U.S. on the rocks

Here's a thoughtful view of how low the Republican "corporatocracy" has dragged us.

From Jane Smiley's post on the Huffington Post, third paragraph.

We are a country that can no longer pay our bills, no longer wage an effective military action, and no longer protect our citizens from disaster. And it doesn't matter what fiscal responsibility individuals show, what bravery individual soldiers show, or what generosity individual Americans show. As a nation-as a geopolitical entity-we have been stripped of all of our superpowers and many of our powers, and it has been done quickly and efficiently, in the name of blind patriotism, by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and their neocon advisors....

From the second paragraph from the bottom:

...A decent place to live is one where a large employed middle class can most of the time afford to house, feed, educate, and care for their children, who are, in the regular course of events, safe. Canada is a decent place to live. The US is divided largely between those who live in indecent ghost-towns that have been gutted by the evaporation of jobs and those who live in indecent affluent communities that they can barely afford but are terrified to leave. When the corporatocracy paid the Reagan revolutionaries to roll back any and all regulations so that they could do every short-sighted and selfish thing they wanted to, they started us down the road to this. ...

Link

Not only are we busted in the big picture, but locally most of our communities can no longer afford to provide many basic services. Funding schools, largely supported by outrageously high property taxes, is helping to break the back of the middle class, especially senior citizens.

Reagan and the Bushes have managed to wreck the place, top to bottom.

Read Jane Smiley's post.

They don't count our votes

In case all the latest polls showing Bush's loss of popularity have deluded anyone into thinking we have a chance of wining either or both houses and also a chance of retaking the White House, I remind you that we will win nothing unless we address the issue of vote fraud.

Here's a post about the Ohio votes very much worth looking closely at:

"Democracy Breakin': Ohio's Electric Boogaloo
More on Ohio's Staggeringly Impossible '05 Results"

Found on Brad Blog, includes some disturbing information on vote count strangeness in Ohio.

Thanks to The Sideshow

Keeping our heads in the sand on this issue will inevitably ensure the Republican vote fraud machine will be left to operate smoothly in future elections.

Murtha takes no shit from Cheney

Here's a part of Murtha's speech you don't want to miss. From the NYT

...Mr. Murtha, a 73-year-old Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam combat, lashed back at Vice President Dick Cheney, who in a speech to a conservative group on Wednesday night condemned critics of the Iraq war. "The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," Mr. Cheney said in an address to the group, Frontiers of Freedom, in Washington.

Mr. Murtha was disdainful of the vice president's remarks, saying that "people with five deferments" had no right to make such remarks. Mr. Cheney, like millions of other young men of the era, avoided military service during the Vietnam war....

Link

Link to Murtha's web site


The Times just can't print negatives about Cheney without softening the blow. What does this crack -- "like millions of other young men of the era, avoided military service during the Vietnam war.." -- add to the article?

When mentioning Cheney they can't help themselves; they must slide in the obligatory shuffles and bows.

Rumbling blunders

Lately, Cheney is taking a much deserved hammering in the press. One poll has his approval rating at 19%. I thought more Americans would be more enthusiastic about legal torture and that his position as national oracle was secure. Maybe not.

I also always thought there wasn’t much to Cheney. That he was truly an empty suit who had mastered the art of slow talking deeply, thus giving every utterance the weight of bedrock. His success is the triumph of form over content. His product: political lies and gibberish and world domination delusions rumbled down to us as if from Mount Sinai.

Not only is Cheney being revealed as a liar and an advocate of torture as defense policy, but more and more writers are discovering Cheney’s lengthy list of incompetent moves.

Here’s a year old profile, The Curse of Dick Cheney, from the Rolling Stone, which gives a good account of the real rodent squeak behind the contrived rumble of gravitas.

Here's a sample from near the end:

Those who have known him over the years remain astounded by what they describe as his almost autistic indifference to the thoughts and feelings of others. "He has the least interest in human beings of anyone I have ever met," says John Perry Barlow, his former supporter. Cheney's freshman-year roommate, Steve Billings, agrees: "If I could ask Dick one question, I'd ask him how he could be so unempathetic."

Enjoy it all here.

New New Jersey Senator?

In January newly elected New Jersey Governor John Corzine gets to appoint someone to finish his term in the Senate. The list of possible appointees so far circulated is pretty bland. Here's another suggestion.

Jon Corzine needs to appoint Bruce Springsteen to the United States Senate.

Crazy? Not any crazier than a violent action-flick actor from Austria with steroid use and groping allegations who can't even properly pronounce the name of his home state getting elected as its governor (a job with a lot more responsibility than a senator, by the way). Or not any crazier than electing a retired pro wrestler to the statehouse. And not any crazier than another rock star from across the pond coming within an eyelash of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Read the whole article here, Link.

via Atrios

Child molester

All you need to know about Alito is contained in the post below from T Bogg.

