The Pope and Islam

You all know how much I respect the British newspaper, the Guardian. And one of my favorite columnists on matters religious is Giles Fraser. Today he weighs in on the issue of the Pope's insult to Islam in an article entitled "The unmistakable whiff of Christian triumphalism". It is subtitled, "This was no casual slip. Beneath his scholarly rhetoric, the Pope's logic seemed to be that Islam is dangerous and godless."

Here are a couple of excerpts:

John Paul II's pontificate was largely defined by his relationship with a global conflict between west and east. Last Tuesday evening, in a badly judged speech before a home crowd of Bavarian academics, Benedict XVI may well have set the parameters of his own period as Pope, pitching himself into a debate over Islam that has prompted outrage throughout the Muslim world.

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." These were not the Pope's words, but those of an obscure Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologos, back in the 14th century. And yes, the Pope did make it clear he was offering a quotation. Even so, these words fell from the lips of the spiritual leader of a billion Christians without anything like enough qualification. There was no phrase distancing himself from the claim that Muhammad was responsible for evil. It's little surprise, therefore, that the remarks have roused anger and demands for a personal apology.
...
For the most part, the Pope's address was a scholarly exercise that sought to challenge the idea that rationality is intrinsically and necessarily secular. We must "overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable", he insisted. Most Christians would agree. But even here there was a sharp criticism of Islam buried beneath the scholarly rhetoric. For the Pope argued that in Muslim teaching, because "God is absolutely transcendent", He is "not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality". In other words, there is no reasoning in or with Islam. Which, surely, is another way of the Pope saying how dangerous he thinks Islam is.

It was an insult. It was more than an insult; it was throwing down the gauntlet. I recommend that you click through and read the entire column along with the comments that follow. I do think something very serious has taken place. The Pope's remarks are adding fuel to the already considerable raging fire of widespread Muslim belief that the West has embarked upon another Crusade against Islam.

Saddam and Osama

Just look at one paragraph from an article in this morning's Washington Post:

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Now tell me you're not disgusted.

Friday cat blogging!

Photo by Mihail Manolov

Used with permission

We need a draft

I've always felt that a draft was essential to peace. The only way to prevent unnecessary wars is to have a military made up of people who don't want to be there and whose parents don't want them to be there.

But there's another reason we need a draft now. Our fighting forces are depleted. The situation is really quite alarming as you will see in this passage from an article in Slate entitled "Won't Deploy? Can't Deploy.":

Earlier this week, in a Washington Post op-ed, William Kristol and Rich Lowry called on the Bush administration to send more troops to Iraq. Coming one day before 62 Iraqis turned up tortured and shot in Baghdad and a couple of dozen more were blown up by car bombs, their argument that more American boots on the ground are necessary—though not sufficient—to halt the bloodbath has a compelling logic, even for many who think the war was a mistake. It isn't clear that any conceivable increase in troops could stem the tide of sectarian violence, but it is, at least, a serious argument and a welcome counterpoint to the White House's incessant calls for staying a course that is leading to disaster.

The only problem with Kristol and Lowry's recommendation is that it is premised on an illusion: In fact, there are no more troops to send to Iraq.

That is the unmistakable message of an Army briefing making the rounds in Washington. According to in-house assessments, fully two-thirds of the Army's operating force, both active and reserve, is now reporting in as "unready"—that is, they lack the equipment, people, or training they need to execute their assigned missions. Not a single one of the Army's Brigade Combat Teams—its core fighting units—currently in the United States is ready to deploy. In short, the Army has no strategic reserve to speak of. The other key U.S. fighting force in Iraq, the Marine Corps, is also hurting, with much of its equipment badly in need of repair or replacement.

In terms of ground-force readiness, the United States is in worse shape than at any time since the aftermath of Vietnam, when revelations about a "hollow" military sparked defense buildups from the Carter and then Reagan administrations. While most press coverage of the Iraq conflict has understandably focused on loss of life and the damage done in that country by the insurgency, the readiness of the U.S. military has also been a casualty.

The president keeps saying that his job is to protect us. If he really meant that he would not allow the military to get into the shape it's in currently. It's simply dangerous to be in this state of unreadiness.

So true

Remind you of somebody?

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds reptiles of the mind.

--William Blake

Ooh, ooh, ooh...

Check out the snark:

The problem in Iraq is that they just don't want to be Americans. And, after all we've done for them.

-- Grant Gerver

Oh, this is distressing

Here's an excerpt from a report entitled "Senate panel OKs warrantless wiretaps":

WASHINGTON -- A Republican-controlled Senate panel on Wednesday approved legislation that would authorize President Bush's controversial warrantless wiretapping program in return for his pledge to submit it for a review by a secret court.

In a 10-8 party-line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the bill backed by the White House to the full Senate.

This has already been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. It grieves me more than I can say to see these people continue to shred the Constitution. It truly grieves me beyond expression.

Diebold - Part 2

You already know that I cancelled my pledge to the Democratic Party. The trigger for that decision was the Democrats' failure to filibuster the nomination of Alito to the Supreme Court. But the reason I continue to refuse to donate is Diebold - the computerized voting machines developed by admitted partisan Republicans. There's no point in supporting a Democrat's campaign when it's Republicans counting the votes.

Take a look at this excerpt from an article entitled "Princeton prof hacks e-vote machine":

TRENTON, N.J. - A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel Wednesday to claims that electronic voting machines used across much of the country are vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote totals or disable machines.

In a paper posted on the university's Web site, Edward Felten and two graduate students described how they had tested a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine they obtained, found ways to quickly upload malicious programs and even developed a computer virus able to spread such programs between machines.
...
The researchers say they designed software capable of modifying all records, audit logs and counters kept by the voting machine, ensuring that a careful forensic examination would find nothing wrong.

The programs were able to modify vote totals or cause machines to break down, something that could alter the course of an election if machines were located in crucial polling stations.

It was also possible to design a computer virus to spread malicious programs to multiple machines by piggybacking on a new software download or an election information file being transferred from machine to machine, Felten said.

I'm afraid I'm very pessimistic about this whole picture. The article says that 80 percent of American voters are expected to use some kind of electronic voting machines in the upcoming election.

UPDATE: Here's a video made at Princeton University that illustrates the problem described above. If it doesn't make you sick, you just don't get it.



And now look at this. It's only 35 seconds. It'll give you chills:



The 2004 election was stolen. No doubt about it.

Fear mongering ads

As I was driving to the Center this morning, I heard a program on NPR reporting on the negative ads that are part of the current election campaign. I actually heard the one described by the article entitled "Front-Group PFA Echoes Republican "Freedom, Security and Survival" Themes". Take a look:

The Republican “527” front-group Progress for America has reemerged, and is running a TV advertisement that echoes and amplifies the “be afraid” election campaign theme launched by President Bush. The ad is currently running in Missouri and nationally on cable TV.

