By Manifesto Joe
Ve haf von ze var?
That seems what the most obedient of the MSM would have the masses believe about Iraq. But it also seems as though we've heard such pronouncements before -- about a place called Afghanistan.
The Independent (U.K) reports that:
Violence in Afghanistan has reached record highs, with unprecedented numbers of civilian casualties and terror attacks spreading into areas once thought safe, a coalition of charities warns. In a damning indictment of the international community's effort to stabilise Afghanistan, more than 100 aid agencies claimed security is worse now than at any time in the past seven years.
"There has been a surge in the number of civilian casualties caused by all sides, a spread of insecurity to previously stable areas, and increasing attacks on aid agencies and their staff," the statement from their umbrella organisation Acbar said.
(The boldface emphases are mine.)
OK, these are different countries. But, one who's not wearing blinders, one not just following the GOParty line, can't help but notice parallels. We've heard all this before, regarding both places.
Mideast expert Juan Cole, writing on Informed Comment, noted some interesting things about the Iraq "surge" that I will summarize. Let's step back a moment -- in a country of 27 million people, the addition of 30,000 troops, from 130,000 to 160,000, made that much difference in the level of violence? No way.
Not that the violence was down all that much in a relative sense. It did reach a "low point" compared to other points in the war. But there were other factors that were probably far more important.
One that the U.S. has nothing to be proud of is a sort of ethnic cleansing that took place in many mixed Baghdad neighborhoods. The Shiite militias ran off (or killed) a lot of Sunnis. Baghdad is now much more Shiite in the absence of many Sunnis, and there are sharp dividing lines between the ethnic neighborhoods.
It's been said that there ain't nothing more peaceful than a dead man. The second most peaceful sort would be the one who ain't there -- he's split for Iran or Syria.
Another big factor was the bribery of a lot of Sunni factions to get them to join "us" and oppose the insurgents. That was a strategic move that started months before the U.S. troop "surge," and turned the tide in many parts of Iraq -- for now.
Here's the link to the Juan Cole article.
Another interesting perspective on this issue is from former U.S. Sen. James G. Abourezk, D-S.D., "The Surge Has Worked?", writing for Counterpunch.
In an election year, it wouldn't be proper to visit this topic without including something from Democratic nominee-to-be Barack Obama. Here's something pertinent on The Huffington Post.
What about McCain's views? Just turn on the TV, or pick up an MSM newspaper, and you can get that swill quite easily. This is an alternative medium.
I'm going to float a somewhat subversive idea, but one that should be mentioned sometime. Let's presume (probably wrongly) that the "surge" cheerleaders are right, and that the U.S. is within sight of "victory" in Iraq.
In the long view of history, it's not a good idea. I understand the argument that, once a course like this has been set, it's a good idea to see it through. Even if a mistake was made initially, it is imperative to "clean up the mess" as best we can, or so the argument goes.
The tragedy of that would be that it would embolden future U.S. administrations to undertake more such foreign misadventures. Let's not mince words here -- this was an invasion, an act of aggression, on the part of the U.S. Everybody knew that Saddam Hussein was a thug way back in the '80s, when the U.S. was arming him. What most of the world's people seem to realize now is that the contained Saddam was no real threat to the U.S., and that there's no good explanation for American actions there other than that Iraqis are sitting on an ocean of oil. There was no link to al Qaeda. No evidence of WMDs. All the rationale were hollow at the core, except for one.
I'm an American, and I hate to lose. But this is one in which "we've" been in the wrong, and "we" actually don't deserve to win. And, I'll make the comparison with Afghanistan and gamble -- over time, "we" probably won't. The best path seems to just find a way out and assess the damage over time.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Sen. Ted Stevens Indicted: GOP's Longest-Serving Senator In The Crosshairs
By Manifesto Joe
The New York Times reported today that the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, Ted Stevens of Alaska, has been indicted on seven counts of falsely reporting income. This comes during a presidential election year, and one in which the 84-year-old Stevens has been seeking re-election. His challenger is Mark Begich, the Democratic mayor of Anchorage.
Click here for the complete NYT report.
It's a rule in journalism never to convict a person in print. Sen. Stevens is innocent until proved guilty.
But one can't help but wonder how a politician of the senator's vast experience could get himself into this predicament.
Ernest Hemingway, no stranger to a variety of predicaments himself, once wrote or said something in response to the common notion that old men grow wiser with age.
It was something to the effect of, "They (old men) do not become wiser. They become more careful."
Perhaps sometimes it just doesn't work either way. We'll have to wait for the courts to decide.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
The New York Times reported today that the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, Ted Stevens of Alaska, has been indicted on seven counts of falsely reporting income. This comes during a presidential election year, and one in which the 84-year-old Stevens has been seeking re-election. His challenger is Mark Begich, the Democratic mayor of Anchorage.
Click here for the complete NYT report.
It's a rule in journalism never to convict a person in print. Sen. Stevens is innocent until proved guilty.
But one can't help but wonder how a politician of the senator's vast experience could get himself into this predicament.
Ernest Hemingway, no stranger to a variety of predicaments himself, once wrote or said something in response to the common notion that old men grow wiser with age.
It was something to the effect of, "They (old men) do not become wiser. They become more careful."
Perhaps sometimes it just doesn't work either way. We'll have to wait for the courts to decide.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Geographically Challenged John McCain: That's A Broad Definition Of A Border, Iraq And Pakistan
Asked by Diane Sawyer whether the "the situation in Afghanistan in precarious and urgent," McCain responded: "I think it's serious. . . . It's a serious situation, but there's a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border."
He's also having a hard time remembering that Czechoslovakia is a long-defunct country. Here's the piece from The Huffington Post.
What's all this about how somebody can actually get too old to be president? -- MJ
He's also having a hard time remembering that Czechoslovakia is a long-defunct country. Here's the piece from The Huffington Post.
What's all this about how somebody can actually get too old to be president? -- MJ
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Slicing Through 'Surge' Propaganda: Haven't We Heard It All Before?
By Manifesto Joe
Full disclosure: I have no military background. I do have 30 years of experience as a professional journalist, and have known enough U.S. history, for long enough, that at 17, I earned 6 hours of college credit in that subject just by taking a test. Take those for whatever they're worth.
My perhaps-risky thesis: The "surge" in Iraq, now being touted as some kind of unequivocal success, is yet another deception in a military campaign that will be remembered as the war that keeps on costing.
Granted, al Qaeda in Iraq has apparently been dealt some crushing blows (for now), and U.S. military casualties are sharply down. These things are being widely reported as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is in Baghdad to take stock of things.
But, the latter point, about the decline in U.S. casualties, reflects the ethnocentrism with which Americans tend to look at foreign conflicts. Juan Cole, writing on Informed Comment, points out:
Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll.
That is, the Iraqi death toll is actually still worse now than the last time Obama was in Iraq! (See the bombings and shootings listed below for Sunday). The hype around last year's troop escalation obscures a simple fact: that Obama formed his views about the need for the US to leave Iraq at a time when its security situation was very similar to what it is now! Why a return to the bad situation in late 05 and early 06 should be greeted by the GOP as the veritable coming of the Messiah is beyond me. You have people like Joe Lieberman saying silly things like if it weren't for the troop escalation, Obama wouldn't be able to visit Iraq. Uh, he visited it before the troop escalation, just fine.
To read the entire Cole article, click here.
What we seem to be hearing is that when fewer Americans are being killed and maimed as a result of the "surge," that makes it an unequivocal success. When the furrenurs is gettin' whacked a little faster than they wuz two and a half years ago, well, that's their tough luck. It's an A-Murkan world.
And, we've heard all this before, at other times and in other places. And it hasn't been so long since we've heard it. I seem to recall that "we" (in the editorial sense) were supposed to have pretty much routed the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies in Afghanistan. Been reading or hearing any news from there lately? It ain't over till it's over. And that one, the war "we" actually have reasonable justification for, is far from over.
I also seem to recall a day in 2003 when, just weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Il Doofus staged a landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared major military operations in Iraq to be over.
The MSM mouthpieces remain very much on the Pentagon bandwagon (not to mention the Straitjacket Express), with a mantra of "Obama was dead wrong" on the outcome of the "surge."
True, Obama didn't call it right in predicting that the "surge" would bring an increase in violence.
But, given the continued toll on Iraqi civilians, reports of success seem greatly exaggerated. I think the "surge" could be pronounced a success on the day that there are no unusual civilian deaths in Iraq, that the millions of refugees can return home safely, and that a stable Iraqi government can be elected without being propped up by a U.S. military presence. Perhaps in 100 years?
I'll venture a possibly risky prediction, but one firmly based on recent U.S. history.
In January 1973, the Nixon administration finally reached that elusive "peace with honor" deal with North Vietnam. The "peace" lasted a while. Then, a couple of years later, communist troops were overrunning South Vietnam. The American people were so sick of that bottomless pit of lives and money that they said a loud and resounding "NO" when the Ford administration had the nerve to propose that "we" go back in there.
The bottom line is that the U.S. is an occupier in a land generally hostile to the occupation. And, it should come as no surprise that the resistance will hide and play possum with every "surge" that our taxpayers can be conned into bankrolling. That's the name of the game in guerrilla warfare.
I'll gamble, and predict an outcome similar to the previously cited ones. For Americans, this will be the war that keeps on costing.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Full disclosure: I have no military background. I do have 30 years of experience as a professional journalist, and have known enough U.S. history, for long enough, that at 17, I earned 6 hours of college credit in that subject just by taking a test. Take those for whatever they're worth.
My perhaps-risky thesis: The "surge" in Iraq, now being touted as some kind of unequivocal success, is yet another deception in a military campaign that will be remembered as the war that keeps on costing.
Granted, al Qaeda in Iraq has apparently been dealt some crushing blows (for now), and U.S. military casualties are sharply down. These things are being widely reported as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is in Baghdad to take stock of things.
But, the latter point, about the decline in U.S. casualties, reflects the ethnocentrism with which Americans tend to look at foreign conflicts. Juan Cole, writing on Informed Comment, points out:
Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll.
That is, the Iraqi death toll is actually still worse now than the last time Obama was in Iraq! (See the bombings and shootings listed below for Sunday). The hype around last year's troop escalation obscures a simple fact: that Obama formed his views about the need for the US to leave Iraq at a time when its security situation was very similar to what it is now! Why a return to the bad situation in late 05 and early 06 should be greeted by the GOP as the veritable coming of the Messiah is beyond me. You have people like Joe Lieberman saying silly things like if it weren't for the troop escalation, Obama wouldn't be able to visit Iraq. Uh, he visited it before the troop escalation, just fine.
To read the entire Cole article, click here.
What we seem to be hearing is that when fewer Americans are being killed and maimed as a result of the "surge," that makes it an unequivocal success. When the furrenurs is gettin' whacked a little faster than they wuz two and a half years ago, well, that's their tough luck. It's an A-Murkan world.
And, we've heard all this before, at other times and in other places. And it hasn't been so long since we've heard it. I seem to recall that "we" (in the editorial sense) were supposed to have pretty much routed the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies in Afghanistan. Been reading or hearing any news from there lately? It ain't over till it's over. And that one, the war "we" actually have reasonable justification for, is far from over.
I also seem to recall a day in 2003 when, just weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Il Doofus staged a landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared major military operations in Iraq to be over.
The MSM mouthpieces remain very much on the Pentagon bandwagon (not to mention the Straitjacket Express), with a mantra of "Obama was dead wrong" on the outcome of the "surge."
True, Obama didn't call it right in predicting that the "surge" would bring an increase in violence.
But, given the continued toll on Iraqi civilians, reports of success seem greatly exaggerated. I think the "surge" could be pronounced a success on the day that there are no unusual civilian deaths in Iraq, that the millions of refugees can return home safely, and that a stable Iraqi government can be elected without being propped up by a U.S. military presence. Perhaps in 100 years?
I'll venture a possibly risky prediction, but one firmly based on recent U.S. history.
In January 1973, the Nixon administration finally reached that elusive "peace with honor" deal with North Vietnam. The "peace" lasted a while. Then, a couple of years later, communist troops were overrunning South Vietnam. The American people were so sick of that bottomless pit of lives and money that they said a loud and resounding "NO" when the Ford administration had the nerve to propose that "we" go back in there.
The bottom line is that the U.S. is an occupier in a land generally hostile to the occupation. And, it should come as no surprise that the resistance will hide and play possum with every "surge" that our taxpayers can be conned into bankrolling. That's the name of the game in guerrilla warfare.
I'll gamble, and predict an outcome similar to the previously cited ones. For Americans, this will be the war that keeps on costing.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
From The Cool Side Of The Seventies: Herbie Hancock's Vein Melter
Put down the '70s all you want, but culturally it was a very good period for some things.
It wasn't the finest period for jazz. But, the fusion movement was interesting, and it turned enough members of a new generation, people like me, on to jazz generally that we went back and "rediscovered" the great past eras. Like, Forties bop, Fifties "cool" jazz and hard bop, and early Sixties "free" jazz. Now I even like some of the stuff recorded before the early '40s. The music of "The Jazz Age" of the Twenties and the swing of the Thirties was often more commercial than the later stuff, but it had many high points.
Anyway, the '70s had great jazz moments: Here's one from Herbie Hancock, vintage 1973.
Have a wonderful weekend. -- MJ
It wasn't the finest period for jazz. But, the fusion movement was interesting, and it turned enough members of a new generation, people like me, on to jazz generally that we went back and "rediscovered" the great past eras. Like, Forties bop, Fifties "cool" jazz and hard bop, and early Sixties "free" jazz. Now I even like some of the stuff recorded before the early '40s. The music of "The Jazz Age" of the Twenties and the swing of the Thirties was often more commercial than the later stuff, but it had many high points.
Anyway, the '70s had great jazz moments: Here's one from Herbie Hancock, vintage 1973.
Have a wonderful weekend. -- MJ
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Dude, Where's My Plane? FAA Recruiting High Schoolers To Be Air-Traffic Controllers
By Manifesto Joe
Full disclosure of motive: I couldn't pass up yet another opportunity to bash America's all-time most overrated president, Ronald Reagan, when I ran across this item. In 1981, The Great Prevaricator mass-fired over 11,000 members of PATCO, the air-traffic controllers union, for staging an illegal strike. He also ordered a lifelong ban on rehiring, eased 12 years later by President Clinton.
Reagan seemed mainly concerned with how tough he looked, rather than with the safety of U.S. air travelers. Now, 27 years later, the system hasn't fully recovered -- there are still fewer controllers despite the increase in air traffic -- and the scabs hired to replace the strikers are reaching retirement age. As they leave, the Federal Aviation Administration is desperate for warm bodies, even trolling high schools to recruit fresh grads into training programs.
Hold the phone. Readers, do you remember yourselves fresh out of high school? Hell, I graduated fifth in my high school class, but I was a mess during my freshman year in college. I had little self-discipline and was only beginning to develop a sense of responsibility. I would sleep in and cut some of those "101" classes, read the textbook and show up for the tests, and wonder why I got a B instead of an A. I dressed like a bum and then wondered why many people seemed to think I was one. I chain-smoked in public places. I missed deadlines for the student newspaper. It's amazing my G.P.A. never fell below 2.95. (I started making the dean's list when I was a junior and had grown up a bit.)
Again, I'm an example of someone who graduated from high school with honors. What about that student who made a C-plus in metal shop? You want this person controlling air traffic?
Here's the full article from that bastion of American newspaper journalism, the New York Post. I get the impression the Post has been trolling the high schools for cheap recruits as well. The difference is, you don't end up in a body bag after reading tabloid journalism. It's a much slower death, and only from the neck up.
Anyway, here's an excerpt from the Post exclusive:
The FAA has offered an unprecedented $100,000 bonus to air-traffic controllers throughout the country to lure them to the New York area's five understaffed radar centers - and has even begun trolling local high schools to recruit for the jobs.
The FAA began its recruitment efforts in high schools and through online ads on MySpace and Craigslist because of a severe staffing shortage and lack of experience among workers at its air-control towers.
