LIFE IS TOUGH IN TEXAS WHEN YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH FOLKS WHO HAVE CLEARLY DEPARTED FROM REALITY INTO A TWILIGHT ZONE OF MENDACITY AND DISTORTION, NOT TO MENTION CENSORSHIP AND PROPAGANDA.
Hurricanes don't happen in South Texas, there are no earthquakes in California and Dr. Hansen of NASA, the global warming specialist's findings, have been censored by the Bush Administration. All science policy is reviewed by a Bush appointed conservative lawyer who has no background in science. Scientific findings are fixed around neocon policy, just like the intelligence on Iraq was cherry picked. Check out the archives on 60 Minutes for 7/30/06.
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES VIA TRUTHOUT.ORG
"FOOLING THE VOTERS"
Excerpts:
One of the bills was a pension reform measure. The other was a grab bag that contains three main items: an extension of the expired tax credit for corporate research; a $2.10 an hour increase in the minimum wage, to be phased in over three years; and a multibillion-dollar estate-tax cut. That's the deal House Republicans are really offering - a few more dollars for 6.6 million working Americans; billions more for some 8,000 of the wealthiest families.
It is cynical in the extreme. Extending the research tax credit is noncontroversial, yet pressing. A minimum wage increase is compelling - morally, politically and financially - but Republicans generally oppose it. And the estate-tax cut has already failed to pass the Senate twice this summer. So House Republicans linked it to the research credit and the minimum wage, hoping to flip a handful of senators from both parties who have voted against estate-tax cuts in the past. Democrats who vote against the estate tax, Republicans think, can be painted as voting against a higher minimum wage.
This is an attempt at extortion. There is no way to justify providing yet another enormous tax shelter to the nation's wealthiest heirs in the face of huge budget deficits, growing income inequality and looming government obligations for Social Security and Medicare.
As for the House's pension bill, it is not the overhaul that Congress has long been promising. The promised bill would have meshed House and Senate versions of pension reform into a single bill that would have almost certainly passed each chamber. But the conference was fatally derailed last Thursday when House Republican negotiators, including the majority leader, John Boehner, refused to attend a meeting called by Senate Republicans to settle a few remaining differences. Mr. Boehner and his followers avoided having to vote - and lose - on items that other negotiators wanted in the final bill.
"FOOLING THE VOTERS"
MR. LOU DOBBS OF CNN ASKS WHY BUSH IS IGNORING OUR LAWS
Mr. Dobbs is a moderate Republican, by the way. We are supposed to be a nation of laws not men. Not under W.
From CNN.com via Truthout.org.
WHY IS BUSH IGNORING OUR LAWS
BUSH POLICY A DISASTER IN THE MIDDLE EAST, ACCORDING TO GOP FORMER POLICY PLANNING DIRECTOR FOR THE STATE DEPT.
From the Washington Post.com
Excerpts:
"The arrows are all pointing in the wrong direction," said Richard N. Haass, who was President Bush's first-term State Department policy planning director. "The biggest danger in the short run is it just increases frustration and alienation from the United States in the Arab world. Not just the Arab world, but in Europe and around the world. People will get a daily drumbeat of suffering in Lebanon and this will just drive up anti-Americanism to new heights."
The White House recognizes the danger but thinks the missiles flying both ways across the Israel-Lebanon border carry with them a chance to finally break out of the stalemate of Middle East geopolitics. Bush and his advisers hope the conflict can destroy or at least cripple Hezbollah and in the process strike a blow against the militia's sponsor, Iran, while forcing the region to move toward final settlement of the decades-old conflict with Israel.
CRISIS IN MIDDLE EAST COULD UNDERCUT BUSH'S LONG TERM GOALS
THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF NEWS ON IRAQ
Powerful argument made by Mr. Frank Rich of The New York Times yesterday. The link below is from The Progressive American.
Excerpts:
The steady falloff in Iraq coverage isn't happenstance. It's a barometer of the scope of the tragedy. For reporters, the already apocalyptic security situation in Baghdad keeps getting worse, simply making the war more difficult to cover than ever. The audience has its own phobia: Iraq is a bummer. "It is depressing to pay attention to this war on terror," said Fox News's Bill O'Reilly on July 18. "I mean, it's summertime." Americans don't like to lose, whatever the season. They know defeat when they see it, no matter how many new plans for victory are trotted out to obscure that reality.
The specter of defeat is not the only reason Americans have switched off Iraq. The larger issue is that we don't know what we — or, more specifically, 135,000 brave and vulnerable American troops — are fighting for. In contrast to the Israel-Hezbollah war, where the stakes for the combatants and American interests are clear, the war in Iraq has no rationale to keep it afloat on television or anywhere else. It's a big, nightmarish story, all right, but one that lacks the thread of a coherent plot.
Certainly there has been no shortage of retrofitted explanations for the war in the three-plus years since the administration's initial casus belli, to fend off Saddam's mushroom clouds and vanquish Al Qaeda, proved to be frauds. We've been told that the war would promote democracy in the Arab world. And make the region safer for Israel. And secure the flow of cheap oil. If any of these justifications retained any credibility, they have been obliterated by Crisis in the Middle East. The new war is a grueling daily object lesson in just how much the American blunders in Iraq have undermined the one robust democracy that already existed in the region, Israel, while emboldening terrorists and strengthening the hand of Iran.
But it's the collapse of the one remaining (and unassailable) motivation that still might justify staying the course in Iraq — as a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Iraqi people — that is most revealing of what a moral catastrophe this misadventure has been for our country. The sad truth is that the war's architects always cared more about their own grandiose political and ideological ambitions than they did about the Iraqis, and they communicated that indifference from the start to Iraqis and Americans alike. The legacy of that attitude is that the American public cannot be rallied to the Iraqi cause today, as the war reaches its treacherous endgame.
The Bush administration constantly congratulates itself for liberating Iraq from Saddam's genocidal regime. But regime change was never billed as a primary motivation for the war; the White House instead appealed to American fears and narcissism — we had to be saved from Saddam's W.M.D. From "Shock and Awe" on, the fate of Iraqis was an afterthought. They would greet our troops with flowers and go about their business.
Donald Rumsfeld boasted that "the care" and "the humanity" that went into our precision assaults on military targets would minimize any civilian deaths. Such casualties were merely "collateral damage," unworthy of quantification. "We don't do body counts," said Gen. Tommy Franks. President Bush at last started counting those Iraqi bodies publicly — with an estimate of 30,000 — some seven months ago. (More recently, The Los Angeles Times put the figure at, conservatively, 50,000.) By then, Americans had tuned out.
The contempt our government showed for Iraqis was not just to be found in our cavalier stance toward their casualties, or in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There was a cultural condescension toward the Iraqi people from the get-go as well, as if they were schoolchildren in a compassionate-conservatism campaign ad. This attitude was epitomized by Mr. Rumsfeld's "stuff happens" response to the looting of Baghdad at the dawn of the American occupation. In "Fiasco," his stunning new book about the American failure in Iraq, Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent, captures the meaning of that pivotal moment perfectly: "The message sent to Iraqis was far more troubling than Americans understood. It was that the U.S. government didn't care — or, even more troubling for the future security of Iraq, that it did care but was incapable of acting effectively."
WHY THE MSM IS NOT REPORTING ON IRAQ
A GLIMPSE INTO THE GRASSROOTS EFFORTS IN TEXAS TO BEAT BACK THE LIES, THE PROPAGANDA AND THE DISTORTED REALITIES. See how down and dirty the GOP gets when you tell them the truth and inform them of facts. Check out Rove's hand book in real time play, i.e. keep on telling the lies and eventually the lies will become perceived as truth. This is where the GOP has stooped since Bush W. stole the office of the Presidency.
GRASSROOTS DEMS TAKE ON NEONUTS IN BUSH LAND
Monday, July 31, 2006
Saturday, July 29, 2006
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CAN'T STAND ITSELF ANYMORE
Things must be really, really bad within the party right now when a life time and three generation member of the GOP , Mr. Pete McCloskey, supports Dem candidates.
Alas, even a Reagan conservative blasts the Bush Administration. Richard Viguerie, a conservative icon and key architect of Ronald Reagan's 1980 victory, isn't happy either. The piece on Viguerie from Raw Story.com is posted below.
Below the Viguerie story is a link to The Dallas Blog in which volunteers for the Barbara Ann Radnofsky campaign for Texas U.S. Senate have been dueling with neonut supporters of the incumbent, Mr. Tom DeLay's best buddy, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
THE REVOLT OF THE ELDERS
A great piece on the Huffington Post.com
Excerpts:
It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006. Let me try to explain why.
We had become appalled at the House Republican leadership's decision in early 2005 to effectively emasculate the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct by changing the rules to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay. DeLay had been admonished three times by the Committee for abuse of power and unethical conduct. It was our hope to persuade Speaker Hastert and the Republican leadership, of which Northern California Congressman Richard Pombo and John Doolittle were prominent members, to rescind the rules changes and to act in accord with the promise of high ethical standards contained in Speaker Gingrich's Contract With America which brought the Republicans majority control in 1994. We failed. Letters to the Speaker from an increasing number of former Republican Members were ignored and remained unanswered. Then, only a few weeks ago, the House leadership refused to allow even a vote on what could have become an effective independent ethics monitor. Instead of repudiating the infamous “Pay to Playâ€? program put in place by DeLay to extract maximum corporate campaign contributions to “Retain Our Majority Partyâ€? (ROMP), DeLay's successor as Majority Leader called for a continuance of the free luxury airline trips, mammoth campaign contributions to the so-called “Leadership PACsâ€? and the continuing stalemate on the Ethics Committee. Strangely, even after the guilty pleas of Abramoff, Duke Cunningham and a number of former House staffers who had been sent to work for Abramoff and other lobbyists. The Republican House leaders don't see this as corruption worthy of investigation or change. That their former staff members and Abramoff were granted preference in access to the legislative process is not seen as a problem if it helps Republicans retain control of the House. It reminds one of the contentions of Haldeman and Ehrlichman long ago that the national security justified wire-tapping and burglary of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate. Republicans are happy with this new corporate lobby/House complex, which is far more dangerous that the Industry/Defense complex we were long ago warned about by President Eisenhower.
There is another strong reason, I believe, for Republicans to work this fall for Democrat challengers against the DeLay-type Republicans like Pombo and Doolittle. That is the clear abdication by the House over the past five years of the Congress' constitutional power and duty to exercise oversight over abuses of power, cronyism, incompetence and excessive secrecy on the part of the Executive Branch. When does anyone remember House Committee hearings to examine into the patent failures of the Bush Administration to adhere to laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or to the arrogant refusal of the President to accept the congressionally-enacted limits on torture of prisoners? When can anyone remember the House's use of the subpoena power to compel answers from Administration officials? Why have there been no oversight hearings into the Cunningham bribery affair or Abramoff's Indian gaming and exploitation of women labor in the Marianas?
"REPUBLICAN SAYS WE NEED A DEM CONGRESS"
REAGAN CONSERVATIVE LASHES OUT AT THE EXTREMIST NEOCONS
“DeLay is singlehandedly the primary person responsible for the most expansion of the government since [Democratic President] Lyndon Johnson,” he remarks. Subsequent research by RAW STORY revealed that, according to the CATO Institute, President Bush has exceeded Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.
Citing the recent bribery conviction of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), Viguerie says the real threat to government isn’t illegal activity – which he believes will eventually be caught by the law – but legal “plunder.”
“What really affects our life is the legal stuff, the legal thefts, the legal plunder of people like Tom DeLay, for the sole, in my opinion immoral, purpose of holding onto power,” the Texas politico said. “They are engaged in this illegal theft, spending money that doesn’t belong to them to hold onto power. And that’s corrupt and immoral. And people who are engaged in that are in no way worthy of the label conservative.”
