Will GOP Moderates Look Left?

March 30, 2005
Will GOP Moderates Look Left?
Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation and
the Center for American Progress
If current trends continue in the months ahead, growing discontent among GOP moderates may translate into Democratic gains in '06 -- if not sooner. In today's New York Times, former GOP Senator John C. Danforth, now an Episcopal minister, says:
BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube
The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.
Danforth's remarks echo Connecticut Republican Rep. Christopher Shays, who recently said "This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy."
In his SLATE.com article "The Not So Fantastic Four: The Demise of the Republican Moderates," Michael Crowley notes that Senate GOP moderates Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and John McCain of Arizona are increasingly isolated as voices for sanity in their party. Notes Crowley of the prospect of the Republicans "nuclear option" destroying the filibuster:
If Frist finds a way to drop the Bomb, the moderates' lack of clout will be proved. And in the all-out partisan warfare that would be sure to follow—call it nuclear winter—they'd be stuck in a bleak no-man's land.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Peter Wallsten reports on cracks in the GOP base in Florida:
With the GOP base polarized over the Terri Schiavo case and the public skeptical of Bush's plan to overhaul Social Security, two issues with explosive relevance in Florida are stirring up confusing political crosscurrents for Republicans preparing to face the voters there next year.
Even conservative media critic Howard Kurtz comments on the trend in "Splitsville," his wrap-up piece in the Washington Post.
One of the most common headlines around these days is "GOP Split on [Fill-in-the-Blank]." The image of a unified governing party is cracking fast.
As the article by former Senator Bill Bradley quoted below indicates, the GOP has a stronger structure than the Dems' inverted pyramid to endure such splits. And no one should be surprised if GOP leaders suddenly adopt a more moderate tone leading up to the '06 elections. Yet it is not out of the question that Senator Chafee, for example, would consider switching parties, if only because he will likely face a strong challenge from a Democrat.
Even assuming no GOP moderates switch parties between now and '06, it is clear that rank and file moderate Republicans are becomming increasingly uncomfortable with their Party's current direction. Democratic candidates should make an extra effort to reach out and welcome their support.
Posted by EDM Staff at 04:09 PM | link

Pentagon Justice?

Without Reservation
A biweekly column by Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)

posted 15 March 05
Pentagon Justice?

Of court cases concerning the Pentagon, two are particularly instructive.
The Larry Franklin-Israeli spy case has yet to completely unfold. Last fall, someone hired Plato Cacheris, the expensive lawyer who defended Monica Lewisky, to try and help Larry Franklin. The parallels are appropriate. Low ranking yet idealistic people providing succor to powerful politicos in their time of need deserve outrageously expensive attorneys, if only to ensure that they continue to serve government interests. To further that aim, the Franklin case has been buried by the Bush-Cheney administration.
But the Franklin spy case reminds us of what we already know – government tends to defend itself first, foremost and as fiercely as any cornered rat.
The numbers and extent to which soldiers and Marines are refusing to return to Iraq, amidst a rumble of desertion and a growing roar of conscientious objection, has yet to be fully admitted by the Pentagon, although multiple courts-martials are pending. This reality is complemented by reports that the Pentagon has been grossly understating the overall casualties of American soldiers and Marines due to Iraq deployment.
Again, nothing instructive here. Governments grown too large and too unaccountable will lie, deny, and obfuscate beyond anything tolerable in an average citizen.
But “Pentagon justice” exists. It has been gloriously illustrated in two recent cases, one well known and one deeply buried.
The Abu Ghraib prison abuse trials showed that only the lowest ranking military members would be held responsible. No officer or CIA employee of any rank was charged, or God forbid, punished, in a court of law. No courts-martials, no assessment of leadership responsibility, no public examination of what it means to be an officer. No charges for the junior officers, the mid-grade officers, the flag officers and the top Pentagon brass who created and designed Abu Ghraib as one sad outpost in an American gulag stretching from Uzbekistan to Iraq to Guantanamo Bay....

Exposing prolife zealotry

Exposing prolife zealotry
By Robert Kuttner
Boston Globe
SOME GOOD may yet come of Terri Schiavo's sad story. More of us will think hard about how we'd want to be treated if terminally incapacitated. More of us will write living wills, making clear who is in charge. And more people will gain a truer understanding of the religious right.
The Republican Party may also hesitate, out of its own life-support instincts, before rushing so recklessly to embrace extreme zealotry.
And the Democrats, often cowed by America's latest apparent romance with fundamentalism, may wake from their own persistent vegetative state. Much to the shock of Republican operatives and opportunists, polls show that most Americans deeply resent the plain meddling reflected in the right-wing dash back to Washington to write a one-woman law to keep Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube. Bill Frist, the doctor-senator, looked like a perfect idiot when he purported to diagnose her condition via videotape. Even Jeb Bush is backing off....

Bush's hypocrisy truly unbearable

Bush's hypocrisy truly unbearable
The pols confused law with theology and allowed tabloidism to trump privacy.
By JONATHAN ALTER,
GUEST OPINION
Published by news-press.com on March 29, 2005
As Texas governor, George W. Bush presided over 152 executions, more than took place in the rest of the country combined. In at least a few of these cases, reasonable doubts were raised about the guilt of the condemned. But Bush cut his personal review time for each case from a half hour to a mere 15 minutes (most other governors spend many hours reviewing each capital case to assure themselves no doubt of guilt exists). His explanation was that he trusted the courts to sort through the life-and-death complexities. That's right: the courts.
I bring up that story because it's just one of several ironies that have arisen in connection with the Terri Schiavo saga, in which the president said that the government "ought to err on the side of life." Fine, but whose life? The inmate who might not be guilty? The poor people across the country denied organ transplants (and thus life) because Medicaid — increasingly under the Bush budget knife — won't cover them?
The poor people across the world starving to death because we won't go along with Tony Blair when it comes to addressing global poverty?...

American parents creating future terrorist for Christ?

American parents creating future terrorist for Christ?
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) - Scott Heldreth has been arrested numerous times for picketing abortion clinics and blocking sidewalks while praying. Now his 10-year-old son, Josh, has followed in his footsteps.
Josh is one of six children - ages 10 to 14 - arrested in the past week for crossing a police line at the Woodside Hospice to take water to Terri Schiavo.
"God's with me," said Josh, who asked his father to bring him here from Kannapolis, N.C., to join others supporting Bob and Mary Schindler's fight to restore their daughter's feeding tube.
Demonstrators have allowed their children - some too young to truly understand why they are there - to pass out religious fliers and hold signs accusing Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, of murdering her. The children beat 18-litre buckets like funerary drums and wear shirts declaring them "Youth for Life."

On the grass outside the hospice, seven-year-old Hannah Donahue sat colouring signs while wearing a piece of red tape emblazoned with the word "LIFE" plastered across her mouth and an orange sign on her chest bearing the word "JAIL."
She said the sign was for Michael Schiavo.
"Ithink they should put him in the jail," Hannah said in a tiny voice. "Because I don't think he knows what Terri wants. He's being the boss."
Her mother, Tete Donahue, of Clearwater, won't allow Hannah to go to jail for this cause. But she thinks it's appropriate to have her on the picket line.
"I'm not bringing her here as a symbol," Donahue said. "She's with me because we believe in life. . . . She's learning we give value to life, to human beings."
Scott Heldreth, a veteran of the Operation Rescue and Operation Save America campaigns against abortion, didn't intend to join this fight, until his son asked to be brought to Pinellas Park.
"My wife and I, we felt like if God really put it on his heart, we should come down, to allow him to live out what God had put on his heart," says Heldreth, a carpenter.
His son walked up to sheriff's deputies, carrying a plastic cup, and ignored two requests to turn around. Deputies cuffed his hands behind his back and loaded him into a van with 14-year-old twin girls. At the courthouse, the three youngsters were photographed, fingerprinted and released.
Josh said police were nice, but seemed a bit annoyed.
"We were smiling for Jesus and they didn't like that much," he said.
ALLEN G. BREED
© The Canadian Press, 2005

The disassembly of Tom DeLay

The disassembly of Tom DeLay
When a Majority Leader's state-of-the-art money and power machine falters
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.
By Howard Fineman
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 4:29 p.m. ET March 30, 2005
WASHINGTON - A new drama of survival has begun here – political, not physical; legal, not spiritual. The central character isn’t a woman in a hospital bed but a controversial Republican leader in the House of Representatives. Rep. Tom DeLay may not want to admit it to himself, but he’s fighting for his political life.
advertisementI wouldn’t have said so two weeks ago. But I’ve seen enough of these dramas unfold to know when I’m watching a new one, and now I am. You know the story line, which dates back to the Greeks: a powerful, hubristic leader is brought low by his own flaws. Think Jim Wright, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton....

Working Families Launch National Day of Action for Retirement Security

Working Families Launch National Day of Action for Retirement Security
March 29—Thousands of working family and community activists plan to march and rally in more than 70 cities at the offices of Charles Schwab Corp., Wachovia Corp. and other Wall Street firms March 31, challenging them to withdraw their support for privatizing Social Security.
“Working families are putting financial firms on notice. They will not allow firms that handle their savings to promote a scheme that will put their hard-earned money at risk,” says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.....
For more information, go to National Day of Action for Retirement Security

What's Going On?

