THE BLUEST FIST

Obama and Invisible Man

2008-11-07T17:59:00.011-05:00

Read this, from Time Magazine, and it got to me:

After the Feb. 21 debate in Austin, Texas, we were leaving in the morning. Barack had the flu. There was an elderly black gentleman who had been our elevator operator for three days. As we got to the ground floor, he said, "Senator Obama, I have something I want to give you," and he handed him his military patch. He said, "I've carried this military patch with me every day for 40 years, and I want you to carry it, and it will keep you safe in your journey." It was just such an unbelievable act of generosity. So later we asked Barack what he had done with it. And he pulled it out of his pocket and said, "This is why I do this. Because people have their hopes and dreams about what we can do together." -- Valerie Jarrett, senior Obama adviser

Possibly because it reminded me of this passage from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man which I wrote about in my book, where an old man, "Brother Tarp" gives a "keepsake" to the younger "Invisible Man":

*****************
"I've been looking for freedom ever since, son. And sometimes I've done alright. Up to these here hard times I did very well, considering I'm a man whose health is not too good. But even when times were best for me I remembered. Because I didn't want to forget those nineteen years I just kind of held on to this as a keepsake and a reminder."
He was unwrapping the object now and I watched his old man's hands.
"I'd like to pass it on to you, son. There," he said, handing it to me. "Funny thing to give somebody, but I think it's got a heap of signifying wrapped up in it and it might help you remember what we're really fighting against. I don't think of it in terms of but two words, yes and no; but it signifies a heap more...I want you to take it. I guess it's a kind of luck piece. Anyway, its the one I filed to get away."
*******************************

The "object" is a link from the chains that held "Brother Tarp" during 19 years of imprisonment. "A heap of signifying" indeed.

Would like to write a longer piece on this (unintentional?) echo...stay tuned.

Palin: Oh, the irony, oh the hypocrisy!

2008-08-29T14:36:00.003-04:00

The Republicans, who have been ridiculing and decrying identity politics for three decades, just made the most crass and brazen identity politics-based choice in the history of American elections.

More later perhaps on this Hail Mary and why Americans everywhere should rest easy that "McCain/Palin" will soon be a Trivial Pursuit question...

Joey from Scranton

2008-08-24T22:19:00.009-04:00

Could Bluest Fist be gearing up for an extended bout of political blogging?? Stay tuned!

In any event, I'm back tonight to applaud the Biden VP pick. I've heard a number of pundits call this a "balancing the ticket pick" or "steadying the ticket pick". That's accurate in some obvious ways (he's 65, foreign policy experience etc) but misses completely why this pick will be so disruptive for McCain. Here are a few reasons, most of them related to demographics and the symbolism we attach to them in American political culture:

1. Biden is Catholic. I mean, an actual church going Catholic -- confident enough to explain his pro-choice record in that context. His kids went to Catholic school where his sister was, I think, the principal? (This is wrapped up with his period as a single father after his wife and daughter died tragically in a car accident. You think anyone's gonna go after his faith?) The Biden pick calls McCain's bluff on many fronts but one involves DARING him to pick Tom Ridge as his running mate. Ridge is a Catholic and also pro-choice. If McCain picks him the Evagelicals will have kittens. But if he doesn't pick him he may as well not event campaign in Pennsylvania BECAUSE...

2. Biden is from Scranton, PA. This matters for 2 reasons. First, it's a major play for PA's electoral votes -- likely to go Dem anyway but now almost surely so. Between Biden (not only from Scranton but also the Delaware Senator who shares a media market with Philly and is sometimes refered to as "Pennsylavania's third senator") Sen. Casey and Gov. Rendell that state is locked up. But there's a second, more interesting aspect to Scranton: Hillary adopted it as a cudgel to hit Obama with in the primary. Remember her endlessly repeated story about visiting Scranton as a child, how it was her home away from home, how she learned how to hunt etc? "Scranton" was the code word for "regular folks" just as "arugula" was the code word for "Obama is yuppie scum." Which brings me to...

3. Biden is working class. He grew up as an Irish Catholic in Scranton with nothing. He had a stutter. He fought kids on the playground and in the alley. And he's been a brawler ever since. There are so many important aspects to this I need to break #3 down into subsets:
3(a). The Hillary thing. It calls the bluff of all these Dems who indulged the fantasy that she was a working class hero, that SHE was "Scranton" by saying, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Joey from Scranton!" Its a gut appeal to the Dems Obama has the most difficult time winning over: working class whites from the rust belt who are in love with their family story.
3(b). The Irish Catholic Thing. This shouldn't be underestimated. Politics in America remain deeply tribal. You think American Catholics in PA, OH, MI, NH and other swing states are going to pass up the chance to elect the FIRST IRISH CATHOLIC VICE PRESIDENT and only the second Catholic to ever be part of the White House dynamic duo? I mean, I'm a lapsed, Catholic and political leftist and I'M thinking about getting drunk, punching someone out, taking confession, attending a wake, and voting for Biden right now! And the Italians, Latinos and everyone else will find it almost as irresistable. Watch Chris Matthews and Mike Barnacle on MSNBC fall all over each other on the Catholic thing in the next few weeks and tell me I'm not right on this.
3(c). The Working Class Thing. This became much more important after McCain's "Seven Houses" gaffe. We're in stagflation, folks! You think people wanna vote for the guy who can't remember whether he has 4, 7 or 10 houses and wears $520 loafers? But you need a real contrast. Obama brings that, which is why Republicans have been desperate to cast him as some sort of prep school oddity (which is nonsense but has been strangely difficult for him to combat at times). In picking Biden, Obama was doubling down on it with a guy who can vouch for the both of them. Now wait and see if McCain picks Romney to get over the dozen house mark! As an extra bonus, if you want to start "dog-whistling" Romney's Mormon faith and McCain's messy divorce to cause havoc in the Christian Right base, you can invent the slogan: "Barack Obama: One House, One Spouse."
3(d) The Tough Guy Thing. "Biden is a Brawler." The streets of Scranton. It's easy to forget that McCain isn't actually tough. McCain is a hot head. There's a big difference. McCain is a short guy in his 70s. He let George W. Bush slap him around all over the country in 2000. He's the privileged son and grandson of an admiral who walked away from his first wife and kids to marry a mega-rich girl who has floated his old, short ass ever since. We're already hearing from longtime Washington press corp people that Biden intimidates McCain. And, yeah, I'll say it: how many hundred times is McCain going to invoke his POW experience as a testiment to his character before people start pointing out (as Bush surogates did in 2000)that McCain's captors broke him and forced him to do treasonous things? Broke him, by the way, using techniques which George W. Bush defines as legal non-torture, a definition McCain has lately acquiesced to because -- well, because McCain ain't tough. He just plays tough on TV. The guy has my sympathy for getting the shit kicked out of him for five years in the Hanoi Hilton. But I'm supposed to VOTE for him because of this? Huh?
3(e). The Growing Up with Nothing Thing. Just emphasizing 3(c) here. Barack's single mom on food stamps. Somehow Biden helps authenticate that.
3(f) The Iraq Thing. Unlike the "fortunate sons" of the Bush social set, Biden's son is off to Iraq. The angle from which to attack Dems on Iraq just got a little narrower.

All this and the guy wrote the Violence Against Women act!

Get your popcorn...

DAVID GERGEN TO THE RESCUE...

2008-03-15T10:24:00.004-04:00

In case you missed it (and I hope you DID since it was at 10pm on a Friday night and only lame-o fathers of 3 could possibly have been watching!), the CNN show "Anderson Cooper 360" was one of the shows that interviewed Obama about the controversy over all of his pastor Rev Wright's inflammatory black power and quasi-Marxist liberation theology sermons released on video. Anyone familiar with 60s Black Power movement culture wouldn't be surprised by Wright's sermons -- I bet 1/4 or so of traditional black urban churches have featured sermons like this at one point or another over the last 10 years. On the other hand its easy to see why the whole thing is potentially disastrous relative to Obama's message and in the context of a Clinton/McCain race-baiting campaign (both overt and "dog-whistle") -- as well as why an average voter might, in more or less good-faith, think "If he has such good judgement, what the hell was he thinking hanging around this pastor for 20 years?" The intellectual answer is fairly easy but the political one is a killer.
So, one really heartening thing last night (besides the fact that Obama himself jumped on this, went on all the cable shows and did pretty solid damage control) was the comments on "Anderson Cooper 360" by David Gergen. Gergen, a very smart Yale/Harvard guy who for reasons I've never fully understood was an adviser to Nixon, Ford and Reagan (I'm sure there's bio material out there that explains this, I just haven't read it) and then had some kind of conversion experience when he joined the Clinton Whitehouse, clearly admires Obama. But his defense of him, and of Wright, last night was a really unique TV moment -- both intellectually acute and, it seemed to me, a genuine expression of racial understanding and empathy. I fairly couldn't believe I was seeing it on CNN. He actually brought up Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" which Douglass delivered in Rochester New York to a gathering of abolitionists -- and which is maybe one of the 5 greatest political speeches in American history. I wrote about this speech extensively in EMANCIPATING PRAGMATISMp>
Anyway, here's the transcript
COOPER: David, how badly do you think this could damage the campaign, especially with Pennsylvania coming up?

GERGEN: I think, if he acts aggressively, as he did tonight, to address it, and then moves on, Anderson, because we have spent our whole week on all these kind of issues. And, meanwhile, the economy is going in the tank.
And, if he gets -- if these candidates -- and Barack ought to be on this next week. They have got to speak seriously about the fact, you know, what's going on economically with the stock market going down, the dollar going down, prices going through the roof on oil and all the rest.
And I think that will help a lot. But I do think -- I hope, in the next segment, we can come back to understanding that there's a discourse, there's a conversation in the black community.

COOPER: Yes.

GERGEN: There has been for a long time, which is different from what is in the white community. And we ought to understand and appreciate the differences...

MARTIN: Very true.

GERGEN: ... and not expect everybody to be just the same in this country.

COOPER: And that's -- we are actually going to look at that extensively, both in a package and also in a discussion with all of you, coming up.
….
COOPER: David, you brought this up. Why do you think that's an important point?
GERGEN: Well, because there's a long tradition, Anderson. And among black leaders to have a different view of American history, going all the way back to Frederick Douglass, who was one of the greatest American heroes of the 19th century, you know, who -- who gained his freedom from slavery [and became a] great orator.
He was invited the a July 4th celebration to give a July 4th speech in 1852, and he showed up and said, "You know, you whites see July 4 very differently from what I see it. This is not a day of celebration for us."
And I have found that in my classroom with black students frequently. When they speak their minds and when they speak their hearts, they have a very different view. I've had a young woman tell me, "July 4, we still can't celebrate it in my family, because of what's happened to us."
And I think that we as whites have to be understanding and empathic toward that and try to understand that, that people who are African-Americans legitimately have a different perspective on what American history has meant and take that into account as we hear this.
And it's not a lack of patriotism. It is a different form of patriotism. Actually, Reverend Wright may love this country more than any of us but feel we've fallen short of what we preach and believe.

Jesse Hart, aka Gary Jackson

2008-01-27T22:36:00.000-05:00

Here's a thought: the Obama campaign is a little like this question: What would have happened in 1984 if there was no Donna Rice and Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson were the same person?

It's not a perfect analogy: Obama is a better politician than either Hart or Jackson. Hillary is a better politician than Mondale (the calculus here is complex: he had a better party machine behind him and didn't have to deal with misogyny; she has better political skills and a former 2 term president for a husband). But, that being said, if you take Hart's constituency and Jackson's constituency, you pretty much have the group of voters than Obama is trying to win with.

A more fascinating primary battle I cannot recall.

Barack Obama: The Great Communicator

2008-01-27T09:54:00.000-05:00

Despite having too many kids, too hard a job, and too much literary ambition to reasonably add political commentary to the mix, a fit of Obamania has drawn me back to The Bluest Fist. I'll likely be blogging here in much smaller doses than I did in 2000 or 2004 but I'll be blogging nonetheless.

Last night Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, doubling the number of votes won by Hillary Clinton. I'll save my specific feelings about these two formidable candidates for another time. Right now I'd like to focus on a remarkable moment in their last debate which happens to have coincided with Obama move toward a landslide victory.

Just a few days before the primary, Obama led Clinton among black voters by 53-21 percent. For those who thought that black voters would automatically vote for a black candidate Obama's number was fairly unimpressive and reflected the Clinton's strong relationship with the African-American community. Among white voters Obama was polling as low as 10% and this seemed to confirm the belief of those who thought white South Carolinian Democrats would not vote for a black candidate.

There are undoubtedly a number of factors that contributed to a shift that landed Obama a very solid 24% of the white vote (in a three person race, Hillary got 36%) and over 80% of the black vote. The moment I'm interested in is a gifted bit of political Signifyin' from the January 21 debate. Media member Joe Johns asked the question and the exchange went like this:

JOHNS: Right. The Nobel Prize-winning African-American author, Toni Morrison, famously observed about Bill Clinton, "This is our first black president, blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime." Do you think Bill Clinton was our first black president?

(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: Well, I think Bill Clinton did have an enormous affinity with the African-American community, and still does. And I think that's well earned. Like John, one of the things that I'm always inspired by -- no, I'm -- this I'm serious about. I'm always inspired by young men and women who grew up in the South when segregation was still taking place, when, you know, the transformations that are still incomplete but at least had begun had not yet begun. And to see that transformations in their own lives I think that is powerful, and it is hopeful, because what it indicates is that people can change. And each successive generation can, you know, create a different vision of how, you know, we have to treat each other. And I think Bill Clinton embodies that. I think he deserves credit for that. Now, I haven't...
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: I have to say that, you know, I would have to, you know, investigate more of Bill's dancing abilities.
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: You know, and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was in fact a brother.
(APPLAUSE)

Johns's was a trick question. It should have been impossible to answer correctly with Obama either coming off as the "Jesse Jackson candidate" asserting his black authenticity, or the cosmopolitan "Bill Bradley Candidate," picking off a few wealthy and well-educated whites by looking "beyond race" but losing the faith of many black voters in the bargain and failing to attract middle and lower-class whites as well. That represented the hope and strategy of Clinton guru Mark Penn and this "micro trends" philosophy of political organizing -- and Johns had seemed to help them out here. But, in a moment that should be written about for a long time in places other than this blog, Obama shot the gap. His answer involved a three part strategy.

First, he struck a magnanimous chord, celebrating Bill Clinton as an example of a young southern white male baby boomer's journey to racial enlightenment. However, in doing so he used Bill Clinton's story in the service of Barack Obama's canbdidacy: "what it indicates is that people can change." This is the central touchstone of Obama's message -- he said it over and over in last night's victory speech. Here he was speaking to blacks and whites as the nations reconciler.

If he had only done that it would have been a great answer. What he did next made it mind-blowingly good.

First he made the joke about the need to judge Clinton's dancing abilities. The tone in which he employed this stereotype suggested to me that he was speaking to white voters, saying, hey, I don't take this stuff too seriously, I don't take myself too seriously and I don't mind joking about it. (And besides, what a silly question!)

Then, he suggested that a series of tests could prove whether or not Clinton was "in fact a brother." This too was a joke -- except it was also a real test that Clinton by definition failed. Obama pronounced "brother" as "brutha". Only he could do that (Urban Dictionary defines the term as "A well dressed and presented black man that, is very popular with tha girls and can get any woman he wants.") If Clinton ever said "brutha" it would come off horribly. Because, low and behold, Bill Clinton is a white male. In that one moment, Obama was saying to the black audience, "Get real. Bill Clinton can't even pronouce the word brutha."

I would bet a nickel that if you went back through the transcripts of John F. Kennedy's run for the 1960 presidency, you would find similar acts of Signifyin' -- coding to Catholics that would drive them to the polls that simultaneously, almost magically, cooled the anxieties of Protestants. The magic involves embodying the one and the many through voicing. It takes a once in a generation -- at most -- political communicator to pull this off. And right now we're all staring one in the face.

WE WIN!!!

2006-11-09T09:39:00.000-05:00

More soon on what the Dems should do with control of the House and Senate...Suffice it to say for now that "Move to the center and write policy as exciting as an unsweetened bowl of oatmeal won't be my advice.

NOW THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE A CAMPAIGN AD!

2006-10-26T12:21:00.000-04:00

Want some evidence that the Democratic Party smells blood and is finally learning how to make a winning campaign commerical? Have a look at this attack on Bush's miserable STAY THE COURSE policy in Iraq and his recent attempt to run from it.

THE ETHICAL EQUIVALENT OF MARRIAGE

2006-10-21T15:17:00.000-04:00

Today, I’m going to solve the national/cultural dispute over “gay marriage” using the opening anecdote from William James’s essay “What Pragmatism Means.” The anecdote involves an argument about a man, a squirrel, a tree and the meaning of the word “around” and I need to quote it for you in full:

SOME YEARS AGO, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find every one engaged in a ferocious metaphysical dispute. The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel – a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree’s opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not? He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he go round the squirrel? In the unlimited leisure of the wilderness, discussion had been worn threadbare. Every one had taken sides, and was obstinate; and the numbers on both sides were even. Each side, when I appeared therefore appealed to me to make it a majority. Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contradiction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and found one, as follows: “Which party is right,” I said, “depends on what you practically mean by ‘going round’ the squirrel. If you mean passing from the north of him to the east, then to the south, then to the west, and then to the north of him again, obviously the man does go round him, for he occupies these successive positions. But if on the contrary you mean being first in front of him, then on the right of him, then behind him, then on his left, and finally in front again, it is quite as obvious that the man fails to go round him, for by the compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards the man all the time, and his back turned away. Make the distinction, and there is no occasion for any farther dispute. You are both right and both wrong according as you conceive the verb ‘to go round’ in one practical fashion or the other.”

Although one or two of the hotter disputants called my speech a shuffling evasion, saying they wanted no quibbling or scholastic hair-splitting, but meant just plain honest English ‘round,’ the majority seemed to think that the distinction had assuaged the dispute.

I tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example of what I wish now to speak of as the pragmatic method. The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many? – fated or free? – material or spiritual? – here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right.

What does this have to do with marriage? Consider that the debate over gay marriage is nothing more than a fight over the definition of the word marriage. If by marriage you mean “a union between two consenting adults, not related by blood, whereby they agree to love each other and treat each other as a single functioning unit within a larger community; and whereby said larger community also agrees to treat them as such, bestowing on them such benefits (e.g. the sharing of insurance and estate benefits, visitation rights, etc) as will make the maintenance of their union as easy as possible” then you are “in favor” of “gay marriage.” If, on the other hand, you mean by marriage “a union between a man and a woman, not related by blood, whereby they agree to love each other and treat each other as a single functioning unit within a larger community; and whereby said larger community also agrees to treat them as such, bestowing on them such benefits (e.g. the sharing of insurance and estate benefits, visitation rights, etc) as will make the maintenance of their union as easy as possible” then you are “against gay marriage”. That’s it.

By these definitions, you could be quite easily FOR “a union between two men or two women, not related by blood, whereby they agree to love each other and treat each other as a single functioning unit within a larger community; and whereby said larger community also agrees to treat them as such, bestowing on them such benefits (e.g. the sharing of insurance and estate benefits, visitation rights, etc) as will make the maintenance of their union as easy as possible” and still be AGAINST “gay marriage”. In this case, you would tell people, you are “for civil unions.” Here we might use James’s pragmatic method to sort out the argument likely to ensue when I call “a union between two men or two women” as described above marriage and you call that union “a civil union.” (Here we are presuming that the legal benefits bestowed on these unions by local, state and federal governments are identical.) James might say, “We are both right and both wrong according as you conceive the noun ‘marriage’ in one practical fashion or the other. But since we both seem to agree that me and my wife on the one hand and the two men over here on the other should receive exactly the same legal recognition, assistance and protection from the community at large, then, since no practical difference whatever can be traced, the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.” If this pragmatic line of argumentation proves convincing, then we will have cobbled together a veto-proof majority out of those people who believe gays and lesbian should have the legal right to marry, and those who believe gays and lesbians should have the legal right to enter into civil unions. [Note: There are those of course who don’t believe that gay and lesbian couples should have ANY partnering rights whatsoever, not even those rights afforded to long-time un-married straight couples. But those people have already given up the game: they have gone beyond the rhetorical position, “I am defending ‘marriage’” to the position “I am against gays and lesbians as such.” These citizens are, polls show, in the minority.]

There are however some problems with the logic and approach proposed above. These problems are related to the way the word “marriage” and its cognate verb “marry” function in our culture as symbolic action. Even if the social and economic rights of married people and people in civil unions were identical (as far as local, state and federal law were concerned), those who were “married” would still benefit from that designation relative to those in civil unions. In our culture, marriage continues to imply (within certain margins of error) specific levels of piousness, stability, long-term planning (because of its association with children, grandchildren), fidelity and trustworthiness. (We are talking here of course about connotation, not about the actual behavior of married people.) Hence, people who have to answer, in a variety of institutional contexts, the question, “Are you married” with “No I am in a civil union” are being put in the awkward position of having to participate in their own othering and in the depreciation of their social worth. The very structure of that answer –– which presumes a norm from which all other answers are a deviation (and which effectively reads the answer “single” as “not yet married”) –– forces them to designate themselves as, to one degree or another, LESS pious, LESS stable, LESS interested in or able to plan for the future, LESS loyal, LESS trustworthy.

Self-styled “defenders of marriage” tend to emphasize its role in Christian theology and practice: specifically that marriage is a Christian sacrament and that various Biblical narratives make clear (so the argument goes) that marriage is “between a man and a woman.” By a dexterous act of sophistry, their rhetoric tends to suggest that to re-define marriage in our civil institutions would be to re-write The Bible. It is a logically specious but nonetheless powerful argument in a nation where the majority of citizens flatter themselves through religious observance. The word “marriage” comes from the Latin “maritare” (to wed), derived from “maritus” (basically “conjugal,” a seemingly neutral meaning as in “to yoke together” except for the additional etymological connection to “mas,” male [or “person”]). Being Latin, it precedes Christianity by hundreds of years at least. The idea that the word means to us what it meant to Cicero or Virgil, Juvenal or Pliny is absurd. But I think trying enact lawful, protected and respected gay marriage in the United States by telling its detractors that they have no idea what the word marriage means is a hopeless strategy. Witness the zombie-like way in which our political office holders and candidates (including many of those we would otherwise define as “liberal”) answer the gay marriage question by repeating, “I simply believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.” But why? “I just believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.” Why? “I was brought up to believe it.” Couldn’t you change your mind? “I simply believe it.” “It’s my faith.” “It’s an important tradition.” Important how? “It’s what I believe.” To argue that marriage is NOT limited to the union of a man and a woman is to repeatedly butt up against an unbreakable tautology. The Right has come to OWN the word “marriage” –– not least because, truth be told, the Left (myself included) doesn’t actually CARE that much about the word, except insofar as we don’t like being told that we can’t use it the way we want to.

I believe I may have found a way around this impass. I propose that state legislatures begin enacting the following law:

“We, the People of the State of X, agree to recognize a union between two consenting adults, not related by blood, whereby these two agree to love each other and treat each other as a single functioning unit within a larger community; and whereby we, said larger community, also agrees to treat them as such, bestowing on them such benefits (e.g. the sharing of insurance and estate benefits, visitation rights, etc) as will make the maintenance of their union as easy as possible, such rights being exactly commensurate with the rights and benefits we, The People of the State of X, currently bestow on the union known as marriage. This new union described above shall henceforth be known as ‘merriage.’ All laws, customs and practices relevant to the licensing of marriage in this state shall henceforth also apply to the licensing of merriage with the single notable exception that all references to ‘marriage’ will be replaced by references to ‘merriage.’”

What would happen if a state enacted this law? Gay couples could get “merried” but straight couples could as well. Some straight couples would in fact CHOOSE to be merried instead of being married, making merriage a new solidarity movement. The legal effect would be no different than enacting a good, comprehensive Civil Unions law. But the cultural effect would be something more. Gay and straight couples in the movement would now be uttering sentences like: “I’m merried.” “He’s merried to my brother.” “She’s merried to my cousin Lisa.” “We’re related by merriage.” “We were merried last October.” The sonic semblance between “married” and “merried” would function like a piece of comic theater or social satire on a vast scale, making those who cared listen REALLY hard for that minor distinction in sound, calculating in the regional accent factor, asking the absurd question, “Did you say married or merried,” etc. If all the conversants were in fact not hung up on the definition of “marriage” in the first place, the benefit would be a practical erasure of the self-othering aspect of the term “civil union”. [Note: I have chose “merriage” over a second option “mariage” with one r because a) I think “marriage” with one r, being pronounced exactly like “marriage” might lend itself to more obvious court challenges than “merriage” which is clearly a different word; and b) because “merriage” is a play on “merry marriage” which in turn is a play on both “gay marriage” and on the notion of a so-called “happy marriage.”]

