by Anthony Ioven
This past week was a perfect example of why there should be term limits in Congress.
With the mid-term elections just a few weeks away, Congress cast one sorry vote after another. Our Constitutionally-guaranteed right to privacy, our championing of human rights and dignity, and our national honor all became far less important to these high-priced hookers than the desire to keep their fat, pampered asses in their Congressional seats.
The same thing happened just before the mid-terms in 2002, when Congress rubber-stamped pre-emptive military action against Iraq. And the result
was Mission Accomplished — most of them were re-elected.
Today on Democracy Now, Amy Goodman and Senator Patrick Leahy talked about this week's 65-to-34 vote in the Senate that, among other travesties, authorizes indefinite detentions, allows secret evidence to be used against defendants, and grants immunity against prior acts of torture.
Goodman let Democrat Leahy play the blame-game against the Republicans for a while, but then she asked a tough question:
Senator Leahy, this was not a close vote: 65 to 34 [with] twelve Democrats who joined with the Republicans... You are working very hard to get a Democratic majority in the Senate in these next elections and in Congress overall. What difference would it make?
In an election year, next to none.
by Anthony Ioven
Elizabeth McAlister, wife of the late, great peace activist Philip Berrigan, made this profoundly simple observation yesterday at a peace demonstration in Washington, DC:
How can we listen to what's going on in our world and not say it's dead wrong?" she said. "Thou shalt not kill" — they're all one-syllable.
The former nun was probably too polite to say so, but surely she was thinking the obvious — that one-syllable words should be simple enough even for George Bush to understand.
by Anthony Ioven
Universal health care alone doesn't make a country great. But in my opinion, no country with a healthy economy can in good conscience proclaim itself "great" until all its citizens have health care.
That almost 50 million Americans — one in six — don't have health care is a disgrace. That hundreds of thousands of uninsured or underinsured Americans go bankrupt each year because of medical bills is a disgrace. So too are the 18,000 preventable deaths a year of Americans who simply can't afford the kind of care that good medical coverage provides.
A few highlights from a recent post in Alternet called If America's So Great, Where's Our Health Care?:
The overwhelming majority — 75 percent, according to an October 2005 Harris Poll — want what people in other wealthy countries have: the peace of mind of universal health insurance...
[A single-payer system] reduces paperwork costs to a fraction of the American level. It also cuts out expensive insurance corporations and HMO's, with their multimillion-dollar CEO compensation packages, and billions in profit. Small wonder "single payer" systems can cover their entire populations at half the per capita cost...
The United States spends by far the most on health care per person — more than twice as much as Europe, Canada, and Japan which all have some version of national health insurance. Yet we are near the bottom in nearly every measure of our health...
Although you'd never know it from the American media, the number of Canadians who would trade their system for a U.S.-style health care system is just eight percent...
Why do politicians refuse to talk about the solution people want? It could be the fact that the health care industry, the top spender on Capitol Hill, spent $183.3 million on lobbying just in the second half of 2005...
by Anthony Ioven
With the $70 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that Congress is likely to pass, the total cost of the bloody mess since 9/11 passes the $500 billion mark.
And we still haven't found Osama bin Forgotten.
Isn't there anything else we could have done with that money? Like implementing a universal health care system, so we can catch up to the rest of the civilized world.
by Anthony Ioven
Looks like the Intelligent Designer had an off-day when he created this half-humanlike, half-apelike girl about three million years ago.
But you know how it is — sometimes you just can't make up your mind.
by Anthony Ioven
George Bush should thank his lucky stars that Americans don't have that lean and Hungary look.
If Bush had been caught on tape saying this —
We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening.
— I still don't think most of us would give a damn. Not in the America we've become.
by Anthony Ioven
If you think breaking Iraq up into three separate regions — Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd — is the best chance for the US to exit gracefully from the Iraq quagmire, Tom Hayden begs to differ:
The partition discussion downplays the fact that it is a menu for continued US war against the Iraq insurgency...As in Northern Ireland, the occupiers are saying they cannot leave because the natives will kill each other, the perfect formula for permanent American deaths.
