close up of a wax begonia
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Monday, February 20, 2006
Note to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Freedom is messy. Untidy too.
Robert Schlesinger
02.18.2006
Rummy Doesn't Get It Either
Note to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Freedom is messy. Untidy too.
I blogged last week about whether the Bush administration gets it when it comes to freedom, liberty, democracy and all the other good things we're busily promoting around the world. At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was chastising wayward members of the legislative branch that Congressional inquiries into whether the president broke the law with warrantless wiretaps were undoubtedly making the cave walls at al Qaeda headquarters echo with happy laughter.
This, Gonzalez said, was a bad thing.
I disagreed, arguing that the terrorists laugh because they do not understand how freedom, liberty and democracy work, because they do not understand the strength inherent in the system. My question was then, and still is now: Do the Bushies get it?
Rumsfeld does not seem to. Friday he castigated the free press for, well, being a free press. Specifically, his nose was out of joint because the media failed to bury the story when they discovered that the Pentagon was planting false reports in Iraqi newspapers.
Rumsfeld correctly worried about the fact that the United States is losing the information war, then fell back to the bipartisan practice of losers all throughout politics: Blamed the media. Since the message -- in this case U.S. policies -- cannot possibly be wrong, there must be something wrong with messenger.
But the media's job is not to fall into lock-step and do its part for the propaganda effort. This is not the old Soviet Union after all, or even the old Iraq. (Note: This is not to suggest that the media does not have an obligation to balance national interests against the need to disclose -- see, for example, the restraint showed during the Cuban Missile Crisis.)
The problem is one of underlying philosophy. There has long been a political science debate about whether democracies can effectively fight wars -- with things like popular will, a free press, really all of the untidiness endemic to our system can we maintain the collective discipline for a long struggle? (The Confederate States of America and the Third Reich to name two might have something to say about that.)
The gimlet-eyed, tough-guy world-view of the Bush administration seems to fall into the democracy-is-weak camp. In order to make the world safe for democracy we have to be as ruthless as our adversaries, the thinking goes, and if that means putting liberty on a shelf to protect it, well ...
As Maureen Dowd puts it in her column today:
Rummy is genuinely perplexed about why it's wrong to subvert democracy while promoting democracy.
I love it when Shooter and Rummy call us unrealistic for trying to hold them to standards that they set. They are, after all, victims of their own spin on Iraq. Mr. Cheney thought we'd be greeted with flowers; Rummy said we could do more with less.
Rummy misses the point: we're supposed to be the good guys, the beacon of freedom. Our message is supposed to work because it has moral force, not because we pay some Lincoln Group sketchballs millions to plant propaganda in Iraqi newspapers and not because the press here plays down revelations of American torture. If the Bush crew hadn't distorted the truth to get to Iraq, it wouldn't need to distort the truth to succeed there.
"Ultimately, in my view," Rummy concluded, "truth wins out."
Bad news for him, and his pal Dick.
Amen sister.
02.18.2006
Rummy Doesn't Get It Either
Note to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Freedom is messy. Untidy too.
I blogged last week about whether the Bush administration gets it when it comes to freedom, liberty, democracy and all the other good things we're busily promoting around the world. At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was chastising wayward members of the legislative branch that Congressional inquiries into whether the president broke the law with warrantless wiretaps were undoubtedly making the cave walls at al Qaeda headquarters echo with happy laughter.
This, Gonzalez said, was a bad thing.
I disagreed, arguing that the terrorists laugh because they do not understand how freedom, liberty and democracy work, because they do not understand the strength inherent in the system. My question was then, and still is now: Do the Bushies get it?
Rumsfeld does not seem to. Friday he castigated the free press for, well, being a free press. Specifically, his nose was out of joint because the media failed to bury the story when they discovered that the Pentagon was planting false reports in Iraqi newspapers.
Rumsfeld correctly worried about the fact that the United States is losing the information war, then fell back to the bipartisan practice of losers all throughout politics: Blamed the media. Since the message -- in this case U.S. policies -- cannot possibly be wrong, there must be something wrong with messenger.
But the media's job is not to fall into lock-step and do its part for the propaganda effort. This is not the old Soviet Union after all, or even the old Iraq. (Note: This is not to suggest that the media does not have an obligation to balance national interests against the need to disclose -- see, for example, the restraint showed during the Cuban Missile Crisis.)
The problem is one of underlying philosophy. There has long been a political science debate about whether democracies can effectively fight wars -- with things like popular will, a free press, really all of the untidiness endemic to our system can we maintain the collective discipline for a long struggle? (The Confederate States of America and the Third Reich to name two might have something to say about that.)
The gimlet-eyed, tough-guy world-view of the Bush administration seems to fall into the democracy-is-weak camp. In order to make the world safe for democracy we have to be as ruthless as our adversaries, the thinking goes, and if that means putting liberty on a shelf to protect it, well ...
As Maureen Dowd puts it in her column today:
Rummy is genuinely perplexed about why it's wrong to subvert democracy while promoting democracy.
I love it when Shooter and Rummy call us unrealistic for trying to hold them to standards that they set. They are, after all, victims of their own spin on Iraq. Mr. Cheney thought we'd be greeted with flowers; Rummy said we could do more with less.
Rummy misses the point: we're supposed to be the good guys, the beacon of freedom. Our message is supposed to work because it has moral force, not because we pay some Lincoln Group sketchballs millions to plant propaganda in Iraqi newspapers and not because the press here plays down revelations of American torture. If the Bush crew hadn't distorted the truth to get to Iraq, it wouldn't need to distort the truth to succeed there.
"Ultimately, in my view," Rummy concluded, "truth wins out."
Bad news for him, and his pal Dick.
Amen sister.
NSA Spied on U.N. Diplomats in Push for Invasion of Iraq
NSA Spied on U.N. Diplomats in Push for Invasion of Iraq
IraDespite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on U.N. diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq.
That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the U.N. Security Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream U.S. media winked at Bush’s illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda.
Back then, after news of the NSA’s targeted spying at the United Nations broke in the British press, major U.S. media outlets gave it only perfunctory coverage -- or, in the case of the New York Times, no coverage at all. Now, while the NSA is in the news spotlight with plenty of retrospective facts, the NSA’s spying at the U.N. goes unmentioned: buried in an Orwellian memory hole.
A rare exception was a paragraph in a Dec. 20 piece by Patrick Radden Keefe in the online magazine Slate -- which pointedly noted that “the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed.”
But after dodging the story of the NSA’s spying at the U.N. when it mattered most -- before the invasion of Iraq -- the New York Times and other major news organizations are hardly apt to examine it now. That’s all the more reason for other media outlets to step into the breach.
In early March 2003, journalists at the London-based Observer reported that the NSA was secretly participating in the U.S. government’s high-pressure campaign for the U.N. Security Council to approve a pro-war resolution. A few days after the Observer revealed the text of an NSA memo about U.S. spying on Security Council delegations, I asked Daniel Ellsberg to assess the importance of the story. “This leak,” he replied, “is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers.” The key word was “timely.”
Publication of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made possible by Ellsberg’s heroic decision to leak those documents, came after the Vietnam War had been underway for many years. But with an invasion of Iraq still in the future, the leak about NSA spying on U.N. diplomats in New York could erode the Bush administration’s already slim chances of getting a war resolution through the Security Council. (Ultimately, no such resolution passed before the invasion.) And media scrutiny in the United States could have shed light on how Washington’s war push was based on subterfuge and manipulation.
“As part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq,” the Observer had reported on March 2, 2003, the U.S. government developed an “aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of U.N. delegates.” The smoking gun was “a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency -- the U.S. body which intercepts communications around the world -- and circulated to both senior agents in his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency.” The friendly agency was Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters.
The Observer explained: “The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the U.N. headquarters in New York -- the so-called ‘Middle Six’ delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the U.S. and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for U.N. inspections, led by France, China and Russia.”
The NSA memo, dated Jan. 31, 2003, outlined the wide scope of the surveillance activities, seeking any information useful to push a war resolution through the Security Council -- “the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises.”
Noting that the Bush administration “finds itself isolated” in its zeal for war on Iraq, the Times of London called the leak of the memo an “embarrassing disclosure.” And, in early March 2003, the embarrassment was nearly worldwide. From Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.
Several days after the “embarrassing disclosure,” not a word about it had appeared in the New York Times, the USA’s supposed paper of record. “Well, it’s not that we haven’t been interested,” Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale told me on the evening of March 5, nearly 96 hours after the Observer broke the story. But “we could get no confirmation or comment” on the memo from U.S. officials. Smale added: “We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting.” Whatever the rationale, the New York Times opted not to cover the story at all.
Except for a high-quality Baltimore Sun article that appeared on March 4, the coverage in major U.S. media outlets downplayed the significance of the Observer’s revelations. The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline “Spying Report No Shock to U.N.” Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times published a longer piece that didn’t only depict U.S. surveillance at the United Nations as old hat; the LA Times story also reported “some experts suspected that it [the NSA memo] could be a forgery” -- and “several former top intelligence officials said they were skeptical of the memo’s authenticity.”
But within days, any doubt about the NSA memo’s “authenticity” was gone. The British press reported that the U.K. government had arrested an unnamed female employee at a British intelligence agency in connection with the leak. By then, however, the spotty coverage of the top-secret NSA memo in the mainstream U.S. press had disappeared.
As it turned out, the Observer’s expose -- headlined “Revealed: U.S. Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War” -- came 18 days before the invasion of Iraq began.
From the day that the Observer first reported on NSA spying at the United Nations until the moment 51 weeks later when British prosecutors dropped charges against whistleblower Katharine Gun, major U.S. news outlets provided very little coverage of the story. The media avoidance continued well past the day in mid-November 2003 when Gun’s name became public as the British press reported that she been formally charged with violating the draconian Official Secrets Act.
Facing the possibility of a prison sentence, Katharine Gun said that disclosure of the NSA memo was “necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed.” She said: “I have only ever followed my conscience.”
In contrast to the courage of the lone woman who leaked the NSA memo -- and in contrast to the journalistic vigor of the Observer team that exposed it -- the most powerful U.S. news outlets gave therevelation the media equivalent of a yawn. Top officials of the Bush administration, no doubt relieved at the lack of U.S. media concern about the NSA’s illicit spying, must have been very encouraged.
______
This article is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book “War Made Easy: HowPresidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
IraDespite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on U.N. diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq.
That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the U.N. Security Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream U.S. media winked at Bush’s illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda.
Back then, after news of the NSA’s targeted spying at the United Nations broke in the British press, major U.S. media outlets gave it only perfunctory coverage -- or, in the case of the New York Times, no coverage at all. Now, while the NSA is in the news spotlight with plenty of retrospective facts, the NSA’s spying at the U.N. goes unmentioned: buried in an Orwellian memory hole.
A rare exception was a paragraph in a Dec. 20 piece by Patrick Radden Keefe in the online magazine Slate -- which pointedly noted that “the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed.”
But after dodging the story of the NSA’s spying at the U.N. when it mattered most -- before the invasion of Iraq -- the New York Times and other major news organizations are hardly apt to examine it now. That’s all the more reason for other media outlets to step into the breach.
In early March 2003, journalists at the London-based Observer reported that the NSA was secretly participating in the U.S. government’s high-pressure campaign for the U.N. Security Council to approve a pro-war resolution. A few days after the Observer revealed the text of an NSA memo about U.S. spying on Security Council delegations, I asked Daniel Ellsberg to assess the importance of the story. “This leak,” he replied, “is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers.” The key word was “timely.”
Publication of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made possible by Ellsberg’s heroic decision to leak those documents, came after the Vietnam War had been underway for many years. But with an invasion of Iraq still in the future, the leak about NSA spying on U.N. diplomats in New York could erode the Bush administration’s already slim chances of getting a war resolution through the Security Council. (Ultimately, no such resolution passed before the invasion.) And media scrutiny in the United States could have shed light on how Washington’s war push was based on subterfuge and manipulation.
“As part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq,” the Observer had reported on March 2, 2003, the U.S. government developed an “aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of U.N. delegates.” The smoking gun was “a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency -- the U.S. body which intercepts communications around the world -- and circulated to both senior agents in his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency.” The friendly agency was Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters.
The Observer explained: “The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the U.N. headquarters in New York -- the so-called ‘Middle Six’ delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the U.S. and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for U.N. inspections, led by France, China and Russia.”
The NSA memo, dated Jan. 31, 2003, outlined the wide scope of the surveillance activities, seeking any information useful to push a war resolution through the Security Council -- “the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises.”
