The point of government

Commenter K2Aggie07 recently took takes issue with a snarky comment I made over at Boots and Sabers and makes the following argument:

“The whole point of government is not to spend money. The point of our government is to uphold the Constitution for the United States.”

That would seem to be a sensible statement until you consider what it really means to “uphold the Constitution.” How do you “…establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare…” without spending money? What do those things mean anyway?

Provide for the common defense seems simple enough. That means the military and that is a hefty chunk of change in and of itself. But it probably also includes the CIA, the State Department and our network of ambassadors, and our foreign aid programs all meant to provide stability in other parts of the world so that events don’t get out of hand and threaten our interests.

Establish justice… I suppose that would be our courts and criminal justice systems – including police officers, prisons, the FBI, etc.

Ensure domestic tranquility? I suppose that could be the public parks, national monuments, public libraries… How about roads and bridges? Our highway system? Rails, mass transit, sea ports, airports? What about the education system? There sure wouldn’t be a lot of domestic tranquility with a bunch of uneducated kids roaming the streets everyday. What about public utilities – electricity, water, sewer, garbage disposal. Yes, I know that there are lot of private companies out there that can and do provide these essential services, but it still falls upon the government to make sure that those services are made available to everyone.

And then there is promoting the general welfare. What a great catch all that is! Medicare, Social Security, nursing homes, agriculture subsidies, scientific research to cure diseases, USDA meat inspections, protecting the environment and, of course, the scourge of the radical right – welfare itself!!!

And I haven’t even mentioned one of the Republicans’ favorite government programs – the Small Business Administration – which doles out millions in corporate welfare every year. And I’m sure there are dozens more worthy government entities that have their hands outstretched every year at budget time. I haven’t named one single thing that doesn’t cost money.

Do we really need all of these programs? K2 seems to be enamored with life in the U.S. prior to the Great Depression…

“Prior to the great depression the government gave *no* (as in, none, zero) support to the poor. It was left up to private charities and churches. And you know what? People survived. Want to know how? They worked for what they got, and the government didn't tax 50% of their income. In fact, if you get into the economics of it, by pre-great depression standards (or any standards for that matter) the only reason Americans aren't filthy rich is because fully half of our income goes to support an over-stuffed fat beaurocratic leeching self-righteous government.”

Ah yes, I remember when I used to think that life was so simple. Everything was wonderful back in the good old days before big, bad bureaucrats screwed everything up. Liberals bad, conservatives good, blah, blah, blah. But then I graduated from college and moved out into the big, complex, real world.

Prior to the Great Depression, America was not the world power that it is today. In fact, it was questionable whether or not the country was going to make it at all. We had managed to pull ourselves together after a bloody Civil War, but the Great Depression nearly brought an end to capitalism as we know it. It was Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal that saved capitalism. Conservatives should honor his name rather than bitch continuously about his accomplishments.

We won World War II because the government spent money by the bucket loads and taxed the beejeezus out of folks to pay for it. But it was worth it. When everything was said and done we were the strongest and most powerful country in the world. And we still are, for the most part, in spite of Bush’s best efforts to weaken us with his ill conceived tax cuts which have wiped out our surpluses and left us with record deficits while shipping our troops out on this WMD snipe hunt without enough support and equipment.

Then there were the social programs like Social Security and welfare and Medicare that have freed people from having to spend all their time and efforts caring for elderly and sick relatives. With that burden lifted people suddenly found their standard of living dramatically improved. They were able to spend their time and money pursuing other things that helped to grow the economy.

Capitalism works and America is a great country today because of these programs. That is what the radical right fails to understand or refuses to see. And since the radical right has taken control of the Republican Party today, it is left to the Democrats to uphold the standards of good government that have kept our nation strong all these years. That is why, as I noted in my previous post, real conservatives should appreciate the things Bill Clinton accomplished, especially in light of the miserable failure that George W. Bush has been. Clinton reduced the size of government, decreased government spending and balanced the federal budget. Bush has increased spending, grown the size of government and left us with a record budget deficit, all while presiding over a pitiful economic performance to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose more jobs than were gained during his tenure.

In conclusion, I would just say that I much prefer living in a country like the U.S. that provides all of these government services and programs as opposed to any other country in the world, and I suspect even K-2Aggie would have to agree with that.

A flag waving mea culpa

I was getting upset recently when I kept seeing businesses all over town that were still flying their flags at half-mast. I figured the flags would have been raised after Reagan's funeral was over. When they were not I suspected some folks of making a political statement. ("We liked Reagan so much we are going to leave our flags at half-mast longer than anyone else", or something like that.)
Then I figured that maybe there had been some government edict come down to leave them at half-mast til the end of the month. But they were still down on July 2! Now I was really getting ticked!!
Well it turns out that I was wrong. The U.S. flag code says flags should be flown at half-mast for 30 days after the death of a president. So for Reagan that means through July 5. So I'm a little ashamed for thinking all those bad things of those people. As long as we have the same observances for all presidents then I have no right to complain. My apologies.

Bill Cosby's "tirade"

Bill Cosby had some good advice for everybody the other day.
Unfortunately, the Associated Press labeled his comments as a “tirade” and the rest of the national media has jumped on that bandwagon to portray him as some kind of crank with nothing but “harsh words” for the black community.
Now, I’m sure that Cosby could have phrased his comments more delicately and he could have been more politically correct, but when you get to be his age I’m sure you start to lose patience with those kinds of niceties and you just cut to the chase.
Now I realize that Cosby was addressing the black community with his comments, but I believe that we could all benefit by listening to what he had to say. Pretending that his criticisms only apply to poor blacks really misses the point.
It is not like poor blacks are the only ones who have a problem with keeping their kids in school and out of prison, finding jobs and dealing with domestic violence.
I still believe that government has a role and a responsibility to help people who are down and out, but it makes that job a lot easier when the folks needing help are actively working to pick themselves up rather than sitting around blaming the system for all their problems.

More evidence of Bush's economic leadership

Oh dear, it looks like Bush’s economic recovery, such that it is, is stalling once again. Such a shame.

“The nation's expanding economy produced 112,000 new jobs in June, the Labor Department reported today, far fewer than expected and well short of the numbers generated in the previous three months...

“The 112,000 job growth number was a bit of a shock to economists, who had predicted steady increases in the range of 240,000 for June. The most significant slowdown occurred in the manufacturing sector, which shed 11,000 jobs after four months of growth. Five thousand government jobs were lost and construction employment was flat.
All of June's job growth came in service industries.”

Oh goody! More service sector jobs!

As Atrios notes, it takes at least 140,000 jobs just to keep up with population growth in the job market.

A president that conservatives can admire

Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, has an Op-Ed in the NYTimes today that makes the obvious point that conservatives should rethink the Clinton presidency and admit that he was a better president than they have given him credit for.

Here are some of Clinton’s accomplishments (as summarized from the article) that should have pleased any fair-minded conservative:

*Bringing the federal budget into surplus is obviously an achievement. After inheriting a deficit of 4.7 percent of gross domestic product in 1992, Mr. Clinton turned this into a surplus of 2.4 percent of G.D.P. in 2000 — a remarkable turnaround...

*Clinton achieved his surplus in large part by curtailing spending. Federal spending fell to 18.4 percent of G.D.P. in 2000 from 22.2 percent in 1992. Although he raised taxes in 1993, he cut them in 1997. He even reduced the capital gains tax — something his predecessor, George H. W. Bush, tried but failed to accomplish.

*Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996, the only time in American history when an entitlement program was abolished.

*Clinton was also steadfast in his support for free trade. It is doubtful that anyone else could have persuaded Congress to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement.

*...he reappointed Alan Greenspan, a Republican, as chairman of the Federal Reserve, thereby helping to bring inflation down to its lowest sustained level in a generation.

By contrast, Mr. Clinton's Republican successor has caused the surplus to evaporate, raised total federal spending by 1.6 percent of G.D.P., established a new entitlement program for prescription drugs and adopted the most protectionist trade policy since Herbert Hoover.

I think he makes a very persuasive argument. If you want to go back to the good old days of balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility... vote Democratic!

Actors who sing vs singers who act

Why is it that we are more accepting of singers who try to become actors than we are of actors who try to become singers?