Mmmmmmm...strip searches.

Clarence Thomas to be joined by man after his own heart.

In Doe v. Groody, Alito agued that police officers had not violated constitutional rights when they strip searched a mother and her ten-year-old daughter while carrying out a search warrant that authorized only the search of a man and his home. [Doe v. Groody, 2004]

Coupled with his finding that a woman's uterus is something for her husband to have and to hold, I'd say he has some issues when it comes to non-PenisAmericans.

Follow the link to T Bogg to get a link to the case.

via Atrios

More Cheney

Cheney fans will not want to miss this. Apparently he just can't help himself. He just has to do the wrong thing.

Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel
By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources. ...

Link

Profiteers

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp. posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion Thursday, the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from soaring oil and gas prices.

Record profits for Big Oil at a time when consumers are paying sky-high prices for gasoline have brought calls for a windfall profits tax or other penalties on oil companies.

Link

Big bonuses for the boys at the top are sure to follow, as are big contributions (another word for kickbacks) to the Bush/Cheney gang who make it all possible.

The Chairman

Cheney wants to protect the right of the CIA to torture detainees, according to this NYT article,“White House Is Seeking Exception in Detainee Abuse Ban”.

Last weekend I read two reviews of a new Mao biography, Mao: The Unknown Story, one in the NYT book review and a far better one in The New York Review of Books, (You have to buy the issue or buy the article on line). Both reviews presented a Mao who had little real talents beyond a keen sense of which way the wind was blowing and how to change direction to go with it, and an ability to keep his head down and navigate upward through the bureaucracy. He also excelled at sadistic torture and had the willingness to slaughter rivals, real and imagined. The NYB reviewer cited his laziness (He traveled the Long March carried, comfortably reclining) and his apparent complete lack of empathy for others. He was willing to kill millions of his own people to advance his agenda.

While reading the reviews I was reminded of Cheney and to a lesser degree Bush and reminded also of how rare it is for gifted and compassionate individuals to gain political power. Mostly, we are stuck with twisted, Cheney like mediocrities who come to power by avoiding risk, by shuffling minutiae, by scheming in the shadows and by opportunistically attaching to the coattails of rising stars. Once arrived their bitterness (at choosing to eat so much shit to get there) and insecurity cause them to take offense at the smallest slights, and then to work single mindedly, not for the benefit of the governed, but instead to carry out vengeful schemes concocted in the darkness of long nights making lists of enemies. Election victory is about the opportunity to get even.

Damn right Cheney wants torture to be legal and not just for foreigners either.

Subtle curve

Josh Marshall suggests articles, such as the LA Times article I linked in an earlier post, might be part of an overall White House campaign to move Plame blame to Libby as the soldier designated to absorb most of the impact, sparing Rove and possibly Bush and Cheney the worst.

Marshall has a good eye for secret curves, so it’s wise to pay attention.

DeLay

If you're looking for coverage of the Delay trial, the place to go is Majikthis. She's on the scene with camera.

Suck up or else

In case you didn't know what a vindictive, small minded, obsessive, psycho nutcase operation, the office of the Vice President is, here's a sample from the LA Times, via Talk Left.

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.

Link

The rest of the article gives even more details.

(It's exactly what we imagined it to be.)

Imperial delusions

It has always been clear that the long term Cheney plan was to gain control, by any means, of the world’s energy resources, not for your benefit, or mine, as they would have us believe, but solely for the benefit of the American elites.

As things unravel, details of their imperialistic, delusional schemes come tumbling out.

Here (Billmon) and here (Billmon's source).

Once you grasp the goal, the guiding principle that only they should control vital resources, all the pieces fit smoothly into place.

More Plame

Eric Alterman keeps his eye on the ball.

...don’t forget what this is really about: it’s about a conspiracy to defraud the American public into war and destroy the reputation of a public servant who tried to warn us—even at the cost of endangering the lives of loyal CIA agents. Everyone involved is guilty of that and it’s worse than anything of which Keller and Sulzberger can be even remotely accused....

link

To keep up with Plame events check The Raw Story

Plame background

This excellent post, "Why revealing a NOC matters" Gilliard's News Blog makes it very clear how serious the outing of Plame was.

Plame and whigs

There’s a lot going on now behind the well reported new grand jury appearances of Judy Miller and Rove. One story is about a rumored split in the White House between the Rove group and another headed by Andrew Card. There is also speculation that the investigation is leading to, or includes, activities of the White House Iraq Group (whig), which marketed the Iraq war to the media and public with a series of knowingly and carefully concocted lies. This group includes all the biggies that the those of us on the left would so like to see publicly disgraced.

