Friday, March 26, 2004

Rice Discusses Terror, but Not Under Oath

I wonder if Dr. Rice knows it's not OK to lie, whether you're under oath or not?

Link

Power of Incumbency, or of Big Brother

I'm watching MSNBC at 9:45 a.m. on Friday. They've chosen to cover live and uninterrupted, for an extended period (10 minutes, so far), a straight-up Bush campaign speech delivered in New Mexico. The lead-in to the story was that Bush was going to talk about a housing plan or something, but the speech so far hasn't said anything about that. Instead it was Bush pleading for votes, calling attention to his attack on Iraq as a threat, talking about his forebearance in Iraq and so forth.

This is more than news coverage. It's unadulterated bias in favor Bush by MSNBC, owned, as we know, by General Electric--a major supplier of military weapons to the US and the world.

Meanwhile, Kerry has announced a major economic program. Not a moment is given to his presentation. Not a whisper.

I'm telling you, we've now arrived at Big Brother, sponsored not just by the state, but by a combination of the state, the media and the monied interests.

We who resist this monolith must rally outside of the mainstream. We can't succumb to the urge to quit in the face of all this power. We've got to take America back.

Soldier Suicide Rate in Iraq Jumps

I'm posting this without comment. What the hell could I say?

Yahoo! News - Soldier Suicide Rate in Iraq Jumps

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Democrats, hurrah!

I'm watching the Democrats' Unity Dinner on TV, telecast on C-Span. All the heavyweights were there: Carter, Clinton, Gore, Dean, Sharpton, Kucinich, Braun, and of course Kerry--plus thousands of donors. Carter and Clinton spoke, eloquently, passionately, powerfully. Made me proud to be an American, proud to be part of that portion of the American ideology that tries to make the world a better place for all of us, for the rest of the world, for the future. Truly a moving display of fine principles, of hope for the future.
Unlike Bush's fund-raiser the other day, telecast as primetime news on CNN, Fox and MSNBC, this truly momentous event wasn't shown widely. But it was so powerful that I'm confident, this evening, that Kerry can win in November.

Finally a real scandal, a truly willfull lie

The story of the extortionate pressure by the White House on a Medicare actuary to withhold his estimate of the cost of Bush's Medicare law surfaced three days ago in Newsweek Magazine under the title, "The Smell of a Real Scandal." I've read the magazine article, but haven't heard a whisper of this outrageous action on any of the television news programs.
Today, however, the story made it to the NYT, and can no longer be ignored by the popular media. Particularly in view of the estimate that Medicare is going to go broke soon. Can't be ignored. Right?

We're killing toddlers and livestock!!!

Does this sound like Viet Nam to you?

Check out these numbers

Sure--589 dead soldiers in Iraq is awful. But check out this list of weekly casualties.

This the Bush/Cheney's war. Nobody else's. These deaths and these life-crippling injuries are on their heads. This must not be lost in the b.s. about blame for 9/11. What needs to be known is that the two executives of our nation have cost us thousands of American lives and limbs, billions of dollars and untold amounts of less tangible, but even more lasting, decline of our standing in the world, and in the history of the world.

I'm sorry to have been a citizen during this time of America's decline and will do my best to make up for it between now and November 2.

Listen..and weep

These two Fed officials show their true colors. One talks about the imminent disaster that is spelled by the present and projected federal deficits; the other (Greenspan) talks about the present "dislocation" of workers, terming it "a worthwhile price to pay for the increases in living standards productivity brings."

Their solution? Doing nothing..

Powerful images

I'm watching CNN's broadcast of Howard Dean's endorsement speech of John Kerry. Dean's a hell of a stump speaker, full of energy and hope and passion. Damn, I hope that power can Kerry over to the November election. :-)

Yesterday, I watched the 9/11 Commission hearings, in particular Richard Clarke's apology to the survivors of the victims of 9/11 and the most telling moment: when Clarke testified that "...the reason I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is because by invading Iraq . . . the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."

