Cheney's a liar

What could be clearer?

From the Miami Herald.

"Cheney, opening the administration's drive for public support for Hussein's ouster, said in an Aug. 26, 2002, speech that 'firsthand testimony' from defectors had disclosed that Hussein had resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

"Those defectors, Cheney said, included Gen. Hussein Kamal, Hussein's son-in-law, who fled to Jordan in 1995 and was murdered when he returned to Baghdad in 1996.

"Cheney's assertion, however, conflicts with Kamal's comments in an interview conducted by Rolf Ekeus, the then-head of a U.N. weapons inspection program.

'''All weapons -- biological, chemical, missile, nuclear -- were destroyed,' Kamal said, according to an official U.N. transcript of the Aug. 22, 1995, session.

"Cheney's office did not explain the apparent discrepancy."

Another -gate?

That small-print story a year ago about the US intelligence service spying on our allies' UN delegations during the Security Council's deliberations on the invasion of Iraq may blow up again. The head of the Mexican delegation, whose office was bugged by us, is writing a book in which he contends that our spying scuttled the attempt by our allies to find a compromise to invasion.

Oh boy oh boy.

On the other hand...

Some weeks ago I posted a entended list of reasons why Bush was unbeatable in 04. Money, incumbency, a compliant press and so on.

This post goes the other way, listing the impressive number of vulnerabilities that Bush faces in the next ten months. 1. Jobs. 2. Valerie Plame-gate. 3. AirGuard-gate. 4. 9-11 gate. 5. WMD-gate. 6. Continuing deaths in Iraq. 7. Budget deficit. 8. Trade deficit. 9. Declining dollar. 10. Halliburton-gate.
I'm running out of gates. Any others?

Consumer sentiment

Last month, the Administration touted the 10-point increase in the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index as a strong sign that the economy was heading upward. This chart shows the path of the Index since 2000, and it does indeed show a strong dip, with a strong rebound in the last few months, culminating with an eleven-point gain, to 103.8, in December.
Imagine the Administration's chagrin when, in the latest report, the Index fell by ten percent, giving back all but one of those points.
Consumers are wary. Of the economy, of their own prospects and, no doubt, of Bush.

Economic idiosyncracies

I just heard a report on PBS about the unprecedentedly high cost-to-profit ratio that American corporations were presently enjoying. Unprecedented since records have been kept, by multiples, a result of the astounding "productivity" of American workers. The latter, other reports have said, is a function of the amazing stretch of workers' capabilities due to technology, to extensity of effort, and to cost saving measures by employers. Also unprecedented.

Unprecedented too is the level of American consumer borrowing, federal borrowing, trade deficits, federal deficits, acquisition of US debt by foreign investors and governments.

The gap between rich and poor in the US is at its height. The level of taxation of corporations is at its lowest ever. Indeed, there isn't a statistic in this economy that's mid-line or moderate.

I'd like to find an economic macro-analysis of these and related phenomena--a view of the overall--not just more day-by-day stock market digests. There's something very large at work in the American system, isn't there?

A Longer, Harder Slog

This month's drop in consumer confidence was "surprisingly deep." Is the American public catching on?

Baghdad seething

Riverbend, author of the Baghdad Burning weblog, has been silent for a few weeks. Now we know why.

I was offline for a few brief periods recently while I was visiting my family, while I was changing ISPs and so forth. But not because a member of my family was kidnapped for ransom.

How little we know about life in Iraq. How far from our lives theirs are. How far from democracy, US-style, that nation is.

What were we thinking when we, with ignorant arrogance, decided to impose our view of the world on people who haven't lived under it?

Tom Vilsack for President (or Vice President, anyway)

This speech by the Governor of Iowa is straightforward, bold and right on. If only he had a national forum, such as the one the media repeatedly gives Bush, so that Americans could learn, deep down, how distorted this Administration is.

Pete and the Cabbie

Check out this post at petebeck.com: ... who's the tyrant?

Charting the future, by the real numbers, not by Bush's

Oil production by country for the next few decades. Wind power, anyone?

The real world, not Bush's world

Here's the revised job data, and the retails sales data, from January. Bush's rap about a recovery is fantasy.

Retail sales drop, jobless claims rise, inventories as expected

US retail sales fell posted an unexpected 0.3% decline in January, the first drop since September. Sales in December were revised down to 0.2% from 0.5%. On the employment front, initial jobless claims rose by 6,000 last week to 363,000, defying consensus forecasts of a 11,000 decline. The 4-week average rose by 5,000 to 350,000.
The Bush Administration is seeking to defuse an emerging controversy after White house Chief economic advisor Greg Mankiw praised the economic effects of moving US jobs offshore. Mankiw’s rationale is based on the grounds of resulting wealth to US companies stemming from reduced costs at a time when the White House is attempting to resurrect lost jobs ahead of the elections.

Source: http://www.forexnews.com/

Empire in action

Listen up world! The earth shall be as we wish it to be.

What a revoltin' development this is

Darn. The UN is siding with the Shia about the need for full and free elections. And we thought we could get away with Bush-style democracy, a hybrid of appointment, control and, above all, a favorable entity.

Now, what if the Iraqis ask us to leave? Or maybe they just ask us to stay in our place, stranded in our out-of-town bases? Or maybe we become the enforcers for the Shia government, shooting down rioters who are protesting the Shia rules about women's rights and suppression of the Baathists?

The nightmare has just begun.

Say Ahhhhh Sh*t, Dubya

Can you imagine how hard the White House had to work to find a 30-year-old dental exam? They must really be freaking out over this little scandal, AWOLgate. But is there really a hope that democrats are going to overwhelm the intransigent gullibility of the reactionary right by alleging that Bush shirked his duties in the national guard? Maybe, We can hope. The truth remains that he's a menace now, to our economy, our environment, our civil rights and to our peace and security. He's simply a poor president and we need a better one. Politicians always get sidetracked, distracted. They go tromping around in the rough, instead of taking a drop and moving on. Well, maybe they'll find a few nascar Dads out in the bush -- forgive me -- and bring them back to smoother turf.
Yahoo! News - White House Releases '73 Bush Dental Exam

Greenspan's a dolt

I watched C-Span's testimony today, and while he's a whiz at monetary mumbo-jumbo, he doesn't know shit about anything more macro than data-driven drivel about productivity/incentives to invest/financial shenanigans. When asked about jobs, for example, he drew a blank. When asked point-blank where a jobless American should retrain, he had no answer, none at all.
Representative Barbara Lee of California (my Godess) asked him, "Where are the jobs of the future? What do we tell our kids, who want to play by the rules, where they're going to get jobs?"
To this question, Greenspan said, in essence, I don't know.
Fact is, there was nothing in his testimony that gave heart to anyone that America was going to have a thriving economy an incoming job-seeker.
But, of course, the stock market soared on his testimony, because he said he wasn't going to raise interest rates, meaning that stocks would remain an attractive investment.
Result: The rich get richer. The poor stay poor--and jobless.

The Republicans had better get out the cheese

To entice the rats back on board the ship of state.

"Let's you and them fight."

The US military is planning to pull the majority of its troops out of the cities of Iraq and hand over the security tasks to Iraqi police, while remaining in their secure compounds nearby. In view of the recent spate of attacks on police stations in the major cities, I'm not certain, if I were an Iraqi, that I would take this as a handover of sovereignty so much as a retreat.