The appeal of [partitionist Peter] Galbraith's viewpoint is that it avoids the "cut and run" label while still calling for US troop withdrawals and redeployment to Kurdistan — "over the hill", but able in league with the Kurdish peshmerga to re-invade Anbar province with greater troop numbers and force. A retreat but also a repositioning for the US in a pro-Western Kurdistan.
...
If the withdrawal of American troops is contingent on Iraqis accepting partition, this would give new oxygen to the dying American presence. The current Congressional debate would shift away from bringing the troops home and turn toward the imperial game of how to arrange the ethnic chess board.
So if "cutting and running" is unpalatable, and if partition is just an excuse for an open-ended American presence which "means American troops will be killed and wounded for purposes that are less and less understood by their families, friends and the American people," what is the solution? I've proposed one from the beginning, which Hayden but few others seem to agree with:
The best strategy is for the US to declare a plan to withdraw and simultaneously transfer authorization for security and economic reconstruction to the United Nations.
Got a better suggestion?
by Anthony Ioven
 Today's Boston Globe has another great column by Robert Kuttner. Some snapshots:
I thought of my father [a Jewish American soldier captured by the Germans during World War II] as I followed Republican Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham bravely resisting the Bush administration's insane doctrine that the United States should become the first signatory government to take exceptions to the Geneva agreements on humane treatment of prisoners...
[A]fter nearly six years of blind loyalty, Republican moderates in Congress are beginning to rebel against the sheer recklessness of their president — excuse me, of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who are the architects of these policies. A higher loyalty is at last trumping partisan fealty to a dangerously radical administration...
The founders of this republic wisely gave us separate branches of government as checks and balances against tyranny. They may not have imagined Dick Cheney, but they were familiar with his kind.
The example of Kuttner's father is a perfect illustration of why this administration's attempt to bypass Geneva Convention protections of war prisoners is sheer "recklessness." Well worth reading.
by Anthony Ioven
So let's see . . . if The Path to 9/11 is to be believed, 9/11 happened because of government regulations and cowardly politicians and empire-protecting bureaucrats and concern over what the rest of the word thinks of us and basically, really nasty Democrats. And oh yes, the word that one character spit out like a sour lemon — legalities.
I haven't seen so many black-and-white characters since watching all those John Wayne movies in the 50s. And the rhetoric was clear — if we want to win the war on terror, we have to scuttle the legal niceties and become a swaggering, shoot-'em-up John Wayne in a bad Western. No holds barred. We're right, goddamn it. American values be damned.
by Anthony Ioven
While many are crying foul over tonight's airing of The Path to 9/11, the movie was upstaged this morning by two disturbing interviews on Sunday morning news shows.
Think Progress has videos of both — Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice continuing to lie about the Saddam/al Qaeda connection, despite CIA and Senate Intelligence Committee findings to the contrary:
Cheney on Meet the Press:
I haven’t seen the report. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet...
We know that Zarqawi running the terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. After we went in after 9/11, then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of 2002 and was there and then basically until the time we launched into Iraq
Rice on Fox News Sunday, responding to Wallace's question, "Didn’t you and the President ignore intelligence that contradicted your case?":
Chris, we relied on the reports of the National Intelligence Office, the NIO, and of the DCI. That’s what the President and his central decisionmakers rely on...That particular report I don’t remember seeing [referring to a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency report that "Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful [chemical and biological weapons] knowledge or assistance."].
These are astounding, almost desperate claims, made despite mounting evidence to the contrary. You should really take a look at these video snippets. Cheney is Cheney, but both Rice and Wallace sound a bit shaken in their exchange.
by Anthony Ioven
 Comics have had a field day making jokes about the administration's lack of a plan for dealing with post-war Iraq:
Conan O'Brien: A rumor is circulating that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will retire next year. Today, Rumsfeld denied it, saying if you've seen my work in Iraq, you know I don't plan that far ahead.
