clipmonkey

A glorious day

2009-01-18T23:07:00.004-05:00

It was cold, crowded and you couldn't hear the speeches too well, but it was a glorious day nonetheless. It was glorious because we are finally taking our nation back from the torturers, the "Christians", the warmongers, and the homophobes. We are finally becoming the nation we aspire to be.

A steaming pile

2009-01-10T10:54:00.003-05:00

We already knew that Obama had one steaming pile awaiting him as president in the form of the war in Iraq, but who knew an even bigger one would be out there and one that people actually care about- the economy. Unemployment is now at its highest level in 16 years. Bush and his cronies are raiding the bailout faster than you can say corporate welfare or yellow parachute. And Congress is debating how far their "stimulus" plan will fall short of what the economy actually needs.

It's bad out there and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. But here's one suggestion- how about Americans quit spending their money on useless crap they don't need like iPhones and SUVs and ginormous houses and actually save money. Then, banks will have money to make loans with and businesses will have capital to play with. Just a thought.

Another word about Rick Warren

2008-12-30T20:41:00.002-05:00

Since writing the previous post, it has come to this clipmonkey's attention that Rick Warren once said that Jews would ultimately burn in hell because they are not Christians. If this is indeed the case, Warren is not qualified to attend the inauguration much less provide an invocation for it.

A word about Rick Warren

2008-12-28T18:16:00.002-05:00

Many on the left continue to vent their anger and disappointment at Obama about his choice of Rick Warren to perform the invocation at the inauguration. But the ones who are most up in arms are simply reacting to the word evangelical attached to Warren's name. Yes, Warren was unfortunately involved in the efforts to repeal California's same-sex marriage law, however, he is a largely apolitical evangelical who urges people to help out and give money to the poor. He is even known for reverse tithing- giving 90 percent of his money to charity and keeping only 10 percent. He is one of the few evangelicals who seems to actually acknowledge the Bible's emphasis on helping those in need.

So, while people can be disappointed in Obama for choosing Warren, he certainly is no crazy along the lines of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. Ultimately, he's a shrewd choice for Obama and the Democrats' efforts to bring religious people back into the party. Now let's hope he pushes for a middle ground on abortion...

A Christmas Wish

2008-12-26T17:10:00.001-05:00

I hope the Republicans don't try to destroy Obama as they did Clinton. The sh%t happening in this country is too serious for the frivolities of the 1990s.

Hairhelmet-gate

2008-12-13T23:38:00.002-05:00

Gov. Blagojevich is clearly a complete d-bag, but on some level, he's also a refreshingly honest politician. I mean, don't we all operate out of self-interest? Some of us are simply better at obscuring our motivations and maybe a bit more charitable in our actions as well.

Clearly, that giant head of hair has a reckless streak. Maybe he even wanted to get caught, but politicians make similar deals all the time. They decide not to run for positions to make way for a favored candidate. They decide to vote in support or against legislation in return for certain favors. They just don't announce it on a phone that's being wiretapped by the FBI.

A disgraceful human being

2008-11-30T10:44:00.005-05:00

In his latest column from the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol advocates for President Bush to give the Medal of Freedom to those who committed acts of torture. This speaks for itself:

One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning--and should at least be vociferously praising--everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.

Oh and he is one of the guys who brought us Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin. Is there anything more to say about this fellow Kristol?

Yes, we can

2008-11-05T06:58:00.009-05:00

Last night I celebrated Barack Obama’s victory in the streets of Washington, DC with hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow Americans who were exulting in a spasm of patriotism that had been a long time in coming. I overheard one young African-American muttering, “After 400 years. After enslaving my people. Finally!”

African-Americans and whites and other Americans of all races were dancing, crying out, screaming with pride. It was the kind of joy I’ve seen only a few times before- when the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl in 1988 or when the Seattle Mariners advanced to the American League Championship Series in 1995. But this time it really mattered. This time we were celebrating a nation at its best.

After the disgrace of Guantanamo Bay. After the horror of Abu Ghraib. After a war of choice. After Katrina. After years of reckless fiscal mismanagement. After the Florida recount. But also after slavery, after segregation, after Emmett Till. After Selma, after Little Rock, after David Duke, after Bull Connor, after Birmingham. After Willie Horton, after Jesse Helms.

After so many other shameful moments in our nation’s history, we have finally redeemed ourselves and our forebears.

Gas should stay at $4 per gallon

2008-06-09T21:19:00.003-04:00

This clipmonkey and Charles Krauthammer rarely agree, but on Friday the often curmudgeonly and deeply out of touch Mr. Krauthammer was right on with his column on gas prices. Excerpt:

At $3 a gallon, Americans just grin and bear it, suck it up and, while complaining profusely, keep driving like crazy. At $4, it is a world transformed. Americans become rational creatures. Mass transit ridership is at a 50-year high. Driving is down 4 percent. (Any U.S. decline is something close to a miracle.) Hybrids and compacts are flying off the lots. SUV sales are in free fall.

This clipmonkey recently bought a house close to a Metro station so that he wouldn't have to fill his gas tank up continually. Now other monkeys will start following in his pawsteps.

Eff Joe Lieberman

2008-06-07T15:24:00.003-04:00

Sen. Lieberman loves to pretend that he's a man of conscience, but really it's a cover for his warmongering agenda. As a fellow clipmonkey once told me, Lieberman, an aggressive opponent of violent video games, is okay with violence as long as it's the real thing. His current douchebaggery in support of the McCain campaign is particularly obnoxious. Nice to see that Obama b-slapped him, though. After this fall, Lieberman will be b-slapped by the entire Senate Democratic Caucus.

Yes she can

2008-06-07T15:21:00.002-04:00

At the end of the day, she lost because she faced a more charismatic candidate, ran a lousy campaign, and was just too pigheaded early on in the race to admit her mistake in authorizing the Iraq War. But don't count her out. If she's smart, she'll cast aside Gov. Paterson in New York, and use that as a steppingstone to claim the White House in 2016.

Huckabee gets cute

2008-01-01T21:17:00.000-05:00

In the presidential race thus far, Mike Huckabee has presented himself as a happy warrior, sort of a Gomer Pyle or Andy Griffith or Mr. Smith. But his latest stunt is an act of marketing genius. Maybe he's got a little George W. in him....

Huckabee and Obama pull ahead

2007-12-02T01:56:00.000-05:00

It's starting to get interesting......

Reason for optimism in '08

2007-10-06T00:12:00.000-04:00

Dem presidential candidates have raised nearly twice as much as Republicans this year.

'Cause I've got a crush on Obama

2007-10-06T00:07:00.001-04:00

The reason why- his unequivocal opposition to torture.

"To lead the world, we must lead by example. We must be willing to acknowledge our failings, not just trumpet our victories. And when I'm President, we'll reject torture - without exception or equivocation; we'll close Guantanamo; we'll be the country that credibly tells the dissidents in the prison camps around the world that America is your voice, America is your dream, America is your light of justice."

Finally!

In Defense of Brian Baird

2007-09-25T00:18:00.000-04:00

At a September 21 town hall meeting in Olympia that resembled more of a flogging in the town square than a community dialogue, Congressman Brian Baird commented, "The people who scare me the most are the people who are certain on either side (of the Iraq debate). It was absolute certainty that got us into this mess."

Ever since Congressman Baird returned from a recent visit to Iraq and mentioned that he had seen signs of progress, he has been savaged by constituents in his district as well as anti-war activists nationwide. He has been called a trained monkey of the Bush administration, a puppet of Dick Cheney and worse. Moveon.org has even aired ads in his district challenging his stance.

But given that Congressman Baird clearly and consistently opposed the war from the outset, is his stance a flip-flop or an honest appraisal of the current situation and a recognition of our nation's responsibility to the Iraqi people?

General David Petraeus’ report on the war in Iraq has been greeted with predictable responses from the right and the left. The pro-Bush faction has made dubious claims of progress (how legitimate can reports be that assess sectarian violence based on whether someone was shot in the back of the head?). While the usual suspects at moveon.org and DailyKos have blasted Petraeus for misleading, if not betraying the American people, and ramped up calls for a quick withdrawal.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on whether the United States should withdraw or maintain its force from Iraq, but who really knows?

It is conventional wisdom now that we were drawn into the war under false pretenses. Images of mushroom clouds and claims of Iraq’s ties to Al Qaeda were either exaggerated or fabricated outright. Even Alan Greenspan is now acknowledging the role of oil in the decision to go to war.

Regardless of how we got into the war, do we not have a responsibility to fix the mess we created? Do we not, as a nation, still owe a debt to the Iraqi people? Whether you supported the war or not, can the United States just walk away?

As Colin Powell famously commented to President Bush, misstating a Pottery Barn store policy, “If you break it, you own it.”

Well, we’ve clearly broken it, but would a rapid withdrawal make things better?

The last time we abandoned the Iraqis to their own devices, a bloodbath ensued. That was 1991, just as the first Gulf War was ending. After urging the Kurds and the Shiites to rise up against Saddam and saying we would back them up, President George H.W. Bush stood by while as many as 150,000 Shiite Iraqis were massacred by Saddam’s Army.

In the current war, conservative estimates suggest at least 73,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed. Other estimates suggest that over 300,000 have died. More than two million Iraqis have been displaced. Today, we face a challenge like the one facing Bush 41 at the end of the first Gulf War. If we abandon the Iraqis again, how many more will be slaughtered?

Seven soldiers recently penned an op-ed in the New York Times arguing the futility of continuing the war. They argued,

"Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched."

Two of those seven are dead now. Maybe they were right.

Meanwhile, General Petraeus, the guy who literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency operations, thinks we need more time. Petraeus is certainly not immune to political pressure, but is he engaged in a modern-day Pickett’s Charge of sending American men and women to their certain death? Would he be advocating for the continuation of a war that he knows is not winnable?

Either way we need a more honest discussion about the war, not more of the name-calling like that which Congressman Baird has faced. It would be especially nice if the Bush administration would finally admit that things are not going as rosy as they continually claim.

The administration lost all credibility years ago, but that doesn't change the question of what we should do now. Congressman Baird's sobering words about those who are certain are worth examining.

Bush Grows Up

2007-09-25T00:13:00.000-04:00

By nominating Michael Mukasey to be the next Attorney General and sparing us an ugly nomination fight, President Bush has finally shown some maturity and decency. Karl Rove has indeed left the White House.

Is Gonzales a liar or an idiot?

2007-07-29T13:46:00.000-04:00

The excruciatingly painful performances of Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee are evidence that the Attorney General is either an absentee leader of the Justice Department or a moron.

How many Monica Goodlings are there?

2007-05-25T18:54:00.000-04:00

If this moderately attractive alumna of a fake law school had this much power, how many others are there sabotaging our federal agencies?

Exposed for what they truly are

2007-03-18T23:25:00.000-04:00

It’s hard to tell what President Bush ultimately stands for- other than tax cuts for the rich and war for the poor- but one thing that is abundantly clear is that he is a ruthless partisan. Despite carrying himself as someone who would “change the tone” in Washington, President Bush more closely resembles Tony Soprano than a conciliatory politician.

At every turn during his presidency, Bush and his cronies have looked for opportunities to knife their political adversaries. Like a prison inmate facing a life sentence, they act as if they have nothing to lose attacking heroes like Max Cleland, eviscerating environmental policies, and ridiculing Congress.

Indeed, the most galling aspect of the Gonzales-US Attorney scandal is the fact that the attorneys were fired AFTER the Republicans got their derrieres handed to them in the last election. One might think the administration would be chastened after their evil plan to take over the world had been sidelined, but no, they take one more outrageous liberty on their way out of office. Who knows what else they’ll ram down our throats before they exit the White House?

