March « 2005 « Democratic Wings

March 31, 2005

Regarding Larry Summers of Harvard – is it genetics or are things in this country just set up for men, not women?

From Emily Yellin in Time:
Are 80-hour workweeks the only model of success? Isn’t there a better way that doesn’t leave women who want children–and men who want to see their children–with all-or-nothing propositions? I was all set to have my regular chat on the phone last week with my 19-year-old niece Chloe, a sophomore [...]

Social Security Privatization and more cartoons

From Matt Wuerker:

Little Caesar and the American forefathers…
Social Security privatization…
Doing to Gonzales as he does to others…
GOP Rule…
Leaving for Canada? How un-American…
Why the world hates us…
Rewarding Condi Rice – the Post-Powell Doctrine…
Voting problems? Trust the media, there were none…
The “No More Forest Initiative”…
Iraq [...]

March 30, 2005

More on the Islamic fundamentalist attack on the picnic in Iraq

We invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses, leaving the people to cope with untold devastation in their lives, as for many, families, homes, and livelihoods have been shattered. Now add newly empowered religious fundamentalism to their burdens. I know what Michael Jackson is wearing today is of paramount importance, but surely the [...]

Armed attack against students at picnic in Iraq for being in a mixed crowd of men and women, playing music, and women not being veiled; no, Mr. Bush, freedom is not “spreading like a sunrise”

I know Mr. Bush and his “Christian” brethren prefer women barefoot and pregnant, but beaten blind is a bit much, no? From Catherine Philp in The Times:
?They started shouting at us that we were immoral, that we were meeting boys and girls together and playing music and that this was against Islam.” THE students had [...]

India responds to Bush administration sale of fighter jets to Pakistan

By all means, let’s reward Pakistan – after all, they captured bin Laden, stopped Al Qaeda from regrouping, and would never even think of selling nuclear weapons technology to rogue nations. From Siddharth Srivastava in Asia Times:
The reaction has been quicker than expected. Peeved at the US decision to supply F-16 fighter jets to [...]

March 29, 2005

Religious extremists are taking over in America; moderates must take a stand against domestic extemists

From Paul Krugman in the New York Times:
…Before he saw the polls, Tom DeLay declared that “one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America.” Now he and his party, shocked by the public’s negative reaction to their meddling, want to [...]

Bush administration con jobs over Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea have led to nuclear proliferation

From Robert Scheer in the Lost Angeles Times:
…We have thrown away thousands of Iraqi and American lives and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars after crying wolf on Iraq’s long-defunct nuclear weapons program and now expect the world to believe similar scary stories about neighboring Iran.
We have cozied up to Pakistan for more than three years [...]

March 27, 2005

What’s going on in the country while Bush and DeLay and their “Christian” brethren exploit a family tragedy to deflect attention away from their failures

From Cynthia Tucker in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
A recent survey of the National Association for Business Economics found that nearly a third of its members rate the deficit a bigger threat to the nation than terrorism. …Similarly, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, spotted the political windfall in the misfortune that Michael Schiavo and his [...]

If conservatives are so patriotic, why are they outsourcing our jobs overseas?

Outsourcing facts

“People Are Getting Jittery”

From the McLaughlin Group:

Gas prices up
$7.7 Trillion U.S. Debt

$425 Billion U.S. Defecit
5.4% Unemployment

Iraq Casualties

1,520 Dead
36,900 Wounded & Mentally Ill

Social Security “Crisis”
Iran & the Bomb – Plan?
U.S./Syria Face-Off – Too Confrontational?
Alaska National Wildlife Refuge Oil Drilling
Bolton & Wolfowitz Nominations
Govt. Video News Releases “Covert Propaganda” – GAO
Journalists on Govt. Payroll
Gay Marriage Amendment
Meidcare Prescription Cost Falsified
Politics & Schiavo

Like Tom DeLay, Terri Schiavo’s father also discontinued life support for a brain damaged family member – his mother

But somehow Terri’s husband is a “murderer” for making the same decision. What religion are these people following that justifies such behavior? It certainly isn’t Christianity. There is nothing Christian about the cruel way DeLay and Schindler are behaving toward Michael Schiavo, especially in light of past decisions they themselves made. [...]

