Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, Texas
August 10, 2005?
?Dear Ms. Sheehan,
?From your grief over the loss of your son, Casey, in Iraq has come the courage to spotlight nationally the cowardly character trait of a President who refuses to meet with anyone or any group critical of his illegal, fabricated, deceptive war and occupation of that ravaged country. As a messianic militarist, Mr. Bush turned aside his own father's major advisers who warned him of the terroristic, political, and diplomatic perils to the United States from an invasion of Iraq. He refused to listen.?
?Dear Ms. Sheehan,
?From your grief over the loss of your son, Casey, in Iraq has come the courage to spotlight nationally the cowardly character trait of a President who refuses to meet with anyone or any group critical of his illegal, fabricated, deceptive war and occupation of that ravaged country. As a messianic militarist, Mr. Bush turned aside his own father's major advisers who warned him of the terroristic, political, and diplomatic perils to the United States from an invasion of Iraq. He refused to listen.?
Rage against the killing of the light
Mid-August 2005 may be remembered as a moment in U.S. history when
the president could no longer get away with the media trick of solemnly
patting death on its head.
Unreality is a hallmark of media coverage for war. Yet -- most of all -- war is about death and suffering. War makers thrive on abstractions. Their media successes depend on evasion.
President Bush has tried to keep the loved ones of America’s war dead at middle distance, bathed in soft fuzzy light: close enough to exploit for media purposes, distant enough to insulate the commander in chief’s persona from the intrusion of wartime mourning in America.
What’s going on this week, outside the perimeter of the ranch-style White House in Crawford, is some reclamation of reality in public life. Cindy Sheehan has disrupted the media-scripted shadow play of falsity. And some other relatives of the ultimately sacrificed have been en route to the vigil in the dry hot Texas ditches now being subjected to enormous media attention a few miles from the vacationing president’s accommodations.
Unreality is a hallmark of media coverage for war. Yet -- most of all -- war is about death and suffering. War makers thrive on abstractions. Their media successes depend on evasion.
President Bush has tried to keep the loved ones of America’s war dead at middle distance, bathed in soft fuzzy light: close enough to exploit for media purposes, distant enough to insulate the commander in chief’s persona from the intrusion of wartime mourning in America.
What’s going on this week, outside the perimeter of the ranch-style White House in Crawford, is some reclamation of reality in public life. Cindy Sheehan has disrupted the media-scripted shadow play of falsity. And some other relatives of the ultimately sacrificed have been en route to the vigil in the dry hot Texas ditches now being subjected to enormous media attention a few miles from the vacationing president’s accommodations.
The "stricken" president: when down is up
If you accept the judgment of the polls this summer, George Bush is a stricken president. Leave aside his now-permanent sub-50 percent status in popular approval. Take his calling card, conduct of the "war on terror." His status on the approval charts now shows him wallowing without mast or rudder in the mid-30s. Honesty? Here Bush is bidding to join Nixon in the sub-basement of popular esteem, somewhere around the 40 percent mark.
But hold! The measure of a stricken president is surely an inability to push through the legislation he desires. Remember Bill Clinton. By midsummer in his maiden year of White House occupancy he was truly stricken. He had to send a mayday call for lifeboats, which duly arrived under the captaincy of Republican Dave Gergen, with Dickie Morris soon to follow. By July 1993, as the receptacle of liberal hopes, the Clinton presidency was over.
Look now at Bush. Stricken he may be in the popular polls, but his political agenda flourishes.
But hold! The measure of a stricken president is surely an inability to push through the legislation he desires. Remember Bill Clinton. By midsummer in his maiden year of White House occupancy he was truly stricken. He had to send a mayday call for lifeboats, which duly arrived under the captaincy of Republican Dave Gergen, with Dickie Morris soon to follow. By July 1993, as the receptacle of liberal hopes, the Clinton presidency was over.
Look now at Bush. Stricken he may be in the popular polls, but his political agenda flourishes.
Not So "Intelligent"
You've got to hand it to President Bush. Just when you'd think our ideologically-divided country couldn't possibly be further polarized, the president this week weighed in with his opinion on teaching American schoolchildren the alternative to evolution referred to with a straight face as "intelligent design" by its Christian fundamentalist proponents.