REAGAN CONSERVATIVE RAILS AGAINST HIJACKERS OF CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT
ENABLERS OF CORRUPTION ARE ALIVE IN WELL IN THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS
HEY! I've just posted two pieces by REPUBLICANS who say Tom DeLay is the most corrupt creature on the politcal planet. But our senior Senator from Texas,Kay Bailey Hutchison, is his best friend and chaired a fund raising event for his legal defense fund. This is what we are stuck with in Texas. The corrupt and the enablers of corruption. Wonderful.
AND WHEN CAMPAIGN VOLUNTEERS FOR U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE BARBARA ANN RADNOFSKY RAISE ISSUES ABOUT THE INCUMBENT, CHECK OUT BELOW WHAT THE INCUMBENTS' SUPPORTERS HAVE TO SAY. TALK ABOUT A TWISTED TWILIGHT ZONE OF MENDACITY AND DISTORTION.
Note: Ms. Carolyn Shore Aresu, Mr. Christopher Bates, Mr. George Chamberlain, Ms. Carolyn Moon, Mr. Evan Norman, and yours truly are obviously volunteers for the Radnofsky for Texas U.S. Senate campaign.
GRASSROOTS DEMS DUKE IT OUT WITH THE PARTY OF CORRUPTION IN TEXAS
Alas, even a Reagan conservative blasts the Bush Administration. Richard Viguerie, a conservative icon and key architect of Ronald Reagan's 1980 victory, isn't happy either. The piece on Viguerie from Raw Story.com is posted below.
Below the Viguerie story is a link to The Dallas Blog in which volunteers for the Barbara Ann Radnofsky campaign for Texas U.S. Senate have been dueling with neonut supporters of the incumbent, Mr. Tom DeLay's best buddy, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
THE REVOLT OF THE ELDERS
A great piece on the Huffington Post.com
Excerpts:
It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006. Let me try to explain why.
We had become appalled at the House Republican leadership's decision in early 2005 to effectively emasculate the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct by changing the rules to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay. DeLay had been admonished three times by the Committee for abuse of power and unethical conduct. It was our hope to persuade Speaker Hastert and the Republican leadership, of which Northern California Congressman Richard Pombo and John Doolittle were prominent members, to rescind the rules changes and to act in accord with the promise of high ethical standards contained in Speaker Gingrich's Contract With America which brought the Republicans majority control in 1994. We failed. Letters to the Speaker from an increasing number of former Republican Members were ignored and remained unanswered. Then, only a few weeks ago, the House leadership refused to allow even a vote on what could have become an effective independent ethics monitor. Instead of repudiating the infamous “Pay to Playâ€? program put in place by DeLay to extract maximum corporate campaign contributions to “Retain Our Majority Partyâ€? (ROMP), DeLay's successor as Majority Leader called for a continuance of the free luxury airline trips, mammoth campaign contributions to the so-called “Leadership PACsâ€? and the continuing stalemate on the Ethics Committee. Strangely, even after the guilty pleas of Abramoff, Duke Cunningham and a number of former House staffers who had been sent to work for Abramoff and other lobbyists. The Republican House leaders don't see this as corruption worthy of investigation or change. That their former staff members and Abramoff were granted preference in access to the legislative process is not seen as a problem if it helps Republicans retain control of the House. It reminds one of the contentions of Haldeman and Ehrlichman long ago that the national security justified wire-tapping and burglary of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate. Republicans are happy with this new corporate lobby/House complex, which is far more dangerous that the Industry/Defense complex we were long ago warned about by President Eisenhower.
There is another strong reason, I believe, for Republicans to work this fall for Democrat challengers against the DeLay-type Republicans like Pombo and Doolittle. That is the clear abdication by the House over the past five years of the Congress' constitutional power and duty to exercise oversight over abuses of power, cronyism, incompetence and excessive secrecy on the part of the Executive Branch. When does anyone remember House Committee hearings to examine into the patent failures of the Bush Administration to adhere to laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or to the arrogant refusal of the President to accept the congressionally-enacted limits on torture of prisoners? When can anyone remember the House's use of the subpoena power to compel answers from Administration officials? Why have there been no oversight hearings into the Cunningham bribery affair or Abramoff's Indian gaming and exploitation of women labor in the Marianas?
"REPUBLICAN SAYS WE NEED A DEM CONGRESS"
REAGAN CONSERVATIVE LASHES OUT AT THE EXTREMIST NEOCONS
“DeLay is singlehandedly the primary person responsible for the most expansion of the government since [Democratic President] Lyndon Johnson,” he remarks. Subsequent research by RAW STORY revealed that, according to the CATO Institute, President Bush has exceeded Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.
Citing the recent bribery conviction of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), Viguerie says the real threat to government isn’t illegal activity – which he believes will eventually be caught by the law – but legal “plunder.”
“What really affects our life is the legal stuff, the legal thefts, the legal plunder of people like Tom DeLay, for the sole, in my opinion immoral, purpose of holding onto power,” the Texas politico said. “They are engaged in this illegal theft, spending money that doesn’t belong to them to hold onto power. And that’s corrupt and immoral. And people who are engaged in that are in no way worthy of the label conservative.”
REAGAN CONSERVATIVE RAILS AGAINST HIJACKERS OF CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT
ENABLERS OF CORRUPTION ARE ALIVE IN WELL IN THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS
HEY! I've just posted two pieces by REPUBLICANS who say Tom DeLay is the most corrupt creature on the politcal planet. But our senior Senator from Texas,Kay Bailey Hutchison, is his best friend and chaired a fund raising event for his legal defense fund. This is what we are stuck with in Texas. The corrupt and the enablers of corruption. Wonderful.
AND WHEN CAMPAIGN VOLUNTEERS FOR U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE BARBARA ANN RADNOFSKY RAISE ISSUES ABOUT THE INCUMBENT, CHECK OUT BELOW WHAT THE INCUMBENTS' SUPPORTERS HAVE TO SAY. TALK ABOUT A TWISTED TWILIGHT ZONE OF MENDACITY AND DISTORTION.
Note: Ms. Carolyn Shore Aresu, Mr. Christopher Bates, Mr. George Chamberlain, Ms. Carolyn Moon, Mr. Evan Norman, and yours truly are obviously volunteers for the Radnofsky for Texas U.S. Senate campaign.
GRASSROOTS DEMS DUKE IT OUT WITH THE PARTY OF CORRUPTION IN TEXAS
Thursday, July 13, 2006
SUPPRESSION IN THE TEXAS MEDIA?
One would never know it, but the Democratic Party is alive and well in Texas. Despite the fact that our great state has been gerrymandered to smithereens by the likes of soon to be jailbird Tom DeLay, we Democrats do have more than a mere pulse.
The national media covered a debate between Democratic opponents in teeny Connecticut, but some how one of the largest states in the U.S. that also happens to house the fourth largest and most diverse city in the U.S, mysteriously falls off the radar screen.
Wake up mainstream media. Wake up or find some courage local media.
Our state's newspapers and dumbed down TV news are obviously married to or are cowards and are therefore terrified of the Republican Party machine.
Or they are simply lazy and don't do their homework.
Or a little of both
Texan Democrats are well informed. We know the facts and we have the figures. And we know that bully Rove no longer has any clothes. Indeed, he is completely naked and is an embarrassing buffoon. And of course there is the added distraction that Mr. Overly Fed Naked Boy must face with yet another trial.
Ms. Valerie Plame Wilson, the outed CIA agent, sued Rove, Cheney and Scooter boy yesterday.
Truth is on our side. Maybe when the press and media get it, they will grow some courage and do what they are hired to do.
PROOF OF MEDIA FEAR AND/OR SUCKING UP TO THE GOP
A volunteer for the TEXAS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE BARBARA ANN RADNOFSKY campaign submitted a letter to the editor of the Houston Chronicle. The letter was published, (6/27/06), however an entire paragraph that had asked for a debate between Ms. Radnofsky and her opponent was conveniently omitted.
Letter Submitted to the Houston Chronicle by Carolyn:
To Whom It May Concern:
The election for the US Senate seat in Texas is four months away and all we hear is Karl Rove's cheap campaign rhetoric. I am sick of spin. I want to know about real policy issues and hear the candidates debate them.
We are at war on two fronts: Afghanistan and Iraq. We face nuclear threats from North Korea and possibly Iran. Our southern border is hemorrhaging, yet firms are never penalized for hiring illegals. Our public schools are next to last in the nation. Our deficit is in the trillions. We owe our souls to the Chinese. We are less safe than ever.
And yet our Congress has met a mere 76 times this year.
I want to hear what Ms. Radnofsky has to propose on Iraq, border security, immigration and the deficit. I also want to know why, during her two terms in office, her opponent has done so little to solve the grave problems that confront us.
I am tired of Rovian rhetoric. Voters deserve real debates, dialogue and discussion.
Sincerely yours,
Carolyn of Houston
EDITED VERSION OF CAROLYN'S LETTER PUBLISHED BY THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE:
The election for the US Senate seat in Texas is four months away and all I hear is Karl Rove’s cheap campaign rhetoric. I am sick of spin. I want to know about real policy issues and hear the candidates debate them.
We are at war on two fronts: Afghanistan and Iraq. We face nuclear threats from North Korea and possibly Iran. Our southern border is hemorrhaging, yet firms are seldom penalized for hiring illegals. Our public schools are next to last in the nation. Our deficit is in the trillions. We owe our souls to the Chinese. We are less safe than ever.
And yet our Congress has met a mere 76 times this year.
I am tired of Rovian rhetoric. Voters deserve real debates, dialogue and discussion.
Sincerely yours,
Carolyn of Houston
THANKS TO ALTERNATIVE MEDIA SOURCES, WE KNOW ABOUT THE PLAME-WILSON LAWSUIT
From Raw Story.com
OUTED CIA AGENT VALERIE PLAME WILSON SUES CHENEY, LIBBY AND ROVE
TEXAS INDIAN TRIBE FILE LAWSUIT AGAINST ABRAMOFF AND SAINTLY REED
Remember, our senior Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison , is busy hosting fundraising events for Abramoff instead of going to work for Texans at U.S. Appropriations Committee Hearings.
Excerpt:
The Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Livingston, Texas, alleged the defendants defrauded the tribe, the people of Texas and the Legislature to benefit another of Abramoff's clients — the Louisiana Coushatta tribe — and "line their pockets with money."
"Ultimately, the defendants' greed and corruption led to the Alabama-Coushatta tribe permanently shutting its casino. The funding for economic programs evaporated, over 300 jobs were lost in Polk County and the Alabama-Coushatta tribe has spent years struggling to recover and revitalize its economy through other means," the tribe said in its lawsuit, obtained by The Associated Press.
The lawsuit also names Abramoff's ex-business partner Michael Scanlon, a former aide to former Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas; Neil Volz, a former aide to Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio; and Jon Van Horne, Abramoff's former colleague at his law and lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig.
TEXAS TRIBE NAMES ABRAMOFF AND REED IN LAWUIT
GOP DOES ALL IT CAN TO HINDER VOTING RIGHTS ACT RENEWA SO IT WILL NOT BE IN PLACE FOR THE 2006 ELECTIONS
This is the party that likes to wear white sheets and ride at night.
From Truthout.org.
TRUTHOUT.ORG: "CHANCES OF VOTING RIGHTS RENEWAL DIM"
DO NO RE-ELECT STREETWALKER TYPE POLITICIANS WHO DO NOT WORK FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BUT PREFER INSTEAD TO PANDER TO CORPORATIONS AND LOBBYISTS.
Libby Shaw will be on vacation until the end of the month. If anyone should happen upon this blog who would like to help win back our government, state by state, please visit TEXAS U.S. CANDIDATE FOR U.S. SENATE, MS. BARBARA ANN RADNOFSKY'S BLOG and make a donation.
No donation is too small.
By the way, Ms. Radnofsky does not accept money from corporations or lobbyists. She will not be beholden to the big dudes calling all shots.
Get a grip folks and step up to the plate. We Texan Democrats don’t do $10,000 per plate dinners like the elitist, smug and obviously proven corrupt GOP.
