by abi
I tuned into the Democratic debate last night, but it turned me off to the point where I just want to drop out.
How many times can you watch politicians dance around questions before you just want to scream? Slick Hillary's non-response responses last night brought me to that point. But deftly dancing on both sides of a question (plus selling her soul in exchange for bagsfull of corporate donations) propelled her to frontrunner status, and she'll probably be the one under the balloons at the Democratic Convention next year.
Still, empty promises and double-talk are what we've come to expect from political debate in America. Same old same old. But last night, moderator Tim Russert brought the charade to a new low, when he asked Dennis Kucinich to confirm whether he had, in fact, "sighted a UFO."
Russert wasn't asking Kucinich a question here. He was making an insinuation. And it was the kind of smear that can only work in a country like America, where, for all our lip-service to freedom of speech and freedom of belief, if you think out of the mainstream, you're a screwball. Where it's ok to believe in angels, but it's nuts to see a physical object in the sky that isn't immediately identifiable.
Derision is a powerful controlling force. Russert and other mavens of the MSM like him know how to wield it well. Because, God knows, a politician like Clinton who speaks and says nothing is safe. A politician like Kucinich who speaks straight is dangerous.
by abi
 Two World Series wins in four years. Hell has surely frozen over.
by abi
At the risk of inviting my liberal bona fides to be called into question, I have to take issue with an editorial in today's NYT about undocumented illegal immigrants.
The writer sounds like the kind of liberal who gives the rest of us a bad name. A "big part" of the illegal immigration problem, according to the tortured logic of the editorial, isn't the millions of people who came here or remain here unlawfully. It's the word — "illegal":
Since the word modifies not the crime but the whole person, it goes too far. It spreads, like a stain that cannot wash out. It leaves its target diminished as a human, a lifetime member of a presumptive criminal class. People are often surprised to learn that illegal immigrants have rights. Really? Constitutional rights? But aren’t they illegal? Of course they have rights: they have the presumption of innocence and the civil liberties that the Constitution wisely bestows on all people, not just citizens.
The editorial writer prefers the word "unauthorized." Fine. But as soon as the unauthorized immigrant gets caught — zoom, his ass goes back from whence it came, to make room for those other immigrants who are honest enough to have the adjective "legal" modify their immigration status.
And until he is caught, no unauthorized immigrant, or child of same, should be allowed to drive, be educated, or enjoy any other rights that citizens and legal immigrants enjoy, unless he's criminally accomplished enough to have acquired a set of convincing forged documents.
If the immigration laws are too restrictive, let's change them. But let's not pretend the laws we do have are mere suggestions.
And please, let's stop the disingenuous word games. Illegal/unauthorized immigrants are not simply "undocumented," and they certainly are not simply "immigrants" (are you listening, Boston Globe?).
by abi
After the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, they pledged to put Congress back to work and end the Congressional "two-day work week." From now on, they boasted, it would be a grueling, 5-day work week for Congress — you know, just like the peons back home.
But after an absolutely exhausting 10 months of working like a dog — or a constituent — the brutal, inhuman pace has taken its toll on our coddled leaders. Dems will officially cut back the House's work week to four days, starting in January. Quipped the Republican House whip:
"Is this a reward for our accomplishments in 2007?"
Maybe. Last week the House logged its 1,000th roll-call vote of the year, the first time that mark was reached since the Constitution was ratified. But Republicans put the milestone in its proper context, since barely 10% of the votes involved a bill that ultimately became law. Said Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan:
“Unlike Congress, the American people do not mistake motion for progress. They want results. And given the approval ratings, they are certainly convinced they aren’t getting them.”
Still, pity the poor Congress, whose put-upon members not only had to clock more hours at the office this year, but who "have not gotten a raise or cost-of-living increase this year."
Horrors. If these outrageous working conditions continue, the only people who'll even consider taking a job in Congress are illegal immigrants.
by abi
As hell-bent as the Cheney-Bush administration seems to be to attack Iran, Vladimir Putin seems equally intent on stopping them (chilling emphasis mine):
A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the [Iranian] Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration's relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear strike, against Iran. An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an attack on Russia.
Suddenly World War III doesn't seem so far-fetched, does it?
Putin sees the reckless American position on Iran this way:
"To run around like a madman waving a knife is not the best way forward. Why drive the situation into a dead end?"