Jay Leno: According to CNN, Donald Rumsfeld said the war in Iraq did not go according to plan. And President Bush said, "What? We had a plan?"
Jokes like these can only be funny if, down deep, we know the administration must have had a plan — a bad plan, sure. But a plan.
But now we find out that not only did we not have a post-war plan, Rumsfeld threatened to fire the next person who even brought the subject up, according to Brigadier General Mark Scheid, one of the primary architects of the war:
Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.
Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.
"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today."
I couldn't agree more with Kevin Drum's take on this:
And this also means that all of Bush's talk about democracy was nothing but hot air. If you're serious about planting democracy after a war, you don't plan to simply topple a government and then leave.
So: the lack of postwar planning wasn't merely the result of incompetence. It was deliberate policy. There was never any intention of rebuilding Iraq and there was never any intention of wasting time on democracy promotion. That was merely a post hoc explanation after we failed to find the promised WMD. Either that or BG Scheid is lying.
There's no overstating the importance of Sheid's story.
After the invasion, the media reported that the priceless treasures of Iraq were being looted from museums, and weapons were being looted all over the country. Yet the the US military focused its attention on protecting the Oil Ministry.
At the time I had a hard time believing this story. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to find in a bad novel.
And apparently, in a criminal administration.
by Anthony Ioven
 Conservatives are supposed to be — well, conservative, at least on constitutional issues. So why is this uber-conservative administration doing its best to dismantle our constitutional protections, bit-by-bit?
Rendering the Geneva Conventions — which protects our soldiers and civilians as well as others' — "quaint" is bad enough. But now the administration is trying to keep one constitutional branch of the government, the Supreme Court, from having a say on what the administration does regarding, ahem, "interrogation methods" (read, "torture"), in legislation the administration is proposing:
The proposed legislation would provide retroactive immunity from prosecution to government agents who used harsh methods after the Sept. 11 attacks. And, as President Bush suggested on Wednesday, it would ensure that those techniques remain lawful.
And the money quote:
Indeed, the proposed legislation takes pains to try to ensure that the Supreme Court will not have a second bite at the apple.
That "apple" is the Hamden v. Rumsfeld decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US must abide by the Geneva Conventions when dealing with Al Qaeda.
So let's see... The proposed legislation wants to give retroactive immunity to US violators of the Geneva Conventions, make the administration's torture policy legal, and keep the Supreme Court from exercising its constitutional "checks and balances" powers.
Remember the old Melanie song, What Have They Done To My Song, Ma?
Look what they done to my song, Ma
Look what they done to my song
Well it's the only thing that I could do half right
And it's turning out all wrong, Ma
Look what they done to my song
What have they done to America?
by Anthony Ioven
 In an election year, the campaigning starts in earnest right after Labor Day. But it's probably just a wild coincidence that today, two days after Labor
Day, George Bush decided to tell us how successful the CIA's "tough" but "safe, and lawful, and necessary" methods of questioning terror suspects has been.
Some of the plots that Honest George claims were nipped in the bud:
Planting bombs high in US buildings to prevent escape for people on upper floors
Setting up a cell to create anthrax
Carrying out new suicide attacks in the US and Britain...using hijacked planes
In the next two months, you can expect to hear many times over about these and other evil plots that were thwarted thanks to the vigilance of our Republican administration. What you won't hear or see is proof. You'll just have to take Honest George's word for it.
by Anthony Ioven
Interesting take on why the Republicans keep beating the pants off the Democrats:
If there's one thing Republicans have understood and Democrats haven't, it is that politics is not about issues. Politics is about identity...
Think about what happens in campaign after campaign. The Democrat comes before the public and says, 'If you read my 10-point policy plan, I'm sure you'll vote for me. Let's go over it point by point.' The Republican then comes before the public, points to the Democrat, and says, 'That guy is a weak, elitist liberal who hates you and everything you stand for. I'm one of you and he's not.' And guess who wins.
