Book Review

Paul Krugman: Strictly Business

"...And yet. Ivins and Dubose track the outrages; Conason exposes the hypocrisy. But why is the public so easily manipulated? One answer is the supineness of much of the press, radio, and television, a fact documented by Conason. But that just pushes the question back a step. What is it about today's right that lets it bully the press so easily, that creates such an effective machine of propaganda, intimidation, and base mobilization?

Money is surely part of the story. Recent statistics confirm that income inequality in the United States has returned to Gilded Age levels; maybe, then, our newly empowered rich are in a position to buy themselves a return to Gilded Age politics. Religion is also part of the story: in effect, the religious right--a majority of whose adherents are very much losers in the new economic order--seems to have made a deal to support low taxes for the rich and weak regulation in return for a more Bible-friendly government. And 9/11 was, of course, the best gift the right could have wished for--a perfect occasion to shift politics to a permanent war footing, in which criticism of our leaders could be shouted down as unpatriotic. But the success of today's right, despite its manifest greediness and irresponsibility, remains a puzzle. And it's a puzzle we'd better solve soon, if we want to preserve the America we grew up in.

Uncivil? Damn right.

And it's about time.

Paul Krugman: The Uncivil War

"One of the problems with media coverage of this administration," wrote Eric Alterman in The Nation, "is that it requires bad manners."

He's right. There's no nice way to explain how the administration uses cooked numbers to sell its tax cuts, or how its arrogance and gullibility led to the current mess in Iraq.

So it was predictable that the administration and its allies, no longer very successful at claiming that questioning the president is unpatriotic, would use appeals to good manners as a way to silence critics. Not, mind you, that Emily Post has taken over the Republican Party: the same people who denounce liberal incivility continue to impugn the motives of their opponents..."

Dirty politics at its absolute lowest

Quelle surprise!

Robert Scheer: For the GOP, Criticism Is Next to Cowardice

"But the television ad that the Republican Party is running on Bush's behalf in Iowa this week does just that, making the outrageous insinuation that critics of the president's policies are in fact supporters of terrorists...This is dirty politics at its absolute lowest, equating criticism with cowardice... "

Freedom from Religion, too

Cynthia Tucker: Jefferson's wall preserves faith

"It is not just the liberty of Jews and Muslims and Hindus that would be trampled by Moore's "Christian nation." So would the religious liberty of millions of Christians who don't accept his theology, including myself. I would be forced to bow to prayers that make me uncomfortable, to salute commandments I consider wretchedly antiquated ("Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's"), and to condemn good friends. (My neighbors, it happens, are a servantless gay couple.)..."

Republican assault on Medicare

Madison Capital Times: The assault on Medicare

"Under the guise of creating a prescription drug benefit, the proponents of the legislation that stands on the brink of final passage in the Senate today have, in fact, crafted a scheme designed to enrich pharmaceutical companies while saddling seniors with high co-pays and costs that will continue to make needed medicines unaffordable for millions of citizens. Worse yet, the legislation seeks to use billions of taxpayer dollars to break up the Medicare program and hand the pieces over to the same for-profit concerns that have made the U.S. health care system one of the costliest and most inefficient in the world. So corrupt is the legislation that it actually bans initiatives to lower drug prices..."

Enemies of the People

Boston Globe: Under attack -- by the FBI

"ATTORNEY GENERAL John Ashcroft should be the chief protector of the United States Constitution, not its chief threat. By allowing the FBI to ask local police departments to report antiwar activities to the FBI's counterterrorism squads, Ashcroft makes the FBI look unsuited to protect Americans against the terrorist threat from Al Qaeda."

Errant attacks

Newsday:Slams on Dean Make Him Stronger

" Mark Halperin of ABC News recently wrote: "Whatever doesn't kill Dean makes him stronger." That's because every attack has made Dean look more and more like the outsider, the guy who runs against Washington and who tells it like it is..."

No evidence collected, no crime

Madison Capital Times: Touch-screen voting isn't the answer

"The machines are supposed to eliminate all the disadvantages of paper and punch-card ballots, disadvantages like hanging chads and confusing ballot lineups that have, in effect, disenfranchised voters throughout the country. But the system of allowing voters to touch a computer screen in the box of their favorite candidate eliminates any "paper trail" that could be used to check the accuracy of the voting tabulation.

The fact that several of the executives of the firms who manufacture the newfangled machines are closely linked with Republican politicians and President Bush, in particular, has fed suspicion, especially since several computer experts have shown that the software for the machines isn't foolproof and can be tampered with. It didn't help that the CEO of the major touch-screen manufacturer, Diebold, is a prolific campaign contributor to Bush and has publicly committed to "delivering" the state of Ohio to him in the 2004 election..."

Predictable flop

Jules Witcover: A jolly bad show for Bush in London

"Why in the world did President Bush go to London? If it was to help Prime Minister Tony Blair, his pal and co-sponsor of the invasion of Iraq, deal with an angry British public, the visit certainly was a flop. And a predictable one..."

Blow back

Knight-Ridder:U.S. Tactics in Iraq May Backfire, Critics Say

"The increasing American violence may lead to the killing or arrest of some resistance fighters," said Dr. Wamid Nadmi, a professor of political science at Baghdad University. "But the other side is this will increase the people's rage against the Americans, especially those people whose homes are being destroyed or family members are being killed..."

Pay the price

Chicago Tribune: Free trade strikes again

" The Bush administration is capping imports of some textiles and clothing from China. This is intended to benefit textile companies and workers--and not incidentally the president's political fortunes--in the southeastern U.S. Everyone else in the country will pay for it in higher prices and fewer buying choices.

Happy holidays from the Bush White House..."

Truth and justice as strategy

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.: Dean's New Southern Strategy

"Rather than repeating this stereotypical and condescending approach of appealing to whites in the South with a "balanced ticket" and "social conservatism," Howard Dean dares a new approach--to join whites and blacks around a common economic agenda of good schools and healthcare.

If Howard Dean wins the nomination around an economic agenda, and can effectively combat the certain Republican tactic of diversion--using social issues openly, and race more subtly, to sublimate economic concerns--then Democrats may once again be able to win in the South and pursue a progressive economic agenda for the benefit of all Americans.

That's Howard Dean's approach and his challenge. I support him because I think it's the right strategy politically, economically and morally..."

The 9/11 Cover-up

David Corn: The 9/11 Cover-up

"With these actions, the White House blocked the public from learning what Bush had been told about the al Qaeda threat in the weeks before 9/11, and it hid information that could cause Americans to wonder if Bush might have not reacted to the warnings with sufficient vigor. But the preliminary evidence is that the White House has been protecting itself. According to the House and Senate intelligence committees' final report on 9/11, the committees were told by an intelligence community representative that an August 2001 intelligence report included information that bin Laden wanted to conduct attacks in the United States, that al Qaeda members had been residing and traveling to the United States for years and had apparently maintained a support structure here, that bin Laden was interested in hijacking airliners (to trade for prisoners), that the FBI had discerned patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings, and that bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in the United States with explosives..."

The phoney war on terror

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: War on terror/Iraq just gets in the way

"Which raises a powerful question: Why is the United States pouring so much of its limited blood and its treasure into Iraq and so much less into the real war against terrorism? That's what so many Americans and people around the world are asking. Most are not unalterably opposed to the use of force. They agree with the president's assertion that duty " sometimes requires the violent restraint of violent men." They simply don't believe the war on Iraq was one of those times. And they worry that Iraq is diverting attention from the real threat..."

Cooking the books

Robert B. Reich: Risking Your Future

"But this cheery story has a darker side. Just like other major corporations, Fannie and Freddie have shareholders who want high returns on their investments. And they have executives who get multi-million dollar paychecks?even higher when the corporations show big profits. Earlier this year, Freddie got caught up in an accounting scandal that requires an estimated $4.5 billion earnings restatement. Last month, Fannie reported a $1.3 billion accounting mistake.

