Op-Ed

In the House Leadership wars, Tom DeLay's gone, his protege Roy Blunt's been defeated, and the GOP's anointed Rep. John Boehner (OH) as the new face of the party. It's all about reform, right? Guess again. The new guy's no prize either.

According to the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), Boehner's record documents his support for measures that have run counter to the best interests of the vast majority of American Jews. As reported by the NJDC:

1. For School Prayer and Amending the Constitution: Boehner supported a school prayer amendment to the United States Constitution in 1997 (H.J.Res. 78), 1999 (H.J.Res 66), and 2001 (H.J.Res. 52); voted to permit school prayer "during this time of struggle against the forces of international terrorism" (House Roll Call Vote 445, Nov. 15, 2001); and voted to only allow federal aid to schools that allow prayer (House Roll Call Vote 85, March 23, 1994).

2. For Forced Religion in Anti-Poverty Programs: Boehner voted to permit taxpayer-funded anti-poverty programs to require aid recipients to join in religious activities. (House Roll Call Votes 16 and 17, Feb. 4, 2004)

Remarks prepared for World Can't Wait rally at White House, Feb. 4, 2006.

There are protests outside at least two houses today, the White House and Bush's luxury estate near Crawford, Texas. Bush can run, but he cannot hide.

He tries to hide behind fear, our fear. The only tool in his bag is making us afraid. We have to resist becoming afraid, but we have to be able to talk about the fact that Bush and Cheney have made us much less safe. They have turned world opinion against us. They have turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists. They have turned Afghanistan into a drug production kingdom. Terrorist incidents are up so dramatically that the Bush Administration no longer publishes those statistics.

For those impervious to the suffering of others, a dollar figure sometimes helps bring it home. Two honest economists have recently put one on the Iraq war, and in so doing shown a spotlight on the black hole in the center of our future.

If $1 trillion makes you gag, try $2 trillion.

The latter number is the "moderate," as opposed to the conservative, price tag that Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes have put on the war, which they calculated by factoring in some - but by no means all - of its real costs, such as lifelong care for brain-injured U.S. troops.

The most outrageous deception in the selling of this war three years ago is not the claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction or had links to al-Qaida, but the blithe assertion that the war could be fought for chump change; it was supposed to be pay-as-you-go, financed by liberated oil revenue. White House economic advisor Larry Lindsey was sacked for saying the adventure could cost the country as much as $200 billion; of course, the total, even by conventional calculation, has gone well beyond that.

Back at the start of the 1970s, President Nixon made a determined bid to split the antiwar movement. His strategy was to present himself as an environmentalist, a friend of Mother Earth. He celebrated Earth Day, founded the Environmental Protection Agency and, in so doing, proved himself a greener president than any since. (Watergate soon overwhelmed him, and the environmental movement displayed no appetite to defend their crusader.)

Listening to Bush on Tuesday night, I wondered whether he was trying to play the same game. How many Greens today dreamed they would hear George Bush call for more investment in "revolutionary solar and wind technologies," let alone "cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years."

The Guardian is reporting that Bush told Blair "that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of 'flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours'. Mr Bush added: 'If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]'."
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/7408

This came out in a memo obtained by Phillipe Sands, QC, for the new edition of his book "Lawless World."  The memo is apparently the minutes of a two-hour meeting between Bush and Blair (and possibly the cast of Monty Python) which took place at the White House on January 31, 2003 – close to two months before the "decision" to go to war. 

Remarks prepared for California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus meeting in Los Angeles, Jan. 28, 2006

I was asked to speak about "Creating National Action as an Individual," so here are a few thoughts.  Back in May, five of us individuals brought a bunch of groups together as a coalition called "After Downing Street" www.afterdowningstreet.org  We used the internet and radio and lots of activism to force the Downing Street Minutes into the news.  Our success came from tapping into passion among a large section of the public for exposing the war lies and pushing the idea of impeachment. 

We helped organize hearings in Congress and helped promote various bills that created debate but were killed in committee.  We helped move opinion against the war by exposing its fraudulent basis.  We helped make it safe for Congressman Conyers to create an investigation into grounds for impeachment.  It wasn't five people who did this, though, it was hundreds of thousands.  And it wasn't an organization, but a coalition with organizations as members.

Hours after Coretta Scott King died, President Bush led off the State of the Union address by praising her as “a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream.” For good measure, at the end of his speech, Bush reverently invoked the name of her martyred husband, Martin Luther King Jr.

The president is one of countless politicians who zealously oppose most of what King struggled for -- at the same time that they laud his name with syrupy words. It wouldn’t be shrewd to openly acknowledge the basic disagreements. Instead, Bush and his allies offer up platitudes while pretending that King’s work ended with the fight against racial segregation.

Now that Dr. King’s widow is no longer alive, the smarmy process will be even easier: Just praise him as a beloved civil rights leader, as though the last few years of his life -- filled with struggles for economic justice and peace -- didn’t exist. Ignore King’s profound challenge to the kind of budget priorities and militarism holding sway today.

AUSTIN, Texas -- "We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory. First, we are helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency will be marginalized. Second, we're continuing reconstruction efforts and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefit of freedom. And, third, we're striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy." -- George W. Bush

"The Iraq war has been a disaster." -- CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour.

-- The number of terrorist attacks per day in Iraq grew from 55 in December 2004 to 77 per day in December 2005.

-- Electricity production in Iraq has not yet recovered to prewar levels, and the electricity in Baghdad is on less today than it was under Saddam Hussein. On the other hand, telephone and Internet use are up.

You'd think that after doing this State of the Union thing five times he'd finally get it right and say something new and meaningful. Instead, what we got was another dose of some good ole Texas drivel. Nothing more than a bunch of Rovian talking points mixed in with a few lies and lots of deception. And empty promises. And sugar-coated liberal-bashing. And I gave up "Queer Eye" for this?

This speech was classic King George. In the same chamber that he pays homage to civil rights leader Coretta Scott King, who died yesterday, he has Iraq anti-war lightening rod Cindy Sheehan tossed for wearing a t-shirt that showed the number of dead U.S. soldiers. Ain't protesting a bitch?

Fresh from my utter frustration over the Democrats' failed (and pathetic, I might add) attempt to filibuster Samuel J. Alito Jr., I have to also admit that I'm getting Irritable Bowel Syndrome listening to conservative twits like Pat Buchanan declare that it is President Bush and VP Dick Cheney whom "Americans want to protect them." Exactly which Americans are they talking about, because last time I checked, most of the country's voters, according to the latest polls, think the Busheviks are responsible for much of the nation's woes. As for the myth perpetuated by Buchanan and other GOP spin-monkeys, maybe it's due to years of unfair double-standards in this country that Texans and ranchers are tough guys while New Englanders like John Kerry are wimpy prep-school sissyboys. It must be that, because it sure as hell ain't based on facts or on the record of these two draft-dodgers since they grabbed power back in 2000.

So to set the record straight, let's revisit this impressive record, shall we?:

1. It was on Bush/Cheney's watch that the worst terrorist act in our history occurred