One recent hire is a 20-year-old who is now reading the scopes for the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) center in Westbury, LI, officials said.
By 2011, 59 percent of all controllers will have less than five years on the job.
The recently hired 20-year-old man has a bachelor's degree in air-traffic control, but other new hires can come straight out of 12th grade. They go through three months of training before becoming "controllers in training" and eventually full-fledged staffers.
Let us once more ponder the Reagan legacy: Richer rich and poorer poor, deregulation of everything including lending banks, environmental horrors, and now frighteningly close calls at airports across the nation.
Here's a suggestion for President (I hope) Obama: Find every surviving member of the PATCO strike Class of '81 and offer them their jobs back, with big bonuses and raises. Then have the FAA let the high schoolers grow up some before putting countless lives in their hands.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Full disclosure of motive: I couldn't pass up yet another opportunity to bash America's all-time most overrated president, Ronald Reagan, when I ran across this item. In 1981, The Great Prevaricator mass-fired over 11,000 members of PATCO, the air-traffic controllers union, for staging an illegal strike. He also ordered a lifelong ban on rehiring, eased 12 years later by President Clinton.
Reagan seemed mainly concerned with how tough he looked, rather than with the safety of U.S. air travelers. Now, 27 years later, the system hasn't fully recovered -- there are still fewer controllers despite the increase in air traffic -- and the scabs hired to replace the strikers are reaching retirement age. As they leave, the Federal Aviation Administration is desperate for warm bodies, even trolling high schools to recruit fresh grads into training programs.
Hold the phone. Readers, do you remember yourselves fresh out of high school? Hell, I graduated fifth in my high school class, but I was a mess during my freshman year in college. I had little self-discipline and was only beginning to develop a sense of responsibility. I would sleep in and cut some of those "101" classes, read the textbook and show up for the tests, and wonder why I got a B instead of an A. I dressed like a bum and then wondered why many people seemed to think I was one. I chain-smoked in public places. I missed deadlines for the student newspaper. It's amazing my G.P.A. never fell below 2.95. (I started making the dean's list when I was a junior and had grown up a bit.)
Again, I'm an example of someone who graduated from high school with honors. What about that student who made a C-plus in metal shop? You want this person controlling air traffic?
Here's the full article from that bastion of American newspaper journalism, the New York Post. I get the impression the Post has been trolling the high schools for cheap recruits as well. The difference is, you don't end up in a body bag after reading tabloid journalism. It's a much slower death, and only from the neck up.
Anyway, here's an excerpt from the Post exclusive:
The FAA has offered an unprecedented $100,000 bonus to air-traffic controllers throughout the country to lure them to the New York area's five understaffed radar centers - and has even begun trolling local high schools to recruit for the jobs.
The FAA began its recruitment efforts in high schools and through online ads on MySpace and Craigslist because of a severe staffing shortage and lack of experience among workers at its air-control towers.
One recent hire is a 20-year-old who is now reading the scopes for the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) center in Westbury, LI, officials said.
By 2011, 59 percent of all controllers will have less than five years on the job.
The recently hired 20-year-old man has a bachelor's degree in air-traffic control, but other new hires can come straight out of 12th grade. They go through three months of training before becoming "controllers in training" and eventually full-fledged staffers.
Let us once more ponder the Reagan legacy: Richer rich and poorer poor, deregulation of everything including lending banks, environmental horrors, and now frighteningly close calls at airports across the nation.
Here's a suggestion for President (I hope) Obama: Find every surviving member of the PATCO strike Class of '81 and offer them their jobs back, with big bonuses and raises. Then have the FAA let the high schoolers grow up some before putting countless lives in their hands.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, July 14, 2008
The Great Prevaricator Remembered II: With Reagan Policies, Seldom Has So Much Harm Been Done To So Many By So Few (Plus Swipes At Phil Gramm)
By Manifesto Joe
With news of a Bush/Treasury/Federal Reserve bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, I'd say it's unofficially official: Reaganomics, and the 30-year era of helter-skelter deregulation that came with it, is at long last dying for good.
No, it's not dead yet. I think terminal brain cancer is a certain diagnosis. Yet Reaganomics lingers, having been reanimated repeatedly from the dead. But I don't think another long-term resurrection is possible.
And as the details of a massive bailout emerge, the person who comes to my mind is that turkey-necked geezer who presided over the first "great" round of deregulation during the '80s -- The Great Prevaricator himself, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan survives largely just in right-wing mythology. But some of his soldiers, who helped him construct this sturdy economic Trojan horse, are still with us. Despite a rebuke over a recent gaffe, former GOP Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, deregulator extraordinaire, is still John McCain's economic adviser.
Gramm, a Texas Aggie economist (Know how to spoil an Aggie party? Flush the punchbowl), earned his bars in the "conservative" movement as one of The Fibber's hardiest point men. He started in the House as a major architect of the 1981 tax cuts that, first, handed a bonanza to the wealthiest Americans. Then, those cuts plunged the federal budget so deeply into the red that piecemeal tax increases had to be sneaked past the public for many years thereafter to slow the hemorrhaging.
He was also a player in the '80s deregulation of savings and loans, which ultimately opened them up to full-scale looting. It took years, and many, many billions from the taxpayers, to clean up that mess. (Sound familiar now? To paraphrase the poet Santayana, our leaders did not remember the past, and we are ALL condemned to repeat it.)
Near the end of his venal "service" in the Senate, Gramm was a towering figure in the second "great" wave of deregulation. This from Wikipedia:
Later in his Senate career, Gramm spearheaded efforts to pass banking reform laws, including the landmark Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which modernized Depression-era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities. Between 1995 and 2000 Gramm, who was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, received $1,000,914 in campaign contributions from the Securities & Investment industry.
Here, "modernize" means that the bill Gramm co-sponsored repealed certain New Deal-era regulations of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had helped keep those pillars of high finance separate, and hence relatively honest and solvent, since the '30s.
Not content with leaving only this much damage imminent, Gramm helped pull off a major deregulatory coup the following year. More from Wikipedia:
Gramm was one of five co-sponsors of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which critics blame for permitting the Enron scandal to occur. At the time, Gramm's wife was on Enron's board of directors.
A big part of the CFMA was what became known as the "Enron Loophole." Again, Wikipedia:
The CFMA has received criticism for the so-called "Enron Loophole," 7 U.S.C. §2(h)(3) and (g), which exempts most over-the-counter energy trades and trading on electronic energy commodity markets. The "loophole" was drafted by Enron Lobbyists working with senator Phil Gramm seeking a deregulated atmosphere for their new experiment, "Enron On-line." ...
The legislation was passed by the Republican controlled Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton [ouch --MJ] in December 2000 to allow for the creation, for U.S. exchanges, of a new kind of derivative security, the single-stock future. An attempt to reverse this policy was vetoed by President Bush in 2008. Several Democratic Legislators introduced legislation to close the loophole from 2000-2006, but were unsuccessful due to Republican control of the House and Senate.
So, in the ensuing years, Phil acquired a succession of nicknames, including "Enron Phil" for the CFMA, and recently "Foreclosure Phil" for his banking "modernization."
For more on the extent of the profound injuries that then-Sen. Phil Gramm personally inflicted on America, click here for a Joe Conason article in Salon.
But enough with beating up on a now-obvious sleazebag operative like Gramm. Let's go back a generation, and longer, to that moth-eaten spirit ultimately behind the Enron accounting scandal, and behind what is becoming known as the Panic of 2008. It's that mythical right-wing figure, the man Gore Vidal once perceptively described as "grandmotherly": Reagan.
The Sixties spawned a unique cast of characters who lingered and did their dance macabre across our collective unconscious, on their way to oblivion. The same seems to be happening with the malefactors of the Eighties, the Armani-clad hooligans of the Reagan era.
They seem determined not to go away completely, at least not right away. But I foresee a day when they will be like withered cranks at small-town school board meetings, voted out of office but showing up in enfeebled bids to harass those who replaced them. An effectively permanent death seems at hand.
Going back to the Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac bailout -- and perhaps forward toward many more -- here are a couple of especially significant quotes from The New York Times on this story:
The companies, known as government-sponsored enterprises, or G.S.E.’s, touch nearly half of the nation’s mortgages by either owning or guaranteeing them, and the debt securities they issue to finance their operations are widely owned by foreign governments, pension funds, mutual funds, big companies and other large institutional investors.
“G.S.E. debt is held by financial institutions around the world,” Mr. (Treasury Secretary Henry) Paulson said in his statement. “Its continued strength is important to maintaining confidence and stability in our financial system and our financial markets. Therefore we must take steps to address the current situation as we move to a stronger regulatory structure.”
"... a stronger regulatory structure"? This from a Bush Cabinet member?
R.I.P., Ronnie Reagan. (And Phil Gramm?)
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
With news of a Bush/Treasury/Federal Reserve bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, I'd say it's unofficially official: Reaganomics, and the 30-year era of helter-skelter deregulation that came with it, is at long last dying for good.
No, it's not dead yet. I think terminal brain cancer is a certain diagnosis. Yet Reaganomics lingers, having been reanimated repeatedly from the dead. But I don't think another long-term resurrection is possible.
And as the details of a massive bailout emerge, the person who comes to my mind is that turkey-necked geezer who presided over the first "great" round of deregulation during the '80s -- The Great Prevaricator himself, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan survives largely just in right-wing mythology. But some of his soldiers, who helped him construct this sturdy economic Trojan horse, are still with us. Despite a rebuke over a recent gaffe, former GOP Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, deregulator extraordinaire, is still John McCain's economic adviser.
Gramm, a Texas Aggie economist (Know how to spoil an Aggie party? Flush the punchbowl), earned his bars in the "conservative" movement as one of The Fibber's hardiest point men. He started in the House as a major architect of the 1981 tax cuts that, first, handed a bonanza to the wealthiest Americans. Then, those cuts plunged the federal budget so deeply into the red that piecemeal tax increases had to be sneaked past the public for many years thereafter to slow the hemorrhaging.
He was also a player in the '80s deregulation of savings and loans, which ultimately opened them up to full-scale looting. It took years, and many, many billions from the taxpayers, to clean up that mess. (Sound familiar now? To paraphrase the poet Santayana, our leaders did not remember the past, and we are ALL condemned to repeat it.)
Near the end of his venal "service" in the Senate, Gramm was a towering figure in the second "great" wave of deregulation. This from Wikipedia:
Later in his Senate career, Gramm spearheaded efforts to pass banking reform laws, including the landmark Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which modernized Depression-era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities. Between 1995 and 2000 Gramm, who was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, received $1,000,914 in campaign contributions from the Securities & Investment industry.
Here, "modernize" means that the bill Gramm co-sponsored repealed certain New Deal-era regulations of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had helped keep those pillars of high finance separate, and hence relatively honest and solvent, since the '30s.
Not content with leaving only this much damage imminent, Gramm helped pull off a major deregulatory coup the following year. More from Wikipedia:
Gramm was one of five co-sponsors of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which critics blame for permitting the Enron scandal to occur. At the time, Gramm's wife was on Enron's board of directors.
A big part of the CFMA was what became known as the "Enron Loophole." Again, Wikipedia:
The CFMA has received criticism for the so-called "Enron Loophole," 7 U.S.C. §2(h)(3) and (g), which exempts most over-the-counter energy trades and trading on electronic energy commodity markets. The "loophole" was drafted by Enron Lobbyists working with senator Phil Gramm seeking a deregulated atmosphere for their new experiment, "Enron On-line." ...
The legislation was passed by the Republican controlled Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton [ouch --MJ] in December 2000 to allow for the creation, for U.S. exchanges, of a new kind of derivative security, the single-stock future. An attempt to reverse this policy was vetoed by President Bush in 2008. Several Democratic Legislators introduced legislation to close the loophole from 2000-2006, but were unsuccessful due to Republican control of the House and Senate.
So, in the ensuing years, Phil acquired a succession of nicknames, including "Enron Phil" for the CFMA, and recently "Foreclosure Phil" for his banking "modernization."
For more on the extent of the profound injuries that then-Sen. Phil Gramm personally inflicted on America, click here for a Joe Conason article in Salon.
But enough with beating up on a now-obvious sleazebag operative like Gramm. Let's go back a generation, and longer, to that moth-eaten spirit ultimately behind the Enron accounting scandal, and behind what is becoming known as the Panic of 2008. It's that mythical right-wing figure, the man Gore Vidal once perceptively described as "grandmotherly": Reagan.
The Sixties spawned a unique cast of characters who lingered and did their dance macabre across our collective unconscious, on their way to oblivion. The same seems to be happening with the malefactors of the Eighties, the Armani-clad hooligans of the Reagan era.
They seem determined not to go away completely, at least not right away. But I foresee a day when they will be like withered cranks at small-town school board meetings, voted out of office but showing up in enfeebled bids to harass those who replaced them. An effectively permanent death seems at hand.
Going back to the Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac bailout -- and perhaps forward toward many more -- here are a couple of especially significant quotes from The New York Times on this story:
The companies, known as government-sponsored enterprises, or G.S.E.’s, touch nearly half of the nation’s mortgages by either owning or guaranteeing them, and the debt securities they issue to finance their operations are widely owned by foreign governments, pension funds, mutual funds, big companies and other large institutional investors.
“G.S.E. debt is held by financial institutions around the world,” Mr. (Treasury Secretary Henry) Paulson said in his statement. “Its continued strength is important to maintaining confidence and stability in our financial system and our financial markets. Therefore we must take steps to address the current situation as we move to a stronger regulatory structure.”
"... a stronger regulatory structure"? This from a Bush Cabinet member?
R.I.P., Ronnie Reagan. (And Phil Gramm?)
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
'Enron Phil' And Whiner Nation: McStain Has An Adviser Problem
By Manifesto Joe
No sooner than the last problems regarding former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, as McStain's economic adviser had calmed, did "Enron Phil," as he is known in some circles, stick a big fat Gucci in his oral cavity Friday.
Gramm, a senator from 1985 through 2002 and a House member before then, wrote much of the deregulatory legislation that made accounting travesties like those at Enron and Arthur Andersen possible. Something one can't say is that the man hasn't got plenty of chutzpah.
Bloomberg News reports:
Gramm, a vice chairman of UBS Securities LLC, said in an interview with the Washington Times that despite the sluggish economy, high oil prices, job losses and the mortgage crisis, growth in the U.S. has stayed around 1 percent.
``You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,'' Gramm told the paper. ``We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet.''
``We have sort of become a nation of whiners,'' Gramm said in the interview. ``You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness."
McStain had to do rapid damage control. More from Bloomberg:
Republican John McCain rejected comments by economic adviser and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm that the U.S. is in a ``mental recession'' and is a ``nation of whiners.''
``Phil Gramm does not speak for me. I speak for me, so I strongly disagree,'' McCain told reporters after a town hall meeting in Belleville, Michigan, today. ``I believe that the person here in Michigan that just lost his job isn't suffering from a mental recession.'' Nor are people whining, he said. ``America is in great difficulty.''
And more still:
Asked about reports McCain was considering Gramm as his Treasury secretary if elected, McCain said: ``I think Senator Gramm would be in serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus.''
``I'm not sure how the people of Minsk'' would feel about that, McCain said.
Let's take a walk down memory lane where "Cracker" Gramm is concerned. (Yeah, I know that's politically incorrect, but he's also known thusly in some circles, actually being from Georgia, not Texas.)
This is a man who went to college and grad school largely on programs for disadvantaged people, and got a doctorate in economics. He got a professorship at state-funded Texas A&M University. Once ensconced in Aggieland, he decided to kick the ladder down on those trying to follow in his footsteps. After he got into Congress as a right-wing Democrat (quite a feat for an Aggie professor), he consistently voted to cut the very programs that made his success possible. By 1984 he was running for senator as a Republican. All the while, he had never made a dime in the private sector. His primary income had always originated from taxpayers.
As mentioned before, he was the author of much deregulatory law that made debacles like Enron and Arthur Andersen possible. While he was a senator, Enron heaped largess upon his campaigns, and his wife, Wendy, served on Enron's board of directors while hubby was in the Senate.