The hypocrisy of Tom DeLay, continued; he discontinued life support for his own father, who was also brain damaged, in 1988

Another chapter in the continuing saga of Tom DeLay’s hypocrisy. From Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek in the Los Angeles Times:
A family tragedy unfolding in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the raging debate outside Terri Schiavo’s [...]

Apparently the only thing Judicial Watch thinks is worth judicially watching during the most corrupt administration in our nation’s history is Bill Clinton

The New York Times and Washington Post seem to quote Judicial Watch quite a lot in their articles, usually just referring to them as a “watch dog group” with no reference to their conservative ideaology. It seems from viewing the items on the Judicial Watch home page at judicialwatch.org that most of the “ethical [...]

March 26, 2005

New federal health plan does not offer birth control coverage, thanks to the “faith-based” initiatives of the anti-birth control crusaders (AKA George W. Bush and the Rapture Right Republicans)

How much do you want to bet most of Bush’s “W’s” (“W is for women!”) don’t know what he’s really been up to these past four years? More information about the anti-birth control crusade of Bush and his brethren is in the “Reproductive Rights” section to the right. From Catholics for a Free [...]

The “Islamization of the Republican Party”

From Juan Cole:
The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and [...]

Why people are pessimistic about the economy – unemployment is really higher than it looks; the payroll survey vs. the household survey

From Daniel Gross in Slate:
…in recent weeks, there’s been an emerging campaign, mostly by Bush partisans, to discredit the BLS payroll numbers. It is both a serious economic inquiry and a political effort to distract attention from the ugly job figures… That “faulty source” is the BLS Establishment Survey, which provides the payroll jobs number…
…What [...]

Bush’s job approval at record low, lowest of all other presidents; concerns about economy, government intervention in right to die case

From Knight Ridder
President Bush’s job-approval rating has sunk to 45 percent, the worst of his presidency, amid public opposition at his intervention in the Terri Schiavo case and growing concern over gasoline prices.
The 45 percent rating is a far cry from his record 90 percent approval after the Sept. 11 attacks, but it’s still well [...]

March 25, 2005

Bush’s Iraq War architect and eminently unqualified nominee to head the world bank Paul Wolfowitz (AKA “Wolfie”) is cheating on his wife (again), but this time it’s with a woman “committed to overthrowing Middle Eastern regimes”

Spare me talk of “moral values.” Newt Gingrich told his wife on her hospital bed he was leaving her for a younger woman. Many of the neocons have similar stories of marital infidelity. So much for that moral value. Then there’s the blatant corruption compromising the safety and health of the [...]

Faces of the fallen

From the Washington Post:
In the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, at the gateway of Arlington National Cemetery, an exhibition opened this week that consists of rows and rows of portraits of U.S. military men and women who have died in the country’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The more than 1,300 “Faces of [...]

March 24, 2005

Bush and Congress take a hit in the latest polling

Overwhelming support for removing the feeding tube and letting this poor woman die with dignity and find peace, at long last. And overwhelming disapproval of congressional and presidential involvement in the case, with 82% disapproving, and Bush’s job approval down to just 43%. This echoes the earlier ABC News poll results, but despite [...]

March 23, 2005

Political cartoonists question the motives of politicians interfering in a personal family matter

Ann Telnaes…
Sandy Huffaker…
Dwane Powell…
Matt Davies…

Clearly explained facts about Terri Schiavo’s medical condition

I heard on the Al Franken Show today clips of Sean Hannity repeating a dozen times that the doctor who claims a woman with a liquified brain can recover is a Nobel-prize nominee. The only problem is, he isn’t any such thing – a Republican congressman who did not have the authority attempted to [...]

March 22, 2005

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

America was founded on all three together. And it’s the individual who is endowed with these rights by his or her creator. Terri Schiavo did not wish to have her body kept artificially alive while her brain disintegrated. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say Tom Delay or Randall Terry get to [...]

The Bush administration suppresses a Harvard study of mercury emissions that estimates the benefits of pollution controls are 100 times greater than the administration reported

Business as usual. From Shankar Vedantam in the Washington Post:
“They are saying if they fail to regulate mercury from power plants at all, it really wouldn’t make a difference. To acknowledge the real benefits would be to raise the next question: Why didn’t you go further?” When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a [...]

