Neo-Fascist CNP Can't Find a Candidate for '08

Haha! The evil Council for National Policy can't find anybody to support! Bahahaahahahah! May the marginalization of the bogus "Christian Right" movement continue. Good riddance. Another 25 years and they'll be like the John Birch Society, a place for dead-end wannabe fascists to nurse their grievances over steaks and cigars. Once they're not able to deliver elections to the GOP, they're going to be ever more marginalized! Of course, they're well-heeled, so they'll be around for longer, still -- rich Christians? Yeah, they're for real. Hah. They're theocratic fascists.

NYT
February 25, 2007
Christian Right Labors to Find ’08 Candidate
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 — A group of influential Christian conservatives and their allies emerged from a private meeting at a Florida resort this month dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field and uncertain where to turn.

The event was a meeting of the Council for National Policy, a secretive club whose few hundred members include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Liberty University and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Although little known outside the conservative movement, the council has become a pivotal stop for Republican presidential primary hopefuls, including George W. Bush on the eve of his 1999 primary campaign.

But in a stark shift from the group’s influence under President Bush, the group risks relegation to the margins. Many of the conservatives who attended the event, held at the beginning of the month at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., said they were dismayed at the absence of a champion to carry their banner in the next election.

Many conservatives have already declared their hostility to Senator John McCain of Arizona, who once denounced Christian conservative leaders as “agents of intolerance,” and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, a liberal on abortion and gay rights issues who has been married three times.

But many were also deeply suspicious of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts; the council has been distributing to its members a dossier prepared by a Massachusetts conservative group about liberal elements of his record on abortion, stem cell research, gay rights and gun control. Mr. Romney says he has become more conservative.

And some members of the council have raised doubts about lesser known candidates — Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Representative Duncan Hunter of California, who were invited to Amelia Island to address an elite audience of about 60 of its members, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who spoke to the full council at its previous meeting, in October in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Although each of the three had supporters, many conservatives expressed concerns about whether any of the candidates could unify their movement or raise enough money to overtake the front-runners, several participants in the meetings said.

Finally, in a measure of their dissatisfaction, a delegation of prominent conservatives at Amelia Island attempted to enlist as a candidate Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a guest speaker at the event. A charismatic politician with a clear conservative record, Mr. Sanford is almost unknown outside his home state and has done nothing to prepare for a presidential run. He firmly declined the group’s entreaties, people involved in the recruiting effort said. A spokesman for Mr. Sanford said he would not comment.

“There is great anxiety,” said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and an elder statesman of the conservative movement. “There is no outstanding conservative, and they are all looking for that.”

Mr. Weyrich, a longtime member of the council, declined to discuss the group or its meetings. The council’s bylaws forbid members from publicly disclosing its membership or activities, and participants agreed to discuss the Amelia Island meeting only on the condition of anonymity.

For eight years and four elections, President Bush forged a singular alliance with Christian conservatives — including dispatching administration officials and even cabinet members to address council meetings — that put them at the center of the Republican Party.

But in the aftermath of the stinging defeats in the 2006 midterm elections, and with discontent over the Iraq war weighing heavily on the public, some Christian conservatives worry that they may find themselves on the sidelines of the presidential race.

Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney have worked hard to pitch themselves to Christians conservatives — Mr. McCain by delivering a speeches at venues like Mr. Falwell’s Liberty University or a recent abstinence-promotion event, Mr. Romney by leading the charge for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. But neither has won over many of the movement’s leaders.

The conservative concern may also be an ominous sign for the Republican Party about the morale of a core element of its political base. Conservatives warn that the 2008 election could shape up like 1996, when conservatives faced a lesser-of-two evils choice between a Republican they distrusted, former Senator Bob Dole, and a Democrat they disdained, President Bill Clinton. Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family later said in a speech to the council that he voted for a conservative third-party candidate that year rather than pull a lever for Mr. Dole.

The Council for National Policy was founded 25 years ago by the Rev. Tim LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians to strategize about turning the country to the right. Its secrecy was intended to insulate the group from what its members considered the liberal bias of the news media. In recent years the group has brought together a cross-section of the right from Edwin J. Feulner to Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association.

In addition to doubts about their ability to generate enough money and momentum, each candidate who addressed the group also faces initial skepticism from one faction or another on issues like immigration, trade, taxes and foreign affairs.

“Right now there is still a vacuum among conservative Republicans,” said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative who was a Republican primary candidate in 2000. Conservatives, he said, “want a more provable conservative who also is demonstrating that they can put together the resources necessary to prevail.” He declined to comment on the Amelia Island meeting.