There is plenty more Gramm family pond scum. But suffice it to say that I'd like to get Phil Gramm into a room with some of the Enron workers who saw their life savings incinerated by white-collar crime, and see what happens after he tells them that they are a bunch of "whiners."
To hook back: No matter how much McStain backpeddles on this one, a pattern of bad judgment about advisers and confidants is emerging. Gramm was picked to be economic adviser. Did McCain not know about the slimy ghosts of Enron Phil's past?
And recall Charlie Black, PR man for assorted Third World despots, who recently said something to the effect that a terrorist attack on the U.S. this year would be very advantageous to McStain. So far, Black is still with the GOP campaign. Between Charlie and Phil, this says a lot.
To read more on the Gramm family/Enron connection, click here for a 2002 article in The Nation.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
No sooner than the last problems regarding former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, as McStain's economic adviser had calmed, did "Enron Phil," as he is known in some circles, stick a big fat Gucci in his oral cavity Friday.
Gramm, a senator from 1985 through 2002 and a House member before then, wrote much of the deregulatory legislation that made accounting travesties like those at Enron and Arthur Andersen possible. Something one can't say is that the man hasn't got plenty of chutzpah.
Bloomberg News reports:
Gramm, a vice chairman of UBS Securities LLC, said in an interview with the Washington Times that despite the sluggish economy, high oil prices, job losses and the mortgage crisis, growth in the U.S. has stayed around 1 percent.
``You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,'' Gramm told the paper. ``We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet.''
``We have sort of become a nation of whiners,'' Gramm said in the interview. ``You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness."
McStain had to do rapid damage control. More from Bloomberg:
Republican John McCain rejected comments by economic adviser and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm that the U.S. is in a ``mental recession'' and is a ``nation of whiners.''
``Phil Gramm does not speak for me. I speak for me, so I strongly disagree,'' McCain told reporters after a town hall meeting in Belleville, Michigan, today. ``I believe that the person here in Michigan that just lost his job isn't suffering from a mental recession.'' Nor are people whining, he said. ``America is in great difficulty.''
And more still:
Asked about reports McCain was considering Gramm as his Treasury secretary if elected, McCain said: ``I think Senator Gramm would be in serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus.''
``I'm not sure how the people of Minsk'' would feel about that, McCain said.
Let's take a walk down memory lane where "Cracker" Gramm is concerned. (Yeah, I know that's politically incorrect, but he's also known thusly in some circles, actually being from Georgia, not Texas.)
This is a man who went to college and grad school largely on programs for disadvantaged people, and got a doctorate in economics. He got a professorship at state-funded Texas A&M University. Once ensconced in Aggieland, he decided to kick the ladder down on those trying to follow in his footsteps. After he got into Congress as a right-wing Democrat (quite a feat for an Aggie professor), he consistently voted to cut the very programs that made his success possible. By 1984 he was running for senator as a Republican. All the while, he had never made a dime in the private sector. His primary income had always originated from taxpayers.
As mentioned before, he was the author of much deregulatory law that made debacles like Enron and Arthur Andersen possible. While he was a senator, Enron heaped largess upon his campaigns, and his wife, Wendy, served on Enron's board of directors while hubby was in the Senate.
There is plenty more Gramm family pond scum. But suffice it to say that I'd like to get Phil Gramm into a room with some of the Enron workers who saw their life savings incinerated by white-collar crime, and see what happens after he tells them that they are a bunch of "whiners."
To hook back: No matter how much McStain backpeddles on this one, a pattern of bad judgment about advisers and confidants is emerging. Gramm was picked to be economic adviser. Did McCain not know about the slimy ghosts of Enron Phil's past?
And recall Charlie Black, PR man for assorted Third World despots, who recently said something to the effect that a terrorist attack on the U.S. this year would be very advantageous to McStain. So far, Black is still with the GOP campaign. Between Charlie and Phil, this says a lot.
To read more on the Gramm family/Enron connection, click here for a 2002 article in The Nation.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Cornyn Watch, Update: Senator Cornhole Changes To The Other Side On Medicare
By Manifesto Joe
But the question is, will he change back?
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was one of several Republican senators who finally decided to vote against the Bush administration's Medicare cuts Wednesday, when the Senate cast another vote on the bill. Could it be that Senator Cornhole has carefully considered the ramifications for his re-election campaign?
Both Cornyn and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, were among the 40 who earlier kept the Senate from reaching the 60 votes to invoke cloture the last time this bill came to a Senate vote. It was 58 for, 40 against. This time, enough of the GOPhers switched to make it 69-30, seemingly a veto-proof majority for H.R 6331, the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008.
But what if Il Doofus comes through with the anticipated veto? Will Senator Cornhole, or for that matter, 1962 edition UT cheerleader Kay Bailey (H), stick with the majority, or cave? (Cue in cheesy organ music.)
This may be interesting to watch. As mentioned on this blog before, Cornyn has a very credible challenger in his bid for a second Senate term. State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, trails by only single digits in most Texas polls -- pretty good for a Texas Democrat in recent years.
"Go Team" Kay has a rep for being almost a "moderate" Republican by contemporary standards, so her switch in time wasn't shocking. Senator Cornhole has been a more of a reliable water boy for Il Doofus' team, so that switch actually surprised me a bit. But of course, he wants a second term. And when the Texas Medical Association withdrew an endorsement of him after the first vote, that probably made an impression.
Let's see what he does when this comes to brass tacks. But no matter what Cornhole does, if I were Rick Noriega, I wouldn't let the old people or the medical establishment of this state forget about that first vote. Stay tuned.
Postscript: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was absent for this vote.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
But the question is, will he change back?
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was one of several Republican senators who finally decided to vote against the Bush administration's Medicare cuts Wednesday, when the Senate cast another vote on the bill. Could it be that Senator Cornhole has carefully considered the ramifications for his re-election campaign?
Both Cornyn and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, were among the 40 who earlier kept the Senate from reaching the 60 votes to invoke cloture the last time this bill came to a Senate vote. It was 58 for, 40 against. This time, enough of the GOPhers switched to make it 69-30, seemingly a veto-proof majority for H.R 6331, the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008.
But what if Il Doofus comes through with the anticipated veto? Will Senator Cornhole, or for that matter, 1962 edition UT cheerleader Kay Bailey (H), stick with the majority, or cave? (Cue in cheesy organ music.)
This may be interesting to watch. As mentioned on this blog before, Cornyn has a very credible challenger in his bid for a second Senate term. State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, trails by only single digits in most Texas polls -- pretty good for a Texas Democrat in recent years.
"Go Team" Kay has a rep for being almost a "moderate" Republican by contemporary standards, so her switch in time wasn't shocking. Senator Cornhole has been a more of a reliable water boy for Il Doofus' team, so that switch actually surprised me a bit. But of course, he wants a second term. And when the Texas Medical Association withdrew an endorsement of him after the first vote, that probably made an impression.
Let's see what he does when this comes to brass tacks. But no matter what Cornhole does, if I were Rick Noriega, I wouldn't let the old people or the medical establishment of this state forget about that first vote. Stay tuned.
Postscript: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was absent for this vote.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Dead On The Fourth Of July: Jesse Helms (1921-2008)
If God is in heaven, and we will all stand before him as traditional faith holds, I'll have plenty of sins of my own to answer for.
But I definitely wouldn't want to swap shoes with the former North Carolina Republican senator, who passed away on Independence Day. Perhaps it's a sin in itself to reflect poorly upon the dead. But I wouldn't want to have to answer for the legacy of racism and chauvinism that Mr. Helms would have to.
Here's the Associated Press obit. Some of you may be amused over a former GOP congressman's comparison of Helms to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both of whom died on July 4, 1826. -- MJ
But I definitely wouldn't want to swap shoes with the former North Carolina Republican senator, who passed away on Independence Day. Perhaps it's a sin in itself to reflect poorly upon the dead. But I wouldn't want to have to answer for the legacy of racism and chauvinism that Mr. Helms would have to.
Here's the Associated Press obit. Some of you may be amused over a former GOP congressman's comparison of Helms to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both of whom died on July 4, 1826. -- MJ
Thursday, July 3, 2008
The Baseball Campaign Ad That Democrats Should Run, But Won't
By Manifesto Joe
Here's the scenario:
FADE IN to a Major League baseball stadium. A game is under way, and it's in the later innings. A runner is on third base. A batter hits a fly ball to the right fielder. The right fielder zeros in on it and catches it like a first-rate pro. The runner tags up and goes for home plate. This outfielder has a rifle for an arm. But he throws the ball into the bleachers, and then does a victory dance, arms raised in triumph. The runner scores. Everyone in the stadium shakes their head. FADE OUT.
FADE IN: The right fielder comes to bat in the bottom half of the inning. There's a runner on first.
The right fielder nails a line drive into the left-center alley, and the ball goes all the way to the wall. It looks like a certain triple, and an RBI.
But the right fielder takes off in a sprint for third base, running the bases backasswards. The runner who was on first advances to second, but then pulls up, not sure what the hell to do.
The opposing team members look on in amazement when the right fielder rounds the bases, backasswards, with Ty Cobb aggression, and slides into first base, spikes up. Nobody will go near this fucking maniac, not even the umps.
FADE OUT TO BLACK. "A Voice" comes on, soft and fast, as in a disclaimer:
"Being able to get things done doesn't necessarily mean you will get them done right. The Republican Party has brought us George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the Iraq war, Medicare cuts, and $4-a-gallon gasoline. They've done plenty, only backwards."
FADE IN, back to the right fielder aggressively sliding into first base from the wrong direction. "A Voice" again: "Don't you think we should change direction, and soon?
FADE OUT TO BLACK: "I'm Howard Dean, and I approved this message. ARRRRAAAAGGGHHHHAAAA!!!!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Here's the scenario:
FADE IN to a Major League baseball stadium. A game is under way, and it's in the later innings. A runner is on third base. A batter hits a fly ball to the right fielder. The right fielder zeros in on it and catches it like a first-rate pro. The runner tags up and goes for home plate. This outfielder has a rifle for an arm. But he throws the ball into the bleachers, and then does a victory dance, arms raised in triumph. The runner scores. Everyone in the stadium shakes their head. FADE OUT.
FADE IN: The right fielder comes to bat in the bottom half of the inning. There's a runner on first.
The right fielder nails a line drive into the left-center alley, and the ball goes all the way to the wall. It looks like a certain triple, and an RBI.
But the right fielder takes off in a sprint for third base, running the bases backasswards. The runner who was on first advances to second, but then pulls up, not sure what the hell to do.
The opposing team members look on in amazement when the right fielder rounds the bases, backasswards, with Ty Cobb aggression, and slides into first base, spikes up. Nobody will go near this fucking maniac, not even the umps.
FADE OUT TO BLACK. "A Voice" comes on, soft and fast, as in a disclaimer:
"Being able to get things done doesn't necessarily mean you will get them done right. The Republican Party has brought us George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the Iraq war, Medicare cuts, and $4-a-gallon gasoline. They've done plenty, only backwards."
FADE IN, back to the right fielder aggressively sliding into first base from the wrong direction. "A Voice" again: "Don't you think we should change direction, and soon?
FADE OUT TO BLACK: "I'm Howard Dean, and I approved this message. ARRRRAAAAGGGHHHHAAAA!!!!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Cornyn Watch: Losing The Doctors AND Older People Could Prove Terminal For The Senator
By Manifesto Joe
There are two constituencies that right-wing Republicans have generally been able to count on in Texas: doctors and other medical professionals, and people 65 and older. This election year, most of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, have managed to royally piss off both groups.
This is not unimportant for Cornyn, who is facing surprising opposition in his bid for a second term in the Senate. State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, trails Cornyn, but only by single digits in most polls. He's within striking distance of Cornyn.
You Texans out there: Our glorious senator was one of 40 who kept the Senate from reaching the 60 votes needed Thursday night to invoke cloture and end Republican obstruction of a bill to avert the Bush administration's 10.6% cut in Medicare payments, set to go into effect tomorrow. (Sen. Barack Obama showed up and was one of 58 who voted yes; Sen. John McCain was one of two senators who did not vote.)
This bill, to forestall the cuts by 18 months, had passed in the House by a vote of 355-59. Only the most kook-right Republicans there opposed it. But just enough Senate Republicans caved in to the most loathed administration in U.S. history to kill what could have been an easy veto override.
In response, the political committee of the Texas Medical Association has rescinded its support of Cornyn for re-election to the Senate. ("Senator Noriega." I like the sound of it.)
The San Antonio Express-News reported Friday:
Medical association officials said the cut, which is set to take effect July 1, will force them to choose between their finances and their elderly patients.
Cornyn said he voted against the measure because it was a partisan ploy and "election year grandstanding" by Democrats rather than a real effort to solve the problem.
The physicians group began the day criticizing both Cornyn and senior U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for their votes against the bill on Thursday. Association President Dr. Josie R. Williams of Paris said they "chose to protect insurance companies profits instead of protecting our patients’ health."
By the end of the day, the association’s political committee, TEXPAC, had withdrawn its backing of Cornyn, saying its board was "outraged."
"That (planned Medicare cut) will force physicians into an impossible choice: face financial crisis by continuing to see their Medicare patients or protect their practice and cut off those patients," the political committee’s chairman, Dr. Manuel Acosta of El Paso, wrote to Cornyn in a letter made public by the association.
"We expect our elected officials to show leadership and do the right thing," Acosta said. "Absent that, TEXPAC has rescinded our endorsement of your candidacy."
Noriega didn't pick up an endorsement, but the challenger's campaign had a rapid response. The Express-News again:
"Cornyn has failed Texas families again and again - from rejecting health care for children to medicare votes that prioritize big insurance companies over doctors and seniors, to cutting veterans’ benefits and health services," said Noriega spokeswoman Holly Shulman. "Texans are ready for a change from a senator that continues to choose to vote with special interests instead of Texas families."
The Bush administration had threatened a veto because the bill included payment reductions to Medicare Advantage, which some senior citizens use as a private, fee-for-service alternative. Yep -- somebody's profits were being affected. For the Bush administration, it's business as usual.
But in this state, as in others, medical professionals and senior citizens are two groups that show up on Election Day. They also sign checks. Both of our GOP mannequin senators -- Kay Bailey Hutchison also voted no -- may live to regret this vote. But in an election year in which Cornyn is no shoo-in according to the polls, it could cost him everything politically.
Postscript: This is also one vote McCain may wish he hadn't missed.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
There are two constituencies that right-wing Republicans have generally been able to count on in Texas: doctors and other medical professionals, and people 65 and older. This election year, most of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, have managed to royally piss off both groups.
This is not unimportant for Cornyn, who is facing surprising opposition in his bid for a second term in the Senate. State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, trails Cornyn, but only by single digits in most polls. He's within striking distance of Cornyn.
You Texans out there: Our glorious senator was one of 40 who kept the Senate from reaching the 60 votes needed Thursday night to invoke cloture and end Republican obstruction of a bill to avert the Bush administration's 10.6% cut in Medicare payments, set to go into effect tomorrow. (Sen. Barack Obama showed up and was one of 58 who voted yes; Sen. John McCain was one of two senators who did not vote.)
This bill, to forestall the cuts by 18 months, had passed in the House by a vote of 355-59. Only the most kook-right Republicans there opposed it. But just enough Senate Republicans caved in to the most loathed administration in U.S. history to kill what could have been an easy veto override.
In response, the political committee of the Texas Medical Association has rescinded its support of Cornyn for re-election to the Senate. ("Senator Noriega." I like the sound of it.)
The San Antonio Express-News reported Friday:
Medical association officials said the cut, which is set to take effect July 1, will force them to choose between their finances and their elderly patients.
Cornyn said he voted against the measure because it was a partisan ploy and "election year grandstanding" by Democrats rather than a real effort to solve the problem.
The physicians group began the day criticizing both Cornyn and senior U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for their votes against the bill on Thursday. Association President Dr. Josie R. Williams of Paris said they "chose to protect insurance companies profits instead of protecting our patients’ health."