Noting that the Bush administration “finds itself isolated” in its zeal for war on Iraq, the Times of London called the leak of the memo an “embarrassing disclosure.” And, in early March 2003, the embarrassment was nearly worldwide. From Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.
Several days after the “embarrassing disclosure,” not a word about it had appeared in the New York Times, the USA’s supposed paper of record. “Well, it’s not that we haven’t been interested,” Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale told me on the evening of March 5, nearly 96 hours after the Observer broke the story. But “we could get no confirmation or comment” on the memo from U.S. officials. Smale added: “We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting.” Whatever the rationale, the New York Times opted not to cover the story at all.
Except for a high-quality Baltimore Sun article that appeared on March 4, the coverage in major U.S. media outlets downplayed the significance of the Observer’s revelations. The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline “Spying Report No Shock to U.N.” Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times published a longer piece that didn’t only depict U.S. surveillance at the United Nations as old hat; the LA Times story also reported “some experts suspected that it [the NSA memo] could be a forgery” -- and “several former top intelligence officials said they were skeptical of the memo’s authenticity.”
But within days, any doubt about the NSA memo’s “authenticity” was gone. The British press reported that the U.K. government had arrested an unnamed female employee at a British intelligence agency in connection with the leak. By then, however, the spotty coverage of the top-secret NSA memo in the mainstream U.S. press had disappeared.
As it turned out, the Observer’s expose -- headlined “Revealed: U.S. Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War” -- came 18 days before the invasion of Iraq began.
From the day that the Observer first reported on NSA spying at the United Nations until the moment 51 weeks later when British prosecutors dropped charges against whistleblower Katharine Gun, major U.S. news outlets provided very little coverage of the story. The media avoidance continued well past the day in mid-November 2003 when Gun’s name became public as the British press reported that she been formally charged with violating the draconian Official Secrets Act.
Facing the possibility of a prison sentence, Katharine Gun said that disclosure of the NSA memo was “necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed.” She said: “I have only ever followed my conscience.”
In contrast to the courage of the lone woman who leaked the NSA memo -- and in contrast to the journalistic vigor of the Observer team that exposed it -- the most powerful U.S. news outlets gave therevelation the media equivalent of a yawn. Top officials of the Bush administration, no doubt relieved at the lack of U.S. media concern about the NSA’s illicit spying, must have been very encouraged.
______
This article is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book “War Made Easy: HowPresidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
The Mary Matalin Horror Show
Arianna Huffington: Russert Watch: The Mary Matalin Horror Show
Arianna HuffingtonMon Feb 20, 2:02 PM ET
Meet the Press has been jumping all over the schedule. Sure, they're using the excuse of some sporting event in Italy, but we know the real reason is they're trying to elude Russert Watch. But there we were -- if a little foggy -- at 6 a.m. (I know you can TiVo it, but it's a slippery slope. First you TiVo it, then you just don't watch it.)
As it happens, I wasn't sure I had entirely woken up today. Indeed, I felt locked in a horrible nightmare -- because today's installment was a true horror show.
If you tuned in, you already know what I'm talking about: Mary Matalin.
Oh my God.
James Wolcott called her "a car wreck in repose" and "the Beltway's Madwoman of Chaillot." Crooks & Liars has video here and here.
Let's start with the unavoidable: what was she wearing? First, the brooch. Or was it a sculpture? Or was it perhaps some bizarre new NSA listening device? It was so, well, there, that hard as you tried you could not avert your eyes from it.
And then there was the black Asian pajama top to match the black eye makeup and the scarlet red nails to match the scarlet red lips. It was impossible to watch her without thinking of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. And then there was her manner, which was so incredibly nasty that it was hard to focus on her ludicrous talking points.
Her counterparts on the roundtable were Maureen Dowd, David Gregory and Paul Gigot. At the top of the show, Tim announced that these four would "square off."
But the segment began with Tim basically giving Mary the first third to lay out her side of the story. It was bad enough to just have an administration mouthpiece on to regurgitate talking points, but why not allow -- in old Meet the Press fashion -- the journalists to question her? Maybe Mary demanded some solo time, but, if so, it didn't serve her boss well.
The impact of her appearance was to make the whole story seem even less under control than having a beer and shooting your friend in the face. As for what she said, there were so many intelligence-insulting lies and half-truths it's hard to know where to start.
There was her claim that there was not even the implication that Whittington himself was somehow to blame for the incident. And yet we have Katherine Armstrong saying last Monday that it was "incumbent" on Whittington to announce himself when he rejoined the group. "He did not do that."
And why did they take so long to put out a story?
peak to the sheriff so we'd have the voice of authority. Have Katharine be able to share with other witnesses, and she could be an eyewitness. Oh, and because "there were differing accounts, and there was mass confusion."
Mass confusion? What does that mean? And how did the "mass confusion" resolve itself in the 18 hours it took them to tell the country that the vice president had shot a man?
Then there was Matalin's claim that the reason the local authorities were turned away from interviewing Cheney was because of "national security" considerations. Really? The Secret Service was worried that the sheriff's deputy interviewing Cheney would harm our national security?
Then there was her claim that "these sorts of accidents are not infrequent."
Actually, that's precisely what they are. Infrequent.
As DavidNYC at Kos points out:
In Texas, over the last decade, only one hunter in 26,000 has been involved in a hunting accident. In 2005, only one in 36,000 was involved in a hunting accident.
In fact, there were 1.1 million hunting licenses issued in Texas last year but only 30 reported accidents.
Given that this was obviously going to be one of Matalin's claims, one would think that Tim might have some stats like these at the ready. Instead, Matalin's repeated assertion about how this was just another ordinary day of Texas hunting was allowed to stand unchallenged.
Then there was Mary's allusion to something called the "culture of rural enforcement," and the implication that the elite Eastern press just didn't get it. But if Mary and Dick are so in tune with the Texas "culture of rural enforcement," why were the local officers turned away? It seems that the "culture of rural enforcement" in Texas was operating pretty much like the "culture of urban enforcement."
Then there was Mary's use -- twice -- of the bizarre term "presumption of accident," which was never explained, but which wouldn't be a bad slogan for the entire administration.
Then there was her cockeyed answer to the fact that Armstrong's claim that there had been "no, zero, zippo" alcohol was later contradicted by the vice president himself, who admitted he'd had "a beer" at lunch: "What Katharine Armstrong was answering," Matalin said, "is a literal fact going to the question she was asked, which is always the case on the Armstrong ranch. You don't drink and hunt, and you don't hunt with drinkers."
Then there was her assertion that the real problem here is that the press just doesn't have enough empathy for the vice president. She contrasted the press with "normal people" "who have a full complement of human empathy."
In fact, a modicum of human empathy -- forget a full complement -- is what this vice president notoriously lacks.
Then there was her shock -- unintentionally revealing -- that the vice president is expected to abide by such plebeian considerations as "rules" -- indeed "conventional rules":
"The problem with these rules," she said, "is that they're presumed to be inviolate. This vice president, who is logical and who is human, was not following the conventional rule, but he wasn't doing anything that was irrational, that's for sure."
I could go on and on, but to get the full effect, you had to see not just what Mary said, but how she said it. She was dripping with contempt and sarcasm, parroting anything said by the other panelists in a teenage sing-song imitation complete with the liberal use of air quotes. Note to the vice president: if you're in a situation in which you feel like you need a little more empathy from the American people, and want them to see you as human, you might want to reconsider handing the job to Mary Matalin. It's hard to believe that the VP's 29-percent approval rating didn't plummet by the time her performance was over.
David Gregory, for his part, opened up with a strange, prepared mea culpa about his exchange with Scott McClellan:
I think I made a mistake. I think it was inappropriate for me to lose my cool with the press secretary representing the president. I don't think it was professional of me. I was frustrated, I said what I said, but I think that you should never speak that way, as my wife reminded me, number one. And number two, I think it created a diversion from some of the serious questions in the story, so I regret that. I was wrong, and I apologize. Why are all the good guys apologizing? Harry Whittington apologizes. Harry Reid apologizes. Dick Durbin apologizes. And now David Gregory apologizes. Why? Gregory's a reporter. McClellan was being a jerk. So why the apology?
In any case, it turns out the apology didn't matter much to Mary, as you can see from this exchange:
GREGORY: The vice president's office doesn't feel an obligation to disclose that to the American people directly. You do it through a ranch owner in Texas? It just -- it just strikes me as odd. MATALIN: It strikes you as odd because you live in a parallel universe....
GREGORY: If you thought he did everything right... why did you do a big national interview this week?
MATALIN: Because you went on a jihad, David. For four days you went on a Jihad.
GREGORY: And that's an unfortunate use of that word, by the way. This is not what that was.
Her reply (said with as much contempt as is humanly possible): "Oh, OK. All right. How -- were you saving up for that line?"
So much for empathy and humanization.
Maureen Dowd chose to take the high ground. Classy, in a silk beige top and pale fingernails, she did not rise to the bait even when Matalin called her "the diva of the smart set." And she looked calmly on, even when Matalin parroted her words the way squabbling kindergartners do.
And most important, she succinctly explained why Cheney's handling of the shooting mattered:
The reason this story has evoked such fascination is because the vice president is like the phantom. You know, we hear the creak of the door as he passes, but we don't really know what he's up to. We don't know his schedule. We don't always know where he is. We don't know what democratic institution he's blowing off at any given minute, and so this allowed us to see how his behavior and judgment operated pretty much in real time -- with the delay, but pretty much in real time. ... And it covered all the problems of the Bush/Cheney administration: secrecy and stonewalling, then blowing off the rules that are at the heart of our democracy, then using a filter to try and put the truth out in a way that would most suit their political needs, and then bad political judgment in bungling a crisis. I mean, if there's one thing the Republicans are great at since Reagan, it's damage control. But he is such a control freak, you know, he doesn't even care about the damage. ... Mary, it isn't only the press. He blows off the FISA courts, he blows off the Geneva Conventions, he blows off the U.N. to go to Iraq. He wants to blow off everything. He's got a fever about presidential erosion just the way he had a fever about going into Iraq. If Dowd's point was that the vice president might not have the greatest respect for "the rules that are at the heart of our democracy," then her point was confirmed when the vice president's stooge sarcastically echoed the phrase.
This whole fracas was caused not by the vice president shooting somebody, but by his stonewalling, secrecy and contempt for transparency after the shooting -- by the fact that, as always, he retreated to his bunker.
If Cheney really wants to repair his reputation, he should start by inviting Mary into the bunker and keeping her there.
Update: Mary Matalin's performance was universally panned in the blogosphere. Check out:
firedoglake: Crazy Mary Does Timmeh
"Quite the bravura performance, complete with wacky foil flower badge and everything."
The Left Coaster: Matalin Trots Out The J-Word All Too Easily
"If you watched Meet the Press this morning, you got to see a prime example of how this administration's defenders manage to equate criticism and dissent with terrorism."
Think Progress: Cheney Advisor Won't Say If "A Beer" Is "Literally One Beer"
"What's puzzling is that Matalin insists its a 'literal fact' that Cheney doesn't 'drink and hunt' even though he has admitted to drinking before hunting."
AMERICAblog: Matalin is crankier and nastier than usual on MTP
"Matalin had to spin extra hard today trying to defend Cheney."
Sirotablog: After DUIs, Should We Really "Presume" Cheney "Doesn't Drink?"
"Cheney advisor Mary Matalin claimed that the public should be 'presuming what we all know, that [Cheney] doesn't drink.' I don't think we should presume that about anyone who has already admitted to drinking before the hunting accident in question."
Hullabaloo: The Beltway's Madwoman of Chaillot*
"You really have to wonder who is ever going to be dumb enough to ever hire Mary Matalin again? This shooting mess was clearly her deal and she couldn't have fucked it up worse than she did."
Talking Points Memo: On Meet the...
"Matalin claimed that Vice President Cheney never sent surrogates out to blame Harry Whittington for last weekend's hunting accident... How can she be serious when she was one of the lead surrogates sent out to do just that?"
Eschaton: Liars
"When people lie to you that obviously and blatantly you stop having them on. Matalin doesn't even have an official position in the Bush administration so there's literally no excuse."
Oliver Willis: Meet The Press? Nah, Just Matalin
"Man, they just let Mary Matalin - an official flack for the Bushies - yammer on unopposed forever today, didn't they? Must be that liberal media I keep hearing about."
