29 August 2004

Countdown to 1,000

Sometime in the next few days -- possibly just after the Liars Club Convention in NYC -- we will lose our 1,000th serviceperson in Iraq, a country I am increasingly convinced we never should have gone to at all. We are, as I write this, only 28 people away from that point.

This is another golden opportunity to find out exactly how conservatively-biased your preferred news channel really is. If they spend anything less than two complete 24-hour news cycles commenting on this point -- particularly if, fate forbid, it should happen during or immediately after the Liar's Club Convention -- I think you can fairly write that given channel/newspaper/radio show/service off as conservatively-biased and abandoned of true journalistic principles, and thus change your viewing/listening habits accordingly.

It should go without saying that a liberally-biased news organisation, by contrast, wouldn't let it go at all, and would keep bringing it up for at least a month if not right up till the election. The Sunday talk shows are an exception, since they tend to at least mention (if not honestly or fully report) issues of some depth and substance, since their target audience are self-admitted news junkies.

28 August 2004

Say Something Nice

It's always a good idea to say something nice about someone whom you've spent considerable time attacking (fairly, but rigourously). So, thanks to another article from the New York Times, I'm pleased (really!) to say that President Bush has said something I can at least partially agree with.

The quote: "Five twenty-sevens [freelance political organisations that are not controlled by or have direct links to the official parties or candidates] - I think these ought to be outlawed,'' Bush said. "I think they should have been outlawed a year ago. We have billionaires writing checks, large checks, to influence the outcome of the election.''

While the fantasy of outlawing any free speech by political groups not directly approved by the two controlling parties is a communist dream come true that will never happen, I can certainly agree with the President that "billionaires writing cheques" is a danger to democracy.

What the President doesn't seem to realise is that the "billionaires writing checks to influence the outcome of the election" are primarily his pals Richard Mellon Scaife (psychotic obsessive Clinton-hater) and Rupert Murdoch (destroyer of journalism). Oh and let's not forget that nice Mr. Diebold. And Rev. Moon.

The Democrats only have, to the best of my knowledge, one "billionaire" on their side, George Soros (an immigrant who made his fortune in America, yet is amusingly attacked by right-wing billionaires as "anti-capitalist"). Soros has pledged up to $15 million of his wealth in the fight to unseat George Bush.

Sounds like a lot of money to you and me, but it's about 1/10th the amount Scaife and Murdoch are each putting into this. Heck, it's less money than Fahrenheit 9/11 makes in a typical weekend at the dollar cinemas. It's extremely unlikely Soros would even be bothering if it wasn't for the decade-long head start Scaife, Murdoch and Moon have had trying to smear and destroy the opposition political party -- almost entirely with lies and distortions, I might add.

So, we have a president controlled by right-wing billionaires claiming to call for an end to billionaires writing large checks to influence the outcome of the election. A promise to mount a court challenge that will be laughed away at the first go-round. This from a man who owes his very career to these "billionaires."

What's also remarkable about the article is how much evading Bush does. The interview is not published as a Q-n-A, presumably because it would be embarrassing to President Inarticulate, but rather as a summary of his remarks sprinkled with direct quotes. Most of the questions posed by the New York Times editorial board were not answered, or evaded with generalities.

Example: Asked repeatedly if he would condemn the Swift Boat Sociopath ads, Bush said only that he condemns "all 527 ads" and characterised himself as having been "attacked" by them too.

Note to Mr. Bush: there's a big difference between the left-leaning 527s and Swift Boat Sociopaths. The Not-So-Swiftees are proven liars. Stop trying to paint yourself as an equal victim of those bad ol' 527s. It would be impossible to smear your reputation the way Kerry has been smeared, or distort your record the way you have distorted Kerry's.

27 August 2004

Oh. My. Gawd. The Smoking Gun.

For the love of all that's holy, go here and then watch this video.

Swift Boat Sociopath Finally Tells the Truth

Here's the real story on Swift Boat Liars leader John O'Neill. See how many media outlets outside the New York Times pick up on this, and then tell me how "liberal" the media is.

O'Neill, for those of you who don't know, is the leader of the Swift Boat Sociopaths, the ringleader who coerced a number of people who are now busy backpedaling their statements into saying nasty things about John Kerry. Most of the Swift Boat Sociopaths begin lying immediately in their ads: only two of the 10 veterans featured in the ads ever even met Kerry in Vietnam, and one of those two can't produce proof of it. When they say they "served with John Kerry," they mean they were in Vietnam at roughly the same time he was (O'Neill himself never actually crossed paths with Kerry in Vietnam -- he took over Kerry's swift boat months after Kerry had left).

