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Saturday, January 17, 2004
What’s law got to do with it anyway?
Asshole buddies talk turkey in the duckblind on the eve of the big Enron case…
Long ago and far way during my days as a suit I remember rookie Supreme Antonin Scalia showing up in Montevideo at the invitation of his friend Judge Malcolm Wilkey, ambassador to Uruguay and a Poppy Bush retainer. Scalia was the perfect cultural fit to address the legal profession there about democratic values so as to help remove the ola de junta that was hanging around. But Scalia’s views on democracy now have more in common with the legal system of Mussolini’s fascist republic operating under the Lateran Accords than with the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Scalia’s cozy relationship with Dick Cheney is what one might expect of the chief judge of the supreme court in an ethically challenged nation like Argentina or Peru. But as the LA Times reports (registration required) there they were in the duckblind in Louisiana not far from where Leander Perez used to put Negroes in his “private” jail before Bobby Kennedy got into the act. Oh yeah, Scalia will be on the bench to pass judgment on whether the Dickster might have to reveal whether he met with Enron goniff and Trilateral shill “Kenny Boy” Lay while formulating our AADD president’s energy policy. In Latin America, they’ve got a phrase that describes it best… ola de corrupcion.
posted by Groom
5:38 PM
Baghdad 500
It's a record we could have done without, but American deaths in Iraq have just passed the 500 mark, with three more today. Could it be any clearer that the Bush administration's reckless invasion has been a complete disaster? Forced to back down from its bellicose claims of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist links, the administration quickly grabbed the "bringing democracy to the Middle East" band-aid but that too is unraveling. So, now it's back to the "irrelevant" UN for an exit strategy. Has there ever been a more incompetent foreign policy team in Washington?
posted by Jerry Bowles
10:12 AM
Bush crew practicing to jack next election?
The following piece by Larry Margasak of The Associated Press ran on the wire last Sunday. None of the bought-and-paid-fors’ in the corporate media gave it a ride. If the Bush-Rove-Cheney-Rummy “axis of deceit” is altering Pentagon electronic data records on a massive scale before campaign season just think how easy it will be for them to jack the next election.
Pentagon auditors caught altering own files by Larry Margasak, AP
WASHINGTON- Pentagon auditors spent 1,139 hours altering their own files in order to pass an internal review, say investigators who found that the accounting sleuths engaged in just the kind of wasteful activity they are supposed to expose.
When the auditors in the New York City office learned well in advance which files a review team would check, they spent the equivalent of more than 47 days doctoring the papers and updating records from several audits, the Defense Department’s inspector general concluded. Administrative staff, audit supervisors and other employees also participated in the scheme.
The Fabrication at the Defense Contract Audit Agency “certainly violates the spirit and intent” of government auditing standards and rules on ethical conduct, according to the inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press.
The defense agency, which audits government contracts, is the same one that recently reported that Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, may have overcharged the Army as much as $61 million for gasoline in Iraq.
The audit agency ran up some charges of its own when its auditors worked on altering the records.
The task of rewriting the files was so daunting that auditors came in from other offices to help make the changes, costing taxpayers more than $1,600 in travel expenses.
The agency “is supposed to be the watchdog for defense contracts,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a constant critic of government waste. “Altering audit work papers could undermine the accuracy of cost reports. Falsifying official reports is a crime, and those involved must be held accountable.”
To stop any fabrications in the future, the review teams only give 48 hours advance notice of the files they want to inspect. The advance time under the old policy was much longer.
Discipline was proposed for the manager who directed the alterations, but was never imposed because the official resigned, the report said.
Daniel Tucciarone, executive officer of the audit agency, said a second senior management official who “had not been forthcoming and acted inappropriately to conceal information” was punished.
Tucciarone told the AP that the agency took “appropriate disciplinary action in all cases” but added that federal privacy law prevented him from releasing such information about individual employees.
The revisions were so pervasive that the work continued even after the review team arrived to inspect the auditors files. The New York branch manager directed a senior auditor to delete electronic backup files of original documents, the inspector general said.
The report said agency employees believed that “upgrading” the working papers was a normal and acceptable practice and that they did not try to hide what they were doing.
The inspector general uncovered the file deletions following a tip to a fraud, waste and abuse hotline.
This is not the first time that Pentagon anti-waste investigators were found to have altered documents.
The AP reported that in 2001 that the inspector general’s office itself destroyed documents and replaced them with fakes to avoid embarrassment in a review of its work.
posted by Groom
6:11 AM
Friday, January 16, 2004
Just Wondering
Anybody besides me believe that Shrub "turns in" around 9 o'clock every night so he can spend the next couple of hours nursing a six pack of longnecked Lone Stars and downing 400 packets of those US Airways pretzels?
posted by Jerry Bowles
7:39 PM
Why does the Western media seem not to care about the hows and whens of Saddam’s capture?
