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18 years Ago

What Dicks!

Published by marco on

’Marshall Plan’ for Iraq Fades (LA Times) hove its bedraggled carcass into view, reared its ugly head and expired with a wheeze that sounded like: “the America we learned about is dead and probably never existed”.

The story interviews several American officials whose crassness is beyond caricature—previously found only in the diseased imaginings of a died-in-the-wool marxist. And yet, quotes from these people are sprinkled throughout a story that shows no sense of outrage whatsoever. As far as the LA... [More]

How’m I Doin’?

Published by marco on

That’s the question implied by the smirk on George Bush’s face every time he speaks to the American people—not that he’s particularly interested in the answer. Bush dragged himself from the depths of his bubble to a dais (or rostrum, as his speechwriter put it) he’s visited six times before to deliver the 2006 State of the Union (Washington Post) address. The speech had all the earmarks of a committee effort delivered by someone who only understood about half of it. There were a good dozen different large... [More]

19 years Ago

A One-Party Republic

Published by marco on

Much of the chatter from Washington these days is about corruption, misplaced values and partisan politics. This has probably ever been so, but it’s the last one, partisan politics, that truly colors everything one hears about the centers of power in the United States. Almost without exception, issues are discussed as if there are only two possible sides and those sides are adequately represented by the Democrats and the Republicans, whose opinions on all issues are diametrically opposed. It... [More]

Sammy “The Eel” Alito

Published by marco on

 Most likely only those with the best endurance survived all 18 hours of the senate confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito. The entire transcript is also available online and runs to hundreds of pages. Reading 50 pages lends a strong feeling of deja vu whereas reading over 100 inspires more a feeling of disenchantment and nausea. Read The Shameless and Spineless by Will Durst (Alternet) for a comic synopsis of the entire transcript (see The hearing so far… (Plastic) for another). Democrats actually did ask pointed questions,... [More]

Scott McClellan dead at age 37

Published by marco on

According to Cheney Looms Large in Latest Twist of CIA Leak Drama (Common Dreams):

“McClellan was also asked by reporters whether Cheney always told Americans the truth. … ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The vice president, like the president, is a straightforward, plainspoken person.’”

Scott McClellan died at 16:34 later that day from third degree burn wounds suffered from multiple lightning strikes.

Nickname for Bush

Published by marco on

The people of New Orleans should put their heads together and come up with something in their patois.

“President Bush once spoke to a major gathering of the American Indian Nation in Arizona. He went on for almost an hour about plans to increase every Native American’s standard of living. He referred to his career as Governor of Texas, where he had signed “YES” 1,237 times — once for every Indian issue that came across his desk.

“Although vague on the details, he seemed most enthusiastic to... [More]”

Impeachment Avenue via Downing Street

Published by marco on

 Impeachment is a word that’s going to turn up almost no hits on a Lexis Nexis search. The word gets kicked around whenever a president does stuff he shouldn’t. The last time it was used was with Clinton, who actually was impeached, but was not forced to leave office. As with everything else in American politics, impeachment is too complicated for a mortal mind to grasp. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, Clinton was impeached not for adultery (though there are many in the Puritanical... [More]

World War II Myths

Published by marco on

It is generous to say that the U.S. education system doesn’t place much of an emphasis on learning history. Knowing history breeds learning about current policy (before it becomes history), discussing it (politics for the layman? absurd) and, worst of all, questioning it. The typical American history education during the 70s and 80s included years of repetition of the same 75 years during the founding of the U.S., coverage of the Civil War, some stuff about the Arch Duke Ferdinand and WWI,... [More]

The Foreign Aid Myth

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 The End of Poverty by Onnesha Roychoudhuri (AlterNet) is an interview with Jeffrey Sachs, head of a panel of “over 250 development experts to lay out practical strategies for promoting rapid development”. The biggest hurdle, as far as he’s concerned is the “lack of appropriate effort” on the part of “rich countries”. The main problems faced by poor countries today are malnutrition and diseases like AIDS and malaria; these could be “controlled quite dramatically and easily if we just put in the effort”. Opponents have criticized his... [More]

Opting in to the Iraq War

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 Opting for ‘Opt-In’ by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor (AlterNet) shows how schools are dealing with increasingly predatory military recruiters in their schools. As the military misses more and more recruiting deadlines, they demand more and more access to the records for younger potential recruits: kids in high school. The military has access to a student’s personal records by default, unless the school district or the parents deny it.

