March 30, 2005

The Great Democracy Diversion

Diversion. It’s a tactical tool used to achieve a strategic goal. If diversion is employed with aggressive skill, it can be startlingly effective.

Okay, I’ll get right to the point.

While peddling democracy abroad, the Bush administration has been practicing just the opposite here where the stuff was invented. Dessent, which the administration applauds when it materializes in Lebanon or any of the former Soviet Bloc countries, is being aggressively stifled when citizens try it here.

Example: Yesterday White House thugs forcibly removed three individuals from one of President Bush's carefully choreographed “town meetings” on Social Security. Why? Did they disrupt the meeting? Nope. Did the Secret Service consider them a risk to the President? Nope.

The three were dragged from the meeting after an unidentified “Republican staffer” spotted a “No More Blood for Oil” bumper sticker on their car in the parking lot. A man in a blue suit told the three they had to leave and "in a physical, forcible way" escorted them out, refusing to explain why.

When the incident became a public embarrassment for the administration, White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, used the same excuse they used when the Swift Boat thugs went after Kerry – we didn’t do it, someone else did. He went on to claim, “The White House welcomes a variety of voices into events,” but does not welcome those who might disrupt the meeting or heckle the President.

God forbid someone should “heckle” an elected official in a free country.

I am certain if you asked the deposed leaders of Ukraine, or the current pro-Syrian Lebanese leaders how they feel, about those demonstrating against them the terms “disruptors” and “hecklers” would be the first pejoratives out of their mouths. (The Soviets used to call people who tried to exercise free speech “hooligans.”)

If the Denver incident were unique it would deserve little attention. But what happened in Denver is a pattern. People attending President Bush’s speeches have been dragged away for wearing tee shirts that were off the talking points. Others were dragged off for carrying protest signs.

(In North Korea everyone loves their Great Leader too. You won’t find any “Food Not Nukes” bumper stickers at his events either.)

The Bush administration has treated the public’s right to know with undisguised contempt. (Remember the secret Cheney Energy Task Force? Well, five years later, it’s still secret.) And, reversing the Clinton administration’s declassification process, this administration uses the “Classified” and “Secret” stamps as though they were Easter Seals. (More on this)

So, while grabbing attention pushing other nations to make their political systems “more transparent,” they blacked out the windows at the White House.

And, what grows in the dark?

Nothing wholesome, that’s for sure.

Nevertheless, little by little we begin to learn the reasons why this administration doesn’t want us to see in. For example, the way it treats suspected terrorists. While condemning other governments for failing to establish “a rule of law,” this administration violates our own rules of law.

Ever wonder why the Neo-cons are so eager to get people just like them on the federal bench? Because, until they are able to stack the courts, the courts will remain the last line of defense against Congressional and Executive branch abuse and overreaching.

To wit: Yesterday a federal judge yesterday barred the Bush administration from transferring detainees from the U.S. military prison camp in Cuba to the custody of foreign governments without first giving the prisoners a chance to defend themselves in court.
In his ruling yesterday, the judge said, "The government's assertion that they are merely 'relinquishing' custody of detainees whom the government is simply 'no longer interested in detaining' is disingenuous."

What was really going on here was an attempt to destroy evidence. After scooping up hundreds of suspected terrorist fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq, shoving them in a Gitmo cage for months, interrogating them without legal representation, denying them hearings or access to the tools to defend themselves, US law finally caught up with the administration.

The courts have repeated ruled that Americans simply can’t treat people this way. But why not, the administration whined?

Because, it’s the law, you neo-fascists, un-American bastards.

That’s why.

It became the law of our land because our founding fathers knew only too well how situational, flexible laws become the tools of choice of tyrants. So, they enshrined these principles into two contracts, the Constitution and Bill or Rights. And, they knew that, even when laws are applied care and due process, mistakes are made. Which is why juries were given two choices; guilty and innocent.

But this administration is on record as describing such highfalutin notions as having become “quaint” in our troubled times. But they forget – or choose to ignore -- that when these rules were established our nation was a fragile entity and its new leaders had every reason to eschew any civil right that might be used by enemies to kill the world’s first democracy in its crib. But they didn’t. Because they understood, as this administration apparently does not, that when it comes to democracy, you can’t be just a little bit pregnant.

The application of our “quaint” constitutional rights at Gitmo would have prevented hundreds of cases of unjust incarceration. And it’s that evidence this administration wanted to avoid getting out by shipping these detainees to dingy cells back in their home countries.

"They got the wrong guys at the wrong place," said Michael Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "These people were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured for no reason. So now the government wants to get rid of them, because they just can't justify what they've done."

Anyway, about Denver and the dozens of other the White House’s phony “town hall” meetings -- its time to call these little gatherings are – Soviet-style staged propaganda events. The audiences are a pack of pre-screened sycophants. The events are being filmed by phony government “journalists,” who edit and package their “reports,” and distribute them to the media under the guise of “news.” Propagandists are as propagandists do.

The mainstream media does not quite know what to do about all this. I suspect that, other than reporting on incidents like the one in Denver, which they did, there is little more they can do about it.

That leaves it up to the hecklers and disruptors. Maybe it will take nightly news footage of White House thugs dragging US citizens out of town hall meetings before Red State voters come to understand the kind of people they put into office.

If I were a leader of one of those countries Bush is lecturing on how they must establish and maintain the rule of law, I would simply reply, “Okay big fella. You first.”

March 30, 2005

The Great Democracy Diversion

Diversion. It’s a tactical tool used to achieve a strategic goal. If diversion is employed with aggressive skill, it can be startlingly effective.

Okay, I’ll get right to the point.

While peddling democracy abroad, the Bush administration has been practicing just the opposite here where the stuff was invented. Dessent, which the administration applauds when it materializes in Lebanon or any of the former Soviet Bloc countries, is being aggressively stifled when citizens try it here.

Example: Yesterday White House thugs forcibly removed three individuals from one of President Bush's carefully choreographed “town meetings” on Social Security. Why? Did they disrupt the meeting? Nope. Did the Secret Service consider them a risk to the President? Nope.

The three were dragged from the meeting after an unidentified “Republican staffer” spotted a “No More Blood for Oil” bumper sticker on their car in the parking lot. A man in a blue suit told the three they had to leave and "in a physical, forcible way" escorted them out, refusing to explain why.

When the incident became a public embarrassment for the administration, White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, used the same excuse they used when the Swift Boat thugs went after Kerry – we didn’t do it, someone else did. He went on to claim, “The White House welcomes a variety of voices into events,” but does not welcome those who might disrupt the meeting or heckle the President.

God forbid someone should “heckle” an elected official in a free country.

I am certain if you asked the deposed leaders of Ukraine, or the current pro-Syrian Lebanese leaders how they feel, about those demonstrating against them the terms “disruptors” and “hecklers” would be the first pejoratives out of their mouths. (The Soviets used to call people who tried to exercise free speech “hooligans.”)

If the Denver incident were unique it would deserve little attention. But what happened in Denver is a pattern. People attending President Bush’s speeches have been dragged away for wearing tee shirts that were off the talking points. Others were dragged off for carrying protest signs.

(In North Korea everyone loves their Great Leader too. You won’t find any “Food Not Nukes” bumper stickers at his events either.)

The Bush administration has treated the public’s right to know with undisguised contempt. (Remember the secret Cheney Energy Task Force? Well, five years later, it’s still secret.) And, reversing the Clinton administration’s declassification process, this administration uses the “Classified” and “Secret” stamps as though they were Easter Seals. (More on this)

So, while grabbing attention pushing other nations to make their political systems “more transparent,” they blacked out the windows at the White House.

