Common Sense for Uncommon Times |
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John Ashcroft is a dangerous menace to American values. He doesn't believe in freedom, states' rights, or the rights of an individual to freely practice no religion. His Pentecostal agenda is at odds with the needs of the country and the Constitution, and I call for his immediate resignation for the good of the United States of America which all of us, including Ashcroft, love.
Heroes
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin
Alexander Hamilton
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Saturday, June 08, 2002
The Business of America Is Out of Control Ho Hum, another corporate greed screed. When are the poor huddled middle class going to wake up and VOTE! A Comedy of Eros The LA Times get the award for best headline on the year long FBI investigation of a bordello in New Orleans. Read it and weep at the incredible waste of resources. To make the story even more pathetic, the federal prosecutor vowed more of the same. Does anyone else sense an echo of the sizzling flesh of burning witches when John Ashcroft passes by? New Questions on Handling of Power Prices in California The backstabbing at the CIA and FBI has nothing on the power companies. Xcel from Minneapolis just surfaced documents that show Mirant, Duke Energy, and the Williams Companies may have been scheming. It's great. "We're ratting you out, but only because FERC told us to." I love it when the sharks turn on each other. FERC, of course, still has a giant Bush thumb up its ass, but when the writing is not just on the wall, but on billboards, skywriting, and the sides of buses, you can't hide behind executive privilege any more. The whole ugly deal of Bush and Lay, Bush and Enron, Bush and Oil, Cheney and oil, Bush and Cheney and Afghan pipelines and El Paso and Enron and Reliant and a bunch of good old boy companies screwing California and Bush laughing as if its a joke. He lost California by a million votes so he figured payback time was finally at hand. Ken Lay could make his campaign contribution back in a day. These guys were sucking 50-80 million dollars a day out of California right into their pockets. No wonder Enron collapsed when FERC put price caps on. They had built unconscionably high profits into their budget to cover their scams of the last five years. Who knows, they might even have gotten away with it if they could have drained the Golden State for a few more years. As for the energy traders, they have lost any sense of a moral compass. I used to respect Republican business types for a high minded rectitude and strong ethical values. Damn, was I ever a sucker. Clinton looks like the pope compared to this administration. Well, maybe more like a straying cardinal, but you get my point. He never screwed the people. He didn't do the self-enrichment in office. He didn't stand by while his cronies ripped off a whole state. No, he balanced the budget, ran a surplus, and oversaw full employment. Hell, he's entitled to a blowjob for that. And a cigar. What you will no doubt see soon is Bill Bennett trotted out on the talk shows to talk about morality. Somehow, some way, Bennett will make all these corporate CEOs look like good guys. Tax evasion, cheating on options, stiffing their shareholders, moving off shore to avoid taxes; all these will be as nothing to Bennett. Somehow the Democrats will be the evil class warfare mongers, the big spenders, the cheaters. Wait and see. If Bennett had the balls of a paper doll, he'd stand up tomorrow and blast the Republicans for ethical failure. Sadly, he doesn't and he won't. We're witnessing the biggest scam in the history of the United States and the Republican Party is aiding and abetting. Teddy Roosevelt must be turning over in his grave. Bush had an opportunity to be a reformer and a leader. Squandered. He had an opportunity to be a uniter. Squandered. He had an opportunity to restore dignity to his office. Squandered. Friday, June 07, 2002
Department of Homeland Insecurity- Not to pile on or anything so tacky but Frank Rich turns over the steaming pile of blame and lapse to make sure all the corruption gets exposed to a little fresh air. Today's new wrinkle is a reminder that in addition to the Energy Task Force, a massive pile of odorous dung rendered more obsolete by the minute, the Vice President was also put in charge of an overall review of coordinating federal response to domestic attacks. "On May 8, 2001, the president charged Mr. Cheney with overseeing a "national effort" to coordinate all federal programs for responding to domestic attacks in league with a new Office of National Preparedness at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That day the vice president went on CNN to explain his duty. After noting that "one of our biggest threats as a nation" may include "a terrorist organization overseas," Mr. Cheney said: "We need to look at this whole area, oftentimes referred to as homeland defense. The president's asked me to take on the responsibility of overseeing all of that, reviewing the plans that are out there today." I guess the "blame California" game he was playing with Ken Lay just took too much damn time out of his schedule for that other stuff. Forget the warnings from the Clinton national security team. Wusses. Forget the CIA warnings. Pansies. We've got Enron's energy plan to promote, we've got the Afghan pipeline deal to sign with the Taliban, we've got Saddam to go after. There's a whole list of priorities higher than Osama, right? Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell: 'We Expected Eternal Paradise For This,' Say Suicide Bombers. Thanks to the Opinion Journal for reminding their readers about this Onion piece from a few weeks after the WTC attacks. It came up in the context of a Chinese paper running an Onion article without understanding the Onion is a satirical paper. This piece, however, is pretty much straight reporting. On a related topic from a March 4 New York Times article, "scholars have returned to the earliest known copies of the Koran in order to grasp what it says about the document's origins and composition. Mr. Luxenberg explains these copies are written without vowels and diacritical dots that modern Arabic uses to make it clear what letter is intended. In the eighth and ninth centuries, more than a century after the death of Muhammad, Islamic commentators added diacritical marks to clear up the ambiguities of the text, giving precise meanings to passages based on what they considered to be their proper context. Mr. Luxenberg's radical theory is that many of the text's difficulties can be clarified when it is seen as closely related to Aramaic, the language group of most Middle Eastern Jews and Christians at the time. For example, the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply "white." Islamic tradition insists the term hur stands for "houri," which means virgin, but Mr. Luxenberg insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, hur means "white raisin." Mr. Luxenberg has traced the passages dealing with paradise to a Christian text called Hymns of Paradise by a fourth-century author. Mr. Luxenberg said the word paradise was derived from the Aramaic word for garden and all the descriptions of paradise described it as a garden of flowing waters, abundant fruits and white raisins, a prized delicacy in the ancient Near East. In this context, white raisins, mentioned often as hur, Mr. Luxenberg said, makes more sense than a reward of sexual favors." Monitored calls by chief hijacker weren't shared Hey, Good news for a change. It wasn't the FBI screwing up! No Such Agency is the butt of the latest kick the dog blame game going around Washington. I don't know what Bush thinks another layer of bureaucracy will do to make this situation better, but it would be hard to make our intelligence agencies look stupider. I could let the country down for a lot less money than these guys are doing it. Hell, for that matter, we could hire the collective mafias of the world for a lot less than we pay our NSA, CIA and FBI. Just let them get rid of the terrorists for us and we'll let them move their drugs and hookers without interference. Just like now, but we'll get something for it. Justice Dept. ideas thrown out of court Our dear friend John Ashcroft can't seem to shake this severe problem. He can't find a single federal judge who thinks he's right about anything. Oregon death with dignity, secret deportations, denial of access to a lawyer. Into the court he pops time after time just to get rejected. I'd like the franchise on the Whack an Ashcroft arcade game, but I'm afraid by the time I'd get it to market he might be out of office. The factoid that is most relevant here is that Ashcroft is responsible for screening judges. If his current situational awareness is so bad that he is zero for everything in his court battles, I'm not sure I want him making the call on lifetime appointments. His confirmation-era vows to govern fairly and constitutionally ring hollow with his perfomance to date. Boob update: It's semi-official. A third topless statue is being draped at the Justice Department. Is It OK To Hate Bush? In which the president's carefully orchestrated dumb-guy shtick proves hollow and dubious. A Mark Morford skewering. Thursday, June 06, 2002
