Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Incidentally, there seems to be a weird reluctance to face up to what happened in California. Since the blackout, I've seen national news reports attributing California's woes in part to environmental restrictions, while ignoring the role of market manipulation. Huh? There's no evidence that environmental restrictions played any role; meanwhile, even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which strongly backs deregulation, has concluded that market manipulation played a major role. What's with the revisionist history?
Have we learned our lesson? Early indications are not promising. President Bush now says that "our grid needs to be modernized . . . and I've said so all along." But two years ago Tom DeLay blocked a modest Democratic plan for loan guarantees for system upgrades, calling it "pure demagoguery." And press reports say that despite the blackout, the administration will bow to pressure from Senate Republicans and put on ice the only part of its energy plan that had any relevance to the blackout, a FERC proposal for expanded oversight of the transmission system.
This nation needs to invest billions in its power grid, yet given recent history, it's crucial that this investment not be simply another occasion for energy-industry profiteering. Somehow, I'm not optimistic. - Paul Krugman's NY Times column, 8/19
"Paul Krugman is the indispensable American columnist, a voice of truth in a political world of lies and calculated injustice."- Anthony Lewis, recommending Krugman's new book, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century
Bombings: Much in the news. The Road Map's in more trouble, and our Iraq/Afghanistan positions are more untenable. More, below.
John Dean on the Bush Lawlessness re Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent ( http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030815.html) He makes a case!
The Espionage Act (of 1917), though thrice amended since then, continues to criminalize leaks of classified information, regardless of the reason for the leak. Accordingly, the "two senior administration officials" who leaked the classified information of Mrs. Wilson's work at the CIA to Robert Novak (and, it seems, others) have committed a federal crime.
Another applicable criminal statute is the Intelligence Identities Act, enacted in 1982.
Support Our Troops! Support our Clinicians!
After the Pentagon's embarrassment re the pay raise / cut for the troops, it's good to appreciate that like many other workers in America, soldiers' pay has not kept up with inflation. Combat pay during the Vietnam War was approximately $75 per month. Inflation since then should mean that soldiers should get almost $450 monthly. They receive $225. Similarly, I earned $18.50 per hour as a fee-for-service clinician in 1979. Accordingly, inflation adjusted it would be over $45 now. For those not exposed to it, the average is $27-28/hour.
Example of an Outraged Journalist:
He has consistently lied to the American people about how much the war would cost -- and how long it would last, and why we were fighting it, and, gosh, just about everything...
Soldiers make a great backdrop for presidential speeches, but let's face it, they just eat up money that could be better spent for shiny new weapons systems. And God knows we wouldn't want to raise taxes to pay our soldiers more. No, here's the plan: Increase the deficit and call it a growth package. Also, the soldiers should stop whining to reporters because their tours of duty keep getting extended. Oh, and sorry about the Taliban creeping back into Afghanistan, but we're a little overextended. Hold that line and fight fight fight, and we'll see you when we see you. --Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
Example of a (Model) Letter-to-the-editor
A terrific letter to the editor from the Salt Lake Tribune (sltrib.com), that is effective in content and title.
Ask questions
Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Where is Bin Laden? Where is my 401K? How did a huge governmental surplus become a huge deficit in two years? During the campaign, why did George Bush say he was a great uniter? Why did the reasons we went to war with Iraq change after the troops landed?
Where were President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Attorney General Ashcroft and members of Congress during the Vietnam War? Where are their kids during this war? Was there a plan for postwar Iraq, or is it trial and error? Where have 2 million jobs gone over the last two years? How many people died during Clinton's "lie?" How many have died during Bush's "truth?"
How can they say they are for the military, yet cut veterans' benefits? Why were we told the 2003 tax cut would benefit all families, then find out -- after it is passed -- that 20 million would not benefit?
If we are a democracy, a voice of truth and freedom, why isn't the full report released on the 9-11 attacks? Why aren't the names of those who sat on the Bush/Cheney Energy Panel released? Why is it wrong to ask questions? Why do I feel we have gone back to the 1950s' secret, paranoid, McCarthyism atmosphere?
Why will I, a retired military vet with two boys serving overseas -- or any American -- be called an un-American, yellow-bellied liberal for asking these questions? Why?
Greg Dunn
Tooele
Washington Post Follow-up:
Eric Alterman develops what I wrote about previously, the discrepancy between the terrific summary piece in the Post on the Bush lies, and the supine editorial.
Ignoring the facts on page one of its own newspaper to launch ideologically inspired attacks on the truth is a time-honored tactic for the wingnuts who run the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but it is dismaying to see the same phenomenon taking hold at the Post--an editorial page that was considered "liberal" so recently that The American Prospect's new editor, Michael Tomasky, mistakenly included it as such in his recent study of the relative ferocity of conservatives versus liberals.
