February 28, 2005
Fucking Liberal Republicans
In the wake of the 2004 election, there has been much talk about how the American Left lacks policy prescriptions to solve America's problems. As President Bush's political guru Karl Rove asserted recently asserted, "conservatism is the dominant political creed in America" while progressivism is lost at sea.
But is this conventional wisdom really true? Not if you look at the handful of Republican politicians who have recently headed back to their states from Washington to serve as governor. Once reliable conservative ideologues inside the Capital Beltway, these governors have undergone a conversion on their road to America's heartland. And they threaten the conservative movement more seriously than any Democrat in America.
In the South, for instance, two GOP congressmen-turned-governors have abandoned their past willingness to gut Medicaid funding and are now raising hell about budget shortfalls. Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher told Fox News last month that he's "very concerned about any cuts" to the low-income health care program, apparently forgetting how his party tried to cut Medicaid repeatedly when he was a House member. Similarly, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a hard-core economic conservative in Congress, actually proposed raising cigarette taxes to increase Medicaid funding.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 11:03 AM
| Comments (4)
The U.S. is embarking on a major rethink of its policy towards Iran, which could see it dropping the strategy of confrontation and threat, instead offering Tehran incentives for abandoning its suspected nuclear ambitions. The striking change of policy emerged during President Bush's fence-mending trip to Europe last week, when for the first time he indicated that Washington endorsed the tripartite effort by France, Britain and Germany to reach a deal with Iran, offering technology in return for an end to its uranium enrichment programme.
This blog predicted as much about eight months ago. Took a little longer than we figured it might, but, Bush ain't too difficult to read.
February 27, 2005
Not Too Surprising
The U.S. is embarking on a major rethink of its policy towards Iran, which could see it dropping the strategy of confrontation and threat, instead offering Tehran incentives for abandoning its suspected nuclear ambitions. The striking change of policy emerged during President Bush's fence-mending trip to Europe last week, when for the first time he indicated that Washington endorsed the tripartite effort by France, Britain and Germany to reach a deal with Iran, offering technology in return for an end to its uranium enrichment programme.
This blog predicted as much about eight months ago. Took a little longer than we figured it might, but, Bush ain't too difficult to read.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 11:19 AM
| Comments (1)
"It's a heavy lift," Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday after a week spent crisscrossing his home state to host 17 town-hall-style meetings. He said the sessions ended "without my getting much of a consensus of where people are [regarding Social Security], except general confusion," and with the president facing "a major job of educating people."
The funny thing is, the President often acts as though -- with his condescending tone of voice, and his "explanatory" choice of words -- he's smarter than everybody else in the room. But not only do his "explanations" not make any sense, they're usually not even grammatically correct. So, who's educating who, here?
Quote Of The Moment #0089
"It's a heavy lift," Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday after a week spent crisscrossing his home state to host 17 town-hall-style meetings. He said the sessions ended "without my getting much of a consensus of where people are [regarding Social Security], except general confusion," and with the president facing "a major job of educating people."
The funny thing is, the President often acts as though -- with his condescending tone of voice, and his "explanatory" choice of words -- he's smarter than everybody else in the room. But not only do his "explanations" not make any sense, they're usually not even grammatically correct. So, who's educating who, here?
Posted by Eddie Tews at 11:02 AM
| Comments (0)
This blog noted a few days ago that the President's "Uncle Bucky" has cashed in, to the tune of a half-million dollars, stock options whose net increased was the result of the company's (on whose board he sits) Iraq war contracts.
Now, it's easy enough -- and certainly appropriate -- to feel outraged at the sight of companys and persons closely connected to the White House (very closely in the case of Dick Cheney and Halliburton) making out like bandits from an illegal war opposed by 90% of the World's population; in which it has been conservatively estimated that 100,000 civilians have been killed so far, in which any number of banned weapons were utilised, in which one entire city has been completely destroyed and its entire population made refugees, in which the civilian infrastructure has been largely wrecked, in which the country's cultural and archeological legacy has been more less destroyed, in which a previously secular society has been overrun by fundamentalism, and so on, and so on, and so on.
But the shenanigans perhaps obscure a more important question: should a private company be profiting from war at all -- that is to say, even in the absence of corruption, lies, war crimes, occupation, and cetera?