She's in

2007-01-20T19:45:00.000-05:00

If nothing else, it will be an interesting cultural experiment.

Joementum or Joe Mama?

2006-07-22T08:20:00.000-04:00

Sen. Joe Lieberman is a vexing political figure for the Democratic Party in that he regularly comes to the defense of the party's political nemeses while continuing to be a truly decent guy. His high-profile support for the Iraq war and the infamous (and bizarre) kiss from President Bush at the State of the Union have turned the left-wing blogosphere against him with a fury. Having the left-wing bloggers root against you is usually a good thing- thus far I don't believe they've helped a Democratic candidate win a significant race yet (Howard Dean, Francine Busby, Paul Hackett)- but the intraparty strife is worrisome.

It's especially worrisome because the left-wing bloggers seem to have no institutional memory of the Democratic Party prior to 1998. All they seem to remember is impeachment and the recent losses at the presidential level. And, in truly bizarre fashion, their inspiration has come not from those who appeal to their ideals, but from those whom they despise- Karl Rove and Tom DeLay. They pray at the altar of party discipline, believing that all Democrats should believe what they do and "fight" for their agenda. They don't realize that without Susan Collins and Chris Shays and Dianne Feinstein and Joe Lieberman, today's moderates, Democrats would wield ZERO influence over the political process.

Sirota, Kos and the rest of the blogging crowd fail to recognize that the extremes are often wrong on both politics and policy. The framers of the Constitution established the many checks and balances so as to ensure that compromise and consensus would steer the political process. Just because a bunch of radicals from Texas hijacked our government doesn't mean that we should hijack it back for our own agenda.

Moderates are frustrating and wishy-washy, but they've made many important contributions to our political system. Sen. Lieberman deserves another term.

Bill Moyers: A Time for Heresy

2006-03-24T13:13:00.000-05:00

The always brilliant Bill Moyers once again delivers an insightful look at the culture of corruption in the US. It's a pernicious cocktail of religious zealotry and greed that undermines the institutions and that essential spirit of defiance that once defined America.

"This is a time for heresy. American democracy is threatened by perversions of money, power, and religion. Money has bought our elections right out from under us. Power has turned government 'of, by, and for the people' into the patron of privilege. And Christianity and Islam have been hijacked by fundamentalists who have made religion the language of power, the excuse for violence, and the alibi for empire. We must answer the principalities and powers that would force on America a stifling conformity. Either we make the heretical choices that will inspire us to renew our commitment to America’s deepest values and ideals, or the day will come when we will no longer recognize the country we love."

Thanks to Tompaine.com for posting the complete speech here.

Taking liberties with presidential power

2006-01-29T09:10:00.000-05:00

An interesting debate is occurring among the DC chattering class and run-of-the-mill political junkies about the effort inside the Bush administration to dramatically expand presidential power. The nomination of Samuel Alito, who pathologically defers to the executive on all matters of dispute between the president and Congress, makes this issue of even greater importance. Coupled with the recent revelation of the far-reaching domestic surveillance program under way, a robust debate should take place. By now it's clear that the president broke the law in establishing the domestic surveillance program. The question is now whether he was right or wrong to do so.

There are differing arguments about whether the administration would have obtained the authority to conduct surveillance if it had sought the approval of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court judges. This clipmonkey will assume that the administration would NOT have been given the authority because there often isn't any evidence of an actual crime, but merely communications with suspected terrorists. On this matter I'm willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, if you are corresponding with Al Qaeda, I believe our intelligence agencies, with the support of the president, have a responsibility to find out what you're up to.

However, when an administration hides behind "executive privilege" in refusing to hand over documents related to its response to Hurricane Katrina (while everyone else is handing over even their most embarrassing bits of information), it becomes clear that this expansion of presidential power is not an effort to keep us secure. In fact, it is an effort merely to keep the jobs of Republicans in the administration and in Congress secure. This is not protecting us from terrorists. This is shameful.

The Senate's drama queen

2005-12-23T10:04:00.000-05:00

After failing once again to secure approval for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), crotchety old Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens threatened to go to the states of all the senators who opposed his drilling plan to tell their constituents "what you've done." I'm sure it was just more bluster from the self-described "mean, miserable SOB," but if it's not I imagine many senators would welcome such an opportunity to discuss federal spending priorities.

I'm sure the senators would love to point out to their constituents and Sen. Stevens how much of their tax dollars are redistributed to the state of Alaska. I'm sure they'd love to point out how Alaskans don't pay any state income taxes, but instead receive an annual payment from their state government. This year every man, woman and child in Alaska received $845.76 from the fund merely for breathing the air in the 49th state.

DC Clipmonkey has written before about how Alaska's welfare mentality contradicts the state's image as a land of rugged individuals. I guess it's just one more example of how we've entered an age of hypocrisy. Sen. Stevens embodies that hypocrisy like no one else- a "conservative" who binges at the government trough.

It's time for Congress to do its job

2005-12-22T12:22:00.000-05:00

While many on the left are salivating over visions of impeachment hearings in response to the news of the president's domestic wiretapping program, it's important to acknowledge that the man's intentions, at least in this particular case, are not evil. Yes, he and Cheney do have some devilish designs on consolidating power within the executive branch. But if you had a friend who you knew was emailing Osama bin Laden, wouldn't you let the FBI know? I certainly would.

Clearly the administration overstepped its bounds. It should have at least sought the endorsement of those members of Congress serving on the intelligence committees before undertaking such a program. It should have even sought legislation that would have provided this authority. In fact, the refusal to seek congressional approval reveals a certain contempt or condescension toward the legislative branch and the American people.

As John Dean clearly laid out in his excellent book Worse Than Watergate, this administration has gone to incredible lengths to consolidate power in the executive. Maybe they felt they deserved such power or sincerely believed that it would not be granted by Congress. Considering that the administration has pretty much had its way with Congress for five years now, it would be surprising if such authority would not have been quickly provided, especially in the aftermath of 9/11.

Nearly half of Americans lack any trust in this administration. They are well-justified in this viewpoint. But there is no evidence that the administration has used this particular power to spy on Americans for political purposes. The administration certainly must be held accountable for spying on certain left-wing groups (including the Catholic Workers, a group this clipmonkey once considered joining) under other provisions within the law. That discovery warrants serious scrutiny. And we may find out about appalling excesses in the coming weeks, but until then this president deserves the benefit of the doubt. Many of his policies are loathsome, but he's no J. Edgar Hoover.

The real test now is what Congress will do next. Will it stage show hearings and express alarm while tacitly approving the surveillance program? Or will the Republicans in Congress finally fulfill their oversight role of the executive branch rather than continuing to serve as the pro-corporate, pro-Bush patsies they've been for the past five years?

The poor: Not a high priority for the religious right

2005-12-16T11:42:00.000-05:00

This writer has repeatedly excoriated "Christians" who spend their time demonizing gay people while ignoring the concerns of poor Americans. It has always been a mystery to me how these folks on the religious right could be such activists around so many causes (evolution, gay rights, nominating judges, tax cuts) yet completely disregard Christ's teachings with regard to the poor. Well, in a Washington Post story this week, many of these fixtures of the religious right explained why they do virtually nothing about the issue of poverty in America- it's just not a high priority.

Money quote:

"It's not a question of the poor not being important or that meeting their needs is not important," said Paul Hetrick, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, Dobson's influential, Colorado-based Christian organization. "But whether or not a baby is killed in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, that is less important than help for the poor? We would respectfully disagree with that."
Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal Christian journal Sojourners and an organizer of today's protest, was not buying it. Such conservative religious leaders "have agreed to support cutting food stamps for poor people if Republicans support them on judicial nominees," he said. "They are trading the lives of poor people for their agenda. They're being, and this is the worst insult, unbiblical."

Thank you, Jim Wallis, for calling attention to this staggering hypocrisy.

(Some) candor from Bush

2005-12-16T08:33:00.000-05:00

Dare I say it, but is President Bush starting to grow up? His childish refusal to admit mistakes during the first four years of his administration seems to have finally passed as this week he acknowledged that the prewar intelligence on Iraq was wrong and that the war itself has not been such great news for 30,000 dead Iraqis.

Of course, it was not a perfect week for Bush. He stated his belief that Tom DeLay was innocent on the charges currently pending against him, a comment that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid deemed a high-level act of jury tampering. News reports also revealed this week that the president has been trampling on the Constitution by authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals.

But these embarrassing instances aside, Bush did something else this week that has been extremely rare since he took office - compromise. On Thursday, he and torture enthusiast Dick Cheney gave up on their effort to retain the right of the CIA to torture detainees. Of course, loopholes abound in the president's compromise, but this is a step toward reestablishing our nation's traditional respect for human rights.

Are these signs that the administration is maturing? Compromising and speaking with candor are what adults do, but for the most part neither have been part of this administration's repertoire. With three painful years ahead under this regime, these actions offer a little hope.

Where the buck stops, nobody knows

2005-12-15T02:17:00.000-05:00

The influence of Bush’s new communications team is readily apparent in his recent spate of speechmaking. The same polling to which Bush claims he pays no attention has coerced his new crew into tacking in a new direction – one of forbearance, even a hint of *gasp* remorse for the lives stamped out along the warpath.

“It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,” Bush said. “As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq, and I am also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities and we're doing just that."

Not exactly an admittance of guilt or responsibility on his end, but a faux-mea culpa crafted to win him a few more percentage points and perhaps a kinder mention in the history books.

Still, Bush adds, "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision."

OK, we get it. No one has ever argued in favor of Saddam. We all know he was a power-hungry despot. But are we really better off? Well, when it comes to public enemies, there's no doubt we’d all be better off if Osama bin Laden were the one who's gone.

Regarding the state of Iraq, I’m afraid only time will tell. My hope is that the recent election leads to a stable democratic government in which all factions can function peacefully. My fear, however, is that Saddam’s formerly secular, albeit oppressive, government becomes a far-worse Islamo-fascist one down the road; one emulating an emboldened Iran or even the Taliban. It could also be that the civil war is just beginning, and what was the country of Iraq splits and spirals out of control, and drags the whole Middle East down with it.

By owning up to at least partial blame, Bush most likely expects the nation to pat him on the head and tell him it’s ok, we forgive him, and we’re proud that he’s finally acting like a grown-up, like some cousin with a drinking problem who made a fool of himself at a family wedding.

Not so easily swayed by hollow apologies, however, the American people seem in no mood to forgive and forget. Apologizing (especially when still blaming the intelligence community) is not enough. Until he is held accountable, Bush will not have paid any penance for the misdeeds and misconduct of this administration. And that won’t likely happen unless his enablers in Congress are thrown out in ‘06.

Under the radar: Plumbing the leaks

2005-12-09T14:24:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago WashPo reporter Dana Priest uncovered the news that the U.S. government was detaining some Al Qaeda suspects in several Eastern European countries, away from the attention of the Red Cross and safely in that netherworld where torture and prisoner treatment standards are nebulous. This was alarming, but not surprising news as it's been well-documented that this administration supports the use of torture and has used a variety of means to enable other countries to practice torture on terrorism suspects.

The one surprising thing about this episode was not that it was occurring, but how Republicans reacted to it. Rather than condemning the use of secret prisons, Messieurs Frist and Hastert initiated an inquiry into how news of the detention facilities was leaked to the press. They expressed no outrage about the facilities themselves. Sadly, this is today's Republican Party- more concerned about protecting its leaders than doing what is right. Even the Wall Street Journal supports the Republicans' pro-torture agenda.

Howard Dean's at it again

2005-12-09T13:59:00.000-05:00

Just when it seemed like the Democrats were on a roll that might carry them through November 2006, Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean recaptured the role of useful idiot for the Republicans. On a talk radio show early this week Dean commented, "The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong."