The answer is simple. This is an administration of madmen, armed with weapons much more dangerous than knives.
by abi
The open contempt that much of the world regards the US with continues to surge.
The president of Ecuador has pledged "to cut off his arm" before allowing the US to maintain its military base in his country after the lease expires in 2009. Says President Correa:
"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorean base. If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."
Such blatant disrespect from an inferior nation. Doesn't he know we're the World's Only Superpower? And adding insult to injury, he refers to our esteemed President Bush as a "dimwit." I mean, really...
by abi
Great news! America's crusade to re-cast the Middle East and the world in its own image and likeness is starting to work, if this headline is any indication:
Palestinian 'torture widespread'
The West Bank Palestinians (the good guys) and the Gaza Palestinians (the bad guys) are taking their decades-long frustrations out on each other, in a deadly internal conflict that we played no small role in instigating.
According to Amnesty International, Palestinians have been ripping pages right out of America's playbook:
Arbitrary detentions and torture or other ill treatment of detainees by Hamas forces are now widespread and the initial improvements in the security situation which followed Hamas' takeover [of Gaza] are fast being eroded.
And it's not just bad-guy Hamas that's following in America's bloody footsteps. It's good-guy Fatah, too, although you'd never know it, according to AI:
"What we're finding in the West Bank is pretty much a mirror image, even though it is much less reported.
"People find it surprising, what's happening in Gaza, but it's as if the international community doesn't want to see what's happening in the West Bank."
Bingo. Turning a blind eye to inconvenient truth is as American as it gets.
by abi
 Hey, kids, and good Christians everywhere. Dust off those swords and swing that mace. It's that jolly time of year again — Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week. Let's party.
In case you didn't get the memo, the purpose of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week is:
...to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.
Barbara Ehrenreich describes this cause celebre thusly:
[A] veritable witches' brew of Cheney-style anti-jihadism mixed in with old-fashioned, right-wing anti-feminism and a sour dash of anti-Semitism.
Overstated you say? Not if you consider some of the honored speakers at Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week events:
But Ehrenreich concedes that maybe she's missed the point of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week:
Maybe it's really an effort to show that our own American anti-feminists (and anti-Semites) are just as nasty as the ones on the other side. If so, good job, guys!
by abi
Nearly 40 years ago, I went to hear Bernadette Devlin speak about the "troubles" in Northern Ireland. All I knew about the cause of the conflict was what I could glean from the papers — it was all about an irrational, centuries-old hatred between Catholics and Protestants.
So what Devlin said surprised me. "Catholic" and "Protestant" were just the labels that defined the participants in the real conflict — one of political and economic discrimination. Protestants happened to be the class of power and privilege, and they wanted to keep it that way.
My guess is that in more cases than not, class and power are the real, underlying friction points between groups with incidental labels — Catholic and Protestant, North and South, Sunni and Shiite.
I was reminded of this during the Republican debate last night, when the discussion turned to the privatization (Huckabee tried to soften it by calling it "personalization") of Social Security. This radical idea is hardly dead. It's going to be a major battle in the class warfare being waged in America today.
The media talks around America's class war, but doesn't have the courage to call it by name. But that makes it no less real. Hell, even a dolt like George Bush knows that class war exists, and knows which side of it he's on, as indicated by this remark he made to the glitterazzi during a fund-raiser for his first presidential campaign:
"This is an impressive crowd — the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base."
If the Adolescent in Chief is aware of the class war, the rest of us have no excuse not to be. But it seems we talk around it, too, refusing to call it by name. Why?
If the universal mandatory health care plans being proposed by the top-tier Democratic presidential candidates are any indication (and they are), the two sides in this class war are not identified by "Democrat" and "Republican." The anointed parties are just two factions of one side, which happens to be the winning side.
I don't know what the sides in America's class war should be called. All I know is that if those of us on the losing side can't admit that there's even a war going on, we're going to keep having our asses handed to us.
by abi
According to the US military, 49 "criminals" were killed after US forces were attacked while raiding buildings in Sadr City.
The US denied Iraqi claims that the dead "criminals" included women, children, and elderly men.
(I guess by now the military must have a form letter for this denial, filling in just the date and location as needed.)
Said one of the women criminals:
We were waking in the morning and all of a sudden rockets landed in the house and the children were screaming."