Look at all of the singers who have gone on to have successful acting careers, even going so far as to win Oscar recognition for their work:

Bing Crosby - Best Actor for “Going My Way”
Frank Sinatra - Best Supporting Actor for “From Here To Eternity”
Barbara Streisand - Best Actress for “Funny Girl”
Diana Ross - Oscar nominee for “Lady Sings the Blues”
Cher - Best Actress for “Moonstruck”
Will Smith - Oscar nominee for “Ali”
Queen Latifah - Oscar nominee for “Chicago”

And then there are others who went on to have solid film careers:

Dean Martin
Tina Turner
Dolly Parton
Olivia Newton John
Kris Kristofferson
Mark Wahlburg
Jennifer Lopez
Whitney Houston
Ice Cube

Even Elvis Presley and Madonna have had better film careers than most actors have had singing careers. Oh, you will have the occassional singer whose movie will bomb - like Maria Carey in Glitter or anything Britney Spears has been in so far. But given time they may eventually get a good role and suddenly they are respectable.

Now compare that with the derision and scorn that is heaped on actors who dare try to record their voices on anything other than a novelty record:

Eddie Murphy
Bruce Willis
David Hasselhoff
William Shatner
Leonard Nimoy
Jennifer Love Hewitt

Even the ones who avoid singing and opt to just play bass guitar with a band like Kenau Reeves and Russell Crowe are given no respect.

I can think of only one actor who went on to have any success as a singer. That would be Jim Nabors (i.e. Gomer Pyle) who became popular on the gospel circuit.
Am I leaving anyone out?

Why are we so picky about our singers, but not so much with acting?

I figure it is because we tend to listen to songs over and over again, but we don’t watch a particular perfromance in a movie with the same amount of repitition. I’m sure the first time most people heard Eddie Murphy’s song “Party All the Time” they probably thought it was pretty good, but by the 10th or 20th time it starts to wear thin.

Top movie songs

The American Film Institute’s latest list purports to reveal the top 100 songs in movies during the past 100 years.

The top 10:
Over the Rainbow (THE WIZARD OF OZ)
As Time Goes By (CASABLANCA)
Singin' In The Rain (SINGIN' IN THE RAIN)
Moon River (BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S)
White Christmas (HOLIDAY INN/WHITE CHRISTMAS)
Mrs. Robinson (THE GRADUATE)
When You Wish Upon a Star (PINOCCHIO)
The Way We Were (THE WAY WE WERE)
Stayin' Alive (SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER)
The Sound of Music (THE SOUND OF MUSIC).

As always, I could quibble with the order. For instance, I would bump up Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” ahead of “Moon River” and I wouldn’t include “The Way We Were” or “Stayin’ Alive” in my Top 10.

But my biggest gripe, as always, is with the blatant ommissions. Looking over the list of 400 nominated songs there are quite of few deserving tunes that didn’t make the cutoff for the Top 100. Most significantly, in my opinion, are the Disney and Pixar tunes:

Chim Chim Cher-ee (Mary Poppins)
The Bare Necessities (Jungle Book)
Friend Like Me (Aladdin)
Under the Sea (The Little Mermaid)
Whistle While You Work (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves)
You’ve Got A Friend In Me (Toy Story)

Then there are these shocking ommissions:

If I Only Had A Brain (Wizard of Oz)
Ghostbusters (Ghostbusters)
I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)
Live and Let Die (Live and Let Die)
The Time Warp (Rocky Horror Picture Show)
You’re the One That I Want (Grease)

And finally, songs that were not even on the list of 400 nominees:

Spoonful of Sugar (Mary Poppins)
Oompa Loompa (Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)
The Maladjusted Jester (The Court Jester)
Yellow Submarine (Yellow Submarine)

I’m sure I will think of more...

UPDATE:
Pink Elephants on Parade (Dumbo)

Rowland pays while Bush plays

The resignation of Connecticut Gov. John Rowland was probably inevitable and therefore not surprising. If anything, I was mostly surprised that he held on for so long in today’s media culture where the hint of a scandal can sometimes produce a feeding frenzy.

But this wasn’t really a feeding frenzy, at least not on a national level. The charges leveled against Rowland - that he lied about getting gifts and favors from friends, state contractors and state employees - didn’t get too many people excited outside of the Nutmeg State.

I had an inkling that it would come to this, however, because of my personal experience with the typical Connecticut Yankee’s intolerance for these types of scandals. In April of 1992, I was working as a young reporter for a chain of weekly papers along the Connecticut coastline.

Once I was called to fill in for a vacationing reporter at one of the papers and cover a legal hearing in the upscale community of Madison where the local chief of police was in the process of being drummed out of his job. His crime? When the department got new police cruisers from a local dealer (Three 1991 Ford Crown Victoria’s), the chiefs car came with a trunk-mounted, 10-disc compact disc player that the dealer had thrown in.

Now this was back when having a cd player in a car was still kind of unique, and a 10-disc changer was something out of Star Wars. At the hearing I covered, the prosecuting attorney grilled the local dealer about how much the 10-disc changer cost (he refused to say) at a time when AM/FM radios with cassette decks was the standard.
I remember sitting there watching this hearing unfold thinking ‘What’s the big deal’? But obviously folks in Connecticut took this kind of stuff very seriously.

So when I saw what Rowland was charged with I knew his days were numbered. Here is the NYTimes summary:

“(Rowland’s wealthy friends) fixed up his cottage in bucolic Litchfield, where Connecticut's movers and shakers summer, complete with a hot tub given to him by a state employee. The governor got thousands of dollars in Cuban cigars and French champagne, a vintage Ford Mustang convertible and free or discounted vacations at the estates of friends -- contractors who won substantial business from the state.”

So while I’m not trying to defend what Rowland did, I think I can say that a certain former Texas Governor should be thankful that the folks in the Lone Star State were much more lenient about such things.

The rich get richer...

There is at least one constituency group that has made out like gangbusters these last few years under President Bush, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Millionaires

The WSJ reported Tuesday that the number of millionaires in the U.S. is up 14 percent. The 2004 World Wealth Report revealed that the U.S. and Canada added more new millionaires last year than Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East combined.

“In the U.S., rising stock markets, strong real estate prices, wealth-friendly tax cuts and low interest rates combined to create strong returns for the wealthy.”

And needless to say, they aren’t exactly spreading this wealth around (except for their donations to the Bush election campaign). Meanwhile, the economy continues to lose jobs as it sputters along while the government racks up record deficits.

Tortured reasoning

Here is an interesting article in Slate about President Bush’s chief legal counsel Alberto Gonzales.
Gonzales, a political appointee from Texas, was apparently the author and co-author, respectively, of two of the infamous memos that try to provide justifications of the torture of foreign prisoners.

The thing that caught my attention, though, was the headline Slate used for the story out on their front page:

Bush’s Execution-Lovin’, Torture-Denyin’, Treaty-Hatin’ Lawyer

It would be funny if it weren’t so true.

Celebrity endorsements update

Time to update my running list of celebrity endorsements for this year’s presidential campaign.

Needless to say, John Kerry is the runaway favorite among most celebrities.
According to The Hill:

“A horde of celebrities has asked if they can help the Kerry campaign defeat Bush in November. There were so many requests, in fact, that it’s almost more celebrity help than the Kerry campaign needs or can use.”

Here are the latest additions to the Kerry celebrity endorsement list:

Jon Bon Jovi
James Gandolfini
Steve Buscemi
Richard Belzer
Robin Williams
Billy Crystal
Neil Diamond
Robert Redford
Tom Hanks
Danny DeVito
Dave Mathews Band
The Eagles
Sheryl Crowe
Bruce Springsteen
Emmylou Harris
Blink 182
Willie Nelson
John Mellencamp
Wyclef Jean
Whoopi Goldberg
Ben Affleck
Rhea Perlman
Ben Stiller
Dustin Hoffman
Richard Gere
Jessica Lange
John Williams (film score composer)
James Brolin
Ted Danson
Mary Steenburgen
Jason Alexander
Christina Applegate
Oliver Stone
Sharon Stone
Angelica Huston
Tobey Maguire
Brad Pitt
Christian Slater
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Barry Manilow
Jack Nicholson
Martin Sheen
Maya Angelou
Michael Douglas
Wesley Snipes
Goldie Hawn
Sally Field
Christopher Reeve
John Travolta
Annette Bening
Kevin Spacey
Alan Cumming
Ed Begley Jr.
Steve Harvey
Leslie Ann Warren

And those previously mentioned:

Meg Ryan
Leonardo DiCaprio
Jennifer Aniston
Kevin Costner
Barbara Streisand
James Taylor
Larry David
Carole King
Dennis Hopper
Kathleen Turner
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds
Moby
Aaron Sorkin
Quincy Jones
Penny Marshall
Bette Midler
Jerry Seinfeld
Uma Thurman
Stephen Stills
Chevy Chase
Kevin Bacon
Paul Newman
Kate Hudson
Russell Crowe
Harvey Weinstein
Jennifer Garner
Robert DeNiro
Michael J. Fox
Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul & Mary)


As for the Bush campaign, the list is sparse by comparison. A web search only came up with three new names I had overlooked before:

Golfers Ben Crenshaw and Fuzzy Zoeller
and comedian Dennis Miller

Previously mentioned were:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Bruce Willis
Tom Selleck

I’m sure there are a few more out there but so far they aren’t making themselves too visible.