A spokesman for Mr. Brownback said he would not comment on the senator’s presentation to the council, citing its rules about strict confidentiality. Several others who attended his speech said he received heavy applause for his emphasis on restricting abortion and amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. But foes of illegal immigration objected to his support for a temporary guest worker program, and some faulted him for touching only briefly on the threat of Islamic terrorists, an increasingly central focus of the council and many social conservative groups since the Sept. 11 attacks.

(People who attended the Amelia Island event said Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, delivered a well-received address to the council about what he called the gathering threat of radical Islam.)

In an interview, Mr. Hunter, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee and a supporter of Mr. Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq, said the need for a strong national defense was the centerpiece of his speech. That defense, he argued, should include cracking down on illegal immigration, building a wall along the Mexican border and renegotiating foreign trade deals to protect American manufacturing. “We are losing the arsenal of the democracy,” he said.

But several people at the council meeting said his stance on trade alienated the business wing of the Republican Party, compounding his substantial fund-raising challenges.

Mr. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who was the head of the Arkansas Baptist convention before becoming governor, has the advantage of strong personal ties to many council members. Many prominent evangelical Christians consider him a friend, and he has appeared several times as a guest on Dr. Dobson’s popular Christian radio program.

In an interview, Mr. Huckabee said he believed his roots in the evangelical world helped set him apart from his rivals. “I am not going to them,” he said. “I am coming from them.” He said he did not remember speaking about his opposition to abortion or same-sex marriage, “although I am sure that I must have.” He said he emphasized education, among other issues, and talked about a continuing war “with a radical form of Islamic fascism,” which he called “a bastardization of religion.”

But many conservatives, including several participants in the Amelia Island meeting, said Mr. Huckabee faced resistance from the limited-government, antitax wing of their movement. Some antitax activists fault Mr. Huckabee for presiding over tax and spending increases. (He says the only tax increase resulted from a public referendum.)

In the interview, though, Mr. Huckabee said he was now leaning toward signing a pledge not to raise income taxes that is presented to all the candidates by Mr. Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.

Mr. Norquist said he remained open to any of the three candidates who spoke to the council or to Mr. Romney. He argued that with the right promises, any of the four could redeem themselves in the eyes of the conservative movement despite their past records, just as some high school students take abstinence pledges even after having had sex.

“It’s called secondary virginity,” he said. “It is a big movement in high school and also available for politicians.”

McCain't

This blurb is from the Washingpost...

SPARTANBURG, S.C. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party’s conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned.

“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.

McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who “strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench.”

He's definitely made his faustian bargain with the fundamentalists. What a creep. The "Dead Constitution" types just use that as a fig leaf for their reactionary agenda, as a way of sabotaging any non-reactionary issue that comes up. So long as the American government lives, as long as the American people live, the Constitution lives. Nice try, jerks.

Zodiac

So, I was looking at the Washington Post's website to see who voted how on the non-binding resolution, and I saw they had some widgets that broke down the vote, which included the usual breakdowns, but then had "by astrological sign" -- I was like, *buh?*

Astrological sign	Yes	No	Not Voting
Aquarius	20	18	0
Aries	19	10	0
Cancer	31	18	1
Capricorn	16	17	1
Gemini	23	27	1
Leo	24	11	0
Libra	20	19	0
Pisces	14	7	2
Sagittarius	16	14	0
Scorpio	21	12	0
Taurus	15	9	1
Virgo	27	20	0
Total	246	182	6

Is the Washingpost tipping its hat to Gen X or what? Did they do that for the 109th Congress, too? Or did the Post think it had to change its coverage to get more readers. Now we can see who dominates the House astrologically! Whoa!

And all in time for the coming release of Zodiac, no less!

Sigh

I'm a little ticked at the sudden "Airline Passenger Bill of Rights" idea invoked in the wake of the JetBlue stranded airlines fiasco.

Several things bug me about it: first, just like the overused "War on XXX" (War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terror) I think invoking a Bill of Rights-style (Patients' Bill of Rights, etc.) concept cheapens the actual Bill of Rights. That's a seemingly stupid point, but it takes the fundamental freedoms that, bundled together, make America a desirable place to be, and transforms it into a euphemism for citizen outrage. I'm sorry people were stranded, but if there's an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, then how about a Highway Commuter Bill of Rights, a Public Transportation Bill of Rights, and a Shopping Mall Consumer Bill of Rights, too? Lame! Seems to me that people should just be going after JetBlue and/or the FAA (or the TSA?) for boning up the process so that the passengers were stranded.

