Bush is Laughing at YouIn a move that was stunning on many levels, Bush finally vetoed a bill that the Congress had sent on for his approval. After letting over five years of pork legislation ooze its way across his desk without being in any danger whatsoever, Bush finally unleashed the mighty power of his pen to hold back a piece of legislation that was roundly viewed as a senseless waste of taxpayer money and precious time for all parties involved.

I’ll give you three guesses what it was … and the first two... [More]

Last week, president Bush’s approval rating slipped below 35%. One might take heart that Americans, after having elected[1] him not once, but twice, are finally coming around. One might also wonder what took so bloody long and further wonder what’s wrong with the other 35%. How can they be so foolish? Those “red staters”. Those “Republicans”. It’s not so simple. The fingers of propoganda grasp far and wide and reach deep into the unwary mind. Thanks to sufficient propaganda, a lot of people live... [More]

The article We Have Created the World’s First Truly Global Empire (Democracy Now!) is an interview with “Self-Described Economic Hit Man” John Perkins. He’s a former NSA employee who spent a couple of dozen years of his life playing loan shark to various countries around the world.

“We economic hit men, during the last 30 or 40 years, have really created the world’s first truly global empire, and we’ve done this primarily through economics, and the military only coming in as a last resort. Therefore, it’s been... [More]”

This draft was buried, nearly complete in the earthli archives. It has been published now … well because it’s still relevant.

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Bush Views New Orleans from Air Force OneWhy doesn’t Bush come up with a better persona for the Katrina aftermath? Americans don’t really have high standards for veracity in reporting, a fact that he’s used often before. What’s... [More]

US citizens not interested in Freedom (Slashdot) started off a conversation on Slashdot recently that aired some common arguments for and against the libertarian political system.

Libertarians want a world with as little government regulation as possible, including drug and weapons use. The basic philosophy goes along the lines of “if it only affects your own self, you should be able to do it”. No more laws imposing a morality inherited from religion or from less enlightened systems. If you want to smoke... [More]

Cartoons Worse than Torture?

This is the Real Outrage by Tariq Ali (Common Dreams) slices through the nonsense over the non-issue of the recent cartoons of Muhammed published in newspapers[1] recently. He acknowledges that the right to free speech is paramount, but neither can a speaker assume that everyone will react calmly and reasonably, regardless of the message.

“[T]he cartoon depicting Muhammad as a terrorist is a crude racist stereotype. The implication is that every Muslim is a potential terrorist. This is the sort... [More]”

As George Bush mentioned at the beginning of his State of the Union speech, Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King, died last week. She was almost 80 years old and had been in poor health after suffering a stroke and heart attack last summer. Throughout her life, she was a champion of civil rights for minorities—especially the poor—and was an outspoken pacifist. She was laid to rest with a six hour funeral ceremony during which “almost three dozen people spoke”, according to the... [More]

It’s been five years now since the President stopped caring whether we knew he was lying to us. It’s been five years since the office dropped the facade of caring what the American people think of what it does. It was harsh when it first happened, but by now it’s really hard to work up a good batch of indignation about it. So, yeah, you kind of just get used to it. It’s an attitude that is eminently manipulable by supporters of this president, this desire to ignore news of his repeated... [More]

Piss Christ by Andres SerranoAt least one embassy has been brought to the ground because of some childish cartoons published in a newspaper in Denmark. Or, shall we say, ostensibly because of these cartoons. The causal nature of the publishing of the cartoons and the burning of a Danish embassy is as plain as the nose on your face, most would say. Is that really so? A quick recap is probably in order for those that have only heard bits and pieces of fact mixed in with hyperbole from all sides, describing typical behavior... [More]

’Marshall Plan’ for Iraq Fades (LA Times) hove its bedraggled carcass into view, reared its ugly head and expired with a wheeze that sounded like: “the America we learned about is dead and probably never existed”.