Summing up the outrages

It is difficult to summarize all of the outrages of the Bush administration into just one paragraph, but Eric Alterman makes a good effort:

“It’s hard to say which is the best representation of what this war is doing to and has done to this country.  Is it the lies that were told to get us into it?  Is it the fact that we are picking up innocent people off the street and torturing them?  Is it that we have suspended the most basic civil liberties in our own country?  Is it that the work of professional intelligence agencies has been corrupted?  Is it that we have drawn resources away from the fight against Al Qaida which has completely regrouped?  Is it that we are creating more terrorists?  Is it that more than 700 Americans have been killed and thousands have been seriously injured?  Is it that thousands of Iraqis have been killed but nobody is keeping an account of the numbers of their deaths?  Is it that we are now more hated around the world than we have ever been?  Is it that we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars while actually decreasing our security?  Is it that we are doing all this while starving the most crucial homeland security programs?  Is it that everyone who told the truth about what was being planned has been dismissed and seen their characters attacked?  The usually soft-spoken and moderate intelligence analyst and author Thomas Powers does not exaggerate when he notes that Bush and the neocons have "caused the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in modern U.S. history." 

And that is just the foreign policy outrages.

Emperor Bush has no clothes!

A group of 26 former diplomats and military officials have joined forces to oppose Bush's reelection campaign.

"Prominent members include retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East during the administration of Bush's father; retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., ambassador to Britain under President Clinton and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Reagan; and Jack F. Matlock Jr., a member of the National Security Council under Reagan and ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991."

"We agreed that we had just lost confidence in the ability of the Bush administration to advocate for American interests or to provide the kind of leadership that we think is essential," said William C. Harrop, the first President Bush's ambassador to Israel, and earlier to four African countries."

Finally more people are starting to come forward and admit that the emperor has no clothes. The group is supposed to issue a formal statement on Wednesday so I will link to that when it becomes available.

Too little, too late

After presiding over a miserable economy for the past three and a half years and watching a record surplus turn into record deficits, the Bush administration is now pointing to some long overdue good economic news as proof that they deserve a second term in office.

Is that the way it work in the real world? If CEO Bush went before his Board of Directors after producing such miserable results would he walk away with a big fat bonus and a contract extension?

But the real irony, as laid out in this Washington Post article is that Bush’s lousing up of our foreign policy is now overshadowing any positive news on the economy.

I still believe that a chief motivation for the Bush team’s headlong rush into war with Iraq was Karl Rove’s belief that it would take the public’s attention away from Bush’s inept mishandling of the economy. And guess what? It worked!

“Voters fixated on Iraq so far are not willing to see the improving economy through a positive prism, according to pollsters and Bush campaign aides.”

G'n'R + STP = Velvet Revolver?

This news makes me want to go out and buy a music CD for the first time in two years. The former members of Guns ‘N’ Roses - minus Axel Rose and Izzy Stradlin - have joined with former Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland to form a new group called Velvet Revolver. Their first album has gotten some good notice. Too bad there are no decent radio stations left where I can listen to it on air.
I’ve also heard that Van Halen has reunited with Sammy Hagar and released some new music. I never even heard anything from the last Van Halen album that featured some non-Roth, non-Hagar frontman.

Ronald Reagan dies

Former President Reagan died today at age 93.

I was in high school when Ronald Reagan was shot shortly after being elected president. It was one of those startling moments that shake you out of your day-to-day existence and force you to pay attention to the rest of the world. I remember the detailed diagrams in TIME magazine showing the path and trajectory of each bullet and where all the wounded people - Reagan, James Brady, the Secret Service agent and the police officer - were all standing. I remember thinking that Reagan could still die even though he survived the initial shooting and wondering what that would mean.

My family was pretty much apolitical when I was growing up. I used to tell my parents who they should vote for before I was old enough to vote myself. (I don't know if they actually took my advice.) In 1980, I told them to vote for Jimmy Carter, probably because he was the incumbent who I was familiar with. But by 1984, the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in, I had been completely won over by Reagan. I had a picture of Reagan and campaign bumper stickers in my dorm room at Texas A&M. I used to clip out cartoons that lauded Reagan and lampooned poor Walter Mondale. I couldn't understand why anybody would vote for Mondale over Reagan.

The landslide that year for Reagan meant I was pretty much in tune with the rest of the country. But during his second term a number of things happened that gave me second thoughts. I read a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. I became facinated by the Kennedy assassination conspiracy and became convinced that a shadowy right-wing cabal had gotten away with the murder of the century. And then the Iran-Contra scandal hit the news. At first I was willing to give Reagan the benefit of the doubt. I still liked Reagan and hadn't shifted my allegiance at that point. But I remember him coming on television shortly after the news of the scandal first broke and explaining that the arms that had been shipped to Iran were just a tiny shipment that could all fit on one airplane. It seemed reasonable to me, no big deal, no harm done. But then I found out that was not really the case. The arms sent to Iran were much more substantial than what Reagan had claimed. Was he lying? Was he misinformed? Either way my confidence in Reagan was shattered and I began to have a lot of second thoughts about my politics.
By 1988, I had done a complete turnaround and was supporting Dukakis for president (after voting for Jesse Jackson in the primary).

However, I still liked Reagan. He was just hard to dislike. He was so full of optimism and pride in America that he had become an icon for our country, not just for conservatives, but for everyone. Today I think Reagan was a great leader for our country who, unfortunately had some wrong-headed ideas that took us in bad directions, but for the most part his impact on the country was positive. He did leave us with a huge national debt, but he also helped to make the country stronger - in spirit if not materially.

By direct contrast, George W. Bush has made our country weaker. He has presided over a deep recession and a long jobless recovery and he has led us into a tar pit in the Middle East that has aggravated our friends and enemies alike. In many ways, Bush is the Republican version of Jimmy Carter. What the Democrats need - and I'm hoping John Kerry can be - is a Democratic version of Ronald Reagan. We need to restore our faith and pride in our country and repair our tarnished image around the globe. Rather than an aggressor nation that bullys smaller countries and conducts pre-emptive invasions, and then abuses foreign prisoners, we should be the "good guys" who are there to help and lead through example. If the Democrats can take those positive aspects of Reagan and apply them to good government policies, I think they will retake the White House for the next eight years.

From Bush - “Unprecedented Negativity”

From the Washington Post...

“Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising...

“...Scott Reed, who ran Robert J. Dole's presidential campaign that year, said the Bush campaign has little choice but to deliver a constant stream of such negative charges. With low poll numbers and a volatile situation in Iraq, Bush has more hope of tarnishing Kerry's image than promoting his own.”

Bush is currently running a nasty, negative campaign because he has nothing positive to run on - absolutely nothing. The economy has been lousy for his entire presidency, he is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs, he squandered the surplus on tax cuts for the rich which have failed to revive the economy and the Iraq war is without a doubt a complete and utter debacle.

Why would anyone want four more years of this?

You tell 'em, Al!

Al Gore's speech the other day at New York University was the kind of no nonsense rhetoric that I would like to hear more of from Democrats in the coming months.

“From its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President...

“President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States.”

I imagine this is just a taste of the kind of address Gore will be giving at the Democratic Convention this summer.

Apparently unable to rebut the substance of the speech, The Republican National Committee has tried to dismiss Gore's criticism by attacking MoveOn.org, the group that sponsored his speech. In a statement, the RNC opined that Gore’s credibility was undermined by his association with MoveOn.org. However, I would respond that the RNC’s credibility is greatly diminished by its association with George W. Bush.

A favorite tactic of the Republican spin machine recently has been to spread the lie that MoveOn.org sponsored ads comparing George W. Bush to Hitler. What actually happened was that the group sponsored a contest to find the best ads critical of the Bush administration and out of 150 submissions there were two that had made the Hitler analogy. These ads were rejected and were never used by the MoveOn.org. The organization addresses this smear here, not that it will make any difference to the lying liars who continue to spin this tale.

Campaigning on failures

I guess when you have nothing but failures to show for your four years in office you have to make the best of them. In this New York Times story from yesterday, the Bush administration is sending its minions out to campaign by touting programs that Bush tried to cutback or eliminate:

- Justice Department officials recently announced that they were awarding $47 million to scores of local law enforcement agencies for the hiring of police officers. Mr. Bush had just proposed cutting the budget for the program, known as Community Oriented Policing Services, by 87 percent, to $97 million next year, from $756 million.

- Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years.

- The administration also announced recently that it was providing $11.6 million to the states so they could buy defibrillators to save the lives of heart attack victims. But Mr. Bush had proposed cutting the budget for such devices by 82 percent, to $2 million from $10.9 million.

In each case, the additional spending that is being touted represents a failure by the Bush administration to curtail or end a program that it was opposed to. They were unable to accomplish these cutbacks even with total Republican domination of all branches of the federal government. That is what I would call incompetent. Bush can’t even even lead within his own party, much less so on the world stage.

That brings us to another recent news story where the U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure in Iraq.

This really should not be a surprise to anyone who has followed Bush’s career over the years. He almost always fails in his various ventures and then sits back and waits for his daddy’s wealthy friends to come and bail him out. I’m just not sure who is supposed to bail us out this time, other than the U.S. taxpayers, of course, who get stuck with another $25 billion for Bush’s Iraqi Quagmire.

"357 Channels and Nothing On"

It looks like I might still have a few programming options on next season’s television schedule - but not many.
The number of shows that I watch regularly has been slowly dwindling and the shift away from quality television programming to cheap, brainless “reality” shows means I will have that much more free time in the evenings.

With the series finales of “Friends” and “Frasier” now past and the finale of “Angel,” the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” spinoff, later tonight one might think the networks would be scrambling to come out with some worthy replacement shows. But on first glance at the new fall schedules being announced this week, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Other than the “Friends” spinoff “Joey,” while I will check out, the only new show on the schedule that even looks remotely interesting is “Lost” scheduled for Wednesdays on ABC. It is some kind of adventure series set on a deserted island and stars Matthew Fox of “Party of Five” fame as well as Dominic Monaghan who was a hobbit in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’m sure ABC will axe the series after airing only a handful of episodes since I have shown some interest in it now.

Other than that, there are no shows on ABC that interest me (except possibly the “Wonderful World of Disney” depending on what is showing). I haven’t watched anything on Fox since I got bogged down with the second season of “24” and the cancellation of “Angel” means I won’t be wasting my time tuning into the WB Network again.

I understand that UPN has decided to renew “Star Trek: Enterprise” for one more season so I will continue to faithfully tune them in once a week as a devoted Trekee.

NBC still has “ER” on Thursday nights and CBS has renewed “Judging Amy” and “Joan of Arcadia,” and that is about it. There are a few others shows that I would normally find worthy but for various reasons I have not found the time or the desire to watch them regularly. They include “The Simpsons,” “West Wing,” and “Alias.”
I also watch “60 Minutes” on occasion depending on the topic.

Finally, I have a friend who is such a devoted fan of “The Amazing Race” that he has applied to be on the show for its sixth season. So I will probably break down and watch an episode or two next season to see what it is all about.

Here is my tentative viewing schedule for next fall:

Monday: Nothing
Tuesday: “Judging Amy”
Wednesday: “Lost”
Thursday: “Joey,” “E.R.”
Friday: “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “Joan of Arcadia”
Saturday: “Amazing Race”
Sunday: Nothing

Not an isolated incident

From a report
by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC)

This is just chilling.....

“The agency said arrests allegedly tended to follow a pattern.

"Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said.

"Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."

I can understand that seeking out insurgents during the heat of battle can be a tense and hazardous duty and I would expect our soldiers to take every precaution to protect and defend themselves, but what is the purpose behind these gestapo tactics? What is that supposed to accomplish other than spread fear and resentment among the masses.
And when we are gathering our prisoners in this manner it is little wonder that -

“...some coalition military intelligence officers estimated that "between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.”

Yes, innocent civilians. Not insurgents, not terrorists, but the very people we are supposed to be liberating and introducing to democracy.

And the worst part about the ICRC report aside from how their warnings were ignored by the Bush administration was the answer they got back from military officials in response:

“The ICRC report said the agency was told that in general that the prisoner abuse in Iraq by U.S. military personnel is "part of the process" during interrogation.”

That’s right. Just part of the process.

Here is the process...

“The report cites abuses - some "tantamount to torture" - including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."
"These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from person who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value.'"”

So this was not just an isolated instance and court marshalling a few guards who had the misfortune and poor judgement to have their pictures taken during some of the abuses is not going to do anything to address the real problem.

“U.S. President George W. Bush said the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few," but the Red Cross report backs up with detail the neutral agency's contention that the abuse was broad and part of a system, "not individual acts."”

More Bush lies. No surprise there.

Arrogance and Incompetence

Fareed Zakaria, international editor for Newsweek, sums up the “arrogance and incompetence” that has been the hallmark of President Bush’s administration:

“On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.
Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he takes full responsibility.”

Speaking of taking responsibility, Zakaria notes earlier in the article that it has little meaning at Bush Corp.

"I take full responsibility," said Donald Rumsfeld in his congressional testimony last week. But what does this mean? Secretary Rumsfeld hastened to add that he did not plan to resign and was not going to ask anyone else who might have been "responsible" to resign. As far as I can tell, taking responsibility these days means nothing more than saying the magic words "I take responsibility."

“After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn't even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after months of refusals because some of the victims' families pursued it aggressively and simply didn't give up. After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was even reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths.”

President-elect John Kerry

Pollster John Zogby predicts election victory for Kerry!! Woo Hoo!!

He gives four reasons summarized as follows:

1. Bush has bad re-election numbers for an incumbent president with the latest poll showing Kerry up 47 - 44 in a 2-way race.

2. There are few undecided voters at this point and most of those tend to break for the challenger against the incumbent.

3. The economy is still the top issue for voters next to Iraq and both situations have veered out of control for the president. The economy is improving too little, too late to make a difference to most voters and Iraq is a quagmire.

4. Historically, Sen. Kerry is a good closer and always performs well in the final weeks of a campaign.

The Abu Ghraib - Guantanamo link

I find it interesting that most of the details of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal were reported as early as Jan. 21, 2004 and yet there was no uproar until the mass distribution of the photos sparked by the 60 Minutes II television show.

Now we have fresh turmoil in Washington where fingers are being pointed and accusations are flying about who didn't tell whom about the brewing scandal. President Bush claims not to have known anything about it before the 60 Minutes show which raises a number of questions.

Is he really that poorly informed by his staff? Did they just not think it was a big deal?

Anthony Lewis in The New York Times today draws the obvious link between our refusal to honor the Geneva Convention accords with respect to the prisoners at Guantanamo and our leaders' seeming indifference to the mistreatment of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

More disturbing is the very real possibility that this issue was not taken seriously because it is all too common and par for the course in the netherworld that makes up our military intelligence gathering operations.

Disney censoring Michael Moore

Good news for Michael Moore, the Academy Award-winning documentary film maker, best-selling author and leftist rabble-rouser.

It looks like the clowns at Walt Disney Co. are trying to do the same thing for Moore’s latest film project that Bill O’Reilly and Fox News did for Al Franken’s book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.”

In the same way that the Fox News lawsuit created publicity and helped boost sales of Franken’s book, Disney’s efforts to prevent the distribution of Moore’s new anti-Bush documenatary "Fahrenheit 9/11" is sure to create buzz and drive up interest in the film.

I’m not a huge fan of Moore. I though he was an idiot for supporting Ralph Nader’s campaign during the 2000 elections. I liked his last film “Bowling for Columbine” for the most part, but I thought his interview with Charlton Heston at the end of the film went over the top. If Moore had simply done a straight-up interview with the celebrity icon turned gun nut it would have worked. But when he pulled out a photo of a girl killed by a gun accident and started hounding Heston with it I had to cringe. I came away feeling sympathy for Heston, and I don’t think that is the reaction that Moore had intended for the scene.

The problem with Moore is that while his in-your-face aggressive attitude is good for rallying the faithful, it does little to convert those on the outside and rather tends to drive them away. Still, it is not bad for the left to have a few folks like that around. The right has people like that coming out of their ears.
So while I don’t always agree with him, and I don’t like his style, I still want to see his new movie and Disney’s inept attempts at censorship only heightens that desire.

The battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people is over.

We lost.

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) -- Dhia al-Shweiri spent several stints in Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, twice under Saddam Hussein's rule and once under American. He prefers Saddam's torture to the humiliation of being stripped naked by his American guards, he said Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press.

When you have people like this comparing us unfavorably to Saddam, it's no wonder they aren't throwing rose petals at our feet.