A second thing that bugs me is how quickly and vehement the response has been to these people trapped 11 hours on a plane. Again, it's lame and irritating, but I couldn't help but think of the hapless people in New Orleans, who had a helluva lot more going on than the JetBlue passengers, and where was the help for them? I think there's more than a little class and race bias in the publicity around the JetBlue thing, and the push for reform, compared to New Orleans, which is still a mess, and is likely to remain so for a long, long time, victim of not-so benign neglect (some of which created the problem to begin with). But inconvenience some airline passengers, and it's suddenly a big issue. Why? Because they had cellphones with cameras, captured those Kodak moments?

A third thing that pissed me off was how JetBlue's stock went up in the wake of the JetBlue fiasco! My rule of thumb about the stock market is this: if it's bad news for working people and consumers, then the stocks go up; good news for everyday people, and the stocks go down. That's common enough to be, in my eyes, almost a truism. Chrysler axes thousands of workers, and I bet its stock goes up. A company lets its workers unionize, its stock'll go down. So, we have JetBlue blowing it, utterly failing to do what people are paying it to do, and it gets rewarded on the stock market. It's that topsy-turvy kind of accounting that lets CEOs garner massive salaries and benefits packages even as their companies tank. Enough, already.

Outfoxed

Oh, lordy. Fox is trying to do comedy, trying to do their own reactionary "Daily Show" -- it's going to be a trainwreck! The clips they've shown already are just terrible! About at this level...

Krusty Komedy Klassic

Fox should take a bath on this venture, unless people just watch it to laugh at it, to see how bad it is. Still, I can't imagine it lasting for long, this dog-and-pony show. Fox probably has interns watching "Laugh-In" and trying to put a right-wing spin on it, so they can be current and edgy. Baahah!

The biggest joke is Fox even trying this.

Shooting Star

Okay, one last star I'll post from SALON, since I've been doing alright by them, looks like...

Iraq and a hard place, still

Although I never agreed with Clinton's vote, always felt that the Bush League were leading the country by the nose on the rush to war with Iraq, I think she's in a real bind right now on admitting to that vote being a mistake, and don't really fault her for not copping to it, because the Right can run all over that, making it a campaign issue, another distraction from their own rotten record of obeisance to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rove's manipulations.

It could: 1) make her seem like a dupe for believing Bush's deception to begin with; 2) make her seem to be a flip-flopper (only Democrats are called this, it seems); 3) be used as an indictment of the troops; 4) be construed as an attack on her for supporting the incoherent, janus-headed policy to begin with ("how can you be against the war you supported?" -- the line they used against Kerry); 5) be seen as political cowardice, like finger-in-the-wind sentiment pollchasing.

I think she probably won't admit to it being a mistake for all of those reasons, and a few more. Like Obama's blackness, the "admit to a mistake" smoke-and-mirrors show is a diversion meant to indict the character of a candidate.

The ones who should be fessing up to mistakes are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove, and you'll never hear them do that, either. So why blame Hillary for it?

She (and many other Congresspeople) made the same mistake with their votes. She's got plenty of company. I wish she had shown more political courage back then, but 20/20 hindsight and all of that. I understand why she's not admitting to it as a mistake.

-- Slackie Onassis

Clampdown

So, it looks like the Iraqi government is staging a security clampdown in an effort to turn the tide on the civil war (or, as the NYT put it, the "sectarian cleansing" -- a term that earns the O'Brien Award as far as I'm concerned).

Even if we manage to create a police state in Iraq, the Neoconservative/Neoliberal Holy Grail of "Saddam Without Saddam" -- it still seems like it won't be enough, with the sticky problem of that Shiite majority and all.

My plan (and others, although I've been spouting it since 2002, not that you'd know, because I wasn't blogging it) remains creating an Iraqi Federation, with Baghdad as a shared capital, and the oil revenues held in a UN-brokered trust that distributes revenues proportionally to the components of the federation, or else equally, if that's more diplomatically acceptable. Put some UN peacekeepers there to moderate the disputes that arise, with some kind of safeguard against Saudi and Iranian interference in their politics.

Seems like the only thing that would address the issues at hand and defuse the civil war.

Obama, Okay?!