The ad, titled “The War on Terror,” is not even a little bit subtle, marketing pure fear.

“There are people who want to KILL … US!” it shouts in a horror-movie-advertisement voice, as dark-skinned, Middle-Eastern faces appear on the screen.

Just as President Bush did all last week (political campaigns traditionally begin on Labor Day), the ad conflates different groups like al Queda, Islamic Jihad, and Hezzbollah together as if they are one group. The ad reinforces the Bush administration and surrogate’s repeated claim that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attack. Referring to “the evil” that happened five years ago while showing a plane hitting the World Trade Center, the ad then says President Clinton “took little action” against al Queda and says that “after 9/11 we destroyed al Queda terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Also, echoing current Party talking points, the ad claims there are those who want to “cut and run” from the war on terror.

Reflecting another campaign point advocating warrantless wiretapping of Americans, the ad goes on to say “we have narrowly escaped another 9/11, using proven surveillance that some would stop” – even though it was British law enforcement that caught those involved, using warrants.

Finally, the ad closes saying “the war on terror is a war for our country’s freedom, security and survival.”

What's really disgusting is that 527 groups are tax-exempt. Read the article and you'll get the whole scoop.

And this from a Republican

His name is Christopher Buckley and yes, he's William F. Buckley's son:

Who knew, in 2000, that 'compassionate conservatism' meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief? Who knew, in 2000, that the only bill the president would veto, six years later, would be one on funding stem-cell research? A more accurate term for Mr. Bush's political philosophy might be incontinent conservatism....

Despite the failures, one had the sense that the party at least knew in its heart of hearts that these were failures, either of principle or execution. Today one has no sense, aside from a slight lowering of the swagger-mometer, that the president or the Republican Congress is in the least bit chastened by their debacles. George Tenet's WMD 'slam-dunk,' Vice President Cheney's 'we will be greeted as liberators,' Don Rumsfeld's avidity to promulgate a minimalist military doctrine, together with the tidy theories of a group who call themselves 'neo-conservative' (not one of whom, to my knowledge, has ever worn a military uniform), have thus far: de-stabilized the Middle East; alienated the world community from the United States; empowered North Korea, Iran, and Syria; unleashed sectarian carnage in Iraq among tribes who have been cutting each others' throats for over a thousand years; cost the lives of 2,600 Americans, and the limbs, eyes, organs, spinal cords of another 15,000 -- with no end in sight. But not to worry: Democracy is on the march in the Middle East....

Well, glad you're finally getting it, Mr. Buckley. All I can say is, you voted for them, chum. Now you're waking up to the consequences.

(The original article can be found here.)

Good point

Here's a comment I found on AMERICAblog about the ABC 9/11 movie:

It's rather obvious to anyone with opposable thumbs and a brain stem:

To make Dems look bad they have to lie.

To make Repigs look bad they have to tell the truth.

So true. So, so true.

They have it, they exploit it.

So weird - NOT!

I'm telling you, it's enough to make me very cynical:

It's so WEIRD: the closer we get to midterms, the lower gas prices go.

-- Grant Gerver

Still more on the ABC 9/11 movie

Maybe you're tired of hearing about it but I think it's very ominous indeed that such a blatant piece of shameless propaganda was aired and that it's being disseminated to the public schools. So this morning I want to call your attention to an article in The Nation entitled "ABC 9/11 Docudrama's Right-Wing Roots" by Max Blumenthal. It's a substantial article and a bit complicated so I recommend that you read it all if you have time but I'll give you one detail here that alarmed me:

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC signed David Cunningham as the film's director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). According to Sara Diamond's book Spiritual Warfare, during the 1980's YWAM "sought to gain influence within the Republican party" while assisting authoritarian governments in South Africa and Central America. Cunningham, Diamond noted, was a follower of Christian Reconstructionism, an extreme current of evangelical theology that advocates using stealth political methods to put the United States under the control of Biblical law and jettison the Constitution. Cunningham instilled his radical ideology in young missionaries by sending them to "Discipleship Training School." A former student of Cunningham's school claimed "similarities between cult mind controlling techniques and the [Discipleship Training School] program instituted by YWAM."

When the young Cunningham entered his father's ministry, he helped found an auxiliary group called The Film Institute (TFI). According to its mission statement, TFI is "dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry." Cunningham has placed over a dozen interns from Youth With A Mission's Discipleship Training School in film industry jobs "so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out," according to a YWAM report.

Last June, Cunningham's TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled Untitled History Project. "TFI's first project is a doozy," a newsletter to YWAM members read. "Simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!" (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted last week after its publication by the blogger Digby, but has been cached on Google at the link above).

The following month, on July 28, the New York Post reported that ABC was filming a mini-series "under a shroud of secrecy" about the 9/11 attacks. "At the moment, ABC officials are calling the miniseries 'Untitled Commission Report' and producers refer to it as the 'Untitled History Project,'" the Post noted.

Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive Untitled film. Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like Cunningham.

I am seriously worried about the likelihood of a Christain Taliban emerging in the United States. I think it's clear that the Reconstructionists are infiltrating our institutions and are engaged in subversive activities designed to undermine and eventually destroy the Constitution. I believe we ignore this grave threat to our peril.

Bill Maher rules!

Take a look:

I maintain that ridiculing this president is now the most patriotic thing you can possibly do. Wait. Let the word go forth to our allies and our enemies alike. Let them know that there's a whole swath of Americans desperate to distance themselves from George Bush. And that's just Republicans running for re-election.

-Bill Maher

Too good not to share

More on that movie

and other Republican "dirty tricks" (and they are vile). I want you to go read the entire article by Robert Parry entitled "9/11's Dark Window to the Future". For now I will give you this brief excerpt:

As the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks unfolds, it has come to look less like a sad remembrance of the past and more like a troubling glimpse into the future, a window to a new-age totalitarianism that looms before the United States, where a powerful right-wing government tells lies aided and abetted by friendly media corporations.

So, even as the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee finally acknowledge some of the many Iraq War falsehoods told by George W. Bush and his senior advisers, Bush's misfeasance and malfeasance are obscured by Disney's ABC-TV "docu-drama" pinning most of the blame for the 9/11 catastrophe not on Bush, but on Democrats.

With Disney's selection of a right-wing director and with the secrecy that surrounded the project - that gave Democrats little time to react - "The Path to 9/11" also had the sickening feel of a collaboration between a giant corporation and the Republican government in power.

So, less than two months before a pivotal national election, with Americans increasingly wondering how the nation got into the mess it faces today, this joint project of Disney and pro-Bush operatives provides a narrative that focuses not on Bush blowing off CIA warnings of an impending attacks in 2001 but on events dating back to 1993.