What's Going On?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 29, 2005
New York Times
Democratic societies have a hard time dealing with extremists in their midst. The desire to show respect for other people's beliefs all too easily turns into denial: nobody wants to talk about the threat posed by those whose beliefs include contempt for democracy itself.
We can see this failing clearly in other countries. In the Netherlands, for example, a culture of tolerance led the nation to ignore the growing influence of Islamic extremists until they turned murderous.
But it's also true of the United States, where dangerous extremists belong to the majority religion and the majority ethnic group, and wield great political influence.
Before he saw the polls, Tom DeLay declared that "one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America." Now he and his party, shocked by the public's negative reaction to their meddling, want to move on. But we shouldn't let them. The Schiavo case is, indeed, a chance to highlight what's going on in America.
One thing that's going on is a climate of fear for those who try to enforce laws that religious extremists oppose....

Your Law Suit is Junk, Mine Seeks Justice

Your Law Suit is Junk, Mine Seeks Justice
Wampum
...When one of his twin daughters was involved in a fender bender (in which no one was hurt), then Governor Bush filed a lawsuit to recover property damage to the car. I do not know which driver was at fault, but I found it interesting that Bush sued Enterprise Rental-A-Car.
His theory was that the other driver did not have a valid driver’s license and, therefore, that Enterprise should not have rented him a car. I leave it to you to decide if that is an example of looking for a deep pocket with only a tangential relationship to the damage. Bush collected a $2,500 settlement from Enterprise.
Another pet peeve of the tort reformers is forum shopping. Forum shopping is seeking out a favorable jurisdiction to file suit even if that jurisdiction has little or no relationship to the tort. The GOP astroturf organization, Progress For America calls forum shopping the search for the “magical jurisdiction” and terms such efforts a “significant abuse” of the legal system.
Not all Republican politicians, however, think that forum shopping is such a bad idea, at least not for them.
Before he became Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger was perhaps best known for his roles in the Terminator movies. He was very aggressive about preventing his image as the Terminator to be used by others for commercial purposes.
A local Ohio car dealership used a tiny thumbnail photograph of Schwarzenegger in a full page advertisement in a local Ohio newspaper. Arnold sued the dealership and its ad agency claiming that used his photograph without his consent. He sought more than $37 million in damages.
Schwarzenegger filed the suit in California despite the fact that the ad ran only in Ohio and the car dealership had no connection to California. See, Republican politicians do not think that forum shopping (to say nothing of of outrageous damage claims) is always bad, at least not when they are the shoppers.
Another pet peeve of the pro-tort reform Republicans is plaintiffs who sue medical professionals in the hope of winning the "litigation lottery." Republican Senator Rick Santorum once noted:
We have a much too costly legal system. It is one that makes us uncompetitive and inefficient, and one that is not fair to society as a whole. While we may have people, individuals, who hit the jackpot and win the lottery in some cases, that is not exactly what our legal system should be designed to do.
How, then, does Santorum explain why his wife sued a chiropractor for half a million dollars alleging back injuries from a badly done spinal manipulation? He says it is a private matter. Of course, Santorum believes that everyone else's cliam for compensation is a public matter. Santorum does not think that "jackpot justice" is so bad when his wife is the winner....

The lawlessness of unintended consequences

P.M. Carpenter: 'The lawlessness of unintended consequences'
Posted on Monday, March 28 @ 10:00:53 EST
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By P.M. Carpenter
The right's depraved indifference to the fiscal health of Social Security and its criminal recklessness in the passing of Terri Schiavo were self-inflicted one-two punches that have put the GOP on the ropes.
The first concrete evidence of this was last week's Gallup poll showing that President Bush's approval rating had fallen a precipitous seven points in as many days. He took his biggest hit from churchgoers, conservatives and men.
What's more, revealed the poll, the percentage of those willing to identify themselves as Republicans slipped from 35 to 32, while Democratic identification more than inched upward, 32 to 37.
In explaining this developing sea change, political number-cruncher Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report said, "You have to wonder if people didn't feel that the president and Congress couldn't be spending their time working on Social Security and other problems."...

Creation Care

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Creation Care
Bull Moose
On Easter, the Moose points out an opportunity for the donkey to forge an alliance with the faith community.
The Moose has longed maintained that there is a contradiction in the religious right being tied to a party whose master is Mammon. Now, with the emergence of evangelical involvement in protecting the environment, the donkey has an opening to forge an alliance with social conservatives.
As the New York Times reported recently, the National Association of Evangelicals has joined the fight against global warming,
"The Rev. Rich Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals and a significant voice in the debate, said, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created...

"Mr. Cizik said he was among many evangelicals who would support some regulation on heat-trapping gases.

"We're not adverse to government-mandated prohibitions on behavioral sin such as abortion," he said. "We try to restrict it. So why, if we're social tinkering to protect the sanctity of human life, ought we not be for a little tinkering to protect the environment?"

Currently, the NAE is deliberating what legislative vehicles they will support to address global warming.....

Stop Bolton

Citizens for Global Solutions ~ 2005
Why America Must Stop John Bolton

On March 7th, President Bush nominated John Bolton, who’s dedicated his life to undermining the United Nations, to be our UN Ambassador. In April, the Senate will decide to approve this nomination or not.  We must not stand for this.
John Bolton is a disastrous choice. Right now, the U.S. needs to work through the UN more than ever to make the world a safer place for Americans.
Bolton, however, has made a career out of belittling and dismissing the UN, suggesting at one point that “if the UN secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” He advocates a go-it-alone foreign policy that alienates our allies and strengthens our enemies. He has a history of rash behavior. And he has consistently put his own priorities over those of his country by refusing to obey orders.
http://www.stopbolton.org/
STOP BOLTON! ACT NOW!
For more background information: Washington Note
Call your Senate office to register your opposition to Bolton's nomination as UN representative! He must be stopped!

Stop Bolton

Citizens for Global Solutions ~ 2005
Why America Must Stop John Bolton
On March 7th, President Bush nominated John Bolton, who’s dedicated his life to undermining the United Nations, to be our UN Ambassador. In April, the Senate will decide to approve this nomination or not.  We must not stand for this.
John Bolton is a disastrous choice. Right now, the U.S. needs to work through the UN more than ever to make the world a safer place for Americans.
Bolton, however, has made a career out of belittling and dismissing the UN, suggesting at one point that “if the UN secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” He advocates a go-it-alone foreign policy that alienates our allies and strengthens our enemies. He has a history of rash behavior. And he has consistently put his own priorities over those of his country by refusing to obey orders.
Washington Note
Call your Senate office to register your opposition to Bolton's nomination as UN representative! He must be stopped!






 

 

WHY IT MATTERS.

March 25, 2005
Guest: Garance Franke-Ruta
WHY IT MATTERS.
washingtonmonthly.com
I've been exceptionally impressed with the quality of the comments on this blog over the past week, which have been wonderfully intelligent, thoughtful, and polite. One question that's come up over and over, however, is why this topic mattered, or should matter, to those outside of elite media circles.
Let me try to answer that. Recall that the majority of Democrats are women. Given that, the absence of female voices on Op-Ed pages means that half the liberal/Democratic family is not getting its views across to the public, where they can be debated and have influence. That puts the Democratic Party at a substantial messaging disadvantage, especially, I believe, on values issues. White men are the most conservative demographic group in the country, and to the extent that they overwhelmingly dominate political speech on Op-Ed pages and in the blogosphere, the range of political issues under debate winds up being restricted to what they know, what they are concerned with, and their perspectives on values questions.
Take what is, I believe, the single most important issue facing middle-class families: the rise of the 50-80 hour work week and the disappearance of the weekend. Anne Applebaum wrote about this recently. I bring the issue up in story meetings at the Prospect at every available opportunity. And I’m regularly surprised by the number of young, progressive women I know who tell me that the thing they dislike most about the Democratic Party is its obsessive focus on abortion instead of the question of how to combine work and family and not go crazy. They want to be approached as mothers and potential mothers, as well as people with jobs and aspirations, not as atomized rights-bearing individuals given to crisis pregnancies. But those who raise such issues often cannot get any traction because there are simply not enough voices in high enough positions in the press or the party to create buzz. And so the topic remains a cultural issue on the left, rather than a matter for political consideration and action. Result: middle-class mothers vote Republican, and the Democratic Party has won a smaller fraction of the female electorate each presidential-election year since 1996. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party carries on loudly about the outsourcing of manufacturing sector jobs, which are mainly held by men, and judicial appointments, which are crucial to preserving reproductive rights but, once again, turn the focus back to abortion. No wonder the so-called “Mommy Party” now routinely loses the votes of parents and the married. Recall, too, that the "Year of the Woman," 1992, helped boost Clinton into office.
Or take abortion itself. I expect that male politicians and pundits are not always cognizant of the way that men who are vehemently pro-choice can come across as creepy and irresponsible to some women. This has nothing to do with those women being opposed to choice; it has to do with a broader sub-rosa argument this country has been having for decades about male irresponsibility and untrustworthiness and the way that a lot of women in contemporary society wind up feeling used and cast aside by men. This argument and social worry lies at the heart of some of our most prominent media obsessions, from the Scott Peterson trial to the right-wing response to Terri Schiavo. The right wing has been trying to turn Michael Schiavo into Scott Peterson, and petite, brunette Terri into petite, brunette Laci. The O.J. trial was a variant on the same basic theme of the irresponsible, potentially violent mate who wants to be rid of his all-too dispensable wife. Such stories ricochet through a social landscape split apart by divorce and often ambivalent about its American Pie-style sexual ethics.
Virtually every values issue in this country can be reduced to a debate about how men and women are supposed to relate to each other. How can such a debate be won by men of the left only? It seems to me that it cannot. Reviving liberalism in America and growing the Democratic Party is not a sales job for a small cadre of men. It is the joint responsibility and project of every member of the Democratic coalition. The Republican Party's efforts to pick off members of the coalition, by targeting Hispanics and African-Americans, just makes that universal responsibility even more urgent.
Kevin thoughtfully offered some folks an opportunity to discuss one small slice of this broader problem. I thank him for his good intentions and for the opportunity to be part of this experiment on his blog. Thanks also to Amy and Katha, and to all of you for sharing your comments and thoughts. You can find me most of the rest of the time over at Tapped.