Disappearing act

A clear and detailed exposition of Bush's Air Guard record may be found here, including a copy of the original Boston Globe article that raised the question during the 2000 Presidential campaign. Turns out Bush's promise today that he'll turn over his military records to show his attendance at drills during the "missing year" was made once before, about the same time of year four years ago. And no records materialized. Will the media let him off the hook again? I think not. Maybe Faux news will, but the others will chase this story down as part of their chase for ratings. After all--they smell blood in the water too.

Who are those other guys?

Bush's economic predictions--his riff about the benefits of international outsourcing of jobs, about the long-term benefits of privatizing social security, and particularly about the amount of new-job creation in the upcoming year--are absolutely nuts.

We've already seen one of his job-creation predictions go down the toilet. He told us when his tax-reduction package was passed that it would create 1.7 million jobs in 2003; instead we lost 53,000. And as has been noted elsewhere, the jobs that have been lost are in the high-paid fields (manufacturing, high-tech), to be replaced by retail and service jobs at much lower wages.

I'm waiting for one of the Democrats to drag out the "voodoo economics" slogan from Reagan's days in office. In the meantime, I like this comment by Senator Kerrey: "I've got a feeling this report was prepared by the same people who brought us the intelligence on Iraq."

Who are those guys?

It's reported today that Bush's low approval numbers in the polls have rebounded since he gave the interview that was telecast by NBC, not much of a bounce, but still...
He got a big bounce when Saddam was captured, and the biggest bounces on 9/11/01 and in March 2003 when he invaded Iraq.
I can only conclude that there is a large segment of the voting public who swing from disapproval to approval of Bush when he's making war or lying. My baseline question, however, is this: How can a sensible person change his mind about the President of the United States depending on what occurs from day to day? Are 20 percent of us that vacuous?
Don't answer that.

the bottom line

I've just been browsing through the transcript of the interview that the president gave NBC over the weekend. It's interesting stuff. As expected, it underlines the self-centered arrogance that has come to dominate this administration. I suspect the man is so out of touch with reality, he wouldn't know it from a mission to mars. He may not even know he's been misleading us. What am I saying? Of course he does. A lot of people believe Bush's slop, but not me and not him. Hopefully, not you.

Here's my favorite quote:
"I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind." Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Taking the gloves off

This site tracks the ongoing investigation of Bush's record in the Air National Guard, and has uncovered a complete copy of a "torn record" that had been submitted by Bush some years ago to show him earning "points" toward discharge from the guard. Now we see the whole document, and its contents are revealing. It's too long a tale to recite here, but CalPundit has it all.

All Hat and No Cattle--redux

Business Week has analyzed Bush's claim that he will reduce the deficit by one-half in five years and has reacted with the above quotation. This publication, widely read in the financial community, is solidly conservative, rarely anti-Bush, but cannot allow his economic shenanigans to continue. They use words like "misleading" and "illusory" to describe Bush's economic predictions, and are plainly unhappy with his free-spending policies.
Let's hope they convince their fellow fiscal conservatives to stay home on election day.

Politicizing intelligence

The Administration's still at it, only more obviously than ever. This NYT times report about a supposed memo by an Iraqi insurgent soliciting al Qaeda's support for a civil war in Iraq was handed to the reporter by an official of the occupation. It contains a description of the state of the insurgency, calls for assistance, remonstrations about the power of the US Army and its unremitting resolve.
My first reaction was that the memo's a fake, which so many similar leaks have been. My second was that if it's for real, why would it be leaked, except for Bush's political gain? Isn't this precisely the kind of information that we don't want the adversary to know we have? Bush, the president who touts himself as the most capable of handling the war on terr'r, is apparently willing to subvert his troops' efforts when it benefits his chance for reelection.
But then I already knew that.

Bush Says Invasion of Iraq Was Necessary

I was encouraged to channel surf by as president Bush was facing off with Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Pres tonight. I wasn’t encouraged enough to watch the whole thing, because it was the same old Texas Two Step, boot-scootin’ around the truth. But I think it’s lovely that he feels compelled to go on the defensive in the media. It shows he’s becoming cognizant of the political corner into which he’s painted himself.

[Link.]

The Gray Lady smells blood in the water

Okay, so the metaphors are jumbled. Point is, finally the NYT editorial page challenges Bush, calling his "independent commission" a political ploy. Not a scathing attack, but a measured one that cuts through the rhetoric and concludes that by limiting the scope of the commission, Bush in effect leaves it to each of us to decide whether he warped the intelligence to suit his political ends.
Well, so be it.

The dog is begining to wag the tail

This Reuters article about the sluggish job picture states what has probably been felt for months, that the continued absence of jobs may drag the other components of the recovery down, in particular consumer spending. As people lose faith in the security of jobs, they tighten their belts, with the result that instead of continuing to run up credit card debt, they cut expenditures and hence demand.
An unstated fear is deflation: the awful prospect of sustained price decline due to lack of demand, which becomes a vicious circle as layoffs then feed the lack of spending by consumers. With the number of personal bankruptcies at record levels, there's nowhere for the consumer to go but cutting back on expenditures. This economy may indeed be in for a long, hard slog.

Short memories

Tenet's sales pitch about the quality of intelligence (measured by the contents of his prewar "estimate" against the now-available evidence "on the ground") simply places in starker relief the need to inquire into the "policy-makers'" use of intelligence rather than its gathering. Besides the obvious misuse by Cheney, Rumsfeld and, most notably, Bush in their public pronouncements, two particular items come to mind, items I'm shocked that I forgot (and so far too have the pundits).

The first was buried in the news during the weeks before the much-hyped appearance by Colin Powell at the UN where he presented a dog-and-pony show to spur the Security Council into voting for an invasion-justifying resolution. The UN inpsectors were on the ground, dutifully chasing from site to site in their white vans, coming up empty, while Blix was complaining to anyone who'd listen that the US wasn't sharing with the inspectors the information that it claimed it had to prove Saddam's noncompliance. Finally, a few days before Powell's UN appearance, the US gave Blix a verbal report of selected sites (I recall that Blix was appalled at such a lax, unorthodox procedure). The conclusion many drew from this sequence was that the US either was unsure of its intelligence or was witholding it so that the inspectors would fail, allowing the US to attack.
The second item followed shortly thereafter, when the inspectors hopped into their vans to follow the leads the US finally handed over. One lead, to a supposed weapons factory in the north of Iraq, turned out to be a crumbling village. Others were equally false, so much so that one of the inspectors called the US intelligence, "garbage."
During all of this time, Scott Ritter, a former US Marine and weapons inspector, was telling us (although the news outlets wouldn't listen) that which we now know: The the WMD Iraq had once possessed had been destroyed or discovered in the weapons inspection regime in the nineties.
If I were Tenet I'd be pissed off too. Bush and his buddies ignored and purposely witheld the caveats and uncertainties in the CIA's estimate in their inexorable march to war and now, as before, they're making him the fallguy.

For another (and a more fluent) presentation of this position, check out this essay in Time Online.

