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Saturday, September 27, 2003
Are We Seeing Some Major Realignment Here?
The headline reads Noted N.H. Republican endorses Democrat Dean. The noted Republican in question is Hillary Cleveland who, get this,"was the New London co-chair for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign and was the state finance chair for Bush’s father in 1980."
Commenting on Howard Dean, she ways, "I have been disappointed in the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq, and former Governor Dean has best articulated why we should not have gone to war in Iraq. I like his emphasis on the importance of internationalism and his fiscal program."
posted by John
11:49 PM
Killing Grandfathers
The worst day of George Bush's presidency was not September 11, 2001, writes Andrew West, in the Sydney Sun-Herald. The worst day, so far, was July 9, 2003, when a a 54-year-old Tennessee National Guardsman and grandfather named Roger Dale Rowe died in an ambush in Iraq, leaving behind a a widow, four children, seven grandchildren and an increasingly grieving nation. Sergeant Rowe was the oldest of the 306 American soldiers to die in Iraq and one of the 167 killed since the war officially ended on May 1. The reputedly gentle Vietnam veteran also personified the problem Bush faces back home - that workaday soldiers, who are not even in combat, are being picked off in a messy occupation of someone else's country. The White House fiddles, trying to restructure Iraq's oil-rich economy so that it will suit American investment, while troops die.
It is victims such as Sergeant Rowe, who took time off from his job making car parts to volunteer for reserve duty in the Middle East, who are turning public sentiment against the Bush White House. I think West is right. Little by little, the middle and lower middle classes are beginning to notice who is paying the real costs of Shrub's Not-so-Excellent Adventure.
posted by Jerry Bowles
5:21 PM
War on drugs… fuhgeddaboudit
We’ve got our allies in the world of Islam don’t you know. Parviz “the pusher” in Pakistan. Karzai’s drug mullahs in Afghanistan. The opium kingpins of Turkey. And don’t forget those poppy fields in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental that the Afghanis and Colombians helped set up. But it’s all good if they’re helping democratize the region, innit, as one of Martin Amis' underworld characters used to say.
Getting this stuff into the US requires more than a nervous Pakistani family swallowing balloons of heroin to raise capital for their local donut shop. We’re talking industrial-strength ingress here. Screenwriters who want to build on the success of The Great Escape would do well to check out the drug tunnel big enough to drive a Humvee through down in, where else, Nogales, Arizona.
posted by Groom
4:17 PM
Oh, Yeah. Well, He's Our Illiterate Psychopath.
North Korea described Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a dictatorial psychopath and a politically illiterate old man for criticizing Pyongyang and predicting its system would collapse.
Rumsfeld told U.S. and South Korean business leaders on Tuesday he had a night-time satellite picture of the divided peninsula in his office that showed the North almost entirely in darkness and the South aglow. Reuters, September 27, 2003
posted by Jerry Bowles
11:27 AM
Meanwhile, In a Faraway Universe
The incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans fell 18 percent in 2001, as did their income taxes, shaving $66 billion off revenues and showing how dependent the federal government has become on its wealthiest citizens.
Over all, Americans had 2.8 percent less income in 2001 than in the previous year. But federal tax revenues fell 9.4 percent because the incomes of those at the top, who pay the highest tax rates, dropped so much more than the average.
The top 1 percent reported $1.09 trillion of income, down from $1.34 trillion in 2000, according to data posted by the Internal Revenue Service on the Internet yesterday without announcement. New York Times, September 26, 2003 How much do you need to reach the top 1 percent? The minimum was $293,000 last year, down from $313,500 in 2000, but almost identical to the threshold in 1999.