O'Neill, as was obvious to people who follow Republican machinations, is a right-leaning hit man attorney with a special vendetta against Kerry going back to Kerry's Senate testimony in 1971 in which Kerry told shocked congresscritters (and the nation) of atrocities and other barbaric behaviour by his fellow servicemen.

Having read Kerry's testimony (but not seen it), it seems to me that Kerry takes pains to say that his broad and damning brush should not be inferred to mean that all Vietnam soldiers were like that, but many (including O'Neill) took deep and long-lasting offense at being lumped into that category. Perhaps something in Kerry's manner made them feel that he did mean all servicemen, as I say I haven't seen Kerry's testimony.

So this guy has been on Kerry's ass about his actions post-Vietnam for thirty years now. A little whacko, I think, but admittedly I wasn't in Vietnam and perhaps I can't understand the intense shame and humiliation O'Neill feels that drives him to hound Kerry so much. To me, O'Neill comes off like a guy who buys a Hummer to make up for his tiny penis (and really, isn't that the only reason to buy a Hummer?).

Anyway, he hounded Kerry back in the 70s and, having said his piece (and having decidedly lost a televised debate with Kerry in 1971) largely went away, but when O'Neill found out Kerry was running for president, he decided he had to stop Kerry at all costs, and that includes telling bald-faced lies about both his own service as well as Kerry's. O'Neill has been caught red-handed telling a lie about his own trips into Cambodia and about the border of Cambodia, but he refuses to relent (just like Bush -- getting caught lying doesn't even slow down the lies).

He's written a book called Unfit For Command with nutcase raging bigot (anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, misogynist -- the man is an equal opportunity hater, I'll give him that) Jerome Corsi, he's led the Swift Boat Sociopaths into a moral morass from which they'll be lucky to emerge with any semblance of career or health intact, and all because he's pissed that Kerry beat him in a debate (both literally and figuratively) over Vietnam 30 years ago.

The New York Times actually talked to the guy, and what emerges is absolutely fascinating. Not only did I have this guy pegged as a psycho right from the start, but he's even more mentally unbalanced than even I believed:
hile enemies portray him as a one-dimensional partisan, Mr. O'Neill is man of intriguing contradictions. He has extensive ties to prominent Texas Republicans, but he has told friends he considers Mr. Bush an "empty suit" who is unfit to lead the country, and says he voted for Al Gore in 2000, and for Ross Perot in 1996 and 1992.

So let me get this straight: O'Neill doesn't think Kerry should be president because he feels that Kerry disgraced his fellow Vietnam brothers, but thinks Bush is an idiot and incompetent.

The article goes on to say that O'Neill is "known in the Houston legal community for a near-photographic memory and an ability to master complex facts and that have helped him win big trial judgments. Yet the book he co-authored against Mr. Kerry, "Unfit for Command," is riddled with inconsistencies and differences with the official record."

His colleagues, both friends and enemies, agree on one thing, according to the Times: "O'Neill's grudge against Kerry is personal."

Gosh, I wonder why that isn't splashed across every paper and TV news show in America? Along with the revelations of backtracking and outright lies in both the TV ads and the book, and the clear fact that O'Neill just has a personal grudge, you'd think the media would stop giving him so much credibility, wouldn't you? Gosh darn that liberal media!!

The article goes to quote friends and supporters describing O'Neill as a man unable to ever change his mind once he decides on a position, a person who continues to argue that position even if the facts (reality, majority opinion, etc) contradict him, a man who sees the world in very simple-minded black-and-white terms and won't brook any shades of gray. His colleagues even coined the phrase "Johnovision" to describe his obsessive single-mindedness and refusual to let go to open his mind once it had closed on a topic.

To me, the Times article (which goes to great lengths to highlight his accomplishments and make his psychopathic closed-mindedness sound like a positive trait) paints a pretty fair portrait of a nutcase, a stalker, a compulsive-obsessive-vindictive bastard. The sort of person who would kill his ex-wife and kids rather than let another man touch them, you know?

Restoring American Credibility

This USA Today editorial calmly and elegantly explains the problem, and what's more they also tell you, in plain English that even the most agenda-obsessed neocon could understand, what to do about it. A small excerpt:
Still missing are solutions to broader problems arising from the scandal:

1. Addressing international fallout. Around the world, Abu Ghraib has become a symbol of an arrogant America that doesn't practice the respect for human rights that it preaches. The negative impression not only falsely portrays the U.S. as a nation that disregards international norms of behavior, but -- more worrisome -- it also helps al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups recruit.