Best of all, though, is this likely outcome: that the American Right, sensing that “merriage” was a new example of barbarians storming the gate, would be forced to argue, in Congress and in court and on every other national stage, that the State cannot legally determine the meaning of the word “merriage”. This, despite the fact that, according to these same folks, Congress has every right in the world to legally “defend” the word “marriage” by defining it. Additionally, all politicians that have claimed support for Civil Unions as a means to position themselves as “moderates” while stonewalling gay marriage and its attendant civil rights would be forced in opposing “merriage” to –– ahem –– come out of the closet as explicitly anti-homosexual. Someone that has claimed to be in favor of civil unions could not logically claim to be against “merriage” without confessing that what one is “defending” when one defends “marriage” from re-definition is not an institution, not a social and/or religious tradition but rather a recognizable and revered pattern of sounds.

AN HONEST CONSERVATIVE

2006-09-09T00:19:00.000-04:00

CBS News aired a brief interview with a Marine Colonel who is also a conservative Christian recently. What he says about the Bush Administration is eye-opening. Have a look:

HERE

I have many problems with conservative doctrine, problems I could talk all day about as you know. But I have also always felt that conservatism, at its most honest and honorable, does originate from a plausible world-view.

The best conservative argument, boiled all the way down, goes someting like this: 1) The world is cruel and chaotic by its nature. 2) Human beings are sinners (or if you want the secular version, human beings are hopelessly flawed animals constantly prone to mistakes in judgement and fits of cruelty toward each other). 3) The only way to combat this is to batten down the hatches: organize yourself in a small traditional family unit, in a small manageable community, with a clearly defined set of laws backed by tradition, habit and if necessary, well-reasoned force. 4) Once you've got everything manageable, you can focus on your own personal righteousness and be witness to the benefits of that righteousness.

I disagree strongly with this world-view for a number of reasons I won't get into now (gotta go pick up the kids at school in a minute) but its certainly not ridiculous and I think many of the people whose beliefs bascially conform to what I've sketched out here don't have a malicious bone in their body.

As the Marine Colonel in the video I've linked to here reminds us, there is nothing the least bit conservative about the Iraq War: making boneheaded, improvised, wing-and-a-prayer policy decisions based only on a few human beings' complete and total conviction about their own righteousness and infallibility; blowing $300 Billion on the adventure and justifying it by utopian fantasies about the better world on earth you're creating for people you dont know. What in the hell's conservative about that? It seems to me many conservatves are starting to ask this question.

If you are a true conservative, you might think about doing what this Marine Colonel says he'll be doing in November: voting Democratic across the board to deliver a Democratic congress that can stop this administration's madness in its tracks. Once a real conservative emerges again you can always return home.

If you're a liberal but know any conservatives, please pass this along.

OLD FRIENDS

2006-09-09T00:15:00.000-04:00

Hey, who's THIS HERE shaking hands with Sadam Hussein in 1983? Why, I do believe that's Mr. Donald Rumsefeld!

THE PATH TO SHAMELESS PROPAGANDA

2006-09-09T00:13:00.000-04:00

Below is a letter from the Democratic Party leaders in the US Senate to The Walt Disney Company about their outrageously erroneous mini-series “Path to 9/11.” Please take a moment to read it. If you’re as outraged as I am, call this number and let Disney and ABC know:

(818) 460-7477

You can listen to the message, or you can press 2 and then 6 to get the beep and leave a message.

Public pressure has already convinced Scholastic Books to withdraw from their partnership with this program. We CAN actually get ABC to throw the thing in the garbage where it belongs before it airs.

Peace and Love,

Michael

***************
September 7, 2006

Mr. Robert A. Iger
President and CEO
The Walt Disney Company
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank CA 91521

Dear Mr. Iger,

We write with serious concerns about the planned upcoming broadcast of The Path to 9/11 mini-series on September 10 and 11. Countless reports from experts on 9/11 who have viewed the program indicate numerous and serious inaccuracies that will undoubtedly serve to misinform the American people about the tragic events surrounding the terrible attacks of that day. Furthermore, the manner in which this program has been developed, funded, and advertised suggests a partisan bent unbecoming of a major company like Disney and a major and well respected news organization like ABC. We therefore urge you to cancel this broadcast to cease Disney’s plans to use it as a teaching tool in schools across America through Scholastic. Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law, to your shareholders, and to the nation.

The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest. Nowhere is this public interest obligation more apparent than in the duty of broadcasters to serve the civic needs of a democracy by promoting an open and accurate discussion of political ideas and events.

Disney and ABC claim this program to be based on the 9/11 Commission Report and are using that assertion as part of the promotional campaign for it. The 9/11 Commission is the most respected American authority on the 9/11 attacks, and association with it carries a special responsibility. Indeed, the very events themselves on 9/11, so tragic as they were, demand extreme care by any who attempt to use those events as part of an entertainment or educational program. To quote Steve McPhereson, president of ABC Entertainment, “When you take on the responsibility of telling the story behind such an important event, it is absolutely critical that you get it right.”

Unfortunately, it appears Disney and ABC got it totally wrong.

Despite claims by your network’s representatives that The Path to 9/11 is based on the report of the 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Commissioners themselves, as well as other experts on the issues, disagree.

Richard Ben-Veniste, speaking for himself and fellow 9/11 Commissioners who recently viewed the program, said, “As we were watching, we were trying to think how they could have misinterpreted the 9/11 Commission’s findings the way that they had.” [“9/11 Miniseries Is Criticized as Inaccurate and Biased,” New York Times, September 6, 2006]

Richard Clarke, the former counter-terrorism czar, and a national security advisor to ABC has described the program as “deeply flawed” and said of the program’s depiction of a Clinton official hanging up on an intelligence agent, “It’s 180 degrees from what happened.” [“9/11 Miniseries Is Criticized as Inaccurate and Biased,” New York Times, September 6, 2006]

Reports suggest that an FBI agent who worked on 9/11 and served as a consultant to ABC on this program quit halfway through because, “he thought they were making things up.” [MSNBC, September 7, 2006]

Even Thomas Kean, who serves as a paid consultant to the miniseries, has admitted that scenes in the film are fictionalized. [“9/11 Miniseries Is Criticized as Inaccurate and Biased,” New York Times, September 6, 2006]

That Disney would seek to broadcast an admittedly and proven false recounting of the events of 9/11 raises serious questions about the motivations of its creators and those who approved the deeply flawed program. Finally, that Disney plans to air commercial-free a program that reportedly cost it $40 million to produce serves to add fuel to these concerns.

These concerns are made all the more pressing by the political leaning of and the public statements made by the writer/producer of this miniseries, Mr. Cyrus Nowrasteh, in promoting this miniseries across conservative blogs and talk shows.

Frankly, that ABC and Disney would consider airing a program that could be construed as right-wing political propaganda on such a grave and important event involving the security of our nation is a discredit both to the Disney brand and to the legacy of honesty built at ABC by honorable individuals from David Brinkley to Peter Jennings. Furthermore, that Disney would seek to use Scholastic to promote this misguided programming to American children as a substitute for factual information is a disgrace.

As 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick said, “It is critically important to the safety of our nation that our citizens, and particularly our school children, understand what actually happened and why – so that we can proceed from a common understanding of what went wrong and act with unity to make our country safer.”

Should Disney allow this programming to proceed as planned, the factual record, millions of viewers, countless schoolchildren, and the reputation of Disney as a corporation worthy of the trust of the American people and the United States Congress will be deeply damaged. We urge you, after full consideration of the facts, to uphold your responsibilities as a respected member of American society and as a beneficiary of the free use of the public airwaves to cancel this factually inaccurate and deeply misguided program. We look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Sincerely,

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid
Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Senator Charles Schumer
Senator Byron Dorgan

FINAL NOTE: Disney's Chairman of the Board is former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-ME). Senator Mitchell has a long and distinguished career both inside and outside government and he knows how important it is to accurately represent historical events.

You can remind him that 9/11 was a national tragedy, and that politicizing and flagrantly misrepresenting the facts about 9/11 is wrong.

Senator George J. Mitchell
T: (212) 335-4600
T: (212) 335-4500
F: (212) 335-4605
george.mitchell@dlapiper.com

2006-05-04T13:15:00.000-04:00

Steven Colbert dispenses with his usually subtle irony and lets the President HAVE IT at the White House Correspondence dinner. This is just Part 1. Once you've seen it, search the same site for Parts 2 & 3:

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2723919

GOD, MONEY AND THE ABRAMOFF CASE

2006-01-10T15:59:00.000-05:00

I imagine many of you have been hearing about the Justice Department’s major case against Jack Abramoff and a number of powerful figures in the Republican lobbying and fundraising community. It’s a case that has already brought down Republican House Majority leader Tom Delay and may bring down over a dozen Republican congresspeople before all’s said and done. There’s been an awful lot of good investigative reporting on this case. I’m partial to the reporting Josh Marshall has been doing at Talking Points Memo

What Marshall argues convincingly is that, led by figures like Bush, Cheney, Delay and Roy Blunt, the Republican party has actually been functioning like an organized crime syndicate, laundering huge sums of money so as to avoid campaign finance laws and then using that money to bribe and/or bully public officials (often in their own party) to do their bidding. Jack Abramoff ran the enormous slush fund. It’s just another example of how this situation with the Bush Whitehouse and its tentacles has reached Nixonian proportions and is indeed now completely out of control.

I’m hoping to write a full synopsis of the Abramoff case for you, but in the meantime I thought I’d show you this. It’s an email exchange between Ralph Reed – he formerly of the Christian Coalition and the Michael J. Fox-like innocent looks – and Jack Abramoff. Reed's correspondence with Abramoff is contained in pages 52-53 of the Exhibits released to the public by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs as part of the Oversight Hearing on Lobbying Practices on November 2, 2005.

The Reed/Ambramoff coversation took place on April 11, 2001, as Reed was mounting a campaign for the chairmanship of the Georgia Republican Party:

Reed writes:

"Jack, would you be willing to contribute personally to my state chair campaign? This race is costing me $50-100K, and I'm asking my friends to help."

Abramoff responds:

"Sure. Give me the name of the entity."

Reed deadpans:

"The actual committee is "The Reed Family Retirement and Educational Foundation." It is a 501(c)(3). The address is 200 Bay Drive, Grand Cayman, BCI, R59876."

Abramoff:

"Ha ha ha. Make sure you get me the proper committee name."

After Reed responded with the real name ("Reed for Chairman"), Abramoff wrote:

"Seriously, I'll get you the $10K this week or next from a source which owes me money."

The "source" was the Mississippi Choctaw Indian tribe. In early April, the Choctaw cut a $150K check to the American International Center, one of the fake foundation slush funds Abramoff had set up with Michael Scanlon. On 4/12/01, Abramoff wrote to his assistant instructing $10K of the $150K check to be sent on to Reed's campaign (see page 54).

Strangely, only $5500 of the Choctaw money seems to have gotten into the “Reed for Chairman” accounts. Perhaps the rest ended up in those Holy and Tax-Free Cayman Islands Reed mentioned.

Reed has been for almost two decades now one of the public faces of “conservative” American Christianity. And like many of his compatriots, he’s been working hard to give new meaning to that “In God We Trust” brand on the money in your wallet.

Could somebody remind me what slush funds in the tax-free Cayman Islands have to do with Jesus again?

SOCIAL SECURITY? WHY WORRY! STABLE DEMOCRACY? WHY WORRY! THE END IS NEAR!

2005-12-14T13:18:00.000-05:00

Wow.

GOD: AN INCOMPETENT ENGINEER OR PRACTICAL JOKESTER?

2005-12-08T18:06:00.000-05:00

Bring The Incompetent Design Theory up at your next School Board meeting…

KING GEORGE AND "THE RENDITION GROUP"

2005-12-08T12:02:00.000-05:00

Well, something has finally forced me to carve out a little time and put my Bluest Fist hat on. I urge you to read the article by Dana Priest in this past Sunday’s Washington Post

But if you for some reason can’t or don’t have time I’ll synopsize it here and give you my thoughts. Here are some excerpts from Priest’s article:

In May 2004, U.S. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.
….
Unlike the military's prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- where 180 prisoners have been freed after a review of their cases -- there is no tribunal or judge to check the evidence against those picked up by the CIA. The same bureaucracy that decides to capture and transfer a suspect for interrogation-- a process called "rendition" -- is also responsible for policing itself for errors.

And errors there have been, plenty of them. We are talking about innocent people with no association whatsoever to terrorism being grabbed by the CIA, beaten, tortured and interrogated in secret. Khaled Masri is one of these people. Who is he? Well, geez, he’s just some German guy who happens to be of Lebanese decent. Other people of Lebanese decent include my good friend Phil Metres and TV’s Jamie Farr, who you may have recently seen in a rerun of M*A*S*H. Masri had a fight with his wife and took a bus to Macedonia to blow off steam. Macedonian authorities working in contact with the CIA grabbed him off the bus because his name was kind of like (yes, not the same as but kind of like) the name of an al Qaeda figure. Once word got to the CIA “The director of the al Qaeda unit [in the CIA’s counter-terrorism office] insisted he was probably a terrorist, and should be imprisoned and interrogated immediately.”

Let’s pause for a minute. “Probably a terrorist”?!? This is how we fight terrorism now, by saying some German dude with a middle eastern name is “probably a terrorist”? It would all be a hilarious Saturday Night Live-like joke if it weren’t for what happens to these guys once they are designated “probably terrorist.” Because, listen up American citizens, they are then snatched up by our lovely, secret, “Rendition Group.” Haven’t heard of the Rendition Group? Didn’t know your hard-earned tax dollars pay for this group? Well, Dana Priest at The Post tells us about them:

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.

Let’s try to put this all in familiar terms for a moment: Let’s say you’re a working-class guy and you live in San Diego. You’re name is Mike Magee. You get in a fight with your wife and to blow off a little steam you take a bus across the border to Tiajuana. Mexican authorities meet you as you get off the bus because they’re looking for a guy named Mick McGahee and, well, your name is kind of like that. So, now you’re in a jail waiting for a hearing. But before you get a hearing, a bunch of commandos dressed head to toe in black and wearing masks snatch you up, blindfold you, cut your clothes off, shove an enema up your ass, drug you. When you wake up you’re wearing a diaper and have hit and pissed in it; you’re in a dimly lit room in some basement where these commandos proceed to beat, torture and interrogate you for five months. Then they drop you off somewhere near the border and tell you to find your way back to San Diego. When you get there your wife and five children are gone. You hear they moved to Nebraska. Meanwhile the Mexican Government has convinced your President to pretend this never happened.

This is the equivalent of what your United States government did to Khaled Masri. THEY DID THIS KNOWINGLY, THROUGH A PROGRAM AUTHORIZED BY GEORGE W. BUSH AT THE PROVOCATION OF DICK CHENEY.

Please do not treat this as conspiracy theory. It is not. The story of Khaled Masri is simple fact, corroborated by dozens of sources in the U.S. government and intelligence community. And Masri is one of several dozen innocent people who have received similar treatment at the hands of the Rendition Group.

"I have very bad feelings" about the United States, Masri says. "I think it's just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Can someone explain to me again how this message we’re sending to ordinary law-abiding people of Middle Eastern decent is going to help us fight terrorism?

There was a time, after 9/11, when citizens like you and I could perhaps be forgiven for not having the moral righteousness and fortitude to pay attention to the perversions of American democracy that were taking place in the name of the “war on terrorism”. That time is now past. If we can’t as citizens of the United States put a stop to what this White House is doing by our own actions of vote and protest then we don’t really deserve to live in a democracy, which depends for its very life on the personal moral responsibility of its citizens.

Call your Congresspeople! Call your Senators! They are in your phone book. Tell them you have had enough and don’t sugar-coat it – tell them your are wretching and puking over what George W. Bush is doing to our democratic principles and that you will stand for nothing short of a full investigation and immediate reforms.

When Thomas Jefferson sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, he decided to include in it a list of sins committed by King George against the people of the United States of America and against the principle of democracy. It wasn’t a long list, really. Every item was treated as a serious state-altering infraction. Among the items included were these:

“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power…depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury [and] transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.”

When I think of these words in light of our current circumstances and those of Khaled Masri and others like him, I am completely sick. And my greatest fear is that around the globe, millions of people are or will soon be echoing in their own minds precisely what Jefferson said about King George at the advent of our own nation:

“He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a Civilized Nation.”

This horrible turn of events in the history of the United States of America can only be remedied by you and I, the American people.

Peace, Love and Happy Holidays,

Michael

SCALITO

2005-11-02T15:00:00.000-05:00

Our good friends at People for the American Way (http://www.pfaw.org) have provided a succinct explanation for why you should be appauled by Bush's new nomination to the Supreme Court, Judge Alito. I've copied it below. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has indicated by his audacious political maneuvering yesterday (forcing the Republicans to seriously investigate the pre-Iraq War White House propaganda machine) that he may just be able to mobilize enough votes to kill this insulting nomination. So, call your Senators!

Peace & Love,

Michael

PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY
PRESS RELEASE
Samuel Alito: Leading the Attack on Fundamental Legal Rights and Protections for All Americans

Samuel Alito has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since his appointment by the first President Bush in 1990. In that time, Alito has compiled an extensive, extreme right-wing judicial record on numerous matters of importance to the protection of the rights and interests of ordinary Americans -- a record that has earned him the nickname "Scalito" for his ideological resemblance to Justice Antonin Scalia. Alito's judicial opinions demonstrate that he is an out of the mainstream opponent of fundamental legal rights and protections for all Americans and must not be confirmed to the Supreme Court. For example:

Hostile to basic reproductive privacy rights: Alito wants government to be able to interfere in personal decisions on reproductive rights. In Casey, Alito stated that he would have upheld a provision of Pennsylvania's restrictive anti-abortion law requiring a woman in certain circumstances to notify her husband before obtaining an abortion. His colleagues on the Third Circuit and the Supreme Court majority disagreed and overturned the provision.

Rejects basic protections for workers: In a number of dissenting opinions, Alito has taken positions that, if adopted, would have made it more difficult for victims of race and sex discrimination to prove their claims. In one case involving claims of race discrimination, the court majority sharply criticized Alito's dissent, stating that Alito's "position would immunize an employer from the reach of Title VII" in certain circumstances.

Leads revolution against federal laws protecting individual and other rights: According to one of Alito's opinions, Congress had no authority to require state employers to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act, a ruling that was repudiated by the Supreme Court in a later case in which conservative Chief Justice Rehnquist, no friend of civil rights, wrote the Court's decision. Alito also dissented from a ruling by the Third Circuit that Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause to restrict the transfer and possession of machine guns at gun shows.

Fails to consider racial discrimination in capital punishment: An African American had been convicted of felony murder by an all white jury from which black jurors had been impermissibly struck because of their race. Alito cast the deciding vote and wrote the majority opinion in a 2-1 ruling rejecting the defendant's claims. The full Third Circuit, in a split decision, reversed Alito's ruling, and the majority specifically criticized him for having compared statistical evidence about the prosecution's exclusion of blacks from juries in capital cases to an explanation of why a disproportionate number of recent U.S. Presidents have been left-handed. According to the majority, "[t]o suggest any comparability to the striking of jurors based on their race is to minimize the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants . . ."

WHAT DOES A GUY HAVE TO DO TO GET IMPEACHED AROUND HERE?

2005-10-27T14:21:00.000-04:00

Well, as I mentioned a few days ago, I've been feeling bad about my lack of Bluest Fist posts in a time of such urgency. But today I think, at least in regards to my sworn duty to convince you, my gentle readers, that George W. Bush is the worst president in the history of the Un ited States, can't I just kick up my heals at this point and let Dubya convince you all on his own?

In the past week, Bush has had to withdraw not one but TWO major nominations, the latest being his buffoonish crony Harriet "Not Ready for Primetime" Miers who he tried to sneak onto...um...THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. In addition to this, he had to reinstate the so-called "Davis-Bacon" labor rule -- which guarantees workers in disaster reconstruction projects equitable pay, and was thus unable to throw his right-wing economic base a much needed bone.

Oh, and did I mention that two of the five most powerful people in the White House -- Karl Rove and Scooter "I Did Not Have Phone Sex With That Woman, Judy Miller" Libby -- may get indicted tomorrow on federal charges?

Oy vey!

But unfortunately we don't have the luxury of laughing at this political Keystone Cops routine. Yesterday we learned that 2000 U. S. soldiers have now died in Iraq. For Iraqis themselves there is nothing resembling democracy as we know it while great pain and suffering continue. Iran grows bolder by the day and is no doubt laughing its collective ass off that it managed to convince -- get this -- the United States Government to give it effective control over the ruling party of its archenemy's land. Meanwhile, to the north, the Kurds and the Turks are quietly spoiling to beat each others brains in.

Total presidential incompetence combined with hair-brained right-wing ideology has real and tragic consequences.

2000 soldiers

2005-10-25T15:49:00.000-04:00

2000 U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq.

For what?

TWO DAYS IN OCTOBER

2005-10-17T23:19:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone,

So sorry not to have been in touch w/ with Bluest Fist posts ranging from the witty to the poignant to the insightful to the scalding. Life's just carried me away for a few months and may do so for a few more. This isn't a good excuse and I feel bad that in these troubling times I haven't been able to find the time for a good political letter to you. Stick with me and at some point I'll be back on the airwaves with a vengence.

Anyway, Sue and I watched a pretty excellent documentary tonight on PBS's American Experience. It was called "Two Days in October" and it told the contemporaneous stories of the 1967 "Dow Protest" at University of Wisconsin-Madison, on the one hand, and on the other, the massacre by ambush of the "Black Lions" regiment of (mostly teenage) soldiers by Viet Cong.

The documentary is remarkable for the range of interviews -- from the Viet Cong colonel who lead the ambush to half a dozen very brave and honest (it seemed to me) U.S. soldiers who were there and are universally haunted by it (though their political responses to it ranged widely); likewise in the Wisconsin story -- where two of the police officers who lead a brutal repression of the protest manage to reveal the deep class resentment at the heart of their own anger towards the "student radicals" (though without tempering their hsotility very much) -- and a very eloquent guy who was a young professor there at the time really steals that part of the show. The wife of Colonel Terry Allen plays a startling role on the other side of the story.

So, look for it on PBS! And if you see it, send an email to your local PBS affiliate and thank them for showing it.

PLAME/ROVE UPDATE

2005-07-16T10:05:00.000-04:00

Great piece today in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/politics/16memo.html

PLAME IT ON ROVE

2005-07-05T13:13:00.000-04:00

I imagine most of you have heard a thing or two about the so-called “Valerie Plame Affair” – in which someone in the White House leaked the top-secret identity of Plame, an undercover CIA agent, in apparent retaliation for her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s criticism of the White House’s cooking of intelligence in the build-up to the Iraq War.

Let’s pause and let that sink in for a moment: 1) The White House was fixing intelligence to use as propaganda for their proposed invasion of Iraq. [Again, I refer you to the Downing Street Memos] 2) Joe Wilson was sent by the CIA on a fact-finding mission to Africa to vet the story that Saddam Hussein was trying to by nuclear material there. 3) He reported back that this was not true. 4) George W. Bush told you, the American people, that it WAS true in his State of the Union Address. 5) Wilson was highly critical of this lie and said so in an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, noting that “some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” 6) In retaliation for this criticism SOMEONE in the White House blew his wife’s CIA cover. 7) The CIA indicated that it told reporter Robert Novak that revealing Plame’s identity could cost agents their lives.

Is blowing the cover of one of our active international spies giving “aid and comfort to the enemy”? If so, this person committed treason under Section 2381 of the U.S. Code. In any event he did commit a SERIOUS crime in violation of section 421 of Chapter 15 of Title 50. I have included both sections at the bottom of this message if you’re curious. Title 50 covers EVERYTHING we need to know about “War and National Defense.” Chapter 15 covers “National Security.” So, I think you’ll agree we’re in serious territory, the kind of territory Republicans like to run an election on.

Oh, who is the criminal who blew Agent Plame’s cover? Why, it’s none other than “Bush’s Brain” – Karl Rove.

Lawrence O’Donnell broke the story on The McLaughlin Group five days ago, and now that July 4th weekend is over it should explode this week in the mainstream press (though they’ve become so craven and cowardly, who knows if they’ll actually do their job?)

Here’s what O’Donnell is saying at the moment.

Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, had his holiday weekend ruined on Friday when I broke the story that the e-mails that Time delivered to the special prosecutor that afternoon reveal that Karl Rove is the source Matt Cooper has been protecting for two years. The next day, Luskin was forced to open the first hole in the Rove two-year wall of silence about the case. In a huge admission to Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, Luskin confessed that, well, yes, Rove did talk to Cooper. It is a huge admission in a case where Rove and Luskin have never, before Friday, felt compelled to say a word about Rove's contact with Cooper or anyone else involved in the case.

Luskin then launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Knowingly. That is the most important word Luskin said in what has now become his public version of the Rove defense.

Not coincidentally, the word 'knowing' is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent "knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States."

So, Rove's defense now hangs on one word—he "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Does that mean Rove simply didn't know Valerie Plame was a covert agent? Or does it just mean that Rove did not know that the CIA was "taking affirmative measures" to hide her identity? [The CIA itself has already refuted this latter defense.]

In Luskin's next damage control session with the press, let's see if any reporter can get him to drop the word 'knowingly' from the never-disclosed-classified-information bit.

George W. Bush has obtained outside counsel to represent him this whole mess. Why would he do this “when numerous government attorneys are available to him - for instance, in the White House Cousel’s Office?” Well, as John Dean – he of Watergate fame – explains, “The answer is that the President has likely been told it would be risky to talk to his White House lawyers, particularly if he knows more than he claims publicly. Ironically, it was the fair-haired Republican stalwart Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who decimated the attorney-client privilege for government lawyers and their clients” during the Whitewater and Lewinsky probes.

Likewise, the Valerie Plame Affair is not an isolated incident, as the connection to Iraq intelligence suggests. Josh Marshall notes on Talking Points Memo that “I've gotten hints or suggestions from several sources over the last month that new information is bubbling to the surface, not about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, but who was behind the underlying caper that started the whole drama afoot in the first place: those phoney Niger uranium documents.” And of course, Jeff Gannon/Guckert (remember him?) was one of the few reporters who received the Plame story. Wow. The Bush White House is one weird den of thieves.

What can you do? Well, the criminal investigation is being handled by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney from Chicago, who does not report to the Justice Department regarding his investigation. That’s a good thing. You can call your Congresspeople and make sure they are giving their full public support to the investigation and making sure Fitzgerald has all the resources he needs. Make sure you tell them that you are one of their constituents. More importantly, I’d say you should call your local newspapers and ask them to cover this important story. If they don’t, write a letter to the editor.

Speak truth to power!

**********************************
US Code Title 50, Chapter 15
Section 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources

(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall befined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of covert agents as result of having access to classified information
Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents. Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States, discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual's classified intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(d) Imposition of consecutive sentences. A term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be
consecutive to any other sentence of imprisonment.

U.S. Code Section 2381. Treason

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

BACK IN THE SADDLE, YEE-HAW!

2005-06-16T11:58:00.000-04:00

Whew! The Bluest Fist has been out of commission for quite a while, quieted by my perfect storm of personal and professional chaos this past winter and spring. Much better now I’m happy to report.

I thought I’d get back into the swing of things by briefly commenting on some stories I’m following. Chief among them is the story of the “Downing Street Memo.” If you haven’t heard of it (and that’s entirely possible since the bought-and-sold mainstream media has so far done an abysmal job covering it) you really need to go here and have a look:

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/

Read the actual memo and watch the video clip at the top of the page. This is a leaked top secret British memo from July 2002. The memo includes the following report [note these are actual words from the memo, not a synopsis]:

“C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”

You heard that right. Reading the memo in full makes it clear that the Bush Administration knew with reasonable certainty that Iraq DID NOT have weapons of mass destruction; that in fact if the HAD had WMD they WOULD NOT have risked an invasion – precisely the opposite of what we citizens were told. George W. Bush ordered the cooking of facts on Iraq for the express purpose of convincing the American people to sign off on a war. The Downing Street Memo takes this out of the realm of conjecture and into the realm of fact. Approximately 1714 American soldiers have died as a result; 13,000 wounded; at least 22,000 Iraqi civilians dead. If this is not an impeachable offense I don’t know what is. Where have you gone Monica Lewinsky?

*****

In other news, the U.S. Senate voted on a non-binding resolution apologizing to the African-American victims of lynching in the U.S. -- more than 4,700 people from 1882 to 1968, most of them black men. During that time the U.S. Senate (in the form of filibustering Southern Senators) repeatedly blocked anti-lynching laws that had been passed by the House of Representatives. Amazingly, these 15 Senators showed their disapproval by refusing to co-sponsor the bill (which in this case, because it was a “voice-vote” was the only way to approve it):

STILL HAVEN'T COSPONSORED

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) - (202) 224-4944
Robert Bennett (R-UT) - (202) 224-5444
Thad Cochran (R-MS) - (202) 224-5054
John Cornyn (R-TX) - (202) 224-2934
Michael Crapo (R-ID) - (202) 224-6142
Michael Enzi (R-WY) - (202) 224-3424
Chuck Grassley (R-IA) - (202) 224-3744
Judd Gregg (R-NH) - (202) 224-3324
Orrin Hatch (R-UT) - (202) 224-5251
Kay Hutchison (R-TX) - (202) 224-5922
Jon Kyl (R-AZ) - (202) 224-4521
Trent Lott (R-MS) - (202) 224-6253
Richard Shelby (R-AL) - (202) 224-5744
John Sununu (R-NH) - (202) 224-2841
Craig Thomas (R-WY) - (202) 224-6441

This issue can hardly be said to fall along traditional conservative/liberal lines. The bill’s co-writer is conservative Senator George Allen and dozens of conservative Senators such as the otherwise totally evil Rick Santorum co-signed. The most obvious explanation for the damning silence of the Senators listed above is racism, plane and simple. Call ‘em and give ‘em hell! One can understand why so many slave-state Senators are there – as we all know, Trent Lott pines to return slavery to Mississippi. But, may I ask, HOW IN THE HELL can Judd Gregg and John Sununu from the state I like to call North Massachusetts get away with this?? Call ‘em up!

*****

Lastly, for now, it looks like Bush is insisting on forcing the Senate Republicans to vote for clinically insane right-wing lunatic John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations. For a good explanation of why this would be a disaster go here:

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=252671

For an official letter to Congress detailing one example of Bolton’s craziness go here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/15/101542/050

I think that Bolton’s ridiculously bad record as a diplomat should be enough to disqualify him for this crucial diplomatic post. So, I won’t even mention information from numerous sources that Mr. Bolton participated in paid visits to Plato’s Retreat, the popular swingers club that operated in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (Why is it that every time you turn over a Republican rock you seem to find a swingers club or a phone sex line? Huh.) I mean it, don’t ask me because I REFUSE to mention Plato’s Retreat!

BUSH'S SOVIET ART

2005-06-08T09:54:00.000-04:00

http://www.mdrails.com/images/marc_marshal.jpg

Just caught this on Daily Kos. This is a poster currently displayed on the metro trains from Baltimore to Washington DC. Visually, it is uncannily like the ones I saw in the Soviet Union in 1987. That boneheaded visual (who the hell chose it??) plus it's message seems fairly chilling to me. Consider for a moment the audacity of it.

AIR AMERICA RADIO

2005-04-20T23:18:00.000-04:00

You need to be listening to Air America Radio, "the station" as the motto goes, "that Rush Limbaugh would listen to if he hadn't lost his hearing to drug abuse." No excuses, find it on your radio dial ad spread the word:

EAST

Asheville, NC - WPEK 880 AM
Atlanta, GA - WWAA 1690 AM
Boston, MA - WKOX 1200 AM and WXKS 1430 AM
Brattleboro, VT - WKVT 1490 AM
Chapel Hill, NC - WCHL 1360 AM
Charleston, SC - WLTQ 730 AM
Key West, FL - WKIZ 1500 AM
Miami, FL - WINZ 940 AM
New Haven, CT - WAVZ 1300 AM
New York City - WLIB 1190 AM
Northampton, MA - WHMP 1400 AM
Philadelphia, PA - WHAT 1340 AM
Plattsburgh, NY/Burlington, VT - WTWK 1070 AM
Portland, ME - WLVP 870 AM
Providence, RI - WHJJ 920 AM
Rochester, NY - WROC 950 AM
Washington D.C. - WWRC 1260 AM
West Palm Beach, FL - WJNO 1290 AM

WEST

Albany/Corvallis, OR - KTHH 990 AM
Eugene, OR - KOPT 1450 AM
Los Angeles, CA - KTLK 1150 AM
Phoenix, AZ - KXXT 1010 AM
Portland, OR - KPOJ 620 AM
Reno, NV - KJFK 1230 AM
Riverside, CA - KCAA 1050 AM
Sacramento, CA - KSAC 1240 AM
Santa Barbara, CA - KIST 1340 AM
San Diego, CA - 1360 AM KLSD
San Luis Obispo, CA - 1340 AM KYNS
San Francisco, CA - 960 AM KQKE
Seattle, WA - 1090 AM KPTK
South Lake Tahoe, NV - KTHO 590 AM
Spokane, WA - KPTQ 1280 AM

CENTRAL

Austin, TX - KOKE 1600 AM
Albuquerque, NM - KABQ 1350 AM
Ann Arbor, MI - WLBY 1290 AM
Cincinnati, OH - WCKY 1530 AM
Columbus, OH - WTPG 1230 AM
Youngstown, OH - WANR 'The Pulse' 1570 AM
Corpus Christi, TX - KCCT 1150 AM
Dallas, TX - KXEB 910 AM
Denver, CO - KKZN 760 AM
Detroit, MI - WDTW 1310 AM
Madison, WI - WXXM 92.1 FM
Minneapolis, MN - KTNF 950 AM
Petoskey, MI - WWKK 750 AM
Santa Fe, NM - KTRC 1260 AM
Davenport, IA - WKBF 1270 AM
Memphis, TN - WWTQ 680 AM

ALASKA AND HAWAII

Anchorage, AK - KUDO 1080 AM
Honolulu, HI - KUMU 1500 AM
Maui, HI - KAOI 1110 AM
Kauai, HI - KQNG 570 AM

JUDGE THEM FOR YOURSELVES

2005-04-17T11:19:00.000-04:00

A must read in this week's NY Times Magazine:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/magazine/17CONSTITUTION.html

on the Judicial "Constitutional in Exile" movement and how it is licking its chops in expectation that Bush will name one of their own to the Supreme Court.

My own take on the idea of a "Constitution in Exile" (the notion the "real" U.S. Constitution was legislated out of existence around 1937) is that it is a complete crock of shit. Our Constitution, as people sometimes need to be reminded, is made of WORDS. It only means something when someone READS it. And it has NEVER meant anything in a stable way: each of its framers had a someone different take on its meaning, significance and historical trajectory; each citizen who takes the time to read it will draw different conclusions from it. Consequently, its meaning only materializes when we begin to interpret it and try to reach some consensus about it as a group. Often, our judges perform this process for us. When we as a people can't stomach their deliberations, we elect new officials who will appoint better judges or, if frustrated in that regard, take to the streets in an attempt to change public (and judges') opinions and beliefs. (I refer you to the Civil Rights movement.) When that doesn't work you have Civil War.

The Constitution lives, whether the right-wing likes it or not, because, being made up of words, it can't do anything else. In fact -- irony of ironies -- the whole notion of a "Constitution in Exile" depends on the right-wing's ability (to quote Emerson, who was thinking of pro-slavery advocates) "to read the Constitution with a very shrewd and daring and innovative eye" even as they're telling you that the "real" Constitution "just means what it says." In the beginning are the people, reading the words.

WHY, THEY HATE HIM

2005-04-05T14:51:00.000-04:00

Here are the ratings for presidents as recorded by Gallup in the March following their re-election. Thanks to Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com) for the tip.

Truman, 1949: 57%.

Eisenhower, 1957: 65%.

Johnson, 1965: 69%.

Nixon, 1973: 57%.

Reagan, 1985: 56%.

Clinton, 1997: 59% .

Bush, 2005: 45%

Yep, no one is even CLOSE to Dubya in unpopularity. His ability to finagle two terms as president will really be one of the strangest stories in U.S. History some day.

SCHIAVO -- A MUST READ

2005-03-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

I implore you to read two new pieces in The New England Journal of Medicine on the Schiavo case. (Thanks to Bluest Fist reader Linda Berman for drawing them to my attention.) They are both thoughtful, informed and not polemical:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/NEJMp058062

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/NEJMlim050643

The second piece concludes in this way:

"Erring on the side of life" in this context often results in violating a person's body and human dignity in a way few would want for themselves. In such situations, erring on the side of liberty -- specifically the patient's right to decide on treatment -- is more consistent with American values and our constitutional traditions. As the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said in a 1977 case that raised the same legal question: "The constitutional right to privacy, as we conceive it, is an expression of the sanctity of individual free choice and self-determination as fundamental constituents of life. The value of life as so perceived is lessened not by a decision to refuse treatment but by the failure to allow a competent human being the right of choice."

As a side note, I was heartened this morinng to hear two typically right-wing sports talk radio hosts in Boston (John Dennis and Jerry Callahan) excoriating George and Jeb Bush for their manipulative use of Terry Schiavo. Perhaps their role as loving husbands trumped their role as Republican talking heads in this case.

SHIAVO - A RESPONSE TO ONE OF MY READERS

2005-03-24T23:37:00.000-05:00

One of my readers has posted two long comments in response to my post (and Dr. Jeff Wilson's guest post) on Terry Shiavo. You can read the below in the comments section of "Saving Private Shiavo." Joe V. is a very old friend of mine. I've known him since the 2nd grade. During those early years he battled cancer (as he notes in his comment) and I was witness to the physical and psychological turmoil he suffered as a result. I have always considered myself his friend, though perhaps I was not always the best friend I could be. Joe and I lost touch sometime after college, though I get word of him from mutual friends on occassion. Joe was, last time I knew enough to judge, a conservative Republican and an admirer of Antonin Scalia's political and judicial views. This is of course his right.

His comments presume to poke wholes in my earlier argument about the Shiavo case and Bush's motives for pursuing it -- but they really do nothing of the sort. First of all, Joe never addresses the incontravertible evidence (the "talking points" for instance) that the Republican Party (which doesn't go to the bathroom without the approval or George Bush and Karl Rove) has seen this case in purely political terms from the beginning. Secondly, he doesn't address the fact that Bush's position has flip-flopped since the signing of his hospital-friendly bill in Texas. Thirdly, his sense of what's at stake in this case -- and of what the case "is" generally -- is just all wrong. Let me see if I can explain.

Joe states that his personal battle with terminal illness makes this case near and dear to him, and gives the impression that this makes his opinion authoritative. But in fact the opposite is true. When a case is "near and dear" to you a judge throws you off the jury, and with very good reason -- namely, because your ability to be impartial (and thus to provide the sort of peer judgement the Constitution envisions) is seriously in doubt. I feel very badly that Joe is still battling cancer, having suffered it again as recently as two years ago -- but if anything, this makes me trust his opinion of the Shiavo case less, not more. I respect him too much to patronize him by pretending this isn't the case.

By the same token, I myself am having to struggle to keep my personal experiences from affecting my opinion of this case. In the last three months, two people I love very much have died -- too soon -- from terminal illness. Both of them were able to make conscious decisions about how they wanted to die and both chose to die with grace and dignity and without prolonging the inevitable beyond the time they needed to convene with their loved ones. These too are experiences quite differenent from those in the Shiavo case. Unlike Joe's situation and those of my two family members Terry Shiavo CAN NOT make her own decision.

And that is the central fact. Terry Shiavo has a husband who -- no one really disputes -- she loved at the time she slipped into a vegetative state. What the courts have said, over and over, is that, barring strong evidence that it would be illegal, the decision to withdraw various forms of life support is HIS, the husband's. Not her parents or her siblings or her uncles or her friends. Her husband's. When someone you love is dying, you have innumerable conflicting emotions. Sometimes you don't want them to go even though you know that they are needlesly suffering and that THEY want to go. Sometimes people within the circles of loved ones disagree as to how to proceed. So the court invests SOMEONE with the authority to make that decision. Imagine the absolute chaos that would ensue if they didn't! And in this case it is the husband. Terry Shiavo's parents can believe whatever they want -- and we as citizens can sympathize with them or not. But they simply have no legal roll in deciding her fate. Period. As a spouse, I think this is quite right.

As far as the attempts to discredit Michael Shiavo as some sort of con man, I find them absolutely appauling and insulting . Five years after his wife slipped into a vegetative state he started dating another woman. We're supposed to take this as evidence that he didn't love her? C'mon! If God forbid, I slipped into a vegetative state I'd certainly want my wife to start a new life after five years. Hell, two or three years of mourning would be fine with me. And as for the malpractice money, it's gone folks. DOES ANYONE ACTUALLY THINK THAT THIS GUY, MICHAEL SHIAVO, WOULD HAVE WENT THROUGH THIS LEVEL OF TOTAL HELL, FIFTEEN YEARS FIGHTING HIS WIFE'S PARENTS, FOR THE FEW BUCKS THAT ARE LEFT? Puh-lease. The guy simply wants his wife to die peacefully after being kept needlessly alive, it seems to me. You can disagree with him but to pretend that this is not a plausible response from a loving husband is completely ridiculous. (As an aside, the fact that Nat Hentoff -- "a liberal" as Joe puts it -- sides with Shiavo's parents means nothing to me. Nat Hentoff is a fine jazz critic but I don't think he has anything especially enlightening to say about this case or politics generally.)

Lastly, Joe posits that my view of George Bush's role in this case is clouded by my hatred of Bush himself. Well, okay, I do hate Bush with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. But, sheesh!, do you really need to dislike Bush to recognize what a pathetic pandering job he's doing in this case? He is doing what IN ALMOST EVERY OTHER CASE he would not do: get involved in a private matter obviously under the jurisdiction of the state of Florida. Indeed, the only other case I can think of where he meddled with the Florida courts was...um...the 2000 election which made him president.

SAVING PRIVATE SHIAVO

2005-03-21T16:05:00.000-05:00

Most of you have probably heard that George W. Bush has gotten Congress and the White House involved in preventing a loving husband from acting on his wife’s wishes (stated to him when she was uninjured and conscious) that she be allowed to die gracefully after 15 years in a coma. Bush and Tom Delay think that the Federal government should be able to tell this husband that his wife has to be hooked up to machines unnaturally keeping her alive for decades because, well, all life is precious and it would insult George Bush’s faith to restore this woman’s dignity. The woman’s name is Terry Shiavo.

The Republican Party’s "Talking Points" on the Shiavo case were leaked to the press today. They include these two disgustingly calculating "bullets":

1. The pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.
*
2. This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida - has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.

Add to these the fact that while he was Governor of Texas, George Bush signed a bill into law that gave hospitals broad discretion to "pull the plug" on patients who were on life support who had no hope of recovering. Why? Because, Bush argued back then, they were a needless economic drain on the Texas hospital system. How's that for a flip-flop?

Every day George Bush seems to top himself, revealing for us with greater and greater clarity what a vile human being he really is. I hope that even those of you who have supported him in the past will take a moment to imagine a moment where the White House tells you that their ideology supercedes your ability to let your spouse die with grace and dignity. But, listen, my good friend Jeff Wilson – like my wife Sue, an MD specializing in Family Medicine who has shepherded many family’s through the dying process – speaks with greater eloquence than I do about just how crazy this case has become thanks to right-wing ideologues. I’ll let him have the floor till the end:

Is anyone following the story of the women in florida? if not here is a quick update-15 yrs ago this lady had a heart attack leaving her in a coma. her husband says that she had verbally instructed him prior to the accident that she would not want to be kept alive with artificial means. her parents however, feel that she had/has a chance to improve and have pushed to keep her alive. the battle went to the courts and over that time period the 'feeding tube' has been removed THREE TIMES the most recent time a few days ago. each of the previous two times it was re-inserted after some legal maneuvering.

what has me so incensed at this story is the levels of government that have now become involved. the day before the tube was removed there were multiple motions in the house and senate (were talking in washington here, not in her state) to block this action. the motions/bills that they attempted to push through involved calling her as a 'witness' to various 'trials' involving end of life issues. this woman's daily life involves laying in a bed, unable to eat/drink or move essentially ANY of her body and is fed with what is called a peg or 'g' tube inserted into her stomach. her parents insist that she is able to respond by blinking and/or small hand squeezes and answers questions appropriately in that manner, however the truth to this is much up in the air.

IS THIS INSANE???? as of last night the president... that's right the actual president... now has cancelled a trip in order to stay home at the white house waiting to sign anything the congress can push through to 'protect' this woman and re-insert the tube. im so glad he has time to worry about this case in the middle of, oh, lets say a war, a major and horrible push to revamp and kill social security, crisis in medical coverage and insurance companies, record high oil and gas prices and lets not forget about all those heart-warming individuals in al-queda just itching for another chance to punch us in the face. maybe after signing the bill to open more drilling in alaska bush felt he could lay off on some of the 'other stuff' and help out another pet project.

as a doctor and a husband this story is eating at my soul. life is precious and god knows i work everyday to help it along but i also strongly believe in the idea of dying with dignity if someone wishes. i have sat at the bedside of patients and their families as they have let go peacefully and gracefully-it is really a beautiful thing. i have stood next to and participated in drawn out and dramatic codes where the patient SHOULD have been allowed to die peacefully but the family could not let go. my own family had to deal with this exact same issue when i was in college and, after a car accident, my aunt was left in a coma- six months later my mom and her sisters decided to withdraw support. to this day i applaud and am humbled by their courage and use it and that lesson to help other people through the same process.

if indeed this woman voice desire not to be kept alive under these means, and her husband should know- his story has not wavered from the start- this action is criminal. and now the president wants to get involved. to me, this reeks of a pet project for the religious right anti-abortion crowd to grab onto and flaunt and use to justify their misguided cause but instead they only cause more pain to the players and ultimately to the woman they are trying to 'save'. it stinks and shows how blind to the truth and divorced from reality they actually. some of them actually tried to bring the woman bread and water a few days ago... please excuse the detached nature of this next statement but actually i wish they had been allowed to give it to her,
maybe she would have choked and had her wishes fulfilled.

anyway, i really needed to get this out of my head. i picture myself in this position (my in-laws are awesome people, that is not what i mean!!!) of my most valued friend, lover and partner unable to speak or move and yet tortured for 15 years, made to endure a living hell that she did not want to be in. now put it in the media spotlight and turn it into a circus. if something good can come out of this PLEASE PLEASE talk to your partners and families and discuss these types of issues. it is not scary or depressing or macabre to do so, it is freeing and loving to your partner, kids and family to know what you want. how different is it from checking off the 'organ donor' box on your licenses?

i hope you are all very well, please know that you are all in my heart and thanks for listening.

Jeff Wilson

Peace and love from me too,

Michael

HEADLINES

2005-03-13T11:21:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the slowdown at The Bluest Fist. Life has overwhelmed me these last few months. Seems like it’s been a helluva winter for everybody. So, here are a few thoughts and updates in lieu of a long meditation. If you haven’t looked at the website lately, there are a number of items up that I did not email to you, so have a look and comment if you like.

I’d urge you to read the lengthy expose in the New York Times about how the Bush White House’s propaganda machine has infiltrated and manipulated the mainstream media (have people stopped calling it the “liberal media” yet or should I continue to pee myself laughing?).

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html

In other news, the Manchester Union Leader has the story on the Republican Party official in New Hampshire convicted for jamming Democratic Party phone lines the day of the 2002 elections. Chuck McGee (no relation!) looks startlingly like he could be Karl Rove’s more rotund brother and will now be doing 7 months in the clink. The dirty tricks of the Republican Party look more Nixonian by the minute.

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=51820

And on Social Security, this actually appeared in the right-wing Washington Times (thanks to Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos for pointing it out):

A senior Republican senator said, "The message coming out of the White House is that we'll fix Social Security by raising your taxes and cutting your retirement benefits and, to get something passed, we'll forget about the personal retirement accounts we promised." The senator said that is like telling voters, "Never vote for Republicans again -- we lie."

Ouch! Sounds like someone actually told the American public the truth about Social Security…

I’ve been promising a piece on the Death Penalty for months now and I really do hope to get it out to you soon – I’d like it to be more of an essay than a news item and that’s why it’s taking so long. Meantime, you should know if you don’t already that the Supreme Court has now within the last couple years outlawed the Death Penalty for the mentally retarded and for minors. The right-wing is absolutely appalled that a Court would have the audacity to tell us that we are not allowed to remain part of that exclusive club (China, Iran, Syria) that allows the State to hang, electrocute or lethally inject with poison handicapped people and kids for the purpose of killing them. Imagine! The Bush Administration was of course highly critical of this outrageous decision by the Supremes.