I'm also fed up with the "is he REALLY black" nonsense surrounding Obama. At least we're early enough in the campaign that hopefully this whole line will be used up by the time the primary season really kicks into gear, but for now, it's annoying as hell. Give the man a break -- there are way bigger issues afflicting the US currently than whether Obama is really black, a line which conservative Alan Keyes dredged up in his ill-fated campaign against Obama in 2004.

What is Wrong With People?

This is really steaming me, the ongoing beating of the war drums re: Iran. Is the Bush League so desperate to distract the country with yet another war (or another front in the War on Terror) that they're willing to actually go to war with Iran (or launch an air strike on their nuclear facilities and/or have Israel do it)?

C'mon!! It would probably guarantee generations of terrorists, which would play into the neoconservatives' hands, policywise, locking the US into a straitjacketd response in world affairs, and would ensure fat Pentagon budgets as far as the eye could see. Is that their game?

Certainly they've made Americans no safer with their War on Terror.

Learnin'

A star for a little blurb; I wanted to write more, but was kinda pissed at the article...

We Need Quick Learners

Obama has been called the Democrats' Ronald Reagan because he has the personality to sell the public on programs it might reject on their merits. (In Reagan's case, it was supply-side economics. In Obama's, it would be national healthcare.)

Except that, unlike Reagan, Obama's actually smart -- to imply that there's no substance behind the image is typical Reader backhanding. Despite McClelland's snide Reader-style digs salt-and-peppered throughout the piece, what still emerges from it is that Obama learned from his mistakes and -- he admitted to them and, most importantly, didn't repeat them.

All the more reason why we could use somebody like that in the White House, no?

-- Slackie Onassis

And another star on the article ripping on that NYT reporter who is a shoddy journalist...

Commissars Are Never Wrong

There are numerous explanations for that, but one that ought not be overlooked is simple arrogance. Some national journalists simply believe that they are immune from criticism because they are more knowlegeable and wiser than their critics.

I agree, although I'd probably say "most" instead of "some" -- part of what's gutted journalism in this country is the emergence of journalists as a political class unto themselves (and probably fuels their sniping of Internet information gathering -- whether blogs, or YouTube, etc. -- anything that gets information out there in ways that they're not a part of is "bad information").

The Press has become a uniquely-situated institution, straddling three arenas: Businesspeople, celebrities, policymakers (indirectly, in their ability to draw attention to things and get people to think about whatever it is they cover -- and what they don't cover gets ignored). I don't think we have journalists in America anymore; we have commissars. "Pravda-like" is right.

The celebrity angle is probably the most recent and startling corrupting influence. A celebrity journalist is eventually going to have to choose which they value more -- their journalistic integrity or their celebrity; the former path is thankless drudgery, the latter brings fame and fortune.

No wonder we have so few journalists, anymore.

-- Slackie Onassis

Obama 2008

Yay, Barack kicked butt on his announcement...

Obama 2008

Lordy, I hope he's careful. He's definitely got the right stuff. Hillary Clinton looks like more of the same compared to Obama -- and he's way more charismatic than she is.

I hope: 1) nobody tries to shoot him; 2) that he doesn't take any VP slot offered to him by the Clinton crew -- that would finish him.

This is his moment. He needs to go for it. I think he's smart enough, charismatic enough, and visionary enough to do it.

I saw Obama speak when he was just a state senator, like around 1999; he'd come to the place where I worked and spoke at a meeting; there might've been fifty people in the room, but he owned the room, and after seeing him speak (it was on universal health care) I thought "Wow, he's going to be President someday." It was so palpable, I distinctly remember it. Man, I wish I'd left my job and gone to work for him back then! But I didn't think he'd try for a presidential run so soon.

But more power to him. He's got my vote. Sorry, Hillary -- many of the votes you cast in the Senate alienated me, and you appear to me to be more of the same, and DC needs serious change, and it feels like Obama could bring that change.

For what it's worth

Another star; an article that pissed me off, Bushies blaming "24" for prisoner abuse. Just absurd, and infuriating, so I jotted a comment down...

I Smell a Rat

Oh, come on. I mean, sure, a lot of America takes its cues from television and movies, but I think it's a dodge to try to blame "24" on bad treatment of prisoners. That feels like a cover story, like Dan Quayle blaming "Murphy Brown" for our cultural woes. More GOP secular culture-bashing, as pointless as it is meaningless.

More to the point, it tries to camouflage the very real responsibility the Bush League leadership has for creating the climate of lawlessness that led to the abuses to begin with! They knew just what they were doing the minute they get up the prisoner camps in Cuba, and when they adopted their rendition torture-go-round way of circumnavigating international laws.