Correcting that impression is essential. The task begins with establishing a clear chain of accountability. The case for firing the top brass or the civilian leadership is less clear but certainly a possibility

Now, I happen to think that this means replacing the Commander-in-Chief, on who's shoulders the responsibility ultimately lies (even if he has made a lifetime career out of ducking it).

But even if you don't agree about changing presidents, you must -- surely -- agree that the above two paragraphs are the absolute minimum that must be done to begin to repair the incredibly damaged moral authority of the United States. The USA Today editorial goes on to list several more steps, all equally obvious to every decent person except the administration. Go read.

Bush: Bad President

Let's ignore for the moment the fact that George W. Bush is a liar, a hypocrite, a religious phony and misguided to the point of actual evil who surrounds himself with genuinely evil yet incompetent idiots. Let's just put all that aside for a moment.

There must be some way to objectively measure a president's performance independent of their personality or political agenda, right? Measurements such as economic performance, respect within the world stage, peace and democracy around the world, good jobs and good wages for consumers at home, housing starts and media housing prices, crime statistics, drug usage rates and so on. In short, we can and should measure this and every president's performance by independent data of the overall quality of life in the country. In short, as Ronald Reagan said, "Are we (as a country/society) better off than we were four years ago?"

(Would that the SCLM would pick up on this idea, which has only been a world standard for elected leaders since forever.)

I hope my Republican friends (and yes, I do have some -- quite a few, in fact) will accept the central premise of this exercise, which is that individual presidents, regardless of party affiliation, political agenda or personality, can do better or worse their their peers in the job. IOW, Franklin Roosevelt (D) is generally accepted to have been a good president, whereas Herbert Hoover (R) was considered a bad one. On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln (R) was one of the greatest, whereas Lyndon Baines Johnson (D) was, on balance (and civil rights advocacy nonwithstanding) not too good. Even Richard Nixon (R) has with time and perspective been regarded as having done a number of good things (to balance out the evil things), while Jimmy Carter (D) has equally been recognised as someone who's heart was genuinely in the right place and who did a number of good things, but was generally ineffective and weak as a president.

There have been times in our history, my Republican friends should remember, when the president has been seen to be a bad president and lost support of the population at large, including their own party. Republicans rose up against Richard Nixon when it became obvious that he was, in fact, a crook. Democrats abandoned Lyndon Johnson when it became obvious that he couldn't get us out of Vietnam to the point where Johnson didn't even run for re-election.

Likewise, mainstream American voters have, when motivated, easily crossed party lines when it comes to voting for presidents. Ronald Reagan enjoyed a lot of support from Democrats during his first run for president, and Bill Clinton obviously persuaded a lot of Republicans to pull off the two large mandates he enjoyed (the likes of which we may never see again, I might add).

Finally, let's also accept and recognise that both parties have, at times, fielded incredibly weak candidates. Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis (both D) come to mind, but so does Gerald Ford and Bush41 (R), who were both poised to get creamed due to the perception of poor on-the-job performance -- and did indeed get their asses handed to them in the next election.

So, removing all aspects of rancour and politics out of the equation, how has George W. Bush done in his first term as president? The answer, if Republicans were honest, would be: very poorly.

Economics: Whoever heard of a jobless recovery? Whoever heard of financing a recovery with a record deficit without much to show for it? How can any president defend their economic record when statistics consistently show them to be deliberately misleading people? Honestly, I've tried to look at this as objectively as possible, but from an economic standpoint Bush has been a disaster and that's just all there is to it.

Bush continues to claim that the economy is improving, but the facts say otherwise: poverty is on the rise (by more than a million people!), health insurance coverage has shrunk (by a million and a half, largely due to people either being laid off or forced to take jobs that don't offer health insurance), unemployment is actually much more significant than the (rising) numbers say (because the gov't simply doesn't count people after they've exhausted their benefits and/or given up looking for work), housing prices are completely out of control and so is the trade deficit (look at how badly the dollar is doing worldwide), real wages are shrinking to the tune of $500 a year (not counting inflation!) and most importantly, nobody in Washington seems to care.

To be fair, inflation remains low, interest rates are still kind of reasonable (creeping back up though), and the stock market thankfully has only a tenuous link to economic realities on the ground, meaning that the enormous deficit has yet to impact on American's daily lives very much. But gas prices are ridiculous, housing costs are ridiculous, energy costs are ridiculous, healthcare prices have gone well beyond ridiculous (what was an emerging and serious issue during the Clinton admin is now a full-blown crisis), and food prices have spiked as well. Despite innumerable reports that offer solid proof to the contrary, the Bushies continue to say that the "recession" was inherited from the Clintons. Folks, that just isn't true. Republican economic theory of the last 20 years (which is in stark contrast to their previous fiscal responsibility) seems to be:

"Republicans will help a handful of other Republicans get incredibly rich, but heaven help you if you're not in that group, because the rich Republicans will definitely not help you. Oh, and the deficit is Somebody's Else's Problem."