Where are the heirs of Woodward and Bernstein these days? The “third world” press seems to be very interested in the story of how and when Saddam was actually cornered and the U.S. press seems to be perfectly satisfied with a photo op of the U.S. soldiers dragging Saddam out of his hole. Beyond the fact that it appears that this was as phony a news event as the K-B Bush toy landing on the aircraft carrier, it is also important in that it appears that the Kurds, who at this point in their history must have the survival instincts of cockroaches, have brokered a deal with the U.S. that inevitably will affect the other players in Iraq, as well as Turkey.
posted by Evelyn
7:05 PM
Coup de What?
Do you suppose the military is trying to tell Shrub something? A couple of days ago one of the top analysts at the Army War College published a savage critique of the invasion of Iraq, calling it a "strategic mistake." Now, five uniformed military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have filed a brief with the Supreme Court asserting that President Bush worked to "create a legal black hole" and overstepped his constitutional authority as commander in chief in the way he set up the program for military tribunals.
posted by Jerry Bowles
6:59 PM
Dean “Loses” Iowa
Vince Lombardi was only half right when he said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” So Dean loses Iowa even if he wins because he didn’t win the “expectations” race. Remember how Bush beat Gore by meeting or exceeding low expectations created by the press, the public—and it own political machine?
Now with CNN, Zogby and other polls showing the Dean lead has turned into a four-man race, winning the expectations race is just as important as winning the delegate race. Kerry and Edwards, assuming they stay in the pack, will be able to claim a “win” because they did better than expected. Gephardt has to come in first to win or he loses. Same for Dean, except a narrow win for him is a loss.
The expectations race is not fair, but it’s the one the press plays and opponents play. With New Hampshire presenting the same problem for Dean as his lead dwindles there, still in double digits, but dwindling, he has to find a way to win on both fronts, or as Yogi Berra, another sports legend would say, “It’s going to get late early out there.”
posted by Josh
12:26 PM
As the Worm Turns
Well, well, well. Look who's gone crawling to the UN on his belly begging Kofi and the lads to come back to Baghdad and intervene with that crazy-like-a-fox country preacher Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani so the U.S. can get the hell out of there and Shrub can get re-elected. The Bremer-man, his bad-ass self, as things look more and more desperate and al-Sistani realizes that he's got the upper hand. One word from this bad dude and the Shi'tes will hit the fan and the last few months of Sunni rebellion will look like Jimmy's Sunday school class for three-year-olds. What was that word again? "Irrelevant?"
posted by Jerry Bowles
8:00 AM
Why it’s still the “Bush flu”
it's 3 degrees in New York... and you know your flu vaccine isn't protecting you...
In their comments to my post about the “Bush flu” Bob in Canada and Ben said that it isn’t fair to blame Shrubby and call the epidemic the “Bush flu.” Jerry says it’s important to realize that “fair” isn’t part of the GOP agenda (see Ed Gillespie for details). Here’s why the Fujian strain is still the Bush flu.
Canadian Bob says it isn’t fair to blame Shrubby because it takes nearly a year to produce a flu vaccine that can handle a particular strain. But the US has the know-how to get the job done in eight weeks. The problem… the Bush administration FDA hasn’t approved the technology for the general marketplace. Since they knew this year’s vaccine was a dud from the git-go one can only wonder why Shrubby or public health guru Dick Carmona, HHS honcho Tommy Thomson and others on the Hill didn’t take the lead and lean on FDA.
Ben posted in his comment that the doctors who work on the vaccine have no political agenda. It’s the drug manufacturers and the some of the public health bureaucrats who have the political agendas. In 2002, the two global flu vaccine manufacturers, Aventis Pasteur and Chiron got burned overproducing. So this year there was a “shortage.” A Congressional hearing would throw some sunshine on that.
Perhaps the best reason to continue to call it the “Bush flu” is the Bush administration itself. There was a lot of talk late last Fall about importing quantities of the dud flue vaccine due to the “shortage” in the US and the large number of cases, and child deaths. But that drumbeat in the media and inside the Beltway stopped when it came time for the White House and its political operators to get the president’s “Medicare prescription drug benefit” through Congress. When your biggest campaign contributors are paying you to make sure that it’s illegal for senior citizens and other Medicare beneficiaries to import drugs from Canada and Mexico because they are “substandard” the last thing you want to do is import large quantities of “foreign” flu vaccine into the US. Bush flu… like Groucho Marx used to say… you bet your life.
posted by Groom
5:37 AM
Thursday, January 15, 2004
We Shall Overcome
Although no one seems to have invited him, our uniter-not-divider-in-chief is making a hastily arranged visit to Martin Luther King's grave in Atlanta to lay a wreath and "pay his respects." People in Atlanta are fuming. Seems the Shrubster is really in town for a $2,000-a-person fundraiser. Spending five or ten minutes at Dr. King's grave (and three hours hustling re-election money) allows him to write off the trip as "official" and we, the Americans taxpayers, get to pay for what is a flagrant campaign junket and graveside photo op.
