Not to say "I told you so" or anything, but once again I feel vindicated.
The news media is abuzz about Scott McClellan's new book in which Bush's former spokesman and close friend takes aim at the plethora of Bush lies and double-speak.
Specific talk about McClellan's book ("What Happened," officially set for release on Monday even though every journalist in the country seems to have already read it) in the latest media frenzy focuses on the Valerie Plame affair (wherein Valerie was "outed" as a CIA operative by a White House set on revenge over the Nigerian yellowcake lie) and the disingenuous spin given the media to justify the war in Iraq.
I kinda expected this, you see.
Not to say I'm clairvoyant, but I spotted these lies as outright fabrications from the get-go.
So, obviously, did Scott . . . and his discomfort at trying to cut-and-paste over the lies and deceptions of a White House chock full of corruption was so palpable that I even blogged about it back in April of 2006 -- not long before Scott decided to call it quits and try to redeem his soul, if not his reputation.
So, after much reflection (and, no doubt, a nice hefty 'advance' for his new book) Scott has added his to the long and raucous list of former-insiders calling the Bush kettle black.
It's about time, frankly.
I'm not sure if it's too late for McClellan to salvage his reputation, to say nothing of his Bush White House complicity, but it's not too late for me to say :
Little in life is as precious as a citizen's right to vote, and yet there are plenty of Americans who apparently think that squandering that precious right is just dandy. Plenty of my countrymen are willing to cast a vote for a candidate or cause, even when it's ultimately against the best interest of their country or themselves.
The right to vote is, apparently, not a sacred trust for some.
In the last election cycle and the one before that, plenty of people voted against their own socio-economic best interests, for instance, when the issue of gay marriage blinded them to the fact that Bush neo-conservatives were plotting to further take their jobs and ship them overseas.
Okay, they said. Take this job and ship it, just don't let those damned queers desecrate the holy marriage bond.
Okay, said Bush and the neocons. No gay marriage. You got it. Now, would you rather that job of yours sent to China or Indonnesia.
China was apparently the preferred destination of most voters, since they were accustomed to seeing that Made in China label on everything their already-diminished paycheck could buy at WalMart.
Bush and the neocons didn't invent this game, mind you. The previous Republican administration did pretty well at sending jobs over borders. Bill Clinton (ah... you thought he was a Democrat, didn't ya?) was a big-time promoter of "free trade," and NAFTA was his legacy.
Free trade, now there's a cryptic little phrase for sending your jobs to someone else while you're supposed to feel good about it. I need to write a blog about free trade, but back to my topic here: revenge voting.
Those North Carolina voters who sought revenge on Democrats over that gay marriage thing got what they wanted: a Republican administration deadset against gay marriage but also hellbent on saving the "Walls" a lot of money. Wall Street and WalMart loved the gay marriage issue.
People, blinded by a short-term, hot-button issue, voted against their own best interests and were glad to do it. It's called revenge voting. It's persuaded lots of erstwhile rational people to cast some singularly irrational votes.
Enter Barack and Hillary and the Democratic Party race for the White House.
No small number of Hillary voters are hopping mad. No small number of them are women. They don't like Barack and they're not shy about saying it. There's no way, they say, they'll vote for Barack because he's busy stealing votes from those uppity well-educated whites, young people and those ungrateful black voters who should feel obliged to vote for Hillary.
They'd rather vote for John McCain, they say. They'll teach those damned liberal Democrats a lesson, they say. Another Bush term will teach 'em to piss off a bunch of older white women. They'll cast another round of revenge votes.
Good god. What's WRONG with these people? What's wrong with American voters?
What IS it about us that we'll vote for the devil that'll do us in, rather than vote for someone who's actually got our better long-term interests at heart? Are we so clueless in this country that we've lost focus on the big picture?
Are we this mired in myopic politics?
A Hillary voter who votes for John McCain is doomed to regret her vote as surely as 40-percent of those voters who gave George Bush the nod last-time-around have lived to regret that vote.
Wise up, people. ANY Democrat would be better than ANY Neocon, no matter how pleasant-looking and benign he may look in his nicely-combed white hair and cheshire-cat grin.
We can't afford four more years of warmongers. We can't afford four more years of American prestige being sacrificed on the altar of rich-guy vanity. We can't afford a hundred more years of Iraq civil-war meddling... either in terms of money or our soldiers. We can't afford more "unitary" executives spying on us, toying with our civil rights, snooping in our private lives and ignoring the Constitution. We don't need more neocon Supreme Court appointees. We don't need more Alberto Gonzales' or Kevin Martins or Condi Rices. We cannot afford four more years of Bush-Lite.
Forget revenge. Act with your head, not your anger. Do otherwise and you'll live to regret it. Trust me. You'll really, really regret it.
The Republican party has announced a new campaign slogan for this year's electoral season.
It'll be officially announced at the RNC convention in Minneapolis in September but they're giving us a sneak peak at it now.
The operative word of the motto is "change." Change, you see, is the catch-word this year. Americans are sick and tired of the direction our country is headed.... ... or, rather, has gone. They want change.
Barack adopted the word and it was a hit. Hillary followed soon after. Not wanting to be left behind, the Republican National Committee hired a slick Fifth Avenue advertising agency to come up with a catchy slogan with "change" in the mix.
Those smarty-pants advertising guys thought about it and said "You know boys, Americans don't want just ANY change. What they really only want is a change that they're gonna like... a change they deserve."
And so was born the slogan: "The Change You Deserve"
Hmmm. I wonder if these boys maybe should've done a little more focus-group testing. I mean, think about it.
The word "change," has more than one meaning. Change can mean altering a situation from bad to good . . . but . . . change can also be the meager left-overs from what once was real money.
Buy an empty-calories Big Mac and after shelling out your five-spot, you might hear the underpaid counter clerk say "Here's your change, sir."