Armed and Dangerous contributes a funny commentary on a comment that I call "Bird to Islamic Men". click on the comments to see the original. Who Wins with the Estate Tax Repeal? Ya know, it's a funny world. 1 person out of 1,000 will benefit from this law, but the Congress just has to shove it to the top of their To-Do List. Stop and think about that for a minute. 1 person out of 1,000. In the meantime: hundreds out of 1,000 have no health care. fifty or a hundred seniors struggle to pay for prescription drugs. ten or twenty families bankrupt themselves caring for an ailing family member. ten or twenty families use their life savings paying for nursing home care. There are two primary reasons the estate tax is a good idea. Let's get the smokescreens out of the way first. The Republicans claim the "death tax" is a second tax on the same money. That's just baloney. The tax is on the "income" to the surviving heirs and doesn't include the entirely tax-free transfer of an estate to a surviving spouse. In many cases, there are massive capital gains from long-held securities or property. If there was no estate tax there would be no reconciliation of those capital gains. If you think the rich should be able to pile up wealth upon wealth with no tax, that's your privilege, but as long as working stiffs pay a social security tax on their first dime of income and an income tax soon thereafter, I'm going to argue for a tax on inherited wealth, capital gains, and un-earned income. Our system requires poor and middle income people to bankrupt themselves to get medicaid to help with nursing home care. If we think it's okay to destory the inheritance for poor and middle class folks, I frankly don't give a rat's ass if we tax the inheritance of the rich. Now for the better, sweeter, and more reasonable arguments. Nothing is more destructive to the self worth of an individual than being superfluous. If society doesn't need you, you might lead a life of idle abandon wasting your time on wine, women and song. That's not the American way, bro, and I won't let that cruel fate happen to you. Wise wealthy families leave their heirs enough not to starve, but not a lot more. Work is rewarding and fulfilling in its own right and everyone should have the opportunity to know that. I'm taking your money for your own damn good and you should thank me for it. Second, massive wealth is corrupting our political system. We have a handful of senators worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What do they know about my life or yours? Nothing. They haven't been hungry or cold or wrapped in bitter argument over where the next food dollar is coming from. There is a distancing that only money can buy, and it does. A corollary argument is that your peers also are people with more money than connection with regular folks. You start to do foolish things like voting for an estate tax repeal rather than a prescription drug benefit or a Plan E (for everyone--thanks Kucinich) for Medicare. Worst of all, you might actually start to believe that cutting taxes and increasing spending is smart economics. I've got two words for you: Voodoo Economics. straight from Bush 41's lips to your ears. Look at any decent graph of the deficit and debt and you'll see that Clinton saved the nation's ass by balancing spending and taxes. Bush 43 is as big a disaster as Reagan for the economy and when you start believing that Bush makes sense, you are in deep trouble. Remeber, this is the guy who asked the President of Brazil if "he had blacks, too?". Finally, and this is an argument I make with little relish, the business elite have become fatally corrupted with greed. Not garden variety gimme, but avariciousness on an apocalyptic scale. Cheating New York children out of sales tax on your Monet purchase tops my current list of sleazy crimes, but Enron crooks numbered in the hundreds, some of them now in the administration. Ripping off California, cheating on taxes, or Stanley-like, leaving the country to avoid taxes altogether. We're at war, boys and girls, and people who stay "out of harm's way" to quote Pres. Bush, and companies and individuals who dodge every effort at even nominal taxation are not the heroes we want or need in America. I'm all for a 3 million buck exemption on your estate. After that, screw it. If you weren't smart enough to give it away to charity, libraries, education, churches, or your favorite animal shelter, your kids don't deserve it. Besides, there's a whole body of Biblical lore advising you that you're never going to make it into Heaven if you're loaded. We're doing you a favor. Enjoy it. Wednesday, June 05, 2002
Read about John O'Neill yourself from this New York Magazine piece from Dec. 17, 2001. You'll be reading more about him soon and this seems like a fair background piece. Al-Qaida monitored U.S. negotiations with Taliban over oil pipeline. You can only read the first bit without signing up for Salon, but it ties in with some other O'Neill mentions from today. Harper's Editor JOHN R. MacARTHUR is taking no prisoners with this June 4 op ed piece in the Globe and Mail. He brings up the recently prominent name and testimony of John O'Neil, the FBI Deputy Director who died in the WTC attack. Tuesday, June 04, 2002