These folks are way past shame but this one takes the prize for sheer political tackiness.
posted by Jerry Bowles
3:04 PM
No vaccine for the “Bush flu”
here's one Dr. Dean ought to jump on
Cold outside. “Free market” demand for oil is driving prices so high OPEC is having to talk them down. Sneezing. Body aches. Can’t afford health insurance or prescription drugs? Credit cards too maxed out to go to Urgent Care? Thinking about finally getting that flu shot you postponed because of the “shortage”… oldsters and children first. Don’t bother. The vaccine doesn’t work. It never did. We hinted at such last month.
Now, in what will soon become a major public health fiasco for the Bush administration, a CDC study reports that this year’s flu vaccine is protecting from 0% to 14% of those tested. Instead of blowing $12 billion to jump start a “lunar colony” maybe we ought to be spending that money on making sure we are out in front of the public health basics like getting the flu vaccine right. Average Americans have been panicking to get their kids vaccinated with a vaccine that doesn't work. Shades of Harry Lime in Graham Greene's classic "The Third Man." How many kids will die this winter from the Bush flu?
Every public health official interviewed on every TV station in every market that did a canned piece on “flu season” lied or, in softer terms, fudged the facts on this issue. Is a shortage of flu vaccine (even one that doesn’t work) a public health issue, a national security issue or a “homeland” security issue? Does our AADD president even know, or care? What is evident is that the Bush administration fumbled the ball, putting Americans at risk and the fuck up warrants a Congressional investigation. Nurse Frist, is there a doctor in the house? This is an issue tailor made for Dr. Dean.
posted by Groom
5:37 AM
Ghosts of Clintons Past
Want to know who is advising Howard Dean or Wes Clark or those other annoying people on foreign policy? Check out this article and hard-to-read chart (which blue is that again?) from Foreign Policy magazine.
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:10 AM
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Curses, Foiled Again
Curses, foiled again.
posted by Jerry Bowles
6:03 PM
Clinton-style “I feel your pain” tactics help Clark in AZ
Conducted during a major Clark TV ad blitz, an Eyewitness News 4/Arizona Daily Star poll by SurveyUSA indicates that out of 412 voters “certain” to cast ballots in Arizona’s February 3 primary, 39 percent said they would vote for Wes Clark while 32 percent said they would back Howard Dean. Released yesterday, the poll has a margin of error of 4.9 percent. This coencides with a poll released in New Hampshire which indicates that Clark is gaining on Dean.
In previous Arizona polls that found Clark running behind Dean but close to the margin of error the Arizona Daily Star and other Arizona newspapers referred to the poll results as a “statistical dead heat. Now, with Clark ahead among 412 voters by two percentage points above the margin of error the Arizona Daily Star headline reads “Clark beats Dean in AZ poll.” Fair and balanced…
Clark’s surge can be attributed to two factors, namely, angry attacks from other Democratic party candidates who accuse Howard Dean of having an “anger problem” and Clark’s well-crafted “soft and cuddly” ads where he mimics Bill Clinton, reaching out with a casual voice to convince “average Americans” that he understands their predicament and feels their pain. Let's see what happens to Dr. Dean after Jimmy Carter lays on hands.
posted by Groom
5:36 PM
Pray for Dr. Dean
Go to your local Baptist Church tonight, it's Wednesday and the faithful gather for a mid-week prayer meeting. Dr. Dean needs our prayers. I just heard CNN report that he's going to a Sunday School class taught by Jimmy "lusted-in-my-heart" Carter as part of the photo op on Sunday. Is this a Dukasis moment or what?
Note to Dean: Don't confuse Job with jobs, and stick to the gospel according to Dr. Luke. (As the son of a preacher man I know that the credited author of the Gospel of Luke was a physician in the Dean mode.)
posted by Josh
4:39 PM
What Kind of a President Would Clark Make?
While much is known about Dean's management style, we know little about how Wes Clark would manage the U.S. government. Some may say the question doesn't matter because the photo op in Plains, Georgia, with Dean and former President Carter this coming Sunday is the kind of endorsement that will put Dean over the top and pave the way for one big happy bandwagon--big enough for everyone except Gephardt. (P.S. Just don't schedule it during the football playoffs!) Others may believe the presidency should not be occupied by anyone in the military, although a dozen past presidents have been generals, including our alpha president George Washington.
