Hooman Majd: Why We Are Going to Go to War, Part II | The Huffington Post:
"For Iran to make any public contact with the U.S. (and at such a high level) after twenty-seven years is in itself an overture, even if all the letter says is 'Mr. Bush, please convert to Islam. Shia Islam, preferably. Yours Truly, Mahmoud.' The Iranian regime has based its entire credibility; with its own population, with the Islamic world, and with the Third World on its independence from U.S. hegemony and as non-aligned but proud nation that deserves the respect of the world. A sudden and open embrace of even the idea of talking to the 'Global Arrogance', formerly known as the 'Great Satan', should not be taken lightly. Of course the letter contains 'history, philosophy and religion', Condi: Iranians are proud of their history (and resentful of America's involvement in it), they are proud of their philosophers and poets, and the government is, after all, a religious one. If anyone at the White House or the State Department knew anything about Iranians, they would know that a desire to talk about these things with the U.S. is indicative of a genuine willingness on the part of Iran's leadership to begin a dialogue with the United States that might lead to better relations and, of course, a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue, even if that isn't mentioned directly in the letter.
There's a word in Farsi that has no proper translation into English but that every Iranian knows the meaning of: ta'arouf. Ta'arouf is social convention in Iran; it can be nothing but small talk, or frustratingly incomprehensible back-and-forth niceties uttered in any social encounter. It can be a long-winded prelude to what is actually the matter at hand, whether the matter be a serious negotiation or just ordering dinner. It can also be polite entreaties, or overtures, and on all counts Mr. Ahmadinejad just made ta'arouf to Mr. Bush. For Mr. Bush to refuse to counter-ta'arouf may, to the Iranians, seem extremely rude, but Americans need not be concerned with that. What Americans need to be concerned with is whether there is anything, and I mean anything, that will change the minds of the men who want to go to war."
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Notes for converts from Huffington Post
Notes for Converts
Jane Smiley
The Huffington Post: 03.21.2006
Bruce Bartlett, The Cato Institute, Andrew Sullivan, George Packer,
William F. Buckley, Sandra Day O'Connor, Republican voters in
Indiana and all the rest of you newly-minted dissenters from Bush's
faith-based reality seem, right now, to be glorying in your outrage,
which is always a pleasure and feels, at the time, as if it is
having an effect, but those of us who have been anti-Bush from day 1
(defined as the day after the stolen 2000 election) have a few
pointers for you that should make your transition more realistic.
1. Bush doesn't know you disagree with him. Nothing about you makes
you of interest to George W. Bush once you no longer agree with and
support him. No degree of relationship (father, mother, etc.), no
longstanding friendly intercourse (Jack Abramoff), no degree of
expertise (Brent Scowcroft), no essential importance (Tony Blair,
American voters) makes any difference. There is nothing you have to
offer that makes Bush want to know you once you have come to
disagree with him. Your opinions and feelings now exist in a world
entirely external to the mind of George W. Bush. You are now just
one of those "polls" that he pays no attention to. When you were on
his side, you thought that showed "integrity" on his part. It
doesn't. It shows an absolute inability to learn from experience.
2. Bush doesn't care whether you disagree with him. As a man who has
dispensed with the reality-based world, and is entirely protected by
his handlers from feeling the effects of that world, he is
indifferent to what you now think is real. Is the Iraq war a failure
and a quagmire? Bush doesn't care. Is global warming beginning to
affect us right now? So what. Have all of his policies with regard
to Iran been misguided and counter-productive? He never thinks about
it. You know that Katrina tape in which Bush never asked a question?
It doesn't matter how much you know or how passionately you feel or,
most importantly, what degree of disintegration you see around you,
he's not going to ask you a question. You and your ideas are dead to
him. You cannot change his mind. Nine percent of polled Americans
would agree with attacking Iran right now. To George Bush, that will
be a mandate, if and when he feels like doing it, because...
3. Bush does what he feels like doing and he deeply resents being
told, even politely, that he ought to do anything else. This is
called a "sense of entitlement". Bush is a man who has never been
anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and
cajoled into being president of the United States through his
connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own
purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of
American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of
perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done. He did not
complete his flight training, he failed at oil investing, he was a
front man and a glad-hander as a baseball owner. As the Governor of
Texas, he originated one educational program that turned out to be a
debacle; as the President of the US, his policies have constituted
one screw-up after another. You have stuck with him through all of
this, made excuses for him, bailed him out. From his point of view,
he is perfectly entitled by his own experience to a sense of
entitlement. Why would he ever feel the need to reciprocate? He's
never had to before this.
4. President Bush is your creation. When the US Supreme Court
humiliated itself in 2000 by handing the presidency to Bush even
though two of the justices (Scalia and Thomas) had open conflicts of
interest, you did not object. When the Bush administration adopted
an "Anything but Clinton" policy that resulted in ignoring and
dismissing all warnings of possible terrorist attacks on US soil,
you went along with and made excuses for Bush. When the Bush
administration allowed the corrupt Enron corporation to swindle
California ratepayers and taxpayers in a last ditch effort to
balance their books in 2001, you laughed at the Californians and
ignored the links between Enron and the administration. When it was
evident that the evidence for the war in Iraq was cooked and that
State Department experts on the Middle East were not behind the war
and so it was going to be run as an exercise in incompetence, you
continued to attack those who were against the war in vicious terms
and to defend policies that simply could not work. On intelligent
design, global warming, doctoring of scientific results to reflect
ideology, corporate tax giveaways, the K Street project, the illegal
redistricting of Texas, torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, the Terry
Schiavo fiasco, and the cronyism that led to the destruction of New
Orleans you have failed to speak out with integrity or honesty,
preferring power to truth at every turn. Bush does what he wants
because you have let him.
5. Tyranny is your creation. What we have today is the natural and
inevitable outcome of ideas and policies you have promoted for the
last generation. I once knew a guy who was still a Marxist in 1980.
Whenever I asked him why Communism had failed in Russia and China,
he said "Mistakes were made". He could not believe that Marxism
itself was at fault, just as you cannot believe that the ideology of
the unregulated free market has created the world we live in today.
You are tempted to say: "Mistakes have been made", but in fact,
psychologically and sociologically, no mistakes have been made. The
unregulated free market has operated to produce a government in its
own image. In an unregulated free market, for example, cheating is
merely another sort of advantage that, supposedly, market forces
might eventually "shake out" of the system. Of course, anyone with
common sense understands that cheaters do damage that sometimes
cannot be repaired before they are "shaken out", but according to
the principles of the unregulated free market, the victims of that
sort of damage are just out of luck and the damage that happens to
them is just a sort of "culling". It is no accident that our
government is full of cheaters--they learned how to profit from
cheating when they were working in corporations that were using
bribes, perks, and secret connections to cheat their customers of
good products, their neighbors of healthy environmental conditions,
their workers of workplace safety and decent paychecks. It was only
when the corporations began cheating their shareholders that any of
you squealed, but you should know from your own experience that the
unregulated free market as a "level playing field" was the biggest
laugh of the 20th century. No successful company in the history of
capitalism has ever favored open competition. When you folks
pretended, in the eighties, that you weren't using the ideology of
the free market to cover your own manipulations of the playing field
to your own advantage, you may have suckered yourselves, and even
lots of American workers, but observers of capitalism since Adam
Smith could have told you it wasn't going to work.
And then there was the way you used racism and religious intolerance
to gain and hold onto power. Nixon was cynical about it--taking the
party of Lincoln and reaching out to disaffected southern racists,
drumming up a backlash against the Civil Rights movement for the
sake of votes, but none of you has been any less vicious. Racism
might have died an unlamented death in this country, but you kept it
alive with phrases like "welfare queen" and your resistance to
affirmative action and taxation for programs to help people in our
country with nothing, or very little. You opted not to take the
moral high ground and recognize that the whole nation would be
better off without racism, but rather to increase class divisions
and racial divisions for the sake of your own comfort, pleasure, and
profit. You have used religion in exactly the same way. Instead of
strongly defending the constitutional separation of church and
state, you have encouraged radical fundamentalist sects to believe
that they can take power in the US and mold our secular government
to their own image, and get rich doing it. The US could have become
a moderating force in what seems now to be an inevitable battle
among the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions, but you have made
that impossible by flattering and empowering our own violent and
intolerant Christian right.