Lastly, the latest official statistics state that 1513 American soldiers have died in Iraq, including 647 since the handover of power and 81 since the recent Iraqi elections. Well over 11,000 soldiers have been wounded. A minimum of 16, 231 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting, though estimates of civilian deaths resulting from the invasion go much higher.

GANNONGATE HEATING UP

2005-02-23T11:19:00.000-05:00

This just in: a letter from the Senate minority leadership to George W. Bush sent from the office of Senator Durbin (IL). Will an investigation finally begin? Will the media finally take this story off the editorial page and put it on the front page? You can bet your butt they would if Bill Clinton were president. Contact your Senators and Representatives and ask them to support this letter:

Dear Mr. President,

At a press conference in the White House on January 26, you stated that "there needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press." In that same press conference, you called on a reporter then known as Jeff Gannon, who worked for an organization called Talon News.

Since that time, the public has learned that the real name of that reporter is James Dale Guckert, not Jeff Gannon, and that he had regular access to the White House press facilities for more than a year. We have also learned that the questions he posed at White House press briefings and the stories he filed for Talon News frequently mirrored Republican Party talking points, that Talon News is a news organization in name only and that it has apparently close connections to the Republican party.

Given the unprecedented level of security in Washington since 9/11, it is troubling that that a non-journalist using a false name and working for a sham news organization could have gained regular access to the White House for such an extended period of time.

Another reason the Gannon/Guckert affair is disturbing is because of what we have recently learned about apparent efforts by some in your Administration to try to "buy" favorable news coverage. These other efforts include paying news personalities Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher large sums of money to promote your Administration’s education and marriage initiatives, and using tax payer dollars to produce video news releases promoting the new prescription drug benefit for Medicare beneficiaries and other policies the Administration regards as accomplishments. A recent report by the General Accountability Office called such video news releases illegal uses of public funds. More recently, we have heard troubling reports that Social Security Administration officials may be using public funds and pressuring public employees to promote your goal of privatizing Social Security.

As you know, concerns that government officials may be trying to deceive the public by manipulating the media can be extremely corrosive to public trust. For that reason, we respectfully request that you order an immediate and thorough investigation into the Gannon/Guckert matter. How is it possible that a man using a fake name, with dubious journalism credentials, was able to clear the White House’s extensive security screening process and gain such close access to you and your staff for such an extended period of time? Have there been other, similar breaches of security and journalism standards?

We appreciate your prompt attention to this important matter. We urge you to order a full inquiry so that the American people know the facts.

You can find your Senators’ contact info here:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC

MORE ON GANNON/GUCKERT

2005-02-17T11:26:00.000-05:00

I wouldn’t usually follow up one of my Bluest Fist posts so quickly but I want to stress to you that this James Guckert / Jeff Gannon story is one that you should really be following in the news. Both the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor are reporting on it today. And there’s continued investigative reporting on the web at

http://www.americablog.blogspot.com/ and http://www.dailykos.com.

The best synopsis of what’s new in this story since I last posted comes from two stories today in Salon.com:

Gannon/Guckert’s application for a press credential to cover Congress, a process handled there by reporters, was rejected. But at the White House the press office arranged for him to be given a new pass every single day, a highly unusual and deliberate evasion of the regular credentialing that requires an FBI security check, which likely would have discovered more about Guckert.

There's now documented evidence that Guckert attended White House briefings as early as February 2003. Guckert, using his alias "Jeff Gannon," once boasted online about asking then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer a question at the Feb. 28, 2003, briefing. The date is significant because in order to receive a White House press pass, Guckert would have needed to prove that he worked for a news organization that, in the words of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, "published regularly," in itself an extraordinarily low threshold.

What's significant about the February 2003 date is that Talon did not even exist then. The organization was created in late March 2003, and began publishing online in early April 2003. Gannon has already stated publicly that Talon News was his first job in journalism. That means he wasn't working for any other news outlet in February 2003 when he was spotted by C-Span cameras inside the White House briefing room. And that means Guckert was ushered into the White House press room in February 2003 for a briefing despite the fact he was not a journalist.

May I ask, what in the HELL is going on here?? Someone in the White House issues a press pass to a prostitute who sits not ten feet from the President of the United States of America –– who CALLS on him using his first name! –– at which point, said prostitute lobs him softball questions which the President gladly answers as if they were real questions? And this continues for TWO YEARS with, again, someone in the White House making sure that this prostitute's alias and cover are not blown by the Department of Homeland Security or the Secret Service. AM I IN SPACE?!?

We can surmise that it is a symptom of this Administration that no one in the Secret Service decided to investigate Gannon/Guckert –– that they apparently decided he was just another hack conservative reporter asking the president canned non-questions at his press conferences (for instance, on January 26 when Gannon/Guckert asked the president whether the Democratic Leadership was "divorced from reality") rather than the MAJOR security breach he actually was. But the larger questions: 1) Who put him there in the first place; 2) Who kept his cover; 3) How many people in the White House knew the truth; 4) Did the President know; 5) Who illegally gave Gannon/Guckert information about undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame –– these questions need to be answered. Stay tuned…

FABULOUS NEWS

2005-02-15T12:11:00.000-05:00

In one of the more bizarre “stranger than fiction” stories to emerge out of a truly bizarre White House, it has been revealed that Jeff Gannon, a White House correspondent for the ultra-conservative propaganda outlet “Talon News” (really more a simple website than a news organization) was formerly a gay hooker named James Guckert. Furthermore, he may have been given extraordinary access to Whitehouse news information based on his relationship with one or more high-level White House and Republican staffers who are gay.

I realize that some of you may find the above paragraph impossible, preposterous and nothing more than liberal conspiracy. Not so. It is all meticulously backed up by the facts. For the story on Jeff Gannon/Guckert go here:

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html

(Be aware that there are some potentially offensive images of Gannon/Guckert in this story from his escort websites – though nothing that couldn’t be on the nightly news, as they have been edited).

John Aravosis frames what’s at stake correctly:

This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we're talking about. It's looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a gay hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a daily basis. They reportedly made a decision to give him - one of only six - access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative [Valerie Plame – this, by the way, is a federal offense]. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can't find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?

As gay activist Mike Rogers of BlogActive has put it, “Friends, there is nothing wrong with being gay -- it's when the gay people are in positions of power and hiding in the closet that we have a problem. When those very same people use that power (‘Hello, Jim McGreevey, please’) to do favors for sexual partners we have a really big problem.”

And this White House is full of em. Closeted homosexuals who have been “outed” in the last year include: Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the Republican National Committee; Jay Banning, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Administration of the Republican National Committee; Dan Gurley, RNC National Field Director; David Dreier, Chairman of the immensely powerful Rules Committee in the House of Representatives; Linus Catignani, head fundraising consultant for Senate majority leader Bill Frist; Jay Timmons, Executive Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

So, there’s two issues you need to consider here: 1) the almost sublime hypocrisy of a political party that would create a rabidly anti-homosexual agenda (I refer you to the 2004 Republican National Committee platform) while employing so many gay people in their senior leadership; and 2) these gay people themselves, who are, as Rogers points out, HIGHLY susceptible to blackmail; personally repressed and/or conflicted human beings; and personally helping to enact legislation that would limit their own civil rights. These people are making major decisions every day that affect you as a citizen and as a voter. George W. Bush signed off on all of them just as, at the same time, he was signing off on Karl Rove’s gay-baiting use of the Gay Marriage issue to draw votes away from John Kerry in the swing states.

Like I said, it’s a mad, mad, mad world in Dubya’s Washington!

DONATE TO THE NEW DEAN-LEAD DNC!!!

2005-02-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

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LEAVE NO BROKER BEHIND

2005-02-11T15:26:00.000-05:00

I thought I’d send you all something on Bush’s Social Security plan. This has the potential to be the most sweeping piece of legislation in a generation and if it passes it will greatly effect each and every one of you, so it’s worth taking a good look.

First, a couple of indisputable facts:

1) Social Security is a wildly effective program. It collects taxes efficiently. It disburses benefits efficiently. And those benefits are, the vast majority of the time, used wisely, ensuring that millions of people are housed, fed, healthy and alive for as along as they naturally should be.

If you are one of those people (and I’ve known a surprising number in my life and heard more than a few others on TV, radio and the editorial pages) who count Social Security among those “socialist” programs of the New Deal era that never should have been enacted in the first place, then what you’re really saying is this: that the health and well-being of the American elderly should be left up to religious and charitable organizations; that if an elderly person didn’t save wisely or didn’t have the intellectual or physical abilities to earn excess income for retirement or doesn’t have access to religious and charitable assistance, then what they should properly do is die quietly in an alley like an infirm, abandoned dog.

I want to stress: that is a legitimate position to take. I only ask that if you say you are against Social Security as such that you do so with this level of transparency.

2) Social Security IS NOT in any immediate danger of becoming insolvent and disappearing. Period. End of story. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misinformed or stone cold lying to you.

A member of the Bluest Fist community who knows a helluva lot about economics (being a senior officer of a very large financial institution in NYC) has sent me the link to an interesting article by Bill Gross, “Sizing Up Social Security”:

http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Late+Breaking+Commentary/IO/2005/IO_Feb_2005.htm

As our Bluest Fist member (who shall remain nameless for the moment b/c I haven’t asked him whether he wants his feelings about the Bush Administration spread all over the web) tells me, “Bill Gross runs the PIMCO bond fund - the largest bond fund in the word. He is a brilliant fund manager whose words often move the debt markets. His posting today argues that, W's social security plan makes absolutely no sense.” Our fellow member goes on to explain Gross’s article in a language which is, for this English professor at least, a bit easier to understand than Gross’s own:

“Essentially Gross argues that, to the extent that one anticipates that the US government will have a problem funding social security in the future (around 2050-2070 depending on who you believe), private accounts will not help solve the problem. If there is a problem with Social Security, then it is a funding gap problem (fewer workers will need to pay more in taxes to fund the SS benefits of baby boomers or the US government will need to borrow to fund the gap). But the point is that allowing taxpayers to save a portion of their social security taxes is PSAs [Private Savings Accounts] will not reduce the funding gap. ONLY MORE WORKERS PAYING INTO SOCIAL SECURITY WILL SOLVE THE FUNDING GAP. Although reducing the US government's ballooning federal deficit would provide the US government with more leeway to borrow money to fund the SS funding gap...

Instead, W. [your President] is simply trying to pull the old 401k versus fully-funded pension bait-and-switch routine on US taxpayers. In W's "ownership society" workers will fund a portion of their own retirement by re-directing a portion of their SS taxes into PSAs. These savings accounts will be secure and may be transferred to heirs at death (draining even more money out of the SS system!!). But these PSAs will not solve the Social Security funding gap unless the rise of PSAs is also coupled with either (A) more workers paying into the system OR ..... wait for it .... (B) a gradual lessening of the burden on the US government to provide social security benefits (i.e., eventually the government must reduce SS benefits to workers now in their 20s, push back the retirement age, and / or not allow rich workers to collect SS benefits, etc). For workers with large PSAs these reduced benefits may not hurt much. But for most people paying smaller amounts into the social security system, it will translate into fewer benefits from a social security system that will remain chronically under funded...

Moreover, PSAs will obviously introduce market risk into the retirement equation for individuals - which is a tricky variable no matter what Bush says. If you can sustain 50% losses in your 401k during a stock market crash, then it could happen in your Social Security PSA too. There is no way around it. Essentially, PSAs just shift the market risk to individuals as opposed having the US government bear the market risk (hence my prior 401k vs. fully-funded pension analogy). But private saving accounts for social security DO NOT lessen the looming burden on the government to remedy the funding gap for the entire system.”

I present this brilliantly succinct explanation of a colossally dim-witted piece of legislation as a service to you, my readers.

I would only add that Bush’s plan does have one very obvious constituency from where I’m standing: stock brokers. But the Slogan “Your Children, Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren Should Bear the Burden of a Short-Term Windfall for Stock Brokers” doesn’t sound very Karl Rovian. “Leave No Senior Behind” is more like it. You see, with this White House, up is down and day is night.

MORE BLOWBACK

2005-02-07T15:45:00.000-05:00

Like I said in my "Blowback Iraq" piece in November, I hope everybody has the stomach for more of this when our boys in uniform start returning home by the thousands...

SOLDIER KILLS HIMSELF AFTER SHOOTING WIFE
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 7, 2005
Filed at 3:18 p.m. ET

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- A Fort Bragg soldier charged as a teenager in a notorious New Jersey rape case shot and wounded his estranged wife and her boyfriend, then killed himself, authorities said.

Spc. Richard Timothy Corcoran, 34, entered wife Michele A. Corcoran's house Thursday night and shot William Paul Seifert several times. Michele Corcoran ran outside, where she was shot in the arm, said Cumberland County sheriff's Maj. Sam Pennica.

Corcoran then went back inside the house and shot himself, Pennica said.

Seifert, who is also a Fort Bragg soldier, was taken to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. Michele Corcoran, 30, was treated and released. The Corcorans' 7-month-old baby was in the house but was not hurt.

Richard Corcoran was involved in a 1989 case in affluent Glen Ridge, N.J., in which a group of popular high school athletes allegedly raped a mentally retarded teenage girl with a broom and a baseball bat.

Corcoran, the son of a Glen Ridge police lieutenant, was among seven boys who were arrested and charged, but charges against him were dropped the day before his trial was to begin.

Three other boys were sentenced to jail terms, one was given probation and two others were ordered to perform community service under plea agreements.

In 1997, Corcoran won a $200,000 settlement in a federal civil rights lawsuit that charged Essex County prosecutors with malicious prosecution.

Corcoran enlisted in the Army in June 2000. He was assigned to Fort Bragg in 2001 and in late 2002 was deployed to Afghanistan with the 7th Special Forces Group, said Sgt. Kyle Cosner, a spokesman for the Army Special Operations Command.

Corcoran returned home in 2003 and was transferred to the 1st Special Warfare Training Group in August of that year.

A 1997 book, ``Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb,'' explored the town's willingness to rally around the perpetrators and disparage the victim.

ALBERTO GONZALEZ: PURE TORTURE

2005-02-03T11:07:00.000-05:00

I’ve mentioned the Alberto Gonzalez nomination for Attorney General in an earlier post to you all and pointed you toward an excellent synopsis of his candidacy written by People for the American Way. His supervision of the infamous White House “torture memos” which suggested that the president could exempt interrogators from the Geneva Convention is really just the tip of the iceberg. Gonzalez also served as an utterly lazy and uninterested rubber stamp for every death penalty case that reached George W. Bush’s desk as Governor of Texas (there were well over a hundred –– some defendants were convicted with a single accuser as the only evidence against them; others had court-appointed lawyers who – literally – slept through their proceedings; one, Carla Fay Tucker, was a born again Christian whom clergy around the world literally begged Bush not to execute – after she was executed Bush mocked her to a reporter by imitating her crying, “Please don’t kill me!”).

Gonzalez is also just an untalented lawyer, plain and simple – he is one in a long line of appointees who have benefited from a political policy which began with Bush Sr.’s White House: namely the appointing of rightwing minority yes-men (and women) regardless of whether they have the intelligence and experience to do the job for which they were chosen. Call it the “Clarence Thomas Strategy.” This strategy has it’s distinct advantages – you get an appointee who is in political lockstep with you AND you get hundreds of future photo-images of yourself surrounded by minorities in high positions which suggests – suggests -- to the casual voter, political moderation. When people object to them you (subtly or overtly) call them racists, further blurring the lines when it comes to taking sides on Civil Rights. It’s brilliant, actually, and effective when Democrats fail to respond boldly. In this case, they need to say that a) Gonzalez is a disaster as a candidate; and b) he DOES NOT represent Latinos – a majority of the major Latino groups, in fact, are against his candidacy.

When we failed to stop Bush’s last nomination for Attorney General, John Ashcroft, we got someone who was blinded by ideology and consumed with pet-projects, and who consequently told counter-terrorism officials (before 9/11) that he wasn’t interested in terrorism and proceeded to ignore it until it could not be ignored. He then filled the USA Patriot Act with WILD invasions of your privacy that have nothing whatsoever to do with effectively fighting terrorism.

Let’s not make this mistake again.

There is still time to take action against Gonzalez’s candidacy by urging your Senators to vote against his nomination.

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=16842&action=1516

At the top of the page you’ll see “Find Elected Officials” which you can click on. You should call your own Senators and ask them to vote no on Gonzalez’s nomination (make sure you tell them you’re one of their state constituents).

You should also call the one Democratic holdout, newly elected Colorado Senator Ken Salazar:

Washington Phone: (202) 224-5852
Fax: (202) 228-5036

Colorado Phone: (303) 455-7600

Email: frontdesk@salazarforcolorado.com

Salazar has accepted at face value a letter from Gonzalez stating that he now believes torture is illegal and supports human and civil rights (!) But as, Senator Dick Durbin explains in the long quote below (I’ve copied the transcription from Daily Kos) Gonzalez’s actions in front of the Senate put his conversion in grave doubt. I’ll close with Durbin’s opinion.

Mr. Gonzales now says he believes that all torture by U.S. personnel is illegal. But notice what Mr. Gonzales does not say.

I asked Mr. Gonzales whether he believes the President could invoke his authority as Commander-in-Chief to simply ignore the anti-torture statute. Mr. Gonzales refused to answer, saying, "it is simply implausible that I would ever be called upon to address" this question. But Mr. Gonzales and this Administration are the ones who raised this "simply implausible" question. The Justice Department's infamous torture memo, which Mr. Gonzales requested and approved, claims that the President does have this authority.

I asked Mr. Gonzales whether U.S. personnel can legally engage in cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under any circumstances. Mr. Gonzales's response was shocking. He claimed that it is legal for the U.S. government to subject detainees to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Specifically, he said, "There is no legal prohibition under the [Torture Convention] on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with respect to aliens overseas." But cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment are expressly prohibited by the Torture Convention, a treaty that the U.S. has ratified and is bound to obey, not just by law but by the rule of conscience. In an editorial entitled, "A Degrading Policy," The Washington Post called Gonzales' position "a gross distortion of the law."

This explains why Mr. Gonzales and this administration opposed my anti-torture amendment to the intelligence reform bill. My amendment would simply have reaffirmed the U.S.' long-standing obligation not to engage in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. This is the law of the land.

But Mr. Gonzales claims that my amendment "would have provided legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled." I asked him what additional legal protections my amendment would have provided. Mr. Gonzales refused to respond.

Now we know the legal protections that Mr. Gonzales opposes: the long-standing prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

I asked Mr. Gonzales about media reports that U.S. personnel have used abusive interrogation tactics such as simulated drowning, mock executions, threatening detainees with dogs, forced nudity, forcing detainees to assume painful, contorted positions for extended periods of time, and the forcible injection of mood altering drugs. I gave Mr. Gonzales an opportunity to repudiate these tactics and to make clear that this administration will not tolerate such abuses.

He responded, as only a lawyer can, with a very carefully worded and ambiguous answer. He said, "Some of these activities, at least under certain factual assumptions, might very well be prohibited ... Some might likewise be permissible in specific circumstances." What a pack of weasel words about torture techniques. Mr. Gonzales refuses to condemn un-American and degrading conduct that, frankly, shocks the conscience.

I also asked Mr. Gonzales about reports that the U.S. has "outsourced" torture by sending detainees to countries that systematically engage in torture. The Torture Convention prohibits a government from sending someone to a country if there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being tortured. As a party to the Torture Convention, we are bound to abide by this prohibition.

Mr. Gonzales responded with another very lawyerly answer. He said that "it is permissible in appropriate circumstances to rely on assurances from a country that it will not engage in torture, and such assurances can provide a basis for concluding that a person is not likely to be tortured if returned to another country."

Based on this reading of the law, the Administration has reportedly sent detainees to countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, which systematically engage in torture. These detainees have said publicly that they were in fact tortured after they were transferred to these countries. It is indefensible to send a detainee to a country that regularly uses torture on the basis of hollow assurances that it will not torture the detainee. Outsourcing torture is morally equivalent to engaging in torture.

The bottom line is this. Mr. Gonzales says he is opposed to torture, but he believes the President can invoke the Commander-in-Chief exception to set aside the torture statute; and he believes it is legally permissible to outsource torture.

He says it is Administration policy to treat detainees humanely, but he believes it is legally permissible to subject detainees to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; he opposes my anti-torture amendment, which would have reaffirmed the prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; and he refuses to condemn a host of abusive tactics such as mock execution and simulated drowning.

These are not the principles on which our nation is based. America is a nation founded on the ideals of freedom and justice. We believe that no one is above the law, no one is outside the law, and no government official should ever be invested with the power, real or imagined, to ignore, bend or break the rule of law.

****UPDATE****
6 Democratic Senators voted to confirm Gonzales as Attorney General: Salazar of Colorado, Nelson of Fla., Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor of Arkansas, Landrieu of Louisiana, and (blech) Lieberman of Conn.

Call their offices and let them have it! If someone doesn't run against Lieberman from his left in his next election than there IS NO DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT.

RELIGIOUS, RIGHT?

2005-01-14T08:53:00.000-05:00

We hear a lot in the mainstream media about how religious contemporary Americans are, a sentiment often backed up by polling numbers showing an unprecedented percentage of Americans who identify themselves with one religious organization or another (by comparison the fledgling Americans of 1776 were barely religious at all). But what does "religious" actually mean to those who identify themeslves as such? Here's a quote I came across in The New Yorker this week that's well worth pondering:

"The Davinci Code" [Dan Brown's mega-Bestselling book] is plain burn-at-the-stake blasphemous: its entire point is that Christianity as it is understood is a fraud put over by Constantine, and that Jesus, far from being divine, is a human being who fathered children. (The murder mystery [at the heart of the novel] rests on the premise that the Catholic Church, through the Opus Dei, sends out hit men to kill people who know the truth.) A cultural anthropologist, a hundred years from now, will doubtless find , in the unprecedented success of "The Da Vinci Code" during the time of a supposed religious revival, some clear sign that, in the Elvis mode, what a lot of Americans mean by spirituality is simply an immense openness to occult superstitions of all kinds. --Adam Gopnik

I would add to these "superstitions of all kinds" major and minor prejudices of all kinds entertained and validated under this same umbrella "religion." As I tried to explain in my piece on Jesus and Christianity, this doesn't mean that religion is of no value to democratic people, it just means that "religious" is a vague and not very helpful adjective, a catch-all term which people use, these days, to flatter whatever belief system they happen to hold.

It also may suggest that Christianity as a specific, complex system of belief is actually *waning* rather than growing. The number of Catholics I know who have read and loved the Da Vinci Code is extraordinary. At Christmas Mass this year, the priest mentioned that there were 17 million lapsed Catholics in the United States. As the church emptied out I couldn't help singing, in the melody of the old jingle, "Seventeen million strong, and growing!" I then endured an hour of freezing temperatures as more than a dozen Christians entering the next sheduled mass refused to help me jump my car (we'd left the lights on) despite the fact that my wife and two little girls were in it. I suppose a "religious" person could surmise that God was punishing me for my joke. Indeed, this was probably the easiest onclusion to draw.

GOOD RIDDANCE 2004, HELLO 2005

2005-01-12T01:05:00.000-05:00

Well, I’ve been completely off the radar these last few weeks. First came the holidays. And then, I’m very sad to report, my mother-in-law Barbara Rissberger had a very serious heart attack. She’s recovering slowly and in fits and starts. I know all your prayers are with us.

I’m going to make a few brief comments and observations here now and will do more as time allows. I want to at least keep some dialogue going so as always feel free to chime in at the website

http://www.bluestfist.com

***

Well, this is something I wish I had time to argue in detail myself, but as usual People for the American Way has done an excellent. Here’s a great explanation for why Alberto Gonzales is a DISASTROUS choice to replace John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Please do take the time to read it. This is surely one of the 2 or 3 most important and consequential events of the Bush presidency:

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=17596

***

Best, and most surprising, quote of the week had to be Mel Gibson speaking about Michael Moore:

"I feel a strange kinship with Michael. They're trying to pit us against each other in the press, but it's a hologram. They really have got nothing to do with one another. It's just some kind of device, some left-right. He makes some salient points. There was some very expert, elliptical editing going on. However, what the hell are we doing in Iraq? No one can explain to me in a reasonable manner that I can accept why we're there, why we went there, and why we're still there."

Wow, when Mel Gibson abandons your war you KNOW you’ve bungled it pretty bad. I agree, Mel, what the hell ARE we doing in Iraq?