I contend it does matter, especially now that Dean poll watchers should be looking over their shoulders because someone is rapidly gaining on them. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Clark is closing in on Dean having gained eight percentage points within the past two weeks. The gap is now only four percentage points, almost within the margin of error in the polling. And New Hampshire is in Dean's back yard. All Clark has to do is come in a close second or third to be in serious contention.
So what do we know about the kind of president Clark would make? I don't know the man and haven't worked for him, but there are two key elements in his style that I have studied over the years and they signal that Clark would be a very different kind of president from both Dean and the current temporary resident of the White House. One, Clark talks about leadership, not the presidency or being commander-in-chief. Two, Clark, by discipline, training and experience is a trainer and a leader--30 years worth.
Much was made about Bush as the first MBA president and his management style. His MBA was the result of a few years of classroom training and he obviously hasn't applied much of what he learned. Now we have a real MBA observer, Paul O'Neill, to thank for further insights on Bush's indifferent leadership style. Dean, on the other hand, had a few more years of classroom training and residency application, then became a doctor-governor, maybe the first in the nation. Dean says his medical training informs his policies and practices, but he downplays, for better or for worse, his medical discipline.
Clark, a Rhodes Scholar like Clinton, is schooled in the theory and practice of scenario planning and scenario training. While this highly sophisticated management technique was first developed by Shell Oil Company in the 80s, the U.S. Army has developed it into a science. All Army officers are required to go through the training and then train others in return. All untested Army programs and all new Army situations need to go through scenario planning and testing BEFORE they are used or implemented.
In the U.S. Army scenario planning is a form of participative management (democracy) that openly assesses the effectiveness of new programs or strategies before they are implemented or adopted. The process involves an comprehensive assessment of what work in the dry run and what didn't work and why. And this is the key dimension: the analysis is on multiple fronts to determine if the failure was a function of leadership, training, communications, technology, or other factors. Once identified, corrective action can be taken collectively.
I'm familiar with the general process of scenario planning and I've been through a few exercises. With Clark making a move now in the primaries, I sense he has taken his troops through this process to assess why he fell back in the pack after a good start. What we are now seeing is Clark benefiting from his own scenario analysis. Look out, Dr. Dean.
posted by Josh
1:29 PM
Healthy Marriages
Having saved the environment through his "Healthy Forests" initiative, our con-man-in- chief now proposes to revitalize the institution of marriage with $1.5 billion election year sop to the Christian right designed, supposedly, to promote "healthy" marriages. No definition of a healthy marriage was immediately forthcoming but one assumes that it is the kind of marriage where Ozzie, Harriet, Dave and Rickie turn off the TV and gather around the table at 6 o'clock every night and Ozzie says grace and everybody tells amusing anecdotes about what they did that day. ("Gee, dad, I blew coach in the shower after basketball practice.") Oops, how did that "homosexual" stuff get in there. There are no gay Republican Christians. Everyone knows that.
What we have here, friends, is a $1.5 billion taxpayer-funded payoff to the meddling, busybody, bedroom-creepers of the Christian virtue squad to avoid Bush having to say that he supports an constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
posted by Jerry Bowles
10:56 AM
Bremer craps out
In a nation that spends as much per year on dieting as we do on the war in Iraq, “administrator” Paul Bremer has run out of ideas on how to return the oil rich nation back to its people. That’s the price you pay when your boss tries to sell the “fad war” like a “fad diet.” When one factors in the Twin Towers of foreign debt and the trade deficit, Bremer is at the table playing with scared money, money from US taxpayers who had serious objections about how the Bush administration was running the war prior to the capture (which may have possibly been staged if we are to believe the Kurds) of Saddam.
David Mack, a US diplomat who has served two stints in Iraq told The Guardian “They (the Bush administration) are running out of ideas. They had obviously hoped the people they are working closely with in the Iraqi governing council would be able to exercise more influence than they have in brokering some kind of arrangement.”
Wes Clark’s latest ad brags that he’s led troops into battle and that he promises to get us out of this mess. It’s a pretty big stretch from Kosovo to a soon-to-be-balkanized Iraq. Just as he tacitly supported the Bush-Cheney-Rummy lies while a TV analyst, Clark didn’t voice any objections to the crew of crooks, criminals and holier than thous’ who were part of the Iraq lobby when he was soldiering during Clinton’s watch. Do we want to elect a president who might, unwittingly, touch off World War III under the guise of “getting us out of this mess.” It nearly happened in Kosovo.
posted by Groom
5:49 AM
Supremes 1, Immigrants 0
Let’s hope that the Supreme Court was just having a bad day on Friday when it refused to consider whether the government properly withheld names and other details of hundreds of people detained after 9/11. The roundup and detention of more than 1,200 immigrants – most of them Muslim men of Arab or South Asian origin – in the weeks immediately following the September 11 attacks was a grave injustice and an outrageous assault on the Sixth Amendment that cannot be allowed to stand. If John Ashcroft can round up everybody named Mohammed and help them indefinitely without telling their families where they are or allowing them access to a lawyer, he can do the same thing to you and your momma.