You have created an imperium, heedless of the most basic wisdom of
the Founding Fathers--that at the very least, no man is competent
enough or far-seeing enough to rule imperially. Checks and balances
were instituted by Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest of
them not because of some abstract distrust of power, but because
they had witnessed the screw-ups and idiocies of unchecked power.
You yourselves have demonstrated the failures of unchecked power--in
an effort to achieve it, you have repeatedly contravened the
expressed wishes of most Americans, who favor a moderate foreign
policy, reasonable domestic programs, a goverrnment that works,
environmental preservation, women's rights to contraception,
abortion, and a level playing field. Somehow you thought you could
mold the imperium to reflect your wishes, but guess what--that's
what an imperium is--one man rule. If you fear the madness of King
George, you have no recourse if you've given up the checks and
balances that you inherited and that were meant to protect you.
Your ideas and your policies have promoted selfishness, greed,
short-term solutions, bullying, and pain for others. You have looked
in the faces of children and denied the existence of a "common
good". You have disdained and denied the idea of "altruism". At one
time, our bureaucracy was full of people who had gone into
government service or scientific research for altruistic reasons--I
knew, because I knew some of them. You have driven them out and
replaced them with vindictive ignoramuses. You have lied over and
over about your motives, for example, making laws that hurt people
and calling it "originalist interpretations of the
Constitution" (conveniently ignoring the Ninth Amendment). You have
increased the powers of corporations at the expense of every other
sector in the nation and actively defied any sort of regulation that
would require these corporations to treat our world with care and
respect. You have made economic growth your deity, and in doing so,
you have accelerated the power of the corporations to destroy the
atmosphere, the oceans, the ice caps, the rainforests, and the
climate. You have produced CEOs in charge of lots of resources and
lots of people who have no more sense of reciprocity or connection
or responsibility than George W. Bush.
Now you are fleeing him, but it's only because he's got the earmarks
of a loser. Your problem is that you don't know why he's losing. You
think he's made mistakes. But no. He's losing because the ideas that
you taught him and demonstrated for him are bad ideas,
self-destructive ideas, and even suicidal ideas. And they are
immoral ideas. You should be ashamed of yourselves because not only
have your ideas not worked to make the world a better place, they
were inhumane and cruel to begin with, and they have served to
cultivate and excuse the inhumane and cruel character traits of
those who profess them.
6. As Bad as Bush is, Cheney is Worse.
http ://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/notes-for-converts_b_17662.html?view=print
Jane Smiley
The Huffington Post: 03.21.2006
Bruce Bartlett, The Cato Institute, Andrew Sullivan, George Packer,
William F. Buckley, Sandra Day O'Connor, Republican voters in
Indiana and all the rest of you newly-minted dissenters from Bush's
faith-based reality seem, right now, to be glorying in your outrage,
which is always a pleasure and feels, at the time, as if it is
having an effect, but those of us who have been anti-Bush from day 1
(defined as the day after the stolen 2000 election) have a few
pointers for you that should make your transition more realistic.
1. Bush doesn't know you disagree with him. Nothing about you makes
you of interest to George W. Bush once you no longer agree with and
support him. No degree of relationship (father, mother, etc.), no
longstanding friendly intercourse (Jack Abramoff), no degree of
expertise (Brent Scowcroft), no essential importance (Tony Blair,
American voters) makes any difference. There is nothing you have to
offer that makes Bush want to know you once you have come to
disagree with him. Your opinions and feelings now exist in a world
entirely external to the mind of George W. Bush. You are now just
one of those "polls" that he pays no attention to. When you were on
his side, you thought that showed "integrity" on his part. It
doesn't. It shows an absolute inability to learn from experience.
2. Bush doesn't care whether you disagree with him. As a man who has
dispensed with the reality-based world, and is entirely protected by
his handlers from feeling the effects of that world, he is
indifferent to what you now think is real. Is the Iraq war a failure
and a quagmire? Bush doesn't care. Is global warming beginning to
affect us right now? So what. Have all of his policies with regard
to Iran been misguided and counter-productive? He never thinks about
it. You know that Katrina tape in which Bush never asked a question?
It doesn't matter how much you know or how passionately you feel or,
most importantly, what degree of disintegration you see around you,
he's not going to ask you a question. You and your ideas are dead to
him. You cannot change his mind. Nine percent of polled Americans
would agree with attacking Iran right now. To George Bush, that will
be a mandate, if and when he feels like doing it, because...
3. Bush does what he feels like doing and he deeply resents being
told, even politely, that he ought to do anything else. This is
called a "sense of entitlement". Bush is a man who has never been
anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and
cajoled into being president of the United States through his
connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own
purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of
American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of
perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done. He did not
complete his flight training, he failed at oil investing, he was a
front man and a glad-hander as a baseball owner. As the Governor of
Texas, he originated one educational program that turned out to be a
debacle; as the President of the US, his policies have constituted
one screw-up after another. You have stuck with him through all of
this, made excuses for him, bailed him out. From his point of view,
he is perfectly entitled by his own experience to a sense of
entitlement. Why would he ever feel the need to reciprocate? He's
never had to before this.
4. President Bush is your creation. When the US Supreme Court
humiliated itself in 2000 by handing the presidency to Bush even
though two of the justices (Scalia and Thomas) had open conflicts of
interest, you did not object. When the Bush administration adopted
an "Anything but Clinton" policy that resulted in ignoring and
dismissing all warnings of possible terrorist attacks on US soil,
you went along with and made excuses for Bush. When the Bush
administration allowed the corrupt Enron corporation to swindle
California ratepayers and taxpayers in a last ditch effort to
balance their books in 2001, you laughed at the Californians and
ignored the links between Enron and the administration. When it was
evident that the evidence for the war in Iraq was cooked and that
State Department experts on the Middle East were not behind the war
and so it was going to be run as an exercise in incompetence, you
continued to attack those who were against the war in vicious terms
and to defend policies that simply could not work. On intelligent
design, global warming, doctoring of scientific results to reflect
ideology, corporate tax giveaways, the K Street project, the illegal
redistricting of Texas, torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, the Terry
Schiavo fiasco, and the cronyism that led to the destruction of New
Orleans you have failed to speak out with integrity or honesty,
preferring power to truth at every turn. Bush does what he wants
because you have let him.
5. Tyranny is your creation. What we have today is the natural and
inevitable outcome of ideas and policies you have promoted for the
last generation. I once knew a guy who was still a Marxist in 1980.
Whenever I asked him why Communism had failed in Russia and China,
he said "Mistakes were made". He could not believe that Marxism
itself was at fault, just as you cannot believe that the ideology of
the unregulated free market has created the world we live in today.
You are tempted to say: "Mistakes have been made", but in fact,
psychologically and sociologically, no mistakes have been made. The
unregulated free market has operated to produce a government in its
own image. In an unregulated free market, for example, cheating is
merely another sort of advantage that, supposedly, market forces
might eventually "shake out" of the system. Of course, anyone with
common sense understands that cheaters do damage that sometimes
cannot be repaired before they are "shaken out", but according to
the principles of the unregulated free market, the victims of that
sort of damage are just out of luck and the damage that happens to
them is just a sort of "culling". It is no accident that our
government is full of cheaters--they learned how to profit from
cheating when they were working in corporations that were using
bribes, perks, and secret connections to cheat their customers of
good products, their neighbors of healthy environmental conditions,
their workers of workplace safety and decent paychecks. It was only
when the corporations began cheating their shareholders that any of
you squealed, but you should know from your own experience that the
unregulated free market as a "level playing field" was the biggest
laugh of the 20th century. No successful company in the history of
capitalism has ever favored open competition. When you folks
pretended, in the eighties, that you weren't using the ideology of
the free market to cover your own manipulations of the playing field
to your own advantage, you may have suckered yourselves, and even
lots of American workers, but observers of capitalism since Adam
Smith could have told you it wasn't going to work.