These problems might not be worrisome under normal circumstances. But we?ve had two years of revelations about cooked books and shady dealings on Wall Street, so everyone?s a bit nervous..."

What could have been

Robert T. Holnut: 40 years later, his promise still haunts us

"That contrast is even more stark when you compare Kennedy with President George W. Bush. In the words of his chief speechwriter and advisor, Ted Sorenson, Kennedy was "so blessed with the gifts of reason, intellect and vitality that eloquence came naturally to him..."

Don't be fooled

San Francisco Chronicle: Arnold's Unbecoming Xenophobia

"Don't be fooled by all the heavy immigrant rhetoric in the inaugural address. When the man with the self-described "immigrant's optimism" declared, "I will not forget you," most of the Latino community had to be bent over in laughter..."

Tom Daschle, Traitor

I don't know why the Republicans target Daschle. He's the best friend they ever had.

New York Times: Filibuster Blocks $31 Billion Energy Bill in Senate

"Thirteen Democrats joined with most Republicans in trying to gain a yes-or-no vote on the bill. They included Senator Tom Daschle, the minority leader; his fellow senator from South Dakota, Tim Johnson; and Tom Harkin from Iowa. One section of the bill encourages the use of ethanol in gasoline, an idea that benefits corn-producing states..."

Honor and dignity, eh?

Ruy Teixeira:Plan A Falls Apart

" Turning to the question of whether the public feels that the administration, including Bush himself, has been straight with them about Iraq, it is impressive how negative the public is becoming. In the CBS poll, 55 percent say that the Bush administration either was hiding important elements of what they knew about WMD in Iraq (40 percent) or was mostly lying about what it knew (15 percent). And when the public was asked the same question about Bush himself, the results were almost identical: 53 percent say that Bush either was hiding important elements of what he knew about WMD in Iraq (37 percent) or was mostly lying about what he knew (16 percent)

Restoring honor and dignity to the White House, eh? ..."

Trojan Horse

Paul Krugman: AARP Gone Astray

"That's only one of a number of anti-retiree measures tucked away in the bill. It contains several Trojan horse provisions that are clearly intended to undermine Medicare over time ? it will allow private insurers to cherry-pick healthy clients in selected cities, and it will heavily subsidize private plans competing with traditional Medicare. Meanwhile, the bill prohibits Medicare from using its bargaining power to cut drug prices; drug company stocks have soared since the bill's details became public..."

Sheer genius for special interests

Robert Kuttner: Haste Could Doom Medicare

"As a bill for special interests, however, the legislation is sheer genius. Pharmaceutical companies get to sell more drugs at prices they set. Hospitals and doctors receive additional payments. Insurers get to run a lucrative new program, with government subsidies. And corporations that pay health benefits to retirees get new annual tax breaks worth $18 billion..."

Vulnerable

Chicago Sun-Times.: Bush ripe for green revolt

"Republican strategists are aware that this issue could hurt Bush. "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general and President Bush in particular are most vulnerable," GOP pollster Frank Luntz confided to party leaders in a strategy memorandum.

Luntz bluntly advised them that the public viewed their party as being "in the pockets of corporate fat cats who rub their hands together and chuckle maniacally as they plot to pollute America for fun and profit."

He warned: "Not only do we risk losing the swing vote, but our suburban female base could abandon us as well..."

Rotting from the head down

Molly Ivins: Smell something fishy?

"Responsibility: Have you ever heard this administration admit it has made a mistake? It won't even take responsibility for dumb stuff like the "Mission Accomplished" sign, much less admit it had no idea what it was doing in Iraq after Saddam fell. Even now, administration folks keep trying to wiggle out of their own ... I don't know whether it was lies or misinformation -- there was no nuclear weapons program, there were no weapons of mass destruction, and there were no ties between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. But there they come again, with some leaked list of questionable intelligence trying to prove what isn't true..."

Not a regular guy at all

John Dean: An Early Assessment by Leading Presidential Scholars of George W. Bush's Presidency (Part Two)

"Jeanne Cummings, who has traveled with Bush abroad (as she did with Clinton) finds that when home, "he doesn't socialize a lot," and when abroad, "he's very lofty." He has no interaction with everyday people (as so many presidents have). Instead, he visits kings, queens, prime ministers, and ambassadors. Others have noted that Bush's visits with common people are staged. Bush's state visit to London certainly confirms Ms. Cummings's observations..."

Faux journalism is sensational

William Rivers Pitt: George W. Bush Loves Michael Jackson

"One of the shots on my television an hour ago showed a gaggle of reporters and cameras gathered outside the police station, waiting for Jackson to arrive. The talking head working the microphone at that moment mistakenly called those people "journalists." This is not journalism, and those people are not journalists. This is entertainment television passed off as news of import. This is more poison poured into our national discussion. This is the grand bull moose gold medal winning distraction of all time..."

They were wrong

Christian Science Monitor: A turning point in the Iraqi mess?

"The grand vision of a pacified, democratized Iraq, with vast oil reserves enabling it to pay its own way and shine the light for the rest of the region, must have seemed quickly achievable. Clearly, it did to Mr. Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - the architects of this adventure.

But they were wrong. And every day of every week, more Americans are being maimed and killed because of their wrongness..."

The Upcoming American Religious War

Thom Hartmann: The Founders Confront Judge Moore

"Instead, the record tells us that many of the Founders and Framers believed that secular democracy is a more powerful unifying force for a decent and peaceful civil society than any religion ever was or could be. Although most were spiritual in their own ways, and many were also openly religious, as students of history the Founders and Framers knew the damage that organized religion could do when it gained access to the reigns of political power..."

Whoever thought "bucolic" would be a fighting word?

Michael Kinsley: Attack Geography

"The appropriate sentiment at this point is that we all live in the real America, and share . . . something. What a generation of attack geography actually demonstrates is that nobody lives in the Real America. There is no part of the country that cannot be portrayed, with some accuracy, as a sealed society, out of touch with the rest of the country. In fact, attack geography depends on this very ignorance and disdain wherever it decrees the Real America to be in this election cycle..."

Shoot this turkey

Philadelphia Inquirer: Energy Bill - Shoot this turkey

"The energy bill is a pork-laden industry payoff that promotes yesterday's technology, scars sensitive landscapes, and pushes America further into a budget deficit..."

Steaming pile

Cleveland Plains Dealer: Powered by pork

" The energy bill is now spread before the Senate. It's an $80 billion devil's banquet of subsidies, tax breaks and special-interest favors that almost certainly will pass because the members' political self-interests will compel a majority to support it, regardless of its evident cost and not-so-evident benefits.

Look at this steaming spread: Before you is the reality of the great federal support system that masquerades as a market-driven economy. There's something here for practically everyone. That - and not its avowed purpose of ensuring America's secure energy future - is why this 1,200-page monster, most of it unread by the senators, is so close to becoming law..."

Crass Political Hustlers

Madison Capital Times: No need to amend

"So what motivates Gundrum, Fitzgerald and others like them who seek to turn the Wisconsin Constitution into a document of discrimination? There are several possibilities. The nicest interpretation would have it that these men are simply ill-informed and frightened individuals who do not know how to accept people who are different from them.

A more disturbing interpretation would have it that they are bigots who seek to insinuate their hatred into the laws of the state.

The most disturbing interpretation, however, would have it that they are crass political hustlers who want to exploit ignorance, fear and bigotry to score points for themselves and for their party in the coming election season. .."

Enemy of the People

Alternet: Neocons Leak Bad Intelligence

"The leak of a secret memorandum written by a senior Pentagon official reveals less about the connection between Saddam and al Qaeda than the growing desperation of neo-conservative hawks in the Bush administration..."