While conceding that curriculum decisions should be made by local school districts and not the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that "intelligent design" should be taught alongside evolution in American schools as competing theories.
"Both sides ought to be properly taught...so people can understand what the debate is about," he said. "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
While conceding that curriculum decisions should be made by local school districts and not the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that "intelligent design" should be taught alongside evolution in American schools as competing theories.
"Both sides ought to be properly taught...so people can understand what the debate is about," he said. "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
Orphan Nagasaki
Like Nagasaki, August 9 is an orphan of history.
And in that history, new, definitive evidence has finally surfaced that the atomic bombing there was completely unjustified.
More than 80,000 human beings perished in Nagasaki three days after at least that many died in Hiroshima.
The Bomb that destroyed this historic city was made of plutonium (Hiroshima's was uranium).
Whatever the case for nuking Hiroshima, it was far weaker for Nagasaki.
The US had already shown it had this ultimate weapon. It showed it was willing to use it. And it now had time to wait for the Japanese to gather themselves and surrender, which so many believe they were trying to do.
Lingering doubts about Hiroshima and Nagasaki have only multiplied over six decades. Statements from American strategists include one to the effect that the first bomb showed we had it and were willing to use it, while the second showed we were willing to use it irrationally.
Many believe the US used the both to scare the Soviets.
And in that history, new, definitive evidence has finally surfaced that the atomic bombing there was completely unjustified.
More than 80,000 human beings perished in Nagasaki three days after at least that many died in Hiroshima.
The Bomb that destroyed this historic city was made of plutonium (Hiroshima's was uranium).
Whatever the case for nuking Hiroshima, it was far weaker for Nagasaki.
The US had already shown it had this ultimate weapon. It showed it was willing to use it. And it now had time to wait for the Japanese to gather themselves and surrender, which so many believe they were trying to do.
Lingering doubts about Hiroshima and Nagasaki have only multiplied over six decades. Statements from American strategists include one to the effect that the first bomb showed we had it and were willing to use it, while the second showed we were willing to use it irrationally.
Many believe the US used the both to scare the Soviets.
Big Star-Spangled Lies for War
A lot of people want to believe that the current war on Iraq is some
kind of aberration -- a radical departure from the previous baseline of
U.S. foreign policy. That’s a comforting illusion.
Yes, the current administration in Washington is notable for the extreme mendacity and calculated idiocy of its claims. But -- decade after decade -- the propaganda fuel for one U.S. war after another has flowed from a standard set of lies.
Some of the boilerplate lies are implicit assumptions about Uncle Sam’s benign and even noble intent. Other deceptions rely on more specific whoppers, endlessly whirling through the news media’s spin cycle. From one war to the next, certain themes are played up more than others -- but the process always involves building an agenda to start a war, trying to justify the war while it’s underway, and then claiming that the war must continue as long as the man in the Oval Office says so.
Yes, the current administration in Washington is notable for the extreme mendacity and calculated idiocy of its claims. But -- decade after decade -- the propaganda fuel for one U.S. war after another has flowed from a standard set of lies.
Some of the boilerplate lies are implicit assumptions about Uncle Sam’s benign and even noble intent. Other deceptions rely on more specific whoppers, endlessly whirling through the news media’s spin cycle. From one war to the next, certain themes are played up more than others -- but the process always involves building an agenda to start a war, trying to justify the war while it’s underway, and then claiming that the war must continue as long as the man in the Oval Office says so.
The Incredible Blight of TV Punditry
When super-pundit Robert Novak stormed off the set of a live CNN
show Thursday -- just after uttering what the New York Times delicately
calls “a profanity” -- it was an unusual episode of TV punditry. With
rare exceptions, the slick commentators of televisionland keep their
cool. But we’d be much better off if they all disappeared.
Novak’s unscripted exit from the telecast may have been a preemptive strike -- a kind of semiconscious work stoppage -- to avoid squirming under the hot lights. “The moderator of the program, Ed Henry, later said on the air that he had warned Mr. Novak that he planned to ask him ‘about the CIA leak case,’” the Times reports. As a bottom-feeding big fish in the pond of political journalism, Novak wants control over the sunlight in his face.