And then there was the way you used racism and religious intolerance
to gain and hold onto power. Nixon was cynical about it--taking the
party of Lincoln and reaching out to disaffected southern racists,
drumming up a backlash against the Civil Rights movement for the
sake of votes, but none of you has been any less vicious. Racism
might have died an unlamented death in this country, but you kept it
alive with phrases like "welfare queen" and your resistance to
affirmative action and taxation for programs to help people in our
country with nothing, or very little. You opted not to take the
moral high ground and recognize that the whole nation would be
better off without racism, but rather to increase class divisions
and racial divisions for the sake of your own comfort, pleasure, and
profit. You have used religion in exactly the same way. Instead of
strongly defending the constitutional separation of church and
state, you have encouraged radical fundamentalist sects to believe
that they can take power in the US and mold our secular government
to their own image, and get rich doing it. The US could have become
a moderating force in what seems now to be an inevitable battle
among the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions, but you have made
that impossible by flattering and empowering our own violent and
intolerant Christian right.
You have created an imperium, heedless of the most basic wisdom of
the Founding Fathers--that at the very least, no man is competent
enough or far-seeing enough to rule imperially. Checks and balances
were instituted by Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest of
them not because of some abstract distrust of power, but because
they had witnessed the screw-ups and idiocies of unchecked power.
You yourselves have demonstrated the failures of unchecked power--in
an effort to achieve it, you have repeatedly contravened the
expressed wishes of most Americans, who favor a moderate foreign
policy, reasonable domestic programs, a goverrnment that works,
environmental preservation, women's rights to contraception,
abortion, and a level playing field. Somehow you thought you could
mold the imperium to reflect your wishes, but guess what--that's
what an imperium is--one man rule. If you fear the madness of King
George, you have no recourse if you've given up the checks and
balances that you inherited and that were meant to protect you.
Your ideas and your policies have promoted selfishness, greed,
short-term solutions, bullying, and pain for others. You have looked
in the faces of children and denied the existence of a "common
good". You have disdained and denied the idea of "altruism". At one
time, our bureaucracy was full of people who had gone into
government service or scientific research for altruistic reasons--I
knew, because I knew some of them. You have driven them out and
replaced them with vindictive ignoramuses. You have lied over and
over about your motives, for example, making laws that hurt people
and calling it "originalist interpretations of the
Constitution" (conveniently ignoring the Ninth Amendment). You have
increased the powers of corporations at the expense of every other
sector in the nation and actively defied any sort of regulation that
would require these corporations to treat our world with care and
respect. You have made economic growth your deity, and in doing so,
you have accelerated the power of the corporations to destroy the
atmosphere, the oceans, the ice caps, the rainforests, and the
climate. You have produced CEOs in charge of lots of resources and
lots of people who have no more sense of reciprocity or connection
or responsibility than George W. Bush.
Now you are fleeing him, but it's only because he's got the earmarks
of a loser. Your problem is that you don't know why he's losing. You
think he's made mistakes. But no. He's losing because the ideas that
you taught him and demonstrated for him are bad ideas,
self-destructive ideas, and even suicidal ideas. And they are
immoral ideas. You should be ashamed of yourselves because not only
have your ideas not worked to make the world a better place, they
were inhumane and cruel to begin with, and they have served to
cultivate and excuse the inhumane and cruel character traits of
those who profess them.
6. As Bad as Bush is, Cheney is Worse.
http ://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/notes-for-converts_b_17662.html?view=print
Saturday, April 08, 2006
"Network" 1976
"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I
won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a
business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of
dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb
and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There
are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are
no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one
holistic system of systems, one vast and immanent, interwoven,
interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars.
Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, yen, rubles,
pounds, and shekels.
"It is the international system of currency which determines the
totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things
today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things
today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU
WILL ATONE!
"You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America
and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only
IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those
are the nations of the world today.
"What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state --
Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical
decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost
probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The
world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the
immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has
been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr.
Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine,
oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for
whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will
hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties
tranquilized, all boredom amused."
won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a
business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of
dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb
and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There
are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are
no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one
holistic system of systems, one vast and immanent, interwoven,
interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars.
Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, yen, rubles,
pounds, and shekels.
"It is the international system of currency which determines the
totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things
today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things
today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU
WILL ATONE!
"You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America
and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only
IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those
are the nations of the world today.
"What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state --
Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical
decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost
probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The
world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the
immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has
been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr.
Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine,
oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for
whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will
hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties
tranquilized, all boredom amused."
Monday, April 03, 2006
Pedro Knows His History... (funny)
How this History Lesson should be an insult to every political
party......
It was the first day of school and a new student named Pedro Martinez,
the son of a Mexican restaurateur, entered the fourth grade.
The teacher said, "Let's begin by reviewing some American history.
"Who said 'Give me Liberty, or give me Death?' "
She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Pedro, who had his hand up.
"Patrick Henry, 1775."
"Very good!" apprised the teacher. "Now, who said, "Government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth?"
Again, no response except from Pedro: "Abraham Lincoln, 1863."
The teacher snapped at the class, "Class, you should be ashamed! Pedro,
who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do!"
She heard a loud whisper: "Screw the Mexicans!"
"Who said that?" she demanded.
Pedro put his hand up. "Jim Bowie, 1836."
At that point, a student in the back said, "I'm gonna puke." The
teacher glared and asked, "All right! Now, who said that?"
Again, Pedro answered, "George Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister,
1991."
Now furious, another student yelled, "Oh yeah? Suck this!"
Pedro jumped out of his chair waving his hand and shouting to the
teacher, "Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!"
Now, with almost a mob hysteria, teacher said, "You little shit. If you
say anything else, I'll kill you!"
Pedro frantically yelled at the top of his voice, "Gary Condit to
Chandra Levy, 2001."
The teacher fainted, and as the class gathered around her on the floor,
someone said, "Oh shit, we're in BIG trouble now!"
Pedro whispered, "Saddam Hussein, 2003."
Finally someone throws a eraser at Pedro, someone shouted "Duck"!
Teacher, just waking, asked "Who said that?
Pedro: Dick Cheney 2006!
party......
It was the first day of school and a new student named Pedro Martinez,
the son of a Mexican restaurateur, entered the fourth grade.
The teacher said, "Let's begin by reviewing some American history.
"Who said 'Give me Liberty, or give me Death?' "
She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Pedro, who had his hand up.
"Patrick Henry, 1775."
"Very good!" apprised the teacher. "Now, who said, "Government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth?"
Again, no response except from Pedro: "Abraham Lincoln, 1863."
The teacher snapped at the class, "Class, you should be ashamed! Pedro,
who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do!"
She heard a loud whisper: "Screw the Mexicans!"
"Who said that?" she demanded.
Pedro put his hand up. "Jim Bowie, 1836."
At that point, a student in the back said, "I'm gonna puke." The
teacher glared and asked, "All right! Now, who said that?"
Again, Pedro answered, "George Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister,
1991."
Now furious, another student yelled, "Oh yeah? Suck this!"
Pedro jumped out of his chair waving his hand and shouting to the
teacher, "Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!"
Now, with almost a mob hysteria, teacher said, "You little shit. If you
say anything else, I'll kill you!"
Pedro frantically yelled at the top of his voice, "Gary Condit to
Chandra Levy, 2001."
The teacher fainted, and as the class gathered around her on the floor,
someone said, "Oh shit, we're in BIG trouble now!"
Pedro whispered, "Saddam Hussein, 2003."
Finally someone throws a eraser at Pedro, someone shouted "Duck"!
Teacher, just waking, asked "Who said that?
Pedro: Dick Cheney 2006!
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Neocon architect says: 'Pull it down'
Scotsman.com News - International - Neocon architect says: 'Pull it down': "Mr Fukuyama once supported regime change in Iraq and was a signatory to a 1998 letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to the then president, Bill Clinton, urging the US to step up its efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It was also signed by neoconservative intellectuals, such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and political figures Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the current defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
However, Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
'The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism,' he argues.
'Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally.'