We our own 'Truth Commission'

(JFK Assassination) Time for the truth

"An examination of this massive official record raises unanswered questions and impossibilities galore regarding the ballistic evidence, the nature of Mr. Kennedy's wounds, the ignored testimony of key witnesses, the suppression and destruction of Mr. Kennedy's autopsy report and other forensic evidence that exonerates Mr. Oswald. It exposes the government's case against Mr. Oswald as a public relations exercise and not a good-faith investigation into the Kennedy assassination..."

Not a campaign. A movement

American Reporter: It's the Paradigm, Stupid

" John Kerry and Lieberman can whine and call Dean politically incorrect when he says he wants to be "the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." But they voted for the war on Iraq. They're members in good standing of the herd of sheep who went along. They're the establishment. They don't get it, and the press doesn't get it, but they're over. They're dead candidates walking..."

Picking the wrong fight

Boston Globe: A 'culture war' on gay marriage could hurt GOP

"The radical right is demanding a cultural war and calling for a civil war within the Republican Party at a level not seen since the 1992 Houston convention," observes Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. "The last time I checked, that led to the defeat of the first President Bush."

The group, the nation's largest gay Republican organization, put out a statement applauding the Massachusetts SJC decision that homosexual couples are constitutionally entitled to marry..."

Punching-bag no more

Joe Conason: Liberals fight back; pundits are shocked

"During those years, and in particular during the Clinton era, accusations of immorality, criminality and even treason became so commonplace in Republican discourse that hardly anyone bothered to protest. None of these worthies piped up. Where were the righteous critics when their pleas for civility might have mattered?

Mostly they were working for publications -- The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal, among others -- that specialized in smearing political adversaries, with particular emphasis on all persons associated with the Clinton administration. They lack the credentials to bleat piteously about Bush-bashing and unbridled partisanship..."

Isolationism

Maureen Dowd: The Buck House Stops Here

"The bubble in London is just an extension of the bubble the Bush team lives in at home. It superimposes its reality on the evidence for war, the ease of the occupation, the strength of the insurgency and the continuing threat from Saddam and Osama.

Isolationism has been a foreign policy before. But for this administration, it seems to be a way of life..."

Outlaw

Findlaw's Writ: How The U.S. Supreme Court Recently Refused to Enforce U.S. Law, and Insulted the International Court of Justice

" This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court denied review in the important case of Torres v. Mullin. It should have accepted the case, or at least refrained from declining review until after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ruled on the petitioner's claims.

In declining review, the Court turned a blind eye to the United States' repeated violations of its obligations under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). And in so doing, it refused to enforce U.S. law..."

Overcoming Liberal Elitism

Common Dreams: Candidate Dean and the Matter of Liberal Elitism

"Howard Dean is in trouble for uttering a sentiment that most Democrats keep to themselves. Dean remarked that he wanted the votes of the guys with pickup trucks and Confederate flags on the back. He has been accused of pandering to racists. Howard Dean is not my candidate, but he is getting a bum rap. No Dem- ocrat is likely to win without large numbers of white working-class male votes, the so-called Reagan Democrats. The question is how to get these votes in ways that expand our most generous instincts rather than cave in to defensive and self-destructive fears..."

Stressed to the breaking point

Andrew M. Cockburn: Tired, Terrified, Trigger-Happy

"Among the less publicized incentives propelling Iraq overseer Paul Bremer's urgent dash to Washington last week was the concern in various quarters of the administration that the U.S. expeditionary force in Iraq was in a dangerously unstable state. "We are one stressed-out reservist away from a massacre," remarked one senior official closely involved in the search for an exit strategy..."

With friends like these...

Alternet: Bush Goes To England, Blair Goes To Hell

"In the name of Bush's safety, the Secret Service requested that the London Underground, the provider of transportation to millions daily, be closed down. American snipers and special agents traveling with Bush were to be given diplomatic immunity in the event that they should kill any of the expected 100,000 protesters. An artillery weapon called the "mini gun," normally used in battlefield conditions, was to be flown in in case it was deemed necessary to mow down protesters en masse. Vast sections of the city were to be closed to all traffic, forcing the closure of untold hundreds of businesses. Americans were to be placed in charge of all security operations, ahead of the British Scotland Yard, the MI5, the Metropolitan police, and Blair's own security detail. And U.S. fighter jets and Blackhawk attack helicopters, armed with surface-to-ground missiles and high-powered machine guns, were to secure the skies over London. All of this in addition to flying in not only Bush's own presidential limousine, but in fact his own motorcade. No foreign cars for our President ? only a custom-imported procession of Humvees would do..."

Will the Dems fight back?

Robert Kuttner: The rush to kill Medicare

"THE BUSH administration's Medicare bill is a calculated first step toward ending universal Medicare in favor of vouchers. President Bush and his congressional allies have deftly baited this hook with meager prescription drug benefits..."

The revenge of the monied class

Madison Capital Times: An assault on Medicare

"The proposed changes are not a reform in any positive sense of the word. They are not an improvement on the program that currently exists. Rather, they represent little more than a marketing plan for business interests that want to begin the privatization of health programs for the elderly. If this legislation is passed, it will begin a process of dismantling Medicare as it currently exists, and with that dismantling will come a further narrowing of access to health care for low-income seniors and higher costs for middle- and upper-income seniors..."

Sins

Molli Ivins: Sins of omission

"Trying to determine historical causation is notoriously tricky. Right now, the administration is stuck in a no-win fight with the commission investigating Sept. 11. The commission wants access to the president's daily intelligence briefings pre-9-11 for the obvious purpose of figuring what did he know and when did he know it. The Bushies resisted for months and then opened their marble hearts and generously offered a few commission members access to the briefings -- after they have been edited however the administration sees fit. I'm not that interested in the issue, but this is the kind of behavior that used to send the Clinton-haters screaming and howling into the topmost branches. Ignoring Bin Laden in favor of Saddam Hussein may yet turn out to be an even worse mistake than it now appears -- and the evidence accumulates that the decision to go after Saddam pre-dated Sept. 11..."

At some point it will be too late

Washington Post: Not Too Late for the U.N.

"What will bring peace to Iraq is a true end of occupation, which would mean more inclusive political arrangements than those represented by the Governing Council (which has failed to establish leadership legitimacy), managed not by the United States but by an international force and mission led by the United Nations. Given the widespread Arab perception of the United Nations as essentially doing U.S. bidding, this mission would have to be free of U.S. control and have an unquestionable pro-Iraqi mandate, which would include guaranteeing all democratic factions equal access to full political opportunity..."

Didn't repeal the Constitution

New York Times: 'Enemy Combatant' Sham

"...Fortunately, it appears from this week's argument that the appeals court panel saw through the administration's spurious justifications. "As terrible as 9/11 was,"` Judge Rosemary Pooler observed, "it didn't repeal the Constitution.""

The Big Theft

Paul Krugman: Funds and Games

"That, in essence, is the story of the growing mutual fund scandal. On any given day, the losses to each individual investor were small ? which is why the scandal took so long to become visible. But if you steal a little bit of money every day from 95 million investors, the sums add up. Arthur Levitt, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, calls the mutual fund story "the worst scandal we've seen in 50 years" ? and no, he's not excluding Enron and WorldCom. Meanwhile, federal regulators, having allowed the scandal to fester, are doing their best to let the villains get off lightly..."

What it is is exactly clear

Robert Scheer: There's Something Happening Here

"Iraq is not Vietnam, and this is not 1964. But there are enough pillars for this analogy that we should remember some of the lessons of our last attempt to remake a nation in our image..."