UPDATE: Reader Andrea offers this reworked gem of Matalin as Evil Queen Maleficent:
Copyright © 2006 HuffingtonPost.com.
Arianna HuffingtonMon Feb 20, 2:02 PM ET
Meet the Press has been jumping all over the schedule. Sure, they're using the excuse of some sporting event in Italy, but we know the real reason is they're trying to elude Russert Watch. But there we were -- if a little foggy -- at 6 a.m. (I know you can TiVo it, but it's a slippery slope. First you TiVo it, then you just don't watch it.)
As it happens, I wasn't sure I had entirely woken up today. Indeed, I felt locked in a horrible nightmare -- because today's installment was a true horror show.
If you tuned in, you already know what I'm talking about: Mary Matalin.
Oh my God.
James Wolcott called her "a car wreck in repose" and "the Beltway's Madwoman of Chaillot." Crooks & Liars has video here and here.
Let's start with the unavoidable: what was she wearing? First, the brooch. Or was it a sculpture? Or was it perhaps some bizarre new NSA listening device? It was so, well, there, that hard as you tried you could not avert your eyes from it.
And then there was the black Asian pajama top to match the black eye makeup and the scarlet red nails to match the scarlet red lips. It was impossible to watch her without thinking of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. And then there was her manner, which was so incredibly nasty that it was hard to focus on her ludicrous talking points.
Her counterparts on the roundtable were Maureen Dowd, David Gregory and Paul Gigot. At the top of the show, Tim announced that these four would "square off."
But the segment began with Tim basically giving Mary the first third to lay out her side of the story. It was bad enough to just have an administration mouthpiece on to regurgitate talking points, but why not allow -- in old Meet the Press fashion -- the journalists to question her? Maybe Mary demanded some solo time, but, if so, it didn't serve her boss well.
The impact of her appearance was to make the whole story seem even less under control than having a beer and shooting your friend in the face. As for what she said, there were so many intelligence-insulting lies and half-truths it's hard to know where to start.
There was her claim that there was not even the implication that Whittington himself was somehow to blame for the incident. And yet we have Katherine Armstrong saying last Monday that it was "incumbent" on Whittington to announce himself when he rejoined the group. "He did not do that."
And why did they take so long to put out a story?
peak to the sheriff so we'd have the voice of authority. Have Katharine be able to share with other witnesses, and she could be an eyewitness. Oh, and because "there were differing accounts, and there was mass confusion."
Mass confusion? What does that mean? And how did the "mass confusion" resolve itself in the 18 hours it took them to tell the country that the vice president had shot a man?
Then there was Matalin's claim that the reason the local authorities were turned away from interviewing Cheney was because of "national security" considerations. Really? The Secret Service was worried that the sheriff's deputy interviewing Cheney would harm our national security?
Then there was her claim that "these sorts of accidents are not infrequent."
Actually, that's precisely what they are. Infrequent.
As DavidNYC at Kos points out:
In Texas, over the last decade, only one hunter in 26,000 has been involved in a hunting accident. In 2005, only one in 36,000 was involved in a hunting accident.
In fact, there were 1.1 million hunting licenses issued in Texas last year but only 30 reported accidents.
Given that this was obviously going to be one of Matalin's claims, one would think that Tim might have some stats like these at the ready. Instead, Matalin's repeated assertion about how this was just another ordinary day of Texas hunting was allowed to stand unchallenged.
Then there was Mary's allusion to something called the "culture of rural enforcement," and the implication that the elite Eastern press just didn't get it. But if Mary and Dick are so in tune with the Texas "culture of rural enforcement," why were the local officers turned away? It seems that the "culture of rural enforcement" in Texas was operating pretty much like the "culture of urban enforcement."
Then there was Mary's use -- twice -- of the bizarre term "presumption of accident," which was never explained, but which wouldn't be a bad slogan for the entire administration.
Then there was her cockeyed answer to the fact that Armstrong's claim that there had been "no, zero, zippo" alcohol was later contradicted by the vice president himself, who admitted he'd had "a beer" at lunch: "What Katharine Armstrong was answering," Matalin said, "is a literal fact going to the question she was asked, which is always the case on the Armstrong ranch. You don't drink and hunt, and you don't hunt with drinkers."
Then there was her assertion that the real problem here is that the press just doesn't have enough empathy for the vice president. She contrasted the press with "normal people" "who have a full complement of human empathy."
In fact, a modicum of human empathy -- forget a full complement -- is what this vice president notoriously lacks.
Then there was her shock -- unintentionally revealing -- that the vice president is expected to abide by such plebeian considerations as "rules" -- indeed "conventional rules":
"The problem with these rules," she said, "is that they're presumed to be inviolate. This vice president, who is logical and who is human, was not following the conventional rule, but he wasn't doing anything that was irrational, that's for sure."
I could go on and on, but to get the full effect, you had to see not just what Mary said, but how she said it. She was dripping with contempt and sarcasm, parroting anything said by the other panelists in a teenage sing-song imitation complete with the liberal use of air quotes. Note to the vice president: if you're in a situation in which you feel like you need a little more empathy from the American people, and want them to see you as human, you might want to reconsider handing the job to Mary Matalin. It's hard to believe that the VP's 29-percent approval rating didn't plummet by the time her performance was over.
David Gregory, for his part, opened up with a strange, prepared mea culpa about his exchange with Scott McClellan:
I think I made a mistake. I think it was inappropriate for me to lose my cool with the press secretary representing the president. I don't think it was professional of me. I was frustrated, I said what I said, but I think that you should never speak that way, as my wife reminded me, number one. And number two, I think it created a diversion from some of the serious questions in the story, so I regret that. I was wrong, and I apologize. Why are all the good guys apologizing? Harry Whittington apologizes. Harry Reid apologizes. Dick Durbin apologizes. And now David Gregory apologizes. Why? Gregory's a reporter. McClellan was being a jerk. So why the apology?
In any case, it turns out the apology didn't matter much to Mary, as you can see from this exchange:
GREGORY: The vice president's office doesn't feel an obligation to disclose that to the American people directly. You do it through a ranch owner in Texas? It just -- it just strikes me as odd. MATALIN: It strikes you as odd because you live in a parallel universe....
GREGORY: If you thought he did everything right... why did you do a big national interview this week?
MATALIN: Because you went on a jihad, David. For four days you went on a Jihad.
GREGORY: And that's an unfortunate use of that word, by the way. This is not what that was.
Her reply (said with as much contempt as is humanly possible): "Oh, OK. All right. How -- were you saving up for that line?"
So much for empathy and humanization.
Maureen Dowd chose to take the high ground. Classy, in a silk beige top and pale fingernails, she did not rise to the bait even when Matalin called her "the diva of the smart set." And she looked calmly on, even when Matalin parroted her words the way squabbling kindergartners do.
And most important, she succinctly explained why Cheney's handling of the shooting mattered:
The reason this story has evoked such fascination is because the vice president is like the phantom. You know, we hear the creak of the door as he passes, but we don't really know what he's up to. We don't know his schedule. We don't always know where he is. We don't know what democratic institution he's blowing off at any given minute, and so this allowed us to see how his behavior and judgment operated pretty much in real time -- with the delay, but pretty much in real time. ... And it covered all the problems of the Bush/Cheney administration: secrecy and stonewalling, then blowing off the rules that are at the heart of our democracy, then using a filter to try and put the truth out in a way that would most suit their political needs, and then bad political judgment in bungling a crisis. I mean, if there's one thing the Republicans are great at since Reagan, it's damage control. But he is such a control freak, you know, he doesn't even care about the damage. ... Mary, it isn't only the press. He blows off the FISA courts, he blows off the Geneva Conventions, he blows off the U.N. to go to Iraq. He wants to blow off everything. He's got a fever about presidential erosion just the way he had a fever about going into Iraq. If Dowd's point was that the vice president might not have the greatest respect for "the rules that are at the heart of our democracy," then her point was confirmed when the vice president's stooge sarcastically echoed the phrase.
This whole fracas was caused not by the vice president shooting somebody, but by his stonewalling, secrecy and contempt for transparency after the shooting -- by the fact that, as always, he retreated to his bunker.
If Cheney really wants to repair his reputation, he should start by inviting Mary into the bunker and keeping her there.
Update: Mary Matalin's performance was universally panned in the blogosphere. Check out:
firedoglake: Crazy Mary Does Timmeh
"Quite the bravura performance, complete with wacky foil flower badge and everything."
The Left Coaster: Matalin Trots Out The J-Word All Too Easily
"If you watched Meet the Press this morning, you got to see a prime example of how this administration's defenders manage to equate criticism and dissent with terrorism."
Think Progress: Cheney Advisor Won't Say If "A Beer" Is "Literally One Beer"
"What's puzzling is that Matalin insists its a 'literal fact' that Cheney doesn't 'drink and hunt' even though he has admitted to drinking before hunting."
AMERICAblog: Matalin is crankier and nastier than usual on MTP
"Matalin had to spin extra hard today trying to defend Cheney."
Sirotablog: After DUIs, Should We Really "Presume" Cheney "Doesn't Drink?"
"Cheney advisor Mary Matalin claimed that the public should be 'presuming what we all know, that [Cheney] doesn't drink.' I don't think we should presume that about anyone who has already admitted to drinking before the hunting accident in question."
Hullabaloo: The Beltway's Madwoman of Chaillot*
"You really have to wonder who is ever going to be dumb enough to ever hire Mary Matalin again? This shooting mess was clearly her deal and she couldn't have fucked it up worse than she did."
Talking Points Memo: On Meet the...
"Matalin claimed that Vice President Cheney never sent surrogates out to blame Harry Whittington for last weekend's hunting accident... How can she be serious when she was one of the lead surrogates sent out to do just that?"
Eschaton: Liars
"When people lie to you that obviously and blatantly you stop having them on. Matalin doesn't even have an official position in the Bush administration so there's literally no excuse."
Oliver Willis: Meet The Press? Nah, Just Matalin
"Man, they just let Mary Matalin - an official flack for the Bushies - yammer on unopposed forever today, didn't they? Must be that liberal media I keep hearing about."
UPDATE: Reader Andrea offers this reworked gem of Matalin as Evil Queen Maleficent:
Copyright © 2006 HuffingtonPost.com.
National Energy Week Hosted By W
Marty Kaplan: Prof. Harold Hill Hits the Road
Marty KaplanMon Feb 20, 1:13 PM ET
The Huffington Post
This is energy week for the White House. Last week, in case you missed it, was health week, but something seemed to have stepped on, or shot at, their message. No matter - W's Presidents Day plan is to fuel up Air Force One and zip from photo op to photo op attempting to convince the nation that he has an energy plan that will free us oil junkies from our addiction.
The White House hopes that flooding the media with images of W peering at solar panels and expelling impressive amounts of geothermal energy from his mouth will prove that he truly has what his marketing geniuses will stencil into the background of every picture taken of him: an Advanced Energy Initiative.
His actual energy strategy, of course, is exactly what you'd expect from a Texas oilman, and whose Svengali VP long ago declared that conservation is for pantywaists. (For an analysis of the Bush energy policy, look here.)
Bush's energy "plan" is the policy equivalent of "the think system" -- the con run by The Music Man's Prof. Harold Hill. If you just think you can play an instrument, you will. If we Americans just think we can wean ourselves from those OPEC meanies, we will. Shared sacrifice? You gotta be nuts. Higher mileage standards? Big Government is so Jimmy Carter. Global warming? You must not have gotten the memo.
It was thrilling when those Iowa kids who couldn't read a note nevertheless managed to march down Main Street playing "Seventy-Six Trumbones." That's the feel-good finale that the Republicans want us to believe in. For the cost of less than a week of war in Iraq, the're telling us, we're going to research ourselves into energy independence.
How hard will the media push back on this gutless swindle?
At best, it'll be he-said/she-said. The panpoly of the visiting President will be counterposed by some Washington politician (whose substantive critique will be framed and undermined by its putatively partisan motives), or by some think tanker (who will look as though the manly cry, "It's a gusher!" has never passed his lips).
Far be it from the press actually to explain to the country that it's being conned. These days, the tyranny of false equivalence rules journalism. It's phony parity -- putting your thumb on the scale, so that lies and truths weigh the same. After all, who wants to be accused of raining on the River City Boys Band parade? No, it looks like the weather report for W's energy week is fair, and balanced.