Mr Fukuyama, one of the US's most influential public intellectuals, concludes that 'it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly'.
Going further, he says the movements' advocates are Leninists who 'believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States'."
However, Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
'The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism,' he argues.
'Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally.'
Mr Fukuyama, one of the US's most influential public intellectuals, concludes that 'it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly'.
Going further, he says the movements' advocates are Leninists who 'believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States'."
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Annexing Khuzestan; Battle-Plans for Iran
Annexing Khuzestan; Battle-Plans for Iran: "But, step by step, Iran is being set up for war. What difference does the provocation make? The determination to consolidate the oil reserves in the Caspian Basin was made more than a decade ago and is clearly articulated in the policy papers produced by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) The Bush administration is one small province away from realizing the its dream of controlling the world's most valued resource. They won't let that opportunity pass them by."
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Top 10 Mistakes Bush made reacting to Al-Qaeda
Informed Comment : "Top Ten Mistakes of the Bush Administration in Reacting to Al-Qaeda
Usamah Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri murdered 3,000 Americans, and they both issued tapes in the past week, blustering and threatening us with more of the same. Most of us aren't wild about paying for the Bush administration with our taxes, but one thing we have a right to expect is that our government would protect us from mass murderers and would chase them down and arrest them. It has not done that. When asked why he hasn't caught Bin Laden, Bush replies, 'Because he's hidin'.' Is Bush laughing at us?
Usamah Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri murdered 3,000 Americans, and they both issued tapes in the past week, blustering and threatening us with more of the same. Most of us aren't wild about paying for the Bush administration with our taxes, but one thing we have a right to expect is that our government would protect us from mass murderers and would chase them down and arrest them. It has not done that. When asked why he hasn't caught Bin Laden, Bush replies, 'Because he's hidin'.' Is Bush laughing at us?
On September 11, 2001, the question was whether we had underestimated al-Qaeda. It appeared to be a Muslim version of the radical seventies groups like the Baader Meinhoff gang or the Japanese Red Army. It was small, only a few hundred really committed members who had sworn fealty to Bin Laden and would actually kill themselves in suicide attacks. There were a few thousand close sympathizers, who had passed through the Afghanistan training camps or otherwise been inducted into the world view. But could a small terrorist group commit mayhem on that scale? Might there be something more to it? Was this the beginning of a new political force in the Middle East that could hope to roll in and take over, the way the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan in the 1990s? People asked such questions.
Over four years later, there is no doubt. Al-Qaeda is a small terrorist network that has spawned a few copy-cats and wannabes. Its breakthrough was to recruit some high-powered engineers in Hamburg, which it immediately used up. Most al-Qaeda recruits are marginal people, people like Zacarias Moussawi and Richard Reid, who would be mere cranks if they hadn't been manipulated into trying something dangerous. Muhammad al-Amir (a.k.a Atta) and Ziad Jarrah were highly competent scientists, who could figure the kinetic energy of a jet plane loaded with fuel. There don't seem to be significant numbers of such people in the organization. They are left mostly with cranks, petty thieves, drug smugglers, bored bank tellers, shopkeepers, and so forth, persons who could pull off a bombing of trains in Madrid or London, but who could not for the life of them do a really big operation.
The Bush administration and the American Right generally has refused to acknowledge what we now know. Al-Qaeda is dangerous. All small terrorist groups can do damage. But it is not an epochal threat to the United States or its allies of the sort the Soviet Union was (and that threat was consistently exaggerated, as well).
In fact, the United States invaded a major Muslim country, occupied it militarily, tortured its citizens, killed tens of thousands, tinkered with the economy-- did all those things that Muslim nationalists had feared and warned against, and there hasn't even been much of a reaction from the Muslim world. Only a few thousand volunteers went to fight. Most people just seem worried that the US will destabilize their region and leave a lot of trouble behind them. People are used to seeing Great Powers do as they will. A Syrian official before the war told a journalist friend of mine that people in the Middle East had been seeing these sorts of invasions since Napoleon took Egypt in 1798. 'Well,' he shrugged, 'usually they leave behind a few good things when they finally leave.'"
See the article for the full list:
http://www.juancole.com/2006/01/top-ten-mistakes-of-bush.html#comments
Monday, January 23, 2006
The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse By Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.
The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse By Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.: "The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse
By Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D."
By Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D."
Friday, January 06, 2006
The Cost of The War
TPMCafe || The Cost of The War: "NEW STUDY SUGGESTS ECONOMIC COST OF IRAQ WAR MUCH LARGER THAN PREVIOUSLY RECOGNIZED � A new study by two leading academic experts suggests that the costs of the Iraq war will be substantially higher than previously reckoned. In a paper presented to this week%u2019s Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston MA., Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion."
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity
Has there been even one, single, solitary instance of a “terrorist” being caught by all this nonsense? What exactly is all this good for, other than spying on citizens at will?
The “evidence” against Padilla was apparently obtained by waterboarding (drowning reflex torturing) two al Queda members until they made up something that the torturers wanted to hear. No case, no evidence, no “dirty bombs”, no admin officals declaring him guilty without trial on TV anymore. And he was one of their Big Wins By Using Theeir New Freedom To Find Terrorists.
Still, people don’t understand what’s happening to their rights. And they won’t care. Torture, false imprisonment, stripping a US citizen of his constitutional rights by executive fiat based on stories made up under torture, keeping him prisoner and helpless to answer his accusers for over three years, then a nonsense charge to maintain face — and he’s still under the King’s justice, unable to examine the evidence against him — because there never was any. Why is a US citizen in a secret gulag under trumped up charges? Why don’t people care? How many others are out there?
They demanded trust, and they blew it. They don’t care about justice, just power. Don’t give them more.
The “evidence” against Padilla was apparently obtained by waterboarding (drowning reflex torturing) two al Queda members until they made up something that the torturers wanted to hear. No case, no evidence, no “dirty bombs”, no admin officals declaring him guilty without trial on TV anymore. And he was one of their Big Wins By Using Theeir New Freedom To Find Terrorists.
Still, people don’t understand what’s happening to their rights. And they won’t care. Torture, false imprisonment, stripping a US citizen of his constitutional rights by executive fiat based on stories made up under torture, keeping him prisoner and helpless to answer his accusers for over three years, then a nonsense charge to maintain face — and he’s still under the King’s justice, unable to examine the evidence against him — because there never was any. Why is a US citizen in a secret gulag under trumped up charges? Why don’t people care? How many others are out there?
They demanded trust, and they blew it. They don’t care about justice, just power. Don’t give them more.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Jeff Huber - Top 10 Bad Reasons for "Staying the Course" in Iraq (and One Good One)
"Top 10 Bad Reasons for %u201CStaying the Course%u201D in
Iraq (and One Good One)
by Jeff Huber"
http://www.epluribusmedia.org/columns/20051003huber.html
5. We need to support our troops.
I applaud and deeply respect our men and women in uniform for their magnificent service and sacrifice. These are my people, remember? However, comma….
In the first place, we are supporting our troops — to the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars a year.
Second, when we continue to commit those men and women in uniform to a struggle for which there is no military solution, we are abusing them, not supporting them.
Third — and most importantly — America does not exist for the purpose of supporting its military. Our military exists to support America. And if it’s not defending us at home or achieving our national aims overseas, it’s not supporting our country.
1. We set out to establish a military base of operations from which we can control the Middle East and its oil, and we should persist until we "get the job done."
Even though it’s true, the argument’s still specious. Our "besttrained, bestequipped, bestfunded" military can’t get Iraq or Afghanistan under control. How can we possibly expect to lock down the entire Middle East?
Iraq (and One Good One)
by Jeff Huber"
http://www.epluribusmedia.org/columns/20051003huber.html
5. We need to support our troops.
I applaud and deeply respect our men and women in uniform for their magnificent service and sacrifice. These are my people, remember? However, comma….
In the first place, we are supporting our troops — to the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars a year.
Second, when we continue to commit those men and women in uniform to a struggle for which there is no military solution, we are abusing them, not supporting them.
Third — and most importantly — America does not exist for the purpose of supporting its military. Our military exists to support America. And if it’s not defending us at home or achieving our national aims overseas, it’s not supporting our country.