And, what grows in the dark?

Nothing wholesome, that’s for sure.

Nevertheless, little by little we begin to learn the reasons why this administration doesn’t want us to see in. For example, the way it treats suspected terrorists. While condemning other governments for failing to establish “a rule of law,” this administration violates our own rules of law.

Ever wonder why the Neo-cons are so eager to get people just like them on the federal bench? Because, until they are able to stack the courts, the courts will remain the last line of defense against Congressional and Executive branch abuse and overreaching.

To wit: Yesterday a federal judge yesterday barred the Bush administration from transferring detainees from the U.S. military prison camp in Cuba to the custody of foreign governments without first giving the prisoners a chance to defend themselves in court.
In his ruling yesterday, the judge said, "The government's assertion that they are merely 'relinquishing' custody of detainees whom the government is simply 'no longer interested in detaining' is disingenuous."

What was really going on here was an attempt to destroy evidence. After scooping up hundreds of suspected terrorist fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq, shoving them in a Gitmo cage for months, interrogating them without legal representation, denying them hearings or access to the tools to defend themselves, US law finally caught up with the administration.

The courts have repeated ruled that Americans simply can’t treat people this way. But why not, the administration whined?

Because, it’s the law, you neo-fascists, un-American bastards.

That’s why.

It became the law of our land because our founding fathers knew only too well how situational, flexible laws become the tools of choice of tyrants. So, they enshrined these principles into two contracts, the Constitution and Bill or Rights. And, they knew that, even when laws are applied care and due process, mistakes are made. Which is why juries were given two choices; guilty and innocent.

But this administration is on record as describing such highfalutin notions as having become “quaint” in our troubled times. But they forget – or choose to ignore -- that when these rules were established our nation was a fragile entity and its new leaders had every reason to eschew any civil right that might be used by enemies to kill the world’s first democracy in its crib. But they didn’t. Because they understood, as this administration apparently does not, that when it comes to democracy, you can’t be just a little bit pregnant.

The application of our “quaint” constitutional rights at Gitmo would have prevented hundreds of cases of unjust incarceration. And it’s that evidence this administration wanted to avoid getting out by shipping these detainees to dingy cells back in their home countries.

"They got the wrong guys at the wrong place," said Michael Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "These people were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured for no reason. So now the government wants to get rid of them, because they just can't justify what they've done."

Anyway, about Denver and the dozens of other the White House’s phony “town hall” meetings -- its time to call these little gatherings are – Soviet-style staged propaganda events. The audiences are a pack of pre-screened sycophants. The events are being filmed by phony government “journalists,” who edit and package their “reports,” and distribute them to the media under the guise of “news.” Propagandists are as propagandists do.

The mainstream media does not quite know what to do about all this. I suspect that, other than reporting on incidents like the one in Denver, which they did, there is little more they can do about it.

That leaves it up to the hecklers and disruptors. Maybe it will take nightly news footage of White House thugs dragging US citizens out of town hall meetings before Red State voters come to understand the kind of people they put into office.

If I were a leader of one of those countries Bush is lecturing on how they must establish and maintain the rule of law, I would simply reply, “Okay big fella. You first.”

March 29, 2005

First This Just in From Vulture Watch
What circus would be complete without an appearance by Rev. Jesse Jackson? And so it has come to pass. The most reverend wife-cheatin’ financial shakedown artist appeared at the Shiavo bedside this morning to, he told assembled cameras, “bear Christian witness.” Randall Terry arrived earlier. And then today Jesse Jackson.

You know death is near when the vultures come to roost.

CIA: Jackass or Sacrificial Lamb?
Okay, let’s get this straight once and for all.. the President didn’t lie about WMD. He was just misinformed. But that begged the question, by whom? Someone had to take the fall.

Well, it took a while to get to the bottom of it, but now we know. The final report of a presidential commission on American intelligence failures arrived on Capitol Hill yesterday and it hangs the entire blame on the CIA under the now long-gone George Tenet. Yes, the same George Tenet President Bush awarded the civilian equivalent of the Medal of Honor to a couple of months ago.

Meanwhile the presidential commission had nothing but a “hearty commendation” for Don Rumsfeld’s Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Bush administration hopes this report will put the whole lying about WMD issue to rest. But, inquiring minds now want to know this: Why, if the CIA got it all wrong and misled the President, and the DIA was doing such a great job, the DIA/Rumsfeld didn’t warn the White House that the CIA/Tenet had the facts wrong? Curious, huh?

Well, let's see if we can figure it out. Maybe the DIA didn’t know that the CIA was getting it wrong? But, if that's so, then the DIA wasn’t doing a great job after all. Okay, could it be, that the CIA’s bogus WMD intel was left to stand because it served other Rumsfeld/DIA/administration purposes? Or maybe when the shit hit the fan Tenet/CIA voluntarily took a dive for the administration by accepting the blame in return for a wink, a nod and shinny medal?

Some future historian will surely eventually sort it all out. Until then, feel free and pick the reason that makes the most sense to you. Chances are excellent you'll be right.

Wonderfully Strange Bedfellows
I love stories like this because they come right out of nowhere. Just when you think there is not hope left, hope appears in the strangest places. And, I never saw it coming.

A letter arrived at the White House today signed by 26 former US national-security officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations. The letter called pleaded with President Bush to support a $1 billion initiative to curtail U.S. consumption of oil and to back measures that would price oil in a way that accurately reflects its real cost to our economy.

“The price at the pump is not all we’re paying,” said Robert McFarlane. “We are also paying $400 billion a year for a defense budget,” much of which he noted is because of the growing cost of providing security for oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia. McFarlane was Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor.

The letter was organized by the Energy Future Coalition a bipartisan group working to reduce US dependence on oil. While it is not surprising to find liberals signatures on the letter, some of the names are truly startling – and encouraging; Ultra-conservatives like Frank Gaffney and C. Boydon Gray for example. Holy brain twister, what’s going on?

Well it’s pretty simple actually. Liberals have long worried about our burning fossil fuels is ruining the environment. But conservatives were unimpressed and instead worried that energy conservation would ruin business. Stalemate.

Then came 9/11, which besides, killing 3000 people, also put a serious kibosh on business. Overnight conservatives realized that our ever-growing dependence on imported oil was a sword just hanging over their bottom lines.

Voila! Suddenly both environmentalists and business folk agreed that we must kick the oil habit.

“I do think there is common ground,” said “There is now a critical mass of national-security-minded people coming together to make the argument that this is no longer something we do at some point. (Reducing U.S. oil consumption) is no longer a nice thing to do. It’s imperative.” (Conservative national security consultant Frank Gaffney)

Welcome aboard fellas! (Please take off your wingtips though. They mark up the deck.)

Another Surprise
Here’s one more story that will lift your spirits and renew your faith in our democracy.

Pro-business conservatives just love to brag how we are moving towards President Bush’s vision of an “ownership society.” The proof, they say, is the huge number of ordinary working Americans who, thanks to their 401Ks, now own stakes in corporate America.

Ah yes, but there was a flaw in their plan, a wrinkle they had not planned on when they got that ball rolling. Owning shares in a corporation means a person also has voting rights. Corporate democracy… damn, they never saw it coming.

But come it has and as “ordinary” American shareholders are increasingly exercising those voting rights. And conservatives are discovering that “ordinary” folks don’t necessarily see the corporation’s place in the world the same way they do.