"The Path to 9/11," which ABC touted as a public service shown "with no commercial interruptions," makes some of its right-wing judgments with sneering asides from characters, such as wondering if Attorney General Janet Reno had "any balls," and others by mixing real and fabricated events to put Democrats in the worst possible light.

When the mysterious project finally was unveiled to mainstream media reviewers and when Democrats started complaining about fabricated scenes, the right-wing media responded with a counter-attack accusing the protesting Democrats of threatening the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

In other words, at a time when Republicans control the White House, the Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and increasingly the American media, the Democrats still get transformed into the ones threatening free speech, for protesting their harsh and at times false depiction in events that led to the deaths of almost 3,000 people.

There's more about how the Republicans plan to stay in power through the upcoming mid-term elections. And it's depressing.

The president's job

"My job is to protect you," he says. Take a look:

Matt Lauer: And yet you admitted that there were these CIA secret facilities. OK?

President Bush: So what? Why is that not within the law?

Matt Lauer: The head of Amnesty International says secret sites are against international law.

President Bush: Well, we just disagree with him. Plus, my job is to protect you. And most American people, if I said [to them] that we had who we think is the mastermind of the 9/11, they would say, “Why don’t you see if you can’t get information without torturing him,” which is what we did.

Matt Lauer: I don’t want to let this “within the law issue” slip though. I mean, if, in fact, there was water boarding used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and for the viewers, that’s basically when you strap someone to a board and you make them feel as if they’re going to drown by putting them underwater, if that was legal and within the law, why couldn’t you do it at Guantanamo? Why did you have to go to a secret location around the world?

President Bush: I’m not going to talk about techniques. And, I’m not going explain to the enemy what we’re doing. All I’m telling you is that you’ve asked me whether or not we’re doing things to protect the American people, and I want the American people to know we are doing so.

No, you uneducated, lying, disingenuous fraud. Your job is not and has never been to protect us. Your job is to preserve, protect and defend the CONSTITUTION! Why don't any of these reporters confront him about that?

The president's 9/11 speech

Well, I followed last night's speech through live blogging. I really wasn't up to turning the television on and listening myself. (I like myself too much to subject myself to listening to Bush unnecessarily!) It was clear from the posts I was reading that the speech was brazenly political and partisan. I'm glad to learn that the Democrats think so too. Here's an excerpt from a CNN article entitled "Democrats blast Bush for 'playing politics' with 9/11":

While Democrats have been using public opposition to the Iraq war to argue for a change of leadership in Congress, Bush's prime-time address showed how he has been able to use the power of incumbency to command public attention and make his points. Democrats objected to the tone.

"The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had nothing to do with 9/11," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said in a statement. "There will be time to debate this president's policies in Iraq. September 11th is not that time."

It was, of course, completely predictable.

Propaganda

Do you know about "live blogging"? That's when people watch a television show or press conference or presidential speech and post running comments about it in the comment section of a blog as it's happening so that others don't have to watch. Last night I followed the live blogging on AMERICAblog of that horribly inaccurate and deliberately misleading ABC movie, "The Path to 9/11". Not only did the creator of that movie just make stuff up that never happened and basically blame the Clinton administration for the attacks, the film served as blatant propaganda for torture and the decimation of the Bill of Rights.

On Saturday the Washington Post published an article entitled "Clinton, Other Democrats Assail ABC Docudrama 'Path to 9/11'". Here's part of what it says:

Former president Bill Clinton has urged ABC to "tell the truth" in its hotly disputed docudrama on the battle against Osama bin Laden as network executives scrambled to make last-minute changes to fictional scenes.

Clinton told reporters in Arkansas Thursday night that ABC executives should provide an honest accounting in "The Path to 9/11" -- "particularly if they're going to claim it's based on the 9/11 commission report, they shouldn't have scenes which are directly contradicted by the factual findings of the 9/11 commission. I just want people to tell the truth and not to pretend it's something it's not."

An ABC spokeswoman said yesterday that changes are being made to a number of scenes in the film, including one deletion involving The Washington Post. ABC plans to air the film tomorrow and Monday -- despite another letter from the Clinton camp yesterday asking that it be pulled -- although it is trying to figure out how to accommodate President Bush's prime-time speech Monday and a planned panel discussion after the movie.

Democrats -- joined yesterday by former vice president Al Gore -- have mounted a campaign against the film, which depicts Clinton administration officials as undermining attempts to capture or kill bin Laden. Actor Harvey Keitel, who plays an FBI agent in the film, has joined the critics, telling CNN's "Showbiz Tonight" that he has had arguments with the filmmakers over elements that were "wrong."

"You can't put these things together, compress them and then distort the reality. . . . You cannot cross the line from a conflation of events to a distortion of the event," Keitel said. "Where we have distorted something, we made a mistake, and it should be corrected."

In another salvo, nine prominent historians -- including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Sean Wilentz and Michael Kazin -- released a letter urging the film's cancellation. Calling ABC's explanation that the movie will be identified as a dramatization "disingenuous and dangerous," they said: "A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it."

I'm really very dismayed about this broadcast, the second half of which airs tonight. I think it is the Bush administration's effort to rewrite history in order to secure the mid-term elections for Republicans. And I think, in general, the American people are so uninformed and easily manipulated that this Republican "dirty trick" strategy will probably work.

Sadam and Al Qaeda

This is from the Senate Intelligence Committee report released Friday:

Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al Qaeda to provide material or operational support.

Now, is the mainstream press going to hammer this and hammer it hard are will it just slide on past so that the American people remain unaware of it?

Travesty

I really thought you ought to see the cover of this week's Time Magazine. I also offer the following for your contemplation:

Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

-- Jesus of Nazareth

The CNN website this morning offers a summary of the Time cover story. Here's an excerpt:

Of the four biggest megachurches in the country, three -- Joel Osteen's Lakewood in Houston; T.D. Jakes' Potter's House in south Dallas; and Creflo Dollar's World Changers in Atlanta -- are Prosperity or Prosperity Lite pulpits (although Jakes' ministry has many more facets).

While they don't exclusively teach that God's riches want to be in believers' wallets, it is a key part of their doctrine.

And propelled by Osteen's 4 million-selling book, Your Best Life Now*, the belief has swept beyond its Pentecostal base into more buttoned-down evangelical churches, and even into congregations in the more liberal Mainline. It is taught in hundreds of non-Pentecostal Bible studies. One Pennsylvania Lutheran pastor even made it the basis for a sermon series for Lent, when Christians usually meditate on why Jesus was having His Worst Life Then.