In other words, let's suspend our disbelief, and take the Bush Administration at its word. Let's pretend that the "War On Terror" (under whose umbrella, we'll recall, the "Battle For Iraq" falls) is this generation's ultimate battle between good and evil. Let's pretend that 90% of the World's population was in favor of the invasion of Iraq, that the Security Council had given its consent, that population centres were not bombed, that the Pentagon's "precision" strikes unfailingly distinguished between civilian and military targets, that nobody has been (or is being) tortured, that no permanent U.S. military bases are being built, and so on, and so on, and so on.
In the case, then, of a "good war", should private companies profit? Or, if we accept that the State has the authority to conscript its citizens to fight and die (if not explicitly through the draft in this case, then through back-door methods: the poverty draft, stop-loss orders, extended tours, Individual Ready Reserve call-ups), to restrict its citizens' Civil Liberties, to unilaterally allocate its citizens' tax dollars to the "war effort"; then should we not also expect the State to order manufacturers of munitions and military hardware to produce these items at cost in accord with the general sacrifice required of all citizens (interestingly enough, Multinationals are constantly requesting -- and receiving -- the same rights accorded citizens) in order to save the civilised world from the depredations of onrushing savages?
Note that we'll pay them for materials, for labor costs (and even a living wage for the big-wigs!), for R&D, for depreciation of facilities, etc.. And we'll not even ask their CEOs and board members to put themselves into "harm's way"; or to be taken from their lives and families for an indefinite time period; or to expose themselves to conditions which are known to result in greatly increased rates of permanent psychological scarring, suicide, and homelessness. So we're not so much asking for any sort of sacrifice -- just that military contractors at least contribute to the great effort to pull humankind's bacon out of the fire. (Not to mention, et voila!, instant deficit-reduction.)
Assuming we find the proposition sensible, what can we do to make it happen? A couple of things.
We can draft a letter to the President's uncle (who's going to use his newfound largesse to bid on a house in Florida, but who claims that he would "prefer" that his company had "no business in Iraq"); suggesting that he donate his $450,000 windfall to Doctors Without Borders, or the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, or Oxfam, or any other organisation dedicated to mitigating the horrors of war:
Uncle Bucky c/o Engineered Support Systems, Inc. 201 Evans Lane St. Louis, MO 63121
We can write letters to editors and/or submit Op-Eds to our hometown dailies pointing up the dichotomy. We can contact our representatives -- we in the Seattle area have two, Jim McDermott and Jay Inslee, who could be especially receptive to the idea of making the weapons contractors pull their fair share.
And, alas, we simply must take our financial matters into our own hands. So long as we continue to lend our monetary support of injust policies, so long will these policies continue -- whether we agree with them or not.
That means refusing to pay federal income taxes, refusing to purchase gasoline, refusing to purchase products made in China and other maquiladora-ist export zones, purchasing as much as is possible only locally grown organic foods, and investing our money with Community Investment funds rather than with funds and institutions that will support military contractors and other ne'er-do-wells.
Apologies if it all sounds too preachy. But it's either that or un-ending resource wars and their concomitant blowback, increased nuclear proliferation and instability, and ecological catastrophe.
February 26, 2005
Put Your Money Where Your Conscience Is
This blog noted a few days ago that the President's "Uncle Bucky" has cashed in, to the tune of a half-million dollars, stock options whose net increased was the result of the company's (on whose board he sits) Iraq war contracts.
Now, it's easy enough -- and certainly appropriate -- to feel outraged at the sight of companys and persons closely connected to the White House (very closely in the case of Dick Cheney and Halliburton) making out like bandits from an illegal war opposed by 90% of the World's population; in which it has been conservatively estimated that 100,000 civilians have been killed so far, in which any number of banned weapons were utilised, in which one entire city has been completely destroyed and its entire population made refugees, in which the civilian infrastructure has been largely wrecked, in which the country's cultural and archeological legacy has been more less destroyed, in which a previously secular society has been overrun by fundamentalism, and so on, and so on, and so on.
But the shenanigans perhaps obscure a more important question: should a private company be profiting from war at all -- that is to say, even in the absence of corruption, lies, war crimes, occupation, and cetera?
In other words, let's suspend our disbelief, and take the Bush Administration at its word. Let's pretend that the "War On Terror" (under whose umbrella, we'll recall, the "Battle For Iraq" falls) is this generation's ultimate battle between good and evil. Let's pretend that 90% of the World's population was in favor of the invasion of Iraq, that the Security Council had given its consent, that population centres were not bombed, that the Pentagon's "precision" strikes unfailingly distinguished between civilian and military targets, that nobody has been (or is being) tortured, that no permanent U.S. military bases are being built, and so on, and so on, and so on.