posted by Jerry Bowles
10:12 AM
Friday, September 26, 2003
Our National Shame
Census data released today show that poverty increased and median household income fell in 2002 for the second consecutive year. The number of poor people increased by 1.7 million to 34.6 million; the poverty rate rose from 11.7 percent to 12.1 percent; and median household income fell by $500, or 1.1 percent, to $42,409. There were 3 million more poor people in 2002 than in 2000, the last year before unemployment began to rise. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, September 25, 2003
posted by Jerry Bowles
6:58 PM
Tricky Dicky Cheney
New Jersey Senator Frank R. Lautenberg released a Congressional Research Service report yesterday which confirms that receiving deferred salary and holding stock options in a corporation does constitute a "financial interest" under Federal ethics standards. The finding directly conflicts with statements released by Vice President Dick "Him Before He Dicks You" Cheney's office after it was revealed that the Vice President continues to receive deferred salary from Halliburton and holds 433,333 Halliburton stock options. The flap started when the evil little troll said on the September 14th edition of Meet the Press: And since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years. Confronted with information to the contrary, Cheney's office argued that by taking out an insurance policy on the deferred salary and assigning his after-tax proceeds from the sale of unexercised options to charity, a financial interest no longer existed. The CRS Report explicitly rejects this dubious line of reasoning, finding that financial ties continue despite those steps.
None of this would be an issue if Halliburton weren't already into American taxpayers pockets to the tune of $2.25 billion so far--$1.25 billion through a no-bid exclusive contract. One lesson this administration never learns is that if it looks like a turd and smells like a turd, it's probably a turd.
UPDATE: 10:52 pm The indispensible Josh Marshall has the scoop on a piece of sleazeball GOP cronyism that is so brazen you'll want to tear your hair out in frustration.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4:36 PM
Speculation Pope may step down in October
The Vatican has announced that the selection of 20-30 new cardinals, originally scheduled for February, 2004, will now take place next month. The new cardinals will participate in the selection of the next Pope. Cardinals now must be 80 years of age or younger to vote for a new Pope. Moving up the date increases speculation that Pope John Paul II, in questionable health, may abdicate at 25 years of service in October. The announcement made front page news in Argentina. Cardinal Jose Maria Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, a Jesuit and a trained chemist, has been mentioned as a leading contender to become the first "transatlantic Pope." Argentina's population is now 53% from Italian extraction.
posted by Groom
2:05 PM
More on jacked WMD intel
Marine Corps General (ret.) Anthony Zinni, former commander of US Centcom troops in the Middle East, told Ted Koppel last night that US intelligence was either “flawed or manipulated” to make a case for the Shrub Club making an end-run around the UN and prosecuting its war with Iraq. You can surf over to ABC and check out the on-demand webcast.
posted by Groom
11:21 AM
Thanks, Matt
Now, this is how a President should look in uniform. Matt Drudge continues to give conservatives who mistrust Bush (and there are a lot of them) reasons to like Wesley Clark.
posted by Jerry Bowles
7:50 AM
Poindexter’s spook shop… RIP
The Office of Information Awareness (OIA) in the Pentagon, once led by sycophant former National Security Council director John Poindexter, is dead.
Congress killed funding for OIA yesterday, the New York Times reports. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Or) says that a few projects developed by OIA, notably war games and other simulations that pose no threat to the constitutional rights and civil liberties of Americans, will be taken over by other Pentagon shops.
Poindexter, who was pardoned by Poppy Bush for his Iran-Contra crimes, resigned from OIA last month. His scam to launch a futures market for predicting global terrorism went out the door with him. Like Lord Rummy, Vice Admiral Poindexter is a man who cultivated a reputation among GOP hawks as a man with fresh ideas who can “think outside the box.” His big problem was that he looked at the American citizenry as if it was his private Skinner box.
posted by Groom
4:54 AM
Thursday, September 25, 2003
The Big Debate
Wesley did okay. Not great, but okay, and he did himself a favor by reminding viewers that he has been a politician for only nine days now. No clear winner but big loser: Howard Dean, who allowed himself to be goaded into a snit by Dick Gephardt's unfair, but effective, comparison of him (Dean) to Newt Gingrich.
What did you folks think?
posted by Jerry Bowles
6:06 PM
How huge is thy folly?