We are the party of the people and stand on principle. LS
The national media covered a debate between Democratic opponents in teeny Connecticut, but some how one of the largest states in the U.S. that also happens to house the fourth largest and most diverse city in the U.S, mysteriously falls off the radar screen.
Wake up mainstream media. Wake up or find some courage local media.
Our state's newspapers and dumbed down TV news are obviously married to or are cowards and are therefore terrified of the Republican Party machine.
Or they are simply lazy and don't do their homework.
Or a little of both
Texan Democrats are well informed. We know the facts and we have the figures. And we know that bully Rove no longer has any clothes. Indeed, he is completely naked and is an embarrassing buffoon. And of course there is the added distraction that Mr. Overly Fed Naked Boy must face with yet another trial.
Ms. Valerie Plame Wilson, the outed CIA agent, sued Rove, Cheney and Scooter boy yesterday.
Truth is on our side. Maybe when the press and media get it, they will grow some courage and do what they are hired to do.
PROOF OF MEDIA FEAR AND/OR SUCKING UP TO THE GOP
A volunteer for the TEXAS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE BARBARA ANN RADNOFSKY campaign submitted a letter to the editor of the Houston Chronicle. The letter was published, (6/27/06), however an entire paragraph that had asked for a debate between Ms. Radnofsky and her opponent was conveniently omitted.
Letter Submitted to the Houston Chronicle by Carolyn:
To Whom It May Concern:
The election for the US Senate seat in Texas is four months away and all we hear is Karl Rove's cheap campaign rhetoric. I am sick of spin. I want to know about real policy issues and hear the candidates debate them.
We are at war on two fronts: Afghanistan and Iraq. We face nuclear threats from North Korea and possibly Iran. Our southern border is hemorrhaging, yet firms are never penalized for hiring illegals. Our public schools are next to last in the nation. Our deficit is in the trillions. We owe our souls to the Chinese. We are less safe than ever.
And yet our Congress has met a mere 76 times this year.
I want to hear what Ms. Radnofsky has to propose on Iraq, border security, immigration and the deficit. I also want to know why, during her two terms in office, her opponent has done so little to solve the grave problems that confront us.
I am tired of Rovian rhetoric. Voters deserve real debates, dialogue and discussion.
Sincerely yours,
Carolyn of Houston
EDITED VERSION OF CAROLYN'S LETTER PUBLISHED BY THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE:
The election for the US Senate seat in Texas is four months away and all I hear is Karl Rove’s cheap campaign rhetoric. I am sick of spin. I want to know about real policy issues and hear the candidates debate them.
We are at war on two fronts: Afghanistan and Iraq. We face nuclear threats from North Korea and possibly Iran. Our southern border is hemorrhaging, yet firms are seldom penalized for hiring illegals. Our public schools are next to last in the nation. Our deficit is in the trillions. We owe our souls to the Chinese. We are less safe than ever.
And yet our Congress has met a mere 76 times this year.
I am tired of Rovian rhetoric. Voters deserve real debates, dialogue and discussion.
Sincerely yours,
Carolyn of Houston
THANKS TO ALTERNATIVE MEDIA SOURCES, WE KNOW ABOUT THE PLAME-WILSON LAWSUIT
From Raw Story.com
OUTED CIA AGENT VALERIE PLAME WILSON SUES CHENEY, LIBBY AND ROVE
TEXAS INDIAN TRIBE FILE LAWSUIT AGAINST ABRAMOFF AND SAINTLY REED
Remember, our senior Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison , is busy hosting fundraising events for Abramoff instead of going to work for Texans at U.S. Appropriations Committee Hearings.
Excerpt:
The Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Livingston, Texas, alleged the defendants defrauded the tribe, the people of Texas and the Legislature to benefit another of Abramoff's clients — the Louisiana Coushatta tribe — and "line their pockets with money."
"Ultimately, the defendants' greed and corruption led to the Alabama-Coushatta tribe permanently shutting its casino. The funding for economic programs evaporated, over 300 jobs were lost in Polk County and the Alabama-Coushatta tribe has spent years struggling to recover and revitalize its economy through other means," the tribe said in its lawsuit, obtained by The Associated Press.
The lawsuit also names Abramoff's ex-business partner Michael Scanlon, a former aide to former Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas; Neil Volz, a former aide to Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio; and Jon Van Horne, Abramoff's former colleague at his law and lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig.
TEXAS TRIBE NAMES ABRAMOFF AND REED IN LAWUIT
GOP DOES ALL IT CAN TO HINDER VOTING RIGHTS ACT RENEWA SO IT WILL NOT BE IN PLACE FOR THE 2006 ELECTIONS
This is the party that likes to wear white sheets and ride at night.
From Truthout.org.
TRUTHOUT.ORG: "CHANCES OF VOTING RIGHTS RENEWAL DIM"
DO NO RE-ELECT STREETWALKER TYPE POLITICIANS WHO DO NOT WORK FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BUT PREFER INSTEAD TO PANDER TO CORPORATIONS AND LOBBYISTS.
Libby Shaw will be on vacation until the end of the month. If anyone should happen upon this blog who would like to help win back our government, state by state, please visit TEXAS U.S. CANDIDATE FOR U.S. SENATE, MS. BARBARA ANN RADNOFSKY'S BLOG and make a donation.
No donation is too small.
By the way, Ms. Radnofsky does not accept money from corporations or lobbyists. She will not be beholden to the big dudes calling all shots.
Get a grip folks and step up to the plate. We Texan Democrats don’t do $10,000 per plate dinners like the elitist, smug and obviously proven corrupt GOP.
We are the party of the people and stand on principle. LS
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
ENABLERS OF CHICKEN HAWKS AND FAKE COWBOYS
I am not a native of Texas, but I have lived here for 29 years. My husband's and my only child was born here, so that should make us, at the very least, legitimate Texans. We came to Houston, many moons ago, when my better half was offered a teaching position at a private academic institution. We thought we would stick around for a few years and then move back to the Pacific Northwest or perhaps return to my roots in New York City.
But we stayed here.
As with many newcomers to Texas, it took us a few years to appreciate both the poetry and hard-edged beauty of the Texas culture.
Texans work very hard. We care deeply about our children and our families. We take commitment and responsibility seriously. We believe in accountability. No one and I mean no one is above the law. Numerous summons to state and local jury panels have clearly reinforced this message, at least to me, as both a yankee and a westerner. Whether one is a farmer, rancher, urban dweller, teacher, lawyer, religious leader, engineer, scientist, accountant, yard man, maid, roughneck, longshoreman, banker, clerk, bookkeeper, student, horse trainer, dog trainer, vet, military, airline pilot, travel agent, hotel clerk, waiter, waitress, to name just a few professions, we all share a common belief in a work ethic, personal intregrity and accountability.
And so, my question tonight is, why are Texans who work hard and play by the rules saddled with elected leaders who do an abysmally poor job of representing their constituents?
Are our elected officials lazy? Are they above the law? Do they work for corporate donors and lobbyists, or worse, are they merely sheep that are herded by a bunch of fake and cowardly cowboys? Or are they all of the above?
I choose all of the above.
The senior Senator from Texas, it seems, fails to show up for work on absolutely crucial days when her committee has a very important agenda. Her committee? That would be the powerful Appropriations Committee in which billions of our taxpayer dollars are divided up among various programs throughout the states. Our Senator left us with absolutely no representation on that significant meeting day last week. In short, Texas got zip.
Why did the senior Senator fail to attend such an important meeting?
Was she:
1. Moving her home from Texas to McLean, Virginia?
2. Chairing fundraiser events for Tom Delay’s legal defense fund?
3. Hosting fundraisers for Abramoff’s lobbying firms?
4. Having her hair done?
We surely deserve better.
And we will get a jewel in the end if we do what we do best. Work hard and maintain our principles. And go to the polls in November.
Our salvation for the future?
That would be US Senator for Texas, BARBARA ANN RADNOFSKY OF TEXAS FOR U.S. SENATE 06
Ms. Radnofsky has the right stuff to represent Texas: an unflinching value system; a keen intellect that understands all issues on every level and a real and deep commitment to serve Texans. Radnofsky is about substance, unlike her opponent who is merely a puppet for poisonous partisan ideology and rhetoric.
Thank goodness for Barbara Ann Radnfosky’s volunteers who are organizing Meet and Greets throughout the state; George and Ann in Grand Prairie, Evan in Austin, “Spinmeister” in Dallas, Carolyn in Houston. Vik in Kilgore will be involved through writing letters and flyer distribution. Randy has a firm grasp on the facts and figures and keeps lefty liberals like yours truly in check and honest. Susan is working with ranchers’ wives on both school-related and political issues. Carolyn in South Texas is helping, too. Janet Z., probably our youngest newcomer, is helping with Internet resources and Sharon; the lone liberal in Wise County is going it alone against the neocons with great success. Clark makes us laugh with his extraordinary wit. No one will ever forget his joke about W. riding the electric horse at Wal-Mart while Laura inserts the coins. There are many, many others…..
MOVING ON TO NATIONALLY HERDED SHEEP
SHOCKING DISCOVERY!
CONSERVATIVES ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE HERDED BY AUTHORITRIAN LEADERS.
LOL..What the hell else is new?
John Dean gave a smashing interview on Keith Olbermann the other night on this topic which is included in his recent book "CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE." I ran off to Barnes and Noble today to purchase a copy. Now I am torn between starting The One Percent Solution or Conservatives Without a Conscience. Thank goodness for vacations and down time.
CONSERVATIVES AND THE HERDED SHEEP COMPLEX
ON RAISING ROVE.
YEARNING TO RETURN TO THE DAYS OF SLAVERY, GOP WON'T INCREASE THE MINIMUM WAGE, THOUGH IT HAS NOT BEEN CHANGED IN 10 YEARS, BUT ROVE SOMEHOW GETS A RAISE.
Why do our tax dollars pay a political hack's salary? Shouldn't the GOP campaign wing pay Rove? He does not work for the people. He works for the propaganda arm of the GOP.
ROVE GETS A RAISE WHEN MINIMUM WAGE STAYS THE SAME
"MINIMUM STANDARDS"
By Mr. Will Rivers Pitt of Truthout.org.
This is a wonderful article written about accountability or lack thereof.
Excerpt:
We caught a glimpse of the mind-set behind this whole process on Tuesday afternoon. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Hamden v. Rumsfeld Supreme Court ruling, the one that has ostensibly turned the Bush administration's war doctrine on its ear and has motivated them to grant minimum Geneva protections to prisoners.
Senator Patrick Leahy was grilling Steven Bradbury, acting head of Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, on the legal and ethical basis for Guantanamo in general and the treatment of prisoners specifically. Pressed into a corner by Leahy's questioning as to whether Bush was right or wrong in his decisions on the matter, Bradbury finally stated, "The president is always right."
Mr. Bradbury, it appears, did not get the memo.
Tuesday's Washington Post laid out the myriad ways in which, all of a sudden, the president is being forced to admit that he has been, almost comprehensively, always wrong. "Accustomed to having its way on matters related to the nation's security," reported the Post, "the administration is being forced to respond to criticism that it once brushed aside. The high court ruling rejected the White House's assertion that the president has nearly unlimited executive powers during a time of war, and now executive branch lawyers are reviewing whether other rules adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon will have to be revised, especially those concerning the Geneva Conventions."
Much of this is, in the end, short-term analysis and observation. After picking through the detritus left behind in arguments over executive power, the inside baseball of political positioning, and the strange absolutism of Justice Department attorneys, we come around again to looking at long-term ramifications.
Granting minimum protection standards under Geneva to prisoners cannot and must not have anything to do with the exact circumstances of the detention of a prisoner, or the modern elastic definitions of war, or the desires of an administration to establish unlimited power. While the need to gather necessary intelligence and information on the disposition of terrorist elements is undeniable, the need for adherence to the rule of law on this issue goes far beyond constitutional platitudes.