The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay

The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay
Published: March 27, 2005
Frank Rich
New York Times
Congress and the president scurried to play God in the lives of Terri Schiavo and her family last weekend, ABC kicked off Holy Week with its perennial ritual: a rebroadcast of the 1956 Hollywood blockbuster, "The Ten Commandments."
....Cecil B. DeMille's epic is known for the parting of its Technicolor Red Sea, for the religiosity of its dialogue (Anne Baxter's Nefretiri to Charlton Heston's Moses: "You can worship any God you like as long as I can worship you.") and for a Golden Calf scene that DeMille himself described as "an orgy Sunday-school children can watch." But this year the lovable old war horse has a relevance that transcends camp. At a time when government, culture, science, medicine and the rule of law are all under threat from an emboldened religious minority out to remake America according to its dogma, the half-forgotten show business history of "The Ten Commandments" provides a telling back story.

As DeMille readied his costly Paramount production for release a half-century ago, he seized on an ingenious publicity scheme. In partnership with the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a nationwide association of civic-minded clubs founded by theater owners, he sponsored the construction of several thousand Ten Commandments monuments throughout the country to hype his product. The Pharaoh himself - that would be Yul Brynner - participated in the gala unveiling of the Milwaukee slab. Heston did the same in North Dakota. Bizarrely enough, all these years later, it is another of these DeMille-inspired granite monuments, on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin, that is a focus of the Ten Commandments case that the United States Supreme Court heard this month.
We must wait for the court's ruling on whether the relics of a Hollywood relic breach the separation of church and state. Either way, it's clear that one principle, so firmly upheld by DeMille, has remained inviolate no matter what the courts have to say: American moguls, snake-oil salesmen and politicians looking to score riches or power will stop at little if they feel it is in their interests to exploit God to achieve those ends. While sometimes God racketeers are guilty of the relatively minor sin of bad taste - witness the crucifixion-nail jewelry licensed by Mel Gibson - sometimes we get the demagoguery of Father Coughlin or the big-time cons of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.
The religio-hucksterism surrounding the Schiavo case makes DeMille's Hollywood crusades look like amateur night. This circus is the latest and most egregious in a series of cultural shocks that have followed Election Day 2004, when a fateful exit poll question on "moral values" ignited a take-no-prisoners political grab by moral zealots. During the commercial interruptions on "The Ten Commandments" last weekend, viewers could surf over to the cable news networks and find a Bible-thumping show as only Washington could conceive it. Congress was floating such scenarios as staging a meeting in Ms. Schiavo's hospital room or, alternatively, subpoenaing her, her husband and her doctors to a hearing in Washington. All in the name of faith.
Like many Americans, I suspect, I tried to picture how I would have reacted if a bunch of smarmy, camera-seeking politicians came anywhere near a hospital room where my own relative was hooked up to life support...

Pull the plug on pandering

Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
03.22.05
Pull the plug on pandering
Congress, president have no business in Schiavo case
AUSTIN, Texas -- I write about the Terry Schiavo case both as one who has personally confronted the "pull the plug" question on several levels in recent years and as a staggered observer of this festival of political hypocrisy, opportunism and the trashing of constitutional law, common sense and common decency.

Look, the fundamental question in such cases is, "Who decides?" Preferably, the dying themselves, with a living will. In this case, evidence that Terry Schiavo did not want her life continued in its current pitiable state has been offered and accepted in several courts of law. Next, the next-of-kin, though in many cases someone else may be closer to the dying person, such as a longtime lover, and should be legally designated to make the decision through power of attorney.

Bad cases make bad law, and this is a bad case. In the tragic cases where a family splits on the decision, the case goes to court, where there is a well-established body of law on the subject. The Schiavo case has been litigated for seven years now, the verdict upheld at every level (including the U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to hear arguments). It is beyond comprehension, not to mention the Constitution, that the Congress of the United States and the president should have involved themselves at this point.

What on earth makes them think they have the right to do so? Both libertarians and constitutional conservatives, including Justice Scalia, should be having fits over this push by the federal government into a private family matter....

The GOP's selective compassion

Froma Harrop: 'The GOP's selective compassion'
Posted on Thursday, March 24 @ 09:45:08 EST
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Froma Harrop, The Day
I have a question for all those "culture of life" people praying in front of Terri Schiavo's hospital: Where were you last week when President Bush and the Republican Congress were pushing to cut Medicaid? Medicaid is the medical lifeline for the poor. And, by the way, it is picking up some of Schiavo's hospital bills.
Are you aware of your inconsistency? Or are you just pawns of the Republican Party?
You fixate over a woman who has hung in a vegetative state for 15 years, but stand mute as 45 million of your fellow Americans go without any health coverage. More than 18,000 adult Americans die every year for lack of health insurance, according to the Institute of Medicine in Washington.
Perhaps you'd like to hear the story of another woman, Annette Arrico. A divorced mother, Arrico ran a tiny beauty parlor in Rhode Island, serving mostly elderly ladies. After expenses, she took home only $150 a week and could not afford health insurance.
Some years ago, Arrico found a lump in her breast. She knew the lump meant trouble, but she tried to ignore it.
"I had all I could do to bring up our daughter," she said at the time.
Pushed by her daughter, Arrico finally saw a doctor, but by then it was too late to help her. She subsequently died.
There are thousands of Annette Arricos among us today. Lacking health insurance, they do not seek preventive care and avoid getting a diagnosis. That's why the mortality rate from cancer is up to two times higher for uninsured people than those with coverage, says a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has spent the past year plumping up his "pro-life" credentials with grand displays of hypocrisy. He made a big show of inserting himself into the Schiavo case -- basically denying a husband's rights as his wife's legal guardian. While doing that, Bush presided over the unspeakable act of throwing 105,000 poor children off the state's health-insurance program.
Where were the religious leaders then, and where were their followers?
"I see many religious groups stepping forward and saying it's wrong to take a feeding tube from Terri," says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "I don't hear anything about it being wrong not to vaccinate tens of thousands of children. The Congress still accepts the reality of uninsured children in America, which is beyond the moral pale."
But "pro-life" advocates have nonetheless rallied to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, House Majority Leader Tom Delay and Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner, as they make political hay off the Schiavo tragedy.
That "leaders" of disability groups would add their praise is beyond comprehension. After all, Americans with disabilities get most of their funding from Medicaid. Frist, Delay and Sensenbrenner were directing the attack on the program. The disabled might ask why their alleged spokesman did not stop them.
Here is another question for the "pro-life" folks: Where were you two weeks ago, when the Senate voted to toughen the nation's bankruptcy laws? The bill made no distinction between debt run up in a casino and debt run up in a hospital. A recent Harvard study found that nearly half of the personal bankruptcies were caused by unexpected medical bills. Funny, but I don't recall any spiritual leaders rushing to protect families in a medical crisis from losing all in a bankruptcy.
Of course, the Schiavo case is ripe for political exploitation. The following memo was sent to Republican senators: "The pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue."
To the pliant members of the "pro-life" base: Follow your orders, and get excited over a poor woman who can neither think nor emote and for whom doctors can do nothing. Interfere with a husband's decision to end medical treatment for a wife who has floated between life and death for 15 years.
Then sit back as your political masters try to cut the programs that help the sick, the frail and the dying. Let credit card companies harass families overwhelmed by medical expenses.
You have every right to call yourselves "defenders of life." Just as long as no one else has to.
Froma Harrop writes for the Providence Journal-Bulletin.
(c) 2005 The Day Publishing Co.