The movement's renaissance has infuriated a number of prominent pastors, theologians and commentators. Fellow megapastor Rick Warren, whose book The Purpose Driven Life has outsold Osteen's by a ratio of 7 to 1, finds the very basis of Prosperity laughable. "This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy?" he snorts. "There is a word for that: baloney. It's creating a false idol. You don't measure your self-worth by your net worth. I can show you millions of faithful followers of Christ who live in poverty. Why isn't everyone in the church a millionaire?"

The brickbats -- both theological and practical (who really gets rich from this?) --come especially thick from Evangelicals like Warren. Evangelicalism is more prominent and influential than ever before. Yet the movement, which has never had a robust theology of money, finds an aggressive philosophy advancing within its ranks that many of its leaders regard as simplistic, possibly heretical and certainly embarrassing.

Well, I must say, that gives me some respect for Rick Warren.

* Take a look at the Publishers Weekly review off the Amazon site:

Houston megachurch pastor and inspirational TV host Osteen offers an overblown and redundant self-help debut. Many Christian readers will undoubtedly be put off by the book’s shallow name-it-and-claim-it theology; although the first chapter claims that "we serve the God that created the universe," the book as a rule suggests the reverse: it’s a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals. Osteen tells readers that God wants them to prosper, offering examples of obtaining an elegant mansion or a larger salary ("don’t ever get satisfied with where you are," he cautions). In seven parts, he details how readers should enlarge their vision, develop self-esteem, discover the power of thought, let go of the past, find strength through adversity, give back to others and choose to be happy. The section on giving comes as too little, too late—Osteen’s message to remember others and "get your mind off yourself" flies in the face of the previous 200 pages. There are some good pockets of advice, such as letting go of past hurts and avoiding bitterness. Editorially, the book would have packed more of a punch if a third of its repetitive slogans and stories had been pruned. Theologically, its materialism and superficial portrayal of God as the granter of earthly wishes will alienate many Christian readers who can imagine a much bigger God.

As an Episcopalian, I had a very Anglo-Catholic formation that taught me that voluntary poverty was a great good and earnestly to be desired. While I don't believe God wants us to be destitute, I do think a lavish life style is morally repugnant. Remember Gandhi's admonition to "live simply that others may simply live."

The flawless liar

Well, Cheney just lied through his teeth on Meet the Press this morning. He insisted that Zarqawi was the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda in spite of the fact that just on Friday the Senate the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that concluded there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi. You can either watch the video or read the transcript of the pertinent exchange right here on Think Progress. Fortunately Tim Russert called him on it. But Cheney covered his lies by saying that he hadn't seen the report.

Somone on AMERICAblog said the following:

Soon Cheney wiil say that the Senate findings would be different if they had access to the information he has seen. Seems to me Cheney pulled this BS with the 9/11 Commission and no one called him on it for either witholding evidence, impeding the investigation or obstruction of justice. Could not get him for perjury, because neither he nor W gave sworn testimony. Cheney will get a media pass again and the Senate report will fade fast from public attention.

Sadly, I agree.

UPDATE: Here's a link for the transcript of the entire conversation between Tim Russert and Vice President Cheney.

Howard Dean on the ABC 9/11 movie

Well, it's refreshing to know that Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is demanding to know who funded the thing. Take a look:

It's deeply disappointing that ABC would put something on the air that has been proven to have factual inaccuracies about one of the most important events in our nation's history. ABC should not air this distortion of history.

The fact that the writer/producer of the piece is a well known conservative raises additional concerns and questions. The American people deserve to know who funded this $40 million dollar slanderous propaganda. Use of the public airwaves is a privilege conferred upon broadcasters in the public interest. It comes with a responsibility to the American people and a responsibility to the truth.

This is right off the Democratic Party blog.

R.I.P. Steve Irwin

Now this is genuinely touching. I just had to pass it on.

Leno again

Good snark:

It was announced today in England that Tony Blair will leave as British Prime Minster in May. He is stepping down in May! So President Bush has toppled yet another government!

- Jay Leno

Men and war

Well, the research is in and the results show that men are more likely to support war than women. Take a look (from a CNN article called "Researchers identify 'male warrior effect'"):

NORWICH, England (Reuters) -- Men may have developed a psychology that makes them particularly able to engage in wars, a scientist said on Friday.

New research has shown that men bond together and cooperate well in the face of adversity to protect their interests more than women, which could explain why war is almost exclusively a male business, according to Professor Mark van Vugt of the University of Kent in southern England.

"Men respond more strongly to outward threats, we've labeled that the 'man warrior effect'," he told the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting.

"Men are more likely to support a country going to war. Men are more likely sign up for the military and men are more likely to lead groups in more autocratic, militaristic ways than women," he added.

Van Vugt said the finding is consistent with results from different behavioral science disciplines.

Of course, this doesn't mean that it's inevitable that a man will be a war monger. I just got back from the amazing memorial service for my friend, The Rev. Russell Bennett. He worked tirelessly for peace and justice his entire life. Representatives of the entire faith community were present. Taking part in the service were representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, and African-American communities as well as UCC ministers and it was announced that there were Zoroastrians and Buddhists in the congregation as well. The church was packed. What an impact he has had here in Tulsa - particularly with regard to interfaith dialogue and cooperation. Listening to his eulogies, I realized in many ways he functioned as the conscience of this city on peace and justice issues during his 37 year long ministry here. May we all follow his example.

Down for the count

The PBS program NOW has a broadcast tonight about the problem with voting machines. Here's what their website has to say about tonight's show:

Jammed machines, rejected ballots, malfunctions that declare the losing candidate the winner...if this were occurring on American Idol, you can imagine the outrage, but it's happening with a far more important American institution: democratic elections. New election machines, as mandated and funded by federal law, may create a new election debacle instead of correcting the old one.

In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which allocated $3.1 billion for all 50 states to update their voting systems, following election fiascos in years past.

Some industry analysts suggest that the government implemented the new technology too quickly to the detriment of not only security and performance of the new machines, but the integrity of our democratic process. "Losing candidates are going to have more and more credibility when they say 'Well, I think that the voting machines were rigged,'" Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at John Hopkins University, told NOW.

Rubin performed an analysis of voting machines produced by Diebold, one of the four manufacturers of the county's electronic voting machines. But his recommendation that the machines not be used in elections fell on deaf ears.

To see for ourselves if the new technology was up to task, NOW traveled to Oakland County, Michigan on Primary Day, where election workers encountered more than a few frustrating snags, even when demonstrating the machines for us. In one instance, it took five attempts for the machine to accept a ballot.

We also checked in on other states, including Texas, Iowa, New Mexico, and - you guessed it — Ohio. What we found were alarming scenes of computer and human error, poor results validation, nonexistent contingency plans, and extreme vulnerability to tampering.These are not isolated cases. In half of 37 primaries held this year, there were technical problems associated with the new HAVA-mandated technology.

These included:

* An extra 100,000 votes recorded but never cast in Texas, which was blamed on a programming error.