Example: Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that the SEC has ruled that ExxonMobil Corp. must allow a vote on two shareholder-sponsored resolutions. The two measures demand that the oil company explain to shareholders exactly it’s position on global warming and what it plans to do to comply with the provisions of the Kyoto treaty which mandates cuts in global-warming emissions.

The SEC ruling comes after years of legal wrangling by shareholders.

The action by Exxon’s pro-environment shareholders would force the company to come clean – no pun intended – on what it’s own scientists are telling management about global warming. No wonder the company didn't want to comply. The shareholder action smacks of actions that forced tobacco companies to come clean about what they knew and when they knew it on the dangers of smoking.

“The SEC staff’s decisions show how prickly an issue global warming is becoming for the oil industry. Earlier this month ChevronTexaco Corp. and several smaller U.S. oil companies that faced similar global-warming related shareholder resolutions got shareholders to withdraw these measures after the companies agreed to take more action on environmental issues.” (WSJ)

All we need now is a Congressional hearing in which oil company CEOs swear under oath that they believe burning is not causing global warming.

Yikes.. More Good News
I can’t handle this much good news in a single morning. I will have to lay down with a cold cloth on my forehead when I finish here.

Another letter, this one signed by 59 former American diplomats, has been sent urging the Senate to reject John R. Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"He is the wrong man for this position," they said in a letter to Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We urge you to reject that nomination," the former diplomats wrote.

And, as with the letter signed by former National Security Advisors, the anti-Bolton letter was signed by diplomats who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. They include Arthur A. Hartman, ambassador to France and the Soviet Union under Presidents Carter and Reagan and assistant secretary of state for European affairs under President Nixon, James F. Leonard, deputy ambassador to the U.N. in the Ford and Carter administrations; Princeton N. Lyman, ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria under Presidents Reagan, George H. Bush.

In their missive, the former diplomats listed the numerous international treaties Bolton opposed and claimed he made "unsubstantiated claims" that Cuba and Syria were working on biological weapons. And, not incidentally, they pointed out that at this sensitive moment in the relationship between China and Taiwan, was it really wise to appoint a man who had been on Taiwan’s payroll as a consultant and supported recognition of Taiwan’s independence from China?

Bolton, they noted, had also been an outspoken opponent of the U.N.

"Given these past actions and statements, John R. Bolton cannot be an effective promoter of the U.S. national interest at the U.N.," the former diplomats concluded. "We urge you to oppose his nomination."

Hope Springs Eternal
Could it be that the worm has finally turned? That our Neo-con nightmare is approaching an end? There would seem to be some hope that this is so.

The stories above show support within the GOP’s corporate and pro-business constituency splintering into two groups: stubborn nuts and realists.

In Congress Tom DeLay appears to be losing his grip on power as the accumulated stink of his personal and professional sleaze offends even those Republicans he helped get elected.
Finally this week we saw Red State GOP voters shifting nervously in their BarkOLoungers as they watched on TV the GOP’s fundamentalist Christian wing engage in a full-scale, praisin’ the lord, crucifix waving wingding over the Terri Shiavo matter. It was unsettling.

They suddenly had images of Randall Terry-whackos loudly witnessing at the foot of their own deathbeds. Suddenly they weren’t so sure they wanted to be foot soldiers in the GOP’s Christian Crusades after all. And some went AWOL. Will more follow?

I believe so, and this is why. Tip O’Neil used to say, “all politics is local.” I think he was off a bit. Politics is local when you are talking about passing bonds to fund local schools or fire stations.

But, when you start talking about genuine homeland security, the degradation of our life-supporting environment and matters involving sex, marriage and death, politics get personal -- very personal.

And that’s what we see happening. Individual voters asking themselves if this is the kind of world they really want to live in.

March 29, 2005

First This Just in From Vulture Watch
What circus would be complete without an appearance by Rev. Jesse Jackson? And so it has come to pass. The most reverend wife-cheatin’ financial shakedown artist appeared at the Shiavo bedside this morning to, he told assembled cameras, “bear Christian witness.” Randall Terry arrived earlier. And then today Jesse Jackson.

You know death is near when the vultures come to roost.

CIA: Jackass or Sacrificial Lamb?
Okay, let’s get this straight once and for all.. the President didn’t lie about WMD. He was just misinformed. But that begged the question, by whom? Someone had to take the fall.

Well, it took a while to get to the bottom of it, but now we know. The final report of a presidential commission on American intelligence failures arrived on Capitol Hill yesterday and it hangs the entire blame on the CIA under the now long-gone George Tenet. Yes, the same George Tenet President Bush awarded the civilian equivalent of the Medal of Honor to a couple of months ago.

Meanwhile the presidential commission had nothing but a “hearty commendation” for Don Rumsfeld’s Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Bush administration hopes this report will put the whole lying about WMD issue to rest. But, inquiring minds now want to know this: Why, if the CIA got it all wrong and misled the President, and the DIA was doing such a great job, the DIA/Rumsfeld didn’t warn the White House that the CIA/Tenet had the facts wrong? Curious, huh?

Well, let's see if we can figure it out. Maybe the DIA didn’t know that the CIA was getting it wrong? But, if that's so, then the DIA wasn’t doing a great job after all. Okay, could it be, that the CIA’s bogus WMD intel was left to stand because it served other Rumsfeld/DIA/administration purposes? Or maybe when the shit hit the fan Tenet/CIA voluntarily took a dive for the administration by accepting the blame in return for a wink, a nod and shinny medal?

Some future historian will surely eventually sort it all out. Until then, feel free and pick the reason that makes the most sense to you. Chances are excellent you'll be right.

Wonderfully Strange Bedfellows
I love stories like this because they come right out of nowhere. Just when you think there is not hope left, hope appears in the strangest places. And, I never saw it coming.

A letter arrived at the White House today signed by 26 former US national-security officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations. The letter called pleaded with President Bush to support a $1 billion initiative to curtail U.S. consumption of oil and to back measures that would price oil in a way that accurately reflects its real cost to our economy.

“The price at the pump is not all we’re paying,” said Robert McFarlane. “We are also paying $400 billion a year for a defense budget,” much of which he noted is because of the growing cost of providing security for oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia. McFarlane was Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor.

The letter was organized by the Energy Future Coalition a bipartisan group working to reduce US dependence on oil. While it is not surprising to find liberals signatures on the letter, some of the names are truly startling – and encouraging; Ultra-conservatives like Frank Gaffney and C. Boydon Gray for example. Holy brain twister, what’s going on?

Well it’s pretty simple actually. Liberals have long worried about our burning fossil fuels is ruining the environment. But conservatives were unimpressed and instead worried that energy conservation would ruin business. Stalemate.

Then came 9/11, which besides, killing 3000 people, also put a serious kibosh on business. Overnight conservatives realized that our ever-growing dependence on imported oil was a sword just hanging over their bottom lines.

Voila! Suddenly both environmentalists and business folk agreed that we must kick the oil habit.

“I do think there is common ground,” said “There is now a critical mass of national-security-minded people coming together to make the argument that this is no longer something we do at some point. (Reducing U.S. oil consumption) is no longer a nice thing to do. It’s imperative.” (Conservative national security consultant Frank Gaffney)

Welcome aboard fellas! (Please take off your wingtips though. They mark up the deck.)

Another Surprise
Here’s one more story that will lift your spirits and renew your faith in our democracy.

Pro-business conservatives just love to brag how we are moving towards President Bush’s vision of an “ownership society.” The proof, they say, is the huge number of ordinary working Americans who, thanks to their 401Ks, now own stakes in corporate America.