WILL RIVERS PITT: "MINIMUM STANDARD"
But we stayed here.
As with many newcomers to Texas, it took us a few years to appreciate both the poetry and hard-edged beauty of the Texas culture.
Texans work very hard. We care deeply about our children and our families. We take commitment and responsibility seriously. We believe in accountability. No one and I mean no one is above the law. Numerous summons to state and local jury panels have clearly reinforced this message, at least to me, as both a yankee and a westerner. Whether one is a farmer, rancher, urban dweller, teacher, lawyer, religious leader, engineer, scientist, accountant, yard man, maid, roughneck, longshoreman, banker, clerk, bookkeeper, student, horse trainer, dog trainer, vet, military, airline pilot, travel agent, hotel clerk, waiter, waitress, to name just a few professions, we all share a common belief in a work ethic, personal intregrity and accountability.
And so, my question tonight is, why are Texans who work hard and play by the rules saddled with elected leaders who do an abysmally poor job of representing their constituents?
Are our elected officials lazy? Are they above the law? Do they work for corporate donors and lobbyists, or worse, are they merely sheep that are herded by a bunch of fake and cowardly cowboys? Or are they all of the above?
I choose all of the above.
The senior Senator from Texas, it seems, fails to show up for work on absolutely crucial days when her committee has a very important agenda. Her committee? That would be the powerful Appropriations Committee in which billions of our taxpayer dollars are divided up among various programs throughout the states. Our Senator left us with absolutely no representation on that significant meeting day last week. In short, Texas got zip.
Why did the senior Senator fail to attend such an important meeting?
Was she:
1. Moving her home from Texas to McLean, Virginia?
2. Chairing fundraiser events for Tom Delay’s legal defense fund?
3. Hosting fundraisers for Abramoff’s lobbying firms?
4. Having her hair done?
We surely deserve better.
And we will get a jewel in the end if we do what we do best. Work hard and maintain our principles. And go to the polls in November.
Our salvation for the future?
That would be US Senator for Texas, BARBARA ANN RADNOFSKY OF TEXAS FOR U.S. SENATE 06
Ms. Radnofsky has the right stuff to represent Texas: an unflinching value system; a keen intellect that understands all issues on every level and a real and deep commitment to serve Texans. Radnofsky is about substance, unlike her opponent who is merely a puppet for poisonous partisan ideology and rhetoric.
Thank goodness for Barbara Ann Radnfosky’s volunteers who are organizing Meet and Greets throughout the state; George and Ann in Grand Prairie, Evan in Austin, “Spinmeister” in Dallas, Carolyn in Houston. Vik in Kilgore will be involved through writing letters and flyer distribution. Randy has a firm grasp on the facts and figures and keeps lefty liberals like yours truly in check and honest. Susan is working with ranchers’ wives on both school-related and political issues. Carolyn in South Texas is helping, too. Janet Z., probably our youngest newcomer, is helping with Internet resources and Sharon; the lone liberal in Wise County is going it alone against the neocons with great success. Clark makes us laugh with his extraordinary wit. No one will ever forget his joke about W. riding the electric horse at Wal-Mart while Laura inserts the coins. There are many, many others…..
MOVING ON TO NATIONALLY HERDED SHEEP
SHOCKING DISCOVERY!
CONSERVATIVES ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE HERDED BY AUTHORITRIAN LEADERS.
LOL..What the hell else is new?
John Dean gave a smashing interview on Keith Olbermann the other night on this topic which is included in his recent book "CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE." I ran off to Barnes and Noble today to purchase a copy. Now I am torn between starting The One Percent Solution or Conservatives Without a Conscience. Thank goodness for vacations and down time.
CONSERVATIVES AND THE HERDED SHEEP COMPLEX
ON RAISING ROVE.
YEARNING TO RETURN TO THE DAYS OF SLAVERY, GOP WON'T INCREASE THE MINIMUM WAGE, THOUGH IT HAS NOT BEEN CHANGED IN 10 YEARS, BUT ROVE SOMEHOW GETS A RAISE.
Why do our tax dollars pay a political hack's salary? Shouldn't the GOP campaign wing pay Rove? He does not work for the people. He works for the propaganda arm of the GOP.
ROVE GETS A RAISE WHEN MINIMUM WAGE STAYS THE SAME
"MINIMUM STANDARDS"
By Mr. Will Rivers Pitt of Truthout.org.
This is a wonderful article written about accountability or lack thereof.
Excerpt:
We caught a glimpse of the mind-set behind this whole process on Tuesday afternoon. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Hamden v. Rumsfeld Supreme Court ruling, the one that has ostensibly turned the Bush administration's war doctrine on its ear and has motivated them to grant minimum Geneva protections to prisoners.
Senator Patrick Leahy was grilling Steven Bradbury, acting head of Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, on the legal and ethical basis for Guantanamo in general and the treatment of prisoners specifically. Pressed into a corner by Leahy's questioning as to whether Bush was right or wrong in his decisions on the matter, Bradbury finally stated, "The president is always right."
Mr. Bradbury, it appears, did not get the memo.
Tuesday's Washington Post laid out the myriad ways in which, all of a sudden, the president is being forced to admit that he has been, almost comprehensively, always wrong. "Accustomed to having its way on matters related to the nation's security," reported the Post, "the administration is being forced to respond to criticism that it once brushed aside. The high court ruling rejected the White House's assertion that the president has nearly unlimited executive powers during a time of war, and now executive branch lawyers are reviewing whether other rules adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon will have to be revised, especially those concerning the Geneva Conventions."
Much of this is, in the end, short-term analysis and observation. After picking through the detritus left behind in arguments over executive power, the inside baseball of political positioning, and the strange absolutism of Justice Department attorneys, we come around again to looking at long-term ramifications.
Granting minimum protection standards under Geneva to prisoners cannot and must not have anything to do with the exact circumstances of the detention of a prisoner, or the modern elastic definitions of war, or the desires of an administration to establish unlimited power. While the need to gather necessary intelligence and information on the disposition of terrorist elements is undeniable, the need for adherence to the rule of law on this issue goes far beyond constitutional platitudes.
WILL RIVERS PITT: "MINIMUM STANDARD"
Monday, July 10, 2006
WHEN CHICKEN HAWKS ARE ALSO FAKE COWBOYS
There is a lot of buzz going on here in Texas about W. and his so-called ranch. It seems that W. does not own horses, nor does he ride them. Worse, he is supposedly afraid of horses.
Clark, a volunteer for the Radnofsky for U.S. Senate campaign, suggested that Bush does indeed ride. According to Clark, our cowboy president rides the electric horse at Wal-Mart while wife Laura inserts the coins.
Randy, another volunteer, who also happens to be a professional airline pilot for a well-known U.S. carrier, told our group that Dub was also afraid to fly jets and planes while "serving" in the National Guard.
Chicken pilot, fake cowboy. This is the dude that duped this great land into war.
Sharon, a rare gem of a liberal in Wise County Texas, works day and night for Democratic candidates. Unlike W., Sharon owns a horse, and she rides. More impressively, she can actually rope. Alas, Sharon has little time for either because she is committed to getting rid “of the rot in this state.” All of the rot started in Texas, according to Sharon.
These are just a few of the folks who are seriously committed to re-establishing the real party of the people in Texas. LS
ARE REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS REALLY UNNERVED BY BUSH'S NEO NUT AUTHORITARIAN POLICIES OR ARE THEY MERELY WORRIED ABOUT THEIR OWN DERRIERES DURING AN ELECTION YEAR?
I think you know the answer to that.
From The Washington Post.com via Buzz Flash.com
Excerpts:
Hoekstra's four-page letter of May 18 was posted yesterday on the New York Times' Web site. His staff confirmed the letter's authenticity but said it was meant to remain private. Spokesman Jamal D. Ware said Hoekstra "has raised these concerns, and they are being addressed. He will continue to push for full disclosure so the committee can conduct vigorous oversight."
The letter is significant because few congressional Republicans have complained publicly about Bush's surveillance programs, which include warrantless wiretaps of some Americans' international phone calls and e-mails as well as the massive collection of telephone records involving U.S. homes and businesses.
WAPO: "BUSH IS PRESSED ON REPORTING DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE"
THINGS MUST BE REALLY BAD WHEN A NEWSPAPER IN BRIGHT RED MISSISSIPPI PUBLISHES A LETTER FROM A DISGRUNTLED CITIZEN WHO IS CRITICAL OF THE GOP.
IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY IN TEXAS. AU CONTRAIRE, MOST LETTERS CRITICAL TO THE BUSHIES ARE PUT THROUGH THE BUZZ SAW.
Maybe we all ought to send our letters to Mississippi! LS
Another great find on Buzz Flash.com
"WORKING CLASS HURT BY REPUBLICAN POLICIES"
MORE EVIDENCE THAT THE GOP CULTURE OF CORRUPTION IS ALIVE, WELL, AND GETTING RICHER BY THE SECOND
From The Washington Post.com via Truthout.org.
Excerpt:
No wonder Americans hate the nation's capital. Federal employees are prohibited from supplementing their incomes with money from private sources, especially from lobbyists who have business before the government. Shockey says his payment was justified and within the rules. But experienced lobbyists around town question both its economics and its propriety.
The situation is an example of a common occurrence - the spinning of the "revolving door" between the public and private sectors. Shockey is deputy chief of staff of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Before that he was a partner for five years in a lobbying firm that made its living extracting goodies from the same committee. And before that he worked for Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), who was then a member of the committee and is now its chairman.
Along the way, Shockey made millions. As a lobbyist in 2004 he earned $2 million, which is double what the city's top lobbyists were said to earn just a few years ago. Shockey, in fact, was on track to make $3 million in 2005, the year he returned to government as the No. 2 staffer for the Appropriations Committee.
Lobby shops often give parting gifts to colleagues who go into public service as a way to maintain strong relations. But the amount tends to be nominal and strictly tied to past performance to avoid even the appearance of paying a federal official in exchange for favorable treatment - an exchange that would be illegal.
Why, then, would Shockey's former firm pay him so much? The reason, several seasoned lobbyists speculated, must have been the firm's desire to keep its communications with Shockey and the appropriations panel absolutely seamless. "There would be no need to pay out that amount of money unless you needed to maintain a superlative relationship with that person after he leaves," one veteran lobbyist said.
Spokesmen for Shockey's old firm say the company already had deep connections with Lewis and didn't need any more. Still, who can blame skeptics for thinking that $2 million might buy more than merely goodwill?
"$2 MILLION TO HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CHIEF OF STAFF QUESTIONED"
TRUE TO THE TALIBAN WING OF THE GOP, BUSH WILL VETO BI-PARTISAN STEM CELL RESEARCH BILL
Excerpt:
The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed the legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del. If the Senate approves the bill it would go to the president's desk.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who backs the bill, has said he will try to bring it up for a Senate vote soon.
"It is something we would, frankly, like to avoid," Rove said when asked if the White House would welcome, or dread, vetoing legislation passed by a Republican Congress, especially on so emotional an issue as embryonic stem cell research.
But Rove said that he believes the legislation will pass the Senate with more than 60 votes this month, "and as a result the president would, as he has previously said emphatically, veto the Castle bill."
"I'm appalled that Bush would use the first veto of his presidency to veto a bill that could help 110 million people and their families," DeGette said today after being informed of Rove's remarks.
Um, congress folks should be well beyond "being appalled" by Bush. They should have stood up to him many moons ago. LS
BUSH TO VETO STEM CELL RESEARCH BILL
Clark, a volunteer for the Radnofsky for U.S. Senate campaign, suggested that Bush does indeed ride. According to Clark, our cowboy president rides the electric horse at Wal-Mart while wife Laura inserts the coins.
Randy, another volunteer, who also happens to be a professional airline pilot for a well-known U.S. carrier, told our group that Dub was also afraid to fly jets and planes while "serving" in the National Guard.
Chicken pilot, fake cowboy. This is the dude that duped this great land into war.