It's not Jack Bauer's fault that prisoner abuse and torture has gone on. Rather, the fault lies with George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, and many other members of the Bush League who think extremism in defense of imperial executive authority is no vice.

What next, blaming video games for Abu Ghraib?

-- Slackie Onassis

I must've done something right, since I ended up with a trollbite, courtesy of Locutus, stargazer extraordinaire...

Article never said that "24" was to blame. The article indicated that some of the training cadre in the military are concerned that some individuals may be mimicking the show.

What a silly, pointless quibble! Poor thing! If the officials are concerned that folks are mimicking the show, then they're indirectly blaming the show for the problem, no? He missed the point of my comment, which was that the leadership are the ones we need to blame, not television shows (or individuals imitating television shows).

It's almost this bad

Bush Administration tries out new anti-immigrant tactics at the border.

Rudy Can't Fail?

Apparently Rudy G is outpacing McCain in polls as a viable candidate. Although I still consider Giuliani to be an unreconstructed neofascist, he does have charisma, and it's nice to see McCain's entirely undeserved maverick status beginning to cost him. His presidential moment was in 2000, and he blew it, or it was stolen from him. He's a relic of the pre-Bush age, and I think after he's smoked in the primary race, that'll be it for him. It'll be interesting to see how the GOP primary race plays out. Will the fundamentalists like Giuliani's stuff? Will he flame out by bullying somebody on the campaign trail? Could he stand toe-to-toe with Hillary Clinton?

I think his smirking self could probably handle Obama in a debate -- it would be interesting, because they're both smart and charismatic. Against Clinton, Giuliani would definitely come across as more charismatic, although with Iraq hanging around the GOP's neck, maybe no GOP candidate will have a good chance.

Interesting thing in the above article is how little support stupid Gingrich and Romney have -- they're deluding themselves.

Starry

Got another one. It's not that I support people like Ortega, but what I support is countries having popular elections, self-determination, being able to conduct their affairs without political interference from the US. I support countries taking care of their own people, and oppose dictatorships, juntas, fascist regimes. And I strenuously oppose the US policy of supporting political strongmen abroad. If we're paragons of democracy (and these days, it's a debatable assumption, no?) -- we should not be afraid of democracy, which means the right for people to self-determination, and NOT corrupt and brutal governments kowtowing to us...

Banana Republicans and Death Squad Democracies

In El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, misery plus surging violent crime has turned hope into one word: emigration, preferably to El Norte.

Ironic that three North American-style "success stories" (e.g., popular leftist movements brutally crushed through American intervention/interference and rightist regimes put in place) have led to countries in miserable condition, where the only recourse for the populace is flight!

From Washington's perspective, any Central or Latin American country that tries to take care of its own populace (versus, say, foreign creditors) is immediately on our blacklist. Our stance toward them goes from wary, to icy, to cold, to hostile.

Whereas the regimes that rely on paramilitaries and death squads to terrorize their countries into submission (or civil war), give corporations a free hand in exporting resources and wealth and let them wield undue political influence (aka, "embrace free market economics"), smash trade unions, kill journalists and teachers, have horrible human rights records, and have glaring social inequality -- well, our government likes those countries, so long as they embrace capitalism.

Good luck to Chávez, to Ortega, to the various countries down there who are trying to improve the lives of their citizenry, instead of marching to the tune of Washington, which is invariably bad for the country that does it, good for the corrupt government we're supporting (in terms of our aid to them), and terrible for the people forced to endure it.

Washington likes juntas and coups in the region, and that's not hyperbole, that's history -- it's policy (wrapped up in obfuscating language about democracy, of course)! Shows where our hearts really are in the matter of freedom and democracy, if it's measured in actual practice, and not simply in rhetoric and buzzwords. Never has our rhetoric strayed further from actual practice than in Central and Latin America.

-- Slackie Onassis

Pentagoners

Oink! Oink! Oink! The Pentagon wants more and more. And this article doesn't even get at the real number: anywhere from $739 to 745 billion already budgeted to them. We're way, way overspending on our military, and keep in mind: our even-then huge military did nothing to prevent 9/11 from happening.

Proof Positive

Why the whole national defense and national security state apparatus is so much bullshit, unable to actually defend the country from very much at all...

Electrocuted Owl Cuts Power to 23,000

- - - - - - - - - - - -

February 06,2007 | CASPER, Wyo. -- An owl electrocuted itself in an electrical substation, briefly knocking out power to almost 23,000 customers in south Casper.

