George's Back

The great majority of you have already heard and seen more junk about this subject than you care for. I had only seen a couple of the shots from the debates. A friend just sent me this link with quite a few surprising back shots.

There really is something strapped on Georgie's back. Or bolted in. Or coming out.

Thomas Schaller Goes Off in the Gadflyer

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for a great rant:

"Domestically, I believe income tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are the solution to budget surpluses or deficits, high or low inflation, stable or unstable interest rates, expanding or shrinking trade deficits, widening or narrowing wealth gaps, increasing or decreasing poverty rates, rising or falling unemployment, prosperity or recession, wartime or peace. I believe record-setting budget deficits, record-setting trade deficits, and a burgeoning national debt are examples of the president's fiscally-conservative economic leadership."

A Good Comic

A little Monday humor to start the week out.

Fear Tactics Reach New Low

Please watch the "wolves" video, and then watch this video about a hundred times in a row. Then ask yourself a simple question: What kind of weak-minded coward does the Bush team think I am?

The (Sp)Oils of War

Linda McQuaig of the Toronto Star wrote a great piece on oil and the war in Iraq.

Kerry's promise to bring more allies to the table seemed to be a particularly empty one. He more or less dodged the question in the second debate. Key allies, such as France and Germany, have come out publicly and said they will not commit troops whether or not Kerry is elected.

But let's look at a key part of McQuaig's article:

Certainly any suggestion that private oil interests were in any way involved is hooted down with charges of conspiracy theory.

Yet the documents suggest that those who took part in the Cheney task force including senior oil company executives were very interested in Iraq's oil and specifically in the danger of it falling into the hands of eager foreign oil companies, rather than into the rightful hands of eager U.S. oil companies.

As the documents show, prior to the U.S. invasion, foreign oil companies were nicely positioned for future involvement in Iraq, while the major U.S. oil companies, after years of U.S.-Iraqi hostilities, were largely out of the picture. Indeed, the U.S. majors would have been the big losers if U.N. sanctions against Iraq had simply been lifted. "The U.S. majors stand to lose if Saddam makes a deal with the U.N. (on lifting sanctions)," noted a report by Germany's Deutsche Bank in October 2002.

When I read this it occurred to me that if Kerry is willing to do a complete "re-do" with respect to who really gets to divide the spoils of war, then there is a chance that allies will in fact be drawn back to the table. One would hope that Iraq itself would get a much fairer deal than described in Naomi Klein's "Bagdad Year Zero" article.

Perhaps this is the real message behind Kerry's promise, one which he cannot explicitly say to an American public that is not ready to hear it, but a message that is crystal clear to certain world leaders.

The Iraq quagmire may not simply be a military one, but an economic one as well. Perhaps re-doing the post-war plan in this way is not even possible without legal battles against companies who already have deals in place. If the situation in Iraq is really as dire as some of the reports indicate, however, then it may be possible that these companies are losing their stomach for doing business under the current plan, and might be willing to re-negotiate.

In any event, it seems that quite a few planets will have to align before the mess in Iraq can begin to be undone. It is not hard to imagine a Kerry presidency that makes little or no progress beyond the grim situation the U.S. is now facing.

Bush Not Confined By Reality

A lot of food for thought in the new piece by Ron Suskind in the New York Times. Here is an excerpt that is sure to raise some eyebrows:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

A Bump in the Road on Bush's Spending Spree Highway

I didn't know there was any sort of limit in place on the deficit spending of our federal government. Apparently there is, and Bush has reached it. Now the question is whether or not he can quietly exceed it after the elections.

I Am Less Confused

In my earlier article I wondered why I heard such loud laughter on the radio in response to Kerry's "Tony Soprano" joke, but then heard nothing when I watched this joke again on TV.

Well I wasn't imagining things, I re-watched the TV broadcast, and could not hear the laughter. So I cranked the volume way up, and that time I could in fact hear some barely audible laughter. Yet I remember quite vividly the loud laughter I heard on the radio.

So I am guessing what happened is that the audience was miked, but most broadcasters turned the audience mike off during most of the debate. For some reason the ABC radio feed I was listening to didn't.

At the end of the debate, the question on what the candidates learned from the women in their lives, the audience can be heard again loud and clear. I suppose the audience mikes were turned on again in anticipation of the audience's reaction at the end.