“But federal officials are warning that any open defiance by school districts to the military... [More]”

U.S. Policies − At Home and Abroad

Published by marco on

What follows are some tales from recent U.S. domestic and foreign policy — tales of a government increasingly concerned neither with the will of its people nor the welfare of humans in general. A government that prefers to shortsightedly amass power unto itself, ignoring long-term realities that make such power fleeting at best.

Taking action in Darfur

 Ring Them Bells by Chris Floyd (CounterPunch) sounds the alarm that the sweet-faced young up-and-comer, the United States, is poised to pop its self-interest cherry by... [More]

Galloway 1 − U.S. Senate 0

Published by marco on

 A little while ago, the United States Senate invited British Parliamentarian George Galloway over the pond for a bit of a chat. They wanted to hear what he had to say about the accusations they’d made that he profited from the Oil for Food program in Iraq during sanctions. The U.S. media had naturally already weighed in and found him guilty supported by marginal circumstantial evidence. (He knew a guy who knew a guy … what more do you need?) Galloway is by no means an angel, but after... [More]

Double Whammy for US Citizens

Published by marco on

Two bills signed into law this year will have major effects on the average American citizen’s life in the coming years. First, the Congress and the President gleefully passed the written-by-credit-card-companies bankruptcy bill. Soon after, RealID slipped through on the coattails of the appropriations bill for the next whack of change for Iraq.

Bankruptcy is Obsolete

Debt Slavery by David Swanson (Common Dreams) provides some background on the recently passed bankruptcy bill.

The bankruptcy bill was sold to us by our media... [More]

Deep Throat comes out of the closet

Published by marco on

 As Winston Smith noted long ago, keeping history up to date is a full-time job. It’s good that we in America are blessed with a vigilant media that takes care of the job. When W. Mark Felt recently came forward to name himself as the erstwhile informant in the Watergate scandal, the right-wing loonies seized the opportunity to rewrite the history of the Vietnam War in today’s context.

Deep Throat and Genocide by Ben Stein provides a truly stunning summary of Nixon and the Vietnam War, claiming that Nixon... [More]

Fighting Corporations on their own Turf

Published by marco on

One of the most important points to remember about democracy in America is how strongly controlled it is by large corporations. What exactly is a corporation, anyway? How did we get to the point where there is no way of fighting a bad corporation or even realistically boycotting one? (you usually end up putting money in their coffers through subsidiaries) State and Corp. by Noam Chomsky (ZNet) offers a description of corporations that is grounded in U.S. law and is both accurate and chilling:

“And [they] were granted... [More]”

Bob Novak’s Ground Rules

Published by marco on

It’s been a while since a blatantly government-beholden article has graced earthli News, so here’s Cooperation falls apart in Senate by Robert Novak (Chicago Sun Times). I did

“The lavishly acclaimed new era of good feelings in the Senate lasted less than four days. Senators, anxious to begin another long recess, reverted to mean and brutish behavior a little after 7 p.m. Thursday when Democrats blocked an up-or-down vote on John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. So much for supposed congeniality wrought by the... [More]

Newsweek and other tales of a cowed media

Published by marco on

Judging from the humming on the old Internet(s) lately, Newsweek is in a fair amount of trouble. It seems that this young upstart of a magazine, instead of being happy with its lot sitting in Time’s shadow, seems instead intent on bringing life as we know it to an end! (emphasis added by the White House). With their publication of an article documenting specific prisoner abuses in U.S. detainment facilities (known as dungeons in any other context), they incensed an administration known to be... [More]

The Yellow Peril

Published by marco on

 An idea that’s been recently bouncing around, apparently, is the imminence not only of hordes of slavering Arabiacs biting the heads off of our babies and raping our womenfolk, but also that of clone-like masses of yellow bodies swelling forth from Asia like a tide of army ants, conquering with their socialist sameness all that was ever good and right in this world.

It was mentioned that China is a mighty danger because they greedily take money from sadly hoodwinked western businesses, then... [More]

Those Crazy Muslims

Published by marco on

Everyone Check Your Sources (Plastic) shows that you just can’t believe anything these days, even when it justifies your worldview perfectly — perhaps especially then. Newsweek exposed US Army practices at Guantanamo, claiming that they were using psychological means of breaking the Muslim suspects by “flush[ing] a holy book [the Quran] down the toilet.” The article supposedly sparked protests “throughout much of the Muslim world” (wherever that is) which killed 16 people and included threats of “a jihad... [More]”

Zeroing in on Newspeak

Published by marco on

Black and White and Full of Crap by Ted Rall (Common Dreams) revisits the Pat Tillman story, one year later, to see which parts of it hold up under closer scrutiny (spoiler: not much).