* A ballot-counting malfunction in Iowa that declared a losing candidate the winner.

* Allegations of discrepancies between votes cast and the corresponding paper trail created by machines in Ohio.

"We are no more certain today than we were in 2000 that we will not have an embarrassing moment and a tragic outcome in this year's election," Deforest Soaries, former Chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, told NOW.

Will new voting machines cure election headaches or cause them? Next time on NOW.

There will be a streaming video of the program on the PBS website after tonight's broadcast.

Historians write to ABC

The following letter was published on the new blog, Open Letter to ABC:

Dear Robert Iger:

We write as professional historians, who are deeply concerned by the continuing reports about ABC's scheduled broadcast of "The Path to 9/11." These reports document that this drama contains numerous flagrant falsehoods about critical events in recent American history. The key participants and eyewitnesses to these events state that the script distorts and even fabricates evidence into order to mislead viewers about the responsibility of numerous American officials for allegedly ignoring the terrorist threat before 2000.

The claim by the show's producers, broadcaster, and defenders, that these falsehoods are permissible because the show is merely a dramatization, is disingenuous and dangerous given their assertions that the show is also based on authoritative historical evidence. Whatever ABC's motivations might be, broadcasting these falsehoods, connected to the most traumatic historical event of our times, would be a gross disservice to the public. A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it. We strongly urge you to halt the show's broadcast and prevent misinforming Americans about their history.

Sincerely,

Arthur Schlesinger
Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University
Lizbeth Cohen, Harvard University
Nicholas Salvatore, Cornell University
Ted Widmer, Washington College
Rick Perlstein, Independent Scholar
David Blight, Yale University
Eric Alterman, City University of New York
Beverly Gage, Yale University
(List in formation)

There is a groundswell of protest to this film. Let's hope ABC does the right thing and cancels it.

A book worth knowing about

Robin Morgan, feminist activist and poet, has written a book that sounds really helpful in taking on the religious wing-nuts out there. Here's what the Amazon page has to say about it:

The religious right is gaining enormous power in the United States, thanks to a well-organized, media-savvy movement with powerful friends in high places. Yet many Americans — both observant and secular — are alarmed by this trend, especially by the religious right's attempts to erase the boundary between church and state and re-make the U.S. into a Christian nation.

But most Americans lack the tools for arguing with the religious right, especially when fundamentalist conservatives claim their tradition started with the Framers of The Constitution.

Fighting Words is a a tool-kit for arguing, especially for those of us who haven't read the founding documents of this nation since grade school. Robin Morgan has assembled a lively, accessible, eye-opening primer and reference tool, a "verbal karate" guide, revealing what the Framers and many other leading Americans really believed — in their own words — rescuing the Founders from images of dusty, pompous old men in powdered wigs, and resurrecting them as the revolutionaries they truly were: a hodgepodge of freethinkers, Deists, agnostics, Christians, atheists, and Freemasons — and they were radicals as well.

I'm getting really disgusted by the right-wingers determination to re-write history. They really want to turn the Founding Fathers into fundamentalists! It's truly important that we combat that attempt. I, for one, plan to order this book.

Friday cat blogging!

Henry

Photo by Ellie Finlay

Bill Clinton's lawyer blasts ABC

Here's part of an article from the New York Post:

September 7, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A furious Bill Clinton is warning ABC that its mini-series "The Path to 9/11" grossly misrepresents his pursuit of Osama bin Laden - and he is demanding the network "pull the drama" if changes aren't made.

Clinton pointedly refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.

The former president also disputed the portrayal of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as having tipped off Pakistani officials that a strike was coming, giving bin Laden a chance to flee.

"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely," the four-page letter said.
...
The letter, written by Bruce Lindsey, head of the Clinton Foundation, and Douglas Bond, a top lawyer in Clinton's office, accuses the ABC drama of "bias" and a "fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans."

Clinton, whose aides first learned from a TV trailer about a week ago that the miniseries would slam his administration, was "surprised" and "incredulous" when told about the film's slant, sources said.

Albright and former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger also dashed off letters to Iger, accusing the network of lying in the miniseries and demanding changes.

Once again, I'm just glad the Democrats are screaming about this. It's high time they showed some spine.

Poll on the ABC 9/11 movie

Here are the current results from an MSNBC Live Vote:

Do you feel ABC is misleading the public through its dramatization of Sept. 11 in "The Path to 9/11"?

Yes - 60%
No - 26%
I'll decide after watching the movie - 14%

I think the word is getting out that ABC is playing dirty.

Liberty

How sad that we've lost this principle:

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Worth realizing

Something I just found:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

-- Philip K. Dick

Diebold

Diebold voting

You know things are bad when a foreign newspaper says that American elections are not fair. I want to call your attention to an article in the Guardian entitled "The myth of fair elections in America". Here's part of what it says:

One person, one vote. Count the totals. The one with the most wins. The beauty of democracy is its simplicity and its inherent fairness. It equalises everyone, even as it empowers everyone. What could go wrong? In America, it turns out, quite a lot.
...
This week the venerable New York Times was the latest of many organisations and institutions to declare that America's democratic system is simply starting to fail. Not in terms of its democratic ideals, or some takeover by a Neocon cabal, but by a simple collapse in its ability to count everyone's votes accurately and fairly. The Times is editorialising on a shocking government report into electoral rules in Ohio's biggest county, Cuyahoga, which contains the city of Cleveland. It details a litany of errors and a large discrepancy between the paper record of a ballot and the result recorded by the new Diebold electronic voting machines the county has just installed. It also worried that 31 per cent of black people were asked for identification as they voted compared to 18 per cent of other voters. '[The] report should be a wake-up call to states and counties nationwide,' the paper thundered.
...
Then you add a large dose of dirty tricks that are again all too common at a local level in US politics. Forget Ohio or Florida. Just look at Milwaukee where mysterious fliers appeared in 2004 in a black neighbourhood informing residents that all felons and their relatives - even those guilty of traffic violations - could not vote. Or an election in New Hampshire in 2002 where senior state Republicans hired a firm to jam the Democrats phone bank system. Three people are now in jail due to that little escapade. Similar examples of other abuses can be found all over the country.

I expressed some cynicism in the posting below about Bush losing the support of Southern women. I called it good news - and it is - but I don't believe we will benefit from that good news because of election fraud. And until the Democrats address this issue aggressively, they will not get one penny of my money.

Thursday good news blogging

Well, it's Thursday again. Time for some good news. What I want to share with you today is a CNN article entitled "Southern women breaking up with Bush". If the Democrats have any hope at all of regaining control of Congress, this will do it. Take a look:

MACON, Georgia (AP) -- President Bush's once-solid relationship with Southern women is on the rocks.