Spend your hard-earned dollar and all that's left is the change. The change you got comin' to you.
Vote for a Republican and the oil giants will clean house. Vote for John McCain and more jobs get sent overseas. Wall Street makes billions. WalMart makes billions. You, however, are left holding the change. And it ain't much.
It's an appropos slogan, now that I think about it. Vote Republican and you WILL get change, by golly.
It'll be the change you deserve. You poor deserving bastard.
Traveling, as I have, over the past few weeks, I've missed out on much of the revelatory news and current events that are my wont. I couldn't miss the news from China, though. An earthquake, a big one, shook China and the numbers are still coming in.
NPR last night presented a heart-wrenching segment about a particular Chinese couple who lost their parents and 2-year-old to the earthquake. The couple's tragedy was made all the more real by the audio of their lament.
I can relate.
First, my mother's death makes me feel their pain. The memory of having lost my mom less than a month ago is fresh in my mind.
Then, too, as an Alaskan I'm constantly aware of earthquake potential. It always lurks in my subconsciousness. Losing homes, streets . . . entire cities . . . is rough. Alaskans know this.
Looking at homes, as I have over the past few weeks, makes me mindful of what it means to have -- or not -- a place of refuge from the world. The Chinese of Sichuan know it all, right now.
I've been more than critical of China, as a rule. I don't hold their leadership in very high regard; I consider them more than slightly xenophobic; many Chinese businesses are aggressively opportunistic; China's foreign policy is shameful, especially regarding Tibet and Darfur; Chinese knock-offs and their cavalier national attitude towards intellectual property rights is criminal; their treatment of political dissidents makes even Stalin's Gulag look benign . . . in short, China needs to grow up and accept a mantel of responsibility if it wants to be accepted as a responsible partner in the world community.
China, as a country, is at once an object of my disdain while simultaneously the people of Sichuan have my heartfelt sympathies.
China can't have it both ways for long, though. Chinese who are victims of their government and are imprisoned for speaking out are much like those unwitting victims of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake: they are deserving of support from the west.
The Chinese leadership and those ultra-nationalists who attack Korean protesters for supporting Tibetan rights, for instance, or who imprison protesters for speaking anything "unpatriotic" deserve utter and sustained condemnation. Condemnation from me and anyone who loves fair play and free speech.
My heart cries for those in pain. My heart is pained by the Chinese government and Chinese ultra-nationalists.
I know them both. My country has them, too. Earthquakes and nationalistic idiots and corrupt governments and family deaths.
What do soaring oil prices, world-wide food riots, the sub-prime mortgage mess, inflated insurance rates, corporate rip-off scandals and the dot-com bubble have in common?
Wall Street.
Well actually, the Wall Street speculator.
Speculators. Investors. PWM's. People with money. People with money seeking a place to invest that money.
I'm sure you've heard the expression "It takes money to make money," but less commonly heard is the corollary that money always seeks a home. A home paying the highest return, that is.
There's lots of money out there, and it doesn't belong to you or me. It's investment money.
It's money belonging to other guys. Institutions, insurance companies, lots and lots of rich people. Even Alaskans -- through the Permanant Fund investment board -- have piece of this action. Lots of people have money and they want that money bringing back the best return possible, whatever it takes.
During the Clinton years, lots of that money went into dot-com stocks. When the dot-com bubble burst, those PWM's sought somewhere else to maximize their returns. Energy stocks was one place.. Lots of that dot-com money went into energy conglomerates. Enron, for one.
Telecommunications (WorldCom) was another. Insurance stocks was another.
Then things happened that dampened enthusiasm for insurance investing. Hurricane Katrina, for one. Floods. Tornadoes. Things that require paying OUT money, not making more of it.
Then those PWM's discovered sub-prime. Sub-prime loans were the ticket: package worthless loans on inflated properties and you could make a bundle.
They did, until the bubble burst.
Seeking a new place to make the next fast buck, money discovered the next big thing in the commodity market. Oil was an obvious choice. Speculate on oil and you could get rich. Just by speculating on oil futures, you could make money. Spook the oil market with rumors or inuendo and you could create a self-fulfilling prophecy that oil prices would soar and you could make a killing.
Make agricultural commodities an adjunct to oil and you could make a killing there, as well. Turn food into oil. Turn corn into ethanol. Make food an oil-like commodity. Speculate on corn. Peanuts. Soybeans. Rice.
The result: food prices soar. The price of rice increases 80% almost overnight. Corn futures double. Futures traders make a killing; the rest of the world goes hungry.
Riots in Indonnesia and Kazhastan. Vietnam ceases rice exports. Costco and Sam's Club start rationing rice purchases. Hoarding, stockpiling, rationing.
Capitalism gone beserk. See where this is going?
So long as unfettered corporate interests have their unfettered way, this crap will continue until everything is priced out of reach of everyone except those f*ckhead PWM's with all the money.
This is the exact scenario Karl Marx witnessed a little over a century ago when he predicted riots and chaos in the streets. Capitalism, unchecked (as has happened under six years of total Republican control and almost eight years under this administration) is sending us into the arms of another worldwide rebellion.
The new rebellions may not come labeled as "communist" this time around, but the threat to international tranquility will be just as real. The threat of terrorism will be real and America will clearly be a target.
The chickens, as someone widely quoted in recent news has said, will come home to roost.
George Bush (and George the Third: aka John Sidney McCain III) must not be allowed to continue down this path. America can't stand it. The world can't stand it. You can't afford it.
Unless, that is, you are a PWM. If you have lots and lots of money, then ignore what I just said.
Speculate away. $5 gas won't be a problem if you got tons of money. Until . . that is, until the real, BIG, bubble bursts.
I once mentioned to my mother that I couldn't imagine life as an orphan. It must, I said, be awful to be a motherless child.
It is.