Can you imagine the reaction there'd be if American police ordered surprise air strikes against buildings in overcrowded neighborhoods of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, for any reason whatsoever? Why are the lives of Iraqi civilians worth less than ours?
by abi
If you have any doubts that Gaza is the world's largest jail and the Israelis its jailers, read this:
Since June 2007, when Hamas forcibly seized power in Gaza, Israel has made it increasingly difficult for medical supplies to get into Gaza and for any of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents to get out, even when they urgently need medical treatment.
The Israelis claim they are simply trying to protect themselves against dangerous elements — like the 16-year-old girl with a congenitive heart defect, or the 72-year-old man in need of open heart surgery.
The 72-year-old died after his permit was denied. But maybe he could have saved himself if only he had been willing to sell someone out:
[I]intelligence officers at Erez crossing, the only passenger crossing in and out of Gaza, tell medical patients that they can leave only if they provide information to Israeli intelligence.
In the end, it didn't matter to the Israelis whether the man sold out someone or not. Either way, there was one less Palestinian for them to worry about.
by abi
Admit it — you knew partisanship would win the day, and Congress, in spite of polls showing overwhelming popular support for extending SCHIP, would be unable to override Bush's veto.
But I'll bet in your wildest dreams you never expected to hear those partisan hacks cite this as their excuse (indignant emphasis mine):
Members of both parties argued that public opinion was on their side, and repeated poll numbers like mantras to bolster their cases. Democrats turned to survey data saying that 82 percent of Americans supported the bill, while Republicans emphasized a poll suggesting an 11 percent approval rating for Congress.
What exactly are Republicans saying here? That if Americans have so little regard for Congress, then Congress will take its revenge by having little regard for what the great majority of Americans want? Or maybe they're saying that a body with so little credibility has no business overriding a presidential veto?
It's sad to watch a great nation rotting from within.
by abi
In yesterday's Boston Globe, Benazir Bhutto showed both class and courage as she described her determination to return to Pakistan is spite of open threats to kill her if she does:
Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander, has said that his terrorists will "welcome" me on my return. Everyone understands the meaning of these comments.
And welcome her they did:
Bombing turns Bhutto's triumph to horror
If only America's "leaders" had an ounce of such courage.
by abi
This week the House will vote on the RESTORE bill, in a better-late-than-never attempt to keep this administration minimally honest in its wiretapping activities.
One of the issues at stake is whether telecommunications companies should be granted retroactive immunity for turning over records of customers' private communications to the government, in violation of the FISA law.
Last week President Bush threatened to veto any bill that does not include an immunity provision:
"And it must grant liability protection to companies who are facing multi-billion-dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend our nation following the 9/11 attacks."
Sure sounds reasonable, doesn't it? The only problem with that sentence is that it's missing one somewhat crucial word — illegal.
Congress is talking tough right now about sending the bill to Bush without the immunity guarantee. But my dime says that either the immunity language will be written into the bill, or the fix will be in, and none of the guilty telecoms will actually be brought to trial.
by abi
Ok, I admit it. I like Drudge's site. It has a no-frills presentation that makes it easy to scan the headlines, with a minimum of in-your-face ads.
But after all, he is Drudge, so you've got to watch him like a — well, Fox. For example, take this link on his site today:
Report: Kidnapped Israeli reservists are in Iran?...
Hmmm, so Iran may be tied to the kidnappings that set off the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah last year? Just another reason to bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran, eh?
But if you click Drudge's link, the headline and first sentence of the story read thusly:
'Goldwasser, Regev aren't in Iran'
Israel knows that kidnapped reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev have not been transferred to Iran, government officials involved in negotiating their release told Army Radio Sunday, denying a report in Asharq Alawsat.
C'mon — it's Drudge. You were expecting maybe fair and balanced?
Update: The source of the story, the Jerusalem Post, has changed the beginning of their article. Maybe they got a call from Drudge? :-) (Question marks let you get away with a all kinds of reportorial sins, don't they?)
by abi
It looks like the Mayor of Kabul is starting to lose control even over Kabul:
The fighting [in Afghanistan] is spreading to places once relatively safe, including the capital and the western and northern parts of the country...
In Kabul, where suicide bombs have killed almost 50 people in two weeks, foreigners are increasingly ordered into "lockdown."
It seems the Taliban, who we defeated six years ago, "never evaporated into thin air." And they're getting stronger:
"One reason for their renewed strength is that the people are more or less amenable to what they are doing and maybe some of the (NATO) bombardments have not been very wisely executed."
