Evict Bush!

Friday, May 16, 2003  

Things I couldn't resist linking to...

Go to the Center for Digital Democracy to learn how to register your protest regarding the FCC media consolidation initiative. Great collection of resources, links, and articles. While elsewhere, Ruminate This rounds up the best blog commentary on the subject.

Billmon with a caption and two headlines that need no additional comment.

Asia Times: Henry Liu talks about the legacy of colonialism in Hong Kong. Commentary on Saudi terror links and the resurgence of terror cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It's a short blurb of an article, but Newsweek acknowledges that a federal program may have created the perverse incentives that led to 38 wrongful drug convictions. For more, go to Google, type in "Tulia drug bust" & go from there. It's a doozy of a story.

TalkLeft on Jeb Bush's order to appoint guardian for fetus.

Courtesy of Jim Hightower's radio news spot on the local indy station, it turns out that California drinking water is contaminated with waste from rocket fuel production in Nevada. Think this doesn't affect you? If you had a salad recently, it probably does. The state is the major, nationwide supplier of winter lettuce, and many other types of produce. Produce that's watered with a contaminant that, as the article says, accumulates in doses 100 times above EPA safety guidelines in as little as two ounces of the affected vegetables.

BuzzFlash: Whales and dolphins threatened with extinction. The Carlyle Group cleans up. Halliburton admits paying $2.4 million bribe in Nigeria. And finally, here we go again; Iran accused of bioweapons manufacture. This portion was just transcendent in its cluelessness, emphasis mine:

...In recent weeks, the Mujaheddin has been fighting for survival after some of its Iraq-based military camps came under attack by U.S. forces during the war. Although the Mujaheddin claimed neutrality in the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq, the Bush administration decided to bomb Mujaheddin bases in an apparent attempt to thaw relations with Iran. Later, the U.S. Central Command arranged a cease-fire that allowed the group to keep many of its weapons and maintain its camps. But then the Bush administration decided to actively seek its surrender.

Mujaheddin officials said the timing of the release of their report on Iran's biowarfare program was unrelated to their problems with the U.S. government. ...

Oregon Bus Project

I wanted to let people in the Portland area know about an upcoming event on May 27th (the Tuesday after Memorial day) where you can find out more about the Oregon Bus Project's newest campaign.

May 27th Double Feature

2003 Great Defender Award Honoring Gov. John Kitzhaber and "Saying Something" - a kick off to the Engage Oregon Campaign

World's Only $10 Black Tie (Optional) Premiere and Award Ceremony 7-9 PM at the Hollywood Theatre.

$30 tickets include jazz reception with Gov. Kitzhaber before the event (5:30 - 6:45), main event (7:00-9:00), and After Party with Lilly Wild and her rockin' band.

The Oregon Bus Project is run by the New Progressive Network and they have come up with some wonderful, new ideas on how to build an activist network in Oregon.

This morning I interviewed Jefferson Smith, the chairman of the board, about what they are doing in Oregon. I'll be writing up my interview for PolState and will expand a bit on it here (check back later this weekend). They have had some very good successes that I'd like to share.

They are also launching an electronic magazine, the Zephyr, and are looking for contributors. I bet that we Oregon bloggers could provide some great content.

Check out the site and let's plan to go to the best progressive party in our state.

PS. I'll be posting very lightly for the next week or so to accommodate my visitors who want to do something while visiting, but I do plan to get my interview written up and posted. I'll also be dropping in to see what Natasha and James are covering. Be back soon.

Roving About

Ruminate This finds that a lot of people are talking about the proposed media consolidation rules. If you haven't read up on this, I highly recommend that you go now. She talks about it in more depth here.

Go to We Want The Airwaves for more discussion of media issues.

Interesting Times on the Project for a New American Century.

See The Forest explains that what conservatives really, really hate, is the right to privacy.

Wampum has the latest autism report from California, and shares a disturbing visual highlighting the sharp rise in cases.

Steve Gilliard at dKos talks about the return of Osama, and the day late, dollar short, looting policy in the works.

Billmon draws our attention to widespread radiation poisoning in areas of Iraq where unguarded nuclear waste facilities were left open to looters.

Body and Soul talks about Bill Gates.

Check out the latest edition of the Commonweal Institute newsletter.