The Education President

Bush on the minimum wage:

But let me talk about what's really important for the worker you're referring to. And that's to make sure the education system works.

I have worked with people who took on two minimum wage jobs to simply feed their family. If you don't believe in raising minimum wage, just say it. Don't insult people by telling them they have the luxury of going to college for some number of years, because a lot of them don't have that luxury.

Bush on racism and affirmative action:

But we ought to have an aggressive effort to make sure people are educated...

Again, just come out and say you are against affirmative action. Why the smokescreen?

Bush's message of encouragement for someone out of a job:

No, education is how to help the person who's lost a job.

Here in Silicon Valley we have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. This area was perhaps the biggest casualty of the economic downturn. A great many of those who lost their jobs here have Masters degrees and PhDs. Telling them "here is a little money to go to a community college" will go over like the proverbial lead balloon.

Waving his magic education wand at all of those people suffering the failure of his four years as President will accomplish nothing more than to salt in their wounds.

I Am Confused

Driving home I was listening to the debate on the radio. When Kerry delivered his "Tony Soprano" line, a great deal of laughter could be heard coming from the audience.

I got home shortly thereafter, but wasn't able to watch the debate on my DVR until after the kids were asleep. On the PBS broadcast when Kerry delivers this line, there is absolute silence from the audience. Hmmmm, was there some sort of rule that required the laughter to be edited out? Would that even be possible to do?

Later, when Bush made a joke in his closing statements, laughter could be heard loud and clear from the audience. At this point I thought I must be losing my mind.

This morning I glanced at the transcript:

Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country. (LAUGHTER)

I'll have to watch the footage on my DVR again. Surely I must be in error, and the laughter must be audible on the PBS broadcast.

3rd Debate: Osama

Kerry:

He said, 'I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned. '

Bush:

Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Actual quotes from March 13th transcript:

So I don't know where he is. Nor -- you know, I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you.

I'll repeat what I said: I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country.

But, you know, once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins.

Questions for Bush

Laundry lists of pointed questions (that will never really be asked) have become all the rage now. Have a look at the questions for John Kerry in today's New York Times. Not to be left out of the fun, here are my ten questions for George Bush:

1. Please cite the part of the Constitution and/or international law that gave you the legal authority to "pre-emptively" invade Iraq.

If you believe Article 1, Section 10, clause 3 of the Constitution grants you such power, then please answer, if you will, a couple other questions. The American Heritage dictionary lists the most common definition of "imminent" as "Threatening to occur immediately...". Can you describe what imminent danger our nation was facing from Iraq, and give as accurate estimate as possible as to when this danger was going to be realized?

2. Why did you appoint five-time convicted felon John M. Poindexter?

OK, I will give you some credit for this one, you sort of answered it in the town hall debates. While mainstream media published article upon article pondering who you were referring to when you said you regretted some of the people you appointed, I think it is obvious that Poindexter would be at the top of your list.

I'd still like to hear some rationale as to why you picked him in the first place.

3. Individuals who earn over $200,000 are presumably savvy investors. Why would such a person invest the money from your tax cut into our economy and not into a more lucrative foreign market or business?

4. In two separate rulings this year the PATRIOT Act was found to be in violation of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. The Supreme Court recently said that a "state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." Do you still claim that the PATRIOT Act does not infringe upon the rights of United States citizens?

5. Can you point to an instance where you personally took the blame for a mistake of policy? Describe an issue where the "buck" stopped at your desk.

6. A multi-part question:

Why were the men charged with running the most flagrantly illegal and abusive prison systems in our country exported to Iraq to set up the Abu Ghraib prison?

Why was it necessary for the Congress to pass an anti-torture bill yesterday? Why did the Republican-controlled Congress deem it worthy of passage?

The DOJ memo of August 1, 2002 goes to great lengths to argue that you as President have a singular power to authorize torture, and that any attempts to prosecute such authorized acts of torture will be barred as unconstitutional. If you had no knowledge of acts of torture occurring, and the Constitution already granted you this power, why was this memo necessary, why was it authored when it was, and why does it go into such great detail with regard to your power, and immunity from consequence? Do you believe you have a Constitutional right to authorize torture?

7. You say the hundreds of billions of dollars it will take to win the "war on terror" are worth it to keep WMDs out of the hands of the wrong people, and because freedom stops terrorism. Could you talk about these claims in light of the fact that the attacks of 9/11 were successfully executed with the lowest-tech devices imaginable, by people who benefited substantially from taking advantage of the freedoms in our society?