In the case, then, of a "good war", should private companies profit? Or, if we accept that the State has the authority to conscript its citizens to fight and die (if not explicitly through the draft in this case, then through back-door methods: the poverty draft, stop-loss orders, extended tours, Individual Ready Reserve call-ups), to restrict its citizens' Civil Liberties, to unilaterally allocate its citizens' tax dollars to the "war effort"; then should we not also expect the State to order manufacturers of munitions and military hardware to produce these items at cost in accord with the general sacrifice required of all citizens (interestingly enough, Multinationals are constantly requesting -- and receiving -- the same rights accorded citizens) in order to save the civilised world from the depredations of onrushing savages?
Note that we'll pay them for materials, for labor costs (and even a living wage for the big-wigs!), for R&D, for depreciation of facilities, etc.. And we'll not even ask their CEOs and board members to put themselves into "harm's way"; or to be taken from their lives and families for an indefinite time period; or to expose themselves to conditions which are known to result in greatly increased rates of permanent psychological scarring, suicide, and homelessness. So we're not so much asking for any sort of sacrifice -- just that military contractors at least contribute to the great effort to pull humankind's bacon out of the fire. (Not to mention, et voila!, instant deficit-reduction.)
Assuming we find the proposition sensible, what can we do to make it happen? A couple of things.
We can draft a letter to the President's uncle (who's going to use his newfound largesse to bid on a house in Florida, but who claims that he would "prefer" that his company had "no business in Iraq"); suggesting that he donate his $450,000 windfall to Doctors Without Borders, or the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, or Oxfam, or any other organisation dedicated to mitigating the horrors of war:
Uncle Bucky c/o Engineered Support Systems, Inc. 201 Evans Lane St. Louis, MO 63121
We can write letters to editors and/or submit Op-Eds to our hometown dailies pointing up the dichotomy. We can contact our representatives -- we in the Seattle area have two, Jim McDermott and Jay Inslee, who could be especially receptive to the idea of making the weapons contractors pull their fair share.
And, alas, we simply must take our financial matters into our own hands. So long as we continue to lend our monetary support of injust policies, so long will these policies continue -- whether we agree with them or not.
That means refusing to pay federal income taxes, refusing to purchase gasoline, refusing to purchase products made in China and other maquiladora-ist export zones, purchasing as much as is possible only locally grown organic foods, and investing our money with Community Investment funds rather than with funds and institutions that will support military contractors and other ne'er-do-wells.
Apologies if it all sounds too preachy. But it's either that or un-ending resource wars and their concomitant blowback, increased nuclear proliferation and instability, and ecological catastrophe.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 12:22 PM
| Comments (0)
The New York Times, this great liberal newspaper, had 70 editorials between September 11, 2001 and the attack on Iraq, March 20, 2003. In not one of those editorials was the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Tribunal, or any aspect of International Law ever mentioned. Now, those guys know that these things exist -- and that's a perfect example of censorship by omission. And so if you were reading The New York Times over that period, during the buildup to the war, you would not have had the sense that the United States was planning on doing something that was a gross violation of International Law (and national law, for that matter).
February 25, 2005
Quote Of The Moment #0088
The New York Times, this great liberal newspaper, had 70 editorials between September 11, 2001 and the attack on Iraq, March 20, 2003. In not one of those editorials was the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Tribunal, or any aspect of International Law ever mentioned. Now, those guys know that these things exist -- and that's a perfect example of censorship by omission. And so if you were reading The New York Times over that period, during the buildup to the war, you would not have had the sense that the United States was planning on doing something that was a gross violation of International Law (and national law, for that matter).
Posted by Eddie Tews at 11:39 AM
| Comments (0)
The Kansas attorney general is demanding that abortion clinics turn over the complete medical records of nearly 90 women and girls, saying he needs the material for an investigation into underage sex and illegal late-term abortions.
The Party Of Small Government To The Rescue
The Kansas attorney general is demanding that abortion clinics turn over the complete medical records of nearly 90 women and girls, saying he needs the material for an investigation into underage sex and illegal late-term abortions.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 10:56 AM
| Comments (0)
It's been a while since George has taken a Cyborg-Watch-worthy photo -- but this one makes it very much worth the wait.