Copyright © 2006 HuffingtonPost.com
Marty KaplanMon Feb 20, 1:13 PM ET
The Huffington Post
This is energy week for the White House. Last week, in case you missed it, was health week, but something seemed to have stepped on, or shot at, their message. No matter - W's Presidents Day plan is to fuel up Air Force One and zip from photo op to photo op attempting to convince the nation that he has an energy plan that will free us oil junkies from our addiction.
The White House hopes that flooding the media with images of W peering at solar panels and expelling impressive amounts of geothermal energy from his mouth will prove that he truly has what his marketing geniuses will stencil into the background of every picture taken of him: an Advanced Energy Initiative.
His actual energy strategy, of course, is exactly what you'd expect from a Texas oilman, and whose Svengali VP long ago declared that conservation is for pantywaists. (For an analysis of the Bush energy policy, look here.)
Bush's energy "plan" is the policy equivalent of "the think system" -- the con run by The Music Man's Prof. Harold Hill. If you just think you can play an instrument, you will. If we Americans just think we can wean ourselves from those OPEC meanies, we will. Shared sacrifice? You gotta be nuts. Higher mileage standards? Big Government is so Jimmy Carter. Global warming? You must not have gotten the memo.
It was thrilling when those Iowa kids who couldn't read a note nevertheless managed to march down Main Street playing "Seventy-Six Trumbones." That's the feel-good finale that the Republicans want us to believe in. For the cost of less than a week of war in Iraq, the're telling us, we're going to research ourselves into energy independence.
How hard will the media push back on this gutless swindle?
At best, it'll be he-said/she-said. The panpoly of the visiting President will be counterposed by some Washington politician (whose substantive critique will be framed and undermined by its putatively partisan motives), or by some think tanker (who will look as though the manly cry, "It's a gusher!" has never passed his lips).
Far be it from the press actually to explain to the country that it's being conned. These days, the tyranny of false equivalence rules journalism. It's phony parity -- putting your thumb on the scale, so that lies and truths weigh the same. After all, who wants to be accused of raining on the River City Boys Band parade? No, it looks like the weather report for W's energy week is fair, and balanced.
Copyright © 2006 HuffingtonPost.com
THE NEW AMERICAN POLICE STATE
THE NEW AMERICAN POLICE STATE
By Richard Reeves
NEW YORK -- "When I saw that the neoconservative response to 9/11 was to turn a stateless war against terrorism into military attacks on Muslim states, I realized that the Bush administration was committing a strategic blunder with open-ended disastrous consequences for the United States that, in the end, would destroy Bush, the Republican Party and the conservative movement."
I agree with that, but I didn't write it. No liberal did.
The author is Paul Craig Roberts, one of the creators and champions of "supply-side economics," the great conservative cause of the early 1980s. As a Wall Street Journal editorial writer and then assistant secretary of the treasury under President Reagan, Roberts was a true believer and an effective advocate. His political stance is pretty well summed up in the title of his newest book: "The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice."
Roberts is a syndicated columnist now, an honorable profession, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a temple of talented political thinkers devoted to all the Right things, beginning with Reaganism. His essay, "My Epiphany: From Reaganaut to Anti-War Radical," is, as they say these days, sweeping the Internet. (You can read the text on VDARE.com, the Web site of the Lexington Institute.)
Roberts begins by emphasizing that he does not believe he is betraying old friends or old causes, saying that he never considered himself a slave to party or ideology. Apparently not. He has been writing strong stuff:
"Americans have forgotten what it takes to remain free. Instead, every ideology, every group is determined to use government to advance its agenda. ... The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and democracy itself. The 'liberal press' has been co-opted. ... Media concentration permitted in the 1990s has put news and opinion in the hands of a few corporate executives who do not dare risk their broadcasting licenses by getting on the wrong side of government, or their advertising revenues by becoming 'controversial.'"
He talks of "years of illegal spying" giving the White House the power of "blackmail" over media and political opposition. I might not use the same words, but I do believe that we, the people, are in jeopardy: New spying and eavesdropping technologies and their delighted abuse by intelligence-gathering organizations and their political masters are turning the United States into an emerging police state.
"Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are not our protectors," he adds. "Americans need to understand that many interests are using the 'war on terror' to achieve their agendas. The Federalist Society is using the war on terror to achieve its agenda of concentrating power in the executive and packing the Supreme Court to this effect. The neoconservatives are using the war to achieve their agenda of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Police agencies are using the war to make themselves less accountable. Republicans are using the war to achieve one-party rule ..."
"Debate is dead," Roberts concludes. "One certainty prevails. Bush is committing America to a path of violence and coercion, and he is getting away with it."
I asked Roberts what has been the reaction since these words were published 10 days ago.
"I have had thousands of e-mails, about 99.9 percent favorable, full of praise from Democrats and Republicans alike," he answered. "They say the country is desperate for a straight talker. ... People want to hear more. People want me to run for the Senate or for president."
I, for one, would consider voting for him, though I would hope he will finally give up on supply-side theory.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
By Richard Reeves
NEW YORK -- "When I saw that the neoconservative response to 9/11 was to turn a stateless war against terrorism into military attacks on Muslim states, I realized that the Bush administration was committing a strategic blunder with open-ended disastrous consequences for the United States that, in the end, would destroy Bush, the Republican Party and the conservative movement."
I agree with that, but I didn't write it. No liberal did.
The author is Paul Craig Roberts, one of the creators and champions of "supply-side economics," the great conservative cause of the early 1980s. As a Wall Street Journal editorial writer and then assistant secretary of the treasury under President Reagan, Roberts was a true believer and an effective advocate. His political stance is pretty well summed up in the title of his newest book: "The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice."
Roberts is a syndicated columnist now, an honorable profession, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a temple of talented political thinkers devoted to all the Right things, beginning with Reaganism. His essay, "My Epiphany: From Reaganaut to Anti-War Radical," is, as they say these days, sweeping the Internet. (You can read the text on VDARE.com, the Web site of the Lexington Institute.)
Roberts begins by emphasizing that he does not believe he is betraying old friends or old causes, saying that he never considered himself a slave to party or ideology. Apparently not. He has been writing strong stuff:
"Americans have forgotten what it takes to remain free. Instead, every ideology, every group is determined to use government to advance its agenda. ... The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and democracy itself. The 'liberal press' has been co-opted. ... Media concentration permitted in the 1990s has put news and opinion in the hands of a few corporate executives who do not dare risk their broadcasting licenses by getting on the wrong side of government, or their advertising revenues by becoming 'controversial.'"
He talks of "years of illegal spying" giving the White House the power of "blackmail" over media and political opposition. I might not use the same words, but I do believe that we, the people, are in jeopardy: New spying and eavesdropping technologies and their delighted abuse by intelligence-gathering organizations and their political masters are turning the United States into an emerging police state.
"Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are not our protectors," he adds. "Americans need to understand that many interests are using the 'war on terror' to achieve their agendas. The Federalist Society is using the war on terror to achieve its agenda of concentrating power in the executive and packing the Supreme Court to this effect. The neoconservatives are using the war to achieve their agenda of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Police agencies are using the war to make themselves less accountable. Republicans are using the war to achieve one-party rule ..."
"Debate is dead," Roberts concludes. "One certainty prevails. Bush is committing America to a path of violence and coercion, and he is getting away with it."
I asked Roberts what has been the reaction since these words were published 10 days ago.
"I have had thousands of e-mails, about 99.9 percent favorable, full of praise from Democrats and Republicans alike," he answered. "They say the country is desperate for a straight talker. ... People want to hear more. People want me to run for the Senate or for president."
I, for one, would consider voting for him, though I would hope he will finally give up on supply-side theory.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Hmmm, a conservative idea that seems on target
At last, the conservatives stand up to be counted
By Dante ChinniTue Feb 14, 3:00 AM ET
It's taken awhile, a little more than five years to be precise, but we may be witnessing the return of a respected and important political ideology in this town: conservatism. And its apparent ride back onto the political scene comes not a moment too soon.
Last week, when the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Democrats asked a lot of combative questions, as one might expect. But the real news was that some of the senators on the right side of the dais wondered aloud about whether the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program went too far in the way of expanding executive power.
Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina called some of the legal justifications the Bush administration used for the program (like its assertion that it didn't need Congress's or the judiciary's OK) "dangerous." Over in the House, Heather Wilson, a Republican from New Mexico, is calling for an investigation.
Why was this significant? Because conservatism, real conservatism with its distrust of government and radical change, has been in short supply in our nation's capital since 2001. Oh, there are Republicans, and they have controlled the political landscape here since then. But there is a difference between Republicanism and conservatism.
Republicans are a party, concerned ultimately, as all parties are, with maintaining and growing power. And the GOP in particular is disciplined about doing whatever it takes to help their president. Conservatism is a political outlook, one that questions what the state is doing and is skeptical of power. It owes nothing to no one - not the president, nor the Congress. And it is crucial as a counterbalance to liberalism in the proper functioning of the government. It is the arched eyebrow in a room full of ideas.
Other than its belief in tax cuts (a cornerstone of the conservative philosophy), the current administration has hardly been conservative. On everything from fiscal responsibility to rebuilding Iraq, the administration is sure of itself despite what the data say. It is skeptical of others, but never of itself or its own policies. Counter facts and contrary opinions are ignored or dismissed. And the administration's wiretapping without seeking warrants is based on the idea that other branches of government can't really challenge the executive branch during a time of war. If that's not a bald political power grab, what is?
Yet many conservatives in Congress and elsewhere have not only looked the other way, they've urged the president on.
Even the National Review, the publication that once helped bring the conservative movement back to the front of American politics, supported the president's move. "[T]he evidence is also abundant that the Administration was scrupulous in limiting the FISA exceptions. They applied only to calls involving al Qaeda suspects or those with terrorist ties," wrote the magazine's editors in December.
Of course, that evidence of scrupulousness came from those running the program. No one else could talk about it. And the terms "al Qaeda suspects" and "those with terrorist ties" seem to be fairly broad definitions. But more to the point, the warrantless wiretapping issue isn't really about the taps themselves.
The administration is proposing what is essentially an unchecked power for the president (not just this president, but all presidents) during the "war on terror." And despite all the comparisons to World War II or World War I or the Revolutionary War - yes, we did hear Attorney General Gonzales cite George Washington as a precedent last week - the "war on terror" is a lot more like the cold war. It is likely to go on for decades, which means any expansion of powers the executive branch claims will not be a temporary measure ended by an armistice. It will be an indefinite expansion, perhaps even permanent. When will the time come when no terrorist wants to target the United States?
And since when have conservatives been eager to give the president extra powers?
They haven't. Back in the 1990s, when a president named Bill Clinton was seeking to have his sexual harassment case put off until he left office, it was the conservatives who rose up and declared that the president is not a king and is not above the law.
Was it all just politics? Sure, and some of this is now. It's a lot easier for Republicans to stand up to a president whose approval rating is hovering around 40 percent than it was when it was over 50 percent - and it's especially easy for those facing tough reelection fights.
But there is a principle at stake here as well, and it only makes sense that the party that distrusts and dislikes federal power assert itself in the argument.
If we're lucky it means the conservatives are ready to make themselves a serious part of the political discussion in Washington again. Who knows, maybe it'll even wake up the liberals.
• Dante Chinni writes a twice-monthly political column for the Monitor.
Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor
By Dante ChinniTue Feb 14, 3:00 AM ET
It's taken awhile, a little more than five years to be precise, but we may be witnessing the return of a respected and important political ideology in this town: conservatism. And its apparent ride back onto the political scene comes not a moment too soon.
Last week, when the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Democrats asked a lot of combative questions, as one might expect. But the real news was that some of the senators on the right side of the dais wondered aloud about whether the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program went too far in the way of expanding executive power.
Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina called some of the legal justifications the Bush administration used for the program (like its assertion that it didn't need Congress's or the judiciary's OK) "dangerous." Over in the House, Heather Wilson, a Republican from New Mexico, is calling for an investigation.
Why was this significant? Because conservatism, real conservatism with its distrust of government and radical change, has been in short supply in our nation's capital since 2001. Oh, there are Republicans, and they have controlled the political landscape here since then. But there is a difference between Republicanism and conservatism.
Republicans are a party, concerned ultimately, as all parties are, with maintaining and growing power. And the GOP in particular is disciplined about doing whatever it takes to help their president. Conservatism is a political outlook, one that questions what the state is doing and is skeptical of power. It owes nothing to no one - not the president, nor the Congress. And it is crucial as a counterbalance to liberalism in the proper functioning of the government. It is the arched eyebrow in a room full of ideas.