Campaign finance reform of another kind

Byron Williams: Dean's $77 gamble

"Unlike Bush and Kerry, Dean's decision to forgo matching funds, if successful, could actually move campaign finance reform beyond the moderate changes called for in McCain-Feingold. Dean has woven fundraising into the fabric of his campaign. Instead of fundraising being a necessary adjunct that opens the door to possible abuse, undo influences and time spent away from connecting with voters, Dean's utilization of the Internet has made fundraising a tool that involves the electorate. The byproduct could be increased voter turnout."

No effective inquiry, no truth. Ever

John D. Rockefeller IV: Avoiding A Critical Inquiry

"In what is beginning to look like a coordinated effort to shield the administration from scrutiny, Republicans claim that reviewing the ways intelligence was used is not part of the committee's responsibilities. In this they plainly misread the committee's history and organizing resolution, which explicitly calls for oversight of "the collection, analysis, production, dissemination, or use of information which relates to a foreign country . . . and which relates to the defense, foreign policy, national security or related policies of the United States..."

Brainless, but committed

Liberal Slant: In A Party Of Hypocrites, Neocons Are King

" By remaining faithful to terminally corrupt BushCo, pathological neocon zealots and their supporters have fully exposed their seamy, nasty, infected underbellies (you know, where fleas, ticks, maggots, and leeches like Limbaugh, Coulter, O'Reilly, and Hannity live). They're no longer ashamed to be ignorant, hatemongering, pseudo-intellectual reactionaries openly preferring a born-again Judeo-Christian theo-plutocratic oligarchy involving minimal respect for the common man, individual rights, or global peace, to a representative democracy . In fact, it's quickly becoming a selling point, especially in the South (Haley Barbour's governor of Mississippi , for Christ's sake!).

This twisted pathology is increasingly apparent in their predictable voting practices and subsequent excuse-making. They gravitate to and vote into our highest public offices the most brainless and least qualified ignoramuses. When those morons fail, the brain trust scratches its collective head and blames the liberals, the Democrats, and the leftist media. Then they elect another mentally challenged simpleton..."

More than meets the eye

American Reporter: The Woman behind an Oil Giant's fall

"A French woman of Russian origin, armed with thousands of papers related to Yukos oil scandal, the giant Menatep business group and its offshore banking and securities dealings over the past decade, has been providing information to Russian prosecutors, the American Reporter has learned.

Accortding to those who have seen them, the papers offer a window on the dramatic rise and fall of billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oil tycoon and that nation's richest man. He is now being held in prison following seizure of his oil company Yukos, Russia's largest petroleum exploration and development firm. .."

Mockery

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Moore makes mockery of Ten Commandments

"His unseating should come as a relief to those who hold the Ten Commandments near and dear. Like most fanatics, Moore's zealotry is more about himself than his cause..."

Religious fanaticism

Findlaw's Writ: Judge Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments Controversy
Why He Was Not A Fit Justice, Won't Be A Fit Governor, And Belongs in the Private Sphere

"...In Judge Moore's world, Alabamians -- and all Americans who might have had business in the Alabama courts - who did not share Moore's religious worldview would have had to walk through a courthouse lobby that sent a message that their tradition was, at best, second-class. Fortunately, we don't live in Judge Moore's world -- and Lady Justice in Alabama has now replaced her blindfold."

More NAFTA casualties

Madison Capital Times: The trouble with NAFTA

"NAFTA has been a disaster for workers in the United States in general, and Wisconsin in particular. Of the close to three million manufacturing jobs lost in recent years, more than 500,000 can be directly attributed to factory closings by U.S.-based firms that have moved operations to Mexico. Whole industries with deep roots in Wisconsin - including the cookware manufacturing that was once a mainstay of employment in the Manitowoc area - are collapsing..."

NAFTA benefits multi-national corporations, not us

tompaine.com: Trade Off

"The reality? Using the same methodology NAFTA's proponents wielded, the agreement cost us 750,000 jobs, many of them good-paying manufacturing jobs that were a backbone of America's middle class. The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada ballooned to $87 billion in 2002. In the United States, workers haunted by the specter of losing their jobs, became even more fearful of forming unions or striking&mash;and companies used that fear to break union organizing drives and drive down wages and benefits. Wages in Canada now lag behind U.S. wages and the average Mexican wage has plummeted..."

No immunity

Common Dreams: Get Mad - And Get Even

"Meanwhile, America's preparation for them shows just how much they value our special relationship and what kind of democracy they like to export on their travels. Among other things, US armed special agents have asked for diplomatic immunity in case they kill a protester; to patrol the skies with Black Hawk helicopters; and include a tank, equipped with a gun that can kill a dozen people in one go, in their presidential cavalcade. While these requests have been turned down much of central London will still be closed down to create a "sterile zone" so that Bush's belief that he has the support of the British people will not be contaminated. If ever there was an example of a guest taking liberties this is it..."

Democrats in Congress should fight back

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Energy bill/A fine target for a filibuster

"The energy bill unveiled over the weekend is wrongheaded policy prepared in a highhanded way, fitted with perhaps enough gifts to selected opponents to buy its passage. It's an abusive approach to lawmaking, egregious enough to deserve -- indeed, to invite -- a filibuster..."

The Continuing fix

Newsday:Power Play

" The vast and costly energy bill that the Republican Congress was finishing up yesterday is a grab bag of programs and tax breaks that will do little to relieve the nation's energy predicaments. Some Democratic legislators, shut out of the largely secretive negotiations that crafted the final bill, have joined environmentalists in objecting to the legislation's failure to do more to spur conservation or to develop renewable fuels. But energy industry analysts say it won't even do much to increase the supply of conventional fuels, despite a raft of industry subsidies..."

Under Bush, the guitly will never pay the price

Cleveland Plains Dealer: High-powered denia

" FirstEnergy Corp. officials continue to sputter denials, but a draft report from the U.S. Department of Energy blames FirstEnergy and other utility companies for contributing to the massive blackout that struck Ohio, seven other states and Ontario on Aug. 14..."

The fight within

I've been hearing intimations of this from other sources. If true, there is a point where the anti-Dean forces better realize that if they do ANYTHING that keeps Bush in for another term, they will be in deep, serious shit. An honest disagreement is one thing, a Pyrrhic victory will be another.

New Republic: Outside In

"But, for all of his newfound respectability, the buzz from numerous Washington Democrats in the wake of Dean's extraordinary two weeks has been a hardening of opposition rather than a cascade of previously reluctant supporters endorsing the governor. "My sense is that this isn't tipping anyone towards Dean," says a top Beltway Democrat with ties to the Dean campaign. "The overwhelming majority here in Washington are more worried." Instead of consolidating support within the party establishment, Dean is polarizing it..."

"It is easy to think the presidential race has reached a tipping point. One week, assured by his supporters that they will raise all the money he needs, Howard Dean skips out of the restrictive federal matching-funds system. The next, he formally accepts the endorsements of the two most politically powerful unions in the country: the Service Employees International Union (seiu) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. And soon, according to an aide, his campaign will unveil a group of foreign policy luminaries who had been advising several candidates but have recently decided to back only Dean. The Dean campaign seems to be shedding the last vestiges of insurgency, aiming to build a sense of inevitability and end the race early with decisive victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, like Al Gore in 2000.

But, for all of his newfound respectability, the buzz from numerous Washington Democrats in the wake of Dean's extraordinary two weeks has been a hardening of opposition rather than a cascade of previously reluctant supporters endorsing the governor. "My sense is that this isn't tipping anyone towards Dean," says a top Beltway Democrat with ties to the Dean campaign. "The overwhelming majority here in Washington are more worried." Instead of consolidating support within the party establishment, Dean is polarizing it.