After it's all over, Democrats wonder why they lost, when a majority of the public favors nearly all the items on their agenda.
Just one of the many tricks that get voters to vote against their own best interests.
by Anthony Ioven
 Once upon a time in America, income kept pace with productivity:
From 1947 through 1973, American productivity rose by a whopping 104 percent, and median family income rose by the very same 104 percent.
No more:
That America is as dead as the dodo. Ours is the age of the Great Upward Redistribution. The median hourly wage for Americans has declined by 2 percent since 2003, though productivity has been rising handsomely.
Productivity is "a measure of the quantity and quality of what workers produce per hour." You would expect that increases in workers' productivity would result in a comparable increase in workers' wages — it's only fair, right? But you would be wrong (emphasis added):
Between 1995 and 2005, productivity...grew 33.4 percent. But hourly wages rose only 11 percent, with almost all of that increase coming during the late 1990s, according to EPI [the Economic Policy Institute].
Looking back even farther, the disparity is greater. Since 1979, productivity rose 67 percent, while wages rose only 8.9 percent.
So where is the fruit of your productivity and hard work going? Not in your pocket:
Real median income for households under age 65 is down by 5.4 percent since 2000, even though the economy has grown every year. All of that gain has gone to upper-bracket people and corporate profits.
And...
Government statistics show that the typical family works about 500 more hours a year than families did 30 years ago, because it takes two incomes to make it. Even so, family incomes are failing to keep pace with the cost of living.
Why?
Politically, it's evident what is occurring. Those in a position to capture astronomical incomes are awarding themselves an ever-larger share of the national economic pie. Meanwhile, ordinary incomes, job security, health security, and retirement security are eroding.
Who says there's no class war in America? Not only does class war exist, but the vast majority of Americans are losing.
Don't believe me?
Don't take my word for it. According to a report by Goldman Sachs economists, "the most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor's share of national income."
Happy Labor Day...
by Anthony Ioven
Dusty, the straight-shooting proprietor of It's my Right to be Left of the Center tagged me for a book meme, so here goes...
A book that changed my life – Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane. Don't think it actually changed my life, but it convinced me not to accept everything the government tells me on blind faith.
A book I've read more than once – I used to read a lot of Erich Fromm way back when — Escape From Freedom, The Sane Society, You Shall Be As Gods. Had to read them more than once to find what I missed the last time.
A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island – Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
A book that made me laugh – Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken. I loved the way he put Alan Colmes' name in a smaller point size when referring to the Hannity and Colmes show.
A book that made me cry – Well, not actual tears, but two books had quite an impact:
The Scourging of Iraq by Geoff Simons, which described the effects that the Gulf War and US-led sanctions had on the Iraqi people.
 Under the Southern Cross by Francis D. Cronin, which described the ordeals of the Army's Americal division in World War II, which my father belonged to.
A book that I wish had been written – The definitive account of who killed JFK, so we could finally put that mystery behind us.
A book I wish had never been written – Three: Revere Beach Boulevard, Revere Beach Elegy, and In Revere, In Those Days, all by Roland Merullo. These are great novels set in the Massachusetts city where I (and he) grew up. But I wish they weren't written so I could have had a shot at writing them. ;-)
A book I've been meaning to read – Like Dusty, American Theocracy is also on my to-do shelf.
I'm currently reading – None - most of my reading is on the Internet these days. But I recently read a great novel at my wife's urging, Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
Cartledge, consider yourself tagged.
by Karl Rove
 I am so humbled. Yesterday, miraculously, God appeared before me in the White House Rose Garden, in the form of a burning shrub. I was dumbstruck. I fell trembling to my knees. I couldn't speak. But God took mercy on me. He spoke soothingly, calming me down with a few amusing jokes about Ted Kennedy's boozing and Hillary Clinton's ass. I knew it — God is a Republican.
God told me He knew I've been filled with self-doubt lately about the things I've helped the administration bring about. But he assured me I had absolutely nothing to regret. I told Him I wished I had a tape recorder, because no one was going to believe God told me this, when poof, I suddenly found myself holding one. A Sony.