Tom Friedman’s column this morning linked the war on terrorism with the Bush administration’s reluctance to eliminate agricultural subsidies at the failed Cancun world trade talks. Citing a World Bank study, the NY Timesman suggests that reducing agrisubsidies would put 144 million people out of poverty. He claims that the rollback of subsidies would stop the migration of Egyptians and Pakistanis farmers to the cities, where they morph into urban poor amidst the conditions that spawn terrorism.
His argument makes sense through the prism of US values. But it is a bit of a stretch. It is Islam itself that foments the conditions that spawn terrorism. And as for the subsidies, Friedman says that our federal government gives $3 billion a year to 25,000 cotton farmers. Geez, that barely enough moolah to finance (without interest) two weeks worth of Shrubby’s war in Iraq. Moreover, the overall costs of the Iraq war (without interest) make global agricultural subsidies pale in comparison. And, Tom, by the way, lots of Democrats and their fatcat friends are big fans of the subsidies bidness too.
posted by Groom
3:41 PM
Debate Time
Don't forget that all 10 Democratic Party presidential hopefuls will face a national audience live in about 25 minutes in a two-hour debate hosted by The Wall Street Journal and CNBC. MSNBC will re-run it tonight at 9 ET.
posted by Jerry Bowles
3:35 PM
Tres Amusant
Those crazy frogs at the conspiracy-addled think tank Reseau Voltaire in Paris have issued a deck of cards called "The 52 Most Dangerous American Dignitaries - The Bush Regime Card Deck" which its web page describes, in part, thusly: A behind the scenes look of the Bush administration reveals a team of croonies, carrying out a "neo-conservative" revolution in total opposition with the History and Values of their country. (JB Note: "croonies" are kind of like cronies but they are organized as groups of barber shop quartets.) You can download a pdf here or see Reuters report here.
posted by Jerry Bowles
1:36 PM
Palming the deck
Does Diebold have something to hide? A reader who posted in the comment box below “Shrubby wants more drugs, not more votes” seems to think so. The computer vote counting giant is apparently taking legal action to shut down websites critical of the proprietary software it uses to tabulate votes. (Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) has a piece of the action in Diebold Election's rival Election Systems & Software, the company that also happened to count the votes in his last election.)
The Federal Election Commission lays off the accuracy part of its mandate to what it calls the Independent Testing Authority (ITA). States, for their part use a “logic accuracy test” which, some argue, does not catch fraud and misses programming errors that cause miscounts by electronic systems developed and marketed by companies like Diebold.
Like Ron Ziegler used to say back in the Nixon White House… “we can neither confirm, nor deny.” I’m heading to Toys ’R US to buy my Ouija board.
posted by Groom
9:44 AM
Wes's Mojo
In his post just below, John points to a scathing unsigned article at The Black Commentator (nobody seems to want to use their real name at this site), that accuses Wesley Clark of being a tool of the Clintons and not really an "anti-war" candidate.
That General Clark is not "anti-war" can hardly be a surprise; he's a career military man, for Christ's sake. Devout peaceniks do not become generals. Clark was opposed to this particular war and the part of The Times article that TBC doesn't quote makes it clear that Clark has always been skeptical about the war and its aftermath: Is this victory? Certainly the soldiers and generals can claim success. And surely, for the Iraqis there is a new-found sense of freedom. But remember, this was all about weapons of mass destruction. They haven’t yet been found. It was to continue the struggle against terror, bring democracy to Iraq, and create change, positive change, in the Middle East. And none of that is begun, much less completed.
Let’s have those parades on the Mall and down Constitution Avenue — but don’t demobilize yet. There’s a lot yet to be done, and not only by the diplomats. TBC goes on to paint Senator Charles Rangel as a water carrier for the Clintons with black folks and to diss the Clintons' extremely limited involvement with Clark's campaign (they have not endorsed him or campaigned for him or, as far as we know, sent him five bucks) by saying it is an attempt to "transfer their black mojo to Wesley Clark." (My black friends have no idea what that means either.)
