Do the ends justify the means...?


I'm sad to report that progressives are resorting to "astroturfing."

If you go here, you can click through the menus and generate a "letter to the editor" of your local paper--in this case, against Patriot Acts I and II.

While I agree with the end, I strongly disagree with the means. Leftists have been rightly criticizing the RNC for using this tactic for some time now.

I must say, True Majority and Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream fame, I'm disappointed in you.

Correction....

The link to the House of Representatives vote tally of infamy (below: removed now) was incorrect. I got it from MoveOn.org, who now says that link was for a procedural vote on the $87 billion -- not the final Yes or No.

My post was correct on this matter: Susan Davis did vote for the bill.

I hope other voters besides me are calling her office to express their displeasure.

Here's the final tally for the yes or no.

Rummy memo a plant...?

I must say, I've been suspicious of the Rumsfeld memo from the start. This guy makes sense:

That memo wasn't leaked, it was obviously planted. Why? Well here are a few reasons I believe:

- The administration obviously knows they are losing the war on terrorism and so now they are setting up their excuses. How else are they going to try to explain why there are still so many terrorists?

- They are trying to prepare the American mentality to expect long drawn out occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan as necessary evils.

- It makes Rumsfeld look like he is doing his job, but that the Department of Defense is a large difficult bureaucracy to manage (shift the blame).

- It plants the seed for the possible development of a new branch of defense designed by the White House.

- It paves the way for them to take more "necessary" aggressive measures.

Complete post here.

Infamy in the House....

To my ire, Congresswoman Susan Davis, my rep, voted to give Bush his $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. I just called her office and expressed my displeasure.

Want to check your own representative's vote? Go here. [Link removed: see above.]

Make sure you let them know if you're pleased or angry.

This made my day...!

Bush heckled inside and outside Australia's Parliament.

...Thousands of demonstrators banged drums and shouted outside the Parliament building while a separate group of protesters jostled with security officials outside the U.S. embassy compound where Bush stayed overnight.

During Bush's speech, two Green Party senators jumped to their feet and shouted war protests at Bush. They were ordered removed from the chamber but sat and refused to leave. One of them, Sen. Bob Brown, shouted "we are not a sheriff," a reference to Bush's recent description of Howard.

"I love free speech," Bush said to laughter. [You lie, you smug bastard.]

If only more lawmakers, at home and abroad, had the guts.

Complete story here.

Roll call of infamy ii....

If you want to see how your senators voted on the abortion ban.

Here.

Roll call of infamy...

On the $87 billion funding to continue the debacle in Iraq.

Senator Diane Feinstein, of California, voted "yea." So did Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, of New York.

For shame!

Only 12 senators stood up to President Bush: Boxer (D, CA), Byrd (D, WV), Edwards (D, NC), Graham (D, FL), Harkin (D, IA), Hollings (D, SC), Jeffords (I, VT), Kennedy (D, MA), Kerry (D, MA), Lautenberg (D, NJ), Leahy (D, VT) and Sarbanes (D, MD).

Tally here.

U.S. troops spread too thin....

We're so overextended, we have to hire rent-a-cops to guard our military bases!

Of course, this means big bucks for the companies getting the contracts, both here and abroad.

...In Iraq, almost a third of the $4 billion monthly costs are going to private contractors. One foreign policy expert estimates the current Bush Administration has five times as many civilian contractors in Iraq as his father's administration did during the first Gulf War in 1991. [Emphasis mine.]

The privatization practice, first explored when Cheney was Secretary of Defense for the senior Bush, led to an $8.9 million logistics contract for Brown and Root, a company Cheney later oversaw as head of Halliburton after he left government. Of approximately 3,000 civilian contracts awarded by the Pentagon since 1994, about 2,700 have gone to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root and one other firm.

Complete story here.

Abortion ban passes....

Sometimes I see this as a continuation of the centuries-long battle between secularism and superstition. You know, the same battle that claimed Galileo as a victim and kept us believing the sun rotated around the earth for a few hundred years longer?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the first federal ban on a specific abortion procedure, ending eight years of divisive debate and clearing the way for President Bush to sign the measure into law.