It's the jobs, stupid

Two much-anticipated Labor Department numbers that I just heard on TV. The first is the increase in the number of jobs in the month of January: 112,000. The second is the upward revision of the dismal number of new jobs from December: from 1,000 to 12,000. Both announcements were disappointing to those who believed that Bush's tax-cutting "economic stimulus" would translate into job creation.
The 112,000 figure for January fell 60,000 short of the prediction of forecasters, and was 40,000 short of the number of new jobs needed merely to keep pace with the number of new workers entering the labor force each month. There will of course be some trumpeting of the 112,000 figure as being the highest in many months, but those months were awful. In fact, the figure demonstrates that the stimulus has translated into increased profits for companies and increased money in the hands of the rich, but not into real recovery for the workers, i.e., jobs. (In addition, of course, the figures for workers' real income shows them losing against inflation, as is noted in the immediately preceding post.)
The second figure, the upward revision of December's new-jobs figure to 12,000 confirms how dreadful that month really was for new employment. It was thought that the revision might be substantial, that the 1,000 figure was way off the mark. But no, we're now certain, December was indeed terrible, as was the 47,000 figure for the preceding month.
These two announcements gave rise, immediately, to an upward spurt in the cost of a euro against the dollar. The traders know what Bush apologists still deny: That the "recovery" of the US economy is hype, and the GDP increases are due to consumer borrowing and warmaking. Classic smoke and mirrors.

Speaking of Numbers ...

Speaking of numbers, is it my imagination, or has it been a couple of days since the number of US ... kids ... solidiers ... killed in Iraq has gone up? And if so, what should one suppose this might portend?

Behind the numbers

The following brief analysis from the ForexNews ("foreign exchange") website puts into perspective the jobs/income/recovery picture as it relates to the common worker. Not a pretty picture.

"Are Payrolls or GDP the Anomaly?" by Jes Black
A general rule of thumb in economics, known as Okun's Law, states that a 1% increase in GDP leads to a 0.4% increase in employment. But the primary flaw is that changes in productivity undermine this relationship because output depends on both the amount of inputs used and the level of technology.

Moreover, when economists like Okun peered into the economy in the 1980s and 1990s a not so subtle shift was already taking place towards a global economy driven by finance and technology. Inflation has since grown quiescent while growth can be manufactured through lower borrowing costs. Yet the real economy seems to suffer since the shift from selling tangible goods to a service economy has resulted in exploding deficits and jobs outsourcing recently estimated at 500,000. Real growth has in fact been substituted for financial growth and the effects they have on employment are now noticeable.

Slow Recovery in Payrolls

Tomorrow's labor report is expected to show a sharp 165k-175k gain in payrolls, which is hardly surprising following the anemic December report and the strong advance in Q3 and Q4 GDP. This would complement the increase in the household survey while rising payrolls and record-setting gains in GDP will likely be heralded as the missing link in the recovery story. But since many of the jobs created so far have been in lower wage service sector, ambiguous self-employment and government jobs the actual benefit to the economy may be less significant.

The unemployment rate is expected to remain steady at 5.7% in January. But the real unemployment rate would be higher if it were adjusted for decreases in both hours per worker and labor force participation. Since each of these factors contributes to falling output, because of rising productivity last year's second half surge in US growth is the anomaly, not the jobs picture.

In fact, much of the second half recovery was financed through record homeowner refinancings, tax cuts and deficit spending. But for a US-centric global economy saturated with overcapacity, a slow, steady rise in employment and balanced GDP growth is the most logical path as the world struggles to find a more sustainable means of consuming domestic production.

October Surprise?

This is just the latest of the predictions that Osama will be captured before the November election. We know that Bush is capable of anything, and we know that Reagan plotted with the Iranians to delay release of the hostages until after he defeated Carter. So, why will Osama's election-eve capture be a surprise?

Is Knight-Ridder piling on?

Bush's leadership is in question, says this august wire service piece. It details Bush's recent reversals, citing polls that show that Kerry's more trusted than Bush as a leader. Fun reading.

I'm baaack--and Tenet's in a groove.

Okay, after weeks (seems like years) of hassling about a switchover to cable hookup from DSL, I'm finally in business bigtime. My posts will accordingly be potent, incisive and, most tellingly, constant. Starting with my observations about Tenet's speech today at Georgetown (one of my alma maters, BTW).
This guy's a stump-speaker, no doubt. Actually, a car salesman, presenting a tick-list of items with flair and verve. His bottom line (a phrase he used repeatedly): The pre-war assessment ("Estimate") by his minions was right on, or close enough, including his concession that there was no evidence of an "imminent threat" to the US from any of this.
It will take some time to sort through his assertions, but for me the bottom line is this. It wasn't the fault of the intelligence community that we ended up with egg on our face and blood on our hands. It's absolutely clear that the fault lies with Bush/Cheney, that they'd made up their minds to take over Iraq and weren't going to be swayed by the equivocations and uncertainties of the intelligence professionals' report.
Thus, the task of any new inquiry into the "intelligence failure" should include the misuse of intelligence by the politicians, not just lapses in the gathering and presentation of data by the spooks.
After all, it was Bush who launched this war. It's his desk where the buck stops.

All That Arises

Please see John’s comment to Let me get this straight... on Monday. He’s got it right.

Congress is corrupt, and I’ll add gutless. But then what if I added a corrupt and gutless congress is exactly what a corrupt and gutless populace deserves? Are we not made for television? This week, the American people are much more interested in discussing Janet Jackson's Jubblies than the unremitting meltdown of the economy or the high crimes of our literally unbelievable president.

"Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
--William Shakespeare Julius Caesar I.ii.

Hardly a liberal rag

BusinessWeek lambastes Bush's budget, spelling out in detail the fallacies of its assumptions and projections. The article's title says it all: "Lies, damned lies and Bush's budget."

Let me get this straight...

The Administration's "war on terr'r" includes attacking any group that we pronounce to be a "terrorist organization," even if the group's alleged terrorist activities aren't directed against the US? Are our soldiers supposed to die in such a cause? Where is the constitutional requirement of a declaration of war? Where will such a policy end? What have we (including the Congress) wrought?

A brief respite

Not from the matters of moment in the world, but in my posting. I'm switching to cable connection and have been struggling to get online. Hard to keep quiet as Bush runs us farther into the mire, but in a little bit I'm be posting like a madman (as usual)>

A night already devoid of stars

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.… Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. ”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The rich get richer and ...

After sustained "recovery" from recession, check out these numbers reflecting the income levels of those whose incomes increased versus those whose didn't. Somebody's gotta wake up the Americans who're financing the wealthy and the corporate robber barons.

If not me (and you), who? If not now, when?

Bush's Blue Dress

"...the Bush administration is complicit in arguably the greatest scandal in U.S. history."
says by Robert Scheer in today's LA Times.

It's time to talk about impeachment.

[Link]

I hate to say I told you so, but I don't

There's a legion of my acquaintances who'll confirm, as will the impenetrable archives of this weblog, that seven-plus months ago I predicted that Cheney would be dumped from Bush's 2004 ticket. My reasoning was that by doing so (with the fact-based cover of Cheney's weak vascular system) Bush could dampen the Democrats' summer nomination festival with speculation of who Bush's running mate might be. Elizabeth Dole? If male, perhaps Colin Powell? To drive the Democrats totally crazy, maybe Condi? Of course Bush will end up choosing a Christian Wasp, but no matter. He'll have shared the summer headlines with whoever the Democrats nominate.

Well, some may call me crazy, but here's the first of a cascade of drumbeats.

How much traction? Not even a rotation

I wondered, in my post entitled "Let's see if this story has legs," whether the alarm expressed by the US Comptroler General at the billowing deficits in US trade and federal budget, would find press coverage. Answer: No. Indeed, even Billmon, a sound reporter who's just finished covering the Davos conference, didn't remark on it in his departing post.
He did offer this cleverly incisive paragraph on the subject of America's excesses, however:

"The problem in trying to get a read on what's really going on -- and what kind of consensus is likely to emerge among the global power elite about the USA's vulnerability on the dollar-deficit question -- is the same as at every conference of this sort: The Americans say the sky is the limit, the Europeans say the sky is falling, and the Asians, whose views are in many ways the most important, say as little as possible."

comments are back!