More than 700 of those unfortunates swept up in the panic following 9/11 were held for routine visa violations, many under a regulation allowing the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to hold individuals for an extended period without charge. Many were denied prompt access to attorneys and some remained in custody for months pending “clearance” by the government even after immigration judges had granted them bail or issued them with deportation or “voluntary departure” orders.
The choice of immigration court was not accidental. According to the Supreme Court, deportation is not a criminal punishment; therefore all of the full set of rights that apply to the criminal process don't apply. For example, criminal detainees can’t be held in secret but immigration detainees can be…and were. Criminal defendants have a right to a public trial and access to lawyers. The rounded-up immigrants were denied these rights.
In November 2001, the Department of Justice closed immigration hearings to the public and press. Even immediate family members were denied access or information – even though some detainees were not even accused of a crime, but rather were being held as “material witnesses.”
It was not until 18 months later that the public learned the ugly truth—most of the detainees were held for minor immigration violations, deprived of basic rights, and were the victims of serious physical and verbal abuse while they were being held. In April 2003, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice issued a report entitled “The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks.” The report confirmed what everyone with an ounce of common decency said at the time—the Justice Department used 9/11 as a pretext for a scary and pretty much indiscriminate witch hunt for illegal aliens during which time a lot of extremely nasty and “un-American” abuses were tolerated, if not encouraged, by the FBI and Justice Department lawyers.
The OIG report found “significant problems” with the roundup and said that the FBI made little attempt to distinguish between aliens who were subjects of the terrorism investigation and those encountered coincidentally, and that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) did not consistently serve the detainees with notice of the charges under which they were being held within its stated goal of 72 hours. The average wait for those arrested in New York City and housed in Brooklyn was 15 days, the report said. It took the bureau an average of 80 days to clear prisoners for removal or release because of understaffing and because the process was "not given sufficient priority," the report said.
The report also found that immigrants arrested in New York and housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn faced "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" from some guards as well as "unduly harsh" detention policies. A total of 184 inmates who were held in Brooklyn were subjected to highly restrictive, 23-hour "lockdown," the report found. They were limited to one phone call a week, and they were put in handcuffs, leg irons and heavy chains any time they moved outside their cells.
A Supplemental Report on September 11 Detainees' Allegations of Abuse at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York issued by the OIG in December 2003 further confirmed the worst of the treatment. After reviewing tapes kept at the Brooklyn MDC, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported that some Bureau of Prisons officers slammed inmates against walls, pressed their heads against walls, bent their hands and wrists into painful positions, lifted them off the floor by the restraints used to bind them, stepped on their leg chains so as to trip them and left detainees in their cells in restraints for hours at a time -- all in violation of bureau rules. They verbally abused them and used strip searches and restraints as punishments. And guards hung a T-shirt on a wall with an American flag and the words "These colors don't run" on it -- and pressed inmates' faces against it while searching them. The report also found that jail personnel improperly taped meetings between detainees and their lawyers and overused strip searches to punish them.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court refusal of this case does not set a precedent and you can bet that this issue will be back around again in some different legal form. There’s too much at stake to just let this one ride.
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:09 AM
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Strange Bedfellows
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida filed a motion yesterday claiming that state law enforcement officers violated Rush Limbaugh’s privacy rights by seizing the radio talk show host's medical records as part of a criminal investigation involving alleged “doctor-shopping.”
Do you suppose Rushbo will send a thank you note?
posted by Jerry Bowles
6:25 PM
Democrats for Bush
Evelyn's Republicans for Dean post yesterday raised the intriquing possibility that moderate Republicans who feel excluded by Shrub's radical right agenda could be enticed into the Dean camp. David Brooks' column in the New York Times this morning throws a bit of cold water on that notion. The problem, simply put, is that Democrats are deeply divided on the major issues while Republicans solidly support Bush and his agenda.
Brooks cites a recent Pew Center study, which found that 85 percent of Republicans support the war in Iraq, 82 percent believe that pre-emptive war is justified, and 72 percent believe the U.S. is justified in holding terror suspects without trial. According to the same Pew survey, 54 percent of Democrats oppose the war in Iraq, but 39 percent support it. Forty-four percent of Democrats oppose the pre-emptive war doctrine, but 52 percent support it. Forty-seven percent of Democrats oppose holding terror suspects without trial, but 46 percent are in favor.