1. We set out to establish a military base of operations from which we can control the Middle East and its oil, and we should persist until we "get the job done."
Even though it’s true, the argument’s still specious. Our "besttrained, bestequipped, bestfunded" military can’t get Iraq or Afghanistan under control. How can we possibly expect to lock down the entire Middle East?
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Hullabaloo
From Hullabaloo:
"I am of the opinion that alienating our allies, exposing ourselves as having an intelligence community that can't find water if they fall out of a boat and then screwing up Iraq in spectacular fashion, we have destroyed our mystique and have made this country less safe. We were much better off speaking softly and carrying the big stick than flailing around like a wounded, impotent Giant.
I see no reason to believe that these people see that. They believe that to 'cut and run' is the equivalent of emasculating this country and that is what puts us at risk. George W. Bush is not bugging out."
"I am of the opinion that alienating our allies, exposing ourselves as having an intelligence community that can't find water if they fall out of a boat and then screwing up Iraq in spectacular fashion, we have destroyed our mystique and have made this country less safe. We were much better off speaking softly and carrying the big stick than flailing around like a wounded, impotent Giant.
I see no reason to believe that these people see that. They believe that to 'cut and run' is the equivalent of emasculating this country and that is what puts us at risk. George W. Bush is not bugging out."
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Once Upon a Time...:
"The attacks of 9/11 tore aside a significant part of the veneer of civilization that had shrouded us from certain continuing, ugly truths about ourselves. In the wake of the attacks of that day, many of us -- led by our president, cheered on by the neoconservatives, and also by many conservatives and liberventionists (those alleged "libertarians," who think government should stay out of our lives at home but should simultaneously seek to rearrange the globe by military force -- and who appear to think it represents the apex of intellectual integrity never to even acknowledge this contradiction, let alone try to justify it) -- enthusiastically embraced a simple storyline: Western civilization, more particularly the United States, constitutes the highest point of possible human development. It is only "freedom" and "democracy" as practiced in the West that can guarantee a future of peace. (Never mind the West's uninterrupted history of warfare within its own ranks, and never mind the West's unending, centuries-long interference with the rest of the world.)The West has the answer to successful human life. Since it does, and because certain elements in the rest of the world have now chosen to attack us on our own ground (and never mind that we have invaded and ruled over vast portions of the rest of the world since time immemorial), we must enlighten those benighted portions of the globe in our defense. Our chosen method of enlightenment is brute military force, to be deployed even against countries that did not threaten us. The lack of a genuine threat is no argument against spreading our version of "civilization," for our mission is grounded not only in self-defense: it is also a moral mission. Our success and our "peace" directly correlates to our virtue. Those countries and those civilizations that do not enjoy the same success and peace are without virtue. In the most extreme (and, one could argue, most consistent) version of this tale, non-Western parts of the world are less than human -- and they are subhuman by choice. They are immoral, and sometimes even evil. Since we represent the good and they represent the evil, we are surely entitled to improve them, by invasion and bombing if necessary. If they do not threaten us today, they might at some indeterminate time in the future. And while we might kill many innocent civilians in our campaign of civilization, those who survive will be infinitely better off than they would have been otherwise. Besides, how "innocent" can any of them be -- since they are members of inferior, less than fully human civilizations, and since they are so by choice?">Once Upon a Time...: Myths of New Orleans: Poor, Bad Blacks -- Who Got What They Deserved: "The attacks of 9/11 tore aside a significant part of the veneer of civilization that had shrouded us from certain continuing, ugly truths about ourselves. In the wake of the attacks of that day, many of us -- led by our president, cheered on by the neoconservatives, and also by many conservatives and liberventionists (those alleged 'libertarians,' who think government should stay out of our lives at home but should simultaneously seek to rearrange the globe by military force -- and who appear to think it represents the apex of intellectual integrity never to even acknowledge this contradiction, let alone try to justify it) -- enthusiastically embraced a simple storyline: Western civilization, more particularly the United States, constitutes the highest point of possible human development. It is only 'freedom' and 'democracy' as practiced in the West that can guarantee a future of peace. (Never mind the West's uninterrupted history of warfare within its own ranks, and never mind the West's unending, centuries-long interference with the rest of the world.)The West has the answer to successful human life. Since it does, and because certain elements in the rest of the world have now chosen to attack us on our own ground (and never mind that we have invaded and ruled over vast portions of the rest of the world since time immemorial), we must enlighten those benighted portions of the globe in our defense. Our chosen method of enlightenment is brute military force, to be deployed even against countries that did not threaten us. The lack of a genuine threat is no argument against spreading our version of 'civilization,' for our mission is grounded not only in self-defense: it is also a moral mission. Our success and our 'peace' directly correlates to our virtue. Those countries and those civilizations that do not enjoy the same success and peace are without virtue. In the most extreme (and, one could argue, most consistent) version of this tale, non-Western parts of the world are less than human -- and they are subhuman by choice. They are immoral, and sometimes even evil. Since we represent the good and they represent the evil, we are surely entitled to improve them, by invasion and bombing if necessary. If they do not threaten us today, they might at some indeterminate time in the future. And while we might kill many innocent civilians in our campaign of civilization, those who survive will be infinitely better off than they would have been otherwise. Besides, how 'innocent' can any of them be -- since they are members of inferior, less than fully human civilizations, and since they are so by choice?"
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Abraham Lincoln, letter to William Elkins, Nov 21, 1864
HaloScan.com - Comments:
"'I see in the near future a crisis approaching. It unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. The money powers preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.
It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me & the financial institutions at the rear, the latter is my greatest foe. Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.'
-Abraham Lincoln, letter to William Elkins, Nov 21, 1864 (after the passage of the debt causing National Bank Act [June 3, 1864])"
"'I see in the near future a crisis approaching. It unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. The money powers preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.
It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me & the financial institutions at the rear, the latter is my greatest foe. Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.'
-Abraham Lincoln, letter to William Elkins, Nov 21, 1864 (after the passage of the debt causing National Bank Act [June 3, 1864])"
Latest Mark Morford (SF gate) article: George W. Bush Still Rocks
All:
Mark has always had a rapier-like writing style; this time
he skewers with great abandon.
Note: not for the squeamish. But Mark usually isn't.
WinterBear
========================
George W. Bush Still Rocks!
Stop criticizing! The rich man's CEO president is
executing his job requirements perfectly
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/
By Mark Morford, San Francisco Gate columnist
Friday, September 9, 2005
Everyone is slamming poor Dubya. Everyone is saying,
oh my God, he's more inept than we ever imagined, he
has no idea what's really going on, he's oblivious and
in denial and he pretty much let all those poor black
people die in filth and misery, and he basically
ignored the massive Katrina disaster for days before
finally being pressured into cutting his umpteenth
vacation short and actually taking action.
This is what they're saying. Kanye West was right,
Bush doesn't care about black people, or the poor, or
anything that doesn't directly serve his handlers'
agenda or flatter his monochromatic ego or anything
that isn't spelled out for him in nice simplistic pie
charts and reassuring matronly tones.
And lo, the darts are slinging in from around the
world, according to SF Gate's own World Views column:
"Maddening incompetence ... reminiscent of a
drought-stricken African state," says Britain's Daily
Mail. "Can't get it together," says a major paper in
Italy. "A plethora of grim tales of disaster," says
the Scotsman. "Superpower or Third World?" asks the
Spanish daily Noticias de ?lava. Why did BushCo fail
its first great national-security test since Sept. 11,
despite having two days' advance notice of Katrina's
wrath? asks Le Monde. And on it goes, the world's
powers looking on in one part shock and one part
disgust and all parts repugnance for Bush's rampant
ineptitude and America's apparent inability to take
care of its own.
But it's so unfair, isn't it, to attack poor Dubya
like this? Just a little misplaced? After all, Bush
has always been the rich white man's president. He is
the CEO president, the megacorporate businessman's
friend, the thug of the religious right, a big
reservoir-tipped condom for all energy magnates,
protecting against the nasty STDs of humanitarianism
and progress and social responsibility.