***

As always you should be catching up on your Talking Points Memo:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

***

In the category of “too strange to be made up”:

“The Department of Education used $240,000 in tax dollars to hire right-wing pundit Armstrong Williams to promote controversial Bush education policy.” This is the same Armstrong Williams who settled a sexual harassment suit with a male employee who rejected his unwanted fondlings in 1997 (and the same Armstrong Williams who, in true closeted Republican fashion, is virulently homophobic in his public pronouncements). As usual, Team Bush is more than happy to “love the sinner” (in this case to the tune of a quarter million bucks) as long as that sinner is “hating the sin” and doing White House bidding on CNN.

***

Okay, that’s all for now.

WAR WOUNDS

2004-12-14T10:45:00.000-05:00

If you are already against the Iraq War a photo like this may not surprise you. If you support the war you ought to have enough enough guts to stare its consequences in the face:

http://content.nejm.org/content/vol351/issue24/images/large/03f9.jpeg

As of this posting 1,294 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq and 9,766 have been wounded in action.

An entire photo essay about treating the wounded in Iraq can be found in this weeks New England Journal of Medicine:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/24/2476

FAMILY VALUES BY THE NUMBERS

2004-12-07T13:14:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Massuchusetts (haven of liberalism, gay marriage and other unspeakables) has the lowest divorce rate in the country. That, people, is not a fluke. The state that rightwingers like to call "The People's Republic of Massachusetts" does 2 things pretty damn well: it educates it's citizens in decent public schools; and it creates a safety net of healthcare, welfare and unemployment benefits to make sure it's citizens don't fall into true desperation and despair. It turns out to be a great formula for keeping families intact. Not even Gay Marriage seems to affect it! Huh...

Andrew Sullivan, an honest Republican if ever there was one, provides the rest of the numbers:

"Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country at 2.4 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants. Texas - which until recently made private gay sex a criminal offence - has a divorce rate of 4.1. A fluke? Not at all. The states with the highest divorce rates in the U.S. are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. And the states with the lowest divorce rates are: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Every single one of the high divorce rate states went for Bush. Every single one of the low divorce rate states went for Kerry. The Bible Belt divorce rate, in fact, is roughly 50 percent higher than the national average."

Shall we try another bellweather statistic?

How 'bout "Pregnancies per 1000 teenage girls." As you can see from the graph below, our poor Red States are still working to get them family values in order:

CHRIST IN THE "CHRISTIANS'" DEN

2004-11-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

During the 2000 presidential campaign, at one of the Republican primary debates, the candidates were asked to name the philosopher they most admired. George W. Bush famously said, “Jesus Christ. Because he changed my heart.” Some pundits found this nutty –– more a sign that Bush didn’t know any philosophers (he himself has admitted that he never ever reads books) than that he had thoughtfully considered the philosophy of The Gospels. Four years later another reading of that answer seems the most likely – namely, that it was a fairly calculated way for George Bush to communicate a plain and simple faith to Christian voters, particularly (but by no means exclusively) to those voters known collectively as “the Christian Right.”

The Christian Right is a group whose political time, energy and capital are spent overwhelming on three issues: 1) fighting against the right of women to have abortions; 2) fighting to have Constitutional authority for prayer and the presentation of religious symbols in public schools and other public and governmental spaces, while garnering federal assistance for religious institutions via so-called “faith-based initiatives”; and 3) fighting against the “normalization” of homosexuality – the idea that homosexuality is neither deviant nor sinful but is, rather, a normal (if comparatively infrequent) sexual orientation which has no bearing whatsoever on one’s ability to be a good child, parent or citizen. This includes fighting against the rights of homosexuals not to be fired from their jobs or assaulted or kept from adopting children or kept from teaching in public schools or married by a Justice of the Peace in a civil ceremony.

That’s it. That’s the Big Three of religious conservatism, from the Pope to Pat Robertson. Anyone who’s been attending mass at a conservative Catholic parish for a while or watching The 700 Club knows this to be the case. There is one fellow-traveler with the Big Three, however, which is not specifically religious but tends to be packaged with them – that is, the tax cut. Of course it wouldn’t do to suggest that multi-millionaires like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell want a tax cut for the same reason other multi-millionaires do (for those napping at home, it’s because they want more money to accrue consumer goods and earthly power); so, instead, the argument runs like this: it is immoral for you to give money in the form of taxes to a government that supports abortion and won’t let your kids pray in their public school. Of course, you have to give them some to keep out of jail, but the less the better. Thus, among some members of the Religious Right, MONEY is discussed with a quasi-religious reverence.

Why have we Americans come to equate this four point agenda with Christianity? When I see Jerry Falwell (as I did on Thanksgiving Day) actually selling a financial investment plan on TV to his flock and using the language of “faith” to do it, I am reminded of Jesus’s famous proviso,

“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearances say long prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.” (Luke 20:46-47)

Makes you think twice about wanting to say a prayer out loud in a public place like a school, doesn’t it?

My message today is simply this: the idea that cultural conservatives could be followers of Jesus Christ is LAUGHABLE – or would be if these people hadn’t used Christ’s name to promote their profoundly anti-democratic and, indeed, anti-Christian agenda. When they did this to apologize for – and even promote! – slavery in the “red states,” pro-democracy Christians all over the U.S. and the world seized the initiative and hollered from the rooftops that these so-called Christian slave-owners were, in the most wretched and disgusting way, anathema to everything Jesus stood for. As Emerson asked in 1841 (and continually in the years preceding the Civil War), “in Christendom where is the Christian?”

Today, however, when “conservative Christians” put the weight of their institutions behind George W. Bush’s anti-democratic agenda, we just shrug. We call them “crazy Christians” as if following the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament actually lead in some obvious way to violent military interventions abroad, massive tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the world, and a total faith in a *human being* leading a secular nation into a foreign war while refusing to admit he has made a single mistake during his tenure. I support unequivocally the right of anyone and everyone to neither read nor follow the Christian Gospels – democracy depends on this right, among others. But more and more I have come to see the choice to concede those Gospels to cultural conservatives (a choice accelerated by the assassination of the last great Christian in American public life, Martin Luther King, Jr.) as a deeply lazy and boneheaded decision.

So, I asked myself a question: where would I begin if I were to explain that American conservatism has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus. Then I decided to email my friend John Parker. John’s dad was a Seventh Day Adventist, his mom a Methodist. He reads Martin Luther in the original German, reads Latin and Greek, and knows a thing or two about the Gospels. I asked John the same question I had asked myself. And he responded with the following passages and commentary.

1) "Repent, for the Kingdom is at hand!" (Mt 3.2, 4.17; Mk. 1.15)

The Lord commands his followers to admit their mistakes. Only in this way can they prepare for the Armageddon that their mistakes are about to bring upon us. Change course! The word of the Lord.
It's worth noting, in connection to this verse, the supreme irony of a self-proclaimed born-again convert touting *steadfastness* as his greatest virtue and branding any change of opinion in his opponents as a sign of weakness. Save for his own "flip-flopping" W would still be the cocaine-snorting booze hound he used to be. On the other hand, if the mantra of AA is any indication, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Not even Jesus can change that. So that probably W really *is* as steadfast as he proclaims, and therefore *remains* a cocaine-snorting booze hound, if not at the level of actual substance abuse, then at the level of personality, which is, in this case, a very low level indeed; in fact, the most craven, self-destructive, adolescent, vaguely Oedipal recklessness to seize global power since, perhaps, Christ's own emperors, Caligula and Nero.
Speaking of whom....

2) Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God what
is God's (Mt. 22.21; Mk 12.17; Lk 20.25)

Is it good to pay taxes? The Lord commands that you pay your taxes. He does not tell his disciples that “it’s their money;” he does not advocate tax cuts. On the contrary. He commands that you give your wealth to the state, on the grounds that the state has made your wealth possible in the first place: that is why money has other people’s pictures on it, and not yours. Jesus specifically *befriended* tax-collectors. It was a tax collector who wrote the Gospel according to Matthew.
The same verse clearly commends the radical separation of Church and State. There is the Kingdom of God, on the one hand, and the regular old kingdom on the other, and till the former should supercede the latter at the end-time of history, the secular kingdom remains secular and the Kingdom of God remains, in effect, non-existent. It is your religious duty to support the secular kingdom with taxes.
In fact....

3) “Sell all you have, and distribute unto the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven....how hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Lk. 18.22-5; Mt. 19.21; Mk. 10.23)
This is why you have to pay capital gains tax when you sell all the stock you have: in order as to *distribute unto the poor*. Period. Anyone who receives undue tax breaks and does not aid the secular state in distributing unto the poor WILL NOT GET INTO HEAVEN! The word of the Lord, people!

4) "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them to all men, as every man had need" (Acts 2.44-5).
The early church, as one learns from this verse, was a communist organization. Each according to need, was their motto. There follows an instructive anecdote about a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira, both of whom followed the conservative doctrine of hoarding their own while profiting from the collective. For this they are openly denounced by Peter, then fall down instantly and GIVE UP THE GHOST! True! (Acts. 5.5, 10).

So, to recap:
1) Admit mistake and change course, for the kingdom is at hand!
2) Until the kingdom actually comes, Pay Taxes to the Kingdom that's already here.
3) Redistribute wealth.
4) Redistribute wealth or DIE!

Among other things, the passages John quoted put the lie to the whole notion of Christian Fundamentalists “reading the Bible literally.” Are fundamentalist Bush supporters reading these passages literally? Oh really? I imagine one could do a whole lot of interpretive gymnastics with these passages and still manage to end up as a “Christian” holding on to your money. But a “fundamentalist”? Uh-uh. I give you Matthew 6.24: “You cannot serve God and wealth.” Period. (By the way, the same goes for the so-called “strict constructionist” judges and the U.S. Constitution.) As always, John had gotten me thinking. There seemed to be an endless number of directions I could pursue. I could note, for instance, that Jesus talks endlessly (endlessly!) in the Gospels about the evils of economic greed, while he has nothing (not one single thing!) to say about homosexuality. I could meditate on cultural conservatives’ obsessive return to selectively chosen rules and restrictions from the Old Testament books of law (Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc) and answer them using Paul’s complex meditation on Judaic law in his letter to the Galatians (where he writes that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law” and “now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian” (3.13, 25). Hopefully I’ll get to these and much more down the road.

For now I think it’s important to deal with the Iraq War. I was disgusted to learn from one of my wonderful aunts at Thanksgiving that she had received a Catholic voter guide at Mass before the election which listed these five “non-negotiable issues”: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and homosexual marriage.

How in the world did we get to this point? THESE are the five? Where is the torturing of prisoners? Not sufficiently in the news? Did the Church miss the Bush memo authorizing it? It was written by incoming Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Is torture not non-negotiable? Is the decision to hoard wealth while eight million uninsured American children go without proper healthcare not non-negotiable? Not worth putting in the pamphlet? Is the Iraq War – where 1252 American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed – a morally negotiable war? The very idea of this sickens me. Of course I’m not totally surprised by a Catholic Church which once turned a blind eye to the evildoings of Hitler and Mussolini, but I respond with revulsion nonetheless. And in any event it is time that we stopped letting rightwing so-called Christians apologize for such a war.

It is absolutely, unequivocally clear that Jesus would have died on the cross a thousand times before he uttered a single kind or even ambiguous word for the Iraq War. If the Gospels are any indication, he would have condemned it in the strongest possible terms and called on its architects to repent before they were cast into the bowels of hell. Here’s Jesus talking about violence and retaliation during his Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Mt 5.38-45).

Could this be any more clear? Iraq War? Puh-lease! And if there was any doubt that Jesus might not practice what he preaches, here is his reaction – as described in Luke and Matthew – the only time one of his followers ever attempts to violently defend him:

LK 22.49-51: When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, "Lord, should we strike with the sword?" Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, "No more of this!" And he touched his ear and healed him.

MT 26.51-52: Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

I don’t know that it has ever been stated any better.

It is your right to support George W. Bush. But if you do, for God’s sake, stop calling yourself a Christian, it’s embarrassing.

On the other hand, there are many reasons besides Christian service to oppose this administration. But if you are truly a follower of Jesus, take to the streets immediately in protest.

GOING TO WAR AT THE MOVIES

2004-11-30T15:54:00.000-05:00

Here are five movies popularly released and widely available that might get people across a wide range of opinion and experience (though not of course the unpersuadable "true believers") thinking about the implications and consequences of war:

1. The Thin Red Line
2. The Deer Hunter
3. Salvador
4. The Killing Fields
5. Three Kings

I started thinking about this after mentioning "Taxi Driver" in my last post. "The Killing Fields" in particular made a big impression on me when I was about 16 -- and I guess I'm thinking about movies that might reach someone while they're still a political work in progress as much as I am about convincing people already pretty set in their ways.

Any others? Add 'em to the "Comments"!

BLOWBACK IRAQ

2004-11-18T11:52:00.000-05:00

With Colin Powell resigning after what he termed “the worst time in my life” there can now be no illusions that the Iraq War is in the hands – completely – of its architects, a group of radical conservatives none of whom ever fought in a war. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith: ladies and gentlemen, this is your starting team. Without exception they are what we liberals call “Chickenhawks”—rabidly pro-war conservatives who never bothered to fight themselves, and in most cases (Bush and Cheney being the obvious ones) went out of their way to dodge the draft. One of Bush’s professors at Harvard Business School recalls him aggressively championing the Vietnam War as late as 1974 (the MBA program was his early ticket out of the National Guard which apparently wasn’t cushy enough) while sitting in the back of the class with his bomber jacket on. I’ll give you a minute if you want to go to the bathroom and throw up.

Okay.

By now you all know the obvious criticisms of the Iraq War. In a nutshell, it’s a unnecessary war that was badly planned, that won’t bring democracy to Iraq or the Middle East generally, has nothing to do with 9/11 and the war against Al Qaeda (except insofar as it gives Al Qaeda a new place to kill Americans while drawing resources away from the hunt for Osama bin Laden) and it has cost taxpayers 225 billion dollars and counting.

Now, I know a few of you disagree with this assessment and believe that the Iraq War is a heroic battle to bring democracy to the world and that it is one we will win. If this sounds like you then I strongly encourage you to enlist in the armed forces. It’s okay if you are middle-aged. The Army is in desperate need of soldiers with various kinds of expertise (notably doctors: the Bush administration has even drawn up plans for a medical draft if necessary) so you may very well be able to serve in Iraq even if you’re in your fifties. You can also show your support for the war by encouraging your children to enlist. It’s surprisingly easy. Just go to

http://www.usarmy.com/

and follow the steps in the section marked “Plan Your Military Career.” If you are not internet savvy, I have taken the liberty of downloading the enlistment forms for the Army, Navy and Marines and will gladly mail copies to you or your sons or daughters. All you have to do is email me at bluestfist@cox.net and ask.

But before you express your unqualified support for the war in such an honest and courageous way, you may want to read the rest of this message.

As the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, “While at least 38 Marine and Army troops have died in a tough week of house-to-house fighting in Fallujah, that is not the hardest part of the U.S. counteroffensive against the Iraqi insurgency.”

That’s right, folks – “taking” Falluja was the easy part. And given that we apparently failed to capture any of the insurgency’s senior leadership, it’s hard to say what “capturing Falluja” means. The Bush Administration clearly ties this ability to occupy and stabilize Falluja to their plans for Iraq-wide January elections which need some semblance of Sunni support to have any legitimacy. And a nationwide election is part of their broader plan for the “Iraqization” of the Iraqi government and military. “Iraqization” is what, theoretically, will allow the U.S. military to leave. But it is instructive to compare Bush’s optimistic assessments of the “Iraqization” process (which all of you have no doubt heard him tout at one point or another) to Richard Nixon’s description of his “Vietnamization” plan. [All praise be to the "Daily Kos" folks for digging this speech up.]

On 11/3/69 Nixon described to the American people, “the goal of strengthening the South Vietnamese so that they could defend themselves when we left.” He went on to explain:

The Vietnamization plan was launched following Secretary Laird's visit to Vietnam in March. Under the plan, I ordered first a substantial increase in the training and equipment of South Vietnamese forces. After 5 years of Americans going into Vietnam, we are finally bringing men home. By December 15, over 60,000 men will have been withdrawn from South Vietnam including 20 percent of all of our combat forces. The South Vietnamese have continued to gain in strength. As a result they have been able to take over combat responsibilities from our American troops.

Sound familiar? The Vietnam War continued for another bloody five years – in which time it also destabilized Cambodia, leading to the Khmer Rouge’s horrific genocide and the death of at least 1.2 million Cambodians.

Meanwhile, Tuesday in Mosul, a Marine (apparently under extreme stress after being shot in the face the previous day) cracked up and shot an unarmed man lying on the ground in – of all places – a mosque. He is on video tape taken by an NBC freelance journalist saying, “He’s fucking faking he’s dead. He faking he’s fucking dead.” As the journalist then put it, “The Marine then raises his rifle and fires into the man’s head.”

Get ready for more of this, everybody. Political scientists have a word for the unintended longterm consequences of foreign military interventions. They call it "blowback."

Here’s a question for you: who are the two Americans who can be reasonably said to have committed large scale acts of terrorism *on Americans* in the last decade. The answer is Tim McVey, who (with the help of Terry Nichols) bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children; and John Allen Muhammad who, along with his young accomplice Lee Malvo, shot 13 people from long range in the Washington D.C. area, killing 10 of them.

What do McVey and Muhammad have in common? They were both veterans of the Persian Gulf War.

You’ll recall that that was one of our “good” and “successful” wars. Still, according to leaks of a report, which is due to be released next week by the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, “a substantial proportion of Gulf war veterans are ill with multisystem conditions not explained by wartime stress or psychiatric illness”. As the New Scientist journal reports, “Some 30% of Gulf veterans suffer from various combinations of fatigue, muscle and joint pains, headache, and gut and cognitive problems – over and above non-Gulf veterans, the report says.” The U.S. is finally, after 13 years, admitting that this syndrome exists and that it was likely the result of Sarin gas exposure.

While Bush has done members of the military an enormous disservice by getting them embroiled in an unwinnable war where they are being maimed and killed, he hasn’t even done them the courtesy of creating a safety net for them when they return or for their families while they are away. U.S. Representative Lane A. Evans has an excellent, detailed speech about Bush’s attempts to decimate the VA Hospital system which you can read here:

http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=67856

Wars reverberate long after they are won or lost – and when we consider whether or not to support a war we should consider these reverberations.

Everyone remembers the Martin Scorcese movie “Taxi Driver” as a movie about a crazy person planning a political assassination – and as a movie that inspired John Hinkley Jr’s attempt to kill President Reagan. But Robert De Niro’s character Travis Bickle is nothing like John Hinkley Jr. And “Taxi Driver”, I’m here to tell you, is a Vietnam War movie:

PERSONNEL OFFICER: Military Record?
TRAVIS: Honorable Discharge, May 1973.
PERSONNEL OFFICER: Were you in the Army?
TRAVIS: Marines.

Later De Niro utters the famous lines “Listen you fuckers, you screwheads. Here’s a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the c***s, the dogs, the filth, the shit, here is someone who stood up. [He draws his gun.] You’re dead.”

I realize a few of you may find this language terribly offensive -- if so, I would ask you to come to terms with the fact that the men and women in the military traffic in similar language. They may not have spoken it when they enlisted but many of them surely speak it by the time they are discharged, if they live that long. It is the language of the Marine who killed that man in a mosque yesterday as surely as it was the language of the prison guards at Abu Ghraib. De Niro’s monologue is a “bad” War come home to roost. It strikes me as uncannily like the delusions of grandeur which buoyed Tim McVey as he hatched his shocking and awful plan.

Add a long line of disillusioned, expertly trained Veterans to the list of what we are inheriting as a result of Bush’s Iraq War. It may pale in comparison to the 1209 dead and the (at least) 8458 wounded American soldiers; or the tens upon tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians; but it is surely another consequence to keep in mind. Bush and his cabinet may be sowing the seeds but we, the people, will reap the harvest.

PHILOSOPHY BLUES

2004-11-15T13:57:00.000-05:00

Brad Carson, defeated Democratic senate candidate from Oklahoma, has an interesting piece in The New Republic this week. In it, he tries to explain why the Red States go conservative. Here’s a portion of his argument:

The culture war is real, and it is a conflict not merely about some particular policy or legislative item, but about modernity itself. Banning gay marriage or abortion would not be sufficient to heal the cultural gulf that exists in this nation. The culture war is about matters more fundamental still: whether nationality is, in a globalized world, a random fact of no more significance than what hospital one was born in or whether it is the source of identity and even political legitimacy; whether one's self is a matter of choice or whether it is predetermined, before birth, by the cultural membership of one's family; whether an individual is just that--a free-floating atom--or whether the individual is part of a long chain that both predates and continues long after any particular person; whether concepts like honor and shame, which seem so quaint, are still relevant in a world that values only "tolerance." These are questions not for politicians but for philosophers, and, in the end, it is the failure of liberal philosophy that we saw on November 2. For the vast majority of Oklahomans--and, I would suspect, voters in other red states--these transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage or preserving farm subsidies. Pace Thomas Frank, the voters aren't deluded or uneducated. They simply reject the notion that material concerns are more real than spiritual or cultural ones. The political left has always had a hard time understanding this, preferring to believe that the masses are enthralled by a "false consciousness" or Fox News or whatever today's excuse might be. But the truth is quite simple: Most voters in a state like Oklahoma--and I venture to say most other Southern and Midwestern states--reject the general direction of American culture and celebrate the political party that promises to reform or revise it.

Now, one always needs to begin a discussion of something like this by noting the obvious: that if Americans had simply been given the basic, un-spun facts about domestic and international policy, Kerry would have won the election in a landslide: my guess is he would have won by about 56-44. The people Carson is talking about are that 44% who wouldn’t have cared about those facts even if they’d known them because their beliefs supercede those facts. Much as I disagree with Carson’s implicit suggestion that Democrats moderate their philosophy, it rightly identifies a philosophical rift as the cause for the current red-blue polarization. But Carson doesn't go the final step of turning a pragmatist's eye on the motives of "Red State" philosophy (likely b/c it would end what's left of his political career). As John Dewey says, philosophy is not "in any sense whatever a form of knowledge" but rather "a form of desire, of effort at action." The South's "metaphysical feudalism" has always inspirited and emboldened and policed its preferred social relations -- most notably slavery and the master-slave relationship, and more generally the traditional gender and class relationships which they have historically located (not always accurately, one could argue) in jolly old England and the Old Testament. That many Southerners "believe" their philosophy is important to digest but it doesn't remove the insidious and fundamentally un-democratic texture of that belief. What it DOES do is explain why a bunch of poor people would vote for one of the world's great elitists, George W. Bush. Put simply, they do it because they LIKE TO, because it pleasurably confirms their fundamental belief in authority and hierarchy. Bush executes the seamless melding of their earthly and heavenly masters. Why in the hell would they question his decisioon about a war, particularly when he has affirmed the righteousness of their nuclear family? God is good, all's right with the world, long live the king. Contrast this with what Dewey says about democracy:

"A philosophy animated, be it consciously or unconsciously, by the strivings of men to achieve democracy will construe liberty as meaning a universe in which there is real uncertainty and contingency, a world which is not all in, and never will be, a world which in some respect is incomplete and in the making, and in these respects may be made this way or that according as men judge, prize, love and labor...a genuine field of novelty, of real and unpredictable increments to existence, a field for experimentation and invention."

It's not "modernity" that Red Staters hate, it's democracy. Carson either doesn't recognize or is too afraid to break the code. But he is absolutely right that our defeat in the election is a defeat for our philosophy -- and
that we need to stop asking our presidential candidate to carry the whole load of selling democracy to the American people.

The Left (some of its more forceful advocates anyway) made an enormous mistake, IMHO, when it abandoned the term "democracy" to stroke its own skepticism -- they simply gave this powerful word to the very people who believed least in democratic practices and allowed them to call THEIR thing "democracy." How stupid can we get?? We did the same thing with such revered terms as "America" ("People for the American Way" being one important exception) and "Jesus." Dumb, dumb, dumb. So, Carson's got his symtom identified but he needs to think more about cause and cure.

GO TIME

2004-11-15T13:23:00.000-05:00

Most of you have been receiving my "BushWatch" emails for several months. A few of you are new to this list. Welcome! The BushWatch2004 blog has been renamed in honor of it's broader mission. Kudos to my cousin Nadia for winning the "Name Mike's Blog" contest. So, I introduce to you: The Bluest Fist. Which you can always find at:

http://www.bluestfist.com

I will be committed to explaining what the democratic/liberal causes are and why they make sense. And I will be trying to get you clear, factual information about domestic and international policy and events -- which is so hard to get in these days of corporate media noise. As one of The Daily Show's reporters recently joked, the networks have stopped reporting the facts about Iraq and many other issues because "apparently the facts have become biased." No such worries here at The Bluest Fist.