Other than its belief in tax cuts (a cornerstone of the conservative philosophy), the current administration has hardly been conservative. On everything from fiscal responsibility to rebuilding Iraq, the administration is sure of itself despite what the data say. It is skeptical of others, but never of itself or its own policies. Counter facts and contrary opinions are ignored or dismissed. And the administration's wiretapping without seeking warrants is based on the idea that other branches of government can't really challenge the executive branch during a time of war. If that's not a bald political power grab, what is?
Yet many conservatives in Congress and elsewhere have not only looked the other way, they've urged the president on.
Even the National Review, the publication that once helped bring the conservative movement back to the front of American politics, supported the president's move. "[T]he evidence is also abundant that the Administration was scrupulous in limiting the FISA exceptions. They applied only to calls involving al Qaeda suspects or those with terrorist ties," wrote the magazine's editors in December.
Of course, that evidence of scrupulousness came from those running the program. No one else could talk about it. And the terms "al Qaeda suspects" and "those with terrorist ties" seem to be fairly broad definitions. But more to the point, the warrantless wiretapping issue isn't really about the taps themselves.
The administration is proposing what is essentially an unchecked power for the president (not just this president, but all presidents) during the "war on terror." And despite all the comparisons to World War II or World War I or the Revolutionary War - yes, we did hear Attorney General Gonzales cite George Washington as a precedent last week - the "war on terror" is a lot more like the cold war. It is likely to go on for decades, which means any expansion of powers the executive branch claims will not be a temporary measure ended by an armistice. It will be an indefinite expansion, perhaps even permanent. When will the time come when no terrorist wants to target the United States?
And since when have conservatives been eager to give the president extra powers?
They haven't. Back in the 1990s, when a president named Bill Clinton was seeking to have his sexual harassment case put off until he left office, it was the conservatives who rose up and declared that the president is not a king and is not above the law.
Was it all just politics? Sure, and some of this is now. It's a lot easier for Republicans to stand up to a president whose approval rating is hovering around 40 percent than it was when it was over 50 percent - and it's especially easy for those facing tough reelection fights.
But there is a principle at stake here as well, and it only makes sense that the party that distrusts and dislikes federal power assert itself in the argument.
If we're lucky it means the conservatives are ready to make themselves a serious part of the political discussion in Washington again. Who knows, maybe it'll even wake up the liberals.
• Dante Chinni writes a twice-monthly political column for the Monitor.
Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ex-Gay Cowboys
February 10, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ex-Gay Cowboys
By DAN SAVAGE
Seattle
FIRST, a little of that full disclosure stuff: I have not actually seen "Brokeback Mountain" or "End of the Spear," both of which I'm going to discuss here.
But since when did not seeing a film prevent anyone from sharing his or her strong opinions about it? Before the posters for "Brokeback Mountain" were even printed, everyone from the blogger Mickey Kaus to the Concerned Women for America to gay men all over the country had already said a lot about the film. (Their opinions were, respectively, con, con and pro.)
So, let's get to it: Remember when straight actors who played gay were the ones taking a professional risk? Those days are over. Shortly after Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, both straight, received Oscar nominations for playing gay cowboys in "Brokeback Mountain," conservative Christians were upset when they learned that a gay actor, Chad Allen, was playing a straight missionary in "End of the Spear."
"End of the Spear" tells what happened after five American missionaries were murdered in 1956 by a tribe in Ecuador. Instead of seeking retribution, the missionaries' families reached out to the tribe, forgave the killers and eventually converted them to Christianity. An evangelical film company, Every Tribe Entertainment, brought the story to the screen. In a glowing review, Marcus Yoars, a film critic for Focus on the Family, noted that the "martyrdom" of the slain missionaries has "inspired thousands if not millions of Christians." But after conservatives took a closer look at the cast list, the protests began. Many felt Chad Allen's presence in the film negated any positive message.
The pastors claim they're worried about what will happen when their children rush home from the movies, Google Chad Allen's name, and discover that he's a "gay activist." ("Gay activist" is a term evangelicals apply to any homosexual who isn't a gay doormat.) They needn't be too concerned. Straight boys who have unsupervised access to the Internet aren't Googling the names of middle-aged male actors gay or straight — not when Paris Hilton's sex tapes are still out there.
Frankly, I can't help but be perplexed by the criticisms of Mr. Allen from the Christian right. After all, isn't playing straight what evangelicals have been urging gay men to do?
That's precisely what Jack and Ennis attempt to do in "Brokeback Mountain" — at least, according to people I know who have actually seen the film. These gay cowboys try, as best they can, to quit one another. They marry women, start families. But their wives are crushed when they realize their husbands don't, and can't, ever really love them. "Brokeback Mountain" makes clear that it would have been better for all concerned if Jack and Ennis had lived in a world where they could simply be together.
That world didn't exist when Jack and Ennis were pitching tents together, but it does now — even in the American West. Today, the tiny and stable percentage of men who are gay are free to live openly, and those who want to settle down and start families can do so without having to deceive some poor, unsuspecting woman.
Straight audiences are watching and loving "Brokeback Mountain" — that's troubling to evangelical Christians who have invested a decade and millions of dollars promoting the notion that gay men can be converted to heterosexuality, or become "ex-gay." It is, they insist, an ex-gay movement, although I've never met a gay man who was moved to join it.
This "movement" demands more from gay men than simply playing straight. Once a man can really pass as ex-gay — once he's got some Dockers, an expired gym membership and a bad haircut — he's supposed to become, in effect, an ex-gay missionary, reaching out to the hostile gay tribes in such inhospitable places as Chelsea and West Hollywood.
What should really trouble evangelicals, however, is this: even if every gay man became ex-gay tomorrow, there still wouldn't be an ex-lesbian tomboy out there for every ex-gay cowboy. Instead, millions of straight women would wake up one morning to discover that they had married a Jack or an Ennis. Restaurant hostesses and receptionists at hair salons would be especially vulnerable.
Sometimes I wonder if evangelicals really believe that gay men can go straight. If they don't think Chad Allen can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren't actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one?
Evangelical Christians seem sincere in their desire to help build healthy, lasting marriages. Well, if that's their goal, encouraging gay men to enter into straight marriages is a peculiar strategy. Every straight marriage that includes a gay husband is one Web-browser-history check away from an ugly divorce.
If anything, supporters of traditional marriage should want gay men out of the heterosexual marriage market entirely. And the best way to do that is to see that we're safely married off — to each other, not to your daughters. Let gay actors like Chad Allen only play it straight in the movies.
Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly.
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ex-Gay Cowboys
By DAN SAVAGE
Seattle
FIRST, a little of that full disclosure stuff: I have not actually seen "Brokeback Mountain" or "End of the Spear," both of which I'm going to discuss here.
But since when did not seeing a film prevent anyone from sharing his or her strong opinions about it? Before the posters for "Brokeback Mountain" were even printed, everyone from the blogger Mickey Kaus to the Concerned Women for America to gay men all over the country had already said a lot about the film. (Their opinions were, respectively, con, con and pro.)
So, let's get to it: Remember when straight actors who played gay were the ones taking a professional risk? Those days are over. Shortly after Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, both straight, received Oscar nominations for playing gay cowboys in "Brokeback Mountain," conservative Christians were upset when they learned that a gay actor, Chad Allen, was playing a straight missionary in "End of the Spear."
"End of the Spear" tells what happened after five American missionaries were murdered in 1956 by a tribe in Ecuador. Instead of seeking retribution, the missionaries' families reached out to the tribe, forgave the killers and eventually converted them to Christianity. An evangelical film company, Every Tribe Entertainment, brought the story to the screen. In a glowing review, Marcus Yoars, a film critic for Focus on the Family, noted that the "martyrdom" of the slain missionaries has "inspired thousands if not millions of Christians." But after conservatives took a closer look at the cast list, the protests began. Many felt Chad Allen's presence in the film negated any positive message.
The pastors claim they're worried about what will happen when their children rush home from the movies, Google Chad Allen's name, and discover that he's a "gay activist." ("Gay activist" is a term evangelicals apply to any homosexual who isn't a gay doormat.) They needn't be too concerned. Straight boys who have unsupervised access to the Internet aren't Googling the names of middle-aged male actors gay or straight — not when Paris Hilton's sex tapes are still out there.
Frankly, I can't help but be perplexed by the criticisms of Mr. Allen from the Christian right. After all, isn't playing straight what evangelicals have been urging gay men to do?
That's precisely what Jack and Ennis attempt to do in "Brokeback Mountain" — at least, according to people I know who have actually seen the film. These gay cowboys try, as best they can, to quit one another. They marry women, start families. But their wives are crushed when they realize their husbands don't, and can't, ever really love them. "Brokeback Mountain" makes clear that it would have been better for all concerned if Jack and Ennis had lived in a world where they could simply be together.
That world didn't exist when Jack and Ennis were pitching tents together, but it does now — even in the American West. Today, the tiny and stable percentage of men who are gay are free to live openly, and those who want to settle down and start families can do so without having to deceive some poor, unsuspecting woman.
Straight audiences are watching and loving "Brokeback Mountain" — that's troubling to evangelical Christians who have invested a decade and millions of dollars promoting the notion that gay men can be converted to heterosexuality, or become "ex-gay." It is, they insist, an ex-gay movement, although I've never met a gay man who was moved to join it.
This "movement" demands more from gay men than simply playing straight. Once a man can really pass as ex-gay — once he's got some Dockers, an expired gym membership and a bad haircut — he's supposed to become, in effect, an ex-gay missionary, reaching out to the hostile gay tribes in such inhospitable places as Chelsea and West Hollywood.
What should really trouble evangelicals, however, is this: even if every gay man became ex-gay tomorrow, there still wouldn't be an ex-lesbian tomboy out there for every ex-gay cowboy. Instead, millions of straight women would wake up one morning to discover that they had married a Jack or an Ennis. Restaurant hostesses and receptionists at hair salons would be especially vulnerable.
Sometimes I wonder if evangelicals really believe that gay men can go straight. If they don't think Chad Allen can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren't actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one?
Evangelical Christians seem sincere in their desire to help build healthy, lasting marriages. Well, if that's their goal, encouraging gay men to enter into straight marriages is a peculiar strategy. Every straight marriage that includes a gay husband is one Web-browser-history check away from an ugly divorce.
If anything, supporters of traditional marriage should want gay men out of the heterosexual marriage market entirely. And the best way to do that is to see that we're safely married off — to each other, not to your daughters. Let gay actors like Chad Allen only play it straight in the movies.
Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly.
The Trust Gap
February 12, 2006
Editorial
The New York Times
The Trust Gap
We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.
This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.
DOMESTIC SPYING After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.
According to Mr. Gonzales, the administration can be relied upon to police itself and hold the line between national security and civil liberties on its own. Set aside the rather huge problem that our democracy doesn't work that way. It's not clear that this administration knows where the line is, much less that it is capable of defending it. Mr. Gonzales's own dedication to the truth is in considerable doubt. In sworn testimony at his confirmation hearing last year, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a question about whether he believed the president had the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. In fact, Mr. Gonzales knew Mr. Bush was doing just that, and had signed off on it as White House counsel.
THE PRISON CAMPS It has been nearly two years since the Abu Ghraib scandal illuminated the violence, illegal detentions and other abuses at United States military prison camps. There have been Congressional hearings, court rulings imposing normal judicial procedures on the camps, and a law requiring prisoners to be treated humanely. Yet nothing has changed. Mr. Bush also made it clear that he intends to follow the new law on the treatment of prisoners when his internal moral compass tells him it is the right thing to do.
On Thursday, Tim Golden of The Times reported that United States military authorities had taken to tying up and force-feeding the prisoners who had gone on hunger strikes by the dozens at Guantánamo Bay to protest being held without any semblance of justice. The article said administration officials were concerned that if a prisoner died, it could renew international criticism of Gitmo. They should be concerned. This is not some minor embarrassment. It is a lingering outrage that has undermined American credibility around the world.
According to numerous news reports, the majority of the Gitmo detainees are neither members of Al Qaeda nor fighters captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The National Journal reported last week that many were handed over to the American forces for bounties by Pakistani and Afghan warlords. Others were just swept up. The military has charged only 10 prisoners with terrorism. Hearings for the rest were not held for three years and then were mostly sham proceedings.
And yet the administration continues to claim that it can be trusted to run these prisons fairly, to decide in secret and on the president's whim who is to be jailed without charges, and to insist that Gitmo is filled with dangerous terrorists.