Ah yes, but there was a flaw in their plan, a wrinkle they had not planned on when they got that ball rolling. Owning shares in a corporation means a person also has voting rights. Corporate democracy… damn, they never saw it coming.

But come it has and as “ordinary” American shareholders are increasingly exercising those voting rights. And conservatives are discovering that “ordinary” folks don’t necessarily see the corporation’s place in the world the same way they do.

Example: Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that the SEC has ruled that ExxonMobil Corp. must allow a vote on two shareholder-sponsored resolutions. The two measures demand that the oil company explain to shareholders exactly it’s position on global warming and what it plans to do to comply with the provisions of the Kyoto treaty which mandates cuts in global-warming emissions.

The SEC ruling comes after years of legal wrangling by shareholders.

The action by Exxon’s pro-environment shareholders would force the company to come clean – no pun intended – on what it’s own scientists are telling management about global warming. No wonder the company didn't want to comply. The shareholder action smacks of actions that forced tobacco companies to come clean about what they knew and when they knew it on the dangers of smoking.

“The SEC staff’s decisions show how prickly an issue global warming is becoming for the oil industry. Earlier this month ChevronTexaco Corp. and several smaller U.S. oil companies that faced similar global-warming related shareholder resolutions got shareholders to withdraw these measures after the companies agreed to take more action on environmental issues.” (WSJ)

All we need now is a Congressional hearing in which oil company CEOs swear under oath that they believe burning is not causing global warming.

Yikes.. More Good News
I can’t handle this much good news in a single morning. I will have to lay down with a cold cloth on my forehead when I finish here.

Another letter, this one signed by 59 former American diplomats, has been sent urging the Senate to reject John R. Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"He is the wrong man for this position," they said in a letter to Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We urge you to reject that nomination," the former diplomats wrote.

And, as with the letter signed by former National Security Advisors, the anti-Bolton letter was signed by diplomats who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. They include Arthur A. Hartman, ambassador to France and the Soviet Union under Presidents Carter and Reagan and assistant secretary of state for European affairs under President Nixon, James F. Leonard, deputy ambassador to the U.N. in the Ford and Carter administrations; Princeton N. Lyman, ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria under Presidents Reagan, George H. Bush.

In their missive, the former diplomats listed the numerous international treaties Bolton opposed and claimed he made "unsubstantiated claims" that Cuba and Syria were working on biological weapons. And, not incidentally, they pointed out that at this sensitive moment in the relationship between China and Taiwan, was it really wise to appoint a man who had been on Taiwan’s payroll as a consultant and supported recognition of Taiwan’s independence from China?

Bolton, they noted, had also been an outspoken opponent of the U.N.

"Given these past actions and statements, John R. Bolton cannot be an effective promoter of the U.S. national interest at the U.N.," the former diplomats concluded. "We urge you to oppose his nomination."

Hope Springs Eternal
Could it be that the worm has finally turned? That our Neo-con nightmare is approaching an end? There would seem to be some hope that this is so.

The stories above show support within the GOP’s corporate and pro-business constituency splintering into two groups: stubborn nuts and realists.

In Congress Tom DeLay appears to be losing his grip on power as the accumulated stink of his personal and professional sleaze offends even those Republicans he helped get elected.
Finally this week we saw Red State GOP voters shifting nervously in their BarkOLoungers as they watched on TV the GOP’s fundamentalist Christian wing engage in a full-scale, praisin’ the lord, crucifix waving wingding over the Terri Shiavo matter. It was unsettling.

They suddenly had images of Randall Terry-whackos loudly witnessing at the foot of their own deathbeds. Suddenly they weren’t so sure they wanted to be foot soldiers in the GOP’s Christian Crusades after all. And some went AWOL. Will more follow?

I believe so, and this is why. Tip O’Neil used to say, “all politics is local.” I think he was off a bit. Politics is local when you are talking about passing bonds to fund local schools or fire stations.

But, when you start talking about genuine homeland security, the degradation of our life-supporting environment and matters involving sex, marriage and death, politics get personal -- very personal.

And that’s what we see happening. Individual voters asking themselves if this is the kind of world they really want to live in.

March 26, 2005

March 25-27, 2005

Weekend Edition

America’s Christian fundamentalists have been on quite a roll. But that roll may be coming to an end, and for predictable reasons.

The trouble with fundamentalists, be they political, ideological or religious, is they can never be satisfied. It’s purity, not piecemeal reform that drives them. Purity, being just another word for “perfection,” cannot of course be attained. So, a fundamentalist’s work is never done.

That fact argues against even trying to engage fundamentalists in the political process. Tthey are simply not interested in compromise or even coexistence, but an unattainable image of divine perfection.

So they tend to wear on the fabric of any society of which they are a part. That’s how the Puritans ended up in the New World. (Lucky us) They finally wore out their welcome and got their neverendingly obnoxious butts tossed out. Unfortunately there are no more New Worlds where we can send their Christian Right progeny. We’re stuck with them.

But, unlike the Old World, the modern world is wired, and that may be our salvation, so to speak. In the Puritan’s day knowledge, information and education were scarce commodities. Today they are just plain commodities. We are up to necks in the stuff. That’s a very good thing for society, and a bad thing for fundamentalists.

Example -- stem cell research. The right to lifers saw the issue of fetal stem cell research as a useful lever in their anti-abortion crusade. If they could get the government to agree with them that a fertilized egg in a petri dish was a human being, then what’s a fertilized egg in a woman’s uterus?

And, of course, the Bush administration was happy to accommodate them. For Republicans the stem cell issue appeared to be a cheap and easy way to throw a bone to their religious right supporters without paying a political price from pro-choice voters.

And, it looked like the ploy had worked because back then, who knew?. The general public had only sketchy information about stem cells. In particular they did not understand what an empty jesture it was when President Bush, announced he was going to allow research on existing stem cell “lines,” but not the creation of new lines. Turns out that was worse than empty jesture.

Since then the public has learned more about stem cell research. Liberals and conservatives alike have learned that those existing lines Bush touted were old, contaminated by years of research and virtually useless for the kind or groundbreaking research scientists wanted to do.

And voters also learned more about the various of deseases scientists believe stem cells might be able to treat or even cure. Millions of American families have loved ones suffering from those very diseases, many of them “pro-life” families. They started to ask themselves how they could be pro-life and pppose life-saving anti-stem cell research. How they could fight for the rights for an unborn human but let full-term humans die of diseases that might be cured by stem cell treatments.

Earlier this year California voters broke with the Bush administration by passing a taxpayer-funded bond that not only encourages stem cell research but subsidizes it.

The message was getting through to voters. The public was onto the Republicans stem cell gambit. The jig was up.

The most recent proof of that was in this morning's paper:

“The House leadership has agreed to allow a floor vote on a bill that would loosen the restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research imposed by President Bush in 2001, according to members of Congress and others privy to the arrangement. The vote, expected to take place within the next two to three months, would be the first of its kind on the politically charged topic since Bush declared much of the research off-limits to federal funding.” (Washington Post)

Last year almost half -- 206 members of the House, including 31 Republicans and many opposed to abortion -- signed letters begging Bush to reconsider his stem cell ban. A survey of 1,054 adults, conducted for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine found that more than two-thirds of Americans support stem cell research.

Nevertheless, the religious right will continue to fight it.

"I look forward to the opportunity to help defeat it," said Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of pro-life activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Then we can set aside this silly obsession and concentrate on things that are actually working for patients."

The difference is, this time they will lose. And there is an important lesson in that the religous right should try very hard to grasp. Whenever that successfuly foist their narrow fundamentalist beliefs on the rest of us, they create a backlash that will wipe away their gains.

