Op-Ed
New, from the I-hate-government crowd: mandatory voter ID!
The last time fiscal and moral folly merged so shamelessly with political opportunism, we invaded Iraq.
The primary question in my mind, as I ponder the latest assault on rationality to emanate from our GOP-controlled Congress (how much longer, Lord?), is to what extent these radicals believe they're doing the right thing - as they set about methodically circumventing the principles that define who we are as a nation - and to what extent they're just cynically serving their short-term interests. Or has that line simply vanished?
HR 4844, which passed the House along party lines last week, is, unfortunately, more than just sputter and bluster about the peril of illegal aliens invading our voting booths, i.e., another piece of fantasy legislation to "protect" Americans from one more right-wing bugbear, like smoldering flags and gay wedding cakes.
The last time fiscal and moral folly merged so shamelessly with political opportunism, we invaded Iraq.
The primary question in my mind, as I ponder the latest assault on rationality to emanate from our GOP-controlled Congress (how much longer, Lord?), is to what extent these radicals believe they're doing the right thing - as they set about methodically circumventing the principles that define who we are as a nation - and to what extent they're just cynically serving their short-term interests. Or has that line simply vanished?
HR 4844, which passed the House along party lines last week, is, unfortunately, more than just sputter and bluster about the peril of illegal aliens invading our voting booths, i.e., another piece of fantasy legislation to "protect" Americans from one more right-wing bugbear, like smoldering flags and gay wedding cakes.
AUSTIN, Texas -- Oh dear. I'm sure he didn't mean it. In Illinois' 6th Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth of planning to "cut and run" on Iraq.
Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot, who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. "I just could not believe he would say that to me," said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?
The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill, now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. Warner, McCain and Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of "technical fixes" that were the point of the putative "compromise." It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.
Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot, who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. "I just could not believe he would say that to me," said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?
The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill, now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. Warner, McCain and Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of "technical fixes" that were the point of the putative "compromise." It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.
AUSTIN, Texas -- Noshing on the news ...
-- The National Intelligence Estimate, agreed upon by 16 Bush-controlled spy services within the U.S. government, says the war in Iraq is making the war on terrorism harder and worse. It gives the phrase "leaking intelligence" a new meaning (a line not original with me).
We've been having a debate in this country about whether to continue the war -- or "the comma," as the president calls it -- until it has become a semi-colon. Now, the debate is over, and what we need to discuss is the best way out. This war is not a goddamn comma.
-- According to The Associated Press, the directors of the Legal Services Corp., a program for poor people, have been trying to get rid of their inspector general, who has clocked them for, among other things, expensive meals, using limousine services and wasting money on a ritzy headquarters.
-- The National Intelligence Estimate, agreed upon by 16 Bush-controlled spy services within the U.S. government, says the war in Iraq is making the war on terrorism harder and worse. It gives the phrase "leaking intelligence" a new meaning (a line not original with me).
We've been having a debate in this country about whether to continue the war -- or "the comma," as the president calls it -- until it has become a semi-colon. Now, the debate is over, and what we need to discuss is the best way out. This war is not a goddamn comma.
-- According to The Associated Press, the directors of the Legal Services Corp., a program for poor people, have been trying to get rid of their inspector general, who has clocked them for, among other things, expensive meals, using limousine services and wasting money on a ritzy headquarters.
"I've known Hugo Chavez for years, let me tell you that man knows a diablo when he sees one." -- Greg Palast
From The Progressive By Greg Palast
You'd think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chavez's behind. Not only has Chavez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chavez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, "not too high, a fair price," he said -- a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon.
But our President has basically told Chavez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline. Before I explain why Bush has done so, let me explain why Chavez has the power to pull it off -- and the method in the seeming madness of his "take-my-oil-please!" deal.
From The Progressive By Greg Palast
You'd think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chavez's behind. Not only has Chavez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chavez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, "not too high, a fair price," he said -- a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon.
But our President has basically told Chavez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline. Before I explain why Bush has done so, let me explain why Chavez has the power to pull it off -- and the method in the seeming madness of his "take-my-oil-please!" deal.
Some say the globe will end by warming,
Some say nuclear war.
At the risk of being too alarming,
I hold with those who favor warming.
But if religious feuds can't wait
I think I know enough of hate
To say that just a few more missiles
Could end us first
While Dubya whistles.
Apologies to Robert Frost, and to you, and your family, and what would have been your great grandchildren. We are sending missiles to Iran on a ship departing my home state of Virginia next week, and the water the ship will be passing through is warmer than it used to be, and there's more of it.
Some say nuclear war.
At the risk of being too alarming,
I hold with those who favor warming.
But if religious feuds can't wait
I think I know enough of hate
To say that just a few more missiles
Could end us first
While Dubya whistles.
Apologies to Robert Frost, and to you, and your family, and what would have been your great grandchildren. We are sending missiles to Iran on a ship departing my home state of Virginia next week, and the water the ship will be passing through is warmer than it used to be, and there's more of it.
"In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. . . . In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops."
- Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"
Now that even Republicans are gagging on the war on terror, as lavish descriptions of psychosis-level torture seep into the mainstream - and as a flailing, unpopular president clings in the face of reason to his right to maintain a gulag of "enemy combatants" (for God's sake, George, most of them are innocent) - Americans are finding themselves on the brink of the moral debate they've been trying to avoid for the last, oh, 50 years or so. It's been brewing my whole lifetime.
- Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"
Now that even Republicans are gagging on the war on terror, as lavish descriptions of psychosis-level torture seep into the mainstream - and as a flailing, unpopular president clings in the face of reason to his right to maintain a gulag of "enemy combatants" (for God's sake, George, most of them are innocent) - Americans are finding themselves on the brink of the moral debate they've been trying to avoid for the last, oh, 50 years or so. It's been brewing my whole lifetime.
AUSTIN, Texas -- Some country is about to have a Senate debate on a bill to legalize torture. How weird is that?
I'd like to thank Sens. John McCain, Lindsay Graham -- a former military lawyer -- and John Warner of Virginia. I will always think fondly of John Warner for this one reason: Forty years ago, this country was involved in an unprovoked and unnecessary war. It ended so badly the vets finally had to hold their own homecoming parade, years after they came home. The only member of Congress who attended was John Warner.
A debate on torture. I don't know -- what do you think? I guess we have to define it, first. The White House has already specified "water boarding," making some guy think he's drowning for long periods, as a perfectly good interrogation technique. Maybe, but it was also a great favorite of the Gestapo and has been described and condemned in thousands of memoirs and novels in highly unpleasant terms.
I don't think we can give it a good name again, and I personally kind of don't like being identified with the Gestapo. How icky. (Somewhere inside me, a small voice is shrieking, "Are you insane?")
I'd like to thank Sens. John McCain, Lindsay Graham -- a former military lawyer -- and John Warner of Virginia. I will always think fondly of John Warner for this one reason: Forty years ago, this country was involved in an unprovoked and unnecessary war. It ended so badly the vets finally had to hold their own homecoming parade, years after they came home. The only member of Congress who attended was John Warner.
A debate on torture. I don't know -- what do you think? I guess we have to define it, first. The White House has already specified "water boarding," making some guy think he's drowning for long periods, as a perfectly good interrogation technique. Maybe, but it was also a great favorite of the Gestapo and has been described and condemned in thousands of memoirs and novels in highly unpleasant terms.
I don't think we can give it a good name again, and I personally kind of don't like being identified with the Gestapo. How icky. (Somewhere inside me, a small voice is shrieking, "Are you insane?")
AUSTIN, Texas -- Is it just me, or was that the worst presidential press conference in history? So I went back and read it over. Of course, in print you don't get the testy tone: I heard it on radio and thought the man was about to blow up -- not just because he was being questioned, which Bush appears to consider an offensive action in the first place, but because people continue to refuse to see things the way he does. How can they be so stupid or malign, he appears to wonder.
I ask: How can he be so repetitive, repeatedly using the oldest tactic of a verbal bully -- saying the same thing louder, as though that would make it true?
Last Friday's Rose Garden press conference seemed so awful I thought it worth wading through it again to see what set him off. Maybe if you saw it on television, it seemed better. Perhaps his banter with reporters works better on TV. But I left with the impression that this is a spoiled man whose frustration level when someone disagrees with him is that of a 3-year-old and that he's the last person you want to see operating under a lot of stress because he doesn't handle it well.
I ask: How can he be so repetitive, repeatedly using the oldest tactic of a verbal bully -- saying the same thing louder, as though that would make it true?
Last Friday's Rose Garden press conference seemed so awful I thought it worth wading through it again to see what set him off. Maybe if you saw it on television, it seemed better. Perhaps his banter with reporters works better on TV. But I left with the impression that this is a spoiled man whose frustration level when someone disagrees with him is that of a 3-year-old and that he's the last person you want to see operating under a lot of stress because he doesn't handle it well.
I attacked the conspiracy nuts last week -- these being the self-styled "Truthers" claiming the WTC and Pentagon attacks were organized by a list of suspects ranging from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to the Queen of England.
Yes, the finger of suspicion apparently points to the Queen because one nut faction believes the world is run by the Bilderberg group -- one of those annual get-togethers of businessmen and politicians who assemble from time to time to bore each other with long speeches and drink a great deal. Those who think the Bilderbergers control everything claim that the Queen of England and the British Secret Service are deeply involved in this supervision.
Yes, the finger of suspicion apparently points to the Queen because one nut faction believes the world is run by the Bilderberg group -- one of those annual get-togethers of businessmen and politicians who assemble from time to time to bore each other with long speeches and drink a great deal. Those who think the Bilderbergers control everything claim that the Queen of England and the British Secret Service are deeply involved in this supervision.
AUSTIN, Texas -- She was so generous with her responses to other people. If you told Ann Richards something really funny, she wouldn't just smile or laugh, she would stop and break up completely. She taught us all so much -- she was a great campfire cook. Her wit was a constant delight. One night on the river on a canoe trip, while we all listened to the next rapid, which sounded like certain death, Ann drawled, "It sounds like every whore in El Paso just flushed her john."
She knew how to deal with teenage egos: Instead of pointing out to a kid who was pouring charcoal lighter on a live fire that he was idiot, Ann said, "Honey, if you keep doing that, the fire is going to climb right back up to that can in your hand and explode and give you horrible injuries, and it will just ruin my entire weekend."
She knew what it was like to have four young children and to be so tired you cried while folding the laundry. She knew and valued Wise Women like Virginia Whitten and Helen Hadley.
She knew how to deal with teenage egos: Instead of pointing out to a kid who was pouring charcoal lighter on a live fire that he was idiot, Ann said, "Honey, if you keep doing that, the fire is going to climb right back up to that can in your hand and explode and give you horrible injuries, and it will just ruin my entire weekend."
She knew what it was like to have four young children and to be so tired you cried while folding the laundry. She knew and valued Wise Women like Virginia Whitten and Helen Hadley.