Psst! The Republicans control Congress!!

Did you know that there are actually lots of folks who don't know that the Republicans actually control all branches of our government? Well, I'm inspired by Chris Bowers, on MyDD, who has a GREAT IDEA!

And I intend to incorporate it in a survey I’ve been working on to be submitted as a local op-ed piece. The survey will serve to inform as well as elicit information — my target is the disproportionate number of local citizens who, I believe, have very little clue as to what is really going on in the world. (How else to explain continuing support for Republicans at any level?)

In addition to Bowers' perfect idea, another example is this one:

“Do you believe the United States government allows foreign companies to control some of our ports because there is no American company who will do so, or because it is good foreign policy?”

Or how about:

“How much money will Medicare Part D (the prescription drug plan) save you, as a beneficiary, if you are single, your annual income is at least $13,500, and your annual prescription expense is $250? [Nothing; your cost of the drugs, however, will increase to $713.59]

If you have suggestions for questions, please send them to me! We can have some good fun with this and perhaps even educate some folks at the same time.

Israelis Sponsor Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest

The fall of Sen. Joseph McCarthy began when the world began to laugh at him.

While in the Iranian "retaliate against the Danish cartoons" contest the main message is anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish, the organizers of an Israeli contest aim to create a collection of works that are above all funny. They are showing that it is possible to defuse the hatred and fear in anti-Semitism by means of humor, and in this way are ridiculing the grimness that characterizes the Iranian contest.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/684696.html

boomka.org

Analyze this!

Lyndon Johnson had a ranch in Texas, too. And, like the current president, he often invited folks to visit for a weekend. I don't remember hearing of any brush-clearing, but apparently there were plenty of barbeques and bourbon, and vigorous tours of the ranch by jeep.

Johnson hadn't been President for very long, of course, and the next election loomed almost from the time he took office.

I had a psychiatrist friend, who was as astute as all-get-out, who told me he couldn't support Lyndon Johnson and thought it would be a big mistake for Americans to put him back in office in 1964. I was taken aback, what with his being a good Democrat and all, and asked him why on earth he thought so.

Because, he said, he drives like a madman! When I pointed out that it was off-road, and only around his ranch, he replied that it didn't matter: The point was that it showed Johnson was reckless. And it was just a few months later that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution drove the Vietnam War to new ferocity.

"Reckless," indeed. Now, these 40 years later, it certainly seems relevant to our take on the Cheney hunting "accident."

I put "accident" in quotation marks because of the point: Dick Cheney has shown himself to be, if not reckless, then less than perfectly cautious — as we have a right to demand of a man who could be president of the United States at any moment.

The Cheney delay

OK, so the media are all over the delay in reporting the accidental shooting by Vice President Cheney of his hunting partner. I think it's perfectly understandable: I think they just didn't want to tell us about it until they were sure the shootee was going to be fine.

So here's the question: What if the shootee had not been fine? What if, God forbid, he had died?

Would we have ever known about it?

Oz, UPDATED

On January 27th I posted a challenge to the Bush assertion that we are at war. Hence I am delighted to bring you this by Molly Ivins today:

One problem of legal logic is to "define war." We have not been attacked by another nation -- in fact, we were clearly the aggressors against Iraq. We were attacked by a private group of ideological zealots led by a Saudi millionaire. This war -- against no nation, flag or territory -- can presumably last indefinitely, like our wars against drugs and crime.

Her excellent article is here; in the context of the recent Gonzales testimony, her memories of Barbara Jordan are compelling.

Demand freedom! UPDATED

The drawings in question were originally published, last September, by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, after an appeal to artists to provide drawings for — get this— a children's book about Muhammed for which they had been unable to find an illustrator.

They received only 12, they say, because "certain interpretations of Islam find it inappropriate or directly forbid pictures of the prophet," and they originally published the drawings "as a contribution to the debate about self-censorship amongst journalists, authors, and artists." Link

Danish imams later carried the drawings to a Muslim summit in Mecca, where it appears that folks with agendas seized upon them for political purposes. "In addition to the Jyllands-Posten drawings, the imams brought with them highly offensive drawings that had never appeared in Jyllands-Posten and which had nothing to do with the newspaper." Link

"All hell" would be an understatement for what broke loose.

Jyllands-Posten republished the drawings, despite threats of destruction and death, and many in the world media have since supported them by doing likewise, in defense of freedom.

Sad to say, most of our papers, including the Big Five, have so far disappointed. Notable exceptions are reported to be the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Austin American-Statesman (yee-hah!), and web sites for Fox and ABC. But before you start googling, be sure to read Tim Rutten, summing it up very nicely in today's LA Times.

This is ridiculous; how, in a country that prides itself on the free flow of information, are we to understand and be able to judge for ourselves what's going on?

So take a look. If you don't have time for surfing, I have posted them here.*

Just say NO to blackmail

Islamic Jihad has entered the fray, to no one's surprise; it's reported in Ha'aretz today:

"So far we have demanded an apology from the governments. But if they continue their assault on our dear Prophet Mohammed, we will burn the ground underneath their feet," Habib said.

In Jerusalem, about 2,000 women, young boys and older men chanted "Bin Laden, strike again" as they marched around the Dome of the Rock on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, trampling a homemade Danish flag.