He has always been merely an entirely selective
figurehead, out of touch and eternally dumbfounded, a
hand puppet of the neoconservative machine built and
fluffed up and carefully placed for the very specific
job of protecting their interests, no matter what.
Repeat: No. Matter. What. Flood hurricane disaster war
social breakdown economic collapse? Doesn't matter.
Corporate interests ?ber alles, baby. Protect the
core, reassure the base, screw everyone else unless it
begins to affect the poll numbers and then
finger-point, deflect, prevaricate. All of a piece,
really. Because Bush, he was never actually meant to,
you know, lead.
So maybe it's time to stop with the savaging of poor
Dubya. He is, after all, doing a simply beautiful job
of kowtowing to his wealthiest supporters while
slamming the poor and running the nation into a deep
hole and creating the largest deficit in American
history, all while his cronies in oil and industry and
military supply and Big Energy gain immense and
staggering wealth and pay less and less tax on it.
This is what he was hired to do. This is why he is in
office. Hell, the day after Katrina, Bush flew right
by Louisiana and headed straight to San Diego to party
with his Greatest Generation cronies. Reassure the
masters, first and foremost, eh Shrub? Understood.
Is this not what we all expected? Can you reasonably
say you thought it would be different? Just look. All
major social services are being gutted. The Federal
Emergency Management Agency is a joke, second in line
only to the ungodly useless Homeland Security
Department, which has become about as reassuring and
trustworthy and humane an organization as a prison in
Guant?namo.
The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of
Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and
flood programs in New Orleans just last year. The
White House hacked that down to about $40 million,
even as it passed the most bloated and nauseatingly
pork-filled $12.3 billion energy bill in recent
history, one that guaranteed we'd be sucking at the
tit of foreign oil and kneeling before Bush's pals in
Big Energy for decades to come, even as more and more
teenagers die in Iraq for Bush's inept and failed war.
Yay politics.
Why didn't National Guardsmen from Louisiana and
Mississippi march into New Orleans immediately after
Katrina exited to take charge and keep the peace? Why,
because most of them are serving in that same violent
and brutally costly war in Iraq, silly. Fully 30
percent of the guard is stuck over there, along with
50 percent of their equipment. Yay Vietnam 2.0.
Why did FEMA chief Michael Brown wait hours after
Katrina struck to timidly plead with his parent
company, Homeland Security, for some backup, not to
actually get their hands dirty but rather to help
"convey a positive image" about the government's
response to the victims? Why, because he's an
incompetent lackey Bush appointee who was fired from
his former job as head of something called the
International Arabian Horse Association. Yay pathetic
nepotism.
Just look. Senate majority leader Sen. Bill Frist,
icon of hollow self-righteousness and the energy
magnate's friend, has already leveraged the Katrina
nightmare to argue for more drilling in Alaska, much
in the way BushCo whored Sept. 11 to cram the Patriot
Act down the nation's throat and make fear and
xenophobia a national pastime. And let's not forget
trusty profit-sucking sidekick Halliburton, which has
already scored a sweet deal to help repair Katrina
damage, thanks to the fact that the former director of
FEMA is now a Halliburton lobbyist. Ah, war and death
and tragedy. They are just so goddamn profitable,
right, Dubya?
And then, the kicker. Then you read that Bush has
actually ordered an official probe into the botched
Katrina relief efforts, a formal federal investigation
into what went wrong, which is a bit like a shark
ordering an investigation into what happened to all
the fish. Unless this probe starts and ends in the
White House, unless it hangs Bush himself up by his
monkey ears and dangles him over a river of toxic
Louisiana sewage, it's merely useless and insulting
and more than a little sad.
Let's say it outright. The truest measure of any
president, of any leader, is how well he takes care of
his own people. And Bush, well, Bush has done a simply
spectacular job of taking care of exactly his own
people -- the wealthy, the corporate, the extreme
religious right, his core base of supporters -- while
happily and fiercely ignoring, restricting,
condemning, destroying the rest. Are you educated or
progressive or liberal or alternative-minded or
sexually open or homosexual or anti-war? This means
you. Are you dirt poor and belong to a minority and
don't drive an SUV and contribute six figures per
annum to the RNC and maybe live in a flooded swamp in
the Louisiana bayou? This means you, squared. Sucker.
Here, then, is the new American motto, as reimagined
by BushCo: Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses, and we'll let them die in a filthy and
decrepit storm-ravaged American football stadium while
our president languishes on vacation and ponders his
oil futures and fondly remembers his good ol' days of
getting drunk at Mardi Gras before going AWOL from the
military. God bless America.
Mark has always had a rapier-like writing style; this time
he skewers with great abandon.
Note: not for the squeamish. But Mark usually isn't.
WinterBear
========================
George W. Bush Still Rocks!
Stop criticizing! The rich man's CEO president is
executing his job requirements perfectly
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/
By Mark Morford, San Francisco Gate columnist
Friday, September 9, 2005
Everyone is slamming poor Dubya. Everyone is saying,
oh my God, he's more inept than we ever imagined, he
has no idea what's really going on, he's oblivious and
in denial and he pretty much let all those poor black
people die in filth and misery, and he basically
ignored the massive Katrina disaster for days before
finally being pressured into cutting his umpteenth
vacation short and actually taking action.
This is what they're saying. Kanye West was right,
Bush doesn't care about black people, or the poor, or
anything that doesn't directly serve his handlers'
agenda or flatter his monochromatic ego or anything
that isn't spelled out for him in nice simplistic pie
charts and reassuring matronly tones.
And lo, the darts are slinging in from around the
world, according to SF Gate's own World Views column:
"Maddening incompetence ... reminiscent of a
drought-stricken African state," says Britain's Daily
Mail. "Can't get it together," says a major paper in
Italy. "A plethora of grim tales of disaster," says
the Scotsman. "Superpower or Third World?" asks the
Spanish daily Noticias de ?lava. Why did BushCo fail
its first great national-security test since Sept. 11,
despite having two days' advance notice of Katrina's
wrath? asks Le Monde. And on it goes, the world's
powers looking on in one part shock and one part
disgust and all parts repugnance for Bush's rampant
ineptitude and America's apparent inability to take
care of its own.
But it's so unfair, isn't it, to attack poor Dubya
like this? Just a little misplaced? After all, Bush
has always been the rich white man's president. He is
the CEO president, the megacorporate businessman's
friend, the thug of the religious right, a big
reservoir-tipped condom for all energy magnates,
protecting against the nasty STDs of humanitarianism
and progress and social responsibility.
He has always been merely an entirely selective
figurehead, out of touch and eternally dumbfounded, a
hand puppet of the neoconservative machine built and
fluffed up and carefully placed for the very specific
job of protecting their interests, no matter what.
Repeat: No. Matter. What. Flood hurricane disaster war
social breakdown economic collapse? Doesn't matter.
Corporate interests ?ber alles, baby. Protect the
core, reassure the base, screw everyone else unless it
begins to affect the poll numbers and then
finger-point, deflect, prevaricate. All of a piece,
really. Because Bush, he was never actually meant to,
you know, lead.
So maybe it's time to stop with the savaging of poor
Dubya. He is, after all, doing a simply beautiful job
of kowtowing to his wealthiest supporters while
slamming the poor and running the nation into a deep
hole and creating the largest deficit in American
history, all while his cronies in oil and industry and
military supply and Big Energy gain immense and
staggering wealth and pay less and less tax on it.
This is what he was hired to do. This is why he is in
office. Hell, the day after Katrina, Bush flew right
by Louisiana and headed straight to San Diego to party
with his Greatest Generation cronies. Reassure the
masters, first and foremost, eh Shrub? Understood.
Is this not what we all expected? Can you reasonably
say you thought it would be different? Just look. All
major social services are being gutted. The Federal
Emergency Management Agency is a joke, second in line
only to the ungodly useless Homeland Security
Department, which has become about as reassuring and
trustworthy and humane an organization as a prison in
Guant?namo.