For example, an actual ban on abortions would result in a steady drumbeat of tragic stories on the news -- women in tears and family doctors being led away in handcuffs and charged with felonies. Dr. Welby in stir.

Those pols foolish enough to have voted for an abortion ban would be unseated in the next election cycle. And the first order of business by their replacements would be to reverse the ban, and that would be the end of the abortion debate for generations, or forever.

The same goes for pther Christian fundamentalist demands such as prayer in public schools, religious statues on government property, and banning the teaching of evolution in schools.

Go ahead you guys, push for those things and win. I dare you.

Speaking of the stupefaction of America, did you hear this one?

IMAX theaters throughout the Bible belt are refusing to show the science documentary, "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea." The reason? Pressure from local fundamentalist Christian groups. They don’t like mention in the movie that DNA found in living cells around volcanic vents bear similarities to human cells.

“Folks around these parts don’t believe in evolution,” a South Carolina Christian minister explained. “They believe in creationism.”

Think about this for moment, because it proves my earlier point about the futility of trying to satisfy fundamentalists.

The IMAX documentary in question is not about evolution. It's about undersea volcanoes and the life forms that live around them. All the film did “wrong” was to mention that scientists found similarities between cells retrieved from the undersea vents and human cells.

So, you see, Christian fundamentalists are already moving the anti-science line further right. Now all a piece of science has to do to get banned is to discover anything that supports the theory of evolution. Never mind that no one has stepped forward to disprove this finding. True or not, our Christian Taliban will have no part of it.

( Ignorance is bliss. Don’t mess with our bliss. )

"A number of theaters said, `We're not taking the film literally for fear of the reaction of the audience," said Richard Lutz, a Rutgers University oceanographer who was chief scientist for the film.

Nothing is more frightening than ignorance -- except militant, arrogant, willful ignorance.

Nevertheless, this was actually a pretty good week for the forces of reason. Terri Schiavo’s body is finally being allowed to join the rest of her as she had wished. And those calculating, conniving Republicans in Congress have suddenly figured out that their fundamentalist Christian supporters maneuvered them onto the wrong sides of BOTH Schiavo and stem cell matters.


There is one thing though that apparently can change the mind of a fundamentalist – self-interest. As the Schiavo case proceeded even many Christian fundamentalists began to understand that the next Terri Schiavo could well be someone in their own family. And did they really want Tom DeLay chasing them around their loved one's deathbed with a feeding tube?

Remember Nancy “just say no” Reagan? She changed her views on fetal stem cell research only after fate forced her to watch powerlessly her own husband die a slow death from dementia. Do you believe for one second that she would have switched camps on stem cell research if Ronny had died become pro-stem cell research had Reagan instead died of a sudden heart attack? Forget about it. She would be out there with the right to lifers opposing such research right now. "Just say no,” became "please say yes” because the issue became personal.

So, fundamentalists make a fatal mistake when they fail to calculate the impact of their policies on the rest of us should they actually prevail -- that by winning they end up losing.

Oh, and one more thing fundamentalists don’t seem understand: NEVER present a politician with the choice of either saving their immortal soul or their job. They will ALWAYS choose the job.


Have a nice weekend.

March 25-27

They Kill Programs, Don't They?

Those who disagree with the Bush administration on various issues too often fail to look at the big picture. They need to stand back sometimes and ask themselves, “Are these various issues really connected?” And, “If the Bush folk were to get their way on all these issues, what kind of America would emerge?

Finally, “And is that the kind of America they are consciously working to create?"

Before I get on a roll I want to remind everyone that, if I have learned anything from too many years of reporting on Washington, it is this: no one in government is either smart enough or skilled enough to pull off a well-oiled conspiracy. To immediately assume that such a caper is afoot gives those in government far too much credit.

So, I can’t tell you, or myself, that the clear implication their actions noted below represent a carefully thought out plan or just stupidity. What I can say with some degree of certainty though, is where these policies are taking us.

Social Security “reform,” Medicare, Medicaid – Let’s take them one at a time.

Yesterday two independent trustees overseeing Social Security and Medicare broke with the Bush administration's trustees yesterday, saying Medicare's financial problems far exceed Social Security's and in urgent need of attention.

This news comes on the heels of the Bush administration’s stated desire to cut Medicaid reimbursements to states by $60 billion, leaving states with no alternative but to cut medical services to the poor.

All this in country where, at any point in time, upwards of 45 million citizens cannot get or afford private health insurance. While President Bush works himself into a rhetorical lather over Social Security he has not uttered a word about the much larger and much more imminent crisis in Medicare.


My wife’s 95-year old mother has been in an out of the hospital recently. If it were not for Medicare she and the rest of our family would be broke by now. No ownership society for her, for us, or for our kids. And, with the new bankruptcy laws pushed through at the behest of the credit card industry, we would not even be able to find refuge in bankruptcy.

My mother-in-law is lucky. She can afford the $2500 year premium for supplemental medical insurance that pays whatever Medicare does not cover. But millions of old folks out there rely entirely on Medicare. She -- a millions like her -- would be in the poorhouse without Medicare....

Yet Bush only wants to talk about Social Security. Why?

I am left only to guess. So, here’s my best guess. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- Republicans have never liked any of these programs. To them they are socialist tumors growing within our capitalist body. They would like to end all of them and let the chips fall where they will within the private sector. All these services, they believe, could be more efficiently provided by the private sector. And, what about those human needs where there is no money to be made? Well, conservatives says, that’s where “faith-based” charities come in.

That’s what they believe. But, first they have wean us off these three commie programs. Just pulling the plug on them would make them look like ogres. So, they need to slip each one a poison pill under the guise of a cure.

Social Security is the healthiest of the three and able to survive well into the next century if nothing is done. But, if a hunk of the money needed to keep Social Security solvent could be diverted into private accounts the program’s demise can be hastened considerably. Besides, once small private accounts are approved it would be that much easier to raise the amount diverted in the years ahead until the Social Security Trust Fund looked like Ken Lay were it’s CFO. All that would be left then would be to put the program out of its misery.

So far, so good. Now what about Medicaid? Simple. Tighten up on reimbursements to the states. Under Medicaid the states pay half and the feds pay half. But, as fewer and fewer people can afford private health insurance, especially in poorer parts of the country, states have turned increasingly to Medicaid to cover the medical needs of its poor and working poor. In the process they have found increasingly creative ways of getting the feds to pay more of those bills. By tightening those loopholes the Bush administration would, in effect, remove the feeding tube to those state programs.

Killing Medicare requires only one thing… just ignore it. The program is already so close to financial collapse that all they need to do is nothing and it will go broke near the end of the next decade. RIP.

So, Bush’s big push for Social Security private accounts actually serves two purposes. The first I noted above, to starve the trust fund by diverting money into private accounts. The second is diversionary. While everyone else is spinning their wheels trying to kill Bush’s private accounts idea, no one has been paying attention to Medicare’s looming crisis.

If all three of these plans succeeds the next generation of Americans will live in a very different country than we have.

Conservatives honestly believe that anything government can do the private sector can do better, cheaper and more efficiently. In many cases that’s true. But not a shred of proof exists this is true when it comes to the things that don’t have a built in profit margin.

For those kinds of human needs, conservatives assure us, people of faith will step forward and care for our loved ones and us if we cannot pay for that care. That’s our part of the “faith-based” initiative – we just have to have faith some religious charity will step up to the plate for us if we every need it.

I have this vision of nearly dying and then awakening in clinic someplace and, there at the foot of my bed is Rev. Moon to assure me that he not only saved my life, but found me a new wife to boot.