For the first time in my life, I'm now officially an orphan. For the first time in my life, I'm now very much a motherless child....
... and you know what? It sucks.
In the past twenty-four hours, I have cried more tears of pain than I've cried in my entire life. The loss of my friend Pete didn't even register on this scale.
In case you didn't know, my mother died on Thursday evening.
My mother, bless her heart, did everything with her children foremost in her mind. She always thought of her children's welfare ahead of her own. I think she even managed to time her passing with me, in particular, in mind.
After several days of worsening health, my mother probably realized that her long-term prognosis was bad, so rather than wait 'til I was long-ago and far-away, she managed to die with me by her side and holding her hand.
Here's how that went:
My brother and my sister had been taking turns staying the night in mom's hospital room. Thursday night was my turn. After most everyone had left for the day, only my niece and I remained in the room with mom and after some silence, Vicki suggested watching Wheel of Fortune. My mother was alert for most of the program but as it ended, her eyelids slowly grew lower and heavier, her breathing less frequent and more labored, her heartbeat slowing enough to tigger alarms at the nurses' station.
After two such episodes, her functions stopped and she slipped into silence, with me still stroking her hair and holding her hand. I think she knew how much love surrounded her and was comforted by our presence.
I come from a rather large family. With three brothers and three sisters, I've always been the most unmarried and available son to care for my mother. It was a responsibility that didn't always make my life easy but it certainly gave me a connection to my mother unlike any of my siblings.
This, of course, made my mother's death all the more profound for me. My sense of loss is overwhelming. For the first time in my life, I'm rudderless. I have lost my mom.
The person in this world who loved me most is gone. The person I loved most in this world has left me.
I now am that orphan that I spoke to mom about. I now am a motherless child.
As some of you already know, spring is a busy season for me.
It's when I start gearing up for another summer season doing what I do. That inevitably entails a trip to Seattle to buy, box and load supplies for the entire summer season.
So... I was just started to Seattle for my ritual spring trip when I got a call from an ex-boyfriend who was (well, "is") house-hunting in the Pacific Northwest.
We met in Portland and we've been doing a combination Seattle business trip (for me) and real-estate shopping trip for him (well, and me, too, really.)
Things were going slowly -- but at least progressing -- until today (the 16th) when I got a call from my sister advising me that my mom is once again in the hospital and critically ill.
I mean "critically" ill.
My oldest sister even suggested mom might be "checking out" (her exact words) soon.
At first I thought she meant she was getting better and would be checking out of the hospital when I received a clarification from another sister saying that "checking out" was a metaphor for, well, NOT checking out of the hospital in one piece.
Horrified, I dropped all my plans today and have started an accelerated road trip to Iowa. Having left eastern Washington at 2 PM, I'm over-nighting in Missoula, Montana and hope to make it to (at least) Casper, Wyoming by Thursday night and then on to Omaha by Friday afternoon when I'll pick up my sister who's flying in from California's Central Valley.
This is all a nightmarish change from PlanA to B to C -- which, frankly, isn't anything new to me -- but the situation sounds dire and I don't know how this will play out.
Since I've been spending most of my time in the past two weeks searching for properties and the rest of that time actually driving to and looking at property, my blogs and email correspondence have languished.
Sorry about that.
Blogging has been something of a emotional venting process for me and not having ready access to the news and being unable to voice my frustrations has proven to be a real challenge.
I hope to get some semblance of order restored soon but in the meantime, my frustration factor continues to grow.
That cry of anguish you hear wafting across the northern rockies and plains is likely me.
This is just a quick note to explain the lack of anything happening on my page for the past few days.
First, as some of you know but apparently many others don't, I'm on the road for the next few weeks. I flew to Portland earlier this week and have been busy catching up with friends and now am traveling. I unexpectedly ended up spending the night in Astoria (Oregon) last night and will be traveling up to Long Beach (WA) and then to Hoquiam, Wash. for the weekend. Then on to Seattle.
When I travel, not only do I find it harder to write my own blogs but reading and commenting on everybody else's is nearly impossible. Time and the sparsity of internet connections worth a damn conspire against my ability to keep in touch with y'all.
Once I find a good motel with an internet connection and also have the time, I have some things that deserve a good blog entry or two . . . but for now, commenting here is pointless, since once I start blogging again, I'll delete this puppy.
Who knew baseball could be so problematic for a troubled President?
Last year, George Bush missed the ceremonial "first pitch" of the season because he was "busy."
We know how busy he was -- creating, as he was, new Signing Statements to circumvent laws he didn't like... devising new and clever ways of extending Tours of Duty for active, reserve and National Guard soldiers so he could "surge" in Iraq ... consulting Kevin Martin to further the cause of corporate media consolidation through looser FCC rules ... devising amnesty plans for telecommunications companies who were in hot water over their collusion in the FBI / NSA illegal wiretapping scheme .... you know, stuff like that.
Hey, he's a busy man.
In truth, as the Washington Post sagely observed, the real reason was that his war wasn't going well. Comparing Bush's first-pitch absence to that of Nixon, at a time when his muddled war had also destroyed his popularity ratings, the similarities are eery:
Like Bush today, Nixon had meetings that afternoon.
He was in trouble.
Polls showed his approval ratings had dropped to a new low. A majority of Americans felt he wasn't being truthful about an unpopular war.
A massacre of civilians by U.S. troops had inflamed opposition to the conflict. The president called the atrocity an aberration, lauding U.S. soldiers for their courage and sacrifice and urging the country to support them.
Democrats wanted a complete military withdrawal, but the president refused to set a timetable. To do so, he said, would embolden the enemy and undermine U.S. commanders in the field.
So ... here we are a year later and once again Bush was invited to throw the first pitch, this time at the Washington National's new stadium and once again fate has intervened to complicate things.
The announced catcher for that first pitch that the whole world would be watching tonight was .... oops! ... Paul LoDuca.