Guardian: Jack Straw plays a game of CYA over WMD. New trade-offs proposed to get smaller countries to agree to a permanent EU president. In a disturbing finding that affects (directly or indirectly) every single person on the planet, it turns out that favored fish stocks are down 90% in 50 years.

For a little light refreshment, check out the Ironic Times, and in closing, I leave you with a comment from the Onion's latest report of person-on-the-street opinions about Bush & Blair's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Says one stalwart citizen:

"It's about time. I'm sick of them always giving the Peace Prize to all those fucking pacifists."

Framing the message: Tax Cut Debt Increase Plan

My friend, Matt Stoller, has a great idea about how to frame the issue for Bush's tax cut.

Let's not call Bush's fiscal plans a 'tax cut' anymore. It's not. We will have to find the money eventually, whether that's through inflation or increased taxes later on. And meanwhile, local and state taxes go up to address gaping budget deficits on the local level.

We should call it what it is: A Debt Increase Plan

In my opinion, the conservative attitude is: privatize the "shared wealth" of this country and socialize the "risks". So, we Americans must not stand in the way of drilling for oil in Alaska by private entities, but if a disaster happens (ie; the pipe line is split in an earthquate or war), then the American taxpayer will pick up the tab as we are the insurer of last resort.

Who will pay for today's tax cut for the wealthy? Everyone, but especially our children and grandchildren who will have to service the debt that we incur. And with the Republican budget plans, our children and grandchildren will have less opportunity for a high quality education, safe neighborhoods, public transit, healthy environment, etc. When do we consider the world we leave for them?

Go read Matt's full post. I think his suggestion bears merit.

Why...

...does the largest military budget on the planet not phase people who are concerned about big government?

...are some groups who worry obsessively about Big Brother usually in favor of longer prison sentences for everything?

...is school funding given lower priority than prison funding in a nation that incarcerates more people per capita than any other country on earth?

...do people who complain about illegal immigrants not learning English want to exclude them from public schools?

...does a society that mythologizes the quality of private boarding schools blame the poor quality of education in many low income areas entirely on absentee parents?

...do those who complain about absentee parents want to force poor, single parents to work longer hours?

...are American small farmers idolized as rugged individualists, while developing world farmers are viewed as foot-dragging holdouts in the new world economy?

...is it that the most vocal proponents of the capitalist virtue of charging all the traffic will bear always seem to complain first and loudest about getting squeezed by some two-bit, greedy b*stard overcharging for their services?

'Cause I was just wondering.

Why Bush Lies

During the 2000 election cycle, Bush was held up as an honorable, honest man in stark contrast to the dissembling Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the man that the press core hounded as a liar and egotist. Despite the fact that Bush lies incessantly is obvious to number of us, there has been very little discussion of this in the mainstream press. Krugman has been the main pundit that has tried to point this out since the 2000 election, but for the most part, the common belief continues to be that Bush is an honorable and honest man, one with real leadership qualities.

I know I'm deeply offended that they lie with such impunity and with so little consequence for their perfidity.

Tristero provides some insight into why they believe that their lying is justified. They actually have a philosophical justification for it based on the work of Leo Strauss.

Leo Strauss was, as close I can figger it from secondhand descriptions, a kind of a thinking lad’s Ayn Rand - with some major differences, it is true, but all of them simpatico with rightwingerism. Strauss was a man utterly traumatized by the Holocaust, as were many others. But he believed that the seeds of Nazism were sown in the Weimar Republic specifically. However, in general, he was appalled with the entire Enlightenment project. Enlightenment attitudes, Strauss felt, inevitably substituted individual moralities for spiritual morality, a veritable descent into a maelstrom which leads to liberal democracy, a corrupted form of governance which will slowly turn, step by step, into Nazism and anarchy. Since it is so vital that order be preserved, a country’s leaders - who should be beings of superior morality compared to the average citizen - must use all means, including lies and deception, in their fight against anarchy. These superior beings are beyond conventional norms; much of standard morality is irrelevant to their all important mission. Insight into the qualities and obligations of these leaders can be gleaned by close reading of ancient texts, notably the early Grecian philosophers, as our own morally superior leader might put it. When one truly understands Plato and Socrates, a secret, esoteric meaning is revealed which will help illuminate the role these great leaders play in keeping the world safe.