The comments function has returned to our blog. Cry havoc!

Business Week on business

I'm posting this sanguine article from Business Week, not because of the accuracy of its prediction of a wholesale business upturn (including jobs), but so that later on I can say, I Told You So. The fact is, that nothing in the data recited in the article is supportive of a surge in meaningful jobs in the US. Check it out. The article touts higher stock prices based on higher corporate earnings (all so far obtained by belt-tightening measures and longer working hours by existing employees) and a spate of mergers and acquisitions, which usually lead to job-cutting and downsizing of unprofitable segments of the merged businesses. Not a whisper in the article about a basis for meaningful job growth except the usual exhortation that where there's money, there must be more work.

Not these days, not in America. We have no labor unions, no worker leverage, but rather a glut of unemployed and underemployed workers who have no might to demand decent pay and fair benefits. This recovery, unlike others, will benefit Bush's corporate donors, but will leave behind the people of America, the voters.

Let's hope they remember to register to vote when they pick up their welfare and unemployment checks.

(If you want another take on the future of well-paid jobs in America, check this article in the NYT.)

I know only fellow-travelers read this blog

But in case it snares a Google-errant, a Republican searching for "All That Arises" on a Vegas crap table or a porn site, do this one thing before you surf back to la la land. Read the last few posts by Riverbend, just so you may hereafter pause when you hear from Bush/Cheney/Powell/Rumsfeld/Rice/Bremer how swimmingly we're reconstructing Iraq.

Okay, I'm rolling up my sleeves, Dean-style

Howard Dean--he may not be the Democrats' nominee, but he's sure as hell their conscience--is absolutely right when he says that the only way to beat Bush is to empower (that is to say, to deliver--by "any means necessary"--to the polls in November) the enormous numbers of new voters who are--cutting through the bs here--of darker skin tones than we whitie liberals. We have the message, for God's sake.

Here's what's happening to jobs among young black males. Startling, eh? You'd think there'd be riots in the streets. But no. What there is is apathy. The black vote, overwhelmingly Democratic, will be once again overwhelmingly silent unless we--that's you and me and the candidate and his energies---can grab them by their necks, by their souls, by their instinct for self-preservation and self-fulfillment, and get them to vote!

Same thing with the brown vote. I've talked about the Nascar Dads. They're a hopelessly ignorant bunch, whose idea of "the news" is Hannity, Limbaugh and Faux News. No way to change their minds between now and November. Maybe never. They may be the residual blight of the failed capitalist system.

But their brown counterparts, whom I call the "Oakland Raider Dads," the Latino males with backward-worn ballcaps and big trucks. What about them? They're no better off under Bush (they're worse off, actually, under his new "let them eat cake" immigration policy, which allows the labor market in the border states to be swamped by low-paid foreigners). In fact, Latino males, many of whom react favorably to Bush's "macho-don't fuck with me, dude" attitude toward foreign policy are the hardest hit by his economic slant. He cuts programs in education, health care, transportation, daycare, insurance--all of which mean less income to the lower-paid segment of our culture, i.e., the newer arrivals, the browner skinned Americans.

Here's the deal: If we're going to Beat Bush it will only be by swamping the polls with new voters: blacks, browns, youths, who've not voted in earnest before. Otherwise, my fellow citizens, it's Four More Years.

The lunatics are running the asylum--and this voice of sanity responds

Stephen, a new contributor to this blog, speaks the following truths:

Keep standing up to the lies.

One way to subvert the system is to say to people, "I am really afraid that
they're (those damn liberals!) going to try to impeach Bush for all of the
conflict of interest laws his administration has broken. What can we do to
keep him and his cabinet out of jail?" This tactic of course makes the point
that he's a crook while assuring them you're on poor George W's side!

Ten Thoughts on How To Defeat Terrorism! (To Mr. Bush and his puppet
masters)

1. Make friends with the Arab world. This is done by having a balanced
foreign policy toward the Middle East. It also means reducing foreign aid to
Israel and not being their lap dog. Do you know Israel has a national health
plan that covers all its citizens? Wish we could afford one!
2. Seek alignment with Europe - stop insulting their intelligence and
bullying them into supporting ridiculous policies. Better to have lots of
friends - one day we'll need them!
3. Foreign aid and food are not supposed to be wielded like weapons.
Supporting bad leaders and toppling elected ones is unhealthy for us and the
world.
4. Review the behavior, conflicts and demise of all previous imperialistic
civilizations. Look in mirror. Repeat.
5. Stop using Christianity as a club. Muslims and others find the modern
Crusade worrisome and zealots find it an easy target for their hatred.
Church and state are separate for a purpose. Don't suppose that intelligent
people don't notice the huge downside of blending the two.
6. Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars creating Fortress
America, get the best minds on Arab culture and politics to work for the
State Dept. and build bridges of trust and friendship with this large slice
of humanity. Remember: they're not evil - we're just acting evil.
7. Keep in mind that there is a big gap between the industrialized northern
nations and the southern developing counties. Unless the wealthy nations
have a game plan to truly encourage and economically develop the Third
World, we'll always be a target for the discontented.
8. Eliminate childish, shortsighted ways of looking at reality: the war on
drugs is a joke, the war on terror is destined to fail and cheating other
countries out of resources is institutionalized imperialism.
9. Paste this to your bathroom mirror: The U.S. Military-Industrial Complex
creates more danger in the world every day than every 'terrorist' group or
nation combined.
10. Our elected officials are temporary custodians of our nation and its
citizens' trust. They will quickly pass, their actions will be judged
against time and the future will unfold without their influence.
-------------------
Interesting Quote:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of
this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should
take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can
compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of
defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty
may prosper together.
--- A soldier said that. His name was Dwight D. Eisenhower
http://www.luminet.net/~tgort/ike.htm

Davos Meets the Blogosphere

In this pithy analysis, Billmon reacts to a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that discussed the impact and future of blogging upon journalism and information dissemination in general. His demand and mine: Hands off the blogosphere, corporations!

Outsourcing: The uneven playing field

This article is one of hundreds lately addressing the enormous impact on the US labor force of "outsourcing" of relatively well-paying jobs abroad. Ireland makes the most money from such jobs, followed closely by India. As I know from having recently called the 1-800 number to get a fixit for this laptop, New Delhi is the early-morning center for HP customer-service reps. (Who were polite, knowledgable and almost intelligible.)

So--Bush complains about uneven playing fields in manufactured goods, and as a result imposes tariffs to protect US manufacturers (read contributors). But meanwhile jobs flow abroad by the thousands, with not a peep from this Administration. It's part of the globalization of all forms of capital and labor, it is claimed; a natural result of the world being shrunk by quick and ready transport and communication. The American worker (not a Bush contributor) can suffer, but not a corporation. No siree, not when they save money by having their phones answered in India for one-fifth the expense. And we wonder why this is a jobless recovery.

A view from across the pond and a view from this side

A fine survey of the recent spate of books reviling Bush's foreign policy has been presented in the NYT, by an American residing now in France, with this conclusion:
"Though I have lived abroad for many years and regard myself as hardened to anti-Americanism, I confess I was taken aback to have my country depicted, page after page, book after book, as a dangerous empire in its last throes, as a failure of democracy, as militaristic, violent, hegemonic, evil, callous, arrogant, imperial and cruel."

I'm an American residing in America and I'm here to tell ya, I'm taken aback that the reviewer's taken aback. And it doesn't take book learnin' to know whazzup in America. It just takes a few afternoons.