You know, the same Paul LoDuca who was mentioned 30-odd times in the Mitchell steroids-and-drug-abuse-report scandal -- the report that had baseball stars lined up in front of Congress like a gang of ex-cons defending a crime spree?
Bush -- who conveniently looked the other way when steroids were part of his Texas Rangers corporate structure -- decided that, as President, he'd make fighting drug use a major facet of his administration. Image the shrieks of horror in the halls of the White House when they learned that "Mr. President" would be throwing that pitch to "Mr. Steroids."
A pitch from one crminal suspect to another! Can't be having that! It might remind fans of all the hypocrisy of an administration swimming in hypocrisy.
How's this for symbolism, then? :: The ceremonial first pitch was thrown by a pitcher who can't pitch to a catcher who can't catch. I swear, Hollywood writers couldn't even make this stuff up.
Is this the height of baseball irony or what? Gawd, you gotta love this country.
(And yes, I mean politics, guys.... not some veiled reference to sexual orientation.)
If I asked you to name a sitting U.S. Senator who is also a Republican, a handsome grey-haired man, keenly articulate, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and famous for his "straight talk," who would you answer?
Wait.
Don't answer that yet.
This straight-talker is also critical of the Republican Congress' failure to hold George Bush to account, highly critical of the Iraq War -- both in its pretext and in its execution -- and is retiring at the end of this term.
Oh . . .
and he isn't running for President....
so the answer is clearly NOT John McCain.
It's Chuck Hagel.
The Nebraska Senator appeared last night as part of a remarkable "double header" on PBS's Charlie Rose.
So good was this hour of television that even as addicted a news junkie as I forwent my dose of nightly local news to stay glued to my PBS station.
Hagel was brutal in his assessment of Congress' abject failures under GOP control and even had some uncommonly nice things to say about a Democrat -- namely Barack Obama -- as a successor to Bush.
If Chuck Hagel ran for President, he could probably have a bus called the "Straight Talk Express," and not have the wheels come immediately off.
For a politician, he really is a straight shooter.
But . . . as heady as that segment was, nothing could come close to the 12-minute exchange Charlie Rose had with political observer and sometimes-economics commentator Michael Kinsley, who condensed the economic plight of America into one of the most concise, cutting summations I've ever heard from anyone in the past ten years.
He told it straight-up and pulled no punches.
It was amazing to hear.
Charlie invited him for a reprise appearance after reading the article he wrote for yesterday's Time magazine (see the article below) and this guy has nailed it. The current economic mess is entirely self-inflicted... and mostly borne of a Congress unwilling to do its job and a President incapable of doing his.
After hearing weeks and months of political gobbledy-gook, hedging and hemming and hawing and nauseating self-serving sputum, this hour of straight talk was enough to restore my faith in mankind.
Well, it was . . . until I later saw ABC's Nightline segment about how mankind has littered the central Pacific with 300 million TONS of plastic waste and debris that has, probably, irreversibly polluted a section of the ocean the size of twenty Texases.
I'm back to being the outraged cynic I was before that 10 o'clock hour.
We don't need a conversation about race. At least not now. What we need is a conversation about money.
It becomes clearer by the day that this is not your grandmother's--or even Barack Obama's grandmother's--economic downturn.
This time we start with a huge government deficit and record private debt, all run up when times were good and we should have been storing up acorns.
This is one that begins with people losing their homes, which is usually the last act of the drama.
This is one that is bringing back stagflation--that poisonous combination of economic slowdown and eroding currency we cured at a terrible cost back in 1981.
When that red phone rings in the middle of the night, it probably won't be the National Security Adviser saying Osama bin Laden has struck again. It will be the Treasury Secretary reporting that markets have opened in the Far East and the dollar has become worthless.
The three remaining candidates have finally given speeches that addressed the economic crisis. But the presidential campaign is bouncing into its second year inside a hermetic bubble where the discussion is mainly about itself. Who cares about the economy when there is the allocation of superdelegates to worry about?
John McCain has manfully admitted that he doesn't know much about economics. Typically, this comment has been analyzed in terms of its effect on the campaign, not in terms of what it might mean to have a President who doesn't know much about economics. It has become an occasion for the popular Washington game Who Will His/Her Advisers Be? In a speech on March 25, McCain declared that he "will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis" but "will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful." He promised to "not allow dogma to override common sense."
In other words, he hasn't got a clue. Another word for dogma is values, and another word for politics is democracy. So McCain, by his own admission, knows little about economics, has no underlying values or principles to apply in considering what action to take and isn't interested in your opinion either.
Hillary Clinton's speech on March 24 blamed everybody for the excessive borrowing at the root of this crisis--except the people who did the borrowing. Her proposal to help is a parody of old-Democrat thinking. Thirty billion dollars to states and cities to spend on "everything from police and fire support to graffiti removal and better lighting." She offers a complex plan to renegotiate the terms of troubled mortgages--ultimately with a federal guarantee, which she insists "would cost the taxpayers nothing in the long run."
Republicans believe you can cut taxes and bring in more money. Democrats believe you can turn mortgages that people can't afford to pay into ones that they can and it won't cost anyone a cent. Most pathetically, Clinton calls for an "Emergency Working Group" composed of Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan.
Let those guys figure it out if they're so smart.
As with most issues, there isn't much daylight between Clinton's position and Obama's. Obama also blames lenders and excuses buyers, while piling on new subsidies that will nicely compensate everyone involved for the new regulations he also wants them to endure. Obama's unique angle is blaming the war in Iraq. In the business, that is called "message discipline."
Where is the "conversation" about the economy that's even half as sophisticated as Obama's speech about race? One that explains to people that you can't just make everything better by sending out $1,200 checks? That there is a real cost to protecting overextended homeowners from the consequences of their own folly? That, yes, there are villains here, but blaming the whole mess on villainy is missing the point? That immigration and international trade are part of the solution, not the problem?