The Angry Liberal asks if Bush is smart enough to outwit a clever enemy. The evidence of recent days isn't encouraging. To add insult to injury it now appears clear in this Nicholas Confessore piece that many of the INS omissions that make it so easy for student visas to be abused could have been prevented by a program that was tested during the Clinton administration but blocked by special interest groups. Bush compounded the problem by appointing opponents of strong screening software to key positions at INS. Ask your congressperson to support the already-tested and ready to go CIPRIS program.--Coordinated Interagency Partnership Regulating International Students (CIPRIS). Monday, June 03, 2002
Bruno Shapiro writes in praise of John Ashcroft. Very few people have had as many opportunities to distinguish themselves as John Ashcroft has had. He could have prevented September 11, boosted the FBI anti-terrorism budget pre Sept 11, told the President about the Phoenix memo immediately after he found out, used the gun check database to find terrorist suspects, and any number of other activities. Hey, what a great time to have been attorney general if you were alert and focused on terrorism. Of course, if New Orleans bordellos and California medical marijuana clinics and virtual child porn were at the top of your wish list, September 11 might have come as a very rude and unwelcome surprise. In our new found desire to be positive, we're positive Genral Ashcroft is doing everything he is capable of doing. US News throws in their two cents worth about another FBI (oh shit, I can't be anti-government)... US News reports that the FBI upheld all their regulations rather than stepping over the line and doing something un-American like tracking Osama bin Laden's activities in his training camp. The report makes it clear that Headquarters acted to uphold the highest traditions of honoring guidelines. Google Bites my Ad Ashcroft is an okay guy; an undoubtedly moral man of deep faith, and a dedicated public servant. I have read that he holds Bible study sessions every morning at work, and he sings with passion about patriotism and other praiseworthy topics. If I keep saying pro-Ashcroft things, perhaps Google will stop censoring me. I love America. Ashcroft loves America. Ashcroft loves Ashcroft. Everybody loves Ashcroft except for a few Muslims he has locked up for their own good. Yeah, their own good. He's a good man. Just cuz he's trying to fix the Consitution to fit the Bible better, everybody should leave him alone. Ashcroft loves babies, even tiny, tiny, nano-babies. He might not be so sure about marijuana smoking cancer patients, but he would probably love marijuana smoking tiny babies. He loves the Madam in New Orleans. He kept a close eye on her for over a year just to make sure she was okay. I like Ashcroft. He's a good man, a good American, and a good Pentacostal. I really, really mean it. Stuart Taylor, also writing in The Atlantic, assembles a compelling case against Attorney General Ashcroft for grossly distorting our laws to illegally detain thousands of mainly harmless Muslims. Everyone understand the immediate aftermath of September 11 and the need to insure against other imminent acts of violence. Eight months later, many innocent people are still locked up without cause or justice. One of the great lessons of our recent history has been that if you don't act against tyranny, it may come back to haunt you. The German people found this out, to their horror. So did the Americans during the shameful Japanese internment camp era. It's time to let the rule of law back into the Ashcroft Justice Department. William Schneider makes his case for organizational incompetence, not personal malfeasance in the case of Bush pre September 11. However, Bill's May 28th Atlantic Monthly piece reads more like an indictment of Bush honesty than anything else. Ever since the CBS story about the August 6 briefing broke, Bush and his surrogates have been pleading their "we couldn't have known" case. Each day that passes, however, reveals more and more information that may have been relevant to at least some aspects of the plot. The question might be better phrased with today's insight as "Why didn't the Bush national security team maintain the Clinton team's focus on bin Laden?" Of particular relevance to this site is "Why didn't Ashcroft have a counter-terrorism focus at all?" What were Ashcroft's top seven priorities in the summer of 2001? Could his list have included porn, child porn, virtual porn, fetus protection, marijuana smoking, and various other moralistic claptrap? Isn't he just a little dated for the 21st century? I'd prefer an Attorney General who could rip the paralytic head from the strong field office body of the FBI and re-capitate the FBI with special-forces-thinking patriotic souls who can dream, envision, scheme, sneak, and plot the vicious destruction of our enemies. That enemies list doesn't include Democrats, gays, AIDS victims, abortion rights advocates, marijuana smokers, prostitutes, or stem cell researchers. It does include Al Qaeda. If Ashcroft can't do the job, get