The army, overextended by the Iraq War, raises enlistment age

And so it begins. From the Houston Chronicle:
The U.S. Army, stung by recruiting shortfalls caused by the Iraq war, has raised the maximum age for new recruits for the part-time Army Reserve and National Guard by five years to 39, officials said today.
The Army said the move, a three-year experiment, will add about 22 [...]

March 21, 2005

Bush signed law in Texas authorizing pulling the plug on life support if patients can’t pay for it; Republican strategy memo says the Terri Shiavo case “is a great political issue”

Just yesterday Republicans were going on and on about the sanctity of marriage. But now suddenly they are interfering in a matter of sacred trust between a husband and wife. And Republicans were extolling the evils of malpractice suits. But it was a reward from a malpractice suit that has paid for [...]

A theological view of the Terri Schiavo case from a Catholic priest

George W. Bush and the Pope are the only ones derailing the UN World Conference on Women with their repressive – and deadly – Victorian era views of women, but there was a time when more rational thought prevailed in the Church, a time when there was a promise of reform. From Father [...]

Absolute power corrupts absolutely; Republicans and the Terry Schiavo case

What he said. From Howard Troxler of the St. Petersburg Times:
The end justifies the means.
When you have enough power, you can tell the courts to get lost, you can overrule the self-government of an entire state, you can obliterate the rule of law.
It does not matter that Florida’s courts ruled that Terri Schiavo [...]

Republicans fumble while playing political football with someone’s life; 70% of Americans oppose their actions

Public opinion is strongly against them:
From ABC News (PDF):
Removal of feeding tube
Support 63
Oppose 28
Federal Intervention
Support 35
Oppose 60
Appropriate for Congress to get involved?
Appropriate 27
[...]

The Bush administration misled allies about nuclear proliferation

From Dafna Linzer in the Washington Post:
The new details follow a string of controversies concerning the Bush administration’s use of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the White House offered a public case against Iraq that concealed dissent on nearly every element of intelligence and [...]

“No Child Left Behind” law stipulates name & contact information of all school children must be provided to military recruiters

From Mother Jones:
“The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman,” says Major Johannes Paraan, head U.S. Army recruiter for Vermont and northeastern New York. “Or maybe if the kid died, we’ll take them off our list.” Sharon Shea-Keneally, principal of Mount Anthony Union High [...]

March 19, 2005

Democracy is history’s “most powerful emancipatory idea”, not an “empty marketing exercise”

From Naomi Klein in The Nation:
The US-Kurdish alliance has handed Washington a backdoor veto over Iraq’s democracy. And with Kirkuk as part of Iraqi Kurdistan, if Iraq does break apart Washington will still end up with a dependent, oil-rich regime–even if it’s somewhat smaller than the one originally envisioned. …Faced with an Arab world enraged [...]

A picture is worth a thousand words – drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge amounts to this

Check out this cartoon…

Only 6 months of oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge and the environment will be devastated, but there’s lots of money in it for Bush cronies and the Republicans can pretend they are doing something constructive – sounds like a fair trade-off

From John Vidal in The Guardian:
It is described as the last great American wilderness and has been the battle ground between America’s most powerful oil interests and environmentalists for more than two decades. But yesterday the giants of the energy industry were celebrating a significant victory and looking forward to the chance to move into [...]

March 18, 2005

In an outrageous abuse of congressional powers, hypocritical immoral Republicans once again interfere with the rights of states and citizens

Republican politicians must keep their radical rapture right base happy, or they won’t win elections – and keeping the rapture right happy means meddling in other peoples’ lives and then turning their backs on the mess they made. The hypocrisy that these horrible men are grandstanding to block the right of a woman to [...]

The Bush administration is misrepresenting number of Iraqi troops trained, according to the GAO

From Reuters:
The Pentagon told Congress on Monday that there are 142,472 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces, but a Capitol Hill watchdog agency said data on the forces was unreliable and it was difficult to gauge whether billions of U.S. dollars were being used effectively.
“Data on the status of Iraqi security forces is unreliable and [...]