Gephardt, Kerry and Lieberman may be uninspiring candidates but they are not wrong when they say that Dean is swimming against the current. The question, really, is are there enough of us in the relatively small, well-educated, blog-reading Internet elite to make up for the "mainstream" Democrats who will go for Shrub because they think he's being tough on the brown guys?
posted by Jerry Bowles
11:24 AM
Quote of the Week
"You can't have a war, cut taxes, have the economy in a garbage pail and spend billions going into space," said Dallas Hodgins, a 76-year-old retired University of Michigan researcher from Flint, Mich. "How are they going to pay for all this? I don't see how it's morally justifiable. In Flint, there isn't a school roof that doesn't leak." New York Times, January 13, 2004
posted by Jerry Bowles
9:32 AM
Latin “summit” …another Bush fund raiser
Latin leaders saw their own agenda largely ignored by White House minions at the “Special Latin Summit.“ Job one, it seems, for Shrubby was to denigrate Fidel and tap into right wing Cuban bongo bucks for his campaign. More evangelical shekels will be flowing in now that our Spanish-speaking lider told Latins- on the eve of the Pope’s visit to Guadalajara, Mexico- that everyone in the hemisphere has a “god given right to freedom.” And don’t we know that Ahmanson, Ashcroft, Preacher Danforth and the rest of the Kompassionte Kristian Kabal never met a Roman Catholic or Mason they didn’t like.
Save for Mexico becoming part of North America rather than an appendage of Latin America, the “Inter-American” system really hasn’t changed much since Nelson Rockefeller and his pals organized it with a little help from Carmen Miranda in the late 1930s and during the war. It’s still very clubby, very elitist, and still focused on who controls land, who controls the armies and who owns the politicians. More thirty seven cents an hour jobs for workers in "free trade zones" in Honduras and Guatemala that make clothes sold at US discount stores for low-wage America. Folks who will be able to buy more clothes made by 37 cents/hour labor when they get Wes Clark's $7 minimum wage.
When the United States wanted to move its embassy out of downtown Buenos Aires, it bought land from the Argentine Rural Society, the association of the nation’s wealthiest landowners (cattle and agribusiness), the folks who kept Evita Peron’s beloved descamisados (the poor, shirtless ones) shirtless for over a century. When the Reagan administration made plans to move the embassy in Santiago, Chile from downtown to the “burbs” it was a big plot of land in Las Condes, where General Pinochet has his crib.
Yesterday’s clusterfuck brought out more angry economics from the Shrub club. The US voiced concern over Latin America welching on its huge debt. Never mind the Twin Towers of US debt and trade deficits. Why should Argentina and Brazil listen to what Washington tells them about their debts when the IMF is warning the US that its own economy is in third world status.
No matter where populist leader “Lula” da Silva leads Brazil, we’re not going to see Jeb Bush’s orange juice buddies stop buying huge quantities of concentrate from them. If it’s “not from concentrate” than what is it from?
And with Venezuela holding more oil reserves than Iraq, you wonder what Condi Rice, Elliot Abrams and Otto Juan Reich have been smoking for them to think that big oil is going to stop buying from Hugo Chavez just because there’s an NSC finding suggesting he’s wacko populist thug in bed with the drug cartels and has a bad case of Castro cooties.
Sadly, for Latin nations who want to “kiss the ring” of the US leader, 24 hours of “Special Latin Summit” is tantamount to Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame. Great soundbites and news articles back home in Panama City and Santiago.
But the real “Inter-American” system is all about illegal immigration, capital flight (to US and EU banks) in order to avoid local taxation, recycling narcodollars into the US economy, maintaining strong armies that pay lip service to democratic values and the huge “underground” economy.
With great hubris, the US proposed that the region agree to kick corrupt governments out of the Organization of American States (another powerless relic of the “Inter-American” system). Too bad Dick Cheney wasn’t flown in to make that call.
posted by Groom
5:11 AM
Of Compassionate Conservatives, Class Warfare, and Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: Illegal Immigration
Buried at the bottom of a New York Times story reprinted in the International Herald Tribune on Friday are three statements that spell out the implications of the George Bush pander-to-Hispanics-and-do-my-contributors-another-favor proposal for dealing with illegal immigration.
Howard Dean says, "The president's proposal will help big corporations who currently employ undocumented workers. But it does nothing to place hard-working immigrants on the path to citizenship and would create a permanent underclass of service workers with second-class status."
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says that the plan, " deepens the potential for abuse and exploitation of these workers, while undermining wages and labor protections for all workers."
Federation for American Immigration Reform spokesman David Ray says, "It's going to have a huge downward pressure on wages and working conditions. It will basically allow employers unfettered access to cheap, exploitable workers. If they claim they can't fill a job with an American, they can fill it with a foreign worker."