By the end of the day, the association’s political committee, TEXPAC, had withdrawn its backing of Cornyn, saying its board was "outraged."
"That (planned Medicare cut) will force physicians into an impossible choice: face financial crisis by continuing to see their Medicare patients or protect their practice and cut off those patients," the political committee’s chairman, Dr. Manuel Acosta of El Paso, wrote to Cornyn in a letter made public by the association.
"We expect our elected officials to show leadership and do the right thing," Acosta said. "Absent that, TEXPAC has rescinded our endorsement of your candidacy."
Noriega didn't pick up an endorsement, but the challenger's campaign had a rapid response. The Express-News again:
"Cornyn has failed Texas families again and again - from rejecting health care for children to medicare votes that prioritize big insurance companies over doctors and seniors, to cutting veterans’ benefits and health services," said Noriega spokeswoman Holly Shulman. "Texans are ready for a change from a senator that continues to choose to vote with special interests instead of Texas families."
The Bush administration had threatened a veto because the bill included payment reductions to Medicare Advantage, which some senior citizens use as a private, fee-for-service alternative. Yep -- somebody's profits were being affected. For the Bush administration, it's business as usual.
But in this state, as in others, medical professionals and senior citizens are two groups that show up on Election Day. They also sign checks. Both of our GOP mannequin senators -- Kay Bailey Hutchison also voted no -- may live to regret this vote. But in an election year in which Cornyn is no shoo-in according to the polls, it could cost him everything politically.
Postscript: This is also one vote McCain may wish he hadn't missed.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
'There Will Be Blood' Comes To Iraq
For years, those of us who have argued that the Iraq war is mainly about oil have been dismissed as wild-eyed neo-Marxists, conspiracy theorists and prematurely senile ex-hippies. Tell that to journalism legend Bill Moyers.
Moyers and Michael Winship present a compelling look at the clear motive behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq in "It Was Oil, All Along."
For reader-supported Web news service Truthout, Moyers and Winship wrote:
"Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil."
Go here to read the entire article. I found the analogy to the film There Will Be Blood intriguing. -- MJ
Moyers and Michael Winship present a compelling look at the clear motive behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq in "It Was Oil, All Along."
For reader-supported Web news service Truthout, Moyers and Winship wrote:
"Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil."
Go here to read the entire article. I found the analogy to the film There Will Be Blood intriguing. -- MJ
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
George Carlin: 1937-2008
He was the Lenny Bruce for a slightly younger generation -- only, I would say, funnier than Lenny, and he lasted much longer than either Bruce or the late great Bill Hicks.
It's actually remarkable that George Carlin lived to be 71, given his lifestyle in his younger years. And just as amazing is how he got better and better. I'm so cheap that I rarely pay the full price of a new hardback book, but I happily paid it for what was arguably Carlin's crowning achievement as a humorist, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004) That alone earned him his posthumous Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
George's facility with language was far superior to mine, so I'll pay tribute with some quotes from him, courtesy of imdb.com:
Most people are not particularly good at anything.
If someone loves you and they leave and don't come back, it was never meant to be. If someone loves you and they leave and come back, set them on fire.
When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.
Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
Heart disease has changed my eating habits, but I still cook bacon for the smell.
I'm completely in favor of the separation of church and state. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.
[March 1997] We use up words like "spiritual" so fast in this culture. Twenty years ago "spiritual" had a distinct meaning. But now there's a lot of jack-off thinkers who just love to talk about the spiritual. And there is a lot of bogus -- is "bogosity" a word? It should be -- a lot of bogosity in these spiritual seekers. So you have to find another way to express it. I just call it "how I fit.
I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.
I'm not afraid of heights, I'm just afraid of falling from them.
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated, but not be able to say it.
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.
Don't confuse my point of view with cynicism. The real cynics are the ones who tell you that everything's gonna be all right.
Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.
Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done".
Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.
Thanks, George, for all the laughs, and the wisdom. -- MJ
It's actually remarkable that George Carlin lived to be 71, given his lifestyle in his younger years. And just as amazing is how he got better and better. I'm so cheap that I rarely pay the full price of a new hardback book, but I happily paid it for what was arguably Carlin's crowning achievement as a humorist, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004) That alone earned him his posthumous Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
George's facility with language was far superior to mine, so I'll pay tribute with some quotes from him, courtesy of imdb.com:
Most people are not particularly good at anything.
If someone loves you and they leave and don't come back, it was never meant to be. If someone loves you and they leave and come back, set them on fire.
When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.
Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
Heart disease has changed my eating habits, but I still cook bacon for the smell.
I'm completely in favor of the separation of church and state. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.
[March 1997] We use up words like "spiritual" so fast in this culture. Twenty years ago "spiritual" had a distinct meaning. But now there's a lot of jack-off thinkers who just love to talk about the spiritual. And there is a lot of bogus -- is "bogosity" a word? It should be -- a lot of bogosity in these spiritual seekers. So you have to find another way to express it. I just call it "how I fit.
I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.
I'm not afraid of heights, I'm just afraid of falling from them.
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated, but not be able to say it.
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.
Don't confuse my point of view with cynicism. The real cynics are the ones who tell you that everything's gonna be all right.
Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.
Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done".
Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.
Thanks, George, for all the laughs, and the wisdom. -- MJ
Monday, June 16, 2008
Reagan: The Great Prevaricator Remembered, Four Years A.R., Part I
By Manifesto Joe
"A White House official who has had to bring large doses of bad news to the president about coming budget deficits recently observed: 'Reagan doesn't understand numbers. Every time the figures point to trouble, Reagan rebuts them with a personal anecdote'" -- Joseph Kraft, The Washington Post, Dec. 29, 1983
This month marked the fourth anniversary of The Great Prevaricator's death -- this morning in right-wing America, this is early in The Year 5 A.R. (After Reagan). In a presidential election year, his memory still surfaces now and then as some kind of standard by which all presidential aspirants are measured.
In a comments thread on a different blog, one commentator referred to Ronald Reagan as, though far from perfect, the last "presentable" president the U.S. has had. I agree to the extent that he was presentable as a sort of mannequin, which is common among Republican politicians. Reagan was the prototype GOP politician, America's First Mannequin. And he governed that way most of the time.
Assessing Reagan as a president, I would give him credit on a few points. Reagan was a turkey-necked chairman of the board who often slept through parts of Cabinet meetings, so he could never be as destructively proactive as George W. Bush. The latter governs like a reverse King Midas (everything he touches turns to feces) who is firmly convinced he can do no wrong. Reagan was afflicted with that same delusional self-assurance, but fortunately, he was so doddering and detached that he didn't do as much damage.
Reagan governed just a shade more from the "center" than Bush, and he didn't get us directly mixed up in foreign adventures for very long. There were Nicaraguas, Grenadas and Lebanons, but thankfully no Iraqs or Vietnams.
And -- he was actually willing to talk with our enemies, eventually to good effect. His friendly relations with Mikhail Gorbachev made his second term, arguably a disaster at home, look much better than it really was. People seemed to forget all about Iran-Contra, the S&L debacle, exploding deficits, burgeoning homelessness and the like.
But, enough of giving Reagan his due. Let's travel back in time, to that ugly era of mullets and old-time collars on hipster men, those "serious hair" sheepdog permanents and floppy ties on yuppie women, and remember Ronnie Reagan as he was: a meaner-spirited version of Elwood P. Dowd.
This man lived in a world of celluloid fantasies -- where facts didn't matter, and where a dude who took the "gut course" in economics at a fourth-rate Illinois college conjured up economic policy that is still ruinously with us now.
Distortions of Jimmy Carter's Record
This material is from Reagan's Reign of Error, by Mark Green and Gail MacColl (1983, rev. 1987), p.43:
"We then went back into negotiations on their [the Soviets'] terms, because Mr. Carter had cancelled the B-1 bomber, delayed the MX, delayed the Trident submarine, delayed the Cruise missile, shut down the ... Minute Man missile production line ..." (Presidential debate, 10/28/80)
The B-1 bomber had been delayed. As for the rest: the Cruise missile and MX were under full-scale development; the Minute Man missile's production line had been shut down because the production schedule had been met; and the first Trident submarine, the USS Ohio, had been launched on April 7, 1979.
(What was that quotation about how a lie can travel so much faster than the truth?)
Green and MacColl, p.65:
"Mr. Carter is acting as if he hasn't been in charge for the past three and a half years; as if someone else was responsible for the largest deficit in American history" (Nationally televised campaign speech, 10/24/80)
Federal deficits totaled $195 billion under Mr. Carter. The latest budget projections [this was 1987] suggest that during Mr. Reagan's six years the deficit will total nearly $1 trillion.
(After the fact, we now know that Reaganomics roughly tripled the total national debt, from about $1 trillion to around $3 trillion.)
Reagan on Nuclear War
Green and MacColl, p.46:
"Those [nuclear weapons] that are carried in ships of one kind or another, or submersibles, you are dealing there with a conventional type of weapon or instrument, and those instruments can be intercepted. They can be recalled." (5/13/82)
Submarine-launched missiles cannot be recalled. If the president thinks differently he may be surprised in a nuclear exchange.
Reagan Quotes Churchill
Green and MacColl, p.60:
"I would like to quote a few words by a very famous and celebrated orator, journalist, soldier, historian, and statesman. People have said he might have made a great actor if he tried that. Winston Churchill. He said, 'The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the crudest delusions which has ever befuddled the human mind.' Now I don't know how that quote happened to catch my eye." (3/9/82)
Neither does anyone else. Reagan's speechwriters "don't know where he got that one from." Nor does the British historian at the Library of Congress; there was no such passage in the Library's extensive collection of Churchill quotations. Ten other books of quotations also failed to provide a clue.
Reagan on Poverty
Green and MacColl, pp.88-89:
"In 20 years, the federal budget increased five-fold and the cost of welfare grew ten-fold. But that didn't help many local governments which lost effective control of their communities. It didn't help small businesses hit by the highest interest rates in a hundred years. It didn't help the working poor and pensioners flattened by double-digit inflation and taxation." (1/14/82)
It probably did. The standard of living has doubled since 1960. Accounting for inflation, per capita disposable income, the average income after taxes, rose, in 1972 dollars, from $2,709 in 1960 to $4,472 in 1980. In 1959, 22.4% of Americans lived below the poverty line. By 1981, that figure had been cut nearly in half.
Green and MacColl, p.92
"The decrease in poverty I referred to earlier started in the 1950s. By the time the full weight of the Great Society programs was felt, economic progress for America's poor had come to a tragic halt."
In 1967, the Field Foundation testified before Congress on hunger in America: "Wherever we went and wherever we looked, we saw children in significant numbers who were hungry and sick." A decade later, the Field team retraced its 1967 steps and found "far fewer grossly malnourished people in this country. ..." They concluded that food stamps and other federal nutrition programs, implemented or inspired by Great Society legislation, had made the difference.
That's all we have time for today. My gratitude to Green and MacColl -- I highly recommend "The Instant Nostalgia Edition" of that book, if it's available. See you next time for more summer Reagan-bashing.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
"A White House official who has had to bring large doses of bad news to the president about coming budget deficits recently observed: 'Reagan doesn't understand numbers. Every time the figures point to trouble, Reagan rebuts them with a personal anecdote'" -- Joseph Kraft, The Washington Post, Dec. 29, 1983
This month marked the fourth anniversary of The Great Prevaricator's death -- this morning in right-wing America, this is early in The Year 5 A.R. (After Reagan). In a presidential election year, his memory still surfaces now and then as some kind of standard by which all presidential aspirants are measured.
In a comments thread on a different blog, one commentator referred to Ronald Reagan as, though far from perfect, the last "presentable" president the U.S. has had. I agree to the extent that he was presentable as a sort of mannequin, which is common among Republican politicians. Reagan was the prototype GOP politician, America's First Mannequin. And he governed that way most of the time.
Assessing Reagan as a president, I would give him credit on a few points. Reagan was a turkey-necked chairman of the board who often slept through parts of Cabinet meetings, so he could never be as destructively proactive as George W. Bush. The latter governs like a reverse King Midas (everything he touches turns to feces) who is firmly convinced he can do no wrong. Reagan was afflicted with that same delusional self-assurance, but fortunately, he was so doddering and detached that he didn't do as much damage.
Reagan governed just a shade more from the "center" than Bush, and he didn't get us directly mixed up in foreign adventures for very long. There were Nicaraguas, Grenadas and Lebanons, but thankfully no Iraqs or Vietnams.
And -- he was actually willing to talk with our enemies, eventually to good effect. His friendly relations with Mikhail Gorbachev made his second term, arguably a disaster at home, look much better than it really was. People seemed to forget all about Iran-Contra, the S&L debacle, exploding deficits, burgeoning homelessness and the like.
But, enough of giving Reagan his due. Let's travel back in time, to that ugly era of mullets and old-time collars on hipster men, those "serious hair" sheepdog permanents and floppy ties on yuppie women, and remember Ronnie Reagan as he was: a meaner-spirited version of Elwood P. Dowd.
This man lived in a world of celluloid fantasies -- where facts didn't matter, and where a dude who took the "gut course" in economics at a fourth-rate Illinois college conjured up economic policy that is still ruinously with us now.
Distortions of Jimmy Carter's Record
This material is from Reagan's Reign of Error, by Mark Green and Gail MacColl (1983, rev. 1987), p.43:
"We then went back into negotiations on their [the Soviets'] terms, because Mr. Carter had cancelled the B-1 bomber, delayed the MX, delayed the Trident submarine, delayed the Cruise missile, shut down the ... Minute Man missile production line ..." (Presidential debate, 10/28/80)
The B-1 bomber had been delayed. As for the rest: the Cruise missile and MX were under full-scale development; the Minute Man missile's production line had been shut down because the production schedule had been met; and the first Trident submarine, the USS Ohio, had been launched on April 7, 1979.
(What was that quotation about how a lie can travel so much faster than the truth?)
Green and MacColl, p.65:
"Mr. Carter is acting as if he hasn't been in charge for the past three and a half years; as if someone else was responsible for the largest deficit in American history" (Nationally televised campaign speech, 10/24/80)
Federal deficits totaled $195 billion under Mr. Carter. The latest budget projections [this was 1987] suggest that during Mr. Reagan's six years the deficit will total nearly $1 trillion.
(After the fact, we now know that Reaganomics roughly tripled the total national debt, from about $1 trillion to around $3 trillion.)
Reagan on Nuclear War
Green and MacColl, p.46:
"Those [nuclear weapons] that are carried in ships of one kind or another, or submersibles, you are dealing there with a conventional type of weapon or instrument, and those instruments can be intercepted. They can be recalled." (5/13/82)
Submarine-launched missiles cannot be recalled. If the president thinks differently he may be surprised in a nuclear exchange.
Reagan Quotes Churchill
Green and MacColl, p.60:
"I would like to quote a few words by a very famous and celebrated orator, journalist, soldier, historian, and statesman. People have said he might have made a great actor if he tried that. Winston Churchill. He said, 'The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the crudest delusions which has ever befuddled the human mind.' Now I don't know how that quote happened to catch my eye." (3/9/82)
Neither does anyone else. Reagan's speechwriters "don't know where he got that one from." Nor does the British historian at the Library of Congress; there was no such passage in the Library's extensive collection of Churchill quotations. Ten other books of quotations also failed to provide a clue.
Reagan on Poverty
Green and MacColl, pp.88-89:
"In 20 years, the federal budget increased five-fold and the cost of welfare grew ten-fold. But that didn't help many local governments which lost effective control of their communities. It didn't help small businesses hit by the highest interest rates in a hundred years. It didn't help the working poor and pensioners flattened by double-digit inflation and taxation." (1/14/82)
It probably did. The standard of living has doubled since 1960. Accounting for inflation, per capita disposable income, the average income after taxes, rose, in 1972 dollars, from $2,709 in 1960 to $4,472 in 1980. In 1959, 22.4% of Americans lived below the poverty line. By 1981, that figure had been cut nearly in half.
Green and MacColl, p.92
"The decrease in poverty I referred to earlier started in the 1950s. By the time the full weight of the Great Society programs was felt, economic progress for America's poor had come to a tragic halt."