And 11 more U.S. troops were killed this weekend. Almost one year to the day since President Bush did his little "Mission Accomplished" victory jig aboard that U.S. aircraft carrier. It looks like May isn't going to be much better than April.

Clinton, unlike Bush, had his priorities straight

From the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire (page A4):

“When the two spoke privately at inauguration time, Clinton put al Qaeda at the top of his list of national-security concerns, with Iraq behind the Mideast, North Korea and India and Pakistan, according to one outsider who recently heard Clinton’s account. It is confirmed by several former Clinton aides from the time.
Bush, by contrast, already had called for regime change in Iraq.”

That sounds about right. Too bad Bush insisted on being the anti-Clinton in all respects.

Wolfowitz underestimates U.S. troop deaths in Iraq

From the Associated Press:

“Asked how many American troops have died in Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz , the Pentagon's No. 2 civilian and an architect of the military campaign in Iraq, estimated Thursday the total was about 500 - more than 200 soldiers short.
Wolfowitz was asked about the toll at a hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee. "It's approximately 500, of which - I can get the exact numbers - approximately 350 are combat deaths," he responded.
"He misspoke," spokesman Charley Cooper said later. "That's all."
American deaths Thursday were at 722 - 521 of them from combat - since the start of military operations in Iraq last year, according to the Department of Defense.”

How pathetic! One of the chief chickenhawks responsible for this Iraqi quagmire and he can’t be bothered to keep straight the number of American soldiers who have been forced to pay the ultimate price for his and Bush’s folly!

First they try to prevent the media from publishing photos of the stream of coffins being shipped back from Iraq. Now they are trying to keep broadcasters from airing a special NightLine segment that will honor all of the fallen soldiers from the conflict.

Bush's manipulation and abuse of science threatens the well being of our nation

Scientific American magazine has a withering editorial assailing the Bush administration for its political manipulation of science. They make an apt comparison between the current ideology-driven administration and the Soviets of the 1930s:

“Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science.”

The Bush administration’s efforts to impose their fundamentalist ideology in place of sound science was well documented recently by the Union of Concerned Scientists in a report signed by 62 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations.

The report details instances where the administration “misrepresented the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with the discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.”

The Bush administration responded to the report by having John Marburger, George Bush's science adviser, issue a strongly worded defence of the president's science policy.

This past week, the Economist magazine took a look at the back and forth and found that while “some of Marburger’s responses look justified—for example, his denials that the Bush administration overruled scientific advisers in acting to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Some, however, have a whiff of spin about them.” And in other instances he is simply unconvincing such as with the accusations of committee-packing, the rebuttal merely states that the UCS report is wrong in all instances, without explaining why.

The Economist, which is based in England, tends to be a slightly moderate to conservative publication (they support the war in Iraq, for instance), so their perspective is refreshingly free of American political bias. So I halfway expected to read a wishy-washy “both sides are bad” type of summation of the issue, but instead they end thier piece with this rather frightening denunciation of the Bush administration:

“To the extent that it is aimed at environmental and bioethical questions, which have long divided America on party-political lines, this disagreement could be seen as business as usual. However, it is not limited to those fields. There is a widespread feeling among scientists that Mr Bush is ignoring scientific results and opinions he does not like in other areas, too. In August 2003 the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform made claims similar to those of the UCS report. But it also observed widespread scientific unease about the feasibility of the missile-defence systems proposed by the administration. This report has gone unanswered by Dr Marburger, as has a report made in July 2003 by the American Physical Society (APS), a professional organisation for physicists in America. The APS report concluded that boost-phase missile defence, one element of the system planned by the Bush administration, would be ineffective.

“These are serious accusations. Suppressing research into stem cells is causing that research to move abroad, which will damage America's biotechnology industry. But that will not be fatal to America's future, and opponents of stem-cell research might argue that it is a price worth paying for their beliefs. Monkeying with defence is a different matter. America's current military prowess has been achieved, in large part, because the country has listened to and lauded its physicists and engineers. Spending billions on technology that most of them believe will not work is, at the least, a dubious approach. Politicians can cheat nature no more effectively than scientists can.”

Kerry's medals

The recent news reports that has Republicans questioning the validity of John Kerry's combat medals made my jaw drop.
Could they really be that stupid?? Then I saw this offensively stupid letter to the editor in the local San Antonio daily :

Medals meaningless

I expect other former servicemen have reached the same conclusion as I: John Kerry's military awards in Vietnam are undeserved.
First, three Purple Hearts, with confusion among observers on whether Kerry was under enemy fire. Even Kerry's superior officer was dubious about the validity of his claim that his scratches were caused by enemy fire. No hospital time.
Next, a Bronze Star for hauling a man, who had fallen overboard, out of the water. A commendable action, but not particularly heroic and certainly not deserving a Bronze Star.
Finally, a Silver Star, one of the nation's highest military awards, for killing an enemy soldier. Apparently, naval officers forgot that killing the enemy is the primary objective of military personnel. If every soldier, sailor and Marine who killed an enemy were awarded this honor, the medal would be cheap indeed.
Remembering the battles that our young men have fought, where (unrewarded) exceptional valor was (and is) a common virtue, Kerry's adventures seem pale in comparison.

Charles D. Wood

This is really outrageous!! If you are going to question the validity of one of Kerry's medals they you are essentially questioning the validity of every medal earned by any and all of our service people. And this coming from an administration led by someone who blew off the last year and a half of his National Guard service and filled with chicken hawks like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who avoided military service for themselves. And the one guy with any military credibility - Colin Powell - is ignored and shunted aside during preparation for the Iraq invasion.


My father recieved the Silver Star for actions he took in Vietnam. When his squadron was cut off from their base in the middle of the Tet Offensive with no means of communication, he and another pilot ran out in the midst of sniper fire to push an abandoned jeep back into their compound so they could use its radio. By doing so they were able to call for reinforcements which kept the whole unit from being overrun.

I'm obviously very proud of what my father did in Vietnam and the idea that somebody would question whether he really deserves his medal really makes my blood boil. If this is the tactic that Republicans want to take in this campaign they will lose very badly.

As I've said before, the difference between Kerry's military service and Bush's military service can be summed up by the simple observation that while Kerry's superiors were pinning medals on his chest for valor in combat, Bush's superiors in the National Guard were scratching their heads wondering where the hell he was half the time.

Too close to home

My brother-in-law’s Louisiana National Guard Unit is being called up for duty in Iraq. He leaves on May 9 for three months of training at Fort Hood followed by one month of testing somewhere else before beginning a 12-plus month tour overseas.
Needless to say I am not happy about the situation, although I am very proud of by brother-in-law for his service. He and I don’t see eye-to-eye on politics, but that has never been an issue between us. I’m sure that other than being separated from his family, he doesn’t have a problem with the deployment and is very supportive of the whole operation.
But it will still be a hardship on both him and my sister as he is forced to leave her at home with their four young children - my three nieces and one nephew. My prayers are with them.

I have already come to the conclusion that we need to start pulling out of Iraq. We have scoured the country for WMDs and found nothing. We captured Saddam Hussein, killed his two sons and scattered the remnants of his government. So now it is time to declare victory and go home. Pass the baton to the United Nations and let the Iraqis have the government that they choose rather than one we want to force on them. Unfortunately, that government will probably be closer to the religious oligarchy they have in Iran than to anything we would prefer, but Bush should have thought about that before plunging us into this mess. (Or he should have at least listened to someone with half a brain who actually does think once in awhile.)

The Knoblauch mystery is solved!

The NY Times finally answers the mystery of what happened to Chuck Knoblauch?
Knoblauch dropped off the radar when his contract was not picked up by the Kansas City Royals. But now the former New York Yankee is happily retired from baseball and living in Houston.
Well, I’m happy for him. He had a great career that was unfortunately cut just a bit short by his throwing problem which happened to coincide with the deteriorating health of his father.
I think it would be great if Knoblauch could be lured out of retirement to join his old teammates with the Houston Astros this season.
It is pretty obvious that the Yankees are missing him now that they have traded away Alfonso Soriano and are left with a gaping hole at second base.

Too bad Bush didn't listen to Colin Powell

Back when Bush tapped Colin Powell to be Secretary of State, everyone thought it was a brilliant move. Unfortunately, we now know it was just a political calculation and that Bush never had any intention of actually listening to Powell or heeding his advice on foreign policy matters.

The new Bob Woodward book notes that Powell warned Bush about the war's cost to no avail.

"You're sure?" Powell is quoted as asking Bush in the Oval Office on January 13, 2003, as the president told him he had made the decision to go forward. "You understand the consequences," he is said to have stated in a half-question. "You know you're going to be owning this place?"