It has become a cliche to complain about the cable news channels. Fox News is notorious -- or revered, depending on one’s political outlook -- for a hard-right style that sometimes resorts to shouting down dissenters or cutting off their microphones. Bombast has become professionally respectable; many TV journalists yearn to be the next Bill O’Reilly.
Novak’s unscripted exit from the telecast may have been a preemptive strike -- a kind of semiconscious work stoppage -- to avoid squirming under the hot lights. “The moderator of the program, Ed Henry, later said on the air that he had warned Mr. Novak that he planned to ask him ‘about the CIA leak case,’” the Times reports. As a bottom-feeding big fish in the pond of political journalism, Novak wants control over the sunlight in his face.
It has become a cliche to complain about the cable news channels. Fox News is notorious -- or revered, depending on one’s political outlook -- for a hard-right style that sometimes resorts to shouting down dissenters or cutting off their microphones. Bombast has become professionally respectable; many TV journalists yearn to be the next Bill O’Reilly.
Did the GOP steal another Ohio Election?
The Republican Party has -- barely -- snatched another election in Ohio. And once again there are telltale symptoms of the kind of vote theft that put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000 and then kept him there in 2004.
This time an outspoken Iraqi War vet named Paul Hackett led the charge for a Cincinnati-area Congressional seat, earning 48% of the vote. The spot was open because Bush appointed his pal Rep. Rob Portman to be a trade representative.
Hackett is a rarity among today's Democrats---a blunt, hard-driving truth talker who blasted Bush's attack on Iraq. Hackett labeled W. "a chicken hawk." He's the first Iraqi war vet to run for Congress. He made no bones about the incompetence and cynicism that define the GOP strategy there. In particular Hackett attacked Bush's attacks on veterans benefits while claiming patriotic support of the war.
In return, GOP candidate Jean Schmidt lied about Hackett's war record. Unlike John Kerry, Hackett fought back immediately.
This time an outspoken Iraqi War vet named Paul Hackett led the charge for a Cincinnati-area Congressional seat, earning 48% of the vote. The spot was open because Bush appointed his pal Rep. Rob Portman to be a trade representative.
Hackett is a rarity among today's Democrats---a blunt, hard-driving truth talker who blasted Bush's attack on Iraq. Hackett labeled W. "a chicken hawk." He's the first Iraqi war vet to run for Congress. He made no bones about the incompetence and cynicism that define the GOP strategy there. In particular Hackett attacked Bush's attacks on veterans benefits while claiming patriotic support of the war.
In return, GOP candidate Jean Schmidt lied about Hackett's war record. Unlike John Kerry, Hackett fought back immediately.
Regarding the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
August 6th marks the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act (as amended), was called “America’s crown jewel” by President Ronald Reagan. The Act’s prohibition of discrimination and retrogression has facilitated much progress in access to the ballot box by African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans. With several important provisions up for reauthorization in 2007, our constant vigilance and tireless action can make universal suffrage both the law of the land and the practice in every community coast to coast.
Americans are deeply concerned about the situation in Iraq, but there is yet another crisis. This country has not been functioning as a just democracy. As we try to serve as an example to the entire world of what democracy is all about, we simply cannot afford the experiences of the past two presidential elections. Despite vigilance, persuasion, pressure, and even litigation, registration processing and election preparation anomalies persisted in 2004 and were compounded by Election Day irregularities.
Americans are deeply concerned about the situation in Iraq, but there is yet another crisis. This country has not been functioning as a just democracy. As we try to serve as an example to the entire world of what democracy is all about, we simply cannot afford the experiences of the past two presidential elections. Despite vigilance, persuasion, pressure, and even litigation, registration processing and election preparation anomalies persisted in 2004 and were compounded by Election Day irregularities.
Media flagstones along a path to war on Iran
On Tuesday, big alarm bells went off in the national media echo
chamber, and major U.S. news outlets showed that they knew the drill.
Iran’s nuclear activities were pernicious, most of all, because people in
high places in Washington said so.
It didn’t seem to matter much that just that morning the Washington Post reported: “A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis. The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House.”
It didn’t seem to matter much that just that morning the Washington Post reported: “A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis. The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House.”