Best of the Blogs

Doin’ the Hawkeye Shuffle

The slogan “vote early, vote often” is usually linked with old school Chicago politics and its chroniclers, Irv Kupcinet and Studs Terkel. But as Ron Brownstein points out in today’s Los Angeles Times, (registration required) it plays in Keokuk and Council Bluffs too.

The Iowa Democratic Party allows independents to participate in the caucus (that means “vote”) if they re-register as Democrats at the door. The very same voters can then change their registration back to “independent” the next day by filling out another form. Like Fats Waller, the great stride pianist/singer used to say… “I wasn’t there yesterday, I was at the other place.”

Believe Paul O’Neill, or believe Bush the Liar?

Smug responses from Mouthpiece McClelland on the Paul O’Neill book and more poignant ones from White House “sources” to damage control the “60 Minutes” interview with O’Neill by Leslie Stahl.

Let’s see… walking out of the Tenet briefing in Crawford weeks before 9/11. Lying about Saddam’s uranium deal with Niger. Lying about being a “uniter” when he’s a divider. Lying about the war being over in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier thirty miles off the coast of San Diego. Beyond penis envy and adult attention deficit disorder (AADD) we might well add pathological lying to the list. At least that’s what would probably turn up if Karl Rove’s frontmen paid a crew to do a “Watergate-style” break in at a psychiatrists office to get the goods on the “opponent” since that’s the level at which this crew operates. Frankly it would probably be more fun to play truth or consequences with John Gotti down in the cryogenics center. At least one would have a clear cut knowledge of “the consequences.”

Paul O’Neill did the right thing by outing the issues in his book. Now, watch the media fumble, like Mr. Pickwick going through his papers.

posted by Groom 2:30 PM

Moon Shadow

The Shrubster's goal of returning to the moon in eight to 10 years and eventually sending astronauts to Mars is such an obvious election year stunt designed to leave the impression the man cares about something other than war and tax breaks for his wealthy cronies that you have to wonder if it might backfire.

I don't feel a groundswell of excitement out there in the marketplace of ideas for a new $130 billion to $240 billion Lockheed-Martin boondoggle at a time when tax cuts are lowering the budget by $135 billion. I suspect--I'm hoping--that the whole thing will backfire and voters will begin to ask questions about why issues like health care, education and retirement benefits remain underfunded and unresolved on Earth.

It also adds serious fuel to the notion that Bush is a fiscally irresponsible big spender who is mortgaging our children's future and threatening the retirement of the baby boom generation.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:35 AM

Friday, January 09, 2004

Men are from Mars

Why let them eat cake when you can let them eat space…

Coming on the heels of the European Community’s botched mission to the Red Planet, Shrubby‘s plan to put men on Mars is nothing but another bread and circuses event designed to deflect criticism from the war, the lies, the Twin Towers, the corporate ripoffs and the incipient racism and class warfare that are the real hallmarks of the George W. Bush presidency.

Plans to accelerate the Mars program have been part of NASA doctrine for years. But with this crew trying to steal a page from John F. Kennedy by pushing the envelope, one ought to wonder when the next case of “Bush O-rings“ will cause things to go boom. Then too, NASA research and the space program are our biggest cover for “dual use” technology that can be spun off and used to strengthen our own WMD arsenal.

The Mars program is a strictly whitebread issue. It doesn’t impact on women voters. It doesn’t impact on minorities. Jameel freezing his butt at 95th and the Dan Ryan in Chicago is a child left so far behind that he probably doesn’t even know where Mars is let alone have the reading or aural comprehension levels to learn more via science books and videotapes.

Will some Bush “Ranger” toymaker decide to make a commemorative presidential “rocket man” doll dressed in the new Mars spacesuit? Speeding up the Mars program is a classic Bush penis envy issue. We can get there quicker, our rockets are bigger. I’ve got a Ford F-350 with a V-10 and dual rear wheels that gets 12 mpg. A Colt Python 44 magnum in the glove compartment just in case I meet up with the Yankee Jesus.