They are true believers and share a Manichean view of the world with Osama bin Laden. They frame the world in stark terms of good battling evil and believe that the ends justify the means.

Lakoff's interview with TomPaine also remarked on how the conservative framework allows for "dirty tricks" and deception:

But there is something in the worldview that leads to seeing deception as a reasonable thing to do. It has to do with the idea of evil being out there in the world. That is, if you are fighting evil, you can use evil to fight evil -- you can use fire to fight fire. The assumption is that, you know, if you are out there in a world against evil-doers, you may have to do some not very nice things. That is part of the conservative worldview.

So they see liberals as doing something that they believe is simply wrong and immoral by their perspective. They can fight it anyway they can. Deceptive practices are all part of the game.

The Strict Father model allows them to frame their message as "father knows best" and "don't you worry your pretty little head over that, I'll take care of it all". The problem is that they also subscribe to "children are better seen than heard". They, as superior beings, want us to act like sheep.

Under the Straussian influence, they feel totally justified in using vicious and deceptive practices. Strauss also believed that if you have no external enemies, then you must create internal enemies, because nothing else will restrain mankind from their inherent wickedness:

"Because mankind is intrinscially wicked, he has to be governed," he once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united -- and they can only be united against other people."

These true believers find themselves lucky enough to have two enemies they can battle: the terrorists and the liberals. They must be very happy with their lot.

Can you imagine any philosophy in stronger contrast to the teachings of Jesus or any of the other major religions of the world? Can you imagine a philosophy that was more anti-democratic or anti-liberal? And can you imagine a philosophy that is more destructive of the human soul? May the world forgive us for allowing these people any position of power.

Get informed about the coming FCC Media Consolidation.

Oil in Africa

US firm Murphy oil will begin offshore operations in DR Congo.

The South African subsidiary of TotalFinaElf has expanded black ownership to comply with new industry standards. It can be hoped that this is more than a bandaid and a nice face on the economic fact that black South Africans are getting poorer.

British energy firm BG set to increase export of West African natural gas to the US, mainly from Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.

Woodside Petroleum of Australia will begin offshore drilling in Kenya, in concert with Dana Petroleum of the UK.

Shell petroleum forced to shut down two pipelines in Nigeria after local unrest continues to focus on Shell and Chevron. A hostage situation where Nigerian youths held Shell employees captive has recently ended, and a new pipeline rupture may be due to vandalism.

Tullow oil of the UK announces new discovery offshore near Ivory Coast, they are already developing a nearby site.

The Scottish Wood Group has signed a $20 million contract to provide support services to the American firm Marathon for operations in Equatorial Guinea.

Exxon-Mobil under investigation for a bribery scandal in Equatorial Guinea.

Mysteriously, US set to expand military presence in areas of Africa where recent petroleum deposits have been uncovered. And private military companies are increasingly available for hire in the region, sometimes acting directly on behalf of oil conglomerates.

News of Iran

Iran to US: Don't come up with any new crises.

Private meetings have been held between the two countries, most recently in Geneva. The issues on the table were activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Natural gas contracts signed with India. The deal is for 25 years. Further economic cooperation planned with France, including expanded contracts with Peugeot. Also, they will help rebuild Afghan airports and train pilots.

The country is looking to improve relations with Algeria and Armenia.

An unusual wave of executions sweeps the country.

Iranian Jewish immigrant appears to be responsible for arson attacks at Los Angeles Jewish centers.

First commercial US release of an Iranian film is meeting with some acclaim.

President Khatami's brother, a parliamentarian, is pessimistic about political reform. Tellingly, the country has finally begun to follow in China's footsteps, cracking down on internet access.

Around the Web

Ampersand finds that a new British study reveals that kids do fine with working mothers, and that childcare is harder to find in the US, even as we continue in the mad dash to reduce welfare rolls.

Avedon on lying in journalism.

Blog Baby talks to local small business owners who say that they will create no new jobs unless consumers start buying more, no matter how big a tax break they get.

How To Save The World has interesting quips on why you hate your job, and some handy business survival tips.

Daily Kos: Republican representatives increasingly resentful of Bush. Maybe it clouded their minds into debating the wrong tax bill. And, btw, weren't there supposed to be boatloads of WMDs found in Iraq, after a war that was supposed to deliver a fatal blow to Al Qaida? 'Cause we were kind of wondering.