As I've said before, I do an hour-long "peace march" on Saturdays with a handful of like-minded folks, and then about three afternoons a week I station myself at a well-traveled intersection here in SB with my protest sign that contains on one side an anti-war chant and on the other (recently revised) an anti-Bush message. I receive an equal number of favorable honks (including furtive displays of "peace signs") and furious glares accompanied, sometimes, by middle-finger signs.

The most troubling reactions, however, are those where the driver hangs out of the window and yells (this happened twice today, about average for an hour), "God Bless American and George W. Bush." I shit you not.

I'm not taken aback at how America is perceived abroad. Just like Nazi Germany was perceived.

Let's see if this story has legs

The United States Comptroller General--also head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--has expressed alarm at the budget deficits that this administration is incurring and projecting. His report is a direct contradiction of the Bush/Cheney policy that "deficits don't matter," and he predicts an economic cataclysm if the tax cuts are made permanent, as Bush sought in his State of the Union message.

This isn't a political hack speaking. It's the man what holds the purse.

Worthy of a whisper in a major news outlet, this alarm? Let's see.

The ace in the hole: Dick Cheney

As I was out at the Dolphin Fountain in SB this afternoon with my protest sign, one side of which reads, "Anybody -- Absolutely Anybody -- But Bush!", I had a thought. Since the opponents are presenting a fear-based campaign, why not equalize it with our own?

The target wouldn't be Bush, scary as he is, because too many duped Americans think he's a nice, stupid guy. But Cheney. He's pretty much conceded to be the power behind the throne and he's not only scary, he's unlikeable as hell.

So, I think (in addition to a wealth of positive campaigning) the Democrats should tee off on Cheney with slogans like, "I'm scared of Dick Cheney. Aren't you?" and "Cheney runs this country. Four more years?" and "Cheney will give us four more wars." And "Cheney/Bush: Four more wars." I've just begun to spin slogans, but I think I'm onto something.

Finally, a syndicated writer understands

This article, by a British writer, is the first I've read that tries to get at the core purpose of bin Laden's activities. Step one, make the Muslim nations mad at us; step two, unite them in a holy war against us. With Bush in the White House, bin Laden has an administration that furthers his aims. He'll attack our soil again before the November election if he feels it will further Bush's re-election, and won't if he feels it won't. In that sense, Bush and bin Laden are allied. While we watch them destroy us.

Am I the only one

who's noticed Bush's hypocrisy in calling for numerous "faith-based initiatives," and for a constitutional amendment to disallow same-sex marriages in his State of the Union Address, while at the same time demanding that the "democracies" in Afghanistan and Iraq be entirely secular? Apparently, to the "religious right" religion in government is all right so long as it's the correct religion.

From the mouths of babes

My fellow AOL subscribers are hardly a sophisticated lot, and many of them are unabashed right-wingers. Thus, most "Members' Comments" aren't worthy of quoting. But tonight's is a beaut, a comment on Bush's State of the Union Address: "The best part of his speech was when he said that the Patriot Act would expire in a year."

World without end, amen

One cartoonist's take on Armageddon. (Takes a while to load.)

Somehow this Madness ...

Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.

Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
April 1967
At Manhattan's Riverside Church

Partly Cloudy

Look, it's partly cloudy in Baghdad. The weather is very much like it is here in Santa Barbara . I guess the difference here is a must less chance of thunderous midmorning explosions. Which is good, because I just don't have the clothes for it.

Sen Biden of Delaware says that a lot of Iraqis are pissed at America because, while they were so amazed that we could blow away Saddams regime, we can't get the power on and the water flowing, etc. And we didn't stop the looting until it was moot. I'm not suggesting that these are the same Iraqis blowing stuff up, just that the Bush Administration was abjectly unprepared to follow through after the Shock and Awe was over.

A new site

The Columbia School of Journalism has just launched CampaignDesk, a new website/blog that will track news stories during the upcoming election. They'll comment on poor or unfair stories, do followups, and otherwise act as ombudsman of the media. If this first day's entries are an indication of its worth, it's worthy.

It's still the debt and the jobs

Okay, so I may have misperceived the impact of the recent drop in the value of the dollar against the euro. It turns out that the same folks--in the 1980's called arbitragers, now unnamed but equally amoral--who manipulate the world's currencies have lately stemmed the dollar's decline. The dollar may resume its descent based on fundamentals--the wild US trade imbalance, its massive budget deficits--but currency traders are most attuned to day-to-day hints, hedges and speeches such as those by members of the Federal Reserve Bank and international agencies that are bound to protect their nations' currencies, speeches that have lately caused the traders to predict an upward blip of the dollar against the euro, softening its decline, averting a pre-panic alarm.
But the dollar is bouyed even more solidly by the purchase of American companies' stock and US debt instruments by foreigners, mostly Japanese and Chinese, who own an incredibly huge amount of these securities. They have little long-term interest in America's financial wellbeing, except as it may support their ownership of dollar-based debt and assets.
They're not fools, however. Even though, as holders of trillions of dollars in US currency, treasury notes and corporate stock, they surely don't relish a decline in the value of their holdings, they also don't want to be the last passengers off the Titanic.
If it should occur--as might happen if the US economy continues to waddle through months of unemployment and underemployment--that the dollar is confirmed to be fundamentally weak (that is, truly the currency of a failing national economy, overly beholden to the support of others) these dollar-based-asset holding nations might decide to sell their dollars and debt all at once to beat the decline that they see as inevitable. At that point, all bets are off, and we could well see a global dollar massacre.
It could happen any moment. All it takes is for the world to realize, as the next few months' figures might well reveal, that the potency of the American economy is a borrow-based fiction. Once the first foreign investor sniffs that out, watch out. Time to move to Canada, Sweden or the proverbial desert island and leave the rest of the world to fight over scraps.

Spin, spin, everywhere spin

When reading the news these days, I must remember to bear in mind the motivation of the entity that disseminates it. Faux News, of course, has an ideological bent that renders its "news" tainted, a taint readily discernible. More difficult to remain aware of, however, is the spin that is applied even by so-called "hard news" outlets, such as those that report economic developments.
Take for example, this story from today's Dow Jones wire, reporting the status of inflation as recently reported by the Labor Department.

The "gist" of the story is stated in the opening paragraphs thus:

"The consumer price index rose a scant 0.2% in December, reversing 0.2% decline in November, the Labor Department said Thursday. The closely watched core index, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.1%. In annual terms, consumer prices rose 1.9% in 2003, the smallest rate in two years."

An upbeat development, it would seem, until one reads to the final paragraph of the story, where the truly significant statistic--the fact that impacts most Americans--appears.

"In a separate report, the Labor Department said average weekly earnings of U.S. workers, adjusted for inflation, declined 0.6% in December as a 0.2% increase in average hourly earnings was more than offset by a 0.6% decline in average weekly hours and a 0.2% gain in the CPI for urban wage earners and clerical workers. Over the course of 2003, average weekly earnings rose 1.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis."

So, what really happened in December was that there was a tiny uptick in the price of consumer goods (the CPI), an identical increase (0.2%) in average hourly earnings--a wash--but a decrease in workers' weekly earnings because of fewer working hours. The result: A net loss of workers' purchasing power over the last month of 2003. This decline capped a year in which workers' earnings grew a "scant" (to borrow the word from the opening paragraphs of the article) 1.7%, which is actually one-tenth of one percent less than the increase in consumer prices (1.8%) over the year. So the working consumer ended the year with a worse month than the year as a whole, and the year was one in which the worker consumer lost ground against prices for consumer goods.