Bush administration lets big polluters off the hook; mercury, it’s what’s for dinner

From the Chicago Sun-Times:
“At the behest of industry, the Bush administration has just endorsed the continued poisoning of children and pregnant women with mercury.” The Bush administration on Tuesday ordered power plants to cut mercury pollution from smokestacks by nearly half within 15 years but left an out for the worst polluters.
The Environmental Protection Agency [...]

The neocons are still lying about it, but global warming not only exists but is inevitable

From Peter Spotts in the Christian Science Monitor:
Scientists have long warned that some level of global warming is a done deal – due in large part to heat-trapping greenhouse gases humans already have pumped skyward.
Now, however, researchers are fleshing out how much future warming and sea-level rise the world has triggered. The implicit message: “We [...]

March 17, 2005

Bush quote from the 80’s – the last time he told the truth

“You know I could run for governor but I’m basically a media creation. I’ve never done anything. I’ve worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that’s not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office.” ~ George W. Bush, 1989
More quotes by the Fortunate [...]

And then there was one: Italy withdrawing its troops from Iraq

To join “Don’t forget about Poland”, the Netherlands, and the Ukraine. From the BBC:
Italy is to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq in September 2005, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said.
He told Rai state television the pullout would take place “in agreement with our allies”.
Italy has 3,000 troops in Iraq – the fourth [...]

Mission accomplished for Bush, but not for Iraqis; the “triangle of death” around Baghdad

From the Christian Science Monitor:
Nearly two years since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, Baghdad is still one of the most dangerous cities in the world. It is ringed in peril. Travel in any direction a few miles outside city limits and the risks intensify. The ferocity and growth [...]

Bush thumbs his nose at the world with another hostile appointment: big bad Wolfowitz, failed architect of the Iraq War, with no background in economics, to head the World Bank

From Newsday:
…Wolfowitz in particular has been a lightning rod for European criticism over the Iraq war, as one of the leading proponents of the idea that Iraqis would greet U.S. invaders as liberators. Wolfowitz also disagreed publicly with a four-star general who estimated several hundred thousand troops would be needed to pacify Iraq – a [...]

Playing the “national security” card – the Nazi tactics of the neocons

The Republican Congress just tacked a resolution to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into a budget bill in order to avoid meaningful discussion of the issue. Drilling in ANWR is not only incredibly poor environmental policy, but also incredibly short-sighted and ineffective energy policy. All it’s going to do [...]

The US economy – dancing on a volcano

From Stirling Newberry in Truthout:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t trumpet the numbers of underutilization it does compile, which show that 9.3% of the people who want to work either can’t work, or are working part time when they want to work more. …If one takes the price of the same stocks in Euros or [...]

March 15, 2005

Bush and Republicans push to drill in Anwar – a drop in the bucket, rather than meaningful energy policy

The Bush administration and their rubber stamp Republican congress have never been ones to look at the big picture – their motto is anything for a quick buck for themselves and their cronies. From the New York Times:
Any number of modest efficiencies could achieve the same result without threatening the refuge. Simply closing the [...]

War in the digital age: US soldiers are filming battle and bringing it home to watch

Pfc. McCullough needs to listen to his father – this is not normal. From Louise Roug in the Los Angeles Times:
Another soldier said, “I wouldn’t watch them, and the people I work with wouldn’t watch them. I don’t think it’s proper.” He compared the violent videos to those made by insurgents showing [...]

Nietzsche on the neocons; quotes from “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”

A friend sent these quotes from “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William Shirer that call to mind the Bush administration:
Nietzsche, as quoted in William Shirer’s book, p. 111:
The strong men, the masters, regain the pure conscience of a beast of prey; monsters filled with joy, they can return from a fearful [...]

What liberal media? Certainly not CBS, whose owner held back a damaging report on Bush until after the election and endorsed Bush

From Media Matters:
…In late September, CBS postponed a prepared report questioning one of the Bush administration’s rationales for invading Iraq until after the election; a CBS spokesperson acknowledged that the network didn’t want to air the report before Election Day. Presumably coincidentally, the head of Viacom, which owns CBS, endorsed Bush for re-election at about [...]