Margaret Oler, spokeswoman for Rocky Mountain Power, said the bird tripped the high-voltage line at 10:20 p.m. Sunday, shutting down that and three other substations. She called it the largest outage she's seen in 25 years.

"Our equipment operated exactly as it should have and did not allow the damage to go further," Oler said.

It took about an hour to restore power.

Astrogate and Afrikakorps

Jeez. That astronaut's going to be charged with attempted murder. Even NASA's not immune to the culture of corruption and criminality that has beset the American government. Maybe with the shuttle program winding down, the woman figured she had nothing to lose. It's a weird story, for sure, but definitely not what NASA needed.

Also, it looks like Bush is creating an Afrikakorps, adding a Pentagon command covering Africa. Apparently it's going to be using the Pentagon for humanitarian aid functions, which'll further lead to the atrophying of the State Department. Here's the new symbol they're using for it (just kidding). But it really bugs me how the Bush League increasingly rely on the Pentagon to cover all phases of government action abroad. Small government? Not hardly. It's just another extension of the Fortress America conception the Bushies have created, largely through their own inept actions and their willfully wrongheaded warmongering.

$739 Billion

Fred Kaplan masterfully breaks down War Budget hijinks, courtesy of the Decider...

It's Actually $739 Billion

Scary stuff. I fear the militarization of American society has been going on so long (loosely, I'd drawn a line at 1947, when the Department of War was transformed into the Department of Defense as the time when we began to embark on this particular "slayride").

Monstrously, as the Pentagon Lockbox continues to grow, it's going to consume ever more of the American budget -- it's the secret weapon the GOP and related reactionaries would use to finally smash the so-called Welfare State. Keep enough hot wars going, and it becomes its own justification -- hack social spending to the bone, privatize/kill/maim/destroy Social Security and Medicare, and keep several wars going indefinitely, and you've basically got the GOP's plan for the future. Nobody's yet touched the true third rail of American politics: reinstating the draft.

Yet. But it's coming. This kind of insane, worldwide war-waging has decimated the all-volunteer army (which is now the all-volunteer and partially-privatized army). A draft will eventually come, just to meet manpower needs.

The inertia of it is frightening and devastating -- our country has been on a permanent wartime economy for so long, so much is bound up in the costly, dead end of military keynesianism, it's hard to imagine people stepping back. Especially with the GOP eager to point a finger and squawk about national security if anybody dares try to open the Pentagon Lockbox.

This runaway military spending is killing the future of America-as-we-know it -- the oft-cited "American Way of Life(tm)" that reactionaries claim to care so much about.

It's not making the US safer, and it's making the world a good deal more dangerous. The only beneficiaries of it is the defense industry. But actual debate on it is immediately derailed by "Support the Troops!" and "Support the War on Terror!"

This is the same death spiral empires always take; this is why the Founding Fathers feared standing armies. Empires crumble at home while their armies consume ever more. *sigh*

For all the scoffing of Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" -- like somehow the US was immune to the dynamic that has gutted superpowers before us, we're exactly on the track he laid out.

And I don't know if a new, invigorated Progressive movement (even if one existed) could stop it. The only thing that would likely stop it would be an economic meltdown, or (related, and perhaps worse) a political crisis at home.

Even a sham democracy should be fearful when its strongest national institution is the Army.

About time

I'd had a few starless letters of late, thought I was entering a slump, and then...

War without end, Amen

In a way, it almost feels like the neocons and reactionaries are deliberately stirring the pot to ensure generations of war to come, because the threat of peace breaking out (admittedly, a long-term threat at this point, thanks to them) would threaten their tidy relations with defense contractors.

I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed, and for about two weeks, they talked nervously about a peace dividend, and how, in the 90s, in the wake of it, how the GOP was floundering, since their whole politics is based on enemy imagery, on a nefarious "Other" that threatens our way of life. They would periodically chirp about narco-terrorism, but it never carried the gravitas that the overhyped Communist Conspiracy(tm) menace did.

9/11 had to have been an answer to their prayers, sadly enough, giving them the perfect bogeyman (never mind that most of the terrorist came from Saudi Arabia, that's immaterial, right?) And if they claimed that the terrorists envied our success and hated our way of life (instead of, say, opposing our lopsided, lavish support of Israel and endless, cynical oil politics and support of secularish police states in the region), they could get Americans behind a crusade in the Middle East.