The division in the party over Dean is less about ideology than about power. Three years after Bill Clinton left office, he and Hillary still control what remains of a Democratic establishment. Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was installed by Clinton. Most of the powerful new fund-raising groups, known as 527s, and the new think tanks, such as the Center for American Progress, are run by the best and brightest of the Clinton administration. As National Journal noted in a detailed look at what it called "Hillary Inc.," the senator's network of fund-raising organizations "has begun to assume a quasi-party status." And some of the best Clinton talent is heavily invested in non-Dean campaigns, especially Joe Lieberman's (Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn), John Edwards's (Bruce Reed), and Wesley Clark's (Bruce Lindsey, Eli Segal, and Mickey Kantor).

Dean, by contrast, has come to represent the party's anti-establishment forces. While the other candidates, especially former self-styled front-runner John Kerry, started the campaign by wooing party leaders, Dean built a grassroots army first--in part by bashing D.C. Democrats and their disastrous 2002 election strategy--and is only now leveraging his fund-raising power to win over establishment types. No Democrats closely associated with the Clintons are working for the Dean campaign. In fact, it's hard to find a Clintonite who speaks favorably of the former Vermont governor. This evident schism is not just about Dean's opposition to the war--or even his prospects in the general election. It's a turf war to decide who will control the future of the party.

This struggle is playing out in several of the party's organizations and constituencies. Indeed, Dean's high-profile labor endorsements--the cornerstone of the tipping-point argument--actually emphasize the party's divisions. Andy Stern, the leader of seiu, is to the labor movement what Dean is to the Democratic Party--an anti-establishment reformer. When the afl-cio failed to adopt reforms recommended by Stern earlier this year, he started a breakaway organization--the New Unity Partnership--with several other unions that is now seen as a major challenge to the afl-cio establishment. And seiu is a lot like the Dean campaign. It's the fastest-growing union and one of the most democratically run. It's obsessed with organizing new members to whom it imparts a message of empowerment, unlike the more centralized afl-cio. Stern and seiu, with their emphasis on health care instead of globalization, are the future of the labor movement in the United States, while the industrial unions, which back Dick Gephardt and have been bleeding members for years as they fight an uphill battle against free trade, are the past. seiu's backing of Dean isn't a nod from the establishment--it's a protest against it.

The Dean split is mirrored in the centrist New Democrat movement as well. No organization has been more hostile to Dean than the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). In May, Al From and Bruce Reed, the chairman and the president of the DLC--the group that served as a policy springboard for Clinton's rise--wrote their now-infamous manifesto warning that nominating Dean, whom they view as hopelessly left-wing, would bring certain defeat for Democrats in 2004. But, for months, another prominent New Democrat has been making a different case. Simon Rosenberg, who cut his teeth on Clinton's 1992 campaign and now heads the New Democrat Network (NDN), sees Dean as the most innovative and potentially transformative Democrat since Clinton himself. Like Stern, Rosenberg is a bit of a rebel within his own movement. He once worked for From, but his organization is now challenging the DLC and is becoming an increasingly influential player in Democratic politics. Unlike the more top-down DLC, NDN is building a grassroots network of donors and has become a key player in the new world of 527s. "NDN has not endorsed Dean or embraced him, but we have given our opinion that this is a serious campaign that is going to change the party," says Rosenberg.

As the party's split into Deaniacs and anti-Dean Clintonites unfolds, one of the most intriguing subplots concerns the machinations of Gore. Immediately after the Florida recount was decided in 2000, Gore's senior aides were purged from the DNC and Clinton's were installed. Some ex-Gore staffers are still bitter about the coup, and several express admiration for what Dean is doing.

The two men have a strained history, but lately Gore is sounding more and more like Dean. His three most important speeches since leaving office have been harsh attacks on President Bush's Iraq policy and his abuse of the Patriot Act. The two most recent were delivered before MoveOn.org, the Internet network for grassroots liberals, which is overwhelmingly pro-Dean. Some suspect that, just as Dean went outside the Beltway and built his own high-tech grassroots army to bypass the sclerotic D.C. establishment, so is Gore. It's not a bad way for him to exercise influence in the party, if he wants to make a potential endorsement more powerful or if he still harbors hopes of running for president in 2008. "The rest of the Democratic infrastructure is controlled by the Clintons," says one top Democrat.

Perhaps Gore would not endorse the former Vermont governor (though Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, says "they talk relatively regularly"). Regardless, he'll have to choose sides, because the Democrats are splitting into two parties: the party of Clinton, and the party of Dean."

Bug out

Molly Ivins: 180 in Iraq?

"Now we're going to bug out before next year's election, Paul Bremer has been called in for an emergency confab, troops must be down to 105,000 by spring. The CIA, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, has sent a report from Baghdad saying the whole thing's going south. We're back to bombing Baghdad. Forget a constitution, we have to hand it all over to the Iraqis right away..."

These (inconvenient) Honored Dead, ignored by Bush

International Herald Tribune: Bush can't hide from the casualties of the war

"This is a central part of the warrior's culture, but it is all too often missing from the way President George W. Bush is running the Iraq war. As the toll nears 400, the casualties remain largely invisible. Apart from a flurry of ceremonies on Veterans Day, this White House has done everything it can to keep Bush away from the families of the dead, at least when there might be a camera around..."

Media Betrayal

Seattle Times: Burying the dead

"The press has, therefore, betrayed its responsibility to portray the truth. It was so ironic that, at the same time the fascination for the tragic murder of a pregnant woman sold papers, images of bloody carcasses in the Iraqi deserts repulsed the public. Perhaps there has been some tacit suppression by the administration of the truth of war, let alone the truth of the justification for this invasion..."

Anti-tax Hero while your children pay the bill

San Mateo Mercury News: The 97-pound budget weakling

"Nobody likes the idea of a tax increase. But nobody should like the idea that today's toddlers, when they eventually get jobs and pay taxes, will still be paying off this debt..."

Vote Fraud and the Republican Party

Common Dreams: Wishing Won't Beat W

" The leading manufacturer of e-voting machines, Diebold Inc., has responded to concerns about voting security problems by pursuing court orders to shut down websites that publish company documents leaked by a hacker. Free speech advocates, led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford University's Cyberlaw Clinic, on Nov. 4 sued Diebold, demanding it stop the harassment. Voting activists who have received the cease-and-desist orders, including students from at least 20 universities, claim the documents raise serious security concerns about Diebold, which has more than 50,000 touchscreen voting terminals nationwide but keeps its software secret..."

Remember what happend to Troy.

Paul Krugman: The Trojan Horse

"A Congressional conference is now trying to agree on prescription drug legislation. But beware of politicians bearing gifts ? the bill will contain measures that have nothing to do with prescription drugs, and a lot to do with hostility to Medicare as we know it. Indeed, it may turn out to be a Trojan horse that finally allows conservative ideologues, who have unsuccessfully laid siege to Medicare since the days of Barry Goldwater, to breach its political defenses..."

The benefits of good government

Eliot Spitzer: It's in Our Mutual Interest

"Evidence of illegal and improper trading practices and conflicts of interest in the mutual fund industry has shocked the 95 million Americans who own mutual fund shares. The investigations into wrongdoing are continuing, but what we have already uncovered compels us to ask what went wrong and how we can prevent it from happening again..."

Whored Out

Molli Ivins: Brains on drugs

"Isn't that nice? Sixty-one percent of what the plan costs will be additional profit for drug companies. Just what we had in mind. Only our fully bought-and-paid-for politicians (in Texas, we rather delicately refer to them as "whored out') could have taken a plan to help seniors and turned it into a plan to help drug companies already making obscene profits. Their estimated increased profits under this bill are $139 billion over eight years..."

U-Turn

Michael Kinsley: The Limits of Eloquence

"The eloquence would be more impressive if there were reason to suppose that Bush thinks the words have meaning. One test of meaning is the future: what the words lead to. As even some admirers of the speech point out, the details of this "forward strategy of freedom" are missing, except for pursuing our current military adventure in Iraq -- which was sold to the country on totally non-Wilsonian grounds. But meaning can also be tested by looking at the past. Eloquence is just a hooker if it will serve as a short-term, no-commitments release for any idea that comes along..."