Guardian/Observer: Will Britain see a regime change? If no weapons are found, public opinion in the UK is set to tilt perilously against the war, because for some reason the British public actually cares what other countries think of them. This article has a very different perspective of Blair's relationship with the EU than the rosy American picture of his emergence as the leader of a new consensus. Iraqi agriculture on brink of collapse, as an exiled Shia cleric addresses a crowd of 100,000.

More on Iraqi Shi'ites.

Guerilla News talks about the growing problem of antibiotic resistance as spurred in part by the meat and fast food industries.

An Islamic perspective on slander.

Forget blood for oil. For Bechtel, it's blood for water.

US has asked for Indian troops to come help in Iraq.

Government Executive: Top officials at the Office of Special Counsel, in charge of whistleblower protections for federal employees, have resigned. Defense contractors hopping on the Homeland Security bandwagon.

Texas Democrats on the lam holed up in Oklahoma.

Further thoughts on the missing WMD

It seems to me that we can chalk up the missing WMD to one of two things.

1) Either the Bush administration deliberately lied about the danger of Saddam to take us into war for reasons that could not stand up to scrutiny.

2) Or the administration is totally incompetent because if there were WMD, they allowed the WMD to be secreted to whatever enemies and terrorists might wish to see us harm.

I cannot see any other reason that can account for the fact that this administration has not uncovered the Weapons of Mass Destruction that they assured the world were an imminent threat and the reason that we must invade Iraq.

Either case seems to me to be a more than sufficient reason to impeach Bush for his fatally flawed leadership.

On dKos, we have been having a lively discussion about the state of the constitution and whether there are still checks and balances in our government today. Bird Dog, one of the fellows that leans (heavily) to the right, said this today:

If Bush deliberately misled Congress and the nation about WMDs, then that is an impeachable offense. We agree. If WMDs are not found over the coming weeks and months, heads in the intelligence community should roll. Congress has the authority to investigate.

If Bird Dog is representative of the general right winger, this is indeed a dangerous sign for Bush.

For the record, Bush set the criteria to judge his administration in his State Of the Union speech.

In his own words, the reason that the US had to deal with Saddam:

Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. For the next 12 years, he systematically violated that agreement. He pursued chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, even while inspectors were in his country. Nothing to date has restrained him from his pursuit of these weapons -- not economic sanctions, not isolation from the civilized world, not even cruise missile strikes on his military facilities.

Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world. The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct -- were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq's regime is disarming. It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see, and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.

The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He's not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them -- despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, and Saddam really did have a bunch of WMD. From that same speech, Bush promised that he would work to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on these dangerous weapons:

We're strongly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency in its mission to track and control nuclear materials around the world. We're working with other governments to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, and to strengthen global treaties banning the production and shipment of missile technologies and weapons of mass destruction.

In all these efforts, however, America's purpose is more than to follow a process -- it is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to the civilized world. All free nations have a stake in preventing sudden and catastrophic attacks. And we're asking them to join us, and many are doing so. Yet the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others. (Applause.) Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people.

Through his own words he has impeached himself. Either there was no legitimate reason to invade Iraq or there were WMD that they have carelessly let lose in the world. Because I see no evidence that anyone is too concerned about the missing WMD, I cynically believe that he lied and deserves to be impeached for his lies. It would be much worse for all of us if option 2 was the truth.

Today's funniest headline

Digby's latest on the "hottie" President Bush has a link to today's best headline in my opinion:

Did Karl Rove Stuff Socks Down the Front of Bush's Pants Before He Got On THAT Plane?

In a BuzzFlash reader commentary, one astute mom tells us that she asked her children and her friends about how hot they found Bush. Needless to say, the reaction was not quite what Digby's WSJ writer reported.

I asked my son, who likes George and believes this administration will save him from all the monsters under his bed (he's 23) I asked him to look at the picture, and he said "you just don't like Bush's policies so nothing he does will suit you." He grabbed the picture and said "what does he have in his pants, looks like golf balls, they shouldn't have let him go out looking like that. So, he looks stupid, it's only one picture."

Republican policies and lies

One thing that is obvious about the Administration's policies is that often they have to lie or slip them in under the cover of other news -- usually on a Friday afternoon.