The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of
Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and
flood programs in New Orleans just last year. The
White House hacked that down to about $40 million,
even as it passed the most bloated and nauseatingly
pork-filled $12.3 billion energy bill in recent
history, one that guaranteed we'd be sucking at the
tit of foreign oil and kneeling before Bush's pals in
Big Energy for decades to come, even as more and more
teenagers die in Iraq for Bush's inept and failed war.
Yay politics.
Why didn't National Guardsmen from Louisiana and
Mississippi march into New Orleans immediately after
Katrina exited to take charge and keep the peace? Why,
because most of them are serving in that same violent
and brutally costly war in Iraq, silly. Fully 30
percent of the guard is stuck over there, along with
50 percent of their equipment. Yay Vietnam 2.0.
Why did FEMA chief Michael Brown wait hours after
Katrina struck to timidly plead with his parent
company, Homeland Security, for some backup, not to
actually get their hands dirty but rather to help
"convey a positive image" about the government's
response to the victims? Why, because he's an
incompetent lackey Bush appointee who was fired from
his former job as head of something called the
International Arabian Horse Association. Yay pathetic
nepotism.
Just look. Senate majority leader Sen. Bill Frist,
icon of hollow self-righteousness and the energy
magnate's friend, has already leveraged the Katrina
nightmare to argue for more drilling in Alaska, much
in the way BushCo whored Sept. 11 to cram the Patriot
Act down the nation's throat and make fear and
xenophobia a national pastime. And let's not forget
trusty profit-sucking sidekick Halliburton, which has
already scored a sweet deal to help repair Katrina
damage, thanks to the fact that the former director of
FEMA is now a Halliburton lobbyist. Ah, war and death
and tragedy. They are just so goddamn profitable,
right, Dubya?
And then, the kicker. Then you read that Bush has
actually ordered an official probe into the botched
Katrina relief efforts, a formal federal investigation
into what went wrong, which is a bit like a shark
ordering an investigation into what happened to all
the fish. Unless this probe starts and ends in the
White House, unless it hangs Bush himself up by his
monkey ears and dangles him over a river of toxic
Louisiana sewage, it's merely useless and insulting
and more than a little sad.
Let's say it outright. The truest measure of any
president, of any leader, is how well he takes care of
his own people. And Bush, well, Bush has done a simply
spectacular job of taking care of exactly his own
people -- the wealthy, the corporate, the extreme
religious right, his core base of supporters -- while
happily and fiercely ignoring, restricting,
condemning, destroying the rest. Are you educated or
progressive or liberal or alternative-minded or
sexually open or homosexual or anti-war? This means
you. Are you dirt poor and belong to a minority and
don't drive an SUV and contribute six figures per
annum to the RNC and maybe live in a flooded swamp in
the Louisiana bayou? This means you, squared. Sucker.
Here, then, is the new American motto, as reimagined
by BushCo: Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses, and we'll let them die in a filthy and
decrepit storm-ravaged American football stadium while
our president languishes on vacation and ponders his
oil futures and fondly remembers his good ol' days of
getting drunk at Mardi Gras before going AWOL from the
military. God bless America.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Fox gets a Clue. Wow.
OMFG.... who woulda thunk it.
Fox. Yep, Fox News. yes, the mouthpiece of the NeoCons... That Fox.
Fox Gets a Clue. Astonishing.....
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,169041,00.html
for more stuff on Fox News check out the blog:
www.newshounds.com
Winterbear
Fox. Yep, Fox News. yes, the mouthpiece of the NeoCons... That Fox.
Fox Gets a Clue. Astonishing.....
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,169041,00.html
for more stuff on Fox News check out the blog:
www.newshounds.com
Winterbear
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Who to blame, who to blame
Blanche,
I have seen this kind of thing talked about in various news outlets, web sites and on msnbc and cnn. Nobody is faulting the federal response before the event. The problems is what happened from Tuesday until now and into the future.
Local and state wide failures were also horrendous. if your going to start assigning blame, mayor and the Governor are for sure on the list.
But, the failure of the federal government was huge and I think the reasons for that failure were the following:
1) Lowering the status of FEMA from a Cabinet Position to a sub organization within HomeLand Security. In a time of Crisis, this extra level of bureaucracy got people killed.
2) In the last 4 years FEMA has been given a lot more to do (Terrorist response) while having its budget cut. One former employee of FEMA claims that this lack of focus on FEMA's traditional role got a lot of people killed. Many current and former FEMA employees are speaking out and expressing same in whats happened to their organization.
3) The last two directors of FEMA have been hand picked political appointees who have almost no experience at disaster relief and have made some terrible decisions that got a lot of people killed. Both were appointed to this "Plum" posting because of the work they did for the election campaigns.
4) Michael Brown, Current director of FEMA has no executive management experiance, has no experiance with any form of disaster or emergency response. His previous job was with the International Arabian Horse Association as a lawyer. According to people at the association, he was fired for gross incompetence and the association had to change its name because it was bankrupted.
5) President Bush didnt get engaged and didnt take this seriously quickly enough. That got a lot of people killed. He has created an environment around himself where no one tells him bad news so he didnt really find out there was a problem until late wednesday. And they he did not take charge of the situation and kick butts to fix the problem until Friday and some are saying that was pretty weak. He congratulated his cronies for doing a good job when things were completely out of control.
Blanche, please stop watching fox news. They are trying to spin this whole thing as a failure at the local level. It was that, but its shameful how the Bush administration is ultimately to blame for the failure at the federal level.
We live in a wonderful time where incompetent politicians can no longer control information. Google around a bit and find people who are reporting the truth. Dont trust the left wing blogs or the right wing either... but get the real story... its out there and available via the net.
I have seen this kind of thing talked about in various news outlets, web sites and on msnbc and cnn. Nobody is faulting the federal response before the event. The problems is what happened from Tuesday until now and into the future.
Local and state wide failures were also horrendous. if your going to start assigning blame, mayor and the Governor are for sure on the list.
But, the failure of the federal government was huge and I think the reasons for that failure were the following:
1) Lowering the status of FEMA from a Cabinet Position to a sub organization within HomeLand Security. In a time of Crisis, this extra level of bureaucracy got people killed.
2) In the last 4 years FEMA has been given a lot more to do (Terrorist response) while having its budget cut. One former employee of FEMA claims that this lack of focus on FEMA's traditional role got a lot of people killed. Many current and former FEMA employees are speaking out and expressing same in whats happened to their organization.
3) The last two directors of FEMA have been hand picked political appointees who have almost no experience at disaster relief and have made some terrible decisions that got a lot of people killed. Both were appointed to this "Plum" posting because of the work they did for the election campaigns.
4) Michael Brown, Current director of FEMA has no executive management experiance, has no experiance with any form of disaster or emergency response. His previous job was with the International Arabian Horse Association as a lawyer. According to people at the association, he was fired for gross incompetence and the association had to change its name because it was bankrupted.
5) President Bush didnt get engaged and didnt take this seriously quickly enough. That got a lot of people killed. He has created an environment around himself where no one tells him bad news so he didnt really find out there was a problem until late wednesday. And they he did not take charge of the situation and kick butts to fix the problem until Friday and some are saying that was pretty weak. He congratulated his cronies for doing a good job when things were completely out of control.
Blanche, please stop watching fox news. They are trying to spin this whole thing as a failure at the local level. It was that, but its shameful how the Bush administration is ultimately to blame for the failure at the federal level.
We live in a wonderful time where incompetent politicians can no longer control information. Google around a bit and find people who are reporting the truth. Dont trust the left wing blogs or the right wing either... but get the real story... its out there and available via the net.
Who's on First, FEMA addition
HorsesAss.Org: "Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA director Michael Brown: make headway%u2026
Chertoff: All I%u2019m tryin%u2019 to find out is what%u2019s the guy%u2019s name in charge of food and water.
Brown: : Oh, no, wait a minute, don%u2019t switch %u2018em around. What is in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I%u2019m not askin%u2019 you who%u2019s in charge of evacuation.
Brown: : Who is on food and water.
Chertoff: I don%u2019t know!
Brown: : He%u2019s in charge of media spin%u2026now we%u2019re not talkin%u2019 %u2019bout him.
Chertoff: Now, how did I get on media spin?