The GOP's selective compassion

Froma Harrop: 'The GOP's selective compassion'
Posted on Thursday, March 24 @ 09:45:08 EST
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Froma Harrop, The Day
I have a question for all those "culture of life" people praying in front of Terri Schiavo's hospital: Where were you last week when President Bush and the Republican Congress were pushing to cut Medicaid? Medicaid is the medical lifeline for the poor. And, by the way, it is picking up some of Schiavo's hospital bills.
Are you aware of your inconsistency? Or are you just pawns of the Republican Party?
You fixate over a woman who has hung in a vegetative state for 15 years, but stand mute as 45 million of your fellow Americans go without any health coverage. More than 18,000 adult Americans die every year for lack of health insurance, according to the Institute of Medicine in Washington.
Perhaps you'd like to hear the story of another woman, Annette Arrico. A divorced mother, Arrico ran a tiny beauty parlor in Rhode Island, serving mostly elderly ladies. After expenses, she took home only $150 a week and could not afford health insurance.
Some years ago, Arrico found a lump in her breast. She knew the lump meant trouble, but she tried to ignore it.
"I had all I could do to bring up our daughter," she said at the time.
Pushed by her daughter, Arrico finally saw a doctor, but by then it was too late to help her. She subsequently died.
There are thousands of Annette Arricos among us today. Lacking health insurance, they do not seek preventive care and avoid getting a diagnosis. That's why the mortality rate from cancer is up to two times higher for uninsured people than those with coverage, says a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has spent the past year plumping up his "pro-life" credentials with grand displays of hypocrisy. He made a big show of inserting himself into the Schiavo case -- basically denying a husband's rights as his wife's legal guardian. While doing that, Bush presided over the unspeakable act of throwing 105,000 poor children off the state's health-insurance program.
Where were the religious leaders then, and where were their followers?
"I see many religious groups stepping forward and saying it's wrong to take a feeding tube from Terri," says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "I don't hear anything about it being wrong not to vaccinate tens of thousands of children. The Congress still accepts the reality of uninsured children in America, which is beyond the moral pale."
But "pro-life" advocates have nonetheless rallied to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, House Majority Leader Tom Delay and Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner, as they make political hay off the Schiavo tragedy.
That "leaders" of disability groups would add their praise is beyond comprehension. After all, Americans with disabilities get most of their funding from Medicaid. Frist, Delay and Sensenbrenner were directing the attack on the program. The disabled might ask why their alleged spokesman did not stop them.
Here is another question for the "pro-life" folks: Where were you two weeks ago, when the Senate voted to toughen the nation's bankruptcy laws? The bill made no distinction between debt run up in a casino and debt run up in a hospital. A recent Harvard study found that nearly half of the personal bankruptcies were caused by unexpected medical bills. Funny, but I don't recall any spiritual leaders rushing to protect families in a medical crisis from losing all in a bankruptcy.
Of course, the Schiavo case is ripe for political exploitation. The following memo was sent to Republican senators: "The pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue."
To the pliant members of the "pro-life" base: Follow your orders, and get excited over a poor woman who can neither think nor emote and for whom doctors can do nothing. Interfere with a husband's decision to end medical treatment for a wife who has floated between life and death for 15 years.
Then sit back as your political masters try to cut the programs that help the sick, the frail and the dying. Let credit card companies harass families overwhelmed by medical expenses.
You have every right to call yourselves "defenders of life." Just as long as no one else has to.
Froma Harrop writes for the Providence Journal-Bulletin.
(c) 2005 The Day Publishing Co.

The Invasion Two Years Later

From Think Progress:

The Invasion Two Years Later

200: Lowest estimated number in billions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars that have been spent on the war in Iraq

152,000: Estimated number of troops currently deployed in Iraq

1,511: U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the invasion

11,285: Americans wounded since the invasion was launched two years ago

21,100-39,300: Estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed since the invasion by violence from war and crime

176: Non-U.S. coalition troops killed in Iraq since the invasion

339: Coalition troops killed by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)

70: Daily average number of insurgent attacks on coalition forces in February 2005

14: Daily average number of insurgent attacks on coalition forces in February 2004

18,000: Estimated number of insurgents in Iraq today

5,000: Estimated number of insurgents in Iraq in June 2003

27/14: Countries remaining in the "coalition of the willing" versus number of former coalition members that have withdrawn all their forces or announced their intention to do so

25,000: Non-U.S. coalition troops still in Iraq

4,500: Troops that Italy and the Netherlands have pledged to withdraw before the end of the year

142,472: Iraqi security troops the Pentagon says it has trained and equipped

40,000: Iraqi troops that General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said are adequately trained and equipped to handle most threats

0: Number of active Army combat units deployed to Iraq that have received the required year-long break from active duty required by Pentagon rules

30: Percent by which the U.S. National Guard missed its recruitment targets in November and `December 2004

27: Percent by which the U.S. Army missed its recruitment goals in the past month

15: Percent of military personnel, according to GAO, who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who could develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

2: Estimated output of Iraqi oil industry in millions of barrels per day

2.8: Estimated output of Iraqi oil industry in millions of barrels per day before the U.S. invasion

8: Average number of hours that Iraqis have electricity per day

28-40: Estimated Iraqi unemployment rate

108: Millions of dollars in Halliburton overcharges hidden from international auditors by the Pentagon

9: Billions of dollars the Coalition Provisional Authority cannot account for of all funds dispensed for Iraq reconstruction

Heaping praise on Reid

Heaping praise on Reid
by kos
Mon Mar 21st, 2005 at 10:52:30 PST
As tough as losing Daschle may have been to some, is there any doubt that the GOP screwed up big time by ousting our ineffective Senate leader?
Given the chance to do it all over again, I would gladly trade that Senate seat for Reid's ascendency to the leadership slot.
Joe Klein is the latest to praise Reid's performance.....

....Corruption. Intoxicated with power. Out of control. All good lines of attack. And as the recent polling shows, the Shiavo mess only fortifies those impressions in the mind of the public.
If we take back either house of congress within the next two cycles (even odds), it'll be thanks to GOP corruption and overreach (and new internal divisions, as Jerome talks about in multiple posts over at MyDD today).
But while Democrats are still a decade away from getting our own version of the WRWC and getting our own house fully in order, Reid is skillfully exploiting cracks in the GOP coalition, mostly holding together his own, and communicating the seedling of a core Democratic message.
And to give credit where it's due, the House Dems are doing a great job highlighting DeLay's and the GOP caucus' cronyism, corruption, and power mad ways.
So thank the GOP for self-destructing, and thank Reid and House Dems for exploiting the cracks in their armor.

Sleazo-Cons

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Sleazo-Cons
Bull Moose blog
The Moose observes that Tom DeLay has sunk to depths that no other sleaze has ever dared to go.
In order to preserve his political viability, the House Majority Leader is attempting to link his ethically-challenged reputation to the moral cause of saving Terri Schiavo. The New York Times reported on what DeLay told a conservative gathering in Washington,
"On Friday, as the leaders of both chambers scrambled to try to stop the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, Mr. DeLay, a Texas Republican, turned his attention to social conservatives gathered at a Washington hotel and described what he viewed as the intertwined struggle to save Ms. Schiavo, expand the conservative movement and defend himself against accusations of ethical lapses.
"One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," Mr. DeLay told a conference organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. A recording of the event was provided by the advocacy organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
"This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others," Mr. DeLay said.
"Mr. DeLay complained that "the other side" had figured out how "to defeat the conservative movement," by waging personal attacks, linking with liberal organizations and persuading the national news media to report the story. He charged that "the whole syndicate" was "a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in."
One can only marvel at this extraordinary demagoguery! Tom DeLay is now attempting to save himself by associating his fate with this woman's tragedy as he languishes in a persistent unethical state....

Was March 16, 2005 America’s tipping point?

Groundhog Surfaces for Sunlight
Posted by James Wolcott
....I also wanted to write about Stephen Roach's column about the cracks in the ice that forked on March 16th, and why they're so ominous.
"Tipping points are a great concept, but virtually impossible to identify ahead of time -- let alone when they are occurring.  It is only with the great luxury of hindsight that we can look back and know that the proverbial bell has rung.  In my view, March 16, 2005 could end up in the running as a possible tipping point for America.  Suddenly, the US has taken on a very different aura in an increasingly unbalanced world: The confluence of a record current account deficit, a disaster from General Motors, and yet another new high for oil prices all speak of an increasingly precarious role for the global hegemon.  World financial markets have barely begun to sniff that out."
Manufacturing decay, outsourcing of jobs, soaring oil prices, widening trade deficits, shrinking savings--and if that weren't enough, throw in a hefty slice of imperial hubris.
"In the end, of course, there’s far more to this story than economics.  As I noted recently, history is replete with examples of leadership tests that pit a nation’s military prowess against its economic base (see my 28 February dispatch, 'The Pendulum of Global Leadership').  Yale historian Paul Kennedy has long argued that great powers typically fail when military reach outstrips a nation’s economic strength.  In that vein, there’s little doubt that America is extending its reach in this post-9/11 world.  Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were the opening salvos. The Bush Administration’s recent nomination of two leading neocons to key global positions -- John Bolton as America’s ambassador to the UN and Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank (also announced on March 16) -- are more recent examples of a White House that is upping the ante on its 'transformational' projection of global power.  In Paul Kennedy’s historical framework, America is extending its reach at precisely the moment when its economic power base is weakening -- a classic warning sign of the fall of a Great Power. 
"Was March 16, 2005 America’s tipping point?  Only time will tell.  The optimist can hope that it was a wake-up call for a saving-short US economy to put its house back in order.   For once, call me an optimist.  It’s time for America to smell the coffee."
Call me a pessimist, a proud Eeyore, because I don't think America will smell the fine aroma of Gevalia anytime soon, if ever. This country is wearing a blindfold, staggering backwards, and slitting its own throat in slow motion. Watch the cable news, listen to our elected leaders: there's no more urgency about the economic decline in living standards dead ahead than there is about addressing global warming or loosening the chokehold of military spending. A country where "evolution" is becoming a bad word is not a country interested in facing reality. Instead, as the passage of the bankruptcy bill shows, corporate-political power is going to grind every last dollar out of the desperate and destitute rather than confront the difficult macro decisions. The elites in this country have never had it so good, and as long as they're prospering the distress will smothered under the surface, kept under a lid.
"Many Americans have virtually no leeway on their monthly budgets," writes Alexander Cockburn in Counterpunch. "A co-pay on some relatively minor health emergency sends them scrambling to the loanshops. If interest rates start to move upwards many households on flexible mortgage rates will default, and plummet into bankruptcy and debt peonage for the rest of their lives.
"If the current trend among countries such as China, Japan and India to reduce their dollar holdings continues, the dollar's status will plummet, and eventually its role as the world's reserve currency will come to an end. No longer will the Asian nations subsidize America's debt, and in consequence the cost of living for ordinary Americans will start to soar, pushing even more over the edge.
"And as the dollar tumbles, so does one of the keystones of what in the 1950s used to be termed reverently, the American Way of Life, meaning in coarse material terms a civilization that guaranteed its middle class affordable higher education and the decent jobs consequent upon same."
You can kiss that dream goodbye....