As with most of Mr. Dean's ill-timed statements, there may be some truth to this one. However, it was not a helpful comment and it ultimately depends on how you define winning. In fact, the best way out of Iraq may well be to simply declare victory and get out soon. If this is the case, Democrats and progressives who want us out should be shouting what a success the war has been. Although the country is a total mess, one could argue that we've already won- we've deposed Saddam, we've enabled the country to hold elections, we've enabled the Iraqis to govern themselves at least partially.

The problem with this latest statement is that it changes the subject from how poorly Bush is handling the Iraq war to are the Democrats treasonous naysayers? Howard Dean has made a significant contribution to the Democratic Party, but he should never have been chosen as its leader. Now he should step down and run for the Senate where he'll only embarrass a few hundred thousand people from the state of Vermont, not Democrats across the country.

In Bush's America, facts are for those who lack power

2005-12-02T10:47:00.000-05:00

John DiIulio, President Bush's former director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said it best in a story that appeared in Esquire Magazine in January 2003:

"There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

So it is with the news this week that political appointees in the Justice Department overruled the findings of a team of lawyers who unanimously concluded that the 2003 Texas redistricting plan, initiated by a certain indicted figure, was a violation of the Voting Rights Act. As we know, the plan was approved and five new Republicans were elected in Texas in 2004 singlehandedly increasing the Republican majority in the House.

Similarly, we learned several weeks ago that administration officials at the FDA had circumvented the agency's normal procedures to block Plan B emergency contraception from being available over the counter.

With this administration, the pattern is clear. There is no room for dispassionate policy analysis. Facts and data are merely for people who lack power. In this White House, there is only power and the will to exercise it.

Bring it on

2005-12-01T19:14:00.000-05:00

As memos continue to leak out revealing the activist leanings of Judge Samuel Alito, it's becoming clear that this man could be the guy to overturn Roe v. Wade. Of course, he won't say it during the course of his hearings and he'll look like a sweet little puppy when DiFi confronts him over some of his Reagan era writings. But sooner or later, we are going to have to deal with the fact that the right-wingers on the court are determined to overturn the right to an abortion.

While this action may be devastating for women for some years to come, it's time to air this spat before the entire nation. A solid majority of Americans believe that women should have the right to choose. And another solid segment of the Republican Party supports it, too. But both sides have been allowed to hide behind hypotheticals for decades. It's time to stand and be counted. Should the state force a woman to have a child against her will?

This writer strongly supports efforts to reduce abortions from occurring in the first place, but at the end of the day, he would NEVER take away a woman's right to choose. Would you, President Bush, or you Chief Justice Roberts, or you soon-to-be Justice Alito? It's time to bring this discussion out in the open.

What's another word for lying?

2005-11-28T16:12:00.000-05:00

In Slate last week, Jacob Weisberg explores the question of whether the Bush Administration deliberately misled the American public during the buildup before the Iraq war. His conclusion- it most certainly did. Money quote:

If you examine these [erroneous claims] and other pillars of the administration's case for invading Iraq, a clear pattern emerges. Bush officials first put clear pressure on the intelligence community to support their assumptions that Saddam was developing WMD and cooperating with al-Qaida. Nonetheless, significant contrary evidence emerged. Bush hawks then overlooked, suppressed, or willfully ignored whatever cut against their views. In public, they depicted unsettled questions as dead certainties. Then, when they were caught out and proven wrong, they resisted the obvious and refused to correct the record. Finally, when their positions became utterly untenable, they claimed that they were misinformed or not told. Call this behavior what you will, but you can't describe it as either "honest" or "truthful."

It's nice that Weisberg shows the administration the courtesy of not calling them liars, but let's be honest, the Administration presented Saddam as a clear and present danger to the United States. It simply wasn't true. Images of mushroom clouds and smoking guns were bandied about without any tangible evidence. Several years later not a single shred of evidence has emerged revealing that we were in any danger. Yes, even this writer thought that Iraq probably had WMDs, but he was skeptical about whether those weapons were a threat to us. Clearly, they were not. They lied.

The worst consequence of our actions is that they've given the radicals in the Middle East what they always wanted- a legitimate reason to hate us. They no longer have to hate us because of our support for Israel. They don't have to mention the sanctions we placed on Iraq which harmed so many children. Now they can just show pictures of the many thousands who have been killed since this war began.

We invaded a country that was no threat to us and may have spawned a civil war that could become a pan-Arab war. Way to go, President Bush.

Op-ed: Another difference between Democrats and Republicans

2005-11-18T12:09:00.000-05:00

DC Clipmonkey has had countless conversations with his many very liberal friends and acquaintances about whether it matters who wins presidential elections. During the 2000 election, he regularly battled with Nader supporters over whether it mattered if Gore or Bush won. He'd like to think that those debates have been clearly decided, but if not, it's important to remind those Naderites that there are small, but significant ways in which the current administration's policies contrast with those of hypothetical Gore and Kerry administrations every day.

This week another glaring example of this appeared in the news when a report revealed that political appointees at the FDA had overruled scientists in determining whether the morning-after pill, also known as Plan B, should be available without a prescription. For those friends of clipmonkey who aren't aware, Plan B is an emergency contraceptive that can prevent a woman from becoming pregnant if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Approved by the FDA in 1999 as a prescription drug, it is most effective within the first 24 hours after unprotected sex. If a woman is required to see a doctor and obtain a prescription, the delay could make the drug far less effective. For example, if the unprotected sex occurs over a weekend and no appointments are available until Monday, it could mean an unwanted pregnancy.

The GAO report found that the FDA did not follow its normal procedures in determining the status of Plan B, deferring instead to political appointees like Dr. Mark McClellan, the brother of beleaguered White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. During the course of the review process, McClellan repeatedly raised many of the objections to the drug's availability posed by various right-wing "Christian" groups.

This case is but another example of how the current administration simply hands off decision-making to one interest group or another regardless of the evidence or policy impact. Remarkably, it also raises the question of whether the policies of Bush and the religious zealots who back him have actually increased abortions.

Do these so-called Christians actually care about reducing abortions or do they simply like to use the issue as a cudgel with which to win elections?

Must-read: The case against torture

2005-11-15T14:37:00.000-05:00

It's fascinating to think how different the world would be had Al Gore been elected president back in 2000. Would we be anywhere near Iraq right now? Would global warming be on the national agenda? Would 9/11 have even occurred?

But an even more interesting question for this moment is what the world would be like if Sen. John McCain (pictured in a Hanoi hospital) had secured the Republican nomination in 2000 and become president. Over the years, McCain has proven himself to be a decent, reasonable man. On issues ranging from health care to gun control, he has been a voice of moderation and compromise. Although something of a hawk on national security, it's hard to imagine that the war in Iraq would have been fought as it has been or even at all under a McCain administration.

One thing that would certainly be different is our government's policy on torture. McCain, a victim of torture himself, knows how reprehensible and impractical the use of torture is. He lays it out beautifully right here. Money quote:

To prevail in this war we need more than victories on the battlefield. This is a war of ideas, a struggle to advance freedom in the face of terror in places where oppressive rule has bred the malevolence that creates terrorists. Prisoner abuses exact a terrible toll on us in this war of ideas. They inevitably become public, and when they do they threaten our moral standing, and expose us to false but widely disseminated charges that democracies are no more inherently idealistic and moral than other regimes. This is an existential fight, to be sure. If they could, Islamic extremists who resort to terror would destroy us utterly. But to defeat them we must prevail in our defense of American political values as well. The mistreatment of prisoners greatly injures that effort.

John McCain is a man truly worthy of the presidency. Too bad George W. Bush and his sleazy benefactors deprived our nation of this man's leadership.

Alaska, Aleutian for "land of government waste"

2005-11-13T19:27:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens gave an indignant speech on the Senate floor in response to a proposed amendment that would cut some pork designated for his home state and redistribute it to the ravaged Gulf Coast region. Stevens warned his colleagues:

"I will put the Senate on notice -- and I don't kid people -- if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state and take money only from our state, I will resign from this body."

Unfortunately for our nation's fiscal health, it didn't come to that. The amendment was defeated 82-15 and Alaska will continue to receive its ridiculously disproportionate share of government largesse. But this episode has called attention to the scandalous amount of tax dollars that ends up in the pockets of Alaskans.

Alaska is a stunningly beautiful place. It remains one of the last places in the world where you can truly witness nature unencumbered by human beings. On two trips there I've encountered grizzly bears, a wolverine, watched multitudes of salmon swim upstream, and viewed towering mountain ranges. On these trips, I've been impressed by the kind of rugged individualism it takes to live in Alaska. You've got to be tough to survive those winters.

With that toughness, Alaska's conservatism seemed to make sense. I imagined that Alaskans had a self-reliant, independent streak. In reality, Alaska is an enormous welfare state that would make the Europeans blush. Its residents pay no sales or income tax and each year every man, woman and child who has lived in Alaska for the preceding year receives a dividend check from the Alaska Permanent Fund. This year it's $845.76 just for breathing the Alaska air.

Meanwhile, Alaska receives more federal spending per capita than ANY state, $1,150 per person. And soon, U.S. taxpayers are poised to spend $223 million for a bridge to nowhere in the 49th State.

Any notion of conservatism and self-reliance among Alaskans is nothing more than a myth. It's time to cut Alaska and Sen. Stevens off. Learn more about the "bridge to nowhere" and how Alaska's congressional delegation is fleecing you from Taxpayers for Common Sense.

A glimpse of what's to come?

2005-11-09T15:04:00.000-05:00

It's premature to call the solid victories by Democrats Tim Kaine and Jon Corzine a bellwether for the 2006 elections. Much can happen between now and then to change the political landscape and there were many factors unique to their respective states that enabled Kaine and Corzine to win. But yesterday's results are certainly a promising sign for Democrats.

Tim Kaine's victory in Virginia was a resounding rejection of the Republican attack dog style of politics which has been employed so successfully in recent decades. Kaine's opponent, Jerry Kilgore, tried to tap deep into the Republicans' arsenal of wedge issues, bashing illegal immigrants and stoking fear of death row killers, most prominently. For some reason, he forgot to bash gays. Fortunately, Kilgore's vapid negative campaign failed miserably.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey Jon Corzine won an ugly, nasty election he was widely expected to win. No great lesson came out of Corzine's race other than a reminder that New Jersey is now a safely blue state.

What does all this portend for the 2006 election? Probably not much, but after the devastating loss of 2004 it feels good to be a Democrat again.

What's really the matter with Kansas

2005-11-08T19:15:00.000-05:00

On Nov. 8th, 2006 the Kansas Board of Education formally filed for a divorce from reality. By a 6-4 margin, board members adopted new public-school standards that elevate the concept of intelligent design to the same academic standing as the theory of evolution.

This is particularly distressing at a time when less American kids are going into fields involving Math and Science. While China produces 150,000 programmers per year, children in Kansas will be forced to study supernatural causes for opposable thumbs. Not only is this decision damaging to the children of Kansas; it also perpetuates an ugly, anti-intellectual crusade intended to introduce a very Christian God into every classroom in the United States.

Charles Krauthammer writes a very stirring op-ed piece explaining the blatant fraud of intelligent design.

(Dis)Honorable mention: Delay’s lame excuse for uncontrolled spending

2005-11-04T14:13:00.000-05:00

Chris Cillizza over at The Fix reports on a speech given by Tom DeLay today at a meeting of the Heritage Foundation, in which he attempts to pin the blame for reckless spending on congressional democrats:

“DeLay used the appearance to attack Democrats for their alleged lack of willingness to cooperate with Republicans in making cuts to bring the budget back into line. ‘Washington Democrats believe that every single penny of the $2.5 trillion the federal government lays out is wisely spent on efficient programs vital to the national interests of the American people,’ said DeLay. No wonder their new slogan is 'We can do better.' Anyone can do better than that!’ (Cue cymbal crash)”

Right. We’re supposed to believe that the Democrats - who control no branch of government; who have been essentially locked out of negotiations; and whose amendments to reign in spending were shot down – are the ones to blame for driving the federal budget into the gutter.