I talked about Frank Luntz' environmental memorandum previously as an example of the careful focus group testing of words to sell a policy. I went into more on this in an article I wrote for the Vox Populi Nebraska eZine.

The Battle for the Environmental Vote

Republicans know that Americans care about the environment. For years the best minds in advertising have been marketing GOP policies and now they want to sell the GOP as environmentally friendly. GOP polls showed them that, “The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general – and President Bush in particular – are most vulnerable.”

Bush’s record became even more of an issue after Dick Cheney made the statement, “conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” As Time Magazine reported last December, Karen Hughes was appalled by his statement and had the President do a series of photo-ops in natural settings to show that Bush actually cares about the environment.

The other thing they did was to hire Frank Luntz, a well-known Republican pollster and communication expert, to find a way to convince Americans that Republicans were better on the environment than Democrats. Full post

Molly Ivin's also remarked on how the language they use to "label" their policy completely hides what the policy will actually do:

Boy, there is no shortage of creatively terrible ideas from the Republican Party these days. Those folks are just full of notions about how to make people's lives worse -- one horrible idea after another bursting out like popcorn -- and all of them with these sickeningly cute names attached to them.

Consider the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act (Senate version) and the Family Time Flexibility Act (House version). The Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

To hear the Republicans tell it, you'd think these were family-friendly bills, something like Bill Clinton's Family Leave Act, designed to help you balance the difficult combined demands of work and family. With such a smarm of butter over their visages do the Republicans go on about the joys of "flexibility" and "freedom of choice" that you would have to read the bills for maybe 30 seconds before figuring out they're about repealing the 40-hour workweek and ending overtime.

The other way they enact their unpopular policies is to announce them on a Friday afternoon, knowing that the horrible policy will most likely be missed and never discussed. Last weekend there was an article in the NY Times This Week In Review about a new policy that affects the definition of Wilderness that I had completely missed because it had been announced when we were all paying attention to the Iraq aftermath, or Santorum, or a thousand of other things.

More than a century after historians declared an end to the American Frontier, the Interior Department made a somewhat similar announcement last month, with no fanfare. On a Friday night, just after Congress had left for spring break, the government said it would no longer consider huge swaths of public land to be wilderness.

The administration declared that it would end reviews of Western landholdings for new wilderness protection. As long as the lands had been under consideration for the American wilderness system, they had temporary protection from development.

With a single order, the Bush administration removed more than 200 million acres from further wilderness study, including caribou stamping ground in Alaska, the red rock canyons and mesas of southern Utah, Case Mountain with its sequoia forests in California and a wall of rainbow-colored rock known as Vermillion Basin in Colorado.

Republicans like to say they have won the hearts and minds of the American public, but it seems to be that their actions on what they do to enact policy says that this is a lie as well. If they really believed that they had the hearts and minds of the American public, they would not go to such lengths to lie and hide their true goals. It is important for us to try to find ways to expose and exploit this, because it is a serious weakness on their part.

"The Earth quakes and the heavens rattle; the beasts of nature flock together and the nations of men flock apart; volcanoes usher up heat while elsewhere water becomes ice and melts; and then on other days it just rains.

"Indeed do many things come to pass."

Malaclypse the Younger - The Principia Discordia

Around the Web

Veiled4Allah talks about mothers in Islam, and posts a tour of Islamic blogging.

Magpie tells us how the now usual version of the Klingon translator story is a misrepresentation of the facts.

A visit to the Whiskey Bar informs us that US arms inspectors have given up on finding WMDs in Iraq. Either they didn't exist, or they disappeared in the looting, but they're nowhere yet to be found. We can all hope and pray that the Bush administration was true to its nature, and was simply lying about the existence of vast quantities of horrible weapons. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.

Peace Tree Farm talks about his informative evening at the local chapter of a resurgent ACLU. The post includes links to some good commentary about conservative linguistic trickery.

Talk Left discusses how US government threats pressure has induced Canada to halt plans to decriminalize marijuana. Further, she links to an instance of Rich Lowry having a rare glimmer of sense, talking about the horror of prison rape.

From BuzzFlash: Dude, where's my electric car!? Will Iraq's women be as excluded from rebuilding efforts in their country as Afghan women were? Ashleigh Banfield has fans. Talks in Geneva between US and Iran.