Party of Obstruction

Madison Capital Times: GOP should get serious

"Why are the Republicans engaging in these stunts? Partisanship, nothing more. The GOP legislative leaders want to create the false impression that the real issues facing the state are gay marriage and gun control, rather than jobs and economic development. They hope that, by diverting attention from the serious issues Doyle is trying to address, they can undermine his popular appeal and render him ineffectual.

But it appears that the GOP scheming has blown up on the party of obstruction..."

Not the message, but the man

Christian Science Monitor: Dean's big strength is also his weakness

"When asked why they've cast their lot with the man, Dean supporters normally don't cite positions, they talk about the man. From early on, Dean's appeal has been personal. Even if his supporters don't agree with him, they're willing to trust him. In fact, they may like him more because he doesn't agree with them. They like his toughness and think it makes him an excellent adversary for President Bush..."

A Voice of Truth in the wilderness of Media Lies

Alternet: The Professor Takes the Gloves Off

"Accustomed in economic circles to calling a stupid argument a stupid argument, and isolated (in Princeton, New Jersey) from the Washington dinner-party circuit, Paul Krugman has become the most prominent voice in the mainstream U.S. media to openly and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people to sell budget-busting tax cuts and a pre-emptive and nearly unilateral war..."

A Revolution

Boston Globe: Growing power of small money

"This innovation has revolutionized American political fund-raising and revived grassroots politics. If a Democratic candidate can enlist, say 2 million activists -- 1 percent of eligible voters -- to donate $70 each, that's $140 million and a roughly level playing field. Any candidate squawking about Dean's decision to forgo public funds and rely on his legions of small donors is an envious hypocrite. They would all do the same, if they had Dean's base. Eventually, every successful candidate will learn this approach..."

Ir-rationale

Jules Witcover: Another day, another rationale for Iraq war

"But the drip-drop of American deaths and casualties in Iraq is not unlike what happened in the early stages of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, which in time became a political nightmare for Lyndon B. Johnson. If American voters do continue to support the war in Iraq, it more likely will be out of their commitment to our troops there than to a moral crusade only now offered as the latest reason for present and future sacrifices..."

Bleak (White) House

Knight Ridder Newspapers: More Iraqis Supporting Resistance, CIA Report Says

"A new, top-secret CIA report from Iraq warns that growing numbers of Iraqis are concluding that the U.S.-led coalition can be defeated and are supporting the resistance.

The report paints a bleak picture of the political and security situation in Iraq and cautions that the U.S.-led drive to rebuild the country as a democracy could collapse unless corrective actions are taken immediately..."

A Fraud on the American Public

John Podesta: Negative Energy

"The final form of the energy legislation being considered by congressional negotiators remains uncertain, but what has leaked out of the conference committee to date, if enacted into law, would be a giant step backwards for energy policy and for our nation. Any meaningful energy policy must meet three main goals: it must reduce dependence on unstable forms of energy, advance technologies that create jobs and reduce pollution, and help deliver reliable, affordable energy. The current energy bill fails on all counts. Largely the product of the still-secret 2001 Energy Task Force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, the bill is a prime example of the dangers of opaque decision making?where the process is not subject to public scrutiny, key voices are denied a seat at the table and deals are cut in the proverbial smoke-filled backroom. What has been produced is not a cohesive energy strategy but a loose conglomeration of symbolic programs and massive political payoffs that, taken together, constitute a public fraud on the American people..."

Example to the World

Walter Cronkite: Choosing voters - The redistricting of Texas reminds us to first clean up rigged elections at home

"Rigged elections here seem especially scandalous today, as we preach to the Iraqis and others in the developing world the virtues of representative democracy and hold ourselves up as the paragon of that virtue. It is high time we cleaned up our own house..."

Sacrosanct Fantasies

Adam B. Kushner: Reagan watchdogs in deity denial

"Every president has his hagiographers. Bill Clinton, only three years out of office, has already enjoyed three sympathetic biographies. So it should come as no surprise that the Reagan pantheon, born more than 15 years ago, is enormous. In the past few years alone, five high-profile apologists have whitewashed the Reagan presidency, absolving him of his faults and aggrandizing his accomplishments. So far, at least, the revisionism has been confined to the bookstore. No more..."

You first

St. Petersburg Times: Partisan hypocrisy on display

"If Bush wasn't so determined to pack the courts with far-right judges, the Democrats might not go to such lengths to block nominations. There are plenty of well-regarded, conservative-to-moderate Republican attorneys and judges who would make uncontroversial candidates for federal judgeships, but Bush and Hatch aren't interested in those..."

From bartcop.com

Starve the Beast

Paul Krugman: Support the Troops

"For example, last week the magazine Army Times ran a story with the headline "An Act of `Betrayal,' " and the subtitle "In the midst of war, key family benefits face cuts." The article went on to assert that there has been "a string of actions by the Bush administration to cut or hold down growth in pay and benefits, including basic pay, combat pay, health-care benefits and the death gratuity paid to survivors of troops who die on active duty..."

Not Democracy

Robert Scheer: In a Democracy, Liars Can Never Be Liberators

"His (Bush) buddies at Bechtel, Halliburton and the giant oil companies have been ripping off the profits of Mideast oil for decades while seeking and gaining protection from the CIA and whatever other parts of the U.S. military-industrial complex were needed to prop up "our guy" -- the dictator of the moment. Despotism in the Mideast flowered on our watch, often succeeded by fundamentalist or nationalist regimes of great violence, or both. Every Mideast despot exists only because his power has proved tolerable to the economic interests that former Halliburton Chief Executive Dick Cheney and his defense-industry friendly counterparts in previous Republican and Democratic administrations have placed at the top of the American agenda..."

Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter: Defining the resistance in Iraq - it's not foreign and it's well prepared

"Though the Bush administration consistently characterizes the nature of the enemy in Iraq as "terrorist," and identifies the leading culprits as "foreign fighters," the notion of Al Qaeda or Al Ansar al Islam using Baghdad (or any urban area in Iraq) as an independent base of operations is far-fetched. To the extent that foreigners appear at all in Baghdad, it is likely only under the careful control of the pro-Hussein resistance, and even then, only to be used as an expendable weapon in the same way one would use a rocket-propelled grenade or IED..."

Not Millionairs

Boston Globe: Veterans Devalued

"But the administration's least defensible money-saving moves affecting service members concerns their children's education. The administration has proposed closing or transferring control of 58 schools the Defense Department operates on 14 military bases. In addition, it tried to get away with cutting the assistance that civilian school districts get when they educate the children of service members, but Congress flatly rejected that increased burden on communities..."

Bad Bet

Cynthia Tucker: Kerry's Iraq wager

"The truth is more likely this: Kerry caved in to what he believed to be his political interests. Last year, many Democratic strategists were advising their congressional candidates to vote for the war. Kerry, whose most transparent flaw has always been calculated ambition, probably believed that his presidential aspirations would be better served by a "yes" vote on the resolution..."

Nothing to look at. Please move on.

William Rivers Pitt: Without Honor

"Very nearly 40 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the month of November began. 33 more were killed in October, and 16 more died in September. The total losses, to date, creep towards 400. Few American citizens are aware of this, because the Bush administration has made it policy to deliberately hide these honored dead from the media. No cameras are allowed inside the Dover, DE facility that receives the ruined bodies of our troops.

No cameras are allowed inside Walter Reed Army Medical Center to film the thousands of soldiers who have been catastrophically wounded in Iraq, nor are cameras allowed inside the facility at Ft. Stewart in Georgia where the wounded await treatment in conditions they have described as inhumane..."

