eikonoklast

If a Democrat were prez right now

2004-08-31T08:57:00.000-05:00

Imagine a Democrat in the White House right now,

Imagine Carter or Clinton presiding over the same mess we are now in:

disastrous deficits,

an untenable and mismanaged war,

almost 20% of our nation’s children living in poverty,

environmental carelessness,

a president who has broken four international treaties,

new jobs that replace outsourced jobs with salaries that average $9000 less per year,

borrowing from Social Security to pay for the famous “tax cut”,

payoffs to political cronies,

an unstable economy,

sexual abuse of adults in POW prisons,

sexual abuse of children in POW prisons,

a foreign policy that alienates us from our allies,

trillions in unfunded mandates that threaten Social Security,

Medicare and education…

Imagine how the “so-called liberal media” and the pundits would react if a Democrat had been in charge with all this going on!

A Democrat who did to the country
what Bush has done in the past four years
would be raked over the coals nightly,
and would be looking at losing the fall election in a record landslide.

the Bush who cried Wolf

2004-08-10T08:10:00.000-05:00

Knock knock! Who's there? Orange.

Orange who?

Orange you feeling safer?

(thanks to Corrente)

why am i not surprised?

2004-08-03T01:16:00.000-05:00

the administration announced right after the Democratic national Convention that there was a hightened terror alert. they named specific financial buildings as targets for the very, very, very, near future.
now the Times reports that this "intelligence" predates 2001.

the democrats in convention

2004-08-02T00:43:00.000-05:00

well, the democratic convention is over...and in the midst of the fru-fru and hoopla some substantial things were said and some important issues were addressed.
but the broadcast networks decided none of that was newsworthy...people didn't need to know what the democrats thought.
they spend three minutes discussing Kerry's hair but won't report what he says about healthcare.
they will have a feature on how Edwards was a trial lawyer, but ignore what the democrats are saying about workplace safety law.
they will focus on the "storm" around Theresa Heinz Kerry, but will not report on what her husband says about education or foreign policy.
hmmmm and these "journalists" see themselves as guardians of America's freedoms? we really oughta quit referring to them as journalists....image vendors maybe, or just infotainment hawkers....snakeoil salesmen?

Kerry...the difference

2004-07-28T13:41:00.000-05:00

lots of hopeful things are being said this week about Kerry...about how he will change things once elected. i see no evidence of this in his statements, except in regard to women's issues and perhaps (perhaps) healthcare. certainly his middle east policy sounds like a dittohead of Bush's quagmire. i think he will work better with other nations...but what else?

Kerry will only be slightly better than Bush as far as i can see....i tell myself the choice is not Bush or Kerry but the people they surround themselves with...and we know what destructive people surround Bush.... even a little difference might make a big difference in terms of the future....certainly the obvious difference will be women's rights and perhaps healthcare.

on the otherhand i think of Lenin's insight about voting for the worst in order to bring the real tensions to a head sooner....it bothers me from time to time that Kerry might possibly be no real difference at all.

but I have to believe that something must be done now...not sometime in the future....four more years of Bush will be a disaster any way you cut it.

do we vote our hopes or do we vote our anger?

Seen these stories in our So-called Liberal media lately?

2004-07-19T07:57:00.000-05:00

First we torture their men and women, now, we torture their children

Norwegian, German, and Australian press broke this story over a week ago, reporting the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Most of the more than 100 minors still believed to be held in American-controlled prisons in Iraq were taken into custody after US forces raided their homes.

Some of the children are taken to the adult prison and abused in front of their fathers-detained there- in an effort to make the parent talk. They are usually stripped naked, abused or fondled, or even raped by the American interrogators.

"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter Seymour Hersch said last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher.”

He called the prison scene "a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway…war crimes."

The outrages are known within Iraq, and have cost us the support of moderate Arabs, says Hersh. European media learned that the Red Cross, UNICEF, and Amnesty International discovered these prisons and lodged complaints months ago with U.S. officials, to no avail.

Sources:

http://www.juancole.com/

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=541472

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/

We’ll call him the new Saddam for short

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, handpicked by the Bush Administration, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station last month, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them."

Sources:

http://www.juancole.com/

http://atrios.blogspot.com/

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/16/1089694568757.html?oneclick=true

Presbyterians and Israel

“Leaders of the largest Presbyterian denomination have officially equated Israel with apartheid-era South Africa and voted to divest from Israel,” reports Arutz Sheva. Predictably, some leaders have mounted an attack against the PCUSA. “We were offended and distressed by the actions of the Presbyterian Church USA at your most recent General Assembly pertaining to Jews and Israel,” complained Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman.