"I think history will show him to be the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant," said Barbara Knight, a self-described Republican since birth and the mother of three. "He's been an embarrassment."

In the heart of Dixie, comparisons to Grant, a symbol of the Union, is the worst sort of insult, especially from a Macon woman who voted for Bush in 2000 but turned away in 2004.

In recent years, Southern women have been some of Bush's biggest fans, defying the traditional gender gap in which women have preferred Democrats to Republicans. Bush secured a second term due in large part to support from 54 percent of Southern female voters while women nationally favored Democrat John Kerry, 51-48 percent.
...
Republicans on the ballot this November have reason to worry. A recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that three out of five Southern women surveyed said they planned to vote for a Democrat in the midterm elections. With control of the Senate and House in the balance, such a seismic shift could have dire consequences for the GOP.

Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate to seize control.

Of course, I'm pretty cynical about the mid-term elections because the Republicans control the voting machines. Our only hope is for the elections not to be close enough to steal. It's an uphill battle all the way.

Email activism

Just click on the graphic above to make your voice heard. Please do it. This is important. ABC is peddling appalling propaganda and they need to be stopped.

UPDATE: Wow! The story of the objections to this movie has hit the front page of the CNN website. The article is entitled "Clinton officials to ABC: Fix or pull 9/11 miniseries" and here's part of what it says:

NEW YORK (AP) -- A miniseries about the events leading to the September 11 attacks is "terribly wrong" and ABC should correct it or not air it, former Clinton administration officials demanded in letters to the head of ABC's parent company.
...
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Clinton Foundation head Bruce Lindsey and Clinton adviser Douglas Band all wrote in the past week to Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Co., to express concern over "The Path to 9/11."
...
The letter writers said that the miniseries contained factual errors, and that their requests to see it had gone unanswered.

"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has a duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely. It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known," Lindsey and Band wrote in their letter.

The letter writers pointed out examples of scenes they had been told were in the miniseries, but which they said never happened. Albright objected to a scene that she was told showed her insisting on warning the Pakistani government before an airstrike on Afghanistan, and that she was the one who made the warning.

"The scene as explained to me is false and defamatory," she said.

Berger objected to a scene that he was told showed him refusing to authorize an attack on Osama bin Laden despite the request from CIA officials. "The fabrication of this scene (of such apparent magnitude) cannot be justified under any reasonable definition of dramatic license," he wrote.

Lindsey and Band objected to advertisements for the miniseries, which they said suggested that Clinton wasn't paying enough attention to the threat of terrorism.

"While ABC is promoting 'The Path to 9/11' as a dramatization of historical fact, in truth it is a fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans," they said. "Given your stated obligation to 'get it right,' we urge you to do so by not airing this drama until the egregious factual errors are corrected, an endeavor we could easily assist you with given the opportunity to view the film."

I'm so glad that key people in the Clinton administration aren't taking this lying down. Now, will former President Clinton himself speak out? That's what's needed.

More on that ABC 9/11 movie

Well, first of all ABC is showing this inaccurate, right-wing, fictionalized movie without commercial interruption. That's fishy. Somebody's got to be paying for it. Secondly, they're sending letters about it to 100,000 high school teachers telling them how it can be downloaded for free. (Somebody's paying for that, too.) Now I want to share with you an email I got from Congresswoman Louise Slaughter this morning on the subject:

As Congress gets back in session this week after a five week recess, I wanted to let you all know that I have been following a story concerning ABC Television’s plan to air a so called "Docudrama" on 9/11 written by a right wing activist.

On September 10 and 11, ABC Television is planning to run an inaccurate film, The Path to 9/11, depicting the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The film was written by an avowed conservative activists and it largely places the blame for failing to prevent the attacks on the Clinton administration while whitewashing the failures of the Bush administration.

Reviews of the film have shown it to be full inaccuracies. According to researchers at Think Progress, the film’s distorted version of history is inconsistent with the 9/11 Commission Report, upon which it claims to be based.*

The events leading up to September 11, 2001 are too important and too tragic for us let anyone play politics with the facts. So, please join me in calling on ABC to make it clear to viewers that this is a docudrama, not a documentary account of the events and political decisions that preceded the attacks. Sign our petition today urging the network to run explicit disclaimers throughout the airing of The Path to 9/11 stating that it is nothing more than a docudrama:

http://votelouise.com/page/petition/ComeCleanABC

The American people need to know that those behind this film and the incendiary claims it advances are questionable in their impartiality and accuracy...

Distorting the public’s knowledge about what led to September 11th by airing a film with so many inaccuracies makes it harder to learn from our mistakes and endangers our nation. I am disappointed that ABC has done just that – and done it at a time when partisan, vitriolic comments from top Republicans are undermining Democratic attempts to have a serious, non-partisan discussion about how we can better improve America’s security.

Personally, I think she should demand that it not be aired or that the offending scenes be edited out. What she is asking is very mild. Me, I've written scathing emails to various officials at ABC promising to boycott their advertisers. And I plan to do it, too.

Here's an interesting comment I found as I was searching for infomation about this miniseries:

I wonder if the movie mentions that the Clinton administration CAUGHT the 1993 WTC bombers and they are now in jail.

I wonder if the movie mentions how the Republican controlled congress passed bills that CUT funding for counter-intelligence andcounter-terrorism during the Clinton administration.

I wonder if the movie mentions that the Bush administration dismissed the intel and planning developed by Sandy Berger/Richard Clarke about AlQaeda and even demoted the office of counter-terrorism so it took until August of 01 for Clarke to even get a meeting with Bush about Al Qaeda.

I wonder if the movie mentions that Bush was informed of the 1st plane hitting the WTC BEFORE GOING INTO THE ELEM SCHOOL...and then waited 7 minutes after being informed of the 2nd hit before doing anything.

Finally....I wonder if the movie mentions that the Republican's impeached a sitting president for lying about getting a blow job and yet will NOT investigate the current administration's botched decision on invading Iraq and killing 2600+ soldiers!!!

C'mon people...wake up.

I agree with the writer. I doubt very seriously if these points will be made.

Stories from the ice

The ice has stories to tell. Painful, difficult stories. I refer to an article published by the BBC entitled "Deep ice tells long climate story ". Here's part of what it has to say:

Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica confirms.

The in-depth analysis of air bubbles trapped in a 3.2km-long core of frozen snow shows current greenhouse gas concentrations are unprecedented.

The East Antarctic core is the longest, deepest ice column yet extracted.

Project scientists say its contents indicate humans could be bringing about dangerous climate changes.

"My point would be that there's nothing in the ice core that gives us any cause for comfort," said Dr Eric Wolff from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"There's nothing that suggests that the Earth will take care of the increase in carbon dioxide. The ice core suggests that the increase in carbon dioxide will definitely give us a climate change that will be dangerous," he told BBC News.

