Tenet, the CIA, and the FBI are pointing to Rumsfeld and the neocons, who richly deserve blame regardless of what you think about the CIA and FBI. Bush himself apparently is twirling around in circles trying to figure out what happened to the adults who were supposed to be taking care of him.

In Iran the various factions, including but not limited to Chalabi, realize that the U.S. is no longer capable of doing much of anything and are playing us for fools. If this war accomplishes anything, it should lay rest to the idea that Republicans are good on defense issues.

NEOCONS: Some are still defending Chalabi, even though it's pretty clear that Bush was ultimately behind the raids on him (seemingly after getting information from Blair, from Jordan, and from the CIA). This apparently means that the neocons know that they're not going to be able to distance themselves from Chalabi the way Bush has been doing. (Bush's recent self-defense require people to forget completely things Bush said about Chalabi three months ago, but that's par for Bush and it seems to work with his imbecile base).

ARAS KARIM HABIB: Chalabi's "security chief" hasn't been mentioned anywhere since May 23. Supposedly he's taken refuge in Iran, which sounds pretty damning. His job description seems to indicate that he was in a position to do a lot of damage.

ALLAWI: The new prime minister is a nephew of Chalabi, but apparently a rival; it's not certain that he's a Chalabi stooge, though their supposed rivalry might be a smokescreen -- their differences may be limited to the division of the spoils. In any case, both are expatriates, with little Iraqi support. Allawi apparently went from being a Ba'athist goon to being a CIA resource.

ALLAWI'S SELECTION: Apparently the U.S. originally intended for Brahimi of the U.N. to play a major role in setting up the new government, but the Interim Governing Council (a corrupt U.S.-appointed group which Brahimi was trying to freeze out) hijacked the process by naming Allawi as Prime Minister, and later also chose a President not wanted the U.N. or the U.S. By doing this they protected their own position while setting themselves up to pose as independent nationalists. (Some have speculated that this was all a U.S.-staged charade meant to give credibility to the new government).

Brahimi and the U.N. clearly were humiliated in this episode. Brahimi says Bremer was behind it (he seems to have been behind the Chalabi raids too), but a special envoy named Robert Blackwill who had recently been sent from Washington also played a role. Seemingly the winners were the I.G.C, where Chalabi is probably behind the scenes; U.S. support seems to have been after-the-fact.

TENET: He was under attack both because of 9/11 unpreparedness and because of his support for Bush WMD argument, and Chalabi claims that Tenet was behind the Chalabi raids. Perhaps he was asked to quit, and perhaps he did so voluntarily to separate himself from the Bush administration. Some say he quit because he couldn't get Bush to fire Rumsfeld and the neocons. (Because of Tenet's involvement with Bush, it seems likely to me that there are also other CIA factions acting independently, motivated by the neocons' Chalabi connections.)

PS: Originally I was also going to cover the Plame affair too, which also part of the U.S. internal power struggle, but this is complicated enough already, right? But there definitely is a power struggle going on within the Bush administration, and all bets are off as far as I'm concerned.


John Micah Marshall on Tenet's resignation, June 3

Josh Micah Marshall, June 3 but written earlier

Guardian: How Brahimi was sidelined, June 3 (print)

Kevin Drum, June 3

Allawi (Cockburn in Salon)

The LA Times lacks confidence, June 2

Time Magazine on Allawi, June 1

Highly unfriendly summary of Bush Iraq policy

Chalabi and Aras Karim Habib, New Yorker, May 31