Plus, I add, the easiest way to do that is to lower the wage and eliminate benefits to the point that no not-yet-starving American worker will take the job, opening the way for labor contractors like those who supply clean-up crews to Walmart. Don't need no lousy overpriced Mexicans either; Chinese snakeheads can deliver the bodies cheaper--by the container load.
What a great way to create one of those things Marx talked about--"the reserve army of the unemployed." Great weapon for class warfare, too--the top-down kind.
posted by John
3:42 AM
Soros is "Keen on Dean"
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — After months of criticizing President Bush and contributing millions of dollars to organizations that oppose his policies, the philanthropist George Soros said on Monday that he believed three of the Democrats running for president — Howard Dean, John Kerry and Gen. Wesley K. Clark — could generate enough support to defeat Mr. Bush in November.
"There is no doubt about Howard Dean's abilities and qualities for being president," Mr. Soros said after giving a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sharply critical of the administration's foreign policy. "Other candidates are also qualified. I'm also a great advocate of Clark and Kerry."
All three, he said, had views very similar to his own. "I'm not picking one particular candidate," he added, "but I am keen on Dean."
See the rest of the story in today's Washington Post.
posted by John
1:39 AM
The Dean Machine's Global Reach
Not the freshest news but still fun.
The Electronic Connection Era, Part 8
Nihon Keizai Shimbun, January 9, 2004
Here's something totally cool. To realize how cool, you have to know
that the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) is Japan's equivalent of the
Wall Street Journal and this story was top-left front page.
(Translation courtesy of The Word Works, Ltd.)
===================
On the evening of January 7, some twenty American residents of Japan
gathered in a restaurant in the Jingumae area of Tokyo. Their purpose
was supporting former Vermont governor Howard Dean, a Democratic
candidate for president of the United States. After each of the
participants stated their views, the organizer called them to action:
“It’s only a few days until January 19 and the Iowa caucuses, the start
of the presidential primary season. Let’s reach out to Iowans and ask
for their votes.”
US election battle in Tokyo
Actually, most of the people there were meeting for the first time.
This gathering in Japan of people so far from their home country was
made possible by a US Web services company called Meetup. Its service
has become hugely popular by making it possible to reach out, via the
Internet, to people with shared interests, bring them together, and
build relationships. The Dean campaign team saw its potential and is
utilizing it to organize meetings of Dean supporters, attracting a
total of 170,000 participants so far. On that January 7, Dean Meetups
like the one in Tokyo were held in about a thousand locations in the
United States and elsewhere abroad.
Dean, who is also using the Internet effectively for fundraising, has
secured the highest levels of support among the Democratic candidates.
posted by John
1:33 AM
Uncommon Common Sense from the Army War College
"The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate US military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security," Dr. Jeffrey Record, visiting scholar at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College. Full pdf text.
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:01 AM
Monday, January 12, 2004
A Short History of Blogging
Middle Ages
1993 – Al Gore invents the Internet
1994 – Dave Winer starts DaveNet. Model T of web logs. Sample post: "XML+RPC+WEB+ODB+WIN=MAC"
April 1, 1997 – Dave Winer starts Scripting News which he says is the longest continuously running weblog on the Internet. Sample post: “Fat Pages are Our New File Format”
Renaissance
1997- Somebody named Jorn Barger comes up with the name “blog” as a contraction of web log. Barger disappears. Name sticks.
1998 – A handful of people who spend too much time indoors begin linking to each other and exchanging ideas. Most of them are named Jason. Because participation is limited to those who know how to write code and are moderately social, there are only 23 weblogs at the beginning of 1999 and their content is mostly XML+RPC+WEB+ODB+WIN=MAC.
1999 – Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan start Pyra Labs to create a Web-based tool to help project managers share information with co-workers. While Meg is on vacation in July, Evan is goofing off and creates the software we now call Blogger. Everybody agrees that Blogger is kick-ass and wants a free copy but nobody can figure out how to make money from it.
Modern Days
January, 2001 – George Bush is appointed president by the Supreme Court. Blogger has 75,000 registered users.
2002 – Liberated by software so simple even a moron can use it, Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds and other political junkies, journalists, consultants and exasperated citizens by the thousands take to their keyboards in full-rant mode.
February, 2003 – Google buys Blogger, which then has 1.1 million registered users. Everybody agrees it’s a cute thing but wonders how Google plans to make money at it.
2004 – Howard Dean demonstrates once more that the Internet changes everything.
posted by Jerry Bowles
5:35 PM
Memo to Howard: Think Republicans for Dean
To visitors of this blog it is not news that the holy rollers in the Bush administration doctored intelligence to justify going into the beast of Babylon or employed sales tactics that would make a car dealer blush in promoting a tax plan to turn us into a banana republic. But it still makes news when more reasonable judges like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the IMF get into the act .