Anyone can join my email list. Just email me at bluestfist@cox.net and ask to be included. Likewise, anyone can ask to be removed from it at any time. My emails will always be posted to the website. And you all can easily post comments to the website. All you have to do is click on "comments" at the bottom of any one of my posts and walk through the easy steps. You have to sign up for a "Blogger" account but it's easy and free. I'm hoping that will be a way to create some dialgue without clogging up all our email inboxes.

In the coming weeks I hope to discuss a number of things, including: the politics of Christianity; the impending demise of Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; the likelihood of a military draft; an update on Iraq; and Democracy and the history of the progressive tax (or, "Why Paris Hilton's taxes are lower than the woman's who does her nails).

For now, I will end with a Pop Quiz:

What state has the lowest divorce rate in U.S.?

Give up?

Okay, it's Massachusetts. Yup, the land of atheists, communists and homosexuals. Apparently, liberals' marriages are so damn good they don't need defending.

GET UP!

2004-11-04T23:45:00.000-05:00

Thought I was going to go away and sulk? Fat chance! There’s a lot of work to do. Over the next few weeks you’ll be hearing a lot of nonsense about what this election "meant" and about a Bush "mandate." Don’t you believe it. George Bush has now run two presidential elections. The way I slice the numbers, half the nation hates his guts, about 40% of the nation loves him, and the final 10% think he’s a disaster but votes for him anyway because they viscerally dislike our Democratic candidates. Folks, that’s not a mandate to do anything.

The blog http://www.mydd.com dispels some of the myths already circulating about this election: for instance, the one about young people not turning out to vote in the expected record numbers -- they did turn out in record numbers, it’s just that so did every other age group so the *percentage* of the total turnout didn’t seem remarkable. The point is that groups like MoveOn and blogs like DailyKos did have an appreciable effect, most noticeably in places like Philadelphia. The battle shifts for a while now to Congress and we’ll start rallying against rightwing extremists like Senator Rick Santorum NOW -- he’s up for reelection in 2006 and the numbers and trends in Pennsylvania clearly spell his demise. See, I told you there was work to do! In 2000, Gore lost and we all went into hibernation for a while, exhausted. Not this time. I am continuing BushWatch as a blog. And I’m soliciting names which suggest both liberal and tough. My choice at the moment is "The Liberal Fist" – I like it ‘cause it sounds kinda crazy. But I’m holding off on deciding until I hear other suggestions. I’ll also continue emailing my posts – as always, if you want off the list just let me know. And feel free to sign others up.

The story of Bush’s win? Karl Rove turned out his evangelicals, period. This is a group of voters who steadfastly, willingly, even knowingly, vote against their economic self-interest. "Bush cost you your job" means almost nothing to them. We need to absorb this fact and plan accordingly.

Last night John Stewart gave to Sen. Schumer a litany of things that Bush has done to hurt "average Americans" -- and then he said, "Apparently this was all trumped by the idea of dudes kissing other dudes."

IF WE DON'T CHANGE THE TERMS OF THE DEBATE STARTING NOW WE WILL LOSE AGAIN.

Wes Clark began this process with his excellent stump speech about "Family Values" which pointed out, without spite or rancor but with plenty of indignation, the myriad evidence that Bush and the Republican party *despise* families. "Health Care is a family value" should be a bumper sticker on 50 million cars (in contrast Kerry’s "Health Care is a right" spoke only to his own
choir).

That being said, 55.5 million people voted for Kerry. We came within a hair's breath (about 75,000 votes in Ohio when all’s said and done) of electing the most liberal senator in the country (the Bushies were right about that) President. I admire many things about Kerry but his flaws as a national candidate were obvious, notably his undeniable patrician/northeastern/European vibe and the coincidence of the Gay Marriage legal fight being waged in his state in an election year. If we had run a Governor from a swing state with political skill we would have won the election with the exact same platform on which Kerry ran. I'm not endorsing that platform 100% mind you (especially his hedging on Iraq) but this seems to me a political fact. How y'all feeling about Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell these days?

In 1851, Emerson complained, "Slavery reads the Constitution with a shrewd and daring and innovative eye; Liberty is satisfied with the literal construction." He was berating abolitionists for not taking control of the debate about what was "American" what was "patriotic" what was "Christian" and what was not.

Well, I say, Karl Rove is very shrewd and daring and innovative -- and to hell with us if we don't start fighting back.

A FINAL PLEA

2004-10-27T16:34:00.000-04:00

My first political memory is watching the Fall of Saigon on the nightly news when I was four years old. I don’t recall having an opinion about it but I remember the old television set and the images very clearly. I wonder now whether my daughter Anabella, who turns four on November 8, will have similar memories. She was born in the wee hours of 11/8/00 while the news stations were still trying to decide who they thought won the Bush-Gore election. The first political opinions I remember having were from the Reagan years when, generally speaking, I felt pro-Reagan. I remember thinking it was cool that Reagan bombed Libya though I didn’t have any particular understanding of the reasons behind it. I was fourteen year old. A year later I was standing at a booth at school about to sign up for the Young Republicans club. A friend of mine named Ryan asked me why I was a Republican. I can’t remember what I told him but I remember his response – which was to ask me a long series of questions about my beliefs on a variety of issues. We had quite a lengthy discussion and I answered all his questions. After which he responded, "You’re a Democrat" and explained convinvingly why this was so. That conversation saved me a hell of a lot of time.

It is a truism of Republican punditry that the older you get the more conservative you become, and that every hardworking citizen who achieves a certain degree of personal and economic success eventually becomes a Republican. The opposite has been true for me. I am a more committed liberal now than I ever have been in my life. But I also hold to a belief which I think is essentially non-partisan: that the job of a voter in a democracy is to educate oneself on the issues and to envision how each candidate would create public policy. What policies do the candidates support? What is the likelihood of them successfully implementing those policies through interactions with government agencies, Congress and the Supreme Court? And finally, weighing the outcomes you are imagining for each candidate, which are better?

Your job is not to decide who you want to have a beer with (for the record, I’d rather have a beer with Kerry any day). Your job – your DUTY as citizens, if I may be so bold – is to decide which candidate is more likely to help create the sort of world you want to live in. For instance, if you make more than $200,000 dollars a year and you want to live in a world of violence and political chaos, increased Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, widening economic disparity, criminalized abortion and catastrophic Health Care and Social Security crises, where the value of your real estate and stock portfolio goes down BUT your income tax rate stays the same or perhaps even decreases slightly over the next, say, eight years – then I implore you to fulfill your duty as a citizen and vote for George W. Bush. His presidency and world have so devolved over the last four years that this is the only scenario I can think of where a vote for Bush makes sense.

I wish I were joking. But this is an instance where shrill political rhetoric actually reflects the reality of what’s at stake in this election. I know some of you are Republicans who have grown up loathing democrats and liberalism generally, which you equate with socialism and/or hedonism. I know a few of you are in fact socialists who loathe the Democrats’ compromises with capitalist rugged individualism. I know some of you are jaded and apathetic because the political noise machine makes every candidate seem like a liar and a crook. And many of you are Democrats eternally disappointed by the candidates we run for office. I have one message for all of you.

I BEG you all to soul-search in the most honest possible way. The choice you make –– whether to vote or not to vote and for whom –– has REAL CONSEQUENCES. The moment is dire and cries out for a vote of national sanity, the putting aside of petty self-interest and unquestioned partisan habits to insure that we DO NOT GO DOWN A ROAD FROM WHICH WE AS A NATION WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RETURN.

John Kerry is a decent and sensible man. There are many many things I could say in admiration of his life and his political positions. But for the sake of clarity I will say only these: he believes in the principles of democracy; he listens to advice; he thinks things through; he is courageous under fire. I’m asking you from the bottom of my heart to vote for him on November 2nd and to feel no bashfulness about asking everyone you know, everyone you pass in the street, to do the same. You, the voter, are the nation’s only hope.

SAFETY FIRST, PEOPLE!

2004-10-25T00:14:00.000-04:00

As everyone knows, George Bush is hanging his increasingly desperate election hopes on the idea that the War in Iraq made U.S. citizens safer. That claim has always seemed to me false in a number of obvious ways. First, our soldiers are U.S. citizens and 1104 of them have died in Iraq. Another 8016 have been wounded. Secondly, as has been widely reported, Al Qaeda’s recruitment has exploded since we invaded Iraq. There are more terrorist cells in more countries than ever before. Thirdly, our inability to find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri is a direct consequence of our diversion of military resources away from the Afganistan-Pakistan border. There are plenty of other things I could mention, some of which came up in my post on terrorism. BUT HERE IS SOMETHING NEW AND DISTURBING: you may recall that John Kerry criticized Bush during the debates for not "securing ammo dumps" in Iraq once the initial military successes in Iraq gave him the chance to do so. Well, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo is breaking a story that will surely go national this week and reveals more mind-boggling ineptitude by the Bush Administration. Here’s a brief synopsis:

********************
Prior to the war, Iraq's Al Qa Qaa bunker and weapons complex had roughly 350 tons of high explosives under International Atomic Energy Agency seal. [You remember the IAEA, right? They’re the group that kept Sadam from getting nuclear weapons for a decade – the group that George W. Bush rididcules every chance he gets.] After the war, for whatever reason, the complex was either not guarded at all or inadequately guarded. And all those explosives (primarily RDX and HMX) were carted away.

What we're talking about here isn't just a bunch of dynamite. If you look up RDX in the encyclopedia, you’ll find that it "is considered the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives." And not 350 pounds, 350 *tons*.

It is widely believed within the US government that those looted explosives are what in many, perhaps most, cases is being used in car bombs and suicide attacks against US troops…One administration official told the Nelson Report, "This is the stuff the bad guys have been using to kill our troops, so you can’t ignore the political implications of this, and you would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information."

You get all the facts in great detail here: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com

My bet is the story will also be in your local paper by week’s end.

IF YOU HAVE ALREADY DECIDED TO VOTE FOR KERRY, YOU CAN VOLUNTEER TO GET OUT THE VOTE IN THE FINAL WEEK.
THIS IS VERY VERY IMPORTANT. GO HERE:

http://acthere.com/

All you have to do is type in your zip code to get the information you need on how to volunteer.

THE CATHOLIC VOTE

2004-10-24T14:00:00.000-04:00

I know that many of you happen to be Catholic. I myself am what is often referred to as a "lapsed Catholic" though I indentify strongly with the history of Irish Catholics in particular as a historically oppressed minority who as recently as the 17th century were being sold into slavery in the West Indies by Oliver Cromwell; who were callously left to die by the thousands during the potato famine of the mid 19th century when the English leadership, who viewed the Irish peasantry as less than human, refused to provide the necessary humanitarian aid to avoid catastrophe; and who faced de facto segregation and job descrimination upon arriving in the United States. The fact that Irish-Americans haven't always stood by other American minority groups who have suffered discrimination is a source of real frustration for me, though I also appreciate their history of positive social work.

My sense is that very few of you use Catholic theology as the determining factor in how you vote for President. Nonetheless, the conventional wisdom has been that Catholics who consistently obey church doctrine will vote for Bush. This is because the Catholic Church has, in the public consciousness, devolved into a one-issue theology. That issue is abortion rights. But the Vatican has made clear that there is a distinction to be made between *believing* in abortion rights, on the one hand, and believing that the United States as a religiously free democracy cannot legislate religious belief. Hence, as a believer in abortion rights and reproductive freedom, *I* am a heretic. But John Kerry is not. He simply believes that his own belief can't be indoctrinated in American law. The Vatican says specifically that John Kerry is not a heretic. John Kerry is in fact a Catholic like millions of others who a pro-choice as a matter of public policy not or morality.

On the other hand, George W. Bush *is* a heretic. Ed Kilgore of the Progressive Policy Institute makes this fact abundantly clear in the post below, which I'm using a guest BushWatch column.

The fact that Bush is a heretic doesn't make me any less likely to vote for him. But if you are a conservative Catholic this is something you may want to consider. And if you know any conservative Catholics, please pass this post along.
*********************************

Ed Kilore
http://www.newdonkey.com/
Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Kerry Cleared of Heresy Charge--But What About Bush?

As you may know, this presidential election has been roiled by claims from certain conservative Catholics--including a noisy minority of Bishops—that Catholics emperil their souls by voting for John Kerry, whose views on abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research allegedly divide him fatally from Church teachings, making him a self-excommunicated heretic.

Yesterday, according to the Catholic News Service, an unnamed Vatican official representing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addressed this argument by saying: "No, Kerry is not a heretic."

Now that we've cleared that up, Catholics might want to apply a similar test to President Bush, whose campaign has made a mighty effort to convince Catholic voters they have a religious duty to vote Republican this year.

I don't want to prejudge any official proceedings here, but a quick examination of the president's professed beliefs create a strong suspicion that he is guilty of a number of heresies condemned by ecumenical councils and leading Catholic theologians over the last two millenia.

Although he does not appear to belong to any specific religious congregation, Mr. Bush has publicly identified himself as a "born-again Christian" of the Methodist denomination. He is thus presumptively an adherent of the Protestant Heresy, condemned most notably and definitively by the sixteenth-century
Council of Trent. If so, Bush has implicitly embraced an array of subordinate heresies, including:

* Denial of the teaching authority of the Church (the basis, BTW, for questions about Mr. Kerry's views on abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research).
* Bibliolatry (rejection of Church tradition as amplifying and interpreting scriptural authority)
* Symbolism (rejection of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist)
* Sacrilege (rejection of marriage, holy orders, penance, confirmation and extreme unction as valid Sacraments of the Church)
* Dishonoring the Mother of God (rejection of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception, Assumption and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
* Schism (rejection of papal authority and establishment of a separate ecclesiastical structure)

In addition, as a Methodist, Bush must be suspected of additional grave errors associated with the heresiarch and patron saint of that denomination, John Wesley.

* Pelagianism (belief in the perfectibility of human nature, suppressed in the 4th century by the Emperor Honarius, following the teaching of St. Augustine).
* Abandonment of the Apostolic Succession of Bishops (achieved when Methodists seceeded from the Church of England)

Moreover, as Msgr. Ronald Knox argued in his influential 1950 book, Enthusiasm, Wesleyans reflect a persistant heretical tendency towards elevation of subjective experience in the pursuit of religious truth that links them to such widely varying heresies at Donatism, Hussism and Jansenism.

Finally, the President's persistant "unilateralist" demand that the United States must enjoy a privileged and unique status with respect to the use of force specifically and international law generally raises some concern that he is guilty of the Americanist Heresy (the belief that this country's special conditions require deviations from universal laws of faith and morals), condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1899.

If fidelity to the faith is supposed to be the sole test for voting behavior by Catholics, then perhaps the examination of conscience that some conservatives have urged on Catholics prior to entering the voting booth should extend to the highly suspect belief and value system of the incumbent.

BOYCOTT SINCLAIR

2004-10-11T20:06:00.000-04:00

******IMPORTANT UPDATE*******

Sinclair's stock has fallen 17 percent, costing shareholders $105 million, since Sinclair's decision to air the anti-Kerry faux-documentary "Stolen Honor" in its entirety first became public.
Today, under threat of a massive shareholder lawsuit, Sinclair backed off: they will now air a news piece *about* the documentary which, they say, will include a number of people criticizing "Stolen Honor" (presumably for its total lack of acuracy). The boycott will remain in place until Sinclair makes good on its promise.
***************************************

Between October 21 and 24, Sinclair Broadcast Group will force the local television stations it owns and operates to preempt regular network broadcasts and devote one hour to an anti-John Kerry documentary.

Go here to sign the petition against this disgusting blow to democracy:

http://www.stopsinclair.org

and here if you want to participate more fully in the boycott:

http://www.boycottsbg.com/

and if you own Sinclair stock, dump it.

***UPDATE***

Monday, October 18, 2004

Sinclair fires Washington bureau chief

By KASEY JONES ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BALTIMORE -- The Washington bureau chief for Sinclair Broadcast Group said he was fired Monday after he criticized the company's plans to produce a news program based on a documentary critical of John Kerry's Vietnam-era anti-war activities.

Jon Leiberman said he was fired by Joseph DeFeo, Sinclair's vice president for news, and "escorted out of the building."

IN OTHER NEWS...

Sinclair Broadcasting stock took a nosedive today and ended at $6.49, down .55 cents a share, on a huge volume of 1,147,658 shares (that's triple their average daily volume.) The stock lost 7.81% of its value today.

DEBATE HAPPENS 2

2004-10-06T13:36:00.000-04:00

Some of you veterans may recall a BushWatch post that I sent in 2000. It said, in a nutshell, don’t be fooled by Dick Cheney’s grandfatherly persona – his voting record in the Congress is to the right of Attila the Hun. I then detailed that record – a record that was in fact much more conservative than even Jesse Helms. Unfortunately, Joe Lieberman, desperately trying NOT to make himself useful to Al Gore, refused to bring up any of these details in his debate with Cheney.

Well, thank heaven for John Edwards.

During the debate, Edwards remarked, "I'm surprised to hear [Cheney] talk about records. When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors. He voted against [founding] the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa."

Every one of these details is so true on its face that Cheney didn’t even bother to respond. He literally said nothing about any of these votes. What they show is a man who abhors democracy and fair play and is in lock-step with powerful, cynical corporate and defense-industry lobbies. Dick Cheney speaks in lofty terms about democracy when it suits his purpose, as it does in Iraq. But his voting record in Congress suggests that he couldn’t care less about it. Thanks to John Edwards the public now sees this with real clarity.

The other compelling storyline of the VP debate is that Cheney was caught red-handed telling some ridiculous lies. The worst kind of lies – i.e., the kind which are easily refuted by video tape. In one, he made the dramatic accusation that, because Edwards allegedly never shows up for Senate votes, Cheney (who, as VP, is President of the Senate) had never met Edwards until they sat down to debate each other. Within two hours Democrats had produced C-SPAN footage of them meeting on three separate occasions. Secondly, Cheney claimed that he had never suggested that there was a connection between Sadam Hussein and the attacks of 9/11. Once again footage was produced immediately of Cheney on "Meet the Press" suggesting exactly that. More examples quickly followed.

As much as I don’t like Cheney I was shocked at the recklessness and sheer stupidity of these particular lies. Some of his other lies were more dexterous.

The post-debate polls, both on-line and scientific, suggested an Edwards victory. More importantly Kerry-Edwards continue to surge in the national Presidential polls.

Onward!

DEBATE HAPPENS

2004-10-04T13:16:00.000-04:00

THE PRESIDENT'S RECORD ON TERRORISM: TERRIFYING

2004-09-29T11:39:00.000-04:00

1. BUSH BEFORE 911

On January 24th, 2001, Richard Clarke "wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently -- underlined urgently -- a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo-- wasn't acted on." According to a Bush administration security official, Clarke "was the guy pushing hardest, saying again and again that something big was going to happen, including possibly here in the U.S." The official added that Clarke was likely sidelined because he had served in the previous (Clinton) administration. Clark also served under Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan.

In face-to-face meetings, CIA Director George Tenet warned President Bush repeatedly in the months before 9/11 that an attack was coming. According to Clarke, Tenet told the President that "A major al-Qaeda attack is going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead."

On August 6th, 2001, Bush was given a classified memo entitled, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." The memo stated that,

"FBI information since [1998] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York" and also noted "a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May [2001] saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

It is a simple fact of history that Bush did nothing with this information. Didn’t call the CIA or FBI for further information or clarification. Didn’t call John Ashcroft with instructions for the Justice Department. Didn’t call Dick Cheney. Didn’t…do…anything. He either didn’t read the memo or took on faith Condoleeza Rice’s incomprehensible interpretation of the memo as "historical" and not urgent.

As the Sept. 11 Commission’s final report put it, "In the face of dire warnings in the summer of 2001, Bush failed to direct his government to work together to prevent attacks."

2. BUSH ON 911

On September 11th, George Bush was reading "My Pet Goat" with some Florida school children. Camera’s were rolling because this was a photo op. After the second hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center, Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card walked up to him and whispered in his ear "America is under attack." Bush sat there for another seven minutes doing nothing. Judge the expression on his face for yourself – to me it seemed like a pure and child-like fear.

More importantly, if you are at all on the fence about George W. Bush, I implore you to ask yourself this question and be completely honest with yourself: Would you have sat there, as President of the United States and done nothing for seven minutes? Wouldn’t you, naturally, have gotten up immediately and gotten more information immediately? Wouldn’t Franklin Roosevelt have excused himself from the reading circle? Wouldn’t Truman and Eisenhower have gotten up? Wouldn’t Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, wouldn’t Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton have gotten up? Wouldn’t John Kerry have gotten up from that chair? Be honest, fence-sitters. And then ask yourself what this says about the president’s mettle and character.

Bush did not immediately return to Washington or fly to New York. After a stop in Louisiana, the presidential jet flew to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska where Bush stayed in Offutt's deep underground bunker until late afternoon. Top Bush political adviser Karl Rove told members of the press that Air Froce One had been threatened with attack. Bush returned to Washington at 7pm.

Days after the attacks, Dick Cheney had said word of the threat to Air Force One had been passed to him by Secret Service agents. But in interviews, two former senior Secret Service agents on duty that day denied that their agency played any role in receiving or passing on a threat to the presidential jet. Later, the President’s Press Secretary Dan Bartlett admitted there had been no threat and chalked it all up to "confusion." The Wall Street Journal reported that Bush had been told the skies were clear at 1pm.

In his address to the nation from the Oval Office on the night of Sept. 11, Mr. Bush said that "immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency-response plans." But in interviews, federal officials said that, in fact, lower-level government employees activated the Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan. The so-called "Con Plan" (developed by President Clinton) goes into affect automatically in an emergency, without any input from the president.

3. BUSH ON THE DAY AFTER

On September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld pushed to bomb Iraq even though they knew that al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. "Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Richard Clarke said. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.'"

Also on September 12, 2001, President Bush personally pushed Clarke to find evidence that Iraq was behind the attacks. From the New York Times: "I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything," Mr. Clarke writes that Mr. Bush told him. "See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way." When Mr. Clarke protested that the culprit was Al Qaeda, not Iraq, Mr. Bush testily ordered him, he writes, to "look into Iraq, Saddam," and then left the room. Clarke’s testimony was confirmed by White House deputy Roger Cressey. Cressey served as chief of staff to the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board from November 2001 to September 2002. He began his career in Bush Sr.’s State Department. Creesey and Clarke were soon gone from the White House. In April 2003, Rand Beers, a key National Security Council member for every president since Reagan, also resigned, citing the Bush administration’s total ineptitude in fighting terrorism and their totally ill-conceived decision to start the Iraq War.

Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush "did know better," Clarke insists, "They did know better. They did know better. We told them, the CIA told them, the FBI told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were avenging September 11th, when Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th."

Now, I can not stress this enough: Richard Clarke, Cressey and Beers were *lifetime staffers*, experts in counter-terrorism who had served Republican and Democrat presidents with distinction and without tension for over 20 years. All three of them left the Bush administration in complete frustration.

Later, in December 2002 the President fired Lawrence Lindsey after Lindsey offered a guess that the total cost of an Iraq War might be $100 billion to $200 billion. Lindsey's controversial estimate held up very well.

On September 11, 2001 Bush’s own State Department had a list of 43 countries where al Qaeda was operating. Iraq was not on that list. Iraq HAD NOTHING TO DO with September 11th. Every single investigation by government agencies and news organizations has confirmed this. Even Bush has been forced to admit it on several occassions. Anyone who tells you different is a liar or has been fooled by liars. A recent poll showing that 42% of Americans believe Iraq -- not Osama bin Laden – attacked us on September 11th, a sign of just how good the Bush political machine is at spreading a lie without having to use the president himself to do it.

4. 2002, "THE LOST YEAR"

James Fallows in the October 2004 isue of Atlantic Monthly has a very thorough and objective analysis of the devastating mistakes Bush has made in the War on Terrorism. Fallows came to this conclusion after long discussions with "a group of people at the working level of America's anti-terrorism efforts" who have "no partisan ax to grind with the Administration." Here is what he concluded:

[To govern is to choose, and the choices made in 2002 were fateful. The United States began that year with tremendous strategic advantages. World opinion was strongly sympathetic. Longtime allies were eager to help; longtime antagonists were silent. The federal budget was nearly in balance, making ambitious projects feasible. The U.S. military was superbly equipped, trained, and prepared. An immediate foe was evident—and vulnerable—in Afghanistan. For the longer-term effort against Islamic extremism the Administration could draw on a mature school of thought from academics, regional specialists, and its own intelligence agencies. All that was required was to think broadly about the threats to the country, and creatively about the responses.