Translation: A few too many dead babies and women.
But according to one international observer, the news isn't all bad:
"It's important to emphasise: I don't think the Taliban themselves are wildly popular...I don't think people want Taliban times back."
Or is it? The observer continued:
"[The Taliban's resurgence] is a broad dissatisfaction with what is happening in the country now."
Translation: Compared to us, the Taliban is starting to look pretty good.
by abi
And now for the completely ridiculous.
Warning — subject matter may be considered offensive to 46% of America.
by abi
Barney Frank is whining about the sharp criticism from the left who accuse Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic-controlled Congress of not getting done what they were elected to do:
“Nancy Pelosi is not Glenda the good witch,” Frank said. “She can’t wave her magic wand and make people from all over this country vote however she wants them to vote."
Frank was talking about his refusal to support transgenders in a gay-rights bill, but he made clear he was also reacting to criticism that Democrats in Congress haven't lived up to the left's expectations.
And he's right. Americans who expected Democrats to provide the leadership that would end the war, close the gap between rich and poor, implement a workable health care system for all Americans, might as well have voted for Glenda the good witch.
According to Frank, there are "responsible liberals," and then there are those other liberals who dare to criticize the Democrats:
"People who then denounce those who take reality into account … make it impossible for us to govern."
Oh, poor you.
It's time for liberals to come to a realization — Democrats don't represent you.
America is stagnating. We need an alternative to the two entrenched parties. But we have allowed politicians and the media to hoodwink us into believing that the only possible, "responsible" ways for Americans to perceive reality are represented by Republicans (the party of more-of-the-same) and Democrats (the party of more-of-the-same with a little sugar coating).
by abi
 As if we needed further proof that President Bush is a buffoon and a danger to America and the world, consider how foolish he has made himself look in his dealings with Vladimir ("I call him Vladimir") Putin.
Since 2001, when he claimed to have looked into Putin's eyes and down into his trustworthy soul, our pathetic boy president convinced himself he could overwhelm the former KGB case officer with his charm, and turn him into an obedient lapdog like Tony Blair. But it turns out it was Putin who was playing Bush:
Putin has led global opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq, hosted Palestinians on the U.S. list of terrorist groups, sold anti-aircraft missiles and other arms to Iran and stymied Bush's drive to tighten U.N. sanctions on the Islamic republic for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.
The Kremlin has steadily increased spending on defense modernization and revived symbolic long-range aerial reconnaissance patrols toward U.S. and European airspace.
Putin also has threatened to re-target Russian nuclear missiles at Europe if Bush deploys U.S. missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic, declared his intention to trash treaties that eliminate a class of nuclear missiles and limit conventional military forces in Europe and compared the United States under Bush to Germany under Hitler.
Yesterday, Putin showed how much respect he has for America under the Bush administration when he kept Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Gates waiting 40 minutes before meeting with them. That's a slap in the face that even the slow-on-the-uptake Bush is sure to notice.
Under Bush's inept leadership, the US and Russia are at loggerheads over more and more issues. In particular, our differences over the Middle East in general and Iran in particular have explosive potential.
by abi
I tend to avoid Ann Coulter articles as religiously as Coulter herself avoids responsible speech and logical thought. But I couldn't help clicking this intriguing link:
Coulter: We want 'Jews to be perfected'
WTF?
Explained the Grand Dame of Delirium:
"It is not intended to be [offensive]. I don't think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews."
Which means what, exactly? That a Christian is a Jew who's been de-circumsized?
The Bewildered One's actual reasoning is no less bewildering:
"That’s what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express."
Something tells me that when the Coulter consignment gets overnighted to Heaven, it'll be bounced back the next day stamped Return to Sender.
by abi
During the Republican debate last night, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani got into it pretty good over who had the better record for keeping taxes low. But everyone agreed that when it comes to taxes, smaller is better, and they took every opportunity to say so.
But how do you talk about taxes in isolation? It's like saying x amount of dollars is quite enough to budget for your expenses, without talking about the things you want and need to spend the money on.
Taxes are a secondary issue. What must come first is a discussion about the things that need to be done with taxes. For example, are endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and god knows where else really worthwhile? If so, you don't pay for them by lowering taxes, but by raising them. That logical connection seemed to go unacknowledged last night.