In 1967, the Field Foundation testified before Congress on hunger in America: "Wherever we went and wherever we looked, we saw children in significant numbers who were hungry and sick." A decade later, the Field team retraced its 1967 steps and found "far fewer grossly malnourished people in this country. ..." They concluded that food stamps and other federal nutrition programs, implemented or inspired by Great Society legislation, had made the difference.
That's all we have time for today. My gratitude to Green and MacColl -- I highly recommend "The Instant Nostalgia Edition" of that book, if it's available. See you next time for more summer Reagan-bashing.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Native Texan Bill Moyers Is Still A National Treasure
This speech on media consolidation by journalism icon Bill Moyers should be required listening/viewing. It was posted on YouTube by videofreepress:
As a bonus for watching, here's something posted by the same folks, with Keith Olbermann narrating Moyers' smackdown of a Bill O'Reilly/Fox News toady:
Sweet dreams. -- MJ
As a bonus for watching, here's something posted by the same folks, with Keith Olbermann narrating Moyers' smackdown of a Bill O'Reilly/Fox News toady:
Sweet dreams. -- MJ
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Cornyn Watch: Senator Cornhole Lies To His Constituents
By Manifesto Joe
I'm shocked, shocked to find a politician engaging in deception.
No, not really. But this seems a particularly tawdry case of it, something from the repertoire of the King and the Duke in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Sen. John "Cornhole" Cornyn, R-Texas, is making energy policy a centerpiece of his bid for a second term in the U.S. Senate, and he's playing a shell game with pending legislation.
Sen. Cornhole sends an e-mail "update" to his constituents, usually at his whim, but lately a lot as he campaigns. In his last two he's been talking about energy policy in mendacious ways, and deliberately confusing two separate Senate bills. This is from his latest opus:
... the majority party in Congress has proposed $6.7 trillion climate tax package that could actually raise gas prices by 147 percent. It defies logic that after blocking the American energy production and oil independence, Congress is now pursuing bigger government, more taxes, and higher energy costs with no guarantee of actually improving the climate.
What one discovers upon further examination is that Sen. Cornhole refers to S. 3036, aka America's Climate Security Act. The sponsors are Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va. As liberal as Democrats are reputed to be, I don't think even they are magnanimous enough to include John and Renegade Joe as members of "the majority party."
Going back to Sen. Cornhole's previous e-mail, he lays this alleged Democrat (GOP-ese for the adjective form) tax-spend-and-regulate atrocity on the doorstep of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Here he goes again:
... earlier this month, the Senate actually considered a massive climate tax bill that headed in the exact opposite direction. This massive $6.7 trillion Rube Goldberg scheme proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would undermine our economy and likely lead to $10 per gallon gasoline. It could well eliminate some 330,000 Texas jobs, sending them to places with limited regulation like China and India.
It's never explained where the figures come from. But I suspect that, as a member of the Senate, Master Cornhole can distinguish one bill from another. What Boxer introduced was S. 2191, a separate bill that takes the measures of S. 3036 a bit deeper into enemy territory. But it doesn't appear to be all that radical. Here's part of an article posted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors:
WASHINGTON, May 22 - The nation's mayors are putting forth their full support behind Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer's revised version of the pending Climate Security Act (S.2191), which will enable cities and the country to make systematic reductions nationwide in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
"We commend Chairman Barbara Boxer for her leadership and commitment to this issue," said Conference President Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer. "We urge the Senate to pass this crucial piece of legislation that will put us on a path to continue to confront America's climate challenge."
But, let's go back to the Lieberman-Warner bill, S. 3036. I just pulled up Renegade Joe's handy-dandy Web site, and here's what he had to say:
On its own, the America's Climate Security Act (ACSA) is projected to reduce total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 19% below the 2005 level (4% below the 1990 level) in 2020 and by as much as 63% below the 2005 level in 2050. Lieberman and Warner presented their new bill as the core of a new federal program that Congress should pass to avert catastrophic global climate change while enhancing America's energy security.
"With all the irrefutable evidence we now have corroborating that climate change is real, dangerous, and proceeding faster than many scientists predicted, this is the year for Congress to move this critical legislation," said Lieberman. "If we fail to start substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next couple of years, we risk bequeathing a diminished world to our grandchildren. Insect-borne diseases such as malaria will spike as tropical ecosystems expand; hotter air will exacerbate the pollution that sends children to the hospital with asthma attacks; food insecurity from shifting agricultural zones will spark border wars; and storms and coastal flooding from sea-level rise will cause mortality and dislocation."
"In my 28 years in the Senate, I have focused above all on issues of national security, and I see the problem of global climate change as fitting squarely within that focus," said Warner. "Today we introduced a balanced bill. Senator Lieberman and I found a good, sound, starting point that sends a significant signal that the U.S. is serious about taking a leadership role in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions."
Joining Lieberman and Warner in co-sponsoring ACSA are Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
A bunch of crazed socialists, no doubt. Anyway, during a lucid moment in which Sen. Cornhole was talking about the actual bill at hand, he's quoted thusly:
“As we move forward with debate over this mammoth new legislation, there are many unanswered questions that Congress should examine closely. The bill appears to implement a $6.7 trillion program that could undermine economic growth, raise energy costs for American consumers and send jobs overseas to countries such as India and China. We need a thoughtful and serious debate on how to be the best stewards of the environment possible. As we do this, I hope Congress pays heed to the law of unintended consequences, including what impact it might have on the budgets of families in Texas and across the country."
It appears that Sen. Cornhole ran across some Adam Smith during his halcyon days at Trinity University. That so-called law of unintended consequences can be framed as an obstructionist argument against damn near anything, when abused.
And speaking of intellectual dishonesty, let's return to the grade-school variety of it: getting the bills straight. Last week, the one that came before the Senate was the Lieberman-Warner incarnation, S. 3036, and here's what happened, according to Votes in Congress Newspaper Syndicate:
Global climate change
Passed, 74-14
Senators voted to begin debate on a bill ... that would establish a cap-and-trade system to sharply reduce the U.S. share of the greenhouse-gas emissions that help cause global warming and climate change. Democratic leaders later shelved the bill in response to Republican delaying tactics, such as compelling clerks to read the entire 490-page bill aloud.
Well, it was noted that Sen. Cornhole was among the 74 senators who voted to begin debate. As for the other 14, I doubt that there was anything unintended about the consequences.
Maybe one of these days Sen. Cornhole will show his constituents the respect to actually distinguish one bill from another. But I don't think the median of American intelligence will ever compel him to do so. Here's an example of the general public, taken from the lead comments on S. 3036 on WashingtonWatch:
Greatdanes
This is OUTRAGEOUS. The Congress must be Stopped and we have to Get Rid of each and every Senator and Congressman. This is SUCIDE for America! Global Warming is a SCAM and Will destroy the Country and make us all Slaves. Americans STAND UP and FIGT BACK. Say NO to this Bill.
Well, it should be no mystery how politicians like Sen. Cornhole manage to have long careers. Against odds, I most profoundly hope that the voters of Texas will see fit to cut this scumbag's career short.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Postscript: It has come to my attention that the Boxer bill, S. 2191, was also voted on last week in one of the goofy ways that the Senate often does. The vote was 48-36 in favor of ending a Republican filibuster against this version, but 60 votes were needed to invoke cloture, so it failed. Cornyn wasn't there for that vote.
I'm shocked, shocked to find a politician engaging in deception.
No, not really. But this seems a particularly tawdry case of it, something from the repertoire of the King and the Duke in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Sen. John "Cornhole" Cornyn, R-Texas, is making energy policy a centerpiece of his bid for a second term in the U.S. Senate, and he's playing a shell game with pending legislation.
Sen. Cornhole sends an e-mail "update" to his constituents, usually at his whim, but lately a lot as he campaigns. In his last two he's been talking about energy policy in mendacious ways, and deliberately confusing two separate Senate bills. This is from his latest opus:
... the majority party in Congress has proposed $6.7 trillion climate tax package that could actually raise gas prices by 147 percent. It defies logic that after blocking the American energy production and oil independence, Congress is now pursuing bigger government, more taxes, and higher energy costs with no guarantee of actually improving the climate.
What one discovers upon further examination is that Sen. Cornhole refers to S. 3036, aka America's Climate Security Act. The sponsors are Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va. As liberal as Democrats are reputed to be, I don't think even they are magnanimous enough to include John and Renegade Joe as members of "the majority party."
Going back to Sen. Cornhole's previous e-mail, he lays this alleged Democrat (GOP-ese for the adjective form) tax-spend-and-regulate atrocity on the doorstep of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Here he goes again:
... earlier this month, the Senate actually considered a massive climate tax bill that headed in the exact opposite direction. This massive $6.7 trillion Rube Goldberg scheme proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would undermine our economy and likely lead to $10 per gallon gasoline. It could well eliminate some 330,000 Texas jobs, sending them to places with limited regulation like China and India.
It's never explained where the figures come from. But I suspect that, as a member of the Senate, Master Cornhole can distinguish one bill from another. What Boxer introduced was S. 2191, a separate bill that takes the measures of S. 3036 a bit deeper into enemy territory. But it doesn't appear to be all that radical. Here's part of an article posted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors:
WASHINGTON, May 22 - The nation's mayors are putting forth their full support behind Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer's revised version of the pending Climate Security Act (S.2191), which will enable cities and the country to make systematic reductions nationwide in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
"We commend Chairman Barbara Boxer for her leadership and commitment to this issue," said Conference President Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer. "We urge the Senate to pass this crucial piece of legislation that will put us on a path to continue to confront America's climate challenge."
But, let's go back to the Lieberman-Warner bill, S. 3036. I just pulled up Renegade Joe's handy-dandy Web site, and here's what he had to say:
On its own, the America's Climate Security Act (ACSA) is projected to reduce total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 19% below the 2005 level (4% below the 1990 level) in 2020 and by as much as 63% below the 2005 level in 2050. Lieberman and Warner presented their new bill as the core of a new federal program that Congress should pass to avert catastrophic global climate change while enhancing America's energy security.
"With all the irrefutable evidence we now have corroborating that climate change is real, dangerous, and proceeding faster than many scientists predicted, this is the year for Congress to move this critical legislation," said Lieberman. "If we fail to start substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next couple of years, we risk bequeathing a diminished world to our grandchildren. Insect-borne diseases such as malaria will spike as tropical ecosystems expand; hotter air will exacerbate the pollution that sends children to the hospital with asthma attacks; food insecurity from shifting agricultural zones will spark border wars; and storms and coastal flooding from sea-level rise will cause mortality and dislocation."
"In my 28 years in the Senate, I have focused above all on issues of national security, and I see the problem of global climate change as fitting squarely within that focus," said Warner. "Today we introduced a balanced bill. Senator Lieberman and I found a good, sound, starting point that sends a significant signal that the U.S. is serious about taking a leadership role in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions."
Joining Lieberman and Warner in co-sponsoring ACSA are Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
A bunch of crazed socialists, no doubt. Anyway, during a lucid moment in which Sen. Cornhole was talking about the actual bill at hand, he's quoted thusly:
“As we move forward with debate over this mammoth new legislation, there are many unanswered questions that Congress should examine closely. The bill appears to implement a $6.7 trillion program that could undermine economic growth, raise energy costs for American consumers and send jobs overseas to countries such as India and China. We need a thoughtful and serious debate on how to be the best stewards of the environment possible. As we do this, I hope Congress pays heed to the law of unintended consequences, including what impact it might have on the budgets of families in Texas and across the country."
It appears that Sen. Cornhole ran across some Adam Smith during his halcyon days at Trinity University. That so-called law of unintended consequences can be framed as an obstructionist argument against damn near anything, when abused.
And speaking of intellectual dishonesty, let's return to the grade-school variety of it: getting the bills straight. Last week, the one that came before the Senate was the Lieberman-Warner incarnation, S. 3036, and here's what happened, according to Votes in Congress Newspaper Syndicate:
Global climate change
Passed, 74-14
Senators voted to begin debate on a bill ... that would establish a cap-and-trade system to sharply reduce the U.S. share of the greenhouse-gas emissions that help cause global warming and climate change. Democratic leaders later shelved the bill in response to Republican delaying tactics, such as compelling clerks to read the entire 490-page bill aloud.
Well, it was noted that Sen. Cornhole was among the 74 senators who voted to begin debate. As for the other 14, I doubt that there was anything unintended about the consequences.
Maybe one of these days Sen. Cornhole will show his constituents the respect to actually distinguish one bill from another. But I don't think the median of American intelligence will ever compel him to do so. Here's an example of the general public, taken from the lead comments on S. 3036 on WashingtonWatch:
Greatdanes
This is OUTRAGEOUS. The Congress must be Stopped and we have to Get Rid of each and every Senator and Congressman. This is SUCIDE for America! Global Warming is a SCAM and Will destroy the Country and make us all Slaves. Americans STAND UP and FIGT BACK. Say NO to this Bill.
Well, it should be no mystery how politicians like Sen. Cornhole manage to have long careers. Against odds, I most profoundly hope that the voters of Texas will see fit to cut this scumbag's career short.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Postscript: It has come to my attention that the Boxer bill, S. 2191, was also voted on last week in one of the goofy ways that the Senate often does. The vote was 48-36 in favor of ending a Republican filibuster against this version, but 60 votes were needed to invoke cloture, so it failed. Cornyn wasn't there for that vote.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Cornyn Watch: The Bush Shill Is Now Considered Vulnerable
By Manifesto Joe
Politics in Texas has fallen so much under Republican dominance since 1990 -- that was the last year that Democrats like the late ex-Gov. Ann Richards won statewide elections -- that a lot of people in "blue" states wrote us off as hopeless rednecks long ago.
Not so fast. The demographics in this state are changing; and also, perhaps even some of the traditionally conservative Anglo voters are beginning to wonder about the pendejos they've been habitually electing to high office. Like Bush toady Sen. John Cornyn.
As of last month, Cornyn's little-known Democratic challenger was within 4 percentage points of him, according to Rasmussen Reports.
State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, is a graduate of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, an Afghanistan war veteran as a lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard, and much more.
It's great news that Texas Democrats have a real chance this year to knock off one of our GOP mannequins in the Senate. Here's a bit of what Cornyn has been busy with lately, representing the vital interests of Texans as he does:
-- Since the ruling in California last month opening the door for gay marriage in the state, Cornyn has been going that extra mile to make sure the miscreants never come to the Lone Star State with such deviant ideas. He's renewed his call for a nationwide ban against same-sex marriages. Yep, that's really going to make a dent in the price of gasoline, and make bread and eggs so much more affordable for decent folk.
-- Speaking of the price of gasoline, here are Sen. Cornhole's thoughts about energy policy, courtesy of his own "Texas Times" e-mail newsletter:
In my view, the solution is straightforward. We need more energy. Government should get out of the way, let the free market work and allow more domestic energy production. This would reduce gas prices even in the near-term, expand job opportunities in Texas — a world energy leader — and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
But earlier this month, the Senate actually considered a massive climate tax bill that headed in the exact opposite direction. This massive $6.7 trillion Rube Goldberg scheme proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would undermine our economy and likely lead to $10 per gallon gasoline. It could well eliminate some 330,000 Texas jobs, sending them to places with limited regulation like China and India.
How can this be explained? After blocking American energy production and oil independence, Congress pursues bigger government, added taxes and higher energy costs—with no guarantee of actually improving the world’s climate.
It is vital that we be the best possible stewards of the environment. Fortunately, improved technology has enabled us to take advantage of America’s own abundant natural resources in an environmentally sensitive way. Yet the U.S. remains the only country in the world that refuses to develop many of its natural resources.
America is aggressively moving from fossil fuels to more diverse energy sources, including wind, nuclear, solar and clean coal. We need all of this supply. The government and private industry are both investing to promote and expedite this transition, and using steps such as increasing vehicle fuel-efficiency standards.
In the short term, however, oil, gas and coal will remain our dominant sources of energy. The free market could provide significant additional supplies—but Congress continues to prevent that.