Here’s some links to the good stuff: Digby, Josh Marshall and America Blog

And for a vicious portrait of Card go to Billmon. Here’s how it starts:

If Howard Fineman is right, and Andrew Card really is making a move to topple Karl Rove, then this country could be in a heap of trouble. Rove, at least, is smart, even if it is a feral, devious brand of intelligence. Card, on the other hand, is as dense as a truck load of gravel -- a half-full truck load of gravel.

Maybe the plutocrats in the superstar media will have an epiphany and the whole sordid tale will be hung out on the line for all to see. Maybe there will be some indictments of some of the major players. But I’m not counting on it. These guys will waltz it away like they did with Iran Contra and the same players will either return with new titles or continue to engineer things from the Cheney bunker.

You don’t need a History PhD to know that once in power fascists are difficult to dislodge. Neither indictments, nor unrecorded votes will get the job done.

It will take true desperation, lost homes, lost access to healthcare and the sick and dieing children that follow to piss off the working public enough to put enough squeeze on the cowardly Democrats (who will do anything to hang on to their privileges) to throw the Bush gang out; the same level of nothing to lose desperation that fed the early labor movements, for example.

We have a long way down to go and nothing is going to happen until we get there. It would have been a lot easier to deal with the coup in 2000 when the thugs on the ground were a pink cheeked, soft handed, squishy little mob of Delay recruited congressional aides sent down to stop the recount in Miami.

Go read Billmon

Caged

From "A Less Fasionable War"

"...Thirty years ago Gore Vidal noted that “roughly 80% of police work in the United States has to do with the regulation of our private morals…controlling what we drink, eat, smoke, put into our veins…with whom and how we have sex or gamble.” Then there were roughly 250,000 prisoners in the nation. Today there is more than 2 million, with another million in county jails awaiting trial or sentencing, and another roughly 3 million under “correctional supervision” on probation or parole. The total national cost of incarceration then was $4 billion annually; today it’s $64 billion, with another $20 billion in federal money and $22-24 billion in money from state governments earmarked for waging the so-called “War on Drugs.” Nationally, around 60% or more of these prisoners are drug criminals. Yet, throughout all this time and expense there has not been the slightest decrease in either drug use or supply.

And amidst all the talk of race as a factor in the Katrina disaster let us not forget a bigger disaster: One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 is in prison compared to 1 in 180 White men. Despite African Americans comprising only 12% of the total population, in five states, including Illinois, the ratio of Black to White prisoners is 13 to 1. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that Blacks comprise 56.7% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons while Whites comprise only 23.3% (in my Illinois prison—one of 28 in the State—of the 1,076 inmates, 689 were Black, 251 were White, and 123 were Latino). Based upon these numbers, a full 30% of African-Americans will see time in prison during their life, compared with only 5% of White Americans, even though White drug users outnumber Blacks by a five-to-one margin....

Link

Via 3 Quarks Daily

Plame game

I’ve been quiet for a couple of days because I’ve been transfixed by the latest Plame Gate developments and feeling a little stirring of hope. If I did post, anything I would have to say would boil down to writing "I hope they nail these bastards" over and over again.

Josh Marshall and America Blog are offering the best coverage of the Fitzgerald investigation, in my opinion. Both, compared to me at least, are insiders receiving and passing on information otherwise not available to others. Kos is close behind. So, if you want to keep up with developments as they unfold visit their sites. On this subject, if it hasn’t been posted on their sites, it isn’t happening. When it comes to reliability, Marshall is especially cautious, or responsible and trustworthy, depending on how you look at it. The bolder America Blog might be a step or two ahead of everyone.

As for bird flu, I have joined the stampede and purchased and stashed Tamiflu and have urged my daughter to do the same. It's not a perfect solution, but it is a small edge. My wife got prescriptions for both of us from our family doctor.

Bird flu

Deadly 1918 Epidemic Linked to Bird Flu, Scientists Say

Published: October 5, 2005
Two teams of federal and university scientists announced today that they had resurrected the 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, and had found that unlike the viruses that caused more recent flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the 1918 virus was actually a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.

From the NYT, Link

What was so special about the 1918 flu epidemic? It killed between 20 and 40 million people.

It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

For a complete introduction, go here Link

Fascist dream 2

From the AP: "Bush Considers Military Role in Flu Fight"

...Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, called the president's suggestion an "extraordinarily draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu, and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.

"The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said. ...

AP Link

(Via AMERICABlog.com)

Soldiers everywhere. That's the answer.