Journalists don't help.
This is a golden age of economic journalism, with wonderful business writers churning out great stuff every day. But they're not the ones covering the candidates. The endless political campaign has produced a permanent class of political journalists (or perhaps it's the other way around). Many are just as wise as the business journalists, but they devote their wisdom to the minutiae of campaign strategy and are mystified to the point of terror about economics.
C'mon, boys and girls -- economics may be complicated, but it's no more complicated than the laws about campaign-spending limits or the mathematics of Democratic Party superdelegates, all of which you handle with ease.
We all know about the economist who predicted nine of the past five recessions. But you don't want to miss this one.
Today marks the 19th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
I had intended my blog entry today to cover this event and some curious kharma surrounding it, saving the must-see TV Frontline series "Bush's War" for tomorrow, not knowing that the series starts tonight, not tomorrow night.
Since I want everyone to see this series, I decided a discussion of this national tragedy outweighs our own great, regional one.
There are probably consequences of (and 'to') both that have similarities I could write about, but for now turn on your television tonight and tomorrow night and watch "Bush's War."
I intend to write more about the war, myself, sometime this week . . . especially since the media is all abuzz about the "official" four-thousandth American military casualty of the conflict. As you might imagine, my take on that number is slightly different from what CBS or NBC news is likely to say.
For now, watch Bush's War. It's gonna be good -- and proves yet again the utter folly of the New York Times calling PBS "unnecessary." The NYT was busy cheerleading the effort to go to war, you might remember. Shame on them. Hurray for PBS.
TV Review
For 4 1/2 hours, PBS' 'Frontline' examines, explains 'Bush's War'
By David Zurawik |Sun Television Critic
March 24, 2008
Last month, an essay in The New York Times asked the question: Is PBS still necessary?
The newspaper reaped a whirlwind of angry and eloquent responses in the affirmative, but nothing shows the necessity and continuing cultural importance of PBS like the two-part Frontline documentary titled Bush's War that starts tonight.
No one in television has covered the war in Iraq with as much diligence and passion as Frontline in dozens of reports. And that goes back to the time of the run-up to the conflict when The Times was printing stories on its front page about the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
While some of the Times stories that carried the byline of Judith Miller have since been called into question, the work of Frontline stands tall - and Bush's War is at the apex of that effort.
If you watch only one report or read one article in connection with the fifth anniversary of the war, make it this 4 1/2 -hour film. It will make you among the best informed as to how America came to find itself in the conflict and why so many things went so wrong on the ground in Iraq.
Starting with Sept. 11, 2001, and continuing through last year's troop surge, writer and director Michael Kirk crafts a compelling TV narrative that is a triumph of journalism and filmmaking.
The journalism part involves gathering, processing and verifying so much information in one place.
Kirk and reporter-producer Jim Gilmore focus on moments of passage - the reaction within the Bush White House in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the decision to invade Iraq, and the confusion when it became apparent that America was going to have to occupy the defeated country but had no plan on how to do so.
At every turn, memos from key players are shared with viewers, while participants are interviewed on-camera. And, then, their written and spoken words are cross-checked with other participants and accounts for verification.
Critics from the right have charged Frontline with liberal bias over the years. But while Bush's War feels almost Biblical in its ultimate condemnation of the president, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for their execution of the war, the documentary includes officials from all sides of the issue. Such high-level Bush administration players as Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, and L. Paul Bremer III, who served as American administrator in Iraq in the early days of the war, are interviewed extensively.
But so much information would be impossible to process if not for the deft touch of director Kirk, who wraps all the data in a visual tapestry reminiscent of Alan J. Pakula's 1976 feature film All the President's Men. As the narration tells viewers of secret meetings, internecine feuds, backroom deals and political back-stabbing at the highest levels, viewers are carried along on a river of images suggesting a government run behind closed doors - both in Washington and Iraq.
Ultimately, Bush's War might also come to be judged a first-rate work of history. It certainly feels like history with its richly textured and strongly supported narrative of cause and effect helping explain a bewildering rush of events that have left thousands dead.
But it is still too soon to make that call.
For now, just enjoy the documentary. Clear some time tonight and tomorrow to watch Bush's War - and be thankful that there is still a public television system in this country that can produce such stellar work.
This is the fifth anniversary of the end of the American Empire.
As with the end end of every great empire, it was overseen by fools thinking they were greater than they were, ruling over foolish people who thought their nation was greater than it was.
This has always been true, whether that empire was Babylon or Egypt, Rome or China, Byzantium or Britain.
Pride, as the Proverb says, goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Prov 16:18-19
No American President -- elected or not -- has been as arrogant and haughty as George W.
None.
Ever.
It gets worse.
Compounding his arrogance and folly in waging war, misconduct in foreign affairs, and reckless fiscal policy, was his single-minded devotion to friends in the oligarchy and their love of laissez-faire capitalism.
That reckless form of capitalism has now borne its fruit.
So, on this fifth anniversary of a war that millions worldwide protested against even before it began and knew would end in disaster, let's consider again the trap American politicians set for themselves and for us.
The Clintons and McCains and Liebermanns may say they couldn't have predicted the sequence of events, but many of us could and did.
This war has raged longer than World War II and has no end in sight. If John McCain is to be believed, it may rage another decade or century.
It leaves me shocked and awed.
The following comes from a post–World War II interview between Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist who was allowed by the Allies to speak with Nazi POWs, and Hermann Goering, the Nazi Reichsmarshall.
Their conversation took place on April 18, 1946, during a break in the Nuremberg trials, and was recounted in Gilbert's book, Nuremberg Diary:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
“Why, of course, the ‘people’ don't want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Am I the only one who finds it curious that all four of the top news-pundit-topics this past week have been on men who are Democrats?
Eliot Spitzer, of course, made news with his dramatic fall from grace -- and his office as N.Y. governor.