So here is the Word of God, as told to a humbled Karl Rove:
God: Ask me anything, Karl. But be brief. I have a smiting at 10.
A Humbled Karl Rove: Oh Lord, I have to know — were we correct to invade Iraq?
God: Yes, my son. The evil one, Saddam Hussein, helped Osama bin Laden plan 9/11, just as you suspected.
A Humbled Karl Rove: Forgive me, Lord, but no one has ever found a link between Saddam and bin Laden. If we only had some evidence —
God: Evidence? Evidence? I'm fucking God, idiot, and I'm telling you it's so. That isn't enough evidence for you?
A Humbled Karl Rove: Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes — forgive me, Lord. But how...how do we answer people who say we have killed so many innocent people in Iraq, and that killing violates one of God's commandments?
God: That Moses. What a klutz. That particular commandment had a list of exceptions to it that I wrote on another tablet — a sort of signing statement, if you will. But Moses-the-klutz dropped the damn thing and broke it. Shame — that commandment has been so misunderstood over the centuries. Don't worry, you're covered.
A Humbled Karl Rove: Oh, thank you, thank you, Lord. That makes me feel so much better.
God: Yes, yes. Tick-tick-tick, Karl. Anything else?
A Humbled Karl Rove: Just one more, Lord. How can I guarantee that the Republicans win an overwhelming majority of seats in Congress this November?
God: You shitting me? Just play them this tape. You think anyone in America will vote for Democrats once they hear God Almighty telling them to vote Republican?
A Humbled Karl Rove: But...
God: Yo! America. Listen up. This is God speaking. Vote Republican this November if you know what's good for you. That should do it, Karl. Look, gotta run. Keep up the good work, my son. And please tell George I'll be in touch. I so enjoy our chats.
And then He was gone. And the flame had not so much as singed a single needle on the shrub. A miracle.
A miracle that I have solid evidence of. At least I did, until my cassette player malfunctioned and chewed the tape to pieces right after I transcribed it. But so what? I still have the transcription, and just in time for election season, too.
by Anthony Ioven
 No one doubts the barbarism of terrorists. From the brutal thugs who savagely decapitate a hostage to the "suiciders" who blow apart innocent victims to the 19 mass-murderers of 9/11, these are, at best, expertly manipulated and self-deceiving pawns or, at worst, hate-filled misfits whose capacity for evil has no bounds.
But as Tom Engelhardt asks, That's them. But what about us?
When it comes to brutality, ancient times have had a bad rap. Nothing in history was more brutal than the 20th century style of war-making, than its two world wars with their air armadas, backed by the most advanced industrial systems on the planet. Powerful countries then bent every elbow, every brain, to support the destruction of human beings en masse, not to speak of the Holocaust (which was assembly-line warfare in another form)...
It may be that the human capacity for brutality, for barbarism, hasn't changed much since the eighth century, but the industrial revolution, especially the rise of the plane, opened up new landscapes to brutality...
From the slaughter of innocent civilians in Guernica in 1937, to the incineration of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, woman, and children by both sides (but mostly our side) in World War II, to Hanoi, to Iraq during the Gulf War, to Iraq during the boastful Shock and Awe bombardment of 2003, to Lebanon, why is it that this willful destruction of innocent life is tolerated as acceptable?
I wonder who history will judge to be more barbaric — us or the barbarians?
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UpdateAmerica.com
604.UpdateAmerica.com
September's Posts
Mission Accomplished
Peace Is for Girlie Men
Not Quite Great
$500,000,000,000.00
Selam
Milquetoast Nation
Partition
'A Higher Loyalty'
Legalities
Caught
Plan? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Plan
Constitutionally Quaint
And a Talking Point is Born
Hearts or MInds
'Trade In Your Hours for a Handful of Dimes'
Meme-ories
September Surprise
'If the President Does It, It's Legal'
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