THE WAR IN IRAQ One of Mr. Bush's biggest "trust me" moments was when he told Americans that the United States had to invade Iraq because it possessed dangerous weapons and posed an immediate threat to America. The White House has blocked a Congressional investigation into whether it exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq, and continues to insist that the decision to invade was based on the consensus of American intelligence agencies.
But the next edition of the journal Foreign Affairs includes an article by the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year, Paul Pillar, who said the administration cherry-picked intelligence to support a decision to invade that had already been made. He said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear what results they wanted and heeded only the analysts who produced them. Incredibly, Mr. Pillar said, the president never asked for an assessment on the consequences of invading Iraq until a year after the invasion. He said the intelligence community did that analysis on its own and forecast a deeply divided society ripe for civil war.
When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on the brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr. Pillar was not to be trusted because he dissented from the party line. Somehow, this sounds like a story we have heard before.
•
Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes dissembles clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example, that the White House did not tell the truth about when it learned the levees in New Orleans had failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at the civil liberties, due process and balance of powers that are the heart of American democracy is another.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Editorial
The New York Times
The Trust Gap
We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.
This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.
DOMESTIC SPYING After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.
According to Mr. Gonzales, the administration can be relied upon to police itself and hold the line between national security and civil liberties on its own. Set aside the rather huge problem that our democracy doesn't work that way. It's not clear that this administration knows where the line is, much less that it is capable of defending it. Mr. Gonzales's own dedication to the truth is in considerable doubt. In sworn testimony at his confirmation hearing last year, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a question about whether he believed the president had the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. In fact, Mr. Gonzales knew Mr. Bush was doing just that, and had signed off on it as White House counsel.
THE PRISON CAMPS It has been nearly two years since the Abu Ghraib scandal illuminated the violence, illegal detentions and other abuses at United States military prison camps. There have been Congressional hearings, court rulings imposing normal judicial procedures on the camps, and a law requiring prisoners to be treated humanely. Yet nothing has changed. Mr. Bush also made it clear that he intends to follow the new law on the treatment of prisoners when his internal moral compass tells him it is the right thing to do.
On Thursday, Tim Golden of The Times reported that United States military authorities had taken to tying up and force-feeding the prisoners who had gone on hunger strikes by the dozens at Guantánamo Bay to protest being held without any semblance of justice. The article said administration officials were concerned that if a prisoner died, it could renew international criticism of Gitmo. They should be concerned. This is not some minor embarrassment. It is a lingering outrage that has undermined American credibility around the world.
According to numerous news reports, the majority of the Gitmo detainees are neither members of Al Qaeda nor fighters captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The National Journal reported last week that many were handed over to the American forces for bounties by Pakistani and Afghan warlords. Others were just swept up. The military has charged only 10 prisoners with terrorism. Hearings for the rest were not held for three years and then were mostly sham proceedings.
And yet the administration continues to claim that it can be trusted to run these prisons fairly, to decide in secret and on the president's whim who is to be jailed without charges, and to insist that Gitmo is filled with dangerous terrorists.
THE WAR IN IRAQ One of Mr. Bush's biggest "trust me" moments was when he told Americans that the United States had to invade Iraq because it possessed dangerous weapons and posed an immediate threat to America. The White House has blocked a Congressional investigation into whether it exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq, and continues to insist that the decision to invade was based on the consensus of American intelligence agencies.
But the next edition of the journal Foreign Affairs includes an article by the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year, Paul Pillar, who said the administration cherry-picked intelligence to support a decision to invade that had already been made. He said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear what results they wanted and heeded only the analysts who produced them. Incredibly, Mr. Pillar said, the president never asked for an assessment on the consequences of invading Iraq until a year after the invasion. He said the intelligence community did that analysis on its own and forecast a deeply divided society ripe for civil war.
When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on the brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr. Pillar was not to be trusted because he dissented from the party line. Somehow, this sounds like a story we have heard before.
•
Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes dissembles clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example, that the White House did not tell the truth about when it learned the levees in New Orleans had failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at the civil liberties, due process and balance of powers that are the heart of American democracy is another.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Friday, February 10, 2006
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Bush intent on cutting programs for the poor & making the wealth wealthier, sad
from the February 08, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0208/p01s03-usec.html
Who will feel budget's impact?
Bush Wednesday signs bill with $39 billion in cuts. His 2007 budget would point to more cuts ahead.
By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - With President Bush's signature Wednesday, Medicaid recipients can expect higher copayments and deductibles. College students may face higher interest rates on student loans, as lenders are squeezed. Work requirements for women on welfare are likely to be tightened. Federal aid to states for child-support enforcement will be curtailed.
All told, the US government will save $39 billion over the next five years under the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005. The legislation is the first in a decade to rein in the growth of entitlement programs. And, along with a plan for $70 billion in tax cuts moving through Congress, it provides the backdrop to a fierce debate over government priorities with the unveiling this week of Mr. Bush's budget proposal for fiscal year 2007.
In short, the Bush administration faces competing pressures to bring down the budget deficit, keep the nation safe, foster economic growth, and maintain popular social safety net programs. In an election year, the task grows only more difficult.
The stark reality is that Bush is asking for budget savings from Medicare, education, transportation, and agriculture as he seeks to cut taxes. Can the administration pull it off? The answer goes to the core of different government philosophies of the two parties.
"Republicans believe the poor and everyone else benefit from a growing and thriving economy, which is fed by capital investment," says Republican pollster Whit Ayres. "Democrats believe that the poor are best served by larger and larger government payments. The Republicans have won that clash of ideas fairly consistently since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. There's no reason to think they can't win that same argument again."
The proposed $2.77 trillion budget would boost Pentagon spending by almost 7 percent, and also increase the budgets for the Departments of State, Veterans' Affairs, and Homeland Security. The budget would cut $182 billion over five years in areas outside of defense and homeland security.
Critics argue that the tax cuts built into the budget plan - $285 billion over five years, not including an expected extension of the Alternative Minimum Tax - would more than negate the savings from cuts to domestic programs, which largely benefit low- and middle-income Americans.
Among entitlements, Bush proposes a plan to slow the growth of Medicare, which provides health insurance for senior citizens, saving $36 billion over five years. The budget also contains new cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to the poor and disabled, by shifting some costs to the states, which in turn may reduce eligibility or benefits.
From Social Security, the budget proposes benefit reductions that would save $2.2 billion over five years, including an end to the lump-sum death benefit, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
In its early budget analysis, the CBPP identifies cuts to hundreds of programs. Among those targeted for elimination:
• The Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food packages for some 400,000 low-income seniors.
• A preventive care block grant, which helps states provide preventive healthcare for "underserved populations."
• The TRIO Talent Search program, which helps colleges and universities assist disadvantaged teenagers so they can finish high school and go to college.
Among programs facing major cuts, according to CBPP:
• Section 202 housing for low-income elderly, which would be cut 26 percent below the 2006 level.
• Section 811 housing for low-income people with disabilities, which would face a 50 percent cut.
• A 79 percent cut for Community Oriented Policing Services, which aims to put more police on the streets.
• Child Care and Development Block Grant, which would face more than $1 billion in cuts over five years. CBPP reports that by 2011 the number of children receiving child-care assistance would drop by more than 400,000, compared with the 2005 figure.
"There's a fairness issue here," says Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economics at the Brookings Institution. "We're basically cutting programs that serve low-income families and the middle class in order to pay for tax cuts that go overwhelmingly to the very wealthy. Even some Republicans have been uncomfortable with that."
The Republican Main Street Partnership, a collection of moderate GOP governors and members of Congress, is withholding judgment on the president's budget blueprint for now, over concerns it could hurt the poor. "Obviously, in an election year, we don't want to see that happening," says executive director Sarah Chamberlain Resnick.
The Bush White House says programs slated for cuts or elimination are ineffective, and that there are other ways to help the poor, such as through programs supported by Bush's faith-based initiative
Who will feel budget's impact?
Bush Wednesday signs bill with $39 billion in cuts. His 2007 budget would point to more cuts ahead.
By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - With President Bush's signature Wednesday, Medicaid recipients can expect higher copayments and deductibles. College students may face higher interest rates on student loans, as lenders are squeezed. Work requirements for women on welfare are likely to be tightened. Federal aid to states for child-support enforcement will be curtailed.
All told, the US government will save $39 billion over the next five years under the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005. The legislation is the first in a decade to rein in the growth of entitlement programs. And, along with a plan for $70 billion in tax cuts moving through Congress, it provides the backdrop to a fierce debate over government priorities with the unveiling this week of Mr. Bush's budget proposal for fiscal year 2007.
In short, the Bush administration faces competing pressures to bring down the budget deficit, keep the nation safe, foster economic growth, and maintain popular social safety net programs. In an election year, the task grows only more difficult.
The stark reality is that Bush is asking for budget savings from Medicare, education, transportation, and agriculture as he seeks to cut taxes. Can the administration pull it off? The answer goes to the core of different government philosophies of the two parties.
"Republicans believe the poor and everyone else benefit from a growing and thriving economy, which is fed by capital investment," says Republican pollster Whit Ayres. "Democrats believe that the poor are best served by larger and larger government payments. The Republicans have won that clash of ideas fairly consistently since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. There's no reason to think they can't win that same argument again."
The proposed $2.77 trillion budget would boost Pentagon spending by almost 7 percent, and also increase the budgets for the Departments of State, Veterans' Affairs, and Homeland Security. The budget would cut $182 billion over five years in areas outside of defense and homeland security.
Critics argue that the tax cuts built into the budget plan - $285 billion over five years, not including an expected extension of the Alternative Minimum Tax - would more than negate the savings from cuts to domestic programs, which largely benefit low- and middle-income Americans.
Among entitlements, Bush proposes a plan to slow the growth of Medicare, which provides health insurance for senior citizens, saving $36 billion over five years. The budget also contains new cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to the poor and disabled, by shifting some costs to the states, which in turn may reduce eligibility or benefits.
From Social Security, the budget proposes benefit reductions that would save $2.2 billion over five years, including an end to the lump-sum death benefit, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
In its early budget analysis, the CBPP identifies cuts to hundreds of programs. Among those targeted for elimination:
• The Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food packages for some 400,000 low-income seniors.
• A preventive care block grant, which helps states provide preventive healthcare for "underserved populations."
• The TRIO Talent Search program, which helps colleges and universities assist disadvantaged teenagers so they can finish high school and go to college.
Among programs facing major cuts, according to CBPP:
• Section 202 housing for low-income elderly, which would be cut 26 percent below the 2006 level.
• Section 811 housing for low-income people with disabilities, which would face a 50 percent cut.
• A 79 percent cut for Community Oriented Policing Services, which aims to put more police on the streets.
• Child Care and Development Block Grant, which would face more than $1 billion in cuts over five years. CBPP reports that by 2011 the number of children receiving child-care assistance would drop by more than 400,000, compared with the 2005 figure.
"There's a fairness issue here," says Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economics at the Brookings Institution. "We're basically cutting programs that serve low-income families and the middle class in order to pay for tax cuts that go overwhelmingly to the very wealthy. Even some Republicans have been uncomfortable with that."
The Republican Main Street Partnership, a collection of moderate GOP governors and members of Congress, is withholding judgment on the president's budget blueprint for now, over concerns it could hurt the poor. "Obviously, in an election year, we don't want to see that happening," says executive director Sarah Chamberlain Resnick.
The Bush White House says programs slated for cuts or elimination are ineffective, and that there are other ways to help the poor, such as through programs supported by Bush's faith-based initiative
Britain Defies US with Funding to Boost Safe Abortion Services
Britain Defies US with Funding to Boost Safe Abortion Services
By Sarah Boseley
The Guardian UK
Monday 06 February 2006
Attempt to replace lost dollars after 'global gag.' 70,000 died last year in backstreet operations.
The British government will today publicly defy the United States by giving money for safe abortion services in developing countries to organisations that have been cut off from American funding.
Nearly 70,000 women and girls died last year because they went to back-street abortionists. Hundreds of thousands of others suffered serious injuries.
Critics of America's aid policy say some might have lived if the US had not withdrawn funding from clinics that provide safe services - or that simply tell women where to find them.
The "global gag" rule, as it has become known, was imposed by President George Bush in 2001. It requires any organisation applying for US funds to sign an undertaking not to counsel women on abortion - other than advising against it - or provide abortion services.
The UK will today become the founder donor of a fund set up specifically to attempt to replace the lost dollars and increase safe abortion services.
The Department for International Development will contribute £3m over two years. DFID and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) - whose clinics across the world have suffered badly - hope that others, particularly the Scandinavians, Dutch and Canadians, will be emboldened to put money in too.
