Wishful thinking dept.

If ever there were a perfect situation for disapproval by the feds of a merger, the obscene proposed sale of MBNA Corporation to Bank of America for $35 billion is it: Forget for a moment the implication of eliminating competition, the plan is to eliminate 6,000 jobs in the process!

It would be a small but worthy starting point for returning our economy to the interests of the people rather than the powerful. Link

Is such a deal truly in the interests of the consumer? Will it cause credit card interest rates to plunge? Is MBNA going to go under if it's not rescued by a bigger bank (which will then be humungous, of course)?

It couldn't be just greed, could it? Could it?

Take a look:

A monumental proposal

From Judaism 101:

According to Jewish tradition, G-d gave the Jewish people 613 mitzvot (commandments). All 613 of those mitzvot are equally sacred, equally binding and equally the word of G-d.

There's an obvious compromise here, just waiting to be recognized: Let the Christian right have their ten commandments, and the Jews have theirs, right alongside. Fair, if not balanced . . .

Passion flowers

As one who feels a passion for truth,
beauty and justice, this says it well.

Pop psychology dept.

Most folks who watched Karl Rove accuse liberals of wuzziness after 9/11 probably didn't make much of his stammering — unless, of course, they had raised children.

Here's what he said, reading from prepared remarks, and approximately how he said it:

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9-11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the sava-savagerary of the 9-11 attacks and wanted to pre-pa-pare-pare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.*

As a mother, and for a time a nanny for a living, I want to tell you what usually happens when a child who finds himself in trouble tries to get out of it. He stammers. This is often true of adults, too, and that's my point.

Think about Rove's remarks. Some pundits have brushed them off, saying Rove was just talking to his base, but I don't think so. What he said carried a clear implication yet was carefully crafted for plausible deniability — as in, "Golly gee-whiz, he never said Democrats!" and, "He was obviously talking about people like Moveon.org!"

Moveon.org, by the way, supported the invasion of Afghanistan and against the Taliban, but truth doesn't seem to be a factor here.

Rove knew exactly what he was up to. I propose that since he was reading his remarks and is a clever, articulate fellow, there was no reason to stumble over his words, yet he surprisingly stumbled twice as he uttered the remarks. And I propose that's because he was just a tad nervous for he knew their purpose and likely effect; he uttered them in a cynical calculation to unleash a storm that would distract from the President's woes.


*To see and hear for yourself, copy and paste the following URL: http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Rove_Resign.wmv.

Diary entry, November 1996

The history of mankind is replete with examples of what happens when religious doctrine is imposed upon a political system: totalitarian rule. There is no good to come of it, but only worsening of the social condition; Mexico is still struggling, decades after rejecting the Church's control.

The idea that my government might someday be run by people who insist that I live according to their own interpretations of 2000-year-old beliefs and accounts by people who did not even know the world was round is appalling, and frightens me nearly to death. We are headed for a tyranny of the minority, and I suggest that one concrete step toward resistance would be to make The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, required reading for every high school sophomore in America.

From an email written after watching "With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right," broadcast on PBS in 1996

Sodden thought* for today

Tom Friedman got me thinking:

The Bushies are not going to run the risk of having all their hard-won destruction overturned by a more compassionate administration after 2008, let alone allow for the possibility that they and their rich friends might stand to lose their perks, or that Radical Christianity's march might be slowed.

Given what we know about them, what ARE the chances that Dick Cheney or Jeb Bush would get the Republican nomination after all, despite their "protests" to the contrary? You know doggone well that there's no way Frist will get the nod, now that his namby-pambyness has been shown. With the Republicans' unexcelled lying, hiding and spinning and our electorate's apparently willingness to put aside reason, either one just might be able to get elected.

McCain would seem to be the strongest candidate at this point, but I'll bet that the Powers That Be suspect, as do I, that once elected he would start repairing almost as quickly as a Democrat. So he may be doomed.

Of course, the outcome to be desired is that the Democrats run a decent and believable candidate (will it be Biden? have we learned anything from the Gore and Kerry misadventures?) who will win and that at least one house of Congress will change leadership.