Sharon, a rare gem of a liberal in Wise County Texas, works day and night for Democratic candidates. Unlike W., Sharon owns a horse, and she rides. More impressively, she can actually rope. Alas, Sharon has little time for either because she is committed to getting rid “of the rot in this state.” All of the rot started in Texas, according to Sharon.
These are just a few of the folks who are seriously committed to re-establishing the real party of the people in Texas. LS
ARE REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS REALLY UNNERVED BY BUSH'S NEO NUT AUTHORITARIAN POLICIES OR ARE THEY MERELY WORRIED ABOUT THEIR OWN DERRIERES DURING AN ELECTION YEAR?
I think you know the answer to that.
From The Washington Post.com via Buzz Flash.com
Excerpts:
Hoekstra's four-page letter of May 18 was posted yesterday on the New York Times' Web site. His staff confirmed the letter's authenticity but said it was meant to remain private. Spokesman Jamal D. Ware said Hoekstra "has raised these concerns, and they are being addressed. He will continue to push for full disclosure so the committee can conduct vigorous oversight."
The letter is significant because few congressional Republicans have complained publicly about Bush's surveillance programs, which include warrantless wiretaps of some Americans' international phone calls and e-mails as well as the massive collection of telephone records involving U.S. homes and businesses.
WAPO: "BUSH IS PRESSED ON REPORTING DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE"
THINGS MUST BE REALLY BAD WHEN A NEWSPAPER IN BRIGHT RED MISSISSIPPI PUBLISHES A LETTER FROM A DISGRUNTLED CITIZEN WHO IS CRITICAL OF THE GOP.
IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY IN TEXAS. AU CONTRAIRE, MOST LETTERS CRITICAL TO THE BUSHIES ARE PUT THROUGH THE BUZZ SAW.
Maybe we all ought to send our letters to Mississippi! LS
Another great find on Buzz Flash.com
"WORKING CLASS HURT BY REPUBLICAN POLICIES"
MORE EVIDENCE THAT THE GOP CULTURE OF CORRUPTION IS ALIVE, WELL, AND GETTING RICHER BY THE SECOND
From The Washington Post.com via Truthout.org.
Excerpt:
No wonder Americans hate the nation's capital. Federal employees are prohibited from supplementing their incomes with money from private sources, especially from lobbyists who have business before the government. Shockey says his payment was justified and within the rules. But experienced lobbyists around town question both its economics and its propriety.
The situation is an example of a common occurrence - the spinning of the "revolving door" between the public and private sectors. Shockey is deputy chief of staff of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Before that he was a partner for five years in a lobbying firm that made its living extracting goodies from the same committee. And before that he worked for Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), who was then a member of the committee and is now its chairman.
Along the way, Shockey made millions. As a lobbyist in 2004 he earned $2 million, which is double what the city's top lobbyists were said to earn just a few years ago. Shockey, in fact, was on track to make $3 million in 2005, the year he returned to government as the No. 2 staffer for the Appropriations Committee.
Lobby shops often give parting gifts to colleagues who go into public service as a way to maintain strong relations. But the amount tends to be nominal and strictly tied to past performance to avoid even the appearance of paying a federal official in exchange for favorable treatment - an exchange that would be illegal.
Why, then, would Shockey's former firm pay him so much? The reason, several seasoned lobbyists speculated, must have been the firm's desire to keep its communications with Shockey and the appropriations panel absolutely seamless. "There would be no need to pay out that amount of money unless you needed to maintain a superlative relationship with that person after he leaves," one veteran lobbyist said.
Spokesmen for Shockey's old firm say the company already had deep connections with Lewis and didn't need any more. Still, who can blame skeptics for thinking that $2 million might buy more than merely goodwill?
"$2 MILLION TO HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CHIEF OF STAFF QUESTIONED"
TRUE TO THE TALIBAN WING OF THE GOP, BUSH WILL VETO BI-PARTISAN STEM CELL RESEARCH BILL
Excerpt:
The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed the legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del. If the Senate approves the bill it would go to the president's desk.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who backs the bill, has said he will try to bring it up for a Senate vote soon.
"It is something we would, frankly, like to avoid," Rove said when asked if the White House would welcome, or dread, vetoing legislation passed by a Republican Congress, especially on so emotional an issue as embryonic stem cell research.
But Rove said that he believes the legislation will pass the Senate with more than 60 votes this month, "and as a result the president would, as he has previously said emphatically, veto the Castle bill."
"I'm appalled that Bush would use the first veto of his presidency to veto a bill that could help 110 million people and their families," DeGette said today after being informed of Rove's remarks.
Um, congress folks should be well beyond "being appalled" by Bush. They should have stood up to him many moons ago. LS
BUSH TO VETO STEM CELL RESEARCH BILL
Sunday, July 09, 2006
WHY CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL POLICIES HURT US
Do conservative political principles help us or harm us?
The engine driving conservative policy is an uncompromising belief in a free market economy. This ideology endorses outsourcing jobs. It supports a continuous influx of low-wage workers, legal or not. It encourages high gas prices and Internet usage fees at the expense of the consumer. It neglects border security, undocumented migration and national natural disasters.
Democracy is imposed by the barrel of a gun, not through diplomacy or good example. There are no strategies following an invasion other than campaign-style rhetoric. War merely paves a path for private contractors to set up shop and serves as a mechanism to impose a free market economy on foreign soil.
In the 1950’s President Eisenhower cautioned against the intrinsic dangers of a powerful military industrial complex. Unfortunately, conservative policy ignores the warning.
War drives up our federal deficit. Enormous deficits and tax cuts for the wealthy mean less funding for veterans’ benefits, public schools and college scholarships.
Spreading “democracy” by military means instead of diplomacy makes us less safe. While invading one part of the planet, we neglect another. And then there is a problem with nukes and rogue nations.
Folks ought to ignore poisonous partisan rhetoric and study the real facts.
CENSORSHIP IN TEXAS?
Down here in Texas the Rovian wing of the Republican Party is alive and well, as is the obvious censorship of news that is critical of the Bush Administration and its Republican elected officials.
The media's sin of suppression is one of omission more so than it is of commission.
Democrats are fighting an uphill battle and we are more or less "going it alone." We have a brilliant candidate who shows great promise and who is also gaining in the polls, as is Ned Lamont in Connecticut. But Ned somehow rates national media coverage.
Texans do not?
Our candidate of promise is Barbara Ann Radnofsky. All of her efforts and that of her campaign have been at the grassroots level. The response to Ms. Radnofsky's stand on issues by the Texans she has met has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic and gratifying. When Ms. Radnofsky walks into a room, people yell and cheer. Why? Because Ms. Radnofsky's policies are more consistent with those of most Americans, and therefore Texans, according to recent national polls.
But the Republican machine needs and breeds Bush rubber stamps, not those who are intelligent and who will work for Joe and Jane Texas.
Local newspapers throughout the state will not publish most of our letters asking for debates between candidates for U.S. Seante. When they do, editors will sometimes omit sentences or entire paragraphs that mention Ms. Radnofsky's name. The senior Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison arrogantly ignores every request made for a debate. Her excuse is that she is too busy but we know better. The senior Senator is busy, but not in doing the work of the people who elected her. No, she is” busy” doing things like chairing fundraisers for Tom Delay’s legal defense fund and for Abramoff's lobbying interests.
Alas, I am an optimist and know that Ms. Radnofsky and her group of supporters will do all it takes to prevail in the end. We have great faith in the American dream, our collective conscience and our culture as a people. LS
WHY?
WELL, BECAUSE FOLKS IN KANSAS FINALLY GET IT.
Ken sent this article today from The Kansas City Star via Raw Story.com.
Excerpts:
Kent Goyen, Pratt
Age: 55
Occupation: Farmer and substitute teacher
Running for: 114th District House seat
Switched parties because: The Republican Party has gotten a little far away from where it ought to be. It's probably just a little too far right. Philosophically, they're trying to control too many things in people's lives that they shouldn't be controlling
Goyen also was advised that winning the primary would be tougher than winning the general election. A late decider, Goyen said his switch was based partly on practicalities. As a busy farmer, running in the GOP primary just wasn't feasible. He needed more time to mount his campaign.
Any regrets? I'm a little nervous about the whole thing.
District registration: 59 percent Republican, 23 percent Democratic and 18 percent independent.
My chances are 75 percent or better, the way I read it. The formula: Build a coalition of Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents.
I‚m fairly well known. Hopefully that‚s a positive. I think people ought to vote the person, not the party.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cindy Neighbor, Shawnee
Age: 57
Occupation: Marketing, public relations, patient care and human relations for a dental practice
Running for: 18th District House seat
Switched parties because: Several things in the (Republican) platform were not what I thought I could agree with. They‚re supporting (school) vouchers and tax credits and the teaching of creationism over evolution.
All of that just went against what I really had grown up with, I think, as being a moderate Republican. I said I thought the Republican Party left me. I didn‚t leave it.
Any regrets? It was actually a feeling of relief. (The reaction) has been very positive. I haven‚t had any negative comments.
When I talk to them (Democrats), they don‚t say if you disagree with us you don‚t count.
District registration: 47 percent Republican, 25 percent Democratic and 27 percent independent.
You put your independents and Democrats together and that counterbalances the Republicans.
Neighbor rejected the idea that party switchers carry a stigma „because people are seeing that people don‚t have anywhere else to go.
Registering as an independent didn‚t seem plausible because then people wouldn‚t know what you stand for, Neighbor said.
The engine driving conservative policy is an uncompromising belief in a free market economy. This ideology endorses outsourcing jobs. It supports a continuous influx of low-wage workers, legal or not. It encourages high gas prices and Internet usage fees at the expense of the consumer. It neglects border security, undocumented migration and national natural disasters.
Democracy is imposed by the barrel of a gun, not through diplomacy or good example. There are no strategies following an invasion other than campaign-style rhetoric. War merely paves a path for private contractors to set up shop and serves as a mechanism to impose a free market economy on foreign soil.
In the 1950’s President Eisenhower cautioned against the intrinsic dangers of a powerful military industrial complex. Unfortunately, conservative policy ignores the warning.
War drives up our federal deficit. Enormous deficits and tax cuts for the wealthy mean less funding for veterans’ benefits, public schools and college scholarships.
Spreading “democracy” by military means instead of diplomacy makes us less safe. While invading one part of the planet, we neglect another. And then there is a problem with nukes and rogue nations.
Folks ought to ignore poisonous partisan rhetoric and study the real facts.
CENSORSHIP IN TEXAS?
Down here in Texas the Rovian wing of the Republican Party is alive and well, as is the obvious censorship of news that is critical of the Bush Administration and its Republican elected officials.
The media's sin of suppression is one of omission more so than it is of commission.
Democrats are fighting an uphill battle and we are more or less "going it alone." We have a brilliant candidate who shows great promise and who is also gaining in the polls, as is Ned Lamont in Connecticut. But Ned somehow rates national media coverage.
Texans do not?
Our candidate of promise is Barbara Ann Radnofsky. All of her efforts and that of her campaign have been at the grassroots level. The response to Ms. Radnofsky's stand on issues by the Texans she has met has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic and gratifying. When Ms. Radnofsky walks into a room, people yell and cheer. Why? Because Ms. Radnofsky's policies are more consistent with those of most Americans, and therefore Texans, according to recent national polls.
But the Republican machine needs and breeds Bush rubber stamps, not those who are intelligent and who will work for Joe and Jane Texas.
Local newspapers throughout the state will not publish most of our letters asking for debates between candidates for U.S. Seante. When they do, editors will sometimes omit sentences or entire paragraphs that mention Ms. Radnofsky's name. The senior Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison arrogantly ignores every request made for a debate. Her excuse is that she is too busy but we know better. The senior Senator is busy, but not in doing the work of the people who elected her. No, she is” busy” doing things like chairing fundraisers for Tom Delay’s legal defense fund and for Abramoff's lobbying interests.
