September 2007
Monthly Archive
September 24, 2007
Is quiet racism an anchor around the Republicans’ necks that will eventually send them straight to the bottom? Columnist Paul Krugman makes that case today in the New York Times.
No one even disputes any longer that Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legislation drove white southerners firmly into the arms of the Republican party where they today remain the party’s base. The fiasco in Jena, Louisiana where six black teenagers had been charged with attempted murder following a beating sparked by some white kids who hung nooses to warn blacks not to sit under a “white” tree, has stirred the embers of southern racism.
Republican politicians, who understand quite well that the G.O.P.’s national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of Southern whites, have tacitly acknowledged this reality. Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.
Thus Ronald Reagan, who began his political career by campaigning against California’s Fair Housing Act, started his 1980 campaign with a speech supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered. In 2000, Mr. Bush made a pilgrimage to Bob Jones University, famed at the time for its ban on interracial dating.
And all four leading Republican candidates for the 2008 nomination have turned down an invitation to a debate on minority issues scheduled to air on PBS this week.
…to get the Republican nomination, a candidate must appeal to the base — and the base consists, in large part, of Southern whites who carry over to immigrants the same racial attitudes that brought them into the Republican fold to begin with. As a result, you have the spectacle of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, pragmatists on immigration issues when they actually had to govern in diverse states, trying to reinvent themselves as defenders of Fortress America.
Krugman notes that blacks, Hispanics and Asians are turning their backs on the Republicans and strongly supporting the Democrats. Bush, in one of his brief displays of intelligence, saw how this demographic shift was threatening his party and moved to staunch the damage with his immigration bill only to see it soundly defeated by his own Republicans.
Today’s Jim Crow Republicans are clinging to the rails of a sinking ship, unable to let go. When they’re gone they won’t be long missed.
September 24, 2007
Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal church has been let off the hook by the IRS. A year ago the federal agency came down on All Saints with both boots, threatening the church’s tax exempt status because of a sermon from 2004.
Two days before the last presidential election the church’s former Rector of 28-years delivered an anti-war sermon. In his sermon, George Regas depicted Jesus in a mock debate with then presidential candidates Bush and Kerry. According to the L.A. Times, the sermon didn’t endorse or oppose either candidate. Instead, Regas is said to have “addressed the moral and religious implications of various social issues facing the nation at the time.”
The IRS demanded, not just a copy of the sermon, it even ordered the church to produce its utility bills to establish costs of hosting Regas’ sermon. They also summoned the Rector to furnish “a copy of all oral communications identifying candidates for public office delivered at All Saints Church or at events sponsored by All Saints Church between January 1, 2004 and November 2, 2004.”
Now the tables have been turned. The IRS has shelved the matter but it’s not over yet. After a battle that cost the All Saints congregation some $200,000, they’ve got a few questions of their own. According to the LA Times, ” e-mails obtained by the church through Freedom of Information Act requests, appear to show that Justice Department officials were involved in the All Saints case before the IRS made any formal referral of it for possible prosecution, an attorney for the church said. The discussions raise concerns that the IRS’ investigation was politically motivated, church officials said. One e-mail, for example, appears to show coordination between IRS and Justice Department officials about a request to the church for documents. Others discuss the timing of the request and news coverage about the case.”
No, say it ain’t so. The same Justice Department then headed by Alberto Gonzales pulling an underhanded, partisan stunt like this? How could anyone possibly believe he’d do something as despicable – hell we’re talking Jesus here, make that “evil” – as that?
All Saints is demanding a full explanation, from the revenue service and the injustice department – and a full apology.
September 23, 2007
The LA Times reports that President George w. Bush is about to ask congress to authorize $200-billion to fund his Middle East wars for 2008. That funding relates to direct costs, not the actual costs resulting from Bush’s folly which are substantially higher.
Someone is making out like a bandit on this war. The Times pointed out that the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been increasing dramatically with every passing year: In 2004, the two conflicts together cost $94 billion; in 2005, they cost $108 billion; in 2006, $122 billion.