Both sides declared the 64-to-34 vote a historic turning point in a controversy that has split Americans for decades, ever since the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to abortion in the case of Roe v. Wade 30 years ago.

Of course President Bush is salivating to sign the bill, calling it, "very important legislation that will end an abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life in America."

Gag.

Our hopes lie in the Supreme Court now.

Yep, the same court that appointed Bush some two years ago.

Complete story here.

Stovepiping...

Interesting interview with Seymour M. Hersh on the New Yorker website, referring to his recent article, "The Stovepipe," which details the practice of "taking a piece of intelligence or a request that should be pushed through the chain of command—checked at levels and sent from one level to another—and bringing it straight to the highest authority." He makes a strong case that President Bush might actually believe his own misinformation about Iraq--a frightening prospect.

...Remember that the Administration, no matter how they twist the words or spin the words, told us we’d find weapons in Iraq. They believed it. That was the intelligence they got. And, to me, the fact that they weren’t lying and really believed it is as alarming as if they had been lying. It’s very, very troubling.

He also quotes classified sources inside the U.S. government that say, as of two weeks ago, the number of incidents against American forces in Iraq were up to 23 a day!

Not that we hear about them here in the United States.

Complete story here.

Boykin watch....

Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin has apologized and says his words were misconstrued.

Awww, what a guy! We were wrong, he shouldn't be fired after all.

...When he spoke of the Somali warlord, he did not mean that the Somali's god was Islam, but rather "his worship of money and power — idolatry." Boykin said he did believe that "radical extremists have sought to use Islam as a cause of attacks on America."

As for his statement that God had installed Bush in the White House, Boykin said he meant that God had done the same for "Bill Clinton and other presidents."

Boy, I'll bet ya he gagged on that sentence!

Is the guy going to get away with this sham?

It seems so:

Though he defended his comments, Boykin has told others at the Pentagon that he will stop making speeches to religious groups and will try to tone down his remarks on the sensitive subject of religion. Defense officials said his job was not in jeopardy.[Emphasis mine.]

Once again, the L.A. Times focuses on the anger Boykin's remarks have caused in Islamic communities. Once again I ask, what about non-Islamic, secularist American constituents who don't want a religious nut like this in charge of hunting down bin Laden and Hussein? If the guy can't separate his religious extremism from his job, he shouldn't hold a government position.

Boykin should be fired.

L.A. Times story, sad disappointment that it is, here.

Is this site for real...?

Or an over-the-top parody?

It makes my skin crawl.

I can't believe the letters in the "hate mail" section are authentic. If I were a Right-Winger, trying to fake a "hate letter" from someone on the Left, I think I'd come up with something along the lines of what they have.

Creepy.

Pathetic....

That "defiance" of the Bush administration has been reduced to this.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — The Senate defied the Bush administration on Thursday by insisting that Iraq repay up to $10 billion in reconstruction aid, even as a divided House took a different path and prepared to grant President Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan without conditions.

A bipartisan coalition of moderate senators, saying that American taxpayers should not bear the entire burden of rebuilding Iraq, prevailed against strong administration opposition in a 51-to-47 vote Thursday evening. Their amendment — approved shortly after Vice President Dick Cheney failed to bring wavering senators in line through a round of phone calls — would require half of the $20.3 billion in reconstruction aid to be a loan to Iraq, unless the administration persuaded other countries to forgive 90 percent of Iraq's existing debt.

This is the best that Congress can do, even given the "waves of opposition that their constituents have voiced in the five weeks since Mr. Bush announced his intention of spending $87 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan" and the "record-high deficits [that] have squeezed public-works projects at home."

What spineless wheenies!

A bit further down in the story is the truth:

The debate about loans versus grants, however, could not obscure the administration's overall success in persuading both chambers to endorse the basic framework of its postwar Iraq policy. The president is virtually certain to command solid majorities in both houses for a vast majority of what he is asking for — and a mandate for a strong role in overseeing Iraq's future.

We have no opposition party in the U.S.

Complete story here.