But we had better be prepared, for the Blindsider is out there somewhere.


*Thanks, Herb Caen. . .

No target left behind

This week I heard a report on NPR that public schools are required by law to furnish to military recruiters the information they have about their students 16 years old and up. What law could this be? Why, one that was included in “No Child Left Behind.” Indeed.

I went to the internet to learn more, and it’s true. According to FoxNews.com, there is a “little-known provision in the No Child Left Behind Act that compels public high schools to open their doors and pupil records to military recruiters.”

According to this report, “parents are just becoming aware of the policy, which gives recruiters the same access to high school campuses and students' phone numbers and addresses as colleges and businesses have. Districts that don't comply could risk annual federal funding.”

Allowing recruiters on campus is one thing, where students can choose to meet with them or attend a presentation or not. Providing those recruiters with names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, grades and whatever else may be in the students’ records is another.

Dream on, John Danforth!

A really inspiring piece by John C. Danforth in today's NYTimes should be a must-read for every person of faith — Christian and otherwise — who feels even slightly uncomfortable with the hijacking of religion by extremists in this country. LINK

Unfortunately for John Danforth’s hopes, however, Newt Gingrich (remember him?) instituted and taught his followers to follow the Commandment for Calumny. Until we get rid of its practitioners, Danforth’s gentle proposal, try as he might, won’t have much chance of going anywhere.

Beware the lowly conversation

According to the London's Sunday Times, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has criticized the "web-based media" for too much "paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry."

Said the Times,

He described the atmosphere on the world wide web as a free-for-all that was “close to that of unpoliced conversation.”

Great heavens! Unpoliced conversation?

Bush's smoke-friendly environment

The New York Times began reporting last week on the sudden decision by the Justice Department to reduce the penalty it had demanded from tobacco companies, from $130 billion to a mere $10 billion. This, after five years, at the close of a months-long trial and untold hours of work by Justice Department attorneys.

Today's revelation is a stunner:

The newly disclosed documents make clear that the decision was made after weeks of tumult in the department and accusations from lawyers on the tobacco team that Mr. McCallum and other political appointees had effectively undermined their case. Mr. McCallum, No. 3 at the department, is a close friend of President Bush from their days as Skull & Bones members at Yale, and he was also a partner at an Atlanta law firm, Alston & Bird, that has done legal work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, part of Reynolds American, a defendant in the case.

Sigh. It's just one of those days when you wonder if ANYone is paying attention.

News quiz

How many of the Republican leadership grousing aloud about Howard Dean’s "irresponsible" verbal potshots are supporting John Bolton for appointment to the United Nations?

Can't happen here!

A friend sent me the following excerpt from a WashPost piece today:

But [he] doesn't need to close newspapers in order to force people to censor themselves. He doesn't need thousands of political prisoners if he can make examples of a few people in every sector of society, a labor leader here, a journalist there. And he doesn't need to cancel elections if he can use his appointees to change the rules so that the voting can be easily manipulated. It is a terrific facade, but inside is an atmosphere of total control and fear. Traveling around the country, as I do, it's shocking to see how frightened people are about what the government can do to their lives.

“He” in this case was Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

Well, of course. After all, as Sinclair Lewis wrote, it can’t happen here.

Will Rumsfeld do the right thing?

They call it “the Friday night news dump.” That refers to the fact that news that comes out just at the beginning of the weekend doesn’t get much play in the press.

Well, at about 7:15 pm ET today the Pentagon released its report regarding abuses at Guantanamo — you know, the one Newsweek got into so much trouble about. It was worse than “flushing the Koran down the toilet.” What they admitted happened, among other desecrations, was that human urine was cast upon the Koran (they didn’t say whether it was a direct piss or from a container), and incidentally upon the owner of same.

Friday night is not going to protect us in this case.

Even the cable newscasters are talking about this going all the way to Rumsfeld. The only way our administration can avert a serious conflagration throughout the middle east, and get any modicum of honor back, is to dump Rumsfeld. NOW.

There’s no more time.