Brown: : You mentioned his name!
Chertoff: If I mentioned the media spin guy%u2019s name, who did I say is in charge of media spin?
Brown: : No%u2026Who%u2019s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: Never mind food and water, I wanna know what%u2019s the guy%u2019s name in charge of media spin.
Brown: : No, What%u2019s in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I%u2019m not askin%u2019 you who%u2019s in charge of evacuation!
Brown: : Who%u2019s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: I don%u2019t know!
Brown: : He%u2019s in charge of media spin.
Chertoff: Aaah! Would you please stay on media spin and don%u2019t go off it?
Brown: : What was it you wanted?
Chertoff: Now who%u2019s in charge of media spin?
Brown: : Now why do you insist on putting Who in charge of media spin?
Chertoff: Why? Who am I putting over there?
Brown: : Yes. But we don%u2019t want him there.
Chertoff: What%u2019s the guy%u2019s name in charge of media spin?
Brown: : What is in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I%u2019m not askin%u2019 you who%u2019s in charge of evacuation.
Brown: : Who%u2019s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: I don%u2019t know.
Brown: & Chertoff: MEDIA SPIN!!
Chertoff: You got someone in charge of fixing the levees?
Brown: : Oh yes!
Chertoff: The guy%u2019s name?
Brown: : Why.
Chertoff: I don%u2019t know, I just thought I%u2019d ask you.
Brown: : Well, I just thought I%u2019d tell you%u2026"
Chertoff: All I%u2019m tryin%u2019 to find out is what%u2019s the guy%u2019s name in charge of food and water.
Brown: : Oh, no, wait a minute, don%u2019t switch %u2018em around. What is in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I%u2019m not askin%u2019 you who%u2019s in charge of evacuation.
Brown: : Who is on food and water.
Chertoff: I don%u2019t know!
Brown: : He%u2019s in charge of media spin%u2026now we%u2019re not talkin%u2019 %u2019bout him.
Chertoff: Now, how did I get on media spin?
Brown: : You mentioned his name!
Chertoff: If I mentioned the media spin guy%u2019s name, who did I say is in charge of media spin?
Brown: : No%u2026Who%u2019s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: Never mind food and water, I wanna know what%u2019s the guy%u2019s name in charge of media spin.
Brown: : No, What%u2019s in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I%u2019m not askin%u2019 you who%u2019s in charge of evacuation!
Brown: : Who%u2019s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: I don%u2019t know!
Brown: : He%u2019s in charge of media spin.
Chertoff: Aaah! Would you please stay on media spin and don%u2019t go off it?
Brown: : What was it you wanted?
Chertoff: Now who%u2019s in charge of media spin?
Brown: : Now why do you insist on putting Who in charge of media spin?
Chertoff: Why? Who am I putting over there?
Brown: : Yes. But we don%u2019t want him there.
Chertoff: What%u2019s the guy%u2019s name in charge of media spin?
Brown: : What is in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I%u2019m not askin%u2019 you who%u2019s in charge of evacuation.
Brown: : Who%u2019s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: I don%u2019t know.
Brown: & Chertoff: MEDIA SPIN!!
Chertoff: You got someone in charge of fixing the levees?
Brown: : Oh yes!
Chertoff: The guy%u2019s name?
Brown: : Why.
Chertoff: I don%u2019t know, I just thought I%u2019d ask you.
Brown: : Well, I just thought I%u2019d tell you%u2026"
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Hughes for America: Barbara Bush: First Moron
Hughes for America: Barbara Bush: First Moron: "Barbara Bush: First Moron
What the hell was Barbara Bush thinking when she said this today on National Public Radio's 'Marketplace' (Crooks and Liars has the audio)?In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: 'Almost everyone I%u2019ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston.'
Then she added: 'What I%u2019m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.
'And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this %u2013 this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.'Yeah, if by 'working very well' you mean 'their worst fear realized,' then you'd be onto something, Barbara. Making light of the victims being underprivileged while also making light of the fact they're displaced largely because of your incompetent son's criminal negligence: Now that's what I call a Texas two-step!"
-----------------
Barbra is like an awful lot of older American women who voted for George W in the last election. I know for a fact that her thought process here is exactly like that of my mother.
My Mom doesnt want to hear about any bad news. She watches Fox because "there are lots of possitive things going on in Iraq too." and she would rather hear stories of happy evacuees in shelters than about floating bodies and hellish conditions at the convention center.
So, she can honestly say "everything appears to be going well... the problems are being taken care of. This was a massive disaster and some people got hurt but you cant blame the Hurricane on the president"
I call it the "Happy Happy Hurrican Syndrome". Fox and to some extent the other news channels have made it possible for people to watch hours and hours of the news and never see anything that is in the least bit disturbing to their world view that everything is going well.
What the hell was Barbara Bush thinking when she said this today on National Public Radio's 'Marketplace' (Crooks and Liars has the audio)?In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: 'Almost everyone I%u2019ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston.'
Then she added: 'What I%u2019m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.
'And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this %u2013 this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.'Yeah, if by 'working very well' you mean 'their worst fear realized,' then you'd be onto something, Barbara. Making light of the victims being underprivileged while also making light of the fact they're displaced largely because of your incompetent son's criminal negligence: Now that's what I call a Texas two-step!"
-----------------
Barbra is like an awful lot of older American women who voted for George W in the last election. I know for a fact that her thought process here is exactly like that of my mother.
My Mom doesnt want to hear about any bad news. She watches Fox because "there are lots of possitive things going on in Iraq too." and she would rather hear stories of happy evacuees in shelters than about floating bodies and hellish conditions at the convention center.
So, she can honestly say "everything appears to be going well... the problems are being taken care of. This was a massive disaster and some people got hurt but you cant blame the Hurricane on the president"
I call it the "Happy Happy Hurrican Syndrome". Fox and to some extent the other news channels have made it possible for people to watch hours and hours of the news and never see anything that is in the least bit disturbing to their world view that everything is going well.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Florida compared to New Orleans - Bush's election year response to disaster
Whiskey Bar: Where There's a Will: "This catastrophe isn't a product of the anti-government biases of the conservative true believers; it's a product of the uses to which government has been put by the Mayberry Machiavellis and their GOP ward heelers in Congress.
Even the legally blind can see the Rovians are serious about the essential functions of government. It's just that in their value system, funneling federal money to sympathetic interest groups while simulatenously redistributing the tax burden away from those same groups are the two essential functions of government.
Likewise, the Bush family is prepared to spend almost unlimited amounts of federal money on preventative measures -- that is, on efforts to prevent them from losing an election.
It's instructive, on that score, to compare the current response to Hurricane Katrina (in which the Three Stooges apparently have seized control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a bloodless coup) with the administration's efforts on behalf of the voters of Florida following last year's triple storms -- Charley, Frances and Ivan.
True, the 2004 disasters didn't completely take down a major metropolitan area by turning its urban center into a bowl of shit soup. But the difference in the federal goverment's performance before, during and after those storms had passed is stlll rather striking. It appears there's something special about years divisible by two -- and particularly every other year divisible by two -- that can inspire amazing feats of bureaucratic energy and competence, at least in large, populous swing states."
Even the legally blind can see the Rovians are serious about the essential functions of government. It's just that in their value system, funneling federal money to sympathetic interest groups while simulatenously redistributing the tax burden away from those same groups are the two essential functions of government.
Likewise, the Bush family is prepared to spend almost unlimited amounts of federal money on preventative measures -- that is, on efforts to prevent them from losing an election.
It's instructive, on that score, to compare the current response to Hurricane Katrina (in which the Three Stooges apparently have seized control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a bloodless coup) with the administration's efforts on behalf of the voters of Florida following last year's triple storms -- Charley, Frances and Ivan.
True, the 2004 disasters didn't completely take down a major metropolitan area by turning its urban center into a bowl of shit soup. But the difference in the federal goverment's performance before, during and after those storms had passed is stlll rather striking. It appears there's something special about years divisible by two -- and particularly every other year divisible by two -- that can inspire amazing feats of bureaucratic energy and competence, at least in large, populous swing states."
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