Alas, I am an optimist and know that Ms. Radnofsky and her group of supporters will do all it takes to prevail in the end. We have great faith in the American dream, our collective conscience and our culture as a people. LS
WHY?
WELL, BECAUSE FOLKS IN KANSAS FINALLY GET IT.
Ken sent this article today from The Kansas City Star via Raw Story.com.
Excerpts:
Kent Goyen, Pratt
Age: 55
Occupation: Farmer and substitute teacher
Running for: 114th District House seat
Switched parties because: The Republican Party has gotten a little far away from where it ought to be. It's probably just a little too far right. Philosophically, they're trying to control too many things in people's lives that they shouldn't be controlling
Goyen also was advised that winning the primary would be tougher than winning the general election. A late decider, Goyen said his switch was based partly on practicalities. As a busy farmer, running in the GOP primary just wasn't feasible. He needed more time to mount his campaign.
Any regrets? I'm a little nervous about the whole thing.
District registration: 59 percent Republican, 23 percent Democratic and 18 percent independent.
My chances are 75 percent or better, the way I read it. The formula: Build a coalition of Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents.
I‚m fairly well known. Hopefully that‚s a positive. I think people ought to vote the person, not the party.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cindy Neighbor, Shawnee
Age: 57
Occupation: Marketing, public relations, patient care and human relations for a dental practice
Running for: 18th District House seat
Switched parties because: Several things in the (Republican) platform were not what I thought I could agree with. They‚re supporting (school) vouchers and tax credits and the teaching of creationism over evolution.
All of that just went against what I really had grown up with, I think, as being a moderate Republican. I said I thought the Republican Party left me. I didn‚t leave it.
Any regrets? It was actually a feeling of relief. (The reaction) has been very positive. I haven‚t had any negative comments.
When I talk to them (Democrats), they don‚t say if you disagree with us you don‚t count.
District registration: 47 percent Republican, 25 percent Democratic and 27 percent independent.
You put your independents and Democrats together and that counterbalances the Republicans.
Neighbor rejected the idea that party switchers carry a stigma „because people are seeing that people don‚t have anywhere else to go.
Registering as an independent didn‚t seem plausible because then people wouldn‚t know what you stand for, Neighbor said.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
IT IS FAR, FAR WORSE THAN INCOMPETENCY
Ken sent an article written by Mr. Robert Parry today. The title: "CIA: Osama Helped Bush in '04." In a sick and twisted fashion Bush and Osama Bin Laden needed one another 2001. OBL's Al-Qaeda operation was fledging as Bush stumbled in his presidency. Bin Laden desperately hoped to reenergize his movement by attempting a dramatic attack on the U.S. The end result, OBL revived Al-Qaeda while Bush rebuilt his presidency as a “war president” after 9/11.
The CIA had tried to warn Bush about an impending attack in August 2001, however, a vacationing and out of touch Bush blew off the CIA and continued to play cowboy in Crawford. As the story reports, Bush snapped at the CIA's intrusion and said, "all right you covered your ass."
The real terror of bin Laden, according to the article, is that he was able to both manipulate and frighten Americans into voting for Bush.
I am not sure I completely buy this because I do firmly believe the election was clearly stolen in Ohio in 04, thanks to the likes of Blackwell and Diebold. That having been said, it is possible that Bin Laden was able to scare some of the less informed voters and therefore the margin of victory for Kerry narrowed. LS
"CIA: OSAMA HELPED BUSH IN '04"
BUSH TOLD CHENEY TO GO AFTER WILSON
From the National Journal.com, written by Mr. Murray Waas. (Thanks Ken!) LS
Excerpt:
One senior government official familiar with the discussions between Bush and Cheney -- but who does not have firsthand knowledge of Bush's interview with prosecutors -- said that Bush told the vice president to "Get it out," or "Let's get this out," regarding information that administration officials believed would rebut Wilson's allegations and would discredit him.
A person with direct knowledge of Bush's interview refused to confirm that Bush used those words, but said that the first official's account was generally consistent with what Bush had told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
Libby, in language strikingly similar to Bush's words, testified to the federal grand jury in the leak case that Cheney had told him to "get all the facts out" that would defend the administration and discredit Wilson. Portions of Libby's grand jury testimony were an exhibit in a recent court filing by Fitzgerald.
BUSH DIRECTED CHENEY TO COUNTER WAR CRITIC
AWARD WINNING JOURNALIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES WRITES A BLISTERING ATTACK ON FOX NEWS, THE MEDIA AND THE NYT FOR ITS FAILURE TO DISCLOSE INFORMATION ON IRAQ
Excerpts from his latest column follow from Raw Story.com
When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.
Historically, we in the press have done more damage to our nation by withholding secret information than by publishing it. One example was this newspaper's withholding details of the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. President Kennedy himself suggested that the U.S. would have been better served if The Times had published the full story and derailed the invasion.
Then there were the C.I.A. abuses that journalists kept mum about until they spilled over and prompted the Church Committee investigation in the 1970's. And there are secrets we should have found, but didn't: in the run-up to the Iraq war, the press ˜ particularly this newspaper ˜ was too credulous about claims that Iraq possessed large amounts of W.M.D.
In each of these cases, we were too compliant. We failed in our watchdog role, and we failed our country.
WHILE THE PRESS AND MEDIA FAILED OUR COUNTRY BY TACITLY ENDORSING THE WAR IN IRAQ AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION FAILED TO GRASP OR PURPOSELY BLEW OFF THE THREAT OF NORTH KOREA, MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH, N. KOREA DECIDED TO PLAY WITH ITS MISSILE TOYS TODAY.
Bush is playing cowboy in Crawford again and Cheney is trying to manipulate the incident into a win-win for the GOP.
NORTH KOREA LAUNCHES MISSILES
The CIA had tried to warn Bush about an impending attack in August 2001, however, a vacationing and out of touch Bush blew off the CIA and continued to play cowboy in Crawford. As the story reports, Bush snapped at the CIA's intrusion and said, "all right you covered your ass."
The real terror of bin Laden, according to the article, is that he was able to both manipulate and frighten Americans into voting for Bush.
I am not sure I completely buy this because I do firmly believe the election was clearly stolen in Ohio in 04, thanks to the likes of Blackwell and Diebold. That having been said, it is possible that Bin Laden was able to scare some of the less informed voters and therefore the margin of victory for Kerry narrowed. LS
"CIA: OSAMA HELPED BUSH IN '04"
BUSH TOLD CHENEY TO GO AFTER WILSON
From the National Journal.com, written by Mr. Murray Waas. (Thanks Ken!) LS
Excerpt:
One senior government official familiar with the discussions between Bush and Cheney -- but who does not have firsthand knowledge of Bush's interview with prosecutors -- said that Bush told the vice president to "Get it out," or "Let's get this out," regarding information that administration officials believed would rebut Wilson's allegations and would discredit him.
A person with direct knowledge of Bush's interview refused to confirm that Bush used those words, but said that the first official's account was generally consistent with what Bush had told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
Libby, in language strikingly similar to Bush's words, testified to the federal grand jury in the leak case that Cheney had told him to "get all the facts out" that would defend the administration and discredit Wilson. Portions of Libby's grand jury testimony were an exhibit in a recent court filing by Fitzgerald.
BUSH DIRECTED CHENEY TO COUNTER WAR CRITIC
AWARD WINNING JOURNALIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES WRITES A BLISTERING ATTACK ON FOX NEWS, THE MEDIA AND THE NYT FOR ITS FAILURE TO DISCLOSE INFORMATION ON IRAQ
Excerpts from his latest column follow from Raw Story.com
When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.
Historically, we in the press have done more damage to our nation by withholding secret information than by publishing it. One example was this newspaper's withholding details of the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. President Kennedy himself suggested that the U.S. would have been better served if The Times had published the full story and derailed the invasion.
Then there were the C.I.A. abuses that journalists kept mum about until they spilled over and prompted the Church Committee investigation in the 1970's. And there are secrets we should have found, but didn't: in the run-up to the Iraq war, the press ˜ particularly this newspaper ˜ was too credulous about claims that Iraq possessed large amounts of W.M.D.
In each of these cases, we were too compliant. We failed in our watchdog role, and we failed our country.
WHILE THE PRESS AND MEDIA FAILED OUR COUNTRY BY TACITLY ENDORSING THE WAR IN IRAQ AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION FAILED TO GRASP OR PURPOSELY BLEW OFF THE THREAT OF NORTH KOREA, MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH, N. KOREA DECIDED TO PLAY WITH ITS MISSILE TOYS TODAY.
Bush is playing cowboy in Crawford again and Cheney is trying to manipulate the incident into a win-win for the GOP.
NORTH KOREA LAUNCHES MISSILES
Sunday, July 02, 2006
"BUSH IS NOT INCOMPETENT" IT IS FAR WORSE
This is an extraordinary article written by Dr. George Lakoff, Mr. Marc Ettlinger and Mr. Sam Ferguson
This piece is significant in that it forces Progressives to rethink their message on Bush’s incompetence. Despite Bush’s abysmal approval ratings in the polls, powerful conservatives clearly believe Bush has been successful in delivering their agenda on a broad number of issues.
The authors suggest Progressives miss the bigger point - it is conservatism itself that is the problem. It is not Bush, but the ideology that is harmful to the American people and our democracy, or what little of it that is left.
Bush will go away in 2008. We do not want his conservative clone to replace him. And, we absolutely must make sure no conservative enablers are re-elected in 2006.
Anyone who cares about the future our democracy must read this and then get to work doing whatever one can to change public opinion about the hurtful and harmful conservative movement and its impact on the majority of Americans. It is obviously the kiss of death in terms of access to our government, education, opportunities, our financial and national security and equality. The rich will get even richer while the poor sink below unimaginable levels of poverty, as in the case of third world countries. The middle class will disappear almost entirely. Ultimately, conservatism spells social instability and economic chaos. LS
First of all, concerning copyright issues, below is excerpt no. 1
(We invite the free distribution of this piece)
More relevant excerpts:
The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:
Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based initiatives
Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment — “The Healthy Forests Act” and the “Clear Skies Initiative” — to deforest public lands, and put more pollution in our skies
Winning re-election and solidifying his party’s grip on Congress
Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual initiative, that is, government’s positive role in people’s lives outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.
The conservative vision for government is to shrink it – to “starve the beast” in Conservative Grover Norquist’s words. The conservative tagline for this rationale is that “you can spend your money better than the government can.” Social programs are considered unnecessary or “discretionary” since the primary role of government is to defend the country’s border and police its interior. Stewardship of the commons, such as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to people’s own initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be made — conservation, healthcare for the poor — charity is meant to replace justice and the government should not be involved.
When Progressives shout “Incompetence!” it obscures the many conservative successes. The incompetence frame drastically misses the point, that the conservative vision is doing great harm to this country and the world. An understanding of this and an articulate progressive response is needed. Progressives know that government can and should have a positive role in our lives beyond simple, physical security. It had a positive impact during the progressive era, busting trusts, and establishing basic labor standards. It had a positive impact during the new deal, softening the blow of the depression by creating jobs and stimulating the economy. It had a positive role in advancing the civil rights movement, extending rights to previously disenfranchised groups. And the United States can have a positive role in world affairs without the use of its military and expressions of raw power. Progressives acknowledge that we are all in this together, with “we” meaning all people, across all spectrums of race, class, religion, sex, sexual preference and age. “We” also means across party lines, state lines and international borders.
Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush’s conservative philosophy is what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.
Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people, destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.
Rockridge Institute
Bush Is Not Incompetent
by George Lakoff, Sam Ferguson, Marc Ettlinger
"BUSH IS NOT INCOMPETENT"
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.
by George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger and Sam Ferguson
(c)The Rockridge Institute, 2006 (We invite the free distribution of this piece)
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. For example, Nancy Pelosi said “The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader." Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative office holders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff.