His eyes have never looked spookier!
February 24, 2005
Cyborg Update
It's been a while since George has taken a Cyborg-Watch-worthy photo -- but this one makes it very much worth the wait.
His eyes have never looked spookier!
Posted by Eddie Tews at 06:23 PM
| Comments (0)
The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force... [...]
Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see, and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy.
How well will the robokillers work? Probably about as well as "National Missile Defense", which has failed test after test after test -- but still manages to get billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars thrown its way.
Or about as well as the two-billion-taxpayer-dollars-a-pop Stealth bomber, which "cannot go out in the rain".
What happens when the robots get taken out of carpeted, climate-controlled rooms and dropped into the desert sands of Iraq -- which have extracted "an amazing toll on combat vehicles, generators, just about everything"?
What happens when some ten-year-old kid sneaks up on the robots with a can of spray paint and covers over their robo-eyes? What happens when somebody turns on a transistor radio within a few hundred yards of the robots? Or when some fourteen-year-old kid downloads a bunch of spyware into the robots' gizzards?
Well, it's all good:
The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion. [Emphasis added.]
See? The high-tech shit doesn't need to "work", it just needs taxpayers to line military contractors' pockets. If it doesn't "work", that only proves that taxpayers need to spend some more money.
But, what if the robots do work like they're supposed to? This is where it gets kinda interesting:
Colin Angle, 37, is the chief executive and another co-founder of iRobot, a private company he helped start in his living room 14 years ago. ... He believes the calculus of money, morals, and military logic will result in battalions of robots in combat.
"The cost of the soldier in the field is so high, both in cash and in a political sense," Angle said, that "robots will be doing wildly dangerous tasks" in battle in the very near future.
In other words, those flesh-and-blood soldiers that Limbaugh and O'Reilly are maniacally exhorting us to "support" would soon enough be looking for work. And, assuming the robots will also be authorised to conduct "homeland security" operations, Limbaugh and O'Reilly will be maniacally exhorting us to support the robocops in their project of blowing away in droves the unemployed veterans. After all, prisons can only hold so many niggers -- better to just shoot them down and be done with it.
But hey, it's never too early to begin fashioning your Luddite Hammer.
We Support Our "Troops"
The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force... [...]
Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see, and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy.
How well will the robokillers work? Probably about as well as "National Missile Defense", which has failed test after test after test -- but still manages to get billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars thrown its way.
Or about as well as the two-billion-taxpayer-dollars-a-pop Stealth bomber, which "cannot go out in the rain".
What happens when the robots get taken out of carpeted, climate-controlled rooms and dropped into the desert sands of Iraq -- which have extracted "an amazing toll on combat vehicles, generators, just about everything"?
What happens when some ten-year-old kid sneaks up on the robots with a can of spray paint and covers over their robo-eyes? What happens when somebody turns on a transistor radio within a few hundred yards of the robots? Or when some fourteen-year-old kid downloads a bunch of spyware into the robots' gizzards?
Well, it's all good:
The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion. [Emphasis added.]
See? The high-tech shit doesn't need to "work", it just needs taxpayers to line military contractors' pockets. If it doesn't "work", that only proves that taxpayers need to spend some more money.
But, what if the robots do work like they're supposed to? This is where it gets kinda interesting:
Colin Angle, 37, is the chief executive and another co-founder of iRobot, a private company he helped start in his living room 14 years ago. ... He believes the calculus of money, morals, and military logic will result in battalions of robots in combat.
"The cost of the soldier in the field is so high, both in cash and in a political sense," Angle said, that "robots will be doing wildly dangerous tasks" in battle in the very near future.
In other words, those flesh-and-blood soldiers that Limbaugh and O'Reilly are maniacally exhorting us to "support" would soon enough be looking for work. And, assuming the robots will also be authorised to conduct "homeland security" operations, Limbaugh and O'Reilly will be maniacally exhorting us to support the robocops in their project of blowing away in droves the unemployed veterans. After all, prisons can only hold so many niggers -- better to just shoot them down and be done with it.
But hey, it's never too early to begin fashioning your Luddite Hammer.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 11:00 AM
| Comments (1)
The Iraq war helped bring record earnings to St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems (ESSI) , and new financial data show the company's war-related profits have trickled down to a familiar family name: Bush.