"I think the UK is being very brave and very progressive in making this commitment," said Steven Sinding, director general of the IPPF. "We're deeply grateful for this gesture not only financially but also politically.
"Tens of thousands of women who depend on our services are not able to get them. We're committed to the expansion of safe abortion because in any society no matter how efficiently contraception is made available there will be unplanned and unwanted pregnancies."
The "global gag", he said, had increased the number of unsafe abortions by stopping funding to clinics that primarily provide contraception. "What I've never been able to figure out about American policy is why they persist in cutting down funding to organisations that are about preventing unwanted pregnancies."
International development minister Gareth Thomas said the government hoped the US position would change: "We work very closely with the Americans but we have a very different view from them on abortion. Friends can disagree.
"I recognise that the Americans are not going to want to contribute at the moment. We obviously continue to hope that the position will change. It is a position that has been decided by Congress so we're very aware of it and they know that."
DFID asked IPPF to produce a report on the scale of the damage caused by unsafe abortion. Death and Denial: Unsafe Abortion and Poverty, is published today. It reveals that an estimated 19 million women will risk the consequences of an unsafe abortion this year, of whom 70,000 will die. This accounts for 13% of the 500,000 maternal deaths each year. Reducing unsafe abortions is critical to reaching the UN's Millennium Development Goal on cutting maternal mortality, said Mr Thomas.
Women's low status in many poor countries makes them vulnerable to sexual coercion, abuse and exploitation, says the report. Almost 50% of sexual assaults worldwide are against girls aged 15 or less.
The death and injury toll is highest in countries where abortion is illegal or severely restricted, as in Kenya, where some 30% to 50% of maternal deaths are a result of unsafe abortion.
The Family Planning Association of Kenya, an IPPF member, chose to forfeit US funds rather than sign the "global gag" clause. It was forced to close three reproductive health clinics, scale back others and slash outreach programmes.
Many other organisations are affected by the global gag, including Marie Stopes, which is bigger in some countries than IPPF. The money from the new fund will be equitably shared among all those who have lost US funds. IPPF, which has itself lost $15m (£9m) a year for the past five years, together with the provision of contraceptives worth $2m to $4m, hopes the fund may eventually raise up to $35m.
By Sarah Boseley
The Guardian UK
Monday 06 February 2006
Attempt to replace lost dollars after 'global gag.' 70,000 died last year in backstreet operations.
The British government will today publicly defy the United States by giving money for safe abortion services in developing countries to organisations that have been cut off from American funding.
Nearly 70,000 women and girls died last year because they went to back-street abortionists. Hundreds of thousands of others suffered serious injuries.
Critics of America's aid policy say some might have lived if the US had not withdrawn funding from clinics that provide safe services - or that simply tell women where to find them.
The "global gag" rule, as it has become known, was imposed by President George Bush in 2001. It requires any organisation applying for US funds to sign an undertaking not to counsel women on abortion - other than advising against it - or provide abortion services.
The UK will today become the founder donor of a fund set up specifically to attempt to replace the lost dollars and increase safe abortion services.
The Department for International Development will contribute £3m over two years. DFID and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) - whose clinics across the world have suffered badly - hope that others, particularly the Scandinavians, Dutch and Canadians, will be emboldened to put money in too.
"I think the UK is being very brave and very progressive in making this commitment," said Steven Sinding, director general of the IPPF. "We're deeply grateful for this gesture not only financially but also politically.
"Tens of thousands of women who depend on our services are not able to get them. We're committed to the expansion of safe abortion because in any society no matter how efficiently contraception is made available there will be unplanned and unwanted pregnancies."
The "global gag", he said, had increased the number of unsafe abortions by stopping funding to clinics that primarily provide contraception. "What I've never been able to figure out about American policy is why they persist in cutting down funding to organisations that are about preventing unwanted pregnancies."
International development minister Gareth Thomas said the government hoped the US position would change: "We work very closely with the Americans but we have a very different view from them on abortion. Friends can disagree.
"I recognise that the Americans are not going to want to contribute at the moment. We obviously continue to hope that the position will change. It is a position that has been decided by Congress so we're very aware of it and they know that."
DFID asked IPPF to produce a report on the scale of the damage caused by unsafe abortion. Death and Denial: Unsafe Abortion and Poverty, is published today. It reveals that an estimated 19 million women will risk the consequences of an unsafe abortion this year, of whom 70,000 will die. This accounts for 13% of the 500,000 maternal deaths each year. Reducing unsafe abortions is critical to reaching the UN's Millennium Development Goal on cutting maternal mortality, said Mr Thomas.
Women's low status in many poor countries makes them vulnerable to sexual coercion, abuse and exploitation, says the report. Almost 50% of sexual assaults worldwide are against girls aged 15 or less.
The death and injury toll is highest in countries where abortion is illegal or severely restricted, as in Kenya, where some 30% to 50% of maternal deaths are a result of unsafe abortion.
The Family Planning Association of Kenya, an IPPF member, chose to forfeit US funds rather than sign the "global gag" clause. It was forced to close three reproductive health clinics, scale back others and slash outreach programmes.
Many other organisations are affected by the global gag, including Marie Stopes, which is bigger in some countries than IPPF. The money from the new fund will be equitably shared among all those who have lost US funds. IPPF, which has itself lost $15m (£9m) a year for the past five years, together with the provision of contraceptives worth $2m to $4m, hopes the fund may eventually raise up to $35m.
THE BLAND LEADING THE BLIND
THE BLAND LEADING THE BLIND
Tue Feb 7, 8:15 PM ET
The Nanny Press and the Cartoon Controversy
LAS VEGAS--Of course it was a provocation. In September, the editor of a right-wing Danish newspaper decided "to test cartoonists to see if they were self-censoring their work, out of fear of violence from Islamic radicals." Though some declined, 12 artists accepted the editor's invitation to make light of the Prophet Mohammed, and submitted work equating Islam with terrorism and the oppression of women, among other things.
Five months later editor Fleming Rose has learned that cartoonists have good reason to watch what they draw. Thousands of demonstrators, furious at the publication's violation of an Islamic stricture banning graphic depictions of the Prophet, marched through the streets of Cairo, Karachi, Istanbul, Teheran and Mehtarlam, Afghanistan, where at least five were killed by police. Gunmen took over the European Union office in Gaza. Mobs burned Danish flags and called for a Muslim boycott of Danish goods. Iran withdrew its ambassador from Copenhagen. Danes were ordered to flee Lebanon after mobs burned the Danish consulates in Damascus and Beirut, where they also trashed a Christian neighborhood. The Danish cartoonists, having been threatened with beheading, are presumably catching up on their Salman Rushdie while they weather the storm.
Adding fuel to the fire, said the Times, were "a group of Denmark's fundamentalist Muslim clerics...[who] took their show on the road" last fall, traveling around the Middle East showing a package that included cartoons that had never actually appeared in any newspaper, "some depicting Mohammed as a pedophile, a pig or engaged in bestiality." Newspapers in France, Germany and elsewhere further fanned the flames by reprinting the Danish drawings.
Being provoked, as I tell myself when I'm sitting next to Sean Hannity, doesn't justify reacting with violence. And as Kuwaiti oil executive Samia al-Duaij pointed out to Time, there are better reasons to torch embassies than over cartoons: "America kills thousands of Muslims, and you lose your head and withdraw ambassadors over a bunch of cartoons printed in a second-rate paper in a Nordic country with a population of five million? That's the true outrage."
As the only syndicated political cartoonist who also writes a syndicated column, my living depends on freedom of the press. I can't decide who's a bigger threat: the deluded Islamists who hope to impose Sharia law on Western democracies, or the right-wing clash-of-civilization crusaders waving the banner of "free speech"--the same folks who call for the censorship and even murder of anti-Bush cartoonists here--as an excuse to join the post-9/11 Muslims-suck media pile-on. Most reasonable people reject both--but neither is as dangerous to liberty as America's self-censoring newspaper editors and broadcast producers.
"CNN has chosen not to show the [Danish Mohammed] cartoons out of respect for Islam," said the news channel.
"We always weigh the value of the journalistic impact against the impact that publication might have as far as insulting or hurting certain groups," said an editor at The San Francisco Chronicle.
"The cartoons didn't meet our long-held standards for not moving offensive content," said the Associated Press.
Bull----.
If these cowards were worried about offending the faithful, they wouldn't cover or quote such Muslim-bashers as Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens or George W. Bush. The truth is, our national nanny media is managed by cowards so terrified by the prospect of their offices being firebombed that they wallow in self-censorship.
Precisely because they subvert free speech from within with their oh-so-reasonable odes for "moderation" and against "sensationalism," the gatekeepers of our national nanny media are more dangerous to Western values than distant mullahs and clueless neocons combined. Editors and producers decide not only what's fit to print but also what's not: flag-draped coffins and body bags arriving from Iraq, photographs of Afghan civilians, their bodies reduced to blobs of blood and protoplasm, all purged from our national consciousness. You might think it's news when the vice president tells a senator to "go f--- yourself" on the Senate floor, but you'd be wrong--only tortured roundabout descriptions (like "f---") make newsprint. "This is a family newspaper," any editor will say, arguing for self-censorship--as if kids couldn't fill in those three letters in "f---."
As if kids read the paper.
The nanny media, even more prudish since 9/11, covers our millions of eyes to protect us from our own icky deeds. In Afghanistan in 2001, while covering a war that had officially killed 12 civilians, I watched a colleague from a major television network collate footage of a B-52 bombing indiscriminately obliterating a civilian neighborhood. "If people saw what bombing looks like here on the ground, " he observed as body parts and burning houses and screaming children filled the screen, "they would demand an end to it. Which is why this will never air on American television." But other countries don't have our nanny media. Europeans and Arabs see the horror wreaked in our name on their airwaves, assume that we see the same imagery and hate us for not giving a damn. America's self-censors make anti-Americanism worse.
Ugly truths come out one way or the other. While the Muslim world was raging over the Danish Mohammed cartoons, Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles received a chilling letter from the Joints Chief of Staff in reaction to his single-panel rendition of a quadriplegic veteran; if not for the nanny media's slavish refusal to run photos of the real thing, would that abstract image have shocked anyone? While we're at it, using prose to describe graphic images--as editors and anchormen are doing about the Mohammed imagery--makes as much sense as talking about the Rodney King police brutality video. "[Describing the cartoons without showing them] seems a reasonable choice," editorialized The New York Times, a paper whose readers' right to know apparently includes classified surveillance programs--but not cartoons.
Toles "crossed the line" from appropriate commentary into outright tastelessness, complained the Joint Chiefs. Similarly, many Muslims say the 12 Danish cartoonists "crossed the line" when they indulged in blasphemy of one of the world's major religions. U.S. State Department spokesman and honorary mullah Sean McCormack helpfully tells us where The Line is drawn: "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," he said. But who can distinguish "anti-Muslim images" from "acceptable" satire? Taste is subjective. Right-wing Time columnist Andrew Sullivan, who has repeatedly called for censoring my work because it's critical of Bush, calls the Danish cartoons "not arbitrarily offensive" and thus acceptable free speech. Lefties, on the other hand, rallied to get Rush Limbaugh fired from his gig as a football commentator.
Hypocrisy abounds: Everyone supports the free speech they agree with.
Which is why, in a nation with a truly free media, there is no line. To hell with the nanny media. Free speech is like a Ferrari: What good is it if you don't use it or if you barely use it, only driving it in town, in stop-and-go traffic? It's useless until you can head out to the Arizona desert and push it past 150 mph. Short of libel, slander and impersonation, anything goes--that is, if you believe in the First Amendment.
What if millions of people take offense? What if some of them turn violent, even murderous? So what? No one can make you angry. You decide whether or not to become angry. If journalistic gatekeepers worry about the mere possibility of prompting outrage, they'll validate mob rule and undermine our right to a free press, one that covers the controversial along with the bland.
While deciding what goes into the paper and the evening news, good journalists ought to be guided by only one consideration: Is it news? If the answer is yes, send it out. Even if it's tasteless as all f---.
Postscript: A European Muslim website has posted a cartoon depicting Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler. "If it is the time to break taboos and cross all the red lines," the site explains, "we certainly do not want to fall behind." It's an idiotic cartoon. Breaking taboos, on the other hand, is something our nanny media ought to try.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Tue Feb 7, 8:15 PM ET
The Nanny Press and the Cartoon Controversy
LAS VEGAS--Of course it was a provocation. In September, the editor of a right-wing Danish newspaper decided "to test cartoonists to see if they were self-censoring their work, out of fear of violence from Islamic radicals." Though some declined, 12 artists accepted the editor's invitation to make light of the Prophet Mohammed, and submitted work equating Islam with terrorism and the oppression of women, among other things.