To Bush’s base, his bumbling folksiness is part of his charm — it fosters conservative populism. Bush plays up this image by proudly stating his lack of interest in reading and current events, his fondness for naps and vacations and his self-deprecating jokes. This image causes the opposition to underestimate his capacities — disregarding him as a complete idiot — and deflects criticism of his conservative allies. If incompetence is the problem, it’s all about Bush. But, if conservatism is the problem, it is about a set of ideas, a movement and its many adherents.
The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:
Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based initiatives
Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment — “The Healthy Forests Act” and the “Clear Skies Initiative” — to deforest public lands, and put more pollution in our skies
Winning re-election and solidifying his party’s grip on Congress
These aren’t signs of incompetence. As should be painfully clear, the Bush administration has been overwhelmingly competent in advancing its conservative vision. It has been all too effective in achieving its goals by determinedly pursuing a conservative philosophy.
It’s not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it’s the conservative agenda.
The Conservative Agenda
Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual initiative, that is, government’s positive role in people’s lives outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.
The conservative vision for government is to shrink it – to “starve the beast” in Conservative Grover Norquist’s words. The conservative tagline for this rationale is that “you can spend your money better than the government can.” Social programs are considered unnecessary or “discretionary” since the primary role of government is to defend the country’s border and police its interior. Stewardship of the commons, such as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to people’s own initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be made — conservation, healthcare for the poor — charity is meant to replace justice and the government should not be involved.
Given this philosophy, then, is it any wonder that the government wasn’t there for the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Conservative philosophy places emphasis on the individual acting alone, independent of anything the government could provide. Some conservative Sunday morning talk show guests suggested that those who chose to live in New Orleans accepted the risk of a devastating hurricane, the implication being that they thus forfeited any entitlement to government assistance. If the people of New Orleans suffered, it was because of their own actions, their own choices and their own lack of preparedness. Bush couldn’t have failed if he bore no responsibility.
The response to Hurricane Katrina — rather, the lack of response — was what one should expect from a philosophy that espouses that the government can have no positive role in its citizen’s lives. This response was not about Bush’s incompetence, it was a conservative, shrink-government response to a natural disaster.
Another failure of this administration during the Katrina fiasco was its wholesale disregard of the numerous and serious hurricane warnings. But this failure was a natural outgrowth of the conservative insistence on denying the validity of global warming, not ineptitude. Conservatives continue to deny the validity of global warming, because it runs contrary to their moral system. Recognizing global warming would call for environmental regulation and governmental efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Regulation is a perceived interference with the free-market, Conservatives’ golden calf. So, the predictions of imminent hurricanes — based on recognizing global warming — were not heeded. Conservative free market convictions trumped the hurricane warnings.
Our budget deficit is not the result of incompetent fiscal management. It too is an outgrowth of conservative philosophy. What better way than massive deficits to rid social programs of their funding?
In Iraq, we also see the impact of philosophy as much as a failure of execution.
The idea for the war itself was born out of deep conservative convictions about the nature and capacity of US military force. Among the Project for a New American Century’s statement of principles (signed in 1997 by a who’s who of the architects of the Iraq war — Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby among others) are four critical points:
we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future
we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values
we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad
we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
Implicit in these ideas is that the United States military can spread democracy through the barrel of a gun. Our military might and power can be a force for good.
It also indicates that the real motive behind the Iraq war wasn’t to stop Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but was a test of neoconservative theory that the US military could reshape Middle East geo-politics. The manipulation and disregard of intelligence to sell the war was not incompetence, it was the product of a conservative agenda.
Unfortunately, this theory exalts a hubristic vision over the lessons of history. It neglects the realization that there is a limit to a foreign army’s ability to shape foreign politics for the good. Our military involvement in Vietnam, Lebanon, the Philippines, Cuba (prior to Castro) and Panama, or European imperialist endeavors around the globe should have taught us this lesson. Democracy needs to be an organic, homegrown movement, as it was in this country. If we believe so deeply in our ideals, they will speak for themselves and inspire others.
During the debate over Iraq, the conservative belief in the unquestioned authority and moral leadership of the President helped shape public support. We see this deference to the President constantly: when Conservatives call those questioning the President’s military decisions “unpatriotic”; when Conservatives defend the executive branch’s use of domestic spying in the war on terror; when Bush simply refers to himself as the “decider.” “I support our President” was a common justification of assent to the Iraq policy.
Additionally, as the implementer of the neoconservative vision and an unquestioned moral authority, our President felt he had no burden to forge international consensus or listen to the critiques of our allies. “You’re with us, or you’re against us,” he proclaimed after 9/11.
Much criticism continues to be launched against this administration for ineptitude in its reconstruction efforts. Tragically, it is here too that the administration’s actions have been shaped less by ineptitude than by deeply held conservative convictions about the role of government.
As noted above, Conservatives believe that government’s role is limited to security and maintaining a free market. Given this conviction, it’s no accident that administration policies have focused almost exclusively on the training of Iraqi police, and US access to the newly free Iraqi market — the invisible hand of the market will take care of the rest. Indeed, George Packer has recently reported that the reconstruction effort in Iraq is nearing its end (“The Lessons of Tal Affar,” The New Yorker, April 10th, 2006). Iraqis must find ways to rebuild themselves, and the free market we have constructed for them is supposed to do this. This is not ineptitude. This is the result of deep convictions over the nature of freedom and the responsibilities of governments to their people.
Finally, many of the miscalculations are the result of a conservative analytic focus on narrow causes and effects, rather than mere incompetence. Evidence for this focus can be seen in conservative domestic policies: Crime policy is based on punishing the criminals, independent of any effort to remedy the larger social issues that cause crime; immigration policy focuses on border issues and the immigrants, and ignores the effects of international and domestic economic policy on population migration; environmental policy is based on what profits there are to be gained or lost today, without attention paid to what the immeasurable long-term costs will be to the shared resource of our environment; education policy, in the form of vouchers, ignores the devastating effects that dismantling the public school system will have on our whole society.
Is it any surprise that the systemic impacts of the Iraq invasion were not part of the conservative moral or strategic calculus used in pursuing the war?
The conservative war rhetoric focused narrowly on ousting Saddam — he was an evil dictator, and evil cannot be tolerated, period. The moral implications of unleashing social chaos and collateral damage in addition to the lessons of history were not relevant concerns.
As a consequence, we expected to be greeted as liberators. The conservative plan failed to appreciate the complexities of the situation that would have called for broader contingency planning. It lacked an analysis of what else would happen in Iraq and the Middle East as a result of ousting the Hussein Government, such as an Iranian push to obtain nuclear weapons.
Joe Biden recently said, “if I had known the president was going to be this incompetent in his administration, I would not have given him the authority [to go to war].” Had Bush actually been incompetent, he would have never been able to lead us to war in Iraq. Had Bush been incompetent, he would not have been able to ram through hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Had Bush been incompetent, he would have been blocked from stacking the courts with right-wing judges. Incompetence, on reflection, might have actually been better for the country.
Hidden Successes
Perhaps the biggest irony of the Bush-is-incompetent frame is that these “failures” — Iraq, Katrina and the budget deficit — have been successes in terms of advancing the conservative agenda.
One of the goals of Conservatives is to keep people from relying on the federal government. Under Bush, FEMA was reorganized to no longer be a first responder in major natural disasters, but to provide support for local agencies. This led to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Now citizens, as well as local and state governments, have become distrustful of the federal government’s capacity to help ordinary citizens. Though Bush’s popularity may have suffered, enhancing the perception of federal government as inept turned out to be a conservative victory.
Conservatives also strive to get rid of protective agencies and social programs. The deficit Bush created through irresponsible tax cuts and a costly war in Iraq will require drastic budget cuts to remedy. Those cuts, conservatives know, won’t come from military spending, particularly when they raise the constant specter of war. Instead, the cuts will be from what Conservatives have begun to call “non-military, discretionary spending;” that is, the programs that contribute to the common good like the FDA, EPA, FCC, FEMA, OSHA and the NLRB. Yet another success for the conservative agenda.
Both Iraq and Katrina have enriched the coffers of the conservative corporate elite, thus further advancing the conservative agenda. Halliburton, Lockhead Martin and US oil companies have enjoyed huge profit margins in the last six years. Taking Iraq’s oil production off-line in the face of rising international demand meant prices would rise, making the oil inventories of Exxon and other firms that much more valuable, leading to record profits. The destruction wrought by Katrina and Iraq meant billions in reconstruction contracts. The war in Iraq (and the war in Afghanistan) meant billions in military equipment contracts. Was there any doubt where those contracts would go? Chalk up another success for Bush’s conservative agenda.
Bush also used Katrina as an opportunity to suspend the environmental and labor protection laws that Conservatives despise so much. In the wake of Katrina, environmental standards for oil refineries were temporarily suspended to increase production. Labor laws are being thwarted to drive down the cost of reconstruction efforts. So, amidst these “disasters,” Conservatives win again.
Where most Americans see failure in Iraq – George Miller recently called Iraq a “blunder of historic proportions” – conservative militarists are seeing many successes. Conservatives stress the importance of our military — our national pride and worth is expressed through its power and influence. Permanent bases are being constructed as planned in Iraq, and America has shown the rest of the world that we can and will preemptively strike with little provocation. They succeeded in a mobilization of our military forces based on ideological pretenses to impact foreign policy. The war has struck fear in other nations with a hostile show of American power. The conservatives have succeeded in strengthening what they perceive to be the locus of the national interest —military power.
It’s NOT Incompetence
When Progressives shout “Incompetence!” it obscures the many conservative successes. The incompetence frame drastically misses the point, that the conservative vision is doing great harm to this country and the world. An understanding of this and an articulate progressive response is needed. Progressives know that government can and should have a positive role in our lives beyond simple, physical security. It had a positive impact during the progressive era, busting trusts, and establishing basic labor standards. It had a positive impact during the new deal, softening the blow of the depression by creating jobs and stimulating the economy. It had a positive role in advancing the civil rights movement, extending rights to previously disenfranchised groups. And the United States can have a positive role in world affairs without the use of its military and expressions of raw power. Progressives acknowledge that we are all in this together, with “we” meaning all people, across all spectrums of race, class, religion, sex, sexual preference and age. “We” also means across party lines, state lines and international borders.
The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush’s management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for another radically conservative president in 2008, so long as he or she can manage better. Bush will not be running again, so thinking, talking and joking about him being incompetent offers no lessons to draw from his presidency.
Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush’s conservative philosophy is what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.
Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people, destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.
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This piece is significant in that it forces Progressives to rethink their message on Bush’s incompetence. Despite Bush’s abysmal approval ratings in the polls, powerful conservatives clearly believe Bush has been successful in delivering their agenda on a broad number of issues.
The authors suggest Progressives miss the bigger point - it is conservatism itself that is the problem. It is not Bush, but the ideology that is harmful to the American people and our democracy, or what little of it that is left.
Bush will go away in 2008. We do not want his conservative clone to replace him. And, we absolutely must make sure no conservative enablers are re-elected in 2006.
Anyone who cares about the future our democracy must read this and then get to work doing whatever one can to change public opinion about the hurtful and harmful conservative movement and its impact on the majority of Americans. It is obviously the kiss of death in terms of access to our government, education, opportunities, our financial and national security and equality. The rich will get even richer while the poor sink below unimaginable levels of poverty, as in the case of third world countries. The middle class will disappear almost entirely. Ultimately, conservatism spells social instability and economic chaos. LS
First of all, concerning copyright issues, below is excerpt no. 1
(We invite the free distribution of this piece)
More relevant excerpts:
The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:
Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based initiatives
Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment — “The Healthy Forests Act” and the “Clear Skies Initiative” — to deforest public lands, and put more pollution in our skies
Winning re-election and solidifying his party’s grip on Congress
Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual initiative, that is, government’s positive role in people’s lives outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.