Boo at the State of the Union. Open your windows and boo at home. Let the world hear that beyond the phony Hooveresque economics, it's still about the lies.

posted by Groom 3:31 PM

More Dog Wagging at ShrubCo

Riding around picking up ice hockey equipment for my kids this morning, I tuned into a very interesting interview on WNYC with the Washington representative for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two political groups controlling the autonomous northern region of Iraq. The interviewer, Brian Lehrer, mentioned reports from Israeli news media, including the respected Haa'retz Daily, that Saddam had been captured by the Kurds some weeks prior to December 13 and--according to reports--was kept by them for interrogation before being put into the “spider hole” for his then easy capture by U.S. forces.

The Kurdish representative refuted this story but pointedly would not refute Lehrer’s follow-up question, which was along the lines (check transcripts when they appear) “Did the Kurds find and contain Saddam for several weeks in order for U.S. to effect the capture?”

Which leads to the big question: Was this single biggest boost to Bush’s numbers in the last few months staged? And will the Kurds, who are even now being guaranteed autonomy by the Iraqi Governing Council, a decision that Paul Bremer will have to approve, keep mum on this ? (Evelyn Keyes)

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:25 PM

To the Moon, Alice

Is it just me or is anybody else underwhelmed by the prospect of building a base on the moon as a step toward travel to Mars? I'm sure the folks at Lockheed-Martin and Boeing and Grumman are all excited but wouldn't you rather, say, provide every American with health care insurance or a guaranteed college education? What makes me suspect that this whole nobly-wrapped "scientific" program will be a cover for one of demented Donald Rumsfeld's evil space war schemes (since blowing up the planet bit by bit is not good enough and we need to take out the universe, too.) What'd do you want to bet that Halliburton and Bectel get to build the base?

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:49 PM

Blind Man's Bluff

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill likened President Bush at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," according to excerpts on Friday from a CBS interview.

O'Neill, who was fired by Bush in December 2002, also said the president did not ask him a single question during their first one-on-one meeting, which lasted an hour.

"As I recall it was just a monologue," he told CBS' "60 Minutes," which will broadcast the entire interview on Sunday. Reuters, January 9, 2004

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:15 PM

Sticks and Stones

Things are are getting corny out there in Iowa. Joe Trippi's morning note today highlights a new ad being run by The Club for Growth, a corporate interest group, showing an elderly couple saying:

"I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont - where it belongs."

Is this the best they can do? Stereotyping millions of fellow Americans (not to mention offending the Japanese, Swedes, and French). And, anyway, I do not have a piercing or drive a Volvo, although the folks at Volvo are very nice and make a fine product.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:45 AM

Exaggerating the Threat

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a scathing report, "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications," yesterday that confirms what skeptics have believed for months now: Iraq was not an imminent threat, UN inspections were working far better than realized, our intelligence process failed, officials misrepresented the threat, and, importantly, that war was not the best-or only-option.

The study states that "administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile program" by treating possibilities as fact and "misrepresenting inspectors' findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire."

Carnegie authors Jessica Mathews, Joseph Cirincione, and George Perkovich outline policy reforms to improve threat assessments, deter transfer of WMD to terrorists, strengthen the UN weapons inspection process, and avoid politicization of the intelligence process.

The policy recommendations flow from a detailed study that distills a massive amount of data into side-by-side comparisons of pre-war intelligence on Iraq; weapons of mass destruction, the official U.S. presentation of that intelligence, and what is now known about Iraq's programs.

Key policy recommendations include:

-- Create a nonpartisan independent commission to establish a clear picture of what the intelligence community knew and believed it knew about Iraq's weapon's program

-- Revise the National Security Strategy to eliminate a U.S. policy of unilateral, preventive war

-- Formalize collaboration between the United States and United Nations to create a permanent, international, nonproliferation inspection capability

-- Consider changing the post of Director of Central Intelligence from a political appointment to a career appointment, based on the outcomes of the independent commission

The full report is here.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:31 AM

Thursday, January 08, 2004

Same sex union… will Rove and DeLay blame the “Yankee Jesus”

As Jerry and Josh have pointed out, same sex union is now the hot button issue in the race for the White House. GOP political jefes hope it will light a fire under the asses of the right wing minions enough to bring them to the polls since, statistically they aren’t big on voting. Then too, there are plenty of anal-retentive, middle of the road god-squadders flexing their glutes on the fencepost who, with a few mediagrams of Rove induced hatred, might put the biscuit in the basket.