Yeah, we certainly own it now and the Bush administration is finally starting to have buyer's remorse. Now suddenly, after months of denigrating the United Nations as being inconsequential, Bush is going back to the U.N. with hat in hand begging them to bail us out of this Iraqi quagmire.

This is yet another fine example of a classic Bush flip-flop, but the subservient media is oddly portraying it as Bush and Blair "staying the course."

Things in Iraq have gone from bad to worse these past two weeks and we would be lucky if the U.N. does agree to come in and pull our bacon out of the fire.

Mood music

My friend Robert at Beginner's Mind asks about music that people use to change their moods.

I guess when I listen to music it doesn't put me in a mood so much as it transports me back to a time and a place when I first heard it. Music can be very nostalgic. I have certain music that I associate with my childhood. Some that dates to junior high school. Some that takes me back to high school days and some that is from college.

Whenever I hear Elvis Presley's "That's Alright, Mama" I'm back in elementary school - Elvis having been one of the first albums I ever got. If I hear the Kingston Trio singing "Tom Dooley" or Herb Alpert and the Tiajuana Brass playing "Tiajuana Taxi" I am transported back to my childhood listening to my father's recorded music from Vietnam on his reel-to-reel player.

The Bee Gee's "Tragedy" and "Play that Funky Music" by Wild Cherry transports me back to junior high days in Victoria riding the bus to school and listening to the local rock radio station each day. Same goes for "Barracuda" by Heart and "Rich Girl" by Hall & Oates.

But to alter my mood, I suppose one song that always makes me happy to listen to is "When Jimmy Falls in Love" by Vance Gilbert. Or the soundtrack to Walt Disney's Dumbo - particulary "Pink Elephants on Parade." I also love a particular version of "If I knew you were coming I would have baked a cake" sung as a duet by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on Crosby's radio show.

Of course, you can't always make yourself happy just by listening to music. Sometimes when you are really down or heartbroke the old adage "misery loves company" applies and you want to know that you are not alone. That is when Hank Williams Sr. is most effective. The guy knew something about misery and could put it in a song so that it was both catchy and sincere.

Time to look for the exits in Iraq

I agree with Sen. Byrd. It's time to Follow the Exit Signs in Iraq and get our troops out of there.

"The United States should get out of the business of running Iraq.
Additional military force from the United States, which is now widely viewed as an international bully by those in the region, will not ease the transition to a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. A new approach is urgently needed. We should work with the community of nations. It is time to turn full authority over to the United Nations."

It is very clear now, one year into this operation, that the Bush administration did not have the foggiest clue as to what they were getting us into.

As Maureen Dowd noted in the NY Times the other day:

"Every single thing the administration calculated would happen in Iraq has turned out the opposite. The W.M.D. that supposedly threatened us did not exist. The dangerous dictator was deluded and writing romance novels. The terrorism that would be thwarted has mushroomed in Iraq and is feeding Arab radicalism.
Mr. Rumsfeld thought invading Iraq would exorcise America's Vietnam syndrome, its squeamishness about using force. Instead, it has raised the specter of another Vietnam, where our courageous troops don't understand the culture, can't recognize the enemy and don't have an exit strategy. And the administration spins the war every day.
Rummy also thought he could show off his transformation of the military, using a leaner force. Now even some Republicans say he is putting our troops at risk by stubbornly refusing to admit he was wrong.
Dick Cheney thought fear was better than weak-kneed diplomacy, that if America whacked one Arab foe, all the others would cower. Wrong. The Iraq invasion has multiplied and emboldened our enemies.
Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld thought America should flex its hyperpower muscles, castrating the U.N. and blowing off multilateral arrangements. Now the administration may have to crawl back for help.
The hawks thought they could establish a democracy that would produce a domino effect in the Arab world. Wrong. The dominoes are falling in a scarier direction.
The president thought he could improve on the ending to his father's gulf war. Wrong again."

We supposedly went to Iraq to find WMDs which we now know did not exist (at least not in this decade) and to depose a brutal dictator. Well, Saddam Hussein has been captured and his evil sons are dead. So let's declare victory and go home.

U.S. battles China, Iran for top executioner title

TalkLeft has a post linking to an Amnesty International study on the death penalty.

The U.S. is among the top three executioners in the world along with China and Iran. When you throw in No. 4 Vietnam, they account for 84 percent of all the executions in the world.

The U.S. continues to be increasingly isolated in its support of this backward and barbaric practice as Amnesty International's figures showed that 77 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes by the end of 2003....

The study also shows that since 1973, 113 prisoners have been released from death row in the U.S. after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.

I would like to think that if Mel Gibson's graphic film "The Passion of the Christ" inspires one thing it might be a revulsion for state-sponsored executions of which Christ was a victim.

Celebrity endorsements

During past presidential elections I’ve had a habit of keeping track of celebrity endorsements. This year I plan to keep a running list on my blog which I will update as new information becomes available. My rule for listing celebrity endorsements is that I have to see a reliable news source listing their support for the current campaign year in some shape or fashion - they attended a fund raiser, gave cash, signed a petition, peformed at a support function, or simply said “I support so-and-so.” If they supported a different candidate in the primary, I do not assume that they have transferred their support to the winner until I see some confirmation.

So without further ado, here is the list as it stands to date:

George W. Bush:
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Bruce Willis
Tom Selleck

John Kerry:
Meg Ryan
Leonardo DiCaprio
Jennifer Aniston
Kevin Costner
Barbara Streisand
James Taylor
Larry David
Carole King
Dennis Hopper
Kathleen Turner
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds
Moby
Aaron Sorkin
Quincy Jones
Penny Marshall
Bette Midler
Jerry Seinfeld
Uma Thurman
Stephen Stills
Chevy Chase
Kevin Bacon
Paul Newman
Kate Hudson
Russell Crowe
Harvey Weinstein
Jennifer Garner
Robert DeNiro
Michael J. Fox
Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul & Mary)

Aunt Pearl turns 90!

My Great-Aunt Pearl turned 90 over the weekend. Here is a picture of her at her party. I'd say she doesn't look a day over 75. Seriously, though, I think she looks terrific and I hope she makes it to 100-plus. I don't want to be the only family member who is going to live to be 100.

My mom attended the celebration along with my Uncle Kenneth and Aunt Sarah. You can see my mom in this picture facing the camera with my Uncle Kenneth to her right.

And here is a picture of the surviving sisters: Aunt Pearl, Aunt Iris and Aunt Vesta. Their sister Erna Mae, my father's mother, passed away in about 1986, I think.

Kudos to whichever family member posted all of these pictures online!

Late night watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I've lately become a big fan of the cult TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know that I am a little late to the party since the series ended its 7-year run last year.
I got hooked on Buffy lately because I wind up staying up two to three hours every night with my seven month old son. I've found that I can rock him back to sleep while sitting on the living room couch and watching the TV with the sound muted. Fortunately, now that I have Tivo (or at least the cable equivalent) I can record shows to watch at these odd hours. One night when I had nothing else to watch, I stumbled upon a Buffy episode on the FX network which just happened to be showing two episodes a night beginning with the first season. Since the shows are close captioned I can watch them without sound with no problem.
I'm up to about the third season now and I have to say it is one of the best written and most enjoyable TV shows I've ever seen. It's right up there with Star Trek among my all-time favorites. I also like the spin-off series Angel too. The best comparison I can make is that it is like a cross between Beverly Hills 90210 and the X-Files. But it is even better than that.
Unfortunately, my wife is usually getting some badly needed sleep while I'm watching the show and putting Nathan to sleep, so she is not a fan of the series like I am. That means she probably would not consider spending $200 or more dollars buying all the episodes on DVD to be a good investment at this point. So I will just have to continue watching them in random order at odd hours of the night.

Is Blogging just the tip of the iceberg?

I’ve often worried that blogging is just a fad that will eventually go out of fashion. If Blogger were to shut down in a year or so I would lose all of my archived blog entries (not that that would be a great loss) and the Internet would become a lot less interesting.

But there are apparently some folks out there who see the trend going the otherway. Jason Calacanis at Weblogs Inc. thinks blogging will catch on the same way e-mail did and soon everyone will have one.