TBC then goes on to laud Howard Dean as the real "anti-war" candidate and, condescendingly, as "good white folks." Nothing wrong with giving Dean credit (although he's not opposed to all wars either) but one thing we all to need to remember: the enemy is Shrub Bush. There is nothing to be gained by having Dean and Clark and their supporters destroy each other in the coming primaries. Whichever one of these decent men wins the nomination is a win for all of us and the loser's supporters will need to coalesce immediately and enthusiastically around the winner. Unity is essential to ultimate victory--regime change in Washington. Let's not drive such a big wedge between Dean and Clark in the runup that it can't be overcome when victory is in sight.
posted by Jerry Bowles
9:21 AM
Where is the Clark Defense Team?
"For an interesting perspective on the General's intrepid foray into the political arena, read this."
posted by John
2:10 AM
Lies and the Lying Liars
One of the great tragedies of the Bush administration has been the complete destruction of the reputation of Colin Powell. I think most liberal Americans (and many conservatives) really wanted him to succeed and looked to him as a beacon of honesty in an integrity-challenged administration. Turns out, he's just an empty suit like the rest of them. I am confident when people see what David Kay puts forward they will see that there was no question that such weapons exist, existed, and so did the programs to develop one. Colin Powell, Meet the Press, September 7, 2003 Report says no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
A preliminary report from US and British arms inspectors tracking Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, according to a U.S. official, will show that such weapons have not been found. The BBC quoted the unnamed US government source as saying the so-called Iraq Survey Group will report that not even "minute" amounts of biological or chemical weapons material have been discovered. Addressing the same issue, America's Central Intelligence Agency says that the interim report by former weapons inspector David Kay is unlikely to reach any final conclusions. Deutsche Welle, September 25, 2003
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:44 AM
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Why We Love Japan Post
Others may talk about service and good customer relations. But how about this? Just this morning my wife Ruth received a somewhat damp and battered looking letter to which was attached the following message (translated from the Japanese)
This postal item became wet while enroute from the country from which it was sent. Your local post office has made every effort to dry it, but we do extend our sincere apologies for the state in which this should-be-cherished-and-taken-good-care-of postal item has arrived.
One of those little things that occasionally makes life in Japan delightful.
posted by John
11:20 PM
Lest We Forget
The headline should have read "Thieves Fall Out." As it was it was all we read is, "Enron sues investment banks, brokerages"
The lead to this Salon story reads,
"Enron Corp. is suing a string of banks, brokerage firms and their subsidiaries that financed its deals and partnerships, accusing them of participating in deliberately murky transactions for millions of dollars in fees that helped create the failed energy company's facade of success.
"Defendants in the lawsuit filed late Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York include banking titans J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. -- two of the country's largest banks and Enron's largest creditors."
Another wonderful day in the history of the folks who bring us GOP (Guns Oil Polution) .
posted by John
11:10 PM
Wonder If Anyone Has Told Him?
President Bush's job approval has dipped to 49 percent in an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, the lowest level of his presidency in that poll. Shrub told Fox News the other night that he doesn't read newspapers and gets his news from his staff so he may not know he's tanking.
posted by Jerry Bowles
8:45 PM
You can’t democratize Islam
“Jihad means the conquest of the non-Muslim territory, the domination of Koranic law, from one end of the earth to the other…” Ayatollah Khomeini
Minority leader senator Tom “the senator from Citigroup” Daschle (D-SD) thinks our "donor fatigued" allies should be providing more troops and more resources for Iraq. Like Lord Cheney, Lord Rummy and the GOP war pimps in Congress, Daschle overlooks the cultural dimension of our unilateralist occupation. The world of Islam, overnight, has become the planet’s largest non-aligned political entity. As Jerry has said, “the bought don’t stay bought anymore.”
Didn’t anybody yesterday bother to listen to the speech of Megawati, the female leader of the world’s largest Islamic nation, Indonesia? No Saudi-bought shill she. If one takes this daughter of Sukarno seriously, the occupation of Iraq means, effectively, the occupation of Islam. And this woman drives her own car.