8. Your Clean Skies Act calls for a cap on tons/year of mercury that is more than five times the limit that would have been allowed under the previous Clean Air Act. This is certainly does not present a lethal danger to citizens, or you would not support this act. If one of your daughters were to become pregnant how would you feel if her mercury level could be tested and then increased by a factor of five?

9. Do you consider gloating about executions and beating your chest about making war to be outward signs of someone walking with Christ, or do you regret these episodes?

10. Did John Ashcroft fly on a commercial airliner between July 26th and September 11th, 2001? If not, why not?

Extra Credit. Out of curiousity, I don't know the answer, what is the average distance from our military bases in Afghanistan to its four largest cities? What is the furthest distance from a military base in Afghanistan to an oil or gas pipeline?

Baker Caught with Hand in the Cookie Jar

Naomi Klein notes there is something rotten in the ex-Secretary-of-State.

Listen to Naomi speak with Amy Goodman on this mornings Democracy Now program.

Orwell was off by a couple decades

Contrary to the laments of some, we are not living in a fascist society. The United States has not become a totalitarian regime under the Bush administration. This nation is far too great to be damaged that badly in such a short time, even during a period in which we were changed forever by nineteen low-tech hijackers.

We still enjoy great prosperity and freedom, most of us living relatively carefree lives. Yet there are disturbing trends. In the area of public discourse in particular the Bush administration has shown a true Orwellian flair. Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al, seem to believe if they tell us black is white and that 2 + 2 = 5 enough times that we will eventually believe it. Take for example their unbending insistence that Saddam was an imminent threat, and a great many statements that suggested Saddam was (in)directly connected to the 9-11 attacks.

They also seem to have a penchant for obtuse, cryptic, and sometimes overly euphemistic labels. Who can forget the Information Awareness Office? How about the Clean Skies initiative that allows 520% more mercury pollution, and 68% more nitric oxide pollution? Or the Healthy Forests Initiative that calls for the "harvesting" of the forest, as Bush put it in the debate?

The destruction of language is indeed a very dangerous thing. To see how far down this dark path we have gone, I will try, just as an experiment for fun, to see if we couldn't just adopt Big Brother's three slogans of The Party:

War is Peace
Are we not sold this line almost daily? It has been repeated so much that it could be argued that this "truth" is now common knowledge. To live in peace here in America we must continuously wage war elsewhere; war is peace. We can go about our lives, happily shopping and consuming, not to be bothered by coverage of the daily carnage we inflict upon our enemies.

Pardon me, should I call them our enemies? Without so much as batting an eye, the likes of Hannity and Limbaugh will in one breath tell us that they are all ruthless bloodthirsty killers who are full of hate and should be nuked to high heaven, and in the next breath tell us how grand and worthwhile it is that we are spending our national treasury and spilling the blood of our soldiers to liberate these very same people. Perhaps a corollary slogan is in order: Love Our Enemies (to Death).

Freedom is Slavery
In the wake of 9-11 Bush and company gave us the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, a namesake Big Brother would be proud of. The act was met with little opposition. Congress passed it almost unanimously, and the media made little stir about it. Even the courts, whose charge it is to uphold the Constitution, were curiously silent for a long time.

With nearly universal support and barely a word of alarm from a conforming media, the tranquilized public seems to have accepted without complaint the promise from Big Brother Bush: I will preserve your freedoms, if you will just kindly give them away.

Ignorance is Strength
Ahhhh... Where to begin with this one? Precious few press conferences. Legislation pushed through in the dark of night, trying to fly under the radar. A full-frontal assault on the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and Presidential Records Act. The classification of an inordinate amount of information. Secret deportations, secret detentions, secret trials without due process of law. Secret investigations allowed under the aforementioned P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. Resistance time after time to be forthcoming with the public, for example the request to have some insight into Cheney's energy plan meeting.

The blanket excuse is always "national security". Seemingly this President believes the more ignorant we are of what is going on, the safer and stronger this country will be. The idea that democracy should be a somewhat transparent system of governance has been tossed on Bush's massive slag heap of the discarded norms and laws of the previous (useless) century.

Time to Enroll in Anger Management Class?