No sooner had he been sworn in as Spitzer's successor, than former Lt. Governor David Paterson admitted to reporter's questions that he, too, had an extra-marital affair. Rather than dwell on the personas of this one, the press seemed enthralled by the news that the tryst(s?), in this case, had happened at . . . a Day's Inn.
As if, somehow, that mattered. Actually, as if any of this matters.
Steamy and salacious as was that news, former N.J. governor Jim McGreavy's tell-all revelations upstaged them all when he revealed that he and his wife had been joined in a bizarre sorta-wanna-be-but-wasn't-quite three-way sexual romp with his chaffeur. Well! That had the press wide-eyed.
While they were spectulating on who knew what, and why didn't she read the writing on the wall about her husband being gay, and where was she while the two of them were getting it on . . . I kept wondering "so, why is Jim bringing this all up? Does he miss the limelight, even when it's bad?"
In other words, is this really news?
And then there's Barack.
Obama's troubles didn't stem from any sexual infidelities or loud-mouth gaffes of the sort that George has made, oh, about fifty-thousand of in the past few months.
Nope.
The former pastor of Barack's church has made some inflamatory remarks -- not recently, mind you, but years ago -- railing against Black oppression and anger at White establishment arrogance.
*rolling eyes*
Is this really the important stuff to be talking about in the same week that 230 Iraqis have died from suicide bombers and insurgent attacks and "the end" of the surge? (God, do I need to write a blog about that "surge!"?) U.S. troops have killed another six in Afghanistan, just today. The dramatic collapse of Bear Stearns resulted in a bail-out financed by a $30-BILLION loan of your -- make that, OUR -- tax dollars. The US economy is in genuine free-fall. The US dollar is in even greater freefall. Hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested in Tibet in a fight for some reasonable amount of independence. John McCain has just visited Iraq and made one stupid inaccurate remark after another, embarrassing himself AND my country in the process. Riots in Kosovo have resulted in the deaths of twenty -- maybe as many as fifty -- protesters . . .
...well, you get the idea....
...and, meanwhile, our news media is fixated on David Paterson checking in to a Day's Inn?
They actually joked about the fact that "at least it wasn't a Motel 6."
: |
This is why my country continues to embarrass me.
PS: If the stupid remarks of Barack Obama's pastor merits some press coverage, what about some equal time to John Hagee and Pat Roberton and the other nuts-o gang on the other side? Does it only count as "hate speech" if it's an expression of rage against those lily white guys?
Aside from the obvious -- that gay men are sexually attracted to other men -- none of the enduring stereotypes of gay men persists quite like the notion that their solution to any frustrating situation is to go shopping. Am I right?
Imagine, then, what that stereotypical gay man would do if he were President of the United States. Imagine his solution would be to each of these scenarios:
1) The World Trade Center and Pentagon are attacked and America feels itself under dire threat of danger.
He would go before the national media and say "My fellow Americans, in this time of national grief and distress, please go shopping. "Spend money."
2) The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commence. America is -- declared or not -- at war. Unlike during previous wars -- say, the two World Wars or Korea, where Americans were asked to conserve and sacrifice, plant victory gardens and even ration supplies -- a gay President would instead say "Macy's is having a sale! Use your credit cards if necessary."
3) The country faces economic perils unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. Banks teeter on the edge of the abyss. The dollar freefalls like a skydiver without a parachute.
The Gay President's solution: "How about a nice, big fat tax rebate? That way, every American can go shopping!"
Hey! It's the one-size-fits-all fix-it plan for every occasion. It's the gay man's solution.
"When all else fails, go shopping!"
Who knew George Bush was really a gay guy?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (This clip dates from WAY before the current economic collapse of the Bush economic plan:)
I've written and then written again about a dozen attempts to explain my non-Irish-ness for today.
I started out writing about the significance the color "orange" played on this day, since my fiercely-British grandparents were stridently anti-Irish (and, by extension, anti-Catholic) . . . . but my drafts inevitably got bogged down in the minutia of details about William of Orange and the ascension of the House of Hanover . . . and, well, I can get a bit didactic at times.
This morning, in reply to an email from a friend in Portland (the one in Oregon) I wrote the following in reply. Imperfect as it is, it suffices to say the salient parts ::
So, it's St. Patrick's day:
Another day dedicated to someone whom most of us know nothing about (visions of the just-celebrated St. Valentine) and yet over whom we go crazy . . . . doing silly things like dressing up like Leprechauns, drinking green beer, wearing silly green hats or clothes (did I ever mention that green is my next-to-least favorite color? pink wins top honors. or is that bottom?) and placing cloverleafs on everything in sight.
To wit:
I'm especially conflicted over this particular day, since I don't want to appear to be necessarily contrarian or anti-social, but my ancestry is, after all, 90% English.
So English, in fact, that my grandmother made sure we wore Orange during this week, particularly so on the Sunday church service closest to today.
Being both non-Irish and raised as a Protestant, I don't feel it's appropriate for me revel in anything so completely out of character (or genealogy) . . . but I also recognize the nasty things done to the Irish by my supposed forebears and, so, feel a certain need for penance.
About that remaining non-British 10% of my heritage?
Recent geneology searches by sister suggest there are hints of German and even some evidence of Irish blood (horrors! my grandmother would roll over in her grave)! In the old South, if a man was known to have even 1% Black blood, he was considered a Black man.
What percentage of what makes us ... well, anything other than what we think we are?
Does the chance I have 1% Irish blood make me an Irishman?
I hardly think so.
Imagine how conflicted, then, Barack Obama must feel.
I mean, we all call him a Black man but he's in truth just as much White.
It's a 50/50 deal for him.
Just consider me confused in a cold climate.
Happy (and it's a "white" not "green" one as seen from my sunny Alaskan proximity) St. Patrick's Day....
whether you're Irish or not.