William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, uncle of the president and youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, cashed in on ESSI stock options last month with a net value of more than $450,000.
"Uncle Bucky", as he is known to the president, is on the board of the company that supplies armor and other material to U.S. troops.
The company's stock has soared to record heights since just before the Iraq invasion, benefiting in part from contracts to rapidly refit military vehicles with extra armor.
February 23, 2005
Free Market Miracle #0015
The Iraq war helped bring record earnings to St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems (ESSI) , and new financial data show the company's war-related profits have trickled down to a familiar family name: Bush.
William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, uncle of the president and youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, cashed in on ESSI stock options last month with a net value of more than $450,000.
"Uncle Bucky", as he is known to the president, is on the board of the company that supplies armor and other material to U.S. troops.
The company's stock has soared to record heights since just before the Iraq invasion, benefiting in part from contracts to rapidly refit military vehicles with extra armor.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 09:40 AM
| Comments (0)
Democrats on the committee noted that the supplemental budget contains $400 million to defray the costs of countries that have provided peacekeepers to Iraq, and complained that the administration has done too little to spread the financial burden of the Iraq war.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Americans were told before the war that U.S. allies would help cover the cost of the mission, now estimated to total about $250 billion. But almost two years after the invasion, the impact on the U.S. Treasury has been nothing like the 1991 Persian Gulf War, for which allies paid about 80% of the cost, Boxer said.
February 16, 2005
The Democratic Party: Home Of Principled Opposition
Democrats on the committee noted that the supplemental budget contains $400 million to defray the costs of countries that have provided peacekeepers to Iraq, and complained that the administration has done too little to spread the financial burden of the Iraq war.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Americans were told before the war that U.S. allies would help cover the cost of the mission, now estimated to total about $250 billion. But almost two years after the invasion, the impact on the U.S. Treasury has been nothing like the 1991 Persian Gulf War, for which allies paid about 80% of the cost, Boxer said.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 06:07 PM
| Comments (0)
To be fair, taking over Middle East oil fields was not a new idea. In 1975 Henry Kissinger, using a pseudonym, wrote an article for Harpers titled "Seizing Arab Oil", outlining plans to do just that...
I Was Not Aware Of That!
To be fair, taking over Middle East oil fields was not a new idea. In 1975 Henry Kissinger, using a pseudonym, wrote an article for Harpers titled "Seizing Arab Oil", outlining plans to do just that...
Posted by Eddie Tews at 03:31 PM
| Comments (0)
U.S. officials said they had no evidence of Syrian complicity in Hariri's assassination.
Instead, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher advanced the argument that the killing undercuts Syria's stated reason for keeping 14,000 troops in Lebanon: to maintain the multiethnic country's stability.
"The very tragic bombing yesterday shows that that's just plain not true," he said. "And therefore we believe that there is no reason for them to remain there."
Nobody But Nobody Could Make Up Unintentional Irony This Delicious
U.S. officials said they had no evidence of Syrian complicity in Hariri's assassination.
Instead, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher advanced the argument that the killing undercuts Syria's stated reason for keeping 14,000 troops in Lebanon: to maintain the multiethnic country's stability.
"The very tragic bombing yesterday shows that that's just plain not true," he said. "And therefore we believe that there is no reason for them to remain there."
Posted by Eddie Tews at 03:08 PM
| Comments (0)
"We have got to deal with the cost of drugs. We have got to force the drug companies to play by some set of rules that is fair to everybody." -- Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn.
February 12, 2005
Fucking Liberal Republicans
"We have got to deal with the cost of drugs. We have got to force the drug companies to play by some set of rules that is fair to everybody." -- Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 01:40 PM
| Comments (2)
Marine Cpl. Travis Eichelberger received a Purple Heart after he was crushed under a 67-ton Abrams tank in Iraq.
Now, nearly two years later, the honor is being revoked because his injuries weren't caused by hostile or combat action, as required under military rules. Eichelberger is among 11 Marines who were notified recently that their Purple Hearts were awarded by mistake and were being taken away.
February 09, 2005
Support Fuck The Troops!
Marine Cpl. Travis Eichelberger received a Purple Heart after he was crushed under a 67-ton Abrams tank in Iraq.
Now, nearly two years later, the honor is being revoked because his injuries weren't caused by hostile or combat action, as required under military rules. Eichelberger is among 11 Marines who were notified recently that their Purple Hearts were awarded by mistake and were being taken away.