Maybe I'm showing my age, but that's not a Republican Party I recognise. The old Republican party were real conservatives -- budget hawks as much as they were war hawks (the last Republican president to submit a balanced budget was in fact Nixon, who did it while financing a war). You notice how the Republicans no longer use the phrase "Tax and Spend Liberal" much anymore (well, apart from Zell Miller, but he's truly talking out of his butt -- Georgia has far higher taxes and a far bigger deficit than the state of "Taxachusetts" as he loves to say)? There's a reason for that.

The World Stage: It's quite clear to any rational person that the US has lost a lot of prestige in the world, and by "the world" I mean all over, not just those countries that never liked us much anyway. Bush alienated our allies with his "fuck you" attitude, then descended into exactly the same sort of torture, rape and murder that we railed against Hussein for committing, and then followed that up by demanding to come crawling back to the UN on his own terms. "Hubris" doesn't even begin to describe it. When you compare our standing in the world today to what it was on, say, Sept. 12th, 2001, it's obvious that anyone -- absolutely anyone, from either party -- couldn't have screwed this whole Iraq thing up worse than this bunch. It is exceedingly difficult to believe that these losers even remember the first Gulf War, let alone were part of the planning of it as so many of them were ...

The thing I'm probably angriest about, though, is the loss of our leadership role in the world. The US used to be able to go to other countries and say "respect human rights" with authority because we could back it up by pointing to our own record and show that you don't have to handle things that way -- you don't have to impose order with violence and fear. We used to be able to go to other countries and say "get rid of your totalitarian/communist/socialist regime, because democracy works better." The 2000 non-election screwed that one up for good. We used to be able to say to other countries "pre-emptive attacks are wrong." Now we are in no position to say any of those things, and the Chinese (for starters) are already throwing it back in our faces. It did not have to be that way.

Good Jobs, Good Wages: Give me a freakin' break. This administration actually continues to promote the shipping of jobs overseas, even in the face of massive voter dissatisfaction with this "strategy." The statistics prove that the jobs created under Bush pay significantly less than the jobs exported, and of course this just puts the squeeze on the middle class, since the poor are already underpaid and the rich are of course overpaid. Do we really want to live in a country where only the wealthy can really enjoy life? Because that's where we're headed.

Again, it wasn't like that under Clinton. The facts are out, and show clearly that under Clinton, the rich got richer and the poor got richer and the middle class got richer. And he did it all while submitting budgets that not only destroyed the deficit, but actually made a start on the national debt, and without raising taxes significantly. He finished up his second term with a surplus that would have easily paid for this Iraqi nonsense 20 times over if Bush hadn't already wasted it all. It all seems rather like a dream now ...

Housing Costs, Crime, Drugs: Up, Up, and Away. There have been some definite, and welcome, shifts in crime and drug use patterns during the last four years (away from excessively violent crimes and a dramatic lowering of middle-level drug use), but just like the rest of country the stats at either end are up, up, up. Low-end recreational drug use (pot, X, pills, alcohol, smoking) is increasing and getting to younger kids, and very high-end serious addiction (PCP, Heroin) is also on the rise.

Crime isn't much better. While burglaries and muggings are down, rape and murder are up. People are generally acting more savagely towards their fellow human beings. There have been times when people felt more afraid generally than they do now, but as 9/11 taught us, much of that sense of security is a false one -- and it doesn't help that this administration (and particularly this campaign) uses fear as one of its main weapons.

In my own life, it's hard to give an easy answer to the question "are you better off than you were four years ago?" In terms of raw income, yes I am better off, because I've now learned how to make my freelance business profitable -- a skill I'm still learning, and knew a heck of a lot less about four years ago. I suspect this would be the case under any administration, at least as applies to me.

But our rent has gone up every year, our power bills creep up, our health costs have soared (to the point where, if they continue at this pace, we will be unable to afford health coverage in another three years), our food and transport costs have risen very noticeably, and there's a lot more stress in our lives thanks both to the "war" and to Bush's seeming ability to combine policies that we feel are wrong-headed with an inability to even execute the wrong-headed policies correctly. The conservative swing by the media doesn't help much either -- there is so much blatant, easily-spotted lying going on (particularly on the cable news networks) that you begin to not even recognise the country you're living in. We're obsessed with ridiculous details and parsing games rather than the real problems that face us. It takes a terrorist attack on a scale like 9/11 to get us to shut up about trivialities, and even then it only works for a year at most.