Well, now we've got the crusade, and maybe it's not going so well, but, eternal optimists that Americans ultimately are, a new front in the War on Terror could be just the ticket for the defense industry, the shot in the arm it needs to get people back on board. Beat those war drums, salt the newsfeeds with stories about Iranian villainy, and the war-to-be practically sells itself.

And best of all, from their perspective, is if it turns into a quagmire as well, because then they can stab Democrats in the back if we "lose" the region by withdrawing, and insist that we keep fighting in the region indefinitely, or else lose our standing in the world (what standing that remains, that is). The absence of a real progressive wing in the Democrats ensures that they'll take the gutless stance of keeping the war going.

Think of how the GOP dragooned the Democrats into becoming cold warriors by tarring them with the "Soft on Communism" brush, and the billions of dollars wasted for decades fighting the Cold War. The Democrats were busy proving themselves to be tough talkers and walkers, too, at the expense of our actual way of life in the this country. Now the reactionaries want a Hot War to run for as long, and the war industry will be laughing all the way to their offshore banks.

Everybody circle around, now, and recite Mark Twain's "The War Prayer."

-- Slackie Onassis

Afghanistan

The forgotten war's not going much better. I knew we were screwed there the minute we permitted the opium trade to revive (so much for the Drug War, eh? Not that reactionaries have ever been serious about it). If Iraq is the new Vietnam, then I guess Afghanistan'll be the new Cambodia or Laos?

Pentagon Gravy Train Rolls On

Looks like Bush is doing his usual crap. It's long, long overdue for us to go back to the pre-1969 budget, that correctly separates out the Social Security TRUST from the budget, to reveal that the Pentagon actually occupies a greater chunk of the budget than we're led to believe.

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961

His speechwriter originally referred to it as the "military-industrial-congressional complex" but they didn't want to torque off the Congress, so they struck that. Are we allowed to talk about it, anymore??

Pentagon Big Winner in Bush Budget Plan
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press Writer

February 03,2007 | WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is the big winner in President Bush's proposed budget for next year, while domestic items such as aid to schools and grants to local governments will get only the slightest of increases.

[Compassionate conservatism. *koff*]

Medicare and the Medicaid, the health program for the poor and disabled, would shoulder modest but politically difficult cost curbs in the budget the White House is submitting to Congress on Monday.

Some $18 billion in budget savings would come from farm programs over five years.

Bush's spending plan totals almost $3 trillion for the budget year starting Oct. 1. It would produce a surplus in five years, helped by steady revenue growth and a squeeze on the one-sixth of the budget that covers domestic agencies such as the departments of Education, Energy and Health and Human Services.

Domestic agencies would not face an outright cut, as proposed last year, but would see increases averaging less than inflation, White House Budget director Rob Portman said. Higher costs for veterans' health care probably would eat up most of any such increase.

The Pentagon, which also consumes one-sixth of the overall budget, would get a whopping 11 percent increase, to $481.4 billion in its core budget. And that is before accounting for an additional $235 billion in war costs over the next year and a half.

[AAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH! Gnashing teeth!!]

Bush's plan will get a skeptical reception from the Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats say it meets the president's promise to balance the budget by 2012 by omitting war costs and expensive changes to the alternative minimum tax and assuming politically untenable cuts in payments to doctors under Medicare.

"There's this continuing deception about our real fiscal condition," the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said in an interview Saturday. "Over and over again we see things left out of his budget that we know are going to have to be dealt with," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

[Yes, there is real deception going on.]

Democrats also say Bush's estimated cost of about $6 billion for increasing U.S. combat troop strength in Iraq greatly understates the likely total.

For months, Conrad has worked in back channels to establish a group of administration officials and lawmakers that would try to rein in costly benefit programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the president's refusal to consider some tax increases has scuttled the idea, at least for now.

Bush pushed the balanced budget idea -- to applause -- before a meeting Saturday with House Democrats in Virginia. But he seemed to acknowledge that a large-scale budget agreement with Democrats is a long shot.

"I'm under no illusions of how hard it's going to be," Bush said. "The only thing I want to share with you is, is my desire to see if we can't work together to get it done."

There is room for some modest steps such as an increase in the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students to $4,600, $550 more than the current cap. House Democrats last week passed an increase in the maximum grant to $4,310.

The federal contribution to the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program would rise slightly to address chronic shortfalls. States, however, would get less money to cover children in families at twice the poverty level or more. Democrats are pressing for far greater increases in the children's health program.

The White House's budget also would trim $12 billion from Medicaid, mostly through lower payments to states for administrative costs. About $5 billion or so would go toward addressing SCHIP shortfalls, according to the White House budget office.