Then there's the vision of four men in saffron robes standing over me with burning incense and chanting “hari, hari kristna, kristna, kristna…

What you laughing at sucker? Get on the phone or email and insist your member of Congress force Bush to fix Medicare and Medicaid right now.

Or else one of those scenarios may become your personal nightmare twenty years from now if you get sick and the hospital admittance clerk glares down on you asking, “and what’s in your wallet?”

By Stephen Pizzo

Raconteur at Large

March 24, 2005

Cluck Cluck Cluck… Heads Up
Chickens Coming Home to Roost.

At the darkest moments I find comfort in the sure knowledge that the universe always comes back into balance. Call it what you want, Karma, Yin/Yang, or comeuppance, but in all my 60 years I have never seen it fail.

Of course it takes a while sometimes, so the hard part is the waiting. Some of that waiting ended yesterday.

Oh yes people, the time arrived. Prepare to gloat.

Barry Bonds
Did you catch Barry Bonds doing his Michael Jackson routine yesterday? I love it when blowhard, lying, cheaters get smothered in their own web of deceit. Michael Jackson hoped that he was so famous that just denying he molests little boys would get everyone off his back so he could go back to molesting little boys.

Likewise Barry Bonds believed that just denying he took steroids would let him get back to the business of taking steroids and breaking records. And, for a while, it looked like he might pull it off. In fact Bonds must have been sure it was working when he was not among those called before Congress last week.

But those hearings have proved to be his undoing anyway. Anyone who watched the hearings had to know that no longer would the ball player’s union or management be able to shield cheating players. Bonds knew he was going to get tested, and regularly. He also knew that without steroids he could not come close to matching is previous performance. And that that, even more than being caught with a hypo in his ass-check, would tell the whole tale.

So, like Michael Jackson, Bonds got “hurt.” The same week we watched Jackson pulling the old “mom I’m sick, can I stay home from school today?” gambit in court, we see Bonds limping around on crutches.

Jackson blames the moneygrubbers and media for his troubles. Bonds blames the media for repeating rumors.

Before he was indicted Jackson used a child in a documentary to try to gain sympathy. Yesterday Bonds dragged his own kid in front of TV cameras while he whined that his kids were tired of crying. Well, could it be Barry that your kids are not crying about your steroid troubles but rather that that their mother just dumped daddy after discovering daddy had been keeping a girlfriend on the side? Could be.

Jackson’s career was over even before he got charged with child molestation because he just wasn’t that good any more.

Bond’s career is over now too because, without steroids, he can’t be that good any more.

Both men will go to their graves in denial. Both will blame everyone but themselves and their own cheatin’, lyin’, toxically self-indulgent behavior for their misery. And miserable they both shall be.

I found one move by Bonds yesterday particularly pathetic. After whining that the media had “gotten him,” he threatened to sit out the entire season. I was reminded of that wonderful scene in Mel Brook’s western movie satire, Blazing Saddles where the black sheriff, surrounded by a crowd of angry white town folk, pulls his gun, points it at his head and declares, “Okay, no one move or the n----r gets it.”

It was funny in the movie. Not so funny yesterday.


Republicans in Congress
The Terri Schiavo case was gut wrenching for those on both sides before Republicans in Congress decided to jump in and tie those guts into a few more knots.

Why did they do it? The Schiavo case was getting so much TV and press the conniving little bastards started to calculate like the little boy found digging in a pile of horse manure. Asked why he was digging so hard he said, “With this much manure there must be a pony in here someplace.”

With Republicans the pony they were sure was in there was the love, affection, money and votes of their Christian Right to Life supporters.

So, the same Congress that can’t seem to find the will to provide health insurance to nearly a third of Americans, or fund Medicaid and Medicare, tripped over themselves to pass legislation to save one brain-dead woman in Florida.

Oh, and they were in rare form… pontificating on the sanctity of life and all that. Never mind that on that very day a kid in Minnesota shot dead. They had nothing to offer there. And, if you asked them if they might at least rethink their refusal to renew the assault weapons ban, they would scoff that there was any connection, or contradiction.

No, they had work to do. There were crazy-people votes just laying out there to harvest among the same suckers who bought their “culture of life” shtick during the last campaign. This Schiavo story had real legs that would carry them through the next election cycle without having to do anything real. All they would have to do is put out mailers to their constituents telling how they voted to save Terri while their godless, liberal opponents tried to smother the poor girl with a hospital pillow.

And so they passed their law stripping the voiceless Schiavo of her state’s rights and slamming the heavy hand Uncle Sam down on her consciousless caucus.

Ah, but then the results started coming in, and that’s when the worms turned. Apparently those Right to Lifers out there started to think. Yes, this was an issue about “life,” but this was different than abortion. They could oppose abortion because, they figure, it’s always someone else’s abortion that’s being banned. But even Right to Lifers have family members who are going to die and this one could come home in a very personal way.

Then the poll numbers started rolling in. Poll after poll showed American’s were not only unimpressed by Congress’s grandstanding on Terri’s deathbed, but opposed it, even conservatives opposed it:

Who should decide? Americans are divided — 45 percent think it is the spouse's right to make such a decision, while 38 percent believe it is up to the family's wishes. Few believe the government (2 percent) or the patient's doctor (3 percent) should make the call. (FOX )

About seven in 10 Americans say Congress inappropriately intervened in the case of a brain-damaged woman whose relatives disagree over whether she should be allowed to die, according to a new poll. (CBS News )

So, expect to hear a lot of “mitigating” and back peddling among those who voted for that craven piece of legislation. It’s already begun. It should be quite entertaining to listen to the various ways those who voted for that despicable law, and the president who signed it, worm their way out of this fix.

Then this morning it got even better when this delicious story crossed my sights.

Someone snuck a tape recorder into a private meeting yesterday between House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and a group of right wing supporters. During the meeting DeLay referred to Terri Schiavo as “a gift from God to conservatives.” This from a man who angrily denies he is simply exploiting Terri’s misfortune to further the conservative cause.

Earlier in the week a memo surfaced traced back to DeLay’s office that celebrated the Schiavo affair as a political win/win for Republicans. When it went public Tom said he would fire the staffer who wrote the memo, if he could find the person. Like O.J.’s search for the real killer of his wife, DeLay’s suspect remains at large.

I have said for months that there is no “telling” fundamentalist conservatives anything. After all, they get their direction for a higher source, or so they believe. The only way to get through to them is to show them. Show them how, if they get their way, it will only blow right back onto them.

For example, the religious right says it wants to allow religious monuments on the Capitol lawn? Okay, then let the lawn party begin.. Buddha, Shiva, prayer stones to Allah…. Go ahead, turn the whole US and State capitol lawns into “It’s a Small Small World of Religion,” theme parks.

“Ah, well, that was not exactly what we had in mind,” the holier than thou will reply.

To which I say, “Yeah, I know. But that’s exactly what you’ll get.”

And that’s what happened in the Schiavo capper. Suddenly the Right to Lifers “get” this one. Because. the last thing a real conservative – or anyone else for that matter -- would want is a government official standing between them and a loved one during their final moments on earth.

But that’s what they’d get if the Tom DeLay’s of Congress get their way.

By Stephen Pizzo

Raconteur at Large

March 21, 2005

March 22: A day off for me. See you tomorrow.)

March 21, 2005

Better Dead than Fed?