Stop that music… today we learn from the Washington Post that Howard Dean based his decision to green light same sex union while Vermont governor in part on an honest leap of faith, notably, his religious beliefs. By taking this tack, Dean trumps the White House hate mongers and a media whose advertisers (much as they did during the McCarthy era) are demanding more “faith-based” news coverage. As Obersturmbannfuehrer Rove likes to say… “stay tuned.” We'll watch and see who gets "left behind."

posted by Groom 3:35 PM

Jesus Was Not a Republican

Got to hand it to Howard Dean. He may not know Job from Jacob's ass but he does know that the gospels of Jesus preach love for your fellow man, understanding and forgiveness of fallibility, charity toward the downtrodden and empathy for human differences. "My view of Christianity . . . is that the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind," he told reporters Tuesday. "So I think there was a religious aspect to my decision to support civil unions."

Anti-gay Christian wingnuts are fond of quoting Leviticus 18:22, which says, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

They are less fond of quoting Matthew 19:23-24 "It is easier for a camel to pass through eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God."

If Pat Robertson (or Shrub Bush) believes one of these quotations literally, he has to believe the other. Tell you what, guys; if you're concerned about making it through the gates, trade bank accounts with me. You'll get there for sure.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:36 AM

Where is Congress?

On September 15, 2001—four days after the devastating attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center—a joint resolution of Congress overwhelmingly authorized President Bush “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

Lest the point be missed, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was quoted as saying: "No one should think what we have passed here is anything less than a declaration of war."

In the emotion of the moment, Senator Biden might be forgiven for the hyperbole. In fact, the authorization deliberately stopped short of giving the President unlimited war powers because of concerns from members of both parties.

But, the sad reality is that Congress has seriously abdicated its responsibilities to provide either leadership or a balance to unchecked executive power, passively granting the administration the authority to invade and occupy a sovereign nation that was not a direct threat, allowing government to seriously undermine the American people’s individual liberties through the egregious Patriot Act, and displaying no interest in the administration’s flaunting of international law.

A little more than two years after the September 15, 2001 authorization of force resolution, as the administration’s strategies and tactics for waging the amorphous “war on terrorism” become clearer, Congress needs to clarify what it meant by “all necessary and appropriate force.”

- Did they mean to authorize the President to designate anyone—including American citizens--he determines is a potential danger an “enemy combatant” and imprison that person forever without access to counsel or any form of judicial review?

- Did they mean to authorize the President to take military action against “nations, organizations, or persons” without clear and compelling evidence of their complicity in the 9/11 attacks?

- Did they mean to authorize the Pentagon and the CIA to create an alternative global prison system—beyond the purview of Congress and American courts--where suspected “terrorists” can be incarcerated without judicial review for unlimited periods of time on the word of paid informants and enemies under conditions that border on torture?

-Did they authorize the use of assassination squads to “otherwise deal with” terrorists, as the President sometimes likes to brag.

Perhaps, Congress meant to authorize the Bush administration to take all these extrajudicial and distinctly totalitarian actions. Maybe, our Congresspeople thought a Communist Bulgarian concept of justice was appropriate for these times. If so, it's time to stop hiding under the skirts of the Executive Branch. Let’s vote on these draconian measures one by one just so we can be sure that the administration is not overstepping its mandate and turning America into just another terrorist state with weapons of mass destruction.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:40 AM

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Car talk or tax talk?

If you’ve seen any coverage of the big auto show you probably know that Japanese manufacturers are making a hard run at the SUV and big pickup truck markets, that last bastion of American excess where the US “big 3” automakers still dominate by giving back seats two cupholders and lighter plug-ins for cell phones. But in today’s Global Economy, does it really matter who dominates. Still headquartered in the US, Ford and GM have been heavily invested in the Japanese carmakers for three decades. And our tax structure, and our entire philosophy of taxation is still mired in Rust Belt, manufacturing economics.