More about Boykin....

This story in today's L.A. Times misses the point.

Rather than raising the question of General Boykin's fitness (see below) for the position of deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, it suggests that someone should have "a quiet chat" with him, to get him to quit offending the Islamic world with all his religious posturing.

Forget the Islamic world! (For the moment only.) The issue here is not global public relations. As a secularist who believes strongly in the separation of church and state and as a citizen who wishes to prevent a repeat of 9/11/2001, I believe someone who has stated that the real enemy is Satan, not the bin Ladens of the world, should be disqualified for the position of deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence.

Period.

Fairy tales....

Some interesting quotes, uttered in June, by our nation's deputy undersecretary of defense, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, whose mission is to aggressively combine intelligence with special operations and hunt down "so-called high-value terrorist targets," including Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (both still missing, as you may recall):

“Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”

Why are terrorists out to destroy the United States? Boykin said: “They’re after us because we’re a Christian nation.”

There's more:

Boykin also routinely tells audiences that God, not the voters, chose President Bush: “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”

Lest NBC seem too critical of the Bush administration, the article carries this "disclaimer."

NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin, who’s been investigating Boykin for the Los Angeles Times, says the general casts the war on terror as a religious war: “I think that it is not only at odds with what the president believes, but it is a dangerous, extreme and pernicious view that really has no place.”

Yeah, right. And I've got a pretty bridge for sale.

On the other hand, who really wants to believe that the finger on the button to the nation's nuclear arsenal belongs to a man who believes Satan walks the earth and that he was placed in office by divine intervention?

Complete story, such as it is (NBC doesn't do depth) here.

Saint George....

As Buzzflash asks, is the AP trying to sanctify Bush? By running this photo, the wire-service has lost a lot of credibility.

See for yourself here.

Krugman sounds another warning in the NYT....

During the 1990's I spent much of my time focusing on economic crises around the world — in particular, on currency crises like those that struck Southeast Asia in 1997 and Argentina in 2001. The timing of such crises is hard to predict. But there are warning signs, like big trade and budget deficits and rising debt burdens.

And there's one thing I can't help noticing: a third world country with America's recent numbers — its huge budget and trade deficits, its growing reliance on short-term borrowing from the rest of the world — would definitely be on the watch list.

One mystery I will never understand is how the Republicans continue to successfully present themselves as the political party of fiscal responsibility.

Complete story here.

A taste of our new governor's tactics....

California Governor-Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger gets back at one of the women who accused him of sexual-harassment.

Read about it here.

Fed up....

I rushed in late to a work meeting the other day, just in time to hear our HR representative winding up a talk on upcoming budget cuts, belt-tightening, heavier workloads and possible salary freezes.

Gloomy predictions have become commonplace at the large, state-funded California university where I work. The $20 billion state budget deficit lurks around every campus corner, an uninvited guest at the banquet, ravaging the buffet before anyone else can get to it.

After HR left the room, my fellow faculty assistants erupted into talk. We have to make the best of a bad situation, they said. Suck it up. Help one another when the workload gets too heavy.

No one questioned the basic premise of the situation. Not a word was uttered about fighting back if our workloads became unbearable or our workplace conditions intolerable.

Until finally I could take it no longer and piped up. “Hey, isn’t there a limit to how much we’ll take? After all, we do have a union…”

You would have thought I had suggested jumping off a cliff into the nearby Pacific. If only a fraction of the anti-union sentiment my remark occasioned would be channeled into campus labor organizing, our union wouldn’t be the well-meaning but ineffectual body even I agree it is.

Instead, the most vocal group members around the table damned the union and insisted that we have to take whatever the university dishes out because...well...that’s the way it is. Who can argue with a state budget deficit? Employers hold all the cards. Besides, we have it better than many others out there.

That the latter is true, makes me even angrier. I am so sick of low-paid workers getting the shaft, then being manipulated into turning against one another. The university has used the budget deficit for years to intimidate employees, keep lower-level wages low and excuse a host of ridiculous business practices.