Raping the truth

Independent/UK: 'No President has Lied so Baldly and so Often and so Demonstrably'

"What the Bush White House has done, he (Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years) believes, is far worse than the false premise that dragged the United States into the Vietnam War - a reported second attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin which later turned out not to have taken place. "The Gulf of Tonkin was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and Lyndon Johnson seized on that. That's very different from the very calculated, 18-month, orchestrated, incredibly cynical campaign of lies that we've seen to justify a war. This is an order of magnitude different. It's so blatant..."

'Disappeared' detainees

Findlaw's Writ: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees

" The larger significance of Moussaoui's case lies elsewhere. It is, at present, the only legal peephole by which to glimpse the circumstances of a much more important group of terrorist suspects: those, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, who are held by the U.S. military for interrogation in "undisclosed locations." Although Moussaoui's legal claims only address their predicament indirectly, the courts' resolution of his case will have important implications for these detainees' legal status and treatment..."

Tautology

tompaine.com: Strategic Deception

"But in making the argument, Bush?s speechwriters provide a Matrix-like moment where rhetoric collides with reality and causes an error in the program..."

Solve real problems? No, just play 'gotcha'

Madison Capital Times: GOP ignores real issues

"While Wisconsin faces a host of problems that need immediate attention - everything from the funding of education to enacting legislation that would remove the corruption of money from our politics - the legislative leadership has spent the last several weeks in a transparent attempt to "set up" the Democrats for the next election..."

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter: Peace plan that's a duet sounds like a real winner

"Although it has received little attention in the U.S. media, a detailed, soon-to-be-released Middle East accord struck by a group of influential Israelis and Palestinians paves the way to the region's best, and perhaps last, chance for peace..."

Posted by fightingdem at 10:14 AM

Corporate Owned and Operated

Washington Post: Alaskan Outrage

"Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has attached to a key spending bill a series of riders concerning Alaskan fisheries that range from the merely bad to the completely outrageous -- and that's before noting that the senator's son, Alaska state Sen. Ben Stevens, has a financial interest in two of them. Don't expect any embarrassment from the elder Mr. Stevens. He proudly issued a press release when he bucked the regular order and included these provisions in the bill."

Early Assessment

John Dean: An Early Assessment By Leading Presidential Scholars
of George W. Bush's Presidency: Part One

" If you don't like Bush, this material won't change your mind, but it will correct some of your thinking. If you're a Bush supporter, you will be disappointed to learn that in the eyes of professionals, and for good reasons, this president is making some potentially dangerous mistakes.

These two dozen presidential experts have placed the Bush II presidency in a nutshell, with its strengths and weaknesses laid bare. Absent another terror attack in the United States, this assessment will likely still be reasonably accurate at the time of the next Presidential election. In this two-part series of columns, I will discuss the conference and the book..."

Playing Gotcha

Paul Krugman: Flags Versus Dollars

"Howard Dean's remarks about the need to appeal to white Southerners could certainly have been better phrased. But his rivals for the Democratic nomination should be ashamed of their reaction. They know what he was trying to say ? and it wasn't that his party should go soft on racism. By playing gotcha, by seizing on the chance to take the front-runner down a peg, they damaged the cause they claim to serve ? and missed a chance to confront the real issue he raised..."

Endemic Corruption

Alternet: 'Highway Robbery' at Halliburton

"Halliburton has been charging the American people more than double the cost of transporting fuel into Iraq. Not only have energy experts said that Halliburton's prices amount to "highway robbery," but the Director of the Defense Energy Support Center, an office within the Pentagon, said that Halliburton looked as if it was charging "excessively high" prices to the American people. Reports released yesterday suggest that the Defense Energy Support Center can transport fuel into Iraq for less than half the amount that Halliburton has charged the American people..."

Historical Revision

Liberal Slant:Bad Faith

" Suppressing previously available documentation and altering published texts after the fact goes beyond the normal drive of a government to massage or slant information. It's an attempt to ensure that contemporary citizens are too bereft of reliable sources to assess a government effectively, and that future citizens will be too ignorant to do so. Nobody who values democracy would countenance it..."

Picking nits as the house burns down

Molly Ivins: 'Imminent' questions

"Right-wing commentators have ignited yet another pointless debate, this one on the burning topic of whether the administration actually told us we were going to war because Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an "imminent threat." The right-wing choir is suddenly singing, "He never said 'imminent,' he never said 'imminent,'" (they are so very good at all singing off the same page). Here, fallible human memory (this was less than a year ago) reasserts itself, and you find yourself saying: "They damn well did say Saddam was an imminent threat. I was there. I heard it, again and again..."

Shared Responsibilities

Bill Clinton: Defining the mission of the 21st century

"I think the great mission of the 21st century is to create a genuine global community, to move from mere interdependence to integration, to a community that has shared responsibilities, shared benefits and shared values. How would we go about building that kind of world?.."

CBS caved

It looks like CBS caved in to Republican Freedom Fighters (or is that Freedom Fries) and bailed on the Reagan mini-series. It's time to boycott the network of disappearing cojones. Fortunately, the only thing even remotely watchable is CSI. I avoid CSI: Miami like the plague (imagine CSI crossed with Miami Vice, and, please, Hummers instead of Surburbans?). Hmmmmm, better yet, I'll Tivo CSI and skip all the commercials. Win-win.

Monument to Failure

Sen. Robert Byrd: A High Price for a Hollow Victory

"Perhaps this take-no-prisoners approach is how the President and his advisers define victory, but I fear they are fixated on the muscle of the politics instead of the wisdom of the policy. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to policy, the Iraq supplemental is a monument to failure..."

Alternate History

William Rivers Pitt: Assassin's History

" None of these men were even 50 years old when they were killed. All of them would have entered the 1970s, 1980s and even the 1990s as activists, elder statesmen, and spokesmen for the most righteous progressive causes imaginable. Imagine the good Medgar Evers could have done in the civil rights struggles in the South. Imagine the understanding a newly tolerant Malcolm X could have given Americans about the true nature of the Muslim faith. Tremble at the magnificence of what Martin Luther King Jr. could have done with forty or fifty more years to work. Tremble again at the thought of Robert Kennedy given the same opportunity.

What kind of world would this have been had these men lived? Would Ronald Reagan have even bothered to leave Hollywood? Would Richard Nixon and Watergate have happened? Would the rampant ignorance and selfishness that is the standard issue attitude for most Americans today been allowed to flourish as it has? Would George W. Bush be anything more than a thrice-failed oilman in Texas?

No. No and no and no..."

Media malpractice

Madison Capital Times: Rebel flag flap shows media failure

"If you want to understand just about everything that is wrong with the way American politics is practiced these days - and especially with the malpractice of the media - consider the absurd controversy about Howard Dean's comment that "I want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks...."

Rotten to the core

San Jose Mercury-News: Mutual funds: the tiny, huge ripoff

" Posted on Tue, Nov. 04, 2003 Mutual funds: the tiny, huge ripoff EVEN IN THIS `SAFE' HAVEN, THE GAME IS RIGGED Mercury News Editorial

They promised to watch out for your money as if it were their own. They were supposed to be the place where you could get a piece of the market action without being eaten by the sharks on Wall Street. They said you could invest for the long term and sleep soundly.

And so, over the past 15 years, mutual funds became the investment of choice for working Americans. Nearly 100 million families, or half the nation, put some $7 trillion in mutual funds.

As it turns out, the mutual fund industry had the same kind of rotten apples that plagued brokerage houses, investment banks and some of America's most distinguished corporations. While you were sleeping, sharks were nibbling at your investments with techniques known as ``late trading'' and ``market timing.'.."

Profound failure

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: The Chinook/An unnecessary tragedy

"The Pentagon crowd was supremely arrogant; it had all the answers, so it needed help from no one. Painstaking planning work done at the State Department was tossed in a Pentagon dumpster because it had been done by those namby-pamby policy wonks of indeterminate patriotism at State..."