“It’s becoming clear to me that blogs are not simply journals or editorial. They are, in fact, the new email address. They will be the most important piece of data on anyone’s business card. Want to email me and don’t know my email address? Visit my blog — which you will find by Googling me — and fill in my contact form. Try finding someone’s email address using Google — good luck.
Everyone will have a blog in ten years or less and I mean everyone. The way everyone has an email address today and so few people had email in 1994, the same will happen to your blog address. Why? Blogs are simple, as flexible as the Internet itself and they are rich. You can’t fit the same depth of information on a vcard.
Now, I’m sure some people said this about homepages back in 1994. However, back then people were not as tech savvy as they are now, and certainly only a fraction of them were online. In the past ten years online publishing technology has become easier, more powerful and more ambitious. Like many things, the second or third time is a charm.
Blogs are hyped, but the truth is they will ultimately surpass and transcend the current hype — the same way the Internet did.
As much as it may seem they are overexposed, blogs are underrated.”

So are we bloggers on the cutting edge of something big? Or are we part of a fad that will soon be overtaken by the next big thing - whatever that may be?

Doubts about new "Alamo" movie

I hope that the new “Alamo” movie is good, but I have my doubts. I’ve always loved Texas history and as a resident of San Antonio I would love to see the movie become a big hit. However, I’m afraid it will be hampered by a serious case of the “might have beens” thanks to the arrogance, incompetence and stupidity of Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

The film was supposed to have been helmed by Ron Howard fresh off of his Academy Award win for “A Beautiful Mind.” Howard had reportedly spent a year working on the project and had lined up Russell Crowe and Ethan Hawke to take prominent parts in the movie. There were even reports that Sean Penn was considering accepting the role of Jim Bowie.

But then Eisner stepped in and vetoed the project reportedly because he was afraid it might get an R rating for violence. So Howard dropped out and when he left so did Crowe, Hawke, Penn and anyone else of significance who might have thought about coming aboard.

So Disney brought in rookie director John Lee Hancock whose most prominent film to date was the feel-good Disney baseball flick “The Rookie” that starred Dennis Quaid. Not surprisingly, Quaid was also brought on to replace Russell Crowe in the role of Gen. Sam Houston. Unfortunately for Quaid, the latest reports say the Sam Houston role was trimmed back significantly to cut the length of the movie down from 3 hours to about 2 hours and 15 minutes. The only other actor of note to sign up was Billy Bob Thornton in the role of Davy Crockett.

Quite frankly, I’m dreading finding out how they handle the Crockett character in the film. If they give credence to that bogus story about Crockett being captured and executed by Santa Anna, well that would pretty much end it for me right there.
But I’ll wait and see what happens. Maybe Hancock will surprise everyone the way Peter Jackson did and come out with an extraordiary film. Or maybe I’ll just go down to Wal-Mart and pick up the old John Wayne version instead.

Daschle sums up the latest Bush outrages

I swiped this from Eschaton because it was too good to pass up.

Excerpt from statement by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle:

“When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill stepped forward to criticize the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, he was immediately ridiculed by the people around the President and his credibility was attacked. Even worse, the Administration launched a government investigation to see if Secretary O'Neill improperly disclosed classified documents. He was, of course, exonerated, but the message was clear. If you speak freely, there will be consequences.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson also learned that lesson. Ambassador Wilson, who by all accounts served bravely under President Bush in the early 1990s, felt a responsibility to speak out on President Bush's false State of the Union statement on Niger and uranium. When he did, the people around the President quickly retaliated. Within weeks of debunking the President's claim, Ambassador Wilson's wife was the target of a despicable act.
Her identity as a deep-cover CIA agent was revealed to Bob Novak, a syndicated columnist, and was printed in newspapers around the country. That was the first time in our history, I believe, that the identity and safety of a CIA agent was disclosed for purely political purposes. It was an unconscionable and intolerable act.

Around the same time Bush Administration officials were endangering Ambassador Wilson's wife, they appear to have been threatening another federal employee for trying to do his job. In recent weeks Richard Foster, an actuary for the Department of Health and Human Services, has revealed that he was told he would be fired if he told Congress and the American people the real costs of last year?s Medicare bill.
Mr. Foster, in an e-mail he wrote on June 26 of last year, said the whole episode had been "pretty nightmarish." He wrote: "I'm no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policymakers for political purposes."
Think about those words. He would lose his job if he did his job. If he provided the information the Congress and the American people deserved and were entitled to, he would lose his job. When did this become the standard for our government? When did we become a government of intimidation?

And now, in today's newspapers, we see the latest example of how the people around the President react when faced with facts they want to avoid.
The White House's former lead counter-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, is under fierce attack for questioning the White House?s record on combating terrorism. Mr. Clarke has served in four White Houses, beginning with Ronald Reagan's Administration, and earned an impeccable record for his work.
Now the White House seeks to destroy his reputation. The people around the President aren't answering his allegations; instead, they are trying to use the same tactics they used with Paul O'Neill. They are trying to ridicule Mr. Clarke and destroy his credibility, and create any diversion possible to focus attention away from his serious allegations.

The purpose of government isn't to make the President look good. It isn't to produce propaganda or misleading information. It is, instead, to do its best for the American people and to be accountable to the American people.
The people around the President don't seem to believe that. They have crossed a line -- perhaps several lines -- that no government ought to cross.
We shouldn't fire or demean people for telling the truth. We shouldn't reveal the names of law enforcement officials for political gain. And we shouldn't try to destroy people who are out to make country safer.
I think the people around the President have crossed into dangerous territory. We are seeing abuses of power that cannot be tolerated.
The President needs to put a stop to it, right now. We need to get to the truth, and the President needs to help us do that.”

I would just add that every one of these abuses by the Bush administration is far worse and more detrimental to civil society than any of the pseudo-scandals that Ken Starr and his right-wing cabal spent $70 million of taxpayers’ money investigating in the 1990s.

Loyalty and betrayal after school

I never got into fights much when I was a kid. This was probably a good thing since I was and still am thin as a rail. But one time when I was about 7 or 8 my friend Dickie was supposed to fight some kid after school and he asked me to come along. I didn’t know what the fight was about or who the other kid was, but I agreed to tag along to back up my friend. What resulted was one of my first lessons in loyalty and betrayal.

I happened to mention to another kid that day named Ronnie that there was going to be a fight after school and he agreed to come along as well. I don’t remember how many kids showed up in the end but it was something like a half dozen on each side. It was a rather bizarre experience. Sort of like being on a team in a sport where you don’t really know what the rules are or what you are supposed to do. When the actual fight started it was just Dickie and the other kid wrestling on the ground with everyone else just standing around shouting encouragements.

Before the fight actually got underway, however, I found out just how fickle my friend Ronnie’s loyalties turned out to be. As the other group of kids was walking up, Ronnie noticed that the group included a big black kid named Derrick who I’m guessing must have known a bit of judo or something. Derrick proceeded to demonstrate this skill by flipping several kids onto the ground, including me.

When Ronnie saw Derrick, he suddenly stopped and announced “They have Derrick on their side! I’m on their side!” Then he turned around and shoved me. I remember being surprised at first and then shoving him back. Afterwards he kind of slipped away to the back of the group and didn’t participate in any more fighting. Thus ended our brief friendship.

I’ve always wondered whether Ronnie went away ashamed of his actions that day. I kind of hope that he did and that he learned a valuable lesson himself. But I’ve seen that same kind of behavior over the years. People want to be on the winning side regardless of which side it is. It takes a certain amount of integrity to stick it out on the side that you know is destined to lose. This doesn’t mean that you should never change sides. It is also a mark of integrity to change sides if you determine that the side you are on is in the wrong. But that decision should be based on facts, evidence, logic and values, not on the desire to win.

Bush's Iraqi qWagmire

One year after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and the country is still in turmoil.
Most of Bush's promises about the war have turned out to be as reliable as his prescriptions for fixing the economy.
In fact, a new congressional study has documented more than 230 misleading statements , if not outright lies, told by Bush and his top advisors during the run-up to the invasion.

The cost of the war in both dollars and lives has far exceeded what the Bush administration said it would be.

"The invasion and occupation of Iraq, his administration predicted, would come at little financial cost and would materially improve the lives of Iraqis. Americans would be greeted as liberators, Bush officials predicted, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein would spread peace and democracy throughout the Middle East.

Things have not worked out that way, for the most part. There is evidence that the economic lives of Iraqis are improving, thanks to an infusion of U.S. and foreign capital. But the administration badly underestimated the financial cost of the occupation and seriously overstated the ease of pacifying Iraq and the warmth of the reception Iraqis would give the U.S. invaders. And while peace and democracy may yet spread through the region, some early signs are that the U.S. action has had the opposite effect."


If anything, Iraq is a more dangerous place today than it was during Saddam's brutal regime. The AP today reports that suicide bombings in Iraq have claimed more than 660 lives. That is more than all the suicide bombing deaths in Israel since 2000. Suicide bombings used to be unheard of in Iraq, but ever since the invasion it has become common place.