So how would republicans define “programs vital to the national interests of the American people?" Here’s a telling excerpt from the Baltimore Sun:

“The Senate approved yesterday a far-reaching measure that would trim spending for Medicare, Medicaid and other domestic benefit programs, to save $35 billion over five years, and allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

Outrage of the week: Cheney promotes from within

2005-11-04T01:01:00.000-05:00

DeLay dismissing his judge? Michael Brown's narcissism? Samuel Alito's nomination? Actually, it was the naming of Scooter's replacements that comes in first this week on our list of outrages.

Vice President Cheney announced this week Scooter's replacements… in plural. Apparently it takes two aides to stonewall Congress, orchestrate the exposure of a CIA agent out of spite, and declare that the Iraq insurgency is in its last throes. Get some rest, Mr. Cheney. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

Maureen Dowd explains it best, in her column, Chain, Chain, Chain of Cheney Fools:

"Once Scooter left, many people, including a lot of alarmed conservatives and moderate Republicans, were hoping that W. and Vice would throw open some White House windows to let the air and sun in, and climb out of that incestuous, secretive, vindictive, hallucinatory dark hole they've been bunkered in for five years."

"But they like it in their paranoid paradise. One of the most confounding aspects of W.'s exceedingly confounding presidency is his apparent unwillingness to consider that anyone who ever worked for him - and was in any way responsible for any of the disasters now afflicting his administration - should be jettisoned."

"This is not loyalty. This is myopia."

Alito: the Anti-Harriet Miers

2005-11-01T13:41:00.000-05:00

With Bush's announcement of Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court yesterday, a jurist with quite a paper trail, he shot down all that talk about the end of conspicuous supreme court nominees.

The Roberts and Miers nominations reinforced the theory that future nominees could only be enigmas - someone who could skate by without revealing too much of their ideology or previous record on hot-button issues. The problem is that only works when the nominee's supporters have enough clout with the public and can make a compelling enough argument as to why their pick should earn a seat on the court.

Democrats might not approve of his opinions, but John Roberts was successful at appearing thoughtful, saying just enough, and appearing worthy of the court. Roberts was also fortunate enough to receive the nomination prior to Hurricane Katrina, which opened many eyes to the Bush Hackocracy.

With his approval ratings in the high-30's and the sour taste of cronyism still strong in our mouths after the "heckuva job" Brownie did to New Orleans, Bush made a monumental mistake choosing Miers, a shameless sycophant completely unqualified for the Supreme Court. Trust me, Bush told us, he knows her heart. The same way he knows Putin's, or Chalabi's, or Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's, we assume. Luckily for us, Americans are no longer buying that line, especially Congressional Republicans up for election in ’06 who are distancing themselves from an administration sinking faster than a margarita in Jenna Bush’s hands.

Bush's handlers must have realized that when it's left up to him, he's utterly incapable of making a coherent, logical argument as to why his pick should be appointed. So they give us Samuel Alito as the anti-Harriet Miers, a conservative judicial activist in the worst way, with a clear record of infringing upon Americans' privacy rights, siding with big business over working families, and advocating to set back civil rights for minorities.

President Bush has always found it is easier to let his base make the decisions and defend them, rather than defending his choices from his base. It's much less work for him. Unfortunately, when extremists have their way, mainstream America is the loser. Now the far-Right Wing of the Republican Party has their nominee and will shove it down our collective throats. And Bush - after having kowtowed to them - will stand aside and let the extremist attack dogs scream for an up-or-down vote on Alito, something they denied to Miers. All Bush has to do is keep his mouth shut.

Spotlight on Dick Cheney

2005-10-28T10:55:00.000-04:00

The Vice President has always been a shadowy, Wizard of Oz-like figure presumed to be pulling levers behind the scenes in the Bush White House. Of late, he's garnered attention for his involvement in the unfolding Valerie Plame/CIA leak scandal. Indeed, it appears Cheney may have even started the entire mess. But as Karl Rove and the VP's pal, Scooter Libby, practice their perp walks, the roguish Cheney continues to walk freely while doing his best to shame the United States and earn the scorn of the entire world.

His latest misguided project is ensuring that CIA interrogators retain the right to practice torture on detainees. This is an interesting move by Cheney considering he doesn't even think the CIA should be charged with its primary functions, gathering and analyzing intelligence. As he demonstrated in the lead-up to the Iraq War, Cheney doesn't trust the CIA, so he and SecDef Donald Rumsfeld set up the Office of Special Plans within the Defense Department to build the case for war (Newsweek lays the entire story out here.). According to the British newspaper the Guardian,

"The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war. "

In another time and with a less compliant news media, Dick Cheney would be a ridiculed figure. His public statements would be laughed at by reporters much like the words of the infamous Iraqi information minister. To wit,

"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." -Cheney, June 20, 2005.

"Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." -Cheney, March 16, 2003.

Meanwhile, his current, er, former employer, Halliburton, continues to win huge contracts from the U.S. government despite innumerable shady dealings. Cheney continues to receive a deferred salary from the company and owns stock options worth as much as $8 million.

Now, the Vice President is battling with a torture survivor, Sen. John McCain, to protect the right of our government to commit torture. This is coming from a guy who received five deferments from serving in Vietnam.

The man is truly shameless.

A glimpse at Corporate America

2005-10-26T10:18:00.000-04:00

After a brief foray into corporate responsibility following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, is back at its usual ways of gutting employee benefits and freeloading off the government to care for its employees. In a memo obtained by the New York Times, Wal-Mart has revealed its true colors- it wants to cut employee benefits without looking too awful in the eyes of the public.

The proposals laid out in the memo include:

discouraging unhealthy employees from accepting work at Wal-Mart by requiring that "all jobs include some physical activity,"
hiring more part-time workers, and
attracting more young workers at lower pay since older workers are no more productive.

The memo acknowledged that in cutting benefits Wal-Mart must walk softly because 46 percent of the children of its 1.33 million U.S. employees lack health insurance or receive Medicaid. I guess times are tight for the Walton family since the company only earned $10.5 billion last year.

Meanwhile, another industry with questionable business practices is reporting jaw-dropping earnings this week. ExxonMobil is expected to announce today that it has earned the largest quarterly profit of any company ever!

I wonder what proposals for corporate welfare Congress has in store for the oil companies now?

Op-ed: Standard Operating Procedure

2005-10-20T14:18:00.000-04:00

The Weekly Standard has revealed what I’ve suspected for years. Unethical, amoral, and probably criminal behavior is the hallmark of conservative governing. Jeffrey Bell and William Kristol unite to search low but not high for an explanation to the unfortunate fact that the entire Republican leadership seems to be under investigation. Bell and Kristol might find the answer to their probing question if they were to look within; of course, conservatives are incapable of introspection, reflection, or any other form of self-critical analysis.

Still I must query the authors: if conservatives control the executive and legislative branches of government (not to mention that a majority of the Supreme Court has been appointed by Republican presidents), how could a conspiracy of criminalization exist – let alone thrive – in the first place? Democrats, both liberal and moderate, are on the outside looking in and the so-called “moderate Republican” is such a rare species that it couldn’t possibly exert a significant influence. No, it seems to me that other forces must be at work.

I suggest two alternatives. First, conservatives are cannibals. This seems far-fetched and, as Bell and Kristol note, so many conservative leaders are under investigation for so many transgressions that the cannibalistic explanation seems incomplete as well. For this explanation to hold, conservatives would have to be cannibals on the order of gerbils and I for one have a hard time believing – given their limited appetite for thought – that they could devour much above the order of a lost expedition. My point is that they wouldn’t choose to eat their own. Rather they would only attempt to stomach themselves if driven to it by some force majeure.

The second alternative is that DeLay, Libby, Rove, Frist, and Co. may be miscreants whose bad acts have run afoul of the system of laws that we as a nation cherish. Admittedly this is a less sexy explanation but it’s where I’ll put my money. Under this premise there is no vast any-wing conspiracy presently at work – only wrongdoers and conscientious enforcers of the law. In short, the dilemma for Bell and Kristol is not that there is a conspiracy that is out to criminalize conservative governance; rather, it’s that there isn’t one in place to shield them from their criminal acts. I guess that will give them something to work for in 2006.

-This post was written by Brookland Clipmonkey.

Outrage of the week: Screwing the troops, Part II

2005-10-19T11:29:00.000-04:00

It continues to amaze DC Clipmonkey how members of the military get routinely screwed by their leaders yet continue to strongly support their government (For Part I, click here). It is particularly stunning how anyone in the military would vote Republican after the disaster that is the war in Iraq.

The fruitlessness and short-sightedness of the Iraq war aside, in recent weeks we've learned:

Injured soldiers who've returned to the U.S. are continuing to receive combat zone wages, but are later sent huge bills to repay the government for its mistake.
The Armed Forces earn $120 million from on-base slot machines, forcing many servicemembers into debt (You can't help but wonder if Abramoff is behind this.).
The Army has tried to cover-up the truth about how football star-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan.

These bits of news come on the heels of a Pentagon report that the Bush Administration failed to pay attention to prewar intelligence that "predicted the factional rivalries now threatening to split Iraq." According to USA Today:

"In an ironic twist, the policy community was receptive to technical intelligence (the weapons program), where the analysis was wrong, but apparently paid little attention to intelligence on cultural and political issues (post-Saddam Iraq), where the analysis was right," they write.

U.S. servicemembers, Pat Tillman's family and the American people deserve better than the dishonest, short-sighted, malevolent leadership of the current administration and its civilian cronies at the Pentagon.

Update: For even more military shenanigans, click here.

Virginia 2005 or California 1994?

2005-10-14T08:09:00.000-04:00

In 1994, California Gov. Pete Wilson (R) staked his reelection campaign on Proposition 187, a measure to deny public services to illegal immigrants. The strategy was extremely successful, helping Wilson to garner 55% of the vote that year alongside the 59% support won by the anti–illegal immigrant ballot measure.

During the 1994 campaign, Gov. Wilson also eagerly contrasted his strong support for the death penalty with his opponent’s (Kathleen Brown) opposition to it due to her Catholic faith. Nevermind the fact that Wilson had allowed only a handful of executions to proceed during his first term in Sacramento.

Lastly, Wilson trotted out another old reliable – painting his opponent as a tax-and-spend liberal. Again, he did this despite the fact that Wilson himself had raised taxes in his first budget by $7 billion.

When Republicans lack any positive agenda, they trot out wedge issues that terrify suburban moms and inflame angry white men. They bash illegal immigrants. They stoke fear of crime. And they cast their opponents as tax-and-spend liberals. The mind-numbing simplicity and effectiveness of it are a sad commentary on the electorate. Has anything changed in the past decade? In Virginia, probably not.

Jerry Kilgore, the Republican candidate for governor, has ripped his opponent, Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine, for seeking a responsible policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, personally opposing the death penalty, and pursuing reasonable tax increases to address Northern Virginia's horrendous traffic problems. It's the same garbage that has helped Republicans divide and conquer this nation for the past two decades.

Tim Kaine is an honorable man who has worked to advance civil rights, help the poor in America and abroad, and serve the public. Hopefully, Virginians will stand up to this naked attempt to wedge the voting public. You can help, too.