Let’s face it. It ain’t cheap to lose two wars at once.
September 23, 2007
Iraq’s Minister for National Security says charges will be laid against Blackwater personnel in connection with the recent shooting deaths of eight or more civilians in Baghdad.
According to a report in the New York Times: a preliminary report of findings by the Interior Ministry, the National Security Ministry and the Defense Ministry stated that “the murder of citizens in cold blood in the Nisour area by Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against civilians just like any other terrorist operation.”
My question is just who is going to round up these suspects and bring them before an Iraqi court? Blackwater’s mercenary army in Iraq is unquestionably as powerful as any Iraqi armed force, save perhaps for the country’s militias. I suppose the US military could take them into custody but, no, I’ve heard reliable reports that Dick Cheney isn’t dead yet. Maybe Blackwater will just surrender these guys. What are the chances?
Nouri al-Maliki has taken a stab at banning Blackwater outright but it wasn’t much of a stab and it missed. Blackwater remains very much on the job on America’s payroll. So much for Iraqi sovereignty.
Maliki has picked a fight he may not be able to win but may not survive if he loses.
September 22, 2007
Just how much does the Iraq war cost? If you go by current accounts it’s about $12-billion a month. In reality it’s much, much more.
Today’s Washington Post reports that the actual costs of the Iraq war are estimated at $720-million dollars a day. The estimates were produced by the anti-war, American Friends Service Committee:
The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group’s analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.
The estimates made by the group, which opposes the conflict, include not only the immediate costs of war but also ongoing factors such as long-term health care for veterans, interest on debt and replacement of military hardware.
“The wounded are coming home, and many of them have severe brain and spinal injuries, which will require round-the-clock care for the rest of their lives,” said Michael McConnell, Great Lakes regional director of the AFSC, a peace group affiliated with the Quaker church.
The $720 million figure breaks down into $280 million a day from Iraq war supplementary funding bills passed by Congress, plus $440 million daily in incurred, but unpaid, long-term costs.
And just what could America do with that kind of money? According to the AFSC, the money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity.
As for the neo-cons, they don’t care:
“Either you think the war in Iraq supports America’s national security, or not,” said Frederick W. Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “If you think national security won’t be harmed by withdrawing from Iraq, of course you would want to see that money spent elsewhere. I myself think that belief, on a certain level, is absurd, so the question of focusing on how much money we are spending there is irrelevant.”
September 22, 2007
It’s sad to say but I think my generation, the vaunted Baby Boomers, may some day come to be known as the “Squandering Generation.” Certainly in North America, ours may be the generation that took more than it deserved and left little but problems for those to follow us.
I suppose a lot of this is simply the culmination of human nature and opportunity. Previous generations prevailed over enormous hardships and deprivations to create nations, economies and societies that enjoyed bounties unknown in the history of man and enough stability to allow us to rapaciously harvest those blessings without regard for either the past or the future.
The former editor of Harper’s magazine, Lewis Lapham, attributes the demise of America’s greatness to a change that began in the Nixon years in which his countrymen came to confuse wealth for virtue. Once wealth, in its own right, became the object of worship, the accumulation of this faux virtue became the national obsession. Caution was thrown to the wind along with any residual notion of posterity.
Today we have whole tracts of three, four, even five-thousand square foot houses that sit as shrines to the virtue of wealth, largely unused and yet heated and lighted and tended to as their enormity demands. We have people congesting our streets in massive, unarmoured personnel carriers for no other purpose than to drop the kids off at school or take in an afternoon of shopping at the mall or even to attend some consciousness-raising event. We are a generation gone mad.
We have turned inward, devoting our attention to what we have amassed and how we will amass even more for that is the quest in which our lives are to find purpose. By turning inward, we turn our backs on our own society and its future. We’re far too busy indulging ourselves in our achievements to be bothered. Problems are to be resolved by easy payment plans or ignored altogether. Posterity is a quaint irrelevance, antithetical to the aggregation society.