It's worth noting, by contrast, that in Britain, Tony Blair is on the ropes for offenses against democracy that--while significant--pale in comparison to Bush's. Blair faces an aggressive, independent-minded media whose members consider it their job, in the words of the BBC's head of newsgathering, Adrian Van Klaveren, "to question governments...to hold governments to account.... This is not passive journalism. This is about trying to get information which others don't want us to know." not as if the information we need to judge our government is kept from us. The reporters are, for the most part, doing their jobs. But as the Guardian's New York correspondent, Gary Younge, pointed out to the New School audience, "In the political context in America, there weren't that many takers for certain kinds of information." Indeed, you can learn what liars the members of the Bush Administration are on the front page of the Washington Post. But if you say so aloud, be prepared to be smeared as "paranoid" by the paper's editors.
What's Happening: Afghanistan:
This AP report captures the status of the conflict
Hundreds of insurgents in a convoy of trucks attacked a police headquarters in southeastern Afghanistan, triggering a gunbattle Sunday that killed 22 people, officials said. It was one of the largest shows of anti-government force in over a year. The fierce fighting in Patktika province...underscored just how unstable Afghanistan remains after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.
Clinton Speaks Out:
I found him a frustrating disappointment, to put it mildly. Happy to give him a tad of credit now. Excerpts from a report on nymetro.com by Michael Wolf.
Clinton had lost weight and—with a great collection of just-out-of-the-wrapper pastel-colored polo shirts on view throughout the conference—seemed in fabulous form. He was in campaign mode but without the restraints of campaign mode. While there was clear bitterness on his part toward the successor who had rushed “to undo everything I’d done,” and the Republicans who “will run over you unless you beat their brains out,” there was a feisty humor too. Of the disputed Harken oil deal, Clinton said Bush had “sold the stock to buy the baseball team which got him the governorship which got him the presidency.”
Clinton kept referring to the media as (contrary to Kinsley’s view) the “supine” media, pointing out that when Bush insulted Helen Thomas (who, by asking a rough question in the infamous prewar press conference had, Clinton said, “committed the sin of journalism”), no “young journalists” stood up and walked out.
The media, the supine media, was going to have to “go to the meat locker and take out its brains and critical skills...”
This turned out to be the pivotal moment of the conference—even the primal one. When Clinton took questions, a young man from a technology company who identified himself as chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004 in California said he was offended by Clinton’s partisanship. To which Clinton, without hesitation, and with some kind of predatory gleam in his eye, said, “Good!” From there, Clinton went on, with emotion and anger, at a level seemingly foreign to most everyone here, to rip to shreds the motives, values, and legitimacy of the Republicans.
It was all anyone could talk about the next day. People seemed genuinely taken aback (some people kept offering that since it was late at night, in a bar, it didn’t quite count) that one of their own might have violated the accepted codes of lofty liberal behavior. There was a little current of fear at the sudden recognition that testosterone could fuel politics. It was a shock, apparently, that we might be this close to real feelings. That politics could actually be personal.
What's Happening: Iraq:
Building Network of Opposition: From Financial Times (Mark Huband):
Increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into Iraq in preparation for a jihad, or holy war, against US and UK forces, security and Islamist sources have warned. A senior western counter-terrorism official on Monday said the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq was "extremely worrying.
Saad al-Faguih, a UK-based Saudi dissident, the Saudi authorities are concerned that up to 3,000 Saudi men have gone "missing" in the kingdom in two months, although it is not clear how many have crossed into Iraq
Casualties Update: A total of 268 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq from either combat or friendly fire incidents since the war started on March 20, the Pentagon said Aug. 18. Of that number, 130 have died since U.S. President George W. Bush declared the major combat phase over on May
"No 10" warned over Saddam claim
Chris Tryhorn and Jason Deans of The Guardian laid out how there was nothing in the documents used to justify the war that contained any proof of "an imminent threat, " that Tony Blair's chief of staff had warned his superior of this reality.
Otherwise: Meanwhile, it's now clear that oil revenues will not be adequate so as to provide reconstruction or even basic services (which the ongoing sabotage and vandalism will cut further); the religious Iraqis are running out of patience, and now the bombing(s). This "quagmire" is only getting deeper...
Kentucky: A model of speaking out
Bush has an almost 70% "approval" rating in Kentucky. Yet, the state's Democratic candidate for Governor is running against Bush, trying to try the Republican candidate to the failed economic policies of the Bush regime. And, as of now, the race is too close to call- a poll completed for Democratic Attorney General Ben Chandler last week showed him in a statistical dead heat with Republican U.S. Rep. Ernie Fletcher.