The upbeat tone of the article can be accounted for by Dow Jones' bias. It's in the business of business, of trading in stocks and commodities, of benefiting from borrowings and investments and of reporting same. If the news is downbeat, its various functions lag. Moral: Read the entire article--including the bottom "graph"--and more than one article, on any subject. Or--don't read anything. Just look around you and see what's happening.

Do you remeber your Al-Gebra?

Not only is the Administration on the lookout for the dreaded Al-manac, now there's an even deadlier source of terror. Enjoy.

Imagine Our Surprise

President Bush, whom we all thought was a sure thing for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, has been Accused of Waging Unnecessary War in Iraq. Of all the unmitigated audacity. It's those irrepressible Kennedys again. They just can't help but poke fun at the kids from Skull & Bones.

Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy said Bush had capitalized on fear from the September 11 attacks to put a "spin on the truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."

Aw come one, Ed. The president's gotta cowboy up once in a while, open him up a barrel or two of good old down home Texas Whupass. What good is being president if you can't find you some terrists, flush 'em outta their holes, head 'em up and round 'em up and run 'em to ground and such? As long as he takes care of the economy, the enviroment and health care, let's just let him have some fun.

U.S. Soldiers' Suicide Rate Is Up in Iraq

Erik and I were discussing just this afternoon what we perceive to be a decline in readership for this blog. One possibility, we said, might be that an anti-war blog isn't a lot of fun. We'll this damn sure isn't going to help. If we could oppose this war with Michael Jackson jokes, we'd do it, but the truth isn't quite that bizarre. The truth is that The Suicide Rate for U.S. Soldiers' in Iraq Is Up.

Support our Troops: Bring them home from that hellhole.

Comments function fubar

It seems our need comments function isn't working. I checked the site for BlogSpeak, which provides that function, and found the following message:

BlogSpeak is currently down because the bastards that host it decided to suspend my account. I do not know as of yet when this situation will be resolved. If you don't want any JavaScript errors on your pages, take the code off for the time being. Thanks for your patience.

So I guess we'll give it a little time and see what happens. If you want to send a comment in the mean time, use one of the e-mail links (our names) in the left hand column. Thanks.

blogspeak

Bush buck passing

In Southern Iraq, the Shia "Pope"--al Talibani--is demanding popular elections instead of the local caucuses that the US has decided will choose the members of the group that will draft the constitution and proceed to "democracy." He has threatened violence if his call is not heeded, and the US isn't heeding it, so far.

In the north, the Kurds are demanding autonomy, including control over Tikrit and its oil, while the US is demurring, deferring, hoping they can get the hell out of Iraq before the place catches fire--and hoping it won't catch fire until after the November election.

In the central Sunni section the US is hoping to suppress the populace enough to stifle dissent and insurgency until July 1, so that they can announce a relinquishment of political power, with trumpets and CNN coverage, while maintaining the hundred-plus thousands of soldiers on the outskirts of Baghdad to enforce US interests and prohibit anti-US activities.

We, Bush opponents, can only hope that one or all of Bush's plans goes awry, and that it does so far enough before the fall election to reveal what a fraud this invasion and occupation actually is.

Come to the party, NYT

Three months ago (so long ago that the post isn't still available in our archives), I pointed out the likely illegitimacy of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Administration's privatization of the nation's industries, as well as other acts it decreed in furtherance of "economic reform." There was a spate of analyses at the time, including a detailed essay by Naomi Klein, that questioned the legality, under international law, of such broad alterations of the laws of the occupied country, based on the provisions of the Geneva Convention, and otherwise founded in international law.

Now, finally, the NYT has seen the light. It has interviewed a handful of international lawyers and professors who agree with Naomi Klein and (I say this with all humility--not) me.
Soooo--Tribune Bremer has once again screwed up. Any deal the CPA makes now to attract outside investment in Iraq is subject, say these experts, to being rescinded by the duly constituted government of Iraq, should one come into existence.

Would you buy a car from this man? Would you invest your bucks in Iraq? Yeah, maybe, but not while the US is in charge. So much for Bush's plan of bringing economic prosperity to Iraq. Turns out they've got to do it themselves. It's the law.

It's jobs, stupid

December's numbers are out, and it's clear that whatever impact the tax cuts may have had on GDP and other features of the nation's economic picture, the employment figures reveal that jobs are in the toilet. Not just the pitiful number of jobs created, but the quality of jobs in terms of security and pay and benefits. We're talking about an economy that's adding temp positions and burger-flipping jobs in the stead of solid employment--full-time, responsible, vested and well paid. A large segment of the American workforce has become transient, migrant workers, and the rest of them have no jobs at all.

Yes, the GDP will get another blip-boost when hefty income tax refunds are mailed out to taxpayers, the result of the lower rate that was applied to the last several months of their wages. But that will translate, as did the one-time refunds in May, into retirement of their astounding personal debt or into a brief consumption bounce (of products made in China or Korea however).

And then? A dramatic downward slide of the jobs figures, and personal income figures, through the summer until the November election. And there's nothing Bush can do about it.

I can't wait.

The beat goes on and on and on

Iraqi police kill six protesters in southern Iraq. American troops shoot two Iraqi policemen by mistake. A taxi full of Iraqis is killed when the cab attempts to pass an Army convoy on the highway.

No wonder the Nazis didn't occupy southern France in World War Two. It's a pain in the ass killing all these people.

"There's always something..."

In the ensuing weeks (if not already) we'll understand that Bush's "immigration reform" proposal wasn't meant to ease the plight of immigrants but to massage Latino voters and provide cheap labor to agribusiness. His "moon, then Mars" announcement, already seen as a silly "hid the weenie" ruse (the weenie being all of his other failings), will turn out to be the first step in the use of the moon as a launching pad for weapons.

And now the formal announcement of POW status for Saddam Hussein. To protect his rights? Hardly. The significant protection might have been freedom from interrogation, but they've already had him in their grip, incommunicado, for a month, thereby either getting what they wanted from him or learned that they weren't going to.

No, my hunch is that such status is solely for the US to retain control over his prosecution so that his defense can't raise at his trial those nasty tidbits of US's manipulation of his regime over the last two decades.

Apparently, the Iraqi Governing Council is miffed that the CPA didn't consult with them before making the POW determination, but it plans nevertheless to go forward with its trial of him this summer. I wouldn't be so sure they'll get their way. To be sure, the Bushies would like that ongoing drama during the pre-election period, but without US control? That could be dangerous, feeding out too much information about our cynically corrupt policies in the Middle East. I think, rather, the Iraqi trial will be postponed until after the 2004 election (as will Saddam's POW-War Crimes Trial), or the Iraqi trial will be somehow controlled by the US to avoid embarrassing Bush during the pre-election period.

[Update: The Iraqis react to the US announcement of Saddam's POW status. They're onto Bush.]

POW

Depending on who's spinning him, Saddam may or may not be a POW. Wait! I see a screenplay fermenting here. Saddam could play the Christopher Walken role in a ripoff of the Deer Hunter -- "The Yak Hunter." Soundtrack by Travis Tritt. Think we'd get sued? Bring 'em on.

I'm sold

I've been following, with some diligence, the Democrats' quest for the best candidate to beat Bush. I've now decided. It's Howard Dean.

Because I don't have a TV I haven't seen much of the candidates or their debates. But lately I've been tuning in on them through internet casts and I've gotta tell ya, Dean's smart, eloquent and, most important, direct and forceful in his ideas and his presentation of them. In short, he "tells it like it is" and that, to me, counts for everything.