Bush's Texas Futile Care Law

Bush's Texas Futile Care Law
Digby blog
By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.
Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.
Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.
Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.
And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.
Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.
This is why we cannot trust the mainstream media. Most people get their news from television. And television is presenting this issue as a round the clock one dimensional soap opera pitting the "family", the congress and the church against this woman's husband and the judicial system that upheld Terry Schiavo's right and explicit request that she be allowed to die if extraordinary means were required to keep her alive. The ghoulish infotainment industry is making a killing by acceding once again to trumped up right wing sensationalism.
This issue gets to the essence of the culture war. Shall the state be allowed to interfere in the most delicate, complicated personal matters of life, death and health because a particular religious constituency holds that their belief system should override each individual's right to make these personal decisions for him or herself. And it isn't the allegedly statist/communist/socialist left that is agitating for the government to tell Americans how they must live and how they must die.
One of the things that we need to help America understand is that there is a big difference between the way the two parties perceive the role of government in its citizens personal lives. Democrats want the government to collect money from all its citizens in order to deliver services to the people. The Republicans want the government to collect money from working people in order to dictate individual citizen's personal decisions. You tell me which is the bigger intrusion into the average American's liberty?

PRIVATIZATION WOES

PRIVATIZATION WOES....
Kevin Drum
Political Animal
Yale economist Robert Shiller, an expert in investment cycles, has performed an extensive set of computer simulations to estimate likely future returns for Social Security private accounts invested in George Bush's proposed "life-cycle" portfolios. The results aren't pretty:
According to U.S. historical rates of return, the life-cycle portfolio fell short of the 3 percent threshold 32 percent of the time, meaning nearly a third of personal account holders would have been better off sticking with the traditional Social Security system. The median rate of return was 3.4 percent....
But he also adjusted for what he expects to be lower future rates of investment return by using historic rates of return from international stock and bond markets....The results were not encouraging: The life-cycle portfolio under these adjusted returns lost money compared with the traditional system 71 percent of the time, with a median rate of return of just 2.6 percent.
What's even more remarkable are the people who apparently agree with Shiller. The Post's Jonathan Weisman quotes both Jeremy Siegel, a stock market enthusiast, and Kevin Hassett of the conservative American Enterprise Institute in support of Shiller's views. All three agree that balanced investment portfolios are unlikely to earn 3% a year over the next few decades. The Heritage Foundation demurs as expected, but if a routine denunciation from Heritage is the best the privatizers can do, they're in big trouble.
Bottom line: any kind of prudent investment is likely to leave a lot of people worse off than they are under current Social Security law. As with any financial scheme, you should be mighty cautious about signing on the dotted line when you're dealing with a fast talking huckster who's seems a little too eager to sell his goods without giving you time to read the fine print. And who's a faster talking huckster than our very own George W. Bush?

Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's fake news

Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's fake news
Posted on Saturday, March 19 @ 08:40:20 EST
By Frank Rich, New York Times
JUST when Americans are being told it's safe to hand over their savings to Wall Street again, he's baaaack! Looking not unlike Chucky, the demented doll of perennial B-horror-movie renown, Ken Lay has crawled out of Houston's shadows for a media curtain call.
His trial is still months away, but there he was last Sunday on "60 Minutes," saying he knew nothin' 'bout nothin' that went down at Enron. This week he is heading toward the best-seller list, as an involuntary star of "Conspiracy of Fools," the New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald's epic account of the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme anointed America's "most innovative company" (six years in a row by Fortune magazine). Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a documentary seen at Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you're not among those whose 401(k)'s and pensions were wiped out, it's morbidly entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there's the sight of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the "Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service" only days after Enron has confessed to filing five years of bogus financial reports. Then again, given the implicit quid pro quo in this smarmy tableau, maybe that's the Enron drama's answer to a sex scene.....

Bush to U.N.: screw you! — Mad Dog Bolton's nomination

Bush to U.N.: screw you! — Mad Dog Bolton's nomination
Posted on Saturday, March 19 @ 08:41:23 EST (272 reads)
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers
Traditionally, a lame-duck president has a two-year window of opportunity to successfully push his foreign and domestic agenda. Karl Rove knows this well.
Since the Bush/Rove/Cheney bullyboy approach worked for them so successfully during their first term, the Administration is using the same strong-arm tactics in its foreign/military policy, and in quickly trying to ram its domestic agenda through Congress.
But something is different this time; there now is an odor of reckless haste emanating from the White House. The result is that they are now making mistakes, big time.
Just two examples: the nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations, and the Social Security "reform" campaign.....

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolfowitz

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolfowitz
He Bungled Iraq, the Pentagon, and East Timor. Look Out, World Bank—Here He Comes
by Jason Vest
Village Voice
March 18th, 2005 1:15 AM  
To some, Paul Wolfowitz's nomination to be president of the World Bank is yet another sign of neoconservative political hegemony; to others, it smacks of a setback for the neocons, as it means one of their top (though least doctrinaire) defense intellectuals will, for the first time in his career, be using balance sheets, not bullets, as instruments for realizing formidable political vision.
How well he'll do is anyone's guess. There were, however, a few comments of optimistic or deferential cast in Tuesday's papers regarding the deputy secretary of defense that bear commenting on, in the service of divining what we're likely to see from the architect of "free and democratic Iraq"—which a report released yesterday by the anti-corruption group Transparency International reveals is reeling with corruption and graft, thanks in part to the poor planning and practices of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation that was Wolfowitz's baby....

No Stopping Global Warming, Studies Predict

No Stopping Global Warming, Studies Predict
Mar 17, 2005 — By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even if people stopped pumping out carbon dioxide and other pollutants tomorrow, global warming would still get worse, two teams of researchers reported on Thursday.
Sea levels will rise more than they have already risen, worsening the damage caused by extreme high tides and storm surges, and droughts, heat waves and storms will become more severe, the climate experts predicted....

The Ugly American Bank

The Ugly American Bank
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times
Published: March 18, 2005
You can say this about Paul Wolfowitz's qualifications to lead the World Bank: He has been closely associated with America's largest foreign aid and economic development project since the Marshall Plan.
I'm talking, of course, about reconstruction in Iraq. Unfortunately, what happened there is likely to make countries distrust any economic advice Mr. Wolfowitz might give. ...

Arctic Refuge Plan B

Arctic Refuge Plan B
by lorax
Daily Kos
Wed Mar 16th, 2005 at 12:36:44 PST
(From the diaries -- kos)
By now, you've seen the bad news: the Cantwell amendment to strike Arctic Wildlife Refuge drilling from the budget has failed, 51-49. LINK
It is not time to give up. This battle can still be won. We must take the following steps immediately.
Diaries :: lorax's diary ::
Focus on defeating the entire Senate budget. This is a distinct possibility, if we can cobble together a coalition of Arctic Wildlife Refuge drilling opponents and enough fiscally conservative Republicans to oppose this bloated, deficit-expanding budget. It is very common for budgets to go unapproved. Dems can offer to support the budget if Arctic Wildlife Refuge drilling is removed.
The House budget does not include a provision for Arctic drilling. This is somewhat of an anomaly, as the House has been much more enthusiastic in the past about drilling the Arctic Wildlife Refuge than has the Senate. The budgets will have to undergo a reconciliation process, and maybe we can use this as another bottleneck to protect our national treasure.
Worst-case scenario--the budget passes both houses with a provision to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for drilling. Then we take it to the corporations. BP and ConocoPhillips, while not model corporate citizens, have renounced their desire to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. We can support them by only buying gas from them and their subsidiaries, while boycotting ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, the satan-spawn corporations behind this administration and drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. We can hit them where it hurts. A majority of Americans oppose drilling the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and we can get many of them to boycott the soulless Houston motherfuckers who are behind this bullshit.
Boycott update: Call these two corporations and tell them you refuse to buy their gas until they promise not to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

ExxonMobil: (972) 444-1000
ChevronTexaco: (925) 842-1000

Call these two corporations and thank them for refusing to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Inform them that they will benefit from your boycott of ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco.

BP: (281) 366-5174 and (202) 457-6603
ConocoPhillips: (303) 649-4065

DeLay's Dirty Dozen

DeLay's Dirty Dozen
Think Progress. Posted March 16, 2005.
A scandalous round-up of Tom DeLay's flagrant trespasses against decency. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been a busy man these last few years. Whether bribing congressmen, threatening political opponents, vacationing with lobbyists, or gutting House ethics rules, it's been hard to keep up with all the Hammer's activities. Here are 12 recent highlights from DeLay's illustrious career:
Delay Raises Corporate Cash for TRMPAC: DeLay is embroiled in a scandal in Texas for his active participation in illegally funneling corporate funds to assist state political campaigns. DeLay's political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), is under criminal investigation for using corporate money to finance Texas campaigns.
Delay Bribes Congressman to Vote for Medicare...
Delay Uses Taxpayer Money for Partisan Stunt...
Delay Pays for Golf Tournaments with Cash Meant for Kids...
Delay Promises 'Seat At Table' for Donor...
Delay Takes Money from Texas Prison Company with Legislation Pending...
Delay Blocks Legislation for Partisan Vendetta...
Delay Takes Shady Donations for Legal Defense Fund...
Delay Leaves Ethics Behind On European Vacation...
Delay Leaves House Rules Behind on Asian Vacation...
Delay Kicks Ethics out of House....
Delay Tries to Change Rules to Protect Power...