White House OK’s stealth propaganda fake news broadcasts, despite objection of Goverment Accountability Office (GAO)

From Ken Herman of Cox News Service:
The White House, intent on continuing to crank out “video news releases” that look like television news stories, has told government agency heads to ignore a Government Accountability Office memo criticizing the practice as illegal propaganda.
In a memo on Friday, Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and [...]

Bush’s approval on Social Security down to 29%

From Emerging Democratic Majority:
A Quinniapiac University poll released on March 9 found Bush’s approval rating on Social Security down to 28 percent, with 59 percent disapproval. Among independents, that rating worsens to 25/62.

Keep up with the latest on the Tom DeLay scandals

The Daily Delay…
DeLay’s Dirty Dozen…

Systematic looting at nuclear sites in Iraq

From James Glanz and William Broad in the

Halliburton is making out like bandits in Iraq

From Salon:
Congressional Democrats released records Monday from the Defense Contract Audit Agency’s investigation of Halliburton, revealing that the company overcharged $108 million for one of 10 ten services the company performed as part of its Restore Iraqi Oil contract. U.S. Representatives Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and John Dingell, D-Mich., also submitted an open letter to [...]

March 13, 2005

Bush’s middle class tax increase takes effect for 3 million in 2005; in 5 years, 30 million will be affected, among them, 94 percent of married filers who have children and make $75,000 to $100,000

From the New York Times:
President Bush is presiding over a big middle-class tax hike.
As recently as 2000, only about one million taxpayers owed the alternative minimum tax, created by a provision in the federal tax code that is supposed to prevent multimillionaires from using loopholes to avoid paying their fair share. But by the time [...]

Bush shames the US again before the world; the only time the Bush Administration pays attention to the human rights of women is when it is trying to justify invading their countries

Bush’s political power play to secure the votes of religious zealots, with deadly consequences for women and children worldwide. From Katha Pollitt in The Nation:
Egypt and Qatar have changed their minds and won’t be backing our attempt to insert antiabortion language in the one-page reaffirmation of the platform document. So now it’s just us [...]

March 12, 2005

Each state has 2 senators, so it comes out to this: the Senate?s fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million; more on the Republican hypocrisy about the filibuster

Democrats represent more people than Republicans. So much for the phony outrage over the filibuster. From Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker:
The Senate?s fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million. Looked at another way, the present Senate is the product of three elections, those of 2000, 2002, [...]

Judge admonishes pharmacist who refused to fill birth control prescription

This is why we need more women judges. From the Feminist Majority Foundation:
A judge has ruled that a pharmacist who refused to fill a woman’s prescription for birth control on religious grounds should be reprimanded. In July 2002, Neil Noesen, a pharmacist at Kmart, refused to fill a University of Wisconsin student?s oral contraceptive [...]

March 11, 2005

Bush is channeling Teddy Roosevelt backwards – he shouts loudly and carries a small stick

From Charley Reese in the Sanford Herald:
Osama bin Laden did not say he would conquer us and convert us all to Islam. He said he would bankrupt us. If Bush gets us further mired in the Middle East by attacking Iran and Syria, as he seems likely to do, bin Laden might very well succeed. [...]

US dismisses agent orange cases; Vietnamese who are sick and disabled from the dixoin are upset

This is what happens when Bush stacks the courts with corporate shills. From the BBC:
Vietnamese plaintiffs have condemned a US court’s decision to dismiss their legal action against manufacturers of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
“It is a wrong decision, unfair and irresponsible,” said Nguyen Trong Nhan, vice president of Vietnam’s Association of Agent [...]

March 10, 2005

Bush chooses another opponent of something to represent it – this time it’s his UN choice

From the New York Times:
We certainly look forward to Mr. Bolton’s confirmation hearings, and, after that, his performance at the United Nations, where he will undoubtedly do a fine job continuing the Bush administration’s charm offensive with the rest of the world. On Monday, President Bush nominated John Bolton, an outspoken critic of multinational institutions [...]

New bankruptcy bill so hostile to ordinary American families that it could only have come about in a place as corrupt, cynical and unmoored from reality as Washington

From Arianna Huffington:
U.S. senators are about to pass a bankruptcy bill so hostile to ordinary American families that it could only have come about in a place as corrupt, cynical and unmoored from reality as Washington, D.C.
In a normal world, those elected to represent the interests of the people would have fought for bankruptcy legislation [...]