Say, wasn't the "free market" one of the ways we got here in the first place? Big Oil didn't want alternative energy sources, and resisted them for years. Now they're raking in record profits, and attributing it to the supply-and-demand mechanism of the so-called "free market." (Hey, let's send copies of The Wealth of Nations out to the players in the OPEC cartel.)
And the solution from U.S. Big Oil is to drill on environmentally sensitive lands, and next to national monuments, in national parks, and so forth? Isn't this "free market" approach what we've been doing for decades, and to ill effect? And Sen. Cornhole proposes that we trust such people, yet again?
And, what has been the role of the Iraq war, and how would the "free market" address that?
It's not hard to figure out to whom Cornyn is answering -- lots of Petroleum Clubs and the associated donors -- and that will have to end someday. Eventually it could end in enduring disaster, so the sooner it ends, the better. Getting jerks like Cornhole out of the Senate would be a great start -- with a new Texas senator named Noriega.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Politics in Texas has fallen so much under Republican dominance since 1990 -- that was the last year that Democrats like the late ex-Gov. Ann Richards won statewide elections -- that a lot of people in "blue" states wrote us off as hopeless rednecks long ago.
Not so fast. The demographics in this state are changing; and also, perhaps even some of the traditionally conservative Anglo voters are beginning to wonder about the pendejos they've been habitually electing to high office. Like Bush toady Sen. John Cornyn.
As of last month, Cornyn's little-known Democratic challenger was within 4 percentage points of him, according to Rasmussen Reports.
State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, is a graduate of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, an Afghanistan war veteran as a lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard, and much more.
It's great news that Texas Democrats have a real chance this year to knock off one of our GOP mannequins in the Senate. Here's a bit of what Cornyn has been busy with lately, representing the vital interests of Texans as he does:
-- Since the ruling in California last month opening the door for gay marriage in the state, Cornyn has been going that extra mile to make sure the miscreants never come to the Lone Star State with such deviant ideas. He's renewed his call for a nationwide ban against same-sex marriages. Yep, that's really going to make a dent in the price of gasoline, and make bread and eggs so much more affordable for decent folk.
-- Speaking of the price of gasoline, here are Sen. Cornhole's thoughts about energy policy, courtesy of his own "Texas Times" e-mail newsletter:
In my view, the solution is straightforward. We need more energy. Government should get out of the way, let the free market work and allow more domestic energy production. This would reduce gas prices even in the near-term, expand job opportunities in Texas — a world energy leader — and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
But earlier this month, the Senate actually considered a massive climate tax bill that headed in the exact opposite direction. This massive $6.7 trillion Rube Goldberg scheme proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would undermine our economy and likely lead to $10 per gallon gasoline. It could well eliminate some 330,000 Texas jobs, sending them to places with limited regulation like China and India.
How can this be explained? After blocking American energy production and oil independence, Congress pursues bigger government, added taxes and higher energy costs—with no guarantee of actually improving the world’s climate.
It is vital that we be the best possible stewards of the environment. Fortunately, improved technology has enabled us to take advantage of America’s own abundant natural resources in an environmentally sensitive way. Yet the U.S. remains the only country in the world that refuses to develop many of its natural resources.
America is aggressively moving from fossil fuels to more diverse energy sources, including wind, nuclear, solar and clean coal. We need all of this supply. The government and private industry are both investing to promote and expedite this transition, and using steps such as increasing vehicle fuel-efficiency standards.
In the short term, however, oil, gas and coal will remain our dominant sources of energy. The free market could provide significant additional supplies—but Congress continues to prevent that.
Say, wasn't the "free market" one of the ways we got here in the first place? Big Oil didn't want alternative energy sources, and resisted them for years. Now they're raking in record profits, and attributing it to the supply-and-demand mechanism of the so-called "free market." (Hey, let's send copies of The Wealth of Nations out to the players in the OPEC cartel.)
And the solution from U.S. Big Oil is to drill on environmentally sensitive lands, and next to national monuments, in national parks, and so forth? Isn't this "free market" approach what we've been doing for decades, and to ill effect? And Sen. Cornhole proposes that we trust such people, yet again?
And, what has been the role of the Iraq war, and how would the "free market" address that?
It's not hard to figure out to whom Cornyn is answering -- lots of Petroleum Clubs and the associated donors -- and that will have to end someday. Eventually it could end in enduring disaster, so the sooner it ends, the better. Getting jerks like Cornhole out of the Senate would be a great start -- with a new Texas senator named Noriega.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Predictably, Senate Panel Turns Wussy On Iraq War Report
By Manifesto Joe
Say it ain't so, Sen. Jay Rockefeller. These pathetic lily livers we call Democrats are going to let the Bush thug-o-crats, in essence, weasel out of this one, too. Nobody goes directly to jail; everybody passes Go. (Some probably collect $100,000.) The Senate Intelligence Committee -- perhaps a contradiction in terms -- gives the Bush hooligans a mild slap on the wrist, and declines to follow up.
Basically, the panel is making a brief media show of this. But in the long run, they're clearly going to let the war criminals skate. Here's the Los Angeles Times "report" on the Senate's "report": Click here.
Il Doofus has always seemed like a person leading some kind of perversely charmed life. After this it seems doubtless that he will skate, even after all the death and suffering he is directly responsible for.
It will now be up to history to hold him somewhat responsible for the human disaster of the Iraq war. I wish him long life, because I hope he is still around to find himself a bigger pariah than Nixon ever could have been.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Say it ain't so, Sen. Jay Rockefeller. These pathetic lily livers we call Democrats are going to let the Bush thug-o-crats, in essence, weasel out of this one, too. Nobody goes directly to jail; everybody passes Go. (Some probably collect $100,000.) The Senate Intelligence Committee -- perhaps a contradiction in terms -- gives the Bush hooligans a mild slap on the wrist, and declines to follow up.
Basically, the panel is making a brief media show of this. But in the long run, they're clearly going to let the war criminals skate. Here's the Los Angeles Times "report" on the Senate's "report": Click here.
Il Doofus has always seemed like a person leading some kind of perversely charmed life. After this it seems doubtless that he will skate, even after all the death and suffering he is directly responsible for.
It will now be up to history to hold him somewhat responsible for the human disaster of the Iraq war. I wish him long life, because I hope he is still around to find himself a bigger pariah than Nixon ever could have been.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Breaking News: Bushies Already Sabotaging Obama Plans For Troop Withdrawals
By Manifesto Joe
If Barack Obama wins the presidency in November, he may be stepping into a foreign policy minefield come January, courtesy of the Bush administration. The Independent (U.K.) newspaper reports that it received leaked information of a secret plan being negotiated in Baghdad that would establish 50 U.S. military bases, give the U.S. control of Iraqi airspace and give all American soldiers and contractors legal immunity.
It's finally here -- the Iraq 100 Years War Plan. It doesn't take much imagination to conjure up a more or less permanent insurgency, a permanent state of low-grade warfare. Maybe the neocons will tell us to look on the bright side -- all those unemployed and underemployed young poor and working-class men and women will have three-year contract jobs awaiting them, for decades to come.
The al-Maliki government is reportedly torn, basically opposing the idea but scared shitless that it can't be viable without being propped up by U.S. military force. It shapes up into a no-win situation for most concerned parties: The Independent reports that the terms of the deal that the Bush administration wants "are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq."
This deal would pretty much show the hand of what the Bush junta wanted all along -- a permanent military base in the Middle East, under cover of a puppet government, theoretically forming a bulwark against Iran and eventually giving the U.S. an inside track on all that light sweet crude.
If Obama is elected, he might be forced into the position of deal-breaker. There's a lot of money riding on this one, too.
Fasten your seat belts -- it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
If Barack Obama wins the presidency in November, he may be stepping into a foreign policy minefield come January, courtesy of the Bush administration. The Independent (U.K.) newspaper reports that it received leaked information of a secret plan being negotiated in Baghdad that would establish 50 U.S. military bases, give the U.S. control of Iraqi airspace and give all American soldiers and contractors legal immunity.
It's finally here -- the Iraq 100 Years War Plan. It doesn't take much imagination to conjure up a more or less permanent insurgency, a permanent state of low-grade warfare. Maybe the neocons will tell us to look on the bright side -- all those unemployed and underemployed young poor and working-class men and women will have three-year contract jobs awaiting them, for decades to come.
The al-Maliki government is reportedly torn, basically opposing the idea but scared shitless that it can't be viable without being propped up by U.S. military force. It shapes up into a no-win situation for most concerned parties: The Independent reports that the terms of the deal that the Bush administration wants "are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq."
This deal would pretty much show the hand of what the Bush junta wanted all along -- a permanent military base in the Middle East, under cover of a puppet government, theoretically forming a bulwark against Iran and eventually giving the U.S. an inside track on all that light sweet crude.
If Obama is elected, he might be forced into the position of deal-breaker. There's a lot of money riding on this one, too.
Fasten your seat belts -- it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thoughts On The Shallow Seventies
By Manifesto Joe
This was a comment I left on Watching Those We Chose, a blog with which I am affiliated, but it was substantial enough that I felt it would be a decent post for my home site. The post there went, just peripherally, into some ways that the Seventies sucked, what with "gas lines, ugly clothes, platform shoes, high gas prices, inflation, recession and disco." Yeah, I hated all that stuff, too. But ... here's the comment:
"Like others, I hated the litany of things y'all mention about the '70s. Having been a child and young adolescent of the '60s who came of age during the '70s, the latter decade was undeniably a letdown. I was one of those disco-loathing tokers who went musically to either fusion jazz or the red meat of the rock era (circa 1964-73). At 22, I found myself oddly out of place in a youth culture suddenly turned shallow with a vengeance. I couldn't relate to punks, either -- that seemed like a rebellion of futile and deliberate ugliness.
"I experienced unemployment and underemployment during the time, was seriously injured in an industrial accident, got mistreated by newly liberated women (they discovered that they, too, could be cads!), and found myself dressing in ways that embarrass me in hindsight.
"But the 2000s have done an amazing thing -- I'm a bit nostalgic for the Shallow Seventies. There are a few things I'd like to have back. To wit:
"Liberal Republicans. Remember Jacob Javits, Clifford Case, Edward Brooke, Mark Hatfield, Pete McCloskey, Richard Schweiker, John Lindsay, Charles Percy, etc? Moderate-to-liberal politicians had a surprisingly strong presence as a minority in the GOP back then.
"A strong decrim movement. I drifted out of the pot-smoking culture many years ago, but had enough experience with it to know that it's more or less no worse over the long haul than Jim Beam. At one point we got some form of decrim in 13 states. In 1979, if you had told the 23-year-old MJ that we would still be stuck on stupid about this ...
"Good Hollywood movies. The decade came in with M*A*S*H and ended with Apocalypse Now. In between, we had The Last Picture Show, The Godfather parts I and II, The Last Detail, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Taxi Driver, Network, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, and so many others. It was arguably the best era Hollywood ever had. Fewer car chases and special effects -- more actual quality. They had scripts!
"An environmental movement, Part I. This was about the time when a significant minority of Americans began to realize that oil is a finite resource, that ozone depletion is a real problem, that pollution actually kills people by inches and that animal species are dying off one by one. We actually had a president, Carter, who installed solar panels in the White House. (Reagan promptly had them taken out.)
"I could go into other things, but suffice it to say that the 2000s have made the '70s look pretty good to me in hindsight. And let me repeat, at the time I utterly detested the '70s."
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
This was a comment I left on Watching Those We Chose, a blog with which I am affiliated, but it was substantial enough that I felt it would be a decent post for my home site. The post there went, just peripherally, into some ways that the Seventies sucked, what with "gas lines, ugly clothes, platform shoes, high gas prices, inflation, recession and disco." Yeah, I hated all that stuff, too. But ... here's the comment:
"Like others, I hated the litany of things y'all mention about the '70s. Having been a child and young adolescent of the '60s who came of age during the '70s, the latter decade was undeniably a letdown. I was one of those disco-loathing tokers who went musically to either fusion jazz or the red meat of the rock era (circa 1964-73). At 22, I found myself oddly out of place in a youth culture suddenly turned shallow with a vengeance. I couldn't relate to punks, either -- that seemed like a rebellion of futile and deliberate ugliness.
"I experienced unemployment and underemployment during the time, was seriously injured in an industrial accident, got mistreated by newly liberated women (they discovered that they, too, could be cads!), and found myself dressing in ways that embarrass me in hindsight.
"But the 2000s have done an amazing thing -- I'm a bit nostalgic for the Shallow Seventies. There are a few things I'd like to have back. To wit:
"Liberal Republicans. Remember Jacob Javits, Clifford Case, Edward Brooke, Mark Hatfield, Pete McCloskey, Richard Schweiker, John Lindsay, Charles Percy, etc? Moderate-to-liberal politicians had a surprisingly strong presence as a minority in the GOP back then.
"A strong decrim movement. I drifted out of the pot-smoking culture many years ago, but had enough experience with it to know that it's more or less no worse over the long haul than Jim Beam. At one point we got some form of decrim in 13 states. In 1979, if you had told the 23-year-old MJ that we would still be stuck on stupid about this ...
"Good Hollywood movies. The decade came in with M*A*S*H and ended with Apocalypse Now. In between, we had The Last Picture Show, The Godfather parts I and II, The Last Detail, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Taxi Driver, Network, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, and so many others. It was arguably the best era Hollywood ever had. Fewer car chases and special effects -- more actual quality. They had scripts!
"An environmental movement, Part I. This was about the time when a significant minority of Americans began to realize that oil is a finite resource, that ozone depletion is a real problem, that pollution actually kills people by inches and that animal species are dying off one by one. We actually had a president, Carter, who installed solar panels in the White House. (Reagan promptly had them taken out.)
"I could go into other things, but suffice it to say that the 2000s have made the '70s look pretty good to me in hindsight. And let me repeat, at the time I utterly detested the '70s."
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Where Are The Liberal Media When You Need Them? Thoughts On Scott McClellan's Spiel
By Manifesto Joe
In the time I have worked in American news media -- 30 years -- we've had to deal with right-wingers' allegations of "liberal bias." It goes on to this day, despite many years of Fox News obviously functioning as the right-wing Republican answer to Soviet state TV. Even if you go back 20 years or more, to a time when some faint whiff of liberal influence on American media might have been evident, it pales in comparison to the partisan bashing one sees on Fox, every hour on the hour.
In his new, much-discussed book, Scott McClellan touches -- just slightly -- on the problem. That being that the right wing had a strategy, and that despite any rational opposition, they made it work.
Scotty only brings it up in the context of the Iraq war, and American news media's absolute failure to hold the Bush administration's propaganda up to proper scrutiny.
I suggest that this reverse bias strategy has been going on a pretty long time, and still is. The strategy was to cry "liberal bias" so often that the great lie would become accepted as truth, a la Joseph Goebbels. As a result, the right seems to have at least their U.S. hard-core 30% in tow, no matter what happens on the world stage.
It's common sense that a profession like journalism will attract more liberals than conservatives. There are some righties who go into the field (with backing from trust funds and inheritances, usually) because they think their influence is needed among these hordes of liberal reprobates in the profession. I have known some like that. But mostly, liberal types are drawn to these jobs. The jobs don't usually pay well as "college required" professions go, so that means you have to have a bigger moral and emotional stake in it than if you were going into, say, banking. One goes into journalism actually hoping to do meaningful work and make the world a slightly better place.
The right's strategy has been to cry "bias" so many times, and to assemble dubious inductive arguments with isolated instances of sloppy journalism, that eventually many people would buy the line. Over decades, they succeeded to a frustrating degree.
But, with Scotty coming forward like this about media cheerleading on the Iraq war, the ruse is beginning to fall apart. I remember the period of 5-6 years ago, and wondering where the hell our Murrows were while Colin Powell was lying to the U.N. Even Bob Woodward seemed to be shilling for the administration during that time. There was a total collapse of the scrutiny, the skepticism, the suspicion that comes with media at its watchdog best. You know, the traits that "liberals" usually bring to it.