The Bush Administration chose another path. Implicitly at the beginning of 2002, and as a matter of formal policy by the end, it placed all other considerations second to regime change in Iraq. It hampered the campaign in Afghanistan before fighting began and wound it down prematurely, along the way losing the chance to capture Osama bin Laden. Iraq dictated not just the vaunted "lightness" of the invasion but also the decision to designate allies for crucial tasks: the Northern Alliance for initial combat, and the Pakistanis for closing the border so that al-Qaeda leaders would not escape. In the end neither ally performed its duty the way the Administration had hoped. Delegating the real work to less motivated allies seems to have been the uncorrectable error. Meawhile, the Administration turned a blind eye to misdeeds in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and to WMD threats from North Korea and Iran far more serious than any posed by Saddam Hussein, all in the name of moving toward a showdown with Iraq. It overused and wore out its army in invading Iraq—without committing enough troops for a successful occupation. It saddled the United States with ongoing costs that dwarf its spending for domestic security. And by every available measure it only worsened the risk of future terrorism. In every sense 2002 was a lost year.

"Are we better off in basic security than before we invaded Iraq?" asks Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the Air War College. "The answer is no. An unnecessary war has consumed American Army and other ground resources, to the point where we have nothing left in the cupboard for another contingency—for instance, should the North Koreans decide that with the Americans completely absorbed in Iraq, now is the time to do something."

"We're really in dire straits with resourcing," [an army officer] said. "There's not enough armor for Humvees. There's not enough fifty-caliber machine guns for the Hundred and First Airborne or the Tenth Mountain Division. A country that can't field heavy machine guns for its army—there's something wrong with the way we're doing business."

"Let me tell you my gut feeling," a senior figure at one of America's military-sponsored think tanks told me recently, after we had talked for twenty minutes about details of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. "If I can be blunt, the Administration is full of shit. In my view we are much, much worse off now than when we went into Iraq. That is not a partisan position. I voted for these guys. But I think they are incompetent, and I have had a very close perspective on what is happening. Certainly in the long run we have harmed ourselves. We are playing to the enemy's political advantage. Whatever tactical victories we may gain along the way, this will prove to be a strategic blunder."]

These are lifetime military officers talking.

5. 2004

Bush, who fought against the appointment of both the 9/11 Commission and The Department of Homeland Security before flip-flopping and supporting them now says (in the minute details of his latest budget projections) that he will cut the budget for the Department of Homeland Security by 3% next year. He has never funded the department at anything close to the level he originally promised.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London, reported that al-Qaeda was galvanized by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of mid-2004 it had at least 18,000 operatives in sixty countries. "Al Qaeda has fully reconstituted [and] set its sights firmly on the USA and its closest Western allies in Europe."

Ayman al-Zawahri, second in command in al Qaeda, said in March 2004: "If you have 30 million dollars, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, a lot of dozens of smart briefcase bombs are available…They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated and we purchased some suitcase bombs."

In the ultra-conservative National Review, Andrew Stuttaford recently wrote, "Sorry to return to this depressing topic, but the two greatest threats to the US are almost certainly nuclear proliferation and the large amounts of nuclear material still held under worryingly insecure conditions in worryingly insecure countries. Seen in this light, the apparent failure of the administration to make enough use of [Republican Senator Richard Lugar’s] program on ex-Soviet missiles is disturbing."

Meanwhile, as one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials told The Washingtn Post recently, Iraq is "a disaster, and they’re digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," "There’s no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."

American Deaths in Iraq

Since war began (3/19/03): 1053
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 914
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 593
Since Handover (6/29/04): 195
Total Wounded: 7290

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri are still at large and have now had three years to reconstitute al Qaeda and ensure that the terrorist organization outlives them.

Everyone needs to do an honest accounting of themselves and of the state of the nation. Ask yourself: what will America and the world be like if we give George Bush another four years of rope to hang us with?

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: IRAQ

2004-09-20T17:00:00.000-04:00

SEPT 20 -- The ceiling in your first floor bathroom is cracked from an old leak. The floor tiles could stand replacing. You need a contractor. You’re not committed to anyone in particular and a friend told you about a guy named George Bush. "He’s a good guy," your friend said, so you ask him to give you an estimate. Arriving at your house, Mr. Bush is very friendly, patting you on the back, "Call me George," he says. As soon has he sees your bathroom, he says, "This is gonna look great! I can do it for $5000." "That seems a bit high," you say. "Well, what if I told you it’ll increase the value of your house by twenty thousand?" he ventures. This seems pretty unrealistic but he’s very confident and convincing and, besides, what do you know about contracting and real estate? You hire him.

The next day George Bush arrives to work at your house with a small team. While you’re having coffee and watching Katie Couric, one of his workers drives a back hoe through the side of your house and into that first floor bathroom, ripping the sink and toilet out of the floor. "What are you doing?" you yell. "Well, look," he says, "whoever designed this bathroom left us with a real mess. We knew we had to take an aggressive approach. The boys and me talked about it last night and decided to come through the outside wall instead of the door. I gotta admit, when I woke up this morning I wondered whether that was such a good idea but by then there was really no looking back. But listen, don’t worry! We’re gonna re-do the whole bathroom now and it’s gonna look great." "But how much is that going to cost?" you ask. "Well," says Bush, "it’s gonna cost $50,000, but honest to God it’s gonna trans-form this house. The house will be worth twice what you bought it for. Think of it as an investment in a beautiful future."

By this time you’re a bit unnerved by what Mr. Bush and his team are doing and you decide you better get a second opinion. Another friend says he used a guy named John Kerry. He’s methodical and he likes to talk through the project with you, so he takes a bit longer than your average contractor, but he does excellent work. You invite Mr. Kerry to have a look. When he sees the bathroom he says, "Holy shit. You said you were just doing the ceiling and the floor tiles." You reply, " Right, and you said that sounded like a good idea." "Yes," Kerry says, "but this is a total disaster now. I mean, if you had done it the right way from the beginning everything would have been fine, but you need a completely new plan to deal with this." Well, you say, can you give me a sense for what you’d do and how much it might cost? "Sure," says Mr. Kerry, "but I’d like to think it through for a day or so. And at this point I really need to talk to my electrician and my plumber –– and you may have real architectural issues to deal with now" –– pointing –– "I think that’s a load-bearing wall." This Kerry is very grim and serious. You’re not getting that warm feeling you got from Bush the first time you met him. And Bush makes you feel like you were part of a big exciting project whereas Kerry seems to just want to fix the problem and move onto his next job. Not very inspiring, you think.

You decide to call Mr. Bush to let him know that you’re weighing your options. "John Kerry?!?" he exclaims on the phone, "That boy’ll say anything to get a job –– he’s just a pessimist and an opportunist! He can’t make up his mind, he’ll just talk your ear off and never get anything done. Stick with me, now. Nobody said this was gonna be easy but there is gold at the end of this rainbow, I promise you! It’s called own-er-ship. It’s called e-quit-y. I’m telling you, you put two hundred thousand dollars into this house, you’re gonna make four hundred thousand." "Alright," you say to yourself, "I’m going to be steady and stick with my original choice, my original plan."

Later that day, you catch Mr. Bush’s plumber snooping around in your underwear drawer. Bush himself is giving neighborhood children rides to the cul-de-sac on his back-hoe. You run out of the house to chase down Mr. Bush. Meanwhile his electrician (unlicensed, it turns out) has accidentally started a fire. Turning around, you see that your kitchen is engulfed in flames.

This is a choose your own adventure.

To fire Bush and hire John Kerry, turn to page 2004.
To keep George Bush on the job, turn to page 2005.

*****************************************************
NOTES

42 Americans died in Iraq in June -- the month before the handover. But 54 died in July -- 66 in August and already 54 halfway through September.

And more than 1,100 Americans were wounded in August -- more than in any other month since the invasion.

We are fighting a growing insurgency in an ever widening war-zone. In March, insurgents attacked our forces 700 times. In August, they attacked 2,700 times -- a 400% increase.

Falluja, Ramadi, Samarra, even parts of Baghdad -- are now "no go zones" -- breeding grounds for terrorists who are free to plot and launch attacks against our soldiers. The radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who is accused of complicity in the murder of Americans, holds more sway in the suburbs of Baghdad.

Violence against Iraqis from bombings to kidnappings to intimidation is on the rise.

Basic living conditions are also deteriorating.

Residents of Baghdad are suffering electricity blackouts lasting up to 14 hours a day.

Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees. Children wade through garbage on their way to school.

Unemployment is over 50 percent. Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 for tossing grenades at passing U.S. convoys.

Mission Accomplished?

UPDATES

2004-09-16T22:30:00.000-04:00

SEPT 16 -- A couple of updates here regarding BushWatch #s 6 and 7

1. For those of you still hearing in the mainstream media that Bush got a “convention bounce” or has a lead in the polls, here are the 5 most recent polls:

Harris Poll: Kerry 48 Bush 47
Investor’s Business Daily: Kerry 47 Bush 47
Pew Poll: Bush 47 Kerry 46
Rasmussen: Bush 47 Kerry 46.5
Democracy Corps: Bush 49 Kerry 48

The first 3 are from non-partisan outlets. The second 2 are by a republican and a democrat pollster respectively. They all show the exact same thing, a dead heat.

I had said in my post on The Polls that I didn’t think talk of a big Bush “bounce” actually helped Bush, that it might even hurt him by rousing the Democrats to go out and vote in larger numbers. But yesterday I heard media expert Kathleen Hall Jameson make a good point: that when the media insists that you’re behind, you have a very hard time getting your message out. For instance, if you release a proposal on healthcare, the media doesn’t ask, “Is this a good proposal?” Instead they ask, “How is this proposal going to save candidate X’s sinking ship?” This happened to Bob Dole in 1996. The Autumn polls showed him down by 15 points and made everything he said look shrill. (And in fact it made Dole himself shrill because he believed the polls.) But the truth was we was only down about 6 points, and might have gotten a lot closer if the media hadn’t made him the defacto loser. Something to think about.

2. One more update: as you’ve probably noticed the debate rages on regarding the memos relating to Bush’s National Guard service. My original point on this dust-up stands: the “proof” offered up that these memos are forgeries is not proof at all. The most obvious example is this nonsense about old typewriters not being able to type a superscripted “th”. I had the pleasure this week of watching an old professor and colleague of mine type a superscripted “th” on an IBM Selectric Composer he’d owned since 1969. Sheesh!

Now the documents may indeed turn out to be *not original* memos. But yesterday “the secretary for Bush’s squadron commander in the Texas Guard told The New York Times that, although she did not think these documents were the actual original memos, the information in the disputed memos is correct. As The Times reported today:

**************
"It looks like someone may have read the originals and put that together,'' said a lucid 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox.

Her boss, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, wrote a "cover-your-back file,'' a "personal journal'' to keep a record about the politically connected Bush in his charge. She said the contents of that mirrored the CBS documents, but she said those documents were not on the right forms and contained Army terms rather than Air National Guard argot. She confirmed that young Bush had disobeyed a direct order from Colonel Killian to take a physical.

"It was a big no-no to not follow orders,'' she said, adding that the Bush scion's above-the-rules attitude caused some snickers and resentment among fellow officers.
****************

So, the basic contours of this story are completely clear. Bush got preferential treatment, skipping a long waiting list to get into the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. Around 1971 his performance lapsed. In 1972 he disobeyed a direct order and skipped a required physical. In 1973 he missed 6 months of Guard duty and did not have permission to do so (because by law and Guard regulations no one was allowed to give him such permission.) These latter two offenses should have (again by law and regulations) resulted in his being sent to Vietnam. Instead he was sent to Harvard Business School –– which, though vicious in its own way, is not a place where one is likely to be shot and killed.

The latest news organization to report these undisputable facts is the very middle-of-the-road US News and World Report, which has done its own investigative reporting and does *not* rely on the controversial memos.

3. Lastly, I would highly recommend that you read this NY Times article from today, which reports that “A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday. The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.” Bush’s own National Security team is telling him Iraq is unwinnable. And he’s not telling you.

http://nytimes.com/2004/09/16/politics/16intel.html

PAPER TRAILS AND THE NATIONAL GUARD

2004-09-11T21:27:00.000-04:00

SEPT 11 -- I can’t believe I’m having so much trouble getting to a discussion of policy here but something demands clarification. I imagine some of you watched 60 Minutes this past Wednesday after I mentioned it in my last newsletter. And I imagine most of you heard that 60 Minutes revealed that a) Bush did indeed get a sweetheart invitation into the Texas Air National Guard to avoid Vietnam service; and b) that his superiors were getting serious pressure from above to "sugarcoat" his dishonorable record of service in 1972 and 1973. That record, as has been widely reported in the last week, *should* have gotten him either 6 months in the stockade or a ticket to Vietnam. Instead Bush got a trip to Alabama and an honorable discharge.

This second revelation was backed by memos written by Bush’s commanding officer Jerry Killian. Within minutes of CBS’s airing of their expose, a number of right wing groups (especially the juvenile lunatics who run a site called "Little Green Footballs" and Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report) began to question the authenticity of the memos, suggesting they were forgeries and really bad forgeries at that. They made a huge number of claims about the font and layout of the memos, suggesting that they were made on Microsoft Word. Despite the fact that this seemed illogical (you would have to be a total idiot to make a forgery of a 1972 document in Microsoft Word when a million typewriters from that era are readily available) they made these claims forcefully and with audacious confidence. Not surprisingly, every major conservative media outlet repeated these claims, with Rush Limbaugh leading the way. What *was* incredibly surprising though was that media outlets that pride themselves on factual analysis and cautious journalism (such as the New York Times and Washington Post) also reported that these documents might be forgeries.

I call this surprising because – and I can’t stress this enough – EVERY SINGLE point of argument suggesting these documents are forgeries has now been answered. It is now absolutely clear that 1) the memos obtained by CBS are consistent with ALL the type characteristics of an IBM Selectric Composer; and 2) that the Air Force purchased large numbers of such devices as early as 1969. Instead of waiting a few minutes for this to be made clear, the mainstream media entered the political echo chamber and sowed the seeds of doubt for no reason. It now seems rather obvious that a number of groups on the Right *knew* this would happen – that if they could just make the public doubt the authenticity of the memos for a few minutes it would take the emphasis off the facts *behind* the memos (facts, by the way, that are backed up by official documents released by the White House and several eye witnesses.) But if the media does its job and reports that these memos now appear to be indeed quite authentic, then these Right Wing bloggers and radio men have done Bush a real disservice by giving this story more legs than it probably would have had otherwise.

If you want an extremely detailed analysis of the memos’ authenticity, go here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/10/213416/348

and here:

http://mediamatters.org/

For the simple journalistic report on why these documents apppear to be authentic, see:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/11/authenticity_backed_on_bush_documents/

and

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml

I hope to finally report on Bush’s abysmal record fighting terrorism later this week. Stay tuned!

POLLIANA

2004-09-10T13:18:00.000-04:00

SEPT 10 -- Although I’d rather be talking about specific issues important to all of us, I thought I’d just take a minute to discuss polling. I do believe that polls sway voters, though I don’t pretend to know which way they sway them. As you probably heard last week’s polls published by Newsweek and Time showed Bush with a roughly 10 point Lead over Kerry. As you may NOT have heard, both of these polls were absolutely terrible and inaccurate – the methods used to come up with these numbers were highly flawed: in a nutshell, both polls overcounted Republicans. Whether this was accidental or purposeful, your guess is as good as mine. But one thing’s for sure, they both gave an xtraordinarily inaccurate picture of where Americans stand on these two candidates.

Now, some of you may be thinking that I’m making a case for John Kerry here. I am not. In fact, I tend to think that it would help John Kerry if people believed he was down 10 points, by energizing Democrats to get to the polls. The criticism of the Time and Newsweek polls comes from the two most respected non-partisan pollsters in the world: Rasmussen and Zogby. Both of them explained the problems with these polls in detail on their websites:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
http://www.zogby.com/

In the meantime, there are some very recent polls out which suggest that the race remains essentially a dead heat. It is relatively easy to poll Registered Voters and notoriously difficult to poll "Likely Voters" since no one knows exactly what a likely voter looks like. Below are some polls of both registered and likely voters. As you can see, none other than FOX News has Kerry up by 4 pts among registered voters. In every presidential election of the last 20 years, registered Democracts have gone to the polls in greater numbers than registered Republicans. Make of that what you will. Here are the recent polls:

FOX/Opinion Dynamics 9/8 Among Registered Voters:
Kerry 46 Bush 42

CNN/Gallup 9/5 Among Likely Voters
Bush 52 Kerry 45

ICR 9/5 Among Registered Voters
Kerry 45 Bush 43

Rasmussen 9/9 Among Likely Voters
Bush 48 Kerry 46

If you want two reasonably accurate projections (one Dem one Repub) of what the electoral college map looks like at this point (i.e. who will win what states) you can find them here:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/
http://www.electionprojection.com/

Most importantly, keep tuned in to the issues and vote!

CONVENTION-AL HYPOCRISY

2004-09-07T08:21:00.000-04:00

SEPT 2 -- For the last three days, and last night in particular, the speakers at Bush’s convention have been eviscerating John Kerry, suggesting time and time again that Kerry is some sort of peacenik who would role over and die in the face of a touch foreign battle. The distortions of Kerry’s record are extraordinary. Many of the speakers have expressed complete indignance at how John Kerry handled his service in Vietnam and his protests of the War afterward. They have suggested that somehow the U.S. Navy was so stupid and misinformed that it mistakenly gave Kerry the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and Three Purple Hearts. They have suggested that a decorated Veteran like Kerry was being unpatriotic when he told Congress in 1971 that the civilian leaders of the military – Nixon, Kissinger, and their underlings – were selling his fellow soldiers down the river in Vietnam and Cambodia. And they have suggested, over and over (as Karl Rove did yesterday on CNN) that Kerry claimed to have witnessed the list of atrocities he quoted to Congress in 1971, a list featured prominently and totally out of context in the latest “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ad. This last suggestion is a bold-faced lie. The full footage of that testimony shows Kerry reporting to congress that these were the atrocities related to him by other Veterans at a veterans meeting in Detroit; it further shows him imploring Congress not to scapegoat veterans (as the Pentagon has recently done in the case of Abu Graib) but to hold the Civilian Leadership responsible for putting its young men in a completely untenable position in an unwinnable war. “How do you ask a man,” Kerry asked poignantly of Congress, “to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Now, I don’t begrudge George W. Bush his decision to dodge the draft – I certainly would have. But in releasing the hounds on John Kerry he has certainly welcomed a comparative analysis. As Bush himself was forced to say recently, John Kerry’s service was obviously “more heroic.” But that is not the end of the story. Here is some further news:

A closer examination of a photograph included in President George W. Bush’s Air Force records, released by the White House earlier this year, shows then-Second Lieutenant Bush wearing an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award which he never earned.

Additionally, Lieutenant Bush would not have been authorized to wear the ribbon temporarily, the Air Force Personnel Center said in an email.

American media, having focused for more than three weeks on Swift Boat veterans’ attacks on Sen. John Kerry’s Vietnam service, has yet to report the story.

Punishment for wearing an award one hasn’t earned is punishable by bad-conduct discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and/or confinement for 6 months under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

***

Additionally, a new, remarkably damning and credible article in Salon magazine sheds light on why Bush left the Texas Air National Guard in the Spring of 1972. The Widow of George H.W. Bush’s closest political confidant during the 60s and 70s, Jim Allison (he was Bush Sr.’s Karl Rove) says, “The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy’s wing.” She also reveals that Bush never wore an Alabama National Guard uniform, and that she saw Bush urinate on a car after the wake of the failed Senate campaign he sporadically worked on. Allison’s account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence. Asked if she’d ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: “Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way.” Allison also confirmed previously published accounts that Bush often showed up in the Blount campaign offices around noon, boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before. Bush left the house he’d rented in Montgomery Alabama trashed – the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. “He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people’s possessions,” Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid.

These are the Vietnam ear experiences of our president. His conventioneers have spent the last three days ridiculing John Kerry’s war service in Vietnam, wearing “purple heart bandaids” on their cheeks. His closest advisers, including Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, have given credence and support to the accusations of the so-called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” that John McCain has called “dishonest and dishonorable,” that the U.S. Navy disputes tooth and nail, that are not supported by a single piece of documented evidence, and that have been exposed time and again as politically motivated lies. Today, we have verifiable reports that this group has been forging the signatures of Swift Boat veterans -- who never signed up for their organization and don’t believe their accusations – on their accusatory letters. The forged signatures may account for up to 25% of their “membership.”

You can read the entire story of Bush’s dubious use of National Guard money and time here (Just click on “free day pass” at the bottom of the page to read the whole article):

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/02/allison/index_np.html

THE BOY WHO CRIED "FLIP-FLOP"

2004-09-07T08:13:00.000-04:00

SEPT 1 -- One of the chief claims mounted by the Bush White House against John Kerry is that he is a "flip-flopper" – meaning, he changes his political positions according to the political climate. Personally, I believe that changing one’s position is often a sign of necessarily complex thinking and a willingness to change one’s approach as the circumstances themselves change. So, I myself don’t, as a matter of principle, hold it against John Kerry that he sometimes changes his mind. Instead I try to look at the particulars of each case and decide what his logic was and what his motives were. I think we should all give George Bush the same courtesy in regard to the 26 factually verifiable "flip-flops" listed below. It may be that George W. Bush had very good reasons for changing his position on the issues so much.