Pause to consider that both of these organizations are stuffed not with “leftists” and Democrats, but intelligent Republicans of the old Bush I/Council on Foreign Relations school. (Forgive me if I have overlooked something, but I am not finding any refutation of the Carnegie report by its Board.)
Add to that the sentiments expressed by Christie Whitman in today's NY Times suggesting that "moderate" Republicans are feeling a tad left out of the Bush zeitgeist.
What if Howard Dean, the presumptive Democratic nominee, were to soon focus not on the “undecideds” who are probably idiots anyway but to go straight to the “moderate” Republicans whose internationalist views have been ignored and who have been “red-lined” by organizations like the Club for Growth? These guys are probably secret Clark supporters but could be wooed without too much effort by an intelligent guy who stayed awake in his poli sci class. Besides, they have gravitas, they have bipartisan glamour, and they have cash. Without compromising any position substantially, Dean could represent the Republican wing of the Republican party. Evelyn Keyes
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:05 PM
Is Dean vs. Bush a Real Choice for America?
Many would have us think, including The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol in a post here last week, that the best choice for the country is between Bush and Dean because they are so opposite and thereby present a real choice, not the echo of past elections. I disagree, mainly because Dean’s positioning as the challenger is too extreme and based on the past. He wants to fix everything when many, if not most Americans, don’t think everything is broken. Moreover, the Bush bus is already steamrolling to the middle, making Dean’s positions appear even more exaggerated. I’m not talking about cognoscenti nuances, but the broader, established perceptions of the general public within which most Americans think and act.
Americans insist on choice, but moderate their choosing. Americans are optimistic and live in the immediate future—yesterday is history. We forgive and forget. Americans are very practical. We aren’t interested in perfection, we like to make things work.
Based on 10 years of studies and research that I did for my book, The Stuff Americans Are Made Of (Macmillan Books, 1996), we know that practically all Americans love the range of choice that is uniquely available in this country, but a plurality, often a majority, exercise their actual choices within a narrower range of options. We give voice to choice, but act (vote) within a safer range of options. That's one reason there are no large third parties in America. We welcome micro-breweries but choose Budweiser; we like the Beetle but buy the SUV (which not incidentally from a marketing point of view all tend to look alike), and we fantasize about wilderness adventures but go to Disney World.
We welcome the new as a way to expand the range of choices, but we predictably stick to the old or a recognizable version of the old. That is why companies invest so much in branding and brand promotion. The one exception is telecommunications and technology where yesterday’s gizmo is today’s baggage.
The Dean/Bush choice is too extreme, on both personality and policy. It’s not a choice, say between flavors of ice-cream, a moderate range of taste and texture, but a choice say between pomegranates and ice-cream, an extreme range. Americans have come to accommodate a public debate on the traditional range of choices in governance and public policy, such as abortion, minimum wage, school vouchers, drilling for oil in the wilderness. And, yes, there has been an echo in many past elections leading to a vote made more on personality than on policy. However, Dean significantly broadens the range of issues the electorate must face because he has a personal stake in them, such as civil unions (gay marriages), the complete wrongheadness of the war in Iraq, repeal of ALL tax cuts (it’s harder to take back something you have already given), and so on.
Dean further complicates matters because he sees the choices in black or white. Choice positioned in right or wrong terms does not work for Americans. Positioning choice as a process does work. Dean does not say, as he should, “We have a choice here. If we stay in Iraq it means this, if we leave it means this. I propose we do this and here is why.” Instead he just yells: “Take the country back.” (Note the use of the word “back” when as governor he ran successfully on “take Vermont forward”!)
What is a clearer real choice? Clark vs. Bush. Clark is new to national politics, a true outsider, and his style and temperament draw a safer contrast with Bush that is more favorable for Clark than for Dean. Former governors become presidents, but only once in the last century did a general become a president, and he weren’t that bad, not the greatest, but better than some governors. Clark is the opposite of Dean and still presents a clear choice with Bush. He is more forward looking, calls for new tax cuts and among other things for a new definition of patriotism, one that welcomes choices. On the critical issues of war and terrorism, Clark gives credit to Bush on the front end of Afghanistan, but lays out a different choice on the back end where Bush is bogged down. In addition, he talks about the processes he would use to define the choices and make the choices, and his military training would better enable him to make course corrections and field adjustments. In this manner he presents a choice in a less confrontational, in-your-face way, a choice that would be more acceptable to the SUV-driving, Budweiser-drinking, Disney-going adventure seeker in his Nike shoes and Chino pants.
posted by Josh
12:03 AM
Sunday, January 11, 2004
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