The case against Miers

2005-10-07T15:05:00.000-04:00

Rick Bender, President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, explains in his latest column that what we do know about Harriet Miers is enough to oppose her nomination to SCOTUS:

"Harriet Miers lacks judicial experience so very little is known about where she stands on touchstone social issues like abortion, privacy, assisted suicide and the like. However, she has plenty of experience defending Microsoft, Walt Disney Corp. and other large corporations.

"In fact, Miers headed a law firm, Locke Liddell & Sapp, that’s part of the multi-billion-dollar 'union avoidance' industry, counseling employers on how to keep their workers from organizing unions. Her firm also touts on the Internet: 'We defend OSHA (occupational safety) claims of any type, including multiple death cases."

Read Bender's full column, CEOs aren't sweating Bush's Supreme Court nominations.

There's some hope for the American people

2005-10-07T09:02:00.000-04:00

Bush continues to tumble in the polls. From CBS News:

PRESIDENT BUSH President Bush's job approval rating has fallen to his lowest rating ever. 37 percent now approve of the job he is doing as president, while 58 percent disapprove. Those in his own party are still overwhelmingly positive about his performance (nearly 80 percent approve), but the president receives little support from either Democrats or Independents. And while views of President Bush have lately not changed much among Republicans or Democrats, his approval rating among Independents has dropped 11 points since just last month, from 40 percent to 29 percent now.

Now that he's enraged the right-wing with the nomination of lightweight Harriet Miers, he might be under 30 within the month.

A failure of leadership

2005-10-06T10:36:00.000-04:00

Because President Bush wouldn't set standards regarding the appropriate treatment of detainees, the Senate had no other choice. Thank you, senators, for voting 90-9 to restore some dignity to this nation.

In case you are wondering, here is a list of the pro-torture nine:

Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stevens (R-AK)

I guess Oklahoma is now known as "The Torture State."

Op-ed: America's prestige indefinitely detained

2005-10-06T00:06:00.000-04:00

You know America’s in trouble when Saudi women scoff at pronouncements of "freedom on the march" from Bush’s mouthpiece, Karen Hughes.

Hughes recently toured the Middle East on a mission to win over the hearts and minds of all those skeptics who sense more than a small gap between our words and our deeds. But as one Turkish woman told Ms. Hughes, "This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero."

Her beliefs aren’t completely baseless. President Bush is seemingly uninterested in investigating prisoner abuse beyond Lynndie England and her cohorts. In the eyes of the world - and unfortunately our own troops - his inaction is seen as complicity. Consequently, more photos of prisoner abuse will soon be released, and soldiers are talking openly with congressional leaders about the torture still occurring not only in Iraq, but our other “detention center,” Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo.

The detainees at Guantanamo are not in prison - prisons are for criminals convicted of a crime. Camp X-Ray is not a jail either - jails are for those awaiting sentencing, and there’s little evidence trials are forthcoming. So we’ll go on calling it a “detention center” or “incarceration facility,” or whatever politically-correct term Alberto Gonzalez can think up for “place where people go to disappear for indefinite periods of time off-limits to public scrutiny.”

That might explain why Camp X-Ray prisoners are entering their second month of a hunger strike. Previous hunger strikes have failed when prisoners were force-fed nutrients through a tube forced down their nose. It wouldn’t look good for America to have a mass extinction of prisoners, now would it?

Google the words “Guantanamo” and “hunger strike” and you’ll see the story has received attention across the globe - everywhere except here in America, that is.

So who can blame the rest of the world for being a little skeptical about Ms. Hughes’ PR trip to the Middle East? If America is to lead by example, then our leaders must end the disgrace at Gitmo, put these alleged terrorists on trial for the crimes of which they are accused, and eliminate once and for all the abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

Until then, our leaders will fail to restore America’s international prestige. As Bill Maher said of President Bush, “I don’t doubt that you love your country. I’m just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side…”

Must-read: George Will on Harriet Miers

2005-10-05T22:57:00.000-04:00

Whether or not you agree with her political ideology, Harriet Miers simply does not belong on the Supreme Court, and the stench of cronyism will remain heavy over her Senate hearings.

It's not often this clipmonkey sees eye to eye with George Will. To his credit however, Mr. Will puts aside partisan gamesmanship to live up to the traditional ideals of Conservative ideology (long since forgotten by Bush and the neo-cons) and make an outstanding case in opposition to Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court:

"First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due."

Read George Will's entire column: "Can this nomination be justified?"

Bush and the K Street hurricane-industrial complex

2005-09-30T03:14:00.000-04:00

As baffling as Bush’s big-government, fiscally promiscuous administration has been, it is equally baffling how Bush’s supporters can call for limited government while they get in line for the next government handout.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the K Street sharks would come swimming once Bush threw $200+ billion worth of chum into the water. The Washington Post reports, “Oil refiners, bond issuers, air carriers, manufacturers, insurancers and farmers are among the interests clamoring for Congress to include their wish lists in Katrina-related legislation.”

As my fellow clipmonkeys have pointed out, the conservative ideology is dead. Their supposed standard bearer, George Bush, has betrayed the faith, and yet, those who voted for him - from farmers to CEOs - seem not the slightest bit concerned over massive trade and spending deficits, unprecedented pork-barrel spending, and myriad examples of billions simply being lost. It seems the new breed of conservative shuns handouts only when they're not the direct recipient.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

2005-09-29T10:28:00.000-04:00

One architect of sleaze gives way for another.

Here's a little about the new Majority Leader, courtesy of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

In 2003, Rep. Blunt divorced his wife of 31 years to marry Philip Morris (now Altria) lobbyist Abigail Perlman. Before it was known publicly that Rep. Blunt and Ms. Perlman were dating – and only hours after Rep. Blunt assumed the role of Majority Whip – he tried to secretly insert a provision into Homeland Security legislation that would have benefitted Philip Morris, at the expense of competitors.

In addition, Rep. Blunt’s son Andrew lobbies on behalf of Philip Morris, a major client he picked up only four years out of law school. Notably, Altria is Rep. Blunt’s largest campaign contributor, having donated more than $270,000 to political committees tied to him.

More ideological bankruptcy from the Republicans

2005-09-29T09:20:00.000-04:00

Following up on Brookland Clipmonkey's fine post from yesterday, an article from last week's LA Times about the post-Katrina relief effort reveals how success has undermined the principles of the Republican Party. Check out the excerpt below with a money quote from Newt:

At least in the case of housing, critics say that the president's unwillingness to rely on existing programs could raise costs. Instead of offering $10,000 vouchers, FEMA is paying an average of $16,000 for each trailer in the new parks it is contemplating. Even many Republicans wonder why the government would want to build trailer parks when many evacuees are now living in communities with plenty of vacant, privately owned apartments.

"The idea that — in a community where we could place people in the private housing market to reintegrate them into society — we would put them in [trailer] ghettos with no jobs, no community, no future, strikes me as extraordinarily bad public policy, and violates every conservative principle that I'm aware of," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican.

"If they do it," Gingrich said of administration officials, "they will look back on it six months from now as the greatest disaster of this administration."

What has happened to the Grand Ole Party?

This is what patriotism looks like

2005-09-28T16:26:00.000-04:00

Today's WP publishes a letter from an Army Captain who tried for 17 months to determine what the U.S. policy on treating detainees was. As you can imagine, he failed. For commentary, go here. For the letter, go here. But first, read this money quote:

Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda's, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Don't blame Lynndie England. This is the fault of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Flanigan, and many, many others. They have shamed our nation.

Tom DeLay indicted

2005-09-28T13:20:00.000-04:00

From the Washington Post- DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe.

Karl Rove, you're next.

Op-ed: The Conservative Movement: Principally a bankrupt ideology

2005-09-28T09:35:00.000-04:00

The headline of Tuesday’s Washington Post reads: “FEMA Plans to Repay Faith Groups for Aid”. The article, which reports on efforts by Congress and the administration to reimburse faith-based organizations for the aid they have provided in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, primarily emphasizes the problems such reimbursements would create under the doctrine of separation of church and state. From a more fundamental perspective, however, the push for reimbursements by Republican leaders and conservative groups illuminates just how ideologically bankrupt the conservative movement has become.

Reagan Republicans, Republican Revolutionists, and the Bushies used to argue for limited government based on the principle that private charity was the more effective and virtuous avenue for directing aid to the needy. This argument was a corollary of the proposition that private markets always produce more efficient outcomes than markets marked by government intervention. The theory went that instead of devising big government programs concerned with the general welfare we should shrink government, cut taxes, and let charitable organizations funded by private donations provide solace and support to those in need. This principle was no small part of the conservative ideology. And, as we find out, it’s no part at all of the conservative practice.

Bush, Cheney, Rove, Frist, DeLay, Norquist, Abramoff, George Will, the Heritage Foundation and the rest of the Conservative Movementarians remembered the tax cutting part of the formula, at least for the jet set crowd. Unfortunately, in their haste to raid the piggybank they seem to have forgotten the part about private charities being the better resource for allocating altruism. Under the proposed scheme private charities will become public charities financed by the U.S. taxpayer. To make matters worse, the religious right has evidently begun taking its cues from Halliburton. Why compete in the private sector when the Republicans have opened Uncle Sam’s wallet like Bill Bennett at Bally’s to anyone on the Right side of things?

Apparently the point is not – as free market capitalists would have us believe – that government prima facie should not undertake certain activities, rather the point is that government should give money to Republican constituencies to undertake those same activities. (It’s considered a bonus if there’s a chance to proselytize along the way.) Then instead of bloated government, we’ll have bloated fat cats. Of course we’ll have bloated budget deficits too but that doesn’t matter to the folks who are lining their pockets and stocking the coffers of the RNC. If you’ve got an invite, it really is a Grand Old Party!

The conservative movement has gone from the principled (but wrong) argument that government should not intervene to provide for the general welfare because it crowds out donations to private charities, which otherwise would achieve more optimal outcomes, to the unprincipled (and still wrong) practice that churches that open their doors to those in need should suckle off the teat of Lady Liberty. Market intervention is market intervention. But apparently conservative ideology is more malleable. In any case, the doctrinal wellspring of conservatism has run dry. Say an ode; hold your nose.

-This post was written by Brookland Clipmonkey.

Outrage of the week: What they always wanted

2005-09-28T08:14:00.000-04:00

An excuse to ravage our nation's natural resources.

Finally, a call for sacrifice

2005-09-27T09:14:00.000-04:00

President Bush loves to say that we are a nation at war. At every opportunity he mentions this to remind people that he's tough and to justify his misguided policies. But he's never asked any of us to sacrifice for the war in Iraq or anything else. After five years of running up the national credit card bill, giving us tax cuts, prescription drug benefits, and a war we cannot afford, Bush has finally asked us to do something for the good of our country.

Too bad President Bush is not following his own advice.

Corruption and fiscal mismanagement

2005-09-26T17:49:00.000-04:00

The recent news that a Bush administration official is ensnared in a corruption probe and the rampant waste, fraud and abuse by companies working in Iraq and on the Katrina cleanup with ties to the Bushies and Republicans in Congress will be the party's downfall in 2006.

Outrage of the week: Bush just doesn't get it

2005-09-23T01:44:00.000-04:00

One of the most appalling revelations since Hurricane Katrina was that the head of FEMA, Michael Brown, was utterly unqualified and unprepared for the job at hand. Americans, not fond of cronyism (in theory), demanded to know how someone without any crisis management experience could lead our country's first responders before, during, and after an actual crisis. Apparently, all it took was being a pioneer in the Elect and Re-elect Bush campaigns to be the next in line for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Bush comforted many Americans after 9/11, and convinced many people to vote for him this past election cycle, by telling them he’s the one to keep them safe. It’s difficult however, to imagine how. First, it was disregard for CIA warnings about Osama and airplanes. Bush followed that monumental intelligence failure with another - a war to round up those WMDs that could be used against us (but fear not, he said, for we’d be greeted as liberators).