Welcome to America, “victim” of the Global Economy. We’ve got the “Twin Towers” foreign debt and negative trade balance that Paul Krugman and former treasury secretary Robert Rubin are going ballistic about. And then there’s John Snow letting our “allies” go diving for dollars at bargain basement rates, betting and bragging in the media today that those bongo bucks will flow back into the US economy after a Bush victory and spur the “Bush recovery.“

But our tax structure sucks. Every bean counter and all the nerds up at the FASB in Connecticut need to get their heads out of their butts (Congress and the presidential candidates too) and wake up to the fact that the US economy is a consumer and service driven economy.

If our economy and social net are to avoid collapsing like a Barnum & Bailey Circus tent on move-out day the states and the federal government need to make structural adjustments. If Howard Dean wants to be more like Harry Truman its time to get some serious tax proposals out there. This is not a time for more angry economics, the kind of tax cuts that fuel class warfare. It’s not a time for tax cuts of any kind, even for low income and John Edwards’ “average Americans.“ We need to tax services. We may need a higher federal gasoline tax. We need to tax commerce via the internet. And we need to look into all the tax-avoidance scams being used by religious organizations who prefer to pay a “tithe” to their church rather than to pay taxes to their federal, state and local governments.

Josh talks about resurrecting the political cultures of Barry Goldwater and Alf Landon. The problem is that our culture of taxation is still mired back in those times.

posted by Groom 2:47 PM

Por Favor

Anybody know a book agent or publisher who might be interested in a lively and well-documented little Bush-bashing manuscript. I may know where there's a pretty good one that's almost finished. Send me a note.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:48 PM

All in the Family

If you've ever harbored for a second the illusion that George W. and Laura Bush are perfect parents and the twins are anything other than shallow, semi-attractive, spoiled rotten, pot-smoking, tequila-chugging, Secret Service-abusing little rich girl monsters, check out Laura's Girls in today's Washington Post. They make Britney look mature.

On the other hand, the Bushes apparently have found the ideal "adopted" daughter in Condoleezza Rice. Think of the whole thing as a kind of "Cinderella" story.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:32 AM

Is Dean the Barry Goldwater of the Democratic Party?

I admit there are some holes in this analogy, but some of the similarities are rather striking. Consider this: Goldwater, from a small electoral state, ran against a controversial president, who became president in a controversial way. Ditto for Dean.

Goldwater ran against his own party, bashing the entrenched establishment, hoping, win or lose, that his candidacy would radically reform the party, which it did. Ditto for Dean and the Democrats.

His party’s establishment (Nixon, Governors Rockefeller and Scranton, among others), including Henry Cabot Lodge, a popular Baystater who won New Hampshire with a write-in candidacy, lined against him in the primaries. Ditto for Dean (except for Clark).

Rockefeller was put up as the last-minute, stop-Goldwater candidate, just as some say Clark is the stop-Dean candidate. Clark, like Rockefeller, is scrambling to present a belated center or moderate alternative to a controversial candidate. Clark is the only candidate to propose a further tax cut, while Dean would repeal all the recent tax cuts, an extreme position reminiscent of Goldwater’s positions on domestic policy.

Goldwater ran against the grain of conventional wisdom of his day. For example, questioning major domestic programs, such as Social Security (as Dean is doing on Medicare), and questioning the war strategies of a sitting president. Goldwater’s position on war, of course, was just the opposite of Dean’s, but equally controversial and extreme at the opposite end of the argument.

The big in-party, then the Democratic political machine, tarred and handicapped Goldwater with some of the most mischievous, controversial and mean-spirited TV ads ever seen in politics. Dean can expect the same thing and responding in kind will only make Dean appear more mean-spirited than Mr. Nice-Guy George and his Rose Garden strategy.

The big difference between Goldwater and Dean that determines electability, is Dean is a governor and Goldwater was a Senator. Since 1964, Senators don’t win elections (Humphrey, McGovern, Dole, Gore), Governors do (Reagan, Carter, Clinton). Nixon, of course had it both ways.