This was a stunning statement and it rocked the hearing room. The Republican member of the Commission had no further questions, no retort. And even the Bushies are silent on this subject, instead trying to besmirch Clarke's character. But they'e getting tongue-tied. Cheney says Clarke was "out of the loop," while Condi Rice says he was "deeply involved" in the pre- and post-9/11 activities.

The fact is, many others who were in the loop support Clarke's view of the Bushies' fixation on Iraq immediately after 9/11. Recall that Wesley Clark asserted this some months ago, and Bush's former Treasury Secretary said the same thing. Finally, the Commission has heard similar testimony from another intelligence officer:

"Patrick Lang, a former head of the Middle East section of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that Clarke was perhaps too 'shrill' in his complaints about Bush. But Clarke's analysis about the Bush administration, Lang observed, is correct.

"'What he's talking about is these guys were not interested in al-Qaida. They wanted Iraq.'"



Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Richard Clarke for Christ

If you need to turn to an image, a visage, of someone who's unwilling to put with the sacrimonious crap that these days passes for truth, try Richard Clarke. He speaks in short sentences, he speaks truth.

And he'll become a martyr to a cause--of truth.

What B.S.

The Nine-Eleven Commission's hearing, being telecast publicly today and yesterday, are singularly uninformative on the subject it's supposed to be investigating. Mealy-mouthed bureaucrats talking in circles, dodging direct questions, not asking direct questions, just plain trash, full of catch-phrases and fluff.
Don't bother to watch it. Watergate it's not. Maybe when Clarke testifies this afternoon, but so far nada.

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

A day of superlatives

Gasoline at historically high prices, stock market indexes at yearlong lows, and credit card debt is at an all-time high. And that's just the good news.

Student George W. Bush

A professor who taught Bush at Harvard speaks. Not just illuminating, frightening.

Fun, fun, fun

One of the joys of blogging is making up a catchy title for the post. My practice is to write the post first, spending that time deliberating on the title and hopefully (but hardly always) coming up with a clever headline.

But none of my titles is as clever as this one from this Blah3 post, which calls attention to Croatia's newly-announced equivocation about sending troops to Iraq. The headline: "Coalition of the dwindling."

Bush is delighted by the Israelis' attack on the Hamas cleric

because it has ignited Hamas against the US and has therefore given us a new enemy. This is implicit in Bush's latest pronouncement on the subject.

Believe me, as much as I would like to think that Bush is sincere about bringing terrorism to an end, and that his failure to succeed plays into the hands of those of us who want to address the causes of terrorism rather than making "war on terr'r," I now appreciate that the opposite is true. Bush has no interest in having terror cease. It feeds his presidency, it justifies his calls for common defense and cements his role as a "war president" and so to keep a handle on his re-election.

Monday, March 22, 2004

Alarming numbers

This data is freaky. Only because the Far East governments (Japan and China), not individual investors, who know better, are buying US debt instruments. The governments, of course, are doing so to keep the dollar from plummeting and so to avoid harm to their exports to the US. But at some point these governments may decide that enough's enough, that cutting their losses is better than continuing to ride a losing horse. When that happens...

What does it take

To get Bush out of office? His former Treasury Secretary, and now his former terrorism czar, state on the record that Bush made war against Iraq because of his obsession with Saddam Hussein, not as part of a war against terror. This, by the way, dovetails precisely with the emerging proof that Bush tailored the WMD evidence to give a justification for the invasion.

Going to war because of a personal vendetta, spending the peoples' money, sending their children to death to further a personal agenda--these are what ancient, corrupt kings and emperors did, always, as we know, leading to the downfall of their reigns.

Let's hope history repeats.

Sunday, March 21, 2004

The Hydra

So, today Israeli forces killed a Hamas leader, the idea being if they murder a prominent leader of Hamas they will damage the movement and will thereby be able to reach peace with the Palestinians.
We believe that if we kill Osama bin Laden (or Saddam Hussein) we'll cause their movements to quit.

Just think about it. If these people believe they're right, and righteously so, killing their leaders will simply inflame them. Imagine, if our leader was killed by them. Would the US be crippled? No. Even if (especially if) it was our present leader, the US would be more empowered, more resolute. A thousand heads would replace the severed one.

As in the Middle East, so here, so anywhere.