The conservative vision for government is to shrink it – to “starve the beast” in Conservative Grover Norquist’s words. The conservative tagline for this rationale is that “you can spend your money better than the government can.” Social programs are considered unnecessary or “discretionary” since the primary role of government is to defend the country’s border and police its interior. Stewardship of the commons, such as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to people’s own initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be made — conservation, healthcare for the poor — charity is meant to replace justice and the government should not be involved.
When Progressives shout “Incompetence!” it obscures the many conservative successes. The incompetence frame drastically misses the point, that the conservative vision is doing great harm to this country and the world. An understanding of this and an articulate progressive response is needed. Progressives know that government can and should have a positive role in our lives beyond simple, physical security. It had a positive impact during the progressive era, busting trusts, and establishing basic labor standards. It had a positive impact during the new deal, softening the blow of the depression by creating jobs and stimulating the economy. It had a positive role in advancing the civil rights movement, extending rights to previously disenfranchised groups. And the United States can have a positive role in world affairs without the use of its military and expressions of raw power. Progressives acknowledge that we are all in this together, with “we” meaning all people, across all spectrums of race, class, religion, sex, sexual preference and age. “We” also means across party lines, state lines and international borders.
Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush’s conservative philosophy is what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.
Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people, destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.
Rockridge Institute
Bush Is Not Incompetent
by George Lakoff, Sam Ferguson, Marc Ettlinger
"BUSH IS NOT INCOMPETENT"
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.
by George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger and Sam Ferguson
(c)The Rockridge Institute, 2006 (We invite the free distribution of this piece)
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. For example, Nancy Pelosi said “The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader." Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative office holders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff.
To Bush’s base, his bumbling folksiness is part of his charm — it fosters conservative populism. Bush plays up this image by proudly stating his lack of interest in reading and current events, his fondness for naps and vacations and his self-deprecating jokes. This image causes the opposition to underestimate his capacities — disregarding him as a complete idiot — and deflects criticism of his conservative allies. If incompetence is the problem, it’s all about Bush. But, if conservatism is the problem, it is about a set of ideas, a movement and its many adherents.
The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:
Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based initiatives
Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment — “The Healthy Forests Act” and the “Clear Skies Initiative” — to deforest public lands, and put more pollution in our skies
Winning re-election and solidifying his party’s grip on Congress
These aren’t signs of incompetence. As should be painfully clear, the Bush administration has been overwhelmingly competent in advancing its conservative vision. It has been all too effective in achieving its goals by determinedly pursuing a conservative philosophy.
It’s not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it’s the conservative agenda.
The Conservative Agenda
Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual initiative, that is, government’s positive role in people’s lives outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.
The conservative vision for government is to shrink it – to “starve the beast” in Conservative Grover Norquist’s words. The conservative tagline for this rationale is that “you can spend your money better than the government can.” Social programs are considered unnecessary or “discretionary” since the primary role of government is to defend the country’s border and police its interior. Stewardship of the commons, such as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to people’s own initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be made — conservation, healthcare for the poor — charity is meant to replace justice and the government should not be involved.
Given this philosophy, then, is it any wonder that the government wasn’t there for the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Conservative philosophy places emphasis on the individual acting alone, independent of anything the government could provide. Some conservative Sunday morning talk show guests suggested that those who chose to live in New Orleans accepted the risk of a devastating hurricane, the implication being that they thus forfeited any entitlement to government assistance. If the people of New Orleans suffered, it was because of their own actions, their own choices and their own lack of preparedness. Bush couldn’t have failed if he bore no responsibility.
The response to Hurricane Katrina — rather, the lack of response — was what one should expect from a philosophy that espouses that the government can have no positive role in its citizen’s lives. This response was not about Bush’s incompetence, it was a conservative, shrink-government response to a natural disaster.
Another failure of this administration during the Katrina fiasco was its wholesale disregard of the numerous and serious hurricane warnings. But this failure was a natural outgrowth of the conservative insistence on denying the validity of global warming, not ineptitude. Conservatives continue to deny the validity of global warming, because it runs contrary to their moral system. Recognizing global warming would call for environmental regulation and governmental efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Regulation is a perceived interference with the free-market, Conservatives’ golden calf. So, the predictions of imminent hurricanes — based on recognizing global warming — were not heeded. Conservative free market convictions trumped the hurricane warnings.
Our budget deficit is not the result of incompetent fiscal management. It too is an outgrowth of conservative philosophy. What better way than massive deficits to rid social programs of their funding?
In Iraq, we also see the impact of philosophy as much as a failure of execution.
The idea for the war itself was born out of deep conservative convictions about the nature and capacity of US military force. Among the Project for a New American Century’s statement of principles (signed in 1997 by a who’s who of the architects of the Iraq war — Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby among others) are four critical points:
we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future
we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values
we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad
we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
Implicit in these ideas is that the United States military can spread democracy through the barrel of a gun. Our military might and power can be a force for good.
It also indicates that the real motive behind the Iraq war wasn’t to stop Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but was a test of neoconservative theory that the US military could reshape Middle East geo-politics. The manipulation and disregard of intelligence to sell the war was not incompetence, it was the product of a conservative agenda.
Unfortunately, this theory exalts a hubristic vision over the lessons of history. It neglects the realization that there is a limit to a foreign army’s ability to shape foreign politics for the good. Our military involvement in Vietnam, Lebanon, the Philippines, Cuba (prior to Castro) and Panama, or European imperialist endeavors around the globe should have taught us this lesson. Democracy needs to be an organic, homegrown movement, as it was in this country. If we believe so deeply in our ideals, they will speak for themselves and inspire others.
During the debate over Iraq, the conservative belief in the unquestioned authority and moral leadership of the President helped shape public support. We see this deference to the President constantly: when Conservatives call those questioning the President’s military decisions “unpatriotic”; when Conservatives defend the executive branch’s use of domestic spying in the war on terror; when Bush simply refers to himself as the “decider.” “I support our President” was a common justification of assent to the Iraq policy.
Additionally, as the implementer of the neoconservative vision and an unquestioned moral authority, our President felt he had no burden to forge international consensus or listen to the critiques of our allies. “You’re with us, or you’re against us,” he proclaimed after 9/11.
Much criticism continues to be launched against this administration for ineptitude in its reconstruction efforts. Tragically, it is here too that the administration’s actions have been shaped less by ineptitude than by deeply held conservative convictions about the role of government.
As noted above, Conservatives believe that government’s role is limited to security and maintaining a free market. Given this conviction, it’s no accident that administration policies have focused almost exclusively on the training of Iraqi police, and US access to the newly free Iraqi market — the invisible hand of the market will take care of the rest. Indeed, George Packer has recently reported that the reconstruction effort in Iraq is nearing its end (“The Lessons of Tal Affar,” The New Yorker, April 10th, 2006). Iraqis must find ways to rebuild themselves, and the free market we have constructed for them is supposed to do this. This is not ineptitude. This is the result of deep convictions over the nature of freedom and the responsibilities of governments to their people.
Finally, many of the miscalculations are the result of a conservative analytic focus on narrow causes and effects, rather than mere incompetence. Evidence for this focus can be seen in conservative domestic policies: Crime policy is based on punishing the criminals, independent of any effort to remedy the larger social issues that cause crime; immigration policy focuses on border issues and the immigrants, and ignores the effects of international and domestic economic policy on population migration; environmental policy is based on what profits there are to be gained or lost today, without attention paid to what the immeasurable long-term costs will be to the shared resource of our environment; education policy, in the form of vouchers, ignores the devastating effects that dismantling the public school system will have on our whole society.
Is it any surprise that the systemic impacts of the Iraq invasion were not part of the conservative moral or strategic calculus used in pursuing the war?
The conservative war rhetoric focused narrowly on ousting Saddam — he was an evil dictator, and evil cannot be tolerated, period. The moral implications of unleashing social chaos and collateral damage in addition to the lessons of history were not relevant concerns.
As a consequence, we expected to be greeted as liberators. The conservative plan failed to appreciate the complexities of the situation that would have called for broader contingency planning. It lacked an analysis of what else would happen in Iraq and the Middle East as a result of ousting the Hussein Government, such as an Iranian push to obtain nuclear weapons.
Joe Biden recently said, “if I had known the president was going to be this incompetent in his administration, I would not have given him the authority [to go to war].” Had Bush actually been incompetent, he would have never been able to lead us to war in Iraq. Had Bush been incompetent, he would not have been able to ram through hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Had Bush been incompetent, he would have been blocked from stacking the courts with right-wing judges. Incompetence, on reflection, might have actually been better for the country.
Hidden Successes
Perhaps the biggest irony of the Bush-is-incompetent frame is that these “failures” — Iraq, Katrina and the budget deficit — have been successes in terms of advancing the conservative agenda.
One of the goals of Conservatives is to keep people from relying on the federal government. Under Bush, FEMA was reorganized to no longer be a first responder in major natural disasters, but to provide support for local agencies. This led to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Now citizens, as well as local and state governments, have become distrustful of the federal government’s capacity to help ordinary citizens. Though Bush’s popularity may have suffered, enhancing the perception of federal government as inept turned out to be a conservative victory.
Conservatives also strive to get rid of protective agencies and social programs. The deficit Bush created through irresponsible tax cuts and a costly war in Iraq will require drastic budget cuts to remedy. Those cuts, conservatives know, won’t come from military spending, particularly when they raise the constant specter of war. Instead, the cuts will be from what Conservatives have begun to call “non-military, discretionary spending;” that is, the programs that contribute to the common good like the FDA, EPA, FCC, FEMA, OSHA and the NLRB. Yet another success for the conservative agenda.
Both Iraq and Katrina have enriched the coffers of the conservative corporate elite, thus further advancing the conservative agenda. Halliburton, Lockhead Martin and US oil companies have enjoyed huge profit margins in the last six years. Taking Iraq’s oil production off-line in the face of rising international demand meant prices would rise, making the oil inventories of Exxon and other firms that much more valuable, leading to record profits. The destruction wrought by Katrina and Iraq meant billions in reconstruction contracts. The war in Iraq (and the war in Afghanistan) meant billions in military equipment contracts. Was there any doubt where those contracts would go? Chalk up another success for Bush’s conservative agenda.
Bush also used Katrina as an opportunity to suspend the environmental and labor protection laws that Conservatives despise so much. In the wake of Katrina, environmental standards for oil refineries were temporarily suspended to increase production. Labor laws are being thwarted to drive down the cost of reconstruction efforts. So, amidst these “disasters,” Conservatives win again.
Where most Americans see failure in Iraq – George Miller recently called Iraq a “blunder of historic proportions” – conservative militarists are seeing many successes. Conservatives stress the importance of our military — our national pride and worth is expressed through its power and influence. Permanent bases are being constructed as planned in Iraq, and America has shown the rest of the world that we can and will preemptively strike with little provocation. They succeeded in a mobilization of our military forces based on ideological pretenses to impact foreign policy. The war has struck fear in other nations with a hostile show of American power. The conservatives have succeeded in strengthening what they perceive to be the locus of the national interest —military power.
It’s NOT Incompetence
When Progressives shout “Incompetence!” it obscures the many conservative successes. The incompetence frame drastically misses the point, that the conservative vision is doing great harm to this country and the world. An understanding of this and an articulate progressive response is needed. Progressives know that government can and should have a positive role in our lives beyond simple, physical security. It had a positive impact during the progressive era, busting trusts, and establishing basic labor standards. It had a positive impact during the new deal, softening the blow of the depression by creating jobs and stimulating the economy. It had a positive role in advancing the civil rights movement, extending rights to previously disenfranchised groups. And the United States can have a positive role in world affairs without the use of its military and expressions of raw power. Progressives acknowledge that we are all in this together, with “we” meaning all people, across all spectrums of race, class, religion, sex, sexual preference and age. “We” also means across party lines, state lines and international borders.
The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush’s management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for another radically conservative president in 2008, so long as he or she can manage better. Bush will not be running again, so thinking, talking and joking about him being incompetent offers no lessons to draw from his presidency.
Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush’s conservative philosophy is what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.
Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people, destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.
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