Music Clip: Oh, Danny Boy - Eric Clapton (acoustic version)
When things start happening that don't look good, is there reason to worry?
Always the suspicious type, I am beginning to. Again.
Consider this sequence of events occurring over the past few days:
~ The White House has announced that Dick Cheney is being dispatched to the Middle East, ostensibly to kick-start negotiations over the Palestinian question. Dick Cheney: a man who has absolutely no experience with foreign-policy negotiations and even less expertise on the matter of Palestinian issues. He will, reportedly, also be "in consultation" with other (read: Arab) interested parties in Middle Eastern affairs.
Dick Cheney is supposed to succeed where Bush, himself, and later Condi Rice had earlier failed. The unspoken truth, though, is that he's there to put them on notice.
~ The aircraft carrier Teddy Roosevelt has been ordered to the region.
~ Admiral William Fallon has resigned as commander of CENTCOM, the military's Central Command. As chief of Centcom, he was the major -- and functionally only -- critic of the Bush Administration's conduct of war and foreign policy, particularly when it came to lavishing money and resources on the Iraq War while letting the effort in Afghanistan languish. Fallon was also the main force opposing any new distractions in the region which, of course, means a new war with Iran.
~ The Pentagon announced that it would not be releasing the study by the Joint Forces Command which definitively concluded there was no connection between Al Quaida elements and the government of Iraq's Saddam Hussein. When asked why the report won't be available online, as previously announced, JFC spokesman Capt. Dennis Moynihan said anyone wanting to see it will have to order it and it'll be mailed to them. He declined further comment.
This is important because the last thing the White House needs right now is a national discussion on how the Bush team lied in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.
~ Congress met Thursday night in a rare closed session to discuss Bush's amnesty program for telecommunications companies that want immunity for illegal wiretapping and spying. Bush fervently wants this bill. It would cover previous illegal conduct and grant blanket amnesty for future breaches of law and Bush is pressuring Congress like never before.
So . . . . what do these, and other, developments point to?
Frankly, I had previously expected this to happen in March (this month) but the CIA threw a wrench in the works of Plan A when they publicly released portions of their last NIE (Nat'l Intelligence Estimate) showing that Iran had no nuclear capability and wouldn't have it for a very long time.
Also complicating his Plan A was the abject failure of his swing through the Middle East to drum-up support and get Arab counties in-line back in January.
Bush, not one to take "no" for an answer, has let the dust settle and is again moving forward with plans.
Why, you might wonder, would he risk another failed Middle East venture this close to the elections and just months before he leaves office? Bingo!
Because he IS leaving office and we ARE in the middle of the campaign season.
In his twisted little mind, George has concluded there are several good reasons he's duty-bound to start this war.
First, he's convinced that war will spark voters to view Democrats with suspicion -- you know, "Democrats are soft on terrorists" -- and now that his friend, "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb . . . Bomb, Bomb Iran" John McCain, is the presumptive GOP nominee, the war will energize fundamentalists and conservative pro-war voters.
Second, he's made it quite clear that he has no intention of leaving office with Iran having even the capability of re-starting a nuclear weapons program. (listen to the audio clip -- below -- of the last few seconds of his last press conference) He feels it's his destiny to stop Ahmadinejad, and that feeling will be re-inforced after Iran's elections leave the Iranian President still firmly in charge.
Third, if he starts a war and things don't look good for John McCain's election, Bush, under the delusion that he has unlimited powers over the Constitution under the Unitary Executive theory, will feel completely justified in canceling or postponing the November elections. He still has enough members of Congress -- particularly in the Senate -- to thwart Congressional objections, the Supreme Court is in his corner, and with his friends controlling corporate news media and the telecommunications companies spying on his enemies with impunity, there's no one around to stop him.
By the time people recover from their dazed confusion, it'll all be too late.
Let's face it, the economy is a shambles, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a mess, American prestige is at an all-time low -- as is the U.S. dollar, the red ink in Washington is hemorrhaging like a patient with a severed leg . . . what's there to lose?
To Bush's mind, I'm sure he feels it can't get any worse. He probably even feels he deserves a few more years in office to let the wounds heal.
God help me, I hope I'm wrong . . . but the signs aren't good and, frankly, I've had a pretty good sense of these things, if I do say so myself.
With Admiral William Fallon gone, many observers have stated that they feel the chances that Bush will feel empowered for forge ahead with an Iran War plan went from 50/50 to 80/20.
I agree.
There is a chance a complete uprising by the American public could persuade Congress or somebody to stop this plan dead in its tracks, but so far Congress has shown itself to be completely incompetent when dealing with Bush and is not up to the challenge.
So far, the Unitary Executive doctrine is winning and soon we could all be facing the dire consequences of it.
Lordy, lordy. Where's Thomas Jefferson when you need him?
A friend sent me the following copy of an email he received from the American Family Association announcing they had "won" this round against those nasty, America-hating gay guys.
Oh thank god!
I was holding off buying a Ford ONLY because the AFA told me not to!
Whew!
What a relief.
Now, tell me again what it was that Ford did to make the AFA happy?
I need to know this critical info for the next time I walk into a showroom.
We sure have defeated that terrible "gay agenda," haven't we?
I have some good news for you! AFA is suspending its two year boycott of Ford Motor Company. The conditions of the original agreement presented in fall 2005 have been met. We reached the conclusion that Ford had met the conditions of the agreement based on monitoring for several months. Individuals are free to purchase Ford vehicles again.
Your support of the boycott played a key role in convincing Ford to cease its significant support of the homosexual agenda. During the 24 months the boycott was in effect, Ford sales dropped an average of 8% per month. The boycott was not entirely responsible for the drop in sales, but it played a very significant role.
A total of 780,365 individuals signed AFA's Boycott Ford petition.