Source:

http://www.kurtnimmo.com/blog/

Stains on the country

2004-07-10T12:49:00.000-05:00

As of today 881 Americans are dead in Iraq, over 1000 "coalition" forces dead, and about 15,000 Iraqs. That's 16,000 bloadsoaked clothes.

And Clinton was impeached for one stained dress?

Independence Day Thoughts, part two

2004-07-06T21:50:00.000-05:00

In the afterglow of the national holiday I am sure the flag waving will be more and more politicized by the right….but the flag and the holiday and the national symbols belong to all of us, more especially to progressives…even though Democrats are at times timid about flag waving (because it is so exploited by the rightwing). to those of us who are not happy with the direction of the country under George W. Bush’s “guidance”, America has always been beautiful and always been a place where progress was possible, where society could change for the better. For so many of us, America has always been a place for democratic values, social progress, equality, liberty, and a land of hope for all. So progressive Americans have worked through the years to end slavery, bring women into full civic participation, build a public school system where everyone could have an opportunity to learn and grow, stop child labor and sweat shops, end racism, bring an end to the exploitation of the poor by powerful moneyed forces….Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle comes to mind, as does the five day work week, paid vacations, and social security. (all progressive or liberal ideas)

Did you know:

the Pledge of Allegiance itself was originally authored and promoted by a leading Christian socialist, Francis Bellamy (cousin of best-selling radical writer Edward Bellamy). Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America by promoting use of the flag in public schools. He hoped the pledge would promote an ethical vision which would counter the climate of the Gilded Age, with its robber barons, monopolistic practices, and exploitation of workers. Bellamy intended the line “One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all” to express a more collective and egalitarian vision of America.

America the Beautiful was written by Katherine Lee Bates, a professor of English at Wellesley College. A member of progressive-reform circles in the Boston area, concerned about labor rights, urban slums and women’s suffrage, an ardent feminist, for decades she lived with and loved her Wellesley colleague Katharine Coman, an economist and social activist. Bates was an accomplished and published poet, whose book America the Beautiful and Other Poems includes a sequence of poems expressing outrage at U.S. imperialism in the Philippines.

Emma Lazarus wrote the lines inscribed on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Emma Lazarus was a poet of considerable reputation in her day, who was a strong supporter of social reform. Her welcome to the “wretched refuse” of the earth, written in 1883, was an effort to project an inclusive and egalitarian definition of the American Dream.

and one more thing...

From David Letterman:

Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About Fahrenheit 9/11

10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing

9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election

8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words

7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported

6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger

5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true

4. Not sure -- I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe

3. Where the hell was Spider-Man?

2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth

1. I thought this was supposed to be about Dodgeball

Independence Day thoughts, part one

2004-07-03T18:53:00.000-05:00

Sorry the weblog has been silent for so long. I have been out of the country, working in refugee settlements in the Dominican Republic. It was a meaningful experience, one I engage in from time to time, through my local church.It is good to be back home.

the Fourth of July Weekend is here, and flags will wave (as they should) and speeches will be made, and no doubt, the Bush White House will claim some corner on patriotic truth, using the occasion to stygmatize those who dissent from a useless war, prison torture, padding the trough of campaign contributors, and the slow deprivation of our liberties.

One thought to the patriots of the days to come:
If you must wrap yourself in the flag to prove you are a patriot, and if you must wear your Christianity on your sleeve, then I humbly suggest that you are neither a patriot nor a Christian.

the Reagan Commemoration Bash

2004-06-09T00:23:00.000-05:00

Ronald Reagan is dead. They called him the great communicator. The media celebrates all week long his "youthful enthusiasm", his positive message, his "vision". We are told he had a profound effect on America. Indeed! The word for that effect is called selfishness. Instead of asking us to go into the voting booth seeking what was best for our country, he suggested we seek our own success: he challenged us with questions like,"are you better off today than you were four years ago?" as if the real issue was self-aggrandizement.

The common good was seemingly non-existent for Reagan. It is even less existent in the Bush era. (Reagan plays John the Baptist to Dubya's messianic administration.) He spoke anecdotally about individual success stories that had no government or community reference. Reagan communicated to American's in general and America's youth in particular the priority of the heroic, the entitlement to privilege, and the primacy of symbol, and the glory of self-concern. this is Ronald Reagan's legacy...

