Posts from ‘September, 2006’

We had intended to pass on mentioning the seamy demise of Florida Republican Mark Foley’s six-term career as a congressman. We’d prefer to leave sensationalizing that kind of scandal to the cable news channels that do it so relentlessly at every opportunity.



Besides, we’re acutely aware that either party can suddenly discover it has someone on board with nasty habits of one kind or another.



. . . Our good intentions evaporated when we saw news tonight indicating Republican powers that be in the House knew one year ago that Foley had some kind of problem involving inappropriate e-mails and young pages . . .

Quote: “President Bush has frequently cited the desires of the Iraqi people as a primary reason for our continued involvement in Iraq, liberally peppering his speeches with phrases like ‘it’s what the Iraqi people want,’ ‘the people spoke,’ and ‘they want our help.’



“During a visit by Prime Minister Maliki this summer, the president said: ‘When 12 million Iraqis went to the polls and said, “I want to be free,” it was an amazing moment.’



“Well, we’ve just had another amazing moment in which the Iraqi people have spoken. But this time the message isn’t ‘We want to be free.’ It’s ‘We don’t mind seeing American soldiers blown up.’ . . .”

When President Bush said two days ago he was ordering release of the whole National Intelligence Estimate, we fully expected a catch. That kind of openness about anything would be unprecedented for Bush and his administration.



Sure enough, sections of the report — logically the most pertinent to assessing how effective and otherwise worthwhile Bush’s policies are, and thus the most politically sensitive — are being withheld.

Our ever so grateful friends in the new democratic Iraq — well, they had elections anyway — are trying to tell us something:



Get out, already! Or, if not right now at least within the year. Oh, and by the way, if our people kill your people, your people have got it coming to them.



Obviously, Middle East folks whose country has been turned into a slaughterhouse with too much blood being spilled in the streets and too little clean water flowing to faucets, have their own take on gratitude. . .

Quote: “Next time a muscle-bound guy in a sports car cuts you off on the highway, don’t get mad — just take a deep breath and realize that it might not be his fault.”

We’ve often wondered during the past 30 years how and why so many people would vote against their own longterm best interest. Sure, movie star charisma and perceived straight-shooterism count for some of it, but still . . .



Here we are in 2006 with a failed president who couldn’t cope with a hurricane but takes it on himself to compromise our rights and freedoms in his grandly proclaimed, open-ended terror war. We have a Congress that has shirked its responsibilities to the point of criminal negligence. Our troops are stuck in a deadly, unnecessary quagmire that’s cost us 2,703 soldiers’ lives and a half a half trillion dollars, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, the middle class is being ground down, our economy is being hollowed out and ours is the biggest debtor nation in the universe, beating whichever country is second by a colossal margin.



Then, here comes another in an expanding series of clues.



“Today’s college students are failing to graduate with a knowledge of and appreciation for America’s history and institutions, a new report says. Warning of a ‘coming crisis in American citizenship,’ it blames U.S. colleges and universities for neglecting to prepare students for their civic responsibilities. . .”

Fox News personality Chris Wallace’s gotcha moment with former President Bill Clinton didn’t go off as planned Sunday. Instead, Clinton turned the tables on Wallace, setting the Republican propaganda outlet’s right-wing viewers straight on critical points of recent history in the process.



While Clinton was obviously annoyed and being strongly assertive, at no time did he act or speak in an uncivil or even impolite way. What got off with Wallace then, and other Fox News talking heads ever since, is that aside from forcefully telling his side of things, Clinton told Wallace straight to his face what Wallace and Fox were up to.



That’s not something the unfair and unbalanced broadcasting home of bullies like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly is accustomed to. Guests are for beating up on, not for being beat up by.

The big-three U.S. automakers are signature U.S. industries. Americans pioneered auto design and assembly line manufacturing at the beginning. Our economy has thrived on a burgeoning mass market for cars and trucks for a century.



But now, thanks to proliferating technology and knowhow backed by plentiful capital and cheap labor, foreign producers are eating U.S. automakers’ lunch. In response, U.S. auto executives are hell bent on cutting costs — labor costs first and foremost.



As if robots, computers and low-wage foreign workers will turn around and buy Ford, GM and Chrysler vehicles, and their stock. As if ex-auto workers manning convenience store tills and the aisles of big-box imported goods retailers will be able to afford U.S. automakers’ products.



Successful foreign competitors, meanwhile, are applying the same thinking that’s provided them so much recent success.

Quote: “I was interested to find that the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition is so in favor of torture he told (Sen. John) McCain that the senator either supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian vote. I’d like to see an evangelical vote on that one.



“I don’t know how Sheldon defines traditional values, but deliberately inflicting terrible physical pain or stress on someone who is completely helpless strikes me as . . . well, torture. And, um, wrong . . .”

It’s as though we’ve all fallen through Alice’s looking glass, into a la-la land where up is down, black is white and wrong is right, or at least right wing.



In point of fact — yes, we know, facts are out of vogue in Bush-era Washington — the Geneva Conventions our interrogators are supposed to abide by have specifically forbidden “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” for nearly six decades. We’re at a complete loss to understand how and why the 2005 law figures into this, or how Sens. McCain, Graham and Warner could bargain away what the Geneva Conventions specify. . .