You get the drift. BUT if you don’t like this analogy, how about Dean as the Alf Landon of the Democratic Party? Landon, a progressive governor from another small state, Kansas, was the Republican candidate in 1936. He campaigned against the core elements of a popular president's program as wrong for the country and charged that FDR was becoming a dictator. Sound familiar?

Lesson for Dean: Stop trashing the Party. Candidates are fair game, but leave the Party alone. Extremism in any form gets you nowhere.

PS. Not that some of you need any encouragement, but to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, I say that extremism in the critique of this blog is no vice and moderation in defense of this analogy is no virtue.

posted by Josh 10:02 AM

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

I find myself in curious agreement with William Kristol’s current column in The Weekly Standard, which argues rather persuasively for the nomination of Howard Dean--not because Kristol believes that he would be the easiest Democratic for Bush to beat (in fact, Kristol writes: “…even if things do go reasonably well, it would be a mistake--perhaps a fatal mistake--for the Bush administration, or its supporters, to assume victory in 2004 will be easy”--but because Dean (and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Clark) offers the clearest choice to a deeply divided country that has reached the boiling point. A Dean-Bush or Dean-Clark contrast, he reasons, offers the American people something they haven’t had in a long time--“a choice, not an echo.”

This is perhaps as it should be. In polls, a majority of the Democratic party is anti-Iraq war, anti-Bush Doctrine, and anti-Bush's overall conception of the war on terror. Most of the country, on the other hand, basically supports Bush's foreign policy. That's why the president now runs ahead of his Democratic opponents, and why he must be favored in this election. But if the country is split about 60-40 on the most fundamental choice facing it, and if the bulk of one party is strongly opposed to the policy being promulgated by a president of the other party, the opposition presumably deserves a chance in the presidential election to take its argument to the country. They're going to get it.

Kristol’s notion, which I find compelling, is let Dean be Dean—if people vote for him, they know what he stands for, and if he loses, at least there was a fight. And, let Shrub be Shrub. As with Dean, you know what to expect. There won’t be any “compassionate Conservative” baloney to hide his rightwing extremism behind this time. Even the dumbest of voters must realize by now that Bush is neither compassionate nor conservative.

Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards and Gephardt still don’t get it—they are losers because they allowed themselves and their party to be seduced by Shrub’s false promises of bipartisanship, addled by his manipulative use of fear and phony-baloney terror alerts, and cowed into quiet submission by his hysterical waving of the American flag. At too many critical moments on too many critical issues, they rolled over and let Shrub scratch their bellies when they should have taken a huge bite out of his ass. Kristol’s got it right: If we’re going to have a dog fight, let’s go with our meanest dog.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:11 AM

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Cebo y Cambio

Shrub's forthcoming immigration policy speech looks like the usual GOP bait and switch--a "guest worker" program for new immigrants and a lot of new red tape to overcome for those who are already here illegally. Conservatives oppose an outright amnesty program so he can't go that route. Instead, this is a half-assed measure posing as immigration reform in the service of picking up a few more latino brownie points (and votes) for the Shrubmeister.

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:40 PM

This just in… Dean leads Clark by 3 in Arizona

Released today in the Arizona Republic, a new poll of Democratic voters who say they plan to show up and vote in the coming primary shows that Howard Dean continues to lead Wes Clark… by 3 percentage points. The rest of the candidates, including "Democrat" Joe Lieberman, are so far back that even the Daily Racing Form's "Trackman" would prefer not to comment. Some would call this Dean-Clark derby a statistical dead heat. Others would say that nothing has changed during the past month.

posted by Groom 2:20 PM

You spell anger B-u-s-h. Not D-e-a-n

Following up on Jerry's post that "a jerk is still a jerk," ABC and CBS last night featured Clinton mouthpiece Joe Lockhart (now a political “strategist”) putting his stink on the old saw that Howard Dean is the angry young man of American politics.

In a couple of weeks, after the Iowa “caucuses,” the DNC pimps and Clinton whores will have to end this little obedience ritual called dumping on Dean and kick out the jams by pointing their fingers at the real “axis of anger“… the Bush administration. The whole crew are not only jerks, they are angry jerks. As the French say... voir ici...

The war. Built on lies, its a pure act of anger and unilateral aggression.