Then on display for the world to see was the rampant incompetence among those Bush chose to lead FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, as if the threat of natural disaster was somehow less significant than that from al Qaeda.

The latest example: Bush’s latest nominee to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security is Julie Myers, “a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience to head the troubled law enforcement agency that handles those issues,” as the Washington Post reports.

How did she get the nod from Bush to be the one to crack down on jihadists sneaking across the border with backpacks full of plutonium? WaPo lets us in: "Her uncle is Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She married Chertoff's current chief of staff, John F. Wood, on Saturday."

Ah, yes. So once again, Mr. Bush will take our national security and bet it all on Papa's Moustache in the third.

Either Bush just doesn’t get it, or worse, he just doesn’t care. It also explains his belief in limited government; as Daily Show Senior Fiscal Policy Analyst Rob Corrdry explains: "the president believes government should be limited not in size but in effectiveness."

Must-read: Mark Shields says it's time America did some soul searching

2005-09-23T01:35:00.000-04:00

Mark Shields writes an excellent column posted at CNN about the wake-up call for America that was Hurricane Katrina. If we are to make it as a country - a great country - we can no longer stay the course and allow the gap between the rich and poor to continue to widen. The pendulum must swing back, and we must provide for all Americans, not just the lucky few.

Here's an abridged version:

"Political attention has been fixed on the "Individual Me," not on the "Collective We." Ronald Reagan loved to recall how he had voted four times for Franklin Roosevelt, who asserted what would be contemporary heresy in his Second Inaugural: "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

"By the time the Gipper, himself, won the White House, his question was not: Are we better off -- are the strong among us more just, are the weak among us more secure? No, Reagan's appeal was to the self-absorbed individual: "Are YOU better off than you were four years ago?"

"After New Orleans, the poor can no longer be invisible. "

"We may not be the masters of our destiny, but we can certainly be the captains of our souls. After New Orleans, the appalling silence of good people can no longer be
excused. These are our fellow Americans, our brothers and our sisters. "

"More than our gross national product or all the Dow Jones averages, how we honor and treat those among us who possess the least will tell us more about our national character, pride and values."

Read the full column here.

Must-read: Richard Cohen on Bush and race

2005-09-20T10:30:00.000-04:00

Cohen gets it right in today's Washington Post (where the opinion pieces are still FREE- screw you, NYT), it's incompetence, not racism. Money quote:

We owe the poor our special consideration. We especially owe the black poor an appreciation of their plight and their dolorous history. But in general it was incompetence, not racism, that slowed the relief effort -- incompetence on the local and state levels, too, and incompetence on the part of black as well as white public officials. The search for racist scapegoats does the poor no good. This relief effort ought to start, above all, with some clear thinking.

Live to fight another day

2005-09-19T16:08:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post said it first Sunday, but this clipmonkey's been saying it for some time. John Roberts should be confirmed by a solid, nearly unanimous vote.

Roberts has proven himself fully qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. Admittedly, he was not the most forthright nominee in confirmation hearing history, but his credentials are impressive and nothing came up during his hearings that disqualified him. Of course, many left-wing clipmonkeys would prefer Laurence Tribe or Mario Cuomo or some such liberal, but we lost the election last November and we can't change that.

Left-wing interest groups are creating hysteria over Roberts, as they did with Justice Souter's nomination a while back ("Stop Souter or women will die"). They may even be right that Roberts will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Unfortunately, little can be done a) to predict that, and b) to make President Bush pick someone acceptable to the left. That's why Democrats should conserve their ammunition in case Bush nominates some genuine nut such as Janice Rogers Brown for the high court.

For now, though, Senate Democrats should show this president the same courtesy extended to Bill Clinton and his nominees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, nearly unanimous support. The best we can do is hope that Roberts recognizes that many Americans do not grow up with all of the opportunities that he had, and start working to help win the majority in the Senate in '06 and the presidency in '08.

Outrage of the week: Lights on for Bush, off for everyone else

2005-09-16T11:53:00.000-04:00

From Brian Williams' blog:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

We are all liberals now

2005-09-16T09:23:00.000-04:00

Standing in front of the Magic Kingdom, President Bush proposes a lavish effort to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina and confront poverty with "bold action." Tom DeLay says there is no fat left to cut in the federal budget. MSNBC host, former Republican Congressman, and Bush lackey Joe Scarborough is reexamining his views on the role of the federal government. Newt Gingrich is working with Hillary Clinton on improving our health care system.

What's next, Rush Limbaugh calling for an end to the war on drugs?

The Onion gets it right once again

2005-09-16T09:02:00.000-04:00

Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth

September 14, 2005 HOUSTON—On Tuesday, Halliburton received a $110 million no-bid government contract to pry the gold fillings from the mouths of deceased disaster victims in the New Orleans-Gulf Coast area. "We are proud to serve the government in this time of crisis by recovering valuable resources from the wreckage of this deadly storm," said David J. Lesar, Halliburton's president. "The gold we recover from the human rubble of Katrina can be used to make fighter-jet electronics, supercomputer chips, inflation-proof A-grade investments, and luxury yachting watches."

Op-Ed: Kicking 'em once more while they're down

2005-09-15T17:53:00.000-04:00

There is no better way to attract citizens back to New Orleans and help them rebuild their city on a solid foundation than by providing good-paying jobs.

Unfortunately, Bush doesn't seem to think so.

It wasn't enough to cut funding for their levees and destroy their protective wetlands, leaving the Gulf Coast more vulnerable to killer storms. Ensuring that the poor would remain poor, with a bankruptcy bill that damns them to eternal indentured service wasn't enough either. He didn't even feel it was enough to leave them helpless in case of disaster, by cutting emergency services like FEMA.

No, he decided to kick them once more while they're down, just for good measure.

While the poor were still suffering and dying, Bush quietly rescinded the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which would have simply ensured that workers rebuilding New Orleans would earn a decent wage on construction projects financed with federal dollars.

By doing so, Bush has essentially proclaimed a new era of poverty and depression for the already homeless and unemployed of Louisiana and Mississippi.

According to the Davis-Bacon Act, companies that win federal construction contracts must pay workers the prevailing wage - the wage typical for their specific job function in the local area where the work is being completed. Bush's proclamation suspends this wage requirement indefinitely in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, including parts of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida.

Meanwhile, Team Bush has begun handing out no-bid contracts to big Republican-donor companies like Bechtel and Halliburton. Companies that have shown contempt for America's taxpayers by literally losing billions of dollars for so-called reconstruction projects, especially in Iraq.

This is nothing short of exploitation of the poor once again. At a time when the federal government should be pumping more money into the afflicted areas to revitalize them, Bush decrees that the rebuilders should be paid sub-standard wages.

Fortunately, some Democrats in Congress are fighting back, and fighting for the people of the Gulf Coast. Representative George Miller (D-CA) has introduced legislation called the Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims Act to rescind Bush's anti-worker proclamation. As Miller says, “We ought to choose right now not to recreate the poverty that exacerbated this disaster, but to take another course that respects all Americans workers by paying them a decent wage.”

Bush's accountability moment

2005-09-14T10:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's acknowledgment by President Bush that he accepts responsibility for the federal government's failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina is a breakthrough for the president and for this nation. For a guy who refused to acknowledge any mistakes during the 2004 campaign, this was an act of maturity that has never before been seen in this man. Maybe W. has finally grown up.

Now if he'd only accept responsibility and work to correct another miserable government failure, the war in Iraq.

Outrage of the week: Another out of touch member of the Bush Aristocracy

2005-09-09T10:58:00.000-04:00

From MSNBC:

At a school in Mississippi, it was first lady Laura Bush defending the government’s response to Katrina. “I think we’ve seen a lot of the same footage over and over that isn’t necessarily representative of what really happened in both — in a lot of ways,” she said. “Overall, it was a very good response.”

Laura Bush faults media coverage, but was she even there? How would SHE know? What is she basing this on? How would she explain the still yet unrecovered bodies in the streets? How about the scathing assessments from impartial entities like the Red Cross, who have described conditions as "horrendous"??? (I went to a volunteer training this past weekend, the local director read a national memo assessing the very dire conditions.)

Also, on the "same footage," she's right to a degree. But so what? That's because news teams under pressure like that can't keep constantly collecting new footage every 10 seconds. It's impossible. It's the constraints of the situation, not an indication things are overblown.

By the way, did you hear what Barbara Bush said earlier this week?

-This post was written by the original clipmonkey.

Tax cuts + a war of choice + a natural disaster = fiscal doom

2005-09-09T09:14:00.000-04:00

As the situation in Iraq continued to worsen this summer it was starting to become clear that the war was no longer an endeavor our government could afford. Still, Republicans in Congress continued their relentless pursuit of tax cuts for the wealthy, at least until this week. Now that Hurricane Katrina has invaded our political landscape and Congress has responded with over $60 billion to get us through the next few weeks, it is becoming clear that something's got to give.

Will it be their beloved tax cuts or the misguided effort in Iraq?

What goes around comes around, Dick Cheney

2005-09-09T09:09:00.000-04:00

Remember Dick Cheney's salty words for Sen. Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor last year? Well, watch this.

Must-Read: Thomas Friedman's "Osama and Katrina"

2005-09-08T02:39:00.000-04:00

"Besides ripping away the roofs of New Orleans, Katrina ripped away the argument that we can cut taxes, properly educate our kids, compete with India and China, succeed in Iraq, keep improving the U.S. infrastructure, and take care of a catastrophic emergency - without putting ourselves totally into the debt of Beijing."

Read the full column here

One casualty that was worth it

2005-09-07T10:10:00.000-04:00

One of the items at the top of the Republicans' post-recess agenda was a permanent repeal of the estate tax. But the disaster along the Gulf Coast and the tremendous harm it wrought on the region's poor people have taken this issue off the table, at least temporarily.

In recent years, the Republicans have tried to recast the estate tax as the death tax, fabricating sob stories of family farmers and small business owners who have been devastated by the tax. In reality, though, the tax impacts a minuscule number of people, encourages charitable giving, and rarely, if ever, has cost a family its business. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration continues its march toward returning America to a Dickensian England-like state.

Stopping this repeal is one bit of good Hurricane Katrina did.

Op-ed: America fails its poor (again)

2005-09-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

The images of impoverished, desperate and largely African-American people roaming the streets of ghost-towns, collected on rooftops, gathered inside and outside of stadiums, ravaging stores for food and water, and looting unnecessary items is a tragic sight. It is but another instance of our government's failure to address the needs of poor Americans.

Whereas nearly all those of means escaped to friends, family, and hotels via their own automobiles or rental cars, those left behind had little with which to help them escape. They were stuck depending on a government that is supposed to be the envy of the world. A government with nearly limitless resources. A government that spends over $2 trillion each year.

We're well aware that the Bush Administration has been dismantling FEMA since 9/11. We know by now that our environmental policies have been endangering parts of the Gulf Coast for decades.

But few people know that those most devastated by the hurricane and its aftermath are victims of another quiet tragedy that attacks more Americans every day. These are the victims of a poverty rate that continues to rise, a health care system that falls short, and an "economic recovery" that leaves them, and most other Americans, behind. And for those just above the poverty line, many states are cutting the few supports that prop them up in our society.

Now, in their greatest hour of need, our government has failed them once again. Some will blame President Bush for not investing enough in emergency preparedness and sending National Guard troops on a mission few of them signed up for. But this is a larger failure that goes beyond the particular ideology of one president or one party. It is a failure of a nation that has largely turned its backs on poor people and scapegoated them for the struggles they are often born into.