I guarantee you that if Al Gore had been in office when 9/11 happened, the rest of the world would be happily joining us in kicking some serious ass in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan (and perhaps North Korea as well) right now instead of wasting our time (and $200 billion+ in badly-needed funds) on dictators who turn out to be no better or worse than a host of other dictators, had nothing to do with 9/11 and didn't have any terrorists or WMDs hiding there when we invaded.

Long Post, Short Summation: By any yardstick, George W. Bush has been a bad president. Quite possibly the worst one ever, inasmuch as his blunders and agenda spread far beyond our borders. Most fascinatingly (at least for me), Bush comes off particularly badly when you measure his performance by a traditional Republican yardstick -- he has plunged the country deeply into debt, he has hugely expanded the government, he has savaged privacy laws, he has engaged in foreign adventures that have produced no positive result and cost us a huge portion of our GNP, he has taken cops and firefighters off the streets, weakened homeland security, cut veteran and active-military benefits, conscripted the National Guard into service they are not trained for, angered our allies and visibly strengthened our enemies. He has ruined environmental safeguards, endorsed "pork barrel" spending, sent good jobs overseas, allowed more illegal immigrants access to our workforce/benefits/school system, and his administration has been caught and convicted of breaking the law far more times than the Clinton administration. You would think the Republicans would be unhappy about this ...

About the only thing George Bush is strong on is undoing gun control laws, opposing abortion, giving religious institutions government money, and ... hmmm, come to think of it, that's all I can come up with. I can't think of a single thing inside this country that's gotten noticeably better under George Bush's stewardship, even including the issues I just mentioned as his strong points. Can you?

Update: My own analysis of the Bush administration's objective failures pales in comparison to the more thoughtful and in-depth look already done by my Canadian chum and blogmate James Bow. I believe James speaks (very articulately and fairly, as always) for a lot of Canadians, and quite frankly I'd add that opinions from outside the US such as his are woefully missing from the national debate on both George Bush and our future as a country. Go read.

18 August 2004

Hurricane Charley

What can I say? We survived it, though we were completely without power or reliable water for four-and-a-half days. Thank heavens for my in-laws.

It's absolutely amazing how grumpy and out-of-sorts you get when you're forcibly separated from your own bed, your own computer, your own stuff.

At the risk of sounding like an ingrate, I'll say this much: we didn't see a single solitary National Guard person throughout the entire ordeal. I would suggest to my readers that had they not been deployed unnecessarily to Iraq, they could have done a lot of good here that would have minimised the widespread suffering and, in some cases, saved lives.

13 August 2004

From the Department of the Obvious

Well, it's official: Bush's tax cuts mostly went to rich people.

In other shocking news, hurricanes often cause a lot of rain to fall and wind to blow.

The Congressional Budget Office says about 2/3rds of the benefits of Bush's tax cuts went to people in the top 20%, with an average yearly income of $203,740. The worst part of this is that it was the middle 20% who actually saw their taxes rise: poor people got a small break, albeit a largely meaningless one. But if your total household income is between $50K-$100K, you actually got soaked.

I think the debate on whether Bush's tax cuts a) went to rich people over middle-class or poor people and b) helped cause the enormous swing from surplus to crippling deficit is now completely over.

08 August 2004

Alan Keyes, Hypocrite

The guy who said the following:
I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton's willingness go into a state she doesn't even live in and pretend to represent people there, so I certainly wouldn't imitate it.
Has now decided to run for the Illinois Senate even though he lives in Maryland.

The Republican party used to be able to do better than this.

06 August 2004

Katherine Harris is a National Disgrace and a Liar

Not content with simply being an evil anti-democracy cheater in 2000, she's now decided to start making stuff up just to make it seem like she's one of the Cool Kids, like she matters in any way.

She lied to an audience in Indiana that she knew of a terrorist plot that had been foiled in tiny Carmel, a suburb of Indianapolis. She also said that the mayor had told her this, but it was "classified" and that she had "already said too much."

Only problem ... the mayor of Carmel doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. Neither does Indiana Governor Joe Kernan, the police chief of Carmel or the staff of the US House Intelligence Committee, who should know about those things, don'tcha think?

In other words ... allow me to tell you what the SCLM won't ... she's lying. Making shit up. Blowing smoke out of her ass.

Just what we want in a US Representative, isn't it? Er, isn't it?

02 August 2004

Ask Not for Whom the Bell Toles ...

Tom Toles is the best political cartoonist working today. Have a look and see if you don't agree.