[That's a real dick move, there.]

The proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are relatively modest, given the overall size of the programs. The reductions would come in part from smaller inflation adjustments for hospitals, nursing homes, home health care providers and hospices. More higher-income older people would face increased premiums.

Hospitals in particular are a powerful lobbying group and often are some of the leading employers in lawmakers' districts and states. Smaller Medicare cuts of $36 billion cuts proposed last year went nowhere in a GOP-led Congress, and Democrats quickly pounced on the new proposal.

"I think that sounds like the president is declaring war on us and the poor people in this country," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif.

[A new front in the War on Terror? Gnash.]

Stark and other Democrats probably will go after what they see as excessive payments to private managed care plans that provide care to about 8 million Medicare beneficiaries.

Democrats also must deal with a scheduled 8 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors, a byproduct from a 1997 budget bill. Bush's budget would leave the cut in place, though Congress is virtually certain to provide relief as it has since 2003 with other scheduled payment cuts. Such a move would eat up Bush's proposed Medicare savings and then some.

All told, Bush is seeking $96 billion over five years from mandatory programs providing fixed benefits such as Medicare, farm subsidies and Medicaid and whose spending rises each year as if on autopilot.

"Unless we act, we will saddle our children and grandchildren with tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded obligations," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "They will face three bad options: huge tax increases, huge budget deficits or huge and immediate cuts in benefits."

[Yeah, since they'll never take money from the Pentagon lockbox. Christ, it's so infuriating. Remember when Eisenhower belatedly warned about the military-industrial complex? Now it's standard operating procedure.]

Hard Knox

I'm watching a special on Fort Knox on the History Channel, and it's kinda pissing me off. The imperial tone associated with the Depository, it highlights the remoteness and scary aloofness of the government with regard to the American people, as the National Security State continues to evolve.

I thought they said about $100 billion in gold is kept there. Since the US went off the gold standard, and since the gold stored there isn't circulating, I can't help but wonder what it's doing there, what purpose it serves? Or is it just an exercise in government inertia?

It's like the equivalent of stuffing money in your mattress, in a sense. Unless it's being used covertly or something. Maybe it's being paid out to the owners of our government (e.g., creditors). I don't know. Why's it there?

Maybe we charge governments to put things there, like the ultimate strongbox or something.

Even when they had people visit in 1974, to ostensibly dispel rumors that there was fuck-all in there, they only showed the visitors one room full of gold! To my cynical, sarcastic, ironic, jaded Gen X self, I'm thinking "What about the other rooms??" People who saw the gold in that room said "Yeah, I saw gold!" but I'm thinking *Pff. One room's worth.*

They only audit 10% of the gold in there, I guess.

But if it were revealed that there wasn't so much gold in there as was claimed, that would probably cause some kind of economic meltdown, so maybe that's why all the secrecy's surrounding it.

With so much secrecy around it, we can't really know. Hence the problem with secrecy in a purportedly democratic government, yes?

My February 14

Salon's having a Valentine's Day playlist contest. I'm not going to enter it, because it's too much work to track these songs down (I have'em on my iTunes, most from CDs, but I wouldn't know how to find them online). Anyway, these tunes are way better than the shit they had for their sample playlist...

1. The Nerves - When You Find Out

2. The Zombies - Just Out of Reach

3. Sebadoh - Rebound

4. 13th Floor Elevators - You're Gonna Miss Me

5. Treepeople - Guilt Regret Embarassment

6. The Pagans - What's This Shit Called Love?

7. The Seeds - Can't Seem to Make You Mine

8. Alison Breitman - When You're Gone

9. Material Issue - What If I Killed Your Boyfriend?

10. The Action - I'll Keep On Holding On

11. Suede - Have You Ever Been This Low?

12. Elliott Smith - A Fond Farewell

13. Suicide Commandos - Match/Mismatch

14. Experimental Aircraft - Solitude

If you're tech-savvy, track down the above tunes, and you'll have yourself a decent Valentine's playlist, there, covering ups and downs and all arounds.

Gee, that was quick!

Joe Biden's already blown it! From the NYT...

Biden Unwraps His Bid for ’08 With an Oops!

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who announced his candidacy on Wednesday with the hope that he could ride his foreign policy expertise into contention for the Democratic nomination, instead spent the day struggling to explain his description of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat running for president, as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Not like he had a chance, anyway, as I'd said, but to already commit a gaffe, like the day of his announcement? Hahah!

GAME OVER