The story interviews several American officials whose crassness is beyond caricature—previously found only in the diseased imaginings of a died-in-the-wool marxist. And yet, quotes from these people are sprinkled throughout a story that shows no sense of outrage whatsoever. As far as the LA... [More]

That’s the question implied by the smirk on George Bush’s face every time he speaks to the American people—not that he’s particularly interested in the answer. Bush dragged himself from the depths of his bubble to a dais (or rostrum, as his speechwriter put it) he’s visited six times before to deliver the 2006 State of the Union (Washington Post) address. The speech had all the earmarks of a committee effort delivered by someone who only understood about half of it. There were a good dozen different large... [More]

Much of the chatter from Washington these days is about corruption, misplaced values and partisan politics. This has probably ever been so, but it’s the last one, partisan politics, that truly colors everything one hears about the centers of power in the United States. Almost without exception, issues are discussed as if there are only two possible sides and those sides are adequately represented by the Democrats and the Republicans, whose opinions on all issues are diametrically opposed. It... [More]

Most likely only those with the best endurance survived all 18 hours of the senate confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito. The entire transcript is also available online and runs to hundreds of pages. Reading 50 pages lends a strong feeling of deja vu whereas reading over 100 inspires more a feeling of disenchantment and nausea. Read The Shameless and Spineless by Will Durst (Alternet) for a comic synopsis of the entire transcript (see The hearing so far… (Plastic) for another). Democrats actually did ask pointed questions,... [More]

According to Cheney Looms Large in Latest Twist of CIA Leak Drama (Common Dreams):

“McClellan was also asked by reporters whether Cheney always told Americans the truth. … ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The vice president, like the president, is a straightforward, plainspoken person.’”

Scott McClellan died at 16:34 later that day from third degree burn wounds suffered from multiple lightning strikes.

The people of New Orleans should put their heads together and come up with something in their patois.

“President Bush once spoke to a major gathering of the American Indian Nation in Arizona. He went on for almost an hour about plans to increase every Native American’s standard of living. He referred to his career as Governor of Texas, where he had signed “YES” 1,237 times — once for every Indian issue that came across his desk.

“Although vague on the details, he seemed most enthusiastic to... [More]”

Impeachment is a word that’s going to turn up almost no hits on a Lexis Nexis search. The word gets kicked around whenever a president does stuff he shouldn’t. The last time it was used was with Clinton, who actually was impeached, but was not forced to leave office. As with everything else in American politics, impeachment is too complicated for a mortal mind to grasp. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, Clinton was impeached not for adultery (though there are many in the Puritanical... [More]

It is generous to say that the U.S. education system doesn’t place much of an emphasis on learning history. Knowing history breeds learning about current policy (before it becomes history), discussing it (politics for the layman? absurd) and, worst of all, questioning it. The typical American history education during the 70s and 80s included years of repetition of the same 75 years during the founding of the U.S., coverage of the Civil War, some stuff about the Arch Duke Ferdinand and WWI,... [More]

The End of Poverty by Onnesha Roychoudhuri (AlterNet) is an interview with Jeffrey Sachs, head of a panel of “over 250 development experts to lay out practical strategies for promoting rapid development”. The biggest hurdle, as far as he’s concerned is the “lack of appropriate effort” on the part of “rich countries”. The main problems faced by poor countries today are malnutrition and diseases like AIDS and malaria; these could be “controlled quite dramatically and easily if we just put in the effort”. Opponents have criticized his... [More]

Opting for ‘Opt-In’ by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor (AlterNet) shows how schools are dealing with increasingly predatory military recruiters in their schools. As the military misses more and more recruiting deadlines, they demand more and more access to the records for younger potential recruits: kids in high school. The military has access to a student’s personal records by default, unless the school district or the parents deny it.

What follows are some tales from recent U.S. domestic and foreign policy — tales of a government increasingly concerned neither with the will of its people nor the welfare of humans in general. A government that prefers to shortsightedly amass power unto itself, ignoring long-term realities that make such power fleeting at best.