In metaphorical terms, Iraq is a wildfire and the Shrub Club took it upon itself to parachute in with their hotshots confident that they could contain the fire. Instead, their unilateralist, cowboy-like approach has caused the fire to spread beyond its containment to the entire world of Islam.
The longer we are the petro-colonial masters of Iraq, the longer we will fan the flames. Memo to Daschle and other nouveau ueberhawks: do you really want to sacrifice social security and Medicaid for this? If so, you are playing right into the cynical hand of Shrubby and his minders. Do your homework on Islam, dude.
Shrubby wants more drugs, not more ballots
Amount the White House wants to allocate to bribe the dope-pushing Turks into sending occupation troops to Iraq. You know, the same Turks that cost American lives by refusing to allow US forces transit through their nation that would have opened a crucial Northern Front in Iraq... $8.5 billion
Amount the White House is refusing to allocate to the states to help them rennovate the automated vote counting systems as mandated by the act enabling the Election Assistance Administration... $1.3 billion
posted by Groom
4:08 PM
Fire Rumsfeld
More than 196,000 people have already signed MoveOn.org's "Face the Facts" petition which demands a recall to private life for Don Demento. I've signed it. Have you? If not, go here forthwith.
posted by Jerry Bowles
3:04 PM
Common Sense
Come, let us reason together. You're a former Commander in Chief of NATO, Rhodes scholar, highly decorated and wounded Viet Nam vet, first in your West Point class kind of guy. Two days after you enter the race, the polls show you beating the incumbent President. But, you're not really a serious candidate--you're a stalking horse for the first-term junior senator from New York whom you actually don't really know all that well and have had limited communication with over the years.
All I can guess is that the Republicans are trying to energize the far right by dragging the Clintons into it. Otherwise, all the speculation is pure bullshit.
posted by Jerry Bowles
2:10 PM
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Matt Drudge seems to have fallen in love with this picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger's ass. It's been up for two days now.
posted by Jerry Bowles
11:00 AM
My e-Voting Problem
Lawyers for Diebold Election Systems, one of the largest of a handful of suppliers of electronic voting equipment, have succeeded in forcing the citizens activist group blackboxvoting.org to take down links to "found" internal Diebold documents demonstrating that e-voting systems are a lot more susceptible to manipulation and fraud than most voters realize.
Back in July, a group of computer security researchers at Johns Hopkins University did a study and found a variety of ways in which Diebold Election Systems machines and software are vulnerable to major vote-tampering before, during and after elections.
In addition to vulnerable software, a major concern is that most of these e-voting systems do not create a "paper trail," a receipt that voters can look at and make sure their vote was recorded as they wished and a record that can be used in recounts.
"This is an epic error," writes Dan Gillmore, Technology columnist for the Mercury News and an Electronic Frontier Foundation big. "They're putting unwarranted trust in technology. They're believing that private companies, for the first time in recorded history, can produce perfect, tamper-proof electronic devices."
While I find the potential for manipulation of these increasingly popular voting machines truly scary, I'm more concerned about a larger issue. There are only a few companies that make these systems, most of them small and not publicly held (As a subsidiary of a much bigger company, Diebold Election Systems is an exception). Virtually all of them have documented ties to right of center Republican politics. For example, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is a founder and owner of Election Systems & Software, the company that counted the ballots in all of Chuck Hagel's elections.
Waldon O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, is a major fundraiser for George W. Bush who has been under a lot of fire recently for a letter he wrote saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president next
year."
True, Diebold Election Systems is a tiny little minnow inside the larger Diebold corporate whale and I'm certain that O'Dell has nothing to do with its day-to-day operation. He has the absolute right to raise money for the hopeless fool of his choice. But, the American voting system is far too precious to be in the hands of a very small group of corporate partisans whose business success depends on their ability to get contracts from highly placed cronies inside the political system. Something must be done and quickly before we start finding out who won the election before the polls open.