Without DeLay: Clean Up Congress - Sign the petition

 Without DeLay: Clean Up Congress
We the undersigned demand that Tom DeLay resign from Congress immediately because he...
Violates ethics rules at will;
Embodies the worst of pay-to-play politics putting big donors ahead of the rest of us;
Abuses his position as House Majority Leader; and
Believes he is above the law.
It's time for Tom DeLay to go....Sign the petition

To Trump Bush on Taxes

To Trump Bush on Taxes
By John Podesta
Tuesday, March 15, 2005; Page A23
Washington Post
A presidential advisory panel has quietly begun work on the critically important issue of tax reform. It does so against a political backdrop that makes it appear increasingly likely that the president's twin domestic goals of reforming Social Security and the tax system will merge by the summer.
This is a time when progressives would be wise to apply some of the lessons from the battle over the president's 2001 massive tax cuts for the wealthy.
President Bush put the debate in a philosophical, value-driven framework. He asked, "Who do you trust with the people's money, the people or the government?" He then unleashed the special interest groups to lobby for the tax giveaways covered by this theme, which implied that they were fighting for the people instead of their narrow interests.
We ended up with a tax bill that produced exploding deficits, protected the special interests, undid the progressivity of the tax code, and laid more of the burden on wage earners and less on those with investment income. But our arguments against it were never heard; we didn't offer a larger progressive counter-narrative, and we didn't offer a tax cut alternative worthy of its name....

Move Up the Date For Armageddon

Move Up the Date For Armageddon
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted March 10, 2005.
I must confess, I have sadly underestimated the Bush administration's sense of humor. Appointing John Bolton ambassador to the United Nations: Boffo! What a laff riot! Hilarious comedy, a delicious romp, great setup for a sitcom.
Bolton is known for being arrogant, humorless, self-righteous and confrontational, and he hates the United Nations. In other words, the perfect diplomat.
Speaking of setups, would the joke be half as good if President Bush hadn't just returned from a tour of Europe during which he assured our allies he was anxious to improve international cooperation? There, he was promising Europeans old and new that we'd turned a new page, we want nothing more than consultation, cooperation, being buddy-buddy. And then he names Bolton ambassador (oh, ha ha) to the United Nations (ha, ha, ha). Bolton keeps a bronzed grenade in his office to show how proud he is of being called a bomb-thrower.
Bolton himself has said, "I don't do carrots." Meaning he's strictly a stick guy. Intimidation, bullying, threats. The hawk's hawk, the neo-con's darling. This is a single-digit salute to the United Nations....

StopBolton.org Now Up and Running Against Nomination

StopBolton.org Now Up and Running Against Nomination
If all the Democrats and one Republican on the Senate's Foreign Relations committee vote against Bolton's nomination, it'll stop there.

Overcoming Anti-Semitism in Europe's Most Arab City

March 14, 2005
Guest: Laura Rozen
Overcoming Anti-Semitism in Europe's Most Arab City....Regular readers of my site, War and Piece, may be aware that I like spy fiction (and non fiction). So I was drawn into this Jerusalem Post interview today with American spy novelist Claire Berlinski. The interview is not really about Berlinski's spy novel, but about a fascinating article the Oxford-educated PhD recently published about why France's most Arab immigrant-dense city, Marseille, has seen among the least amount of anti-Semitic violence plaguing much of France:
The launching of the second Palestinian intifada, in late 2000, ignited the most extensive outbreak of anti-Semitic violence in France since the Holocaust. The crimes have been perpetrated almost entirely by the beur – Arab immigrants...
Yet while in other French cities the violence continues, in Marseille the animus soon fizzled out. This is largely because the city reacted with revulsion to these crimes: City-wide protests against anti-Semitism were immediately organized. Significantly, Arabs participated in these protests.
Islamic leaders were also present for the burial of the synagogue's charred Torah scrolls, and were photographed comforting Jewish religious leaders. These symbolic actions have been surprisingly successful in dampening outbreaks of ethnic violence.
Marseille's success is particularly impressive when one considers its demographics.
Fully a quarter of Marseille's population is of North African origin, and demographers predict that Marseille will be the first city on the European continent with an Islamic majority. Moreover, its Jewish community is the third-largest in Europe.
The most ethnically diverse city in France, then, has paradoxically been the most successful in containing its outbreak of ethnic violence.
A key reason for the city's calm is an entity called Marseille Esperance, a group of religious leaders convened by the mayor in a regular discussion group. Created in 1990 to stave off ethno-religious conflict between Jews and Muslims, it includes delegates from each of the city's religious communities who meet regularly to discuss civic problems... Whenever tension threatens to rise, the group meets and, at the mayor's urging, makes a public display of solidarity.
Most striking about Marseille Esperance, however, is this: It challenges the core principles of the French republican ideal, and the historic concept of what it means to be French.
This is an important article that certainly deserves more attention. Also don't miss the interview with Berlinski, which features some interesting observations about anti-Americanism in Europe, including this bit:
In some ways, anti-Americanism is not really irrational, if you completely ignore what the Europeans keep nattering on about their desire for human rights and international brotherhood of man. If you see that for the total bulls--t it is, and look at it in terms of traditional power politics and traditional European interests, you can see it as the traditional impulse that most nation states have for power.
Europe was divided, occupied, razed to the ground – some parts literally levelled by American bombers. And the US has dominated the continent for the entire post-war period.
Finally, the Cold War is over and we're looking at a new generation of people growing up who do not feel any personal guilt for past events. What they do feel is that they are Europeans – with a grand tradition of an extremely powerful Europe...
Is it any surprise, then, that these countries are now concerned with establishing and asserting their power on the world stage? Their biggest obstacle to this end, of course, is the United States. Structurally, what you would expect to see is a resentment of American power and a yen to curb it in any way possible. In the European case, curbing American power can only be done through diplomatic means, not military ones. In this sense, we're not talking about a psychotic illness; we're talking about something quite rational.
Interesting stuff.

Brand USA is in trouble, so take a lesson from Big Mac

Brand USA is in trouble, so take a lesson from Big Mac
Instead of changing his foreign policy, President Bush is changing the story
Naomi Klein
Monday March 14, 2005
The Guardian
Last Tuesday, George Bush delivered a major address on his plan to fight terrorism with democracy in the Arab world. On the same day, McDonald's launched a massive advertising campaign urging Americans to fight obesity by eating healthily and exercising. Any similarities between McDonald's "Go Active! American Challenge" and Bush's "Go Democratic! Arabian Challenge" are purely coincidental.
Sure, there is a certain irony in being urged to get off the couch by the company that popularised the "drive-thru", helpfully allowing customers to consume a bagged heart attack without having to get out of the car and walk to the counter. And there is a similar irony to Bush urging the people of the Middle East to remove "the mask of fear" because "fear is the foundation of every dictatorial regime", when that fear is the direct result of US decisions to install and arm the regimes that have systematically terrorised for decades. But since both campaigns are exercises in rebranding, that means facts are besides the point.
The Bush administration has long been enamoured of the idea that it can solve complex policy challenges by borrowing cutting-edge communications tools from its heroes in the corporate world....

Across U.S., citizens fight Bush administration for access to records

Across U.S., citizens fight Bush administration for access to records
Posted on Sunday, March 13 @ 09:12:04 EST
By Robert Tanner, Associated Press
FALL RIVER, Mass. - Ed Lambert, Al Lima and Mike Miozza never thought of themselves as activists, just regular guys. Then an energy company announced plans to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in this small community on the Taunton River. The men — the mayor, a city planner and an engineer — had nightmare visions of gas igniting into a huge fireball on the river, and asked for government-held reports that studied the threat to the town if the plant or a tanker were attacked.
But like many people who ask for government records these days, they didn't get what they were looking for. "It's a farce," Miozza says.
And it's happening across the country. To a Virginia homeowner seeking plans for a gas pipeline near his home. To Wyoming politicians worried about local dams. To an environmental group that wants the studies on 100-year floods and dam failures in a Southwest river canyon.
All asked for records, and all were turned down....

Dems Must Use Social Security Battle As Springboard

March 11, 2005
Dems Must Use Social Security Battle As Springboard
Donkey Rising
When he heard about John Kerry's statement on funding the war in Iraq, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," Karl Rove reportedly responded with lip-smacking glee "You don't get a gift like that very often."
Greg Anrig returns the favor in a new American Prospect article "The President's Gift" and cuts a fresh angle on the opportunity presented by President Bush's Social Security privatization scheme. Anrig, vice president of The Century Foundation and co-editor of "Social Security: Beyond the Basics," argues that Bush's proposal "gives liberals more than just a good shot at a legislative victory. It gives them a chance to define themselves."
Anrig skewers the GOP premise that workers'retirement security "should depend on how well the stocks and bonds in their accounts perform." He argues that Dems must hammer home their message that working peoples' retirement income must instead be anchored "to their earnings over the course of their careers." Winning the Social Security battle, Anrig believes, will give the Dems an even greater victory:
simply gaining ownership of the word “security” has the potential to pay enormous dividends with the public on both domestic and international issues...Progressives should no longer be undecided about what should come between “It’s” and “stupid.” Security, security, security.
Anrig says the GOP push for privatization gives the Democrats an unprecedented opportunity to reveal the Republicans as the party of impractical ideologues, whose grandiose policies won't work on "planet earth." This gives the Dems a chance to project a stronger alternative:
Contrasting the well-established desire of liberals to achieve real-world results with the fanciful theories of conservative ideologues can help progressives win on a range of issues, just as it is helping on Social Security.
Anrig urges Dems to drive home this message:
Conservatives are dividers, not uniters; they cannot be trusted to run the government; they care more about ideology than results; and they value the unpredictability of markets over your personal security.
If the Democrats amplify this message over the next 18 months, it could produce victories in the '06 elections -- and strengthen the party for even greater gains in the long term.