(sorry for the absence the last few weeks, i have been out of the country)

2004-05-19T09:44:00.000-05:00

Loving Our Oppression

From Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," 1985:
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held... But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another, slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"... Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally opposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision no Big Brother is required... As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared is those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book for there would be no one who wanted to read one... Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with the equivalent of the feelies, the orgy progy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy... In 1984, Huxley added people who are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

2004-05-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

Marriage and the State

In a column in the Boston Globe (yes, the Globe), Jeff Jacoby argues that people who believe that people who love each other should be able to marry have it all wrong. Jacoby insists that the problem is we have forgotten the definition and purpose of marriage, which “is to unite men and women so that any children they may create or adopt will have a mom and a dad”. Ahhh! Thanks for the clarification, Jeff. No one had ever put it quite that way for me. I thought it was about love, commitment, and all that. The marriage traditionalists, do, though, keep coming back to procreation as the basis for marriage. They also say that with same-sex marriage we are seeing the state trying to define and shape marriage. The president of the USA says his job is to defend the “sacred institution” of marriage. Sacred institutions, of course are the bailiwick of churches, mosques, temples and synagogues, not the president of the United States. I honestly didn’t think it was the responsibility of the President to be chief theologian for the nation. I didn’t think it was the job of the government to define or protect what was “sacred” or holy. I go to church for that.

Of course, the truth is that the state has nearly always defined and shaped marriage. Just a glance at how the state has redefined divorce in the last fifty years gives lie to the claim that suddenly the state wants to do what it never has done (shape marriage). It is the state that defines marriage. Some time, some where, marriage may have meant simply providing a mommy and daddy, but in the United States today, marriage as defined and sanctioned civilly shapes inheritance, income tax filings, next of kin decisions, health care, insurance, custody and familial relations.

Some may say the church has always preached that marriage was divinely sanctioned, but in fact many in the early church discouraged marriage (see Paul). The official church in the west for centuries did not perform weddings, but blessed civil unions at the doors of the churches. The Abyssinian Church for centuries did not give church blessings to marriages until the grandchildren of the civilly married couple were baptized and being raised in the faith. Not the divine myth the traditionalists want us to swallow.

2004-05-18T02:31:00.000-05:00

2004-05-14T04:13:00.000-05:00

Prisons, Perceptions, the President

I have noticed among GOP folk three different responses to the prison “scandals” at Abu Graib. The first might be characterized by Dubya, John McCain, and a small number of GOP on the Hill. Dubya expressed regret that the abuses had taken place (once he got around to expressing anything). This first group seems to be sorry that any of the abuses happened.

The second group, given voice by Rumsfeld, express the regret that abuses happened, but also express regret that we ever found out. They are sorry people were tortured and abused, but just as sorry that we now know what was going on.

The third group is just sorry we found out. This group, whose opinion is so well articulated by such “minds” as Oklahoma’s Senator Jim Inhofe, Rush Limbaugh, and some not very memorable congressfolk from Alabama and California, is not upset at all that the prisoners were mistreated. They are upset that the rest of humanity is upset. They excuse the humiliation of the prisoners, saying that what they got was nothing compared to “what they did to us”. Presumably that refers to 911, which even the White House now admits has no connection to Iraq. These guys learned well from Goebbels…if you want a lie to be believed, just keep saying it over and over.

When I first heard Dubya express his regret and how upset he was and how he just didn’t know about it, I figured he was just saying what he “needed” to say. But, the more I thought about it, the more I believe he was at least partly honest. I don’t think he knows, because I don’t think he is in charge. War crimes aside, his being out of the loop is a fascinating thought.

2004-05-09T22:50:00.000-05:00

President Bush says that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American military guards is "a stain on our country's honor and reputation".
I guess that's two presidents in a row who have been involved with stains.

2004-05-08T14:35:00.000-05:00

They have eyes but cannot see...ears but cannot hear... just a few years ago the religious right republicans were expressing their moral outrage at a stupid presidential affair...it was "deplorable," "reprehensible," "despicable," "disgusting," and " "revolting." the affair was such an act of depravity that they were sure we needed to impeach the guy.

now their own administration is seen torturing and sexually humiliating (and even raping) young men in Iraqi prisons (the same ones we condemned when Saddam was in power because he had people tortured, humiliated and even raped there ... but wait....)

somehow pictures that show American soldiers sexually humiliating Iraqis are quietly dismissed as "unfortunate", "fraternity-like" hazing.

somehow reports of rape by chemical flashlights are deemed "too bad"

somehow forcing a naked man to stand on a rations carton for three days in the middle of the prison is seen as a "miscommunication"

somehow raping soldiers in Saddam's raperooms is part of the way things are supposed to be in our liberation of Iraq....and those people aren't grateful enough ye!
wonder what happened to the moral outrage?

(o i know, even christian TV preachers are excusing these acts by equating them with 911....as if revenge were a christian value...)