There was a time when we looked to the future and actually strove for the ideal of a better tomorrow for those to come. We took real pride in imagining what that world would be like, how those generations would enjoy and appreciate what we were creating. Of course that wasn’t “we” at all. That was “them”, the builders, those who preceded us.
It’s been decades since we stopped building for the future. Now we build for today, for us and no one else. Where’s the proof of this fantastic accusation? It’s right before our eyes in the undeniable fact that we live unsustainably. We take more than our share, as much as we can get our hands on, and in so doing we ensure that there will be less, much less for those who will follow us. To them we bequeath only our consequences. They’ll live in the midden of our excess, a world raped of its promise and in contaminated retreat. For we are the Squandering Generation and our legacy is very nearly complete.
September 21, 2007
I saw this last night on the Daily Show, a breathtaking example of how utterly screwed up America’s presidency has become. It was George w. Bush hisself opining on the sad fate of Nelson Mandela:
“I heard somebody say, Where’s Mandela?’ Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.”
George Bush, by all accounts is not a stupid man. Oh hell, he is so.
“All we can do is reassure people, especially South Africans, that President Mandela is alive,” Achmat Dangor, chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
September 21, 2007
When you’ve got a country that needs wrecking, even if it’s your own, you need the professionals, The Wrecking Crew. No matter how good, no matter how bad, we can – and will -make it worse and we guarantee it. And don’t forget, The Wrecking Crew doesn’t just do countries – be sure to ask about our Regional Rates too.
The Wrecking Crew, We Git’er Done!
Our Destructer In Chief
Some Really Angry Dude
Who Really Likes to Make Stuff Up
Screws Up Everything He Touches
No Human Rights Stand in His Way
Pull The String and She’ll Say Anything
Him Too
Intelligence That Doesn’t Just Suck
– It Blows
Who’re You Looking At?
You Lookin’ At Me?
–
Complete Psycho
Can Screw Up an Entire Country
In a Single Bound
Director of Applied Sycophancy
Chief of Defence Stooges
In House Gaydar
The Wrecking Crew, in business since 2000. Imagine where the world would be today without us!
September 21, 2007
It appears that the FoxNews/Newsmax brain rot has spread to Canada. It seems to get established in the dim-witted and, once it takes hold, moves virulently through their ranks.
I see signs of it here every now and then, generally whenever I post anything about Harper, the neo-cons or global warming. That’s when these goofy little comments will appear that often simply make no sense or are rooted in ignorance and bigotry.
These trolls crawled out from beneath their bridges yesterday to denounce the conviction of Myriam Bedard, the former olympian found guilty of child abduction. Fervently they attacked the justice system as a Liberal institution packed with Liberal judges who were driven to rig the trial against Bedard in retaliation for her embarrassing a former Liberal government.
Of course what these partisan dummies conveniently overlooked is that the judge (whether Liberal or PQ or even Tory) presiding over Bedard’s case had very little to do with the result. It was a jury trial. Bedard’s lawyers asked for that and got it. As in all jury trials, counsel on both sides had the opportunity to question and challenge jurors. They even had pre-emptory challenges if they simply didn’t like the look of the potential juror.
A rigged election? Hardly. Just don’t try to tell that to the trolls.
September 20, 2007
The US defence contractor, Blackwater, seems to be a law unto itself, at least in Iraq. Atop the US military’s 160,000 personnel in Iraq there are an estimated 180,000 contract employees doing everything from the soldiers’ laundry to servicing their weapons and providing security to the American and Iraqi bureaucracies. The number of mercenaries is believed to be in the range of 20-30,000.
Blackwater has recently become embroiled in controversy over the purported shooting of Iraqi civilians by some of the company’s mercenaries. Now it’s alleged that Blackwater operatives helped break a major Iraqi swindler out of prison and spirit him out to the United States. Former Electricity Minister Ahyam al-Samarrai was in prison awaiting sentencing for stealing $2.5-Billion in reconstruction funds.
Until now the name of the private security company said to have been involved has been kept quiet. Today an Iraqi official told McClatchey news the company was Blackwater.
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