Taking action in Darfur

Ring Them Bells by Chris Floyd (CounterPunch) sounds the alarm that the sweet-faced young up-and-comer, the United States, is poised to pop its self-interest cherry by... [More]

A little while ago, the United States Senate invited British Parliamentarian George Galloway over the pond for a bit of a chat. They wanted to hear what he had to say about the accusations they’d made that he profited from the Oil for Food program in Iraq during sanctions. The U.S. media had naturally already weighed in and found him guilty supported by marginal circumstantial evidence. (He knew a guy who knew a guy … what more do you need?) Galloway is by no means an angel, but after... [More]

Two bills signed into law this year will have major effects on the average American citizen’s life in the coming years. First, the Congress and the President gleefully passed the written-by-credit-card-companies bankruptcy bill. Soon after, RealID slipped through on the coattails of the appropriations bill for the next whack of change for Iraq.

Bankruptcy is Obsolete

Debt Slavery by David Swanson (Common Dreams) provides some background on the recently passed bankruptcy bill.

The bankruptcy bill was sold to us by our media... [More]

As Winston Smith noted long ago, keeping history up to date is a full-time job. It’s good that we in America are blessed with a vigilant media that takes care of the job. When W. Mark Felt recently came forward to name himself as the erstwhile informant in the Watergate scandal, the right-wing loonies seized the opportunity to rewrite the history of the Vietnam War in today’s context.

Deep Throat and Genocide by Ben Stein provides a truly stunning summary of Nixon and the Vietnam War, claiming that Nixon... [More]

One of the most important points to remember about democracy in America is how strongly controlled it is by large corporations. What exactly is a corporation, anyway? How did we get to the point where there is no way of fighting a bad corporation or even realistically boycotting one? (you usually end up putting money in their coffers through subsidiaries) State and Corp. by Noam Chomsky (ZNet) offers a description of corporations that is grounded in U.S. law and is both accurate and chilling:

“And [they] were granted... [More]”

It’s been a while since a blatantly government-beholden article has graced earthli News, so here’s Cooperation falls apart in Senate by Robert Novak (Chicago Sun Times). I did

“The lavishly acclaimed new era of good feelings in the Senate lasted less than four days. Senators, anxious to begin another long recess, reverted to mean and brutish behavior a little after 7 p.m. Thursday when Democrats blocked an up-or-down vote on John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. So much for supposed congeniality wrought by the... [More]”

Judging from the humming on the old Internet(s) lately, Newsweek is in a fair amount of trouble. It seems that this young upstart of a magazine, instead of being happy with its lot sitting in Time’s shadow, seems instead intent on bringing life as we know it to an end! (emphasis added by the White House). With their publication of an article documenting specific prisoner abuses in U.S. detainment facilities (known as dungeons in any other context), they incensed an administration known to be... [More]

An idea that’s been recently bouncing around, apparently, is the imminence not only of hordes of slavering Arabiacs biting the heads off of our babies and raping our womenfolk, but also that of clone-like masses of yellow bodies swelling forth from Asia like a tide of army ants, conquering with their socialist sameness all that was ever good and right in this world.

It was mentioned that China is a mighty danger because they greedily take money from sadly hoodwinked western businesses, then... [More]

Everyone Check Your Sources (Plastic) shows that you just can’t believe anything these days, even when it justifies your worldview perfectly — perhaps especially then. Newsweek exposed US Army practices at Guantanamo, claiming that they were using psychological means of breaking the Muslim suspects by “flush[ing] a holy book [the Quran] down the toilet.” The article supposedly sparked protests “throughout much of the Muslim world” (wherever that is) which killed 16 people and included threats of “a jihad... [More]”

Black and White and Full of Crap by Ted Rall (Common Dreams) revisits the Pat Tillman story, one year later, to see which parts of it hold up under closer scrutiny (spoiler: not much).

Tillman was the “the former NFL player who turned down a multi-million dollar football contract to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan” and was subsequently killed in action. First off, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Pat himself probably had his priorities straight. He had his facts all wrong and his brain was squeaky clean from a lifetime... [More]

Continuing in the by-now-classic vein of other Bush appointments, Bush’s envoy can actually find Canada (Globe and Mail) tells of the man slated to make nice with Canada for the next several years. The article, published in Canada’s biggest paper, sardonically points out the one good thing about him before going on to describe just how little he’s actually been to Canada.

“Mr. Wilkins’ only trip to Canada was to Niagara Falls, Ont., over a long weekend in the early 1970s while he was posted in Indiana with the... [More]”