The tax cuts that benefit the rich. Angry economics. Class warfare.

The Medicare drug “benefit.” It’s okay for a government of the people, by the people and for the people to negotiate fair prices with drug manufacturers for the public health system. But its not okay for the people to do anything other than pay retail for US-made drugs through the new Bush plan. More angry economics.

Patriot Act “Homeland Security” Department. Use of fear and propaganda to psycho terrorize Congress into passing legislation that usurps civil liberties protected and guaranteed by Constitution and Bill of Rights. Anthrax perps have not yet been found in spite of $2 million “reward.”

Photographing incoming foreign passengers. Everybody has been getting photographed surreptitiously for years. The technology has been way ahead of the terrorism curve. It’s just that the DHS and its leader Tom “call me Pilsudski” Ridge are letting us in on the little secret to provoke some anger, which, they think is the stuff that drives the “terrorists” out of their “ratholes.” And, by the way, Governor Ridge, you could be up front and fess up to fact that it’s not a data base of terrorists that these largely “innocent” travelers are being matched up against. It is data base of criminals. Not terrorists. Not suspected terrorists. Maybe a few folks who sell drugs or have some boom and bang connections that could be linked to terrorist “cut-outs”. You don’t have a data base of terrorists at this time to match up against.

Stiffing our allies on Iraq reconstruction. Child anger. You didn’t bring me any toys for my birthday. You can’t come and play in the sandbox anymore.

How did Poppy and Babs raise such angry child? Didn't they read Dr. Spock. Or what about Dr. Seuss? Like the late, great jazz bass player Charlie Mingus said... "Sigmund Freud's wife yo' momma think all the things you could be by now..."

And some really important stuff…

Laura Bush friend, General (ret.) Tommy Franks, is on the cover of the latest Cigar Aficionado magazine. One look at the photo and you’ll see what penis envy is all about.

posted by Groom 1:45 AM

Love in the Time of Terror

One of the curious cultural reactions triggered by 9/11 was a fresh appreciation among the fair sex for the manlier sort of man—those brave, uncomplicated surviving firefighters and cops, whose colleagues were lost in the heroic, but doomed, effort to rescue others at the World Trade Center. Suddenly famous actresses and models and other goodlooking babes were stalking New York City’s ladder companies and nearby boites catering to denizens of same. Hunky firefighters were gracing the pages of Vanity Fair.

Never mind that most of these guys had a 220-pound wife named Angela and four kids on Staten Island or in New Jersey or that an astounding number of these same brave firemen were involved in a riot at a fancy restaurant in Bryant Park a few years back which involved urinating on furniture, chasing waitresses into bathrooms, and dropping their pants for the edification of passers-by. Forget that many of the cops have to reminded daily not to sodomize suspects with broom handles.

In that glorious moment of togetherness after the Towers fell, all was forgiven. Heroic men were in; bookish wimps were out. For the finest and the bravest, it was pussy galore forever. Or, so it looked. (For Republicans, who don’t believe in sex, it was “war” forever.)

Now comes the news that on Christmas Eve, a certain firefighter named Michael R. Silvestri cold-cocked his brother fireman Robert Walsh (who is 6-foot-8 and 330-pounds) with a heavy metal chair at Engine Co. 151 on Staten Island, as firefighters who were changing shifts sat around a table talking and joking in a kitchen area. Walsh suffered deep cuts to his face, a broken jaw, a broken and gashed nose and a broken eye socket, and will have to undergo extensive surgery. Especially revealing is the fact that the other firemen present at the company waited about eight hours to tell the cops about the assault and several of them claimed Walsh “fell down the steps.”

Most of the women who were initially interested in finding themselves a “hero,” have long since learned that a macho jerk is still a jerk, no matter how many dangerous staircases he may stupidly go charging up without knowing what awaits on the other end. We’re just waiting for more Americans of both sexes to realize that the same moral applies to Shrub.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:16 AM

Monday, January 05, 2004

Democracy is Cultural

From Can Iraq be Democratic? by Patrick Basham, a senior fellow with the Center for Representative Government of the Cato Institute.