The Free Press Action Fund has kept abreast of the reactions to Scotty's book, and there's more there than has been headlined in general:
... he takes it one step further, implicating the mainstream media for its role in "enabling" this propaganda: "The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House" in spreading the president's case for the war, McClellan writes. The mainstream media didn't live up to its watchdog reputation. "If it had, the country would have been better served.
There's more:
The media's complicity in promoting this war was confirmed Wednesday night by CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin who said that network executives had pushed her not to do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration as the nation readied for war.
"The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation," Yellin told CNN's Anderson Cooper. Here's the video:
This is all very familiar turf for me. I've heard it, from bootlicking editors, in many ways. "These people in your story, they're not OUR people." "We need to stick to the facts of the story." (I thought that's what I had been doing.) "We have advertisers, and we need to think about them." (Hey, that was when they were trying to be half-assed honest.)
Perhaps this has driven one more nail into the coffin of the myth of liberal media bias. If not -- give me a bag of nails, a coffin and a good shovel, and I will gladly finish the job. I can vouch from experience that it is among the most toxic of all political myths.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
In the time I have worked in American news media -- 30 years -- we've had to deal with right-wingers' allegations of "liberal bias." It goes on to this day, despite many years of Fox News obviously functioning as the right-wing Republican answer to Soviet state TV. Even if you go back 20 years or more, to a time when some faint whiff of liberal influence on American media might have been evident, it pales in comparison to the partisan bashing one sees on Fox, every hour on the hour.
In his new, much-discussed book, Scott McClellan touches -- just slightly -- on the problem. That being that the right wing had a strategy, and that despite any rational opposition, they made it work.
Scotty only brings it up in the context of the Iraq war, and American news media's absolute failure to hold the Bush administration's propaganda up to proper scrutiny.
I suggest that this reverse bias strategy has been going on a pretty long time, and still is. The strategy was to cry "liberal bias" so often that the great lie would become accepted as truth, a la Joseph Goebbels. As a result, the right seems to have at least their U.S. hard-core 30% in tow, no matter what happens on the world stage.
It's common sense that a profession like journalism will attract more liberals than conservatives. There are some righties who go into the field (with backing from trust funds and inheritances, usually) because they think their influence is needed among these hordes of liberal reprobates in the profession. I have known some like that. But mostly, liberal types are drawn to these jobs. The jobs don't usually pay well as "college required" professions go, so that means you have to have a bigger moral and emotional stake in it than if you were going into, say, banking. One goes into journalism actually hoping to do meaningful work and make the world a slightly better place.
The right's strategy has been to cry "bias" so many times, and to assemble dubious inductive arguments with isolated instances of sloppy journalism, that eventually many people would buy the line. Over decades, they succeeded to a frustrating degree.
But, with Scotty coming forward like this about media cheerleading on the Iraq war, the ruse is beginning to fall apart. I remember the period of 5-6 years ago, and wondering where the hell our Murrows were while Colin Powell was lying to the U.N. Even Bob Woodward seemed to be shilling for the administration during that time. There was a total collapse of the scrutiny, the skepticism, the suspicion that comes with media at its watchdog best. You know, the traits that "liberals" usually bring to it.
The Free Press Action Fund has kept abreast of the reactions to Scotty's book, and there's more there than has been headlined in general:
... he takes it one step further, implicating the mainstream media for its role in "enabling" this propaganda: "The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House" in spreading the president's case for the war, McClellan writes. The mainstream media didn't live up to its watchdog reputation. "If it had, the country would have been better served.
There's more:
The media's complicity in promoting this war was confirmed Wednesday night by CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin who said that network executives had pushed her not to do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration as the nation readied for war.
"The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation," Yellin told CNN's Anderson Cooper. Here's the video:
This is all very familiar turf for me. I've heard it, from bootlicking editors, in many ways. "These people in your story, they're not OUR people." "We need to stick to the facts of the story." (I thought that's what I had been doing.) "We have advertisers, and we need to think about them." (Hey, that was when they were trying to be half-assed honest.)
Perhaps this has driven one more nail into the coffin of the myth of liberal media bias. If not -- give me a bag of nails, a coffin and a good shovel, and I will gladly finish the job. I can vouch from experience that it is among the most toxic of all political myths.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, May 26, 2008
From Joe's Vault On Memorial Day: Remembering A Real American Hero
By Manifesto Joe
Originally posted on BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, Aug. 5, 2005
In an age of faux heroism, illustrated by the swagger and tough talk of our "president," we should perhaps take time to remember a real American hero.
July 30 was the birthday of Smedley D. Butler, born in 1881. Few Americans have heard of this two-time Medal of Honor winner, who rose to the rank of major general in the Marine Corps. But history teachers ought to note that Butler probably thwarted the first serious conspiracy toward a coup in the United States.
In 1933, soon after he retired from active duty, Butler alleged that he was approached by a representative of a group of super-rich business interests, led by the Du Pont and J.P. Morgan industrial empires, with a proposition. The representative, a top Wall Street bond salesman named Gerald MacGuire, was said to have tried to recruit Butler to lead a move to strip recently inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt of his political power.
Butler testified before a congressional committee that he was promised a militia of 500,000 men for a coup, after which Butler would assume near-absolute power as "secretary of general affairs," with Roosevelt retained as a figurehead. The men behind MacGuire feared a major redistribution of wealth by an FDR administration, and they were prepared to bankroll the force needed to prevent it.
The outcome of Butler's testimony was predictable. The press, at the time mostly owned by business-friendly conservatives, generally played the story way down. The tiny "reports" that did run ridiculed Butler and said he lacked evidence. Those whom he accused of the conspiracy, including former Democratic presidential nominees Al Smith and John W. Davis, professed innocence and did not come under public scrutiny. MacGuire -- known through his correspondence to have been an admirer of Mussolini's fascist rule in Italy -- was the panel's only open-session witness besides Butler. Of course, he told the lawmakers he never made such a proposition. The allegations are now a footnote in history.
But in 1967, journalist John Spivak vindicated Butler (who died in 1940) when he uncovered the House committee's internal, secret report. It clearly confirmed the story. The panel's public report was a whitewash and even omitted the names of the powerful men whom Butler accused.
This was not the only time Butler tangled with the early U.S. military-industrial complex. He had seen its operations firsthand many times, and blew the whistle on it. In a speech delivered in 1933, the same year he went public about the conspiracy, Butler told his audience:
"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the few at the expense of the masses. ...
"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
"There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its 'finger men' to point out enemies, its 'muscle men' to destroy enemies, its 'brain men' to plan war preparations, and a 'Big Boss' Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
"It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
"I helped make Mexico ... safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. ... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. ... I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
"During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Today we have other names -- Iraq, Halliburton, Diebold, Rove. We've had two Bush administrations; the first was at best legally questionable, the second possibly elected through voting irregularities in the deciding state and high-tech rigging in others. The stench of war for profit, and of crypto-fascism, is in the air.
Those who discuss this odor are being either ridiculed or ignored by the mainstream media. Perhaps they will be vindicated one day, as Butler was.
Meanwhile, let's honor a real hero, a man who blew the whistle on nascent American fascism.
HISTORICAL SOURCES: Wikipedia; excerpts from an online transcript of a 1933 speech by Smedley D. Butler
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Originally posted on BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, Aug. 5, 2005
In an age of faux heroism, illustrated by the swagger and tough talk of our "president," we should perhaps take time to remember a real American hero.
July 30 was the birthday of Smedley D. Butler, born in 1881. Few Americans have heard of this two-time Medal of Honor winner, who rose to the rank of major general in the Marine Corps. But history teachers ought to note that Butler probably thwarted the first serious conspiracy toward a coup in the United States.
In 1933, soon after he retired from active duty, Butler alleged that he was approached by a representative of a group of super-rich business interests, led by the Du Pont and J.P. Morgan industrial empires, with a proposition. The representative, a top Wall Street bond salesman named Gerald MacGuire, was said to have tried to recruit Butler to lead a move to strip recently inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt of his political power.
Butler testified before a congressional committee that he was promised a militia of 500,000 men for a coup, after which Butler would assume near-absolute power as "secretary of general affairs," with Roosevelt retained as a figurehead. The men behind MacGuire feared a major redistribution of wealth by an FDR administration, and they were prepared to bankroll the force needed to prevent it.
The outcome of Butler's testimony was predictable. The press, at the time mostly owned by business-friendly conservatives, generally played the story way down. The tiny "reports" that did run ridiculed Butler and said he lacked evidence. Those whom he accused of the conspiracy, including former Democratic presidential nominees Al Smith and John W. Davis, professed innocence and did not come under public scrutiny. MacGuire -- known through his correspondence to have been an admirer of Mussolini's fascist rule in Italy -- was the panel's only open-session witness besides Butler. Of course, he told the lawmakers he never made such a proposition. The allegations are now a footnote in history.
But in 1967, journalist John Spivak vindicated Butler (who died in 1940) when he uncovered the House committee's internal, secret report. It clearly confirmed the story. The panel's public report was a whitewash and even omitted the names of the powerful men whom Butler accused.
This was not the only time Butler tangled with the early U.S. military-industrial complex. He had seen its operations firsthand many times, and blew the whistle on it. In a speech delivered in 1933, the same year he went public about the conspiracy, Butler told his audience:
"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the few at the expense of the masses. ...
"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
"There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its 'finger men' to point out enemies, its 'muscle men' to destroy enemies, its 'brain men' to plan war preparations, and a 'Big Boss' Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
"It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
"I helped make Mexico ... safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. ... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. ... I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
"During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Today we have other names -- Iraq, Halliburton, Diebold, Rove. We've had two Bush administrations; the first was at best legally questionable, the second possibly elected through voting irregularities in the deciding state and high-tech rigging in others. The stench of war for profit, and of crypto-fascism, is in the air.
Those who discuss this odor are being either ridiculed or ignored by the mainstream media. Perhaps they will be vindicated one day, as Butler was.
Meanwhile, let's honor a real hero, a man who blew the whistle on nascent American fascism.
HISTORICAL SOURCES: Wikipedia; excerpts from an online transcript of a 1933 speech by Smedley D. Butler
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Rev. Rubber Room Repudiated: McCain's Hand Finally Forced On Hitler Apologist Hagee
By Manifesto Joe
It took awhile, but presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain was finally compelled to reject the endorsement of fundamentalist pond scum John Hagee. It seems that Hagee is on record as having said that Adolf Hitler was, in some way, an instrument of God in forcing Jews to go to Israel.
Granted, Hagee wasn't McCain's personal minister, which raises a distinction between this situation and that involving Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But I've had a hard time figuring out exactly why Obama was as compelled to run from Wright as he was. Wright has said a couple of kooky things, but much of it is no different from what one can read in a Noam Chomsky polemic. And Wright certainly comes across as far more intelligent, schooled -- and sane -- than Hagee.
Here's a report from Bloomberg News:
Republican John McCain today rejected the presidential endorsement of the Reverend John Hagee after revelation of an audio recording in which the Texas televangelist said that God's will was at work in the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
``Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them,'' the Arizona senator said in a statement released by his campaign. ``I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.''
McCain had declined previously to repudiate Hagee after reports of the pastor's earlier anti-Catholic remarks and his contention that the U.S. must join Israel in military strike against Iran. Hagee argued that the conflict would lead to a second coming of Christ.
Hagee is pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, and McCain had sought his endorsement.
Hagee isn't much different from certain other popular American televangelists in that he seems to think he has a direct line to the thinking of providence, and a special knack for interpreting Scripture.
Let's go back to what Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had to say on the subject of the Sept. 11 attacks -- transcript furnished by www.truthorfiction.com:
Then Falwell said, "What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."
Robertson replied, "Well, Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven't begun to see what they can do to the major population."
Falwell said, "The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll hear from them for this, but throwing God...successfully with the help of the federal court system...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen."
Robertson said, "I totally concur, and the problem is we've adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system."
Falwell added, "Pat, did you notice yesterday that the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, the People for the American Way, NOW, etc., were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress, as they went out on the steps and and called out to God in prayer and sang 'God bless America' and said, let the ACLU be hanged. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time, calling on God."
It's all self-righteously demented, and a lot like the things Hagee was already on record as saying. But Hagee, in a moment of "youthful" indiscretion, finally went a step further in suggesting that Der Fuhrer was in some way doing the work of the Lord by carrying out the Holocaust.
On MSNBC, Republican mouthpiece Susan Molinari said, in response to today's development, that McCain, by disavowing Hagee and purging his campaign of active lobbyists, is "acting like a presidential candidate."
Yes, he is. He's acting a lot like the Republican nominee of the past two cycles. And like a couple of others of the past 30 years.
The Matter Of Rod Parsley
And Hagee isn't the only Chrust-chun kookster that McCain has courted. Mother Jones reports that:
Senator John McCain hailed as a spiritual adviser an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a "war" against the "false religion" of Islam with the aim of destroying it.
On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a "strong, true, consistent conservative." The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain's effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a "spiritual guide."
The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook, including the 2005 Silent No More. In this work, Parsley decries the "spiritual desperation" of the United States, and he blasts away at the usual suspects: activist judges, civil libertarians who advocate the separation of church and state, the homosexual "culture" ("homosexuals are anything but happy and carefree"), the "abortion industry," and the crass and profane entertainment industry. And Parsley targets another profound threat to the United States: the religion of Islam.
In a chapter titled "Islam: The Deception of Allah," Parsley warns there is a "war between Islam and Christian civilization." He continues:
I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.
In case there's any doubt about this, here's the video, posted on YouTube by bravenewfilms:
Perhaps McCain, in seeking so ludicrously to ally himself with the forces of the "divine," has actually made a couple of starkly different kinds of deals that he has come to regret. I, for one, intend to do all I can to make him regret them most profoundly come a Wednesday morning in November.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
It took awhile, but presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain was finally compelled to reject the endorsement of fundamentalist pond scum John Hagee. It seems that Hagee is on record as having said that Adolf Hitler was, in some way, an instrument of God in forcing Jews to go to Israel.
Granted, Hagee wasn't McCain's personal minister, which raises a distinction between this situation and that involving Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But I've had a hard time figuring out exactly why Obama was as compelled to run from Wright as he was. Wright has said a couple of kooky things, but much of it is no different from what one can read in a Noam Chomsky polemic. And Wright certainly comes across as far more intelligent, schooled -- and sane -- than Hagee.
Here's a report from Bloomberg News:
Republican John McCain today rejected the presidential endorsement of the Reverend John Hagee after revelation of an audio recording in which the Texas televangelist said that God's will was at work in the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
``Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them,'' the Arizona senator said in a statement released by his campaign. ``I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.''
McCain had declined previously to repudiate Hagee after reports of the pastor's earlier anti-Catholic remarks and his contention that the U.S. must join Israel in military strike against Iran. Hagee argued that the conflict would lead to a second coming of Christ.
Hagee is pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, and McCain had sought his endorsement.
Hagee isn't much different from certain other popular American televangelists in that he seems to think he has a direct line to the thinking of providence, and a special knack for interpreting Scripture.
Let's go back to what Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had to say on the subject of the Sept. 11 attacks -- transcript furnished by www.truthorfiction.com:
Then Falwell said, "What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."
Robertson replied, "Well, Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven't begun to see what they can do to the major population."
Falwell said, "The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll hear from them for this, but throwing God...successfully with the help of the federal court system...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen."
Robertson said, "I totally concur, and the problem is we've adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system."
Falwell added, "Pat, did you notice yesterday that the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, the People for the American Way, NOW, etc., were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress, as they went out on the steps and and called out to God in prayer and sang 'God bless America' and said, let the ACLU be hanged. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time, calling on God."
It's all self-righteously demented, and a lot like the things Hagee was already on record as saying. But Hagee, in a moment of "youthful" indiscretion, finally went a step further in suggesting that Der Fuhrer was in some way doing the work of the Lord by carrying out the Holocaust.
On MSNBC, Republican mouthpiece Susan Molinari said, in response to today's development, that McCain, by disavowing Hagee and purging his campaign of active lobbyists, is "acting like a presidential candidate."