posted by Jerry Bowles
8:24 AM
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Hack on Wesley
As a writer and author, former colonel David Hackworth has built an avid following among grunts, both current and former, and independent thinkers of all political stripes. He is admired widely for his spirited support of the men in the foxholes, often against the idiocies of their own brass. He's a man whose opinion I respect and one of the few people who can make Fox dickhead Sean Hannity back down. Here's part of what he has to say about General Wesley Clark: For the record, I never served with Clark. But after spending three hours interviewing the man for Maxim’s November issue, I’m impressed. He is insightful, he has his act together, he understands what makes national security tick – and he thinks on his feet somewhere around Mach 3. No big surprise, since he graduated first in his class from West Point, which puts him in the super-smart set with Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur and Maxwell Taylor. Hackworth then goes on to praise the General's toughness and admit that he was wrong a few years back when he criticized Clark's leadership in Kosovo. For sure, he’ll be strong on defense. But with his high moral standards and because he knows where and how the game’s played, there will probably be zero tolerance for either Pentagon porking or two-bit shenanigans.
No doubt he’s made his share of enemies. He doesn’t suffer fools easily and wouldn’t have allowed the dilettantes who convinced Dubya to do Iraq to even cut the White House lawn. So he should prepare for a fair amount of dart-throwing from detractors he’s ripped into during the past three decades.
Hey, I was one of them: I took a swing at Clark during the Kosovo campaign when I thought he screwed up the operation, and I called him a “Perfumed Prince.” Only years later did I discover from his book and other research that I was wrong – the blame should have been worn by British timidity and William Cohen, U.S. SecDef at the time. Read the whole article; you'll be impressed.
posted by Jerry Bowles
5:57 PM
Can I Get an Amen?
Christopher Preble, Cato Institute's director of foreign policy studies, says the president's speech "reveals a fundamental misreading of the situation in Iraq, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the threats confronting the civilized world." The process toward [Iraqi] self-government must begin immediately, it must be conducted rapidly, and it must be followed by a swift end to foreign occupation. If the international community can help in this process, and if the Iraqis desire it, then international involvement is welcome. But we should not presume that multilateralism will be more successful than the alternative. Indeed, to the extent that a larger international presence delays Iraqi independence, it will only result in an increase in the threat of terrorism.
The United States must return to its political traditions, and its governing documents. It must confront the known threats facing us today-the threat from Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations of global reach. The fight against terrorism is more likely to succeed if the world joins us; but it will most certainly fail if we do not end our ruinous imperial policies that place American troops in nearly every corner of the globe and do nothing to protect the homeland from those who are so anxious to kill us.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4:08 PM
One trick pony
Was this a speech to the UN or a speech to the American people? Unrepentant for his lies, continuing to blur the distinction between Iraq and terrorism and, oh so confident about those WMDs that have never been found. Using AIDS and the sex-slave trade to soften the emotions of the audience. A bunch of disingenuous blather projected from a fundamentalist Christian perspective.
Beyond the arguments based on jacked intel, errors of omission and twisting of historical facts about Saddam, Shrubby’s oratorio offered world leaders no key message. The strut-and-cut bravado might play well in Springfield, Mo. But it won’t go very far in Smolensk or Sevres, or Stuttgart.
Here’s the president of the United States asking the United Nations for help by giving them a rundown of how his (and Lord Cheney’s) political cronies are profiting from a reconstruction program in Iraq that he claims is the largest economic commitment since the Marshall Plan. And the repeated references to the “coalition partners” as if they were providing the majority of the military manpower are great propaganda. But everybody knows who is doing the heavy lifting.
Get out your Shrubanese dictionary. “This process must unfold by the needs of the Iraqis” the UN was told. What that suggests is that that the process will unfold by Washington’s agenda. And using the Karzai thugocracy in Afghanistan as an example of nation building belies the fact that it is a nation that continues to be dominated by drug lords and tribal politics. Hello Chaing-mai.
Were Osama, Mullah Omar and Saddam watching? If so they would have recognized the rantings of another pathological zealot. It’s the crusaders vs. the jihadsters. WWWF rules. Shrubby gets high marks only for trying to church the world.
posted by Groom
3:55 PM
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