Yes, California’s budget is in a colossal crisis—especially now that an inexperienced Republican actor has been placed in the governor’s mansion. (Remember what happened the last time this occurred.) The university, however, is a huge, pampered financial entity, rich in cash, land, facilities, resources and employees. Its wealth is anything but evenly distributed throughout the system.

A case in point. I recently saw one my boss’ federal tax returns. A relatively new faculty-member in electrical and computer engineering, he reported $149,000 in income in 2001. That's nothing compared to what senior U.C. administrators and other top academic leaders make. In 2001, the average salary of a UC chancellor was $280,610. And they've given themselves raises since then.

Yet, when I brought up wage-disparities in the meeting, without naming names or quoting salaries, and suggested that maybe fat could be cut from above rather than below, my fellow employees reacted more strongly than when HR had threatened to freeze their own salaries.

The faculty, they said, would go elsewhere if they aren’t paid enough. Not only that, they are "Ph.D.'s," the letters uttered as if discussing godly attributes. They have to study four years undergraduate, six years graduate, then take a post-graduate position, be an intern or whatever for even longer. Do you want to do that? someone asked.

You bet! I said. Only, I’m too broke, too indebted and most likely, too old.

Ten years ago, I tried to better my circumstances through education. I worked like a maniac and went into $20,000 in debt to earn first a B.A., then a master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley. Only to graduate and be offered $9 an hour to pursue my field, journalism, in one of the most expensive regions of the country, the San Francisco Bay Area. With a child to support and no savings or investments to fall back on, I had no choice but to turn the job down and return to higher-paying office work.

So much for my attempt to escape the admin-support ghetto.

But those poor Ph.D.’s! To hear my coworkers talk, it’s as if schooling, followed by interesting, creative and highly-paid work are sacrifices, not amazingly good fortune.

While grad students out there are studying and making, what, $25,000? Other workers are earning the same or less, pushing coffee, pumping gas, stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart, cleaning motel rooms and performing other less-than-desirable labor. Rather than rosier futures to look forward to in a few years, they have bunions, blown spinal-discs, hundreds of rude, disrespectful and filthy customers, mind-numbing boredom and no healthcare or dental benefits. Vacations? Hell, most working-class Americans are lucky now if they can get by holding down only one job.

People in the privileged classes consider several years of making less than $100,000 an economic hardship, above and beyond the call of duty.

The rest of us call it Life and consider ourselves lucky if we ever break $35,000.

Sad day for Ca-lee-for-nya...

How's this for a quote from the governor-elect of the largest state (population-wise) of the union?

"I will not fail you. I will not disappoint you, and I will not let you down," Schwarzenegger said to cheers from the crowd.

Well, he already has by uttering the same thing three ways without saying anything of substance.

A true protégé of President Bush in this regard, Schwarzenegger promises to go far!

What's more, don’t feel too smug from the safety of faraway states and foreign countries. He will soon be heading your way.

His celebration last night was held in the ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars in LA, where Republicans have toasted Reagan election-night victories for two decades.

Want more proof the Republican Party is grooming him for the Oval Office? In July, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah introduced what he hopes will become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, permitting foreign-born nationals to be elected president.

Time to wake up!

According to the LAX, Hummers clogged the Avenue of the Stars last night, as invitees to the victory celebration searched for nonexistent parking places. Security was tight at the super-swank affair: if you weren't on the list, you didn’t get in. And that seems to have included a fair number of disappointed reporters.

Well, what do you expect from a multi-millionaire Republican actor-cum-politician-cum-governor?

Pandering to California voters’ basest instincts, Schwarzenegger’s first move will be to overturn a law granting drivers' licenses to undocumented immigrants. But make sure you somehow get a ride to the fields, nurseries, kitchens and laundry-rooms!

Just as quickly, he’s promising to undo the unpopular tripling of the car tax. And balance the state budget.

Oh well, we all know when he fails, the Democrats will somehow be blamed.

By the way, someone ought to tell Maria Shriver to ease up on whatever chemical substance has been smoothing her way on those late nights on the campaign trail. In every recent photo, she looks like a Stepford Wife on coke.

Election story here.