Each of us will have to make up our own minds. Bush’s most recent reversal came this week. In an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC, recorded Saturday and run on Monday, Mr. Bush was asked about the war on terrorism and replied, "I don't think you can win it." On Tuesday, in an address to veterans, Bush said of the war on terrorism, "make no mistake about it, we are winning, and we will win." One can only imagine the avalanche of abuse John Kerry would have taken for such a "flip-flop." But, again, I don’t personally believe that changing one’s mind is a bad thing in every case. Here are the other 25 Bush flip-flops so that you can decide for yourself whether they suggest anything about Bush as a leader.
*******************************

1. Social Security Surplus

BUSH PLEDGES NOT TO TOUCH SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS... "We're going to keep the promise of Social Security and keep the government from raiding the Social Security surplus." [President Bush, 3/3/01]

...BUSH SPENDS SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS The New York Times reported that "the president's new budget uses Social Security surpluses to pay for other programs every year through 2013, ultimately diverting more than $1.4 trillion in Social Security funds to other purposes." [The New York Times, 2/6/02]

2. Patient's Right to Sue

GOVERNOR BUSH VETOES PATIENTS' RIGHT TO SUE... "Despite his campaign rhetoric in favor of a patients' bill of rights, Bush fought such a bill tooth and nail as Texas governor, vetoing a bill coauthored by Republican state Rep. John Smithee in 1995. He... constantly opposed a patient's right to sue an HMO over coverage denied that resulted in adverse health effects." [Salon, 2/7/01]

...CANDIDATE BUSH PRAISES TEXAS PATIENTS' RIGHT TO SUE... "We're one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage... It's time for our nation to come together and do what's right for the people. And I think this is right for the people. You know, I support a national patients' bill of rights, Mr. Vice President. And I want all people covered. I don't want the law to supersede good law like we've got in Texas." [Governor Bush, 10/17/00]

...PRESIDENT BUSH'S ADMINISTRATION ARGUES AGAINST RIGHT TO SUE "To let two Texas consumers, Juan Davila and Ruby R. Calad, sue their managed-care companies for wrongful denials of medical benefits ‘would be to completely undermine' federal law regulating employee benefits, Assistant Solicitor General James A. Feldman said at oral argument March 23. Moreover, the administration's brief attacked the policy rationale for Texas's law, which is similar to statutes on the books in nine other states." [Washington Post, 4/5/04]

3. Tobacco Buyout

BUSH SUPPORTS CURRENT TOBACCO FARMERS' QUOTA SYSTEM... "They've got the quota system in place -- the allotment system -- and I don't think that needs to be changed." [President Bush, 5/04]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION WILL SUPPORT FEDERAL BUYOUT OF TOBACCO QUOTAS "The administration is open to a buyout." [White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo, 6/18/04]

4. North Korea

BUSH WILL NOT OFFER NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM... "We developed a bold approach under which, if the North addressed our long-standing concerns, the United States was prepared to take important steps that would have significantly improved the lives of the North Korean people. Now that North Korea's covert nuclear weapons program has come to light, we are unable to pursue this approach." [President's Statement, 11/15/02]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFERS NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM…"Well, we will work to take steps to ease their political and economic isolation. So there would be -- what you would see would be some provisional or temporary proposals that would only lead to lasting benefit after North Korea dismantles its nuclear programs. So there would be some provisional or temporary efforts of that nature." [White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 6/23/04]

5. Abortion

BUSH SUPPORTS A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE... "Bush said he...favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question." [The Nation, 6/15/00, quoting the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 5/78]

...BUSH OPPOSES A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE "I am pro-life." [Governor Bush, 10/3/00]

6. OPEC

BUSH PROMISES TO FORCE OPEC TO LOWER PRICES... "What I think the president ought to do [when gas prices spike] is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to open your spigots...And the president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price." [President Bush, 1/26/00]

...BUSH REFUSES TO LOBBY OPEC LEADERS …With gas prices soaring in the United States at the beginning of 2004, the Miami Herald reported the president refused to "personally lobby oil cartel leaders to change their minds." [Miami Herald, 4/1/04]

7. Iraq Funding

BUSH SPOKESMAN DENIES NEED FOR ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR THE REST OF 2004... "We do not anticipate requesting supplemental funding for '04" [White House Budget Director Joshua Bolton, 2/2/04]

...BUSH REQUESTS ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR IRAQ FOR 2004 "I am requesting that Congress establish a $25 billion contingency reserve fund for the coming fiscal year to meet all commitments to our troops." [President Bush, Statement by President, 5/5/04]

8. Condoleeza Rice Testimony

BUSH SPOKESMAN SAYS RICE WON'T TESTIFY AS 'A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE'... "Again, this is not her personal preference; this goes back to a matter of principle. There is a separation of powers issue involved here. Historically, White House staffers do not testify before legislative bodies. So it's a matter of principle, not a matter of preference." [White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 3/9/04]

...BUSH ORDERS RICE TO TESTIFY: "Today I have informed the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Against the United States that my National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, will provide public testimony." [President Bush, 3/30/04]

9. Science

BUSH PLEDGES TO ISSUE REGULATIONS BASED ON SCIENCE..."I think we ought to have high standards set by agencies that rely upon science, not by what may feel good or what sounds good." [then-Governor George W. Bush, 1/15/00]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION REGULATIONS IGNORE SCIENCE "60 leading scientists—including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents—issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels." [Union of Concerned Scientists, 2/18/04]

10. Ahmed Chalabi

BUSH INVITES CHALABI TO STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS...President Bush also met with Chalabi during his brief trip to Iraq last Thanksgiving [White House Documents 1/20/04, 11/27/03]

...BUSH MILITARY ASSISTS IN RAID OF CHALABI'S HOUSE "U.S. soldiers raided the home of America's one-time ally Ahmad Chalabi on Thursday and seized documents and computers." [Washington Post, 5/20/04]

11. Department of Homeland Security

BUSH OPPOSES THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY..."So, creating a Cabinet office doesn't solve the problem. You still will have agencies within the federal government that have to be coordinated. So the answer is that creating a Cabinet post doesn't solve anything." [White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, 3/19/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY… "So tonight, I ask the Congress to join me in creating a single, permanent department with an overriding and urgent mission: securing the homeland of America and protecting the American people." [President Bush, Address to the Nation, 6/6/02]

12. Weapons of Mass Destruction

BUSH SAYS WE FOUND THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION..."We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories...for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." [President Bush, Interview in Poland, 5/29/03]

...BUSH SAYS WE HAVEN'T FOUND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION "David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons. And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out." [President Bush, Meet the Press, 2/7/04]

13. Free Trade

BUSH SUPPORTS FREE TRADE... "I believe strongly that if we promote trade, and when we promote trade, it will help workers on both sides of this issue." [President Bush in Peru, 3/23/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS RESTRICTIONS ON TRADE "In a decision largely driven by his political advisers, President Bush set aside his free-trade principles last year and imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel to help out struggling mills in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, two states crucial for his reelection." [Washington Post, 9/19/03]

14. Osama Bin Laden

BUSH WANTS OSAMA DEAD OR ALIVE... "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" [President Bush, on Osama Bin Laden, 09/17/01]

...BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT OSAMA… "I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... I truly am not that concerned about him."[President Bush, Press Conference, 3/13/02]

15. The Environment

BUSH SUPPORTS MANDATORY CAPS ON CARBON DIOXIDE... "[If elected], Governor Bush will work to...establish mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide." [Bush Environmental Plan, 9/29/00]

...BUSH OPPOSES MANDATORY CAPS ON CARBON DIOXIDE "I do not believe, however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a 'pollutant' under the Clean Air Act." [President Bush, Letter to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), 3/13/03]

16. WMD Commission

BUSH RESISTS AN OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION ON WMD INTELLIGENCE FAILURE... "The White House immediately turned aside the calls from Kay and many Democrats for an immediate outside investigation, seeking to head off any new wide-ranging election-year inquiry that might go beyond reports already being assembled by congressional committees and the Central Intelligence Agency." [NY Times, 1/29/04]

...BUSH SUPPORTS AN OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION ON WMD INTELLIGENCE FAILURE "Today, by executive order, I am creating an independent commission, chaired by Governor and former Senator Chuck Robb, Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction." [President Bush, 2/6/04]

17. Creation of the 9/11 Commission

BUSH OPPOSES CREATION OF INDEPENDENT 9/11 COMMISSION... "President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11." [CBS News, 5/23/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS CREATION OF INDEPENDENT 9/11 COMMISSION "President Bush said today he now supports establishing an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." [ABC News, 09/20/02]

18. Time Extension for 9/11 Commission

BUSH OPPOSES TIME EXTENSION FOR 9/11 COMMISSION... "President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." [Washington Post, 1/19/04]

...BUSH SUPPORTS TIME EXTENSION FOR 9/11 COMMISSION "The White House announced Wednesday its support for a request from the commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks for more time to complete its work." [CNN, 2/4/04]

19. One Hour Limit for 9/11 Commission Testimony

BUSH LIMITS TESTIMONY IN FRONT OF 9/11 COMMISSION TO ONE HOUR... "President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday." [NY Times, 2/26/04]

...BUSH SETS NO TIMELIMIT FOR TESTIMONY "The president's going to answer all of the questions they want to raise. Nobody's watching the clock." [White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 3/10/04]

20. Gay Marriage

BUSH SAYS GAY MARRIAGE IS A STATE ISSUE... "The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into." [Gov. George W. Bush on Gay Marriage, Larry King Live, 2/15/00]

...BUSH SUPPORTS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BANNING GAY MARRIAGE "Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife." [President Bush, 2/24/04]

21. Nation Building

BUSH OPPOSES NATION BUILDING... "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road." [Gov. George W. Bush, 10/3/00]

...BUSH SUPPORTS NATION BUILDING "We will be changing the regime of Iraq, for the good of the Iraqi people." [President Bush, 3/6/03]

22. Saddam/al Qaeda Link

BUSH SAYS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEEN AL QAEDA AND SADDAM... "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." [President Bush, 9/25/02]

...BUSH SAYS SADDAM HAD NO ROLE IN AL QAEDA PLOT "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11." [President Bush, 9/17/03]

23. U.N. Resolution

BUSH VOWS TO HAVE A UN VOTE NO MATTER WHAT... "No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It's time for people to show their cards, to let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam." [President Bush 3/6/03]

...BUSH WITHDRAWS REQUEST FOR VOTE "At a National Security Council meeting convened at the White House at 8:55 a.m., Bush finalized the decision to withdraw the resolution from consideration and prepared to deliver an address to the nation that had already been written." [Washington Post, 3/18/03]

24. Involvement in the Palestinian Conflict

BUSH OPPOSES SUMMITS... "Well, we've tried summits in the past, as you may remember. It wasn't all that long ago where a summit was called and nothing happened, and as a result we had significant intifada in the area." [President Bush, 04/05/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS SUMMITS "If a meeting advances progress toward two states living side by side in peace, I will strongly consider such a meeting. I'm committed to working toward peace in the Middle East." [President Bush, 5/23/03]

25. Campaign Finance

BUSH OPPOSES MCCAIN-FEINGOLD... "George W. Bush opposes McCain-Feingold...as an infringement on free expression." [Washington Post, 3/28/2000]

...BUSH SIGNS MCCAIN-FEINGOLD INTO LAW "[T]his bill improves the current system of financing for Federal campaigns, and therefore I have signed it into law." [President Bush, at the McCain-Feingold signing ceremony, 03/27/02]

THE RIGHT TO HEALTHCARE

2004-09-07T08:11:00.000-04:00

AUG 27 -- This week, the federal government’s non-partisan Census Bureau found that the number of uninsured Americans rose by 1.4 million last year.

Since George Bush took office, Healthcare premiums have increased $2,630 and 5 million Americans have lost their insurance. There are now a staggering 45 million Americans without health insurance.

Paul Krugman explains why this has a major effect not just on Americans’ health but also on their ability to get jobs:

"In America the government offers insurance only if you're elderly (Medicare) or poor (Medicaid). Otherwise, you're expected to get private health insurance, usually through your job. But insurance premiums are exploding, and the system of employment-linked insurance is falling apart.

Some employers have dropped their health plans. Others have maintained benefits for current workers, but are finding ways to avoid paying benefits to new hires - for example, by using temporary workers. And some businesses, while continuing to provide health benefits, are refusing to hire more workers.

In other words, rising health care costs aren't just causing a rapid rise in the ranks of the uninsured (confirmed by yesterday's Census Bureau report); they're also, because of their link to employment, a major reason why this economic recovery has generated fewer jobs than any previous economic expansion."

You can read a succinct version of John Kerry’s comprehensive Healthcare plan here:

http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/health_care/health_care.html

SOCIAL IN-SECURITY

2004-09-07T08:09:00.000-04:00

AUG 17 -- I thought I’d send something along about Bush’s Social Security plan –– something he proposed in 2000. Pushing the plan through congress is, according to Bush and his advisers, a *major* priority if he receives a second term in office. First, a few facts about Social Security:

*45.4 million people – 1 in 6 Americans – receive benefits.
*Social Security keeps 89% of our senior citizens out of poverty.
*One-third of beneficiaries – 14 million people – are disabled workers and their families, or survivors of deceased workers.
*98% of kids are protected by disability and survivors insurance – they'll receive Social Security until they're 18 if a parent dies or becomes disabled. Four million children today receive Social Security benefits.

To cover the cost of his tax cuts, Bush will have to spend the entire projected Social Security surplus of $2.4 trillion from 2005 through 2014. That’s not a Democrat’s statistic, that’s a statistic from Bush’s own Office of Management and Budget. In order to make up for this stunning depreciation of the surplus Bush’s plan calls for the partial privatization of Social Security, allowing a certain percentage of benefits to be played in the stock market. (For those counting at home, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen in the last four years from 11,722.98 to about 9800. The Nasdaq has fallen from 5048.62 to about 1750. Those are drops of 17% and 66% respectively. Ouch!)

The Princeton economist and NY Times opinion writer Paul Krugman explains the implications of Bush’s Social Security plan this way:

****************************
Right now, the ownership of stocks and bonds is highly concentrated. Conservatives like to point out that a majority of American families now own stock, but that's a misleading statistic because most of those "investors" have only a small stake in the market. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that more than half of corporate profits ultimately accrue to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers, while only about 8 percent go to the bottom 60 percent. If the "ownership society" means anything, it means spreading investment income more widely - a laudable goal, if achievable.

But does Mr. Bush have a way to get us there?

There's a section on his campaign blog about the ownership society, but it's short on specifics. Much of the space is devoted to new types of tax-sheltered savings accounts. People who have looked into plans for such accounts know, however, that they would provide more tax shelters for the wealthy, but would be irrelevant to most families, who already have access to 401(k)'s. Their ability to invest more is limited not by taxes but by the fact that they aren't earning enough to save more.

The one seemingly substantive proposal is a blast from the past: a renewed call for the partial privatization of Social Security, which would divert payroll taxes into personal accounts. Mr. Bush campaigned on that issue in 2000, but he never acted on it. And there was a reason the idea went nowhere: it didn't make sense.

Social Security is, basically, a system in which each generation pays for the previous generation's retirement. If the payroll taxes of younger workers are diverted into private accounts, there will be a gaping financial hole: who will pay benefits to older Americans, who have spent their working lives paying into the current system? Unless you have a way to fill that multitrillion-dollar hole, privatization is an empty slogan, not a real proposal.

In 2001, Mr. Bush's handpicked commission on Social Security was unable to agree on a plan to create private accounts because there was no way to make the arithmetic work. Undaunted, this year the Bush campaign once again insists that privatization will lead to a "permanently strengthened Social Security system, without changing benefits for those now in or near retirement, and without raising payroll taxes on workers." In other words, 2 - 1 = 4.

Four years ago, Mr. Bush got a free pass from the press on his Social Security "plan," either because reporters didn't understand the arithmetic, or because they assumed that after the election he would come up with a plan that actually added up. Will the same thing happen again? Let's hope not.

As Mr. Bush has said: "Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - can't get fooled again.
****************

Some of you on this list are approaching retirement age. The rest of you will get there some day. And beyond our personal difficulties there are clearly millions of citizens whose lives would be catastrophically effected by a shortage in Social Security benefits. Bush is completely serious about pushing his plan through Congress. Worth thinking about.

SWIFT BOAT VETERANS FOR FEAR AND SMEAR

2004-09-07T08:07:00.000-04:00

AUG 10 -- At my cousin Christie’s wonderful wedding this past weekend, few family members asked me whether I’d be reviving my "Bush Watch" emails of 2000 for this upcoming election – and I said that it’d be a lot harder this time around with two little daughters tugging at me, plus it seemed like the word was out on Dubya this time around and there’d be a lot fewer minds that weren’t already made up beyond the point of no return. BUT then I got to thinking that when the mainstream media does a lousy job of reporting something it still might be worth setting the record straight as time allows. SO…

The first installment of Bush Watch 2004 is copied below this personal note. You may have seen all those Swift Boat Veterans who "served" with John Kerry and are now attacking him mercilessly. You may also have heard that NONE of them served on Kerry’s swifts boats and that the soldiers who DID serve on Kerry’s boats have refuted every single one of the spurious charges leveled at Kerry in the book "Unfit for Command." But that’s not the whole story. Below are the facts about the actual authors of the book. For more information you can check out http://mediamatters.org

****************************************
While much has been written about the identity and history of John E. O'Neill -- one of the authors of the forthcoming book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (O’Neill’s links in the GOP go back to his days as "protégé of Nixon-era dirty trickster Charles Colson") -- little has been said about his co-author, Jerome R. Corsi, PhD.

o Corsi on Islam: "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion"
o Corsi on Catholicism: "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press"
o Corsi on Muslims: "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together"
o Corsi on "John F*ing Commie Kerry": "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"
o Corsi on Senator "FAT HOG" Clinton: "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?"

Unfit for Command has received wide media coverage recently, in part because of hype on The Drudge Report and the website Human Events Online, which is offering a sample chapter via e-mail, and in part as a result of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's new attack ad on Kerry's service in Vietnam. The book has skyrocketed to the top of the Amazon.com "Top Sellers" list, as of August 6.

Corsi received his PhD in political science from Harvard University in 1972; his dissertation was titled Prior Restraint, Prior Punishment, and Political Dissent; a Moral and Legal Evaluation. Previously, he co-authored a report on the 1967 riots in Cleveland, titled "Shoot-out in Cleveland: Black Militants and the Police," published in 1968 by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence.

In addition to Unfit for Command, Corsi has written books on a variety of subjects, and is currently the vice president of development and senior editor of U.S. Financial Marketing Group. Recently, he has been contributing articles to the website wintersoldier.com on the subject of Senator John Kerry's record as an anti-war activist following his service in the Vietnam War.

In this series of articles, Corsi has accused Kerry of "violating the legal provision against negotiating with foreign powers (18 U.S.C. 953) and the constitutional prohibition against giving support to our nation's enemies during wartime (Article III, Section 3)"; asserted that Kerry's actions as an anti-war activist amounted to treason; and claimed that "Kerry and the VVAW consistently coordinated their efforts with Communists." Corsi asserted that, in 1971, Kerry's anti-war activism amounted to a proclamation by him that "Communists were right in maintaining that American values were corrupt and that the only solution was for America to capitulate so Communism could continue to spread." As Media Matters for America has noted, Kerry was quoted expressing exactly the opposite sentiment in a December 12, 1971, Boston Globe article: "I don't like Communists," Kerry said. "In fact, I hate them. I hate all totalitarians. I'm totally dedicated to representative, pluralistic, free democracy."

On August 6, Salon.com's Joe Conason documented links between Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the conservative online forum www.FreeRepublic.com. Conason noted that the designer of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth website is Robert A. Hahn, a director of the Free Republic Network, a conservative activist organization affiliated with FreeRepublic.com. Scott Swett, who is listed as the webmaster of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth website, swiftvets.com, also appeared on FOX News Channel host Sean Hannity's August 5 radio show to discuss the group. Swett posts frequently to FreeRepublic.com, using the pseudonym "Interesting Times," and is also a director of the Free Republic Network. The wintersoldier.com website to which Swett has contributed articles is a project of the Free Republic Network.

Corsi is also a frequent participant in FreeRepublic.com's online forums, posting under the pseudonym "jrlc" since 2001. (Click here to read a full set of Corsi's posts; click here to read the post in which "jrlc" admits to being Jerome Corsi.)

On FreeRepublic.com, Corsi has, among other things, said that "ragheads" are "boy buggers"; referred to "John F*ing Kerry"; called Senator Hillary Clinton a "Fat Hog"; referred to her daughter as "Chubby Chelsie" Clinton; referred to Janet Reno as "Janet Rhino"; called Katie Couric "Little Katie Communist"; suggested Kerry was "practicing Judaism"; and expressed the wish that a small plane that had crashed into a building in Los Angeles had instead crashed into the set of NBC'S The West Wing, thereby killing actor Martin Sheen.

Following are some examples. [Spelling and punctuation are Corsi's own.]

On Catholics and the Pope

CORSI: Maybe while he's there he can tell the UN what he's going to do about the sexual crimes committed by "priests" in his "Church" during his tenure. Or, maybe that's the connection -- boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press. (03/03/2003)

CORSI: So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the laywers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it. (12/16/2002)

On Islam and Arabs

CORSI: Let's see exactly why it isn't the case that Islam is a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion? Where's the proof to the contrary? (04/24/2004)

CORSI: Islam is like a virus -- it affects the mind -- maybe even better as an analogy -- it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects... No doctor would hesitate to eliminate cancer cells from the body. (11/26/02)

CORSI: Islam is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered, and the infidels killed. (11/22/2002)

CORSI: How's this as an analogy -- the Koran is simply the "software" for producing deviant cancer cell political behavior and violence in human beings. (02/15/2002)

CORSI: Think the liberal press will ever let out that these 2 were lovers -- typical Islamic boy-buggering -- older man, younger man -- black Muslims? I doubt it. Not a pretty picture, but one certain to be hidden by PC media. (11/08/2002)

CORSI: Isn't the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA -- oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon's first act in office was to promote "gays in the military." RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together. (11/18/2001)

On Senator John Kerry

CORSI: First let's undermine the US in Vietnam. Then we can go for gay marriage. When you get to be Pres. JFK-lite, there will be no end to how much of America we can destroy. (05/17/2004)

CORSI: Just don't let anybody put a tablet with the Ten Commandments in front of the school where that girl wants to wear a Muslim scarf -- OH, No --- then the RATS would complain. Anti-Christian, Anti-American -- just like their Presidential Candidate -- Jean Francois Kerrie. (03/31/2004)

CORSI: After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal gradparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry? (03/04/2004)

CORSI: Kerry has a long history of Communist supporters. (03/12/2004)

CORSI: Kerry offers a clear choice. Anti-American hatred. (02/08/2004)

CORSI: John F*ing Commie Kerry and Commie Ted [Kennedy] discuss their plan to hand America over to our nation's enemies. (02/04/2004)

On former President Bill Clinton

CORSI: When is this guy going to admit he's simply an anti-American communist? Won't he and his leftist wife simply go away???? Enough already. (02/24/2002)

CORSI: Hey, Bill, didn't you steal enough when you had the chance? (02/15/2002)

CORSI: Clinton doesn't get it. Afganistan, and other Moslim countries, are not poor because they lack money. The culture itself is anti-modern. But then, maybe Slick did get it and he just wants to create another bork barrel from which he and his wife can draw slop. (02/15/2002)

CORSI: Clinton was more interested in gays in the military than going after OBL. Clinton had Janet Rhino pushing the FBI to deport a child to Castro's nondemocratic Cuba, not searching out OBL sleepers in the USA. Clinton was too busy getting BJs in the Oval Office to do more than Wag the Dog after the Cole was hit. (05/16/2002)

On Senator Hillary Clinton

CORSI: HELL-ary loves the Arabs so much (kiss, kiss Mrs. Arab*RAT) -- wonder how she would look in a Burkha? (05/21/2002)

CORSI: Mullah Ali'Gore-ah is very proud of his new Bin Laden beard and he hopes others in the Democratic Party will follow his lead. Hell-ary is disappointed she cannot grow a beard, but her press secretary reminds us she can still enroll in flight school. (01/07/02)

CORSI: Let the FAT HOG run!!! [regarding a possible presidential bid] (08/30/2003)

CORSI: Hellary should resign and go away. What ever happened to the people she ran over with her car at Westchester Airport? Can't anybody sue this b*tch? (11/17/2002)

CORSI: Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she? (06/08/2003)

On Chelsea Clinton

CORSI: According to Talk Magazine, Chubby Chelsea had a very great adventure on 9/11 in NYC and Hell-ary had the details wrong -- oh, it was terrible. (12/07/2001)

CORSI: Did the Journalist see Chubbie Chelsea among the wives. Little Katie Communist [Katie Couric] on the NBC Today show interviewed Hillary this morning and mom is worried sick about Chelsea. She was last seen in Kandahar at a Starbucks. But now, as Little Katie Communist sighed, "Who Knows?" Even British disinformation planted reports such as this grocery crap will be useful. Anyone with information about Chubbie Chelsea's whereabouts should post it now. Mom wants to know her daughter is out of harms way. Mom also wants to be at the center of the story. (11/29/2001)

CORSI: But the real question is: WHERE IS CHUBBIE CHELSEA? Is she in Kabul in danger, looking for a Starbucks? Waldo wants to know. Please, Little Katie Communist, HELP US FIND CHELSEA. THE SITUATION MAY BE URGENT. (11/29/2001)

CORSI: HILLARY SAYS CHELSEA IS MISSING AND JANET RHINO DOESN'T KNOW WHERE SHE IS? (11/28/2001)

On former Vice President Al Gore

CORSI: Gore isn't available for television. He is growing his regulation length Bin Laden beard. Mullah Ali'Gore-ah, as he now wishes to be called, is focused on his new career as a pilot. "Want to fly like bird," he says after his stint as a professor at Columbia. "No need to learn take-off or landing, just soar like bird and look at buildings." As to Florida, Mulllah Gore-ah says, "No big buildings," dismissing the importance of the state to his future plans." (12/15/2001)

On the Media

CORSI: Time to FREEP Chris Matthews of MSNBC. MSNBC is beginning to stand for "More Sh*t, Nothing But Communism." (05/16/2002)

CORSI: I didn't realize Little Katie Communist of the NBC Today Show knew how to hack a website. Finally something impressive from the little wimp. [responding to news that USA Today's website had been hacked and that the hackers were mocking President George W. Bush's Christianity] (07/12/2002)

CORSI: COMMUNISM -- it's simple NBC = NOTHING BUT COMMUNISM. (04/19/2004)

CORSI: Susan Estrogen -- even the voice grates. But then with supporters like her and Ted Kennedy, who needs enemies. Let Susan BLAH BLAH screatch -- only Chrissy Matthews whines better. (04/13/2004)

Assorted

CORSI: Perfect Liberal -- lesbian, self-absorbed, hates America, anxious to impose her values on everybody else. [on Martina Navratilova] (06/26/2002)

CORSI: And now we get Pooh-LEFTY pushed on us by the RATS as Minority Leader in the House -- here come the SanFrancisco liberals -- hope the RATS go back to focusing the debate on gay marriages and other pro-choice topics close to Pelosi's heart. (11/18/2002)

CORSI: Too bad the plane didn't crash into the TV set of the NBC show "THE LEFT WING" -- especially when Martin Sheen was "acting." (06/07/2003)