Maybe this catastrophe will get Americans and our government to recognize that while we have pacified the poor, we have still failed them. Warehousing poor people in abysmal schools and tightly-packed jails and prisons are not anti-poverty policies.

Mr. Bush, we've seen the conservatism. It's time for the compassion. But we also need to show some compassion of our own.

Outrage of the Week: Criminal Negligence

2005-09-01T17:12:00.000-04:00

"I do have some good news...I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance."

If New Orleans were a child, her parents would be brought up on charges of neglect and abandonment.

When she needed it the most, her parents turned their backs. They didn’t heed the warnings, they didn’t prepare her for the troubled road ahead, and they left her to fend for herself.

The storm surged and the levees broke. Days passed and Americans starved, suffered, and died. More days passed.

And where were New Orleans’ parents? Her Papa Bush remembers partying a little too hard with her, but never bothered to protect her from the inadequate levees. Nor did he rush to her aid when the time came.

And Mama Condi? While the Bush Cabinet assembled in DC, and allies around the globe - and even a few foes - were pledging support and readying cargo loads of food and medicine, our Secretary of State was enjoying herself shoe-shopping and taking in Broadway shows in New York.

Then there’s Uncle Cheney… anyone seen him lately? Have they let him out of the bunker yet?

It is clear these folks are unqualified and incapable of providing for the safety and well-being of their family.

Op-ed: John Bolton: Straight from Rough-and-Ready Creek

2005-09-01T16:18:00.000-04:00

My girlfriend and I recently made our annual sojourn to Northern California’s Lost Coast to attend a 3-day reggae festival. The drive requires a short jaunt through the sweltering Illinois River Valley in southwestern Oregon. As we passed the dried-up remnants of Rough-and-Ready Creek, I noted that a few earnest homeowners had taken it upon themselves to let all passers-by know their true feelings about the UN. Their comments can be summarized in two statements: 1) The US should get out of the UN because it undermines US sovereignty, and 2) UN payments are a global tax and taxes should be avoided at all costs. All messages were painted in red and blue on large white backdrops.

I don’t know if John Bolton has ever visited the area around Rough-and-Ready Creek, but his latest end-run at the U.N. proposal on humanitarian relief, genocide, and terrorism indicates that he more than sympathizes with the residents. The White House and Bolton are conducting an all-out blitz on the empowerment initiatives in the U.N. These proposals are meant to strengthen international resolve on fundamental issues such as genocide and terrorism. Instead of picking and choosing where to act based on geopolitical significance, these new measures would require wealthier nations to stand and act together against the maladies of our time.

Yet let’s be honest. John Bolton wasn’t chosen by the Bush family to cooperate with Kofi Annan’s plans or provide insightful leadership in revising the U.N. charter. Instead, Bolton denounces plans for increased aid to poorer countries as a global tax and insists that any definition of terrorism cannot apply to state-sanctioned forces.. Bolton is essentially a walking monkey wrench, meant to undermine the current negotiations and disrupt any policy that the administration deems a threat to US unilateralism.

So take heart citizens of the Rough-and-Ready. Your voice has been heard in the highest offices of the country, and your views are being carried forth with rabid ferocity.

Under the radar: Bush takes on our national parks

2005-09-01T15:39:00.000-04:00

While much of America is focused on the war in Iraq and more recently on the natural disaster along the Gulf Coast, the Bush administration is quietly destroying our national park system.

In typical Bush administration fashion, a person without any park service experience was tasked with revising the park system's basic management policy document. The draft revision that is circulating within the Interior Department will allow off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, and Jet Skis to roam about in nearly every national park under the guise of providing "opportunities to use and enjoy" the parks. Now that's what I'm looking for when I go to a national park to quietly commune with nature – the roar of such vehicles in the background. Since when did it become necessary for people to use a motorized vehicle to enjoy the national parks? Maybe it was when the obesity rate of our population began skyrocketing…

One of the reasons that Hurricane Katrina had such a powerful impact on the city of New Orleans is because the wetlands that protected that area for years have been destroyed over the past couple of decades. While Mississippi and Louisiana struggle to recover from this terrible natural disaster, the Bush administration will likely miss one lesson that could be learned from this tragic event – we must learn to protect and conserve the environment in which we live.

-This post was written by Cleveland Park Clipmonkey.

Op-ed: Bush strums while the Gulf Coast burns

2005-08-31T17:40:00.000-04:00

It was a nice gesture by President Bush to fly over the disaster zone for 30 minutes today aboard Air Force One, a nicely-equipped 747 Jumbo Jet moving at a couple hundred miles an hour. He had the opportunity to witness firsthand a blur of devastation enhanced by his policies, as well as the emergency relief efforts directly hampered by them.

If you listened in on Bush's statement to the nation today, you heard him robotically recite words written by someone else, carefully phrased to comfort folks he's never been interested in, unless it's to send them into war.

Here at Clipmonkey, our hearts go out to those affected by Hurricane Katrina. Certainly no amount of preventative measures would have saved every life from this storm.

The images from New Orleans and other affected areas however, paint a picture of the real "perfect storm;" an administration combining a lack of foresight with emergency relief and security personnel stretched too thin.

We're witnessing the beginning of a major refugee crisis. Hundreds, if not thousands, could be dead. Thousands more desperately seek basic necessities but their pleas go unanswered. It's three days after the storm hit Mississippi, and FEMA and the National Guard have yet to appear in some areas.

Bush's lack of foresight has unfortunately exacerbated the problem. Yesterday the Center for American Progress outlined what NOT to do to prepare for a storm like Katrina, among them:
"slash spending on hurricane preparedness in New Orleans, gut the agency tasked with developing hurricane responses, send our first responders to fight a war of choice, destroy natural hurricane protections, and help fuel global warming."

Sadly, Bush and his cohorts have done exactly that. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the threats from disease, fires, starvation, and looters could have been minimized by our nation's first line of defense and emergency assistance. Those folks are now serving a role outside of their traditional realm however, a role they never intended; that of peacekeeper in a hostile foreign land for an indefinite amount of time. As Lt. Andy Thaggard, a spokesman for the Mississippi National Guard, said "Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people."

Americans should be sickened at how far our nation has fallen when we can no longer provide even the basic security and necessities to our own citizens. I am disgusted watching the coverage from the Gulf Coast and how helpless and impotent this administration truly is.

FEMA, the South's savior after Hurricane Andrew and the exemplar of the Good our government can achieve during the Clinton Adminstration, has become merely a shell of its former self. Like much of the rest of America's safety net, it's being dismantled by these short-sighted ideologues hell-bent on leveraging our country's future.

So while Bush strums his guitar, New Orleans burns. The picture above was taken yesterday while many were losing their lives and their homes to the floodwaters.

Have oil, will bargain

2005-08-31T11:44:00.000-04:00

Western Sahara, a large, sand-filled land bordering Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania recently found itself in the news after the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Richard Lugar, paid a visit under the direction of President Bush. Senator Lugar was tasked with mediating the release of 404 Moroccan soldiers that had been captured by the West Saharan political front Polisario during their long-standing feud with the Moroccan government over self-determination.

Morocco continues to claim Western Sahara despite the fact that no state currently recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the region. What crucial US interests would prompt such an intense and active diplomatic effort in this 30 year-old post-colonial hangover? The big “O” of course.

Kerr-McGee, the infamous Oklahoma energy concern that was the defendant during the Karen Silkwood contamination trial, along with French oil giant Total/Elf, contracted with the Moroccan government to explore Western Saharan waters with the hope of finding new oil reserves. However, given the uproar over the status of Western Saharan sovereignty, the exploration consortium fell apart leaving Kerr-McGee the only company still willing to continue work. The company has a number of influential board members including former Haliburton Chairman William E. Bradford and former Arthur Andersen Audit Division Head, Robert O. Lorenz.

Oh, those ties that bind!

Chaos in New Orleans

2005-08-30T12:30:00.000-04:00

As anyone who has ever been to New Orleans knows, the city needed a good washing.

But this is ridiculous.

Must-read: Fareed Zakaria on oil dependence and foreign policy

2005-08-26T09:20:00.001-04:00

DC Clipmonkey just returned from a nice trip to Vermont during which he filled up his gas tank 7 or 8 times to the tune of roughly $25 at each stop (Obviously, he doesn't drive an SUV). DC Clipmonkey loved shelling out $2.50, $2.60, $2.70 per gallon and hopes that the price of gas continues to shoot up. Because only then will Americans start taking the problem of our addiction to oil seriously.

In an insightful commentary about oil consumption as foreign policy, Fareed Zakaria describes how our dependence on oil has us in a Catch-22 situation with brutal regimes throughout the Middle East.

This week, the Bush administration made a half-assed attempt to address the problem, but it will probably take $5 per gallon gas prices for our government and the American people to change their ways.

Bring it on.

Time To Put Your Money Where Your Ribbon Is

2005-08-25T12:37:00.000-04:00

Since its rebirth after September 11th, 2001, Community Connection for Military Families in the South Sound "offered get-togethers, with free child care, six days a week for military families in Lakewood, Parkland, University Place, Lacey and Bremerton," reported the Tacoma News Tribune today.

"The aim was to provide a safe place for military spouses – nearly all the participants were women – to meet and talk. Many are alone, new to the area and raising small children while their husbands are deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere."

The program's director, Sherrill Hendrick, states that it costs about $8000 a month to keep Community Connection's doors open. Due to evaporating support for the war(s), combined with the public's shrinking attention span however, those doors are shutting, possibly for good.

That's a sad commentary when I think of all those bumper stickers and ribbons I see on all those fancy SUVs out there.

I say to all those who supported Bush and don't mind a war or two so long as it doesn't affect your road hog of a vehicle, it's time to put your money where your yellow ribbon is. Really, it's the least you can do for your war. Show how much you support the troops by contributing to the families left behind.

Either that or Oly Clipmonkey begins his campaign... Here in Washington, the gas tax is constitutionally bound to fund our highway system and the state patrol exclusively. I'd however like to push for an amendment: I propose raising the gas tax to help fund Community Connection and the Minuteman Fund, services that provide support to military and national guard families while their loved one - and often prime breadwinner - serves in the line of fire. That way, your gas-guzzling lifestyle will provide direct assistance to the families making all the sacrifices.

And we all know how much you Washingtonians out there love a gas tax...

To contribute to Community Connection for Military Families in the South Puget Sound, visit the Web site at http://www.militaryfamilies.org/. Or contact Sherrill Hendrick at 253-431-6687 or e-mail militaryfamilies@harbornet.com.

A responsible path out of Iraq

2005-08-25T07:10:00.000-04:00

The left-wing blogosphere is salivating at Bush's plummeting poll numbers, claiming they are a justification to bring the troops home. But nowhere in their emotional cries is an answer to the question of what is right both for Iraq and the U.S. Moveon.org, Daily Kos, The Nation, Cindy Sheehan, et al. are simply and irrationally spouting for our government to bring the troops home.

What happens if we abandon Iraq and a civil war breaks out? What happens if Iraq becomes like Afghanistan under the Taliban? What happens if Iran then invades Iraq? As Colin Powell foretold, we broke Iraq, now we own it. We may not have wanted this war, but we now owe it to the Iraqi people to help them stabilize their country.

Unfortunately, Nicholas von Hoffman may be right in this satirical post. On another note, this clipmonkey leaves it to George Will to remind us of the danger Democrats are courting.

A couple more differences between red and blue America

2005-08-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

There are many obvious differences between the residents of red and blue America. In red America, they like to shoot guns, execute people, and watch NASCAR. We in blue America like to drink wine, attend gay pride parades, and listen to NPR. But there are a couple of other notable differences in the news today-

Because the Bush Administration has failed to act, a group of nine blue state governors has just reached an agreement to reduce power plant emissions in the Northeastern United States. Another three blue state governors from the west coast are in the early stages of a similar process.
Obesity continues to rise and yes, red staters have a bit more heft.