“Republicans only care about you if you're brain dead or not born, but in between they don't give a shit. Why can't the Dems make this point?” (From friend and travel author, Michael Shapiro)

Terms like “beneath contempt,” and “low-life, shameless opportunists,” don’t even scratch the surface of my disgust at what Republicans did this weekend. It was so full of contradiction, political conniving and selfishness that it takes the breath out of me. Where to begin?

Well, with the Conniver-in-Chief I suppose, who dropped everything and flew back from his Crawford, Texas ranch to make damn sure his signing of the Schiavo bill got into the same news cycle as Congress’ passage of this diabolical piece of “legislation.”

President Bush said in a statement just after signing the bill at 1 a.m.:

"In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life. This presumption is especially critical for those like Terri Schiavo, who live at the mercy of others."

This from a man who, during his five years as governor of Texas, dropped the hammer on 131 death row prisoners. And, when asked about how he felt about that in 2000 Bush had no “substantial doubt.”

"I'm confident that every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts."

So do we now have two mortal humans who can never be wrong – the Pope and GWB? Not likely. Cold, hard statistics argue otherwise.

Since 1975 defense groups have won acquittals for 120 death row inmates around the country, almost all of the over the objections of state prosecutors and various State governors who were determined to kill them ASAP.

Therefore it’s virtually a statistical certainty that Gov. GW Bush executed some number of innocent people --- individuals who, unlike Shiavo, had fully intact and functioning cerebral cortexes.

George W. Bush and his Christian fundamentalist supporters also worry themselves into lather over the fate of three-cell embryos in Petri dishes yet can see no contradiction in their support for the death penalty. These pious folk will be quick to explain that there is a big difference; the unborn human embryo is pure, innocent while those on death row are guilty of sinful crimes.

Whoa.. hold it right there your forgetfulness. What about Original Sin? That embryo, be it in a dish or a uterus, is filled with Original Sin and not in the clear until born AND baptized, or am I wrong about that? Has that rule changed? (Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we mix superstition and legislation.)

As for Republicans in Congress… gag me. There they were, the same hypocrites who, just a few short months ago, refused to renew the ban of assault weapons. Nevertheless, there they were speechifying how it was their moral responsibility to pass a law to save one brain-dead woman in Florida. Hey, what about all the non-brain-dead who are now brain AND body-dead because of our overly liberal gun laws?

(Guns? old news.. not important… must find FOX cameras…get into picture with the I-voted-to-have-Terri’s-feeding-tube-put-back-in members .…. Running for reelection next year… ummm.. culture of life, you know… where are those damn TV news cameras? Shit.. did I miss the goddamn photo op?”)

Then there’s Florida. I have a question for its governor, Jeb Bush. Jeb lead the fight in Florida for keeping Schiavo’s body alive.

Yo! Jeb, before we talk about Terri, might you explain how a two-time registered sex offender, a man with over 24 convictions for various crimes was, first, out of jail to begin with, and second, able to move around your state unsupervised? How was he allowed to be in a position to kidnap, molest and murder a 9-year old neighborhood girl – who, BTW, also had a fully functioning cerebral cortex, at least until recently. Maybe you were too busy grandstanding in the Shiavo case to worry about such things. Well, now you have two dead girls on your hands bro.. a fully dead 9-year old who really didn’t want to die, and another one who wants to finish dying but who you let go. How do you sleep at night?

Jeb’s got some tall explaining to do on this one. The only question is whether the mainstream media will push the issue or give him another pass.

One more thing on Jeb-the-Compassionate. This is the same guy who sold his services as a lobbyist to a crooked Cuban businessman who bilked Medicare out of several hundred million dollars in the 1980’s. I wonder how many elderly Floridians suffered from lack of medical services because of that little affair? (You can read about here)


Another argument the Christian Right is using is that starving a person like Schiavo to death is cruel. On this we agree. But here too the hypocrisy is stupefying. The Right to Lifers making this charge are the very same bunch that has consistently blocked doctors from smoothing the way to death for the terminally ill and brain dead patients like Schiavo. This sad tale would have been over years ago if a doctor could have safely administered a merciful IV full of morphine to poor Terri’s lingering chassis.

As the so-called Right-to-Lifers pontificate about the Shiavo case in the days (weeks, months) ahead, the mainstream media will have many opportunities to probe them on the above contradictions. But will they? Don’t bet on it. Media folk are deathly afraid of being painted as “anti-religion.” Being hostile to Christian dogma is now what it was like to be painted a “Pinko” or “Commie” in the 1950s. If a newsperson should get caught on the wrong side of this issue he or she is sent off to reeducation camp (.. now euphemistically called “sensitivity training.) in a flash.

The Schiavo fiasco is just another indication of the power of intimidation the Christian Right now has within the Republican Party. What amazes me is that how it has completely swamped the Republican Party’s traditional “government-should-keep-its-grubby-hands-out-of-our-private-lives” platform. The party of fiscal responsibility, state rights and small government has been transformed before our very eyes into the party of reckless deficits, diminishing state rights and a level of government intrusion into private lives only an old KGB agent could love.

Of all people Republicans themselves should feel the hair rise on the back of their necks as they listen to their leaders grandstand the Schiavo issue. Because it can only be a matter of time and fate before Tom DeLay and his gang of unholy-rollers jackboot their way into the middle of a family crisis near you.

By Stephen Pizzo

Raconteur at Large

March 20, 2005

Politics of Envy - Say They

Republicans are remarkably skilled in the art of what I call, “Issue Jujitsu;" turning the entire force of a Democrat issue back against Democrats. And the GOP is at the very peak of its Issue Jujitsu game whenever Democrats try to make hay off statistics that prove a massive redistribution of wealth upward has occurred since Bush took office.

Whenever Democrats rant about the ever widening wealth gap Republicans Jujitsu it right back at them, accusing Democrats of engaging in “class warfare,” and “the politics of envy.”

Just how much longer Republicans will be able to get away with this remains to be seen. But so far, so good -- for the wealthy very, very good.

How good? Evidence pops up from time to time revealing what the already-rich beneficiaries of Bush’s tax cuts are really doing with their windfall. Bush assured us they would invest their tax savings and create jobs. That didn’t happen. So, where did all that moola go?

The Wall Street Journal carried a section advertising the hottest new trend in being rich – “Destination Clubs.” A couple of months ago I reported that wealthy travelers, flush with cash and expanding appetites, had sparked “star inflation,” forcing already posh Five Star hotels and resorts to add an even more indulgent Sixth Star level of service.

But hey, if you have dough to burn, why stay with a bunch of other full-of-themselves nuevo-rich? Why not have your own private villas? Sweet.

The rich are flocking to posh Destination Clubs.. luxurious multi-million dollar villas scattered around the world. Think of Destinations Clubs as very high-end timeshares. Members pay an initial membership fee plus an annual membership fee.

Want to join? You better have a bucket of dough. Here is a sampler:

Membership Fee Annual Fee
Abercrombie & Kent $475,000.00 $14,750.00
Exclusive Resorts $375,000.00 $25,000.00
Solstice $675,000.00 $35,000.00
The Private Resort Club $275,000.00 $21,000.00

So, what’s in your wallet? Where will you be spending your tax cut this year?

Class warfare? You bet. And, guess who’s winning.

Compassionate Whaaaa?
At the same time President Bush is handing out vacation money to the wealthy he was trying to plug the hole those tax cuts would cause by cutting medical services to those who can’t afford medical care, much less a nice vacation.

Bush proposed $60 billion in Medicaid cuts by tightening up reinbbursements to states. Bush’s proposed cuts would leave states with no choice but to cut Medicaid services to the poor.