Bolton: The enemy within

The enemy within
How an Americanist devoted to destroying international alliances became the US envoy to the UN
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday March 10, 2005
Guardian
In the heat of the battle over the Florida vote after the 2000 US presidential election, a burly, mustachioed man burst into the room where the ballots for Miami-Dade County were being tabulated, like John Wayne barging into a saloon for a shoot-out. "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count," drawled John Bolton. And those ballots from Miami-Dade were not counted.
Now that same John Bolton has been named by President Bush as the US ambassador to the UN. "If I were redoing the security council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world," Bolton once said. Lately, as undersecretary of state for arms control, he has wrecked all the nonproliferation diplomacy within his reach. Over the past two decades he has been the person most dedicated to trying to discredit the UN. George Orwell's clock of 1984 is striking 13.
The euphoria that Bush's European trip marked a conversion on the road to Brussels is fading. For it was Bush himself who decided to reward Bolton with a position where he could continue his crusade as a "convinced Americanist" against the "globalists," especially those at the UN and the EU.
Bolton made a play to become deputy secretary of state after the 2004 election, but was blocked by Condoleezza Rice, who understood that his love of bureaucratic infighting would have undermined her authority. Dick Cheney privately promised Bolton that if all else failed he would give him a job on his vice presidential staff, but that proved unnecessary when Bush nominated him to the UN post. Rice announced his appointment, symbolically demonstrating that he reports to her. But Bolton has deep support within the White House, and Rice is very much a work-in-progress. With Bolton's appointment, the empire strikes back....

Harbingers of Harder Times

March 12, 2005
EDITORIAL
Harbingers of Harder Times
New York Times
t $58.3 billion, the United States' trade deficit for January exceeded everyone's worst expectations. The huge mismatch reported yesterday between imports and exports just missed breaking the monthly record, set last November, and is all the more remarkable for occurring in a month when the price of oil actually declined.
The trade deficit is the single most important factor in measuring the extent to which the nation lives beyond its means. As such, it should force us to own up to the dangers of rampant deficit spending. But the White House is showing no sign of action, as if doing nothing might make the problem smaller.
In response to yesterday's trade deficit figure, the dollar weakened against the euro and the yen, and traders predicted further declines in the weeks and months ahead. That, in turn, contributed to a drop in stock and bond prices. Such gyrations are certainly not unprecedented. The dollar has been on a downward trajectory for three straight years and was going into a fresh skid even before the latest trade deficit figure was released.
That slump was largely in response to recent reports, some later denied, that Asian central bankers may begin moving their huge dollar holdings into other currencies. That would mean higher interest rates in the United States because the government would need to sweeten Treasury yields, and higher interest rates imply further declines in stock and bond prices. A declining dollar also risks higher inflation; more expensive imports give domestic producers an excuse to raise prices.
There may be more trouble to come. Next week, the government will release figures showing how much capital flowed into the United States from abroad in January. Those numbers were down by nearly one-third in December. If next week's report is disappointing, the logical response from the currency markets would be to sell dollars - again raising the threat of all the possible side effects.
Since the trade deficit is intimately connected to the federal budget deficit, the best way to reduce the trade imbalance is to reduce the budget gap. But President Bush is calling for more tax cuts, politically implausible spending cuts and costly Social Security privatization. Both parties in Congress must address the twin trade and budget deficits - or risk being forced to do so by events beyond their control.

A Hill of credit-card debt

A Hill of credit-card debt
By Josephine Hearn
The Hill
More than 40 members of the House reported carrying at least $10,000 in credit-card or charge-card debt in 2003 and parts of 2004, according to a survey of financial disclosure reports conducted by The Hill.
The findings come as the House is poised to take up a bankruptcy-reform measure that would give banks and credit card companies expanded powers to seek repayment from debtors who file bankruptcy.
Opponents of the bill drew hope from the data, suggesting that lawmakers who nurse high-interest debt might be more likely to sympathize with indebted consumers. High credit-card debt is often a factor in the decision to file for bankruptcy, although the root cause is usually related to a life-altering event such as a divorce, illness or the loss of a job, experts said...

Running Red Lights

Running Red Lights
By Matthew Scott Kelemen, AlterNet. Posted March 11, 2005.
The children featured in Born into Brothels are growing up fast. Filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman hope to give them some tools to navigate with.
Was anybody expecting Million Dollar Baby to sweep the Academy Awards? Once Clint Eastwood's euthanasia drama won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, a consensus began to emerge in the media that Academy voters went sentimental this year. It was even suggested in some quarters that said sentimental streak extended to the Best Documentary category.
But anyone who actually saw Born Into Brothels, from the inaugural audience at Sundance to the critics screening it for this week's wide theatrical release, knows that there is little mushiness in the film.
"I don't think it is a sentimental film at all," says filmmaker Zana Briski. "I think it's a really honest film about these kids in the red-light district, and it shows everything from their joy and humor and beauty to the really harsh reality of their lives. I would not describe the film as sentimental, although I would describe it as a love story. I think it really is filled with love."
Despite Briski's insistence, the film is touching when not heart-wrenching in its depiction of the Calcutta children's plight. Co-directed by Briski and Ross Kauffman, Born Into Brothels captures her determination to save the kids by first inspiring them creatively, and then figuring out how to get them educations....

Senators May Block Social Security Vote

Senators May Block Social Security Vote
By Charles Babington and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A01
President Bush's bid to add individual accounts to Social Security faces such formidable opposition in the Senate that its supporters may be unable to bring it to a vote, according to a Washington Post survey of senators.
An overwhelming majority of Democratic senators said they will oppose, under any circumstances, Bush's plan to allow younger workers to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into individual investment accounts that would follow them into retirement. A few others said they will not support such accounts if they require substantial government borrowing. Even many Republicans say that is inevitable because the alternative involves unacceptably large cuts in benefits or tax increases to replace the diverted taxes or both.
Combined, these Democrats form a coalition large enough -- more than 41 members -- to use delaying tactics to keep the proposal from reaching a vote in the 100-member chamber.....

Slanting Social Security

Slanting Social Security
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times
Published: March 11, 2005
Many people involved in the debate over Social Security's future worry that the 2005 trustees' report will be slanted in favor of privatization.
I don't expect to see books that are literally cooked: Stephen Goss, the agency's chief actuary, has an excellent reputation. But it's not out of the question. After all, in 2003 the chief actuary of Social Security's sister agency, which oversees Medicare, was told that he would be fired if he gave Congress accurate information about the cost of the Bush Medicare bill.
Even if the numbers aren't fabricated, however, it's a good bet that they will be presented in a way intended to make Social Security's financial outlook seem much bleaker than it really is.....

Putting Last Things First

Putting Last Things First
New York Times Editorial
Copyright 2005 
Published: March 10, 2005
This week, there was more evidence that the world has begun edging away from the dollar. International data showed that several more nations who have been big customers for American debt - including China and India - have diversified their portfolios away from the American greenback. To us, that sounds like a serious threat to the long-term soundness of the national currency. But the Bush administration hasn't come close to addressing any of the economic fundamentals that have helped spawn the dollar's decline (the budget deficit comes to mind). Instead, the White House has been busy lobbying for new tax cuts that will make the situation worse.
Meanwhile, in a world in which the United States desperately needs international cooperation on everything from curbing the trade in terrorist weaponry to presenting a united front to countries like Iran and Syria, President Bush is spending his political capital on getting John Bolton, a longtime critic of multilateralism, as representative to the United Nations.
We had hoped, when Mr. Bush was re-elected, that he'd rethink his goals once the next campaign was no longer an issue. There are so many critical problems facing the nation. But the president seems determined to ignore the biggest challenges and to home in on politically charged side issues. Medicare faces a perilous future, given growing health costs and the aging of the baby boomer population, and anything approaching a resolution would require hard bipartisan work. But the White House instead decided to make privatizing Social Security its chief priority. Social Security's long-term problems are relatively minor compared with Medicare's, and the fixes are pretty obvious.
The list goes on and on. When we look at problems that cry out for White House involvement, one that leaps out is our dependency on foreign oil. That not only leaves us hostage to some of the shakiest and most unappetizing oil-producing nations around the globe, but also threatens the entire economy over the long term, given that rising oil prices make the trade deficit even bigger and the dollar even weaker. Another huge economic threat, at least for some agricultural regions, is the growing international pressure to end our irrational subsidy program for crops like cotton. Both of these are tricky political issues that require steady and firm presidential intervention.
We haven't heard Mr. Bush make a big deal about either, except for his fixation with drilling in the Arctic wildlife preserve. Meanwhile in Congress, all the political capital is being directed toward putting an anti-environmental former lobbyist for mining interests on the federal bench, and passing a new law that will make it difficult for middle-class credit card users who suffer a life catastrophe - like sudden illness or divorce - to get back on their feet after they have to declare bankruptcy.
The priorities of this administration never cease to amaze.