-R
Have we learned our lesson? Early indications are not promising. President Bush now says that "our grid needs to be modernized . . . and I've said so all along." But two years ago Tom DeLay blocked a modest Democratic plan for loan guarantees for system upgrades, calling it "pure demagoguery." And press reports say that despite the blackout, the administration will bow to pressure from Senate Republicans and put on ice the only part of its energy plan that had any relevance to the blackout, a FERC proposal for expanded oversight of the transmission system.
This nation needs to invest billions in its power grid, yet given recent history, it's crucial that this investment not be simply another occasion for energy-industry profiteering. Somehow, I'm not optimistic. - Paul Krugman's NY Times column, 8/19
"Paul Krugman is the indispensable American columnist, a voice of truth in a political world of lies and calculated injustice."- Anthony Lewis, recommending Krugman's new book, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century
Bombings: Much in the news. The Road Map's in more trouble, and our Iraq/Afghanistan positions are more untenable. More, below.
John Dean on the Bush Lawlessness re Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent ( http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030815.html) He makes a case!
The Espionage Act (of 1917), though thrice amended since then, continues to criminalize leaks of classified information, regardless of the reason for the leak. Accordingly, the "two senior administration officials" who leaked the classified information of Mrs. Wilson's work at the CIA to Robert Novak (and, it seems, others) have committed a federal crime.
Another applicable criminal statute is the Intelligence Identities Act, enacted in 1982.
Support Our Troops! Support our Clinicians!
After the Pentagon's embarrassment re the pay raise / cut for the troops, it's good to appreciate that like many other workers in America, soldiers' pay has not kept up with inflation. Combat pay during the Vietnam War was approximately $75 per month. Inflation since then should mean that soldiers should get almost $450 monthly. They receive $225. Similarly, I earned $18.50 per hour as a fee-for-service clinician in 1979. Accordingly, inflation adjusted it would be over $45 now. For those not exposed to it, the average is $27-28/hour.
Example of an Outraged Journalist:
He has consistently lied to the American people about how much the war would cost -- and how long it would last, and why we were fighting it, and, gosh, just about everything...
Soldiers make a great backdrop for presidential speeches, but let's face it, they just eat up money that could be better spent for shiny new weapons systems. And God knows we wouldn't want to raise taxes to pay our soldiers more. No, here's the plan: Increase the deficit and call it a growth package. Also, the soldiers should stop whining to reporters because their tours of duty keep getting extended. Oh, and sorry about the Taliban creeping back into Afghanistan, but we're a little overextended. Hold that line and fight fight fight, and we'll see you when we see you. --Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
Example of a (Model) Letter-to-the-editor
A terrific letter to the editor from the Salt Lake Tribune (sltrib.com), that is effective in content and title.
Ask questions
Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Where is Bin Laden? Where is my 401K? How did a huge governmental surplus become a huge deficit in two years? During the campaign, why did George Bush say he was a great uniter? Why did the reasons we went to war with Iraq change after the troops landed?
Where were President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Attorney General Ashcroft and members of Congress during the Vietnam War? Where are their kids during this war? Was there a plan for postwar Iraq, or is it trial and error? Where have 2 million jobs gone over the last two years? How many people died during Clinton's "lie?" How many have died during Bush's "truth?"
How can they say they are for the military, yet cut veterans' benefits? Why were we told the 2003 tax cut would benefit all families, then find out -- after it is passed -- that 20 million would not benefit?
If we are a democracy, a voice of truth and freedom, why isn't the full report released on the 9-11 attacks? Why aren't the names of those who sat on the Bush/Cheney Energy Panel released? Why is it wrong to ask questions? Why do I feel we have gone back to the 1950s' secret, paranoid, McCarthyism atmosphere?
Why will I, a retired military vet with two boys serving overseas -- or any American -- be called an un-American, yellow-bellied liberal for asking these questions? Why?
Greg Dunn
Tooele
Washington Post Follow-up:
Eric Alterman develops what I wrote about previously, the discrepancy between the terrific summary piece in the Post on the Bush lies, and the supine editorial.
Ignoring the facts on page one of its own newspaper to launch ideologically inspired attacks on the truth is a time-honored tactic for the wingnuts who run the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but it is dismaying to see the same phenomenon taking hold at the Post--an editorial page that was considered "liberal" so recently that The American Prospect's new editor, Michael Tomasky, mistakenly included it as such in his recent study of the relative ferocity of conservatives versus liberals.