And here's something I didn't know before:

More CO2 absorbed by the oceans will raise their acidity, and a number of recent studies have concluded that this will eventually disrupt the ability of marine micro-organisms to use the calcium carbonate in the water to produce their hard parts.

Life on earth is an intricate, complex web. What we do to one part of the web affects the whole. This is actually not hard to understand. Why those in power continually refuse to understand it completely bewilders me.

The lies of ABC

By now I hope you know that for the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, ABC is airing a docudrama movie that whitewashes Bush's accountability and blames Clinton. But it's not just the slant they're giving it. They're making up stuff out of whole cloth. Take a look at this little article from Think Progress:

On September 10 and 11, ABC is planning to air a “docudrama” called Path to 9/11, billed by writer Cyrus Nowrasteh as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”

The first night of Path to 9/11 has a dramatic scene where former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give the order to the CIA to take out bin Laden — even though CIA agents, along with the Northern Alliance, have his house surrounded. Rush Limbaugh, who refers to Nowrasteh as “a friend of mine,” reviews the action:

So the CIA, the Northern Alliance, surrounding a house where bin Laden is in Afghanistan, they’re on the verge of capturing, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to proceed.

So they phoned Washington. They phoned the White House. Clinton and his senior staff refused to give authorization for the capture of bin Laden because they’re afraid of political fallout if the mission should go wrong, and if civilians were harmed…Now, the CIA agent in this is portrayed as being astonished. “Are you kidding?” He asked Berger over and over, “Is this really what you guys want?”

Berger then doesn’t answer after giving his first admonition, “You guys go in on your own. If you go in we’re not sanctioning this, we’re not approving this,” and Berger just hangs up on the agent after not answering any of his questions.

ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.
2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.
3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military
involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

Tell ABC to tell the truth about 9/11.

I really encourage you to click through the last link and sign the petition. You might also email ABC and give voice your protest that way. Personally, I think this is an outrage.

Television news

Well, I don't watch it anymore, as I've shared with you before. Television news, that is. I want to share with you something in that regard that I found on one of my favorite blogs, HeadBlast by David Cogswell:

I heard that George Stephanopoulos had Bo Derek on his show on Sunday. (Boston.com) Bo Derek! The sex object in the movie "10", and some other more mindless movies. Ms Derek is listed as an "activist" -- pro Bush, pro war, pro corporatism, apparently. This is Stephanopoulos' idea of a major news story for the Sunday morning audience. I rest my case. The corporate media "news" shows are an utterly ridiculous distraction.

All I can say is that's pretty pathetic.

Capital owes everything to labor

The first Republican president:

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Rank injustice

If you've read my posts already today, you know that I'm focusing on issues of economic justice. You might want to click through and read the article by Greg Palast entitled "Today's pig is tomorrow's bacon (a Labor Day recipe)". Palast reports on this reprehensible development at Dupont:

This week, Dupont, the chemical giant, slashed employee pension benefits by two-thirds. Furthermore, new Dupont workers won't get a guaranteed pension at all -- and no health care after retirement. It's part of Dupont's new "Die Young" program, I hear. Dupont is not in financial straits. Rather, the slash attack on its workers' pensions was aimed at adding a crucial three cents a share to company earnings, from $3.11 per share to $3.14.

So Happy Labor Day.

Let's hope Palast's title is correct and that the pigs eventually get their just reward.

More on labor injustice

I've spent a good few hours today observing Labor Day by surfing the web on economic justice issues. And a few minutes ago I found a website called Jobs with Justice. Here's part of their Labor Day message:

Unfortunately, this Labor Day workers have little to celebrate. Wages and salaries now make up the smallest share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since the government began tracking it in 1947. Meanwhile, corporate profits have risen to their highest share of the GDP since the 1960s. The median hourly wage has declined by 2 percent since 2003, even though productivity has been rising, so workers are doing more work and making less money. The buying power of the minimum wage is at a 50-year low. A record 46.6 million people in the U.S. have no health insurance, and a majority of the uninsured are working people. A recent poll found that "The public thinks that workers were better off a generation ago than they are now on every key dimension of worker life — be it wages, benefits, retirement plans, on-the-job stress, the loyalty they are shown by employers or the need to regularly upgrade work skills."

Think that sounds fair? Neither do we. If you believe America's workers deserve better, take a moment to commemorate Labor Day with a contribution to Jobs with Justice's efforts to put human needs ahead of corporate greed.

The Bush Administration, always ready to help out their super-rich CEO friends, has made it no secret that they are interested in stripping workers of their rights. The Bush-appointed NLRB has stripped the right to form unions from graduate research assistants, disabled employees, and temp agency employees. They've allowed employers to ban off-duty fraternization among employees, allowed employers to retaliate against workers who seek community support for their organizing campaigns, and much more. Under President Bush, the Department of Labor reclassified broad swaths of workers, denying them the ability to receive overtime pay. President Bush has also fought to strip hundreds of thousands of Federal employees of their right to join a union. Now, Bush's NLRB is preparing to let employers strip up to 8 million more workers from their right to belong to a union by manipulating job descriptions to artificially classify workers as "supervisors" ineligible for union contract protection.

How on earth can it be legal to for an employer to ban off-duty fraternization among employees? Whatever happened to freedom of assembly?

I fear it's actually going to take a revolution for matters to get much better and that will be hard to make happen given the current level of Big Brother at play in our society. I do think we're headed for a very ugly dystopia.

It's another Labor Day

Anyone who works full time - regardless of skill level - should be able to live above the poverty line. The fact that this is not true in America is a national disgrace. I want to share with you an article called "Beyond the Living Wage: A New Challenge for Progressives" that looks at the outrageous discrepancies between worker and CEO compensation. Here's part of what it says:

Over 120 communities, big and small alike, have now enacted ordinances that require businesses that win government contracts to pay a living wage. These victories have made an undeniable impact. Low-wage workers from Baltimore to Los Angeles have seen their annual take-home pay rise by hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.

Yet, as a sobering new report reminds us, the pay gap in America's workplaces - between workers and top executives - has actually widened, and significantly so. Last year, notes "Executive Excess 2006," a just-released report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, top executives at major U.S. corporations took home 411 times more than average workers.

In 1994, at the birth of the living wage movement, chief executive pay outpaced pay for average workers by only 142 times.

All this concentrating of wealth at the top of our corporate ladder has become America's single biggest engine of inequality. Between 1993 and 2003, according to researchers at Harvard and Cornell, the top five executives at America's 1,500 biggest companies more than doubled their share of corporate earnings. These top execs took home $290 billion, over a quarter of a trillion dollars.

The impact of executive pay jackpots on our great divide actually goes far beyond the sheer immensity of this $290 billion. To fatten corporate bottom lines and hit those jackpots, executives have downsized workers, outsourced jobs, gutted pensions, trimmed benefits, and slashed R & D. These executive decisions, taken together, have left American workers appreciably poorer and American companies considerably less competitive.