American Hitler

American Hitler
By DOUG THOMPSON
Capitol Hill Blue
Mar 8, 2005, 07:18
A cancer infects this country, spreading like wildfire, devouring the flesh of our society and threatening to turn what was once the greatest nation on Earth into a rotting corpse of political corruption, greed and abuse of power.
This cancer has a name: George W. Bush.
Yeah, yeah. Call me a Bush-basher if you want. I don’t give a damn. If you still support this madman check yourslef into the nearest psychiatric hospital for shock therapy. Somebody has to stand up against this American Hitler, this destroyer of freedom, this Devil with a drawl.
I’ve watched a lot of dangerous men pass through the portals of politics in my lifetime: Demagogues like Senator Joseph W. McCarthy, Racists like Alabama Governor (and Presidential candidate) George Wallace and Former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke (another Presidential candidate) as well as tail-chasing, vendetta-driven despots like Bill Clinton.
But none, repeat none, compare to the fear mongering, hatred, homophobia and anti-American actions of  Dubya and his klavern of fanatics who are hell-bent to destroy the Constitution, personal freedoms, civil liberties and just about anything else that provide the foundation of this place called America.
No President has done more to destroy freedom in America. His first Heinrich Himmler,  the bible-thumping, tight-assed John Ashcroft, threw Americans in jail without cause and denied them due process while ignoring the Constitution with the rights-robbing USA Patriot Act. Bush’s new Himmler, new attorney general Albertto Gonzales, promises to take jack-booted thuggery to new highs, prosecuting citizens for watching dirty movies and pushing for more spying on American citizens while calling the Constitution an “outdated document.”
Meanwhile, the brain-fried Republican lemmings who lick Dubya’s ass and boots and proclaim his mythical greatness apparently relish the destruction of America while wrapping themselves in faux-patriotism and claiming that anyone who doesn’t follow their madness in absolute lockstep is un-American and un-patriotic.
Horseshit. These people are the real traitors to America and should be treated as such. They have sold out their country in the name of political power and greed, willing to sacrifice what’s best for the nation in order to maintain control and push their narrow-minded, Puritanical agenda on a numb populace.
Bush and his fellow Republicans are also traitors to their party, one founded on the principle of less government, responsible spending and states’ rights. Together, the Bush White House and his Republican-controlled Congress have created the largest federal bureaucracy in history, pushed the deficit to all-time highs and forced an ever-increasing glut of federal regulations on state governments.
They’ve lied to the American people, cheated on the principles established by our forefathers and brought disgrace to this nation on the world stage. International respect for America is at all all-time low, thanks to an Iraq war based on lies and arrogance without limits.
Like Hitler, Bush may well go down in history as a mass-murderer. Nobody knows for sure how many innocent Iraqis have died at American hands because the Pentagon hides those figures but the number grows every day. Hell, an Italian hostage negotiator can’t even try to bring back someone from their country without getting gunned down by American troops in Iraq.
Thanks to George W. Bush and those who follow him, America is no longer the home of the brave or the land of the free. That America is gone. Maybe, must maybe, it can be reclaimed when the goons, crooks, thieves and traitors who control our country are driven from office.
Or maybe it’s too late. Maybe we’ve sat on our collective asses too long while traitors took over our country. Maybe we've been silent too long while American citizens with Arabic last names are rounded up like cattle and sent to concentration camps at Guantanimo Bay.
Maybe we should remember these words:
First they came for the Communists,
  and I didn’t speak up,
    because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
  and I didn’t speak up,
    because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
  and I didn’t speak up,
    because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
  and by that time there was no one
    left to speak up for me.
The Rev. Martin Niemoller wrote those words in Germany in 1945. An early supporter of Adolph Hitler, he realized, too late, his terrible error.

Made-in-America Wahhabism

Made-in-America Wahhabism
Posted on Tuesday, March 08 @ 09:54:27 EST
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Christian right is our own brand of extremism.
By William Thatcher Dowell, Los Angeles Times
There is a certain irony in the debate over installing the Ten Commandments in public buildings. The Second Commandment in the King James edition of the Bible states quite clearly: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the Earth below, or that is in the water under the Earth." Few people take this as a prohibition against images of stars and fishes. Rather it cautions against endowing a physical object, be it a golden calf or a two-ton slab of granite, with spiritual power.
In trying to promote the commandments, the Christian right seems to have forgotten what they are really about. It has also overlooked the fact that there are several versions: Exodus 20:2-17, Exodus 34:12-26, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Different language in Catholic Bibles and the Jewish Torah offer more variants.
Which should be enshrined? That is just the kind of debate that has been responsible for religious massacres through the ages. It was, in fact, the mindless slaughter resulting from King Charles' efforts to impose the Church of England's prayer book on Calvinist Scots in the 17th century that played an important role in convincing the founding fathers to separate church and state.
The current debate, of course, has little to do with genuine religion. What it is really about is an effort to assert a cultural point of view. It is part of a reaction against social change, an American counter-reformation of sorts against the way our society has been evolving....

Bush Gives the UN the Finger

Bush Gives the UN the Finger
David Corn
03/07/2005 @ 4:55pm

If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which requires Senate confirmation.

Bolton is the rightwing's leading declaimer of the United Nations. He once said, "If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further evidence to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."

Bolton has expressed much more vitriol for the UN than those two (representative) remarks, for he has been a UN-basher for years. Sure, the UN has many flaws and deserves reform. But what message does it convey to the UN and the world to send to the UN a fellow who has essentially called for total defunding of the institution? And this move comes right after Bush went to Europe to mend fences and after he has started working closely with France in an admirable effort to push Syria out of Lebanon. The Bolton appointment is unfathomable--except if viewed as a payback to the neocons. his band of Bush-backers were considered the losers when Bolton, formerly an undersecretary at the State Department, was not appointed to the number-two slot at Foggy Bottom when Condoleezza Rice took over the State Department. But this is some consolation prize. Imagine Jerry Falwell being placed in charge of marriage in Massachusetts.

Dem Gov. Schweitzer unveils plan to crack down on tax cheats

Schweitzer unveils plan to crack down on tax cheats
By BOB ANEZ
Associated Press
HELENA -- Gov. Brian Schweitzer unveiled a plan Monday to crack down on cheating taxpayers that he said could mean an additional $20 million in tax collections for the state over two years.
The plan, some of which will require legislative approval for changes in laws, is aimed mostly at large multistate corporations, wealthy taxpayers and those out-of-state taxpayers making money from selling Montana property.
The proposal targets what the administration calls "abusive tax shelters and income shifting techniques" that some people and companies use to avoid paying what they should in Montana taxes.
"The long-term consequences of abusive tax shelters could be severely detrimental to Montana's economy," Schweitzer said in prepared remarks. "Montana's hardworking and law-abiding citizens do not deserve to be ripped off by high net worth individuals and multistate corporations who aren't playing by the rules."
He said the federal General Accounting Office has estimated that the federal government lost up to $85 billion over the past decade to improper tax shelters. Some of those moves include such things as creating phony deductions, miscalculating gains from sales of assets and shifting money to untaxed operations, or to states and nations where income is not taxed.
Schweitzer said the Multistate Tax Commission has estimated the states lost $12 billion in corporate taxes in 2001 alone, and Montana's share of that was $26 million.
The plan calls for requiring taxpayers and those who prepare tax returns to disclose to the state Revenue Department any questionable tax shelters and any Montana business operations with sales of more than $500,000 annually but paying no Montana income taxes.
Another piece of the plan would prevent out-of-state residents who sell Montana property from escaping taxation on the profits by requiring them to pay withholding taxes at the time of the transactions. The administration also wants to update Montana tax law to close loopholes that allow certain types of income to escape taxation.

Copyright © 2005 Associated Press

Blogging: It’s a new medium, but, for the Republican Party, it’s an old story.

Blogged Down
From our April issue: Pseudo-journalistic Web sites are another way conservatives get around “the filter” of mainstream media. It’s a new medium, but, for the Republican Party, it’s an old story.
By Garance Franke-Ruta
Web Exclusive: 03.04.05
During one especially hectic week in mid-February, the Internet took three scalps in what appeared to be unrelated events. Liberal bloggers forced Talon News White House correspondent James D. Guckert, a k a “Jeff Gannon,” to resign after it was revealed that he was writing under a false name for a Republican activist group (GOPUSA), that he was not really a journalist at all, and that he had posed nude on the Internet in an effort to solicit sex for money. Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, created a firestorm after Eason Jordan, the chief news executive for CNN, made controversial remarks during an off-the-record panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, suggesting that the U.S. military had targeted journalists in war zones. Jordan was forced to resign. Finally, in Maryland, Joseph Steffen, a longtime aide to Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich, was fired after reporters exposed him as the author of e-mails and anonymous Web-site postings encouraging rumors about the marriage of Baltimore’s popular mayor, Martin O’Malley, a potential ’06 challenger to Ehrlich.

All unrelated stories, except for the Internet angle, right? Well, no. Scratch the surface and the same names turn up in each scandal, revealing the events of mid-February to have been part of an ongoing and coordinated proxy war by Republican political operatives on the so-called liberal media, conducted through the vast, unmonitored loophole of the Internet.....