Blinkered

Boston Globe: The message Bush is missing in Iowa

"More bad news for Bush: According to a recent New York Times poll, most Americans don't think their taxes are any lower than they were three years ago. Of course, if they are not millionaires, most of them are right..."

Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause

Gary Wills has an interesting take on Thomas Jefferson in the L.A. Times today. He tries to rehabilitate Jefferson, slave holder, back into the pantheon of American Heroic Figures where he once stood. I think it's less important to maintain the fallacy of "heroic men" than to understand the deeply tragic and flawed nature that led these men to champion democracy with one hand and to hold in bondage human beings with the other.

Gary Wills: A Slave to His Time and Place

" The answer is simple: He (Jefferson) did everything he could to protect and extend the slave system.

This was not because he approved of slavery, or would have defended it in principle - as did John Calhoun of South Carolina in the Senate and John Taylor of Caroline County, Va., in his writings. Jefferson defended slavery because it was inextricable from the economy that sustained him and the politics that supported him. Publicly questioning slavery would have been fatal to a man with political ambitions in the South. He actively worked to keep his own personal condemnations of slavery away from the voters. So did his great compeers, George Washington, James Madison and James Monroe...."

Roger Kennedy, in his book "Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause" is an excellent read and well worth the effort. In it he analyzes the social, political and economic forces that led Jefferson to sell out his ideals. From the books description...

"Thomas Jefferson advocated a republic of small farmers--free and independent yeomen. And yet as president he presided over a massive expansion of the slaveholding plantation system--particularly with the Louisiana Purchase--squeezing the yeomanry to the fringes and to less desirable farmland. Now Roger Kennedy conducts an eye-opening examination of that gap between Jefferson's stated aspirations and what actually happened. Kennedy reveals how the Louisiana Purchase had a major impact on land use and the growth of slavery. He examines the great financial interests (such as the powerful land companies that speculated in new territories and the British textile interests) that beat down slavery's many opponents in the South itself (Native Americans, African Americans, Appalachian farmers, and conscientious opponents of slavery). He describes how slaveholders' cash crops (first tobacco, then cotton) sickened the soil and how the planters moved from one desolated tract to the next. Soon the dominant culture of the entire region--from Maryland to Florida, from Carolina to Texas--was that of owners and slaves producing staple crops for international markets. The earth itself was impoverished, in many places beyond redemption. None of this, Kennedy argues, was inevitable. He focuses on the character, ideas, and ambitions of Thomas Jefferson to show how he and other Southerners struggled with the moral dilemmas presented by the presence of Indian farmers on land they coveted, by the enslavement of their workforce, by the betrayal of their stated hopes, and by the manifest damage being done to the earth itself. Jefferson emerges as a tragic figure in a tragic period."

Civil War in America, the beginning

Thanks to Atrios and this echos, somewhat, what William Rivers Pitt wrote below.

Evidently, some of the Religious Reactionary Right are preparing for more than a cultural and religious struggle for power in the U.S (where they are temporarily ascendent). While paying lip-service to "anti-violence", they fully expect it to come to that. What happens when the Progressives win back the presidency and perhaps the Congress and Courts. Get ready for religious based domestic terrorism.

Bet on it.

Boston Globe: The Crusaders

""There's two questions there," says the Rev. C. John McCloskey 3d, smiling. He's something of a ringer for Howard Dean -- a comparison he resists, also with a smile -- a little more slender than the presidential candidate, perhaps, but no less fervent. "One is, Do I think it would be better that way? No. Do I think it's possible? Do I think it's possible for someone who believes in the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of family, over a period of time to choose to survive with people who think it's OK to kill women and children or for -- quote -- homosexual couples to exist and be recognized?

"No, I don't think that's possible," he says. "I don't know how it's going to work itself out, but I know it's not possible, and my hope and prayer is that it does not end in violence. But, unfortunately, in the past, these types of things have tended to end this way..."

The Revolution Was Not Televised

truthout.org

By: William Rivers Pitt

There was a large anti-war rally in Washington last week. The standard slogans were on display for all to see: Impeach Bush, Bring The Troops Home, No Blood For Oil. On the periphery of the protest stood a few dozen 'patriots' holding a counter-demonstration in support of Bush and the Iraq war. Among the signs carried by this crew was a banner that succinctly summed up the madness of the age, and the dangerous nature of the current ruling class.

Across the top of the banner, which was clearly professionally made and not hand-lettered, were the block-letter words "SUPPORT PRESIDENT BUSH." Through the center of the banner were black outlines of a fighter aircraft, a tank, an M-16 rifle, a .45 caliber pistol, an attack helicopter, a surface-to-air missile battery, and a thermonuclear bomb. Underneath these images were two more block-letter words: "TRUST JESUS."

The sentiment apparently finds resonance with Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi. The Wednesday edition of The Hill carried a story about GOP concerns over the manner in which the post-war war is unfolding. The trepidation is understandable; more American troops have been killed in the 'Mission Accomplished' phase of the war than in the war itself. Lott responded to the crisis in Iraq by saying, "If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens."

The Bush administration has tried to frame their wars as not being a religiously-based crusade against the Islamic world. This has been a hard-sell with Muslims, especially since Bush used the word "crusade" immediately after September 11. Norman Podhoretz, one of the ideological fathers of the cadre of hawks currently running our foreign policy, publicly described our conflict in the Mideast as being a process aimed at bringing about "the reformation and modernization of Islam." The religious overtones are difficult to miss.

Perhaps the best example of where we stand today comes in the guise of Lt. General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary for defense, who is charged with finding important enemies like Osama bin Laden. Boykin, when not smoking 'em out of their holes, has been touring the fundamentalist pulpits across the America. Describing the hunt for a Somali warlord last January, Boykin said, "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

Boykin has held forth on the true meaning of the War on Terror. "Satan wants to destroy this nation," says Boykin, "he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army." In June of 2002, Boykin held up a photograph of Mogadishu to a church congregation. The photo carried the image of a dark spot in the sky above the city. "Ladies and gentlemen," Boykin said, "this is your enemy. It is the principalities of darkness. It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy."

The banner carried by the 'patriot' in Washington should have had the black outline of an oil well alongside all those weapons. Trusting Jesus has been a lucrative business for some. The Center for Public Integrity released a report on Thursday which details how $8 billion in contracts to 'rebuild' Iraq and Afghanistan have gone exclusively to companies which donated piles of money to Bush's 2000 election campaign. These contracts were awarded without the usual bidding process; few beyond the friends of Bush were given the opportunity to cash in on the war.

Most prominent on the list of companies awarded these contacts is Halliburton, the oil company recently run by Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton subsidiary, Kellog Brown & Root, has gathered to itself a tidy $2.3 billion contract to repair Iraq's oil industry. The price tag for this project was doubled recently by the Bush administration so Halliburton could get a larger share of the $87 billion allocated for Iraq. The reason for the doubling? Halliburton plans to go beyond repairing old oil wells and develop new wells to tap virgin supplies of oil and gas.

Islam is not the only religion to have a militant, fundamentalist Taliban wing making up part of the whole. In America, the Taliban wing of Christianity has assumed power. The banner at that 'patriot' rally captures the essence of these frightening extremists: Supporting Bush is placed on the same level as worshipping Jesus, and shot through the middle is the steel fist of weapons and war. September 11 has been refashioned by the Christian Taliban as a rallying cry for an end-times death match against Islam, a rallying cry that obscures the orgasm of profiteering that is taking place behind the scenes.

There has been a religiously fundamentalist revolution in the United States. The extremists have taken control of the White House, Congress, the courts, and the military. You did not see this on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC or Fox, but it happened all the same.