The original agreement contained four items:
Ford would not renew current promotions or create future incentives that give cash donations to homosexual organizations based on the purchase of a vehicle.
Ford would not make corporate donations to homosexual organizations that, as part of their activities, engage in political or social campaigns to promote civil unions or same-sex marriage.
Ford would stop giving cash and vehicle donations or endorsements to homosexual social activities such as Gay Pride parades.
Ford would cease all advertising on homosexual Web sites and through homosexual media outlets (magazines, television, radio) in the U.S. with the exception of $100,000 to be used by Volvo. The Volvo ads would be the same ads used in the general media and not aimed at the homosexual community specifically.
A few minor issues remain, and we will continue to bring these to the attention of Ford. But basically Ford has met the terms of the agreement. We are therefore suspending the boycott.
Thank you for caring enough to get involved. If you feel our efforts are worthy of support, would you consider making a small tax-deductible contribution? Click here to make a donation.
Sincerely,
Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman American Family Association
Since the news in America has been fixated on Eliot Spitzer the past couple of days, you might have missed a couple of other stories that were blurred by the noise.
One, about the resignation of Admiral William Fallon as commander of CENTCOM sent tremors through every level of the American military establishment, is serious and I hope to write about later.
The other, though, is a remarkable story about how marine mammals sometimes show more humanity than, well, humanity.
It is the very true story of the dolphin and the whales.
The place: Mahia, North Island, New Zealand.
Whales, you probably know, can get stranded for a variety of mysterious reasons anywhere in the world. When two pygmy whales wandered into shallow waters off Mahia and became beached, Department of Conservation officers knew they had to act fast.
Over a period of hours, they kept the whales moist and tried, time after time, to coax the pair into the shallow waters and, from there, into deeper waters. The whales, however, kept getting disoriented and always returned to shore.
The disoriented mother and calf had resisted attempts to herd them out to sea, and kept restranding on the beach, to the point where [NZ Conservation officer] Malcolm Smith said the pair would likely have to be killed. Reuters News Service 12 March 2008
The whales — 10ft long female and her 5ft male calf — had been unable to negotiate a sand bar that was blocking their way to deeper water. The Times [London] 13 March 2008
The prospects for the mother and calf looked dim when, mirabile dictu, along came the dolphin.
Her name is Moko and she had been a frequent visitor to the beach over the previous six months. She knew the waterways so well, in fact, that she knew exactly the right route for the whales to take . . . . if only she could communicate with them.
Turns out, she could.
[Smith] heard Moko and the whales making noises before they departed, he said. “The whales were on the surface of the water quite distressed. They had arched their backs and were calling to one another, but as soon as the dolphin turned up they submerged into the water and followed her.”
Moko led the whales 200m along the beach and once they reached the end of the sand bar, Moko turned a right angle through a narrow channel and led the whales to safety.
“What the communication was I do not know, and I was not aware dolphins could communicate with pygmy sperm whales.” The Times [London] 13 March 2008
Neither did anyone else.
Not only did Moko manage to lead the pair to safer waters, she apparently persuaded them to stay safely offshore, since they've not been seen or heard-of since.
Moko isn't just a local hero, she's a local favorite. She was long ago separated from her pod and had taken a liking to local human swimmers and surfers, playing with them and pushing people around in their kayaks and on their surfboards.
Once she had escorted the whales to sea, she immediately returned to her favorite playmates: the humans.
By now, you'd have to live on a planet orbiting Sirius to not have heard about Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace.
Actually, let's call that his shooting himself in the foot.
After making a name -- a very good one and for good reason, I should think -- for himself as New York's aggressive law-and-order chief, Eliot has become the classic example of a man hoisted on his own petard.
Less charitable people would call him a hypocrite. I would be one of those people.
Don't get me wrong :: I like Eliot Spitzer. His feisty pursuit of Wall Street crooks and white-collar crime made him almost unique among A.G's across the country who dared investigate, then prosecute, those PWM's (People With Money) whom the Bush Administration was simultaneously glad-handing. What's not to love about a man like that?
After his election as governor, I was hoping he'd continue his campaign to champion integrity and pursuit of justice, and to some degree he did.
That campaign just hit a big ol' bump in the road and for the life of me, I don't get it.
By way of reminder :: some of Spitzer's many campaigns were against prostitution rings, most prominently in the NYC area. If he thought having the occasional dalliance with a prostitute was really okay, as now it seems he thinks it is, why didn't he seize the many opportunities either as Atty General or as Governor of New York to remove the legal constraints and soften government sanctions against it?
Had he done exactly that, these allegations would seem equal parts trivial and, on the part of his many enemies on Wall Street, vindictive. Now, he just looks like a hypocritical buffoon.
Which, of course, he is.
Worse, he didn't just blow some chump-change on these hookers. He spent more on one eight-hour romp than my total income last year :: $45,000. I guess if you're gonna flaunt the law, you might as well do it in a really big way, huh?
No . . . Eliot's big mistake wasn't hiring a hooker, as bad as that is to his public persona and as devastating that must be to his wife Silda. Eliot's big mistake was taking a get-tough approach towards victimless crimes when he had the chance to influence lawmakers and change or amend the law and is living to reap the consequences of having squandered that opportunity.
Despite a new and growing campaign to revive his reputation and keep him in office, I think his days are numbered. Very numbered.
Too bad. I really liked the guy but there are few things I consider more damnable than a hypocrite and, frankly, Eliot now fits the definition.
Yea! He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
Jesus was right.
======================================
PS: Political dominoes are falling.
1) The Clinton campaign is horrified that comparisons to Bill will start reminding voters in those remaining primary States -- and those undeclared Super-delegates -- of the weaknesses that plagued the Clinton Adminis
Traveling, as I have, over the past few weeks, I've missed out on much of the revelatory news and current events that are my wont. 
As some of you already know, spring is a busy season for me. 
The following comes from a 