Also, is it really responsible for presidential candidates to do everything but carve a sign on their foreheads that say I'm for lower taxes! when America's infrastructure is crumbling? When 47 million Americans have no health insurance? When 38 million Americans have trouble putting food on the table?
Didn't hear much about those issues last night. Just a lot of pandering to the niggardly about lowering taxes.
(Of course, on the Democratic side of the pandering aisle, Hillary Clinton's been going around the country talking about giving a $5,000 bond to every baby born in the US, and giving $1,000 in 401k funds to contributors making under $60,000. But that's a post for another day.)
by abi
I'm sure Washington pols and the MSM will howl over this:
The Israeli army has ordered the seizure of Palestinian land surrounding four West Bank villages apparently in order to hugely expand settlements around Jerusalem.
It looks like the Israelis plan to steal develop enough Palestinian land for 3,500 Israeli homes, and link an existing Israeli settlement with Jerusalem.
This latest land grab comes a month before talks between Israel's PM Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the West Bank Palestinians. According to an Israeli expert on West Bank development:
"[Any development] done before that meeting will be set in stone. In general this has to be seen as part of a timeline in which Israel wants to get all its development of the West Bank finished before Bush leaves office."
Gee, I wonder why.
"Settlements." "Development." Sounds like a downright innocent, pleasant endeavor, doesn't it? But our crackerjack pols and the MSM, they won't be fooled. You watch. They'll be in Olmert's face but good. You just wait...and wait...and wait...
by abi
When you read Robert Novak's claim the other day that Joe Wilson wasn't "terribly exercised" about the public exposure of his wife as a CIA agent, you knew there was more to it than that, right?
Well, here it is — from a reporter who actually bothered to get Wilson's side of the story:
"He's lying..."
"The purpose of my phone call to [Novak] was to tell him that it was not appropriate for him to be telling strangers in Washington that my wife works for the CIA."
I guess Novak's "exercised" threshold requires at a minimum the use of the word bullshit.
by abi
Every American knows what happened on December 7, 1941 — a day that still lives in infamy. And every American knows what happened on September 11, 2001. Those dates have been burned into our collective psyche for the acts of deadly, unprovoked aggression that took place on them, acts that have been called both cowardly and criminal.
So why, then, when a speaker brought up another act of deadly, unprovoked aggression against Americans, did his audience react this way:
"I found myself looking out at 400 blank stares. The USS Liberty? And so I asked how many in the audience had heard of the attack on the Liberty on June 8, 1967. Three hands went up..."
When someone tells me that I must vote for the Democratic candidate in a presidential election, because voting for a third-party candidate just helps to elect the Republican, one of the things that comes to mind is the USS Liberty. The attack on the Liberty occurred under and was covered up by a Democratic administration. Administrations and Congresses from both anointed parties have forked over tens of billions of dollars in financial aid to the perpetrators of this crime since it happened.
America has been hijacked — not just by Israeli special interests, but by all special interests with bags full of money tipping the scales of government action in their favor.
Politics and money. It is a dangerous, self-perpetuating alliance that will attack anything that stands its way. Even our liberty.
We can change the way we finance and run political campaigns that would virtually eliminate the influence of moneyed interests. But we won't. Not as long as bought-and-paid-for Democrats and Republicans keep telling us it can't be done.
by abi
Nothing of substance can be fixed in this country until we fix this:
by abi
With fewer and fewer things Americans can be proud of these days, we still have this:
The United States has consolidated its position as the world's leading arms dealer to the developing world...
The boom in US sales appears to have been partly fueled by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have made neighbouring countries nervous. Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia were the biggest buyers.
As Gordon Gekko, might say, War...is good.
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UpdateAmerica.com
604.UpdateAmerica.com
October's Posts
Boxers or Briefs
Now This Changes Everything
Fun with Words
Like a Page Out of Dickens
'A madman waving a knife'
Bitch-Slapping the US
Doing as the Americans Do
Celebration of the Gullible
The Silent War
'Simply Barbaric'
No Soup for You
You Gotta be SCHIPping Me
A Profile in Courage
The Bluster Before the Cave
Drudging Up a War
Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
'Can't Wait for 2008'
Poor, Poor Me
'I call him Vladimir'
The FedEx Highway to Heaven
Mine's Smaller than Yours
And On It Goes
The Rest of the Story
Attack on our Liberty
American Democracy at a Glance
We're Number 1
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