No doubt Bush did better in the second debate, although it was still surprising how angry and defensive his demeanor was. One would think he might have watched footage of the first debate and tried to make an adjustment.

Much has been made of this in the press already. In particular, will the fact that he shouted down the moderator damage the perception undecideds have of him? Some polls suggest that his downward slide is still continuing, albeit at a slower rate.

Is Bush simply unable to control his anger? Is Kerry really that good at getting under his skin? Or do Bush and his advisors actually believe that his indignant and sometimes belligerent tone make him appear strong? It's impossible to say for sure, but in any case I like the nickname I saw for Bush on usenet recently: Furious George.

Not a Conservative

People need to understand in the simplest of terms that Bush is not a conservative. I called my father for his birthday yesterday. To the best of my knowledge he has voted Republican for life. He told me, "I'm a conservative. Bush, he is not a conservative."

Here is an article by a Bush supporter. I don't agree with much of what he says, except that he makes the correct observation that in the leadership sense, it is Kerry who is far more conservative, and Bush is progressive, even radical.

The wheels came of the Noam Chomsky bandwagon some years back, but I have to give him credit for correctly labeling this administration. He called them "reactionary statists, these are not conservatives." That is about the best six word summary I have heard so far.

Let's get really clear about this: Bush is not conservative. He is not for free markets. He is not for small government. His plan for health care is subsidies. His plan for the economy is subsidies. He doles out huge subsidies to the mining, timber, and agriculture industries. He is not fiscally responsible. People need to take a minute to comprehend the astronomical amount of money he has spent.

He has radically re-written and undone all sorts of treaties, acts, and protections put in place by the hard work and diplomacy of previous administrations, dating back to the formation of this country. These include little things like the Geneva conventions and the United States Constitution. He has replaced them with his sham programs which usually amount to blatant giveaways to his corporate buddies.

If you want to vote Republican, I am sorry to inform you that such an option is not on the ballot this year.

Gamemanship

Bush has used the "He voted for the 87 billion before he voted against it" line numerous times in the debates. This is an interesting tactic considering Bush is the undisputed King of the Mis-Statement.

Perhaps Bush would like nothing more than for Kerry to come back at him with a line about his own inability to formlate coherent thoughts on countless occassions in the past.

"Mr. President, I am suprised that you of all people would want to introduce mis-statements into this debate, but I will not stoop to those sorts of attacks"

"Well Mr. President, not all of us can always speak with your clarity and presicion, pleae forgive me for that one."

One might think some such line would have worked well for Kerry, and yet he was pretty much willing to take the 87 billion line on the chin again and again and keep silent. Perhaps Bush is egging him on to hit back, and the Kerry camp, knowing this, has smartly decided not to belittle the President in that way.

Somehow we have regressed as a society to the point where we are like third graders again, and it' bad to be seen as the smart kid (yeah we wouldn't want a smart President now would we?). If Kerry comes off as a smart- aleck from the Northeast, picking on an easy-target dim bulb from Texas, it could hurt his chances.

For whatever reason, people have come to accept, and even embrace, the steady stream of verbal bloopers that come from our President's mouth (don't ask me I have no idea why). So I think it was indeed wise for Kerry to pick his battles elsewhere.

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

With so many exciting things going on in the last few months, I don't want people to forget all of the little things that make W such a swell guy. So please, take a stroll with me down memory lane.

Remember five-time convicted felon John M. Poindexter's idea to create the Information Awareness Office? Its seal was to be a pyramid with the all-seeing eye above it. Its motto was to be "Scientia Est Potentia," or knowledge is power.

Another neat-o feature of the program: Futures Markets Applied to Prediction, a futures market where investors would bet on terrorist attacks and assasinations.

What in the world was this man Poindexter, a five-time convicted felon, doing within a hundred miles of a presidential administration? Hey, that would make a great question to W in tomorrow's town hall meeting debate.

The Other Big Election

Tomorrow's big election down under may have impacts on our own election come November. Labor candidate Mark Latham has promised he would withdraw Australia's troops from Iraq by Christmas, which would presumably be more bad news for the Bush campaign.

This is yet another story that has received little attention from US media.

Grab Some Popcorn, It's Movie Time

This is a very well done edit-job of the Republican National Convention:

http://www.oliverwillis.com/stuff/gopmashup.mov

Yeah that pretty much sums it up. Vote for Bush or the Bogeyman will get you.