March 9, 2005

America’s Crumbling Infrastructure – the money was spent on the Iraq invasion & tax breaks for the wealthy instead

From MSNBC:
Crowded schools, traffic-choked roads and transit cutbacks are eroding the quality of American life, according to an analysis by civil engineers that gave the nation?s infrastructure an overall grade of D.
A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers released Wednesday assessed the four-year trend in the condition of 12 categories of infrastructure.
The [...]

Republicans vote against miniumum wage increase bill

From Emerging Democratic Majority:
According to a January report by the Pew Research Center, 82 percent of Americans supported an increase in the federal minimum wage as an important priority, with only 6 percent opposed. Yet, the U.S. Senate voted 49-46 to defeat a bill that would have provided three increases of 70 cents in the [...]

March 8, 2005

Dear Larry Summers; a response to Harvard’s Lawrence Summers, who says women are dumb bunnies

The only tough part about getting my math degree (with honors, Larry) was putting up with rampant male chauvinism along the way (most of it from my professors, who, with only one exception, were male). Women of my generation grew up watching Samantha on Bewitched and Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie – women [...]

Freedom then and freedom now

From Jen Sorensen:
Freedom then and now
Why there have been no women presidents, according to Larry Summers
Reclaiming the language
No compromise with the vanquished
Reactions to the election

March 7, 2005

An interview with Republican Senator Rick Santorum

Want to learn more about the man responsible for the “sweatshop” bill? Here’s the infamous “man on dog” interview – his anti-privacy rant, where he also makes clear his disdain for contraception. From the AP:
…AP: Speaking of liberalism, there was a story in The Washington Post about six months ago, they’d pulled something [...]

Anti-contraception anti-privacy Republican Rick Santorum is now pushing a sweatshop bill

From Economic Policy Institute:
The minimum wage amendment proposed by Sen. Rick Santorum, which is expected to come to a vote on Monday, would harm far more workers than it helps.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that a straightforward raise of $1.10 in the minimum wage could directly benefit, at most, about 1.8 million workers.
The Santorum proposal, [...]

Our banker, China, says Kerry was right about bilateral talks with North Korea

From Joseph Kahn in the New York Times:
The Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, expressed doubt on Sunday about the quality of American intelligence on North Korea’s nuclear program and said the United States would have to talk to North Korea one-on-one to resolve the standoff.
Mr. Li’s assessment, made at an extended news conference during China’s [...]

March 6, 2005

10 members on FDA panel who recommended putting Vioxx back on the market, despite risks to patients, have ties to the drug’s maker

And of course, after they stack government panels with industry insiders to hawk their unsafe products, patients who pay the price have less recourse now that Republicans have eliminated such “frivilous lawsuits.” From Gardiner Harris and Alex Berenson the New York Times:
Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing [...]

The economy is like a plane losing altitude

A reality check from the “reality-based community”. From Bill Fleckenstein in CNBC:
…It’s a pretty tall task to believe that the economy is creating jobs in any kind of meaningful way compared with what we used to consider a normal economic recovery. If you think of the economy as an airplane, it’s been losing altitude [...]

New home sales down 10 percent, but industry-financed economists say no worries; other economists are singing a different tune

From Stephen Roach at Financial Times:
…the US personal saving rate fell to 0.2 per cent of disposable income in October. The profligate US consumer is not the only source of the saving shortfall. America?s net national saving rate, stripping out depreciation and reflecting the combined saving of households, businesses and the dissaving of [...]

More bad news for Bush in the polls

So soon after an election, this really makes me think the thugs rigged the election even more than suspected. Check out Ruy Teixeira’s analysis of the latest New York Times poll…
Unfortunately, this poll contains another meaningless question about abortion, but even so, the answer indicates wide support – 75% say they think it should [...]

CBO says Bush’s plans for spending and taxes would yield deficits through the decade ending in 2015 totaling $2.58 trillion, $1.6 trillion worse than if his plans did not become law

From the AP:
President Bush’s budget would keep federal deficits over $200 billion annually over the next decade, Congress’ top budget analyst said Friday in a report raising doubts about White House efforts to contain the shortfalls.
The analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Bush’s plans for spending and taxes would yield deficits through [...]