It's worth noting, by contrast, that in Britain, Tony Blair is on the ropes for offenses against democracy that--while significant--pale in comparison to Bush's. Blair faces an aggressive, independent-minded media whose members consider it their job, in the words of the BBC's head of newsgathering, Adrian Van Klaveren, "to question governments...to hold governments to account.... This is not passive journalism. This is about trying to get information which others don't want us to know." not as if the information we need to judge our government is kept from us. The reporters are, for the most part, doing their jobs. But as the Guardian's New York correspondent, Gary Younge, pointed out to the New School audience, "In the political context in America, there weren't that many takers for certain kinds of information." Indeed, you can learn what liars the members of the Bush Administration are on the front page of the Washington Post. But if you say so aloud, be prepared to be smeared as "paranoid" by the paper's editors.
What's Happening: Afghanistan:
This AP report captures the status of the conflict
Hundreds of insurgents in a convoy of trucks attacked a police headquarters in southeastern Afghanistan, triggering a gunbattle Sunday that killed 22 people, officials said. It was one of the largest shows of anti-government force in over a year. The fierce fighting in Patktika province...underscored just how unstable Afghanistan remains after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.
Clinton Speaks Out:
I found him a frustrating disappointment, to put it mildly. Happy to give him a tad of credit now. Excerpts from a report on nymetro.com by Michael Wolf.
Clinton had lost weight and—with a great collection of just-out-of-the-wrapper pastel-colored polo shirts on view throughout the conference—seemed in fabulous form. He was in campaign mode but without the restraints of campaign mode. While there was clear bitterness on his part toward the successor who had rushed “to undo everything I’d done,” and the Republicans who “will run over you unless you beat their brains out,” there was a feisty humor too. Of the disputed Harken oil deal, Clinton said Bush had “sold the stock to buy the baseball team which got him the governorship which got him the presidency.”
Clinton kept referring to the media as (contrary to Kinsley’s view) the “supine” media, pointing out that when Bush insulted Helen Thomas (who, by asking a rough question in the infamous prewar press conference had, Clinton said, “committed the sin of journalism”), no “young journalists” stood up and walked out.
The media, the supine media, was going to have to “go to the meat locker and take out its brains and critical skills...”
This turned out to be the pivotal moment of the conference—even the primal one. When Clinton took questions, a young man from a technology company who identified himself as chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004 in California said he was offended by Clinton’s partisanship. To which Clinton, without hesitation, and with some kind of predatory gleam in his eye, said, “Good!” From there, Clinton went on, with emotion and anger, at a level seemingly foreign to most everyone here, to rip to shreds the motives, values, and legitimacy of the Republicans.
It was all anyone could talk about the next day. People seemed genuinely taken aback (some people kept offering that since it was late at night, in a bar, it didn’t quite count) that one of their own might have violated the accepted codes of lofty liberal behavior. There was a little current of fear at the sudden recognition that testosterone could fuel politics. It was a shock, apparently, that we might be this close to real feelings. That politics could actually be personal.
What's Happening: Iraq:
Building Network of Opposition: From Financial Times (Mark Huband):
Increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into Iraq in preparation for a jihad, or holy war, against US and UK forces, security and Islamist sources have warned. A senior western counter-terrorism official on Monday said the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq was "extremely worrying.
Saad al-Faguih, a UK-based Saudi dissident, the Saudi authorities are concerned that up to 3,000 Saudi men have gone "missing" in the kingdom in two months, although it is not clear how many have crossed into Iraq
Casualties Update: A total of 268 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq from either combat or friendly fire incidents since the war started on March 20, the Pentagon said Aug. 18. Of that number, 130 have died since U.S. President George W. Bush declared the major combat phase over on May
"No 10" warned over Saddam claim
Chris Tryhorn and Jason Deans of The Guardian laid out how there was nothing in the documents used to justify the war that contained any proof of "an imminent threat, " that Tony Blair's chief of staff had warned his superior of this reality.
Otherwise: Meanwhile, it's now clear that oil revenues will not be adequate so as to provide reconstruction or even basic services (which the ongoing sabotage and vandalism will cut further); the religious Iraqis are running out of patience, and now the bombing(s). This "quagmire" is only getting deeper...
Kentucky: A model of speaking out
Bush has an almost 70% "approval" rating in Kentucky. Yet, the state's Democratic candidate for Governor is running against Bush, trying to try the Republican candidate to the failed economic policies of the Bush regime. And, as of now, the race is too close to call- a poll completed for Democratic Attorney General Ben Chandler last week showed him in a statistical dead heat with Republican U.S. Rep. Ernie Fletcher.
-R