I was treasurer of Bobby Kennedy's campaign in Southern Arizona in 1968--the campaign was brief, of course, because the vote followed California's by only a few weeks--and felt the same surge of energy then as floods me when I hear Dean speak. Now, Arianna explains why.

Call me irrepressible, I'm now a fan, a Deanfanatic.

Summertime, summertime

It just occured to me that the slumping dollar could mean that Europeans will be attracted to the United States in droves this summer, because of the favorable exchange rate of their currency to ours. Think of it: Compared to last summer, a hundred euros will buy a night at a $130 motel instead of an $80 one. The tourist influx could spark our economy bigtime.

Too bad it will take them all summer just to gain admittance past the sniffing dogs, the fingerprinters and the rectal probers.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but...

I'm confused. All I've ever heard from the US press, including dispatches from the Pentagon, was that Saddam was captured as a product of glorious US intelligence--and, I recall, that the $25 million reward wasn't going to be disbursed for some undisclosed reason. I also remember murmurs of a leading role played by the Kurds in the capture. I believe there was a mention that Saddam was, or appeared to be, drugged when he was dug out of his hole.

Now there's this report, muddled as it is. Do we have another Jessica Lynch story/fiasco in the making? Maybe so. Check out these posts.

And then there's this

The briefest, clearest exposition of the Bush Administration's attack on the "lock box" of Social Security to fund its deficit spending. Scary, scary. And the main reason I decided to start taking my social security benefits early.

More about the Labor Department report

Not only did the December report show an anemic gain in jobs (1,000), it also revised downward the previous month's job growth, from 57,000 to 43,000. (Bear in mind that Bush told us in April 2003 that his tax cuts would cause the creation of 306,000 new jobs per month!).

So over the last two months of "recovery" we've gained a total of 44,000 jobs, far below the number of new entrants into the labor force by reason of our population growth. We are therefore suffering a steep net loss in the ratio of jobs to workers, not gaining at all. And yet the unemployment rate declined to 5.7%, showing how inaccurate that measurement truly is. The sites I linked to below show this, as does the exlanation that the Whisky Bar provides here.

To add insult to insult, the jobs that are being created aren't in the lucrative fields of high-tech and manufactuing, which are showing net losses each month, but in the service sectors (food delivery and such) and in temporary jobs, both of which are notoriously low paying and insecure.

As a result of this report, the analysts predict that the Fed will leave interest rates at their present record low level, to continue to spur the economy. But of course that will cause a further weakening of the dollar, which will inevitably drive up the price we have to pay for imports, such as Japanese cars and TV sets, so that US consumers will face higher prices with less money. But business will benefit because the weak dollar will open the export market to them since their dollar-priced products will be cheaper abroad. And now Bush, with his "immigration reform" notion, wants to re-institute the Bracero program, the evil system that Congress finally discontinued after years of allegations of enslavement of Latin Americans in back-breaking, physical toil.

If this isn't greed-driven exploitation of the masses in favor of corporate wealth, I don't know what is.

La la land

I've finally got it! The explanation for Bush's behavior. He's nuts! Wacko! 'Round the bend! He's goddam delusional.

Check out this news item:

"President Bush, speaking after [italics mine] a report showing an unexpectedly small gain of 1,000 U.S. non-farm jobs in December, said on Friday all signs pointed to strength in the U.S. economy. 'I'm optimistic,' Bush told a forum on small business. 'All of the signs in our economy are very strong.' Bush's comment was in sharp contrast with the Labor Department's report that said U.S. payrolls outside the farm sector grew a mere 1,000 in December, far less than the 130,000 projected by U.S. economists in a Reuters survey."

The Labor Department is part of Bush's cabinet, for God's sake! Doesn't he read its reports? (Well, we know he rarely reads the news, but don't his minions at least read them to him?)

And check out this article, refering to the same report:

"American employers hardly took on any new workers in December, a disappointing government report Friday said, indicating the economic recovery has yet to translate into sustained jobs growth. The unemployment rate fell to 5.7 percent, the lowest in over a year and down from 5.9 percent in November. But this was mainly because people dropped out of the work force....
"The poor report is a headache for President Bush as he seeks re-election in November with the economy -- specifically job creation -- expected to be a key issue in the campaign. But Bush, speaking to a small business forum, was upbeat, saying all economic signs were 'very strong'. He said the drop in the unemployment rate was a 'positive sign' of an improving economy.
"Economists disagreed. 'It's a shocker. The one ray of sunshine, the decline in the unemployment rate, is ironically a sign of weakness,' said Cary Leahey, senior U.S. economist, Deutsche Bank Securities, New York. 'The only reason it declined is that fewer people were looking for jobs in December.'
"The dollar and stock market fell and U.S. Treasury bond prices rose after the report."

The other explanation is that Bush (and/or his minions) make an announcement--any announcement, regardless of its relationship to reality--to cover up, or cancel out, an unfavorable news item with a headline of their choosing. This makes sense, because Bush no doubt knew of the unfavorable Labor Department report before it was published and chose to make his "upbeat" remarks anyway.

It had the desired effect, too: The two items from AOL News that I refered to above, reporting the same news, carried these two headlines: "December Jobs report worse than expected" and "Bush says US economy 'very strong'." The result, given the level of readership, would be a non-news item, a cancelling out, just as Bush's handlers intended.

And so it goes, all the way to November.

[For accurate analyses of the "job creation" resulting from Bush's tax cut, check out this site.]

GW, there's bad news...and bad news.

The Carnegie Foundation for International Peace concludes the Bush Administration "systematically misrepresented" the evidence of the presence of WMD in Iraq. The US-dominated International Monetary Fund reports that the "US budget deficits threaten world economy." Thirty-four soldiers are wounded and one killed in a mortar attack, while nine more are killed in the crash of a Blackhawk helicopter. US soldiers scoff at the offered $10,000 re-enlistment bonus, while the Army issues "stop loss" orders to prevent existing troops from ending their enlistment periods.

To Bush, how distant must seem the refrain of Reagan's re-election slogan, "It's morning in America."

35 Personnel

Yahoo! News - Iraq Mortar Attack Wounds 35 U.S. Soldiers:

Well, insurgent personnel on the ground engaged 35 of our personnel with mortars. Translation: Angry people in Iraq hurt 35 of our guys with bombs. This brings two questions to my mind tonight. I'm tired, so I'll be brief.

Why didn't we send anyone along to Iraq who can speak to the media without sounding like a wind-up GI Joe? Personnel means a group of people working in a particular place, such as an office, and the department within a company concerned with them (e.g., Personnel Department). It is not interchangeable with the word people. ... "The building was searched and no weapons or personnel were found. Upon questioning, civilians in the area reported two dead personnel were taken to a nearby hospital." Translation: We searched the building we blew up, but didn't find any weapons or people. But their neighbors said they took two dead people to the hospital.

What in the wide world of sports are our troops doing in Iraq now? Searching for what or whom? Neutralizing what regime or WMD? None of the reasons that Mr. Bush and his flying monkeys cited for this war still exists, except bringing lovely democracy to the forlorn Iraq people. News flash: they don't want it, can't use it, thank you very much but scram.

Time to get out of Dodge, because no matter what reason they think they still have for our people being there, it's not worth human lives.

speak now

Behold! This blog now offers Comments functionality, thanks to an html class I once endured, and a site that offers the code for free. So now all our friends can join us in our intrepid ascent to the icy altitudes of free speech. "Bring 'em on."