Outrage of the week: Making George Orwell proud

2005-08-24T07:14:00.000-04:00

After cooking the numbers on the cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit and altering reports on global warming, the Bush administration is at it again. This time they're lying to us about racial profiling by police.

These guys are indefensible.

So much for the Ten Commandments....

2005-08-23T14:26:00.000-04:00

Not only is Pat Robertson praying for more vacancies (i.e. deaths) on the Supreme Court, now he's openly promoting assassination of a democratically-elected leader. According to Wednesday's reports, a few other Christian groups were too busy to disagree with Reverend Pat. Pretty soon they'll be installing statues depicting the Nine Commandments in a government building near you.

This kind of insane rhetoric is exactly why laws defining the separation of church and state need to be cast in iron and coated with titanium.

Buyer's remorse

2005-08-22T17:44:00.000-04:00

It's too bad presidential elections are held every four years. Check out the bad news for Bush here. There's even more startling news for Bush in his state-by-state approval ratings here.

Frank Rich tells it like it is, and how it will be

2005-08-15T02:02:00.000-04:00

"The endgame for American involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history. "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Mr. Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, Gen. George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring. Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind. The priority now is less to save Jessica Lynch (or Iraqi democracy) than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006."

Read the rest of his excellent column at the New York Times here.

Op-ed: Bush's stain on our nation

2005-08-11T22:24:00.000-04:00

There are plenty of reasons to despise President Bush- his favoritism for the wealthy, his blustery talk (especially given his unwillingness to serve in Vietnam), the fact that tens of thousands of people have died because of his policies, or his use of religion for political purposes.

But no reason stands out more than his administration's stance on torture. In endorsing torture, Bush has brought shame on our nation and endangered us all. Our soldiers in Iraq are the most vulnerable because of this policy, but ultimately, all of us are at a greater risk of terror because our president did not clearly and emphatically lay out a policy that banned torture.

By "playing cute" with the Geneva Conventions, as Sen. Lindsey Graham likes to say, President Bush has necessitated that members of Congress set the rules by which we treat detainees. Republican Sens. Graham and John McCain have admirably led this effort. It's just embarrassing that it has been left to them. Members of Bush's own military urged the Administration to prohibit torture, but shiny-loafered lawyers at the Justice Department tried to redefine the meaning of torture and the meaning of the Geneva Conventions.

Millions if not billions of people around the world hate us. Some can't stand our cultural and economic dominance. Others loathe us because of our support for Israel or our stationing of servicemembers in the Middle East. Still others hate us because we coddle repressive regimes while talking a good game about freedom and democracy.

Then there are the paranoids who hate us because they believe we want to destroy them. They think we want to wipe out the Arab world. And now, with the invasion of Iraq and the events at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and God knows where else, we've fed their paranoia. We have no designs on empire, despite what many liberal conspiracy theorists say, but who is going to listen to us now?

The damage to our nation's standing has been done. The question is now what we can do to repair it. Unfortunately, Karen Hughes is not the answer.

Outrage of the Week: Dishonoring our Fallen Soldiers and Their Families

2005-08-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

"We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity. And we wanted him to look at the pictures of Casey. He wouldn't look at the pictures of Casey... He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, "So who are we honoring here?" He didn't even know Casey's name. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn't even call him "him" or "he." He called him "your loved one."

"Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party. "

From Cindy Sheehan's interview with Wolf Blitzer, on meeting with President Bush after her son was killed in action April 4th, 2004. Is there anyone that could still possibly believe he gives a damn about the soldiers over there?

Today is Day 6 of the sit-in protest by Cindy Sheehan who wants *real* answers to why her son had to die for a war based on deceit and deception.

Further adding to this clipmonkey's outrage is the vulgar and tasteless reaction by the Right, and a Clear Channel station that will host a BBQ at a local Crawford bank as a counter-protest.

That's right - a monopolizing media corporation will hand out beer and barbecue at a bank, in protest against the mother of a fallen soldier sitting in a ditch on the side of the road.

It's my hope a busload of soldiers from Fort Hood shows up at the BBQ, and then promptly shows them what true loyalty and patriotism is, and what happens when they denigrate the mother of one of their own.

If you can't join Cindy Sheehan in Crawford, then join Cindy in spirit at: MeetwithCindy.org

About John Roberts

2005-08-10T20:06:00.000-04:00

DC Clipmonkey finds it ridiculous how folks on the left and right are getting into such a tizzy over John Roberts. To those on the left, who the hell did you expect Bush to nominate, Alan Dershowitz? To those on the right, please read the New Testament before we discuss this any further.

In total, the guy seems like a solid conservative who also happens to be a decent human being. Leave him alone and save your fire for some battles you can actually win.

Punished for adultery, but not for torture

2005-08-10T09:19:00.000-04:00

The perversion of moral values by conservative Christians has not only taken over our political landscape, but also our military. Yesterday, the Army relieved Four-Star General Kevin Byrnes of his command because of an extramarital affair he had with a civilian.

Although Gen. Byrnes's affair is clearly a violation of the military's code of conduct, it certainly is not a crime that endangers us all and humiliates our nation. No, that crime would be practicing torture on detainees. Despite abundant evidence that the use of extreme tactics was approved by officials at the very top of the US government, not a single high-ranking member of the military, or any of their civilian enablers, has faced any significant punishment for this dark episode in American history. In fact, the only person punished in a significant way is Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the useful idiot "in charge" of the Abu Ghraib prison.

Not even Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, the fellow who once claimed about a Muslim adversary, "I knew my God was bigger than his," has been disciplined for making this and other more outrageous statements WHILE IN UNIFORM. The guy hasn't even been punished for failing at his actual duties- finding Osama bin Laden and aiding in the Iraq War. Boykin alone may be responsible for turning more people into anti-American terrorists than President Bush.

Remember, this is the same military, aided by civilian enablers, that runs out the few Arabic-speakers serving in it because they're gay.

God help us.

None of this is to say that adultery is not wrong, but there is a question of proportionality. Is it a greater crime to hurt your family or embarrass and endanger your country?

Questions for Mr. Bush

2005-08-06T22:11:00.000-04:00

Over at the Huffington Post, talk radio host, Cenk Uygur, asks some troubling questions about Mr. Bush's work ethic, as well as his wilingess/competence to get things right. A few fine morsels:

"Who takes a two hour exercise break in the middle of the work day? Who takes five week vacations? Who takes over 350 vacation days in less than five years? Who refuses to work at night and on the weekends? Third graders … and apparently, our president..."

"The President has already taken off 319 days and counting in less than five years. He is in the middle of his annual five week vacation on his Crawford ranch, which will put his vacation days at over 350 when he’s completed this stretch. He will soon surpass President Reagan’s record of vacation days in the modern presidency – 335 days. Reagan took eight years to get to that total. All of this doesn’t even include the days Bush was in Camp David or Kennebunkport. He has taken 20% of his work days off, even without counting vacations outside of Crawford. This is simply a stunning amount of vacation time... "

"If this is the attitude George Bush had in all of the businesses he ran before he became governor, then no wonder they all went bankrupt."

Read Uygur's entire column here.

A Must Read: Thomas Friedman on the Federal Energy Bill

2005-08-05T13:50:00.000-04:00

Thomas Friedman explains why US policymakers must open their eyes to the threats that our continued reliance on imported oil pose to our country's future, from both an economic standpoint and a national security one.

Read: Too Much Pork and Too Little Sugar

Excerpts:

"We need a strategic approach to energy. We need to redesign work so morepeople work at home instead of driving in; we need to reconfigure our cars and mass transit; we need a broader definition of what we think of as fuel. And we need a tax policy that both entices, and compels, U.S. firms to be innovative with green energy solutions. This is going to be a huge global industry - as China and India become high-impact consumers - and we should lead it..."
"It seems as though only a big crisis will force our country to override all the cynical lobbies and change our energy usage. I thought 9/11 was that crisis. It sure was for me, but not, it seems, for this White House, Congress or many Americans. Do we really have to wait for something bigger in order to get smarter?"

Not-so-Intelligent Designs for Public Schools

2005-08-05T02:52:00.000-04:00

It’s only natural we here at Clipmonkey would comment on Bush, who recently shared his “thoughts” on the “Intelligent Design” debate. After all, we’re clipmonkeys.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that intelligent design was an alternative to evolution, but he did not directly answer. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said, adding that "you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

Bush is not talking about a social science course, the proper place for a debate of religion vs. science. He’s talking about including this religious belief into the public SCIENCE class.

A thought I’m not so sure he's considered: While these neo-Creationists demand their personal beliefs be accepted as on a par with Evolution, they’re also saying that any other religion’s creation beliefs have no place. If we’re going to share time in Biology class with Christianity, will our kids also study reincarnation, or how Raven created Man, according to the Inuit?

Best to leave Science to the scientists and discuss your personal religious beliefs with the others at Sunday school.

Not one stroke of the Veto pen. Ever.

2005-08-04T19:43:00.000-04:00

Some quotes from the Washington Post's story:
In Congress, the GOP Embraces Its Spending Side

"Republicans don't even pretend anymore."
- Rep. Jeff Flake (news, bio, voting record) (R-Ariz.)

"With Congress unable to keep its pocketbook pocketed, it would be nice if President Bush could be counted upon to cast his first vetoes on bills so richly deserving of them,' the editors of the conservative National Review wrote yesterday."

I hope warmongering and opposition to abortion and gay rights is enough to satisfy all you Conservative voters out there, because that's all you're ever going to get from the Bush Team.

Face it. The only party that has proven its fiscal prudence over the years is the Democratic Party.

Dems and values

2005-08-04T17:46:00.000-04:00

Regular readers of this site know that DC Clipmonkey bristles with rage at Republican claims that their party better represents the albeit-nebulous term "moral values." The idea that a party that eagerly supports the death penalty, torture, and bombing other countries, shows little regard for the environment, and cuts funding for services to the poor at every opportunity, is morally-upright is laughable. This month's Harper's describes the absurdity of this notion in great detail.

Ultimately, it is merely a function of marketing. Republicans are simply better at it. But many Democrats are finally getting the point, led by the Rev. Jim Wallis. In today's NYT, Wallis lays out how the Democrats can reclaim the values mantle.

Excerpt:

"...somebody must lead on the issue of poverty, and right now neither party is doing so. The Democrats assume the poverty issue belongs to them, but with the exception of John Edwards in his 2004 campaign, they haven't mustered the gumption to oppose a government that habitually favors the wealthy over everyone else. Democrats need new policies to offer the 36 million Americans, including 13 million children, who live below the poverty line, as well as the 9.8 million families one recent study identified as 'working hard but falling short.'"

Outrage of the week: Drunken sailors in Congress

2005-08-04T11:51:00.000-04:00

Like a band of sailors rolling into a port town full of bars and prostitutes, members of Congress continue to empty their wallets, actually our wallets, via the latest transportation bill. Here are some of the more egregious earmarks:

$200,000 for a deer avoidance system in Weedsport, N.Y.
$330 million for a highway in Bakersfield, Calif.
$480,000 to rehabilitate a historic warehouse on the Erie Canal.
$3 million for dust control mitigation on Arkansas rural roads.
$2.3 million for landscaping on the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California.

The worst perpetrator of all, as always, was Alaska, which means "the land of government waste" in the Inuit Language. The third-least populated state received $941 million - the fourth most in earmarks - courtesy of its lone representative, Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young. $231 million of it was for a bridge near Anchorage to be named "Don Young's Way."

Even worse, Congress is hiding how much it actually spent behind some accounting tricks that would make Enron proud. So much for fiscal conservatism.