March 5, 2005

Another Bush success story: Afghanistan has become a narcotics state

“Freedom is on the march” in the country whose number one import is burkas and and number one export is narcotics. From MSNBC:
More than three years after a pro-U.S. government was installed, Afghanistan has been unable to contain opium poppy production and is ?on the verge of becoming a narcotics state,? according [...]

Commission on the Status of Women in Beijing

Read about it here

Women are worse off than they were 10 years ago

But I thought W is for women? From the AP:
Many women are worse off today than they were 10 years ago, women around the world say in a new report that accuses governments of failing to keep their pledge to achieve gender equality.
Governments worldwide have adopted a “piecemeal and incremental” approach to [...]

US shoots at freed Italian hostage in Iraq, kills rescuer

It’s not enough to shoot at innocent Iraqis, we’ve got to shoot at journalists, too. And this is hardly the first time that has happened. From Knight Ridder:
Italians expressed bewilderment and anger on Saturday over news that U.S. troops had killed an Italian intelligence agent who had just helped to free an Italian [...]

Laurence Summers aplogizes to women… sort of

Funny stuff, read more at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:
“I must apologize for recent comments of mine that seem to suggest women lack the innate ability that men have to excel in math and the sciences. To be sure, my intention was to spark controversy and debate. But I certainly did not set out to offend anyone, [...]

March 3, 2005

Are we the next Syria?

Check out Liberal Oasis for some warning signs of Iraq – US & Lebanon – Syria parallels…

Canadian foreign minister’s letter to Condi Rice – MUST READ!!!

From the Winnipeg Free Press:
Dear Condi,
I’m glad you’ve decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It’s a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.
I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with [...]

The “moral values” mantle belongs to pro-choicers; Democrats should point out the Republicans’ hypocrisy – they fanatically oppose family planning, sex education, and HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention

Abortions have sharply risen during the Bush administration – how can policies that lead to such statistics be “pro-life”? And that’s just Republican hypocrisy on matters relating to sexuality. What about the hundreds of thousands dead and maimed in Iraq? And for what, a fundamentalist Islamic government just as bad as the [...]

Russia accuses US of double standard with respect to human rights; under the Bush administration, the US has lost the moral high ground

From the AP:
Russia accused the United States of double standards Wednesday in an angry response to a U.S. State Department report that criticized Moscow’s human rights record.
The State Department’s annual report on human rights, published Monday, cited what it said were credible reports that Russian law enforcement officers engaged in torture, violence and [...]

1500th soldier dies in Iraq; thousands more soldiers have faced amputations and other serious injuries; suicide rates are higher than any other conflict in history

A state of emergency still exists in Iraq, and the killing continues. Yet they call elections “successful”? From the AP:
The number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq rose to 1,500 after the military announced Thursday that a soldier was killed in action just south of the capital, an Associated Press count showed.
The latest [...]

March 2, 2005

Lebanese protests spurred by assasination of former Prime Minister

I can just imagine what’s on Fox News right now, as they are no doubt twisting an assasination and spontaneous reaction of common people into a neocon victory, just as they did with an election in Iraq that Bush opposed until he had no choice, where frightened Iraqi people voted for an Islamic anti-American state [...]

George W. Bush’s Credit Card

View the image…

A look at Bush’s choice for national intelligence director, John Negroponte of Iran-Contra notoriety

From Eric Alterman of the Center for American Progress:
…The Negroponte nomination comes equipped with a resume containing a few bullet points that ought to give anyone, not just Democrats, considerable pause. Before he was the American ambassador to the U.N. from 2001 to 2004 and top official in Iraq for much of the past year, [...]

March 1, 2005

Uncle Bucky Bush is making a mint out of the Iraq invasion; so is Iraq ambassador and national intelligence director nominee John Negroponte

First, a look at good ole Uncle Bucky, from Walter Roche Jr. in the Los Angeles Times:
The Iraq war helped bring record earnings to St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems Inc., and new financial data show that the firm’s war-related profits have trickled down to a familiar family name ? Bush.
William H.T. “Bucky” Bush, [...]