Yes, he is. He's acting a lot like the Republican nominee of the past two cycles. And like a couple of others of the past 30 years.
The Matter Of Rod Parsley
And Hagee isn't the only Chrust-chun kookster that McCain has courted. Mother Jones reports that:
Senator John McCain hailed as a spiritual adviser an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a "war" against the "false religion" of Islam with the aim of destroying it.
On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a "strong, true, consistent conservative." The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain's effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a "spiritual guide."
The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook, including the 2005 Silent No More. In this work, Parsley decries the "spiritual desperation" of the United States, and he blasts away at the usual suspects: activist judges, civil libertarians who advocate the separation of church and state, the homosexual "culture" ("homosexuals are anything but happy and carefree"), the "abortion industry," and the crass and profane entertainment industry. And Parsley targets another profound threat to the United States: the religion of Islam.
In a chapter titled "Islam: The Deception of Allah," Parsley warns there is a "war between Islam and Christian civilization." He continues:
I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.
In case there's any doubt about this, here's the video, posted on YouTube by bravenewfilms:
Perhaps McCain, in seeking so ludicrously to ally himself with the forces of the "divine," has actually made a couple of starkly different kinds of deals that he has come to regret. I, for one, intend to do all I can to make him regret them most profoundly come a Wednesday morning in November.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Update: McCain Forced To Confront Lobbyist Issue
By Manifesto Joe
Last week, in response to criticism about his habit of employing current and former lobbyists for his Republican presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain and his staff set down a new rule: No one currently working as a lobbyist can also work as a paid campaign staffer.
There was a casualty reported yesterday, and on Page One of today's Washington Post. Tom Loeffler, a former Texas GOP congressman who had been on McCain's staff as a fundraiser, resigned over his status as a lobbyist.
Here's some of what The Washington Post had:
Tom Loeffler, the national finance co-chairman for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, resigned yesterday because of his lobbying ties, a campaign adviser said.
He is the fifth person to sever ties with the campaign amid a growing concern over whether lobbyists have too great an influence over the Republican nominee. Last week, campaign manager Rick Davis issued a new policy that requires all campaign personnel to either resign or sever ties with lobbying firms or outside political groups.
The story also clarifies the question over Charlie Black, a longtime lobbyist who (see my previous post on this subject) was with a firm that has done PR for a who's who of nasty foreign dictators going all the way back to Filipino "strongman" Ferdinand Marcos:
McCain has built his reputation in Congress on fighting special interests and the lobbying culture, but he has been criticized for months about the number of lobbyists serving in key positions in his campaign. Until recently, his top political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., was the head of a Washington lobbying firm. Black retired in March from BKSH & Associates, the firm he helped found, to stay with the campaign. Davis ran a lobbying firm for several years but has said he is on leave from it.
Black, in particular, remains in the cross hairs of McCain's critics. Campaign Money Watch, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, yesterday praised Loeffler's departure but renewed its call for Black's departure. The group has launched a Web site, http://www.firethelobbyists.com, to urge McCain to rid his campaign of their influence. Loeffler's lobbying for Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments was revealed over the weekend.
McCain has steadfastly defended Black and Davis. "Charlie Black and Rick Davis are not in the lobbying business; they've been out of that business," he told reporters. "Charlie Black has been involved in every presidential campaign going back to President Reagan's first campaign. He has severed his connections with the lobbying group that he was with. Rick Davis has not been involved in any lobbying for years."
So, since Charlie Black finally retired from lobbying for international pond scum like Mobutu Sese Seko, it's more than proper for him to stay on as a McCain campaign staffer? And what about his involvement in all these presidential campaigns going back to Reagan's first? (1968, 1976, or 1980? Reagan won the GOP nomination on his third try.) And what does this suggest about the ethics and values of the modern Republican Party?
Back to Loeffler, there's the Saudi connection. (That government isn't exactly one to win over a little-d democrat's heart, is it?) More from WaPo:
Loeffler, a former congressman from Texas, is a close friend of McCain's and took over the campaign's fundraising last summer. He did not respond to e-mails or a message left on his office voice mail yesterday.
Newsweek reported that his firm, the Loeffler Group, had collected $15 million from Saudi Arabia and millions more from other foreign governments. He is listed as chairman and senior partner at the firm.
There is also the matter of past conflicts of interest involving Loeffler and the Arizona senator. ThinkProgress cited the Newsweek article:
[Loeffler’s] lobbying firm has collected nearly $15 million from Saudi Arabia since 2002 and millions more from other foreign and corporate interests, including a French aerospace firm seeking Pentagon contracts. Loeffler last month told a reporter “at no time have I discussed my clients with John McCain.” But lobbying disclosure records reviewed by NEWSWEEK show that on May 17, 2006, Loeffler listed meeting McCain along with the Saudi ambassador to “discuss US-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia relations.”
What all this indicates is that McCain, for all his grandstanding, is fundamentally no different from others in the modern Machiavellian Republican Party dating back to even Richard Nixon, in terms of ethics and values. If he wins the White House, expect more of what we've been seeing for decades.
Amusing postscript: The late, great Molly Ivins had an anecdote about Tom Loeffler. Molly wrote that Loeffler "wore shower caps on his feet while showering during a visit to San Francisco back in the '80s lest he get AIDS through his feet."
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Last week, in response to criticism about his habit of employing current and former lobbyists for his Republican presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain and his staff set down a new rule: No one currently working as a lobbyist can also work as a paid campaign staffer.
There was a casualty reported yesterday, and on Page One of today's Washington Post. Tom Loeffler, a former Texas GOP congressman who had been on McCain's staff as a fundraiser, resigned over his status as a lobbyist.
Here's some of what The Washington Post had:
Tom Loeffler, the national finance co-chairman for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, resigned yesterday because of his lobbying ties, a campaign adviser said.
He is the fifth person to sever ties with the campaign amid a growing concern over whether lobbyists have too great an influence over the Republican nominee. Last week, campaign manager Rick Davis issued a new policy that requires all campaign personnel to either resign or sever ties with lobbying firms or outside political groups.
The story also clarifies the question over Charlie Black, a longtime lobbyist who (see my previous post on this subject) was with a firm that has done PR for a who's who of nasty foreign dictators going all the way back to Filipino "strongman" Ferdinand Marcos:
McCain has built his reputation in Congress on fighting special interests and the lobbying culture, but he has been criticized for months about the number of lobbyists serving in key positions in his campaign. Until recently, his top political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., was the head of a Washington lobbying firm. Black retired in March from BKSH & Associates, the firm he helped found, to stay with the campaign. Davis ran a lobbying firm for several years but has said he is on leave from it.
Black, in particular, remains in the cross hairs of McCain's critics. Campaign Money Watch, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, yesterday praised Loeffler's departure but renewed its call for Black's departure. The group has launched a Web site, http://www.firethelobbyists.com, to urge McCain to rid his campaign of their influence. Loeffler's lobbying for Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments was revealed over the weekend.
McCain has steadfastly defended Black and Davis. "Charlie Black and Rick Davis are not in the lobbying business; they've been out of that business," he told reporters. "Charlie Black has been involved in every presidential campaign going back to President Reagan's first campaign. He has severed his connections with the lobbying group that he was with. Rick Davis has not been involved in any lobbying for years."
So, since Charlie Black finally retired from lobbying for international pond scum like Mobutu Sese Seko, it's more than proper for him to stay on as a McCain campaign staffer? And what about his involvement in all these presidential campaigns going back to Reagan's first? (1968, 1976, or 1980? Reagan won the GOP nomination on his third try.) And what does this suggest about the ethics and values of the modern Republican Party?
Back to Loeffler, there's the Saudi connection. (That government isn't exactly one to win over a little-d democrat's heart, is it?) More from WaPo:
Loeffler, a former congressman from Texas, is a close friend of McCain's and took over the campaign's fundraising last summer. He did not respond to e-mails or a message left on his office voice mail yesterday.
Newsweek reported that his firm, the Loeffler Group, had collected $15 million from Saudi Arabia and millions more from other foreign governments. He is listed as chairman and senior partner at the firm.
There is also the matter of past conflicts of interest involving Loeffler and the Arizona senator. ThinkProgress cited the Newsweek article:
[Loeffler’s] lobbying firm has collected nearly $15 million from Saudi Arabia since 2002 and millions more from other foreign and corporate interests, including a French aerospace firm seeking Pentagon contracts. Loeffler last month told a reporter “at no time have I discussed my clients with John McCain.” But lobbying disclosure records reviewed by NEWSWEEK show that on May 17, 2006, Loeffler listed meeting McCain along with the Saudi ambassador to “discuss US-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia relations.”
What all this indicates is that McCain, for all his grandstanding, is fundamentally no different from others in the modern Machiavellian Republican Party dating back to even Richard Nixon, in terms of ethics and values. If he wins the White House, expect more of what we've been seeing for decades.
Amusing postscript: The late, great Molly Ivins had an anecdote about Tom Loeffler. Molly wrote that Loeffler "wore shower caps on his feet while showering during a visit to San Francisco back in the '80s lest he get AIDS through his feet."
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
McCain: Time To Come Clean About Your Lobbyists' Links To Homicidal Dictators
By Manifesto Joe
Sen. John McCain did a fair job in the past of selling himself as a "maverick" Republican -- you know, not one of those whose knees both jerk when Rush Limbaugh's right knee does. I have a vague yet fond memory of him calling Herr Lardbaugh "a circus clown."
But apparently ambition can get the best of people. Or perhaps they never were what they depicted themselves as. Amid all the volleys flying about in the presidential race, it came out early this week that McCain's campaign has been employing lobbyists who have worked for blood-stained foreign dictatorships, and for tidy sums.
The one they call Charlie Black is the senator's "chief political adviser," according to The Washington Post. Here's a current report on Charlie Black's experience as a lobbyist, from Progressive Media USA:
Black Enlisted to Improve Marcos’s Image. The Globe and Mail reported, “A politically well-connected U.S. lobbying firm is being paid nearly $1-million to help a Philippine client linked with President Ferdinand Marcos, and some analysts believe its task is to improve Mr. Marcos’ image.” “The firm, Black, Manafort & Stone Public Affairs, began a year-long contract with a client called the Chamber of Philippines Manufacturers, Exporters and Tourist Associations.” “Stanley Roth, who serves on the staff of a congressional subcommittee investigating Mr. Marcos’ business dealings in the United States, called the arrangement ‘just means of Marcos hiring a public relations firm.’ Under the terms of the contract, the suburban Washington-based concern is to be paid $950,000 plus expenses to provide ‘advice and assistance on matters relating to the media, public relations and public affairs interests’ as well as lobbying services.” [The Globe and Mail, 12/20/85]
Meet Charlie Black: lobbyist, political scientist, public relations man for homicidal dictators. As far as I can gather from the latest news dispatches, Charlie is still on the John McCain payroll.
But wait, there's more:
While Black Lobbied for Somalia, Siad Barre’s Army Killed 40,000 – 50,000 Civilians. The Associated Press reported, “The Somali army killed 40,000 to 50,000 unarmed civilians between June 1988 and January 1990, according to human rights group Africa Watch.” [Associated Press, 1/2/95]
Black Lobbied for Zaire’s Dictator. Black, Manafort, Stone lobbied for “Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire.” The “military dictator, Mobuto, was a $1 million-per-year Black, Manafort client until December 1990.” [Common Cause Magazine, Winter 1993; Department of Justice, FARA database, accessed 2/26/08]
There's actually much more than that, but space limitations compel me to keep things relatively brief. Just bear in mind that this is one of Mad Jack's main men.
Granted, there are now a couple of dudes who are no longer on The Straitjacket Express. They were the ones who had to fall on their swords. This is from a recent post on MSNBC:
Doug Goodyear and Doug Davenport, the two McCain aides who resigned from positions within the GOP contender's campaign, stepped down this weekend after Newsweek reported that their lobbying firm, Washington power player DCI Group, represented Myanmar's military junta in 2002 to the tune of $348,000.
It should be noted that Mr. Goodyear was, until his resignation, heading McCain's GOP convention team. That's not a small post to award someone without checking their background -- or perhaps figuring instead that no one important would ever know.
In 2008, we're in a political mode of Barack Obama having to give multiple speeches explaining that he differs markedly from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on crucial issues. So perhaps this calls for, at the very least, an explanation from McCain to the effect that he doesn't agree with lobbyists who promoted murderous dictators for pay. It seems appropriate and equitable for Mr. Black to get his walking papers, too. I'm sure he will prosper in his Faustian bargains for many years to come, so no one should worry.
Except maybe John McCain?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sen. John McCain did a fair job in the past of selling himself as a "maverick" Republican -- you know, not one of those whose knees both jerk when Rush Limbaugh's right knee does. I have a vague yet fond memory of him calling Herr Lardbaugh "a circus clown."
But apparently ambition can get the best of people. Or perhaps they never were what they depicted themselves as. Amid all the volleys flying about in the presidential race, it came out early this week that McCain's campaign has been employing lobbyists who have worked for blood-stained foreign dictatorships, and for tidy sums.
The one they call Charlie Black is the senator's "chief political adviser," according to The Washington Post. Here's a current report on Charlie Black's experience as a lobbyist, from Progressive Media USA:
Black Enlisted to Improve Marcos’s Image. The Globe and Mail reported, “A politically well-connected U.S. lobbying firm is being paid nearly $1-million to help a Philippine client linked with President Ferdinand Marcos, and some analysts believe its task is to improve Mr. Marcos’ image.” “The firm, Black, Manafort & Stone Public Affairs, began a year-long contract with a client called the Chamber of Philippines Manufacturers, Exporters and Tourist Associations.” “Stanley Roth, who serves on the staff of a congressional subcommittee investigating Mr. Marcos’ business dealings in the United States, called the arrangement ‘just means of Marcos hiring a public relations firm.’ Under the terms of the contract, the suburban Washington-based concern is to be paid $950,000 plus expenses to provide ‘advice and assistance on matters relating to the media, public relations and public affairs interests’ as well as lobbying services.” [The Globe and Mail, 12/20/85]
Meet Charlie Black: lobbyist, political scientist, public relations man for homicidal dictators. As far as I can gather from the latest news dispatches, Charlie is still on the John McCain payroll.
But wait, there's more:
While Black Lobbied for Somalia, Siad Barre’s Army Killed 40,000 – 50,000 Civilians. The Associated Press reported, “The Somali army killed 40,000 to 50,000 unarmed civilians between June 1988 and January 1990, according to human rights group Africa Watch.” [Associated Press, 1/2/95]
Black Lobbied for Zaire’s Dictator. Black, Manafort, Stone lobbied for “Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire.” The “military dictator, Mobuto, was a $1 million-per-year Black, Manafort client until December 1990.” [Common Cause Magazine, Winter 1993; Department of Justice, FARA database, accessed 2/26/08]
There's actually much more than that, but space limitations compel me to keep things relatively brief. Just bear in mind that this is one of Mad Jack's main men.
Granted, there are now a couple of dudes who are no longer on The Straitjacket Express. They were the ones who had to fall on their swords. This is from a recent post on MSNBC:
Doug Goodyear and Doug Davenport, the two McCain aides who resigned from positions within the GOP contender's campaign, stepped down this weekend after Newsweek reported that their lobbying firm, Washington power player DCI Group, represented Myanmar's military junta in 2002 to the tune of $348,000.
It should be noted that Mr. Goodyear was, until his resignation, heading McCain's GOP convention team. That's not a small post to award someone without checking their background -- or perhaps figuring instead that no one important would ever know.
In 2008, we're in a political mode of Barack Obama having to give multiple speeches explaining that he differs markedly from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on crucial issues. So perhaps this calls for, at the very least, an explanation from McCain to the effect that he doesn't agree with lobbyists who promoted murderous dictators for pay. It seems appropriate and equitable for Mr. Black to get his walking papers, too. I'm sure he will prosper in his Faustian bargains for many years to come, so no one should worry.
Except maybe John McCain?
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, May 12, 2008
If I Wuz A Trrrrrist ...
This video, posted by HillbillyReport on YouTube, should explain itself -- MJ
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