Tillman was the “the former NFL player who turned down a multi-million dollar football contract to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan” and was subsequently killed in action. First off, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Pat himself probably had his priorities straight. He had his facts all wrong and his brain was squeaky clean from a lifetime... [More]

Latest Bush appointment: Canadian ambassador

Published by marco on

Continuing in the by-now-classic vein of other Bush appointments, Bush’s envoy can actually find Canada (Globe and Mail) tells of the man slated to make nice with Canada for the next several years. The article, published in Canada’s biggest paper, sardonically points out the one good thing about him before going on to describe just how little he’s actually been to Canada.

“Mr. Wilkins’ only trip to Canada was to Niagara Falls, Ont., over a long weekend in the early 1970s while he was posted in Indiana with the... [More]”

Three Daily Show Clips

Published by marco on

Earth day

Battlefield Earth (Daily Show) shows Bush at a fund-raiser in the Smoky Mountains, “the nation’s most polluted national park”. His flight was grounded by a thunderstorm, so he was forced to wing his speech, to some degree. He didn’t vary too much from his standard program, offering his usual batch of lies and uncomfortably long pauses intended to allow the audience to erupt into gales of laughter. Every time he does this, it becomes more and more painfully obvious what a deleterious effect speaking... [More]

Popes, Hitlers, Nazis and combinations thereof

Published by marco on

As most of you have probably heard, the new Pope joined the Hitler Youth. As you may not have heard, this is not a reason to panic and run around gossiping that the Catholics have not only elected a conservative Pope, but, in fact, elected a Pope who wants to kill all the Jews in the world.

Take a look at the details in New pope defied Nazis as teen during WWII (Seattle Post Intelligencer). After scanning through some charming paragraphs about wartime Bavaria, you’ll get to this part: “he … was compelled to join the... [More]”

Following Orwell’s Playbook

Published by marco on

Step One (1)

Those parts of reality which make the government look bad are to be eliminated.

Using Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report (Knight Ridder) as a reference, we read that:

“The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.”

Further reading shows that... [More]

Poison! Al-qaeda! Save yourselves!

Published by marco on

Scotland Yard has recently been credited with foiling yet another sinister plan hatched by the nefarious Al Qaeda (the Arabic Emmanual Goldstein, for those living in a box for the last few years). Al Qaeda Poisons Seen Sowing More Panic than Death (Reuters). A literal read of the title indicates that the threat wasn’t so bad, but it includes the words “poison”, “panic” and “death”, so they still get an A for effort. The first sentence of the article cranks it up a notch further, getting everyone’s... [More]

Tilt-a-Whirl

Published by marco on

As a die-hard cynic, I’m really starting to appreciate having an administration with such a refined sense of irony.

I can’t wait for the Supreme Court nominations to begin…

More Tales of a Liberal Media

Published by marco on

Media bias is a question mulled often by the media itself and by its usual victims: conservatives. It is truly amazing with what perseverence and clarity of purpose the extreme right is able to continue in the face of this truly debilitating onslaught.

Televisual Fairyland by George Monbiot (Common Dreams) provides some comparisons of media bias one way or another. If you’ve read Manufacturing Consent, this theory will be very familiar. He actually covers two related points using the recent resignation (sacking?) of Dan Rather... [More]

Dubious Charity

Published by marco on

Bush nearly triples request for tsunami relief tells me that Bush “increased [the US] pledge by another $600 million”. When the shock of the disaster was fresh, this administration was moved to donate $15 million. Now, that figure is up to $950 million.

What changed?

The article takes care to justify the charity by noting that “the massive U.S. aid has helped this country’s image across the Muslim world”. Some questions:

  • Are we helping them because they need and deserve our help and we are a... [More]

Condi Stays in Washington

Published by marco on

 So Miss Condaleeza Rice has magically become the Secretary of State. Raise your hand if you’re surprised. Of course, it wasn’t quite the slam dunk the White House thought it would be — there was dissent, after a fashion.

Condi Rice had to sit in front of a Senate committee* and stonewall a bit before she got her job as Secretary of State. She’s used to it and seems at least capable of doing that for long periods of time. There was really no doubt that she would get the job; the confirmation... [More]

20 years Ago

How can you tell Bush is lying?

Published by marco on

His lips are moving.

 It’s an old joke, and a bad one, but hell, he’s earned it. Take the gala event from last week, where he obliged to let some words drop out of his mouth for the great unwashed to gather up and cherish. It was only twenty one minutes long, but was carefully worded and notable for both what was in it and what was not. As always, he sees no need to reference reality in any way whatsoever, instead mouthing palliatives for the masses — soothing baby talk to calm them so they... [More]