There is not much nice that can be said about Saddam Hussein, but the main reason why western leaders before Bush were willing to tolerate him was because he was a secular counter to the religious fundamentalism that is spreading across the middle east.

George Bush - Crooked Liar!!

OK, so that might be a bit provacative. But how else do you respond to this type of nonsense - "Bush Exaggerates Kerry's Position on Intelligence Budget (washingtonpost.com)"

"President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would "gut the intelligence services," and one that had no co-sponsors because it was "deeply irresponsible."

In terms of accuracy, the parry by the president is about half right. Bush is correct that Kerry on Sept. 29, 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget. But Bush appears to be wrong when he said the proposed Kerry cut -- about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years -- would have "gutted" intelligence. In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office -- the same program Kerry said he was targeting."

I think the Washington Post was being kind to use the term "exaggerates" rather than saying what it really was - a blatant lie. The $1.5 billion over five years ($300 million annually) that Kerry proposed cutting was the surplus amount left unspent that year in the intelligence budget. So all that Kerry was proposing to do was to give that unspent money back to the taxpayers - something that Republicans are typically in favor of. It would hardly have "gut the intelligence services," as Bush well knows.

But this blatant lie about Kerry trying to "gut the intelligence services" is currently being spread all across the country by our president as he attempts to divert attention from his own domestic and foreign policy failures.

But that kind of dirty pool campaigning, while despicable, is not even the worst thing that came out about the Bush administration this past week. There was also this story about how the Bush administration lied to members of its own party and threatened to fire the government's top expert on Medicare if he didn't keep quiet about how the administration's prescription drug plan would cost $100 billion more than what they were telling everybody it would cost.

"When the House of Representatives passed the controversial benefit by five votes last November, the White House was embracing an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But for months the administration's own analysts in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had concluded repeatedly that the drug benefit could cost upward of $100 billion more than that.
Withholding the higher cost projections was important because the White House was facing a revolt from 13 conservative House Republicans who'd vowed to vote against the Medicare drug bill if it cost more than $400 billion."

The Bush folks knew they didn't have the votes to pass their version of the Medicare drug bill, so they simply lied about it. They LIED about it!

And they want John Kerry to apologize for what? Stating the obvious??

Bush admin treated view of Iraq WMDs "like a religion"

Buried inside Saturday's NY Times is the following story - U.S., Certain That Iraq Had Illicit Arms, Reportedly Ignored Contrary Reports which sums up much of what I find most egregious about the Bush administration.

"In the two years before the war in Iraq, American intelligence agencies reviewed but ultimately dismissed reports from Iraqi scientists, defectors and other informants who said Saddam Hussein's government did not possess illicit weapons, according to government officials.

"The reports, which ran contrary to the conclusions of the intelligence agencies and the Bush administration, were not acknowledged publicly by top government officials before the invasion last March. In public statements, the agencies and the administration cited only reports from informants who supported the view that Iraq possessed so-called weapons of mass destruction, which the administration cited as a main justification for going to war.

"...government officials said they knew of several occasions from 2001 to 2003 when Iraqi scientists, defectors and others had told American intelligence officers, their foreign partners or other intelligence agents that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons.

"The officials said they believed that intelligence agencies had dismissed the reports because they did not conform to a view, held widely within the administration and among intelligence analysts, that Iraq was hiding an illicit arsenal.

"It appears that the human intelligence wasn't deemed interesting or useful if it was exculpatory of Iraq," said one senior government official with detailed knowledge of the prewar intelligence.

"A second senior government official, who confirmed that account, said the view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons had been "treated like a religion" within American intelligence agencies, with alternative views never given serious attention.

The view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons had been "treated like a religion." That says a lot right there. That pretty much sums up what is wrong with this administration. Bush is essentially a religious fundamentalist. A right-wing Christian hard-liner who refuses to accept or even consider evidence that is contrary to the preconceived conclusions dictated by his narrow and rigid ideology.

This is why we are bogged down in Iraq hunting for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction while 500-plus U.S. troops lie dead and many thousands more are seriously injured.

This is why we have an "economic recovery" that isn't producing enough jobs to even keep up with normal growth. Bush's only answer for the loss of jobs is to cut taxes for the rich even though doing so twice in three years has failed to turn the employment situation around.

This is why we now have record deficits when we started the Bush era with record surpluses. Bush adheres to the supply side nonsense that cutting taxes will produce more revenue for the government even though it failed to work for Reagan and hasn't worked for him.

You cannot reason with somebody who starts out with a preconceived notion and then demands that everything must fit into that scheme or be discarded. We might as well just disband our intelligence agencies right now since it does not matter what evidence they dig up - the only items that will be believed will be the ones that Bush wants to believe and nothing else.

The NYT article goes on to note that while intelligence reports stating that Iraq had no WMDs were being discarded (and hidden from the public) the administration was basing its arguments for the war on the testimony of an Iraqi defector who had been determined to be a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"In the past month, some senior intelligence officials have acknowledged that some information from human sources on Iraq was mishandled, including reports based on interviews in early 2002 with an Iraqi defector who later that year was labeled a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"The information the defector provided was nevertheless included in the administration's statements, including the October 2002 intelligence assessment and Mr. Powell's speech."

It didn't matter that the man was a liar and a con artist. The only thing that mattered was that he was saying what the administration wanted to hear.

I'm sorry, but foreign policy should not be treated like a religion and the power of the presidency should not be wielded by someone who refuses to consider evidence "contrary to the conclusions" they start out with.

Oscar Shocker!

Everyone who was supposed to win..... won!!! I don’t think this has ever happened before in the history of the Oscars! No upsets! No surprises! No dark horse victories!
The one thing everyone is always sure about around Oscar time is that at least one of the presumed victors will be upset by someone who comes out of left field at the last minute. This year that could have been Johnny Depp who surprised everyone by winning the Screen Actors Guild award for best actor just a few weeks ago. Or it could have been Keisha Castle-Hughes, the cute little 13-year-old from Whale Rider for best actress. Or it could have been Shohreh Aghdashloo swiping a sure thing away from Renee Zellwegger in the best supporting actress category. It could have been any number of films coming from behind to overtake front-runner Lord of the Rings in its nearly a dozen categories. Some people thought Rings might fold just like Howard Dean in the Iowa caucuses.

But none of that happened and that may have been the biggest surprise of all.
The Lord of the Rings romped to a record 11 victories (tied with Ben-Hur and Titanic) leaving very little Oscar gold to be split between the other contenders.
Master and Commander picked up two Oscars in the only two technical categories where Rings wasn’t nominated. Mystic River won two acting awards. Lost in Translation got a single Oscar for original screenplay and Seabiscuit was shut out. Finding Nemo, of course, won for animated feature. The only other films to garner a trophy were Cold Mountain and Monster in the other two acting categories.

TV Pundits are declaring this year’s Oscar ceremony as “boring” due to the lack of controversy and scandal. No left-wing political rants! No sudden flash of nudity! No fistfights or brawls! What is the world coming to??
Frankly, I quite enjoyed the show. I thought Billy Crystal was funny and none of the tributes - Bob Hope, Katherine Hepburn, Blake Edwards, Gregory Peck - were too drawn out. The musical performances where also good.
It’s no surprise that I am thrilled with the results. I still think that Rings should have gotten at least one acting nomination - they won the ensemble acting award at the SAGs - but I can’t complain about an 11-Oscar sweep. This was obviously pay-back from the Academy for having passed over LOTR the first two go arounds.

As for predicting the Oscars this year, I did surprisingly well. I entered at least two online contests and predicted a LOTR sweep and all of the acting noms. I went 21 for 24 missing only the cinematography, animated short and documentary short categories. Still don’t know if I won anything.

Thank you, Alan Greenspan!

I was glad to see Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan calling for cuts in Social Security benefits yesterday. I think that any time that Republicans are forced to talk about cutting Social Security during an election year is a good thing.

It is, of course, an outrage that the Republicans now want to pay for their tax cuts for the rich by taking benefits away from the elderly. Normally they would not be willing to talk about it in the open, especially right before an election. But now Greenspan has kicked the issue out into the open and has thereby done a great favor for the rest of us.

Social Security is currently collected out of the first $87,000 of every person's salary. That means that the vast majority of us who earn less than $87,000 per year have 100 percent of our income taxed for the purposes of Social Security. Meanwhile, folks like Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush and Ken Lay who make considerably more than $87,000 per year have only a fraction of their incomes going toward Social Security. So how is it fair that they should use the Social Security surplus to cover for Bush's fiscal irresponsibility?