The building blocks of a modern democratic political culture are not institutional in nature. The building blocks are not elections, parties, and legislatures. Rather, the building blocks of democracy are supportive cultural values--the long-term survival of democratic institutions requires a particular political culture.

Four cultural factors play an essential, collective role in stimulating and reinforcing a stable democratic political system. The first is political trust. The second factor is social tolerance. The third is a widespread recognition of the importance of basic political liberties. The fourth is popular support for gender equality.

This is not only valuable advice about Iraq, it's a good refresher for the Bush administration which seems to have forgotten how democracies are supposed to work.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5:51 PM

Bush Knew

Let us never forget August 6, 2001--a day that will live in infamy. That's the day Shrub cut short a CIA briefing in Crawford, Texas about airplanes being hijacked by Islamic terrorists and crashed into buildings in order to go fishing. This is the only reason George Tenet is still head of the CIA. He knows too much. Thanks, Dave.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:33 PM

Arbeit Macht Frei

Okay, maybe it goes a little too far. But, then, so does BushCo.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:48 AM

Fewer Christians May Go To Polls

All this talk about politicians needing to get cozy with religion in order to win the big one. But as Geneive Abdo reports in the Chicago Tribune fewer members of the "religious right" seem interested in voting in November. Joe Lieberman must be giving a big "oy vay." Muslim voters are abandoning Bush. Jewish voters are sticking to Shrubby like flypaper for his Likudnik-like behavior. Maybe Joe will show his true colors and cross over to be with the other big-time Bush machers. And, yes, there are Christians for Dean.

posted by Groom 5:05 AM

Andy, I Think Congress Be Afraid of its Shadow...

Congress is supposed to be an equal branch of government. So why is it allowing itself to go to the back of the bus on Homeland Security issues? Are they afraid of Max Schmeling look-alike Tom Ridge, who put almost as many Blacks and Hispanics on death row in Pennsylvania while governor as Shrubby? The Washington Post asks some serious questions today in an editorial. Could be time to send an unscrupulous lawyer like Calhoun up to the Hill to get things straight and we all know that Lightin' will not be far behind.

posted by Groom 4:13 AM

Sunday, January 04, 2004

The Book of Job? A Sunday School Lesson for Dean

Disquietingly reminiscent of Bush’s 2000 misspeaks and citing Jesus as his favorite philosopher, Dean steps into a biblical hailstorm of his own making—a disturbing sign of a man trying to stumble to the middle or, at least, to the Republican Wing of the Democratic Party. The Christian Right must be in stitches.

If Bush’s verbal gaffes were/are fair game, so are Dean’s, and these are lulus. Why didn’t the good doctor simply pick the Gospel of Luke, attributed to a fellow doctor, and leave it at that? What’s this gunk about his favorite book of the New Testament being Job? Was he thinking jobs? (Job is strictly OLD Testament, for those of you who don't follow such things.) And, what’s this pontificating on the various endings to the Book of Job?

Then the flip-flop-flap. He corrected himself about where the Book of Job is and then embraced all the gospels.

This venture into the particulars of religion does nothing to assure the public that Dean is not a speak-first/think-later kind of leader, a Nor’easter blowing in the wind. The point we made in early posts was that Dean and the other Democrats should engage the themes of religion (dominated and un-countered by the Conservative Right) in public debate, not getting into which ending of the Book of Job is best?

Tomorrow should be interesting with Dean on the cover of both Time and Newsweek. Maybe we'll go to Code Elmo.

posted by Josh 2:45 PM

And They Wonder Why We Hate the Man

In a series of recent decisions, the National Park Service has approved the display of religious symbols and Bible verses, as well as the sale of creationist books giving a non-evolutionary explanation for the Grand Canyon and other natural wonders within national parks, according to documents released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Also, under pressure from conservative groups, the Park Service has agreed to edit the videotape that has been shown at the Lincoln Memorial since 1995 to remove any image of gay and abortion rights demonstrations that occurred at the memorial.

“The Park Service leadership now caters exclusively to conservative Christian fundamentalist groups,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “The Bush Administration appears to be sponsoring a program of Faith-Based Parks.”

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:19 AM