somebody who can. Warren Rudman if you want someone from the Republican side who understands national security and the current threat environment. Just get John "Wayne Edgar Hoover Newton" Ashcroft out of there. Scott Shuger continues the bi-partisan pile-on of the FBI with a relentless indictment of their penchant for looking good above all else along with a laundry list of blown cases. I think my solution is probably best. Just transfer everyone from FBI headquarters to the new airport screening squad where they can inspect shoes, wand little old ladies, and peer at purses all day. I think the hard working FBI field offices would probably get along just fine without a central HQ. Arianna Huffington weighs in with a hard hitting piece about how wasting time on the drug war may have helped cause the deaths of 9/11. As I mentioned a few posts back, the transfer of a few hundred narcotics agents to counter terrorism still leaves drugs as a higher priority than terror. At the same time, nearly all our allies are rethinking their failed anti-drug efforts. We've got the wrong attorney general for these times if he continues to occupy himself with porn and drugs. This was highlighted again today in a column by Chris Coursey (link to follow...sorry) in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. A public storefront medical marijuana clinic was busted by the DEA in spite of California's repeated and determined efforts to make medical marijuana use possible. How can the deficit-running federal government justify this clueless use of personnel when any number of threats are higher on the public's list of concerns? At least the local sheriff's department had the sense to decline to participate in the raid. "The Sonoma County Narcotics Task Force declined an invitation to assist with the Aiko raid, citing other priorities and investigations, sheriff's Sgt. Chris Bertoli said." I think the feds could add hunting Al Qaeda to the list of "other priorities" Global warming and parenting If you want to know why Bush refuses to change our policies to address the now-admitted problem of global warming, look no further than his parenting skills. He drinks so his daughters drink and he doesn't really care. He's equipped to be your buddy, but not your Dad. That's why the fat cats love him so. He'll always be around to slap their back and crack a joke at the expense of earnest do-gooders. Too bad the times call for Father Knows Best and all we have is Cheers. Brendan Miniter at the Opinion Journal joins the chorus for reform of the FBI and in praise of good leaks. Most wryly, he also challenges the FBI to see if they are reading, analyzing, and reacting to information. I won't give away his specific challenge, but I'll be watching the FBI site to see if they do as he sagely suggests. For those Ashcroft fans who dropped into the site, I'll give you a hint since logic may not be your strongest suit. It's a Greek cheese often used in a salad. Spell it backwards to get your clue. Bush Admits Global Warming but Doesn't Think We Should Fix It The NY Times reports that Bush has now agreed that global warming is real, here to stay, and damaging. All the skeptics, blow hards, ditto heads, and flat earthers can now take it as an article of faith that not only were they wrong for the last decade, but that most people knew it and didn’t care to face the situation. I won't hold my breath waiting for the "Big Fat Idiot" to apologize, however. In many ways these paid skeptics were not too different from tobacco scientists, but that’s not the point. Bush admits global warming is here, it might be a big problem, but he doesn’t think we should do much about it. BTW, whatever you may think of Clinton, at least he wasn't an idiot on issues like blacks in Brazil or knowing that uninalienable (how Bush even pronounced that tongue twister I’ll never know) wasn’t the right formulation. I would bet that by the end of his first and final term in 2004 Bush will have as many indicted officials as Reagan did in eight years. The level of moral sleaze starts with Bush and his fantasy about being a successful businessman and Cheney with his Haliburton book magic. It includes Thomas “Sell no energy but charge for it” White at Army and “Nuclear” Card and a host of others. Rove barely fits into the lineup since he’s not really an official, but his cynical manipulation of voters with the steel tariffs, the farm bill, and textile legislation makes this principled blogger want to puke. I’m a social libertarian, fiscal rationalist and I’m appalled at the selling out of national interest in pursuit of a vote here and a vote there. Where’s the support for Sarbane’s reform of the accounting practice. Who’s behind Phil “Bribe me before I leave office” Gramm’s sabotage of sensible and honest reform on behalf of the investing public. It’s sickening. However you slice it, the business ethics prevailing today are at a perilously low ebb. Fault Clinton for many things, but he tried to fix some of the accounting issues that allowed an Enron to happen, but he was blocked in Congress by Republican majorities. If the Enron collapse wasn't enough to create reform, you might as well kiss the American capital markets goodbye. Sunday, June 02, 2002