Five months later editor Fleming Rose has learned that cartoonists have good reason to watch what they draw. Thousands of demonstrators, furious at the publication's violation of an Islamic stricture banning graphic depictions of the Prophet, marched through the streets of Cairo, Karachi, Istanbul, Teheran and Mehtarlam, Afghanistan, where at least five were killed by police. Gunmen took over the European Union office in Gaza. Mobs burned Danish flags and called for a Muslim boycott of Danish goods. Iran withdrew its ambassador from Copenhagen. Danes were ordered to flee Lebanon after mobs burned the Danish consulates in Damascus and Beirut, where they also trashed a Christian neighborhood. The Danish cartoonists, having been threatened with beheading, are presumably catching up on their Salman Rushdie while they weather the storm.
Adding fuel to the fire, said the Times, were "a group of Denmark's fundamentalist Muslim clerics...[who] took their show on the road" last fall, traveling around the Middle East showing a package that included cartoons that had never actually appeared in any newspaper, "some depicting Mohammed as a pedophile, a pig or engaged in bestiality." Newspapers in France, Germany and elsewhere further fanned the flames by reprinting the Danish drawings.
Being provoked, as I tell myself when I'm sitting next to Sean Hannity, doesn't justify reacting with violence. And as Kuwaiti oil executive Samia al-Duaij pointed out to Time, there are better reasons to torch embassies than over cartoons: "America kills thousands of Muslims, and you lose your head and withdraw ambassadors over a bunch of cartoons printed in a second-rate paper in a Nordic country with a population of five million? That's the true outrage."
As the only syndicated political cartoonist who also writes a syndicated column, my living depends on freedom of the press. I can't decide who's a bigger threat: the deluded Islamists who hope to impose Sharia law on Western democracies, or the right-wing clash-of-civilization crusaders waving the banner of "free speech"--the same folks who call for the censorship and even murder of anti-Bush cartoonists here--as an excuse to join the post-9/11 Muslims-suck media pile-on. Most reasonable people reject both--but neither is as dangerous to liberty as America's self-censoring newspaper editors and broadcast producers.
"CNN has chosen not to show the [Danish Mohammed] cartoons out of respect for Islam," said the news channel.
"We always weigh the value of the journalistic impact against the impact that publication might have as far as insulting or hurting certain groups," said an editor at The San Francisco Chronicle.
"The cartoons didn't meet our long-held standards for not moving offensive content," said the Associated Press.
Bull----.
If these cowards were worried about offending the faithful, they wouldn't cover or quote such Muslim-bashers as Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens or George W. Bush. The truth is, our national nanny media is managed by cowards so terrified by the prospect of their offices being firebombed that they wallow in self-censorship.
Precisely because they subvert free speech from within with their oh-so-reasonable odes for "moderation" and against "sensationalism," the gatekeepers of our national nanny media are more dangerous to Western values than distant mullahs and clueless neocons combined. Editors and producers decide not only what's fit to print but also what's not: flag-draped coffins and body bags arriving from Iraq, photographs of Afghan civilians, their bodies reduced to blobs of blood and protoplasm, all purged from our national consciousness. You might think it's news when the vice president tells a senator to "go f--- yourself" on the Senate floor, but you'd be wrong--only tortured roundabout descriptions (like "f---") make newsprint. "This is a family newspaper," any editor will say, arguing for self-censorship--as if kids couldn't fill in those three letters in "f---."
As if kids read the paper.
The nanny media, even more prudish since 9/11, covers our millions of eyes to protect us from our own icky deeds. In Afghanistan in 2001, while covering a war that had officially killed 12 civilians, I watched a colleague from a major television network collate footage of a B-52 bombing indiscriminately obliterating a civilian neighborhood. "If people saw what bombing looks like here on the ground, " he observed as body parts and burning houses and screaming children filled the screen, "they would demand an end to it. Which is why this will never air on American television." But other countries don't have our nanny media. Europeans and Arabs see the horror wreaked in our name on their airwaves, assume that we see the same imagery and hate us for not giving a damn. America's self-censors make anti-Americanism worse.
Ugly truths come out one way or the other. While the Muslim world was raging over the Danish Mohammed cartoons, Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles received a chilling letter from the Joints Chief of Staff in reaction to his single-panel rendition of a quadriplegic veteran; if not for the nanny media's slavish refusal to run photos of the real thing, would that abstract image have shocked anyone? While we're at it, using prose to describe graphic images--as editors and anchormen are doing about the Mohammed imagery--makes as much sense as talking about the Rodney King police brutality video. "[Describing the cartoons without showing them] seems a reasonable choice," editorialized The New York Times, a paper whose readers' right to know apparently includes classified surveillance programs--but not cartoons.
Toles "crossed the line" from appropriate commentary into outright tastelessness, complained the Joint Chiefs. Similarly, many Muslims say the 12 Danish cartoonists "crossed the line" when they indulged in blasphemy of one of the world's major religions. U.S. State Department spokesman and honorary mullah Sean McCormack helpfully tells us where The Line is drawn: "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," he said. But who can distinguish "anti-Muslim images" from "acceptable" satire? Taste is subjective. Right-wing Time columnist Andrew Sullivan, who has repeatedly called for censoring my work because it's critical of Bush, calls the Danish cartoons "not arbitrarily offensive" and thus acceptable free speech. Lefties, on the other hand, rallied to get Rush Limbaugh fired from his gig as a football commentator.
Hypocrisy abounds: Everyone supports the free speech they agree with.
Which is why, in a nation with a truly free media, there is no line. To hell with the nanny media. Free speech is like a Ferrari: What good is it if you don't use it or if you barely use it, only driving it in town, in stop-and-go traffic? It's useless until you can head out to the Arizona desert and push it past 150 mph. Short of libel, slander and impersonation, anything goes--that is, if you believe in the First Amendment.
What if millions of people take offense? What if some of them turn violent, even murderous? So what? No one can make you angry. You decide whether or not to become angry. If journalistic gatekeepers worry about the mere possibility of prompting outrage, they'll validate mob rule and undermine our right to a free press, one that covers the controversial along with the bland.
While deciding what goes into the paper and the evening news, good journalists ought to be guided by only one consideration: Is it news? If the answer is yes, send it out. Even if it's tasteless as all f---.
Postscript: A European Muslim website has posted a cartoon depicting Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler. "If it is the time to break taboos and cross all the red lines," the site explains, "we certainly do not want to fall behind." It's an idiotic cartoon. Breaking taboos, on the other hand, is something our nanny media ought to try.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Monday, February 06, 2006
The Poor Get Poorer
Democrats & Liberals: Archives
February 06, 2006
The Poor Get Poorer
The President’s 2007 budget proposes $2.7 trillion in spending neccessary to increase defense and homeland security. There is $18 billion for rebuilding from the hurricanes that devestated the poor in the Gulf Coast region. Other programs such as energy programs will get $4.1 billion (huge surprise), while 141 programs that primarily help the poor, children, the elderly, veterans and the handicapped will see their money drastically cut or eliminated. The cuts are needed to reduce a deficit caused, in part, by the war and to support the continuation of the war. They are also to pay for damage from the devastating hurricanes.
The soldiers who risk their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq do so with heroism and grit. The soldiers and their families are making brave and sometimes horrific sacrifices. Why should the same socioeconomic group that makes up the bulk of the fighting force also sacrifice the most financially? Some of us do not believe that we should have invaded Iraq, some of us do. What we all can agree upon is that the cost of the war should not trickle down to those who are fighting and their families. The cost of hurricane rebuilding should not cut programs that will help those most effected by the hurricanes.
Why is this happening?
Why are programs for the poor cut to pay for a war and storm damage that has benefited the wealthy oil companies and defense contractors? The money that's cut will go to wealthy cotractors hired to rebuild or Haliburton KBR. Huge, sometimes record profits for them, while killing and maiming the poor and middle class soldiers and causing emotional and financial hardship for their families is terrible.
A report, entitled “Shifty Tax Cuts: How They Move the Tax Burden off the Rich and onto Everyone Else,” from United for a Fair Economy (UFE) indicates that between 2002 and 2004, the Bush tax cuts to the top 1% of US income earners redirected billions of dollars in revenue that could have eliminated virtually all of the budget shortfalls in every state.
These tax cuts and our government's incestuous relationship with large corporations are the reasons why.
The report identifies five main areas of shifting tax burden:
FEDERAL TO STATE — a 15% shift in tax burden between 2000 and 2003.
PROGRESSIVE TO REGRESSIVE — at the federal level, a 17% decline in the share of revenue from progressive taxes and a 135% increase in the share of revenue from regressive taxes.
WEALTH TO WORK — A tax cut on unearned income — such as inheritance or investment — of between 31% and 79%, but a tax hike on work income of 25% since 1980
CORPORATIONS TO INDIVIDUALS — a 67% drop in the share of federal revenues contributed by corporations and a 17% rise in individuals’ share.
CURRENT TAXPAYERS TO FUTURE GENERATIONS — record deficits that shift the tax burden to our children and grandchildren
Corporate welfare is not a valid reason for the poor and middle class to have to shoulder the financial burdon in same war that they are making all of the physical sacrifices.
The Military Industrial Complex must not be allowed to continue to overshadow the citizens of this country.
Wealthy corporations should not supplant the working class and poor in importance to our Federal government.
Posted by Andre M. Hernandez at February 6, 2006 11:55 AM
February 06, 2006
The Poor Get Poorer
The President’s 2007 budget proposes $2.7 trillion in spending neccessary to increase defense and homeland security. There is $18 billion for rebuilding from the hurricanes that devestated the poor in the Gulf Coast region. Other programs such as energy programs will get $4.1 billion (huge surprise), while 141 programs that primarily help the poor, children, the elderly, veterans and the handicapped will see their money drastically cut or eliminated. The cuts are needed to reduce a deficit caused, in part, by the war and to support the continuation of the war. They are also to pay for damage from the devastating hurricanes.
The soldiers who risk their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq do so with heroism and grit. The soldiers and their families are making brave and sometimes horrific sacrifices. Why should the same socioeconomic group that makes up the bulk of the fighting force also sacrifice the most financially? Some of us do not believe that we should have invaded Iraq, some of us do. What we all can agree upon is that the cost of the war should not trickle down to those who are fighting and their families. The cost of hurricane rebuilding should not cut programs that will help those most effected by the hurricanes.
Why is this happening?
Why are programs for the poor cut to pay for a war and storm damage that has benefited the wealthy oil companies and defense contractors? The money that's cut will go to wealthy cotractors hired to rebuild or Haliburton KBR. Huge, sometimes record profits for them, while killing and maiming the poor and middle class soldiers and causing emotional and financial hardship for their families is terrible.
A report, entitled “Shifty Tax Cuts: How They Move the Tax Burden off the Rich and onto Everyone Else,” from United for a Fair Economy (UFE) indicates that between 2002 and 2004, the Bush tax cuts to the top 1% of US income earners redirected billions of dollars in revenue that could have eliminated virtually all of the budget shortfalls in every state.
These tax cuts and our government's incestuous relationship with large corporations are the reasons why.
The report identifies five main areas of shifting tax burden:
FEDERAL TO STATE — a 15% shift in tax burden between 2000 and 2003.
PROGRESSIVE TO REGRESSIVE — at the federal level, a 17% decline in the share of revenue from progressive taxes and a 135% increase in the share of revenue from regressive taxes.
WEALTH TO WORK — A tax cut on unearned income — such as inheritance or investment — of between 31% and 79%, but a tax hike on work income of 25% since 1980
CORPORATIONS TO INDIVIDUALS — a 67% drop in the share of federal revenues contributed by corporations and a 17% rise in individuals’ share.
CURRENT TAXPAYERS TO FUTURE GENERATIONS — record deficits that shift the tax burden to our children and grandchildren
Corporate welfare is not a valid reason for the poor and middle class to have to shoulder the financial burdon in same war that they are making all of the physical sacrifices.
The Military Industrial Complex must not be allowed to continue to overshadow the citizens of this country.
Wealthy corporations should not supplant the working class and poor in importance to our Federal government.
Posted by Andre M. Hernandez at February 6, 2006 11:55 AM
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