Republicans may have no shame when it comes to pandering to wealthy contributors, but they do understand that there are not enough wealthy voters to keep them in office. They realize it’s the “little folk” back in their home states -- the ones who consider a week in tent at a nearby lake a vacation – who can vote them out of office.

So yesterday Republican Senators took a mini-step away from Bush’s cuts, stripping $14 billion out of Bush’s proposed Medicaid cuts. Compassionate conservatives in action? Nah, just fear.

Right after that vote Republicans went straight back to being themselves, nearly doubling proposed new tax cuts from $70 billion to $134 billion.

And who gets the extra $64 billion in tax cuts? You guessed it. The Republican-sponsored measure repeals a 1993 tax increase on Social Security benefits paid to wealthy seniors.

So, let’s review what happened:

• First Republicans reduced Bush's Medicaid cuts from $60 billion to $46 billion.
  
• Then they increased tax cuts for wealthy Social Security recipients by $64 billion.

Bottom line: Republicans voted yesterday to transfer $46 billion from the poor to cover part of the cost of a $64 billion tax cut for the rich.

Class warfare? You decide.

Politics of envy? Sure, we envy their healthcare coverage. (Okay, the villas too.)

But nevermind that the federal treasury is empty and our nation is living on borrowed money. Why should people who got rich off America’s taxpayer funded infrastructure, laws and workers pay a bit more? That would just be wrong. Right?

Speaking of Deficits
Two decades of idiotic “free trade” policies have gutted America’s balance of trade with the rest of the world. One picture says it all:

Combine our annual budget deficit and trade deficit and were are over $1 trillion a year in the hole. We are now the world’s biggest deadbeat nation. We are living off loans, largely from Japan and China.

America, once the world’s dominant economy, is not just broke, but broken.

Talk is Cheap
George Bush constantly brags how “democracy is on the march.” What he doesn’t explain is why. Democracy has to march because Uncle George won’t pony up taxi fare.

For example, in the weeks after a popular uprising toppled a corrupt government in Ukraine, President Bush jumped in front of CNN cameras to claim the Ukraine as another convert to his Democracy Crusade and promised $60 million to nurture this nascent democracy. But in the weeks that followed that promise was slashed in half.

"The president is not putting his money where his mouth is," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch.

Of course, considering the fiscal hole Bush’s tax cuts have created, all he has left is talk.

Hey, maybe China would loan Bush a few hundred million for his Democracy Crusade, just so long as he doesn’t spend any of it trying to democratize China.


Have a nice weekend.

March 17, 2005

Memo to Caribou: There goes your neighborhood
Texans have never forgiven Alaska for joining the union and knocking Texas off as our largest state. So they are getting even by turning Alaska into a giant air-conditioned version of the Long Horn State.

Yesterday the Republican-controlled Senate voted to allow oilrigs into Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They should have changed the name at the same time, since it will be a “refuge” no longer.

Once the Republican-controlled House votes to go along the influx of tobacco-spittin’, pickem-up-truck drivin', gun-racks-in-the-window, “Jake’s, Jeb’s and Arlo’s will begin rollin’, rollin’ rollin’ north -- Hummers and Halliburton, Four-wheeler’s for Christ, Hooters and hell-raisers, wildcatters for wampum.

Roads will cut into lands where no tire has ever rolled; no steel has ever pierced the frozen tundra -- one of the final patches of earth where the sounds of mankind's engines have not drowned out the sweet music of creation.

And for what? A few billion more barrels of the stuff melting the ice caps, heating the earth and crapping up the air we breathe. What geniuses we are.

Another Genius Heard From
Federal Reserve chief, Alan Greenspan, was on The Hill yesterday assuring Senators that Bush’s plan for private accounts was a great way to reform Social Security.

Then Sen. Hillary Clinton had the bad taste to remind Weird Al that, four years ago he also assured Congress that the Bush tax cuts were a great idea -- that they would stimulate the economy and create jobs.

Hillary pointed out that both of those predictions were wrong. The only quantifiable results of the Bush tax cuts are half trillion-dollar annual budget deficits as far as taxpayer's eyes can see.

Greenspan – glancing down to see if George had maybe left a stain on his blue suit -- tried to spread the blame:

“We were all wrong about that,” Greenspan sheeplessly replied.

Hillary, a woman with way too much experience dealing with lying men, was not about to let Al get away that easily.

"Your testimony helped blow the lid off the lock boxes," Hillary replied, "and, just for the record, we were not all wrong."

Go to your room Al, and stay there. Bob Rubin, a lonely and broke nation longs for you.

Flat Learning Curve
But never mind that Greenspan was wrong about the Bush tax cuts, or that, thanks to those cuts we are now in hock up to our wallets to China and other Asian central banks. None of that mattered to Republicans. No sooner did Greenspan finish testifying than the Republican-controlled Senate rejected efforts to reinstate budget rules mandating that any tax cuts be offset by equivalent spending reductions or revenue increases. The "pay-as-you-go" rules, in effect through the 1990s, could have jeopardized Bush's call to make his first-term tax cuts permanent, but it would have also complicated efforts to secure approval of a budget resolution.

So, if the House goes along, it means the good times will roll on for the wealthy. Already the wealth gap between the top 1% of earners and the rest of us has widened faster than at any time since the turn early days of the 20th century.

It’s the Re-Gatsbyiscation of America, an enormous redistribution of wealth upwards. And we all remember how that all ended in October 1929.

Memo to Republicans: Here’s a refresher on Econ 101 -- Rich people get rich by selling stuff to working people. If too much of a nation’s assets (wealth) gets locked up in rich people’s bank accounts, stocks and trusts, working people don’t have the money to buy stuff from the rich people’s companies. Duh!

An economy is like a farmer’s stone wall; it’s the little rocks that hold the big rocks in place. How many times do we have to learn that lesson?

Gangsta’s Are as Gangsta’s Do
John “Teflon Don” Gotti had his Sammy “The Bull" Gravano. Tom “The Hammer” DeLay has Jack Abramoff. Jack is DeLay’s fixer and consigliore rolled into one. Four years ago I produced a long report for a group of Clinton Dems on the DeLay/Abramoff relationship, but they refused to run it saying, “We don’t want to pick a fight with DeLay.” (That report is posted online HERE)

Dems had no balls then and, consequently, they have no power now.

John Gotti’s downfall came when he started to believe he was untouchable. He got cocky and careless. DeLay has made the same mistake. The DeLay/Abramoff relationship continued to fester until the stink got too much for even the Republican-controlled Senate to ignore. So yesterday the Senate Finance Committee opened an investigation into allegations that Abramoff used nonprofit organizations to launder money for a variety of improper activities, including overseas trips for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

“Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.), the panel's top Democrat, faxed a letter to Abramoff's attorney seeking information from the Capital Athletic Foundation, a charity he created. The committee wants financial records and receipts for travel, which would include a 2002 trip to Scotland by House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and lobbyist and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed…Tax records for the groups show a flow of $2.5 million through the national center to a company controlled by Abramoff and to Abramoff’s foundation…. in 2002 the Choctaw tribe, a client of Abramoff's, donated $1 million to the center and in 2003 Greenberg Traurig gave $1.5 million in "grants" that originated from an Abramoff client.” (Washington Post)

Meanwhile the House Ethics Committee can’t investigate anything following a Saturday Night Massacre-type purge of Republican members unwilling to stonewall a committee investigation of DeLay’s fundraising activities. Dems have – correctly – thrown a parliamentary fit refusing to participate in the Republican’s Soviet style "Ethics" Committee.

By Stephen Pizzo

Raconteur at Large