Bursting the bubble

This article in the Christian Science Monitor about the myth of the populist stock market says it all: Capitalism is for people with capital. The rest of us are its victims.

Now for something completely different

I usually reserve non-political stuff for my other blog, but I thought the readers of All That Arises could use this. It's one of those stories that tends to restore one's faith in people.
Puppy receives a new home and mobility

An indigestible digression

I don't think about war/peace/politics all the time. For example, I found irresistible the list of requested menus of last meals of 301 Texas death-row prisoners, salvaged by The Memory Hole from the Texas Penitentiary website.

Go ahead, fellow ghoul, scroll down the list. What fascinated me: (1) Not a filet mignon to be found; (2) the prisoner who ordered only a jar of dill pickles (#235); (3) the prisoner who asked that his meal be given to a homeless person (#123); (4) the one who wanted the eucharist (#160); and (5) the one who asked for "justice, equality, world peace" (#209).

The list also shows the criminal history, complete with mugshot, of each prisoner. Are we seeing the origin of a new board game here?

Why didn't I think of that?

The Pentagon is contemplating adding another layer of military bureaucracy in Iraq: a four-star general on top of the mere three-star general who's presently in charge.

Never mind that the madness is the product of our warmongering ways. This additional star will fix it, no doubt.

Am I becoming a Libertarian?

I'm finding myself in startling agreement with Libertarian essays and satire. I've always (for four decades, anyway) been distrustful of government, more than most of my liberal friends, I believe. But now that the Farther Right is taking on Bush's monstrous-government mentality, I cannot help but agree with much of what their best pundits are writing. Take this piece on Stupid Vogue. Brilliant. And The Borowitz Report on a Bush plan to "catch-and-release" Saddam Hussein. ROTFLOL.

Krugman quoting Rubin quoting Mankiw

Okay, it's an obscure headline, but the NYT article isn't. Krugman, the Times' financial columnist, details a scholarly piece published over the weekend by Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary, which warns of an impending "crisis of confidence" in the American economy if Bush's profligate spending/unfair taxation policies aren't abandoned. Rubin, in turn, quotes a previous article by Gregory Mankiw, who's presently chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, to the same effect.

The synopsis of Krugman's essay is that, like other countries, notably Argentina, the US policies are headed toward such a disastrous climax--with no end in sight as Boomers begin to retire in four years--that other nations, as well as US citizens, will come to doubt the viability of the US economy, and when doubt sets in, look out. The effects of such loss of confidence in an economy as dominant as ours is unknown, but frightening--just as the effects of our present spending/income differential are unknown--and frightening.

Rubin's no left-wing nut, Krugman points out. As Clinton's Treasury Secretary he was Mr. Sharp-pencil, whose policies turned the economy around from its woeful state in the early 1990's.

If Rubin's worried, so should we be.

What's the problem?

Syria's president says he won't consider acceding to US demands that he account for and abandon all WMDs, unless Israel does so. They are bordering countries--Israel still occupies the Golan Heights, part of Syrian lands--and Israel is known to possess nuclear-weapon capability. Makes sense to me.

Not just 1984, 1987!

Forex, a foreign exchange reporting site, has this to say about the declining dollar:


"Recall that an orderly decline in the dollar turned ugly was the very backdrop in 1987. Only this time the US is the world's largest debtor nation, not a net creditor, which means the downturn could be worse as it requires $2 billion in foreign financing a day. In the near term US deficits may continue to be funded by Asian central banks, but it may eventually take a sharp rise in bond yields (wanted or not) to stop the dollar's decline."

I was in the stock market, and in real estate, in 1987. What a gross debacle on both counts. You couldn't give away a house or vacant lot, didn't dare put your money in the market or in an S&L. And this decline could spell worse? Ouch.

News - Army Forcing Troops to Stay in Harm's Way

This kind of makes one view those "Army of One" commercials in a different light. And it's a dandy way to boost morale.
Yahoo! News - Army Trying to Keep Troops From Leaving

Dropping dollar

Atrios, blogger of Eschaton, displays an illuminating chart of the daily decline of the value of the dollar against the euro.

Here's what it comes down to: Will the US be spared the effect of its profligate spending (against declining income) by other nations' forebearance from support? Will they fear the debacle the US is approaching sufficiently to keep from acknowledging it?

I'm sure it doesn't occur only to me that while we hold military hegemony over the other nations on the planet, we're handing them economic power over us. A new form of MAD--mutually assured destruction.

The "S" word

This guest editorial in a Seattle paper dares to explore the reason why Bush's popularity remains high, even though a factual investigation of his administration would cause outrage.

More good job news

As we know, "outsourcing" jobs to lesser-paid workers in foreign countries hasn't, for some time, been limited to sneaker-stitching child-labor sweatshops in Southeast Asia. Tech jobs are fleeing to India, factory jobs to China and Korea, all because of low pay and low-cost transport and communication. Now, however, some new twists that take advantage of the lower cost as well as other factors available in foreign lands:

Medical research, pathology and even billing is being outsourced abroad to utilize the time-change differential, thereby allowing constant activity, round-the-clock results without paying overtime. Accountancy too, and similarly time-sensitive occupations may find practitioners in foreign lands flooded with demand from American businesses as we become more dependent on speed in our culture and the communication revolution is able to deliver on a world-wide basis that which one could only obtain from the local business in the old days.

The finest irony? Bush's massive tax cuts, meant to stimulate the economy and create American jobs, will be calculated by a category of newly-outsourced foreign employees. You guessed it: Tax-return preparers.

Journalists Take Flak in Iraq

Media people covering the war are being confronted by American troops, hassled, and their film erased or destroyed, according to this article in The Nation.

"Our journalists in Iraq have been shoved to the ground, pushed out of the way, told to leave the scene of explosions; we've had camera disks and videotapes confiscated, reporters detained," says an official of the Associated Press.

One good thing about Bush

He's given us plenty of delicious fodder for anti-administration ads. You can vote for your choice of the fifteen finalists but the decision is up to the judges, including Michael Moore.

Sinatra's tribute to Saddam

An entertaining collage of fifty years of Iraqi history, set to music. Enjoy.

Rebranding Bush

This article in the Guardian about the new Bush approach that appears to favor international diplomacy over war and multilateralism over cowboyism, contains this incisive (and appropriately cynical) comment:

"With elections 11 months away, Mr Bush does not want to be vulnerable to claims that he has presided over a warmongering strategy that has left Americans little safer than September 11 2001. His shift follows an established pattern in Washington of politicians moving to the centre during an election year."

Recall Bush's first campaign as the "compassionate conservative" and the "consensus builder"? It is the task of the opposition (among other Herculean ones) to make sure he doesn't get away with his rebranding now, because if he does and is reelected we face four years in which he has no incentive to do other than his worst, worse even than in his first four years, unimaginable as that is.

Happier New Year!

My take on 2003 in a nutshell.

Two thousand four has got to be better.

Iraqi police

This article in the Guardian describes the state of the Iraqi police force that the US has been training and recently deploying in Tikrit. To the US Commander's chagrin, the police often cover their faces on patrol to avoid identification; and are both poorly equipped and trained, occasionally firing at other Iraqi policemen by mistake.

"The good thing is they can't hit anything," remarked the US officer who's in charge of their training.

U.S. Not Worried About Dollar Drop

Whew. What a relief. Weakness is strength and Washington isn't worried. I should've guessed; the end of the major conflict wasn't the end of anything in particular, so why should weakness be weakness?