I was not aware of those numbers - that is, that CEO compensation went from being 142 times worker pay in 1994 to 411 times worker pay. To call that obscene is to put it mildly. There is no word that adequately expresses how outrageously wrong that is. I grieve for this country, for this society, that it has become a culture of unfettered and actually celebrated greed and selfishness. Let us do what we can to work for economic justice in our land and remember the reason for this holiday we observe today.

The America I believe in

This morning I got an email from Amnesty International about their current "The American I believe in" campaign. Here's the main message:

The America I believe In does not engage in torture, does not hold people in detention without trial, respects due process and affirms human rights for all.

How inexpressibly tragic it is that these principles are no longer upheld in and by our country. Do consider joining Amnesty International if you haven't already.

How we have changed

Here's a CNN Quick Vote for tonight:

How has the United States changed since 9/11?

For the better 20%

For the worse 80%

Sad. Not just sad - tragic.

Sunday prayer blogging

Prayer for the World

by Lori-ann Latremouille

This is by the poet Ellen Bass:

Pray for Peace

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah, raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinhah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper
of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down
to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus
and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
If you haven't been on a bus in a long time,
climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latté and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile case we are poured into,
each caress a season of peace.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust
of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

Giving up on politics

This morning I read a very insightful, beautifully written and poignant article by Joe Bageant called "Roy's people" about the working class poor, their need for community and how the Democratic Party just doesn't get it. I also read an article called "Another Year, Another Wage Loss" - also about how we've basically lost the working class with regard to the political process. It's really about a mixture of cynicism and hopelessness. Read this and you'll see what I mean:

Theda Skocpol, author of several books of social history, tells of interviewing a hard-pressed woman with small children and a low-wage job. Her only social support was that her mother-in-law -- the children's grandmother -- looked after her children while she worked. As Skocpol observes, this was possible only because Social Security enabled the grandmother not to have to work herself.

Skocpol asked the woman whether she thought there was anything government might do to improve her economic circumstances. The woman replied, "Nothing they do there ever makes a difference for people like me."

But that was not always so. Social Security, Medicare, college aid, the GI Bill, government wage-and-hour laws, and government protection of the right to unionize made a real difference in people's lives.

These policies, which benefited the vast middle class (and helped to create it), did not just happen. They were the result of political organizing and a public awareness that government could affect the economic opportunity and security of ordinary Americans, for better or worse.

It's understandable why politics today is often a turnoff. But if a great many middle-class and poor Americans have given up on politics, you can be sure that the economic elite is invested in politics as never before. The changes in the tax code and regulatory laws and workplace practices that benefit America's super-rich did not just happen, either. They are the result of relentless maneuvering by the financial elite and its political allies.

The big problem for progressives in this country is people who vote against their economic self-interest or who just don't vote at all. How to reach these people is the issue that needs to be addressed. But I don't see the Democrats doing it.

Moral courage - the real thing

Rocky Anderson

Something amazing happened in Salt Lake City, Utah on August 30, 2006. The mayor of that city, Rocky Anderson, delivered a speech that was a scathing indictment of Bush and the Bush administration. It is sizzling. You have to handle with forceps. And I really want you to click through and read it all but I'll give you a small sample here:

We are here today to insist that those who were elected to be our leaders must tell us the truth.

We are here today to insist that our news media live up to its sacred responsibility to ascertain and report the truth - rather than acting like nothing more than a bulletin board for the lies and propaganda of a manipulative, dishonest federal government.

We have been getting just about everything but the truth on matters of life and death . . . on matters upon which our nation's reputation hinges . . . on matters that directly relate to our nation's fundamental values . . . and on matters relating to the survival of our planet.

In the process, our nation has engaged in an unnecessary war, based upon false justifications. More than a hundred thousand people have been killed - and many more have been seriously maimed, brain damaged, or rendered mentally ill.

Our nation's reputation throughout much of the world has been destroyed. We have many more enemies bent on our destruction than before our invasion of Iraq.

And the hatred toward us has grown to the point that it will take many years, perhaps generations, to overcome the loathing created by our invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.

What incredible ineptitude and callousness for our President to talk about a Crusade while lying to us to make a case for the invasion and occupation of a Muslim country!

Our children and later generations will pay the price of the lies, the violence, the cruelty, the incompetence, and the inhumanity of the Bush administration and the lackey Congress that has so cowardly abrogated its responsibility and authority under our checks-and-balances system of government.

We are here to say, "We will not stand for it any more. No more lies. No more pre-emptive, illegal war, based on false information. No more God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal war. No more inhumanity."

Let's raise our voices, and demand, "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Mayor Anderson then goes on to spell out the lies we have been fed one by one and to conclude of President Bush that "he betrayed each of us, he betrayed our country, and he betrayed the cause of world peace. "

All I can say is, thank you Rocky Anderson. May your tribe increase. But watch your back, please, and do stay out of small planes.

UPDATE: If you want to say thank you to Rocky Anderson you can do so right here.

War IS terrorism

This morning, Frank Ford sent me a Boston Globe opinion piece by Howard Zinn. It's entitled "War is not a solution for terrorism" and here is part of what it says:

Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms. Wars waged by nations, whether by the United States or Israel, are a hundred times more deadly for innocent people than the attacks by terrorists, vicious as they are.

The repeated excuse, given by both Pentagon spokespersons and Israeli officials, for dropping bombs where ordinary people live is that terrorists hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on 9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.

This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a "suspected terrorist" is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is "inevitable."

So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians. And when you consider that the number of innocent people dying inevitably in "accidental" events has been far, far greater than all the deaths deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reject war as a solution for terrorism.

Simple. Obvious. Why, then, is this observation by Zinn almost universally rejected or ignored?

More Leno

You have to admit this is excellent:

NBC anchor Brian Williams interviewed President Bush. He asked him about his poll numbers and President Bush said, "The key for me is to keep expectations low." I think you can accurately say, "Mission Accomplished."

--Jay Leno

Friday cat blogging!

Henry

Photo by Ellie Finlay

Keith Olbermann rocks!

It's making the rounds on the internet. The remarkable commentary by Keith Olbermann the other night. You can find a transcript in a number of places, actually, most recently (to my knowledge) on Smirking Chimp. I urge you, I truly urge you to click through and read the whole thing. It will not take very long. Here's a sample, though:

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis-and the sober contemplation-of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our employees - with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
...
And about Mr. Rumsfeld's other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism."

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that - though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

He refers, of course, to the fascism taking root in this county.

I just can't do the piece justice with these excerpts. Go read the whole thing. Please. And let's hope Olbermann keeps his job.