I think we ought to just quit trying — apologies from heads of quite decent, very civilized states who had no hand in the "offense" make me cringe, as do concessions by newspaper editors; tolerance, understanding, sensitivity have been tried. And none of it does any good at all.

Just quit dealing with them.

If the relatively few Muslim leaders around the world who are speaking out relatively softly against the current anti-West violence are right, and it is just a militant minority that is responsible for it, then all the more reason not to give in to them.

Reject blackmail.

Buy Danish.

Are they having fun yet?

The funeral service for Coretta Scott King yesterday was an incredible gathering and tribute.

The President’s remarks (reading, flipping pages as he went) were graceful and well received, but then the Rev. Joseph Lowery stood right there and skewered him for WMD and Katrina, and President Jimmy Carter stood right in front of him and reminded the audience of how the Kings had to endure wire taps and other surveillance. Applause. (In between those two, Poppy George got his own laughs by observing that, as an Episcopalian, he had never seen anything like this — immediately reminding me of the “not being in touch” problems he had.)

Anyway, the 15,000 who came to honor Mrs. King were loving every bit of it. Then Bill and Hillary Clinton came to the podium to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. That must have hurt. And Bill Clinton was at his best, getting lots of love and laughs (and did it all without reading).

Oh, the humility of it all . . .


*Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Now, pay attention here

This Tuesday the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to consider legislation for what has been called Net neutrality — effectively banning Internet access companies from giving preferred status to certain providers of content. The concern is that companies that do not pay could find it hard to reach customers or potential customers, threatening the openness of the Internet.

A paragraph from today's New York Times, from an article entitled Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail — this is information you need to know, especially if you use Yahoo or AOL for your email — and this is just the beginning. Read all about it here.

Demand freedom!

I, for one, am sick and tired of being bullied by fundamentalists of all stripes. The Muslims who are offended by drawings on paper seem to spend all their time being offended anyway, while Evangelical activists in this country seem to spend all their time on the offensive.

I applaud the courage of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in reprinting the drawings in support of freedom.

Enjoy!


*NOTE: littlegreenfootballs provides some closeups.

Tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the rest of us

One measure of how severely the budget cuts just passed will affect the Lower Ninety-eight Percent of Americans is the fact that they just passed — so many Republicans voted against it that the final House vote was 216 to 214. But the President is delighted.

According to the New York Times (now don't get all worked up, You-know-who-you-are, these are just facts, not some "liberal media plot"), the cuts, over a five-year period ending in 2010,

. . . will achieve savings of $6.4 billion in Medicare, the health care program for the elderly, through a variety of changes that includehigher premiums for all beneficiaries, with steeper increases for the more affluent and a freeze in payments to home health care providers.

In the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled, $4.8 billion will be saved in part by increasing co-payments and reducing payments for prescription drugs.

Anyone you know on Medicare or Medicaid?

And, according to the Washington Post,

College students could face higher interest rates when their banks get squeezed by the federal government. And some cotton farmers will find support payments nicked. State-led efforts to force deadbeat parents to pay their child support may also have to be curtailed.

Just as shameless as the legislation itself was the maneuvering by the Republican leadership. Democrats were excluded from the process, representatives from insurance and drug companies were included, and the legislation was put in final form pretty much in the middle of the night and submitted for a vote the next day before anyone had a chance to really review it.

UPDATE: Roy Blunt just lost the leadership vote to John Boehner, who is a step further away from the scandals, even though Blunt got credit for the success of this disgusting legislation. Hm.

When, exactly, is the revolution to start?

Dr. James E. Hansen, a top NASA scientist who knows a thing or two about climate change, reports that the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out or writing about the need to do something immediately to reverse global warming.

The Justice Department lead prosecutor in the Abramoff case, Noel Hillman, has just been kicked upstairs, with Bush appointing him to the federal bench; naturally, he had to step down from an investigation he has headed for two years. Democratic outrage has been characterized by the Administration as "pure politics." Link.

Read Molly Ivins today, for more of what she calls "an entire climate of secrecy and fear being created by this administration." For example:

Some damage is harder to see than others -- and I offer two cases of suppression. First, there's a congressionally mandated report on outsourcing high-tech jobs. It was supposed to be released before the '04 election but wasn't, because it was politically embarrassing. More than a year later, they are still stonewalling, ignoring the federal law that ordered the study done and be released before November 2004.

Second case: According to the Project on Government Oversight, the Congressional Research Service has warned a senior analyst to avoid describing his research findings. The analyst, whose job it is to describe research findings of the nonpartisan service, specializes in separation-of-power issues, but was criticized over a report and comments he made concerning the plight of national security whistleblowers.

You have to wonder whether our country is strong enough to take another three years of what I have come to believe is a concerted effort to dismantle it. And where the hell is the public revulsion? What will it take to mobilize America to get rid of the Gingrich-descended Republicans in Washington, beginning NOW?

State of the Union II

A friend insisted I offer my take on The Speech. OK:

Unwatchable (but I can't help myself); undecipherable; incoherent; petty; smug and smarmy. Not to mention soporific.

For starters.

State of the Union

Can't outdo Nora Ephron, writing on Huffington Post today, who concludes:

. . . perhaps the worst moment of all: you realize that you've spent the last two hours attempting to watch a parallel universe that is entirely based on invented truth, and what's more, it's running the country.

Set for life . . .

A lifetime job with great benefits and super pension, just in case . . . I'd be happy, too.
(Photo: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)