Thomas Oliphant takes the FBI Director to task for his ever shifting versions on the missed 9/11 warnings. William Safire rips Ashcroft for nonfeasance and cutting last year's terrorism budget. He confirms the anti-freedom and anti-privacy nature of Ashcroft's new FBI guidelines and how they serve as a pathetic cover up for failure. It's time for Ashcroft to go and to take the new guidelines with him on the way out the door. It just strikes me as bald faced hypocrisy to call for "family values" at the same time that you are avoiding taxes, ripping off the public, and demolishing the retirement dreams of thousands of people. How Christians got mixed up with this crowd of amoral jerks is a sad case of political expedience gone bad. Nobody can fault the true-believing Christians for betraying their faith or beliefs, but a religion that preaches generosity, compassion, sharing, and the inability of the rich to enter heaven sure has some strange bedfellows among the Republicans. I just can't see Jesus campaigning against the estate tax, against financial accounting standards, or getting excited about invading Iraq. I can see him pushing for national health care, aid for the homeless and AIDS victimes, and a vast increase in foreign aid. It might be time to look for some new coalition partners who care about living people. just a thought. It's not just Ashcroft. He's a peculiar sort, but I've never thought he was motivated by greed. Cheney on the other hand, had his fingers deep in the cookie jar at Haliburton. Between scads of staffers from Enron and the emerging problems of the Veep from Haliburton, the Bush team is stuffed with freeloaders, profiteers, scumbags, and other classic Republican "free-market" enthusiasts. Phil "Screw America" Gramm is busy de-nutting Paul Sarbane's effort to protect Americans from Republi-fraudsters and Thomas "No Energy" White is still ensconced at Army Headquarters. How these jerks manage to hold their heads up in public is beyond me, but there must be a special gene for people who rip off the public and don't give a shit. If they were physically violent they'd be called sociopaths. I don't really see any need to change the label just because the crime was theft instead of assault. It's hard to believe, but after this year of fraud, corporate collapse, retirement melt downs, and admitted abuse of trading rules we aren't going to get any reform. No FASB changes; no 401k changes; nothing. If you don't think Congress and the White House are bought and paid for, you're dumber than I thought. Gramm ought to be serving his last term in the slammer rather than the Senate. He's bribed from yin to yang to do the bidding of the financial services industry. His wife's a crook too with a career jump straight from oversight to the Enron board. They don't even hide it any more. That's how stupid and toothless they think the public is. Well, you've got your damn vote and if you give a shit you'll vote out anybody who isn't for change that will protect the innocent public. Republican, Democrat, Independent, or Rat Eating Communist. It's all the same if they think things are just fine in Washington. A quick followup to yesterday's post about the FBI computer system. It seems the NSA Intelink system is everything the FBI really needed if they would just adopt it as one of their primary systems. Gee whiz, they could even send email and pictures. That is oh, so modern and the government already owns it. I'm sure Michael Dell could supply them with one laptop per person in less than a month. What in hell is everybody waiting for? Fredric Tulsky has a detailed story about John Ashcroft in today's San Jose Mercury News. Full of detail about his career as a lying scoundrel with a taste for revenge and a religious agenda that brooks no opposition. His incompetence in dealing with America's terrorist threat is matched by his peculiar obsession with child pornography, an almost non existent problem. His insistence on finding a way to prosecute virtual child pornography when there is no child involved at all reveals a mind with no capacity for nuance. We need an attorney general who can reorganize the FBI and cooperate with the NSA and CIA. Forget the fetuses. Forget the dope smokers at medical marijuana clinics. Forget the adult consumers of porn. Just get Al Qaeda. Newsweek chips in with a compelling account of the CIA failing to notify the FBI, INS, and State Department about two known terrrorists who entered the US 18 months before Sept 11. There's obviously still colossal failures of intelligence if Ashcroft had to find out about this from the current edition of Newsweek. |